A/N: Got a recent bump in readership thanks to some fine folks on Tumblr, namely lenfaz, timeless-love-story, PhiraLovesLoki and modernkillianjones. Many thanks. It's nice to have champions :-) I was keeping my fanfic and Tumblr lives separate, to stop some RL acquaintances from realising exactly how it is I spend my nights, but I think I've reached the stage now where I just don't give a fuck. I'm blessed-but-distressed on Tumblr, and shall be posting reference pictures and things spasmodically under the harsh realms tag.

More importantly, thank you all for the reviews, faves and follows. Waking up to my inbox full of notifications is pretty much the best part of my week. And now that is out of the way, let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure. (With love to Dumbledore).

4. A Friend In Need Is A Friend Indeed

There was a postcard in her mailbox when Emma got back from the store. It came right alongside a past due notice from her electricity provider, but she ignored that one, dropping her bag of frozen dinners right there in the entrance way to flip over the card containing a disgustingly picturesque scene of the Temple of Angkor Wat encased in mist, with trembling hands.

There were just two lines written in August's familiar untidy scrawl.

I'm so sorry, Em.

Back soon.

Emma blinked back the tears, half in relief, half in anger. Or maybe that was more to do with the throbbing pain in her foot, from where she had kicked it against the wall in frustration. It had been a rash move, one she regretted more and more as she made her slow, painful trudge up three flights of stairs, weighed down with shopping bags and a persistent ache in her chest.

Three months! He'd been gone for three months!

He'd never been gone so long before, and certainly not without sending a check to cover rent. Emma had half a mind to put this room up for let on Craigslist and sell his antique typewriter out from under him. It was worth a damn sight more than anything than Emma owned, maybe even more than her piece of shit Volkswagen, held together as it was these days by little more than duct tape and prayers. And it would serve him right for being such a flake.

So of course she wouldn't.

But she sure fantasized about it.

Right up until the moment her power got shut off, due to non payment.

...

For a little while, she thought she could handle it.

After all, humans had lived for thousands of years without electricity. Surely it couldn't be that hard to survive a couple of rough weeks? It would be like camping, but without ever having to leave her couch. Emma had never been camping, but other people did it all the time, and they didn't necessarily hate it. It could be like a vacation from the drone of modern life. A detox. Hadn't she been concerned lately that she might have become a little too dependent on checking her Twitter every fifteen minutes? Now she could concentrate on the more important stuff. She could read all those books that had been piling up on her nightstand for months, the ones that she always told herself she was getting around to, and never did. She could take up yoga. It was just stretching and breathing, right? Emma could breathe. She could be someone who stretches.

The sunny-side approach lasted an entire five minutes, before Emma checked the emergency supplies drawer, and came to the swift realization that she and August didn't really have an emergency supplies drawer. It was just the bottom kitchen drawer, and all it contained was a box of band-aids (empty), a ball of string, and a small cache of plastic shopping bags. She didn't even own any fucking matches.

It was demoralizing to realize that in the event of a zombie apocalypse, or any kind of apocalypse really, she wouldn't even last through the night.

Things got progressively worse over the next few hours, as each new horror of her predicament slowly revealed itself. All Emma had in the way of food was a stockpile of frozen Lean Cusine meals, and a few cans of soup. August had always been the one who did the cooking. Emma didn't cook so much as microwave, or toast. Occasionally she branched out, and she heated on the stove top, but not often. None of which were feasible options with the power out. And whilst it might not necessarily kill her, the idea of eating chicken and corn soup cold from the can did lack a certain appeal. She was definitely going to starve to death sooner rather than later.

The wifi was already shot, and Emma watched in abject horror as her phone battery dwindled down to nothing in her hands. She pictured her future, spending the winter being perpetually moved on from each Starbucks in her neighborhood, circling for free power outlets like a hungry vulture, snatching half-eaten muffins off of recently vacated tables. The image was uncomfortably familiar, like a past Emma had only been too happy to suppress. And this time, there was no August to pull her back from the brink.

Resolved to just have a shower and go to bed in defeat, because what the fuck else was she going to do, Emma reached her last proverbial straw. Because as Emma sat under that freezing cold spray, sick with the realization that the water really wasn't ever going to warm up , because of fucking course her hot water heater was electric, she realized she could put up with a lot of shit: Cold soup, no wifi, a lack of ambient lighting. But everyone has limits, and Emma's limit was this: No fucking hot water.

...

She figured he was still up. Smee certainly was, barking up a storm on the other side of the door as she knocked. The rest of the building was probably up now too. She briefly wondered if Killian got beautifully calligraphed notes left in his mailbox threatening his dog with euthanasia on the regular. It would only be fair; for such a little dog, there was quite a lot of bark. But somehow Emma doubted it. Shit like that only ever happened to her.

