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marvelousmarvelimagines · 5 years

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Five Times You Caught Tony Stark’s Eyes

Pairing - Tony Stark x Avenger!Reader

Summary - It’s not easy to grab the attention of the genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, but here’s five times that you did.

Word Count - 3,138

Warnings - Language, and also some slightly smutty situations.

Tony Stark had seen a lot of things in his forty years of life. From a burrito flying through the air into a car window, to a wormhole leading into space, he had seen a lot.

But he had never seen anything like you.

The fire blazing in front of him was reflected in your eyes, creating a barrier between you and the rest of the team. That wasn’t the only thing reflected in them though. It was a look Tony recognized well. It was fear. You put on a brave front, but he could see right through it. The bravado you put on was all an act from a woman trying to hide that she had no idea how to control this thing inside of her. You were scared to death. Tony knew at that exact moment every single incident that got you on the Avengers radar must have been accidental. How could someone that looked that terrified be a murderer?

Surprising everyone, even himself, he stepped closer to you. He could hear the team’s warnings, as well as his AI’s, echoing in his ears, but as usual, he paid them no mind. How could he focus on anything other than you as your eyes widened.

“Stay away!” You yelled at him, but your voice lacked the authority it had earlier held, and Tony stepped forward again.

Your arm thrust up, but you seemed too panicked to do anything, scrambling backwards toward the wall behind you. Tony could see the sweat gleaming on your skin, the trembling of your hand as your gaze darted around trying to find a way out. You looked like a small mouse that had been cornered by a large cat with no escape in sight.

Tony deactivated his mask, revealing his face to you. That grabbed your attention and you focused once more on him instead of the fire surrounding you. “Mr. Stark, you need to get away! Leave me alone!” This time there was another tone in your voice, one of pleading as you looked at him. You didn’t want to hurt him.

“No can do, kid. We just want to help you.” He tried to reassure you as he continued forward. “Can you let me through?” Tony asked once he reached the edge of the fire.

You shook your head, “please,” you gasped, “stay away . . . I can’t -” Your whole body seemed to be trembling with terror as he stared at you. “I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt anyone else.” You said.

“You won’t,” Tony tried to reassure you. “I would say we’re pretty damn near indestructible, but Cap here has weak legs,” he said, gesturing to the super soldier over his shoulder.

His humor was rewarded with a little smile, but it vanished as soon as it appeared.

“I can’t control it.” You told him.

Tony leaned down so that he would be level with you. The heat from the fire caressed his skin, but he didn’t notice it. Your eyes were locked on his, filled with a multitude of emotions ranging all over the place. You were scared, you were powerful, but most of all, you were desperate. While you might not be asking for it, Tony could see you needed help. “We’re good with that. If I can build an iron suit in a cave surrounded by terrorists, I think I can help you out with this.”

It felt like hours, hours of staring into each other’s eyes, while all around the fire continued to blaze. Tony’s gaze was filled with awe and sincerity, while yours was filled with pain and uncertainty trying to figure out if you could trust him. Then, your hand started to lower, hesitating for a moment. “You promise?” You whispered so low he almost couldn’t hear it over the crackle of the flames.

“Promise,” Tony replied.

The flames lowered.

⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊

Appreciating the little things had never been a priority in Tony Stark’s life. Why should it when there were much finer things to be appreciated in reach of his fingertips? Any piece of the latest technology he could have. Say he wanted some pizza from Italy? Easy, take his plane and go there. Stopping and smelling the roses? Please, there were artificial scents for that he could order and have at the tower in under an hour.

Not you though.

He had never seen someone so fascinated by such simple things before. Everything you did was like you were doing it for the first time. He couldn’t count the amount of times he had found you laying on the roof enjoying the sun. Then there was this little smile of relief you got every time that someone greeted you or left you with a hug. It was like it made your day. Also your obsession with animals. At the rate you were going, Tony didn’t think that there would be a cat in New York City that hadn’t been pet by you. It seemed so . . . easy to make you happy. Coming from the girl that half a year ago had been sobbing and helpless on the ground surrounded by a fire she couldn’t control, it was the most impressive turnabout Tony had ever seen.

This might take the cake though.

Tony couldn’t stop staring. Rain poured down from the skies as you moved around the roof of the tower, your clothes so drenched your button up hung off your shoulder, your curled hair falling in waves around your face, but yet, you still danced, a soft smile on your face as you embraced the downpour. He had thought he had gone unnoticed even though he had no idea how long he had been standing there.

“I can feel your judgement from here.” You called out to him.

Tony started, but recovered before it became too awkward. “I thought fire and water didn’t get along?”

You shook your head, opening your eyes and turning your smile to him. “Common misconception.” Once again, Tony watched every step that you took as you moved closer, stopping mere feet in front of him. His chest tightened as you held out your hand to him. “Join me?”

“Uh, bad idea, see this shirt is about the cost of saving several mountain gorillas, and I have to get to a Gala in -”

“When has something being expensive ever stopped you?” You asked him, lifting an eyebrow.

Tony thought about it for a minute. He knew the fancy gala would be starting soon, but it was already in his reputation to be late. Why start changing now? Besides, he wouldn’t mind spending some alone time with the mystery that was you. “Two conditions.”

Your smile widened as if you expected nothing less. “I’ll hear them and take them into consideration.”

He took a step closer to you, right at the edge of the door as he spoke. “Number one, I expect round the clock care when I inevitably get sick from this little venture.” He told her, holding up one finger.

She laughed and Tony found his breath leaving him at the sound. God how was a laugh so attractive? Nobody was supposed to have an attractive laugh. “Agreed as long as it doesn’t involve foot massages.” She told him, scrunching up her nose.

Tony bit his bottom lip as if considering her counter, but then nodded. “Number two, not my type of music. JARVIS, cue something from my playlist would you?” The Steelheart song his AI had selected, ‘I’ll Never Let You Go’, began playing and Tony had to fight the urge to roll his eyes.

“I’m impressed. I thought for sure it would be some AC/DC.” You pointed out.

“Me too,” he looked at her and stepped out into the rain, tugging her close. “Guess we’ve just got to play the cards we’ve been dealt sometimes.”

If you hadn’t been pressed against him, he would have missed your sharp intake of breath as your bodies met, because your face didn’t change a bit, your smile still in perfect place. He watched as a single raindrop dripped from one of your eyelashes and slid down your cheek. “Isn’t that the truth.” You said, wrapping your somehow still warm arm around his neck and pulling him even closer as you both moved in circles in the pouring rain.

⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊

It was hypocritical of him, he had known that from the very beginning. You had known that too, but you hadn’t questioned him. You had told him once that you trusted him more than anyone in the world. He had responded by telling you that was a mistake. You had replied that he hadn’t let you down yet.

This time he felt like he had.

“Just for a few days. As soon as all of this has blown over I’ll bring you back and you can sign the accords like you wanted.” Tony told you, sitting on the porch of the small cabin that he had rented out for you.

“I don’t understand why I can’t sign them now. It’s not like the government doesn’t know of my existence. Doesn’t signing them -” You paused, and Tony knew right away that you had come to the same conclusion he had as soon as this whole idea was brought up. “You think they’ll prosecute me.” You said, your voice so low Tony almost missed it.

“I don’t know that -”

“Why wouldn’t they?” You stood up and Tony watched as you began to pace around the porch, your hands trembling with emotion. “I’ve killed innocent people. I’m a murderer. I killed my own boyfriend, Tony. I should be locked up. They could make a good example out of me too. Show that superheroes aren’t above the law.”

“That was not your fault.” Tony said in a stern tone, punctuating every word with emphasis. “He was abusing you, Y/N. Your powers were new and out of control. You were defending yourself.”

You turned back to look at him, tears streaming down your face. “Historically, women who murder their own abusers don’t do well in court. You know that as well as I do.”

Tony had never been one for physical affection, but he made an exception for you, pulling you so tight against his chest he could feel your heartbeat, pounding and erratic with emotion against his own chest. “Then I’ll make a deal. I just need time. I promise nothing’s going to happen to you.”

He watched from a distance, taking in everything about you. The way your tan skin glowed in the flames you were creating in the fire pit. The tips of your fingers moving around in a dance as you manipulated them. Your white dress contrasting with the black night surrounding you, making you stand out even more in his tired eyes. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen. God you were a sight for sore eyes. He took a step forward, a branch cracking under his feet.

You glanced up, finding Tony in the darkness and letting out a gasp at his appearance. Now that he thought about it, he might should have cleaned up the blood a bit before coming to see you. “Tony . . .” You ran over to him, your hands covering your mouth in shock at the wounds on his face as you stopped a few feet away.

A sarcastic comment was on the tip of his tongue, but he continued looking at you, and he couldn’t do it. He was exhausted, emotionally and physically, and he couldn’t keep up his usual facade. Not with you. “I fucked up.” He croaked out.

He didn’t have to say anything else. You hugged him close, one arm wrapped tight around his middle while the other pulled his face into your neck. You didn’t have any words to say, but he didn’t need them. He just needed to be close to you.

⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊

It was a rare night that Tony Stark got to sleep all the way through it. Even more so when it wasn’t in his own bed, but Tony woke up feeling refreshed that morning. He could hear the wind blowing through the open windows, the white curtains flowing with it. The sun was rising, painting the sky in purples, oranges and yellows, a sight he normally only saw through tower windows after he had been up all night tinkering. He had to admit, it was nice to see from the comfort of a bed.

