Once Upon a Time Nothing But A Pirate

**A/N:** **So I was making myself these pancakes because what else does a person do at midnight, and was just casually like "****[friend]****, did you have a thought about Killian making Emma pancakes after she had a nightmare, because I just did" and it was decided that I should write this thing, but it got away from me, and 4 hours later here we are. So. Yes. It turned out substantially more angsty than I had thought, but hey, if you ever wanted a hint of what most of my original pieces are like, here you go. Except everybody doesn't die in the end. Enjoy!**

**Thanks to tumblr user captainhand-andthesaviour for listening to me ramble on about his, and answering questions about Killian's particulars.**

Killian woke with a jolt as he felt the bed shift sharply underneath him. Before he even knew what he was doing he was sitting straight up in bed, swinging his feet from under the covers to blindly search for his boots on the floor. He didn't know what time it was, what day it was, what realm it was, but he did know that his bed, build into the wall of the captain's quarters, would only ever move so suddenly if a storm was throwing the ship about in the waves. He trusted his crew, but nobody could captain a ship out of a storm like he could.

"Sorry." He heard a soft voice say from beside him. A woman's voice. He stiffened, still turned away from her, because no matter how many women he had brought back to his quarters, none had ever been permitted to stay the night. Not after Milah. And certainly none had ever been permitted to travel with him. Whoever this woman was, she was intruding on his personal space, on his ship, and needed to leave. He was already forming a plan in his mind to lock her in the cargo hold until the next port, but as he turned to face her, his whole plan dissolved around him.

_Swan_. He thought. And then he berated himself because _of course_ it was Swan. Of course, because this was her apartment, and this was her realm, and no he was _not _on the Jolly Roger because he had traded it for her. He wiped his eyes wearily, grounding himself very firmly in _this_ bed and _this _room, and looked up at her again.

"Sorry." She said again, her voice no more than a whisper in the dark room. "Go back to bed. I didn't mean to wake you."

"I'm a pirate, love. This isn't the first time I've been woken from…" He trailed off because as his eyes slowly adjusted to the barely-there light coming through the bedroom window, he finally got a good look at her face. And he didn't like what he saw.

It was no great secret that Emma suffered from nightmares. Besides the fact of her difficult upbringing, the things she had seen and experienced since breaking that first curse left a lasting impact. Things had gotten better for her – for both of them, truthfully – over time, but she still woke some nights in a cold sweat and with tears already on her face over things that her mind forced her to face over and over.

"What's wrong, love?" He asked softly, swinging his legs back into bed and turning so he was facing her. She bent her head, letting her hair fall around her face like a curtain, as if not seeing her face now would make him forget that he had just seen the tears trailing down her cheeks, would make him deaf to the way her breath hitched as she tried to keep it steady.

"Nothing, Killian. Go back to sleep."

"Swan…"

"It's fine." She took a deep breath, but he could hear it tremble as she drew the air in. "I'm fine."

He sighed, and reached over to take her hand, tracing circles on the back of it with his thumb as she sat there and pretended to be fine. After a moment, she sighed an uneven sigh and looked up at him, offering him a very convincing smile that absolutely broke his heart, because he knew how hard it was to put on such an expression when your eyes had so much sadness in them. He knew that she had developed that smile over years and years of putting it on for people who would rather believe it than try to see through it to help her, if anybody was there to see it at all.

"Just go to bed, Hook. I'll be asleep in a minute anyways."

"As you wish, Swan." He said thickly, holding her gaze for a moment, imploring her with the softness of his eyes and the gentle set of his mouth to just _trust him. _She had done it before, and those nights when she told him in that soft voice of hers what was wrong, those nights when she let him hold her and place kisses into her hair while she nestled into his shoulder, those nights when she allowed herself to just _let him in_…those were the nights when she was able to fall asleep without the dreams coming back.

They both knew from experience that the more she kept to herself, the more came back to haunt her.

