HerBespokeCurse

I'll Keep This Place Ready For You

light-cream-cheese — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 10:34:19 -0600

Rating: G

Word Count: ~2600

Summary: “You’re not the one who made the kid cry on Christmas. And I’m not the one whose pillow he cried into.”

A/N: Christmassy Regina/Emma gen. It’s still technically Christmas, right? Title courtesy of the Mountain Goats.

Read on: (AO3) (FF.net)

…

The air in the station is so suffocatingly still that sometimes Regina wonders if time hasn’t stopped again just inside this building, while the world outside continues turning without her.

The feeling is shattered only by the way Emma Swan tromps into the station with annoying regularity, punctuating Regina’s solitude with bursts of noise and color, always accompanied by one or two of her deputies and at least once a week by Archie Hopper. She brings Regina cups of hot black coffee with no sugar at all and white paper bags full of omelets and salads and lasagna that Regina thinks might have been good once, before it was frozen.

Regina finds ways to fill up the seemingly endless stretches of time between these visits. Ruby occasionally brings her a book, and she makes use of the journal Archie seems to think might help her, but there are so many hours in the day that after a while, there’s simply nothing left to do to fill up the time but think about the son who has not come once to see her.

The stamping of boots from the hallway startles her awake. The thin novel she’d been trying to read is lying open across her chest. She picks it up and tries to look interested, bracing herself to pointedly ignore the intrusion.

Today, though, Emma is alone when she appears from around the corner, pink-cheeked and with a mess of yellow hair sticking out from under a ridiculous knit hat.

“Lunch,” Emma announces flatly, leaning against the box of the cell’s locking mechanism. Regina peers over the top of the Hemingway and eyes the brown paper bag Emma’s sticking through the bars of her cell.

“That’s not from Granny’s.”

“No, it’s from home.”

Home.

The easy, possessive way Emma’s taken to talking about the house on Mifflin Street makes the hair on the back of Regina’s neck stand up. She’d agreed to the idea, if only to have the knowledge that Henry was in his own bed rather than on the pull-out couch of some Charming love nest, but that didn’t make the fact of Emma Swan living in her house any less irritating. Emma shakes the bag once, impatiently. “Come on, Regina. I’m not even supposed to be here alone.”

Regina sits up, then, rising to her feet in one fluid motion. “I’ll be sure to complain the next time I see your deputy.”

“Yeah, ‘cause that rule’s supposed to protect you.”

Regina sighs and takes the bag from her. Emma looks at her expectantly, so she opens it and examines the contents. “Peanut butter?”

“Crunchy, even, so don’t say I never did anything for you,” Emma points out and Regina’s breath catches in her throat on the inhale. She freezes the way she did on a night not actually all that long ago, when Henry had caught her eating sandwiches over the sink at two in the morning. She tries to remember, and thinks he must have been eight or nine, because instead of frowning accusations at her, he’d grinned conspiratorially and let her hoist him onto the kitchen counter to share the other half of her snack. Ninja pajamas, she remembers. A bit too small. So he’d been eight, then.

Regina makes a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat. “Thank you, Sheriff.”

She waits for Emma to retreat, but instead the sheriff just shoves her hands in her back pockets, scuffing the toe of one boot right up to the place where the cell door meets the floor.

“Is there something else?” Food and books are the only things ever offered to her. No one mentions laundry or hygiene or exercise—Regina can take care of these things herself, and as long as no one notices or mentions it, she’s pleased to keep it that way. The only thing she might want, if pressed, is the one thing she refuses to ask for.

“Yeah, I, uh… it’s kind of about Henry?”

“Did he—” Regina starts, but Emma’s shaking her head before she can finish the question.

“He didn’t ask,” Emma says, so apologetically that Regina wants to scream. “If you want to see him, Regina, I could just—”

“No,” Regina cuts her off, forcefully enough that the word echoes off the station’s high ceilings. “I don’t want—don’t push him. He’ll ask. When he’s ready, he’ll ask. What did you want to know?”

Emma sighs deeply and squints at a point somewhere over Regina’s shoulder. “This is so dumb.”

Regina doesn’t doubt that, but all she says is, “Just get to it, Miss Swan.”

“It’s Christmas next week, and, um, I have to ask about Santa Claus?”

Regina lets out a short bark of laughter before she can stop herself. She has waited weeks for Emma Swan to ask for Regina’s advice on how to parent their son, and this is the area in which she finally seeks guidance? She sobers again when she realizes that she herself doesn’t actually know whether her eleven-year-old still believes in Santa Claus. She shrugs one shoulder and admits as much.

“Last year, he was more interested in curses and evil queens. And this year, he certainly has no reason not to believe in—well, I suppose it’s a fairy tale too, isn’t it?” Regina smiles then, more to herself than at Emma. “At any rate, you have to hide the presents in the attic until Christmas morning. Henry is congenitally impatient, and it’s the only place he’s afraid to peek.”

“Oh,” Emma says in a low voice, ears reddening. “Actually, I was kind of asking if Santa was, y’know, real?”

Regina rolls her eyes, certain that no adult woman could possibly be this ridiculous, but Emma is clearly far too embarrassed not to be serious. “As far as I know, that really is just a story, dear.”

“It’s just, Henry made a list of the stuff he wants? And it’s kind of a long list? And he seems—I mean, Regina, he’s really sure he’s going to get everything on that list.”

Regina raises one eyebrow. “And you were hoping Santa might help you out? If you needed money for my son, Sheriff, all you had to do was ask.”

“Oh my god, Regina, it’s not about the money. Jeez, I’m trying to talk to you about the kid. Look, I never really had… Christmas, whatever, so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about, but isn’t he kind of spoiled?”

“I worked very hard to make the holiday special for my son,” Regina explains tightly. And she had. An entire holiday about domesticity and tradition and indulgence, Christmas played to her strengths. And the idea of it, of a boy child coming into the world just when it was at its darkest and filling it up with light and color and warmth? That had been something Regina knew how to celebrate.

“He told me it’s his favorite. I’m not saying you didn’t do a good job.” Emma’s frown deepens. “I just… is that good for him? To give him everything he asks for?”

“And what would have been the point of anything less? Why on earth would I disappoint him when I could make him happy?” Regina feels her stomach sink even as she says the words, knowing that she’s giving away the only thing she knows she did right as a mother—no matter how much she’d let him down, she certainly never meant to.

“Okay,” Emma puts out her hand as though she means to reach for Regina, but her hand meets one of the bars instead and she just scrubs her knuckles against it for a moment. “Okay. I’ll try.”

The first thing she thinks before opening her eyes is, It sounds like jingle bells.

It’s not, of course. The noise that wakes her is simply Emma Swan fumbling with a large ring of keys. When Regina sits up, frowning, Emma looks up at her a bit sheepishly.

“Sorry,” Emma whispers, although there’s no one else she could disturb. “I don’t know why I was trying not to wake you, you just looked… sorry. I can’t find the right key.”

Regina blinks slowly, glancing out the windows to confirm that the sky is in fact still pitch dark. “What the hell are you doing here, Sheriff?”

“It’s Christmas Eve,” Emma says as though that’s an answer. She tries another key in the cell door and gives a little growl of frustration when it slides easily into the lock but won’t turn. “Y’know, this would go a lot faster if you’d just open the door.”

It’s the first time Emma has overtly acknowledged that locking Regina up at all is little more than a trust exercise. Regina crosses the cell and reaches for the door.

She hesitates, searching Emma’s face for some sign that this is a trap. The prospect of reminding the Savior just what she’s capable of—just what she’s not been doing, here—is not unappealing to Regina. She flexes her fingers, once, concentrating on the subtle thrum under her skin that she spends most of her time trying to ignore. When she drops her hand on top of the lock, there is an immediate, agreeable ker-chunk in the mechanism.

Emma grins and whispers, “Cool,” and in the shadowy light cast by a single desk lamp, she looks exactly like Henry. Regina’s fingers against the metal lock spark and pop before she can snatch them back and step clear of the door.

“It’s the middle of the night. Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, perhaps with my son, Miss Swan?”

“Oh,” Emma says. “He’s at Midnight Mass. With—uh, he wanted to go.”

“Midnight Mass,” Regina echoes. She’s surprised anyone’s still interested, although she supposes religion works like everything else in Storybrooke does now, with people picking and choosing the things they like best from the old world and the new. If people like superstition and guilt, well, that’s not Regina’s problem now.

“Yeah. I know it’s late, but it’s just one night and it’s Christmas and I figured letting him stay up is my best chance at getting to sleep until a normal hour tomorrow, so—”

“Miss Swan.”

“Yeah?”

“Why are you here?”

Emma sighs and drops her hands, letting the ring of keys bounce against her thigh a few times before answering. “I put up the Christmas tree.”

The statement is almost completely devoid of meaning for Regina, except for the way it brings up the sharp squeeze behind her sternum that she gets every time she realizes she’s missed another opportunity to be her son’s mother—which is pretty much always, these days. “How lovely.”

“It wasn’t actually. David took him sledding and I put up the Christmas tree and then when he came home…”

“You put it up without him.”

Emma rubs at the back of her neck. “Yeah?”

All Regina can think to do is shake her head slowly. “Good lord, Miss Swan.”

Emma’s face crumples and Regina’s not sure she’ll be able to refrain from slapping the woman if she actually starts to cry. “I didn’t know!” Emma whines. “I thought it could be, like, a surprise. And then I asked him if he wanted to watch the Avengers, because he was mad and that’s his favorite.”

“The Avengers. On Christmas Eve.”

“Yeah, I kinda got that that was the wrong thing when he started crying and went up to your room. And then he came down and informed me that he was going to mass with David and Mary Margaret.”

Regina can’t help it. She smirks. It had taken a while for some of the shine to wear off of Emma Swan, but it had happened all the same. “Welcome to motherhood.”

“It sucks,” Emma grumbles, and then has the good sense to immediately look ashamed. “Except it doesn’t, does it?”

“What, dear?”

“Being a mom. It doesn’t suck. I’m just sort of… screwing it up.” She’s not whining now, just resigned. “I keep asking Mary Margaret what I should be doing, but really…” she looks up at Regina. “What does she know? She never raised her kid, either. She’s just making it up as she goes along.”

“Truthfully, Miss Swan?” Why the hell is she trying to reassure the woman who’s supplanted her? “There’s no other way to do it.”

Emma shakes her head. “I should’ve been asking you. Dentist appointments and homework and bedtimes—I can figure all that stuff out, but actually being Henry’s mom? You’re the only one who knows how to do that.”

“Henry might disagree with you,” Regina reminds her.

“Maybe,” Emma shrugs, “but you’re not the one who made the kid cry on Christmas. And I’m not the one whose pillow he cried into.”

Regina bites down hard on the inside of her cheek until she can speak without her voice wavering. “I’ll give you anything you need for my son, Miss Swan. You only have to ask.”

“Really anything?”

Regina draws in a slow breath and nods, once.

“Then come home with me.” She gathers up a coat and a pair of gloves that Regina recognizes as her own from the chair behind her and thrusts them into the cell.

Regina takes them slowly and tips her head toward the windows. “Won’t that cause a bit of a problem for you?” It wasn’t Emma’s decision to lock her up here, surely she couldn’t just decide on a whim to set Regina free.

“Yeah, as it turns out, the whole savior-princess thing comes with some perks. Makes it kind of easy to get what I want.”

Regina stiffens and crushes the gloves in her hand. There it is. This isn’t about helping Regina at all. This is Emma getting her way yet again. Just like always.
Emma spots her hesitation. “Don’t be proud, Regina. We both want the same thing.”

“You have no idea what I want, Miss Swan,” Regina manages through gritted teeth.

Emma sighs wearily. “I know you want to see your kid. I know you want him to be happy on freakin’ Christmas morning.”

“And you’re sure—”

“Look, I don’t know what this business of waiting for him to ask for you is about, but get over it. He needs you around. He needs both of us, Regina. Even I can see that, and I have no clue what I’m doing. And, by the way, it’s obvious that he wants to see you. He does. It’s something he wants, even if he won’t ask for it, and I can give it to him. We can. So put your coat on and let’s just go home. We’ll figure the rest of it out.”

Emma lifts her chin at precisely the same angle Henry does when he’s decided to be stubborn, and Regina suddenly knows that Emma’s not going to leave here without her. Whatever has happened between Emma and Henry in the last few weeks, the situation is no longer tenable, at least for Emma.

She wishes it felt more satisfying.

When they push their way through the wide doors of the sheriff’s station, Regina stops short at the feel of the wintry air. It’s icy and thin and smells like the promise of more snow, and she sucks in a deep lungful. It feels like the first real breath she’s taken in weeks.

Emma’s already halfway across the parking lot, headed for the cruiser instead of her bug. “Come on, Your Majesty,” she tosses over her shoulder.

Regina ducks her head against the wind and follows Emma’s lead.

You Know You're Not A Sequel

light-cream-cheese — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 19:42:00 -0500

Rating: PG

Summary: Pre-Swan Queen, inspired by the Singlebrooke video aired during SDCC 2012. I started it then, and then rediscovered it in my WIP folder this week, dusted it off, and gave it a second half.

SwanSong23: you’re really not gonna send me a picture?
Storybrooke108: Are you getting cold feet?
SwanSong23: no! it’s just, you know, that’s usually how things are done.
Storybrooke108: Well, consider me unusual.
SwanSong23: i could send you one?
Storybrooke108: That’s really not necessary.
SwanSong23: sure?
Storybrooke108: I told you, I’m old-fashioned. Blind dates should be blind. No preconceptions. Besides, pictures on the internet can be…
SwanSong23: misleading?
Storybrooke108: In a word, yes.
SwanSong23: gotcha. so. BLIND date, granny’s, 8pm. how will I know who I’m looking for?
Storybrooke108: I’ll be at the counter. In red.
SwanSong23: nice.
Storybrooke108: I’m looking forward to it.
SwanSong23: me too. see ya tonight.
Storybrooke108: Please don’t be late.

*****

“I am going to kill Ruby,” Emma snarls, nearly tearing the white linen dress in half as she wriggles out of it and flings it onto the bed.

“Hey, that one was mine,” Mary Margaret protests.

“And it looked just as stupid as the other three.” Emma flops down on the bed in her underwear.

“Doesn’t she already know what you look like?” Mary Margaret asks. “What happened to all those pictures you made me take?”

“She said she wanted it to be a real blind date. It doesn’t matter; I’m not going.”

“Emma!”

“I didn’t even want to do this.”

“Ruby didn’t make you agree to a date. All she did was make you sign up for Singlebrooke.”

“No, she signed up for me. And filled out the questionnaire. And texted me every hour on the hour until I picked someone to talk to.” Not that there’d been a big selection. The Storybrooke dating pool was already pretty shallow. Leave it to a computer program to distill it down to one.

“Who you liked,” Mary Margaret reminds her. “You can’t stand her up now.”

“I’m not gonna stand her up,” Emma argues, grabbing the pants Mary Margaret is holding out and shoving her legs into them. “I’ll just sign on and send her a message. Tell her I got tied up at work.”

“Which she won’t see until she’s already gone to Granny’s and sat there, alone? How would you feel if she did that to you?”

“Right now? Like I won the lottery.” Emma buttons up a white shirt like it’s personally offended her. She stops before she gets to the top few buttons and looks up at Mary Margaret. “Hey, do you think maybe she will?”

“No, because she’s great, which is why you liked her so much. Hair up with this one,” she adds.

Emma sighs and sweeps her hair up into a ponytail. “What if it’s awful? What if—“ She stops before she can ask What if I’m awful, but Mary Margaret hears it anyway.

“You’re great, too. She’s going to love you.” She hands Emma a lipstick, which Emma dutifully applies. “It’s just dinner, Emma. You can do dinner. Shoes.”

“Yeah,” Emma concedes. She shoves her foot into one black suede stiletto while Mary Margaret hunts for its mate under the bed. “I can do a date.”

“You can do a second date, too.” Her roommate emerges from under the bed, holding up the shoe. “You’ve got to quit pretending you don’t have a life here, now. You can try to have something more substantial.”

“Fine,” Emma huffs, grabbing on to Mary Margaret’s shoulder for balance as she puts on the other shoe.

When she stands up straight, Mary Margaret looks her up and down, then does up one more button on the white shirt before turning Emma around to face the full-length mirror. “See? Beautiful. Now go, you’re late.”

*****

She’s totally late. And she feels horrible about it, too, right until the moment she stumbles through the door of Granny’s. Her date’s not here. No one’s at the counter except Leroy, a few other guys, and Regina Mills in a bright red dress.

It takes her a second to realize her mistake. ”Oh shit,” she breaths. She is actually going to have to kill Ruby. She really wants to turn and walk right back out the door, but she’s all dressed up and hungry and can’t resist a chance to maybe get a rise out of Regina. So she struts right over to the counter and drops onto the stool on Regina’s left. “Evening, Madam Mayor.”

Regina stiffens and gives her a tight smile. “Sheriff Swan. Do you mind? I’m expecting someone.”

“Hot date?” She’s certainly dressed for it. From the back, the red dress looks like just a bolder version of what Regina wears most days, but from this angle, Emma can see that it’s enticingly low-cut. It’s not that she hasn’t noticed the mayor before—it would be hard not to—but Regina’s usually trying to engage in some verbal sparring match with her, and it’s hard enough for Emma to keep pace without the distraction of the other woman’s curves, so she tries hard to keep her eyes above the neck.

Regina looks down at herself and flushes just a bit. “It’s a date, yes. Now could you please move?”

Emma ignores her. She cranes her head around to look at the clock on the wall. “Meeting a date at 8:16? Are you early or is he late?”

“They’re—“ Regina starts to answer before catching herself, and Emma can’t help but smirk at the mayor doing the pronoun dance. “It’s really none of your business, Sheriff.”

