He picked up on the second ring as he always did and she couldn't help the slight release of breath when she heard the click of the line, then his voice as he said, without hesitation, "Where to, love?"
"Anywhere," she said, eyes drifting shut. "Someplace nice."
She waited for him on the steps of her foster family's home - her tenth in fifteen years - and tried (failed) to remember what she had done on nights like this before she had met Killian Jones two years ago.
Nothing worth remembering, apparently, as so many things back then weren't.
His house was exactly ten minutes from hers by bike, if you rode fast and ignored the four-way stop on Chestnut that never had any cars at it, and twelve minutes after she hung up the phone he was there. She never called him after dark unless she wanted to get away so he didn't make the mistake of getting off his bike, just propped his foot against the curb, inclined his head towards his rear wheel and the pegs on the axle, and said, "Hop on. I've got a good place."
She balanced on the pegs in a move that was so familiar now, her hands coming up to rest lightly on his shoulders, and there it was - the air filling her lungs, clear and pure, and the night sounds rushing into her ears where there had been nothing but white noise and the pounding of her own blood in her veins only moments before. He knew better than to talk now so she shut her eyes, the cool evening breeze tangling through her hair and sweeping across her cheeks as he started pedalling.
"So," he said. He had taken them down a short gravel trail, cut across two roads she didn't recognize, and stopped at a worn picnic table tucked close to a dense line of trees. She was pretty sure they were near the industrial park because she could hear a loud hum that sounded like a big fan, but it was easy to ignore in the dark with the stars out above them, sitting on top of a picnic table with her best and only friend in front of her.
"So," she repeated back to him, her voice slightly tight where his had been calm and gentle and easy like it always was on these nights. She knew he noticed by the way his eyebrow quirked slightly, but he kept his gaze trained on the tabletop. They were both slowly carving their initials there with the tips of their respective house keys in an unspoken race, and she knew he didn't care about winning as much as he knew she needed space to speak - space that the concern in his eyes couldn't give her.
"What happened?" He asked.
"Oh, you know. Nothing that hasn't happened before." She tried for casual but even she could hear how hollow her voice sounded.
"Emma."
"They're having another baby."
He was silent for a beat, then, "You knew that."
She did know it - had known it for seven months, and Killian had known it too because she had called him and he had taken her to 7-11 and bought her a slushie the night she found out. It had taken nearly three hours but he had convinced her that night that a baby didn't mean she was being replaced - and as seven months passed and not a word had been spoken about it, Emma had started to believe him.
"She's freaking out about it." Emma had started to believe him, until tonight. "It's six weeks 'till her due date and she's freaking out, Killian."
"That's normal though, aye?"
"Is it normal to tell your husband you can't handle two loud enough that how could I not have fucking heard?" She asked quietly.
He was absolutely silent for a moment and she couldn't look at him, not now, especially as he said, "Emma..." in a soft, painfully gentle voice.
"Don't." She warned, and something in her chest felt very uncertain, like if a breeze hit her the wrong way she would break.
"I'm not...but Emma, that doesn't mean..."
"I heard the way she said it. And he didn't disagree."
"They could still..."
"I give it three weeks," she said.
It took two.
Her case worker's car and shitty parking job were both unmistakable - a bright red Hyundai with one tire up on the sidewalk and the rear end swung out into the road. Emma's heart was in her throat when she saw it on her way home from school and she had known it was coming but it never hurt any less. She had stopped hoping for a forever home but as she climbed the steps to the front door she wished for her relative luck to continue. She had been fortunate that both moves she had made in the past two years had all been in the same district, close enough that she stayed at the same school, close enough that when she called Killian at night he came.
She didn't care about the family, but she cared about this.
It was exactly as she thought when she went inside - her foster mother and father both on the couch with her case worker in the recliner facing the door, and all of them stood when Emma walked in. Her case worker started with a gentle, "Emma..." and everything after that was too standard to be memorable - the excuses, the way nobody's apologies sounded sincere, the short plug about Emma's new family and the line she never believed about how they were well suited to a child Emma's age, about how this time would be different.
