Disclaimer: All characters belong to ABC's Once Upon a Time.
Pairing: Regina Mills/Emma Swan
Rating: T – Romance/Hurt/Comfort
Summary: You call her. You said you wouldn't, but that was three whiskeys and a hell lot of self-loathing ago. Something tells you it's the middle of the night and it is highly inappropriate to call someone this far into their sleep, but you do it anyway. And you wait.
Note: I started writing it without really knowing where it would take me, and I can tell you it almost took its own course, so I'm not completely sure it makes sense. It's vaguely set after the "good guys" found out Regina didn't kill Archie – except there is no mother for her to deal with here just yet. I hope you enjoy reading it, and leave a review if you feel like it. Thanks!
A QUARTER AFTER ONE
Picture perfect memories,
Scattered all around the floor.
Reaching for the phone 'cause
I can't fight it anymore.
(I need you now, Lady Antebellum)
You call her. You said you wouldn't, and you really weren't planning to, but that was three whiskeys and a hell lot of self-loathing ago. Dialing when the numbers are all blurry seems hard enough to make you think about giving up, but a numb part of your brain awake to the fact you have her on speed dial. The same numb part tells you it's the middle of the night and it is highly inappropriate to call someone this far into their sleep, but you do it anyway. And you wait.
When you are about to put the phone down to refill you glass, she answers in a too drowsy voice for you to convince yourself she was up. She doesn't say anything other than a hum, letting you know she is listening, "Sheriff Swan, I need you. Now."
Calling her "Sheriff Swan" is a nice formal and official touch, and you pat yourself in the back for being able to sound less desperate than you are. After confirming that yes, you are at your house and being told she will be there as soon as possible, you let yourself go get another glass of hard liquor.
Sheriff Swan doubtless thought your choked voice meant you were being attacked by one of the countless angry Storybrooke citizens and that is the only reason she gets to your house in five minutes flat.
Looking less like your usual regal self in silky pajamas pants and barefoot trying to balance your glass to keep its contents to spilling over, you open the door. You open the door to a very concerned Emma, leather jacket on, trying to get her badge to stay clipped to her too tight jeans, and you step aside to make room for her to enter, clinging to the door for balance.
You down your whiskey as if it was meant to be a shot, and you can't keep your eyes from hovering over her body, gladly noticing her jeans are making some curves way more evident than they should be as she paces down the hallway, looking for signs that may confirm her suspicions on why you asked her here.
Settling your glass on the first table you find, you let the wall help you with your balance as you follow her to your study. Maybe you shouldn't have had that last glass – truth be told, maybe you shouldn't have been drinking at all. You get to the room a few moments after her, just to find a frustrated woman with her hands on her hips staring at you.
"Why did you call me here, Regina?" and you like the way your name rolls out of her lips so much you barely register that she is angry.
You make your way from the doorjamb to the sofa safe and sound, and you congratulate yourself for not even tripping. You feel an urge aching in the pit of your stomach, and you can't tell if it's caused by the drinking or the raw staring you are receiving.
You pout and you say her name, just to check if it feels as good as she saying your name sounds, "Emma…"
It does.
Hearing her sighing loudly makes you close your eyes and let the images your sober self doesn't allow you to form in from of you. She is sighing into your ear and a hiss comes out of your mouth when she bites down your lobe. But you open your eyes and she is taking a seat next to you, looking at you like you were inside out.
And maybe you are.
"Regina," she tries again, "Why did you call me here?"
Something in her voice makes you want to tell her the truth, but that wouldn't happen until another whiskey. And you are already in your consciousness threshold, "How is Henry?"
You wanted to ask her about your son for a couple of days now. But instead of calling her while sober and asking to talk to him, you decided to try and drink your way into forgetting why you don't see your son everyday anymore. Your mind betrays you and you are taken aback when such memory flashes before your eyes.
Kneeling down, you take Henry's hands in yours and you look at him with pleading eyes, but you don't even know what you are asking for. Oh, be honest, you know – you are asking him the one thing you ever asked him, you are asking him to love you. "I know you are trying not to be evil, but it is inside you. It will always be. I don't want to see you anymore," you hear the words and you can't believe your ears, you don't want to. You watch as he runs out your door to a yellow bug, leaving you down to your knees and your heart ache a bit more when you see his blonde mother giving you a comforting smile from behind the steering wheel.
You suppress a sob. You want to drink the pain away, loosen this tight grip around your heart and more than anything, you want to stop feeling so damn weak.
As your surrounding comes back into focus, you look down at your hands tangled with another pair a shade or two lighter. It takes you a minute to realize Emma is holding your hands, and you look back at her when you do. She is wearing the same smile she was when Henry left you, trying to comfort you somehow. And now you want to cry. So much for being strong, Regina.
"Henry is… okay. He wants to see you," you can hear Emma weighting her words as she says them, and how she takes a break to let the news sink in in you. He is fine. He wants to see me. "We can have dinner at Granny's sometime."
