A/N: If I could individually hunt you all down and hug you and force vegetables into you like some crazed mother hen I would - you and your feedback mean the world to me and there's so much of it I don't know what to do with myself I just want to keep you all safe and snug and healthy. So here is Chapter 4, now with its own little cover art over on Tumblr. You guys continue to overwhelm me with your reviews and follows and favourites. Please know that you all fluster me.

Whatever Floats Your Boat

Part 4: Children's Literature

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Emma had never really lost anyone before.

Well, no, that wasn't strictly true. Emma had lost lots of people (and in a multitude of ways), but nothing close to this. Although she had lost everyone that had been in and was supposed to be in her life, she knew the difference – the difference between that and this. She had never so fiercely had someone that their presence in her life was a guarantee. Never so fiercely had anyone (except perhaps Neal, but that was debatable).

And watching Killian lose the one last person that was that to him was unbearable; stripped of the one person left in his life that tied him to anything, to anyone, to anywhere. It was all well and good to know these as facts as well, but the way that he would always speak of him, their stories, with such love and loyalty? Well that hurt.

Emma honestly didn't know how to feel.

Okay, so maybe that was another misnomer. Perhaps it would be better to say she didn't know how to express it. She could feel his pain so clearly in her own heart and limbs that it made her sick – so she shut it off, simple as that. She had texted him her address, thankful that she had no idea where her roommates were (they were fine people, but not what you'd call close), and waited for an hour until he showed up, at her front door, looking like a hologram of his former self.

She had feared that look the entire time it took for him to get to her place and was in large part why she felt so sick. An anxiety had grown in her chest ever since reading his text, but the actual look of him was far worse than what she'd been imagining (and that was saying something). Emma hadn't been able to say anything to him when he came in, apart from the few strangled greetings they gave each other.

She'd panicked a little when he'd first come in, standing silently in the hallway, taking off his jacket. Emma excused herself a few moments later to nervously shake a few broken (but silent) sobs in the bathroom to rid herself of the initial shock to her system, caused largely by the pain that he was wearing - clear as day - on his face. The evidence on her own face was gone (desperately washed away in front of the mirror), except the changed shade of green in her eyes, a fact which he did not fail to notice, doing a double take as she came back out.

He was doing the same thing though – shutting away his feelings.

He wasn't very good at it - his eyes, his whole face, lingered in a puffy red, and Emma had zero idea how to help anyone get through something like this, because he wasn't speaking and she wasn't speaking, and in fact the entire night around them wasn't speaking. His hair was sticking somewhat to his forehead, and while the flush of his cheeks and his haphazard hair may look to the average eye a result of a cold night with harsh winds, there was no wind to speak of. She found herself wondering (multiple times that night) why it was that nightmarish atmospheres were always described as rough. Rough winds, rough seas, heavy rains – none of it made any sense to her, because what this night was really driving home was that absolute stillness was the worst soundtrack to disaster.

And the night was so still. There was no wind, no rain, no street noise, not even the nocturnal birds had thought to venture out tonight, nothing to detract from what it was that had happened – what was happening.

Everything was just so unbearably still, as though the night knew how to handle it about as much as they did.

(Which was not at all.)

He had lingered so awkwardly at first, glancing around the apartment curiously, as though trying to identify what was hers and what were her roommates. It was the sheer fact that he looked so uncomfortable that just jolted Emma into grabbing the situation by the horns. She padded (silently), a tartan blanket wrapped around her shoulders, into the kitchen, deciding that fussing about making drinks was better than waiting for him to say something. He followed her there wordlessly, the gentle clunk of his boots becoming muffled on the old 50s linoleum floor of her kitchen. Her absolute inability to think of anything to say to distract him was irritating her, but he hardly seemed to notice, the look in his eyes telling her that his mind was nowhere near by.

She broke the silence further, clankering round the galley kitchen gathering mugs, cocoa and cinnamon, and asking him if he wanted anything to eat.

He only declined, said the chocolate would be fine, before taking the mugs from her to heat the milk in the microwave himself. Emma let him do it, sensing his itch to do something, and leant back on the counter to watch him. His movements were a little slow, as if stunned into sluggishness, and you'd never know that the same person standing in front of her now was the very one that had been grinning ear to ear as they bumped nose to nose only hours earlier.

He looked so much younger like this – so forlorn, and childlike.

"Thank you, for this," Killian said it without looking at her, as though embarrassed by the situation, as though he was imposing on her, and that sat ill with Emma. She took a few steps towards him as he placed the mugs in the microwave, the high-pitched noise of the buttons ringing loudly.

