In response to all the pain you guys want to inflict on me with your fanfiction (you know who you are, I'm looking at you!) so here's fluff for Christmas. Happy holidays everyone! Features Captain Swan Cobra stuff mainly.
Prompt: Christmas + baby shenanigans
"...Love?" His call ends on a questioning note that immediately puts Emma on edge.
She discards the garland cord she's trying to put around the fireplace, brushing the green pines from her ghastly, yet only second in warmth to the human furnace that is Killian Jones, sweater as she does so. The decision to put the Christmas tree in a different room than the fire place to avoid any catastrophes meant she couldn't watch her family while she did this part of the decorating. She walks across the wooden floor to where Killian stands in the threshold between the two rooms.
"Killian? Please don't tell me the tree is crooked, I'm telling you, it's the best we're going to get with that tree topper and- William!" A charming one year turns at the sound of his name, giving her a dirty look like she's the one sitting in the middle of all the Christmas presents and in the process of opening all of them. The Christmas tree stands undamaged, still twinkling merrily, but all the presents she had spent the last two days wrapping are scattered around the baby in various states of undress, the evidence sticking to her son's fingers as he tries to shake the tape off, unconcerned that his mother is staring at him.
Instead of feeling intense rage, she feels the urge to laugh more than anything. "I think we should have left the presents in our closet until Christmas Eve, love," Killian tells her, wrapping his arms around her from behind and tugging her backwards to his chest.
"Maybe, but he's just like his father, always try to get to the buried treasure," she sighs, a hint of teasing to her voice as she leans back into his chest. His warmth burns through her sweater, soothing her, and she turns around in his arms, pressing a kiss to the corner of his lips as William rips open another present with glee. "Well, I should probably call Henry over, it looks like someone wants to have Christmas early and there's no way I'm wrapping this mountain again."
"We could probably slap a bow on it all and still wait for the 25th," Killian argues, tightening his arms around her when she goes to pull away. She raises her brow, he didn't think that would work anyway, he was having a hard enough time avoiding the gifts that he knew were his (because he knew they weren't Henry's, or William's, or hers and that only left him). "Or I'll wrap the presents myself."
Incredulously, she asks, "You do remember that issue with the tape, right?"
"I didn't think my hook would be that much of a help and a hinderence at that, but I'll just try again, can't be that hard. Come on, it's our first Christmas without something going horribly wrong yet, l... want this to go better," he says, voice lowering, not looking at her. It's true, this is their first Christmas without something happening; she either didn't know who he was, he didn't know who she was, he was dead, or they were all being overrun by venomous elves. Everyone in town is tense for that reason, but them more than anything.
As the savior, the sheriff, and the princess, she's often in the middle of these things. Last year was horrible when, only two days after William's birth, she had to give him to the fairies for protection while she handled the elves. (She knows they weren't actually elves, some weird creatures that the personification of Winter had conjured up, but with pointy ears and some real name she didn't know, she settled on elves a long time ago).
She doesn't want anything to interfere with their plans this year, she wants to have one cliche holiday with her family.
William being impatience wasn't exactly one of the things she had been watching out for since it turned December. It wasn't the worse thing either, it was very fixable in a way all the other holidays weren't, and she sighs, dropping her forehead to his chest briefly before lifting her head. "Oh, alright, we still have a lot of wrapping paper left anyway."
He laughs, thankfully not pointing out that she's the one who bought quite a few stacks of wrapping paper because she wanted more than one. "You grab William, I'll grab the gifts?" He asks, hook and hand sliding down her back, an obvious attempt to distract her that he knows will fail.
She catches his wrists before he can brush against her ass, laughing. "Nice try, but you can't see your presents and I know mine are still hidden in the closet. You get William cleaned up, I'll go put everything away again and call you when I'm done with yours."
"Don't peek at your presents either!" He protests when she pulls away from him.
She snorts, picking up William and pressing a kiss to his chubby cheek before passing him along to his father. Even with a hook for a hand, Killian masters how to hold a child one with one arm without stabbing either of them. Which makes her laugh because, for the few months after William's birth, Killian refused to wear the hook at all until she put her foot down. (Really, the hook was one of those things that he'd had for so long that not having was difficult and she happened to enjoy it very much). "I won't."
"Come on, lad, want something to eat?" He asks, turning to leave the room while Emma leans down to scoop up the presents.
...
Their next catastrophe occurs the very next day. All the presents are done, but hiding away in the closet until Christmas Eve and the house is fully decorated for the holiday. Maybe a bit much so. Neither of them celebrated this holiday much, her because the abundance of foster homes growing up and him because such a holiday didn't exist until he met them, but both wanted to give William something that other people seemed to cherish.
So it's no surprise that William is, yet again, at the start of the issue on December 21st.