A soft sigh turned his attention away from the windows, and he glanced down at the woman curled on her side against his front. Your whole body was relaxed and warm as always. Your hair was a gentle wave against the pillows between the two of you, a serene look on your face with your lips parted, still deep in sleep. Then his eyes landed on your bare shoulder, and he couldn’t resist.

Leaning over, he pressed a kiss to your skin, followed by another, then another, all the way to the spot behind your ear that he knew drove you crazy. He was rewarded with another sigh as your back arched into him. “It’s way too early for you to be kissing me like that.” You mumbled into your pillow.

“Is it?” He asked, a hint of a smirk on his lips as he splayed his hand across the smooth skin of your lower stomach. “I’m not used to normal waking hours. I can stop if you want.” He said, turning his attention to your earlobe, nibbling on it softly.

This time you whined, pressing your ass back against him. “If you do I’ll set you on fire.” You replied, half joking.

Tony paused at that, his hand massaging your inner thigh with tender circles. “Now are you talking about the good kind of fire such as, ‘dear god I have to do terrible things to this awful man right now, or the bad kind of fire in which you’re thinking, ‘dear god I have to do terrible things to this handsome man right now?’” He asked, nipping at your neck.

At this point, you seemed to be almost awake, and rolled over on top of him, hips floating above his just enough to where they were almost touching, hands resting on either side of his head. “You know, those both kind of sound the same to me.”

“Did they? Seemed to have distinct differences to me.” He replied before sliding his hands up to grip your hips and pull you down to his hard length.

He couldn’t miss the way your arms tensed, and he knew you were gripping the sheets tight. As if it was second nature, you rolled your hips down on him, causing a slight groan to leave his mouth. He loved how your body reacted to him and his teasing. Even in the most inappropriate of situations, you always responded. In fact, he recalled fondly how angry you had gotten at him during one of your previous press conferences with the rest of the Avengers when he had kept a hand under your skirt the whole time while you all sat at the table. Nevertheless, within seconds of the press conference ending you had him pulled into a broom closet where he had fucked you against the door. You may deny it, but you couldn’t resist him. He enjoyed you attempting to though. “You’re walking on thin ice, Stark. I don’t start my mornings this early without coffee. You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

“What can I say? I like playing with fire.” Tony replied.

You laughed, so deep in your belly that Tony could see it with your breath, the sight making him smile. God he loved you like this. Carefree and happy, adorable and yet alluring at the same time. Most importantly, with him. “You’re lucky I love you, or I’d hit you for all the fire puns.”

“Now, that’s an interesting idea. What do you say -”

He didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence. When you started kissing down his chest, he found himself rather occupied doing other things.

⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊⎊

“I need another drink.”

“You do not need another drink. As your best man, I am not going to allow you to get drunk before the most important day of your life.” Rhodey told him, clapping him on the shoulder. “Especially in front of an actual priest.” He muttered under his breath while smiling at the man in question.

Tony’s fingers tapped against his Tom Ford clad leg in no particular rhythm. “Drinking in front of a Priest is hardly the worst thing I’ve ever done.”

“No, but drinking on your wedding day might be. She would set your suit on fire. You realize that right?” Rhodey told him.

The thought of that had a fond smile appearing on Tony’s face. “Yeah, yeah I do.”

Then the violins started. An instrumental version of Sweet Child O’ Mine was the song both of you had ended up agreeing on after you had flat out refused You Shook Me All Night Long several times. Now, watching your Maid of Honor, Carol Danvers, walk down the aisle to it, sending a little wink to Rhodey as she did, he had to admit you were right.

As the music swelled, he could feel his heart rate getting faster and faster to an almost painful level. If he didn’t know any better, he would say he was having a panic attack. But then the doors opened and he saw you.

Gorgeous, lovely, pretty, ravishing, stunning, breathtaking, ethereal, a fucking knockout. Tony struggled to come up with a word that fit your description at that moment, but there was none in the English language. Head to toe in white lace, with a smile that left him breathless, you were every bit the angel he teased you were. At that moment, he wanted to run down the aisle, grab you close and marry you as soon as possible, but he didn’t, taking every second to memorize how you looked to implant in his mind forever. Finally, you reached the bottom of the stairs where he was waiting. It was then that he noticed the fire red detailing on the back, an ode to the both of you and how you had met.

If there had ever been a doubt in Tony’s soul that you were not meant for him, this moment stomped it. It wasn’t until you reached up with gentle fingers to brush a tear away that he realized he had been crying. “Did you ever think we would get here?” You asked him, your smile still blazing and your eyes shining with love.

“From the moment I laid eyes on you.” Tony replied.

#tony stark #tony stark x reader #iron man #iron man x reader #tony stark imagine

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jkottke · 5 years

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What Would Mister Rogers Do?

In 1998, Tom Junod wrote an article for Esquire about Fred Rogers. It is a particular favorite of mine and if you've never read it, I would recommend setting aside some time soon to do so.

Koko weighed 280 pounds because she is a gorilla, and Mister Rogers weighed 143 pounds because he has weighed 143 pounds as long as he has been Mister Rogers, because once upon a time, around thirty-one years ago, Mister Rogers stepped on a scale, and the scale told him that Mister Rogers weighs 143 pounds. No, not that he weighed 143 pounds, but that he weighs 143 pounds.... And so, every day, Mister Rogers refuses to do anything that would make his weight change -- he neither drinks, nor smokes, nor eats flesh of any kind, nor goes to bed late at night, nor sleeps late in the morning, nor even watches television -- and every morning, when he swims, he steps on a scale in his bathing suit and his bathing cap and his goggles, and the scale tells him that he weighs 143 pounds. This has happened so many times that Mister Rogers has come to see that number as a gift, as a destiny fulfilled, because, as he says, "the number 143 means 'I love you.' It takes one letter to say 'I' and four letters to say 'love' and three letters to say 'you.' One hundred and forty-three. 'I love you.' Isn't that wonderful?"

The article has been adapted into a movie called A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood; it stars Tom Hanks and will be out in two weeks time. Here's a recently trailer -- my skepticism about Tom Hanks playing Rogers is fading:

youtube

Junod recently wrote a piece about his friendship with the television icon, which began with the writing of the Esquire piece, continued until Rogers' death in 2003, and clearly still reverberates in his life.

What would Fred Rogers -- Mister Rogers -- have made of El Paso and Dayton, of mass murder committed to fulfill the dictates of an 8chan manifesto? What, for that matter, would he have made of the anti-Semitic massacre that took place last fall in his real-life Pittsburgh neighborhood of Squirrel Hill? The easy answer is that it is impossible to know, because he was from a different world, one almost as alien to us now as our mob-driven world of performative slaughters would be to him. But actually, I think I do know, because when I met him, one of the early school shootings had just taken place, in West Paducah, Kentucky -- eight students shot while they gathered in prayer. Though an indefatigably devout man, he did not attempt to characterize the shootings as an attack on the faithful; instead, he seized on the news that the 14-year-old shooter had gone to school telling his classmates that he was about to do something "really big," and he asked, "Oh, wouldn't the world be a different place if he had said, 'I'm going to do something really little tomorrow'?" Fred decided to devote a whole week of his television show, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, to the theme of "little and big," encouraging children to embrace the diminutive nature of their bodies and their endeavors -- to understand that big has to start little.

The whole piece is great, but the latter half, where Junod writes about Rogers' complicated legacy, the failure of his grand task, and how the people who idolize him today might nevertheless find it difficult to follow his example...well, I'm going to be thinking about that for awhile.

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nothingnothingaaa · 5 years

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Tom Junod's eulogy of Fred Rogers

By Tom Junod (Nov, 1998)

Can You Say... Hero?

Fred Rogers has been doing the same small good thing for a very long time.

ONCE UPON A TIME, a little boy loved a stuffed animal whose name was Old Rabbit. It was so old, in fact, that it was really an unstuffed animal; so old that even back then, with the little boy's brain still nice and fresh, he had no memory of it as "Young Rabbit", or even "Rabbit"; so old that Old Rabbit was barely a rabbit at all but rather a greasy hunk of skin without eyes and ears, with a single red stitch where its tongue used to be. The little boy didn't know why he loved Old Rabbit; he just did, and the night he threw it out the car window was the night he learned how to pray. He would grow up to become a great prayer, this little boy, but only intermittently, only fitfully, praying only when fear and desperation drove him to it, and the night he threw Old Rabbit into the darkness was the night that set the pattern, the night that taught him how. He prayed for Old Rabbit's safe return, and when, hours later, his mother and father came home with the filthy, precious strip of rabbity roadkill, he learned not only that prayers are sometimes answered but also the kind of severe effort they entail, the kind of endless frantic summoning. And so when he threw Old Rabbit out the car window the next time, it was gone for good.

YOU WERE A CHILD ONCE, TOO. That's what Mister Rogers said, that's what he wrote down, once upon a time, for the doctors. The doctors were ophthalmologists. An ophthalmologist is a doctor who takes care of the eyes. Sometimes, ophthalmologists have to take care of the eyes of children, and some children get very scared, because children know that their world disappears when their eyes close, and they can be afraid that the ophthalmologists will make their eyes close forever. The ophthalmologists did not want to scare children, so they asked Mister Rogers for help, and Mister Rogers agreed to write a chapter for a book the ophthalmologists were putting together a chapter about what other ophthalmologists could do to calm the children who came to their offices. Because Mister Rogers is such a busy man, however, he could not write the chapter himself, and he asked a woman who worked for him to write it instead. She worked very hard at writing the chapter, until one day she showed what she had written to Mister Rogers, who read it and crossed it all out and wrote a sentence addressed directly to the doctors who would be reading it: "You were a child once, too".

