Summary: Takes place between 3x06 and 3x07. Emma and Hook venture back to the Jolly Roger for additional supplies. Tension inevitably follows in their wake.
Rated: M
Warnings: Smut, language
Notes: For killians-dimples (on tumblr). Because socks, and because Neverland.
If Killian's honest with himself, there's something about the forest.
He's always been a man of the sea, despite the harsh masters he's served upon its waters. The ocean is capricious, swallowing when it sees fit, holding dark secrets at unreachable depths. It sways and it churns and it takes, often far more than it gives. He's seen more sailors than he cares to, lost beneath the surface – after death, often before it.
Emma –
"Swan," he mouths, to himself, jungle leaves draping over his shoulder, first signs of rain tickling at his nose.
– somehow manages to be of both. She steps easy among the trees, seems to have an innate feel for direction, for the way the soil shifts, for the creatures that slither among the shadows. He's spent enough decades in Neverland to listen when the island speaks, when the trees rustle in an ancient language. And ever since they'd made landfall, it's spoken of nothing but her.
Then again, she's the same at sea. When she's close, he can smell the salt on her skin, like wet earth after a storm blown in off the sea. He could taste it on her tongue, feel it in the press of her fingertips at the base of his skull. She's one foot in the water, it seems, and one on the shore. Though she seems to be edging out, the longer she's in his company, the longer the weight of his confession –
Until I met you.
– sits on her shoulders. And he, retreating back, the longer it sits on his.
It's hardly been an hour since their ordeal in Echo Cave. At the very least, it didn't tear them apart. He's seen men and women aplenty plunge into the depths of the caves, ravaged by their own wrongdoings. As terrible a fate as it is, there's something more insidious about the disquiet that settles among them. It's infuriating, to say as little as he will. And though he's uncertain as to the journey ahead, he can no longer bear to sit, to keep watch, as it were, on the people who very clearly distrust him, on the man he'd once viciously betrayed, on the woman he –
Wants? Needs? Loves, perhaps?
So he exaggerates the need for additional weapons, for extra provisions, to Emma's father, in the quiet of night, the man's patience and courage – all the things that make him everything that Killian isn't, that make him talk towards a tree snake sleeping up over his shoulder – wearing a bit thin.
"I know this island well, mate," he says, quietly, trying not to disturb those that are at rest. "The closer we draw to the Hollow, the more likely it is we'll be met with trouble. We're hardly prepared."
"And you didn't think of this earlier?" David protests. He has his hands on his hips, in a familiar gesture. "Why go back now?"
"Because I can. We have a few hours of quiet, at least, plenty for me to return to my ship. It certainly can't hurt."
"Aside from the fact that you'll be getting no sleep whatsoever."
"Ah." Killian gestures, with a flourish, and David's nostrils flare. "There you go, caring again."
"I care that you might leave and never come back."
"That won't be happening," Emma says, from behind them. He and David alike turn to look at her. Killian feels there's a protest waiting on both their lips, but she beats them to it.
"I'm sure as hell not sleeping tonight, no one else will be either if you two won't shut up." She holds up her hand, ticks off her reasoning, the clench in her jaw disallowing any argument. "I can handle myself, and I can do what I want."
She holds up four fingers, as if daring them to contradict her. Her father fidgets beside him, but exhaustion rests heavy on his shoulders, he sways on his feet, and he's hardly the will to fight. David spares him a glance, and though it's not bathed in quite as much disdain as it was before, it's still a grave warning, one which Killian does not take lightly.
"Aye," Killian says, answering the unspoken threat. "We'll return before the fire dies."
David seems satisfied, at least enough to nod, defeated, and retreat back towards the camp, where Baelfire and Snow are fast asleep, apparently able to swallow the dregs of hell and still manage to find peace enough to rest.
"You coming?" Emma says, as though she'd suggested it in the first place.
Killian turns, and quirks a brow. He turns a snide comment over in his mouth, but she's already stomping ahead, gathering her things and dismissing what he's sure is a disbelieving expression on his face.
Emma Swan, he thinks, with some measure of frustration, and, as ever, with some measure of hope.
