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Killian tried to recall the last time he had so completely lost control of a situation. This had seemed like a good lark at first — play a few hands of cards with the lovely and chilly Emma Swan and see whether he could get that shell of hers to crack a little. However, his desire to see her smile it him, laugh with him, had propelled him a little too deeply into the rum bottle, and the consequences had proven to be dire indeed.
He remembered in a flash something Liam had told him once: “when you find yourself in a situation you can’t see a way out of, retrace your steps. Maybe you’ve just missed the answer.”
“Bloody hell,” he mumbled into the fabric of one of Snow’s coats. How many damn coats did one woman need? And what was that perfume that now threated to blind him in a citrus-floral haze? Swan didn’t bother with perfume. When he was very close he could smell whatever she washed her hair with and the scent of her skin. Her skin, and it defied description. Not that he hadn’t spent time mentally trying to describe it. Not to mention trying to picture it completely without the cruel confine of clothing, which brought him rudely back to his present predicament.
Hiding in Snow’s coat closet. Waiting for Snow and Charming to leave. They had to leave before he could come out with any shred of dignity intact whatsoever because he was naked. Starkers. In the buff. And it was all Swan’s fault.
So, take Liam’s advice and start at the beginning. How did he end up in this ridiculous situation?
He fell in love with the Savior, that’s what happened. Well, no. That’s not exactly how this happened. At least, not directly. What happened was…
6:41pm
“This is an easy game. Really.” Emma squinted at her hand of cards and smiled at Killian in what was probably supposed to be a reassuring way. Instead, she looked like a gleeful shark who has happened upon a wounded seal. Killian, presumably the seal, was not convinced.
“Why can’t we just play Six-Fingered Satyr? Surely that’s keeping it simple. Even a child can play that. Or Ogre Toss. Or Ladies All in a Row.” He eyed the cards. At least they were familiar: four suits, aces, kings, queens, jacks, and numbered cards one through ten. But this game she was suggesting…”Texas Hold ‘Em”…was not familiar in the least.
“Do you want to play Go Fish?” Emma lifted an eyebrow and Killian wondered what her response would be if he threw down his cards, knocked the small table between them out of the way and carted her off to Snow’s bed. He didn’t actually see any knives on her, but somehow he imagined that she could call one forth if he were to be so bold. Not for the first time, he was struck by what a strange living space this was. Everything except the water closet in one large room, and Emma apparently shared this space with her mother and father. And sometimes Henry. Irritating, that. Why didn’t she have her own quarters? Not that she had given him the slightest bit of encouragement since returning to Storybrooke, unless one counted the fact that she had refused to strike up her relationship with Baelfire again. And Killian did count that. So, to hell with it. He could wish for more private rooms all he wanted, even if nothing would come of it.
“Earth to Hook!” Emma waved her hand and Killian realized his mind had been seriously wandering. Of course, he was alone with Emma for the first time since Neverland. And they were about to play cards. Of course his mind was wandering. Perhaps he could get her drunk? But that would be bad form. She deserved to be wooed. He would do the right thing by his Swan. Like the man of honor that he was.
“I will play this game with you, Swan,” Killian declared. “Just explain the rules to me one more time.”
“Deal.” Emma smiled at him again and he could feel his cheeks heating. “It’s too bad we don’t have any booze. Mary Mar…or, Snow or Mom, or…well, she doesn’t keep anything in the house. Not even wine.”
Man of honor. Oh, sod it. “Luckily for you, my lady, I always have my flask.” Killian withdrew the silver and ebony flask from his belt and set it on the table between them. What could it hurt, anyway?
Emma looked at the flask skeptically. “How do you always have rum in that thing? Don’t you ever have to refill it?”
Killian smiled. “I don’t, actually. It’s enchanted. Never runs dry. Got it from a djinn in a desert realm full of bloody scorpions. Saved his life. Seemed like a fair trade.”
“Rum for a person’s life? That’s a fair trade?”
“Never ending rum for a person’s life. Yes, indeed – seems fair to me.”
Emma looked at him for a long moment before bursting into merry laughter. He had never heard her laugh like that before and it warmed him, made him feel giddy. Your smile is better than rum, he wanted to say. Instead, he looked at his hand again. “All right, Swan. Explain the game to me again so we can get your total destruction underway.”
8:12pm
He was beginning to see double, but he was almost certain that he had won more times than he had lost. Ten out of fifteen? Fifteen out of twenty? He wasn’t entirely sure. Emma looked positively miffed, which in truth he found adorable but had thus far refrained from saying anything, lest she punch him in the face.
“I can’t believe you’ve never played this before. You’re like a poker shark!” She blew an errant lock of pale hair out of her eyes and scowled at him. “I feel like I’ve wandered into a trap.”
“Not at all, love.” Killian surveyed his current hand. He was almost certain he was about to win again. She was going to murder him. “It’s a pirate thing, you know. There’s quite a lot of downtime on a ship between raids. A man finds himself playing many a hand of cards, many a different game, many different stakes. You develop a knack for it.” He looked up at her. Her color was high, thanks to the rum, and her eyes were shining. She met his gaze and the rum was giving him all sorts of potentially fatal (to him) ideas. Like how difficult it would be to get those trousers of hers off. They seemed to be painted on, but surely…
“Sorry?” It occurred to him that he had said something that he missed as his mind had been happily diving into the gutter.
