Shout out to Brittany! I know I have a gazillion multi-chaps in the works, but I needed a little change of scenery. As always, I own nothing, I just want to play. Enjoy, and please let me know what you think!
Regina's house doesn't feel very much like home anymore. Every tiny flaw has been exacerbated in the wake of quite possibly the worst day of her adult life.
The third step on the staircase creaks like a bitch, it has for months now, and she's so sick of the bland tiling in her bathroom. Not to mention the horrible blue wallpaper in her bedroom that does nothing to reflect her as a person. And her bare walls. She has no art or pictures on the wall, all because she let trivial things distract her from actually framing her photographs and displaying them in the places she had already chosen.
Each little thing sticks out so much more now that these tiny inconveniences feel like her biggest enemies now that her heart has shattered into a million pieces. It's scattered all over the hardwood floors that she wishes she picked in the darker colour. Or maybe she just wishes that Graham hadn't insisted...
He was meant to be the one. The love of her life, the person she would grow old with. She gave him everything. He held her trust in his hand and took the time to get close to Henry. He promised her a lifetime, and now every ounce of that promise is in pieces on the floor along with her heart.
She didn't see his betrayal coming, not in a million years. She never even imagined that he was capable of cheating on her, though the image of him in their bed with a very naked Marian will forever be burned into her mind as a constant reminder of just how wrong she was.
Her fiancé and her married best friend, like some horrible scene out of a movie.
Marian barely spoke when she dressed quickly and left with a tearful I'm sorry falling from her lips, but Regina couldn't take her eyes from Graham. She blinked a few times, even considered pinching herself just in case, but with every passing second it set in just how real it was.
"I'll be downstairs," drew from deep in Regina's chest monotonously.
And that's where she went. She made her way down the stairs, creaking on the third from the bottom as usual, and fell carelessly against the cream cushions, exhaling the deepest and most pained sigh she ever has in her life.
She starts questioning everything: the stair, the tiles, the wallpaper, and even considers how she's going to strip the bed and toss those sheets into the washer with double the recommended amount of detergent, at the highest temperature setting the washer will allow. It's the closest thing to burning them entirely that she could do; Henry picked them out for her birthday, so an actual flame is out of the question.
When Graham comes downstairs, she's perched on the couch with her fingers clasped in her lap, bobbing her knees up and down impatiently as he paces around in front of her muttering off excuse after excuse. She's staring at him, has been for almost thirty minutes, but she hasn't been able to make out the words he's saying. Every meaningless syllable from his mouth is instead being drowned out by the voice in her head scolding the decision to get these goddamn wooden floors.
He startles her when he kneels down and leans against her knees, grabbing at her hands desperately and apologising like his life depends on it. They're hollow apologies, doing absolutely nothing to absolve the nauseating pit in her stomach.
"I think you should go," she mutters, snatching her hands away, even going as far to rub them on the rough fabric of the couch to rid herself of the feeling of him. Before he can even inhale completely, she cuts him off. "Get out."
"Regina, please."
"Don't you dare," she warns. He doesn't get to plead with her, not today, not ever. "We're finished. That's it. Go... And I hope for your own sake that you don't bump into Robin anytime soon."
He lingers for a moment too long, still pressed against her legs, so she stands up quickly with a disgusted groan and pushes passed him towards the kitchen. She plants her hands on the cool surface of the island, takes a deep breath in to settle her bubbling anger, and when she exhales, it's accompanied by a choked sob, coinciding perfectly with the front door as it slams shut.
Hitting her palms against the granite, she reaches for the ring around her finger and rips it off, throwing it across the room, not caring in the slightest where it ends up. Her breath quickens when she starts pacing around the kitchen aimlessly, her hands rubbing up and down on her pencil skirt, reaching up to claw through her long her, all while trying to figure out where she goes from here.
She stares blankly ahead for at least another twenty mintues as she leans uncomfortably against the countertop in the kitchen, her mind rapidly trying to piece out everything she needs to do now.
Obviously, he needs to move out, it's over, but that means packing up his things and then he'll have to come back for them. Henry is gone for the weekend, thank god, but when he comes back she will have to explain everything to him, and he'll be crushed. And the wedding.
Shit.
Their wedding. The day they'd been planning for over a year now, the space circled with a big heart on their calendar, it's all come crashing to a mess on the floor; She'll have to cancel everything and call everyone, and she can practically hear the pity in the voices already.
In the midst of imagined phone calls, there's a light knocking at her door, and she almost ignores it. She loathes to think that Graham has come back with some new excuse to throw in her face, but her legs take her to the door regardless.
She sharpens her words before reaching for the doorknob, ready to lash out violently but unexpected to her, the body on the other side of the door is that of the only other person in this town that has a clue how she feels.
