Some Sort of Neighborly
Chapter 6
If he were anyone else, he may not have noticed it: the flash of blond hair, quicker and brighter than a bolt of lightning.
But, as it is, he's probably a little more aware of the apartment down the hallway than the average visitor exiting Robin's, and so he finds his eyes flickering to 3B, out of instinct more than anything else, as he fishes in his pocket for the spare key.
"Swa—"
The door swings shut.
He frowns, fingers wrapped around his keychain (a colorful jumble of plastic Roland had made at school). While there have certainly been nights in the past where he's lost some sleep over the woman in question, he doesn't think he's as far gone as to have started hallucinating her image – but, then again, he's been surprised by Emma Swan before. Like every time she lets herself laugh around him, real and full (he suspects some of those may have been unintentional, but won't complain either way), or that one time she'd waved at him through her living room window as he passed by and he'd nearly fallen off of the fire escape.
(Except, he surmises: they're friends, and that's just the kind of things friends do. It's his reaction to it that's the problem, as much as he tells himself that it isn't.)
(He also manages to convince himself that conveniently forgetting his key to Robin's a little more often than usual is, too, the kind of thing friends do, but he's rather sure Robin doesn't buy it as much as he pretends he does.)
In any case, an awfully strange renewal of her previous disappearing act, however mutual it had once been (and a few weeks past at that), isn't quite the sort of surprise he'd ever hope for.
Maybe she just hadn't heard him?
Maybe he's fumbling for excuses.
Shaking his head, he turns back around to lock the door, pats the strap of his guitar case across his chest just to make sure he hasn't forgotten it (again). He's just about ready to pass it all off as a figment of his imagination, so, of course, that's when he hears it.
A faint but unmistakable thud from the flat down the hall.
He should probably be ashamed at how quickly his head turns.
His first thought, to his chagrin, is that she must have company. He stares at the flat pane of her door and tries not to let the idea get the better of him, even as it burrows a ridiculous weight into his chest like he's a bloody teenaged cliché – as if he hadn't only just proclaimed them friends, and nothing more.
His second thought is that something might have happened to her, however capable she may have already proven herself to be.
He hesitates. The neighborly-ish thing to do would be to at least check to make sure she's okay, wouldn't it? He certainly has no intention of trying to eavesdrop on anything she may or may not be doing, with or without someone else, behind those walls.
But even as he nears, what feels suspiciously like dread curdling in the pit of his stomach, he's greeted with nothing but silence from her doorstep. He isn't sure whether or not to knock, hovering there with his hand raised – except the second he so much as brushes the wood with his indecision, the door creaks open against his knuckles, not properly closed at all.
No matter how quickly he jumps back, the damage is already done.
"Er, Swan?" He grimaces; he sounds like a bloody lunatic. "Sorry, I didn't mean to—"
And then he notices the reason the door has stopped moving.
"Killian?" Her eyes wide, Emma blinks up at him from the floor – and the sight alone drops his heart just as far, even if he hasn't a clue for context. Her cheekbones are dusted pink from what he assumes is the cold outside, as is likely the reason for her tousled hair, but she seems to have neglected removing her coat and scarf before she'd assumed her position on the ground, her back against the foyer wall, her knees bent just enough to catch the door halfway open.
The words are out of his mouth before he can help it, regardless of how obvious the answer should be. "Emma, are you—?"
"Oh, I— yeah, I'm fine; I'm fine." She braces herself against the wall to try to stagger to her feet, but he knows without even watching her fumble that it's a lie. His hand darts out to grasp hers before he can think twice about it.
Hers is like an ice block, far colder than the weather should warrant, and it feels slick with clammy sweat.
"You don't seem fine," he tells her honestly, and it's probably indicative of how much truth those words actually hold that she doesn't counter with a jab back.
"Really, I'm good."
He frowns. "So, you just… decided to get reacquainted with the floor?"
This time, her green eyes narrow. "I don't tell you how to spend your spare time."
