He's on a bench in Kensington Gardens, a park he'd probably say he knows better than the back of his hand without a second thought—mostly because the pen he ought to have in hand, scratching away on the pages he's stuffed into his back pocket is instead dipped into the front pocket of his jacket. It presses uncomfortably at his chest, reminding him without too great an effort that at the moment his creativity ultimately amounts to a stack of the worst cliché's. At a park he knows as well as the back of his hand, still lack of noise pounding far louder than any given word against his skull.
He tugs none too gently at the collar of his shirt, loosening the fabric that has been stifling him—letting out a breath that freezes translucent in front of his nose before melting out into the air that still feels like it is pressing in around him, holding him captive just out of reach of the ideas he is sure are floating and freezing and melting—just like his breath, beyond his grasp.
At his feet there is a warm mass of a moppy creature he refers to fondly as Porthos. The dog is as constant a companion as the creativity block that has attached itself to his hip, although a far more welcome one. He's gathered a slobbery and swiftly freezing stack of sticks in front of him that Killian has not found the motivation to reach down and throw—until the dog finally resigns to settle at his feet, tossing his master a droopy-eyed stare that Killian finds quite easy to interpret as "Fine, have it your way."
"'m sorry, mate. Just not in the place for games."
Porthos whines, a shrill noise that has no bearings in a dog of his size, and drops his enormous head to settle on his even larger paws, glowering into the distance.
"'m sorry," Killian repeats, but this time he is not as sure it is directed at the dog.
He thinks maybe he is apologizing to life in general for his stunning inability to live it.
And then his attentions are wavering as his mind steals away. It is a habit that on any other occasion is a great relief—slipping safely into the confines of his imagination and tending to his thoughts, searching for anything ripe enough for picking. But his creativity has taken an indefinite vacation and everything in that safe haven is brown and shriveled and dark.
He is so taken by the utter nothingness in the usually swirling centers of his mind that he hardly notices the boys playing about him until Porthos lets out a too-shrill pleased bark that drags him roughly back to the world that has gone on turning even without his presence in it.
His dog, no longer at his feet, is instead prancing around the bench with a gaggle of laughing boys who don't seem to even notice his placement precisely in the middle of their game.
"Hurry up, Michael! Hurry or it'll catch you and we'll not complete the Queen's quest!"
The one that must be called Michael suddenly pops out from beneath the bench, very nearly between Killian's legs.
"It's touched me, George!" He cries with an exaggeration that would impress even the haughtiest of the troupe of actors signed to Killian's plays, "The beast has touched me and now its poison will kill me without the cure!"
The boy is small, no older than six—and when Killian peers down at him a wide smile breaks across his little mouth.
"Good afternoon, sir," he greets brightly, smiling up at him from his place laid out on the ground, half beneath the bench.
"Good afternoon?" He responds dubiously, setting him with a steady look of faux horror, "You've been poisoned by the great beast of Kensington! I can't imagine it is that good an afternoon for you at all!"
Michael's smile flickers somehow wider before instantly returning to the pretend misery that filled it previously.
"Aye! I'm dying, sir! Have you got the cure?"
Killian is contemplating his answer when a fourth boy appears, expression tense, glowering down at the dying one on the ground.
"Leave the man alone, Michael. And get off the ground before you get sick. You aren't dying—that's a dog. And it isn't even yours."
The boy sits promptly down then, ignoring Killian entirely and running a hand through his tousled brown hair—and as Killian watches the young boy's expression shifting dryly into distaste as the far more gleeful boys around them continue their games as if he hasn't spoken—something in the pit of his stomach aches.
An adult with no imagination is an unfortunate reality—but a child scoffing at the magic around him, Killian thinks, is simply unacceptable. And perhaps it is in the way the boy eyes him dubiously as his friends dart around the bench after Porthos—screeching and laughing at the invisible paintings their little minds are conjuring around themselves—maybe it's this that snaps the match in Killian's stomach. Sparks reveal images of the playland around him, but his eyes don't leave the boy.
"What's your name, lad?"
"I can't tell you that. You're a stranger," the boy says wryly, those eyes two shades too dark for the line-less face they're planted on. "A creepy one, honestly. Do you make a habit of stalking parks?"
