Chapter Ten: Karmic Reciprocation
They missed Christmas.
Which, in the grand scheme of things, didn't seem like that big of a deal. Not really. Neal doubted that he and Emma would have ever even noticed if Joy and Maya hadn't stopped by, presents in hand, asking the obligatory, "How'd the holidays go?" sometime after the New Year had passed. And after a copious amount of blinking, a quick check of the date on his phone, and several stuttered excuses from Emma because she hadn't even thought to get Joy and Maya anything (though, to be fair, he and Emma hadn't even swapped gifts with each other), they exchanged a helpless sort of look, realizing that they officially had a batting record of zero for three. Maybe they could give themselves a half-point for attempting Thanksgiving because they really had tried, but considering the fact that the holiday season probably served as one of the few perks that came with living a regular, crime-free life, Neal could, maybe, understand why Emma got so hung up on the how-to's of normalcy from time to time.
Because their attempts at this whole regular life thing? Kind of pathetic.
Neal had done his best to keep his promise, both he and Emma putting forth a decent effort, trying harder to not let exhaustion turn into bickering so that they could actually enjoy the now rare quiet moments they had together. A part of that, they had realized, involved just finally accepting that sometimes putting off some chore or other to give into the ever-tempting pull of sleep was more than okay. And napping with Porter in the afternoons had become a regular part of their routine, particularly Emma's, and he would often return home to find them laid out in bed together, Emma's hand resting protectively on Port's stomach (she had far fewer reservations about falling asleep with the baby than he did - maybe because she slept still as a board while he had a history of thrashing when pulled too far under). It both warmed him and filled him with an ache, to the point that weekly road trips weren't enough anymore. So he swallowed back the fear of looking dispensable and asked for some time off.
(Stupidly, maybe, considering the mildly amused look that had graced his boss's face, eventually alerting Neal to the fact that he probably would have gotten time off for the holidays anyway.)
They considered putting together a belated sort of holiday just to say they'd tried before they realized that neither of them actually identified with anything in particular. Neal hadn't celebrated a holiday since around fourteen or so (because who, exactly, would he have shared the experience with), while Emma had always just gone along with whatever her foster family of the time had done (a mish-mash of experiences that included everything from Christmas to Hanukkah to Kwanzaa to absolutely squat). Money remained a major concern, frustrating Neal until a needlessly stressed Emma, who had taken to frantically flipping through ads in the effort to find something suitable for Joy and Maya, reminded him that she hated the idea of giving things out of apparent obligation anyway.
"Gifts should have meaning," Emma told him, a stark reminder of the words that she had used when he'd tried giving her a chain to replace the string she kept her swan pendant on (his feeble attempt to mark a year together). "Not some meaningless trinket you hand out because you feel like you have to."
Neal's face twisted in confusion. "So you don't want to get Port anything?"
"Of course I do," Emma said, her tone very clearly adding a silent don't be ridiculous, "but when we can afford it and it's just because, y'know?" A beat and then quite practically, "Besides. He's barely a month old. He doesn't even know to expect anything."
Even though Neal, guided by emotions and tradition, couldn't quite wrap his head around the concept, he also knew that it made sense in that strict, logical way Emma often wielded. That didn't necessarily keep him from stopping off at the toy store one day after work, picking up a stuffed dog (money wasn't so tight that they couldn't afford one measly toy), silent adding the velvet-soft, floppy eared puppy to their son's things just because. Emma noticed, of course, raising a brow in silent amusement, but didn't dare chide him. Not when Porter, tiny fingers stretched out to grip a nearby ear even in his sleep, seemed so obviously taken with it.
Still. Gifts aside, it all seemed like a piss poor acknowledgment to their son's very first holiday. They wanted Porter to have traditions. They just had to decide on what, exactly, those traditions should be.
"But what about when you were a kid?" Emma asked as she worked on folding the laundry they had finally gotten around to after a few weeks of neglect (it was a bit of an ordeal, even without a baby, dragging all their crap down to the laundry-mat and back). Neal, meanwhile, had Porter perched on his shoulder where he gently patted his back in the effort to produce the necessary baby-burp.
Neal had to think for a minute, sorting through a long list of bad memories, until he could tug out a good one.
"Yule," he said before Emma's blank look prompted him to add further clarification. "Winter Solstice."
"That's," Emma furrowed her brow, "Pagan?"
"We raised sheep," Neal said, moving Porter to his other shoulder and breezing past the unfamiliar word. "Shepherds. Y'know, farmers. We're big on the seasons."
"Oh." Emma took a moment, seemingly to think over this new piece of information, but if anything she only seemed more baffled by it. "You raised sheep?"
