Part II


N

Navel

He buries his head into her navel, and hot tears soak her skin. Words are muffled into her, indiscernible, words she doesn't need but he gives anyway.

She stands stoic, arms firmly by her side, pretending she isn't fighting her own. She stares hard into the mist, waiting for her vision to correct itself, waiting for her walls to brick up.

Instead something inside her, at the pit of her stomach, dislodges. She lets a sob escape, and she ducks her head down.

Her hands shake, and she lets out a shuddered breath when she tangles them in his hair.

O

Outside

The pattering of rain sounds outside, and a slow piano tunes in the other room from a forgotten radio.

In their room, it is warm, cozy. They are buried under blankets and relishing in the grey of the mid-morning storm.

Her breath is warm and sweet from the cocoa she had earlier, and her eyes echo that sentiment as she looks up at him in half-asleep wonderment.

He has never felt this type of peace anywhere but under the stars and amidst his wild family, a lifetime ago.

He is careful to curl her closer, to keep the feeling longer.

P

Package

She greets the small, brown package with an absent 'thanks' to the delivery person disappearing down the hall.

She takes it in, shifting its weight and leaving it next to a filled plate. She ignores it while she readies herself and son for their day, unbothered.

When Henry is safe at his Manhattan school, she grabs a scissors and snips the sealed edges with a soft scraping sound.

The contents shakes loose into her open palm, and the cool metal sits facing up – a badge. One she stares at until she sees cobalt eyes instead.

Storybrooke. It's from Storybrooke. Graham.

Q

Quality

The first kiss is searing, unasked for, all teeth and passion, aching plea. She rips away, not after closing her eyes, she swears. She tastes him for hours later, refuses to wash him out, claims it anger that makes the choice.

The second kiss is softer, sweeter. Slow, then burning. Intense. A mutual decision, a drop of pretense. The thirst grows, until she cannot give him up for air. It stops abruptly, and Emma can't help but crave more, even as concern bleeds first.

The third kiss never arrives, but it is not the quantity of them that haunts her.

R

Reception

The reception is icy, strangely, eerily so when she arrives with his hand in hers.

A dark glare sets from the back of the diner, tracing his form with rage barely contained.

She calls to the others first, puzzled by the strain on their faces. Can't they see? A shock, a wonder, a goddamn miracle that he's here.

But tones remain cool, detached, and the chanced looks to the glowering mayor shows the reason.

She sets her spine. If the solution is one or the other, she has made her decision.

She will be sure all will know exactly that.

S

Seam

His thumb rolls across the seam of her reddened lips, and she parts them willingly, taking his mouth just as simply as she gives her own.

His hands plunge through her hair, and her own tangle in his shirtfront, ripping down. He sucks a breath in through his nose, unwilling to part where his skin meets hers but he finally follows down to find more of it.

Teeth run along her collarbone, and threads pop open from their confines at the waist of her skirt.

Her head lolls back, and she twists into his hold: closer, closer, and closer still.

T

Tire

He doesn't tire of this.

He loves sleeping next to only Emma, of course. He has long since memorized the patterns of her breathing, cannot sleep without it.

But there are midnights where he must scoop up a shivering body to lie between them, where messy dark curls mix with her blonde ones, arm slung over her neck to pull her close and small, slack fingers reaching back for him.

He lays an arm to rest on Emma's hip, one that shelters her underneath as she kicks out. He grins tiredly, happy to play the protector for this princess' dreams.

U

Undress

He feels undressed by their gaze, peeled back layer by layer from the very act of their stare.

Unnerved, guarded, he pulls at his collar and ventures closer to her side.

Her gown glitters in the candlelight, and she is a vision that dances from one conversation to the next. He feels unmatched and out of place, an imposter in their midst.

She asks for help with the corset ties later, and sighs her tiredness. She worries aloud that she doesn't belong; he kisses the disquiet off her face.

For everything, they are at least matched, the two of them.

V

Veil

Under the veil of night, the trees were foreboding. They stretched their arms upwards in their bare, dormant state, cloaking the light of the pale half-moon.

Her hands were like ice, and she pulled the hood around her closer, scanning the woods for signs of life.

A grip of fear caught the breath in her chest, panic dying as she caught the red eye of the beast.

"There you are," she breathed even before she turned to find her lover.

He held her close, and the cold melted from her as she embraced him in the shadow of the wolf.

W

Weakness

He always considered it a weakness, the fact that he cared.

It had lost him his security, his family, his heart. It had cost him his freedom, his life.

So he pulls away when he finds firm ground beneath him once again, pretends that he could be the misanthrope he had once been once more.

Ignores the pain plain in her eyes when he rejects her open hand.

But when she collapses, pale and cold against the ground as her magic extinguishes, every last bit of the resolve crashes down.

He is weak, perhaps. But it will make him strong.

X

X-Ray

She frowns deeply at the X-ray, shoots a glare at her children. The doctor points out the jagged lines across the ulna.

The tiny boy peeks from behind a mop of sandy hair, sad eyes just like his father's.

"It was my fault," both her sons say in unison.

"We'll discuss it later," she says in her sternest voice, leftover panic in her tone.

They drive home with the smell of fresh plaster filling her yellow bug. "You can't scare me like that," she demands.

"It was an Operation," her teen explains stubbornly. "We were trying to find his wolf."

Y

Yearn

She knew what it was to yearn for something.

She spent her entire childhood seeking a family with a passion that made her heart collapse under the weight. Even behind bricks, her heart had yearned for this.

So when she looks over her family, strange and broken but stitched together through sheer willpower, she feels anxiety creep into her chest.

What if she lost this? What if it is dragged away, just as before?

He only listens when she whispers her fear later, brushes her hair in long strokes, nods. He kisses her forehead and says, "It's my fear, too."

Z

Zoom

The sound of the Zoom call was so mind-numbingly familiar that she pushed her head into her palm and glared into the camera as she clicked to let the person in from the virtual waiting room.

The screen loaded, and the smiling face of her parents appeared. Emma waved, and adjusted the baby in her lap, listening as Snow cooed and David tried to press in to see.

The quick weekly catch-up was over quick.

"I miss them," she admitted tiredly as she passed along the infant.

"We're keeping them safe," he said, brow creased with worry.

"Yeah. Still."

"Still."