Chapter Text
Emma hesitates, because after barging in so aggressively she’s wobbly on her feet like a willowy birch in blustery weather. The backs of her thighs bump the big conference table, and she clings tighter to Regina’s elbows as she searches for how she wants this to happen.
“So, you’re finally willing to see me,” Regina says.
On every breath out, both their chests heaving, the room stuffs with suppressed feelings and conversations that need to be had (if they are to have a chance). They haven’t since Regina showed up at the apartment howling for Henry barely an hour after her release, and Emma got rough, again. Frustration revs in her gut, muscles impossibly wound up from the drive over.
“Not really,” she says then, and just starts unbuckling her jeans.
Regina swallows, uncharacteristically subdued. Her make-up is simple, and her sleeves are rolled up. In fact, everything about Regina seems distinctly washed-out today.
The belt hangs loose and Emma waits, scrunches her hands by her sides.
Regina reaches in. She is stopped short when Emma’s agitated hands shoot out, grabbing her wrists a little desperately, pressing down on them – an unlikely anchor in a way as jumbled lines splinter across their foreheads for a difficult few seconds. In the end, Regina merely blinks and complies and clumsily bends to her knees. In an anxious kind of gesture she tucks back some hair, and the move unintentionally reveals from behind the starched collar of her light, blue shirt, some of the bruising along her neck, like brushes of thick paints.
Guilt tasting like something gone bad in her mouth, Emma quickly distracts herself by glancing around. There are boxes everywhere, and personal items collected in various piles, all of it neat and organized. “You’re packing up?”
“I’ve been asked to leave,” Regina says, flatly.
Frowning, Emma’s eyes track across the fireplace, the couch, the armchair, and all of the other places in the office they have touched, and had moments. “Right, so they’re officially taking over the town like it’s theirs.”
Navy blue panties slide off with the jeans, gingerly exposing hips, a long stretch of thighs, and distractedly Emma settles on the very edge to lean back on her elbows.
“It’s what they do best. Take, and take –”
“Stop talking.”
Like magnets their gazes snap together again.
Emma is struggling to cope. The very seams of her are splitting, and the dirty kind of releases she’s been managing in the shower have only been making it worse, more confusing. Every part of her body only leads right back to thinking of Regina. Pressing her lips in a hard curve downwards, she stares expectantly.
A stroke of red colours Regina’s cheeks, and she lowers her eyes before shuffling nearer. The smell of Emma awakens a rush of goose bumps across her skin, and yet, even still memories of performing duties develop like a forgotten roll of film at front of her brain. Opening her mouth wide, she licks slow, broad lines then, urgently thinking of how they used to do it, deep and intimate without ever really knowing that was what they were doing.
Her front teeth slip against an already swollen clit when a hand jerks her face in closer. Regina pushes her tongue inside.
A rhythm builds. “Oh fuck,” Emma sighs and tremors flourish over her belly.
It’s familiar, a memory to hide in, under the covers, a firm mattress, a blur of white sheets, and the hush of possibilities.
Except a startling, jolting fear soon follows as the pleasure grows, and Emma grimaces, feeling so wide open, and helpless, like a balloon with no one to hold the string. Fretfully, she curls her fingers in to feel like she is holding to something, the very tips of something, but she’s flying off all the same. She hits her fist on the table, twice. Panicked, she violently lurches forward, knocking Regina back, and tumbles to the floor with her bare ass peeking out from under her jacket.
Scurrying up, Emma blushes furiously. “This can’t be my life, how is this my fucking life,” she mutters while wrestling with her jeans.
Regina sits up slowly, her joints stiff from having so little to occupy herself with these days but for sulking, drinking, trying to pull herself together. “Well, don’t take it out on me.”
“Who else am I supposed to take it out on? This is your fault, isn’t it?!” Emma hates how childish she sounds, the stress of it all breaking up her voice. She’s also way too hot and rubs at a shoulder, nudging a disturbingly soft, pastel sweater she borrowed from Mary Margaret aside. “Leroy saw you by the school earlier. Did you seriously go and make a play for Henry, behind my back?”
“He is my son, and his home is with me.”
“No, he really isn’t, so stay away from him,” Emma spits, bending forwards as if she were lecturing a kid. “Actually, you know what, I’m not here to talk, all anyone wants to do is talk, so just … whatever.”
She stomps out and the door slams, hard enough to rattle the walls, the layers of plywood and plaster suddenly seeming seconds away maybe from being ripped apart in some whirlwind.
As she wipes the back of a hand over her sticky mouth, Regina can’t keep herself from feeling the humiliation, right down to her toes. She rips a box sitting on the chair in front of her to the ground, scattering books and stationary.