"Yeah." He shrugged his free shoulder. "What did you think I did?"
Emma imitated his shrug. "Less raise sheep. More ... Lurking around convenience stores, making trouble."
Neal snorted, his amused laugh at the image of his fourteen-year-old self doing nothing but swanning off and starting shit briefly capturing Port's attention, who started to squirm restlessly until Neal gave him a brief reprieve, nuzzling his nose against a soft cheek before perching him on his other shoulder, resuming their quest.
"The life of crime came later. I'll have you know my formative years were spent being the model son." And, when Emma gave him a disbelieving look, he added, somewhat defensively, "I was."
Emma gave an amused hum before her features shifted, turning into something a bit more serious. "Is that something you want to celebrate now though?"
Neal couldn't exactly say. In his desperate attempts to outrun his father and Pan and fucking Neverland, he had refused to cling to memories, suppressing them and stomping them out and, overall, just doing his very best to forget they ever existed. Mostly succeeding too, until those unfortunate moments when they bubbled up, haunting his sleep in the form of nightmares. Letting the good memories go simply became a natural side effect of that. A coping mechanism. Because thinking of the good reminded him of what he had lost and that just really fucking hurt.
Unfortunately, at best, that left him with half-truths wrapped in the bitter aftertaste of bad experiences and what kind of legacy did that make? He couldn't even afford to give his son his fake last name.
Which didn't bother him. Well, somewhat, maybe. Okay, obviously. But it didn't matter in the long run, he didn't think, so long as they did better by Porter. He would have family and a home and love. The childhood his parents didn't get to have. And if he had all that then what did his and Emma's past really matter anyway?
Clean slate.
"I think we should find something that's just ours," he said carefully and he was quickly rewarded, Emma offering him her most brilliant smile, something Neal couldn't help but return as Porter finally let out an agreeable burp.
They gave it a lot of thought. They even considered adopting the recently passed Twelfth Night as their very own holiday of choice before dovetailing into something completely original because why not.
"We should use it as a way to celebrate how far we've come," Emma suggested over a library book dedicated to child-centric holiday traditions, "and to remind us of what we want to do."
Neal liked the idea save for one little thing "Most people use the New Year for that, don't they?"
"Yeah," said Emma somewhat distastefully as she absently flipped a page, "and how many people actually stick out their resolutions?"
Fair point.
"But we could, maybe, knock something off Operation Hope," she continued, fingers twitching at the last word.
(A far cry from the near-violent flinch it had first inspired.)
So the day, which they had decided would fall on the second Saturday of January (because it was the closest), actually started with careful consideration of their fridge and the realization that they hadn't actually bothered to add all that much to it since Emma had pinned up Porter's first ultrasound.
Well, nothing immediately attainable anyway.
"Because we have everything we could ever want," said Neal in the effort to put a positive spin on things.
Emma's lips inched upwards, forming a half smile, but her eyes remained pinned to the still mostly-white door and Neal knew that she wanted the same things he did. Because he wanted better for Porter. He wanted to give his son a life of comfort and safety and love, where dreams came easily, becoming almost frivolous. Not in a material sort of way necessarily, but if his parents had longed for the things that most people took for granted, then Porter should never ever have to.
"Okay so, maybe, in place of the obligatory gift exchange we've already ruled out, we find something we can both use. Like a couch for the living room," Neal suggested, "you're always complaining about the recliner."
Emma seemed to like the idea, though she had a suggestion of her own, looking at him with, almost pleading eyes. "Can it be a bed? I'd really like an actual bed."
Neal let out a light laugh. "I think we can manage that."
They went to the mall, finding the nearest non-brand department store, something that would probably have cheaper prices. Not as cheap as a garage sale, no, but when Neal had tried suggesting they wait one out, Emma pointedly drew a line in the sand and that line, she said, started with used beds. But they both agreed that they didn't need anything fancy and they already had the mattress, they just wanted something with a bit more support. So they found the first double on sale and, really, if they tilted their heads and squinted, it kind of looked like it might go with Porter's mahogany baby stuff. They didn't care if it didn't though. Because it was a bed.
Naturally, after they handed over the obligatory cash (a hefty chunk of change as far as Neal was concerned), Emma immediately began to show signs of guilt.
"We need to go to the toy store," she announced, tone leaving no room for argument as she grabbed him by the hand and dragged him (well, led, considering she still had Porter's stroller to push) from the store.
(Completely unnecessary considering Neal wouldn't have protested.)
There remained a certain challenge, y'know, buying for a newborn who spent most of his time sleeping and crying. Neal would secretly add stuffed animals to Porter's collection, but he refused to take to any of them like he had Puppy.
