#i want him to legit sniff the air whenever he's tracking or he smells some good cheese

[anxiously-sidequesting]

I know dyvim is a sentient being but if he doesn't do little mouse things and mannerisms every now and then what is the point.

[lifeinahole27]

CS ff: “Wait for the Moonrise” (5/10) (au)

Summary:  Emma doesn’t remember who she was before she was found in the woods, but she knows that she has a few close friends, a good job, and a loyal cat that greets her every day when she gets home from work. What she doesn’t know, however, is that her past is about to catch up to her in the strangest of ways. She learns quickly that not everything is as it seems, not even her cat.

Rating: E

Content warnings: smutty smut, brief mentions of the loss of a hand

Chapter specific content warnings: One hella curious/naked pirate. Take that however you’d like (and you have a 50/50 shot of being correct, I’m sure). Maybe some strong language, but otherwise this is a fairly tame chapter for warnings.

A/N: Upon completion of this chapter, you will officially know half the story. Hooray!!!! Thanks to the people that made this fic possible: @clockadile for kick-ass art, @captainstudmuffin, @phiralovesloki, @sambethe for all the handholds and support and beta and comments and late nights and dealing with a super pain-in-the-ass writer (ME I AM SO SORRY YOU GUYS), @pocket-anon for her endless encouragement and positive attitude when I was freaking out about this, and I’ve failed to thank her up to this point (BECAUSE I AM LEGIT A TERRIBLE PERSON), and to @captainswanbigbang because if it didn’t exist, this story would still be in my WIP folder, probably being edged towards the “Possible Neverminds” subfolder...

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Catch it on Ao3 or FFN! And catch @clockadile‘s artwork HERE!

It turns out that apple martinis and tequila are a terrible combination, at least that's certainly what Emma's head and stomach inform her of as she wakes up. Suddenly, the idea of going out with Regina is the worst idea she's ever had, or at least the worst she remembers.

Nearby, her phone starts ringing, and she reaches out to answer it more to stop the racket rather than to find out who is calling her on her day off.

“Emma, I’m sorry, but I need you to swing by and take calls at the station while Mulan and I are out on an emergency call. There’s apparently been some kind of commotion down at the docks and Merida and Phillip are already out on a traffic stop.”

“But all I have to do is answer the phones, right?”

“Oh, geez, you sound terrible. Are you ill?”

“No, I went out with Regina last night.”

“Apple martinis?”

“Apple martinis,” she confirms. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll be there. But I’m not wearing my uniform.”

“That’s fine. You’re a savior, Emma.”

She makes a crude noise as she hangs up the call, rolling from the bed and throwing on a pair of jeans from her floor. She’s almost to the front door when she realizes she hasn’t fed her cat, so she jogs back to the kitchen to drop a handful of dry food in his bowl as she races back to the door.

“Sorry, Cat! I promise I’ll give you tuna when I get home!”

Then she’s out the door and running to her car so she can drive the speed limit like a good, law-abiding cop.

Of course, as all emergency calls go, her day ends up being a lot more than just answering the phones, and it’s halfway through the second hour that Emma is incredibly grateful she keeps an extra set of clothes in her locker. The second Phillip and Merida get back from an additional call down at The Rabbit Hole, Will Scarlet promptly throws up all over her.

From there, a fight breaks out between the drunk and Leroy, and it takes all three of them to break up the two of them. Emma throws her soiled clothes (dampened all the way down to her underwear) on the floor in disgust and runs through the dinky shower they have for just such moments.

“Hey, Emma? Can you get down to the docks to help Graham? Apparently, the accident was a little bigger than they originally thought and they can’t get the workers to stop walking around without giving their full statements. He and Mulan are really struggling.”

She pulls on her backup shoes and holds back every urge to grumble or groan in aggravation. At least leaving the station means she can swing by Granny’s and get a damn cup of coffee. Even as she thinks it, she whips out her phone and places the to-go order for a grilled cheese, as well, so she can combat some of the hangover and severe case of Hulk that’s lingering in her periphery.

It takes hours for her to get home, and when she does, she all but dropkicks the bag of her dirty clothes into the washing machine before stomping into the kitchen. It’s only after she’s downed half a bottle of water that she finally takes a deep breath. She takes yet another grilled cheese out of a take-out bag to set up her own dinner, only pausing to dump a healthy amount of ketchup into the lid of the Styrofoam container to dip her onion rings.

She stands at the counter to eat it, sighing in relief when she licks the last crumbs from her fingers and dumps the container in the garbage. Ugh. That’s full, too. She’ll have to take that out before she can fully relax. While she’s at it, she opens the fridge to see if there’s anything expired and sees the partial can of tuna on the second shelf.

“Shit, I can’t believe I forgot to feed him when I got home,” she mutters to herself. “Cat! Come get your dinner!” She spoons the last of the tuna into his dish, dripping the juice from the can all over the floor when she checks her watch. “Dammit!”

Silence greets her, which is odd. There are days that he meanders from the bedroom after a lengthy nap, still blinking open his eyes as he heads for his food dish, but this is late even for him. She figures he’ll come out soon and pulls a fresh liner out of the box under the sink to change out the garbage can.

“Cat? Come on, buddy, it’s dinner time. I did promise you tuna tonight, little man.”

Emma’s too busy fussing with wrangling the bag from the trash can to notice the footfalls that finally come in response to her voice.

“I’d much rather prefer something a little more human, if you don��t mind.”

Emma whirls around, faced with the man standing at the entrance to her kitchen wrapped in nothing but the blanket she still keeps in the corner for the nights Cat doesn’t sleep next to her. In her state of shock, Emma slips on the tuna juice she spilled and goes down hard – hard enough that she should worry, whenever she comes to, about whether or not she has a concussion.

-x-

When Ursula told him that she’d be changing him into a creature that would be able to track and blend in at the same time, he had imagined something far more majestic. He imagined himself a powerful beast of moderate size that could sniff out Emma immediately and find his way to her heart. The sea witch told him to close his eyes, and when he awoke, he would already be in the land without magic, and he would already be transformed.

And awake he did. His first dismay is finding that he was not transformed with all his limbs, and honestly wonders if it’s because Ursula couldn’t change what wasn’t there, or if it’s because he’s a pirate and ignored one too many mermaids during his time on the seas. The second problem is the vessel she chose to send him in. It takes one look around him to realize everything is much larger than he is, and it takes great effort and time to haul himself up the beach and away from the incoming tide that woke him.