And that's how the chapter began.

THE OLD NAVY-BLUE SPORT JACKET comes off first, then the dress shoes, except that now there is not the famous sweater or the famous sneakers to replace them, and so after the shoes he's on to the dark socks, peeling them off and showing the blanched skin of his narrow feet. The tie is next, the scanty black batwing of a bow tie hand-tied at his slender throat, and then the shirt, always white or light blue, whisked from his body button by button. He wears an undershirt, of course, but no matter soon that's gone, too, as is the belt, as are the beige trousers, until his undershorts stand as the last impediment to his nakedness. They are boxers, egg-coloured, and to rid himself of them he bends at the waist, and stands on one leg, and hops, and lifts one knee toward his chest and then the other and thenMister Rogers has no clothes on.

Nearly every morning of his life, Mister Rogers has gone swimming, and now, here he is, standing in a locker room, seventy years old and as white as the Easter Bunny, rimed with frost wherever he has hair, gnawed pink in the spots where his dry skin has gone to flaking, slightly wattled at the neck, slightly stooped at the shoulder, slightly sunken in the chest, slightly curvy at the hips, slightly pigeoned at the toes, slightly aswing at the fine bobbing nest of himself and yet when he speaks, it is in that voice, his voice, the famous one, the unmistakable one, the televised one, the voice dressed in sweater and sneakers, the soft one, the reassuring one, the curious and expository one, the sly voice that sounds adult to the ears of children and childish to the ears of adults, and what he says, in the midst of all his bobbing nudity, is as understated as it is obvious: "Well, Tom, I guess you've already gotten a deeper glimpse into my daily routine than most people have".

ONCE UPON A TIME, a long time ago, a man took off his jacket and put on a sweater. Then he took off his shoes and put on a pair of sneakers. His name was Fred Rogers. He was starting a television program, aimed at children, called Mister Rogers' Neighbourhood. He had been on television before, but only as the voices and movements of puppets, on a program called The Children's Corner. Now he was stepping in front of the camera as Mister Rogers, and he wanted to do things right, and whatever he did right, he wanted to repeat. And so, once upon a time, Fred Rogers took off his jacket and put on a sweater his mother had made him, a cardigan with a zipper. Then he took off his shoes and put on a pair of navy-blue canvas boating sneakers. He did the same thing the next day, and then the next until he had done the same things, those things, 865 times, at the beginning of 865 television programs, over a span of thirty-one years. The first time I met Mister Rogers, he told me a story of how deeply his simple gestures had been felt, and received. He had just come back from visiting Koko, the gorilla who has learned or who has been taught American Sign Language. Koko watches television. Koko watches Mister Rogers' Neighbourhood, and when Mister Rogers, in his sweater and sneakers, entered the place where she lives, Koko immediately folded him in her long, black arms, as though he were a child, and then "She took my shoes off, Tom", Mister Rogers said.

Koko was much bigger than Mister Rogers. She weighed 280 pounds, and Mister Rogers weighed 143. Koko weighed 280 pounds because she is a gorilla, and Mister Rogers weighed 143 pounds because he has weighed 143 pounds as long as he has been Mister Rogers, because once upon a time, around thirty-one years ago, Mister Rogers stepped on a scale, and the scale told him that Mister Rogers weighs 143 pounds. No, not that he weighed 143 pounds, but that he weighs 143 pounds . And so, every day, Mister Rogers refuses to do anything that would make his weight change he neither drinks, nor smokes, nor eats flesh of any kind, nor goes to bed late at night, nor sleeps late in the morning, nor even watches television and every morning, when he swims, he steps on a scale in his bathing suit and his bathing cap and his goggles, and the scale tells him that he weighs 143 pounds. This has happened so many times that Mister Rogers has come to see that number as a gift, as a destiny fulfilled, because, as he says, "the number 143 means 'I love you'. It takes one letter to say 'I' and four letters to say 'love' and three letters to say 'you'. One hundred and forty-three. 'I love you'. Isn't that wonderful?"

THE FIRST TIME I CALLED MISTER ROGERS on the telephone, I woke him up from his nap. He takes a nap every day in the late afternoon just as he wakes up every morning at five-thirty to read and study and write and pray for the legions who have requested his prayers; just as he goes to bed at nine-thirty at night and sleeps eight hours without interruption. On this afternoon, the end of a hot, yellow day in New York City, he was very tired, and when I asked if I could go to his apartment and see him, he paused for a moment and said shyly, "Well, Tom, I'm in my bathrobe, if you don't mind". I told him I didn't mind, and when, five minutes later, I took the elevator to his floor, well, sure enough, there was Mister Rogers, silver-haired, standing in the golden door at the end of the hallway and wearing eyeglasses and suede moccasins with rawhide laces and a flimsy old blue-and-yellow bathrobe that revealed whatever part of his skinny white calves his dark-blue dress socks didn't hide. "Welcome, Tom", he said with a slight bow, and bade me follow him inside, where he lay down no, stretched out, as though he had known me all his life on a couch upholstered with gold velveteen. He rested his head on a small pillow and kept his eyes closed while he explained that he had bought the apartment thirty years before for $11,000 and kept it for whenever he came to New York on business for the Neighbourhood. I sat in an old armchair and looked around. The place was drab and dim, with the smell of stalled air and a stain of daguerreotype sunlight on its closed, slatted blinds, and Mister Rogers looked so at home in its gloomy familiarity that I thought he was going to fall back asleep when suddenly the phone rang, startling him. "Oh, hello, my dear", he said when he picked it up, and then he said that he had a visitor, someone who wanted to learn more about the Neighbourhood. "Would you like to speak to him?" he asked, and then handed me the phone. "It's Joanne", he said. I took the phone and spoke to a woman his wife, the mother of his two sons whose voice was hearty and almost whooping in its forthrightness and who spoke to me as though she had known me for a long time and was making the effort to keep up the acquaintance. When I handed him back the phone, he said, "Bye, my dear", and hung up and curled on the couch like a cat, with his bare calves swirled underneath him and one of his hands gripping his ankle, so that he looked as languorous as an odalisque. There was an energy to him, however, a fearlessness, an unashamed insistence on intimacy, and though I tried to ask him questions about himself, he always turned the questions back on me, and when I finally got him to talk about the puppets that were the comfort of his lonely boyhood, he looked at me, his grey-blue eyes at once mild and steady, and asked, "What about you, Tom? Did you have any special friends growing up?"

"Special friends?"

"Yes", he said. "Maybe a puppet, or a special toy, or maybe just a stuffed animal you loved very much. Did you have a special friend like that, Tom?"

"Yes, Mister Rogers".

"Did your special friend have a name, Tom?"

"Yes, Mister Rogers. His name was Old Rabbit".

"Old Rabbit. Oh, and I'll bet the two of you were together since he was a very young rabbit. Would you like to tell me about Old Rabbit, Tom?"

And it was just about then, when I was spilling the beans about my special friend, that Mister Rogers rose from his corner of the couch and stood suddenly in front of me with a small black camera in hand. "Can I take your picture, Tom?" he asked. "I'd like to take your picture. I like to take pictures of all my new friends, so that I can show them to Joanne...". And then, in the dark room, there was a wallop of white light, and Mister Rogers disappeared behind it.

ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a boy who didn't like himself very much. It was not his fault. He was born with cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy is something that happens to the brain. It means that you can think but sometimes can't walk, or even talk. This boy had a very bad case of cerebral palsy, and when he was still a little boy, some of the people entrusted to take care of him took advantage of him instead and did things to him that made him think that he was a very bad little boy, because only a bad little boy would have to live with the things he had to live with. In fact, when the little boy grew up to be a teenager, he would get so mad at himself that he would hit himself, hard, with his own fists and tell his mother, on the computer he used for a mouth, that he didn't want to live anymore, for he was sure that God didn't like what was inside him any more than he did. He had always loved Mister Rogers, though, and now, even when he was fourteen years old, he watched the Neighbourhood whenever it was on, and the boy's mother sometimes thought that Mister Rogers was keeping her son alive. She and the boy lived together in a city in California, and although she wanted very much for her son to meet Mister Rogers, she knew that he was far too disabled to travel all the way to Pittsburgh, so she figured he would never meet his hero, until one day she learned through a special foundation designed to help children like her son that Mister Rogers was coming to California and that after he visited the gorilla named Koko, he was coming to meet her son.

At first, the boy was made very nervous by the thought that Mister Rogers was visiting him. He was so nervous, in fact, that when Mister Rogers did visit, he got mad at himself and began hating himself and hitting himself, and his mother had to take him to another room and talk to him. Mister Rogers didn't leave, though. He wanted something from the boy, and Mister Rogers never leaves when he wants something from somebody. He just waited patiently, and when the boy came back, Mister Rogers talked to him, and then he made his request. He said, "I would like you to do something for me. Would you do something for me?" On his computer, the boy answered yes, of course, he would do anything for Mister Rogers, so then Mister Rogers said, "I would like you to pray for me. Will you pray for me?" And now the boy didn't know how to respond. He was thunderstruck. Thunderstruck means that you can't talk, because something has happened that's as sudden and as miraculous and maybe as scary as a bolt of lightning, and all you can do is listen to the rumble. The boy was thunderstruck because nobody had ever asked him for something like that, ever. The boy had always been prayed for. The boy had always been the object of prayer, and now he was being asked to pray for Mister Rogers, and although at first he didn't know if he could do it, he said he would, he said he'd try, and ever since then he keeps Mister Rogers in his prayers and doesn't talk about wanting to die anymore, because he figures Mister Rogers is close to God, and if Mister Rogers likes him, that must mean God likes him, too.

