*a wild epilogue appears* Hellooo. You guys were way to observant about the fact I hadn't whacked a completed on after that last chapter :p.
I'm too overwhelmed by every single thing that came with this story. But this is the end – the epilogue. Although, after talking it through with others, I am way too attached to this damn thing, so this little verse and their ragamuffins will be open to prompts and enquiries cause I know there are a lot of things left unanswered (so sue me, I like it that way). Every single teeny tiny follow, favourite, and the reviews that make me smile with embarrassment and glee have rocked my world. You're all enormous sweethearts.
I love you all.
(Eat your greens.)
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Part 7: Epilogues
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Three months. Three months, twelve weeks, an innumerable mass of sunrises awoken by the garbage trucks, midnight conversations and terse fights.
Yet, there was not a moment in any of those junctures where she considered leaving. It wasn't that she felt settled, or that the insecurities vanished – far from it – but she wanted to be there, she wanted to try and smother those fears with his smiles, with the touch of his fingers between hers as moral support.
Killian was happy to comply, never pushing her into things, never asking for more than she gave, gleefully accepting every little part of her that she wanted to share, helping to suppress her worries (and the cold) with his feet tucked against hers.
And as it turns out, he had plenty more suggestions for where else Emma could go – and absolutely all of them included him.
They were mostly castles (ruined and rubbled), quiet towns and bigger cities, gaping ocean views, and adventures of a different kind entirely that didn't even require leaving the apartment. There was no rhyme nor reason to where they went half the time, and more than once they had simply pointed at a map to see where they would go. This method (tried and tested with Neal, but with a little more success this time round) usually yielded good results - ambling countryside, seaside picnics - but once or twice they ended up in an industrial district, laughing and not even caring about where they'd ended up.
He was doing better, she thought. In the same way his presence seemed to quell her own kind of storm, she anchored him in place, trying as best as she could to keep memories of Liam at a happy medium and to not let him get swept away in a tide of emotions.
The adventures they had were good for both of them. He had always sought journeys and adventures, had told her so even before their first kiss, and she knew it helped him feel a little more at ease, a little less trapped by his memories. It was why he never once judged her when the restlessness set in, or when she suggested they go somewhere new.
(But it was always they, never she, never he.)
It was why he hadn't worried when she came home one day with a car (and a large bouquet of carnations and forget-me-nots).
The car. She had been so happy when she'd seen it, sitting beside an old stone wall, a strange assortment of flowers inside the open boot and the sign 'Flowers (& Car) For Sale'. It was beaten up, and it was perhaps a little too wide for the country lanes – but the old yellow VW was too perfect to pass up. It was almost identical (reversed driver's position for British roads excepted) to the one she had had so many years ago – had stolen so many years ago – and a strange sense of fortuitousness and sentimentality overwhelmed her when she saw it.
Emma absentmindedly wondered if she should have felt disdain rather than wistfulness for the car that reminded her of the boy she hated – but she couldn't bring herself to.
Besides, the car was just another symbol of freedom. The freedom to make trips on a whim, and the liberating sense of abandon without abandonment. The need for a jaunt to unexplored places roared through both their veins, she knew it did, and the car helped them scratch that itch.
(And the car cemented her place even more. Up until that point, most things had been on his terms – his flat, his town, his country. While none of 'his terms' dissuaded her from being there in any small amount, it was nice to have something that she could contribute.)
Fortunately, it didn't cost much to run (but it hadn't broken down yet), and was at their beck and call whenever the urge took them.
Just as it had been the day he almost told her he loved her.
She let him drive mostly, preferring not to drive on the unfamiliar side of the road down the motorways. The only downside was that all these road trips and her reluctance to embrace their left hand side, opened up a wide range of idioms he insisted upon still teasing her with, tongue between his teeth - cliché after cliché. ("You can do it, love, it's just a bump in the road." "I'm not talking to you about this again, let's just hit the ro – really?!" "You can't blame me for encouraging you – the road to hell is paved with good intentions." "Just- just stop." )
This particular trip had been all his idea, an adorable indulgence for his bookishness, and she was more than happy to comply. She was never really sure which part of their ventures she enjoyed the most, whether it was the places themselves, the drives, or the boy forever at her side.
Perhaps, what it was, was that the places they always went to were amazing, and she certainly tucked away the memories of vast cliff faces and tiny brooks; she loved the drive, loved the freeing feeling of hills and cows as they blurred past; but maybe, it was ultimately just allowing herself to experience the whole thing with her walls down (or at least at half-mast), trusting him implicitly.
Cornwall, they were going to Cornwall, and as they reached the highway turn off, he'd rolled down the windows, the cool country air blustering in through the car, and without even realising what she was doing, her hand was on his arm, fingers dancing lightly under the hem of his sleeve.
