Author's Note: Here we go - the requested sequel to Rude Awakening! Posting as a new fic because the story I'd wanted to tell with Rude Awakening (a bizarre morning encounter) is very different from the story I want to tell here (a twist on the neighbors!AU), even though that one-shot is technically the first chapter to this story. A little confusing, I know; sorry!

Also, another important note - I usually don't like to post multi-chapter fics without having fully written them first, but then I realized that's probably why I've never actually published any multi-chapter fics, lolol. Not that I give up halfway through (fingers crossed), but I'm working on like three concurrently, which is getting me exactly nowhere. I'll probably regret this later, but for now... enjoy!

Some Sort of Neighborly

Chapter 1

Her last name is Swan.

He discovers this through completely innocent means, of course: there's a stack of mail sitting on Robin's counter when he lets himself in after the most confusing morning of his life, and since he's in no mood to calmly scramble some eggs when his adrenaline is pumping like he's just run a mile, he decides to shuffle through it while he waits for Robin to wake up. It turns out that not all of the letters are addressed to Robin Loxley in 3A, and for longer than he'd care to admit, he stares at the name above the line Apartment 3B, trying not to smile. Emma Swan. The name suits her.

"Why do you have Emma Swan's mail?" he asks when, ten minutes later, Robin blearily makes his way into the kitchen with a horrible bed head and Green Arrow pajama pants.

"Why were you looking through my mail?"

"That's not an answer."

Robin groans as he crouches to rummage through his dishwasher for the skillet. "The postman is a bloody idiot. I get her mail all the time. He confuses everyone on this floor."

"So you've met her before? When you give her mail back, I mean." For a second, he feels a little offended that Robin had never even bothered to introduce him to this woman he barely knew existed until less than an hour ago.

"No, I just slide it under her door – and how do you know Emma Swan, anyway?"

Killian frowns, shifting in his seat at the bar. Robin's always been amused by his drunken antics, but this is this first time he's felt even a little embarrassed. "I may have accidentally broken into her apartment instead of yours last night."

"Really?" Robin snorts, finally turning around to give him a skeptical look. "I'm surprised she didn't call the cops to throw your ass in jail."

"I don't think she needed to. She probably could have beaten me up, if she wanted," he says, recalling the way she had practically dragged him to the door and out of her apartment. She had a good arm. Good aim, too, he thinks ruefully, and he rubs the spot on his forehead where one of his shirt buttons had hit him when she'd thrown his shirt into his face, just now starting to feel the sting.

"I bet she could. Apparently she's a bail bondsperson. She probably deals with crooks worse than you on a daily basis."

"What?" The jibe flies right over his head at this new piece of information. "How do you know? I thought you said you've never met her before."

"I haven't," Robin says slowly, and Killian feels his heart sink when he realizes that Robin's probably seeing right through him. "Aurora from 2A told me. She said she'd helped her and her husband with a case."

"Right." He nods with what he hopes looks like vague curiosity, although Robin's still watching him with narrowed eyes, and slides off the barstool and into the kitchen. Making a huge effort to seem casual, he opens the refrigerator to pretend like he's getting the eggs out when he's actually hiding a small grin. Bloody hell, no wonder she was such a hardass. He's suddenly very glad he didn't test her patience further, because from what it seems like now, she could have done much worse than leave a button imprint on his forehead.

When he closes the refrigerator door, Robin's standing right behind it, arms folded across his chest.

"No."

"What?" he says, bewildered.

"No, you are not getting involved with my next-door neighbor."

"What the hell? I'm not. Why would you even think that?"

"You have that look on your face," Robin says with a frown. "The one that says you're going to do something you know you probably shouldn't be doing."

"I'm not going to do anything," Killian insists, all the while knowing that's at least a partial lie, because he's not sure exactly what he's going to do about Emma Swan and how the image of her in his head makes his stomach flip over in his body. "And anyway, why do you care? You've never had a problem with me sleeping around before."

