Summary: In which Emma Swan loves every part of him, too.
Warnings: Language, mentions of sex
Notes: For the lovely seethelovelyintheworld (on tumblr), who sent me the following prompt: "I was thinking about the fact that Emma holds Killian's hook naturally, because it's a part of him and almost as if she forgets that it isn't a "real" hand. I'd love a fic from Killian's point of view describing how he feels when she first does that. It must have been emotional for him." Love and devotion to literatiruinedme and high-seas-swan (also on tumblr) for reading it through.
Thirteen.
The number of times, Killian is certain, that his heart has leapt into his throat.
He stands along the sloping edge of a nameless, sweet water lagoon in the forest that creeps along the northwestern shores of Neverland. The multicolored, shimmering flora at his feet taps at his boots, winding restlessly up around his ankles. Birds overhead caw in broken, hideous languages. Even the rhythmic swish of the water – the sound he most often hears when he closes his eyes, when he tries to forget who he is – is grating, unnerving. At least at sea, these muted, mournful cries of a jungle burdened with sorrowful magic and lost children…at least there it cannot touch him.
But it's not the magic – nor the vines squeezing at his calves, nor the yellow billed demon bird having a conniption fit just above his head – that has his heart making a concerted effort with his lungs to escape from his chest.
It's Emma, of course. Emma Swan, as she walks precariously along a patchwork of silver-white rocks that jut out into the water. Emma Swan, as she teeters and leans on her bloody stubborn quest to dip her canteen into what tastes like –
"Skittles, I swear to God, it tastes like Skittles."
"Swan, there's perfectly acceptable, dare I say fresh water bubbling happily in the brook just down the – "
"We're getting the Skittle water."
– what he's sure must be an unbearably sweet candy, if it's anything like the water that climbs ever higher, up towards the sunken soles of his shoes, with the wash of the tide. Emma Swan, as she furrows her brow, as she leans down on her knees, her shirt riding up, skin ghostly, ethereal beneath the heavy shafts of moonlight.
"I can hardly keep you exactly as you left, as your father commands, if you insist on throwing yourself into this saccharine excuse for a lagoon."
She huffs, even as she teeters once more, steadying herself on a moss covered branch twisting low over the surface of the water.
"Listen," she says. She pauses as she turns. She lets go of the branch above her, leaps nimbly from one rock to the other. She leans down to catch her balance, swaying to the uneven beat of his heart.
Fourteen, he thinks.
"Listen," she repeats. "Henry is still missing. It's five thousand degrees. I'm being led around the creepy dark corners of Neverland while my so-called parents squabble with the Evil. Queen."
She looks up at him then, from just outside his reach. There's desperate amusement shining in her eyes, something lost and lonely in the twist of her lips. He tilts his head to the side, and she mirrors, before she turns away, looks down at the rock below her feet, loneliness turning to fear, fear turning to burning anger as she twists needlessly at the cap on her canteen.
"Nevermind the fact that I'm arguing about candy water with Captain Hook," she says, as she steadies herself on her feet. "I'm going to fucking drink it."
He sighs, long suffering, and shuffles where he stands, shaking the sentient vines from his feet.
"As the lady likes it," he gripes.
And he steps back, out of her way as she bends her knees, ready to spring over the last stretch of water between them. He leans back on his left heel, hooks his thumb over a latch on his vest, and waits. Waits as she leans on one foot, then the other, considering the slippery rock face that stands between them.
"Any time, darling," he says.
"Shut up," she says, and leaps.
Time, he knows, has long since ground to a halt in this place. So he feels it must be winding backwards when she slips on a slick of moss that grows black beneath the starlight, and falls forward towards the water. He knows – with rather unfortunate, personal experience – that it's not the current that makes the seagrass sway as it does. Long, dark creatures slither between the leaves, scales like tourmaline, and teeth like bits of broken glass. He thinks of the long, bloody gash the beanstalk had left behind on her hand. He thinks of those teeth sinking down into the scar. Something bright and hot burns brilliant at the base of his spine, and he jumps forward and reaches out, reflexively.
"Bloody – " he says. All he manages to say before she, rather deliberately it seems, reaches past his hand and latches hard onto his hook. Simply by the force of her fall, she yanks him forward, very nearly crashing into his chest as she just barely manages to stumble onto the bank beside him. She lands hard on her feet, and her shoes sink and squelch down into the mud beneath the crawling vines.