At the turn of the hour, they're on the path back towards the Jolly Roger, Emma on the lead, and him close behind. She has her sword in hand, hacking zealously at the overgrown vegetation. She's frustrated, he knows. About her son, about Baelfire, about him, and the way she can hardly stand to look at him. He means to talk to her, even at the risk of vitriol returned for curiosity. It's unlikely that she would believe him, that he means to comfort her. And he can hardly blame her, for here on this island, his misdeeds have begun to unearth themselves, one by unforgivable one.
So he remains quiet, sullen even, speaking only when necessary, and watching carefully for signs of danger.
"There's a clearing ahead," he says, to the footprints she leaves behind. "Allow me to check for danger before we cross."
The tone of his voice brooks no argument, which is perhaps precisely why he is none surprised when she huffs, and pulls out her sword.
"Don't be stupid, I can just – "
"You can just…" he says, pauses to curl his hook around her wrist. "You can just attract unwanted attention. I don't doubt your abilities, love, I've simply been here much longer than you."
Emma concedes, but only after a long and heavy sigh, of the sort that live permanently in one's chest. She nods at him, and he nods back before drawing his own blade. He steps carefully around the underbrush. The clearing is nothing more than that, simply a spot that's empty of trees, though their sprawling canopy still hangs overhead, blocking the vast majority of the moonlight. It spills in narrow shafts, down upon the ground. The clearing itself sits low, and wet. A stream flows coolly, slowly just around the bend, but it leads off towards the West, where the Lost Boys often lay their heads at night.
It occurs to him – his feet shifting lightly upon the sandy soil, the rustle of birds overhead, songs of the dead and cries of the lost echoing all around them – that he hasn't been this alone in several days. Though Emma waits behind him, he can feel the weight on his shoulders, of loneliness, of purpose lost.
It's funny, he'd thought it would be the other way around.
"Anything?" she whispers. He listens for a moment longer. There are creatures underfoot, ones that crawl through the earth, others that howl bloody murder in the treetops, still other that lay silently in wait. But nothing seems out of place, not for Neverland.
"No," he says, and he sheathes his sword. He beckons her forward, waits for her to take her place ahead of him, before he goes, directing her quietly as they approach the shore.
"You know," she says, when they break through the tree line. "I guess I never really looked at this place before. It's…"
She gestures weakly, up towards the stars, out where the water shimmers blue-green in the wake of the wind.
"Quite the sight, isn't it," he says. He keeps on, even as he speaks, pulling the oars for the skiff out of the ground, throwing them with a flourish into the hull.
"When it's not trying to kill you," he adds. He plants his foot along the gunwale as she climbs inside. She stumbles, a bit, head thrown back to watch silver-gray clouds overtake the moon. The sand beneath their feet is damp, heavy even, rolling in clods down towards the waterline as they clamber inside the boat. She settles between the oars, but seems content to watch the wind blow, to wait as the mist coalesces into droplets on her face, make her wrinkle her nose.
"Swan," he says. "I'm afraid I left the modified oar on the Jolly."
"What?"
Killian holds up his hook, wiggles it in front of his face. Realization dawns, but she doesn't cower or apologize, simply shifts her behind in place, and grabs at the oars, commands him with all the regal air she'd never believe she can muster to push them off the sandbar.
"That was stupid," she says. "What if you have to leave by yourself?"
He sighs, sips from his flask as they approach the ship. It never would have occurred to him to refuse a solo journey with Emma Swan, but with her biting observations, and honest ignorance of the life he's known, she's like a willful battering ram, obliterating his defenses and using the rubble to reinforce her own.
"If anyone is leaving this island alone," he says, with as much acid as he can feign. "It certainly won't be me."
She looks at him, curious, a flash of something fearful in the ways the oars stutter, and they turn a bit towards the south.
"Careful," he says. This he means to be biting as well, but alas – as it tends to around Emma Swan – it's gentling, soothing even, as he reaches out to steady her hand. She looks away, and he gazes determinedly at the water, until they reach the ship.
"I can row," she says. "But I don't know how the hell you're supposed to…dock this thing."
"If it's a lesson you're after, I'm afraid I charge more than you can afford."
She scoffs, rolls her eyes, and it's a familiar, comfortable sort of exchange. Her irritation seems to put her at ease, and he smiles secretly into the collar of his coat.