"Perhaps you should. You seem to have quite a good handle on it." She snorts, though he detects a hint of a smile curving the edges of her lovely mouth, and it's only then that he realizes that their hands are still joined. Cold as her skin was, a twinge of disappointment still jerks through his fingers as soon as he lets go.
"Swan," he says seriously. He makes sure to look her right in the eye as he stands his ground, because he needs to ask it, just once more. "Are you sure you're all right?" If she brushes him away again, he tells himself – he'll leave. As much as he's loathe to, there's only so much prodding he can do before it becomes too insistent, and he's not about to embark down that path again.
Even aided by the thick heels of her boots, she still has to tilt her face up to meet his gaze properly. There's a windswept lock of blond hair curling across her temple the wrong way, and the temptation to brush it back nearly distracts him from how her tongue darts out against her lips.
She seems to pull into herself, her padded arms tugging tighter around her chest, and she exhales a sigh that seems unsteady, her expression disconcertingly unreadable.
"Do you have a show tonight?"
He blinks in confusion, but she only gestures over his shoulder – where, he remembers, his guitar still hangs. "You play near here, don't you?" she asks again.
"I'm afraid if you're after pity points for an answer," he says, cocking his head, "you're going to actually have to admit that something's wrong."
She stares at him for another long moment, and then her lashes flutter as she lets out another breath – this time, almost a laugh. And then, to his dismay, she leans back against the wall, slides all the way down back to the floor.
A slender hand scrubs over her face before it settles for pinching over the bridge of her nose, but she's speaking before he can even begin to figure out what he wants to say.
"It's the stupidest fucking thing."
Her voice is almost a groan – tired, he thinks, but he doesn't like to consider the word defeated when it comes to her. "Try me."
"Aren't you going to be late to your gig?"
"Perhaps," he admits. Ignoring the tight fit of his jeans (the bar crowd likes them, so he won't complain), he squats down to meet her, which just so happens to allow the door to swing closed at his side. It's probably the leap in privacy that allows him to lower his voice, or so he tells himself. "But I'd like to keep my priorities in order."
Her eyes dart back up to meet his, like the skittish flit of a dragonfly, but she blinks away faster than he thinks he could have conveyed just how much he means it. Tucked under her chin, her slender throat works down a swallow.
"Look, Killian…" she sighs. There are a million ways she can finish that sentence, and a million more things he doesn't want to hear – except he needs her to say it anyway.
"Do you want me to leave?" he asks quietly.
For a long moment, she doesn't speak. The hand she's kept hovering near her face runs over her brow again, her shoulders falling with a long, tremulous exhale, before it drops to meet the other propped up on her knee – and he doesn't have to be as shamefully attuned to her as he is to notice the way the fingers on her right hand reach for the fourth one on her left, as if on absentminded instinct.
"No," she murmurs, without looking up.
Her words – or, rather, word – from before come to mind, against the backdrop of spirited yelling in the living room just feet away: Good.
I want to know you.
He hadn't needed David's keen scrutiny to know that was the truth, to know that'd have been the truth no matter her answer.
Peeling the strap from his clothes, he carefully deposits his guitar case against the foyer wall opposite where she sits. His jacket comes next, draped neatly over the top of the body.
And then he heads to her kitchen without another word.
Hot fucking chocolate.
Of course he comes back bearing two mugs of the stuff, and he'd managed to excavate her fridge for the whipped cream, too. Maybe she's a little biased, but there's just something about the image he makes with both hands full of her drink, rolled-up sleeves and dark wool sweater, that chases the cold from her fingertips before she can decide whether or not she wants it to stay.
The mug he pushes toward her is the same one from the upper shelf of her cabinet, the one he'd retrieved for her last time he was here. The one he keeps is covered in tiny yellow ducklings, and, out of pure reflex, she hesitates, her reach faltering halfway to meet his.