-
Another eighties tune starts up, and Emma blows out her cheeks. The reunion is already as nostalgic as she can take, friends celebrating exuberantly in the cozy embrace of the diner. That is, except for the nagging tension like a haze hanging to the backs of people, because stupidly she thought inviting Regina might be an acceptable thing to do.
Stuck by the jukebox at the very back, Emma slowly scans the diner one more time. The kid is just finishing his second helping of lasagna and as he spins on his stool, fork in hand, he catches Regina’s gaze from across the room and smiles wide at his mother before ignoring her again, chitchatting with Leroy, pointing at the cake Archie made.
Regina is sitting alone in a booth at the front, her coat draped over her knees, an untouched glass of water on the tabletop. Her lingering half-smile is unbelievably sad and awkward as she studies the happy people laughing intimately and having a good time, like she can’t remember how and yet misses it terribly. It’s been two hours and she hasn’t moved.
Holding to the cake knife, Leroy scowls at her and Regina turns away, eyes fluttering exhaustedly with nowhere really safe to settle.
Emma's had enough. Plonking her mug down on the bar along the way, dodging people left and right, she plods right up to that miserable booth. Telling her “stand up, put on your coat,” in a low voice, she sternly steers Regina out of the diner and down to the patio, where strings of lights are twinkling prettily above.
“Why are you still here?” Her feelings are a mess, like a bunch of three-year-olds are dipping in her heart and finger-painting all over the floors.
“You invited me,” Regina attempts.
“No, Henry asked to see his mom, there’s a difference.” The beer in her stomach tosses as she makes the jab, and Emma huffs, the cold stiffening her lips. “Everyone in there is ready to stab you with whatever fork or knife they can find, and you’re just sitting there, pretending like it’s totally normal.”
“What can I do? I miss Henry,” she says. Then suddenly, demurring, looking down as if shy or something, Regina implores quietly, “And you.”
It isn’t the easiest thing to say no to.
“Sure whatever, you’re leaving now, thanks for showing up, I guess,” pours out in a long grumble as Emma curls her hand around an upper arm, pinching purposefully, and hauls Regina out onto the sidewalk. Except she can’t seem to let go then, her fingers glued as she just keeps putting one foot in front the other, faster and faster. Her headache pounds with her boots on the pavement.
“Emma, stop –” Regina disparages, stumbling, out of breath, and exhausted by their constant, physical struggling.
Pivoting around and over with being polite, Emma seethes, “What is wrong with you, why aren’t you fighting back?”
“What is it do you think I’m doing,” Regina growls.
“You’re supposed to be awful, and a bitch, the person who destroyed everybody’s happy endings. Where is all that?”
“And I told you once people only fool themselves into believing they can change, but Emma –”
“Fuck you.”
The pain in her flaring, Regina wrenches her to the left and propels the combined weight of them banging up against a parked delivery van. “Is this what you want, what they’ve been telling you?” Her beseeching comes out fogging the passenger window as it skims the side of Emma’s face. “Those people in there don’t know me. You do, you know better,” she practically accuses, and unraveling the tie, opening the neckline of her blouse, Regina frantically guides one of Emma’s freezing hands over her chest, shivering as her skin responds to the touch.
Hardening the set of her jaw, Emma sneers, “You know what, I did. Know you. And then you tried to kill me, and almost killed Henry.”
“No, please,” she croaks. With her ears drumming wildly, fearful of another rejection, Regina professes, her eyes firm and genuine, “I’m sorry. For you, I am.”
Emma only deepens the creases outlining her glare. Beside herself with longing, Regina places her other hand, her own, the one more or less obscured from the diner just above the waist of her skirt.
“The fuck are you doing?” Emma checks up the sidewalk towards Granny’s; they’re only about two shop lengths away, and Mary Margaret is sure to be toddling out for her soon. Head whipping back, fingers are already slipping beneath the fabric.
“You’ve been gone too long,” Regina whispers, before groaning softly.
A few parked cars along the quiet road are all that prevent them from being totally visible. Even still, Regina rubs herself and Emma’s brain scrambles like a TV signal, all mangled colours and high-pitched noises. She’s turned on, appalled, embarrassed for them both, but more than anything, the more she aches for their relationship, the more the betrayal gathers like a severe, thundering storm.
“Come back to me.”
Disgusted, Emma shoves her right off. “Oh, now you want me? Too fucking bad.”
A burn of embarrassment finally breaks out behind Regina’s ears then, and she collects the delicate material in one hand to cover her chest, pursing her lips. Down at her side, those other fingers curl in, squirming, tacky, and hiding in her palm.
The looks on both their faces are strained and emotional, all torn up by how ugly things have become.
“Just go,” Emma says, cringing.
-
It would be absurd if only the sky weren’t also a little bit gorgeous, swirling with broad strokes of dark indigo and abstract specks of glittering light.
