anxious in heart, restless in soul.
The text appears with a cheerful ding! and his ballpoint pen leaves a crooked black line through a paragraph when David drops it uncapped. Emma, who had been just been fiddling with a paperclip with her feet propped up on his desk, snorted at him.
Someone's chatty today, read the message alongside a picture of Neal, blues eyes crinkled with a gummy baby smile that showed off both of his teeth.
"I know that face," Emma said, "let me see my brother."
"You can tell from just my face?" David handed the phone over.
"Aww." Emma smiled down at the screen. "Send me that one? And duh, I have like a catalog of your faces when reading texts. I mean, Mom should've seen the way you lit up when Killian texted you yesterday about your guy thing."
David restrained the urge to stick his tongue out at his daughter. "Very funny, Emma," he drawled instead as he took his phone back.
"Not kidding at all," Emma said, but her smile still tugged at her eyes, uncannily like her brother's. "Also, I've known your 'pining for Mom' face since you guys were cursed. Go home for lunch or something, I'll hold down the fort."
"But-" David gestured to the paperwork and the pen that would have rolled off his desk it not for his World's Greatest Dad mug.
Emma rolled her eyes. "The epic story of the back window at Dark Star Pharmacy that some poor kid's baseball went through will still be here this afternoon."
David had to admit, she had a point: there were only two pieces of paper on his desk required to document the incident, and he hadn't gotten to spend more than half an hour with his son in… a while. "We should both go, then," he offered, already standing and going for his jacket. "Have a family lunch."
"No, no, not today." Emma had to take her feet off his desk to recap the pen. "I can read your expressions, right? Neal doesn't mind much if you wanna make out with Mom a bit before lunch as long as you read him a story after and his diaper's clean, but I don't wanna see that."
"Pretty sure the pot's calling the kettle black." David raised his eyebrows.
"Tacos," she replied, enunciating the word as slowly as possible.
David's mouth pinched. "And on that note-" across the room to kiss her forehead, smoothing her hair down at the same time- "I'm off. Make sure you get some lunch, too."
Emma's chuckle followed him out the door.
An hour later, when David's stomach was pleasantly full and his chest still felt warm from the way Neal had gurgled when he put him down for his nap, he wandered back into the station. There was a faint buzzing of voices and laughter from the little television, and David was already drawing breath to tease Emma about her inexplicable Whose Line addiction when he rounded the corner, but then he stopped dead.
Emma was fast asleep on the little couch by the cells, her head pillowed on someone else's chest: Hook, who was asleep as well, his mouth slightly open and both arms wrapped tightly around the woman who was snoring on top of him and between his legs. Both of them had left their shoes next to David's desk, four dark leather boots in a tidy row.
There had been a while when, despite Prince Charles and multiple reassurances and even the sheer way Emma lit up so much brighter around the pirate, David had bristled to see his daughter and Hook touching at all; the first time he saw them kissing, one evening when he and Elsa had taken a detour to ask the fairies if they'd met anyone of Anna's description and they'd returned to the sheriff station to find Emma and Hook lip locked, his hand cradling her jaw, David had had to turn away and develop a sudden interest in the wall to avoid pulling the pirate off his daughter. (When the two jumped apart like guilty teenagers, Elsa had just made a pleased hmm noise that somehow frustrated David further.)
But things had changed.
Hook, Killian, had grown on him, as he'd been forced to admit in the Underworld (and hadn't the man smiled so widely at that, as if he still found it miraculous that people cared about him, were willing to sacrifice for him. Snow's smile had turned watery when David related the story a few days later.)
He had more than proved himself as a hero, both as a man doing good for its own sake and as someone dedicated without reservation to Emma, and that was all David could ask. And besides, there had been so much hardship lately; he was allowed to find joy in something-
"And now we're going to play Scenes from a Hat!" called Drew through the thin layer of interference that the little television couldn't shake.
David pulled his phone out of his pocket, typed in his code (Neal's birthday, so sue him,) and selected the camera app. The click! sound effect was louder than the audience's hysterics over someone's joke, and David winced when Emma blearily roused herself as he was sending the picture to Snow.
"Dad?" she mumbled, sitting halfway up. "What're you doing?"
"Nothing. You can go back to sleep."
There was a crease printed on Emma's cheek from Killian's vest. "Okay," she mumbled, but kept her eyes cracked open as she laid her head back down. "Are Mom and the kiddo doing okay?"
"Just fine," David promised, bending down to pick up a crumpled piece of wax paper that must've been wrapped around a Granny's sandwich and been tossed not quite to the trashcan.
"Bad choices for pets," called Drew, and someone David didn't recognize walked out to yell "Here, velociraptor!"
Snow's reply came in quickly: Aww, how sweet! You should let them sleep.
"How's he doing, Emma?" David finally asked, tucking his phone back into his jacket.
"He'll be okay," Emma murmured into the shirt of the man in question. "He'd just- tired. He barely slept in Camelot, I know 'cause he'd sit up with me to watch me weave dreamcatchers, and then he was the Dark One for about a month, and, well, turns out you don't even get to sleep when you're dead."
David had noticed the moment he entered the room that Killian's arms were tightly around Emma, but it wasn't until now that he noticed that she was clutching at his chest as well.
"He feels guilty, too," Emma added, a strange note in her voice.
"He doesn't need to."
Her smile was lopsided, but she closed her eyes. "He does anyway, and I, I'm not sure what to do to make him feel better."
David looked at his daughter and Killian: so deeply entwined one could hardly tell where one ended and the other began; eyes bruised with dark circles beneath but faces clear and calm. "I think you're already doing it."
She cracked on eye open again, but barely, as if she were already mostly gone to the realm of dreams. "You think so?"
"Yeah," David breathed. "I really do. Get some rest, okay?"
"M'kay, Dad. Love you."
"It's time for a Hoedown!" Drew was yelling as David closed the door and turned to go back home again.