Regina made it three nights before she made the deal. It would take months for the ship to arrive in Neverland, and she simply couldn't last that long not knowing if her son was alive or dead. She had to know whether they would succeed. So, after three days and three nights without even the little peace she'd had in Storybrooke, she went to Gold. She broke her own rule for dealing with him and promised him a favor in exchange for his famed precognition. He agreed readily—seemed glad to be rid of it. As soon as she had it, Regina didn't even wait for the last trade of barbed witticisms. She stomped out of the room as fast as her heels could carry her, and back to her own. She wanted privacy in case of the unthinkable—she knew she'd be inconsolable if the future held a tiny grave, and no one would be privy to her weakness.
Lying in bed, she summoned up the tentative new power. With a jerk like falling asleep, she was elsewhere… back in her bedroom in the manor. Lying on the floor.
Regina looked around frantically. What had gone wrong? Had Gold tricked her, used his power to return her to Storybrooke? He wouldn't dare—he must've known that putting her that much rather from her son would have her burning down anything he showed the slightest affection for. Now she saw; the room was hers, but it was different. The atmosphere was off, the décor had changed—most obviously, there was a calendar, and the month was far off from what it had been.
Regina stood and cursed herself. Even more obviously, the bed was full. She herself was in it—another her with a trace of gray at the end of her hair and one new wrinkle at the corner of her eyes. Beside her—the other her—was a sheeted lump far bigger than when Henry had used to crawl into bed with her.
All Regina could think was that it had better not be Hook. The man was attractive, true, but she had been queen-there had to be standards.
She reached for the sheets to pull them back, but her hand passed vexingly through them. She was immaterial—an observer only. All she got for her trouble was the sight of gold between the sheets and the pillow.
Hair.
As if a trap had been sprung, Emma pulled back the covers even as Regina realized the possibility. The two of them. Her and her. They were in bed together. Cuddling.
How? Why? Had some kind of catastrophe claimed every other available bed? That still didn't explain why a queen would opt to share hers with the most unpleasant of peasants. And the skin contact! Were they huddled together for warmth? Regina looked outside. She saw no sign of an ice age, so what justification could there be?
"Regina," Emma said suddenly, nearly shocking Regina out of her skin before it occurred to her that if she couldn't touch her, then Emma surely couldn't see her. "Babe, you've gotta quit it with the night-spooning. I pull up the comforter because I think it's gonna be the usual meat locker outside, then I wake up and there's a furnace with boobs on my back."
"If you didn't wear a football jersey the size of Delaware to bed..." said the other Regina-no, Regina couldn't think of her as that, a queen and a witch-this was Mayor Mills, a fiction that had somehow sprung to life.
"It's lucky," Emma insisted. "Signed by Troy Aikman."
"What do you need luck for?" Mayor Mills pouted. "You already have me."
"Oh sweet goddess," Regina muttered. She'd take Snow White singing to the fucking wildlife over this.
"Do you know what day it is?" Emma asked.
For the first time, Mayor Mills craned her head from the pillow. "No-that's tomorrow. Henry's still at college."
College! So, Regina thought, she would get him back. She'd get him back and he'd go to college. Having Emma vined around her like dutch elm disease wasn't so bad compared to that.
Well, yes, yes it was. What the hell was going on? Had Emma made her some kind of sex slave? Seemed a little dark for her, but then, she seemed a little kinky. Or maybe it was the other way around-not that that was Regina's style. And if it was, she could surely do better than Emma Swan.
"Yes, he is," Emma was saying, burying her nose in the perfectly-coiffed mass of Mayor Mills's hair-Regina was glad that much hadn't changed. "Which means this is the last day we have the house to ourselves. No more shagging on the living room carpet. No more screaming each other's names."
"However will we survive?" Mayor Mills said, muffled through her pillow.
"You tell her," Regina said to her doppelganger, arms crossed. "Wait, what'd she do on the carpet?"
"I think," Emma said, "the only sensible solution is to fuck each other's brains out until we can't even think about sex-all within the next twenty-four hours."
"Or we could find the gag," Mayor Mills said, to a blinking, quivering pause from Emma.
