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She opens her door after an obnoxious amount of knocking that she had tried to pretend not to notice - without any success. “I told you I didn’t want to see anybody,” she sighs, but he just ignores her and passes her before she can shut the door in his face. Leaning her head tiredly on the doorframe, her voice comes out muffled against the wood. “How did you get in?”
“I asked your neighbor to please open the door for me,” he informs her, and she notices a bag on his hand that he carefully sets on the kitchen aisle before turning to her with a sheepish smile. “I guess I sounded desperate enough, huh?”
She ignores the tiny flutter she feels inside her chest at the adorable look on his face. This is not the time to notice how cute he can be. How cute she has already noticed he is. How cute he is, period. It is definitely the worst time. “I really don’t want to see anybody.”
She hears him sigh as she sits on the edge of the couch, picking up her blanket and rearranging it over her legs right as it had been before he had barged inside her apartment. God, she must look a mess. Her make up is completely ruined - she hadn’t even worried about removing it since that disastrous night, or even try to brush her hair, or changed from the wrinkled tee and pants she had favored since then.
She wishes she could even muster the will to care about it - to at least look the littlest bit presentable in front of him.
Alas, she can’t. Not when she feels so numb.
Killian’s voice brings her back to her living room, where he appears seconds later and sits at her side, patting her leg awkwardly. She is always amazed to see this shuffling slash blushing cute boy next door side of him instead of the smirky teasing idiot he usually is. She has always teased him for it since they became friends and started bonding, but today she isn’t really feeling like pointing out how adorable he looks - or how some other guy might have tried to make a move on her or take advantage of her in his situation. Not that he’d ever try, of course. “I know, but it’s been two days since anybody has seen you, and we were worried.”
She waves a hand at him and tries really hard not to roll her eyes. She is sure Mary Margaret or Ruby have had something to do with all of this set up to make sure she is okay.
Or alive.
“You don’t need to worry about me. I’m fine.”
She squeals when he picks up her foot and lightly tickles her. In fact, she has to fight the urge to hit him for it, but at his warm smile she finds it almost impossible to lash out at him. “Yes we do, because that’s what friends do.” His gaze rakes over her, and this time she doesblush at the perusing of her current state. Jesus, she must look a mess. “And yeah, I can see you’re fine.”
She hides her grimace at his obvious sarcasm behind the blanket, only her eyes visible as she peeks up at him. “Shut up.”
He rubs his face warily and sighs. She braces herself for what is to come. “Emma… come on.”
And there it is.
“I really don’t wanna talk about it okay,” she almost whimpers, and she wants to slap herself at how weak she sounds. She knows she has been a total wreck since that last talk with Graham, but at least she has been on her own and has been able to deal with it by herself, no witnesses to see her breaking.
And now it is him who gets a first seat for the show.
Fuck. Everything.
He taps her legs to catch her attention and doesn’t stop until she looks at him warily. His eyes are warm and understanding, and it only makes her gulp down tears that she has been shedding non stop these past days. “I know. That’s why we won’t talk. We’re gonna eat and we’re gonna watch a movie.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Are we?”
“Yeah. Look at all that I brought for you.” At that, he stands up after carefully leaving her feet on her place on the couch and goes to the kitchen, probably to get the bag he had carried with him. While she hears him picking up whatever it is he has brought, she frowns.
“For me or for us?”
He pauses and after a moment peeks from the kitchen, lingering at the doorway and a frown of his own marring his forehead. “If you want me to go, I will, but I’d rather stay here with you.”
It’s the way he says it. The way he looks at her. The way his whole demeanor screams comfort to her, reminding her of that night out she had forgotten her jacket when she had been so cold she had thought her fingers would fall off and he had sidled up to her and rubbed her arms until she felt warm again. The way his smile and thick accent would brighten up her day and make her wish for them to have dozens of projects together at the studio to work on. The way he would know when she needed a hug or, on the other hand, just someone to sit companionable in silence with.
The way he just… is. There, for her, without her even asking for it.
Yet she can’t help but try to push him away from her, even when he has stated that he would prefer to be with her right now.
“I’m gonna be awful company.”
He chuckles. “That’s okay. Nothing new.”
“How charming,” she mutters under her breath, even if she has to fight a smile at his teasing tone.
“I know.” The smirk he sends her way makes her think of the predatory gleam she has sometimes spied in his eyes when he looks at her, but she doesn’t dwell too much on it. Heis taken, after all. She just snuggles deeper into the cushion and envelopes the blanket tighter around herself. He approaches her again, gingerly kneeling by her side so she’ll have no way to ignore him, tugging on the edges of her blanket.
