The first time she meets him, David introduces Killian Jones as his best friend from high school. She may be two years behind the both of them, but he sure is a hot dude nevertheless. She practically keeps herself reserved from them though.
He wears the typical leather jacket which clearly complements his shining blue eyes of joy and intelligence. He's also a part of the swimming team with David, however Killian is the captain of the team, ahead of her brother. She's caught sight of them swimming at the schoolwide pool a couple of times, and if she needs to admit anything, he's a hell of a good swimmer.
There are times where she simply doesn't want to go to school, even when David marches into her room and encourages her to walk with him. It doesn't work that way. They don't know what she goes through every day when she heads off to class. She gets stares, and as subtle as they think they are, Emma never fails to notice the way they look at her for being that new girl who's adopted. It hurts no matter what, even if she loves David and his mother, Ruth. It never fails to tug on strings which still control her emotions.
Before school, it's always a 'time to get this day over with'' mood. At lunch, she sits against her locker staring at the floor, her eyes seeing the little shuffling movement of feet passing by, bringing along the chatter of people and their friends. After school, she doesn't have the strength in herself to wait for David. The moment she steps out of the school doors, her feet are guiding her back to the house without a second thought. For some reason, she feels eyes on her when she leaves.
When she's fifteen and in grade ten, the bullying doesn't particularly stop. The closest of friends she has are two other girls, Mary Margaret and Ruby, and none of them can do anything to help her. There are nights where she goes home and hears the conversations between Killian and David about how she's faring. She falls asleep to these distant talks, only remembering the voices echoing through her mind about how painful everything truly is.
There are times where she wants to fight back, but because of this behaviour, it's gotten her kicked out before or sent back into the system. For once she doesn't wish of this - mainly because David's the only one who understands her - so it explains her withdrawal of a personality. There are times where she ends up sitting in the washroom stall, praying for the day to go by quicker before returning to class and staying silent at her desk.
Her marks are not bad. She does well for her own abilities, but there are times where she simply can't keep up with curriculum because the voices in her head run free and wild and completely out of her own control. The voices that bother her and burden a great weight on her shoulders.
There's a tree outside on the back field where she retreats to during the Spring and Autumn time. Sometimes, Killian comes out and sits beside her, joking and flirting like his usual self. He happens to be one part of her life that manages to brighten her mood, no matter what happens. But through hushed conversations, she knows that there's a dark bit of his past he covers up with this type of usual bravado of his. She never questions it though, and if he's grateful for it, she never notices him present anything like that.
Days where she returns, sitting at her desk and completely her homework, she hears more voices from Killian and David under her on the porch. It's difficult to not try and listen to them, but all she can really make out is that Killian is meeting a girl called Milah.
She tries not to think anything more about that, but regardless, there's a slight drop of disappointment inside of her.
It's during her third year in high school at age sixteen where things start going a little bit better for her way, at least that's what she originally thought. She falls in love with a guy named Neal. He's sweet and kind, promising and almost seems unrealistic, so of course she grows head over heels for this boy. They go on for awhile, making plans of the future, discussing things that probably are just unreachable dreams. She trusts him with all of her heart, but it eventually doesn't go well when she learns of his cheating with another girl. Trust is easily thrown out the window. Realistically, they break up and it smashes both her heart and her soul.
Both Killian and David visit from college whenever they can, and even though she's somewhat happy of their visits, she doesn't feel the usual spark she does when seeing the two most important people in her life. Putting up her best fake smile, she hugs the both of them tightly, insisting that she misses the two of them. She doesn't mention her broken heart from Neal to either of them.
It's the first night Killian spends since three months ago in the spare bedroom. Unlike any of the three other people in this old house, she sneaks outside and sits on the porch, gazing at the faint stars blinded by light pollution.
She doesn't know why he cares, but he ends up draping his jacket over her shoulders and sitting down next to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder giving her a tight squeeze. "Rough day?" he asks softly.
"You could say that," she mutters in response, closing her eyes and sighing out of her nose. The smell of his cologne and the warmth of his body gives her the smallest opportunity to just escape into an ethereal world. She doesn't want to cry, nor is she going to, but there's something about his company that makes her feel safe.
When Christmas rolls around and only David returns with Mary Margaret, she tries not to show her disappointment in Killian's lack of presence. He's with Milah, his girlfriend.