"Just climb the stupid thing," she says, as Killian stands and grabs a hold of a ladder made of rope and sturdy wooden slats.
"As the lady commands," he says, and begins his ascent. "Secure the skiff, would you?"
"What the what?"
He turns, huffs, and points at the boat. "Tie this thing – " He points at a hook secured along the hull. " – to that thing. Nice and tight, eh Swan?"
She grumbles, and he waits. To make certain she does it right –
to catch her if she starts to fall
– before he adds, once she's finished to his satisfaction, "There's a satchel beneath the seat, love – "
"Okay, okay," she whinges, knocks clumsily about the boat before she wrenches his leather satchel from its hiding place. "And how exactly did you plan on doing this alone? The rowing? Carrying your crap up the world's deadliest ladder?"
"Oh," he says, as they both begin the climb. He reaches the ledge in moments, but doesn't dare do her the disservice of offering her a hand before she asks for it. "I can row, it's simply far too arduous for my liking, without the modified oar."
"You son of a bitch," she says, without malice. Or at least without much.
He grins, rather fatuous, but something like a smile nonetheless.
"Aye," he agrees. "Now hand me that satchel, would you, darling?"
"Pain in the ass," she adds, when she climbs over the edge. She wipes her hands on her pants, and walks to starboard, satchel swinging by her back all the while. She lifts it over her shoulder, but pulls it out of his reach when he follows.
"What's in this thing anyway?" she says.
"Many and varied items of great importance."
She rolls her eyes, and opens the satchel, much to his displeasure. The first item, of course, is a spare flask, at which she casts him a disparaging look.
"'S bad form to rifle through a man's things, love," he says.
She ignores him, at least until she reaches his perfunctory pair of socks.
"Socks?" she says. "Are you kidding me?"
He grits his teeth, wrenches the bag out of her hands, throws it over his shoulder.
"I keep a spare," he grumbles. He stalks towards the cabin, stomps down the stairs. She follows close, seemingly unaware of nautical etiquette, or at least choosing to ignore it.
"Is it really such a crime to dislike wet feet?" he says, when she throws him another look in his cabin.
"No, I mean, why…" She cuts herself off, then. He expects her to remain quiet, as asking to know any more about him than is absolutely necessary appears to violate one of her unspoken rules.
Or perhaps not – that or perhaps she chooses when and where they are to be followed – because she steels herself against an unseen force and repeats, "Why?"
"Can a man not have a personal preference?"
She huffs. "Not when it's weird and impractical."
"There's nothing impractical, as you say, about avoiding rot and disease."
"Uh, pretty sure you yourself said that it's magic, not hygiene that – "
Killian slams his hook into the table, creating a deep gouge that he already regrets, and more so, a shocked expression on her face that he feels he's always regretted. He stares at her a moment before he looks down, wrenches the point out of the wood with a grunt. Splinters follow in his wake, as they always have, and the mark seems to grow the longer he looks at it, as they always do.
For longer than he cares to know, they simply occupy the same space. He means to say something –
I'm sorry, perhaps.
Pay no attention to the monster behind the man.
– but he simply squirms in place, until he can bear it no longer.
"Wait here a moment, will you?" he says. "I'll check the mainmast. You…" He gestures vaguely at the cabin. It seems rather vacant to offer her suggestions, as she'll likely ignore them. "…do as you please."
Her sigh, pitched low and quivering in her chest, follows him all the way up to the deck.
"Swan," he says, carefully, when he climbs back down the steps. The mainmast, of course, is as damaged as ever. No amount of listless surveying will change that. Even so, he'd stared at it, unseeing, for a quarter of the witching hour before retreating back to the cabin with a flush yet staining his cheeks, staring resolutely at his feet.
She doesn't answer, and he looks up, briefly wonders if she somehow managed to sneak past him in his miserable state. Then –
"Hook," she says.
He turns, finds that she's thrown open one of his chests, and has apparently decided that it will serve as her own, personal armchair. She's managed to find one of his hidden flasks, he notes, but she doesn't drink from it. Only considers the buffed metal, the ornate filigree. She turns it over in her hands – over and over and over – and pauses when it catches the moonlight, filtering blue and overbright, in through the portside window.