"Gross," she says. Her face scrunches up, casual disdain on her face as she shakes her feet, much like he did. She grasps harder onto his hook, gives it a mindless tug as she lifts one foot, then the other. He thinks of the last man he'd gutted with the sharpened edge. He thinks of blood, again, this time someone else's, dozens of lives, gruesome ghosts clinging to the metal that warms beneath her gentling touch.
Fifteen.
"Swan," he says. His voice is thin, high, uncertain. He clears his throat, and straightens his back. He affects nonchalance as best he can, but he knows he's failed when she looks up at him.
"What?" she says, defensive. He's loathe to point it out, loathe to have to watch her let go, just like she always has, just like she always will. But he squashes it down, covers the vulnerable waver to his voice with a waggle of his brow.
"I've told you before, love," he says, gives his hook a shake, and watches the expression on her face drop into surprise. "No need to stand on ceremony. If you want to touch me, you've only to ask."
He expects her to drop it when she realizes, as if burned. He's seen it happen before. But, she gives it another hard tug, the palm of her hand dragging all the way over the sharpened point –
Sixteen.
– before she releases it with a roll of her eyes.
"Come on," she says, as if she knows the way, stomping up the bank with her sword clanging mutedly against the swollen canteen. "Before David has a heart attack."
He nods, stupidly, frozen in place. He can't feel his hook, of course, only the impression of weight that hangs at the end of his blunted arm, wrapped in leather that creeps up over his shoulder, biting faint, red scars into his skin. But, as he watches her ascend the slope, he swears he can feel it burn, can feel the stories peel away and fall at his feet. Until all he sees is metal, glinting in the moonlight, and fogging over the impression of her fingertips.
"Hook?" she says.
He looks up, catches a curious expression on her face. She looks concerned, almost. So he bites at his lower lip, smiles affectedly, and swishes his coat with a flourish.
"Aye," he says. "Before your father perishes."
She looks unimpressed, but lets him go ahead nonetheless. And though his hook now feels a terrible weight, he holds it lightly by his hip, and tries to ignore the eyes he feels roaming over his back as he treads lightly back through the way they came. He can hear the slosh of the sickly water in her canteen, hear the jump in her throat and the rush of breath as she swallows. He longs to look at her, but doesn't, simply breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth, imagines the curl of her fingers around the curve of the weapon at the end of his arm.
Seventeen.
He wants to feel it again.
The way his mind had latched onto his hook, infusing it with a life it's never held before. Even now, he can almost feel her touch upon it, like she brought it to life, something much grander than its gory reputation.
It occurs to him that it's always been this way. Just a hook. When he dies, it will remain a hook. It doesn't tell stories. He does. To himself, in his dreams, when he wakes, every moment of every day, longer and louder and filled with more self-loathing the longer he looks at the Charmings and the inimitable Emma Swan.
But here, as they trek along through the underbrush, he can't afford to think about it, or much of anything at all, besides the way the land turns up and out, the way the low hanging, seaside vegetation turns a telltale blue-tinged green. The way the innards of the island turn the soil from sand to soot as they climb to higher ground. He follows an old, familiar path, one that turns north then west –
"East then south, north then back," he reminds himself, quietly.
– as the lot of them, heroes and Regina alike, tread quietly along behind. Palms give way to pines, and the needles crunch a different tune beneath the bottoms of his boots. He turns a bend, and the pines then give way to a stretch of knee high ferns, bordered by bushes with swollen berries and weeping thorns.
"We should rest here," David says, with all the authority he can manage from the very back of the line.
"Aye," Killian says, quietly, still rather out of sorts. Then, again, louder, "Aye." He pauses, gestures over at the berries. "The red are poisonous in the morning, the blue at night. Forage carefully, if you please."
He winces at the bite in his tone, but covers with a sneer as he slinks to a shadowed corner of the clearing. None of the Charmings seem keen on following him, and even Regina simply regards him with a primly arched brow before gliding through a dip in the earth, using a spit of magic to summon a cloth, and a neat pile of glistening, red berries. Killian, despite his own misgivings about the queen, hasn't the willpower to even open his mouth, to chide her for even the barest of magic on this hellish island.
So he turns his back, allows the thorns to draw wet, creaking tracks over his leather coat. He pulls his flask from his pocket, takes a generous sip. He sighs, long and loud and with a shudder that starts at his neck and vibrates straight down to the end of his hook. He looks down, and gives it a gentle shake. It knocks against a few of the thorns, and they fall silently to the ground, leaving their silver sap behind, slick and sticky up over the curve, and along the base. He brings it up to his face, just under his nose. It smells sweet and sickly, the bright tang of centuries old metal above all else. Even in the shadows, it winks against an imagined, sinister light. And all at once, he can't quite believe he allowed himself to think of it as anything but a weapon, a tool, tempered by blood and anger and lust and –
"Hey."
