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*
It’s the fog’s fault, Emma decides rather emphatically.
The damn stuff is everywhere, whenever she walks outside or in the woods. Even after the sunniest days in Storybrooke, come night the fog will settle over the town almost as a shield against prying eyes. It’s thick and damp and settles in her bones, and now it lingers in her chest with a wet cough and a rattling of her ribs. She wakes up one morning all but coughing her lungs into her hands, and decides that the fairy tales and Henry’s theories can take a break, and settles into the couch for a day of soap operas and soup.
Mary Margaret, who has grown more determined to find out the truth behind John Doe since his wife’s miraculous return, sets her up with blankets and pillows. “I’m sorry. I’m a little at a loss,” Mary says, standing over Emma with her arms across her chest. Her mouth is set, a fierce sort of resolve in her gaze that Emma can’t help but admire. “People never get sick, really. So I don’t know what else to give you.”
“I’ve got soup, I’ve got tissues, I’ve got hot toddies. I’m just fine,” Emma mumbles from her corner of the couch, squinting in the grayish morning light. The whiskey-soaked tea is smooth on her ravaged throat. She thinks she might do less tea, more whiskey as the day goes on. “People never get sick?” she asks as an afterthought.
Mary shrugs, smoothing her hands across her cardigan. “Not little stuff like this. Maybe we’re all just used to the weather.”
Emma snorts. “Yeah. Okay,” she mutters, sipping at her mug. Weird fucking town, she thinks.
Mary leaves her soon after, for school and an afternoon at the hospital with John Doe/David/Prince Charming/whoever. Emma sleeps through Live with Regis and Kelly and The View. She eats soup, has another hot toddy (more toddy than tea, really), and falls asleep once more. It’s slow and drowsy, and she hasn’t let herself have a day like this since – since she can’t remember when. Her life is usually pressed-forward, heels on the pavement and her eyes turned to the next job, the next target, the next paycheck. Now she spends her days with a boy she can barely fathom, exploring a past too fantastical to believe.
And then, at night, she dreams of wolves, and woods quiet dark and deep. The smell of smoky winter lingers in her nose. She doesn’t know what it means, but when she wakes she thinks of the end pages burned long ago in the doctor’s office, and a huntsman with a heart.
A hand settles at her shoulders, startling her awake in the middle of the afternoon. On reflex, her fingers streak out from underneath the blanket and wrap like irons around a broad warm wrist. Her bleary gaze meets Sheriff Graham’s, and she lets out a slow breath.
“Jesus Christ, don’t you knock?” she mutters, releasing his wrist. It’s still a gray day; it sits heavily in her chest.
“I did,” he says after a moment. He pushes aside empty mugs and a soup bowl and crumpled tissues to sit opposite her on the edge of the coffee table. The television bleats softly in the background. The shadows of the afternoon linger at the sharp planes of his face.
She sits up and tucks the blanket around her shoulders more tightly, passing a hand through the tangled waves of her hair. “What are you doing here?” she asks tiredly. Her fingers itch to reach for the lukewarm half-full mug near his hip.
“Henry stopped by the station after school. He asked me to check on you,” Graham says, eyes dark and serious on her.
Something low and warm hums in her stomach, a flush starting at her collarbones. It’s the whiskey, she’s sure. “I’m fine. It’s just a cold. Why didn’t he come himself?”
“His mother is taking him out for dinner, I believe.”
“Ah,” she says shortly, plucking at the fuzz on her blanket. “Well. I’m fine.”
“I can see that,” he drawls.
“Look, either be helpful and make me a toddy, or go back to sleuthing and arresting innocent women, or whatever it is you do in this crazy town,” she mutters.
Clapping his hands on his knees, he rises. “Even in illness, you are charming,” he says dryly before moving away.
She shuts her eyes and curls back into the corner of the couch, waiting for the click of the front door on his way out.
It never comes.
Five minutes later, she feels a hand on her hair, fingers carding through the thick strands. She opens her eyes and finds him sitting opposite her once more, his free hand holding a steaming mug near her nose.
“Here,” he murmurs as he guides her fingers around the mug.
She sips, teeth resting at the mug’s rim. He tucks the blankets around her arms and shoulders, eyes focused on her face. “Thanks,” she says after a moment.
Silence settles between them, heavy in the dying afternoon. Loose-limbed and drowsy from sleep and tea-laced whiskey, she finds herself missing the weight of his fingers in her hair. His hands linger at her arms, gentle and easy.
“You’re very quiet like this,” he says after a moment.
“Don’t get used to it,” she retorts.
He laughs. It’s a nice sound, warm and soft. She wants to stop finding things to like about him. It makes it too easy to get comfortable, to want to stay in this bizarre little place. “I don’t think it’s possible to get used to you.”
A flush crawls up her throat. She looks down into the murky depths of her toddy, steam catching at her eyes. His hands move from her shoulders to her hair, smoothing it back from her face and tucking it behind her ears. His fingers are callused on her skin; they linger near her temple.
“I need to sleep,” she mumbles, pushing her mug at him. He takes it, and she curls back into the cushions, shutting her eyes.
She can hear him breathe in, and then there is a light press of his mouth to her brow, just across the barest inch of skin. The smell of woods and leaves and something spicy settles in her nose.
“Feel better, Emma,” he says against her skin before he’s gone. She can hear the fall of his boots against the wood floor, the faint click of the front door. Oddly, she misses him once he’s gone.
*