9:23.
Killian stared at the display on his phone as he perched against a lamppost at the foot of the River Street Bridge. He flexed his fingers in an attempt to stop himself from firing off an angry text. Eight minutes was hardly the latest Liam's been for one of their Saturday morning runs.
Settling on scrolling through Instagram instead, his eye caught on a familiar expanse of grey cotton. He paused and swiped back upwards to poke at the photo. It was of David laying on a familiar black and white tweed couch, his head pillowed in a woman's lap – a woman who was wearing Killian's sweatshirt.
Deep grey and ridiculously soft, it had gotten him through his last year at university. It was with him through the three years of law school and the move to Boston. The frayed edges of the left sleeve were a reminder of an absent-minded tic and too many late night study sessions. He knew on the back right towards the hem was a small, ragged hole, the result of snagging an errant nail when he moved into his current flat. The cut neckline, though, was a later addition, coming sometime after it was co-opted by the current wearer. At the time, he'd tried to come off as offended by what he'd termed 'the assault,' but the first glimpse of her collarbone as the sweatshirt draped off her shoulder had him seeing the merits of the alteration.
While the photo was framed to not include Emma's face, he'd know her and that sweatshirt anywhere. Also, that couch - just the right side of firm with deep cushions that invite entire weekends to be lost in its confines. God, he missed that couch. Not to mention the photo's caption - Little sisters make the best pillows - was a dead giveaway.
He tried not to chafe at the fact David neglected mentioning he was going to New York when he asked him to check on and feed his cat for a few days. Killian assumed it was for another work conference. Instead, he focused on how his thumb wavered as it hovered over the like button.
Thinking better of it, Killian closed the app and moved to turn on his running playlist before pocketing the phone in its arm band.
Turning his attention back to his surroundings, he caught sight of Liam making his way down the street. Hoping to distract himself from reading any meaning into the fact Emma was wearing his shirt, Killian pushed himself from the lamppost and took off down the river path. He'd let Liam's punishment be spending the first half their run trying to catch up.
He placed a hand between her shoulder blades and pressed a knee between her legs. Complying with his silent request, Emma bent over and rested her elbows against the back of the couch. Killian curled a hand around her hip and pressed himself against her ass, biting back a groan at her breathy exhale. The dinner he brought sat cooling next to her front door, all plans forgotten when he let himself in and found her in the middle of her small living room swaying along to Mystify in her deep blue sleep shorts and a camisole that bared more than it covered. He had a flash of a thought to hope Buttercup wouldn't rifle through it but that was lost when Emma reached back to twist her fingers in his hair and pulled.
Moving the hand on her hip up to curve along her breast, his fingers dipped beneath the lace edging to trace around the already hardened nipple. With his free hand, he opened the fly of his jeans and pushed them down enough to free himself. Leaning back in, he ran the tip of his nose along her neck and breathed out, relishing the spread of gooseflesh in his wake and the twitch of her hand in his hair. He pulled her earlobe between his teeth and tugged before releasing it again and whispering, "Sorry to interrupt the dance party, Nolan."
Emma laughed as he pushed down her shorts. "No, you're n–"
The last of her words were swallowed by a moan as he dragged his cock along her folds and then pressed at her entrance.
Afterwards they lay tangled together on the couch, her between his legs with her bare back against his chest. Emma's attempts to feed them their now cold pasta were thwarted by his need to press kisses along each of the freckles spread across her shoulders.
Killian awoke with a start, sheets tangled around his legs, panting and rock hard.
Okay, maybe it wasn't the couch he missed.
Sunday found him sitting at the end of Liam's bar, nursing a glass of bourbon and once again scrolling through David's photo feed. A bowl of limes and a cutting board laid abandoned in front of him while he took in pictures of David and Mary Margaret at Central Park, the Met steps, and the reading room of the New York Public Library. Emma, however, flitted around the edges – often just an elbow of her red leather jacket, the grey blur of her favorite wool cap, or a stream of blond hair in the background. There was one, however, of her from behind as she leaned over the railing at Battery Park to stare out at the Harbor. He stopped himself from grabbing a screencap, pretty sure that saving photos of your ex-girlfriend's ass was a bad idea.
There was also series of what looked to be shots of tequila lined up on the bars of several of the finer dives of the Lower East Side. As the night wore on and the sequence continued, the photos got progressively more out of focus, which was probably fitting parallel.
"Those limes aren't going to cut themselves, little brother."
