Emma drummed her fingers against the steering wheel while she waited for Regina to come out of her apartment building. She had called the brunette fifteen minutes ago to tell her that she was here and ready to go. Regina had said she would be right down. So, why was Emma still waiting for her fifteen minutes later?
She was sure it didn't take that long to grab a suitcase and come downstairs. Sure, Regina lived in the penthouse, but the elevator ride to the ground floor took one minute, tops. Emma knew this for a fact because, when Regina was sick, she had forced the blonde to bring her some work from the office, then lunch, then dinner. She had been sick for a week so, by the end of that time, Emma had come by so many times that she and the doorman were on a first-name basis. That was why Emma knew exactly how long it took to come down from Regina's apartment, and she should have been here about twelve minutes ago.
Emma wasn't a very patient person on the best of days, but when she had a five hour car ride with the woman she hated ahead of her, she just wanted to get it over with. She was tempted to call Regina again and tell her to hurry the hell up, but then the door opened and Regina stepped out.
She was wearing a tight blue dress, with a black blazer and black heels, and carrying a large handbag on one arm. Behind her, she dragged the largest suitcase that Emma had ever seen, which was Louis Vuitton, of course. She looked as classy as ever, which made Emma roll her eyes as she got out of her car.
She walked around to greet Regina, noticing a man following the brunette and dragging another suitcase. This one was slightly smaller, but still bigger than was necessary. He also had a very feminine duffel bag slung over his shoulder, which seemed to be weighing him down on one side. The man followed Regina to Emma's yellow bug, then dropped the suitcase and bag next to the trunk. He waited for Regina's nod before making his way back to the apartment building.
"Regina, I said we were going to Storybrooke for five days, not five months." Emma grumbled, looking at the two huge suitcases and the duffel bag.
"Better to be on the safe side, Ms. Swan." Regina said with a smirk, then looked behind Emma at the yellow bug. Her expression instantly morphed into one of disgust as she turned back to Emma. "What the hell is this?" She asked, pointing to the car.
Emma smiled in amusement and tapped the roof of the bug twice. "My pride and joy."
"I hope you don't expect me to get into that monstrosity." Regina turned her nose up at the vehicle.
"Well, yeah. Unless you want to walk to Storybrooke." Emma shoved her hands into her pockets and looked at her car. "Besides, it's not that bad."
"It's yellow." Regina said, as if that fact alone made it the most hideous car in the world.
"I happen to like the colour yellow." Emma shrugged.
Regina looked at Emma judgmentally. "Of course you do." She sighed, then lifted up her duffel bag. "Well, shall we get moving?"
"Sure." Emma nodded and walked back to the drivers side.
"Ms. Swan." Regina called, catching the blonde's attention again. "Aren't you going to help me?" She nodded to the two suitcases and Emma sighed and rolled her eyes.
She walked back to the trunk and opened it, revealing the single duffel bag that she had stuffed her belongings into. "You packed... lightly." Regina said with a frown as she put her bag next to Emma's.
"No, I packed accordingly. As I said, we're only going for five days."
Emma grabbed the first suitcase and tried to lift it up. She ended up dropping it back down again when she realised how heavy it was. "Jesus Christ, Regina. Did you pack everything but the kitchen sink?"
"Put your back into it, dear." Regina teased, then walked to the passenger side and got into the car.
Emma looked at the closed door in disbelief. "It's fine. I'll load the car." She mumbled sarcastically, aware that Regina wouldn't hear her.
How she was going to survive five days with that woman, she didn't know.
It took Emma longer than she would care to admit to get Regina's suitcases into the car. Not only were they ridiculously heavy, but they were also so big that they wouldn't both fit into the trunk. So, she had had to do some shifting, and eventually had managed to fit everything into the car, with one suitcase and one bag in the trunk, and the other suitcase and bag on the back seat.
As soon as they set off, Regina had pulled a manuscript out of her bag and began reading through it. Emma was thankful for this, as it meant that she got some peace and quiet to relax and think about how excited she was to see her family. As long as the brunette was occupied, then she wouldn't be bothering her, and she could actually enjoy the drive. However, she should have known that the quiet wouldn't last.
"Are you trying to hit every single pothole you come across?" Regina snapped as a bump in the road caused her to accidentally draw a line right across her page.
"It isn't my fault, Regina. There are potholes. If you want to blame somebody, then blame the government for not filling them with cement."
"You could at least try to avoid them."
"And you could at least try to not complain for two minutes." Emma quipped. She felt, rather than saw, the glare that she received from Regina at the comment, but the brunette shut her mouth and turned her attention back to her manuscript.
Emma let out a sigh of relief and glanced at the clock. They had been on the road for an hour, which meant they had four left. The thought made Emma's shoulders drop, but she reminded herself that the first hour had passed relatively quickly, so maybe the next four would too. And, on the bright side, Regina wasn't being too obnoxious at the minute. The constant sighing and grumbling every time they hit a pothole or someone sounded their car horn was annoying, but Emma could deal with that.
