Fantasies and Magic, Unicorns and Rainbows
As a child, Emma Swan had always dreamt about meeting her mother. As an adult, she'd always wanted to find that special someone to share her life with. She never expected find both those things in the same person. Oops. Eventual Swan Queen. Set at the end of S1.
Not quite an AU, but not really how I imagine this would have gone (I'm so in love with "In Love and Loathing" that nothing else will ever be *true* for me), but this came from my early shipping of Emma and MM, combined with my own perpetual state of broken heartedness (woe is me) and my need to practise writing smut.
Lots of thanks to my wonderfully talented beta, bardaholic (on tumblr and ffn) - any mistakes are where I ignored her advice.
-x-
Mary Margaret Blanchard is Emma Swan's mother.
Mary Margaret Blanchard is my mother.
Emma opened her eyes, surveyed the cold, hard reality of the empty playground in front of her and said it again, just to make it real; Mary Margaret Blanchard is my mother. Just to make sure. Just to get it into her fucking pea-sized, queer-assed brain. Mary Margaret wasn't a 'mother figure'. Mary Margaret wasn't a foster mother, or an adoptive mother. Mary Margaret was her absolutely-true biological mother. This wasn't the way she had imagined this fantasy going.
That was a good thing, though, right? Ever since she'd known that most other kids had a mother all of their very own, forever and ever, Emma Swan had dreamt of finding hers. As life had progressed, she'd met way too many foster kids with the same dream but who'd found that their mother was some drug-fucked kid whose body had been found behind a dumpster in Florida with a needle in her arm before she was even old enough to drink. Or a disappointed wannabe in Santa Monica still blaming her first kid for ruining her body and costing her a big break. (Or a lonely bail-bondsperson totally not cut out for reality and trying oh-so-hard to hide the pain?). So, finding out that your mother was a small-town elementary school teacher with a nice apartment and a really good story for why she gave you up and why she still loves you was a really, really good thing. It was every foster kid's dream...Right?
Except that Emma Swan's mother was Mary Margaret Blanchard. Emma's mother had a black pixy cut and a smile that appeared slowly, and often from a lowered head, but which was somehow sweet and welcoming. Emma's mother was someone she had felt an instant connection with when they met. Despite being unlike anyone else that Emma had ever been close to before, she had felt a desire to be in Mary Margaret's company. She'd stood in the kitchen in that apartment on a Friday night, washing the dishes, and because she'd been talking with Mary Margaret she'd never once thought that she would prefer to be somewhere else, or be doing something else. Because she was inclined to make the wrong choices where love was concerned, Emma had interpreted all this in a lesbian way. In short, Emma Swan had totally fantasised for the last three months about kissing – and so much more – with her mother.
Being with Mary Margaret had been easy in a way that Emma had never felt with anyone else. Somehow she'd always thought that the sort of people she could love were hard people. She'd looked at boys on motorbikes and men with scars. She'd thought that people like that might understand her own scars and fears. She'd never imagined how it might feel to sit across the table from someone who just wanted you to be happy, someone who told stories about birds she'd seen and cookies she'd baked and who reached out to touch you to reassure you that your tough-act wasn't necessary here. Mary Margaret Blanchard had scared (was that the right word?) Emma because she'd shown her how she could be happy without pain.
And now?
It was okay. Emma still knew how to be tough. It was her default attitude to kick whatever was broken, look at the people around her cynically and move on. She'd done it before and she could do it again.
That was why she was here; she couldn't go home. She was trapped. She'd probably end up living here on this park bench. Or dying here; it was fucking freezing! Does Maine ever have summer? It appeared to be fall again, with the trees in the park turning yellow, and a definite feeling of snow in the air. Emma pulled her knees up to her chest. The gathering mist was threatening to turn to rain.
She needed a drink.
This was not how this particular fantasy was supposed to go - neither the 'finding her mother' scenario, nor the 'finally falling in love' thing.
She had fucked up.
Forget about the curse. She hadn't run from that hospital room because it turned out to be true that Henry had been right the whole time, or because Snow White was screaming like a banshee - who knew Mary Margaret could do that?! - for the Evil Queen to get the fuck out of her grandson's hospital room. Rather, it was for the wholly selfish reason that Mary Margaret Blanchard was her mother. Right now that seemed like a much, much bigger issue than any curse.
