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dunmerofskyrim · 7 years

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At night they kept watches in pairs. Simra and Galgas, Noor and Bandrys. Never Tammunei, and never the brothers together — never one of the settled mer, awake without an ashlander to watch him as he watched them. No trust in all this, they’d agreed in silence. But wariness and mutual gain could walk hand in hand for a time.

Bandrys, louder of the brothers, tried to talk his watches through. Dazzling, the amount of nothing in the world he found to comment on. Hours after their evening meal he’d rub his belly through the blue and yellow stripes of his sash, thoughtful or pained, and narrate his digestion. Under a night sky filled with still pale stars, he’d look up, look over to Simra, look up again, and talk.

“I saw one moving once.”

“A comet?”

“A wandering star, I’ll say.”

“Suppose you wished on it, hm? Wished for wits. That’d explain a lot…”

In the dark, Simra heard his frown. “Wish on it? Hghm. Why’d I do a thing like that?”

“Hm. Must be a Western thing.”

“Outlander superstition, I’ll say. No, everyone knows you can tell a lot by the stars, don’t they? As it goes above, so it runs below.”

Simra thought back on the topics for talk that Bandrys had found in the past. Reckoned he could go his whole life happy without ever again hearing Bandrys talk about what was running below. The shifting of stars at least was better than the tides of his bowels. Simra listened, lending him at least one ear. A half-ear, lobe torn through.

“That’s what the deep-elves knew,” Bandrys continued. “Why they made their…”

“Orreries?”

“That’s right.”

“So you saw this wandering star one time. Right. Star-canny mer that clearly you are, what’d you reckon from it, in your wisdom?”

“Well, I’ll say, I don’t know about wisdom, but…” Bandrys feet shuffled against the ground, heels digging, shy. “This was when my brother and me had just started out. On our way coming north out of Temnar.”

“That where you’re from?”

“More where we ended up. Further south is where we were born, grown. Scaleskins got at our village though, and…I’ll say, maybe you know how that goes. Been at this work long? You must know… Ma got got in the fighting. Fever took da in Temnar, after. Galgas and me, I’ll say we upped roots. Tried to make the best of wandering. So when I saw that star I thought maybe it’s a sign. Maybe I’m doing something right…”

Simra regretted asking, near as soon as he’d asked. It was the kind of question that’d tell him nothing useful about the brothers. All it did was make them real, beyond how they could hinder him, or elsewise what they could offer. Best to stem that flow, before it got too strong.

“I knew an old stargazer once,” Simra said. “Clever old fetcher. Knew all sorts. Astrology, astronomy, and philosophy besides… Don’t reckon even he could fault you, thinking that. Hoping. That’s fair.”

“Fair..? Hghm. I’ll say, I don’t know about that. I don’t know that much is, in the end.” Bandrys’ stomach growled and gurgled, like the call of some animal way off in the night. “It’s all odds, like you said, and usually they’re against you. Best you can do is try slim down the difference.”

That sat better with Simra than any amount of starry symbolism, or trickle-down prophecy from out the night sky. There was enough in the world that hedged and hemmed in your fate already. The family you were born into; the place and the race of your birth. Worse than words would tell, then, to think that the time of your birth, and whatever accidents the stars had overhead from night to night could hedge and hem it all further. Things weren’t fair, but some choices would always be your own. It seemed fairer by far to think that, and put what faith in it you could.

Still, he’d have preferred silence. Alone on watch, cloaked up in Noor’s magic so the stars went out and the world closed off and no light they cast would show out on the plains, he could have written. Red glow tinting the parchment; black runes by magelight, cold as rubies.

The story was a mess by now. Try to make it fit itself – write like people write when they’re pretending they remember – he found he couldn’t write. It turned drab, false, filled with remove and conceit. Masked drama and mummery. But write like he remembered, and like he’d lived it then, five years before, three years, one year ago and counting, and it went all to pieces, and what was left was chaos. But so is life and the living of it. And maybe that was better. Or at least more honest.

Old Ebonheart’s island district is mazed with roads that lead nowhere. Pits where the ground opened out and chasms down into darkness. Climbs and sheers of fallen wreckage, some hard to pass, others impassable. The citadel refuses us. I knew getting in would be hard; that getting through would not be easy. Now I wonder if getting out is even possible — whether it was ever a possibility.

Ruin and hollow abandon. In the way things lie now, I can see it: a shadow of what passed over the city in the Red Year’s first red day.

Towers toppled for aspiring too high. They crushed what lay in their shadow. Others stood strong, shored up by what could only be magic. The sea rose up in waves taller than any tower. Crystals of salt stain the walls, like high-tide marks on the Windhelm waterfront. We walk down streets that the sea coursed through, like rivers flowing inland, fatted on floodwater. The world turned upsidedown and has turned back slowly since.

The ruins are half-reclaimed by growth. Green creepers throng the front of a temple. Impossible to tell if they’re trying to pull it down, or else they’re all that’s holding it up. Where the street yawned open and a hive-house fell inside, storey on storey, gone into the pit, fungi flourish in the wreckage. Green shoots grow between the flagstones we tread on. Something tells me to careful my steps. They’ve struggled up through all of this to sip what they can of the sun. So tread light, that something says. They deserve that much.

We walk. We stop. Another dead end.

