A/N: I posted this on AO3 a few weeks ago and didn't get around to posting it here at the time. So here it is for anyone who only reads over here.
Written for 31 days of Fanon Swan Queen, Day 24: Which ridiculous trope is the one they wind up in?
"Don't touch anything unless I tell you to. There are dangerous magical artefacts in here." It didn't matter how many magic lessons they had, every one of them started with Regina pre-emptively telling Emma off.
"I know, okay? I'm not a child." Emma pouted as she said this. "You say that every time I come here and we've been doing this for, I don't know, a year?"
Regina crossed her arms and pinned Emma with a stern look. "If I thought you'd learned your lesson the first, second, third, or even the fifteenth time, I wouldn't feel the need to warn you. But you haven't."
Emma started to protest, but Regina interrupted her. "Need I remind you that last month, you unleashed a swarm of locusts into the vault and they ate our clothes?"
Emma looked at her boots as she scuffed them against the ground. If she was being entirely truthful, although she hadn't meant for the locusts to happen, she couldn't quite bring herself to regret it. In fact, it was a memory that she was pretty sure she'd cherish until her dying day. She didn't dare to look up in case Regina caught sight of the hint of a smile she couldn't quite suppress.
"Or what about that time you picked up a tree sprite's talisman and turned Robin into an oak tree?"
She definitely didn't regret that one. They'd spent a week trying to change him back, until he'd spelled out I'm happy… leave me be in acorns. She finally managed to get her expression under control and she looked up at Regina. "It's not like I meant to do any of those things."
Regina sighed, her voice heavy with exasperation as she said, "And yet somehow, you manage to do them anyway. Come on. Let's not waste any more time; I've got a meeting this evening."
Emma trailed after Regina. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she stumbled, too busy admiring the curve of Regina's legs in high heels to pay attention to her own footing. She bumped into a shelf as she steadied herself and an object fell to the floor.
"Emma!" The sound of metal hitting concrete alerted Regina to her mishap; Regina turned and glared at her.
Emma bent down to retrieve the object; it was a silver cuff. Emma ran her thumb over the engraving and was just about to take a closer look when Regina snatched the cuff from her hand and put it back on the shelf.
"Sorry." Emma shrugged and tried to paste her most puppy-like expression onto her face. Regina was not in the least bit appeased.
Regina grabbed her arm and led her to the other end of the vault, keeping her as far away from any more shelves, all the while muttering about getting Marco to build her some cabinets with doors.
Neither of them noticed the brief glow of magic emanating from the cuff on the shelf.
Emma scratched at her wrist irritably. "Kid, are you getting bitten?"
Henry shook his head. "It's November, Ma. There aren't any insects out at the moment."
When the itching continued to intensify, Emma rolled up her sleeve and inspected her wrist. There was a reddish welt that seemed to wrap most of the way around her wrist. She continued to scratch at it distractedly as she picked up the game controller in front of her.
"Okay, kid. This time I'm definitely gonna hand you a beating."
Henry scoffed and rolled his eyes at her. "Sure thing, Ma. That's what you say every time." He pulled up the top scores list. "What's this? I'm seeing a lot of Henrys on this list and… only one Emma. And you cheated that time, anyway. You got Mom to beat me while you were signed in."
"Yeah, yeah. Shut up and play, kid."
The itch on her wrist settled to a vague tingle as she focused on getting beaten yet again by Henry.
Regina woke up to an intense, throbbing pain in her wrist. She fumbled in her nightstand for some Tylenol, swallowed them. While she waited for the painkillers to take effect, she turned on her bedside lamp and inspected her arm. There were no signs of any bruising and she couldn't think of anything she'd done that would make it hurt like this.
She turned off the light again and tried to get some sleep. However, the pain only intensified and she finally gave up on trying to sleep. She couldn't explain the impulse that led her to get up and dressed at two in the morning and leave the warm, comfortable confines of her bedroom, but by the time she reached the main street of Storybrooke, the throb in her wrist had faded slightly in its intensity. And when she saw Emma walking down the street, somehow unerringly heading towards her, the ghost of a suspicion she'd begun to harbour suddenly became all too corporeal. She turned her senses inward, and there, almost seamlessly intertwined in her own magic was a spell not of her own making.
"Damn." She cursed out loud.
She pulled up beside Emma and wound her window down.
"Get in the car."
"Regina? What are you doing out here at this time of night?"
"I'd ask you the same question if I didn't already know the answer. Now get in."
Emma gave her a puzzled look, but didn't argue.
