if you live by the word, you die by the pen -- CH 8
SUMMARY: It’s just another day with bad coffee, the day that Sheriff Swan enters Detective Jones’ precinct.
The fact that his life is about to come apart at the seams is purely incidental.
With apologies to Dashiell Hammett and James Ellroy, i’m playing in their sandbox and i’m taking the bucket and the shovel. You guys can keep the rake.
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|CH1| CH2 | CH3 | CH4 | CH5 | CH6 | CH7 |
AO3 (if you want decent formatting, because tumblr does not).
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A/N: My darlings - i want to write all of you the most epic love note for being so patient and sticking with this fic, but i find the English language is lacking the adequate expressions for just how much it means to me. Will you settle for some love and hugs instead? 💖💖💖 (Yes, i’m ridiculously tired and a little loopy, why do you ask? 😂)
For @profdanglaisstuff, my enabler and goddess of language, who is always there when i need her, who encourages my lunacy and provides the brilliance in every single brainstorming session and finds magic trees. Without her there would be no stories, and i cannot thank her enough. Even if she is slowly but surely creating a monster turning me into a plotter.
And for @ohmightydevviepuu who’s probably already forgotten that this was originally her birthday present (hey, maybe i'll manage to finish it up by the time your next birthday comes around! 😂) and for @kmomof4 who actually is a paragon of patience these days. And of course @captainsjedi whose amazing art started it all.
And to all of you still reading - THANK YOU. i LOVE YOU. 💖💖💖
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If you want on or off the tag list, let me know! (And seriously - if it’s ‘off’ - please don’t worry. Absolutely no hard feelings.)
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CHAPTER 8
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On one side of a narrow river, fast and flush with fall rains, next to a steel bridge which has seen better days, four people stand, waiting.
A tall man with brown hair and bloodshot eyes, clearly hungover, is mostly trying to keep his bearings. Next to him a blond man looks forlorn and wary, like he’s unnerved by the entire situation, and none of the other people present can blame him. Least of all the man with the bloodshot eyes, who makes a point to nod at the blond man in an effort of reassurance. Several times.
A woman with a messy ponytail and a disheveled-looking man with blue eyes and lots of scruff stand slightly to the side, neither moving nor touching. All they do is glance up the hill to where their parked cruiser stands, then at each other, then at their watches.
“Where are they?” The woman asks, her voice low and worried.
“They’ll be here,” says the man.
It’s minutes later when the scruffy man turns to the blond one and says, “Victor, you should go. This has nothing to do with you,” and the blond man replies, “I’m staying.”
“Why?” It comes out gruff and the blond man flinches.
But then he lifts his chin and says with no small means of defiance, “I’m a doctor. You may need one.”
And they all fall silent again.
Until they hear a car door slam closed above them, and turn to watch two more people come down the hill.
Another blond man, this one in a deputy’s uniform.
And a small brunette with a large rifle slung behind her back.
.
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“Call me Mary Margaret.” Emma smiles at Ms Blanchard’s very firm handshake.
“Sheriff Emma Swan,” she replies. “I heard you ran circles around my tracking?”
Ms Blanchard blushes a very pretty shade of pink, which almost immediately mirrors in her deputy’s cheeks, and Emma files that information away for much, much later.
“I, uh, didn’t mean to---”
“I’m not complaining,” Emma cuts off the beginnings of her apology. “I only know the basics, and my experience is more reading crime scenes than spoor. I’m glad you’re here.”
Mary Margaret smiles an absolutely radiant smile, and David behind her blushes even more, and oh god, he’s got it bad. Emma will spend many a future night making merciless fun of him.
If they get future nights.
A spike of pure fear makes Emma’s breath hitch and she pushes it down.
“David said you had something to show us?”
Mary Margaret nods, and lets her gaze wander up over the surrounding trees, their branches creaking in the wind. She spends a long time looking, and they all follow her example, but Emma can’t make out anything but evergreen needles and the last falling leaves of the deciduous.
