A/N: Not fans of lemons, huh?! lol Thanks for following everyone, I truly appreciate your support. Please enjoy this chapter, and know that Once Upon A Time is not my property and I do not profit from this story in any way.
Chapter 15
Welcome Home David
Emma noticed over the next couple of days that Mary Margaret took her time getting home in the evening. One day, after Mary Margaret came home from volunteering, Emma cornered her. "Hey, where have you been lately? I feel like I haven't seen you very much," she teased in mock sadness. She would never admit it, but Emma had missed having dinner with her supposed mother over the last few days.
Mary Margaret shared a guilty look with her friend. "I'm sorry, really," the school marm said. She fell onto the couch tiredly, lifting her feet to lay across it more comfortably. "I didn't mean to keep anything from you, only I've been staying later at the hospital," she said cautiously.
Emma narrowed her eyes at her friend. "Mary Margaret," she said, scandalized. "You're smarter than that. You know better than to get involved with a married man," she warned her friend. She was well aware of the woman's budding crush on the man she'd saved, despite the discovery that he had a wife.
Mary Margaret told her about how he came to her one day. David asked her to be his volunteer and take a walk with him since he still had to be under hospital supervision. Before the end of their walk together, Mary Margaret told her they both knew they had feelings for each another.
David confessed to her he had no memory of his life with Katherine. He said he had no desire to remember either, with a woman so beautiful in front of him. "I know it's wrong, but when he was in that coma, I swear I touched him somehow," the fanciful school teacher romantically claimed. She simply couldn't get the married man out of her head.
"It's not worth the heart ache," Emma said, shaking her head ruefully. "Well, anyways," Mary Margaret said dismissively. "He's having a welcome home party this weekend, his wife is throwing it for him," Mary Margaret said contemptuously.
"He invited me, and I told him I'd go, and of course you won't let me go alone," Mary Margaret said matter of fact. She had no idea about Emma's aversion to parties, so Lily laughed when she said it so easily. She was wrapped in a towel, fresh from the shower.
"Good luck," the brunette said, and Emma shot her a disdainful look. "Emma doesn't know how to have fun," the brunette teased. She waggled her eyebrows, and Emma chuckled good naturedly.
"Oh, come on, Emma!" Mary Margaret chided the woman whom she had come to consider her best friend. "Lily already said she'd go, you just have to come along," she pleaded with her. Emma relented fairly easy enough. "Okay, I'll go," she agreed.
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When they arrived at David's Welcome Home Bash that weekend, there was a big white banner hung over their front door. "WELCOME HOME DAVID" He looked lost amidst all the people, not knowing or recognizing a soul.
He had a serious case of amnesia and was no closer to remembering anything about his past, if what Mary Margaret confided in her was anything to go by. He looked blankly at the sea of surrounding faces, and Emma sympathized it must be overwhelming for him.
She was wearing a purple sweater and her hair was pulled back into a high pony tail. She wore dark blue denim jeans and knee high black boots. She was seated in the shadows of the entrance hall with Lily, where no one had bothered to flick on the lights.
Most everyone else was either gathered in the dining room, kitchen, or out on the patio adjacent to the kitchen where tiki torches were lit. The couple shared a brief moment of privacy, and Emma's hand rested comfortably in Lily's lap in her grasp.
Lily wore a dark red dress and a delicate, black choker with a small diamond centered in the middle at the hollow of her neck. Emma admired it, and kissed Lily on the cheek, close to her ear, her breath tickling Lily erotically.
It was then that they heard someone approaching, and Henry entered the room. Emma drew back hastily, and Lily missed her warmth immediately. She scowled in the dark in the boy's direction. "What are you guys doing in here?" he asked innocently. "Nothing," Emma said, equally innocent, and Henry came to sit beside them on Emma's other side. Lily glowered.
"You know, Operation Cobra is still on," Henry said to his mother, oblivious to Lily's discomfort in his presence. Lily by now was in on Operation Cobra also, and had spent some time reading over Henry's story book with him. Any person Emma trusted, Henry was inclined to trust as well. That didn't mean she took kindly to being interrupted, though.
"You know why he doesn't remember anything?" the boy asked rhetorically. "Because the curse isn't working on him yet," he answered himself. "Henry, David has amnesia," Emma said, trying to explain things reasonably to the child.
