#thank you ao3 people for working on the outage i love you forever

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ao3 going down right as i’m about to get into bed after a really busy day is my personal 9/11

[let-it-raines]

Halloween One-Shot

Summary: Discovering you have magic in a world where it doesn’t exist is scary enough. Having yourself exposed as some kind of magical being because onion rings are falling from the sky might be even worse. 

Rating: Somewhere between teen and mature 

Tag list: @kmomof4 @resident-of-storybrooke @wellhellotragic @onceuponaprincessworld @jennjenn615 @ekr032-blog-blog @bmbbcs4evr @branlovesouat @mayquita @nikkiemms @teamhook @cs-forlife

Also found on ao3 | here |

Happy Halloween (almost) everybody! I’ve never been one for things that go bump in the night and stories that have me hiding under the blankets shaking in my boots, but I am one for some Halloween fun and some Halloween puns. So I hope you enjoy this magical little tale that was so very fun to write. 

-/-

The Harry Potter stories have been banned from hundreds of libraries across the world for various reasons, most commonly because people believe that if impressionable children read these stories, they’ll believe in witchcraft. It’s a funny thing, though. Since when did believing in something make it come true?

Emma Swan always believed that she’d be adopted. She never was.

Emma Swan always believed that she’d find a family. She never did.

Emma Swan always believed that she’d find a place where she belonged. She didn’t.

But here’s the thing. Emma Swan believed in a lot of things, but it’s the one thing she never believed would happen to her that ended up happening. Well, two things, but she doesn’t know about that second thing yet.

She was five the first time signs of her magic showed up, but she didn’t know what was happening, didn’t even believe magic was real as most kids do at the age, already jaded against the world. It was a blustery night, the winds howling outside as the rain beat against the roof, water dripping through the ceiling into buckets her foster home had the children put out to keep the floor from being ruined. The entire night her stomach felt like spiders were crawling around inside, and she couldn’t shake the nerves arising in her. It wasn’t that she was scared of storms. She really wasn’t. This was all going to be fine. But then a tree branch got loose and crashed through the window, the glass spraying across the room and a large shard landing on her leg, cutting a slash open and causing a scream to emanate from Emma.

She still has the scar, pale against her thigh.

She’d screamed and then all of the lights had gone off, the formally dull gray house now completely black. She remembers her foster father, so harsh and abrasive, yelling at her for getting cut because she needed stitches and that would cost them time and money. She still remembers the sting of the tears in her eyes as she tried to act like everything was okay. It wasn’t.

The power outage had nothing to do with the storm outside.

Emma doesn’t remember any other instances of her magic showing up, though she’s sure there were quite a few, until she was seventeen. She’d been dating this guy, Neal. He was older, a bit mysterious, and as someone who had never had someone of her own, someone to love her, she was desperatefor him to be the one to love her. And maybe he did at one point, but she’ll never really know. She never wants to know, if she’s honest with herself.

He…well, he was harsh with her, not liking when she didn’t listen to him or when she told him she couldn’t hang out because she had to go to school. It wasn’t that she felt a particular fondness for school, but her foster mom at the time kept track of her attendance and Emma wasn’t interested in finding out what would happen if she skipped out on a day. So one day after a few months of dating, he snapped. She told him she couldn’t see him that day, and he showed up at her school, grabbing her arm and pulling her away to his beat-up Chevy.

She was in no way weak, but he was bigger, stronger, and he had no problem getting her to move. She just didn’t want to move with him, so she closed her eyes and willed him to let her go and to go away. When she opened her eyes, she was no longer in the schoolyard but in her bedroom, the flowery comforter at her fingertips and her backpack on the floor.

There was…well, there was no denying anything after that.

Something was different about Emma.

Something was different and that something was that she had fucking magic.

Holy crap. She’s basically Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Where the hell is her sarcastic talking cat? She totally wants a Salem of her own.

She quickly shook that thought out of her head because magic wasn’t real. That was something that was just in books and movies, folklore and mythological tales. It wasn’t something that happened to a girl living in Boston, Massachusetts. That’s just damn crazy.

Maybe Emma was damn crazy.

(Of course, Boston is close to Salem…and not the talking cat Salem.)

She wasn’t crazy. She just had this apparently real magic, and what the hell was she supposed to do about that? Who could she tell about that? Was there anyone to even tell about that? Is there a coven of witches or warlocks or wizards to talk to? Maybe even a genie? Hell, could she get a fairy godmother?

