Chapter Text
Struggling through a sigh, Regina comes, clutching at Emma’s blue jacket.
She does everything to keep her voice out of it. It isn’t easy, however, even after all the practice.
Eventually, her shoulders release, though her knuckles still strain against the back of her hand. She is gently out of breath. With some effort, she makes certain not to let herself dangle forward too far, tip the wrong way. Her thumbs rub vaguely side to side, and the unpleasant texture of the pleather sobers her more or less.
Letting go, she drops her head against the back wall of her office. Some early evening sun slides off the tilt of her jaw and down her throat, and Regina is grateful for some sensation on her skin. She glances out at her desk. The minute hand on the clock isn’t quite visible from this angle, and while she doesn’t bother stressing to find out, she does take several sluggish seconds to reorganize her scheduling for what's left of the night.
Very carefully, she closes her eyes. For just a moment.
As the wetness trickles towards her wrist, Emma slips her fingers out. Splaying her left fist along the wall for support, she leans over Regina, panting and a bit too warm, and considers whether she wants to just wipe it on her jeans.
The arm hangs lazily at her side.
“Get out,” Regina says, shoving past with the firm heel of a hand. “I have to pick up Henry.”
Emma barely bothers to bat an eye.
“Fine, but I’m coming over when my shift is done.”
She isn’t looking for a fight, to put more feeling, or any more drama into their arrangement, but fair is fair, and Emma needs her turn. While pulling thick curls off the one side of her neck, Emma notes a grating nagging in her chest growing in size and curses the lingering disappointments fluttering about. Before lifting her head, she sharply huffs out the rest of that line of thought.
A window pops open, and the room relaxes a touch.
“Fine,” Regina concedes. Her voice sticks awkwardly. She resists clearing her throat and calling attention to it. She needs a glass of water.
Pursing her mouth over her already returning frustration, Regina concentrates instead on tucking the crinkles of her faintly limp, white shirt further in, before zipping her trousers rather loudly. Absently then, she runs a hand through her hair, observing the Sheriff as she finally peels herself off of the wall.
Emma strolls over, opening the top draw for a tissue to clean her hand with. She decides she doesn’t want to have to smell the woman on her leg like that all night long. The vibrating echoes of Regina groaning, mouth mashed up beneath her ear will be more than enough of a parting shot. She rubs at the spot, hopefully fading the lipstick.
“See yourself out, Sheriff.”
They stand off, eye to eye, at either ends of the desk. The more sex they have, the less nerve they have left in reserve for occupying personal space.
“Are you deaf, Miss Swan?”
The ringing fever in her ears pushes Emma a little too far.
“Madam Mayor,” she grits out and manages to leave without incident.
-
The clock reads ten to ten, and the low lamps at Granny’s, it seems, are never near bright enough for the rumbling darkness outside. A couple of them flicker faintly, and Emma can’t be sure if they need changing, or whether they are simply bowing to the thick static in the air.
Losing interest, she pours herself another drink. The bottle clunks heavily on the rim of her glass, the Scotch sloshing out messily.
Emma is drunk, for no particular reason.
She recently hired a deputy, and it’s her second night off from patrol. Unfortunately, there just isn’t much else to do in a small town but for biding time. A long standing pang of discontent bleeds out to her restless feet, because staying anywhere too long has never been a good idea. She fidgets grumpily, the stool she is parked on seriously bugging her.
The front door tinkles and a pair of heels click across the diner.
Her mouth goes instantly dry. She’s been avoiding that sound all morning, afternoon and night (or so she tells herself). She shakes her head for the thought to leave her, but it doesn’t. Grinding her elbows into the bar, she reluctantly gives in to doing a sideways glimpse, only to discover what she already could sense, even after half a bottle; the one person she wants and doesn’t want to see, at the far end, very back of the diner, in a dark burgundy dress, tucking into a booth opposite Sidney Glass.