The street’s two sides have collapsed together. The buildings lean, closer and narrower, yearning for each other, then finally they meet in wreckage. Splintered timbers halfway to rot; brickwork poured shattersome into brickwork. Like a roadfork but reversed; one path splitting into itself to become no path at all.

Our procession collapses into itself too. A clot of names, faces, voices, and differing opinions. I know how this works now. The others will squabble then look to me as if I know any better. Or else they’ll look to Tammunei through me. Or else they used to, when Tammunei still needed a go-between.

“Over? Listen, he wants to go over! Hah!”

“You saying I can’t climb it?”

“I’m saying we can’t all climb it is what I’m saying. We’re not all cursed with cat-claws and monkey-toes like you.”

“It’ll fall, more’s the point.”

“You so sure?”

“Look at it.”

“That’s your theory, is it? It’ll fall?”

“Look at it and tell me you’re still eager to test it.”

I feel the grimace on my face. Lost my patience with them days ago and it’s been lost ever since. Placing my boots careful over the flagstones, I move to a patch of cold sunlight. Let it soak into my skin. The ruins around us are overgrown. Cinders heap in doorways and hoard up in corners. A shrub clambers along the side of an apartment building, roots battling the plaster and brickwork with time for an ally.

“Ashfall, d’you reckon?” I ask Tammunei, knowing they’ll be beside me.

“What?” they ask, absent, standing on the edge of the shade I stepped out from.

“Plants, mushrooms. Growing things. D’you think it’s ash that did it? Or just that no-one was here to stop it?”

“Ash, I think.” Tammunei’s voice is dry with disuse but elsewise full-returned. Even so, they use it seldom, and are short-spoken when they do.

“That’s the way I’d heard it. A double-edged sword always hanging over Vvardenfell. Ready to smother the sun, suffocate crops, bury families in their houses. Choke the lungs and carry disease. But after it’s done, for all it takes from the present, it gives back to the future. Turns tough ground fertile. Alters things that’d struggle to grow til they’re forced to change and thrive…”

“Ash is fire. Not burning maybe. Not anymore. But still fire. Fire gone still.”

“And that means—?”

“Look!”

A shout goes up. It ripples through the squabble like the sudden shock of a hawk amongst a flock of sparrows. A great fumbling of questions. What? What is it? Where?

A hand points from the squabble’s center. I follow its fingers, up the heights of the ruins to our left. Past tiled half-roofs and tiered gutters, diamond windows, up the cracked face of an apartment building. The top is jagged where its final roof is missing.

“There! Look!”

But the pointing hand points at nothing now.

It was Balambal’s brother who shouted and pointed. Or else a mer he called brother, one of the last leftover from his kin-band. A younger Vereansu, with lynx eyes and a blotch of birthmark pink on his cheek and jaw. Scars are yet to mark his face but their lack marks him all the same: not yet Harrowed.

Balambal is beside him already, bow uncovered and bent round one leg. Quick as instinct, he bends the last bend into it and puts a string to its nocks.

“What was it?” I say. “What did he see?”

The younger mer is already babbling in Velothis, faster than I can follow. I turn to Balambal and ask again with my eyes.

“A face. A ghost? A face.” He frowns. “It was on top of the house-cliff. Up where it’s topless. See?” He points now too, with a nocked arrow. Already he’s crammed a drawing-ring of bone onto his right thumb.

“What? Another corpsewalker?” My left hand’s gone to the hilt of my sword, worrying an inch or so of blade loose from the scabbard. “Could there be more?”

“He says it moved like something living. Stood like someone watching.”

And I think to myself: I knew it. Through the fretting I’m almost smug.

Strange-filtered sunlight from a cloud mired sky. The clack and chunk of hooves, soft against the dirt-road, hard against the stones. The wider softer pad of guar; fewer feet and fewer steps, so they sounded almost like bootfalls and the walking of people.

The sound of travelling clothes shifting constant on skin. Silk had an airy voice, a breathy whisper. Then the creak and fold of leather in the silent strain of harness, saddle and saddlebag, swordbelts and boots.

And then there was the old stiff and softness of Simra’s jacket. All those sounds lived in it and more, so familiar they’d turned almost into a feeling. Silk lining and stitchwork of red and purple flowers; stiff short leather body; soft belled sleeves of softer leather.

He worried what the straps of his satchel were doing to wear at its left shoulder. Like he always worried over it, but couldn’t just stop wearing it. Nowhere to keep it if he saved it for best. And down the years, hadn’t he kept it safe? Not safer than if it had hung all this while, in a hole in the ground of the Grey Quarter. But still uncanny-safe, all considered.

A small rain had fallen again that morning. The road through the plains was half mud, and a quarter again was puddles. Each stand of water showed strange dark reflections as Simra and the rest trudged past. Colourless sky; flying things he’d failed to see when last he’d looked up, but saw plain as day when looking down. And then a corner of his sharp-lined face; a fall of ill-tempered hair or the slanted apricot-stone of an eye. His image, broken into pieces and scattered down the road.

Dark gathers itself up over islandside Ebonheart. What was diffuse in the evening sky condenses into new solid blackness, pricked out with only the smallest holes of starlight. Like fisherfolk gathering in their nets at the end of the day, and the openness of the mesh closes up in a thick black heap.

A cold sets in, deepening as the sky loses light after light after inch of pink-red light. Despite it, Tammunei and I lay side by side, and not together, tangled in each other, like we have before.

Smock, tassel-fringed blanket, two coats that came as gifts from the others. All that lies layered on Tammunei as they lay on their back, hands clutched together at belly-height.

