Chapter 7: How to Hold a Heart
Emma felt absolutely absurd standing in the middle of the Queen's bedroom holding a pile of fluffy blankets in her arms.
After telling the sheriff that she could find the blankets folded in the hope chest in her study, Regina had nearly fallen over herself as she raced up the stairs to fix the mess that was the current state of her bedroom. Now with the remains of the shattered vase stashed in the trash, the broken picture frames hidden in the bottom drawer of her dresser, and the stubborn candle returned to its proper place behind her sink, the mayor's private sanctuary had once again been restored to its painfully regimented precision just in time for Emma to saunter through the door.
The blonde looked like a drop of chaos standing in the middle of the deceivingly meticulous calm; all unruly curls and nervous eyes and fidgety fingers, and Regina couldn't stop the small grin that was pulling at the corner of her lips. Emma radiated a wild kind of vibrance into the rigid room and Regina internally sighed in relief that she had managed to return it to its usual immaculate state before the sheriff got there.
Emma rocked on the balls of her feet as she surveyed the pristine environment until her eyes stuttered to a halt on something that didn't fit. "What happened to your mirror?"
A little of the color drained from Regina's face as she followed the Savior's gaze towards the fractured glass. Shit. She had forgotten about that damned mirror; the crack in her polished façade glaringly obvious in its tangible form.
But being groomed to be a politician had its perks and the Queen quickly covered up the unsightly truth with a lie, "Oh that old thing? I barely touched it and it cracked… can you believe it?"
Emma's eyes narrowed like she didn't, but thankfully she said nothing.
"Just put the blankets on the foot of the bed, dear."
Grateful for something to busy herself with, the blonde ambled over to the bed with her heavy load and leaned over to place the pile on the edge of the mattress. She was so fixated on not tripping over her own feet and making a fool of herself in front of Regina that she almost missed the mayor checking out her ass as she did so.
When Emma turned back around the brunette's eyes hastily darted upwards towards her face and the mayor wet her lips.
"Mmm," Regina hummed, looking around the room to distract herself. "Now what do I have that will fit you? I already know that we wear the same shirt size, since you seem to enjoy stealing mine so much more than you do buying your own."
Emma's mouth dropped open like she was about to protest but no words came out. Instead she settled for shoving her suddenly sweaty palms back into her pockets.
"Oh don't look so shocked, Ms. Swan; I'm not blind. And although I may be allowing you to stay in my house for the night, I am most certainly not about to let you dirty any more of my furniture with what you're wearing."
Regina rummaged through the second drawer of her dresser to return with a perfectly folded pajama set in her hands, which she promptly placed into Emma's with a pleased smirk curling up the corner of her lips.
"Um, thanks. These are really nice," Emma muttered hesitantly as she fingered the red silk top and matching pants. It looked more expensive than anything she'd ever owned, let alone had on her body.
"Everything I own is nice, Ms. Swan. And be careful with those!" she nearly squealed, swatting the blonde's questing digits away from the rich fabric. "It's one of my favorites."
Why Regina had decided to give her one of her favorite pairs of pajamas was beyond her, but Emma suddenly felt a faint blush beginning to creep up her neck at the thought. The mayor's naked body had probably been wrapped in these pajamas very recently…
Regina had invaded Emma's personal space quite a bit in order to slap her hand away and the pair was now standing much too close to each other for comfort. Their brief encounter in the kitchen swam to the forefront of the mayor's mind and a small knot of warmth began to coil low in her abdomen at the sheriff's proximity; it was a welcome sensation that had absolutely nothing to do with the curse rolling around inside of her.
The Queen's sultry lips parted as she leaned in towards Emma's face only to stop a few inches from her jaw, her mouth quirking up in satisfaction as she felt the blonde stop breathing in response.
"Now get out of my room, Sheriff Swan," Regina whispered darkly, a glint of mischief shining behind her even darker eyes. "A queen needs her beauty sleep."
Then using only the tips of her manicured fingers she applied just enough pressure on the sheriff's shoulders for Emma to take a tiny step back, but not before the brunette had made note of how the blonde's heart was thumping madly beneath her breastbone.
"Right," Emma faltered quietly and slipped out the door into the hallway.
She needed to get away from the Queen right now if she was going to keep their relationship anything close to resembling platonic. Damn Regina was sexy. The woman had always been hard to say no to but this… and had Regina just made a joke about herself?
Emma turned back with a question in her eyes.
The mayor answered it without being asked. "Second door on the right."
Emma nodded and began to walk backward down the hallway, refusing to relinquish her gaze from the Queen just yet. Regina was being kind of fun for once, and she just couldn't help how intoxicating it was.
"Now don't go blowing up the town before I wake up," Emma pointed a finger at the brunette in a playful manner and then inwardly smacked herself in the face. Only idiot teenage boys acted like this; what the fuck was she doing?
"No promises," Regina husked back, and with a fleeting twist of her lips she closed the door behind her.
Emma found herself unable to contain the smile currently splitting her face and had almost reached the guest bedroom when she heard the door behind her creak open again.
"Oh, and sheriff," Regina had only peeked her head out of the doorframe; her tussled bob floating around her face like a cloud. "Thank you for saving me today."