Emma openly gawks as Sidney folds his newspaper in a hurry, speaking in intimate tones and retrieves something small from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. Placing it in the Mayor’s waiting palm, their fingers then curl over one another's and remain oddly clasped like that on the tabletop. While Regina sits straight and distant, Sidney is bent over, gesturing animatedly with his free hand.
It makes her flat out laugh to see how Regina could have any patience for his bumbling, confiding in the man, and allowing him, of all people, this bizarre, personal leniency.
Finishing her drink, Emma scratches irritably at her neck. The room thrums and whines as her pulse kicks against the fingertips. There is too much blistering inside her right now. Slumping off the stool, she throws a few bills on the counter. Looking over again, she marks how Regina smirks and squeezes his hand before taking the item. She should have studied how to read lips, on top of the stealing cars, and wallets, and chasing down sleazy men.
A woman though, she has never tackled, and she thinks, maybe she will tonight. Because that woman is trouble; shuffling from the booth like an excessive fog, rolling out languorously, she flaunts every shape, every curve as she stands, as she leaves, as she coils around again, dipping over the man, hips jutting back, to murmur in close over his shoulder. He doesn’t dare catch her eye, but smiles readily and nods.
Emma yells out stridently, full out across the room, “Madam Mayor, I need to speak with you.”
Regina looks up, a kind of horror and annoyance hardening her brow; she flits her eyes once over, painfully wary of the scatter of people still sitting in the diner. It spurs Emma on.
“It’s about my new deputy. I have questions. About the budget, I mean.”
She thinks she covers pretty well, except Regina merely clears her throat and continues to glare.
“We can talk back at the Sheriff’s office.” Emma shifts her heels and jams her hands into the back pockets. “Because there are some documents you should probably take with you. Before the budget meeting, you know,” Emma raises her voice,“tomorrow morning.”
“Sheriff, it’s late,” she snaps in return, but Regina can feel a tickle in her tongue about to slip down the back of her throat and refrains from jumping the gun. She exhales discreetly. “But I suppose, if your questions are quick, you can walk me to my car.”
Regina does what she can, however Emma makes the exit clunky and awkward, holding the door wide, then practically sticking to her from behind, shoving at her feet. She’s about to snap again, when steps past the diner window, Emma pounces and drags her forcibly down the side of the building to a corner of a small loading area, where the air is nippy and the ground is rough. Their shoes scrape and trip, the overcast night making it particularly hard to see, with only a single, aged yellow light from above the ‘employees only’ door diffusing a dusty, meagre scrap of glow.
“What did he give you?” Emma seethes and pins Regina to the uneven brick. Her hand fills the palm Regina had used to cling to Sidney, spreading between her fingers.
Craning her head to the side, Regina watches as they wriggle against submitting. Suddenly, Emma is pressing down on her wrist, delicate skin pinching on the brick until an aching grunt escapes from her, whistling past her bared teeth.
“The hell you two doing now?” She sucks and rolls her tongue knowingly where Regina likes it most along the neck, meaning on making marks, when it dawns on her. “Did you know I was in the diner?”
The blood in Emma lurches about, her mouth breathing hot against Regina’s jaw.
“Don’t flatter yourself, dear.”
“You dirty fucking whore.”
A heavy moan rips out, and Regina is cringing even as her hands are dropping to grasp at Emma’s ass, worried all of a sudden about having to walk back out the length of the alley alone. It cannot be helped. She starts to reach underneath, rubbing at the crotch of Emma’s jeans from behind. She gets loud.
The muffled quickies in the office no longer satisfy like they used to.
Emma can hardly believe the sounds. They make her red and mad, and in a brute sort of urge for dominance, she flips Regina haphazardly, in between scrabbling to lift her dress, and yanking her black stockings a large way down her thighs.
“Let’s see just how wet you are.”
She fucks Regina with two fingers; adds a third until the Mayor is pushing at the wall for leverage, brimming with both the thrill and the humiliation of sleeping with an enemy.
