Author's Note: One more chapter to go! :)
Some Sort of Neighborly
Chapter 10
Just like that, he's gone.
It shouldn't surprise her, really, how thoroughly he's disappeared: even before, he was just her neighbor's friend, after all, and she can count the number of chance encounters she's had with him in one hand. Most of the times she's run into him, she realizes now (now that it's too late) haven't been products of circumstance, but instead of deliberate intent.
They'd all been results of effort on his part, too, save for her showing up at The Jolly Roger – and look where that got her.
She almost expects to hear a knock on her front door or at her window at any given moment, to pull it open only to be snared by his suspiciously innocent smile.
But it never comes.
I think it's yourself you're afraid to trust.
Her skin still crawls with the ghost of his words. Except, while she knows her immediate reaction that night should have spoken for itself, while she refuses to believe he would lie to her – the more she turns it over and over in her mind, the more she decides that her response, instead, should have been pure indignance.
Because she'd been right to confront him: he doesn't know anything about her relationship with Neal. He doesn't know the hell she went through to put herself back together, to keep the scars she'd born, after years and years of that same hell, from tearing her apart all over again. He doesn't know how firmly she'd steeled herself, how she'd forced her life forward even when it seemed stuck in the past, in that same never-ending loop she's had on replay since the Swans decided they couldn't keep her.
(She was supposed to be done with all of that the second she turned eighteen, once she could finally grasp her heart with both hands and refuse to let it be passed around ever again.)
(But he does know. And it kills her that she didn't have to tell him at all.)
Either way, if she hadn't raised herself on trust – internal trust and nothing else, at that – she wouldn't have been able to make it through any of it, which the only thing she can cling to, the only thing she can use to tell herself that he was wrong.
She doesn't want to think about how the only reason she needs to do that is because she doesn't know what the hell to do if he was right.
So there isn't anything to do about it at all, honestly – especially since, well, he's gone. Though not without leaving her far too many mementos of that night for what little had actually happened – a faded mark on her neck that still tingles with the scratch of his scruff days later, the taste of his hunger and desperation on her tongue, his soft groan against her lips replaying itself over and over in her mind. But for all that she's plagued by the memories of his warmth in her bed, and the pang of white-hot craving that inevitably follows, what sticks with her the most, as she'd feared, is the hollow look on his face right before he'd left. It was worse than the pain he'd had to endure to relive his ghosts, but only barely, and the spot on her cheek where he'd have kissed her stings with the loss of his goodbye.
Fuck. She doesn't know how the hell it'd happened, but some way, somehow – she misses him. She hadn't even had the chance to have him, not even as a constant presence, but she misses knowing he might be there, on the other side of that door, always ready to say exactly what she needs to hear.
(Double fuck.)
It's the refusal to dwell on that thought finally that pushes her off of her couch and towards that same door, the one she's been staring at for the better part of the afternoon, an entire week after he'd walked through it without looking back. She doesn't realize where her bare feet are taking her until she's already halfway to the apartment down the hall, and with that, she also realizes that her next-door neighbor might have been in a perfect position to witness exactly what had transpired in this hallway last weekend, and that she'd been a little too wrapped up in it herself to check for bystander trauma at the time.
Before she can blush, before she can overthink it, she forces her hand upward to knock.
A short moment of muffled shuffling later, the door swings open, heralding none other than Robin's surprised face.
(She shouldn't have expected anything else, but disappointment still flickers through her all the same.)
"Hey, Emma." His confusion only takes a split second longer than usual to dissolve into a smile, but she appreciates the warmth anyway: for more reasons than one, she's been in no mood for the questions and confrontation Mary Margaret and Ruby would have wrought had she not kept her distance, and though she appreciates them respecting her plea for space under the circumstances (even if she feels a tad guilty they're under the wrong impression, given what happened at the bar), that also means she's been sorely deprived of friendly human contact for longer than she'd care to admit. In the doorway, Robin cocks his head. "How can I help you?"
"Er." Well, no going back now, no matter how silly this attempt suddenly seems. "Is Killian around?"
She can almost pinpoint exactly when the pieces click together in Robin's head, as though she's just confirmed his suspicions; she's always been well-tuned to pity, even when it looks a lot like sympathy, after all. "No, I…" he presses his lips together. "I haven't seen him. Sorry." No surprises there, either. But she had to try. He continues, slowly: "Is something going on?"
No. It's the truth, if only because he'd so staunchly decided it for the both of them, and yet it doesn't feel like the right thing to say. She holds Robin's gaze, expectant but concerned, but there's no proper response she can give him. So, instead, she shakes her head and heaves him a short sigh from a half-smile she doesn't feel, one she suspects will be telling enough.
