So, this is my CS Secret Santa gift for Emma (nothandlingit) over on Tumblr!
It's pure fluff and humor overload for this magical holiday season. Thanks to Lanni for soundboarding the twelve ridiculous gifts with me and then subsequently beta'ing and helping me settle on an ending!
All I want for Christmas is...pasta sauce (and other weird and wonderful gifts)
This was their first Christmas together, and Emma was determined it would be perfect. Well, okay, technically it was their fourth Christmas, but it was the first one they were spending together as Mr. and Mrs. Jones. And she'd been throwing herself wholeheartedly into making it their best one yet. No Snow Queens, no Wicked Witches, no Immortal Imps would be ruining this holiday.
Killian was more than a little amused by her enthusiastic planning, even if he did groan and remind her it was 'barely December'. For the majority of her life, Emma had never been one to celebrate holidays, choosing to order takeout and watch a movie (alone, always alone) at Christmas. But that was before she had a family and friends and love in her life. Now, the holidays seemed to have that magic about them she'd only ever seen in sappy commercials and Lifetime movies. And she enjoyed every second.
But for all the planning she'd done – among other things, stocking up on plenty of rum for the copious amounts of eggnog she'd assumed they'd all be knocking back – there was one thing that she hadn't counted on.
Two pink lines.
With the white stick clutched in her trembling hands, Emma had stared at those two pink lines as her heart raced and the blood rushed in her ears. She hadn't expected it to happen so soon. They'd only been married for 8 months and had decided to try for a baby less than two months ago. They hadn't told anyone, of course. It was something they'd talked about but they didn't know if it was in the cards for them.
She was 35 now and fully aware that her body's baby-making abilities were most likely starting to slow down. And then there was Killian…'are men still fertile at 300 years old?' wasn't exactly something they could type into Yahoo Answers. So they'd tentatively decided she'd simply stop taking her birth control and see what happened, if anything.
And here she was, 6 weeks later with a positive pregnancy test and a heart so full that she couldn't help the tears from falling. The last time she'd stared down at two pink lines, all she'd felt was utter dread. This time…she'd never felt lighter. It really was going to be the perfect Christmas.
CS
"Killian, just stop fussing and get over here!"
Family Christmas cards. Something Emma had never dreamed she'd be making. Standing in their overly decorated living room in front of a Christmas tree that looked like they'd taken it straight out of a magazine (because her husband was a perfectionist), she sighed and watched Killian fuss over the goddamn angle of the camera tripod while Henry rolled his eyes despite the amused smile playing at his lips.
He was eighteen now, a head taller than her and a little awkward with it, off at college in Boston for most of the year. Having him back at home for the holidays was something Emma had been looking forward to since he'd left. She missed him every day, even though he kept his promise of a phone-call once a week, and she couldn't help but wonder how he'd feel about a new baby coming along.
Killian finally hurried over to stand beside Emma then, his arm wrapping easily around her waist as he pulled her closer to him and turned his head in the direction of the camera. She looked up at him with a smile and raised her eyebrows.
"Ready?"
He nodded; wearing a grin that she was entirely sure could light up New York City after dark. Emma bit her lip. She'd had this particular scenario in mind the moment she'd found out she was pregnant but now that the moment of truth had arrived, nerves caused her pulse to flutter and butterflies to take flight in her stomach.
With the camera remote tucked into her palm, she hit record. They thought they were having a picture taken, but Emma could be just as sneaky as her pirate and there was no way she wasn't capturing his reaction when she broke the news.
"Everyone say…Emma's pregnant!"
She said nonchalantly, eyes trained on the camera.
"Chee-…wait, what?!"
Henry spluttered, spinning to face her with a huge grin and wide eyes. And Emma couldn't help the laughter that bubbled up, spilling from her lips in a magical, musical sound of pure happiness. Turning her head to find Killian's gaze, she could see the tears in his eyes and he blinked quickly, mouth opening and closing as he struggled to put his emotions into words.
"Are you really…are we…? Gods, Emma! This is the best Christmas gift imaginable!"
He was laughing then too, lifting her into his arms and spinning her around, peppering kisses all over her face as she reveled in the moment.
"Yes, I really am. We really are," she smiled through happy tears, "But neither of you are allowed to tell anyone yet. We're going to surprise my parents on Christmas Day."
CS
If someone had told Emma Swan at 17 years old, heavily pregnant and alone in her prison cell, that less than two decades later she'd be planning an elaborate pregnancy announcement for her parents with her husband (Captain Hook, no less), she would certainly have laughed in their face.