Emma stopped dead in her tracks. The genuineness of Regina's words made her voice momentarily catch in her throat and her heart rate speed up again as she took in the most open and honest look she had ever seen grace the mayor's face. Regina was looking at her with eyes she could have fallen into they were so dark and deep.
"Don't mention it," Emma managed.
"Oh don't worry," the Queen sneered; the younger, purer version of herself hiding once again as a hint of her old devious self flashed back across her face. "I won't."
Emma awoke to an odd assortment of sounds filtering through the wall of the guest room. At first she wasn't sure what to make of them; maybe she just was hearing things after all. But as she pressed her meddlesome ear against the wall in question she was sure that she could hear groaning; plaintive little moans and whimpers of pain circulating in the dark just outside her vision.
Was Regina's house haunted? After learning your parents were fairytale characters, anything seemed possible.
Curiosity got the better of her and she popped her head out to search the hallway.
Silence.
But then she heard it again, a faint sniveling sound that echoed up through the lofted ceiling of the entryway.
Was that coming from Regina's room?
Knowing better but doing it anyway, Emma quietly crept down the hall towards the master bedroom to sate her interest.
A foreign idea idly knocked around in the back of Emma's head as she tiptoed forward. The Evil Queen didn't have nightmares, did she? Remorse for past wrong-doings didn't really fit the bill of a malicious tyrant... but if Emma thought having her heart almost ripped out was traumatic, then she couldn't even begin to fathom what taking one would feel like. That could really fuck somebody up psychologically, the blonde mused to herself. Maybe there was some part of Regina that actually regretted what she'd done.
But Emma was jostled from her thoughts as soon as she reached the entrance to the mayor's bedroom. Green fumes were leaking copiously from underneath it and the whimpers were getting louder.
An anguished groan resonated from within and more bilious smoke poured from under the door.
"Regina?" Emma knocked on the door. "Are you okay?"
Something that sounded like a muffled shriek through gritted teeth was her only response.
"Regina?" Emma asked again, getting a little panicky.
She tried the door handle. It was locked.
"Regina?"
A scream of pain screeched through the door and all of Emma's instincts kicked into high-gear.
"Regina I'm breaking down the door!" Emma called out once more before careening her shoulder forcefully into the wood, splintering the framing around the lock and buckling one of the hinges. "Please don't kill me," she added under her breath.
Emma flew into the room only to be instantly engulfed by a wave of thick green smoke that rushed out into the free air of the hallway. She coughed and sputtered like a firefighter without a gasmask, squinting through the green and trying to navigate her way through the fog to find the mayor.
The sheriff gasped when she reached her intended destination.
Regina was having a seizure in the middle of the bed; the covers ripped from her body and strewn haphazardly towards the bottom of the mattress in a jumbled heap. Bolts of neon lightning arched over her form like charges from a stripped electrical wire; electrocuting strands shooting out of errant shoulder blades and elbows only to reconnect and disappear under the skin of a thigh, her forehead, or anywhere else it could reach in its desperate need to reenter the mayor's rapidly cooling flesh.
A dry sob fled the brunette's mouth as a particularly big jolt shook her body with tremors anew, her hands fighting to cling to the bed sheets as her arms flailed and her legs thrashed, her torso rapidly flipping between concave and convex as her body tried to expel the poison from within her. Sparks popped into the air as she twitched and seized uncontrollably, her teeth nearly biting through her lip as she tried unsuccessfully to keep another groan of pain at bay.
Emma did the only thing she could think of: she jumped on top of the writhing Queen to stop her from hurting herself any more than she already had.
The electrical current tore through Emma like a shock wave, unexpected in its intensity but not entirely unpleasant. Her skin tingled wherever she and Regina touched, freezing and warming like the magic flowing between them didn't quite know what to do with itself, and she felt her blood surge with adrenaline the more she came into contact with the brunette. Emma clamped her arms and legs around the mayor like a straightjacket and held on for dear life as Regina continued to spasm and jerk, charges of energy leaping out of her skin and dissipating into the blonde's until the smoke around them eventually evaporated and the Queen's body began to settle back into its original state of being.
Emma pulled her head back and watched as the glowing green in Regina's eyes diminished and they returned to their usual enchanting hue. But as soon as the dark chocolate color had seeped back into her orbs Regina was gulping in rapid shallow breaths in a panic, her chest heaving as she blinked furiously and tried to get her eyes to refocus on the world around her.
When her eyes finally cleared, they locked onto Emma's in unmitigated terror and her hands gripped at the blonde's forearms so tightly that she was sure Regina's fingernails were leaving marks.
This was the second time in less than twenty-four hours that Regina had regained consciousness with Emma on top of her.
"Hey. Hey, it's okay," Emma cooed. "I've got you, Madam Mayor. Don't worry. I've got you."
The curse might have stopped hurting her for the moment but the lingering cold was a tortuous side-effect, and Emma readied herself for the storm she was sure would follow.
