Hey there, @colinoeyebrows, it’s me, your secret Santa! I’m sorry we didn’t get more time to get to know each other before I wrote your story, but I think I managed to create something that fits what you’ll enjoy. I kept it short - but not too short! And I suppose it would be filed under enemies/friends to lovers, if it required a label. I truly hope you enjoy it and that you have a Merry Christmas! I think in your time zone it’s officially Christmas Eve, so I’m not too terribly early, but here in the states it’s still Christmas Eve Eve... and I’m terribly sick and requiring a few days of not moving a finger, so here you are! I hope you enjoy. I tried to pack it full of as much Christmas joy as possible :)
Killian and Emma are neighbors in an apartment building full of Emma’s makeshift family. He’s been insufferable most times, but also oddly kind, so Emma tolerates him. But his weird over-the-top dedication to their Christmas decorating this year is really starting to grate on her. Until she understands.
@cssecretsanta2k19
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“Killian! Stop stealing my damn ladder!”
“Of course, princess,” the jerk snarked back at her. What had she ever done to deserve him as a next door neighbor? So full of himself, intensely competitive over things that did not require competition, and always, always making sure he had the last word. He’d probably raise up from his damn casket just to say one last thing when the eulogies were finished.
Not that Emma would be there. Ugh. She’d love to be rid of him.
Except that on some days he was literally the only thing she actually looked forward to. When work was stressful and she hadn’t caught a skip in weeks and she’d fallen and sprained an ankle and a wrist, he was there, mocking her crutches and laughing at her drug-addled ramblings, but still always, always helping her up the stairs, fetching her mail, tipping her pizza delivery man extra for delivering hers first despite being the farthest away from the parlor.
How could one person be so infuriating and yet so caring at the same time?
Halloween this year had been canceled as the town was practically falling down (thundersnow or ice-nado or something of the like), so this year, Storybrooke had decided to simply transfer the door-to-door candy begging from Halloween to Christmas. Because of this, landlords all over town were asking that tenants decorate and prepare to delight the children who had been robbed of their November sugar hangover by Mother Nature, instead giving them a lovely sugar hangover for Christmas morning.
(Sounded like a conspiracy by parents to get kids to sleep in, but whatever.)
Emma made fudge every year and always had tons left over, so this year she’d decided she’d throw herself into this Halloween-Christmas mashup with everything she had. Her other neighbors were always very festive, specifically the ice skater Elsa who every year had more Christmas lights in her one-bedroom apartment than all of the foster homes Emma ever lived in. Combined. Ruby loved to dress her dog up as a reindeer, and even David and Mary Margaret went all out, despite being the owners of the building and not just lowly tenants.
Killian usually kept his decorations minimal. Mistletoe over his doorway just to taunt his neighbors (female and male alike, to Graham’s amusement and horror), and maybe one string of lights or tinsel around the doorway.
But no. This year he’s decided there’s a door-decorating contest that he’s absolutely going to win.
Emma, on the other hand, is absolutely going to kill him.
He stole her ladder. He stole her tacks. He stole her snowflakes with sticky backs.
This man was driving her so insane that she was starting to rhyme like a cartoon train.
Ugh.
Elsa (infuriatingly) found it endearing. And Ruby, ever the flirt, was mostly trying to distract their neighbors into standing under Killian’s mistletoe with her. No one seemed to be as furious as Emma that the bartender across the hall who usually didn’t give a crap about Christmas was suddenly “dedicated to his craft” so much that he just had to take her scalloped scissors at exactly the time that she needed them.
She was going to scallop his other hand off if he didn’t watch it.
Thoroughly frustrated with decoration, she took a nice, long break late that morning to go check on her fudge and start bagging it for the kids that would be coming around No-Trick-Just-Treating tonight.
Living in this apartment had been surprisingly life-altering for Emma. The lifelong lost girl had finally found some people she called family, even though none of them were related. The family you choose is the real one, Ruby had told her one drunken evening when Emma finally spilled her secrets, her sadness at being abandoned as a child, her fear that it would all be taken from her again. So it was only recently that she’d even decided Christmas was worth celebrating. Christmas Eves of her childhood had mostly been like every other day – if they weren’t even more miserable because of all the joy she was missing out on by being unwanted. It had taken her years of reflection, therapy, and bad decision making for her to realize that she wasn’t the problem. That hope was always there. That she had things worth celebrating now, even though she suffered in the past.
And god forbid if any single child who walked through her hallway tonight was in need of a glimmer of hope, she’d be the one to provide it. Even if only through a bag of fudge and a warm smile.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Emma’s door sounded like it might break off the hinges, so she went running, assuming that something deeply horrifying was happening outside it.
But no, it was just Killian. On her ladder. Affixing mistletoe to her doorway.
“You know this thing is supposed to be about kids right? Not you trying to suck face with all thirty of your neighbors.”
“Well you’re the last one I’ve managed to not kiss. Ball’s in your court, love.”
“Can you go bother someone else? Emma’s a common name. Find a different one.”
“But my darling, all I want for Christmas is you,” he began singing, putting on quite the distracting performance in their shared hallway.
She couldn’t help but smile. She’d never met someone so… carefree? It was like the only thing Killian was capable of doing was making people smile (even when it was accompanied by another person’s heavy eye roll). But she was envious of him, because she’d give anything to not be burdened by the ghosts of Christmas past.
“Can you please go bother someone else, Jones?”
“Oh, fine. But I’ll be back for fudge.”
He turned on his heel and started back toward Ruby’s and Graham’s side of the building, ignoring Emma as she shouted back to him, “the candy is for the children, not for grown adult asses!”
Later that night, Christmas Eve in full-swing, Emma received another knock on her door. She grabbed her tub of fudge and skipped to the doorway, only to be met with those infuriatingly beautiful blue eyes that could only belong to one Killian Jones… alongside a small human who looked strikingly like him.
“Holiday Treats!” the two of them yelled together, nearly giggling, and Emma would have laughed too if she weren’t so damn confused.
“Jones, are you plucking children off the street to guilt me into giving you peanut butter fudge?”
“Killian said your fudge is the best ever in the whole world! And my brother doesn’t lie.”
“I’m sorry… brother?” Emma gaped, suddenly feeling as if there’s quite a lot she didn’t know about Killian Jones.
“Liam, please don’t scare the nice fudge lady or she won’t give us any,” Killian teasingly chastised to his shorter counterpart before turning back to Emma to explain. “So, long story short, my father is a garbage human being and after leaving me and my older brother in an orphanage, he started a new family and abandoned them, too. Just found out about little Liam here about a week ago, but I’m now an approved foster parent, and, well, he’s soon to be your neighbor, too!”
“Aye, aye!” Liam yelled, absolutely delighted by at least some part of that odd tale.
“Oh my god, that’s why you wanted to decorate so badly.”
“Yep, just trying to make things festive for junior here. Now…. Fudge, please?” he asked, pouting his lip and extending his open hand. Liam, of course, followed suit, and Emma nearly burst into a fit of laughter at the sight.
“Of course, Joneses,” she chuckled, handing them twice as much fudge as she’d given out to any of the other children.
“Now why don’t you stop on by later on so I can get to know my new neighbor a little bit better?”
“Of course, love!” Killian replied, about to bolt for the next candy-giving door when Emma stopped him abruptly, her hand gripping his elbow tightly, keeping him in place.
Before he had time to question her, she leaned in and gave him a sweet peck on the corner of the mouth, muttering “mistletoe” into his ear before she leaned back against the doorframe.
A little dazed, Killian did nothing but smile somewhat confusedly, until Liam tugged on his leather jacket. “Kiss your girlfriend later – it’s candy time!”
When the Joneses came back later that night, Emma made them her signature hot chocolate and they watched a marathon of Love, Actually, Elf, and Rudolph, each of them passing out on their respective couches long before Emma had a chance to turn off her Christmas lights. When they awoke the next morning, she made them breakfast and they invited her over to open presents with them (not that Killian could afford many, but he was trying, he’d whispered to her as Liam begged her to join).
Merry Christmas from your CS Secret Santa, @thislassishooked! I hope you’re enjoying a wonderful holiday season. From our exchanges, I decided that I wanted to do something from Killian’s POV that incorporated lights and decorations. And for some reason, I felt very strongly that I wanted it to be somewhat canon... so here you have it!
This is a season 1 mostly compliant one-shot in which Killian is a fisherman in Storybrooke, and he meets Emma and Henry a few times. Intrigued and oddly hopeful because of Emma’s fiery spirit, he embarks with her on a Christmas quest for bringing about joy.
It’s not pure fluff and leaves some to the imagination, but I felt like it stayed true to their kind of dynamic. I really, really hope you enjoy!
I know I’m a little early, but I’m sick as hell and worried that tomorrow I might not be conscious, so here you have it on Christmas Eve Eve :)
@cssecretsanta2k19
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It was an odd feeling, being half in love with a woman you’d practically just met. But it had been years, decades, lifetimes, probably, since Killian Jones had encountered such a fierce, witty, engaging, interesting, and bloody gorgeous woman like Emma Swan.
He’d been living in Storybrooke, Maine… since forever, really. His brother had been in Storybrooke General since his accident years before – still alive, of course, but the doctors continually warned Killian against having any kind of hope that their lives would ever return to the normalcy of Granny’s for breakfast in the off-season and hard work lobster fishing the rest of the year.
It wasn’t just that Emma was the liveliest woman he’d met in ages, she was simply the liveliest being, as if she somehow was part of a totally different, vibrant world.
Storybrooke was… fine. It was safe. He made a living. The people were well enough – he enjoyed talking with Miss Blanchard, the teacher who often read to the coma patients in her spare time. Archie was kind and generous, if not a little bit condescending at times, but his dog was sweet and always made Killian smile. Even Dr. Whale was all right – understanding about the phantom pains from the loss of Killian’s hand that he couldn’t even remember.
But Emma? She was pure magic.
Rumor was she was the mayor’s son’s biological mother, and little Henry had dragged her from her home of Boston to Storybrooke because he was so damn miserable. It made sense. Regina Mills was possibly the least nurturing person he could think of in the whole of Storybrooke, and no one ever really understood why she decided to adopt a child. Henry was wonderful, though – Killian had always thought so. Precocious, inquisitive, kind… many traits he can now attribute to nature versus nurture.
The fist time he spoke with Emma happened to be while she and Henry were walking along the pier one afternoon. Emma’s brows were stitched together in worry, her voice low as she spoke to her son, the boy clutching a large children’s book and never breaking eye contact with her. It felt intrusive to even witness the exchange, but alas they were in his way, and there wasn’t much he could do to avoid them when he needed to get all of his supplies back to his ship without somehow losing another limb.
“Excuse me, love, Master Henry,” he mumbled breathlessly, twisting to the side to pass them by without knocking either of them in the head with something large and possibly rusty (when was the last time he’d gotten a tetanus shot? Did they even offer them at the hospital here?).
“Hi, Mr. Jones!” Henry called excitedly, rushing past his mother and following Killian onto the Jewel.
“How’s your day going, lad?” Killian asked after hefting the pile of supplies onto the closest surface. The boy looked happy, as usual, but seemed to have an extra glint in his eye.
“Henry, what the hell!” Emma shouted as her boots stomped onto the ship, her blonde curls now mangled from the seaside breeze.
“Don’t worry, I know him! This is Killian. He’s Captain Hook.” Henry said it so matter-of-factly that it didn’t even cross Killian’s mind to be offended about the possibly jab at his handlessness. The way Henry was talking you’d think he was just reading from a biography.
“Kid, what did I tell you about that? Operation Cobra is for you and I only, and, like I said, it might be time to take a little break from it.” Emma’s eyes were full of concern, genuine worry for her boy, but also fear. He knew that well enough from his vague recollections of the accident(s) that scarred him and rendered his brother near lifeless. What was she so afraid of?
