Author's Notes: Written for a prompt on Tumblr, which is as follows. Swan queen. Emma draws the mayor (it's pretty explicit) and Regina finds the drawing.
The night shift, Emma had decided, sucked. It was no wonder that Graham had spent a lot of them climbing in and out of Regina's bedroom window. There was honestly nothing else to do. She usually got a call about Leroy around closing time, which for the bar in Storybrooke was one in the morning. By the time she got him back to the cell, it was 1:30. Which meant that she had five and a half hours before she would be relieved and could go home and sleep.
Five and a half hours where the only sound was Leroy's snoring. After the first night, Emma thought she would go crazy. She tried to read, but found herself falling asleep. She played games on the computer and her phone for a while, but quickly grew bored or frustrated by them. Crosswords and Sudoku were also discarded. By the third night of that shift, she was pretty sure she had reached the ends of the internet, too.
So she turned to the only other thing she could think of doing - drawing. She'd always been a decent artist through school, and once she'd started working as a bail bonds person, she'd found that being able to sketch people was a pretty good habit to have. She'd even worked for a while with a sketch artist who helped her improve her skills.
And so it was that Emma started spending the night shift drawing. At first she just did headshots. Henry was first and then Mary Margaret. Then she branched out and did a full body portrait of Leroy, sprawled out asleep in his cell. And then after a particularly long day in which the mayor had made it her mission to annoy Emma all day, she started to draw her.
The first headshot showed Regina wearing a scowl, but although it was true to life, it made Emma frown to see it. So she drew another one, this time with Regina smiling that secret smile that she'd only ever seen once - when Emma had pulled Henry from the mine. Then she drew a full portrait of Regina standing under her apple tree.
And then, on her fourth night of drawing, after a rather intense meeting with the mayor, Emma started another picture of Regina. Only this time, she wasn't working off memory, but instead fantasy. She tried to imagine what Regina would look like out of those pencil skirts and blazers. She drew her image of the mayor wearing only a black lace bra and panties. It took up most of the night shift, because she wanted to get it just right, and by the time the sun rose, she had a fully drawn portrait of Regina in nothing but her underwear, wearing a look of lust.
Emma shoved the picture under the rest in her locked top drawer and swore she would never do anything like that again.
Her determination lasted until two in the morning the next night, when she began idly sketching lines and curves without thinking, until she realized that she'd once again drawn Regina, only this time, she was looking over her shoulder with her back completely bare. With a glance to be sure Leroy was still passed out, Emma continued on with her drawing. At least it was a way to pass the time - even if the implications of what she was drawing were not something she wanted to consider.
With each night the drawings became more detailed and more explicit. She tried to stop more than once, but it had become something like an addiction - certainly a habit but it was far beyond that now - and she couldn't seem to make herself stop. At the break of dawn each day, the drawings were locked away in her top drawer, safe from any prying eyes that might have tried to find them, and like clockwork each night shift, they were pulled out and continued.
The pattern continued on for nearly three weeks, until Regina herself broke it.
Emma was just finishing up a drawing in which Regina had her own hand in her panties - shading the woman's hair with only ten minutes left on her shift - when the mayor walked into the office.
"Nice to see you working so hard, Sheriff Swan," Regina said sarcastically, causing Emma to jerk in surprise.
"Oh shit!" She hissed under her breath as she shoved the drawing into the drawer, quickly turning the key and praying that Regina hadn't gotten close enough to see what she'd been doing.
"Did I catch you at a bad time, Sheriff?" Regina continued to egg Emma on, her eyes on the locked drawer, and Emma had to swallow hard before she could speak.
"Of course not, Madam Mayor. What can I do for you so early in the morning?"
"Today is the day that the elementary school needs to do its monthly fire and security drill. As sheriff, you need to be on hand to help with the security drill."
Emma was pretty sure this was a bullshit assignment, but she just nodded dutifully, sliding the key to her drawer into her pants' pocket. She'd take any excuse to get away from Regina's scrutiny right now. And banging on some doors at the elementary school sounded like a decent way to relieve tension too.
"I'll head over there right now."
Regina watched her go, making no mention of the fact that the students wouldn't even arrive for another two hours. Once Emma was gone, she turned her attention to the drawer that the sheriff had locked. Whatever it was that she had shoved in there, Emma didn't want Regina to see it. Which, in turn, made Regina that much more determined to see it.
Glancing around the station, Regina was pleased to see that it was unoccupied. Leroy had apparently behaved himself last night. Digging into her purse, she pulled out a small set of desk keys that she'd had since Graham had been sheriff. With a triumphant smirk, Regina fitted the key into the lock and pulled the drawer open.
Looking down, she was surprised to see Henry's face staring up at her. She lifted the drawing from the drawer, her eyes taking in all of the details. In the bottom right hand corner, the initials ES were scrawled. "So our Miss Swan is an artist," Regina murmured, still taken with the drawing of Henry. He looked so happy and the details truly were amazing.
Glancing back down at the drawer, Regina noticed more drawings. She pulled them out, flipping through them. Mary Margaret and Henry featured most heavily at first, but she also saw Ruby and Leroy and even one of Granny. It was the first drawing of her that gave her pause. Emma had been drawing her?
She flipped past the first headshot, to find the one of her smiling. Something about the image and the way Emma had drawn it made her stomach feel like butterflies had suddenly been let loose inside it. Then she came upon the portrait under the apple tree. It was beautiful and Regina found herself thinking about taking it and perhaps putting it in her office.
