The Doctor's Wife...Is In.
Fandoms you will find here: Harry Potter, Dr Who, NCIS: Los Angeles, OUAT, NCIS: NOLA, and Brooklyn 99.
Ships you will find here: Romione (Harry Potter), Densi (NCIS:LA), Captain Swan (OUAT), Percy x LaSalle (NCIS: NOLA), Merintosh (OUAT), the Ponds (Dr. Who), Silverhardt and Monrosalee (Grimm), and Jake x Amy (B99).
Sailing the crackship of Dimples & GIn/DeVil King (i.e. Cruella x Arthur - OUAT) forever.
You know what I think its grossly under-rated in fandom? Second loves.
What it's like to love and lose and then love again. To suffer through either the death of a loved one or the death of a love you used to share. To know that loss, to know that hurt, and to still make yourself vulnerable to someone again. To love scared, to love wounded, to love anyway.
By under rated in fandom I mean so often past loves are either erased completely or downplayed like "oh yeah they weren't really in love.". I think it flattens the character. Humans are capable of so much love. Each relationship is different and you can learn from each one! And yes, there's something brave in learning to love again, something incredible romantic, why pass it by?
Heyyyy!! Here I am again, dusting off another fic from the partially-finished files...this one has sat in my Google Drive for literal years.
It's still not done, but I do have over 5K words so far and a good idea of where it's going conclusion-wise. In the meantime, I thought posting a 400 word snippet might help me with accountability (i.e. if other people know the fic exists, I will finish the fic, right? Riiiiight?).
Here goes!
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Shrugging the soft cotton of one of her oversized sleep tees down over her head and shoulders, Emma stretches the worst of the kinks out of her back and talks herself out of just crawling right back into her bed, instead going in search of the caffeine that is definitely not brewing itself.
She bypasses the small apartment’s shared bathroom, figuring that Ruby won’t care too much if she’s brushed out her hair or washed last night’s makeup off her face - they’ve seen each other in far worse situations over several years of living in the same space. Ruby might tease her a bit, but it won’t be anything she hasn’t heard from her friend before (and given right back to her in equal measure).
Emma’s jaw pops on the tail end of a gigantic yawn as she reaches the end of their short hallway, rounding the corner into the kitchen. “Rubes...you know I love you...but right now, don’t look at me, don’t talk to me, and don’t even think of getting in between me and the coffee machine. I will stab you.”
The owner of the richly accented, decidedly male voice that replies is distinctly amused. “Good morning to you too, love.”
Emma’s head whips around so fast she’s surprised she doesn’t dislocate something important in her neck.
It’s not Ruby in their kitchen.
“You’re not Ruby,” she blurts out before her brain can catch up with her mouth.
Way to state the blindingly obvious, Emma, she thinks to herself, wishing she could get a “do over” on the last five minutes of her morning (or, better yet, reset to the very first moment she’d opened her eyes). But the aftermath of last night’s alcohol, combined with the lack of caffeine makes everything even more muddled around the edges, and she can’t be blamed for being less than on top of her game.
It probably doesn’t help that the person standing in her kitchen - currently shirtless and apparently brewing coffee - is none other than Killian Jones. The (unfairly) handsome and too-charming-for-his-own-good Brit who’d snuck his way into Emma and Ruby’s friend group a little over a year and a half earlier.
If he’d begun to sneak his way into Emma’s heart - or at least a few of her fantasies - a couple of months after that...well that was nobody’s business but hers.
I thought to myself earlier this week "hmm....maybe you might FINALLY finish that one last Captain Swan fic that you had mostly done...you know...the one that just needed one really good scene to close it and a bit of heavy editing....but was basically....essentially...done."
Tonight, I went looking for it....and....it is GONE. I know it was on my Google Drive...and clearly I posted this 400 word snippet a year ago....but though I can find earlier fics and fics I started around the same time, this one is just gone and I didn't have it backed up anywhere.
SIGH.
Part of me thinks this is a sign it was never meant to be finished. the other part thinks that now I will recreate it and finish it out of spite. I still remember a lot of what I had and it's been dancing around in my head on and off because I really hoped someday I'd finish...I've been mentally rewriting for awhile.
The DashCon ball pit is trying to kill me. Ray Stantz from Ghostbusters is my protector. I honestly have no clue how this is gonna play out, but I want to see it.
Gollum is trying to take me out and Lin-Manuel Miranda is my protector. I think I'll make it, but it'll be a close thing...I'm pretty sure Lin-Manuel can dazzle Gollum into a stupor with a barrage of brilliant words...but he's also a literal cinnamon roll, so I don't know....
Fucking hate watching children go “um Actually UwU” about AO3.
saw someone say that fixing a bug with bookmarks isn’t a good reason to close a site down for a couple hours and they’re all lying about what they spend money on
meanwhile this very week my actual day job shut down the internal programmes for idk how many hours to fix a minor bug that popped up out of nowhere. I mean??? I don’t know shit about IT but “shut down all functions while we fix a problem” is so damn common. And “oh this took longer than we said” as well.
AO3 is impressively transparent about their bug fixes and downtime. They communicate fast, mention the reason why they're doing things and actually keep their promises.
Meanwhile my workplace regularly shuts down entire applications for maintenance with minimal warning or explication and often keeps them offline way longer than initially communicated.
Also it was not just 'oh we need to fix a tiny bug with bookmarks'.
It was 'there are more bookmarks than a normal database can handle'
Source
Migrating over 2 billion of *anything* is gonna take a while and I imagine having people using the site and adding more bookmarks while that is happening would be kind of a risk!
Doing it without losing any data is impressive as hell. I've seen commercial vendors shrug and say, sorry. You're losing 24 hours worth of transactions. Just re-enter them.
It would have been simple for AO3 to 'lose' a million or so bookmarks to buy some time. They're just bookmarks, who cares? It's not like anyone's paying for this.
I have a lot of things I could say about this (for context, I just retired a month ago as chair of the AO3 support committee so I have insight, but I am speaking only on my own behalf and not as an official representative).
First: this particular type of data migration (moving from INT to BIG INT) has happened twice in AO3's past already (for history, and for kudos) and it was the same each time - a large table with hundreds of millions of items being moved is time-consuming and you need to be cautious doing it, and it WILL require a few hours of downtime to be safe. It is not "fixing a bug". It is moving the content of all bookmarks on the site. It will have to happen again for other types of data in the future, because AO3 just keeps growing.
Second: They can't know exactly how long a migration like that will take, so they make their best estimate. They can't test it before-hand on the test archive and have it reproduce exactly what will happen on the live archive, because the live archive has so much more data. Estimating "how long will it take to move 700 million items" is a matter of experience and luck. (Yes, 700 million is more the actual number of bookmarks involved, I know people keep citing the 2 billion number but each bookmark is assigned an ID number, and bookmark numbers iterate by 3. The highest ID number available under the old system was the slightly over 2.1 billion number, so the actual total is about 1/3 that. It's still a lot.)
