A/N: So, for me this story has been a whirlwind. I've met so many gorgeous human beings because of it and your reviews have given me so much life I didn't know was possible. I just wanted to say that I quite honestly love anyone who has said nice things to me as a consequence of this daft thing I wrote half on a whim and half at your encouragement. I know it's simple, I know there's not a bunch going on and it's rather predictable – but I love you all so much for everything. And not to spoiler alert or anything, but the rating has kinda gone up, maybe, sorta… I also had a few questions about who I thought Emma's boss would be fairy tale wise, and while he's not in Storybrooke, I've included his name in this chapter so you can figure out who he is through that handy thing we call google :)
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Part 6: Travel Guides.
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I quit my job this week.
There were three things that happened within the space of three weeks that Emma would say - with the benefit of hindsight - were probably (definitely) worth noting. Of course, at the time she was none-the-wiser, she was simply the same small girl making the same frightened choices, lost to most people and to herself. She had no clue what she was doing, except that every vein in her body was begging her to scratch the itch that spread through her like pins and needles.
So, Emma waited.
As she always did when she did this (which she'd done several times, now), waiting for the regret to sink in. A boy had told her once, twisting on a rusty carnival swing, that she would just know when the decision wasn't the right one; know when an overwhelming feeling of post-adolescent yearning was location specific and not an esoteric longing for somewhere non-particular. Just as Emma would always wait for that answer, for that confirmation, that feeling, the response came back a resounding 'no' each and every time.
(Much to Emma's great disappointment.)
Similarly, that is exactly how it came to her now.
'No, you will not regret leaving this place'.
But there was something there that wasn't there before, and there was no denying to herself what was different this time.
Swinging on her faithful stool, absentmindedly mirroring the swinging image of Neal from the formative memory she was now replaying, Emma considered the very real possibility that she regarded the empty shop before her with actual fondness. She mentally tossed and turned over whether or not it was the quaint appearance of the shop - its tall ceilings, tall shelves, and equally tall tales. She had definitely developed an affection for being essentially a caretaker of books, the boss of ensuring that English boys did not drip water all over them. The stool beneath her began to squeak in a way it never had before. Emma read too much into the squeak, considering it a sign (as fanciful as the thought was) that all things must change.
Not that she was changing – she was running, again.
(Well, sort of.)
(And she shook her head immediately after the thought, dismissing the idea that green leather stools were fortune-telling furniture.)
It was her last shift, the last ten minutes she would ever look over the shop before counting the day's profits, and try as she did, she couldn't shake a sorry feeling from her stomach. Her boss was shutting up shop with her tonight (a wordless agreement to say farewell), and the cheery man had decided to hum as he dusted the shelves on the other side of the shop.
Should I have taken more advantage of your staff discount?
The buzzing of her phone had not surprised her, she was clinging so firmly to the thing, anxious for his response. She spun the phone in a circular motion through her fingers, again and again, bumping the bottom of her chin with each rotation, waiting for the courage to literally hit her so she could tell him what she was doing.
Okay, so truth be told, Emma wasn't entirely sure why she was so anxious to tell him. Perhaps, part of it was because she knew he would accuse her of running, would say that she was simply postponing things so she could live within her little castle walls that little bit longer.
Even if he would agree with why.
Perhaps, she was worried that her first thought should have been to fly straight to him. Would he have done the same thing if given the opportunity? But she needed this. She'd learnt long ago in her youth, and her post-prison days, that there was a certain freedom in being physically lost and the way it helped you to forget the awareness of being emotionally displaced.
"Why did Killian Jones want to come here anyway?" "Adventure, Swan – pure and simple".
The memory replayed in her mind, overtaking the image of Neal. The recollection of Killian opening cardboard boxes, of teasing her, of his stubble scratching lightly on her face, gracefully (partially, anyway) scrambling for contact as they kissed themselves into a pile of books. Whether or not she knew it, Emma bit her lip at the sheer hankering to do it again.
"Why is it you've stayed so long here? Sick of running?"
