Because after the hell us CS shippers have gone through in 5A, I need a bit of fluff and humor. Minimal spoilers, although I'd suggest you to at least get to 4x22 before reading this. After Dark Swan, after the Underworld, after whatever awaits them in the future, Killian and Emma finally manage to stake their claim on that house by the water, although moving into a new home is never an easy ride. "Happily Ever After" takes time to build, and in the case of pirates, old habits die hard. This will mostly be a collection of one-shots that are vaguely tied together by timeline, in that they are all in the same world and happen one after the other, but there won't be a real overarching story. I won't be updating regularly, as I can't predict when I'll have an idea for a new chapter, but I hope you guys enjoy nonetheless!


In hindsight, Emma realized that her decision to move in with Killian might have benefited from a little more forethought.

It wasn't that she regretted the decision, not at all; living close to him was surreal, in the best way she could have hoped for––waking up every morning and him being right there, healthy and breathing and bed-headed and hers. Every day was a reaffirmation that they were alive and well and that they were together, and that the world hadn't managed to tear them apart tonight, and then once there was no more time to silently (or not so silently) revel in one another's presence the two would haul themselves out of bed and get to work defending Storybrooke, because God forbid that an isolated town in Maine should have more than one week without a world-threatening disaster. And once the monster of the week was vaporized or hugged into seeing the error of their evil ways, the pair would do their best to work on the daunting task of moving into their new (not so new) house.

Because while the realities of living with Killian were warm and comforting and worth every moment she had fought for them, there were still some unexpected realities to living with a (kind of) reformed pirate.

Their first day had been spent gathering the bare essentials––food, bedding, toilet paper, all the things that would get them through the night, because the sun went down like clockwork and then they were too distracted with each other to get anything done. And then morning came and Emma got to wake up with her arms around him and realize all over again that he was alive and he was with her. And when she reassured him why her tears were tears of happiness, he grinned and said he would prove to her just how alive he really was; they left the house twenty minutes late, but she couldn't find it in herself to be irritated at him for the delay.

The second day was about their personal things. Emma was surprised to see him bring nearly as few items as she had; she first came to Storybrooke with no more than two boxes piled up with all her worldly possessions, and she hadn't hoarded anything new since then. And as for Killian, it was apparently maritime custom for a sailor to have only as many personal effects as could be stored in a single trunk. He simply brought it inside, carried it up the stairs and set it down unceremoniously against the wall, right next to his side of the dresser, not even bothering to unpack it; he informed her that he already knew where everything was inside it and that no, Swan, just because he was a criminal didn't mean he couldn't be organized, and he didn't have time to unpack right now because he had to go downstairs and take that horse tethered in their front yard back to its original owner since the horse wasn't exactly his. "It's not theft if he owner never finds out it was gone in the first place."

Emma couldn't resist opening the trunk once he was gone. The first thing she found was a shiny roll of black leather and metal that, upon being opened, revealed itself as Killian's coat––his old one, the one that reached down to his knees with metal buckles and latches and holy crap, it had to weigh at least fifty pounds! No wonder Killian was so muscular; if she'd captained a ship with this hanging off her for three hundred years, she'd probably be like the freaking Hulk by now. And just because she was feeling mischievous, or perhaps she wanted to know what it felt like, or perhaps she just wanted to pretend she was the Hulk for a bit, she slipped the coat on before continuing to look through the trunk.

Underneath the jacket were Killian's old clothes, which consisted of exactly two black shirts, two pairs of black leather pants and two vests––and for variety's sake, one of the vests even had red on it. Emma was left utterly unsurprised.

He also had an extra pair of boots, a collection of knives of various shapes and sizes, coiled rope, brass navigational tools and a smaller box the size of her head that she didn't touch; she got the sense that the box was a bit more private than clothes and knives, and she didn't want to go deeper without Killian's knowledge.

"That coat looks good on you, love." He was back from his "borrowing," leaning casually against the doorframe of their bedroom, grinning ear to ear at the sight of her, in his jacket, looking through his things.

She turned beet red and tried to talk her way out of it, which just amused him more and made him watch her in silence as she dug herself deeper and deeper with every word until she realized he was teasing her and sat in silence for a few moments, fuming at him. He was wise enough not to laugh out loud, and he came over to take out the little box she hadn't touched and open it for her. It was filled with parchment and maps, as well as a few of the smaller, more delicate tools of a navigator. He answered her questions and then put it back, asking her if she wanted to re-stow his coat or if she was more inclined to keep wearing it (an option he seemed entirely too happy for her to do,) and then she made a joke about junk in his trunk that he didn't need to understand for them to become quickly uninterested in anything but each other for the rest of the night.

The third day made them both realize that the few things they had, even combined, were no match for the vast emptiness of the house. The Dark Swan had been entirely conservative in her decorating habits, and what few paintings she had scattered about the place had been taken down with mutual agreement and disposed of alongside the dreamcatchers. And so now they had a large, comfortable, decorationless house and almost nothing to fill it with. They both tried their best to spread things out, but the two of them barely had enough belongings to fill up the bedroom. In the dresser, their clothes took up two drawers each; after deliberation, Killian decided to hang up his old coat in the closet in an attempt to make it less empty, and Emma hung up her red one next to it––right before having to take it down because Regina was having a quarrel with Robin and needed a cooldown speech before she scorched something. Killian and Emma left for the station to rendezvous with her parents, son and not-exactly-step-parents and track Regina down, only to discover that she was already in the process of making up with Robin and had simply talked too harshly to Grumpy, who had naturally assumed that she was on the path of evil once more and summoned the entirety of Clan Charming to the scene for nothing at all. The lot of them had a quick lunch at Granny's to make sure everything was well, which naturally turned into Snow grilling Killian and Emma on the progress they had made on their house. At the mere hint of their dilemma, Snow had excitedly proclaimed that the only thing to do was to go shopping––no, better, to throw a housewarming ball! They could invite Cinderella and Aurora and Philip and Ariel and Guinevere, and they could ask Lilly and Maleficent too, and wouldn't that be amazing and fun? Regina stepped in to save them before Snow could go on, offering to join a shopping trip to whatever Storybrooke's equivalent of an IKEA was to thoroughly dispel the need for such a party. From behind her mother's shoulder, Emma mouthed 'thank you.'

That night, in between teaching Killian how the stove worked and learning a plethora of salted curses, Emma was made aware that even though Killian himself didn't own a great deal of personal items, there were several things on his ship that he could bring over to help fill up the house––namely a cannon or two, to fight off whatever the bloody hell a "housewarming" was. Emma laughed and shrugged it off nonchalantly, assuming it to be a joke.

Until she came home on the fourth day to find not one, not two, but four cannons in their front lawn, pointed towards the street and a grim-faced Killian carrying crates of power and cannonballs into the house.