Notes: Beta/Edited by Peaceheather (with a cameo betaing by Wolfie. THANK YOU SO MUCH.) For the record, this chapter started off kind of short. Then I edited it and it suddenly grew two more pages.
Chapter 5
The sound of the door slamming downstairs jolts Emma awake. Sunlight is streaming in through the window, birds are singing cheerfully outside, and the alarm clock informs her that it's a quarter after eight. For a moment, Emma simply lays there, listening to Mary Margaret and David bustling around as they come in. Reluctant to actually get up, she snuggles deeper into her pillow, inhaling the aroma of clean sheets and something else that's tickling her nose and making her feel warm and relaxed all over. She takes another deep breath, trying to place the scent—
—and then the events of the night before come screaming back, in all their gory detail.
Hook.
Emma flips over and props herself up on one elbow, inexplicably afraid he'll be gone, as if the night before had been a dream worth reliving instead of a blood-soaked nightmare.
He's still there.
She's reminded of the night she sat by his bedside in the hospital. Hook's face is even more bruised by daylight, his cheekbone slightly swollen below the burst capillaries. She can see now several smaller contusions scattered across his skin. His eyes are shut, dark lashes contrasting strongly against the pallor of his face. He looks battered, but peaceful. He's so still, he looks...
For one horrible, awful moment, Emma's heart stops.
He looks dead.
"Hook?" she whispers. He doesn't respond.
Emma stretches out a tentative hand. No. No he can't be dead. It was just a cut! Please, he can't be ...
The relief that washes over her when she touches warm, living skin is nearly palpable. His eyebrows twitch slightly and he makes a noise that's half groan, half grunt, but he doesn't wake.
"Emma, are you up yet? We brought breakfast!" Mary Margaret's voice precedes her knock against Emma's open door by mere seconds. She pokes her head into the room before Emma can stop her or warn her or even turn to face her. "Emma—What in the world?!"
She twists around in time to see Snow White turn bright red and abruptly avert her eyes toward the ceiling. Mary Margaret's voice drops to a dramatic whisper, "Emma why is Hook sleeping in your bed?"
Emma opens her mouth, ready to explain, except—
"What?!" David's voice calls up from downstairs, sounding alarmed. "What's wrong?"
Mary Margaret's eyes go wide with panic. It's at this exact moment that Emma realizes Hook is pretty much naked—which is fairly obvious since at some point in the night he's knocked the sheets down to mid-chest and his black leather, I'm-such-a-bad-boy pants are draped over the foot of her bed, right beside his belt. And, of course, all of his bruises are on the side that Snow can't see.
"It's not what you think," Emma says, quickly. But David's footsteps are already pounding up the stairs. She rolls out of bed and interposes herself between Hook and the door, just in time. Snow raises her arm to stop David before he barrels into the room, so instead he comes to a skidding halt in the doorway, one hand braced against the frame to keep himself from slamming into it.
Emma takes a step toward them, hoping to block the view.
Whether it's because David spent a huge chunk of his life watching over sheep and keeping track of all of them, or because he was also born with the natural instincts of a battle-hardened warrior, or maybe it's just because he's her father, it takes him less than a second to process the scene in front of him. His eyes focus on Emma, then seem to leap from her, to the incriminating pants, to the naked guy in the bed. "What the hell is that bastard doing—"
It's a good thing, Emma thinks later, that Snow is even faster on the uptake than Charming is. She snags him by the back of his belt and yanks on it as if it's a collar, just as he starts to lunge. "Whoa, down boy. Maybe we need to hear Emma out before we go leaping to conclusions?"
"He's injured," Emma says, before David can add to the problem. "He showed up last night. Gold hurt him. Bad. He didn't want to go to the hospital."
"So you let him sleep in your bed?" David asks, his voice a little strangled.
Emma plants her hands on her hips, her backbone straightening. She cares about her parents, she really does, but it is weird as hell sometimes that they're practically the same age she is. She gets that David has a ton of fatherly instincts that have gone completely to waste, but Emma is a big girl, with a kid of her own.
"Okay, first of all, I am twenty-eight years old. If I want to let a man sleep in my bed it is nobody'sbusiness but mine. You don't have to agree with my choices, but you need to respect them. Besides that, he could barely walk last night, let alone do anything else. Moving him wasn't really an option."
"How'd he get up here in the first place?" Snow asks.
"Climbed through the window, I think," Emma says. She glances back at Hook, who still hasn't woken up yet, despite the heated discussion taking place in the same room. Emma frowns. The David situation seems to be in hand, so she crosses to the other side of the bed and leans over to check his pulse. It's there, steady and stronger than the night before; his skin is warm but not too warm.
Something still seems wrong to her, though. An uneasy feeling settles uncomfortably in her stomach.
"He climbed through the window, while injured?" Mary Margaret asks. She crosses to the window and looks out and down, much as Emma had the night before.
