A/N: Bet you thought you'd seen the last of this. Apparently, I couldn't even stay away for a week. Thank you so much for all the wonderful words you all sent me with the epilogue I just want to be aggressively nice to you all.

I was all set to write something for i-know-how-you-kiss's birthday over on tumblr and a little birdie told me she might like something in this 'verse. So this little instalment is a special edition birthday one shot. If you're curious about the cake, it's inspired by the 'Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book'. Almost everyone I know has had a cake from this book.

Happyyyy Birthdayyyy Liiiz, my little chocolate croissant :)

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Whatever Floats Your Boat

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Appendix 1: Cook Books

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It was an accident.

She must have put them on the table at least a hundred times before, kicking, resting and slamming her boots or bare feet against the wooden surface - but evidently, this was one time to many.

In the months they'd been living together, Emma and Killian had finally managed to clean Liam's place properly, and create some sort of organisation for Killian's ever growing personal library. The furniture in their apartment grew - the rug they had bought was particularly useful to cut out some of the annoying echo - but easily the thing they owned most of were books. Some of them had been moved from the boat before they started leasing it out, others had simply found their way out of Killian's boxes, and even Emma's suitcase.

(Not to mention Killian's insistence that this time they shouldn't let her staff discount go to waste.)

But the coffee table was the one concession to disorder that they made.

He had been quite attached and proud of himself for building the legs, sturdily out of an array of books that seemingly would not have seemed secure. They were mostly hardback novels – Margaret Atwood, Dickens, Ian Rankin – but many of them were wider more physically imposing books - atlases, recipe books, children's picture books (she had spotted Animalia there some weeks back under a Jamie Oliver, reminding her briefly of sadder times past).

However, it didn't seem to matter what kind of book was a part of it when Emma's feet hit the table, because the whole thing wobbled, collapsing in a massive spread on the floor. It'd almost occurred in slow motion, Emma cursing the thing and herself before it had even fully begun to sway. It took her a moment to even really react, groaning in annoyance rather than jumping up in shock - her life seemed perpetually at risk of toppling piles of books.

(And it was almost always his fault.)

"Really?"

She was half-tempted to leave it there, tempted to leave the whole disastrous thing as it was, making a point about the growing commotion of books that not even Killian could ignore. But he wasn't coming home for three days, and there wasn't a chance that Emma would live with it that long just to make a statement that he would undoubtedly only chuckle at, before pressing his grin into the pulse of her neck.

(They were still at that hopeless stage, where her irritations were half-arsed, and he seemed solely focused on coaxing smiles from her skin.)

And so she put it back together. It took hours, and Emma wasn't happy about it, grumbling aggressively at each book, splitting her attention between the rerun of Great British Bake Off and creating increasingly unstable towers out of them (the more books in the pile, the more dubious their reliability).

And that was how she came across it – the second accident of the night.

It was an old and very fading cake book (Children's Birthday Cake Book), and looked as though it was conceived of, written, and photographed in the 80s. She couldn't entirely be sure why she opened it up, she hadn't even entertained the idea of perusing through any of the others, far more entertained with the strange bread challenge that was taking place on the television in front of her. Maybe it was the fact that she couldn't remember the last time she'd had a birthday cake, maybe it was the way the book seemed thumbed and worn in, maybe it was the baking theme from the TV influencing her.

Maybe it was just happenchance.

But open it, she did. A superficial flick through, observing the strange array of dolls and animals morphed into edible scenes – and then it fell out: a photograph.

Emma couldn't for the life of her make sense of why it would have been hidden there, so negligent and perfunctory, certainly considering the sentimental value that was evident within the photo. The colours of the image still bright and vivid as though they had been kept well preserved within the darkness of the book's pages for a long time, but the photo itself was incredibly creased. Small bends around the edges telling its sentimental worth, before she'd even focused on the image it captured.

Beyond all the smudgings of fingerprints, was the image of two small boys and the mother they both shared, gleaming at the image of a blue birthday cake.