"I finally get to gag her?" Regina said, both to herself and to herself. "Well... silver linings."
"Well, yes," Emma agreed, "or we could have sex in the mine shaft again-" It was Mayor Mills' turn to shudder in remembrance, "-but I really want to see if I could conquer your sex drive, for once. I can't always be the one begging for you to have mercy. It's bad for my self-esteem."
"She has self-esteem?" Regina asked.
"Alright," Mayor Mills yawned. "Shall I tie myself to the bed or do you want to do it?"
"Go take a shower," Emma suggested. "I like you better when you're clean."
"Lies," Mayor Mills retorted as she got out of bed, shedding her silver sleeping gown just before she left the bedroom for the bathroom. Regina studied her future self carefully. Mortality had had remarkably little impact on her. The good news was rather spoiled by the sight of-ugh-a 'landing strip' in place of her usual efficient Brazilian. Emma's bad influence, surely.
Mayor Mills did seem rather happy, almost whistling as she turned on a hot shower and checked her usual shampoo routine, assuring herself that each bottle was sufficiently full. Regina nodded approvingly. At the thought of an alternate her rooming with Emma Swan, Regina would've pictured herself in a soiled tanktop, with a rat's nest of hair and, somehow, an illegitimate pregnancy. Thankfully, the forces of rationality hadn't completely conceded this... 'future.'
Mayor Mills stepped under the shower stream and exhaled her sleep into the hot water. Regina could've licked her lips. Hot running water. Yet another thing Hook's ship was missing, along with decent company and intelligent conversation.
"You're going to break things off with her?" Regina asked her future self. "We all have moments of weakness, but begging Snow White for friendship isn't half so bad as turning into her daughter's... Valentine! What could you possibly see in something like that?"
"Knock knock," Emma said.
Both Reginas turned to see Emma on the other side of the shower door. She had taken Mayor Mills' advice and gotten rid of the football jersey. Regina caught sight of her other's slack-jawed expression and hoped her own wasn't identical.
Emma eased her way inside while they were still stunned. "Twenty-four hours to sexually satisfy Regina Mills. I'd better get an early start. Turn around."
"I will not!" Regina fairly shouted. "Get out of my bathroom and wait your turn to use the shower! And you should be grateful I even let you clog the drain with your-your-hair!"
"Wash my back?" Mayor Mills asked, her voice far below a shout.
Regina would've believed she was seeing an elaborate puppet show before suggesting that really was her, offering up her wet back to Emma's depraved intentions.
Emma, for all her faults, at least realized how blessed she was. Not giving Mayor Mills a second to change her mind, she darted in and kissed Mills over her shoulder as she pressed the mayor's body into the tiled wall. Regina opened her mouth, a bare squeak coming out, as she watched herself and her mortal enemy-french.
Emma, again, seemed aware of how ridiculous her circumstances were. "Your highness," she said teasingly, mock-bowing as she nonetheless lowered herself down Mills' body, kissing the gleaming wet flesh as Regina herself would've done in her place. Ten years into the future and she'd found a redeeming quality in Emma: good taste.
"M'lady," Emma continued, now nipping at the square of flesh at the base of Mills' spine where the skin seemed so uncommonly sensitive. Regina grabbed her own back in sympathy. It'd been a minor miracle when Graham had stumbled across that... sweet spot... so many years ago, and she'd been so adverse to revealing her weakness that she'd pretended her rapid orgasm hadn't even occurred, kicking him out of bed on an invented pretense.
Now Emma was pulling the skin there with her teeth like a cat clawing curtains, and by the look on Mills' face, time hadn't done anything to diminish that touch's hateful effectiveness.
"Come and be done with it," Regina advised herself-realizing this would literally be a 'Note to self'.
But Emma, lowborn bitch that she was, wouldn't let her off that easy. She stopped biting and simply kissed, and Regina saw Mills' tears of frustration hidden in the shower spray. God help her, she was turning into this bitch's bitch.
"I'll tell you what, queenie." Emma spoke while kissing Mills's ass-something Regina had often wished for her to do, but this mostly wasn't what she'd had in mind. "Even if you hadn't shoved your royal scepter into some very thankful areas of mine, I could tell you were a queen by this royal fucking ass."