“Would you let go, already!”
Regina is flat on her back and heaving for oxygen, having just been body-checked by Emma to the uneven clumps of soggy grass and snow on the ground. The beams shooting from the two cars, pulled up one behind the other, cause enormous silhouettes to elongate across the clearing like make-believe monsters from children’s bedrooms.
“You’re not getting away that easily!” With a grunt, Emma pins those struggling arms to either side and hunkers down on her diaphragm.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she wheezes.
“Then what’re you doing all the way out here, huh? In the middle of the night.”
Her shoulders sag, and reluctantly she melts in with the wet, forest floor. “I needed out of the house, and I had nowhere else to go.” Regina sighs, and closes her eyes, on the verge of a nervous break, the hysterics of their relationship getting to be too much, even for her. “And why the hell are you here?”
Emma falters, suddenly self-conscious about her rash behaviour. “I was patrolling, and saw your headlights. I thought you were leaving.”
“Without you, and Henry?” Regina scoffs, her voice heavy with emotion, upset that even now, after all her efforts – giving over custody, abiding stipulations, agreeing to see Archie – Emma still refuses to believe.
A cold wind picks up and clatters some bare branches, like antlers locking.
“Why’d you need out so bad?” Emma warily licks her lips, studying every tiny response. “Come on, you want me trust you, then talk.”
Her body is sore and wriggling uncomfortably, Regina stares up at the expansive sky and wonders which stars she might still have left to wish upon. Her vision blurs as she murmurs. “Everything in the house is you, or Henry. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t think of what to do next to get you to –” Her eyes tremble as she searches the heavens for some sort of reprieve. “Forgive me.”
The fragile moment affects Emma before the words are even out and her brain can catch up, the depth of feeling between them to great to ignore. Rolling a stale anger around her tongue, she loosens her grip and regrets immediately engulf her lungs.
“Damn it, we can’t keep doing this, Regina.”
“I’m trying.”
“And I’m trying, I really am, to be okay, with everything.” Her arms are bent at sharp angles, and rickety as she shifts her weight. “Nobody gets it, you know, why I can’t just be okay.”
“I should have just told you,” Regina says to the dull leaves in her peripheral.
“Yeah, you screwed up. And I was so angry, wondering how you could … Doesn’t mean I should’ve treated you the way I did, how I keep treating you, hurting you like this,” she admits then, and with that her neck just can’t seem to hold her head up any longer. Sinking like a stone to a muddy riverbed, her forehead lands heavily on Regina’s sternum.
Regina peers over at the trees and the furrows in the bark.
“Fuck, Regina, I’m so sorry,” Emma mumbles, her stomach shuddering, hiccoughing through the words.
“Oh.” The noise escapes from Regina so abruptly, she almost loses it completely. The air is thin and the nearness like a shot in the arm, making her heart pump, and her pupils dilate. Through her own quivering, she takes pulls from the atmosphere in gasps.
The emotion is overwhelming, terrifying even, feeling such great love, and she clasps a shaking hand over her eyes.
A moment later, Emma is gently peeling that hand away and pulling her into a sitting position. Regina doesn’t cry out or weep, but the tears, they collect across the line of her chin, like distant waters trickling along the roof of a cave, the dripping slow and constant. Emma looks at her with big, astonished eyes.
“You really do … love me?”
“… I really do.”
The stillness is awful, huddled in the yawn of a thick forest waiting for what next, for now what, as Emma keeps wiping at those tears. After a while, she lets Emma help her up, and leaning an arm against a tree Regina brushes uselessly at her dirty coat.
“You know that I do too, right?”
Sniffling, she glances up and Emma moves in so close, so suddenly, messy curls tickle her face. Her chest squeezes. When their lips press together, it is soft, and tentative, and new. They make-out slowly, their teeth chattering a bit in between.
“My squad car is still running, fixed the heater last week.” Emma makes the suggestion straight into Regina’s waiting mouth. “And the backseat is big, if you remember.”
-
There’s a bed, but it seems almost too intimate, being here for the very first time.
It’s dim, the curtains are half-drawn, and the wrinkly covers are mostly straight even if nothing else is, and she thinks with a careful hint of a smile, perhaps Emma was making an attempt before she arrived. Her stocking feet release to the hardwood. Picking up her heels, they dangle from two fingers as she crosses in front of the bed, and gazing at the untidy closet, Regina flattens her other hand over her stomach.
Emma tosses her boots by the dresser, and walks quietly up behind. “Hey, you wanna go somewhere else?”
“No,” Regina says and turns in Emma’s arms, “you asked me here.”
“I did, but your place isn’t that far, and I don’t know, this was just –”
Regina combs some of that unruly blonde hair back from those honest-to-goodness eyes. “Shut up.”
