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The first time he offers to help her, she is sprawled across her bed like a starfish, as she tries to properly tuck in her freshly-washed fitted sheets.
“Come on guys, you’re making this harder than it needs to be,” she hisses between her teeth, one foot keeping the right corner down while her fingers battle with the left.
“Need a hand love?”
“Thought you were in the bathroom,” she mumbles -- this close from succeeding, this close -- and she doesn’t spin around to face him because the sheets just might escape her and she won’t allow it.
She hears him chuckle behind her back. How dare he be chuckling?
“Aye, well, a man has needs love...But now that I am here, let me help you.”
It’s actually quite funny then, because as she reluctantly raises her chin towards him, ready to tell him that she’s got it covered -- although she has actually broken a sweat over this terrible affair -- well, her eyes meet his and her heart leaps inside her chest just as the fitted sheet bounces back into her face.
Fuck.
Because, see, the thing is the sun is quite a traitor, and it has decided to dabble its most outrageous golden beams into his gentle blue eyes and this absolutely does not stir something weird deep within Emma’s belly -- not at all.
And Emma’s heart tries its best to remain neutral, cold, detached but the only thing it manages to do as Killian Jones offers her a bright smile and a raised eyebrow is to sigh and skip an alarmed beat.
“Y-yeah, sure. Thanks.”
The starfish leaves her natural habitat to stand up and hand him one corner of the white cotton sheets. When his warm palm brushes against hers, playfully, on purpose , she flushes remembering what those fingers did to her the night before.
“There we go, Swan,” he says, casually, as if all of this domesticity is normal and appropriate when her heart is throbbing and threatening to jump out of her ribcage onto the carpeted floor. “I’m actually quite an expert, as you’ll see.”
And because misfortunes never come alone, he has the audacity of gently pressing his lips to her temple and sighing a deep sigh of contentment against her skin, and by that time Emma has completely stopped breathing.
Because the thing is she is fucking terrified.
.
Later that day, when Killian has ventured out of the apartment, a piece of toast tucked between his teeth, pirate business to attend love , and Emma’s alone with her mother in the kitchen, and her spoon tinkles inside her mug, tinkles and tinkles, Emma wonders aloud:
“Mom, when did dad start helping you make your bed?”
And then it’s quite a scene for the ages because Mary Margaret nearly spits her entire mouthful of tea into Emma’s face, and Emma figures her question might be slightly weird and instantly regrets asking it.
“I’m, I’m…,” Snow White begins, and Snow White is blushing, and Snow White is Emma’s mother and Emma wants to dive into her mug of coffee and possibly drown there. “I mean, I don’t know.” She pauses, winces. “With the Evil Queen, and the sleeping curse, and all of that...your father and I didn’t really get to date, you know…”
Oh, Emma knows. This is all very new and weird to her, the whole dating Captain Hook.
“I see,” Emma replies simply, because Mary Margaret is gazing at her far too intensely and Emma is still contemplating diving into her small mug.
Instead, she stubbornly lowers her gaze and refuses to look back up at her mother, who will not stop staring.
“Why…” Mary Margaret’s voice resonates a few seconds afterwards, “Why are you asking, Emma?”
Emma feels her hair stand on hand.
“No, you know, just wondering…”
.
The next time he sleeps over, her parents are downstairs when they wake up. Emma feels like she is sixteen and she’s just had her first boyfriend at home, and while it is obviously inconvenient, a part of her cannot help but shriek (very silently) of happiness because this is is silly and dumb and it’s hers .
“Alright. Just stay here, I’ll go grab us some coffee.”
When she climbs back up, cold, morning air greets her and curls around her bare legs. But Emma cannot bring herself to complain. In fact, she can barely bring herself to form any coherent thoughts.
Because, see, the thing is Killian Jones -- her boyfriend, as we’ve mentioned before -- has opened wide the windows and is currently on all fours, busy fluffing her pillow, on top of her already tightly made bed.
Emma blinks, swallows, tries her best to contain the panic birthing inside her throat, ready to roar out of her mouth.
It’s just Killian. It’s just him. It’s just him.
Although her legs seem to burn with the urge to run, flee, disappear, she breathes in deeply, it’s just us , forces a smile on her face and clears her throat to signal her presence.
All it takes to quiet down the voices are his eyes gazing into hers as he turns his face.
And she says, “You didn’t have to make the bed”, but she means something else, something that she isn’t ready to voice, that she is terrified to even think.
And he smiles back at her, rolling back to her side, and she can tell in his “Don’t worry about it, love,” as he springs to his feet and to her lips that he heard it anyway.
.
As things turn out, Killian makes a far better bed than Emma ever could, and Mary Margaret is quite pleased.
“I have never seen your room so tidy,” she exclaims on delivering a hot cocoa to Emma who is still busy with sheriff files.
Feet propped on her desk, Emma shrugs and scans the room while this silly, little warm bubble of happiness swells inside her chest.
“Well, yeah, Killian always makes sure everything is in order when he--” and abruptly cuts herself.
Emma’s cheeks flush a bright pink then, what the hell was she about to say? and Mary Margaret’s cough is another poor attempt to hide her grin.
“I see...Well, I’ll leave you to it. Say hi to Killian if you see him tonight.”
Emma means to tell her that she absolutely doesn’t want to talk about her boyfriend with her mother, of all people, and she isn’t sixteen anymore and she shouldn’t feel this embarassed, but instead she just smiles, giggles a bit even, for fuck’s sake , and exhales: “Sure.”
And if she wants to slap her own face with her own two hands afterwards, it’s only because this is new and terrifying and the happiest she’s been in ages.
.
