As Killian led her up the stairs to the second floor of his home, Emma realized with sudden clarity that even though she had been here before, their porch dinner was nothing at all compared to this. His voice was slightly muted as he apologized for the shirt draped over the railing, the dishes still on the kitchen table, the mess of magazines and newspaper spilling from the couch. Even though every other word out of his mouth was an apology, though, she didn't miss the way his hand trailed along the bannister as they climbed the stairs, or the easy way he sidestepped a floorboard that squeaked loudly when she stepped on it - the gestures that told her even though his words should have read as ashamed, everything about him here just screamed home.

They passed two closed doors and a bathroom before he stopped in front of the last room in the hall, toeing the door open with his foot and rubbing a spot behind his ear as he said, "The sheets might be a bit dusty but they're clean - I hope this is alright."

"Killian, my plan up until now was to sleep in the backseat of a car." She said. He didn't look convinced, so she let her hand drift over to nudge the back of his, and when he looked up at her she smiled softly. "Seriously. It's perfect. Thank you."

"Well..." There was a faint hint of colour in his cheeks as his gaze slid away from hers, but the corner of his lips twitched in an answering smile. "You're more than welcome, Swan." He lowered her bag to the floor just inside the doorway and his arm bobbed in a half-wave as he took a few uneven steps back. She stifled a smile because this was new - a far cry from the cocky, teasing swagger she was used to seeing from him. "I'll see you in the morning?"

"You know where I'll be." She cracked a smile and ducked into the room to spare them both the awkward shuffle in the hall, but leaned back against the wall for a moment after she did. There was something in her chest that kept tugging whenever that confident grin of his faltered and she saw someone beneath it who was slightly unsure of where this was leading, just like she was. She pressed her heels of her hands hard against her closed lids - this is not something you are allowed to think when you're just going to leave -until the swirls of colours that bloomed behind them stopped resolving themselves in the shape of his crooked grin.

The first night in any new house was always the hardest for her, so it took her a long time to get to sleep that night and even then, it was fitful. No matter where she was, there was something about the sound of the wind outside of a new room in a new place that always made her think of how many places she had tried - and failed - to call home, and how many places she wished she could forget.

Even though she fell asleep well after midnight, she still woke with a start early enough the next morning that the dawn was only a suggestion at the edge of the horizon. In the strange lull between the crickets dying down and the birds waking, the house was so, so quiet. It was almost another world compared to the eternal hum of noise that had always been outside her window in Boston. Even at Granny's there had always been the clatter of dishes in the Diner or the sound of Granny's TV downstairs or the whir of the industrial fan on the roof outside. Here, it was just the occasional creak of the house as it settled and the tangle of her own thoughts. It was nice, in its own way, but she knew that at this point the sheer lack of noise would be too...loud for her to fall back to sleep.

Instead of even trying, she padded gingerly across the floor to a bookshelf by the window, running her fingers over the dusty spines as she shifted from foot to foot. The floor was cold and the wind wafting through the open window was sharp and fresh. She wished absently that she had packed a better selection of clothing before leaving Boston - something that included more socks and fewer t-shirts - but she settled for grabbing a thick book with a helicopter on the cover and huddling back underneath the sheets. She was about to head back to bed when she noticed a flicker of light cutting a swath out of the dark driveway. Upon closer inspection, she saw that it was filtering through the back door of the garage, and suddenly the overwhelming silence of the house made so much more sense - it was so quiet because there was only one person in it.

For a moment, she wrestled with the idea of going down there, but it wasn't her place to do anything about it, and generally when someone went somewhere so early it was because they wanted - needed - to be alone. So she let herself get lost in the tale of an ebola pandemic and the heroic ex-RAF pilot who saved the day, until the sky turned grey and then pink with the dawn. Despite the chill that was still in the air, the prospect of breakfast propelled her out of bed. A quick glance out the window told her that the garage lights were still on, but she couldn't tell if he was still there or not. Her thoughts still very much down in the garage, she wasn't paying attention to anything as she opened the door, and nearly tripped over a soft...something piled in the threshold. She picked it up gingerly and let it unfurl as she did. It was plaid, incredibly soft, and only once it was fully unfolded did she realize it was a flannel bathrobe. A note had fluttered to the ground and she picked it up, once again feeling something pull in her chest. In surprisingly beautiful handwriting, the note said simply It's cool in the mornings.