Her foster parents stuck close to her when her case worker left, trying to make themselves feel less guilty by pretending to help her pack the few things that belonged to her and not them, but they went to bed early and the moment they did Emma had her phone pressed to her ear.
She had one night left in this house but she didn't plan on staying here.
Killian had to have know why she was calling, or had to have guessed, because he greeted her with, "Someplace nice?"
"The nicest," she said, and blinked back tears.
Her new house was twenty minutes away from Killian's by car and he told her before she left that if she called he would come, but he had to have known even as he said it that she would never ask. Still, there were nights when her finger would hover above his name in her contacts and she she would want so badly to be somewhere that wasn't here, and knew more than she had ever known anything that he had meant what he said - that it would take him three quarters of an hour and that it was already too late, but if she asked, he would be here.
Six months passed and then her phone lit up late one night, startling her from near-sleep, and she was surprised to see Killian's name on the screen. It had always been her calling him at this hour, never the other way around.
"What's wrong?" She asked immediately.
"Are they asleep?" He asked back instead of answering, something slightly frantic-edging-on-deranged in his voice. "Your parents?"
"What do...I mean, yeah, but..."
"Good, I'm-shit-I've gotta go, Em, but go outside."
"Killian..."
"Outside, Swan. I'm serious." Then he was gone, the dial tone sounding for a long moment before Emma let the phone drop from her ear.
She didn't know what he was up to but she padded downstairs anyways, coaxing the door open and sliding silently outside. She half expected him to be sitting there on his beat up bike, a self-satisfied grin on his face, but she was greeted by nothing but the empty, silent night and a stiff breeze.
She sat down on the front step, pulling her knees to her chest as the chill of the concrete crept through the fabric of her pajama bottoms, and she was about to call him back and ask exactly what she was supposed to be doing out here when a boxy beige sedan pulled up to the curb in front of her house, window already rolled down, and against all odds Killian's head poked out.
"Sorry," he said. "I was at a traffic light."
She just stared at him, failing to put together the image of him in that car here, so he cracked a smile that spread across his whole face and continued, "Get in. We're going somewhere."
She was at the car in a shot, her own grin mirroring his. "You asshole," she said as she sank into the passenger seat. "What the hell is this?"
"Don't be silly - you've seen these newfangled horseless carriages before."
She ignored that with a slight arch of her brow. "You're not old enough for a license."
"It's called a birthday, Swan. Liam took me after school." He had such self-satisfied look on his face because she knew him too well for him to surprise her often, and she wanted to wipe that smirk off his face and freeze it there forever in equal measure.
"Your birthday's not until Saturday."
"No, you asked me when I wanted to celebrate my birthday and I said Saturday."
"Are you seriously arguing with me about semantics?"
"I'm not the one who brought it up," he shrugged and pulled onto the road, darting a glance at her out of the corner of his eye. "Don't be mad, though. I wanted to surprise you."
"I'm not," she said, her smile softening a shade. "And you did."
"Good surprise?"
"Duh." She rolled her eyes because he was ridiculous, her friend, but his surprises were always good.
Killian kept the windows down as he drove, evening air filtering into the car, and he let Emma fiddle with the radio until she found something bright and happy, then turned the volume up until they were those people who drove around just shy of midnight blasting music, but neither of them cared.
He took her to a 24-hour convenience store one town over and bought a single popsicle with a handful of change he pulled out of the centre console - I won't tell Liam if you won't - then cut a few blocks closer to the water and parked in an empty lot. She split the treat down the centre and handed him half wordlessly, propping her feet on the dash and turning her head lazily to look at him.
"You realize you've basically set a precedent now and you're going to have to regularly surprise me and buy me popsicles, right?"
"Oh is that what this means?"
"Mmhmm."
"Noted." He was silent for a moment, reaching out absently to catch a drip of cherry-red juice running down the side of her hand, the swipe of his thumb warm and familiar against her skin. Then, quietly, "I missed this."
