Dancing with the Pirate
CS genre: Future Fic
"You've gotta be kidding me," Emma growled, crossing her arms and glaring at the building in front of her. "You can't be serious about this, Killian!"
Killian stepped in front of her and gave her his best puppy dog eyes. "Please, Swan?" he asked "For me?"
Emma sighed in exasperation, glancing up at the sign swinging above them on the sidewalk. Puss in Boots Latin Dance Studio. "But why? Why do we have to take a dance class?"
"You know as well as I that it's a tradition in your world for a newly married couple to open their wedding reception with a dance," Killian said.
Emma looked down at the diamond ring Killian had put on her finger a month ago after the most romantic marriage proposal in the history of marriage proposals.
"Yeah," Emma said, "but what about 'pick a partner who knows what he's doing'. Doesn't seem to me like I need to take a freaking dance class with a guy who used to be a cat before coming to Storybrooke! Can't we just…waltz or, you know, hold each other and sway back and forth like normal couples do?"
Killian grinned in the way that tended to turn her insides to mush. "Now darling," he purred, "I may be knowledgeable about the waltz, but your moving picture box has alerted me to the myriad other ballroom dances that exist in your world."
"Knew I shouldn't have let you watch Dancing With the Stars," Emma muttered under her breath. "Just what new dance do you want us to learn?"
"Hm," he said with a raise of one eyebrow, "I quite liked the rumba. Quite the sensual dance, don't you think?"
Emma laughed. "If we do the rumba in front of all of Storybrooke my dad might just stab you in the back again."
"Perhaps it would be worth it, love."
Emma laughed again, loving this man and his shameless flirting. "Fine," she finally said on an exaggerated sigh. "We can take the class. I'm not doing the rumba at our wedding reception, but who knows? Maybe we can find some time to dance it on our honeymoon."
~c~s~c~s~c~s~c~s~c~s~
Within ten minutes of starting the dance lesson with Puss in Boots (who insisted on being called Antonio while in human form), Killian realized he had severely miscalculated with this particular attempt to spend quality sensual time with Swan. He'd envisioned a morning spent in his true loves arms, bodies slowly undulating against each other. Instead…he'd spent the last two hours fantasizing several increasingly gruesome ways to plunge his hook into their instructor.
"That's it, that's it, mi tesoro," Antonio crooned to Emma as she swayed to the music within his arms. "Yes, relax. Feel the rhythm in your hips."
Killian crossed his arms and scowled, thinking things not to be spoken about the smooth-talking bilge rat. Perhaps if he spent more time teaching and less time flirting he'd have more patrons to his dancing establishment.
Killian supposed the dance instructor was a handsome man, with his wavy black hair and soulful brown eyes, but the amount of time he spent chatting up his female students was ridiculous.
It certainly didn't help that within half an hour, Killian had been sidelined so the instructor could show him (and Swan) how it was done.
"¡Venga!" the cat-man said, shooing Killian away. "You're as stiff as a board, señor! How do you expect the lady to learn with such an oaf as a partner? And your form? ¡Deplorable!"
Being relegated to the sidelines and informed he had bad form was bad enough, but when the flea-ridden feline dared to put his hands on Swan's hips, ostensibly to show her the proper movement, Killian had reached his limit.
Reaching into his waistcoat, he extracted two doubloons and placed them—rather forcefully—on the desk against which he had been leaning. "Swan, I believe there were some details for the wedding your mother wished to discuss with us over a bite at Granny's establishment. I think it's best we leave this establishment."
She gave him a strange look, but refrained from comment, merely using her towel to wipe the perspiration from her brow and then joining him with a bemused smile.
~c~s~c~s~c~s~c~s~c~s~
Emma shot Killian another surreptitious glance as they walked—more quickly than was strictly speaking comfortable—back toward her parents' loft. Something was clearly bothering him, but she hadn't a clue what.
He mumbled under his breath, glancing aside with a frown that could curdle milk.
"Alright, out with it," she said, finally, stopping abruptly on the sidewalk and coming to face her fiancé. "Something's obviously bothering you. We walk into our dance lesson you were all about the flirtation, and now…you look like you could murder someone on the spot. What's the deal?"