Sand, it turns out, is not just difficult when barefoot. It’s also hell on paws. On the side of a building, he spots a ledge that might be a good vantage point for him to better see anything at all. He aims and leaps, surprised when he makes it, then struts along the window ledge with pride; he shouldn’t have doubted himself at all. He’s Captain Hook, and he can accomplish anything he sets his mind to. The proof is in the fact that he’s here, in the land where he will find Emma and bring her home, where all others doubted him.

He’s here – as a bloody house cat.

When he catches sight of himself in the window, his back arches and his fur fluffs out in all directions. He knows that’s his own reflection and yet, the indignity of being turned from his handsome self into something most often kept in barns to catch mice is just too much for him.

With an endless stream of curses directed towards that bloody witch, he jumps from the ledge and moves onward. From what he can tell, the waterline is at the edge of town, and he needs to head somewhere he’ll be able to find people. Where there are people, there are bound to be scents that he’ll be able to pick up. Currently, all he can still smell is sea water and fish, probably left on a grudge by Ursula herself.

Much like the search for Emma when she first went missing, Killian takes a methodical approach to searching for her here. He’s totally unfamiliar with the terrain, so it takes longer than he wants, but there’s no shortage of places for him to hide for a night when he needs to sleep, and there’s a food establishment that excels at wasting their leftovers, which results in Killian eating quite well more than one night in a row.

During the daytime, he’s careful to remain discretely hidden. There’s only one person he seeks, and he still hasn’t caught scent of her yet, even after a week of searching. There are two places where he catches what might be her on the air, but by the time he finds a trail of the smell, it’s already dissipating.

It’s almost pure luck that he ends up behind the building he does at the start of his second week searching. He’s judging the dumpster, trying to surmise if he’ll get trapped inside if he makes the jump, but he’s distracted when a blur of a scent catches in the wind. He immediately trots around the building, and he picks up speed and fully runs when he sees her blonde hair.

He wants to call out; he even tries meowing as loud as he can, but it’s of no use. She’s already in one of the metal contraptions he’s dodged more times than he can count at this point, and she’s pulling away. He skids to a stop, changing direction in order to avoid being run over by Emma, and watches with disappointment as she goes.

By the time she returns home that evening, Killian is already asleep, having waited as long as he could but still unable to resist his natural urge to rest. From the rafters of the parking structure, he thinks he’ll wake when she comes home, but she exits her vehicle and heads for her dwelling without him stirring at all.

The next day, he’s woken by a rude man with a broom, shooing him out of his hiding spot and chasing him down the road. Killian doesn’t look back, just runs as fast as he can until he no longer hears the thunderous footsteps behind him. He huffs in exhaustion from his new crouched hiding spot, squeezed between bushes and the side of a house, and he tries to decide how he’ll possibly be able to keep watch and keep alive at the same time. Neither are working out so well for him at the moment.

He finds a new hiding spot each time he must rest, unwilling to be lulled into false complacency again by believing himself invisible. At another moment, a young lass of maybe eight or nine catches sight of him and wants to keep him, and it’s only thanks to her mother’s insistence that they cannot adopt him and his own ability to escape situations that saves his tail (almost literally).

After several failed attempts to get her attention, Killian isn’t sure that he’ll ever succeed. That’s not something he ever thought after commandeering his brother’s ship, and it’s certainly not something he ever expected to think after going through everything he did. He’s survived unlikely sea storms, and an encounter with the Dark One himself with only a hand lost in the process.

But this land, and this woman, are both so equally frustrating, that he’s surprised he hasn’t just curled up to perish in one of his hiding spots yet. That thought swirls about his head, and then he realizes it could be the new plan. First, he must wait for nightfall. There’s a time that the man with the broom always disappears, and he assumes that’s when he retires for the evening.

What Killian doesn’t anticipate is the rapid cooling of the temperatures as he enacts his disguised waiting on the stoop for her to return. Pretending to be nearing death is much easier when the concrete beneath his smaller body is chilling his bones. He does fall asleep again while waiting, and as the weather gets colder, it becomes less of an act and more of him curling up tighter in order to not die before she gets home.

It takes hours, by his count, but when he hears someone approaching, he somehow knows it’ll be her. Sure enough, when he squints open an eye, Emma is looking back at him in indecision. The wind gusts harder, and he closes his eyes and finds the hope he’s kept buried in his heart all this time, holding onto it tightly as he shivers uncontrollably.

She lifts him carefully, and he feels his entire body sag with relief that it worked. His plan worked. He stays curled the way she puts him, letting her take control and finding he doesn’t have the energy to fight, even if he wanted to. He’s transferred from her clothing to a towel, and from the towel (and a minor inspection for injuries, he assumes) to a warm blanket. When she cradles him against her, he finally opens his eyes to look at her fully, and he would weep with joy if he were human.

He’s in the arms of Emma Swan, who may have become leaner in the last three years, but her eyes still shine with care, and her arms still feel like home. He falls asleep again, knowing for sure that he’s safe where he is, and he is where he belongs.

When he wakes up, he’s surrounded by Emma’s scent, both from the blanket and from the woman asleep beneath him.

Not the way I would’ve preferred it, he thinks, but he wiggles free of the blanket and her arms as he becomes aware of the second scent he picked up. She’s put out food for him. In his obsession to get to her, he’s forgotten to eat for days, he thinks. It’s hard to gauge time when everything seems so much bigger and minutes feel like years. He tries to savor the tuna she’s placed in a bowl, but as soon as he tastes his first bite, he loses all bits of himself and he’s chasing the bowl across the table for the last scraps.

He abandons that bowl when he realizes there’s a second, this one filled with water. It’s clean water, not in the form of a puddle with dirt and grime visible in the bottom, and in his excitement, he drinks until his nose hits the bottom of the bowl. He twitches back, displeased with the liquid that’s just ended up in his nostrils, and sneezes once. Maybe there’s still some tuna that he missed in the bowl.

Alas, it is definitely empty, but he licks at the sides and bottom of the bowl until he’s found every crumb, every drop of the salty liquid it rested in, and licks the bowl right off the short table she placed it on. He hears a sigh to his left and looks over at Emma asleep on the couch.