"What, me making a mess of your brother's car at midnight on a weekday?" She joked roughly, turning her gaze from his and directing it back out the windshield.
"Don't do that, Emma. Just..." he gestured between the two of them. "...all of this. You know."
"Yeah," she sighed, shooting a glance at the uncanny blue of his eyes and the artificially red lips that matched her own. Oh yes - all of this. "I know."
It wasn't late but it felt like it, the sun hidden behind thick black clouds and sheets of rain breaking the glow of the streetlights into too many pieces to be useful. Emma hadn't planned ahead so she was already soaked through, spine pressed tight against the trunk of a tree as she tried to avoid the worst of the rain. The phone rang over and over and this was the second time she had called but he had to pick up - there was no other option. The line clicked and she was almost sure it was going to be his voicemail again, but finally-
"Hello?" He sounded out of breath and she could tell he was distracted because he usually checked the caller ID and knew it was her before he answered, and the fact that he didn't made this even worse.
"Hey," she said softly. She hated everything about herself as she said it because it was bad enough calling him when he wasn't in the middle of something else, and this on top of everything else...but she was out of options and, more than that, she needed this. She knew he could hear it in her voice. "I'm at the community centre by my place. Can you..."
He didn't let her finish. "Twenty minutes."
"It takes longer than-"
"Twenty." He said firmly, and hung up.
He made it in fifteen.
She felt miserable and she knew she looked it as she slid into the front seat, but Killian was nice enough not to say anything about it. He wordlessly handed her a hoodie and when she slipped it on it was warm and smelled like him. She was certain he had just been wearing it. She screwed her eyes shut and drew her knees to her chest, dropping her forehead to them and letting his hood flop over her head. He kept giving and giving and giving, never asking for anything in return, and all she ever did was take. From him, from everyone, always.
"Where to?" He asked softly.
She shook her head because she didn't know anymore. "Anywhere."
He just drove.
They wound their way up and down the roads ringing the town as the rain made a steady static on the roof. Killian's hand was resting against the centre console but she could feel his pinkie brushing the side of her leg, and it was just enough. She wasn't sure how long they had been driving - how long she had been focusing on the rush of the tires against the slick asphalt and the steady cadence of his breaths beside her - but eventually she leaned her head against the cold window and said, "It's not a good fit."
"What's not?" He asked quietly in a way that made her think he knew.
"Me. This family."
"Did they..."
"They didn't have the balls." Emma muttered, blinking once, long and slow. "My case worker came over after dinner."
"They don't deserve you." His response was so immediate and so vehement that she lifted her head to look at him, and there was something fierce in his eyes that made her chest constrict with something like pride and something like loss.
"After a while if there are so many people who don't deserve you, it's not them who's the problem - it's you." She sighed.
"I don't believe that." He rested his hand on her knee and squeezed once. "Your next family-"
"There isn't one."
His silence spoke for his shock and she pulled her gaze away because she couldn't look at the way his blue eyes snapped as they darted between the road and her.
"What?"
"My case worker hasn't lined anyone up yet. Says there aren't any good matches. She's still looking but..."
"What does that...I mean...where-" Killian was so rarely at a loss for words, but she didn't blame him. Considering Emma had run before her case worker had even left the house, he was taking it considerably better.
"Group home. For now."
"I cannot believe-" he started, hand rising from her knee to gesture wildly in the air between them, but she grabbed it with one of hers and brought it back down to the console between them.
"There's not a group home in town."
The car jerked to a stop.
"Killian..." Emma glanced over her shoulder but they were alone on the road, and then she looked over at him to find his eyes already on her - wide and disbelieving and lost.
"Where?"
"An hour away."
"But school...they can't..."
"There's only a month 'till summer." She shook her head. "My case worked talked to all my teachers and they gave me enough work so I can finish up the year on my own. I'll come back for exams, and she said she's trying to find me a place around here so I can do my last year at the same school but..." she shrugged. "I don't know, Killian."