Speaking of potholes, Emma saw a particularly large one up ahead and smiled to herself wickedly. She moved her car to the side so that she would go right into it, and waited for Regina's annoyance.
After a few moments, they hit the hole in the road and the car jolted. Even Emma had to admit that that was a big one, but it was worth it was she saw Regina's pen slip again and draw another line across her page. The brunette huffed and slammed the manuscript shut, shoving it aggressively into her bag in exasperation.
"It looks like I won't be getting any work done on this journey." Regina said, trying to sound unaffected, but Emma could hear her frustration. Regina glanced at the clock and then sighed. "And four hours left to go. Wonderful."
Emma glanced at the brunette and felt slightly guilty about annoying her. Only slightly. She was more disappointed in herself for stooping down to Regina's level of annoying people just for the hell of it, but she tried to push the feeling away. She wouldn't let the Evil Queen make her feel bad. When Regina straightened out her blazer, Emma was reminded of how fancy Regina's outfit was and shook her head.
"I thought I told you to bring jeans and casual stuff? My parents aren't posh or anything, you don't need to dress up."
Regina glanced at her and then looked out of the window without interest. "I have brought jeans. They're in my suitcase. But I wanted to wear what I'm comfortable in, which is-"
"Tight dresses and sky-high heels? A.K.A. the least comfortable clothes possible?" Emma asked incredulously.
"Ms. Swan, I haven't questioned your choice to wear that hideous leather jacket, so I would appreciate if you didn't question my choice of clothes either."
Emma looked down at the red leather jacket that she was wearing and frowned. This was her favourite. "I love this jacket." She said quietly.
Regina looked at her, looked at her outfit, and then wrinkled her nose slightly. "Of course you do." She said under her breath, as if this day couldn't get any worse.
Emma shook her head in disbelief and clenched her jaw. This woman was unbelievable. First judging her for her choice of car, now her choice in leather jackets. Why would she even care what Regina thought of her anyway? Well, she didn't. Regina was pretentious and stuck-up and Emma couldn't wait to be done with her.
"Would you reach onto the back seat?" Emma asked, changing the subject. "There's a binder on there."
Regina looked over her shoulder and saw the ring binder that Emma was talking about. She reached over and picked it up, then opened it and flicked through the first few pages. "What is this?"
"It's the questions that the INS is going to ask us." Emma said, referring to their scheduled interview that they had coming up, where they would have to know everything about each other. "I've sorted them into categories. There are questions about our relationship, like how we met, that we'll have to come up with answers to at some point. But there's also questions about ourselves, like birthdays and stuff. The good news: I know all the answers to the questions about you. The bad news: you don't know anything about me."
Regina scanned through the pages of the ring binder. There were a lot of questions in there that they would need answers to, and Regina began to worry that they wouldn't be able to do it. "You know all the answers to these questions about me?" Regina asked incredulously. There was no way that was right.
"Uh huh." Emma confirmed.
"I highly doubt that."
"Oh yeah? Try me."
"OK." Regina scanned the page, trying to find a good question. "Here. What am I allergic to?"
"Pine nuts." Emma replied immediately. "And the full spectrum of human emotion."
Regina forced out a dry laugh and looked at the questions again. "What's my favourite colour?"
"Purple."
Regina nodded her head. "Well, I know your answer too. Yellow."
Emma glanced at her and smiled. "See, we've only spent an hour together and you're already learning about me. We'll ace this."
Regina smiled slightly at Emma's optimism and turned back to the binder. "Do I have any scars or tattoos?"
"Well, there's obviously the scar on the right side of your upper lip," Emma said, causing Regina to bring a hand up to it self-consciously. Should she be concerned that Emma had it memorised? She hadn't even needed to glance to check what side it was on, she had just known immediately. Regina felt guilty about the fact that she didn't have a clue if Emma had any scars or tattoos. "But I doubt you have any tattoos. You're too boring."
"I'm not boring." Regina said defensively.
"Do you have any other scars that I should know about?" Emma asked, ignoring Regina's argument.
"I have a scar on my thigh." Regina mumbled, turning the page to look through the other questions.
"How did you get it?"
"Does it matter?"
"Well, yeah. I might get asked."
Regina sighed, as if this whole getting-to-know-each-other was a chore. "I burnt myself with a hot glue gun when I was a child."
Emma glanced at her with amusement. "A hot glue gun? How'd you manage that?"
Regina sighed again in an overly-dramatic way, but reluctantly answered the question. "When I was younger, I wanted to be a queen. Well, every queen has their castle, so I was making a castle out of popsicle sticks, using a hot glue gun because I took my castle-construction very seriously. A blob of glue fell onto my leg and burnt me, then when I pulled it off, it took my skin with it."