When Emma sat down, Regina turned to face her. "How's your wrist? Does it hurt?"
Emma's frown deepened. "How did you know about that?"
"I know all sorts of things." Regina reached over and grabbed Emma's hand, clasping it firmly in her own. Their wrists were soon illuminated with a tell-tale glow.
"What was that?"
"That, my dear, is the magical equivalent of a set of handcuffs that you've managed to get us stuck in."
"What? But I didn't do anything," Emma whined. "Not this time, anyway."
"Remember that cuff you picked up in the vault today?" Regina waited for the glimmer of recognition to bloom in Emma's eyes. "Yes, that one. It belonged to an order of assassins who used it to create perfectly bonded dyads that would work together as if they were one. And somehow you managed to activate it."
"Can't you fix it? Break the spell, I mean."
Regina sighed. "I wish I could, but if we try to interfere with the magic, we both die."
"And you just left that lying around?" Emma shook her head. "Seriously, Regina…"
"Granted, that wasn't my most sensible decision, given your penchant for touching things you shouldn't, but I really hoped you'd finally learned your lesson."
"So what does this mean?"
"It means that I'm stuck with you for the next week or thereabouts. Any time we move more than around ten feet apart, we'll both be in excruciating pain." Either way, Regina was pretty sure the next week was going to be a source of extreme pain; a whole week of Emma's company promised to be absolute torture, for any number of reasons.
"What are these for?" Emma asked as she took the pair of headphones Regina held out to her.
"Noise-cancelling headphones. I need to go to the bathroom and I'd rather maintain some semblance of boundaries. Put them on and turn around."
Emma sighed. This was going to be a long week.
Emma had already suffered through three hours of boring mayoral meetings on absolutely no sleep. The other participants had looked at her with puzzlement at the beginning, but quickly managed to ignore her as she sat there quietly with her phone. However, just before Regina's 2 o'clock arrived, she insisted that Emma get under the desk.
"I can't let you be seen sitting in on this one, Emma."
Emma grumbled for a couple of minutes, before sliding into the cramped confines under Regina's desk.
"And don't even think about looking up my skirt while you're down there."
"As if I'd want to," Emma snapped back. She kind of did, but only if Regina was into it.
Fifteen minutes into the meeting, her phone ran out of battery. Half an hour of listening in on discussions about development permits and height limits and she was on the verge of going crazy. And really, that was the only reasonable explanation for what she did next. Sheer, out and out insanity.
Ten minutes into the meeting, Regina had slipped her heels off with a sigh. Right now, one of those stocking-clad feet was dangling right near Emma's hand. She hesitated for a moment before reaching out with her index finger and gently running the tip of it along the sole of Regina's foot. There was a muffled curse from somewhere above the desk and the foot was firmly retracted, and curled backwards under Regina's chair.
That answered that question. Regina was very ticklish.
A couple of minutes later, the foot was back and Emma couldn't stop herself from reaching out again.
"Are you alright, Mayor Mills? You've suddenly gone very red."
"I'm fine. It's just very warm in here."
Emma wasn't expecting the sharp kick to the ribs that came next, and her breath whooshed out of her as she grunted in surprise.
"Have you got someone under there?"
"Of course not," Regina said.
A moment later, the property developer was peering under the desk. He caught Emma's eye and gave her a wink.
"Well, ladies, I might just leave you to it. Mayor Mills, you'll have the full application on your desk Monday morning. Pleasure doing business."
The moment the door closed, Regina dragged Emma out from under the desk by the front of her shirt.
"This time, I really am going to kill you, Emma. No more messing around with apples and pastry. Instant death. That's where you're headed."
Regina folded her arms and met Emma's glare with one of twice the intensity.
"What do you mean I have to sleep on the right side?"
"I always sleep on the left," Regina said. She was tempted to stomp her foot for effect, but suspected she might be surrendering the high ground in this argument if she did.
"Yeah? Well so do I and I don't see why I should be the one to compromise."
"Need I remind you that you're the reason we're in this mess?"
"Hey! It took both of us to activate that cuff thingy," Emma said, clearly indignant. She was silent for a moment, before her face brightened. "I'll arm wrestle you for it."
"Not a chance. I've seen your arms and I've absolutely no interest in participating in a contest that is so heavily weighted against me."
"I didn't realise you were paying attention." Emma waggled her eyebrows.
"I could hardly fail to notice with all of those ridiculous tank tops you wear."