His attempts to quell her worry were for naught, as she wasn’t about to trust a single hair on his body. “Love, the lad and I are great friends, aren’t we Henry?”
“I’m not your love. And Henry shouldn’t be running on board the boats of near strangers when I’m hardly trusted to keep him breathing let alone keep him from being kidnapped by Peter Pan.” Emma snapped.
“Mom, he’s Hook, not Pan,” Henry corrected, his tone that of an exasperated teenager despite the boy being no more than ten or eleven.
“I don’t care who he is, I’m not letting him be the reason I’m never allowed to see you again, Henry! You know if your mother knew that you ran onto some dude’s boat who apparently you thought was a pirate under my watchshe’d have me jailed. Again!”
“It’s actually a ship here, love,” Killian couldn’t help himself from pointing out, his amusement at her fiery attitude entirely inappropriate for what was clearly a very strong emotion she was experiencing. But it was simply so foreign to him, a person having… feelings. Beyond despair, anyway.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Mo-om,” Henry chastised, though it wasn’t clear if he was offended by her language or embarrassed that she wasn’t quite a fan of Killian’s… sass.
(Killian hadn’t remembered a single other moment in his life where he’d said something so… unfiltered. Damn.)
“My apologies, love, I’m not sure what’s come over me. I’m usually much more polite. Henry, we all know your mother – Mayor Mills, that is – would look for just about any reason to throw this lovely fireball out of our town permanently. Emma is right to worry. Now how about you two go about your way and I’ll show you more about fishing the next time that Regina approves it?’”
“So, never?” Henry mumbled, rolling his eyes and walking toward the gangway. Emma turned to follow him, but Killian wanted one last chance to apologize.
“I really am sorry, love. I can’t imagine you’re having an easy go of it here in Storybrooke and I just wanted… well, I just wanted you to know that there’s at least one more person on your side than you thought.”
Emma finally looked back at him, incredulous, and Killian suddenly felt quite naked. Reaching to scratch behind his ear, he clarified: “Me, I mean. I’m also on your side.”
She rolled her eyes yet again, but a spark came alive in the smirk she shot back at him. “Good to know, pirate, but I’m not your love.”
From that day, he’d had numerous minor interactions with the Mills/Swan duo. He saw them at breakfast at Granny’s one morning, and Emma refused to so much as look at him, while Henry excitedly told him all about the website he’d used to find Emma (he glossed over how he stole his teacher’s credit card, a fact that Emma still appeared to be quite peeved about). The following week he saw the two of them at the playground that Killian passed on his way to his ship. He re-introduced himself to Emma, as she was yet to actually acknowledge she knew his name, but she only responded with some variant of, “OK Pirate,” which had led to her and Henry laughing like fools for at least five straight minutes.
About a week before Christmas, he finally ran into Emma without her son, and while he’d thought that was something he was hoping for – an opportunity to get to know her without her hiding behind Henry – he realized something awful. That fiery spirit in her – the one he so admired – was dimming. This town, it was getting to her. Was she doomed just like the rest of them to live forever without a happy ending? Or even a happy middle? Was this safe, sweet, seaside town nothing but dashed hopes and broken dreams?
“Uh, Miss Swan?” he asked, cautiously approaching the bench she was sat on, her blonde hair whipping in the breeze, her hands tucked tightly into her flame red jacket.
“What,” she called back, not even looking at him.
Even their non-conversations previously had been some type of banter, some kind of force in his dreary life, but today, she seemed defeated.
He didn’t know much about the world – didn’t really care enough to participate most days – but wasn’t this seasons supposed to be the one where you believed even more strongly than ever that everything might just end up being all right?
“Can I sit?
“It’s a free country.”
“My purpose in sitting with you is to speak to you, and while I could talk at you, I’m actually hoping you’ll talk back. Is that a reasonable wish or shall I keep on moving?” With great effort, he kept his voice light and teasing, when in reality his heart was breaking right along with hers. From what he understood about her life, Henry was new to it, but had nonetheless become its center. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have had hope dangled in front of your face only to possibly have it snatched away.
Instead of snapping back at him, she slowly lifted her head, swept her hair to the side, and patted the seat next to her. “Why would you want to talk to me?” she asked, her eyes once again trained on her feet.
“You look like you could use a friend.”
“I don’t have any friends.”
“You could. I’m here,” he offered.
She exhaled deeply, shaking her head and gripping the bench at either side of her legs. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. I have no right to Henry… I had him young and gave him up for his best chance. And, as usual, I was wrong. And as usual there’s nothing I can do about it now. I’m fighting a losing battle. It’s not like anyone can defeat Regina.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. You’ve certainly gotten under her skin.”
“Yeah, making it all worse for Henry. I’m just being selfish here, aren’t I? Wanting my son back because he says his rightful mommy is an evil queen? I’m sure that’s something a lot of kids his age feel. I just… I just wanted to be wanted, I guess.”
Killian let his right hand graze the back of hers as he shifted slightly closer to her. When she didn’t flinch away, he allowed his hand to fully rest on hers, squeezing ever so slightly.
“You’re not making Henry’s life worse by being here. Believe me, Emma. I know you don’t know me and I don’t know you, but I have eyes. Henry has always been a bright spot in an otherwise lightless town, but since you’ve arrived it’s like he’s a whole new kid. Confident, excited, hopeful. And don’t discredit what you’ve done for everyone else. Miss Blanchard seems happy to have a roommate. Ruby loves when you visit with her at the diner. Granny seems to think of you as a surrogate granddaughter. Our world was black and white and you brought us color, love.”
The shock in her eyes at his words was enough to both warm his heart and enrage him – it’s not as if he was saying anything that should be surprising to her. Who in her life had made her feel so worthless and how soon could he stab them through the heart with his hook?
You know, if he had one.
But her shock wore off as a bit of mirth seemed to take its place. “Now, I can’t take credit for all of that. Granny likes the money I spend. And Mary Margaret… let’s just say I’m not the one fucking her, so I’m definitely not the reason for the extra smiles.”
“Miss Blanchard!” he gasped theatrically, clutching his heart and hamming it up.
“Oh yeah. You might be the native here, but I know all the secrets, friend.”
“So tell me another.”
“Hmmm. Granny’s lasagnas are frozen.”
“No!” This time he was actually shocked. That crazy loon…
“Oh, yeah. And her nonfat pizza crust? Definitely still has fat.”
“That’s it. I’m calling the health inspector.”
“You know, we don’t have one. I think you’d have to call the sheriff,” she chuckled, flipping her hand over on the bench so her palm was against his.
“Hmmmm, think I have an in with her? I’ve heard she’s a spitfire.”
“I don’t know. Depends on the day you approach her. I’ve heard she has mixed feelings about you, Jones.”
“Oh, so you do know my name,” Killian teased, adjusting the fringe around his hat with his stump.
“I tend to remember the people who try to annoy me to death,” she deadpanned, but he caught the ghost of a smirk at the corner of her lips.
“What if, insteaed of annoying you to death, maybe you let me help you?” Killian offered, absolutely no clue what exactly he could offer her when she wasn’t wrong about the futility of fighting with Mayor Mills.
“Hey now, I’m no damsel. No one saves me but me,” she said, pulling her hand from beneath his and tucking it back into her jacket.
“Easy, love. I’m well aware that you’re more likely than any other person in this god forsaken town to actually have some success at anything.”
“You been reading Henry’s book?” Emma turned fully toward him for the first time since he sat, her cheeks red and her eyes dancing with cautious amusement.
“No, I haven’t had the pleasure. Why?”
“Well. According to his book, I’m here to save everyone. Bring back the happy endings.”
“Oh? And where exactly have they gone?”
“The Evil Queen – Regina, actually – has ripped them from you. But I, the daughter of Snow White (Mary Margaret) and Prince Charming (the former coma patient she’s been banging) am the ‘product of true love’ and therefore can break the curse.”
“Damn, you should sell that shit to Disney. You’d make a fortune.”
“Hah. Maybe I should. It’s about the only way I could ever afford to fight Regina the real way, you know with lawyers and money and not … magic.”
It struck him at that moment how true Henry’s story actually rang. Sure, there was no way it was actually real, but hadn’t Killian himself thought countless times how full of life Emma was, how she seemed magical in a world of nothing but ordinary hopelessness? Even if he didn’t believe Henry’s story… scientifically, or what have you – he believed it in his heart.
Emma might not be an actual princess, but she definitely had the power to save. And he’d do anything he could to help her.
“It’s the season for magic, you know?” Killian pointed out, gesturing vaguely toward the wreaths haphazardly hung on the lampposts that led back to main street.
“Are you going to help me achieve a Christmas miracle, Killian?” She reached back toward him and took his hand, squeezing as her eyes sparkled with a plan.
“I’m damn well going to try.”
Together they stumbled through the slippery streets toward Granny’s, armed with an idea and the hopes that Ruby would facilitate their ridiculous plan to bring Henry as much joy as possible, even if Emma couldn’t directly be involved.
“So, you’re telling me you want me to let you decorate the shit out of this place, just so Henry sees it?” Ruby questioned, her one eyebrow nearly touching her hairline, her face so skeptical.
So Killian jumped in. “Listen, Ruby, you know damn well fighting with Regina never ends well. We just have to give the kid some hope. Believing in even the possibility of a happy ending is a very powerful thing.”
“Are you sleeping with Mary Margaret now, too, because damn that girl gets around.”
“Ruby!” Emma shouted, smacking her on the arm.
“What? Have you seen him? If Mary Margaret isn’t taking her chance with him and you’re not interested, then hello sailor, fancy taking me for a ride?”
“Ruby, fucking focus yourself. Can you help us? And by help us I mean literally offer free decorating service that will likely increase your tips?”
“Oh, fine. For Henry.”
“For Henry!” Emma and Killian repeated, scurrying off to whatever store they could find that carried Christmas lights, tinsel, blow-up polar bears, and any other kind of purchase-able holiday joy.
Once they’d filled three whole carts, they rolled them back to Granny’s, sat down to sip hot chocolate until close, and then went to town, covering every surface with glittery tinsel, jingle bells, reindeer, elves, and pretty little lit-up presents. Killian borrowed a ladder from the short pharmacist so he could string icicle lights across the courtyard outside and Emma filled the big windows at the entrance with those giant bulb style lights of all different colors. At some point after 2am, Ruby texted Emma that the electricity bill was going to be something she’d have to take up with Granny, but Emma just laughed and Killian said he’d pay it and they kept decorating until about 5am when Granny appeared to start baking in preparation for the morning crowd.
“I’m not even going to ask,” was all Granny said to Killian as she entered her now Christmas paper-wrapped front door and Killian’s heart definitely grew two sizes or more when his eyes traveled over to Emma, carefully arranging the Hallmark Disney castle on the ledge next to the table that Henry and Regina often sat at when they stopped there before school.
It was a losing battle they were fighting, Killian was sure of it – nothing in Storybrooke ever led to winning for anyone who wasn’t Regina Mills. But one look at Emma and all he wanted to do was keep fighting, keep trying, keep hoping that one day their world would be full of happy endings again.
CS FF Flashback: Fireworks (that went off too soon)
It’s Independence Day here in America, but considering there’s a uncontained deadly virus, I have three incurable autoimmune diseases, and I could give birth to a fairly large baby at any moment, I’m not exactly out enjoying myself. But I was reminded that one of my favorite CS stories I’ve written is appropriate for today, so I derived a little joy from rereading that. Maybe it might bring you some smiles, too.
This one is M rated but not explicit, and has two chapters, one of Emma’s POV & one of Killian’s. He’s basically Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy, and she was his best friend in college. Years later she hears one of his songs and it changes her perception of the past by a lot - and alters her future, too.