When she sleeps over on the Jolly Roger, and she wakes up to his side of the bed empty, a good sailor wakes up with the sun love , she tries to make the bed like he does...and fails, miserably.
“For both of our sakes, Swan, please leave the bed to me.”
And she wants to be mad, fists on hips, but instead a rare, childlike laughter rattles her ribs as she pounces on top of him and they both land onto the bed.
“What’s the point of having a neatly made bed if we’re going to mess it up anyway?” she grins against his lips, and then kisses him more, and more . She cannot get enough of his kisses.
He chuckles, too. It’s a wonderful sound.
“Point taken, Swan.”
And as she backs away to slowly delve into his eyes, Emma thinks she might need to hear it for the rest of her life, or else she might wither like the poets do.
.
(When he leaves, she doesn’t wither like the poets do. Emma figures she should have known, should have known that the metaphor was far too delicate and gentle, should have known that death would be fire and ashes and void -- oh, so much void, where he used to live in her heart.
When he leaves, she burns, she breaks, she collapses to the ground in a deafening bang, but she most absolutely does not wither.)
.
The first time, it is a parallel universe and it doesn’t count, it isn’t real, and she gets to hold him a few hours later, and squeeze him, as hard as she can, against her heart, and she doesn’t say it, then.
Although his smile weakens he lets her love him this way -- with her fragile, imperfect, scarred fingers that tremble even as she brushes his cheeks.
She doesn’t know how else to love him.
(He also loses her, that night. She tends to forget it. That she isn’t the only one bleeding, that he also lost his love when she took on the darkness in a flash of light. He also lost her.)
.
In Camelot, they share a room.
Although Dark Ones do not sleep she remains by his side most nights, and she watches him.
As the moon and the stars illuminate his skin, trace the shape of his face and dust his cheeks of constellations, she thinks about the time he died, only it wasn’t real but it could have been, and she thinks about how precious he is to her and that death should not be able to touch love, death should remain very far and hidden from her because god knows what she’ll do to keep him by her side.
She brushes a stubborn strand of hair from his forehead and brushes her lips against his warm skin, once, twice, thrice. I love you. I love you. I love you. In his slumber, he smiles.
She loves him. It is the only light in her darkness.
.
The second time, he lays asleep in a middlemist flower field. She doesn't let him sleep. She wakes him up.
He hates her for it. No one likes to be awoken in the middle of the night, in the middle of an eternal, ghastly night.
.
When Emma is alone in this big, enormous house, she is quite thankful Dark Ones do not need sleep. She doesn’t have to make the bed. But she does stare at it, the bed where they should be both lying down, curled up together, warm and comfortable and happy.
She stares at it and she remembers his sleepy smile under the golden morning light, not two months ago, she remembers his blue eyes disappearing, one instant, behind yellow sheets that danced in the air between them, she remembers how much love she had seen in his eyes and how much it had frightened her.
She isn’t afraid anymore. Her fingers have stopped shaking.
She only hopes she isn’t too late.
(She is, of course, she is but that will take some time to sink in.)
.
The third time, she sleeps on the couch, warm fingers against the cold silver of the ring he gave her.
“The Dark One is immortal. Emma isn’t. Bring her home to me.”
Her heart pounds inside her chest for the first time in weeks and it bumps against her ribs, it rattles, it begs, it cries: what is the point anymore? What is the point?
She sleeps on the couch.
It would be too much to withstand to wake up in her bed and forget that he is gone, stretch a hand and not meet his, stretch a leg and only find void, nothing, and remember it all, suddenly -- and stretch the bed cover and find her muscles sore and lonely and how the hell did she manage to do that alone?
She sleeps on the couch.
Until she stands up and decides Orpheus was right and strides to fetch him from Hell.
.
Is she meant to turn around, and lose him forever? Is there no other ending?
It can’t be. It can’t be, not when his skin still tastes like his skin, and his eyes are still blue and real and he is here with her, and they are going to make it out of there alive, together.
Orpheus failed. She won’t.
.
She does.
She fails. Again.
She leaves him behind. And when she turns around, her father’s fingers clutched around hers, tugging, tugging, Emma we have to go , she doesn’t even get to see him one last time.
She swallows broken pieces of glass and happy endings and true love, and she suffocates because it is the fourth time and she cannot breathe and this cannot possibly be the end, they deserve time, more time --
-- We already got more time than we were ever meant to.
.
The day she buries him, she’s staring at her unmade bed when, for the first time, she realizes, understands, that there will be no getting him back this time.
That his warm fingers will not close over her knuckles, his stubborn little sigh, as he mumbles not like this Swan, you have to really tug, just like that…
Her fingers will forever remain stretched, ready to grasp, hold, treasure... but there is nothing left to reach.
Tears burn her eyes as she stares at the stubborn piece of fabric in her hands that will not be properly tucked in.
A breath, a sigh, a sob shaking her spine.
She should have paid attention when he was explaining. Should have remembered the steps. Instead, she stared at him and his mouth and his eyelashes in this golden light and thought she would have him forever.
She thought they would have their happily ever after, so why bother with making a bed?
But now he is gone and she is unable to make the bed like he does, used to -- oh god, will this ever get easier? -- and her fingers have nowhere to hold anymore, nowhere to reach, nowhere to be.
.
It does. It gets easier.
As things turn out, Fate has other plans than death for Killian Jones.
Emma is forever grateful.
(Their nights are still haunted by terror and grief, but that’s quite alright.
Because, see, every morning, no matter the stormy night they just spent, no matter the nightmares and cries and screams, well every morning they make the bed together, and Emma actually pays attention when he explains, she’s learned her lesson, and they get to face the rest of their lives together.)
**