Jamaica Inn.
He didn't even bother playing down his excitement as he summarised the plot for her, a wry grin curled on his lips, and a little sparkle in his eyes as he told her about sailors, nere-do-wells and romance on the English moors, arching his brow irritatingly as he did so. ("You know, for someone who worked in bookshop for over six months, you know surprisingly little about books" "Hey!")
His suggestive pandering was completely unnecessary at this stage. It'd been six weeks since she'd clambered across the Atlantic, and every day they shared the same bed (or couch, or hard surface, or shower – wherever it was they ended up losing themselves).
When they got there, the place itself was simply an inn, the pub portion of it all dressed up to meet the touristy needs of the book. The gift shop itself was littered with pirate paraphernalia, and he came sauntering outside to the courtyard, beers and table number in hands, and a fake pirate hook dangling off one of the loops of his jeans.
Aside from the enthusiastic rant in the car, he had tried to reduce his excitement about coming today, and Emma knew because she'd seen it before. He had been exactly the same way at the book reading all those months back, a quiet buzz shining in his eyes, his saunter a little lighter, and yet it was restrained. That nervous tick of his, scratching behind his ear, frequently gave him away.
"Fancy a little pillaging and plundering on Bodmin Moor, love?"
She took her drink from him, ignoring his devilish smirk by glancing down at the amber liquid (and somehow still blushing at the gravelly sound of his voice).
"You wish."
He plopped himself down, facing the opposite direction to her, but not before leaning into her ear to whisper.
"Oh, you have no idea."
She swung around on the bench to join his perspective, staring out across brush and moors, the paling green-yellow of the grass weirdly picturesque in its baron nature. It was strange, a breeze building slowly around them, and the echoed laughter of others in the courtyard, the noise carrying across into the hills before them – strange because it wasn't. The breeze should have chilled them, but it didn't, the pleasant Spring air simply drawing them contentedly out of their jackets. The dried and foreboding grass in front of them did not make them feel at all desolate, but alive.
They had never gone anywhere with a literature theme before (well, not if you don't count Stratford-upon-Avon), and it felt strangely different, almost more intimate - the nature of their relationship so heavily built around fictions, fantasies and novels. They were each themselves a kind of novel; unwittingly writing their own chapters simply by living. A small little ache twinged in her chest at the thought, wondering if their literary themed getaway meant the same to him, if he thought about these things as much as she did.
(Although, secretly she knew that it would; that he did.)
Not that they never talked about books, on the contrary. They were hard to avoid when the place they were living was so cumbered by them; not when they both found themselves frequently drawn into the old second-hand place they'd met on her first day here; not when a certain God of Lovewas sitting on their bedroom floor, makeshift acknowledgments page reattached with sticky tape.
He was staring at her now, an arm around her shoulders, hand faintly running through her tresses, and a look up to him told her she knew what was on his mind. It wasn't an unfamiliar look. She'd seen it so many times, even as far back as when they were in the US, and it never failed to knock the breath out of her. She could see the emotion swirling behind them with trepidation, the way they tempted the words behind his lips. There was little reason as to why it might have overwhelmed him now, sitting after a long drive, each with a barely touched beer in hand - but there was no rationale to the timing of love anyway. The moment, the gesture, the look - the combination was both soothing and fiery, little sensations heating her scalp and her cheeks, and she wondered how it was she still felt like this after so long.
(It was stupid, and sappy, and overly romantic, but she'd be damned if she could get rid of the feeling.)
His eyes, definitely no longer teasing and flirtatious, held a different kind of promise to his earlier words, and she waited for him to say it, her free hand finding itself on the corners of his face – but they both waited too long.
"Two ploughman's lunches?"
Their food arrived, and whatever courage had brewed in him disappeared – though his grin didn't, and it remained toothy and mischievous all the way home, the little lines of his smile that she coveted so much, stinging her with sentiment.
And if he was surprised to hear her call it that – home - ("Do you want me to drive the way home?"), he didn't show it.
Their biggest fight in those three months was brought about through a common enemy, one that most human beings detest: money.
Only, for both Emma and Killian, it was not so much the issue of money itself, but the set of fears and strains that it brought to light, and their individual and collective inability to know how to deal with them.
For Killian, money resurfaced the memory of Liam, and the fact that he was still yet to do anything about his brother's boat.
But, for Emma, it was the dwindling of her savings, losing it to bills they shared, the groceries they bought, the petrol they drove with. The crux of it, came to the fact that getting a job would bind herself even more to this place, with him - and that was what scared her the most.