I’m curled beside. I give scarce any warmth out to them and ask scarce any back. I curl like a cat, like a shell, like a secret turning to stone in the stomach of its keeper. Never could sleep except by being small. And I curl round a cold sullen fact.

We are hungry again. Supplies have grown stark and spare again. Through my clothes I feel the warning of my ribs, the threat of my hipbones, worse than usual and soon to get worse. I know from Winters in Windhelm that the true warnings come when you stop feeling hungry. It’s by silence your body says: We are starving.

So, tomorrow will take me away. Out with Shurfa, Balambal, Medis. To pick whatever meat we can from off the bones of this city. To crack whatever marrow we can, sucked from out its bones. And it’s needful, and it’s necessary, and I know that. The welling terror that’s welled up in me comes from how well I know that, and still am scared to go.

Going would take me away again, and take them away from me. And I hate the fear that puts in me, with a hate so hot it’s shameful.

“Knew it,” I say. “Life. The living. People living here. Making lives, I reckon. I said so, didn’t I? I knew it.” This is the kind of backwards tail-chasing thing I say when I’m too scared of silence to crave it.

“I know,” Tammunei says. They make a difficult noise behind their lips, then carry on, reshaping what they said. “No, I knew.”

“Right. I mean — seemed inevitable, right? Knew it when I saw green things growing. It’s like that. Like crops and flowers come from ashfall, rainfall, whatever…”

“No,” they correct me. “It wasn’t a guess. I knew.”

I’ve learnt down the days and months that sometimes Tammunei will tell me more when given quiet to speak in. Works better at getting answers than prodding with outright questions ever does. So I’m quiet. I wait, guilty feeling from already having said too much.

“I know because I can hear them. Loud. More, now that we’re close. There’s a lot now. Sea, city, the broken back of the sea, risen in breaking, up from the sea.” I hear them wince, troubling over their words. “And now them too. Loud before we came here, and now we’re here they’re louder. Hard to hear myself, sometimes. Most times. Sorry…”

I try to imagine it. Like trying to think in a crowded room maybe. Like trying to write in a place loud with words and speaking maybe. “I’m sorry,” I say, stupid.

“No. That’s just it. It was easy at first, after Bodram. When I was gone for a while. Out of myself. I was hollow, so that meant I was a place to sound in?” The words come slow and thoughtful. Tammunei is explaining to themself as much as me. “Have you ever seen one: a jar full of singing? The settled-folk have them. Metal things, shaped so any sound that goes in will turn and come out as song. Clever. I was like that. I felt…cleverly made.”

I tried to imagine, but never imagined this. Alien to me, this desperate fondness; wanting so bad to be empty.

“I wasn’t myself,” Tammunei says. “So it was easy to be full of other things. Like I’m meant to be.”

Full of hearing, I think. Filled with the song of others. Nothing to feel that feels like it’s your own. It puts a pale disgust at clench in my belly. Maybe it’s the thought of living like that – selfless in the core sense of the word – or maybe it’s something else I’m only now starting to think. An ingrown disgust that this is the person I’d come to want. Who I’d lain next to, held, helped, and got all so heated and heart-pulled over. Just a singing-jar, cleverly made so it would always show back whatever hopes you dropped into it. A thing that couldn’t say yes except by mirroring each yes you gave it.

I think: If this has been a kind of love, I’ve let myself love passivity, and not a person at all. Tammunei doesn’t disgust me, except perhaps a little by this new strangeness. I disgust me. It’s hard to have room left for more, I disgust myself so sickly.

“I didn’t know you were like that. Gone.” I say at last. “You make it sound peaceful…”

“It—… Yes.” Tammunei swallows. “It was peaceful. Appropriate…” Once again, that wistful note gets into their voice and bites me.

My own voice is wooden now, as I talk so I don’t have to think: “If you hear the living, d’you know anything I should know?”

“For while you’re gone?”

“For when I’m gone.”

“Like what?”

“If they’re friends? What they want with us if they’re not?”

“It’s not like that. I don’t…it’s not that I hear the living. I can – sort of – sometimes. But I don’t think I ever did, here. Too much of everything else.”

“What then?”

“I think… What I think I hear…” Another wince. “What I think I hear of the living is how they disturb the dead.”

“They’re scavengers, then?”

“Grave-robbers. Urn-breakers.” Tammunei’s voice is edged with anger now. I can’t tell if it belongs to them or the dead themselves. I wonder if even Tammunei knows.

A city of rags, I think to myself. Figures that it’d make for a city of ragpickers. Makes sense like nothing else has — not for a long time now.

#TES #Morrowind #Dunmer #Simra Hishkari #SH Forth and Back #SH New Canon #Tammunei Ereshkigal

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eirabach · 7 years

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What Life Is [3/4...ish]

Hello hello, I come bearing the ever growing CSSS fic written for the very lovely @littlebabeswan. Absolute credit to the CS Writers’ Hub ladies, for their advice and regular poking. Tagging @cat-sophia @lenfaz @piratesails @blessed-but-distressed and @profoundlyfadedprincess who asked and are actual angels.

Rated M. This starts to matter in this chapter ok? Ok. This part 5.6k.

