I think I have a very grotesque predilection toward this type of headcanon and it's increasingly problematic to my mental health. I wrote this two weeks ago before the Lily episode but the way it is now can be taken as canon, I guess? Maybe, idk. Perhaps if this wasn't just a trope (major, major weakness) of mine, phone sex between my otps, and it was at all plausible. We're just going to pretend the whole Zelena pregnancy thing doesn't exist for this one-shot too. Also, there's a line in here from one of my favorite fics by one of my favorite Mirandy authors. If you find it you're awesome and we should be friends. Also, also, for those of you who are almost obscenely (see what I did there?) amazing at writing smut, which black market did you sell your soul to in order to acquire such skill and where might I find it?
I'm not tagging OutlawQueen or CaptainSwan for relationships in this because the last time I did that I got chewed out. So yeah. Just know that they're both canon in this and however long this story does end up taking me to write, it IS a SwanQueen story, okay? Okay.
It's probably going to hurt though. And you'll more than likely want to kill Regina a few times. That's usually how my fics like this go.
Enjoy! (?)
It was a routine of theirs.
Something that had started after they'd come back from New York.
"She's uh…adjusting." Emma shimmies into a pair of boxers, iPhone cradled between ear and shoulder.
"I can't imagine what she must be going through," she hears Regina say, imagining her head shaking with the words, the light jostle of her deep brown, sometimes flecked with red and violet if the sun hit it just right, hair.
"Can't you?" Emma says, eyebrows lifting as she lies on her back in her bed, eyes tracing the design on the ceiling.
She gets a rumbling chuckle out of that and Emma bites her lip, her stomach clenching a bit with the sound.
The phone calls at night were a routine of theirs, something that had happened the night they had got back a month ago and hadn't stopped since.
Every. Single. Night.
Emma's unbidden, continuously growing arousal during these conversations though? That wasn't part of their routine.
"I don't believe I've ever been through exactly what Lily has, dear."
Emma shrugs and picks at the cotton of her tank top.
"Yeah, but you did punch me in the face and you also tried to kill my parents…and me too, actually," Emma gives a wry smile, a part of her mind kind of amazed at how far her and Regina had come that she can now joke about their acrimonious past and not feel anything but affection toward the older woman.
"How many times do I have to tell you that you wouldn't have died…you just would have slept forever."
She rolls her eyes but laughs, "oh right, of course, because that's such an important distinction."
She hears rustling on the other end of the line and doesn't feel tentativeness when she asks, "what are you doing?"
"I'm moving to the study so I don't wake Henry," Regina whispers, Emma imagining her tiptoeing past his room.
Emma chuckles, "we do this every night and you haven't woken him up once; pretty sure our kid could sleep through an apocalypse, Regina."
Emma feels the corner of her lips tug up at the silence on the other end, picturing Regina's eye roll.
It's a few more seconds before she hears the quiet opening and closing of a door, then the creak of leather.
"Couch?" Emma asks, brow crinkling.
"Chair."
"Damn," Emma whispers. She was usually good at this game.
"You're losing your touch, dear."
Emma rolls her eyes and shifts further down on the bed, rolling her ankles, popping them a few times.
"Did you just pop your fingers?"
"Ankles," Emma says, scratching at her nose.
"You're going to get arthritis if you keep doing that."
Emma rolls her eyes again, "you do realize that's a myth, right?"
She hears a noncommittal hum and feels a smile tug at her lips again.
"Is everyone asleep there?" Regina's voice is above a whisper now, but not by much. Emma wishes she'd stop sounding so...that. Like whiskey and cigars and raspy, raspy, raspy.
Emma silently wonders how exactly one person can sound so fucking raspy all the time. She wonders if Regina had gone to school for it. If it's something she did deliberately or if it was just her.
Probably both. Regina was an asshole like that.
Emma licks her lips, "yeah. Baby brother was weirdly quiet tonight so they passed out."
Regina does another one of those hums and Emma gives the phone a baleful glare, feeling the sound tingle and race along her skin.
"You've got to quit doing that," Emma says petulantly, face heating.
"Oh, I'm sorry, am I doing it again? My 'stupidly raspy, voice thingy' as you so eloquently put that night?"
She can practically feel Regina's smirk. Ass.
"You're a jackass and I was drunk."
