Mini fic-let based off of this by il-etait-une-fois-nos-reves.
When the Princess's carriages draw into sight a few miles down the palace road, Robin's father pulls him aside for a stern warning.
"You will be a gentleman, Robin. That is what she and her family will expect, and that is what is required of your station. I have told you how much we need this alliance. You will offer her your arm on the way to dinner, you will make polite conversation, you will not speak unless it is necessary or it is to compliment the girl. One does not joke with a Princess, and you should take care that you do not insult her. Is that clear?"
"But father—"
"Is that clear, Robin?"
Robin sighs. Though he normally has no intentions of keeping his mouth shut, he imagines she won't be any fun to joke with anyway.
"Good. I am proud of you, my son." He clasps Robin's shoulders, roughly, Robin has hated the patronizing gesture all of his life. "A marriage, an alliance, perhaps an heir soon," he says, pleased, "You are truly a man now."
He wants to punch something at the suggestion that he will not be a man until he has forced some silent, unwilling bride into bed, but he knows from experience that his father would not care.
"And what of our desires? We have not seen each other since early childhood. Perhaps we will hate each other."
"This alliance has been fixed since your infancy. You will rule together. You will have a family together, and perhaps, as did your mother and I, you will learn to be in love."
"But father—"
"It shall not be so bad as you imagine, my child. I hear many reports of her great beauty."
He pictures a small, skinny little thing with dainty features, pale skin and no desire to go out of doors or to speak except when spoken to.
"A great beauty to whom?"
…..
His jaw drops when she walks in. Actually separates until there's a ridiculous, gaping expression on his face and wonder in his eyes. She jumps at the intensity of his eye contact, looks down, and he snaps his mouth shut.
She's stunning, gorgeous. Not at all the meek, mousy creature he'd pictured. Thick, dark hair flows down her shoulders, across warm olive skin. Her mother, he guesses, has weighed her down with heavy, bright jewels and a pale gown, but beneath it he sees the sun-darkened, muscled arms of a horseback rider, and the tan lines there and the crinkles in her hair suggest that she more often wears riding clothes and braids. She has eyes of the warmest chocolate—he could melt in them, drown in them, and they are the only part of her face that gives anything away. Otherwise, her expression seems outwardly impassive, or a little hostile. He likes it, that he can see the life in her eyes beneath the regal exterior, and that she seems to feel the same bitterness towards their situation that he does. Really? He scowls. I'm drawing comfort from the fact that she seems as miserable as I?
His father gives him a demanding look.
"May I escort you to supper, Milady?" he asks, his voice flat, he knows—the words themselves are the only concession he will make to his father. He holds out a stiff arm.
"I am perfectly capable of walking," she snaps.
"Quite a feat, in that dress. It's hideous."
She narrows her eyes at him, tosses the skirt down as though to flatten it, and he can tell she does not like the dress, either, but she glares, never one to take an insult quietly.
He cannot help but continue. "What a pity to dress such a strong and stunning woman in that monstrosity."
"Robin," his father warns.
She bites back, "Quite as much of a pity as it is to let the heir of Locksley wear green rags around his neck. Where I come from, we have expectations of appearance and hygiene. What did you do, steal them from your kitchen maid?"
"Regina," Cora cries.
His father and her mother both look severely displeased.
"Shall we?" Robin's father asks, offering his arm to Cora. Regina's mother takes the arm, calm, regal, collected as ever, and gives Regina a pointed glare as if to state that she was leading by example.
Robin falls into step beside Regina on the way to supper anyway. "Where I come from, a simple thank you for calling you stunning would be quite enough," he says, just loud enough to hear.
He gives her a lopsided grin, and he fancies he sees a little twist in her lips as well. They have just angered their parents together. He will find a way to get them out of this, to get her out of this. But until then, it seems they could at least be friends?
Perhaps he will offer to take her horseback riding tomorrow.