As for Mister Rogers himself well, he doesn't look at the story in the same way that the boy did or that I did. In fact, when Mister Rogers first told me the story, I complimented him on being so smart for knowing that asking the boy for his prayers would make the boy feel better about himself and Mister Rogers responded by looking at me at first with puzzlement and then with surprise. "Oh, heavens no, Tom! I didn't ask him for his prayers for him; I asked for me. I asked him because I think that anyone who has gone through challenges like that must be very close to God. I asked him because I wanted his intercession".

ON DECEMBER 1, 1997… oh, heck, once upon a time a boy, no longer little, told his friends to watch out, that he was going to do something "really big" the next day at school, and the next day at school he took his gun and his ammo and his earplugs and shot eight classmates who had clustered for a prayer meeting. Three died, and they were still children, almost. The shootings took place in West Paducah, Kentucky, and when Mister Rogers heard about them, he said, "Oh, wouldn't the world be a different place if he had said, 'I'm going to do something really little tomorrow,'" and he decided to dedicate a week of the Neighbourhood to the theme "Little and Big". He wanted to tell children that what starts out little can sometimes become big, and so that could devote themselves to little dreams without feeling bad about them. But how could Mister Rogers show little becoming big, and vice versa? That was a challenge. He couldn't just say it, the way he could always just say to the children who watch his program that they are special to him, or even sing it, the way he would always sing "It's You I Like" and "Everybody's Fancy" and "It's Such a Good Feeling" and "Many Ways to Say I Love You" and "Sometimes People Are Good". No, he had to show it, he had to demonstrate it, and that's how Mister Rogers and the people who work for him eventually got the idea of coming to New York City to visit a woman named Maya Lin.

Maya Lin is a famous architect. Architects are people who create big things from the little designs they draw on pieces of paper. Most famous architects are famous for creating big famous buildings, but Maya Lin is more famous for creating big fancy things for people to look at, and in fact, when Mister Rogers had gone to her studio the day before, he looked at the pictures she had drawn of the clock that is now on the ceiling of a place in New York called Penn Station. A clock is a machine that tells people what time it is, but as Mister Rogers sat in the backseat of an old station wagon hired to take him from his apartment to Penn Station, he worried that Maya Lin's clock might be too fancy and that the children who watch the Neighbourhood might not understand it. Mister Rogers always worries about things like that, because he always worries about children, and when his station wagon stopped in traffic next to a bus stop, he read aloud the advertisement of an airline trying to push its international service. "Hmmm", Mister Rogers said, "that's a strange ad. 'Most people think of us as a great domestic airline. We hate that'. Hmmm. Hate is such a strong word to use so lightly. If they can hate something like that, you wonder how easy it would be for them to hate something more important". He was with his producer, Margy Whitmer. He had makeup on his face and a dollop of black dye combed into his silver hair. He was wearing beige pants, a blue dress shirt, a tie, dark socks, a pair of dark-blue boating sneakers, and a purple, zippered cardigan. He looked very little in the backseat of the car. Then the car stopped on Thirty-fourth Street, in front of the escalators leading down to the station, and when the doors opened...

"Holy shit! It's Mister Fucking Rogers!"

...he turned into Mister Fucking Rogers. This was not a bad thing, however, because he was in New York, and in New York it's not an insult to be called Mister Fucking Anything. In fact, it's an honorific. An honorific is what people call you when they respect you, and the moment Mister Rogers got out of the car, people wouldn't stay the fuck away from him, they respected him so much. Oh, Margy Whitmer tried to keep people away from him, tried to tell people that if they gave her their names and addresses, Mister Rogers would send them an autographed picture, but every time she turned around, there was Mister Rogers putting his arms around someone, or wiping the tears off someone's cheek, or passing around the picture of someone's child, or getting on his knees to talk to a child. Margy couldn't stop them, and she couldn't stop him. "Oh, Mister Rogers, thank you for my childhood". "Oh, Mister Rogers, you're the father I never had". "Oh, Mister Rogers, would you please just hug me?" After a while, Margy just rolled her eyes and gave up, because it's always like this with Mister Rogers, because the thing that people don't understand about him is that he's greedy for this greedy for the grace that people offer him. What is grace? He doesn't even know. He can't define it. This is a man who loves the simplifying force of definitions, and yet all he knows of grace is how he gets it; all he knows is that he gets it from God, through man. And so in Penn Station, where he was surrounded by men and women and children, he had this power, like a comic-book superhero who absorbs the energy of others until he bursts out of his shirt.

"If Mister Fucking Rogers can tell me how to read that fucking clock, I'll watch his show every day for a fucking year". That's what someone in the crowd said while watching Mister Rogers and Maya Lin crane their necks at Maya Lin's big fancy clock, but it didn't even matter whether Mister Rogers could read the clock or not, because every time he looked at it, with the television cameras on him, he leaned back from his waist and opened his mouth wide with astonishment, like someone trying to catch a peanut he had tossed into the air, until it became clear that Mister Rogers could show that he was astonished all day if he had to, or even forever, because Mister Rogers lives in a state of astonishment, and the astonishment he showed when he looked at the clock was the same astonishment he showed when people absolute strangers walked up to him and fed his hungry ear with their whispers, and he turned to me, with an open, abashed mouth, and said, "Oh, Tom, if you could only hear the stories I hear!"

ONCE UPON A TIME, Mister Rogers went to New York City and got caught in the rain. He didn't have an umbrella, and he couldn't find a taxi, either, so he ducked with a friend into the subway and got on one of the trains. It was late in the day, and the train was crowded with children who were going home from school. Though of all races, the schoolchildren were mostly black and Latino, and they didn't even approach Mister Rogers and ask him for his autograph. They just sang. They sang, all at once, all together, the song he sings at the start of his program, "Won't You Be My Neighbour?" and turned the clattering train into a single soft, runaway choir.

HE FINDS ME, OF COURSE, AT PENN STATION. He finds me, because that's what Mister Rogers does he looks, and then he finds. I'm standing against a wall, listening to a bunch of mooks from Long Island discuss the strange word a foreign word he has written down on each of the autographs he gave them. First mook: "He says it's the Greek word for grace". Second mook: "Huh. That's cool. I'm glad I know that. Now, what the fuck is grace?" First mook: "Looks like you're gonna have to break down and buy a dictionary". Second mook: "Fuck that. What I'm buying is a ticket to the fucking Lotto. I just met Mister Rogers this is definitely my lucky day". I'm listening to these guys when, from thirty feet away, I notice Mister Rogers looking around for someone and know, immediately, that he is looking for me. He is on one knee in front of a little girl who is hoarding, in her arms, a small stuffed animal, sky-blue, a bunny.

"Remind you of anyone, Tom?" he says when I approach the two of them. He is not speaking of the little girl.

"Yes, Mister Rogers".

"Looks a bit like Old Rabbit, doesn't it, Tom?"

"Yes, Mister Rogers".

"I thought so". Then he turns back to the little girl. "This man's name is Tom. When he was your age, he had a rabbit, too, and he loved it very much. Its name was Old Rabbit. What is yours named?"

The little girl eyes me suspiciously, and then Mister Rogers. She goes a little knock-kneed, directs a thumb toward her mouth. "Bunny Wunny", she says.

"Oh, that's a nice name", Mister Rogers says, and then goes to the Thirty-fourth Street escalator to climb it one last time for the cameras. When he reaches the street, he looks right at the lens, as he always does, and says, speaking of the Neighbourhood, "Let's go back to my place", and then makes a right turn toward Seventh Avenue, except that this time he just keeps going, and suddenly Margy Whitmer is saying, "Where is Fred? Where is Fred?" and Fred, he's a hundred yards away, in his sneakers and his purple sweater, and the only thing anyone sees of him is his grey head bobbing up and down amid all the other heads, the hundreds of them, the thousands, the millions, disappearing into the city and its swelter.

ONCE UPON A TIME, a little boy with a big sword went into battle against Mister Rogers. Or maybe, if the truth be told, Mister Rogers went into battle against a little boy with a big sword, for Mister Rogers didn't like the big sword. It was one of those swords that really isn't a sword at all; it was a big plastic contraption with lights and sound effects, and it was the kind of sword used in defence of the universe by the heroes of the television shows that the little boy liked to watch. The little boy with the big sword did not watch Mister Rogers. In fact, the little boy with the big sword didn't know who Mister Rogers was, and so when Mister Rogers knelt down in front of him, the little boy with the big sword looked past him and through him, and when Mister Rogers said, "Oh, my, that's a big sword you have", the boy didn't answer, and finally his mother got embarrassed and said, "Oh, honey, c'mon, that's Mister Rogers", and felt his head for fever. Of course, she knew who Mister Rogers was, because she had grown up with him, and she knew that he was good for her son, and so now, with her little boy zombie-eyed under his blond bangs, she apologised, saying to Mister Rogers that she knew he was in a rush and that she knew he was here in Penn Station taping his program and that her son usually wasn't like this, he was probably just tired . Except that Mister Rogers wasn't going anywhere. Yes, sure, he was taping, and right there, in Penn Station in New York City, were rings of other children wiggling in wait for him, but right now his patient grey eyes were fixed on the little boy with the big sword, and so he stayed there, on one knee, until the little boy's eyes finally focused on Mister Rogers, and he said, "It's not a sword; it's a death ray". A death ray! Oh, honey, Mommy knew you could do it .And so now, encouraged, Mommy said, "Do you want to give Mister Rogers a hug, honey?" But the boy was shaking his head no, and Mister Rogers was sneaking his face past the big sword and the armour of the little boy's eyes and whispering something in his ear something that, while not changing his mind about the hug, made the little boy look at Mister Rogers in a new way, with the eyes of a child at last, and nod his head yes.

