Disclaimer: To paraphrase baby Emma and Pinnochio's last foster father together, NONE OF THIS IS MINE. Except the first attempt at sex writing, which is mine, and invariably entertaining.
Hook tried to tell himself that things were going well, in all the ways that mattered. He was neither villain nor (worse) stranger to Emma any longer. They both remained in the same realm, even though she had left the room…
It isn't fair, he thought. The thought moved him to take another gulp of brandy, straight from the bottle. It seemed to help him think straight, because the next thought he had after that was: I shouldn't ever expect fairness anymore, from any world. I've seen too much.
But it wasn't fair that he'd still want her this much, that the pain of longing and passion had grown in her absence, and even more that moment he saw her face again. He was still reeling—or being reeled in, like a kraken on a harpoon.
And she wasn't even trying.
It isn't fair.
Restlessly, Hook walked around, bottle in hand, examining the various items in Emma's abode without seeing them. He was too busy wondering. How many keepsakes made their way here based on Regina's false memories? How many spoke of Emma's true character? How could he love her so much and know about her so little?
The kitchen was tiny, and cluttered with much-used pots and pans—Where had Emma learned to cook? A small bit of shelf space was dedicated to books. He tilted his head to read the titles written on the books' spines, titles such as 101 Simple Technology Hacks for Private Investigators and Criminal Profiling. On a lower shelf that must have been for Henry, there were books with titles such as Haroun and the Sea of Stories, and The Once and Future King,
He approached what appeared to be the frame of a black mirror, and ran his hook along the side. It moved over an embossment on the side that was marked with a letter from an unfamiliar alphabet, and blast of lights and sounds replaced the blackness within the frame. This array of moving lights began singing and speaking at the same time with many voices.
"Apollo candy bars! Like sunshine in your mouth! Buy our limited edition flavor, caramel apple with white chocolate, before it's too late—"
Though he was startled for a moment, Hook fearlessly jabbed the sigil again. The frame went black and silent once more. He took another gulp of brandy and approached the window. The wind was too cold to smell anything.
It isn't fair to Emma, either, Hook thought. She had made him no promises, and yet…
"Lucky bastard, to have had her affections for a full eight months," Hook muttered, and he raised the bottle in a mock toast to the mysterious man on the roof.
The mysterious man falling past the window, more like: the dark form offset by two eyes glowed red like a demon's, and wings blossomed from his back as he passed.
Hook, mid-gulp, choked and sputtered.
At the speed of thought, the bottle dropped from his hand, he'd run to the door, out to the hall, and into the stairwell. He raced the ascending silhouette of a winged monkey.
Of course, he'd lost. Would that the love of a pirate for a princess would give him wings.
He thundered up the stairs and almost punched the door open. "Swan?"
Ultimately it was Emma who had won, and she had stayed unharmed—that was the important thing. Also, it was a bloody brilliant, amazing thing. As he ran to where she stood victorious, Hook himself was still wondering—
"What in blazes was that?!"
Emma turned to face him and replied, only slightly out of breath from the fight, "A reminder…that I was never safe." She held his gaze and continued, "That what I wanted—what I thought I could have—was not in the cards for The Savior."
Hook didn't know what to say to that.
"We leave tomorrow." Emma set her jaw and walked past him.
He followed her down the stairwell. "If I could assist in any way with your preparations—"
"No, I've got it."
"If you need an ear, or a shoulder—" He persisted, and quipped, "I've actually got two of each."
"Now's not the time for talking." More quietly, Emma added, "He does not deserve my tears."
They'd reached the level of Emma's apartment.
"Then we part ways here," said Hook, regretfully, sighting down the hall, "And, Swan… Just so you know…" He turned back to her. Emma tilted her head slightly, listening. "What's not in the cards you're dealt, is up your sleeve."
He didn't wink or move up close. Despite the play on words, Hook now had that same edge-of-heartbreak expression that he'd given her in the Echo Caves at Neverland. Emma breathed out something between a scoff and a sigh. "I can't even hope."
