The moment Killian closed the door behind himself, he felt a chill roll down his spine. He wasn't sure if it was from the wet clothing currently sticking to his skin or if it was because he'd just become acutely aware of the fact that he was now alone with Emma, inside what was essentially her home for the last of her time in France. While the two of them had certainly spent plenty of time together already that week, there was something about being stood inside of her home that felt different.
"There are, uh… there are some towels in the bathroom," she explained, as she began doing her best to hobble her way down the hallway.
"I'll get them," Killian offered. He gave her a slightly wide berth to avoid brushing against her injured ankle and then headed for the door that was located in a similar place to the bathroom in his own holiday home. He was relieved to see that while the bathroom here was certainly bigger than the one he had, it was decorated and furnished pretty much the same way, which meant that the cupboard to his left was full of fluffy white towels. Killian gathered up an armful and then made his way back to Emma, who had taken a seat on the staircase.
"Here you go," he said, handing a couple to her before he lifted one to his head and roughly began toweling off his hair. When he was satisfied it would no longer drip water down the back of his shirt, he moved on to wiping the droplets from his neck and around his upper chest. From the corner of his eyes, Killian spotted Emma staring in his direction and stopped suddenly when he realized just how intently she was watching him.
"What?" he asked, looking down himself for anything out of place.
"Nothing," she said after a moment, shaking her head slightly. Killian raised a brow in question, and she threw him a cheeky smile before she finally explained, "Wet is a good look on you."
Killian flushed a little as he looked down his body again, trying desperately to see what it was that she saw instead of the drowned-rat appearance he knew he was giving off.
"Thanks," he mumbled towards the floor, as he carried on moving the towel further down his body, hoping to soak up as much of the water as he possibly could.
"I don't think I have anything here that will fit you," Emma mused, struggling her way back to her feet again and cringing a little as she did. "I can go and check, though."
"Don't worry about it," Killian assured her. "I can always run home and change when the weather lightens up a little. Trust me; I've looked far worse than this before."
"Really?" she asked, doubt coloring her tone.
Killian watched as she gently massaged the ends of her hair between two sections of her towel. Her careful actions were the complete opposite of his own.
"Oh, yeah. I used to cover things like hurricanes before the network agreed to give me my own show. I would come back from those spots with water dripping down parts of my body I didn't know water could reach."
Emma stopped what she was doing and wiggled her brows playfully at his words.
Killian flushed again when his brain finally finished processing what he'd said.
"I didn't mean it like that," he told her.
"Hey! I'm not judging. You do you," she giggled, as she turned on her heels to make her way towards what Killian assumed was her kitchen.
After a moment of hesitation, he followed just behind her.
"Do you want something to warm you up?" Emma asked, already busy filling a kettle with water, which she then set onto the stove before igniting the gas flame beneath it.
"I'm not really a hot drink kind of person," he explained.
"At all?"
Emma turned so fast that Killian was a little worried she would fall over. Somehow, even on one leg, she managed to keep her balance and make the move seem effortless.
He shook his head ruefully.
"Okay. Well, there's, uh – there's water and Cola in the fridge if you'd rather have one of those."
"Thank you," he said, making his way around the table to the small fridge that was the exact same model and color as the one in his own kitchen. Inside, Killian noticed that Emma's fridge was much fuller than his own. There was a half-empty carton of orange juice and another of milk beside it, sitting on the shelf inside the door. He pulled out the milk and set it down on the counter for Emma, assuming she'd want some for her drink. On the top two shelves, there were neat little rows of drinks - everything from bottles of water, and cans of soda, to bottles of wine; and cans of fruit cider. The next shelf held some cuts of meat and half-finished pastries, and the one below it contained cheese, eggs, and some sort of low-fat spread. In the crisper drawers, there was a good variety of fruits and vegetables for her to snack on.
"Wow. You, uh – your fridge is far better stocked than my own," he chuckled, as he grabbed himself a bottle of water and pushed the door shut. "I just bought some drinks and a couple of boxes of pop tarts with me."
"How have you survived this long?" Emma wondered, as she gestured for him to take a seat at the kitchen table.
"I live in New York City. You can get anything and everything you want; delivered at any time of the day."
"Must be nice," she mused, but there was something about her tone that suggested she wasn't thinking about all the different kinds of foods she could have delivered to her if she lived in the city too.
Before he could inquire about what was on her mind, the kettle started whistling, and Killian watched as Emma poured the boiling water into a mug. An inviting scent of comfort and cake immediately began filling the kitchen.
