The first day she'd seen the cat, Emma hadn't really given him a second thought. He'd been lurking around the front of the house, and he'd rubbed himself up against her legs as she opened the front gate. She'd absentmindedly given him a scratch under the chin, and she'd collected the mail and headed inside.

The next day, she'd come home from college, exhausted, shucking her shoes, bag and jacket as she'd walked through the house on her way to her room. Mary Margaret had given her that signature disappointed look that mostly just made her look kind of constipated, and Emma had sighed and picked up her trail of crap, before trudging to her room. She'd turned the light on, just about ready to launch herself straight onto the bed, when she noticed the fluffy tabby cat peacefully sleeping in the middle of her bed, curled up in her favourite leather jacket.

Emma crinkled her brow in confusion, wondering if she was hallucinating. It had been an incredibly long day, with an early shift at the diner followed by classes and then a long session in the library working on her doctoral proposal. She rubbed her eyes. Still there. As she approached the bed, the cat woke up, looking at her through half-closed, sleepy eyes. He stretched and yawned, before settling back down, ready to resume his nap.

"Okay dude. This is so not okay. I don't know what you think you're doing, but I definitely didn't invite you in."

The cat regarded her sleepily. Emma approached the cat, trying to find evidence of a tag or a collar that might give her some clue to the cat's identity and where he belonged. He started purring as she combed her fingers through his mane, looking for a collar. No collar.

Emma paced the room for a minute, trying to figure out what to do, before it occurred to her to go talk to Mary Margaret. It honestly wouldn't surprise her if her housemate had impulsively picked up a rescue cat; that was the kind of girl she was. Last summer, Mary Margaret had gone through a phase of rehabilitating injured wildlife, and there'd been a series of weird and wonderful creatures in the house. It had been okay to start with, but when Ruby had come home to find a seriously pissed-looking owl glaring at her from the curtain rod in her bedroom, and had later discovered owl crap on her bed, she and Ruby had finally put their collective foot down.

She walked out into the lounge room where Mary Margaret was settling in with a glass of wine, about to watch the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice for the 376th time.

"Hey M&M. Did you, by any chance, recently acquire a brown tabby cat?"

Mary Margaret looked up at her with the soft, confused look that made most people underestimate her severely, even though, as Emma knew, she was scary smart. And occasionally, just plain scary. "A cat? No. Why do you ask?"

"Because there is currently a fluffy, brown tabby cat that has taken up residence in the middle of my bed. I was just wondering if you knew anything about it."

Mary Margaret frowned. "Of course not. I promised you and Ruby that I wouldn't bring anything else home without asking first."

Mary Margaret followed Emma to her room. "Oh. I saw him in the yard yesterday. I really wanted to give him a saucer of milk, but I thought that you and Ruby would have been cranky about me encouraging him to hang around, so I didn't."

"What are we going to do about this?"

"Does he have a tag?"

Emma shook her head. "Already checked. No collar, no tag."

"He doesn't look like he's a street cat, so there must be someone he belongs to. Maybe he's micro-chipped. We should take him to the vet tomorrow; I'll talk to David, and maybe he can check for a micro-chip."

"That's great. But what do we do with him in the meantime? I kind of want my bed back."

"We can't just turn him away Emma. Who knows what might happen. He needs to stay here."

Emma groaned. "Okay, fine. He can stay the night. But that's it."

"So, do you want to watch Pride and Prejudice with me?"

Emma shook her head. "I'm beat, and I've got an early class tomorrow. Besides, you know that Colin Firth isn't really my cup of tea."

Mary Margaret shrugged. "Your loss."

Emma got ready for bed. The cat was still sleeping on her jacket. She stood there, hands on hips, glaring at the cat.

"Come on. You need to move now. I'm going to sleep."

The cat ignored her. She reached down and tried to move him off the bed; he hooked his claws into the bedding, clinging on as she tried to move him to no avail.

"Fine, have it your way. You'd better not have fleas though."

Emma climbed under the covers, managing to get him to move over just enough for her to get in. She fell asleep, the gentle hum of his purr reverberating in her chest.

