Work Text:
If she can just stay here, then Emma thinks she will be safe.
Behind her, the ancient dot matrix printer churns out pages of paper from arrest reports that have been made and yet to be filed. Emma knows it’s on it’s last legs (do printers have legs?) and that she needs to upgrade this computer system but that would require actually staying in town for more than few days at a time and she’s not entirely sure that is possible with the way things have been going.
Sighing, she pushes back from her desk, letting inertia carry her across the room on the rolling office chair and towards the coffee pot (oh coffee, caffeinated nectar of the gods, save us from paperwork hell). Unfortunately for Emma, the dregs left at the bottom of the pot are specked with ground coffee - David can’t make a pot of coffee to save his life but that’s what years in a coma will get you, probably - so nope.
New pot. Fresh coffee. And then, filing. Lots and lots of filing. No big – in a past life, she temped at couple places that had filing as part of the job responsibilities. She’s got this. Maybe there’s some coffee in the break pantry.
After all, the more work she does, the little she has to think about tonight and where she is and where she isn’t.
It’s been a month since they returned from Neverland, and Emma feels like life has moved non-stop at times and slowed to a crawl at others, and the combination is making her feel off-kilter and unsettled. It’s like she’s in a state of alertness that feels all too familiar, but she doesn’t want to flee from family, doesn’t want to fight Regina anymore, just kind of freezes when Neal shows up. It’s a hell of a situation to be in, and she’s kinda over it to be sure but the problem is that she doesn’t want to do anything about any of it so it’s easier just to keep her head in the sand and let things happen while she pretends things aren’t happening.
Like tonight, and the party that her parents are throwing. They say it’s because they threw balls and banquets all the time in the Enchanted Forest and they haven’t here, and she knows that’s only partly true. At least, the stuff about wanting to throw a party. But under the kind reminders about the party’s start time and the sudden uptick in father-daughter talks, she knows what they’re doing.
They still think Neal’s her happy ending.
She’s not sure how to convince them, and him, that’s not the case.
No coffee in the break room pantry. Shit.
Emma slams the pantry before making a concerted effort to check every nook and cranny of this police station, but it’s to no avail – David must have used the rest of the coffee and yep, a brief look into the trashcan shows an empty bag (Emma thinks about trying to get some of the remaining grounds out with her finger but she likes to pretend she’s an adult sometimes). She’ll need to buy more, but buying more means going to the store which means potentially running into people on their way to her parent’s house which means her alibi suddenly becomes less of an alibi and more of a lie and she’s not in the mood to explain her lack of belief in her own happy ending to Snow Freaking White, Queen of Hope Springs Eternal.
But, coffee.
She’ll have to risk it.
She pulls her hat over her head, sips up her jacket, and plunges straight into the Storybrooke night.
It is surprisingly quiet as she walks towards the town’s one supermarket, and once she gets there she realizes why: it’s closed. In fact, most of the businesses are closed (small towns closing up shop at 5pm can be the worst) and even though Emma sighs and presses her fist against the door, hoping the limited supply of magic she seems to have will open the doors for her…they remain shut.
Damn it.
The only place that seems to be open at 7 on a cold and dark winter’s night is Granny’s and even a few blocks away Emma can see the people coming in and out, can hear the sound of the dinner rush and her stomach clenches (it’s not that she doesn’t want to have fun, it’s just that the fun her parents want her to have seems so very different from what she wants).
But the thought of not settling for coffee and getting some hot chocolate worms it’s way into her head and she takes a deep breath, braces herself, and makes her way towards Granny’s.
The diner is packed with the usual clientele – she spots the dwarves at the counter grabbing mugs of beer – and she side-steps a waitress to head to the counter herself. She quickly orders a hot chocolate to go, and hopes that no one says anything about seeing her at her parent’s party (Emma tells herself that she can’t remember the time, but she knows it’s already started). As she waits, she shifts her gaze across the room and -
Oh.
Her stomach does the opposite of clenching – it drops, like she’s just reached the top of the roller coaster and is now careening towards the bottom, adrenaline rushing through her blood as she tries to steady her breathing as she remembers exactly the kind of fun that she wants and yet is trying so hard to not want.