Emma. Emma will have more food for him. He leaps with ease the short distance from table back to her lap, and he sets about waking her up so he might request more food. Instead of anything that might be polite, however, Killian emits a single, obnoxious meow.

She mumbles a couple noises back at him, lifting and waving her hand as her brows draw together in her sleep. But he is hungry, and she has more food for him, he just knows it. He meows again, pressing his paw into her thigh a little harder and putting his weight on that front leg. When she opens her eyes, his ears perk up and he feels his whiskers twitch. It’s worth the sleepy smile she gives him, and he happily follows her when she asks if he wants more food. He watches from his perch on the floor as she fills each dish again and then carries them back to where they were before.

Immediately, he hops back up on the table and heads straight for the tuna. As her hand strokes down his back, his body’s natural instincts kick in and he begins to purr, but with his mouth otherwise occupied with the food, it comes out more as a snarfled sound, broken by a chatty meow.

He comes back to himself when he finishes eating, and there’s some part of him that feels shame at his behavior, but he’s quickly realizing that if he’s to be stuck this way for all but three days per moon cycle, he’d better get used to the fact that he won’t always have control of his human instincts.

This proves true more than ever after Emma comes home after their terrifying run in with the animal doctor that violated him earlier in the day. She dumps toys that he would scoff at if he were himself, but this body decides that it must attack, and it must destroy every small mouse, no matter how artificial they are.

Emma looks increasingly happy as he chases small bells to and fro across the carpet, however, so he does something he hasn’t done since he was a lad and lets go. His cat instincts immediately take over and there’s only some awareness in the back of his mind of his real name and his actual purpose. Otherwise, there’s a feather on a string that will soon be meeting with its demise, if he has anything to say about it.

Most amazingly, Emma invites him into her bed that night, informing him that she tends to have spatial issues while she sleeps. Not that she knows this, but he definitely already knows. And for the first time since she took him in, he has a moment of panic. He knows, because this was the woman he was to spend his life with. It’s been three years, and she may not even know who he is. It suddenly dawns on him that she could’ve fallen for someone in the time it took for him to get here, and he’s incredibly grateful that it doesn’t seem to be the case.

He considers going to his makeshift bed again, because it’s comfortable enough and he’s very aware of the fact that he no longer knows this woman like he used to, but something stops him. It’s the glimmer in her eye when she invites him up that gives away how lonely she is, and he cannot resist after that. He nimbly jumps up, making sure to stay as far from her legs as possible, and settles himself in. He goes to sleep that night trying to hold onto the hope that he will succeed, but feeling, for the first time in three years, the same hopelessness he felt on the morning he found her gone.

Over the next few weeks, Killian finds out much about Emma’s life since she was kidnapped, including the day she was found in the woods. She relays the information so offhandedly that he wonders if that’s how she handled it at the moment or if time has dulled her reactions to her own reappearance. She mentions that she doesn’t remember parts of her life still, and as Killian listens to her talk, he realizes that she must have no memory of Misthaven at all. Which means she doesn’t know she’s missing.

But where does she think her parents are? Will she remember him when he changes? Would it be better if he referred to her by her title or no? The thoughts go spiraling through his mind, and it makes him so dizzy that he spends much of the day napping.

“I don’t know where this ring came from,” she admits that night. “It was on my finger when I was found, but Regina seemed so surprised to see it that I honestly wonder if it’s not just something I found in the woods and lied about when she asked. I told her it was my mother’s.”

He’s on the back of the couch, settled on his belly with his arms stretched out in front of him, and he pulls them back and inches forward as she mentions this. There are a couple things that catch his attention. One is Regina’s name. There’s little chance it could be the same Regina from Misthaven’s history books, but then again, this is the Dark One’s creation. The second thing is the fact that Emma seems to somehow know the ring came from her mother, even if she doesn’t actively remember it. He scoots so close while she speaks that they’re both surprised when she turns her head and her nose is inches from his.

Emma leans forward once, bopping his nose with hers in an affectionate move, and the smile she gives him is worth the fact that he’s relieving himself in something like sand, but not sand, and better than sand, but so much worse than sand. When he transforms, he will definitely have some words to share with Emma regarding his experiences as a cat.

Since he cannot converse with her, Killian spends his time reliving their timeline of a relationship from meeting to that final morning. There are the tender young ages, where everything was new and they were careless with their words and their bodies, flinging them from branch to branch in the trees in the meadow they would claim as their own. He tries to remember every nuance of that adolescent friendship, how her eyes looked when she was angry, the cherry stain of her lips after they were given tarts that had just cooled.

Another day passes, and he thinks of the years when their friendship grew into something uncertain. Hanging from the curtains while Emma works on a strange invention, he thinks of the first time he offered his arm before they walked to the flower meadow and Emma took it, a blush appearing on her cheeks when he rested his hand over hers.

Killian is again struck with the terror that Emma will recognize he’s not a whole person anymore without his other hand. At the same time, he realizes he’s stuck in the curtains. His one paw is too entangled in the fabric and if he retracts his claws, he’ll surely fall and injure himself. He has a couple options, but one of them is a little easier than the rest.

With a sad meow, he looks over his shoulder towards Emma. She’s wrapped up in her work, but the second the noise comes out of him, she looks over and tries to not chuckle. She pushes her chair back and comes over, carefully extracting him from the curtains while affectionately scolding him. She keeps him in her arms as she sits back down, and Killian decides that her lap is a fine place for his next nap time, and promptly stretches out and falls asleep.

Picking right up where his thoughts left off, he dreams of Emma in one of the lighter dresses she always preferred over ballgowns. With her hair being lifted by the wind, she smiles when she turns her face towards the sun, and Killian smiles at the sight. She’s eighteen and beautiful, wise beyond her years but with a streak of realism that he cannot fathom.

“You know, princess,” Killian states, kneeling down and offering his hand to her, “the queen will kill me if you come home with grass stains on that dress.”

“She’ll do no such thing,” Emma says, but still takes his hand and lets herself be drawn to her feet. Her hand stays in his, both of their attention drawn to it. It’s the first time Killian can think of nothing better than kissing the princess, but such thoughts should remain hidden.

“Why, uh, why wouldn’t she do that?” Killian asks. While his voice had changed with puberty, the low level it hits when he asks this question is more intense than either of them have heard before. She shivers, leaning closer to him without realizing it, and Killian can smell the floral scent clinging to her from the meadow around them.