The next morning she woke up and he was gone. She always left her window half-open and he'd obviously departed the way he'd come in.

Emma didn't see the cat again in the next couple of days, and she'd all but dismissed him from her mind, until she walked into the house around lunchtime to find Ruby on the sofa watching television, a cat firmly planted on her lap.

"What's that damn cat doing here again?"

Ruby looked up. "What? Oh, you're talking about Mr Fishsticks. He was sitting out the front when I came home and he just followed me in."

The cat had jumped off Ruby's lap and was winding figure-eights around Emma's ankles.

"Mr Fishsticks? Seriously?"

Ruby shrugged. "Do you have a better name for him?"

Mary Margaret was sitting at the dining table working on her doctorate, and she chose that moment to pipe up with an opinion. "I think we should call him Heathcliff. He's so handsome and wild."

Emma groaned. "Guys, we're not calling him anything. He's not our cat."

Ruby had stage-whispered to the cat. "Don't listen to them. You'll always be my Mr Fishsticks."

After some discussion, including a further extended argument over the cat's name, Mary Margaret had called her on-again off-again boyfriend David who was working as a vet assistant at a local clinic while studying for his degree. They'd all piled into Emma's Bug and headed down to the clinic to see if David could find a micro-chip. He hadn't been able to, and none of the vets recognised the cat as a patient of the clinic.

The clinic had offered to take the cat in to transfer him to the local animal shelter, but Mary Margaret and Ruby had both looked horrified at the prospect and insisted on taking him back home. In the car on the way home, they'd argued about what to do next, badgering Emma until she agreed that they'd look after him until they managed to find his owner.

Over the next few days, Mr Fishsticks/Heathcliff/The Damn Cat had made himself at home, and gradually Mary Margaret and Ruby had acquired more and more cat swag for him. Within two weeks, he had a bed, food and water bowls and a collar and tag with his name and their home phone number engraved on it.

And even though Ruby and Mary Margaret competed constantly for his attention, he'd decided that he liked Emma best of all, despite her best efforts to ignore him. Somehow, every night he'd sneak into her bedroom while she was getting ready for bed, and she'd wake up in the morning with a purring cat on her chest. And as hard as she tried, she couldn't maintain the pretence of crankiness for long. The Damn Cat was growing on her.

Regina was furious. Her flight home had been horrific; the corporate travel consultant had screwed up and booked her in Economy, even though it was a six-hour flight. She'd tried to finagle an upgrade to Business, but the flight was fully booked. When she'd taken her seat, she'd been horrified to discover that she was seated in between a chatty 70-year-old who was flying for the first time, and a middle-aged smoker who sounded like he was trying to cough up all of his internal organs. She'd given up on the idea of trying to get any work done, and tried to get some sleep. That had been when the child behind her had decided to start kicking her seat and fighting with his sister.

She'd returned home from the airport, desperate to run herself a bath and relax with a glass of wine, only to find her house in disarray. There were bottles littering every surface, clearly the result of a party her sister had thrown. Ugh. Zelena was in her thirties, but sometimes she acted with all of the maturity of a college freshman. Regina continued to survey the damage. Most of her plants were dead, despite Zelena having promised that she'd water them. The only one that appeared to have survived intact was her cactus, which typically thrived on neglect.

Regina frowned. She would have expected that Enrique would have been winding his way around her ankles by now.

"Enrique. Enrique. Come here dear. Kiko? Kiko?" Regina started to become frantic as she called and called, and Enrique didn't come. She walked through to the enclave near the back stairs where Enrique's food and water bowl were. They were both empty, and there was a fine patina of dust in the bowls. She found a bag of his favourite treats and opened the back door, shaking the bag and calling him. After a few minutes she sat down on the back step, wondering what to do.

She opened the freezer. The carefully labelled bags of meat she'd left for Zelena to feed Enrique were still there. She was going to kill Zelena. She'd trusted her to look after Enrique and the house, and it appeared that she'd done neither. Sometimes she couldn't believe that Zelena was four years older than her. She dug around in her handbag and found her phone, angrily dialling her sister's number.

