A/N: I haven't been able to write anything for weeks apparently my creativity is also on hiatus, so this is just me, flexing my creative muscles. You know what they say about bikes and horses.

.

In those few peaceful weeks, Emma and Killian go boating for the first time.

.

Claimed By The Sea

.

It seemed absurd to her that she didn't know how to do any of this. Not a single thing.

She knew how to stand on a boat and watch as everyone else scrambled about with instruction, but that was about it.

Until now, that is.

Her toes sink deeper into sand, and the pants that she'd worn are submerged and clinging to her as far up as her knees. She's sure it's meant to annoy her, and she's probably supposed to curse the way the denim, that is rolled up to her calves, will still be sticking and chaffing for however long she keeps them on.

But the water is cold and somehow appeasing, as though each ripple of water that contours about her legs is claiming her as its own. The day isn't too cold either, even though the sun has hidden itself between deep grey clouds, lingering hesitantly just beyond reach. The whole thing seems strange, how the light is muted and the air similarly subdued of warmth. Normally, Emma would find the cold would go straight through flesh to find chattering bone, but there was none of that today, and instead, something quite different she couldn't put her finger on hung in the air, overtaking most of the chill.

("Are you sure it's not going to storm the moment we get out there?" "Not a chance, love, trust me – I know what I'm doing." "Yeah, well, I suppose after a few hundred years you'd've picked up a thing or two.")

In the past, all she'd had to do was simply walk onto the boat and that was that, but no, of course the damned thing hadn't been moored, and of course the thing had still been on the trailer waiting impatiently to be let loose down the slip. That was where she now found herself moving slowly, though with determined steps, at the bottom of the slipway, avoiding as much as she could the sharp edges of shell and concrete that lay scattered about her heels.

Emma struggled to get in place behind but mostly to the side, struggling to manoeuvre herself through the thick tide – and it was his lopsided smile that spurred her on, all arrogance and excitement as he stood between her car and the boat, ready to let it fly into the water.

("And who exactly does this boat belong to anyway?" "A friend." "A friend? Right, cause that's believable." "I have my methods of persuasion.")

The motorboat, apparently too small to be worth the mooring fee (and yet still big enough that standing beside it Emma could not see over the edge), nearly knocked her aside as it sped, clankering its chain through the winch of the trailer and falling with a force she hadn't expected, surging away in a sideways float as it hit water. Emma had been told to just hold on to the side of it while he had (attempted to anyway) ease it in, but never having done it before the momentum and the awkward wading through the tide, meant the boat got away from her. It didn't seem to matter how tightly she grappled with the metal around the edge of the boat, or how stubbornly she dug her feet into the sand beneath her – she lost control of the thing.

His only response was to laugh at the frazzled look on her face, more than thigh high in water now, as the boat drifted further and further out of reach – and damn him the smile was contagious, because she couldn't seem to find it in herself to be annoyed.

(Not when he was so stupidly boyish and bouncy.)

When a sensible solution was mentioned ("Go park your yellow vessel, love – I'll fetch the boat.") he made it look so damn easy, standing back on the shore, wet up to his torso, rope of the boat wound comfortably around one hand. He waggled a look at her as she came back, Emma walking awkwardly over rocks and bitumen, waggling a look that itched a wrinkle in her nose and yes, this had definitely been one of her better ideas.

(Getting into the boat was significantly easier than getting the boat into water, Killian's hook round the metal bars of the bow, and a spare hand for her to graze as she hoisted herself over the top of it.

With a lot less grace than she wanted.)

His smile never wavered. It sat there, immovable, from the moment she asked why he would always take Henry out, and not her; smiled as she'd turned up in a windproof vest and a dimple in each cheek; smiled as the keys and the motor made disagreeing sounds until finally – and just in time to avoiding hitting a rock – the blades hit blue swells with enough energy to propel them forward.

Emma couldn't say she blamed him for the smile, not when the jerky movement of the old motor stuttered into motion, nor when the air about them picked up with their speed and carried her hair behind her. There had always been this niggling of salt water in her own veins, one she had never been able to explain and never really acted upon either beyond sitting beside it (lacked the skill and the opportunity to learn, she supposed), but it was there, as inexplicable and as permanent as Killian himself seemed to be.

