You never get a second chance to make a first impression… unless you're CS, in which case you get five.

(Seriously, we are so lucky, I'm still not over this.)

killian: firewater

She puts her hands on the table and leans down, quick.

"What are you boys playing?" she asks, voice low and eyes only on him.

He hears himself make a noise. His swallow is rough, and his mouth is falling open, and he doesn't care because she - well.

She's got long blonde hair and a deep scoop of a dress and her smile is confidence itself. She knows what she wants and she knows she is going to get it and Killian's not in the least inclined to disagree. Her eyes gleam with amusement as he unceremoniously tells his companions to scram, and he can't tell in the candlelight if they're blue or green. He wants to know.

He wants to kiss her.

Wants to do far, far more than that, and he's already imbibed a fair bit tonight, that's nothing unusual, but then she circles the table - slow - and her fingertips skim along his jacket, brush behind his neck and trail down his arm as she sits next to him with a wicked grin and a jug of ale.

The firewater burns down his throat, again and again and he wants her name, wants the color of her eyes, wants her lips and skin and sighs against his own, he just wants and she's smiling like she knows everything he's thinking. Like she's planned it that way.

Her cheeks are flushed red and her fingers on his hook and he's impatient for her in a way that's definitely out of the ordinary. But then, this woman is far from ordinary.

This woman, his ship in the night, she's the furthest thing from ordinary, and he's too drunk now for the thought to alarm, but it lingers: he doesn't want to pass her by.

-xxx-

emma: chance

She sees him first.

Aurora and Mulan are the ones who get there first, and so they're the ones who pull the body off his back, and Snow is the one to soothe him when he begs for help. He breathes out his thanks, and looks between them all, fast.

"Thank you," he says again, this time barely a whisper. It's aimed directly at Emma.

And she thinks: liar.

It makes sense to be suspicious; she probably would be regardless. One man surviving Cora's massacre, waking just as they walk past… it's far too convenient. But it's more than that, too, because when he saw Emma he stopped for a second, like he'd found what he was searching for.

He's wearing those rings she just can't reconcile with 'blacksmith', that edge of a sob in his voice is a little too obvious, and more than anything, the look in his eyes…

"I'm telling you the truth," he lies, solemn and low.

Emma smiles. She thinks, good. Maybe it's wrong but she thinks this could be a chance. Cora's spy has to be more useful than a traumatized survivor would be, and while she wouldn't have any idea what to do with the latter…

Pulling the knife on him is easy. She'll be brutal, and cold if that'll help her get back to Henry, and she is entirely willing to leave him for the ogres because shesaw that look in his eyes and she knows he's not the sort to die loyal.

He's in this for himself, somehow. Emma can use that.

"Good for you!" he shouts as she walks away, that irritating fake fear finally gone. He sounds confident - strained, maybe, but impressed. "You've bested me."

It's the first true thing he's said.

-xxx-

killian: equal

They're taking too long, and he's sweltering under the sun and his heavy cloak and the body stinking above him, so he finally gets fed up and waves his hand around to get their attention. Luckily, it works - seconds later they're all gathered around him, tugging him free and trying to help him up, and he pulls out his best cringing.

He's looking for the Savior.

It's not the first, not in clothing like that, and he's already familiar with Mulan, but the one with short hair and bright garments and assurances that he won't be harmed… maybe. She seems an easy mark, he's thinking, and he thanks her, and then he glances up -

Now there is a Savior.

"Thank you," he tells her. Says it directly to her, so quiet it's almost lost in his throat, because he's too busy taking her in to keep up the act: she stands a little back from the rest, sunlight shining in her long blonde hair and a dubious look on her face. She's wearing red leather, he likes that about her. She's frowning. She's beautiful.

It's difficult to remember to look away.

Doesn't get much easier later, when she stands together with Mulan (warriors both, and the soft touches are on the other side of him, and he can't turn away from Emma long to work their sympathies - she's good) and interrogates him.

She puts her hands on the table and leans in a little, hair swinging before her, and there's an uncomfortable twinge in his memory, a flash of familiarity before it's gone again.

It throws him off-balance. Or maybe it's the quiet, almost gentle way she speaks, those noncommittal statements and just a hint of disgust at the tale he's spinning. Whether it's the cowardice or the fact that she's convinced it's a lie, he can't be sure. Maybe both.

"I'm gonna let you in on a little secret," she leans in close to tell Killian, her voice the softest yet and dangerous: "I'm pretty good at knowing when someone is lying to me."

