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It doesn’t occur to her that she’s not entirely thought through the consequences of RSVP-ing to her cousin Regina’s wedding. It’s not like she could have backed out anyway, having confirmed her attendance months before (when her life wasn’t in shambles), but it isn’t until she’s tucked away into her assigned table at the reception that she realizes how fucked she is.
(That’s a lie, but if she has her way, she will eventually bleach the actual ceremony straight out of her head.
She’s not going to think about any of it ever; not Roland the adorable ring-bearer, now one parent richer, not the most genuine smile she’s ever seen her tough-as-nails cousin wear, not Robin’s misty eyes and blissful smile as he slid the ring onto Regina’s finger. None of it. It’s all going straight into her mental trash can.)
Whiskey, she decides, is how this will best be accomplished.
Because the reception is already unbearable; aside from the younger children, and Miss Lucas the widow, she is the only one actually seated. Everyone else is on their feet, swaying to the soft song floating through the truly breathtaking ballroom Regina had booked for her wedding. The couples are all so different, but somehow manage to look the same. Content smiles, foreheads touching, palms pressed over hearts; it’s all too much, especially for Emma eternally-on-the-outside-looking-in Swan.
When she sees the happy bride and groom floating across the dance floor like heaven really is a place on Earth, she downs what’s left of her (fifth? maybe sixth?) glass of Connemara, and proceeds towards the open bar to order another.
She has no dignity, really, ordering Irish whiskey at a wedding that could have been hers if she wasn’t such a fucking trainwreck. But it’s the only concession she’ll allow to her heartbreak. And only because it is really good whiskey.
(It’s absolutely not because it tastes like the nights they spent in that dingy little bar in Southie, touching and tasting and talking until last call damn near every night).
By the time she’s gotten her refill (two fingers, on the rocks, because she’s not trying to blackout at a wedding, but also not trying to be anywhere near the realm of sober) and downed half of it, she has absolutely no desire to fight her way through the mass of people and back to her table.
Watching her cousin, Mary Margaret, pull her high school sweetheart and husband of five years in for a small, sweet kiss confirms her decision to get the fuck out of this nightmare. Because she can’t stand the joy permeating the room, but she’s also not the kind of asshole that will ruin said joy for anybody.
She knows what a precious commodity that kind of incandescent happiness is, how quickly it slips through one's fingers, and she has no intentions of stealing it from any of the couples that have found themselves caught up in the blissful atmosphere of binding nuptials and undying love.
She takes one last look at Regina, eyes closed, cheek on her new husband’s shoulder, smiling so softly, like she’s finally found her happy ending, and has to repress two painfully sudden urges. The first is easily conquered; she’s spent her entire life mastering the art of keeping her eyes dry while her soul weeps it’s aches and pains.
The second is a much newer impulse, and she is, at this stage, very drunk, so she doesn’t think she should go too hard on herself when her thumb doesn’t listen to her and starts twisting and rubbing a ring that isn’t there.
The missing weight hasn’t felt this heavy since she took it off, but the moment she stepped into the church, lined with delicate white lilies, she felt its absence like a tangible force, dragging her body down by the difference that she still hasn’t quite accommodated for (she’s resolutely not thinking of the target’s she recently left on the range, all her hits just the slightest fraction off).
Panic starts to crawl up her throat, thick and ugly, and she elects to leave, now, before she loses her shit at her cousin’s wedding reception. She thinks Regina will forgive her for not saying goodbye, especially with how wrapped up in her own fairy-tale-come-true she is.
--
Spring has slowly been sweeping out the permanent chill of Boston’s winter, and she hadn’t felt the need to wear a coat when she left in the morning, but now that the sun has set, she finds herself cold enough to regret that decision. More so after fifteen minutes of walking, as her dress (way too formal for Emma’s taste, but it wasn’t her special day, never would be, so she had put on what Regina had picked and dealt with it) doesn’t provide much insulation from the chill, and all the cabbies in Boston must be on break at once because she doesn’t see a taxi anywhere. She knows it’s a bad idea to take the T in her state; it’s a long ride and she’s way too drunk to stay awake for it. And if the train ride is long, the walk is impossible, so she lets herself wander, trying to come up with a solution to the problem.
Drunk Emma is apparently the biggest masochist in the world, because before she even realizes it, she’s turned onto a very familiar winding road. But to say sober Emma didn’t know how bad this would probably go when she googled the reception hall and found the address was remarkably close to a certain apartment complex would be an outright lie, so.
Maybe the amount of alcohol in her system isn’t a factor, maybe she’s just a trainwreck of a human being regardless of how much she drinks, which is enough to worry a whole host of people these days.
(There is no maybe).
--
He’s a little surprised to hear his buzzer ringing at eight at night, especially when he has spectacularly few people who would actually come to visit him in his home.
