The sound of darts hitting the wooden dart board and a husky man's laughter filled the open bar, along with the unnerving smell of various kinds of alcohol.
Emma Swan sat at the sticky wooden bar with an annoyingly good beer in hand and Regina Mills sitting in front of her. Deep brown eyes watched every move she made, whether it was lifting her cup to the rim of her lips, or if she turned to see if her mother was still conscious amongst the vikings that she challenged a game of darts with.
Finally, after minutes of the brunette's probing eyes bearing into the side of her face, she let loose an annoyed sigh.
"Can I help you with something? Or are you just going to stare at me all night?" The question didn't seem to phase the older woman as she stared at Emma with curious eyes.
"I am just trying to figure out what it is gonna take to get you to open up." Emma grimaced at the older woman's words. She took a small sip of the strong beverage in her hand and sighed.
"Open up? I am open. Hook left, it sucks," she quickly spit out, trying to get the queen to drop the still sore subject. Regina scoffed and played with the toothpick that once held a line of olives in her drink.
"Yes, it does suck. I know the feeling all to well. So I want you to know that I am here for you no matter what, Emma." When Regina had suggested the night out at Aesops, she hadn't expected the blonde to open up to her right away. She thought she could get a drink or two into her and then she would finally let Regina know how to help her, but Emma was now on her second beer (a beer so strong that it now had Snow White playing a drunken game of darts with some vikings, and she only had one) and she was getting nowhere.
"Look, Regina, I know you are trying to help, and I will always be thankful for that, but this is just something that I have to deal with. This is my problem, not yours." Emma gingerly took another sip of her drink and set the half empty cup on the counter with a thud.
Regina's brown eyes watched her every move. To the way her muscles in her hands flexed when she squeezed her fingers into a fist, to the way the corners of the blonde's mouth turned slightly down in a frown that seemed to be ever-present in the most recent weeks.
"I know what you are doing, Miss Swan, and I am here to tell you that it will not work on me. It may work on your mother, it may work on your father, and it may work on our son, but it will not work on me."
"Oh yeah? What am I trying to do then, Regina. You seem to know me so well," the blonde countered quickly.
"You are trying to push people away from you so you don't have to talk about the things that are bothering you. You are trying to avoid the problem until it ceases to exist. I know you, Miss Swan, more than you think I do." Regina leaned forward, her forearms now resting on the sticky wooden bar underneath her. "You think that if you don't talk about the handless wonder fleeing that it would have never happened. You would rather let the problems skirt by than having to talk about it to someone who cares."
Emma didn't know she was crying until she felt a hot tear drop onto the back of her hand. She took in a deep, shaky breath and wiped under her eyes, silently thanking whoever was above that she didn't wear mascara tonight.
"Yeah, well, I guess you are just the Emma Swan expert. You know me inside and out, don't you Regina?" She knew what she was doing, it was something she had done her entire life. Tell no one about her problems, and eventually they would dwindle out without being made into a big ordeal that she couldn't control.
"Emma that is not at all what I am saying. I don't know every single thing about you but I do think I know you better than most people," the mayor defended. Emma scoffed, her bottom lip caught between her teeth.
"Why'd you bring me here, Regina? So you could make me feel worse about everything going on? That's what it feels like at least." Her eyes caught sight of the half empty brown liquid and debated drinking the whole thing now and ordering another. Every instinct in her body told her to steer clear of the intoxicating liquid, but she didn't listen. She picked up the thick glass and held it to her lips, tipping her head back and letting the contents slide down her throat easily. Before she knew it the glass was empty and back on the table. She let out a shaky breath.
"Emma I brought you here because you need a friend right now more than you need anything else. I wish I had it when Robin left, but I shut everyone out until I wasn't crying long enough to leave my house. It sucks, Miss Swan, but the worst thing you could do is shut me out and close yourself off." The blonde shook her head, not believing a word Regina said.
"Yeah, but Robin came back, Regina. He came back and he left because he had a wife and a son who needed him. Hook left me because he promised me no more lies and then I found out he lied about killing David's father and he didn't tell me about it. I found him about to burn the memories away with a dreamcatcher, so I told him I couldn't marry him and gave him his ring back." Emma was in tears now for what felt like the thirtieth time, her brain fuzzed with the strong alcohol that she ingested moments before.
Regina reached over the table and placed her hand on top of Emmas, squeezing her fingers. Emma offered her a forced smile that didn't quite reach her eyes and looked down at the shiny wood, a tear rolling down her face and dropping onto the surface.
"So it is pretty much my fault that he is gone. I pushed him to leave, I am the one that ended things. So its my fault and yet I am sitting here, crying with you in a bar while my mother is beating a bunch of big men three times her size in darts," she pushed out in one breath. She pulled her hand away from under Regina's, whos now felt like it was radiating heat. She laced her long fingers together, she teeth worrying her bottom lip.
Regina hadn't known that Hook killed David's father, she hadn't known he had anything to do with is death in the first place. Where would he even get a dreamcatcher? So many questions were running through her mind but she knew now was not the time, and when Emma pulled her hand away, she tried not to let herself be hurt by the small move.
"You can't make everything perfect, Emma. You can't fix something that doesn't need to be fixed," she said, her voice so calm it almost scared her. She wanted to say that she knew what to do in this situation, but the four martini's she drank making her think harder than she usually would have to. She didn't realize she was staring at the younger woman until Snow White's shrill voice made the blonde jump.