"You always say the nicest things," Regina and Mills said in unison. Regina looked at her double in surprise. It was good to know some things never changed.
"Now," Mills continued, "are you going to stare at it all day or are you going to do something before the water gets cold?"
"Don't tempt me, baby. I could spend a year staring at this ass."
"Just a year?" Mills teased right back.
"For God's sake, fuck!" Regina demanded.
As if hearing her, Emma was defiant one last time-planting a kiss on Mills's tailbone as her strong hands kneaded that royal fucking ass, drawing her cheeks apart and letting them clap back together. Then Mills' hand clamped down on her hair, pulling on it with the same perverted fascination Emma had had, playing with her erogenous zone.
Emma obeyed the implied order, getting down on her knees and vining her arms around Mills' thighs. Regina watched breathlessly. With her free hand, her future self was actually spreading her ass cheeks. And Emma-Emma was staring at the small brown star of Mills' ass like she was hungry.
"Oh, you dirty little bitch," Regina said, not thinking to wonder why she stumbled over the words.
Her other self seemed to see nothing wrong with this—in fact, she seemed quite used to the idea of Emma licking the tender skin between her holes, then teasingly lower, almost to her crotch, before slithering her tongue back… there.
Regina had never—not once—allowed anything to happen back there. She hadn't even thought of it. It was depraved, indecent, low. But, seeing the look reflected on her face as Mills gave into the sensation, she wondered for a moment—actually wondered.
"Stop this!" she insisted in a low whisper, as much to herself as to Emma's lover. "Stop this right this instant or I'll—"
"Yes…" Mayor Mills moaned gently as Emma's tongue washed over her asshole, not even penetrating, simply—Regina couldn't even think about it. It was so wrong. So… wonderfully wrong.
She was seeing her own naked body, spread-eagled against the wall of her shower, legs akimbo with her worst enemy kneeling behind her and literally tonguing her ass. And it was arousing her. As she watched, Mills rocked her hips back into Emma's face, as if insisting on more—but really, making room for her right hand to slide down to her pussy, her left forearm pressed against the wall to cushion Mills' head as she gently drove it against her soft flesh. If it weren't for her foresight, the pleasure Emma was producing would've had her headbutting the tile.
"You'd better make her come. I've seen those Terminator movies, I know how to mess you up," Regina found herself telling Emma, her own sex feeling in need of attention. She felt an overwhelming need to just shove her hand down her panties and—what?—join in? But she couldn't. Couldn't expose herself to Emma fucking Swan and this stranger she'd become.
But she couldn't stop watching either. And she needn't have bothered with thinking up a way to set up a nasty future surprise for the future Emma. She was doing exactly as Regina had told her. Regina could see her double's face contort in pleasure, her eyes shut, her mouth working in tiny syllables. Emma shook her face, doing something that Regina could only quantity by the squeal Mills let loose, then she slapped Mills' hand away from her own pussy and covered the pink flesh with her own hand. Shoving three fingers deep inside.
Mills screamed now, biting her own fingers and throwing her head back, breasts heaving, hips working between where Emma was licking and where Emma was fingering. Regina watched in disbelief, knowing from sight alone that she'd never felt something so intense. She was always reserved in the bedchamber, dignified, politic—except this woman was mewling like a common whore. And it wasn't an act. No matter what happened to her, Regina would never debase herself that way to please a partner.
No. Emma was really making her feel—all that.
It was quite a realization, finding out that she envied Emma's bedmate, even if that bedmate was technically herself.
It must've come as a shock to Mayor Mills as well; or at least, a cognitive dissonance she had never quite reconciled. At the moment of orgasm—and Regina could tell it was an orgasm, with the unsightly face she had trained herself never to make, but that Emma had returned with a vengeance—Mills swore into the linoleum: "You pretty... pink... fucking PRINCESS!"