"Sorry to bother you." But just as she turns to leave, he calls after her.
"You don't want to know where he is?"
She supposes he knows as well as she does that she has no shame in resorting to that tactic. The thought of tracking Killian down now, though, is far removed from the triumphant satisfaction she'd only just celebrated what feels like yesterday. She hasn't a clue what she'd even say to him.
"Uh, no," she says, one foot out the metaphorical door even as she faces him again. "That's all right. Thanks though."
Her parting smile feels just as forced as her previous one, but something in Robin's expression catches her off-guard. His brows furrowed, he seems less like he's analyzing her for answers than trying to figure out his own, and that's the only reason she hesitates just long enough for him to speak again.
"Whatever's happened between the two of you," he says carefully, and then stops, restarts in a different direction. "I won't ask, and I won't get in the way, but you have to know how he feels about you, Emma. You know it, don't you?
Guilt twists in her gut like a hot knife. "I know. I swear I didn't—" She sounds too defensive, even from just that. "Look, Robin, I'm sorry. I know he hasn't been around, and I know you're nowhere dense enough not to have guessed at why, but—"
"Emma, I'm not looking for an apology from you," he interrupts her quickly, with a shake of his head, and the look on his face is so genuinely insistent that she just has to believe it. "I just wanted to make sure you knew."
Of course she's known. But that isn't the problem. "Thanks, Robin," she tells him anyway, with as much appreciation as she can muster. "I'll, uh. I'll keep that in mind."
That doesn't quite seem to be the end of it, though, given how his serious gaze still pins her in place – still thoughtful, still considering. He shuffles between his feet before he speaks, earnestly. "He's better for having met you, you know."
His words ring with a strange kind of truth, one she can be sure holds at least for one of them, though also one that feels misplaced for how unexpected that declaration is. "Um. I… sorry?"
"I heard about that morning," Robin says, cocking his head with a trace of strange amusement. "That morning, when you two met. He broke into your apartment, didn't he?"
Still unsure where he's going with this, she can only frown. It's a little bizarre to think of Killian as the stranger he once was. "Yeah," she begins slowly, but he continues before she gets the chance to herself.
"He was probably still a little pissed, and definitely more than a little hungover. Don't you wonder why that hasn't happened since then?"
"I didn't think he made a habit of breaking into strangers' apartments."
"No, not that," Robin snorts. "I meant – he used to drink himself into a coma, almost every weekend we didn't have plans. After work, he'd pack up and go to a different bar, and he'd get straight-up pissed to try to drown everything out." He doesn't have to say it; she knows, even with his considerate discretion, exactly what he's talking about. The rawness in Killian's expression whenever his gaze had fallen on his mother's ring was proof enough. "He hasn't done any of that, though," Robin goes on, "not since the morning he met you."
"I… I guess he learned his lesson about safe drinking habits," Emma suggests, though she hates trying to make light of something that makes her ache so.
"Maybe. I actually thought he might have been trying to distract himself with winning you over," he says, and it sound vaguely like an apology, to his credit, "but something was different about him from that very first morning." She might be more miffed at that first part, but she's too wrapped up in his words to mind very much (especially, of course, when she already knows the truth of the matter herself). He seems to have trouble finding the right words to elaborate on the second. "He was… lighter, I suppose. More like his old self. I think meeting you reminded him of the person he used to be."
That easy rhythm she's known with him from the very start – even when it's stumbled, it's beat on between them, stronger than ever, and the loss of it still throbs within her now. "Why are you telling me this?"
Robin's smile is one of careful sympathy. "I think the only reason that happened," he says, "is because the two of you are so alike, even more than you could have known back then. Whatever you're feeling right now, I wouldn't be surprised if he's feeling the same way."
Doubtful, she thinks, on pure instinct. After all, she wasn't the one who walked away, and on a bullshit premise, at that. But Robin's reminder ripples through her again, that they'd only met in the first place because Killian was trying to drink away his past – that he's always been good at running, at trying to leave things behind. He could probably give her a run for her money for it, in fact, if she gave him the chance. From whatever had happened with his father to make his brother his only escape. From the deaths of his mother and that brother she knows he'd have loved so well. From Milah.
From Milah.
He's still running, she realizes with a dull start, one that pangs hot in her chest and spreads through her like the flicker of a candle – but it isn't from her. Maybe they really are too alike.
"Robin, I, uh—" She blinks to regain her focus, Robin's patient face blurring back into view. "Listen, thanks for this. I have to run, but I really appreciate it."
