Reality Learns to Love Fiction.
Sum: One hates the others favorite book, so this is how Robin Mills changes Alice's Jones's mind.
Note: The bold text belongs to the genius mind of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson also known as Lewis Carroll. The Once characters belong to the show. The italic is from Kelly Clarkson's "Dark Side" I'm just borrowing everything for a while.
"Stop whatever you're doing and come home."
Normally Robin wasn't so forceful in her texts and the fact that Alice had had a particularly unpleasant day didn't help. Then again neither did the fact that just that morning the pair had gotten into a particularly angry argument that seemed to threaten to end their engagement if not their entire relationship.
Alice just didn't understand that despite the curse breaking Robin's continued insists on keeping that dammed book so close when nearly everyone in the U.R. knew the archer knew the book by heart backward and forwards thanks to Margot and with Alice herself right there in front of her telling her everything that the author got wrong with her first trip to Wonderland.
"You kept that Robin Hood book why can't I keep my Alice book?" her archer argued cradling said book against her chest as if it were a scared child she was shielding from Alice's angry wrath.
"You know why Mills. While it has your name on it those stories are about your father so it's less weird than that horrible rendition of something that actually happened in my life." Alice shot back her eyes casting over to the bookcase seeking out the red binding of Tilly's Robin Hood book just to be sure Robin hadn't thrown it out as she had done to the battered hardback Robin was holding.
Alice shook her head to clear it as she veered off the sidewalk at the edge of the main road in Storybrooke Maine heading off to the start of the unseen pathway that leads deeper into the trees toward her and Robin's cottage house.
While the walk from her work to her home had given her time to think it was getting colder and more than once Alice had cursed at herself for repeatedly declining to let Dorothy or Ruby drive her back to the house.
"Okay, so what's the dammed emergency then?" Alice calls out as soon as her nub fingers cooperate enough for her to get the front door open.
Well, that meant that Robin hadn't changed the locks when she was out. That had to be something right?
"Mills?" Alice asks when she didn't get an immediate reply as she took off the coat, she'd stolen from her grumpy archer hanging it on the coat rack and kicked off her snow boots by the door.
Casting a quick glance into the den when she passed Alice didn't find anything out of place but it didn't stop the flash of worry that was steadily growing the longer the house stayed quiet. "Robin? I'm home. What's wrong?" she tried again thinking that the other woman just hadn't heard her somehow the first time she'd spoken.
Alice made quick work of checking the first floor of their cozy cottage home making sure to take time to search the closet Robin keeps her archery gear in just to make sure the other woman wasn't out target shooting in the snow or something and that was why she wasn't responding yet when a quick count told her everything was exactly where it had been that morning Alice stopped again this time to pick up the baseball bat from the umbrella stand by the front door (a carry-over from her time as Tilly and Robin's as Margot) as she creeps to the stairs leading to the second floor when after another five minutes of searching every room a second time she had yet to hear anything but her own shallow breathing.
"Dammit, Nobin where are you?" Alice wondered out loud in a low hiss twisting the bat in her hands as she moved from room to room of the second floor of her and Robin's dream house until the only one left unchecked was the door to their bedroom.
The door rebounded off the wall at Alice's touch no doubt leaving a mark behind from the scrape of the door latch.
"You couldn't take three seconds to say 'Hey, I'm alive' something." Alice complained letting the bat slide from her fingers and fall to the floor with a muffled thump.
Robin didn't move from her place sitting with her legs crossed under her in the middle of their queen-sized bed. She was dressed just as she was that morning. All of Margot's keepsake bracelets lined on her wrist somehow highlight the well warn deep blue tank top she'd chosen (after she'd stolen it from Alice) paired with her own loose-fitting pajama pants. Her hair was still up in its messy braid just as had been at breakfast. "Hey, I'm alive." She says in a board kind of tone her eyes staying trained on the blonde standing in the doorway.
"Jerk." Alice says under her breath running a hand in her hair messing it up more than it already was to keep from going over to both hit and hug the woman she loved for scaring her.
"I want you to read to me." Robin says her tone telling the listening blonde that it was a command rather than a request.
One that Alice wasn't about to bow to when she saw the book Robin had chosen that the archer brought out to slide it across the bed toward her. "You have got to be kidding me. That's why you called me home to early?" Alice scoffs leaning over the side of the bed to read the title then immediately crossing her arms rather than pick it up.
"Do I look like I'm kidding?" Robin growled her anger reminding Alice of just who her mother was in the flash in her eyes. Yet she wasn't about to cave to the rage staring back at her. She was a Jones after all.
