A little something inspired by the prompts @winterbythesea posted here and here and here. This is not those prompts exactly (nor is it what I outlined on the discord, sorry guys) but I think it carries the same lighthearted dumbass energy as they do.
Also, Killian Jones does not know what a ‘date’ is. Fight me, show.
Summary: Emma’s not quite sure how it happened, but somehow she finds herself going from single and solitary in the city one minute to smoothly co-parenting with her ex, living with a pirate, and at home in a town full of storybook characters the next.
Home. She never thought she’d have one of those.
This is the story of how she got there.
(also no! curse! renaissance! 3B divergence without Pan’s curse)
<3k words
Rated T
AO3
-
from one minute to the next:
Emma was never entirely certain how it happened.
One minute she was telling Neal she didn’t want to get back together with him, that it was just too late for them now, and he was looking sad but in a resigned sort of way, as though he regretted the truth of her words while still recognising that they were true.
“For what it’s worth,” he said. “I am sorry. I shouldn’t have listened to August. I shouldn’t have left you like that. If I hadn’t…”
He didn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t have to. They both knew how different things would have been if he hadn’t left her. And they both knew that it was far too late to undo what had been done. The only option left was to move on.
“We found each other again, though,” she reminded him. “And we found Henry.”
“You mean Henry found us.”
“Yeah, that’s probably more accurate.”
They shared a chuckle, and for the briefest moment the years fell away and she remembered why she’d fallen for him. And for the first time since she’d run him down in a New York alleyway, Emma looked at Neal and she felt hopeful.
“Anyway,” she said, “Henry wants both of us in his life. He deserves that, and I think he needs it. And I think for it to work we need to try to be friends.”
“No hard feelings, then?” Neal asked, hopefully.
Emma hesitated.
What did she feel for Neal? There was still affection, of course there was—the stubborn remnants of a passionate first love that she doubted would ever fully die. There was resentment too, a lot of it, and a lot of hurt. A fair bit of anger. So yeah, there were some hard feelings, but there also wasn’t much point in attempting to hash any of them out with Neal. Not when they needed to move forward.
She produced a smile, slightly stiff at the edges but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Sure. No hard feelings.”
Neal’s face broke into a grin, the wide, happy kind that crinkled his eyes and once upon a time would have sent Emma’s heartbeat into overdrive. Now it just made her think of another crinkly grin, one far rarer and all too often tinged with sadness.
“Neal,” she said. “I’ve got to go.”
-
The next minute she was at the docks, breathing deeply and gathering her courage, looking up at the Jolly Roger and hoping Hook—Killian—would be there, in his cabin, maybe with his flask and one of the books that lined his shelves. More than once these past few weeks she’d caught him tucked up in a corner somewhere, reading, and Belle informed her that he actually had a library card.
“He didn’t have the required ID,” she’d said with a little smirk. “But I think we all know who he is.”
Emma was pretty sure she did know that, now, and the knowledge propelled her forward, onto the deck of the ship then down to his cabin where she knocked firmly on his door and shivered a bit when his voice called for her to enter.
He looked up, surprise registering on his face followed swiftly by the delight he could never quite conceal when he saw her.
“Swan,” he purred. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Emma’s heart was pounding and her throat dry, and honestly it was ridiculous to be this nervous, it wasn’t like he was going to say no.
“I’m, um. Heretoaskyouout,” she blurted.
He frowned. “To what?”
Emma drew a deep breath and tried again. “Ask you out.”
“Out of where?”
“What? No. What?”
“Where do you want me to go out of? This is my ship.”
Emma resisted the urge to smack herself on the forehead. Of course he didn’t know what ‘ask you out’ meant, he was like a thousand years old. “No, no, I mean out on a date,” she explained. Tried to explain anyway, though his confusion just grew more apparent. “Like, to dinner or something. You and me. Out.”
“Ah. Ah.”
She watched as he turned the unfamiliar phrase over in his head, watched his eyes brighten with interest at learning a new thing, then when he finally realised fully what it meant she watched a rosy pink flush creep across his cheekbones and up to the tips of his ears.
He swallowed, and when he spoke again his voice was gruff. “Let me be certain I understand. You want us, as in you and me, to go someplace and eat dinner together. Just—just us?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“And in this realm that is called a date?”
“Yeah.”
“And am I to understand that there are… romantic connotations to these dates?”
‘Romantic connotations’, she thought, for fuck’s sake, and did her best to ignore the fluttery feeling she always got in her belly whenever he broke out the big words. Aloud she said “Yeah.”
“I see.” He swallowed again. “And when do you propose we have this date?”
“Um. Tonight?”
Aaand there it was, that wide and crinkly grin that made the blood rush far too recklessly through her veins, this time with no sadness lurking behind his eyes. None at all.
“Tonight it is, then,” he said.
