Emma & Killian have found their way back to their own time, but finding their home again will prove to be another adventure entirely…
The Tale of a reunited family, an unescapable destiny and the marvels of indoor plumbing.
Thank you to the world’s best beta and most wonderful human ever @elizabeethan❤
♥️♥️♥️
The motor whined in protest as Emma shoved the vacuum across the carpeted landing, annoyed with the confetti they were still finding- how is this possible? Are we producing it?- from the New Years Eve party her mother decided to throw in their new house. Christmas has been a complicated affair, and while he knew a key to surviving it would be to keep Emma content and comfortable on the sofa with her cranberry ginger ale- these are amazing, babe, you need to try one- and the mess contained as much as possible to the kitchen, it hadn’t been a smooth evening, and there had been more than one awkward silence.
“Everytime you vacuum it smells like burning, love.”
“That’s not my fault,” she snarled at the vacuum, malice taking over her face as she banged the poor contraption against the floor, a veiled threat bordering on a meltdown.
Her emotions had been an erratic mess the last few weeks, far more so than they had been at home. He stopped, hand extended to take the vacuum from her grasp, the threat of tears clear on her face. No, he corrected himself, forcing his body to move once more. This was home.
It had been a mantra of theirs since they had moved into the house, entirely unfurnished and so very much like their move to the cottage that they had both cried that first night, overwhelmed with longing and the old-new-wrongness of Storybrooke. It wasn’t the same. But it was home.
“Have you cleaned it?”
“It’s a vacuum, babe, you don’t clean it, you clean withit.”
“That’s a no. So it will be full of your hair again?”
She huffed and stomped down the stairs, and he counted to ten before the refrigerator door opened.
He pulled the plug from the socket at the wall- it’s not a tripping hazard if you know you need to step over it, babe- coiling it quickly and hauling the small machine down the stairs. He had set up a small workshop in their garage, which had come in handy several times already. Henry had sat beside him holding a laptop steady as a video played on repeat- this is YouTube, and it’s awesome- to teach him how to repair whatever it was that had broken.
“There is more of that juice you like in the garage, love,” he pressed a kiss against the top of her head, the smell of her shampoo, something floral and almost right, filling his chest, “I’ll go get it, aye?” She merely nodded, reaching into the fridge and pulling out a jar of fruit preserve- it’s called jam here, or jelly I guess, I don’t know if there is a difference- which she had happily produced from her shopping bag the day before.
The garage was dark, the high ceiling with it’s exposed rafters reminding him of the barns he had spent the last three years working in, but the smell of animals was replaced by stale motor oil and he supposed, hoisting the vacuum up onto the workbench, there was something painfully poetic in that reality.
Emma has asked him, voice quiet against his skin as he read to Hope one night from a brightly coloured book about a rainbow fish, if he thought Soarise noticed she was gone. His voice had caught in his throat and Hope pulled at the pages as he held the book, falling loose in his grasp. He nodded, not knowing which answer was best, but choosing honesty over anything else.
A slip of bright paper floated in the gentle breeze from the half open door, confetti from over a week ago, and he watched it as it settled in the corner, fluttering as if cornered and alive. A pinboard was hung on the wall in front of him, a leftover remnant from the last owner of the house, and he swiped the square of paper, bright blue like the sea, like the dress Emma wore for their wedding, like the bright clever eyes of their child, and pinned it to the cork. It may not have been the most successful of parties, but it had been theirs.