He speaks bluntly and clearly and Killian really has no business laughing at the seriousness on the young lad's face, alas—a chuckle escapes him nonetheless. It angers the boy, probably rightly, and he grumbles something unintelligible as he crosses his arms across his chest, turning his attentions to glare again at the other boys, still racing about the bench with Porthos, flashes of colors accompanying each spurt of giggles.
"If we're being quite fair, you and your mates are who've gone and stolen my dog."
That quiets the boy, and he bites his lip in quiet contemplation, brow wrinkling in another move that is far too old for the face it resides on.
"It's alright, you know," he tells him, gentler, hoping for the wrinkles to disappear. "Porthos. That's his name. He quite likes to play."
A cry from one of the boys behind him: "It isn't a dog, Henry! 's a bear and 's gonna eat you alive!"
The wrinkles soften as he rolls his eyes.
"Take it from a grown up, lad," he tells the boy, lowering his voice conspiratorially, "you're best to play pretend when you are just a boy and haven't got anyone to tell you off for living up there." He taps the boy's forehead as the last word drops from his lips, and his glare returns somehow harder.
"Killian, God, life isn't an imaginary playground in your head! Can't you take a single thing seriously!?"
Milah's voice was tense and strained, and he noticed too late the pulsing vein in her forehead that ought to have been the first hint not to test his wife this particular afternoon.
"Of course I can be serious, love. I'm an adult, aren't I?"
He knew his voice should have sounded far more certain.
"Sometimes, my darling, I'm not sure."
Porthos, previously standing at Milah's feet, lowered shamefully at the cool tone he recognized as usually reserved for his most heinous behavior. Killian felt an overwhelming urge to join the creature in his show of misery, but he was quite certain it would not amuse Milah in the same way it might amuse him.
"'m sorry, love." he muttered instead, still watching Porthos's flattened ears.
"Are you apologizing to me or the bloody dog?!"
"Well, my lack of an income does affect you both, does it not?"
He might just deserve to be alone in Kensington.
"George? Michael?"
He hears the voice before he sees her and it's the clear American accent in her tone that starts the creaky wheels of his imagination turning for the first time in what feels like lifetimes. The boy beside him, he thinks now, speaks with a tinge of the states in his tone as well. But the other three boys (who he has heard plenty from, running about and yelling as if the garden is their's alone) have all got perfectly natural British lilts. He's not certain how the woman who is clearly their caretaker, likely even mother—can have an accent so different. He imagines a faceless young woman stowing away on a ferry from across the sea, sneaking various children along with her. Or the same woman, some variation of spy leading a mission with her tiny cohorts.
He knows her story is certainly far less interesting than anything his mind spins up but he can't help himself but to imagine it anyway.
And then he sees her and immediately thinks she's got to have a story beyond his wildest imaginings.
She is a vision, gold hair pinned into a halo around her head that glows in the cool evening sunset. She wears a soft blue dress that seems to float around her heels, and when she sees the boys pretending excitedly about him with a dog she certainly doesn't recognize, the most stunning of green eyes land widening upon him.
They carry the same misplaced darkness as the boy sat beside him.
"Oh God, are they bothering you?" She asks, and doesn't wait for an answer before glowering down at the little one still sprawled at his feet, "Kid, what have I said about playing with strangers?"
Killian rises politely to his feet as she draws nearer, mesmerized by her movements.
"Get off the ground, Michael, you'll catch your death—Henry, did you even ask to share this gentleman's benc—" then her eyes are back on him and widening further.
"It's really no problem, love," he dips his head in the vaguest of polite greetings, but is unable to draw his eyes from hers, "your boys—they aren't bothering me."
She shakes her head regardless, fixing each boy in turn with a steady glare.
"God, boys—go, leave the poor man alone."
Michael pops up from beneath the bench as his mother speaks, flashing Killian a set of dimples before going momentarily serious, leaning in close instead of following the other boys drooped-shouldered retreats.
"She's the queen, sir," he informs Killian matter-of-factly in a well-meant attempt at a hushed tone, before turning and offering the woman an exaggerated salute before following the others away from Killian's bench.