Secretly, Regina adored those tank tops. Those tank tops, and the urgent need to save Henry, had been the only things getting her through Neverland. Those tank tops and thoughts about their contents had sustained her through more than one boring meeting. Those tank tops… Regina had even written bad poetry in honour of them. Not that she was about to admit any of this to Emma. Even the most skilled torturer in all of the lands she'd visited would not be able to elicit that truth.
"I guess I'll let you have the left side, because I'm a generous, big-hearted person." There was a pause. Then, "By the way, did I mention I sleep naked?"
Regina picked up a pillow and swung it at Emma. She ducked just in time, laughing as she did.
"Okay, okay. I was joking." Emma backed away when Regina brandished the pillow again.
Regina blinked sleepily as she tried to account for the unexpected warmth pressed against her side. Her eyes snapped open properly when she remembered Emma's presence in her bed. Sure enough, there was Emma nestled against her side, looking annoyingly pretty, her hair all mussed up and draped over Regina's arm.
Somehow they'd both ended up on the left side of the bed.
She was so startled by this realisation that she fell off the edge she was unexpectedly close to.
A moment later, Emma's face appeared over the edge of the bed, her hair long enough to tickle Regina's nose.
"Why are you on the floor?"
"I like it down here."
"Really?" Emma cocked her head like a confused puppy and regarded her with surprise.
"Of course not," Regina snapped. "And yes, I'm just fine," she grumbled.
"Okay. By the way, Regina, I just thought you should know that you snore."
From her position on the floor, she glared at Emma. "I most certainly do not."
"You do." Emma frowned contemplatively. "If I had to describe the sound, I'd say it was kind of like a hippopotamus had swallowed a French horn."
"I am actually going to kill you." She groaned. "Just as soon as I manage to get off the floor."
Henry eyed them both suspiciously as they walked into the kitchen together and Emma tried her best to look casual.
"Why's Ma here for breakfast, Mom?"
"We were working late last night and it made more sense for Emma to stay here." Regina smiled, and it looked insincere even to Emma, so she figured there was no way the kid was buying it.
She was right.
"What were you working on?" Henry asked as he slurped milk off his spoon with an expression that Emma could only describe as obnoxious.
"Henry…"
"Well?"
"Important town business," Regina said.
"What type of important town business? Is there a new enemy, or something weird going on?" Henry's curiosity was obviously piqued and Emma knew any minute now he'd be coming up with a full-blown operation to expose whatever he thought was going on.
"Budgets." Emma jumped in, hoping to kill whatever interest he had in the matter before it had time to fully develop.
Henry nodded his head exaggeratedly. "Budgets. In the middle of November. Sure thing, Ma."
Henry's suspicion only appeared to grow at Emma's continued unexplained presence in the house.
Later that evening, Emma perched on the arm of the sofa that Regina and Henry were sitting on as they settled in to watch a movie. She shifted, trying to get comfortable, but she couldn't. There wasn't enough room for her to sit on the sofa properly, and the nearest armchair was far enough away that she'd be bent double in pain if she tried to sit in it.
She sighed noisily and stood up.
"I'm going to make some popcorn."
"Okay, dear. There's some in the pantry," Regina said, without making any move to get up.
Emma looked at Regina pointedly. When she didn't appear to get the message, Emma said, "Maybe you could show me where it is."
They walked into the kitchen together.
"Can I please sit next to you? On the actual sofa? Your bed's way too soft and my back is absolutely killing me."
Regina rolled her eyes. "Harden up, Goldilocks."
"Not fair. At least you get to sleep in your own bed."
"Well I'm certainly not sleeping in your loft and then coming down to have breakfast with your parents in the morning." Regina smiled sweetly. "Unless, of course, you want me to. I'm sure the look on your mother's face would be absolutely delightful."
Emma shuddered. That was definitely not an idea she wanted to entertain.
"Please just let me sit next to you, Regina. If you want to hear me beg, well here you go. Pretty please."
Regina smirked. "Very well. You may sit next to me on the sofa."
Henry didn't look up from the television screen when they returned. "You know, moms, it's really cool and all that you're dating, but it'd be awesome if you weren't so obvious about going to make out."
Next to her, Regina was spluttering, apparently rendered incapable of forming a coherent response.
"Kid, we weren't making out. You know why? We're not dating."
Henry finally looked over at them. "Yeah? Where's the popcorn, then?"
Emma wracked her brain for a suitable response. She came up empty.
"Emma! You haven't been home in three days and your father and I are worried about you." Snow had made a beeline from across the street when she'd spotted them walking towards Granny's.
