Chapter Two
Mary Margaret's fist hit Hook soundly across his jaw and he stumbled back a pace, holding his cheek and spitting out the blood from the split lip she'd managed. He looked faintly impressed Emma noted.
"Enough Hook. Or I swear I will feed you piece by piece to an ogre." Mary Margaret all but snarled at him, her blade at his chin. He eyed it warily, they all knew what she could do with it after the last set of zombie-like creatures Cora had sent after them, unsuccessfully.
"Come now Your Majesty. I meant no offense, is it so wrong for a humble pirate like myself to so admire the young Princess Swan?" His grin split his face as he winked quite deliberately at Emma.
"Admire her from afar. Pirate!" Mary Margaret snarled, the blade flashed and a gash sliced open across his cheek, she moved as if to strike him again, her breathing heavy with rage, Emma had to act or she really was going to cut him to pieces.
"Mary Margaret. Please..." Emma grasped her hand, trying to lower the blade, but Emma could see from the set of her jaw she wasn't going to win this argument, Hook had been needling them both with his barely contained lechery directed entirely her way for days now. Emma felt her tense as if to strike. "Mother." She tried quietly, her softly spoken admission of their connection finally reached her and she lowered the blade, but she didn't take her eyes off Hook.
"Stay away from my daughter Hook. She might have made you a promise, but I don't trust you. If you lay even a single finger on her, I will remove the other hand." With that Mary Margaret threw him a scornful look before she spun away, returning to quietly mutter with Mulan. Two women warriors, armed, Hook looked suitably nervous as his fingers pressed against his cheek to stem the bleeding of the gash she'd opened up.
Emma actually found herself feeling mildly sorry for him, hands on hips she narrowed her eyes, aggravated at her continued confused emotions where he was concerned, he was just so damn enticing and absolutely unbearable, all at the same time. "You were asking for it." She muttered, crossing to him and removing his hand to get a better look at the damage, clearly that last comment he'd made about where she could put her perfectly formed derriere had been the straw that broke her mother's back. Oddly enough it hadn't even made her blush, she'd had far worse insinuated in her life. "It's deep, with your luck it'll probably scar." Emma commented, sighing wearily as his fingers lingered on hers just that little too long again, seemingly unwilling to simply release them without at least a token effort to get under her skin from him.
"Afraid I won't be so pretty?" Hook smirked at her, that twinkle in his eye stirring the feelings he'd been steadily cultivating. Men like Hook she could usually ignore, unfortunately most men like Hook didn't look like Hook. When a man that attractive decided to make you his undivided mission, it would take a nun to not be flattered by it. No one had ever mistaken her for a nun last time she checked.
"Give me the rum." Emma held her hand out to him, he looked about to take it in his own, before she noticed his gaze shift behind her, no doubt to where Mary Margaret was making a veiled threat. He sighed.
"Women, it's always about the rum." He handed his hip flask over with a flourish. "Although I have to say, having your overprotective mother breathing down my neck is oddly exciting. I fear she may be having the opposite effect Love."
Emma suppressed the eye roll and grasped his chin, turning his head to the side before splashing the rum down the gash. He didn't hiss. She expected him to, but he just stared straight back at her, in moments when he was quiet like this she genuinely wondered what he was thinking, because she was more than certain that his offensive comments were all a smoke screen. Not that she doubted for a second however that he was capable and more than willing to follow up on them.
"Are you to nurse me back to health now Love... kiss it better?" Emma ignored him, tearing off a piece of her shirt and dousing it in more rum to clear the blood away. She should have left him to deal with this himself, that would have been the smart thing to do, but shying from conflict had never been her style and for some reason, Mary Margaret's insistence she stay away from him was having a curiously irritating effect on her, she was a grown woman, one who'd managed just fine for 28 years alone. Perhaps it was just repressed teenage rebellion against an absent parental figure, but she felt the maddening urge to push at Mary Margaret now.