Killian mocks horror for the second time that day, before lowering himself into a deep, full bow, keeping his eyes still glued to hers regardless of the display. She is fighting back amusement, he can see clearly in the way she bites at the corners of her lips.
"My apologies, your majesty," he says, and she waves a hand in a halfhearted attempt to blow him off, cheeks going pink. He catches it as she does and relishes in the deeper shade she goes when he brushes a kiss across her knuckles, "had I known you were royalty before your lad told me so…"
He can tell the woman is fighting to keep a straight face and very sorely losing, the smallest of smiles tugging at the edge of her lips now—and he thinks he might prefer the brightness there to that that the sun creates.
"I'm not his mother, Mr. Jones," she says carefully, but there is a bit of a sparkle behind her eyes that gives her away, "And you are a kind of royalty yourself, yeah? No need to bow to me."
Her boys eye her curiously from their distance, now as Killian rises steady back to his feet.
"You are Killian Jones, right? Playwright extraordinaire?"
It is his turn to feel his cheeks go hot.
"Extraordinaire is taking it a bit far, yeah?"
She smiles fully then, flashing bright teeth before redirecting her stare at the ground and coming back up with something more gentle painted across her lips.
"Boys, come say hello to Mr. Jones!" She calls over her shoulder, before; "I used to love to go see your plays."
"Didn't you just tell us to leave Mr. Jones alone?" One of the lad's calls back with a wit that makes Killian smirk, regardless of the un-ignorable 'used to'.
"And then my plays went to hell," he responds with a mandatory half-smile.
A nearly indecipherable shake of her blonde locks.
"And then my husband died."
And then the words are again just out of his reach—swirling and freezing and melting in the air between them. Her expression wrinkles into something like embarrassment, and she shakes her head again.
The silence stretches—even Porthos, now returned to his little pile of sticks and staring back expectantly at Killian, refrains from letting out the unhappy whine he is rather adept at.
And then Michael is back.
"We need ice cream!" He tells the woman who apparently is not his mother, hand held out and fingers wiggling for a pence. She jolts momentarily out of the little daze they've drifted into, digging deep in her pockets—and he doesn't miss the flash of disappointment that crosses her gaze as her hand stills.
She draws it back out and and presses a single coin into the boy's little palm.
"You may need to share," she tells him, tone lowered in a way that makes Killian turn his head away.
Michael smiles pleased, anyway, before hurrying happily back to the other boys, prize held over his head.
She turns slowly back to him.
"I'm sorry," she mutters when the boy is out of earshot, "That… just slipped out. I'm not sure… I'm not sure where it came from.
Swirl. Freeze. Melt.
Swirl. Freeze. Melt.
"And I'm, uh, also sorry if my boys were bothering you at all. It's alright. They're… overwhelming."
"I thought you said that Michael wasn't yours?"
It is clearly his turn for words to just slip out. Bloody smooth, Jones.
Her cheeks are again going pink.
"Er, yeah," her fingers tangle in and out of the soft fabric at her side, "Henry is my kid. The other three… George, Michael, Jack—they live on the street. We take them in sometimes. Feed them and, you know… whatever they need."
You're bloody fantastic. How's one person managed to be so thoughtful? Could I be in any assistance taking care of those boys? What is your name? They've got fantastic imaginations.
Swirl. Freeze. Melt.
"Oh."
She is still twitching and now she begins chewing at her lip.
"For a writer extraordinaire, you have awfully few words to say."
"Extraordinaire is taking it a bit far."
(She tells him she's Emma and tells him he is welcome to play pretend with her boys any time he wishes. He tells her to pass the secret cure for Bear Fever on to Michael and she promises she will.
As the odd little family drifts back away, Henry lingers.
"If your dog likes to play so much, why don't you play with him?"
Killian isn't sure what to say at first, meeting the young boy's concentrated expression and searching for an answer.
"I grew up."
He hates that understanding settles into the boy's brow.
That night he sits at his desk with Porthos snoring gently at his feet, listening to the gentle breathing from Milah asleep in the room beside him and thinking of bright curls and shimmering smiles.
When he puts his pen to the paper he expects the ink to spill out and puddle and stain like on every page previous. Words spill out instead.)