Mary Margaret’s brow furrows, but she doesn’t comment before she finally motions towards the bridge itself.
“Here, let me show you,” she says, and leads them all to the middle, before turning to Emma and pointing at the slats. “We have to lie down.”
Emma gets down on cold, rusty metal, and can feel Killian lie down down beside her. He’s warm next to her, and just close enough to touch down the length of her side, and she smiles at him briefly before looking back at Mary Margaret on her other side.
Mary Margaret, who lifts her hand and points.
Up.
The moment Emma sees the symbols down the length of the bannister, she can feel Killian beside her go rigid. His breath stops . The letters look exactly like the ones on the note cards, like the ones on Leroy’s back, but they don’t look carved into the metal, they look etched.
As if they were made by acid, something corrosive.
She lifts her hand to trace them when an iron grip closes around her wrist and Killian next to her yells, “ DON’T! ” and yanks her arm away so forcefully, her shoulder protests loudly for a brief moment. He sits up, breathing hard, and when he speaks, his voice is a gravelly hiss.
“Don’t touch anything.” He looks sharply at Emma and Mary Margaret. “Nothing at all.” Then he turns to David. “We need to photograph all of this. Do you have your crime scene kit and camera?”
The deputy nods, and Killian looks at August. “Go with him,” he says. “Help the deputy get his gear, take the photos. You know what to do. Touch nothing. ”
It is only then that he seems to come back to himself and looks at Emma, ducking his head. “Sorry. I’m sorry. This is your crime scene. I just-- I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK,” she says, and sits up, nodding. “Go ahead, David. Get the camera, document all of this. Make sure it’s sequential, and stays in order.”
She stands, helps up Mary Margaret, and Killian looks relieved and contrite in equal measure.
“Did I hurt you?” He whispers. “Your arm, did it hurt? I’m sorry.”
“I’m fine,” she says, and smiles. “Don’t worry about me.”
Then she drops her voice low. “Have you seen this kind of thing before? Symbols on structures?”
Killian’s eyes are large and worried as he shakes his head. “Never. I don’t know what to make of them.”
Emma watches as his eyes drift over to August and the doctor, bent over the CSI cases with her deputy. It’s a sign she has learned to recognize. Killian looking away in that manner is a clear indicator that he’s completely caught inside his own head.
So she waits.
“They weren’t made by a quill,” he finally says. He turns his head back to her, his eyes focus slowly on hers.
Emma nods. “I don’t think they were made by any type of blade or point. It looked chemical, like the top layer of the steel was stripped.”
“We have to swab it.” Killian shakes his head. “We have to test it for particulates, residue, anything concrete---”
“And we will.” Emma slowly puts her hand on his arm. He looks so very strained.
“Killian.” She waits until he meets her eyes, gives her his full attention. “We’ll take all the samples and do all the tests, OK? And we’ll be careful.” He gives her a wan smile. “But now let’s sweep the area one more time and find out what Ms Blanchard wanted to----”
“ SHERIFF! ” It’s Mary Margaret’s voice, from the other side of the river. Its pitch is easily an octave above normal, and somersaulting all over her words. “ SHERIFF! YOU HAVE TO COME HERE! ”
David sprints past them with a clatter of hard-soled shoes, and Emma and Killian break into a run to follow.
Behind them Emma can hear both August and Whale, but slower.
On the other side of the bridge is a clearing which runs in a very gentle slope down to the wide, generous bank of the river. This side belongs to the forest - there are neither roads nor paths, just the trees and many, many animal prints leading down to the watering hole.
Mary Margaret stands at the far edge of the clearing, right at the tree line, white as a sheet and shaking.
“I knew they couldn’t have just disappeared,” she says. Her eyes are glassy and she’s mumbling to herself. “They couldn’t have, it’s just not possible.”