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Am I being?"

The question was heavily loaded, she could tell by the vulnerability in his eyes, and she wasn't entirely sure why. Perhaps he doubted whether the level of their companionship extended to 2am shoulders to cry on. But if Emma was being completely honest, she wasn't sure there were any levels at all when it came to them. Or if there were, she had no idea how to get from one level to another and was certain that they'd gone straight from 17 to 3, before shooting up to 34 or something equally nonsensical.

"After this afternoon you still have to ask me that?"

A wistful sort of smile hesitantly grew on his face, and for that she was glad – glad his smile still worked, and glad to distract him with something pleasant in the first place. Though the smile didn't last there was a small twinkle lingering somewhere in the depths of his reddened eyes and that small spark lit one of her own.

"This is something entirely different to a quiet, spur-of-the-moment, moment in the shop," was his whispered reply.

She looked down, smiling inwards a bit before the microwave beeped at her, the feeling of that afternoon leaving almost as soon as it had arrived.

"It's okay to need someone, Killian."

His expression did not change – did not soften, did not harden – though he did absentmindedly thumb one of the tassels that was hanging off her blanket, rolling it between each of his fingers.

"You should learn to take your own advice, love."

She ignored his statement, opting instead to move around him and take the mugs out of the microwave, spooning the cocoa into it, before placing them back in for a few more seconds.

"It nicked his heart."

His words stilled Emma in her tracks, and she turned slowly to find him staring at his feet, irritably clenching the right hand that moments earlier had been idly feeling the blanket.

"The shrapnel - it began to move, and by the time it reached his heart, he was dead."

The cruel reality of his words were only punctuated by the quiet night around them

She barely felt herself move, barely registered anything but the gentle croaking of his words, their usual timbre lost entirely – until she felt her hand in his, fingers unfurling the fist and coiling into them instead. They did not hug, but his other hand found hers (the cold clamminess in his palms washing her more in his melancholy) and she shuffled forward a bit, allowing his cheek to rest upon the top of her hair. It took him a long time to settle into the position, but once he let go with a deep and shaky sigh, another of her tears fell across Emma's nose.

The beeping of the microwave completely ignored as they remained, hands holding at their sides, hair covering their eyes.

They fell asleep on the couch.

Not with their limbs tangled in each other, not with one 'accidentally' spooning the other, not in any of the vaguely intimate ways that either of them would have preferred. Emma had crashed, her legs curled up and torso heavily draped over an arm of the chair, while Killian had drifted off sitting up. The only contact between them were the toes of Emma's feet, pressed lightly against his thigh as they poked out of her blanket and under his own.

It was the sound of a slamming door from one of her neighbours that woke her, the noise of it making a dull echo through her place and Emma's first thoughts were those of people who find themselves asleep in places that are not a bed – that her back was aching.

That, and she was cold.

Those thoughts vanished quickly.

His head was in his hands, hunched over and leaning on the edge of the settee. He was sobbing silently, the tears a steady stream of grief, relentlessly so, regardless of how hard he pressed the balls of his hands into them to dam them, mouth parted to breathe. Killian tried to still himself a little when he noticed her stir, she could tell, his breathing becoming unnaturally slower and even – he was trying to control himself.

Emma sat up immediately, crossing her legs beside him, and just leaned against his shoulder with her right hand losing itself at the nape of his neck.

He seemed to lose a bit of self restraint with her there - awake, and with him - as he let go a little more, moving his shaking hands to his hair where he gripped onto it simply to grip onto something. She completely ignored that the muted rumbling of his cries shook her head uncomfortably. There was still no sound made by his tears and it seemed to mirror the continuing eeriness of the night, save for the occasional low hiccup of his breathing that sounded like thunder in contrast.

Neither of them cared.

She let him cry, she let him still beneath her at times but pressed her cheek harder into his shoulder each time he did in a silent encouragement. More than anything she needed him to know that she was there, and that he was by no means alone (knowing in part that that was why he'd messaged her), and while he had no family to speak of (he had told her that much), she would be there. She just let him cry, and every time his lungs stuttered she herself let a tear fall to dampen his shirt.

His left hand eventually found her own when the tears eased their onslaught, playing with her fingers in his, finding them a distraction in addition to a comfort.

She let him mourn.

It was still dark outside.

She was almost too afraid to ask him why he was in the children's section.

Emma hadn't seen him come in, but once she'd spotted him in the most vibrantly coloured part of the shop, spotted with a strange assortment of plush vegetables and anthropomorphic figures, she stopped where she was. It was hard to miss him, the tall leather clad young adult rather stood out compared to the two other five-ish year olds either side of him.

