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"Lad, repeat after me: Killian. Kil-li-an."
Her little brother looked at them, grinning. "Killy."
Killian huffed, his eyebrows drawing together. He leaned back into his seat at the booth.
Next to Emma, Snow and David laughed. "He thinks it's funny when you make that face. That's why he won't say it right," her father explained.
Killian sighed, steadying Neal in his lap. The baby reached for his face, rubbing his chubby little hands over his beard.
"It doesn't mean he doesn't like you, you know," Emma said to him, voice low. Her husband looked back at her.
"I know," he answered, trying to gently stop Neal from squishing his face, "but it still smarts. He says everyone else's name correctly."
"Mama and Dada are easy to say and so is Emma. And it's not everyone's. He calls Regina Gigi, remember?" Snow comforted him, grinning at the last part.
"Yes, don't be sad now, Killy."
"Call me that again and wake up on the bottom of the ocean tomorrow," Killian told David, glaring. They looked at him, sitting there with a baby in his lap that had now started to pull on his hair. Emma saw her mother biting her lip, struggling and failing to hide a grin.
Wincing, Killian reached up to extract the tiny hand from his hair. Neal stared at him, tears gathering in his eyes.
"Oh, no, no, no."
Killian scrambled to calm him.
"Don't cry, please. I'm sorry," he hushed him, starting to rock his legs up and down. Snow leaned forward in her seat, ready to take her son back, but relaxed back into it when the baby stopped fussing, instead busying himself with the rings on Killian's hand.
They dropped the name conversation, turning to talk about their days instead.
As time passed, Emma watched as her little brother slowly but surely started to droop over; Killian was still rocking his legs and with every up and down, Neal sagged further against his chest. One little hand was curled into Killian's vest, the other was stuck in his mouth. His neck was at an angle that looked very uncomfortable. Killian pulled him fully into his arms, the baby's head now supported in the crook of his neck.
He looked down, stroking over her brother's fuzzy hair once, before he returned his attention to the story David was telling about an escaped cow.
It wasn't unusual anymore, for him to hold her brother. It had been, only a few months ago, but that had changed the day her mother had forcefully shoved Neal into his arms.
("You've never held a baby before?" her Snow had asked him, astonished.
"I have, but the last time I did I still had two hands."
"But that was so long ago!"
"You'd be surprised how few mothers are eager to hand their child to a one-handed pirate," he'd joked.
"Here, take him."
"I'm fine, thank you. Never was much good with babies, even with two hands."
"Killian. Take him. Now."
He'd taken him.)
Emma on the other hand had been no stranger to holding babies from a young age. Some of the foster homes she'd been in, the ones with about a thousand kids in them, had had the older kids help take care of the younger ones. She'd never really minded that much, as a child.
Babies only cried and screamed because they needed something, not because they hated you. Not because you were a little pest in their eyes, an easy way to make a few hundred bucks. Or because they were drunk and angry and you were there.
She didn't really remember the first time she'd held a baby, but she'd never forgotten how it felt when a baby fell asleep in your arms. Their comforting weight and warmth, that sweet smell of powder and mild soap, that feeling that that small human trusted you to protect them, their tiny hand tangled in your shirt.
She'd clung onto those memories for days after Henry had been born. Had wondered if it would feel different when it was your own baby. If he'd have known it was her, calmed easily when she'd have held him.
From then on, she'd steered clear of babies.
Once, when she'd dropped a perp off at the nearest police station, a woman had asked her to hold her baby. They'd both been waiting, Emma for the officer to come back from booking her perp. The mother had been trying to fill out a stack of paperwork, but the baby had kept on grabbing it. They'd talked a bit before, enough to for Emma to know that the woman was there for her boyfriend, who was a bit of a crook. She'd tried to refuse, but ended up with the baby in her arms anyway, the tale hitting a bit too close to home.
She'd handed the baby back as soon as the officer had come back and sprinted out of the station, a gnawing ache in her chest.
By now, Emma didn't have the urge to give babies a wide berth anymore. She babysat her brother, held Gideon when Belle was eating with them. Smiled at Alexandra when she met Thomas at the grocery store or Ashley on the street. (She didn't even mind Aurora's son, little Philip, who'd had no less than eight tantrums out of the handful of times she'd seen him.)
She didn't know what had caused the change, if she was honest.
She would have said it was meeting Henry, but as much as seeing Ashley with her newborn in the hospital, blonde and a teenager and so desperately in love with her baby, had felt cathartic, it had also left her with a bitter taste in her mouth.
