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Killian, as part of the group of people on Earth with internet access and in possession of a smartphone, knows this: everybody believes themselves a photographer.
And since the fateful day his friend Jefferson installed Instagram on Killian’s phone and posted one awful, blurry but kind of memorable selfie of their group performing at a bar, which had gotten quite the response and a nice influx of followers, Killian becomes one of those in that category.
For shame.
(Then again: Shame, what shame.)
Through the years he also learns how thanks to the various filters said App offers, anything as ordinary as one’s drunk beer, a half-eaten burger or any rusty piece of junk can pass as art these days.
Not only that, but Jeff had not let the opportunity pass to lecture them on whatever nonsense Professor Archibald had said in one of his classes about how every choice you make says quite a lot more about you than you think. Meaning, the Instagram filter you use is a direct expression of your personality.
(Bullshit, clearly.)
That didn’t stop the group to psychologically profile every filter user on this godforsaken world. At least the beer had helped, he guessed.
Still, his friends’ words ring in his ears as he tries to choose one for the selfie he has just taken at the Millenium Bridge. Normally he wouldn’t bother taking a selfie there, but his followers are pretty demanding, and the day isn’t awful for once, and his hair is looking especially dandy.
Also, there is the chance to make a Millennial joke in the caption instead of the Worthless or Random fact about Architecture he would have added as a P.S. before he had become more popular than he’d have ever imagined on social media.
(...who’s he kidding, he definitely will be adding that P.S. no matter what. He can’t just deprive his followers of the knowledge that the bridge’s alignment is so perfect you can see St. Paul’s Cathedral south façade from across the river framed by the bridge supports.)
(...or how death eaters make the bridge collapse at the opening scene in the sixth Harry Potter movie.)
He tries to remember what Jeff, Victor and Will had said about each of the filters as he tries them on the picture, but it all comes in bits and pieces: Rise is for the lazy ones who just don’t wanna scroll through all the options and it’s nice enough, Valencia for quasi-vampires who will always slight-fade everything, Hefe as the one for blind people who oversaturate their pictures to the point that they can cause permanent damage to whoever stares for too long, or Nashville for ‘the cool guy’ who just won’t bother too much. There are others, of course - Earlybird or That Kind of Person Who Just Wants To Give A 70s Vibe To Everything, Amaro as your emergency filter to make those pics you took last night in a dimly lit pub look passable enough, or Hudson, for those cold-blooded art majors who see everything through a misty and stoic gaze.
The list goes on and on, and yet while he tries one after the other as he rests his elbows on the bridge, his head swims. Hell, he’s even tempted to use a Black and White one at this point, but his ego won’t let him. Too many a girl has raved about the blueness of his eyes to hide them in a lazy BW filter.
...God, he’s such an peacock, no wonder his mates make fun of him.
There’s a soft tap on his shoulder as someone says, “Do you mind if I suggest something?”
He startles, and thanks his lucky stars that his phone doesn't drop to the Thames in his surprise. He had already lost one to water, two years prior, and it hadn’t been funny, but that time it had been his own fault.
This time, though, he would have most definitely blamed whoever had interrupted his Very Awful Issue of Choosing a Filter.
He turns and for a second he’s blinded, and not only by the sun. Or maybe by the sun, yeah, as it hits a head of blond hair, shiny and glowing in front of him. He squints, probably looking like a fool at the girl standing in front of him, who is trying very hard not to laugh. “Oh?”
She steps into his space, and he holds his breath, because holy shit, she’s gorgeous and she’s so close? Her finger hovers over his phone screen, and before he can say anything, she presses the ‘Next’ button, ignoring the filters. She holds his gaze and shrugs at the question in his eyes. “No filter.”
“You think?”
“Yeah. The real thing and all that, that’s what chicks dig, right?” she says, and he outright laughs.
“I don’t know, you tell me.”
She taps her lips for a moment, and the motion brings his eyes to them. They’re slightly chapped, and glistening and reddish, and smell like cherries, and he really, really wants to kiss them. “You’re right, I’m the authority here. I say no filter,” she finally says, and he can’t help his beaming.
“Then no filter it is,” he concludes, and scratches his ear, because he just doesn’t know what to say after that, just that he wants to keep talking to her. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
He’s tempted to offer her his hand, because she’s clearly American and he’s learned the hard way that the usual two kisses greeting thing vs usual hug is a culture clash issue he’ll never master. So he just waves, because he’s lame like that. “I’m Killian.”
And, as adorable as it is, she waves back with a snicker, smiling radiantly, and he’s done for. “Emma.”
