Emma Swan went to Britain looking for family. It should have been a Hallmark movie, a Christmas miracle waiting to happen. Instead she’s stuck in a grimy London ‘flat’, with the worst next door neighbor in the world.
Well, maybe not the worst.
Ok, here it is! My contribution to the @captainswanbigbang ‘s little bang! Thank you so much to all the mods for organising it and for all your hard work. Specifically I owe a blood debt to @phiralovesloki for being an awesome beta, my heart on a platter to @katie-dub and @killiancygnus for cheerleading and, of course, a million thank yous to my incredibly talented and lovely artist @shady-swan-jones who sent me a prompt a year ago and had to wait a reaaaaally long time to see it come to fruition in a way she almost certainly didn’t expect! The fact that we were paired together makes me grin like a loon Sophie, I hope I did you proud.
As well as the beautiful banner, @shady-swan-jones has also created X this gorgeous artwork for the first half and this X beautiful spoilery piece too! I am a spoilt writer.
Thanks for the title Death Cab. And the tears.
Wordcount: 14999 (yep, that close!)
Rating: M
Other Pairings: Snowing, Outlaw Queen
Warnings: Excessive drinking, swearing, sexual situations.
Emma Swan has never really been one for romantic comedies. They aren’t made for the likes of her – a woman described as prickly by her friends and rather less flatteringly by the vanishingly few dates she’s had over the years. No, romantic comedies are really more Mary Margaret’s thing, full of hope and joy and promises that things will get better if you believe in yourself, Emma.
(She believes in herself just fine, as it happens. It’s other people she struggles with.)
It makes sense, then, that her vague memories of watching one such movie years ago are of being curled up under a blanket on Mary Margaret’s college futon, her attention carefully focused on the television and not on the way David’s hands roamed over Mary Margaret’s knee. Public displays of affection were even less appealing to her than some stupid movie’s ideas about the perfection of true love, and that’s why she remembers most of it even now. There were lobsters, for sure, and something about pornography that made Mary Margaret gasp. (She hopes that was the reason. Maybe her memory blanked that part out.)
And at the end, a beautiful airport reunion that made David sniff surreptitiously against Mary Margaret’s shoulder.
Her experience of London’s Heathrow is nothing like that.
She arrives on a miserable foggy November night, clutching her single case and blinking grit from her eyes in the overly bright arrivals hall.
She steps through the late night crowd waiting for loved ones and out into the darkness, struggling to read her new address from the back of an aircraft napkin in the dim glow of an orange street light.
(Peckham. Mary Margaret had said, a little furrow between her brows even as she tried to smile. Sounds fancy.
If you’re a chicken, maybe. David had muttered, pulling Emma against his side. Do you have to go?)
It All Starts With a Dance 