"Which is preventing his mind from remembering any fake memories," he said. "Right, because everyone here has fake stories to keep them from remembering who they really are," Lily said, following along with the kid. "Like Sneezey at the pharmacy," she said proudly, having noticed this detail about the red nosed man.
"Yeah," Henry said, looking excitedly at Lily who seemed to be supporting him. "Now we just have to help David to remember, by getting him together with Ms. Blanchard again," Henry exclaimed. The women sought out the two in question automatically.
David was surrounded by a group of men including Dr. Whale, smiling dumb founded. Mary Margaret was on the opposite side of the room, sitting at the dining room table talking with a few mothers of the students from her class. It was painfully obvious to the three in the entrance hall that they were purposefully avoiding each other because they were trying to hide the fact that they had feelings for each other.
"Didn't we just try that?" Emma asked. "And it woke him up," Henry conveniently reminded her, a triumphant smile on his small face. He was galvanized as David approached them.
"You're the ones who found me, right?" David asked. Emma nodded and he smiled down at them. "Thanks a lot. I owe you guys one, and coincidentally, you're the only ones I know here," he said, bashfully rubbing the back of his neck. "The doctor says maybe I'll remember everything with time, I just have to keep trying to jog my memory in the mean time," he explained.
"Snack?" Katherine Nolan asked, suddenly entering the hall from the kitchen behind her husband. She was holding aloft a plate of crudites. David took one with a small sample fork and stabbed it into a piece of carrot. "Thank you," he said, and she kissed him on the cheek as she went to mingle with more guests.
"So, have you ever used a sword before?" Henry asked out of the blue, and David laughed uncertainly with Emma. Emma shrugged her shoulders, as if to say, "Kids, what're you gonna do?" "Emma, you live with Mary Margaret, right?" he asked, trying to break the awkward silence that ensued.
He could have kicked himself when she sent a warning look his way in response. He forgot he was supposed to be married, and married men weren't supposed to ask after women they weren't married to, no matter how enamored they were with a certain life saving angel.
"Yes, I do," Emma said rather frostily, discouraging him from asking further questions about the woman she lived with. "Is she seeing anyone?" he dared to ask, despite his best judgement. "Oh, she's got her eyes set on someone alright," Lily butted in, using her own tactic to distract and confuse David.
Emma flashed her a warning look, but David was successfully deterred and didn't ask any more questions of the two. He bid them goodbye, and wandered off to mingle with more people he didn't know. Lily said she was ready to go home, and Emma told her to go on ahead and she would find Mary Margaret and follow.
She sent Henry to his mother who was also attending the party, and went about looking for Mary Margaret, only to find her nowhere. On her way out though, she bumped into Sheriff Graham.
"Fancy seeing you here," he said in his thick accent. "You don't seem the party type, if you'll pardon my saying so," he said to her, knowing her bite and malice as he did. He was the one to calm Regina after Emma's little stunt with her tree.
"I'm not," the blonde confessed. "In fact, I'm on my way out now, just looking for Mary Margaret," she said. Graham had had just a little too much to drink, and feeling bold, he gripped her upper arm to hold her in place. "I was wondering, have you given any more thought to that job I offered you?" Emma had.
She looked down at his hand on her arm. "I think that if you promise to stop staring at my ass when you think I'm not looking, we could make some kind of arrangement," she slyly offered, looking meaningfully back up at him. Graham blushed and coughed, embarrassed, as he released her. And here he thought he had been playing it so cool.
Emma saw right through him, and he felt like an exposed, horny teenager. "So you'll accept, and be my deputy now?" he asked, just to be sure. Emma slanted a look towards the dining room, where Regina was chatting with the hostess of the party.
"Are you sure Madam Mayor will approve?"
"I don't care," Graham daringly said. "It's my department, and I have it in the budget," he said as a defense. Never mind how much he wanted Emma around. He wanted it bad enough to risk Regina's wrath, and Emma was ballsy enough to not care if she raised the mayor's ire. He liked that about her. He needed someone who was willing to stand up to her, as God knew he wasn't the right man for the job.
Emma agreed to come into work bright and early Monday morning. Who was she kidding? They couldn't keep getting by on Lily's check alone. She never found Mary Margaret at the party, and headed home to find Lily already up in bed. Mary Margaret was sitting on the living room couch, wrapped in a blanket, watching a movie on TV. There were tears on her face.