"Tell me where," he said. "Tell me where and I'll still come. You know that, right? You have to-"
"I know," she said, screwing her eyes shut against a sudden rush of tears because she had known he would be angry but he sounded just as wrecked as she was. And also because she had wondered, in those moments in the rain as she waited, whether when he heard how far away she would be, he would be relieved. Whether he would stop offering. She should have known by now to stop pretending he was the same as everyone else she had ever known. He wasn't - and now she was losing him. "Let's just go."
Silence hung in the air for a long moment and she could tell he wanted to say more, but also that he didn't know what else to say. So eventually he just squeezed her hand once, hard, and they went.
It was hard not having Killian around. He texted her often, called almost as much, but it wasn't the same as seeing him in the halls every day or having him there. She knew he meant what he said when he told her that if she asked, he'd be there, but they both knew there was no world in which she would ever ask. There were nights, though, when the group home felt too small with so many people or when she missed him so fiercely she almost couldn't breathe, that she'd go sit on the grass in the far corner of the backyard and grasp at all the reasons she couldn't call him even though they all felt like lies.
Two months of self-imposed exile and then, one night, "Let's go somewhere."
His jaw was slack and he was leaning a little too heavily against the doorframe, and she was sure she looked like an idiot standing on his front stoop backlit by a very full, late night moon, with a smile splitting her face.
"Wh...Emma?" He rubbed a hand over his eyes and up through his hair, and her heart stalled because this was probably overstepping.
"I moved again," she said in a small voice.
"You...what?" He blinked once, long, and it was probably a stupid idea to come here so late.
"I live three blocks away. On Baron."
"On..." He shook his head. "You're not...you're actually serious? This is real?"
"The fuck else would it be?" She quirked an eyebrow and hid behind the quip because oh god he probably wanted to sleep and she should have waited until morning and-
Killian let out a whoop and then he had an arm around her waist and was swinging her around in such a cliché of a happy circle but she didn't care because finally she didn't have to call him and finally she was here and just finally.
"You're such a demon - why didn't you tell me you were coming back?"
"I only found out three days ago," she said on the edge of a laugh that made her feel lighter than she had in months. "And I wanted to surprise you."
"Well colour me surprised." He pulled away but not far, his hand coming up to settle on her shoulder, and he was just looking at her for so long she squirmed and said,
"What?"
"Nothing, I just..." he shook his head, a strange, wistful twist of a smile on his face, and let her go. "You said you wanted to go somewhere?"
"I mean, if you do," she said to his back as he reached back inside - to, she knew, the table behind the door where Liam kept his keys, because whether he wanted to or not, she had asked, and he had always been too good about that.
"With you, Swan," he returned, popping back out and closing the door gently behind him, then slinging an arm around her shoulder and pulling her into his side, "Anywhere."
She had three good months - happy, full, effervescent months where she and Killian were inseparable, showing up at each other's houses at all hours and going everywhere and nowhere, but always together. But then school started, and they both got jobs, and they still saw each other but they were both tired when they did and eventually their late nights together became grounded in need once more.
Then Emma's foster father got handsy, and then he got violent, and one night she decided that a high school diploma wasn't worth this, and wasn't worth having to move again.
So she ran.
She called Killian at 2:07am from a bus station hours from their town, and her heart broke when he answered.
"Where to?" He asked in a voice gravelly from sleep.
"Nowhere," she answered, voice low. "Listen, Killian. Someone's probably going to come see you in the morning and ask you if you know where I am."
The line was dead silent for a moment, but he was wide awake when he spoke again.
"And what am I supposed to tell them, Emma?" He asked, edging on frantic. "Where did you go?"
She closed her eyes and dug her fingernails into her palm because this was the right decision, she knew it was, but for a moment she wished it was his car that had brought her here, that would take her wherever it was she needed to go.
"Someplace nice," she whispered, and ended the call.