-
One minute Emma was alone and telling herself she was content to be so, the next she had parents and a son and an ex who was almost a friend, and she was dating. Dating Hook, which she told herself firmly was only weird if she thought too hard about it. She wasn’t actually dating Captain Hook, of course she wasn’t. That would be ridiculous. No, she was dating Killian Jones—who was surprisingly, endearingly, sweet and nervous about it at first, like he wasn’t entirely certain her interest was real and was doing his utmost to tread carefully.
Emma didn’t want him always on his best behaviour, though, and while Killian was wonderful she knew that both of them still needed at least a little bit of Hook. And so it was that after their third date, when Henry was with Neal and Emma had made it very clear to her parents that they were not to expect her home before morning, that she and Killian stumbled back to his ship tipsy on rum but drunk on each other, and she made certain he understood exactly how interested she was.
It was very. She was very interested.
And when they awoke the next morning and she groaned at the glaring sunlight and pressed her face into his neck, muttering that it was too damn early and she needed caffeine, he ran his fingers through her hair and informed her he had a coffeemaker in his galley.
She pulled back and blinked at him. “You what?”
He flushed slightly, though with a pleased grin. “I asked Granny and she showed me what I needed, and helped me buy it.”
“But why? You don’t drink coffee.”
He shrugged. “It’s growing on me. And besides, I thought—well, I hoped—that you might want to spend some time aboard ship in the future and, well, I want you to feel comfortable here and to have the things you like.”
She stared at him for a moment as his flush deepened, then surged forward and kissed him, wrapped herself tightly around him and kissed him and kissed him until they were both breathless and the coffee forgotten until much, much, much later.
-
Another minute passed and they were marking six months together. Emma had rented a place of her own, nothing fancy but hers, and she and Killian were spending most of their nights there. Her bed was bigger than the bunk in his cabin, softer and with actual springs, and her parents, Granny, and Ruby had all chipped in to buy her an espresso machine. Small but serviceable, like her apartment. Granny taught both her and Killian how to use it—and honestly, Emma thought, you haven’t truly lived until you’ve seen a shirtless pirate with a hook for a hand whip up a latte on a Sunday morning—and she was, tentatively, happy.
Very happy.
She didn’t see too much of Neal. He spent time with Henry of course and with Belle, renovating the pawn shop and brightening it a bit, removing what traces they could of the Dark One’s influence. She also knew he was volunteering at the convent where the Lost Boys lived, helping them get accustomed to life in Storybrooke and make it their home.
He might also, she suspected, have become somewhat more than friends with Tink.
-
And then one night Emma and Killian had dinner at a new place by the docks, where they gorged on seafood and drank a bit too much wine and decided, for safety and for old times’ sake, to spend the night on the Jolly Roger rather than trying to get home.
Home. She had a home now, and a man who as good as lived there with her. She should really get around to asking him to live there officially, she knew. She kept meaning to. She wanted to, she truly did. But as conversations go that one felt so weighty and so significant that she wanted to be sure to do it right and so in the end she’d done nothing at all—nothing except feel that little bit more guilty each time Killian asked her politely if it was all right for him to stay.
Yes, she wanted to tell him. Stay forever. Soon she would.
They stumbled onto the ship and to his cabin, foolish and messy in a way they hadn’t been for a while. Emma realised she had missed this a bit, the dark, almost feral look in Killian’s eyes when he was just this shade of drunk and she was naked in his bed on his ship.
“You are… so beautiful, Emma,” he growled against her throat as his fingers tangled in her hair. “Have I told you how you steal my breath away?”
“Not for at least an hour,” she teased.
“Remiss of me.”
“Mmm. However will you… ohhh… make it up to me?”
He pulled back and looked down at her, his eyes glinting in the moonlight. “Oh, I have one or two ideas.”
-
They woke late the next morning as was their habit on a Sunday, and Emma groaned as the light pierced her eyelids and straight through her throbbing head.
“Killian.” She poked him in the ribs.
“Mmphh,” he replied.
“You still have your… thing. Right? Coffee thing? In the galley?”
“Aye.” He rubbed his eyes and blinked. “I believe there’s aspirin in there as well.”
Emma turned her poking finger into a caressing one, stroking him with the tip of it. “Killian,” she said again, in a wheedling tone.
“It’s your turn to make the coffee and you know it, Swan,” he replied, in his pirate captain voice.
She huffed. He raised an eyebrow.
“Fine.” She flung the covers off and rolled out of bed, snatched his shirt from the floor and threw it on, buttoning it just enough to keep it from flapping when she walked. “I’m guessing you don’t have milk though.”
“Certainly not any in a drinkable state. Though there should be some of that horrid creamer.”
She perked up. “Cinnamon?”
“What else?”