He was still looking a little worse for wear, but steeled into something stronger – not a steeling of pretence and guise, but one of exhaustion that through necessity became strength.

In truth, there could only really be one reason why Killian was there, looking through things far below his reading capability and it made her cheeks flush with an anxious sadness.

Emma, still frozen in place, watched as three books were pulled off their shelves, pulled with purpose rather than curiosity: a smallish book of Roald Dahl poetry was first to come off, followed by a huge clunky illustrated Animalia, until lastly, Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy found its way into his hands.

Unable to let him stand there on his own any longer, Emma stood beside him, shoulder to shoulder, as though browsing the shelf herself.

"Your favourites or his?"

He was completely unfazed by both her presence and her question, choosing instead to flip through the book about the little black dog, settling on a page with a scar-faced cat.

"A bit of both. This one," he passed the larger of the three gently into her pair of hands, grazing her fingers with his as he always had a habit of doing. His voice was a soft kind of gravelly, suggesting that he hadn't spoken to anyone in a while, and the dry crackle in the gravel suggesting he was still letting himself cry.

Good, Emma thought to herself.

"This one, is my favourite. Hairy Maclary was my brother's, and the Roald Dahl we used to read together."

Tucking the book she already had into her chest and a little into her arms so she had her hands free, she took the Roald Dahl from him, tracing the letters of the title (Revolting Rhymes) reverently with her fingers. The image of a younger Killian, sitting with his brother reading the ridiculous fairy tale verses cross-legged on a floor somewhere was heart-achingly surreal. Emma lingered a little on the story of Jack and the Giant Beanstalk, imagining the two boys giggling at the silly turn of the tales.

"Swan?"

He was staring at her, but she could not tear her eyes from the book. She felt an uncomfortable moisture well in her eyes as she tried desperately to shake his pain from her own veins. She totally ignored the child next to him who threw a toy broccoli over their heads the entire length of the aisle.

"Are you going to buy them?"

Out of the corner of her eye, he ducked his head, Adam's apple bobbing nervously.

"Most likely there are still copies back, erm, back at home."

There was something in that, but it did not even occur to her to push it – he had been pushed far enough this week.

She had gone silent once more, lost in the items that he treasured and the memories that accompanied them, but his voice shook her once more from her reverie, asking which was her favourite.

Emma had never really been a big reader as a child. Very few of the foster homes in which she stayed really catered to the reading interests of young children. Though there were always school libraries, the aisles of which she used to amble down as she did the store aisles now.

"Not sure that I really have one."

"May I recommend – this one."

He pulled it off the shelf like he knew exactly where it was and what it was, unintentionally giving away just how long he'd been standing in this section of the shop.

And try as she might, Emma couldn't help the chuckle that escaped her (trying to fight the laugh with a grimace through her glasses) as he ceremoniously presented her with a pastel-coloured picture book of The Swan Princess.

("Hilarious." "Devilishly so.")

She whacked him in the chest with the books in her hands in feign indignation, memorising the crinkles of his eyes as he smiled back at her.

She saw him every day that week.

Emma wouldn't quite go as far as to say he was doing better. Sure, he no longer had a despondent air about him, but he was still unbearably fragile and she got the impression that there was an underlying fury waiting to have legitimate cause. She feared what that feeling was doing to him. He was clearly not coping – but Emma had gathered by now that her simple presence (and the complicated set of emotions it brought with it) was somehow enough, somehow grounding.

She didn't read into it.

She did not realise until it was too late, that this build up of days, and moments, and feelings was only making his inevitable departure in a few weeks worse. Part of Emma's subconscious simply told her to let it happen, to enjoy it while it lasted. The slow development of their bond had borne a friendship (the kind that had not grown with Neal, romance coming first, friendship later – although arguably, she and Killian had always been romantically inclined). In fact, the last real friend she had, she had lost due to betrayal and stubbornness when she was a younger, more rash.

One day she told him this without meaning to.

Killian had wordlessly decided to walk her home, and while in the past she may have simply suspected that it was part and parcel of his whole gentleman act (well, not act, personality), now it rather felt like he was trying to be in her company for as long as he feasibly could.

She said it – as she said everything that meant something – with an impartial tone and an offhand nature. It was his fault, really, he was the one who had grabbed her hand, he was the one who ran his thumb over the small tattoo that resided there on her wrist. He brought it up, dodging a few suits and briefcases that rushed around them, more than keen to get home. The two of them however, surrendered to a more leisurely pace, totally ignoring the speed at which the peak hour world worked, no doubt frustrating the bustling individuals around them.