The number’s actually zero, so maybe he’s more than a little surprised, but the talk feature on the buzzer has been broken for the better part of a year and the landlord doesn’t seem interested in fixing it any time soon, so he guesses he’ll have to roll with it and buzzes the person in.
It’s probably just a tenant who’s forgotten their keys and has resorted to smashing buttons to get back in, or a delivery person who got the wrong unit number.
But both of those theories are debunked when three soft knocks echo through his door. Curiosity piqued, he swings the door open, and reveals the last person he expected to see (ever again, for the rest of his natural life) and a little surprised becomes a lot shocked and more than moderately heartsore.
Because there, swaying slightly on his doorstep, is the woman he still calls the love of his life, though she walked away from him, from them, six months prior.
He manages to speak out a rough sounding, “Emma?”
He’s not sure this isn’t a dream. Or a hallucination.
Oh, but what a vision. His beautiful Swan, swathed in a delicate lilac number, with her curls windswept and wild around her face, that beloved face, cheeks rosy and eyes sparkling.
He (very discreetly) pinches himself.
When the woman he once called his remains standing in front of him, solid, alive, and (now that he’s got his wits about him to notice) obviously very drunk, he concedes that he is not dreaming.
He doesn’t know what to do, has no clue what the protocol is for your ex-fiance showing up at your door, dolled up and wasted, after six months of silence that was immediately preceded by her insistence that she couldn’t keep seeing him (that they couldn’t ever work, not for keeps, that they’d ruin each other, and a whole host of other excuses that were fronts for her fears and insecurities).
He’s so angry at her for throwing away the best thing that’s ever happened to him, for treating their relationship like something she could opt out of with ease, when he needed her just to breathe. But he loves her. He always has, almost certainly from that first meeting, where she kicked his ass at pool and made him buy her a drink instead of collecting the money owed.
He looks at her and he hurts, he looks at her and he might even hate, just a wee bit, but above all that, he looks at her and he loves, more than the hurt or the hate or the anger or the bitterness or any of the other unnameable emotions her presence has cascading inside of him.
He also looks at her and sees how utterly plastered she is and decides that everything can take a backseat until she doesn’t look like she’s about to lose her dinner on his welcome mat.
He’s not sure that his touch is welcome, but she looks as though she might drop where she stands, and though this is mostly the drink’s doing, he can also see the exhaustion weighing on her frame. He just wants to hold her, like he used to when she came home knackered from a hard case, like she confessed that she cherished. He decides his best bet is to play it safe and holds out a hand.
“Come in, Emma,”
He makes the words soft as he can, doesn’t want to spook her away, is incredibly worried about what would happen if she left and started wandering around at this level of utterly drunk. But apparently he need not worry.
The second the words are out of his mouth, a small tremor shakes itself across her lower lip, and that’s all the warning he gets before she launches herself at him, wet face nuzzling insistently into his neck, like she’s afraid he’ll try to pry her away from him.
Which is a silly notion, really, when he feels like a whole man for the first time in half a year, when his body is doing its own quaking, in shock from finally getting its deepest desire; to embrace her body with his and just be.
He can’t say how long they stand there, wrapped up in each other like parting from the others arms would end them sure and swift. Her tears keep coming, and he is more than happy to take them from her, anchoring a hand in the curls at the base of her neck and pressing just enough to let her know she need not retreat, need not suffer alone as she is so horrendously used to.
And if he lets a few of his own tears escape, well, this might be the closest thing to catharsis he gets.
After some time, when it becomes clear that this storm is going to last a good while, he walks himself backwards, never letting go, and sits them both on the couch in front of the fireplace. Weak knees out of the equation, it’s much easier to hold her up and weather the hurricane with her.
(Not that much easier; she’s keening and whimpering like she’s in physical pain, and it unsettles him to his core, having seen her in such a state only a few times in the three years they spent together).
Eventually she pulls back a fraction, just enough to look at him, and she seems to be trying to force out some concoction of words, but her breath hitches every time she tries, which makes her cry harder, press herself more fully into him. Some of her angelic curls have gotten pressed to her face with the salt water; it makes her look heartbreakingly young, and so, so lost.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, he still can’t stand the sight of her despair, even after everything her agony wrenches his heart like it was his own and he just wants her to tell him what has her like this, why she’s so upset that she would show up on his doorstep of all those in Boston, what could make her let go like this, be free with her pain like she never could when they were together.
In the end, it takes about an hour for her sobs to start quieting, for her to regain enough composure for speech. He is desperate for her to explain, to tell him how he can help her, but before he can express these sentiments, she presses her forehead to his, stealing the breath clear out of his lungs.
