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I Thank God Every Day for That Damn Alarm Clock

Author Notes: Gotta holla at my girl @sheriffchiselchin, for whom I had the pleasure of being CSSS. She is lovely and sweet and endlessly patient because by this point, I’m actually her NYE Secret Santa. Here is the start of an angsty-with-a-happy-ending MC for you, milady! Also, can we please take a moment to appreciate the fact that we were paired up randomly, but we both have URLs based on the magical sass of Cruella addressing handsome men? I love it. Also, we have the same CS gif as our blog header. You can’t write this stuff, people. Inspired by a few different prompts, this is a seedling of an idea I've had in my head for a little while, and my angst-loving heart just had to expound on it. A prompt-themed tumblr posted something about Person A of your OTP waking up to someone else's alarm and going over to wake them up, only to discover Person B sleeps in the nude. Easy enough. But, a different tumblr user, whose name unfortunately escapes me, wrote a wonderful post about how instead of "meet cutes," there should be more "meet uglies," wherein couples have horrible first meetings. I love that idea. As for the references of drug use you will spy in the rating, I am fascinated by different renditions in modern AUs of Killian coping with the darkness in his life, his addictive personality, and the need to forget things that have happened to him. Thus, you have this story. I promise it ends well. Thanks are due to @bleebug, who looked this over for me when it was a hot mess and still said nice things to me. ily girl

Words: 2,500 and some change Rated: T+ for mentions of drug use/addiction

Find on A03 here.

------------------------------- Chapter One It wasn't very often Emma Swan was allowed to sleep in, but when she did, she relished it. She was one of those people who needed a solid string of seven or more hours of sleep to function at full capacity. Alas, with her line of work, that was scarcely possible.

But this day was different. For the first time in weeks, she didn't have an alarm set. It was her day off, a day in which she planned to sleep to her body's content and lazily spend the rest of the day lounging around her apartment, preferably in her pajamas.

The skip she'd been staking out the past week had met his match in Emma Swan, and the case had finally come to a close at around 2:00 a.m. By the time she had taken him to the police station and signed the appropriate paperwork, it was three in the morning. She didn't crawl into her bed until 3:30 a.m. It took her only a handful of seconds to fall asleep, cocooned beneath a mountain of blankets. +++

The sound of an alarm pulled Emma roughly into cruel, unwanted consciousness. Groggily, she reached out for her phone to silence it. Her arm was halfway out from beneath her blankets before she remembered she hadn't set an alarm.

Wherever it was coming from, the sound was incessant. It was vibrating, as well, seeming to pulse in time with her throbbing head. She heard it through the wall, even after she pulled her pillow over her head and crammed it into her ears with her fists.

Emma had always known her apartment walls were thin, but this was next-level obnoxious. The neighbor to the right of her—an attractive, dark-haired man in his early thirties she had seen around the building a few times—was clearly sleeping through his alarm.

He was either choosing to hit the snooze button on his phone, making himself an unknowing sadist, or he was sleeping through it. It was clearly a cell phone's alarm—she recognized the obnoxious default ring tone—and every five minutes, it came back on again, rejuvenated after its snooze.

Exasperated, Emma finally yanked her pillow off her head with a growl. Groping in the dark, she reached out for her phone, and nearly knocked it off her nightstand as she felt around blindly. Assaulting blue light flooded the room as soon as she turned it on, and she winced, squinting at her phone screen.

“Are you kidding me?” she groaned. It wasn't even 7:00 a.m.

She wanted to give the guy the benefit of the doubt, but she was within seconds of getting out of bed, marching next door, and waking the guy up personally.

Abruptly, the alarm stopped. A few minutes of blissful silence unfolded, and Emma relaxed, beginning to drift away.

And then it started up again.

She cursed loudly, shooting up out of bed, and threw her pillow across the room. It landed with a loud Fwap! against the opposite wall.

"Oh, that is it," she muttered, as she threw her blankets off herself with a few violent kicks.

Her neighbor, handsome as he was, was about to experience the full extent of her sleep-deprived wrath, and she didn't pity him in the slightest.

She whipped on her robe over her nightie and slipped on the shoes closest to the door that weren't a pair of heels, muttering angrily beneath her breath the whole way.

She wasn't sure what she expected, necessarily, but she found her neighbor's door unlocked. In all honesty, she hadn't thought that part through, but counted herself fortunate she didn't have to break his door in.