She gets nothing in response but a husky laugh and Emma's eyes flutter, a groan breaking past her lips before she can censor it.
Her eyes snap open when she realizes what she's done and her stomach fills with ice, heart jumping, palms instantly starting to sweat.
Shit, shit, shit.
The line is eerily silent and Emma screws her eyes shut, bringing her fist up to press into her forehead, wanting to sink through the bed. Maybe Regina'd just tack it up to sleep deprivation or like, mental insanity and move on.
Talk about something else, laugh, make a joke, something, Swan, something.
"Erm," because she's about as articulate as a chimpanzee and she thinks very seriously about just hanging up, her embarrassment making her face feel on fire, before she hears Regina's voice again.
"I didn't know you were so affected by my voice," she breathes, breathes and Emma's stomach does a somersault, feeling like a goddamn circus has taken up residence in her abdomen because that's not even kind of indirect.
That's not subtext, not a thinly veiled innuendo, not a subliminal message, none of those words that seem to be stamped into their every interaction.
No, that's context, bolded and underlined and raspy, raspy, raspy.
"It's um…yeah, I mean, it's very nice," Emma says lamely, trying to navigate her way through this without taking them down a road neither of them can come back from.
"Nice?" Regina asks, sounding equal parts amused and offended.
Emma feels her stomach drop because shit, now she's got to try and veer them away from…whatever the fuck is happening right now while also trying not to piss Regina off.
So basically she's going to end up pissing Regina off.
"Um, no – I mean, it's…yeah, it's nice…like a good nice, like sexy nice, but in a totally non-weird way, it's – "
Laughing, there's laughing again, this time more full-bodied. Great, Emma thinks. Not pissed off, but laughing. At Emma. At her expense.
Much better alternative.
Emma scowls at her stomach, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at her bedspread like it was Regina's face.
"You're an ass," Emma growls, pride wounded, embarrassment giving way to absolute frustration.
Regina's chuckles fade into something like a sigh and Emma's circus starts another show.
"An ass with a nice voice. Like a good nice, like sexy nice, but in a – "
"Oh my god, stop," Emma says, hand coming up to cover her face, the other one gripping at her phone to keep it from sliding down her shoulder.
And Regina's laughing at her again and she huffs, grumbling.
"That's the last time I pay you a compliment."
"Oh, have I bruised your ego, dear?" Regina asks, laughter lingering in her voice.
"Jesus, are you this smug around Robin?" Because she's an idiot and she had to bring up the purported soulmate.
Emma cringes, waiting for the awkwardness that's about to envelop them.
"He's never shown such…particular interest in my voice like you do."
Acrobats now, acrobats in her stomach, some of them deciding to move down a bit lower.
Because that's not what Emma had asked. That's not at all how Regina was supposed to respond.
She was supposed to be clipped and evasive like she always is when Robin's brought up.
Emma drags her legs up, knees bending, pressing them together.
"Oh," is all she says, because honestly, she has no idea what's happening right now or how she's supposed to react.
Their conversations are never like this and it wasn't Emma who'd taken the turn down this road. 206 Never Ever Talk About This Street.
"You're not drunk tonight," Regina says, voice like velvet, and Emma hears another creak of leather.
Emma's brow furrows, "no…I'm not." Why was she -
"So you're going to remember this. All of this." The register of her voice, if it was at all possible – because Regina's voice is already naturally, ridiculously low, drops down an octave or two.
Oh. Oh wow. Was this going where she thought it was?
"R-remember what?" She presses her knees together harder, feeling like the entirety of her lower back is about to snap in two from the pressure building in her spine.
She hears creaking again, this time a little louder and Emma swallows, gulps really.
"I'm on the couch now," Regina whispers, raspy, raspy, raspy.
Emma's hips jerk, mouth parting a little.
"O-oh?"
"Yes, it's more comfortable here."
"More comfort – "
"I think this is the part where I'm supposed to ask you what you're wearing."
Oh fucking christ. Yeah, it was. This was happening – they were actually – Regina was actually –
"Oh, uhm...a tank top and boxers...you?"
She hears a throaty chuckle, the sound so close, and Emma wishes with every single bone in her body that Regina was beside her.
"Such a cliché," Regina exhales, sounding absurdly content, lax even.
Emma mostly just tries to keep her hand from stealing beneath her boxers.