The shocking clarity of his words were what made the memory of each and every syllable stick to her mind like treacle. Of course, I want to stop running, she thought to herself, watching as her boss re-alphabetised a couple of Eyewitness travel guides. Perhaps she hadn't put enough confidence in how well they understood one another, in just how openly Killian could read her, that feeling of knowing and of empathy for their differing yet strangely similar circumstances. He had needed escape too in the search for something, despite the fact that it meant leaving his brother whom he loved so terribly.
Perhaps, she was anxious because she'd made her decision and now she couldn't take it back. No matter how unsure of it she felt.
(Sure flights could be un-ridden, minds reversed, words negated – but hearts were a little harder to change.)
(Not that this would be the last time she tried to change it.)
Hold on a moment you actually resigned?
Sighing she continued to spin her phone before a tune change from her boss echoed through the store, a tune she recognised from one of his CDs of lute music she would never (gods permitting) have to listen to again.
Are you busy in three weeks time? Or are you going to be too busy being Oliver Twist?
Emma counted the till, turned off the computer, and decided to take one last sickeningly sentimental turn down the aisles, thinking of how well she's come to know this store and how she'd likely never see it again.
"Parting is such sweet sorrow," her boss was standing at one end of the aisle smiling as she was startled by him. In his hands was a pocket-sized Lonely Planet to England, an idyllic countryside image on the front to match the chipper beaming of his own smile.
She was probably not going to miss his proclivity for clichés, however.
He handed it to her, exchanging her keys to the shop for the little book of advice, and she laughed at the terrible Shakespearean expression, thinking of how mere months ago his strangeness had been barely tolerable. Though, he did seem sad to be letting her go (and in a weird way, Emma was too), and he had been incredibly supportive of her journey, particularly since the night of his birthday dinner.
"Thank you, Duban. For this," Emma said awkwardly, gesturing at the book she was probably never going to use. "For everything."
"It was my pleasure, Emma."
The first of Emma's life altering decisions? The decision to leave.
.
For all her sentimentality, Emma passed the shop two days later to go to the bank.
(Though she didn't go in.)
.
Emma told him the wrong date.
He had asked her specifically when she was flying over to his continent ("I thought you told me once that Europe wasn't even a continent?" "Missing the point, love"), and she had told him the date she was landing in London. Like a coward. She was definitely overreacting by this point, certain that he wouldn't react negatively to her decision, but she was still fearing that paralysing sensation that she was crossing continents to see this boy that she'd kissed fewer times than she had left-hand fingers.
(The longer she thought about it, the more she definitely wanted to increase that number.)
Emma closed her eyes, breathing in the smell of the sea and listening to the white noise that not understanding half the languages around you could create. She couldn't regret this however, the strangely elating feeling of sore feet and a full stomach. Even when she opened her eyes to see the curve of land and sea to erase that white noise haze, the feeling of contentment did not leave her.
Even when she saw, again, what she was gripping in her hands.
She crossed her legs on the bench that was perched a few metres from the brink of the outlook, smiling at a little tourist boy munching on an ice-cream, jabbering in a language she couldn't even slightly begin to comprehend. Turning back to the Tyrrhenian before her, and the postcard of a ruined ancient city in one hand, pen in the other, she wrote.
Killian,
So I might already be in Europe. You would love this place. It's pretty cold and there are still people eating gelato by the sea. But the history is great – or how do you say it, "a bloody marvel". Pompeii was a 'bloody marvel'. I got lost a few times but seemed to find my way in the end, even if I did end up in the same brothel 5 times. Not sure if you'll get this before I see you in England but I'm heading for Granada this week (on a stupidly long train trip) where I'm told food comes complimentary when you buy a drink. Sounds too good to be true.
Emma
.
She was actually wandering through the mosaic hallways of the Alhambra when her phone buzzed in her bag.
I bet Pompeii was like paradise. Were the views breath-taking? Would have been like stepping back in time. You should really wander off the beaten track though.
Emma couldn't help the pained smile that crept across her face.
Really? Travelling clichés?
.