Third: In general, AO3 tries not to have downtime, and it does very well. My observation is that the process in this case was usually like "Ok, let's start doing this and see how it goes. *waits to see if things start to get painfully slow and a lot of errors start happening* Ok, there are lots of errors happening and the site is getting slow to use, let's block all bot traffic and see if that helps. *that helps for a while and then things start to pile up again* Ok, let's try flipping the site into maintenance mode (i.e. take it down) just for a minute or two and see if that lets it catch up. *that helps for a bit and then things start to get slow and not catch up with just a few minutes of downtime* Ok, we do need to actually take it down and just let the process run until it finishes. " My point is that they first try various options that, if they work, will not require taking the site down all the way, before resorting to downtime. If they left it up, the process would take a lot longer, and people would experience a lot more problems while using the site. Taking it down is safer and more efficient in that kind of case.
Fourth: The same people doing the work need to communicate it to the people who do the tweets/tumblr posts/status updates. So not just doing complicated database stuff, but also telling communications "hey we are about to do X and Y and it will take approximately Z hours". (Fortunately we have mostly moved on from the times when it was literally the SAME people trying to do both things, and have dedicated communications folks to help.) Sometimes when they are trying to do a lot of things at once, the technical volunteers might not communicate as quickly or clearly as would be ideal, or a comms person might not immediately be available to make a post, so a status update is a bit later than we prefer, but we try to always communicate to users before doing something big like taking the site down. In a normal situation with planned downtime, the ideal is to make a post a couple of days before, then an hour before, and then at the time the downtime happens, and then when it's done. Sometimes there isn't time for as much advance warning, when something is either unexpected or doesn't go as planned.
Fifth: Also the people doing this are doing it in their spare time, around real jobs, and often on their evenings, weekends, in the middle of the night, while they're trying to cook dinner, etc. and they're doing it better than many sites with paid employees and larger staff. So cordially, anyone saying that they're lying or not doing a good enough job can go to hell.
#this is how it feels to be on tiktok#every video is secretly an ad somehow and theyre so good at hiding it u don't find out until the wnd#end*
This post has way too many notes and they've been clogging up my notifs for a month, but these are the first ones I've seen that Get It. Thank you. This is exactly it.
I wasn't talking about the absurdity of companies trying to advertise cars or vacations that no one can afford, like everyone in the notes seems to think. There are plenty of people who can afford them. Fewer than there used to be, but corporations aren't starving.
I was talking about the invasive way advertisers have taken over every modicum of available space and how it's no longer possible to turn anywhere without advertising being pushed on you, despite the fact that most people don't have the kind of expendable income that these companies are trying to extract from them. The less money the average person has to throw around, the more aggressively they're hounded to hand it over. Where people used to be able to afford a new car and a vacation and still throw expendable income around, they now save up for one or another big purchase (those who can afford one, and that population has significantly dwindled). People limit their other spending, and in response companies descend on our consciousness, on every last bit of space they can squeeze their presence into, like pigeons onto a handful of seeds thrown on the ground.
You have to sit through advertisements to watch something on youtube only to realize the video is, itself, an ad in disguise. You can't pump gas without a little screen blaring at you wanting you to buy things. Billboards and bus benches weren't enough, they have to be energy gobbling screens now so five companies can sell you shit while you wait instead of just one. Every available surface is screaming at you to BUY THE THING. Where you used to be able to play a game on your phone, now you can't get through more than a round of any without having to sit through ads to keep playing. Ads that are pushing other games to you that have more ads. Games based on making working class jobs look fun. Be a barista and fulfill every order or the customers will be angry! Lolololol! Work at a hotel and don't fail, making the demanding customer angry is failing don't fail! Hahahahahahahaaahaaaaahaaaaaaaa it's fun! Run a farm and make money to buy more things to grow and sell to make money to buy more things to grow and sell to make more money to buy more things to grow and sell and and and! Even in your free time you should be thinking about your place in the market economy! Or worse, they're ads for predatory games, whether they're "play our game and win real money!" bullshit or "doctors want you to play this to avoid alzheimer's [if you're old play this game where we'll exploit your confusion about technology to sell you more things.]"
Every free moment you have, every free surface you come across is another opportunity to sell you something. We aren't able to get a break from it in our free time in our own home unless we constantly take steps and make effort to, like installing ad blockers - which youtube and other websites are constantly working against - but those don't even work on your phone or tablet. And the closer to home the advertisement, the more it targets you specifically, because your personal devices, that should be your personal, intimate, private property and space, are exploited to collect data on you to wrench every last cent from your wallet. They want to get to know you, not because they're curious about you, but because they want your money. They don't just see you as a wallet with thumbs, they do so unabashedly and brazenly and aggressively.
This post wasn't about the content of what's being advertised to us. It was about the relentless, instrusive aggression with which advertising invades our privacy and personal space and every inch of public space. We are exposed to hundreds of images daily, none of which are art or even remotely creative or inspiring, but instead demand our attention and our money while ignoring that both have been stripped bare by the mere need to exist from one day to the next.
This post was about the insidious way advertising has embedded itself into culture and consciousness, so much so that in a post trying to call this out, most people's immediate reaction is, "yes, the problem is that I can't afford the thing being advertised" and not "why can't I go three seconds without being advertised to" in the first place. That advertisers continue to pour money into new ways to insert themselves into the average person's life when it's absolutely fucking pointless.
Even before The Truman Show, this movie got this concept...Back to the Future II, which I always used to think of as the least interesting of the trilogy (but one you had to watch in order to get from the amazing original to the triumphant conclusion)....crammed every moment of Marty's arrival into 2015 with giant interactive billboards, assaultive audio, products (the hoverboard) literally flying around and, if I recall correctly, clothes that would adjust to your body after you put them on because they were scanning you and correcting for better fit.
Every moment was monitored and interconnected...not just in an advertising context either. Older, 2015-era Marty gets fired (over video-call) and the printer in his house instantly spits out paper saying "you're fired!" Doc had sunglasses with an internal video display that was like a proto-Google Glass. One good bit of tech was that they'd apparently figured out how to turn trash into fuel for cars!
Point being...it was a dystopian, darker film that felt "off" when compared to the sunny nostalgia of the original and the gung-ho get-it-done send off of the third one...but we might just have caught up to it in terms of our cultural zeitgeist/ethos/whatever you want to call it. That's...kinda terrifying actually. But it might be time for a rewatch.
What made you ship Emma Swan and Hook (besides like. The everything)
CAPTAIN SWAN MY BELOVEDS
SO MANY THINGS
Obviously the first thing is the incredible chemistry between COD and JMo, they are top tier and they work off each other so well. As early as their second episode together (THE SCARF BANDAGE MY BELOVED) their chemistry is just electric.
