The first of several more side stories and future stories set in the Storybrooke Downs series and currently the furthest point set in that universe. I wrote this during CS AU Week 2015 and am now getting around to expanding it and publishing it to an audience wider than my Tumblr.

If you haven't read the others, there's a reading order in my profile. :)

October 30, 2019

Emma sets the last of the plates on the kitchen table, then glances outside towards the hills. There's no sign of her wayward family near the fences, just the wandering trail of footprints in the snow up towards the paddocks, so she goes to the coat rack near the back door. She sighs as she shrugs into her parka, tugging uselessly at the front.

She's absolutely not buying a new winter coat. It still fits, it just... doesn't zip up anymore.

She walks out onto the porch, shivering a bit as the wind hits her full-on; winter had decided to blow in several weeks early, dumping half a foot of snow over the farm on her birthday last week. Freezing temperatures and a few follow-up snow showers had ensured that the Horn looked picture-perfect as a wintery wonderland. Case in point, there's two snowmen in the yard: a decent-sized one that Leo had built by himself and a tiny one Ruth had insisted on building by herself (though Emma had been on hand to supervise). She smiles briefly at the lopsided shapes, then cups her hands around her mouth. "Leo! Ruth! Come on, it's time for dinner!"

"Aww..."

Twin groans roll down the hill from the yearling paddock. She smirks as her niece and nephew climb over the fence. A taller figure walks up to the fence as the kids stumble and roll down the hill. "What am I, chopped liver?" Killian calls.

She laughs as he hops the fence too; she can just picture the disgruntled look on his face. He jogs down the hill after the kids, scooping up handfuls of snow and dumping them on both Leo and Ruth's heads in turn as they trudge up to the house. "I spend significantly less time dragging you away from the horses than I do them," Emma tells him as they stomp up the steps, shaking off as much snow as they can. "I figured you'd wander in eventually." She turns her attention to Leo and Ruth. "Kids, go wash up. Boots and coats off by the door or you get to mop up the puddles."

"Yes, Auntie Em."

As the kids go into the house, Killian greets her with a kiss; his lips are cold and his nose is like an icicle poking into her cheek, but she responds enthusiastically, pushing back into him and savoring his surprised groan. When they part, he says, "You know, love, we can go get you a new -"

"Nope," she says firmly as his hand settles on her sweater, over the swell of her belly. "This kid has two weeks to vacate the premises, we're not wasting money on a new coat."

Said kid proceeds to kick their father's hand as if to agree with her. Killian grins as he crouches down. "Hello, little one," he says, reaching up with his other hand and cupping her belly between them. Emma smiles wryly: Killian had taken the 'talk to your baby' part of their parenting class a little too much to heart - not that he needed much extra incentive. The baby kicked again and Killian's grin widens. "Are you ready to come out meet us yet, or are you too cozy and warm with your mam? I don't blame you, bloody freezing out here it is -"

"How many times do I have to tell you not to curse at the baby?" Emma asks, reaching behind her to open the door.

"I'm not cursing at it, and it's not going to understand -"

She sighs, pulling away from him and going into the house. He straightens and follows close behind. "I swear to God, Killian, if this kid's first word is 'bloody' or 'fuck'," she whispers those, as the kids are seating themselves at the table, "or literally anything except 'Mama' or 'Papa' -"

Killian stops her at the sink with his hands on her shoulders. He turns her towards him, her mild annoyance fading at his grin. "So we're not letting Scarlet anywhere near our offspring then?" he asks.

Emma smiles wryly. "That was the general plan, yes."

She tilts her head up for another kiss, which he happily obliges. Leo makes retching noises behind them and she rolls her eyes, giving her nephew a noogie as she goes to sit. "Grownups kiss too much," Leo states. Ruth nods in agreement.

Killian sits across from him, grabbing a roll from the basket. "Aye, lad, but sooner or later you'll see it's not so bad, this kissing business."

Both kids make faces. "Ew!"

Killian catches Emma's eye over the salad bowl and winks.

Dinner is a noisy affair as the kids argue about who gets to tell their parents what about their stay at the Horn. Emma and Killian take turns reminding them to eat between bickering; Emma's privately looking forward to a break from them after this. She loves Leo and Ruth like crazy, but she's 36 weeks pregnant. Leo's a little easier - even though they'd had a bit of an argument over the fact that he's eleven now, Auntie Em, he's practically a grownup and can take care of himself - but Ruth is much more hands-on. Emma's tired.