She hesitated a moment but she slipped the robe on anyways even though it felt like a promise she knew she couldn't keep. He kept giving and giving and even though she spent her days in his garage, she knew she was nowhere close to paying him back for any of it, least of all the car.

When Emma got downstairs, a cursory glance through his cupboards revealed that there wasn't any real foodthere as much as there were condiments and things in boxes, so she settled on pancakes and made a mental note to at least buy him some groceries to make up for invading his space. She had just spooned the first dollop of batter into the frying pan when Killian came in, his footsteps near-silent in a worn pair of boots and his hands careful against the door as he coaxed it shut softly. He wasn't looking at her as he toed off his boots, and he looked...younger as he did. He was wearing a pair of pajama pants with nautical flags printed on them, and a worn grey hoodie, and as he scrubbed a weary hand through his dark mess of hair things just felt right with him there, edges softened by the early morning, and her across the room making breakfast for them both. Before she had a chance to dwell on that thought, his gaze drifted up and over to her, faltering for a moment in surprise.

"Swan. Didn't expect to see you up so early."

"You know what they say about the early bird." She shrugged a bit and God, could you have picked anything stupider to sayand nodded down at the frying pan. "You want pancakes?"

"It will be a very cold day in Hell when I turn down a free breakfast." He wandered into the kitchen and busied himself with the coffee machine, and they both worked in amicable silence for a few minutes until the sound of the coffee brewing filled the kitchen and she had a reasonable stack of pancakes split between the two plates beside her. He slid behind her to grab syrup from the fridge and as he placed two fingers on the small of her back as a warning not to back up into him, she realized with painful clarity how far this thing between them had already gotten without her even realizing.

"Table alright with you, Swan?"

"What?" She shook her head slightly and met his gaze.

"Are you alright with breakfast at the table? I'd suggest the porch but as you have your hands full already..." He gestured to the plates she had in both hands, his point made even stronger by the fact that his hands were full with syrup and cutlery, and she nodded.

He pushed a few old dishes out of the way as they sat down, and grimaced a bit as he did. He was so clearly not used to company, and understanding echoed in a hollow space behind her breastbone because she knew what it was like - how easy it was to stop caring about the small things - when you only had yourself.

"Thank you for these." He said, snapping her out of her thoughts. He was drenching his pancakes in syrup and looked genuinely pleased at the meal he had before him, but she just snorted a laugh at his sentiment because here she was staying at his house, wearing his bathrobe, eating food that she had made from ingredients in his kitchen, and he was thanking her.

"I should be the one thanking you for letting me root around your kitchen uninvited, among other things - thank you, by the way, for the bathrobe - but you're welcome."

"Except you were invited. My offer of a room pertains to the whole house, Emma, not just one corner of it."

She had a response - she knew she did, somewhere - but instead she found herself just staring at him as he dug into his breakfast, her chest strangely tight as his words played over and over in her head. Eighteen years bouncing from house to house and never had anyone so quickly made her feel like she was welcome.

He took her silence in stride, mopping up syrup with his pancakes for several long moments while she puller herself together, then nudged her foot gently with his and offered her the gentlest smile when she looked up at him, inclining his head towards the door.

"Finish your breakfast, Swan. I've got a surprise for you."

Between finishing her breakfast, pouring herself a cup of the coffee that was finally ready, cleaning the dishes - he told her to leave them, she told him he was a heathen - and getting dressed, it was nearly an hour later that she finally let him lead her out the door and down the driveway. They were just going to the garage, she knew - they had to be because there was nothing else around - but still he insisted that she close her eyes as they got closer, steering her by her shoulders through the office and into the garage proper.

