Four
She curses him under her breath a half dozen times before she starts yelling obscenities in the middle of the living room.
He was right and she's not incredibly surprised by it, but she is still stubbornly frustrated regardless.
She stumbles to the couch and clutches at her leg.
The crack had been loud and out of nowhere.
She'd been in the middle of getting back from the laundry line, having finished folding and putting everything back, intending on finding a new home for the clothes pins. And then it happened, sending her to the floor in an instant.
She's a little surprised the kid hasn't caught on to her distress. Henry is currently lying in his bundle of pillows dressed in a cloth diaper fashioned from one of Killian's shirts.
Emma whines. She's fairly certain she's re-fractured the break and now he's going to come back and have to reset it. Damn him.
The thing about her leg being broken is that it really, really shouldn't be. The old fashioned ship was an insane choice for a family cruise to begin with, and Emma getting flung like she was from her spot on the upper deck was an act of insanity, if not impossible.
She grits her teeth and struggles to lie down, biting her lip and cursing more. A part of her hopes he comes back because of the noise, but the other part of her wants him to never come back.
The door opens up, squealing on its way. It's a dramatic buildup, Killian walking into the room, and once he reaches her, he tilts his head.
He's standing there, all dashing and stupid, and she thinks he's savoring this moment.
"Shut up," she growls.
He smirks. "Do you need my help?"
Emma scowls, but then the pain makes her angry again. "Screw you."
He chuckles darkly. His eyes are alight with amusement. "I don't think now would be the time for that, love."
She rolls her eyes so hard she thinks they'll fall out of her head. "How charming. Just do it, you ass."
He slides her up the couch a little so she doesn't hit Henry, and just like last time, he doesn't warn her, and she screams. Emma growls at him when he backs off.
He stares at her for a second. "Better not get up for a while if you want it to heal properly, yeah?"
"And just how am I going to take care of Henry if I can't feed him or change him?"
He looks over at the lump by her feet and sighs. "Teamwork. I'll deliver your materials when he requires them and you'll do the work."
Emma rolls her eyes. "Fine. Whatever." Killian takes a step back. "What time is it?"
"Late."
He turns around and she watches him as he leaves the living room to go into the kitchen.
She scoffs, closing her eyes and draping her arm over her forehead as she lays back, settling into the cushions of the raggedy sofa. Henry fusses at her feet a moment later and she groans.
"Henry," she sighs. "Just for five minutes, can you not need something?"
It isn't fair that she's being tasked to take care of a kid that doesn't even belong to her. It isn't fair that she broke her leg and has had to get it reset twice.
It isn't fair that she's stranded on an island with this man who seems to believe that women are only good for cooking and cleaning.
She just wants to go home, to wrap herself up in a blanket and sit between her parents on their couch, watching some old movies while they discuss mundane crap. She misses talking about mundane crap. Who would've known?
Emma winces as she sits up, her thoughts of home weighing heavily on her chest, settling into the pit of her stomach anxiously.
She misses home and she misses her family and friends. She misses Neal, of all people, and he isn't even someone she likes that much right now.
Somehow she manages to adjust so that Henry is cradled against her and she sighs. "Hey! Captain Hook! Get back here."
The boots clatter loudly against the floors and she hears him moving things in the kitchen. "Where the bloody hell did you put the bottles?"
Emma rolls her eyes. "Top shelf next to the sink."
She hears him yanking the door open and then he puts together the bottle noisily. The man has a nasty habit of being over-the-top loud and it annoys her so much, especially with a crying baby roaring in her ear.
"Hurry up, damn it!"
"I hear him!" the man yells, clearly just as perturbed as she is. "I bloody well hear him! Bloody woman!"
She sighs as she rocks Henry a bit to get him to calm down. He doesn't.
By the time the idiot comes back into the room, she has no patience for anything and yanks the bottle from him hastily. He goes storming off immediately and she hears the front door squeaking open and slamming shut, making her roll her eyes again.
"Yeah, thanks for the help, you jerk."
Emma turns her attention to Henry and successfully gets him to eat and fall back asleep within a matter of twenty minutes. She leaves the bottle on the floor and curls up on the couch as much as she can, closing her eyes and listening to the world move around her.
It's raining.
She hears the steady threshing of the rain against the roof and a dribbling sound from somewhere she's sure she'll discover in the morning. The night is dark and when it starts to thunder, she's instantly reminded again of the night she was tossed from the ship.
It's chilly in the house so she tugs at her blanket to trap the body heat closer. Maybe she would feel better if she and Killian weren't so horrifically opposed to one another. Maybe she could let herself rest and get comfortable.
But instead, she dwells on the fact that he is a man with his own set of ideas and plans, plans that she interrupted when she washed up on his island.
It isn't her fault that the ocean brought her to him. It isn't her fault that the ocean brought them both this child to take care of.