“She adores you, for some reason. Cannot imagine why,” she murmurs, and Killian doesn’t even realize she’s going to kiss him until she already is, her lips tentatively touching his, her free hand pressed to the side of his neck.

The dream is knocked away when Emma shifts and Killian rolls at the same time, an ungodly noise coming from him as he squeaks and wheezes as he falls. He only knows that the adage about cats landing on their feet is true because he can no longer count how many times he’s tumbled to the ground and still landed upright.

Emma apologizes, ducking and tilting her head to find him underneath the desk, and she pats his head before going back to her work.

The day that Regina shows up at Emma’s door brings about a lot of things. First is that yes, she is definitely the missing royal. Snow would be so happy to discover that she was wrongfully accused, which is what he thinks he’s saying when he goes to her feet and chatters up at the missing woman. There’s also confirmation that the time here is or was tampered with, as Regina looks no older than she would’ve been when she went missing. Snow was young when the woman went missing, in that stage between young woman and girl, and Regina was scarcely a decade older than her. Now, Emma looks to be the same age as the woman standing in her living room. That is very long for time to stand still.

Of course, the nature of Regina’s visit also causes him anguish. Emma uses the term “fuckable” as she wanders off to her bedroom, and comes back looking just that. Killian blanches, realizing that Emma is heading out with the purpose of finding a man to sleep with. He wonders, not for the first time, how many men she’s been with since she got here.

His curiosity is immediately covered up by shame, as he has no room to speak. He’s been with quite a few women in the last three years, even if there were stipulations to their encounters. If this is what she wishes to do, then he has to handle his own emotions. Although, he wonders if he has enough time to dart out when they’re exiting the apartment. He doesn’t have to be here for it, right?

Sadly, the door closes before he has a chance to escape, so the best he can do is tuck himself away when she returns, if she returns with someone else. He prepares for the worst night of his life – having to witness in any part, the woman he loves coming home with another – and also can feel the prickles of the oncoming shift.

This brings about a whole new level of panic, on his part. What the bloody hell will he do if the moon rises while Emma is still with this other man? There’s a whole new level of complication to this whole thing. Why did it have to be tonight, of all nights?

Thankfully, his Emma is strong, and knows her own mind, and when the bastard she’s brought home vocalizes locking Killian up in the bathroom to get him out of the way, along with outwardly sleazy behavior, Emma tosses him out the door with barely a thought.

He just manages to avoid seeing her naked several times, despite hiding his face in his bed until he thinks it’s safe. He makes the mistake of looking up when she enters the room from the bathroom, just in time for her to wind her arm around her back to pluck at the clasps of her undergarment. He again buries his face in the bedding until she’s dressed for sleep and under the covers. Only then does he jump onto the bed with her, curling up by her pillow and listening to her sleepy murmurs. He expresses his own goodnight wishes to her as she curls her hand around his tail, trying to ease the panic in his chest.

In the morning, Emma’s phone rings right at the moment Killian stumbles into her closet. He manages to push the door closed most of the way, feeling the moon rising and his skin crawling just as Emma is scrambling to get ready to leave. He tries to judge how long until he shifts, but without knowing what time it is and precisely what time the moon will begin to rise, he’s left clueless. At least when the apartment door closes, he doesn’t fear that she’ll walk in mid-change.

It’s not until later in the day that the shift happens, and he gasps, his body shivering as the spell takes hold. An hour passes before he’s able to move, his body unaccustomed to the shift in his bones. He manages to lift himself from the floor when it becomes apparent he has to use the toilet, and he knows he needs hydration, as well. Who knows how long Emma will be gone, and he needs to care for his body in her absence.

He’s seen the toilet flushed plenty of times, so while he’s mystified by it, he still uses it with no difficulty. He uses any of the knowledge he’s gained about the living space to locate things like cups for drinking water, manages to use the water faucet with no problems, and then raids her cabinets for anything that looks remotely edible. It’s not that Emma has been starving him as a cat, but there’s only so far tuna and hard pellets can sustain him now that he’s a smidge bigger in size.

Just as Emma’s unlocking the door, Killian scurries back to the bedroom, closing the door and trying to figure out how to approach her now that he’s human again. She’s not likely to remember him, so she will not be happy to see a grown man in her apartment – and a naked one, at that. Killian grabs the blanket he usually sleeps on and wraps it around his waist, closing his eyes and counting to ten as she keeps calling to Cat to come eat his dinner.

Scrubbing his hand over his face and sending up a quick prayer to whatever deity might be listening, Killian eases open the door. The pirate side of his brain takes over as he makes it to the entrance of the kitchen, watching Emma (and oh god, he can make eye contact with her if she just turns around) and waiting for the opportune moment.

“I did promise you tuna tonight, little man,” she says, still too busy fiddling with the trash bag to notice that he’s leaning against the doorway.

“I’d much rather prefer something a little more human, if you don’t mind.”

His voice sounds weird to his own ears, as unused as it is, but Emma spins around when she hears it. He doesn’t anticipate the liquid she slips on. He doesn’t expect her to knock herself out. But he definitely wasn’t ready to feel the love well up in his chest at the sight of her seeing him for the first time in three years.

-x-

In the short time she’s out, she sees the flower field, she hears her name, and she sees the blue eyes that look at her with adoration. She forgets it all as she wakes on her couch, with the strange man settled on the floor by her feet, inspecting the television remote. She figures she has two options here: figure out who this guy is and how he got in her apartment, or scream bloody murder until someone comes barging in.

The second option, while probably totally reasonable, doesn’t seem like a lot of fun with the way her head is pounding, so she takes the first one. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Please don’t upset yourself, Princess Emma. I promise I can explain.” He rushes to sooth her in some way, but it’s not working out so well since there’s a mostly naked, rugged-looking man sitting on her living room floor.

“Oh, I’m Emma, but I’m no princess. Now who the hell are you? Where’s my cat?”

“We’re one in the same, I’m afraid,” the man explains. His left arm, which he’d been hiding before, is visible now and ends at the wrist. Coincidence, right? There’s no way. There’s no logical explanation for her cat to be a man and she wonders if she’s really just passed out, still. Maybe she even died and this is some warped form of the afterlife.

“Listen, we don’t have a lot of time. I’m from where you’re from. You must believe me. You came here one day because of an evil man and a portal. You’ve been living here for three years but the first twenty-five years of your life you lived with your parents, a king and queen, in their castle.”