Emma. Of course. He doesn't look at her.
"Red in the morning," he says, to a spot on the ground. "Blue at night."
She sighs, just as he did, and shuffles until he's looking down at the toes of her boots.
"Neither, actually," she says. "The thorns are stabbing me to death."
This catches his attention, and he looks down at her hands, pinpricks on her wrists, dancing up her fingertips. Blood wells in a few of them, miniscule droplets that trickle and dry in nary an instant. Still, his back stiffens, and he grabs at her forearm, a bit frantic as he brings her hand up for careful inspection.
"Swan," he says. "Tell me you didn't touch the blue – "
"No, I didn't touch the blue."
She huffs when he raises a skeptical brow, and grinds her teeth when he pulls her hand even closer to his face. He replaces his hand with his hook and reaches for his flask. But she yanks out of his grip before he can even bite off the cork.
"Uh no," she says. "It'll be fine. I just need…"
She trails off, gestures vaguely at his left arm. He tilts his head, one side to the other, shakes away the fear and replaces it with a smug veneer.
"And just what is it that you need, eh, Swan?"
She rolls her eyes, reaches out and takes hold of his hook. He jumps, actually jumps, with the contact. He's longed for things before, just on the edge of twilight, when reality begins to warp beneath the weight of the darkness. Out on the sea, where no fire nor lantern nor bustle of townsfolk can dilute the ink of night. But he'd learned quickly enough that any dream he dared to imagine, any hope allowed himself to entertain, seemed to be made impossible simply by the fact that he'd had the audacity to think it.
Yet here she is, this infuriating creature, holding tight to the claw at the end of his brace, dragging him along, out of the shadows and through the patchwork moonlight. He can feel the stares of the others as he follows with barely a complaint. But he ignores it in favor of the sight of her fingers, once more smearing the shine he buffs into the metal early every morning.
"I need this," she says, when she stops beside one of the bushes. She clamps her hand down on his forearm, and gives the branch a thwack or two, or five – he's not certain, not with the way his eyes are locked on her profile. The berries fall to the ground without protest, and without the scratches that mar the skin of her hands.
"It's like a pocket knife," she says, as she leans down to gather what's fallen.
He tilts his head. "A what?"
She looks up at him, then away, never one to look him in the eye if she can help it, it seems.
"A tool," she says, and she walks away. "Just a tool."
Just a tool, he thinks, a few hours later, when they make camp for the night. He throws off his coat, and takes his seat beside her, just at the foot of the fire. He feigns nonchalance for as long as he can, but he can't help the smile the pulls at his lips, that twists the careful, guarded expression on his face as he reaches for one of the many coconuts he'd found just up the hill. He can feel his eyes on her as he twists away, the hard flesh of the fruit squeaking harshly against the slide of his hook.
Emma, he thinks.
She looks at him as if he'd spoken to her, knees drawn tight to her chest, ankles crossed, back hunched over. The posture of the lost, he knows, he recognizes, as though he's gazing down at himself in the still waters in the heart of the island.
He hands her the coconut, and she smiles dimly in thanks. He's certain the expression on his face is wildly out of control. But he gazes at her nonetheless before he reaches for another, for her father, for her mother, yet another for Emma when she drains her first.
"What about you?" she asks, when he's cracked the last of them open. She speaks through a mess of coconut flesh, the wet sound of chewing piercing the polite fog that the Navy set over his ears.
"Your manners are appalling," he says, without malice, smirk firmly in place by the time she looks up at him, pushing a bit of coconut back into her mouth and licking innocently at the tips of her fingers.
"There are like eighty-seven other places to sit around this fire."
"Ah, but none so fun as this."
She rolls her eyes, "Seriously, though, what about you?"
"What about me?"
She holds up another sliver of coconut flesh. "Aren't you hungry?"
He waves her off with his hook. "No, love, I'm quite alright. I prefer the fish, I must say."
"Fish?"
"Aye, fish. Made of gemstones and glass, seems like. Nasty teeth." He pauses, stares down at the dirt below. He fiddles with his hook, wipes absently at the scratches left by the broken shells of the coconuts. He takes a deep breath, and reaches up to rub just beneath the lobe of his ear.
"The most foolish animals I've ever come across," he says, after a stretch of silence. "They practically spear themselves on the tip of my hook."
She hums. "Thank God for that hook, then."
And he scratches harder behind his ears, offers to take the next watch before the blush blooming in his cheeks becomes apparent, even under the dull shine of the starlight.