"I'd like that", you try to say. You choke on the words and you doubt Emma understands what you mean, but she squeezes your hands regardless. She looks drained, you think, and a part of you wants to believe motherhood is giving her a hard time, but you also want to believe Henry is happy with her.
Whatever it takes, you want him to be happy.
But you glance at the clock on the wall and you get now why she looks worn-out – it's one fifteen in the morning.
You should apologize for getting her out of bed, but you don't want to. You should keep your eyes on hers, but that feels too painful and you drop your eyes to her neckline. Despite having a good sight of her cleavage, you notice something else. The zipper on her jacket looks blurry, and you free a hand from hers to touch it – there must be a reason why it's out of focus, but so is your hand and this is just plain odd. You let your hand grab a handful of her jacket and you blink, and you feel a wet warm trail being formed down your cheek.
You gulp down a sob, you swallow past it and you fight back another tear. You are not crying.
Emma holds up her hand and you dread she will touch your face – you cannot stand that kind of interaction and you tell yourself it is due the years of building a wall around your heart, not the fact Emma seems to be the one able to break through – but she cups your hand that lays two inches from her heart, that is beating ridiculously strong. You move your hand just a bit so you can feel in full how strong and steady her heartbeats are.
And you let yourself sink into this warm feeling spreading through your body as your breathing slows down to match the pumping under your hand.
Drifting off to nowhere in particular, calming yourself down one heartbeat at a time, you don't know how long it has been before you snap back into the present. You assume it has been quite a while, given that the liquor is starting to wear off and you can feel your lips again, your bitten down lips that sting and fill your mouth with a copper taste that makes you want to cry.
But again, you are not crying.
You release your hand from Emma's grip before you realize she has laid her head down on the couch and were on the edge of sleeping. That startles her and you are up to your feet before those green eyes can take your half sober form in, and you are smoothing your tank top down, trying to put on any of your too many masks to regain some of your composure.
And that comes crashing down as soon as she hover her sleepy glare over your body before getting up too, standing way less than a foot away from you.
You falter when she wraps her arm around your waist and your "What the hell you think you're doing?" gets stuck in your throat, because you want to know where she is going with this. She tilts her head down and you can feel her warm breath in your cheek, and she is saying something you can't make sense of, not when she is so ridiculously close.
Your throat makes a "Huh" sound and she repeats herself, "I said I'll get you to bed, let's go."
And you freezes.
"No!" you shout as loud as you frightened voice allows you, and you step away from her – not really away, just enough to make sense of your own thoughts, "I don't want to sleep."
"Why not?" she asks and it is such a simple question you have no idea why you are so terrified to answer.
It takes you more than a few moments and concerned glances from Emma to gather up the courage to say, "I have nightmares," she stays put, waiting for you to complete your line of thought and your face must be devastated for her not to make any comments, "Every night, I… I dream of my mother trying to get me to be like her, the king treating me like anything but a person, Henry rejecting me over and over again, I dream of you…"
"Me?"
She cuts you off and your tongue gets tied. Congratulations, my Queen, you just admitted you dream about your son's biological mother. At least she cut you off before you say she is the only good thing that happens in you dream land.
You wave her off, hoping it looked like your mayoral wave rather than a schoolgirl thing. But she takes the hint regardless, "When did it start?"
"After you broke the curse," you say without blinking because it is too fresh in your mind how you woke up covered in sweat, after falling asleep on Henry's bed on the same night they thought he had died and dreaming a too vivid dream of King Leopold entering your bedchambers for the first time.
"Much like the sleeping curse," Emma is deep in thought and you can't help but find it adorable how her brows are drawn together, a soft line forming in between. Well, the liquor is wearing off, but you are a long way from being completely sober.
You find yourself gazing at her focused expression and she is still too close. Close enough for you to reach out for her arm almost unwillingly, grazing it lightly until you find her pulse and you put some pressure into the touching, glad you can adjust your breathing to her heartbeat once again, "It is alike, but I'm not trapped in a burning room. I'm trapped in my memories."
Emma lazily moves her stare from somewhere behind you to where your skins touch. Then to your eyes, and you can't help the little sigh that comes out of your mouth – her terribly intense green eyes are burning holes into your soul, just as they did for such a brief moment when you offered her your apple strudel that put your son in a sleeping curse.
Then again, your memory betrays you. This time, the remembrance is a little softer, just sweet enough to give your heart a squeeze that lies between joy and sorrow – oh, how you despised nostalgia.
You refused to get down to your knees this time, but you bend enough to be eye level with your baby boy – he looks so young you almost doubt he is nearing eleven years old. You take his face into your hands and he says the words you wanted to hear the most, "I know you didn't do it. I am so sorry I doubted you, mom. Emma believed you, and I should have had believe you too. I'm sorry, mom, I'm sorry," and you hug him. You hug him because yes, of course you forgive your son, and you don't want him to feel so sorry. It is okay now; you put it all behind you.
