There is a plane crash.
The story dominates the news. The plane had been a chartered flight, carrying six doctors up the coast to assist another hospital's surgical team in separating conjoined twins. The doctors never made it. Currently, teams are combing through the New England forests searching for the downed plane. Newscasters speak hopefully of finding survivors, but it's doubtful. Hardly anyone survives a plane crash.
She watches the news over Chinese takeout, alone in her small studio. As a doctor, she knows how easily one's life can stop on a dime. Since starting her internship, she's done the whole ER thing. Car crashes, heart attacks, sudden falls. She's been there waiting as paramedics drive up, on for their patients to be called dead on arrival. People doing their jobs, or carrying about their days, only for things to go horribly wrong and die. She knows all of this.
She's always been drawn to the morbid - she's a doctor, after all - but this story sticks with her in the way others do not. She thinks it has something to do with the fact that the passengers were doctors. She thinks it could be her someday, maybe, flying across the country to perform some insane surgical feat. She thinks about their families, their friends, the people they are leaving behind. Emma even thinks about the conjoined twins, whose surgery will continue to be delayed.
If Emma dies, she wouldn't have much unfinished business like the plane crash victims. She's barely into her internship. She doesn't have any real cases. No conjoined twins to separate. She doesn't even have a significant other to leave behind. Not even a cat in need of being fed.
It's a little bit depressing.
-/-
Her internship is exhausting and exhilarating, but most of all, it is all-consuming. It surprises Emma how an 80-hour-workweek can both drag on, but also speed by in nothing more than a blink of eye. It's part patient work, part paperwork, and a whole lot of discovering just where to go and what to do, with residents and attendings both looking at her and her fellow interns like they are idiots.
It could always be worse, though. She hasn't almost killed anyone. Their second week, Mary Margaret nearly had a patient bleed out while assisting with an appendectomy. Problems arise during surgery - that's a fact - but generally not something like an appendectomy. Thankfully, the general surgery attending present, Dr. Nemo, had stepped in to pull the patient through.
Mary Margaret's near failure had served as a reminder, though: they're still interns, and they have a load to learn.
-/-
The worst part of her internship is the elevators.
Emma hates elevators, and if given the chance, she does everything possible to avoid them.
It's a newfound thing, this whole disliking of elevators. Prior to her internship, she actually never held any strong opinions regarding them. They had always just be there, existing as they do. But here, here she hates elevators.
Because of him .
Because an elevator is a small, enclosed space that she is forced to share with him. It's not so bad when there are a bunch of other people in it with them, unless she somehow gets shuffled next to him, and can feel the heat radiating off of him, smell him, and feel his warm breath on the back of her neck, making her think very impure thoughts.
It's worse, though, when it's just the two of them. Him and her in a tiny enclosed space, in what feels like the slowest elevator to ever exist. It's those moments when he looks at her with that smug sort of half-smirk, one eyebrow quirked as if he can read those very impure thoughts that flicker through her mind whenever he's around. Because here's the thing: even though Emma Swan is a one night kind of girl, she's finding herself increasingly in want of another round with Killian Jones.
Which is a problem, because he's her boss. Well, her boss's boss, as he likes to remind her, but he's high enough on the foods chain that it still counts. And though the hospital has no fraternization policy, a fact of which he also likes to remind her, sleeping with him (again) would still be wrong on some level...right? Emma remembers the ways everyone talked about the girls who slept with their professors in undergrad and medical school. Sluts. Whores. Every dirty word one would call a woman. And though Emma never called them those names, she was still suspect of them to a small degree, because everyone knew sleeping with a professor was a "not good" thing. Just like sleeping with an attending.
So, no, she can't sleep with Killian Jones because that would be a very bad, not good thing. No matter how hot he looks in his scrubs, no matter how nice he smells.
No matter how much she wants to.
-/-
It's easy to not think about her fucked up sex life while she is working, so Emma enjoys the hell that is life as an intern more than she otherwise would. And as much as it sucks being on Dr. Whale's service for week, where she does more coffee runs than actual doctoring, it's better than sitting around thinking about Dr. Jones, or being constantly around him doing neuro consults like Ruby is this week.