She's just hoping that David and Mary Margaret had a very relaxing ten days in Florida. She's definitely not considering doping the kids up with sugar just before the Nolans get home - which should be in about an hour, if their traveling went well.

Emma's also more than a little pleased that her brother and sister-in-law are going from palm trees and sandy beaches to gray skies and snow everywhere, but she's the first to admit that she's been bitter about her recent travel restrictions. She'd been confined to the bed for several weeks starting back in August after a false labor scare, which meant actually taking maternity leave. (She'd thought she lucked out with a November due date.) There'd been a lot of laying around with the cats and binge-watching bad TV shows or working on the Horn's backlogged account books for a change of pace. After bedrest, she was actually allowed to move around or go down to the office to do paperwork, but there were strict orders about taking it easy and sticking close to home. Her mood hadn't improved when Killian couldn't swap out with Will for a few out-of-state races in September. It was only Pennsylvania, but it was leagues better than the four walls of their bedroom.

She likes their bedroom, just... more so when Killian's there with her.

After dinner, Killian and Leo take care of cleanup while Emma and Ruth head up to the guest room. Emma makes sure Ruth looks under the beds and the dresser for every possible stray sock or stuffed animal; she's too damn pregnant to check herself, but she's also very well aware of the consequences of a teddy bear or security blanket being left behind. "Sure you've got everything?" Emma asks as Ruth clings to her bear.

"Yup."

"Absolutely, one hundred percent sure?"

Ruth nods. "One hundred million percent sure!"

A laugh escapes her as Emma picks up Leo's duffel bag. "Well, I guess you can't get much more sure than that."

She'll still have Killian come up later to double-check. Ruth's only four, and if Emma's learned anything about kids it's that they seem to have blind spots that are shaped exactly like the things they're supposed to be looking for.

When David and Mary Margaret come to pick up the kids, though, Mary Margaret takes care of it by making both Leo and Ruth go double- and triple-check their room before they leave. "And I mean it, Leo, I don't want you back down here in five seconds and swearing up and down that you checked everywhere!" she calls up the stairs after their grumbling backs.

Shaking his head, David pulls his arm out from where it had been resting behind his back, presenting Emma with a suspiciously Mickey-Mouse-bedecked gift. "Here, quick, before the kids come back and ask where their presents are," he says.

"What did you do?" she demands, accepting the gift bag warily.

"Just open it, Emma."

She has a suspicious feeling that this is yet another gift for the baby - Lord knows Emma's not particularly a huge Disney fan, so that rules out her, and David would have given it to Killian if it was a gift for him. Her brother and sister-in-law had already bought the baby's bedroom furniture as their baby shower gift, even though Emma had protested that it was too much; by now, she's more than ready for them to stop buying stuff for her kid.

She's miscalculated Mary Margaret's eagerness to play the doting aunt, though. "It's not gender-specific," Mary Margaret says, clearly deflecting.

"What did you do?" Emma asks again.

Killian eagerly plucks the bag from her hands. "Allow me, love," he says, making Emma snort. He's just as enthusiastic at Christmas or his birthday (which are so close together that they shouldn't cause equal excitement), so this doesn't really come as a surprise.

He tears out the tissue paper, which one of the cats immediately pounces on before it even hits the floor, and pulls out the smallest pair of Mickey Mouse ears Emma has ever seen. "Baby Jones" is embroidered on the back. Emma reaches for them before she even thinks, tracing the threads lightly with fingers that tremble and completely blaming the hormones for the tears stinging in her eyes.

Well, she'd cried a lot at her baby shower too, over picture books and little socks with those plastic grip things on the bottoms. Something about having all of these clothes and toys and furniture makes it all the more real, even when she has physical proof of the reality every day: the kicking and the little hiccups, the way this kid likes to practice somersaults on her spine and the way they calm down when Emma sings. She'd opened a window and called down to the pastures for Killian to come up to the house the first time she'd felt something stronger than a flutter; there were still stabs of panic every time the baby went too long without moving and Emma would poke at her belly until they pushed back - her kid all right, grumpy at being woken up.

Emma swipes at her eyes now, sniffling and muttering apologies under her breath. Mary Margaret's watching her with sympathy. "We'll have to get new ones when they have a name," she says.

Killian snorts and Emma resists the urge to elbow him; names have been a source of contention between them since they found out Emma was pregnant, and at this point she's pretty sure the only reason the kid's going to even have a name is because they won't be able to leave the hospital without a name on the birth certificate. "There's something else," David says.