"Hey sis. What's up?"

"I just got home." Regina struggled to keep her tone even, but the rage was threatening to bubble over.

"Oh, damn. I thought you were getting in tomorrow. I was going to come by tonight and tidy up."

"Zelena, where's Enrique?"

There was a sudden silence on the other end of the line, and Regina thought for a moment that the call had dropped out. Eventually the reply came.

"He's kind of missing."

"I'm sorry, you'll have to repeat yourself. I thought heard you say that he's missing, but I don't know how I possibly could have heard that."

"Yeah, I meant to tell you, but I didn't want to worry you while you were busy with work. He's missing."

"How long?"

"Uh, since the Tuesday after you left."

Regina's tight control on her anger finally broke. "What? He's been missing for three weeks and you didn't call me? Damn it, Zelena. How could you?"

"Hey, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I thought he'd turn up. You know how cats are."

Regina hung up before she said something she'd really regret. She sat on the step, on the verge of tears. She shouldn't have trusted Zelena, but the last minute nature of her trip meant that her usual cat boarding kennel had been full. Zelena had been forced to move at short notice and had been looking for a place to stay for a couple of weeks, and she'd figured that Enrique would be more comfortable at home than at an unfamiliar kennel. It had made sense at the time.

It was too late to do anything now. All the animal shelters and vet clinics in the area would be closed and it was too dark to search the neighbourhood. All she could do was put some food out and hope that Enrique found his way home. She started cleaning up the mess, unable to relax until her house was back in order. Zelena seemed to have obliterated her wine supply – she'd found bottles in every room of the house.

She picked up another empty bottle, and suddenly the tears that had been threatening to fall came. It was the bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild that her father had given her and Daniel as a wedding gift, intended to be opened on their tenth anniversary. She sat, twisting the empty bottle about in her hands, the tears falling uncontrollably. Daniel hadn't lived to see their first anniversary, and Daddy had died two years later.

She was going to kill Zelena. And then she was going to bring her back to life and kill her all over again.

The next day, Regina had calmed down enough to start taking practical steps towards finding Enrique. She drove around to all the nearby animal shelters and vet clinics to see if he'd come through any of them, showing Enrique's picture to the staff in each. She was about to give up and start working on posters to distribute, when she decided to try one last clinic a couple of miles further out. It was a long shot, but she got lucky, and talked to a vet assistant who knew the people who had found Enrique and were taking care of him. He offered to take her over to their place at the end of his shift, and Regina, desperate to see her cat again, agreed.

David had texted Mary Margaret to warn them that he was coming by with the cat's owner. Emma answered the door to find David and a gorgeous brunette who somehow managed to be both the most attractive woman Emma could recall laying eyes on, and the most terrifying. She'd kind of been expecting someone older, frumpier, rather than this incredibly put-together, intimidating young woman.

"Hey guys. This is Regina, and your mystery boy is actually her cat. Regina, this is Emma Swan, and Mary Margaret Blanchard and Ruby Lucas are the two behind her."

Regina pushed past David, walking straight into the lounge room. "Where is he? Where is my Enrique?"

Emma shrugged and followed them inside. She muttered to herself, "The pleasure is all mine."

Ruby eyed Regina suspiciously. "Can you provide us with proof that Mr Fishsticks is your cat? After all, it's not unheard of for people to catnap cute kitties like him. How do we know that you're not here under false pretences?"

"Firstly, how dare you suggest that I'm trying to kidnap my own cat? And secondly, you called him Mr Fishsticks? What sort of ridiculous name is that?"

Emma scoffed. "And Enrique isn't a ridiculous name for a cat?"

Regina glared at her, before fumbling in her bag for her phone. She opened a slideshow of photos before handing the phone to Ruby. "If you absolutely must, you can have a look at this proof."

Ruby and Mary Margaret peered at the phone. They squealed simultaneously. "Oh my god! He was the cutest kitten ever."