It was the fourth of July
You and I were, you and I were fire, fire, fireworks
That went off too soon
And I miss you in the June gloom, too
It was the fourth of July
You and I were, you and I were fire, fire, fireworks
I said I'd never miss you
But I guess you can never know
May the bridges I have burned light my way back home
On the Fourth of July
Read on AO3.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Hey there! This is a CS one shot. An AU in which Killian is the lead singer and songwriter in a band that sounds suspiciously like Fall Out Boy...
Summary: Emma and Killian were friends in college, but haven’t spoken in 9 years. Killian’s band’s new single changes everything.
Words: 4400ish
Rating: Teen? (Swearing, References to Sex)
Also on AO3
Big thanks to @awkwardnessandbaseball for reading this over, correcting all my dumbass mistakes, and helping me polish this up pretty :)
(The title comes from my favorite Fall Out Boy song, Fourth of July. It’s heavily featured in the story sung by Killian’s band.)
---
It was 3pm on Friday the 13th – also a Full Moon – when Emma Swan finally had the meltdown she’d pressed “pause” on about nine years earlier.
(Nine years, three months, more accurately, but who was counting?)
The work week was winding down. The get this done today or be fired tasks had been completed and all the emails had been answered and it was about time to start doing the bare minimum to run down the clock to 5:01 when she could, without regret, run screaming from the building and put her god forsaken job out of her mind for two days of rest, relaxation, and rum.
(Definitely the rum. Or maybe it had been upgraded to a tequila weekend.)
It was Pandora’s fault, really. (A fitting name for opening up an emotional box inside her soul that had been sealed for quite a long time and with very good fucking reason.)
Usually Emma listened to wordless music – movie scores, Vitamin String Quartet and the like – so as to keep the creative juices flowing without breaking her train of concentration. But having reached the procrastination part of the afternoon, she thought, what harm could there be in listening to a little regular music?
Emma had always had a soft spot for pop/punk/emo music. It brought her joy even when it wasn’t joyful, which is either a sentiment only shared by lonely foster girls or perhaps all emo kids, but did it matter? It was her kind of music. Long before she met Killian Jones.
But then she met him. He was an insufferable ass at least 2/3 of the time, but for the other third of his life, he was sweet, funny, and musically a goddamn genius. His voice was smooth and warm, he could play guitar like it was in his DNA, and his lyrics were both relatable and completely original. She was half in love from the start, so of course she pushed him as far away as possible.
(Love is patient; love is kind. Love is slowly losing my mind)
He was aloof. At best. They were college kids who shared a dorm building and not much else, not until their roommates fell in love with each other. That’s around the time they started spending an inordinate amount of time together. He was fucking anything with brown eyes and tits and she absolutely did not care and everything was fine. They were friends, kind of. She was a fan of his band, but not in the groupie way. She had no intention of being just a notch in his bedpost or a line in his song.
(As it turned out, she ended up becoming both. Eventually.)
When he wasn’t playing shows in dive bars (or fucking freshmen girls in a shower stall of their dorm hall’s shared bathroom), he spent a lot of time in Emma’s room. Mostly to avoid Mary Margaret and David in his room who were, as he called it, “the most sickly sweet love story this side of the Atlantic” and “a complete buzzkill to complex song-writing.” And she was OK with it. She loved when he would compose while she read. And they had the best conversations. They challenged each other on everything from politics to pie flavors and she’d never been so stimulated by someone of the opposite sex in her life.
Intellectually stimulated. In the brain.
By junior year, the two pairs of roommates had moved off-campus, opting to share a three bedroom house while they finished up school. Killian’s band was starting to actually make something of themselves, but he vowed to get his degree (this pretty face won’t last forever), and Emma played tutor for him when he skipped class for weeks on end so he could play some gigs on the west coast.
They were friends. They were equals. They meant so much more to each other than “just” friends or study buddies or housemates or anything, because the past three years had been the most stable years in either of their lives and it was all because of the support they received from each other in the darkest nights and the brightest days and seriously.
Fuck Pandora.
It had distracted her when she was in the middle of perfectly pleasant procrastinating. Now she was getting off track. Frazzled. Fucking pissed.
With her work mostly finished, she had decided to listen to Panic! At the Disco’s station. It was a safe zone – the best of two different genres: emo and pop. She bopped along to Blink 182 and “the Ballad of Mona Lisa.” She swayed and swooned a little when “Secrets” by One Republic played. And she got a good laugh at “I’m Not OK (I Promise),” remembering the days she’d scream “I’m not o-fucking kay! [trust me]” every time she got into a fight with the foster mother she now loved so very much.
But then there was a dramatic twist and a cinematic sweep and that voice and before she could switch the station, some warning popped up at her, removing all the buttons and controls and displaying the error message of SOMETHING WENT WRONG and all she could think was no shit, Sherlock.
Killian’s band got big when they were 21. And stayed big. The band broke up once, briefly, but they’d been dancing around the American Top 40 for at least 6 of the last 9 years and as much as it hurt her to hear his voice through a radio and not through a wall of their shared house, at least the lyrics of the songs never stung her before.
Because they’d never been about her before.
It was the summer before senior year, late that June, and Killian had just returned from a little pop-punk festival in Seattle. She’d picked him up at the airport in Portland (Maine) and had been chatting his ear off about how much better “our” Portland was from “theirs” (Oregon), but Killian had been largely silent.
Which was out of character to the extreme, his little creative writing/song composer mind always racing and his far too pleasing voice always spilling from his stupidly attractive lips.
“What is up with you, Jones? I just said that they have better lobster in Oregon and you didn’t even react.”
From the passenger seat, he played with the window controller, the air whooshing in and stopping to the rhythm of Seven Nation Army AKA the world’s most overplayed song that wasn’t sung by Ed Sheeran or Taylor Swift.
“Hmm? Oh, it’s nothing, Swan. A problem for a different day, to be sure.”
His voice had been quiet, unsure. That wasn’t him either. This was the asshole who could start a trend with a typo and who claimed to have made a girl come with nothing but his voice. His level of confidence was infuriating, but unshakeable.
(He made forgetting the words to his own songs look attractive. And that was an eventual Buzzfeed headline, not Emma’s own assessment. Obviously.)
“Killian, what’s up? Did the festival not go as well as you wanted? From what I saw on YouTube, it seemed awfully successful.”
“Aye, love.” He perked up just a bit, finally turning toward her and smiling. “It was grand.”
“And you’re brooding because, what, you’re worried that feeling happy for too long will sap you of your emo energy or something?”
Her attempt to lighten the mood didn’t seem to take, though, and Killian turned back out the window like he was practicing for his very own music video.
When they got back to their house, Emma grabbed his clothes and Killian lugged the musical equipment and neither of them said a word.
Fog had rolled in, or maybe it was on its way out, and if it weren’t for the green leaves, it might have felt like October. But there was something about his expression that was a hell of a lot more December. Something ending.
They were lingering almost awkwardly in their kitchen, Emma trying to casually wrack her brain for how to pull Killian out of his little funk, when he interrupted her with an overdramatic clearing of his throat.
“Ahem! Fancy a drink, Swan?” Killian extended a shot glass to her, a dark liquid inside that couldn’t be anything but spiced rum.
“What’s the occasion?” she asked hesitantly.
“Perhaps… perhaps it’s a celebration.”
“…of?”
“Your business sense, of course!” He lifted his glass toward hers for a clink and then downed the shot faster than she could even raise hers to her lips.
“What kind of business are we talking here? I’m not sure if this is the setup for an idiot joke or a reference to lyrics you swear you told me you wrote but never actually did.”
“Ah, love, no. Not that, this time anyway. Actually – actually, it’s about the band. And ‘Grand Theft Autumn.’ They loved it like you said they would.”
“They being?”
“The record company. They loved it. And they want it. And us.”
Holy shit! She knew it. They were going to be famous. Killian deserved it so much and they were going to be huge and everyone was going to love him just like she did and –
Wait.
“When you say they want you… do you mean, like, deferred acceptance so you can finish college or…”
“No, love. The boys and I … we’re packing up and moving to LA.”
She was dumbfounded.
“LA?”
“Aye.”
“When?”
“Monday.”
That’s right about the time her stomach dropped to her heels and the rum threatened its way back up her throat and perhaps onto Killian’s perfectly rumpled white shirt.
She just – wasn’t ready to let him go.
She could hear his honey-smooth voice drift through her head, his own lyrics seeming oddly relevant to this dramatic turn in her life.
Maybe he won’t find out what I know; you were the last good thing about this part of town.
So they drank. And drank. And drank some more. They were more honest with each other than they’d been in three years. She told him how much she hated that he thought setting his clocks early would keep him from being late. And he told her that he didn’t truly think that… it just had fit as a song lyrics and he felt like he needed to “make it authentic by living it.”
She called him pretentious and he called her painfully adorable and neither were true and yet somehow they felt like the perfect identifiers for the characters they were trying to be when they weren’t with each other.
So of course she fell into bed with him that night. Her bed. The twinkly lights hung around her ceiling were flickering as he kissed a trail down her neck and she tugged off his way-too-tight jeans and dear fucking lord if she thought the only thing he could do with his tongue was sing, she was officially wrong.
But come morning she was officially gone. As the sun rose on a rainy June Sunday morning, she slipped out of her bed, slid into whatever clothes she could reach without making noise, and jogged all the way to David’s brother’s frat house to hide until Monday came and went and when exactly did her life turn into an emo song?
When I wake up I’m willing to take my chances on the hope I forget
September. Friday the 13th. Pandora malfunction. Her brain was reeling and her heart was shattering all over again, because the song pumping through her pathetic tinny Dell speakers was, on first blush, just another of his melodramatic fictions, a series of sentiments that sounded good together but that he’d never actually experienced (he’d admitted the best songs were much like Hey There Delilah… a lovely story and 0% real). But she could hear something genuine in that still so attractive voice. And then… a few familiar thoughts.
I’ll be as honest as you let me
I miss your early morning company
If you get me
You are my favorite ‘what if’
You are my best ‘I’ll never know’
She’d turned off her phone the morning she’d left him in her bed. Kept it off until Tuesday. And blocked his number the minute she turned it back on.
Goodbyes were bad enough. To have been reduced to his very last college-one-night-stand? She couldn’t face it.
(Especially because she’d realized mid-fuck she’d kind of always wanted to be his forever, or whatever overly-romantic hyperbole he’d scoff at before writing it down in his notes.)
She hadn’t let herself think of him for longer than the span of one of his songs since that day. Even then, she’d usually change the channel. It was just too hard.
But could this one actually be about her? And if so, what the fuck was she supposed to do with that? Cry? Scream? Sue his sorry ass for slander?
(Not that one.)
She’d made a lot of mistakes in her life. He’d never been one of them, not until the end. Is it possible that didn’t need to be the end at all?
My 9 to 5 is cutting open old scars
Again and again til I’m stuck in your head
He’d probably had a lot of almosts. Maybe he’d just gotten better at faking genuine emotion in his songs. There’s no way he still thought about her. Even for lyrical dramatics.
I wish I’d known how much you loved me
I wish I’d cared enough to know
I’m sorry every song’s about you
The torture of small talk
With someone you used to love
Well there you had it. Small talk? They hadn’t talked in years. And she already knew every song was total bullshit, made up longing. Some of his best lovelorn pandering (that she admittedly loved) had been written when he claimed to be incapable of actual love. When he would only sleep with dark-haired, dark-eyed girls who didn’t want anything more than a good breakfast the next morning.
(I’m not looking for a soulmate, darling, just a beauty without a gag reflex, he’d repeated on many occasions. Sometimes literally to the women he was hitting on. And yes, they did usually blow him afterward and he would inexplicably tell her and she Did. Not. Care.)
(Until the day she realized she always had.)
A week after he’d moved to Los Angeles had been the 4th of July. It being summer and most of her friends working various jobs, she didn’t think there would be a huge party. James had insisted, though, that they needed to celebrate the fact that their friends were getting famous. David had pointed out the irony that the band – Killian, Will, Robin, and Graham – were all from outside of the USA. And yet they were being celebrated on America’s birthday.
