no prompt this time, this just came up and slapped me. i also want to point out that the pirate stories are real, reasonably obscure fictional pirates from 19th-century stories (so in the same rough genre/time period as captain hook).

i want to point this out because finding stories that a) killian would be interested in and actually tell, b) involved pirates as the heroes, and c) were not immediately recognizable was hard as hell.

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—better to light a candle than curse the darkness

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A lamp was on. Goddammit.

Emma hesitated and almost turned back around — there were no words for how much she didn't want to deal with her parents right now — but decided to power forward on the hope that maybe one of them had just forgotten to turn it off, or…

"Couldn't sleep?"

…or she had forgotten that Killian was sleeping on their couch.

Right, she thought, blizzard, no heat on his ship, David's badly-hidden man-crush on him rearing its head and causing him to insist that he stay with them until it warmed up some. Right.

"No," she replied, running a hand through her hair and busying herself with microwaving a cup of cocoa (she was so tired she didn't even bother to fish out the cinnamon, just threw a packet of Swiss Miss into it and called it a night). The distraction only gave her a couple of minutes, but, even though she didn't turn around, she could feel him watching her the whole time.

For a moment, she considered just standing at the counter and drinking her cocoa in awkward silence, if only because her parents were asleep literally twenty feet away from the couch and not in their own room or anything (and who the hell had approved that house plan anyway?) and curling up on the couch with Killian and a cup of hot chocolate was a little… intimate wasn't quite the right word, but domestic, maybe. (Which, between the two of them, was intimacy, and probably more so than the common implication of that word.)

But she was kidding herself if she thought she could stay away from him.

Killian raised an eyebrow when she walked around to the couch and swatted his feet aside so she could sit down.

"Couldn't sleep either?"

He laughed a bit and replied, somewhat darkly, "Sleep rarely deigns to visit me these days, love."

"And so you've decided to spend your time reading… what is that, Treasure Island?" she asked, tilting her head to peer at the cover and then paused, making a face. "Of course it is."

"I had intended to read your story about Peter Pan, but it appears that someone has… removed all copies the library had," he drawled. "The librarian suggested that I not inquire further."

Emma raised an eyebrow, but decided not to ask either; after their adventures in Neverland and after, any number of people could have been behind that.

"Yeah, you probably wouldn't enjoy it too much," she said, leaning heavily into the couch. "Although the book version of Hook was a little more accurate than the cartoon."

"Than the what, now?"

"Cartoon," she repeated, and opened her mouth to explain but drew a blank as to how. "It's… um. People draw pictures and put them one after another, and… you end up with a sort of… moving illustration? Does that make sense?"

He shrugged. "No less than anything else of this world."

The way he said it, and the slight wistfulness in his tone, and — the guy was reading Treasure Island, oh for god's sake, he was homesick— all left her feeling a little melancholy herself.

It was the first indication he'd given that he didn't feel like he belonged in this world; usually, he carried himself with such confidence and that blasé, untouchable attitude, like the fact that he didn't fit in was everyone else's problem — it was convincing, very convincing.

Even she hadn't noticed it.

(On the other hand, she'd had more than enough on her mind already… which, in retrospect, might have had something to do with his determination to hide it.)

"We'll have to show you some," she said awkwardly, hiding her wince into her mug. "But not Peter Pan. I won't do that to you. Yet."

"Yet?" he challenged, raising an eyebrow, and she smirked, falling into the easy banter they'd perfected in Neverland.

"No, I'll save that for when you piss me off, I'll just cuff you to the chair and force you to watch it."

"Again with the restraints," he said airily, finally closing the book and setting it aside. "I'm not opposed, darling, all you need do is ask."

"Saw that coming," she muttered, rolling her eyes, but couldn't quite conceal another smirk behind her hot cocoa, and he chuckled.

"You opened that door deliberately," he countered, and, well, she had…

"What can I say? I need some amusement in my life."

It was intended to come out flippant and light-hearted, but she couldn't quite kill the darkness behind the words, and — of course — he noticed.

She hadn't realized how fragile the atmosphere had been until it started deflating; he was watching her face in that damn knowing way he did sometimes, like her every thought and fear was written across it, and it made her feel self-conscious (like usual) but at the same time, a little relieved.

(It was sort of nice, to have someone she couldn't hide her emotions from — someone who didn't need to ask — someone to whom she didn't have explain.)

"Nightmares?" he asked softly, and she turned away, taking a deep drink and trying to forget them, still so fresh in her memory that they haunted her like ghosts, visible even with her eyes open.

"Obviously," she replied just as quietly, sighing into her nearly-empty mug, and she didn't mean to go on, but it just wouldn't stay down — "I… I almost shot him, when he was — when Pan did that thing, I almost shot my son, and — "

"Don't," he cut her off, and she glanced over to him. "The more time you devote to thinking about it, the more often it returns and intense it becomes. Leave it aside."

Emma blinked; of course, he would be familiar with nightmares.

"That's easier said than done," she muttered, leaning forward to set her mug on the coffee table; she didn't feel any closer to sleep than when she'd come down here, but figured she should probably try to get back to bed before she had to be at the station in a few hours — but the image, Henry with a bullet wound, her gun smoking in her hand, Henry collapsing, blood on her hands, a scream in her throat, the word mom on his lips —

"Here," he said shortly, motioning for her to come closer. She raised an eyebrow, and he huffed in mild irritation. "Relax, would you. love? It may come as a surprise," he went on as she tentatively moved toward him and he pulled her near so that she was sitting between his legs and her back was flush with his chest, "but I happen to know a thing or two about handling nightmares."