Add this to the fact that he had only just started smiling. Something that provided Neal with an endless well of delight after weeks and weeks spent trying to produce the elusive grin wondering, with a certain amount of worry, why Porter refused to do this one little thing.
"The doctor said it takes a month or so," Emma had said, completely unconcerned (not even after all those days fretting over whether or not Port was happy). But then a month officially passed, robbing Emma of her practical excuse, and she joined Neal's efforts, making funny voices and trying games like peek-a-boo until finally Emma had simply peered over his crib to check on him after a rare night of nothing but sleep and Porter rewarded her with the most brilliant toothless grin, face lighting up at just the sight of her, prompting Emma to excitedly wake him, Neal matching her enthusiasm (even if he had to squash his own disappointment at missing the official debut).
Naturally, after adding a picture to Porter's baby book, the flash turning the grin to startled tears, they both worked tirelessly to replicate it, testing all sorts of games and toys to see if any would cause him to light up with obvious joy. And so they discovered that Port almost always smiled at his mom and dad and would even do the same for little Maya when she'd peer curiously over his crib. He'd stare stonily at all toys that weren't Puppy and preferred clapping games and music over peek-a-boo.
"He'll be five and we'll be deaf," commented Emma drily as she reluctantly returned a brightly colored toy to the shelf, Porter failing to show any interest.
"It's too bad I don't have my old guitar," Neal said without much thought, distracted as he fumbled with a plastic looking thing that had started flashing and making noises the moment he picked it up, the very busy thing successfully scaring Port into a fit of tears.
"You had a guitar?" Emma asked, her curiosity masked with her best motherly voice as she tried to use that and Puppy to sooth Porter.
"Yeah," said Neal, directing them to a more age appropriate aisle. "For a little while there anyway. Wound up hawking it. Turns out street musician isn't as lucrative as it sounds."
"But you can play," said Emma, resigning herself to an afternoon of carrying Porter, lifting him out of the stroller and sighing in relief when he finally started to calm.
Neal shrugged. "Picked it up from watching a guy at a bar I worked at."
Emma gave him an impressed look as she rubbed soothing circles on a calming Porter's back. "Just watching."
"Well," said Neal drily, "he wasn't very good."
Emma dragged him out of the toy store then, ignoring his protests that they hadn't actually found anything yet. But Porter needed a change, for one, and apparently she wanted to go to one of his favored garage sales. And then, when they couldn't actually find one nearby, another three pawn shops until they found a used guitar. She bartered with the owner, driving down the price to something in the reasonable range considering it had its fair share of scratches on it and then, just like that, they were on their way home.
"I don't need this," Neal had tried telling her. Multiple times. But Emma merely shook her head.
"You can play for Port," she said, "he'll love it."
X-x-x-x-X
Emma was right.
After a minor catastrophe involving stray grease and an unfortunate burn (she very carefully treated Neal's hand, wrapping it in a generous amount of gauze after applying some kind of aloe-y thing) they had a dinner full of fried chicken, mac-and-cheese, fries, and yams sprinkled with Lucky Charms followed by pumpkin pie and hot chocolate with cinnamon.
The theme? Their favorites (Neal's idea and okay, yes, obviously a much better one than spending all day slaving over some sort of expensive roast she'd probably burn).
Neal played for them, even with his injured hand ("It's not that bad now," he had insisted, waving off her attempts to check it again), singing some tune that Emma didn't recognize while Porter watched entranced. He smiled and flailed his limbs about excitedly as soon as the strums of the guitar first started, something that switched to tears when the music hummed to a stop
This inevitably called for an encore, Emma gently swaying back and forth with him in the rocking chair until Porter drifted off to sleep, his eyes fluttering closed seemingly in spite of himself.
"Told you," Emma murmured, feeling quite pleased as they settled back onto their mattress for what she hoped would be one of their last nights sleeping on the floor. She flipped on her side to face him. "What song was that anyway?"
Neal acknowledged her with a distracted hum. "Just an old ballad."
Emma raised a brow.
"Mothers used to sing it," he explained, "to wish their children a safe return from war."
Emma blinked. "Children?"
"Soldiers," Neal scrunched his nose playfully, "same thing."
"I've never heard of something like that," she said, leaning forward and pressing her nose against his, a grin on her lips. "Another one of those sheep farmer things, I suppose."
"We're a strange bunch, us sheep farmers," he murmured, moving, nose nuzzling against her cheek. "Thank-you for the guitar."
"Hm," her eyes fluttered closed, "well, I was right, wasn't I? Porter liked it."
"But that wasn't why you bought it." She felt Neal grin. "Admit it. You caught the gift-giving bug."