There was probably no such thing.

Bippity. Boppity. Boo.

If she told someone, she’d be put into a mental institution for sure.

Emma didn’t know the answer to any of these questions, and she didn’t make an effort to find someone to talk to. It was…too much. It was too much to try to find someone to help her. She’d been alone her entire life, figured everything out on her own, so why wouldn’t she be able to do that now?

So that’s the spark notes version of how she’s ended up here, a twenty-eight-year-old cop who lives a normal life with absolutely nothing weird happening…until she goes home and turns on and off the lights with the flick of her finger or turns on the coffee pot while she’s still in bed.

She’s a witch (or some other magical being she can never really land on one), and she uses her magic to help her be lazy.

She’s crushing it.

The one thing she hasn’t figured out how to do is instantaneously blow dry her hair, and that’s honestly the biggest tragedy of all. That takes forever, and it’s like if she can transport herself from one place to another, why the hell can she not blow dry her hair?

She likes to think that she’s pretty normal despite her oddities. She does own an unusual amount of black, but that’s because black clothes are the best, okay? And she does own her trusty red leather jacket, so it’s not like she’s walking around in drapes and flowing black fabrics with a corset and a wart on her nose. Plus, she doesn’t own anything particularly witch-like. She has a broom, but that’s because she has to clean her apartment. And the closest thing she has to a cauldron is the pot she attempts to cook in. She’s sure she wouldn’t be able to make potions or whatever because she can barely boil water.

Forget double double toil and trouble.

It’s double double boiland trouble.

Also, she had a cat once, Charlie, and he didn’t talk. He just swatted at Emma until she fed him. Maybe it’s because he was orange instead of black. (She totally didn’t name him Charlie because he reminded her of the great pumpkin in Charlie Brown.) Magic probably has these super weird rules or something. She doesn’t know. She just read the Harry Potter books and watched Hocus Pocus.

Maybe she should do a musical number to cast a spell on everyone like Bette Midler.

“Swan,” Killian calls, nudging her foot underneath their desks, “Swan, did you hear the Captain?”

She shakes out of her thoughts, trying to clear her mind of all magical thoughts to look at her desk partner (and patrol partner and partner in literally every little thing she’s had to do at work for the past five years) staring at her with those damned blue eyes that drive her crazy when she’s trying to focus on something important…like the fact that she is thinking about if it’d be too obvious to poof some onion rings to her desk right now.  

Who needs magical rings like the one (to rule them all) from Lord of the Rings when you can have onion rings?

“Uh, no Jones,” she admits when she’s back to herself and willing her stomach not to rumble and her mind not to accidentally cause those onion rings to show up (that happened once in her apartment, and she’s been concerned that she stole them off of someone’s plate ever since), “I didn’t hear.”

“We’ve got patrol tonight.”

“No,” she groans, rolling her head forward and hitting her forehead against her desk. “No, Halloween night is when all the weird shit happens.”

(Weird shit happens at Emma’s house every night, but the “regular” people of Boston have to be Rick James kind of super freaks on Halloween night compared to Emma on every other night.)

Killian begins moving those damn eyebrows while his lips twitch up into a closed-lip smile as he leans over his desk to be closer to her, his face practically an inch away from hers. “Aye, that’s what makes it fun.”

He pulls back to settle back in his chair and thank heavens for that because she couldn’t breathe for a minute there.

“Fun to you, maybe. Last time I had patrol on Halloween I got hit on by six of the seven dwarves.”

He cocks his head to the side, studying her for a moment before his lips turn up even more and expose the white of his teeth contrasted against the black and red of his scruff.

“Why didn’t the seventh?”

“He was passed out.”

“Sleepy, I presume.”

“Sneezy, ironically enough.”

Killian barks out a laugh, and it’s so contagious that she has to laugh a bit, too, hiding her chuckle under her hands before she turns back to her computer screen to see their patrol route for the night. It’s all residential areas, thank goodness.

“You want to drive or shall I?”

“Swan, I’m driving. You almost crashed the cruiser last week.”

“I did not,” she protests, pulling her hair up into a high ponytail before rising from her chair and adjusting her jeans. The best part about her job is they don’t have a uniform besides their badges, so she can wear jeans every day. So can Killian and damn. He may frustrate her most days, but boy (or very mucha man) can the officer fill out his jeans.