[Part One] [Part Two]

She’s the one who goes to pick him up, waiting in the lobby of the company paid-for hotel and scowling at her reflection in the marbled walls. The light’s too harsh, her hair looks brassy and her dress looks cheap (is cheap to be quite honest - she's not going broke over this thing), but she practices a fake smile and it looks alright. Good enough to fool those who didn't know her and most of those that do into believing that she’s happy. A woman in love, even though she’s not quite sure what such an alien notion would look like on her own face.

Then he leaves the elevator all sin and smarm in a fine tailored suit, and the smile crumbles, brittle under the weight of his stare.

She can't help the way her heart kicks up a gear, the tingle his smile sends across her skin. She can't help being happy to see him, but god, she can't be. She can't.

“You look beautiful,” he says. “But then you always do.”

“And you look -”

“I know.”

She ought to smile back, be gracious, thank him, any of the half dozen other polite things that other people would do when complimented by a date, but Emma is not other people.

“Do you? Cause I was gonna say mismatched,” she hisses out, her sudden, irrational anger catching him off guard.

“Whatever do you mean?” he asks, so smooth and noncommittal that most people wouldn't notice the slight tick in his jaw, the way his eyes darken as his walls come up.

She sees, though. They are rather alike after all.

“You're wearing navy, I'm wearing red,” she gestures between them, “what, have we come as two thirds of the national flag?”

“I don't follow you,” he says, brow furrowed. “What does it matter?”

“Why do you think I text you what colour dress I was wearing. We're supposed to match!”

His expression lightens immediately.

“Was that why? I thought you were just teasing a man, Swan.”

She rolls her eyes so hard it actually hurts.

“About the colour of my dress?”

“With the thought of you in it,” he shoots back.

“This is going to be a disaster,” she groans.

He tilts his head, suddenly shrewd.

“Is that what marriage is to you? Two people wearing colour coordinated party wear?”

“No,” Emma scoffs. “But it's what the people at Regina Mills’ birthday bash will notice - how can we be a convincing couple if we can't even look the part?”

“No one will care what we're wearing,” he says gently, and Emma barely resists the urge to stamp her foot in frustration.

“Have you met Regina?”

“Listen,” Killian steps into her space and takes her hand in his, entwining their fingers oh-so-gently, his gaze fixed on her the whole time. “Just - just leave this to me, all right? Follow my lead.”

“Why,” she asks, “you going to play Prince Charming?”

“I prefer dashing rapscallion, love,” he says with a wink, tugging her after him as he heads for the door. “And believe me - there's no acting involved.”

The party’s in full swing by the time they arrive, Emma leaving the keys to the bug with a perturbed young valet as light floods from the large sash windows of Regina’s screamingly ostentatious home and the sound of music and laughter echoes out of the open doors.

“I wasn’t expecting this,” she says, wrinkling her nose slightly as a man stumbles down the porch steps, clearly worse for wear. “I thought Regina’s parties were a little more…”

“Staid?” Killian asks cheerfully.

“Scary,” she admits.

“Well,” Killian pauses, watching the man on the stairs digging through his pockets. “I can see something out of one of our nightmares at least.”

“What?”

She catches hold of his prosthetic as he storms towards the porch, a strange little thrill running through her at how natural it feels to wrap her fingers around the curve of it as she scurries after him, her heels catching in the gravel driveway.

“Are you trying to ruin everything?” he calls, and she almost lets go, but then the drunk man looks up and she groans.

“I would never!” bellows Will joyfully, his arms outstretched. “Killian! Mate! You’re late!”

“You’re drunk,” hisses Killian. “How can you possibly be drunk already? Why are you here?”

Will furrows his brow as if considering the question, but then the sounds from inside become momentarily louder and a second, smaller and more graceful, figure appears.

“I invited him of course,” Belle says brightly, her cheeks flushed. “Oh Emma, just wait until you meet Robin, he’s so kind and welcoming and - “ she hiccups loudly. Will gives her a wide, adoring, sloppy smile.

“Robin?” Killian asks from the side of his mouth.

“The new Mr Mills,” Emma says lowly, “clearly he’s livened things up around here.”

“Listen, mate, just so as you know,” Will grabs Killian’s jacket lapels and pulls him close to whisper in his ear. Except, of course, he’s so drunk that it’s less whispering and more like a foghorn at point blank range. “There’s something in the punch.”

He winks extravagantly, and Belle nods.

“There really is,” she whisper-shouts. “I think we might be drunk.”

“You think?” Emma says with a sigh before tugging Killian free of Will’s extended grasp. “Have fun out here you two. Be good.”

“And if we can’t be good be careful, right?” trills Belle, and the two of them disappear into the dark of the garden, their giggles fading away as Killian and Emma watch them retreat.

“You still think they’ll care that we clash?” Killian asks her.

“Shut up,” she grumbles, but she holds his prosthetic tighter as he leads them through the door.

It's a party like no other, that's for sure.

Emma stares, mouth agape, as what look like a load of overgrown college boys in various camouflage patterns play a riotous game of beer pong on Regina’s antique dresser top, mere feet away from where the woman herself holds court, as pristine and put together as always, with three expensively dressed and solemn faced members of local government.

On the other side of the room, beside the innocent looking punch bowl, a woman with tell-tale red soles on her shoes and a necklace worth more than Emma's apartment brays delightedly at a seven foot tall man with a full lumberjack beard and mud on his trouser leg.

“Livening up, you said?” Killian says lowly. “I'm surprised the place isn't on fire.”