Killian ignored the dig and continued to scroll, once again finding himself hovering over the initial picture of David and Emma on her couch. As it had the previous morning, his thumb drifted over the like button. "Last I checked, the Anchor didn't cut me a paycheck."
Liam chucked a bar rag at his head and Killian let it fall to the floor.
"Last I checked, you didn't have any debt related to that poncy Ivy League law degree of yours either. So if lime wedges are your repayment, so be it."
Killian scowled and tossed back the remains of his bourbon. "As you command," he replied with a deep bow of his head.
Liam snorted. "What's got your attention?"
"Nothing. Just dicking around on Instagram."
"Uh huh. This has got nothing to do with David's trip to New York then?"
Killian tried to school his face before looking over at him. "Of course not," he replied. "Hand over the knife," he continued with a gesture towards Liam.
Liam gave him a skeptical look before passing the knife but before he could question Killian further, a group of women came up to the other end of the bar and he left to take their order. Killian allowed himself one last glance at the photo. Not giving himself the chance to overthink it any further, he pressed the like button before shutting the app and pocketing his phone.
David returned with a sheepish smile and a thank you present in the form of a snow globe containing the New York Public Library in his hand.
"You could have said where you were going, mate," Killian said as he stepped aside to allow him in.
"I know," he replied as he hung up his jacket and toed off his boots.
Killian set the globe on his mantle and headed towards the kitchen. "And yet?"
David sank into the couch and accepted a beer from Killian when he returned from the kitchen. "You're both unpredictable when it comes to the other," he said with a shrug. "I didn't want to…"
Killian allowed him to trail off as they watched the start of the Bruins facing off against Pittsburgh. About fifteen minutes in David started up again and Killian was surprised he lasted that long. "She asked about you." He wasn't sure he wanted to talk about it, yet or at all still an open question, so he nodded instead and took a long pull of his bottle.
David got the message and minus some muttering at the ref, he remained quiet through to intermission. When Killian got up to get another round of beer, he started again. "You saw she was wearing your sweatshirt?"
Killian refused to glance back as he walked into the kitchen, wanting to keep any smile the question produced to himself. "Don't be thick, you know I did," he called instead. Returning with the beer, he passed one to David. "Do you really want to discuss this?"
Taking the offered beer, David replied, "Only if you do."
Killian flopped onto the couch and was silent a moment. "If it is all the same to you, I'd prefer to focus on that abysmal attempt at a check from your boys and leave the emotional prodding to your fiancée."
David laughed and proceeded into a full-throated attempt to defend the Penguin's ridiculous play to re-take possession.
Most likely, given time, Killian would have let it go; would have chalked the sweatshirt-wearing up to having been another mystery in the puzzle that was Emma Nolan. He used to think, long ago, that he could read her pretty plainly, but she had shown how sorely he'd been mistaken. His kept his routine intact – he put in his hours at the firm, hung out with Belle and David, and helped Liam out at the bar where he could. But then Emma went and started liking his posts.
It hadn't even occurred to him that she'd be looking at his stream. Having unfollowed her after she had moved away – after they had broken up, he reminded himself – he hadn't thought to check if she had done the same. Her comments and likes had stopped, as silent there as she was in the rest of his life.
The first was a photo he took in his office, his desk awash in stacks of files, but centered among them was a bottle of Black Maple Hill 16-Year. He nearly cried when he opened the package, sent by a client as a thank you for a well-negotiated settlement. He almost hadn't believed it was sitting there, hence the photo. Then, nearly as shocking, was her username on the photo's list of likes. He almost couldn't blame her. She had to be dying looking at the bottle. With the exception of Liam, she was most likely the only one who truly knew what a find it was.
Then three days later she liked another, a picture taken out his front window of three snow angels left by the kids in the flat downstairs disappearing beneath another layer of falling snow. It was such an ordinary photo. He wasn't even sure why she liked it and it ate at him. It was still eating at him three days later while he sat at brunch with Belle, both working on their second Bloody Mary over plates of poached eggs.
"Maybe this is her way of mending fences?" she offered.
Killian picked up his glass and swirled the celery stalk around. "After fifteen months of silence?"
Belle shrugged, taking a sip of her own. "Do you miss her, Killian?"
He didn't answer and he knew he didn't have to. Instead he polished off the remains of his drink.
"Stop overthinking it and re-follow her, then." Then gesturing at his plate with her fork, she said, "And eat your food before I help myself to it."
