Author's Note: Emma Swan is my spirit animal... and it scares me how similar we are sometimes. [Insert boyish giggle here because I'm still 4 years old.]
you are missing from me
All she knew was that the bed was unbearably empty without him. That her throat turned raw as she paced the long sidewalks of the suburbs in her sneakers. That she discovered her hand suddenly reaching for the man that wasn't there when a car squealed too close for comfort.
That her hair kept falling into her eyes as she had gone through the motions of the evening – dinner, walk, shower – and there'd been no one to brush that fucking strand off her stupid forehead and it made her angry beyond anything she thought herself capable.
But it's not as though it meant anything.
Because it really didn't.
It didn't.
And yet there was still a bitter streak on her tongue and her teeth were sort of throbbing and her ankle burned in the spot where her sock had fallen in her shoe and she found herself hating the way the cool air of the room fell over her skin when she got back home.
She'd been gone for an entire hour that evening. The house was empty when she left, and empty when she returned, and she tried to act like that didn't surprise her.
She was Emma fucking Swan.
She took down the bad guys and tamed her blonde hair into a semblance of style and wore her signature jacket and managed to inveigle herself between two family members at dinner at Granny's every Tuesday night and it was never enough but too much at the same time.
She spent her days either overwhelmed or empty, but there was no in-between.
Her phone would shrill loudly at 3 a.m. and vibrate and chirp in her pocket for hours.
Her phone was silent despite having the ringer turned on and a screaming woman had taken up residence in the back of her mind; the noise occupied her jumbled thoughts so that her brain felt just too damn quiet.
There was no in-between for Emma fucking Swan.
It's just –
God damn it all.
It had been so long since she'd felt that blissful moment of belonging. Of having people there who cared about the shadows that crossed her face. Of people who sensed her moods and simply understood. And now that she had him, him, him, and her and him and her and him – and she knew they all cared… Now that they were all off on their own… Now that she was sitting, alone, in their bed in their home that they created together, complete with pictures and ChapStick on the nightstands, laundry – hers, never his – spilling from the armoire, the spicy scent of his hair on the pillow underneath her palm…
Well. Fuck.
She was so unbearably empty.
She didn't know what was wrong with her.
She had no idea what the hell was wrong with her.
Why it even mattered or if anyone cared and all she knew was that it hurt, far more than it had any right to, but it did. It pulsed like a foreign heartbeat behind her breast that drowned out her actual heart that was full to brimming with love of those she kept close to it.
So when the bedroom door opened and he poked his face through the crack, every cell in her being screamed at her to shut him out, to roll over and act asleep. To ignore the sparkling Superman-blue eyes that danced with mischief as he climbed over the bed to her.
To fake returning the kiss that was so unbelievably sweet it was cotton candy in her mouth and her teeth were already aching from it. His smell overwhelmed her – salty with undertones of smoke and the sandy outdoors.
"Evenin', Swan." He grinned and his eyelashes were so elegantly long and fanning softly up to touch his eyebrows as he evened his gaze upon her, seeming to drink her in.
That was when his expression crashed, and she knew what he saw but she was too weak, too exhausted, too empty to hide. "Emma?" He sat, tripping backwards so his knee was pressed against her thigh, one leg thrown over both of hers. A handful of fingers came up to smooth the hair from her brow, and the sob she'd been pushing further and further down her throat all evening shattered inside her.
"You're just – you're a lot… sometimes." She could barely force the words out once she saw his face – his dear, innocent, beloved face. The hurt flickered in and out and was gone, but she still saw it and knew him well enough to recognize it in his gaze and the tension in his shoulders.
Mountains were being erected in his eyes, ones she'd never hope to climb by herself. "Do you wish me to leave?" he asked, face stony and expressionless.
"No!" she cried more loudly than she meant to, because that wasn't what she wanted to say at all and she didn't have his propensity for flowery words but knew all the same that she needed to chase away the fear she saw reflected back at her. "No, I didn't mean… Damn it."
His eyes had cleared somewhat, but not completely, and it broke her heart.
She shook herself and took a deep, broken breath. "Just – it doesn't matter. Forget it. How was your night?"
"Emma." His voice was stern yet pleading and she didn't know anything anymore because the look in his eyes was flipping and squashing her stomach into bloody pancakes.
"No, really. It's fine."
"No, it's not. Something's obviously upset you. Do you really think me so unconcerned with your feelings, love?"
For a moment she couldn't even think because there was such beauty quietly contained within him and it was hitting her all at once with the same undeniable force as a baseball bat walloping her atop the head. It left her breathless and bruised in too many places. She couldn't possibly encapsulate all her feelings inside this small, frail body.
He waited patiently, seemingly content to sit in her presence while she gathered her thoughts like Easter eggs – each one unique and unrelated to all the others.
But the light caught just so on his face, twinkling dimly against the jewel in his ear, glancing off the reddish tint to his beard, and the man sitting before her became so angelically soft it was nearly inhuman.
"It overwhelms me. A lot. How much I love you, I mean," she whispered, unable to unabashedly explain the depths her feelings dove to. "I just – sometimes I'm afraid I'll wake up from this – this dream and I'll be the me from before again, little orphaned Emma, all alone in the world and in this big house where it seemed so real."
She had to stop because there were not enough words but all the vowels and consonants were crowding the tip of her tongue and ringing with their individual truths and it seemed to be the only way to keep them from spilling messily in the space between their bodies. She finally settled on something to end the thought, and since tears were glistening in his eyes, she was touching his face when she spoke. "It terrifies me."
A roughened finger tipped her chin up. "Emma, I'm real. Henry and your parents and your little brother – they're all real and they're here. We're not going anywhere, not without you. Never without you. Never again."
His words halted for a moment, and she felt the gooseflesh rise on his arms, the skin exposed by the sleeves he'd pushed past his elbows.
She saw him swallow heavily.
"I love you, sometimes so much it physically pains me to be away from you." A small, shaky smile tugged at his lips. "I'll wake deep into the night, certain you'll have left me and gone somewhere I cannot follow. But then I see you, Emma. I see you and feel what you feel for me, and it's no longer possible for me to be afraid, to doubt."
The silence that settled between them was not filled with pain or abandonment or anger, but rather a perfect love in a nameless context that she felt all the way through her, one that ate away the darkness and filled her with light.
She was wiping at their collective eyes and almost laughing with the joy this man wrought in her. "Sorry I ruined your evening with my pointless babbling," she said. "'The house was empty' is not a good excuse."
"I disagree with you on both fronts, Swan. It not only brightens my evening to just be with you, it also opens up another chance for me to tell you how much I love you."
She did laugh then, unable to help herself, at his boyish charm and simplicity. "You're such a guy. So cut-and-dry."
"Pirate, lass. Or have you forgotten?"
A challenge she couldn't resist.
She pushed herself into his lap, languid, heavy heat pooling in her blood, and ran her fingers through his mess of hair. She dragged her lips to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth before moving on to nip at his ear, whispering, "Let me show you just how much I remember."
She could feel his grin on her cheek for only an instant before his mouth was crashing into hers, tongue eager and warm, teeth sharp on her bottom lip, limbs tangled with hers.
And her heart was inexplicably and irrevocably and unbearably full – all thoughts of emptiness mysteriously abandoned. But it wasn't a mystery – not really. She knew the real reason why, and felt it along every inch of skin as they fell, perfect and beautifully lost in each other.