She looks at David. “I said it the first time, didn’t I? That it’s not possible?”
Emma watches her deputy slowly take Mary Margaret’s hands and ask quietly, “What are you talking about? What’s impossible?”
Her eyes fill with tears. “Graham’s tracks, they just disappeared, and now I know why.”
She swallows hard, and more tears fall. “Look!” Her voice cuts out and she tries again. “Look up.”
And six pairs of eyes lift to look at the trees above.
On a high branch in the tree to their left - an enormous rowan with quite a few leaves left - a figure swings gently in the wind.
Wearing a coarse linen robe, strung up by the wrists which are bound together underneath cupped hands, hangs the Huntsman.
-/-
“What. The Fuck.”
Victor’s eyes are enormous as he looks from the corpse dangling up high to each member of the group and then back again. He looks thoroughly bewildered and not a little afraid.
August can’t blame him. It’s a gruesome sight.
The Sheriff and Killian subconsciously step closer to each other, but they don’t touch. August can see Killian’s hand twitch like he wants to take hers and stops himself at the last moment. Repeatedly. Not like the deputy and the woman with the rifle. David is hugging her hard. It looks like she knew the victim.
“We have to cut him down,” August finally says, trying to keep his voice quiet, calm. While every fiber in his body is telling him to Run. Now.
Killian nods. “Without touching anything.” He looks up again, squinting. “Emma? Are there carvings on the branches?”
Sheriff Swan whispers, “I can’t tell.” And steps even closer to Killian. There’s barely an inch of space between them now, and August can see them for what they are: A unit.
This is new, and it takes him completely unawares.
The fact that Killian is part of something again.
Back in Boston, a lifetime ago, when August and Liam were partners and caught the first in that string of strange homicides which would end their lives figuratively for one and literally for the other, Killian was just a stuttering image and lagging audio across an old computer screen. Just someone Liam had videoconferenced to consult, because he’d had the sinking feeling that the randomly carved lines on the notecards were in fact not random at all. Especially not after they found similar ones across the back of the victim.
And Liam had been right.
The lines were not random, they were an ancient phonetic alphabet which had been used to transcribe another ancient language, and Liam asked his brother to come and consult.
August remembers it well.
He remembers the Killian who first came to Boston, a walking cliché in tweed and elbow patches, with his messy hair and his scruff and his eyes constantly laughing. They’d ribbed each other, Liam and Killian, like only brothers who truly love, truly understand each other can, and through it all Liam made sure everyone knew that his little brother was the smartest man in any room he walked into.
To which Killian would blush and half-smile, and then roll his eyes and make another futile attempt to get Liam to say ‘younger brother’. Which he never did.
And then tragedy struck and that Killian, the one with the quick jokes and the easy smile and the laughing eyes vanished. He disappeared like the body of his brother they never found, and changed his life’s calling and purpose to the pursuit of atonement.
Years now, years of this, of penance and pain and the weight of the dead.
Of sifting the wreckage of lives destroyed and deaths unavenged, while August dove into a bottle and never came back up for air.
And now Killian is here, broken and damaged and yet functioning, and it throws August for a loop, hard, the way Killian and the Sheriff seem to vibrate along the same frequency. The way they are in tune, attuned, in this perfect sync and click which Killian has never had with anyone save his brother.
It’s simultaneously the most hopeful and the most terrifying sign yet.
There’s a deafening crack , and Killian and David both shout, “ GET BACK! ” as the branch breaks off and slams to the ground, corpse and all.
“Everybody OK?” Emma’s voice is unsteady. “Anyone hurt?”
August looks around, but everyone seems fine, and he breathes a sigh of relief.
Killian pulls at Emma’s shoulder to look at her, and she smiles at him, tells him she’s fine.
David is looking up at the tree, trying to gauge the damage.
The short-haired brunette has pulled the rifle off her back and is holding it in a firm regulation grip, barrel-down, index finger well away from the trigger. She definitely knows her weaponry, and seems to have a handle on her emotions now. She’s no longer crying.
