A|N Many thanks to outlawqueenluvr for being an awesome and encouraging (and enabling) beta!
Heat
"Hurry up," the Queen hisses behind him, for the…fourth, fifth time now?
"My apologies," says Robin, trying very hard to keep an even tone as he fumbles with another lock. Bloody imp and his perverse sense of humor. Trust the man to have rigged this room to transform into a wardrobe the instant its door trapped any unsuspecting intruders inside. Thus far, Robin has managed only three in a series of intricate deadbolts Rumplestiltskin's magic had thoughtfully fashioned as a way to earn back their freedom. "If you'd give me another moment—"
"And if I don't have another moment?" she asks imperiously.
"Your Majesty," Robin says rather stiffly now, "if you think I am purposely delaying our escape simply for the pleasure of your company, then rest assured how very mistaken you are."
She's quiet for a beat, and he inwardly congratulates himself on having discovered something she'd rather not talk about. He needs silence, if not space, to think. Squinting through what little light the cracks in the wardrobe can afford, he reassesses the lock that's stumped him. Perhaps if he tried something else—
"What are you doing?" Regina demands when he reaches for another tool in his trouser pocket and, miscalculating how closely she'd been standing behind him, winds up brushing a knuckle across the front of her thigh. She jerks away as if his touch had burned her, knocking against the back compartment of the wardrobe and sending the entire thing teetering onto its hind legs.
The sudden unsettling movement startles a gasp out of her and she slams into Robin, shoving him forward as he instinctively widens his stance, until balance has been restored and their world has quit careening backward. His bow and quiver, which he'd successfully crammed against a wall earlier, have now wedged themselves rather uncomfortably over his feet, and he carefully toes them off, arrows rattling in their disarray.
"Relax, Your Majesty," he tells her once everything has more or less sorted itself back into order, feeling rather grateful that she can't see him smirking. "I've no intention of taking advantage of you."
"Not if you place any value on your head, however small that might be," she sneers, practically pouncing on the opening he's just given her, though her words lack their usual bite.
"Oh, more pinecones than Your Majesty is accustomed to seeing, I'm certain," he states gravely, sensing her tense, as though she can't decide whether he means to make fun of her, or how she means to punish him for it.
He notices she still hasn't loosened her grip on his arms.
"I am, however, starting to wonder how pure your intentions are, milady," he comments, unable to resist needling her further. He's not sure whether it's the teasing tone of his remark or the sudden downgrade of her title that does it, but she seems terribly put out either way, roughly removing her hands and falling into another sullen silence.
Yes, it's a very good thing she can't see his face at the moment.
However, his smile flattens somewhat when he reaches to have another go at the lock and discovers that his hand is no longer holding the pick. He must have dropped it somewhere between the incident with Regina's leg and her attempts at turning them floor to ceiling in order to get as far away from him as possible.
Robin can't help but feel a bit wounded by this insistence of hers on always being so disgusted by him.
And he most certainly can't abide to admit to her that he may have squandered their last hope of making it out of this damn wardrobe because she had distracted him and he was an idiot and dropped it on the ground, where it's rolled off to who knows what corner, more than likely never to be recovered.
Particularly when he can hardly move a muscle without, apparently, risking both their lives. Based on the way she'd reacted to a mere graze of her leg, imagine if, say, his face were to get too close to hers while turning around, or worse, very far away from it indeed, if he bent down and—
"So," says Regina, as if she's somehow sensed the detour his mind has just taken and is determined to put a stop to it before he reaches some dangerous place. "What's the hold up?"
A resurgence of irritation promptly puts straight his deranged line of thinking. Clearly, it's the heat in this bloody coffin that's altering his judgment, and on that note, when had it gotten so intolerably stuffy in here? Gods only know Regina will get the very wrong impression if he makes any attempt to remove his cloak or loosen his tunic collar.
She clears her throat obnoxiously, a not so subtle reminder that she's still awaiting his response.
All Robin can manage is a stiff head shake, too frustrated to respond cordially at the moment. Instead, he resumes fiddling with the lock, as if by sheer force of will alone he'll convince it to open.
"I never knew a thief to have such trouble breaking into something," she remarks with studied disdain.
"Breaking out, if we're to be technical about it," he says as mildly as he can muster, though he's pretty sure he can hear his teeth grinding together. His neck is starting to prickle, probably from her breathing fire down the back of it while he crouches as much as he dares and frowns ineffectively at the confounded piece of metal. If he has to suffer such close quarters with this infuriating woman for one more second—
"What?"
Had he muttered that last part aloud?
"I merely commented that I've not the right pick for this type of lock," he tries, relaxing slightly when she seems to find his lie perfectly adequate and doesn't scoff at him right away.
"I suppose you didn't see this trap coming, did you?" Regina questions, sounding unsuitably haughty and triumphant considering the dire status of their situation.
"Nor did you, might I recall," Robin retorts, completely abandoning any pretense of interest in a lock he can hardly see through his blinding ire, much less dismantle with his bare hands. "Otherwise you wouldn't have followed me into this room. Unless it truly is my company you're after."
She bristles instantly, rising to his bait as predictably as ever.
"I will not stand here and have you make such baseless accusations—"
"Seems neither of us have a choice in the matter," he says with a calm he does not feel. How, exactly, are they to be rid of this ludicrous quandary, and of each other?
"Snow and Charming will be here any moment to rescue us from this mess you've walked us into," Regina dismisses confidently, and he feels her shrug, a brush of blue-tinged fur against his stiffening backside. He blows out an exasperated breath, unwilling to remind her how useless it is to pass blame between the two of them when they are both equally stuck in this wardrobe, with equally little chance of escape.