"Killian, if this is another air conditioner, I swear to..." He nudged her shoulder halfway through her sentence and she opened her eyes, only to forget the rest of her words as her gaze fell on the car before her. Her car. It was her car. It was up on the jack and half-disassembled, and the paint was already streaked with grease where his hands had rested, but it was hers.

"Killian, I..."

"I can arrange for another air conditioner though, if you'd prefer." He was wearing his familiar smile, the one that put a wicked glint in his eye and fit his features perfectly, and between that and the sight of her car in front of her she couldn't not kiss him.

So she did.

She could tell by the short, shocked breath he let out that he hadn't been expecting it, but his surprise lasted a fraction of a second and then he was right there with her, arms around her with one hand soft at the base of her neck and the other pulling her towards him. Her hands were threaded into his hair and she was so close to him that she could feel the rise and fall of his chest as if it were her own, and they were just together so completely and so immediately that it felt like they had always been.

He was the first to pull away, but only enough so that he could look down at her with a playful note in his blue eyes as he said, "That's not a thank you I would usually accept from one of my clients or one of my employees, but for you I'll make an exception."

"You say that like you don't like it."

"Don't forget, Swan," He said, leaning a hairsbreadth closer so his nose just brushed hers and she could feel his breath against her lips as he spoke. "I'm not the one who started it." He pulled away properly then, his eyes still dancing with laughter, and walked over to rest a gentle hand on the bumper of her car. "I've got some of the old parts out and by the end of the day I'll have the rest of them. We're still waiting on one part but by the time I need it, it should be here."

"I trust you." She let her hand trail over the curve of the wheel well as she came to stand next to him, looking at the knot of tubes and sleek curves of metal under the hood, very deliberately not looking at him as she bumped his shoulder with her own. "But all kissing aside, Killian, thank you. I didn't...this means a lot."

"It is my job, and that was our deal."

"Still." She knew what she was trying to say - that it wasn't just that he was doing the work at all, it was that he was doing it right. It was that he had told her up front that a quick fix wouldn't work. It was that the parts he had already removed were laid out meticulously on a drop sheet on the floor next to the jack, wiped clean. It was that she could tell even without him saying that he wasn't doing the work to get it done, he was doing the work to do it right. It was that he had seen right from the first moment that she didn't just need this car to get her home, she needed it to find home. She needed it to be home.

"Still nothing, Swan." He slid his hand across the hood to nudge hers softly until she looked up at him. There was something heavy behind his eyes but his smile was still a gentle, beautiful thing. "But there's a line of oil changes waiting for you if you're feeling particularly grateful."

"Normally I'd say no," She said, and let him see the grin that she was beginning to wear just for him. "But I'll make an exception for you."

They fell into a similar rhythm over the next few days. Emma brought actual groceries up to the house after that first morning, and made it a habit of making breakfast for the both of them. Killian protested every morning - I'm a grown man, Swan, and you're my guest -but she told him that cleaning his crap off the table would be his contribution, and then she told him to stop being a baby and that she was going to cook whether he liked it or not.

Having the two of them working side by side in the weeks prior had put a large dent in Killian's service list so he managed an hour or two with Emma's car every afternoon, slowly working away at undoing what was apparently a very amateur conversion, that more times than not had him cursing under his breath at the parts and his tools and the nameless person who had owned the car before Emma. Never the car though - never a word crossed his lips that spoke against the car.

As routines went, theirs was peaceful and welcome and just days of comfortable conversation and jokes traded back and forth across the garage, and a small voice in Emma's mind started whispering about what it would be like if she never left? She would get her car back eventually, of course, but there was nobody waiting anywhere for her, nothing that said she had to take her car and drive it far and fast.

Part of her knew that she could stay, and that he would let her.

She dreamt about it one night, warm and comfortable in the room in the corner of his home. She dreamt that he stood in the driveway in front of the garage, proud and radiant in the afternoon sun as he told her to turn the car on. She was in the driver's seat and when she turned the key the engine caught immediately, and it sounded smooth and familiar and like freedom stretching out in front of her, but when he said Drive she said No and what stretched out in front of her then wasn't the open road but instead their life together, and dream-her was so happy that it swelled in her chest and woke real-her from a dead sleep.