And Victor----
It’s a second too late. He looks for Victor a second too late, a fleeting moment, a blink, a fucking fraction of time too late, because Victor has of course stepped forward
he’s a doctor, He’sADoctor
up to the corpse
how could you forget he’s a fucking DOCTOR
and knelt down next to it
and he knows nothing about this case, nothing
and stretched out his hand, his bare hand
why didn’t you check on Victor first
to touch----
Killian and Emma and David and August simultaneously scream, “ DON’T ”, scream “ STOP! ”, and August leaps forward, but it’s too late
it’s too late
and Victor’s outstretched, bare fingers touch the cold, dead skin of Graham’s wrist.
August’s momentum rips Victor away a split second later, but it’s not enough, and he knows it’s not enough, and they both tumble to the ground amidst brown leaves and cold earth and August swears he can hear the jaws of fate snapping shut.
And then there is silence.
-/-
How long?
It’s the question on everybody’s mind. In everyone’s eyes. Emma can almost taste it in the air.
How long does he have?
David is busy cordoning off a perimeter. For all the good it will do now.
Emma has called the ME, and Ashley says she’ll come down here with the siren, cut her driving time in half. Like it’s going to make a difference.
Victor sits on a tree trunk off to the side, pale, shaking, listening to Killian and August. Tell him about how he is going to--- how he is going to----
“What’s going to happen to him?”
Emma turns and finds herself facing Ms Blanchard, her eyes narrowed, the rifle across her shoulder.
Emma shrugs. “I’m not sure, exactly.”
“I realize I’m just a civilian. And an elementary school teacher to boot.” Ms Blancha rd’s tone is resolute and firm. Emma has no trouble believing she can keep infinite numbers of 4th graders in a very straight line. “But I have eyes. There’s no need for discretion with me.” She shakes her head. “That guy over there, he’s the next victim. Isn’t he.”
Emma looks at the woman before her, and it’s almost a relief to be able to nod. “I think he might be.”
“Graham found the last victim, didn’t he.”
Emma nods again.
“Do you think Graham touched him? Do you think that’s why he died?”
Ms Blanchard’s voice shakes on the last bit, and Emma remembers that she was friends with the hunter.
“I think it’s very likely,” she says gently. “Leroy was prostrate on the bridge, not displayed in a tree. Graham probably tried to help, or check his pulse.”
“That makes sense.” Ms Blanchard’s voice is very quiet now. “He knew first aid. And he was a very decent person.” She looks up at Emma and sniffs, once. “Did you know he tried to call me before he died?”
“He what?”
“It’s in my statement. I--- I told David?”
Emma shakes her head to clear it.
“Ms Blanchard---”
“Please Sheriff. I told you to call me Mary Margaret.”
Emma can’t pay attention to niceties right now.
“When you say Graham called you before he died, what do you mean? How long before he died? What did you talk about?”
“We didn’t talk.” Mary Margaret looks supremely unhappy now. “He called sometime after midnight. He tried, at least. I woke up to 23 missed calls.” She sniffs again. “I’m a heavy sleeper.” It sounds like an apology. “Anyway, by the time I woke up and found my phone, he’d stopped, and I tried to call back, but all I got was his voicemail, and I----” her voice breaks--- “and then I never saw him again.”
She’s holding on by the barest of threads. Emma feels a pang of empathy.
“I’m sorry Ms Blanchard.”
The brunette rolls her eyes.
“I’m sorry Mary Margaret ,” Emma says, and gets a wan smile in return. “But thank you for telling me. This is incredibly helpful information.”
“How so?”
“Because this area is remote and wooded, and we have no less than five cell towers covering it.” Emma feels a slim ray of hope for the first time in a long time. This is tangible evidence. This is what she does. “And now we can triangulate the signals and track Graham’s movements. His exact movements.”
