Word Count: 2115

Rating: T

Summary: Their whole life could be summed up by two, little words, from childhood friends to adulthood.

Just once.

His life seemed to revolve around those words, ever since he was naught but a stable boy of nine and she a girl he shouldn't be speaking with (especially not while working, especially not with her). It was after Father had left him on a ship headed for Liam's port. His elder brother, a newly officered Lieutenant whom had earned a fondness from the King and Queen for some heroics or another that he was far too young to understand, had bought him a place of service and a bed to sleep in with the other stable workers at the castle.

"Until you're old enough, Killian," was what he always said before he left on a voyage (of a length that seemed endless to a child), ruffling his hair and telling him to mind the stables as he's told and his manners twice as well. It wasn't until some time later that he understood what he would soon be old enough to do.

No matter. Minding the stables was where he first met Princess Emma.

"Why won't you talk to me?" The Princess had frowned, pouting prettily, even at all of nine years old, braids bouncing as she followed him from stall to stall.

"I am talking to you… erm, Princess," he added her title hastily, forgetting himself in a child's huff, but only for a moment. He wouldn't let Liam down. He did mind the stables, as well as any older boy (minus lifting the heavier bales, but soon he'd be strong enough). "Only I'm not supposed to."

"No, you're not," she grumped, crossing her arms and giving him a look that made him want to laugh, though he was far too scared of reprisal to actually do something as terrible as that. "You're just saying 'yes Princess'," she mocked his voice in a purposefully bored tone of voice. "Just like everybody else does."

"Yes, Princess."

"There you go again."

He flushed red, flustered and unsure of what to say. No one had told him what to do in the situation that the Princess demanded he speak with her, only not to bother anybody that looked more important than he was.

"I–um–stable boys aren't meant to speak with royalty, M'lady," he stammered quickly, averting his eyes as he did his best to lift a bag of feed nearly half his size and empty it into the trough (he managed, though only by sheer luck and probable blessing of the gods to not embarrass himself in front of her).

He still remembers the way that she had leaned against the stall wall, paying absolutely no mind to her dress.

"You're not going to get in trouble, there's no one around. Come on… just once?"

The words had done him in that day, the way they had every day beyond.

"Just once?" she would whisper or whine or pout or tease, and no matter the tone, no matter the time, he found from that day forward, he could never truly deny her.

"Just once, Killian? It's not as if anybody will notice me gone, and if I have to sit another minute in that stifling room with my studies, I'm going to scream."

Killian grinned and shook his head, blue eyes sparkling with a familiar amusement as he shoveled the last bit of dirty straw from the stall, wiping his brow with the arm of his sleeve. Now an older boy of twelve, he had long since learned not to argue with the Princess when she was in a stubborn mood.

"Aye then. I'm all finished now, and we can't have screaming princesses, can we?"

"It wouldn't be very proper," she replied with a smug smirk, annoyingly triumphant. "To that spot in the meadow then? Beneath the tree?"

She was gone before he could argue. She nearly always was. Emma was no spoiled, prim and proper princess nor lady of court, not inside at least, but she certainly knew how to use her royal charms on him when needed. No, she wasn't one of those silly ladies always looking down their noses at him and his sullied clothing from a long day's work when all he wanted was to buy some bread from the sweets cart. No, inside Emma reminded him the littlest bit of Liam. Someone who had to be responsible on the outside, in front of others, but when it was just the two of them, Liam was fun. Deep down inside, his brother loved playing his games and telling him stories and dreaming of adventure and new lands and the smell of the sea.

(Only a few more years, and the smell of the sea wouldn't be so distant for himself, he thinks whenever the thought of Liam crosses his mind.)

Each day that passes, he finds himself minding her antics less and less.

After his fifteenth birthday, he became an official member of the kingdom's Royal Navy, a true, honest to goodness sailor with his brother as his Captain and promises that someday, if he's proven himself, he'll wear the much finer uniform of an officer and serve beside him at the helm, rather than on his knees, scrubbing the deck. That was also the year that he left on his own very first adventure - not a terribly long one, but two weeks at sea with the smell of salt in his nose is pure Heaven to a boy constantly locked within the walls of a musty stable full of soiled straw.

"Just this once."

She had told him that firmly, one hand on her hip, eying his uniform critically, as if the fear of Liam's own inspection to follow wasn't enough to ensure every stitch clean and precisely in its place. It was only the drab of a cabin boy, but he'd be a liar if he said his jaw hadn't been sore from grinning the day he had put it on for the first time and caught his reflection in a bit of glass that he kept to help him shave.

"You're only leaving me this once, Killian Jones. Who am I to run off with if you aren't around?" She had fussed, fumbling with his collar, which had already been perfectly straight.