It's one of his most ornate, the chest, decorated with onyx and streaks of silver, depicting the tale of a woman who had braved a nest of krakens – breathing the waters of the deep sea only by virtue of the magic of a most vile sorcerer – to save the one she loves. It's always been disturbing to him that it's unclear how the story ends. No doubt, then, given the nature of the piece, she seems surprised at its innards.
"Socks," Emma says. "More socks."
She waits for a moment, then looks up at him. Killian doesn't wish to look her in the eye, but it seems to happen anyway.
"Aye," is his answer. Because it's true. The chest is nearly filled to the brim with socks. There are a few treasures underneath, of course, but he's not one to reveal secrets than have not yet been discovered.
"Seriously," she says. "Why?"
He should know better than to be surprised by her at this point, but it seems par for this journey, at least. That she would be stubborn is rather typical, that she would doggedly attempt to know him is another matter entirely. For a moment, he rolls a lie around on the tip of his tongue, but he can't bring himself to tell it.
"Bilge," he answers, quietly. "When you acted out of turn, you were compelled to stand in the bilge, to scrub the chain-pump, often for a day or more at a time. I've…hated wet socks ever since. I keep extra...just in case."
Silence, heavy silence, until, softly, "You were compelled?"
"I wasn't always a master of the sea."
She looks up at him, catches his eye, and he finds he can't look away. He imagines she sees something she recognizes, judging by the expression on her face, if only because he sees something he recognizes as well.
He clears his throat, closes the distance between them and offers her his hand. "Up you get, love. Those are perfectly clean, and I'd prefer they remain clean."
She rolls her eyes, weakly, and reaches for his hook instead.
If they're playing a game, she's certainly winning.
"Some have fish on them," she says. He quirks a brow, and she continues. "And stripes. And oars, and anchors."
He quirks the other, and waits. Waits and waits, until the rain that's been threatening to fall all evening comes softly on the breeze. If falls gently, as it often does here, in stark contrast to the vile beasts that roam among the groves. It smells sweet – too sweet – but it bites the humid edge off the air, leaves behind a pleasant chill. Each second ticks away, loud and raucous in his mind, made all the more unnerving by the fact that time, in fact, does not move here. They're lost in a moment, and always will be, unless –
"Birds, too," she says, and takes a step forward, until he can feel the heat of her body, brushing up against his. It's as if he doesn't learn, because he expects indecision, despite how deliberately she's done everything since he met her. And so, with a glint in her eye and burning curiosity in the set of her jaw, she grabs a hold of the limp collar of his shirt. Her mouth twists when she tugs, gently, seemingly dissatisfied with the way that it gives beneath her fingertips.
"Swan," he says, and he can hardly recognize the sound of his own voice, even here on his own ship, where every creak of the floorboards, every whinge of the wood against the breeze – it sings in a language only he knows.
"No," she says, perhaps more harshly than she means, because she winces, and stares down at his chest. She pauses, chews at her lip, and quite suddenly, he feels as though he's never been so aroused in his life, never quite so torn as to what to do about it.
"Don't," she says. "Just…"
She looks up at him, then, and he catches something in her eyes. Many somethings, in fact. Only, he can't quite put them in order, can't quite give them a name. But he thinks he spots desire in among them, for one, and a question, too. And he answers it, or at least tries to, by letting his knees bend, letting his neck go slack, and letting her pull his lips to hers.
Her mouth…it tastes different this time. As though the kiss they'd shared before was bathed in dry, unbridled power, the sort that fizzles in the air just before a storm. But for now, at least, the storm has passed, and he can taste the rain on her tongue, can feel relief in the figures she draws on the roof of his mouth, on the wandering path she takes along his teeth. She tastes new and familiar all at once, and he can't help the quiver in his knees, nor the graceless stumble in his step when she pushes him back towards the bed. His legs meet the frame and he drops to the mattress with a quiet oomph. She follows him, settling heavy in his lap. Somehow, he manages to be both vigorous and subdued. His hook rests lightly on the bed beside them. His hand barely skims her waist.
His mouth, however, opens wide against hers. He dips in, again and again, tasting both rum and coconut on her tongue. She dips back, and he wonders what she feels, what she tastes. If the violent centuries echo in the way that he kisses the corners of her mouth, if the person he's become is written in the scars all over his back, giving way beneath the tips of her fingers.