We were heading back to his apartment in a taxi when I asked him what he had said.

"Oh, I just knew that whenever you see a little boy carrying something like that, it means that he wants to show people that he's strong on the outside.

"I just wanted to let him know that he was strong on the inside, too.

"And so that's what I told him.

"I said, 'Do you know that you're strong on the inside, too?'"

"Maybe it was something he needed to hear".

HE WAS BARELY MORE THAN A BOY himself when he learned what he would be fighting for, and fighting against, for the rest of his life. He was in college. He was a music major at a small school in Florida and planning to go to seminary upon graduation. His name was Fred Rogers. He came home to Latrobe, Pennsylvania, once upon a time, and his parents, because they were wealthy, had bought something new for the corner room of their big redbrick house. It was a television. Fred turned it on, and as he says now, with plaintive distaste, "there were people throwing pies at one another". He was the soft son of overprotective parents, but he believed, right then, that he was strong enough to enter into battle with that that machine, that medium and to wrestle with it until it yielded to him, until the ground touched by its blue shadow became hallowed and this thing called television came to be used "for the broadcasting of grace through the land". It would not be easy, no for in order to win such a battle, he would have to forbid himself the privilege of stopping, and whatever he did right he would have to repeat, as though he were already living in eternity. And so it was that the puppets he employed on The Children's Corner would be the puppets he employed forty-four years later, and so it was that once he took off his jacket and his shoes well, he was Mister Rogers for good. And even now, when he is producing only three weeks' worth of new programs a year, he still winds up agonising agonising about whether to announce his theme as "Little and Big" or "Big and Little" and still makes only two edits per televised minute, because he doesn't want his message to be determined by the cuts and splices in a piece of tape to become, despite all his fierce coherence, "a message of fragmentation".

He is losing, of course. The revolution he started a half hour a day, five days a week it wasn't enough, it didn't spread, and so, forced to fight his battles alone, Mister Rogers is losing, as we all are losing. He is losing to it, to our twenty-four-hour-a-day pie fight, to the dizzying cut and the disorienting edit, to the message of fragmentation, to the flicker and pulse and shudder and strobe, to the constant, hivey drone of the electro-culture and yet still he fights, deathly afraid that the medium he chose is consuming the very things he tried to protect: childhood and silence. Yes, at seventy years old and 143 pounds, Mister Rogers still fights, and indeed, early this year, when television handed him its highest honour, he responded by telling television gently, of course to just shut up for once, and television listened. He had already won his third Daytime Emmy, and now he went onstage to accept Emmy's Lifetime Achievement Award, and there, in front of all the soap-opera stars and talk-show synchrotrons, in front of all the jutting man-tanned jaws and jutting saltwater bosoms, he made his small bow and said into the microphone, "All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are .Ten seconds of silence". And then he lifted his wrist, and looked at the audience, and looked at his watch, and said softly, "I'll watch the time", and there was, at first, a small whoop from the crowd, a giddy, strangled hiccup of laughter, as people realised that he wasn't kidding, that Mister Rogers was not some convenient eunuch but rather a man, an authority figure who actually expected them to do what he asked and so they did. One second, two seconds, three seconds and now the jaws clenched, and the bosoms heaved, and the mascara ran, and the tears fell upon the be-glittered gathering like rain leaking down a crystal chandelier, and Mister Rogers finally looked up from his watch and said, "May God be with you" to all his vanquished children.

ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a little boy born blind, and so, defenceless in the world, he suffered the abuses of the defenceless, and when he grew up and became a man, he looked back and realised that he'd had no childhood at all, and that if he were ever to have a childhood, he would have to start having it now, in his forties. So the first thing he did was rechristen himself "Joybubbles"; the second thing he did was declare himself five years old forever; and the third thing he did was make a pilgrimage to Pittsburgh, where the University of Pittsburgh's Information Sciences Library keeps a Mister Rogers archive. It has all 865 programs, in both colour and black and white, and for two months this past spring, Joybubbles went to the library every day for ten hours and watched the Neighbourhood's every episode, plus specials or, since he is blind, listened to every episode, imagined every episode. Until one night, Mister Rogers came to him, in what he calls a visitation "I was dreaming, but I was awake" and offered to teach him how to pray.

"But Mister Rogers, I can't pray", Joybubbles said, "because every time I try to pray, I forget the words".

"I know that", Mister Rogers said, "and that's why the prayer I'm going to teach you has only three words".

"What prayer is that, Mister Rogers? What kind of prayer has only three words?" THE WALLS OF MISTER ROGERS' Neighbourhood are light blue and fleeced with clouds. They are tall as tall as the cinder-block walls they are designed to hide and they encompass the Neighbourhood's entire stage set, from the flimsy yellow house where Mister Rogers comes to visit, to the closet where he finds his sweaters, to the Neighbourhood of Make-Believe, where he goes to dream. The blue walls are the ends of the day-lit universe he has made, and yet Mister Rogers can't see them or at least can't know them because he was born blind to colour. He doesn't know the colour of his walls, and one day, when I caught him looking toward his painted skies, I asked him to tell me what colour they are, and he said, "I imagine they're blue, Tom". Then he looked at me and smiled. "I imagine they're blue".

He has spent thirty-one years imagining and reimagining those walls the walls that have both penned him in and set him free. You would think it would be easy by now, being Mister Rogers; you would think that one morning he would wake up and think, Okay, all I have to do is be nice for my allotted half hour today, and then I'll just take the rest of the day off .But no, Mister Rogers is a stubborn man, and so on the day I ask about the colour of his sky, he has already gotten up at five-thirty, already prayed for those who have asked for his prayers, already read, already written, already swum, already weighed himself, already sent out cards for the birthdays he never forgets, already called any number of people who depend on him for comfort, already cried when he read the letter of a mother whose child was buried with a picture of Mister Rogers in his casket, already played for twenty minutes with an autistic boy who has come, with his father, all the way from Boise, Idaho, to meet him. The boy had never spoken, until one day he said, "X the Owl", which is the name of one of Mister Rogers's puppets, and he had never looked his father in the eye until one day his father had said, "Let's go to the Neighbourhood of Make-Believe", and now the boy is speaking and reading, and the father has come to thank Mister Rogers for saving his son's life .And by this time, well, it's nine-thirty in the morning, time for Mister Rogers to take off his jacket and his shoes and put on his sweater and his sneakers and start taping another visit to the Neighbourhood. He writes all his own scripts, but on this day, when he receives a visit from Mrs. McFeely and a springer spaniel, she says that she has to bring the dog "back to his owner", and Mister Rogers makes a face. The cameras stop, and he says, "I don't like the word owner there. It's not a good word. Let's change it to 'bring the dog home'." And so the change is made, and the taping resumes, and this is how it goes all day, a life unfolding within a clasp of unfathomable governance, and once, when I lose sight of him, I ask Margy Whitmer where he is, and she says, "Right over your shoulder, where he always is", and when I turn around, Mister Rogers is facing me, child-stealthy, with a small black camera in his hand, to take another picture for the album that he will give me when I take my leave of him.

Yes, it should be easy being Mister Rogers, but when four o'clock rolls around, well, Mister Rogers is tired, and so he sneaks over to the piano and starts playing, with dexterous, pale fingers, the music that used to end a 1940s newsreel and that has now become the music he plays to signal to the cast and crew that a day's taping has wrapped. On this day, however, he is premature by a considerable extent, and so Margy, who has been with Mister Rogers since 1983 because nobody who works for Mister Rogers ever leaves the Neighbourhood comes running over, papers in hand, and says, "Not so fast there, buster".

"Oh, please, sister", Mister Rogers says. "I'm done".

And now Margy comes up behind him and massages his shoulders. "No, you're not", she says. "Roy Rogers is done. Mister Rogers still has a ways to go".

HE WAS A CHILD ONCE, TOO, and so one day I asked him if I could go with him back to Latrobe. He thought about it for a second, then said, by way of agreement, "Okay, then tomorrow, Tom, I'll show you childhood". Not his childhood, mind you, or even a childhood no, just "childhood". And so the next morning, we swam together, and then he put on his boxer shorts and the dark socks, and the T-shirt, and the grey trousers, and the belt, and then the white dress shirt and the black bow tie and the grey suit jacket, and about two hours later we were pulling up to the big brick house on Weldon Street in Latrobe, and Mister Rogers was thinking about going inside.

There was nobody home. The doors were open, unlocked, because the house was undergoing a renovation of some kind, but the owners were away, and Mister Rogers's boyhood home was empty of everyone but workmen. "Do you think we can go in?" he asked Bill Isler, president of Family Communications, the company that produces Mister Rogers' Neighbourhood. Bill had driven us there, and now, sitting behind the wheel of his red Grand Cherokee, he was full of remonstrance. "No!" he said. "Fred, they're not home. If we wanted to go into the house, we should have called first. Fred " But Mister Rogers was out of the car, with his camera in his hand and his legs moving so fast that the material of his grey suit pants furled and unfurled around both of his skinny legs, like flags exploding in a breeze. And here, as he made his way through thickets of bewildered workmen this skinny old man dressed in a grey suit and a bow tie, with his hands on his hips and his arms akimbo, like a dance instructor there was some kind of wiggly jazz in his legs, and he went flying all around the outside of the house, pointing at windows, saying there was the room where he learned to play the piano, and there was the room where he saw the pie fight on a primitive television, and there was the room where his beloved father died until finally we reached the front door. He put his hand on the knob; he cracked it open, but then, with Bill Isler calling caution from the car, he said, "Maybe we shouldn't go in. And all the people who made this house special to me are not here, anyway. They're all in heaven".