“Well, I dunno. If you’re gonna bring Mystery Date around my kid, I might want to know if he’s the kind of inconsiderate jerk who stands up beautiful women.”

A muscle in Regina’s jaw twitches at the possessive way Emma talks about their son, but then she looks up at Emma sharply at the beautiful woman comment. She opens her mouth to say something—probably something completely unappreciative—but she’s interrupted by the slap of Ruby’s order pad on the counter and pointedly looks away.

“Hey, Em,” Ruby grins, her eyes dancing between the two women, taking in their attire as a grin slides across her face. “Are you—“ Emma shoots her a warning glare and a little shake of her head “—ready to order?”

On a normal date, she’d order something at least marginally adult. Chicken or something. “Just bring me the special order, Rubes. Thanks.”

“You got it,” Ruby says with a wink. “Madam Mayor?”

“I’m still waiting, thank you, Ruby.”

Ruby shrugs. “Let me know when you change your mind.”

“So,” Emma prods as Regina watches Ruby sashay towards the other end of the counter. “Who’s the lucky guy? Do I know him?”

Regina sighs loudly. “Again, not that it’s any of your business, but it’s a blind date, actually.”

“A blind date? Huh,” Emma feigns surprise. Regina’s really blushing furiously now, her eyes darting around the diner as if looking for an escape. “So it’s a set-up? No,” she corrects herself quickly. “Someone you met online.”

“It most certainly is not,” Regina lies. Regina’s a good liar, one of the best Emma’s ever met, but her heart’s not even in this one, which almost makes Emma cringe for her.

“Oh,” Emma says lightly. “So you’re not Storybrooke108?”

The blush is gone—in fact, all the blood seems to have drained from Regina’s face. If anything, she looks a little green. “Oh my god.”

Emma can see that there’s no way Regina is going to find this funny. “Relax, Regina, it’s—“

“Sheriff Swan,” Regina grinds out, placing great emphasis on the formal address. “If you breathe a word of this to anyone—“

“Oh, come on, Madam Mayor. I know we’re not exactly best friends, but you really think I’d out you?”

“It’s not that,” Regina says. “I don’t care about that. It’s the” her voice drops so low that Emma can barely catch the words “computer thing.”

Emma can’t help but laugh a little at that, but she keeps her voice low enough when she speaks. “You don’t want me telling people you were trolling the internet for a hook-up, is that it?”

“I was not,” Regina hisses, “looking for any kind of a ‘hook-up.’”

“No, I know. You’re old-fashioned. You mentioned it one or five times.”

Regina pinches the bridge of her nose. “Oh my god.”

“And that dress, well…” Emma leans back and brazenly looks Regina over. “That definitely says, ‘No hook-up.’”

“I knew this was a mistake.” Regina’s shoulders sag a bit, and Emma’s suddenly not having fun anymore.

“Look, what am I going to say? I can’t tell anyone you’re on Singlebrooke without admitting that I am, too.” Emma doesn’t add that she doesn’t actually care if anyone knows this about her.

Regina considers this for a moment, and it seems to satisfy her. “Fine. I’m going to go home. Perhaps you can find another date, salvage what’s left of your evening.”

She turns on her stool, but Emma stops her with a hand on her elbow. “Wait,” Emma says. “Why don’t you stay?” Regina looks down at the point of contact before glowering up at Emma. “You’re already paying a sitter, right? You’re dressed, you’re out. Just have dinner. And since I ruined your evening, it’ll be my treat.”

“I am absolutely not having dinner with you,” Regina insists, but she’s already setting her purse back down.

“No, of course not.” Emma rolls her eyes. “Just have dinner next to me. And let me pay for it.”

Ruby appears from the kitchen and slides a plate full of fries and a chocolate milkshake in front of Emma. Regina holds up a finger. “Ah, Ruby. I’m ready for my dinner.”

“Sure thing!” Ruby flashes a wide smile at the mayor and tosses another wink at Emma for good measure. Emma shakes her head, grateful that the diner is busy tonight. The last thing she needs is Ruby having time to chat, because if there’s anything that could send this dinner from uncomfortable to disastrous, it’s a bad innuendo from Ruby.

“You’re ‘ready for your dinner’?” Emma snorts. “What is that?”

“I’ve lived in this town a long time, Sheriff Swan. You didn’t think you were the only one with a standing order, did you?”

Emma meant that she could’ve been nicer about it, but she doesn’t imagine Regina would be thrilled to hear her point it out. She dunks a couple of fries into her shake before popping them into her mouth.

Ruby returns from the kitchen with Regina’s salad and a glass of iced tea. “Thank you, dear.” And then Regina actually smiles at Ruby.

Emma watches her begin to eat with neat bites. She ordered the junk food to annoy Regina, but the mayor’s mostly ignoring her. It makes her feel juvenile. She leans toward Regina. “I don’t, uh, this isn’t really my usual order. The special order is just what I get after bad days at work or bad dates.” Emma hears the words as they come out of her mouth, not before, and winces in anticipation of Regina’s reaction.

Regina lays her fork down. “I can go sit at a table.”

“No, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant that it’s comfort food for me. I just didn’t want you to think that this is what I feed Henry or anything.”

“Sheriff, I know perfectly well what you feed my son.” She takes the fork back in hand and stabs at a chunk of cucumber.

Emma frowns. “You do? How?”

Regina stares at her for a long moment before saying flatly, “I ask him.” She places the cucumber into her mouth and chews slowly, eyes still on Emma.

“Anyway,” Emma says, attacking the fries again as though she’s been given permission, “this can’t be a bad date because it’s not a date. You’re not having dinner with me, remember?”

“That’s true,” Regina agrees.

“Why not?” Emma asks earnestly. She can think of about sixteen good reasons why not offhand, but she wants to hear the one that Regina will give her.

Regina sighs. “It’s not appropriate, Sheriff. Not professionally, not personally.”

“Right.” Emma gives her a humorless wink. “Gotta make sure we play by all those rules.”

“The rules are there for a reason. They keep people from getting hurt.”

“They also keep you from having any fun.” To punctuate her point, she scoops up as much chocolate ice cream as she can onto a french fry before dropping it into her mouth. She smiles smarmily at Regina while she chews.

“You should be careful about what you say, Sheriff,” Regina warns gently, raising an eyebrow. “You’re the law in this town, don’t forget.”

“I’m not suggesting that you hit the town with a can of spray paint. I’m just saying, don’t you ever let loose a little bit?” Emma racks her brain, trying to remember if she’s ever actually seen Regina doing anything that wasn’t about work or taking care of Henry. Some of that skulking around with Sidney Glass was definitely extracurricular, but it didn’t exactly seem like fun. “Isn’t that why you were… y’know, looking for a date?”

“Actually, that was Henry’s idea.”

“Really?” She grins, trying to picture Henry convincing his mom to sign up for online dating. No doubt it’s part of some plan he’s working, a scheme to get his mother out of the house. She’s faintly disappointed that he didn’t ask for her help.

“More than his idea, to be honest. He signed me up, filled out the profile, everything. Something about me needing to ‘get back out there.’ I didn’t see any harm in humoring him.”

“Huh,” Emma says absently, turning to watch Ruby bus a table across the diner.

“What?” Regina asks, glancing over her shoulder to see what’s in Emma’s new eye line.

“I kinda had the same thing happen.”

Regina looks at her with surprise. “Henry signed you up, too?”

“No.” She nods in the direction of the waitress and shifts her focus back to Regina. “Ruby.”

Regina twists to look at the young woman, providing Emma with a decidedly more interesting view of that neckline. “You let the waitress sign you up for a dating service?”

“’Let’ is kind of a strong word for it,” Emma replies. “She can be really persistent.”

The corner of Regina’s mouth curls up like she knows a secret as she turns back to her food. “That must be irritating.”

Emma’s pretty sure that’s more a comment about herself than about Ruby, but she very nobly ignores it. She jabs a fry in the direction of Regina’s salad, indicating the cherry tomatoes gradually forming a ring around the edge of the plate. “You gonna eat those?”

Regina hitches a shoulder and stabs two of the tomatoes at a time, depositing them next to Emma’s fries. “I usually give them to Henry.”

Emma doesn’t bother with a fork and pops one of the tomatoes into her mouth. “You didn’t answer my question,” she points out.

“What question?”

“Does Mayor Mills ever have any fun?” Emma reminds her, snatching a tomato directly off of Regina’s plate.

Regina sighs at the liberty of the gesture. “I do have hobbies, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Emma wrinkles her nose. “Any that don’t involve doing paperwork afterwards?”

“I have my garden to tend to, and my tree. I’m an excellent cook.”

Emma tries to think of a not-too-offensive way to say that keeping your house looking like something out of a Town & Country spread just sounds like more work. “That seems, uh, productive.”

“Yes, well,” Regina drums two perfectly-manicured nails on the countertop. “Idle hands.”

Emma considers this as she watches the businesslike way Regina eats. If even the things she does to blow off steam are all directed at some kind of goal, well, no wonder she’s so tense. It’s not that Emma worries about Regina, exactly. It’s just that Regina seems to actually radiate stress, and that can’t possibly be good for Henry. “Your car’s outside, right?” Emma finally asks, digging into her pocket.

Regina narrows her eyes. “Yes?”

“Good. You can drive.” Emma drops a few bills on the counter for Ruby. “We’re going to have some fun.”

“I don’t think so, Miss Swan,” Regina corrects tightly. “I have to get home to Henry. And I rather think you and I have wildly different definitions of the word ‘fun.’”

“Well, yeah, that’s what I have to correct.” Emma grins her very best Jedi-mind-trick grin, the one she used all the time in Boston but hasn’t had much use for in Storybrooke. “Come on, Regina, aren’t you curious?”

Regina purses her lips as she weighs her options. “Alright, Miss Swan,” she concedes, producing her car keys. “You have one hour.”

*****

“The Rabbit Hole, really?” Regina sounds more like they’ve just pulled into the parking lot of a dentist’s office.

“You gave me an hour,” Emma reminds her smugly. “It’s my hour, and I want to dance.”

Inside, Emma leads them straight to the bar. When Regina downs her first bourbon in one go, Emma smirks and calls over the music. “You okay?”

“It’s quite loud. I can’t hear myself think.” Regina signals to the bartender to bring her another drink.

“Good,” Emma leans in, close enough that she can be heard without raising her voice. “You’ve grasped the point.” Regina clutches her tumbler and turns to lean against the bar. She watches the people on the dance floor, and Emma watches her.

Emma wonders how, exactly, it is that they’ve ended up on this… well, dinner and dancing makes it kind of a real date. She can see, now, how she didn’t figure out that she was chatting to Regina; the woman had been pretty cagey. What she can’t quite work out is how Singlebrooke paired them up in the first place. She recalls an offhand comment Mary Margaret made once about how she and Regina probably have more in common than either of them would be willing to admit. Emma’s not sure that’s exactly it, but she’s surprised to find that on a date with maybe the worst possible set-up, she is actually enjoying herself.

She brushes her fingers over Regina’s forearm, drawing her attention back to Emma. “I want to dance.”

“Go right ahead,” Regina replies, as if she’s being magnanimous.

“Uh-uh,” Emma insists, shaking her head. “You, too. Watching’s only half the fun. You have to get the whole experience.”

“Miss Swan, I am absolutely not dancing with you.”

“That’s okay. Just come dance next to me.” Regina merely quirks an eyebrow at this, so Emma resorts to the one surefire way she knows to get Regina to do anything. “What’s the matter, Madam Mayor? Afraid you can’t keep up?”

“Oh, for god’s sake,” Regina mutters, knowing exactly what Emma’s doing but constitutionally incapable of letting a challenge go unanswered. She drains the rest of her drink and pushes herself away from the bar. Emma grins triumphantly at no one in particular as she follows Regina onto the floor.

For someone who claims not to do this or even find it fun, Regina’s remarkably good at it. Okay, not right away. At first she’s so predictably stiff that Emma wants to laugh But then, something shifts, tipped by the drinks or the noise or the dance floor full of people who don’t seem to know or care that she’s their mayor. And when Regina begins to move, really move, even Emma’s impressed. And Emma has danced with pros.

After four songs, Emma retreats to the bar to catch her breath. She can’t decide if she hates the idea of being outpaced more than she’s enjoying watching Regina right now. She looks startlingly young, smiling and sipping at a drink that’s appeared in her hand seemingly from nowhere. Emma feels a little swell of pride at the thought that she’s the one who got Regina to loosen up enough to look like this. She looks good. She’d look even better if she weren’t leaning into some tall stranger with his hands glued to her swaying hips.

Emma makes her way back across the room. She told Regina they didn’t have to dance together, so it shouldn’t matter that she’s dancing with somebody else. It shouldn’t matter, but the sight of it annoys Emma in a way that makes her fingers itch.

“Don’t you know it’s rude not to dance with the one who brought you?” Emma asks petulantly. She slips a hand around Regina’s waist and shoots a glare up at Tall Guy, who shrugs good-naturedly and backs off.

“I didn’t know you were such a stickler for manners, Em-ma,” Regina drawls, but she’s still smiling and she lets Emma pull her close.

“Maybe I’m turning over a new leaf.”

And suddenly, Regina’s not just smiling, she’s smiling at Emma, and not in a way that makes Emma feel like she’s in danger. This time, when they dance, Emma doesn’t have any trouble keeping up.

*****

When they emerge from the bar, Emma’s flushed and a little breathless, and the night air is just cool enough to make her shiver.

“It’s late,” Regina points out the obvious and wraps her arms around herself. “That was much more than an hour.”

“But you had fun, right?”

“I can see the appeal.” Regina enunciates the words a little too deliberately, and Emma realizes that she can’t remember how many drinks she saw Regina have.

“Give me your keys. I’ll drive you home.” She waits for something along the lines of You are absolutely not driving my Mercedes, Miss Swan, but it doesn’t come. Instead, she’s stopped short by Regina using both hands to press a set of car keys into her palm. She stares at the hands wrapped around hers for a moment before meeting Regina’s eyes. “Um, okay?”

Regina stares at her intently, almost like she’s searching for the answer to a question, before she says, “Thank you, Miss Swan.”

When they get to the Mills house, Emma gets out of the car and leans against it. If Regina still thinks this isn’t a real date, there’s no way Emma’s going to make a fool of herself by following Regina up to the front door like a puppy waiting for a pat on the head.

When Regina comes around from the passenger side, she plucks her keys from Emma’s outstretched hand and then hovers in front of her for a moment. It almost looks as though Regina is going to say something, but then she seems to change her mind and starts up the walk toward the house.

Oh, fuck it. The worst that can happen is that things go back to normal. “Regina?”

“Hmm?” Regina turns expectantly.

“If I were anyone else, would you be inviting me in?”

“On a first date?” Regina manages to sound at least a little bit stricken. “Certainly not.”

“First date, huh?” Feeling a bit more confident, Emma steps forward, closing the distance between them. “Does that mean I get a second date?”

Regina sighs softly, but she’s smirking, too. “Don’t get presumptuous, Miss Swan.”

“Why not? It works for me.” And just to prove it, she leans in and presses a kiss to Regina’s cheek, just to the left of that smirk.

When she pulls back, the smirk is gone, and Regina blinks up at Emma. “Oh,” she breathes. It’s not quite speechless, but it’s close enough.

“Goodnight, Regina.” Emma smiles gently.

Regina swallows hard. “Goodnight, Miss Swan.”

Emma tries not to strut as she makes her way down the driveway. Oh, yeah. She’s totally getting a second date.

Your work is amazing. You are soooo talented. Like, wow!!!!! Just incredible!!!!

light-cream-cheese — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 13:50:33 -0500

I… don’t know what prompted this, but it’s nice to hear? Thank you, truly.

the-charmings answered your question: The Color of Proof (6/6+) HELLO YES I LOVE IT AS USUAL. And...

light-cream-cheese — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 10:54:57 -0500

the-charmings answered your question: The Color of Proof (6/6+)

HELLO YES I LOVE IT AS USUAL. And I really love that Emma feels like marriage is unnecessary for them. And Henry’s dad feels. And everything

I really hate the part of this where you’re too far away to hug.

This Warm Prism (6/6+)

light-cream-cheese — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 02:42:00 -0500

Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me. The only profit I earn from this piece is your feedback, dear reader.

Rating: PG

Summary: Magic in Storybrooke has all kinds of unpredictable consequences. Emma gets the surprise of her life—for the second time—and assumes Regina must be behind it. (Yes, it’s Magical Baby fic.)

A/N: This is it! The final bit. I always love hearing what you think.

(Red) (White) (Green) (Purple) (Pink)

*****

Gold

“She’s awake.”

Emma rolled over and groaned into her pillow. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“Well, she’s awake,” Regina insisted. Emma groaned again, but she dragged herself out of bed anyway. She didn’t know why she bothered protesting. Regina did this every morning, and she’d never once been wrong. Emma wasn’t really clear on whether it was magic or just that weird mommy-spidey-sense Regina seemed to have in spades, but she was better than a baby monitor.

Sure enough, when Emma padded into the nursery, Alice was sitting up in her crib, sucking at the ear of her teddy bear and watching for Emma with wide, dark eyes. When she saw her mother, she began babbling, not stopping even as Emma lifted her onto her hip. “Good morning, Alice,” she murmured in the baby’s ear. “Happy birthday.”

*****

Emma woke up when she felt someone lifting her legs. Regina lowered herself onto the couch and settled Emma’s feet into her lap. Emma inhaled deeply and started to stretch before she registered the warm little body across her chest. She opened her eyes to look blearily over Alice’s head at Regina. The living room was still pre-dawn grey. “Hey,” she rasped, her voice thick with sleep. “What time is it?”