Feeling manic and feverish, Regina wishes she could get her hands around the brick. Short, familiar prayers stumble like lost children under her breath, even as she is swinging her hips back for more.
A roar of thunder passes overhead.
They continue on without thought or understanding of where they are, or what has led them here. And though Emma cannot make out the words, she’s sure she is hearing what are words, and starts to kiss at the side of Regina’s face.
As she dribbles down the inside of her thigh, Regina swears never to let Emma see Henry again.
-
She doesn’t open the door all the way.
Gripping securely to the edges of her home, palms on either side, guarding the threshold, Regina arches a brow then at the distracted gaze meandering her bare arms. It isn’t often she is without a jacket of some kind.
“How nice of you to show,” she drawls. “Did you bring anything?”
“Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”
She is more or less amused until she reminds herself of the innumerable scores to settle, and like a drug, her anger filters through the microscopic fibers of her again.
“Of course you think you do.” Her insides – stomach, heart, and lungs – wind tautly, twisting neatly.
“You letting me inside?”
“I just tucked Henry in for bed. I can’t be sure he’s asleep yet,” she spits.
The dig is low, it’s cheap, and using her son to the land it is vulgar, but then again, Regina is at a loss for what more she isn’t incapable of.
“So what,” Emma shrugs sourly, “we’re gonna chat in your doorway until we know?”
“My, are we in a hurry.”
“Whatever Regina, you called me. I got a long day tomorrow, if you’re going to be like this, I’m leaving.”
“No Sheriff, stay,” Regina blurts, blinking stiffly. “Or rather I suppose,” she heaves a low, irritaed sigh. “Come on in.”
Emma brushes by gruffly.
Not caring to be lead tonight, she trudges upwards, abandoning the Mayor in the foyer without so much as a second thought. At the top of the stairs though, she tosses a look towards the side of the manor where Henry lies – she hopes – safe and sound and her throat closes like an allergic reaction. Briskly, Emma veers off the other direction.
Trailing several paces behind, Regina curls a fist against her side. Her eyes are hard and tight.
She is the odd one out in this triangle of theirs, no matter how they cut it, and an overwhelming anguish surges in at the realization, that she is merely a holding place – a means to an end – until they can be free to have the one they truly want. She wants to break something, crush something, kill someone.
Breathing heavily, she wades through the grief, musters together a crumb of jealousy and clings to it.
By the time she slinks through the door, Emma is already dumping her cuffs, her nightstick, and with a thwacking yank, her thick, leather belt onto the end of the bed.
The sheer bravado radiating off the blonde, in her simple cotton, broad features, and unruly hair, revives in Regina a crackling, current of lust. It clatters in her chest like over-hanging pots and pans in the midst of a natural disaster. She closes her mouth, stuffing the feeling back. This evening is about reclaiming control – no melting, no whimpering, no matter the cost.
“My house isn’t soundproof, you know.”
Emma smiles smugly, “I think you should be the one worrying about waking the neighbours.”
Regina returns the smile with exaggerated disdain. Stalking off then, a storm brewing in her, bursting with wind and lightning and the like, she preps the room: spreading the drapes, flipping the bedside lights on, rustling the covers away.
“You have a tolerance for pain, Sheriff?”
“I’m talking to you aren’t I? I mean you’re the biggest pain in the ass I know.” Emma chucks her jacket carelessly.
“Don’t, remove anything,” she growls a little out of control. The blades of her shoulders clench at the bitter taste of her tone. “We haven’t started.”
She glances at Emma sternly, raw contempt in the pits of her eyes, and retreats inside the walk-in closet.
Seeking every chance she can get to refuse the Mayor, Emma plops down petulantly on the bed to tug out of her boots. When Regina reappears though, she is carrying a tremendous, oversized crocodile bag. It drops to the plush sheepskin rug with a thud, several pieces inside rattling menacingly. The size of that bag, concealing whatever feasible toys or playthings, is no joke. There isn’t much that Emma fears anymore, but she fears she is excruciatingly out of her depth here. She steps away from the bed.
