Chapter Text
This scene was mentioned in chapter 10 of I Always Wanted a Real Home with Flowers on the Windowsill. It wasn't important enough to take time out of the narrative for a flashback, but it made me happy to write it, so here it is.
Killian blinked through the heavy, disorienting fog that seemed to have taken up residence in his brain. His mobile was on the night table next to him, buzzing like a wasp, and he couldn't seem to draw his thoughts together sufficiently to comprehend why that should be. His body took over on instinct and reached from the hot, sweaty cocoon of his blankets to answer the infuriating device.
"'Lo?" he rasped into the phone, the single syllable setting off a barrage of coughing that felt as though it had set his throat on fire.
Once he'd managed to gasp his way to relative quiet, a voice finally sounded through his phone's speaker.
"You sound like Hell, Jones."
"I feel like it," he answered, in absolutely no mood to be witty. "What do you want, Swan?"
"The Jolly is closed and you're not exactly known for taking vacation. I wanted to check whether you're alive."
He remembered, vaguely, his alarm sounding that morning and having determined that he absolutely could not work that day- besides his own exhaustion, he could tell he was a hazard to public health. He'd considered getting up and putting a sign on the diner's entrance, but he found that he couldn't be arsed. His customers would, presumably, be clever enough to determine from the locked doors that the place was closed, and any idiot who couldn't work it out themselves could ask a friend.
"I'm alive. Leave me be now."
"Only by a technicality. Are you okay? Do you need anything? Soup? Tea?"
"Only if it's laced with cyanide. Leave me to die in peace, Swan. You'll have to get your coffee elsewhere- perhaps you could learn to make it yourself."
"Kil-" Emma started, but he slammed his phone shut on her voice, having no desire to deal with her meddlesome ways. He was an adult, and if the Jolly Roger had to be closed for a few days so he didn't become patient zero in an outbreak of whatever it was that he had, Emma Swan would just have to deal with it.
Tea did sound nice but he simply did not have the energy or strength of will to un-bury himself from the blankets on his bed and brew it, so he fell back asleep instead- his dreams unsettled and painful.
~?~?~?~?~
Once more, Killian swam up from the murky depths of unconsciousness. His head felt thick, his lungs congested, and his body ached.
He had no idea how long he'd been asleep, his normally dependable internal clock seemed to have abandoned him along with his health and good humour.
For all he wanted to burrow back down into his bed and go back to sleep, he knew he wouldn't be able to do it. For one, though he was sick, he'd slept at least ten hours already. For another, his mouth felt dry as a desert and he knew if he didn't get some fluids into his system, he'd never get well again.
There were some days still where falling asleep and remaining so until next he saw Liam and his mother appealed, but they got fewer and farther between the longer he went on. He hadn't had one in an age, and knew his current death wish was entirely to do with physical malaise and not emotional turmoil.
He shoved his blankets away, and the one effort seemed so immense and exhausting, he wondered at the wisdom of his intended endeavor- boiling water for tea seemed a herculean effort. He might manage a glass of tap water to keep fever-induced dehydration at bay before his reserves ran out.
As though his thoughts had conjured it, he could swear that he suddenly heard the whistling of his tea kettle, a whine that stopped after a few seconds.
He tried to drum up some concern for the fact that this would seem to indicate that there was another person in his flat but couldn't quite manage it. Energy was needed to worry, and he was also relatively certain that armed robbers rarely put on the kettle.
Slowly, from the feverish sludge of his brain, a voice emerged that sounded like one part Liam and one part Granny Lucas, telling him that whether the stranger in his flat was likely to shoot him dead or not, they were there and shouldn't be, and he should be dealing with it.
He shoved his protesting body into a seated position on the edge of his bed, then hauled himself to his feet by sheer force of will. Upon standing, his head spun, and he knew he'd never manage to get trousers on over the boxers he'd slept in, so instead he wrapped a blanket from the end of his bed around his shoulders for modesty's sake and shuffled out of his bedroom.
"Oh good, you're awake," the slightly-fuzzy (he should have put on his glasses, but it had been too much work- no chance at all of putting on his contacts today) figure in his kitchen said as he made his appearance in the main room of the flat. "I was about to go in and wake you up. Let me guess: you haven't eaten anything today?"
"How the hell did you get in?" he asked, blinking at her and wondering if he were hallucinating. "You haven't got a key, Swan."
"Picked the lock," she said, nonchalantly.
"Picked the- How the bloody Hell do you know how to do that?"
She smirked. "Some of us had wilder and more lawless youths than others. You pick up a few skills along the way. Sit down before you fall down."
He did feel like he might do just that and, in spite of the voice of his pride, did as as she instructed.