“Still early. You didn’t come back to bed,” Regina whispered plaintively

“Yeah, you’re welcome for that. She was talkative this morning. I thought one of us should get some real sleep. Thought it was better if it was you.”

“Are you trying to tell me something?” Regina’s fingernail played lightly against Emma’s bare ankle, drawing soft figure-eights.

“Yup.” Emma drew the word out, teasing. “You’re a bitch when you’re sleep deprived.”

“Language,” Regina warned gently, nodding at Alice, who had opened her eyes and was looking up at Emma intently. “That won’t be cute when it’s coming out of her little mouth.”

“She doesn’t talk yet, Regina.”

“She will soon enough,” Regina replied primly. “And you’ll wish you’d developed better habits.”

Emma let out a tired sigh and stopped fighting to keep her eyes open. “Whatever.”

Regina smirked a little. Whatever was Emma-speak for you’re right but I’ll never admit it. “You could have brought her back to bed with you. I couldn’t sleep anyway.”

“Excited?” Emma guessed. Snow and David had become something of regular fixtures in this house, but no one else had set foot inside the door since Regina’s house arrest. Today, if things went according to plan, that would change.

“That, and nervous,” Regina admitted, her eyes trained on the feet in her lap. She’d thrown herself into full hostess mode over the last few weeks, cleaning and decorating and making endless lists. Anything to keep herself from thinking about all the things that could go wrong when they invited people into their home. As much as the house had served as Regina’s prison, it was her sanctuary, too, and very much her kingdom. She’d been reluctant to agree to a party, but Emma had insisted that birthdays were part of the normal childhood she’d promised to give Alice, and Regina had no way to object to that.

“Hey,” Emma implored, nudging her toes against Regina’s stomach until the brunette met her eyes. “It’s going to be fine. Everyone who’s coming is coming for Alice, because they love her, okay?”

“Okay,” Regina agreed reluctantly. Emma had told her, many times, that Alice was adored, that the people of Storybrooke had embraced their tiny princess as much as they ever had their queen or their savior, but Regina still worried. She had no evidence of people’s loyalties other than Emma’s word, and as much as she trusted Emma, she knew the blonde’s ability to spot dishonesty was clouded when it came to the people she loved. Emma couldn’t conceive of someone not finding her daughter miraculous, but Regina saw so much of herself in Alice, and she knew others would see it, too.

“Regina.” Emma’s voice drew her out of her own thoughts. “They do love her. You’ll see. And they’re going to see you the way she sees you. The way I see you. This is going to be good for us.”

“And how do you see me?” Regina asked.

“As Regina,” Emma replied simply. “Just Regina. Not as a—you’re a good mother. You’re a good woman. And you deserve to be loved.”

“I doubt very much that anyone is going to see all of that,” Regina replied with a wan smile. “But I’m glad that you do.”

Emma beamed at her warmly, the sparkle in her eyes making Regina’s heart swell. “So, Martha Stewart. What’s left to get ready for this party?”

Regina thought for a moment. “The food. Your father’s bringing extra chairs.” Her face changed suddenly, remembering something. “I finished wrapping presents last night.”

“Yeah, I saw that,” Emma said. She had peeked into the dining room when she’d brought Alice downstairs. Regina loved to accuse her of spoiling the kids, but she was positive there were at least twice as many of those pink and gold packages as there had been the last time she checked. She never should have let Henry teach his mom about online shopping. “Please tell me those aren’t all going to show up on the credit card statement.”

Regina simply shrugged. “It’s her first birthday. You can’t begrudge her a few extra gifts.”

Emma rolled her eyes. Regina was clearly working with a loose definition of the word few. “I’m not begrudging her, I’m begrudging you.”

“Well, they’re not all for her. One of them is for you.”

“For me?” Emma’s eyes lit up. She’d never particularly been excited by gifts, having gotten so few of them, but Regina loved giving them, and she had a knack for choosing exactly the right thing that Emma found utterly charming.

Regina smiled, pleased that she’d been able to surprise Emma. “I was going to wait, but then I hoped you might it wear it today.”

Emma scrunched her face up. “I already promised you I’d wear a dress, Regina. At least let me pick it out.”

“It’s not a dress,” Regina answered patiently. “Oh, well, if you don’t want it…”

Emma considered calling Regina’s bluff for no other reason than to see what she’d do, but curiosity and greed got the better of her. “No, where is it?”

Regina reached for her daughter. “Come on, baby girl, let’s go find Mama’s present.”

Emma drew her feet up under her as she sat up, waiting. After a moment, Regina came back from the dining room with a package wrapped in shimmery blue paper. Emma reached for it eagerly, and Regina sat back down beside her, watching closely as she unwrapped it. Inside was a small wooden box, intricately carved.

“It’s a jewelry box,” Emma said, trying to keep the edge of dismay out of her voice. Admittedly, it was beautiful, but it seemed more like something her mother would have than something Regina would pick for her.

“Oh, that’s not the gift,” Regina said, with wave of her hand. “Open it.”

Emma did, and inside found a gold ring, set with a small diamond. “Oh,” she breathed. “It’s beautiful.”

“You can have it on one condition.”

Emma looked up sharply, narrowing her eyes. “What’s the condition?”

“It’s an engagement ring.”

Emma shook her head, wondering briefly if she’d misunderstood. “Sorry, it’s what?”

“An engagement ring,” Regina repeated. “You can wear it on the condition that you marry me.”

“You want to get married?” Marrying Regina had honestly never crossed Emma’s mind. It seemed almost unnecessary, somehow, when there was simply no future that Emma could see without Regina in it.

“I want…” Regina’s mouth worked as she tried to find the words. “I want something permanent. Something that says you and I are permanent.”

“We have Alice,” Emma pointed out. “And Henry. That’s pretty permanent, Regina.”

“That’s true. But you and me, that’s not just about Henry and Alice, is it?” Regina’s voice had suddenly done that going-small thing it did sometimes. Emma knew that meant she was only half-present in the moment, that her mind was drifting toward things that had happened in another life.

Emma took her hand, pulling her back. “You know it’s not.”

Regina smoothed her free hand over Alice’s dark head and pressed an absent-minded kiss to it. “I love our family. But I want something that’s just about the two of us.”

“You really want to marry me?”

“Very much.”

Emma lifted a hand to Regina’s face, pulling her close to give her a soft kiss over their daughter’s head. If Regina wanted a promise of what Emma already knew to be true, it seemed like such a small thing to give. “Well, all right, then.”

*****

Emma leaned against the marble counter, watching Regina bend over neat rows of cupcakes, carefully piping pink frosting onto each one. It had taken a long time for Regina to begin baking again, and Emma enjoyed getting the chance to watch her do something she so clearly enjoyed. “These look amazing.”

Regina glanced up just in time to see Emma swipe a finger through the frosting on the cupcake closest to her and grabbed her wrist before she could stick the finger in her mouth. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Um, taste testing?” Emma tried.

“They taste as good as they look, and you know it,” Regina snapped, but her eyes were crinkling around the edges. She considered Emma’s hand for a moment before pulling the pink-frosted finger to her own mouth and licking it clean. Her eyebrows lifted in approval of her own work. “And you can wait like everybody else.”

Emma made a face at her. “Control freak.”

“Hedonist,” Regina shot back with a grin.

“Morning,” Henry announced his presence as he came into the kitchen. His eyes lit immediately on the cupcakes. “Hey, that one’s messed up. Can I have it for breakfast?”

“No,” both of his mothers replied in unison. Regina picked up her pastry bag to repair the damage, and Emma wrapped a consoling arm around her son’s shoulders. “Cheerios are on the table, kid,” she told him.

“Fine,” Henry sighed, and then he caught sight of Emma’s hand on his shoulder. Excitedly, he turned, not to Emma, but to Regina. “You asked her already?”

“I did,” Regina replied with a small smile. “And she said yes.”

“Yes!” Henry pumped his fist before wrapping his arms tightly around Emma’s middle. “I knew it!”

“Kid,” Emma grunted. “I need to breathe.”

He let her go and turned to pull a cereal bowl down from the cupboard. “So awesome,” he said, grinning widely.

The doorbell rang, echoed by a squeal from Alice. On her way to answer it, Emma stopped to lift the baby out of the highchair. She opened the front door to find her parents standing there, and when Alice gave a little wave, the biggest smile Emma had ever seen spread across Snow’s face. While David edged past them with his arms full of another half-dozen gifts, Snow pressed kisses to the cheeks of her daughter and granddaughter.

“What’s this?” Emma tapped an accusatory fingernail against the large red and white button pinned to her mother’s cardigan. Three decades with the concept of democracy had not been lost on the people of Storybrooke, and while Regina counted that as a point of pride, a way she’d made people’s lives better, Emma really didn’t think it was necessary to remind her that Snow was now running for the office Regina had held for so long. The sound of grinding teeth drove Emma crazy.

“Sorry.” Snow unfastened the pin and dropped it into her pocket. “I had a breakfast thing.”

“This is my kid’s birthday, not a campaign event, okay?”

“Of course,” Snow agreed, reaching to pull Alice into her own arms. “This is a family thing. I’m just here as—Emma!“ She grabbed Emma’s left hand. “What’s this?”

Emma smiled sheepishly. “Um, a ring. From Regina.” She bit her lip, waiting for a reaction.

Snow simply tilted her head as she examined the ring, raising one eyebrow. “It’s lovely. Although I did think she was going to wait.”

Emma’s brow creased. “She told you?” Snow and Regina were civil, even occasionally kind when their shared adoration of the children made them forget themselves, but Emma didn’t think they ever spoke privately.

“Oh, Emma,” Snow said, amused. “You’re marrying a traditional woman. She asked permission.”

“And you gave it,” Emma said, and it was not a question. She was a little embarrassed at the emotion welling in her throat. She supposed in another life she might feel insulted by people talking about her life as if it was theirs to give and take, but she had never imagined that she would feel so much like she belonged to so many people.

“She’s your true love,” Snow said, with that constant note of deep assurance. “And she asked us, Emma. Do you know how hard that was for her to do?”

Emma nodded slowly. Of course she knew, now, of how Regina had learned never to ask for the things she wanted, how disappointment and loss had turned her heart inside out until the only way she knew how to go through life was by grasping desperately at anything she thought might make her happy. Asking meant being ready to be refused. And, Emma realized now, asking, for Regina, meant trusting that she would not be.

“My precious girl,” Snow said. “We knew you’d say yes. How could we say no?”

*****

Regina held Alice in front of her. Not slung on her hip, not draped over her shoulder, but in front of her, facing out. Emma couldn’t tell if the baby was meant to be a shield or a peace offering. Either way, it seemed to work. Emma hung back, leaning in the archway between the living room and the foyer and watching as people approached the pair easily, even warmly. Alice grinned and babbled back at the people who fussed over her, energized by the attention. For her part, Regina looked happy to disappear into the role of proud mother.

Ruby spotted Emma from across the room and flashed her a wide smile. Emma re-crossed her arms, tucking her left hand into her elbow as Ruby weaved her way through the small clusters of guests. She hadn’t wanted to take the ring off, but she wasn’t quite ready to really show it off, either.

Ruby sidled up to her, bumping shoulders with her affectionately. “Emma! Nice dress.”

Emma glanced down at the sweet blue dress Snow had talked her into borrowing. It was a bit too short and made her feel like a six-year-old trying to wear last summer’s clothes, but the look on Regina’s face when Emma had come down the stairs wearing it had almost been worth how silly she felt now. “It’s my mom’s,” she said apologetically.

Ruby rolled her eyes. Snow was her best friend, but it was no secret that Ruby thought her sense of style left something to be desired. “No kidding. When you pick your wedding dress, you’ve gotta let me help you, okay?”

Emma raised her eyebrows. “My wedding dress?”

“Oh, come on,” Ruby said with a knowing smile. “You didn’t really think you were hiding that rock, did you?”

Emma shrugged, rubbing her thumb along the gold band. “I was trying to let Alice have her day.”

“She is,” Ruby assured her. “You can still let people congratulate you, Em.”

“I wasn’t sure anyone would want to. You don’t think I’m crazy?”

“Marrying Regina? Oh, I definitely think you’re crazy.” Emma tried not to flinch at that, and Ruby smiled indulgently. “But since when does that mean you shouldn’t do it? If Emma Swan didn’t do something crazy once in a while, I don’t think any of us would even be here. Especially not that kid. And she’s great.”

Emma couldn’t help but grin. Ruby didn’t even like babies. She tended to eye them warily from a safe enough distance that no one would suggest she hold them. But she loved Alice.

“So I say go for it,” Ruby continued. “I just want a front row seat.”

Emma wrapped an arm around her friend’s waist and hugged her. “I’m so glad you’re here, Rubes. You really are the best.”

Ruby winked cheekily. “I know.”

*****

She found Henry in the study, sitting on the floor next to the coffee table, bent intently over a thick leather-bound book. This was not the book her son had carried like a talisman in the first months that she knew him. This was a new book, similar but for the title embossed on the cover and the blank pages within. Henry had nearly filled the book with his accounts of people in Storybrooke finding the happy endings they’d been denied for so long. Emma had read most of it, and as much as she adored him, Henry’s prose was nothing special. Where he really shone was the illustrations. With some gentle encouragement in that direction, his work had begun to resemble a comic book more than a story book.

“Hey, kid,” she said from the doorway. “You’re missing the party.”

“I’m not missing it,” he argued. “I’m remembering it.”

“Working on your book?” She came to crouch beside him, looking over his shoulder at the page where he was sketching a detailed picture of the party. At the center of it was a laughing Regina holding Alice, with Emma and Henry smiling on either side of her.

“If I don’t get it down right away, sometimes I start to forget things. And the ending is the most important part.”

“The ending?” He’d never mentioned an ending before.

Henry nodded, still drawing. “I think I’m almost done, Emma. If the Queen and the Savior get married, that’s the last happy ending.” He’d all but dropped the epithets for his mothers, except in the book, and the queen hadn’t been “evil” for a very long time. Emma was glad for that, but she suddenly realized that the day might come when she would miss hearing herself called the Savior, even if she never really did feel like one. She had wished so often for him to outgrow his childish obstinacy, but now she wished that he wouldn’t grow up quite so fast.

“What are you going to do when it’s done?”

His pencil stilled as he thought for a moment. “Color it in, I guess. Mom said you’d get me some paints.”

“That’s a good idea,” she told him, ruffling his hair gently. She ran a finger over the faces in his drawing, careful not to smudge the lines. “I think this is my favorite one.”

He tapped the end of the pencil against the page. “Ma, do I look like you?”

“What?” She looked up from the book, startled by the non-sequitur.

“Alice looks like Mom. Everyone looks at her and just knows she’s Mom’s kid. Which is weird, because you’re the one who had her.”

“Henry…” Emma’s stomach was already churning at the thought of the one horribly awkward conversation they’d had about how, exactly, Emma could be pregnant.

“I know, magic.” He rolled his eyes—that was Emma all over—and it was clear that he didn’t want to revisit that subject any more than she did. “But do I look like you?”

She glanced back down at his drawing, surprised that he couldn’t seem to see the shared features he could render so well. “Well, it’s different. You’re a boy. But, yeah, I can see me in you. And I can see your grandpa sometimes.”

“No one else?” Henry, in an uncharacteristically shy gesture, dropped his eyes. It was the reticence that let her know what he was getting at.

“You mean your dad?” Henry nodded. “Sure. Sometimes. Henry, I know you know things were a mess with your dad. But I also liked him. A lot. And every time I notice him in you, it’s really easy for me to remember why.”

“Really?” He looked up at her then, trying to channel Emma’s superpower. She’d lied to him before to keep him from feeling bad about his dad, and he wanted to be sure that this was true.

“Really. I like it, actually.”

He chewed the inside of his cheek, and she could see the thought coming together behind his eyes. “You think maybe Alice does that, too? For Mom? You think Alice helps people remember the good stuff about her?”

She thought of the way Regina had held Alice, the way she’d seemed to be presenting the child as though she were proof of something. Which, when Emma thought about it, she was. “Yeah, kid. I hope so.”

He nodded once, firmly, as if locking the idea into place. “Me, too.”

“I think you’ve got enough here to remember, Henry. Come back to the party. You can help your sister open her presents.”

“Okay!” His eager grin was every bit her little boy.

He scrambled to his feet as she closed the book. She traced her fingers over the gilded letters on the cover, smiling to herself when the gesture let her catch the sparkle of the new ring on her finger. She had rolled her eyes at the title when August had presented Henry with the book, but now that she knew how it ended, she thought it was kind of perfect:

Happily Ever After

Can I just say how much I loved the "Three-Way Calling" story you wrote. It was so well written and so in character and just so hot! You are a fantastic writer and I was wondering if there was going to be a Part Two to this story because you left me wanting more :)

light-cream-cheese — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 10:29:23 -0500

Oh, thank you! I wasn’t planning a second part, but flattery will just get you everywhere with me. Consider it on my to-do list.

Three Way Calling

light-cream-cheese — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 06:13:00 -0500

Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me. The only profit I earn from this piece is your feedback, dear reader.

Rating: M

Summary: Emma and Regina are interrupted by the phone.

A/N: Smutty Swan Queen that I wrote essentially on a dare. I wasn’t actually going to post it, but my FILDI is mighty this morning, so here you go.

*****

When the phone starts ringing for the third time in a row, Regina sighs and leans back to reach across her desk for it. The twist of the mayor’s hips as she does so forces Emma to withdraw her hand from between the other woman’s thighs. “Leave it,” she whines. “Just let it go to voicemail.”

“He’ll just keep calling,” Regina explains, trying to catch her breath. Emma sticks her slick fingers into her own mouth and pouts. Regina rolls her eyes and hits the “talk” button. “Sheriff. How can I help you?”