"Stop," she says. She pushes his coat off his shoulders, fiddles with the buckles at his waist. "Stop waiting."
He pulls back, and looks up at her, but she's not interested in looking at him, doesn't care for what she sees. He's half a mind to push her away, but then –
"For like five fucking minutes, can I just…" She stutters, her eyelashes flutter, and she sighs. She undoes the last of the buckles on his vest, and pushes it off as well.
"Can I just not think?" she says. To the universe, he imagines, more so than him. If he were a stronger man, perhaps he would refuse. Perhaps he would demand some sort of courtship, turn her away with sarcasm, diffuse the tension that builds with each rolls of her hips, and his in reply. If he were less selfish, he wouldn't take what she's giving.
But then she scratches gently over his back with one hand, the other grabbing tufts of his hair. She breathes against his collarbone, and he finds himself answering, not with words, but with a steady pressure on her thigh, pushing down until he's sure she can feel the heat of him through the laces on his pants. She grunts, straight in to his mouth, before she tilts her head, and kisses him again.
And oh, how she kisses. Not like any other he's held before, who kiss when words run out. She kisses like she speaks – no unnecessary embellishments or metaphorical foreplay – and seems to say more with her tongue on his than when it's behind her own teeth.
"I – " she starts, reach down for his pants, but he's already ahead of her. He nudges her back, and she takes care of her own clothing while he pulls at the strings below his waist. By the time he's managed to pull enough of them free, she's already grabbed a hold of them, fisting the leather in her hands and yanking until he's bare enough for their purpose. He means to scoot back on the bed, to lie down so she can fuck him at her leisure, but she stops him with her hands clutching at his shoulders.
"No," she says. She clambers up onto his lap, missing a half-step with another swell in the water, lacking the extra boost provided by the heel in her boots. She's completely bare from the waist down, so when she sits, his cock brushes over her folds, and he fears he may very well come on the spot.
Emma.
He nearly speaks her name. And though he knows it was she who insisted they stop their tiptoeing, he wonders what he'll do that will cross the line.
So he gets on with it, the pressure rising in his belly. He can feel the flush on his face, can see it answered in the rosy red the disappears beneath the neck of her shirt, that crawls up the slope of her neck to the tips of her ears. He leans back, and catches her eye with a deliberate waggle of his brow.
"Ready?" he says, and reaches down, slips his fingers over her clit. She certainly feels ready, and the slickness on his fingers makes his cock twitch. But in his experience, his lovers have always known best.
Emma, though, she seems perturbed by the question. She tilts her head, and bites at her lip, considers him, as though she's never seen him before.
"Yeah?" she answers, but it's half a question. He mirrors her tilt, rubs a bit harder between her thighs, and she repeats, breathless, "Yeah."
She looks away, then, and he has the distinct feeling that she won't be looking back. So he makes certain to catch the flecks of burnished gold in her eyes before she presses her cheek against his hair, chin resting over his shoulder. She lifts up on her knees, and he leans on his hook so he can reach between them, hold himself steady while she sinks down.
"Gods," he says. He can't help it. She's warm, all around him, and wet. She breathes, deep, arches her back, pressed tight against his chest as she takes him even deeper. He thinks he feels her nod, but he fears he's lost all sense of reality when she rises up on her knees, until he nearly slips out of her, and then rolls back down.
"Swan," he says. This too, is rather involuntary, what with the rhythm she sets, and that he follows, an upward thrust for every one of her down. She doesn't answer him, only scratches harder at his back, and buries her hand in his hair.
She likes to touch your hair, something whispers, something younger, not yet lost to the years he's lived in violence, in depravity.
Sod off, he thinks, and wraps his left arm around her, frees the other to wriggle between them, to draw faltering circles over her clit.
It's hardly a minute or two – long, heady thrusts, feet planted against the floorboards as he slides in and out – before she comes. Her rhythm falters, and she grabs at the back of his head. He bites down on his lip, hard, when he can feel her tighten around him, when he can feel the press of her breasts along his chest, a warm, pleasant weight even between the layers of fabric. He holds back as she comes, presses his face against her collarbone, breathes as evenly as he can, stirring the hair that falls over her face.