"Oh." He twists the mug she has locked in her sights, trying to get a better look at it. "Is this one yours?"
Despite her muddled mind, she manages to heft him the tiniest of grins. "Swan, remember?"
A low snort escapes his nose, but his smile is apologetic. "Very creative, love," he shakes his head. "But unfortunately, I neglected to add cinnamon to this one, so it's your decision whether you'd like to go without."
Her thoughts flicker back in time to a much warmer day, watching him wrap his lips around the rim of a beer bottle as she rummaged around in her kitchen. It seems like far too long ago for him to have remembered, and yet, here he stands.
She takes the other mug, the one adorned with a skull and crossbones (a warning, apparently, for her dental health given her poor dietary habits, though she's inclined to associate it with something a little more fun, and a little more swashbuckling, than that).
"Thanks."
"You're quite welcome, love," he tells her, settling down next to his guitar and jacket against the opposite wall. Her living room has couches that are still in perfectly good order (somehow, after everything her stupid friends have put them through), so it feels a little ridiculous, sitting with him on the cold floor like this. Especially when she still hasn't so much as unbuttoned her coat. Especially when she knows he has another commitment he's ignoring to drink hot chocolate with his friend's next-door neighbor.
The first sip is scalding, but the heat settles into her bones like relief.
He doesn't speak.
"Am I ever going to hear you play?" she finds herself asking, on impulse more than anything else, after she finishes making sure she's free of whipped cream.
Humor tugs at the edges of his mouth, and it's almost enough to bring a sense of normalcy to this entire situation. "You'd really like to?"
Even though she knows the answer, she shrugs. "It'd be nice to have something to narrow down the options for the venue," she says. "If you're awful, I'd only have to check into the grimier joints."
"The advantages of being a bail bondsperson, is it?" he chuckles. "Perhaps that could be called an abuse of power."
"I'm not a cop. It's not like I'd be going in with a warrant."
"No handcuffs either?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?"
He only grins around the rim of his mug, blue eyes dancing as he takes another sip.
The stutter in her chest, however, is born not only of that mischievous look, nor just of his stupid attempt at being charming (it's a successful attempt, if she's being honest) – but of those things in junction with something else. With the familiarity of it reminding her why she's here right now at all.
But she'd told him to stay, anyway. She'd wanted him to stay.
Just to drop her gaze, she mimics him in bringing her own cup back to her lips.
"What was his name?"
She starts. "Sorry?"
His head tilts in a meaningful gesture towards her hands, and she realizes, far too late, that she's been rubbing that same spot again, even with her fingers splayed around the warm ceramic. Maybe she hadn't been as subtle about it as she'd hoped, but there's still something to be said about how quickly he's put two and two together, between that ridiculous video and, now, this.
She takes in a steadying breath. "Neal." It should be surprising, perhaps, that it doesn't burn on the way out. Then again, it never really was his name that was the problem, and it's not the problem right now, either.
"Neal," he repeats quietly. It sounds strange in his voice, like a foreign word wrapped in his tongue, something she almost wishes she didn't have to hear him say at all. But he doesn't speak any more – just nods, as if to himself.
He won't ask, she realizes. Despite the circumstances, he looks remarkably comfortable, leaning back against the wall like he's in this for the long haul, duckling-patterned mug folded neatly between his hands, and she knows with absolute certainty that he has no intention of actually searching her for any real rhyme or reason for it. For any of this.
That's probably why she begins to speak at all, dredging the nerve up from the very depths of her courage, from a place she'd forgotten existed until she feels it now, thrumming a wary rhythm against the walls her chest.
"It's just—" She groans, shaking her head, but the words refuse to come. "I just don't understand why—" He's silent, his gaze transparent as the sky, from what she sees of it before she closes her eyes. "You know how things have a way of just… No matter how long it's been, or how little you've come to care, really, all it takes is one little reminder, and the past just comes barreling back at you, and, just like that, you've been punched in the gut all over again?"