He sighed long and loud. "The deal is, that mange infected feline couldn't have behaved with less decorum had he tried! Rest assured; I shall be sure to voice my concerns in full on the comment card he provided us with."
Emma shrugged. "He was a bit over-the-top," she said, "but I have to admit, that dance lesson was actually pretty fun."
"Fun?" he scoffed. "Swan, are you telling me you enjoy being in the arms of arrogant lecherous swains who have nothing better to do than attempt to cuckold a man before his very face?"
"Attempt to…?" Emma began…and then it suddenly dawned on her. "Killian are you jealous of Antonio and our dance lesson?"
His frown intensified. "Not in the slightest. I merely find it inappropriate how free he was with your person."
Emma laughed long and loud. "You…you think that guy's competition for you? Killian he's a cat. He had to excuse himself halfway through the lesson so he could bathe his face—by licking his hand and swiping it over his forehead—and hock up a hairball. He had a freaking human-sized litterbox in the bathroom! You really think I'd go for that? Killian, bestiality's totally not my thing."
His face cleared slightly, but there was still a hint of pain in his expressive blue eyes. She'd bet her next month's salary that whatever was bugging him went deeper than a little petty jealously of a ridiculous flirt. "I apologize, Swan," he finally said on a sigh before turning to resume their walk.
She stopped him. "You know how much I love you, right?" she said hesitantly, hand coming up to cup his cheek. "I've never been happier in my life than the day you put this ring on my finger, and there's not a man alive or dead who could ever measure up to you."
Killian's eyes softened, and he brought his good hand up to cup her hand on his cheek. "I love you with all my heart, my Swan."
"But?" she prompted.
"I was quite…outrageously flirtatious, quite the same as our instructor…when I first made your acquaintance," he said. "Did I come across as that ridiculous and shallow?"
Emma stood on her toes and kissed him gently. "You could never be ridiculous and shallow in my eyes," she said softly. "You know how you always say you can read me like an open book? Well I can read you too. You know what I saw when you flirted outrageously? I saw a broken man using over-the-top lines to mask the pain he felt deep down. I saw a lost boy who thought he'd lost the only love he could ever have in his life. I saw the depth and the layers that lay beneath. I saw…myself looking back at me. It's one of the reasons I ran from you on top of the beanstalk. When I looked at you, I saw a kindred spirit, someone that I could fall for, hard, and the possibility scared the crap out of me."
"Do you speak the truth, love?"
"Course," she answered. "And you know what I saw when I looked at Antonio the feline dance instructor? An idiot who had a way too high opinion of himself. There'll never be another man for me than you, Killian. No one else could ever come close. I can't wait to grow old with you and have a family with you and wake up with you beside me every day for the next fifty years or so. I love you, you stupid, stupid pirate."
She saw her own love reflected in his eyes as he leaned down and kissed her long and slow, right there on the sidewalk in front of her parents' apartment building. This was right; this was perfect. Being in his arms was home.
"I love you too," he said against her lips when he finally ended the kiss. "Now what say we adjourn to your mother's abode. I believe choosing a design for wedding invitations was on the agenda for today."
Notes:
-The first section of this story was originally posted as the fulfillment of a prompt by kmomof4 on Tumblr. I thought if it were expanded a bit it would do nicely for a Fluffy Friday installment.
-Scheduling note: We've now reached the season of Lent, beginning with Ash Wednesday a couple of days ago. I look at Lent as a kind of spiritual spring cleaning, and when I reflected on what I need to address, it really hit me that my life is filled with noise and busyness. I need to take these 40 days to simplify my life and just…slow down…(and of course focus on my relationship with God, which is kind of the point of Lent). That being the case, I've decided to cut back on my fandom life a bit during Lent, and to that end, I've decided to only post one new chapter per month until Easter. I'll post the first Friday of the month in March and April, and then starting with the first Friday in May, I'll be back to my normal weekly posting schedule.
-Since I have 3 weeks before I post again, feel free to drop me a line with what you want next month's story to be.