“You’re deranged. I was an orphan that spent her childhood moving from foster family to group homes. I don’t have a family. I was abandoned.”

“Surely you don’t believe that,” he says, a look of alarm on his face. “You come from a land where everyone loves you, Swan.” He’s on the verge of touching her hand, so Emma snatches it back, sitting up and pulling her legs in front of her in hopes of keeping him away. There’s something under his words that makes her wonder what he didn’t say, but he’s a stranger…

Again, his hand goes up in a placating gesture. “I know you, Emma. Probably better than you know yourself. You told me, recently, that you feel like you don’t belong here.”

She considers him for a moment before standing up to pace. “Yeah? Like that’s an original thought or something? Who really feels like they belong where they are?” She’s seen enough movies to know the answer to that one.

“Emma, you said it yourself, that you feel like there’s something in your missing memories that’s hiding the fact that you don’t belong in this land.”

“Maybe in Storybrooke, but what’s this crazy idea of being in this land?” she says, throwing up a set of air quotes around ‘land’ to emphasize. “Forget it, I’m calling the cops.”

“You are the law enforcement, love.” She shoots him a glare, picking up her cell phone as she does and unlocking it. He stands suddenly, reaching for the blanket when it drops from around his waist. “Wait, wait, Emma. You believe in your heart that someone is out there looking for you and they can’t find you because this place lacks the technology required.”

There’s no way, she thinks, especially thinking about the conversation she just had with her cat about all this, and the fact that he’s said most of her words back to her. She thinks about the comforting gesture that she mistook for Cat wanting more food. Without realizing it, she’s shifting the peridot ring on her finger.

“The ring, Emma. The ring. That is your mother’s ring. You told me you lied to Regina about it and worried you just found it in the woods, but it actually is. She gave it to you the day before your twenty-fifth birthday to remind you that we would always find you. Please, Swan, you’ve got to admit that you’ve wondered where it came from.”

She has, but there’s no way in hell she’s admitting that to him. Even as she feels her stress levels rising, the simple act of twisting the ring around her finger calms her right back down.

It’s the strangest thing, but she doesn’t feel like he’s lying about any of this, which is just fucking absurd. There’s no way for it to be real that her cat, her little black housecat that has spent just as much time cleaning himself as he has sleeping on the windowsill to soak up the sun, is the man that’s standing here now. She locks her phone, needing to sit down, needing to think for a minute. She needs to cover up the naked man standing in her living room is what she really needs to do.

“Okay, hang on, you’re distracting me too much.” Emma tells him, not even considering the fact that she’s going to leave a stranger in her living room while she goes to rummage through her closet for a pair of sweatpants or anything that might cover up the physique she would be checking out a little more if this wasn’t the strangest situation she’s ever lived through - that she remembers, obviously.

She takes the moment to look through her closet shelves, hoping to find Cat hidden away somewhere so she can lock the bedroom door and call Graham and have the crazy guy arrested, but it truly seems as if her cat is gone. With her head spinning even more, Emma grabs a baggy pair of sweats she keeps around for period days and a t-shirt that Graham left in her car once.

“Put these on,” Emma says, barely pausing in the living room to throw them at him as she goes to the kitchen for a tall glass of wine. When the glass is full to the brim and she’s sure he’s clothed, she goes back. “Now tell me who you are. Don’t lie at all, or I’ll be able to tell. If there is such a thing as a superpower, that’s what mine is.”

He’s situated on the edge of her couch, sitting very still with his back completely straight. “Where would you like me to start?”

She pauses to consider the question. “Well, I would like to call you something other than ‘crazy naked guy’ so a name might help out with that.” This is all absurd, but it might as well do some good to find out what name she’ll be filing on the police report later.

He snorts, relaxing a little bit in his posture as he shakes his head. Still, he hesitates, and she can almost see some form of lie forming in his brain until his shoulders droop and he stares at the coffee table in thought. “My name is Killian Jones. I was a lieutenant in your parents’ navy.”

“Was?” She picks up on the subtle cue in his words.

“Aye, there may have been a falling out of sorts. I’ve been on my own for a couple years trying to find you.” There’s something missing, still.

“Why couldn’t my parents find me?” This time, she resists the air quotes around these supposed parents of hers.

“They were trying everything they could, Swan, but they just didn’t have the same resources I did to get over here,” he explains. He’s not lying, but there are gaps in what he’s saying. She can tell. It’s like looking through a piece of Swiss cheese.

While she spends a great deal of time looking at him, she has a hard time meeting his eyes with her own. She wants to keep him at arm’s length, and eye contact, she’s found, is way too intimate for how she wants to view this situation. Luckily, he’s incredibly good-looking, so while she refuses to look at his eyes, there’s quite a bit of good to glance at when she does. The borrowed t-shirt is tight in all the right places, his biceps stretching the sleeves in a way she can appreciate. It’s weird to think that Graham certainly never looked as good in the shirt.

When she’s not subtly checking him out, she’s glancing around to see if she left a window open or unlocked – anything to explain how Cat may have gotten out and how this Killian could’ve gotten in.

The strange thing about it all is that she hasn’t called the station, or texted Regina, or kicked his ass yet. But Storybrooke has always felt so… stagnant. This man sitting here, with his fancy accent and his downright absurd stories about being from a different land, that she’s a princess of all things, is the most excitement she’s had in ages that didn’t involve a drunk throwing up on her. So if she ignores a bit of common sense for an hour or two, so be it.

She realizes she hasn’t responded to him yet when it becomes clear that she’s looking anywhere but at him, and there’s total silence in her living room. He’s staring at her; that much she can tell without even turning her head. He’s looking at her so intensely that she doesn’t want to look in his direction.

“Are you still going to have me hauled to the dungeons?” he asks, and she can’t tell if he’s joking and trying to break the tension or genuinely curious about her intentions at this point.

She turns her head, meeting those eyes of his and she’s stunned to find that he looks familiar. But this is not someone she’s met in the last three years. Could he have been someone she met in the time she still doesn’t remember? There are still parts of her life missing from her memories. It’s entirely possible that she’s encountered him before and just doesn’t remember him now.

With a heavy sigh, Emma drops her head into the hand that isn’t occupied by her wine glass.

“No, I’m not gonna call the station, but that doesn’t mean I trust you.”

“Understood. I will endeavor to change your mind on that.”