Emma laughed and shook her head, finding it hard to picture a child-version of Regina making a castle out of popsicle sticks. One thing that she didn't find hard to believe was that Regina had wanted to be a queen. She probably still did. In a way, she had succeeded, seeing as she had the nickname 'the Evil Queen'. "I can't even picture you as a child making popsicle stick castles." Emma admitted.
"Did you think I was born an adult?" Regina asked with a quirked eyebrow.
Emma rolled her eyes. "Obviously not, I just... I don't know. I guess I've never really thought about your childhood."
"Well, I had one. Just like everyone else."
Emma nodded, trying to think of what her domineering boss looked like when she was younger. Regina was undoubtedly an attractive woman, so she must have been a cute child. She was probably well-behaved and polite, that's how Emma imagined her. For some reason, she wished she could see it."Do you have any pictures?"
"Of what? My popsicle stick castle?"
Emma chuckled and shook her head. "No. Of you as a child."
Regina looked at Emma, surprised by the question. "Maybe in my apartment somewhere. Why?"
"Because I'd like to see one some time."
Regina swallowed, trying to remember the last time anyone had wanted to know about her childhood. Or the last time anyone had wanted to know anything about her. Her life revolved around her work, which didn't leave much time for friends or dating, so the only people she really spoke to were from work. It wasn't exactly a secret that her colleagues weren't that fond of her, and she suspected that even Emma hated her, which made it strange that the blonde would want to see pictures of her at all, never mind her childhood.
Regina didn't know why Emma would say she wanted to see pictures of her as a child. She didn't know what the blonde's intentions were, so she didn't know how to respond. So, she decided to just ignore it.
"Uh... Well," She cleared her throat and closed the binder. "I don't know the answers to any of these questions." Regina admitted, tapping the binder. "So, why don't you tell me some things about yourself. Like, do you have any tattoos or scars?"
"I have some tiny scars," Emma informed her with a shrug. "But I don't even remember how I got most of them. I was an adventurous kid, I fell down a lot so they're probably just scrapes from falling out of trees and stuff. As for tattoos, I have a flower on my wrist."
"A flower? Original." Regina scoffed, trying to seem disinterested while she sneaked a glance to see if she could see the tattoo in question. The wrist was a place where the tattoo would be visible, but Regina had never noticed it before. She had never really noticed much about Emma before, and now she felt guilty about it.
"It was part of my rebellious phase." Emma explained with a shrug. "I wasn't interested in getting anything meaningful, I just wanted a tattoo."
Regina just lifted an eyebrow and looked away, slightly annoyed that she couldn't see the tattoo at the moment. "Is there anything else I should know about you?"
"Um..." Emma thought for a moment before answering. "My birthday is October 22nd; I'm 28 years old; I was born and raised in Storybrooke, but I moved to New York when I was 21; I was a bail bondsperson until I decided that I wanted to be a writer, so I quit and started working for you; my favourite band is Nirvana; my favourite movie is The Avengers... Oh! And I love grilled cheese."
Regina nodded along, trying to commit every fact to memory, but having a hard time when they were just being fired at her like this. She knew that she still had a lot to learn, but at least they were making a start. It made her feel bad that Emma knew all the answers to the questions about her, but she knew so little about Emma. She hated the feeling, and tried to tamp it down, but it was there nonetheless.
On the road up ahead, a long queue of cars just waited for Emma and Regina to join, causing Emma to sigh as she slowed down the car.
"What's the hold up?" She asked, trying to see why the cars in front of them were no longer moving.
"I'll check."
Regina got out her phone and connected to the internet, then looked for any road problems that could be causing the traffic jam. "There's been an accident a mile ahead." She said eventually, scanning through the news page. "There'll be delays until it's cleared up."
"Great." Emma mumbled, hitting the top of the steering wheel with her hand. "I guess that means our trip will take a little while longer."
Twenty minutes later, and Emma and Regina had barely moved a metre. They were crawling forward at an excruciatingly slow pace, with no sign of the traffic jam moving any time soon. Regina had learnt that Emma could be quite impatient, if the constant huffing and puffing was anything to go by.
But Regina ignored the blonde and looked at some of the questions in the ring binder. They would need to go through them all at some point, which was something that she was not looking forward to. It reminded her of studying for some test at school, which was something that she never wished to do again. Yes, she had been a good student and had always gotten straight As, but that didn't mean she liked revising.
Eventually, she got to a page with questions about their relationship and began to look through them. It included things like when and where they met, their first date, what they had in common, why they agreed to go out again. Regina sighed internally when she realised that they were going to need to plan a whole fake relationship meticulously.
"If we don't move soon then it might take us six hours to get to Storybrooke." Emma grumbled.