"Killian, get your son!" She calls with a scowl, holding the tree up and holding William away with her foot as he reaches out, trying to tug on the lights. The fact that he could have tugged the tree down on his head if she hadn't checked on him before work still makes her heart race.
"He's my son when he gets in trouble, but when he says Dave's name, he becomes yours, I'm starting to see a pattern here," he jokes from the kitchen, where he was bent over maps and a cup of coffee, the latter of which she can hear him set on the table. His chair scrapes across the floor as he stands up, but he's silent until he enters the room, stopping abruptly at he takes in the scene.
Emma is holding the tree up and trying to fix whatever their son did to nearly topple it, William is trying to go over her leg to get to a shiny red ornament near the bottom of the tree. The only thing missing is Henry, who happens to come down the stairs at that moment as though summoned by their thoughts, and pauses in the doorway as well.
"Lad, you want to get your brother while I help your mum?"
"Sure," says Henry, so much taller now that he's rapidly approaching adulthood. The sound of his voice is enough for William to stop straining, turn on his heels, and fall on his butt while holding his arms out, cheerfully squealing. "Hey midget, I'm starting to think you're the Scrooge and you don't like Christmas, but I know you don't know what that is yet. I'll read it to you someday."
Her heart warms at the sight, pulling her from the conundrum of the now lopsided tree. When she first discovered she was pregnant, her first instinct was how Henry would react to knowing that he would have a sibling that would have both parents as they grew up. Would he feel the way she did when she found her parents were having baby Neal? The jealousy, the anger, the desperation at both the baby and her parents until she made amends, true amends, with her parents? It was horrible timing, considering Regina and Robin, his other parent figures, were wrapped up in Robin's baby girl, even if said child was nearly a year old at that point.
Her son was an infinitely better person than her though. He took it in stride, quiet reluctance at first, but growing enthusiasm as the months went on, often reading stories to her belly whenever Killian wasn't telling the baby stories about his time on the seas. (Extremely edited ones, mind you.) (People spent more time talking to the baby during her pregnancy than they did to her.)
Henry loves his little brother.
Henry loves. Period, that's it, he loves pretty much unconditionally, without the reservations and distrust that Emma did.
Watching them interact, she's rather happy about this minor almost catastrophe if only to see this moment and have this epiphany.
...
Christmas comes early, the sun just about rising and blinding her when she opens her eyes. Killian groans beside her, mumbling and sitting up; he always wakes up faster than her. She's a light sleeper, but he was a pirate for years who woke up at dawn and the first sign of trouble.
William's crying from his crib isn't the same as being attacked by Lost Boys or other pirates, but he still wakes up in much of the same way, climbing out of bed fluidly and easily, slipping into his sweats and walking the distance between their bedroom and William's in barely a second. Sometimes, he wakes up and handles it before Emma is ever truly awake, coming back to bed to wrap her in his arms so they can fall back asleep.
Not today though. It's Christmas.
Flutters erupt in her stomach, an excitement that surprises her enough that she lingers in bed for a minute longer until she hears Killian coming closer, responding to William's babble with fond words. She sits up, climbing out of bed and slipping her feet into the pajamas they had discarded carelessly last night. She goes down the stairs much in the same way: slowly, sleepily, but with a growing excitement in each step.
"Merry Christmas," Henry tells her, standing in the kitchen. He knows Emma isn't the best cook and Killian isn't either, both still learning, and takes it upon himself to make breakfast for them all before they open presents. They only get him until the afternoon and, after which, he goes to his other mother's for a holiday with that side of the family. Everyone meets at Regina's for dinner that night too.
"Merry Christmas, kid," she replies, smiling and setting up a cup of coffee, only mildly disappointed that he wasn't waiting impatiently for them to open Christmas presents.
"Merry Christmas, love, lad," Killian says brightly as he enters the room. William lifts his arm in an exaggerated wave while Killian sets him on the floor and he immediately attempts to leave the kitchen. They hear the music that tells them he's playing with his toys. "You need help, lad?"
"I'm sixteen now, I can definitely handle this." Ten minutes later, they see he can do exactly that as he sets plates on the table with eggs and bacon and sausage, even dumping some eggs into a bowl that he then sticks to William's high chair.
(William spills most of it in his seat).
They are still eating when they finally let a squirming William out of his seat. He gives a little gurgling laugh before toddling off while Killian and Henry talk animatedly about when they'll get to go sailing next and whether or not they could take a family vacation on the Jolly Rogers.
She smiles and relaxes, content with the way things are going.
Of course that's when things start to go wrong.
She stands at the sink, cleaning off the dishes from break, but turns off the water at the sudden lack of music from William's toys. Then she hears the unmistakable sound of something being ripped open. "William," she mutters, tossing her towel on the drying dishes. "Killian, your son is opening the presents again. Without us."