She should have known that someplace nice wasn't something she could create for herself - only he had ever been able to do that. Still, for a while she thought that she had managed it. She didn't have much but she had a life that was her own. She found a place to stay and people to stay with and she got good enough at shoplifting that she could support herself, in a way. She got good at shoplifting but then she got very bad very quickly and then-
-and then after being processed by a surly female guard and handed a jumpsuit that looked like every other jumpsuit in this cinderblock building, after a week to get "settled" and lonely nights that felt lonelier than they ever had, after self-hatred and disappointment settled on her shoulders in a way that felt terrifyingly permanent, after she stopped feeling like she could breathe or speak or move without fear of coming apart at the seams because this - this was the life she had created for herself...after all that, she held the grubby communal payphone tight to her ear and listened to it ring, listened to the pre-recorded you are receiving a call from a federal penitentiary, press one to accept, and then,
"Hello?"
She told herself she wasn't going to cry - that even though she hadn't heard Killian's voice in over a year and even though it sounded like home and even though she could picture him perfectly...she could keep it together. But no, her eyes overflowed and she slid down the wall to sit heavily on the floor, phone pressed to her ear like a lifeline, and she probably wasn't meant to have heard him breathe her name into the phone in a broken voice.
She didn't deserve to ask anything of him, not after all this time and not after leaving like she had, but she had nothing anymore except for his voice states and states away.
"Take me someplace," she whispered, voice ragged, and she heard his breath catch at the familiar words. "Someplace nice."
She called him often enough that he stayed up to date on her life, so it shouldn't have been a surprise that ten months after she had been arrested, he was waiting for her outside the prison gates.
She froze in her tracks the moment she saw him, his hand resting on the roof of the familiar beige car, and something in her chest collapsed because even after everything, he came. She hadn't even asked, and he came anyways.
He stood there stock still as she walked towards him, and he looked good - taller, stronger, with facial hair just this side of a beard that suited him like nothing else. But the eyes were the same - that blue that always used to flash when he teased her - and so was that expression on his face, that something just north of a smile that made her calm and happy and-
"Hey," she said, stopping a few feet away.
"Hey."
"I...uh...didn't know you were..."
"Well, I didn't want you to have to..." His hand drifted up to scratch behind his ear and - oh. That gesture. She had missed that gesture and the pieces of him that were still tucked away in her mind and him. She missed him and she couldn't-
Two steps and he was in front of her and then his arms were wrapped around her and since when had he gotten so tall? They had always been equal in height but now she was tucked snugly under his chin, his arms strong and solid and god she was stupid for just up and running.
He pulled away just as quickly and that hand was back up behind his ear a moment later. She offered him a familiar grin and just like that it was like they had never been apart.
The smile that spread across his face in return was breathlessly happy, and she knew hers grew to match his when he tilted his head towards the car and said, "Where to?"
She spent a little while at his house - his alone now, he told her, since Liam had left for the Navy - but headed to Boston to chase a job opportunity three months shy of her nineteenth birthday. The job didn't pan out but she found bail bonds shortly thereafter and even though she was young she was good, and her life finally started falling into place.
She had been there a year and a half when her phone rang one evening. It was no great surprise when she saw Killian's name on the screen and she answered with a small smile.
"Quick - should I order pizza for dinner or be responsible and eat leftovers?"
He was usually fast to answer especially when she asked ridiculous questions, and the fact that she was only met with a heavy silence was the first indicator that this wasn't a social call.
"Emma..."He sounded wrecked and her heart dropped into her stomach. She shut her fridge door and leaned her forehead against it as she waited for him to continue, but he didn't. She could hear him breathing on the other end and it sounded unsteady - like he was trying to control it but couldn't. Above all, she heard the echo of a question he had never asked her: take me somewhere?
"Where?" She asked quietly.
"Anywhere but here."
It took her two hours to get there but he was waiting when she did - an open and half-empty bottle of rum on the table in front of him as he studied the grain of the wood hard enough to uncover secrets that weren't there. She came to stand behind him, spreading her hands across the span of his shoulders, and his head dipped the moment she touched him as though he had been waiting until now to fall apart.
