captain swan figure skating AU. I started plotting this years ago, but the Olympics paired with the discovery of Hubbell and Donohue finally gave me the push to finish it. I know I’m not the only one who’s done this, but I spent the last week consumed by this and had to let it out.
11k | rated PG, but coarse language | AO3 coming soon
2018
Emma had to catch her breath, not for the first time this week. She was here—really here! All around her was the din of the crowd speaking countless languages, the chill air of the rink, and that iconic five-ringed logo. As she stared at it where it was painted at center ice, she pinched herself through her bejeweled costume.
The dream had finally come true. She was competing in the Olympics. This wasn’t even the first time she’d taken the ice here—the third occasion out of three, actually—but there was some truth to the saying “saving the best for last”—or at least, the most important. They were minutes away from taking the ice in the pairs’ free skate competition, sitting in second place with the gold medal easily within grasp.
It was hard to believe that not even two years ago, there was a moment when this all seemed impossibly out of reach. But honestly, that made this all the sweeter, and she wouldn’t have it any other way, or with any other partner at her side.
2016
“Bastard!” Emma shouted, slamming her hand against the locker. “That no-good, fucking bastard!”
“Emma, calm down.”
“How am I supposed to calm down? How can he do this, on the day we’re supposed to start training again?”
A text. That was all she’d gotten from Neal to let her know that it was over. They’d skated together for 7 years, won two US championships, and just finished 4th at Worlds. They were already a favorite to medal at the PyeongChang Olympics, even if that was a couple years away.
But just like that, he leaves her for another skater, Tamara something-or-other. Saying that he’s “only thinking of his future” or some bullshit.
“This is bullshit!”
What no one else knew was that he wasn’t just leaving her as a skating partner; he was leaving her altogether. They’d kept their romance on the down-low, even from Ingrid, their coach; so this was a double crowbar to both knees.
“Emma, we’ll figure it out.” How Ingrid could keep her cool right now, Emma couldn’t understand, but she supposed that was why some called the woman “the Snow Queen.”
Unable to deal with the rage-fueled adrenaline coursing through her body, Emma stormed out of the locker room toward the ice. (Of course she already had her skates on by the time he bothered to text.) She barely registered Ingrid’s shouts of “Emma, wait! Be careful! You could hurt yourself!” as she took to the fresh, frozen plane.
After a few warmup laps at breakneck speeds, she did a few spins before heading into jumps; that was usually how she worked off anger. First, a couple axels, then into toe loops; she nailed a few doubles before she realized she was being watched. She and Neal weren’t the only ones who trained in Storybrooke, but she’d never seen this dark-haired guy here before. Whatever. Let him watch.
She continued on through salchows and flips before working on her loops. After landing a particularly nice one, the stranger began to applaud. She rolled her eyes and huffed.
“Trying to practice here.”
“I see that, love. And doing quite well you are.”
She glanced over at the man, registering the familiar accent and not sure how she didn’t recognize him in the first place: Killian Jones, the poster boy of figure skating. It was said that no one could resist his combination of blue eyes, scruff, and skating skills.
But Emma just gagged. Ugh. He was the last person she wanted to see today.
His lips brush her knuckles without thinking. “I’m right here, love,” he tells her, his voice cracking. “I’ll be with you the whole time, it’s alright to be afraid.”
She looks up at him, her eyes glassy and trusting, and nods […] as her eyes close.
There’s that odd, detached feeling again, like he’s watching this all happen instead of living it. His heart thunders in his ears and he feels cold, so cold. “No,” he whispers, feeling her grip loosen in his hands. “No, no you can’t–you can’t just–”
The black lines spread out across her chest and up her neck and he feels as if he’s drowning. Her hands go limp and he can’t think–he can’t fix this.
It was so much fun working on this absolutely amazing story and in the CSLB. I also got to collaborate with wonderful @delenafantasy , check out her awesome gift set that perfectly captures the feelings of this fic!!!
Jenna! You are killing me with this illustration, and I haven’t even had a chance to read the story yet! AGH!
