Disclaimer: I do not own the show or the characters of Once Upon A Time. There's no profit except writing practice being made here.
"Hey? How did you get around last time?" Emma asked, "You know, without being arrested for carrying a sword and a sharp pointy hook and looking like a pirate? Because I'm serious about that change of clothes. It's be really easy and it might stop some of the looks we're getting."
"I was assured by the law enforcement here that such a costume is not uncommon for this place," then he added something else he'd been told, "A few persons mentioned a local fair they assumed I was part of. I find it much safer to say less. I've found in most realms people tend to fill in the details for you without prompting or becoming too curious."
"A ren fair?"
"Sounds right."
Emma hummed. "I suppose you wouldn't look so strange if you were alone."
"I'd rather not be," he said quickly, fearing Emma hadn't quite assured herself finding the dragon and returning to their time in Storybrooke was the right course of action. At least he knew where her residence was, Killian calmed himself, although he couldn't fight the feeling that if Emma did decide to swan off, as it were, to her home with Henry, she'd find another version of her in her place, unwilling to step aside and just as happy to send Emma away as she was him.
"But if you weren't alone."
Whatever did that mean? "I'm afraid you've lost me."
"One pirate walking around New York is noticeable, but two mean he's not a crazy person. That'd be pretty easy to dismiss."
"You dismissed the odd looks fairly easily a moment ago."
"Still, it might be better if we went under the radar."
Killian was unfamiliar with the term, so he ignored it, filing its pronunciation away for later when he could find that information building Emma said they didn't need and he could look it up.
"It's almost Halloween. It's probably really easy to find a costume down one of these streets."
"Are you suggesting you'll drape yourself in the trimmings of a pirate, love?" He tried not to sound too eager but was very aware that he had failed.
Emma rolled her eyes, "I was going to offer a peasant dress."
"Why debase yourself as such, Swan? You are a princess."
"So you wouldn't like me in dirty rags?"
Killian was unsure where the sudden switch in conversation came from, but he was just as quick to retaliate. "Oh, I assure you, I'd like in anything."
Emma snorted derisively again. "Anything?"
It was a dangerous game that ended up pushing her away more than announcing his genuine intentions, as the adopting of double entendre and sexual innuendo had been when he'd first harnessed them into weapons, but with Emma the line between joshing and sincerity blurred and became difficult to decipher - it always had. Not only had he been unable to predict which intended reaction Emma would produce, Killian had struggled to comprehend which reaction he wanted to induce by saying such things - something that had scared him stiff when he met her, the real Emma Swan, atop that fateful beanstalk.
"Or less."
An eye roll. She was so predictable. Adorable and dependent.
"Forget it," she waved her hand between them as though swatting an insect. "We'll just go find the dragon and get back to Storybrooke. No wardrobe changes."
Secretly, Killian was glad for it, exhaling a sharp little sigh of relief as he let his shoulders sink and tried not to smile. He didn't have his hook and hadn't had possession of his ship in longer than he'd ever been parted from her. There weren't many things that remained to tie him to his life as a pirate save for the leather trousers and the long coat he'd adopted, both brilliant at wicking away droplets of salt water and rain. While Emma and David may have considered pirateering base and unworthy, it was who he had become, and who he had been for hundreds of years, his identity. He didn't want to have to give that up too just to fit in to a crowd of complete strangers.
Now if Emma asked him if he was serious about standing by her side for the rest of his life – however long that turned out to be – then he'd happily show her by adopting the clothing style of the people of whatever town she decided to live in. He'd act, rather than tell her, because his Swan never listened. But he'd only do so for her.
Killian had waited for it to happen but as yet Emma had said nothing. Nothing had been said of where they were going, although Killian was sure it wasn't her residence in New York, else they run in to the other version of her as she was afraid of doing.
More importantly, and far more interestingly, nothing had been said of how her wrist was wrapped around his elbow and her fingers rested against his arm.
Killian wasn't about to correct her on it or mention their contact.
It was very rarely that she ever reached out – to anyone, Killian had been glad to note when he watched Emma shy away even from her mother. Everyone but Henry, but his calculation – and less so since he'd been cursed by the bloody witch.
She gripped him tighter, gasping quietly beside him when Killian tripped on the gutter. He would have reddened with the shame of losing his footing on solid ground if not for the way Emma held him, making sure he hadn't fallen and hurt himself. He rightly could have complained about being mothered by Swan, he had no intention of being treated as such from the woman, nor to be considered as helpless as a young lad in her eyes. He was a captain, by the stars, a honed weapon in any situation.
But the zooming thunder and the whoosh of wind that accompanied the moving vehicles of this realm did shock him sometimes, turning around corners almost soundlessly and at a speed Killian could barely comprehend.
"Watch it!" Emma shouted at the metal contraption, although Killian couldn't fathom as to why. "Just drive up on the sidewalk, why don't you?!"
He got the impression she thought the shock of the carriage had sent him reeling when in truth it was the scent of lemons in her hair as it whipped him in the face thanks to the wind that had made him lose concentration on menial things such as his footing.
"Are you okay?"
Both her hands were on him, then, soft as a feather, righting him.
"Fine, love," he promised, saying nothing of her hand on his upper arm or his elbow. Instead, he redirected the conversation, "You said something about the dragon we were to find. Do we know it's location or shall we find that brilliantly filled library?"
"Don't need a library," Emma told him, letting him go so she could step forward and tug him across the laneway with the crowd around them. It seemed as though the light across the way, tinged green by some form of leaf, if not magic, shaped as a man in motion, was signalling to the city-goers they could cross safely. He'd seen the crowds move as one the last times he was in this realms cities and Storybrooke had a similar set-up, although it went unused, on the corner outside Granny's and assumed there was a similar signal to the vehicles to stop them from colliding with the pedestrians.