"What's wrong?"
He shook his head slightly. "I can't..."
Emma knew what it was to sound the way he did now, his words coming from somewhere hollow and barren, and something in her ached because she had never wanted him to sound this way. To have reason to.
"It's okay." She slid into the chair next to him but let one hand trail down his arm, settling on his forearm in silent support. He kept his eyes on the table but she glanced over at him, and he looked the way he sounded. "Where do you want to go?"
"I don't know," he said. "Anywhere. Nowhere." And now he looked at her, eyes red, simultaneously empty and full, too much behind them to overflow or dissipate on its own. "I don't know anymore, Emma, and I just-" He cut himself off and tore his gaze from hers, one hand coming up to rub - claw - at his eyes and knot in the hair at his temple, and she hated to see him so restless - him, Killian, who was always certain.
"Hey," she said softly, shuffling her chair closer so she was pressed against him from hip to shoulder. "We don't have to go anywhere." She tilted her head so it rested against his and felt his breath catch. "How about I just stay?"
She made the mistake of asking Killian later that night if he wanted her to call Liam, and the answering look on his face told her everything she needed to know that he was unable to tell her.
It was the sudden realization that he was now as alone as she was that tipped the scales of a decision she had been wrestling with for months, and slowly - enough so that she wasn't sure if either of them actually realized it was happening - she moved back to town.
It started with the two weeks she spent with him after he called her, with how easy it was to work from the small coastal town, with how much she liked being there when he knocked on the guest room door at night with his car keys already in hand. She started taking more Maine cases, started spending more weekends taking advantage of Killian's open offer to spend the night, and eventually made that final phone call that sealed the deal.
"Morning," he answered, voice rough, and she knew she had caught him before his first cup of coffee.
"You know your friend David you introduced me to last week?" She asked in greeting.
"Aye. What about him?"
"You think he'd let you borrow his truck?"
"Probably. Why's that?"
"You think he'd let you borrow it today?" She smiled, this secret too good to keep to herself for long. "I need you to take me somewhere."
It had been a long time since she had seen Killian smile as much as he did as he helped her load her things in to the bed of the truck, and any lingering worry about whether she was making the right decision disappeared as that smile stayed on his face the entire way down the coast.
He stopped where she directed, right in front of a small blue house with neat bushes and a bright yellow door. Neither of them took any boxes with them on their first trip from the car, just stood together on the sidewalk and looked at it for a moment, the fact that she was here to stay finally settling between them.
Emma didn't look at him as she fished a key out of her pocket and held it in front of him, keeping her eyes on the house as she said simply, "I got two with the house and I only need the one."
"That's very pragmatic of you, Swan," he said, only pausing a beat before taking the key. He held it in his open palm almost cautiously for a moment, just studying the bright silver thing. Then he drifted into her, nudging her with his shoulder slightly. "You did good, Em. This is really nice."
The way he still had that key clutched in his hand like a precious thing and the way he stayed leaning against her made her think that he was talking about more than the house.
She was inclined to agree.
It got so that neither of them had to pick up the phone to know they were needed. She would hear that someone had put their foot through the bow of an old canoe and find him patching it in his backyard, banging away at the wood with a hammer, furious and already undone. Then a week later he would show up at her doorstep at exactly the right time because someone in town had mentioned offhand that that bounty hunter was tearin' a bear claw apart like it did somethin' to her and he knew how much she would need to get away from whatever was roiling inside her.
There were still times, though, when somehow everything in the world would just be wrong - when every ad on tv and every person Emma saw and every thought that flashed through her head would remind her of all the things that had ever gone wrong in her life, and all the things she had never had. She would wait it out because she would probably never be good at asking for things, but inevitably she would find herself with her phone pressed to her ear, voicing a familiar request, and no matter what he was doing or where he was, Killian never didn't answer.
"Would you take me somewhere?" She asked quietly on one of those nights. "Just for a little while?"