She’s not sure why seeing Hook always does that to her, just that he does, and no matter what she does she can’t ignore it.
He’s sitting with the dwarves, dressed in shades of gray and black, a beanie pulled over his head. He is sipping a beer and listening to whatever Happy is saying with a skeptical look on his face that Emma can read easily in a way that doesn’t really surprise her, not after Neverland.
That bottomless feeling still in Emma’s stomach as she takes another moment to look at him? That’s the surprise.
Since they’ve returned from Neverland, and since things have thawed a bit with Regina, there’s been a renewed effort to grow some magic beans. Regina’s got a protective spell over the field, making sure that the weather is moderate enough for the sprouts to grow, and the dwarves have been working the rows with Tiny. She’s heard, from her father and from Henry, that Hook has joined in, trading his leather for some denim and wool, and she’s not that surprised – he seems like he’s the kind of man who would work for what he wants, and she assumes that what he wants is a way back to the Enchanted Forest, and the life of piracy he once had.
She tries not (and fails) not to think of when he wanted her, or when she assumed as much. She’s been making a lot of assumptions these days where Hook is concerned.
He looks up from his drink, and catches her eye, and she starts to smile, because she can still remember that kiss (leather hot against her palms, breath ragged against her face, her heart hammering in her chest) and what he said about fun. There is a look that cross his face which she can’t read, and he gives her a tight smile in return before her name is called by Ruby.
Emma spins back towards the waitress whose name she doesn’t know, pays for her drink before she turns back to face Hook – and he’s gone, an empty beer mug and a stack of gold coins on the table.
The door is swinging shut and so Emma races towards it, but Hook is already halfway down the street, one hand shoved in the pockets of the thick wool jacket he must have bought at the supply store by the dock, which is clearly where he’s headed.
“Hey!” Emma calls out, and to his credit, he stops but the minute he does she regrets her rash decision because now that he’s stopped moving she’s going to have to think of something to say to him and she can’t, because her eyes travel from the beanie to the wool coat and the scarf wrapped his neck.
She kinda likes it when he wears civvies.
“Swan,” he says leisurely, amiably, but there is nothing amiable in the way that his shoulders tense as she nears him. She slows down, confused by the way that his body language and words don’t match, the way that he keeps darting his eyes to the left and right to see if anyone is watching (or so she assumes).
This is the guy who kissed her in Neverland, right? The guy with the flirty remarks and the smirks and the bedroom eyes that had her wondering just what he might be like in the sack?
What has changed?
“You sure took off from Granny’s in a hurry,” she tells him, surprised at how breathless her voice is right now just by looking at him (she remembers their kiss, remembers him by her side throughout Neverland and her chest tightens just a bit). “You didn’t even say ‘hello’.”
She recognizes that she sounds like she’s giving him shit for his behavior and she is but she isn’t, so she stops talking with a frown, closing her eyes as she shakes her head and tries to collect her thoughts. When she opens her eyes, Hook’s eyes are on her and there’s a fondness in his gaze that seems to disappear the moment their eyes make contact.
Looking away, Hook tilts his head to the side, pokes at the side of his cheek with his tongue. Behind her, the door of Granny’s slams and she hears the dulcet tones of the dwarves as they exit the diner, no doubt headed towards her parents’ loft to continue their post-work drinking but the space between her and Hook seems so quiet, so heavy with the silence of the cold night that she can barely stand it.
“Yeah, well, it’s been a long day – magic beans don’t grow themselves,” he responds, making to move like he wants to leave her and that’s the last thing she wants.
“How’s that going?” she asks, genuinely interested but also knowing that the only thing she wants right now is to keep him here talking to her. “It’s been a while since I saw you.”
Her statement hangs in the air between him alongside the cloud of her air from her breath, and it seems to make his features soften just a bit. He takes a step towards her, pulling his hand from his pocket and scratching over his eyebrow.
“Why Swan, I didn’t know you were interested in –“ he starts, but her phone buzzes in her pocket and Emma throws him a look of annoyance before she reaches for it.
It’s just a text from Neal, and Emma feels the frustration of everything going on in her life accumulate in the space between her shoulder blades and press down against her body as she reads the words (it’s nothing important, just asking if he needs to bring something to the party, which he could have asked her parents).