“I said, what if we upped the stakes?” Emma’s lips curved and his mouth went dry.
“What…what did you have in mind?” Killian’s survival instincts were beginning to set off alarm bells in his head, and he unceremoniously shoved them aside. “I’m game for anything, darling.”
The curve of Emma’s lips deepened, and it occurred to him that there were probably tales about sailors losing their lives this way.
8:27pm
She lost the first round. One of her boots came off. The need to win had never gripped him so acutely.
9:31 pm
She had lost both boots and her sweater (which to his dismay had been hiding something she called a “tank top”). He had lost his coat and vest. The stakes were too high; he was beginning to bet foolishly. The smart thing to do would be to stop this now before one of them was put in a seriously compromising position.
“Your deal,” he slurred. That tank top was coming off, if it took him ten hands.
10:15pm
It took him four hands. And he had lost his shirt and both boots in the process. Also, he had discovered two very important things: first, she wore a very abbreviated corset called a “bra” at all times underneath her shirts; and two, he loved her in nothing but her bra. But the sight of her sitting there, with only her bra and her lovely skin and shining hair visible, was literally melting his brain. Thanks to that and the rum, he was also seeing double – possibly triple - and had quite forgotten the rules of this godsforsaken game.
“Should we stop?” Was her voice lower than usual? Was she more beautiful than she had been two seconds ago? Was there any hope left in this world for him?
Killian tried to smile, but was afraid he leered instead. “Not on your life.”
12:01 am
Well, that was it then. She still had those blasted trousers on, and he had…nothing on. Well, technically he was still wearing his rings, his charms, and his earring. He had tried to treat those as clothing items to be removed and Emma had nixed that somewhat forcefully. He had tried to remove his own trousers casually, just to let her know that he was perfectly at ease with having been soundly trounced as well as being in his birthday suit. The truth was that he was three sheets to the wind and was quite past the point of caring.
“Right then.” He stood there a moment, naked, trying to focus on her face. Was she disgusted? Intrigued? “There’s only one thing for a pirate to do at this particular juncture.”
Emma was standing too. Rather close, actually. When had that happened? “What’s that?” She asked.
To his rum-addled mind, she sounded rather inviting. Well, to hell with it. This could hardly get any more humiliating. Resolved, Killian took half a step forward, grabbed Emma by the splendidly bare shoulders and kissed her. He’d only kissed her once, in Neverland – well, really she had kissed him – but it had left him devastated. This one was different. The feel of her lips on his seemed to slice through his drunkenness and bring him a measure of clarity. He braced for a slap or even a swift kick in a very vulnerable place, but instead her lips parted, and then the clarity was gone. He was gone. He had her backed up against an exposed brick wall with his hand in her hair and his hook at her shoulder before he’d even had time to form a rational thought.
This is what you do to me, Emma, he thought. You unmake me until I am a thing that exists only for you.
But she seemed just as affected, her own warm hands traveling the expanse of his back and leaving trails of fire in their wake. His blood roared in his ears, his pulse beating out yes yes yes…
Until he heard the sound of a key turning in a lock. The sweet slide of her mouth vanished and he opened his eyes to see her own hazel gaze on his, panicked.
“Fuck,” she whispered. He was about to say something (maybe along the lines of, why hide what we both know is true?) when she opened a door he had never even noticed right next to him and shoved him inside. He found himself wedged rather tightly into a nest of Snow’s coats. Ah well. He had been in worse scrapes, surely.
Now
They were never going to leave. And considering that it was Snow and Charming’s apartment, that made perfect sense. The problem was that the closet was too bloody small for him to lie down, and the only thing he wanted to do at this point was sleep it off. Unless of course Swan would come back to rescue him, but he seriously doubted that was going to happen.
He also wondered what she had done with his clothes. She had perhaps had fifteen seconds between shoving him into this closet and righting herself before her parents had walked in, and his clothes were not insubstantial. The coat in particular. Maybe she had thrown them out of a window.
She had better not have thrown them out of a window. That coat was practically an extension of himself!
Killian tried to turn around and get a better look at the coats enveloping him. Perhaps he could find a somewhat austere one, put it on and stroll out of here like it was nothing. Yes, that was a reasonable plan. They weren’t going to leave, godsdammit! And he was a three-hundred-year-old pirate captain! Propriety be damned!
He fumbled for the light pull (something he had seen demonstrated several times in Storybrooke) and instead managed to knock down a container made of some hard, clear material onto his head.
"Damn!" He hissed, fumbling with the container. In the light peeking in from between the levered slats on the front of the door he could read a message on the top of the container: "David’s Winter Clothes."
David. Brilliant! The prince might be a bit bigger than he in the shoulders, but this was a damned sight better than trying to strut about in one of Snow’s coats. Opening the container, Killian found two carefully folded knit shirts and three pairs of heavy canvas pants that almost could have been made from sailcloth. He pulled out a shirt and a pair of pants. Salvation at last.
It took a few agonizing moments to get into the bloody things, but when he was satisfied that all of the correct buttons had been buttoned, he took a deep breath and threw open the closet door.
Emma, David, and Snow stood around the kitchen island. Whatever charming family conversation they had been having was effectively halted by his rather dramatic appearance from the coat closet.
"Lovely to see you all," Killian said in what he hoped was a gracious manner. "I will see myself out."