“Stealing things from others is the American way. Now drink, little brother!” James had shouted just before his frat brothers lifted him into keg stand position and he chugged.
Emma wasn’t one for keg stands, so she’d opted for drinking straight liquor instead, and from what she could extrapolate from the massive headache the next morning (in addition to the vomit in her bedside garbage can), she had likely drank that bottle in its entirety.
After the opening of Pandora’s box that fateful Friday the 13th, Emma couldn’t think of much else but her almost-maybe-something Killian Jones. Suddenly his stupid band was everywhere and that stupid song was everywhere and she was feeling a deep longing to connect with that girl who had two whole albums by two different bands written about her to see how the fuck she coped with old wounds being opened every fucking visit to the grocery store.
(Then again, Brand New and Taking Back Sunday weren’t quite so mainstream. Maybe that’s how she survived.)
(Is that what you call a getaway? Tell me what you got away with, cause I’ve seen more spine in jellyfish; I’ve seen more guts in 11 year old kids.)
She’d taken to keeping the radio off at all times, and humming the Star Spangled Banner when she couldn’t escape Killian’s stupidly attractive and all-too-familiar voice gracing the airwaves.
Ruby asked her out for drinks, and alcohol was exactly the cure for her current tumult, so she agreed on the very specific request that they hit the country bar downtown instead of their usual Rabbit Hole escapades. Which worked out great for avoiding song-specific reminders, but sadly didn’t keep all Killian talk at bay.
“By the way, how have you been holding up?” Ruby asked, probably in response to Emma’s downing two shots – one of which that had been intended for Ruby – in the first minute or so at the table.
“What do you mean, holding up?” She wasn’t that transparent, right?
“Well the song… the one Killian wrote about you. It’s, like… huge. Weird how he waited this long. Did he warn you first or anything?”
… what? It wasn’t about her. Sure, it kind of, a little bit, had some moments that seemed like they could be inspired by her. But it had been nine fucking years and she hadn’t seen him since the morning she slinked away from their house and it’s not like he’d ever reached out or anything (or at least he didn’t try very hard, because blocking a cell phone number wasn’t like blocking a whole-ass person), hence her nine years of denial and shoving down her feelings like the very opposite of the emo kid she once was.
She probably looked like that stupid meme of the lady thinking about math and her heart was beating nearly out of her chest, but somehow the only sound that made it out of her mouth was, “huh?”
Ruby, bless her heart, was much better at dealing with, you know, life than Emma was. And sorting through feelings and coping with unprecedented situations that Emma had so far only seen odd iterations of in Hallmark movies or … emo music videos, probably.
“The song. Fourth of July. It’s been a while since he wrote a song about you and I mean usually they were about pining for you, which is a little more tolerable, probably. But this one… I don’t know. I just figured you probably didn’t appreciate it, and that’s why you were drinking my shots.”
Another lame, dumbfounded response: “What? Killian’s never written a song about me.”
Ruby’s eyebrow shot up to her hairline (the way Killian’s always had when she said something silly). “So all that shit in college was…?”
“Made up! Ruby, he was a creative writing major. He just made up characters and then wrote songs as if he were them. He never actually wanted to date anyone. Just fuck anything that resembled Megan Fox.”
Ruby didn’t say a word. She stood, walked to the bar, ordered two drinks, and sat back down with Emma a few minutes later.
“Sweetheart. You sure are dumb for a smart girl.”
And that’s how Emma’s Enlightenment began.
As it turns out, Killian’s creative writing skills were great, but not quite as great as his love for his best friend.
Yep, love. Apparently he’d loved her.
There was a reason he’d really only fucked girls that looked nothing like Emma.
There was a reason he had valued her input so much in his music.
There was a reason he’d hung out with her so often and it had nothing to do with Mary Margaret and David’s grossness.
Keep quiet; nothing comes as easy as you. Can I lay in your bed all day?
Fuck.
“Why didn’t he tell me?!”
Ruby laughed at her, which was totally uncalled for, but also kind of made a lot of sense if she had the ability to think of any of this objectively.
“Oh, honey. He told you every goddamn day in those songs. And how he acted. You’d have to be blind to not realize how much that boy loved you. So he assumed it was a ‘no’ from your side. And then after you slept with him and then he poured his heart out to you and still nothing? That was kinda it for him. But I mean, it’s been so long. I can’t believe he released a song about that now.”
At that, Emma’s jaw dropped. Hard. There was an audible pop and damnit, she was going to have to ice that later, probably.
“How do you know I slept with him?!”
“… because you had a fight about it literally in front of every person you knew?”
HUH?
The buzz of the alcohol was nothing compared to the stinging behind her eyes and the pain in her gut and seriously had the past decade actually been a very different reality from what she’d been living?
And how had Mary Margaret, AKA the Secret Spiller, never told her that A) Killian loved her or B) that Emma had apparently had a blacked-out fight with him in front of everyone?
Emma’s Enlightment continued.
Apparently no one spilled the secret because no one knew it was a secret to start. Much like Killian had, everyone thought that Emma knew his feelings, but that she just wanted to be friends.
And after the blow up on the Fourth of July, they just assumed she didn’t want to talk about it.
While David and James and a bunch of their friends were playing beer pong and Mary Margaret and Regina were trying to find another pair to play cornhole, Emma had been nursing a bottle of Jack Daniels from the roof of the frat house. She’d crawled out of Jefferson’s window, much to his annoyance (he worked in the morning and needed to sleep), and she just watched. Everyone was having a good time. The best days of their lives were now or even tomorrow.
But hers were yesterday.
So she drank and she drank and she drank until the boys were lighting off fireworks and Belle had started a chant of USA! USA! And out of nowhere she saw the floppy brown hair and scuffed-up leather jacket she’d been wishing for every minute of the last week.
“Swan! I need to speak with you!” he’d called up at her, perched on the Lion statue at the front entrance.
But, of course, he’d been pulled in a thousand different directions as soon as everyone else saw their about-to-be-famous friend. So Emma drank and drank and drank some more, not prepared to actually have to say goodbye this time.
Ruby wasn’t sure how long it took until Killian made it onto the roof with her. She did know they’d only been talking a few minutes when Emma started screaming at the top of her lungs about thanks for the memories, even though they weren’t so great. That seemed to have really upset him, because then he started screaming about why the bloody hell did you sleep with me then and Emma had cried but ultimately said she didn’t mean to and he needed to just leave because that’s what he was going to do anyway and there was no reason to feel sorry for her.
There had been more screaming that wasn’t quite intelligible (thank goodness), but when all was said and done, Killian had told Ruby that he laid it all down on the line, how much he loved her, how he wanted her to go with him to LA, how he really would burn down the whole city just to show her the light, but she’d said no. Emphatically.
Before crying so hard in Jefferson’s closet that he threatened to take her to the ER. When Emma passed out, Killian had carried her to his car (the only sober one) and carried her into her room when they got to his now-former house, leaving her with a kiss on the cheek and his later assurance to Ruby that at least he had tried.
And Emma didn’t remember.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Emma muttered to Ruby.
Was there anything worse than finding out something that could have changed your life nine fucking years too late? She had never loved anyone like she’d loved Killian. It had been the easiest relationship of her existence. She’d never felt more safe, more valued, more… loved. But she’d thought it was friend-love.
(Even after the amazing sex.)
What a fucking dumbass she was.
Ruby left her to gather her thoughts/sulk in the corner for at least three line dances before she came back over to their table, bringing Emma a nice tall water as she cleared the un-drunk Long Island Iced Tea from next to Emma’s slumped head.
“I don’t think I can ever un-fuck this up,” Emma whined into her elbow before sitting up to chug the glass of water.
“I do have his number,” Ruby offered.
Hey um Ruby gave me your number and apparently I have a lot to apologize for
Congratulations on the fame also by the way I loved you every minute of every day
This is Emma, remember me? Apparently your song about me is doing really well
Hey Killian, I was wondering if you ever made it to this side of the country any more
I don’t know what to say except I’m sorry
After about 15 failed attempts to send him a message that would convey the depth of her regret, she nearly gave up. Hands shaking, legs bouncing, lunch threatening to make an encore appearance, she pulled up the lyrics to his new song, took a screenshot,
And all my thoughts of you
They could heat or cool the room
And now don’t tell me you’re fine
Oh, honey, you don’t have to lie
And added:
I’m not fine.
It was a very painful 26 hours before she received a response, a screenshot with an addition as well.
I said I’d never miss you, but I guess you’ll never know
Where the bridges I have burned never really led home
Can I come home?
They met outside the old frat house (now shut down) a week later, staying awake until sunrise just catching up on all that had happened since they last saw each other (and a little bit of what happened when they did). She brought sparklers and he brought nine years of unreleased song lyrics.
And when his band’s next single was called Opening Pandora’s Box on Friday the Thirteenth, well, everyone but Emma just thought they were being their usual melodramatic selves.
Yeah, songs about her weren’t all that awful after all.
I Could Use a Love Song (2/22): where the whiskey drowns and the beer chases
Pairing: Emma Swan/Killian Jones (AU)
Words: 3k(ish)
Rating: T for this chapter, I’d say. (M overall)
Chapter Summary: The band’s first day with their new roadie gets off to a shaky start.
Read on AO3.
---
Having grown used to shitty sleeping situations through foster homes, homelessness, couch surfing, and now touring, Emma awoke the next morning refreshed and ready to fight.
Yep, fight. Because the prior evening she’d been exhausted and hovering in that weird stage of drunk where you’re basically pre-hungover, and life had thrown a hot roadie at her. Except it wasn’t life that had done that. It was David. David who in the year of our lord 2019 most fucking certainly had a cell phone and could have shot her a text that a stranger was going to crash her quiet night alone.
Not that Killian crashed in any sense beyond sleep. They were seemingly both out before even the first song had finished playing through her speakers and he was still eyes-closed and breathing steady now that Emma was crawling over the seat and out the door, dead set on properly raging about the ridiculousness of this decision in addition to the lack of communication that shouldn’t exist among people who literally write words for a fucking living.
Seriously. How hard is it to send a text? Don’t wanna do your dirty work yourself, you can just tell Siri to piss of your bandmate on your behalf.
A little warning might have been nice. But she got none. So they weren’t getting any either.
“Rise and shine, motherfuckers!” Emma squawked as she flung open the door to David and Mary Margaret’s bedroom (they knew she had a copy of it, so really they should have thought twice before giving her no warning that she was going to have to deal with some weird ass alternate universe, very fuckable Captain Hook every single day for the foreseeable future. And pay him.
“Emma!” Mary Margaret gasped, yanking the comforter over what was probably her bare chest, but Emma didn’t bother to even glance at her. Accomplice in lack-of-communication, probably… but David was her object of fury.
Speaking of… “What the hell are you doing?!” he shouted, more confused than angry at her intrusion.
“I have a leather-jacket-wearing bone to pick with you, sir.”
“Aw, shit. You met Liam’s brother then?”
“Met him, slept with him, you know, the basic first steps in an employer-employee relationship.”
“Emma! You had sex with Killian?!” Mary Margaret sounded positively scandalized, which made sense for her own personality in addition to the fact that Emma hadn’t slept with anyone in … well it would probably be measured in years and not months, so. It would have been a shock if it were true.
“No, mom, but he slept in the van with me, which is my happy place. Not a place for strays.”
David stood up from the bed, raking his fingers through his hair in what looked like frustration or perhaps the pain of a hangover headache (good).
“We’re all strays, Emma. Can’t you be a little more accepting?”
“Can’t you be a little more with the warning?! You’re lucking I didn’t punch him when he approached me in a dark fucking alley, David.” Which was true. After much of the shit she suffered in her younger years, she didn’t take a chance or give anyone the benefit of the doubt if they seemed to have ill intentions.