Tossing her hair back over her shoulder Alice stomped off to the bedroom without looking back thinking that if she had the rest of the day off, she might as well take a hot shower to get some feeling back into her frozen limbs.
She even took great pleasure in slamming the bathroom door in Robin's face taking the time to lock it behind her even when she knew from experience that Robin could just pick the lock to get in.
Alice let out a small moan that echoed off the tiles at the heat of the water after quickly shedding her clothes and turned on the shower.
She took her time cleaning herself up mostly to spite her fiancée by using up a good amount of the hot water knowing that even during the curse her Robin despised taking cold showers.
After a little while, Alice even started singing to herself while she washed her hair. The song had quickly become one of Tilly's favorites once she'd met Margot even without her Targo being the one to introduce her to the song, to begin with.
"Nobody's a picture perfect
But we're worth it
You know that we're worth it"
Alice sang along to the music in her own head ending the impromptu shower concert when the water against her back turned colder than she liked it.
"What the…." Alice gasp feeling a hand close in a vice around her outstretched wrist when she'd leaned out around the shower door toward the towel rack on the wall not wanting to give up the lingering warmth for the cold of the outside world.
It was only Robin's triumphant little giggle that brought Alice's heartbeat back from its panicked gallop while her fiancée slides a plain leather cuff onto her arm before giving back her wrist.
"Something left over from Mom's more wicked days." Robin explained with a rather smug grin as Alice steps out of the shower with her cuffless arm wrapped around herself as the pair held the other's eyes in the haze of the evaporating steam. "Think of it like a wearable temporary off switch for any and all magic." She adds at Alice's raised eyebrow both at the now empty towel holder and the fact that every towel and in the room had mysteriously vanished except for the one currently draped over one of Robin's shoulders as the archer sits on the vanity beside the sink with her back against the bathroom mirror. Even her discarded clothes were nowhere to be seen.
"A wearable magic off switch that only I can take off of you." Robin finishes her grin widening as Alice sets her jaw now glaring down at the thing sitting snugly against her skin trying yet again to pull it off. "Well that explains that." She sighs wrapping her cuffed arm around herself remembering that she was without the shield of a towel to cover her wet and naked body. "I didn't know it was you at first, so I was trying to magically push whoever it was away while I thought of a plan to fight."
"I wouldn't mind fighting you while you're dressed like this." Robin smiled her eyes sliding up and down Alice's shivering body appreciatively. "Easy for you to say you have clothes on." Alice answered holding out her hand for the towel Robin had yet to give her.
"And I will gladly warm you up," Robin says matter of factly. Alice waited knowing she wasn't finished. It lasted three heartbeats as Robin's eyes slid up and down her exposed body as if she had forgotten her own ultimatum for a moment. "if you promise to read to me while I do." she finished holding out her book again.
Alice was sure she'd drawn blood biting down on the inside of her cheek as hard as she had at the sight of the hardback, but she didn't see much of a choice with her magic temporarily out of commission and with Robin squirreling away all their towels and clothes. Sure, she could just slide under the thick comforter to get warm but that felt like cheating in this little game Robin seemed to be playing with her.
"At least read the first chapter." Robin suggests the hard edge back in her voice as her eyes met Alice's reading the reservations the shivering blonde had as clearly as if Alice had spoken them.
Alice gave up with a groan bringing a hint of a happy smile to the corner of Robin's lips when she took the book clearing her throat as she opened it to the first page of chapter one. "Down the Rabbit Hole." She read holding the book up in front of her with a glance at the widening smile from her fiancée at the foot of the bed.
Alice was beginning to get very bored.
"You're not the only one Not Alice." The blonde huffed after a pause while she shifted into a better position now laying on her back on the fluffy forest green colored comforter quietly willing her body not to shiver still wet as she was from her shower and the chill kept seeping in from outside adding to her discomfort. "What she's not." Alice defended without taking her eyes away from the page at Robin's reproachful huff.
"Do you want to stay cold the rest of the afternoon?" Robin questions nodding to the book Alice had dropped at her side signaling the blonde to keep reading.
She and her sister were sitting under the trees. Her sister was reading, but Alice had nothing to do.
"Oh, come on I don't even have a sister how come she can have a sister, but I don't?" Alice complained letting the book fall to her side again as she tilted her head down enough to look at the woman standing at the end of the bed with a light blue towel hanging against her shoulder and her arms crossed against her front. "What? It's a perfectly reasonable question." Alice defended shuddering against the chill making her shudder against the fluffy forest green bedspread against her back.