"Wait, what?" The startled pitch to his voice reaches her even as she turns away. "Where are you— wait," he says quickly. "Are you going to try to find him?"
"I will," she says, sending him a reassuring nod over her shoulder. "There's just something I have to do first."
She's going to need to come back and find Robin again, at some point, but right now, she needs to put one foot in front of the other before she loses her nerve. She needs to remember all the reasons she has to move forward (forward, instead of backward), why she wants to more than she can remember ever feeling, no matter how difficult it might be to steel her heart and simply get it done.
She needs to grit her teeth and fight for it. That's the only way she's ever gotten the chance for anything in her life, after all.
She needs to pick up the phone and call Ruby.
He's a right idiot, for more reasons than one.
It's a thought that's been gnawing at the back of his mind for the past week, but right now, trudging up the five flights of stairs to his apartment with but a single grocery bag to show for his efforts, he feels it more than ever.
Yes, he really did bundle up, brace himself for the cold, and walk all the way to the corner store for a box of hot chocolate mix. Yes, he'd only bought it to see if it would taste as good without the duckling mug, without a certain blonde neighbor (of sorts) sitting across from him on a hard wooden floor. Yes, that's the only way he could finally quell the thoughts plaguing his every breath since he left – by flat out giving in to them.
(Yes, he might have been able to save himself three flights of stairs had he not left at all, and he might not have been so resigned to drinking hot chocolate alone, either, if he'd stayed. But he hadn't, and even if it was the right thing to do, it still sits at the top of the list of reasons why he's a right, bloody, ridiculous idiot.)
If he were a weaker man, he'd have given in to her. He'd wanted to, more than anything – especially when the hurt on her face had become nearly too much to bear, when he could feel the sting of betrayal with which he'd left her as poignantly as if she'd stuck him with it herself. He knows he's not the first person to walk away from her, and there's no way to express how much he wishes he hadn't had to be the latest on that list.
And yet, he'd gone and done it anyway.
No matter how many times it makes sense in his head, he has to wonder if he'd be regretting it quite as much if it really was the right decision after all. If he'd done it for the right reasons, or if he'd only ruined everything on an assumption that he'd known her better than she knew herself, that being with her then should have been everything, because it should have felt so much more right than it had.
Guilt, pure and simple. That what is was, and that's what it is, and he doesn't know how to rid himself of it.
And now, an entire week later, it's built into a weariness at all of his doubts and sentiment and his stupid, aching chest, one that keeps his eyes locked on the ground as he shuffles though all of his tasks like a mindless, heartsick buffoon.
That's probably why he almost misses the obstruction blocking the top step of the stairway until it lurches into his field of view.
His head snaps up.
"Hey—"
"Killian." He very nearly forgets to exhale the rest of that held breath, because, in all of her windswept glory, who else but Emma herself should make stumbling to her feet look like an act of pure grace?
Granted, he might be a bit biased: with all the resolve he's put into staying away from Robin's, and in effect, away from her these past few days, she's a much more welcome sight than his bewildered mind can process. But, to be fair, he'd never, not once, imagined he'd ever see her anywhere near his apartment building, much less brushing the dirt off the back of her jeans from where she'd been seemingly camped out on the floor to his landing.
Somehow, her place had become the base for her, for them, in his mind.
"Sorry," she says quickly, anxiously, and he realizes he's been standing there with his foot raised and his mouth (likely) agape for far too long. "I… I know I shouldn't have just shown up like this, but Robin gave me your address, and I just had to—" Her words stumble over one another, like white water over rocks. "I mean, I can come back another time, if you're busy. But I ran all the way over here, so. You don't have to, but I thought…."
He's not sure whether or not she's supposed to be making sense, which he doesn't think should be attributed to any lack of oxygen on her part for her supposedly hurried commute. It does almost prick a spark of amusement through him, though – how she seems torn between demanding an audience with him and shying away – except he should probably say something, anything, first, before he starts acting in a way that's liable to get him punched.
"Have you… You haven't been waiting too long out here, have you?" It's the first thought that makes it from his brain to his mouth, though it nearly makes him want to put his foot in it straightaway. He'd only been gone for the twenty minutes it'd taken to get to the store and back (a pathetic single-objective mission, of course), but he's not too fond of the idea of her camped out in this drafty hallway for any length of time, either.
Sure enough, she shakes her head, and then pauses.
"Can I, er…" She gestures over her shoulder, towards the door to 611 on the other side of the hallway.