"Robin," she exhales, opening the door all the way to let him in, but neither of them move and they can barely make eye contact.
"I, uh…" He holds up his right hand, it's clutching a large white bag with Granny's scribbled on the side. "I thought you might be hungry."
Her stomach drops to the ground as she worries that he doesn't know, that Marian didn't go straight home and confess, but all of that fades when he finally meets her eyes. He's hurting, the pain in his eyes indisputable. "I also brought this," he says, raising his other hand that's clutching onto a very full, very large bottle of whiskey. "I didn't know where else to go."
She wouldn't either. If she had left instead of Graham, she can't say for certain that she wouldn't have sought Robin out. He's her best friend… her only friend now.
She takes a step back, inviting him in silently, reaching up to squeeze his shoulder supportively when he passes. She closes the door and dawdles briefly, resting her forehead against her door and inhaling before pushing off to make her way to Robin, who has taken up residence on the couch where she was planted before.
The Granny's bag is on the floor, probably seeping grease through onto her carpet, but she can't seem to find any energy to care. The same reason why when Robin asks if she has glasses for the whiskey, she takes the bottle form him, twists the cap off and takes a hearty swig of the nipping liquor as she sits on the coffee table across from him.
"I think we're passed that," she hisses through the reaction to her double, possibly triple, shot.
She offers the bottle to him, which he happily takes but he doesn't drink right away. He's staring down at the way his hands are gripping the glass as they succumb into a short silence before muttering somberly, "I had no idea."
"Neither did I," she replies. It never once occurred to her, but why would she when their working hours were so obscurely different, same with Marian and Robin.
"Where do we go from here?" He asks while throwing back a mouthful of the whiskey. Unfortunately, it's one of many questions she doesn't have the answer to. "I don't think I can go home. She was just crying and confessing and all I could do was sit there…like..."
"Like someone was sitting on your lungs?" Regina offers, taking her turn with the bottle while he nods. He scoffs a laugh, one she mirrors and elaborates to a dreary chuckle. "You'll stay here," she says, as a matter of fact, refusing to acknowledge any argument that falls from his mouth. "Henry is with a friend until Sunday night, you can sleep in his room."
"You sure? The last thing you need is someone to babysit."
"I'm sure. You'd do the same for me, and let's face it," Regina stands from the coffee table with the greasy bag scrunched in her fist, "getting drunk alone isn't nearly as fun. Where's Roland?"
He sinks forward, his elbows digging into knees with his face in his palms when he mumbles, "I took him to John."
"Call him," she suggests, "Wish him a goodnight and then we can eat."
Making her way back into the kitchen, Regina sets two plates on the counter and glances back into the living room where Robin is still sitting, staring blankly at his phone. She won't rush him, knows him well enough to know that he'll make the call when he's ready, but it doesn't tame how her heart aches in an entirely new way all of a sudden; this will be Robin's first night away from his son and she can't even imagine how that adds to the sting.
Somewhere between reaching her hand into the bag and unravelling the foil on the burgers, she hears Robin's voice from the other room. At first, it's lifeless, asking to speak to Roland and then morphs into a delicate tone full of love and sorrow that the five-year-old has no chance of understanding.
Trying to keep from eavesdropping, she clears her throat and kickstarts into movement towards the fridge. He'll want mustard no doubt, and she decides she can splurge for added ketchup today. When she turns back around with both hands gripping the condiments, she eyes up the burgers, frowning almost when she remembers that she and Robin first met over a cheeseburger and now that memory will forever be tainted by this day.
Regina was sitting alone after a stressful day in an interview with an adoption agency, when the new British resident, the talk of the town, stealthily eased his way into her booth and introduced himself. He was relentless as he brushed off her daggered looks and eye rolls, and eventually, they were inseparable. He's been right by her side ever since. He was there the day she was able to bring Henry home from the agency, he was there when her father died, he was there was Graham proposed...
"You alright?" Robin asks from the entryway, drawing her back to the moment before sadly scoffing at his silly question. "Of course you're not."
Pushing her back from the refrigerator door where she was slumped, she sits next to him at the counter. Offering him the mustard, she tells him, "I was just thinking about how we met."
Chuckling, he utters, "Burgers and persistence." And they choose to enjoy the peace of their memory for a moment, but there's something nagging at him. He's fidgeting aimlessly when he asks, "Want to know what I can't stop thinking about?" She'd guess, but it could be a plethora of things at this point, "They probably never would have met if it weren't for us." He hastily reassembles his mustard soaked burger, licking some away from the tip of his thumb. "Sodding irony at its finest."
Regina can't help but laugh. At first, it's because of the irony, but very quickly it becomes a painfully bitter exhale and she drops her forehead carelessly against Robin's shoulder. "What do we do?"
She feels Robin's disheartened shrug. "I haven't a clue."