(yes he DOES tighten that bandage with his MOUTH)
Next it's the way their backstories mirror each other - both abandoned young, both hurt by love, both responded by closing themselves off to love - and they help each other grow and heal.
And the biggest thing for me is how you can fully understand what they like about each other and why they love each other:
Emma inspires Killian to grow and change and be better, even when he doesn't expect a relationship with her to go anywhere, and she doesn't hold his past against him because she gets what it's like to have done things you regret. In a town full of heroes and villains whose morality can sometimes get pretty black and white, Emma aspires to do the right thing but isn't always perfect and acknowledges that about herself and so doesn't hold Killian to an impossible standard. She sees him when he's trying and she sees the progress he makes and doesn't keep moving the goalposts for him to be "better" but she also doesn't shy away from the darkness in his past or pretend it never happened because she gets that it's part of him.
And Killian intimately gets what it's like to be abandoned and alone and hurt by love and he never makes Emma feel ashamed of having walls or being scared. He doesn't sneak past her walls or climb over them or destroy them - he's patient and steadfast and is there for her when she is ready to deconstruct them herself. He gives her time and understanding and doesn't push her to be ready on anyone's timeline except her own, and he doesn't want her to be the perfect mom or the perfect daughter or the Savior, he just wants Emma. He actively chooses her over and over and he always puts her and her happiness first. He makes her feel like a priority when that's something she's never had., and he always comes back for her instead of leaving her alone. He doesn't get offended when she's not ready for things and he never pretends like her past isn't part of her because he wants everything to be "happy" now.
Basically they invented True Love and the gods agree and they will forever be one of my ultimate OTPs
The good news: you get to pick your new soulmate! (You can define "soulmate" however you want: platonic/romantic/partners in crime/etc. But they will be in your life, constantly.)
The bad news: you don't get to pick where they come from.
Spin this wheel until you get a fandom with characters that you recognize. As soon as you do, stop. One of those people* is going to be a constant presence in your life, whether you like it or not. So choose wisely.
How's your soulmate situation?
I'm thrilled about who I was able to pick! I'd love to have them around!
I'm happy, I found a good option
I can't complain too much, I guess
I'm not happy about my options, but whatever, I found someone
...Either my supposed "soulmate" or this poll OP is going to suffer
I think I found my new favorite rabbit hole. This voice actor does Shakespeare scenes in a southern accent and I need to see the whole damn play. Absolutely beautiful
if you're not from the us american south, there's some amazing nuances to this you may have missed. i can't really describe all of them, because i've lived here my whole life and a lot of the body language is sort of a native tongue thing. the body language is its own language, and i am not so great at teaching language. i do know i instinctively sucked on my lower teeth at the same time as he did, and when he scratched the side of his face, i was ready to take up fucking arms with him.
but y'all. the way he said "brutus is an honourable man" - each and every time it changed just a little. it was the full condemnation Shakespeare wanted it to be. it started off slightly mock sincere. barely trying to cover the sarcasm. by the end...it wasn't a threat, it was a promise.
the eliding of “you all” to “y’all” while still maintaining 2 syllables is a deliberate and brilliant act of violence. “bear with me” said exactly like i’ve heard it at every funeral. the choices of breaking and re-establishing of eye contact. the balance of rehearsed and improvised tone. A+++ get this man a hollywood contract.
The thing that just destroys me about this, though -- we think of Shakespearean language as being high-cultured, and intellectual, and somewhat inaccessible. And I know people think of Southerners as being ill-educated (which...let's be fair, most are, but not the way it's said). But that whole speech, unaltered, is so authentically Southern. And the thing is: Leaning into that language really amps the mood, in metalanguage. I'm not really sure how to explain it except... like... "Thrice" is not a word you hear in common speech...unless you're in the South and someone is trying to Make A Fucking Point.
Anyway. This was amazing and I want a revival of Shakespeare As Southern Gothic.
One of the lovely things about this, and one of the reasons it works so well, is that from what we can piece together of how Shakespeare was originally pronounced, it leans more towards an American southern accent than it does towards a modern British RP.
In addition, in the evolution of the English language in america, the south has retained many of the words, expressions, and cadences from the Renaissance/Elizabethan English spoken by the original British colonists.
One of the biggest examples of this is that the south still uses “O!”/“Oh!” In sentences, especially in multi-tone and multi-syllable varieties. We’ve lost that in other parts of the country (except in some specific pocket communities). But in the south on the whole? Still there. People in California or Chicago don’t generally say things like “why, oh why?” Or “oh bless your heart” or “Oh! Now why you gotta do a thing like that?!” But people from the south still do.
I teach, direct, and dramaturg Shakespeare for a living. When people are struggling with the “heightened” language, especially in “O” heavy plays like R&J and Hamlet, a frequent exercise I have them do is to run the scene once in a southern accent. You wouldn’t believe the way it opens them up and gives their contemporary brains an insight into ways to use that language without it being stiff and fake. Do the Balcony scene in a southern accent- you’ll never see it the same way again.
This guy is also doing two things that are absolutely spot-on for this speech:
First, he’s using the rhetorical figures Shakespeare gave him! The repetition of “ambition” and “Brutus is an honorable man”, the logos with which he presents his argument, the use of juxtaposition and antitheses (“poor have cried/caesar hath wept”, etc). You would not believe how many RADA/Carnegie/LAMDA/Yale trained actors blow past those, and how much of my career I spend pointing it out and making them put it back in.
Second, he’s playing the situation of the speech and character exactly right. This speech is hard not just because it’s famous, but because linguistically and rhetorically it’s a better speech than Brutus’ speech and in the context of the play, Brutus is the one who is considered a great orator. Brutus’ speech is fiery passion and grandstanding, working the crowd, etc. Anthony is not a man of speeches (“I am no orator, as Brutus is; But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man”) His toastmaster skills are not what Brutus’ are, but he speaks from his heart (his turn into verse in this scene from Brutus’ prose is brilliant) and lays out such a reasonable, logical argument that the people are moved anyway. I completely believe that in this guy’s performance. A plain, blunt, honest speaker. Exactly what Anthony should be.
TLDR: Shakespeare is my job and this is 100% a good take on this speech.
definitely one of the challenges I have with reading Shakespeare is that it sounds so weird to me. “The good is oft interr’d with their bones”?? Who talks like that?
Well,,, rednecks. Despite being Elizabethan English, none of this is really out of character for a man with that accent; southern american English has retained not only (I am told) the accent of Shakespeare, and the “Oh!” speech patterns, but also so many of the little linguistic patterns: parenthetic repetition (“so are they all - all honorable men”), speaking formally when deeply emotional, getting more and more sarcastic and passive-aggressive as time goes on, etc.
