Part 2: Surprise
Emma stirred from the bed. Sighing contentedly she opened her eyes, feeling well rested for the first time in a long long time. It felt peaceful, and though she wouldn't say it – it was definitely deserved. After spending so long taking on one disaster after another, a little TLC was really overdue. She felt that ever since the day Henry had found her, life was just throwing her one curveball after the next. Endless dramas, magical chaos, fairytale catastrophes. Despite all the complications that seem to pop up continuously, it was still a hell of a lot better than her life beforehand. Pre-Storybrooke, life had been one cold bitch for the most part. Amidst all the craziness now, she could at least say that she had a family to get through it.
Still, getting up feeling like she could finally slow down and take in a moment and not have to worry about impending doom, well that kind of morning was a huge success in her book.
Now, if only she could move.
Shaking her hair off her face, she shifted her head slightly, trying to gather her bearings.
She felt warm. Cozy and snug like she was wrapped up in a swaddle of blankets. It was nice. Comfortable.
And it was breathing.
Her eyes widened. Oh shit. Tossing a look over a shoulder, she was met with none other than Hook's face. Much too close to her own.
Dangerously close.
Trying not to wake him (because god knows he would have a field day with this) she tried to move as little as possible while evaluating their positions. Somehow during the night he had managed to find his way over to her side of the bed, and somehow she had managed to not make good on her promise and let him.
Is this shit for real?
He was currently lying with his entire front pressed up to her back, his good hand casually strung over her waist, his face practically nuzzling her hair. She in turn was lying back into his embrace, with her legs tangled up in his.
What. The. Hell.
How did she allow this? Asleep or not, Emma liked to think that she had a pretty good awareness of herself at all times and in all states of consciousness. She should have stopped this. She was usually such a light sleeper, how in all the hell had Hook managed to worm his way around and fucking cocoon her without her noticing? She hadn't felt his arm on her, or his breath on her neck. Or even felt her legs brushing the outside of his.
Maybe she was broken?
Completely void of being able to feel anything inside or out? Wouldn't that be fitting. The thought left a bitter after-taste in her mind. And it certainly held no weight considering she could feel every single part of him in that precise moment.
It should have felt really awkward.
It certainly felt really intimate.
If she hadn't been wearing clothes, she would've woken up wondering what she'd gotten up to in his bed last night. It was all too close and wreaking of a snuggling-after-sex scenario. And she didn't even do snuggling. The last time she'd ever felt the naïve need for that was over a decade ago with a guy who came with a cheeky smirk and a penchant for thievery.
I guess some things never change, she figured, eyeing her bed partner.
However it had happened, she needed right now for it to un-happen.
She just had to work out how to do that without making Hook aware of their current predicament. Looking over at the sleeping pirate in bed with her, she couldn't help but notice how utterly different he looked while he was asleep. His face completely at ease. The worries and dark thoughts often lining his face had been smoothed out, the haunted look in his eyes was gone. There was a serene air about him, his lips drawn out without expression – or that godforsaken smirk – his hair ruffled in his sleepy wanderings, sticking out on one side. It all seemed so boyish and innocent and almost sweet.
All those things he prided himself on not being.
Figures, she snorted.
Still. As much as she wanted to, there was no denying that this side of him had a certain appeal. He was not Hook.
He was Killian Jones.
Who was boyish and sweet at some point (she wasn't too sure about the innocent part, that smirk was just a little too sinful to have procured overnight).
It was hard to try and picture what he might have been like back then. A different sort of person. A guy that was younger, full of cheek, flirtation and enjoyment for life. A regular pirate with a code, who had managed to do the unexpected and fall in love. And fall hard. So hard that he spent three hundred years trying to avenge the loss of that love. His revenge had always seemed like such an ugly evil obsessive anger to most people. She imagined that's why even her parents had found it hard to form a truce with him in Neverland. But she had never quite seen it that way. To her it was strangely beautiful. To have loved someone so much that having them torn from your life led you down a dark path to do anything and everything humanly possible to find the justice they deserved. To love someone so much that for three hundred angst filled years, their ghost still haunts you, their absence fills you to the point that you can focus on nothing but avenging them.
He had loved Milah more than words could say.
Emma knew that simply from the man he is now. The things that he had done.
She had always believed that actions speak louder than words. And looking at Hook, his actions contradicted his words more often than not. He gave off airs of being a survivor, but he had hoped to reunite with Milah when Rumplestiltskin went at him. He flirted with women like the world's number one womaniser, but the whole act of his revenge and his focus on it only proved what a complete monogamist he really was. And for someone who was convinced that he was better of alone he was always making sure she never felt that way, always reassuring her that he understood her.
Even when no one else did.
The man behind the words was a hell of a lot more complicated than the words belied themselves.
And she couldn't help that feeling inside, that spark of curiosity – and something else – that made her want to indulge herself in him. Get to know him better. Understand him. Know the man behind the actions, not the man uttering the words.
But she had her own problems with that train of thought.
And quick as a flash, she got rid of it.
He is not for you Emma.
Taking one last look, she got a grip and started adjusting their positions.
Being careful not to make any sudden movements, she started to retract her legs slowly from his. If she could just get them onto the floor, then she could slide the rest of herself out from his grasp.
Which was quite strong considering.
Emma was having real trouble trying to shift his arm from around her.
How can he have such a bloody strong grip when he's asleep?