"What is that?" he wondered, as he watched his friend stir in some sugar and add a small splash of milk before she gave her drink one final stir.
"Tea."
"That doesn't smell like any kind of tea I've encountered before."
"That's because there's more than one kind of tea in the world, Killian," she chuckled, hobbling over to the nearest seat to drop down heavily into it.
Killian waited just long enough for her to take a sip and make herself comfortable before he headed over to the freezer in the corner of the room and began rooting around inside it.
"Are you planning to cook for me?" Emma asked.
"God no! Trust me - you don't want that. I just wanna help you take care of your ankle," he said, finally emerging victorious with a bag of frozen peas in hand. "Take off your sock and shoe."
"Yes, Sir," she teased, as she pushed back from the table to do just as he'd asked.
Killian tried to ignore the way his stomach leaped at her words and, instead, gathered up the small footstool from beside the back door and one of the cushions on the window seat. He then made his way carefully over to Emma's side, dropping the stool to the floor and the cushion on top of it. He wasn't entirely sure if it was the coldness of his hands or the pain in her foot that made her gasp when he reached for it, but after offering her a small smile of apology, Killian gently rotated her leg to get a better look at her ankle.
Emma had been right. The joint was a little swollen, which suggested that she'd twisted it slightly when she'd slid down the side of the mountain, but it didn't appear to be too badly damaged. He was sure that after icing it regularly for the rest of the day, she'd be moving around again tomorrow, even if she was a little stiff at times.
"This doesn't look too bad," he said, as he propped her foot up on top of the cushion and then draped the bag of frozen peas over the swollen joint. "Keep icing it for the rest of the night, and you should be fine."
"Thank you," she whispered. The softness of her voice had Killian's gaze shooting up to meet her own. "I've, um… nobody's ever really done that for me before – taken care of me like that – so thank you."
Killian pushed himself up from his crouch and then reached out to gently squeeze her arm. He wasn't sure why, but something inside of him was busy saying that his words were not what Emma needed from him at that moment, so instead, he simply made his way back around the table to take his seat once again.
"What, uh… what kind of tea do you have?" he asked, settling on the safest subject he could find.
"It's carrot cake flavored," Emma explained. "One of my lecturers drinks it, and she made me a cup when I was in her office, discussing my schedule at the start of my course. She told me where she got it, and I've been treating myself to a little ever since. A pouch usually lasts me about three months - so it's not too expensive."
"I wonder if they ship to New York City?" he mused. "I have a friend who drinks a lot of tea. I bet she'd love that."
"I'm sure they do," Emma replied, and Killian raised his head to offer her a small smile. That smile fell, however, at the next words to fall from her lips. "It's stopped raining."
Killian twisted round in his seat to get a good look out of the window behind him, hoping to find some evidence that she was wrong. Unfortunately, it had not only stopped raining, but the sun was back and rapidly drying off the afternoon's showers.
"Yeah. I, uh – I guess I should go and get changed," he said, albeit very reluctantly.
Emma nodded her head as she continued staring past his shoulder at the view offered by her kitchen window. "I think I might take a shower to try and shrug off this chill," she said, then finally turned her attention back to him to add, "If I leave the front door unlocked, you can let yourself back in. It'll save me hobbling all over the house."
"You, uh… you want me to come back?" Killian asked, because he'd been sure that their afternoon together would now be over, given Emma's injury.
"Sure. Unless you have other plans?"
"No! No, I don't have any. I'll, um – I'll run home, take a shower, put on some dry clothes, and then come straight back. Do you, uh – do you want me to bring anything with me?"
"Just yourself," she said, as she pulled the peas from her foot and hobbled around the table to place them back into the freezer. "See you soon," she promised, bending down to press a kiss to his cheek before she hobbled her way past him to begin carefully climbing the stairs.
Killian sat in stunned silence for a moment longer as he tried to process everything that had already happened that day. The sound of a door closing upstairs startled his mind away from thoughts of Emma's warm body pressed against his own and her soft lips brushing over his skin. Giving himself a mental shake, Killian finally hauled himself to his feet to head back to his own little home and the promise of dry clothes waiting for him.
Less than forty minutes later, Killian found himself once again standing outside of Emma Swan's front door, contemplating what to do. From what he knew of women, they often tended to spend more time in the shower than he did, so the chances that she would still be washing were high, and therefore, she wouldn't hear if he knocked on the door before letting himself in. That being said, he also didn't want to just walk straight in like he thought he was entitled to do so whenever he pleased. Even his closest female friends would have yelled at him for that. He had just decided to knock and announce his arrival when the door was pulled open from the other side.