Regina surveyed the room around her. "Now, where is my Kiko?" She was distracted by the sight of a pile of canned wet food next to the cat bowls in the corner.

Regina glowered at the three of them. "What on earth have you been feeding my cat? Is that Friskies? You've basically been feeding my cat on Big Macs for the last three weeks. No wonder he hasn't come home when he's been getting junk food on tap."

Emma took a step towards her, "Hey, that's way out of line. He was hungry and looking for someone to take care of him, and we did the best we could."

"Well that may be, but Enrique only eats fresh meat, mostly rabbit, along with a premium dry food. I'm surprised he hasn't been violently ill with the garbage you've been feeding him." Regina had further closed the gap between them, to the point that they were almost toe-to-toe.

Emma looked at her incredulously. "Lady, do we look like we have fresh rabbit just lying around the place? We're college students; we're not made out of money. I'm lucky if I get anything better than mystery meat processed beyond all recognition most days."

Regina sniffed haughtily. "It's very important for his dental and digestive health that he gets fresh meat regularly."

Emma rolled her eyes. "Well unfortunately, the only rabbit in this household is the battery-operated one in the top drawer of Ruby's dresser."

Mary Margaret gasped, while Ruby chuckled throatily. David just looked plain confused.

Ruby winked at Emma. "That's right. And I don't like to share."

Emma looked around the room to survey her handiwork. Mary Margaret was hiding her face in her hands, blushing tomato red, while Regina looked like she was about to have an aneurysm. Emma watched the vein throbbing in Regina's forehead with interest. There was something that just made her want to push this woman's buttons, and she was kind of satisfied with the response she'd drawn.

They were still standing up in each other's space, and Emma didn't really want to be the one to back down, but she had a meeting with a potential supervisor for her dissertation to prepare for tomorrow, and she really needed to get some work done.

She took a step back and gestured at Regina to follow. "Come on. He's probably asleep on my bed."

They walked through to her room, opened the door, and sure enough, the cat was curled up in the middle of Emma's bed, once again nesting in one of her jackets. He looked up at the sound of the door opening, and when he saw Regina, streaked across the room to wind himself about her ankles. Emma watched as Regina bent to pick the cat up and hug him to her chest, and she was genuinely surprised by the softness in Regina's expression as she cooed nonsense words over her cat. It didn't mesh at all with the impression she'd had so far of haughty superiority and cutting words.

Regina looked over at her for a moment and smiled so sweetly, that Emma imagined that she could get pretty much anyone to do anything she asked, herself included.

"Thank you for keeping my boy safe, Miss Swan."

While Emma had been puzzling over the possibility that Regina had just stepped out of a time capsule from the nineteenth century with the whole Miss Swan thing, Regina had already made a move towards the front door. And with that, Regina and Enrique/Mr Fishsticks/Heathcliff/That Damn Cat swept out of their lives, and Emma was surprised to realise that she actually wouldn't mind seeing either of them again.

As it turned out, Emma didn't have to wait long. It seemed that Enrique had chronically itchy paws and was not satisfied unless he was out exploring the neighbourhood. A week later, Enrique was back on their doorstep, waiting to be let into the house. Unlike the last time though, he stuck around for a couple of hours before heading back on his way.

It became a regular thing; sometimes she'd come home to find Enrique on the sofa watching television with Ruby or Mary Margaret, sometimes he'd have snuck in through her window and be napping in her bed. However, with the increasing frequency of Enrique's visits came the whirlwind presence of Regina once again.

Their interactions followed the same pattern as the first time they'd met. Regina would sweep in and accuse her of kidnapping her cat, and Emma would snark back, usually something along the lines of how she was simply providing safe harbour to one seeking asylum.

Ruby and Mary Margaret had started to tease her about Regina. One evening, after another one of Regina's infamous visits, they were hanging out watching music videos and drinking wine and talking crap about their non-existent love lives when Ruby had smirked at her.

"You know, Regina seems to have taken a weird kind of shine to you Emma."

