Work Text:
the bitterness of one who’s left alone
Hook’s never been this silent in his life.
Not even when he was a boy in school, following in Liam’s footsteps, trailing his brother wherever he went. Not even when he started as an officer in the Navy, or when he received his first post on a ship. He’s been quiet, and he’s been discrete, but he’s never been silent.
The truth is...there’s nothing to say anymore anyway.
They use The Jolly Roger to get back to Storybrooke with as many of them as they now have and he is grateful for the distraction that comes from standing behind the wheel and focusing only on the horizon. He doesn’t want to think about harnessing the evil of Pan’s shadow to take them home, or that he’s steering his ship through the clouds instead of the waves.
He’s been focusing so hard for the better part of the hour – so hard that his jaw aches and his teeth hurt but the wind is at his back and they are moving and he’s happy because this is what he knows how to do: he knows how to fight and how to be a captain and how to sail a ship.
He most certainly doesn’t know how to love or how to keep his mouth shut.
He shouldn’t think about how he behaved in front of Emma earlier, when they went to trap the shadow. He’s too old to act this foolish. But he’s a pirate, so he’s sure it’s not surprising to anyone that he would stoop so low.
Hook swings the wheel, shifting the trajectory of the ship towards the spot that Regina has pointed out on the horizon – the spot that is Storybrooke.
It was Neal that provoked him and Hook, well, he rose to the challenge didn’t he? He didn’t think it would be this easy, to love Emma and leave well enough alone?
She makes him want to be a better man but he’s not sure if his own darkness will allow him to rise to such great heights. His malice and his selfishness, they’ll just drag him down back into the mud where he’s been wallowing for the past three hundred years. Perhaps in Emma’s world they have it right – perhaps he really is a villain.
The thought catches between his throat and his stomach, and he can only clear it with a sip from his flask.
“You’re quiet up here,” someone says - her, Emma,she always find him when he is at his worst.
“Don’t have much to say,” he responds, eyes glancing at hers briefly before looking back towards their goal. They’re still far out from where they need to be – hours at least. That means she has hours to get under his skin. He’s tired, his coat is heavy on his shoulders and his heart is heavy in his chest. He would rather just be alone right now.
Which he thought he made clear.
By staying away from everyone.
“Seems like you sure had enough to say earlier,” Emma says, hands in her pockets, shrugging her shoulders.
“Thank you for the reminder,” he says.
He remembers all too well his promise that they would succeed, that they would get off the island, that he would win her because she wanted him. He remembers, too, the bravado he demonstrated in front of Neal, which is what has put him in this predicament. He hates that he can talk about winning her without trickery and without anything more than her feelings, and then stooping so low - trying to prove himself in front of her.
He is embarrassed and ashamed. Women like her do not find that sort of behavior attractive. She is not Milah; she does not want someone with bravado. But in the end, he is still a pirate, which is why the next words out of his mouth take so much effort – like he is struggling to remember just who he was all those years ago, when he was not a pirate, when he was the sort of man Emma Swan might have trusted immediately.
He’s become skilled at articulating his thoughts in such a way as fitting a pirate, but he’s forgotten how to do it as an ordinary man.
He wonders if he’ll ever remember the difference.
“I already apologized to you, Swan, for acting improperly. I should not have engaged in words with Neal – not with everything that has already happened. It was a selfish thing to do and I’m sorry for it. You do not need any additional burdens placed on you by grown men.” He sighs, the truth heavy on his tongue. “I’m not a good man, no matter how much I would like to be, but even I can admit that was bad form.”
“I don’t think that’s entirely true,” Emma says, standing over his shoulder. He tries not to look at her, to think about how beautiful she looks even though she is so very tired like they all must be. “You brought us to Neverland. You helped me save my son.”
She pauses. When she speaks again, her voice is quiet. “You gave up your darkest secret so that I could save Neal.” She rests her hands on top of his bad arm, right above the straps that keep his hook secured. “I think you’re a good man...” she smiles and his breath catches in his throat, “for a pirate.”