The door gave a muted squeak as she pushed it open. Her first few steps in were soft, hesitant, as she was hyper aware of the fact that this was considered breaking and entering. After a moment, she straightened, and had to chuckle at how ridiculous it was she was trying to stay silent when the whole idea of trespassing was to wake the guy up.

Her neighbor's apartment had almost the exact same layout as Emma's, and she found the bedroom easily. Save for the color of his carpet, the apartment was a carbon copy of hers, down to the asylum-white walls (which they weren't permitted to paint) and the outdated 90s kitchen appliances. Admittedly, his place was kept much tidier, but that wasn't difficult to accomplish.

Her neighbor—and she realized then that she didn't even know his name—was lying in his bed, wrapped up in a thick navy comforter. She could see the top of his dark head poking out from beneath it. Anger flared hotly inside her at how easily he seemed to be sleeping, even as his phone alarm went off, yet again, for what had to be the tenth time.

"Okay, buddy," she said through clenched teeth, "Time to rise and shine." She took the blanket in both hands and yanked it off him in one fell swoop. She felt a twinge of guilt when he flopped over like a giant, heavy rag doll, rolling from his stomach to his back-- And he was naked.

Her eyes bugged out, naturally drifting down to confirm, and yes—yup yup yup—he was most certainly naked, not a stitch of clothing on him. With a gasp, Emma turned away, her hand shooting up to cover her eyes, immediately abashed.

“I'm sorry,” she stammered out, “I mean, I shouldn't have—just—can you please turn off your alarm? And maybe put some clothes on?”

She turned back to face him again, splitting her fingers open over her eyes to peep at him from behind her hand.

He hadn't moved. He was still lying there in the exact same position, sprawled out limply on his bed, stark naked. Emma's blood ran cold.

“Hey,” she said, panic rising up to overtake her voice. The sudden onslaught of cold air should have aroused even the heaviest of sleepers, but her neighbor hadn't even twitched.

She leaned down over the bed, fingers fumbling over his neck as she scrambled to find a pulse. She swore she heard him moan ever so slightly when her warm fingers pressed against the skin just below his jaw, and it was then she felt it—the faint beating of a pulse.

She all but sprinted back over to her apartment to grab her phone, and she had the 911 dispatcher on the line in seconds. “9-1-1, what's your emergency?”

+++ The paramedics made her wait in the hallway when they arrived. She noticed one of them had carried in a small defibrillator, but she didn't hear it being used, which she took as a good sign. Within minutes, her neighbor was carried away on a stretcher, a portable oxygen mask attached securely over his mouth. She watched his dark head pass, the only thing she could clearly make out around the mask he wore and the blanket they had laid over him.

The ambulance technicians had asked her a few questions, and she offered what little information she had. Emma had no idea what to do next. So, she did the only thing she could think to do: she found out which hospital he was being taken to, put on a change of clothes, got in her car, and drove.

+++

Emma decided to wait as long as it took to get an update. It was only right. She didn't have anywhere else to be, after all, and she wanted to make sure the guy was going to be okay. She felt a certain level of obligation, to be sure, and mild curiosity. But, strangely, she genuinely cared what happened to this man. She barely knew him, and had realized halfway into her attempt to wake him that she didn't even know his name.

But still, she found herself concerned with what happened to him next. As her mind wandered, bored silly in a nearly empty waiting room, she realized she did know his last name, at least: Jones. It was listed on the tiny metal mail box next to hers, down on the main floor of the complex where everyone in the building came to get their mail. So, she sat in a waiting room, waiting on Mr. Jones.

The room was almost empty, save for her. A middle-aged woman sat on the other side of the room, engrossed in her knitting—or crocheting, Emma wasn't really sure. She hadn't even looked up when Emma entered the room. Briefly, Emma had wondered who the woman was waiting for, and what kind of news she would receive. She hoped it was something happy awaiting her on the other side of the waiting room doors, like the arrival of a new grandchild.

Emma wasn't sure what kind of news she'd get. She was fairly certain her neighbor—Mr Jones, she had to keep reminding herself—would have died if she hadn't found him. He had been so completely out of it, unresponsive and weak. She had barely been able to find a pulse, and if it hadn't been for the quiet sound he made when she placed her hand at his neck, she would have thought he was already gone.

There was a small television in the corner of the room, set to a news station. The news tended to bore Emma, or depress her, so after about five minutes of staring blankly at the screen, she was looking around the room again. She found a few magazines on an end table, but they turned out to be just as interesting as it would have been to watch the other woman in the room knit, and eventually, Emma got up and left the room in search of something to drink.