The clothes go assuredly, and though they’re not rushing, their movements are smooth and efficient. Regina untucks her blouse, undoing the buttons, and Emma, pulling a long t-shirt off, ditches it in time to take over removing the item from Regina’s shoulders. Casually, she drapes the blouse over the bed frame as Regina starts in on tackling the jeans.
The t-shirt is lying in a heap god-knows-where.
Minutes later they are both naked on the floor with Regina straddling a sturdy lap, thighs spreading while Emma sits, crossing her ankles. Regina sways as two adoring hands play with her breasts; closer for more, further to watch a thumb and index finger twinge her nipples. She whimpers gladly when a hot mouth begins sucking on her neck.
“Talk to me,” Emma pants, already dizzy. “What do you want?”
Regina clutches Emma to her, arms restlessly sliding up and down a muscled back. “I just want you inside me.”
Fingernails scratch up her thighs, and the tips tease her to find her soaking and so much more than ready. So Emma presses in, and starting slow, Regina rides those fingers, bouncing in the last of the weak, early evening light. And while Regina wants to use her voice, she stays quiet (to preserve some of the tenderness).
“Touch me, please,” Emma begs when the pace doesn’t pick up much.
Groping in between them, Regina teeters a bit as she circles with her fingers for a rhythm to go with whatever her hips are managing.
“Ah yes, yes,” Emma repeats a few times over and it helps get them into something, that’s working, for both of them. “Fuck, like that.”
And for a while they fuck steadily, like that, neither of them willing to let it end too early, except that as they continue it gets harder and harder to keep their balance.
“More – oh more,” Regina urges. Her lower back bows as she deepens the angle. Fingers dig in for purchase, pinching wherever there is supple flesh. Her muscles burn.
Coming first, Emma pumps frenziedly to make Regina come as well, with her, and with an extended, stuttering shout Regina braces herself as she stiffens and jerks. Their thighs are a wet mess and the floor is damp. Regina slumps over. Her left arm flops over a sweaty shoulder.
“I don’t wanna wait and see anymore, Regina. I know that’s what I said, but I don’t want to.”
The harsh gulping for mouthfuls quickly slows, the oxygen drying Regina’s throat as she waits for the usual excuses to follow then. Emma’s fingers are still inside of her, and she sinks lower, her body humming fretfully. “Emma, you have to be sure,” she admonishes, and tries to close her ribs around her lungs, and her heart, to keep from feeling too much, hoping so soon.
“The things I have done … there are things I haven’t told you.”
“And I’m saying I want to do this with you.”
Her thighs cramping, Regina lists forward, and haltingly, arms helping along in thuds against the floor, they keel over. Lying there, a shudder crawls down the trench of her exposed back, and like how she tucks her son in, she tucks her chin to the mess of curls underneath to quiet her fears. “It won’t be easy,” she warns, one more time.
“I know. So let’s do this now, with each other, and not make it harder on ourselves, figuring it out years later, realizing all that time we could’ve had and missed out on.”
“I’ve missed you.”
“I know, but I’m here now,” Emma replies.
-
They don’t make it very far today, barely making it through the front door, nearly stripping and fucking up against the wall at the top of the stairs of Mary Margaret’s apartment building.
In a hurry they leave a trail of jackets, and scarves, a thin sweater, a flimsy blouse, and hoisting Regina up on the reclaimed wood table, leftover cereal bowls clanking on impact, Emma untangles a fancy bra from their fumbling arms, and flings it over a shoulder. She didn’t bother with one herself this morning, and her nipples are hard against her white tank top. She shuffles Regina’s skirt up around the waist and pulls the woman’s wet, lace panties off of those legs and over a pair of stilettos.
“Emma, Emma,” Regina calls for her desperately, excruciatingly needy, grasping at those strong arms for Emma to get up and just kiss her again. Their lips are noisy, smacking through a sort of waltzing rhythm, swaying back and forth.
So, maybe they don’t hear the plodding up the stairwell, and maybe they don’t hear the door scraping the jackets back along the hardwood either, but the gasp and the horrified shriek are impossible to ignore.
Emma slaps her palms down on either side while a very vulnerable Regina scrambles to close her legs. Both their hearts pound, loud as if they were actually fucking against a wall, and seeing the dark pink bleed out across Regina’s skin, Emma hunches over protectively.
“Is that Regina?” David bellows, and Mary Margaret swiftly yanks the jackets from under the door and closes it with a bang.
Emma peeks around one of her arms. “Turn around.”
“Oh honey, what are you doing with her?” Mary Margaret splutters, clapping a hand to her wrinkled forehead.
