A/N: Happy (Belated) Father’s Day to my favorite pirate daddy, Killian Jones!
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There’s a card with his name on it leaning against a gift bag on the nightstand when Killian wakes. It makes his brows knit together, makes him blink in sleepy confusion when he suddenly notes the sunlight just beginning to creep in through the thin curtains over the window on the adjacent wall. It’s early yet, but his internal clock knows that Hope will be up and fussing very soon. He sits up, turning his head to glance at Emma’s side of the bed. It’s habit, really, but that Emma’s side is devoid of her dreaming form is not.
She’s rarely been up before him since Hope began sleeping through the night, and he wonders briefly if perhaps their little one had simply been early to rise that morning and he’d just slept straight through her cries for attention, thus drawing Emma from their bed to see to her in his place. His eyes flit over to the baby monitor on the dresser, but Hope’s grumbling and Emma’s soft, soothing tone is nowhere to be heard over the speaker. There’s nothing out of sorts with the device from what he can see, the tiny green bulb in the corner is still lit up just as it was when he and Emma went to bed last night.
The sound in the doorway draws his attention then — floorboards creaking noisily beneath bare feet — and he is greeted by a sight that tugs on the corners of his lips as deeply as it does the strings of his heart: his wife, shuffling in through the threshold of their room with a baby on her hip and a tray of food carefully balanced on her arm.
“Happy Father’s Day,” she says in a singsong voice, eyes full of mirth and smile warm.
Guys…IDK if many people here have read my WIP A Thread Through the Labyrinth (FF, AO3), but @teamhook just made me the most amazing cover for it!! It’s fantastic artwork, isn’t it?
Thanks so much!
Lovely art! I’ll have to read the story! How have I missed it????
Emma Swan is a dedicated FBI agent getting over a bad breakup. When she and her
partner, Ruby Lucas, are forced to go undercover as contestants on a reality show, Emma
is forced to try and win the affections of Killian Jones, a man she despises. Killian Jones is a lost boy. Having recently been nicknamed the ‘Bad Boy of Boston,’ he’s
been living up to his moniker using women and rum to avoid dealing with his dark past.
When he’s forced to take the lead in a reality show, he encounters a gorgeous blonde who
turns his world upside down. Miss Congeniality meets The Bachelor
He had questions. So many of them, but as his fingers found the hemline of her shirt, his brain lost
the ability to form sentences. Instead, he was only able to string together a “bloody beautiful,” and
“need you now.”
Emma didn’t seem to be faring much better as her responses barely constituted as anything more
than sighs and moans. He’d ask her everything later. How she was there, how she found him,
what it meant for their future. But first, he’d make love to her like his life depended on it.
When she’d stepped close enough for him to make out her face, he was sure it had been a dream,
but she’d stepped even closer and he’d caught the scent of the perfume that was so decidedly her .
His ring still rested around her neck, just barely peeking out over the top of her dress. Dream or no
dream, he wanted her.
He leaned in and their lips met, tentatively at first, but soon they became a tangle of limbs and
mouths and tongues. Using his bad hand, he pulled her closer so that their bodies were pressed
together, competing for the same space. He let her form’s heat warm his cold, grieving heart. He
finally felt alive again.
Summary: Emma Swan tries to keep the witch thing on the down-low. But
when a handsome stranger discovers her secret and begs her to teach him
magic, Emma finds herself using her powers for good to try and save his
brother. ~9.6K. Rated T for language.
Here is the artwork I made for @shireness-says story, The Prickly Witch’s Guide to Magic. This fic is great, you guys. Lots of emotions. You can read the fic here on tumblr. or on AO3 at the links above.
based on @initiala‘s very simple Mermay prompt, “Look, I’m in this for more mermaid/merman smut,” which I am all too happy to oblige
Summary: Killian and Emma travel to Neverland to find the key ingredient to a spell…but find the wrong one first. and it turns out to be underwater sex pollen. And it hits Emma right in the face. There’s only one thing to be done after that.
Anything Emma had ever known about Neverland—real or fictional, preconceived or actually experienced—was turned on its head when she went below the surface of its waters, especially since she was able to see and breathe this time.
(“Still making us dive in after you, eh, Swan?” Killian had joked after they leapt off the railing of the Jolly Roger into the ocean.
“Hey, it worked, didn’t it?” she joked back, but was glad that no one had to mount a rescue this time.)
She’d become so used to the relatively monochromatic Maine sea floor—its deep greens and blues, with the occasional brightly colored fish—that coming down here was like Dorothy waking up in Oz: fish and coral came in every color of the rainbow, the foliage was practically a glowing neon green, and even the water itself was a clearer, brighter blue, not unlike Killian’s eyes. Maybe all that time here rubbed off on him? she wondered.
The only reason they had agreed to travel back to this ridiculous realm—neither of them were really all that keen on it still, for many obvious reasons—was that it was the only place they could get the pollen of the divided lily, which was apparently a necessary ingredient in finally breaking the spell on the town line. And given that it only grew in the waters of Neverland, and she and Killian were the only ones adept at navigating underwater, they were the obvious choice for this little venture.
(“Won’t we draw the attraction of the mermaids here, though?” she asked as they started to strip down to their skivvies on the ship’s deck before they transformed, listing one of her many concerns.
“Perhaps, but they tend to congregate on the other side of the island; and given that they can’t quite drown either of us, they won’t have much interest.”
“I thought this place was supposed to run on happy thoughts, not morbid ones?”
“Really, Emma? Why do you insist on still believing what Barrie wrote, when you’ve spent far more time here than he ever did and you’re well aware of the disservice he did to my dashing self?”)
Even Killian had seemed overwhelmed at first, but eventually, they got to hunting. She’d seen a drawing of what they were looking for, but apparently, no one had ever taken a camera down here. But what she could remember was a white flower with what looked like a dark section in the middle of its petals.
As they searched, he pointed out various other fish and wildlife, usually commenting on how they tasted (“The giant shrimp are quite the delicacy, but the rainbow trout left some things to be desired.”). But no sign of the lily, and eventually, they reached the cusp of a dropoff.
“Do you think it might be down there?” she asked, peering into the deep blue oblivion.
“It’s Neverland and it’s rare magic; it’s most definitely hidden down there.”
Gripping Killian’s hand with one of hers and the magic satchel Regina lent her in the other (even though it was tied around her waist—can never be too safe here), they slowly swam over the edge and down.
Sure enough, growing on many rocky ledges jutting out from the stone wall of the dropoff, were a massive variety of lily-like flowering plants, drifting lazily in the current and in every color of the full spectrum of colors.
“It’s white, right?” she verified as she scanned the array while they swam over it.
“Aye; just be careful that you don’t—”
“Is that it?” she interrupted, a bright flash of white catching her eye. With a quick squeeze of his hand, she dove to where she saw it, nestled in with some red flowers. When she got close, she noted that it almost fit the drawing exactly: white, with a dark blue section dividing the petal. Well, this was easier than I thought it would be.
Too late, she heard Killian’s warning shout of, “No, Emma—not that one!” But she’d already grabbed it at the stem and pulled, releasing a shimmery, inky substance that she inadvertently inhaled.
cshappybeginning 