Emma's phone is resting on the inside of her elbow when she gets the notification. The buzz against her skin and shine of light through her eyelids jars her just before she can fall fully asleep, and it confuses her, because there isn't a single text waiting on her screen. Everyone who typically sends her anything is either out in the suite's common room watching tv or asleep down the hall.
Can I see you tomorrow?
It's not a text — it's a direct message from Killian on Twitter.
Weren't you the one telling me not to check social media earlier?
Emma rolls over onto her side, trying to hold her phone so the light shines somewhere other than her eyes.
If you're busy talking to me, you can't possibly check your mentions.
How noble.
I've always been a gentleman.
A huff of air leaves her nose, too quiet to be an actual laugh, and just like that she feels a little more awake. The pain in her leg has been tapering off ever since she fell into bed an hour ago; it barely protests when she stretches her feet out toward the edge of the blankets.
You're not asleep yet, are you? I'll shut up if you are.
Emma can't understand how she knows it from a six-word question, but she thinks he's giving her an out. To her it seems like Killian is giving her the chance to roll over and call it a night if she wants to avoid a conversation. There's not an ounce of pressure to get an answer out of her, and God, is that refreshing, especially on Twitter.
Not yet.
Good. Then answer my question. Can I come and see you tomorrow?
His persistence feels charming, like something Ruby would say to her if she was avoiding a question. That above everything earns him a serious answer, instead of her usual dodging.
I'm not going to stop you if you want to watch me compete.
That's not what I meant, love.
Emma has no trouble keeping her eyes open after that. She skips right over the endearment he used and focuses on making sure she's reading his message correctly.
The lonely, careful part of her wants to feign sleep immediately, to pretend like she didn't have fun with him yesterday at all. Starting something with a man who lives halfway across the world from her sounds like a recipe for disaster, but —
But the ambitious, hopeful side of her is wide awake and remembers him opening up to her with perfect clarity, has every encouraging tweet memorized.
I guess I do owe you cab fare.
Emma hobbles through the door of the suite and dumps her ski jacket on the couch, groaning audibly the second the door shuts behind her. It's been hours since she last sat down — the trainer's bench doesn't count — and every muscle burns with satisfaction because of it. Not only did Kristoff give her clearance to compete on a leg that had been hurt yesterday, but she actually scored second in her heat. Three interviews and one ice bath later, she'd finally made it home.
"Emma! Is that you? I hope it's you, because that backflip was amazing."
Ruby's voice pulls her down the hall and into the biggest (and messiest) bedroom of their suite. Her other teammates look similarly windswept, either from competing or spectating, and she smiles at the group of pink noses pointed in her direction as she steps through the door.
"Everyone on Twitter shut up after today, Emma. You have no idea how nice it is to see us being taken seriously."
"Oh I don't, do I?" She grins and shoves herself into one of the only open spots on the bed, one foot dangling off the bed and her head resting in the corner of the wall. Sitting on something other than vinyl feels amazing, and she basks in it for a second. Chatter picks back up where, presumably, it'd left off when she came in, and she basks in that, too. She barely feels the urge to turn her phone on when she feels as confident as she does now, and a moment later Ruby takes care of it for her.
"The news put out a gif of you flipping and landing. Everyone's been retweeting that more than your actual interview." Emma opens her eyes and turns her head to the left, staring at the impatient scrolling of Ruby's thumbs on the phone screen in her hands. She shows Emma the trending hashtag, which sits right under the first place boarder's name on Twitter's list of popular items, but she feels none of the bitter sting that hit her when her scores lit up the board beside the slope. The adrenaline is gone, her competitiveness with it, and all she can feel now is grateful that people still care about the woman who came in second.
Emma's distracted from her mental highlight reel by the look on Ruby's face. She's scrolling much too fast to read the tweets one by one, so she must be looking for something in particular.
"What is it?"
"He hasn't said anything about your run yet. I thought he would have."
"Who?"
"Killian Jones," Ruby says, as if it's obvious. Emma watches her switch to his profile, almost but not quite leaning to get a better view, and both of them see his last tweet at the same time. It doesn't mention her.