Emma crinkled her brow. "Ruby, are you sure those cookies you ate earlier weren't laced with something that might make you hallucinate?"

Ruby sighed. "I should be so lucky. But seriously, she totally has a thing for you. You know she only ever comes by when she knows that you're going to be home, right? I swear she knows your schedule better than I do, and I live with you."

Emma shook her head. "It's probably just because she works similar hours to me."

"No, really, she's only come by once when you weren't home, and she barely said a word to either me or Mary Margaret, and she left five minutes later. When you're here, she always gets into an argument with you and sticks around for at least half an hour."

Mary Margaret piped up. "It's true. And there's no real reason for her to come looking for her cat anymore; he usually only visits us for a couple of hours."

Emma looked back and forth between the two of them, feeling like she was being ganged up on.

Mary Margaret continued. "You two have this whole rom-com trope thing going on. It's so Darcy and Elizabeth, so Beatrice and Benedick."

Ruby nodded. "It's kind of hot, actually, and I say that as a straight woman."

Ruby jumped to her feet and pulled Mary Margaret with her. "Come on, we'll provide a re-enactment so that Emma can see exactly what it's like."

Emma rolled her eyes. Living with a drama student and a comparative lit doctoral candidate was the worst, sometimes.

Ruby rushed out of the room, and then came storming back in, coming to a stop about two feet from Mary Margaret.

"Miss Swan, I simply cannot overlook you stealing my cat again."

Mary Margaret stiffened. "Regina. What on earth? Why would I steal your cat? He brings me nothing but trouble."

Ruby took another step forward, poking Mary Margaret in the chest. "You are a terrible influence. He's developing all manner of bad habits. Yesterday I caught him smoking catnip behind the house."

"He's a cat. Everything he does is a bad habit. And maybe he's smoking catnip because his home life is stressful."

"How dare you speak of my Kiko that way?" Ruby paused dramatically, dropping her voice as low as she could. "Unforgivable."

Ruby and Mary Margaret were right up in each other's faces now, breathing quickly.

"Unforgivable? Yeah, well so's your face, lady."

Ruby took a deep breath. "And scene." She and Mary Margaret collapsed on the floor giggling uncontrollably. Emma just stared at them for a moment, before grabbing a handful of M&Ms from a bowl on the coffee table and pelting them at her annoying housemates.

Emma's interactions with Regina continued in the pattern that her irritatingly perceptive housemates had identified, until one afternoon when Enrique had refused to come down from a tree he was perched in. They'd made it through their usual half hour of bickering, and the cat still hadn't budged, so Emma shrugged and grabbed a couple of beers from the kitchen, handing one to Regina.

"We might as well relax a bit while we wait for your damn cat to cooperate."

Regina had looked at the beer a little sceptically before accepting it. "Fine. I'm only doing this because I don't trust you to make sure he gets home safely."

Emma grunted. "Sure, whatever makes you feel better."

After that afternoon, more often than not, when Regina came around looking for Enrique, Emma would hand her a beer or a soda or a coffee, and they'd sit and chat about everyday things, like Regina's work as management consultant, or Emma's plans to do a doctorate in psychology. It was still couched in snippiness and snarkiness, but that was just how they worked.

They somehow maintained a polite fiction that Regina was just sticking around waiting until Enrique was ready to leave, usually on the pretext of not disturbing him from sleep. It was a pretty flimsy pretext though; he was a cat, so he was pretty much guaranteed to be asleep at least 90 percent of the time. Emma appreciated the excuse though; it meant she actually got to spend some time with Regina.

Emma had been napping when she was awoken by the sound of violent knocking at the front door. She'd wandered out just in time for Ruby to answer the door. Regina had pushed straight past Ruby, advancing on Emma.

"Miss Swan, I want my cat back."

Emma peered at Regina, still groggy from her nap. As usual, she was standing entirely too close, and Emma idly wondered if Ruby and Mary Margaret might actually be onto something with their teasing.

"Hey Regina. Nice to see you too. Umm, I'd really love to give your cat back, but I haven't actually seen him at all this week."