He could have used such a device at the town line, Killian made a note to tell Emma the town might use a few more, for safety purposes.
Killian - shamed as he may have once been for such base behaviour, explained away as the deviancy of a pirate – watched as Emma walked before him. It was only a few steps that she was in front of him, still holding onto him and pulling him along, yet he bore witness to the perfect view of this realm's best asset – unabashedly tight fabric that seemed to worship the womanly figure.
Then, safe on the other side, Emma pressed her hand into the little pocket of fabric at the seat of her pants – something he'd seen her do often, though never from this angle. Scandalised, Killian held his breath to see what Swan would do next.
He couldn't decide whether he was saddened or exhalted when her hand slipped back out of the pocket.
Then she met his eyes and narrowed her own.
Not about to face her anger for hailing her beautiful shape, Killian smirked at Emma.
"I've got all the information we could ever need, right here," she waved a rectangular device at him, something she must have fished from her pocket.
"I've seen you use that device to call your father." He had no idea how it may be used to anything else, the act of calling on it still foreign to him, too.
Emma grinned. "Oh, but it does so much more."
"Actually," she interrupted herself, shaking her head, her hat slipping lower on her forehead and her hair flowing over her shoulders. "I should probably get you one of these. Just in case we're separated or something."
"So that I may call you?" he didn't want to get his hopes up but couldn't quite believe she'd gift him such an honour after being so angry with him most of the past week.
"Like if one of us needs help, we should be able to reach each other."
"Aye."
His mind, as if often did when thoughts of Emma were involved, was already wandering. Should she return to New York after this interlude, with Henry and refused to acquiesce his following them, one of those devices would be a godsend.
It would break him, undoubtedly, to be so distanced from her again, but the ability to call her no matter the day or hour would calm him. He wouldn't have to lose her completely.
"You mean to tell me," Killian asked when they had found a seat – a bus stop, Emma called it. He wasn't as ignorant as to require her explanation, Storybrooke had similar shelters that he met Henry at after the lad's school day, and even most other realms had a similar setup, allocated meeting points and stands where one could procure transport for a small fee should they need it – "That this small device holds all the knowledge of the thick tomes in the library."
"Yep," her lips smacked together with the affirmation. "It's a mini computer. All we have to do is look up what we're searching for."
Her finger dipped over a button at the top of the machine, which then ignited with colour. Emma purposefully stepped against him, her shoulder pushing his charms into his chest in such a way he was sure they would leave a mark but Killian didn't dare protest. With the device angled for his attention, Emma swiped her thumb over the glass and then the alphabet of the realm covered most of the screen and Emma quickly tapped away at the letters until the screen lit with paragraphs of information.
Killian gripped Emma's hand, aware of the impropriety and uncaring of it. He dropped his gaze close to the device, his nose almost touching Emma's thumb as he brought the phone and her hand to his face so that he may better read what it said.
"All that information and most of it seems unhelpful," he lamented.
Killian could feel Emma's breath over his ear and the back of his head as she peered at the screen too.
"That's fine," she said, pulling the phone back to her, "I'll just change my search."
Dragon + healing + mystic + New York. Killian read over her shoulder.
"August made a note of something about the guy being a healer in the journal he left behind at Granny's. And he told Henry something about him."
"And he referenced this city as the place they met?"
"I'm not sure," Emma admitted, her tone partially amused and moreso apologetic. "It was a journal entry in the man's private notebook, and it sounded like magical nonsense. He said he was a writer, so I figured it was something he was writing. I didn't pay much attention."
"And August is?"
She sighed deeply as though the burden of recalling fairytale versions of her friends weighed on her as an anchor might. "Pinocchio."
Killian blinked. "The famed wooden boy?" He knew not that the puppet had been in Storybrooke.
"You've heard of him?"
"You don't travel the realms and not hear the rumours of the locals, Swan," he informed her. That was the best part of travelling, he thought, learning about new lands and their mythologies. "Honest John and Gideon made the puppet famous for a time. There were posters everywhere. I never was in port at the right time to catch a show, sadly."
Hook flinched at the sound that emitted from Emma. Whatever it was not hardly as unmannered as the things some of his crew sounded, but it was far from the expectation of an heir to a royal court.
Curious, he turned to watch disbelief turn into amusement as the lines around her eyes and mouth pulled upward.
"The hell kind of name is 'Honest John?'" Emma asked, laughing with her outrage. "You're not going to get anyone to trust you with a name like that."
"I thought it was Foulfellow who scammed Pinnochio." Although it was a frown that Emma's face pulled down into, it wasn't the usual weight-of-the-world-thanks-to-the-Saviour-mantle expression she wore, but something lighter, more confused and far less serious. Not only that but she was asking him for assistance, meaningless though it might be, she was trusting his judgement and knowledge and seeking it out. Killian knew for a fact that Emma Swan never did that for fear of being lied to and swindled. Again.
That she was trusting him not to do so warmed Killian in places he didn't think his cold heart and lonely limbs had ever been warm before.
"I believe that was the name he was born with, yes."
Emma tossed her head back with laughter. "Poor guy."
Blinded by the shine of her hair and the glittering smile Emma tossed him, as though the expression was as precious as a penny and didn't make his heart stutter and she wasn't the sort of woman to hoard her happiness for fear of it being stolen, hiding it from any and all prying eyes.
"Oh, look, hey. There. Those look better." Her thumb made one of the blue-coloured sentences turn purple and then disappear completely before the page reconfigured with completely new information. "And look, we have an address."