It's so surreal that for a few minutes the two of them can do little else but watch as tuxedoed waiters flit, ghost like, between groups of rowdy partygoers, their silver trays weighted down with a bizarre mishmash of long stemmed crystal ware and red solo cups, until, eventually, Regina notices their arrival.

“Not quite what I was expecting, Ms Mills,” Killian says as she approaches. “I’d been led to believe there was a long term moratorium on fun at these events.”

“I think that you and I view fun very differently, Mr Jones,” Regina sniffs back. “But it's Robin’s first event here at the house and I wanted him to feel part of it.”

The hard lines of her mouth soften as she looks over to where a man with a scruffy beard and kind eyes is entertaining a group of lawyers with a story that seems to require a lot of expansive hand gestures.

“You're being nice,” Emma states. “That's weird.”

“Believe me when I say, I don't plan on making a habit of it,” Regina sniffs, but her face stays soft until she looks away.

“So,” Emma shuffles on the spot, nerves starting to get the better of her, “We’re here, what's the plan?”

“The plan?” asks Regina.

“You know,” Emma hisses, her eyes flitting about in case US visa control have plans to gatecrash, “the whole thing with the thing.”

“Very erudite.” Regina drawls. “Not to worry, Miss Swan. Mr Jones assures me he has the matter in hand, so to speak.”

Emma’s attention immediately turns to Killian, who’s looking rather smug.

“You do?”

“I do.”

She lifts her brows in query and he shrugs, his eyes twinkling.

“Are you going to tell me?”

He taps his prosthetic against his chin in consideration.

“Trust me?”

Emma narrows her eyes, her hands coming to rest on her hips.

“Are you asking or telling?” she asks.

Killian smiles, placing his hand and prosthetic on her shoulders until she relaxes, her hands softening from the fists they’d found themselves in.

“Always asking, darling.”

He says it with sincerity, the smugness of his smile replaced with something kinder, something trustworthy, and even though she’s sure she should know better she nods.

“All right. I trust you.”

“How lovely,” grumbles Regina. “Try not to show me up, won’t you? You’re both representing the company here tonight - and it’s my birthday.”

She turns on her heel and makes a beeline for her new husband, the sway of her hips as she moves across the room making a point that Emma isn’t sure she quite understands.

“She doesn’t want you showing her up,” Killian says, making her jump slightly with how close he is, his breath warm on the shell of her ear.

“Me?” Emma scoffs. “As if. I’ve never been to anything like this before.”

Across the room on a makeshift dance floor a man in a hunting jacket does the robot to the strains of a classical string quartet who are perched, alarmed but consummately professional, on a small stage above him.

“I don’t think anybody’s ever been to anything quite like this before,” agrees Killian. “But that doesn’t mean you aren’t the most beautiful woman in the room.”

“Don’t be creepy,” Emma says as her cheeks flush pink. “I was starting to like you.”

“Glad to hear it, but Swan, believe me, every man in here is looking at you and wishing they were me.”

“Why?”

“Because I get to do this, of course.”

He sweeps her onto the dance floor, elbowing robot-guy out of the way in the process, and rests his hand on her waist, holding up the prosthetic for her to hold.

“What are we doing?” she asks, swallowing butterflies as he grins down at her.

He tilts his head slightly, listening, and then pulls her ever so slightly closer.

“By the sounds of it, a waltz.”

He takes two steps, pulling Emma after him as she desperately tries to avoid stamping on his toes.

“Are you kidding? I don’t know how to do that!”

“Of course you do,” Killian scoffs. “There’s only one rule.”

Emma figures out his movements, following each of his steps with her own, and then looks up, grinning, to see him looking back at her with pride and affection, and something else she daren’t quite name.

“Pick a partner who knows what they’re doing.”

He knows what he’s doing.

They dance, and flirt, and sneak solo cups of rum punch like kids at the prom she never got to go to, until her smile isn’t the fake, cold thing she’d practiced in the hotel lobby but something brighter and deeper that makes her cheeks ache and her heart feel full of something she doesn’t quite know how to name.

Killian wins two games of beer pong, and only loses the third when she sneaks up behind him, her hand ghosting over his ass as she leans over him to snatch one of the cups, and Emma almost forgets she’s at her boss’s birthday party, almost forgets that she’s about to commit fraud in front of a room full of layers and officials and, apparently, bushmen.

Almost forgets all of it, until Regina climbs on stage, silencing the music with a wave of her hand, and Killian slips away from her side.

“I’d like to thank you all for coming tonight,” Regina begins. “It’s a pleasure to celebrate in the company of so many friends and -” she catches sight of Will in the crowd and her brow furrows, “associates. I’d like to thank - ”

She doesn’t get any further. Killian appears on stage, his hair slightly mussed, and plucks the microphone from her hands. Part of Emma presumes that Regina must have been in on his plan, because there is no way she’d usually let such disrespect stand, but the rest of her, the majority of her, is frozen in terror as she realises what he’s about to do.

“How’s it going, folks!” he calls, and the crowd cheers drunkenly, “Are you having a good time?”

Another cheer, and he scratches behind his ear, looking out into the crowd until his eyes lock with hers.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce to you the most extraordinary woman,” he says, beckoning for her to join up on stage, and quirking an eyebrow when she shakes her head furiously.

Oh right.

Trust.

She should have known he’d go in for something like this, but nonetheless she clambers up beside him, and gives the gathered crowd a bashful wave.

“Emma Swan,” he says, turning to her and dropping to one knee.