Robin lets out a derisive snort, but he still looks mildly concerned. "I still don't. I'd just prefer not to be kept up all night with loud moaning and banging on the adjoining wa—"

"Bugger off," Killian says with an eye-roll, shoving the eggs into Robin's arms, but then a vivid image of Emma Swan naked and on her back suddenly drifts through his mind, and he barely has time to wonder exactly what kinds of noises she makes when she's wanton and needy before he feels his groin tightening and knows it's time to head far, far away from that line of thought. "She was kind when she didn't have to be, and I'm just thankful she didn't call the police. It was just a question about her mail. Worry about your own bloody love life."

"You're adorable," Robin replies sarcastically. Thankfully, Roland takes that opportunity to tear through the apartment with a loud squeal, barreling into Killian's leg with a force that makes it feel like he's been hit by a small, child-sized train, and the topic of neighbors and whether or not they're off-limits is immediately dropped.

That doesn't mean he doesn't spend the next week thinking about it, though.

He's not sure what it is about this woman, but now that he's seen her more than just in passing, now that he's talked to her and knows how she looks when she smiles at him, he can't get her out of his mind. Maybe he's a little intrigued by her, too – maybe it's the memory of that soft look merging with the memory of her tough attitude and this new knowledge that she's a bail bondsperson that makes him wonder why she doesn't seem comfortable when she isn't on the offensive, wonder if she would have been as nice to him as she'd been if he was anyone else.

Unfortunately, he can't ask Robin anything or he'd get even more suspicious (honestly, though, he has perfectly innocent intentions, but Robin would never believe that), and he's not going to start showing up for dinner every night in hopes of "accidentally" running into her because then Robin would probably permanently kick him out. Besides, he doesn't want to seem like a stalker, so for the week after meeting Emma Swan, he steadfastly refuses to change his visiting schedule.

He comes over for dinner on Wednesday. He and Robin go out for drinks on Friday, and he crashes on his couch through Saturday morning. Maybe he spends a little too long on Wednesday night wondering if she has a nine-to-five schedule and then calculating his commute to arrive around the time she might usually get home, but neither she nor Robin need to know that.

By the time Saturday afternoon rolls around, he cracks. This is ridiculous. He's a fucking grown man; if he wants to talk to a woman, he can sure as hell just do it without all of the secrecy. Or – maybe just less secrecy. Robin doesn't need to know how much this is driving him crazy.

And maybe the universe is on his side, because around half-past five, a lot of voices and occasional crashes start coming from behind the wall of her apartment, and he can tell Robin's getting a little irritated by how he keeps turning up the volume on the baseball game, slouched into the couch with Roland asleep on his lap.

Killian looks over at him from the armchair carefully. "I can go tell her to quiet down, if you want."

"Hm? Yeah, sure," Robin replies absently, reaching for the remote again.

Giddy from this wonderful stroke of luck, Killian rushes out the door and into the hallway, making a beeline for her apartment. It's only after he's knocked that he realizes he probably should have checked his appearance, since he's literally been lazing around Robin's all day in his pajamas. Shit. He's still wearing his pajamas. In a flare of panic, he wonders if anyone had heard him, if he has enough time to run back next door and change, but then he hears her through the door, and it makes him nervous for an entirely different reason.

"Ruby, can you get that?"

"You don't have time for visitors," another voice says, and then the door swings open to reveal a pretty (and, strangely, somehow familiar) brunette in a t-shirt and pajama shorts.

Well, maybe his choice of attire isn't too strange after all.

"Hi," the brunette, who he assumes is Ruby, says, her lips curling into what he suspects is a knowing smirk.

"Hi," he says slowly, unsure of what to make of this development. He supposes it makes sense that Emma has guests, given the number of different voices he'd heard through the wall, and yet he hadn't been prepared to confront anyone else but her.

"Who is it?" Emma's voice comes from somewhere around the corner, and then she steps into the doorway's line of sight, dressed in a tight-fitting red dress and towering heels that make her legs look fucking amazing.

Killian forces himself to swallow.

Fuck.

Hey beautiful.

For some reason, his words to her are the first that come to mind when she sees him in the doorway.

Not that she's thinking them about him, of course – well, maybe a little, because he's probably the only person who could make a slight bed head and threadbare sweatpants look as ridiculously attractive as he does. It's mostly because she hasn't caught so much as a glimpse of him all week, during which she'd forgotten how blue his eyes were, and seeing them now brings the memory of that first encounter flashing to the forefront of her mind.