She's eighteen and fresh out of high school, not having the foggiest idea of where she's intended on going. David's mother insists on law enforcement since she tells her she is a vigilant, strong-willed person. Emma hugs her and thanks her for the suggestion, taking it into consideration.
On New Years, Killian returns with David for a celebration, but she notices his blue eyes have dimmed down to something less than the usual playful and caring sight. It's none of her business, so she keeps to herself and just enjoys the time they have together before they have to return back to college. She tries not to care, but she does and she's attracted to him.
She doesn't miss the way he completely downs at least four bottles of beer within an hour.
There's a missing smile two days later when they leave, and she tries to ignore how he seems more distant, she tries to ignore how his hugs lack something important, but those are all tries. Watching the car disappear into the distance is like an anchor dropping onto her heart, making her harbour another weight of pain. She always misses them, and she sure hasn't been considering getting into a relationship, not after the entire Neal ordeal.
Training physically is a treacherous amount of hard work, but she's determined to get herself a job in the BPD. When she does get a job as a detective, it's where she meets a man called Graham. It's also when she moves out of David's mom's house into a shitty little apartment enough to suffice her living standards everyday.
She falls into a relationship with this man by the time she's twenty-one, but it all breaks apart again when he gets shot trying to defend one of his comrades. And right to the heart. Only another frequent, stinging reminder that she's just not fit to be happy. Never was, never will.
She throws herself into work completely, trying to flush out the reminder of his death, at least until the funeral. But it's difficult to do that when she works in the same office as he does, taking over his position because he's now deceased and needs a replacement. His jacket is on the coat hanger by the door, and everytime she sees it, she wants to break down and wish for a better life.
At the funeral, her body aches and she can barely keep herself standing in between David and Killian. She doesn't utter a single word, only staring at nothing as the hole in herself carves itself deeper, watching the dirt cover up the remains of the man she could have truly loved. Tears flow freely down her face and drop onto the fresh land under her feet, just like another love crushed and stepped all over.
Ruby gets her to go out with her for a drink, but that turns into something far worse. She doesn't remember what happened, but apparently Killian picked her up and took her back to her apartment, crashing on the couch after she was secure in bed. He seemed even worse than her - he doesn't really talk about Milah anymore.
Emma continues to mourn Graham's death, still hardly over the fact that every man she ends up with vanishes from her life before she has a say about it. She realizes Killian is not a part of that list.
Pain and sorrow soon become unbearable, and one night she ends up at his apartment doorstep unaware of what she's doing herself. He opens the door with a groggy expression, seemingly trying to absorb the sight in front of him. She knows she's a mess, but she's just tired of her life, tired of her inconsistent and failing relationships, tired of all the incoherent murmurs of promises and dreams smashed and broken within seconds of time when things become too good to be true, tired of all the hurt in her heart tumbling into a large mess she can't handle anymore.
Her hands are bunched up at her sides, the stinging of overnight tears completely overwhelming her sense of sight. She squeezes her eyes shut, not saying a word to him, and she wants to turn away and run. She thinks it's all just a mistake and she she should go back to the apartment and just deal with it herself until he pulls her in forcefully, wrapping his arms around her back and rubbing up and down before she finally gains control of her senses, letting some stray tears drop onto the wooden floorboards beneath them. His face is buried into her neck, his hot breath only a thought for her to process that he'll always be with her, through every hardship. He's the anchor to her struggling ship.
She's painfully aware that she could have went to David instead, but her feet had brought her to Killian in response to her emotional turmoil. He holds her for a long time, kicking the door shut behind him and leading her down a hallway, into his bedroom. Her usual instincts would be to run from all of this, but she's tired and she just wants peace. He gives her that, even when it can be during the most impossible looking situations.
Thoughtfully, he removes her jacket and unzips her boots, setting them aside from the bed. "I'll take the couch," he whispers, brushing his lips over her cheeks.
It takes a lot of guts for her request, but it ends up being something she desperately needs anyways. "P - Please... stay," she mumbles in between sniffles, rubbing her eyes from the dried tears.
She tries to ignore the way he sighs and climbs into the bed, pulling the covers up and over their shoulders. She tries to excuse or feign a reason for herself to shift closer toward him. She tries to forget the pain as his arms wrap around her and pulls her closer against his chest. None of those work in the end.