It hit her so profoundly, the smile of the two young boys, the youngest of the two (a little chubbier than he was now), with his mouth pursed mid-candle-blow and she almost felt as though she were betraying some boundary by looking in on the scene; as though the memory was too precious to share. In part, that was due to the knowledge that Emma held, knowing that two out of the three people in the photo were dead, and that feeling only worsened with a careful glance at the dark-haired woman Emma had never seen and would never meet. She flipped it over, curiously hoping for more information on the reverse side, but was more than a little unprepared for what she saw there.

Killian's 7th Birthday, 12th August

It was raining outside - England had a habit of doing that - and even though they hadn't predicted a storm as such, a loud clanging woke her and in that heart-pounding state of being rudely awoken, she wondered if it was thunder.

It wasn't.

There was a boy in the kitchen slamming cupboards, swearing about the "bloody rain" and his "bloody shoes".

She should have been less surprised than she was, after all, she knew he was coming home that night. The agreement had been that every two weeks of the course he would drive back for the weekend (even though, more often than not, it ended up being every weekend), but he also had a Friday afternoon tutorial, which meant that his drive home was often late.

(He claimed to never skip the class, and yet somehow there were weeks where he got there hours earlier than he should have.)

While he sometimes crept into their bed, curling around her and mumbling genuinely sweet nothings (his tone was sweet and she was sure the words were too, but she heard none of them, lost to almost-sleep with his arm tucked under hers), other times she was awake and waiting for him, a lazy and excited smile to mirror his own.

And other times he awoke her rudely.

"Seriously?"

Killian had trod mud from the front door all the way to the middle of the kitchen, and as she glanced into the room, she noticed the boots that now sat unceremoniously in the kitchen sink. The rain outside simply pelted down, not caring at all for the inconvenience it had caused not only to his shoes and their floor, but to the strands of hair about his face. He would have looked relatively unsurprised by her presence and the tone of her voice, smiling at her widely and expectantly, were it not for the way his hand shot to his neck to scratch at it in a distracted and almost guilty manner

"Hi, love, what are you more annoyed about – the noise or the mud?"

Moving closer towards him, she danced about the footprints on the floor, avoiding the dirt and the wet in a semi-balanced, semi-disastrous way, and somehow managing to avoid the mess with her feet entirely.

"You know, sometimes I think about changing the locks on this place."

"Sure you do, Swan."

There was no precursor to the kiss he gave her in greeting; no flirtatious, light-hearted coercion; no warm looks; no lingering touches – not from either of them.

They didn't need it, two weeks was fourteenish days too many, and the kiss told them that quite clearly (not that they needed reminding), his hands lost as they slid under the hem of her pyjama shirt, and into the hollow beneath her chin. She had missed him, missed being able to cling to his shoulders with her arms, missed pressing her chest against his, and it hadn't been the first time they'd experienced distance (and the desperation it brought), and it wouldn't be the last time, but this open heart thing she was trying out meant she experienced it in a different way to before.

Experienced it more strongly, more painfully – the reward was more satisfying, though.

And his face was slightly wet, and his tongue inviting as it curled around hers, his stubble leaving little damp traces on her face with each heavy, loaded draw of her lips – but she hardly cared about the rain, not when there was the spice of him and the subtle sweetness that he tasted like.

(The kiss was so desperate, and she felt a restlessness in her bones, and in her feet - desperate to move this in a more horizontal direction.)

The sweetness though, there was something about it, the way it nipped not only at her heart but her curiosity. It made her pause.

Then, with a lick of her lips, it clicked.

"You've got to be kidding me."

He looked the very picture of innocence at her words, as they came out muffled against the cant of his mouth on her mouth. Emma was having none of it, she knew that taste, she'd been sick off it barely hours ago, and so moving to the fridge she opened up the door and pulled out the cake.

Yeah, she'd made the cake.

She'd never really been one for baking, but since seeing that photograph she knew that it was something she wanted to do, a gesture she needed to make. The photo itself had fallen out of a page with the recipe for a little train cake, the exact cake that seven year-old Killian had been blowing the candles of, and she had felt as though she'd had little choice in the matter. Emma had no clue what it would taste like: the sponge cake secretly lined with cream she was a little uncertain about, but the shape had come out surprisingly well, the steam train perfectly modelled, and its little carriages and carts that it pulled packed to the brim with an assortment of lollies. It looked nothing like the image in the book, but that hadn't been the purpose.