She wished she had been smiling when she realized what had woken her, but she wasn't. Instead she was sitting straight up in bed and her breath was coming too fast and there was that familiar refrain of run run run chasing through her veins. The image of joyous, sunlit Killian and Emma saying yes to a future that didn't terrify her drained from her mind and what replaced it was a mosaic of every time she had said Yesthat ended up being a No - family after family, friend after friend, and then Neal who she thought was going to be her forever, and then Walsh who she let convince her that what happened with Neal had just been a fluke and that forever was something she could hope for.

All that, and here she was still dreaming of something that she knew she could never have.

Morning bled into the sky and she went downstairs with her head still a mess of I could stay and No you can't. She knew Killian saw, too, because even though he was silent through breakfast she could feel him watching her with a careful, understanding gaze. Even when they went down to the garage and he was a whole bay away from her, she knew he could see the way her hands dragged as she worked, the way she had to check and recheck everything that wasn't muscle memory because her mind wasn't on her work.

I could stay.

No you can't.

The whole day was a haze of conflicting thoughts and barely-remembered repair slips and the weight of his gaze cutting over to her until sometime in the space between afternoon and evening he slammed a socket wrench down on the tool bench and came over to her side of the garage, taking the screwdriver from her hands and setting it down, and jerking his head towards the back lot.

"We're closing early today, Swan. Come on."

"I'm almost done and I said I'd have that car done by tomorrow."

"Then you've got tomorrow to finish it." He nudged her gently at the small of her back and she gave in even though part of her was screaming that this easy compromise and gently touching between them was exactly the reason she couldn't stay.

"Where are we going?"

"Field trip." He hit the switch for the garage doors with an open palm and didn't stop to make sure they shut, instead leading her to the corner of the lot, far from any of the cars lined up for service, and pulled a sheet off of a low riding car with a quick tug.

Emma had never been one for muscle cars - something about the rough edges and implied snarl of them too...deliberate - but this was something else. This was jet black with glints of chrome that looked like a scoundrel's smile, shining and unmarred by scratches or dust or bugs on the grille, low to the ground and waiting for someone to demand show me what you can do. It was coarse and it was rough but it was gorgeous.

"What is this?" She asked, even though she thought she already knew.

"You don't think I drive the truck everywhere, do you?" His smile said that he had planned for this little bit of ceremony, and that he was thrilled at her reaction. "This, Swan, is mine." He patted the roof and the gesture was pure affection. "1970 Pontiac GTO, perfectly restored."

"You did this?"

"You flatter me - this was done by a far better mechanic." He glanced down for a fraction of a second and there was something sad in his expression, but then it was gone and he was gesturing for her to hop in the passenger side as he swung easily into the driver's seat. The interior was no less pristine than the exterior and if it weren't for the way his hand curved against the steering wheel as if it were made for it, she would have thought he had never driven this car at all.

Emma could hear the faint spray of gravel behind them as he peeled from the lot, and the turn they took onto the road was toeing the line between thrilling and dangerous, but it pulled a smile from her lips that lasted even when they slowed to the speed limit on the road proper.

"I don't like to push my luck in the middle of the day, even if I do know the sheriff." Killian said with a smirk.

"Are you going to tell me where we're going, then, if you're going to drive like an old man?"

"Hasn't anyone ever told you about surprises, Swan?"

"I don't like surprises."

"You'll like this one." He said, all fake bravado. She saw the apprehensive glance he darted at her, but he let their conversation lapse into silence as they continued down the road, all the way down the main street and around the corner, down a hill, and then they were in a parking lot with the ocean spread out in front of them.

She knew where they were headed, but she let him lead her down to the docks and to the slip on the end, to a small aluminum boat bobbing peacefully in the water.

"Behold the finest vessel to sail the seven seas." Killian said dramatically, gesturing to the boat with a flourish.

"That is...quite a vessel."