Liam's funeral was two days after Emma was set to arrive in Gatwick and it was the main reason (one of many, really) why she had aimed to be there on that day.
But the evening before her morning flight, with her blood full of cider, Emma felt the uncanny fear swell in her stomach – she was not ready. She could try to pretend that she was, create a scenario for herself whereby her visit meant less to either one of them than it truly did. But she couldn't. She could not overcome her heart – however, neither could she silence the fear careening through her bloodstream. What she needed was more time.
Emma chose to run again.
Instead of catching her flight, she caught a train to Lyon, where she proceeded to get blindingly drunk on wine, bitterness and self-hatred.
She missed Liam's funeral.
It was this, the second of her three decisions, the choice to run – again – that she would appreciate - only retrospectively - in its capacity to shake her into addressing her flight versus fight nature.
(When she survived the hangover.)
.
Of course, he wanted to meet her here. It was so predictable and sweet – and so very him.
The nerves that she had felt all the way here - climbing onto the plane, sitting on the plane, getting through customs after getting off the plane - had not returned, far too concerned was she with where she was going and how to get there. The instructions had been vague at best, a series of 'go to platform three, take a left at the bakery, stop to smell the roses' (that one made her cringe as she wheeled her case past a florist).
(Though of course, whimsical as the instructions were, she had known the moment she saw it that that was where she was going.)
She'd had to change trains twice, lugging the suitcase that she was quickly losing patience with up and down lift-less station stairwells. Europe may have been quaint and pretty, but one of the wheels of her suitcase had jarred between two cobbled stones her first week and it bent the thing into a wobbled form. As a result, every time she dragged the ridiculous piece of luggage over a surface that was remotely flat it produced an annoying melodic clack behind her. She blamed her own ability to attract bad luck, her own foolishness in dragging the damn thing down the middle of the pedestrian street by the Acropolis rather than the adjacent path, and her refusal to just use a bag rather than a suitcase.
(She had bought it brand new before it betrayed her.)
The walls of the shop-front were a bright red, almost the same colour of the coat wrapped firmly across her shoulders, and when she walked inside, the familiar scent of dust and paper affronted her.
She smiled – awkwardly – at the kindly woman with the cats-eyed glasses behind the counter, apologising for the noise of the suitcase across the hardwood floors (hoping the deformed wheel wouldn't scratch a path behind her). The shop itself was different to A Novel Idea - the aisles tighter, the ceiling lower – and there were more pre-loved books. It felt more English. She abandoned her suitcase a little to scan the shelves curiously, head cantered slightly to the right to try and decipher some of the sideways titles.
Her nerves returned the moment the door to the shop clanged. It was an eerily familiar noise, but the shop itself was surprisingly busy for a Wednesday morning in the middle of a small English town. It wasn't him. She had a near perfect view of the door between the shelves – but that didn't stop her heart from racing every time someone walked through it. She wandered a little further, eyes spotting a particularly pretty leather copy of Heart of Darkness, squinting a tad without her glasses.
"Looking for anything in particular?"
Her heart leapt. For all her tensed waiting, Emma hadn't heard him come in; hadn't recognised the sound of his boots against the different, more muted, floorboards of this shop compared to hers. She smiled - a wide, stupid thing - upon hearing his voice, as mellifluous as always, before even turning to look at him. She crossed her arms, still wearing that grin that betrayed her body language.
(She had missed his face. A lot.)
Killian was still all dark hair and stubble, leather jacket and mischievous grin – but he looked tired. There was a dark kind of hollow under his eyes, and his face was a little thinner – but these were things that were hard to focus on when every part of him was beaming from ear to slightly pointy ear.
"No I'm okay, thanks - just browsing."
Emma hoped that the casual buoyancy of her words would hide the wild thrumming of her blood through her own ears, caused dually by fear and unadulterated happiness.
(She didn't know she'd missed him this much.)
"Not a problem, just let me know if you need anything."
She took two shaky breaths before his feet – firm and sure – strode towards her. All it took was a tug, sure and insistent, on her waist and Emma flung her arms about his shoulders, gripping onto the chilled, worn, jacket like a lifeline. Killian took no time at all in wrapping his arms tighter about her waist, pulling her almost painfully close to him, the strength of his hug keeping her balanced as she stood on the tips of her toes.