Before their patrol even starts, Killian pulls through Blackbird donuts (at least it’s not black cat donuts) and gets them donuts in the shapes of pumpkins, ghosts, and a witch’s hat (she doesn’t own a hat shaped like that, thank you very much). He’s such a kid sometimes, and the ridiculous grin on his face as orange and black icing gets mixed in with his scruff doesn’t help the crush she most definitely does not have on him.

The fact that his coffee cup says Gomez while hers says Morticia makes her smile match his…creepy, kooky, and altogether spooky.

Instead of arresting creeps like she expected, they end up having to shut down a teenager’s party that night, the neighbors calling over the noise, and when the two of them show up, it’s like the fucking red sea, every single teenager running away as fast as they can so that the only person left is the idiotic boy who threw the party while his parents are out of town.

He’s in one of those ridiculous inflatable dinosaur costumes, and after leaving him with a stern warning (come on, Swan, just this one time, a one-time thing for the kids), she and Killian walk out of the house, holding in their laughter until they’re in the cruiser. That’s when they lose it, both of them dissolving into hysterics so much so that tears are coming out of Emma’s eyes from the way the kid had look paralyzed with fear with the head of the costume off, his body still dressed to look like a dinosaur. She laughs so hard that she feels her fingers spark, and when she sees the little green lights, she immediately stuffs them in the pockets to hide her magic from Killian. He is one of the last people who needs to know about her secret. It’s not that she doesn’t trust him. She does…in a work capacity. She just doesn’t want him to know that she’s a freak. He’d probably freak, and then she’d have to find a new job.

She really likes her job.

Maybe the Salem P.D. would take her.

“Oh my God,” she heaves out, trying to catch her breath with her stomach bent over her lap to hide her hands even more, the sparks still flying out of her fingers no matter how much she wills them away. Why won’t they go away? “This is already better than last year. Did you see the kid dressed as a hot dog in the bushes?”

“Aye, that was quite the big wiener. I imagine it doesn’t match what’s under the costume.”

“Jones,” Emma giggles, and wow she really did just giggle, “you can’t say things like that.”

“Would you rather me say it’s nowhere near what I’ve got under – ”

“Killian,” she gasps, sticking her hand out against his chest to keep him from making another bad innuendo, and that’s when she realizes her mistake, the green sparks turning blue as soon as she touches his chest and she can feel Killian’s gasp the moment he sees them.

Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.

That did not just happen. She did not just expose herself because they were kidding around about a kid in a hot dog suit…and how well endowed Killian may be. But then she gets the courage to look over to Killian, her hand still on the center of his chest, the sparks still flying, and when she looks to his face, his eyes are blown wide and his lips are parted as he stares down at her hand like something has shocked him.

She guesses something has. Both figuratively and literally.

“Emma – ”

“Don’t.”

“Emma.” His voice is shaking the slightest bit, and Killian’s voice doesn’t even shake if he’s held up at gunpoint. “What’s happening?”

She doesn’t answer, instead getting out of the car and walking away, trying to poof herself back to the safety of her apartment, but she can’t. It’s not working. Her magic isn’t working besides these damn green sparks. She needs it to work. She needs out, but her mind is working too fast for her to actually be able to concentrate on poofing away.

She feels something rush through her, and she thinks maybe she’ll finally get out of here, but all that happens is that three plates of onion rings land in front of her. If she wasn’t about to have a meltdown (at least she’s not melting like other witches and/or magical beings) that would be damn funny. But she is about to have a meltdown, her legs suddenly falling out from under her as she collapses to the ground in fear of what’s going to happen now that she’s been unmasked.

“Swan,” Killian calls and suddenly he’s sitting on the ground in front of her like he just fucking poofed there, and that’s totally not cool because that’s what she was trying to do, “hey, love. I need you to look at me.”

She can’t look at him. If she doesn’t look, it isn’t real. Her hands are shaking, and she doesn’t know how to make it stop. She just wants everything to stop because forget fictional horror stories. This is a real one, and it’s not going to end when the film runs out.

“Please go away,” she pleads, even though she knows Killian never listens to her, not when he thinks his way is right.

“I’m not going anywhere,” and yep, that’s what she expected, “because you’re sitting in the middle of a residential neighborhood, and the two of us are currently sitting in a clear bubble while onion rings fall down around us. You’re also my partner, and we don’t leave our partners behind, aye?”