-/-
“We are not joking, Victor. This is real.”
August’s voice is as soft as Killian has ever heard it, and Victor grows very, very still.
Only minutes ago he was rolling his eyes at Killian and August and laughing out loud at the preposterous notion of tangible evil that chooses its victims by touch, and Killian can’t blame him for thinking they are short all the fries of a Happy Meal, but he is also so, so tired of fighting this fight.
Of explaining every preposterous aspect of this godforsaken case.
Over. And over. And over.
He looks at Emma, talking to the school teacher, and she feels his gaze, meets his eyes, and smiles. It gives him enough strength to turn back to Victor, now pale and quiet, looking up at them with uncertain eyes and no small amount of fear.
He feels his gut tighten into nausea.
This is his friend. His friend who is going to----
Victor was Elsa’s friend first. She met him long after Liam died and she went back to work, met him at the hospital where she did her assessment sessions for insanity pleas. Suddenly the word ‘Victor‘ crept into a lot of her stories, and Killian was so suspicious of him at first, just poised to hate him.
Until Elsa finally invited them both out for drinks, and Killian realized that Dr. Whale was just helping Elsa through things, and was not going to tarnish Liam’s memory.
He was also smart and wickedly funny and obviously cared a great deal about Elsa, and it was just so wonderful sometimes to have someone to talk to who knew nothing about impossible cases and deadly quills and runes carved in blood. Especially since August had disappeared down a long liquid spiral, and Elsa spent her nights surrounded by framed memories.
Killian had just completed his rookie year at the Boston PD and was spending all his time either trying to untwist Liam’s death or studying for the detective’s exam, and it was just such a pleasure to go meet Victor for drinks and talk about none of it .
To just have a conversation about the Bruins (Killian doesn’t know hockey, but he does know how to let other people talk about hockey), or about the Red Sox (same principle), or about the absolutely insane practical jokes surgeons play on each other (he’s now convinced they’re all eternally just hitting puberty). So he went to whatever bar whenever Victor called to meet him, and for one night didn’t think about anything, and simply enjoyed the fact that Victor was smart and wickedly funny and knew nothing.
And he didn’t have to carry the weight of the dead for a little while.
And now this friend, this friend, is going to----
Is going to----
Next to Killian August crouches and pats Victor’s knee.
“Hey,” August says, and his voice is still soft and careful. Not a hint of its usual mix of bitterness and irony. “We’re not going to let anything happen to you.”
Victor’s eyes follow August’s movement, but don’t seem to see him. August looks up.
“Right, Killian?”
Killian nods. There is no way he is losing another----
“Right.” August gets up and holds his hand out to Victor. “Now come with me. We are going to go back and have a fucking drink.”
Victor’s empty eyes blink. “It’s not even 10AM yet.”
“Trauma exception,” August says, and pulls the doctor to his feet. “Killian, can I borrow your car?”
Killian watches them both walk away, and doesn’t notice Emma until he feels her hand fold into his. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Which it is.
“Where are they going?” He turns to look at her.
Standing there, in the middle of these woods, in the middle of this cursed case, faced with impossible odds and improbable facts, with nothing but a deputy who’s never worked a homicide and an alcoholic ex-cop and a burned-out detective and an elementary school teacher on her side, Emma is holding his hand and offering comfort and care and support, and he lets go of her hand, catches the flash of hurt in her eyes, but he needs both of his hands, right now---
right now---
to lean in
and take her face
and tilt it up
and kiss her.
Like he means it.
Like he has never meant anything ever in his entire life.
His entire.
Life.
She stiffens for a moment.
And then melts against him, like a key sliding into a lock, and she kisses him back
back
back
and it is everythingeverythingeverything.
Everything.
.
There have been lessons in Emma’s life, hard-won and arduous; lessons she fought and bled for for years.
She has learned that trust must be earned and sparingly given, promises are more often broken than kept, and that that which you do not feel cannot hurt you.