"You mock her, but you'll see." He offered her his hand and there was no other option than to take it and get in the boat, so she did, waiting while he undid the mooring ropes and hopped lightly in after her. Even though it was a small boat, it barely rocked as he landed which was either a testament to the boat itself or, more likely, the hours he had probably spend here.

She would have liked to help him as he fussed around the boat checking the fuel and the supplies in a box under the seat, and looking briefly at a compass before yanking the motor to life and navigating out of the marina, but she knew she would just get in the way so she sat on the small seat at the tip of the ship and tried to stay out of his way. He let her, sailing the boat quietly out into the harbour until even the hush of the waves against the shore had faded away.

"You don't have to answer," He said eventually, in a voice that was so soft she wouldn't have heard it if there was anything else to hear. "But you can't deny that something's been bothering you, Emma, and if I can help...I would very much like to."

"You brought me all the way out here just to say that?"

"No." He cut the motor then and let them drift gently as he leaned forwards to scrub a hand through his hair. "But whenever I have something on my mind, I prefer to confront it in a place that's less...busy. And I thought that you might like it as well."

"No, I do. I just..." She sighed and looked out over the water, and she couldn't deny that everything was so much easier out here where it was just her and everything she couldn't help but thinking. He knew that even before she did, and in this moment on the open water with him here giving her things she didn't know she needed, she almost forgot the reasons she had to leave in the first place.

Unbidden, tears sprang to her eyes. She was in a boat with a man who had definitely become her friend if not something more - her mind whispered something more and she couldn't lie to herself and deny it - out on the water with the sun dipping lower in the sky, and she couldn't hold it together enough to let herself enjoy it.

"Emma, I didn't mean to say anything..."

"It's not you." She laughed a little, helplessly, and rubbed a hand over her face in frustration. "It's...you've done nothing but help me ever since I got here, Killian, from the repairs to letting me work them off to letting me stay in your house...and I..." I don't want it to end. "I ruin everything, alright? I always have. And I'm going to ruin this too, and I can't let you get caught up in that."

"If anyone ever told you that you ruined things..." His eyes were dangerous, but she just waved him off.

"It's not anything anyone's ever had to tell me - I've been bounced around the foster system, lost every friend I ever made, I have two failed relationships under my belt that I thought would last...and the only common denominator in that is me. So what do you think is going to happen here?" She gestured to the space between them, and the tears were coming hard and fast now but she didn't care. Whatever he thought of her he hadto know that Emma Swan was a person meant for leaving. "No matter what I feel or what you feel this can never last because it can't. Not with me."

"Do you want it to?" He asked quietly.

"It doesn't matter, Killian. It never has."

He was silent for a long moment, and she was just waiting for the sound of the motor to start back up and for him to turn them back to shore because he had to realize that this had been a huge mistake. Instead, the boat shifted slightly as he leaned closer, and then his thumb was tracing the curve of her cheek gently until she looked up at him.

"My parents haven't been in the picture in a long while," He said, and she could tell that the words surprised even him. "My father left when my brother and I were young - young enough that I don't remember much of him - and my mother passed a year shy of my seventeenth birthday. Liam - my brother - he raised me, practically by himself, and Gods know it wasn't easy on him. On either of us." He chanced a glance over at her and his eyes were stormy with the tale. "I always asked him why - why our family, why us, why couldn't we have a life that was straightforward and made bloody sense even half the time. Why did it seem like..."

"Like bad things only ever happened to you." She finished quietly. He nodded.

"Liam used to say Smooth seas don't make a good sailor, brother,and I hated him for it. I would have rather been a poor sailor sailing on calm waters than an expert sailing in a stormy sea. But now...after losing him..." He stopped for a moment and she could tell that even though it had been years, there was still a piece of him missing that he didn't know if he would ever get back. "I've come to think that the world only gives us what it knows we can handle, to prepare us for the things we'll have to face later...and then pays us back tenfold for the things we've lost."

His words hung in the air a moment, the waves against the hull of the boat a soft hush, until she whispered, "Has it happened?"

"Not yet. But I believe it will someday." He glanced at her and then out over the water, and something in the searching of his gaze made her remember his words: Do you want it to? "I have to."