"Anything important?"

She didn't say much about it ("Just a reminder of an old friend – my last friend, actually. She betrayed me, I betrayed her – we were just kids." "Yet, she is worthy of a tattoo." "I guess.") but it was enough for him to understand. He kissed the tattoo briefly, before looping his arm around her neck, fingers still woven together, as they walked in the late afternoon sun.

There had been no real discussion about what either of them had experienced last week in the bookshop (although the memory of his touches so concrete and cemented into her skin that it was as though he'd paved a path with the damn things).

(Perhaps it was that memory that made their hands entwine of their own accord.)

Outside of her front door, he told her that childhoods tend to leave lasting impressions, the lingering presence of Liam still clearly at the forefront of his mind. She kissed him briefly but slowly (for the first time since the first time), surprised still by the spark it lit in her chest at so small a gesture. She pulled back (too soon), and he wavered forwards a bit. She stopped his fall by nudging her nose with his to push him back up again, while the palm of her hand rested smack bang in the middle of his chest. Emma, while this thing with Killian was clearly getting out of hand, was not quite ready to figuratively throw herself to the wolves, instead throwing a range of excuses at herself about fear, and Liam.

"Bye, Killian."

(She should have invited him inside, should have spent a little more time with him, for coffee, anything.)

"Night, Swan."

(She had wanted to.)

She saw him every day that week – and yet he had failed to mention it to her.

That thing that had been lingering there, under his grief, under the intensity with which he now looked at her – that thing that she ignored (she shouldn't have ignored it).

It happened in the shop. It always happened in the shop. The books of the damn place probably knew more about Emma and Killian's comings and goings than either of them could remember themselves. She resented the books in that moment, resented how they had created the environs in which the whole thing had happened, blamed them for weaving a narrative she hadn't asked for.

That day as he came in, shoulders slackened, and a guilty look upon his face, she knew something was wrong (aside from the aching feeling Liam had left, anyway).

Both she and her boss had been talking idly about the weather (it was sunny, cold, but glary, if you were wondering) when he trudged through the door, letting it clang loudly behind him (as per usual). Emma excused herself, leading the way down one of the aisles, towards the back where the second-hand books lived, and which knew Killian well.

"Everything okay?"

He didn't speak at first, though his mouth did open, most likely to reflexively respond with 'fine, love'. He, like the books that towered over them on both sides, knew – and knew well at this stage – how far keeping things from each other had got them (which was not very far at all). Whether it was Emma's reserve, or Killian's reticence, both had been the ones to put down hindrances.

"I have to leave, have to go home," he was scared of this conversation as much as she was, the crackle of his cadence telling her so. He was also unnervingly still and yet the gaze of his eyes were constantly moving about her face.

"I know, I just assumed we'd talk about it when the time came."

"The time may have come a little sooner than expected."

Emma blinked at him, with each flutter of her eyelids understanding more and more the reality of what he was saying. He watched her carefully for her response, a look that was equal parts fear, equal parts despair.

"You're leaving."

"I have to sort out my brother's estate. I have to do something about his boat, and the inheritance tax, his accountant called to say he had some flat somewhere; and see if the bloody government or their damn military is going to give me any compensation seeing as it's their bloody fault in the first place."

Killian was barely holding onto the anger that Emma had ignored for the past week, seen there first on the night he had cut open his face in a damned stupid bar brawl. His fingers were restless, clenching, unclenching, scratching behind his ear – his irritability was overwhelming her and she wanted desperately to calm him down. Though she wasn't sure that anything really could calm him down, the level of his grief far beyond any of her own youthful losses, and the resentment he was showing towards the government back home suggested that his helplessness and blame ran far deeper than she would like.

Hopefully, it was just stage three of his grieving process.

"You're leaving." The repeated words said aloud once more in a vain attempt at coming to terms with what it meant. She couldn't though, had barely begun to embrace this thing between them - and Emma sounded broken. She didn't want to sound broken, had fought so hard the last few years to shake broken out of her repertoire, but the fact of the matter was that no one stayed, everyone left, he wasn't staying – he was never going to stay (his days were always numbered).

"No, love, not leaving – being forced." It was almost as if he knew what the simple act of leaving meant to her and while she appreciated that he clarified the difference between choice and obligation, it changed nothing. "There's not a chance in hell that I want to leave, let alone early."

Swallowing the sharp pain in her throat (enduring the uncomfortable feeling as it scratched her throat on the way down) she asked when his flight was.

