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She’s got an entire drawer devoted to her socks. Killian stares, transfixed, as Emma tries in vain to muscle the drawer closed without pinching her fingers as she stuffs yet another pair inside. There’s a wisp of hair that has made its escape from her elastic and is draped over one eye. He longs to tuck it behind her ear, but he’s mildly frightened to get in the way of her battle with the sock drawer. He’s not entirely sure, yet, which side is winning.
Emma grins in triumph when the final thunk of wood meeting wood proves something Killian had first told her in Neverland - he’s yet to see her fail.
Then she turns to him and glares so balefully that he finds himself apologizing before he even knows what he did.
It’s only then that he remembers he’s still holding two pairs of her socks - one with anchors that she’d surprised him by wearing to bed the week before, and one with tiny little swans on them that he’d found when he’d volunteered to take Henry shopping a few months ago.
He’s never taking a teenage boy clothes shopping against said boy’s will ever again.
“Swan, why don’t you throw some of those socks aw-” he’s quick to cut off that train of thought, but not quick enough to keep the look of hurt off her face. He tries to backtrack quickly. “It’s only, there’s no way you wear all of them, I just thought…”
He’s never speaking again. Never.
Not if the way her face crumples is the result.
Emma looks down at the two balls of cotton in his hands, and Killian swears there are tears in the corners of her eyes before she meets his apologetic gaze. It hurts him somewhere he thinks is reserved just for her when he sees the grin she graces him with - there’s no trace of tears any more and he knows they’ve been squirreled away behind the armor she still wears sometimes.
He’d hoped that True Love and his god-sent return would have abolished her need for it.
But then something truly miraculous happens.
The tears come back. And as much as it hurts him to see her crying, he knows that she’s making a conscious effort to let him in - to take down those walls.
Emma curls into his embrace, her head fitting perfectly under his chin as her arms wrap around his torso to pull herself closer. The wisp of hair that had called to him before is now well within his reach, and he tucks it behind her ear with his hook before wrapping her securely in his arms. He’s not sure what’s happened or why she’s crying into his chest, but it means everything to him that she’s letting herself do so.
He holds her until her tears dry, the silent sobs no longer hitching her shoulders and tearing his heart to pieces with each sniffle. His hand has made its way into her hair, tangled in the pony tail as his hook rubs soothingly up and down her back.
“You must think I’m being silly,” Emma says when she finally looks up at him.
Killian kisses the tears off her eyelashes, making her giggle. “I think no such thing, Swan,” he whispers into her hair, his hand cradling the back of her head as he guides her back to his chest. “I would like to know what’s going through your head, though. If you’d like to tell me.”
He can feel her grin against the bare skin above his heart, her head ducked down to listen to his heartbeat. She snuggles there for another moment before she speaks.
“We were allowed seven pairs of dark colored socks, in the last group home they stuck me in.” The grin is gone - on his face as well as hers. Her voice is quiet, but she has his undivided attention. “Before that, some of the families let me pick out a pack of cheap cotton socks - the white ones that… never mind, I’ll show you next time we go shopping. But I never had ducky socks or fuzzy socks or boot socks or anything other than what was given to me.”
She shrugs, taking the anchor socks from where he’d dropped them on the dresser in order to embrace her. Emma pulls them out of the ball, smoothing them out and then refolding them. “I like socks. They’re all so different, but no one has to know unless you want them to. Usually, only you and Henry get to see which ones I’ve picked for the day.”
He thinks of her in the mornings, sleepily watching him make her breakfast as she sips at her coffee, her socked feet up on his chair until he joins her. He thinks of her in the evenings, curled up with him and Henry on the couch, all three sets of socked feet sticking out from the blanket as they watch the television. He thinks of her during the day, knowing that the socks she chose for the day are hidden beneath her boots, but still there - still unique like her.
He loves her a little more for all of her socks.
Carefully, he pries the ball of socks from her hand, picking up the swan socks from their perch and hooking open his sock drawer. There are a few pairs of plain dark socks in there that he’s picked up along the way, but there are matching anchor socks and warm, fuzzy socks for winter and socks with little ships on them that she’s bought for him. He understands a little better now why she’s bought them for him, and vows to wear the funny-looking ones more often.
Her swan socks and her anchor socks drop in the drawer with his, and he smiles. “Whatever will we do when we fill up both drawers, Swan?”
The way she kisses him as she knocks the drawer closed with her hip tells him he’s going to find out someday.