#cs deleted scene ouat 3x14

[stophookingatmeswan]

We’re Strange Allies with Warring Hearts

A deleted scene from 3x14 in the aftermath of “if it can be broken, it means it still works. Beautiful artwork by @somethingalltogether

Rated: M for sexual imagery because smut bunnies gonna smut bunny. Heavy on the angst and self-loathing with sprinkles of fluff.

Written for the 2017 CS Storybook, which can be found here.

Also on AO3

“Is that enough humor for you?” 

The words haunted him in the dark, the stars overhead dimmed by fog, an unintended assist by nature to help reflect his mood. There was something beyond a chill in the air; Killian was cold to his bones even through layers of leather and rum, and he laughed humorlessly – a short staccato that reverberated on the water – at the metaphor of it all. 

Those hero types, always talking about hope. And for once, he’d had hope in spades. Hope that he could find a magic bean. Hope that the offer to trade his ship would be enough, and that the accord with Blackbeard wouldn’t be too bitter a pill to swallow. Hope that when he found Emma, True Love’s kiss would break the curse and cause her memories would return. Hope she would come with him back to Storybrooke. 

Hope that there would be an us. 

One by one, those final hopes were dashed until he was left sitting alone at her kitchen table as she went to tend to the us she had with another man. Monkey or not, he’d had her heart, at least far more of it than Killian had ever had. It was a bitter pill to swallow and burned as much as his first sip of rum all those years ago and sat in his gut just as heavy and burdensome. 

That acidity had bubbled up and over as they walked in the woods searching for Zelena as Emma questioned him about how he’d spent his time during the missing year. He’d lied and doubled down when she called him on it, and then brazenly changed the subject, simultaneously guarding his own heart and breaking it as he asked about the proposal. 

I was in love, so of course I was considering it. 

Sitting in the dark he allowed his envy to shape a different reality; one in which he rarely indulged. He usually allowed his frustrations to manifest themselves carnally, preferring a hand on his cock and her on his mind to soothe the ache in his loins to dreaming of things that multiplied the ache in his heart. 

But instead of envisioning a veil of blonde hair in his lap, he stared at the water and let himself picture Emma in a veil made of tulle and lace that did nothing to obscure the joy on her face as her parents walked her down a makeshift aisle on the deck of the Jolly Roger where he stood waiting at an altar. 

Her name fell from her lips – not as an oath as he spilled over his fist, but as a vow as he said I do. 

He wasn’t holding her in arms against the door of the captain’s quarters as he fucked her breathless. They were dancing as husband and wife, his hand at her back and her fingers curled around his hook as they moved in unison to music she’d picked to play.

Killian’s breath caught suddenly as the visions of a life he so desperately wanted clouded, his mind’s eye distorting his own face until someone else stood before Emma on her wedding day. 

With a curse, he willed the phantoms away; throwing his flask into the water at the spot on which his gaze had been fixated for good measure, hoping the ripples on the water spread his heartbreak just a little further when a familiar epithet in an even more familiar voice mingled with his own. 

Shite. 

Humor me. 

Said entirely without humor and with measured challenge in his eyes, Hook’s words had put her on the defensive, not that she hadn’t already been on edge. 

She almost preferred him flirty and laden with innuendo, his push and her pull (away) keeping things from becoming too complicated. Emma had kept things light as they trekked through the trees, joking about his hook and the swashbuckling adventures he must have had in the year she’d been in New York. 

Instead of taking the bait with a snappy comeback offering to show her just what he could do with his hook, he’d become even more sullen and lied to her face – superpower be damned – and then refused to back down when she called him on it. 

The water was calm tonight; the stillness a stark contrast to the whirlwind Emma had been caught in since the moment she’d downed a potion handed to her by a mysterious man whose presence unsettled her, baffled her and made a tiny corner of her heart ache in ways she couldn’t explain. 

Life in New York had been comforting, each building serving as a stalwart soldier and obscuring the next in a never-ending battlefield of hustle and bustle. She supposed in hindsight there was a metaphor there; a parallel to the chaos of life in Storybrooke that somehow faded into the background at the water’s edge; water, she was loathe to notice, that was missing a familiar ship with yellow trim and tall rigging. 

“What the hell were you doing for the last year alone on that trip?” 

In the woods she’d been distracted by his caginess and deceit, anything but drawing him out the furthest from her mind but alone with her thoughts and the gentle lap of water against the docks, her mind wandered as she turned a rock she’d scooped up on her walk to the harbor in her hand. 

Had he been alone? She’d left, his promise to think of her every day lost in the fog of a curse. What if he’d moved on as she had, spending his days one swashbuckling tale after another and his nights on the narrow bunk in the captain’s quarters, moving over and inside a writhing body from which he tirelessly wrung pleasure? 