Someone somewhere shrieks, but Emma only has eyes for him, for the way he’s looking at her as if she’s the only person in the world. As though he means it. She swallows hard, and nods for him to continue.

“Emma Swan, we haven’t known each other long, but I knew -” he shakes his head, “I’ve always known from the moment I met you, that you were strong, and clever, and beautiful, but more than anything I knew from that very first moment that you were the other half of my soul, and I swear, Emma, that it is my greatest wish to spend the rest of my days being the man who makes you happy. So please,” he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small velvet box that opens to reveal a beautiful, glittering solitaire. “Will you allow me the honour?”

“Yeah,” she says, breathless under the intensity of his gaze, “yeah go on then.”

He slips the ring onto her finger - a perfect fit that she figures she should thank Belle for - and the crowd, well, the crowd go wild.

A whirlwind of congratulations follow, the two of them separated by the drunk and cooing well-wishers, and Emma is subjected to dozens of hugs and cheek kisses that culminate in being lifted clear off her feet by Robin’s large and bearded friend, before she's able to grab hold of Killian's hand again.

“Happy?” he asks, with such a goofy smile that she doesn't even think of lying to him.

“I am,” she says, squeezing his fingers, “you know, I really, truly am.”

“Give her a kiss!” somebody yells, and Emma sneaks a glance over his shoulder to see Will propped up against some architrave giving them two thumbs up.

When she looks back at him the giddy expression is gone, replaced with a sort of burning intensity that makes her stomach flip and her heart speed up.

“What do you think, Swan?” he asks lowly. “Shall we give the people what they want?”

She bites her lip and watches his eyes grow darker.

“I dunno,” she half-whispers, the punch making her brave, “do you think they can handle it?”

“Them, or you?”

She hums, tugging him down to her by the lapels, “Oh, I can handle it.”

“Is that a challe - “

He lets out a surprised little sound as she pulls him down the last few inches, and crushes her mouth to his own.

The kiss is rough, but his lips are soft, soft and warm with the taste of rum punch, and when he opens his mouth breathing him in feels like coming to life. It takes her by surprise - the ferocity with which she wants him, her fingers rising to tangle in the soft hair at the nape of his neck and pull him closer, harder, more. She might have kissed him to quench the fire he lit within her but it hasn’t worked, instead it’s stoking it higher and higher until it threatens to consume her whole, her whole world reduced to this man and the way he tastes, to the burn of his beard against her skin and the want throbbing through her veins.

He’s gentle in comparison, his tongue soft against hers, his hand only moving to entangle itself gently in the ends of her hair, but she can feel his restraint in the tension of his shoulders, in the hot, solid length of him rising against her belly. When she finally releases him he leans back in, one, two, three small kisses to the side of her mouth, her cheek, the tip of her nose, before he pulls back to rest his forehead against hers, his thumb stroking at her cheek.

“That was - ” he manages, breathless and flushed, his eyelashes dark against his pink cheeks, and all Emma can think is;

Not enough. Not nearly enough.

They sway in each others space for a moment, utterly unaware of the party still going on around them, until somebody - Will, probably - interrupts them with a gleeful cry of get a room!

“Well?” she says softly, rubbing her nose against his, her smile threatening to split her face. “Shall we give the people what they want?”

It’s almost funny, the way his eyes snap open, the blue almost entirely subsumed by desire, and she takes great pleasure in grinding herself against him and watching them flutter shut.

“Are you certain?” he grinds out, his jaw tight.

“Very sure,” she says. “Let’s get out of here.”

They don’t get far, the sounds of the party dulled but by no means silenced as he presses her up against the cool tile of Regina’s bathroom wall.

She’s already lost one heel, the other digging into his back as she encourages the grind of his hips against hers, her dress is rucked up around her waist, his suit jacket hanging off the shower rail and goddamn it, it’s still not enough.

She lets out a frustrated growl that fades to a whimper as he sucks a bruise into her pulse point, her hands struggling with his belt, need making her clumsy in her desperation.

“Ah ah, no you don’t,” he says, nipping at her earlobe before pulling away entirely, smiling at the scowl she throws him as her foot hits the floor.

“What?” she pants. “You don’t want to?”

“Oh,” he says. “I do. I want nothing more, but I am a gentleman.”

“Please don’t tell me you want to wait for marriage,” Emma moans, “Please.”

“Impatient,” he hums, tugging at her dress so that it leaves her underwear exposed and she shivers, the tile against her ass contrasting fiercely with the burn between her thighs. “Never let it be said I keep a lady waiting.”

He grabs her waist, lifting her away from the wall and depositing her on the edge of the sink unit.

“Up you go, there's a girl,” he says, stepping between her parted legs and pressing kisses to the line of her neck, her collarbone and the rise of her dress. “Let me take care of you?”

He drops to his knees, his breath warm and damp against where she aches for him, his hand hot on her thigh and the prosthetic cool and thrilling at the juncture of her thighs.

Emma leans back, resting her head against the mirror, the door directly in her line of sight and reminding her, suddenly and horribly, that she’s about to fuck this man in her bosses bathroom.

“We shouldn't. We really really shouldn't,” she gasps out as he uses the prosthetic to tug at the edge of her underwear.

It drops away immediately, Killian looking up at her in concern.

“You want to stop?”

She shakes her head furiously.

“Oh fucking hell no.”

He beams at her, and her heart clenches.