“Would you two turn around?!” As Regina tightens those arms around her middle, bunching the tank top, Emma presses her mouth to Regina’s dark, mussed up hair in a comforting kiss. A short exhale blows out warm, tousling several locks. Part of her is relieved, if she’s being totally honest. They’ve been sneaking around for so long, since the very beginning, and she’s been ready to tell for a while – although getting caught more like ‘making-out on the sofa’ and not so much ‘banging in the kitchen’ would’ve been a plus.
Facing the other way, Mary Margaret is utterly dumbstruck then outraged in nothing flat. Tilting her eyes to the stippled ceiling, she yells, “You have done a lot of awful things to me, Regina, but to do come after my daughter, like this?"
“Whoa, hey!” Emma spins and grabs behind at the thick edge of the table in a sharp, defensive posture. “Not everything is about you.”
“Please Emma, you don’t know her like we do!”
The apartment is a buzz of stubborn love.
A bunch of jars, appliances, and dishes in the drying rack sit peculiarly in contrast to the hostilities escalating at opposite ends, the length of the breakfast bar becoming a fragile expanse, and all of the endearing knick-knacks potential shrapnel.
“How long have you been, I mean, are you two –”
“Can we have this conversation later?”
Boorishly whirling back, David stabs an accusatory finger in the air. “That woman was a threat to every bit of happiness in the Forest!” Knowing her husband’s righteous spirit, Mary Margaret clings to his bulky arm in the hopes of preventing him from charging across the small dining space.
“And we’ve been over and over it! Yes, okay, it happened,” Emma says with a heavy shrug. “We’ve all done shitty things. My life sucked, but I have people who care about me now, you guys included, and I want to live my life. I want to live it here and now.”
“Honey, she doesn’t care about you. She can’t. Your – whatever you have, it’s not what you think it is.”
“Wow, are you kidding me right now?!”
Their voices are starting to overlap but Regina isn’t hearing much anyways, because holding Emma the way she is, she can feel every surge of emotion crashing like raging ocean waves, harsh and brackish on every breath as the family argues at the top of their lungs. Blindly reaching sideways, she wanders along a forearm, and over and over those sharp knuckles until Emma yields, and they are linking fingers.
“Emma, she killed people! She cursed us all,” Mary Margaret exclaims, bouncing impatiently.
“Not to mention the whole town hates her,” David hollers.
“Yeah, and I could hate her too. For all the messed up shit she’s done, I really could. But she is a person. Regina is more than just those things. And I am choosing to love her.”
“Yes, but you can choose someone better!”
“Listen to us. We only want your best chance at a happy ending!”
"You don't get to decide what makes me happy!"
And it really is a wonder something hasn’t exploded yet from the sheer force of their protesting.
“That’s enough!” Regina orders at last, gazing at the rippling ribbing of the white tank top. It shuts everybody up instantly , her tone brooking no dissent in way only she could pull off naked and hiding as awkwardly as she is. “Now get the hell out, and take that sanctimonious crap of yours with you.”
“Excuse me?”
“Get out!” She knows, from the way Emma is barely holding it together, this is as much about her, as it is about Emma’s own experiences surviving off of the kind of bad choices she is, even still, afraid to admit to her parents. Anymore of this will only end in saying things that will take every single one of them so far over the line, they won’t ever find their way back again, breadcrumbs or no.
Emma jerks a prideful chin towards the door. “Please, go.” Her parents are as stubborn as she is. Heaving an emphatic sigh, she eases up, and promises, “we will talk, just not now.”
Her throat bobbing, Mary Margaret relents with a “fine, we’ll wait for you at the diner.” They leave, tightly holding hands. When the front door finally shuts with a clang, Emma slumps and just stares at her beat up boots. The apartment is almost jarringly quiet now.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Regina murmurs, and brushes her lips uneasily over one of Emma’s shoulders.
“Yeah, but I did,” she says, solemnly. Then swiveling around to clasp Regina’s cheeks once more, Emma kisses her, as sweetly as she has ever known how to. “Because of this, okay?”
Flushed, and lightheaded, Regina swallows carefully before fluttering back her eyelids. “They’re the family you never had, and should get to have now.”
“I’m not throwing them away or anything,” she explains. “But there’s Henry, and there’s also you.”
“Emma, no.”
She grips her chin firmly. “Don’t, Regina."
It’s now or never – their chance to make it an actual relationship, and more than just a nameless coming together, where no one knows, and someone could leave, and it would be like nothing ever happened at all.
"Then have me," Regina dares. "Please."
Emma carries her to the living room and plops her to the middle of the sofa then. She shucks everything off herself roughly, kicking her jumbled pile of underwear, jeans, and socks aside. Completely naked, she stands tall, puts her hair up with an elastic, and like with blinders on, she crouches in, pops off each stiletto and tosses them behind.
A pencil skirt soars over a low shelf next, toppling a stack of movies to the floor.
“We’re gonna make this work,” Emma says, bending back those flexible thighs until both feet are dangling by their ears, fucking Regina without preamble.