“I wish you would see me as more than that, love,” he responds, because he does. It’s all he wants, to be good enough, to be a good man or – nay – better. For her to stop seeing him as just a pirate.
“I do,” she says softly, drawing closer to the wheel. “It’s just, with this leather duster, how can anyone take you seriously, Hook?”
Her last words as meant to be a challenge but he has trouble thinking properly in such close proximity to her.
He looks at her, with a slight blush on her cheeks due to the wind, a slight flush that makes her eyes even brighter. He feels his body shift, turning towards her almost of its own accord. He can feel her presence in his bones (a dull ache in his body, a sharp pain in his chest from where he is breaking apart, slowly but forcefully, due to his need and his love and his wants) and it distracts him more than the rum. She is a drug herself, sitting heavy in his veins with just the touch of her hand and fucking up his head so that he doesn’t know which end is up anymore.
He spins the wheel, trying to find that spot in the horizon that he’s looking for, but talking to her has made him drift off-course. He panics, scanning and – there it is. He course-corrects, and takes a deep breath, hand and hook on the wheel.
His look of distraction breaks whatever moment they had. “Anyway, I don’t think I can thank you enough – for everything,” Emma says. She squeezes his arm.
He presses his advantage.
“I remember you thanking me in a different way once before, love,” he tells her, winking. Emma shakes her head.
“All these comments that you make...” Emma starts to ask. “You think they’ll really work?”
“As I recall, it’s worked in the past.”
Emma laughs, and he feels himself grin. She runs her hands through her hair, stepping closer to him. “That was a one-time thing.”
“Says the woman who fell asleep in my arms last night.” He can still remember the weight of her in his arms, the feeling of her body against his, the way that he wanted nothing more than to slow the hours and stretch the night into forever. He doesn’t expect an encore performance any time soon.
Not for the time being, at least.
Emma shifts, uncomfortable, but continues – ignoring his earlier comment. “You flirt to create distance. You say suggestive things because it’s better than saying what you really want.”
“How do you know it’s not what I really want?”
The last words are said in a low voice, because he feels like he needs to be honest. He wants her, all of her, has thought about it countless times in the safety of his quarters, idle thoughts that he now knows were probably not that idle to begin with. Has dreamt of her, dreams so real and vivid that waking up in his bed alone is reason enough to start drinking early.
He glances over at Emma and she licks her lips, looking down and away from him. “I guess I don’t. But you started saying those things well before –“
“I was hoping that our sexual tension would lead to its inevitable climax,” he says, raising his eyebrow suggestively and drawing out the last word. He would be lying if he didn’t tell her he wanted her that way as much as any other, and he doesn’t want to insult whatever power she has that allows her to see through people so easily. “I told you we make a good team, and that once we saved Henry...”
“I remember,” Emma says. She steps closer to him. “I’m interested in seeing exactly what your kind of fun is, Killian.” Her voice is low and her breath ghosts over his collarbone, between the layers of his clothing, into his very soul.
She’s been using his real name more lately which he wants to take as means to an end, as a way of her expressing (subconsciously, of course) her choice, but he knows it’s not. Yet, the way that she says his name this time – lower, drawing out all the syllables...
He closes his eyes and tries very hard not to groan.
“Damnit, Swan,” he tells her, opening his eyes to see her grinning, face so near his own. If her son wasn’t onboard this ship, he would close the distance in less than a heartbeat.
“Two can play at this game,” she tells him with a wink. She turns towards the forward deck, where the others are gathered.
“Now that’s just bad form, love, to distract a man while he’s operating a moving vehicle,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. She blinks, and takes a step back, a small smile playing against her lips.
“Oh I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe I’m just leveling the playing field.”
Hook rolls his eyes as he looks away, and hears rather than sees Emma retreating down the stairs. But he’s damned anyway, so if he takes a moment to appreciate the view, well...
...he is only a pirate, isn’t he?