He grimaces the moment her meaning becomes clear, forcing the words from his mouth before he can think twice of it. "Swan, I don't think— that might not be the best idea." Neither is the prospect of having any kind of conversation with her out here, in full view of all his neighbors, but, damn it, he doesn't know if he could bear having her in his apartment, so close, when he knows nothing she might say to him now will change his mind.
He'd meant it: she'd never be able to stop protecting her heart when she kept it lodged in the past, locked up even from herself, as she did.
"I went to see Neal," she says firmly.
He freezes. "What?"
"I tracked him down. I talked to him, just now, before I came here." Her sigh seems to be one of impatience, as though she wishes she didn't have to spell it out for him quite so thoroughly. He's getting there, he thinks, but the words are so unexpected it's just taking him longer than it should. "Listen, can I just… come in for a minute?"
He swallows thickly; he should probably have gotten used to her waylaying everything he'd known by now. In the end, there's nothing he can say but a careful, hesitant, "All right."
It's bizarre, walking past her to unlock his door – he wonders if it's just because she's here at all or if it's because, as he pushes it open and nods her inside first, he thinks this might be how she feels every time she's on the other side of hers. Every time he surprises her, and every time she lets him in (except for, of course, that first morning). This time, he suspects, might be a bit different, because once his initial shock passes, all it takes is the slightest whiff of her perfume as she brushes past him for everything he's been trying to suppress, to forget, to come back in full force, and he doesn't think she's rendered momentarily paralyzed with a jolt of longing whenever he crosses her threshold.
That night had almost been his undoing, in too many ways.
(And perhaps he should be ashamed for it, how easily but memory of her skin and the taste of her kiss could make him crumble – but it has, and it does.)
She's still hovering by his front door when he finishes with locking it and turning to face her, dropping the grocery bag to the floor, though she seems preoccupied with glancing around at the tiny expanse of what she can see. Which isn't really a lot, but it makes up most of his apartment all the same: the utilitarian kitchen, the single couch and armchair set adorning the room beyond. Had he known she was coming, he might have taken the time to tidy up a bit (he's been a little distracted of late, after all, which hasn't exactly lent productivity to menial things like laundry), but he figures he'd never really given her a heads-up on his visits either, so it's only fair.
As it turns out, he doesn't have much time to dwell on her opinions of his place at all when she finally spins on her heel, neglecting to have even removed her coat, her expression alight with adamance.
"I thought about what you said," she tells him, without preamble. "About Neal still being a part of my life, no matter how much I told myself he wasn't."
It's awful hearing his own words repeated back to him, in her voice, but he still stands by it. At least now, though, her declaration from before makes a lot more sense. "So you went to confront him?" He hesitates, and even through his admiration of her bravery, concern flickers through him like the smoldering crackle of ashes come back to life. "Swan, are you all right?"
She presses her lips together, seems to draw herself up to her full height. "That might not be the last time I see him, whether I want to or not. He's going to be around for a while, and there's nothing I can do about that, but it doesn't matter." She heaves a long, heavy breath. "He left so suddenly, there were a lot of things I never got to say. A lot of things I didn't even realize I wanted to say until now, looking back." A guilty smile plays at the edges of her lips. "I probably should have punched him then."
His disbelieving snort, almost a bark of a laugh, is harder than it should be to contain, given the circumstances. "Did you, just now?"
"No," she admits with a hint of regret. But then she shakes her head, as if to clear it, and continues on with dogged determination. "We just talked. He isn't sorry for what he did, and I guess I shouldn't be surprised – he had his reasons, selfish as they were. But everyone always has their reasons. That doesn't mean I shouldn't deserve more."
He gets the feeling she's not just talking about Neal. "Emma, love," he says slowly. "What happened? How on earth could… for you, as tenacious as you are…" There's no proper way for him to outright ask it, which is why he's grateful when she seems to understand his message loud and clear.
(He's never outright asked anything of her, until now, but perhaps this is the most important question he ever could.)
Her green eyes glittering with a muted fierceness, she still seems to need a moment to gather her response. "He let me hope." She says it staunchly, like a stubborn fact she knows she can't change. "I thought I was over that – I thought I'd forgotten how, to trust someone so wholeheartedly with the confidence that they'd never leave. But I guess I spent so long not remembering what hope felt like, after all those years in the system, I didn't realize it'd crept up on me until it'd already made a home for itself where it didn't belong."
He feels his jaw clench without thinking it. "What Neal did," he tells her, with deliberate emphasis, "and how you feel about it, even now – it's not your fault."