Emma was still nervous. The hug was definitely a good sign, as was the way his nose was buried into her hair, but her guilt over abandoning him, her guilt over running, made the embrace bittersweet to her. She noticed a group of old ladies wander into their aisle, nattering happily about birds (of all things). They smiled at her knowingly, and she could have sworn she saw one of them mouth the name 'Killian' before leaving the pair of them alone in the aisle.
"About bloody time."
The words were barely even spoken to her and more for himself than anyone else. But she responded anyway, squinting her eyes and burying a voiceless apology against the grey scarf on his neck. He did not seem to want to push her on the topic of her regret, regret she was sure he could feel in the shaking of her fingers. He seemed more content with crawling his arms further up her back until they were tangling in the ends of her hair. She apologised again, this time with two hands drifting down his front, just in case part of her fears were confirmed and he had thought her seeing him was just an aside in her travels.
(When really, it was the other way around.)
.
It only took them twenty minutes – although it would have, on a less ambled walk, taken about ten.
In twenty minutes they had left the musty old shop, his left hand hooked around her suitcase, dragging it through the town; in twenty minutes they were standing in the almost Spartan living room of Liam's two bedroom apartment, that lived above a greengrocer (the window was open and the place smelt distantly of carrot), grinning like Cheshire cats.
In twenty minutes Emma had thrown her arms around his neck, lips seeking his.
(At least, Emma thought she was the first to move, it was possible that he'd been the first to become distracted by staring at her lips.)
It was a desperate kiss, awkwardly clanging at first - each of them were determined to make up for lost time. She had forgotten in those pointless weeks of almost pining (Emma Swan did not pine) just how his fingers felt buried in the tassels of her hair, though she could not have easily forgotten the spicy way in which he smelt (now a little saltier than she recalled).
It was borne from longing, relief and joy, but with each movement of their lips the kiss began to speak words for them that neither had the patience to stop kissing to actually voice. Words of greeting, words enquiring after their well-being, words of something else entirely that Emma refused to put a name to.
(Love, the word she was avoiding was love.)
But there was also a hunger, and a curiosity, that had never managed to fight its way out of their respective bubbles of doubt – and yet here it was now, as though it preferred a different longitude, or as though they were merely more willing to embrace it.
Emma's hands slid under the shoulders of his jacket, forcing the arms of the clothing down till it fell on the ground with a quiet, reverberating thump.
He stopped kissing her the moment it fell about their feet.
If the look on his face was anything to go by he was trying not to read into it too much, a quiet anticipation descending over them, until all she could hear was the sound of two men outside talking about tomatoes, and the almost-sound of the question in the quirk of his eyebrow.
With an unhurried pull of his lower lip, he seemed to get the message.
So, with unsteady, measured fingers of his own, he moved to un-loop the large wooden toggles from the front of her coat, each downward graze of his hands increasing the heat in her face, in her limbs, in her blood – hell, everywhere. The toggles were all he did, though - it was Emma who shrugged it off, allowing it to fall (with a little less noise) to the floor in a similar manner.
"Welcome to England," words whispered into the apple of her cheek in a low and suggestive manner, destroying the rhythm of her heart, forcing it to skip a beat (or two).
She wanted what their coats had symbolised: the shedding of shields and other linen barriers. She wanted to feel his skin on hers with stubble buried into her neck, as his fingers (just as they were doing now at the base of her neck) traced the topography of her limbs. Though neither of them moved. Foreheads still bracing the pair of them, standing in the middle of the living room, her own hands gripping the hem of his little dark grey waistcoat, breathing the only thing to be heard.
The brazen way she had pounced on him earlier was suddenly no where to be found, as the realisation that she'd simply had one night stands since Neal, the realisation that if she were to go that step further it would undeniably mean something, hit her. Those feelings she almost resented were what made her run a week ago, and it was that something that stood between them now, making her stall.
