Henry has good form in the saddle. He doesn't bounce, he rides exactly like one should - as if the horse were an extension of himself. He's had good teachers, Killian thinks as he watches from the rail. If he's serious about the schooling, he'll do well. Henry flies by again on Blackheart. Shade paws at the dirt as she, too, watches, and Killian idly pats her nose to calm her. Henry circles Blackheart around again and waves. "Can we time my next run?" he calls. "He feels faster today."
Killian clicks his tongue and Shade stills enough for him to mount up and head into the circle. "You can time it yourself, lad. You know the rules."
Henry sighs dramatically, and Killian bites back a grin. He definitely hopes the boy goes for his jockey license - if only because Killian can finally clock Henry for all of the official paperwork and stop the theatrics. His workout rules are there for a reason, but far be it from fifteen-year old boys to accept them willingly. "Fine," the boy says. "Can we race, then?"
"Why else did I go through all this trouble?" Killian gestures to Shade's tack. "Let me warm up, meet you in the chute."
Killian takes Shade around the far side of the oval, his muscles protesting as they ease back into form. There's nothing quite like the feeling of twelve hundred pounds of horse cantering under a person, he thinks as Shade turns into the stretch. It's just himself and the rush of the wind in his ears and the jolt of hitting the ground before taking off again… and it's exhilarating.
Blackheart fidgets as Killian canters up to the chute. "I always feel like he knows a race is coming, even when we're just having fun," Henry says. "Watching you come up, it felt like he knew."
"Aye, lad, they're born to it. They can smell competition," Killian says, only slightly teasing. "You think you're up for a full mile?"
Henry considers it. "Blackheart's broken in, but you'll slow Shade down…"
Killian exaggerates a scoff at the the implication. The lad must be feeling better if he's starting to mouth off. "Are you insulting my girlish figure, boy?"
Henry grins and wheels Blackheart around. "Come on, old man," he challenges.
They meet at the pole, and Henry counts them down. At the one, both kick their horses into a full gallop. It's only ninety seconds from end to end, but everything in the world slows down for those ninety seconds. Killian can only hear the breath he labors to take in against the wind. The rush of blood and adrenaline in his ears blocks out even the thunder of eight hooves slapping the ground at sixty-five kilometres per hour and his vibrating bones are the only reminder that he is not made of air and wind and flight.
Birds can keep their wings. This is the only way to fly.
It's ninety seconds from end to end, and they match pace every step of the way, but at eighty-five Blackheart goes soaring ahead. The sound returns and Henry whoops with joy, standing higher in the irons, raising his fist in victory. Killian begins to laugh, and reins Shade in as they cross the line. "Well done, lad!"
Henry twists to look behind him, grinning, but the grin turns to shock as his left foot slips from the stirrup. Killian yanks up to a full halt as Henry falls, landing in the dirt with a yelp; Shade rears, unhappy with his treatment of her, and Killian fights her to settle, sliding off at the first opportunity. She trots away to join Blackheart around the bend as Killian runs over to where Henry lay. "Lad! Henry, are you alright?"
His heart races - please no, please be alright - until Henry rolls over, coughing. "Holy shit," the boy manages, and Killian starts to laugh again - out of fear or relief, he's not sure.
He kneels in the dirt, helping the boy sit up. "Let's not tell your mother about that in our report," Killian says.
"What, me falling or me swearing?" Henry asks, and Killian laughs again.
"The latter. She'll wonder if I'm horsewhipping you if you come home with the bruises I know you're getting."
Henry shrugs and checks himself. He landed his side, so his hip will be one enormous bruise come tomorrow, but his color is returning and there's no outward sign of anything broken. Killian breathes a quiet sigh of relief. Henry flashes a quick grin. "I'm good. But…" His face falls, and a surge of fear overwhelms Killian momentarily. "Don't tell Emma, okay? You can tell my mom, but just… don't mention this to Emma."
Killian raises an eyebrow and helps Henry to his feet. "Come on, let's find where our charges have run off to."
It's easier to hop the fence and catch up with the horses, and it's been dry lately so the infield isn't made of mud. Killian punctuates their trek with the thought that's been bothering him since yesterday: "You said Miss Swan was your sister. You'll forgive me for having to call bullshit on the matter."
Henry snickers. "She is, though. There's this program - Big Brothers Big Sisters - and my mom enrolled me after my dad died. I was eight then. Emma was my match."
"Ah."
"Usually they only do same sex matches, but I guess there weren't enough guys or something, so I got stuck with Emma. She turned out to be pretty cool, though. She helped me out a lot, even after she left."