Emma slides her fingers out of her mouth and sneers. Graham. It’s always Graham. Emma knows that she’s the one being cheated with and not the one being cheated on, but it doesn’t make it any less annoying when he intrudes on the time they find to be alone. Which is, of course, why she swore not to do this anymore, but something about this stupid town has fucked with her head, and now she seems to be making all kinds of bad decisions on impulse.

“Running?” Regina’s voice is quintessentially innocent. “No, of course not, why?”

Emma smirks and lays an open-mouthed kiss on Regina’s throat with just a little more teeth than is really necessary. Regina rears back and shoots her a warning glare, so she does it again, higher this time. Regina half-asses swatting Emma away, pushing ineffectually at her shoulder. That only inspires her to be more insistent, sucking at the place where she feels the pulse racing under Regina’s skin.

“I don’t see why not.”

Emma tightens her arm around Regina’s waist, pulling the mayor’s body flush against hers as she palms her breast, rolling the erect nipple between her thumb and finger. She smiles against Regina’s neck as she feels the hand on her shoulder soften and then slide up to tangle in her hair.

“The whereabouts of your deputy are your responsibility, Sheriff, not mine.”

Grinning, she catches Regina’s ear in her teeth and tugs gently. I’m right here. She moves her hand back into place between Regina’s legs and finds that she’s even wetter than she was a minute ago, if that’s possible. For all her prissy posturing, this is exactly the kind of thing that gets Regina off. Her arousal amplified by Graham’s proximity, Regina always comes incredibly quickly when they’re in the car in his driveway or in the ladies’ room while he’s just outside.

Emma lifts her head to watch Regina’s face as she slips two fingers back inside and resumes stroking, crooking her fingers in the way that, a few minutes ago, was coaxing soft, delicious moans from Regina’s throat. The mayor’s eyes are shut tight, but she manages to swallow the noise and not miss a beat in the conversation.

“I’m not sure. You’d have to ask her.”

Adding a third finger has the desired effect—Regina sucks in her breath so sharply that Graham has to have heard it. Her eyes fly open in horror at her own slip-up.

“No, Graham, I’m—I’m fine.”

It’s fantastic, watching someone who white-knuckles control begin to lose her grip. The knee that isn’t caught between Emma’s legs is migrating up and out, opening her up further under Emma’s hand. She’s angling the phone away from her face to mask her erratic breathing, and every muscle in her face and neck is tensing with the effort not to make a sound. She’s struggling, Emma can see, but she’s good at it, too. Very good. It makes Emma wonder if Regina does this to her, too, taking Emma’s calls about work or Henry from underneath Graham. That image should probably piss her off, and maybe later it will, but right now she just finds it hot.

“Either way. I have—“ the words catch in her throat as Emma’s thumb brushes her clit. “I don’t care.”

Regina’s whole body is practically vibrating, and Emma’s fingers inside her pick up a little speed as she goes back to dropping kisses along Regina’s jaw, coming dangerously close to her mouth, which she’s biting into a tight line. She’s now only responding to Graham with a series of murmured “mhm”s, every one punctuated by Emma’s circling thumb moving against her clit with more and more intent.

When she speaks again, it comes out all at once.

“YesSheriffthatwillbefinethankyou,” and the phone is clattering on the desk where she drops it and she’s reaching for Emma and she’s completely gone, hips jerking against Emma’s hand and body clenching around her fingers, with a scream that’s almost a roar.

When she’s done, Regina rests her forehead against Emma’s shoulder for a moment before pulling her in for a real kiss. “I hate you,” she sighs into Emma’s mouth.

“You loved it. And you’re the one who doesn’t want to tell him,” Emma reminds her, kissing back, pressing her tongue insistently into the mayor’s mouth. She wipes her hand carelessly on her jeans before reaching for Regina’s hip.

But Regina’s already pushing off from the edge of the desk, pulling down the skirt bunched around her waist. “You have to go. He’s on his way here with Henry. And then we have a date.”

“Oh, no way.” Emma’s been left hanging by Regina before, and she has no intention of letting it happen again. She fumbles with the button on her jeans. “We’re not done here.”

Regina catches her wrist. “Yes, we are.” She’s got that bossy tone that she thinks leaves no question of who’s in charge of this whole… whatever this is.

Emma shakes off Regina’s hand a little too forcefully, more pissed because she knows she’s going to give the other woman her way yet again. “This is bullshit, Regina.”

“I’ll make it up to you,” Regina says, retrieving her bra from the floor. “Tomorrow. Early, I promise.”

Emma raises an eyebrow. “Sunday morning? What, no brunch? You guys don’t read the paper in bed?” Emma knows that she’s just here to scratch an itch or fulfill a kink or whatever, but she can never quite get a handle on what Regina’s doing with Graham. If they’re not playing happy families with Emma’s son, then what, exactly, is the point of him?

Regina smirks, more to herself than at Emma. “I’ll tell him I’m in church.”

“Church. And he’ll believe that?” It’s not the question she wants to ask. She wants to ask whether he ever asks any questions, whether he ever wonders why his girlfriend comes from work smelling like sex, whether Regina has an endgame in mind for all of this. It’s not the question she wants to ask, but it’s a question she thinks she might actually get an answer to.

Regina just shrugs one shoulder as she concentrates much harder than she needs to on buttoning up her blouse. “He wants to believe it, so he will.”

“Right,” Emma says slowly and she’s not jealous, she’s not, because Emma Swan doesn’t get jealous, and even if she did, she doesn’t have any right to be.

Regina looks up at her then, and even though Emma thinks she’s lying about seventy percent of the time, she can see why someone might be willing to believe every word out of the woman’s mouth. “Who knows,” she drawls as she brushes past Emma on her way to the bathroom off of her office, “maybe I’ll become a regular attendee.” She turns to wink at Emma before she disappears behind the heavy door.

Emma shrugs back into her jacket as she makes her way to the parking lot. Church, she thinks. That’s cute. Well, it’s kind of like church. At the very least, the mayor will be on her knees.

*****

This came about after a conversation in which I asserted that any song can be about Swan Queen if you squint hard enough.

This Warm Prism (5/6+)

light-cream-cheese — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 01:06:00 -0500

Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me. The only profit I earn from this piece is your feedback, dear reader.

Rating: PG

A/N: Established Swan Queen, set months after the end of season 1. So, this took forever. As always, your feedback and tremendous patience mean the world to me.

(Red) (White) (Green) (Purple)

*****

Pink

Regina sat bolt upright in bed, straining to hear whatever it was that woke her. The bedroom was dark and warm, so she didn’t notice the empty space beside her until she heard it again: Emma softly calling her name from the master bath.

She pushed the door open, squinting against the full light of the bathroom. “Emma?” Emma was sitting on the floor, leaning back against the side of the bathtub and looking up at her.

“I was trying not to wake Henry,” Emma explained weakly. “I can’t get up.”

“Well, what the hell are you doing down there?” Regina demanded, bending to help Emma stand up.

“As it turns out,” she sighed, steadying herself on her feet, “having contractions.”

Regina’s eyes widened in alarm. “Contractions? For how long?”

Emma looked at the ceiling as though she thought the answer might be written up there. “Um… most of today?”

“Emma Swan! Why didn’t you say anything?” Regina didn’t wait for an answer. She left Emma leaning against the sink to retrieve the overnight bag from their closet.

“No point. If you go to the hospital too early they just send you home. And then I’d get to spend the rest of the day cooped up with a nervous wreck.”

“I am not nervous! Where are your shoes?”

Emma rolled her eyes. “No, you’re totally calm,” she said, too low for Regina to hear. Then, raising her voice just a bit, “I need my phone first.”

Regina reappeared in the bathroom doorway, holding up Emma’s phone with one hand and a pair of running shoes dangling from the fingers of the other.

“Phone first,” Emma repeated, reaching for it. “We have plenty of time for me to put on shoes, I promise.”

*****

Emma had called the doctor and then her parents. David was going to stay with Henry while Snow went to the hospital with them. Regina paced the kitchen while Emma slowly chewed on a sandwich.

“I can’t believe you’ve lived with Henry for twelve years and never had a fluffernutter. You sure you don’t want one?” Emma asked, waving the sandwich at Regina as if it were enticing.

Regina eyed the ridiculously-named sandwich suspiciously. “It’s barely food. You shouldn’t even be eating that. If you weren’t about to have a baby, I’d take it away from you.”

“If I weren’t about to have a baby, I’d like to see you try,” Emma replied, then grimaced as the force of a contraction washed over her. Regina was at her side in an instant, letting Emma squeeze her hand until it passed. When Emma could talk again, she said, “You know what would really help me?”

“No,” Regina said firmly.

“Magic,” Emma gratuitously answered her own question.

“No,” Regina said again. As she frequently was, Regina was grateful that she’d never voiced her suspicions that Emma harbored some latent magical capabilities. She might have been right, and Emma was reckless and a little bit lazy, traits that would be disastrous when combined with magic. As it was, Emma had spent the last month of her pregnancy testing the limits of what Regina could and would do for her. Seeing the blonde struggling to navigate her newly-outsized body had made Regina indulgent, but she had insisted that there would be no magic used around the baby, by her or anyone else. Regina decided that she had better start enforcing that now rather than later. “Where are your parents?” she hissed impatiently.

As if they’d been waiting for her to ask, there was a soft knock at the front door.

David was half-asleep, but Snow was brimming with alacrity. She spotted the overnight bag waiting by the door and slung it over her shoulder. “Ready?” She looked with mild disapproval at her daughter, who had paused in the doorway from the kitchen to have another contraction. “Emma, we have to go. Where are your shoes?”

Regina slipped into her study, where it took her a minute to find the purse she hadn’t had use for in over a year. The weight of it felt strange as she walked to the front door.

David caught her elbow as she passed. “Everything’s going to be fine,” he assured her. “I’ll bring Henry to meet his sister tomorrow.” She glanced out the open front door to where Snow was helping Emma into the car. Certain that neither of them would look back, she reached up to pull David into a quick hug.

“Thank you,” she murmured over his shoulder.

*****

The light from the sunrise streaming through the window turned the whole room rosy just as she made her way into the world.

Emma held her first, of course. The doctor placed her, wet and pink and squalling and wrapped in a towel, on Emma’s chest. The first thing Regina saw was the hair. A thick, black shock of it sticking up in all directions, so very different from the blond fuzz that had tickled her face the first time she held Henry. As Emma held her close, she stilled, and then turned her head and slowly opened her eyes.

Regina expected to see the dull no-color eyes typical of newborns, but instead the child’s eyes were shining as dark as her own. She held out one finger and drew it in a soft line down the baby’s cheek, startled when the little face turned toward the touch. For a moment, she forgot everyone else in the room, even Emma.

“She’s perfect,” Snow’s voice from the opposite bedside broke the spell, and then a nurse gently but insistently moved in to take the baby away, murmuring something about a bath and blood draws and tests. Snow drifted out into the hallway to call David.

Emma reached for Regina’s hand, lacing their fingers together. “She is beautiful,” Regina told her softly.

“Vain,” Emma replied, and if it was an accusation, it was not without humor. “She looks exactly like you.”

“Not exactly,” Regina denied, although she couldn’t stop smiling at the truth of it. “I think she had your chin.”

“Mm,” Emma hummed her disagreement, eyes already fluttering with exhaustion. “Henry does, but this one’s all you. Maybe next time you’ll do some of the work.”

“Next time,” Regina echoed as Emma slipped into sleeping. “You’re dreaming, Princess.”

*****

Emma was still asleep when the nurse returned with the baby, swaddled and sweet-smelling, and offered her to Snow.

Snow frowned and stepped back. “Give her to her mother.”

Regina stiffened.

“The princess—” the nurse began to object.

“Is sleeping,” Snow interrupted. “Give her to her mother.”

“Her—“ the nurse’s gaze flicked to Regina’s face, then immediately fell. “Yes, of course.” She managed to settle the baby into Regina’s arms without raising her eyes once. Regina half-expected her to curtsy before scurrying from the room.

The child stirred against her, thrusting one tiny arm out and waving it before resting it against her own face. She did look remarkably like Regina. Anyone would be hard-pressed to deny that the child was hers, which both thrilled and terrified her. She hadn’t realized that even she still wasn’t sure until she felt the doubt leave her like so much ballast.

But Snow had always been sure.

“Do you just believe everything you’re told?” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Snow start at being spoken to.

“I’m sorry?”

“You just believed she was mine because Emma told you it was so?” It wouldn’t surprise her if that were the case. Henry’s remarkable capacity for blind faith certainly hadn’t been learned from her.

“I had no reason to doubt it. And one very good reason to believe it.”

Regina tore her eyes away from her daughter, then, to search Snow’s face. “You knew the other child. When this happened before.”

Snow frowned deeply. “Didn’t you know?” Regina said nothing, only stared at her expectantly. “But I thought… Regina, the other child was Emma. It’s Emma.”

It was hard for Regina to remember, sometimes, who was mother and who was daughter and to whom and how. She supposed this baby only served to tangle that web further. But it was frustrating, now that everyone knew the truth, to find that three decades of knowing hadn’t turned out to be an advantage at all. There were still so many things she found incomprehensible.

She knew, of course, that Snow had been pregnant at her wedding. Regina was not a fool, nor was she so incompetent that it would take her nearly a year to cast a curse. She had simply never given the matter much thought. Now that she did, she couldn’t help but smirk at the thought of proud, self-righteous little Snow finding herself impossibly pregnant. Snow, for her part, was blushing furiously.

“That answers some questions,” she said, looking down at the girl in her arms. For one thing, it made sense, now, how easily Rumplestiltskin had given up the story, even after she’d refused to deal with him. He’d intended to rub her face in yet another example of Snow and Charming’s storied love, not realizing that he was confirming what Regina had only dared to suspect—that she was living in a love story of her own.

*****

David and Henry came bearing flowers and balloons and a big paper bag full of Chinese food. Henry nearly knocked Regina over with the force of his hug, but he approached Emma’s bed with much more caution. Trying to contain himself, he bounced on the balls of his feet with excitement as he hovered over Emma and his sister. “David said maybe I could hold her while you eat. Can I?”

Emma grinned at his enthusiasm and shot a quick glance at Regina before nodding. “You have to sit down, kid.”

At first, Henry held the baby stiffly, unsure of how fragile she actually was. While the adults passed around cartons of cashew chicken and fried rice, he stared down at her intently. “Emma?” he asked slowly. “Did you give her a name yet?”

“Your mom says we should call her Alice,” Emma replied. “What do you think?”

“Alice,” he tried. “Hello, Alice.” She slowly opened her eyes and a grin lit up his face. “I’m Henry. I’m your brother.”

Emma nodded occasionally as she ate, pretending to listen to the conversation going on around her, but her eyes were fixed on her children. As Henry relaxed, he began to speak to his sister earnestly, eager for the chance to share his secrets of navigating the world with someone else. Emma strained to catch snippets of what he was saying. “You’re a real princess, and it’s sort of a secret but it’s still really cool… Mom is the best cook, but Emma makes better hot chocolate… If you want to go somewhere, you have to ask Emma first, she’ll get Mom to let you… If your stomach hurts, tell Mom. She has this secret… Mom built you your own castle in our woods, but when you get bigger, I’ll show you my castle by the beach.”

*****

When they were finally able to persuade Henry to go home with his grandparents, the quiet in the room was thick. “I should go, too,” Regina said, making no effort to move from the rocking chair where she was curled. “I need a shower.”

“Don’t leave yet,” Emma said, smoothing the dark hair on the little head resting on her chest. “Stay with us for a little longer.”

Regina didn’t argue, content to sit with Emma and listen to the soft snuffling sounds of their daughter. For years, she’d tried to keep count in her head of the lives she’d saved and the lives she’d taken, trying desperately to make it come out even. If only she could get the balance right, she had been sure, the noise in her head would quiet and she could be happy. She hadn’t realized that it was the other way around; it was the happiness that would drown out the noise.

“Half grown and half yours,” replied Snow bitterly. “I get everything back in pieces.” LINES I WISH I HAD WRITTEN. I've been loving the whole story, but that, in particular, was so perfect.

light-cream-cheese — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 15:43:50 -0500

Oh, be still my little writer heart! Thank you so much. I was quite fond of that line, myself.

This Warm Prism (4/6+)

light-cream-cheese — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 22:15:00 -0500

Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me. The only profit I earn from this piece is your feedback, dear reader.

Rating: PG

A/N: Established Swan Queen, set months after the end of season 1. This bit’s mostly Snow & Regina.

(Red) (White) (Green)

*****

Purple

Regina’s afternoon walk in the woods brought her back up through the garden behind the house. She surveyed the carefully cultivated landscape. It was still just a little too early for roses, and the chilly nights were hard on them, but Henry said they were his favorite—though, considering how many he cut for his friend Ava, Regina suspected it was she who had the preference. She let her fingertips brush against the bushes as she passed, the fading blooms springing back to full blush as she did so.

Once she was inside, the acrid smell of paint drew her upstairs. Emma had been poring over paint chips for weeks, and although Regina had pointed out that she could paint the nursery in about three seconds and still leave room for Emma to change her mind, Emma had insisted that she wanted to do things the hard way. “It’s fun, Regina. Like the stuff in the woods is fun for you.”

She stood in the doorway of what had, until that morning, been the spare bedroom. The box fan whirring near the open window had drowned out the sound of her approach, so she was able to watch the scene for a moment without anyone noticing.

A barefoot Henry, clad in sweatpants and an old baseball t-shirt, was perched on a step ladder in the middle of the room, chattering about some new video game he’d become enthralled with. David was nodding absently but clearly just letting Henry riff while he focused on rolling soft purple paint onto the near wall. Emma and her mother were giggling about something, lost in their own conversation as they stenciled silver accents between the two windows. When Snow leaned over to address Emma’s belly, Regina couldn’t bear to watch any more.