She manages to look up, and sure enough, she’s somehow put them in whatever this bubble thing is, and how does she make the falling onion rings stop? What the hell even is her life? She’s got to calm down. That’s the only way. Before she could contain her magic, it always relied on her emotions. She’s got to control herself. She has to.

So she breathes in, and then she breathes out. She doesn’t know what else to do, especially with Killian staring at her the way he is, and how is she going to explain this to him?

The bubble literally pops, splashing the two of them with soap, and all of the onion rings that were falling suddenly hit the floor, covering the street in fried dough and onions. This would be amazing if her life weren’t about to be over because there’s no way Killian can keep his cool like this for too long. It’s just not possible.

Her body is still shivering, especially now that she’s covered in liquid soap and the wind chill has picked up, but at least she’s not doing anything magical right now, her fingers still slightly sparking green…at least they’re green again. She doesn’t know what he hell that blue stuff was.

“Swan,” Killian nudges, cautiously putting his hands on her shoulders, running his fingers up her neck while he encourages her to tear her gaze away from her hands. He’s going to ask what the hell just happened, and she doesn’t know how to answer. “Swan, I’m going to call in Nolan to take over our patrol, and then you and I are going to back to my apartment to get something to eat, okay? And I promise it’s not going to be onion rings…or a hot dog.”

A watery chuckle passes through her lips as Killian helps her stand from the ground, her legs shaky below her because what the hell is even happening right now? She can’t even control her own body right now, so she follows him without even questioning it, somehow trying to figure out how to erase Killian’s memory.

She can’t do that though.

When Killian places his hand on her lower back, fingers ghosting (she idly wonders if ghosts are real, too) over her jacket, she feels her magic running through her veins and before she can even stop it, she’s poofing away in a cloud of blue smoke.

What the hell?

She lands on her bed, her ass hitting hard against the mattress, and she’s going to feel that in the morning. She’s going to feel all of this in the morning. She can’t believe she tried to transport herself that entire damn time and couldn’t do it until she was trying not to do it anymore. She’d calmed down and Killian was talking to her and going to take her back to his apartment and…oh my God, Killian.

He’s got to be freaking out. Yeah, he seemed pretty calm at first, but she literally disappeared in front of his eyes. He was touching her, and she disappeared. She’s got to call him. She doesn’t know what to say because she’s freaking out, too, but she’s got to do something to make sure Killian doesn’t do something stupid like use the precinct computers to google “what do you do when your partner suddenly develops magical abilities?”

Because that won’t raise any red flags or anything.

Except when she reaches for her phone, it’s not there. Not in her jacket or her jeans or even her bra (every girl has done it, no judgment please), and that’s when she’s hit with the realization that it’s in the patrol car. So great, not only does she have someone running around Boston aware that she’s not normal – one could say paranormal – but she also doesn’t have a phone.

She has a bit of a blonde moment worrying about not getting her phone until the next day when she suddenly remembers that if she can transport herself somewhere, she sure as hell can transport a phone. She swears, sometimes people with magic or abilities or whatever are so dumb. It’s like, why didn’t Voldemort (oops, he who shall not be named) just throw baby Harry Potter out a window if he couldn’t kill him with magic?

So she uses all of her focus to imagine her phone, closes her eyes, and wills it to come to her only for Killian Jones himself to land on her kitchen table, shattering the wood as he and the table crash against the floor and holding her phone in his hand.

So it looks like they probably won’t be tabling this discussion until later…but they definitely won’t be having it at the table.

She’s running through explanations in her mind while Killian recovers from the shock of being transported. She’s decided on saying their donuts were spiked with some kind of drug, and even if it’s a crap excuse, she doesn’t have another way to explain why Killian saw what he saw or suddenly got into her apartment. She can’t tell the truth, can she? That would be crazy.

She really should get up and leave this apartment and then never show up to work again, maybe move to Siberia or something. But he’d somehow find her. She just knows it. He always finds who he’s looking for.

“Bloody hell,” he groans as he tries to stand from his spot in the center of the broken table, and she really should go help him. But he’s standing up on his own, brushing off his jeans, and holding her phone out between the two of them before she even gets the chance. “I believe you were most likely looking for this.”

She reaches out to take the phone because that’s the only thing that seems the slightest bit logical in a situation like this, and when the device is back in her hand, she sees the blood running up and down Killian’s forearm.

It’s a good thing she’s not a vampire. Of that she’s sure.

“You’re hurt.”