Only, that's entirely a lie. Because she actually enjoys neuro more than plastics, and Dr. Jones is a much better teacher than Dr. Whale. And a better doctor, to be honest, but she's not going to tell Whale that. Or Jones. Or, well, anyone. Maybe the interns, because they all sort of bitch about that sort of thing, and Emma is sure Elsa would agree. Despite considering plastics as a speciality, she has complained the entire week prior about the Whale's insanity and general asshole demeanor.
But, for the most part, when Emma is working, she doesn't think about Jones or how she wants to bite his collarbone.
Again.
It would be so much easier if she hadn't already slept him. Then, she would just be able to consider him a hot boss, and she could imagine him during one-on-one time with her vibrator without it feeling weird. Because Emma knows how he kisses, and how he looks under those scrubs. She knows how well he uses his tongue and teeth and cock, and God, she wants it all again. Because the sex was good. The sex was incredibly good, mind-numbingly good, good in a way she didn't think was possible with one night stands.
But that's Killian Jones: Neuro God, Sex God...and her boss.
If she keeps repeating it in her head, maybe she will be able to convince herself anything more would be a very, terrible idea.
-/-
She finds herself at the Rabbit Hole on a Thursday, just as alone as the first night she had visited. Elsa and Ruby and both working late nights, and Mary Margaret had wanted to turn in early, leaving Emma to herself. She doesn't necessarily want to be at bar, but there are people here, and it feels better than sitting in her apartment.
She sits at the bar, swirling her rum in its glass, not really drinking. She's always been a solitary sort of person, so she wonders now why the loneliness is getting to her. Is it the demands of the internship? The desire to unwind with a loved on at the end of a particularly heinous shift? Ruby's grandmother owns a diner not too far from the hospital, and Mary Margaret's family doesn't live too far away, either. Even Elsa calls her sister often. Who does Emma have to call or visit?
No one.
"You're supposed to drink that, you know."
"Seriously?" Emma groans, turning to see Killian Jones behind her.
He slides onto the empty barstool next to her, and waves the bartender down for a drink. His drink is brought quickly, and Killian raises the glass toward her. "You see this is a glassful of rum." He takes a drink. "And that is what you do with it."
"I know how to drink," she replies coolly, and just to prove him wrong, she takes a long pull of her rum, almost draining the entire glass. "What do you want, Jones?"
"I want to know why a lovely lass such as yourself is drinking alone on Thursday night," he replies matter-of-factly. He looks at her in the eyes, and Emma wants to shrink away from him. She also wants to kiss him. Instead, she settles on not moving one way or another.
"Have you ever thought about dying?" she asks him. She doesn't know why she's entertaining him, except for the fact that he's here and he's someone to talk to. He's better than no one. "Like, have you ever thought what would happen if a semi came out of nowhere and hit your car?"
He studies his drink, and takes a sip before answering. "Have a thought about being hit by a semi? No. Have a thought about dying? Yes. What brings this on?"
"Honestly? All this plane crash talk on a news. It was a bunch of doctors, you know."
"Relating to the passengers, are we?"
"A bit," Emma answers. She doesn't know why it's so easy talking to him. It's just easy being around him, and it feels as if he's chipping away at her walls without even really trying. She shouldn't like this, because it's dangerous, but the words continue to fall. "I keep thinking, what if it was me on that plane? Is that crazy?"
"It's not crazy," he replies, and Emma knows he means it. "So what do you conclude?"
"Huh?"
"What's your conclusion to your 'what if'? What if you were on the plane, Swan?" Jones asks, quirking an eyebrow. He rests his chin on the heel of his palm, obviously interested in her answer. She debates telling him, but she's tired and it's Thursday, and for the first time in awhile, she doesn't feel like she's alone.
"Nothing. Nothing would happen," she says before finishing her drink. "I'd have nothing left behind. No one would miss me."
"That's a lie," he tells her, his voice stern. He sits down his glass, and inches toward her. "That's a lie, Swan."
"Is it?"
"Yes, it is," he says.
"And why is that?" Emma slides from her stool, and moves between his spread knees. She grabs his glass, and takes a sip.
"Because I would miss you."
She shouldn't kiss him.
But she does.
-/-
The carpet is rough against her back, and his fingers squeeze against hers as he fucks into her. She wraps her legs around his back, shifting the angle and causing him to groan against her throat. He bites at her neck in retaliation, their mutual give and take driving them to pleasurable heights.