Emma turned just in time to see Regina’s back as she slipped away. “Shit,” she breathed. She made a move to put down her paintbrush and follow Regina, but Snow stopped her.

“Let me,” she suggested. “Please.” Emma frowned, uncertain, but finally nodded her assent.

Regina retreated into her study, still the one part of the house that Emma hadn’t managed to make her own. It gnawed at her, having Snow in her home. Regina wished she could still hate her. But when Rumplestiltskin had retreated and the fighting had stopped, it was Snow who suggested that Regina be sent home to her son. And when Emma had decided that she was moving into the Mifflin street house with them, Snow was the first to support that decision, even before David. It nearly killed her to admit it, even to herself, but everything good that she had—her lover, her son, the shards of her life that she’d been allowed to keep—it had all come from Snow.

It was Emma who had planted that idea, because Emma had inherited many things from her mother, including the seemingly incessant need to verbalize every thought as it occurred to her. At first, it had made her want to strike, to hurt Snow just a little bit more, to win. But the sharp mixture of fury and regret that Snow brought up in her had dulled as her newly rearranged world settled into a familiar pattern. It was only Snow coming into her home that threatened to upset the tenuous peace between them.

She found some new paperwork left on her desk and, grateful for the distraction from the uncanny domestic scene upstairs, she settled onto the couch to look it over. When the soft rap on the door came, she assumed it was Henry and called, “Come in, dear,” without looking up.

“We settled on a color.” At the sound of Snow’s voice, Regina froze, allowing only her eyes to turn toward the doorway where Snow hovered.

“Yes, I saw.” Regina, after months of only Emma and Henry for company, had grown lazy about letting her emotions play out across her face, and she knew it. She clenched her jaw and tried to look engrossed in the file in her hand, sending a silent prayer to every god she could remember that the woman would take the hint and leave.

“Henry chose it, in the end. He said you’d like it.” Snow moved deeper into the room as she spoke.

“I do.”

“Good. That’s good.” The practiced effulgence was Miss Mary Margaret Blanchard all over. “We’re almost done, but you could come help—“

“No.”

“All right.” Snow took a breath as if to say more, but then snapped her mouth closed and turned to go. Her hand was on the door knob when she changed her mind again, coming back to perch on the edge of the chair across from Regina. She spoke haltingly. “I wanted to talk to you.”

Regina sighed and closed the file, giving up on the hope that she might avoid this conversation any longer. “Why? And don’t tell me it’s because Emma asked you to. I’d believe that from David, but you?”

The corner of Snow’s mouth quirked in acknowledgement of the fact that her husband was indeed wildly indulgent of his daughter, much as Snow’s own father had been. Much as Regina’s father had been, come to that. “A father gives you what you ask for,” Snow recited. “A mother knows what you need.” She plucked an apple from the bowl on the table and turned it in her hands. “That never meant what I thought, did it?”

Regina pressed two fingers to her temple. It was Snow holding the apple more than Cora’s old expression that brought back the memory. She heard her younger self repeat the dictum, almost as if remembering another person altogether. A girl with sparkling eyes and a flashing smile, not nearly old enough to really be anyone’s mother, producing apple after apple from her pocket like a party trick. One for Snow, the size of both of her fists. One for each of the horses. As if all that the smaller girl needed was an apple and a friend. “I imagine not, dear. Not to her. And not to me, then, although I let you believe what you would.”

“And with Henry?”

“Henry’s different,” Regina replied wearily. “I had to be mother and father to Henry.”

“And what would you give him, to make him happy, to keep him safe?”

“Anything,” Regina snapped, as though someone had accused her of something.

Snow placed the apple back in the bowl. “Do you think I love Emma any less, just because you took her from me?”

“I never took her,” Regina argued. “You allowed yourself to be manipulated, but I had no part in that.”

Snow shook her head sadly. “Let’s not pretend there was a single moment when you intended to let me keep her, Regina.”

If the words I forgive you came out of this woman’s mouth yet again, Regina thought she might actually, finally lose her mind. To accept one more thing from Snow White might be more humiliation than even her happiness was worth.

“And now you’ve had Henry,” Snow continued. “I saw him grow up, but you made sure I’d barely notice, and when I did, I didn’t know what I was seeing, did I?”

“You have him now.” Regina knew it was a weak point, but she made it anyway.

“Half grown and half yours,” replied Snow bitterly. “I get everything back in pieces.”

“My heart absolutely bleeds.” If Snow wanted to play who-lost-what with her, Regina would go ten rounds, but they both knew by now that it was pointless. There were no winners in that game.

“But this baby,” Snow said, a bit of brightness creeping back into her voice. “needs a family, Regina. And we’re going to be one. All of us.”

Regina raised an eyebrow, but she was beginning to get the feeling that Snow was here to ask for something, and that appealed to her. “Are we?” She held the eyes of the other woman and put out an open hand. The violet wisps were so fine that they were almost invisible as they wrapped around the apple Snow had held and drew it into Regina’s waiting palm. After a moment, Snow dropped her gaze. Regina would never quite stop being a queen, even if her realm only consisted of a single room in this house.

“Yes,” Snow said. “A whole family. With mothers and a brother and grandparents.”

The younger woman had obviously spent far too many years in the company of simple children. “I’m familiar with the concept,” Regina replied. “And what makes you think I would agree to be part of that?”

Snow looked like a little girl who’d solved a riddle. “Because I know that you want to give back what you took. And you can’t. Not to Emma, and not to me. But you can still give it to Henry. And this baby.”

“So I’m supposed to… what? Hold hands with you around her cradle and sing kumbayah?”

“Maybe we could just try being in the same room? Sharing a meal? Decorating your daughter’s nursery?”

Regina had been halfway to rolling her eyes when the words your daughter brought her up short. No one had said that yet, not even Emma. But Snow clearly thought of the child that way.

“She needs you, Regina. She needs more than just you, but she needs you.”

Regina stood and crossed the room to her desk, passing the apple nervously between her hands. “I know what she needs.”

“Of course you do,” Snow agreed. “You’re her mother.”

Snow could not have known how familiar the words were, but Regina’s shock at hearing them made her squeeze the apple so tightly that it suddenly wasn’t there anymore. Her hand closed on itself, fingernails digging into the soft flesh of her palm.

Snow pretended not to notice. “Come upstairs, Regina,” she asked plaintively.

“In a minute,” Regina said through gritted teeth.

Snow nodded and left her alone.

*****

When she finally did come out from the study, she passed David and Snow as they were carrying paint cans downstairs. David acknowledged her with a good-natured, “Regina,” and she squeezed his shoulder briefly as he passed. Snow simply gave her a small smile, which she returned.

When Henry saw her, his face lit up. “Mom! We painted the baby’s room!”

Regina pressed a kiss to the crown of her son’s head, noting sadly that he was nearly too tall for the gesture. “It looks wonderful, Henry. And I heard that you chose the color.” She brushed ineffectually at the bits of purple paint dried in his hair.

“It’s called Daybreak,” he informed her proudly.

Emma tugged at the shirttail peeking out from below Regina’s sweater, pulling her close enough to plant a kiss on her cheek. “You all right?” she asked in Regina’s ear, too low for Henry to hear.

“I’m fine,” Regina said with what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “I think I’ll go and start dinner.”

“Already taken care of,” came David’s voice from the doorway. He held up the phone in his hand. “Pizza’s on its way.”

“Yes!” Henry pumped his fist in the air. He turned to his mothers. “If we’re having pizza, can I have soda with it?”

Regina was about to insist that he have milk, as usual, but Emma looked at her with almost as much excited anticipation as Henry, and their matching expressions made it impossible for her not to give in. “If you go and set the table,” she conceded.

“Awesome!”

David ruffled the boy’s hair as he passed, then stepped into the room. “Snow’s getting the crib ready to bring upstairs. I thought I’d put it together after dinner.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Emma answered.

His gaze flicked between the two women, and he shifted uncomfortably. “I’ll, uh, go keep Henry company,” he offered by way of explanation as he backed out of the room.

Emma turned in the center of the room, admiring her own work. “Well? What do you think?”

Regina slid an arm around Emma, resting a hand on the small of her back. “It’s perfect. Fit for a princess.”

Emma wrinkled her nose. “Can we maybe hold off on the princess stuff? At least for a while?”

“Then what’s that?” Regina nodded at the silver design on the wall.

Emma shrugged. “Snow did it. It’s pretty, right?”

“It’s a crest,” Regina replied. She gestured to the elements as she explained. “The flowers, the chevron, they’re from your father’s heraldry. But the flame, here, and the swans. Those were mine.”

With Regina holding her close, Emma could feel the slight shudder of her ribcage with every exhalation. Emma had become a blubbering mess on a regular basis throughout her pregnancy, but she could count on one hand the total number of times she’d ever seen Regina actually cry. It was as if her body knew that it only had a limited number of tears and was trying to conserve them, so these quiet, ragged breaths were the only thing it could offer up.

Emma tilted her head as she asked, “Regina, aren’t you happy?”

Regina made a sound that was halfway between laughter and a sob. “I am so happy with you.”

“So what’s wrong?”

She thought of what her own mother would say: that this situation was perverse, that it was ridiculous, that Regina should be ashamed, that she’d degraded herself. But most of all, that if this was the life she chose, any happiness she might find in it was completely unmerited. “I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve any of it.”

Emma considered that. “I think that the fact that you don’t think you deserve it is exactly why you do. You can’t undo what’s been done. But you would if you could. That’s the person you are now.”

“That’s not what I—“ Regina shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Emma stilled her with a hand against her cheek. “I do.”

Regina’s breathing had steadied somewhat, and now she narrowed her eyes. “You sound like your mother.”

“Yeah, well,” Emma hitched one shoulder. “We talk a lot.”

“About me?”

“About everything.”

“Just so we’re clear,” Regina started, and then stopped, suddenly unsure of her ability to say what she was thinking in a way that Emma would understand.

“What?”

“I wouldn’t undo all of it.” When Emma’s face faltered, she scrambled to explain. “I only mean that I have you and I have Henry.” She rested a hand on the swell of Emma’s belly. “Our family. I wouldn’t change that.”

Emma gave her a grin and a kiss on the mouth for that. “You don’t have to. Just try to get the next thing right, right?”

Regina was about to say something more when she was interrupted by Henry calling their names. “The table’s—ew.” They turned to see their son stopped short in the doorway, making a face at them. “Are you guys kissing?”

Regina said “No” at the same time that Emma said “Yes,” and Henry groaned. “Gross. David wants to know if he should make a salad,” he said, his tone suggesting that he found the idea of salad about as appealing as watching his mothers kiss.

“I think that’s a good idea,” Emma told him. His shoulders dipped a bit in resignation, and Emma gripped them and spun him around, marching him out into the hallway. “Come on, kid, let’s go help him. Maybe we can find something good to put in. Bacon bits or something. You coming?” she asked over her shoulder.

“Of course,” Regina replied, stealing one more look at the painting on the wall before turning out the nursery light.

I normally don't like the magical baby stories, but yours is really cute and well written. Thanks for proving my initial feelings of trepidation wrong!

light-cream-cheese — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 13:36:07 -0500

Thank YOU for taking a shot on something outside of what you normally enjoy! That’s a huge compliment.

This Warm Prism (3/6+)

light-cream-cheese — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 23:23:00 -0500

Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me. The only profit I earn from this piece is your feedback, dear reader.

Rating: PG

A/N: Established Swan Queen, set months after the end of season 1.

(Red) (White)

*****

Green

Emma sat in the Nolans’ cheery kitchen, one leg drawn up so that her chin rested on her knee. Cocoa had sounded good when her mother offered it, but when Snow placed it on the table in front of her, the smell of the hot milk and cinnamon turned her stomach. She reached as if to pick it up but when Snow turned her back, she surreptitiously pushed the mug further away.

“So are you going to tell me or are you going to make me guess?” Snow asked over her shoulder.

“I thought I’d wait until you sat down, at least.”

Snow tilted her head as she turned back toward the table, carrying her own cocoa. “That sounds bad. Is it bad?”

“It’s…” Emma had practiced this in the mirror, but now she couldn’t remember a single word that she had planned to say. Finally, she took a breath and managed to get out the important part. “I’m pregnant.”

Snow blinked at her, very slowly. “I didn’t know that was something you were, ah, planning?”

“We weren’t,” Emma mumbled.

“I’m sorry, we are still talking about you and Regina, right?”

“It just kind of happened… magically.”

Snow choked on a mouthful of cocoa, her ears turning so red that Emma worried she might be having an allergic reaction to it. “Magically?” she sputtered.

“I guess it’s a thing that happens.”

Snow pinched her lips into a tight line and tapped at them with the fingertips of one hand. “Really?”

“I guess. What do I know?”

“You and… Regina.”

“Yup.” Emma puffed out her cheeks. This was turning out to be every bit as awkward as she’d expected—maybe even more so. She scratched at the embroidered tablecloth and waited for Snow to process that information. Snow made a shuddery, high-pitched noise, and when Emma looked up at her mother, it took a moment to realize that she wasn’t crying. She was laughing.

Snow was laughing so hard that her whole body shook. The hand over her mouth moved to cover her eyes instead, and Emma saw a single tear slide from behind Snow’s fingers. Emma leaned back in her chair, staring. She had guessed that Snow would be upset. She had been prepared for scolding, for shouting, for sobbing, but this? This was fully creeping her out.

After a minute, Snow took a few long, shaky breaths, clearly trying to compose herself. When she saw Emma’s stricken face, she reached across the table to take her daughter’s hand. “Oh, Emma, I am sorry, truly. I’m not laughing at you. I’m sorry.” This was followed by another burst of nervous giggling.

“It’s okay,” Emma reassured her. “People get weird when they get a shock.” She’d seen it often enough to know this was true, but Emma found that even saying it out loud did nothing to quell the little curl of hurt feelings that was squeezing her throat shut.

“It is a shock,” Snow conceded. “But I’m sorry anyway.”

Snow was guarded about her feelings about Regina, especially when Henry was around, which was most of the time. That was exactly why Emma had left him at home. If anybody was going to talk her out of this, it was going to be Snow. And it was going to be now.

“I know you think it’s a bad idea.”

“I think it’s not the choice I would make for you,” Snow countered. “But it’s not my choice to make.”

“She’s a good mom.” Emma didn’t know why she was trying so hard to pick a fight, but the little flash in Snow’s eyes at that was remarkably satisfying.

She wasn’t taking the bait, though. “Henry’s a special boy. He’s been good for her. So have you. And true love, well…”

“Who said anything about love?” Emma snapped. It was one thing to hear Regina say it, but it was quite another to hear the words in her mother’s mouth, wrapped in what sounded quite a bit like skepticism.

Snow put her hands up. “No, no one. You’re right.”

The apologetic tone made Emma regret the implied lie. “I mean, I do, actually,” she confessed. “Love her.”

With a small, sad smile, Snow nodded. “I know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No,” Snow said, almost pleading. “Don’t be. Don’t be sorry for that.”

“I didn’t mean to. Love her. But she’s different now, I think. Or she wants to be.”

“Anyone can change their life, Emma. You did,” Snow reminded her, squeezing her hand.

Emma squeezed back and wondered how true that really was.

*****

When Emma had mentioned to David that Regina was bored and restless, trapped inside the house as the weather turned colder and wet, he had sent home a few particularly bothersome files for the former mayor to work on. He had been trained to be a king, not a mayor, and in this realm his knowledge had all kinds of gaps that Regina had had decades to fill. Regina had blown through the work in an afternoon, making changes in her precise handwriting and leaving carefully instructive notes on almost every page. Although she hadn’t told Emma to ask for more to do, she was pleased to find that every few days, when the finished work disappeared, more was left in its place. It wasn’t exactly what she’d done as mayor, and it was still lonely, but it was satisfying, it passed the time, and while no one spoke of it, Regina knew that the steady stream of work was a silent vote of confidence.

Work for the mayor’s office was what she was doing when she found, toward the bottom of a stack of files, a slim blue folder labeled with her own address. She frowned as she flipped it open. The work was all complete, and so meticulously well done that Regina wondered if she herself hadn’t already worked on it without noticing. It was the content that made absolutely no sense. It appeared to be an amendment to the property line, moving it back to include a large swath of the woods behind the house. Clipped to the back cover of the folder, after the very last page, she found a note.

Things will be green again soon.
Thought you might like a walk in the woods.
–D

It was signed with the round, swooping initial she associated with David’s signature. Regina worried her bottom lip between her teeth, wondering if it was worth holding on to the initial prideful indignation that made her want to sneer at the gift. After all, she reasoned, surely she deserved something in return for all the work she’d been doing. The town would probably have been falling apart at the seams otherwise. A glance out the window at the woods which were indeed beginning to look distinctly green made up her mind.

She found her favorite wool coat in the hall closet and let herself out through the sliding glass door at the back of the house. She intended to find out what was encompassed by the new property line and if there were any indication of the boundary once she was out in the woods, but she quickly came to a clearing that gave her pause. It was just deep enough into the woods that the house was no longer visible through the trees, and large enough that an oblong of clear blue sky could be seen where the treetops didn’t quite meet.

Without really thinking about it, she directed a few small bursts of flame to clear away some of the thicker underbrush. The persistent tingling itch at the place where her fingers met her palms lessened a bit when she did that, so she threw a few more flames toward the sky. An idea occurred to her, and she began to move her hands through the air with more purpose. She lifted and rotated stones, directing trees and vines with a crook of her finger, and coaxed flowers out of the ground that weren’t native to Maine—or anywhere, really. Inside her modern home, magic meant exploding light bulbs and slamming doors that shook the whole house, but the natural world was rather more forgiving. She gained momentum as she worked, transforming the clearing into a wild sort of garden.

