There are some things you just don't learn about a person until you are living with them.
/
Killian has a rather sizeable sweet tooth.
He is often torn, wondering if it's a blessing or a curse how fast Emma caught wind of that little tidbit.
On the one hand, she hardly ever comes back from the shop without some sugary treats. On the other, she is quick to hide any and all sweets the second he gets on her nerves.
And then there are those moments when he takes the initiative to procure his own treats for the Netflix night she has announced. Those usually end with Emma standing in front of the couch, looking down at him and his loot and shaking her head. Much like she is doing right now.
"Do you realize that those don't even resemble food?" she sighs but hits play on her laptop and joins him on the couch anyway, giving the packet of gummy bears in his lap an evil look.
"But they are delightful, love! True, taste-wise, they are no honey cake but they are rather amusing, don't you think?" he defends, grabbing a gummy bear by the head and proceeding to suck gleefully on its legs.
Emma is admittedly distracted by the way his lips wrap around the brightly orange candy but not enough to miss his comment. She likes to think that she has grown rather good at not missing a thing where Killian is concerned. He tends to share personal details unconsciously, while if directly asked, he'd probably shrug and turn the tables on her. So Emma has grown rather good at paying attention.
"Honey cake?"
"Hmm?" Killian's eyes are already glued to the screen and she has to snatch the bag of gummy bears from his lap to get his attention.
She does make sure to replace it with her feet so as to halt his protest.
"What's a honey cake, babe?" she asks, popping a red gummy in her own mouth.
"Oh," Killian scrunches his eyebrows like he usually does when he realizes that a memory has popped up randomly, trying to recapture it.
Emma waits patiently. She can't even picture what having to sort through 300+ years of memories at the drop of a hat is like but she can be patient with her pirate.
(Patient to a fault, if you ask her mother.)
"I think… maybe my mother made it when I was a wee lad but…" he seems lost in the hazy memory for awhile, his fingers absent-mindedly starting to rub her feet. "I can't quite recall…"
Emma shuffles a little on the couch, bending her knees so she can press herself closer to his side.
"But anyway," Killian shakes his head and gives her a little, tight-lipped smile. "What I do remember is that it was the first thing that Liam bought whenever we made port. It was…"
When it seems like he's not going to continue his story on his own, Emma tilts her head up and kisses the underside of his jaw, murmuring the question that is now lodged in her head.
"How do you make it?"
Killian shakes his head.
"I'm not sure. It tasted of honey and walnuts and… vanilla, I think? Soft and sticky on the inside and golden, almost brown, and crusted on the outside…"
He has a little, melancholic smile teasing the corners of his mouth and his eyes seem to stare far into the past, at some warm and treasured moment that he'd forgotten and is now rediscovering. Emma decides that it is one of her favourite expressions of his and shows her appreciation by nuzzling closer once he has finished talking, her nose poking at his dimples.
A plan is already forming in her head.
Three secret attempts later, it's a Sunday and she is a nervous ball of energy. She has two cakes on the counter in front of her – one almost brown, slightly burned underneath, the other – a golden that has her pretty satisfied. And yet she's biting her thumbnail and considering starting a third one, just in case, when she hears Killian's footsteps on the stairs.
Taking a deep breath she moves in front of the cakes and thinks 'now or never' with an intensity that makes her want to roll her eyes at herself.
So what if they suck? She'll try again next week. Okay, her ego might be a bit too bruised for that. Make it next month.
"Mornin', love," Killian comes in, hair in disarray, sweats low on his hips and a sleepy grin on his face that he presses to her cheek in a sloppy kiss. "What happened to 'We don't get up before 10 on a Sunday!, hmm?"
"I wanted to get an early start on something," she tries to smile teasingly but it feels nervous on her lips as she grips his forearms to keep him from moving into the kitchen too soon.
Waking before Killian is near impossible. But she did her homework and picked a morning following one of his 'guy nights' with her father and Robin, putting her faith in the fact that even Killian won't rise at the crack of dawn after stumbling home at 4am.
"And what might that something be?" he murmurs somewhere in the vicinity of her collarbone.
"Remember last week when you mentioned that desert your brother used to buy?"