She has learned to be prudent with people and wary of good fortune, to not give without cause nor receive without caution, and that to be safe is always better than to be sorry.
She has learned that to be free of attachment, unbound by people or places or things, is the safest way to live.
None it matters the moment his lips touch hers.
For one, brief, fleeting moment the lessons learned and the defenses built in their name scream in protest, and then---
and then---
The warmth and peace and utter sense of belonging, and closeness, and oh god, home . The sense of being seen, and treasured, and fucking cherished . It’s almost too much.
She has to breathe through the tears that are threatening to come, because he is kissing her like he is the river and she is the sea.
And she should be afraid.
This is how they kiss on the rooftop in her vision amidst lightning and thunder and a storm raging destruction, which means they are another step closer to their inevitable demise, but she can’t because nothing
nothing
nothing can feel like this and be bad.
When he pulls back his eyes are soft, and he smiles a small, shy smile, and then whispers, “Emma?”
She nods. Her voice is not working.
“I’m not sorry,” he says. “I’ve wanted to do that since----” He exhales, slowly. His hand runs down her arm until it reaches her hand, and he folds his fingers through hers.
And squeezes them, hard.
“I’ve wanted to do that since the night we spent at Elsa’s house.”
Once again his voice is a whisper, and Emma thinks of that morning, when she woke up in a panic from the first vision and he came downstairs to comfort her, and in the middle of that room full of memories of everything he’d lost promised her they would prevail.
Promised her he would not let anything happen to her.
Her eyes fill with tears and she simply stands up on tiptoes and kisses him again. He wraps himself around her with a sigh, and when they finally break apart he doesn’t let go, leans his forehead against hers, rubs his thumb across her cheek. Takes a few deep breaths as if he’s about to say something - but remains silent.
Then David very pointedly clears his throat and Emma remembers they’re in the woods with her deputy and a civilian and a corpse .
“Back to work,” she whispers, and Killian smiles.
“Yes,” he says. Just that one word. But she doesn’t need anything else.
Then she turns to David, and he lets go of her hand, and the loss of warmth is simply awful. But there is a killer to catch.
Also, David is scowling like thunder while Mary Margaret is rolling her eyes, and Emma nearly laughs out loud. It’s so normal . Their reactions are so very much part of How Things Are Supposed To Be.
Not the Twilight Zone version her world has become. She half expects David to break out a lecture.
But instead he points across the bridge.
“I think Ashley is here,” he says, and they all watch the ME as she comes down the hill.
Ashley looks around when she gets there; at the corpse on the ground, still tethered to a tree branch, at the blood-smeared rough linen of his gown, at his closed hands which are obviously holding an object, an object with brown barbules sticking out past his fingertips, and then she puts down her case.
“Something brought down the Huntsman? ” Ashley’s voice is not quite steady.
David’s brow furrows. “You knew Graham?”
“We met once,” she says, shaking her head. “I took an orienteering /survival course years ago. He was the guide.”
Then she straightens up and puts her hands on her hips. “I think you owe me an explanation. Because whatever is being played here, it’s not a game.”
-/-
Back at the diner, August puts the cruiser in park and shuts off the engine. The man next to him hasn’t said a word the entire drive.
“Hey.” August keeps his voice quiet as he turns to the doctor. “How about we---”
“I always knew there was something,” Victor cuts him off. Toneless and distant. “With Killian and Elsa and the brother who died, I knew there was something.”
He looks up at August, and for the first time, he sees him. “I’d read about the cases, of course. I mean - for a while you couldn’t get away from them, you know?”
August does know. Serial killer on the loose. Random, mutilated victims. Unknown cause of death . It was in every newspaper, every news cycle, for weeks. For months .
And once Will had been killed----
August had known, then and there, that the case was going to get him, and not the other way around. But the notoriety, the constant press, had magnified each loss a hundred times over, until all he could do was disappear away from it all.