She comes first, biting her lip to stay as silent as possible. He follows not long after, gasping her name as if it is his benediction. After, she allows him lead her back into his bed where they curl into one another.
This time, she waits until he falls to sleep before he leaves.
-/-
She's distracted the next day at work. Whale chews her out for stumbling over her patient reports, and Regina tells her that she looks sloppy.
"Patients don't want their doctors to look sloppy, Dr. Swan."
Emma spends her break hiding out in the on call room, hating herself, Jones, and the stupid passengers on the downed plane. She shouldn't have kissed him the previous night at the bar. She shouldn't have fallen for his stupid line about missing her if she died, because he's only known her for all of three weeks.
For a brief moment, she'd been happy. She enjoyed being around him, enjoyed kissing him. Even when he had held her after, she'd felt warm, safe. She hadn't wanted to leave him. But she had. And in the light of the next morning, all the reasons why they were wrong and all the reasons how she could be hurt came rushing back in full force.
Emma had thought she had learned from her mistakes, but apparently not. She thinks back to when she was seventeen and stupid, falling for Neal just because he was someone who understood the broken lost girl thing and helped her steal a car. And sleeping with Jones is no different. Only it's worse because she's put her entire career on the line - something she's fought desperately for since Neal left her life in shambles - all because she felt a need for affection.
God, she's an idiot.
-/-
"Are you okay?"
Mary Margaret has this magical ability to appear out of nowhere when Emma is feeling her lowest. It's a little bit annoying, but sweet at the same time. Emma wonders if this is how it feels to have a mother, to have someone check up on you have a bad day, or a series of bad days for that matter.
"Can we not do that thing? The thing where I tell you I'm fine, but you don't believe me, so you needle me until I either give in or storm away, because I really don't want to storm away right now," Emma tells her. She's spent twenty-five years without a mother. She can go a few more. She waits for Mary Margaret to protest, because it's a Mary Margaret sort of thing to do, but instead the other woman remains silent. "Look, I don't mean to be bitchy-"
"You aren't being bitchy," Mary Margaret cuts in. At Emma's dubious expression, she corrects herself. "Okay, so you're being a bit bitchy, but we all deal with our things in our own ways. I was just trying to think of something to distract you with, if you would like. Something totally not about you."
"As long as it's not about plane crashes or assholes, go for it," Emma says with a chuckle.
"So, I'm thinking I'm really liking pediatric surgery. It's just incredibly fulfilling to work with the kids…"
Emma listens to Mary Margaret prattle on about her cases and the new pediatric attending. It doesn't exactly make her feel better, but it doesn't make her feel worse either.
It's a start.
-/-
It's at an elevator when she seems him again.
He has the audacity to look hurt, and it's that which sets her blood ablaze.
"That was unfair of you, you know," she tells him as she presses the button to stop the elevator. "You shouldn't have done that, take advantage of me, that is. I was doing fine before you walked into the bar."
"You know, other people will need to use this elevator," he says with a sigh. Even so, he makes no move to resume it. "From what I recall, you kissed me first. Both times, actually."
"You should have stopped it."
"Many times last night, I asked you if it was what you wanted," he replies, a hint of anger in his voice. "You said yes each time."
She wants to argue with him. She really, really does. But he's right. As much as she doesn't want him to be, he's right. He'd asked her in the bar if she wanted to continue. He'd asked her outside of his apartment, and later, inside. She'd said yes each time. "I want you." Isn't that what she'd whispered to him before drawing down for a kiss?
Unfortunately, even if Emma is the type of person who's willing to admit she's wrong to herself, she's also the type who won't admit it to others. So, she doubles down.
"Why'd you say you missed me? You barely know me. You can't miss me. Were you just trying to get into my pants? Manipulate the sad, lonely intern?"
"I told you that I would miss you because I was being honest. The length of time we've known one another doesn't change that," he tells her. He crosses his arms over his chest. "And I do know something about you, love. You're a bit of an open book, you know."
"What does that even mean?"
Before she can answer, both of their pagers begin to buzz.
-/-
There are a number of doctors waiting, each practically humming with excitement, when they get down to the pit.
"What's going on?" Emma asks Mary Margaret, who is standing by an eager-looking Elsa.
"The doctors from the plane crash," Mary Margaret explains. "They found them, and they're bring them here ."