"Come," she whispers, against his ear. And he nearly does, the wash of her breath over his neck, the word pitched low and settling somewhere in his sternum. But he reaches up, pushes down on her shoulder, and stills inside of her.
"Not inside," he says. He breathes once more, counts to ten in three different languages while her hand slides from his back, up into his hair, while the other takes hold of his hand on her shoulder and, rather unceremoniously, throws it off.
"I can't get…" she trails off, and rotates her hips. He groans, loud and long, digging his fingers into her thigh. "I have a…a thing…"
She moves again, this time sharper, and he can feel the sweat prickling out over his back.
"…in my…" she continues, and she leans back, looks down at his lap, and pats at her stomach. She looks up, at a spot on his chin, before she presses her cheek against his shoulder, rocks back and forth, another strangled sound, falling unbidden out of his mouth.
"It's fine," she says. "Just come."
She sets another rhythm, this one quicker than the last, and he's helpless to follow, to come as she bids, deep inside of her. She kisses him when he does, teeth sinking into his lips, tongue dragging against his. It's wet, harsh, rather impersonal, belying the way that she slows her hips, and he in turn, drawing out the pleasure he feels, somewhere deep in his bones, somewhere only she can reach. She pulls away when the last of the tremors cease, when he can feel his release trickling down towards his thighs. He feels cold, bereft, and he has to dig his hook into the wood of the bedframe, clutch at the patchwork throw beneath him – soft, warn fabric, slipping gently through his fingers – to stop himself from reaching for her.
After a moment, he rises to unsteady feet, redoing the laces of his pants as fast as he can before he steps over to a neat, brass basin in the corner. Washcloths lie stacked in the chest beside it. The water in the basin is tepid, but clean. He submerges the cloth, squeezes out the excess before he hands it to her with nary a word.
"Thanks," she says. All at once, tension settles back into the room. He imagines what it would be like to be able to fuck her, to entreat her and to hear her say yes. To drop to his knees and worship her straight to orgasm, at least thrice more. But he knows it's a –
"One – "
" – time thing, yes darling, I know."
– and so he at least does her the courtesy of turning his back while she cleans herself. She places the cloth on the edge of the basin when she's finished, and he waits until the telltale rustle of clothing ceases before he turns. He means to walk past her, to rush straight up to the deck before he loses her forever, to a whim, to the ephemeral feeling of her body around his, one that could never outlast the knot in his chest, the stirring down deep in his bones when she looks him in the eye and tells him what he's done is good.
But she catches him, hand falling gently on his shoulder, for hardly a moment before it falls at her side.
"Weapons, right?"
He nods, but doesn't look at her. "Aye, in the chest by the bed.
And then he adds, wryly, and to her answering huff, "The other chest."
Once they gather their weapons, and he replenishes his supply of spare socks, and spare rum, they gather on the forecastle. He watches the winds, silently, waiting for a sign that the storm will grow worse. For a moment, at least, Emma stands beside him and he allows himself to wonder what it would be like, what it would have been like. If he'd met her before. Before his crusade against the Dark One, even before he'd lost his brother to the violent greed of an immoral king. He wonders what she would have seen, if the man he had been – if any incarnation of himself – would have been able to win her heart.
At the very least, she seems content to stand beside him, to wait while he considers the sky. Before the spell can be broken, he reaches inside his coat, and produces a pair of socks, specifically the very same that she'd eyed in the cabin hardly a half hour ago, with the –
"Fishies," he says, the word unfamiliar, almost unbearably saccharine on the tip of his tongue, something she'd said while she rifled through his belongings. But when she reaches out, gingerly takes them from his hand, she looks up at him, and smiles. It's wan, yet distrustful, a little sarcastic even, but it's the closest thing to genuine gratitude, to approval, that he's seen in ages. It's like sipping at sweet water, after centuries of salt, and he feels desire swell within him. Not the same that rests warm, down deep in his belly, but the one that hides behind the terrible things he's done, the one that had branded a maddening need for both darkness and light the day his father had left him at sea.
"Are you…" She pauses, and looks up at him from beneath her lashes. "…giving these to me?"
He shrugs. "Unless you'd rather I didn't."
She hums, and takes them from his hand. She considers them a moment, and plucks at the weaker threads, runs her fingers over the blue and white and green that makes for, at least in his opinion, a rather weak imitation of the creatures that live in the sea.