She fails when Regina replies with a husky, "silk. Blue. Lace."
"Are you describing your pajamas or what you have on underneath?" She bites her lip, fingernails scratching and raking gently at the inside of her thigh.
"I'm not wearing anything underneath," and Emma feels it as if Regina'd said it directly against her clit.
"Fuck, Regina...what - what are we doing?"
"I think it's fairly obvious what we're doing, Emma," and her name on Regina's lips like this, sounding like that, three octaves lower in register and absolutely dripping sex, makes Emma's eyes flutter closed, thighs flexing, trapping and stilling her hand which had begun moving in time with her traitorous hips.
"We're both completely aware of this - we know exactly what we're doing right now." Because Emma's brain is starting to haze over and she needs the added clarification right now.
"Yes," Regina says and then on the same breath asks, "are you in your bed?"
"Yeah," Really, really hazy. Her middle finger glides through her folds and she really isn't at all surprised at the ease with which it does so. A month of Regina's voice every night had apparently built up some sort of debt within her and now that Regina was talking to her like that…well, Emma was soaking. Her hips jerk up again at the attention, seeking more, firmer contact and Emma sucks in a sharp breath, rocking into her palm.
"Emma," Regina asks, "what are you doing?"
She laughs then, "take a wild guess, Regina."
"Tell me exactly what you're doing," she says, her voice taking on a more demanding note. And Emma should have known that even in bed Regina would be bossy.
But instead of the usual urge to do the exact opposite of what Regina had said, this time she complies. Because this time her need to have constant control over every situation is a serious fucking turn on and really, Regina could recite the friggin' bible to her at this point and she'd get off.
"I'm - oh, I'm rocking against my hand," Emma manages, back arching up when she swirls her index and middle finger around her clit.
"Take your fingers away," Regina says, voice sounding slightly unsteady but still very much in control. Emma thinks the hell she fucking is. She parts herself and hisses when the cold air of the loft meets her sex.
"Emma," Regina says lowly, voice gravelly and jesus fucking christ, she's bringing out the evil queen voice, "remove your hand, now."
"Or what?" Emma challenges, feeling like she could walk on water, or come any fucking second because seriously, Regina brought out the evil queen voice and she's having phone sex with Regina and now she's got two fingers knuckle deep and her thumb is hovering dangerously close to her throbbing clit and honestly, she's about three seconds from -
Her fingers still inside of her then, sliding out and slipping out of her boxers, dragging up the rippling muscles of her abdomen, her arousal leaving a sticky trail in their wake, and Emma's brow furrows because, "Regina," she gasps when her fingers make a lazy circle around an erect nipple, "what - "
"You deliberately disobeyed me," Regina tuts and Emma's brain kind of gets blown a little bit then because she can feel Regina's magic coursing through her veins, can feel it twine and find home within them, and Emma cries out when her fingers pinch her left nipple hard enough that it throbs even as her thumb runs over it in apology.
"You refused to listen."
Her hand stills on her breastbone then and she whines when she tries to move it herself and it doesn't budge.
"Ah, ah, dear. It seems someone needs a lesson in patience."
"Regina," Emma growls, because fuck, she had been so close.
"Yes, Emma?" Regina purrs.
"Put my fingers back inside of me right fucking now."
She hears a chuckle, all wickedly delighted and smug, and Emma wants to wind her fingers in dark, silky hair and yank. She wants to turn that chuckle into a gasp of pain and surprise, wants it to turn needy, wants Regina to beg her.
"Mm," Regina hums, sounding far too amused, and Emma grits her teeth, snaking her other hand down just a little bit –
That one stills on her left hip too and Emma groans, head thumping back against her pillow, phone sliding down her shoulder and catching at the crook of it. She huffs and Regina's voice is only slightly softer from the added distance. She still can't move her hand. Hands.
"Are you always this impatient?" Emma detects the slight exasperation in Regina's tone and doesn't understand how she can be the irritated one right now.
"Only when I've been wanting to do something like this for fucking years and the person involved uses magic to keep me from getting off when I was like two fucking seconds away from it."
"You've been wanting to do something like this with me for years?"
Well, shit.
"Uhh…"
Emma's nails of her right hand rake down her abdomen then, feeling Regina's magic like fire in her veins. So hot. So good. Her eyes flutter and she bites her lip, whimpering when her fingers bypass her pulsating clit and instead just barely tease at her opening.
