lifeinahole27:

Summary: Tweaked from the prompt “I was burning scented candles and fell asleep. You’re my neighbour who bashed the door down when my smoke alarm went off.”

Rating: T+ for some swears and sexual innuendos.

A/N: Sorry for squeezing this in right after the wire of Day 9 but work is a bitch. Thanks @csjanuaryjoy, and thus @lenfaz and @katie-dub for this project. I loved writing this and I hope it gives someone a little light and warmth on a cold January night (in Ohio).

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Emma has found, year after year, that her least favorite month is January. There’s this lull, after the holidays are over, where the cold intensifies, the weather gets worse, and there are no brightly colored lights to make it tolerable. That’s the truth of today, she thinks, as the wind picks up and rattles the screens in her windows. With emphasis, she pulls her hat lower, wraps her scarf tighter, and takes her time pulling on her warmest gloves.

While her favorite neighbor is out there cleaning off her car and starting it for her, she knows she’ll be lucky if the heater in her old, beloved Volkswagen Beetle will work before she gets to the sheriff station. She wouldn’t have left the house at all today, but it works since she also has to stop at the grocery store and maybe the movie rental place before she gets home.

She’s just coming down the stairs when the outside door is nudged open, with Killian bracing himself, presumably to catch his breath or his bearings coming in from the blizzard conditions outside to the warm foyer of the apartment complex. (Her heart skips a beat, just because it’s Killian, and why the hell wouldn’t she have fallen for the charismatic man that’s become her friend and confidant?)

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