"I figured this was easier than waiting for darkness to fall while you decided if you should knock or not," Emma told him, offering him a cheeky smile as she turned a little easier on her heels to stalk through to the room on the left of the building.
"I've never really been given blanket access to a person's home before," he explained. "Well, just my mother's, and she doesn't really count. I wasn't sure what the right protocol was here."
"For future reference, when I tell you I'm leaving the front door unlocked, it means you can just walk through it," she said, as she took a seat on the small sofa, identical to the one inside his living room. Killian watched as she lifted her leg to rest on top of a cushion on the coffee table, then as she placed a bag of frozen peas over her ankle.
"I'm glad you're still icing it," he told her, shrugging off his jacket and quickly scanning the room.
Killian could immediately tell why Emma had chosen this house to be her holiday rental instead of one of the others. It wasn't because the space was bigger - as he had previously assumed - it was because of what was inside it.
"Now I get it," he said, as he took a step towards the corner of the room, where an old upright piano stood against the wall. There was a much newer acoustic guitar resting against the piano's frame, and both the music stand and the small table under the window were covered in sheets of paper. "Do you mind?" he asked, gesturing to the sheets dotted around him.
"Be my guest," Emma replied, as she turned her attention down to a book that had suddenly appeared in her lap.
Killian didn't understand most of what he saw. While he knew that he was looking at sheet after sheet of handwritten music, he didn't know what the notes drawn onto it represented or how they would sound when played together. Occasionally he would find a piece of lined paper with various lyrics scrawled across it in surprisingly neat handwriting. It was only when he picked up another with a title and full verses penned across it that he realized Emma had been holding back more than he'd expected.
"You're not just composing music," he said, as he turned away from the piano to look at his friend once more. "You're writing songs."
"I'm trying to," Emma replied, but there was an air of casualness to her tone that was a little too forced to be genuine. An idea that was confirmed by the way the tips of her ears had turned bright red.
"Would you, um… would you play something for me?" he asked. Emma's head shot up from her book faster than he'd expected. "I don't know much about music so, I really don't know what any of this means," he explained, waving the sheets in his hands.
"Maybe later," she replied, offering him a tight smile. "I, uh… I might need a couple of drinks inside me first."
"I guess I'd better go and get that bottle of wine from the fridge then," he said, and Emma snorted out a laugh as she dropped her book to the coffee table and relaxed back into the sofa.
Killian made his way through to the kitchen and snagged a can of Cola, a bottle of peach-colored wine, and a glass from one of the kitchen cupboards before he headed back to the lounge. He set everything carefully down onto the coffee table next to Emma's injured foot, then took a seat beside her on the sofa.
With two adults on it, the seat felt far more intimate than it had done whenever he'd used the one in his home, and Killian became acutely aware of just how close Emma was. He could feel her thigh brush against his own when she shifted a little to ease the discomfort in her injured leg and the way her hand brushed his knee as she reached out to open the bottle of wine and pour herself a drink. She didn't seem all that bothered by the contact, however, and, with every little move she made, Killian found his body relaxing further into the cushions behind him - until his phone began ringing loudly inside his pocket.
"Shit!" he cursed, as he fished it out a little awkwardly to check the caller ID. "I, um… I'll send him to voicemail," he told Emma, hitting ignore on August's call. Killian knew he'd likely never hear the end of it when he made it back to New York City, but at that moment, he couldn't bring himself to care.
Unfortunately, Killian had forgotten just how annoying his oldest friend could be, as he'd barely set the phone down on the coffee table before it began to ring again.
"I think you should probably answer it," Emma chuckled, between sips of her drink.
Killian sighed a little as his thumb hovered over the dismiss button before he finally hit accept and lifted the device to his ear.
"Did you just send me to voicemail?"
"Hello to you too," he sighed, offering Emma a tight smile.
"Dude, I'd never send you to voicemail. I'm a little offended."
"I've sent you to voicemail before," Killian sighed, because he knew for a fact that it hadn't been the first time he'd dismissed one of August's calls that year, and it certainly wouldn't be the last.
"Yeah, when you're working! Not when you're sitting on a beach, soaking up the sun."
