Author's Note: This chapter contains a scene that's been redacted for adult content. For the full version, read the story on Ao3.

He's much better at texting after that first date.

They meet for breakfast, two or three times a week. He always walks her home, and kisses her good morning, and Ladro always gives her a judgmental look for making him wait an extra hour for his can of wet food (she's started pouring him an extra bowl of kibble before she leaves for work just in case).

It's been two weeks of midnight diners or late cafe brunches when he says he wants to take her out properly. Can she get someone to cover the bar for a night, he asks. He wants to take her on a real date. (They've been on plenty of dates; she thinks maybe he wants to take her on a date without a solid end time, and she can't help be a little excited at the prospect. She misses touching him – those few stolen kisses in the morning aren't enough.)

So she sweet-talks Jacinda into covering a slow Tuesday, and lets him take her to the movies. She and Robin had never gone to the movies, not once, and so Regina revels in sharing something new with Abe. Something that's theirs.

She's no closer to figuring out how to break this curse without killing Henry – but also seems no closer to accidentally breaking it with Abe. She likes him—she does—and she's made peace with the idea that she has to accept this as the way of things. For now. So she might as well try to make the best of it.

But she isn't in love with him, not yet. How can she be, when she knows the truth?

She's tried to stop comparing him to Robin (she fails, often), and to appreciate him for who he believes he is.

He likes old records, and black and white movies. Seattle dogs, and for some reason, the Red Sox.

He doesn't love that she smokes – tells her sometimes that those things will kill her, you know, and Regina just rolls her eyes. It's a bad habit, and it's not even hers, but sometimes after a long day of the buzzing static in her brain and juggling the different truths of her lives that she's told to Abe, to Henry, to everyone in this jumbled mess of a town, she just… needs something. She gets that craving, and she deserves a goddamn vice. So she's bought another pack, and another.

She'll quit when this damn curse ends, she tells herself.

But she doesn't smoke around him anymore. She curls against his side at the movies, smelling of shampoo and the good perfume she's saved up to buy, her breath minty fresh from toothpaste and mouthwash.

She doesn't feel the urge tonight anyway. Being with him like this, in the dark, it's… peaceful. For a little while, she doesn't hear the static in her brain, she just gnaws on a Red Vine and watches the images flash on the screen, feels the press of his thigh warm against hers. The way his fingers have started to trace spirals along her knee. A little higher.

A little higher.

Regina lifts her head and smirks at him; Abe is looking at the screen, feigning innocence of the way his thumb has just swept nearly to the inside seam halfway up her thigh.

She leans in just a little, until her lips brush his ear and asks, "Why am I suddenly getting the impression you brought me to the movies so we could make out?"

Abe turns, grinning, and murmurs, "Why do you think we're sitting in the back?"

And then he's kissing her, and she forgets the Red Vines, and the moving pictures, and the static.

.::.

He has roommates, she knows that, but as they stumble into his place after the movie, his lips pressing against hers again, again, again, she can't bring herself to care.

"Roni," he breathes, one hand tangled in her curls, and she wishes so desperately that he was saying her real name. She wants to hear it again on his lips, the way he'd groan it against her mouth while he kissed her, Regina, whisper it into the air above her bed while she sucked him slowly, Regina, gasp it into her ear as he thrust deep and pressed her into the mattress, Regina, love…

But she can't have that, because he doesn't know her (and yet somehow, he knows her, his hands find her ass the way they always have, and cup, and grope, and then squeeze, and then she's the one moaning. It's nearly his name, almost, she cuts it off at Ro— and gasps it into Abe—Mm! Regina realizes she's going to have to make sure she thinks while she falls into bed with him again, and that just seems unfair).

So she shuts them both up with more kisses, presses them against his mouth, his throat, nips at his Adam's apple in a way that makes him groan (it always has, and she grins, licks to soothe the little bite). She presses a kiss to the scars at the base of his throat and murmurs, "Bedroom," and "Now," and Abe is all too happy to oblige.

He steers her left, and backward, stumbling them through the dark of his apartment until her back bumps against a door. It's ajar, so it swings open easily and then four more steps and there's a mattress beneath her, and Abe on top of her. They're a little clumsy, a little frantic as they try to scoot back onto it and shed their shoes without letting go of each other.