He hadn't given up on getting answers out of her, however.
"Why, exactly, did you pick my lock and what are you doing here?" he asked with what he thought was a remarkable amount of restraint.
"Taking care of you," she said in that infuriating way that women had, as though they were stating the perfectly obvious, but they knew that you wouldn't have seen it.
"I am a grown man who does not need a woman taking care of me," Killian said. Or he tried to, anyway. Had it all gone as intended, he'd have stood majestically while making this statement, crossed to the kitchen and taken the cup of tea to which she was currently adding honey away from her.
That was not how it happened, however. As soon as he got to the word "need" he collapsed into a coughing fit that lasted until there was a cup of tea on the coffee table in front of him, and Emma Swan sitting beside him, gently patting his back as though he were a child.
He wanted to object, but he collapsed against the back of the sofa instead, too tired and miserable to do anything.
She placed the tea into his hands wordlessly, and ran a cool, motherly hand over his face, assessing his temperature.
"My mother used to kiss my forehead to determine that," he muttered, surprising himself. He hadn't realized he remembered that at all.
He glanced up at her from under his lashes to find her smiling at him in much the way he'd seen her smile at Henry when he was being particularly sweet or childish. Then she leaned over and pressed a kiss into his cheek.
He suspected that he was too warm, which was why her kiss felt as cool and refreshing as a glass of water on a hot day.
"It's easier to judge the temperature when the cheek isn't hairy," Emma said, sounding amused as she brushed the back of her hand over his stubbly face. "You finish that tea while I warm up some soup and then you can have some Theraflu, which will help bring down that temperature."
She was up and back in the kitchen before he could object, and he found, somehow, that he no longer wanted to. While she puttered around his small kitchen, he sipped the tea she'd made (badly, but she was an American after all).
After a few minutes and nearly half the cup of tea, his brain began, finally, to kick in again.
"Aren't you supposed to be working, Swan? And where's Henry?"
"School," she said, sounding surprised that he would ask. "And Granny gave me the afternoon off when I told her you were sick. Mary Margaret made the soup, and they're both waiting for an update on how you're doing."
Killian frowned at that. "Why should they care?" he asked, feeling as though he had missed something.
"Because, and I don't know how many times I have to tell you this before it'll get through your thick head, Storybrooke is family, and family takes care of each other."
Killian had nothing to say to that and just sat quietly to drink his tea. Emma's timing was excellent and he had a hot bowl of Mary Margaret's chicken soup (someday he'd convince her to give up even one of her secrets) as soon as his teacup was empty. Then, nearly as soon as he had finished the soup, there was a hot mug of something that smelled vile and tasted worse.
"Theraflu. It's nasty, but you'll feel better. Promise," Emma said, even as she started brewing a pot of coffee for herself.
He might have poured it down the drain, but she sat in the chair across from him and glared until he finished all of it. To please her, he drained the mug as quickly as possible, then held it upside down to show that it was empty.
Emma, in full 'bullying-mother' mode, sent him to take a shower while she stripped his bed and re-made it with fresh sheets, insisting that he put on clean pajamas when he was done.
The hot water in the shower finished much of the work that the fluids, food, and medicine had started, and if he didn't feel quite himself when he stepped out, he didn't feel quite as much like a poorly-reanimated, week-dead corpse.
In clean flannel pants and an old t-shirt, he made his way back into the living room to find Emma curled up on the corner of his sofa, a book open in front of her.
"Whatcha reading?" he asked, dropping heavily onto the other side of the sofa.
She pointed to a bag sitting on his kitchen counter. "They're from the library. I dropped by and asked Belle what you like to read, and she gave me a few suggestions. You're always talking about how you don't have a TV or I'd have brought you movies. Maybe the Firefly series- you'd like that one." She looked at him carefully. "That medicine will knock you out. You should go back to bed, Kil."
He shook his head, though he was beginning to feel the soporific effects. He didn't feel like being alone so, without thinking too much about it, he fell heavily to his side onto the couch, squirming so his head came to rest on her thigh.
"Do you want something to read?" she asked, and he could hear the breath of amusement in her voice.
"No," he muttered, nuzzling against her with his nose. "My head hurts."
"You sound like Henry," she said indulgently. "The medicine has acetaminophen in it to help cut the fever, so I can't give you anything else for a bit, but maybe a glass of water would help?"
He shook his head, rasping his short beard against the fabric of her jeans.
He heard a small snort of laughter, and then he felt her hand thread through the fine hairs at his temple, rubbing gently, carding lightly through his hair, and generally soothing him.
He was nearly asleep when he heard her voice, still amused, still indulgent.
"You know, these curtains are really terrible. I should make you new ones."
He was asleep before he could form an answer.