I wrote this for a friend. Really, I was only supposed to help kick-start her own imagination for her own fic but I kind of got a little carried away.
*shrugs*
As always, I write when I'm half-coherent so I apologize to those of you who are going to read this before I properly edit it. "Why not just wait to post it tomorrow after you've done that?" Obviously because that would be too logical.
"What are you doing here?"
She's bent at the knees, the backs of her thighs resting on the backs of her calves, the olive-toned muscle there flexing as she reaches, in uncoordinated, sluggish movements, for the broken pieces of glass strewn across wood now stained with a small puddle of amber liquid.
Emma reaches for her wrist, stops her. "You're going to cut yourself," she murmurs.
Regina snorts, loudly, red-rimmed, hazy brown eyes flitting over her features before she stands, hand flying out to press a palm into the wall as she sways a bit. Emma's hand shoots to hover at her lower back, where the zipper of her dress kisses cerulean fabric. She feels the coolness of the metal, the heat of Regina's skin beneath.
"Wouldn't be the first time," she hears Regina mutter darkly. It stuns Emma into silence, eyes just blinking, hand still outstretched where Regina's back had been.
She hears clanging seconds later and moves to see the brunette rummaging in her cabinets, on her tiptoes - she's barefoot - the muscles in her arm straining and looking so unfairly elegant under the dim lighting of the kitchen.
When a hand comes back full with a bottle of whiskey, Emma moves quickly, taking it from shaking fingers and setting it on the counter next to the sink. She shifts so her body is in between Regina and the alcohol. Regina clumsily - and when has this woman ever been so clumsy? reaches for it anyway. Always pushing, even like this.
"Regina," Emma says, bowing her head a little to catch her eyes. Her hand hovers over Regina's right hip. "How much have you had to drink?" She whispers softly, feeling as if speaking too loudly would hurt the other woman's head.
She gets a scathing glare in return, eyes a molten caramel. "I don't need you to take care of me, Miss Swan. I know my limits."
"You sure?" Emma arches a brow.
The glare turns murderous. Emma thinks she might have felt a frisson of fear had it not been for the evidence of shed tears, lots and lots of them, still lingering on thick, dark lashes. Had it not been for the ones forming now. Ones she's sure Regina is trying very hard not to let fall.
She can see it in the fist at her side, the flexing of her jaw, the unwavering glower.
The brunette turns then. Walks out of the kitchen, bare feet padding gently. Emma can do nothing but follow her. She stops when Regina opens the front door, eyes piercing, piercing, piercing.
But raw. Here, tonight, Regina's walls are not so unyielding. Here, tonight, they're flimsy, groaning. A breath away from toppling and crumbling, mere rubble at her bare feet.
"If you would, Miss Swan."
Emma takes a step back, shaking her head.
"No."
Regina growls, hand tightening on the door frame. "I distinctly remember a scene just like this where you wouldn't leave me alone. I don't care for a repeat performance. Please," she grinds out, "leave."
"And I distinctly remember a scene where you told me I've never had your back. You don't need to be alone right now. I'm not leaving."
There's another one of those snorts. "Invading my privacy and refusing to leave me alone after I've asked? Twice? Someone's been hanging off the pirate's arm for far too long."
Emma's cheek twitches, red heat lashing at the back of her neck but she doesn't comment. She just holds her ground.
Regina's smile, that one she uses when she's delivering her caustic, meant-to-sting - or piss off whoever was on the receiving end - comments, falls off her face, in its place that baleful glare again. It sustains for a few more seconds before she inhales deeply and shuts the door, walking toward the kitchen before coming back with the alcohol in hand. Emma moves to speak but
Regina holds up a hand, taking an alarmingly large swig of the whiskey straight from the bottle.
"If you won't leave, fine. But I'm drinking this entire damned bottle of whiskey, Emma, and you're not going to stop me, alright?"
Emma grinds her back teeth, nostrils flaring. But she concedes. Maybe after a few more swallows Regina will be too drunk to hold the bottle and Emma can sneak it away from her. She nods.
"Fine."
They don't talk. They don't look at each other. Emma sits on the floor in front of the fire while Regina stays on the couch, legs tucked up underneath her.
Emma tries several times to think up something to say to her, something that might help her, make her smile. She tries to think of menial small talk, knowing Regina needs a distraction more than anything right now.
But all she can think of is I'm sorry. All she can feel on her tongue is those two words. So meaningless in such a large house. So insignificant next to a woman very much the opposite.
She can't say she's sorry because she knows it's the last thing Regina wants to hear. Everyone's sorry. That's all anyone is these days.
Sorry that someone has died. Her true love. Her soulmate.
A father. A friend.
And it's her fault. She was selfish before his death and she's being selfish now, after it.
Shouldering full blame for a life taken, a soul. This is the second person who's been killed because of you, something slithering, like green silk, whispers in her mind.
But it wasn't just any life, was it? No. This was supposed to be Regina's happiness. Her happy ending. And Emma knows, she knows how many times it's been ripped away from this woman. The mother of her child. Someone she used to hate but now doesn't, can't.
