For OQ PromptParty. 69. Robin is so used to sleeping in the forest he won't fall asleep in houses etc because of the missing forest noises (birds, frogs…)
She'd never admit it to anyone, but Regina Mills sleeps better with a partner.
She went so long without one – the king may have wanted her to make regular appearances in his bed, but he never expected her to stay (thank the gods), and her nights curled against the cozy warmth of Maleficent were few and far between. So it had taken her by surprise, the solid, restful sleep she'd gotten on the nights she'd bedded the Huntsman to mutual exhaustion and let him collapse beside her on the mattress, both of them dropping off into satisfied sleep, her body and his heart safeguarded by a few whispered words from her into the glowing, pumping organ.
She'd blamed the first few times on the mind-blanking intensity of the sex, but it had persisted even after the curse, even here. When he was Graham, and she was just Regina, and there was no good excuse to send him scurrying away after, no chambers several floors away for him to find rest in once dismissed. He'd simply roll over with a sated sigh, drop an arm over his eyes, and fall asleep on her.
She'd expected it to keep her awake the first night here - the sex had been adequate but hardly earth-shaking, and she wasn't pumped full of pleasure to the point of near-exhaustion.
And yet.
She'd lain there and listened to his breathing, the space underneath her covers growing soothingly warm as the autumn air crept in around the windows to chill the room around her. She'd been asleep before she knew what hit her, and woken refreshed.
The nights without him held the peace of solitude, but none of the warmth. Her bed was chilly, and she'd wake in a cold sweat from dreams she couldn't quite remember the details of. Or worse, from dreams of the horrors she'd wrought in the years of her torment, or vivid memories of the hell she'd been through at the hands of That Man, or the hands of her mother. Dreams of Daddy's eyes as the life faded out of them.
She'd never admit it to Graham, but she liked sharing a bed with him. Even if it was all a lie.
And then he'd died. And there had been all those lonely months. All the nightmares, and nights spent trembling and sobbing and gripping her pillows, wishing for some kind of warmth to chase away the chill of all her bad decisions.
And now, Robin.
She sleeps like the dead now that Robin is regularly taking up space in her bed. Sinks under to the rhythm of his heart beneath her ear, the cozy warmth of his skin along hers. Wakes from sweaty nightmares to the soothing press of his hands and the slurred, soft shushing of his voice, the gentle presses of his lips along her brow.
She's never been better rested than she is here, now, even with the stress of Emma as the new Dark One, the mystery of what happened in Camelot.
But Robin, not so much.
Robin greets her every morning with bleary eyes, and the scratchy rasp of poor sleep still clinging to his vocal cords. He's not resting, and she thinks she knows why.
She thinks it's… what happened. Zelena. New York. The baby.
She thinks, but she doesn't want to say it. She's a coward, too reluctant to lend voice to the ugly truth of things, especially in those quiet moments before sleep. When they lie together, and he pulls her close, and there are soft kisses, and warm touches – sex, more often than not. They'd been apart for so long, and there's this wall between them still, and every night finds them grasping for ways to reach through it, around it, over it. Coming together as best they can.
And then she sleeps, and he does not, and the guilt gnaws at her.
So tonight, when she wakes to him sighing his frustration as he flops over from back to belly, the bed bouncing a little with the agitated movement, she swallows her fear and rolls toward him.
One hand scouts the terrain of cooling sheets between them, finds his back and rubs it gently, as she rasps, "Hey."
Robin jumps slightly and guilt nips at her, but he settles almost immediately, exhaling heavily, so she skates down his shoulder, back up, in a rhythm she hopes is soothing.
"Sorry," he mutters into the pillows, turning his head toward her and adding, "I didn't mean to wake you."
She means to ask if he wants to talk about it, about It, All of It, the Everything that is surely clogging up his mind with too much anxiety to sleep.
But all her cowardly tongue can manage is, "You okay?"
Close enough. (Not nearly close enough.)