Happy Birthday, @saraswans !!! This is my little gift for you on your special day. I’d have loved to write you a worthwhile story, but my inspiration decided to take a break today. I’d like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude for your continued support and encouragement, thank you for believing in me, whatever the crazy idea that crosses my mind. You’re the best. I love you 🙂
The Day After Valentine’s Day
Emma Swan and Killian Jones are co-workers and best friends. Well, Killian is Emma’s second favorite person, after her son. It also happens that they have become friends with benefits since a few weeks ago, that is, they share a bed from time to time. But they are not dating, nor celebrate together Valentine’s Day. Nope.
For that reason, when Killian subtly suggests going out to dinner together on Valentine’s Day, Emma goes into walls up mode, because no, they are not dating.
“I’m not going out with you today, Jones. I have responsibilities waiting for me at home.” “I also have responsibilities waiting for me at home, but it’s just a dinner.” “Are you comparing my son to your cat?”
Even so, Emma is not surprised when the next evening Killian shows up at her apartment accompanied by Hook, his cat. That bastard… he knows how to play his cards because the truth is that both she and Henry have a penchant for that little kitten — Maybe Henry and his love for fairy tales have something to do with the name of the animal.
But Killian Jones not only uses his kitten to finish winning her heart, he makes sure that his puppy eyes match his pet’s and he also brings the dessert — of chocolate, of course.
Later that day, when Henry falls asleep on the couch with Hook in his lap after a Netflix session, and when Killian carries him to his bedroom, Emma thinks that maybe, just maybe, it’s not such a bad idea to start dating with your second favorite person.
“What do you say, Swan, could we make this a tradition?” “You bringing me chocolate the day after Valentine’s Day? I wouldn’t say no.” “In addition to that, we join our respective responsibilities and celebrate the day after Valentine’s Day together.”
Emma Swan is forging a devious plan to save the sanity of her best friend, Mary Margaret, or at least to stop her form quoting those stupid swashbuckling pirate tales. The core of her plan is to hunt down and neutralize the internet famous writer, dashingpiratecaptain aka Killian Jones. But soon her ideas go down the drain, because she certainly hasn’t counted on developing feelings for the man whose entire writing career she is about to destroy.
I’m very excited to share the art I created for Niki as part of the Captain Swan Little Bang from @captainswanbigbang!
As you can see from my aesthetics the fic has got a lovely summer vibe, which will hopefully chase away the winter blues for all of you suffering in the bitter cold! Please go show Niki’s fic some love, she worked very hard on it ☺️
(Post will be edited to include links to her fic as soon as it’s live!)
Merry Christmas! YO-HO-HO!! ‘Tis I, your Secret Santa! Thanks for chatting with me the past couple of weeks. I hope you enjoy your gift. I was an absolute pleasure to write it for you!!
Based on the prompt: I just wanted to put
Christmas lights up but I ended up falling off the ladder and crashing into you
while you were delivering a package to my door but oh god you’re hot, AND your
expressed love for the snowed in trope. Enjoy!
Rated: M – for sexy times / ~7600 words / Also available on ao3 and ff.net
beta’d
by the amazing @ilovemesomekillianjones, who also came up with its brilliant title. Thank you!
Emma finished securing the ladder to the side of
her house and began the perilous ascent to the rooftop. These probably weren’t
ideal conditions for hanging outdoor Christmas lights, but this was her only
day off for the next several days, and with a snow storm set to blow in later
that afternoon it was her one chance to get lights up before Christmas actually
came.
And she was gonna get these lights up.
And get the rest of her house decorated.
Before her Christmas tree was delivered.
So she could spend a cozy evening decorating her
first ever Christmas tree, in her first ever house, with the first snowfall of
the season swirling outside the windows that were all her own.
All hers.
Emma Swan had never had much that she could
actually call her own, which made this Christmas in her first house all the
more special. She planned to go all out. Garlands, and wreaths, and fake
candles in the window sills, lights on the outside of the house, and even a
real live Christmas tree.
Yup. It was going to be the best Christmas ever.
If she didn’t kill herself getting the house
lights up first.