Someone who doesn't deserve half of what life has thrown at her. Someone who cast a curse on hundreds of innocent people but also had to watch her mother, her own flesh and blood, crush the heart of her first love right in front of her. Someone who has taken many lives of her own but has also been beaten and tortured, lied to, used countless times. Someone who's never known free will, someone who, much like herself, has been strung up like some animative doll, held together by strings - wrapped around the sinewy fingers of an omnipresent being. Something much larger than flesh and bone. Fate.
Emma hated that word. She fucking loathed it.
"Emma."
She jerks her head up at the sound, uttered softly, so softly.
"I can hear you thinking from up here."
Emma blinks, rubs at her forehead. "Sorry."
The bottle of whiskey is half full, resting in Regina's lap.
"Don't be. I was running a bet with myself on how long it would take you to break this stifling, awkward silence." She takes a small sip from the bottle. "I have to say I'm impressed. Twenty minutes."
Emma laughs, a breathy little sound. Her face feels flushed from the warmth of the fire.
"To be honest, I almost broke a few times in the first minute or so."
Regina hums and draws a lazy finger around the lip of the bottle. "So what were you thinking about?" Her voice is scratchy from the alcohol, a few octaves lower than it usually is and Emma's a little disoriented from it.
"Oh," she scratches at her cheek, "I was just…"
"You were trying to figure out a way to say you're sorry without actually saying you're sorry. You were trying not to mention him, say his name, bring him up in any way shape or form."
Dark eyes latch onto hers and it burns Emma, makes her feel like hunching in on herself, makes her feel so, so small.
"I'm sorry," Emma breathes, a knee jerk reaction. The entirely wrong reaction.
Regina trembles, her knuckles straining white with her hold on the bottle.
"About what exactly?" Regina whispers cuttingly, eyes a storm, ever challenging.
Emma feels thorns in her belly, tries to swallow but it sticks in her throat. She clenches and unclenches her palm.
"I should go." She gets up on her feet, knees like jello, feeling so wrong all of a sudden being inside of Regina's home. She wonders if Robin had stayed the night here. Wonders exactly how many times he had been in this house. With her. With Henry as well.
She wonders if he'd sat in this exact spot, right by the fire.
She feels like she's going to be sick. She brings tremulous fingers up to her lips and is just passing the couch when a warm hand shoots out and wraps around the wrist at her side. It's not gentle.
"Say it."
Emma's eyes are on the foyer, mind thinking up how many steps it would take her to get to the door.
The hand at her wrist tightens. Her eyes tip down.
"Say it," Regina says again, imperious and hoarse and a little broken.
Dark eyes, pupils blown out, hold her own, render her motionless. Her breath catches and she feels her hand start to throb from the lack of blood circulation.
"What do you want me to say, Regina?" She's careful with the question, tentative.
"Whatever it is that brought you to my doorstep to begin with. What everyone has been saying to me. What everyone feels."
The words are dripping with rancor, almost a hiss.
Emma sucks in a sharp breath, flexes her hand. Regina notices the motion and jolts a little, her fingers falling away as if burned.
"I'm not my parents. I'm not anyone else in this town."
Regina's eyes find hers again, the rage in them tempered briefly. Now they're just murky, swirling with so many emotions and so quickly that Emma can't parse them all.
"No you're not," Regina echoes.
"I'm sorry," Emma finally breaks, "I am so, so sorry about what happened to Robin." The sharp inhale skewers Emma, trips up her heart a bit. Regina breaks the eye contact between them, dips her head. "He was a good man, Regina, and I'm so sorry he was taken like this."
Emma's chin wobbles as she says it, eyes tracing the soft slopes of Regina's shoulders as they quake, her fingers loosening their hold around the bottle of whiskey.
Emma moves around the couch, kneeling and taking it from her, setting it on the table. She cradles Regina's hands in her own and smooths her thumbs over the tops of her knuckles, wishing with everything inside of her that she could reach inside of this woman and take out all of her pain, swallow it up and make it her own to bear.
"Regina, I'm - "
"Then help me."
Emma's brow furrows. "What?"
Wet, dark eyes tip up to meet her own. "Help me," she rasps again, her fingers lacing through Emma's and tugging a bit. Emma looks between the both of their hands and feels her body complying with the movement, a second later on the couch next to Regina, their thighs - Regina's bare from her dress and Emma's covered by her jeans - pressed together.
Emma sputters when Regina's fingers then untangle from her own and smooth palms flatten and slide up her forearms. "Regina, what - "
There are tears flowing freely and steadily down olive-toned cheeks, wet eyelashes fluttering as fingers squeeze at the toned flesh of Emma's biceps. "You'd do anything to help me get rid of my pain wouldn't you, Em-ma?"
Emma spasms beneath her hands, now gliding over the tops of her shoulders, catching the fabric of her cotton tee and sliding it up a bit. Her eyes flutter closed, mouth parting ever so slightly. She exhales shakily.