“Thank god for that. I've been waiting since that bloody airport to do this,” his prosthetic returns to play at the fabric and she lifts her hips ever so slightly to help him remove them. He presses her back down with a smirk.

“No, leave them on.”

With a flick of his wrist her underwear is pushed aside and his mouth settles against her, the first experimental flick of his tongue sending her hands flying over her head for something to hold on to.

“Jesus,” she hisses out, and his answering chuckle makes her shudder helplessly against him.

“Killian,” he corrects with a quick nip to the skin of her thigh. “Ready?”

She nods, pretty much beyond words at the sight of him between her legs, and his smile is even more beautiful when it’s pressed against her most sensitive flesh, his talented tongue dipping down, down until it’s all she can do not to grab him by the hair and force him to where she wants him, lights blooming behind her eyelids as he sucks her clit into his mouth, the only sounds her desperate heaving breaths he brings her to the edge and the creak of the door.

The fucking door.

Her eyes fly open to see a short, sour faced man standing in the doorway, his only reaction to watching Killian work the slight curl of his upper lip.

“Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Killian! Killian stop!”

She slaps at his head until he looks up at her with a furrowed brow and glistening chin.

“What's -” he begins, and she nods her head towards the door. Killian smirks, not even bothering to wipe his face before he turns towards the intruder. “Sorry mate this is a private - you!”

You looks gleeful, leaning against the door frame with a nasty sort of smile as Emma tries to pull her clothing back into some sort of order behind the protection of Killian’s body.

“Well, well. This is a surprise. I see your habits are much the same as they ever were.” he says to Killian, before pointedly craning his head around to address her. “Miss Swan, I presume? I've heard such a lot about you. Not this much, but a lot.”

“Don’t you talk to her,” Killian growls taking a step away from Emma and closer to the man in the doorway. “Don’t you even look at her.”

“Too late for that, I’m afraid,” he says. “I can certainly see what it is you see in her, Captain. I’m not so sure what it is she sees in you.”

She’s barely aware that she’s moved until the tile under her bare feet is replaced by plush carpets and then the damp cool leaves of the yard, until she’s ripped her keys from the hand of a bemused teenage valet, doesn’t hear him call out for her until she’s already behind the wheel, the ignition on and hot tears gathering in the corners of her eyes.

She doesn’t look back until she’s halfway home. The tears taste like regret.

Regina sits stiffly behind her desk, her hands folded in front of her, the long, red nails of one drumming out a rhythm on the leather surface. Holy shit, but she is pissed.

“It wasn’t what it looked like,” Emma begins, and then stops, her shoulders sagging. “Ok it was exactly what it looked like, but Regina - ”

“But Regina nothing,” Regina says, her tone clipped and her eyes cold. “You were a young couple newly engaged, I don’t suppose you’re the first ones to attempt to consummate that fact on a toilet cistern.”

“Well,” Emma says, “no it was a sink, but - ”

“No but what, Miss Swan? Are you trying to tell me that you were in the throes of some sort of epileptic fit? Or was Mr Jones perhaps attempting to hoist you out of the window to freedom using his face as a step-stool?”

Emma wrings her hands together, her face burning, until Regina seems to take pity on her - relaxing back into her chair and beckoning for Emma to take the seat opposite.

“Emma,” she says slowly, “something’s come up.”

“Is that another sex pun?” Emma asks, “Because believe me, I get your point.”

“No, sadly not. The gentleman who walked in on your little display, what do you know about him?”

Emma wrinkles her nose, trying to think back through the haze of humiliation. “Not much? He was an old guy, kinda short. Maybe Scottish?”

“He’s all of those things, Miss Swan, and many much worse besides. His name is Robert Gold.”

“Gold?” Emma asks, aghast, “The one who used to date Belle? The oil tycoon cum sex pest cum genuine lunatic? That Gold?”

Regina’s mouth sets into a hard line.

“I feel like Miss French would caution you to use the word ‘alleged’ in there somewhere, but yes. That’s the one.”

“Belle would tell you there's nothing ‘alleged’ about it,” Emma snaps. “Did he have a heart attack? Because I can’t say I’m sorry.”

“Not exactly.” Regina sighs. “Has Mr Jones ever mentioned anything to you about Gold?”

She thinks of Killian’s reaction in the bathroom, the rage on his face, and just her chin out defiantly.

“No, never.”

“Well I suggest you make inquiries on the subject before you decide to indulge in anymore public nudity, since Mr Gold has just sent me an email threatening that several unseemly and unlikely scenarios will befall Mills Inc. if Mr Jones isn’t removed from the picture at once.”

Emma balks at the threat implicit in Regina’s tone.

“And how is he suggesting you do that?”

“Why he’s offered to buy JRS immediately it transfers ownership - for twice the market value - on the understanding that Mr Jones will be immediately removed from the company and, ideally, the country.”

Emma shakes her head.

“But he- doesn’t he already have a shipping branch?”

Regina shrugs.

“Half a dozen I suppose, in markets all over the world.”

“So why JRS?”

“Same reason as I wanted it, perhaps. It was harder to get. That, or,” she leans forward, her brows furrowed, “there’s something a little more personal going on.”

“What are you insinuating exactly?”

“I don't insinuate, Miss Swan, if I knew, I'd tell you, or better yet have dealt with it already. But as it stands, I don't. I strongly suggest you ask your boyfriend exactly what business Gold has with him before indulging in any more naked gymnastics.”