In typical Maine fashion they’d had several days
of wet, dreary yuck leading up to the first potential snowfall, so everything
had a coating of moisture that would surely turn icy as the temperature began
to drop throughout the day. Emma meticulously worked to hang the outdoor lights
with as much haste as she could, without sacrificing precision. She’d just
gotten to the last stretch along the front of the house when she heard the
telltale sound of tires on gravel, indicating that someone was pulling up to
her secluded home on the outskirts of town.
As deputy of the small, coastal town of
Storybrooke, Emma got her fill of the citizenry day in and day out, through her
profession; so when the opportunity came to buy a home several miles out of the
way of the hustle and bustle of town, she’d jumped at it. Sure it was a little
inconvenient, but the privacy was exactly what she’d wanted, and the forest
views that surrounded most of her property weren’t too shabby either.
The distance, and slightly sketchy bridge that
spanned the little brook just off the main road, did sometimes make her feel
bad for those who had to trek out to her neck of the woods. Those like the
person currently making their way up her drive with a full and lovely Christmas
tree loaded in the back of a truck that had Jones Tree Farm displayed along its
side.
The same person who, ever since he’d arrived in
town five months prior, turned Emma into a ridiculous swooning cliche of a
woman.
Killian Jones.
The little… er, younger brother of
resident park services manager, Liam Jones.
The hot, seductively sinful, but slightly nerdy,
and totally sweet, (and single) brother of Liam Jones.
Oh, anon. I totally fucked up this prompt and didn’t really fill it properly at all. Singing karaoke in a bar became singing sea shanties in a tavern, and long story short, this turned into a Pirate Emma x Deckhand Hook story. Sorry? 5500 words of Deckhand Hook being deflowered, rated Very Explicit.
“Captain!” came a chorus of drunk voices from the tavern benches as the captain of the Jolly Roger entered the room.
A flagon of ale was pressed into the captain’s gloved hand. With a grateful smile for her crewman, Emma Swan lifted the mug to her lips and drank.
She made the rounds of the room, clapping her fellow pirates on the back, checking that none of their gambling contests were likely to lead to violence, at least for now. There was nothing like having to stop one of your crewmen from stabbing another over a pair of weighted dice to ruin a nice evening. Emma also made a mental inventory of the sex workers who were plying their trade in the tavern’s common room. It was inevitable that not a few of her men would end up spending a pleasurable evening with these women and if they did, Emma would make certain the prostitutes were fairly compensated come morning. The last thing she wanted was for any men under her employ to cheat these women out of their hard-earned coin.
Once she was satisfied that nothing was amiss, she slid onto a bench next to her first mate. The wolf didn’t look up, focusing on the tumble of a pair of dice over the rough-hewn surface of the table. They landed on snake eyes, and Ruby raised her hands in the air, victorious. August, the ship’s navigator, and Broderick, the ship’s boatswain, groaned together at their lost wagers.
“I thought you’d never turn up,” Ruby finally said to her after she’d collected her winnings. “Seeing as how you tend to forget that shore leave is for relaxing.”
“I haven’t forgotten it’s for relaxing, but I heard a rumor and I had to run it down.”
Emma lifted her head, flipped her pillow over, and punched it before flopping her head back onto it. She closed her eyes, counting to fifty. She rolled onto her back, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes hard enough to see spots, groaning in frustration.
There was just no possible way she was going to fall asleep.
Finally, she sat up with a determined frown and swung her feet down onto the cold floor. She reached for the extinguished candle on her bedside table, then thought better of it, leaving it where it was. Emma pulled on her robe and walked over and carefully opened her bedchamber door, listening for the footfalls of a night watchman. Hearing nothing, she slipped out into the passageway.
On the eve of their wedding, Killian had been put in a room in a different wing of the castle, far from Emma’s bedchamber. But after so many years of sneaking down to the kitchen for a midnight snack, it was an easy matter for Emma to avoid the watch’s patrol pattern and make her way to Killian’s bedroom, the location of which she’d made a point of memorizing. Ducking into an alcove and waiting until she was certain she wouldn’t be observed, Emma dashed to the door and carefully opened it, letting herself inside. She locked it behind her.