She looked away first, pulling her hand from his to curl back under the covers, her face turned away from him. He stifled another sigh as he watched her, knowing that she wasn't going to fall asleep anytime soon. He leaned over and pressed a kiss gently against her neck, setting back under the blankets himself. He lay on his back and traced the faint whorls of plaster on the ceiling with his eyes. She was stubborn, his Swan. It was one of the things he loved about her, that tenaciousness – how she never gave up on the people she loved, how she fought for what she knew was right against unbeatable odds, how she pushed through unbelievable circumstances to come out the other side. But not when it came to keeping the things that hurt her to herself. It killed him to watch her face those demons, to watch her eyes shift from open to guarded, to see her slowly retreat deeper into herself. He cursed the legions of people in her past who made her think that her fear was weakness, who made her think that if she opened up about her worries then she would be sent back for being too damaged.

_If only I had been with you then, Swan_.

After a few long minutes, he felt her shift, heard the pillow rustle as she lifted her head to peer over at him, checking to make sure he was asleep. He focused on keeping his breaths deep and even, and he knew he had her fooled when a moment later she let out a watery, broken breath that he could just _hear_ dissolve into tears. His heart ached for her, and it took all he had not to reach out to her. He had always said that she would set the pace for their relationship, and he knew that nosing in on her feelings too soon would just chase her away.

"Stop it." He heard her whisper fiercely to herself, her voice husky, filled with shame and anger, and he just _knew_ the thoughts that were running through her head:

_You're being stupid, Emma. You're being weak, Emma. Nobody wants a crybaby, Emma. You have a family now, Emma. What's there to cry about, Emma?_

The language of self-loathing was one he knew very well.

He heard her heavy, angry breaths quicken as they mixed with the tears and the fear of the dream that still lingered. She was working herself into a sorry state and he knew what came next: she would hold her breath and slip out from underneath the covers, snag her leather jacket from the chair next to their bedroom door, and drive her bug fast and hard in laps on the deserted country roads that bordered the town. He had found her many mornings after nights like these parked behind the Sherriff's station, passed out from exhaustion in the back seat of the Bug. It wasn't until Regina had made a dry comment, the day after one of those nights, about the Sherriff obeying her own speed limits, that Killian had pieced it all together. Emma liked to run from her problems, and this was the next best thing.

The mattress shifted again as she moved to get up, and his arm shot out to stop her. He removed his brace at night, so it was the blunted end of his long-healed wound that bumped against her arm. He cringed, because he knew how scarred the flesh there was, how rough it felt against even his callused palm, much less his Swan's smooth skin. As much as she told him she didn't care about the hook _or_ what was underneath, he still worried that one day she would find this a shortcoming. It was one of the nightmares that _he_ sometimes had.

"Swan, wait." He said softly. She had frozen in place when she felt his arm against hers, but she was doing a piss-poor job of hiding the state she was in.

"Killian, please." She managed to choke out. He considered his possible actions for a moment, and with a swift nod, removed his arm from hers. A brief shock passed over her face, but she ducked her head and stood, already single-mindedly facing the door.

What she hadn't been expecting was the pirate who stood with her.

He rose swiftly, and was standing in her path before she even saw him move. She didn't know how often he had watched through slitted lids as she moved around the dark room and left, didn't know how well he knew every move she was about to make. And once he was in her path, once she knew that he had seen – couldn't _not_ have seen – the tears flowing freely and the sheer panicked look in her eyes, she knew there was nowhere else to go. He could see the moment she accepted it, could see in the infinitesimal droop of her shoulders that she knew there was no running from this one, that she could say she was fine until she was blue in the face and he wouldn't believe her. Not now.

"Swan." He cupped her cheek in his hand and wiped a tear away with his thumb – more symbolic than useful – and drew her close to him with the press of his other arm against her back. "Look at me. Please, love."

"Killian, what?" She sighed heavily. His mouth quirked in a half-smile despite himself, because even now she was trying to seem like none of this touched her at all. As much as he knew otherwise, she still liked to pretend that Emma Swan didn't have emotions.

"What's bothering you?" She was avoiding his gaze, but he kept stroking her cheek with his thumb so she knew he was focused on her and only her. "You know I'm here to weather any storm with you, love, but you have to tell me what's wrong or I can't help you fix it."

"There's no fixing this." She laughed once, harsh and humourless, and he knew it was directed inwards. "I've been like this for 28 years, Hook. What makes you think that's going to change now."

