Emma leaned her hips against the sink and ran her fingers under the tap, wiggling them back and forth under the steady stream until she saw steam rising from her skin. It felt hotter than it would have had she not recently spent half a minute in a frozen lake, but that didn't matter. Most of her focus was going toward keeping careful count of the seconds that were passing by, because five minutes was all the time Emma was giving herself before going back downstairs to rejoin Killian.
Killian. Emma's fingers stilled for a moment as she listened to the television downstairs, muffled sound trailing up through the walls of her room. Water dripped off her hands onto her socks and the tile floor as she listened for signs that he was moving around, but all she heard was a forecast for clearer skies overnight.
Three minutes, Emma. She lifted the stopper on the sink drain until the basin filled halfway and tossed a washcloth under the water. Once every stitch of the fabric was wet, she wrung it out and laid it over her eyes, both palms laying flat and final on the countertop.
The darkness was better. She felt less dizzy when her eyes were closed, and the buzz of her nerves calmed down considerably when her focus moved to her other senses. That wasn't to say she was feeling better, exactly. Every muscle from her calves to her toes had started to throb from the moment her headache began to recede. Part of her suspected that this was just how it felt to have her body heat back up again, but the other thought it was just easier to keep moving.
It wasn't just her body that was returning to normal, either. Her mind had been clouded by the cold, too, and now that it wasn't she could see what had happened downstairs didn't have to ruin everything. She could take this washcloth off of her face and find her way back downstairs. She could sit next to Killian and watch the weather without running out of the room again. He'd said himself that she was out of it, shocked by the cold, and she could use that as an excuse. The way he'd breathed her name in confusion and called worriedly after her when she tumbled up the stairs made her certain he would agree.
If he didn't quite buy it, then that would just make two of them, wouldn't it?
Emma made her way down the stairs, careful of her feet and their newly restored senses. They were sore as hell, and likely would be for a while, but she'd put up with worse chasing down Boston's criminals in stilettos. Part of her fiercely missed it, hated the feeling of being walled in by the snow when home had so much more room for her to breathe. There, whether it be gravel or asphalt or sand-scrubbed planks on the boardwalk, she could always take herself places her thoughts couldn't follow. Here, she could make it down to the edge of the driveway…if she shoveled it first. Given how difficult a few steps down the hardwood staircase felt, she figured that wasn't an option.
Killian was cooking something, or maybe cleaning. Whatever he was doing was making enough noise to cover the sound of her footsteps on the stairs, and she couldn't tell if it was for her benefit or his. The closer she got to the kitchen and the noises coming from it, though, the more her curiosity warred with her reluctance to find out for certain.
He might want to be left alone.
He hates being alone.
He didn't follow you upstairs for a reason.
He's giving you space. You're the one who went upstairs.
She made it over the threshold of the kitchen, trading cold wood for slightly warmer tile, and learned there was no limit to how wrong she could be about him. Killian wasn't making noises to hide behind them, the way she would have. He was standing in front of the largest skillet they kept in the cabin, shuffling two grilled cheeses around inside it to keep them from sticking and burning. He was cooking them dinner, like nothing had happened at all.
"That smells good."
He didn't answer her immediately, instead moving to switch off the burner and set his wooden spatula down. "I wasn't sure if you'd be able to come back downstairs."
Emma bristled, wondering if she'd misjudged the silence. Her plan to apologize was half-formed at best; she'd stopped halfway down the stairs to tug his socks off her feet, prepared to give them back in what to had be the strangest peace offering ever made. It was supposed to be a sign that she was feeling okay, that maybe she had been a little delirious from the cold before. That he could forget. The logic seemed much more solid two minutes ago than it did now, as she stood watching the careful shift of his shoulders.
"I made it," she joked lamely, running her thumb against a seam in the fabric of the socks. "Look, I'm sorry for —"
"Emma, don't tell me you're sorry. Not for that." He sounded so fiercely sure, almost practiced. That couldn't be right. He seemed to notice how he sounded once the words were out in the air, though, and finally met her eyes. Emma didn't see any of the hostility she'd been expecting, and her death grip on the socks loosened a bit. "And don't tell me you're not hungry, either, because it'd be awfully rude of me to eat both of these without offering you yours."
Emma hesitated, even with relief flowing through her. He wasn't supposed to be the one clearing the air, giving her an out, making her an apology sandwich. He had all the right in the world to be as frustrated with her as she was with herself.
But he wasn't.