"My beautiful daughter! Thank God that you are here! These fine men right here will be paying for our drinks!" The smaller woman had no doubt had herself another drink or two, but Regina couldn't be bothered with that at the moment, she was solely focused on the woman with blonde hair sitting in front of her.
The corners of Emma's mouth turned down further than usual when she realized the condition that her mother was in. She let out a defeated sigh and patting the pocket of her jeans for her keys.
"Lets go, Mom. I think that you have had enough to drink for the night," she mumbled, resting her hand on the shorter woman's shoulder. The former bandit shrugged her hand off her shoulder and leaned against the bar.
"I am not going anywhere until I get one more of those delicious beers, Emma. Oh! Regina you should have one! They are divine!" Snow White held her hand up in the air and held up two fingers, signaling for two more of the drinks of the night. Emma sighed and her eyes darted to Regina, whose eyes were still glued to her face.
"Regina, could you please help out here? She doesn't need any more to drink," the blonde pleaded. "Can you not poof us out of here with magic or something?" Her green eyes were glossed over but she knew she would be fine for the rest of the night. Her alcohol intake over the past week had been too much to let this little amount effect her.
Finally Regina sighed and nodded her head, and with a flick of her wrist she and Emma were back in the mayor's mansion, but Emma's babbling mother was nowhere in sight. The blonde instantly let out a breath that she didn't know she was holding.
"I assume you sent her back to her house?" The blonde allowed herself to drop back onto the black cushion that made the room feel more familial that it really was. The only time Regina really used the extra living room was when she and Henry would have Christmas, but now she didn't really have cause to use it now that Henry spent half of Christmas with his other mother.
"Yeah. Charming should be waking right about now. That woman is too much of a lightweight to be drinking that kind of beer. She needs to sleep it off," the Mayor mumbled, kicking off her black high heels and sitting on the other side of the couch.
Emma watched the other woman move, her eyes taking into account of the way that the queen's shoulders dropped slightly and she let her stern expression drop, leaving Regina looking more relaxed than Emma had ever seen her.
"How has Henry been?" Emma hadn't seen her son since Hook had left her and to say she was missing the boy was an understatement. She knew her reasoning for avoiding him, and everyone for that matter, was stupid and childish, but she didn't want the only person she cared with all her being to see her how she had been every day when her front door would shut.
"He is okay. He misses his other mom," the brunette said with a pointed stare. One of her perfectly done eyebrows raised at the younger woman as she watched her shift in her seat.
"Yeah, I know," she whispered back. Her fingers picked at the hem of her t-shirt while her teeth worried her bottom lip. "Look I am sorry for snapping at you earlier. I know you're only trying to help." Emma Swan has never been good at apologising to people, especially when she knew that she was in the wrong. She knew Regina was only trying to help.
"It is okay, Emma. Things happen, people change, people leave, but you can't shut yourself off from us. We can help you. I can help you, Emma." If Emma hadn't known any better she would have thought Regina was begging her, but she knew it was just the alcohol affecting her words. Emma wouldn't let herself believe that the other woman cared about her in such a way.
With a sigh, the blonde finally opened her mouth. "Do you have any of that cider left?"
Regina huffed out a breath. "I do but I need you to promise me something before you drown your sorrows in alcohol." Emma's eyes darted up and met Regina's brown ones before they darted back down to look at her fumbling fingers. She nodded quickly and bit the inside of her cheek.
"Promise me you won't shut me out. I don't care what you do with your mother or father, but don't shut me and Henry out. We need you just like you need us, now more than ever. Let us help you, Emma," she pleaded. Emma felt Regina's warm hand rest over her own fumbling ones, and almost as if her touch alone completely forced her to, tear filled her own green eyes and spilled onto her cheeks.
Raw hiccups ripped through as she allowed herself to cry, and not the silent tears that she had been crying, but thick, hot tears that left tracks on her cheek.
Regina's heart leapt in her throat as she watched the once strong woman break down in front of her. Without thought she moved her body closer to the woman, so close their thighs were overlapping, and wrapped her arms around the shaking sheriff.
Against her better judgement, Emma leaned into her arms and cried into her shoulder. Her hands itched to reach out and wrap around the petite woman holding her, but she held back.
The one thing Emma noticed was that the woman smelled faintly of apples and something else she couldn't quite wrap her finger around. Her body was warm and comforting, just like Emma had thought it would be. Not like she thought about what hugging the woman would feel like.
"I just," she hiccuped out. "I just know I ruined everything and I don't know how to fix it. I don't know who I am if I can't fix things," she sobbed, her tears soaking into the brunette's black jacket.
Regina felt for the woman more in this moment than she ever had in her life. She knew what the woman was going through, she went through almost the same thing when her Robin Hood left her for his wife and never came back. She shut herself in her room for a day, cried to her heart's content, and then put back up her facade and returned to her normal life. She didn't give herself time to grieve like she needed, the wound still festering deep inside her.
That's why she felt the need to help her son's other mother, she decided. She knew the pain that Emma felt in this very moment and she was determined to lessen it as much she could, no matter what it costs her.
Hey, everyone! I am back after our holiday and I am glad to finally have a chance to sit down and write again.
I am aware that this chapter is very slow burn, and it is different than what I have previously written, but I feel that if there is a buildup and a story line behind the sex, then it will make it more interesting to read.
Thank you all so much for reading, and I would love it if you commented and voted or however the system works on this platform. Thank you again!