A tool, he thinks.
Thank God, he thinks. Over and over again, until he wears out the sound of his own voice, the turn of his own tongue as he rolls her words around in his mouth, into the early hours of morning.
Her lips, oh gods, her lips. Despite the cheeky quirk to his brow, the taunt he'd levered in the shrinking space between them, he'd never dared to hope, never could have imagined…
It's her tongue, he thinks. The way it draws an unfamiliar picture on the roof of his mouth. It's her bottom lip. The way that it gives beneath his teeth. It's the sounds that they make. When she pulls from his mouth for a breath only to pull him back in. It's the sweat trickling down the back of his neck, curling the hair at his nape. It's the way that she sways. Or that he sways, that they sway, in and out and back and forth.
But most of all, it's the touch of his hook to the skin at her waist, drawing up the thin fabric of her shirt to scratch at the waist of her trousers. And it's the way that she groans when she feels it, licks at his teeth and turns to the side so that it presses harder into her heated flesh.
"That was…"
A revelation.
Everything I never dared to dream.
The light I've sought, the hope I never knew I was fighting for.
"A one-time thing," she says, into his mouth.
And she walks away, bids him to wait. He rubs at his lips, first with his hand, then with his hook.
He breathes. In, then out.
He speaks, total nonsense, just to hear a a sound, his voice, anything but the silence she's left him to.
And he hums, presses his hand to his throat to feel the thrum of his blood through his veins.
"One-time thing," he repeats, voice high-pitched, before he throws it back down low. "As you wish."
He shakes his head, and taps at the tree beside him with his hook, to drive off the feeling of her skin giving way to the press of the metal, to the leather stretched over the brace.
"You're a madman, Jones," he says, to the trees, to the breeze, to the rustle of the critters beneath the underbrush. Until five minutes passes, perhaps more, and he makes his way on unsteady feet back to the campfire.
Only later does it occur to him that it's the second time he's referred to himself as Jones in the wake left behind by Emma Swan.
Months.
Several, it seems. Though it's only been days, at most. Since the last time she touched him. Since the last time her fingers brushed over the collar of his coat, since the first time she kissed him, lips firm and chapped, breathing hope into his mouth, taking it back when she walked away.
And here he stands, fearing it might be the last. He does nothing to school his expression, knows that several shades of anguish and nostalgia and wistful longing drifts over his face. Pan's curse looms over the horizon, brilliant, crystalline shades of purple billowing ever forward. He almost longs for it to swallow him whole, to chew him up and spit him out the man he'd once longed to be – revenge driven, balanced on the curve of a hook he'd driven into many an enemy, anyone who'd stood in his way.
But then he looks at her face. Tears gather in the corners of her eyes. Her hair ruffles softly in a cool breeze. Her chin warbles. Her voice is low, unsteady as she bids farewell to the family she'd only begun to have.
"That's quite the vessel you captain there, Swan," he says.
Please don't leave me, he thinks.
She smiles, huffs a quiet laugh. And he means to draw back. She'd made her feelings clear, pushing him away time and time again. And he'd stepped away, not gladly. Mournfully, even, watching all the hope he'd yet managed to hold onto, that he'd scraped from the bottom of his rotten heart when she'd touched her tongue to his.
But then he feels it. A gentle pressure, a familiar tug at the end of his hook. A barely rhythmic tap tap along the inner curve, up over the sharpened point. She tugs, and his smile falls away. His hair falls into his face, the smell of lilacs and chocolate and what they call gasoline wafts up into his nose. He looks down at her, at her cheeks, at her nose and her chin, finally at her lips before he gazes straight into her eyes and says –
"There's not a day will go by I won't think of you."
She tugs again, this time harder, and glances down at his lips. Another layer. Another story. Down at his feet as she pulls the once harrowing destiny out through his hook.
"Good."
When they go back to the Enchanted Forest, he can't hardly stand to look at it. There in the vesper, vernal haze of spring, the evening light shines down upon it, stark and storied, as it once was. Each scrape of the tip against his leathers is louder, the air fresher, the water clearer, the sun higher and hotter. So he takes it back to where it was. Dips it into hatred and selfishness, petty greed and anything, anything that will help him forget, remind him that fate turned a blind eye to him centuries ago.
When he takes back his ship, it feels heavier than ever. The hook. The ship. The coat on his shoulders. He can feel the old familiar anger, settling deep into his bones, and the old familiar nightmares, rocking him violently to wakefulness.
