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these things you keep, you’d better throw them away
you want to turn your back on your soulless days
for once you were tethered and now you are free---
because that was the river and this is the sea
--- The Waterboys ---
“Emma? Emma, can you hear me?”
The voice sounds worried. A hand on her waist is trembling.
Why?
Click. Rewind.
„Dude. This is bullshit.“
Killian's eyes sparkle. „Did you seriously just use the word 'dude'?“
Emma shakes her head. She realizes her mistake, and decides to lean into it. „Yes, yes I did. And good job prevari-- prevaricating.“ She just used the word 'prevaricating'. Correctly. Without stumbling over it. Much. „You just swept right past my point. Which is that this. Is bullshit .“
Killian grins and points to the sign above the bar. „We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone,“ he says. „Anyone.“
„I am not anyone, you git. You fucking know me. And I'm not exec--- ex a ctly fall-down drunk.“
„You will be if I serve you another.“
Is that concern she sees in his eyes?
„I am not--- I am totally---“ She can't finish her sentence. She's too indignant.
„You're proving my point, love. Again.“
„Ag-- wait. Again? What was the first time?“
„You called me 'dude'.“
Emma huffs in annoyance. „You are impossible.“
„It's part of my charm.“
„It is not ,“ she says with conviction, and slides off her bar stool. She takes several steps back, and suddenly the alcohol hits her full force. It's always the act of standing up that gets you. Sitting down she had been sober, dammit. Almost sober. Sober-ish. Her knees buckle.
Killian vaults the bar in one smooth movement.
He vaults. The damn bar. The actual, damn bar.
If Emma weren't so busy fighting the forces of gravity, she'd be so fucking impressed. As it is, she's struggling to remain vertical. Killian's arm wraps around her waist the moment she loses the battle, and she slumps against him.
Great. She will never hear the end of it.
Click. Rewind.
It’s a dive and she wants that. She’s trailed a skip all the way to the docks, only to lose him in a restricted area she couldn’t sneak into without blowing her cover, and now she’s stuck at the harbor, looking for somewhere to pass the time.
Somewhere with a view of the docks.
The bar down off the side of the main access road looks perfect for her purposes.
It's a little nicer inside than she expected.
Definitely cleaner.
Emma looks around.
Wood-paneling on the walls. Nautical gadgets and equipment as decor. But not kitsch - and definitely not fake. A sextant mounted next to her head has a bent mirror, its shine dulled from exposure to salty air.
A counter with several stools and honest-to-god brass railing. She wants to sink down on one of the stools, but she needs a window seat, and also, this is no time for alcohol.
She picks one of several booths lining the wall, each with a window, throws down her pack, and resigns herself to having to order food. There’s only one other patron in the dive at this hour, a mangy-looking man in a red cap at the far end of the counter, and the bartender nods at her as he wipes down the bar.
“You’ll have to order up here, love,” said bartender calls out to her. “My waitstaff has not been hired, yet.”
Yeah.
Perfect.
Click. Fast Forward.
“You don’t usually chase oblivion.”
He sets her down on something soft and comfortable, and--- wait. Did he just--- did he carry her into this room? What is this room? Is it his office?
“Why drown yourself tonight of all nights?”
His face is fuzzy. She has trouble focusing. Does he need an answer?
“Emma.”
His voice is soft, and concerned, and reprimanding. She can hear his special brand of worried annoyance even through the fog. And she’s lying on a couch. This is his office, it has to be. He is spreading a blanket over her.
“Emma, are you still with me?”
Fuck. It seems he does need an answer.
He is sitting down on the floor next to her, and taking her hand, and looking at her, and she knows he won’t move until she replies. Even if it takes all night. He did just vault a bar counter after all--- he’s nothing if not tenacious. Why are his eyes so blurry?
“I don’t like Christmas.” It’s a sigh from the bottom of her heart. “I just--- I really hate it.”
He nods, and she wants to elaborate, but her lids are so heavy.
Click. Rewind.
“Does that line ever work?”
She fixes him with her most unforgiving glare, and he stops without putting the dish down. Then again, he just called her ‘love’ and ‘gorgeous’ all in the same sentence, and she doesn’t need his brand of practised charm.