She heard him approaching long before she saw him. She heard the sound of heavy footfalls creaking on wooden floorboards, the rumble of a stern command, and a few blessedly bark free moments before the door swung open, and Killian finally appeared, all sleep rumpled with his hair sticking up in all directions.

Ah. Maybe not still up after all.

"Swan?" he asked, his surprise morphing into a sizeable yawn.

He was holding an excitable Smee to his chest with one hand, presumably to keep the pup from making a break for it, but, to her shame, that wasn't what most caught Emma's attention. Killian wasn't wearing a shirt, and Emma suddenly felt her cheeks flush involuntarily as she noticed. And boy, did she notice. There was some very nice muscle definition going on, and a surprising amount of chest hair. Someone hadn't let their gym membership go to waste.

Before she could be caught gawking, Emma hastily raised her eyes back to his face. She was just in time to see his sleepy blue eyes fill with comprehension as they took in the woman standing on his doormat in the middle of the night, shivering into her coat, hair still wet, with a duffel bag slung over one shoulder. Having apparently decided that she wasn't some sort of apparition, or just a dream, he nodded to himself and stepped back a bit, holding the door open for her to step inside. Which she did, dropping her bag on the mat and collapsing onto his couch in what felt like a single movement.

She liked his couch. It was an egregious sixties velour monstrosity that Killian and August had rescued whilst dumpster diving many years ago. It was floral, and golden, and trimmed in hideous brown bullion fringe. Much more suited to the apartment of an old lady than a pair of bachelors. And yet, they'd been so fucking proud of it when they'd finally managed to maneuver it up the stairs. Even if it did still smell suspiciously of cat piss sometimes, even after numerous attempts by Killian to Febreze the hell out of it. Now it was just part of the charm.

The rest of the apartment seemed to err on the side of IKEA these days, rather than back alley bargain, and Emma wondered exactly how much of that was Milah's influence, and how much was simply the lack of August's. Milah had hated this couch, August had said, and when she'd first started coming around she'd made Killian buy a throw rug big enough to hide its hideousness from the world. But Milah was gone now, and so was the throw rug.

"It's that bad?" Killian asked carefully, as he dropped Smee back down and came to sit on the edge of the coffee table in front of her, but the look in his eye told her that he already knew the answer to that.

Emma Swan wasn't exactly the kind to lean on friends and acquaintances if she was in the bind. She was much more the "suffer in silence" type. Or she had been, anyway. Before August. Now, she was just woefully out of practice.

"It's that bad," she confessed, sitting up properly to face him. Emma had been loathe to admit it out loud, to admit defeat. But it was true now whether she said it or not. Things were bad. The worst they'd been in ages. And unless August came back soon, they would be getting a whole lot worse. "You don't have some cloak-and-dagger, secret squirrel way to get in touch with him, do you?" Emma asked, unable to keep the hope entirely out of her voice. He didn't ask who she meant.

"Not really," he admitted, but at least he had the good sense to look apologetic about it. "But he should be back soon."

"Soon? As in back by Friday ready to cut a hefty check for overdue rent, soon?" Emma couldn't quite hide the bitterness.

"He hasn't been paying rent!?" Emma couldn't lie, his outrage cheered her up considerably. It was nice to have someone on her side.

"Nope."

"Jesus Christ, Swan. Why didn't you say anything!?"

Emma just shrugged, even as she watched Killian tease his hair into angry tufts with his fingers. "He's never been gone this long before. I kind of figured he'd be home already..."

Killian scowled, rising to his feet, hands still wringing with tension. "Bloody hell. I'm going to kick his sorry arse when he gets home. That's bad form! Leaving you in the lurch, so he can swan around Asia like some fucking hippy?"

"Yeah, take a number and get in line, buddy. I think I've earned the first crack at him." It was the first smile that Emma had managed since she arrived, and Killian returned it, holding out a hand to help pull her to her feet.

"Aye," he agreed, with the sweep of his other hand. "Ladies first." He cut a glance to the duffel bag still sitting on the rug where Emma had dropped it, then back to Emma herself. "His old bedroom is still free. I just need to make up the bed."

He went to brush past her, towards the hallway where the linen closet was, but Emma's hand on his wrist held him in place.

"Swan?" His voice was soft, and low, and he was clouse enough that when he turned to face her, Emma could see the tinge of green in his eyes. It's enough for Emma to release her grip on him immediately, and take a sudden step back.

"Thank you, Killian," she swallowed, letting her eyes drift to the floor instead of at him.

"Don't thank me yet, lass." She looked up to see a devious grin spreading across his face. "That's where Smee has been sleeping of late. And trust me, he's a terrible roommate. And a kicker."