“Looks like Madam Mayor isn’t so innocent after all,” she supplies, hesitantly.
Parting her lips, Regina tenses, unsure how to feel about the comment; the murky history it dredges creaking the walls, the ceiling, the legs of the furniture. She always thought of this existence as a reset, the do-over she deserves. Then again, she has never been good at leaving things behind.
“I thought I told you to keep your hands off your clothes.”
Emma scratches at the base of her throat, toes creeping into the carpet.
“You were taking too long.”
Regina bends down, unzipping the bag. She is reaching her limit. Her ribs extend painfully around the blackness inside of her.
“What’s the safeword, dear?”
“Safeword? Right, uh. Forest, I guess.”
It pricks her differently than the last one. It brings losing her son into the equation, brings images of him babbling on and on about fairytales, about curses, Emma thumbing through the book, speculating, plotting their next adventures, bonding over trees, and horses and princes, and magic, all to a swirling mass clogging her throat.
Standing, Regina takes in the blonde one last time, as she is now, and spies a glint of guilt sputtering in the greens of Emma’s gaze.
Gliding her dress to the floor with a hiss of relief, Regina picks up the gag, and the crop, and the nightstick.
The first round does nothing to assuage her. Two hours in and she thinks she will sleep through the night, at least.
“You think I’m evil now?” She whispers it, face down in the crook of Emma’s neck.
“I think you’re a bitch,” Emma stammers in reply.
-
“Regina, seriously, what the fuck!” The bathroom door rears on its hinges, slamming the wall and bouncing back vigorously at Emma, who wrestles with it to get out of her way.
“Language, Miss Swan.”
The faucet squeaks as she cuts the water. Grabbing a paper towel from above the sink, Regina sniffs then, and begins to dry her hands. “If you cannot be a role model to Henry,” she continues, maintaining a flat, even tone and a resolute eye line on her task, “at the very least have enough maturity to keep your appalling behaviour off of school property.”
“Hey, I was invited to this thing.”
“Not by me,” Regina stresses.
Emma can’t understand why this same, impossible argument is happening yet again, making fists and grabbing at the air out of exasperation; every encounter between them, seeming to her, an endless cycle of the exact same patterns and mindless routines, nothing ever progressing but for the pileup of bitter misunderstandings.
“Okay, yeah, sure Mary Margaret had the decency to think that it might be cool for me to get to participate in one of Henry’s school functions, but I double-checked with you.”
“And here you are.”
“What is with the attitude?”
Regina’s jaw tightens. The judgmental tone alone lights her nerves and starts her heart thumping a different rhythm. Gazing up at the dull, stained mirror, she spots an odd spasm in the hollow beneath her eye, and pivots away abruptly, tucking some hair around an ear.
Ahead of the door, Emma folds a pair of defiant arms square across the chest, and hums an assertive note of persistence at her. Regina looks away, suppressing a scowl.
She is ready for this day to be over.
Striding forward, Regina flicks the paper towel into a nearby garbage can, and yearns for some of her old, black magic. She shivers at the thought, against the rigid seams of her garments, and turns on the Sheriff in a measured move, tugging and straightening at her blazer.
“Whatever do you mean, dear?” The false graciousness plunges an octave, “This is how we talk.”
She allows just a beat of silence to drop before reaching for the large, brass handle. Emma however is more than prepared, promptly barring the escape with a solid and clenching arm.
“And the petty little games back there?”
Regina huffs, rapidly losing patience and control. “What do you want, Miss Swan?”
It’s a perfect, wide open opportunity, and Emma hurriedly gathers all the things she believes are wrong between them into her mouth, mindfully outfitting them to be deployed in what will no doubt be a lengthy war, to finally change things maybe, fingers crossed, except nothing comes out. For all her closet theories and half-baked judgments, when actually put on the spot – and left staring at the impossibly attractive face of the woman, and not the villain she likes to conjure – the whole lot evaporates, and Emma is stuck with only a sort of abstract wanting for something better crammed close to her chest.