But here she was, sat at the kitchen island, chuckling to herself as she wrapped a jar of pasta sauce in gaudy Christmas paper and set it down in the box of seemingly random items beside her. She'd been Googling pregnancy announcement ideas and Killian had offered up some humorous suggestions too. Together, between fits of laughter, they'd compiled a list of twelve items they could wrap up reasonably well that would hopefully baffle her parents until they put all the pieces together.
"Killian!" Emma called, smirking and counting up the wrapped items, waiting until he popped his head around the kitchen door, "Is this mixtape too obvious? Come look."
She pushed a piece of paper across the countertop to him and he chuckled, shaking his head as he moved to sit opposite her.
"Darling, I haven't the faintest idea what a 'mixtape' is."
Emma rolled her eyes in mock exasperation (even though she still found it endlessly endearing whenever modern world terminology baffled him) and grabbed the blank CD she had ready to burn her subtle list of songs onto.
"This thing," she held up the CD, "plays music and I can choose what songs it'll play. That list is all the songs I'm planning to put on it. And then we're going to give it to my parents, along with all this other crap, to see if they put two and two together."
Killian nodded, quickly understanding, and let his gaze flicker across all the song choices that were written in her neat scrawl down the page.
"Baby Stop Crying...Baby Got Back…Ice Ice Baby…Baby Let's Play House…Baby Love," he chuckled again and returned his gaze to hers, "Well, love, this is about as subtle as a bloody brick."
Killian was still somewhat taken aback by how much effort she was putting into their announcement. He was finding it quite a challenge to keep his mouth shut, and would have happily announced their news in the middle of Main Street if she'd let him. But he knew that doing so would surely ruin her elaborate plan and he couldn't bear to take that away from her when she was being so ridiculously creative about it.
Emma looked rather pleased with herself as she grabbed the list back from him and canted her head to the box of gifts she'd spent the last hour wrapping.
"Everything is ready, I just have to burn the CD and then we're good to go."
Killian smiled and made his way round the kitchen island to her, slipping his arms around her still-tiny waist and resting his chin in the crook of her shoulder. She sighed contentedly and leaned back into him, feeling his smile as he pressed a tender kiss against her neck.
Ever since she'd told him about the pregnancy three weeks earlier, he'd been taking every given opportunity to wrap his arms around her from behind, the fingers of his good hand skimming delicately over her flat stomach. She'd had to elbow him in the ribs a handful of times when he'd done it in front of her parents, a hissed 'Killian!' and a pointed glare deterring his actions.
But it just made him all the more attentive when they were in private and she couldn't exactly say she minded the way he would make sure to kiss her belly as well as her lips when he said goodnight. Or the way he would leave name suggestions on the refrigerator door made out of magnets. Or the way he had taken to calling the baby 'little bean' after she'd told him that the baby couldn't hear him talking to it, because it was still only the size of a jelly bean.
She'd taken him along to her first pre-natal check (at which she'd ended up having to explain literally everything), and she knew he carried his copy of the ultrasound picture around in his jacket pocket. He'd been utterly awestruck by the fact that they could see their baby on the screen, hear his or her heartbeat strong and sure from the monitor, and it had brought tears to her eyes. She'd blamed it on the hormones.
CS
"So, remind me again how this is going to work, darling."
Killian folded his arms and leaned against the doorframe in the living room, watching as Emma carefully arranged the baffling array of gifts her parents were going to receive. There was an order in which they had to open them, apparently.
Emma glanced over her shoulder at him and grinned, noting the way her stomach clenched at the sight of him. He looked positively sinful draped against the doorframe in his gratuitously tight black jeans and dark blue button-down. He'd forgone the waistcoat for once, and even after four years, Emma still found herself occasionally marveling at the sight of him in modern clothes.
Snapping herself out of it, and catching the smirk on his lips telling her that her appreciative gaze had most certainly been noted, she turned back to the gifts.
"Well, they're gonna be here in ten minutes. We're gonna have dinner, which you and Henry can start helping to lay out in a minute, and then...gift time! And we're taking bets on who figures it out first."
Killian couldn't help but smile at the glee in her voice. She'd planned the whole thing so meticulously that he really hoped the Charmings would get at least halfway through their weird selection of gifts before they put the pieces together.
"Oh, your mother is definitely going to win that one, love."
He chuckled, before making his way to kitchen as the timer on the stove began to beep.
CS
"Thank you for dinner, honey, it was wonderful."