None of this makes sense. None of this makes any sense. And Emma kinda wants to hope she’s dreaming, or maybe Will slipped her a hallucinogenic, or maybe… No, there’s no better explanation than the man behind her needs some kind of mental help. He clearly believes she’s a princess that’s been missing for years, and he somehow believes he’s also her cat. She could kick him out. She has her taser, she has her gun, she has her tenacity – she could force him back out of her apartment, call the station and have night duty pick him up before he can cause anyone any trouble.

And yet, she can’t bring herself to do it. She can’t break the spirit of his claims, and while she can’t believe him, she can start finding a way to help him.

“Listen, this may be the dumbest idea I’ve ever had, but you can stay with me until we get you all sorted out, okay? It’s really cold outside and I don’t want to be responsible for some lost citizen falling victim to frostbite or something.”

He lights up when she speaks, only further grinning as she explains herself.

“On the couch,” she stresses.

“Of course, Swan. I’m honored that you’ve even agreed to let me stay.”

She doesn’t know how to respond to that. She doesn’t even know what else to say at this point so she just sips her wine in the awkward silence that follows. Her mouth is just about to open to tell him she’s going to bed, when his stomach rumbles, loudly, even putting the bullfrogs by the docks to shame with its racket.

“Jesus, have you never eaten before?”

“I can’t help it, love, I’ve been living off a diet of tuna packets and that disgusting crunchy food for almost a month, and I couldn’t make heads or tails out of the rest of the slop you call food. There are no meat pies, no stews. I located the bread but you didn’t even have any cheeses or ale to go with it. I don’t know how you’ve managed to survive this long.” He throws his hand and stump in the air in exasperation, and Emma’s eyes go wide at the nonsense he just spoke.

“Where the hell do you think you are, Middle Earth?”

“Middle where? Oh! And don’t even get me started on the strange thing that claims to be edible from the silver packages. Rest assured that I threw those right away.”

“My Pop-Tarts? You threw away my fucking Pop-Tarts?” The wine has started to kick in, or else she would’ve had her fingers in that pressure point on his neck already, knocking him out and not caring if he froze as she dragged him out of the apartment.

He scoffs, rolling his eyes as he sprawls across his corner of the couch. “No, Swan, your ‘Pop-Tarts’ are fine. I only threw away the one I bit into. Bloody awful taste that left in my mouth.” The last part is muttered under his breath, and Emma snorts.

“Oh god, I’m having an argument with a crazy person about the food I keep in my house.” She covers her eyes with her free hand, trying her best not to laugh hysterically.

“You know, with that attitude, we’ll never get you home to your parents,” Killian says lightly. She has an urge to remind him that he’s speaking gibberish, but holds back.

Pizza. Pizza is clearly the answer to her problems here.

“Fuck it, I’m ordering pizza.”

“Your language, Swan. Your parents would be appalled.” He pauses as she switches her attention from her phone, back to him with her eyebrow raised. “I like it,” he comments, smirking and wiggling his own eyebrows at her.

Whatever. He might be crazy, but he’s pretty damn hot.

While they wait, Killian makes sure to ask her every question about pizza that he can.

“Where does it come from?”

“The pizza shop.”

“Is the pizza shop down in the kitchens?”

“Killian, you’ve seen my kitchen. It’s just like all the other kitchens in these apartments. There’s no pizza coming from that kitchen unless it’s the frozen variety. Which I don’t have. Because I couldn’t go grocery shopping today thanks to the disaster of a day it was.”

“Is the wine helping?”

“It would help a hell of a lot more if you would stop asking me so many questions.” He gives her a pointed look after that statement, keeping his mouth closed but quirking one of those eyebrows. She sips her wine, counting down from ten to see who will win.

Emma makes it to five before Killian asks her about the refrigerator and she’s astonished that the whole complex can’t hear her groan of agitation.

The pizza gets treated like an experiment. While Emma, who already had her dinner but could use a little more grease in her life, digs into her pizza with gusto, Killian stares at the triangular food for way longer than is normal.

“It’s food,” she emphasizes, talking around the bite in her mouth. “You eat it.”

There’s a running commentary after that, of all Killian’s thoughts while he eats his “first” piece of pizza. She refuses to believe that a guy who looks to be about thirty has never had a piece of pizza before, though.

“So, they heat the bread and the cheese together? That’s brilliant! And what’s the red stuff?”

“It’s tomato sauce.”

“And this stuff on top?”

“Pepperoni.”

“And this is more cheese in the rim of the bread?”

“It’s called the crust,” she mutters out, prying open her laptop and finishing off her glass of wine. Killian is seated on the floor, eating over the coffee table as he flips through the channels in wonder. While the wine has helped to calm her down, she’s at least thinking realistically about what to do next. He can stay on the couch for tonight, but tomorrow, she should probably figure out where he needs to go. Maybe Dr. Hopper will be able to help her out.

As he keeps eating (and she’s continually glad she ordered a large pizza), Emma finds what looks to be a special hospital on the outskirts of town that caters specifically in this type of case.

Tomorrow, she resolves, she’ll call them and find out more information. With a soft click, she closes her computer and sits back to enjoy the childlike wonder of the man sitting cross-legged on her floor, licking his fingers clean before going back for yet another slice. She’ll resolves to wipe down the whole table, and the remote, since he’s only got the one hand to operate both eating and channel surfing. And she might need some more food if she gets really crazy and lets him stay.

-x-

Emma leaves him with strict instructions that he is not to leave her apartment while she’s out. Apparently, she’s gone the way of her visitor and has decided that he can stay with her for a couple days, pending how weird he makes it during this second day. First, she has to make it through her shift at the station.

“You lock the door when I leave, and don’t wander the halls, you hear me?”

“Aye, I hear you. Not that I’d want to go out without proper attire. Or, you know, shoes,” he comments, and it’s only then she glances down at his feet as he wiggles his toes.

“Oh. Good point. Okay, I’ll bring home groceries. There’s still pizza in the fridge. Call me if you need something - I left the number to the station on the pad by the phone.” He looks baffled and confused by that statement, but she’s out the door before he can ask her twenty questions about the telephone.

It’s roughly halfway through her shift at the station that Emma realizes she didn’t lock up any of her (very few) valuables or cash. So, if she gets home and her apartment is cleaned out, then she probably deserves it.