It took the better part of the week, but Killian heeded Belle's advice. When he saw the notification that she approved his follow request, the tiny skip in his heartbeat took him by surprise. In the week that followed, he had to physically restrain himself from scrolling back through her stream – not sure if he wanted to fill in the blanks of her months of silence. He ran more and assigned himself random tasks around the Anchor to fill the hours not spent in the office. He remained cautious about her current posts as well, refraining from commenting on anything and allotting himself a like per week.
As the weeks passed though, the world she built for herself in New York came into focus for him. She still seemed to prefer hiding from the camera, but there were photos of her cat, Buttercup, lazing about the apartment, a shot and snarky commentary about the ridiculous heels she wore for a 'date' with a skip, and plenty of views from various windows she found herself in front of around town. Those last were his favorites, though he wouldn't deny that the shot of her calves in heels was appreciated.
"What are you doing?"
Killian shoved his phone in his pocket, but not before Liam got a look at a photo of Buttercup stretched out in a patch of sun filtering through Emma's kitchen window.
"Ahh."
Pushing up away from the bar, Killian grabbed a rag and began pulling down the gin bottles. "What do you mean, 'ahh'?"
"That's Emma's cat, yes?"
Wiping down the bottle of Death's Door with more force than was strictly necessary, he eyed the clock and wondered if noon was too early to start drinking.
"You two talking again?"
Killian poured himself a small glass and wiped down the shelf before placing the bottle back on it. "Not exactly."
Liam peered at him with a raised eyebrow through the mirror that lined the back of the bar. Turning away, Killian focused his attention on the next bottle but could still feel Liam fidgeting beside to him. Feeling words of further explanation move to the tip of his tongue, he bit down on his lower lip, only letting out a sigh when they were interrupted by a knock on the bar door indicating the arrival of their beer delivery.
That night when he got home, after three too many shots of tequila with Belle, he scrolled through his phone to find a notification that Emma had commented on one of his photos. Opening the app, he found it was on one he posted the night before poking fun at the mountain of files threatening to overtake his desk.
'Might be easier to just get a new desk, Jones.'
He grinned before shoving the phone under his bag and dropping his coat on top of the both of them for good measure. He stalked off to his bed before he could do something stupid like reply.
The following week, Emma began a series of posts on some of her favorite things. Killian was on his way into court, waiting in the security line, when he saw her photo for day two. It was of her feet up and crossed at the ankles on her coffee table, with her television on in the background playing what looked to be a video of a live Leonard Cohen performance.
'Fuck,' he thought as he closed his eyes and breathed deep.
Her only comment on it was a link to YouTube, but he didn't have to click through to know what song would play. As he passed through the metal detector, the melody crept into his head anyway and he felt a sway to his steps as he remembered afternoons spent dancing around his kitchen to the sweetly melancholic tune, the lyrics whispered against her temple.
On a bed where the moon has been sweating
In a cry filled with footsteps and sand
Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take its broken waist in your hand
"Fuck," he repeated – out loud this time – as he gathered his briefcase and coat off the belt. His case wasn't going to be nearly interesting enough to keep his attention off what to make of her posting it.
It was dark before he left court and found himself in the solitude of his office, feet propped on his desk and staring out the window at the city's lights below. He couldn't ignore the post, nor was a simple like appropriate either, and he was fairly certain Emma knew that. He thought of a number of responses, all of which bordered on too openly salacious, which he thought would make Mr. Cohen proud. However, he was more than aware of the number of prying eyes playing witness to their virtual interactions.
In the end, he settled on a quick one-liner – 'And I'll dance with you in Vienna :)'.
That night his dreams were plagued with images of her spread out on his bed, her hair pooled around her head, and his head between her thighs.
Emma didn't reply to his comment and her next three favorites were more innocuous in their content. By the time Saturday rolled around, Killian began wondering if he had imaged her poking at him through the ether. So he planted himself in his usual corner barstool, nursing his second glass of bourbon and watched Liam flirt with a tiny blonde at the other end of the bar.
Without meaning to, his focus turned back to the feed on his phone. He was beginning to feel he might need to acknowledge he was spending a disproportionate amount of his time scrolling through the damn thing of late. However, that thought fled when he found Emma had posted a new favorite. The photo this time was of her perched cross-legged on a yellow lounge chair, once again wearing his sweatshirt. It was framed, as always, to not include her face but there was a glimpse of her chin and her hair was swept over her left shoulder in a loose, messy braid. She captioned the photo:
'My favorite sweatshirt – well-worn and loved.'