A month after Regina's arrival, the Locksley family hosts a ball in her parents' honor. They invite all the nobles of their kingdom and Cora and Henry's, to see the princess, and the engagement that will form an alliance between the two lands.
Robin has to dance with stuck-up and inappropriately flirtatious, silly women, with rude old ladies, with his grumpy aunt, who manages to injure every single one of his toes, with Cora who glares simperingly at him for the duration of their dance. He dances with almost every woman in the room. Except for Regina.
That honor is being saved for a few hours into the ball, after the meal, when everyone can fawn over them. Robin resents that. The second they put him and Regina alone on the dance floor, she will close herself off to him, glare and step precisely and sullenly just enough to appease their parents and just little enough to make it clear to him that she hates it.
As they stand from the banquet table, a rather drunk lord (somebody's uncle, a powerless second brother—Robin has forgotten whose) gets up too suddenly and spills an entire glass of wine on Regina's lovely cream dress.
Cora's ire lasts for several minutes, and when they finally make it to their dance, Regina is cold and sullen, shuts down his every attempt at conversation.
He tries not to show how much it stings, tries to remind her with his hand gentle on her waist, his fingers grasping hers, that he doesn't want this for them, either. They swirl across the floor to the delight of Cora and Robin's father, and quite the picture they must make—the stain on Regina's dress covered in another skirt layer her mother had tied around her waist, beautiful silver embroidery faint and shimmering across the fabric, Robin's forest green coat a pretty contrast to her dress's pale cream. But she is tense beneath his hand, and he hates every minute of it.
As they finish and Cora draws her daughter away to change, he comes up behind her, lips on the shell of her ear. "Meet me just past the gates in an hour." And then he slips away.
…..
When she reaches the edges of the trees, she is wearing a simple cotton dress, a teal-grey that suits her much better than the ball gown, and simple boots that must be infinitely more comfortable than silk slippers.
He holds out his hand, and after a moment's hesitation, she takes it, lets him tug her closer.
"Dance with me?" he asks.
She scoffs. "I think we've tried that enough for one evening."
"Not for them. For us."
"You are annoyingly persistent," she accuses, narrowing her eyes at him.
He tilts his head, steps the rest of the way into her space, mock whispers "I think you secretly like that about me."
Her lips twitch, and she fights them back into a weak semblance of a scowl, but then he's stepping forward, guiding her to move with him. She lets him.
"You are so beautiful," he sighs a few moments later as they, turn in the grass, in the moonlight.
She glances down at her dress doubtfully.
He shakes his head, "No, not…I mean, you're a beautiful woman, but I meant…you, your soul. You—feel so much, more in a day than some people do in an entire year, and you hold it all in but I can see it in your eyes, and when you laugh or smile it's all the more beautiful for all that weight you carry, from feeling so much."
She's feeling a little teary-eyed, not that she'd ever admit it. She tips her head onto his shoulder. Just until she gets herself under control, of course.
"You're not so bad yourself," she returns.
"Not so bad?" he teases, voice warm in her ear. He turns them again, their own quiet dance in the forest, and she lets him lead.
"Mhm," she hums in agreement, threading their fingers together.
And if she doesn't move away from him even after those few tears stop burning at the back of her eyes, if she leaves her head tucked into his neck, well, this position makes it easier to dance.
…
A week later, Robin knocks on Regina's door at half past midnight with a scowl on his face.
"What's wrong?" she asks immediately.
He stays in the doorframe, one of his hands clenching around the wood. "I just spoke to my father. It's been scheduled for the end of this week."
"What has?"
"I'll help you, like I've told you. I don't want you to be trapped. I could find you somewhere safe to go. Somewhere where nobody will find you, not even your parents. Where you'll be free."
"Robin, what is it that—"
"Our wedding, Regina. It's happening."
"Oh."
"Yes."
She swallows, looks down, and he cannot decipher it—fear, disappointment, anger, feels an urge to lift her chin that has him pressing his hands into his side to avoid.