Regina had paled at that. "He hasn't been home for two days. I just assumed that he would be here."

They'd all taken a few shelters and clinics, calling around in the hopes of finding him, between them covering a fifteen mile radius. They'd all come up blank.

Regina was starting to look more distraught, and Emma moved to comfort her.

"It's okay, Regina. We'll all go out and look for him. I promise that we won't stop until we find him."

They'd split up, with Emma and Regina going in one direction, while Ruby and Mary Margaret had taken the other. Emma had been caught between cringing and laughing as Mary Margaret had walked down the street calling, "Heathcliff, Heathcliff," and Ruby had shot her a long-suffering look.

They'd been walking around for half an hour when Regina suddenly grabbed her hand and dragged her across the street. Emma started to protest before she noticed the man standing in his yard holding Enrique. They came to a stop on the other side of the fence.

"Hey! What are you doing with our cat?"

"Miss Swan, I will remind you that he is most certainly not our cat. He's my cat."

Emma rolled her eyes. "Fine." She glared at the scruffy guy standing in his front yard. "What are you doing with her cat?"

Scruffy Guy put Enrique down, before looking at the two of them with perplexed amusement.

"Hey there. Sorry ladies, I didn't know he belonged to anybody. He's just been hanging around for the last couple of days and he didn't have a collar, so I wasn't sure what to do about him. He kept coming back, so I put some food and water out for him."

Emma realised that she and Regina were still holding hands, and she gently extricated herself from Regina's hold.

Regina glared. "Didn't you consider taking him to a vet or an animal shelter? He's micro-chipped, you know."

Scruffy Guy shrugged. "Sorry. Didn't think to do that."

Regina gave him a dismissive look before moving to fuss over Enrique, leaving Emma to talk to Scruffy Guy. They moved a few steps away, giving Regina some space.

"Hey, thanks for keeping Enrique safe. Regina would have freaked if anything happened to him."

He grinned at her. "No problems. You know, your girlfriend's kind of scary."

"She's not my girlfriend."

"Really? Could have fooled me." He winked at her.

Emma could feel herself blushing. "Seriously, she's not."

"Okay, if you say so." He extended a hand. "By the way, I'm Neal."

Emma shook his hand. "Emma."

"So I was thinking that maybe I should give you my phone number. You know, just in case Enrique goes missing again."

Emma laughed. "Okay, she may not be my girlfriend, but buddy, you are so barking up the wrong tree."

He grinned at her. "I swear I'm not trying to hit on you; I can tell I wouldn't stand a chance. But your boy over there is a bit of a wanderer, and I get the feeling that this won't be the last time he shows up on my doorstep."

Emma wasn't sure why, but she actually felt like she could trust Neal. "You know what, you're right. He's not even my cat and he keeps hanging out at my place, so I should probably assume he'll do the same thing with you. We should swap numbers. It'll make it easier for both of us next time Regina goes looking for her vagabond cat."

Emma pulled out her phone and let Neal program in his number. While she was waiting, she looked over at Regina, who had stopped fussing over Enrique, and was now glaring in their direction.

Emma took back her phone as Regina marched over to her, Enrique wrapped up snugly in her arms.

"If you've quite finished flirting with this cat thief, we should get Enrique home."

Emma rolled her eyes. "I wasn't flirting." Neal winked at her again, from behind Regina's back, and Emma shot him a glare.

"Come on, Miss Swan."

"Okay already. I'm coming, I'm coming. See you later, Neal." She waved, and then had to dash to catch up to Regina who had stormed off ahead of her.

She came up alongside Regina, who glared at her. "You clearly have the most appalling taste, Miss Swan, but I suppose by now I shouldn't be surprised. After all, you were feeding Enrique on Friskies."

"Regina, not that I need to justify myself to you, but I'm not even remotely interested in Neal."

Regina made a disbelieving noise. "He gave you his phone number."

