Emma woke up slowly to cold pricking at her nose and the muffled sound of running water. At first she thought it was rain — just the thought of having to haul in damp firewood by the armful had her frowning into her pillow — but then she heard the unmistakable clatter of a pot hitting the side of the sink. Relieved, she turned over to look out the window and found last night's clouds had knit themselves into a thick, grey blanket, hanging high over treetops half-obscured by the morning's fog.
She'd expected to sleep later, given that she'd spent close to nine hours in the driver's seat the day before, but it wasn't difficult to peel herself out from under the covers, chase the cold away with an extra pair of socks and head downstairs.
A warm and friendly voice greeted her from the TV in the living room, announcing that the forecast called for snow. It was a local weather reporter, who stood bundled in winter weather gear he almost certainly didn't need inside the studio. The guy pretended to shiver while he discussed the near-record lows the area had encountered the night before, and Emma smiled a little bitterly to herself. She hadn't packed for anything less, but she wouldn't have said no to temperatures that climbed out of the single digits, either. He went on to guess at just how much snow would fall on them between now and tomorrow night — ten to forty centimeters felt like a wide range to her.
She was still working out the conversion in her mind when the broadcast switched to a commercial for Hôtel de Glace, advertising rooms available to book for the new year. Rather than try and imagine the type of person who would willingly sleep surrounded by ice, Emma slid out of her seat and made her way into the kitchen. Whatever Killian was doing with the pans could probably become a two-person job.
He was near elbow-deep in soap suds at the sink, head down and lip bit in concentration as he scrubbed at an large metal pan. "Did you know Canada has an ice hotel?"
"In Québec, yes," he nodded, an edge in his voice that Emma credited to his task. A little hiss of satisfaction left him as the offending spot of food came free, and then he seemed to snap out his lemon-scented stupor. "You're up early."
His full attention came to her, and she suddenly found herself wishing he'd kept scrubbing. His eyes were soft from sleep, and one of his sleeves had snuck down and dipped into the water when he wasn't paying attention. She was sure she looked similarly sleep-disheveled in her sweatpants and sideways ponytail, but she doubted it had the effect on him that he did on her.
"I thought you might need some help down here with breakfast," she answered, eyes darting around at the counters. She couldn't see or smell anything, but the oven light was on.
"You can help me eat it later. Did our weatherman mention anything closer than Québec?"
"We're going to get some snow later." Her response was dismissive, it as if they weren't potentially in for over a foot of it, and Killian hummed as he leaned against the oven door. A moment or two of quiet went by, and then he read her mind.
"We're probably going to need groceries…and more firewood."
Emma groaned and splayed her arms dramatically over the granite countertop, head falling against the side of her elbow. There was no chance of convincing him to let her buy one of those ready-made packages they sold on the grill aisle, assuming there were any left when they made it to the store.
"If I hadn't just spent several days driving here with you, I'd think you sounded a little reluctant just now." He was grinning, his arms crossed at his chest and his watch catching the light from the window. "Is the thought of getting snowed in with me again so hard to stomach?"
Emma watched the light flash across the glass and sighed, working her eyes up to his. "We get three days here, Killian. We're supposed to hike and go skate on the pond and sit around the fire on the patio. Getting stuck inside wasn't part of the plan."
It sounded dramatic, but there was an undercurrent of seriousness in her words. She was used to long hours spent trailing along the undeveloped side of the lake, where bear tracks occasionally mixed with those left by the smaller wildlife. She loved watching ice whisper across the lake at night and shoving her feet into an old pair of Mary Margaret's skates — Emma never made it more than an hour before her ankles screamed for relief, but it felt like a rite of passage to wear them. It wasn't every day a girl got her first hand-me-downs, after all.
"Who says we have to stick to any plan?" He offered, moving to her side of the counter and leaning his elbows close to the tips of her fingers.
"David and Mary Margaret would want —"
"David and Mary Margaret would want you to enjoy your time here, love," he told her earnestly, all traces of teasing gone for the moment. "However you choose to enjoy it."