Emma rolled her eyes. "Mom, I'm a grown up. I'm allowed to stay out late occasionally." She narrowed her eyes in warning at Regina who was smirking at her over Snow's shoulder.
"Can I speak to you privately, Emma?"
Emma shook her head. "Anything you need to say to me, you can say in front of Regina."
Snow looked back and forth between Emma and Regina as if something had just occurred to her.
She smiled tightly and said, "Emma, honey, when you're ready to talk about this, I'll be waiting. And I promise everything will be alright."
After Snow left, Regina smirked at Emma. "You do realise she thinks we're sleeping together, right?"
Emma glared back. "I could hardly miss that, could I? She's not exactly subtle."
Regina's smile widened. "I'm suddenly in a very good mood."
"Really? Just thinking about sleeping with me did that? Imagine how good you'd feel if it actually happened." She elbowed Regina in the side.
"You wish."
Emma did wish exactly that. Frequently. Unfortunately, the fairies had, rather disappointingly, failed to grant that wish. She just kept on trying though.
"Do you realise that eleven different people have just automatically assumed we were a couple in the last few days? And none of them looked even a little bit surprised."
"What's your point, Emma?"
"I don't know if I really had one. Just thought it was kinda funny."
Regina was decidedly unimpressed at the thought of riding around in Emma's cruiser for the next 16 hours.
"I'm sorry about this, but I've been scheduled for this double for ages and there's no one else who can take this shift. I already called in every favour I had to get rid of the rest of my shifts this week seeing as you decided we had to keep this whole thing top secret."
Regina pursed her lips. "I suppose it can't be helped."
They'd been sitting in the cruiser for an hour when they responded to their first call: Pongo had broken into Old Mother Hubbard's garden.
They got out of the cruiser and walked through the gate. Pongo ran past a moment later and Emma reached out to try and grab him. She missed and fell flat on her backside.
"You're really terrible at this."
Emma got up and dusted herself off, before making another futile attempt to catch the rogue dog. "Yeah? I'd like to see you do better."
Regina sighed. "I'm doing this just to spare you any further embarrassment…" She whistled and Pongo immediately stopped doing laps of the garden. He trotted up to her and nuzzled into the palm of her hand. She gave him an absent-minded pat.
Emma eyed her with suspicion. "How'd you do that? He never listens to me. Did you use magic? Because if you did, that's cheating."
Regina ignored Emma's diatribe. "So this is what we pay you to do? Dog-catching?"
"Sometimes."
"It seems like a waste of your talents."
Emma smiled at her. "Aww… you think I'm talented?"
Regina ignored Emma's fishing expedition. "How often do you end up on dog-catching duty?"
"I get a call out at least once a week. Truth is, I'm pretty sure Old Mother Hubbard's been luring Pongo over here on purpose."
"Why on earth would she do that?"
Emma smirked. "She likes the way I look in my uniform. Always makes a point of complimenting me on it."
Regina couldn't quite prevent the irrational surge of jealousy she felt at this. Old Mother Hubbard was 85 if she was a day and hardly likely to be serious competition. And it's not like she had any reason to care about who was interested in Emma, anyway. "And you just keep playing along?"
Emma shrugged. "Why not? Cultivating goodwill towards law enforcement is part of my job. And besides, she makes the best lemonade I've ever tasted."
Regina rolled her eyes. "I should have known your stomach was involved in this somehow."
Emma looked over to the passenger seat of the cruiser. Regina was asleep. As Emma watched, she stirred a little, shivering, and pulled her jacket a little tighter around her. The heating in the cruiser was on the blink and Emma hadn't had a chance to put it in for repairs yet.
She hesitated for a moment before she took off her own jacket and tucked it around Regina. It wasn't like it meant anything, anyway. Being cold would help her stay awake for the rest of the night shift.
"I haven't been for a run in days and normally I try to go at least five times a week." Emma pouted and Regina looked not in the least bit sympathetic.
"Again, this is hardly my fault."
"Yeah, yeah, I know. I promise you, with the frequency you keep reminding me, there's no chance I'm gonna forget."
Regina just folded her arms and looked crossly at Emma.
"Please? I'm going stir crazy and I need to run." She really did. Five days and nights of Regina's constant company had left her a mess of agitation in more ways than one, and she was in dire need of a physical outlet. Unfortunately, one of her preferred physical outlets was decidedly off-limits due to Regina's constant proximity, so she was forced to find more G-rated means of relief.