Killian pulls back and his eyebrows draw together in obvious confusion but he nods cautiously and Emma moves to the side before she can overthink the whole thing. She does, however, grab a hold of his left bicep as if to keep him from judging her creations before she has said her piece.
"So I'm pretty sure I didn't get it right because… you know – no recipe. And I'd have probably messed it up even if I did have a recipe and-"
Killian's lips cut her off and her little yelp of surprise is swallowed in his hot, insistent kiss and his hand cupping her cheek as hers slips to grip his stump to keep herself upright.
When he pulls back his forehead stays pressed to hers and she can taste toothpaste on her tongue and smell its freshness on his breath, his lips brushing hers as he speaks.
"You did this… you made this for me?"
Emma nods against him.
"Don't get your hopes up though," she cautions again. "It might not be-"
"Hush. My beautiful girl has made me a treat and I intent to enjoy it."
With that he loops his left arm around her waist and tugs her towards the counter, his eyes sparkling as he looks over the cakes.
"They look wonderful, love."
"Yeah, well, important thing is how they taste," she mutters, reaching over for the knife and cutting two pieces.
She takes hers as he takes his but doesn't taste it, waiting with bathed breath as he takes a bite.
"So?" she prompts him after a few seconds, watching his tongue sneak out to catch the crumbs at the corner of his mouth. "Does it taste right?"
"Better," he says simply, smiling down at her.
Emma tries not to roll her eyes and not chew off her bottom lip.
"What do you mean 'better'?"
"You added a bit of cinnamon."
"Well, yes, you sai- Oh. You said only vanilla. Shit! Sorry! I thought-"
"Emma," Killian chews and swallows his second bite quickly before he sets his piece aside and moves his hand and stump to her waist to pull her closer until their hipbones bump together. "It's the taste of my childhood. With you mixed into it. It's perfect. Thank you."
He says it with his gaze boring into hers, full of so much love and reverence and wonder that she feels her own eyes begin to sting a little.
"It's way too early for us to be getting mushy," she huffs, ducking her head and pressing her nose to his throat.
"Well, lass, you shouldn't have gotten up at what must have been the bloody crack of dawn to make me my favourite childhood treat, if you didn't want a hearty thanks."
"Now, I didn't say anything about that. Actually," Emma pulls back, a devilish gleam in her eyes as she raises her hand to tap a finger against her lips. "I think gratitude is in order now."
Killian's eyes light up and he's already advancing towards her when he suddenly stops and glances back at the cake on the counter.
"Babe, those will still be there later," she laughs at him.
"Aye. Just thinking that we might need quite a bit of energy for what I have planned," he smirks at her.
"Oh, is that so? Well, how about you tire me out first and then we can replenish our energy supply with some cake and hot cocoa in bed?"
"An ingenious idea, my love. I've always said you're brilliant."
"I know, I know, but who knew I was a half-decent cook as well."
It turns out that she is more than half-decent and in a few months she has perfected the honey cake and started adding new recipes to her repertoire. All of them desserts, of course. All of them approved by her sweet-toothed pirate.
/
Emma's hands are always cold.
Always.
Or at least she doesn't remember a time when they weren't. What she does remember are wet autumns and cold winters and drafty springs and the sleeves of her hand-me-down sweaters always being too short and gloves being so damn hard to come by. But cocoa or at least tea – those she could get her freezing hands on a bit more often. And when she did, she'd wrap her fingers around her cup and take the smallest of sips so as to keep the warmth longer, leaching it out through the thick porcelain and into her chapped, cool skin.
It's a habit that has stuck with her.
But recently Emma's noticed that there's a new habit she has developed as well. One oriented towards seeking warmth again, only in places even sweeter than her cocoa, she thinks as she looks down at her fingers squeezing Killian's as they make their way towards Granny's.
The pirate lets go of her hand to open the door of the diner for her and, even as she smiles at the gesture, she can feel her fingers cooling again and the second they sit down she wraps both hands around his bicep, digging her fingers into the softness of his peacoat. And even though she misses the leather jacket now that December has firmly set in, she can't say she minds burrowing into the wool that already smells like the salt and sugar (sea and sweets, those two words, she thinks, will make an excellent name for Killian's biography).
