For OQ Happy Ending week, Day 3 (Wednesday). Days 1 and 2 contain adult content and are thus available only on my Ao3 page.

"You're such an idiot," she huffs as she cleans the wound on his back with herbal tonics and antiseptic oils and wishes desperately for a some peroxide and Neosporin, and her goddamn magic.

His voice is tense and pained beneath the veneer of joviality as he tells her, "I do believe that's why you love me."

An absolute, complete, stupid, reckless idiot.

"It's not as though we need the riches," she mutters, "You could have at least waited until this damnable hex wears off." He breathes in and out heavily, and she tries to hold onto her anger despite how grateful she is to see proof that he's alive. She still remembers how still the other Robin had been, lifeless and limp without a breath in his body, as she'd clutched him to her in the office that had once been hers.

He has no right to go and die on her again, not this Robin, not the one that's made for her, she won't allow it.

"We don't know when that might be, milady," he points out, and she rolls her eyes and presses perhaps a little harder than is necessary on the next swipe of the cloth around the raw edges of where so much skin has been scraped off his lovely back.

"That may be," she admits through gritted teeth, "But at the very least you could have skipped shimmying from a third story window and grating your back on castle walls and rooftops the whole way down."

"Well, had I gone any lower—ah!"—he hisses as she begins to spread a salve over the angry, pulpy wound and his voice is strained and tight—"I'd have likely been eaten by a dragon."

"And that's another thing!" she gripes at him, though she gentles the touch of her hand when she notices the sweat beading along his brow. "Why a dragon? Of all the creatures you could steal from, why the one with wings and talons and fire?"

"Because they have the best hordes," he shrugs—the move pains him, and she's glad of it, and then feels guilty that she takes any amount of joy in his misery. But he's just such an idiot! "And you'll notice I've managed to avoid talon, and wing, and fire despite my back being ripped to tatters. I did that one all on my own."

"Idiot," she mutters darkly. Her hands are shaking, she realizes. How long have they been doing that?

"Yes, so you've said," Robin mutters, and he has the audacity to sound annoyed. He has no right to be annoyed, not with her, not after he put himself at risk at the worst possible time and for no actually discernable good reason.

"You could catch fever and die, Robin, and I wouldn't be able to heal you," she gripes at him. "This is not the time to be reckless."

"I made a calculated—"

"I watched you die once, and I have no desire for a repeat performance!"

It's the last thing she says before she tosses the cloth she'd been using to clean his wounds aside and stalks off, slamming the chamber doors behind her with an impressive bang and leaving him spread across their bed, alone, to stew on what he's done.

.::.

Robin wakes hours later, in the dark, still on his belly (no surprise there) with an ache in his neck from the way his face has been smushed against the pillow. He grunts and lifts it to turn to his other side, and the wounds on his back make themselves known, painfully.

He hisses at the rippling fire across his back, but manages to turn his head and finds Regina in bed beside him.

He hadn't expected her to be there, honestly. With how angry she'd been earlier, he'd imagined she'd spend the night somewhere else, holed up in one of the castle's many other rooms. They've fought before, sometimes bitterly, and he recalls a night where she'd attempted to kick him out of their quarters, refusing to hear a word of sense, but he'd refused to go. He'd insisted he would stay right where he was, in their chambers, until she'd bloody listen to what he was trying to say to her.

So she'd left him there, and spent the next three nights in the east wing study. He'd seen neither hide nor hair of her until she'd strolled into the great hall for breakfast one morning, and taken the meal with him in silence but for two words: "Not yet."

It had taken until after dinner for her to properly speak with him, but they'd finally made their amends.

So it's a surprise to see her lying there beside him, in her bedclothes, her dark eyes open and watching him. It does not surprise him that she doesn't speak. She simply stares at him, a look in her eyes that reminds him far too much of the Regina they'd left behind in Storybrooke. Like she looks at him and sees someone else. The other Robin Hood.

She doesn't look at him this way often, and usually when she does it galls him. But today, he thinks perhaps he understands. Her last words to him echo in his head, and he grits his teeth against the effort of sliding his hand across the covers toward hers.

She meets him halfway—more than, probably, her fingers sliding swiftly across the expanse of soft cotton the moment his begin to move. They're warm against his own as they curl and weave together, and then he tells her, "I'm sorry."

She frowns, and sighs, rubs her thumb across his and answers softly, "I love you."

He can see how much, can see how worried she is for him, how frightened. It makes him feel a bit guilty for his little errand to be honest—even if the diamond ring he'd pilfered for a very specific purpose is even now burning a hole in his satchel.

He won't tell her where he got it, he thinks. It wouldn't do to start their marriage off with a lie, but he thinks she'd probably not be too terribly fond of it if she knew he nearly died in the heist that procured it.

So he'll keep that little secret to himself and hope she never asks, and tonight he'll simply tell her, "And I, you. There's nothing in this realm or any other that I love as dearly as I do you, and I've no intention of being parted from you."

He intends it to reassure her, but she only frowns more deeply, her gaze dropping into the shadowed chasm between their bodies. "I've found life—or more accurately death—doesn't care all that much about our intentions."

He doesn't know what to say to that. She's known so much death and pain—they both have—that he knows no platitudes will ring sincere.

So he offers the only thing that might bring her comfort, and swears to her, "I'll be more careful. I promise."

She softens, just a bit, telling him, "That's all I ask." Then she leans in and presses a kiss gently to his lips, sealing his promise and settling both their weary hearts. When she pulls back, it's to disentangle their fingers and stroke hers gently over his bearded jaw, her nails scratching in a way he always enjoys. His eyes drop shut for a moment as she asks, "How's your back?"

"Painful," he admits with a grimace, trying very hard to lie very still, lest he cause himself even more discomfort.

Regina sighs, her breath washing against his jaw, his neck.

"It should be redressed," she murmurs. "I'll make more salve."

The bed shifts as she makes her way out of it, and Robin cracks his eyes back open to watch her. The moonlight streaming in makes her look ethereal, in a gauzy nightgown the color of smoke, the blue light reflecting off her skin to make it glow, her hair somehow even darker against the luminescence of her skin. In the moonlight, it looks inky and soft, plaited over one shoulder in a way his fingers itch to unravel.

She's so lovely. Stunning, in every way, and all his.

He's a lucky bastard, he knows that. So lucky that a part of her still fits so finely with a part of him. So lucky that she didn't skin him alive this afternoon when he came loping home bloodied and exhausted. So lucky she's here with him now, mixing poultices and potions to see him well.

He's found a home here with her, a possibility he'd thought lost to him after Marian's untimely demise. Robin thinks again of that ring in his satchel and wonders if she'll say yes.

She'd told him once that she had wasted too much time in her life on fear and regret and revenge, and she didn't want to waste a single minute more. She wanted to take a chance on them and see where it might lead.

So far, it's led them quite well.

So he'll ask her—soon. Once he's back in fighting shape, and she's gotten her magic back, and their world has been set to rights. He'll ask for her hand and give his in return, and spend the rest of his days in this bed, fighting and fucking and laughing and loving, his Queen by his side.

For tonight, though, he'll content himself with the gentle, aching touches of her fingers as they do their best to heal him.