It thrills her that he wants her this badly, that he's as desperate to fuck her as she is to finally, finally make love to him again after so many years without. At least she's not the only one who doesn't want to put more than a breath of air between them. At least he's tugging the buttons of her cold-shoulder flannel as frantically as she is plucking at the buttons of his (green checks this time; he looks so good in green) both of them wriggling to get the offending material off of shoulders, down arms. At least she doesn't have to feel pathetic when she lets out a little moan of protest as he lifts up onto his knees to yank his t-shirt over his head.

Her protest is short-lived, though, snuffed out by the way her blood runs cold at the sight of him shirtless.

The lights are off in his room, but the blinds are open and it's not dark in this neighborhood, street lamps combining with moonlight to give them enough light to see each other. And what she sees has her breath catching.

She should have expected, should have braced herself, because more than once she's found herself unable to tear her gaze from those little silvery lines that creep up out of his collar, and she'd been afraid of exactly this, exactly this, and yet seeing it… nothing could prepare her for that.

It pops out from his heart, a thick, twisting trunk and then spreading away, little electric fingers up his chest, down over his ribs, spreading along his shoulder, his arm. Like tree branches, like electricity, like that menacing blue bolt that had stolen him from her. The light from the street hits the silver of the scars, making them stand out even in the dark, and she can't breathe.

He tosses his shirt away and starts to bend down over her again, but Regina brings a hand up to stop him. It lands smack in the center of his chest, over the nexus of the scar, and it makes her queasy to see the evidence of how he died for her shooting out from beneath her palm.

Abe glances down dumbly, and asks, "Wha—?" and then "Oh." And then he smiles at her, that flirty smirk that usually draws the same from her, because he doesn't know she's drowning in guilt and horrific memories (his body falling to the floor with a thud, the blue glow of him as he'd melted away from her forever), when he tells her, "Would you believe I got struck by lightning?"

Yes. Yes, she would.

"Did you?" she asks, because she wants to know, needs to know what this version of him thinks wreaked this kind of havoc over his skin. (Was this there, before, she wonders? She'd used magic to change him for the funeral, she hadn't seen his skin, just the swirl of purple that had dressed him for his casket.)

Abe nods, sitting back a little and reaching for her thighs, still splayed around his hips (how is she supposed to have sex with him now?). His palms are warm as they rub up and down, from her knees to her hips and back.

"Day two in prison; freak electrical storm. I was working out in the yard, and got struck." His hand lifts to rub against the marks, and he tells her, "They're called Lichtenberg scars – the pattern electricity makes. They usually fade, but… not for me. I get to look like a badass forever – and frighten the women I take to bed without warning them, apparently."

The corner of her mouth tips up in a smirk she absolutely does not feel, her fingers tracing the scar, too, gently, reverently. She shakes her head and asks, "How are you alive?" because he's not supposed to be, this is wrong, and she doesn't know why he's here, how he survived this, how he came back to her.

Abe shrugs, and says, "I don't really know. Missed the heart, I guess."

He finds her fingers with his own, then, weaving them and lifting them, leaning forward and pinning them above her head as he bends down until his mouth is an inch from hers again.

"But I am alive, safe and sound right here with you, and if my unfortunate disfigurement hasn't entirely killed the mood, I'd like to keep kissing you—" his lips brush hers "—and touching you—" again, again "—and…" His hips press into hers, grinding there pointedly, and he's right.

He's alive, and safe, and with her, and now more than ever she needs to feel it.

Regina tips her mouth up to his, kisses him eagerly until he moans softly for her, until one of those hands releases hers and finds its way always, always, into her hair. Her own hands are busy, flitting over his skin, stroking down over his back, his sides, threading into his hair, skimming the light beard over his jaw.

Thank God for sex.

That's all she can think as she uses every excuse she can to touch him, to clutch him closer against her, to feel the warmth of his skin under her fingertips. She can hide her hunger for him behind the guise of enthusiasm, and he'll never know she's slaking the thirst of all those years spent parched without him.

[SCENE REDACTED. FULL VERSION AVAILABLE ON AO3]

.::.

Later, as they lie together in his bed, a blanket slung over their hips to keep out the autumn chill, she leans over and presses a kiss to the spidering scars over his heart.

She's been staring at them for several long minutes, tracing their edges with her fingers, traversing every tributary into the main flow of deadly force into his heart.

"Did it hurt?" she asks. She's always wondered. Abe won't know, but she asks anyway.