"William!" Henry and Killian cry in chorus, both jogging into the other room, where the baby giggles and she can hear him dropping to his knees, trying to crawl away. She follows after them because she can only imagine what disaster will occur next.
The floor creaks beneath her feet and instantly gets a response. "Don't come in here!"
She stops and asks suspiciously, "Why?"
Killian's hesitation is enough that she enters the room anyway.
Everyone is covered in various pieces of wrapping paper, even the tree has some long strips in it. Indeed, William is in the process of opening a perfectly nice and new hat that she got for Killian, tossing the wrapping paper that doesn't get stuck to his chubby hands in the direction of his father and brother. Killian, for his part, is throwing a blanket over a pile of presents that she guesses are hers and Henry is frantically trying to pick up the piles of ornaments off the floor, jamming them on the trees without quite paying attention, ignoring the piece of wrapping paper in his hair somehow.
"We need to put the baby gates up on more than just the stairs I think," she says, biting her lip when they both look up at her. She crosses the room, picking a piece of tape off William's hands and depositing a present under the tree that is only half opened, grateful that William didn't get all of them. No, he just made a huge mess with a few of them. They both look at her in varying degrees of disappointment that makes her stop, frowning. "What's wrong?"
Killian scratches behind his ear, the color of his eyes flashing in that way that tells her that she's thinking of how to reply, but Henry beats him to the touch. "Well, we wanted Christmas to go off without a hitch, but it seems like someone here is trying to build up his resume as Ebenezer Scrooge." William giggles in her arms when they all look at him, waving his fists again.
"We wanted to give you a Christmas you deserved, the ones that your parents give for Neal and his other parents give to his other siblings, something for William to remember later," Killian says, sighing and scratching behind his ear. "Not quite going to plan though, the only thing that could go worse is the crocodile turning out to be Santa Claus as well."
Henry snorts. "That's one thing he isn't."
They banter a bit, but Emma ignores them. A warmness builds in her chest, like a fire that goes from embers to flames in an instant, until she can feel it clear to her toes. It's the same burst of love that broke Henry's sleeping curse all those years ago, but it doesn't dissipate even when as the two of them debate the likeliness of Rumpelstiltskin being Santa or Scrooge, nor does it dissipate as she crosses the distance between them, wrapping paper stick to her feet, and pulls them both into a hug that shocks them into silence.
"This isn't the Christmas I imagined, no, but don't think I'm not enjoying this, just us spending the morning together, cleaning up after William makes a mess and deciding whether a pirate ship is almost in league with a cruise ship, I spent so many holidays alone that just a few minutes of this is worth all the other headaches," she says, her head leaning on Killian and his arm around her back, Henry and William squished between the two of them, the latter of which tries to wiggle away. "Besides, none of us is being bitten by little elves or being run out of town, I'd say this year was a success. None of our ordinary problems can ruin this."
As if to taught her, William does a particularly spectacular yank on one of the ornaments and the entire tree, still lopsided from his ambush a few days prior, topples over their heads. Killian, the tallest of them and trying to shield them by pulling them closer to him, gets a nice whack to the head and the tree topper falls off the top of the tree, shattering into three large pieces on the floor. William laughs while the rest of them stand in shock.
Henry breaks from it first, untangling himself from the circle of arms and taking William away from her, playfully tapping his brother's nose. "I lied, I think he's building up his resume to be the Grinch instead."
Emma laughs, just a snort, then a chuckle, then, as Killian pushes the tree back into place, develops into a full laugh at the fake pines that stick to his hair and his pouting lips. As soon as the tree is leaning against the wall, she tugs him to her and kisses him, ignoring Henry's mock snort of disgust and William's giggles, the warmth in her chest blossoming enough that she's positive he can feel it as he responds back eagerly, his hands tightening on her waist.
He leans his forehead against hers. "Was that my present?" He asks, a half-grin on his face.
She hums, wrinkling her nose, her lips brushing against his as she speaks. "You get those for free, I'm not that cheap."
"Do I get a hint?"
"No, you can wait and open them, you did want a traditional Christmas, didn't you?"
He looks around the room obviously, his eyebrow raising. "I don't imagine Christmas is much like this at any of the other households." When he takes a step back, he winches abruptly, frowning down at the sharp bits of broken decorations on the floor.
She follows his gaze and snorts. "I imagine they were all smart enough to get plastic ornaments only."
"Next year," he promises.
(Next year is worse because two-thirds of the town turn into ghosts during a school play of A Christmas Carol that doesn't end until the New Years. No one blames Henry for the magical potion mix-up that lead to it.)
(Everyone blames Henry.)