She doesn’t want to deal with Neal, because dealing with Neal means pretending that things can go back to the way that they were when she was 17, not 30. She doesn’t want to hurt her parents who believe that first love is true love. And most of all, she doesn’t want to leave this conversation because for the first time in a while she actually is somewhere she wants to be, even if it’s on a cold street corner.
She tells him to ask her parents before shoving the phone back into her pocket.
“Right,” she says, turning her attention back to Hook, wondering if he’s going to be looking at her like he was before (the way that makes her breath catch). But, Hook isn’t looking at her as much as he’s staring off towards the dock. “Sorry – that was Neal.”
She says it as an apology, and it seems like the very mention of Neal makes Hook’s shoulders tighten just a bit more, makes his jaw tense.
“I should be going,” he says, his voice taking on a lower tone. “I don’t want to keep you.”
“No, it’s fine,” she starts to say but he’s already turning away from her, hand shoved back into his jacket pocket and it pisses her off because she was trying to have a conversation with him and why won’t anyone work with her already?
“Fine, go back to your ship,” she says petulantly, amped from zero to sixty in the span of a heartbeat. “Rest up so you can get those beans harvested and get out of here.”
“With that kind of attitude, Swan, it’s a wonder anyone stays in this town,” he responds, with a raised eyebrow, and there’s something about the words he says (and the thought that he will leave her) that revs up her annoyance another level.
“Not like anyone in this town matters to you – after all, you’re just a pirate,” she spits at him, and in the dim light from the street lamp, she can see the words make impact, see his jaw clench and unclench.
He looks down, her heart seizes, and he looks back up again.
“Aye, love,” he says, voice low and laced with something that she can’t identify, ”you’re right. I’ll always be a pirate - what would I know about loyalty.”
It’s not a question, just a statement, and he turns his back to her and continues on towards the dock and his ship, and Emma is pissed. This is bullshit.
Her phone buzzes again, and this time it’s her parents asking where she is and she knows she can’t delay any longer. She’ll duck out early to finish her overdue paperwork.
She takes a sip of her hot chocolate, and it’s too hot by half (she presses her burnt tongue against the roof of her mouth, as if the pain will make her feel better as she casts one last look at Hook’s retreating back, hunched over against the cold, and turns in the opposite direction).
…
The party is in full swing when she gets there, and she narrowly misses slamming into Doc as she steps through the door. Her parents spot her from the kitchen and wave her over. Neal and Belle linger at the counter with them but she’s not in the mood to deal with anyone right now. She holds up her finger, points towards the bathroom and as her mother nods, slips into the small room.
Once there, she clenches her hands at her sides and tries not to scream.
She’s so pissed at Hook.
She wanted to snap at him – wanted to make a snide, shitty comment about how he promised her fun and spends all his time avoiding her (because he does, she realizes – he hasn’t sought her out, has barely said two words to her since they returned from Neverland, slips out of the room whenever the attention is not on him and - )
The truth hits her like a freaking Mack truck.
She misses him. She misses Captain Hook, in all his sassy and swaggering glory. She misses the bit of softness underneath, the goodness that appeared every now and again when she least expected it, the comradery she hadn’t felt with anyone else before (they worked together well, they fit together well). Her thoughts turn back to the kiss, the near-brush of his body against hers, contrasting so strongly with the way that he was with her tonight. How was it possible for him to be the same man yet completely different?
There is pounding on the bathroom door and she reaches over to flush the toilet, runs the water and washes her hands even though she doesn’t know why. She opens it to find Blue on the other side, sliding past the fairy to meet up with her parents in the kitchen.
There, she grabs a beer and takes a sip so she doesn’t have to talk to anyone but the minute she arrives, four pairs of eyes fall on her and she can barely swallow before her mother starts talking.
It’s small talk, the kind of talk that her parents are so good with and Emma fails at – about the library, about Neal settling into town, about lots of things from the Enchanted Forest that Emma has no frame of reference to begin with. She sips her beer, makes a few remarks when necessary, and gears up for what will, inevitably, happen.
She’ll need another beer for that.
She grabs one from the fridge just as David appears next to her, and she hands him one as well.