"Sleep, love," he murmurs, pressing a kiss into her hair.
She does sleep, and that marks the first time she sleeps with him.
Morning comes after a nights rest, the side of the bed where Killian had been occupying cold and empty. Immediately, she starts to panic, thinking that everything had chased him away, everything had made him run away from her because that's what happens with every person she's with. They leave her, and she's god damn tired of people leaving her. The only two men in her life are the current pillars supporting her and if one leaves, everything's bound to go downhill.
From the crying, her eyes struggle to stay open from the sunlight filtering in through the windows. Slipping on her jacket and tugging her boots back on, she shuffles down the hallway. She realizes he's not gone, only awake and making some coffee. If she's going to get through the day, she's definitely going to need her caffeine.
"Good morning, Swan," he greets with a small smile. "Coffee?"
This is the part where she makes a beeline for the door, to leave and never turn back. Instead, she does one of the unexpected and nods at his request.
In two weeks, she's being forced to take a week off from work. She begs to not be put off, but they insist she needs a break otherwise she's going to break. It's a false statement, she's already broken. Perhaps broken to the point of never being fixed again.
Killian makes a surprise visit to her apartment, and she's an utter mess of disappointment. "What has gotten into you, Swan?" is a question he asks and has the right to refuse an answer to.
She still answers, "Life has gotten into me - sick and tired of it all."
It's hard for her to not look at his eyes and see the care and love, and she can't fall in love with him, he's her friend. It's not a relationship she's going to lose because of her possible petty infatuation with him. It's hard to reject the embraces he gives, not when it offers her a sense of safety and familiarity. It's hard to not bust out a small smile or laugh when he tells a smooth joke.
They spend the day together, simply discussing their failed relationships. She doesn't shed a single tear anymore, it's simply out of her system now. All she cares about now it paying her rent and getting work done because there's nothing else she values in life now. She can say she's happy and she can say she's free, but those are all words that mean nothing to her because the intentions with them have fallen short.
She learns of his story with Milah, that they broke it off, that everything had gone downhill by the end of college. There's an unending circle of pain in his eyes, a sadness that feels incurable because she knows the exact feeling that lasts for a lifetime. She tells him the old tale of Neal and her in high school, the unspoken words of resentment ringing in her words even after years of [getting] over him. It feels nice to let it out though, to simply speak of things that continue to burden her each and every day. He holds her hand and squeezes it as she retells - relives - the story of a high school romance.
There are times where she laughs (bitterly), yet also wants to just find something to break her fall. After years of stubborn behavior, she admits that Killian has always been that thing, that person.
It's a spur of the moment the first time the both of them kiss. Slow and tender as if they're both afraid of losing each other. She feels as if her throat is clogged, preventing her from breathing, to only focus on the man who's broken down her hundred walls.
The man who was the first to connect flawlessly with her through body and soul. The man who was the first to sit with her during the Autumn season under the tree (ignoring the looks given to him because he was the famous Captain of the swim team), watching the sunlight seep through the yellow-turned leaves. The man who was the first to become her friend when no one else would. The man who was the first to truly believe in her when no one else could - when she couldn't believe in herself.
It's also the first when she feels a difference in their kiss, an odd yet gravitating pull of a sensation in the pit of her stomach. The first she feels something close enough to a concept called home.
One day she's drowning and drowning, but the next, she's flying and flying. It's the first time she's experienced a vibe like this.
He asks her out on their first date. He grins in a way she's missed for so long when she says, "Okay." It warms her soul when he's plainly ecstatic and not suffering.
She's twenty-four when they have their first major fight. She's twenty-four when she sits at home for the first time in three years, wishing if her life could go by faster, to forget about happy endings, and only just scrape her way through. They fall into a separation where she misses him, where she misses everything about him for an entire year.
She's celebrating her twenty-fifth birthday all alone when there's a banging at her door. It's the first time she sees Killian after they broke on bad terms. He's holding a bouquet of her favourite flowers and a letter neatly sealed. It's a crying pain of silence between them, but she takes them from him and sets them in an empty vase, after dusting and rinsing it out.