Mary Margaret followed her daughter and Henry toward the living room, five-year old Neal following closely at his older nephew's heels. That still weirded Emma out a little, that her kid brother was thirteen years younger than his nephew. But Neal idolized Henry, and it warmed her heart the way he'd surgically attach himself to her son whenever he was home from college.
"Oh, Emma, that's far too many gifts!"
Mary Margaret started as she caught sight of the mountain of presents sat neatly on the coffee table. Henry shot an amused glance at his mother and she couldn't help the chuckle that escaped her lips.
Killian and David finally emerged from the kitchen, bottles of beer in hand, deep in conversation about the weekend fishing trip they planned to take in the new year. Killian caught Emma's eye and grinned. All their planning had been leading up to this, and suddenly they were both a little nervous. Telling her parents somehow made it all so…real.
They'd been so caught up in the entertaining gifts they'd put together that they hadn't really thought about how her parents were going to react. Of course, they were married so it wasn't as though they were wide-eyed teenagers with an accidental pregnancy on their hands. They'd wanted this, planned for it. But still.
Settling down onto the sofa while Henry and Neal enthusiastically ripped open their gifts, the adults smiled and waited until the two boys were busying themselves with their new things before turning to their own gifts. Killian grabbed the gift labeled with a small number one, handing it to David, and Emma grinned as she passed her mother gift number two.
"Little hook and swan ornaments. Cute."
David nodded, smiling over at his daughter and clapping Killian on the shoulder.
"For your Christmas tree, mate."
Killian offered, shifting his gaze to Mary Margaret as she tore the paper in such a gentle, graceful way that Killian couldn't help but be reminded of her royal status. Confusion flickered across Mary Margaret's face then as she turned the pasta sauce jar around in her hands, her smile wavering just a little.
"Erm…pasta sauce…well, thank you…I think?"
Killian could see that Emma was trying hard not to burst into fits of laughter right there and then, and the sparkle in her eyes made his heart soar.
"Well, you know how I crave those pasta dishes you make, mom."
Emma said with far too much amusement lacing her voice. Her mother eyed her carefully and nodded, picking up gift number three as David reached for number four.
Unwrapping the scrapbook that Emma and Killian had put together with a little help from Google, Mary Margaret moved to sit beside David so he could see, clearly expecting some kind of family photo collection to be inside. What they weren't expecting, however, were the pictures of fruits. A single picture of a piece of fruit sat in the center of each numbered page, starting at a poppyseed and increasing in size right through to the watermelon on the last page. Just a single fruit on each page; nothing else.
"Well, this is…abstract."
"Thanks, we made it ourselves."
Killian smirked, and Emma jabbed him subtly in the ribs, despite the grin on her own face. They were thoroughly enjoying this. David was eyeing them both suspiciously and Emma was really struggling to tamper down her amusement, especially as her father opened the next gift – two cans of diet coke announcing 'Mom' and 'Dad' – and she nonchalantly informed them that she hadn't been able to find 'Grandma' or 'Grandpa'. They just nodded blankly. They were grandparents already, after all.
The next gift Mary Margaret opened was a reasonably good one – a toaster oven, which she genuinely seemed thrilled with – and Killian casually added that David's next gift was to go with it. Bagels. When Emma had come up with that one, she'd been thoroughly pleased with herself, but Killian hadn't understood the reference.
'Bun in the oven, Killian!'
She'd exclaimed, exasperated that her three hundred year old husband, struggling with modern idioms, clearly didn't appreciate her clever idea. And now, her parents didn't seem to be figuring it out yet either. If the mix-tape didn't do it, she was going to seriously wonder where their common sense had disappeared to.
"A baby pirate costume…" Mary Margaret started and Emma realized they'd moved on to the next presents, "Emma, honey, I hate to break it to you but Neal isn't gonna fit into this anymore. He's five."
Emma waved her hand, feigning nonchalance as Henry snickered and shot them a smirk from across the room. The baby pirate costume had been his idea.
"I just thought maybe you could save it, y'know, just in case…"
David narrowed his eyes, glancing between Emma and Killian carefully, but Mary Margaret simply laughed, shaking her head.
"Oh, I don't think we're going to have any more babies now, Emma. Two is enough for us."
Killian perched on the arm of the sofa beside Emma, sliding his arm around his wife's shoulder and grinning down at her.
"Yeah, two is a good number."