"Yes, Princess."

He lied to her with practiced ease, he remembers, chuckling quietly so as not to earn a smack to his shoulder. They had always lied to one another, always told promises that could never be kept. In such a world of uncertainty, a world where fathers leave boys to starve and steal all alone, a world where mothers die, where brothers are always gone and friends have to meet in secrecy because some people have everything while others have none, simply due to the families that they were born to, well… sometimes the little lies didn't seem so terribly sinful. They only felt comforting.

"Just this once," she had breathed into his lips the year he became seventeen, upon his return from a month long mission to Midas' kingdom.

The Princess had long since changed, in his mind, from merely a childhood friend that had helped him pass the years in the stuffy palace stables to a beautiful woman he had equally as childish dreams of spending a life with, however impossible that may be. He couldn't help himself, the way he felt around her, the thoughts he dared entertain on lonely nights aboard The Jewel of the Realm.

"Must it be?" He'd whispered back with a cheeky grin.

It had been their first kiss then - his only kiss, and he had assumed hers as well - a chaste act that led to much less chaste thoughts in the mind of a young Navy man of two years past. Thoughts that turned to more dreams, more quiet moments stolen away together, more secrets and little lies whispered between them in the rare times they could spare a minute alone.

"Just this once, Killian." She bit her lip at him after telling him the news of her impending courtship. "It doesn't mean anything."

"You said that the last time." He scratched his ear, a nervous tick that she had teased him about his boyhood. "And the time before that," he reminds her with no shame.

She had nearly nineteen years now (as did he), expected soon to marry (very much unlike him), and the line of young men vying for her attention appeared endless as the months of Liam's journeys had felt to him as a child. It seemed from the moment she had turned eighteen, she had been paraded about for all manner of young dukes and nobleman (anybody but him).

The most recent proposition had come from a Baelfire, her third official suitor - a prince of a far off land, with a father with quite the name for himself, not to mention quite the army. While entirely peaceful an offer (though Killian had spent enough time in the Navy not to trust any kin of The Dark One for a moment), it was obvious that a marriage to such a land, to such an heir, would certainly be in their kingdom's best interest. Even he wasn't youthful and blinded enough by his own affections to ignore such a fact.

She had even teased him that this Bae was fair to look at, something she meant in jest, but he found it closer to cruel, though cruelty wasn't her intent. What had bothered him the most was the confession that they had hidden away from the ball and this was where this other man had mentioned his desire to court her, a proposition to her, not her parents.

Apparently that had appealed to her, he had thought bitterly and jealousy had flared up inside of him like a red coal.

He had always been responsible for the Princess' disappearances from royal functions, he was the one she stole away with to have a moment's peace. If she had found such a friend elsewhere, if she could ease such a consistent need, then what else might she ease with him in the future?

"We've talked about this." She takes his hand; he can't help but squeeze it back. "It's only to appease my parents that I have chosen well for myself. That I haven't ignored their suggestions and gone my own way without a thought…as I always do," she added somewhat bitterly.

He wanted to retort a sarcastic "haven't you?" but ignored the urge, straightening his shoulders instead. "I've been informed that I am to be made Lieutenant." He held his chin high, proud of his news, despite the churning of his gut at the Princess'. "A few more years and I could be a Captain… perhaps… if I work harder," he admits, knowing it would indeed be quite some time before he wore the rank of his elder brother.

It would likely take equally as brave circumstances to award him such a rank in so few years, not to mention awarding him even a hint of an opportunity to court the Princess herself. Childhood friends is one thing, stolen kisses unbeknownst to none but them more so, but marriage is quite another.

"Please, love… only a few more years, alright?"

"Just this once," he tells her softly, only weeks later, wearing his freshly made lieutenant's uniform, ready just in time for him to be sent away on an unexpected mission to a far away land whose name he hasn't been allowed to know, much less utter.

He doesn't know how long the journey will be or when he'll be able to hold her to his chest as he is now, if he'll ever be able to do it again based on the secrecy and ominous nature surrounding his orders. He shouldn't be here, not with her, certainly not in his pristine, new uniform, the dust already settling into the fabric, but he couldn't deny her.

(Has he ever been able to? He can no longer remember.)

He couldn't ignore the wobble to her voice when she had asked him the night before to meet him in the early hours before his departure, or the mistiness to her green eyes that she had blamed on the weather. So in the quiet privacy of the old, deserted stables where they had met, the walls that have long since been abandoned when the new stables had been built, he lets himself hold her, his lips brushing over the crown of her head over and over until the sun creeping above the hilltops tells him that time had run out.

"Just this once," she repeats back to him, for the final time.