"Been like what, Swan?" "Alone. Stupid. Broken." She scowled through her tears, directing an acidic gaze at the floorboards beneath their feet.

"Emma." He said gently, and that made her look up at him. He called her Swan, or Love, or Lass, regularly. It was only when he had something she really needed to hear that he called her Emma. "I know you've experienced more loss than anyone rightly should, and that your beginnings were trying at the best of times. But your past is a part of you, Swan, like your magic or your superpower or your vexing habit of saying you'll do one thing and doing the opposite. You can't run from the things that shaped your present, but you can face them. Once you own them, they lose the power to control you."

"Killian, I…" Her gaze had lost its frantic edge, but it was still glazed with tears. "I just…I can't right now. I'm sorry." She looked back down at the floor, and he knew what she was thinking: that he had offered himself to her, and now that she had refused, he was going to leave. Everyone left, so why wouldn't he. It never ceased to amaze him what an open book she was to him, but when two people were cut from the same cloth the way he strongly believed they were, they had a way of understanding each other on a level much deeper than words.

"Aye, I know, Swan." He pressed a kiss to her forehead. "I know."

They stood there for a moment, her back rigid, trying to hold it all together, his hand still cupping her cheek, unwilling to let her go. He racked his brain, desperately searching for something that would fix this, something that would make her green eyes look a little less hollow, would make a smile seem like a possibility once again.

Then, he had it.

"Come with me, Swan." He said, reaching down to tug on her wrist. She gave him a weary look but followed anyways. She wiped at her cheeks with both hands, though tears were still tracing a delicate lacework on her skin. They had, Killian noted, at least slowed considerably.

"Killian, what are you doing?" She asked as he led her to the kitchen, pressing his wounded arm against her back to guide her to sit at the kitchen island. She did, folding her arms on the countertop and dropping her chin down on them as he moved away from her and into the kitchen proper. She watched in silence, wiping her eyes ever so often on her folded arms, as he pulled chocolate and sugar from the cabinets. She figured out his intentions as soon as he poured a measure of milk into a saucepan, and sighed as she realized that despite his intentions, he had no idea how to make hot cocoa.

"You want cocoa powder, Killian, and there's some in the cupboard." She murmured. "But honestly, I'm not…"

"Swan, please." He raised a sharp eyebrow at her, a hint of his usual teasing adding a twist to his still-gentle expression. She wanted to roll her eyes at him, at his stubbornness, but there was still a hollow space in her chest that she couldn't think around, that sent tears to her eyes and stole any dream of a smile from her lips. So she just shook her head wearily and continued to watch him work, twisting a knob on the stove, dropping chunks of bitter chocolate straight into the warming pot, and dumping sugar in without consulting any sort of recipe. She didn't know that she had the patience to be diplomatic about anything right now, much less his attempts at cooking, but the effort was sweet.

After a quick glance at the pot, Killian nodded once to himself and turned away from it, busying himself in the cabinet once again. He had his back to her now, working on the counter on the opposite side of the kitchen, but she saw a puff of flour as he stirred whatever it was he was making. He had only just learned how to use the stove, so she had no idea what he thought he was going to do with it now. She felt exhausted at the thought of having to salvage whatever it was he was doing, of having to look at his sheepish face as he'd say "It seems I've still got a spot of learning to do, eh Swan?", of him tiring of this world where everything was something new, of him deciding to find his way back to the Enchanted Forest where everything was familiar…

_Stop, Emma. Just stop. If he wants to leave, he'll leave. Just stop._

It wasn't what she had dreamed about that night, but it didn't mean she hadn't. In fact, she dreamed about Killian leaving – dreamed about losing him – more than she would ever dare admit. Sometimes it was death that took him, sometimes it was another woman – Milah coming back from the dead like Marian had – and sometimes it was just choice that took him from her. His choice to leave, his choice that this world – that Emma herself – wasn't enough for him anymore. She had never been enough for anyone, so why would she be enough for him?