But he's not himself. Or not the man he made himself out to be. Not anymore. The difference is clear in the swan he's carved – deep and crooked – into the wood below the windowsill in his quarters. And in the desperate, cloying, miserable fucking hope that claws its way from somewhere deep, deep down in his belly when a bird lands just beyond the very same window, a message in sweeping scrawl tied with a silk ribbon around its leg.
The first thing he touches with his hook is her hair, when he finds her, when he snaps it back into place as she takes in the sight of Storybrooke for the first time in months.
Perhaps he's imagining it, but he can hear the whisper of her hair over the metal. She rolls her eyes, but her smile is bright, if not a little sardonic. And he smiles back, feels the satisfying click of his hook into his brace straight down to his bones.
"How are you gonna explain that to him?"
And it's been a year since, he feels, perhaps longer. But he smiles right back.
Snow monster's the first, ice wall's the second.
Killian curses himself as he hacks relentlessly at the hulking wall of ice that juts up and into the sky. It mocks the hefty metal, the carefully sharpened point. Ice and snow falls at his feet, but he knows it's futile, just knows it's too thick, too high, too powerful. If anything, it seems to grow thicker, colder.
"Emma," he cries. And though he's said it before, the letters of her name feel foreign on his tongue. Or maybe it's the sound, high pitched and helpless, catching on the m with newfound desperation. It reminds him of Liam. Of Milah. Of Baelfire, and the ugly, pleading undertone –
for them to stay
to live
to tell him he's good
– that he hears when he lays down to sleep.
And he does reach her – perhaps there's something to this hope business after all – but he'll not soon forget the slow, stuttering beat of her heart, the tremble in her lips, or the way that her legs – so often set apart in unwavering tenacity – collapsed beneath her.
Later that same night, he holds her in his arms, on the sofa just beneath the window. He feels it's been ages since she pulled him – with gentle lips and plying hands – into the careful circle she's drawn around the people she trusts, around the people she loves. And now here she is, breathing cool and steady against the chilly skin of his neck. Even now, heaters on high, his leather coat draped over her legs, the stiff collar tucked beneath her chin, he wonders. Worries. If she'll push him away. If the things that he's done will catch up to him. If the fate he's cursed so many long and lonely nights will remember his name, and snatch her away.
So he holds her. Tighter.
"Killian," she says, yet quiet and weak.
"Emma?" he answers.
"You're squishing me."
"Oh."
He loosens his grip, rests his hook down by his leg, near the clutch of her fingers. It brushes against her hand, and she flinches, pulling up and away. He shrinks into himself, and tucks it beneath his leg.
"Sorry, love," he says, shamefaced and red. He can feel the heat all the way to the very tips of his ears, an uncomfortable clench somewhere deep in his belly. "I'm sorry."
She's silent for a moment, and he shrinks even further. He thinks of the missing year, thinks how, despite his treachery, they pale in comparison to the centuries he'd lived before. He thinks of the names, as he used to do before, thinks of the looks on their faces, caught between the land of the living and the land of the dead –
"Killian?" she says, and she taps on his chin. He looks down at her, reluctantly. There's still a worrying tinge of blue clinging to her lips. Her skin is pale and her hands are cold. But as desperate for warmth as she is, she doesn't lean forward, back into the circle of his arms. She keeps her eyes on his as she nudges at his leg, pulls his hook up to her chest.
"It's cold," she says. "It's just cold."
"Oh," he repeats. He hesitates, but then he reaches forward, wraps his fingers around hers, pulls the chilled metal up to his lips. And he breathes. He breathes and he breathes until it's warmed beneath his touch, and beneath his mouth. Until she smiles, wan yet against the exhaustion that weighs on her shoulders, and curls back into his chest, his hook trapped between them.
At long last, her shivers seem to abate, and the persistent chill in her skin begins to dissipate. The color rises in her cheek, and her breath rushes in and out, easy and warm, in and out of her mouth. The knot he's tied in his stomach – strung all the memory of every person he wasn't able to reach, able to save – goes slack long after midnight, when the moon sits high in the sky, and the gentle, silver streaks of light play in the strands of her hair.
"Hook," she says, quiet and slurred.
He quirks a brow, suspects she's asleep, but he answers her nonetheless.
"Aye?"
She sighs and sinks further, beneath the weight of his coat, pulls his hook tighter beneath her chin. The metal is warm, fogged, smeared and scratched. And although he might have been miffed in lives past, he smiles when she smiles in her sleep.
"Hook," she repeats.
And he falls to sleep underneath her, wildly uncomfortable, but with the woman he loves tucked beneath his greatcoat, cradling away the terror he'd once buffed into the hook.
