Prompt: Emma is homeless and knows that engaged couples get free food at tastings, so she decides to cajole another homeless guy, Killian, into pretending they're engaged.
Real
Emma had never made it to her own cake-tasting.
Walsh had screwed her over long before that, leaving with only her Bug and her engagement ring. The only reason she hasn't sold the ring is because she's terrified that when she does, she'll find out it's worthless, that it's just as fake as every other part of their relationship was and he really has left her with absolutely nothing.
And now, even months after he left her, she dwells on how she should have known. She should have trusted herself instead of trusting him, believed the nagging feeling that he was always lying, but she wanted to feel like she had finally escaped from the life where she had no one.
After Neal, after Phoenix and her baby, she had needed to get away from that.
Emma's still trying to resign herself to the fact that she is right back where she started and maybe she was just never meant to have anything more.
-.-.-.-
She passes the bakery one day. She remembers going inside, when she was still excited that her and Walsh were going to be married and that even though he insisted on taking care of everything else, he was letting her decide on the cake.
Emma had looked through dozens of catalogues and come up with a vague idea of what she wanted before signing her and Walsh up for a free tasting in a couple of weeks.
And that had felt like everything because a decade earlier, she had had nothing. Food had been rare and a day with three meals had been a miracle.
Standing in a bakery and knowing that in two weeks she would have access to more cake than she could eat and that a few months later she'd never be alone again, everything finally felt real and tangible and she'd needed to take a moment to just breath.
Now she stands on the outside and remembers and tries to ignore how her stomach is rumbling and she hasn't eaten since the night before and she just wants.
And then she thinks that maybe once, if she can find someone willing to help, she can go in there and eat loads of cake and pretend that she's about to marry someone she loves and that she's actually excited about the future.
She knows, no matter who she chooses, that it's going to be fake but Emma's never had anything real anyway.
-.-.-.-
She writes the thought off as just a daydream. Emma doesn't know anyone very well, let alone well enough to propose such a con. And even though it would be one afternoon together, they have to knew each other enough to be convincingly in love.
So yeah, her afternoon at a cake-tasting is a daydream and nothing more and she may entertain the thought sometimes but she has far more to worry about.
Like where that days meal is coming from.
And she pretends she doesn't know who she would ask to help, except she does.
Since everything fell apart, she's only really spoken to one person with more than curt sentences and sharp words and that person is Killian Jones.
Not that she knows him that well. She'd met him a few months ago, back when the night air was bitingly cold, and he was curled up outside with only a shop awning for shelter. Emma had been miserable, loneliness gnawing at her and she knew it was ill-advised, but she'd parked the bug nearby and told him that, if he wanted, he could share the warmth of the car with her.
If everything had gone wrong, she didn't really have anything to lose.
But they'd sat in the front seats with the car heater blasting and they'd talked for hours. Introductions first, of course, but then it had gotten more personal. Killian is the only one who knows the basics of what happened to her, how her so-called fiancé had conned her out of everything, and Emma feels pretty confident in the knowledge that she's the only one he's told about how an accident in the navy had left him without a brother and without a hand and then medical bills had taken everything else.
-.-.-.-
She's not looking for him, but she's relieved when she spots him at the soup kitchen. She always worries about him on cold nights, when she's not there to let him share the warmth of her car, and whenever she sees him, her chest feels lighter and she smiles more than she ever does otherwise (she has little reason to smile).
When she sits beside him, he grins at her and he looks so much better when he doesn't look miserable.
"Been a while, Swan." He says through a mouthful of food, clearly as starved as her. "I was wondering if you'd moved to somewhere closer to the sea."
"Not yet." Emma replies. "I still have a few good memories I'm not ready to leave behind."
"They weren't real." He says that as if they've talked often. Like it wasn't just one conversation they shared in the warmth of her car months before. "What reason do you really have to stay?"
Emma shrugs. She can't really think of anything. But then the bakery comes to mind and he's right there so she tells him. "There's a bakery that does free cake-tasting for engaged couples and I really want to go."
"You're engaged?" He asks, his eyebrows high on his forehead. "To who?"
"Well…" She falters, just for a moment, but he's looking at her with the same interest he'd shown so many months before and she remembers why she'd told him more than anyone else. "I was thinking… to you? Just for one day. A special occasion or something. I mean, it's not like we could do it more than once because most bakery's do actually charge for cake tasting and we can't keep showing up at the same place as though we're newly engaged, but it'd be nice to go. Just once."