"You feel responsible, I know you do. It's in your nature. The savior. Always having to save everyone. Always with the self-inflicted flagellation." Fingers brush over her clavicles, dip in the v of her shirt. "You're carrying so much guilt, guilt that isn't yours to have." Those fingers quest higher, sift through her hair, up, up until they find the elastic band of her ponytail and undo it. Emma can't help the soft moan that bubbles up and slips past her lips. "But for tonight I think I'll let you take it. Tonight, I'm asking you to." The fingers fall away then, instantly and without warning. Emma sways forward. "Will you?"
And then her eyes snap open, her brain finally having cognized what Regina is saying.
She leans away, a jerky action, scooting back a bit on the couch. "I'm not - I'm not going to take advantage of y - jesus, you've had how much to drink tonight?"
Regina bridges the distance between them, nails raking a path up her thighs, leaving a lighter blue trail of denim in their wake. Emma's back bows.
"It's not taking advantage when I'm asking for it," Regina says with an eye roll. "And I've told you, I know my limits. I'm coherent. I know what I'm asking of you."
Emma balks. She's not - how could she ask this of her?
"You're asking me to sleep with you," Emma says, trying to keep the incredulity out of her voice.
She fails a little bit.
Regina, though, doesn't falter. Goosebumps travel up Emma's lower back as those nails turn into the pads of fingers, massaging now, inching higher with every slow circle. Her breath becomes more shallow, her heart thumping away far too quickly in her chest.
"Yes," Regina purrs.
Emma, for her part, clutches the back of the couch, her own nails digging into the cushion. She swallows roughly before attempting words. Two fingers hook in her belt loops.
"And you...you think this will help with your, with your - " there's a sharp tug and Emma's body vaults forward, her hands landing on Regina's hips for any semblance of balance. Emma gasps. Loudly. "Pain," she finishes on a choked exhale.
Fingers slide over her hips, up under her shirt, and guide her, slipping down and curving over the slope of her backside - Emma lets out a soft 'ah' at this - before wrapping around the back of her thigh and lifting it so that she is now effectively straddling the older woman. When her hand travels back up its previous path she gives an impromptu squeeze and Emma's own hands shoot to the back of the couch on either side of the brunette's head. Her head falls forward and she bites back a moan.
She hears a throaty chuckle. "I confess that I've been wanting to do that for quite some time."
Emma is...well, Emma's freaked the fuck out, her body moving on autopilot now, all of her sensations in overdrive. But there's something just in the back of all the chaos. Something entirely calm, drifting idly. It feels...familiar. It feels...satisfied. Like a yearning finally sated.
In the midst of Regina's eager and slightly sloppy fingers, she finds herself utterly confused.
Enough so that it has her pulling away abruptly.
"Wa - woah. Just." She closes her eyes and swallows, sitting back on Regina's thighs and running her hands through her hair. "This is...god, this is so fucked up."
Thumbs make circles along the tops of her own thighs. "Well, we aren't each other's true love...we're barely even anything, so it doesn't really matter how unhealthy it is, does it?"
Emma kind of jolts in her lap, blinking, blinking. Regina's eyes are dull, gazing back at her with this palpable pain. Something inside of Emma aches to alleviate it, her body almost pulsating with the need.
She twists off Regina instead.
"Regina, you may not remember this tomorrow but I will," Emma starts, pacing. "And I'm...no matter what we are to each other…" she stops short, dread tugging at her insides, "there are some lines that shouldn't be crossed."
She turns and catches Regina's eyes; her mouth parts, like she wants to respond.
It's in this moment that Emma decides to be far too honest.
"It would give light to some things that neither one of us can probably handle. Definitely not now." She finishes in a breath, taking a step toward Regina, a compulsion she can't abate.
"Come on, I'll help you upstairs."
She holds out her hand.
Regina looks at it for a long moment before she takes it, fingers constricting as Emma pulls her up.
She slings Regina's arm around her shoulders and only hesitates for a second before wrapping her other arm around her waist.
They almost topple forward that first step of the stairs but Regina's hand catches the railing before they do. Emma's arm tightens around her waist. Regina's fingers tangle up in some of the loose curls of her hair.
They're just at the top of the stairs now. "You deserve better than Hook," Regina murmurs softly, almost too softly - Emma almost doesn't hear it.
She pretends she didn't.
She helps Regina into bed, pulls back the covers - silk, blue. There's an almost overwhelming waft of vanilla and something...clean. Regina just smells clean.
It reminds Emma of one of the very few good homes she'd been in. One in particular where every night in that house she'd take a bath and use the body soap as her bubbles. She'd cup some of the water in her hand and let it glide down her body like mini waterfalls. In those twenty minutes, those solitary, allotted minutes, she felt safe. Free from all of the ghosts dripping tar on her skin. Clean.
"Thank you," Regina whispers as Emma turns to leave. Fingers reach up to trail over the top of her jeans, a belt loop.
"For what?" Emma asks, voice just as low.
Dark eyes tip up, emotion - so much emotion. Emma feels it slam into her gut. Right where Regina's fingers are.
"For staying." The fingers fall away and Regina rolls over, giving her back.
Emma doesn't move for a few seconds, takes in a quiet breath, turns and walks out of her room.
Closes the door gently behind her.
When she's inside the bug in Regina's driveway she realizes what that something was. That yearning.
"Fuck."
Her forehead thunks against the wheel.