“I- I just,” she stammers, voice cracking like smoke on a fire from the last hour’s harshness, “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry,”
His lungs stop working very suddenly, breathing an impossibility. An apology is more than he ever hoped to hear from her, and it is impossible to keep that hope from catching, not when she’s here, in his home, practically on his lap, so close that he can see all the shades of green in her eyes.
“Sorry for what, love?” he dares to press, heart pounding so hard against the wall of his ribs that he wonders if it will come straight out of his chest.
“You were my happy ending,” she slurs, and the misery in her tone cuts him to the quick, “You were my happy ending and I ruined it.”
He can’t take the despair in her tone, feels the depth of it echo ugly and painful in the deepest reaches of his soul. And it shouldn’t do this much to him, not after six months, not after she threw him away like the life they had been building together was nothing.
But Christ in Heaven, he misses her. And he loves her. And he knows he would give her a thousand second chances if it meant that he could keep the light she radiates, let it sweep away the darkness in him, so that all he sees, all he knows is her love.
“You’ve not ruined anything, Emma,” he chokes, “I still love you, just as much as I did the night you walked out, just as much as the day I proposed, just as much as the night we met.”
He takes a deep breath, bringing both of his hands to cup her face before he he tilts his head up to kiss her forehead, which causes her to close her eyes, clearly trying to restrain more tears. But he doesn’t want that, not tonight, not if she’s serious, so he moves to kiss both of her closed eyelids, using the backs of his fingers to gently brush away the tears that fall after he does.
He flits more kisses across her skin (oh God, her skin, her face, her everything, how did he survive without her), kissing the apples of both her cheeks, that adorable indent in her chin, the hollow of her throat, but not her lips.
“My love, my love,” he murmurs, voice thicker and shakier than he would like, “I want to kiss you.”
“You are kissing me,” she whispers back to him, jade eyes finally meeting his.
“I want to kiss you proper, darling, but I can’t this night.”
Tension immediately creeps into her frame, eyebrows furrowing and eyes watering. She makes some sort of aborted nodding movement, like she’s confirming to herself that she really did ruin everything and that’s not what he-
“Emma, there is nothing I want more on this Earth than a second chance at our happy ending together, but I don’t think I can stand to kiss you just once more. And right now you smell like you hit the bottom of the bottle two bars ago and I can’t take that leap until I know this is still what you’ll want in the morning,” he tries to explain as tactfully as he can, not wanting to set any more sorrow on her.
“One bar.”
“Hmm?”
“I was only at one very open bar,” she explains with trepidation, “At Regina’s wedding.”
And fuck him, he’d totally forgotten. She’d gotten the invitation only a few weeks before things had gone south and he’d agreed to be her plus one without question, promised her he'd be by her side for it.
“Love-”
She shakes her head sharply, cutting him off.
“I needed the wake up call. Seeing everything I had thrown away, the life, the joy I could have had with you…” she breathes deep, seeming to draw from some well of courage, “I love you. I always have and I always will. And I’m sorry I’m such a human disaster, but the years I had with you were the best of my life and I hate myself for throwing them away.”
“Well stop, then, because you haven’t thrown anything away. Everything we had is still here, waiting for us to take it back,” he warbles, not even remotely steady after hearing her declare her love for him in the present and future tenses.
“I want it, Killian, I want us back, more than anything. And I know there’s so much that we need to talk about, rebuild, but I want this, our future together, for keeps,” she implores him to understand.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
He nods his head slowly, his fingers tangling in in the ends of her hair, and the feel of the silky strands against the pads of his fingers makes him want to weep like a child.
“Executive decision: right now, we are going sleep, in our bed because it’s missed you at least half as much as I have,” he teases, rewarded by a small giggle that makes his heart skip a beat or five, “And tomorrow, we will figure out the rest. Sound good?”
“Sounds like the best thing I’ve heard in six months,” she confesses, raw as an open nerve.
They make their way to the bedroom, Emma needing quite a bit of help with the task, given that such an intense crying jag did nothing to help her lack of sobriety. He makes sure she gets changed into some of his old clothes without stumbling or banging into anything and pulls the covers down for her. And she must be more tired than she let on because she is asleep practically the second her head hits the pillow.
He takes a moment to savor the sight; the love of his life, wearing his clothes, sleeping in their bed, face finally relaxed into an expression of peace. He knows that things are different know, that it will take time and patience to rebuild, and that it won’t, can't be the same as it was, but he’s okay with that.
Because he thinks they could become something even better.
And with that thought, he finds himself content to flip off the light and crawl into bed, folding her into his arms and nuzzling the back of her neck, feeling half drunk himself off of the fresh strawberry smell of her hair.
For the first time in six months, he falls asleep with a smile on his face, knowing his happy ending is waiting for him when he wakes.