He wakes in the dark, colder than he should be under three thick blankets, to the sound of banging around in the mudroom. Emma is no longer asleep on the couch, the fire is long burnt out, and the crate that usually holds firewood, sits empty beside the bed.
He's about to get up and investigate when there's another loud bang and Emma drops a fresh crate of firewood on the floor so she can use both hands and the weight of her body to close the door against the howling wind outside.
Eira grabs the crate between her teeth and begins hauling it toward the fireplace while Emma works to get out of her snow gear. "Want to get that fire started again?" she calls out, her teeth chattering, and he quickly slips from the bed, grabbing his crutch so he can be of some sort of use.
Outside of the bed and the cocooned warmth of the blankets, the cabin is freezing and he wonders just how long they've been without heat. He was sure he'd thrown enough wood on the fire to last through at least part of the night, but the temperature outside seems to have plummeted and there's a nasty backdraft blowing in from up the chimney.
Emma joins him and it takes them a few minutes to get the fire burning hot enough to counteract the backdraft. She's still shivering slightly when she moves toward the couch, and he catches her arm gently, almost dropping the crutch in his haste.
"Emma, love, sleep in the bed, it's warmer. I'll take the couch for the rest of the night," he offers, already moving to hobble that way.
She stops him with her hand against his chest and a shake of her head. "We can share," she nods toward the bed. "Be even warmer that way."
He swallows hard and looks at the double bed. "You're certain?" It's surely big enough for the both of them, but there won't be a lot of room to spare, especially if Eira decides to join them.
He feels like he should put up more of a protest, but she just rolls her eyes and gives him a gentle shove. "Yes, now get in there. The far side's yours tonight," she says, slipping past him to crawl into the side closest to the fire. She settles facing the flames and he slowly circles the bed to climb in and lie on his back behind her.
He can only see the top of her head in the firelight – she's got the blankets pulled up that far – and when she continues to shiver slightly, he does his very best to fight the urge to reach out and wrap her in his arms.
There's quiet tension for several long minutes in which they both attempt to lie unnaturally still and regulate their breathing, but eventually it's Emma who sighs in frustration and rolls over to face him. "Fuck it," she huffs, "can I just?" she shifts a little closer to him.
He lifts his right arm almost instinctually in a silent invitation and nods. She scoots closer to rest against his side, her head finding his shoulder as she curls her fingers against his clothing covered ribcage. Tentatively he lowers his arm to her waist, wrapping it around her slowly to gauge her reaction; she exhales contently and softens further against him. "Thanks," she mumbles, no longer shivering.
"You're welcome, love," he responds, even though he feels a lot like he should be the one thanking her. The last couple days have been bizarre enough on their own, but this? This is just beyond surreal. He hasn't shared a bed with, or held a woman since Milah, hasn't wanted to, hasn't thought he would ever move on from her, but now, lying here with a softly breathing Emma in his arms, he's starting to believe that he might just be able to. Part of him wants it to feel like a betrayal, but it doesn't, it just feels right, and maybe Liam was right about that as well; Milah would surely want him to be happy.
He doesn't sleep for a long while, content to just enjoy such a simple pleasure, happy to savour the way Emma curls further into him in her sleep. She seeks out his empty wrist at one point, pulling it across his body to rest with her hand over his stomach, one of her legs settling between his, and it might all be faintly arousing if it didn't have him on the verge of some seriously profound tears. He feels a little like his heart is waking up and shaking off layers of snow and ice after a five year hibernation, like it's really beating again for the first time in what feels like a lifetime, and if he's getting less poetic, or poetic in a comical sense, he feels like the Grinch realizing that maybe Christmas… perhaps… means a little bit more.
He bites back a chuckle, curling his fingers over Emma's hip as she nuzzles against his shoulder, his heart pounding and his breath catching with the feel of it.
And what happened then…?
Well… in Who-ville they say, that Killian's small heart grew three sizes that day!
The cabin is brighter through his closed eyelids when he wakes, but the mattress is empty beside him and all sense of peace evaporates as he sits up, looking for Emma and wondering if it wasn't all just a cruel dream.
She's crouched next to the fireplace, adding more wood and he breathes a sigh of relief when she smiles up at him. He moves to get up, but she shakes her head. "Stay there."
He does, watching as she piles one more log onto the roaring fire, stops to rub the sleeping husky's ears, and then steps back toward the bed, quickly climbing in and burrowing under the covers. She hesitates for a brief moment, and then moves toward him again, attempting to almost wrestle him back down beneath the covers. "It stopped snowing, but it's gotta be like a billion degrees below freezing out there. You're warm, the bed is warm; I don't see any reason why we shouldn't just spend the day in here."