She barely speaks to anyone while at work, too worried about the now-thankfully-clothed crazy guy in her apartment, but luckily most of them are preoccupied with the mountain of paperwork that the day before produced so they don’t notice her silence. Emma also concludes, mid-bite of her sandwich, that this is a person she doesn’t recognize. Sure, there are probably a lot of people out in Storybrooke that she hasn’t met yet, right? But in the last couple years, especially, Emma can’t remember anyone new coming into town that she didn’t already know. Come to think of it, has a newcomer ever come to Storybrooke?

That thought huddles in the back of her mind for the remainder of her shift, and also as she blindly dumps groceries into the basket she picks up at the entrance. When she gets back to the apartment complex, the thought follows her down the hall to the communal laundry room as she pulls out items that might fit Killian.

With the clothes thrown over one arm and the bags slung over the other, Emma has a hard time convincing the key to go into the lock, let alone turning the knob as she spills into the entrance. She drops the clothes inside the doorway, observing that Killian is once again staring at the television in great wonder, before she wanders to the kitchen to put away groceries.

The television cuts off and she hears him stop at the entrance of the kitchen.

“You did the dishes?”

“Aye, figured it was the least I could do. Also cleaned my food and water bowls.”

“But if you’re a human now, you won’t be needing those anymore, right?” Is she really playing along with his silly theory, just because her cat has apparently disappeared and he’s missing the same hand/paw?

“I can only hope, Swan.” There’s sadness lingering under the surface of his words, and Emma wants to ask him what he means, but he cuts off her line of thought as he motions to the bags. “May I help?”

“Sure. Knock yourself out,” she tells him, emptying the bags one by one for him to see the contents. “I bought like, healthy snacks for you, I guess. Some veggies and fruits, because I don’t know what you like best. Also, since you mentioned cheese, I bought a bunch of different kinds?”

The expression on Killian’s face scares the shit out of her in the most unexpected way. She bought him snacks, not caviar and champagne, but he’s looking at her with unadulterated affection. This man she doesn’t know looks a little bit like he loves her. And that is not okay.

Emma clears her throat. “I also got stuff for dinner tonight. I’m not really good at cooking much of anything, but I figured with the pure grease we ate yesterday that maybe something homemade might be better. Just spaghetti and meatballs. Nothing fancy.”

“I look forward to it, love. If you knew what I’ve eaten the last couple years, you would understand how much of a delicacy anything that hasn’t been stewed is to me. Also,” he adds, opening cupboards to figure out where to place everything, “the pizza was delicious even though it was still chilly from the cold box.”

“Shit, I didn’t teach you how to use the microwave.” She slaps her forehead, and then backtracks through the rest of his words. “And seriously? It’s called a refrigerator. I’ll show you how to use all this later. I also got you some other clothes that might fit better. Just cast-offs from the lost and found downstairs, but probably more comfortable than my sweats. Do you wanna shower while I make dinner?”

“I would love a bath, and not one given by a tongue for once,” he says, making a face as he does. “Unless, of course, it’s not my own.” His expression morphs from the previous disgust to a beguiling one in the blink of an eye.

The flirtatious quip catches her off guard, and she can’t help but laugh. He’s joking, he has to be. “Yeah, keep dreaming, buddy. Go, shower, pick some clothes, and I’ll make pasta.”

She can breathe a little easier once he’s not standing in the kitchen with her, and Emma quickly puts the rest of the groceries away and starts boiling water for the noodles. She’s just pulling out her sauce pot when his voice trails over from the bathroom.

“Do you bring the water in for me, or would you like me to fetch it from somewhere? Show me where the pail is and I’ll acquire it, love.”

Luckily, he can’t hear the responding groan, or see her roll her eyes to the heavens. This man, she thinks, setting the pot down on the stove and stomping down to the bathroom.

“You’re impossible. You know that, right?” She pushes him out of the way, belatedly realizing that he’s shirtless and almost the crazy, naked guy again. “This is how you turn the water on. Twist right for cold, left for hot, and if you want to fill the tub then you pull on this lever here, okay?”

He nods, a little stunned at her outburst of information, and again as she shoves a towel in his arms. Emma turns to head straight back to the kitchen but stops at the doorway to the bathroom.

“How can you not know how to operate the shower but seem to have figured out the toilet just fine? And the sink to wash dishes.”

“Ah, well, you’ve opened the door before flushing in the time I’ve been here. But you never leave it open when you bathe, so I had no idea how this all worked.”

The weirdest part is that it’s totally plausible. She usually opens the door just as she’s flushing, or right before. “Yeah,” she mutters as she looks between Killian and the toilet. “And you jumped at least three feet in the air the first time you heard it flush.”

“Was hoping you’d forget that little detail,” he says, his cheeks turning pink at the reminder. “I think I’ve got it from here, Swan. Unless, that is, you’d like to stay and watch. But I’m guessing your appetites lean more towards that meal you spoke of rather than that of the sinful variety.”

It’s her turn to blush, especially because she’s definitely been zoning out staring at the trail of hair that disappears below the waistband of the borrowed sweats. “That’s, uh, I’ll – I’ll be making dinner,” she proclaims, before exiting the bathroom and shutting the door on her way out.

She has no idea what’s going on with her brain and her libido, but they both need to knock it off immediately, because strange men should not be so tempting. Maybe she shouldn’t have rejected that guy the other night.

By the time Killian emerges from the bathroom, Emma has the table set (something she can’t actually remember doing in her entire time living here) and is just straining the noodles. While she doesn’t turn off the lights or anything, she definitely has the centerpiece candles lit.

“You trying to seduce me, Swan?”

Startled, she looks up to find Killian leaning against the partition that leads into the eating area. His eyebrow is quirked up as he grins, but what she notices first is that the new sweatpants definitely fit better than hers did. And the shirt, this time long-sleeved, looks even better with the material pushed up to his elbows. He’s wearing one of the two pairs of socks she managed to find as well. The whole package would be very attractive – very, very attractive – if she couldn’t see colors. The sweatpants are burnt orange, the shirt is lilac, and the socks are electric blue, with sock monkeys on them.

“I can’t seduce someone who looks like the lost and found threw up on them,” she remarks, returning to the task of plating the food. He snorts from his position in the doorway, holding out his hand to help get the food to the table.