Behind her, she heard a soft, “Wow,” and whirled, a little out of breath, to see Emma at the edge of the clearing. Her arms were shoved into the too-tight sleeves of a blue pleather jacket that hung open around her protruding abdomen. “You did this?” Emma asked, stepping toward her. “This is amazing.”

“I have a great many talents, Princess,” Regina replied evenly.

Emma smirked. “I’m aware.” She took in the rough stone bench, shaded by an arbor of interlaced trees. “This isn’t going to start singing or dancing or anything, is it?”

Regina rolled her eyes. “Fucking Disney,” she breathed. “You’re safe.” She watched as Emma lowered herself onto the stone slab. The blonde visibly relaxed when it didn’t shift under her weight.

“What’s all this for, anyway?” Emma asked.

“Henry always liked being outside, the park. Even when he was tiny.” She came to sit beside Emma. “If the little one takes after you at all, she’ll mutilate our yard. I thought I’d need a place to bring her.”

“You’re really good at this.”

Regina blinked in surprise at the open compliment. “Landscaping?”

“The kid stuff. Knowing what they need.” Regina looked at her sharply, wondering where Emma got that. But Emma appeared completely absorbed in her own thoughts. Tears in her eyes were threatening to spill over. “I don’t think I can do it.”

“Of course you can.”

Emma shook her head. “I look at Henry and he’s incredible. And it’s completely you. You did that. The only thing I’ve ever known for sure about raising kids is that I have no idea how to do it.”

“There’s no secret. No one gives you an instruction manual. It’s really just an alarming amount of guessing.”

Emma pushed at her tears with the heel of her hand. “That’s… not even a little bit reassuring.”

Regina shrugged. “So you’ll fail.”

“What the hell, Regina?” Emma threw up her hands.

“If you don’t know what you’re doing, it stands to reason that you’re going to fail,” Regina said, as if she were explaining a mathematical proof.

Emma sniffed and looked at her. “Seriously, that’s not making me feel better.”

“Why on earth would I be trying to make you feel better? You’re going to fail at parenting and ruin our child.” Regina reached into the pocket of her coat, pulled out an apple that could not possibly have been in there, and took a bite.

“Well, I’m not going to ruin her!” Emma wailed, not noticing right away that the corner of Regina’s mouth was twitching as she chewed. When she saw that she was being teased, she sighed, exasperated. “You can be a real bitch, you know that?”

“I’ve been told,” Regina replied, offering her the apple. Emma looked at it, then back at her, raising an eyebrow. Regina shrugged and took another bite herself. “You will, though,” she said, once she’d swallowed. “Just like with Henry. Sometimes, you’ll do the wrong thing. And you can sit around wondering why you did it and how you could have been so foolish or you can figure out what the next thing is and try to get that one right.”

Emma sighed deeply. “I know. I just get scared.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Regina promised.

Emma eyed the apple in Regina’s hand. “Got anything else in that pocket? Not an apple,” she added quickly. Regina thought for a moment, trying to remember if she knew how to do anything other than apples. Then she smiled and closed her eyes, concentrating as she reached into her pocket and produced a peach, soft and ripe and as warm as if it had been sitting in the afternoon sun.

This Warm Prism (2/6+)

light-cream-cheese — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 17:40:00 -0500

Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me. The only profit I earn from this piece is your feedback, dear reader.

Rating: PG. There is brief discussion of the concept of abortion, so if that upsets you, tread carefully.

A/N: Established Swan Queen, set months after the end of season 1. This bit took longer than expected due to real life. Thanks for your patience! David is still called David because of reasons. He just is.

(Red)

*****

White

The terms of Regina’s house arrest were very specific about who could escort her off the property. Emma wanted to do it herself, but Regina insisted that it was crucial that they follow the rules. Once they decided to ask, it only took one phone call from Emma and surprisingly little convincing to get David to agree to help them.

They were gone for nearly two hours. Emma tried to distract herself by helping Henry with his homework and putting dinner in the oven, but when she heard David’s truck pulling up in front of the big white house, she was immediately on her feet and out the front door. By the time he parked and came around the front of the vehicle to open the passenger-side door, she had made it to the sidewalk.

“What happened? Is she okay?”

“I’m fine,” Regina insisted, shrugging off David’s hand at her elbow, but her face was drawn and, even in heels that let her tower over Emma, she seemed somehow diminished. “I’m just tired.”

Emma slid an arm around Regina’s waist and looked to her father for confirmation. David simply shrugged. “I couldn’t go in with her,” he said apologetically. “That place is like a fortress. But she’s not hurt.”

“I said I’m fine,” Regina said through gritted teeth. She looked Emma up and down, taking in the tank top and bare feet. “But it is freezing out here. You need to get inside, dear.”

“In a minute,” Emma said, nudging at the small of Regina’s back. “You go. Henry’s setting the table.” She wrapped her arms around herself as she watched Regina stride toward the house. Once the other woman was out of earshot, she asked, “Did she say anything?”

David shook his head. “She just asked me to bring her home. Emma, what is going on?”

“I will tell you, I promise. Jut not yet.”

David tried to look stern, but the way Emma looked up at him sideways melted his resolve, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders instead. “You know I trust you. But I’m hoping you won’t ask me to do this again, Em. It’s dangerous.”

“I know,” she said, sounding like a harangued teenager. “Thank you, Dad.”

He grinned down at her. “Do me a favor and don’t mention this to your mother? She’ll kill me.”

Emma brought her fingers to her forehead in a lazy mock salute. “No names, no pack drill.”

He gave her shoulders another little squeeze. “Now go inside, it is freezing. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” Emma agreed, and watched him climb into his truck before heading inside to where dinner and her family were waiting.

*****

As soon as he’d finished eating, Regina excused Henry from the table. “You don’t have to clear tonight. You can go watch television.”

Henry’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Why?”

“Really, kid? You like helping with the dishes that much?” Emma teased.

Henry flicked his gaze back and forth between his mothers. “Is this about where Mom went this afternoon?” He didn’t miss the look the women gave each other at that. Having two parents was weird. It wasn’t like they kept secrets, exactly, although sometimes there was that, too. It was more like they had something that was just about the two of them and not about Henry at all. That had irked him when he first noticed it, but more and more, he found that it made him feel safe, like there was more holding their family together than just him.

“Henry, go,” Regina pressed, leaving no more room for argument. He pushed away from the table with an exaggerated sigh, but Emma caught his eye and winked at him, eliciting a grin as he left the dining room.

Emma fidgeted, waiting until she heard the television come on in the next room before asking, “What took you so long? Felt like you were gone forever.”

“It took me a while to get to him. Belle was supposed to help, but when she found out it was I and not David who wanted in…” she rolled her eyes rather than finishing the explanation. “Typical.”

“Sorry.” She wasn’t sure what for, exactly. Emma knew that Regina had little right to ask anything of anyone, but it still bothered her to see people reject the woman at every turn.

Regina shrugged. “David was no help at all, either. Maybe you should have come after all.”

“You know I don’t have that kind of magic.”

“Don’t you?” Regina took another sip of wine and raised one eyebrow at Emma over the rim of the glass.

Emma ignored that. “And you didn’t make any deals?”

“Just like we agreed,” Regina assured her.

“Regina,” she said, losing her patience. “What did he say?”

“Almost nothing. He knows of it happening one other time.”

“And it’s… magical?” Emma prompted.

“Apparently.” This was directed at the far wall. Regina was always hard to read, not least because she usually had about sixteen things going on underneath the surface of whatever she was saying or doing, but this degree of reticence was unusual even for her. It was starting to scare Emma a bit.

“Could you just tell me?” She waited for Regina to look at her before she continued. “Whatever it is that you’re trying not to say?”

Regina dropped her eyes and nodded, taking a deep breath before speaking. “He said that in… before, the only spontaneous magic was that which was the result of true love. There was one child rumored to have been conceived because of such spontaneous magic. They said that her parents’ love for each other was strong enough to create new life, even when it shouldn’t have otherwise been possible. It was only a rumor,” she clarified. “But he has ways of knowing when things are false, and that wasn’t the way he spoke about this.” She looked up at Emma when she finished. The blonde was never the quickest to put things together, and Regina could almost see the idea coalescing in her mind.

“True love, huh?” It wasn’t something they had talked about, ever, at least not in those terms. But when Emma thought about it, in the succession of things they’d shared—child, town, home, bed—why shouldn’t love come next? The fluttery, excited flush of new love that she remembered from her few formative attempts at relationships would feel ridiculous now, but there was this other thing she’d been trying to put a name to. It was a feeling that this thing with Regina was the thing that made everything that had ever happened in her life make sense. It was the way Regina seemed to sit on the edges of Emma’s thoughts, even when her thoughts were just about mundane little things like what to order for lunch. And it was the oddly serene confidence that what they had would be permanent, even when it was messy or ugly. It was inevitable, like gravity. If that was true love, then… oh.

She studied Regina, who was trying hard to look Emma in the eye but kept dropping her gaze to Emma’s mouth. Emma looked for the truth of her next thought, which was the memory of the first thing Regina had explained to her about true love—really magical, curse-breaking love. In the fading light of that day, the worst day, Regina had told her that true love, in order to be true love, always had to be returned.

“You love me back,” she said, unable to keep the hint of triumph out of her voice.

Regina pursed her lips and stuttered a half-hearted attempt at mitigation. “Things are different here. It could—“

“No,” Emma cut her off, grinning and very sure of herself. “You love me back.”

Regina couldn’t help herself—she returned the smile. “Well, all right, then.”

*****

In their bed that night, Emma lay on her back under the white sheet, dancing her fingers like tiny legs across her still-flat abdomen. Regina was next to her, curled on her side, not touching Emma, just watching. “You said I didn’t ask you.”

Emma’s fingers stopped mid-twirl, and she turned her head to look at Regina. “What?”

“Before, when you thought I’d done it? You said that I didn’t ask you.”

Emma sighed. “Well, you didn’t ask me. You have to admit it’s a shitty thing to do to someone without their consent.”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t do it.”

“No.”

“That’s all I meant,” Emma said dismissively, turning away again.

Regina was quiet for a moment, tempted to let the subject drop, but she found the question burning in her chest. She had to know. “Would you have? If I’d asked?”

“Let you… knock me up?” she smirked.

Regina sighed at the willful crassness. “Yes.”

Emma thought for a moment, squinting up at the ceiling. She considered their situation. It was much too soon, for one thing. It had only been half a year that she’d been in this house, less time than that since they’d been anything resembling a couple. But the other thing—the love that suddenly felt overwhelming now that she knew it was returned—made her reluctant to say no. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Would you have asked?”

“I didn’t know it was an option,” Regina reminded her. She swallowed hard, and when she spoke again it was almost a whisper. “You don’t have to do it, you know.”

Emma looked at her, eyes wide with surprise. “Regina—”

“No, I mean it. I can make you an appointment. It can be taken care of tomorrow—if you want.”

“You don’t want it,” Emma guessed, tears springing to her eyes. She felt stupid, mentally berating herself for believing that Regina, so fixated on order and with the scope of her control now so small, could possibly accept something as life-altering as a new baby without meticulously planning every aspect.

“I do want it,” Regina said with a fierceness that made Emma feel all prickly. “But I’m saying that you have a choice here. I’ve seen—made people do things without being given a choice. I don’t want to do that again. I especially don’t want to do it to you.”

“Hey,” Emma rolled toward Regina so that they were face to face. “Nobody’s making me do anything.”

“We didn’t make a plan for this. We could wait until we’re ready.”

“And when will that be?”

Regina was silent

“This is, you know, insane. The timing is terrible. But come on, a magic baby? Who knows when we’ll get a chance like this again? And I just think…”

“What?”

Emma wrapped her hands around one of Regina’s, her thumbs stroking it almost imperceptibly. “There are so many things to make right. And I know you think that means you need to be punished. But maybe this is how we make it right. By doing something new. Something good.”

“And the price?” More than anything, Regina wished that the monstrous man had not reminded her that there were some truths in the world that were absolute, and one of them was that nothing good ever came without cost.

“Loving a kid? Magic or not, there’s always a risk you’re gonna get hurt. Henry’s proof enough of that—for both of us. Has it ever not been worth it?”

Regina shook her head. “Of course not.”

“Well, all right, then.”

Once Straight Rope

light-cream-cheese — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 23:50:11 -0500

Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me. The only profit I earn from this piece is your feedback, dear reader.

Rating: G

A/N: Just a brief little bit of pre-series Regina/Henry that would not leave me alone.

*****

Regina emerges from her study, rolling her neck. She would have preferred to simply take the afternoon off when Henry’s play date had cancelled, but the approaching end of the month made bringing some work home with her unavoidable. “Henry?” she calls, crossing the foyer, trying to detect exactly where in the spacious house her son has decided to play.

She stops short when she comes to the living room, feeling the now-familiar brief tightening in her chest. He is growing so quickly, and she still isn’t quite sure how to gauge at a glance whether the ransacked living room is the result of a four-year-old walking hurricane or a home invasion.

“Henry?” she asks again, softer this time. The sandy head pops up over the back of the sofa and Regina’s smile feels like an exhalation.

Henry grins back at her, but his face falters when his gaze drops to her feet. “Mommy, you’re in the lava!”

She wrinkles her nose at him and steps from the hardwood onto the rug. “Better?”

“No, Mommy, you’re burning!” he tells her, his frantically waving arms and melodramatic grimace prompting Regina to swallow a laugh. “Get on an island!”

She moves deliberately slowly, enjoying the way Henry writhes in a highly physical pantomime of anguish as she kicks off her heels before stepping onto a couch cushion lying on the floor. When both feet are firmly planted on the “island,” Henry collapses against an armrest, twisting so that he can keep her in his eye-line. “Phew,” she says, making a show of wiping her brow. “I’m safe!”

Henry looks at her as though she’s just announced that she is, in fact, a baby rhinoceros. “You’re trapped,” he corrects. “You have to get on the boat.” Before she can respond, he’s standing on the armrest and then leaping off, landing in a crouch on another of the cushions he’s liberated from the couch. Her instinct is to move toward him, but he stands, holding up a hand to stop her. “Wait, Mommy,” he commands. Regina allows herself to think, just for half a moment, that he would have made a wonderful prince.

And suddenly he’s hopping nimbly across his home decor archipelago, tongue running across his bottom lip as he concentrates. She cringes when he lands squarely on a four-hundred-dollar white linen throw pillow, but says nothing. He’s just having fun, Regina reminds herself. Over the last four years, it has become her mantra in indulgence.

Henry is close now, reaching for her with wiggling fingers. She lets him take her hand and lead her back toward the couch, crashing into him on islands much too small for two and occasionally teetering precariously on the toes of one foot. He gasps and giggles, playing along until they land, both a little breathless, back on the couch where he started.

“Oh,” Regina groans, pulling him onto her lap and attacking him with kisses and just a bit of a tickle under his ribs. “You did it! My hero!”

When she finally stops, he reaches up for her, framing her face with his small hands. “Mommy,” he tells her, actually serious now and not just playing at it, “I saved you.”

It catches her off guard, and she has to swallow hard before she can concede, “Yes, dear. You did.” She presses one last kiss to the crown of his head, breathing in the spicy-sweet smell of him, and thinks that if anyone could, it would be him.

This Warm Prism (1/6+)

light-cream-cheese — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 17:00:00 -0500

Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me. The only profit I earn from this piece is your feedback, dear reader.

Rating: T - for language

A/N: Established Swan Queen, set about six months after the season 1 finale. This will be in six parts, but there may also be a couple of drabbles and a prequel, depending on how things go.

*****

Red

Regina fiddled with the mantle clock in her study. She’d set it the day Henry had given it to her—Mother’s Day, the year he was seven—and it had kept perfect time for years. But magic had done something to it. The day Emma had brought Henry home from the hospital, Regina had realized that it was running backwards. That had stopped, but no matter how often she set the clock, it no longer seemed able to properly keep time. It was one of her favorite things in this room, but she was verging on throwing it into the crackling fire, so annoyed was she by the visual reminder of how time passing actually felt. The hours alone in the big empty house could drag on until she thought she’d go crazy, but the days turned into weeks and months faster than she could keep track of them.

“You!”

Regina was generally unmoved by the woman storming through her closed study door without knocking or observing any kind of protocol whatsoever. That behavior had been typical for as long as they’d known each other. For someone so private, Emma didn’t have a particularly strong sense of personal space, and it had only gotten worse since she’d moved in. It was the rage in Emma’s voice that raised Regina’s eyebrows. That was something she hadn’t heard in quite a while.

“You did this to me!” Emma roared as she approached the middle of the room where Regina stood. Her color was high, the red in her cheeks nearly as intense as that of the jacket she still wore.

Regina cocked her head. “Did what, dear?”

Emma scoffed. “Oh, I think we both know. I mean, are you kidding me, Regina? This is completely crossing every line, every boundary. I thought we were past this shit, at least with you and me. I’ve stood for you over and over again. How could you think that—”

“Emma.” Regina enunciated each syllable of the name very clearly, as if it were an incantation to still the other woman. “I think you should tell me what it is we’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about being pregnant, you… you fucking… witch.” She spat the last word like poison, but that wasn’t the word that rang in Regina’s ears.

Her eyes wide, she echoed, “Pregnant?”

Emma could see from the look on the other woman’s face that her surprise was genuine, but she refused to let it register. Emma was furious, and that feeling was filling her up, keeping at bay all the other things that threatened to come flooding in if she let the fury go. “Yes, Your Majesty, I’m pregnant. I don’t know what you’re planning or what kind of fucking voodoo you had to do, but it worked. I’m pregnant and fuck, Regina, you didn’t even ask me.” Emma’s eyes were shiny with tears when she stopped, and Regina could see her working her jaw, willing them not to fall.