She can think of nothing to do but kiss her.
Regina is quick to wrench her lips away, resentment vibrating off the peak of her cheeks and in the stitch of her brow. Their bodies linger though, barely inches apart, the stringent smell of cleaners clouding around their faces. Regina is starting to feel caged again. Strangling upwards under the chin, she whacks Emma’s head against the door and grimaces at the thudding creeping up her own throat.
“What, you only like it rough, Madame Mayor,” the scorn in Emma long past the point of taunting. “Or do you always just use sex as some hateful way to torture people?”
“I don’t hate you,” the retort fires out like an unexpected shot exploding out of a jammed rifle.
Her knees grow weak, and for all the wrong reasons.
“What are you talking about?”
Fraught and unthinking Regina lunges, lips first, to stop the looming conversation, to take it back to what they know, will the rest of whatever admissions are left in her today to pour through her mouth, and the evidence to be obliterated in each escalating kiss, and bite, and pressure from her tongue.
Emma doesn’t have the strength to protest. Instead she loses herself searching for some immediate way beneath Regina’s complicated clothing, a path to bare skin without the trouble of undoing the whole thing; skimming over the tucked shirt, the tight belt, the hidden clasps, the tiny buttons, until at last giving in and deciding on steering them to a stall.
The stall door bangs chaotically as they work to maneuver into the cramped and awkward space. Emma’s hands grope over the top of the stall, for a way to lean without toppling, while a thumb works to flatten the stubborn door away. Hissing, she stops dead in her tracks.
Regina is roughly ploughing her nails low against Emma’s stomach. Briskly, she wedges her fingers past the border of Emma’s denim, driving them deep until the warmth and the wetness is rushing over the tips, not even bothering with the buckle, or the zipper, craving the obstacles, needing the struggles.
Their breaths echo unevenly.
“Hello? Is everything alright?” The voice is soft and tiny. Pushing through the door, Mary Margaret tries again, a tad louder. “Henry is worried about the two of you.”
Immediately, Regina’s hand flies out. Her elbow smacks the stall door just as Emma catches her knuckles on an edge in a noisy fumbling to retract her arms.
Fortunately, Mary Margaret doesn’t see much apart from the back of the garish red leather, the racket, more than anything, scaring and distracting her. In fact, before the bewildered schoolteacher can even raise her hands to cover the yelp falling out like a rock off a cliffside, Regina is already barging out from inside the stall. And with far more push than necessary.
Out of habit, Emma snags a wrist and jerks the Mayor straight back to staring her down again.
“Emma, no!” Mary Margaret shrieks. “Think of Henry!”
“Please, Miss Blanchard, I am the only one who thinks of Henry.” Her voice erupts viciously, the thought of her son like a trip wire. In an instant, it sucks every scrap of lust and panic from her body. “And you had better leave now, Miss Swan, or there will be consequences.”
“Oh no, Madam Mayor, please, Emma means no harm, really.”
“It’s fine, Mary Margaret, I got it.” She squeezes the wrist in her grasp firmly in warning, and in spite of herself, to some small extent in reassurance, for Regina to keep it together in front of Mary Margaret. Releasing then, Emma softens slightly, and Regina scoffs, stalking off for the sinks. “Tell Henry we’ll be out in a minute.”
Mary Margaret leaves uncertain, but choosing to put her faith in Emma.
“You think she saw anything? Or heard something? We weren’t making any sounds, were we?”
“I meant what I said.”
“Yeah, I heard you. I’ll go when the book presentation things are done.”
“No,” Regina snatches at a paper towel, “you will go now.” Her chest collapses around that last word, lungs shuddering, and refilling unsteadily. “Henry has had to deal with enough of your antics today.”
(The subtext roars like a train smashing through the drywall, the piping, the crunching, the screeching of metal shredding tiles, shards of mirror and porcelain flailing through the spraying water.)