"You feel exquisite," Regina exhales, leaving Emma's previous comment alone for the time being. And the breathiness of the words, the words themselves, make Emma whimper, her fingers dipping and swirling and slow, slow, slow. And it's Regina. Regina's doing this to her. With her.
"God, Regina," Emma's hips jerk up when her fingers graze over her fucking aching clit and finally, she thinks, but then Regina's teasing again and jesus christ, no. No, she isn't patient at all because she's been waiting years for Regina's touch and she won't give it to her.
Even if it is through magic, even if it's her own fingers, it's essentially Regina and –
"Regina, please…just – "
"Just what?" Regina asks, voice strained and low, "say it, Emma. Tell me what you want," and oh fucking hell. Emma's gone. Completely and wholly. She'd get down on her hands and knees and lick the dirt off Regina's boots for release. For her saying her name like that.
"Please, Regina – please, just fuck me. God I can't – please."
She hears Regina inhale sharply, hearing her name somewhere in the sound, and then finally, finally, finally, Regina's inside of her. Pumping in and out, faster and faster, almost reckless, and Emma feels Regina's magic leave her left hand and arm and she slides it out to grip at the sheets, knuckles turning white as her hips roll in time with the fingers still thrusting within her. The phone is dangerously close to slipping past her shoulder and onto the bed but Emma's too far gone to even notice.
She's so close again, her back bowing up so sharply there's a large gap between her and the bed, the back of her head pressed harshly into her quilt, eyes screwed shut, stomach, thighs, legs rippling, toes curling and she has just enough thought to slap her left hand over her mouth before she comes with a loud cry, her mouth forming around the syllables of Regina's name as her own thumb presses down and circles at her engorged clit, Regina's voice cracking on her name as she croaks, "come for me, Emma."
And then every single muscle in her body is limp, her chest heaving, breath loud and ragged against her palm still covering her mouth and she blinks back tears she doesn't remember forming.
She hears shallow breathing on the other end of the line when the blood stops rushing in her ears and before she can bask in the warm glow of Regina's magic, she feels it leave her body. Feels it like an IV filling her with nutrients and warmth, warmth, warmth being ripped from her veins. Her whole body jolts with the feeling and she wonders if Regina had meant to do that so abruptly. The phone does slip down her shoulder this time and she reaches up with a trembling hand to place back up to her ear.
Her body tenses again, but this time out of anxiety. The fingers of her right hand are still buried inside of her and now that it's no longer Regina who's commanding control of them, she no longer wants them there. She slips them out and swallows as she wipes them on the rapidly cooling skin of her thigh, feeling ice crawl up her body from the tips of her toes to the nape of her neck.
With the sudden loss of Regina's magic, that heat, that peculiar feeling of completeness, comes in its place unease, guilt.
Regina had just fucked her with her own hand, she'd initiated it, and yet Emma was the one who felt guilty.
How the hell did that work?
Emma swallows back the lump forming in her throat and bites the inside of her cheek, shivering at a wave of goosebumps.
"Regina?" She whispers tentatively.
And there's another sharp inhale, this one sounding a bit more unstable, and Emma's heart pounds away in her chest, a feeling of lucid cognizance of what they had just done jolting through her like a hard smack to the face.
"Are you – "
"This never happened," Regina says, voice like steel and the ice she feels hardening in her veins.
Emma's breath catches, the urge to curl in on herself and wrap her arms around her knees almost too strong to resist. But it's not like she wasn't expecting this. She should have known that Regina would react this way. She has a soulmate. A soulmate who is most definitely not Emma. Emma's just a friend. Maybe less than that now.
"I can't believe – " there's a wobbly exhale on the other end and Emma pictures her covering her eyes with her hand, fingers massaging at her brow bones, "this was a mistake," Regina says, and Emma feels it like a blow to the chest.
A mistake. Emma was a mistake to her.
Emma can't speak. She's afraid she'll say something she'll regret. Like I think I'm in love with you or I think that whole soulmate, predestined bullshit is really fucking stupid and I think I could be your happy ending…let me be your happy ending.
"Emma, are you still there?"
Do you really think this was a mistake?
"Yeah, I'm still here," Emma croaks. She clears her throat and rolls onto her side, staring blankly at the dresser, the laundry basket full of clothes she's yet to fold.