He raises an eyebrow at her choice of words and what they suggest, before settling back down on his side to face her. Truthfully he doesn't see much issue with a day spent in bed either, but she's easy to tease and he enjoys the banter, so he waggles his eyebrows and smirks at her. "Holding me hostage, are you, love?"
She blushes lightly and blindly pinches the skin over his ribs beneath the blankets. "Not like it's taking much effort on my part. I mean you can hardly walk and don't seem to be in any great hurry to leave." She grins and pokes him in the centre of his chest. "Besides, you're the one who walked who knows how many miles to fall down at my door."
It gives him an opening he can't resist, cannot pass by, not if he wants to take a chance here, not if he wants to see what 'things going well' might look like. And it may well be the cheesiest (dorkiest) thing he's even done, but somehow he gets the feeling she'll appreciate it.
"Emma?" he whispers, his fingers closing around hers where they still rest against his chest.
She looks at him expectantly, and he sees the same fear in her eyes that he expects she sees in his. It's what pushes his next words past his lips. "But I would walk five hundred miles…"
She seems confused for half a second before recognition lights up her eyes and she tries to bite back a smile as she worries her lower lip between her teeth.
"And I would walk five hundred more…"
She shifts a little closer, her gaze dropping briefly to his lips before returning to his eyes as she waits for him to continue.
"Just to be the man who walked a thousand miles..." he whispers as her forehead meets his softly, her nose bumping his.
They share a breath, she grins, and then finishes for him. "To fall down at my door?"
"Aye, Emma," he breathes into the space between them, and just when he doesn't think he can wait any longer, she closes the distance and kisses him.
It's soft and sweet and somehow nothing like what he imagined it might be. There's still a hint of hesitation – fear, he's sure – on both their parts, but each time they withdraw to suck in a shaky breath of shared air, they come back together stronger than before until he's certain that he would actually walk a thousand miles to be by her side.
Emma presses against him, pushing him to his back as she deepens the kiss, her mouth open, her tongue hot, curling with his. He grasps at the fabric of her shirt over her hip, needing something to hold onto, to ground himself, and just as he suspects that she's about to straddle his hips, Eira jumps up onto the bed and starts yapping and yodeling in what he assumes is some sort of vehement protest.
Emma tenses and her lips break from his as she flops onto her back next to him with a groan.
He's never been so simultaneously annoyed and thankful to be cock-blocked in his life, and he has a hard time deciding which emotion is the stronger of the two while Emma tries in vain to shush the boisterous husky.
She ends up leaving the bed to drag the dog outside, and he's still lying there, staring at whorls in the wood on the ceiling when she returns. The bed dips slightly with her weight and he turns to face her.
"Sorry about that," she apologizes, laughing, hovering at the edge of the bed as he sits up and reaches for her hand.
"It's all right, love. Probably for the best, actually." She frowns and he moves to quickly reassure her, lifting her hand to his lips to press a kiss to her knuckles. "It's not that I don't want to take things further, it's just," he sighs, "it's been a long five years since I last…" he trails off and watches as her eyes widen slightly with understanding.
"You want to take things slow," she surmises.
He nods, already sensing her withdrawing, her walls going up, and he shuffles across the bed as he pulls her closer for another kiss, holding nothing back and only parting when they're both near breathless. "When I say slow, love, by no means do I mean glacial. I simply meant that I do not want to jump straight from first kiss to sex in a matter of minutes. I don't imagine that would end well for either of us, and I know we've only known each other for a few days, but I'm in this, whatever it may be, for the long haul, all right?"
She nods after a moment, and her walls don't exactly crumble back down, but they also don't climb any higher, so he decides to take that as a win.
He grabs the copy of The Princess Bride from the nightstand and pats the mattress next to him. "Come back to bed and I'll finish reading this to you," he offers, and after letting Eira back inside, switching on the Christmas tree lights, and fetching them both a mug of hot cocoa, she snuggles back against his side.
She stays awake this time, fingers at first playing over his wrist as he reads, slowly moving up his arm and over his shoulder. It's soothing to start, her touch through the cotton of his Henley, but when her fingers drop into the unbuttoned V at the neck of the shirt to twist with his chest hair, it quickly becomes one hell of a distraction.
When the last paragraph on the last page stares up at him, he reads it as quickly as possible because at this point he suspects she isn't really listening. "I'm not trying to make this a downer, understand. I mean, I really do think that love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. But I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all."
He'd take a moment to reflect on the truth of that statement, but Emma seems to have other ideas, and his body doesn't exactly protest when she ducks her head under his jaw and drags her lips over his pulse point. It's an instant reaction and he feels like a rubber band pulled taut as his blood rushes south to harden his cock.