Someone sent this to me a while ago and I dropped it in my drafts because I wanted to comment on how RIGHT this sounded but I couldn't express why it sounded right, so I'm glad other people have picked it up
There's a theory that Appalachian English in particular retains a lot of the qualities present in Shakespearean english that are now gone elsewhere. Thinking of my Mamaw, who says "twice't" instead of twice and other things like that...
First of all, this is brilliant acting. Second of all, the language analysis above is great for anyone interested in it. And lastly, this video, to me, does a great job of pointing out the effect of type of media on the story you're trying to tell. Shakespeare's plays work best as plays. Not as scripts, not as movies. Plays.
why does this have 32k notes? it’s just a picture of a knife in a ranch bottle, is there some unspoken joke that 32 thousand people share? what is going on here, i dont get it. it’s just a fucking picture of a knife in a ranch bottle. is there some spiritual connection people have to this picture? is there some ominous and mystical reasoning that this has 32 thousand notes? do people reblog this because it makes them look like some indie blogger? or is there just something funny to this? someone please explain
I'm thinking about the argument I got caught in yesterday- the subject of it doesn't matter.
Often, pseudoscience and misinformation comes packaged with a lot of very important sounding words, and the jargon gets to the point where it seems like a lot of work to fact check it. Which makes the 'I encourage you to do your own research' statements real obnoxious. If it's phrased in a way that's impossible to navigate, good luck.
It sucks, but you gotta.
If you don't want to fact check individual words, that's fine. That's a lot to ask of someone that's just trying to figure out whether something is true.
This is where we get into something called 'lateral research.' Instead of trying to draw a map to a sentence, you check the credibility of their source material.
This is your Snopes, your Fact Check/Media Bias, your Follow The Money.
Knowing more context about what someone is saying will save you a lot of time and energy.
i have found this post and infographic and i want to share it
INVESTIGATE THE SOURCE
zetabrarian's blog says they are a socially progressive librarian monsterfucker, which a quick scroll through their blog seems to support. This makes them pretty cool but not necessarily the perfect source -- anyone can say they are a librarian, and surely not every librarian is correct about processing information
FIND BETTER COVERAGE
if i go to a search engine (in this case google via firefox) i see that several universities, libraries from large municipalities (like Los Angeles) as well as the BBC all agree that this is a real method experts in information fields recommend. I wouldn't necessarily take any single one of these sources as 100% credible, but they are individually reasonably reliable, and taken together indicate a high probability of factual information
TRACE TO ORIGINAL CONTEXT
A brief search reveals that the SIFT method was created by Mike Caulfield, who is a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, where he studies the spread of online rumors and misinformation. This is an extremely good source of information for how to process information on the internet. As the creator of the SIFT method, he has taught thousands of teachers and students how to verify claims and sources through his workshops.
I could not find a post or page about SIFT written by Mike Caulfield himself, so i went to the University of Washington's website for this page about it, since that is the university that employs him.
It corroborates the above information, though there are a few notable differences. For example, under the "trace to original context" section in the Washington U. source (again, as close to the original as i could find) this step contains advice to check the date. This seems very good to include, as in the fast moving world of internet information, things become outdated or get updated very quickly, and yet first takes and outdated articles hang around and get shared for a long time.
EXTRA CREDIT
I personally find that it is important to outright search for the opposite information. For example, I put in a few searches like "Mike Caulfield discredited" "Mike Caulfield wrong" "SIFT method bad" etc. I found nothing showing me any indications this method has any problems. Interestingly, somehow this did turn up an article about news literacy on Medium, which was actually written by Mike Caulfield in April of 2017
What if Emma and her friends all in their late 20s early 30s decide that they want to have a Galentines day sleep over to just catch up be themselves all drink safely and not have to worry about their significant other’s or whatever. And then one of them has a brilliant idea to have a seance like they used to when they were kids it’s just for shits and giggles. But they accidentally actually summon something. And it’s Killian.
And then the significant others the next day are like “so how was galentines day?” “We wound up summoning Emma a boyfriend.” “Haha oh yeah how?” “Lighting candles in a salt circle”
Got this fantastic idea from the CSMM Discord and I couldn't leave the keyboard until I had written it. Hope you had a wonderful Galentine's Day and have a great Valentine's Day, loves!
Read on A03 - Explicit - 5900 words exactly
“Climb on Aunty Ruby’s lap and tell me your naughtiest Valentine’s Day wish.”
The room bursts with laughter at Ruby’s pronouncement, purred from the overstuffed loveseat where she extends a fishnet stocking-covered leg and wriggles her eyebrows salaciously. Her girlfriend Dorothy climbs right on her lap and whispers something much too quiet for the other women to hear, but it makes Ruby’s face turn as red as her name. Ruby has never been one to shy away from things of a sexual nature, so Emma takes another sip of her rum and wonders what exactly could make Ruby Lucas blush.
“I thought the whole point of Galentine’s Day was to get us away from our significant others,” Mary Margaret teases good-naturedly. “You two are much too close for a night about friendship.”
Ruby shoves Dorothy off of her lap and straight on her ass, making Dorothy’s beer splash out of her bottle and making the room laugh again. She stands up, wriggles her jean-clad backside significantly toward her girlfriend, and throws herself onto another couch.
“For the cunt punt you’re next.” Ruby pats her leg. “Hop on board, Mrs. Nolan.”
With a roll of her eyes, Mary Margaret sits herself primly on Ruby’s lap, thinks for a minute, and leans in to whisper her own wish to one of her oldest friends. Ruby gives her a faux-scandalized look and sends her on her way with much less violence than she had shown her own girlfriend.
One-by-one, all the ladies take turns on Ruby’s lap and it almost becomes a competition to see who can make the unflappable Ruby laugh, turn a different color, or, in the case of Mulan, laugh, “You’ll have to ask my girlfriend first, honey !”
Finally, Emma knows that she can avoid Ruby no longer. Her bare feet drag across the soft rug of her living room and she flops into Ruby’s arms.
“Tell me your Valentine’s wish, Miss Swan.”
Emma relaxes into her friend’s grasp and the warm cushions around them. There are a few things she could say that would make Ruby giggle or jump, but she’s had too many drinks tonight to be creative. The rest of her friends have people to go home to, partners to spend Valentine’s Day with. She feels a pang of something like sadness that makes her lean her head against Ruby’s and speak quietly and sincerely.
“Just a nice guy, Rubes. Someone loyal. Someone that makes me feel at home. Funny. Smart. Confident. Fuck, yes, confidence is a turn on. But not cocky.”
“But with a big cock, right?” Ruby jokes, breaking the spell. Emma rolls her eyes.
“Naturally.”
“Clean-shaven?”