“Tis nothing but a scratch, love.”

She rolls her eyes before putting her phone in her back pocket and grabbing his arm. It’s bleeding, but not too badly, and like she’s not even in control of her body anymore (has she ever really been?) she leads him to the kitchen sink and begins running water over the cut. He doesn’t speak the entire time, and she really needs him to say something. It’s making her nervous that he’s not saying anything. Maybe he thinks this is all just a lucid dream. She’s really kind of hoping that this is all a lucid dream.

But then he looks at her with those damn blue eyes, so open and understanding, and she knows that this isn’t a dream. This is real.

Yer a wizard, Emma. And Killian knows it.

(Also, she’s suddenly very aware of the fact that she didn’t get her Hogwarts letter when she was eleven. You know, priorities.)

This feels all too terrifying again, and she can feel her magic spiking through her as her breath hitches and something gets lodged in her throat.

God, she hopes it’s not an onion ring.

She may never eat those again.

What a shame.

Killian seems to sense how uncomfortable she is, and honestly she doesn’t know what’s up with him. If Killian suddenly had magic spurting out of his fingers, she’d be freaking the fuck out, especially because she transported him here and oh my gosh, what if he was driving?

“Were you driving?” Emma blurts out, her voice cracking because this is all just bizarre. “Like, did I cause a ten-car pile up that we’re going to have to lie about tomorrow? Oh God, how would we even cover that up? I’m screwed. I’m so fucking screwed.”

She’s going to cry. She just knows it, the pressure of tears filling behind her eyes, and this whole night is a disaster. How did they get here?

“Shh, Swan,” Killian soothes before wrapping his arms around her, and she’s not sure if the wet thing she feels is water or blood and what even is her life? “It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay. I wasn’t driving. I was actually in your parking garage because, well, you disappeared on me, and I needed to know that you were okay.”

She cries for who knows how long, and she can feel the puffiness of her eyes and the headache that comes with crying blooming behind her temple, and when she realizes they’re on the couch instead of in the kitchen, she thinks maybe Killian can transport things too so that’s why he’s not freaking out.

But then she realizes that she’s just a dumbass because they most definitely simply walked in here.

“So,” Killian mumbles once she’s calmed down, “you don’t have to talk to me about what happened tonight. That seems like it’s a bit of a private matter, and I know that you may look at me as just a partner, but I look at you as a friend. And as a friend, I want you to know that I’m here for you. If not tonight, whenever. And if you tell me I didn’t see anything tonight or I didn’t somehow show up in your apartment, well, I guess I’ll just play it up as Halloween special effects, yeah?”

He’s not lying. That’s another one of her things, and probably the reason she became a cop. She can tell when people are lying, and Killian is about as earnest as can be. He dodges a lot of personal questions from others, but he never lies. Not to her.

“You would do that? For me?”

“I think I’d do about anything for you.”

The words hit her harder than they should have, and she has to keep herself from physically flinching at them. Instead she attempts to smile, and when he smiles back at her, it’s like magic…and not the kind she has.

“Besides,” he marvels, leaning back and looking around her living room, “I’ve already decided that this night must be a dream because Emma Swan has gotten me back into her apartment. I never thought I’d see the day.”

“You’re such a flirt.”

“Well, that’s kind of the point, darling.”

She can feel the heat rising to her cheeks, and she’s a hot mess. She’s a certifiable hot mess, and she needs to change the subject. She thinks she’d rather talk about her magic than have Killian stir up her feelings for him by flirting with her.

“Can we…can we, uh, just watch a movie or something?”

So they do. They watch a movie. Killian tries not to make it obvious, but he takes his time finding something on the guide that has nothing to do with magic. And she’s not sure if it’s because he’s freaked out or if he’s trying not to freak himself out further, but either way she appreciates that they spend the night watching classic black and white movies because it keeps her from thinking too much about what has happened today.

She’s always known that he was a good guy, working as a cop to help keep others safe after the death of his brother, but he’s got to be the best man in the world to not even have one question for her about all of this. She wishes she could read minds (she’s tried) because whatever is going on inside of Killian’s must be fascinating.

She starts to zone out around two in the morning, and Killian nudges her head into his lap while he stretches his feet out on her coffee table, the both of them falling asleep as the screen fades to black.