Killian suspects there's a little more under that statement, but it's not his place to pry. Henry climbs over the decorative rocks in the middle of the infield. "She just… she worries. About me. Like, a lot. So I don't want her to know - even if everything is okay - because she'll worry anyway."
The lad jumps down, proving how fit he really was - or denying how much the impact must have hurt, either one a macho show for no one's benefit but his own. "Sounds like you have two mams then," Killian comments.
"Feels like it sometimes… but Emma's a cooler version of a mom, I guess. So she really is just a big sister to me," Henry says with a grin.
They duck under the fence, where Blackheart and Shade are chasing one another in some horse game of tag. Killian and Henry work to calm them down, corralling them and finally looping the reins around their hands to bring them back for a grooming. "Henry," Killian says as they come into the stables, "if she truly cares about you, she'd want to know."
Henry looks back at him as he leads Blackheart to the cross ties. "I know," he says, hooking on the clips and uncinching the saddle. "But sometimes it feels like I'm the only person she really worries about, and maybe I should let her worry about someone else for a change."
Killian's brow furrows in contemplation. He's seen that in their interactions, however limited his exposure has been. He's seen it in the way Emma's hands are careful and strong and sure, the way her gaze lingers too long when Henry walks away from her and she loses that abrasive, acidic armor she puts up around Killian. He's not sure how long it's been since they've seen each other last - not his place to ask, not Henry's job to tell him. Half a year (at least) is an eternity to a fifteen-year old, and it occurs to Killian, now, that in the wake of the recent scandal and loss, the lethal combination of time and tragedy might result in the same for a woman Emma's age.
But perhaps, he thinks, cygnets are more willing to stand up and try again than Swans.
-/-
Emma should really have learned by now that weeks that simultaneously fly and crawl by will lead to no good.
In addition to changing up her work wardrobe to be more all-terrain, she stashes a pair of emergency flip-flops under her desk. She also ignores the smirk Ruby wears while Emma does this, as well as the pointed neutral expression on Elsa's face while she compresses data on her computer - absolutely not looking at what Emma is doing, nope. Monday and Tuesday go by smoothly, as everyone on her team has the kinks worked out from opening day. At the end of the day on Tuesday, Ruby suggests that, as they have Wednesday off, they go out after work for a celebratory drink. "Just us girls," she says with a wink when Victor starts naming off local watering holes. Her boyfriend looks wounded, and Emma and Elsa have to look away from each other else they burst out laughing.
Emma hasn't been out with "just us girls" in a very, very long time. She's never sure if it's just her or if it's the nature of the field she's in, but having both Ruby and Elsa at the helm with her means more regular contact with women than she's had in several years. If there were drinks to be had after work, Emma always filled the role of 'another one of the guys'. So when she texts Mary Margaret a quick 'going for drinks, count me out for dinner', she does so with not an inconsequential amount of anticipation.
Mary Margaret replies with the happiest of emojis, no less than three party poppers, and the… one that was a disco ball that showered confetti? Emma shakes her head and puts her phone away as she follows Elsa and Ruby down the stairs. Her sister-in-law definitely needed something else to take up her time if she still had enough energy - after teaching all day, taking care of Leo, and helping David around the farm? - to be that concerned about her social life.
Still. It was kind of nice to have someone be that excited about the prospect of Emma making friends.
Drinks turn into food that isn't just fried bar fare - though there's plenty of that too. Emma tries to keep herself in check when it comes to the alcohol - mixed drinks, nothing straight. Elsa's drinking lightly too. Ruby, however, makes herself right at home and steals half of Emma's chili-cheese fries. When asked if she'd like her own (Emma definitely isn't brandishing her fork as a weapon at this point), Ruby just grins, dodges Emma's attempts at defending her food, and steals another. "I'm good."
The third round of drinks also brings Elsa (who is definitely more buzzed from three light beers than Emma has ever experienced, but maybe she doesn't get out much) fully out of her shell, in the form of dragging both Emma and Ruby up to the karaoke machine. Emma is steadfastly against singing in public, buzzed or not, but her attempts at sneaking back to their table are thwarted repeatedly - ending up with Elsa's arm firmly around her waist and Ruby holding her hand while both of them insist on singing their way through most of The Supremes discography. Emma mumbles for most of it, until Elsa selects the next two songs. "You dirty cheater," she says as one of her favorite strains of music pump through the speakers.