And so we went to the graveyard. We were heading there all along, because Mister Rogers loves graveyards, and so as we took the long, straight road out of sad, fading Latrobe, you could still feel the speed in him, the hurry, as he mustered up a sad anticipation, and when we passed through the cemetery gates, he smiled as he said to Bill Isler, "The plot's at the end of the yellow-brick road". And so it was; the asphalt ended, and then we began bouncing over a road of old blond bricks, until even that road ended, and we were parked in front of the place where Mister Rogers is to be buried. He got out of the car, and, moving as quickly as he had moved to the door of his house, he stepped up a small hill to the door of a large grey mausoleum, a huge structure built for six, with a slightly peaked roof, and bronze doors, and angels living in the stained glass. He peeked in the window, and in the same voice he uses on television, that voice, at once so patient and so eager, he pointed out each crypt, saying "There's my father, and there's my mother, and there, on the left, is my place, and right across will be Joanne...". The window was of darkened glass, though, and so to see through it, we had to press our faces close against it, and where the glass had warped away from the frame of the door where there was a finger-wide crack Mister Rogers's voice leaked into his grave, and came back to us as a soft, hollow echo.

And then he was on the move again, happily, quickly, for he would not leave until he showed me all the places of all those who'd loved him into being. His grandfather, his grandmother, his uncles, his aunts, his father-in-law and mother-in-law, even his family's servants he went to each grave, and spoke their names, and told their stories, until finally I headed back down to the Jeep and turned back around to see Mister Rogers standing high on a green dell, smiling among the stones. "And now if you don't mind", he said without a hint of shame or embarrassment, "I have to find a place to relieve myself", and then off he went, this ecstatic ascetic, to take a proud piss in his corner of heaven.

ONCE UPON A TIME, a man named Fred Rogers decided that he wanted to live in heaven. Heaven is the place where good people go when they die, but this man, Fred Rogers, didn't want to go to heaven; he wanted to live in heaven, here, now, in this world, and so one day, when he was talking about all the people he had loved in this life, he looked at me and said, "The connections we make in the course of a life maybe that's what heaven is, Tom. We make so many connections here on earth. Look at us I've just met you, but I'm investing in who you are and who you will be, and I can't help it".

The next afternoon, I went to his office in Pittsburgh. He was sitting on a couch, under a framed rendering of the Greek word for grace and a biblical phrase written in Hebrew that means "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine". A woman was with him, sitting in a big chair. Her name was Deb. She was very pretty. She had a long face and a dark blush to her skin. She had curls in her hair and stars at the centres of her eyes. She was a minister at Fred Rogers's church. She spent much of her time tending to the sick and the dying. Fred Rogers loved her very much, and so, out of nowhere, he smiled and put his hand over hers. "Will you be with me when I die?" he asked her, and when she said yes, he said, "Oh, thank you, my dear". Then, with his hand still over hers and his eyes looking straight into hers, he said, "Deb, do you know what a great prayer you are? Do you know that about yourself? Your prayers are just wonderful". Then he looked at me. I was sitting in a small chair by the door, and he said, "Tom, would you close the door, please?" I closed the door and sat back down. "Thanks, my dear", he said to me, then turned back to Deb. "Now, Deb, I'd like to ask you a favour", he said. "Would you lead us? Would you lead us in prayer?"

Deb stiffened for a second, and she let out a breath, and her colour got deeper. "Oh, I don't know, Fred", she said. "I don't know if I want to put on a performance".

Fred never stopped looking at her or let go of her hand. "It's not a performance. It's just a meeting of friends", he said. He moved his hand from her wrist to her palm and extended his other hand to me. I took it and then put my hand around her free hand. His hand was warm, hers was cool, and we bowed our heads, and closed our eyes, and I heard Deb's voice calling out for the grace of God. What is grace? I'm not certain; all I know is that my heart felt like a spike, and then, in that room, it opened and felt like an umbrella. I had never prayed like that before, ever. I had always been a great prayer, a powerful one, but only fitfully, only out of guilt, only when fear and desperation drove me to it and it hit me, right then, with my eyes closed, that this was the moment Fred Rogers Mister Rogers had been leading me to from the moment he answered the door of his apartment in his bathrobe and asked me about Old Rabbit. Once upon a time, you see, I lost something, and prayed to get it back, but when I lost it the second time, I didn't, and now this was it, the missing word, the unuttered promise, the prayer I'd been waiting to say a very long time.

"Thank you, God", Mister Rogers said.

#fred rogers #eulogy #tom junod

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blessed-but-distressed · 6 years

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#FindEmmaSwanAFriend

Feeling left behind by her more successful, settled friends, Emma Swan moves to Scotland on a whim. Sure, she’s winning at Instagram, but something is still missing from her new life. Fortunately, her friends back home are on it. #FindEmmaSwanAFriend goes viral. Enter Killian Jones, reluctant columnist, who is on the hunt for his newest subject, and may just have found her. CS AU

also on ff.net and ao3

Tagging: @katie-dub , @wholockgal , @kat2609 , @whovianlunatic, @optomisticgirl, @ladyciaramiggles, @the-lady-of-misthaven, @emmaswanchoosesyou, @ilovemesomekillianjones, @biancaros3, @cigarettes-and-scotch-whisky, @ms-babs-gordon @ab-normality, @andiirivera, @fangirl-till-it-hurts, @onceuponaprincessworld , @natascha-remi-ronin and whoever else asks me.

Killian

Killian had the entire bus ride out to the wilds of Musselburgh to get a grip on his anger. A whole forty minutes to compose his thoughts, an hour if you factored in having to stop home to change. A leather jacket wasn’t going to cut it with this crowd.

It was Ladies Day at the races.

The one day a year when the movers and shakers of South Eastern Scotland congregated to blag their way through a succession of conversations about horse racing as if they had any clue. Anything to impress the boss, or seal that deal. The place was fit to bursting with moneyed types and semi-famous faces. People he’d shaken hands with at various luncheons and dinners, and other pretentious press events masquerading as dining opportunities.

He never grew used to it. It didn’t matter how long it had been since he’d welcomed Elsa and her not-inconsiderable trust fund into the family, or lived in that veritable mansion on East Castle Road. When it came to mingling with the blue bloods, Killian always came out of the encounter feeling like some kind of Dickensian orphan, who’d accidentally wandered into the wrong part of town.

There was a clear distinction in this crowd, between the girls in their frocks and fascinators sipping champagne on the grass, and the shifty-eyed types sitting in the stands, betting slips clutched tight in grubby fists.

Killian knew the type well. The kind who still thought his losses could be recovered, if only he chose the right horse. The right name. Wore the right socks, and said the right prayers. They were the usual faces, who’d shown up despite the pomp and inflated prices at the gate. That might divert the usual punter to a betting shop on Clerk Street, but not these diehards. They wouldn’t let a small thing like that stand between them and the ponies. They were also probably the only ones in attendance who’d actually bothered to read the form guide beforehand.

For now, the weather was holding, but Killian predicted there might be something of something of an exodus, sooner or later. Dark clouds were unfurling on the horizon, and he didn’t think those women in their strappy high heels stood much of a chance when the deluge arrived. It would be a quagmire.

He was almost tempted to stick around long enough to enjoy the spectacle, but that wasn’t his primary goal. He had another, less entertaining focus for his attentions.

Malcolm Weaver.

He was, as Killian suspected he would be, right in the thick of things. It was his laugh that first gave him away, the oily artifice of it audible from twenty paces. The face, when it came into view, merely drove that impression home. This was not a man content to age gracefully. Instead, Weaver seemed to be doing everything in his power to keep the years at bay, his hair plugs and unmoving forehead a testament to his vanity.

Killian caught the moment Weaver clapped eyes on him, his dentist white smile dimming mid-anecdote before he had a chance to recover himself.

Killian swiped a champagne flute from a passing tray and took a sip as he watched Weaver excuse himself from his conversation. But before he could speak, a third party appeared from Killian’s left, two meaty fists grabbing him roughly by the lapels of his borrowed suit jacket.

Of course. A lackey. Every wannabe gangster’s favourite spring accessory.

“You might’ve bought me a dinner first,” Killian cracked, as the man relieved him of his champagne, and started in on a none-too-gentle pat down. When he got to the prosthetic he hesitated, but Weaver just waved him away.

“Even Killian Jones isn’t stupid enough to impale me on his own hook in front of twelve MSPs and the Chief Constable. Leave us.”

The goon did as instructed, slipping into the crowd scarily easily for a man approximately the size and weight of a mountain gorilla.

“Friendly chap,” Killian commented idly, smoothing down his jacket from where it had been crumpled in the man’s grasp. He was missing a button, he noticed. There’d be hell to pay for that later.

“Felix? He’s a good lad. Very… effective,” Weaver finished, drinking down the last of his own champagne. “I take it this is about the money.”

“Aye, it’s about the fucking money.”

“I’ve been expecting you to come beating down my door for months now, or has the elder brother Jones become better at hiding his dirty laundry than he used to be?” Weaver mused, indicating to a passing waitress for a refill.

“You should’ve turned him away,” Killian ground out, with something approaching a snarl. “You should’ve left him alone.”

“Left him alone? Dear boy, he’s the one that came to me. All I did was help out an old friend.”

“Help?” Killian practically spat the word. “By charging him, what? Forty percent interest? Fifty?”