"Ruby and I bet that he'd mention you before you got back to us," Anna supplies, a little sigh of regret falling from her mouth as she says it. "Should've gone with midnight."
A knock on the door distracts Ruby. She gets up with a huff and leaves her phone face-down on the mattress, as if to punish it somehow, and Emma stretches to fill the space.
"Please tell me that's an early dinner. I didn't stop at the cafeteria on my way up here."
"You should've."
"I know." Emma had been so eager for a moment's peace she'd skipped the cafeteria, and now she was paying for it.
"Emma!" Ruby's voice carries through the suite again, and this time Emma can hear a shit-eating grin in her words. "You've got a visitor at the door here."
She gives her roommates the quickest and quietest warning not to follow her that she can manage — shut up, Elsa, it might not even be him — and makes it to the door in time to see Killian leaning in the doorway to the hall, smiling crookedly in Ruby's direction. His eyes find her, expression brightening but not changing in the slightest, and it's all she can do to control her reaction before Ruby turns around to look at her.
"Look who I found at the door with a gift for you," she says, stepping aside to give Emma a better view. Emma suddenly remembers talking to him late last night, a conversation forgotten in the rush of the morning, and how he'd asked to see her.
Had she known what she was agreeing to, she might have been more careful.
She gives Ruby the most pointed, dangerous look she can muster, and manages to send her off before she can try inviting him in. Her friend mutters something that's either disappointment or encouragement on her way back to her room, but it's then Emma's mind catches up with Ruby's words.
"What'd she mean by a gift?"
He pulls a takeout box out from behind his back, and Emma's jaw opens in surprise. She tries to understand how he knows how hungry she is, but she's too touched and too hungry to ask. Emma reaches for it with a sincere thank you on her lips, but he tugs his hand away.
"Not so fast, love. I thought we might eat these somewhere a little more scenic."
Emma frowns at him, suspicion replacing gratitude in an instant. "What's wrong with here?"
He grins again and actually leans toward her, his face only a few inches from hers. "I was under the impression that you didn't want your roommates eavesdropping on us," he whisper-shouts, making himself all too easy to hear down the hall.
Emma looks at him, catching the flecks of green nestled in the blue of his irises. Of all the hi-res pictures she's ever seen of him splayed on the X-Games advertisements, she's never seen those before.
"I'll get my boots."
Emma expects him to take her back to the little villages outside of the press perimeter, to one of the hole-in-the-wall taverns he claims as second to none. What she isn't expecting is this —finding herself sitting sixty feet from the starting block of the slope she'd competed on earlier today. The sun's already well into its descent toward the horizon, casting a fiery glow across all of the snow in sight. The town in the valley has started flickering to life, too, lamplight and headlights welcoming the night.
Killian's food sits between the both of them on top of the snow, blissfully warm despite the occasional draft of wind that courses through the trees at their backs. It's quiet up here, the exact kind of quiet she'd been looking for earlier when she got back to her room. That's not to say she and Killian have been quiet in the slightest — she actually interrupts him to voice her thoughts aloud, stealing the french fry he'd been reaching for out of the box.
"How did you know that I hadn't eaten?"
Killian looks up at her with fond annoyance on his brow, taking several fries at once to get back at her.
"I remembered how fond you were of photographers following you around, Swan. You weren't going to stop and feed yourself if it meant they could follow you. I thought if I stopped on my way up here and brought it to you, we'd have more time together."
"Time for what?" She wants to sound suspicious, but it comes out as something else altogether.
"Why, for this, of course," he smiles, gesturing to the view around them. Emma knows he means to direct her to look at the empty slope, the graceful and disarming view in front of her, but her eyes are stuck on him instead. His eyes look even greener with the sunset in them. She blames her inability to look away on that, and does the same for the shallowness of her breath.
"You don't have to keep doing all of this stuff for me," she mutters, dropping her eyes to indicate the tray of food. She means to look back up into his eyes after that, but hers get lost somewhere around his jawline.
"All right," he says quietly, inching closer and shoving the food aside. "Doesn't mean I'm going to stop."
She finds it hard to argue with him when their lips are otherwise occupied, so Emma lets it go.