Title: Crossing Realms
Rating: Did you see the way they looked at each other? Or touched each other? Or spoke to each other? M! M! M!
Summary: Romeo and Juliet have nothing on them.
Disclaimer: Did you see Jefferson and Emma making out in last week's episode? No? Well then I clearly own nothing and my attempts at Jedi mind tricks did not work.
The first time he got the hat to work, it was an accident.
He'd never made a hat before – this was an heirloom, and he'd… lost contact with his family, so to speak, before learning how to make his own – but he knew how to fix a broken one. It wasn't about putting magic in, weaving it like thread and cloth. It was finding the kink or knot and smoothing it out.
Seriously, though, what the hell had Emma done to it? It looked like it had been pulled out of a fire.
He didn't want Grace to be put in danger should he get it to work, so he stuck to fixing it at night after she went to bed. He still wasn't sure how, precisely, it happened but he must have done something right because, well, it worked.
Without even thinking about it, he jumped in.
To his surprise, the Enchanted Forest wasn't exactly gone. Most of it was some kind of wasteland but the part he landed in appeared to have been relatively left alone. He wasn't even going to pretend to understand how the curse worked. He used magic, but he couldn't wield it. No, it doesn't make any sense. No, he won't explain it to you.
He didn't even know that there was anyone else there until he felt a sword at his throat.
"Move and die." A very familiar voice whispered in his ear.
"Why, Emma." He replied. "Is that any way to greet an acquaintance?"
Emma nearly dropped the sword. "Jefferson?"
"The one and only." He turned so that they were facing each other.
"What are you doing here? How'd you even get here?" Emma demanded.
"The hat, and I wasn't doing anything particular. Although I suppose that I should let your father know that you're all safe and sound – he's quite frantic." Jefferson grinned at her.
Emma glared. "You better not be up to anything."
"What could I possibly be up to?" He asked.
"I don't know." Emma stabbed the sword into the ground in frustration. "I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing."
Jefferson instinctively brought his hand up, rubbing her upper arm soothingly. "You will." He smiled that slow, seductive smile. "I take it you believe me about other realms now?"
Emma huffed. "You're not still harping on that, are you? You have to understand that it was a little difficult to believe you when you were acting completely insane."
"I was a little insane, I'll admit." Jefferson shrugged. "But you did believe me for a moment. I saw it."
"Ha, that wasn't belief. That was–" Emma froze, shutting her mouth and shaking her head. "C'mon. David – James – will want proof that Mary Margaret's okay."
"Yes, his dear Snow." Jefferson murmured. Emma turned away but he stopped her, his grip on her arm tightening and turning her back towards him. "But finish that sentence. If you didn't believe me for a moment back in my house that night, what was that then?"
They stared at each other for a long moment, neither one willing to back down.
"Oh, screw it." Emma snapped, pulling his head down and kissing him hungrily.
He'd been popping over to visit ever since then.
They hadn't told anyone. They probably should have but there was complicated rules about his mode of travel and besides, Emma had unfinished business in the Enchanted Forest. Something about their two new traveling companions, a warrior girl and a cat-eyed princess. It was also something they needed, a release of tension, a safe place, a place to let go and be wild, something secret just for them.
And holy mother of God was the sex amazing.
They were at the edge of the forest this time, the wasteland stretching barren before them only about ten feet away from where they lay on the ground. Jefferson had thoughtfully brought a blanket, upon which Emma was currently lying, staring up at him as he gazed at her.
He always did this, staring at her for a few moments as the lay there, bare and flushed with arousal, her nipples hard and her lips wet and red from his teasing. He was just a little too thoughtful, a little too earnest, a little too generous to be a casual fuck, and she'd stopped denying it about a month in. They were lovers, plain and simple, and while Emma had no idea if they were even capable of managing a typical relationship this secret torrid tryst thing was working out just fine.
"Are you gonna–" Her sassy comment was cut off as he swooped down, claiming her mouth, sucking and nibbling at her lips and raking his tongue across the roof of her mouth.
Emma grabbed his shoulders, pushing him down so that their bodies were flush against one another. She shuddered at the delicious chill of lust that wracked her body. Unlike when he'd pressed his cheek to the side of her head back at his workshop, his lips not even an inch from her ear, she didn't have to hold back her shivers.
"You never answered my question." Emma hissed, arching her body as his fingers danced down to between her legs.
"Does it even matter?" Jefferson replied, sucking at the skin on her shoulder. He loved how she tasted; a little different every time, like she was soaking up her environment, but still so deliciously Emma.
"It's not fair – I told you mine." The conversation that had started their current lovemaking session was (what else?) sexual fantasies. Emma had disclosed that she wanted to have sex in her office at the Sheriff's. Preferably something involving handcuffs (it didn't matter who was wearing them).
"You." Jefferson bestowed openmouthed kisses on the swell of her breasts. "Against the shelves in my workspace. Fuck, Emma, I wanted to take you right then and there. You were so fucking stubborn…"
"Still am." Emma rolled her hips, her nails digging into the skin of his upper back. She reached up and grabbed his head, forcing his chin up so that she could look into his eyes. "And right now I stubbornly want you, in me, pronto."
"So demanding." Jefferson murmured. The affection in his voice would have put her off at one point, but she was used to it by now – actually, she enjoyed it. And he complied with her request, sliding inside of her with ease thanks to both practice and how wet she was. It never ceased to amaze him how fucking wet she could get.