Or his approval.
What she needs is this booth, with a window overlooking the dock entrance, and to be left alone, now that she’s ordered.
“You’re a tough lass,” he finally says, setting the Cornish pasty in front of her, and damn if it doesn’t smell delicious. “But you’re still lovely.”
She gives him a full-body eyeroll, but he merely quirks an eyebrow.
“Let me know if you need anything else.”
And with that he retreats behind the bar, and does not bother her again.
No part of her wishes he would.
None.
Click. Fast Forward.
“Who did this to you?”
She laughs out loud. He is a picture of worry and righteous indignation and testosterone overload, even though her eye isn’t even black yet. Just swollen, and a little red. The cut on her eyebrow is tiny.
She smiles at him. “Down, boy. It’s all in a day’s work.”
He shakes his head and his brow furrows. “Don’t lie to me.”
Now she really has to laugh. He looks like he wants to take on the culprit with nothing but his rage and a dish towel.
“Don’t worry.” She puts her hand on his arm, feels his muscles vibrate. “I wasn’t paying enough attention, and caught a skip with a decent right hook.” His eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. “All in a day's work for a bounty hunter,” she clarifies. “And this---” she points at her swollen left eye, “is completely my fault. I was distracted.”
Distracted because there was a boy, a small boy, in the diner to which she finally tracked her quarry. His small boy, the skip’s kid. And she was loathe to resort to violence in front of the child. He was quietly coloring the placemat and smiling at his father and Emma almost left the premises to come back and arrest the man another time. But then she remembered this skip is the main suspect in four assault and battery cases and she can’t not get him off the streets.
And so she took him down, in front of his son, and got a black eye in return.
She keeps seeing the kid’s face, and suddenly tears spring to her eyes.
“Emma?”
They exchanged names weeks ago, she and the bartender, after she hogged his booth for ten straight days. Sometimes bounty hunting takes patience.
Now she comes back simply because she likes this bar, likes that it’s never that busy, likes that he is a nice man and a good listener, now that he’s stopped flirting.
Likes that he knows to leave her be most times.
“Emma? What’s wrong?”
This is not one of them.
Then again, she is wiping her eyes with his cocktail napkins.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and he pours her a beer and a shot of whisky. Damn. She has a usual. How did that happen? She doesn’t put down roots.
But he’s still looking at her, worried, expectant, and she knows he won’t let up until she talks. He’s tenacious that way.
It has happened before. The first time her card was declined, for example, he forced her to talk, forced her to admit she was behind on her bills because she’d lost a few skips to a new rival in town, and really needed this place to stake out her current prey. She asked him if she could pay him later, and maybe let her sit at the window, even if she didn’t order anything?
He smiled at that, nodded, and kept bringing her food and coffee, day after day.
He wouldn’t take no for an answer.
And now she has a damn usual, and she knows his name, and she should be panicking. But she doesn’t, because the kid’s face is still front and center on her mind, and she has trouble reining in the fucking water in her eyes, and---
“I had to take down a father today.” She sighs and picks up more napkins, before drops actually start to roll down her cheeks. “A father who had his kid with him. And then I had to take the kid to social services, and I just---”
She can’t hold it anymore. She puts both hands in front of her face and tries so hard not to cry, she can feel herself vibrate.
“I’m so sorry.” His voice sounds far away. He's walking out from behind the bar. Then she feels his hand rubbing her back, slow and deliberate and god, it’s comforting. He just stands next to her, letting her turn towards him, away from the patrons, without making a spectacle.
She is unspeakably grateful for it.
Click. Fast Forward.
“How’s your head?”
He’s smiling. There’s a bit of Schadenfreude in it. A lot, actually. But he is also carrying a cup with what looks to be black coffee, so she’s willing to forego commenting on the smile.
Especially since she’s about to die of mortification.
Or of the fact that the rays of sunshine are slicing her head open.
It’s a toss-up at this point.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and she really, really means it. “I didn’t--- I should not have gotten that drunk.”
“Emma.” It sounds like a sigh as he sits down beside her and hands her the mug. “Love, don’t apologize. We all have those moments.”