Killian reaches back into the bag and pulls out a little outfit - no, a costume. Emma starts to laugh as Killian drops the bag and the cats claim it as their own. As he unfolds it, she sees it's a little Stitch onesie, complete with a beanie with Stitch's ears. "You realize this is the Christmas outfit, right?" she asks. "No complaining about pictures, baby's first Christmas will be in a Halloween costume."

David and Mary Margaret trade a knowing look. "We figured as much," David says. "Though Mary Margaret was kind of hoping you'd have the baby while we were gone so this could be the 'going home' outfit or a real Halloween costume."

"I wasn't hoping! I want to be there when it happens!" Mary Margaret argues, just as Emma says, "Uh, no, I need the experienced person in the room with me."

"Mostly so she doesn't kill me," Killian adds.

"Regardless," David says, grinning, "we expect a lot of use out of the Stitch outfit before he or she grows out of it."

Emma hugs him before she starts to cry for real, because she's pretty sure she wouldn't be able to stop. Stupid hormones. It's a little awkward around the bump, and the baby wiggles in protest, making David laugh. "Thank you," she says, hugging Mary Margaret as well. "Seriously though, stop buying crap for the baby. At least wait until Christmas."

Mary Margaret just makes a face at her.

After the Nolans leave - every nook and cranny of the bedroom checked, all toys and clothes stowed in bags, and Killian promising to check over it again - Emma decides to head up to bed early while Killian heads down to the barn to help bed down the horses. Her back is killing her and her doctors are still on her about doing too much. And her feet are sore and feel puffy. Maybe she can get Killian to give her a foot massage...

After her nightly routine and putting on her pajamas, Emma putters around the bedroom for a bit, biding time until Killian comes up. She's been doing a lot of cleaning and reorganizing lately - Killian has made more than one nesting Swan joke in the last few weeks, and she has made more than one threat to make him sleep on the couch while she and the cats take the bed and all of the pillows for themselves. Reorganizing their bedroom seems to be the current project; the other day she had to convince herself not to organize their clothing alphabetically by brand name. It's bad enough the baby's clothes are sorted out by item type and then by color.

Idly, she rubs her lower back with one hand while she picks up Killian's loose change and drops it into the change jar. (Seriously, it's not even six inches from where he drops it on the top of his dresser, what the hell.) She knows there's still two weeks until her due date, but she kind of wouldn't mind it if the kid decided it was time to be born now. They're in the safe zone, after all, and to be honest she's completely done with this pregnancy crap.

It had taken a long time to come around to the idea in the first place. Emma had always had a feeling Killian would be a good dad and that they'd probably not screw up a kid too badly, but she'd always been hesitant about the idea of having kids. Her own parents had abandoned her as a baby and if she's being honest, she'd often wondered if she would have that urge herself, if it was something that was hereditary. Or maybe something worse, like her birth mom had died and her birth father had just given up; she'd had a lot of nightmares over the last several months, a lot of late nights and a lot of cups of tea (Killian's kid, all right).

Then there was Killian, who wanted a family but was worried about turning into his father. He's come a long way over the last several years, coming to terms with his family history and what had happened to Liam and Milah, but Emma knows just as well as he does that things so deeply rooted take a long time to get over.

They'd talked about kids for a long time, before Emma moved in even. (They'd talked about a lot of things, pretty much everything that would land itself on an "Eleven Reasons Why Relationships Fail - Number Four Will Shock You!" clickbait Buzzfeed listicle. They'd wanted to make things work, so they dug in deep and spread all their cards out on the table as early as they could.) They'd talked about kids even after they suspected that Emma was pregnant, if they were absolutely sure they wanted this to happen.

Then she'd gone in for the ultrasound and Killian had cried when the little blob that was their baby showed up on the screen, and Emma knew without a doubt that she wanted this to happen.

However, she's pretty positive this isn't happening again. Pregnancy isn't nearly as magical as all the books try to make it out to be - baby hiccups and recognizing Mom or Dad's voice aside. The first couple of months hadn't been too bad, but the labor scare had understandably freaked her out, and this entire last trimester sucked.

At least she'd had Anna to commiserate with for a while, even if it was by phone and a two hour time difference; they'd gotten pregnant around the same time - Emma with her first, Anna with her second two. The Avs happened to play in Boston not long after they found out, so Emma and Killian had gone down to see their friends and celebrate. Both dads-to-be (-again, in Kristoff's case) had gotten a bit overzealous in their celebrating, leaving Emma and Anna (Elsa had stayed home in Denver with Kai; she couldn't fly much these days) to figure out how to get their husbands back to their respective hotel rooms.