He paused, daring blankly at her before taking a swig of the water next to their little bed. Light was just barely filtering through their curtains, so it was still early. No rush to hit the road quite yet, still time to get breakfast and drink their weights in coffee.
Usually the mornings were more pleasant than this.
Usually it was just the five of them in a diner, and usually she was listening to their post-gig stories, not sharing much of her own.
“Where did you leave him, then? Or did you already fire him?”
“Now, David, how could I fire someone I never even hired?! You remember we voted that we didn’t have the money to add staff.”
At that, Mary Margaret perked up, her back straightening as her mascara-smudged face scrunched in guilt. “That one is actually on me. We were on FaceTime with Killian and he’s just so… he’s in a bad place, Emma, and he needs money and people and we couldn’t just let him… “
“Go to the pound with the other strays? Fine. I get it. He doesn’t seem like the worst person in the world. But, like, give a girl a heads-up? And to answer your question, David, I left him soundly asleep in the van. I’m not a goddamn monster.”
Emma stormed out with no real destination in mind, just a deep craving for coffee and a bear claw and space from any other living human who might attempt to converse with her when she needed a minute to wallow in her semi-justified rage.
-
Of all the people to find her, of fucking course it was Killian.
Known him 12 hours or less and he was already the biggest pain in her ass.
“Swan, fancy seeing you here!” His voice was bright despite the wrinkles in this clothes and the hair that was no longer ‘artfully mussed,’ but more… hurricane-ravaged.
“Why are you so chipper?” is all she croaked back in response.
“Well I’ve already had an unpleasant encounter with Brother Dave and figured I would try to make this one a little less fraught with tension and don’t get any ideas about Emma you wanker.” Killian plopped down across from her, already clutching a coffee from somewhere that definitely was not the diner she’d wandered into and been sulking at for at least 2 hours.
“Why would he yell at you? And why are you calling him brother? And… just why?”
“Apologies, Swan, I assumed you’d had enough coffee and sugar to cope with me by now. I was warned of that. You see, apparently I was supposed to just go ‘sleep on a bench in a park’ or something to that effect and then not introduce myself to you or the rest of the crew until morning. Silly me. So David, who appears to think of himself as your father but who was best friends with my brother, proceeded to lecture me about how I’m not allowed to get in your pants. As if you didn’t have a say in the matter. Don’t worry, darling, I clarified that you will without a doubt never care for me beyond tolerance and he seemed to unbunch his knickers.”
“You know, Jones, if I’m not your love I’m probably not your darling, either.”
“Goodness sakes, woman, can you perhaps glean the important information from my babbling and not focus the filler?”
“Fine. Fuck your filler. We’re probably late for leaving by now, though,” Emma said, glancing at the clock on the wall and then at her message-filled phone. She rose from the table slowly, downing the rest of her lukewarm coffee and shoving a doughnut toward Killian in the process. “Shall we?”
He did some type of bow/curtsey nonsenense and flourished his arm toward the door as if to say ladies first and Emma stomped right past him, already 110% fed up with his weird country boy/Jane Austen hero attempt at chivalry when she knew he was no gentleman and she was no goddamn lady.
-
It appeared that the new guy had already met the rest of the team, Ruby fist bumping him and Graham giving him a hungover nod to acknowledge his return. David and Mary Margaret were blessedly silent about any of the morning’s arguments and simply hopped in the driver and passenger seats so they could meander over to the next tiny ass New York town full of Their People.
Some days were harder than others when it came to the places they played. None of them were the hellish ‘hometown’ she’d steadfastly refused to ever revisit, but each seemed to capture some kind of echo of her past. It was really a shame that scent was so tied to memory, because dive bars were smelly places. The right combination of Marlboro Menthol Lights, Miller, and whatever was in that black bottle from Avon and suddenly Emma was back at the Buckhorn, drinking to forget the hurt she hadn’t quite sustained yet, but was inevitably coming.
She always got past it. Rage was good like that, strong enough to overcome the heartbreak of individual memories. Whiskey helped, too.
Graham and Ruby were sprawled on either side of the middle row in the shabby van, both passed out (clearly they hadn’t done enough sleeping wherever it is either of them had gone the night before). David and Mary Margaret, meanwhile, were quietly singing to each other from the front, songs too cheesy for the other three bandmates to ever agree to allow to be performed on stage.
So that left her and Killian, the only two life forms currently active in actual reality.
“So what’s your story, Jones?
He rolled his head on his shoulders, sliding his line of sight from the video to meet her (probably too-harsh) stare. “What makes you think I have a story?”
“You’re on the road with a country band. In my experience you don’t get to that point without some stuff preceding it. Come on, Jones. Someone stole your truck, shot your dog, or screwed your wife. Which one?”
“Where are your manners, young lady, you definitely take a bloke to dinner before you ask for his Tragic Backstory. That’s got to be written somewhere. For shame!” he whisper-shouted, quite overdramatically.
Maybe he’d gotten his heart broken at drama camp.
“What else am I supposed to ask you? I don’t have much information to go on here.”
“Why don’t you start with, ‘Killian, it’s so nice to meet you. How about you tell me a little about yourself?’”
Her answering eye roll reminded her she hadn’t properly removed her makeup from the night before, not having taken her usual five minutes in the lovers’ hotel room bathroom to allow for proper skin care. Fuck, her pores were going to be pissed.
“I’m not quite that polite, but fine. We’ll have it your way. Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself?”
That “little about himself” went on for about an hour, covering everything from his love of football to how underrated asiago cheese was on casual dining menus. They disagreed on silly subjects like the best fast food and what to take on a deserted island. They pretty much only agreed that David and Mary Margaret were insufferable and that love was for losers.
(And yes, that was the closest she got to unlocking even one small detail about his Tragic Backstory.)
They talked all the way to the next hole-in-the-wall bar, which did, in fact, like it might have some holes in it in the light of day.
“Thank the fucking lord we’re finally here. Will you two shut up now?” Ruby moaned into the seat cushion, apparently not as knocked out as Emma had assumed from her unmoving silence the entire ride.
“’s not our fault you two oafs don’t use the nighttime for sleeping,” Killian snarked back at her.
Hmm. Maybe they’d gotten more acquainted than Emma had realized.
Add that to the pile of Killian Jones-related mysteries.
-
Graham had been so exhausted, he didn’t even awake when the van emptied out, still snoozing even as they hauled all their shit into the bar. Just to be a jerk, Emma even tossed a drum stick at him. But he just grumbled and turned, unfazed by her minor assault.
“Hope he lost sleep for the good reason, if you know what I mean,” Killian said, as he bumped his shoulder into hers. He was carrying a guitar case in his right hand and had his left forearm wrapped around one of the boxes carrying electrical equipment.
“Yes, in that tone, I’m pretty sure people up in Vermont know what you mean?”
“I’m not sure about that one. Have you been to Vermont? I don’t think I’ve ever met a fuckable person from that whole state.”
“Don’t say that around David. I’m 99% sure he’d fuck Bernie Sanders.”
The two of them laughed so hard they almost dropped their very expensive equipment, especially when David, as if on cue, turned back toward them: “what’s in Vermont? There’s this ski place I’ve wanted to go to…”
Their laughter turned to near howling as poor, out-of-the-loop David rambled on about Mt. Snow being a great place to take a date and how exactly that could be so funny that two people who’d met last night had already been reduced to giggling middle schoolers.
-
Mary Margaret and Killian quickly started setting up for their set, even though they had a few hours until people would actually show (she was a worrier, and it was technically his first day on the job). So that gave the other slackers some time to rest and eat greasy food and hopefully get properly buzzed before the show so Emma didn’t have a random panic attack at some dude wearing a blue plaid shirt with pink Vans like Neal used to, once upon a time.
Catching up on the night before was usually their breakfast routine, but having avoided that, Emma assumed she’d just end up not knowing how Graham and Ruby had spent their time. Thankfully, both were perfectly happy to provide a secondary replay of their evenings.
Well, Ruby was happy to. See, she hadn’t done anything scandalous the night before. No fucking strangers for her! Turns out, a friend of hers from college lived in that little town and she’d gone over to her place to catch up. Friends old and new were there and she mostly missed out on sleep for conversation and a few truly ridiculous board games (who played Chutes and Ladders when they were plastered?).
Graham, on the other hand, had not had as enjoyable an evening. He’d met a girl, a very pretty girl, and she’d asked him back to her place. He had enthusiastically agreed right up until he was pounding into her against her kitchen counter only to be interrupted by her boyfriend. Thankfully there was no macho how dare you touch my girlshowdown, but it did leave Graham with a bad case of blue balls and nowhere to sleep.
“Wait! Why didn’t you come to the van with me? I don’t bite,” Emma protested as Graham was describing wandering the roads with streetlights until it was appropriately light enough to be breakfast time.
“You don’t think that’s the first place I went? I peeked my head in the fan and saw his shaggy ass and thought you might actually have taken the leap and met someone. No chance in hell I was going to spook you if you finally found a guy you didn’t want to murder on first sight.”
She yelped out a very offended hey, but deep down, he wasn’t wrong. He and David were just the only two men to ever prove to her they were interested in her as a human being and not a punching bag or human fleshlight. She was thankful for finding them and realizing that the whole not all men has some merit, but not enough to take any chances on a guy.
“Well now that you know your assessment couldn’t have been further from the truth, I bet you’re feeling pretty silly for missing out on sleep.”
“No, I stand by my decision. But, yeah, tonight I’m crashing in the van with you two. Unless, I mean, if you ever want privacy with him…”
“YES!” Ruby squealed. “You two would make the cutest babies. You know, someday. With little leather jackets and horrendous attitudes. It would be legit adorable.”
From the corner of her eye she could see David’s face turning fuchsia and she was reminded of the speech he’d apparently given Killian that morning (as if she needed protecting). Not even close.
“Hah, very funny there, Rubes. You think he’s so good looking, you can go for it.”
“Oh, no you will not!” David shouted. “No casual sex within the band.”
(Hey, at least he was yelling at someone who wasn’t her.)
“But you and Mary Margaret!” she protested.
“Nothing casual about that. Marry Killian, fine. I’ll throw the bridal shower. But do not fuck him for fun. We need him and he doesn’t need another mess.”
Before Emma had a chance to ask David to elaborate on that clear Tragic Backstory Hint, Mary Margaret and Killian plopped down at the table, set-up apparently finished.
“So… what do we do now?” Killian asked, the blunt end of his left arm fiddling with the thick ring on his right thumb.
Mary Margaret, David, and Graham collectively responded, “Eat!”
Ruby and Emma were more of the let’s get drunk frame of mind and instead replied, “Shots!”
So the crew of six ordered shots for 12 and their first official day as a team had begun.
By the time they were being announced for the stage, Emma was red-faced and stumbling, Mary Margaret was giggling about the word “banana” and Killian had already told sixteen different dirty jokes, all met with a deeper scowl from Emma each time.
-
That night Graham’s drumming was just a tad out of sync and David forgot that he wasn’t actually supposed to sing the girl parts of their one duet-style song, but none of that mattered. The crowd was wild, totally tuned in and screaming their hearts out right along with them. Halfway through their set, just before Emma relinquished lead vocals to Mary Margaret for Sappy Hour, she clutched the microphone in her hand, swaying as she returned it to the stand at the edge of the stage, yelling, “I love everyone in this bar!”
This whole ‘having friends’ thing just got better and better every single day.
Especially when puking in the dumpster at 3am. You find out who your friends are, right about then, and only Ruby was mockingly taking SnapChat videos. Killian got her water and Graham held her hair and the last thing she remembered before she passed out was telling the other strays she was just so glad they all somehow found each other.