After they’ve eaten, Killian directs Emma out of the kitchen so he can do the dishes, stating again that it’s the least he can do for her when she’s gone to so much effort to feed and clothe him. So, she feels just a little guilty that while he cleans her kitchen, she’s looking up more information on the facility tied to Storybrooke General to see if it’s a good fit for her stranger friend.

His delusions don’t seem dangerous, and he’s done everything he can to avoid making physical contact with her. Hell, she’s noticed that a lot of times, he tries to hide his left arm from her so she can’t see that he’s missing a hand, although she doesn’t know why. Emma is sure, however, that if she says anything to him about going to the facility, that Killian will balk and not go willingly. While he’s been absolutely harmless up to this point, there’s still a darkness – or maybe it’s a pronounced sadness – that lingers in his eyes and makes her wonder what he’d do if she brought this up before just dropping him off at the front doors.

It’s the only place, however, and there’s something oddly sinister about the building on the homepage. Thanks to her researching nature, Emma notices that there’s a comment page on the site, and a couple of them give her a sinking feeling in her stomach. There are notes asking about loved ones, dating from years before, that sit unanswered. Every once in awhile, there’s a response that tells the person leaving the comment to contact their offices to talk about it, but there’s never anything further. Most people wouldn’t even see this page, so she’s glad she decided to click around.

Emma hears the water turn off, and hears the last clink of a dish being placed on the drying rack, before Killian wanders into the living room. She snaps her laptop shut as he walks behind the couch on his way to the open side.

“Care to talk about life as a princess and curses that need to be broken?” He says it jovially, his smile inviting and open, but Emma can’t do this. She can’t indulge in this crazy story and let this keep going.

“Actually, I’m beat. Yesterday took so much out of me, and I worked pretty hard today. You don’t mind if I turn in early, right?”

“Oh, of course. Go get some rest, Swan, and we can talk tomorrow.”

“Goodnight, Killian.” She gets up and heads for her room, but right before she closes the door, she sees his face. Where he’d just been smiling, he’s now furrowing his eyebrows, with panic and agitation dancing in his gaze as he stares at the wall above the television. It’s something she’ll deal with tomorrow.

He’s waiting for her when she gets home from work the next day, his knee bouncing in anticipation as he invites her to sit down.

“Come, Swan, talk to me for a little bit. I have a feeling you don’t believe me and I need to set the record straight.”

“Killian,” she starts, dropping her purse on the table by the door and hanging up her coat as she slips out of her boots.

“Emma, please. There has to be something I can do or say for you to believe me. You have to believe me, please.”

She stares at him; he looks so nervous. Gone is the flirtatious man from the day before, replaced instead by the pleading man on her couch.

With a deep breath, she knows it’s time to say what should’ve been said the first time he even claimed to be a cat. “There’s… There’s no such thing as magic, Killian. Do you realize how crazy this all sounds? There’s no magic, you aren’t my cat, I’m not a princess who’s just lost her memories. You have to give up on that.”

“Why do you know I’m lying?”

“Because you can’t prove that you’re really a cat, Killian. For all I know, you could’ve thrown him out the window after you broke in and just made wild guesses about things I would’ve confided in a household pet.”

“You can’t prove that I’m not,” he says, standing and pacing over to her, still just stopping short of being in her personal space. “And I can prove it,” he says after a lengthy silence. “The moon will set in the morning; find out what time it will disappear below the horizon and wake up before then if you want proof. If I’m wrong, you can take me to that building you were researching last night and I’ll go willingly.” He gestures to the laptop that she left open this morning after she checked her email.

Her computer? Oh, her computer. She left the web pages up and he probably looked –

“Goodnight, Emma,” Killian says quietly, before trudging back over to the couch and settling down to watch television.

With no response in her arsenal, Emma turns and walks to her room with a blank expression on her face. It’s not even that late, but she still goes through the process of getting ready for bed before locking herself away in her room.

She tries to resist the temptation to look up the times, but she’s barely in bed for more than five minutes before she has her phone out, searching the time the moon is due to set in the morning, and then setting her alarm for a half hour before then.

Part of her wants to think that she’ll ignore the alarm when she wakes up. He’s talking nonsense. She’s going to have to drive him over to the Storybrooke General mental health branch tomorrow and drop him off, and that’ll be the end of it. Then he’ll be out of her hair.

Instead, she wakes up before the alarm even goes off. She throws on a sweater to ward off the chill that’s crept in through the walls, or into her bones – she doesn’t know which – before heading to the kitchen to make coffee.

Killian is awake, fidgeting in the corner of the couch as his hand rubs across the place his other one should be. When he sees her, he stops and pulls the sleeve of his shirt back over it.

“I need coffee before whatever it is you’re going to show me,” Emma remarks on her way. Killian grimaces, no jokes in return, no sassy comebacks. That’s when the bloom of unease in her stomach intensifies.

She doesn’t sit when she comes back. She sips from the mug, waiting for Killian to explain or move or do fucking something, but he just stares at the coffee table. With a quick check, Emma sees that the moon is due to set any minute, and that’s when Killian finally shifts, standing quickly as something like panic and maybe a touch of anger goes through his eyes.

“We’ll talk next month,” he tells her. “Next full moon, okay?” His hand is shaking when he reaches up to brush her cheek with the backs of his fingers, and she’s so stunned by the intensity in his gaze that she doesn’t even try to move away from it. Her coffee forgotten, she’s momentarily lost in the sadness in his eyes, those beautiful blues searching her face like he’ll never see her again despite his previous words. A glimmer of a smile tilts his lips up as his eyes soften for a moment, and then he gasps.

As Killian stumbles back away from her, the spell Emma felt she was under breaks and she barely remembers to set down the coffee before spilling it everywhere as she reaches for him.

“Killian? What’s wrong? What’s happening? Should I call an ambulance?”

He doesn’t answer, doesn’t really have a chance when a blast of light and what feels like a small, contained windstorm knocks her back so hard that she falls on her ass between the couch and coffee table. Shaking her head to clear it, Emma look to where Killian was just standing but there’s a pile of clothes on the ground. It twitches and moves, and she scrambles backwards to get away from it.

But all that emerges is a familiar, small face. Cat shuffles his way out of the clothes, hesitantly moving closer to her and stopping right by her outstretched legs. He shifts his eyes up to hers, the same somber eyes she just looked at minutes ago.

No wonder Killian’s eyes always looked so familiar, since they’re Cat’s eyes as well.

Chapter 6