"Fine. We can go for a run if it'll stop you complaining so much."
Emma threw on an old tank top and some shorts and sat on the edge of her bed to lace up her shoes.
"Damn," she muttered under her breath as she saw what Regina was wearing for their run.
"Did you say something?"
"No." Emma groaned internally; the sight of Regina in spandex for the next hour was pretty much going to defeat the purpose of this whole exercise.
She was planning to take it easy for Regina's sake; Emma was pretty sure she wasn't really into running. What she hadn't counted on was Regina's ridiculous competitive streak.
"Come on, Emma. You're holding me up." Regina raced off towards the next corner and Emma was forced to keep pace.
They'd been running for fifteen minutes and Emma could tell Regina was getting tired. "How about we slow down for a bit. Maybe stop and do some stretches?"
"If you're getting tired, Emma, you just had to say so," Regina gasped out.
Emma rolled her eyes, but she was pretty sure sacrificing a little bit of her pride was better than watching Regina have a massive coronary on the sidewalk. "Fine. I'm having trouble keeping up with you, Regina. Can we please rest for a little bit?"
Emma didn't fail to notice the wince as Regina climbed into bed.
"You're sore from our run this morning, aren't you?" She couldn't quite keep the gloating note out of her voice. Regina had continued to act like she was indestructible for the rest of their run and Emma had eventually run out of patience. She'd then spent the rest of the day watching Regina limp around and pretend not to be sore.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Regina snapped.
"Okay. I'll take your word for it. But just supposing you had been sore, I might have offered you a massage. But you're not. So I won't."
Regina flopped down on the bed. Her voice was muffled by a pillow as she said, "Massage oils are in the second drawer."
Emma figured that was about as close as Regina was ever going to come to conceding defeat. She allowed herself a moment to savour the victory, before getting on with the task at hand.
The task at hand proved to be far more difficult and distracting than Emma had imagined was possible. For one thing Regina wasn't the least bit quiet about expressing her pleasure or displeasure with what Emma was doing at any particular moment. And Regina's voice did things to Emma; it was ridiculous and kind of embarrassing just how much effect it had on her.
She found a particularly big knot in Regina's muscle. "You know, your calves probably wouldn't be so tight if you didn't wear heels all the time."
Regina turned her head to the side and glared at her. "Yeah? In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not exactly about to get invited to join a basketball team, and I need every advantage I can get in this town."
"I know. I'm sorry." A few days as Regina's shadow had given Emma a disturbing amount of insight into the constant state of alert that Regina lived her life in and the rarity of moments where she was able to relax, allowed to be something other than Mayor Mills or the former Evil Queen.
"You know, I didn't properly realise what it was like for you. What it's still like for you."
Regina was quiet for the longest time. Then, "I deserve nothing less. The things I did to them, if they'd happened to me, I would have repaid a thousand times over."
"But you've worked so hard to change."
"I have. But it doesn't mean they're obliged to forgive me. And nothing I could do will ever make up for what I did."
"For what it's worth, I forgave you a long time ago."
"Thank you, Emma." Regina sounded tired as she said this in a way that went beyond mere physical fatigue.
There was nothing more either of them could say after that, so Emma focused on what little healing she was capable of giving.
Regina opened her eyes. For the fifth night in a row, Emma had completely failed to keep to her side of the bed.
Regina cursed her own sentimentality for a moment, before pulling Emma a little closer. She might as well enjoy this while it lasted, because soon enough, things would be back to normal and Emma would probably want even less to do with her than usual.
She'd honestly expected that this much time with Emma would drive her completely insane and cure her of these ridiculous feelings in the process. She really didn't like to analyse her own behaviour more than she had to when it came to Emma, but she was all too aware that she tended to provoke her just to get her attention for as long as she could. Because any interaction with Emma was better than none.
And it was true that over the last few days she couldn't help but fall into their usual pattern of interactions, of provocation and response. But there had been more than that. Interspersed between the sarcasm and the bickering, none of it particularly serious, there had been moments like last night, Emma's fingers gentle and soothing on her aching legs. Or waking up with an extra jacket wrapped around her in the cruiser. And those little moments had only served to crystallise the things she was feeling.
After all, there was only so much of Emma's ridiculous nobility and self-sacrifice she could take. Even someone as hardened and cynical as she was could hardly remain unaffected.
She shifted slightly to get more comfortable and Emma stirred in her arms, looking up at her with eyes confused and bleary with sleep.
After a moment, Emma smiled crookedly and said, "Hey," and Regina couldn't help the answering smile that crept across her face.