Besides, he doubts very much the Prince and Princess will be by to save them any time soon. He'd graciously volunteered to keep watch while they consoled a miserable-looking Belle—he's no sympathy for the imp, but it had aggrieved him to see an old friend so heartbroken—and Regina had, for some reason that still mystifies him, elected to trail after him as he sought to give the girl some privacy with her pain.
Their having the misfortune of finding themselves imprisoned in a wardrobe hardly seems a priority in light of other, more serious concerns. Such as taking advice from an imp whose word is hardly credible even in his "right" state of mind—a questionable matter in and of itself—and seeking out some banished witch in order to defeat a wicked one.
The stifling heat must be getting to Regina too, and she shifts restlessly with a quiet huff, her voice gravel-coated and coming from somewhere low in her throat when she speaks again. It stirs up an odd feeling in him, a warmth that has little to do with the temperature unraveling in his belly and echoed in his chest, which she subsequently ruins with her muttering distastefully, "That smell—when was the last time you bothered to take a bath?"
It's petty, but it stings more than he'd like, closing his senses off to his own discreet enjoyment of roses in bloom and air suffused with hints of how her hair might feel if it touched his nose.
"If we happen upon a stream on the way back," he says roughly, palms flattening against the blasted front panel, searching for any weak spots in the wood that might reasonably respond to his well-placed anger, "feel free to drown me in it."
Such a death would be vastly more preferable to the current alternative; he figures they're not long for perishing now, from the clearly toxic effects of each other's presence alone. But Robin is woefully ill-equipped to do anything about it, so he supposes he may as well speed up the process of his own demise.
"In the meantime," he continues, with just the right degree of a cavalier attitude to rile her up, "might I suggest you make yourself useful for a change—"
"Excuse me?"
"—rather than doing everything in your power to drive me to madness with your scornful commentary. Your Majesty."
"And what would you have me do? You already forbid me from using magic—"
"I'm fairly certain that would be considered cheating," he's quick, and maybe the smallest bit smug, to remind her. Knowing their luck, the wardrobe might just explode as punishment. "You are familiar with the concept, no?"
Gods but if he could only turn around just enough to behold the glorious sight of her rage and ruffled feathers. He's really quite taken with that scowl of hers, when it's expressly intended for him.
Wait, what?
Must be the heat, he rationalizes. That, and the fact that Regina seems entirely oblivious to how intimately she's draped herself against him, peering authoritatively over his shoulder and attempting, he imagines, to make her own assessment of the lock conundrum. Perhaps put him to shame for being a thief, and a lousy one at that.
His fingertips find purchase in irregular notches of the door and clench there as loose tendrils of her hair fall to caress his cheekbone. Finding he can no longer trust himself not to do something stupid, he carefully angles his face away from hers, effectively removing all temptation but for its lingering scent, and his lips thin together, thoughts growing light enough to drift away as he endeavors not to breathe.
At least this way she won't be able to accuse him of using up all the air.
"I can't see a thing with your head there," she announces irritably at last, and his feverish brain has likely imagined the breathless snag in her words at the end. A shock of warmth spreads from her palms where they've found his shoulder blades.
"Get out of my way," she orders him, shoving lightly. He would be too happy to oblige, but there's only so much room in this cramped compartment, and it's certainly not enough to accommodate any radical rearrangements. In their shuffling—she driving recklessly forward and he struggling not to wrinkle her overcoat as its enormous hemline crowds him at the knees, stooping so she can overstep him—he entirely misjudges the availability of space and stumbles backward.
Regina gasps, arms locking to brace against the wall above his shoulders, as his face lands perilously close to a generous expanse of skin at the level of her glittering corset. Her fur collar tickles from both sides, catching in his stubble. Each breath she releases, heavy with exertion and something else, washes across his sweat-sheened forehead and calls his attention to the slope of her chest.
Hands finding a place at her hips, steadying, Robin slowly rises to near-full height, vaguely cognizant of his head meeting ceiling as his gaze drags over the angle of her collarbone, her throat where it hollows. His eyes squeeze shut when the tip of his nose crosses the threshold of her jawline, grazing boldly over one cheek, but they're helpless to resist opening again when he feels her shaky exhale against his half-parted lips.
Slivers of light have cast their shadow and her expression is dark, unreadable, but the scar carved into the edge of her mouth stands in stark clarity, demanding, a taste, just a taste, and suddenly what little room they'd felt so crucial to keep between them is simply too much, too unnecessary, as is the notion of escape when he can no longer fathom a world to exist beyond this tiny stretch of space, this moment, that belongs to them alone.
Her lashes are weighted, utterly captivating him as they flutter and close.
"Regina," he murmurs, and he is lost.
Later he will overhear her blaming it on the heat, when Snow White, wielding a hatchet above the splintered remains of their wardrobe, wonders innocently at Regina's flushed appearance and uneven footing. Charming will express his mild curiosity at the fact that they'd somehow managed to not kill each other inside that box, while he kicks away broken locks and sheaths his sword, beckoning them back to the castle entrance.
"He's lucky you came when you did," Regina will sniff, turning her chin up and refusing to look Robin in the eye as she stalks past the door that had nearly claimed her arm. "Or I might have." And he, following behind at some respectful distance, will run his teeth over his lower lip, tasting blood where she'd branded him, and think she's not wrong about that.
But for now, they burn together, both to share in the blame for kisses that bruise and hands, wandering, that steal the very breath from each other, scalding skin and leaving a mark that he won't soon forget.