"I am fully aware that you may - will - never forgive me for what I've done," he mutters, closing his eyes. "But I have also realized that I am madly in love with you, Emma, and that I've regretted every single second spent away from you, wallowing in the pain and disappointment of myself. Make no mistake though, I will never stop loving you, for you were the first I've ever truly loved and still love."
It's the first true declaration of love he's ever made to her. He caresses her cheek in the most gentlest of manners, pressing a lingering kiss to her forehead before wishing her, "Happy birthday, my Swan." It's when she smells the scent of rum, she learns that he's been suffering again. He leaves before even she can say something to him.
While her knees buckle and a traitorous tear slips out from the corner of her eye, it's the first time she realizes she's always loved Killian.
When she hesitantly opens the letter, her eyes immediately well with tears again.
You were always the first, and you always will be.
You were always the first one I loved, and I will always love you.
You were always the first one I wanted to spend my entire life with, and I will always want to spend it with you.
You are the one for me, my love.
Forgive me or not, my love and desire will be forever.
- Killian Jones
In the first time in her life, she makes a choice.
To be with him. The first right choice.
So, she ditches the letter on her bed, grabs her jacket, gets her boots on, and chases after him in the rain. It's the first time she's yelled his name out of desperation and a million mishaps in her life catching up to her if she doesn't make this decision to be with him now.
She clings onto him, clutching and clawing. For once she's not running away from something, she's running toward it. It's the first time she's done that.
Although the road is rocky and full of hardships for their development to get back into a relationship, things go smoothly for them anyways. She wakes up in his arms, to soft kisses and declarations of love each morning. She retires to bed each night with a thought that this is the life she wants, the life she finally believes she'll deserve, the man who will always love her, even when she doesn't love herself.
A night of torture soon arrives four months after their reunion. After chasing a runaway criminal, a man of his own backup shoots her in the shoulder, and that's the first time getting shot and passing out from the abundant amount of blood loss before backup and paramedics arrive.
It's the first night in the hospital where she's in the darkness and struggling to wake up. All of her agony reminds her perhaps it was meant to happen, that she was meant to be shot. But when memories of Killian appear in front of her eyes, she remembers that she'll be ruining his happiness. That she'll end up being a source, a reason, for him to return back to the glasses of rum, for him to lose the bright blue in his eyes, for him to have a lack of a smile or a cough of laughter. She can't do that. He's fought for her before, it's her turn, her first turn to fight back now.
As long as her heart continues to beat, no matter the constriction, she fights back. She wakes in a gasp, wanting to grasp something, anything, but the pain in her right shoulder doesn't seem to tolerate that. The nurses rush in and sedate her by that point, and she can hear the muffled screaming of Killian's voice, but she falls back into sleep before she can even see his face again. God, how does he look again? She doesn't remember too much.
They say she's lucky she managed to survive her injury. There was far too much blood loss, merely sitting on the edge between life and death.
It's 4:27 AM when she wakes up the following day, her eyes peeling open, a weight on her left hand. His hand is clasped over hers, his head resting on top of it as if he's had the longest day in his life. She huffs out a breath, smiling at the view. It wakes him up too, and the smile that plasters across his face accompanying his glimmering blue eyes filling with tears of relief makes her forget that she's even in a hospital.
The first time she steps foot back into the real world, everything feels so off balance.
She's twenty-eight when he takes her sailing for the first time. Everything is perfect, but imperfect, and she wonders about her future.
It's later on during the sunset in the middle of no where, does he get on one knee. "I have loved you since the first day we met. I have promised myself to never stop loving you, no matter where you are, far or close. I have made the mistake of leaving once, I don't intend to let you down like that again. What do you say, love? Marry me?"
She knows if she says "yes," she'll break down into his arms. So she laughs and shakes her head. "What do you think?" is her answer of both hope and joy as he slips the beautiful ring onto her finger.
She's twenty-nine when they get married, something small but memorable for the both of them nonetheless. That marks the day of their commitment and love for each other. She knows the meaning behind "I do" will never fade from existence, not while they still live.
She's thirty-two by the time Liam is born, a bundle of everything Killian and her have ever imagined, even through the pain of hours of labour. Watching Killian, her husband and love of her life hold the baby boy is the best sight she's seen in ages.
She knows that if he's loved her since the first moment, he'll be the exact same toward their son.
It's the first time they're both parents.
It's the first time for a lot of things, and you never forget your first.