"It wasn't a gift," she said and Neal lifted a brow, his amused expression annoyingly fixed. "It wasn't. We bought it together. You picked it out with me, paid for it, no wrapping paper was involved."
"Technicality," he murmured before capturing her lips in a kiss that Emma couldn't help but deepen, leading them down a tempting but dangerous road.
"I'm not cleared yet," she eventually gasped between kisses. Neal hummed an acknowledgment, even slowing down a bit, but he didn't stop kissing her, hand weaving its way into her hair, before nuzzling his nose against hers, forehead landing on her cheek. "Today was nice though."
"Not bad for a first time holiday," he acknowledged gauze free fingers playing with her hair, Neal having already removed the bandages before they had gone to bed because apparently lack of pain also mean zero chance of infection.
"Yeah," agreed Emma, turning her head, letting her nose brush against his forehead, before moving down to nuzzle his cheek, "we did good."
More than, really. But she hadn't even meant that exactly. She had learned a handful of surprising things about Neal in the last few days, fitting into the ever-expanding picture that was Neal-slash-John-slash-Baelfire. Not that he was a complete mystery to her. Emma liked to think that she knew the really important things, but she also knew that he held a lot back, the vault concealing his past a good deal tighter than the one she had formerly used to lock up her feelings. So listening to him, watching him sprinkle in bits of information without much thought? She liked that he had grown comfortable enough with her (or whatever held him back, she supposed) to finally do that.
"You know," he said, turning, bumping her nose, "there's one more thing we could do."
Emma rolled her eyes. "I told you. I'm not cleared yet."
Though she wouldn't mind, maybe, helping him out a bit because they hadn't really done anything in forever and she missed it, the closeness. She had mentally gone through a list of where, exactly (because not with Porter just a handful of feet away), when she felt Neal shake, well, his nose, moving in a silent back-and-forth no.
"Not that. No. I was thinking about Joy and this room full of baby furniture she just gave us and where we'd probably be if she hadn't," Neal started, "and, well, that seems like the sort of karmic energy we should, maybe, release back into the world, doesn't it?"
Neal, she knew, actually believed in those sorts of things. And while Emma reluctantly believed in reciprocation (one of the reasons she hated meaningless gift exchanges), his thought process had one minor flaw.
"Joy already yelled at us for that, remember," she reminded him, "when we tried to pay for her and Maya's tickets at Adventureland."
And again when she had showed up with a couple of belated Christmas gifts because apparently Joy hadn't actually expected anything in return.
(Which had baffled Emma. Because why give them something to begin with then.)
But Neal hadn't meant that either apparently and when he told her what he did mean Emma actually let out a rather loud snort, something that she desperately tried to muffle by burying her face in his shoulder so she wouldn't startle Port awake.
He seriously wanted to do some sort of give-back, charity-service thing in honor of the holidays. Or just because.
"We don't have anything to give," said Emma and, after their frivolous afternoon of bed and guitar shopping, they had even less. Neal, however, remained the eternal optimist.
"We have time," he told her.
Honestly? Even if they had started to settle into something a bit more structured with Porter, they still barely even had that. But Neal had that look about him. All fierce confidence and determination.
"You're really serious about this," Emma noted, squinting through the dark.
Neal cleared his throat, saying gruffly. "Port's gonna grow up one day and he's probably gonna ask us how we met –"
Emma cut him off, "Well, it's not like we're actually gonna tell him the truth."
"But that's not the only thing he's gonna ask, Em," said Neal. "He'll wanna know about my family and yours. All these things that we won't have good answers to. One day we'll have to say something though and when we do I want to be able to show him that we turned it around."
"We have," she murmured, biting her lip uncertainly because at least she thought they had.
"Yes," said Neal with a certain amount of weight before he continued, "but you said you didn't want us to settle either. Maybe this can be us not settling."
Emma offered a distracted nod and pressed her lips together, suppressing a smile because even though he had never given her any reason to think otherwise, it still kinda amazed her whenever he not only listened to her, but actually showed her that he respected what she had to say (even when that thing involved her fumbling over her initial meaning, resulting in a pretty ridiculous fight). No one else ever had, really. Not her teachers and certainly not anyone in her ridiculous line of foster parents.
She still didn't really get the why's of it all. Like why this thing? And why now? And she definitely didn't believe in karma. But Neal kept trying, determined to get as much as he could out of this whole Tallahassee thing. Which Emma wanted. More than anything. So maybe they could try this too. What could it hurt?
"Okay," she murmured, letting go of her grin as Neal broke into that giant trademark smile of his.
Thanks for reading everyone and thank you to steelneena for taking the time review!
Next Chapter: The First Argonaut