“Scruffy.” She thinks. “And, shit, with the kind of chest hair that you just want to grip when you ride him.”
Ruby hums. “Fuck yes. I miss that. But don’t tell Dorothy, okay?”
“Never.”
“Anything else? Sky’s the limit.”
“Handsome. Good body. Oooooh, and maybe an accent.”
“Good in bed?”
“Great in bed. Super into me, into what I want. But also knows when to pull a girl’s hair and spank her ass.”
“Emma Swan.”
She rolls her eyes. “Shut it, Lucas.”
Ruby’s arms wrap just a bit tighter around her and Emma can feel that soft side coming out, the sweetness that Ruby usually hides behind her high heels and cleavage and flirtation. “I’ll see what Aunty Ruby can do, sweetie.”
-----
Two hours later, Emma emerges from her bathroom to find out that the loveseat has been shoved into the center of her living room, there’s a strange circle of white around the room, and all the women are busy lighting a million little candles. Emma doesn’t even own this many candles.
“What the hell?” she asks.
Regina exchanges glances with Ruby, who looks way too pleased with herself. “We’re summoning you a boyfriend, Swan.”
“What?”
Ruby wraps her arms around Emma’s waist and rests her chin on Emma’s shoulder. “Regina said she found some spell for a lost love. We thought we’d try it out.”
Emma looks at Regina like she’s crazy. “I thought seances were for Halloween.”
“Magic can happen any time of year,” Mary Margaret chirps as though they’re talking about hope and unicorns, not summoning the dead. She tucks a lighter back into her purse and gives Emma a bright smile. “Do we have everything ready, Regina?”
Regina holds out her hand and Ruby places two items in it. One looks like a piece of paper from the blank pad that hangs from her fridge and the other is-
“Is that my underwear, Ruby?” she shouts. She’s rewarded with a wolfish grin.
“That’s what the spell calls for, hon.”
Emma’s too drunk for this. And probably too horny for this. But since she’s the only one in this room that won’t be going home and getting some, she’s gonna let her friends be weird and then send them on their way and ring in Valentine’s Day with her trusty vibrator.
Maybe they’ll do a round of ‘Light as a feather, stiff as a board’ first.
Ruby marches Emma to the loveseat and steps carefully outside of what looks like a fucking salt circle. Regina, Mary Margaret, Ruby, Dorothy, Mulan, Ariel, and Belle grasp hands with one another on the outer ring of the salt circle and the rug that will now need to be thoroughly vacuumed.
Regina starts to speak in another language, which Emma assumes is Latin but, for all she knows, it could be demonic or Klingon. The rest of the women repeat after her. It feels like some strange call-and-repeat that makes Emma think of schoolyard jump rope songs or maybe a weird line dance you get subjected to at a wedding. Emma shakes her head, sinks into the loveseat, and closes her eyes and wonders how much longer she will have to put up with this humiliation before she can kick everyone out of her house.
It happens so slowly that Emma doesn’t realize its happening at first. She feels a weight on her lap, like someone threw a pillow or a blanket on her and she wonders at first if she passed out and they’re all going to leave her to spend her night alone on her living room couch. But then the weight gets heavier and it starts to have a scent - something that rises above the strange assortment of vanilla and laundry soap and other smells from the hodgepodge of candles all around the room. This scent is male, like the rum she’s been drinking all night but also leather and spice. But before she can articulate this strange new sensation, something else hits her senses.
A male voice.
“Bloody fucking hell.”
Emma’s eyes fly open and there’s a man on her lap. A whole ass man. A person who wasn’t there five minutes ago but is very much there. He’s heavy and warm and Emma’s mouth immediately dries at the sight of the thick tufts of chest hair right in front of her face.
Fucking hell indeed.
The chanting ends immediately and is replaced by a whole cacophony of shouts, whoops, exclaimations, and Ruby rising above the din to shout “Fuck yeah!”
She pushes the apparition off of her lap and stands as though he set her on fire. And damn, looking down at him, wearing only a pair of low-slung flannel pants, with beautiful big blue eyes and a dusting of facial hair she can imagine feels great between a girl’s thighs, he really might set her on fire.
“Where did you come from?” she manages. The room goes silent.
“We summoned him,” Regina says, sounding pretty damn proud of herself.
“Shit, Regina,” she breathes. Emma isn’t sure what she should do now but, dead or alive, she doesn’t want to be a bad hostess. She reaches down and offers him a hand. Even though he was lying across her lap a moment ago, solid and heavy, she holds her breath, waiting to see if he will glide through her touch like Ghost or some other sci-fi movie.
His touch is electric.
She can’t help the shiver that runs through her when their flesh connects, or the way her knees go a little weak when he gives her a crooked, awe-struck smile.
“Hello, love.”
Her eyebrows fly up at the sound of his voice. She had thought she heard it the first time he spoke, but now she knows for sure. He has an accent. A fucking accent. Emma reaches for the piece of paper that she had been sitting on, ignoring the underwear on top of it, and scans the blocky letters.
Nice
Loyal
Makes you feel at home
Funny
Smart
Confident, but not cocky
Big dick
Scruffy
Chest hair
Handsome
Good body
Accent
Giver in bed
Knows when to pull hair and spank
His dark chuckle beside her ear makes Emma tense up in some very good and not-so-good ways. “Nice list there, lass. I particularly like the last item.” She turns in time to catch his tongue dancing along the corner of his mouth in a very dirty way.
“Well, we’ll just leave you two to it.”
Shit. Emma had forgotten that they were surrounded by seven of her closest friends. She looks away from tall, dark, and dead to make eye contact with Ruby. Had Emma been wearing a mic or did she just have a stellar memory?
“Leave us to what, Ruby?”
The women all giggle and Ruby’s eyebrows waggle again. “Whatever you want, honey. What. Ever. You. Want.”
Emma starts to step toward Ruby and maybe throw a punch, but she’s stopped by the stern form of Regina.
“Don’t you dare, Swan. Either of you takes a step outside this salt circle and Loverboy there disappears.”
“Where does he go?” Emma asks, suddenly concerned for the mostly-naked stranger in her living room.
Regina shrugs. “Wherever he came from, I guess. But just know that if you break the circle, the spell is over. So if I were you, I’d think long and hard about how I want to spend my night.” Her eyes cut over Emma’s shoulder and her lips curl in an appreciative smile. “You could do worse, Miss Swan,” she drawls.
The women all laugh and giggle and cheerily wave goodbye as they trot out Emma’s front door, Mary Margaret kindly offering to lock up behind them. Before she can formulate any more words, Emma is left alone in her home with some undead naked man, stuck in a salt circle without a phone and, worse, without a drink.
She sinks back into the loveseat, covers her face with her hands, and groans.
“Swan?”