"Well, if we're stuck in traffic then why don't we use our time wisely?" Regina suggested. "We could come up with answers to some of these questions."
Emma sighed loudly, causing Regina to roll her eyes. It's not like she wanted to do this either, but at least she wasn't sighing about it. "Fine." Emma said, like a teenager being forced to do their chores. "What's the first question?"
"When and where did we meet?" Regina asked.
"Easy. When I started working for you. The first time we met was in the interview, when I came to your office, remember?"
Regina nodded her head. The blonde woman dressed in work trousers and a shirt had been the most professional of everyone she had interviewed. Also the most attractive, but that didn't play any role in Regina hiring her. Regina didn't date, so never bothered to look at Emma like that.
"Did we make arrangements to meet again?" Regina read from the page.
"Uh... yeah." Emma said in a 'duh' voice. "You hired me. We agreed to meet the following Monday, when I would start working for you."
Regina nodded her agreement, then moved on to the next question. "When was our first kiss and how did it occur?"
"Huh." Emma thought for a moment. "I guess this is where we need to deviate from the truth."
"Indeed." Regina agreed. Seeing as they had never actually had a first kiss, it seemed that they could hardly tell the truth in this question.
"Well, it's gotta be realistic." Emma began, thinking out loud. "So, I'd say our first kiss happened at work, because we never saw each other outside of work. We were working late and everybody else had gone home, so it was just the two of us. It was dark out, and we were in your office. The lights from the city were shining through your window, and all we could see were skyscrapers and New York traffic below. We had the lamp on in the corner, and the one on your desk, so the room was only dimly lit. You know, that romantic lighting. We ordered some food - Italian. That's your favourite - and were eating it at your desk."
Regina looked at Emma, surprised by the amount of detail that the blonde was going into and intrigued to find out where this was going. "So, we were talking while we were eating. Just about mundane stuff, like small talk. But then I accidentally let it slip how beautiful you looked. You were wearing that red dress, by the way. The tight one with the collar and the oval-shaped hole at the top, you know which one I mean?"
Regina looked at Emma with a small frown. Did she really think she looked beautiful in that red dress? Or was she just saying that for the sake of the story? "I know which one you mean."
"Good. So anyway, I accidentally told you that you were beautiful. Like, the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. And then you said..."
"You think I'm beautiful?"
"Yeah, that sounds realistic." Emma said, causing Regina to frown. She had actually been asking Emma, not just suggesting the next line of their little play. But she kept her mouth shut while Emma carried on with the story. "And then, knowing me I would realise that I shouldn't have said that. You were my boss and it was unprofessional, so I probably would have tried to backtrack and convince you that I didn't mean it. Of course, this would have resulted in me rambling like an idiot in front of you."
Regina smiled to herself, finding it way too easy to imagine these events unfolding. She could practically see Emma rambling to try and dig herself out of the hole she'd put herself in, despite the fact that this story was completely fictional. "And then I would have smiled." Regina decided, looking back at Emma. "Because it's cute when you're nervous." Regina swallowed, a little embarrassed about saying that.
Emma looked at her in surprise, clearly wondering the same thing that Regina had wondered when the blonde had made the comment about her being beautiful: whether this was for the sake of the story, or whether it was true. Regina didn't want Emma to know the answer, so she looked back ahead as soon as they made eye contact.
"And that's when I kissed you." Regina finished. "To shut you up, and because I liked you. There'd been chemistry between us for months, but we'd both ignored it for the sake of professionalism. That night, we decided that we couldn't anymore."
"Y-yeah." Emma nodded her agreement. "So, we kissed. Then, one thing led to another and-"
"Let me stop you right there, Ms. Swan." Regina said, holding up her hand to stop Emma. "Nothing led to anywhere. We kissed. Period. I have more class than to sleep with someone before even going on a first date."
Emma frowned and scoffed. "I wasn't going to suggest that we slept together."
"Oh, really?" Regina asked incredulously, raising her eyebrow in amusement.
"No. I'll have you know, I have class too. I was simply going to suggest a little second base action."
It was Regina's turn to scoff now as she shook her head. "No way. We didn't grope each other like teenagers, we just kissed. A soft, sweet, romantic kiss."
Emma looked at her with a smile. "I didn't have you pegged for such a romantic."
"I'm not-"
"See. Under that frosty Evil Queen exterior, there is a heart after all." Emma said cheekily, before winking at Regina.
The brunette rolled her eyes and looked away, just in time to see the traffic ahead start to move. "Will you shut up and put your foot down?" Regina said, with no hostility in her voice for once. "I'd like to get to Maine some time today."
A/N: I was going to do one whole chapter of their car ride, but it was getting too long so I cut it down to here. I could make the next chapter about them finishing the road trip, or I could skip to when they arrive. I'm going to leave that up to you.
So, should the next chapter by more of them in the car? Or should they just arrive in Storybrooke?
