A/N: My CS Secret Shipmate gift to swanhook (saviourswan) who requested a fluffy or angsty fic. Please enjoy!

When he looks back at it, he wonders if he went about it all wrong. He recalls the idiom where one takes a step forward just take to take two steps back and he feels that it does not give the situation enough justice. He has been thrown back (literally) and suddenly the world seems so far away, a smoky tendril that teases mockingly between fingers, looping back and forth, piercing him with a dreadful cold before hurling itself away into that dark abyss he had escaped from after centuries. It is a sort of reversal, he supposes, and as she watches him deliberate between choices, she smirks and his breath flees away from him like a startled prey. It is a gift, she says, I had it prepared just for you, and madly, he feels flattered but the ache in his back is excruciating and her eyes are wide and hopeful, a green or a blue, he is never quite sure, yet they arrest him with their penetrating gaze and he is stunned into place.

We are running out of time, she had said and he wants to cry out because that is all he has left.

He closes his eyes.

Sound

When Captain Killian 'Hook' Jones met Emma Swan, he had first heard her voice—a shocked, hoarse exclamation that was muffled under the layers of rancid garment and rotting corpse.

"Oh my God…"

The most difficult part had been to lay still, the dead body already pressing him into the ground constricting his airways, and his short, inadequate pants full of dirt and grit driving him close to blissful unconsciousness. The nausea had abated after about an hour while the blinding terror of watching heart after heart being ripped out of their cavities without remorse plagued him mercilessly, branded behind his eyes with the echoes of their screams repeating over and over again. She had made him watch, the blatant warning of her actions belying the subtlety of her words ("I need to remove a few obstacles, Captain. It's a little thing, really...") while he relived the horror of Milah's form crumbling feebly into his arms.

He had listened intently to their cries, both terrified and subdued, and his heart beat into a startling crescendo.

"Hey! Hey! Look!"

"There's someone under there!"

Though he had seen the hands of the Sleeping Princess first, it was her face that filled his vision before turning away to see her mother's.

"It's okay! You're safe now. We won't hurt you."

But she does and it is almost enough to drive the tempest of his words into that faint place of truth he had once valued so diligently. The memory of the cuff around his wrist burns like the talon of a wild bird and he isn't sure if he puts the edge into his words for his benefit or hers or for the formidable witch that watches them with greedy eyes.

"The time for making deals is done, just as I'm done… with you."

But he isn't… and as he turns his lady around only to sail it back into a portal, as he rejects the demon boy's proposition, as he proclaims his truth into the cave, as he watches her vessel drive away, he wonders if he ever will be.

"Good."

Sight

If he watches her more than the others—watches as she clumsily treks through the trees with exaggerated steps as if in preparation to flee; observes her odd clothing and the way her trousers cling to her shapely legs; scrutinizes the lost look of her wary and stormy eyes—it is because (he insists to himself) he is a pirate and she has made herself to be the most hostile towards him. When she looks back at him without surprise or indignation, he merely smirks back and then chuckles as her frown mars her pretty features, and if he feels a sting of her rejection, he simply ignores it and smiles forcefully. He does love a challenge.

As they climb the towering plant and she continues to openly ignore him, again he stomps down that irritating feeling of dismissal and he watches her. Her hair is long and golden, free and unadorned, very unlike the women from this realm and he finds it fascinating, a beautiful woman not overly concerned with appearances. She has an assured tenacity that he can't help but admire and he feels that in this they are most similar—she and her determination to find a way to her son, he and his unwavering pursuit for revenge. He also knows that she, like himself, was once abandoned and he wonders who it was that has molded her into this guarded person and he is horrified to discover just how angry it makes him.

From then on it is nothing but a blur of images of her walking away—in the giant's lair, on the cold ground in the rain, at the hospital, in Manhattan, in the diner, in the jungle, at the town line—interspersed with those of him leaving only for him to come back—on his ship, at her apartment.

He had once thought that the most painful memory was watching her drive away with her son, the violet clouds engulfing him as he strained for one last glimpse of the yellow contraption fade slowly away.

It isn't until he sees the unknown man kneel down and take her hand in his, his glowing smile growing as he mouths those binding words that Killian takes everything back.

Touch

For someone so averse to having people near her or around her, she is surprisingly very physical with her proximity. She has her hands in his hair within minutes of their acquaintance and from then on it only escalates to grips and grasps and punches and kisses to (finally) embraces. He does notice that she seems to do this with those she trusts most and even then she is hesitant to be held warmly in someone's arms. It doesn't escape him that he is in that small circle of people that she unknowingly gifts her light caresses but he is thankful nonetheless. It is the moments when she doesn't place her touches on him that he feels the most exposed and if it drives him mad with longing he is sure to arrange his features in a cool mask of indifference.