And according to Emma, it was a request. It might be disguised as a demand but she highly doubted that she could ever actually make Jefferson do anything. Jefferson knew better. He was about as far down the rabbit hole as you could get, and he'd do anything for her at that point.
Except for leave her. That, he could never do.
Jefferson was pretty quiet but Emma was unapologetically loud, moaning and cursing through gritted teeth. He loved to help her come undone, slipping a hand down and working her clit so that she was reduced to a writhing mass beneath him, keeping up with his rhythm only by pure instinct. Although there were times she loved to take control and ride him, completely in charge, the warrior woman through and through.
Emma had a few distinctive character traits, including but not limited to her refusal to play by the rules (anyone's rules) or abide by the "laws" of the land she now found herself in. This trait did not present such immediate interest to her bedmate as her habit of screaming until her lungs gave out when her climax hit.
They'd been together enough times that he could sense when she was about to come, her walls first clenching, then beginning to ripple minutely until they were violently milking every drop from him, clenching and unclenching in waves like a tiny ocean of muscle. When he felt it begin he clamped a hand over her mouth, letting her bite down viciously while he emptied inside her and she shuddered around him, their bodies shaking uncontrollably.
Afterwards they tended to lie together for a bit, then clean up, give a goodbye kiss that turned into a make out session before one of them remembered a little thing called 'responsibility' and broke away, and then he'd return to Storybrooke and she to her sleeping companions.
This time, though, the combination of a certain raven-haired mother's instincts and the paranoia of their two companions had something a little more interesting in mind for them.
"Be sure to check on Henry." Emma reminded Jefferson as he buttoned up his pants.
"Don't be reckless." Jefferson warned her.
Emma scoffed. "I'm always careful. I am the paragon of restraint and caution." She had only managed to get her underwear back on.
"Sure you are. And I'm sane." Jefferson tugged her in, slipping an arm around her.
"Sane is boring." Emma assured him, kissing the scar on his neck. Their skin was still a little feverish, and the shiver that ran through Jefferson's body as she pressed her lips to him made her want to screw everything and screw him again.
"Oh my God."
Emma whipped her head around, reaching for the sword at her hip to find that it wasn't there, while Jefferson pulled her closer into him and turned her so that he was blocking her from the possible attack.
Snow, Aurora, and Mulan all stared, eyes wide, at the scantily clad couple.
"Emma! That's – and you're – and he's…" Snow looked like she wasn't quite sure which emotion she should exhibit.
"Who's this?" Mulan demanded.
"Her true love." Aurora declared sagely.
The other four stared at her for a beat.
"She gets like that." Emma reassured Jefferson.
Mulan muttered something.
"What are you doing!?" Snow asked, finally settling on shocked outrage.
"What do you think?" Emma replied. "I'm a grown woman, for crying out loud."
Snow looked rather like she might faint.
"Look, Your Highness," Jefferson intervened. "I'm sure this is a shock, but I promise you that–"
"Oh, no." Snow shook her head. "Oh, no, you don't. Neither of you is saying a word. My daughter is coming back to our camp with us and explaining herself to me, her mother, and the man who kidnapped the both of us is going back where he came from."
"But–"
"No." Snow drew herself up, and despite her slightly raggedy appearance she was every inch the queen she had fought tooth and nail to become. "No 'buts'."
She turned and began walking back towards their camp. Aurora and Mulan exchanged a look – half the time the pair was bickering and the half of the time they seemed to read each other's minds – and with a sympathetic look at Emma they followed the Fairest in the Land.
Emma leaned forward, resting her head against his chest. Jefferson pressed his lips to her hair. "Go." He whispered. "She'll calm down. You need to focus on your relationship anyway."
"Since when did you become my therapist?" Emma mumbled. She hadn't realized how much she'd come to depend upon him until she was now forbidden from seeing him. She felt like a teenager.
"Go." Jefferson repeated, detaching himself from her and stepping back.
"I'll see you again." Emma made it a statement, not a question.
Jefferson scooped up his clothes and his hat. "Of course." He winked.
The light in his eyes made Emma's throat close up. She could pinpoint that emotion and give it a name, because it was a reflection of what she was feeling.
She opened her mouth to voice it, but then he spun the hat and was gone.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
The next week was torture.
For Emma, it was a mess of explaining things to her mother, getting into fights with her mother, and finally getting up the nerve to apologize, which led to a massive sharing session with her mother.
Mulan and Aurora were no help at all.
For Jefferson, it was the absolutely slowest week of his life – and he'd spent twenty-eight years doing nothing but spying on his daughter and the other Storybrooke residents (oh, the stories he could tell…) so that was saying something.
Unfortunately for Emma, there was nothing that she could do about it. Jefferson was the one with the power to travel, not she, and Jefferson was extremely patient.
Well, he normally was, anyway.
At the end of the week she sensed it. She knew, she knew he was there. She slowly got up from her spot, cautiously rising to her feet and slipping away. She bumped into him – literally – about a two-minute's walk from camp.
"Emma."
His voice sent a dark thrill racing through her, and then their lips found each other and she was lost in the taste of him.
"I was starting to think you wouldn't come back." Emma was used to being abandoned; she hadn't been able to stop her mind from travelling down that road.
"I'd cross any realm for you. No matter what." Jefferson assured her. It felt insanely good to feel her in his arms again.
Emma tightened her grip on him and she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he meant it.
I love this pairing beyond all reason. *growls at Neil and August* But I love reviews almost as much!