Had she accidently made some fucked up fairytale-world deal? Had she, sometime in the past six months, wished upon some star to have Mary Margaret with her forever, and some smart-arse genie had thought this would make a great laugh?
Emma tried to summon that childhood excitement about meeting her parents. Any current crush on Mary Margaret was insignificant in the scheme of things, really. Finding her mother was a lifelong fantasy, and having a mother of her own was something that she would be able to keep forever. When she was upset, there'd be someone there who would answer the phone and hear her out. Her mother would remember her birthday and forgive her stupid mistakes and provide advice about how to move on.
Although, a girlfriend would fill all those roles as well - without the sense of obligation, and with sex.
Ha! Emma tried to laugh. When was the last time she'd had sex with anyone, male or female? She tried to laugh again. It had to be funny. Otherwise it was sad, and she was much better at being angry than sad and so she tended turn her sadness into rage: all I wanted was the sort of thing that other people seem to manage to find by their thirties – companionship, love, stability, (regular sex).
And there were the sickos who said things like, foster kids always reckon they're lesbians because they have some oedipal thing about wanting to fuck their long lost mommies...(can I watch?)
Emma put one hand around the edge of the bench beside her and squeezed tight. She clenched her jaw and closed her eyes and dug her finger nails into the soft damp wood. It was easier to be angry than it was to be heartbroken. It was difficult to be heartbroken over something that had never really existed.
Emma had been building up to making it real, practising in the mirror and everything. Every time she and Mary Margaret had sat down to a meal together or gone for a walk by the river, Emma had been thinking, this is it, this is the time that you say something to make it clear that as wonderful a friendship as this is, it could be something more.
Except that Mary Margaret wasn't gay (she had that ridiculous obsession with David Nolan for Christ's sake) and Emma wasn't sure if she was either - and what happens, anyway, if you come onto your housemate and she thinks it's vulgar and everything goes weird? Emma wasn't an expert on friends, let alone women as lovers. So she'd also told herself that it was okay if she chickened out because being friends with Mary Margaret was really special and it wasn't worth risking it for something that might not last. Really, it could be said that she'd been setting herself up for heartbreak so it shouldn't have been too much of a surprise that she was now alone on a park bench, potentially homeless, definitely single and supposedly having the best day of her life.
Right, so I don't have to worry about embarrassing myself in front of my friend by asking her out when I know she's interested in someone else. That's a good thing, right? If every foster kid's dream was to find a loving mother, their nightmare was to unintentionally sleep with a biological relative (true, it was usually a brother, but this was simply a variation of the old story). And I still get to keep her in my life.
And yet Emma still felt a heaviness that, experience told her, was heartbreak. Being with Mary Margaret had been unlike anything she had felt before.
Emma had slept with a woman before. Back then it had been about how fucking good her body had felt. That chick's body had been small, dark and muscled and her bare midriff had been something that Emma had not been able to avoid touching. She'd seen her across the room at a nightclub not long after she'd gotten out of jail. Emma had moved to lean on the wall beside her, and she – not-at-all-touchy-feely Emma Swan – had touched the girl's hands and upper arm. Then, the next night (same time, same place) Emma had slid her hands under the back of the girl's shirt, her little finger down inside the waistband of the brunette's pants. The girl had turned her head and they'd kissed. Emma's hands had involuntarily begun moving over the lithe body before her. One slid down into tight jeans, the other travelling up the woman's spine and into thick hair. For her part, the other girl had snuck one of her hands into Emma's bra. They'd been kicked out of the nightclub and had gone back to the girl's apartment.
There had once been some heavy petting with a girl at school, too, but that had been more about satisfying her need to fulfil her very Christian foster parents' expectations that foster kids were trouble.
Mary Margaret had been almost totally different. Like a pre-teen crush, Emma had initially felt no need at all to touch Mary Margaret. Being with her had been all about the way that she looked Emma in the eye and called her by name, believed that she was capable of being Henry's mother and asked for her opinion on anything from what colour the new kitchen curtains should be, to whether standardised testing was harmful to the overall purpose of education.
She closed her eyes again. She'd been stupid to ever believe that she could end up spending her life with someone as beautiful and together as Mary Margaret. She tried to steady her breathing. How had she let something that was only ever a fantasy take such a strong hold of her? She needed to get herself together and begin dealing with the very real issues of the real world.
Emma felt a presence beside her on the bench. She turned to see Regina – the Evil Queen – studying her closely.