"I wasn't going to say I'm not hungry," she allowed, twisting her mouth into a grin. It looked just as unconvincing reflected in his eyes as it felt on her lips, but he threw her grilled cheese on a plate like nothing had happened. Emma reached out for it, but he tugged it further away, setting it pointedly in front of one of the island barstools.
"I know you're hardly a fragile flower, but you might consider sitting down for a while. It'll be a lot easier to get around on feet that aren't frostbitten."
"I was getting around to it," she answered him, as if that had been her goal the entire time. "It's not like we're going to have to amputate them."
"Don't be so sure. You might end up with a pair of peg legs."
She snorted, and the air between them got a little thinner. This was the man she remembered meeting their trip last year, and getting to know in the days after that.
There was that first night, the one where everything that could have gone wrong did. Killian had calmed her nerves about the power outage by suggesting a game of bridge; after so many days in the car she was loath to sit down, and wary of taking her focus off the weather app on her phone, but one playful promise that it would be worth her while was distraction enough. He was a good teacher, she was a fast learner, and together they won close to twenty dollars out of David's pocket before the first logs of firewood burned down.
And then there was the second night, when she'd found him scrubbing away at dishes before Mary Margaret could even get to them. He was elbow-deep in water, scrubbing bits of pasta and baked-on sauce away from a glass baking dish, and he'd entertained her less-than-subtle attempts to figure out what he was like at work until the very last plate was dry. No, this was not his first year serving in law enforcement. Yes, he had worked with other partners before being teamed up with David. No, he wasn't actually serious about the skinny dipping idea he'd suggested at dinner. Unless you're offering, he'd tacked onto his reply, bringing what was only the first of many blushes to her cheeks.
And the third and final day of their stay, he hadn't shied away in the slightest when she got too competitive on the hiking trail. A few inches of snow didn't stop either of them from half-jogging their way to the top of the hill on the other side of the lake, and she'd found herself (mostly her legs) wholeheartedly in agreement with him when he mourned their lack of a sled on the way down.
Emma had expected things to change back in Boston, but Killian started to find his way over to her brother's house more nights than not. His presence had become a standard fixture in the duplex before the snow melted from the rooftops around them — she got used to nights spent screaming at the television as the Bruins' young captain scored his first hat trick on home ice, gathered around the tiny kitchen table that bowed in the middle until their plates were empty, to the point where it felt lonely when there were no police vehicles stealing her spot in the driveway. It no longer surprised her to find Killian asleep on the couch when she came over for breakfast with Mary Margaret, or even on top of her bed that one time.
He'd happened into their lives without making a fuss, without any intention to leave, and that was exactly what scared her so much. Killian was tangled in with everything good in her life, and there was no pulling herself free without making a mess of everything.
"Is it really that bad?"
Emma's sandwich sat untouched on the plate between her elbows. It smelled just as delicious as it had a minute ago, and she quickly snatched it up to belay the curious look on his face.
"It's awful," she lied, biting into the crisp, buttery bread.
"Oh, is it? Is that why you just zoned out for a minute?"
"Yeah. In fact, you probably better give me some of yours. I can suffer through the rest of this alone."
He swatted her hand out of the way just as her fingers grazed the crust, and the simple touch buried the rest of the tension lingering in the air. The trick, it seemed, was finding things to do — so long as they were hauling firewood in from under the deck, or drying dishes and stacking them back in the warped wood cabinets, she didn't feel like she had to keep a safe distance away.
It was later on when Killian went up to take one of his record-breaking showers that things began to blur again. It snuck up on Emma; one moment she was curled into a corner of the couch browsing the movie channels, and the next she could smell his shampoo. The scent of summer filled the air, covering even the smell of the fire. She closed her eyes and curled her toes, half-expecting the call of a seagull at any moment, but only a second passed before she blinked back into focus. She couldn't do this to herself — not when she'd have to smell it coming off his skin.
Because that was the truth, wasn't it? She could handle the smell of the ocean. She liked the smell of the ocean. It was the way the ocean smelled coming off his skin that she couldn't handle, no matter how much distance she put between them.
Emma made it through the next few hours of the night without letting her mind drive her wild, but it was a near thing. She'd turned the TV on to a Christmas Classics marathon and gotten up before the first commercial interrupted it in search David's carefully written instructions for the return trip.
Please don't be out in the car, Emma muttered to herself, digging through her backpack near the foot of the stairs. She remembered shoving them somewhere out of sight the moment she and Killian had pulled out of the driveway, and dutifully ignoring them for the rest of the trip, but not where they had ended up.
