Title: Bella Notte
Summary: Dinner had flown by, as had dessert. Neither of them had been willing to end the evening, though, so they'd come out here to have a few more moments together without taking up one of Tony's tables.
Spoilers: 4x04, "The Apprentice."
Characters: Emma and Killian. Captain Swan, lovelies!
Rating/Warning: K+. Because swear words. I would apologize for any feels this may give you, but I think we all know by now that I never apologize. ;)
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I promise I'll return everything the way I found it.
Author's Note: ClaraFrench asked me for a two-handed Killian story with a Captain Swan slow dance. Since I try not to go AU, I decided to add onto the Captain Swan date and ... well, this is what happened. For the purposes of this story, we can pretend Tony's is down by the harbor, yes? :) Feedback makes my day! Enjoy. :)
If this was what all dates with Killian Jones were like, Emma Swan would take it in a heartbeat.
Of course, not all dates could begin with Emma introducing her centuries-old pirate to new food. She'd wanted chicken marsala. She'd decided on the chicken marsala. And yet when the waiter came to take their order, a request for cheese ravioli had tumbled out of her mouth instead.
Apparently, on a level she hadn't even realized herself, she'd really wanted ravioli. Which was fine with her; pockets of pasta stuffed with ricotta and spinach were just as good as chicken marsala.
Killian had then shot her a quizzical expression, and it had taken her a moment to realize … he didn't know what ravioli was. Which, she had to say, was a travesty that needed to be rectified effective immediately. "They're essentially dumplings filled with cheese," she'd told him.
Much to her amusement, Killian's had eyes lit up and he'd ordered the same.
While waiting for their food to arrive, she'd told him of the foster mother who'd introduced her to ravioli in the first place, real ravioli, not that stuff from a can. Emma was living in her house the Christmas she'd turned nine, and the woman had made both cheese and beef ravioli from scratch for the holiday dinner. It was the first and only time Emma had ever eaten homemade ravioli, but she still remembered how the kitchen had smelled that day, warm and comforting
It was the first and only time … until tonight.
The second the waiter had set her plate in front of her, Emma could tell that the ravioli at Tony's was handmade. Like, old-school handmade. The edges had been sealed together with the tines of a fork! And good God, they had been delicious.
Killian apparently agreed. "I must say, Swan," he said as they walked along the pier behind Tony's, "the ravioli was a marvelous choice."
She smirked. "I'm glad you enjoyed, Captain."
Dinner had flown by, as had dessert. Neither of them had been willing to end the evening, though, so they'd come out here to have a few more moments together without taking up one of Tony's tables.
Killian and Emma were the only two on the pier. The moon was shining brightly in the sky above, the stars twinkling. With all human activity in the harbor over for the night, the water was calm and peaceful. It wasn't at all hard to pretend that out here, they were the only two people in the world.
And Emma liked it. Her heart was fluttering, for crying out loud. Emma Swan did not do the heart fluttering thing. She'd done the heart fluttering thing once. In the end, she might as well have drawn a Community Chest card: go directly to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. The heart fluttering thing, then, normally terrified her.
But not with him. Not with Killian. With Killian, the heart fluttering thing was new and exciting and fun and yeah, a little scary, but the good kind of scary. The kind of scary that resulted when one took a chance that ended up opening a whole new wonderful world.
Smiling softly, Emma reached down, took Killian's hand in hers, and threaded their fingers together. The two of them drew to a stop at the end of the pier, only releasing hands to rest their arms on the railing as they stared out at the sea.
"I always did enjoy nights like this," Killian said softly, his eyes trained ahead of him. Emma watched as his gaze darted around, taking in everything with the practiced skill of a sea captain. "Nights when there's no real wind, no storms, no choppy water. Nights when the Jolly Roger rocked gently in the current, when I could sit on deck and just let the calmness envelop me."
He inhaled deeply, filling his nose with the salt air. Emma eyed him, a little twinge of doubt curling in her stomach. Before she had the chance to think better of it, she asked, "Do you miss it?"
Killian now trained that practiced, attentive gaze on her. "Miss what, love?"
"The sea. Being out on the open ocean. Do you miss it?"
He smiled softly, gently, reassuringly. "Aye, a little. The sea was my home for centuries. A part of me will probably always miss it. However ..." He trailed off, searching her eyes as if to gauge how she would react to what he was about to say.
Something in her eyes must have given him courage because he finished his thought. "However, perhaps I had it incorrect for all those centuries. Perhaps home wasn't what I thought it was."
And there it was. Not so long ago, an admission like that would have sent Emma running in other direction. It would have been too honest, too terrifying, just too much for her to handle.
Now, though … now it warmed her heart. Because she understood. Because she agreed. Because she'd learned her own lesson about what home was and how it was defined, not as a place but the people with whom one shared one's life. "I hear that one," she smiled.
Killian smiled back.
A breeze blew in off the ocean, salty and fresh but chilly. The smile on Killian's lips grew wider for a brief moment only to drop into a concerned frown when Emma let out an involuntary shiver. A pirate captain who'd spent centuries on the open ocean had grown accustomed to the cold ocean breeze but a savior in a wispy sleeveless dress clearly had not. "Here, love," Killian said as he shrugged off his jacket and draped it around her shoulders.
It was totally a cheesy boyfriend move but damn if it didn't make Emma feel somewhat weak in the knees. "Thanks," she said, smiling somewhat shyly. She slipped her arms into the sleeves and inhaled the deep leather scent that, despite the jacket's newness, somehow already smelled like him. Like salt and rum and fresh ocean air.
And as they stood there looking out at the ocean, Emma in her pink dress and Killian's leather jacket, it struck Emma that the two of them probably looked like a cheesy postcard from the 1950s or a high school production of Grease or something.