Regina scrunches her toes as she adjusts. Her neck crooks lower along the sofa. Her lips, all faded and swollen, fall open. She is moaning, and coming all too soon then, but Emma goes on fucking her, mumbling against her throat. Overly sensitive, Regina can feel the hum of Emma’s anxiety in each determined thrust and hump of her body. She stills the motion with a whimper and a hand covering the wrist amid her thighs.
“Emma, it’s okay,” she exhales, and drops her legs. “They will get over it.”
“And you? Are you gonna get over it?”
“Of course. Haven’t you noticed I already have? All I care about is you,” Regina assures, tenderly. She clasps the back of Emma’s neck. “What’s wrong, something else is wrong.”
“I’ve never had a fight with a mom and dad of my own before,” Emma spurts, and she’s laughing, and crying, and drowning a little in her unresolved issues. “God, what the hell. I’m sorry. I just, don’t want any of you not to be in my life, you know?”
“That won’t happen. They love you, and I love you. Even if that means I have to go with you to that diner, and sit and talk with those idiots until we come to an understanding, all right?”
“I love you, too.”
“Get up here.” Regina tugs on Emma then, and their arms and legs tangle as they lie and bundle to fit together on the compact sofa.
-
“Stop,” she chuckles and reaches behind to wrap a hand around the one Emma is using to squeeze her ass. “Henry will be down in a minute.”
The foyer is drenched in sun, making everything glimmer like spring is officially here, and fresh grass and flowers could be growing out of the floorboards.
Emma glances up the grand staircase. “Fine, then give me a kiss.”
“It seems you want much more than just a kiss,” Regina replies, playing with the deeper notes in her voice.
“Yeah, well, shoot me, I don’t get to see you all the time.”
“I’m right here. And I will be here when you get back from your day at the docks.” She slips her hands under Emma’s new, burgundy jacket then and hides them in the nook of her waist. “Are you coming over tonight?”
“Why don’t I bring Henry over for dinner, and we can both stay,” Emma suggests, nuzzling closer, seeking out the light musk on Regina’s skin.
In spite of herself, Regina arches her neck, leaning in as she raises her eyebrows incredulously. “Really? Your parents won’t have a fit?”
“They’re busy moving today,” she mutters. “Besides, he’s our kid.”
Regina draws back, lips parted and astounded, really. One word, three letters, and yet it is more commitment than either has ever made throughout their entire relationship. Emma grins sheepishly in return.
“So,” Emma folds her lips in before the happiness gets out of control, “can I have my kiss now?”
Closing in, their noses bob and weave affectionately against each other (foreplay of a different kind).
“Just a quick one,” Regina breathes, losing herself. “I’m serious, Emma.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Hearing the soft thumps, she can hardly distinguish the differences, if the thumps are being made by sneakers or the eager contractions of her heart. Managing to drag her eyes open then, the unmistakable figure of Henry hovering halfway down warms into focus. Regina blinks once to wipe the afternoon sex from her mind, and pulls away hastily.
“You guys were going to kiss,” Henry remarks, clinging to the banister.
Regina exchanges a look with Emma, who is kneading the back of her neck, clearly flustered and getting disgruntled with their situation. Their son hasn’t exactly been supportive. “Sweetheart, we were just –”
“Mom, you should do it,” he blurts.
“Do what?”
“I want to see you and Emma kiss.”
Gaping so far upwards, she is suddenly very nauseous. His interest is entirely out of left field, and it worries Regina how much bigger their relationship is these days, encompassing so much more than what they have simply been sharing in secret, for no one but themselves.
Nervously, she smoothes down the front of her dress.
Emma crams her fingers in her back pockets, and peers over.
They wait on her with identical expressions, and the pressure sits uncomfortably in her ears seeing how cautiously hopeful they are. It would appear they are all in need of something to believe in. Regina straightens, her heels clack, and leaning in awkwardly, she gives Emma a lame, barely there, kind of peck on the lips.
“No, like actually do it, Mom.” From the stairs, Henry looms above them both – a reminder of their beginning, their once upon a time – his round face unwavering as he hugs that big, leather book tight to his chest.
Evidently it was something at first sight, that night, that first meeting.
Regina realizes then it matters that Henry see how his mothers feel about one another now, the change, and the true love they have with great effort brought into being, together. She softens, and tries again, and this time their mouths meet in a firm, open kiss, tingling in a way it never has before.
Slowly parting, she notices her hand tightly clasping Emma’s upper arm, the leather puckering, and backs up, leaving a small distance between them. Both corners of her mouth hike up however, even as she drops her eyes to one side, sucking absently on the remaining traces of Emma on her bottom lip.