As you rest your chin on the top of his head – he is growing so fast – you glance at Emma standing awkwardly on the hallway. She mouths "I'm sorry too," to you and you smile at her. Yes, you forgive her too. Something inside you twists and for a moment, as you hug your child and smile as freely as you could, you believe there is happiness for you after all. But that doesn't last long, it never does. You child comes out of your embrace and says he will see you around before going "home" with Emma – you won't be seeing him for a while, and this realization hits you so hard you barely notice the tears stinging your eyes.
"Regina?" you come back to Emma's rushed voice calling out your name, "Regina! You with me?" and her eyes are wide open, worried about something you seem oblivious to, all you can focus on is her hand cupping your cheek, squeezing lightly trying to get your attention.
And she sure does. Before you can make sense of anything else, you lean in to her. She is so painfully close you only as much as tilt your head before capturing her lips in yours – your eyes flutter shut, your free hand acts on its own towards her waist, and you can feel both her heart and yours racing together as you keep her pulsing point secured between your fingers. You move against her unbelievable soft lips once, twice before you feel the grip in your face slide to the back of your neck, and you run your tongue across her bottom lip, tasting something sweeter than you ever thought Emma had in her.
Without giving you a proper change to put a name on whatever you tasted on her lips, she jumps back, breaking the kiss with no warning. Your hand falls from her waist, but hers is still securing a few strings of your hair between her fingers and that really doesn't make sense when her eyes are wide in pure shock.
She kissed you back. You know she did. If anything, you know when someone is not being reciprocal, and she was.
Emma lets out a shaky breath and her eyelids flutter for a second, before locking gaze with your half closed eyes, "Not like this".
You feel your stomach sink and you taste bile – rejection always made you physically ill.
During Emma's stay in this city, you always felt nothing but hatred for her. You could never enjoy being around her, but you never denied the things she made you feel, you crave. And you could swear she felt those things too, but being trapped for twenty-eight years might have messed up with your judgment. After the curse was broken, after she saved you from the wrath that took her to another land and believed you when nobody else did, you could feel your feelings for her changing from hate to lust from lust to – no, you cannot say love. Not when she just so bluntly stopped the only move you have made in such a long time it felt like forever.
Swallowing past the lump in your throat, you notice that her hand is still on your neck and although yours is no longer holding her arm, she has got a hold on yours. The hurt you're feeling must be written in big block neon letters on your face, because she tilts her head to the side and smiles at you, before starting to play with your hair.
That is it, you are lost.
"I don't want… us to happen when you are drunk," she explains and you wonder when you started showing your emotions so clearly, "If you still want to kiss me tomorrow, we will kiss."
Your eyes widen in understanding and you let an 'oh' come out of your mouth. She does feel it too.
"But Regina," you swallow again, the lump getting bigger – you have no idea what she will say, but you're not sure you want this night to get any longer, "Why did you call me here?"
"I didn't want to be alone," the truth is out of your mouth before you can stop it, and if you could, you would shove them back into your mouth. She doesn't need to know that.
"But why did you call me?"
She knows how to be pushy, you give her that. You consider saying something else, anything but the truth, but you are already feeling half naked so what the hell, "You were the only one who believed me," her big green eyes stare at you, and you keep going, "Yes, you made a scene and I tossed you across my yard, but you were the one who tried and stood up for me."
You have no defenses up. You are playing no games, you are kidding no one. You are getting sleepy now that you are sobering up and you just know you will have a massive headache in the morning, but you are telling her the bare truth. And she just takes it, nods and draws her fingers from your hair down your cheek.
"Now come on. You are taking a shower and we are getting to bed – you need to sleep it off, bad dreams or no bad dreams" Emma sounds so familiar you wonder if you ever did it before. You let her guide you, her hand never leaving your arm, but you stop her before you get to the stairs.
"Emma," you look in her eyes and you are so sure your eyes are pleading you don't even try to hide it, "Will you stay?"
She gives you an apologetic smile, just like the one she gave you outside Granny's when you asked if Henry could stay over, and you brace yourself for some made up excuse, "I need to be at the station really early and… my dad kind of needs me there. And Henry…"
"Oh, please," you snap, annoyed with her attempt of making her way out of it without saying straight up she doesn't want to stay, "Henry already sleeps through the night, and I'm sure Daddy Charming can handle Storybrooke's crimes if you are half an hour late."
"Don't be like this," she asks you in a kind low voice, and again, she sounds familiar, like you arguing about her parents is something trite, "I'm staying, but no snarky comments."
You shrug it off while walking up the stairs, and you smile at her, "Sorry; never had in-laws before."
And this is the first joke you crack with Emma. Sure, the whiskey took the edge off and being on the verge of falling asleep always made you a bit funnier, but you can't deny that damned woman made her way through your too high walls until you were comfortable enough with her.
You shower, she pretends she doesn't pick, you put on clean pajamas and so does she. Emma brings up how her mother helped Aurora deal with the burning room and you decide to give it a try. You rest your head on her shoulder and she runs her fingers through your hair until you are sound asleep.
And for the first time in weeks, you do sleep through the night.
Fin.