“Have you seen Hook?” he asks as they clink bottles, and Emma stops for a moment as she raises the beer to her mouth. Hook?
“Yeah, at Granny’s before I came here.” The look that crosses David’s face catches Emma off guard – where they expecting him? “Was he invited?”
“Yeah – your mother’s warmed up to him a bit since he started working in the field with the dwarves,” David says with a frown. “He said he’d think about it.”
“Clearly he didn’t think too hard,” Emma mutters under her breath, and if David notices what she says, he doesn’t commend on it.
So he blew off her parents too? What was the pirate hiding? All of his new drinking buddies were here, continuing their post-work buzz and it just…it’s strange, that he wouldn’t be here.
It bothers Emma.
It bothers her a lot.
It bothers her so much that she totally fails to see the warning signs: a few pointed words, practically on cue, before her parents drift away to other parts of the party and Belle wanders off to talk to someone else across the room, leaving Emma and Neal together at the counter.
Emma takes another sip of her beer and wonders what she should say to Neal – what can she say? – before it becomes painfully obvious that she is blocking the extra chips. The commotion of the dwarves moving chips from counter to table gives her a moment to walk away. She sits down on the steps, and it doesn’t take long for Neal to appear beside her (the flight instinct rises up inside of her and she has to physically stop herself from leaving, lets him sit down next to her but with enough space between them that it doesn’t bother her).
“Something on your mind?” he asks, and Emma lies and says “Paperwork,” but it sounds like bullshit to her and Neal both.
“That’s not true,” Neal comments, and Emma shrugs, takes another sip of beer.
“Nope,” she admits. “Not at all.”
“Do you just not want to talk about it or…?”
“I’m still figuring it out,” Emma admits, picking the label of the beer bottle. Hook is the last person Emma wants to talk to Neal about – there’s enough bad blood between the two of them before Emma entered into the picture – and she’s not entirely sure she knows what to say to begin with. That she misses the pirate? That she wishes he was at the party too? That she wonders what’s going on with him these days?
“Is it about…” Neal asks, trailing off, and Emma’s not up for playing games with him right now or anymore, because games just draw things out and she wants her life to be settled into neat categories. She’s got her parents now, and her son and her job – would it kill for her to have a love life that made sense and a good relationship with the father of her son and –
Oh.
Things slot into place as she realizes the roles she wants for Hook and Neal respectively, and she takes a swig of her drink as she tries to process. Finally, she decides to rip off the Band-Aid.
“It’s about Hook,” she tells Neal, not looking at him as she says it,” I haven’t seen a lot of him and when we left Neverland, there were a lot of things that needed to be discussed.” Their kiss, the way that he helped without asking for anything, the way that they worked together, how she felt about him – left open in a way that frustrated her (she needs closure, damnit, she needs some sort of ending)
“It’s because of me,” Neal admits. “Hook told me he’d fall back – give me a chance to make things work.”
Neal must say something else but Emma can’t hear him over the blood rushing to her ears, the acknowledgement that something is going on and it’s not in her mind – it’s actually happening. He’s not just ignoring her. He’s doing something downright noble, he’s showing loyalty and -
I’ll always be a pirate - what would I know about loyalty.
“I’ve got to go,” she says, finishing her drink. I’ve got to fix this, she thinks, turning to Neal as she stands up because if she’s about to be as foolish as she thinks she’s going to be, she needs to make sure that no one is laboring under any notions of chivalry: they all need to be on the same page.
“I can’t be with you – not now, not anymore, not after everything that happened and how I still feel about it. But I want to stay civil for Henry. I want him to have what we didn’t.”
Neal’s look could be described as sad puppy being denied a treat but he pulls himself together enough to nod, agreeing with her. “I want that too.”
There’s an awkward moment where both of them clearly debate whether or not they should hug (they don’t) and Emma’s out the door, brushing a kiss against her mother’s cheek, coat wrapped tightly around her, beanie forgotten, but with a goal in mind.
…
The Jolly Roger creaks and groans as it bobs up and down in the harbor, and Emma wonders if Hook will hear her over the noises from his ship. She knows where the captain’s quarters are, and she makes her way down there easily, surprised to find him reading by the light of a battery-powered lantern.
