Prompt: "you live in the apartment above me and everyday I can hear you singing in the shower but you're really good and it makes my day" au
Rating: Soft M.
A/N: Sometimes, I have what I call "Murphy" days, where fucking everything goes wrong. And today was one of those days. So I decided to get past it by playing with an au prompt while I wait for my energy to replenish for the final stretch of "Routines". Enjoy my OT3 of Killian + Emma + water. (Unedited, so apologies for stray typos.)
Killian Jones moves into his third floor apartment on October 22. He finally collapses onto his mattress (bed frame to be delivered at a date in the near future) at three o'clock in the morning. He wakes up entirely too early at eight to get started on unpacking all of the boxes he meticulously carried up the stairs by himself the day before. Other than the mattress, he's yet to own a single piece of furniture minus a folding chair and a card table. At least he has a coffee pot.
He sets that to work and wanders into the bathroom, starts the shower, and steps in before it's fully warm to jumpstart his body into being alert again. As he's rinsing the shampoo from his hair, he hears the shower in the apartment above his turn on. He cringes, waits for the water pressure or the temperature to change, but nothing happens so he gladly continues. He's stepping under the spray when he hears the first notes.
On October 23, she sings "Bohemian Rhapsody" while she showers. The whole thing. Including the guitar solos, high parts, low parts, and the piano sections. He stands under the water of his own shower listening (and holding back from joining in) until the water runs cold and he forces himself out.
He doesn't hear her for a week. He spends the majority of his free time unpacking and directing delivery men to place his furniture, but he can't get her voice out of his head. He lurks through the lobby and takes his time on the stairs in hopes of seeing who lives above him, but between settling into a new place and working, he figures they must hold different hours.
On October 30, she sings "American Pie" in its entirety, and from what he can tell (and he's straining to hear the whole time) she's singing it all from memory without the music to fall back on. And he's impressed. And now more than a little curious.
When he falls into a steady pattern of work, he finds he actually holds much the same morning schedule as his upstairs neighbor. He walks in on either the very beginning of the song sometimes, and others he is climbing into his shower just as she's singing the last notes.
On November 13, she sings "Hey Jude" and it gets stuck in his head for the rest of the day. He finds himself humming it for the rest of the day, sometimes without even realizing it. When he gets home from work, he checks his mailbox and collects his mail, then starts slowly making his way up the stairs as he sorts between junk, bills, and a card from his brother. He's humming the whole time. He swears he hears the front door open and someone make a noise behind him, but when he looks back the lobby is empty, so he returns to his task and heads to his apartment.
While everyone else is spending time with their families on Thanksgiving, he spends time alone in his apartment working. He has no desire to go anywhere into the city today, thanks to the hordes of shoppers all out to get their deals.
On November 26, she sings "Under Pressure" and he notices that she gets really into Freddie Mercury's parts. He actually stands under the water and debates going up to knock when he's out of the shower to ask if she's okay. He doesn't know her (could be a girl, woman, possibly man with a falsetto voice), but he suddenly feels like they need a friend, and possibly a drinking buddy.
Later in the night he's wandering down to the laundry room to switch over to the dryer when he catches a glimpse of long blonde hair going up the stairs, humming as she goes. At the very least, she seems to have survived her day, and she is definitely a she.
Right before the holidays, she switches it up. Sometimes she's singing Christmas songs, sometimes two or three in a row, and others she's sticking to what mostly seems to be a collection of classic rock.
On December 8, she sings "Torn" and it actually takes all of the restraint he can manage to not laugh or sing along. Either response would alert his neighbor of his morning entertainment and it makes his days about a thousand times better to hear her voice mixing with the sound of rushing water and bouncing off old ceramic. But this particular song is so far out of her repertoire that he figures it must be a guilty pleasure song, much like he listens to Backstreet Boys when he's cleaning because there's just something about vacuuming and jamming to that at the same time.
He runs directly into her on Christmas morning when he's doing laundry again. Once again, he's far from family to celebrate any kind of holiday with, so he uses it as an excuse to clean his whole apartment in some attempt to start the New Year off properly.
They do that weird side-step dance on the stairwell as he's going up and she's going down and they end up laughing and agreeing to each move to their right on the count of three.
"See you around," she says.
"I certainly hope so," he says. He didn't mean it to be quite so full of implication, but the words escape from him on their own and he just blushes and scratches behind his ear nervously. She just chuckles, though, and continues on her way down to the laundry room.
They run into each other four more times throughout the day with either laundry or garbage or rushing back from the grocer at the last minute. When he opens his door and almost crashes directly into her and what he assumes is the comforter of her bed, he sucks it up and asks her if she wants to eat with him.
"I don't have meals with strangers," she says, one eyebrow quirking up at him, small smirk playing on her lips.
"Well, I'm Killian. And as you can probably tell, I'm not from around here. I've no one to dine with tonight," he tells her plainly.
"It's nice to meet you, Killian," she says, reaching around the comforter to shake his hand. "I'll be down at six thirty."
On New Year's Eve, she sings "Somebody to Love" and before he can really talk himself out of it, he's walking up the stairs with a bottle of rum and a smile that he hopes comes off as charming instead of lecherous. They drink the rum while sitting across from each other at her small table. They make idle chit chat until midnight and she practically hauls him across the table when the ball drops to fuse their lips together.
He stumbles back to his apartment shortly after, more drunk off her lips than the alcohol, chased down the stairs by her throaty goodnight and he stops on the stairs long enough to turn and wink at her and wish her a happy new year.
He doesn't get to see her for the rest of the week, and she returns to songs he's heard her sing before.
On January 10, he's just finishing his shower on a lazy Saturday morning when he hears her start singing "I Want You" and he has to knock the faucet to cold for a minute to stop the blood from all draining to his groin. He cuts off the shower before she starts the second verse and doesn't really think when he starts singing the second repetition along with her. He hears something clatter to the floor above him. Within a minute, he's outside her door in just a pair of track pants and a t-shirt, both clinging where he didn't fully dry himself off.
She pulls him in when she opens the door and pushes him back against the wood when it's closed behind him. She's already kissing him, and it takes more time than he's willing to admit for him to notice that she's only wearing underwear, but her lips are rather distracting.
They make it as far as the hallway outside her bedroom and after, they collapse on the itchy carpet in a tangle of glorious, sweaty, and naked limbs. She asks how long he's been listening. He can tell her the exact date. He asks about her song choices, and she explains that it's how she measures how long she's in the shower.
"We'll have to duet sometime," he tells her, and then she's dragging him to the bathroom to test out their joint vocals in only one bathroom.