He sighs again, her hand rising under the filling of his ribs, sinking down with the emptying of them. And then he says something that makes her blood run cold: "You know I love sleeping here beside you every night…"
There's a hesitation to it, an inevitable 'but,' and her mind flips through all the possible ways to end that sentence. Or at least, she imagines it does, but she doesn't expect the way he actually finishes: "But it's so bloody quiet in this house, I can't ever seem to fall asleep."
Oh.
"Oh."
Is that all?
"I'm used to… more," he grumbles, finally rolling again from front to side, reaching for her and pulling her close as he gripes, "The chirp of crickets, and the croaking frogs, and owls and, gods, I'd take the bloody howling wolves over this silence. I'd welcome you snoring, at this point. How does anyone sleep here with no noise at all but their own thoughts?"
She tries not to smirk at him, really she does. But his frustration is so simple to solve, and therefore so… well, adorable. He's adorable, all frustrated like this, now that she knows it's not because of… everything. All of that.
"You should have said something," she murmurs, leaning in to press a kiss to his lips and then rolling to fish her phone from the nightstand, the blue light of her screen making her squint as she unlocks it and pulls up the app store, tapping a few keys as he says something about how there's nothing to be done about it, short of sleep apart from her.
"Which I adamantly refuse to do, after so long apart," he tells her, coaxing up a smile he can't see as she scrolls through a couple of options, then presses her thumb over "GET," and waits for that little blue circle to finish.
"And I don't suppose relocating the whole family to the forest is an option you'd consider," he sighs again, resigned and not terribly serious.
"Mm," she agrees. "I think your love for me would rapidly dwindle after several days away from running water, a gas stove, easy access to my washer and dryer…"
"I've loved you without all of those things before," he murmurs into her shoulder, still pressing kisses there, working his way toward her neck in a way that has goosebumps rising.
He's talking about the Missing Year, she knows, and she can't help it, can't stop her tongue from forming the words: "You didn't love me then. Not yet."
"Oh, I did," he assures warmly. "I've loved you since nearly the moment I clapped eyes on you."
She snorts, disbelieving. He says this, has said it before, but she remembers those early, snarky months, and while she'll accept that he was attracted to her then (because she was to him, oh God, how she was…), the love came later. He couldn't have loved her then, she's sure of it.
But it's not an argument she imagines she'll ever win, so she lets it drop and rolls onto her back. Her hip notches in against his, his thighs slipping beneath hers until she's cradled comfortably against him, his hand spreading warm over her belly.
She tips the phone toward him slightly and asks, "What would you like to fall asleep to tonight? We have thunderstorms, gentle rain, crickets…"
She sees his face in the light of the phone, watches as he squints a little then takes it from her, still endlessly fascinated by technology.
He's learned the symbols for play and pause though, and he presses the little arrow beneath the thunderstorm option, his brows popping up slightly as the room is filled with the quiet noise of rumbling thunder and pouring rain.
"Is this a recording?"
"I suppose," she shrugs. "It's supposed to help you sleep – for people like you who can't stand the quiet. And you can—look—" She taps the button under the crickets and they roar to life, competing with the storm. Regina drags a little volume marker beneath them to make them quieter, drags the one under the storm to make it louder. "You can do different combinations, see?"
"Fascinating," he murmurs, and he spends the next minute listening to different nature sounds, combining them, adjusting them. "This would have been nice in New York," he grumbles, and she presses a kiss to his shoulder, because she doesn't know what else to say.
And because she's too cowardly to say all the things she ought to.
He settles on rainfall with crickets, and a running stream, and Regina just hopes the latter doesn't inspire an intense need to use the bathroom in about forty-five minutes.
But he hasn't slept properly in days, so she'll live with the babbling brook.
She sets the phone back on her nightstand, and snuggles back into the spoon of his chest, belly, knees.
Robin's exhale is a rush of relief against her hair, his nose nuzzling in until he can plant a kiss on her scalp.
For several minutes they lie there, and she feels herself grow heavier, feels the warm comfort of his body pull her closer and closer to the abyss.
And then she hears a soft, sleepy snore from behind her and smiles.