I Could Use a Love Song Ch. 3: don’t need no reason or happy hour
Chapter 3 of my Country Singer!Emma AU is here. I added a tag on AO3 for alcohol abuse, because while I don’t think we have true alcoholism here... Emma’s coping mechanisms are shit and the heavy drinking isn’t the healthiest. I wanted to make sure that I added that warning here as well. Please don’t use alcohol like Emma does here. I know from experience it’s hella bad news. Find a therapist! This is actual advice, not a joke. For reals. Emma should have just gone to a counselor instead of making appointments with Jose Cuervo and Jack Daniels. If anyone has treated you the way this iteration of Neal treated Emma, talk to someone. If you can’t afford a therapist, talk to me. Seriously, no lie, no joke, I’m only alive today because I eventually adopted a dog and sought counseling to cope with life’s many traumas.
Mmmmkkay enough babbling.
Also on AO3
Previous Chapters
1 | 2
Their next few gigs were some of the best in Emma’s (admittedly tequila-hazed) memory, and for once that glimmer of hope for that future of fame and fortune… well, it felt like a hell of a lot more than a glimmer.
The crowds had been rowdy, raucous, and ready to sing along to every song on their whole set. A few people even more some of the merch Killian had started selling at the door, nothing fancy of course, but it made her heart burst with pride nonetheless.
It had all gotten so real, so achievable, so close to everything she’s been dreaming about before she ever really knew that dreams were a thing that could come true.
So of course something was about to bring back the quasi-comfort of her life always reverting to being a waking nightmare.
That was a deeply melodramatic way of putting it – it’s not like she was being beaten or shamed or any of the daily torments her tiny town had ensured were burned into her brain. But that was the problem with the past, wasn’t it? It wasn’t over, even when it was. Those days were past but they would always somehow be present, replaying in her brain and aching in her heart no matter how far from Pennsylvania their little van puttered.
(Whoever said you can’t go home again neglected to mention how hard it was to leave it, even after you’d physically gone.)
It had been a Tuesday. In some chain grocery store outside Virginia Beach, the sun glowing through the big front windows and the icy chill of the air conditioning raising goosebumps on her bare arms. Emma had only echoes of a hangover, so Ruby’s constantly chatting wasn’t nearly as grating as it could be. They moved slowly through the aisles, tossing various food and supplies in their cart, more than fulfilling the list Graham and Mary Margaret had given them.
They were still struggling artists but some weeks the struggle was… less. This was one of them and if they decided to celebrate with Patron instead of Jose Cuervo and fresh, organic honeycrisp apples instead of Great Value brand dried apple chips, well, it’s because they damn well deserved it.
They couldn’t have been more than a few feet away from the checkout when the radio (a constant calming presence, most days, being the object of their ambition and all) caused her heart to drop to the deepest pits of her gut, twisting her insides until she was nearly dry-heaving to get the gross sensation of feelings out of her body and in the sewer system where it belonged.
They say scent is tied to memory, and it surely is, but there’s something, too, in sound. Music had a distinct way of tying itself to a moment, to a feeling. For some people that feeling was joy, was love, could be better than the best drug to intoxicate them with no risk of hangover. But for Emma, for this song in particular, it was all hangover, no high.
I’m set on cruise control
I’m slowly losing hold of everything I got
You’re looking so damn hot
The lyrics were innocuous enough. Sweet. Loving. There was certainly some couple out there – many, probably – who smiled fondly at each other when it came on. But for her, it was just a reminder of how pathetic she’d been, once upon a time, how deeply manipulated she’d been. And oh, the consequences she’d suffered for falling for a sweet voice and a pretty face and a moment that had felt like a country song.
And I don’t know what road we’re on
Or where we’ve been, from starin at you, girl
All I know is I don’t want this night to end
It had been a song she’d listened to in Neal’s truck, on a back road, the moon high and the stars bright and her heart hammering in her chest before he leaned over the center counsel parked in his daddy’s field and kissed her like she was precious, like she was, like he could love her through this life and the next.
And even today, half-hungover in a Piggly Wiggly or whatever the fuck this place was, she still felt the whisper of butterflies in her. She still remembered how much she’d believed the lies and even hoped the bad stuff wasn’t actually real, holding on to nights like that first one, her and Neal seemingly the only two people on Earth and all she’d ever need to feel whole again.
Emma Swan was a fighter, a survivor, a strong, badass woman that no man would ever hurt again.
But one Luke Bryan song on a clear Tuesday afternoon had her so torn up in shame, she almost forgot her best friend was standing beside her, her little “family” of a band and crew waiting for her back at the block of hotel rooms down the road.
She wasn’t in Pennsylvania. Neal wasn’t anywhere near her. But she could practically smell his cologne and the exhaust of his truck and the fact that there was a tiny part of her that truly still wished it had all worked out, that he’d been the happily ever after she’d wanted, and she wanted to slap herself silly for how stupid one smart girl could be.
“I think we can afford some Reese’s mix, right?” Ruby asked, already tossing two bags in the cart as they entered the self-checkout line.
“Yeah,” was all Emma could respond, her traitor brain still wavering between wishing for an alternate ending to her stupid, sad tale and coming totally clean to Ruby about what horrors she’d suffered and hitting the road with her on a revenge-fueled quest to keep that fucker from ever hurting another sweet, could-be-innocent girl ever again.
“Emma, you with me?” Ruby’s voice was hesitant, her eyes wide as she took in Emma’s likely ghost-pale complexion and battle-ready stance.
(She was always fighting those internal ghosts and damn could those things travel.)
But she didn’t want to think about Neal or the bruises long-healed or how she wishes she could time travel back and prevent the most painful part of what that monster had done to her, the part where for a pretty little minute she truly thought she’d loved him.
No. The past might be doing its damnedest to creep into today but she was not going to let it.
Fuck you, Luke Bryan, and all your pelvic sorcery.
“God, I hate this song,” Emma finally croaked out. “I think we should celebrate today.”
“Celebrate how much you hate a song that I’m fairly sure David would kill you for hating?”
“No, Rubes. Celebrate this,” Emma motioned all around them, somewhat erratically, only serving to further confuse Ruby. At least for a moment. “We’re really getting somewhere, aren’t we? I mean, three hotel rooms. That’s, like, a record. We’re getting somewhere. You and I, we came from some shit, right? And now we’re headed toward something good and I think we should celebrate.”
“And how exactly do you propose we celebrate this? Because if it’s by having a four-way with Graham and Killian I’m absolutely in, with just a couple ground rules – “
Emma cut off her teasing before her brain had enough time to make any visuals of that: “Ew. God, no. Why does your brain even go there? No. I just meant, you know, hitting some bars or the beach or something. Day drinking. It’s the ultimate in enjoyment and not giving a fuck.”
“So you’re suggesting we celebrate the good the same way we drown our sorrows in the bad?” Ruby mocked, tossing the groceries on the conveyor belt and a packet of mints at Emma’s head.
“No, you drink your sorrows in the dark. You drink your celebrations when the sun’s out,” Emma said like it was the most normal, accepted thing in the world, like she was reciting it from a code of conduct instead of having made it up on the spot to cover for the fact that she very much, one hundred percent was drowning her sorrows but just didn’t have the patience to wait for the sun to set.
“Sure, Ems. Let’s go with that.” Ruby clearly wasn’t buying her bullshit – she always did have an excellent bullshit detector – but she went along with it all the same.
Emma paid for the groceries and hefted as many bags to the car as she could possibly carry, the burn in her arms like the warmth of the sun as she flip-flopped her way to the awaiting van, a great day of drinking and forgettingahead of her.
The usual six of them turned into seven that day, Killian’s old buddy from the service having been stationed at the naval base in Norfolk and here for a visit. Will, that was his name, and he was a pain in the ass in the very best way. He had been matching her shot-for-shot in the hotel room before they hopped the Uber to The Cove, a beachside bar favored by locals and tourists alike. He would tease her and taunt her and buy her drinks, but with absolutely the energy of a brother and not a I’m looking to get into your pants kind of way.
David saw her as a sister, sure, but he tended toward the serious, the protective. He cared so much and knew too much, and it kept him from being totally lighthearted or even downright rude. And Graham, well he never paid Emma quite that much attention, always on his own quests and whatnot. She couldn’t blame the guy, and truly she didn’t usually want attention, but there was something about today, something about the casual nature of her exchanges with Will that allowed her to just be free.
Killian wasn’t quite on board, though. Ever since she and Ruby had floated the idea of some casual no-show-tonight fun, he’d been weirdly quiet. Mary Margaret and David were notably excited, seeming to view it as an opportunity for date night, even with the five other tagalongs. And Ruby was pretty much always up for a party.
But Killian seemed to be cranky at her and she couldn’t figure out why.
“Let loose, why don’t you, Jones!” Emma shouted across the bar, Killian nursing a rum and coke while Ruby, Will, and Emma had joined another group of probable-tourists in a limbo competition.
“Eh, let him sulk,” Will had suggested, stumbling a little after returning to the upright position. He was suspiciously good at the limbo. Maybe he’d been a gymnast in another life?
“I’ll get him, Em,” Ruby promised, having fallen flat on her ass after the last round (the responding ooooohhhhhhshaving more to do with her skirt riding up to her waist as she fell than it was about the fall itself).
Ruby had spent the next hour or so in the corner with Killian, both steadily drinking but never really coming to re-join the party. So Emma and Will kept socializing with strangers while Graham flirted hard with a pretty girl and Mary Margaret and David found another grossly into each other couple to apparently double date with, because of course they did.
After a few drinking games, a few messy dances, and definitely too much liquor for before 5pm, Emma finally took a break, she and Will sidling up to the bar and ordering some nachos.
“Y’know, you’re not nearly as pretty as Killian described you,” Will said after a few minutes of nacho-focused silence.
“Hey! I think you’re insulting me and I don’t appreciate it,” Emma responded, cheese dripping down the corner of her mouth.
“Way he talks, you’d think you were a bleeding fallen angel or something. I definitely didn’t expect a hot mess who talked with her mouth full.”
“Hah! You said hot. I still got it,” she joked, chomping down on another cheese and chili covered chip.
Emma had become pretty good at reading people – people tended to adapt after you suffering the consequences of falling for it – and Will definitely wasn’t flirting with her. At least not with actual intent. So why on earth had he brought up her looks?
She was happy to play along with whatever game he had going, was even feeling a little bolder and more confident than usual with his carefree attitude and his backward compliments.
But his next comment was the proverbial bucket of ice on any of those feelings.
“He’s a good man, Emma. I hope you don’t toy with him.”
“Excuse me?” What exactly was this fucker accusing her of? She hadn’t even talked to Killian since they’d been at the hotel and she certainly hadn’t been mean. No, even at her most prickly, she was never all-out mean to him. He was a good guy, the type to hold your hair when you puked and nearly the opposite of her initial assumptions about him. Of course she’d never ‘toy with him.’ The fucking nerve of this dude.
“I don’t think you know me enough to continue those thoughts, Scarlet,” she warned, shoving the nachos away and downing her fruity drink.
“Don’t get me wrong. I like you, Emma. You’d make a good mate. But I’m more like you than you realize, and I know how many people I hurt before I got myself straight. Just … keep that in mind, won’t ya?”
And then the bastard just… left.
He didn’t say goodbye to anyone – not even to Killian – and left Emma pissed as all hell and sitting alone at a tourist trap in the worst city in all of Virginia.
So much for that attempt at celebration.
But before her thoughts (and actions) could turn to the dark side, Graham and David were approaching her for a friendly tournament of darts and after a couple bulls eyes and a little light taunting, her carefree spirit had returned, just in time to kick Mary Margaret’s ass and move onto the championship game between her and Killian.
“So, that friend of yours is something,” Emma observed, tossing her first set of darts and landing them with soft thunks into the felt.
“Will? Aye. He’s… he’s been a friend for quite a long time. There for me for some pain. So I choose to keep his pain-in-the-ass existence around.” His tone was light and his words sincere, but there was a weight to his expression that Emma didn’t quite understand.