She feel like she is probably giving Rudolph a run for his money so she makes use of her parents' absence and burrows her nose somewhere between the warm skin of Killian's neck and the scarf she forced on him this morning.
"Your hands are always cold," he comments casually, reaching up to tease her hands off his arm and into his grasp.
Emma smiles a little at the sight of his larger (much, much warmer) hand almost covering both of hers.
"I know."
"Why don't you wear gloves?" he asks with a frown, his own fingers working energetically over hers.
Emma shrugs and watches with fascination as her pale digits slowly return to their normal colour under his ministrations.
"Because I'm terrible at remembering to put them on. And when I do, I always forget them somewhere," she swallows a little. "And feel bad for losing pair after pair when-"
The bell over the door cuts her off and she hears her brother's babbling as Snow and David come in.
"I never got into the habit of it," she finishes quickly, looking up at Killian and giving him a tight-lipped smile.
Which is a mistake. And she knows it the second she meets his eyes and he sees the old ghosts lurking in hers.
"Why not?" he probes gently, trying to help her along with sharing the story he has glimpsed.
But her parents are already settling across from them and asking if they had ordered already so she just squeezes his hand in her now warm ones.
"Ask me later."
He doesn't ask her later. She realizes a couple of days later when she comes home and joins him on the couch, quick to stick her ice-cold fingers beneath his shirt. It makes her frown for a second – it's rather unusual for Killian to pass up a chance to find out more about her. But the memory is a little too jaded and sharp around the edges for her to drag up without his gentle nudging so she just digs her cold digits into the hot flesh of his lower back and delights in the little grunt of protest. The one he always follows by dragging her closer to him and resting his chin on top of her head so she can nuzzle closer and warm her nose as well.
Her toes are almost as bad as her fingers and at night she takes full advantage of his warm calves. Eliciting a gruff 'Bloody hell!' and some more expletives from him the second she joins him in bed. Her legs practically weaving themselves around his as her hands seek out his left arm, wrapping around his stump where his skin is rougher but always so warm and when she runs her thumbs over it in little circles his breathing always comes out just a little quicker and he ducks his head into the hollow of her throat – his nose much warmer than hers ever has been.
He asks her the night after Christmas. They are sitting in front of the dying fire, finishing off the bottle of red wine leftover from last night. Her toes are curling into the soft white fur of the carpet they're half-sitting, half-lying on and she never thought she'd be grateful to someone for getting them a carpet but damn, Regina really knows her decorating. Her hands are trapped between Killian's shirt and the (hideous but still not enough to damage his dashing looks) Christmas sweater that Granny made him and Emma is currently contemplating slipping them under said shirt as well.
She decides that it's a sound plan and grins when Killian jumps just a little when her fingers slip under the soft material and settle just above the waistband of his jeans.
"Ah, there are those little icicles you call fingers."
"Shut up, they're not that bad right now."
"No, indeed. It's much worse when you are just coming in from outside. Which reminds me," Killian pulls back enough so he can see her face but not enough for her to have to relinquish her hold on him. "You never told me why you are so averse to gloves."
Emma furrows her brows a little, not so much because of his question, she knows she's gonna tell him, but because something in his voice sounds almost… rehearsed.
"No, I didn't," she stalls, scrutinizing him.
"Perhaps I can bribe you with a cup of your preferred drink?" he asks, leaning so close that his lips brush hers on the last word.
"Perhaps you can," Emma replies, a bit distracted by his proximity and the gingerbread and wine on his breath.
She is just about to close the almost non-existence distance between them when Killian plants a loud kiss on her forehead and jumps up.
"Be right back!"
Emma is still trying to get her thoughts in order and cataloguing all the little details around their home that make it home to counteract the memories she is delving into, when Killian returns with two cups of hot chocolate and a plate of sugar and gingerbread cookies, balanced on his left forearm.
"Don't you think you've had enough of those?" she asks with an eyeroll.
"'Tis the season, I've been told, Swan," he says with a grin and hands her one of the cups.
Emma extracts her hands from where she stuck them between her thighs to keep them warm in his absence and latches onto the heated cup. Killian settles back down next to her on the rug and seems the picture of patience itself as she stares at the cinnamon slowly sinking into the whipped cream as it slowly sinks into the warm liquid.