"Maybe not. But that doesn't mean I don't feel the way I do." She spares him a half-hearted shrug, and he knows, as much as he hates to admit it, that it's true. "You were right. I did have unfinished business with Neal, even if it was just setting the record straight and finally knowing, after all this time, that he doesn't regret it, not even after I told him what I just told you. That he wasn't worth the hope I gave him in the first place." His heart squeezes tight in his chest, and not for her concession of his words from earlier. For that concession, though, she doesn't look the least bit ready to back down, either, her pink mouth still set in a determined line across her face, so all he can do is wait until she finally speaks again.
"You were right about how I felt," she repeats. "But you were wrong about something else." Her gaze seems to pin him to the spot. "Just because it's hard to move forward doesn't mean I can't."
"Wh…" He struggles to piece together her words. "But Swan, you just said—"
"I know what I said," she interrupts him in a rush, "but that's not the same thing. I might not have been able to carve Neal out of my life. Maybe I never will, and I'll carry around those scars forever. But they don't need to vanish like they never existed before they start to heal. The things that hurt you – they don't have to stop hurting before you can start to move on." She lets out an exhale, one that he can feel trembling in his bones even though he's nowhere near enough to capture it on his skin. "I know I can put the past behind me, but that doesn't mean I have to do it alone. That doesn't mean you have to do it alone, either."
He blinks. "What?"
In three long strides, she's before him, a hand going up to rest on his chest. Her warmth melts through the fabric of his coat, somehow, and every inch of him clenches with the desire to feel it without barriers again. "This ring," she says resolutely, looking up to meet his eyes. "I know you might wear it in memory, but you carry it like it weighs as much as the goddamn world." Her fingers curl into a fist, and it certainly feels like he's being twisted up tight in her grasp, the breath lost somewhere between his lungs and his throat. "That weight doesn't just go away, even if you don't realize it's there, you know. Letting someone else help you lift it doesn't mean you've failed, or that it means any less to you than it once did. All it means is that you can take it off and give yourself a moment to remember how to breathe without it around your neck."
He forces himself to swallow, hot and thick. In the back of his mind, her television screen flashes with an image of a bright smile and a sparkling diamond ring, one he'd had so much trouble separating from the vision in his memories. He remembers, night after night, feeling the strings of his guitar against his fingers and refusing to admit, even if he'd told her otherwise, that the reason he'd kept dodging the prospect of her mixed with his music was because somewhere deep inside – he couldn't escape it. The guilt of forgetting, even for a moment, what it'd felt like to see that flash of brunette hair in the crowd. The guilt of losing that one sentimental piece he had left, that one reminder of where he'd once lodged his heart so firmly, it was an insult to think he might be able take it back, give it to another, just like that.
That guilt he's been feeling, the name for it comes to him now: the guilt of letting go.
But, he understands, it's not letting go and pretending it meant nothing, in the end.
It's healing.
The inhale he forces down his aching throat doesn't quite do much for his stability, but he needs it all the same to say it, quietly. "How do you know all this, love?"
She bites her lip, her bright eyes darting between his. "Don't be mad, but it was Robin. Don't—" she says in a rush, as the confusion starts to bubble up into vague indignance, "don't get upset. He didn't tell me anything, really. All he said, all he did was remind me that… well, I know you better than I should. We're the same. It didn't take much to figure it all out after that."
Bloody Robin. For all of his vocal disapproval, he sure seems to have a different opinion of his relationships – whatever form they may or may not take – when he's speaking with Emma. "And he told you I'd be here?"
"Is that all right?" Her hand still pressed against his chest, she's closer than ever, which makes the hesitant quiver of her lashes all the more distracting. "I didn't know how else to find you."
"And you ran all the way here from Neal's?" He can't help the tiny smile that tugs at the corners of his mouth, despite everything. Or, perhaps, because of everything. She only rolls her eyes. "Why?" he asks.
"I was in a hurry," she tells him flatly, as though it should be obvious, but she elaborates upon prompting with a quirk of his brow. "I didn't want to waste any more time."
That doesn't mean I have to do it alone. "Any more time before what?" It is obvious; he just needs to hear her say it. Just as it's obvious that she's spoken nothing but the truth, that the reason understanding comes to readily to him is because she'd had to come to terms with it, as well. That it probably hadn't been easy – acceptance never is, he knows – but the one thing that is easy is staying by her side, and maybe that's enough to pull him through it, to pull both of them through it all, piece by broken piece. That he wants it, if his pounding heart isn't indication enough, finally, with everything he can possibly muster.
That he's done wasting time, too.