He said softly, leaning down and pressing a quick, chaste kiss to her mouth. She smiled against his lips and rolled her eyes as she felt a blush rise on her cheeks, fully aware that her father was perhaps starting to put the pieces together. Her mother, however, still seemed completely oblivious, tearing off the paper to the next gift: the movie 28 Days Later with the 'r' subtly Sharpied out ('28 Days Late? Really now, Emma? We're referencing your menstrual cycle to your parents?').
"Oh…okay. Thank you! We do love movies…even if romcoms are usually more of our thing. Doesn't hurt to branch out though, right?"
She shot a pointed gaze at David, silently instructing him to agree. Emma was thoroughly amused by how grateful Mary Margaret was for every weird gift they were receiving.
"Yeah, we're all branching out lately."
David said lightly, holding Emma's gaze as her eyes widened. He thanked them for the gift then, folding his arms and leaning back on the sofa. His suspicions had clearly been confirmed but he didn't say anything more, just grinned knowingly and waited for his wife to figure it out for herself. He could tell his daughter had gone to a lot of trouble planning the announcement, so he wasn't about to rain on her parade no matter how much he wanted to pull her into a hug and give the game away.
The next three gifts – a hardback edition of Four in the Family by Enid Blyton, kids' building blocks (that conveniently had the letters on to spell out 'we're pregnant'…even though Mary Margaret didn't notice that and just assumed they were for Neal) and the subtle-as-a-brick mix-tape – seemed to stir Mary Margaret's suspicions, finally. But she didn't say anything, just shot careful glances at David, who shrugged and tried not to grin too hard.
"This is…uh…your last gift. You should probably open it together…"
Butterflies began to take flight in Emma's stomach then and Killian took hold of her hand, smiling serenely at her and nodding as she handed them the final gift. The moment of truth. David clearly already knew now (and damnit, Killian owed Emma ten dollars because he'd assumed Mary Margaret was much more astute than she apparently was) but Mary Margaret seemed to be teetering on the edge of realization.
David took the gift and leveled a careful gaze on Killian, who withered slightly under his father-in-law's scrutiny. He and Emma may be married but it still made him slightly apprehensive to be announcing the fact that he'd knocked up the prince's only daughter.
Mary Margaret sighed and took the gift from David's hand, making quick work of the wrapping and freezing as she stared down at the frame in her hands. The ultrasound picture from Emma's first scan sat prettily in the simple wooden picture frame and Emma realized she was holding her breath.
"Oh, Emma, Killian! Congratulations! Oh my gosh, this is fantastic news! I mean, I was starting to suspect, with all the strange gifts but…oh, honey, I'm so thrilled for the both of you."
Emma was pulled into her mother's arms for a warm, bone-crushing hug then and David grinned, slapping Killian on the shoulder and shaking his head before giving him a decidedly 'manly' hug.
"You better take care of her and that baby, Jones."
David warned, but it lacked any kind of threat and Killian simply beamed back at him. Neal bounded over then, clearly tired of the attention being shifted away from him for so long, and launched himself into Emma's arms.
"Where's a baby? Am I getting a baby for Christmas?"
He asked, wide green eyes – the exact same shade as Emma's – looking hopefully up at her and Mary Margaret snorted a very unladylike laugh in response. Emma grinned at her brother and sat down on the sofa with him.
"It won't be here for Christmas, Neal, but there's going to be a baby around for you to play with pretty soon after. It's in my belly right now, growing, and it's not quite ready to come and meet you just yet. Are you gonna help me look after it when it gets here?"
He nodded enthusiastically and beamed up at his big sister in response. Killian ruffled the lad's blonde hair and couldn't help but picture his own child, in a few Christmases time, sat on Emma's lap the same way little Neal currently was. It caused a flush of warmth and pride and utter joy to flood through him whenever he was struck by such images.
"But where did the baby come from? Why is it in your belly?"
Neal suddenly asked, and the adults all exchanged glances. Killian chuckled and scratched behind his ear, as David shuffled his feet in clear discomfort. He obviously wasn't comfortable with thinking about the real answer to that question, because that led to acknowledging his daughter was thirty-five and pregnant and therefore, shockingly, sexually active. With the pirate (though he'd long since stopped thinking of Killian as 'the pirate').
"Why is it in your belly?!"
Neal repeated, when no one seemed willing to answer his question. Henry jumped up from where he sat on the floor then, surrounded by torn up Christmas wrapping paper and new toys, and swooped in to pluck Neal from Emma's lap. He settled the child easily on his hip and grinned in response to the grateful smile his mother gave him.
"She ate it. Now let's go play!"
Fin.