He pulls her up, his hand tangled in her hair to give her a warning with what is supposed to be a stern look on his face, but her cheeks are flushed and she's grinning at him like she knows she's being naughty, and he can't bring himself to do anything but kiss her.
"Bloody hell, darling," he whispers against her lips, his words mumbled, not exactly clear, but she's insistent and addictive and he's quickly learning that he's got little self-control where she's concerned. He's been wandering the desert for years, a man dying of thirst, and she's the veritable oasis on his horizon.
She's aggressive; he doesn't need to have known her long to ascertain that she's the sort of woman to go after what she wants, no holds barred, and at the moment, it seems that he is the thing she wants. She slides gracefully as her namesake into his lap, settling warm and solid with her hips over his, and when her breath hitches and she performs some wicked little rock of her hips, clothed friction burns dangerously over the length of his erection.
He breaks the kiss with a curse, his fingers tight on her hip to hold her still as his head drops back against the headboard and he looks at her, barely resisting the urge to grind up against her. The only thing that solidifies his resolve is the knowledge that him doing so would likely result in him coming in his pants like some bloody too-eager-teen, and at well over thirty years old, he has no desire to make such a mess, especially when he doesn't have much in the way of options for a change of attire.
There's another reason, too; his original one for wanting to hold off on certain acts of intimacy, and as her frown deepens and he can practically see her walls begin to rise at his perceived rejection, he figures he'd better explain it.
Taking a deep breath, he relaxes his grip on her side, slowly trailing his fingers up to cup her jaw, his thumb brushing her lower lip to settle over her dimpled chin. "I want you, Emma," he reassures her with a smile, "that much should be fairly obvious."
She snorts indelicately and thankfully rolls her eyes instead of her hips. "But?" she prompts.
"I would prefer to wait until tomorrow," he tells her slowly, trying to ignore the way her fingers fist in the fabric of his shirt, frustration and confusion clear and present on her pretty face.
"What difference is one day going to make?" She tries to move away from him, slip from his lap, but he only lets her back up to a slightly safer position on his thighs before wrapping his ruined arm around her waist and halting her.
"I know it seems ridiculous, love, but my main reasoning is that tomorrow will no longer be Christmas."
"Not Christmas?" she repeats with a deeper frown, and he clearly needs to explain himself better.
"Aye, Christmas will be past tomorrow. If we were to consummate whatever this is today, there'd be…" he trails off, trying to find the right words to explain himself. "I don't want this to be a one-time thing. I don't want this just to be a product of our shared loneliness, of our distaste for Christmas. I want more than that. I want to get to know you, and I want you to know me as more than the dashing idiot who fell down at your door, all right? Give us today to just talk, and then tomorrow if you still want me, you can have me in as many ways as your heart desires."
Indecision flickers with something looking a lot like fear on her face before determination finally takes over and she nods. "Okay. What do you want to know?"
She looks set for a particularly grueling interview, and he leans forward to softly kiss the tight frown from her lips. "This isn't an awkward game of twenty questions, love. It's not a test where you pass or fail. It's just a conversation. How about we start by finding some breakfast?"
She agrees, climbing from the bed, but there's still tension in her shoulders as the morning wears on, and he tries to ease it by asking mundane questions about Eira and how she got into dog-sledding and hunting. He tells her about Liam, how his older brother raised him after their father abandoned them. He's an orphan too, he was just lucky enough that Liam was old enough and mature enough to take him in and be the father-figure he'd needed.
He talks about sailing, how it's his passion in the warmer months, when the snow melts and grass takes over the mountainside, and he doesn't pressure her into bringing up anything of great significance, doesn't ask her to elaborate on her previous mention of heartbreak.
He's mostly content just to learn how she likes her coffee and that she had to work three part-time jobs to put herself through university and obtain a degree in criminology and criminal justice. He learns that the man in the photo on her dresser is her co-worker, David, and that the petite woman with the pixie cut is his wife, Mary Margaret. She tells him that the little lad, Leo, is their son, and that every year for the past four years, she's turned down their repeated invitations for her to spend Christmas with them because as much as she loves the three of them, it's too hard for her to watch the little boy be showered with love and presents – to experience the sort of Christmas she only ever dreamed of as a kid.
They make dinner together, spaghetti and venison meatballs, and she tells him how she used to be a disaster in the kitchen; could hardly make a grilled cheese without burning it to a crisp. Turns out most people aren't a fan of teaching their foster kids how to cook – not that she was really in any place long enough to learn. Once she was on her own, she had no choice but to figure it out as quickly as possible; when you're broke and trying to put yourself through school, burning food and throwing it out because you suck at cooking isn't really an option.