All thoughts of how cheesy the two of them must have looked fled from her mind when Killian reached down for her hand. And damn if her heart didn't flutter again when he initiated the finger entwining this time.
For a long moment, they just stood there, enjoying the peace and each other's company. There was something so calming about the sea. The way the tiny waves crested along the surface. The way the gulls circled overhead and landed on the water in search of food. The way fish surfaced for a scant few seconds every so often, causing little ripples and bubbles among the waves.
It was no wonder that Emma often found herself near a body of water when she needed to think, needed to calm down, or just needed to escape for a few minutes. And it was no wonder that her pirate captain had made his home there. It was his way of calming the inner turmoil he'd faced.
She knew, because she'd faced it, too. The inner turmoil of abandonment and betrayal and lost love and believing that being alone was easier and better than being with people in any kind of meaningful sense.
But that was also where the both of them had been wrong. The definition of home wasn't finding a solitary place to calm the inner turmoil. It was finding the people whom one could trust to help calm the inner turmoil.
Soft accordion music began to play from a speaker somewhere behind Emma and Killian, startling the both of them. They whirled around, releasing hands, to find Tony grinning at them from the back doorway of the restaurant. After giving them a wink, he ducked back into the building to allow them their privacy.
Emma's cheeks flushed in sheepish embarrassment. Only then did it finally strike her exactly where they were. "Oh my God, we're at Tony's," she muttered, half-horrified and half-amused.
Tony's, as in that Tony. As in the Tony who fed a couple of dogs a plate of spaghetti and meatballs and then serenaded them. Holy crap, were all of the movies she watched as a kid real?
"Aye, love," Killian replied. Judging from the slight confusion clouding his eyes, he had no idea what the big deal was. "Is there something wrong?"
"No," she sighed, smiling despite herself at the ridiculousness of it. "Not at all."
Killian must have taken her at her word because he smiled, held his hand out to her, and said teasingly, "Since we've now got musical accompaniment, may I have this dance?"
Maybe it was the wine she'd consumed at dinner or maybe she just didn't give a damn because she and her pirate were the only ones around. Or maybe she was throwing caution to the wind because this was how falling was supposed to feel. No matter the reason, Emma smiled at her pirate and slipped her hand into his. "Of course."
When he started to assume waltz position, something inside her that she couldn't quite put her finger on made her shake her head at him, take his hands in hers, and place them on her hips. "My world, my rules."
He clearly hadn't been expecting that; the telltale shock in his eyes was more than comical. He was even more surprised when she placed her hands on his shoulders, closing the distance between them considerably. It was admittedly a touch junior prom of her, but, well... by the time most kids her age were going to junior prom, she was a runaway orphan living on the streets so she figured she was allowed.
"Forgive me, love," Killian said, his voice trembling slightly from nerves, "but I'm afraid I don't know this dance."
Emma grinned at him. "Well, it's a good thing you picked a partner who knows what she's doing."
Smiling at the echo of his own words to her, Killian happily let her lead. Since there wasn't much to a slow dance, Killian got the hang of it quickly. Emma just as happily let him take over lead, and being so close with him … well, her heart was doing that damn fluttering thing again.
"You did a fine job planning this evening, Captain," she said after a moment of quiet.
"Thank you, love. It was my pleasure."
The smile on her face morphed into a teasing smirk. "So, how much extra did you have to pay Tony to turn the music on for us?"
He looked down at her with a faux-scandalized expression. "I'm wounded! I did nothing of the sort. The owner of this establishment must have decided to do so himself."
And though his cartoon counterpart may have had time at the end of an evening to serenade a couple of dogs in an alley, it was nowhere near closing time and real-life Tony seemed to have his hands full with a bustling restaurant. "The owner of this establishment has an establishment to run," Emma reminded him. "I highly doubt he makes a habit of coming out here just to see if any people on a date might need some soft music to set the mood."
Killian simply grinned at her.
She sighed; he was never going to admit it, was he? Might as well play along, then. "Either way," she smiled, "I'm glad he did."
The amount of happiness that lit his eyes when she said so told her everything she needed to know. "I'm glad he did, too," he agreed, mostly to keep up appearances. And then ever so tentatively, ever so hesitantly – and God, her heart was pounding in anticipation – he leaned in for a kiss.
Much like the night they returned from the past, this kiss was sweet, tender, and knee-weakening. Emma's hands crept into Killian's hair, her fingers clutching at and combing through his thick locks. Killian's hands curled around Emma's back, holding her impossibly closer.
Everything melted away: the chill of the air, the sounds of the sea, the faint chattering from the restaurant, even the music. For that one blissful moment, it was just the two of them, suspended in time in their own little corner of the world. And when they finally broke for air, grinning and eyes only for each other, both their hearts were fluttering.
Tony left the music on, and Emma and Killian stayed, holding each other, swaying in time to the music, and basking in the simple acting of being together. And they easily could have stayed there for hours – days, forever – but the chill of the evening ocean air eventually became too much for Emma. When her teeth began to chatter, Killian gave her a gentle smile. "Come, love," he said, pulling away from her grip but immediately grasping her hand to maintain their physical connection. "Let's get you away from the water."
Emma had no desire to leave, mostly because she just did not want this evening to end. She wanted to stay right here with Killian, the two of them in their own little world of soft music and salt air. Another shiver ran down her spine, though, and she nodded in agreement.
And so they began the walk to the apartment. Killian once again threaded their fingers together as they walked. Emma smiled before raising his arm and draping it around her shoulders.
Oh yes, if this was what all dates with Killian Jones were like, Emma would indeed take it in a heartbeat.