"So, what your saying is that you don't think of Hope as your half-sister anymore? Emma will be disappointed to hear that next time she asks us to babysit." Robin answers with only a hint of her regular playfulness when she was teasing in her voice. Yet her eyes were still held that distantly cold look in them that made Alice's heartbreak when she saw it. Rather than answer Alice went back to reading.
Once or twice she looked into her sister's book, but it had no pictures or conversations in it.
'And what is the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures of conversations?'
She tried to think of something to do, but it was a hot day and she felt very sleepy and stupid.' She was still sitting and thinking when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran past her.
"You're anything but stupid." Robin whispered this time all traces of her earlier anger gone from her tone as she spoke. Alice didn't dare lower the book even when she felt the bed dip when her archer climbed up onto it having finished wiping the water drops from Alice's legs for her while she read and now was moving up to her stomach. "What just stating the obvious baby," Robin says now laying out beside her frozen fiancée. "Keep reading." Her archer coaxed tracing out invisible patterns in the lingering water drops on Alice's skin with the tips of her fingers rather than using the towel laying on her other side to wipe them away anymore.
It takes a few more seconds for Alice to think about something other than Robin's ghost of a touch to start reading once again.
There was nothing really strange about seeing a rabbit. And Alice was not very surprised when the Rabbit says, 'Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!' (Perhaps it was a little strange, Alice thought later, but at the time she was not surprised)
But when the Rabbit took a watch out of its pocket, looked at it, and hurried on. At once Alice jumped to her feet.
'I've never before seen a rabbit with either a pocket or a watch to take out of it,' she thought. And she ran quickly across the field after the Rabbit. She did not stop to think, and when the Rabbit ran down a large rabbit-hole, Alice followed it immediately.
After a little way, the rabbit-hole suddenly went down, deep into the ground. Alice could not stop herself falling, and down she went, too.
"Never could resist an adventure can you?" Robin joked skimming her fingertips along Alice's skin purposely avoiding the space between her legs as she moved from following the trial of a water drop down the curve of Alice's thighs to circling around her belly button then traveling upward toward the valley between Alice's breasts.
It was a very strange hole. Alice was falling very slowly, and she had time to think and to look around her. She could see nothing below her because it was so dark. But when she looked at the sides of the hole, she could see cupboards and books and pictures on the walls. She had time to take things out of a cupboard, look at them, and then put them back in a cupboard lower down.
'Well!' thought Alice, 'After a fall like this, I can fall anywhere! I can fall downstairs at home, and I won't cry or say a word about it!'
The hand not holding the book was now clenched around the edge of the comforter under her as Alice forced herself to concentrate on the words she was reading and not about how nice Robin's hands were massaging her breasts while she read. Well, that and the teasing flicks of her archer's tongue against her nipples from time to time.
Down, down, down.
Alice could feel Robin grin against her skin during those three lingering kisses she trailed down the laying blonde's stomach as she spoke. The grin was gone when Alice caught her eye. Replaced by a rather impatient mask as Robin's chin rested against her abs. "Yes?" she asks innocently going back to laying on her side leaving a strip of space between them.
Fighting back a pout at the obvious gap keeping them apart Alice rolled over onto her side pillowing the side of her head against her arm before she started reading again.
Down, down, down.
She re-read only to once again feel Robin's lips press against her skin this time against the back of her neck after tenderly moving her hair back away from her throat when she spooned against her back making Alice start in surprise at the flood of warmth from the added body heat despite having gotten used to the cold by this point.
Down, down, down.
Alice read for a third time letting out a little hum when once again Robin obliged with three more kisses trailed down her shoulder as her arm came around her back to drape against Alice's stomach scooting her back against Robin's warm body.
'How far have I fallen now?' Alice said aloud to herself. 'Perhaps I'm near the center of the earth. Let me think… That's four thousand miles down.' (Alice was very good at her school lessons and could remember a lot of things like this.)
Down, down, down.
Alice waited but the three brushes of Robin's lips didn't come. But she didn't move away like the last time Alice stopped reading. Her fingers kept skimming over the skin of Alice's abdomen tracing out the shapes of three little hearts if Alice was feeling it right. It wasn't Robin kisses but after the day Alice's had she wasn't going to complain much.
Down, down, down,
Would she ever stop falling? Alice was very nearly asleep when suddenly, she was sitting on the ground. Quickly, she jumped to her feet and looked around. She could see the White Rabbit, who was hurrying away and still talking to himself. 'Oh, my ears and whiskers!' he was saying 'How late it's getting!'
