It all begins with a tiny note- tiny even by Emma's standards- on the edge of a purloined German telegram.

'You have very nice hair', it says, and Emma gets an odd feeling like she's eavesdropping on someone's love affair or something until she checks her copy against the one sent to her superiors and sees that the note isn't there. She wrinkles her nose and shakes her head and huffs out a sigh of frustration as she crosses out the note with a quick scribble. There's a war on, and she has work to do.

The note lingers on her mind for the next few weeks, until another piece of coded correspondence crosses Emma's desk. It's recent, pertinent, and it's got 'you have a lovely smile', scrawled on it in the same hand as the first note. She hisses like a cat that's been stepped on and stands up. Every other person in the room looks at her, eyebrows raised and faces lost in the endless rows of blue uniforms. She clears her throat and sits down, eerily aware of everyone's eyes on her for the rest of the hour.

After that she scans every piece of paper given to her, looking for another note. There are none, not a single word in the artful, irritating, drawl that had paid her compliments twice already. Mary-Margaret looks at her like she's lost her mind, and she's eighty percent certain that Captain Charmi- (Nolan, sorry, Nolan) goes through her desk a few times, looking for drugs or poison or something to explain why his best codebreaker has suddenly lost her mind.

Emma's not even sure how to explain it, so she just sakes her head and walks away when they ask.

And then she gets the third one, ('it always makes me sad to see you upset'), and she just can't deal with it. Because first of all, who the hell is this guy? and second of all, why does he think this is the best way to get her attention? and third of all, who the hell is this guy? He's beginning to get personal instead of creepy, sweet as well as awkward. Emma kind of wants to know who would care about her enough to leave these notes, but not enough to say who they are. It's a mystery, and evidenced by her job, Emma cannot stand an unsolved mystery.

So naturally, she does the sensible thing and looks at what all three notes have in common. All three are on German papers, all three were found by the Brits, and all three went through the office of one Cora Mills. Further investigation- otherwise known as intimidation of a skittish secretary- revealed that Mills' assistant, Killian Jones, was likely the one leaving the notes. Except that's not what she does first. What she does first is yelp in a very undignified manner, stand up so quickly she knocks over her desk, and go running out of the room to catch up to the deliveryman.

The incident that follows involves forks, lighters, several confidential documents, and a solemn vow to never speak of it again.

And then Emma does the sensible thing.

After that, she makes up excuses to go into Mills' office, and she takes great care to be inconspicuous as she watches the grinning brunette who handles her files. Of course, he cannot be said to do the same, and Emma tries not to laugh as he looks up at her for the fifteenth time in ten minutes.

The notes keep coming, but now that she knows where they're coming from she's not so bothered. In fact, sometimes she writes back.

The one and only time Jones messes up is still giggled about in certain, very covert, circles of the cryptanalysis department. Very covert. So, so covert that they are hard to find even if you are in them. That kind of covert. Emma is humming under hear breath as she shuffles through the latest influx from Mills' office, looking for her note, when Captain Charm- Nolan calls the entire department up to the floor to speak to them.

He starts a projector, and begins to detail the importance of a document they'd all received from Mills' office, and how it would turn the tide of the war, and how they should study it carefully because the Germans had wised up and changed their codes. Emma's looking at her copy, then up at Killian, who's looking at her. There's no note on her paper, and she wonders what on earth he's staring at her so pointedly for- and then she sees it. Not that it's hard to see, given that it's expanded large and clear on the projector.

Somehow, in the rush, Killian must have mixed up her file and the captain's, because there, larger than life and just as strikingly unfair, is 'I love you. Dinner?' with proper punctuation for once and everything in Killian's eternally frustrating handwriting. Emma's eye begins to twitch, but Killian smiles sheepishly and she sighs.

"Everything alright, Swan?" Captain Char- Nolan, alright, Nolan asks.

She just shakes her head and walks away.