"Regina."
"Miss Swan."
"What are you doing here?"
"If you'd failed to pick up on it, I'm their Queen and they want me dead. I'm the last person Mary Margaret wanted in that hospital room with Henry."
Maybe it was because of her own melancholy, but Emma sensed a sadness in Regina that she hadn't been aware of before. "But he's still your son, isn't he?" she asked.
Regina avoided the question and turned her head away so that Emma couldn't look her in the eye.
"You should be there though, Emma. He really is your son too. And Mary Margaret has found her daughter... don't you want to be with your mother?"
Don't you just know it, thought Emma."It's complicated," she said, holding her breath, waiting for Regina to say something loud and hurtful.
She didn't.
The two women sat side by side in the now increasing rain, with Emma's words hanging between them: It's complicated.
"Come on," said Emma, standing. "There'll be some sort of party to celebrate Henry being well, and the end of the curse and everything, and we should be there."
Regina didn't move.
"C'mon, Regina. It's going to get dark soon. And I don't know about you, but I could go for a drink – I've got a few memories of today that I need to block-out."
"You don't understand, do you? If the town is celebrating, then what they're celebrating is having defeated me."
"No, no, no," Emma sat back down. "They don't blame you, I'm sure."
"I wouldn't be so sure, Miss Swan. You heard Mary Margaret in the hospital room. My right to love and care for others in this town has been revoked. But you go along. You're their Saviour, remember."
"Oh, fuu-uck. Don't remind me," Was Emma's response.
"You're not pleased?"
"No shit." Emma stood up again. "I'm just going for trying to live a normal-adult sort of life here. I don't need magic and fantasy. I renounce any dream I ever had. I'm going for a place to sleep and food to eat, the occasional alcoholic beverage and a son who doesn't actively dislike me."
"Well that sounds like a dull life." Regina stood so that she was, as usual, imposing on Emma's personal space.
"Isn't that what you've been doing for the past 28 years?" asked Emma, resisting the urge to step back.
"So that's it, is it? We're going to bond over our desires to be normal, and possibly over our shitty mothers? I expected more from you, Miss Swan."
Emma hadn't realised that Regina expected anything from her at all, and so she was genuinely confused as to where this conversation was heading.
"You know," Regina began, stepping even closer, if such a thing was possible. "Before the curse broke I'd sometimes wonder whether you and Mary Margaret Blanchard were ever doing anything like this," and she ran one gloved finger down the side of Emma's face. "If you were, I didn't know whether it was the sort of thing I should step in and stop. It was you I was worried about, of course. Not her."
"Well, you needn't worry about me any longer." Emma finally took a large step backwards, reached down to grab her bag and began to walk away. Could this day get any worse?
Regina wasn't exactly the kind of woman she'd ever fantasised about having a deep and meaningful conversation with, but those boots and that neckline and the sense of sadness when she smiled; fuck, yeah, Regina was the kind of woman she could fantasise about fucking.
Was Regina interested in women? She certainly wasn't in love with David Nolan. So, perhaps. Emma stopped and turned to look behind her. Through the evening gloom and the now thinning mist she could see Regina still standing by the bench.
Regina was the fucking mayor. She was this uptight little power-suited thing that looked like she had a stick up her (somewhat sexy) ass. Of course there had been moments (who could forget the incident at the mine) when Emma had felt a buzz of something between them that might have been sexual – but, no, she'd been too focussed on Mary Margaret to think anything of the mayor. Regina hated her. It was black and white and simple. Regina did not have sexual thoughts about anyone, and Emma did not have sexual thoughts about Regina.
"Do you want to get a drink, Regina?" she called, and waited while the older woman approached her.
"I can't walk into a bar or I'll get killed. You can't go in or you'll never get back out."
Emma sighed. "And I don't exactly have a home I want to go back to right now."
"Then come to my place. I have cider in my kitchen. I know how to share." Regina sported an almost imperceptible smirk, drawing Emma's attention to that gorgeous little scar above her lip, and her suggestion sounded like a proposition - if you lived in a lovesick, lesbian-queer world, which Emma obviously currently did.
Was Regina aware of the effect she was having on her?
"Are you telling me, Madame Mayor, that you would like to take me home?"
"Why, Miss Swan, you are more astute than you generally let on."