Elsa hip-checks her, laughing as she stumbles a bit, just as she starts the first stanza of "Stop! In the Name of Love". Oh, what the hell, Emma thinks. There's only about seven other people in the joint, she might as well. She grabs what's left of her drink, downs it, and joins in.
"Shit," Emma says as the three women sit against her car, Elsa's head on her shoulder.
"S'not my fault you're lightweights," Ruby mumbles, her head in Elsa's lap.
Three rounds of drinks had turned into five - not counting the freebies Ruby had conned for all of them as the night wore on. Even Elsa had given up on the light stuff after a while. They'd only just managed to stop Ruby from turning full Coyote Ugly as the bar filled up and it was then that Emma and Elsa agreed it was time to go home. Unfortunately, by then all of them had drunk so much that they'd forgotten the necessity of a designated driver - particularly since Emma hadn't planned on getting this drunk. Elsa's sister's down in Boston for the night, so that led to a smug phone call with David. Now that they're waiting, they'd all had a chance to sit and process the alcohol in their bodies, to varying degrees of unhappiness. Ruby's the worst off, but not by much.
David, Emma thinks woozily, is going to be insufferable about this hangover in the morning.
Her brother's no stranger to a drink, but his true passion lay in rubbing salt in the wounds of others - because he's David and David doesn't get hangovers.
He's really lucky she likes him.
Ruby groans and tucks herself further into a ball; Elsa smooths her hair soothingly. "Please tell me you aren't going to be sick, I like these shoes."
"No promises…"
Emma leans her head against Elsa's, willing the dizziness to pass. "How long ago did I call?"
"Million years ago," Ruby mumbles.
"We could have saved time and called your boyfriend, instead of waiting for Prince Charming to ride all the way out from the hinterlands for a dashing rescue," Elsa scolds.
Emma makes a mental note to be impressed at Elsa's drunk-vocabulary when her head isn't spinning. Meanwhile, Ruby flicks her the evil eye. "F'you think Victor's any better'n me right now, y'don't know him. The hell is a 'hinterland' 'nyway?"
The entire situation clicks in her head, the ridiculousness of it all, and Emma starts to laugh. She hasn't even been home a full week, and here she is: a grown woman sitting next to her car with two of her coworkers outside of a bar, drunk on a Tuesday night. Ruby groans and fails to cover her ears properly. "No loud noises!" she whines as Elsa catches the giggles too.
"This is so stupid," Emma says between laughter.
When David and one of the overnight farm hands pull up in his old pickup a few minutes later, they find Emma and Elsa sprawled on the pavement, crying with laughter. Only Ruby notices their arrival, as she's propped up against the Bug and torn between laughing with them and yelling at them to be quiet.
The next morning finds Emma, Elsa, and Ruby draped over one another on the fold-out couch in the living room. They're rudely awakened around nine in the morning by David; Emma resolves to either beat him with the airhorn someone had mistakenly thought was a good idea to give to him or shove it up his ass.
Whenever her head stopped spinning, that is.
On Thursday, Ruby comes in and hands Emma the mail that's been piling up in the media mailbox. She hadn't known such a thing existed, but she couldn't be bothered to fuss with it for the moment: they'd had a brownout overnight and most of her switcher functions were glitching, plus Elsa had called to say she wasn't sure if she'd be able to make it in before the first post time.
It's not until she gets home and empties her purse that Emma remembers the stack of mail to go through. She sets up shop next to Leo and lets him destroy the junk mail while David gets the pizza ready - really, it's just takeout, but he's David and likes to present the illusion. There's a pizza tray stand and everything. It's ridiculous.
Emma pauses at one envelope; the thickness betrays its importance, and she opens it carefully. It's an invitation. "What the fff-heeeeeck is this?" she asks, quickly censoring herself in front of her nephew. She'll let the stable hands teach Leo to swear; she's not going to risk getting on Mary Margaret's bad side.
David walks in with the pizza stand. "What's what?"
She hears the back door slam open and close, boots being hastily kicked off, and Mary Margaret's voice calling, "I'm coming, hang on!" as the water starts running - riding class is finished.
"What's this about some kind of… party?" Emma asks, brandishing the invitation.
Mary Margaret rushes in, throwing the dish towel down next to her as she sits with a gusty sigh. "Made it. Okay. What's the question?"
David kisses the top of his wife's head before dropping a slice of pizza on her plate. "Emma seems to be uninformed about the soiree next weekend."