He was at her house so quickly she knew he had dropped whatever it was he was doing to come, and he took her to the harbour to sit on the edge of the pier, feet dangling into the abyss that was the night above the black water. He pulled two bottles of beer out from the inside pocket of his jacket, twisting the top off one and handing it to her silently.
"I'm pretty sure it's illegal to have an open bottle out here," she said, but took a long swig anyways and let her eyes drift shut.
"Anyone who reported us would be screwed because I can't open the marina in the morning from jail."
"Ah the perks of your friendship."
"Always knew you only liked me because you can drink by the water when we're together." He leaned back, weight resting heavily on the hand splayed on the concrete behind him, taking a sip of his own drink as he stared out at the horizon neither of them could see.
"I've been playing the long con all these years," she said, pulling a wry grin from somewhere because the thought was just ridiculous.
"You never had me fooled."
They both lapsed into silence after that, the soft hush of the water lapping at the pier filling the air, and even though this was the best part of her day by far, a tear escaped Emma's eye and rolled slowly down her cheek as she wondered where she would be now - what she would have - if it wasn't for him.
"What's going on, Emma?" He asked, and she was stupid to think he wouldn't have noticed her basically going to pieces beside him because he knew - he always knew.
"Oh, nothing," she laughed a little but there was no humour in it. "Everything. You know."
"I do," he said softly. "Any kind of everything in particular this evening, or just one of those days?"
"Both. I don't know." She cut a glance over at him, scrubbing a hand roughly over her face. "You ever wonder what your life would be like if things had been different? If stuff that didn't happen happened, or stuff that did happen didn't? What kind of person you'd be? If it'd all fall apart anyways because maybe that's just what you're destined for? If you'd be-" she stopped herself, caught between saying happier or less happy because this day made her wish for happier but this moment, tucked into the night with Killian, made her wonder if maybe she had already gotten as much happy as she was meant to have.
"What if's on far lesser topics would drive anybody mad, love," Killian said quietly. "Don't do that to yourself."
"Too late," she whispered. She could feel his gaze settle heavily on her but she couldn't look at him. Her thoughts were an indistinct tangle in her mind and her eyes burned in a way that told her tears wouldn't fall but she was going to wish they would. Above all, she felt trapped in an endless knot of why - why had she ended up being dealt this hand and, more than that, why was she sitting here, finally with a life that was good, still living in the past?
She jumped slightly when Killian's arm slid around her shoulders and she wondered how long she had been staring at the vague ripple of the water beneath her feet, and exactly when her face had settled in an expression she knew wasn't good. She waited for him to say something and also dreaded it because she couldn't give a response right now - no matter what he said, it was this fine balance the silence gave her that was keeping her together, and she needed that. But instead - and it shouldn't have been a surprise - he just tugged her close, not even shifting under her weight as her chest caved and she settled into him heavily. She had gotten used to Killian - to his hand in hers and his shoulder nudging her and his elbow in her side when she made a joke at his expense - but this was something entirely new. His arms were solid and steady around her, the curve of his body distinctly protective, and the gentle pressure of his chin resting against the top of her head as he tucked her snugly against him felt like the axis of a world that had stopped spinning quite so fast, if even just for a moment.
He had called her shortly after work with no need in his voice, just a casual boredom and the suggestion that she come help him pack the sail of his boat away for the season and have a barbecue with him on the deck afterwards. She could have said no to this but there was never a reason to decline when it was just her and Killian, so half an hour later she was out on his boat in the golden evening sun, wrestling a pile of canvas into a storage compartment below-deck while Killian teased her about being a terrible first mate.
"Consider this," she said later, the sail finally stored and the sun painting the water a riot of reds and oranges as it set. "You say I'm the first mate, but you're the one cooking me dinner so wouldn't that make me the Captain?"
"I think you're ignoring the fact that a good Captain makes sure his crew is well-fed, so either I'm the Captain or you can get up here and man this grill," he returned with a wide open smile and a challenge in the arch of his brow.
"Well this Captain is watching for pirates so the first mate should probably keep doing what he's doing with the burgers over there."