But Anna just had to go and have her twins a month ago. Traitor.

Emma decides the top of the dresser is as de-cluttered as it's going to get for now and climbs into bed with a sigh. There's a mountain of pillows on her side of the bed and her giant body pillow almost looks like a bed divider - and it feels like it sometimes.

She misses her husband.

Emma's a few pages into her latest book when she hears the back door open and close, followed a few moments later by heavy footsteps on the stairs. Killian smiles as he comes into the room, stripping off his shirt and tossing it into the hamper. He comes over and kisses her again, his nose cold again against her cheek. "Taking a quick shower, be back in a mo', love."

That's another reason why she's so ready for this kid to get out of her: showering with him and her belly is inconvenient. She misses him. Emma growls softly to herself, turning the page a little too roughly; she can hear her husband chuckling in the bathroom.

He's teasing her.

Asshole.

She wastes no time when he comes back, his hair still damp and sticking up all over the place from the towel. The moment he sits down she shifts, moving her feet into his lap without even a 'please'. He laughs again and gets to work, applying just the right amount of pressure around her ankle and rubbing soothing circles into the arch of her foot. Emma has to bite back moans as his talented fingers ease away the aches that have plagued her for hours; she knows she'll be able to see the difference when he switches, and every time she marvels at how disturbing it is that her feet are able to swell up that much.

At one point during this delicious torture she catches him watching her, his tongue doing something sinful to his lower lip and damn him for wanting her when she feels like an elephant. "Stop looking at me like that," she says grumpily, though her heart isn't in it.

One corner of his mouth twitches, that damn eyebrow of his lifting up like it's got a mind of its own. "Like what, darling?" he asks, the question suggesting he doesn't have any idea what that look is doing to her but his tone telling a very different story.

"Like you want to eat me alive."

Killian grins, setting aside one of her feet and starting on the other. She glances at them: yep, noticeable difference, thank God for men who work with their hands for a living. "Oh, but I do," he says conversationally. "Believe me, Emma, if it wasn't restricted I would be properly worshipping you as you deserve."

She scoffs, not at the idea (because she absolutely believes him, oh how she believes him) but at herself - and maybe her doctors. Reason number three she's over this pregnancy and (probably) never doing it again: they haven't been able to have any sort of sex for months and it's driving her crazy.

(Second trimester hormones had been awful when she wasn't allowed to act on them.

She may have already circled tentative dates on the calendar for when they'll be cleared to have sex again. Not that she's impatient or anything.)

She honestly doesn't know how he puts up with her, really, between the mood swings and the hormones and the restrictions; though she's offered several times to relieve him, he's declined every time.

Some gentlemanly thing about not wanting to receive without giving in return.

Her foot massage done and Emma feeling ten times better than she did before, she reaches over and turns off the light. Killian moves her body pillow away for now, letting her snuggle under the blankets with him for a while. She lays in the crook of his arm (reason number four: laying any way other than on her side blows, hence the giant pillow to cuddle with), his free hand gently caressing her belly while she reaches up and combs her fingers through his hair. He murmurs in Irish to the baby, lulling her into a doze. She catches about every fourth or fifth word - he's been teaching her, but progress has been slow. "We really should think about names," he says quietly in English after a while.

"We've been over this," she mumbles, the long day catching up with her. "Wanna know them first. There's no good surprises left in the world besides this."

She feels him sigh, just a little bit. They've had this argument before, and often. "Not even a short list?" he asks.

"What if none of the short list names fit?"

She can feel him shrug. "We'll start again."

Emma sighs, tracing the shell of his ear idly with a finger. "It still seems easier to just wait. As long as we don't name anyone Monica or Gerald."

He chuckles as she moves, grabbing her pillow and rolling onto her other side; clinging to it in her sleep is a little awkward and feels like there's a third person in their bed, but it's the only way she can sleep comfortably these days. "When you're not exhausted, we'll discuss why not those names specifically. Go to sleep, Swan." Killian props himself up a little to bend over her and she tilts her head back slightly to allow him to kiss her gently. "Love you," he says; Emma can almost make out his grin in the dark.

"I love you too."

She settles down, his arm resting across her side and his hand caressing her belly again. She starts drifting off to sleep, smiling as Killian tells their baby, "Tá grá agamsa duit fosta."

Thanks for reading, reviews are always appreciated!