“Did your father send you to collect me?” Hook asks, closing the book and placing it on the table that spans a large part of his small quarters (Emma avoids looking at the bed, tries very hard not to glance over there but the bright colors of the blanket and the comfortable looking pillows distract her). She shoves her hands into her pockets.
“No,” she tells him. “I wanted to apologize.”
Hook frowns but says nothing, and Emma rushes to fill the space before she loses her nerve.
“That wasn’t okay, what I said before about being a pirate,” she says, and she doesn’t look at him when she says it, all too aware of the closeness of this space and the bed looming in the corner of her vision and just the fact that he could get up and leave here – that he’s trying to leave Storybrooke and – “that’s not true at all. I know you’re loyal.”
Hook merely raises an eyebrow, but she can tell that he’s listening to everyone work she’s saying, and there’s something about the action that’s so achingly familiar that the next words are not the ones she planned to say but something else entirely different.
“I thought you were interested in me,” she says suddenly, because that’s really the question on her mind. She doesn’t need to know that he was trying to help Neal or that he’s been trying to help the dwarves because he is nice and good and a lot more than she ever expected and it’s okay to be all of that, warts and all, because that’s what she is, right? She’s broken and scared most of the time despite having her ducks in a row and –
“I am,” he says, and he’s moving, standing up and standing in front of her, wool sweater inches from her chest, hand moving nervously at his side. “I am very interested in you, Emma Swan, and in everything that makes you tick, but I don’t want to step between another family – “
“Families don’t have to be cookie-cutter,” she says softly, eyes flicking upwards to glance at him, catching the burning honesty in his eyes, the bit of self-doubt as he looks away, and she’s affected by his proximity, the closeness of his body making her all-too aware of what she really wants (the heat of the jungle and the heat of his skin, the slickness of the hair on the back of his neck from the sweat and the way that his touch got under her skin). “Neal and I are going to try to make sure that Henry has both of his parents – but not like a couple. That’s not what I want.”
“I see.”
There’s a moment that stretches out to the horizons between them, a moment that is full of possibility and longing and just a bit of frustration before Emma steps forward and kisses him, and he responds immediately, fingers threading through her hair and her hands against the collar of his sweater, pulling him closer and their lips sliding against each other and their hands moving desperate to touch and feel after days of temptation and weeks of absence and –
He presses her back against the table, palm flat against the small of her back, mouth tracing path from the underside of her jaw to below her ear and Emma fists her hands in his sweater, moans (so loud for this small space) -
“Why are you working with the dwarves?” she asks between kisses, because she needs to know if he is going to leave if they are going to do this (she wants this but she doesn’t want tonight – she wants forever, or as long as he’ll give her, because she is very interested in him too and she wants to learn him inside and out).
“I needed something to pass the time,” he tells her, breathing heavily against her neck, “and I wasn’t sure what would happen so I thought – “
She grabs his hair in her hands and swallows the next few words, not wanting to hear that he was preparing to leave, not wanting to know that she may have never had this again – the pounding of her heart as they kiss, the way that they fit together so well and the way that heat pools in her belly and her –
Something happens: her weight is not distributed evenly, or her jacket is slick with the light rain that started during her walk over, or something else, but she slips against the table.
They fall into a heap on the floor and it is hilarious because it is not perfect, and slightly horrifying, but this is her life these days (this utter and total shitshow) and at first he is silent but then he joins in, breath warm against her collarbone as he laughs with her, resting his head against her cheek.
“I promise I’m usually more skilled at that,” she says, and Hook smiles and it’s a nice smile, one that says he believes her sortof.
“So you say, Swan,” he teases, and she can’t help but smile at him in return.
(She goes back, later, to help with clean-up at the loft, and when David asks where she was, she tells him that she was checking in on Hook, and when her mother asks where Neal went, Emma is honest and tells her she doesn’t know, and doesn’t really care. Her body hums from where Hook kissed her, touched her, fingers against her jacket and soft words in her ears, and as she takes the empty bottles out to the recycling, she hums in happiness. It’s messy, this life of hers, and it’s not perfect, but it’s hers and maybe it’s something to be glad for after all.)