-x-
"Aren't you meant to be mad? Your curse got broken. I broke your curse. That I'm sitting on your front lawn with you drunkenly talking about fucking, I dunno, it doesn't seem like how I might have imagined the end of a curse would be."
"Are you happy that you got your mother back? Do you feel like having your mother around has improved your life; 'returned your happy ending'? I'm not asking for love, Miss Swan. I'm looking for a way to make us both smile – make the end of the curse at least a little bit happy for the two of us."
Emma had a sense that she should turn her down; that any idea of Regina's was a scheme with an ulterior motive. If she decided to, Regina could quite possibly put some awful spin on the whole thing for the townsfolk and – or, was it the other way around? Did Regina think that the backlash against her, as the evil queen, might not be so severe if she had the (quite physical) love of the saviour? On the other hand: knee high boots, a pencil skirt, cleavage. Plus, it was getting late.
Emma paced the damp lawn in front of Regina. Once upon a time, Emma Swan had dreamt about small-town tea parties with her girlfriend, Mary Margaret. Now, sex was embroiled in politics.
"Just sex," she told the older woman, stopping her pacing to look her in the eye through the night-time gloom. "This doesn't mean anything. This is a crazy evening after a crazy day. Remember you tried to kill me earlier, and I'm the sheriff."
"I would say, 'whatever you want,' as long as you continue to keep your thumbs hooked in your jeans like that. But surely you know, Miss Swan, that there's no such thing as 'just sex'? There's always a story that leads up to it and a story that leads on from it. And where there's magic, there are a million other directions that those stories can spin off from too. You and I might fuck right here on my front lawn and toadstools will grow and little men will come out from inside them and plant gardens around us. Or a dragon may emerge."
Regina took another scull of her cider and Emma came back to sit beside her.
"Dragons, eh? Here in Storybrooke?"
"Well, magic isn't behaving in a way I recognise just now, so I don't really think I could be surprised by what might happen if the Queen and the Saviour...you know...had sex."
"And what sort of sex might be required to set off the magic, Madame Mayor? Would it be something like this?" Having decided that this was going to happen, Emma wasted no time in making the first move. She slid the hand that was on Regina's knee up her leg and under her skirt until she was able to get one finger under the mayor's panties.
She looked sideways at Regina for a reaction of some kind, but the older woman's expression remained stoic.
Emma let her finger continue its exploration. Regina wasn't shaven, which surprised Emma and sparked her own arousal. She used that one finger to seek out Regina's slit and clit. She'd thought of Regina as so neat and so organised and so in control. Not only was she turning out to have both a sexy side and a tortured side, but she had this wild, natural bush of wiry hairs. Emma curled more fingers into her as her index finger found what it was searching for. Despite the fact that Emma had her hand up Regina's skirt, the Mayor sat still, leaning back against the wall of the house, her eyes focussed on the patch of lawn straight ahead where the toadstools would spring from.
She sipped her cider straight from the bottle and said nothing.
Emma stroked and flicked and teased, feeling Regina get wetter and slicker against her fingers. She tried to mentally reign in her own growing desire as she waited for some sort of reaction from Regina. They continued to drink their cider while avoiding each other's gazes. This silent, stoic act was hella-sexy, but Emma was in need of something more. Like maybe a reciprocating hand.
"We're missing something, Regina."
"What?" asked Regina, turning her head at last and asking, with a raised eyebrow, "this isn't creating magic for you?"
Emma turned her whole body and in one quick move, straddled Regina's lap and pushed her down into the grass. She leant over Regina who opened her mouth to allow Emma's kiss. Oh, this was it. Emma looked at the woman beneath her and felt her own breathing become shallow. Their tongues met, and with Regina's skirt hitched up around her waist, Emma soon got her hand back where it had been. And, finally, a physical response from Regina as she bucked ever so slightly against Emma's fingers.
Regina put her hands up into Emma's princess curls, holding their mouths together as two, then three, of Emma's fingers pushed their way inside her. They moaned simultaneously and Regina slid one hand down to grab Emma's ass and pull her closer. The rhythm of Regina's body moved in and out until her rhythm matched Emma's perfectly. But Emma chose that moment to switch from deep thrusts to light, teasing touches. She pushed only the tips of her fingers into Regina, withdrew then slid them back in.
Emma looked at the woman below her, the queen's body so completely at her mercy. All of her past months' desire to be content, to make another woman happy, to create and live out a fantasy were here. Who knew if magic was real or dreams really worth chasing, but oh fuck, it felt good to have her fingers inside a sexy woman who swore and shouted her name like Regina was beginning to.
