A Sea Of Rain And A Very Happy Ending
The rain was a gentle hush against the tin roof, the patter soft but insistent, faint silver streaks of it making marble patterns on the windows against the deep grey of the clouds rolling on the horizon. The sound of it coaxed Emma awake and she blinked slowly for a moment, watching the vague poetry the water made against the glass until she realized that she could feel the same shapes soft as a whisper in the space between her shoulder blades.
"Morning, love." Killian murmured as she turned her head to face him. His nose was inches from hers, the two of them pressed close in the narrow space of his double bed. It wasn't a bed meant for sharing, but that had never stopped them.
"That's nice." She breathed back, letting her eyes drift shut, angling herself and shifting impossibly closer so she was nestled under his chin. She felt more than saw his soft chuckle and not a moment later his fingers, which had stilled with the sound of his voice, started their faint dance against her back again, the soft falls of his fingertips following the sound of the rain.
"It's late." He whispered after another long moment, his words insistent but his tone reluctant as his hands stilled again. She pulled away with a sigh and rolled onto her back, finding his gaze as he propped himself up on an elbow beside her and offered her a gentle smile. "Almost nine."
"Maybe the clocks are wrong." She chased his hand across the mattress, lacing her fingers with his and holding them up in the faint grey light. She could have spent hours tracing the silhouette of their hands with her eyes – the seamless shape of their knuckles fitting together, the shadows of the racing clouds painting pictures across their skin, the rough lines of his hand bleeding into the delicate creases of hers. They were an impossible puzzle, but somehow they always fit.
"If only." He tugged their joined hands towards him enough to brush his lips across her knuckles – he had done it a hundred times since that first night on the floor of the garage, and it never failed to send a faint thrill up the column of her spine – and then let her go, rolling out of bed with a sigh she knew she wasn't meant to have heard. "Come on, Swan. We've got a shop to run."
"There's nothing that has to get done today, you know." She muttered, though she slid out of bed as she did and shrugged on the flannel bathrobe she had left pooled on the floor the night before. "We don't have to open."
"You're the one always going on about walk in traffic."
"Who's walking today?"
"Maybe someone who needs ten thousand dollars worth of repairs."
"As if." She rolled her eyes at him and came up behind him, shoving through the doorway.
"I'll make you a deal." He walked backwards down the stairs, his eyes dancing and impossibly blue as he shot her another smile. "If I go down and open the shop, you make breakfast. What do you think?"
"I think you've got yourself a deal." Emma stopped short on the final step, Killian standing on the ground in front of the stairwell. He was looking at her with that smile tilting a corner of his mouth – the smile he wore just for her – and despite the dim grey sky pressing against the windows, the sun shone for a brief moment in that look.
"If you're forcing me out in the rain, might I make a request, then?" He pulled her towards him, his hands soft on either side of her hips, and held her close as he swung her the final step to the ground. Even when her feet were steady on the cool floor, she didn't pull away.
"Maybe." Her voice was slightly breathy and she knew it, but he was still looking at her with that expression that looked like a summer's day. "If you asked nicely."
He leaned in close then, his lips brushing hers, and she wouldn't let herself chase them as he kept this kiss an almost, she wouldn't, she wouldn't…
…she leaned into him slightly, and it was entirely the uneven floor and not at all the maddening whisper of heat against her skin in the chill room, but for a fraction of a second she was against him and what was between them wasn't a whisper but a sudden rush of sound and light and heat, and when she pulled back – found her footing on the crooked floor and stopped needing him to steady her on the uncertain planks, because that's all it ever was – his eyes were a shade darker than they had been, an ocean dropping away from the shore, and the smile she shot him was smug.
"Pancakes." He said in a rough voice, his hands dropping from her hips to scrub through his hair. "My request is pancakes."
"I think," She said over her shoulder, heading towards the kitchen as he shook his head with a grin and shrugged on a rain jacket. "I can make that happen."
It usually only took Killian fifteen minutes to open the shop – to unlock the doors and turn on the lights and shuffle through his service list until he remembered what needed to be done – so Emma didn't expect to be waiting for him with a bowl of pancake batter beside her and a frying pan waiting to be used. But twenty minutes and then half an hour later she was still sitting on the counter watching the rain fall, the radio playing soft strains in the background. She had just about convinced herself to go out and see what was taking so long when he blew through the door, a strong gust of wind splattering drops on the wood of the floor before he got the door shut. His hair was jet black and plastered to his head, but he was smiling a brilliant and curious smile at her as he shouldered off his jacket.
"Don't tell me someone came in with ten thousand dollars in repairs." She said, letting him see a flash of her smirk before she turned around to ladle the batter into the waiting frying pan.
"Better." He came into the kitchen, pouring himself a cup of coffee and leaning against the counter beside her. "Roof's leaking."
"What?" That made her freeze, darting a glance up at him.
"The garage roof. That crack in the ceiling's leaking."
"Well shouldn't we be down there?" Emma dropped the ladle back in the bowl, already half turned towards the door before he caught her around her waist.