(She would probably deny the level of detail she had tried to stick to to the photograph though, even ensuring that the decorative and freight-carried sweets were the same as she could recognise in the picture.)

But it was the icing that she was most proud of, the bright blue had come out shockingly well, but amongst the sprinkles and the liquorice bits there was a very clear and distinct line across one of the carriages, which she didn't doubt for a minute would be the perfect fit for a certain dark-haired Englishman.

(If the shoe fits.)

And he didn't even have the gall to look guilty, instead he wore a completely satisfied cat-with-the-cream type expression, and where he wore mischief on his face, she wore the very image of unimpressed.

She placed the cake on the counter, half with a mind to grab a spoon and try and smooth out the layer of buttered sugar he'd terrorised, spewing forth a range of complaints as she did. Killian didn't seem to care, instead sauntering his way across the kitchen to stand behind her, grin still devilishly in place behind her shoulder.

("You couldn't have even waited until tomorrow?" "Aye, missed you too, love." "Killian." "Emma.")

He kissed her again, turning her face with a gentle tug on her chin and her whole body following in turn, completely disregarding her feigned outrage, and while she tried to argue with him with each movement of their heads, with each breath between kisses – ("I spent so long on that." "Mmhmm." "Hours with an oven I hate." "Mm-I know.") – she kissed him back just as enthusiastically. Two weeks was a long time between kisses, and a long time to miss his fingers on the skin of her waist. She craved the action – the kisses and the wandering hands - that the taste of sugar on his lips had shaken her from, aching for the thing she'd grown to need: him.

He backed her into the counter's edge one too many times, and so she made to scramble up onto its surface, his arms moving underneath her thighs to hoist her up, her humming something akin to a whine at the momentary distance of lips.

But he met her again with a passionate bite that she'd missed, and she couldn't help but forget the battle she had been trying to put up with the cake.

Until she felt him stall, or more heard him stall, but suddenly his lips were gone, instead all she could feel was the gentle prod of his nose against hers, his fingers falling to the sides of her thighs and the rumble of his words.

"Swan, why have you made me a cake? And a child's cake at that?"

The last time Emma had had her eyes open he'd look utterly content, completely oblivious to the fact he'd walked through mud to get to her, and completely ignoring her indignation. Now, however, it was impossible to not see the cogs whirring in his mind, the curious but subtle look on his face almost wary of the answer.

"Because," her hands found his, twisting in and out of fingers. "Monday is your birthday, not that you bothered to tell me."

She had replied with a small smile, the easiness of their moment overtaking her – but he did not return her mirth, and suddenly every earlier sign of that mirth was gone from his face without a trace. Emma ached with having stolen that look - however intentionally - from him, and cocked her head searchingly at his own uneasy face.

There was no sparkle in his eyes, not even one caused by the light in the room, as he glanced between the cake beside them and back up at her face, and when the confusion on his face didn't waver, she spoke again.

"There was this old recipe book, and in one of the pages there was this photo of your seventh birthday. It was of you, your-"

"Liam and my mother."

He finished her words, clearly aware of the memory, and a little confirming 'yeah' escaped her lips. He tried to smile, but his mouth struggled to turn itself up at all, and yet, he seemed determined to pretend there was no gravity to the situation.

(But failed to.)

(He had not spoken much of his mother, he was so severely uncomfortable talking about himself – they were far too similar in this regard – but on the occasions that he did, he spoke of her lovingly, if distantly.

Killian was still yet to say anything of his father, other than there was one. Once upon a time, anyway.)

The rain outside was still consistently falling, the sound amplified by an open window, and amplified when he said nothing. Emma waited, needing him to say something, needing to know the gesture and the intrusion of his past were not unwelcome or that it was in fact an intrusion at all. He did not seem mad, returning the gentle thumb movements she was making against his hand back against hers, yet she contemplated his silence. Not simply the sad silence standing before her, but the lack of information about his birthday at all (not that she had told him hers, the entire conversation about birthdays had for some reason never come up, both of them far too caught up in everything else to pay it any heed).