The boat swam beyond the break walls of the harbour, suddenly encompassing them with a lot more air and a lot more sea spray as they bounced harshly against the oncoming waves, water splashing and edging around the windscreen with little effort and Emma gripped a little more tightly to the edges beneath her seat.

(They would not have been able to hear one another if they'd even tried.)

Yet, the roughness and the chaos only seemed to make him happier, as though with each rough gust about his face the worries that hung about his shoulders simply took off with the wind to lie dead in the water somewhere.

This, this is why she had wanted to come.

To see sailor reunited; to ease her own quells.

The air was just so poignantly crisp, as though each breath freed her of something indistinct and the sound of nothing but it and the water hitting boat, swishing and thudding – well, the whole thing was oddly magical. It was just nature, and a trip in a small boat with a still leather-studded man, but there was so much in it that she just couldn't pin point.

Hence, the kind of magic, because the whole thing tingled beneath her skin as her own magic did.

(And the feeling ached with each lunge of the boat against choppy wave.)

And so if the feeling of being out here was so strong and affecting for her, she could only imagine what it was doing to the man who had sworn himself to it his whole life.

He was standing, gripping with hook and hand onto the steering wheel and peering over the fibreglass windscreen. There was too much noise to bother speaking, exacerbated by both motor and mother nature, but she didn't need to ask to know he felt the same. Each breath he took was deep and he sighed into each and every one, as though it replenished his entire being with something – and that smile still sat on his face, even if it was somewhat lacking its original bounce.

That smile – the one she couldn't (wouldn't) stop focusing on – had faded (or perhaps the better word was 'eased') into this contented expression. His eyes open, his stance a strange mixture of strength and relaxation.

It was different seeing him like this – more in his element than ever, and yet somehow more vulnerable than ever. He was so adept at everything, and so adaptable (they were on a motor boat for crying out loud) but she knew how plainly he needed to simply breathe in the sea air without the motionless ground beneath him. And his dependence on this sea-stuff was so plainly written across his face that she couldn't stop looking at it.

More than that, she wanted to be with him when he felt it; wanted to share it.

(To double-check.)

Their speed eased after about fifteen minutes of blustering wind, allowing Emma a moment to rein in the tangles of her hair a bit. He'd kept to the coast, woods and rock and forest waving past them as they went, but he seemed to find the spot he wanted not too far from a small and sandy shore.

Without saying a word to her, he opened the latch in the screen, digging into a hole filled with rope and chain before throwing the anchor overboard easing the tether through the curve of his hook, small chinking noises sounding each time it hit metal, and entrusting the current to secure the grapnel on seabed.

They barely said anything ("Pass me that rag would you, love?") a comfortable sort of bubble around them in which the sea and the air spoke for them, and Emma was happy to let it. The sudden decrease in sound and wind had lulled them into a strange space, and even when he jumped back down beside her from the bow, Killian seemed so focused on it – that big briny blue - lost in a language she didn't doubt they both knew. When she stood up to join him at the helm his hand found the back of her arm without even looking at her, drawing nonsensical patterns on it.

(The gesture meant nothing much at all, and that in itself meant everything.)

God, it was becoming impossible to do this, Emma thought, as she rubbed her cheeks frantically to chase away the numbness that the cool wind had put there. The decision to dive in it with him had made it so hard to do anything else but swim, and sometimes, when she felt like being a ridiculous romantic sap, she felt as though she was herself a kind of sailor swearing herself to him a kind of sea.

(Its gaze still blue; its substance largely water; as violent and as calm and as consistent.)

He was leaning over the windshield, the boat not moving enough to do anything more than gently sway her and him and not stumble her feet, as Emma's body edges closer of its own accord, fingers finding his neck and hair and as her chin finds shoulder.

(It was impossible not to dive, it was impossible not to reach and to touch and to be less than three feet from him.)

Killian's hooked hand settled on the windscreen, most probably scratching the outer edge, but his other hand drifting between them and under the gap between jean and shirt, edging her closer to him.

She knows he knows – Emma's not entirely sure what knowledge it is that they're sharing (their sea, their moods, their hearts), only that whatever it is they are in sync, and he accepts this affectionate position on his shoulder without even drawing attention to it. His eyes are bluer out here, light and colour refracting on the water even in the dull light, and his fingers linger, tracing still more patterns on her bare skin.