Regina shook her head, just once. “I didn’t—” and then she stopped herself, her lips curved into a strange kind of smile.

“What?” Emma demanded.

“You’re pregnant.” Regina’s tone was as inscrutable as the expression on her face.

“That’s funny to you?”

“No, it’s just… you’re pregnant and I’m—“ Regina held her hands out to her sides, gesturing to indicate her own very feminine body. “Shouldn’t I be the one who’s angry?”

Emma was incredulous. “Oh, you’ve got to be— I’m with my father or our son all day. I’m in your bed every night. When would I possibly have time?”

It wasn’t an outright denial, and the recognition of that hit Regina so hard that she had to sit. She stared at her own hands. She twisted the ring on her right hand so that the emerald was on the inside, clenched her fist, and focused on the stone where it bit into her palm. When she spoke, her voice was small even to her own ears, as if she was speaking from very far away. “When people want to, they find the time.”

She felt Emma flop onto the sofa next to her. “Well, I didn’t,” Emma insisted. “I wouldn’t.” Regina felt green eyes boring into her, and she lifted her gaze to meet them for just a moment. Emma’s surprise and anger were easily evident, but it was the fear flickering behind them that made Regina certain she was being told the truth. Emma’s voice wavered as she spoke again. “Y-you really didn’t do this? I just was so surprised, and then I thought…”

“Magic,” Regina finished for her. “You remember what I told you? About magic here?”

“Unpredictable, yeah. I’ve noticed.”

Regina stared across the room at the window. She thought of the window upstairs, where she had stood so many months ago and watched the purple fog roll over the town. She had smiled then, feeling her power returned to her. She hadn’t had any idea how things would change. “It’s everywhere here,” she said, almost to herself. “Like an infection.”

“So maybe it just… got away from you?” Emma suggested, but Regina was already shaking her head before the thought was even completed.

“Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t do that.” Emma’s brow furrowed, and Regina realized she’d have to explain. She spoke slowly, choosing each word carefully. “I never learned how. I did try, once. Before. I thought I could… use such a skill. The ability to create a child and ensure the desired parentage would have been extraordinarily valuable. But I was told it could not be done.”

Emma let out a short, sardonic laugh. “I think someone lied to you.”

Regina shrugged. “Maybe. It wouldn’t be the first time.” Even before, she’d never met anyone who could match her skill, but there were always those who were more knowledgeable. It occurred to her that there still was one person who might be able to provide them with an explanation. She studied Emma’s face. “You haven’t… seen him, have you?”

“Not for months. It’s not like it was, Regina. He’s not any better off than you.”

“Emma,” Regina said with quiet intensity. Fear creased her forehead. She raised a hand to stroke Emma’s face, thumb drawing over her cheekbone. “You cannot see him,” she said, more a plea than a command.

Emma nodded easily. “Fine. No love lost there.”

Panic bloomed hotly in Regina’s chest. She was terrified that Emma didn’t understand how serious the situation was. “Emma, I mean it. When he hears about this he will try to trick you. You cannot speak to him. No messages. Nothing. Please, Emma.”

Emma grasped Regina’s hand in both of her own, pulling it down to her lap. She smoothed both thumbs across the back of Regina’s hand, just above the knuckles, drawing twin swaths of reassurance. “Regina. The man tried to kill our son. Not to mention you. And I doubt he’d shed any tears for me. I promise you, I’m not going anywhere near the bastard.” All the flippancy was gone from Emma’s voice, and Regina let out a breath of relief.

“There’s something else,” Regina said slowly. When she hesitated, Emma squeezed her hand in encouragement. “You’re not going to like it. I need to go to him.”

Regina was right; Emma didn’t like that at all. She yanked her hands from Regina’s and stared at her, horrified. “No! Absolutely not.”

“Emma,” Regina started, but Emma cut her off.

“You just got done telling me how important it was to stay away. How dangerous he is, like I could ever forget. You think I’m about to let you walk into that same danger?”

“But it’s not the same danger,” Regina argued. “I’m not carrying a child.”

At that turn of phrase, Emma froze. “A child,” she said, as though the idea had not occurred to her.

“Yes, Emma,” Regina said with a forced patience. “The condition of pregnancy generally results in a child.”

“No, I know, I just didn’t—we’re going to have a baby.” For the first time since she’d spoken with Dr. Whale that morning, Emma found herself trying to picture the two of them with a baby.

“Yes,” Regina agreed. “You are. But we don’t know how, which means we don’t know why. And that leaves all of us vulnerable. Especially the child. If we have any chance of protecting it, I need to speak to him.”

Emma had learned enough about the dark little man in the last months to know that this was true. The idea of Regina having an audience with him made her want to be sick, but she knew that now that the idea was in Regina’s head, there was little to be done to dissuade her. Emma sighed. “Okay. You’ll go. But you have to promise me something. No deals.”

“Not with him,” Regina agreed. “I promise. Does…” she struggled for the right name. “Does your mother know?”

“Not yet.”

“Don’t wait too long to tell her,” Regina said firmly. Emma looked at her with surprise. “She’ll be hurt if she figures it out before you do—and believe me, she will figure it out.”

“All right,” Emma agreed with a small smile at Regina’s concern not for what Snow would do, but for what she would feel. She was trying, but generosity of spirit was still a very new color on Regina, and the former queen shifted uncomfortably under it for a moment.

Then, as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone. “She’ll blame me, no doubt.” She was Mayor Mills again, her voice measured with just a hint of snark around the edges.

“She won’t,” Emma insisted. It probably wasn’t true, but arguing with that voice was like a reflex.

“You did,” Regina reminded her.

Emma made a face. “Yeah, well, I get to make crazy assumptions. I have baby hormones.”

Break

light-cream-cheese — Sat, 26 May 2012 06:33:00 -0500

Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me. The only profit I earn from this piece is your feedback, dear reader.

Rating: M - here be smut

A/N: Swan Queen. For the reader who requested a fic featuring Emma wielding a strap-on. This turned out wildly different from what I expected when I started writing it. Post-ep for 1x09 “True North.”

*****

Henry’s finally asleep and she’s almost forgotten that she left the sheriff in the study, but when she comes back down, Regina finds her sitting there like she owns the place, drinking a glass of cider to which she clearly helped herself. She’s irritating and alluring all at once, the surly expression and crass posture not quite enough to spoil her natural beauty. There’s something else, too, something magnetic that Regina can’t quite put her finger on.

“Now, what can I do for you, Sheriff?”

Emma rises to her feet as the mayor comes in. Henry’s phrase whispers in the back of Regina’s mind. White Knight. And they say chivalry is dead, she thinks with a wry grin. Then Emma speaks, gruffly. “We need to talk. About work.”

Regina feels the milk-glass mayoral demeanor slip back into place, just like always. She’s sure if she ever forgets herself and is glad to see the woman, Emma would only have to open her mouth to ruin it. “Do we?”

“Those kids… you shouldn’t have called social services.” Emma wants a fight, couldn’t be begging harder for one if she literally got on her knees.

“I followed the correct protocol.”

“My protocol. You stepped in when you shouldn’t have. I was handling the situation. I’m the sheriff. It looks bad if you’re doing things that are my job.”

“Looks bad? To whom? People who willfully elected an under-qualified stranger to the post of sheriff?”

The sheriff steps forward, leading with her hips, coming fully into Regina’s space. “Key word, there, Madam Mayor, is elected.”

“I earned my office, too. I need to ensure that this town runs smoothly.”

“You need to let me do my job. No one’s going to trust me to help them if you keep interfering.”

“I wouldn’t have had to interfere if you had done your job. Your incompetence is not my fault. Although it does seem to have a way of always becoming my responsibility, doesn’t it?”

“Fuck you, Regina.” It’s there, in the tone of her voice or the tilt of her chin or the way she never breaks eye contact no matter how angry she gets, that Regina sees it. It’s the same thing she saw that day under the apple tree, the thing that first made her feel like she wanted to eat this blonde woman alive, that’s making her feel it again now. Power. It’s unrefined, and, like a little girl playing with her daddy’s sword, Emma doesn’t know how to wield it yet, but Regina can see it. Her whole life has been spent looking for power in others. She leans in even closer, and she can smell it on the sheriff. Power that might even match her own.

It’s all she can do to keep from baring her teeth as she counters, “Yes, please.” She watches Emma’s eyes darken as the look in them shifts from anger to want. Regina almost laughs that it’s that easy. When Emma kisses her, it’s hard and demanding and sends a shiver through Regina’s body that settles into an ache in her palms and between her legs.

Emma winds her fingers through the mayor’s dark hair and twists, tightening her grip just enough to make pain sparkle across Regina’s scalp before she lets go. One hand slides to wrap around the back of Regina’s neck while the thumb reaches around to trace a firm line down the ridges of her windpipe. The other hand drops to Regina’s skirt and begins tugging upward. Regina stops it with a hand around her wrist. Emma pushes back, insistent, but Regina’s grip only tightens in response. She’s done with quick fucks up against furniture and walls. She wants to let Emma run, like an unbroken horse, see what she’s capable of, how far she’s willing to go.

“Upstairs,” she says, barely more than a whisper. She drags herself off of the other woman and turns to go. She doesn’t realize that she’s holding her breath until she lets it out with relief when she hears Emma move to follow her.

When they reach the master suite, Regina closes the door behind them noiselessly and turns the lock before disappearing into the closet. She emerges and hands Emma a box. “Use this.” As Regina methodically strips her own clothes off, Emma lifts the lid and peers inside. For the first time this evening, surprise registers across her features and she glances up at Regina, who is sitting on the edge of the bed.

“You’re sure?”

Regina unhooks her bra and asks evenly, “You’ve done it before?” She turns her head and Emma gives her a single, slow nod in confirmation. Of course she had. “Then who’s asking questions?” She slides her underwear off, almost as ashamed that she can smell herself as she is aroused by it. She moves up the bed and reclines, leaning against the pillows as she watches Emma peel off the rest of her clothes.

Emma is looking back at her, arching her back in order to hold the eye contact as she steps out of her jeans, and Regina realizes that it is deliberate. Emma is putting on a show for her. She bites the inside of cheek to keep from grinning as Emma slowly swings her hips and pulls off her green sweater. When she’s naked, she finally drops her eyes from Regina’s as she steps into the dark red leather harness, running her tongue along her bottom lip as she adjusts it to fit.

When she’s satisfied, Emma looks down at herself, admiring for a moment before she bends toward the box again. Regina knows the condoms are there, where she tucked them herself, but the easy way Emma reaches for precaution grounds her in the reality of the moment. This is actually happening, and not in a world safely unstuck from time, but in a world where choice and risk are invariably knotted up together, and when you wake up in the morning it’s tomorrow.

Emma moves toward the bed, almost strutting now. Regina lifts her arms over her head, crossing her wrists before grasping the headboard in an imitation of being bound. Emma climbs up from the foot of the bed, coaxing Regina’s legs open as she crawls between them and kneels. When Emma leans forward, the strap-on brushes against Regina’s belly, and she sucks in a sharp breath through her nose, careful to keep her face expressionless.

Emma places the pad of her thumb against Regina’s lips. “Say it,” she demands. Regina knows what she’s asking for, but the only answer she gives is to draw the tip of Emma’s thumb between her teeth and bite just hard enough so that she can see a reaction cross the blonde’s face. Emma withdraws her hand and lays it flat against Regina’s chest, the V of her thumb and forefinger echoing the curve of the other woman’s collarbone. She presses down without leaning into it and asks again, “Say it.”

Regina licks her lips, tempted to acquiesce, until she realizes the one thing Emma would rather hear. “Make me.”

Emma drops her face to Regina’s, so close that Regina can feel Emma’s breath on her own lips. She stays there, green eyes boring into brown ones, until Regina’s face tips up in an attempt to capture Emma’s in a kiss. Then she turns her head and sucks at the pulse point of Regina’s throat. Regina lets her eyes close, shutting out everything except the woman touching her. Emma’s hand is moving, fingernails tripping over hardened nipples and tracing secret maps over her smooth abdomen. Her mouth follows, nipping and tonguing her way down Regina’s body as her hand settles between the woman’s thighs. She slips one finger and then a second inside, not moving, simply feeling Regina’s arousal. Occasionally the heel of her hand bumps up against Regina’s clit, eliciting a vocalized sigh that makes Emma smile against golden skin. When Emma’s head can dip no further without her changing positions, she sits up and considers Regina. Emma’s grown confident, and she takes her slick fingers from Regina’s body to absently stroke her toy cock.

Deciding, she instructs, “Come here,” and pulls Regina up and toward the foot of the bed until she’s on all fours. Emma pushes at her shoulders and pulls at her hips, maneuvering Regina until she’s canted across the bed in a way she doesn’t understand until she looks up. When she does, she lets out a soft exclamation. From this angle, she can see herself in the full-length mirror. She can see Emma behind her. She smiles at the blonde through their reflections, white teeth flashing in the dim lamplight.

Emma holds her gaze as she positions herself. One hand on Regina’s hips to steady her, she grasps the shaft of her new appendage and guides it into place. She enters hesitantly and then all at once, making sparks explode behind Regina’s eyes. Emma’s strokes are unsteady at first, but she keeps her eyes on Regina in the mirror as she gauges how hard and how far to thrust until she can build a comfortable rhythm. When she does, her free hand wanders over Regina’s hip and presses between her legs.

Regina’s shuddering breaths are uneven and her hands are twisting in the bed sheets and she is so close that she nearly screams when Emma abruptly pulls out and away from her. But just as quickly, Emma’s pulling her down to the bed, whispering in her ear. “I want—I want to…” The warm weight of the blonde’s body lands atop Regina as she is entered again. Emma brushes dark waves of hair out of Regina’s eyes as her other hand slides between them, strumming expertly at Regina’s clit.

Regina’s whole body seems to curl in around Emma when she comes, quietly as always, except for the one word, only ever uttered in these moments when the very last vestiges of control have been ripped away and Regina’s body is able to act of its own volition to give the other woman what she asked for. It is a hoarse whisper, almost a growl. Just one word, over and over like an incantation. “Emma, Emma, Emma, Emma.”

She’s still breathless when Emma rolls off of her toward the foot of the bed and sits up. She’s fumbling with the buckles at her hips. Regina watches her for a moment, then sits up behind Emma, insinuating her hands under the sheriff’s and nimbly loosening the harness so that it can fall away. Regina presses a kiss to Emma’s shoulder blade. “Did you—?” She’s grateful that Emma is already shaking her head so that she doesn’t have to finish the question. Instead, she slips around Emma to the floor, kneeling between her thighs. Regina trails a line of kisses up the inside of one thigh, but Emma has a hand in her hair, pulling her closer, urging her along. She looks up and sees that Emma is watching her, her green eyes glassy and needing and intense.

Regina had started this to break the woman, to destroy her, to drive her out. And it’s only now, on her knees, at someone else’s mercy for the first time she can remember in this life, that she really understands. She should have known it the first time she uttered the woman’s damn name. Emma Swan is going to break her.

At the End of the World

light-cream-cheese — Tue, 22 May 2012 09:48:00 -0500

Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me. The only profit I earn from this piece is your feedback, dear reader.

Rating: PG

A/N: Our intrepid duo needs to get the hell out of Dodge for a beach vacation. One-shot. Pre-Swan Queen. Spoilers through 1x22, including significant canon plot points.

**********

Eyes closed behind her oversized sunglasses, Regina took a pull from the bottle that she’d wedged into the sand at her side. The fizzy, citrusy malt beverage was unimpressive compared to her homemade hard cider, but it was cool in her throat and warm in her belly and anyway, nothing was homemade this far from home. It would have to do. Anything to quiet all the noise in her head.

She scrunched her nose at the chemical-sweet smell of sunscreen as a shadow fell across her. She knew it wasn’t Henry, who still wouldn’t speak to her but would have managed to drip salt water out of his hair all over her anyway. This figure just stood, waiting. “You’re in my sun, Miss Swan,” she said finally.

Emma started. She was sure that Regina hadn’t opened her eyes, but she was suddenly self-conscious at being caught staring. She’d been distracted by the white bikini that set off Regina’s golden skin and revealed more of it than Emma guessed anyone had ever seen at once. It seemed out of character for the tightly wound mayor, yet somehow it suited her perfectly. Emma dropped into the empty chair next to Regina and tried to cover. “How did you get so tan already? We just got here.”

Regina cracked one eye open at that and eyed the woman sitting next to her. “Magic,” she replied with a hint of a smirk.

“That’s not actually as funny as you think it is,” Emma told her, but her tone was less than scolding.

“It is,” Regina argued lightly. “You just have a wildly underdeveloped sense of humor, dear.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “You’re a troll, you know that?”

“Witch,” Regina corrected.

“No, it’s—never mind. I brought you a present,” she said, dropping something in Regina’s lap.

Regina glanced down at the glossy fashion rag and frowned. “I brought reading material, Miss Swan.”

“I know,” Emma told her. “I saw it on the plane. You can’t read political biographies on the beach, Regina.”

Regina sighed, but she was already flipping through the magazine. Emma was right, actually. She needed a distraction that didn’t require her to think. Pages of perfume ads and couture photo shoots were pitch-perfect. It was a bit annoying, actually, that the woman who was supposed to be her nemesis had gotten it so right. “I wouldn’t have thought this kind of thing was your style.”

“It’s not,” Emma admitted, holding up a mass-market paperback with a dark cover to prove her point. “But I thought it might be yours.”