“Well, I am a businessman,” Weaver replied, accepting his refreshed beverage with a sly grin and a wink in the server’s direction.

“You’re a snake,” Killian corrected. “A slimy, nouveau-riche bastard so terrified of your own mortality you’ve turned yourself into a human Ken doll.”

Weaver’s answering smile was venomous, white teeth flashing as his lips strained against his frozen facial muscles. “Well,” he said, making eye contact with someone behind Killian’s shoulder, “so much for pleasantries. At least I’m not a one-handed man with a drinking problem.”

The blow came out of nowhere, a fat fist square to the eye socket.

“Bloody hell!” Killian staggered backwards, hand clutched to his face as it exploded with pain.

Somewhere from outside of his haze of his agony, he could hear the sound of Weaver’s voice close by, cold and menacing. “Try to interfere in my business again, and you’ll lose that other hand. And do tell your brother I said hello.”

It can’t be that bad. ES

-KJ has sent you an image file-

I stand corrected. He got you good. And he’s what? A source? ES

Something like that. KJ

Might be time to re-evaluate that relationship… ES

I concur. KJ

Pint? ES

Please. KJ

“So?”

Emma took a few steps back to survey her work, a deep crinkle settling between her eyebrows.

Killian sighed, reaching for his pint glass. “I knew it. He knocked the handsome out of me.”

Emma snorted, twisting the cap back onto her concealer with an involuntary smile. “The concealer helps,” she admitted. “But there’s not a lot I can do about the swelling. My advice? Frozen peas. And if you have to show your face in public? Aviators.”

Killian thought of the pair she’d worn the week before, as they’d sat out in the Meadows after her latest 5k torture session, and wondered how much of this advice might stem from experience. How many of those light, precise touches she’d used to disguise the worst of his injury she’d already perfected in the mirror.

He wasn’t oblivious to the reputation of the foster system where Emma had grown up. She certainly didn’t seem to have too many positive things to say about the experience. He’d only had to endure being in care for a few years. She’d been raised by a revolving door of strangers from infancy.

The way her hand had shaken as she grazed the worst of his bruises-

Clearing his throat, Killian turned his attention to the front of the bar, where the storm he’d predicted earlier now lashed against the windows with a steady ferocity. It hurt to raise an eyebrow, but still, he managed it.

“Or maybe a cool cover story?” Emma suggested smoothly. “Apprehended a purse thief? Foiled a kidnapping? Insulted Mike Tyson?”

“Very helpful. Thank you.”

Emma grinned, downing the last contents of her glass. “You are welcome. You can keep those. And the concealer,” she said, placing the little tube onto the bar in front of him.

“Going somewhere?” he asked, noticing her reach for her jacket. It was the same one she’d worn when they’d first met, soft red leather, and hardly weather appropriate considering the downpour outside.

“Maybe I am,” she said airily, pulling her arms through the sleeves. “But if you think I’m going to tell you about it so you can gossip to all of your subscribers…” She gave him a level look.

“Ah.” Perhaps, in hindsight, he could’ve been a tad more circumspect when it came to the Grant issue in his last column.

“Yes, ah. You should’ve seen the amount of notifications I got after Mary Margaret read your piece. Not to mention the sidelong glances I’ve been getting at work. Those have been super fun. You’re kind of a son of a bitch, you know that?”

He did. He did know that. And one day, he might even make it up to her. Perhaps. In the meantime though…

“Indeed. And that’s why I pay you the big bucks,” he said sarcastically, reaching into his satchel to extract the agreed fee, £100 of pound coins, wrapped in a calico bank bag. Rather than pressing it into her hands, he settled for leaving the bag at her feet, as if this were a far more clandestine exchange.

“Why do you always have to make this out like it’s sordid as hell?” she wondered aloud, frowning as she stuffed the contents away into her messenger bag.

“I must have a knack,” Killian shrugged. “Those are new coins, by the way. I do hope your landlord has changed that barbaric coin meter of yours, because the bank has stopped giving out the old ones.”

Emma made a face. A face that said her landlord had probably done nothing of the sort. “Yeah, I’ll get on that. Thanks.”

She stood up to go, but was surprised when Killian’s prosthetic tapped her on her shoulder, stopping her in her tracks. “Jones?”

He held out an umbrella. His umbrella, hurriedly retrieved from his bag. “Probably too soon in the relationship for Graham to meet Drowned Rat Emma, don’t you think?”

She rolled her eyes, but she took the umbrella.

“You forgot to mention how dashing I look in this suit!” he called after her.

She turned her face away, but he still caught the smile stretching wide across her features as she pulled open the door. “No, I didn’t!” she called back, her shout barely audible above the roar of the rain.

Are you icing that eye? ES

Are you texting me while Graham is in the loo? KJ

You mean the bathroom? Maybe. Possibly. Yes. Don’t change the subject. There had better be some frozen vegetables in close proximity to your face right now. ES

Waitrose branded sweetcorn. Are you satisfied? KJ

I never knew corn could be elitist until right this minute. ES

Believe it. And that’s not forgetting the time I zoned out reading the ingredients on the box of Waitrose brand cereal and came to five hours later in a voting booth, pen poised to vote Tory. Every day in this house is a struggle. KJ

Ha. Graham’s coming back. Look after that eye. And try not to give in to any sudden conservative tendencies. ES

But who else offers Strong and Stable Leadership? KJ

Thin fucking ice. ES

He’d debated how to approach the conversation, but in the end he decided to just rip off that plaster once and for all. He was tired of the secrets. Of the lies. Of pretending everything was normal when everything was so very far from normal.

This was probably how his mother had felt, he realised, when finally confronted with the truth of her husband’s addictions, of the spiralling debts and tangled web of half-truths and broken promises.

He was there to greet Liam as he came in the door, house keys still clutched in his hand, tie askew after another long day cooped up in his office, reading over the latest copy edits.

“Is that my suit?” he asked, shrugging his laptop case from his shoulders with a frown. Which Killian took as all the invitation he needed to properly step into the light, letting his brother see his face.

Even with Emma’s best work, there was no hiding the worst of it. And it must’ve still looked pretty bloody awful because Liam stopped dead where he stood, house keys falling from his hand and clattering onto the floorboards.

“Kil?” It was the same tone he’d used in the hospital, the day Killian’s life had fallen apart. The same one he’d used that morning twenty three years ago when they’d woken up and found their father’s car gone, his wardrobe stripped bare. By their mother’s graveside, as they’d buried her in the cold earth.

“Malcolm Weaver sends his regards. And it’s about time you and I had an honest conversation for once, don’t you think?”

Emma

It had been a while since Emma had played the dating game. The getting-to-know-you game. The how-many-siblings game. The where-did-you-get-that-scar game. Like subjecting someone to a chronology of your more embarrassing teenage anecdotes made tumbling into bed together after three martinis and an awkward handjob in the back of an Uber less sleazy somehow.

For some people, the little things were just that, little. But for Emma, even the most innocuous first date questions turned into stumbling blocks.

“So, what do your parents do?” Ha.

“Where’d you grow up?” Ugh.

“What does the tattoo mean?” Geez.

Sometimes, she wished she could just skip all of the tedious minutiae, and proceed with the naked bedroom aerobics. Did that make her a tramp? Probably. So sue her. Graham Humbert, Professor of International Relations was cute, he was interested, and he was available. But how long would that last, when he learned the truth? Spilling your guts about your shitty childhood and non-existent family was not exactly a precursor to hot, sweaty good times.

God, she really needed to get laid.

But if Graham knew where Emma’s thoughts lay, he was playing it coy. It was their third official date, and so far, there had been zero hints he had any wild seduction plans for later. Just a nice dinner, and drinks at a trendy cocktail bar in the New Town she’d only ever read about.

“You okay?” he asked, setting down her third daiquiri on the bar in front of her. “Is it evaluations?”

Oh, right. Evaluations. As in, all of the student feedback that would be collated over the next week or so, frankly assessing her merit as a teacher. As in, the single largest obstacle which would stand between her and a renewal of her contract. As in, what she probably should have been focusing on, instead of counting the days since her last orgasm.

Still, she took the easy out, releasing a relieved breath. “That obvious, huh?”

He shrugged, a grin forming. “You do seem a little wound up.”

Maybe Graham was gay. That would explain it. How else could a man be so, so oblivious? Killian would’ve seen right through her by now, would’ve already made at least three double entendres and a sly offer to “relieve the pressure”, just to torture her.

God, why was she even thinking about him? Graham was right in front of her. With the biceps and the accent and the research grant. Maybe it was time to take the bull by the horns, so to speak.

“You know,” she began, twirling her straw suggestively between her fingers, “I’m sure there’s plenty you could do to take my mind off of it.”

Okay, so it was a cheap line. But judging by the flare of interest in Graham’s eye, the way his tongue peeked out to wet his lips, it hit its mark. So maybe not so gay after all.

“Yeah?” he said, leaning closer, gaze definitely falling to her lips.

“Yeah.”

She was within a hair’s breadth of making contact when the shrill insistence of a strange ringtone pierced the air, causing them to both jump in their seats, their foreheads cracking together with all of the grace of a slapstick comedy duo.

“Ow. Sorry.”

“Sorry. Did I hurt you?”

Still rubbing at the spot where they’d collided, he reached inside his jeans pocket. His phone. Of course it fucking was. He answered it on the third ring.

Emma didn’t catch much of his half of the conversation, what with the lump rapidly forming on her forehead, but she caught enough of it to know this evening was not going to end the way she’d been imagining when she’d picked out her underwear this morning.