"Touchy subject. Don't ask," Emma says. She shakes his shoulder gently. "Hook? Wake up."
This time he gasps as if he's in pain, but still doesn't rouse. Alarmed now, Emma pulls the sheet down to his waist, revealing her patch-up job from the night before. Carefully she peels back the bandages to check the wound. There's blood dried to the gauze, and his infernal chest hair is stuck to the damn bandages, so she has to work extra slowly. But when she finally peels the bandage away from the sutures, the cut doesn't lookas though it's any worse than the night before. He's stopped bleeding and has begun to scab, the flesh around the stitches is bruised and swollen; but the cut doesn't look infected. Emma fishes the Tylenol out of the first aid kit and heads for the bathroom to get him some water.
"What the hell?" Mary Margaret moves to the side of the bed to get a better look at his injury. "Gold did this?"
"That's what Hook said. Then Gold turned up later to tell me that he'd caught Hook lurking around his shop and gave him a 'warning.' I think Gold was spying on the apartment, too—which, gotta say, is not really a comforting thought. " Emma rinses out Hook's glass in her bathroom sink and refills it with water. "He didn't seem to know Hook was here, though."
"Why didn't you call?" Mary Margaret asks. "If Gold really was trying to kill him again..."
"I handled it," Emma assures her, coming back around the side of the bed. "He left. I ... It was late and I didn't want to wake you."
"You stitched him up by yourself?" Mary Margaret arches a perfect black brow, though her look is more impressed than incredulous.
"What? I can sew, when I have to," Emma says, feeling defensive despite the praise. So what if she'd wanted to swallow her own tongue rather than jab a needle into his flesh the night before? Nobody but Hook needs to know that, and she knows he would never rat her out. She sets the water glass down next to the Tylenol.
"Nice color you picked for him." David hasn't moved from his spot at the foot of the bed; he has his arms crossed, and is scowling at the sleeping pirate. "Suits him, I think."
Snow moves to his side. "Charming."
"What?"
"Not helping," Snow says with a shake of her head.
"Hook? C'mon, wake up," Emma shakes him again, gently at first, then harder when he doesn't respond. Her heart pounds against her ribcage. "Jones!"
Hook's lashes flutter, then his eyes open blearily. He gazes up at her, his eyes slowly focusing on her face, then gives a pale imitation of his usual toothy smile. "Hello, beautiful."
Relieved, Emma sits back on the edge of the bed. "Oh, good. You're still obnoxious." She gives a weak laugh. Her stomach feels like it's in knots.
Hook's gaze flicks from her face to Snow's, then over to David's glower. "Well," he says, his voice rough with sleep and pain. "Isn't this awkward? I hadn't expected to make it a family affair. How ... charming."
David's mouth compresses into a thin line, and Snow puts a hand on his chest to keep him from lunging again.
"How about we hold off on poking the dragon until I get some painkillers in you?" Emma suggests. She helps him shift upward and tucks her pillow behind his head. Then she hands him three Tylenol, and holds the water glass for him. "Swallow these. Don't chew them." Hook gives her a look that clearly says I'm-not-an-idiot, pops the pills into his mouth, then takes the glass from her and downs them like a pro. He grimaces afterward and hands her back the glass.
"What'd you do to make Gold attack you this time?" David asks.
"Nothing," Hook says, tiredly. "I was minding my own business—"
"By which you mean 'spying on him,'" Emma mutters before she can think better of it.
"As I said, darling, minding my own business. Not bothering anyone. Don't let the limp fool you, he still moves like the Dark One. Popped up behind me, bashed me in the face with his cane ... It all gets a bit blurry after that."
Snow leans closer to examine the stitches. "What'd he cut you with? It must have been razor sharp."
An expression flickers over Hook's face so quickly Emma's sure if she hadn't been watching him closely she wouldn't have seen it. For just a split second, he'd looked unsure and just the tiniest bit afraid. It's not the sort of expression that she ever expected to see on his face, and the fact that it was there, however briefly, sends a chill up her spine.
She realizes, then, that Hook's not entirely sure what Gold did to him. Rumpelstiltskin would hardly show him mercy, and the fact that Hook is still alive and relatively unharmed sets warning bells ringing, loudly.
"A knife of some kind, I think," he murmurs. "And I'll have you know, I was completely unarmed—"
"Except for your hook," David says.
Hook just levels him with a flat glare. "Aye. Except for that."
His hand is laying next to Emma's thigh, curled once more into a loose fist. It's trembling, very, very slightly. She might not have noticed if she hadn't been sitting so close. He's barely got any strength left, she realizes, and he's using all of it so as not to look weak in front of David. This pissing match is sapping him, but his gaze never wavers, and his jaw is set.