"You know, we've only got to suffer through one more day of this," Regina said. She wasn't expecting the way that Emma's smile faded, or how quickly she managed to extricate herself from Regina's arms and find her way back to the other side of the bed.
"Yeah. One more day. Let's try not to kill each other when we're so close to the other side of this." Emma's voice sounded flat in a way that couldn't quite be explained by residual sleepiness.
It was mid-afternoon when Emma felt the change. Her wrist suddenly felt inexplicably lighter. She looked over at Regina for confirmation and received a tentative nod in response.
She shrugged. "Here goes nothing."
She stood up and walked to the other end of Regina's office, half-expecting pain that never actually manifested.
"Looks like it's run its course, Regina."
"Indeed." Regina smiled tightly. "Well, there's no need for you to stay around for my 3 o'clock. Consider yourself free to go."
Emma lingered in the doorway for a moment, a frown spreading across her face as she watched Regina busy herself with the paperwork on her desk. The casual dismissal hurt, but somehow, Emma couldn't help but feel like they had some kind of unfinished business.
Regina put the plates down on the table and sat down with a sigh. She picked at her meal, not really feeling any desire to eat. It had only been a few hours, but she found herself missing Emma in a way that seemed entirely unreasonable given they'd spent the last week entirely in each other's orbit.
Henry paused, fork halfway to his mouth, as he looked at her. "Did you and Ma have a fight?"
"Of course not. Why would you think that?"
"It's just that she's stayed here the last few nights and eaten dinner with us." He frowned. "And you just look kind of sad, I guess."
Regina shook her head. "It's nothing like that, Henry. The project we've been working on all week has come to an end and I'm tired."
"Right. The project. More budgets?" Henry's gaze was penetrating and she was reminded once again that it was very difficult to get anything past him.
"Something like that." She didn't really have the heart to put in enough effort to keep the lie going. She looked back down at her plate and pushed her food around a little more.
"It seemed like you were both really happy the last few days."
"Really?" She looked back up at Henry.
He shrugged. "I mean, you still bickered like you always do, but you were smiling way more than usual. Both of you. It was nice."
"Yeah, I suppose it was."
Later, she was getting ready for bed and she still couldn't shake the heaviness that had settled over her. She sat on the edge of the bed and ran her fingers over the indent in her pillow and the long, blonde hairs occupying it.
She changed her mind about bed, put her boots on and headed downstairs. She grabbed her coat and opened the door and was about to step outside when she noticed the figure leaning against one of the pillars on her porch.
"Emma?"
"Hey."
Regina frowned in puzzlement. "What are you doing here?"
"Couldn't sleep," Emma said. "Where are you headed?"
Regina shrugged. "Out. I needed some air."
"I know you're probably sick of the sight of me, but do you mind if I walk with you for a little bit?"
"Sure." Once upon a time, she would have agreed unreservedly with that sentiment, but now she found she couldn't quite get enough of Emma's company.
They walked together in silence for a while and there were several moments where Regina thought about breaking the silence and saying the things she wanted to say. But each time, her bravery deserted her and she kept walking. Emma Swan was not meant for her, no matter what fantasies she'd temporarily been allowed to entertain.
"Regina. Wait." Emma had stopped dead, and Regina was already a few yards ahead of her when Emma called her back.
She walked quickly back to the spot where Emma was standing, intending to say something, but she found herself robbed of speech by the look Emma was giving her.
"Regina, there are things I need to say to you and I want to do this before I chicken out again." Emma swallowed audibly, before continuing. "I spent most of the last week pretending that every moment was a hardship, but the truth is, it was anything but. I thought that it might help me get over whatever it was I was feeling, but all it did was help me see things more clearly."
Emma's eyes traced a languid path up and down her body and Regina shivered in a way that had nothing to do with the cool November night. They eventually settled on her own, the intensity of the gaze at odds with the almost casual, crooked smile curving Emma's lips.
"I don't know if it was just me, but I've been wanting to kiss you all week."
Regina finally, belatedly regained the ability to speak. "It wasn't just you and it wasn't just this week," she said, her voice soft.
There was a moment when that crooked smile of Emma's turned into a full-fledged grin. But just a moment, because Regina didn't waste any more time before closing what little distance remained between them and kissing the daylights out of her.
When they finally came up for air, the grin was back, and there was a cheeky glint in Emma's eye as she said, "If I'd known this would be the result, I would have played with your dangerous magical artefacts a lot sooner."