Not the commitment, or the fact that it was him – she had pressed mute on that particular voice in her head when she bought the plane ticket – but it made her fear getting comfortable, fear that she would suddenly feel like she belonged. She was, essentially, waiting for the other shoe to drop, or for Killian's affections to dwindle. If she allowed herself to become too comfortable, when it fell apart as it often did for young people, she would in essence be destroying herself.
And that day, in the darkness of his own woes, he did not comfort her with gentle coaxing or deft touches as was his usual way. Instead, that day, he took offence and became angry with her. ("Don't you trust me?" "Of course, I trust you." "Then, Emma, when are you going to bloody realise – I'm in this for the long haul").
They were both mad, at war with themselves and the world around them, so much so that the internal tension lead to tension with each other, which inevitably climaxed (in every sense of the word) with sex on the kitchen floor.
It was a wonder to Emma that neither of them said it then. Not when she was standing, arms akimbo and shouting desperately about how they felt about one another, and not when his voice did the same, chin set high and firm like stone, and his eyes dark. They had not even done it when they both snapped with an almost palpable crack, biting and devouring one another as they lost their clothes to the floor, and lost their hands to each others bodies.
Neither one voiced the feeling when the intensity in both of them seemed only worse with each roll of their hips - in fact the only thing they'd said then, that sounded anything like coherent words at all, was the heady gasps of their names falling from each others lips.
They hadn't even said it in the aftermath, with him still buried inside her, and their bodies flushed red and beaded with sweat, and their hearts still beating out the emotion against each others chests.
It was as though they had simply forgotten to say it, as though it was so clearly there that it didn't need to be announced.
It was impossible to tell how long they sat there, the handles of the kitchen cabinet denting uncomfortably into his skin, her atop him – and each of them gripping on as tightly as they knew how. It was late, and there was nothing to be heard from the outside except the quiet chirrup of crickets - but neither of them could hear the small creatures, too busy panting and gasping for air upon slate tiles. They hadn't even turned the kitchen light on when they'd stormed in, and the only glow drifted from the living room and over the countertop.
It was an eerily domestic fight for two twenty-one year olds who still hadn't told each that they loved the other.
(Not for lack of trying)
His breath was warm, exhaling unevenly, and intermingled with lazy kisses placed into the nook of her shoulder and collar bone, as though whispering voiceless promises, and she couldn't shake the agonising way she felt for him (not then, but also not ever).
She said a different set of words instead, still three syllables long, with her fingernails in the darkness of his hair and their bodies slowly calming.
"Don't sell it."
She couldn't be sure he'd heard her, so raspy and hoarse was her voice from the shouting, the crying and the moaning in the need for air and pleasure. One of her hands slid between them, resting among his pectorals and feeling for a beat with reverent fingers. And yet, he did not move, remained breathing heavily into her neck, easing himself from both the physical high and the emotional low – but his lack of response had nothing to do with why she repeated the words.
"Don't sell it," this time she punctuated the words a little more forcefully, emphasising her point with a lingering kiss to his temple. She knew he'd heard her this time, as he sighed deeply, his hands tracing shoulder blades.
"Don't sell it?"
His voice was quieter than hers and carried with it a certain intonation that she'd come to associate with one thing. There was a particular volume and raspiness that accompanied Killian's voice when he was thinking about Liam. Sometimes, she would hear it when he was chopping vegetables, other times when he was watching TV and Emma usually responded with a small kiss to his cheek, lingering on his shoulder with her hand.
(The first time she had heard it was at 2am at night, when he was the little spoon, and she was propped up on one hand, the other tracing the pointed line of his ear. It was 2am when he told her that he'd been completely tanked on rum, blacked out on the boat, avoiding attending Liam's funeral with a bunch of military officials, whom he now loathed.)
"Don't sell it."
They were both as bad as each other, bookmarking their problems for later, refusing to talk about these things until they quite literally overwhelmed them. He sighed again - a tired, satiated and sad kind of thing - before his hands found her cheeks, cradling them in his palms. His own eyes, grey and blue, met hers beseechingly, and with an openness she desperately wished he could see in hers.
"Don't go."
He seemed to hate himself for the way it came out, wincing and loathing the pathetic and dire croak of it all, the sound as small as the words themselves. She didn't know how to tell him that that was never what she heard. These bold gestures of his, mostly whispered with the simple desire to make her see his devotion, never once sounded despairing or pitiful to her ears. It didn't seem to matter whether they were spoken in a bookshop imploring her not fight him quite so much, murmuring hackneyed phrases in farewell, or whispering pleas on kitchen floors.
All she heard, all she ever heard, was the voice of someone that, for once, furiously wanted her to stay.
(She wouldn't say it was why she loved him, but it definitely didn't help.)