In the galley Emma found the coffeemaker and an open packet of coffee that smelled surprisingly fresh given how long it had been since they’d last slept here. There was also the cinnamon creamer, unopened, and a big bottle of aspirin. One minute she was pulling everything off the shelves and turning to set them on the table, and the next the door was swinging open and a person walking through it, and Emma found herself colliding sharply with a bare chest. A familiar bare chest. A familiar bare chest that was not Killian’s.
“Neal!” she shrieked, dropping everything in her arms. “What the fuck!”
“Emma!” He looked equally stunned. “What the—what are you doing here?”
“Here on my—on Hook’s ship, you mean?” My boyfriend’s ship, she wanted to say, but calling a 300-year-old pirate a boyfriend was something she still couldn’t do, however objectively true it may be.
“The ship he said I could use whenever I needed it?” countered Neal. “Yeah, that one!”
“He said you could use his ship?”
“Uh huh, he did. When I, you know.” A shifty look crept onto his face. “Wanted privacy.”
“Priva-oh!” Emma’s eyes widened as the penny dropped. Neal was still living in his father’s house. The house where Belle also lived. “Um. I see.”
“Yeah.” Neal didn’t meet her eyes. “But why are you here, don’t you have your own place now?” he demanded. “I thought Hook lived with you.”
“Not officially,” she muttered. “And we, um, had a bit to drink last night at that new seafood place and you know.” She shrugged. “The ship was closer.”
“Huh. Well that explains those noises I heard last night.”
Emma was just about to ask him what the fuck that was supposed to mean when the door opened again and a voice called “Why don’t I smell coff—oh! Um. Hi Emma.”
Emma pressed her thumbs against her temples. “Hey, Tink.”
The fairy was dressed identically to how Emma herself was, only the shirt she wore was Neal’s. An old Metallica tee because of course.
“Well,” said Tink. “That explains those noises we heard.”
Neal nodded.
“What noises—” Emma began, then the door opened again.
“Did you find everything, love—oh. Er.” Killian appeared in the room wearing only his jeans and without his hook. He scratched behind his ear. “Hello, friends and enemies.”
“Hook,” said Tink and Neal.
“Killian,” said Emma. She crossed her arms over her chest. “You never told me you were letting Neal stay here.”
“Ah. I did offer him use of the first mate’s quarters whenever he was seeking a bit of privacy, yes. If you remember, love, my quarters proved invaluable in that respect when you were still living with your parents.”
Emma felt her cheeks grow hot. “Yeah,” she muttered.
“I merely thought Neal and Tink could do with a bit of the same benefit. And you know the Jolly gets lonely if she’s left by herself for too long. Although,” Killian favoured Neal and Tink with a raised eyebrow and a smirk, “I did make that offer quite some time ago now. And I don’t believe I said anything about staying here.”
“Yeah, well.” Neal’s face took on that belligerent look he got when he was feeling defensive. “I don’t want to move out of Papa’s place and leave Belle alone.”
“Are you kidding me?” Emma demanded.
Everyone stared at her. “What?” asked Neal.
“Belle’s seeing Ruby.”
“Ruby?”
“Yeah. For like three months now. Ruby’s constantly moaning about how they can’t stay at her place because Granny’s got wolf hearing and they can’t go to Belle’s because it’s full of you. Trust me, Belle will be okay if you move out.”
“Oh,” said Neal blankly. “Well. Fuck.”
Emma looked around the room, at her current boyfriend and her ex-boyfriend and her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend who was also her current boyfriend’s ex… something, all of them in varying states of dishevelment, hangover, and undress, and she started to laugh.
“Yeah,” she said. “That about sums it up.”
-
So Emma never did quite figure out how it happened, but somehow she ended up with a home of her own in a fairy tale town with fairy tale friends and a pirate boyfriend, where one minute she was drinking coffee in a ship’s galley with a group of people who knew each other far too intimately for anyone’s comfort and the next her ex and his girlfriend were her neighbours and her pirate was living at her place for good—at their place, now—and her son was bouncing happily between the two apartments save at least one night a week that he spent at Regina’s. She and Neal co-parented better than she could ever have hoped, and every morning she woke up to blue eyes warm with love and lattes made precisely how she liked them.
She was happy. Really happy. Truly happy. So happy that when she came home one evening to find the kitchen smoke alarm shrieking and Henry teetering on a stool waving a towel at it as Killian and Neal grappled with some foamy, hissing, smoking substance on the countertop, she wasn’t even mad.
“What the hell do you idiots think you’re doing?” she demanded.
“Ems!”
“Mom!”
“Swan!”
“It’s not what it looks like!” they cried in unison.
Emma shook her head. “I’m going next door,” she said. “To have a beer with Tink. This,” she gestured vaguely at the room, “had better be dealt with by the time I get back.”
As she turned and headed back out the door, the last thing she heard were three furious voices.
“Now look what you’ve done!”
“What I’ve done! It was your idea!”
“And I still don’t have a science project!”
Emma grinned, and shut the door firmly behind her.