"You know what," she mutters. He feels her hand press more firmly into him as she seems to sway in place, her gaze so full with the sentiment she won't put into words, it threatens to swallow him whole.
Well, that's good enough. He lets it.
Exhaling the breath he's held caught in his throat, he dips his head, hovers there for the time it'd take for her to pull away. But she doesn't, only nudges closer infinitesimally, and waits with extraordinary patience – until, at last, he bridges that last gap and presses his lips to hers once more.
It's gentle, searching, wrapped in all the things they've said like the seal of a promise. Her mouth moves against his with perfect abandon, and her hand on his chest slides up to join its partner around his neck, pulling herself flush against him as the heavy beat of desire between them, reawoken, begins to thrum that familiar pattern, like it's loathe to have disappeared at all. He savors this kiss, savors her, in all the ways he couldn't let himself back when she'd first kissed him at The Jolly Roger, in her apartment, which is the only reason he has even the slightest cause for protest when her lips grow more insistent, a new level of hunger that scarcely allows time for appreciation.
He breaks away just enough, the heady scent of her clouding his senses still, but all that seems to do is prompt her expectant glare.
"I know you said you were done wasting time," he murmurs, "but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy it, too."
"Who says I'm not?" Catching him by the collar, she starts to tug him backward, towards the only way out of the kitchen.
"Would you like a tour?" he asks with amused sarcasm. He knows his apartment is small, but the confidence with which she seems to expect to find what she's looking for (with her eyes closed, no less, if he has anything to say about it) is more endearing than worrying.
She snorts, a sweet breath on his tongue. "Maybe just one of those single-destination trips, for now."
"For now," he agrees, and she pulls his mouth back down to cover hers with a grin. Her fingers work at the zipper to his coat, then at shoving it off altogether, all the while shuffling them backward across his kitchen, the heated slide of her lips against his drawing him along at her mercy. It's all he can do to shift them in the right direction, towards the door to his bedroom, much less keep up in terms of her urgency. He keeps finding himself lost, after all – in the feel of her, her warmth in his arms and her tongue coaxing bliss through his veins – so it doesn't quite surprise him that, by the time she falls onto his bed, she's only lost her jacket, while his shirt seems to have found a new home on his floor.
He stops himself from collapsing on top of her, but only just, so it's from a new vantage point that he can watch her eyes flit down his form, glinting in the bare light of the setting sun through his blinds.
"You know, I'd have thought you'd be much faster at taking off clothes." He raises an eyebrow at her, but she only shrugs, helping him out by beginning to unzip her boots. "You seemed to have no trouble with getting shirtless while black-out drunk," she reminds him, "right before passing out on my couch."
"For your benefit, of course," he hedges lightly, smirks at the way she seems to have trouble maintaining her scowl. He'd have to be blind to miss the appreciation in her gaze – to have missed it, even back then.
(Like then, too, the moment he remembers, he makes sure to tug the chain of his ring over his head before it can cause any more problems, to tuck it away into his pocket for safe-keeping as a force of habit. It's lighter than it's ever been, cupped in his palm, and he doesn't miss the flash of emotion that crosses her face at the sight, either – if just for a split second, mingled understanding and subdued pride.)
"Come on," she snorts. She kicks off her boots and shuffles up his bed, and he has no choice but to do the same, to join her in record time. He tucks her into his side, nudging her lips back to his with his thumb fitted against her chin, and the curve of her leg slides between his knees, her hand beginning to wander up his chest. It has to be that she's deemed them properly situated for her liking, because she finally lets him keep the pace at a heated simmer – lets him take her in with everything she deserves.
The sweet vice of her mouth, slick and hot and wonderful, doesn't distract him from how her fingertips pull at the hair across his skin, or from the delicious sounds she makes every time he kisses her just right. It also can't help him decide where to touch her (everywhere seems like a good place to start), and he swears he runs his fingers between her jawline and the soft tangle of her hair far too many times before he finally settles on sliding them down her collarbones to hook into the first button of her shirt. He might be perfectly content with simply kissing her forever, but the moment he undoes the last clasp, slides his hand up the bare expanse of her belly, the need to feel more jerks up his nerves with a sensation akin to pain.
Gooseflesh rises along the path of his touch, and with every time her muscles tense under his palm, he grows more and more certain that the heat coiling its way from every inch of his skin down into the space below his gut – it's a shared thing.
This time, when she tugs away even as she cups his jaw in place, her tongue darting out between her swollen pink lips, the dark gleam in her eyes makes it all too clear that he was right: she's done with indulgence.