And so she shook her head, hands finding themselves in a barely-there grasp of his neck, capturing his lips almost bruisingly with her own, and ignoring the fact that her knees were most likely also bruised.
"Not planning on it."
He leased the boat out instead, to tourists of the Thames, and to those boating inclined – charging not too much through the nose, but still for a pretty profit. The decision eased his mind considerably, now able to keep that connection to his brother, finding an income that wasn't Liam's savings, and the ability to still use it from time to time.
And Emma?
Emma wasn't really sure she could believe what she was doing, visa and resume in hand, walking through the doors of their local bookshop.
The place was just as dusty, dark and enchanting as it was the first time she'd come in, and she closed the door behind her with a gentle clang, smiling at the woman who she now knew semi-well. Emma walked around for a bit, gathering courage, quieting her own disbelief, and wandering down the biography aisle. There was one lying on the floor (not that it was the only one, this bookshop was a little more arbitrary in its display and order), some paperback with the giant words Epilogue: a memoir scrawled across the cover.
Killian had once told her that she was like a book, and her chapters often a mystery to him, and as she stared at the novel in her hands, Emma realised it had been a long time since he had used such analogy for her. It was true at the time, of course, certain stages sealed shut. But, those seals had somehow along the way become broken, open to his eyes and for that she was thankful. With him, as it turned out, the opposite of what she thought was true: opening herself up made it easier to trust those who stayed, not harder, now knowing he knew and still wanted her. There was no point in sharing bits - a preface here, a conclusion there – because it would never help him to comprehensively understand the girl in front of him. And it was hard, and she hated doing it, the words never quite falling from her tongue as easily or as eloquently as she wanted them to; and she hated the uncomfortable reeling feeling in her chest that was knowing he knew, and fearing he'd treat her differently. But ultimately, she could not fault it, could not fault the way he tucked it away to never use against her, or the consoling and always empathetic way he kissed her afterwards.
Emma put the book back on the shelf (it wasn't in alphabetical order, but then again, none of them were) and suddenly despised the idea that her own biography would have an epilogue.
She had no clue what she was doing with her life, had no clue what would amount to either her or Killian, or them. Emma wasn't entirely sure she wanted to know - would much rather leave it open ended and not find out what her characters were doing several months down the track. Nor did she like the idea that her life might be filled with more endings than beginnings. It was better that way. Sure, Emma was changing, Killian for his part was too, but to suggest that things were ending would be naïve, and daft, and illogical. Emma preferred to think of them as evolving – reasonably, that would make this the rising complication part of her story, rather than the conclusion.
She took a deep breath, cooling the nerves bubbling in her chest, and made her way to the front desk.
He was standing outside when she left, a bottle of milk in hand, an incredibly all-knowing arrogant smile creating little dimples on his face, and leaning on the back of a bench. She exhaled a sharp huff to mirror her own eye roll, but it only made him smirk more.
"Back to the books, eh?"
She smacked him lightly (a lazy exhausted slap, mirroring her exhaustion with such idioms), standing between his legs and putting her visa back into her bag. Emma was glad that she'd done it, glad that the boy in front of her had shaken her out of whatever it was she was stuck in; out of that weary mix of fear and stubbornness. She was also glad that she'd now have something to do when he disappeared (off to collage in July to complete some Summer courses, and make up the credits he'd lost in the chaos of Liam's death).
Emma watched him as he played distractedly with the buckle of the belt around her dress, grin still settled in place. She couldn't get over the casual intimacy they'd both fallen into. Perhaps, it shouldn't have been such a surprise – he, the perennial personal space invader, and she, (well, they) let her actions speak louder than words. With a cursory kiss of his lips, she returned his smile happily, an effortless satisfaction on his, as if the whole thing was his doing.
"It's just temporary, okay, until I can figure out what I actually want to do with my life, or what job I want to bind myself to."
Killian cocked a wicked sort of eyebrow at her words, and she couldn't help but bite her lip at his sheer cheek, the giddy feeling made worse by the satisfaction of having got the job (and all that that step had entailed). The decision of it – the job – had snapped a weight that was on her heart sufficiently in two, until the organ in her chest (still pounding with nerves) practically floated with the sight of him all crinkly-eyed in front of her.
(She loved him.)
"Yeah, yeah I know - 'If a binding is what you want, Swan, let me offer my services'."
He chuckled in response, ignoring her terrible imitation of his accent, but still pleased with her interpretation of his lewd brow.
("I have taught you well, Swan." "You have not - I can flirt on my own, thank you very much.")
"Anyway, like I said, it's just a job."
He put his hands up in mock surrender.
"No judgement from me, love – whatever floats your boat."