“Come on. Let’s watch this thing. Settle down and I’ll bring the food over.”
She looks at him from under her lashes. “Didn’t you bring booze? Here I thought the Irish enjoyed their alcohol…”
“I resent that,” he says, a pout on those smirky lips of his before standing and going to the kitchen once more. As he’s walking away, he calls over his shoulder, “And I forgot okay.”
She half huffs half snorts at that. What a loser. “You make a horrible pick-me-up date,” she points out, and as soon as the words leave her lips, she wants to cover her mouth with her hand, urging them back from where they came.
Did she just call this… whatever it is, a date?
God.
Luckily, he doesn’t seem like he has payed too much attention: he just tsk-tsks at her and jerks with his chin in the direction of the couch while he carries takeaway boxes in his arms. “Lay down. I’ll do the rest.”
“I’m not disabled, God,” she protests when he sits by her side and arranges the boxes at the low table in front of them. There’s a pause in which only the rippling and scrunching sounds of cardboard and plastic being torn are heard, until she cuts it with an even more torn sound.
“I’m just heartbroken.”
And that’s it.
She does break.
And even if he can’t really put her pieces back together, he does pick them up and tries to.
She doesn’t know how much time she spends in his arms, or how long it takes between her first shuddering sob and the moment he takes her and carefully pulls her to him, her whole body laying over his, face hidden in the crook of his neck as she cries her heart out. If she had been embarrassed before at the frazzled state she has been these past days, it is nothing compared to the knowledge of him seeing her now, yet she can’t stop. She cries every damn tear her body can come up with; for every text, every fight, every smile, every kiss, every look she could have shared with her now ex lover - and all of those that now are just that: memories of something no longer alive.
She is mourning. And Killian is there, holding her.
She feels his lips against the crown of her head, and she inhales sharply, hiccups lodged in her throat - not only from the crying. She tries to slow her breathing, counting silently in her head and wishing for that drink she had mocked him earlier about. She closes her eyes, burying her nose into the skin of his shoulder and wondering if she has ruined his shirt with her tears - God, the runny mascara, he is going to kill her when he sees the black streaks on it - when she realizes he is tugging at her hair. She stills, and waits until she reckons that, yeah: he is tugging at her hair in periodic intervals. She lets him do his thing for a moment, and bites her lip, wondering what the hell he is doing now.
When his hands still after a while, she turns until she can properly stare at him. “What are you doing?”
He smiles and picks a lock of her hair and proudly shows it to her. “Look: a braid.” At her dumbfounded expression, his face falls a little, but his eyes are still alight with purpose and, maybe, something akin to hope. He boops her nose and she startles. “I know how much you love them.”
That little flip flop in her stomach is back, and she has to bite back another sob. Is this guy even real? She shakes her head, trying to clear it from the raging emotions battling inside of her - heartbreak, numbness, happiness, warmth… hope. “That’s… stupidly sweet of you.” She takes the braid from him, her fingers grazing his in the process. She pretends she doesn’t notice the way he trembles at the contact. “But - to be fairly honest? That’s the crappiest braid I have ever seen.”
“Forgive me for not being quite an expert braider,” he complains snidely, and she chokes back a laugh at how childish he sounds. “Here, let me try again.”
She settles herself against his chest once more, and almost falls asleep as his fingers work on another strand of hair. It’s soothing, and calm, and sweet, and light, something she identifies with home.
Even if it is not hers. Even if it will never be.
When he stops once more, she comes back from her sleepy haze at him tickling her face with his second attempt at a braid, and now she does laugh out loud. “Killian, do you even knowhow to make a braid?”
He sounds offended when he huffs, “I have seen Milah make them thousands of times. It doesn’t look too difficult.”
“Well, I’m sure you should try staring harder next time.”
He slaps her hand away, going for yet another strand of her hair. “Okay. Third time’s a charm.”
She is oddly tempted to let him try again and lull her to sleep, but instead chooses to look at him work. As soon as she notices what it is he is doing wrong, she turns on his lap and wraps her hand over his, halting his movements. “Come on. Let me show you.” Her fingers cover his and take the three sections of hair, but instead of prying them away from them, she guides them and at the same time whispers instructions under her breath, her back to his chest, his arms caging her as they work on their braid. She tells herself she has imagined the catch in his breathing. “See? Now this one goes to the left…”
The evening ends up with almost a dozen tiny braids adorning her hair, - some of them way better than others, mind you, - her table littered with empty takeaway boxes, Killian’s shirt marred by her mascara stain, and both of them asleep on the couch, wrapped in each other, as Pirate of the Caribbean plays in the background.