"I used to do that," she starts after a couple of minutes and feels her boyfriend shuffle that little bit closer. "Warm my hands with a cup of hot cocoa. Or coffee or tea when I couldn't get that. I think it's part of why I became so addicted to it. It was my go-to source of warmth. Until-"
She feels her cheeks flush a little at that but hell, in for a penny, in for a pound. One of her hands lets go of the mug and moves to wrap around his stump, her fingers smoothing over the creases in his skin. Killian drops a kiss to her exposed collarbone before resting his head on her shoulder and nodding – he gets it, he wants her to go on, he wants her to trust him with this.
Idiot. She trusts him with everything.
"I never really got gloves as a kid. There're many things foster kids don't get. I-I think maybe I did when I was back with the Swans but I don't remember much of my time with them… but… I used to associate them with warmth or… you know, warmth that flares up and then quickly fizzles out and leaves you in the cold."
Killian sets his cup down and covers her hand with his where it still rests over his left wrist. Screw the cocoa. She abandons her cup and adds her other hand to the mix, thinking that they look pretty damn ridiculous at this point. Sentimental as hell. Only she kinda needs that right now, need to be touching him as much as possible.
"I had this one pair that I'd put together during the holidays. It wasn't actually a pair. One glove was brown and the other was a dirty pink and the brown one was a little torn at the thumb but..." she swallows and feels Killian lift his head from her shoulder so that she can tuck herself into him. "It was a cold winter and they kept me warm. But then school started again and… I was… I don't know. Eight? Nine? I didn't really think about it when I went to school. A-and one girl saw them… and started laughing and pointing and calling me Miss Mismatched and-"
This is way harder than it should be over 20 years later. And she is half in her True Love's lap, in her own house, in front of her fireplace, after spending Christmas with her whole family, wrapping paper still scattered here and there from all the presents they exchanged yesterday. And yet…
And yet she aches all over for that little lost girl she used to be. And, if the way Killian leaves her hands over his wrist only to grab her waist and tug her that last bit so she is now definitely sitting on his lap, if that is any indication – he is aching for her too.
"Anyway," Emma sniffs a little, taking a deep breath and trying to relax into him. "I never really wore gloves after that. I'd buy myself a pair when it got really cold but I always forgot them in a Starbucks or something and then felt guilty, thinking that… somewhere, some kid is dying for a pair of fucking gloves."
They sit there in silence for a few minutes after that and eventually Emma thinks she has herself back under control, lifting her head from Killian's shoulder to take her cup back and sip her slightly cooled cocoa. She doesn't know what kind of response she expects from Killian but he's usually so good at knowing what she needs that when he moves from under her and just gets up and leaves the room, all she can do is stare after him in mild shock.
It's not like she underwent the most traumatic experience ever but still for him to just-
And he is back. With a little, red gift bag with a green bow holding the handles together.
The pirate kneels in front to her, his teeth worrying his lower lip slightly and it's a gestures she sees so rarely from Killian that in a second the glove story is out of her head and all she can think about is what on earth has him all nervous.
"So… I figured your story would be something like that," he says with a sheepish little smile and Emma frowns in confusion. "I mean, something along the lines of you not getting what you should have never been deprived of in the first place."
She swallows, thinks, for a second, that she would've never been deprived off anything, if it were up to him.
"And you are in no way to use these when I'm around and available," he says with a teasing grin but his eyes are still shining with softness and that warmth that he radiates inside and out. "But for when I'm not… well..."
He hands her the bag then and Emma feels this little ball form in the pit of her stomach and her eyes sting a little in anticipation and she is not sure she wants to open it because she's really not the biggest fan of waterworks, even when only Killian is around to witness them.
"Babe, wha-"
"Swan, just open it," he says with a smile, seemingly more sure now, to make up for her hesitance.
She takes a shaky breath and pulls at the silky green bow. There's a pair of gloves inside of course. Red and thick and woolen and perfect and yup, she's crying now.
"And it's alright, if you lose them. I'm just going to buy you new ones. And then new ones when you lose those," he teases as he moves closer so their knees are pressed together. "Until you get used to them. And to the fact that you never have to be cold again. Not ever. Not when I'm around."