Placing her hand on top of his, she tried prying his fingers off one by one. When that didn't work, she attempted to interlock their hands and coax it away from her body. Again, no joy. Huffing, she tried stroking his hand slightly in efforts to soothe it off herself. It seemed to work for a moment. His fingers seemed to stretch out a little as though making to move off. She heard a soft sigh from behind her and stilled immediately, thinking that he was about to wake. He shifted a little, his feet stretching back to hers as he dropped his head back into the crook of her neck, inhaling slowly but without waking as she'd thought. If anything he was wrapped right back around her as before.
Just fucking great.
Thinking things couldn't get any worse, she stiffened as his hand suddenly moved from its casual position around her stomach, and drifted north.
Landing soundly…
…on top of her breast.
I am going to kill him.
Reaching for his hand, she grabbed it and wrenched it backwards.
Hard.
"What the-"
His hand immediately tore from hers as he sprang up in bed. He looked so disorientated that she would've laughed…if she wasn't so pissed off at him.
"Love if you wanted my undivided attention, I could think of better uses for those hands of yours" He mumbled sleepily, rubbing his eyes open.
"You're lucky you still have that hand!"
He looked over at her confused for a moment before that smirk made its way back onto his face. She could feel her eyes preparing to roll right out of her sockets. She hated that he insisted of getting up close and personal all the damn time. She hated that her body reacted immediately. And she really hated that he managed to look so damn good at the bloody crack of dawn. Seriously? Was there ever a time that he didn't look like he'd just rolled off a magazine cover?
And the way he was looking at her right now, his eyes searching for something in hers. What was he expecting to find? She had no idea what it was he was looking for but what surprised her more was that she actually let him.
"I do quite like the look of you in my bed first thing in the morning Swan"
His eyes dropped almost lazily to her lips.
She moved closer. They were nose to nose.
"Well…don't get used to it"
Smirking softly at the slight surprise in his eyes, she moved to get out of bed.
Only to be blocked by a sleep-ruffled pirate with a huge grin on his face.
"Actually, I very much intend to"
And before she could think, his lips were on hers, stealing her very breath like the pirate he was. She could have pushed him away, could've held on for dear life. But as always when it came to him, her indecision halted her ability to move forward. By the time she found it in her to catch her breath, he'd already left the bed and headed for the bathroom.
Without looking back once.
Damn.
"Emma are you feeling okay?"
The blonde sheriff tried not to groan. Mary Margaret was a lot of things. Snow White. Princess. Wife. Mother. Fighter. Badass. And most of all worrier.
It had to be the tenth time she'd asked her if she was okay and Emma was trying to remember that she loved her mother, that she had only just found her, and that she really shouldn't want to throttle her.
"I'm fine"
"Okay, okay. I just…you seem a little distracted"
Snow watched her daughter carefully. Really carefully. The problem with Emma was that she had the ability to carefully craft all her features into whatever she wanted you to see, rather than what she was actually feeling. Snow already felt like she'd failed mothering her only daughter, leaving her alone all these years. Whether for the greater good or not, it killed her every day that she had to miss out on so much with her.
She didn't plan to miss out on any more.
And Snow White didn't miss much. Especially the way that her daughter's eyes flicked for a single second to the helm of the ship, before shifting back just as quickly.
"I'm just tired, that's all" Emma smiled back at her.
Right. Snow was pretty sure that she wasn't the first mum that was ever lied to by their child. And she was more than pretty sure that the captain standing at the helm who her daughter's gaze kept drifting to, however unwittingly, was the centre of Emma's distraction.
She'd seen a lot of the interaction between the pirate and her daughter. She'd been there from the very first day when they'd found him amidst the rubble of the campsite in the Enchanted Forest. Watched the pirate flirt with her daughter all the way up the beanstalk. Heard how he'd had her back against a giant, despite his less than virtuous reputation. Seen the look on Emma's face when he's made the speech about the dried up bean, how he wouldn't have betrayed her. He hadn't lied, she knew that much when she saw Emma's face drop.
It seemed Emma was always leaving Hook behind. On the beanstalk. In the hospital. In Manhattan. She'd watched as despite all that the pirate still had a penchant for showing up wherever Emma was. And despite his self-made villainous title, his years of scheming for revenge and undeniable reputation as an all-around bad guy – she found it constantly surprising, that he would stop all his supposed misdeeds to take the time to help her daughter. To team up with her somewhat genuinely. Which seemed really out of sorts for a such a villainous reputation. To actually reveal parts of himself to her, and manage to get her to reciprocate. To be stung by her rejection of his partnership.
The way he had looked at her after she had left him on that beanstalk. Snow had seen that look once before.
On David.
When she had left him behind, after drinking the potion to forget him. And there was only one way to describe what she saw.
Captain Hook was hurt.
Genuinely hurt by the fact that Emma Swan left him behind.
And Snow knew in that moment that the story between the pirate and her daughter was far from being over.
Judging by the frequent looks the captain had been throwing in their direction, which were most definitely not directed at herself…it was only just beginning.
A/N: Sorry for the wait folks, this story is literally something I'm winging whenever my muse hits me. This chapter was short, but I want to get a sense of where Emma's at in her respect to Killian and the idea of them being anything more than they are. Next chapter will be from Killian's POV.
Thanks for the amazing responses to the first chap - feel free to let me know what you think of this one (hint hint)
x