She ends up in front of him on the couch after supper. He sits facing the tree with his injured leg stretched along the length of the chesterfield, his left foot resting on the floor as she settles between his thighs and leans back against his chest. Her hair tickles his nose, catching in his beard, and he breathes in the scent of her as some old Van Morrison cassette plays quietly on the counter beside them.
Her fingers lift his wrist to her chest, cradling it against her breasts, and though the action seems almost entirely innocent, he wonders if he still shouldn't remind her of their earlier agreement.
She surprises him by speaking first though, quiet and with clear hesitation. "His name was Neal."
He places a kiss against her hair and waits for her to continue.
"I stole his car, which turns out, he had already stolen. He was sleeping in the backseat." She laughs, but it's a dry, humorless thing. "We hit it off almost instantly. The next few months were the best of my life that far. Then his past caught up to him. Our plans to settle in Tallahassee quickly changed to fleeing to Canada. He told me we could start a new life there, we just needed money. He had these stolen watches to fence, just needed me to get them out of a locker at this train station. That went off without a hitch, and all that was left was for him to meet the buyer. He gave me one of the watches, and a time and place to meet him at later, only he didn't show up, a cop did instead."
He hugs her a little bit closer, his fingers linking with hers over her stomach. "You said you almost went to jail for him. What happened?"
Emma sighs and lifts their joined hands up to tuck against her chin; an action of pensive self-comfort that he knows well from his own childhood. "My lawyer happened; I was only seventeen, still a minor. She convinced me to turn on Neal; give up the details of his plans to run to Canada and share the extent of our relationship. He was twenty-four; it was technically statutory rape… It was a disaster, the trial was a nightmare, but my lawyer, Regina, was ruthless. Neal went away for the theft and Regina made sure that the stat-rape charges stuck as well. I went free with nothing but community service. Regina helped me out until I finished my GED… and well, you know the rest."
"Bloody hell, love," he whispers, "I…" he doesn't know what to say. Thoughts of beating a faceless man to a bloody pulp for what he did to her arrive first, followed quickly by the overwhelming desire to look up her lawyer and send the woman an extravagant gift basket. Emma shifts in his arms enough to face him though, and makes up his mind for him by silencing him with a kiss.
It's little more than the press of her lips against his, but when she pulls back, she's smiling. "You don't have to say anything," she assures him with a kiss to his chin. "It's a part of who I am, but it's in the past and I try to keep it that way."
Understandably so, he thinks, helping her adjust to the new position with her head against his chest and her arm around his waist. "Thank you for telling me though, love, for trusting me with that."
She shrugs one shoulder and burrows against the soft wool of his sweater. "You should be; outside of Regina and that courtroom, I can count on one hand the number of people I've told that to."
He's struck again by a sense of awe regarding this woman and everything he's learned about her in the last twelve hours alone. She's strong and stubborn and has already overcome more in one lifetime than anyone should have to face in several. She might be cold at a glance, but behind those walls of hers, he gets the sense that she feels things with a depth that would put the Mariana Trench to shame.
With a graceful little wiggle, she blindly reaches behind her to grab the earlier-selected novel from the coffee table, slapping the paperback playfully against his chest. "Okay, enough with the sentimental shit," she mumbles. "Read me another story."
He laughs and picks up her copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. "Why? So you can fall asleep halfway through the first chapter again?" he teases.
He thinks she might pinch him like she seems so fond of doing, but it's more of a tickle instead and he concedes defeat and opens the book before they both end up on the floor.
He's three pages into the third chapter, reading the postmark on Harry's letter from Hogwarts, when Emma stops laughing at his ridiculous impressions of Vernon and Petunia Dursley. Another two pages, and she's sound asleep against his chest.
He doesn't want to wake her and move to the bed; not yet. If he had use of both ankles, he might simply carry her the short distance to the mattress, but as it is, he's currently incapacitated and sees very little problem with it. Closing the book, he reaches over the back of the couch to sit it on the kitchen counter before shifting further down into the cushions with her.
His entire body will likely protest the act in the morning, but right now, with Emma blanketing him and the Christmas tree softly illuminating the cabin, he decides there's nowhere else he'd rather be.
Eira moves into the space between the couch and coffee table with a contented sigh, apparently no longer protesting his proximity to her owner. He drops his arm off the side of the couch and pats the husky on the head with the blunt end of his wrist. There's a soft whine, followed by a ticklish lick, and within minutes, Eira's snoring right alongside Emma.
He looks at the tree again and takes a deep breath as Emma hums happily in her sleep.
He's never really been one to believe in Christmas miracles, even less so during the past five years for obvious reason, but now, in this moment, as he blinks back a single tear of pure, unrestrained joy, and looks up at the slightly crooked glass angel atop the tree; he thanks any god who is willing to listen, for sending him tumbling down the bloody mountain in what is quickly turning out to be the best unfortunate event of his life.