Hook smirked at her, like he knew exactly why she was here. "Shut up." She muttered, pushing the rag into the cut with more pressure, "I'm just returning the gentlemanly favour." She didn't need to remind him of his attempt at gallantry at the top of the beanstalk with her injured hand. Emma pulled away satisfied the bleeding had slowed, and the wound was relatively clean, his hand caught stopping her retreat whilst his fingers traced over hers, daring her to pull away first. She did, giving him a grimace that she hoped conveyed only irritation and no trace of the thrill his touch occasionally seemed to cause.
"You'll live. She muttered, turning away to sit beside the fire on her own. She didn't want to talk to the others, they still blamed her for bringing Hook back into the fold, for promising things they didn't want to live up to. But whatever they thought, she had made a promise this time. And he had helped. He'd saved her life when Cora had sent an entire village full of zombies their way, decapitating the three that had managed to drag her to the ground, almost taking a bite himself for the trouble; granted no one else had seen it and she hadn't felt the need to tell them. But it was enough that he knew he'd saved her, she saw it in every wicked wink he sent her way, every suggestive comment he rasped just loud enough for Mary Margaret stomping along in front of them to hear and turn to glare disapprovingly at him for. Now she owed him. And she'd thought owing Gold was bad enough.
That night it was her turn to sit on watch, Aurora was still not sleeping well, which meant that when she did finally get to sleep, they left her to it. Wrapping a blanket around her arms to keep out the chill she sat staring at the flickering fire, pretending to ignore the approaching form of Hook as he slid down beside her, relaxing back against the wooden log, his legs stretched out casually towards the fire.
"Good Evening my Lovely." He didn't take his eyes off the fire, but then he didn't need to, he'd spent so much time examining her these last few days that she imagined there was an imprint of her behind his eyes. At least he hadn't had the opportunity to pin her to any more trees and press his wicked lips to hers since that night he'd given her the slowly healing mark on her neck that her mother was still raging over.
"If Mary Margaret catches you here, she'll castrate you." Emma didn't even bother to sugar coat it; the docile sweet little cardiganed teacher had clearly left the building... the Queen was in.
Hook's head lolled casually in her direction as he examined her in profile. His hand flicked out and he caught a strand of her long golden hair, twisting it around his finger with a look more curious than mischievous for once, "I'll take the chance." Emma turned to give him a glare and was disarmed by the blistering vulnerability written all over his face.
"Oh god don't give me that look." Emma groaned, pulling her knees up to her chest and dropping her head into them, half to avoid the smouldering gaze searing her from only inches away.
"Am I giving you a look Love?" His voice had dropped to a seductive growl that was doing decidedly effective things to her insides. She bet he said that to all the tavern wenches.
"How long are you going to keep this up?" Emma ran her hands through her hair wearily, she would have given anything for shampoo... this back to nature crap was getting old.
Hook was direct, she'd give him that, he moved swiftly, until he was knelt next to her, his hand angling her face so that his lips could claim hers uncontested. Emma protested, half heartedly as his tongue duelled with hers, preventing whatever pointless words she'd been planning on. It was wrong, she'd fought this attraction since his first flirting comments the day they'd met; but as his hands slid into her hair, she couldn't deny that the man could kiss. Or that she'd wanted to let him do just this,since the moment he'd wrapped his damn scarf around her bleeding rum soaked hand.
The moan he drew from her as his mouth left hers to travel down her neck was stifled by his hand, as he attempted to prevent her waking the others. His hooked arm wrapped around her waist as he pulled her onto his lap, letting her feel just how much of a tease she'd apparently been. Panic flooded her, this was 'Captain Hook', what the hell was she thinking? Clearly he felt her resistance flare because he captured her mouth again, crushing her chest against his in a devious attempt to refocus her mind on his touch. It worked, the curved blade at her back melted away into a concern for a later more sane moment, as she rocked against him, drawing a surprised groan from him as he held the back of her head in place, effectively trapping her; which right now, she had to admit wasn't such a bad thing.