She sounded so earnest that Regina looked up at her in surprise, searching for a hint of deception or derision. But Emma’s face was open, the corners of her mouth tensed with a smile that threatened to appear at the first note of approval from Regina. She looked almost exactly like her mother. The resemblance made Regina’s throat tighten, but she couldn’t parse whether it was from affection or revulsion. The thought grated, so she turned her eyes slowly back to her magazine before offering up, “Thank you.”

Emma relaxed into her beach chair and watched Henry, who was close to the water, bent over a low and intricate sort of sand castle. Normally he’d be begging her to go down and help him, but three days ago the kid had been dead. Normal was pretty much over for all of them. He’d hardly spoken to either of his mothers since they’d left Storybrooke. Emma glanced over at Regina. One hand still held the thick magazine up, but her eyes had slipped closed.

Regina was a beautiful woman, there was no question. Fairest of them all, Emma thought. But in Storybrooke, her beauty had always been deliberate, polished, accentuated with carefully applied lip liner and tailored blazers and pumps that cost as much as Emma’s half of the rent. Here on the beach, half asleep and half in the bag, with her dark hair slicked back and no makeup at all, she should have been a mess, but she was still somehow preternaturally beautiful.

Emma realized she was staring again and turned her attention back to her novel. After reading the same page three times without absorbing a single word, she gave up and dropped the book onto the sand. She decided to try her luck with her son.

Her stirring roused Regina, who watched Emma walk down to the water. She stopped and turned her back to the wind coming off the water, standing a few feet past Henry so that the waves just lapped around her ankles. Regina could see that Emma was speaking to the boy, but he kept his head down, eyes on the work he was doing in the sand. A soft chuckle escaped Regina as Emma folded her arms and cocked her hip, putting on her best “White Knight” pose before trying again with Henry. He didn’t even look up.

It occurred to her that inviting Emma Swan to come with them on this trip had provided her with a companion. She had brought the only other person in the world who understood what it felt like to have your entire self wrapped up in whether and how that boy looked at you. If he wouldn’t speak to them, they could always talk to each other. She was struck by the fact that she didn’t find that idea completely repellent. The blonde sheriff was many irritating things, but at least she was entertaining. Regina had a low tolerance for boredom.

Emma trudged back up the beach and sat down with a defeated sigh. Absently, she picked up the bottle that sat in the sand and drained it, nearly choking when Regina spoke.

“That one was mine, Miss Swan.”

She looked at Regina, who was watching her with one eyebrow raised, then back at the now-empty bottle in her hands. “Sorry?” she tried, only a little bit guiltily. “I’ll go up and get you another one.”

“No, it’s fine,” Regina drawled, waving a hand aimlessly. “You’ll make it up to me later.”

“Oh, really? And how will I do that?”

“With a favor,” Regina answered lightly.

Emma’s eyes narrowed suspiciously and she lifted her chin. “What favor?”

Regina pursed her lips as she thought. “Oh, I don’t know. You can owe me.”

“Owe you?” Emma rolled her eyes dramatically. “You’ve been spending way too much time with Gold.”

“Gold?” Regina echoed, turning the name over in her mouth. Of all the people in Storybrooke, his was the only name that had never really changed in her mind.

“Rumplestiltskin. Whatever.” Emma tilted her head, quizzical. “What’s the deal with you guys, anyway?”

Regina smiled inscrutably and deferred. “It’s a long story.”

“I’m sure it is,” Emma smirked. “You’re like the Storybrooke mafia or something.”

Regina considered that with an amused expression. “A fair assessment, Sheriff.”

For the first time, Emma was acutely aware that although they were playing the same game they’d been engaged in for months, the rules had radically changed. Regina was still her maddeningly belligerent self, but she seemed freer, less withholding. Emma suddenly felt nervous, recalling Archie Hopper’s words about waking a sleeping dragon. This new Regina could be volatile. She squinted hard at the empty bottle still in her hands, scratching at the loose edges of the label with her thumbnail. She didn’t look at Regina as she confessed, “This is a little weird for me.”

“What is, dear?”

“You being, I don’t know…” she searched for the right word. “Forthcoming? And the beach vacation was kind of a surprise.”

“It’s not a vacation,” Regina reminded her. “Not really. Distance buys us time. Time to rest, and time to figure out what to do next.”

“We have to go back,” Emma intoned, thinking of the people she’d left behind, the family who had only just remembered her, left without a word in Emma’s single-minded drive to get Henry out and as far away from danger as possible. Rumplestiltskin was insane. Regina was, too, probably, but she loved Henry, maybe more than her own life. As long as she was operating from the same primal urge to protect him as Emma, the sheriff could consider them on the same team.

“We will go back,” Regina assured her, “but not until we know what cards we have and how we can play them.”

Emma’s stomach did an incomprehensible little flip when she realized Regina was talking about the three of them as a unit. “We? A week ago you wanted me dead.”

“A week ago I still thought I could salvage the life I had built.” Regina surprised herself with how much she was willing to reveal once she started talking. Alcohol and exhaustion had loosened her more than she’d anticipated. “I gave up everything I had loved to create it. And I didn’t know what I would lose when it ended. I had to at least try to protect it. But it doesn’t matter now. That world is gone. There’s nothing left to protect.”

“Except him,” Emma added, looking toward the thin boy digging at the water’s edge.

“Except him,” Regina agreed. “And I simply don’t see a way to do that anymore that doesn’t involve you.”

Emma looked at her. “You’re serious?”

“What you did—well, I already know you’re all in.” She thought of Emma bent over Henry’s lifeless body and felt hot tears spring to her eyes. She hoped against hope that her sunglasses obscured them and swallowed hard before continuing. “But he is still my son, so you’re all in with me. Together. Like it or not.”

“So we may as well like it,” Emma suggested with a shrug and a tentative smile

Regina turned her face up to the afternoon sun. She almost looked as though she were praying, but she answered, “We can certainly try, Miss Swan.”

Forbidden Fruit

light-cream-cheese — Mon, 14 May 2012 01:17:00 -0500

Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me. The only profit I earn from this piece is your feedback, dear reader.

Rating: M for sexytimes

A/N: One-shot. AU for established Swan Queen. If Emma and Regina had been together for a while in secret, how might the kitchen scene in An Apple Red As Blood have gone?

**********

The doorbell rang just as Regina finished re-buttoning the cuffs of her blouse. She tried to make herself presentable as she made her way to answering it. “Sheriff Swan. You’re early.”

Shit, thought Emma. The mayor always managed to look alluring, but the soft domesticity of the blue print apron overlaying Regina’s typical power attire pushed a button Emma hadn’t even known she had. This was going to be more challenging than she’d anticipated. “I thought we should talk.”

Regina smirked and tilted her head. “Talk,” she repeated. It wasn’t quite a question. Emma stared at the toe of her boot as it scuffed at the front walk and remained silent. After months of carrying on in secret, she was clearly still worried that anyone might see them relating as anything but adversaries. Regina sighed as she stepped back, opening the door wider. “Then I suppose you’d better come in.”

The mayor strode confidently through her home toward the kitchen, a wave of her hand indicating that Emma should follow her. Emma rolled her eyes, remembering that this was why she did her best not to come here, or to Regina’s office. She tried to keep their meetings confined to more neutral territory. Regina Mills was a woman who always seemed to have the upper hand. She didn’t need the advantage of being on her own turf.

Emma tried her best not to stare at the woman’s other… advantages as she took off her apron, folded it neatly and placed it on the counter. Regina turned and waited a moment, eyeing the sheriff expectantly, before prompting, “You wanted to talk, Ms. Swan?”

“Yes,” Emma hesitated. She squirmed uncomfortably, pulling at the zipper on her favorite red jacket. “It’s warm in here.”

Regina indicated the oven with a nod of her head. “Baking will raise the temperature,” she said as she moved to get Emma a glass of ice water.

With Regina’s back to her, Emma was able to screw up just enough courage to say what she had come to say. “I think that this… whatever is between us needs to end,” she blurted.

Regina turned sharply, frowning. Whatever this conversation was, it wasn’t at all what she’d been expecting. “End?”

“Yes. This, what we’re doing, is a problem. It’s no good, Regina. The sneaking around, the lying, to Henry, to-” she stopped short, not wanting to mention Mary Margaret and risk derailing the whole conversation. Any talk of her roommate only ever seemed to be a shortcut to a full-blown fight.

Regina stepped forward, closer than was really necessary to hand Emma her glass of water. “So your solution to this… ‘problem’ is that it simply end?”

Emma took a drink and avoided Regina’s eyes. “I think it should,” she mumbled to the ice cubes floating in her glass. She held it in front of her with both hands, vainly trying to create space between them.

“And how, precisely, would that work? Surely you don’t think you can simply leave?” Regina demanded. Emma winced, which was all the answer the mayor needed to understand that that was exactly what Emma had thought. “Oh no, Ms. Swan. You’re in Henry’s life now. That’s what youwanted. And that doesn’t just end. Your leaving now would hurt-” Frustrated, Regina tried to fight the lump of anger that was rising in her throat. She hated the way it strangled her, pushed at the ends of her words, betrayed her feelings. “Him,” she finished. “It would hurt him deeply, and that is absolutely not going to happen. So you’ll still be in his life. Which means that you and I will be in each other’s lives. I suppose we’ll have to find a way to be cordial.”

Emma was still uncomfortably warm and the mayor was standing much too close for her to really think clearly, but at least now she could meet Regina’s gaze. She found the mayor easier to look in the eye once Regina was a little unraveled. It was the way Emma felt most of the time, so it made her feel like they were on equal footing. “Cordial,” Emma repeated slowly. “I’m not sure I can do that.”

“Oh no?” Regina asked, eyes wide with mock innocence. “And why not?” She took the glass from Emma’s hand and took a long sip, never breaking eye contact with the blonde, even as she set the glass down firmly on the counter. She watched with a feeling somewhere between satisfaction and astonishment as the sheriff’s eyes visibly darkened.

Emma felt a fluttery panic in her belly. This wasn’t why she’d come. Well, ostensibly it was why she’d come, but she had hoped that she’d be able to exert some self control, to resist the pull Regina had on her, just once. “I can’t be… in your life and…” Emma swallowed audibly and tried again. “And not…” She gave up on trying to say what she meant and simply did it, kissing Regina hungrily. The mayor responded almost immediately and with matched enthusiasm. Regina always smelled faintly of apples, but today she’d been eating them. Emma could taste them on Regina’s tongue.

Regina pushed at Emma’s leather jacket. Both women wrestled with it for a moment until it fell to floor. Suddenly the sheriff’s hands seemed to be everywhere at once, tangling in the mayor’s hair, snatching at the prim white shirt, sliding over her ass. When she fumbled with the buckle on Regina’s fashionable belt, the dark-haired woman swatted her hands away and did the thing herself, letting perfectly tailored trousers form a dark puddle at her feet. Emma leaned in to kiss her again, but Regina managed to pull back, smoothly levering herself up to sit on the surface of the island. The cool marble against the exposed skin of her thighs was a pleasant counterpoint to the warm air of the kitchen.

“So I take it you don’t truly want to stop?”

Emma looked at the woman sitting before her, all red lace panties and mussed hair and half-unbuttoned dress shirt. How could she possibly stop this? She shook her head ruefully.

“Even though you think we should?”

The blonde shrugged and answered in a low voice. “You’re forbidden fruit, I guess.” She stepped closer, between Regina’s knees and let her fingertips skim up the mayor’s thighs. A grin tugged at one corner of her mouth. “Irresistible,” she added.

Regina smiled then, raising one eyebrow. “Indeed.” She leaned forward and kissed Emma again, nibbling insistently at her bottom lip before releasing Emma’s mouth, which then traced a familiar path down one side of her throat. She threw her head back and closed her eyes, bracing herself against the countertop as Emma sucked at her collarbone and licked at the hollow of her throat. When the wet heat of the tongue left her for more than a moment, she let out a brief noise of protest that quickly turned into a hiss as her head snapped up, eyes wide.

The sheriff had pulled away to shuck her black t-shirt, but she’d also retrieved a half-melted ice cube from the glass of water that sat sweating on the counter and was holding it between her teeth, dragging it down the other woman’s sternum. At the sound of Regina’s reaction, Emma grinned up at the mayor wickedly for a moment before continuing. Emma’s hands were busy clearing a path down the center of the woman’s smooth torso, undoing the front clasp of the white lace bra and nimbly working the last few buttons of her shirt.

Regina sighed and let her eyes drift closed again as she relaxed into the new sensation. The ice dragged swirling lines across her body, around her brown nipples. It melted into rivulets that slid around the swell of her breasts and down the lines of her ribs. She wondered briefly at the way people always muttered the word “cold” about her like it was a bad thing, when it was so clearly a good, good thing.

Somewhere past Regina’s navel, the ice disappeared into Emma’s mouth as she hooked her fingers around the red lace at Regina’s hips and tugged insistently. Regina raised her hips just enough for Emma to slide the panties to the floor as she knelt between Regina’s legs. One hand curved around Regina’s thigh and the other parted dark curls. Emma’s tongue dipped between folds slick with anticipation, the residual chill on her tongue sending a shiver up the other woman’s spine before it dissipated completely into wet heat.

Emma’s eyes roamed over Regina’s body as her tongue worked a steady rhythm. The mayor’s face contorted as she moaned and the muscles of her abdomen rippled as her hips tilted upward. Emma brought her fingers up to Regina’s center and worked them in syncopated time with the movements of her tongue. Regina wound one hand in Emma’s hair and opened her eyes again, meeting Emma’s green gaze. The unqualified want she saw there pushed her over the edge.

When her body finally stilled, Regina slid off the counter onto the floor next to the blonde. She kissed Emma hard, shamelessly tasting herself. Emma smirked proudly and tried to suppress a laugh by kissing Regina back. A loud chirp from across the kitchen startled her, and she bit down on the mayor’s lip. Not hard enough to draw blood, but enough to elicit a snarl. “S-sorry,” Emma said breathlessly, straining to see what was happening in the oven.

Regina took Emma firmly by the chin and turned her face back. She leaned forward, her breath hot in Emma’s ear, making the hairs on the back of the sheriff’s neck stand up as she rasped, “Let it burn.”

Orgasm always energized Regina more than it relaxed her, and this day was no different. She clambered onto Emma’s lap, straddling her, and kissed her playfully, tongue dancing, giving Emma more and then pulling back just enough. Her hands snaked downward, and when she slipped her fingers under the waistband of the sheriff’s skirt only to find the waistband of her tights, the mayor pulled a face. “This seems… unbalanced,” she said, trying for disapproval but not quite getting there.

Even with the two of them working together, getting Emma out of the rest of her clothes proved a challenge. “You really did just come to talk, didn’t you?” Regina teased.

“I should have known better,” Emma replied, leaning for another kiss. Finally naked, Emma let Regina lay her back on the parquet. Those dark eyes bored into her as Regina hung above her on all fours. “Kiss me,” Emma said. Regina didn’t need to be asked twice, but when she began to move lower, Emma shook her head and cupped a hand around the nape of Regina’s neck to draw her back. “Kiss me,” she said again, and this time Regina understood.

Her hand between Emma’s legs, Regina marveled at how wet she was after barely being touched. Emma always seemed to truly enjoy giving sexual pleasure nearly as much as receiving it. Before Emma, Regina hadn’t even thought that was possible. Regina watched Emma’s face between kisses, listened for the changes in her breathing until she settled on just the right combination of stroking fingers and swirling thumb that brought a series of small moans from the back of Emma’s throat. Regina kept pace and was quickly rewarded when Emma’s soft noises turned into a loud cry as she shuddered and clung to Regina’s shoulders.

Regina slid off of Emma and laid on the floor next to her, pressing small kisses to her shoulder while her breathing steadied and slowed. After a long few moments, Emma turned and found Regina watching her expectantly. “Good?” Regina asked. The mayor looked so much like a young girl that Emma nearly laughed aloud. Instead, she kissed her firmly and assured her, “Good.”

Regina smiled a Cheshire smile at that, sat up, and rolled to her feet with surprising grace for woman who spent most of her time seated behind a desk. She plucked her shirt off of the counter and slid into it as she padded over to the oven. “I’ve been thinking,” she said over her shoulder.

Emma rolled her eyes. “Of course you have.” She rose from the floor much more slowly than Regina had and began gathering her clothes.

“About your problem,” Regina clarified.

“My problem?” Emma was still not quite sure what they were talking about.

Regina pulled a cookie sheet out of the oven and set it on the counter. Emma tried to pick at the center of the pastry, where the black hadn’t quite reached, but Regina swatted her hand away. “You don’t like having a dirty little secret.”

“Oh.” Emma deflated a bit. They were back to that. Emma was surprised at just how much it smarted to hear Regina refer to herself that way.

“There is an option we haven’t explored yet.” Regina picked up the ruined pastry and slid it into the garbage, taking the moment her back was turned to compose herself before saying her idea out loud, but Emma beat her to it.

“You want to tell people?”

Regina whirled, already on the defensive. “I know you don’t want to. You’re always worried someone will see us. But you said you don’t want to hide and—”

Emma stopped her with a hand on her wrist. “Regina. I don’t want people to know things about us that we’re not ready to tell them. But it’s been months and clearly neither of us wants to stop. So maybe we are ready.”

Regina did her best to keep her voice measured. “You aren’t worried what people might think? Mary Margaret?”

Emma shrugged. “Of course I am. But I care more about what you think.”

Regina’s face softened again, almost back into a smile. “At last, something we can agree on.”

Emma chewed at her bottom lip. “So, how would we do that? Like, with Henry?”

Regina glanced at the clock over the stove. “Well,” she answered slowly, “he needs to be picked up from school. You could do that and then, perhaps, stay for dinner?”

Emma was already grinning at the prospect of being Henry’s ride home and she nodded once, firmly, as if striking a bargain. “Okay. We’ll start with dinner. And then just… figure it out as we go.”