Damn it. She had hoped to keep Killian and their little morning adventure a secret for as long as possible, so it figures he'd show up just when she has company – and with Ruby's wolf nose for this kind of thing (although she's not even sure what this kind of thing is, exactly), she knows she's already figured at least part of it out.

Fleetingly, she hopes she can pretend like she doesn't know him, but that idea is immediately crushed when he opens his mouth.

"Afternoon, Swan."

"Hey," she replies uncertainly. Ruby's eyes are darting between them with a growing understanding, and it makes her uncomfortable in all the wrong ways. It's almost worse than how Killian's eyes flit down her body just once and make her suddenly feel like she's not wearing enough clothes, although she's not sure if that's entirely his fault.

"Um." He meets her gaze, then looks over to Ruby. "Not to pry, love, but can I ask what the dramatic difference in attire is about?"

"Emma's got a date," Ruby says with entirely too much glee.

"It's not a date," Emma corrects her quickly, and maybe she imagines the way an unreadable expression flickers across his face before he raises an eyebrow. "I'm working tonight."

He snorts, but it sounds more amused than condescending. "Seems like you work at a fun place."

"I'm a bail bondsperson. It's a fake date. I'm trying to catch someone who skipped bail," she clarifies. She's not sure why she's standing here explaining this to him when she's already going to be really late, especially since she barely knows him so it shouldn't even matter whether or not he knows the truth.

Luckily, another voice drifts from the kitchen just in time to save her from thinking too much into it. "Emma, would you mind picking up more popcorn on your way home? This is your last bag."

Only Mary Margaret could tear through her food like a pregnant woman (which, it turns out, is pretty recently accurate) and still find a way to make requests sound nice. "Sure," Emma calls back, eyes still on Killian, who sends her smile that has a small current zipping down her spine.

"Sleepover?" he guesses.

"More or less," she says. "Girl's night. I have the biggest television."

"And yet you're not joining them?"

"I'm going to, later." For some reason, the words come out defensive even though it's none of his business. "It doesn't look like it'll be too difficult of a job."

"I'd imagine not," he says with a solemn nod, but by the way his eyes drift and he blinks twice before they refocus, she feels like the gesture is more in approval than in agreement. Maybe that shouldn't feel as much like a compliment as it does. "Anyway, your neighbor Robin, bad-tempered idiot that he is, kindly requests that you keep the noise level down. He's trying to drown himself in baseball so he doesn't have to think about his ex."

Robin – she still hasn't met the guy, but she remembers the name from the previous week and from the letters that keep showing up in her mailbox, and she feels vaguely embarrassed that this is the first impression he's getting of her. "That won't be an issue," Emma assures him. To make her point, she shoots a meaningful look at Ruby, who shrugs, still looking too thrilled to be comforting, but Killian seems to be appeased.

"Good that. In that case, best of luck with your… date, Swan." His lips twitch upwards in a small smirk, and she's forcefully reminded of the suggestive expression on his face before she'd pushed him out of her apartment the last time. Before she can make a comment about how he must be asking for her to slam the door in his face again, he nods at Ruby and catches her eye one more time, then turns and disappears into the hallway.

She knows Ruby has the decency to at least wait to hear a door snap shut before asking questions, but what she doesn't expect is Mary Margaret, who, having not been present for the entirety of the conversation, is admittedly completely innocent in this, to shout from the kitchen again: "Who was that?"

"No one. A neighbor's friend," she says quickly, because Ruby's closing the door with a wide grin, and she darts forward to wedge it open with her foot because she doesn't have the time to deal with them getting on her case right now. For some reason, she doesn't think it wasn't a big deal, I conveniently forgot to tell you about finding an extremely attractive stranger asleep on my couch is going to cut it anymore. "I'm leaving. Bye."

"We're talking about this later!" Ruby calls after her as she grabs her handbag and all but flees out of her apartment, slamming the door shut behind her.

To her vague horror, when she turns towards the stairwell, Killian is standing in the doorway of 3A, hand on the doorknob and eyes locked on hers. The bastard has the nerve to look like he's trying too hard not to laugh.

"Don't," she warns him, and it takes her until she gets down to the first floor to stop feeling the lingering burn of his gaze on her face.