"Emma." He breathed, pulling back long enough to sear her with another one of those looks that made her insides somersault. Ever the manipulator, she had no idea what he was really thinking in that moment, and whilst it terrified her, it also thrilled her in that dark little part of her that was still a teenage tearaway.
"Shut up." Emma snarled, crushing her lips against his again, she didn't want to hear his voice, it only reminded her exactly what she was doing and with who. He grinned past the kiss and flipped them until she was pressed into the ground beneath him.
"I can do other things with my mouth, besides talk Love." That wicked grin was enough to make her doubt this again, but God did she want to let him try. But she knew how this story ended...
"Off." She bit out, pushing at his arms as he attempted to kiss her again. "Off, get off!" she snarled using her knees to manoeuvre him up and away, he stilled above her, sighing wearily and burying his head against her chest in resignation. But at least he'd stopped she noticed, trying to calm her breathing and keep him held away.
"Love, didn't your mother teach you never to tease a Pirate." But he sounded weary now, weary and unmoving.
"Hook." She warned and he rolled off her to lie flat on his back beside her, staring up into the night sky.
"A blade would be a kinder way to torture a man Princess." He turned his head, fixing her with a look that she was certain saw straight through her, as he reverted to his pet names.
Lay flat on her back beside him, ashamed and aroused Emma knew she was in trouble as she glared up at the sky like it was the cause of all her problems. "I don't mean to torture you... or me." Emma admitted, pressing the palms of her hands against her eyes, trying to shut out the world, but mostly him.
"You could have fooled me Love." She heard him, turn, out of the corner of her eyes she watched him prop himself up on his elbow, his fingers tracing the ground inches from her hair. "Tell, me is it really just the pirate thing, have I not proven myself to you?" he sounded almost plaintive and she turned slowly to meet his look head on. "What did he do to you, your lost love?" And there it was the question she knew he wanted the answer to most and the one thing she didn't want to talk about. She didn't need to give him more insight into the way she worked, especially not now after he'd told her his story about Mila, about their love amongst the sea's, how she'd left a coward of a husband and a family for him, for a life of adventure, or how she'd wormed her way into his heart with her sheer passion for life... for love. And how that same coward of a husband had returned as the monster to rip her heart from her chest and leave him a handless, loveless, pirate forever. Perhaps he'd done it in the hopes that she'd open up in kind, a shared tale of woe to twist his way into a portion of her heart.
"Leave it alone Hook." Emma turned away from him, pushing herself up onto her elbows as she looked over at the camp to make sure no one else was awake.
"A lady not wanting to talk about her feelings incessantly, how refreshing, and in this case frustrating. Would it kill you to open up Emma?" he gave her a warm smile that she was certain had won him more than a few hearts as it twisted something inside her gut in a not unpleasant way.
The biting retort was almost instinctive now. "You're Captain Hook... so it might."
"I'm not him you know Love." He pointed out, sitting up and propping himself back up against the log, casual as you like, any evidence of their 'almost' tryst carefully concealed. Except for the odd restless gestures with his hand that he was trying to disguise by picking at the leather of his shirt.
"You're exactly him." Emma muttered, not quietly enough as he gave her a dark look.
"Oh no Love. Trust me, you've never met anyone quite like me." When he put it like that, his hook glinting in the firelight, she considered that he might just be right.
Emma smirked. "That's probably a good thing."
Hook clasped his heart in a mock gesture that kept the smile in place. "Go to bed, we need you rested for tomorrow." Emma reminded him needlessly, after all he was the lynch pin of their entire plan to get the wardrobe ashes back from Cora, they needed him alert.
Hook sighed, seemingly unable to help himself from making one last comment. "I'd sleep better with you beside me."
Emma rolled her eyes arching a mocking eyebrow back at him, "Somehow I doubt that."
Hook got to his feet, giving her one last lingering look that she felt right to her toes. "One day Emma, you'll see what a pair we could make."