By this point Emma thinks it should be held against her, if she didn't throw her arms around his neck and kiss him senseless. So she does.
And she never loses the gloves.
/
Killian is a pain in the ass in the morning.
He has this thing where, after 300 years on a ship, it is basically ingrained in his bones that he needs to be awake the second the sun peaks over the horizon. Yet, after 300 years on a ship, he absolutely refuses to get out of bed before he needs to.
So far so good. Except that Killian Jones cannot keep still to save his life. And that is how Emma Swan finds herself trapped in their comfortable king-sized bed with her very warm and very awake pirate every morning.
The first morning they wake up next to each other Emma is easily coerced into some pleasurable activities despite the ungodly hour. They are slow, gentle, delicious and sticky warm activities, under the cover of their warm blankets with the sun barely sneaking in and tinting everything in a golden glow that makes Killian's eyelashes glitter and Emma's green eyes sparkles.
The morning after that she is not quite so receptive. They had gone to bed late and it was Saturday and she didn't have to set a foot outside, if she didn't wish to and she did not wish to so no way was Killian rousing her before 7 fucking AM. No matter how tantalizingly he dragged his chin down her spine and how deftly his fingers wrapped around her hipbone and how teasingly he ran his leg between her thighs. Nope, no matter all that, when he shimmied half-down the bed and bit gently at her right butt cheek, Emma kicked him the rest of the way off the bed and tugged her blankets closer before he could drag them with him into that hellish place called out of bed that she just banned him to.
The third time they developed the routine that would stick.
Killian wakes up with the sun as always, nuzzling into Emma's tangled locks and drifting in and out of semi-dreams of hot sand and sunlight bouncing off the ocean's waves and soft flesh, pliant beneath his fingertips and salty under his tongue.
"Mornin', love," he whispers in Emma's ear once his eyelids are fully open and refusing to close again and the sun is bathing more than half of their bedroom in warmth.
"Half an hour, baby," murmurs the blonde, patting the arm around her waist and shuffling backwards to press her back fully to his front.
Killian manages to entertain himself with light touches and cataloguing the different shades of sunshine in her hair and testing how low down her ribcage he can slide his nose before she kicks him lightly in the shin and mutters some quantity of minutes into the pillow. He takes solace in the fact that the quantity keeps decreasing. And when he manages to reach the waistband of her panties, he knows he has won.
/
Emma gets stress headaches.
Every two weeks or so, she comes home from the station just a little earlier, her eyes squinting a bit at the brighter lights over the kitchen counter and her hands reaching for the cocoa mix a bit faster than usual.
The first time Killian was around for one of those (merely a month after they had officially moved in together) Emma labeled him as 'overbearing' and threatened to kick him out if he didn't stop asking her what he could do and trying to find some soothing music among her CDs.
He was understandably cautious the second time he noticed her obvious tension and the way she kept rubbing her forehead and squeezing her eyes. But, try as he might, he just couldn't watch her suffer in silence, so he offered, as quietly as possible, to prepare her cocoa while she laid down for a bit and after that tentative suggestion was amicably accepted, he risked offering her a massage when delivering the cocoa. Emma seemed to rather appreciate him working the tense muscles in her neck, her body sinking deeper and deeper into their mattress and the stress gradually leaking out of her.
The third time they developed the routine that would stick.
Emma texts Killian before leaving the station.
'Rough day. Raging headache. Would like to reserve my favourite massage therapist.'
'Your favourite, huh?'
'Always, babe ;)'
As if she doesn't already have him wrapped around her finger. Half an hour later he is waiting for her – bath drawn, candles lit, cocoa spiced with a bit of rum, pirate half-naked and flexing his 'magical, plundering fingers'.
When Snow finds out about her headaches upon stopping by the station one afternoon and offers Emma some pills, the blonde just shakes her head and fishes her phone out of her pocket.
"I'm good. Or… Killian is quite good at being my anti-headache pill. I just need dad to take over a bit earlier so I can go home."
And if the word 'home' alone helps ease some of the tension out and make her tingle in ways that are all warmth and no stress – well, she'd still like her massage.