The first time he makes love to her – and she to him – he means to pluck the brace away as she wrestles with her pants, one hand tight on the bedpost as she hops in place. But she catches him mid-twirl, one leg yet clinging to her calf.
"Wait, wait," she says. She walks over to him, dragging half her clothes behind her. "What are you doing?"
He glances down at the floor, scratches compulsively just below his ear.
"I just thought…" he trails off, gives his left arm a weak shake. He nearly startles when she reaches out a gives his hook a weighty tug.
"Leave it," she says.
He does.
And he does, and he does.
To bust the locks away from the answers she seeks.
To pull her most stubborn platters from the highest shelves.
To draw a comforting chill over her aching neck.
To lead when they dance, to defer when she wants to take over.
To chase away the demons when she cannot sleep. Lure away the Dark One when she fears she's lost. To steal, to love, to help, and to lose.
Until he finds he's become lost too.
He claws his way back to her just moments before she lets him go, with a blade just under his heart.
And though he could never regret it, his life for hers, he finds it's not above him to leave a long, angry, uneven scratch in the blackened wood of the gnarled skiff that carries him away.
He loses it – the hook – at the tail end of a particularly hard lash. His vision swims, and reality bends, and when he wakes it's to a piece of him missing.
Emma, he thinks.
Only when it's gone does he realize, that somehow, she managed to press away the ghosts, to lure them out of the deadly tip, to coax them out of the base, to trick them out of the straps that wind up his arm.
Only now does he realize, he wants it back.
"I delivered your message," Hades tells him. As if he should be afraid. As if Emma Swan would take a look at his hook, battered and chipped and covered in blood, and find in herself anything but a familiar, dogged determination.
"Ah," Killian says, with as much bite as he can muster. "'S bad form to break something that belongs to the Savior, mate. Even worse to taunt her with it."
Hades sneers. "Are you referring to you or your hook."
Killian laughs, the sound gurgling, weak, deep in his chest. "If you're trying to insult me, you've failed. Both."
The rage on the god's face is something to fear, he knows, but all he can think of is Emma – Emma, Emma, Emma – holding desperately to hope, the way that she taught him, until she appears.
"You're impossible," he says.
"And you love me for it," she says.
He does. Loves the not-so-gentle grasp of her fingers around his arm, loves the press of her chin in the crook of his neck, even loves the painful shift in his bones when she hauls him to his feet.
But most of all, he loves the smile on her face, when she pulls his hook from her jacket pocket. It's polished, glimmering ruby red beneath the grim light of the Underworld. She clicks it back it into place, and even here amongst the dead, the hopeless, the lost and now the found, he's never felt so at home.
"I love you too," she tells him, not days later, behind the bars of an elevator. Before it rumbles to life, and carries her away. He grasps desperately at her hand with his, wants to feel the rasp of her flesh against the callouses on his fingertips.
It's only when she's gone – the last bit of the light she seems to cast swallowed up by the shadows before and behind him – that he feels the weight on his left side, the throb in his wrist. He wishes she'd never let go of his hook in the library up above, that she'd clutched harder, longer, that time had stood still. He wishes he'd reached up, drawn her hair over her shoulder, scratched gently at palm of her hand, the way that she likes. He wishes he'd caught hold of her wrist, kissed her other hand just the same. He wishes he'd urged her to take hold of his hook, to kiss the rounded edge, to breathe away the careful polish as she's done so many evenings before.
But she didn't. He didn't. And he can't change the past. He, of all people – of all impossible centenarians, reaching the end of his line – should know this.
Even so, he doesn't look at it, can't look at the hook. Not when he finally emerges from the fruitless test below, not when he recruits the man who killed him to save his family above, not even when the god of Olympus – hand on his shoulder and warmth in his eyes – leads him to where he belongs.
That is, until he sees her.
"Emma," he mouths, silent into the rainstorm. He watches her stumble back, watches her thread her fingers through her hair, watches her plant her feet the way that she does, when she's puzzled or angry or sad.
She is, of course, the first thing he looks at. But his hook is the second. He hears the water, hears it tap lightly on the metal, a familiar tink-tink that soothes the ache, the unbearable pressure that builds in his belly, rises in his chest, bubbles in his throat until he says –
"Swan?"
It's the sight of her hair, her stance, the smell of the rain, the wet crush of cut grass beneath his feet. It's the salt on the breeze, the chill in the mist, the sound of motors in the distance.
But most of all, it's the feel of her body, small and lithe and strong, as she throws herself into his arms, kisses everywhere she can reach. The muted scratch of his hook down the thick, heavy fabric of her sodden coat. All of these together – they tell him that he's here, that he's hers, and that he never intends to let go.