Furrowing her brow then, Emma swallows uneasily at the sight of the Mayor, drying her hands for a second time. She watches intently, holding a breath, noticing the meticulous manner in which the woman rubs at each finger individually, and the tremble in every single one of them.
“Look,” Emma ventures, frowning, “You’re his mom. I get it.” The wild, vulnerable look Regina gives at that startles Emma into feeling, all of a sudden, like a bully. Her mouth lolls open, taken aback. “I just miss him sometimes, okay? I’m gonna go say bye now - I got a lot of paperwork to get to anyways.”
They hold each other’s eyes.
Before Emma can turn to leave, a forgotten twinge, from that night, way back, when they met for the very first time, compels Regina to return the out of character gesture with one of her own, reaching for the blonde and kissing her, meaningfully, in a rare moment of warm feeling for the woman. Separating herself, Regina nods curtly; the ‘thank you’ she is thinking hanging firmly to the tip of her tongue.
“Say goodbye to Henry.”
-
It isn’t hostile enough, the way Emma counters, and the way they are currently yanking and stabbing at one another, out in the street, with the chill whipping around them, but Regina is determined to get them there today. Her curse is changing, time is on the run from her, what was once customary, clockwork and safe is splintering; a truce is not on the agenda.
She needs their animosity.
Gritting her teeth and biting the bullet, Regina advances, closing the gap.
“You’ve had your fun,” she snarls, a deep, desperate part of her willing bygones to take hold. “It’s time you moved on, Miss Swan.”
“No, Regina, you do not get to intimidate me just like that.” The wind howls in accord with her point, except Emma isn’t on her game right now, and slumps her shoulders uncomfortably.
The roads are wet still from the afternoon rain, and crackle as a pair of cars speed by. Above them, a mess of faded blues, murky indigoes, and purples sweep out across the sky like soaked fabrics as dusk sits heavily on the last of the light.
Since their last major altercation, Emma is finding the spite and the sarcasm easier said than done. Crinkling her chin, she winces at the perfume and spice drifting off of the Mayor.
“You know what, I wouldn’t be so sure,” Regina smolders, flashing her teeth, and flexing her knuckles and joints.
Thrusting a hand under the left side of the baggy, unzipped coat Emma is wearing, Regina latches around the swell of breast concealed underneath, and reels at the tiny taste of memories it invokes. A smile claws out the side of her mouth, dragging her lips back.
Emma grunts, and slams a threatening hand over top, clutching painfully even through the slippery, polyester material of the coat. Anxiously, she scans the empty streets.
“Your heart is beating like a drum, dear. Scared of something?”
“Watch it.”
Crushing, and pinching, as much as she is able, Regina hums when she catches a nipple.
Emma wants to punch her, but her arm is sore and uncooperative. Her ribs pump fervidly as she grinds down on her molars.
“Leave, Miss Swan, no one here wants you.”
“Well, I know for a fact that isn’t true.”
“Oh, don’t think because of this,” Regina wrenches her hand out, smirking, as she waves her index, middle and ring finger, “you have consent to stay here and play house with Henry.”
She surveys the flourishing temper in Emma. Puckering her lips then, she clicks her tongue cruelly, condescendingly, her spirit flaring brightly at the vehemence in front of her.
“He will always be off limits to you. No matter how many times you come scampering into my bed.”
Emma flushes, embarrassed at the implication, that she is trash, that she is still never good enough and her self-preservation kicks in.
“You want to get into this here?” Emma forces Regina back a couple steps, laughing.
“You’re just a warm body, Madam Mayor. Something I can use, and toss and let’s be honest here, touching you is something no one in this town would do if I paid them, not to mention having to deal with your psycho, uptight, neurotic, bitch from hell approach to being a human being. I’m the one doing favours here, and I don’t need you, or your stupid permission to have a relationship with Henry. He loves me, but I can’t say the same goes -”
The slap is hard; nearly hurling Emma to the concrete. The pain of it prickles in her shocked and unflinching eyes.