He sensed her apprehension and the re-emergence of her fears – not her walls, but her fears – moving his hand to her chin, recapturing her mouth with the quiet, comforting nip of his.
She had barely paid any attention at all to her surroundings as they'd come in – it was kind of hard to, her eyes firmly shut and her other senses busy with him. Had completely ignored the eggshell blue colours of the walls, dismissed the fact that an array of hardcover books were being used as the legs of his coffee table, and the fact that cleaning rags lived in the old peeling fireplace.
"I gotta say, I like the way you say 'hello' in this country," her words are out, croaking lowly and flirtatious as he grinned something fierce in response, stepping pointedly over her coat to make his way to the kitchen.
Her gaze followed him, naturally, watching as he beamed back at her over his back, before she paused to take in the room.
It's only then that she sees it.
All that happiness and elation that he'd smiled into her was swiftly wiped clean in an instant, replacing it with a hollow weight. Heavy and yet not even really there – and all it took was the image of a photograph on a bookshelf. She really hadn't been looking at his place properly when they came in. She had been all butterflies and reprieve – but the butterflies were now dead and gone, leaving a rotten choking in her chest, as though the fluttering insects had been trapped to decay there on their escape.
Now, she found her attention drawn to a tall but narrow bookshelf, littered with all manner of books and colours. The entire room she was standing in was speckled with piles of books, some neat, others weren't, but somehow Emma just knew that the ones in front of her now were on display for a reason; deserved the prized shelf.
Just as the photograph of Killian and Liam that sat in the centre was there deliberately.
She noticed his reappearance at her side before she noticed the tears running down her own cheeks.
"I'm so sorry," it was a pleading, a desperate hope for the apology she could not voice earlier. "I don't even kn-ow, I don - I'm so sorry."
"It's alright, love."
She let out a frustrated groan, mangled with the sound of her tears, and began pacing back and forth between the bookshelf and the settee, running trembling hands in knotted hair.
"N-no, okay, you don't get to do that."
Suddenly the sparse décor of his place echoed everything: the anger in herself, the sobbing of her tears, the infuriating silence of his patience -
The culmination of her fears.
"What would you have me say, Emma?"
She contemplated this, listening as her heart bounced off the walls of the room. She wanted him to yell at her, to accuse her of anything, she wanted him to ask why. He didn't like her answer, scraping an upset hand through the back of his hair.
"Why?" He was only fulfilling her request, his voice tainted in the acrimony she was after and that was only put there at the insistence of her own blame.
There was a sob as her only initial response, the sound of it swallowing her first attempt.
"I-I don't know how to be that person," he didn't understand, the confusion evident on his face. "I don't know how to be that rock that you see when you look at me. I have never been that person, I'm just this unwanted thing that doesn't belong anywhere. You were the first person in twenty-one years to not do that to me, to actually make me think that maybe I was something to somebody. That I could be chosen and to not have taken it away again when you regretted it?Do you have any idea how terrifying that is? That's why I ran. I wanted to be here, but I was too scared."
Emma couldn't for the life of her remember when she'd confessed so much. Her nerves were shattered, well and truly, not even with the strength to do much more than whisper her unresolved problems at him. She certainly hadn't voiced her own abandonment issues to him before, though he looked unsurprised and she was forced to wonder, once more, just how good he was at emotional parkour, navigating her walls with such ease.
She couldn't figure out why he wasn't more upset with her, noting instead the mitigating stare, watching as he instead made steady, barely sauntering movements towards her. If it were Emma she would probably have given him the cold shoulder and more than a couple of frosty glares to voice her dissatisfaction. But he?
"Emma, listen to me, if that were even remotely true you wouldn't be here right now standing before me. You are so much stronger than this person you seem to think you are."
Maybe there was an element of truth in his words, but she was only here because she'd dragged herself here to him. Forced herself against every fear - through every station, through every security check - that this was the right decision, that seeing him again and crossing hundreds of miles to do so, wasn't something she'd regret. But maybe, if dragging worked, drag she would.
"I can't keep on being scared of everything. I can't keep letting it do this to me, or to you – it's gotta stop."