But it was the next drawing that stopped her cold. For there she was, in nothing but her underwear. She felt her blood begin to boil. How dare Emma Swan draw a picture like this of her? How dare she even presume to know what Regina looked like stripped down like that? Was this the drawing that Emma had been trying to hide from her?
She flipped to the next one and the drawings she'd been holding scattered on the floor. Emma hadn't just drawn her in her underwear. She'd progressed from there into what could be considered - at least by Regina at that moment - pornographic images. Her eyes took in the scattered drawings, falling always on the drawings of herself. There was one with her naked back and another with her hands covering her breasts. And there was the picture that Regina knew without a doubt was the one Emma had tried to hide from her. It wasn't entirely finished, but it was easy enough to make out the fact that Emma had drawn Regina with her hand down her panties.
She wanted to feel rage, she wanted to want to kill Emma, to want to pull out her heart only to crush it to dust. But she found that she couldn't seem to muster that feeling. She was too captivated by the images in front of her. She was entranced by the way Emma had drawn her. The pictures should've been dirty, but instead Regina found them to be sexy and beautiful.
Emma had portrayed her in a way that she herself couldn't see - hadn't been able to see for a very long time. She had once been called the fairest in the land, but she'd never actually seen herself like that, had never been able to see herself through someone else's eyes. Until this moment. Because now she was seeing herself through Emma Swan's eyes and the images took her breath away.
"You know, you could've reminded me that the kids wouldn't be in school for another two -" Emma stopped short as she rounded the corner, seeing Regina sitting at her desk, the drawings scattered at her feet. "Fuck."
At that word, Regina's eyes lifted from the drawings to Emma, who looked every bit the deer in the headlights. She stood frozen, staring at Regina for a few moments, before she dropped to her knees and quickly scooped up the fallen drawings. "Damn it, Regina, haven't you ever heard of personal property?" She hissed, even as embarrassed tears sprang to her eyes. She knew that Regina was going to murder her - or at the very least run her out of town - now that she'd seen the drawings. "I should arrest you for breaking and entering."
It was a totally weak argument and would never stand up, but Emma needed something to say, something to take away from the drawings that she knew she'd already seen.
"And I should have you arrested for pornography." Regina snapped back.
"Porn - are you kidding me?" Emma glared up at her. "These aren't pictures, they're drawings."
"That you did of me. Without my knowledge or permission."
Emma didn't have a comeback to that, so she stood and turned, intending to run as far and as fast as she could. It was her natural response, after all.
Regina watched her as she started to walk away. She knew she should let the blonde go. Maybe, if she was lucky, she would actually leave town out of embarrassment and Regina could be rid of her for good. But her stomach - which had been flipping pleasantly before - was now in knots.
"Is that really how you see me?" She called to the sheriff's retreating back. It seemed that every time Emma tried to walk away from her, she spoke her inner most thoughts aloud.
Emma turned back slowly, a blush coloring her cheeks. "Regina, I -"
"Is that how you see me?" Regina asked again. "I saw the drawings of Mary Margaret and Henry and Leroy. They were easily recognizable and it was easy to tell your feelings about them. But those of me - do you really see me like that?"
Emma bit her lip. She was already in trouble and if there was one thing that she'd decided long ago, it was that if she was going to go down, then she was going to do so in a blaze of glory. "No." She said and she swore that Regina looked disappointed at her answer. "I can't say that I've ever seen you like that - much as I may want to."
Regina's head snapped up at those words. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me, Regina." She said, turning on her heel once again.
"That's how you picture me though - when you -"
Emma glanced over her shoulder. "When I fantasize about you?"
Regina stared at her, trying to find any hint of mocking. "Do you?"
Emma rolled her eyes. "If you can't figure that out after having seen these drawings, then -"
Regina stood and moved over to Emma. "Why?"
Emma actually laughed. "God, Regina, if you don't know how sexy you are - even when you're being evil - hell, maybe especially when you're being evil - then I don't know what to tell you."
Regina reached out and took one of the drawings from Emma's hands. She held it up so that the blonde could see it. It was the one of her looking over her shoulder. "No one has ever seen me like this before."
"I'm sure that Graham -" Emma started, bitterness in her voice.
"No." Regina shook her head. "People may have seen me naked before, but no one has ever seen me like this." She gestured towards her face, towards the expression Emma had drawn there. "No one has ever made me see myself like this. How is it that you can?"
Emma shrugged. "I see beyond the mask. I see the woman - the one you try so hard to hide away. She's what intrigues me, she's what turns me on, she's who I'd love to see like this. Not the mayor or the mother or the Queen or any of your other masks. But just Regina. That's who those drawings are of."
"And what if she doesn't exist. What if the mask is all there is?"
"Well, I guess I'd have to strip her down to see if that's the case." Emma winked saucily.
"Pornography and now solicitation," Regina smirked at her, "what kind of sheriff are you?"
Emma just rolled her eyes and turned away. "Keep the drawing, Regina. I have to go do my job, until you decide to strip me of it."
Regina reached out and grabbed Emma's arm. "Come by my office afterwards. Maybe I could give you some more inspiration."
"Yeah?" Emma raised an eyebrow. "And is this because you want me to get - inspired, or because you're a narcissist who likes the attention?"
Regina grinned. "Who says it can't be both?"
Emma nodded just slightly. "Fine. But I swear to god, if you're laid out on your couch and ask me to draw you like one of my French girls, I'll kill you."
She walked out of the station with Regina's laughter ringing in her ears and her phone already out. "Hey, Ruby, do you think you could cover the night shift for me tonight? I've got plans."