She looks up at that, because his voice has turned knowing and sad. When he smiles at her, it does not reach his eyes.
“Are you all right?” It’s out before she can stop herself, and only after she says it does she realize-- she actually wants to know.
He holds out his hand, two pills on his palm, and says, “Take these. You’ll feel better.”
She does, washes them down with hot black coffee, but can’t unsee the sad smile, the sagging shoulders.
“That’s not an answer,” she whispers.
He looks up at her, eyes soft and wistful. “I think it is.”
Click. Rewind.
“I can’t take care of a kid. I wouldn’t know where to start!”
She’s angry at him, so, so angry. For saying out loud exactly what she wants. Calling her on her own fantasy. The happy little life she wants to give that damn boy she delivered into the clutches of the system. She delivered.
As if she didn’t know what awaits him there.
Fuck.
“It’s what you want.” He is quiet, but unrelenting. His eyes bore into hers, giving no quarter.
And finally she looks away, has to concede defeat, because she can lie to him all she wants, it doesn’t make it any less true. She has even looked up the boy’s name. It’s Henry.
Henry Cassidy, currently living at the State group home on Thornton Avenue, and not having a great time of it.
She can understand why.
From what little she has seen of him, as she waited with him at the police station where she dropped off his father, Henry is smart, and kind, and funny, and has his head lodged firmly in the clouds. In other words, he is fair game for every last bully and oppressor.
It makes something inside her ache with a pain long forgotten, but never quite conquered, and she just wishes it would stop.
She can’t take care of a child .
“What do you know,” she grinds out after a long moment of silence, and then she slides off the stool and stalks out of the bar.
She doesn’t go back for almost two whole weeks.
Just thinks of his face as he said it’s what you want -- open and friendly and honest, without judgment. Like he knew her.
Like he knows her.
Click. Fast Forward.
“Oh my god, it’s Christmas Day.”
The realization hits her all at once, and he smiles. “That it is, love.”
She groans and buries her face in her hands. “I am so sorry.”
His hand settles on her back, rubs small circles, like it belongs there. “I told you. You don’t have to be sorry. Not for that.”
She looks out from between her fingers and doesn’t tell him just how good his warm hand feels on her back.
Instead she says, “I’ll be out of your hair in a minute. Just let me finish my coffee.”
And he says, “Don’t go.”
She can feel her head snap up, and man, that is painful .
She has to take a deep breath. “What do you--- what?”
He shrugs, and his hand keeps rubbing her back. “You don’t--- you don’t have to go. I don’t have any plans.”
He is looking at her, with longing, with hope , and goddamnit, now there are tears in her eyes again.
“Please stay.” His voice is a whisper. “If you don’t have--- if you want to. We can cook some lunch and maybe--- I have some nice rum we can heat up, and I----”
His shoulders slump, and his hand slides off her back, slowly.
And the tears are now coming in earnest.
He reaches up, oh so tentatively, to wipe her cheeks with the back of his hand.
“Please, Emma. Please stay.”
There is no room for doubt, not anymore.
And so she nods.
Click.
Steak and kidney pie from a freezer, and laughter.
Hot buttered rum and more laughter.
His eyes, warm and fond; the way he rubs her arm on occasion.
The way he smiles.
Click.
“I am so sorry, but I do have to go now. I have to get up early in the morning.”
“On Boxing Day?”
“On December 26th, and my skips don’t care about that.”
“I’m--- I’m glad you stayed.”
“So am I. I---- I had a really good time.”
“Be careful out there, the roads are icy. And---”
“Yes?”
“And I--- I’ll see you soon, right?”
“You will.”
The last sentence she whispers. But she really does mean it.
CLICK.
“Emma? Emma, can you hear me?”
The voice is frantic now. She should answer.
She tries to nod, but can’t. Why does everything hurt?
Finally after a struggle that lasts eons, she opens her eyes. “M here.”
“Oh thank god.”
All she can see is his face, and the fact that his eyes are very, very shiny. She feels herself being pulled up, against his chest, and feels her cheek rub against the soft cotton of his shirt.