"I'm not sitting on a beach and soaking up the sun," Killian protested weakly. "And I am trying to work, remember? That was the whole point of leaving the country for this vacation - so people like you couldn't distract me."
Emma snorted a laugh from beside him, which she tried to cover with a cough, and Killian shot her a withering look.
"What was that?" August demanded.
Even miles apart, Killian could hear his friend's suspicion in his tone.
"Someone else in the café," he lied, and watched as Emma's brows climbed her forehead. "Now, what was it you wanted that simply couldn't wait two whole days until I was back in the country?"
"I was gonna ask if you wanted me to pick you up from the airport," August said, his voice tinged with haughtiness, "But now, I think I'm just gonna let you take a cab."
"I'm sorry," Killian sighed, because he didn't want to get back to New York and find his friend angry with him. He just really didn't want to waste the night talking to August when he only had two days left with Emma. "I would very much appreciate you picking me up. I need to swing by mom's place and grab Lily on the way home, though."
"I'm sure that could be arranged," August declared, his tone once again back to the bright bubbliness that Killian had long since associated with the smugness he wore whenever he got his own way. "I'll let you get back to your work then," August said, filling the penultimate word with as much contempt as he could possibly manage. "Send me a text with all your flight details, and I'll see you on Friday, Killy Boo."
"Don't call me that," Killian sighed.
Emma didn't even bother to hide her laughter that time.
"Have fun," was all August said, before he disconnected the call.
Killian sat with the phone pressed to his ear for just a moment longer before he finally pulled it away and tossed it down onto the table. He wanted to turn to Emma and apologize for the interruption to their night - and for everything she'd likely heard during the call - but he already knew his face was flaming bright red, and he didn't want to make the situation even worse.
Of course, the moment he finally turned her way, he found Emma leaning back against the arm of the chair with what could only be described as a shit-eating grin on her face.
"What's wrong with Killy?" she asked, the moment he caught her eye.
Killian groaned and brought his hand up to scrub over his face. She'd definitely heard far more than he thought she would. "It's just… it's stupid," he said, because surely she could see that? "I mean, how would you feel if I started calling you Emmy?"
Emma took a moment to consider his question, and Killian braced himself for triumph – until she said, "I honestly wouldn't mind."
"Wh – what?" he asked, not quite believing what he was hearing.
"I mean, sure, it's also the name of a popular award ceremony, but honestly, it really wouldn't bother me."
"You like Emmy?" he pressed.
"I don't hate it. And it's…" her voice trailed off for a moment, and the expression on her face shifted from the humor that had been present before to something altogether far more serious.
Killian reached out for his can of Cola and took a large gulp to keep himself occupied.
When Emma spoke again, her voice carried a kind of vulnerability that he'd only ever glimpsed before. "From what I understand, nicknames are a sign of affection, right?" she asked, and Killian nodded his head in agreement. "So, while you might hate the name 'Killy,' it shows that your friend loves you. He loves you enough to have given you this version of your name that's all his. It's something the two of you share, and if other people use it, it's because they both have that same connection to you guys. You're all part of this group of people who have shared a moment and share a great deal of love. I've never had that before," she added, flicking her eyes down to where she was wringing her hands in her lap. "Nobody's ever bothered to get to know me well enough to want to give me a nickname. Nobody's even tried. So, if the one person in this world who's cared enough to even attempt to get to know me wants to call me Emmy, then I'm not gonna stop him."
Killian sat in silence for a long moment as he allowed Emma's words to wash over him. He'd never really given much thought to something as simple as a nickname before. He'd certainly never considered the logic behind it. And then there was everything Emma had revealed about herself in that one small speech. She'd laid herself bare in a way he assumed she had never done before, and all to make him feel slightly better about a stupid nickname one of his oldest friends had given to him on a drunken night out. It was a lot to process, and in the end, Killian said the only thing he could think to say.
"Okay. So, um – what do you wanna do for the rest of the night, Emmy?"
Emma's smile was so bright that it lightened the room as the last few rays of sunshine began to disappear behind the mountains surrounding them.
"How about we just watch some crappy French TV and order a pizza?" she suggested. "I don't know about you, but I could do with a bit of a rest."
"Crappy French TV sounds perfect," Killian agreed, as he stretched his arm along the back of the couch to make himself more comfortable. "You should put the peas back on your ankle, though," he added, as Emma twisted herself around to face the small television in the corner of the room, cringing a little as she did.
"Yes, Sir," she threw back at him, rolling her eyes playfully as she did.
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