There were no sparks or toadstools or other signs of magic, but with one final push of the full length of Emma's fingers and her thumbnail caressing the folds of Regina's now silken clit, Regina pushed herself against Emma's hand and then with one last breathy, "fuck!" and then, "Emma!" she came.
With the two of them lying side by side on the dewy grass, bathed in moonlight, groping round for their abandoned drinks, it seemed to Emma that the evening was completed. However Regina had other plans. She was already standing - but not to bid Emma farewell; she picked her purse up from where she'd left it on the grass and was pulling Emma into a standing position.
"Inside," she ordered, pointing to the mansion's front door.
Not actually keen to go back to the apartment, Emma did as she was told; Regina was clearly inebriated, and if this was some sort of Evil Queen trick then Emma was sure she'd be able to get away. Something about the way Regina clasped her forearms made her doubt that there was any truly evil intent, though.
Once the door was open the two women stepped inside. Regina went through some sort of ritual of emptying keys and phone from her pockets onto a sideboard before, almost in the same move as she put her keys down, she pushed Emma against the back of the door, forcing it closed with a click.
Regina's eyes roamed up and down the blonde's body, taking in Emma's jeans, shirt and jacket. "Take them off," she ordered, stepping back just far enough for the blonde to bend over and remove the layers of clothing.
As surreal – and, yes, somewhat magical - as it had been to fuck Regina Mills on her front lawn, if Emma had had a fantasy about sex with the mayor, this was it. She wanted to play this game. She opened her mouth to protest, but Regina pinned her wrists to her sides and began to work her tongue languidly down Emma's body, starting with a skilled licking, flicking and smooth sucking of her breasts.
If Regina had not been wet, Emma was the opposite. She could feel her wetness coming so thick she thought - in the brief seconds she was able to gather a thought – that she would soon feel it dripping down her legs. Despite her initial desire to resist, her arousal was too great to play games and her head leant back against the door while her eyes closed and her breathing increased.
At last Regina's tongue and lips made it down between her legs. Like with her breasts it was a tease; two steps forward, one step back, as Regina's tongue touched, tapped and then withdrew from her clit, bringing a line of moisture back up towards her belly button. Finally Regina settled on her knees with her tongue doing just what Emma's body reacted to the most, and Emma was quite literally sitting on Regina's face, forcing the queen's tongue as far into her as possible.
Emma no longer had thoughts about being in the mayoral mansion, or about mothers or magic or curses, or even about Regina. It was all about what her body needed. She began to make noises,
"Ugh," just quiet at first. Then louder. She was so disconnected from anything except her body and its needs, and the sounds she made were involuntary. She was nothing but a bundle of nerves that could be excited by the slightest touch, particularly Regina's. Her hips moved in time with her now heavy breathing.
"Fuck." She began to make words. "Fuck. Regina. Fuck." With her hands still pinned against her sides she pushed herself harder, grinding down onto Regain's tongue and face, her nose in her clit. She opened her eyes and flung her head forward to see the brunette's head there, at the base of her own white, exposed, pulsating abdomen. The sight was enough to finally push her over the edge, and she groaned as she came. Regina let go of her wrists so she was able to fold herself down into the space between the queen and her front door. They were both kneeling; Emma with her body feeling light and still pumping with energy from the exertion, but also feeling weak and vulnerable. Regina's hands held her steady and her tongue pried its way into her mouth, kissing and kissing while Emma moaned and continued to rock gently, with her arms wrapped around Regina's body.
"So, did you see unicorns?" Regina smirked, once they were sitting side by side, leaning back against the door.
Emma raised her eyebrows in question.
"Isn't that what you were looking for out of this evening? Some sort of fantasy?"
"You knew that there wouldn't be pixies and unicorns, didn't you, Regina?" Emma's tone was accusatory, but more out of habit than feeling.
Regina, also out of habit, ignored the direct question. "I knew that if I invited you here we'd do something less magical, but more powerful and more real."
Emma grinned. "And more fun, and less likely to result in a fire-breathing dragon on the front lawn?"
"So, are you cured of chasing fantasies?"
"I was. But I've got one or two new ones now."
"In that case, Miss Swan, would you like to accompany me upstairs to see if we can find out what they're like in real life?"
"Certainly, Madame Mayor."