"He said he didn't choose Katherine, he doesn't love her, he has feelings for me," Mary Margaret said, dropping the bomb on Emma. Emma went to sit beside her on the couch. "I told him we couldn't," Mary Margaret sadly said.
"You did the right thing," Emma assured her friend. "Generally when you feel like something you want to do isn't right, it isn't," Emma said, a dismayed look on her face at the truth of it all. She knew how much Mary Margaret felt for the former coma patient. Mary Margaret was in a lull romantically, and she believed she was looking for love in all the wrong places.
"It'll be okay," she said, comforting her friend.
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A week and a half later, Emma was settling in nicely at the police station. She rode along with Graham in the cruiser, and Regina was furious when she first found out. Emma could only imagine the tongue lashing he received later.
One day, she was sitting at the office on her lunch, and Graham approached her with a box of donuts. "You know, some cliches are true for a reason. I'm a cop, and I'll be the first to admit I think donuts are delicious," the sheriff said as he sat down on Emma's desk.
He had a predilection for sitting and standing too close to Emma now, but it wasn't anything she couldn't handle. She never encouraged him in any way, or acted intimidated or into it. She just accepted him for what he was, a player. And Emma would never give her heart to a player.
She looked at him suspiciously. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were bribing me into something," she remarked knowingly. Graham flushed. "Well, you know how I said no nights?" he asked. Emma frowned at him, "Yeah?" "Well, I need you to work tonight," he said, smiling his best, most charming white smile.
"Ugh, no one told me you were a liar when I took this job," she said. "Why?" she demanded. "I volunteer at the local animal shelter, and my boss got sick. Someone needs to feed the dogs tonight," Graham lied.
"You're lucky you brought a bear claw," Emma said, and snatched it from the box. About a half hour after Graham left for the day, Mary Margaret came barreling into the station like a flurry.
"Emma!"
"What, what's goin' on?" Emma asked in alarm. "David left his wife, and he wants me to meet him tonight!" Mary Margaret almost squealed the news.
Emma shook her head in disbelief. She would have never thought he had it in him. Married men did not just leave their wives just like that. But apparently David had it easy, not remembering his enough to miss her.
"Well, are you going to go?" Emma questioned her. "You think I should?" Mary Margaret asked, finally asking the question she needed to know; was it alright if she went? Because she was dying to go.
"It's one thing for him to say he has feelings for you, quite another for him to leave his wife," Emma thoughtfully remarked. "To me, that makes him fair game," Emma said, encouraging her best friend.
"Is this really happening?" Mary Margaret asked.
"I don't know, you tell me," Emma said. "Go get him, tiger."
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After Mary Margaret left, Emma went out on foot patrol later that night. It was a nice fall night out, and she felt like taking a walk. Storybrooke was such a sleepy little town, it was unlikely she would need her cruiser in a hurry in the middle of the night.
On her walk, she found her feet taking her towards the mayor's manor to be near her son. That was why she was so alarmed when she saw someone, a figure, climbing out of the mayor's window in the middle of the night.
She gave chase after the figure, and with a big oof, the person fell to the ground in a heap with her on top of them. She raised her flash light to get a good look at the culprit, and was faced with the astonished face of none other than Sheriff Graham. "I can explain," Graham rushed to say.
"Save it," Emma said, extricating herself from him. She did not offer him a hand up. "This is why you needed me to work tonight? So you could get some?" she incredulously asked. "Why were you climbing out her window?" Emma asked. Graham had the decency to look embarrassed. "She doesn't want Henry to know," he answered.
"Some sick and hungry animals, huh? You can finish my shift for me," Emma snarled, handing Graham her flashlight and set of keys. She stormed off the opposite direction, back towards home which wasn't so far. She didn't want to go back to the station and risk seeing him there also if he caught up with her.
When she got home, Mary Margaret was laying on her bed and even in the dark, Emma could hear quiet sniffles coming from her form on the bed. She guessed her evening had not gone as planned. Emma crept up behind Mary Margaret, and rolled onto the bed beside her.
"Do you wanna talk about it?" she asked. Mary Margaret sobbed and Emma felt her shake her head. "Do you want to be alone?" Emma asked. "No," the heart broken woman said. She would tell her friend about her night in the morning. For now, she just couldn't speak, and Emma sensed that as she fell asleep, hand resting reassuringly on Mary Margaret's side as she nestled into her from behind.