Regina stares back blankly, her face draining of all expression, before walking off their corner of the sidewalk to her car, hauling the door shut, and tearing down the road.
-
Emma is waiting at the gate. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she manages to catch Regina’s glower through the windshield, right as the Mercedes is pulling up the driveway. She plucks her other hand from inside a jacket pocket and massages the two together for some heat. Peering over, Emma blinks impatiently.
The car grumbles and Regina parks it with a violent thrust. Her mind is fraying, and she squashes her lips against the nip of her teeth, over and over, and licks at the taste of steel on them. The thought of Emma churns inside her. Whatever is between them, it has to end, because it is tiring unlike any other feeling, the way it will not quit.
Unfurling her spine then, she picks up her chin.
Regina is reaching for a strategy, when the minute the engine dies, before she even has a good grasp on her keys, there is a loud tug, and the hush of the car interior spills away as the driver’s side door flings open. Hastily ducking under, and without so much as a word then, Emma clambers inside, in a jumble of boots and leather and limbs, straddling the Mayor.
The door slams sternly. The seat falls back in a blur, the seatbelt whizzing by immediately after and the keys rattle bluntly as they hit the centre console.
“What in the hell are you doing?” Regina shouts, completely leveled and flustered.
After a week and a half of threats and dares and zero physical contact, Emma is riled and will not be deterred from what she is come to do. Ripping out of her jacket, and tossing it to the passenger side, Emma quickly shakes out her cold, stiff hands and wraps them around Regina’s face.
She kisses her, deep like the ocean and unyielding.
It takes Regina by surprise, the sentiment, coursing in on her, splitting her open inside, drowning every space, every gap like high tide, like a slow flood. It soaks to the very edges of her, the enormity of it sloshing through, filling and expanding her. It fills and overfills.
Scrambling then for Emma’s fingers, she directs them up her skirt, as it rushes out of her, sticky against her skin.
Emma gets her off in moments; the buzz feeling much too brief and all too dirty. Crumpling over the woman, Emma raises her fingers to her mouth and shuts her eyes.
“I’m sorry for the alley thing.”
“Excuse me?”
“When I was drunk that time, a while back? And I guess that time before your council meeting. And definitely what I said the other day. I’m sorry for those things, and I wanted -”
“Stop,” Regina hisses. “Get off, get off of me.”
“No, wait. Please, just hear me out.”
“I’m not interested in anything you have to say.”
Her palm slides against the foggy window, as Emma tries to keep her where she is, using every body part, pressing her to the seat, backing her into the side of the car like a hard-headed ram brawling for a mate. Regina fumbles ungracefully, an elbow landing inadvertently on the horn.
“I have to – Regina, come on. Just let me – I haven’t been good to you and – that’s not okay. God, woman – will you stop it?!”
“You stop it! This is not what this is.”
Eventually, Regina is able to snatch up her keys, and her bag, with enough sense leftover to shove clumsily at the excessively fitted skirt hiked up around her waist. When she stumbles out of the car, Emma is flat on her back and out of apologies.
Ignoring the wide open car door, Regina marches straight for her front door, hesitating only to steal a half-a-breath to say, “Henry will be home soon. Get off my driveway!”
-
It’s only about a week later.
“God, fuck.”
A mellow light is streaming through the filmy curtains. The desk is crowded, mahogany shelves overflowing with books and trinkets. The sofa squeaks dully under her skin.
Emma wants to scream, it’s so good. She thanks the musky air above she doesn’t.
Surfacing, Regina rests her chin on Emma’s stomach, and wipes at the edges of her mouth with a thumb and forefinger. Her knees are sore, and she pushes unceremoniously at the leg draping over her shoulder.
An unusual numbness settles over the two women.
Half-heartedly, Emma scratches at the green blouse, still partly buttoned and hanging damply to her body. She peeks down past her naked thighs, and bites her bottom lip as she observes Regina, in her black lace bra and slacks, breathing quietly.
