And I am done with my graceless heart
So tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart
'Cause I like to keep my issues drawn
It's always darkest before the dawn

Shake it out - Florence+The Machine

"Don't talk… Just-just come with me?"

A pause.

A nod.

A short walk to the yellow bug (that was so painfully familiar) parked across the street.

He followed her without question. There were only so many times he could question her before following blindly into the dark – she was his weakness, his Achilles heel, his siren.

Ever completely and irrevocably hers, even when he wasn't.

It was torture and heaven, being with her that year, seeing her hurt, seeing her run from him even if it was only across the room. Even after the fate-sealing papers had been signed, he didn't know how to stop being hers, even when she didn't deserve it, even when she was being selfish.

Like now.

Killian didn't stop her when she drove past his turn. He didn't stop her when she pulled into a hotel parking lot and got out of the car without offering an explanation. He didn't fight her when she tugged him into an empty room and forced her lips against his violently, like she was starving for him and she was and it was that realization that made it all too much to take.

"Emma, wait-"

He broke away from her lips roughly, but she took advantage of the few inches that he pulled away to trail kisses along the underside of his jaw, every delicious inch of her body carefully pressed against him.

"Gods, don't do this to me," his whispered words dissolved into an unrestrained moan when she nipped hard at his neck, smoothing her tongue over it before kissing back up his jaw. "I can't-" he groaned, swallowing the words (he wasn't even sure of what he had been going to say) as she kissed him again, hands wandering in such a familiar and agonizing way, one hand delving into his hair (she had always liked his hair too) and the other unzipping his leather jacket and urging him to shrug it off of his shoulders.

"Killian, please just- just please."

Gods, but he could swear that she sounded as desperate for this as he was, as lost and alone and beaten and broken. He let himself wonder if perhaps leaving had scarred her as much as it had him, bringing the hurt that she was so desperately trying to run from. He hoped selfishly that it had as his mouth found hers again with a new resolve, hungry, demanding, pained, his hand sliding up her back and tangling into her hair, pulling at it lightly as he got lost in her taste.

Spiced rum. She never drank rum unless it was with him. The mere idea that she had been drinking it while she was with another man because she missed him brought a rumbling groan into his throat.

"Hurry up," she gasped, and then she was pushing him back and undoing the button of her jeans herself, wriggling them down her hips and in another time he might have pulled her back and finished the job himself, but not now, not tonight.

Killian yanked his t-shirt over his head and tossed it aside, only looking up for a moment to watch Emma, wondering how sleeping with your wife could feel so much like a one night stand. The drinking, the tension, the awkwardness. Was this okay? Was that? It was like they didn't even know each other and like they were made for each other all at once, cold one second and burning white hot the next, the old Killian and Emma in fierce battle with each other as they fought over which they would be tonight.

Maybe neither, maybe both.

They fell into the bed together, her bare to him except for her bra, kicking her panties off of her toes and him naked only from the waist up, jeans hanging off of his hips and open just enough for his straining cock to bob against the zipper. It was all they needed as their mouths met and bodies ground together, desperate gasps and breaths and moans almost indistinguishable one from the other. He was on top of her but she was clearly in control, kissing and tugging and raking a hand through his hair again and gods help him, he let her. He'd dreamed about this, of taking her, alternating fantasies of showing her what a mistake she had made by leaving him and making slow, sweet love with lingering kisses and gasped out I love you's depending on the particular mood.

None of his fantasies had been like this, so heated and raw yet emotionless all at once. It was mechanical, necessary, wrong but so, so right.

"Emma."

He bit his lip and shuddered when he felt her hand reach for him, quick and needy, stroking him once, twice and he jerked in her hands. It'd been so long since he'd been touched. He'd spent so many nights thinking of her. It was too much. "Fuck, you're so hard, Killian," he heard her murmur under her breath - surprised, lustful - as she closed her eyes and stroked him again and it took all he had not to take the control right then and there. She wanted him, but it did terrible things to him to know just how much. He held himself up with shaky arms, suspended above her, letting her touch him as she liked because it might be his last chance. Emma. His Emma. The endless, internal chanting of her name only intensified when she arched her hips upwards, guiding him between her legs. Their eyes met - bad idea. He watched as she screwed her eyes shut and arched again, urging him on, until finally he was there, pushing forward, slowly, slowly sinking into her.

Deep, tight, homefuck, it wasn't fair how much she felt like home (the only home that he had left).

His chest tightened and he grit his teeth. Emma, Emma, his Emma. He couldn't hold himself back anymore, halfway there he thrust his hips sharply, burying himself the rest of the way inside of her, bottoming out so roughly it was painful. She hissed and lurched beneath him, nails digging into his shoulders and he knew she had felt it too, the burn, the ache, the blissful sting.

He didn't wait.

He wasn't gentle.

She didn't want him to be.