And he doesn't. Not for portals or monsters, not for bloody serums or enchanted cages.
Until the world stills, until they go home, her quiet I love you still ringing in his ears as she makes good on her promise, to sleep for weeks in the circle of his arms, his hand drawing nonsense along her back, and his hook warming beneath her touch.
"How the fuck do you put this thing on?"
He laughs, watches as she fumbles with the straps. The brace fits loosely over her hand, lopsided and leaning, if only because she has a hand where he doesn't, in the way of the cinching straps that pull tight over his wrists, where faint red marks still pulse uncomfortably from time to time.
"You just – "
He leans up, means to help her, but she laughs, tilts back on his stomach, just out of reach. The subtle backwards tilt, the press of her bare flesh against his, it would be more than enough to get him hard again, were it not for the fact that they've been in various shades of fucking all afternoon. That is to say, he's spent, and he could think of nothing more appealing than watching her laugh as she sits astride him. It's late summer, and even the cool, dry northeastern air sits heavy in the room. There's a dark blue fan whooshing quietly in the corner, letting out a subtle tick tick tick noise every time the broken blade smacks against the plastic frame. There are birds singing just on the windowsill, crows screeching loudly over the rest. The sunshine comes and goes, beneath clouds rushing along the winds left behind by the storm the night before. The shafts twirl along the sheer, blue-tinged curtains, catching in the green of her eyes as she bites at her lips.
"Seriously, though," she says. "How?"
"Years of practice, darling," he says. "Besides, I don't always wear the shoulder bits."
She hums, and pulls a loop over her head, tangled – now even more impossibly – around her neck, and underneath her arms. She frowns, rather adorably, nostrils flaring as she huffs a hot, frustrated breath.
"I give up," she says, even as she pulls harder at the leather straps, even as she pulls the brace harder up over her forearm.
"You do, do you?"
"No. Never."
Killian knows that never will end soon enough, judging by the marks on her skin, redder and angrier the longer she wrestles with the damn thing. He sits up, and she hardly seems to notice, until she's settled on his lap, and pouting down at metal and cloth.
"Emma," he says, softly, gently, plucking at the straps until they loosen, following his fingers with his lips.
"Ow," she says. He knows the leather tends to pull at his skin, tends to catch on the hair on his arms, but he's the benefit of callouses up the expanse of his arms, a crisscross patchwork of scars that dance up over his shoulder. He can hardly remember what it felt like when he first began wearing the thing. It's been too many years, too many feverish nights, days on end where the pain flared and he lost everything he'd dared to eat, every swallow of rum and water he'd managed over the gunwale of the Jolly Roger.
"Don't they bother you?" she says, quietly. He kisses along her neck as he goes, laughing warm, wet breath over the skin he reveals. He pulls back, and holds her gaze as he lifts a hopeless loop over her head. She purses her lips, tries not to smile. He has no reservations, grinning helplessly as he goes back to her neck, up over her ear, along the slope of her jaw.
"They did. Once." He kisses her once, twice, three times upon the mouth. He licks along the seam of her lips, chases away the salt – from her sweat, from the sea breeze that blows restlessly in through the open windows – on the side of her face with his tongue. She laughs, and pushes at his shoulders.
"Does it bother you?" he asks. And he knows it's silly. He honestly does. He remembers the look on her face in Neverland, how even before she'd allowed herself to love him, she would grab thoughtlessly at his hook. Even now, she'll fiddle with the point, use it to scratch at an itch. On long, lonely nights, when Henry's away and the shadows slip under the door and into her mind, she'll hold it close to her chest, press the chilly metal to her collarbones as she stares over his shoulder and into the past.
Even so, the ghosts still haunt him. Each and every one of their faces, their names, the color of their blood, the sound of their voices in his ears –
"Hey," she says, and grabs hold of his chin. Her skin rasps quietly against his beard, nails scratching down his neck, slipping into his hair and tugging until he's looking her in the eye.
"Where'd you go?" she says, and he looks down at her lips, even only to avoid the way her eyes burn straight into his. He breathes, slowly, listens to the tap of the overgrown maple tree against the window panes, the rustle of the leaves in the wind. A car door shuts somewhere up the road, echoing over and over again against the pavement. The sweet, sweet smell of the hydrangeas wafts in along the humid air, and he wrinkles his nose.
"Nowhere," he answers. She quirks a brow, unimpressed, and so he amends, "Nowhere you'd want to go."