Alice ran after him like the wind.
"So quick Tower Girl." Robin says against her ear tracing the shell with the tip of her tongue "You're faster than the wind." She purrs making Alice shudder when the action was coupled with the fact that the hand against her stomach moved back to caressing her breasts.
Alice ran after him like the wind. She was getting very near him when he suddenly turned a corner. Alice ran round the corner too, and then stopped. She was now in a long, dark room with doors all round the walls, and she could not see the White Rabbit anywhere.
"Tricky little bunny." Robin giggled coaxing Alice to roll back over onto her back this time with Robin laying all but on top of the blonde lying beside her. "Go on baby." Her archer cooed but Alice didn't think she could what with Robin's hands roaming over her naked body as they were yet all the while keeping away from the one place, she knew Alice wanted her to touch. "Come on baby you have to go get the rabbit." Robin hummed against the dip of Alice's shoulder while her love tugged at her hair encouraging.
She tried to open the doors, but they were all locked. 'How will I ever get out again?' she thought sadly. Then she saw a tall glass table with three legs, and on the top of it was a very small gold key. Alice quickly took the hey and tried it in all the doors, but oh dear! Either the locks were too big, or the key was too small, but she could not open any of the doors.
Then she saw another door, a door that was only forty centimeters high. The little gold key unlocked this door easily, but of course, Alice could not get through it- she was much too big. So she lay on the floor and looked through the open door, into a beautiful garden with the green trees and brought flowers.
Poor Alice was very unhappy.
Robin chuckled low against Alice's stomach at her words. "Could have fooled me, my love." She commented noticing in pride the slickness pooling between Alice's legs from her teasing touches.
'What a wonderful garden!' she said to herself. 'I'd like to be out there – not in this dark room Why can't I get smaller?' It was already a very strange day, and Alice was beginning to think that anything was possible.
After a while she locked the door again got up and went back to the glass table. She put the key back down and then she saw a little bottle on the table ('I'm sure it wasn't here before,' said Alice). Round the neck of the bottle was a piece of paper with the words DRINK ME in large letters.
Alice half moaned the words not ready for the determined flick of a tongue against the joint of her hips that sent the book tumbling from her hand and over the side of the bed landing tent-like on the floor instead. For her part, Robin didn't react to the action more than softly biting down against the sensitive bud in her mouth earning a surprised whimpering squeak from the keyed-up blonde.
"I get it now." Alice panted shocked at herself for being able to talk under Robin's continued teasing strokes of her tongue.
"Yeah. I really like this bed." Robin says out of breath herself when she pulls back to let Alice pull at her clothes until she was as naked as Alice was.
The need for the magic dampening cuff came from a rather heated encounter to celebrate properly that they weren't cursed anymore and that they had closed in their new house just after the realms had been brought together. They guessed now that it was because of so much extra magic in the town that somehow amphophiled Alice's inner magic but at the time the couple could only gasp in shock that their newly delivered and put together bed had been reduced to little more than a pile of matchsticks with a mattress on top of it after only a few seconds of Alice laying on top of it.
"Huhu," Alice sigh her eyes sparkling in amusement when Robin takes her place against the mattress all thoughts of their earlier argument mutually forgiven the longer, they traded more and more kisses. "I still don't like the book…. but I can tolerate it for you." She relents sliding her arms around Robin's neck when the archer sits up to pull Alice hard against her lap.
"Tolerate huh?" Robin muses her hands scraping lightly down Alice's back as they held one another "Seems like I'll have to try harder." Alice groans in answer resting her forehead against Robin's shoulder. "Hey, you're the one that didn't finish the first chapter babe." Robin cooed "but that can wait another day for now you're all mine."
"I've been yours from the time you called me a spy….Nobin." Alice corrected keeping one arm draped around Robin's shoulders letting the other drop between their tangled bodies to slide in the wet heat that brings a predatory groan from her lover's lips.
"How many times Tower Girl don't….oh fuck." Robin answered but stopped short in order to try and match the hard-fast thrusts of Alice's fingers with the roll of her own hips rather than finish talking her fingers digging in a stinging mix of pain and pleasure as they clamped down on Alice's shoulder.
"Can't read about this in your book can you baby?" Alice says with a smug grin that reminded the shuddering archer just who her father was as the fingers inside her curled and thrust in deeper. Bringing another rough moan of her name from Robin's lips.