She sets everything aside as David serves her, and then Leo - she's sitting next to him, so she gets to cut up the slice to five-year-old eating standards. Mary Margaret glances at the torn paper mess and raises an eyebrow in a challenge. "I'll clean it up," Emma says hastily. "What soiree," the word cannot possibly escape her with more sarcasm, "is happening that they have to break out the engravers?"
"It's something they started a little while back," Mary Margaret explains. "It's a bit of a get-together, lets everyone who will be working together over the course of the meet get to know one another on a more personal level. It's fun."
The invitation is professionally engraved, and the words "black-tie event" are on it. Emma doesn't need to know that more than half of the owners, and quite a few of the trainers, in the meet are rolling in it to suspect this is a little above her station in life. And just because the Point is a modest-looking farm doesn't mean she isn't well-aware that David isn't hurting for cash either. "Are they sure they want the media crew there?" she asks, finishing fixing Leo's plate and moving on to her own dinner.
Mary Margaret fidgets. David answers instead. "I think, on the stand side of things, it might just be the heads of department. I don't recall seeing the others there last year, but something may have come up."
Emma's eyebrow twitches. Great, I really want to spend my Sunday evening surrounded by snobby rich people, she thinks. Aloud, she cautiously maneuvers the conversation into risky territory. "Doesn't really sound like my kind of thing."
As she suspected, Mary Margaret's expression falls just short of devastation. "Oh, Emma, don't be like that! It'll be fun, I promise!"
Emma eyes her skeptically. David talks around a mouthful of pizza, "Well… not fun, exactly," he says, swallowing, and Emma remembers where Leo gets his stellar table manners from, "but it's nice to catch up with everyone in a way that doesn't involve taking most of their money." Emma smiles weakly at his joke. "And you'll know or remember most everyone there."
"That's kind of what I'm afraid of," she mumbles, and she takes a huge bite to prevent herself from saying anything further.
She misses the look they exchange.
-/-
"Aye, and it's a cold day in hell you'll have me strung up by me own tie to be poked and sneered at by the gentry," Killian snaps. He's entirely too working class to feel comfortable with this banquet the track is throwing, and just because Regina is paying him to keep the money flowing into her pocket doesn't mean she's also paying him to be a performing monkey.
She's undeterred. It's Friday, and he should be at the track with Malcolm and Gold's entries, but there's too much work to be done around the farm. He's sent his top assistant Will instead. Regina had come up to the house after her own work hours to discuss breeding options for Heart, and somehow the banquet next weekend had come up for discussion. Killian still isn't sure how they'd gotten there.
She's made herself quite at home in his house - drinking his brandy and treating the recliner like a throne - and his traitor cats have taken a shine to his boss. Si has draped herself across Regina's shoulders, and if they couldn't hear Am purring away on her lap back in Ireland, he'd eat his riding crop. "Mr. Jones, we run in a very small circle around these parts," Regina says. "But this circle is connected to others. Better ones. An idiot turns his nose up at this kind of opportunity. If you want good references and connections for when you decide to pick up your bags and hit the road again, the smart man would ask how to do up his tie properly for a hanging and smile his thanks through any insults that are thrown his way."
Killian grinds his teeth together and takes another swig of his own brandy. Regina continues, "But, seeing as how you're one of the most sought-after trainers in the country right now, I personally don't see why you have anything to fear. It'll be all gilded promises and fat stacks of cash for you."
Socializing with the nobles, he thinks bitterly. He can hear his brother taking the piss out of him now, not to mention all the folks back home who'd thought he'd never make anything of himself.
He thinks of what old Mr. McCloud would say, slumped over the bar in the village pub with a half-drunk bottle of Jameson - he died years back, but the old man's bite (real or imagined) stings as bad now as it did when he was twelve. "Oh, you think you're so great now, aye? Well you're nothing, boy, remember that, you started off shoveling dung and that's where you'll stay."
Killian focuses his attention back on his employer. "And how fired am I if I refuse anyway?"
Regina shrugs. "It's hardly worth my time to pick up and move three Thoroughbreds, let alone find someone else to train them who isn't also invested. I can hardly have Nolan doing it, can I?" She grins and there's no warmth to it. "It's as I said, Mr. Jones. This is networking and mingling." She takes one more sip out of her glass of brandy, and carefully untangles herself from his cats. "Are you a smart man, or are you an idiot?"
Killian watches her without hiding his irritation. "You wouldn't have allowed me to buy the farm if I were an idiot, Mrs. Hood," he tells her retreating back.
She pauses at the door, and glances over her shoulder at him. She's sin wrapped in a self-satisfied smirk. "Better dress warmly next weekend, Mr. Jones."