"I don't remember it, actually," he tells her. She tries not to be disappointed. "I remember being in the yard, working out. And I remember waking up in the infirmary. Sort of – that's a bit hazy. I have hazy patches. I guess my brain got a bit scrambled."

Regina chuckles once, forces the sound out with a smile that cracks. Scrambled, indeed.

She settles her head back onto his chest, his fingers finding their way into her hair as hers return to trace the consequences of her actions. Of his love for her.

He scratches lazily along her scalp and tells her, "I have dreams about it sometimes, but it's all wrong – like my brain mixes things up. I'm in this room, and it's all… black and white. Like an old movie. And there's all these trees, but it's definitely a room. There's couches and a fireplace, and lots of arguing, but I can't ever hear any of it. It's like being underwater, or like that teacher on Charlie Brown, y'know?"

Regina's heart starts to beat hard in her chest. It's not like an old movie, that black and white room with trees and a fireplace and couches. It's just her penchant for monochromatic decorating. She swallows hard, and says, "Yeah," like she isn't a moment from tears.

"And I always think 'Save her,' and then I take a step to the left, and it hits. Everything goes blue. And I turn to see who I had to save, but… I can never see her. She's right there in front of me, and I think 'I want her to be the last thing I see, I want to see her face forever.' And I do, I know I do. But when I wake up, I can never remember her face. It must be Katie, I suppose."

Regina has tucked her head down against his chest, her fingertips still tracing the marks of that awful night in her office as he tells her what he remembers, what his mixed-up brain is struggling to hold onto (or struggling to forget?) even in spite of the curse. There's no way to keep the tears from coming, so she just has to hope he doesn't see them, doesn't feel them.

Abe is still talking, telling her, "Maybe it's because I got struck right after I got there, I don't know. I thought about her a lot, then. Maybe the lightning burned it into my brain or something. Does that sound crazy?"

Regina shakes her head, and tells him as steadily as she can, "No, it doesn't."

It's wrong, but it doesn't sound crazy.

And she doesn't sound steady, not nearly as steady as she ought to – Abe may not be Robin, but he's also not stupid. His fingers find the bottom of her chin and tip it up as he asks, "Are you crying?"

Shit.

No point in denying it, but she can weave another lie between them to join all of the others.

Regina lifts her head, blinking back tears and says, "Sorry. It's just… a sad story. Dying again and again in your dreams, for some faceless woman."

"Who says I die?" he asks her, a confused frown on his beautiful face. "I got struck by lightning, and I'm still right here."

But you weren't, she thinks. You weren't, you died.

What she says is, "You said you wanted her to be the last thing you saw."

"Well, I suppose I thought I was dying. I must have thought it when I got struck, too, I imagine."

"I suppose."

Abe wipes the tears from her cheeks with the pad of his thumb. "Is it wrong if I'm a bit flattered the idea of my death already brings you to tears?"

She could fill oceans with the tears she's already cried over this man's death, but she forces another smile, makes this one really count, and says, "Who said I was crying over you? Maybe I'm just a sucker for a good tragedy."

"Nah, it was about me," he says confidently, smirking smugly at her. "You'd be devastated if I died now; the sex was that good."

Regina laughs, another few tears leaking out because, God, he doesn't have any idea what he's saying. And he can't; he'd think she's crazy. Better he think she's ridiculously emotional than absolutely insane.

"That's it," she teases back. "It's the sex, it scrambled my brain. Made me all weepy and desperate for you."

"Mm," he says, tugging her lips down to his again for a smooch and then a slower, deeper kiss.

Regina presses herself as close to him as she can manage, her hand sliding up to weave into his hair.

When the kiss breaks, it's only long enough for Abe to bump the tip of his nose against hers and say, "Maybe we should do it again, and see if I can give it another jumpstart. Rattle the tears out of you."

Regina doesn't answer, just kisses him again, letting him roll her onto her back and press his weight into her from above. He's here and solid and real, and he may not be himself, but if he's proven anything it's that her Robin is still in there. Somewhere under the surface, he knows her, he remembers.

It's not enough, but it'll do. For now.

So she lets him kiss her into the mattress, lets him kiss down her body, and back up, lets him take her again, hard and quick and she has to remind herself again and again not to cry Robin's name when she comes.

She falls asleep with her head on his chest again, lulled by the steady lubdub of his beating heart, her fingertips still tracing those spreading scars.