“And I’m not stupid,” Victor goes on. “I knew there were things the news didn’t tell us, things Elsa and Killian didn’t tell me, weird things.” He sighs. “Things that were---- odd. Strange, you know? They both seemed to carry something so--- heavy. More than the loss of a loved one.”
His blue eyes get very shiny. August has to actively stop himself from taking Victor’s hand.
“Anyway, I always thought there was something .” He shrugs. “And now I know.”
He lifts his hands, only to let them drop back into his lap. It looks utterly helpless.
“Now I know, and I wish I didn’t.”
“I know.” August takes a deep breath, and then he does reach for the doctor’s hand. “Trust me, I know.”
Victor looks up in wonder and doesn’t pull away, and it gives August hope of a kind he hasn’t felt in years.
“Come upstairs,” he whispers. “Let’s go upstairs and have a drink and talk this out. Because that thing is not going to get you, whatever it is. We are going to beat this, if it’s the last thing I do.”
And the doctor looks up and gives him a smile that’s both terrified and hopeful and says, “Good.”
-/-
“And now?”
They have documented the crime scene. Ashley has finished her on-site examination. They have loaded the corpse into her van and watched her drive off and promised to come by later to get her results and tell her what they know.
Mary Margaret looks pale and David looks worried and Killian looks dead on his feet.
“It’s been hours,” Emma answers Mary Margaret’s question. “It’s freezing and none of us have eaten and Killian has boxes worth of files we haven’t even opened yet.” She looks around. “Killian and I will go back to the station and order pizza and get started on my report and his files. David, can you take Mary Margaret home?”
“Don’t even bother,” Mary Margaret says. “I’m coming to the station with you. I know you can’t use me as a cop, because, well - I’m not a cop, but I’m coming. I make very good coffee, and you might need my expertise.” At their puzzled faces she adds, “You have pictures of previous crime scenes, right? Were any of them outside? Is it possible that a tracker could be a helpful second pair of eyes?”
David says, “We can’t ask you to do that,” and Mary Margaret rolls her eyes hard. It’s fast becoming Emma’s favorite expression.
That woman plays her deputy like a fiddle already.
“I don’t want to be home alone,” Mary Margaret says quietly. “And besides - the other two guys took Killian’s car. Which leaves us with exactly one vehicle.”
Well, she has a point. That woman is not a teacher for nothing.
David says, “You really shouldn’t---”
And Emma cuts him off. “Of course you can come with us. There will be things we can’t officially share with you, but your input could be valuable, and the safest place to be is the station.”
David blushes as Emma silently dares him to object, and she nods. “Go ahead and start loading the gear. We’ll be right up.”
And then she turns to Killian.
“There’s a couch at the station,” she says. “You can take a nap while we wait for the pizza.”
He smiles and cups her cheek.
“I’d much rather go to my room. With you.” His smile gets a wicked edge. “To talk about the case, of course.”
“Of course,” she says, and he leans in to kiss her. It’s just as wonderful as it was the first time. When they break apart, he sighs.
“Emma,” he says, and now the laughter is gone from his voice, and it’s so, so earnest. “I know you’re worried, and you have every right to be. And I know now we have to figure out impossible clues and an ancient unknown language and bloody magic , and save Victor’s life.” He takes a deep breath. “But this?” His fingers brush past her lips, whisper down her jawline until they tangle in the hair at the back of her neck, warm and sure. “This?” He repeats. “This is not a mistake.”
He kisses her one more time, short, and urgent, and then looks at her and his eyes are burning.
“Nothing that feels so right could ever be a mistake.”
And Emma nods, because she feels the absolute truth of it down to the bottom of her battered soul.
.
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A/N II: Hey, look everybody! The slow burn is finally catching fire! i really hope you enjoyed that, because OMG you all have earned it several times over. You really have waited long enough.
Thank you so much for reading and sticking with me. i love you all.