"Just because you don't believe in something doesn't make it untrue." Before Emma could argue with that, Hook gave a bow, said, "I shall return on the morrow, Milady. Won't that be something to look forward to?" He winked and began to walk—no saunter—away.
Emma noted a shade too much saunter, even for a guy who had accomplished his mission for the day. "Where are you going, Hook?"
Hook continued to walk, although he turned to face her as he replied so that he was walking backwards. "Is that curiosity, or rhetoric?"
Emma strode after him. "Curiosity. Where have you been staying all this time you were looking for me?"
"I shouldn't bore you with unnecessary details—" walking backwards, he stumbled. Emma jogged forward to catch him, and he blushed and laughed.
Emma pulled him upright, and gripped his arms in her hands to keep him so. "When was the last time you ate something?" Bologna wasn't exactly a meal, even if he wasn't a pickier eater than Henry. "Hook, you're drunk."
"Nonsense," he scoffed. "It's my sea legs. I assure you I am suitably inumbra—unibrainyay—" he blurted a little, and then: "Un-inebriated. There, I said it right." At Emma's askance expression, he argued, "You can't say the word 'inebriated' if you actually are inebriate."
"You did say it right," Emma agreed, but she continued to peer at him suspiciously as she released her hold on him. "Keep walking."
Hook turned, took a few steps away from her, in a straight line—he was sure—but the room shifted so that hallway wall moved from beside him to right in front of him suddenly. He pressed himself against the wall to steady the room, muffling his voice as he admitted, "Perhaps I'm more than a pair of sheets to the wind."
Emma's solution to that was to lead him back into her apartment, push him into a tiled room filled with a steady light from above—like the ceiling was full of tiny suns, only the light was too white—foist a sort of blanket upon him "to dry off with", and command him to remove his clothes. At the lift of his smile, of his eyebrow, she clarified, with alacrity, "To shower!" and shut the door between them.
After undressing, Hook gathered that he was to enter a part of the tiled room set apart by a sliding door and walls both made of misted glass—they didn't meet the ceiling, so he draped the blanket over the top—and then to turn a set of knobs set in the wall so that the sort of cudgel hanging above would start to rain on him. The shock of cold water did cut through his drunken haze.
After a moment, he heard Emma's voice through the door. "Hook, did you give one of my plants brandy?"
"Hrmm," Hook said, "I might have dropped the bottle when that Walsh fellow passed by the window."
"It's fine, I wouldn't have let the plant drive anyway."
In an alcove beside the rain-making knobs, there was a lump of something he recognized as soap. On a jut in one tiled wall were vials of what Hook mostly identified as different sorts of melted soaps, and seemed to have been bottled with very specific purposes—for hair, for teeth. There was a potion for washing the mouth that finally removed the taste of bologna. The rest—salt scrub, scented oils, and (for some unfathomable reason) a rubber sculpture of a yellow duckling with an orange beak, among other items—he left alone.
When Hook discovered that one of the knobs gave out water hot enough to steam, he decided to stay in a little longer. Eventually recalling that he'd passed a mirror on the way under the shower, he hopped out to see it misted over. As the shower water continued to run, he began to draw in the misty mirror with the little finger of his right hand.
The door opened and Emma walked in. Her eyes widened with surprise, then looked him up and down, and up again—but not away. Hook didn't move.
"I was done packing for Henry and myself," She stammered, "And I heard the shower still running, so I thought you would still be in there. Where I couldn't see you naked. Like I can see you naked now. Don't—" she said, seeing that he was about to say something. She continued to explain, "I was taking your clothes to the dry cleaner's, and coming back with some normal clothes and some takeout. I was going to tell you as I came in…"
"I do always prefer to have anything anyone has to say told…to my face," Hook assured her. And repeated, amusedly, "My face, Emma."
"Yeah huhwha?"
"My face is up here. Darling."