There's a pause before his reply. "Yes, I know."
"It's just— ridiculous things you'd put behind you, except the moment they so much as fucking sputter back to life, you're back there again. It's like everything happened yesterday, and it…" She falters. It's hard to describe the feeling, that hollow ache that sears through her, after all this time. "It sucks," she says at last, in an astounding feat of eloquence.
"It hurts," he adds simply.
She hates it when he puts it like that. Like three years and the highest walls she managed to build could still tremble in the face of, well, a face. One barely glimpsed, at that – from the end of an aisle at the most insignificant convenience store in the world, even after she'd already come to terms that it was a possibility. That she had no reason to run, like she'd always done, time and time again.
The air, somehow, feels more difficult to swallow.
"It makes no sense," she amends instead, and it's the hardest thing in the world to keep her voice from faltering. "That's the worst part about it. I know life doesn't work like that, that it isn't fair, but all this time… it has to have accounted for something." She shakes her head, unable to suppress her resentful snort. "Though I guess we always end up sabotaging ourselves anyway, so maybe that's a moot point."
He seems to hesitate. "Sabotaging?"
"Chasing after it, that feeling." That awful video, still saved on her old hard drive. The lock pick set she hasn't found the nerve to just toss in the trash and never look back. If she were Ruby, social media stalking would be on that list, too. She sighs, rubbing the space between her eyes. "It's like an addiction, being sentimental."
He doesn't speak right away. Instead, her words are met with a long, pregnant silence, but, to her relief, she's not embarrassed for having said them. Worried they may have been nonsensical? Maybe. Frustrated that they hold any truth for her at all? Without a doubt. But, in the state she's in right now, the thoughts are more welcome a bitter heaviness outside her head than in it, and she can't bring herself to regret it at all when she finally pries her eyes open and takes in the serious expression on his face – purposeful, determined, as if he's just come to a resolution.
He sits up, sets the mug down beside him with great care, and reaches for something under his sweater, just behind his collarbone.
It's a ring. A ring on a long chain looped low around his neck.
"This was my mother's," he says quietly. Even from where she's sitting, she can see that it's a simple design, though unmistakably elegant where he turns it to catch the light. "After my brother passed, it was left to me. And…" he lets out a slow, quiet breath, "it was left to me, again, after the woman to whom I proposed decided to move on."
Her heart squeezes right up into her throat. "Oh, god, Killian, I didn't—"
"—know," he fills in, his lips pressed into a rueful smile. "I'm aware, love. Though you've done nothing to warrant such a guilty reaction."
And yet – the guilt is still there, coiled tight between her ribs. He'd been engaged, too. He should have told her.
He had no real reason to tell her, even after learning of her own story.
But he's telling her now.
His eyes seem to trace the delicate lines of the ring, a dainty thing between his broad fingers, holding it almost right up against his chest,
"Perhaps sentimentality is impossible to cure." He says it like it's a dirty admission, with just a hint of shame. "Perhaps we refuse to let go because it reminds us that we could feel – intensely, truly, whether good or bad. Perhaps that's all we really want."
She can tell he isn't entirely sure if he believes it either – just like she knows, with the same surety, that showing her the ring isn't meant to be a ploy for her attention, or her pity. All the same, every throb of her heart beats heavy with the weight of knowing. Of understanding, just as much as he does, the true weight of what he holds in his hand and latches, with a chain, close to his heart.
"How long?"
"Hm?" He finally looks up, and she gets the distinct feeling he's just snapped back to the present from miles and miles away.
"How long have you been wearing that?" she asks, though she isn't quite sure if she wants to know the answer.
"You mean, how long has it been since it was returned to me?" he says, lips quirking wryly. That, too, is something she hadn't wanted to say aloud, but she refuses to be chagrined. He only shakes his head. "It hasn't even been a year."