"Do you now?" she challenged, somewhat breathlessly — his voice was very, very close to her ear, which was terrifying and distracting and alluring in roughly equal measure, and reverberated through his chest so that she felt him speak as much as heard him and she wasn't sure why she'd allowed him to do this except that she couldn't imagine walking away right now.

He snickered under his breath and rubbed her shoulder almost absently, and replied, "I do," a little smug and a little something else she couldn't identify.

For a moment, they just sat like that, the silence stretching out long enough to become uncomfortable — he had to feel her growing tension, right? — until Emma decided to get up and leave after all, but then —

"Have you ever heard of Charlotte de Berry?" he asked quietly, and she frowned.

"No."

"You'd like her," he said, brushing her hair away from her ear. "Decided she wanted to marry a sailor against her parents' wishes, so she disguised herself as a man to get aboard his ship. When one of the officers found out, he started placing her husband on the most dangerous jobs, running powder and the like, trying to get him killed so he could have her for himself." He paused to adjust, pulling her a little closer. "But she knew what he was doing, and saved her husband's life more often than not.. until, that is, the officer accused her husband of mutiny.

"The word of an officer holds more weight than that of a sailor," he explained, a little mournfully, "and so he was executed. But when the officer tried to take her, she killed him and deserted."

"Good for her," Emma murmured; the cadence of his voice, something about the sound and the sensation, was almost hypnotic. He laughed, running his hand down her arm to take hers, and began tracing light circles on her skin.

"Ah, it gets better," he said quietly, breath warm on her ear. "She was taken off-port by a merchant ship captained by a nasty brute, ruled his ship with an iron fist, had his whole crew paralyzed with fear, that sort of man — and she'd found herself his prisoner."

He paused for effect, and she played along — "What did she do?"

She felt him smiling against her hair. "Incited the crew to mutiny and declared herself the new captain, of course. I said you'd like her, didn't I?"

Emma chuckled, sinking further into him almost against her will. "Whatever happened to her?" she asked sleepily.

"Last I spoke with her, she was disgustingly wealthy and considering retirement," he replied. "Good woman, one of the very few who've managed to out-drink me. I lost a whole pouch of gold and my entire store of dignity when I challenged her to a game of quarters, it was brutal."

She laughed; his fingers interlaced with hers and began lightly massaging her hand. "Oh, really?"

"Mm, yes," he murmured. "Woke up half-naked on the tavern roof, still haven't figured out what happened."

"Damn," she said, snickering, a little impressed. "All right, tell me another."

The words fell out of her mouth without any thought — his voice was both physically and audibly soothing, and she was warm here against him with his arms wrapped around her, and the motion of his hand on her skin was just distracting enough — her eyelids were heavy and she couldn't remember what they'd been talking about before.

He smirked against her hair. "Met a man named Conrad once, never had any other title I've heard, although that might be because he was much like me — wasn't interested in the fame or the power," he explained softly. "Just freedom, and to be left alone. An unsung hero, in my opinion."

"Why?"

"He fell in love with a slave girl in a distant country," he said. "When she was sold into the harem of a wealthy man, he kidnapped her and fought off all the law and the owner's men to keep her safe. And, at her request," he added, brushing her hair away from her neck again, "he went back for the rest of the harem, to set them free.

"Much of his crew resented him for that, claimed that they had a right to the slave girls themselves, and so when he enacted his plan, the buyer caught him and sentenced him to death. They'd betrayed him," he explained unnecessarily, but the details of the story were beginning to blur into the indistinct sound of his voice as the weeks of high-strung sleep deprivation began to reassert themselves.

"The buyer decided that he wanted to marry Medora, Conrad's love," he went on quietly. "Told her that he'd let Conrad live if she did. So, she married him as promised, and on their wedding night, she convinced him to remove his weapons and even allow her to tie him up, at which point, of course, she escaped…"

.

David, not always a morning person, stumbled out of bed and shuffled to the coffeemaker, but paused when he saw that the lamp was still on — did Hook really sleep with the light on? Was he twelve?

He blinked when he actually looked at the couch — Hook was laying there, still asleep… and so was Emma, sprawled peacefully over him with his arm around her, resting on her shoulder in much the same way he'd just woken up — and found himself deeply torn.

On the one hand, his fatherly instincts screamed to break up the scene and perhaps break Hook but…

Emma was asleep.

She might have thought she'd been hiding it well, but he, at least, had noticed the toll the last few weeks had taken on her, how stressed-out and unhappy she'd been, how she was always the last to bed and the first to wake, how she'd woken him up once or twice wandering around in the middle of the night. He knew it had been weeks (or more) since she'd gotten a good night's sleep, but short of going to Whale and getting her some sleeping pills — which struck him as a bad idea for several reasons — he had no idea how to help her.

But here she was, nearly eight o'clock, still sound asleep.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd woken up before her, if he ever had.

Decision made, he crept back to the bed and held a finger to his lips, indicating the couch to Snow's questioning look.

"Emma's asleep," he said softly.

"I thought Hook was — " she started, and he nodded.

"Yeah, but Emma's asleep."

Snow nodded slowly and rose to dress, wincing at the squeaky bed springs. "You can take her shift at the station, right?"

"Of course," he replied, dressing as quietly and quickly as possible and making for the door as soon as they were both ready. "God knows she needs it."

"No kidding," she murmured, glancing over the back of the couch before joining him at the door. "Wow, she is out, isn't she?"

David smiled wanly. "It's about time she got some sleep. I'll have to corner Hook and figure out what the hell he did. And also put the fear of me into him while we're at it."

Snow laughed.