"What about you?"
"What about me?"
"This is your trip, too. You're the reason I don't have to do all of this alone."
She expected him to respond with ease, to affirm her words with the same kind of effortless confidence he usually offered. What she got instead was a smile that stopped short to make way for a flash of unabashed surprise. Killian blinked it away before Emma could place the expression, but she couldn't help feeling she'd stumbled across something he'd rather she hadn't.
The oven timer went off, startling them both out of the moment. Killian ran his hand across his jaw, fingers scratching through ginger scruff, and when it fell he looked more like himself. "There wasn't much in the cupboard, and I used up all the syrup," he told her a bit sheepishly, pulling the oven door open to reveal a pile of pancakes and two ramekins of syrup. "And we're out of paper plates, so —"
"So we'll put that on the list." Emma reached out and tore off a chunk of pancake, dipping it unceremoniously in her syrup while she interrupted him. Sweetness and spice rippled over her taste buds as she took her first bite, and she couldn't help but hum a little in satisfaction. "Did you put cinnamon in the batter?"
His grin was back in full force, lighting up the kitchen. "A good chef never reveals his secrets."
"It's not a secret if I can taste it."
His laugh bounced around the room, taking all the tension with it, but eating breakfast elbow-to-elbow with him didn't shake his reaction from her mind. She came up with two theories on their way to the grocery store — either he'd forgotten their conversation already, which was unlikely, or he was doing a hell of a job pretending that he had.
Whether he knew he was doing it or not, Killian eased her worries as the morning went on. They re-learned the aisles of Foodland together, making up for a year spent on the other side of the continent as they piled fresh groceries into their cart. Killian was adamant that they buy the biggest bottle of medium-grade maple syrup the store sold, and she couldn't find it in her to say no, despite the price tag on the thing. His delight was magnetic, reminding her of one of the differences between them — she practiced survival with almost no self-indulgences to her name, and he had no trouble following his heart toward things that caught his eye. So when she came across a carton of toffee and caramel ice cream three aisles later, she went for it.
She waited for the shadow to return to his eyes on the drive back to the house, but none came, even as they shoved their food into the creaky kitchen cabinets and moved out to chop fresh firewood into kindling. His eyes turned skyward every so often, narrowed at some indefinable point in the endless grey ocean of clouds. Emma didn't notice his distraction until he stopped short halfway down the porch stairs and her face crashed right into the space between his shoulder blades.
"Everything okay up there?" She asked, pushing herself up half a stair.
"I thought I felt something coming down." He turned around and snaked an arm out from under his bundle, adjusting the wood currently sneaking its way out of her arms, and pointed at a wet spot on the edge of one of the logs. "There. I'll bet you five dollars the ground is covered with snow in an hour."
"American dollars or Canadian dollars?"
"American, of course. They're worth more." He turned back up and pushed the sliding door open, glancing upward again as she passed him by. If he was right, they had plenty of time to watch the storm roll in and dump snow on them. She just preferred to do it inside, where the bite of the air couldn't reach them.
"I'm going to make you stay out there if you don't stop doing that."
Emma scowled at the back of Killian as he stood in the open doorway, air and errant flakes of snow hissing past him into the room. He'd gotten up from his perch three times now to watch the oncoming storm, and not even Emma's threat to back out of their bet had scared him into stillness.
She wasn't sure if he had an overdeveloped tolerance for cold or an underdeveloped sense of inhibition, but his restlessness was starting to wear on her.
"You should come and watch from over here, Swan. The lake is freezing over."
"I'd be able to see it from here if you'd sit back down."
It wasn't entirely true; Emma could see thick sheets of powdery white beginning to blanket the treetops in the back yard. Snow had already covered the railings on the deck, or at least the ones that weren't obscured by Killian standing in the way. A half-hour had yet to pass and they both knew she'd be paying up.
Still, she ventured, it was beautiful. One of the reasons Mary Margaret's family had first chosen this house was for its location near the lake. As years passed and the tree line grew thicker, their view of the moonlight falling over the water remained unencumbered.