Feels his hands, one on her waist, one holding the back of her head. Centrifugal motion forces them both to the right.
“Where...?” She can’t seem to finish the sentence.
“We’re in a cab, love. I’m taking you to the hospital.” His voice is unsteady. His hands are shaking, too.
She pulls back a bit. She needs to see him. “What---- happened?”
His eyes squeeze shut, and he leans his forehead against hers. “You fell, Emma, I’m so sorry. You fell, right in front of the pub, you fell.” His voice is doing somersaults. “I’m sorry, I didn’t salt the walkway, but I closed the bar for Christmas and I just--- I forgot….”
“Hey.” She finds her fingers, reaches up to touch his cheek. “Killian, hey. It’s OK.”
He is shaking now. “I’m so sorry.” It’s like he’s stuck in a loop. “Emma, love, please - I’m so sorry.”
“Shhhhhhhhhhh.” She runs her hand down his cheek, but he’s not listening. When he opens his eyes, he doesn’t see her.
“I saw you fall, and you hit your head, and I know I’m not supposed to move people with head injuries, but I called 911, and they put me on hold, and you were unconscious , and I didn’t--- I couldn’t----”
“Killian, breathe,” she says, but he is not listening.
His eyes are darting everywhere and his hands are shaking in earnest now, and so she pulls him down and kisses him.
It takes him a moment to respond, a moment for his mouth to go soft on hers, but once it does----
He pulls back, and his eyes shine in wonder now.
“Emma?”
“I’m here,” she whispers. “And I’m going to be fine.”
His eyes close again, and he holds on to her tightly until they pull up at the ER.
.
There’s a lot of poking and prodding and shining penlights into her eyes.
There’s WhatHappened? and PleaseFollowMyFinger and We’dLikeToKeepHerOverNight .
Killian says yes to the last part, while Emma says no.
He gives her a hard stare.
She doesn’t flinch. She can’t afford it.
“Fine,” he finally says. “But you’re coming home with me. So I can keep an eye on you.”
She concedes.
.
He carries her up three flights of stairs, despite her protests.
Sits down on the couch, with her in his lap.
Makes absolutely no move to let her go.
She lets him.
“Killian?” She clears her throat after minutes of silence.
“Please don’t leave.”
She pulls back again, and again his eyes are large and shiny.
She puts her hand on his heart. It’s beating so fast. “What makes you think I want to leave?”
He shakes his head and blinks and now water is starting to roll down his cheeks.
“I’m afraid,” he whispers. “I’m afraid you’ll come to your senses and figure out I’m just a bartender with a closet full of skeletons and demons, but the thing is----- ”
His voice trails off.
More water flows.
“Killian,” she says again, and this time her voice is steady, and strong. His body goes rigid, like he’s preparing for the blow. She reaches up once more, cups his cheek.
“I don’t know lots of things.” He’s looking at her now, he hears her. “I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time, or where I’m going, or how to get to a future that’s more than just keeping a roof over my head.”
His arms tighten around her, but he does not interrupt.
“I don’t know how to help Henry.” Her voice catches, and she has to take a deep breath. “I don’t know why you----”
The lump in her throat comes on suddenly, with force, and she fights down a sob. He bends down, gently kisses the top of her head and his hands start rubbing her back.
It feels so lovely, and so, so right.
“I don’t know why you want me to stay,” she whispers. “But I do know that I don’t want to go.”
“I don’t know lots of things either.” He laughs. It’s shaky and tentative and glad, and he bends down again, finds her lips with his own, and god, she has never felt so absolutely cared for.
His hand winds into her hair and he sighs against her.
“But I knew from the moment you walked into my bar,” he says, and leans his forehead against hers. “I knew you were going to be my greatest challenge and my saving grace.”
She almost laughs at that, but he’s so, so serious.
“I knew.” His voice drops to a whisper. “And all those other things? I want to figure them out.”
His nose brushes hers.
“Together.”
She tilts her head back and he kisses her again, and she knows, she knows , that this is the beginning of something big, something right, something wonderful, and that if ever a moment could define a life, it is this one.
And so she pulls back, and looks up, and nods.
Click.