Emma shook her head as if to clear it and tried to look him in the eye. Embarrassment moving her to fail at that, she glanced at the mirror, which was misted over except for a few lines. She squinted. "Are you drawing ducks?"
"No," answered Hook, his expression changing from amused to very slightly wounded, and he turned to walk back under the steaming rain.
Only after he'd slid the shower door shut behind him did Emma stop staring, and she gathered up his clothes.
When Emma returned, she knocked on her own front door and called, "Hook? Are you decent?"
"Alas I remain morally ambiguous," Hook replied as he opened the door with his good hand, the towel wrapped around his waist, and said, "But you wouldn't let that scare you off. Oh, blast—!" He feigned surprise and grabbed at the towel as if it were falling from him, when it was doing no such thing.
"Better un-shiver your timbers, there, Captain. I've got neighbors—!" Emma hurried past him, a department store shopping bag in one hand and a takeout bag in the other.
Hook chuckled as he shut the door behind them. "A jest," he said warmly, as Emma set the bags down on the kitchen table, beside his harness, his fake hand, his onyx raindrop earring and his two silver rings set with carnelians.
"Ha, ha," she pronounced, rolling her eyes at him—but she smiled, too, seeming to be in a much improved mood. She dug into the department store bag. With her other hand, she pointed. "Bedroom. Get in there."
This time he didn't need to feign the surprise, although he quickly replaced that with a somehow cautious smirk. "You best me when it comes to the little things too, Milady."
"That wasn't a 'jest'."
"Oh, taking full advantage, are we?"
"Already have, thanks," Emma countered, with rehearsed smugness.
"I doubt that."
A heavy silence grew between them.
Emma broke it. "The people at the cleaner's said that it would take about three hours. Here—" She foisted on him a pile of white cotton, blue jersey, and black denim. "Underwear. Shirts. No laces on the pants, they both zipper up and button on." She unfolded the jeans on the pile enough to demonstrate.
They were very close to one another.
Emma asked, quietly, "You think you can handle it?" She wasn't talking about his getting dressed.
"Perhaps," Hook murmured, "This time—"
His new clothes fell to the ground as Emma pushed her whole body against his, her fingers in his hair pulling his face—his lips—onto hers. His mind melted into the warmth and passion of her kiss, dimly noticing that he was stumbling where she pushed, never quite completely losing balance, that the tiles under his bare feet had turned to carpet, and that Emma's hands were moving over his chest, then clawing at his shoulders, his back and over his now-bare hips and buttocks.
She shoved him onto her bed, away from her, and the rustle of clothing told Hook that she was undressing herself. The room was pitch black, except for the light streaming in through the doorway from the hall. He was still trying to catch his breath when Emma moved over him, her knees against his hips, wisps of her hair tickling his chest.
He breathed her name and reached up to stroke her hair back from her face. Her hand grasped his wrist and pinned it back against the mattress.
Hook was taken aback by the suddenness and force. "What are you doing?"
After a pause, Emma's voice replied, thickly, "That's what I'm asking myself." She drew away from him, sat on the edge of her bed, and heaved a sigh. "This wouldn't…" she began, and then started again, "This doesn't mean…anything. You know that, right?"
Hook sat up and put his arms around her from behind. Emma jerked away at the first touch, then leaned into him. He nuzzled the part where the curve of her jaw met her ear. "Do you want me?" He murmured. "Do you trust me? That means everything, even if you'd only have me for tonight."
After a silence, Emma asked, "Did you really think about me every day?"
"Aye. Some days more than once." He felt for the clasp of her bra, undid it one hand in the dark, and moved his mouth down to her shoulder to drag the bra strap away with his teeth.
She shrugged off the opposite strap and let it fall. Brokenly, breathlessly, she continued, "Did you think about me like this?" She took his hand and guided it over her abdomen, then lower. His fingers began to massage between her legs.
"No. I couldn't imagine. You're amazing." His fingers slipped easily into her, she was that ready. He purred, then playfully asked, "Oh, is that for me?"