The enormous windows on the house didn't hurt, either; at the darkest part of the night it was easy to convince herself that the entire wall was open. Her plan was to do exactly that without moving from her perch on the couch, provided their firewood lasted the night.
Killian, it seemed, had reached a different conclusion. One minute he'd been still and the next he was trailing out of the room and into the kitchen. Emma hardly had time to shout a complaint about the energy he was wasting before he returned to her, a steaming cup cradled in his palms.
"Shall we?"
Emma saw the same look in his eyes that she'd seen the night before, while they bundled up together under her blanket and watching the moon rise over the lake. Killian always showed her so much of himself without even questioning what he was giving away, much less who he was giving it away to. A familiar pang of jealousy spread through her chest as she looked over at him, until it didn't feel like jealousy at all. She rose up to follow him outside, ignoring the protesting goosebumps on her skin as she slid her feet back into her boots and stepped across the threshold to join him.
"Hold this a moment." Killian stepped in close for a moment and opened one of her hands, which until that moment had been cradled close to her chest. She couldn't do a thing but watch him gently press the glass into her palm and curl her fingers around it, warmth soaking her skin from both sides as his larger hand covered hers. Had he always been so warm to the touch, or was her own icy skin confusing her?
Killian patted her hand with his and then he released her to squat down, dragging lines into the snow. At first she thought he was trying to measure what had fallen so far, but there was no sense in the patterns he created. "All right. You can hand me the syrup now, if you don't mind surrendering it for a moment."
She reluctantly did as he asked and watched as he filled each of the trenches with the amber liquid — it was obvious it was syrup, now that he'd poured it into the snow. The sweet, nutty scent was different from the bargain brand she'd grown used to at home, but in the best possible way, one that had her mouth watering for breakfast even as the sky began to darken overhead.
"Do we eat this?"
He nodded. "How is it you've taken this trip many more times than me, Swan, and you've never made your own maple taffy?"
"Blame Mary Margaret, not me. She's the one with dual citizenship."
Taking care not to plunge his watch face into the hardening syrup, Killian reached down and dipped a finger into one of his lines. It came away at his slight touch, rising off the snow and catching new flakes on the way. "It's ready. Want to do the honors?"
Forget how good it smelled a moment ago — maple taffy tasted like heaven. Her preference for breakfast foods had nothing to do with it, either. There was so much flavor and warmth in the bite that she was only too happy to wait for the rest of it to freeze up before heading inside, even as snow began falling thick on top of both their shoulders. She found she didn't mind the cold so much, especially when Killian stood so the wind couldn't reach her.
It was later, leaned up against the side of the kitchen sink, that Emma decided forgoing their plans wasn't all that terrible. Appealing to her sweet tooth had certainly been a good place to start. Emma stood by Killian as he ran his hands under the faucet and cleared the syrup from his fingertips. She was sure it was warmer than her solution which was to lick syrup off her fingers one at a time, but she didn't mind the waiting.
He'd taken off his watch and set it on the countertop while he washed out the syrup cup next, and like always, it caught her eye. Killian's watch was impeccably well cared for, for all the time he spent outdoors. She hadn't known him all that long, but she'd never seen him without it on. Reaching out with clean fingers, she turned it from one side to the other, continuing her examination even as she felt his eyes land on her.
"How long have you had this watch?"
Killian paused a moment, hands stilling under the water. "A few years now."
"It almost looks brand-new." She slid her thumb across the smooth glass face and down around the metal casing, admiring the designs that sat below the dials. The current phase of the moon was inlaid in a panel smaller than her pinky nail, surrounded by a dozen scattered pinpricks of stars. Emma laid it on her wrist while he dried his hands off, just to see how much bigger his hands were, before turning it over. There was a curved scratch near the seam of the battery cover, but that didn't hold her attention for long.
"Who's Liam James?"
"He was my brother."
Emma's eyes snapped up to his in an instant, watching the way he set the glass aside in one slow, calm motion.