"Well, then, I—"
"Think about it," he urges, interrupting her. He takes her hand, squeezes it, though she still won't look at him, tries to fight down the pang he feels at the thought of losing her company, of no longer bantering with her over supper and riding with her in the moonlight. Of losing her.
…
"Did I do something wrong?"
She looks away, her arms tight around her stomach.
His hand lands on her forearm. Gentle, questioning. "Regina?" She was sullen with him at breakfast, avoided being left alone with him. Didn't react to the grin he shot her when his father made another one of his horrid jokes about horseshoes.
She glances back at him, forces a weak flash of a smile.
He swallows audibly. "Have you decided to leave?"
"No."
"Why?"
She turns all the way to face him, then, and he feels the full force of the pain in her eyes. He lifts a shaking hand to cup her jaw, and she leans into it.
"I could not bear to force you to stay," he whispers, using his free hand to tuck her hair behind her ears.
Her eyes go wide, vulnerable, her hands come to frame his face, and then determination sets in. And her lips are on his.
It is just a brief touch at first, her fingers digging into his skin, his breath a whisper across her face. A shiver runs up his spine, and he angles his head better for a second kiss, another, pleasure blooming in his belly, and lower, and his hand moves to her waist to bring their bodies firmly together. She gasps, her mouth opens to his tongue brushing across the seam of her lips, and they are kissing in earnest. Eyes falling shut, sucking in heavy breaths through their noses, swallowing each others' gasps.
"Regina," he whimpers on a shaky exhale, pressing his lips to her cheek, her jaw, the shell of her ear, and her fingers tug at his hair, her chest pressed against his, warmth and desire fizzling through him from his belly to the tips of his fingers.
"Hm?" she hums, kissing his temple before she tilts her forehead onto his.
"Are you quite certain you will stay?" He asks plaintively, even as his face nestles against hers, his fingers moving to comb through the ends of her hair.
A laugh bubbles up into her throat, delighted and warm and just a little mocking. "Yes," she assures him.
"But why would you—"
She takes his face between her hands, lifts his head so that their eyes can meet, though their bodies remain close. "Because I love you, you idiot."
His breath rushes across her face, and he's smiling through a fat tear that has started to fall down his right cheek. She wipes it away with her thumb and tugs him back to rest his head on her shoulder, does the same herself.
"Robin, are you going to say something, or—"
"God, I love you so much," he groans, hands digging into her back to hold her close.
Regina strokes her hands through his hair, from the top of his head to the base of his skull, over and over, and they breathe against each other. "I can't believe our parents won," she grumbles.
His hands wander down to her hips as he shakes his head into her shoulder. "We won," he disagrees. "They want the alliance. They won't care that we fell in love."
Her stomach flutters pleasantly. "It's your fault, you know. I was expecting a pompous ass, and instead you're a frustrating jokester with a good heart."
"Mhm high praise indeed."
"Praise?" Her thumb taps against his neck. "Maybe you are a little pompous."
"See and I was going to compliment you back."
He feels her smirk against his shoulder. "You're going to do it anyway."
"Damn it. You know me too well. Which is one of the things I love about you actually. I was expecting a dainty, quiet girl."
She snorts. "Well for one thing, I am a woman."
"Oh, I know." He slides his hands from her hips to her waist and back, pulls back to lift a teasing eyebrow at her. "And you're stubborn and gorgeous and endlessly fascinating, and not at all quiet" he runs the pad of his forefinger along her cheekbone, "And I want a lifetime to unravel every mystery in those eyes."
She smiles for a few seconds before a frown tugs at her lips.
"What?"
She bites her lip. "I'm going to resent how smug they are."
"Oh, so am I. But I'm quite sure that we'll find other ways to annoy them."
"I'm probably going to scowl at you during the first dance at the ball."
"I don't think you will. But if you do, I promise to scowl right back."
She chuckles, falls back into their embrace. "So sure of yourself."
He smirks, and she drops one more kiss on his mouth before she turns to the stables, gets a few steps ahead of him. They have time for a ride before they have to be back for luncheon.