The thought infuriated her, the ire of being lied to pushed aside by a possessiveness on which she rarely allowed herself to dwell. He’d come back for her – to save her. Would he have done so if he’d spent a year indulging in sins of the flesh? 

Scrubbing a gloved hand over her face, she wanted to scream into her hands, instead huffing out a forceful sigh. The warmth hung in the air, much as it had earlier when she was face to face with him, his hope and her fear mingling in the still air along with their breath. Since when did flowery, piratey phrases such as “sins of the flesh” replace things like the blunt but much more Emma Swan-like “banging some random wench he picked up at a bar.” 

It felt like he’d been slowly seeping into her bloodstream and it was disconcerting. When she was cut, he bled and she didn’t know what to do when he stood in front of her, wounded and wanting something from her she didn’t think she’d ever be able to give. 

With a loud, “Fuck!” she tossed the rock she’d been holding into the water, startling when a different curse echoed back in the darkness. 

Shit.

They sat in their respective solitude for a moment, neither wanting to be the one to make the first approach. Emma had frozen when she heard Hook’s voice, wondering if she could just play possum and wait for him to leave if he hadn’t caught onto the fact that he wasn’t alone. Her ass was already all but frozen to the bench, so what were a few more minutes? 

Her second bout of swearing was quieter but just as forceful when his voice rang out again, clear as day and closer than she’d anticipated. 

“Swan, I’d recognize your dainty, ladylike ways even without the quiet veil of night.” He kept his tone light, the heavy burden of his private thoughts pushed aside by the possibility of a light game of cat and mouse. He even laughed when she called back, her voice gruff and filled with the exasperation he was beginning to think was just as natural a state as her willingness to fight. 

“I’ll show you dainty and ladylike, pal.” Emma lobbed the retort, leaving the window open for some patented Captain Hook innuendo and he didn’t disappoint. 

“Well, darling, if that’s the only slot left on your dance card for the evening, I’d be happy to oblige.” 

They sat in an odd, companionable silence for a moment, drinking in the normalcy of the exchange. When she didn’t answer, Killian found himself lamenting the loss of his rum, suddenly in need of liquid courage. He wasn’t often at a loss for words, but somehow she brought it out in him. And after their exchange in the woods he was keenly aware of how far a divide there was between saying something and saying the right something. 

Emma fell silent, too, knowing if she playing into his mentally wandering hand, things may go too far and wondered when the hell a quick scratch of nature’s itch with a gorgeous man became complicated. So, for once, she followed his other lead, the space between them giving her courage she hadn’t had earlier in the day. 

“Did you mean what you said?” 

“I’ve said a great many things, love. You’ll have to be more specific.” Killian bit his tongue – a tongue that had been saucily poking his cheek just a minute before as he’d once again pictured him wrapped around her, swaying to imaginary music as they coupled in a bed he could no longer call his own. 

“That if a heart is broken, it means it still works.” It was a bastardized version of what he said, but Emma figured it was close enough as the moment of candor got away from her. “Sometimes I wish Cora had been able to pull my heart out of my chest. Just to see that I still have one. Sometimes it feels like it’s been ripped out, over and over again.” 

Her sudden openness was a welcome surprise and Killian thought carefully but quickly before replying, not wanting to give her time to regret and repress. For once, his quick tongue might be useful for something other than talking himself out of a scrape. 

“Isn’t that all sadness is though, Swan? Pulling our own hearts out over and over to look at the damage.” He shifted on his bench, every inch of his being trying to not transport himself to the deck of the Jolly watching the crocodile crush the life out of Milah right before his eyes. “As a man who has spent more than his fair share of lifetimes seeking revenge in a shroud of misery, I might be an expert on such matters. There have been times I’ve been the villain in my own story, hell bent on crushing my own heart. But every time I’ve pulled it out, it’s still been beating with purpose. It’s up to us to define that purpose and not let it rule us.” 

He had a point. Several of them. As she mused on his offering, Emma heard him laugh. 

“Take that all with a grain of sand, Swan. Wisdom for others I may have in spades, but it was also borne of hundreds of years of singular vengeance.” 

Laughing along with him in spite of herself, Emma pivoted away from the depth of conversation into shallower waters. 

“Must be the one hand. Keeps you from multi-tasking.” 

His indignant gasp put a smile on her face as she stood, the cold and the gravity of the moment more than she could take. 

“I’m heading home, Hook. You should do the same. And…thanks.” 

Awkward, but better than nothing. 

He caught himself before he could blurt out that he had no home, but it was neither the time nor place for such revelations. 

“Good night, Swan.” 

Her boot steps fell, echoing on the water, and Killian strained his ears as they grew faint until he could no longer hear them. He pulled his coat closer, the air still breathtakingly cold but with a new sliver of warmth in his chest. 

Because even if it was broken, his heart still worked.