He cast his eyes away from her at the question, and towards the ground, the darkness of his eyebrows almost hiding his eyes entirely at this angle. The longer it took him to answer the question, the worse she knew it was, the muscle in his jaw twitching in a familiar way, and her heart sunk when he replied.

"Tonight."

Forget sunk, her heart was suddenly anchored to the floor beneath them.

"Why the fuck did you leave it so late to tell me?!" She almost screamed it at him, her voice higher in pitch than she'd intended, hoping that no one could hear their conversation.

"I was a coward, I know, but I was scared. Scared of this damned conversation, scared of going home to deal with it all, scared of what leaving would mean." If she hadn't been so angry at him for how he had dealt with it, the fragmented, pleading of his own words would have overwhelmed her more.

(But it was the kind of voice that would plague her later that night as she replayed the conversation in her mind.)

"We're all scared, Killian, of everything and anything!"

"I know."

The silence that fell between them was by far their most awkward silence yet, punctuated by the annoying pluck of lutes throughout the shop. Both of them wanting and neither one knowing how to go about it. Killian finally lifted his glance from the floor, a pained restraint once again present in his blue.

"Can I take your anger as a subtle sign that this means something to you?"

She was scowling at him now. Mad that he was leaving, mad that he had sprung this up on her. Mad that he was always going, mad that she should have known better, mad that she felt this way about him, mad that he was unsure whether or not she felt this way about him, mad that it wasn't his fault.

Mad at him.

The only thing she could think to do was kiss him. She grabbed his face gently, scowl still firmly knit in her brows, and pressed her lips to his – almost at a squash – the force a furious attempt at easing the painful throb of her heart.

It didn't work. It made it worse. The harder she pressed her lips, the more it hurt; the more it hurt, the harder she pressed. Killian's arms pulled her tightly against him, clenching the tan leather of her own jacket, reciprocating her frustrations with his own. When their lips let go to breathe, neither one pulled back to make any distance, and when Emma hiccupped a little, tears travelling down the valley of her face, he recaptured her lips.

The reverence in their limbs a total contrast to the way their lips wanted to feel and push.

Emma was about 90% sure that they weren't alone in the aisle anymore, but there was similarly only 10% of her that actually cared.

"You know I will think of you, far more often than I should."

She laughed a bit, one congested by her tears and pulled back to look at his face. Despite her own pain she suddenly hated the universe for the heart-breaking and lonely journey he was about to make on his own. He had been so aged by the world, and yet the forlorn agony on his features made him look so young, much younger than they were. The cut on his cheek had indeed scarred, and she traced the mark dotingly, as she whispered just three words to him.

"Just as well."

It was with an unbearable amount of effort that they let go of one another, but they had both heard as Emma's boss called her name from the counter, both heard as more and more footsteps approached them. Using the back of his fingers, he wiped the tears that remained on her face (the rest had trickled down her chin and onto the neckline of her top) and both stared challengingly at the other, daring someone to say goodbye first.

But they wouldn't (couldn't).

No one said it at all.

"Text me when you get there."

It wasn't a question, but he told her he would - of course - anyway. Emma could see his tongue playing behind his teeth, grasping for the strength to say what was coming, and the look he gave her was so serious that her heart jumped back into place.

"All paled in comparison, Swan."

A cliché. Naturally.

She chuckled, flustered, and as she closed her eyes the remaining tears hanging on the edge of her lashes fell from her face. She kept them closed as he kissed her cheek, and she kept them closed as the sound of his feet dwindled, and suddenly Emma became a girl, crying alone with her eyes shut in the middle of a bookshop.

"Emma?" Her boss. Again.

"Coming."

Her boss at least looked concerned when she came back, wiping her face on the cuff of her sleeve, taking deep breaths – she still had a job to do. The new prints of Maurice Sendak books would not process themselves.

Fortunately, her shift that day was not too long, and it flew. Flew, not because time flew as she was having fun – in fact quite the contrary. It flew because her mind was so preoccupied with her heart and the way it never ceased aching. The violent thumping of it distracted her as she scanned purchases, as she left the shop to her boss ("another day in, another day out, Emma"), as she made small talk with people.

It thumped aggressively all the way home until she saw, sitting on her doorstep a parcel wrapped in brown paper and a piece of string, a small note sitting on it, and the whole pounding thing didn't know what to do with itself.

Emma,

I couldn't fit all the books in my suitcase. I feel like this is your fault, for luring me in with your harpy ways, therefore your burden to bear. Think of it more like borrowing, than gifting.

I will miss you more with every day - clichés hold an element (or two) of truth.

Killian

Emma carried the bundle inside, and carried herself into her room where a hollow gravity overwhelmed her

– and she let it.