"Swan." She startled as she looked up, his face a foot from hers. He reached out to stroke her hair, and she leaned into it despite herself, loving the way that without saying a word he could bring a small shoot of warmth into the empty space she felt echo beneath her breastbone. She thought about the place where his heart was nestled, how hollow it had felt the moment she had reached into it, the moment before she had released his heart to settle back where it belonged. She wondered briefly if she woke up feeling hollow sometimes because something inside her was missing, too – not taken, but fundamentally _gone_.

"Lass, are you alright?" He asked softly, the word no more than a breath. She knew that spacing out on him over and over was _not _the way to convince him that she was fine, but she was tired. So, so tired – tired of hiding, tired of lying, tired of pretending she didn't need him when he was _all_ she needed.

"Just tired." She murmured back, and she saw the flash of recognition in his eyes as he heard the truth beneath her words. As much as she tried to shield him from the train wreck that was her life, somehow he always knew.

_You and I…we understand each other_, he had said to her once. Over and over he proved that, and what's more, proved that he was worthy of knowing her secrets.

_Then why can't you let him in, Emma?_

He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and smiled softly at her, then turned back to the opposite counter. He was doing something intricate looking with a frying pan on the stove – _When did he pull out the frying pan? – _and somehow attending to that and stirring his milky concoction in the saucepan all at once, still with just one hand. For a moment she thought to herself that maybe there was some background there, some Captain Hook culinary history, because nobody was this comfortable after just a few lessons, and certainly not after a few lessons from Emma Swan, who was self-proclaimedly not the best cook.

He left the frying pan alone for a moment to remove the saucepan from the stove, giving it one last stir before tipping the contents of it into a waiting mug. After a brief search in the fridge, he finished off the cup with a whorl of whipped cream and, of course, a sprinkle of cinnamon, and set it in front of her. His face didn't show much before he turned back to the frying pan, but something about the set of his shoulders and the softness around his eyes told her that this was a very significant act for him. She took a cautious sip, and her eyes drifted shut as she tasted it. It was hot cocoa, but better. Warm and creamy and sweet, with a hint of spice from the cinnamon. It felt like home, and the warmth of it sliding down her throat made her feel a little more human for the first time since she woke up.

"Killian, this is…" She started, but her words died in her throat as he slid a plate in front of her. There were two pancakes on it, still letting off small tendrils of steam and glistening with maple syrup. What was special, however, was the depth to them. There were dark lines of batter defining figures in the cake, the lighter batter filling in the spaces. They looked like drawings – looked like _art – _and he had made them out of pancake batter. She looked up at him with what she knew was shock and awe, and saw his eyes glimmer before he turned around to make simple, round pancakes for himself.

And he wanted her to _eat_ these?

"How in the world did you do this?" She asked incredulously, picking up the fork he had given her and tracing the darkened lines of batter gently with the point of one tine. The one on the left was dainty and graceful, a round body curving into the head of a swan, distinct eyes and the dark line of a folded wing perfectly visible in the batter. The one on the right was a ship, and from the vague squared off shape of the stern and the curve of the sails, she knew it was the Jolly Roger, dark lines separating the body from the mast from the sail. Forget her sharing with him – there was so much _she_ still didn't know about his life before Storybrooke.

"It's not difficult once you get in the swing of it." He said amicably, flipping his cakes onto a plate and coming around to sit on the stool beside her. He ate his without syrup and with his hands – well, hand – and grinned comically at her, nodding down at her still-untouched plate. "They're not poisoned, love."

"I know, but…" She traced the edges of them with her fork, looking at him with wide eyes that had finally stopped dripping tears. "This is _amazing_, Killian. I can't…"

"I'll make you more, Swan." He rubbed his bad arm up and down her spine, feeling the tension that still resided there. "Any time you wish. But pancakes are a vessel for syrup, and syrup heals all wounds." He demonstrated by dipping a finger in the pool of syrup on her plate and sticking it in his mouth, smiling too wide in an attempt to make her laugh. She shook her head a little, but her mouth twitched in the beginnings of an answering smile.

Killian popped the remains of his second pancake into his mouth with his fingers just as she reluctantly cut into the sail of the ship. She hated to ruin it, but he looked so eager, and she had to admit that they did taste good. He smiled softly at her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, only just spanning them without his hook.

