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He’s a bad influence, they say. He certainly has the look for it, if nothing else - all dark hair and piercing eyes and leather when he comes riding in on his motorcycle. If his goal was to fit in, this isn’t the place to do it - a little nowhere-ville called Storybrooke, Maine, where everyone knows everyone and Killian Jones, with his accent and his rough looks, stands out like a sore thumb. He never intended to stop here, a fact he thinks should be obvious, but his gas tank is empty and there’s a concerning rattle in his bike’s engine and he still doesn’t know where the hell he’s going. It’s supposed to just be a few days’ or a week’s layover in town - just enough time to try and trade his labor at the local garage or gas station in return for parts and a full tank of gas before he goes off, chasing that horizon again.
But then he sees her .
She’s got all the cliché trappings of a good girl - all golden curls and charming smiles as she works her shifts at the town’s 24 hour diner in a uniform that looks far too good on her for something so hopelessly out of date. She’s an angel in disguise, he thinks, sent down to Earth in this absurdly tiny town just to remind him that there are still things in life worth living for.
The angel’s name is Emma, he learns when she brings him a cup of tea he can barely afford. Emma Swan. It’s a beautiful name for a beautiful woman, and he’s immediately enchanted in a way that leaves him mutely staring when she asks what he’ll have to eat. Not his finest moment, for certain, especially when he has a reputation to maintain.
(She still brings him a plate of pancakes later, his angel, with syrup and sausages on the side. “Granny’s got a bit of a soft spot for the lonely ones,” she says, and Killian wonders if Emma might have a soft spot for orphans as well.)
He’s only supposed to be in this dead-end town for a few days at most, just long enough to earn the parts and gas he needs and get the hell out of there. But he lingers. He’d say it’s against his conscious will, but Killian knows exactly why he’s lingering, and that reason works everyday at Granny’s Diner. He hasn’t been a romantic man in years - the war eliminating any fanciful tendencies he might have had - but sitting there, watching her breeze between tables and smile at everyone like a treasured friend, he just wants to write pretty words and pretty verses about a pretty girl, forgoing the words of human suffering that have haunted his mind and his pen ever since he was pulled out of the sea and Liam wasn’t.
It’s easy enough to pick up shifts at the local garage. Kilian doesn’t have any formal training in automotive repair, per se, but there’s things you pick up in the war, and engine maintenance is one of them (even if he’s more accustomed to keeping an airplane running than an automobile). David Nolan looks at him with suspicion, but ultimately, he’s a fair man with a big-hearted wife, and that proves enough for him to give Killian a shot. The pay isn’t great, but it’s suitable enough, and money will take you further out here in the country anyways. It should be easy and quick enough to earn enough to fix up his bike and cruise out of town with enough left over for several more tanks of gas.
What’s harder is keeping his earnings when there’s a pretty blonde serving comfort food just down the street who deserves a generous tip. A bad influence like him ought to stay away from a golden goddess like that, but he’s drawn to her in ways he doesn’t have proper words to express. Maybe a younger Killian Jones would have called it fate, but the man he’s become doesn’t believe any more that Fortuna is prone to such generosity. Still, he’s there every evening after the garage closes for a bite to eat, before going back to sleep on the couch in the garage’s office (the most charity he’s willing to accept from the kind Mrs. Nolan). Maybe it’s meant to be - maybe they really are supposed to keep running into one another. But on the other hand, maybe he’s seeking Emma Swan out, and maybe he just likes the way she blushes when he leaves a 50% tip for a ham sandwich and a cup of tea.
It’s probably just a stroke of luck that they both end up in Granny’s one night, alone except for the short-order cook, both plagued by insomnia (and, in Killian’s case, memories he’d rather leave sunken in the cold water of the Atlantic). He likes to watch the stars on nights like this, soothed by the vastness of the universe, but it’s far too cold outside at this time of year in Maine, so he contents himself with sitting as close to the window as the vinyl booth seat will allow, staring at the sky as he waits for his chamomile tea. Normally, he’d prefer rum, but bloody dry counties have left him without stronger recourse.
“You’re the wanderer,” Miss Swan says when she brings his steaming cup, and it’s the nicest description Killian thinks he’s heard for his life at present. It’s a joy to see the way her face unexpectedly lights up at his shy nod. “You have to tell me everything ,” she all but demands, sliding into the seat across from him. And in that moment, his heart is lost forever, stolen by a petite angel and tucked into her apron pocket alongside her pens and order pad.
Emma Swan may live in a tiny, nowhere town, Killian learns, but her thoughts are filled with the world at large, and the hope that she’ll one day get to explore every corner of it. She tells him, that first night, of all the places she dreams of seeing, and in return he tells her a bit of how he came to be riding aimlessly through America, of how after soaring through the open skies in the cockpit of his plane, nothing ever compared again. So he had bought the bike upon his arrival in the States, in a vain attempt to replicate that feeling the only way he can.
(He doesn’t tell her that he bought his bike and the ticket to America with the pension granted to him by the government for his brother’s death, doesn’t tell her how he couldn’t bear to be in that country for one day longer, to be thanked for his service and his sacrifice one more time. He doesn’t tell her that he rides in a desperate attempt to forget everything he’s done and everything he’s lost - not yet. That’s a conversation for a later date and some illicit rum.)