He'd spoken with the kind of control that hid a storm, making his use of past tense unbearably clear. She felt herself recoiling from what she'd unearthed, because she knew what it felt like to be torn and left vulnerable like that, how old scars could rip open and bleed at a moment's notice. He was still trying to hold it back from her as they stood staring at each other, little drips from the faucet punctuating the silence, but eventually the wall came tumbling down.
"James was his middle name. My father gave him this watch when he turned seventeen, before he left us for the Naval Academy. He toured for three years after that, and then his ship was raided by Somalian pirates. He received a Medal of Honor for protecting the men and women who served him, but that's a little harder to wear without attracting attention."
"Killian—"
"You asked, love." He nearly spit the words at her, like the warning bark of a wounded animal faced with an enemy it couldn't fight. The urge to run out of the kitchen was overwhelming.
Emma looked at the watch and then back up at him again before stepping closer. She uncurled his fingers one by one, setting the watch into his palm, and made sure he had a good grip on it before pulling them out of the kitchen and leaving him at the foot of the stairs.
None of the heavy tension from downstairs clouded the air in her room, but she only stayed long enough to gather her blanket off of her hastily made bed. She avoided the mirror on the wall as she passed it by, afraid of what she might see in her own expression on the way out, and found Killian right where she'd left him.
He opened his mouth as her feet fell to the last step of the stairs, but she spoke before his breath could leave him.
"I hated it when I thought you left me in that motel. You can be mad at me or ignore me if you want to, but I'm not going to do that to you."
She moved past him after that and sat against the back of the couch, using her blanket as her armor. Her gaze fixed on the flames in the fireplace, determinedly giving him the opportunity to leave her if he wanted to. After forcing him so much out of him already, this had to be his choice.
The blanket rustled as he picked it up, accidentally tugging an edge of it off her as his hip settled next to hers. He let out a heavy sigh, one she felt as well as heard, and when he spoke up next his voice was hardly louder than a whisper.
"Last year wasn't the first time David invited me to come up here with the three of you."
It was a strange place to start, but Emma didn't breathe a word. She just scrabbled her fingers under the blanket until they caught his and waited for him to go on.
"Liam didn't have much control over his leave, but he usually managed to find a week or so during the holidays," he continued, squeezing her hand a little absently as he muttered the words. "Sometimes it was the week before Christmas, sometimes the week after, but I liked to keep my schedule clear in case he came home. We were the only real family we ever had, he and I, but he liked to make a big deal out of it. The wanker made me buy a real tree every year after I started work, you know."
The corner of Killian's mouth lifted momentarily as he finished the thought, and for a while he just watched the flames in the mouth of the fireplace. She could tell he was still thinking by the way his thumb trailed across the side of her wrist, by the way he didn't seem to notice he was doing it in the first place.
"I thought I was going to hate it up here. I really did — we're men of the coast, us Joneses — but then we spent the better part of two days freezing our asses off and playing cards up here, the four of us, and…and a bit of the color came back to the world after that."
"How long were you alone before that?"
It wasn't the most appropriate question, but something new had shifted between them. He was a lost boy, and she was a lost girl. She recognized something in him that understood her better than she had known someone could. It was how she knew he wouldn't mind if it she asked.
"Long enough to get used to the feeling."
Silence fell again, more comfortably than the first time. An apology came to her lips more than once, but she held herself back, and little by little the snow piled onto every surface it could find.
She told herself not to get used to the feeling, that this wasn't a moment for her to hold onto, but neither of them moved away from the other. Even when another log was needed, he came right back to the warmth that was his leg pressed against hers and their fingers twined together, like there had never been distance between them.
If he pulled her a little closer when the embers burned low, it was because the room was cold outside the blanket, not because he'd shifted to drape his arm around her shoulder. If she let her cheek fall against the curve of his collarbone once the fire went out, it was because her blanket only stretched so far around them both, not because she wanted to feel his heartbeat fall in and out of sync with hers. If neither of them went upstairs for the night at all, it was simply because they were exhausted, not because something soft and fragile had grown without her permission to be there.