Title: We Need a Little Christmas
Summary: "Since Christmas wasn't exactly her favorite and Killian had less than zero clue what it was all about, Emma was shocked when, as they took turns placing ornaments on her parents' tree, Killian asked, "So when are we putting up one of these imitation conifers at our house, love?"
Spoilers: Up through 5x11, "Swan Song."
Characters: Emma Swan and Killian Jones, with a cameo by Henry.
Rating/Warning: K+. I'd apologize in advance for any feels this may give you but I think we all know by now that I'm never sorry. :)
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I took them when no one was looking but I'll put everything back the way I found it!
Author's Note: PenAndInkPrincess prompted: Emma and Killian decorating their house together for Christmas but disagreeing on white lights v. colored lights." I originally wrote a little flashfic for the prompt on Tumblr but then decided to rework it a bit into its own little one-shot. This is set the Christmas after everyone's successful return from the Underworld. Feedback makes the best holiday gift! Enjoy, and happy holidays. :)
On the list of Emma Swan's favorite holidays, Christmas didn't even crack the Top Five.
(Hell, the holiday even being in Emma's Top Ten at all was a relatively new development. Far too many of her Christmases had been spent alone and unloved but a Christmas with Mary Margaret Blanchard her first year in Storybrooke and one the next year in New York with Henry, their heads filled with memories of Christmases they hadn't really shared, had tempered her burning hatred of the holiday to a mere dislike.)
This year was going to be different, though. This year she had her kid. This year she had her parents. This year she had her baby brother. And this year she had her pirate.
Since this was going to be her first Christmas with her entire family, she vowed to at least try to enjoy it.
And as for Killian Jones … well, he'd never had Christmas at all.
They discovered this when they all met to decorate the loft for the holiday. Snow had apparently decided Christmas preparation wasn't worth doing if not done whole hog. She served eggnog. She set time aside for the baking and decorating of Christmas cookies. She put carols on the radio. Hell, she even dressed little Neal for the occasion, putting him in a onesie that could have doubled as an elf costume.
Killian had clearly felt a bit at sea with all the preparation but he rolled with the punches. Although he didn't mind baking and decorating Christmas cookies, he enjoyed eating them a lot more. He discovered that eggnog was a bit too thick and creamy for his tastes, even with a few added splashes of his rum. (Emma, on the other hand, very much liked eggnog with a few extra splashes of his rum. She might have even gotten a little tipsy, much to her family's amusement.)
(Well, her mother's and son's amusement. Her father simply pursed his lips in overprotective-dad annoyance, though even he couldn't quite hide the smile in his eyes.)
And oh, how Emma had wished she'd had a camera to capture the look of utter incredulity on Killian's face when her parents unpacked the artificial Christmas tree and started putting it together. (Emma and Mary Margaret had discovered that first year that Emma was allergic to evergreen. Even though she didn't live at the loft on a full-time basis anymore, her parents hadn't even considered getting a real tree this year. "You shouldn't have to spend your Christmas sneezing!" they'd said, and that was that.)
To the surprise of no one, the only Christmas tradition that Killian had fully approved of, no questions asked, was mistletoe.
Since Christmas wasn't exactly her favorite and Killian had less than zero clue what it was all about, Emma was shocked when, as they took turns placing ornaments on her parents' tree, Killian had asked, "So when are we putting up one of these imitation conifers at our house, love?"
She blinked at him, her mouth agape. "I, uh, wasn't exactly planning on putting one up."
Snow, David, and Henry all looked at her as if she had three heads. Apparently not putting up a Christmas tree was quite the no-no. "Why not?" Snow asked, trying her hardest not to sound scandalized.
"We're going to be spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day here," Emma said by way of an explanation, shrugging dismissively. It was the truth, of course, but not the whole truth. The whole truth – that twenty-eight years' worth of lonely Christmases with nothing to celebrate and no family to celebrate with had left her unable to truly see the magic of the holiday – would only hurt her parents.
"Oh, Mom, you guys have to!" Henry insisted. "Because then I'll have three Christmas trees this year: the one here, the one at Mom's, and the one at your house. It'll be awesome. Please, Mom?"
"Aye, love," Killian added. "Please?"
She darted her gaze from one of her boys to the other. Henry stuck his lower lip out in a pout, prompting Killian to do the same. Oh, that was completely unfair. Even without the rum flowing through her veins, she wouldn't have been able to resist twin pouts. "Fine," Emma sighed. "We'll get a Christmas tree."
For her boys. She'd do it for her boys.
