Things began to move faster than Killian had initially anticipated. The song writing process was different every time. Sometimes the band would want to collaborate, sometimes the band and their manager would tell him what "type" of song they wanted, sometimes he blindly wrote words he was told would eventually end up in a song, and sometimes they sent him tracks of music for him to put words to. The creative process was addicting and tricky, wonderful and invigorating. He had no idea that this was exactly what he needed.
The surprise he felt when he looked at the calendar and realized it had almost been a month since he left was nothing short of destabilizing. He hadn't even called David, which he said he would do about… three weeks ago. He decided he would call on his way to the studio for the day.
The phone rang once.
"Hello?" David answered.
"Hey, Dave!" Killian replied, somewhat embarrassed. "I'm so sorry I didn't call you sooner, mate. I just now looked at the calendar and realized how much time had passed since you last called."
"Killian?"
"Oh, yeah, sorry," he mumbled. "I, uh, am on a different phone right now. Not quite sure where I left mine." That was a lie. It was still in his suitcase. He didn't want to face the reality that waited for him in Dallas, so he lived in a detached world.
"Yeah, I sort of figured something like that. I've tried calling," David sounded almost angry but mostly relieved. "Where are you?"
"On the road currently, on my way to a job," Killian said, changing lanes quickly to make the exit. "Where're you?"
"Don't play that game!" David answered, his voice now stern. "I need at least some answers. I have, uh, people asking about you."
"People?"
"Uh, yeah, more like a person."
There was a pause.
"Is she okay?" Killian asked, pulling up to the curb outside of the studio.
"Killian, you left her," David said quietly. "You didn't even leave a note or tell her you were going. What were you thinking?"
The answer he wanted to give was to say he really wasn't thinking. But he wasn't ready to admit his fault and childish actions just yet.
"David, I left no person. I only left a place. She was not mine to leave," Killian rested his head against the steering wheel. "I'm sending my rent check tomorrow. I'm at work, now, I really need to go."
"What work are you even doing?"
"Oh, some of this some of that. No time to explain," Killian unbuckled his seatbelt and grabbed his bag from the passenger seat. "Sorry it took so long to call you. I'll talk to you again."
"Killian, wait—"
Killian did not wait. He terminated the call and then shut the phone off, tempted to break it in half. The less David knew the better. The songs he had been writing lately were not particularly… kind. He didn't want people figuring out that they had a song written about them by their ex-lover and performed by a semi-famous early 2000s punk rock band.
He also wasn't ready to face Emma.
As he approached the tall, stone building with a rotating front door, he wondered if he would ever be ready.
Pushing that thought aside, he smiled to himself. He had accomplished something. He was becoming someone important. People knew his name, or, at least, his pen name: Captain.
"Captain? Seriously?"
Emma came into his room where he was working on editing the latest edition of their university's newspaper. She held up a manila envelope in her hand with the words "Captain Jones" sprawled across the front in elaborate typography.
"Where did that come from?" he looked at her with bloodshot eyes from a lack of sleep and too much time looking at a computer screen.
"Someone dropped it off a few minutes ago. I tried to tell them that there was no one named Captain who lived here," she grinned at him. "Then he finally remembered your first name was actually Killian, and I let him go."
"Well, give it here," he held out his hand. "Must be Smee's editorial. He can't seem to ever get me anything before three hours after the deadline."
"First, you have to tell me why the hell he's calling you Captain," she held the envelope just outside of his reach.
"Oh, Swan, it's this silly thing they started saying a few years back," he said, rubbing his eyes. "I can't explain things that don't have sense. Something about that "O' Captain my Captain" poem, maybe," he shrugged.
"Isn't that a little morbid?"
"Probably," he turned back to the computer and began typing. "I haven't actually heard the poem."
"Walt Whitman," she moved into his room and sat down on his bed, sinking into the blankets. "You are an English major, and you have never read Walt Whitman."
"Bits and pieces, yeah, I guess. But I have not yet been in an Antebellum literature class, love," he kept typing and clicking away in an attempt to get her to stop bothering him.
"O Captain! my Captain!" she jumped off the bed and started stalking towards him. "Our fearful trip is done, the ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won," she was reciting the poem in perfect rhythm and voice. "The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, while follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring."
Killian sighed and put his head in his hands, "Emma, I really don't have time for this I have a deadline and—"
"But O heart! heart! heart!" Emma continued, complete with hand gestures to emphasize the words, paying his objections no mind. "O the bleeding drops of red, where on the deck my Captain lies, fallen cold and dead."
"Wait, the captain dies in the poem?!" Killian perks up at the mention of death.
"O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; rise up— for you the flag is flung—" she wandered to the window and started delivering the lines to the patrons walking on the sidewalk below. Killian closed his laptop and pushed back his chair from his desk so he could watch her perform out the window. "For you the bugle trills, for you the bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths— for you the shores a-crowding, for you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning."
"Swan, this is just ridiculous," Killian scoffed, whirling his desk chair in a few circles, and started to push his way back to behind the desk. "There is no way my staff thinks of me as a dead captain. There must be another poem or—"
"Here Captain! dear father!" she began again, this time she moved towards his desk, blocking his path. She shoved the papers to the side and sat down right on top of his pile of work, crossing her ankles. "This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the desk, you've fallen cold and dead."
"No!" Killian cried, standing to move towards her. Killian was close enough to her that she could feel his breath, and it sent a chill through her. "I refuse to believe—"
"My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still," she placed a finger to his lips and raised her eyebrows. "My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will." She cocked her head and put her fingers to the pulse on his neck, and felt a heart beating faster than normal. She found her own heart was also beating quite fast for just reciting a poem. "The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage is closed and done, from fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won."
At that, she jumped from the desk, Killian moved to the side quickly to accommodate her movement, his ears burning red. "Exult O shores, and ring O bells! But I with mournful tread, walk the deck my Captain lies," she walks to the door, and turns on her heel to face him. "Fallen cold and dead." She takes a mock bow, her cheeks flushed a light pink.
Killian clapped lightly, the tired look returning to his eyes. "I am quite impressed with your performance. The staff though? Not so much," he smiled slightly. "Where did you learn that?"
She shrugged, "I had to memorize a poem for a class once in high school, and this was the one I chose. Never thought it would come in handy again."
There was a brief pause in which the tension in the room was filled with an electricity she couldn't understand, but felt had something to do with the way he was looking at her. She felt the heat returning to her cheeks as he stared intently at her with wonder and a slight awe.
"Well, um, here's your envelope," she found it on the floor and handed it to him. "Sorry for the production, I just—"
"Don't apologize," he smiled, almost shyly. "I think I needed the distraction more than I knew."
She nodded and shifted her weight on her feet. "I'll be going then," she gestured towards the door. "Let me know if you need any more distracting."
His eyebrows shot up and he got a smirk she knew she deserved. "Oh, yeah?" he said in the voice she recognized from all the times they had been in bars and he had made moves on the attractive women that would giggle and look his direction from a few feet away. Her stomach clenched and her throat tightened as she remembered how soft his lips were against her finger a few moments earlier, and she briefly wondered what they would feel like against her own.
"Get your head out of the gutter," she muttered, throwing the nearest pen she found at his head, which he dodged skillfully.
"Whatever you say, Swan," he laughed as she left his room, shaking her head along the way. "Whatever you say."