Emma peeks at the man through her fingers. “Yes,” she mutters. “That’s my last name.”
“Ah.” He sighs quietly and seats himself beside her. “A lovely name for a lovely woman.”
“Are you trying to seduce me?”
The man lets out a laugh that makes her stomach flip. He has a nice laugh. “You are the one who called me here, lass. Is seduction necessary?”
She lets her hands drop from her face. “My friends called you here. They think this whole thing is a joke.”
“Is it a joke?” When she does not answer, he holds out his hand. “Give me that list again, love.” He studies it with a furrowed brow and Emma fights to keep her face from turning pink. But why should she care? He’s a fucking ghost. Ghosts don’t get to judge her.
“Quite the list here, Swan. Your ideal man?”
Normally she’d flip him the bird or kick him out of her house, but Emma can hear Regina’s advice in her head, and she decides to let down her guard a bit. He’s dead after all. “Yeah. Is that you?”
He hums as though he is thinking and then taps at the paper. “Nice? Well, I would like to think so. Loyal? To a fault, at times. Makes you feel at home.” He looks around them. “I think we are already at your home, love.” She snorts and he grins. “Ah, so we can agree on the next item. Funny. Smart. Graduated in the top of my class at the Academy but I am afraid I’ve been a disappointment ever since. Confident, but not cocky.” He hums again. “I have been accused of being cocky before, so your friend’s spell might not have worked.”
He doesn’t have to name the next item when he taps the words with his finger. Big dick. “I would love to show you just how big, Miss Swan.” She feels her thighs clench at what he says and the way he raises an eyebrow when he says it. Oh yeah, he’s cocky alright.
“Scruffy. Chest hair. Handsome. Good body. Accent.” He runs his other hand up and down his form, as though to demonstrate how he checks every single one of those boxes. He gives her a look with hooded eyes and she gives him a nod of approval that makes his breath hitch. “Glad we are in agreement, then.”
Emma’s fingers itch to run through that damn chest hair or press that damn scruff into the sensitive flesh between her breasts when he sets down the list. Before she knows what’s happening, he’s on his knees right in front of her, sex in his eyes and his hands land on her knees. They’re warm and heavy and they don’t feel like a ghost’s hands.
“Giver in bed. Knows when to pull hair and spank. Is that how you like to be fucked, Miss Swan?”
Why be coy? She bites her lip and nods eagerly. Maybe even a little too eagerly. His fingers begin tracing wavy lines up and down the tops of her thighs.
“I do not have a bloody buggering clue how I got here. And I imagine that whatever magic brought me here will vanish by morning light or when one of us needs to piss or eat or go back to what we were doing.” One of his hands cups her cheek with surprising tenderness. “But I would be remiss if I didn’t share my own list.”
“You have a list?” Emma asks, in a daze.
“Well, I do not have one written down underneath a pair of knickers, but I do have a list. Would you like to hear it?”
Emma presses gently against his hand, gauges the sincerity in his gaze, and smiles. “Hit me with it.”
He hits her with a kiss, something soft, just a brush of his lips, to the right side of her neck. “Blonde,” he whispers. He moves to the other side and adds, “Gorgeous.” He scoops up one of her hands and kisses her palm. “Brave.” The back of her hand. “Strong.” Her other hand. “A lovely laugh. An amazing ass.” She chuckles at that one and he smiles into the back of her hand.
“A very spankable ass,” he amends with a raised brow. With both of her hands in his, he runs his thumbs up and down the ridges of her knuckles. “Compassionate. Kind. A good friend.” He swallows and she thinks she catches a hint of pain in his eyes. “Patient.” She wants to ask what he means, but he lets go of her hands to grip her hips and pull her forward, suddenly, so her ass is half off the couch. “Loves to suck cock and fuck where we might get caught.”
Oh.
Shit.
Oh shit.
For the first time in a very, very long time, Emma kisses the hell out of a strange man without worrying what will happen next. She wraps her arms around his shoulders and feels his hands slide around her back and they give themselves over to this weird, passionate, sexy moment. The man knows how to kiss, that’s for sure. He deepens the kiss almost immediately, tongue dancing alongside hers, teeth nibbling at her lower lip, mouth tasting like that same rum she’s been enjoying all evening. But it tastes sweeter, better, when she tastes it on him.
She didn’t put expert at unhooking a bra on her list, but this man is. She feels her bra loosen beneath her blouse and then allows the man to break the kiss so he can pull both her shirt and her bra off of her.
“Add perfect tits to that list, love,” he breathes. She nods distractedly and digs her fingers into his hair as he leans forward and circles his tongue around a nipple. Emma begins to fall into a haze of magic and rum and pleasure as his hand fondles the breast he’s currently neglecting and then moves his mouth over to tease the now-hard nipple. He goes back and forth several times and only stops when she begins to squirm beneath him.
“Time for giving?” he asks. Emma laughs. The perfect ghost, who would have thought? He deftly unbuttons her jeans and peels them off of her legs. Her panties are soaked through and she lets out a depraved moan when he leans forward to kiss her right over the fabric. “Bloody hell, you really are a dream woman,” he groans. He quickly removes her underwear, pulls her to the right position, and dives right into her without having to be asked. His mouth is pure sin, pure sex, and just fucking perfect. He eats her like a man who hasn’t had a meal in weeks and the insane part of Emma’s mind wonders if he died from starvation or something.
His tongue finds her clit right away and runs lazily across that perfect place that makes her squirm. Any other guy she’s had to coach - the few times she’s asked for or received oral, that is - but this guy just gets it. He sucks at her clit, making her hips buck up, and then his mouth lowers down and she can feel his tongue sliding into her, fucking her, and she wriggles at how good and perfect and fucking hot it feels.
He laughs like he knows how good he is. Is that confident or cocky? And then his mouth moves and makes way for a finger sliding into her. She lets out a gasp at the intrusion.
“Bloody perfect,” he murmurs. He curls his finger, pulls it out, and then slides two inside of her. “Fucking tight and soft and just bloody perfect.”
“D-Dirty talk,” she gasps as he picks up the pace.
“Aye? I did not see that on your list.” His tongue returns to her clit.
Emma nods and sinks her hands into his thick locks. “I-I like it. That should have been on my list.”
He chuckles into her, sending shock waves up and down her body. He pulls back an inch and she lets out a whimper at the loss. “When my mouth isn’t occupied with your delectable cunt, I shall share every filthy thought in my mind. Would you like that, darling?”
The man does not wait for an answer before diving back in. The pressure mounts with every flick of his tongue and every thrust of his fingers until she wraps her legs around his head, grips his hair even tighter, and comes with a loud shout that echoes around her living room.
One of his fingers leaves her and the one remaining moves slowly, softly, as his tongue glides across her sensitive folds, and after a few minutes her legs relax and he helps her lowers them to the ground.