(God, that’s the most beautiful name. For the most beautiful girl. Ever.) (He never claimed not to be a sap.)
He shuffles on his feet, and the rare London sun glints on his screen, and he has an idea. He saves the picture, and offers her the phone with a bow. “So what do you say, Emma. Another no filter picture with my impromptu Instagram coach?”
Emma laughs, and he wishes he had recorded it for future reference, but he’s still on the Instagram camera. “Only if you tag me,” she concedes.
“But of course, how could I not.”
“Okay,” she moves around him until she’s to his left, commenting under her breath something about the right light coming this and that way, and wow does this girl know her photography.
Well, he had already established everybody was a photographer these days, so he shouldn’t be surprised, but still, everything about this Emma seems to amaze him, and if she’s either big on Instagram or a professional photographer, then he’ll find it extraordinary, thank you very much.
He does a pretty good job at not pumping his fist in the air when she loops her arm around his waist and cracks her neck up to look at him with big, green eyes, the kind that the damn Hefe filter would turn into some crazy electric radioactive green that he most definitely wouldn’t mind getting blinded over. “You ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.” Standing by the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
He bites his tongue and lets her do the counting as he attempts an affable smile at the camera. “One… two… three.”
(He fails, and grins wider when he hears her giggle as she presses the button.)
“There,” she states proudly, and both of them huddle over the screen to check on the result. He fights back a satisfied sigh when he takes in how perfect she looks draped by his side, with their twin beaming smiles, and how one of her curls has been captured freely blowing over her shoulder. She smiles up at him, ignoring the filter section once again, offering him the phone. “#nofilter right?”
“Okay.” He types the #nofilter and looks back at her, rising an eyebrow. “Your name?”
Her cheeks tint red, and he wants to scream because does she know how damn alluring she is? “You can’t laugh,” she murmurs over her fluffy woolen scarf. He puts a hand over his chest.
“I promise.”
Sighing, she finally says, “It’s @uglyducklingemma” He bites his lip because that’s even more adorable, dammit, and when he stares at her from under his lashes as he types, she waves a hand in dismissal. “Long story.”
“One I hope to hear some day.”
She doesn’t say no, which is a good sign, but she doesn’t say yes either. Instead she busies herself taking out her phone from her purse, types her code and goes to Instagram, giving him a smug smile. “Your turn.”
He smirks. “I guess you’ll have to see once I post them.”
Emma pouts. “Cheeky.”
“So I’ve been told,” he admits, still smirking at her. They stare at each other for a while, still grinning, and it’s like time stops, as cliché as it may sound. He wants to make up whatever it is for her to stay a bit longer with him, or for him to accompany her for a while, or to ask her out for a cup of tea, anything, but she shakes her head, clutching the hem of her coat so she can hide her cold fingers inside the warm cotton.
“Well, it’s been nice to meet you, Killian.”
Swallowing down a defeated sigh, he nods, not quite able to stop a warm smile to curl his lips. “You too, Emma.”
She bites her lip, and before he has time to process it, she’s gripped his arm in a warm squeeze and turns on her feet, ready to go.
It’s the way her hair bounces over her back, the spring in her step that has him calling out, “Wait!”
She stops and whirls back, not looking half as bothered as he’d have expected for someone who wanted to get rid of him, so that’s at least kind of encouraging. He wiggles his fingers in her direction, motioning for her to come back, and she does, shaking her head and hiding a grin. “Yeah?”
He gulps. “One more?” At her eyeroll, he pouts, giving her the most charming smile he can muster. “For the likes?”
She makes a show of thinking about it, crossing her arms over her chest and giving him a mock-glare he can’t stop taking in because God, she’s perfect, until she finally relents, taking the phone from him and positioning herself at her side again. “Just for the likes.”
He almost does a happy dance, but quickly recovers, and leans as casually as he can against the metal bridge, and adds, “We should do something truly shocking for the likes.”
She pauses as she fiddles with his phone, and just when he thinks he’s crossed a line, she slowly twists until she's facing him. He gulps again, because the look she’s giving him is… well. He’s been with a lot of girls, and he knows a thing or two about body language and taking a hint when a lass is not interested, and, yeah. By the way she’s staring at him, her lip-biting and how she’s stepped closer to him, or how her voice drops as she asks “Anything in mind?”, he’d say that he’s not mistaken in thinking his idea is a Very Good Idea Indeed.
He nods, and takes a step forward, closing the distance between them and putting a hand on her back. “Follow my lead?”