"When I was at sea – in the navy first, and then as a pirate." He said softly, seriously. "No matter where we came into port, there were always children at the docks. Some noble, after a look at the ship, but mostly peasant children and—" he paused for a moment, giving her a complicated look, "orphans. They would work, unloading cargo, gutting fish, and working as hands for hire. It's not a good life, lass, and these children looked so…haggard. Weather worn at the ages of five and eight and twelve, lucky if they hadn't lost a finger or limb, friend or sibling." He looked at her, still slowly and precisely cutting her pancakes, to see if this story was causing more harm than good, but even though she wasn't looking right at him, she still looked interested. "Whenever we'd pull into port, we'd set up a fire a ways from the ship to cook something other than salted fish, and there'd bloody well always be a group of them that would pop over looking for something. Work, coin, food, a place on the ship…" He frowned a bit at the memory, at the sheer number of children who came by their fires, who all needed something – hoards of children who were struggling to survive on their own. "In the navy, I had no authority to accept them as sailors, and most of them were too bloody young. And as a captain…" He shook his head slightly with a wry grin. "The life of a pirate is ruthless and unsafe for grown men, much less young lads."

"Some of them turn out okay, though." She murmured, pushing her now empty plate away and leaning into his side, closing her eyes.

"Aye, Swan. Some do. But many aren't blessed with such natural skill – _or_ such dashing good looks." He laughed low in his throat, and was pleased to see that little twitch of her mouth again, the echo of a smile. "If Liam hadn't already had one foot in the Navy when our mother passed, he and I would have ended up those dock rats ourselves." He continued, voice low and serious once again.

"So you made them pancakes?" She asked softly, nestling her head into the crook of his neck and speaking directly against his skin. Her skin felt hot and slick from the tears, and he wrapped his arm tighter around her shoulders before speaking again.

"A bag of flour is bloody easy to come by," He said. "We requisitioned them in the Navy and it's no great feat for a pirate to walk away with a baker's sack. Mind you, we would only ever use flour and water, occasionally some form of flavouring if one was available, so it was perhaps simpler then to make a batter than it would have been if we had needed all the ingredients you seem to use in this world. However, that didn't matter to them." He smiled fondly as he recalled the expressions of glee on those children's faces the first time he had attempted to create any sort of design in batter. It had taken him years to perfect his technique, and again to relearn it after losing his hand, but the part of him that remembered what it had been like to lose his mother, his one remaining parent, and then his brother, knew that the effort would be more than worth it to give one child one thing to give them hope, if not for a better future, then for a better present. Even through the years when his sole focus had been vengeance, he had never stopped this one ritual, this one shred of kindness that reminded him he hadn't always been Captain Hook.

"And the cocoa?" She murmured.

"What kind of man would I be, love, knowing you fancy it and not learning to prepare it for you?"

"Nothing but a pirate, hmm?" She breathed, recalling the words she had said what seemed like ages ago, back before she had really known him. Now she saw how wrong those words were, because no pirate made pancakes for orphans or learned to make cocoa from its most basic ingredients just for her.

"Aye, love. Just call me Captain Hook." He said back, mirth colouring his voice. He felt then what he had been after all night – the gentle curve of her lips against his skin as she smiled, finally, for real. He could feel how the tension had left her, and knew she was on the edge of sleep once again. He didn't say anything more, just turned to slide his good arm under her knees so he could cradle her against his chest. She made a small noise in the back of her throat, but didn't protest. He pressed a kiss into her hair as he walked back to the bedroom, laying her gently down and climbing in next to her. She grabbed a handful of his shirt once he was settled, and drew herself closer so she was snuggled perfectly under his arm.

They were suited for one another, Emma thought, she and her pirate. Two sides of the same coin. She had never imagined anybody who could make her feel safe like he did, could make her feel loved like he did, could make her feel wanted like he did.

And there was nobody in the world but him, she knew, who could ever take away the sting of fear with two pancakes, some cocoa, and a memory.

Nothing but a pirate, indeed.

**A/N: Thanks for reading! As always, comments and critiques are more than welcome, and I love reviews!**


End file.