“He's not my boyfriend,” grumbles Emma.

Regina groans, and rubs her hands over her eyes.

“Your definitions are your own, but in exactly ten days he's going to be your husband, so I suggest you figure it out.”

She stands - the dismissal obvious.

“Ten days?” Emma splutters. “We only got engaged last night!”

“Well congratulations on such a brief engagement,” Regina says snippily. “With Gold sniffing around we need this deal watertight as soon as possible, and that means you'll be sulking your way down the aisle a week on Wednesday.”

“Nobody gets married on a Wednesday,” Emma says, mostly to stop herself screaming.

“Which is exactly why the registrar could fit you in.”

She tosses a half dozen glossy magazines over the table where they flutter to the ground at Emma’s feet, each page a riot of flowers and pastels and smiling brides..

“I've a team working on it. All you need to do is pick a colour scheme and turn up.”

“Colour scheme?” says Emma blankly.

“Personally I prefer black and white, but you strike me as the insipid pastels type. You’ve a dress appointment on Thursday, so I’d lay off the carbs - we’ve no time for fittings.”

She gestures to the magazines, and Emma picks them up almost without thinking about it, tucking them under her arm as she turns to leave, only pausing as Regina calls out after her:

“And Miss Swan? Do be careful.”

It’s a bit late for that.

And now she’s here, standing in her underwear, ten feet of toile and voile, tulle and crystal, and whatever the hell else lying in a pile at her feet, Regina and the shop owner staring at her with matching disapproving grimaces; a line of other rejected choices hanging on the nearby rail, their dust covers askew.

“I told you to lay off the carbs.”

“How about you lay off,” snaps Mary Margaret, before turning to Emma with an encouraging smile and gesturing to the crumpled mass on the floor. “How about we try pulling it over your head?”

“Yeah, no.” Emma toes at the fabric, struggling to repress a shudder. “I don't think this dress is anymore fond of me than I am of it.”

“We could try a corset back? More flattering?” suggests the owner, leading Emma to wonder how well he'd like to be flattered with her fist.

“Actually,” pipes up Belle from the corner where she's been dreamily examining tiaras, “there was this one dress I saw - it's not as fancy as these, but I thought - I thought it might be a little more you?”

“Eh,” says Emma. “I guess.”

There's nothing in this wedding that's about her. Not the venue, not the catering, not the ring. She didn't even pick her own fiancé.

She might as well look amazing.

Belle beams, and skitters off between the rails.

“Are you sure you didn't like that ball gown,” pleads Mary Margaret as soon as she's out of sight, “I know Belle said it made you look like a Disney princess but I don't think she was trying to be mean.”

“She was being overly generous if you ask me,” sniffs Regina. “I thought you looked like a meringue.”

“Regina!”

“No it's okay,” Emma lays a soothing hand on Mary Margaret's arm. “I did look like a meringue. A very regal one. We could have held the reception under that skirt.”

“Killian wouldn't have minded,” Regina says, innocently looking down at her phone at Mary Margaret's outraged gasp.

“How dare you.”

“Yeah,” sighs Emma. “About that, Mary Margaret -”

“Oh thank god!” barks the owner as Belle returns bearing another ubiquitous white dust cover. “Let's see what you've got shall we?”

He hustles Regina and the red faced Mary Margaret out of the changing area, ripping the curtains closed behind them.

“Sorry,” Emma mutters. “I'm not very good at this.”

“Nonsense dear,” he says, unzipping the bag and motioning for her to turn around. “It's a stressful time in a woman's life, and sometimes the people we love best struggle to understand that. I'm sure you'll all have a good giggle over this one day.”

Emma hums noncommittally, watching in the floor length mirror as he pulls out the next dress, inch by startlingly white inch.

“Oh god,” she says miserably as it's finally freed, “it looks like a shroud. Belle thinks my style is postmortem chic.”

The owner smiles.

“I'll let you in on a secret Emma - they all do when they're in the bag. You see a wedding dress is rather like a marriage. It might not look like much on its own, a white dress, a piece of paper,” he gestures for her to step into the dress as he allows it to pool in front of her, “but the thing that makes it special,” he pulls it up, wriggling slightly to get it to sit just right at her chest, and then steps out of the way so that she can see herself. “Is you.”

The dress is satin, gently flared, plain and unadorned apart from a thin band of gold at the waist, cut high and straight at the chest and with a back that dips and dips, right down to the golden belt.

It fits like a glove, accentuating her toned arms and slim waist, but it's the back that she loves, twisting this way and that in front of the mirror to get a better look.

She thinks of the way Killian had caressed her at the party, imagines the feel of his lips against her spine, and goosebumps break out across her bare skin.

It's perfect.

(It also has pockets, which will be extra useful for keeping notes about her fake life, probably. She keeps that thought to herself.)

She doesn't quite cry, but Mary Margaret does and so does Belle, the two of them leaning on each other and sniffling through wobbly smiles. Even Regina manages a look of cool approval.

“Very nice, Miss Swan,” she says, and the owner beams.

“Well,” he says. “Is this the one?”

Belle squeezes her hands together, Mary Margaret dabs helplessly at her dripping mascara, even Regina lifts a questioning brow.

“Yeah,” says Emma, her smile cheek-achingly wide. “Yeah it is.”

#captain swan #cs ff #cs fic #csss #captain swan secret santa #cs smut #clare vs writers block #what life is

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