He looks at her and Emma can't figure out what he's thinking. "I can't, Swan." He says eventually, when they've both finished eating and are spending a few last minutes together before she returns to her car and he goes back to only god knows where and they don't see each other for weeks. "I'm sorry. It's not… I think it would hurt too much."
She doesn't know what to say, but part of her thinks he might be right. (Even though she knows he's not really talking about her)
-.-.-.-
They stay close following their meeting at the kitchen and she feels like she knows him now. Things have never gotten as personal as that one night, but she knows his likes, his dislikes and things he misses now that he can't afford anything. He knows the same about her, and it's comforting to know that there might be someone on Earth who actually cares for her.
That's probably why, when it starts getting dark, she decides she's reluctant to see him go.
And there's something about the privacy of the Bug compared to the streets, because soon he's telling her all about Milah (the woman he proposed to and planned a wedding with before she revealed she was married to someone else) and she tells him about her son, the one she gave up in prison but has since named Henry (sort of after Harry Potter) because referring to her son as 'him' made her feel even lonelier than she already was.
She's never told anyone about Henry before, but she tells him and she feels much, much lighter when she does.
When she shows him the thin gold band that she keeps in her glove compartment, he brings up the cake-tasting thing except now she understands why he doesn't want to help. For her, it's a representation of something more. For him, it's just a painful memory of a past he wants to move on from.
That night, she kisses him. She leans across the gear stick and just pulls him to her, her lips resting firmly on his for only a moment before his hand comes up to cradle her head and keep her close and it's been so, so long since she's felt wanted by anybody that she almost cries.
She doesn't. At least not then. (She does later, when they're curled up together in the back seat, his coat spread over them and his arms around her as he sleeps)
-.-.-.-
After that, they're a team. He stays in the car every night and they survive together. It's like it was with Neal, only more, because, with Killian, she doesn't worry he's going to leave (he has nowhere to go) and she knows he isn't keeping anything from her.
They know each other completely and maybe it's not what she dreamed of as a little girl, but it is more than enough and she knows now that the cake-tasting was just a silly dream she had when she wanted more.
Sure, she still wants things, but she's perfectly content to just be with him.
Besides, Killian believes in good form, so they're not stealing from convenience stores and sneaking into just evacuated motel rooms. They're trying. He starts trying to get paid for odd jobs - he walks dogs sometimes - and Emma discovers that, even though she doesn't have the credentials for it, shady people are willing to pay for someone to track people down and that she's pretty good at that.
Emma didn't think she could hope again, but Killian has proved her wrong.
-.-.-.-
On her birthday, she finds herself standing outside the bakery, her hand in Killian's and she has absolutely no idea what they're doing there.
"Why are we here?" She asks, her breath catching when he raises her hand to his mouth for a brief kiss and then lets go so he can reach into his pocket and show her her old engagement ring. "We're not-"
"For one day, remember?" He says and she'd let this dream go a long time ago, but now he's here and he's fumbling to slide the ring onto her finger and, sure, it's fake, but not all of it is. "A special occasion."
When they get inside the bakery, it's warm and it smells heavenly and they're expected and Killian has planned all of it without her knowing and she just wants to grab him and kiss him, so she does. He sinks into her slightly, and she hears titters and aww's from the shop employees and she has never loved him more.
And Emma's a bit too thrown to answer the questions that the staff ask - about when and where they're getting married, but Killian's thought it all through. Apparently, they're marrying at the end of spring and they're having a beach wedding (and the beach he points too on the map they're given is not in Florida, and it's nowhere near Tallahassee but that's another dream she's moved on from).
He holds her hand the whole time, sometimes kisses it and the best part about the free cake-tasting is Emma doesn't have to pretend to be in love because she is.
The cakes are pretty good too though.
"Why did you do that for me?" she asks afterwards, when they've scrounged together enough money from their savings to rent a motel room for the night (it's her birthday, so they get to share a double bed instead of the backseat, and they take full advantage of that). "You knew I didn't need that anymore, right?"
"We don't have much, Emma." He says quietly, pressing a light kiss to her temple, his hand firm and warm against her hip. "But I wanted you to have that. For real."
"But I already have something real." She tells him and he smiles brilliantly. "I have you. I love you."
"I love you too, Emma." He replies and she kisses him again and he still tastes like cake. "I always will."
-.-.-.-
(She sells the engagement ring the next day. She doesn't get much money, but it's more than she thought she would. They rent a one-room flat and she gets a job at a diner for when she's not hunting people down and Killian keeps dog-walking and it's not much but she'd lost hope of having anything and now, with Killian, she finally feels like she's got everything she could ever want.)