And jeez, the time after her brother had been born hadn't been the easiest, either. But that had been about her parents and herself, really, not him.
Emma, somewhere along the line, had lost her apprehension about babies, until she had caught herself smiling at Killian entertaining Alexandra at Granny's. That had been different, the ache in her chest had changing from I gave away my baby to I'll never have another one. Or more, I'll never even have the choice of having another one. Safe to say, she vastly preferred baby Gideon to his screwed-up adult version.
"Emma?"
She turned her head towards Killian. "Yeah?"
"Are you okay?" He looked worried.
She smiled. "Just zoned out for a bit."
She nodded to his chest. "Someone's drooling on you."
Killian didn't look down, instead raising his eyebrows at her, teasing. "Well, you're the expert."
She kind of was. She had the habit of falling asleep with her head on his shoulder, mouth wide open. It had embarrassed her in the beginning of their relationship, but she was fine with it now. What she didn't need was hearing it in front of her parents, who by now had stopped their own conversation to listen to theirs, amused smiles in place.
"You snore." He didn't.
"I do not," Killian said, affronted, but very confident in the fact.
The truth was, he didn't do anything really gross or loud while he slept. But he had the tendency to cling to her in his sleep. Most often, he spooned her from behind or pulled her half over him when he was on his back.
Somehow, they also ended up pressed together when he had his back to her. She figured that he had to migrate backwards in his sleep, because then they always woke up on her side of the bed, her face pressed between his shoulder blades.
The thing was, she liked it most of the time. In spring, winter, fall, it was nice to wake up entangled with him. In summer, it was awful. She didn't know why, but Killian's body radiated warmth like it was trying to cut their heating bill in half. Which meant she'd wake up swimming in sweat, while he slept on, perfectly dry and serene in the three thousand degree heat.
How did you tease someone about that? 'When we cuddle, I wake up really sweaty'?
"Snow snores," her father threw in the round, relieving Emma of finding something to embarrass Killian with.
"David!" Her face was bright red.
"Only since she was pregnant with Neal," David added, as if that somehow made it better for his wife.
"Good thing," Killian commented, "Imagine if that had been in the storybook. 'And the prince drew nearer, leaning over the beautiful Snow White, whose snores shook the trees around them.'"
Snow slapped both her hands over her eyes. Emma laughed.
"It's kind of weird. Why didn't it start when you were pregnant with me?" Emma wondered.
Her mother shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe because I was a bit older? Being pregnant is weird, anyway."
Then she grinned. "You know, you could do an experiment. Find out if you start snoring, too, when you have another baby," she suggested, eyes twinkling at Emma and Killian.
"Mom!" Emma protested, while Killian made a weirdly strangled noise in the back of his throat. "God."
"Relax. I didn't say now. But I like the idea of having more grandchildren to spoil. And it's gonna be ages until Neal is giving me some."
The choice of words didn't really sit well with Emma, seeing as Neal had given her a grandchild. Just not the Neal drooling on Killian's shoulder.
David looked torn and she imagined he was probably struggling to approve of more grandchildren, when that meant he'd have physical proof that she and Killian had sex.
"We've not even been married for a year," Killian said weakly.
Emma turned to him. "That's your problem with that?"
Killian had never even mentioned having kids in passing. Emma looked him over. He seemed a bit shell-shocked, but he colored under her examination.
Finally, he shrugged, slowly and carefully, conscious of the sleeping baby in his arms.
Were the really having that conversation for the first time in front of her parents?
He glanced at her, then quickly avoided her eyes. "Would it be the worst thing?"
Emma remembered. Hoping, as an eight-year-old, that the baby she was holding found a home. The agony of giving Henry up. The look on Ashley's face when she told her Alexandra was hers. Her mother, reunited with her newborn, crying tears of joy.
And she looked at Killian, who'd been alone for so long, like her, who was now self-consciously busying himself with her brother. The expression on his face was unlike him, almost shy, and she recognized it from her childhood, other foster kids. Hoping, but preparing for disappointment.
"It wouldn't. I mean, not now, but..." Emma trailed off.
Killian looked up, staring at her with wide eyes. She smiled at him, feeling a bit faint, clenching and unclenching her fists. He smiled back at her, the soft smile he usually only gave her in private, and she only noticed they'd been gawking at each other like idiots when David cleared his throat.
Her mother elbowed him and he rubbed his side, wincing.
"So. Wanna get the check?" Snow asked, beaming.