Killian kisses her with little more warning but the nudge of his nose to push her off his shoulder, and she willingly obliges, moving between him and the wheel, hand immovable from the juncture of his neck and hair.

He tastes no different out here, but his movements are a little absentminded, his lips a little calmer, as though the tug of tides has pulled away something from him and left him with this – and she can't help it, she breaks the kiss and the pull of him with a smile. It's such a broad smile and she can feel her face tug and burrow around her cheekbones.

He's so joyful and peaceful, that it clutches at her in an unusually satisfying way, and that is why she smiles. They are both trying so hard (and also not trying very hard at all) to fall into this thing without knocking and scraping into their walls on the way – and it is working, and he does not seem to regret it at all.

There's a soft enquiring scrunch of brow on his face before he croaks a gentle "What is it?". She doesn't answer at first, taking both scruffy cheeks in both hands, kissing him so strongly (accidentally pouring all emotion into it) that she tilts into him at the hips (or he tilts into her, it's not clear, and really, it's probably the sea's doing).

There are still two hands on his face when she breaks and stays close, and still a confused look upon his face, but his smile lives on – and he sighs as though the kiss replenishes his entire being with something. Emma doesn't bother to tell him why she'd smiled so broadly, why her heart is so overwhelmed with his happiness, and the way it coaxed out her own and seemed to find its outlet in her grin. There's too much about seeing him out here, the way he looks so at home –

And the way he seems to look at the water the exact same way he would always look at her.

That was what had done it really, because somewhere there was that fear inside her that he'd leapt so high (too high) without knowing where he'd find his feet; sold his ship – would he live to regret it?

And yet, the gentle lap of the coast against the side of the boat was not reminding him of what he was missing, but reminding him of what he would still have. There was no regret on his face, no disappointment, and while Emma still found it hard to believe she could be enough for anyone, she was no longer pretending to herself that it wasn't scribbled across every crevice of his face.

So she doesn't tell him (he'll probably figure it out anyway), letting her hands slide down his chest into a tangle of hair and shirt collar, opting instead to lock eyes with him, tongue in cheek.

"Why do I get the feeling I've just been kidnapped, never to see land again?"

He chuckles lightly in response, hand finding itself in the wind-strewn mess of her hair, and she sighs, filling in her lungs with salty air (when it all feels like him anyway).

"Well, I am a pirate, Swan."

"My parents are royalty, I bet they'd pay handsomely for my return."

"Aye, I doubt they could meet my demands."

His voice is so serious where hers is low and flirtatious, so lost in a daze of his own and she'd be worried if he didn't look so stupidly serene.

"Oh really?"

There's no point trying to coax him out of it, he's playing along but his heart's not in it, it's distracted – distracted by her, distracted by the sea, and the strangely bright and quiet mood that envelops and sways them. Killian is looking so fiercely at her, tongue thinking between his lips, that she's almost scared of what he might say.

"I fear I am the one abducted, and not the other way around."

And he's still so serious, and she longs to bring him out of this spell, this emotional trap that they have both walked into (if only she knew how to get out herself), and she wants to scoff, to laugh at how overly emotional the words are – but his eyes have found hers with a quiet intensity and his lips are still upturned in a kind of happy resignation.

There are two things sitting on her tongue: one is witty, the other far, far too meaningful (a meaningfulness to rival his own).

She says neither.

She can't quite bring herself to say anything at all, and her fingers have silenced their grip on his clothes and she's more than certain she's gaping if only a bit. His fingers, however, still stroke the outside edge of her face, winding and tugging gently on strands of hair as he tangles in them. The movement is creating little tingling sensations on her scalp that linger long after his fingers move on, and with the sea around them continuing to whisper and hiss encouragements (and to cast its net around them) she feels a familiar and a now near constant twang in her chest.

So, Emma kisses him again, deliberately and as languidly as they did before, instead using the drag of her lips and his teeth to speak her thoughts, hoping (knowing) he'll get the message regardless.

(But he changes the angle to a deeper one, his nose brushing against cheek bone, and she forgets what it was she was trying to say at all.)

.

Fortunately, getting the boat back up the slipway is much easier.

And the next time they go out, Emma is far more prepared for the force of the enthusiastically falling boat – and even though she braces herself, the next time they go, she completely falls over as the boat nudges her off the slip and floats further into the harbour –

And the only sound louder than Killian's laughter is her own.