Things go back to normal between the two of them after Halloween…well, as normal as possible. They walked back into work the next day a little disheveled, Killian wearing the same thing as the night before, something that didn’t go unnoticed by their coworkers. So things go back to normal except for the fact that they are office (or precinct) gossip for the entirety of November…not that she isn’t used to that.

But Killian never mentions Halloween again. He goes on like he had before, teasing her, but also staying appropriate for the job. They patrol together, work cases together, and spend their days complaining about paperwork and how they are tired of being stuck at their desks. It is normal, and that’s what is weird. She knows that he promised not to say anything again if she didn’t want to talk about it, but this is taking it to a new level. Talk about willpower to not ask about Emma’s…powers.

There are a few days where she doesn’t show up to work, her bags packed as she gets ready to run, but something keeps holding her back. She finally feels like she has a home here, even if it is just here in her apartment, nothing special about the white walls and practically empty kitchen (and broken table that Killian had most definitely made a “morning wood” joke about). So when she looked over at her packed bags, all of the sentimental items inside of them instead of in their places around the apartment, it felt off, wrong really. This is her home, and Killian hadn’t even hinted at what happened on Halloween. No one has come after her or tried to get her to be a part of some weird study. She hasn’t been arrested. Nothing weird has happened. Killian is simply Killian, and despite her natural instinct not to trust, she trusts him.

But then something changes, and her entire world is flipped upside down.

Killian kisses her. Well, that’s putting it lightly. Killian pushes her up against the brick wall of their favorite bar and devours her as her hands roam his back, little whimpers emanating from the back of her throat as Killian practically growls when her tongue tangles with his.

They haven’t even had anything to drink, but it’s like the unspoken thing between them broke. He’d flirted with her all night, and she’d done the same, not caring that it was inappropriate for work or that he knows her biggest secret. Hell, she’d been the one to hook her finger into the open v of his shirt and pull him away from the billiards table and into a dark corner of the bar. And who pulls someone into a dark corner of a bar with good intentions in mind?

Well, Killian is verygood at kissing, so maybe she did have good intentions.

Just call her Emma the Good Witch.

Killian’s hands have just snaked their way into the pockets of her jeans, grabbing at her ass while hers are resting on his lower back underneath the black of his leather jacket when one of them speaks for the first time since, you know, they started making out.

“Do you?” Killian questions, and she knows if he wasn’t feeling up her ass he’d be scratching behind his ear because he sounds nervous. She understands. She’s nervous, too.

“I do.”

So that’s how they end up back in her apartment for the first time since Halloween, clothes left in a trail from her front door to his bedroom, and she’s probably never going to get use of that bra again from the way Killian ripped it off of her body.

The whole thing is kind of a blur, skin against skin, the slapping over it mixing with moans and grunts and whispered words of both lust and affection. But she knows one thing for sure, when he orgasm hits her, she feels small tingles of pleasure run up through her body like she never has before, and when her eyes manage to open, green and blue fireworks are bursting above the two of them, and right before they all go away, they turn into all of the colors of the rainbow before fading to red and then finally, black.

If her legs weren’t jelly and Killian hadn’t just fucked her brains out, she’d probably be both impressed and concerned by that.

She doesn’t run. She knows that she can’t now. Hell, she doesn’t even have the urge to. She had sex with him because she wanted to, and she will not run away because she doesn’t know what’s going to happen with two of them. Killian has known about her biggest secret for forty-two days now, and he hasn’t told a soul. She doesn’t know how she knows that, but she does. She knows he kept his promise.

“So I think we need to talk,” he whispers against her neck later before releasing her waist and sitting up in bed, the sheets pooling around his hips so that she can see the expanse of dark hair that covers his chest, “because I thought that thing about seeing fireworks after a damn good orgasm was just a myth, but you, Emma Swan, have made that a reality.”

Such. A. Flirt.

They both dissolve into a fit of laughter, and Killian’s laugh is so infectious that she has to pull him down so that she can kiss him again. He tastes like the coke he was drinking at the bar and a little bit like her. He pulls back and returns to his sitting position while she stays reclined on the mattress.

“So are we talking about my skills between the sheets or the elephant in the room?”

“Well, the swan in the room really.” She scrunches her nose and tosses a pillow at him that he catches with incredible ease. Damn the man. “But I’d mostly like to talk about you, Emma. Because I’ve always known you weren’t just a normal girl, but this magic thing is something else.”

She doesn’t know why she’s shocked when he says the word magic, but she is. Mostly she’s just flattered by the words that are rolling off of his tongue because he makes her heart flutter, her toes curl, and her fingers spark.