“Fuck,” she breathes. She feels the man’s warmth leave her and opens her eyes to see him seated in front of her, legs crossed, like an oversized child during storytime. Well, not exactly. Those flannel pants are doing nothing to hide a body part that has become much more excited now that they’ve moved from the sweet parts of their lists to the more mature parts.
“Well, I will agree that you’re a giver,” she deadpans. He grins up at her, beard glistening in the candlelight.
“I am willing to give more than once, if you’d like.”
Emma shakes her head. “Nah, let’s move on to one of your items.”
His fingers play with the strings of his pajama bottoms. “Patient?” She shakes her head. “Kind?”
“Closer.” She stands up on shaky legs and reaches out her hand to help him stand again. But this time, he smells like her. And she licks her lips at the scent. “I’ll give you a hint. It goes with one of the items on my list.”
She traces the lines of his abdominal muscles, smiling when they clench beneath her. The bulge in his pants twitches too. He’s obviously wearing nothing underneath the pajamas.
“What item is that, love?” he murmurs.
Emma glides her hand beneath the waistband and wraps her fingers around the warm, solid length of him. He groans at the same time she says, “A big dick.” She grasps the sides of his pants and slides them down as she seats herself back on the couch. His cock bounces right at mouth-level. She gives him a shit-eating grin before she leans forward to wrap her lips around the head and enjoys the way it makes him let out a shout.
She pulls back and waits for him to make eye contact again. “Loves to suck cock?” He nods. She smirks. “This one, I would love to suck.”
Emma leans back a bit on the loveseat, allowing him to brace his hands on the back of it and slowly rock in and out of her mouth. He has a delicious, beautiful dick, one that makes her folds get warm again at the thought of it inside of her, filling her up. She hallows out her cheeks, plants her hand on his ass, and lets him fuck her mouth for as long as he wants. She sort of expects the guy to go awhile, but when her fingernails graze his sack, he pulls back with a gasp.
“Shit, Swan. Keep going like that and I shall embarrass myself.”
“What’s there to be embarrassed about?” she asks, smacking her lips together in clear pleasure.
The man growls and gets back on his knees, surging forward for another kiss. “Only that I wish to fuck you, love. Perhaps pull on your hair and smack your arse, as you wish.”
She hums against his lips. “Okay. If you insist.”
Her first time with a guy is usually standard missionary. Guys like to be on top, be in control. Sometimes she’d get a lazy one that wanted to make her do all the work and get on top. But being bent over the arm of a couch, teased with a slick dick sliding along her folds, that’s the kind of first time Emma Swan loves. She thinks maybe he’ll go slow, let her get used to him, draw it out a little more, but then she feels him line himself up and fill her up with a single thrust.
Oh shit.
This, this is the best first sex she’s ever had.
She doesn’t even have to ask him to grab her by the hair, because she told Ruby and Ruby wrote it on that crazy summoning list. So she gets to enjoy that sharp pain as he wrenches her head back slightly as his cock sets a punishing pace deep inside of her. Emma lets out a low moan and she can feel herself tightening around him when he laughs quietly.
“Naughty girl there, Swan.” The hand not gripping her hair comes down on her ass with a loud crack. “Rousing a man from his sleep so he could make you come.” He smacks her again. “Tsk tsk. Whatever shall I do for your punishment?”
Emma can think of a few things, but she doesn’t have to. He pulls out, making her whimper pathetically at the loss of him, and spanks her a few more times. Then his hand smooths across her reddened flesh and he gets down on his knees to lazily lick her folds from behind, groaning, “I love what this does to you, darling. Dripping for me.” She thinks she might be on the verge again, starting to ride his face, but he pulls away and she lets out a shriek of displeasure.
His hand squeezes her ass, making her wince, and then he seems to disappear again. She opens her eyes just in time to see his cock coming for her as he kneels on the seat cushions.
“Open up, love. I decided I wasn’t done with you yet.” Emma’s never been one for sucking a dick that’s been inside her, but she’s not going to think too hard when she’s letting a ghost have sex with her. She opens up wide and lets him fuck her in the face some more. This time his fingers dig into her hair, pulling and holding her in place and making her moan. His words make her moan too, a torrent of filthy phrases and fantasies and compliments. He doesn’t stop talking when he lets go of her curls, pulls himself out of her mouth, and repositions himself behind her. He keeps telling her how tight and beautiful and perfect she feels as he thrusts harder and harder and faster and faster, until she feels like maybe she’s the one who’s died, because the fingers he slides beneath her that circle her clit make her have a true out-of-body-experience.
The way he gasps her last name a moment after she falls, while she’s still falling, makes her think he was waiting for her to come first, and maybe she should add Gentleman to the list because he obviously is one.
He pulls out of her and she thinks probably he’s going to disappear because the spell is complete or something? But his hand tightens on her hip and he pulls her up and around so that her cheek rests against his chest and his arms wrap around her. He’s still there, warm and solid and also sweaty. But in a good way. She can faintly feel his lips press a kiss to the top of her head.
“Alright there, Swan?” he asks. “Still with me?”
Emma nods. She looks up and her heart squeezes a little at the look on his face. Kind. Yeah, he checks that box. She drops a kiss to his chest and laments for a moment that she never got to dig her fingers into it as she rode him. Maybe next time.
But then her body tenses in shock. Because that’s not a normal Emma Swan thought. Emma doesn’t do next times. She does one-time onlys. Love ‘em and leave ‘em. Emma Swan doesn’t do emotional baggage or vulnerability. His brow furrows in concern, obviously noticing her rising panic, but she tries to disguise it by standing on her tiptoes to kiss his lips again.
“Maybe I’ll have Regina summon you again,” she murmurs. It sounds like a wonderful, terrible idea.
The man kisses her back and then dances them toward the loveseat until they are curled up with one another on the much-too-small space. He reaches up to tug the blanket on the back of the loveseat over their naked, exhausted bodies.
“Goodnight, woman of my dreams,” he whispers into her hair.
But before she can whisper back, “Goodnight lost love,” sleep claims her.
-----
When she wakes up, she is alone. Naked, alone, and surrounded by candles.
And on the line of salt that circles her, there’s a single footprint much too large to be her own.
-----
“I’ve got a Valentine for you, Sheriff!” Emma chirps, trying to infuse the worst fucking day of the fucking year with a bit of good cheer. The bail skip that she’s escorted into the Storybrooke sheriff department does not find her funny, and though Emma wants to punch him again for the curses he grumbles under his breath, she refrains from doing so.
“Just what I wanted!” David Nolan laughs, peeking his head out from the supply closet. “My very own criminal!” He gives Emma a warm smile and nods to the holding cell at the back wall of the station. She walks the skip back, removes his cuffs, and lets David lock him up until he’s ready to process him.