She considers him for a second and then nods back, sending him a soft grin. “Sure.”
He thinks she shivers as his arm comes around her, but he has no time to dwell on it because that's when her free hand goes to the back of his neck, pulling him the rest of the way, and their lips brush. It’s tentative, and sweet, and good, and his other hand goes to cradle her cheek, brushing his thumb over her chin as softly as a whisper. He hears the camera click, and panic swells inside him because that means the kiss is close to ending if not already done, but he needn’t had worried. His mouth opens in response and surprise as she presses her lips more ardently against his, soft and warm, and his heart pounds in his chest as fiercely as he hadn’t even known it was capable of.
Her hand keeps stroking his neck, and then her head tilts and without a pause he starts dropping softer, shorter kisses everywhere he can reach: under her ear, her jaw, her cheek, and finally, over the tip of her nose. He’s so caught up in leaving her thoroughly kissed that he misses a litany of clicks in his wake, until the one he hears after the last kiss he’s left on her nose, and he looks down at her, grinning like a fool as she stares back at him with mischief in her eyes.
The hand he has behind her back plays with the tips of her hair, and he fights back a groan, tamping down the urge to pull at it to kiss her again.
But he knows that it wouldn’t be just a kiss, not anymore, but maybe the beginning of something else.
He pulls back, and they stare at each other. She drops her forehead agaisnt his cheek - blessed height difference - and whispers against his neck, “For the likes, right?”
He grins, dropping a last kiss on her hair and filing away in his brain how it smells of coconut and tangerines. “For the likes.”
She pulls away, gingerly pulling her hair away from her face. She gives him back his phone as an afterthought, and he has to smother a laugh as he spies how there are at least ten shots of their kiss. His heart does a somersault in his chest: at least he’ll have the proof that it happened, and he didn’t make up the amazing woman standing before him. He looks back at her, and thinks of serendipities, and casual encounters between strangers, and sappy love songs artists write about these stories, and the people who appear in your life when you never expect them to, turning them around... and he wonders if this is one of those.
He thinks maybe it is, and he is willing to bet Emma thinks so too.
“It was a pleasure meeting you, Emma,” he says, and means his every word. Her lips pull at the corner, and stares with longing in her eyes.
“All mine.” She leans forward to kiss his cheek briefly, and with a whispered “See ya,” she leaves. He watches her go, and how she looks over her shoulder and smothers a laugh when he waves at her again, and then she’s gone.
Later that day, once she’s at her friend Merida's place, her phone beeps, and she runs to take it. Her fingers shake as she swipes her blocked screen and types her code to see the new Instagram notification. She chastises herself because she should know better, she’s gotten this fessed up over at least 30 likes since she left Millennium Bridge, thinking it’d be Killian’s. Apparently her followers are really into her #vintageemma #britishemmaadventure trip, she’s realized as nonstop ‘so cute!’ ‘you look soooo good’ ‘hug the queen for me’ comments and likes came when she posted that silly picture of her hugging a huge teddy bear dressed as a beefeater.
Not this time, though.
It’s him.
She’s tagged in a picture by one @captainnerd and the caption goes “#nofilter #forthelikes #captainduckling”. When the picture buffers, she feels her cheeks hurting for how wide she’s grinning. It’s the one where he’s kissing the top of her nose, her eyes are closed and it’s so disgustingly adorable she wants to hide her face in a pillow and scream for an entire year.
She bites the inside of her cheek, and before she knows it she’s dropping a comment: “i should have known your name would be so much more embarrassing than mine.”
He answers in record time: “you like it.”
She doesn’t even hesitate in answering back: “i do.”
It doesn’t take them long to figure out that everybody ships it. Or that both of them belong to this kind of low-key Instagram celebrity club (only reached by those who have a follower count between 10k and 15k, as Ruby explains to her) they had never realized they were a part of. Or that some people had kind of shipped them together beforehand, which, okay, weird. Funny, but weird.
(And serendipitous, as Ruby helpfully points out with a wiggle of her eyebrows.)
They also realize they both live in Boston, but met in London during a) vacation for her and b) family trip for him.
(Double serendipitous, Ruby almost squeals when she finds out.)
It’s around that time when their followers can guess the timeline of their relationship - or at least what they let them see.
Killian posts pictures of the ‘Make Way For Ducklings’ statue in Boston Public Garden, and Emma tags him in her caption of her bimonthly rewatch of Pirates of the Caribbean with Henry.