+++

An hour later, as she had sat in the waiting room nursing a cup of cocoa, trying not to fall asleep in her chair, a young doctor came passing through the waiting room. Emma recognized him easily as one of the doctors who had been discussing her neighbor with some of the paramedics when she had first arrived at the hospital. It was hard to miss the bleach-blonde hair, and as soon as she lay eyes on him, Emma jumped out of her seat.

“Hey,” she said, a little too loudly, and she shot an apologetic wince to the other woman in the room, who had nearly leapt out of her skin. The doctor turned to look at her. “Sorry,” Emma stammered, “Just—I'm waiting for an update on Mr. Jones? It's been a while.”

The doctor stared at her blankly for a beat before he spoke. “Sorry, were you waiting here for him? No one told me there was anyone here to see my patient. Your friend overdosed on heroin last night and we've been trying to keep him stabilized.”

It was so matter-of-fact, lacking in all bedside manner, that Emma felt her jaw drop slackly. “I'm sorry, what?” she asked. “Did you just say heroin? Like, the drug?” Emma could feel the gaze of the other woman on her, sensed the judgment radiating from her, and she physically had to resist the urge to snap at her to mind her own business.

The doctor was watching her intently. He nodded. “Yes, heroin the drug. It's easy enough to overdose on by itself, but I'm pretty sure the stuff in your friend's system was much stronger, likely laced with Fentanyl. I'm still waiting on the toxicology report.” Emma felt the urge to correct him every time he called Mr. Jones her friend, as she hadn't even met him officially, but she didn't bother.

“Does he have a history of overdosing?”

Emma hadn't realized her mind had been elsewhere, stuck on the image of Mr. Jones, lying motionless in his bed, until the doctor asked her a direct question and ripped her, thankfully, from her thoughts. “Uh, I really have no idea,” she said. The doctor gave her an unexpectedly warm, albeit tired, smile. “Fair enough,” he said. “He's resting now, but we expect him to be awake soon. Would you like to see him?” Emma gaped. She hadn't thought this far ahead, beyond making sure her neighbor was okay. “Sure,” she heard herself blurt out.

The doctor nodded, and he was walking away from her before she could retract her answer. “I'll send someone to bring you back in a few minutes,” he called over his shoulder.

Sure enough, a nurse soon came to fetch her and brought her back to Mr. Jones' room. The room itself was dingy and poorly lit, with yellowed wallpaper and absolutely nothing pleasant about it. Emma caught herself thinking, before she could shake the errant thought away, about bringing him flowers from the hospital store to brighten the place up a bit.

Did men even like flowers? She had no idea. Neal would have thought flowers were sappy and stupid, even though Emma happened to like them. She gave a shaky sigh, willing thoughts of her ex back into the shadows where they belonged. She didn't know this man, Jones, at all. She had no right to think about bringing him flowers, or paying him another visit. She barely knew his name. All she knew was his last name, the fact that he lived next door to her, and he was apparently addicted to heroin. “And you've seen his penis,” she reminded herself. She felt blush rising to her cheeks at the thought, and she willed the image away.

He looked so much smaller somehow, lying in a hospital bed. There were IVs in one of his wrists, hooked up to a bag of clear fluid that hung by his bedside, and perhaps being attached to heart monitors and mystery liquids always made people look smaller. At least the oxygen mask was gone, and for that, Emma was relieved. His face looked the same as when she had found him, peaceful and relaxed.

Emma swallowed nervously as she lowered herself to sit in the chair next to his bed, her eyes never straying from his face. They flitted over his features, taking in the dark hair matted to his forehead, the back of it still sticking up in odd places from sleep, and the heavy stubble covering his jaw. He really was quite handsome, even like this, and for a long while, she merely watched him, lulled by the gentle rise and fall of his chest.

Then, she pictured how awkward it would be if he awoke while she was there. How would she explain to him why she was in his room with him, sitting at his side? Would he even remember what had happened to him—what he had done to himself?

Fortunately, she didn't have to worry about any of that. She stayed exactly four minutes before the stress of the situation drove her away. At one point, she had thought she saw his lashes flutter, as if he were about to wake up, but nothing happened. When she realized she would have absolutely nothing to say if he did awaken, she left.

She made a brief stop at the front desk on her way out. They had already gotten her phone number when she'd first arrived, and she asked them to call her if there were any updates on Mr. Jones. She figured it was the neighborly thing to do.

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