"Come on," she repeats, barely a whisper this time, and the thin, wanting sound propels him forward without any more convincing. He slips his grip between her free shoulder and her shirt, though that's just about all he can do when she hauls herself up to sitting to shrug it off. Her hands go to the button of her jeans, so he tries to quell the throb of his pulse just enough to work on his own (carefully, of course; it's ridiculous how hard he's gotten from endless kissing and a few prolonged touches alone). Given her ribbing, he's only too glad he's managed to kick them off by the time she settles back under him, as all that matching lace is more than a little distracting.
"Did you know this would happen?" he asks quietly as he props himself up on an elbow, smiling at the faint blush that stains her cheeks, and curls a finger into the strap of her bra. He's all for respectable reverence of undergarments – as respectable as an inspection of that nature can be, really – but it's the sight of all that lovely pale skin against his sheets that has hunger gnawing low, beneath his last shred of clothing.
"No."
"Are you sure, darling?" She casts him a look (though it loses a great deal of bite when cushioned by pillows from all sides). "It appears as though you'd come here knowing exactly what I was thinking, so it goes without saying you'd also known exactly what my answer would have been."
"Don't get used to it, buddy," she tells him, and she reaches behind her back in a maneuver he suspects is meant to shut him up. "I don't have enough matching underwear to keep this up forever."
He hums, half in acceptance, half in pure appreciation when she gets the clasp loose. "I suppose I'll just have to bear it."
"What a saint."
"I'm nothing of the sort," he says, grinning widely – though him reaching over fill his palm with her breast, to rub this thumb over a pebbled nipple when she tosses that scrap of lace to the side, is far from an attempt to prove a point. She sighs with satisfaction, arching up to meet him, and the sound goes straight between his legs with an accuracy that almost has him buckling over. He does end up bending for a different reason, though.
It's the best kind of torture, the feeling of her chest heaving, her body writhing beneath his mouth. He marks a wet trail down the side of her neck, continues where he shouldn't have left off the last time he tasted the salt of her skin – down, down, latching onto a breast with a swirl of his tongue, a nip of his teeth. One set of her fingers finds its way into his, his anchor to keep him grounded in the moment despite the unbearable tautness coaxing its way through every muscle in his body with every quiet gasp that escapes her lips. That leaves him with one free hand to play with the lace at her hip, urging her legs to twitch apart wider. The lace between them is almost completely soaked though.
"Bloody hell, love." She makes a noise that sounds almost like a laugh, but it's cut off the moment he slips his fingers beneath, his groin tightening just as quickly at the slick feeling of her heat. He returns his mouth to her other breast and tries, in vain, he should think, from going mad, from losing himself entirely in the ache to simply sink himself inside. He knows, from personal experience now, that it'd be incredible beyond his wildest dreams, if this is what he gets for merely touching her. He slides between her folds, teasing and rubbing and coaxing out sound after wonderful sound, his thumb drawing tiny circles around the bundle of nerves at the apex of her thighs. It isn't long before her hips begin to move with impatient need against his hand, and he obliges before his brain can catch up, curling one long finger inside slowly.
"Oh," she groans. When he looks up, her lashes are fluttering madly, her own free hand clenched so tightly in his sheets he's surprised the one clasped around his hasn't yet rendered him numb. The edges of his self-control fraying, he pulls out as carefully as he can, then sinks that same finger back inside her trembling quim, and the feeling of her around him hits, hot and wanting, right below the belt, so to speak. He watches her back arch, her hips rising to meet him to the knuckle, and then her heavy-lidded eyes catch him in their dark green snare. "Killian." It's an expression of gratitude and a desperate plea, all in one. "Killian, please."
The noise that escapes his throat is something that should probably embarrass him, but, as it is, he's too preoccupied with letting her underwear settle back into place as he scrambles for his bedside drawer. Somehow, she manages to kick it off completely, to start at the waistband of his before he's even managed to get the condom out of its foil package.
"Bloody—fuck, Emma," he bites out. She smiles a serene sort of torment, all innocence like her hand isn't wrapped around him, curving gently as she slides her grip down. His boxers barely askew from his hips, he can only sit back on his haunches, his mind blanking but for the sensation of her palm around his cock.
Saints. He needs to feel her.
"Come on." It's the last time she has to say it (though it's a close thing, how he freezes the moment he registers her completely bare – the loveliest sight he's ever seen); he gets rid of the last of his clothing, rolls the condom with shaky hands. Before he can resume his prior place over her, though, she pushes him back to sitting with a hand against his shoulder.
His mouth feels dry, even as he grins. "You know, somehow, this doesn't surprise me."
