In my FanFiction, “Adrift,” Blackbeard sails into Storybrooke and throws a wicked curse right at our beloved Captain, one that sends him back to undo a critical decision. The ripple effect of the curse alters the timeline and the lives of all those Hook touched – except Emma, whose savior ways have thrown her to his side to help him correct all that went wrong.
Hook, Emma and the others travel again to Neverland, with a Pan who is far darker and more dastardly than his primetime TV counterpart (in fact, several parts of this fic are very dark so I will give definite trigger warnings for the fic overall – this scene is fit for general consumption).
In this chapter, Hook has to battle his self-doubts, aided by Emma, who has an unwavering faith in the man she’s come to know.
Pan’s eyes shifted from Hook to Emma, then back again. “I can see the two of you are going to be quite entertaining.” He smiled widely at Emma. “Nearly as much fun as your parents.” He turned to walk away, then looked back over his shoulder. “Oh, and Emma? Do be sure and ask Hook how he feels about your reunion with Baelfire. After all, he’s going to be transporting the two of you back to Storybrooke for your happily ever after. Perhaps he’ll give you the captain’s cabin. You’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”
He gave her a wicked little smile, then he started whistling a jaunty tune as he walked off into the forest.
Emma took in a deep, shuddering breath. “Well, I guess that answers that question.”
“What question?” Hook asked, his eyes still scanning the forest where Pan made his exit.
“Neal. He’s still alive.”
Hook’s jaw tightened. “It would seem so.”
The silence hung between them, until Emma turned and spoke quietly.
“When we were here before, Pan gave you a choice. He told you Neal was here, thinking you’d keep that secret. He knew it would torture you to betray your friend and he was playing on the fact that we’d just kissed each other for the first time and you’d see Neal as a rival. But you refused to play his game and you refused to leave Neal to rot on this island. You chose Neal.”
“And you want me to choose him again?”
“I don’t need to tell you what to do,” she explained. “You know what you need to do.”
“You’re just reminding me,” he pointed out.
She lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug, and he reached out, twirling a lock of her hair between his fingers.
“Perhaps you should remind me in a more personal way,” he suggested. “If a kiss motivated me last time…”
His hand closed around her neck, pulling her in, and she went easily, her body pliable against his and already reacting with familiarity to feel of him against her. He kissed her gently, breaking it off a little sooner than he’d like.
“There now,” he said, resting his forehead against hers. “Let’s make that a preferred method, shall we?”
Emma gave him a wry smile. “You need to get some rest.”
He leaned in a moment longer, almost as if he were going to kiss her again, and then with a reluctant sigh, he let her go.
“Come on, Swan,” he said, taking a spot on the ground next to the boulder. “You can watch over me.”
She followed him over, sitting down with her back to the boulder again. “You can put your head in my lap, if you want to,” she offered.
He settled his head on her lap, closing his eyes so he wasn’t staring at those glorious breasts of hers and trying very hard not to think about the softness of the thighs beneath him. They were silent for several moments, and his voice was gruff when he spoke.
“We kissed each other for the first time on this blasted island?”
Her stomach muscles tensed on a short laugh. “Yeah.”
“What prompted that?”
She took in a breath, and again he felt her stomach move, and he fought the urge to roll over and press his lips to it.
“You saved my father’s life.”
“Gratitude,” he remarked. “So it wasn’t a kiss of passion, then.”
“I didn’t say that,” Emma replied. “David let us all know what you’d done for him, I thanked you, you started flirting and the next thing I know, I was grabbing you by the lapels and kissing the hell out of you.”
Hook squirmed a bit, as the tightness in the crotch of his leather pants got acutely worse. “So you kissed me.”
“Yep,” she said. “And it was hot.”
“You’ll have to re-enact that for me sometime, love.”
“Deal. Now get some sleep.”
Not bloody likely. His thoughts began drifting, and he tried to reassure himself by piecing together what he could. Neal was alive when they were here before, and she’d still kissed him anyway. Still chosen him anyway. Would she do it again, now that she knew how to prevent Neal’s eventual death? Hell, it may not even happen now that things were so altered.
Would she choose a villainous pirate over the father of her son? A good man?
He rather doubted it. He shifted to his side, mentally berating himself for getting pulled into all of this. He’d been living free and easy on the high seas until she landed in the middle of his damned deck and capsized his life all over again. Damnable woman.
She brought her hand down to stroke through his hair, and he surrendered himself to the tug and slide of her fingers as they moved through the silky strands, and his head relaxed into the softness of her thighs, lulled by the sound of her even breathing. Eventually, he slept.
Emma brushed a lock of hair off his face, thinking he looked almost too beautiful in the moonlight. Like a statue or a painting by a master artist. Like something out of a dream, too impossibly handsome to be reality. She looked down at him, and her voice was the barest whisper.
“Come back to me.”
You can read “Adrift” at Fanfiction.net or Archive of Our Own (AO3)
Britt DeLaney 