They were punishing, the both of them, kissing and clawing, all teeth and nails, bodies jolting in a bittersweet song composed of their ragged gasps and fought back moans, bruises blooming on lips and hips and knees. It wasn't what he had wanted, it wasn't what he had hoped for.

It was broken.

It was all they had.

At times it bordered on the edge of too much, the edge of him falling, becoming hers completely until she moaned his name and he could hear it - a part of her softening, breaking all over again, truly breaking, and he almost lost himself, months of pent up loss and lust and hurt and love – love. He shouldn't be feeling it. He didn't want to be hers because he knew that she wasn't his. She would leave and this would just be a heartbreaking memory. But he was. Gods, he was hers.

"Emma."

I miss you. I need you. Come back to me.

As if she could hear the words he wished he could say, Emma gasped and cried out his name again, nearly sobbing it, scraping nails turning into clinging fingers, pulling him closer, muscles fluttering around him, needing him and it was too familiar, too amazing to feel her falling apart, unraveling physically and emotionally beneath him. A voice in his head screamed danger, all the logic in him said exactly what it had said when she kissed him at the bar – this means pain. He needed to stop, to pull back, to reign in his emotions so he wouldn't drink himself into an incoherent stupor when he dragged himself back to his lonely apartment, but she choked out a strangled, "oh god, I missed you", bucking harshly, taking him deeper, and the breath whooshed out of his lungs like he had been punched in the stomach. His head dropped into the crook of her neck, listening to her pant and whisper in his ear and that's when he knew he couldn't do it.

He couldn't make love to his wife because she wasn't his wife anymore and he'd be lying to himself if he said that she wouldn't slip out of the bed and leave him in the morning (or more likely, long before).

It hurt.

It hurt like hell and it made him angry. Furious that they couldn't have this, that they couldn't be happy.

They used to be happy.

A twisted and dormant part of him driven by self-preservation and misery began to awaken with every desperate moan he elicited from her, every feeling he was drawing reminding him not to let himself feel.

Killian thrust hard, thumb digging into her hip making a purple fingerprint of a bruise, his scarred and marred wrist pressing impatiently at her thigh and urging her legs further apart while he sucked a dark mark at her pulse, feeling it jump erratically beneath his tongue until she gasped for him again.

"Right there."

He pushed himself into her again and then again, hitting that spot inside her that he always knew he had reached because of the sound she made, that whimper that was just for him. He may not know Emma the way he used to, but he knew her body.

"Oh, just like that-like that, Killian." She moaned again, gripping a bicep hard enough to bruise and he grasped at her hip frantically, slowing his thrusts just a fraction as the tension built, a wave of pleasure rushing over him so quickly that for a moment he thought it was over.

"Fuck, Emma."

Perfect, soft, pink lips parted in a silent cry, muscles tightening, body arching and writhing and tangling with his just in time as she came, his relentless drives into her refusing her a gentle calm after the storm. Her legs wrapped around his waist as his movements sped, chasing his own release, but he shoved them aside, thrusting a few more rough, sloppy thrusts and then he forced himself to pull out, hand wrapping around himself and sliding up and down his length before she could protest.

He was already there. His face contorted, his head lolling back as he came with a grunt that sounded more like a whine, spilling half onto her stomach and half onto the sheets, hips rocking into his hand slightly as he drew out his orgasm until he fell forward, catching himself on her drawn up knees.

"Fucking hell," was all he allowed himself, his eyes fluttering open, his gaze flickering to her for the briefest of moments.

Her expression was a combination of surprise and hurt when he pulled back and wiped his hand on the stained and rumpled sheets, lowering his eyes. "Can't have you pregnant," he mumbled as halfhearted explanation for the mess (it startled him how cold he could sound when minutes before he had been drowning in emotion) as he stumbled off the bed and onto his feet, glancing around the dark suite for the bathroom.

He couldn't look at her anymore, if he did, it would be the end of him and his resolve.

It was cruel, but no crueler than her bringing him here.

"We used to talk about it."

Her quiet, wistful tone froze him in his tracks for the second time that night and his heart ached, throbbed really, the unexpected memory of them lying in bed together and teasing each other about having babies (he demanded a jolly brood of ten and she negotiated her own offer of two) while Henry was downstairs, curled up with a ratty (but extra comfy) blanket, cartoons droning in the background as he slept.

They did used to be happy.

"Do you really want to raise another child without a father, love?"

The words came out more harshly than he originally expected. He looked over his shoulder and caught the way her expression broke and then hardened, her jaw set into a stiff line, lips pursed, and she pulled the unsoiled bit of blankets around her shoulders, a childish sort of comfort. She didn't argue with him. She couldn't and he knew it. She hadn't come here to get him back, she'd brought him there to scratch an itch and the itch had indeed been scratched.

"So that's it then?" she said finally, tone firm and resigned. "We just… go back and pretend this didn't happen?"

"Isn't that what you wanted, Emma?"

"I don't know what I wanted, Killian."

A pause.

A nod.

A sigh.

"Well then. That's one thing we still have in common."

Review for more?