“Come up here.” Emma lifts Regina off the hardwood flooring of the stately study to laze over her, sinking them sighing into the leather sofa. “It gets kind of hot in here.”
“The oven is on.”
“What’re you making?”
“Lasagna.”
They avoid moving, staring off instead; mostly alert, and yet all at once somewhat dumbly resigned. The stack of documents Emma came for sit forgotten on top the crooked coffee table.
“Are you still wet for me?” Emma whispers, after a while, grazing a few fingers along the back of Regina’s thigh, over the hill and a little too far inside, drawing out a sharp inhale.
“Hurry.”
For once, Emma is on the same page, rolling them over and removing the slacks with a tingling urgency. She uses her mouth first. For several long moments, she elongates each press and insistence, following every squirm until her chin is sopping. Then climbing her way back, ravenous at the thought of watching what it does to her, Emma pushes in – no teasing, no playing – bumping her knuckles.
A tragic look of bliss passes across Regina’s face, and Emma begins thrusting with her entire arm, firmly and obsessively heaving the woman against the arm of the sofa in great, surging jolts.
Shaking, Regina spreads her hands on the leather behind her. The shallow breaths in her tumble from her throat in rough, halting patches.
Through a haze, she hears a bounding, pattering of feet along the stairs then, and her chest seizes suddenly, as her head thumps the sofa. They have been losing track of time. Her fear seeps out in a hapless moan, and slinging an arm around Emma, curling it deep in the dip of her waist, Regina hugs her tightly.
“Mom!” Henry’s voice blasts through the corridors. “Mom? Are you in there?”
Emma freezes, and Regina gulps with difficulty.
“Yes dear.”
Rustling a piece of paper in his hands, Henry leans back against the hefty door to have his conversation (part of him knowing better than to force a closed room, part of him not wanting to have to be around his mom much anyways). He hopes he won’t be chastised for talking at her through a wall.
“Is dinner ready? It’s past six.”
“Yes, I’m sorry.” Regina tilts her head toward the sound of Henry. “I had something to do, sweetheart.”
And somehow, through the grit and the terror is a sweetness in her voice.
And somehow, gazing down at the Mayor – the sudden softness in her features, the pureness of her expression, gleaming with a frantic care, a concern unlike any Emma ever thought possible growing up from home to home – Emma feels the world diminish and fade around her like a bleached out photograph. She smiles, and without meaning to begins gently moving her hand again.
Regina whirls her focus back to Emma, staring in alarm, but Emma cannot bring herself to stop.
“I finished my homework, but I have this school form I need you to sign for tomorrow.”
“After dinner.”
They are quiet. Emma strokes slowly but with a purpose and meaning. She goes deep. She leans into it. Because despite the precarious situation unfolding just over and beyond the shelter of the big, brown sofa, something else, something more crucial is mounting in the confined and immediate place between their faces. Regina softly lifts her hips to meet the movement running up against her, and doesn’t dare blink for the strange muted feeling of something like peace warming in her belly.
“Yeah, okay.” Itching his nose, Henry grimaces at the growling notion of his hunger. “I’m going to check on dinner.” As he bounces away, he sneezes and murmurs, “Hope it’s lasagna.”
Inside of the study, Regina tries to count through ten whole seconds, just in case, listening to the receding sound of sneakers on the hardwood. She fails miserably though, unable to keep from anxiously raising a palm toward Emma, finally – clutching at a hot, blushing span of cheek, feeling the sway of blonde curls along the wrist – and like seeing a lover come home from war, Regina kisses her.
When she comes, Regina does so whimpering into Emma’s ear, gasping weakly at the end of it, and letting go of a very long, very weary breath as the final full stop.
They are afraid to budge, afraid to unclench, and they are afraid, for the very first time, to return.
Regina opens her eyes, impassively toward the ceiling.
“Why don’t you stay for dinner,” she states more than anything. “Henry will … see you if you try to leave now anyways.”