"I guess I could use a spare," she says, reaches around him and tucks them into his satchel. "In addition to the ones I already stole from you, I mean."
She leaves his side, then, and he can't help but to smile. The rain, he's long since decided, is calm enough, will likely be over before they can row back to shore. Emma, for all her unbearable intelligence, seems to understand this, and hastily climbs down the ladder to the skiff waiting down by the hull.
He's right about the rain, of course, but the warm petrichor follows them all the way back to the camp. As he suspected, her rather forgiving disposition does not. She settles in beside the dying light of the fire a handful of hours before dawn. The hunch of her shoulders, the steel in the set of her spine, it warns him away, warns him to never speak of this. So he melts into the tree line, watches them all from afar. Only when midnight crawls towards the stiller hours of dawn does he allow himself to run his fingers through his hair, to tap disbelievingly at his lips, to remember – in vivid detail – the way that she writhed above him.
One foot on land, the other at sea. He wonders which she'll choose, at least until the rest of their party stirs, and he sets his mind back to the task so delicately, so desperately at hand.
"Hook," she says.
It's days later, he thinks, although he can't be sure, not with the way the miserable magic of Neverland had swallowed up the daylight. All he's certain of is that her boy is safe upon his ship, and that he has his mother's face, set in Milah's thirst for adventure.
"Aye?" he says. It's all he says, and she seems taken aback, for a moment. He wonders if his adoration is beginning to show on his face. He clears his throat, pulls back his shoulders and says –
"What is it, love?"
She regards him for a stiff moment, and the urge to hang his head rises hard and heady in the back of this throat.
"I just…" She pauses for a moment, crosses her arms over her shoulder. "I stole your socks."
He quirks a brow, can't help that laughter that slips out of his mouth. She seems bewildered by this as well, and it occurs to him that he's never laughed in front of her before, that he hasn't truly, freely laughed in quite some time. An ache settles in his chest, and his laughter quickly fades. He gazes hard into her eyes, and longs to know what she sees, what she thinks. She's an open book, certainly, but she won't hardly let him turn the page.
"For Henry," she elaborates. She looks up at him, then down at his feet. She runs her fingers, gently, along the railing set aside the gunwale on the maindeck. A stray wind catches the sail. He can hear the whistle of the air through the window frames along the port side. A wave crests, and the ship rocks. None to his surprise, she sways along with it, seems to subconsciously stay level on her feet.
"Keep them," he says.
She peeks up at him from beneath her lashes. She blinks, rapidly, in succession, and he courteously looks out at the water.
"You can't be warm without socks," she says, quietly.
He smiles, then, and it feels both familiar and unfamiliar on his face. The starlight on the water brightens, and he glances back at her before raising his head to watch the constellations twinkle above them.
"Indeed," he says. And he means to say more –
Take them all.
Anything for you.
Please, let me look at you.
– but she walks away. Her shirt flutters, her boots stomp across the bow. Killian watches her walk away. Each time he wonders if it's the last. Each time he stares her up and down, if only to remember the way her left heel bounces when her foot lands, the way she seems to step heavier on the right, the way the gentle waves in her hair sway, catching on her shirt, and turning the light back at him in swells of gold. To remember the way that she fiddles with her fingertips, the way she tilts her head, should he never see her again, should he reach the end of the line. The way that she doesn't look back, although –
"Oh, hey," she says, and then she does. He tilts his head, and his hair falls limp over his forehead. He pushes it away with his hook, and she stops, considers him a moment, before she goes on, "Thanks."
He smiles, and sways on his feet, swaggers the way that she expects.
"You're welcome to steal from me any time you wish," he answers.
She nods, stiffly, clearly having reached her limit. So he defers, bows his head and retreats to the helm. What he doesn't tell her, of course, is that –
"You already have," he says, to himself, to the spindles on the wheel before him, to the wind that catches his words and throws them aft. And to the island that he leaves behind, hoping never to return. He thinks, perhaps, for the first time in centuries, that which lies ahead, holds more interest than that which lies behind.
Even if it's making a habit of stealing his clothes, stealing everything he owns, really, everything he is.
Even if the ones with the fishies, as she says, are his favorite.