"I'm telling you the truth," he says, but her smile after - well, it says enough. The Savior isn't biting. If he has any chance of salvaging this, it'll have to be through her companion, the easy mark. So he stays low, curled into himself, weak and quiet and asks about the grandson to ease the mood, tries to speak only to the soft side of the table as he makes his offer.

He's interrupted by a knife to his throat and a Savior hissing in his ear (and a shiver down his spine, something like a grin on his face).

She calls the ogres and walks away, and he can tell she isn't going to stop. She isn't bluffing in the slightest, no mark but an equal and he's… impressed, damn it. She's strong. She's confident, she's determined, she's bloody frustrating but she's smart and he finds himself liking her, finds himself curious.

When she asks for his name, he tells her, "Killian Jones."

-xxx-

emma: familiar

Even after all this time, her first instinct is fear. Whoever is pounding on the door sounds frantic, and Emma sure as hell isn't expecting anyone, so her head goes straight to who might be angry at her for dragging them to court.

But then she tells herself she's being stupid, none of them know where she lives and she hasn't even dealt with anyone dangerous in a while. She tries not to, with Henry. It's probably a mis-delivered package or something.

The man at the door, though -

"Swan," he breathes out, through a smile like he's found everything he could ever want, and it's. Stunning. Not even because he's gorgeous, which he is, but he looks so overjoyed at the sight of her, and she doesn't know what to…

"At last," he says, and starts to just walk right in. That snaps her out of her daze, and she holds him back, asks if she knows him. It's a stupid question - looking at him now, he's striking, for his looks alone, and then there's the black leather getup and the accent, there's no way she has met this man and forgotten about him. No way she has ever given him her address, and she should be a hell of a lot more worried about that but she keeps getting stuck on the way he smiled when she opened the door.

But then he starts talking about her family, the sorest of subjects, and he believes every word he's saying, and he - he calls himself an old friend, and it has to be a lie, she doesn't have any of those, certainly none like this, but somehow…

"I know you can't remember me, but," he says with a tremble in his voice, and there's something about it that's almost - "I can make you."

He surges forward, tugs her into a kiss; and for a second, that almost becomes something more, something certain.

She reacts fast, knees him and shoves him back, and that should be it but she feels breathless.

"What the hell are you doing?" Emma gasps, clinging to the door for support and trying not to outright panic at the flash of - that vivid moment of familiarity, of wanting and longing and finally - she doesn't know what the hell is going on.

It's fading already.

She threatens him and slams the door and, and goes back to breakfast like nothing just happened. Tells herself nothing did, it was just some random crazy pervert and she knows how to deal with those.

But she can't shake it, keeps thinking about it through breakfast and looks for him when they leave the house, turns it over in her mind on the way to work, she can'tstop.

Nothing about him read 'pervert', and Emma's usually pretty good at telling. The words out of his mouth were insane and he wasn't lying so he had to be crazy, but he didn't feel crazy. He felt… he really did feel familiar, despite all logic, and it freaks Emma out.

He looked at her like she was everything, and some part of her still wants to hear his story out.

If she sees him again, she's definitely going to get him arrested.

-xxx-

killian: hero

She slams right into him, and - he's done for.

Killian already knows he's lost all sense, ever since that meeting that boy, brave and determined and dragging him after, but… She's warm in his arms, and beaming, open-mouthed, her hands on his chest, her…

He can't think, and it takes an embarrassing few seconds to even realize Henry is introducing them. He has to pull his head back and clear his throat and try to drag his thoughts away from simply leaning in -

"Yeah, um." His breath escapes him in a giddy almost-laugh, he's completely - "Pleasure."

He holds out his hand; she places hers into it and his breath stops when their hands touch, he doesn't want to let go, can't move away.

"Yeah, right. Look, we need to… get going," she says, finally pulls herself away, her eyes leaving his last of all before she starts to dash down the corridor. "We've got a wedding to stop!"

Killian turns after her, helpless with his hand still held up in the air. He's still having trouble thinking.

They defeat a dragon together not ten minutes later, and he's already devoted. He's already thrown away what little life he had before, but he wouldn't turn back if he could, because this woman and her boy, they believe in him. He isn't worthy of it but they trust him and the way she smiles makes his heart race, makes him hope - he can't really believe it, he's a stumbling, stuttering mess. And she is so much more, strong and beautiful and good, a hero and he's just a deckhand, but…

"I sense that we, uh, we may be close."

"Very," she says, pressed all against him, and Killian is already willing to devote his life to Emma's cause. To Emma herself.

He wants her to succeed, for Henry to get back to his home and Emma to save her family, and he wants to be whatever he was in that reality that brought him close to them, that they believe in. He wants to be a hero to match her.

He wants to be that close again.