"I'm with Robin," Regina says. Emma wonders if she knows how dejected she'd just sounded. Emma wonders if it makes it hurt worse or less that she's almost positive Regina's completely aware.
"I know," Emma whispers, willing the hot tears blurring her vision away.
"And this…anything like this, it can't ever happen again."
"I know," she blinks and one tear trails down and falls off her cheek and onto the quilt as the other rolls off her nose and follows its companion to the cotton fabric beneath her.
"Emma…" Regina whispers it, and Emma hears the apology within the two syllables, hears the regret, the this was a mistake and we shouldn't have done this. Emma's angry at herself for thinking that Regina would ever choose her over her soulmate. Over someone she was destined to be with. Fate over choice.
Emma's angry at herself for knowing that should Regina ever choose her in the future, she'd leave Killian for her. She'd leave Killian like she wishes Regina would leave Robin.
But Regina isn't going to do that and Emma's angry, so, so angry that she's now just cheated on the man who claims she's his happy ending with someone who claims that hers is with a man currently taking up residence in one of the rooms at Granny's.
"It's fine," Emma grits out through clenched teeth, swiping irritably at the tears still staining and warming her skin.
"Emma," Regina says again, because she knows her. Emma flexes her jaw.
"It's fine, Regina, I get it. It was a mistake. You're in love with Robin Hood and I have Killian. We both have someone. We can just chalk this up to like morbid curiosity or something and move on."
"You weren't a science experiment, Emma, I – " she cuts herself off then, and Emma screws her eyes shut.
"Yeah," Emma says, voice raw, "I wouldn't finish that either. It would just – yeah. Just don't."
"I," Regina clears her throat, "should go then, it's getting late."
"Yeah," Emma says, voice cracking. She winces at the sound.
"Goodnight, Emma," Regina whispers. Emma bites her tongue so hard she tastes metallic.
"Night." She can't bring herself to say Regina's name and she pulls the phone away from her ear, pressing the end button before tossing it at the foot of the bed, her hands coming up to fist at her hair and scrub at her face.
She smells the muskiness of her arousal and her stomach lurches, feeling like she's about to puke. She sits up and pads down the stairs of the loft quietly, the sudden, desperate need to shower quickening her steps.
This was a mistake, Emma's mind replays again.
She scrubs at her body, scrubs and scrubs between her legs until it's almost painful to the touch, and she doesn't realize how hard she's crying until her knees buckle beneath her and her body leans heavily into the marble of the shower, the spray of the water pounding into her back as she slides down the cool tile.
She allows her arms to wrap around her knees this time, allows her chin to rest on her forearms, allows the tears to flow freely, unalloyed.
She'd leave him for her.
She'd do anything for her.
She's a mistake to her.
She tightens her arms around the slick skin of her shins, presses her thighs closer to her chest, tilts her head up and gasps as the water flowing from the showerhead steals her breath from her lungs. She keeps her head tilted up anyway, letting the water mix and wash away the salt of her tears, until there's no distinction between them. Until she's spitting out water and still gasping and her face is red and her fingertips are wrinkly and she doesn't move until the water turns too cold to bear.
And then she gets out, wraps a towel around her wet body, water dripping and forming a puddle under her feet, a rivulet of water flowing down her back from her hair, as she wipes away the steam on the mirror above the sink.
She won't cry over this ever again.
She dries her hair and brushes it before padding back up to the loft and donning one of her baggy sweatshirts and grey sweatpants and moving to the other side of her bed. She slips under the covers and tucks her hands under her cheek, rolling onto her side, finding the moon, full and bright, through the undrawn curtains of her window.
She wonders if Regina had touched herself earlier. She wonders if she had come. She wonders if she'd bitten her lip to keep quiet. She wonders if she ever used magic on Robin during sex.
She wonders when she became such a raging masochist.
She wonders if Killian would ever find out. If perhaps one day she'll tell him.
She wonders how idiocy, something she's accused of by Regina on a daily basis, can be such a prominent trait within her bloodline.
She wonders if she's ever going to be able to look at Regina the same way again.
She won't.
She wonders what time it is.
Finds she doesn't care.
She wonders, wonders, wonders.
And the last thought she finds flittering across her mind is does she love me before sleep overtakes her.