Not that the conk to the head had been that great of an omen.

His face was regretful, and that alone would have to be enough to sustain her. “I’m really sorry, Emma,” he began, but she cut him off before he could continue with the sorry spiel.

“Rain check?” she offered.

His smile was a relieved one. “Definitely,” he said, letting a parting kiss graze her cheek. “I’ll text you.”

Once he was gone, Emma let her fingers trace the all-too-brief path his lips had tracked across her skin, considering the untouched whisky he’d left behind. She took a sip, letting it burn its way down into her chest. Added some water. Then let the rest follow, warming her from the inside out.

So I see your shiner, and raise you one bruised forehead. I didn’t antagonize anyone though, my life is just a comedy of errors. We probably shouldn’t be seen together for a while, or people will assume we’ve joined an underground Fight Club or something. ES

Really? Nothing? ES

Did you seriously fall asleep before 10 on a Saturday? I’m almost disappointed. ES

You are asleep, aren’t you? Because if you somehow sustained a concussion, and fell into a coma I’ll feel really bad. ES

Please text me tomorrow and tell me that isn’t the case. ES

On the other hand, if through some miracle you still managed to “pull a bird” even with that grotesque black eye, and are currently warming her bed, I’d rather not hear the details. As you were. ES

Just… don’t be in a coma. ES

Good morning. Not in a coma. I promise. KJ

With the semester over, and a couple of weeks left until she had to teach any summer school modules, Emma Swan found herself with a serious problem. Free time. A lot of it.

Huge swathes of empty hours when she had nothing to focus on except her lack of a social life, her lack of a sex life, and how her academic future lay in the hands of a bunch of 18 year olds who could only be convinced to fill out their evaluation forms with the inducement of a prize draw to win a free iPad.

If only she hadn’t just dropped a large chunk of change on her flight home for Christmas, she could’ve gone somewhere. The Continent. London. Instead she settled for an off-peak train to Glasgow, sheltering from yet another torrential downpour in the baroque confines of the Kelvingrove Museum.

Ever since she was a young, Emma had always loved museums. Very few places let a skinny kid with hand-me-down clothes and a permanent scowl linger for hours at a time in the middle of a blizzard. It felt like everywhere she went, she was being shadowed by security guards and shopkeepers, just waiting for her to make a wrong move.

Museum attendants, though? They were always looking to indoctrinate the next generation. And growing up in the North East, there’d been no shortage of monuments and exhibitions devoted to freedom-loving America’s heroic triumph over Britain.

Back then, it had seemed like a Cinderella story to her. Better than a Cinderella story, even, because instead of balls and dresses and true love, there’d been something worth fighting for. There’d been the scrappy underdog winning against the guy with all the money and fancy uniforms.

She was old enough now to know she’d been projecting, but it didn’t seem to matter anyhow. The course had been set, the die cast. Emma was a history nerd, and she liked museums. The faint whiff of epoxy, the lingering scent of cosmoline. Mothballs and musty books. It was home, in a way a single place had never been.

Even the crowds of dripping tourists couldn’t ruin this for her, as she narrowly ducked out of the way of a visiting tour group, crowded around a canvas Emma had once written a paper on in Art History 101.

“Suck it in!” the tour operator declared, in aberrant English. “Now there are some who might say this painting is ‘kitschy’ but I let you make up your own mind. But it is, without doubt, the most enduring vision of the crucifixion painted in the 20th century. Notice the triangle? A clear reference to the Holy Trinity. And do you see the circle?”

The crowd leaned in, chattering excitedly between themselves as each layer of meaning was revealed, as the origins of the work were discussed and debated.

This. Emma had missed this. She’d spent so much time lately repeating the same tired lectures to the same uninspired freshmen, she’d almost forgotten what it was like to really just enjoy the art. The history. The mysteries that lingered inside half-forgotten volumes and coded diaries, still waiting to be discovered.

And with that, Emma thought she might just have an idea. Her best one in a while.

I’m dying, Swan. Dying. KJ

Before our year is up? You wouldn’t give me the satisfaction. ES

True. KJ

Still feel bloody awful though. KJ

I’ll never forgive Lachie for bringing this plague upon this house. KJ

Aren’t you his godfather? ES

Details, love. KJ

Emma didn’t make a habit of turning up unannounced in well-heeled neighborhoods, her bag crammed with every over-the-counter cold medicine available in Boots. On the whole, she preferred her own more derelict side of town, her bag drug free. But Killian had just sounded so pathetic in his texts she’d somehow convinced herself it would be a good idea to check up on him.

It was stupid. She was stupid. And as she heard the approaching slap of bare feet against the hardwood floors from within Killian’s ridiculous mansion, she quickly debated the merits of just making a run for it.

No, she wasn’t a kid anymore. She didn’t just knock on people’s doors and run away as fast as she could. She was an adult. Bearing medicine. It wasn’t that weird.

Fortunately, before she had to talk herself down again the door swung open.

Emma was aware of Elsa Jones. She’d clocked the wedding portrait sitting on the mantelpiece last time. The Nordic beauty with more money than God, and no bad angles. The owner of the bluest of blue eyes, that put even Killian’s to shame. She sat on the periphery of Killian’s tales of his crazy family, always a benevolent presence, a peacemaker. An ally.

But if Emma had the good sense to be intimidated by her two-dimensional mental rendering of Elsa Jones, it was nothing compared to the reality that stood in the Jones’ front foyer, giving Emma the skeptical once-over.

It wasn’t just that she was beautiful. Or the way she wore her designer loungewear, with just the right amount of casual elegance. Not even the way she held herself, with posture right out of a Swiss finishing school. It was that first, frosty look.

The one that caught Emma in its wake and rendered her mute, as her carefully opening lines died on the vine. The woman waited, silent but expectant.

“Hi, I’m-” Emma cleared her throat, and tried again. “Sorry, hi. I’m Emma. Is Killian up for receiving visitors?”

She would ordinarily have stuck out a hand at this juncture, anything to punctuate the grotesque silence. But both of her hands were occupied with bags, and even reaching for the knocker had been painful enough.

“Emma,” Elsa repeated, letting the word settle on her tongue like a new vocabulary word. And then her entire aspect seemed to thaw, as the name registered. “You mean #FindEmmaSwanAFriend Emma?”

Clearly Killian’s column had at least one reader who wasn’t an octogenarian.

“Uh, yup.” At a loss for what else to say, Emma held up the bags she’d lugged all the way from the high street. “I uh, I was just bringing some stuff over for Killian, but if he’s not up for visitors I could just leave it with-”

But before Emma could make with the hasty retreat, there came the sound of frantic footsteps behind her and she turned to see none other than the patient in question, barefoot and limping from contact with the gravel driveway.

“Swan?”

Sick Killian was a study in contrasts. On one hand, the sweatpants, bed-head thing was a good look on him. But there was definitely a sheen, a pallid tinge to his complexion that hinted of a drawn-out conflict against foreign antibodies. But it was the T-Shirt that really stole the show. The one with the cartoon Tyrannosaurus Rex on the front catching some Z’s, with the caption: Dino-Snore.

Emma resisted the urge to dig out her phone and take a picture, for posterity’s sake. But she couldn’t quite stop the grin spreading across her face.

“Dino-snore?”

He scowled, but whatever snide comeback he had forming on his lips died a swift death when he caught the look in his sister-in-law’s eye. With a roll of his eyes, Killian propped the door open, and motioned for Emma to come inside.

“Swan, my sister-in-law, Elsa Jones,” he said, with a weary wave of his hand. “Elsa, this is the eponymous Emma Swan.”

Now things were official, Emma dumped her bags down onto the area rug, and held out a hand.

“Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” the blonde replied, a perfectly manicured hand finding Emma’s own. “I’ve been reading Killian’s columns, of course, but it’s nice to finally put a face to the name.”

Elsa’s grip was firm, confident, even if her hands were a little cold. Poor circulation, maybe.

Killian gave a pointed cough, a hand coming up to scratch up behind his ear. “Well, this is all very civilized. So, what brings you to our plague den, lass?”

Emma looked from Elsa, back to Killian. “Speaking of which, why were you outside? I thought you were practically at death’s door?”

Killian hesitated, and that was when Elsa stepped in, a sardonic smile in place. “Killian’s room has its own entrance. He probably thought he could intercept you before we ever came into contact.” She turned to her brother-in-law with a shrug. “Too slow.”

Emma liked her immediately.

“Would you like something to drink, Emma?” Elsa asked suddenly. “Tea? Coffee? A glass of water?”

Yeah, someone had definitely been drilled in the finer points of etiquette as a child. But before Emma could decline the offer, Killian took a step forward, interrupting her. “She’ll take a water, love. And any chance you’d fix me up another Lemsip?”

Elsa’s eyes narrowed, but after shooting Killian a meaningful glance, she plastered on a smile. “I’ll be right back,” she assured Emma, before disappearing down the hall in the direction of the kitchen.

“So…” Emma began, lamely.

“So…” Killian finished, no better. “Been shopping?” he asked at last, pointing out the bags she’d abandoned earlier.

“Oh, those. They’re, uh, they’re for you.”

“Me?” He knelt down to peek inside one of the bags. “Did you just bring me industrial-sized quantities of phenylephrine, love?”

Well, when he put it like that it sounded weird.

“Erm, I guess? And some tea. Mary Margaret swears by it when you’re sick, and I just had it laying around and-”

“Swan?” he interrupted, before she could make any more excuses.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t mean to upset you, but I think we might be friends.”

#cs ff #cs au #findemmaswanafriend #it's been a while #you still with me?

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