He tried not to notice the jut of her clavicle just above the fraying collar or the way the framing of the photo focused on the swell of her breasts. It was a fool's errand if there ever was one.
It brought to mind another series of photos he had tucked away on a hard drive somewhere, with her splayed across that same chair in considerably less clothing. He smirked as he recalled a particular favorite of his own – her head pressed back and her left leg bent, allowing one hand to rest on her raised knee. Her other leg stretched out before her with her right hand running along her mound, fingers pressed into the folds around her clit just so. Killian shifted in his seat and tried to focus instead on the comment he should leave to her obvious bait.
'Not sure it's fair to call that 'favourite' yours, love.'
Her reply was immediate but came via text – 'Possession is 9/10ths, is it not, Jones?'
He bit his lower lip before picking up his glass and downing the remaining contents. Giving himself a moment to take a few breaths, he typed out his reply. 'Are you suggesting I come divest you of it, Nolan?'
His phone dinged to indicate another incoming message but before he could look down he was interrupted by a hand clasping his shoulder. He looked up to find David settling into the stool beside him.
"What's that smile?" David asked as he unbuttoned his coat and unwound his scarf.
"Not sure you want to know," Killian said with a shake of his head, pocketing his phone.
David gave a nod to Liam across the bar, who began pouring a beer. Turning his attention back to Killian, he frowned. "Emma's texting you?"
"Sort of," was Killian's only response.
"Good. I've a favor to ask and that will make it easier."
Killian cocked an eyebrow.
"Be my best man?"
Liam laughed as he dropped off the beer in front of David. "How's that even a question? My brother'd murder you if you asked anyone else."
Killian threw an arm around David's shoulder as he scowled at Liam. "Make yourself useful, older brother, and pull down that scotch you've been hiding." Turning back to David he asked, "How does my texting with Emma come into play?"
Liam choked on his beer. "You're texting Emma?"
Killian waved his hand dismissively in Liam's direction while keeping his attention on David.
"Well," David started, "I was hoping she'd be my other attendant."
It was 3 AM before he found himself home, drunker than he should have been but nowhere near as bad as David. It was only once flopped back onto his bed that he managed to fish out his phone from his pocket and saw Emma's response to his retort.
'I'd like to see you try.'
Killian bit back a groan as his mind flooded with a good dozen images of how best to try – mostly centered on fingers and lips teasing along skin. His thoughts were interrupted by another incoming message, this time from Liam.
'Don't think we're done discussing the you and Emma texting thing.'
He groaned shoved his phone under the mound of pillows to his left in order to stop himself from typing out a reply to either of them. He knew exactly where both exchanges would lead and he wasn't sure he was ready for them. He was too drunk and his emotions were too all over the place when it came to Emma.
Instead he pulled off his jeans and flannel shirt, pushing them to the floor with his foot. Settling under the layers of sheets and his thickest duvet, he brought a pillow over his head to shut out the glow of the street lights and hopefully all thoughts of Emma. The darkness, though, simply brought more images of her – her smile as he leaned in to whisper something dirty in her ear, her shoulders as set off by a black halter dress he was fond of, her sitting in his bed in rumpled pajamas and a messy bun with her glasses falling down her nose as she read through her case files, her fingers and mouth wrapped around his cock causing a shiver to run down his spine.
Killian allowed his hand to snake down his chest and run along his cock. He felt it swell further as his fingers pressed along its thick vein and his thumb to brush across the head. He rolled his foreskin as he imaged Emma's tongue following the same path and let out a soft moan.
He gripped himself and gave a few light strokes, letting his mind wander back to his thoughts earlier that evening of her posing for him. He remembered the way the soft light of the room played across her breasts, her coy smirk at Killian's obvious surprise when she first pulled off her t-shirt after the first several photographs, and trying to tamp down the urge to drop the camera and replace her fingers with his own as he watched her sink them within herself.
That last image in mind, it only took a few more strokes to bring himself over the edge, spilling across his hand and abdomen. Keeping his eyes closed a moment longer, he tried to recall the feel of Emma curled up next to him, head resting on his chest and breathing out a satisfied sigh.
Shaking his head, Killian got up and walked over to the bathroom to rinse himself off. He was going to have to pull himself together, especially if this was what a handful of comments and a single text exchange wrought. He needed to remember that nothing had changed; that while the idea of him and Emma was heady, he didn't want to lose himself again in the pain of her inevitable withdrawal.