She wiped her own tears from her face, angrily, whispering the words forcefully as his hand decided to move gently - encouragingly - through her hair, seemingly out of place with the rapid whirring of her heart.
"One day," he started, an impossibly small smile across his face. "One day, you will learn of all the things that I did out of pain and anger that Liam literally dragged me out of, and you will realise that you missing his funeral isn't even comparable, love."
Ring-studded and compassionate fingers lingered as he tucked her hair back behind her ear.
"That, and I'm not fond of hypocrisy."
She had certainly not been expecting him to say that.
"Son of a bitch, you didn't go?"
"You are astute"
She had no clue why this made her happy. It shouldn't have, and it was definitely something that she wanted to talk to him about. Yet, now she couldn't. In fact, she couldn't take her eyes away from his; all she seemed to be able to do was look at him with a deep sense of hope. Honest, straightforward hope. In the same split second they made the same decision.
He kissed her first this time – and it was strong, and reassuring, and she held on tightly, to not only his hips (flush against hers), but the message in that kiss.
(It's okay, Emma.)
(Just don't do it again.)
(Surely it's too warm in here for that sweater, Emma.)
They struggled with their clothes – a lot – their hands too eager for the pure and simple sensation of flesh, that they kept getting in the way of each other. (The buttons on his vest were a serious pest). She continued to not pay attention to the house as he led her straight into his room without proper introduction, stripping off item of clothing after item of clothing as they went. She didn't even remember falling onto his mattress, only suddenly aware that her legs were up around his hips, feeling him there and wanting, his hands trying to rip off her boots - until he gave up, her giggling at his folly earning her his fake annoyance.
("You sure you've done this before, buddy?" "Casanova himself would struggle with these bloody shoes.")
He knelt, as she sat up on the bed, to better strip away the last of their proverbial armour. Killian struggled to look her in the face as she tore off her bra and the rest of her underwear, flinging them over his shoulder and smirking playfully at him. (Hope was a funny thing). Then they were back down again, Emma's head falling gently into a checkered pillow as they reattached together at the mouth, tongue entreating tongue.
They were a mess.
A mess of limbs and hands struggling to get under the covers, and over the curve of her arse; a mess of heavy breathing and gibberish whispers as her hands similarly ventured ("Protection?" "Don't worry, got it covered." "Okay, is there in any point in – fuck, Emma.").
It was the way he was looking at her more than anything else, with reverence and the incredible seriousness that made her hands shake, her breathing far too flustered to attempt composure. It was almost like he knew, choosing to deepen the kiss, palm cupped around her face.
Not that that lasted too long - he kept trying to kiss his way down her entire body, dragging languorous kisses down her neck, the underside of her breast, her hips, her thighs – and she struggled to keep him in place around her face long enough to kiss him back.
He resigned himself – without argument, to be fair – settling the direction of his kisses where she could reach him, opting instead to use the venturing of his fingers to find where she was warm and similarly wanting (so that she was biting back whimpers with his thumbed strokes and exploratory curling). There was a rampant need growing (as his fingers knew well) to match the need in her heart, and while they struggled – to get to this point, to get their clothes off – at a certain point (somewhere after she tore his tongue away from her peaking nipples) their rhythms properly came together.
She'd forgotten how this could feel – how it could assuage rather than numb, how oddly inviting the scratch of his thick hair against her own chest could feel. Emma chased that feeling, welcoming it, arching into him in further silent encouragement - before he withdrew his fingers with a smirk, intentionally leaving her hanging.
He seemed to settle a little, having gotten over what she was sure was the initial shock of her in his bed, his face flushed red right to the tips of his ears – he looked wrecked. So, maybe, it was less about finding a rhythm, and more about them catching their breath, as his eyes searched hers curiously for something. Emma helped him find whatever it was by biting the scarred bone of his cheek and running calm nails down the sides of his chest, feeling with satisfaction the goosebumps left in their somehow mollifying wake.
So he thrust inwards, creating an unforeseen duet of his cry and her own.