God. She remembers that fresh pain with poignant clarity – and, actually, after what happened earlier today, she thinks she just might be on the same page. It's a burden she shouldn't want to wish upon anyone, especially someone, she remembers, who carries scars older still, but if anyone should be here right now, telling her this…
Somehow, she's glad it's him.
"Truthfully, though, love, it's not as heavy as you'd think." She snaps her head up without having even realized her gaze had drifted; she hadn't expected him to continue, especially not with words like those. There's a hint of a small smile on his face, almost rueful, innocent in its earnestness. "I actually seem to have gotten into the habit of forgetting I'm wearing it," he says, cocking his head. "I imagine that started right around the time that I met you."
There's a response to that. She knows there is, somewhere in the jumbled mess of her mind. But, as it happens, she can only blink back at him, not embarrassed, or even angry.
Yeah – she's still glad.
Before she can help it, she feels her mouth tug into a careful, tremulous smile, and the feeling of it kindles through the brimming ache in her chest. Forward instead of backward.
"Cheesy," she mutters, despite herself, and for everything she's had to be embarrassed about today, what embarrasses her the most is how much fondness she's somehow managed to imbue into that single word. So much so that she forces her gaze downward to avoid seeing his reaction.
That's why she hears it instead: a light chuckle that makes her insides squirm. She presses her lips together, and, in an effort to convince herself that it was not, in fact, born of delight at that sound, she forces herself to look up, determinedly reminding herself whom she's talking to. Unfortunately, with that unabashed look in his eye and the distractingly pleased tilt of his mouth, it doesn't exactly work. She holds his gaze for one long moment before he says, without a hint of teasing, "At least it made you smile."
She tries to swallow it down, she really does, but there's no denying it now. "So, what?" she asks, and it takes the space of one exhale for her to wrap her tongue around the words to fill it up. "Mission accomplished?"
He leans forward, propping his forearms across his knees. "You tell me, darling."
Honestly, she almost doesn't want to. But her ass is asleep thanks to the hard floor, and she knows if she took a sip, her hot chocolate would only be lukewarm, and she probably should be a little more ashamed at how much harder it is to tell him this truth than anything else.
(It's becoming disconcertingly clear which truths fall easily from her tongue when it comes to him, which is definitely something to consider another time.)
"You're going to be late to your gig," she tells him at last, and before she can change her mind, she clambers to her feet, much more stable than last time. Balancing her half-full mug in one hand, she holds out a hand for him to use as he rises to his feet as well, though not without an amused shake of his head. He probably could have gone without the help, but she figures it's only fair.
"I told you, Swan: I have my priorities," he says once he rights himself, setting his own mug onto the entryway table as he brushes off his jeans. "And besides, it's a Friday evening bar crowd. Punctuality shouldn't be much expected of anyone on the premises."
She tilts her head to narrow her eyes at him, though she suspects the effect doesn't quite come across properly. "And after all this, you still won't tell me where?"
This earns her a full laugh. "If I've learned anything about you at all, love, it's that you don't much appreciate anyone's pity."
Ridiculously perceptive, as always.
It's only when he starts shrugging into his jacket that she realizes that she's still wearing hers, and she manages to finally strip down to an appropriate indoor state in the time that it takes him to finish bundling up, to sling his guitar over his shoulder with remarkable grace. She knows he wouldn't be leaving now had he not already been certain of her well-being, but she needs to tell him so anyway.
"Killian." She catches his hand before he can make it to the door. His eyebrow quirks, a trace of that lingering smile still touching his mouth. "Thank you," she says, with as much sincerity as she can muster. "Really, I mean it."
The way he blinks at her, she gets the feeling he really hadn't thought much of it at all. "Of course, love." He squeezes her once before dropping his grip. "Ducklings are all yours, now."
And, with a wink, he's pulling her door open, and he's gone. She props herself against the doorframe, watches him make his way to the stairs, all the way until his leather-clad shoulders and that mussed dark hair disappears from view as he leaves – and all the while, she wonders, in vain, when she'd started wishing he didn't have to at all.
