Notes: A 5x21 episode tag. Includes fluff and snuggles.
It's the first thing she notices - the cold, the rain - after the euphoria fades.
She has her face tucked into his neck, breathing in the scent of wet earth, the sweet smell of rain falling just this side of the advent of spring. His hair is cold and rough between her fingertips, teasing at the sensitive underside of her wrist. His breath is hot, heaving out of his chest and down the back of her neck, ruffling the collar of his shirt. His heart - oh God, his heart - is thumping wildly, answering on a stuttered echo to hers.
But her toes -
"You must be freezing, love."
"I don't care," she says.
And she really doesn't. She throws her arms back around him until her hands are locked over her wrists, scrambling up until she's standing on the tips of his toes, and he's grunting into her temples.
"Ow," he laughs, squeezing her back just as tight.
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She can feel his hook pressing beneath her ribcage, just a bit too hard, can feel her toes going numb beneath the pinch of her her shoes, the muggy dampness on his shoulders seeping into hers, the chill grabbing at her bones. She's never been more uncomfortable in her life.
She's never been this comfortable in her entire life.
"Killian," she says. To him. To him. Instead of to the lifeless monolith that bears his name.
"Emma," he answers, and she can hear the warble in his voice, can feel the sob in his chest. "Emma, Emma, my love, my Swan."
She hangs on, just that bit tighter, relishing the way her coat sags, the way he drags his lips over every bit of skin he can find without having to pull away. But she's tired, so very tired, and the droplets are beginning to trickle their way down her pants, down, down, until they tighten the wool in her stockings, until she's flexing her fingers and trembling in his arms, curling her leg behind his until her calf presses into his.
"Let's go home," he says.
She nods, but doesn't let him go, grasping at the lapels of his coat, pulling and standing even straighter atop his feet, so she can press kisses to the top of his head, anywhere she can reach, everywhere she couldn't until now.
"I know - " he starts, cut off by a firm kiss to his mouth.
"How you feel - " to the corners of his lips.
"About wet - " another, tongue pressing firmly against his teeth.
"Wet socks," he finishes, laughing again, half in pain as she stomps all over his toes.
She laughs in turn, soaked in sadness as it is, still riding the joy, the relief.
"Home," she says, like she's saying it for the first time. She leans back so she can look in his eyes, oh his eyes, gemstones in a sea of ash, bright lights in the darkness.
Her lips warble, the longer she looks at him, chin trembling, eyes filling with tears, biting her lip to hold them back.
"It's okay to cry," he whispers, drawing his fingers over her cheeks before the tears even fall, catching them with his fingers, with his lips, answering her tears with his own, more falling as she reaches up to follow suit, hands mapping the dips and curves of his face.
"Come on, love," he says, voice rough. "Let's get you out of those wet socks. They're surely ruined by now."
She, ever so reluctantly, lets him go, just enough so that they can walk in the same direction without taking a tumble into the mud. That isn't to say they move with any grace, looking at one another - with hope, with love, with joy, dimmed with regret, sorrow, mourning - as they go.
"It's okay," she says.
"Hm?" he says, pulling her fingers, which are wrapped firmly around his hook, up to his lips.
"The socks. They're yours anyways."
He smiles, wide -
"Nonsense."
- and he stops them again, expression slipping into something more serious.
"It's all yours," he says. "All of it. All of me."
She can't stand it - not being in his arms, walking besides him when she could be pressed against him - and so she leaps back into his arms, beneath the rain, in the storm in the cold.
"All of me," he repeats.
And she answers, warmly, "Me too."