"He did. And I gave him mine, just in case your ratbag of a cat happens to go walkabouts again and wind up at his place. And that's all, because I'm gay. Gay as a sailor. As gay as the day is long. Like Kinsey-six gay. If I played baseball, I would totally be hitting a homo run.

"And yes, my taste is obviously pretty appalling, because even though you're kind of mean to me sometimes, and even though you refuse to call me by my first name, which is weird by the way, I actually really like you."

Regina stopped dead and just gaped at her.

Emma continued. "And I'd kind of like to spend some time with you that doesn't revolve around your ridiculous cat."

"He is not ridiculous!" Regina started walking quickly again, and Emma almost had to run to keep up with her.

"Well yes, he is. He's a cat, and therefore he's inherently ridiculous. If he sees a box, he's irresistibly compelled to sit in it. And I mean, really, he holds his tail down when he bathes it, because he thinks it's trying to escape.

"But that's beside the point. Despite his ridiculousness, the little furball has kind of grown on me, not least because shortly after he wandered into my life, you followed. And I guess, what I'm saying is that you don't need to use Enrique as an excuse to see me. Enrique can be safely curled up asleep at home, and you're welcome to come bang on my door and embarrass me by telling me and any of the neighbours who care to listen how inadequate I am as a babysitter for your cat."

While Emma had been saying her piece, they had arrived back at her house, and Regina immediately loaded Enrique into the cat crate in her back seat, while Emma stood on the path awkwardly, wondering if she'd seriously misread things. She was pretty sure she had, when Regina had hopped into the car and driven off with just a quick thank you and a wave.

She called Mary Margaret to let her know that Enrique was safe and sound, and headed inside, feeling despondent.

Regina drove straight home, her thoughts a swirling mass of confusion. She'd almost run two red lights in the short distance, and she was glad when she made it home in one piece. Honestly, she hadn't been expecting Emma's confession; she knew she could be prickly, and she was accustomed to people responding accordingly, never getting too close. And generally, she was fine with that, but Emma Swan had somehow gotten under her skin, and it seemed that she'd somehow gotten under hers in turn.

Since Daniel, there hadn't been anyone serious; the occasional fling, but they'd been mere distractions. This was different. And for the first time in what seemed like forever, she allowed herself to want more. She wanted to see that goofy smile that Emma reserved for her friends, and occasionally Regina, all the time. She wanted to run her fingers through blonde curls, and feel the softness and the strength of Emma's body pressed against her own. And more than anything, she wanted to see the desire she felt reflected back at her in green eyes.

"Kiko, be good for me. There's something I need to do, and it can't wait a moment longer."

Regina freshened up her make-up and then hopped in her car. This time, she was pretty sure she'd broken the speed limit the whole way and that she'd be getting a ticket in the mail.

She hurried up the path and banged on the door. It was ridiculous that they didn't have a door bell that worked, and it was also ridiculous that she was having that thought at this very moment.

Emma answered the door, and the crinkled confusion in her brow as she saw Regina was altogether too adorable. Regina desperately wanted to smooth the lines with her fingers, catalogue every expression with her hands.

"I thought…"

Regina smiled softly. "You asked me to come by without my cat. So I'm here, no excuses."

Emma's eyes widened. "Oh."

Emma had taken a step back, and Regina took the opportunity to step inside and close the door behind her.

Regina took a step closer and leaned in until her lips were almost touching Emma's ear. She whispered, "Emma, you are the best babysitter my cat has ever had." Regina felt a thrill as Emma shuddered against her. She pulled back a little to look at her properly. Emma's lips were parted, her eyes wide and her breathing shallow.

"Regina, I swear if you don't kiss me now…"

Regina didn't let her finish whatever threat she intended, bringing a hand up to tangle in Emma's hair and pressing her against the wall, kissing her until she felt her smile against her lips. She pulled back minutely, before moving in to capture Emma's lips again. She was distracted by the sound of applause and cheering, and realised that Emma's irritating housemates were peeking around the corner at them.

Emma grinned at her. "Shall we take this away from the live studio audience? I have a bedroom with a door and everything, just down the hall."

"Lead the way."