Still, his fingers played with hers, and his eyes took in her face, and when she tucked him closer with the pull of her legs around his, he rested his forehead on hers, struggling with what to say. Every fibre of Emma's being told her she knew why he hadn't told her, knew what it was that he'd been evading - largely because it was the same thing that lurked in the background of most of his current dark moods.

"I should have told you," Emma only responded to his words with the shrug of her shoulders, the words soft though not whispered. "It'll be my first birthday without Liam, I was just avoiding talking about it altogether."

Emma took no satisfaction in her correct assumption (it was so often about Liam), and the ache written across his face settled in her chest - and she was determined to get rid of it.

"So, let's not talk about it."

She only had to tilt her face a few inches to catch him again, but when she did, what started out as a soothing, thawing gesture, became yet another unspoken gesture of love. Because she did – love him and mollify him - with her hands and her lips and her legs about him, she thawed him; softening her own heart in response to the softening of his.

(They had told each other at this stage, tirelessly, and the words were repeated often, to the point where they – while still tingly and nervous on her tongue – came out naturally and involuntarily half the time.

But, when it all came down to it, they both still preferred the gestures to the words, preferred to feel the meaning of the words murmured onto each others lips than uttered in the space between them.)

And then she felt it, the cool and slightly grainy texture of sugar and butter, swiped once again from the train, and this time recklessly slid across her nose.

His joyous nature was back a little, and he looked so pleased with himself, Emma opening her eyes just in time to see him removing the remains of the icing from his finger.

"This," Emma gestured between them with the nod of her head, vision slightly hindered by a blue blurry haze, and the lilting tease of her tone. "This is how you repay me?"

"You're right, how unforgivable of me – allow me to make amends."

Emma, eyes closed in laughter, knowing what he was going to do before he even did it, a contorted mix of amusement and vexation on her face as she felt his lips and the edge of his tongue kiss the tip of her nose, removing the icing before licking his own lips.

"You're so predicable."

(So clichéd.)

But she played along anyway, figuring it was as good a use of the cake as any.

The train slowly lost icing, losing it to his bottom lip as she removed it with her own tongue; losing it to her neck as he returned the favour; losing even more to his ear lobe as she bit it, fumbling through the giggles as tiny sticky grains got stuck in the crevices of its shape. Emma thought she had done well with the icing - the texture was perfect, the taste not too sweet – and yet the whole thing was far improved with the further ginger of his skin, mingled with the taste of rain and the slow, lustful laughter that rumbled through his chest.

She may have used a little bit too much dye, however, noting with heavily-lidded eyes how the edges of skin around his lips were blue, matching his tongue, his fraternising fingers, his jaw – in fact, everywhere that had touched icing was a little blue. He only laughed more when she told him, mumbling it as she traced a nonsense shape on his collarbone, earning her a heavy gasp; a quiet groan, when she used a little too much tooth and claw.

Their game got worse (or better) as their skin turned somewhat bluer, as she lost her pants and in return received gentle, warming and blue kisses to her thighs. It was ridiculous, this give and take, and the way the heat flooded her veins, controlling her senses and making her entire body pine for his.

(She definitely loved him, it was easily more than fervour and need, and more about that sickening sensation in her gut, a sickeningly saccharine emotion that was more than just the sugar of the icing.)

(And it was addictive.)

But, it wasn't until she drew a blue shape in the low cut of her singlet that they stopped using the cake entirely and paid more attention to the coaxing kisses of his lips on her chest, her legs drawing him in further.

His attempt to return to the light-heartedness he'd walked in with had not been in vain, a giddy sort of daze influencing them, and yet the ache was not entirely gone - but every kiss, every brush of nails against his skin, and every movement of his hands in her hair chased it further and further away. It rendered them breathless, and sticky, and warm, from cheek to heart cockles.

The cake was quickly ignored (ignored and now mangled), the mud on the floor forgotten (despite the rain still trying to draw attention to itself), and the only thing that seemed to matter was that he was back, and she was here. Once again, Emma found herself hardly paying attention as Killian lifted her from the kitchen, narrowly escaping the dirty puddles on the tiles, and only really coming to when they fell over the edge of the bed.

("Thank you, for the cake - in case I forgot to say it." "Shh, thank me in other ways.")