"That's a funny way of packing. I usually put everything in the bag."
Emma sighed in frustration as Killian stepped in the room, carefully avoiding the piles of things she had yet to pack as he came to stand at her side. He smelled just as good as she expected him to, but she was too frustrated to linger on it the way she would have had he met her downstairs.
"David's stupid step-by-step instructions aren't in here. I was going to try to route it."
"You mean his directions?" She nodded, twisting her back to look up at him. "You asked me to put those in the glove box, I think."
Emma slumped against the headboard of her bed, heaving a long and dramatic sigh. Sure, the whole day was probably catching up to her in terms of energy, but she wanted to figure this out. They'd be taking the return trip all in one go, as they did every year, and with twenty-two hours of road between them and Boston, she was determined to shave off every minute she could.
"I'll go down and look, if you want," he offered, starting for the door as if going outside with wet hair didn't sound terrible.
Emma shook her head and continued to shove everything right back into her bag. "It's fine. It's not like it's going anywhere. I'll just use it as backup for the GPS."
Killian must have seen the struggle on her face, or maybe felt it coming off of her in waves, but either way he stifled whatever reply had been on its way out of his mouth. Instead he just let her be and moved back into his own room. Emma heard zipping from his room and assumed he was packing himself up, too, but then she heard his boots on the stairs, the front door pulling open and shut again.
"It wasn't out in the glove box," said a windswept, satisfied-looking Killian. He'd returned to lounge in her doorway ten minutes later, brandishing the crumpled instructions. "Care to guess where I found it?"
"Inside a magician's hat?"
"Close. You had them shoved inside a pair of your sneakers, Swan." He wrinkled his nose as he handed her the page, coming close enough that she didn't have to stand, and suddenly she knew what he was going to say before. He was still worried about her, even hours after she'd warmed back up.
"Thanks for going to get it," she told him, accepting what he seemed to think was a humble nod, "but I'm okay. I'll be over it in the morning."
Killian didn't look convinced in the slightest, but he didn't argue with her this time, either. She didn't think it was his intention, but the silence stretched just a second too long between them before he found something else to say.
"I'll go pack up the cooler then, so we're out of here faster," he told her gently, saying something else entirely with his eyes. He had a terrible habit of doing that with her. It wasn't lying, but sometimes he was much more honest with her in silence than he was with his words. "Were you watching whatever's on TV?"
"Yeah. I'll be back down for it later."
She meant it when she said it, but a half hour passed and Emma had only moved to slump further against her pillows. Her clothes were folded, and only really needed to be transferred back in with the rest of her luggage, but there was something pleasant about the muffled sound of the TV wafting up through her door that made drifting off sound like a better idea. If she just stayed here buried under everything she'd packed, room lit chiefly by the glow of her phone, she could be sleeping in minutes.
But Mary Margaret had other ideas. She was outright scolded when she answered the phone with a quiet hello.
"Emma! You can't be asleep yet. It's not even eleven!"
"What's wrong with getting a full night's rest?" She argued back pleasantly, glad to hear the familiar voice on the other end of the line. Mary Margaret still had a month to go until Baby Nolan arrived, but she was getting plenty of practice in.
"Nothing," she answered quickly, reining it in a bit. "I just wanted to make sure you were having a good time up there. It's strange being home celebrating with David instead of both of you."
"Celebrating?"
"Emma, the ball drops in…an hour and twenty minutes. You're not watching the countdown?"
"No…I didn't know it was on."
"Emma!" Mary Margaret gasped, and Emma could practically see the whites of her eyes. "You forgot it was New Year's Eve? What were you doing to make you forget an entire holiday?"
"Packing to leave tomorrow?"
"Are you sure that's what you're doing? You don't sound sure." There was a smile in her words now, mixed in with the surprise.
"I am. I'm fine now," she emphasized, "but I fell ankle-deep in the lake today trying to skate. It took a bit of my energy, I think."
"Oh, Emma. No wonder you sound worn out." Her tone shifted right into the kind of motherly tone that Emma had been craving all week. Off the cuff, is was a pretty effective way of changing the subject. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah. We cut your laces to get the skates off, though. Sorry."
"No, don't worry about that. I'm just glad it wasn't anything deeper…I can't believe you waited until now to tell me, but I'm glad it wasn't deeper."