She wonders briefly what she'll do with him when she gets back to Maine. If she gets rid of him, he'll get sent into the system and-
Emma sighs, shaking her head. She'll find him a home with someone. Maybe her parents would want him. They couldn't have children. This could be a second opportunity for them.
With a little hope blossoming in her chest, Emma turns her thoughts to Neal, to the complete asshole that he is, and tries to justify her answer to him.
He says he's sorry for what he'd done when she was younger. It had been a mess. She'd gone to jail for him. She can't trust anyone, especially Neal. But it's not like she can push him away. He's trying and that's something at least.
A short while later, the front door opens and shutters closed.
She hears Killian huffing and wiping his feet on the rug, then she thinks he takes his boots off, because he comes walking into the living room quietly. He's dripping wet when he squats down in front of the sofa, her eyes wide at the sight of him.
Beside him, he has a wooden something- what she isn't sure.
"I wanted to apologize," he tells her softly.
She can tell he's telling her the truth; his eyes are steady and unmoving and his words don't tremble in the way they might if he were lying. He's cold, clearly, and soaked, which explains the small chatter in his teeth and the wavering in his tone.
He takes a deep breath before he continues, "I've treated you poorly since you've woken and it isn't at all how you should be treated."
Emma blinks at him. She doesn't know what to say, if she's supposed to say anything at all. He's actually being… sweet and it confuses the hell out of her.
"Thank you for cleaning this place. I, um, I've let it fall to pieces a bit and I appreciate what you've done to bring it back to livable standards."
Her heart rate quickens at his words and an unfamiliar feeling of gratitude befalls her. She is appreciated. She is wanted. Her actions have not gone unnoticed.
"You're welcome," she manages quietly.
He smiles softly. "Perhaps we should agree to be civil, yeah? Four weeks is quite a bit of time if we're going to treat each other like we have been."
Emma laughs breathily, drawing his smile up a little.
"And if I'm anything, I'm a gentleman, so I want you and Henry to take my bedroom. I've made Henry a cradle so he doesn't have to be buried in pillows any longer. I'll sleep on the couch."
Emma opens her mouth. "What? No, it's fine. I'm-"
He sets his hand on her shoulder. "Come on, Emma, I've treated you poorly and I'm trying to make it right. Allow me this, at the very least. You'll only be here four weeks and I've got the rest of my life to live in that bed."
Emma frowns a little at that, but accepts with hesitancy, sitting up and taking his arm when he offers it to her. They move slowly to the bedroom and he helps her into the bed, covering her with blankets. He sets a fire in the fireplace and then brings the wooden something into the room.
It's a cradle, she realizes, and it makes her heart melt.
Killian stares at the cradle for a moment and she can tell he's thinking deeply about something, but he shakes it off and goes to get the child.
She knows it's not his specialty, carrying and caring for Henry, she knows because he'd been practically yelling at the little boy when she'd first discovered him. So to see him carrying Henry makes her heart warm because she knows he doesn't want this.
Maybe it's his fear of dropping him; a purely male instinct. Maybe it's because he has a hook for a hand. Maybe it's something else entirely, but to see him trying is something she thinks is a rare sight and she takes it in for all it's worth.
Emma helps him settle Henry down on the bed with his bundle of blankets and pillows, holding him in her arms while Killian lowers the little boy into the new cradle.
He's pleasantly asleep; blissfully unaware of anything that's transpired.
"Sleep well, Emma," he says. "I'll be in to help when he stirs."
"Thank you," she says, voice laced with more than just a thank you for helping with Henry.
He stares at her for a moment, then nods once, lips pressing into a line.
He leaves her room with a softened pace, shoulders set in a less angry way, and she releases a sigh, closing her eyes.
It's as if her silent prayers were answered. The man takes a walk in the rain and comes back a renewed person.
She's thankful for whatever it is that got into him, though, and presses her nose against his pillow, breathing in the scent of sea and a little bit of cinnamon, something she supposes must be ingrained in the sheets, because it's his smell and she just washed these today.
He smells okay, she guesses.
/
Killian feels something heavy in his chest. Change.
As he walks through his living room, Killian goes to the bookshelf in the wall and his fingers dance over the leather binding of his favorites. He considers reading because he knows he won't be able to sleep through the night on the sofa, but he decides against the novels.
His attention goes to the television against the wall and he grimaces, taking his fingers through his hair.
In that moment, he recalls Emma telling him about the shortages of food and he finds himself just curious enough to go investigate. Not to his surprise, he discovers the pantry re-organized, tidied, and cleaned.
"There's not enough," he murmurs to himself on a grimace. "Bloody hell, there's not going to be enough."
There's a small stash in the lighthouse, but considering he spends a good deal of time picking those food items off when he hides out in the lighthouse, he figures there's not half as much as there was at the start.
It is in this moment, as he's standing in the pantry studying the shelves of canned food, that Killian resolves to go hungry in order to keep Emma and Henry alive.