Emma seethed and swore as he worked his fingers inside of her, and she whimpered when he withdrew his hand.
"Hush," Hook whispered. "I wouldn't leave you unsatisfied." He moved his hand over her underwear, and began to stroke her clitoris through the damp fabric. Hook could feel a thin sheen of sweat beginning to form on her skin, where his chest pressed against her back, and one thicker trickle against the coarseness of his cheek. She strained towards his hand, both of them settling into a sort of rhythm like the tides, and at the taste of her salty sweat in the kiss he planted upon her neck, he was home at sea once more.
He could feel a swelling in her, like that of a great wave, and ached to join with her but couldn't bear to stop for a moment to shift positions.
Emma could. She pulled away, panting, and pressed her forehead against his. "Lie back down," she murmured.
"Why don't you lie down," he suggested, and she could hear him smiling.
"Fair enough." She stood, first, and let the last of her clothing fall to her feet. She drew him down to her bed, when he positioned himself on top of her she reached between them, between his legs where he was hard and feverish, and the flesh of his cock was so thick that she could barely wrap her fingers around it. "I'll have to take this a little slow…It's been a while…"
Hook bit back a moan at her touch. "What's the fun in rushing?" As she wrapped her legs around his waist, he leaned over to gently kiss her lips. When she got up to deepen the kiss, he pulled back slightly. In protest, she took his lower lip between her teeth, and he made a sound between a laugh and a moan. His hips shifted, sinking the head of his cock inside her. She gasped and shuddered, digging her nails into his shoulders. "You really like that, love." He could feel her pulsing around him. "I didn't know you were so close."
She gulped, and panted, "Keep going."
His slid in further, faster but not fast enough to thrust in; he withdrew with excruciating slowness, the friction just enough tip Emma over the edge again.
Hook murmured, "You're coming so hard, too, I can feel it." The sound of his voice, the feel of his breath in her hair, sent another rush of desire through her. "I want this to last 'til daybreak. I want you to remember this feeling. It's good, isn't it?"
In, fast. She clenched around him like a pulse as he pulled out, coaxing a deep moan from him.
"Yeah," she agreed, hoarsely.
"But this—" his voice broke, he tried again, whispering, "This doesn't mean anything to you…"
Emma silenced him with a kiss, and without breaking that contact pushed him over so that he was on his back. She rode him, not in and out but to and fro on the slickness of her slit and over her clit.
He said, "I love you," as his release finally came.
When the sky began to lighten, Emma whistled gently into Hook's ear to wake him.
"Sweeter than a nightingale," he murmured.
She smiled, a little sadly. "I'm going to take a shower," she told him.
"Mind if I join you?"
"That always sounds like a better idea than it is when you're both actually in there," Emma said, as if to herself. When he reached out to stroke her hair, this time, she let him, and trailed her own fingertips over his arm down to his elbow. As gently as she could with the words, she told him, "You shouldn't still be here by the time I'm done." She drew away from him and left the room.
Hook found his shoes outside the bathroom by the door, and dressed himself in the hall as Emma showered. When the dawn turned from civil to nautical, he looked at himself in the mirror by the desk in the living room. The blue shirt had a V-neck cut, with sleeves long enough to hide the harness for his fake hand. The color did bring out his eyes, but he gave a discontented sigh. That's what you look like when she's used you and is over and done with, he thought, unreasonably, and knew it was unreasonable, and yet determined to get his own clothes back as soon as possible.
On the kitchen table, he found his earring, his rings, his harness and hand, and a claim ticket for the cleaning service for his own clothes that they'd completely forgotten about in the night. He couldn't help smiling at why. In any case, the ticket did have an address. A small translucent bag on the kitchen table turned out to contain bread stuffed with lettuce and meats. Neither of them were filled with the perilous balogna, in any case, judging by the smell.
He gathered everything up and walked out—no, sauntered. Things were going well, in all the ways that mattered.