"Oh, is that what you're doing?" He looked pointedly at her stretched out on the deck with her back against the mast.
"I'm just trying to throw them off - trust me, I'm keeping watch."
"Think you can spare a moment from that very important job to hand me some buns?"
"If pirates sneak up on us," she said with a grin, standing and snagging the bag of buns off the top of the cabin, "It's entirely your fault."
"I'll keep that in mind."
They ate as the sun sank into the water and by the time they had everything cleaned up and packed away, the sky was a deep, dark blue. When she came back to the boat after putting the last of the food in Killian's car, Emma found him sprawled on the deck of the ship with a hand thrown carelessly above him and his eyes on the sky.
"I thought you had an early day tomorrow," she said, crouching down next to him.
"A couple more minutes won't hurt." He tugged her hand until she lay down next to him, and tangled their fingers together so they were pointing up to the sky as one. "The stars come out so early away from the streetlights."
"You're such a nerd, you know that?"
"You never let me forget it," he laughed, but lapsed into silence as he swam their hands through the air, tracing the shapes of constellations she could never remember.
"So, who's out tonight?" She asked after a while. "What are we looking at?"
"We've been over this a hundred times, Swan. Really."
"Oh please. You know you'd be disappointed if I didn't ask."
"Well," he said in a tone that betrayed just how right she was. "Let's see...we've got Cassiopeia just there..." he moved their hands in a jagged line, "and then Perseus to the right. Lyra down here," he reached almost above their heads and she had to crane her neck to follow, "aaaaand there you are, right there." He moved their hands slightly to the side and she rolled her eyes at him. She could see the edge of his goofy smile out of the corner of her eye as he traced the lines of Cygnus, the constellation he always told her was her twin in the sky.
"If that's me, then where are you?" She asked, swirling their hands in the air in a wild path between the stars. "You don't expect me to hang out up there by myself like some cosmic loser, do you?"
"First of all, you're already the biggest cosmic loser so I don't know what you're worried about." He took her elbow in his ribs in stride. "But I don't know - you tell me. Who am I up there?"
She combed the sky for a moment, gaze jumping between stars whose names she didn't know like he did, but she knew her answer before he asked.
"The Big Dipper," she said, guiding his hand to it unnecessarily, and the words slipped out almost without her realizing. "Because you're always there, right where I can find you."
He didn't come back with anything and she let their hands drop. Was it some great offence in the world of astronomy to be compared to the Big Dipper, or was it something else that he didn't like? She realized belatedly that it probably wasn't the best description, her valuing him because he was just there. He had always been better with words than she had, and he probably would have come up with something that spoke to comfort and home and belonging nowhere else but here.
But he had also always been better at actions, too, because when she turned to amend her reasoning he was right there, face already turned towards hers, and before her mind could make the mental shift to I want the space between us right now to not be there he had already erased the distance, leaning in to brush his lips whispersoft against hers.
When they were sixteen, Killian had taken her to see the Fourth of July fireworks at a tourist town up the coast. The explosions had echoed in her chest, something inside her bursting with them - excitement, happiness, everything - and time had stood still as the shimmering bits of metal and flame had rained down in the sky, painting her and Killian's twin smiles in shades of reds and blues.
This was barely a breath against her skin but it was also that Fourth of July and those breathless, hanging moments when the whole world glowed in celebration.
She let go of his hand and tangled her fingers in the soft hair at the base of his skull, realizing all at once that she had been waiting for this for a long time. If the hand wrapping around her back and drawing her closer, and the chaotic beat of his heart against her chest were any indication, so had he.
She flashed through the feeling of her bare feet against the cold metal pegs of his bike, the sticky vinyl of the seat of his car, the cool evening air rushing across her skin at the harbour, his shoulder bumping hers as they sat together, his hand, his arm, his shoulder under her cheek, him in a hundred different places on a hundred different days, always by her side, and only ever because she asked.
It should have occurred to her sooner, really, that someplace nice had never been a place at all.