“You Put Your Arms Around Me (and I’m Home)”
This just wouldn’t let me alone until I got it figured out. It fits into the show’s canon timeline right at the end of 3x16 (“It’s Not Easing Being Green”) – but definitely goes divergent before the events of 3x17. Captain Swan for sure, but with a few bits of Henry and Charming feels here and there for good measureJ) Please enjoy and let me know what you think of it when you’re finished. Of course I don’t own them! Nor do I own the lovely Christina Perri song that lends this story its title and the included lyrics.
“You Put Your Arms Around Me (and I’m Home)”
By: @snowbellewells (TutorGirlml on ff.net)
The beep and whir of the assorted machines both haunts and soothes Emma Swan as she tries to stretch and make herself more comfortable in the narrow, barely-padded visitor’s chair. Storybrooke General is certainly not the newest, most-equipped, or most welcoming facility she has ever been in – but then again, how comforting can a hospital really be? Still, they have saved him; he is alive thanks to the hospital’s efforts, so she is not about to complain.
The fact that her stomach is still curling and twisting in knots upon itself and that she wants to pace the floor, yell, scream, and break things for good measure, is not anyone’s fault but her own. How has it come to this? The air that releases from the respirator breathing for him makes her tense as she waits with bated breath for it to draw air in, once more filling his lungs and causing his sturdy chest to rise and fall reassuringly, even if he isn’t doing it himself. She is tempted to reach out and pull down the cover, to reach under the thin hospital gown and run her hand over the rippling muscles and dark chest hair that are usually tantalizingly on display. Somehow, all covered up, he looks even more vulnerable and exposed, ironic as that seems.
Emma settles for reaching out tentatively to brush one errant strand of his dark hair off his forehead and back over his brow. Her fingers linger, ghosting across his skin, having to feel him to believe he is still with her, that he isn’t gone. She very nearly lost him without ever letting him know that he truly means something to her.
He is no longer an adversary, a villain, someone to conquer, keep away from, or leave behind. As much as her heart flutters in anxiety and fear at the thought, she trusts him. Emma finds herself wanting to tell him things she has bottled up inside for years: secrets of her past, her childhood, her loneliness, self-loathing, and feelings of never being good enough to have someone stay with her. How has he gotten so close to her that she wants to share any of these secrets? She is not sure, and yet, it is blatantly true.
“What have you done to me, Pirate?” she whispers to him brokenly as she keeps her hopeful vigil at his bedside.
romaincrisis
yousharknotpass
turnnoffyourmind