"Knock it off, you two," Emma says. "Hook, you really should go to the hospital. Now that David and Snow are here we can—"
"No," he says. His eyes flick to hers and his voice softens to something that's almost, but not quite, a plea. "I can't fight him like this. You abandoned me in the hospital once before, Swan. As you so kindly pointed out then, he had the advantage. You'd leave me to his not-so-tender mercies once more? Chain me to a bed, perhaps, with no way to escape when he finally comes to finish me off?" The look on his face is furious, but she can see through him right now to the underlying hurt.
You'd leave me here to die?
You'd have done the same.
Actually, no.
"I didn't—" She wants to say that she didn't abandon him. Not that time. She'd hid him from Gold, gone with Gold to New York because he'd threatened to kill Hook if she didn't. She wants to say that she's never truly abandoned him, she's always made sure that he would survive whatever situation she'd left him in. She'd done what she could to protect him. But that admission would cost Emma more than she is willing to spend just now. "I'm trying to help you, okay? If you don't trust me to protect you in the hospital, can I at least try and sneak a doctor in here?"
He searches her eyes, then seems to come to a decision; he nods once. A weight lifts marginally from her shoulders.
"Good," she says, letting him see her relief on her face.
When she looks up, she's surprised to find that Mary Margaret and David are both still standing there, watching them. David's face is clouded, but there's a look on Mary Margaret's face as if she's just found the solution to a difficult crossword puzzle problem and she's not sure she likes it. Her mouth pinches slightly, then her shoulders square.
"We can run interference," Snow says. "I'll go get Whale and sneak him in without anyone seeing. David can keep an eye on Gold and let us know his movements."
David's look gets slightly more confused. "Why am I the one watching Gold?"
Snow smiles sweetly. "Because if you have to go get Whale, you'll only end up punching him. He's likely to be slightly more cooperative if I ask nicely," Snow says. She turns to her daughter and her smile turns just a touch more motherly. "Emma, you should, maybe... you know ... get dressed?"
Emma glances down at her black tank top and blue flannel pajama bottoms. They'd been more than adequate the night before, but David seems to have suddenly discovered an interest in the plaster pattern on the ceiling, and Hook's gaze dips to her chest and lingers there for a moment before meeting hers again. His eyebrows twitch upward and he doesn't even bother to hide his appreciative grin.
Right, Emma thinks. Time for a bra.
She's just about to get up, when Hook catches her wrist. "May the invalid request another sponge bath?" Hook says, tongue tucked against his teeth. "I'm feeling a bit ... dirty."
"Oh, shut up," Emma says, rolling her eyes and getting to her feet.
"Another?!"
Snow shoves David out of the room before he can have an apoplexy.
The instant they're gone, Hook goes completely limp. His head drops back on the pillow, his eyes shut and he grimaces. Emma chews her lip, tempted to ask him how bad it is, knowing that the fact that he's even letting her see him like this means it's pretty bad. That sour feeling in her stomach is creeping back.
"Will you be okay if I go grab a shower?" she asks instead.
"That depends. Will Prince Charming try to kill me in my sleep?" he says, sounding very much as if he wouldn't care if David did.
"Only if you keep baiting him," she says, and heads for her dresser. "It'll only take me fifteen minutes. I think you can stay out of trouble that long."
He doesn't open his eyes. "I'll try not to expire from loneliness whilst you're gone," he says.
Emma pauses in the act of hunting for clothes in her dresser to stare at him. He doesn't say anything further, so after a minute she collects some clean underwear, jeans and a t-shirt and heads for the bathroom.
She shuts the door behind her and leans against it, his words ringing in her ears.
He'd meant it as a joke. He'd said it as if it was a joke, dipped in a thick candy-coating of sarcasm, but Emma can see past his facade.
He hadn't been joking.
And he hadn't been lying.
At least, she thinks he hadn't been lying. Emma drops her head into her hands.
When she'd rolled over and thought Hook was dead, that he might never look up at her and smile that ridiculous smile or banter with her or argue with her ever again, it had almost been like seeing Henry laying in that hospital bed, cold and unmoving.
They're not even friends.
This. This is exactly what she'd been afraid of up on top of that beanstalk. The more time she spends in his company, the more Emma sees him—not Captain Hook, the villain out for vengeance, but Killian Jones, the damaged man underneath. The man who is lonely, who keeps dancing around her with words, baiting her for attention. The man who sees her. He's under her skin now. Whether she wants to or not, she cares what happens to him.
She shouldn't feel this way. She can't afford to care about him. He's team Bad Guy and Emma swore off bad guys a long, long time ago.
She lifts her head and meets her own gaze in the mirror. She looks lost.
"What the hell am I gonna do?"
Notes: Not sure if I'll get the next chapter up tomorrow or not. If not, then it should be up on Tuesday evening sometime. In the meantime, I'm over on Tumblr, if you want to come find me and chat or yell at me or ask me questions. I'm still kind of new over there and no one ever talks to me. :( You can find me there as "MadlyMel"