She heard a fumbling sound, and with her eyes straining in the dim moonlight, she saw Killian’s hand shoot out and knock his candle off the table.
“Who’s there?” he said, his voice raspy with sleep.
“It’s Emma,” she whispered, hurrying over to the bed. “Don’t… raise the alarm or whatever.”
Emma Swan, avid reader of romance novels, appreciates them for their vapid characters and incredibly unrealistic settings. She never imagined that she’d ever stumble into one—or that the man she’d find living alone in a mountain lodge would be the male lead in her own story. (Or how quickly it would escalate—and how okay with that she was.)
4.6k | AO3 | Rated M for Mountain Lodge Lovin’ | for @csjanuaryjoy
Though she was an avid reader, Emma wasn’t one for the literary classics. Those were far too stuffy and time-consuming for her and her life. But romance novels—the kind in the checkout line at the supermarket, covered with pictures of over-muscled hunks draped with busty maidens—those were her guilty pleasure, and she hated that she loved them.
Maybe it was the vapid characters that she never got attached to, or the fantastical love scenes that were physically impossible but still arousing, but there was just something so wonderfully fake and cheesy about them that made it the perfect escape from her simple, solitary life.
And she’d read more than enough of them to know that, like it or not, she’d somehow wandered right into one.
It was her own damn fault for getting lost in the woods, she supposed, but it had been a perfect, crisp fall day and the leaves were the most brilliant red-gold against the blue autumn sky.
Until it grew later, with the color of the sky increasingly matching the color of the leaves, and one wrong step had her twisting her ankle on a knobby root, and she was way too far off the trail to even begin finding it while limping.
The sound of chopping wood made her jump at first, but it wasn’t far away and she was willing to risk whatever lumberjack forest person she would find if it meant not having to spend a night in the elements. She knew how to handle herself, after all, and she just needed a ride to her car.
But when she hobbled to the edge of the clearing, she wasn’t at all prepared for the idyllic sight in front of her—not in reality, at least. There was a picturesque log cabin, a trail of smoke coming out of the chimney and light coming from clear windows giving it a homey character. An older but well-maintained pickup truck sat in the driveway. And next to the house, chopping wood, was who she assumed to be its owner.
He was a lumberjack alright, dressed in a plaid flannel, well-worn jeans, and work boots, but where she was expecting Paul Bunyan or the Brawny man, she got the cover of one of her boudoir fantasies.
Tousled, short-cropped, dark hair framed a face that could only be described as ridiculously pretty: large blue eyes, high cheekbones, full lips, and a sharp jaw covered in gingery scruff looked completely out of place in this setting.
The strain of his back muscles against that blue plaid when he hefted an axe said otherwise, though, and the flex of his bicep was visible even from where she was, yards away. The fit of those jeans only highlighted his assets, and when he stood to take a breather, resting his axe on his shoulder, she got a view of the dark hair dusting his chest via the fair amount of undone buttons on his top.
She’d hit her head when she fell, surely. This had to be a hallucination, because all this scene was missing was the scent of a Mountain Lodge candle.
Summary: Modern AU. Emma arrives in Storybrooke to start anew with her life. What she didn’t expect is to find someone there who she met ten years before, in completely different circumstances.
Ratings: General.
Disclaimer: I don’t own either Once Upon A Time, or its characters (I’d like to, at least some of them, but I don’t).
OK guys, this is the end of this journey. I still can’t believe it’s done. And I can’t take all the credits. This story is out here also thanks to my wonderful beta reader @laschatzi. Sandra, thank you again for the patience and for all the time you spent helping me, and thank you for being this amazing person that you are. You deserves all the best, sweetheart!
Yeah, I know, writers write for themselves and not for the public, which is in part true. This story had been talking to me for months before I decided to put it into words (and pictures), and I felt the need to externalize it. But without all of you who enjoyed reading it, it wouldn’t have been the same. Through this fic I had the possibility to make new frendships, to get to know and chat with some lovely shipmates, and I think this is the best reward ever! Thank you so much to all of you!
cshappybeginning 