He took his turn, little glints in his eye and mini-fist pumps when he hit his intended target. It was adorable, to be honest. But there was definitely something wrong and despite Will’s seeming accusations about her and her abilities to be a good friend, she wanted nothing more than to take away whatever pain he was reliving at the moment.
So she lost – yes, intentionally – and dragged him to the bar, ordering him some straight whiskey to loosen him up and hopefully to help him forget like she already was.
“Why, Swan, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were trying to get me drunk,” he practically purred, breaking the flirty tone with a gentle boop to her nose. “Which is usually my tactic.”
“Easy, Captain,” she joked with him, fiddling with the prosthetic ‘hook’ contraption he wore when they went out (it’s a perfect beer holder, he’d said, to which she’d responded yeah, right, you just want to play pirate).
Despite the fog of the liquor, a few facts clicked into place. He’d suffered some bad shit in his past, shit Will apparently witnessed. Killian had also lost his hand, probably in the Navy. And this town, it wasn’t far from a navy base. Could that have been his navy base? Had they inadvertently brought Killian to the scene of the crime, so to speak?
The way she never wanted to go back to her ‘hometown,’ the place she’d lived the longest and suffered the most… what if that’s how he felt here? What if she’d suggested they celebrate over the grave of whatever and whoever he lost?
God, she was a hot mess and she was dangerous, the way she sank into her pain without looking into anyone else’s.
Before she could talk herself out of it, she wanted to apologize. Or something. “I’m sorry about this. Or, I guess, about whatever led to this. Or accompanied it. I’m just… I’m just sorry?”
“For the ungodly amount of liquor you’re pressuring me into drinking? Don’t worry, love, I’m a big boy.”
Ugh, the deflection. She knew that tactic well. “No, I mean this,” she said, gripping the elbow of his damaged arm. “I don’t know what happened and I’m not asking, but I just want you to know that I’m sorry. Not in the fault kind of way. Just the way where I wish it hadn’t happened and I know there’s pain and you didn’t deserve it. Or don’t. Currently. You know what I mean.”
“I think you’re drunk off your ass, darling.”
“Call me darling one more time and you’ll be the one on your ass.”
“So defensive, jeez,” he quipped, finishing another drink and slamming the glass back down on the table, his face melting into something a little more serious, if only for a moment. “Thank you, Swan,” he said finally, cupping her cheek with his right hand.
Her heart about stopped as his eyes bored into hers. It was much too much, the closeness, the feel of his hand, the heat of his body, the truth in his eyes, and all she wanted was to go back to teasing and laughing and strangers who didn’t have feelings or at least didn’t share them with her and why did she even bring it up, anyway? Just because Will had made her feel bad? Why shouldn’t they drink away their pain if it quieted the demons for one blessed day? Why should we have to suffer the same memories over and over when instead we could just fucking let go.
She should have just stuck to letting go.
But his intense sincerity washed away in a blink, his flirty near-pirate persona back with a vengeance. “Now, Swan, what game shall I best you at next?” His gentle caress on her cheek turned into a full grip, his fingers scrunching her face almost comically.
“Name it, Jones. You’re on.”
Turns out their little crew had signed them all up for a cornhole tournament out on the sand and Graham had called dibs on Emma as a partner, for which she was thankful. He was pretty boss at all bar games, and she had a competitive streak even without her BAC being higher than her high school GPA.
But get her drunk and she’d pretty much lie, cheat, and steal her way to bragging rights on whatever silly game they were playing.
So of course she and Graham had made it to the finals, their opponents two bikini-clad college girls who could trash talk like no other.
Which is why Emma was totally fine with the little plot she had brewing in her head.
“Graham, we need distractions here.”
“What do you mean, like have Mary Margaret set something on fire again?”
“Oh, come on. Pretty girls. Fun, happy, drunk, pretty girls. I saw them ogling you earlier so they’re probably straight. Take your shirt off. Now!”
“I always said I’d reject your advances when you inevitably tried to get me naked, Swan, but you drive a hard bargain.”
Emma rolled her eyes, but Graham did as instructed, stretching lazily and pantomiming sweat before pulling at the neck of his t-shirt and whisking it over his head.
The girls missed their next shots, and Graham had the chance to win it with this last toss and Emma was ready to bust out her victory dance just a tad prematurely.
Until the brunette untied her bikini top and let the fabric fall to her waist just as Graham was taking his shot.
He missed, of course.
Damn, these girls were good.
“Can I be of assistance?” a husky voice offered, his breath ticking her ear lobe.
Killian, of course.
“What exactly can you offer, Jones?” Graham swooped in to ask, clearly annoyed that his bare chest hadn’t yet won them the game.
“Well, Graham, Emma here assures me that you’re one ‘fine specimen of man’ but sadly to those girls you’re all talk and no action, across the beach from them, separated by this very game. I think they need something a little more… tactile.”
Killian was over-confident when he was drinking, but it’s not as if he were wrong. If she were one of those girls and Killian came up to her, with his sultry accent and his maddening smirk and the way he’d run his fingers through her long hair…
Yeah, it would work. Definitely. Yup.
“Go for it, Jones, but don’t come crying to us if they don’t take to your charms the way you want them to,” Emma warned, rolling her eyes and banishing all inappropriate thoughts of Killian Jones to the dark recesses of her mind with her knowledge of calculus and the memory of that time she walked in on Mary Margaret sucking David off in their shared kitchen back in Pittsburgh.
Killians voice alone proved distracting enough for the blonde girl to miss her shot and Graham, his ego now challenged, sank his with ease.
Emma cheered far too loud and leaped into Graham’s arms, her legs around his waist, Ruby rushing up to high five them and pass along a few more shots to keep the day rolling.
By the time the sun sank behind the bar, the ocean in front of them streaked with the deep blues and purples of twilight, Emma was well past drunk and definitely no longer thinking of any painful backstories or traumas or anything, really, but the cinnamon burn of the Fireball and the feel of Killian’s arm around her as they walked down a set of stairs to a fire pit so much like those that she’d built on the banks of the Allegheny and yet so different, the smell of the salt of the ocean and the leather of Killian’s jacket keeping her brain from connecting the present to the past.
“Jones, haven’t you ever heard you’re supposed to keep your hands to yourself in the presence of a lady?” she teased, wiggling her shoulders where he was grasping her.
“Aye, but I see no ladies here!” He chuckled and she elbowed him and he bowed his head to her ear as they stepped down the last stair. “Besides, love, what if you’d fallen and no one was there to save you?”
She rolled her eyes again, shrugging off his support now that there was no excuse for it, solid ground beneath their feet. “Oh, I’m a loud screamer. Someone would have come for me.”
“Oh, how I’d like to experience both of those things for myself…” Killian groaned, his mind of course solidly in the gutter.
Emma just laughed it off and stumbled toward the fire, joining Mary Margaret and David on a log clearly only meant for two.
Tomorrow was going to be hell, definitely more than just the echo of a hangover. But they had hotel rooms and each other and now and really those things alone made every minute of tomorrow’s inevitable headache more worth it than she could ever have fathomed in any stage of her life before this one.
I Could Use a Love Song - Ch 1: givin’ up on love, hey love’s given up on me
Summary: Emma Swan, small town orphan and up-and-coming country singer, is known for her voice, her penchant for leather, and her overall (earned) anger toward the world. She’s had a rough go of it – rough enough that every single song of hers is angry or sad – but on the road something (or someone) happens that might change her tune.
(Spoiler Alert: it’s Killian. Cue the gasps of shock.)
Also on AO3.
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The upside to a truly shitty adolescence? Lyrical inspiration.
Emma Swan grew up a little bit all over the place, but primarily in a small town that was most definitely above the Mason-Dixon line and yet half its population spoke with some kind of southern-esque drawl. Confederate flags were common on Chevy trucks. Friday nights in the Fall were dedicated to high school football and absolutely nothing else. Their town’s only radio station was country, though it played seven different church services on Sunday mornings. To say that the whole town’s dynamic read like a cliché country song… it was more obvious than Emma’s bright red leather jacket in a crowd of cotton camo.
So no one was particularly surprised when the beautiful, damaged orphan with the voice of a (really pissed off) angel hit the road with a country band.
They might not have been surprised, but oh did they talk. After her falling out with the pastor’s son and her quick escape to Pittsburgh, she was every negative stereotype of famous in a small town you could conjure. Lily, the closest thing she’d had to a friend outside of Neal, son of Pastor Gold, would keep her updated on the rumors and the hearsay. Not that she wanted to know, necessarily. She’d rather imagine that her name had simply fallen out of the collective memory of that god forsaken town. But it hadn’t. Her story was on the tongues of every bar patron, Baptist, and boy scout leader north of I-80.
It wasn’t her story, though. Not really. The tales they told of Emma Swan always somehow ended up with her as the villain and not the fairy tale princess, the lost girl with no choice but to suffer at the hands of assholes.
Her parents had been shit. Drug addicts, apparently, and she’d been taken from them. She’d been passed through the foster system from ages 3-12, the best foster parents mostly ignoring her and the worst… well, she couldn’t afford the therapy to even attempt to go there.
She’d wound up with an OK but definitely half-crazy woman by the name of Sarah just before she turned 13 and that’s where she’d stayed, that hick town that just couldn’t get enough of her little sob story. That’s where she’d met Neal, the charismatic son of one of the town’s pastors. His dad had seemed nice enough, did a lot of community work and even owned several businesses, boasting of his commitment to boosting the local economy. For once she’d thought she’d found some people who didn’t suck who might make her life at least somewhat normal.
She, as usual, was wrong. Pastor Gold was… well, off. Way too angry for a dude preaching the New Testament each week. But at least he’d never hurt her. No, that privilege was reserved for Neal, who would beat her to a bloody pulp and then tell his daddy’s flock all about saving his sweet girl from a drug deal gone wrong (poor thing ended up like her parents despite the best efforts of the system, you see).
It was pathetic. And after she went to jail for having the gall to defend her own life from that sociopath, well, that was it. She dropped out of high school during the homecoming pep rally and hopped a bus to the city.
That had been years ago now, of course, but it was her origin story, as they say, and something very important to her on-stage personality. And her internal struggle.
Life had fucked her over and she was pissed. And so for five years after leaving that sleepy, secret-filled little town, all she ever really focused on was her anger. She’d write lyrics on truck stop napkins and sit in a half-stranger’s basement strumming chords on the guitar she’d stolen from the church rectory (she wasn’t sorry). She started out performing at open mic nights and then somehow found some of Her People, those who loved country music but maybe hadn’t grown up in a Dixie Chicks song (if only she could have Goodbye Earl’ed that son of a bitch high school boyfriend of hers before he ever laid a hand on someone new…).
(At least he ended up in prison. You know, eventually.)
(And, hey, her rage got her out there and selling records. But that was on her, not him. Nobody saves me but me, she always said. And she wasn’t about to thank a monster just because she survived slaying it.)
Tonight’s show was in a dive bar in upstate New York and Emma was so damn ready for it. She and Ruby had done a few shots of tequila before slipping on their tight jeans and leather jackets, and David had just finished setting up their brand new sound system that made them sound like they could actually be on CMT and not just playing from someone’s garage. David and Mary Margaret, they were like Johnny and June with their sweetness and Emma could hardly stomach it. But they were her friends, her actual honest-to-god, wouldn’t-rat-her-out-to-the-forest-service-for-underage-drinking friends and she loved them. She loved them and Ruby and even Graham in the only way she knew how: teasing insults, cases of beer, and not running away in the middle of the night even when she was feeling like her whole world could crash town with one wrong word from herself or anyone else.
(She really did need therapy beyond the catharsis of angry singing to half-drunk strangers. Someday, maybe.)