“Well, aren’t you a charmer?”

“No, love, I think that may be you.”

She feels her cheeks flush, and it has nothing to do with the afterglow of sex. He’s flirting with her while trying to get her to talk about something she’s literally never talked about with anyone…unless you count Charlie, the nonverbal orange cat.

Emma takes a breath before sitting up in bed, too, and when she shivers, Killian hands her the sweater he was wearing at the bar that somehow made it all the way to the bedroom, the warm wool hanging off of her shoulder while she garners up the courage to talk to him.

One.

Two.

Three.

Go.

So she tells him. She tells him everything, the words spewing out like she can’t stop them, and he doesn’t run away. He doesn’t look scared. It’s almost like he’s looking at her with adoration. He doesn’t interrupt, even when she has to take a break to get through a particularly rough part of her childhood or learning about her powers. He just listens. He does hold her hand when things get a little rough, and while she feels the sparks move through her, they don’t shoot out of her hands.

She wonders if he can feel them, too.

She gets through all of it before Killian asks any questions, and he surprisingly doesn’t ask a lot, just simple things like what she can do and what she can’t. She tells him about the blow dryer thing, and he laughs so hard that his entire chest heaves and tears stream from his eyes.

“I have to ask, darling,” he begins when it has to be four in the morning at this point, “when your sparks first appeared on Halloween, they were green. And then when you touched me they turned blue. And then you know,” he motions between the two of them, “when we came together…literally…the colors combined and then changed into such a myriad of colors. Has that – has that ever happened before?”

“No.” She’s twisting her hair between her fingers, and that’s going to be hell to untangle later from the way Killian’s hands have run through it today. “They’ve never been anything but green before. I don’t know why they changed.”

“They’re the color of your eyes, love. Think about it.”

She gets it almost immediately, and she doesn’t know how to feel about this. She makes her fingers spark with her magic, and sure enough they’re green, but when she touches Killian’s forearm, they’re blue…the same blue of his eyes.

Holy shit.

But why the changing of colors after that? Does that…does that mean something?

“I think your magic likes me, love,” Killian smirks, cocky smile on his face like he just got laid.

Well, he did.

“I think I like you.”

She can’t believe she says it, but she does.

“Yeah? I’m a fan of every part of you, my darling little magical being.”

It’s only later that he asks, “If you wiggle your nose, does something happen?”

She scrunches her nose in response to this, and Killian immediately leans forward to kiss it, biting lightly at the skin before falling back against the bed and bringing her with him.

“You have witchcraft in your lips, my love,” Killian whispers to her the next Halloween as they sit on the floor of their apartment eating onion rings and surrounded by a bubble that has nothing to do with Emma’s magic.

[thesorceressyennefer]

Same Page

Pairing: Mike Wheeler/Will Byers Word Count: 1.2k AO3 Link

Will and Mike are always on the same page.

Best Star Wars movie? Empire.

Favorite horror writer? Lovecraft over King, always.

What kind of pizza should the party order? Hawaiian.

(The rest of the party always vetoes that decision though).

Mike and Will just get each other. They always have.

It starts when 5-year-old Mike takes a seat on the swing next to Will, right after asking him to be his friend. Will tells him that swings are his favorite, and then blushes. What if swings are for preschoolers and not grown-up kindergartners? But Mike says they’re his favorite too, and he tells Will how he can’t do the monkey bars, and Will says he can’t either, and then they’re talking about how much they hate tetherball and dodgeball and without speaking they’ve agreed to meet on the swings every recess from then on.

When Will’s dad leaves, he’s reminded again that Mike always understands just what to do. Will bikes over to Mike’s house the morning after his dad left, even though he’s not allowed to go that far without Mom or Jonathan or Dad—no, not Dad, not anymore.

(Not that Lonnie would ever “waste his time” following Will while he bikes somewhere).

Will knocks on the door and doesn’t realize he’s crying until Mike pulls him into a hug and he feels a sob escape his chest as he chokes out, “My dad left. For good this time.” When Mike pulls back from the hug a minute later, Will thinks he made a mistake. He should’ve stayed at Castle Byers; he doesn’t want to talk about his dad right now. But Mike doesn’t ask him about his dad; he asks if Will wants to watch cartoons and eat Reese’s Pieces.