It is in the Neverland jungle that he realizes just how dependent she is on being near him and he makes sure to always be in a position to accept her presence without any impediments. He begins to find small things just to please her—supplying her with a sip of his rum, opening a coconut—just to feel the light graze of her fingertips against his. He is their undeclared escort through the perilous jungle and if he maneuvers himself so that somehow she walks ahead of him and he can guide her with a hesitant hand, well it is because she is their leader and her safety is the most important.

He pointedly ignores her father's glares as he passes by.

Even with her lips pressed firmly against his and the fire in his veins threatens to burn him from the inside out, he holds himself back, allowing a quick press to her hip with his hook and the simple stroke of her hair with his hand. He fears that if he were to permit himself more, then the agony of the eventual release will be stronger, and he isn't sure if he will be able to handle it.

When he tells her that not a day will go by that he will never think of her, the desire to touch her is unbearable, but he resists and he regrets it every day that he goes without her.

It is worth it when she finally falls into his arms, gasping in disbelief, clinging to him in desperation as the last wisps of memories consume her into a new reality.

From then on, his existence seems to depend on the moments where her fingers gently grasp his.

Smell

She insists that he still smells like rum and sea salt. He tells her that he hasn't drunk a sip of alcohol in over a year and hasn't been on his ship in months. She says it must be his outfit that never changes out of that reeks of the scents of a pirate. He replies that she is terribly unobservant and that he changes his leathers quite often and why is she complaining anyway, You know you love it, Swan. She rolls her eyes and pushes him off the stool. He laughs until his ribs hurt.

Truth be told, he often does change outfits, he just happens to have multiples of the same one. He had been a naval officer for many years—there was never a need to be burdened with the aspects of fashion, it would have been a waste of valuable resources and time. Plus, he quite enjoys consistency and after three hundred years, it just never felt like a major issue (and he had wanted to make sure that when he finally did come face to face with his Crocodile, he would remember him just as he was).

She smells like the sweet scent of flowers in a dewy morning after a spring storm. At first it was jasmine and hyacinth, and then sometimes it is freesia or gardenia. Then there was the time that she smelled like grapefruit and another time that she smelled like vanilla and he had leaned over her too far (embarrassingly) and she had yelped in surprise while he made a miserable excuse about a poisonous Neverland flower that had nearly grazed her and then he was under the torrent of her wrath, What the hell, Hook! Another one? You could have told us earlier!

It isn't until they are in Storybrooke again—after she has regained her memories and they tiptoe around each other as if stepping on frail glass, and she offers him her couch and he is fiddling with the knobs of her bathing unit—that he sees the various colorful bottles. He takes an absurd amount of time inside the bathroom, opening and sniffing each bottle, memorizing their scents, until the water is turning cold and he feels like a child intruding upon a private moment. He allows the brief flame of shame engulf him and he surrenders to the fact that she will always have the potent ability to reduce him to a million pieces.

He chooses the green bottle that matches her eyes and revels in the feeling that he is stealing a piece of her that he can keep and never give back.

The next morning she places a white mug in front of him and smiles at him openly. It smells like chocolate and cinnamon and something else very sweet like cream and it tastes like heaven, much like her, and he smiles like an idiot for the rest of the day.

Taste

Killian thinks that the first time he ever tasted something truly exquisite was the first time he kissed Emma Swan. It seeps into him like a glorious rain after long drought, blooming from his lips to his gut to his heart, and he awakens to a chilling truth. Somewhere along their short acquaintance he has fallen in love with Emma Swan and he can't quite remember a time when he wasn't. She is walking away, commanding him in that impish way of hers before he can even take a proper breath (before he can come back to life, he thinks) and he cannot decide whether the coldness in his chest is due to her absence from their secluded spot or her presence in his once-dead heart.

He will be damned to a watery grave in the depths of the seas before he admits that for months in the Enchanted Forest after she was left behind with her son, the only thing that seemed real was the bitter taste of his tears.

There is a sweet tang to her lips when he takes that leap of faith, but it is fleeting and suddenly her knee is on his groin and stars behind his eyes and she pushes him away.

He tastes the bile at the back of his throat as she sits back against her seat, mouth agape, staring wildly at the ring in the man's hand and he prays and prays and prays…

(The relief Killian feels as she denies him rivals only what he felt when she came back to life on his deck.)

And now he is here, looking back at the woman who has imprisoned him, invisible shackles holding him in place, and he is weak, oh so weak, and the ache in his bones spread out like a wildfire, the pain shooting through his head like lightning.

"I am only going to ask once," she says serenely as if she were reciting an ancient epithet. "I promise you it shall be painless."

Killian is not strong enough to glare back but he does it anyway, and the sting of the cuts on his face merely startle him into a higher plane of consciousness. "And the boy?" he croaks out, throat parched from his screams.

"He will be safe," the woman says. He notices her eyes are a deep and cold blue. They are a shocking contrast to her green skin.

He looks at her, resignation in his own blue eyes, and he nods.

"Here," the Wicked Witch says, and places the ruby red apple on his lap politely. "I want to thank you for your cooperation, Captain. You have been most useful." She releases his bonds.

Killian sighs and takes a bite.

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