"Shut up," she tells him, and she's barely settled herself into his lap, hands clasped around the back of his neck, before she very effectively does it for him. One second, her hand is guiding his length into position, and he feels just the slightest hint of pressure from her quim; the next, she's lowering herself down onto her knees, taking him deep without even the decency for preamble.
He hears himself groan, as if from somewhere far away, a sound that mixes with her sharp inhale in a way that's pure music to his ears. She clenches him so perfectly on the slide down, wet and tight, that he needs a moment simply to breathe as he bottoms out, feels her legs clamp more firmly around his hips as she steadies herself, too. And then she's moving, back and forth in his lap, her hips rolling to push him deeper with every labored thrust she doesn't even bother to make gentle, or start slow at all, for that matter. The hot clasp of her body consumes every fiber of his being, his pulse pounding in his cock and in his throat as she fucks him, and he's so caught up in the utter bliss that it pumps through his blood that he doesn't even realize he's wasting time until he feels her mouth tilt over his.
If he's being honest with himself, he's in no right state of mind for his lips to be moving properly, but perhaps his instincts have done something right when he tastes the vibrations of her moan. Or perhaps it's just that he can feel her tightening in time with the coil of pleasure tensing to a point in his groin, pushing him closer and closer to the edge every time she sinks back down and buries him to the hilt. He slips a hand between them, pressing his thumb into where she's opened up like a flower, and it takes just a second of coaxing for her to cry out against his lips at last. Everything is white-hot and stretched to the absolute cusp of breaking as her slick walls squeeze around him, fluttering with her release.
When he comes, it's harder than he can ever remember, deep inside her, with his fingers clutched so rigidly against her hip, he's almost afraid of leaving her with more than a pair of bruised lips.
It takes several long moments for the thick pulse of pleasure to subside, for its clouds to clear themselves from his hazy, lust-filled mind. He feels every pant she exhales over his cheek, her nose skimming a gentle line across his skin, and he swallows, tries to catch his breath enough to speak.
"Emma."
When she opens her eyes, even in the new darkness of the room, he can see the lazy satiation glittering in them, clear as day. "Yeah?"
Those words from before – he's glad to be able to say them now. "I wish I'd let you hear me perform earlier, too." Her laugh is an exhausted, but no less pleased, thing, one he can feel more than the way she shifts over his still-tender flesh.
"Well," she says, "now that I know where you play, I suspect you're going to be able to make up for those regrets a lot sooner than you'd think." Her fingers wind into the hair at the back of his head as he returns her grin. "But actually – speaking of which," she frowns down at him, "where have you been keeping your guitar this past week? If you've been avoiding going to Robin's?"
He shrugs, and it doesn't bode well that the soreness is already starting to settle in there, since that probably means it's starting to settle in everywhere. And he knows it'll plague him everywhere. "At The Jolly," he tells her. "I'm afraid I've gotten woefully out of practice, thanks to you." He knows she's aware he only means it in jest.
"Guess you're going to have to put in a few extra hours later," she says, raising her eyebrows meaningfully.
"I suppose I could use a private audience for that, too." She muffles her chuckle by kissing him again, wrapping her arms full around his neck to press her breasts flush against his chest. He might suspect her of trying to work him back up again, and he's just about ready to pull away and accuse her of it, no less – except she's barely a few seconds into it when a thin growl twists its way into the quiet air of the room.
He doesn't realize exactly where it's come from until he spies the redness creeping into her cheeks, long after he jumps and breaks the kiss, startled.
"Hungry?"
"It's gotten late," she says with a touch of defense in her not-quite pout.
"And you've certainly worked up an appetite." If her punishment for his cheek is extricating herself from him, at last, and perching herself back down on the edge of the bed – well, the loss of her warmth might make him think twice about his words from now on.
Maybe.
(Probably not. The view is certainly something to be admired, and there's also the fact that he only has to lean forward to feel it again, soft at the pulse of her wrist.)
"Dinner?" he suggests, and the corners of her lips curve in the darkness.
"You did say that'd be a step up from doughnuts and cupcakes." Against the mattress, she twists her hand to twist her fingers around his, and she glances at him over her shoulder. "Although you'd better be willing to put up with all of my failed attempts at cooking, if we're staying in." From her tone, he'd wager she has zero plans of letting either of them leave anytime soon, which is just as well.
"That won't be a problem," he tells her, in no uncertain terms. "It just so happens that I've only recently purchased a box of hot chocolate mix, of which I hear you're something of an expert."
He swears her smile would light up the room, if it could.
"That," she says, leaning forward to kiss him again, "would be perfect."
(It is.)