Two months later Killian posts a picture of a candlelit table, checked red and white tabletop included, where Emma bites into a grilled cheese with relish as she makes a face at the camera. He captions it as “the bae and the beast. p.s.: i am the bae. she’s the beast. p.s.2: she ate all the onion rings :((((( p.s.3 aka Random and Probably Useless Fact of the Day: did you know the world ‘candle’ is derived from the Latin word ‘candere’ which means ‘to shine’?”
Three months later Emma’s followers awwwww over a shot of Killian's, Henry's and her socks, in a row, resting on the low table as they ready themselves to watch the third installment of Pirates of the Caribbean, captioned as “guess whose socks belong to whom #guessthetinyonesarentthatdifficulttoguess”. Most of them get it right, and it’s not that difficult, when Emma’s have tiny yellow birds and Killian’s have deep blue anchors.
One day, Killian posts a dubsmash of Emma and him where they do the Elizabeth Swan and Captain Jack Sparrow’s ‘but why is the rum gone?’ scene. It’s one of their most liked ever, even though Emma can’t stop snickering when she reads his P.S: “p.s. aka Random and Probably Useless Fact of the Day: the association between rum and piracy began due to english privateers trading it as a valuable commodity who later on became pirates and maintained their fondness for the drink”.
Another day she just has to show the bunch of post its that Killian had left all over her apartment: one over the mirror reading “stop fretting, you’re beautiful”, or another on a muesli bar commanding her to “eat me pls or your stomach will growl at work and you’ll be embarrassed in front of your coworkers”. The final one, and the one she captions as “nerds sleep better on duck feathers” is of the one sitting on her pillow, that reads "i’ll be back later because you smell good and your bed is more comfortable than mine. i love you.”
In Christmas, as tradition dictates, Emma and Henry buy each a potted poinsettia to take care of and to add a little more of the holiday cheer to their place. Killian finds it so adorable he posts a shot of the plants, happily perched over the balcony, and writes: “she named them max and furiosa and i’ve never been more in love. p.s. aka Random and Probably Useless Fact of the Day: in the wild or planted in tropical climates, the poinsettia can reach heights of 12 feet with leaves measuring six to eight inches across”.
In New Year’s Eve, Emma finds Killian and Henry wearing matching Santa hats and sunglasses on the couch attempting to take a selfie together. She tiptoes to the side of the living room, fishes out her phone and snaps a selfie with the two of them in the background still posing for their own, and can’t stop giggling as she writes: “does this count as self-insert? #selfinception”. When Killian sees it later, he leaves a comment reading “and you dare call me the nerd here.”
For Henry’s birthday, Killian opts to post a video captioned as “had a huge fight over what to name this beauty. in the end we let her choose. p.s. aka Random and Probably Useless Fact of the Day: whereas humans sweat everywhere, dogs only sweat through the pads of their feet.” The video shows their new puppy, and both Killian and Emma in the other side of the room, each holding a banner with their name choices, encouraging her to go to one of them. The pup doesn't waste any time in running towards Emma, as Killian flops to the floor in defeat, Emma chants 'Lady, everything the light bathes is your kingdom!' and Henry snickers behind the camera.
There are many more of course: the one with Ruby, Mulan, Elsa and Emma at their spa weekend escapade, or that one of Emma with her boss Graham wearing fake mustaches. Killian’s at the pub facepalming after his team lost and his friends try to console him by patting his hair. A dubsmash of Henry and Killian where they lip-sync ‘I can’t wait to be king’ (with Henry as Simba, of course). Emma, asleep on the couch, with Lady on her lap.
People keep commenting and liking their pictures, commending them for being so cute and becoming #relationshipgoals. Ruby insists on giving Lady her own Instagram account, and Henry promises to take care of it, and that’s how their dog becomes even more Instagram famous than them once Henry names her account @ladydoesthings, posting as many videos, dubsmashes or pictures of Lady sleeping, eating, running behind Killian or her, jumping on their bed or barking at the screen whenever Killian curses at a player during a game because she’s empathic like that.
But still, nothing compares to the reaction to the picture Killian posts two years after their first selfie together. Their followers are treated with a throwback of their first encounter, as the both of them stand in the Millennium Bridge, and once again they’re face to face, but this time it’s Emma who kisses the tip of Killian’s nose, her hand over his cheek. The most observant ones react before reading the caption: they gasp in surprise, squeal in excitement, awww or just plain scroll down because they don’t care about them anyway. Others notice that there’s a ring on her finger when they reach Killian’s words:
“#nofilter #forthelikes #millennialswhoselfietogetherstaytogether #captainduckling p.s. aka Random but Super Important Fact of the Day: she said yes.”