“Did Mary Margaret make it home last night?” Emma asks once they’re out of earshot. David hands her a coffee mug and fills it up from the pot.
David nods. “Yes, but she must have had way too much to drink. When I asked what you guys got up to she told me that they summoned you a boyfriend?”
Emma coughs and sends a shower of coffee down her front. David looks worried. “She said that?”
“Yeah. What really happened? Did you guys slip something into her drink again?”
Emma licks her lips and carefully, slowly, takes a long drink of the coffee. She lets it warm up all the corners of her confused brain and sore body and then gives David a level look.
“I have no fucking clue what happened last night, David, but a man I’ve never seen before appeared like magic in my living room and we had the best sex of my life.”
David Nolan does an incredible impersonation of someone who is not phased by hearing about a dead man being summoned and fucking his friend. He takes two steps back, leans against his desk, and nods thoughtfully before bringing his coffee cup to his lips and taking a deep drink from an empty mug.
A sound from the supply closet saves Emma from having to explain further or David from having to call the psychiatric ward. They both look over and Emma feels her heart race.
“You got a Valentine treat hiding in there, Nolan? Something I should share with the missus?”
David laughs lightly, obviously still shaken up by Emma’s admission, and gestures to the door. “No, that’s the new deputy. Moved to town last week but he already decided we need to re-organize the closet. Said something about a need to alphabetize.”
Emma grunts. “Sounds like a tight ass.”
The Sheriff’s eyes light up and Emma’s seen that look enough times to know that it spells danger. “Actually,” he says, and Emma groans into her next sip of coffee, “I don’t know how he’d compare to dead guy ghost sex, but I think you and Killian would hit it off.”
“Me and Mr. Tightass? Unlikely.”
“Do I hear someone disparaging my posterior?” The voice coming from the supply closet sounds oddly familiar, and Emma only has a second to contemplate why it sounds familiar before the new deputy steps into the office and Emma almost falls over backwards.
“Swan?” He’s wearing actual clothes today, a black leather jacket and dark jeans and he looks damn good, although she wasn’t complaining the night before.
She can’t really respond in the same way, since she never asked for his name, and she thinks that calling him ‘Big Dick’ or ‘Great Lay’ or ‘Hair Puller’ might make David even more uncomfortable. So she settles for shouting. “I thought you were dead!”
And he exclaims back, “I thought I was dreaming.”
David looks between them, the poor man utterly lost and confused, then, with the same level-headedness that makes him a great Sheriff, he steps to the coffee pot, refills his mug, and marches back to the holding cell. He laughs over his shoulder, “Come get me when things get less weird out here.”
“I… don’t think that’s possible,” Emma breathes.
Emma isn’t sure how long they stand there, staring at one another, before her face starts to fill with color at the memory of the night before. And, of course, her hastily-made plans while she staked out this skip, to call Regina tonight, drag her away from whatever Valentine’s Day plans she has with Robin, and make her summon the amazing sex man for her again.
“You’re real,” she says, finally.
He nods and takes tentative steps forward until he’s only a breath away. “Aye. And so are you.”
She lays her hand on his chest and they both start at the contact. His touch is still electric, here, in the light of the day, in the real world, outside of any crazy spell.
“Regina cast a spell to find lost love. I think I just assumed when you appeared that you couldn’t be real. Or possible. Because I’m not the girl who gets the dream.”
His eyes soften. He lays his hand over hers on his chest and he is so warm and so real and so wonderful that she’s scared as hell right now.
“Maybe this time you do, love. Maybe this time we both get the dream.”
And then his lips are on hers, soft and sweet and just fucking perfect. He kisses her for so long that David eventually interrupts them and startles them back into the real world.
“You think you can continue this later? We’ve got work to do, Deputy.”
The ghost man - the dream man - Killian - nods, his face turning a pretty shade of pink. “Aye, Sheriff.” He turns to Emma and tilts his head down shyly. “Might I have the honor of your company this evening, Miss Swan?”
“It’s Valentine’s Day,” she says.
“Of that I am fully aware. Would you be my date? I do not have a reservation, but perhaps-”
Emma cuts him off with a kiss. “I think we can find somewhere.” Her fingers wrap around the lapels of his leather jacket. She likes this leather jacket. “But you’ll probably have to wear clothes if we go out in public.”
Killian gives her a sinful look that tells her that he clearly intends for tonight to end up the same way as last night. “Lets not worry about that, Swan. After all, we have an item from my list that we never got to.”
She suddenly remembers what it is, but she wants to hear him say it. “What’s that?”
“Loves to fuck where we might get caught.”
Emma nods and leans forward so she can whisper into his ear while her fingers play with the soft hairs at the nape of his neck. “Only if we combine it with a nuance that didn’t make it from request to written format.”
“What’s that?”
She slides her hand around and then down his chest, before she grips the soft fabric of his Henley. “The reason I like chest hair is so I have something to grip when I’m riding.”
Killian’s eyes light with clear excitement. “I think that could be arranged, love. That could be arranged quite easily.”
-----
The back hallway of Granny’s Diner is actually the perfect place to get fucked up against a wall. And Emma can’t figure out the best part of the night.
Could be clutching Killian’s chest hair as he fucked her into oblivion.
Could be Ruby catching them as they are getting themselves cleaned up again and nearly fainting at the sight of Killian.
Or it could be the way she leads him to her bed that night, kissing and caressing and sharing vulnerable pillow talk that feels so supernaturally natural.
Whatever the best part of the night might be, Emma Swan is one hundred percent sure that it is the best fucking Valentine’s Day of her life.
-----
tagging those who might be interested - and I know I didn't get them all because the tags didn't work for some names
In honor of Galentine's Day and the (nearly) exact one year anniversary of this smutty-yet-feelsy masterpiece, I'm popping in out of the hectic "real world" to rec a fic that you certainly will come back to again and again. Check it out, along with all of @belovedcreation's other amazing work - including her two current fics - here on tumblr or over at AO3. You'll be glad you did!!
online communities are so strange because people slip away so easily. you can be on here for years, folding people you've never met into the fabric of your daily life, and then they disappear, leaving only ghost posts scattered across tumblr behind. or their blog stays dormant, for weeks, months, years, until you're only still following them because you remember that they love sunflowers or they were kind to you when they didn't have to be or the last thing they posted was sad and raw and you still worry about them sometimes.
and sometimes they come back when you least expect it, years later, even, and there's this sudden rush of relief like there you are, there you are, even though you barely knew each other.
there's a strange kind of love to it. i don't know you and i want to hold your hand across miles and time zones and oceans. i can still see the imprint of you in this community you left. you don't think anyone will notice or care when you're gone, but we notice and we care and we wish you well.
i hope you're all okay out there. i hope the sun is shining on your face and you are breathing deeply. i miss you.
