The Kitchen Wars

CS Genre: CS Future Fic

They say hindsight is 20/20. (Whoever they are.) Looking back at the situation, Emma figures she should have handled it differently. If she'd known that was going to happen, she'd have never introduced Killian to modern kitchen appliances.

It all started innocently enough. Killian had made an appearance at her brand new apartment at the crack of dawn and kissed her awake. (She'd take that method of waking up over alarm clocks any day of the week.) She'd (eventually) gotten up, wandered to her kitchen and rummaged through her cabinets looking for something to eat.

Killian was curious as a cat. Examining each and every piece of equipment on her counter (which, admittedly wasn't that much. She wasn't big on cooking). Touching everything, pushing every button, asking more questions than a classroom full of toddlers. He was about to drive her nuts.

It was a matter of self-preservation, really.

At her wits end she'd done the only thing a 300 year old pirate's girlfriend could do to shut him up. After kissing him senseless…because he was annoying as hell, but he was still an adorable puppy, she rummaged around her junk drawer, still relatively neat and orderly given her recent move, found the owner's manual for each and every appliance she owned, plopped them in front of him, set him the task of learning just how each "infernal contraption" worked, and then left for the sheriff's station.

She hadn't expected to come home to a war zone that evening.

"Killian?" she called as she stepped into the apartment, draping her leather jacket over the back of the sofa. "You still here?"

She heard some extremely colorful (and rather eloquent) cursing coming from the general vicinity of the kitchen, and then it abruptly stopped. A moment later, Killian poked his head into the living room, his face bright red, his single hand scratching at that infamous spot behind his ear.

"Swan," he said with a nervous laugh. "Hadn't expected you home for another hour at least."

Something was up. She knew her pirate like the back of her hand, and something was definitely up.

"Slow day," she said, narrowing her eyes. "Why? Is there a reason I should have stayed out later?"

"Now Swan," he said with a placating motion of his hand, "don't lose your temper, love. It was all a bit of a misunderstanding, but the toaster and I ironed it out. The blender, on the other hand….well, he showed such insubordination I fear he's a lost cause, but the coffee maker managed to make peace amongst all of us…"

What the hell was he babbling about? She moved with firm purpose in the direction of her kitchen, but he stepped in front of her.

"Emma, what are you doing love?" he asked, his voice uncertain. "Perhaps you'd best rest after your long day at work. I'll draw you a bath…"

"Killian?"

"Aye?"

"Is there a reason you don't want me to go talk to your new appliance friends in there?"

He laughed uneasily.

Oh this was going to be bad. She could already tell.

Emma stepped into her kitchen and didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It looked like a full on war had gone on here. The toaster, sporting a distinctly hook shaped dent had been completely disassembled. The blender sat near the edge of the counter, apparently awaiting a similar fate, its contents—some sort of berry smoothie if she didn't miss her guess—were splattered up the walls and onto the ceiling. One of her kitchen cabinets hung askew, held onto its base by a mere whisper.

"Care to explain?" she asked, crossing her arms and giving him the look that never failed to make him squirm.

"See, love, it was like this," he began. "I wished to prepare a slice of toast for myself, so I decided to use the toaster."

"Makes sense so far."

"After diligently reading the instructions, adjusting the settings exactly as prescribed and inserting the bread in the allotted slots, I depressed the levers and waited," he said, beginning to pace. "When the hoped for toast emerged, I was sorely disappointed; it had barely begun to brown."

"So," she said, "you stabbed the toaster?"

"No, Swan, that would be ridiculous," he gave her a disgusted look. "I deduced that the amount of time needed to properly toast bread must vary according to the type of bread. White bread, as I was using, must require multiple insertions into that demon device. Accordingly, I depressed the levers once more, and do you know what happened?"

"I'm waiting on baited breath to find out."

"The bloody thing burnt my toast! Utterly ruined it!"

"And that's when you stabbed it."

He glared at her. "Naturally."

He was so freaking indignant, she couldn't hide her smile. "So…then you decided being 'hooked' wasn't bad enough, you decided to disembowel the thing?"

"No," he sighed. "I decided I had perhaps been a bit hasty. I took it apart in order to ascertain if there was something faulty within its workings. As I am no mechanic, the task has proven futile. Tiring of my battle with the toaster, I decided to make myself one of those fruity concoctions you procured for me the other day."

"Looks like that didn't work so well for you either."

"No," he said. "Nothing in the bloody manual told me of the importance of holding the lid on the blender when in use. You can see the results."

Emma took pity on him. With a wave of her hand she let her magic put her abused kitchen to rights. "You know, Killian, it sounds like you've had a worse day than I have. How about I draw that bath for you?"

"Perhaps," he said, quirking a cocky eyebrow her way, "but only if you join me."

She stepped up to her not-so-handy man, and kissed him soundly. "Yeah, I think I'd better. Who knows what kind of trouble you'd get yourself into trying to make the bathtub work on your own."

Notes:

-Yay! We survived the first week of the Dark!Swan arc! I liked the premiere and I'm pretty excited for the season ahead, but then I've already written thousands and thousands of words of analysis (sadly, not even an exaggeration), so I'll just leave it at that for now.

-I don't even know what this story is…other than ridiculous. This was originally written for the cs writing challenge. The prompt of the day was: "If I knew this was going to happen…" Somehow I couldn't help but turn that into a Killian-vs-modern-technology story.

-Sounds like there might be some serious angst heading our way in this Sunday's episode (at least if people are correct with their predictions based on the episode press release), so I'll have to come up with something particularly fluffy for next week's installment.