She rolls her eyes, and throws her arms over his shoulders, pulls until her breasts are pressed flush against his chest, until her belly brushes against his with every breath she takes, every subtle arch of her back.
"Didn't you hear what I said?" she says.
He only shakes his head in reply.
She huffs, even as she smiles, wan as a cloud rushes between them and the sun, casting her face in shadows for only a moment before the light floods the room once more, greens and browns and silvers blazing down at him.
"It never bothered me," she says. "I thought that was obvious."
"It was."
"Then why – "
"Sometimes…" he starts, but then pauses so he can shuffle back along the bed, so he can lean against the headboard. He keeps his hand firm on the small of her back, presses so she'll follow him down, so he's very nearly speaking straight into her mouth.
"Sometimes I just want to hear you say it."
She smiles, and reaches up to touch his face. First his cheek with the backs of her fingers, then his jaw, over the slope of his nose, then up, up into his hair, drawing the tension out of the base of her spine with the gentle press of her fingertips.
"I love the hook," she says. "I love you."
He grins, can't help it, even with the things he's done beating a ragged rhythm against the inside of his skull, even as his belly twists at the feeling of his hook – now abandoned in a pile of snarled leather at his side – brushing up against his arm. Emma reaches up, snaps it out of the brace with a flick of her wrist, nearly as practiced as he. She brings it up between them, and taps him on the nose. The last of the pain, the last of the memories, the stories, the blood and the noise. All dissipating, crumbling to nothing in the way that the woman he loves presses his hook to her forehead and crosses her eyes.
"I don't see a difference," she says. "You. The hook. You could kick it into the ocean and I still wouldn't see the difference."
He smiles, reaches up to push her hair out of her eyes, tuck it up behind her ear. It, rather predictably, comes tumbling back down, tickles at his chest, and his smile grows.
"By which you mean you could kick it into the ocean," he says. "I never imagined you harbored quite so much disdain for the fishing rods."
She scoffs, tosses the hook beside them, and anchors her fingers back in his hair. "First, it's not my fault that Henry leaves your crap on the deck by the edge – "
"The gunwale, Swan."
" – by the whatever. Second, don't change the subject."
She sits up, slides even lower, until her pelvis presses into his, and he feels a jolt down deep in his stomach. He braces his hand, means to roll up into her, but she flops down beside him before he can follow through, tugging his arm so he falls on top of her, chests pressed together once more, an endearing, quiet little oof rushing out of her mouth, and washing over her face. She reaches up, and tugs at his ears, then traps his jaw between the tips of her fingers.
"Are you listening to me?" she says, face suddenly rather serious, even as she shifts so their hips align, and her voice drops low.
"Aye, love," he answers. "Always."
"Except for like two minutes ago."
He laughs. "Almost always."
She smiles, but then it fades, and she pulls until he can feel her every breath against his lips. She grips harder and shifts again, until his leg falls between both of hers.
"You're Killian Jones," she says, and then waits, as if expecting an answer.
So he nods. "Aye."
"You're Captain Hook," she says, and waits again.
Here, he hesitates, if only for a moment. He glances at the hook. Yet another shaft of sunlight flutters with the wave of the curtain. His ears twitch, and he can hear the swish of the sea, the tinkle of the selfsame sort of metal that lies beside them against modern ships made of iron and steel.
"Aye," he says. Then, quieter, "Captain Hook."
"And I love you," she says, with finality, and pulls his lips down to her. She breathes in, runs her tongue along his teeth. She breathes out, sucks lightly at his lower lip. He sighs, and hitches her hip up over his, so he can settle more comfortable between her thighs. He leans back, and watches as the current from the fan stirs her hair into tangles, even more helpless than those in the brace that teeters on the edge of the bed.
"I love you," he says, and kisses her in earnest. Long, hot, and heavy moments pass between them before he pulls back to see the flush that creeps down between her breasts.
"Again?" he says.
She smiles, runs her hands down his chest and around his back.
"I love the hook," she says. "And you. Same thing."
Another handful of minutes – time ticking away with the clock, the beat of the broken fan just slightly off rhythm, the smack of the branches of trees against the side of the house – and she plants her hands on his shoulders, give him a gentle push. He groans nonetheless, rutting softly as she gives him a look.
"Seriously, though, don't kick it into the ocean."
He pauses, throws his head back, and laughs.
"Not to worry, Swan," he says. "Your hook is safe with me."
She smiles, pulls him down –
"I know."
– and kisses him until the last of the hurt, the last of the memories, fade to nothing, until all that's left is the impression of the palm of her hand along the blunted edge of the hook that bears only his name.