“Okay kid, that’s enough show and tell for today,” Emma announces, her cheeks tickling and attempting to cover it up. “Gotta get a move on.”
Regina gently clears her throat. “Well, darling, be safe. Listen to Emma.”
Henry shuffles, sort of bashful, and nods. Sneakers bending over the precipice of the step, he smirks lopsidedly before scampering down the stairs and out the door. Stretching her neck, Regina can see him waiting by the Bug, already poring over his book again on that bright, yellow hood.
“We’ll be back soon.” Emma smiles, tentatively. Then taking a hand in her own, she ambles over to rest their foreheads together, reluctant to leave.
“Go.” Regina squeezes reassuringly, and letting go, pats Emma on the ass. “Any requests for dinner?”
Emma doesn’t have to stop and think. She knows exactly, and asks, “Lasagna? You know, because it’s … Henry’s favourite.”
-
From under the door, a slant of light gives away the scuffling – a pair of boots, and bare knees. The closet is hot. An arm fumbles up through the coats, and it’s Emma, hanging with everything she’s got to the bar above because she’s practically there.
Regina dips in again. She flattens her tongue for something soft, but satisfying, working two fingers shallowly, and feeling that familiar squeeze finally she tilts back as Emma whacks her head on the wall, and breathlessly Regina watches that expressive body of hers writhe in pleasure and orgasm.
She swallows and withdraws, wet right through as well now.
Getting up off her knees, she stays mum and merely uses her clean hand to tug the jeans up along with her. Holding her other hand in the air she mulls over cleaning it on some of the coats brushing stiflingly against them. Her wrist is gently apprehended. “No, don’t do that,” Regina scolds.
Even in the darkness, it isn’t so hard to tell Emma is licking rather obscenely at the wetness collecting in between fingers. “Come on, why not?”
“Because, I am not getting caught in your parents’ house with your face up my dress.”
“Well, don’t wipe them on the coats, you crazy woman.”
“Fine.” Regina rolls her eyes, and wipes her fingers across Emma’s stomach instead.
They get distracted making-out for a while, and are in the middle of straightening themselves out once more when the doorbell rings out several times, way too excitedly, making Emma jump right out of her skin. Faster than they can get it together then, the boisterous small talk of people being welcomed to the housewarming fills the hall.
“Oh, here we go,” Regina grumbles. “Now how the hell are we getting out of here?”
“Relax,” Emma says, and tips an ear closer, listening to the movements of the laughter. “I think they’re gone, let’s go,” she whispers after a bit, and opening the door, she manages one whole stride before getting busted.
“Oh, you scared me!” Mary Margaret’s lashes flicker as she comes to an abrupt halt ahead of Ruby, a heap of coats in both their arms. “We were wondering where you went, almost everyone is …” she trails off and her face falls flat as she spots Regina hovering inside her hall closet.
“We’re done now, if you need to get in here,” Regina intones, lifting her chin, holding Mary Margaret’s disapproving eyes. “Ruby, how are you?”
“Great,” she laughs. “And you?”
Mary Margaret clucks her tongue, glancing over at her daughter, however all Emma offers is an apologetic simper and a useless shrug. No one is keen on being the first to break their delicate truce for the very first time, so Mary Margaret simply grits her teeth and shoves both piles of coats at the two of them. “I have to check on the oven,” she squeaks, and gruffly drags a grinning Ruby away.
Emma can’t help but snicker to release some of the tension from her chest. “Okay, so, you two are not allowed to be alone together in a room. Got it?”
“Whatever you say, dear,” she replies. Dumping over her share of things, Regina steps out into the bright daylight of the hall.
Emma whistles out for her. “Take that off, Regina. It’s a party.”
Not happy about having to get comfortable where she is, Regina shrugs out of her blazer wearing a grumpy look in place of the rigid fabric, exposing her bare arms, and a fitted, blue dress. And while Emma deals with the coats, she saunters to the bench by the stairs for her purse and some colour to fix her lips.
Somewhat composed again, Regina twists with the feel of Emma rubbing her back, and they trade a few simple kisses.
“One day at a time, hey?” Emma prompts.
“You and me, one day at a time,” Regina repeats their little promise back.
Their day hasn’t been off to a very good start however, and Regina almost wishes she had stayed home on her own after all when they discover that the entire far end of the living room is in fact staring at them: a broad assortment of wary, judgmental, and confused. Emma plasters on her best friendly grin, and moseys on with an effusive, “Hey everyone!”
A lump of insecurities lodges in Regina’s throat; she has yet to even take a first step, and she is feeling impossibly adrift already, all at sea in a growing fog.
“Coming?” The sun is filtering through the blonde as Emma is extending an arm back, illuminating the stray messy strands from their fooling around, and without hesitation Regina fits their hands together, allowing Emma to lead her through the people to the kitchen where Ruby is waving them over.