She found it hard to focus on just one thing after that. There was too much going on, too much building: his teeth on her neck, his fingers clasped in hers by the sides of her head, their pounding frantic hearts -
The drag of him inside her, hitting spot after spot.
As she gasped and sighed (and let forth tiny moaning keens to match his own), Emma wondered if maybe – just maybe - there were really good arguments to be made for opening up the walls of her heart.
.
They'd done this before: stand awkwardly in the kitchen. Though, the differences between those two occasions were staggering. The first time they'd been tired and bereft. This time they were tired, but smiling coyly each time their eyes met, cheeks red with satisfaction (rather than with heavy sadness).
Emma preferred this time infinitely, far more at peace with the way he moved about his kitchen than the way he'd hollowly ambled round hers. She also preferred it, to be perfectly honest, because he was simply wearing a pair of boxer-briefs while she hung about wearing nothing but his shirt (and it really wasn't that much bigger than she was).
(God, she was too fantastically spent to care.)
"So," he had to clear his throat for a moment, worrying the spot behind his ear with his fingers in a nervous gesture, before continuing his train of thought with bravado. "You chased me to England. Grand romantic gesture, Swan - I'm flattered."
"I did not chase you," she tried to sound indignant, really she did, but it only came out frisky, smile once again betraying her outcry.
"You're a terrible liar, love. You must have missed me a lot to come all this way; to seduce your way into my home," he continued to tease her with the wriggle of his brow, the wry and derisive expression on her face doing nothing but spurring him on. "Definitely looks like you're running after me, Swan."
The kettle firmly in place upon the gas stove to heat, he took two very particular strides, coming once again right into her personal space and making himself at home there. (And if his fingers drifted under her shirt, she wasn't going to complain.)
"I do not run after people."
"Is that so? Nonsense. You were probably just sitting on that green stool of yours, pining after me, hoping against hope that I'd burst through that damned door –"
"I was not pining."
"- sitting there, in your home, missing me and my devilishly handsome good looks."
She was flat out denying all of these things they both knew to be true - but something gave her pause. Emma was so tired of running, of that topic they'd thoroughly exhausted (and expanded upon with their heads on pillows and their bodies entwined). Though it had only been a handful of years to reel from the betrayal of Neal – and a bucket-load of other life events that lay unspoken and still broken – those years had still exhausted her immeasurably. There was something about the blue-eyed boy in front of her, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, tongue playing behind his teeth, that reminded her that she didn't have to be so scared of not yet being completely put back together.
Vulnerability was still an option.
"It was never my home."
His smile softened considerably at her (already obvious to him) confession, and the bouncing of his feet stopped their motion. Her fingers found themselves in the tangled grasp of his, as he brushed a quiet kiss and a quieter still message to the sharpest apple of her cheek, smiling if the curve of his lips were anything to go by.
"Home is where the heart is."
She ripped a hand from his, thwacking him squarely on the shoulder for his cliché, shooting him another wry smile, and effectively snapping the quiet moment he'd attempted to create in two. He turned back to the kettle and chuckled.
"So, love, where are you off to next on your big grand adventure?"
There it was.
That small sentence that was there to tell her he was still unsure of where they stood. She couldn't blame him. She'd fought and fled and been so fickle, and despite the fact that they'd spent the past three hours (what the hell, was it really that long?) under the warmth of his stripy sheets, this was something they hadn't even broached.
Problem was, Emma didn't trust hearts – she had been resolute to never trust the hearts of others again. She hadn't had great experiences with them, to be fair. From the foster mother who had vehemently declared she'd loved her, only to almost get her run down by a car; to the parents who couldn't stomach her for twenty-four hours; right down to the boy, all goofy grins and broken promises, who ran in fear.
But he was none of them.
She pitter-pattered across the floor towards Killian, tenderly running fingers over the fading pink ridges she'd made on his back earlier with her fingers, satisfied by the deep humming he responded with before sneaking her arms around his waist and speaking into the muscles of his back.
"Any suggestions?"
The third decision Emma made that was worth noting, was that she, for a change, ran towards something.