When Mike tells Will they’d go crazy together, Will knows he should’ve told Mike about what’s happening to him earlier. But he thought losing your mind wasn’t like admitting you’re afraid of the dark or that you can never remember how to spell maintenance. Those things were weird, but they were the kind of weird people could understand. But Will should’ve known that even if Mike couldn’t really understand, he was still there, always.

When Mike says asking Will to be his friend was the best thing he’s ever done, Will screams in his head, yes, becoming your friend was the bestbestbestbestbest thing I’ve ever done too. Will swears that if he survives, if he becomes himself again, he’ll tell Mike he feels the same way.

(He doesn’t.)

When Mike sees Will kissing a boy outside the gym one day during junior year, Will feels like the floor has fallen away from him. He might as well be pulled into the Upside Down at that moment because there’s no escaping the fact that this will ruin his life forever. The boy pushes Will away and starts yelling. Will thinks he even calls him a few slurs. Will is so embarrassed that the boy he thought was going to be his boyfriend is saying those things, but he’s not really listening because all he can think about is Mike and how he is about to lose his best friend. But after the boy storms off, Mike just says, “Sorry but that guy seems like a dick. You deserve a better boyfriend than that.”

When Will walks into Mike’s room holding his art school acceptance—Cooper Union in New York City—he worries about Mike being far away. He’s not ready to lose his best friend. Mike hadn’t told Will where he wanted to go to school. When Will shows him the letter, Mike smiles and congratulates him. Then, he pulls out an envelope from a mess of papers on his desk and tosses it at Will who drops it spectacularly. Will picks it up off the floor. It’s a Columbia acceptance. Mike says, “Looks like we’re going to New York together.”

(Will doesn’t see the other acceptances on Mike’s desk: Northwestern, close to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; UCLA, near CalArts; Brown, right next to Rhode Island School of Design.)

The realization that Mike’s friendship is unconditional hits Will at the strangest time: while leaving dirty dishes in the sink. The two of them had promised to wash their dishes the same day they use them—it’s kind of a requirement when you only own two plates and one pot, but Will is running late for his midterm and he throws his dishes in the sink and says to himself, Mike will understand. He stops abruptly at the doorway, thinking about how Mike always understands. Not just about dumb stuff like dishes, but stuff like still wanting his father’s approval or the panic that lodges itself in his throat during a power outage. All the things that make him feel crazy, all the things he thinks no one will understand, Mike always gets it. Will can still hear him saying, “We’ll go crazy together,” so clearly in his head. Will promises that he’ll thank Mike for being the best best friend he could ask for when he gets home.

(But he meets a cute boy and they go out for drinks and Will doesn’t make it home until the next day when Mike has already done his dishes for him.)

When the boy breaks his heart a couple weeks later, Will heads straight for the research lab where Mike interns. Will knows Mike won’t be mad when Will asks him to leave work early and get ice cream with him. Mike doesn’t say they weren’t together long enough for Will to be this upset. He does make fun of the way the boy said “orange.” He doesn’t bug Will for being quieter for the next week or so.

(The fear of losing Mike doesn’t return until spring turns to summer, turns to fall, turns to winter.)

Will and Mike are walking through Central Park on the first Saturday of the year, spotty patches of snow covering the grass. They wander aimlessly drinking hot chocolate (Will) and a triple shot americano (Mike). They toss their empty cups into a trashcan before realizing the bottom has split open somehow and the trash is spilling out. Mike makes a dumb pun (“I guess it’s a trash can’t!”) and without realizing what he’s doing Will pulls Mike down to kiss him. Mike just looks so cute, smiling at his own stupid joke, with his hair stuffed under a beanie and the same kind of dorky sweater he’s been wearing since they were kids. Will’s milliseconds away from reaching Mike’s lips when he asks himself what are you doing?!?! That’s your best friend! That’s Mike! It’s too late now though, so Will barely presses his lips against Mike’s and then pulls back, embarrassed.

(He’s not sure when he fell in love with his best friend, but he thinks maybe a part of him has always loved Mike.)

Will knows this is what will finally ruin their friendship. Mike will finally say “I can put up with interdimensional demonic possession and you being gay and you always biting your nails, but I can’t be your best friend if you’re in love with me.”

(Of course, Will doesn’t need to worry though.)

Mike presses his hand to Will’s cheek and smiles at him before leaning down to give him a real kiss. When Mike pulls back he says, “It’s about time we did that.”

Will has to agree, they’re on the same page there.