Emma let her go on for a while, until it got too hard to hide her yawns in her pillows. Mary Margaret promised to wish David happy new year for her on the condition that she left as early as possible. Six in the morning was coming far too early, in her opinion, but she agreed.
"Sleep good, Emma. And don't you dare forget to tell me if you end up celebrating the New Year with Killian."
She paused, finding a voice that wasn't twisted with regret. "I won't. See you soon."
Morning came too quickly for Emma's liking. She blinked awake to shower, said a lengthy goodbye to her blanket until next year and dragged herself down the stairs before the clock hit five thirty. Killian was already outside, packing his share of luggage into the back of the Range Rover, but she couldn't face him just yet. She'd kissed him on New Year's Eve, without meaning to, and he hadn't immediately reciprocated. That wasn't the kind of thought she could handle without at least one cup of coffee in her system.
After downing nearly the full mug in one go, Emma took stock of the kitchen around her. They'd washed everything from dinner the night before, emptied what little was left in the fridge, taken the trash out — everything else was left for the clean-up crew to take care of. She was almost certain, given that Mary Margaret's parents owned the place, that they wouldn't mind a missing thermos or two.
"Got enough room back there?" She made a curious face at him through the space between the seats as she set the mug and their driving directions in the center console. Killian, who apparently hadn't heard her shuffle down the driveway, snapped his head up. His eyes softened the second they latched onto hers, and it felt a little early for that, too.
"I'm ready for your things, if you've got them," he nodded, patting the cooler his arm rested on. With no food to stow in it this time, he'd shoved half their emergency camping gear in it instead, freeing up a little room on the top rack of the Rover. "Ready to go?"
Emma twisted back to look at the house, watching the first threads of sunlight knit themselves in the reflection on the windows. "Yeah," she sighed. "I'll go bring my things out."
She was back two minutes later, having spent most of it fumbling with the keys. They stuck in the heavy lock on the door, and her gloves didn't make the job of locking up any easier. Still, the caffeine was starting to make its way through her veins, and the sky was turning a hopeful purple. Maybe the ride back wouldn't be that bad. Maybe it was just being stuck inside these walls that had made everything inside her feel so large.
Killian shut the door on the passenger side of the car, loud enough to echo across the street into the woods. She frowned at the noise, wondering what had bothered him, but it seemed like an accident.
He had found his thermos — she'd set it down on his seat, obvious enough that he would notice before it got cold — and seemed to be torn between taking a sip and setting it down on the hood of the car. The lip of the cup was popped open, steaming into the chilly air around them, but he had yet to pull it to his lips.
"What?" Emma asked, watching her feet every few steps to stay clear of the ice. "Did you think I was going to make myself a cup and make you stop to buy some? We're on a tight schedule, Jones, and we're sticking to it."
Killian looked up at her, back down to the thermos, and carefully pulled his hand away. One, two, three steps and he was right in front of her. "I can't go twenty-four hours in the car like this, Emma."
"Okay, so we'll stop and get a refill at the —"
One of his hands wrapped around her side, pressed gently through her coat into her spine. The other reached to cup her jaw, and Emma forgot whatever she'd been about to say before the contact. His intentions were perfectly clear, but he still paused for a moment before catching her lips with his.
It was the complete opposite of the kiss she'd given him by the hearth. The brush of his thumb across her cheek was intentional; the tilt of his jaw had a specific purpose behind it. Without saying a word, he was making it absolutely clear that he meant every single touch. Emma felt a sigh rumble up his throat when her hand laid on his chest, even through her gloves, and felt herself sway into him, struck by the tiny sound in the vast quiet around them. His arm tightened around her immediately as he pulled back, making sure she was steady on her feet without moving more than a breath away.
Killian took a moment to look at her, eyes taking their time dragging up from her lips to her eyes. She could still feel the heat from his mug lingering in the curves of his fingertips, but the warmth was nothing compared to his breath mingling with hers, to the brush of his nose against her cheek.
"That," he breathed. "I wasn't going to wait twenty-four hours to kiss you."
"It hasn't been twenty-four hours since last night," she managed to mutter, stringing the words together with confusion. "I kissed you last night."
"Last night doesn't count, Swan." He trailed the side of his finger against the shell of her ear and gave her a little smile.
"Because I jumped you?"
He shook his head. "I didn't want our first kiss to be out of gratitude, or because your judgment was addled by freezing half to death."
"First?"
His smile was brilliant, outshining even the oncoming sun.
"Yes, first, you daft woman. I'm not very fond of one-time things."