AN: Saw the #ficwip Valentine's Day challenge a little while ago and belatedly realized that I've never actually done anything Valentine related for my favorite pair! While this isn't explicitly Valentine-ish, I'm hoping I honoured the sentiment well enough :) Oblique references to an older fic in here (Outside In) but nothing too egregious - just me having fun with the fact that Machias is 100% the over-thinking type and would totally get hung up on what he feels like he should/has to do!

(Also, I totally tried to get this posted on the actual holiday but alas, life got in the way :P)

The Necessity of Nothings

Out of all the reactions he could have garnered, Machias had to figure that a rush of muffled laughter was about the worst one possible. Why didn't he just keep his mouth shut again? No good had ever come from speaking before thinking in the past, it would only stand to reason that now would be no different...

"In my defense, I thought that if I said it out loud it might have sounded a little less ludicrous than in my head. Apparently I was wrong."

"N-No! It didn't sound ludicrous at all," Emma lies shamelessly, her giggles dying down as she looks at Machias with no small measure of affection. "It just surprised me, I think."

"Oh, of course. I laugh exactly like that when I'm surprised too. Doesn't everybody?" he grouses, turning away with an indignant huff as he takes a seat on the couch.

(He was trying very hard not to look at her smile. It had proven frighteningly effective at disarming him over the years, and what was all the more frightening was that she knew it).

"Hehe. I'm sorry - "

"As awful a liar as ever, I see."

"I am, though," she soothes, sidling up next to him and tugging on his sleeve, playfully rolling her eyes when he grumbles and made room for her to slide closer. "It really did take me off guard. I'm not exactly used to you saying things like that, Machias."

"There's a first time for everything, isn't there? And as far as I'm concerned it's hardly out of order for a man to call his fiancee 'sweetheart' once in a while."

"Other men? No. You? Yes." She giggles again at the affronted look on his face, reaching up to tap him on the nose. "Come now. Terms of endearment have never been your forte and I think we both know it, though I'd hardly say that's a bad thing."

He frowns, though given the way Emma was snuggling against him it was rather difficult to take genuine offense. She was unfair like that.

"... Did it really sound so odd?" Machias finally asks, sounding just the slightest bit put out, his expression a study in surrender.

"A touch. Well, maybe more than a touch," she admits, knowing full well that he'd accept nothing less than the unvarnished truth. "What about you? Did you feel right saying it at all?"

The uncomfortable cough as he briefly averts his gaze is the only answer she needs. Emma's lips curl upwards into a tiny smile, the memory of his painfully stiff shoulders and sharp upward inflection all too fresh in her mind.

She'd thought it was cute. Then again, she was hardly unbiased.

"I thought not." She grasps his hand and gently threads their fingers together, the skin of his knuckles rough against her thumb. "You know it's never bothered me that you don't say things like that, right?"

He nods. "I know. It sort of bothers me a little, though."

She looks at him curiously, her amusement slowly fading from sight. "I see. Do you mind if I ask why?"

"As if you'd withdraw your question if I did," Machias mutters, only squirming a little as her hands find a sensitive spot along his side. "Feel free to stop that, by the way."

"I'll think about it. In the meantime, go on."

He remains silent for a few moments, a mess of words jumbling in his head as he readies himself to try and put shape to the ineffable, to try and give voice to a doubt that he hadn't even known he'd been carrying.

"I just - I don't know, I feel as though now's an appropriate time to make up for everything I didn't do at Thors, I suppose? Or afterwards, for that matter," he slowly explains, Emma giving him an encouraging squeeze when he briefly pauses. "I mean, it did take me a good long while to get my act together."

"Perhaps, but I seem to remember that you weren't the only one," she says, shaking her head in fond remembrance of two teenagers that had danced around each other for far, far longer than they had to. "Just like I also remember telling you that I wouldn't have traded our time at the academy for anything in the world, sweet nothings or no. I meant it then, and I mean it now."

He exhales once, willing his suddenly tense body to be still. It's easier said than done.

"But - "

"No. No 'but's." Emma shifts to look up at him, her eyes liquid in the afternoon light. "You think too much, you know."

Her gentle admonishment is punctuated by another tap to his nose, and it was really sort of amazing how she could make him go from feeling uncertain to silly in the span of heartbeats.

Goddess, she was going to be the death of him one day.

"... Maybe just a little," he concedes, shaking his head when she giggles again and lets her fingers rise higher to idly swim through a mess of dark green. "Still, I'm not giving up so easily. After all, it would be embarrassing to let something like this get the best of me!"

She sighs, long used to his quirks by this point. "Hmm. Only you would take calling someone sweetheart as a personal challenge."

"Mark my words, I'll say it eventually. Properly, I mean."

"Would you be willing to let this go if I told you that it's the thought that counts?"

"Never. Practice makes perfect, Emma."

"You're really going to practice calling me that?" she teases, artfully raising an eyebrow at the solemn expression on his face.

"I-I just have to get used to it, that's all! It wasn't as if saying 'I love you' was a matter of course for me either, but eventually I - "

He trails off when she frowns and runs her fingertips across his jawline, graciously bidding him to be silent. He can do nothing else but oblige.

"That's not quite the same," Emma muses, her words distant and dreamy; like stardust scattered across a twilight sky.

"How so?"

She smiles at him. As always, it holds him in rapture.

"Because you never had to agonize over saying it before you did. Why would you? You were telling me you loved me long before you ever said the words, Machias."

The world gradually slides out from under him. It's not a foreign sensation by any means. This isn't the first time she's made this happen, and he knows it won't be the last.

Machias can hear the faraway sound of his pulse roaring through his ears, the cacophony drowning everything else out as he carefully draws her closer. Her braid comes loose in his hands.

"You understand that, right?" she asks, trembling when he buries his head in waves of unbound silk, her palms pressed against his warm back. "I love hearing you say it each and every time, but even if you didn't - the way you are, everything you do... I'd still know."

The death of him. Truly.

"You love me," Emma says quietly, almost to herself, and if she has anything else to say it vanishes when Machias closes the distance with a kiss. He loses himself fearlessly, with neither reservation nor restraint, the graceful curve of her neck a road to lead him home.

He whispers 'sweetheart' like a prayer when he finally pulls away (still dazed, still enraptured) and he's rather gratified to see that Emma's not laughing at all when she leans forwards to remind him in no uncertain terms that oh yes; she loves him, too.

Everything else is gone now, vanished from his sight. There is no more concern in him, no more worry or fear or doubt. All that remains is her and the scent of her hair.

(He needs nothing else, you see).