“Do the skewers for me?” Ruby asks with a wink and a kind expression.
“You bet,” Emma says, plonking on a stool. Patting the one next to her, she peers up, and gives her eyebrows a wag. “You cut and I’ll skewer?”
A very prickly Mary Margaret makes a deliberate racket at the stove.
Gnashing her molars, and taking a breath, Regina nods. “You sure you want to be giving me a knife?”
“If you get out of control I’ll just stab you with a skewer.”
Puckering her lips through a persistent smile, Regina pushes down on the old habits and resentments one more time. Her stomach twinges in protest.
“Wash your hands,” Mary Margaret calls out.
An hour and a half later and the house is still standing, despite a rather fraught exchange between Regina and Mary Margaret over Henry having two scoops of ice cream on top of his blueberry pie. Leaving her son in the company of Archie, happily shovelling the one scoop melting over the pastry from the plate to his mouth, Regina rounds the corner and hides in the empty hall for a minute. Breathing more deliberately, she presses her ten fingers to the floral-papered walls on either side.
“Hey, I looked up and you were gone.” Strolling up, Emma spreads her hands along Regina’s waist and merely continues on, urging her forward.
“Emma, what are you doing?”
Directing her to the bathroom, Emma locks the door with a clack. “We didn’t get to you before we were interrupted earlier.”
“We really don’t have to,” Regina sighs.
“Yes we do,” Emma insists, manoeuvring her against the sturdy-looking porcelain sink. “Plus, I figured you’d need a break.”
Regina makes a noncommittal grunt in her throat even as she is permitting Emma to scrunch the hem of her dress higher, and higher. “I’m not in the mood,” she says.
“Okay.”
Emma takes her time to get Regina there and feeling better, hands roaming, and squeezing sometimes; it doesn’t actually take much convincing.
“Go slow, but fuck me hard,” Regina asks. Worrying her lower lip, she secures her bare leg over a hip, and shamelessly rubs up against Emma for more, the way her body opens up, a relief, like when that first window opens on a hot afternoon.
“We’ll leave soon. One more hour.”
“Am I ruining it for you?”
“No. They’re nice to me so it’s easier sometimes. For me.” Emma runs a hand along the underside of that elevated thigh and over a rounded cheek until her thumb is smearing Regina’s expensive underwear in arousal. “But here’s the thing, they’re not nice to you and that sucks, so that’s why you have me. Now don’t be loud.”
Regina gasps. “I can’t, if you are going to do that.”
-
Emma is staring up at the ceiling. The bed is dishevelled and all of their clothes in a small heap next to it on the carpet, like a hurricane touched on the spot, though the rest of the room remains ordered, neat and minimal.
“Wanna go for a walk after lunch? Get ice-cream, a little Sunday treat?”
“Just the three of us?”
“Yeah.” She plops her cheek to the pillow, listening patiently.
“As long as we don’t make a habit of it.” Regina’s voice is low and relaxed. “The ice-cream part, I mean.”
Rolling on her side and easing over to middle of the mattress where Regina is lying with her back turned, Emma aligns herself with the warm, naked body on display, and bites at an ear. “Figured as much,” she assures.
Her hand sneaks under the cotton sheet that’s just barely covering a hip, and coasts down Regina’s belly, settling in between.
“Again, already?”
Emma sucks in a breath, and in pleasant surprise. “You’re still wet.”
“Just knowing you’re beside me …”
Opening her eyes, Regina twists her upper body over, and looking up fondly, kisses Emma. The remainder of her follows as their mouths deepen. Retrieving the hand from between her thighs, she squishes her lips a couple times to the knuckles, laces their fingers, and brings them to rest on the bed. “And what are your parents doing, unsupervised in my house, while you’re up here with me?”
“Building a fort in the backyard with Henry. Something temporary, and not dangerous, I promise.”
Regina gently scoffs. “Henry showed me his ‘plans’ the other day. Didn’t look temporary to me –”
“Anyways,” Emma says, rubbing their legs together and knocking ankles. “I told them I’d keep you occupied, so they could have uninterrupted time with their grandson.”
“I see. You made me the bad guy.”
“For a good reason.”
“There always is with you Charmings.”
“Yeah, so I could have you all to myself, and we could …” Emma’s not usually a mushy kind of sentimental, but the way they are just casually, and even playfully, having this particular conversation, so close, makes her heart beat a lot faster “… god, I can’t actually say it.”
“Say what?”
“Make love,” Emma snorts, and Regina snickers along.
In the quiet then, they drift for the next hour or so just above sleep, falling under sometimes, their profiles outlining the pillows, and kissing to wake the other person up now and then.
Eventually, checking the clock at her bedside, Regina softly says, “One more?”
Emma smirks. “Yeah, always.”