"Relax, love. It's a drip, not a flood. I've been expecting it for a while but beyond moving things out of the way and putting down a bucket, which I've done, there's not much we can do to fix it until the rain stops."
"So what? We're just going to work around the leak?" She sighed and gave him a look. "Honestly, if you fixed these problems when they came up…"
"If I did, then we wouldn't have a perfect excuse for a day off." He looked down at her, his gaze significant, and she realized at once what she should have initially – this was a problem for tomorrow, but for today it was a gift in disguise. He saw realization dawn in her eyes and just chuckled softly at her, pressing a soft kiss to her forehead before releasing her. "Now, I believe there were pancakes in the works."
"I believe there were."
Despite Killian making a nuisance of himself, snaking his arms around her waist and pressing his face – cool and damp with the rain – against her neck while she tried to make serviceable pancakes, they ended up with a stack better fit for four people than for two, but there was no urgency to the morning so they worked at it over the space of an hour, the borders between their two plates virtually nonexistent as they stole bites from each other just because they could.
The storm worsened over breakfast, the sky nearly black and lightning cutting jagged lines to the horizon. Killian flicked on every light on the main floor while Emma started the dishes so the house was a golden halo on top of the hill. He snagged a dish towel from the handle of the oven and came to stand beside her, leaning his hip against the counter while she washed.
There were four dishes waiting expectantly on the counter before she realized that he was just staring at her.
"What?"
"Nothing." He was smiling that private smile again and she had to duck her head to hide the colour she could feel rush to her face. In this house on the hill, full of pancakes and wrapped in the soft yellow lamplight, that smile felt like a promise they hadn't put to words yet.
Another long moment passed, the weight of that gentle gaze and the soft strains of guitar filling the room, until he dropped his towel on the counter and reached over to pull the dishcloth from her hands.
"What are you doing?" She asked, Killian drawing her a few steps from the sink, holding both her hands in his.
"This song shouldn't be wasted, love." He started to bop from side to side, his shoulders bouncing in a way that was so unlike him, and she couldn't help the smile that split her face.
"This isn't country – you're not supposed to like it."
"So maybe I've expanded my horizons." He pulled her closer, her hands looping around his neck as naturally as if they belonged there. His hands settled on her waist and guided her in a bouncy circle. "Or maybe I just wanted to dance with you in our kitchen."
"I'll take either." She said, a helpless laugh escaping as he spun her out and back into his chest, wrapping around her from behind. His lips pressed to the top of her head as they swayed gently for a few beats, and he hummed happily. Then they were off again, Killian guiding her arms from behind in a strange, jerky dance out into the living room, the two of them pressed together back-to-chest, and as he spun her back around she was helpless with laughter. His eyes, too, shone with it, pulling her close again to waltz around the couch even though she had no idea how to waltz, and for a moment she forgot about the rain and the shop down the hill that was filling with water drop by drop – forgot about everything, past, present, and future except for this moment in this gold-washed house with his arms around her.
As the last chord of the song echoed out from the kitchen and as he dipped her low to the floor, she wished it would go on forever.
There was plenty to do in the house – laundry and vacuuming and a fridge that could have been organized and months worth of accounts that could have been reviewed to get ahead of the year-end rush – but Emma let Killian pull her over to the couch after the rest of the dishes were done, sharing one cushion with him despite the whole couch being free and flicking on a movie to fill the afternoon. They watched his pick first, a comedy that made his chest rumble with laughter against her cheek, and then they watched hers – Singing in the Rain, from start to finish.
He loved it as she knew he would, and he hummed the songs all the way through a pizza dinner they ate together on the porch, sitting on the worn planks and pressed against the wall of the house to avoid the rain that was blowing towards them. It was dark and the wind was strong but protected by the bulk of the house and pressed together from ankle to shoulder, the rain was nothing more than the lazy drops from the edge of the roof and the ever-present music of it against the gravel drive.
The power went out around eight-thirty and before he had a chance to find a flashlight that worked, Emma twined her fingers with Killian's and tugged him gently up the stairs and back into the cocoon of a room they had left that morning. Because he knew her, he could tell even in the dark what she was after, sinking down onto the mattress a beat before she did and letting her tumble against him when she followed a moment later. As she found her place nestled against his chest with her ear pressed to the spot above his heart, he thumbed at the edge of the soft flannel robe that wasn't really his anymore.
"I hope the rain never stops." He breathed, his voice almost lost in the whisper of the rain on the roof.
"It has to eventually." She whispered in the dark, spreading her hand flat on his chest and tracing gentle whorls there. "We'd float away."
He hummed his assent and his other hand found the soft tangle of curls in her hair, wrapping one around his finger.
She tilted her head to press her lips to the underside of his chin, her words spoken straight into his skin. "I wouldn't mind."
His arms tightened around her but the closeness of the house around them both and the gentle magic of a stolen day together made words an unnecessary chore. They drifted off in the same span of moments, and Emma thought as they did that they could sail the world in this house, on a sea made of raindrops, and she would call it a very happy ending.