Of course, in Emma's family, holiday decorating was not a quiet affair. Somehow putting up a simple Christmas tree had grown into decking all their halls, inside and out. Her parents and Henry would be over soon to help, and she and Killian had already raided every store in town for an artificial tree of their own and lights and ornaments and a star tree topper and stockings and little Christmas tchotchkes to set on the end tables and mantle.
(To her complete surprise, Killian had expressed interest in starting a Christmas village. She'd told him to have at it – "whatever floats your boat," actually, to which her pirate had grinned – so he'd picked up a church and a couple of houses and some trees to start.)
Now they sat in the living room, trying to decide which ornaments to actually put on the tree since they'd bought far more than they needed.
And it was as Emma was setting aside the boxes of lights to better reach the ornaments that Killian said, "We should wrap the tree with the clear lights."
Emma's heart lurched in her chest. "No."
He arched an eyebrow at her, clearly surprised by the vehemence in her tone. "I fully admit that I still don't understand the purpose of building an artificial fir tree indoors, wrapping it in electric lights and metallic paper, and hanging baubles on its branches but your parents' tree is done in the clear lights and it looks lovely."
No. She was not doing their tree in clear lights. Hell, she'd only bought the clear lights for the banister. "It's boring," Emma insisted. "I mean, I love my parents and yes, the clear lights are sophisticated and classy but they're so … monotonous."
A frown pulled at the corners of Killian's mouth. "The colored lights are certainly not monotonous, I'll give you that, but don't you think they're a little … haphazard?"
"There's nothing wrong with a little color, haphazard or otherwise."
His frown deepened. "No, of course not, but the clear lights–"
Why the hell was he arguing with her? Well, if he cared that much about the damn lights … "You know what, Killian? It doesn't matter. Just do what you want."
She pushed herself to her feet, catching the shock on his face as she did so. He didn't know what had upset her; he just knew something had. Before she had the chance to stalk away, he gently caught her arm with his hook. "What is it, love?"
"I said it didn't matter."
"Except that it clearly does."
She looked him in the eye for a moment, debating. To tell or not to tell? Out of everyone, he was probably the one who would understand the most. After a beat, she heaved a sigh and plopped back down on the sofa. He shifted to sit right next to her, his arm automatically wrapping around her shoulders as a gesture of comfort.
"I never really had Christmas as a kid," she said after a moment. "I mean, it existed but it's a holiday that's supposed to be about love and comfort and family."
He closed his eyes in sad realization. "Which is hard to celebrate when you don't have any of those things."
"Exactly. But there was this one year that the director of the group home I was in piled us all in her car and took us down of those streets where all the houses go all out with the decorations. We don't have a neighborhood here that does it but remind me later and I'll see if I can find some pictures online so you can see what I mean. There were lights as far as the eye could see, lights of every color, and I had never seen anything so beautiful."
"How old were you?"
"Seven," she shrugged. "Maybe eight. I don't know. All I know is that the colors came to mean Christmas for me."
"Because you had no other way of connecting with the holiday," Killian finished for her.
"Right." Then she looked him in the eye. She'd argued because the colors meant something to her; it stood to reason that the clear lights meant something to him."Okay, now that we've gotten my sad story out of the way, why do the clear lights mean so much to you? It can't be just because you like them on my parents' tree."
His eyes briefly registered surprise but then he gave a touched smile. Of course she could read him. Of course she knew. They understood each other. "They remind me of the stars. Of the night sky. Of looking up into the vastness and finding the stars hadn't changed, no matter where we were or what had happened."
Emma blinked back tears as she ran his hand over his cheek. The colored lights had given her a connection to a holiday that had seemed far outside her everyday experience but the clear lights had given him one, too.
And now was the time to build on those connections, to transform those connections into traditions they would start making now and carry from year to year. Now was the time for them to make Christmas truly mean something for the both of them.
Emma swallowed the rest of her tears and gave her pirate a gentle smile. "So what do you say we come up with a compromise?"
"Like what?"
"We do the tree in clear and the outside in color. That way you can look at the stars on the tree and I still get to spread Christmas through color the way those families on that street did when I was little."
Killian smiled. "That, my love, is absolutely perfect."
And it was. When the entire family stepped outside to survey their handiwork after the sun went down, tears sprang to both Emma's and Killian's eyes. The white lights on the tree twinkled like the stars and the colors on the bushes and framing the house looked like little pieces of candy and confetti under the soft blanket of snow that had fallen while they were eating dinner.
It was the most magical thing either of them had ever seen.
"Merry Christmas, love," Killian whispered, slinging his arm around her shoulder and pressing a kiss to her temple.
"Merry Christmas," Emma whispered back, resting her head on his shoulder.
Oh, how glad she was that Henry and Killian had talked her into decorating. It was clear now that they'd all needed a little Christmas.