Theirs becomes a relationship built on tales of adventure - those he’s experienced and those she dreams of. It’s unconventional, maybe, but it makes her eyes light up in excitement and wonder, and he’ll do anything to see that happen, over and over again. That’s not all there is to it; those beginnings evolve into deeper conversations about how this town is the only family she has and how the sounds of explosions and grinding metal haunt his dreams at night. But that’s how it starts: two people in a diner, talking about how they’d rather be anywhere but here.
(He was only supposed to be here for a few days, a week at most, but the more he talks with Emma Swan, the more Killian Jones wants to never leave her side.)
He’s falling in love with her, he comes to realize over cups of tea and slices of pie and that absurdly sweet hot chocolate concoction she so adores. It’s not nearly as terrifying a realization as he thought it’d be, opening his heart up to someone after resigning himself to life as a loner. There’s still outside forces to contend with - Mrs. Nolan and Granny Lucas may like him, but the rest of the town views him with suspicious eyes, especially if they catch him watching their favorite blonde waitress. David Nolan offers him particularly stern looks on days when Emma brings him lunch down at the garage of her own accord, like Killian’s corrupting her somehow, but Killian learns to deal with it. It’s a preposterous thought anyways, that anything could dim that light, even good-for-nothing drifters with looks too sharp to be safe.
(He still wonders ever day at the fact that she willingly seeks him out. After all, she’s joy and sunlight and everything good; doesn’t she know that he’s a creature better suited for the night and dark thoughts and everything that logic says ought to snuff out her light?)
(But she’s there all the same, his very own saving grace, determined to create starlight in the overwhelming darkness that’s consumed his soul in these past few years.)
Still, he’d never in a million years dare to imagine Emma might reciprocate his tender feelings. She’s a good girl, beloved by an entire town, and Killian’s been around long enough to know that angels like that don’t end up the best girl of guys like him - unknown quantities with a sketchy look about them. In retrospect, there’s probably a lot of signs that he’s missed - lingering hand touches and the way she smiles just that little bit brighter when she sees Killian in their regular booth - but it’s not until she’s kissing the holy hell out of him at her favorite overlook of Storybrooke (and again, looking back, she obviously was asking him on a date, how did he miss all the signs?) that the reality that she might like him too sinks in. It’s not at all what he expected from this evening, but if he’s being honest, it’s everything he’s wanted since the moment he first set eyes on his golden goddess. There’s a sense of inner peace, a rightness , in the way their lips slide together that he’s never felt before, even if they are engaged in an increasingly passionate kiss. In his wistful imaginings, Killian always thought that if he and Emma ever kissed, it’d be a gentle affair, tentative and slow, but Emma continues to take him by surprise, enthusiastically initiating their kiss and diving right in with gusto, fingers grasping his hair, tongue demanding entrance to his mouth instead of requesting it. She jumps in head first, his lass ( his lass! ), and he loves her for it, really and truly. He only hopes she can tell that he’s all in as well in the way he tries to pull her body just that little bit closer on the blanket. As he carefully slides a hand into those golden curls he’s so enamored of - only the best for his angel, even when she’s making it awfully hard to reign himself in - he can’t help the passing thought that he’d be perfectly content to stay like this forever.
The next weeks are a happy blur of treasured kisses and stolen moments, but their time together runs out before he’d like it to, as he knew it always would. He’s put in enough hours at the garage to fund the replacement parts for his engine and earned a tidy little gas fund to boot. This was always meant to be just a few days - a week at most, but now five weeks have passed, and there’s no putting off the inevitable any longer. Even if Killian is ready to leave Storybrooke, he doesn’t relish the thought of leaving Emma behind. He certainly didn’t come to this one-stoplight town looking for love, but he found it anyway, and it hurts his newly rediscovered heart to even contemplate letting such a precious thing slip through his fingers.
So he doesn’t. There’s not much he can offer Emma - Lord knows she deserves an awful lot more than he can ever hope to give - but her dearest wish is to see the world, and that’s the one thing he can give her. It’ll be rough sometimes, and a motorcycle certainly won’t offer any sort of luxury travel, but Killian knows he was right to ask her when Emma throws her arms around his neck in enthusiastic acceptance. No second guessing; no hesitation; considerably less rational thought than such a decision should require; just an unequivocal yes .
They’ll be back someday, he thinks, when Emma’s gotten her fill of the great wide world she yearns to see. Storybrooke is her home, no matter what wanderlust she feels now; it’s filled with people who love her and have adopted her in their hearts, even if there’s no paperwork to prove it. Killian may not truly fit in Storybrooke, but as Emma’s arms tighten around his waist and her exhilarated laughter rings over the roar of the wind and of the engine, he knows he fits with her. Emma is like the missing half of his soul - the piece that makes him feel like he finally is doing something right for the first time in literal years, the person who gives him direction and makes him feel like he actually belongs somewhere again. He belongs with Emma, and Emma belongs in Storybrooke, so he’ll carve a space for himself in town.
(He’d do anything she asks for the privilege to simply remain by her side.)
That’s a concern for another day, though. Today, there’s just the open road in front of them and tendrils of spun gold whipping in the wind as Storybrooke recedes into the background, smaller and smaller in his side mirrors. There’s no telling where the winds and roads might take them, but he knows they’re both in this for the long haul, and that’s enough for today.
Today, they’ve got the whole world in front of them.