Friend love was a strange, but manageable thing. Well, mostly. But romantic love? Absolutely fucking not. After she left Neal and that town, after she drank away the pain and the frustration, well she thought maybe she’d give romance another try. Turned out the next guy was even worse, somehow, leaving her bruised and bloody when she turned down his marriage proposal at a fancy restaurant in Cleveland (yeah, those exist). The physical pain she had been used to, but the emotional… he called her every name she didn’t deserve and a few that she probably did, and when he finished her off with a few choice comments about the baby she’d lost after Neal threw her out a moving car, well she was done. For good. Never ever would she trust a man again. Preacher’s son or furniture salesman – they were all just… evil. She couldn’t ever again take that chance.
But tonight – tonight she wasn’t thinking about romance or even the past, not beyond the bits and pieces that had made their way into her songs. She was happy, buzzed, excited. Their little tour bus (well, van) family was rising in the ranks and soon she could move far away and get her own apartment overlooking the thriving streets of Nashville. Soon she would be so busy with interviews and music video shoots that she wouldn’t have a single second to spare a thought to those who had hurt her. Soon she would be so rich she wouldn’t ever feel lonely because she’d always have male company in the form of all her Benjamins she’d backstroke through like Scrooge McDuck.
The previous night Mary Margaret had tried to set Emma up with the singer of their opening act, a guy they called August who carried a typewriter instead of a guitar (who she’d definitely seen leaving with a drunk after she’d turned him down, by the way), so Emma had already had her monthly I Don’t Want Love chat with her hopeless romantic friend. Meaning today she was free and clear to just… enjoy this new life she’d spent years building on the bones of all the good girls she could have been.
She high-fived Ruby and David kissed her on the cheek as they took the stage, starting the guitar riff as Emma sauntered out to the opening words of the song. This was one of her crowd favorites, a good one to set the tone for what kind of show to expect, and she was melting into her confident, badass, devil-may-care persona easily by the time they hit the first chorus.
I’m goin’ home, gonna load my shotgun
Wait by the door and light a cigarette
He wants a fight, well now he’s got one
And he ain’t seen me crazy yet
A few people in the front row were singing along and her heart was bursting with pride that she was on this road, that she’d turned such a goddamn nightmare of a life into something positive and productive and while overall it still wasn’t healthy… she damn well was on the road to actually being someone. To finally shutting up the idiots back in Pennsyltucky who were convinced she wasn’t going to amount to anything but a statistic just like her parents (despite having never even tried any drug beyond alcohol and nicotine, the judgmental fucks).
One thing that entertained her beyond reason was listening to Mary Margaret sing backup vocals on the songs Emma wrote. Emma liked to call Mary’s on-stage persona Snow White Trash and Ruby insisted that be the name of the band’s first mainstream album when their big break finally came and Emma actually fucking laughed in the middle of performing her angry song that night because she couldn’t stop thinking about the mismatch.
So when the song was over she apologized to the crowd, told them how much she loved her band and her friends, even the hilariously innocent of them, and asked someone to pass her a beer so she could stop the chuckles from trickling out during the next song.
Next on their set list was one that had been co-written by Emma and Ruby, two girls from two very different small towns, who still had so much shared experience. It used to hurt her to sing it, the depressing nature of where she came from threatening to swallow her whole, until Graham came to her one night after the show, quieted her tearful sobs with a kiss and told her to just pretend it was a movie. She was just telling a story. It wasn’t her town or Ruby’s… it was nothing but fiction.
And that’s how she belted it all out totally devoid of those pesky feelings that made her wish she could just crawl under a rock rather than relive her trauma for the seventy third time this fucking year.
If you ain’t got two kids by 21, you’re probably gonna die alone
At least that’s what tradition told you
This song was a lesser known of theirs so they don’t have as many mouthing the words back, but the energy in the crowd is still so high, despite this song being a little more bummer than banger. So she scans the crowd, watches the faces of the drunk, the joyful, the brooding, and best of all, those who understand.
Off to the left, just at the edge of the stage, she saw probably the hottest man she’d ever seen in real life. Black leather jacket, artfully mussed hair, a smirk that could charm her pants right off if she let him.
It’s not that hot guys didn’t come to their shows. They definitely did. But they were usually more the Jake Owen or Luke Bryan type, the ones that look like they were ready to meet your mama by the third date. This guy, he didn’t seem the take-home-to-parents type (just the kind for her, having no parents and all).
But there was something else different about him. Standing just off stage, standing alone, glancing toward David every so often. He looked a bit too confident, comfortable, like he already had some kind of connection to her makeshift little family, and that set up some red flags.
She was not accepting applications for any new friends at the moment. Or maybe ever.
She’d been staring just a little and people tended to notice stuff like that so of course he eventually locked eyes with her, for just a fleeting moment, and there was something in that one glance that told her he knew what she was singing, how she felt, on a level that most others just… didn’t.
So naturally she broke the gaze and didn’t look back.
Jack and Jill went up the hill.
Jack burned out on booze and pills.
Mary had a little lamb.
Mary just don’t give a damn no more.
From there, Mary Margaret had taken over lead vocals, her cover of Strawberry Wine a nice balm to the mood-dampener that Merry-Go-Round always was. And every show without fail, she always took that transition to gloat about how she’s most definitely not the Mary from that song because she has David and loves him so much and Emma almost always makes the universal gesture for “gag me” to the crowd eliciting laughter and a few errant woo’s.
She didn’t tonight.
First taste of love, oh
Bittersweet
And green on the vine
Like strawberry wine
(sorry Deana Carter, but there wasn’t always some sweet.)
They closed the show with Kerosene, like they always did: high-energy, twangy, and true-to-form for their actual fans. The whole bar was on their feet, jumping and swaying and shouting and spilling their $4 beers on the guy beside them but no one really cared because they were sharing a moment, Emma and each of them, singing out their anger and sadness and ten years of life’s-not-fair.
Crazy how a three minute song could effectively patch the wounds of a whole life.
And, yeah, maybe it wasn’t really patching anything. Maybe it was just distraction. Maybe she was just as much a drug addict as her parents, but her drug was the stage and the music and the connection she shared with every other person in each and every bar who didn’t get the benefit of a first love like any kind of wine.
She sang her song from the diaphragm – broadway voice – but it was like it came all the way from her toes. It was always her anger that defined her, drove her, made her feel alive.
Why not lean into it?
I gave it everything I had
And everything I got was bad
Life ain’t hard but it’s too long
To live it like some country song
Trade the truth in for a lie
Cheating really ain’t a crime
I’m giving up on love, cause love’s given up on me
Songs sung, merch sold, and bar tab closed, Emma headed toward the crew’s van, ready to sleep off the liquor in the third row seats while the lovebirds took the hotel room above the bar and Ruby and Graham found someone’s bed to put their boots under for the night.
It was odd, feeling like the fifth wheel when truly there was only one couple in the band. But Ruby and Graham, they were so in sync with where they were in their life – jand it was just not what Emma was looking for – that she still ended up left out.
Which was fine. Everything was just fine.
Until her path to the van was obstructed by the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen in her life, the smoldering-eyed, confident guy who’d nearly made her forget her own lyrics before she’d promptly remembered to forget him and any other person who might possibly hold the potential to make her heart skip.
(Hearts aren’t meant to skip. That’s not love; it’s a trip to the cardiologist.)
He was definitely about to annoy her, so shouldn’t he look properly… annoying? Not like a goddamn model. That was distracting her from her annoyance and inevitable hate. Because a girl like her? Every song lyric and leather jacket was a clear message: leave me the fuck alone.
He clearly wasn’t receiving the signal.
“Swan, I presume?” he finally spoke, her eyes certainly glaring daggers at him despite her tiredness and BAC.
“Uh, obviously? What do you want.” (It wasn’t a question.)
“To introduce myself, of course! Killian Jones, at your service.”
She stopped a few feet from him, one hand on her hip and the other reaching for the cigarettes in the back pocket of her jeans.
“I’m not interested in any services beyond handing me a lighter. Can you manage that one?”
He smirked at her and reached into his jacket, the click of the zippo lighter in his hand echoing off the brick alley the van was parked in. With a quick flick of his thumb there was a flame and he offered it to her, his eyes burning with something other than the reflection of the fire.
“Ah, yes, that’s something even a one-handed bloke like me can manage.” He clicked the lighter closed and deposited it back in his jacket, only to reveal his left arm – ending at the wrist – from where it had been tucked behind him.
Emma deflated a little, some compassion left inside her despite the unwanted nature of his approaching her. “OK, Captain Hook, what exactly do you want from me?”
(She had compassion, but also very little candor. For the record.)
“Ah, yes, I’ve never heard that one before,” he muttered, rolling his eyes and finally looking like he was receiving her please-go-away signals, but he still soldiered on. “I was meant to be here before the show started, but I had some trouble finding this hole-in-the-wall. I presume by your attitude that Dave didn’t warn you I was coming?”
“You presume correctly. Can you please get on with whatever garbage is happening here? I swear if they put you up to asking me out or something I’m going to kill them. Mary Margaret especially. Because we just talked about this and I know that it’s not your fault that they’re such meddlers but I swear I’m pretty much the same girl who sings on stage in real life and I absolutely want nothing to do with men. Or women, for that matter… I’m not a person who dates and if they thought..”
“Love, please stop. No, I’m not here to ask you out. Believe me, I know I’m not what you need. I mean, technically I am, but not in the romantic sense.”
He paused and waggled his eyebrows and Emma was too tired to roll her eyes so she just closed them, willing the moment to pass. “I’ve been hired to work for you. All of you. Roadie. Can’t play notes on a guitar anymore, but I can haul them in and out of these dumps you lot perform in.”
Ah. He was the guy David had suggested they hire but the group had then rejected the idea and apparently David decided to overrule them all because why would Prince Charming listen to a democratic band vote, anyway? (Ugh.)
“Can you maybe stop insulting the patrons that pay us since that same money is going to be what pays you?”
Drunk laugher and electronic music pulsed out of the back door of the bar they’d played in not long before. Almost closing time now. Emma needed to get out of the open before she had to break someone’s wrist for drunkenly groping her. Again.
“Ah, of course, love,” he replied, finally seeming to be at least somewhat chagrined. “Now if you could point me in the direction of our sleeping quarters, I’ll leave you to your business.”
“First of all, I am not your love. We’ve covered this already and I need you to keep up. Second, do you really think we make enough to have quarters? I’m not entirely sure how we’re going to both pay you and eat. So.”
“So, what exactly does that mean for you or I, Swan?” he emphasized her last name in an effort to prove he was capable of using titles other than ridiculous British terms of endearment.
“Well, Jones, that means that either you go shack up with David and the missus (10/10 would not recommend; Mary gets very horny while drunk and her voice carries), or you do like Graham or Ruby and find a local to make gross sex noises with. Or whatever they do. Don’t know, don’t ask, don’t care.”
“And you, princess?” His tone was a challenge. He wanted her to object to the sickly sweet nickname. And she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.
“I sleep in the van. And I do not cuddle.”
“Oh, it’s not cuddling I’m looking for,” he purred, waggling his stupid eyebrows again. (This time she did roll her eyes, annoyed enough to expend the limited energy she still possessed.)
“Then go find someone willing, buddy. Like I said.”
He shook his head and laughed, already turning back toward the van. “Damn. David said you were difficult, but I wasn’t expecting this. I’ll sleep wherever you don’t. Unless you snore?”
“No, I do not snore!”
“Great. Then we’ll get along just dandy.” He waited next to the van until Emma pulled out the fob to unlock it, sliding open the big door a second after the beep-beep to signal entry. “After you, not anyone’s love.”
“Thanks, Captain. I’ll be in the back. Touch me at your peril.”
They each crawled into the van and settled at opposite ends. Emma tossed Killian a blanket and Killian tossed Emma a pillow that had been lodged in the front seat and they both drifted off to the sounds of Garth Brooks on the Pandora radio Ruby had bought her to ward away the nightmares that inevitably accompanied the silence.