Then the strength went out of her legs. She slid down the wall, neatly slipping into Emma's arms so they both ended up on the floor. Regina stood over them, mouth agape. When she saw them slide together, Emma's arms around Mills and Mills' arms around Emma—even their legs intertwined—she actually raised her hands to her face like a horror movie heroine about to scream. Sex was one thing; obviously, Emma had so debased herself that her experience could be put to use. There wasn't too much shame in sleeping with an enemy if there was some sexual prowess to be enjoyed.
But no. Emma Swan was actually stroking Regina's back, whispering sweet nothings into her ear like… oh no.
Regina looked at their fingers—entwined, of course—and saw two circles of gleaming silver on the ring fingers. They matched, Emma wearing a simple, functional wedding band and Mills'… Mills had a ring with a goodly-sized but quite tasteful amethyst stone, very nice actually, but that wasn't the point!
"I'm going to lose my mind," Regina said despondently. It was like one of Henry's awful comic books where a superhero goes to the future and discovers a nuclear wasteland. Only far worse, because their future selves were generally zombies, not people having sex (mind-blowing sex) with Emma "pizza is a food group" Swan!
"Round one," Emma said, adding insult to injury. She was nuzzling Mills. Like a really obnoxious puppy. "Satisfied?"
"Not hardly," Mills replied. "But a good start."
"The only downside of that is I can't kiss you after." Emma nuzzled harder. "Like you don't have the cleanest ass in Storybrooke."
"You're right," Mills said, gazing into Emma's eyes. "You can't kiss me. Finish your shower; you didn't use any soap. As for me, I think I'll sleep in this morning. After five minutes with Listerine, you can join me."
"Admit it, you get off on bossing me around."
"Oh, no, dear, it wears on my soul like you wouldn't believe." Mills, commiserating, drew her forehead against Emma's. "But I know how wet it makes you, so I endure."
Mills got up, leaving Emma stewing by the drain. "That's the shower spray!" she called.
Mills retrieved her shower robe and left the bathroom, taking the time to turn the bottle of Listerine at the sink so the label faced Emma.
"Regina?" Emma called, and both of them looked back to see Emma had gotten up and detached the showerhead. "Sure you don't want to help me wash up?"
Before either of them could answer, Regina felt the vision suddenly dispel. She looked around frantically, catching a few glimpses of her house being swallowed up by the real world. She was back on the ship, back in her room, and Emma was there.
Regina nearly screamed, scrambling back in her bunk. Never mind that Emma was staring at her with simple concern, and the usual world-weary attitude she copped whenever they were in the same room. Regina half-expected Emma to strip her clothes off and subject her to God only knew what.
Hoped might've been a better word.
"Are you coming?" Emma asked.
"That's none of your business!"
Emma's face wrinkled with confusion. "But… dinner's ready? What, do you want one of us to bring it to you on a silver platter, your highness?"
"No, I'll… I'll be down presently," Regina announced, with a semblance of dignity. Emma just rolled her eyes.
It occurred to Regina that, for them to be married, one of them must've been attracted to the other. And it surely wasn't her to Emma; much more sensible was the notion that Emma, of course, was lusting for Regina's own perfect body. Such a thing could be turned to her advantage. More importantly, Regina could use it to shut the little bitch up.
"I could use a good meal," Regina said, stretching extravagantly. Letting her body bloom through the layers of clothing for Emma's eyes to avail themselves of. "Something warm and tasty. I hope you have something like that for me, Emma."
"I, uh…" Emma shook her head slightly, like she'd just woken from a nap. "Yeah, it's pirate food, so, probably sucks."
Regina walked slowly past Emma, brushing just a little too close and flashing a smile that was just a bit too friendly. "Well, sometimes things do just… suck." She put a particular emphasis on that last word. "We just have to enjoy it as best we can. Isn't that right, Emma?"
"I… guess?"
"Perhaps I could scrounge something up, just for the two of us. I'd hate to see you go to bed without being filled up." Regina raised one last eyebrow, then left the room, sashaying just enough to leave Emma wondering if it was deliberate. Henry alive and a clueless Emma hopelessly in love with her—this might just be a fun voyage yet.
Author's note: Hey, this has nothing to do with the story, but due to some financial troubles my family's going through, I'm taking commissions at the moment. Please PM if interested.