"Keep dreaming Hook." Emma retorted, not entirely certain she was right, but determined to at least attempt to resist her hormones. He shook his head, wearing his stupid little winsome smile as he retreated to one of the empty tents, leaving her alone to wish a cold shower was on the cards.
A few minutes passed in blessed silence. "He won't give up." Mary Margaret's voice startled her and she tried not to look guilty as she turned to face the smaller formidable woman, who'd clearly been lurking, which was disturbing on all kinds of levels now.
"I can take care of Hook." Emma informed her quietly, so as not to disturb the man in question.
"Yes, I saw." Mary Margaret sat down on the log beside her, giving her a dark knowing look. "Men like that..."
"Are exactly the type I've attracted my entire life." Emma rubbed her forehead wearily, this was so not a conversation she wanted with her mother. "Trust me, I saw him coming a mile off. Like I said, I'm handling it."
Mary Margaret looked pained, she could practically see the conflict radiating off the woman, the utter desire for her to be a mother, warring with the desire to be her friend again, all twinged with the ever present guilt that Emma had only turned out 'this' way because of her. Most of the time she felt that her mother was somewhat proud of who she'd become, but she got the feeling that it was proud in spite of it.
"I know you're worried. But please, just trust me to deal with...this." She indicated the tent with Hook inside. "I mean I've handled everything else pretty well. This whole fairytale thing. I can deal with one guy."
"He's a murderer." Mary Margaret pointed out sharply which forced her to purse her lips in distaste. Right, that... Killian Jones, Captain Hook, dastardly Pirate and scourge of the seas.
"Have you ever seen him kill anyone, at least anyone that wasn't trying to kill us?" Emma pointed out just as sharply. "All we have are stories, written by Pinocchio of all people. I mean there are so many versions of Peter Pan and Hook, which one's real?" Even to her it felt like a weak argument, she'd seen him fight, seen him disembowel a zombie and take its head, seen the look on his face as he'd done it... he'd enjoyed it, he lived for the thrill of excitement like that. The part of her that knew all about men like him had sounded a warning that she was trying desperately to heed. He was all sorts of wrong and he was most definitely the killer from the stories, he just hid it well.
Apparently his act wasn't fooling her mother either. "Emma, he is always the bad guy in all of those stories, that doesn't change." Mary Margaret sighed, sounding more like the 40 or so years she should be.
"Fair enough." Emma reached out and squeezed her hand supportively. "But that doesn't mean he shouldn't be given the chance to do the right thing here and now." Particularly not if that right thing was getting them back home, but she didn't need to say that, they both knew it was the reason Mary Margaret's threats to run him through remained just that... threats.
"Emma." Mary Margaret gave her a withering look that had she have grown up with, she might have had the sense to acknowledge. "Hook doesn't want to do the right thing with you; he very much wants to do the bad thing."
Emma almost blushed, keeping her eyes deliberately averted from the mortifying situation. "Mary Margaret." Emma started, seeing her bristle at her refusal to call her mother in this instance. "I really don't think that my love life, or lack of it, is any of your business."
Mary Margaret opened her mouth as if to argue and closed it again abruptly, looking thoroughly hurt, which only increased her sense of guilt and confusion about the woman. "Right, of course." Mary Margaret managed, the waiver in her voice making Emma wonder if that had been a jab too far, the last thing she wanted was to make this situation harder for any of them. And just like that she was Mary Margaret again, and not Queen Snow, vulnerable and just a little bit desperate for love. The wall seemed to rise between them again and Emma regretted her efforts to say the right thing or be the daughter they both needed her to be. But at least it had stopped the awkward conversation in its tracks. Mary Margaret excused herself and went back to her tent to sleep, leaving her to stew alone at her inability to connect with the woman she so desperately wanted to. It had the desired effect though she realised, her misery about her family and the reminder of the family... of Henry left behind, had been as affective as a cold shower in getting Hook out of her head.