AN: Don't ask me what this is, because I'm pretty sure I just spewed words onto my keyboard. My only defense is that I needed to write something that wasn't angst, and I'm a sucker for the childhood friends trope.
She's got you high and you don't even know yet
The sun's in the sky, its warming up your bare legs
You can't deny you're looking for the sunset
- Mumm-ra, She's Got You High
He recalls the many times he would look up at her from his spot on the pavement, where she stood at the top of the slide, looking like the Queen of the cracked asphalt. He would call her princess, but she always preferred to be the knight or dragon slayer.
(He had always been more than happy to play the dragon).
He had always loved her blonde hair, flowing behind her when she ran from him during a game of tag. Her golden locks rivaled the sun during the summer and brightened the grayness of the winter. Her mother loved to style it in intricate braids and pretty headbands, but by the end of each day Emma managed to turn it into a tangled, mud-caked mess.
She lost one front tooth at age five which didn't grow back for three years. He can remember her, smiling brightly (shamelessly) up at him, at their teachers, at her parents. Liam had teased Emma mercilessly, but Killian loved her lopsided grin.
When the other kids would tease them, using terrible cockney accents as they asked if Killian fancied Emma, she'd roll her eyes and defiantly take his hand, kicking up dust as she led him in the other direction.
The first time she kissed him, he remembers comparing it to a bee sting. He had thought that surely her lips would leave a mark, that he'd walk around for the rest of his days with the evidence on his freckled cheek.
(He hadn't minded one bit).
She had called him late one night -early one morning- after her first real party, because Killian had gotten his driver's license early on and she'd had way too much to drink. He had already grabbed his keys and was trying to put his shoes on in the dark as she pleaded for him to come pick her up. They stayed on the phone for the ten minute drive, and he found Emma in the upstairs bathroom of Will's house, all smudged mascara and vomit-and-booze breath.
He'd half-carried her back to his car as she recounted how Regina had challenged her to see who could down the most shots, and of course Emma couldn't let that bitch show her up. In the passenger seat, she'd begged him not to bring her back to her house, where her parents would surely catch her sneaking back in. He had begrudgingly brought her back to his place, where she collapsed onto his bed immediately, facedown as she drunkenly told him that his sheets smelled like home.
He had called her late one night after his first real girlfriend dumped him, saying he just wanted to hear her voice, but Emma insisted on making the three hour drive between their colleges to see him. Killian had stayed awake waiting for the knock on his door, the rhythmic tap-tap-tap he knew so well.
She hugged him immediately, wordlessly, offering the simple comfort of her presence. She made his favorite tea for him in the Common Room's kitchen, spiking it with the rum Killian kept smuggled in his desk drawer. Because Emma knew him-knew that the painful things were the hardest for him to say- they didn't talk about it. Instead, they spent the night sitting on his narrow bed, watching his favorite TV shows. At some point the sun began to rise outside, turning Emma's hair into spun gold, and Killian had forgotten why he'd been upset in the first place.
He admits that he loves her on her twenty-first birthday, the night turning from thumping club music to aching confessions in the quiet of his car.
Emma is speechless for several moments, and Killian decides to count to ten before he will look at her, bracing for the rejection spelled out in her silence. He gets to six before Emma reaches across the distance between them, grabbing his shirt collar, whispering idiot against his lips before covering them with her own.
When she pulls back, it's only to catch her breath. Killian looks at her, backlit by the streetlamps, her eyes still so green in the dark. Their lips meet again, like the crescendo of a song, like the finish line of a race, like the climax of some epic saga. They both feel the finally humming through their bones.