She continued to mutter barely audible reassurances into Regina's neck as the mayor shook violently beneath her, wracked with uncontrollable shivers that had her teeth chattering so fiercely that Regina's head had started to quiver in the effort to keep her enamel from clashing together. Emma pressed herself down even harder onto the brunette and tightened her hold, trying to soak up as much of the cooling vapor she could and staunch the intense shudders that continued to plague the distressed woman's limbs.
The cold was flowing freely out of the Queen and into the blonde, and as a result both pairs of their nipples were rock hard. Their breasts brushed together as Regina clung to Emma's warmth and Emma had to fight hard to stifle the loud moan that was humming at the back of her throat. She quite liked the look of Regina sprawled out beneath her, grasping desperately onto her shoulders for support.
Now is not the time to get turned on, Emma chastised herself. The woman is nearly incapacitated you sicko.
So when Emma finally began to feel some of the mayor's natural body heat start to return to her skin, the blonde rolled onto her side still clutching the Queen tightly in her grasp. Regina's head landed perfectly in the crook of her shoulder and Emma rested her chin on top of the brunette's hair, her one hand drifting aimlessly up and down the mayor's bicep in a soothing motion while her other arm wrapped itself protectively around the woman's trim waist.
The fallen mayor of Storybrooke let herself be held… for the moment. The old Regina would have never let herself be comforted, least of all by Emma Swan. Needing comfort was a weakness and a Queen doesn't have weaknesses. But something in her didn't struggle to leave Emma's arms. Maybe Henry was right. Maybe she was changing.
Emma was still wearing Regina's pajamas and her deliciously silk-covered body was rubbing sinfully against her own satin nightgown, which had ridden up quite a bit during their previous scuffle. In trying to cover as much of Regina's body as possible, one of Emma's thighs had fallen between her own while the other had ended up hooked over the mayor's hip, and anytime Emma tried to shift her position it sent a small wave of pleasure hurtling through the brunette's core. Regina bit down on her lip and pulled the blonde a little bit closer to her.
But as the cursed tremors started to subside and the world began to return to normal, Emma felt the inevitably uncomfortable silence beginning to descend upon the room; she and the Queen's intimate moment slowly dissipating back into the awkward realm of reality. Now that the immediate need for comfort was gone, what were they supposed to do?
She was lying in bed cuddling with a woman she was supposed to despise, but apparently didn't anymore. Weird didn't even begin to cover it.
So Emma did what she did best. She just started blathering to fill the empty space.
"So… how are you feeling?"
"Better."
"Good. That's good…" Emma chewed on her lip as she tried to think of a tactful way to ask the question that had been eating at her since she got there, "So, what was it that made you explode into a swirling vortex of green doom this time?"
Unfortunately she had inherited her tact from her father's side of the family.
Regina immediately tensed in her arms, "That is none of your business, Ms. Swan."
"It just seems to me like you're not doing any of this on purpose and I was just wondering if anything in particular was triggering it." She raised a questioning eyebrow in the brunette's direction.
Regina kept silent. The blonde was far too observant for her own good sometimes. She didn't want Emma to know about her lack of control over the curse for fear that the sheriff might lock her up like her father had suggested, labeling the mayor as a menace to society and forcing her to remain imprisoned for the rest of her days, never to see Henry again.
Likewise, she also had no desire to go into the very vivid nightmare she had been having before she had woken up riddled with green sparks and seizing under the sheriff's weight.
A question of her own however, was tapping incessantly at the front of her brain.
"How did you not go flying when I touched you?"
"No idea," Emma answered honestly. "It might have something to do with me being the product of true love and all though. At least that's what Gold said."
"He said what?"
"You know, I actually have a fun story about that," the blonde replied conversationally, trying to keep the atmosphere somewhat light-hearted. "Did you know that your mom tried to rip out my heart while I was away?"
Regina jumped away from her so fast that Emma almost didn't see her move. The mayor scrambled frantically off the edge of the bed and backed herself towards the corner like a frightened animal, a look of pure horror on her face.
"My mother TOOK your HEART?!"
"No!" Emma exclaimed in a rush. "No, she tried but she couldn't!"
"What do you mean she couldn't?" Regina asked suspiciously. She couldn't stand the thought of her mother controlling Emma, not with everything that had already transpired between them. The betrayal would cut too deep.
"I mean she couldn't! That bitch plunged her hand into my chest, grabbed my heart and pulled! Which was not fun mind you." Emma tried to ignore Regina's sickened expression at this and plowed forward.
"But it didn't work. My heart was stuck in my chest like it was tethered there by big steel chains or something, and then there was this big burst of magic and your mom shot backwards. And then I don't really know what happened because I jumped into that freaking portal and popped out of a well that apparently had a curse over it that you and Gold put there, only you sucked it up when Henry got mad at you."
Emma rattled this all out in one breath; finally getting to say it all out loud was actually kind of cathartic.
"Speaking of which, we've really got to get rid of this thing," the blonde finished, waving her hand in the general direction of Regina's body.
The Queen immediately bristled under the insult to her prowess as a conjuror. As if she hadn't been attempting to do that already.
"Excuse me?"
"The curse. The creepy green power surges. I don't know how well Storybrooke is going to react when they find out that the Evil Queen is running around with her magic again."
"Don't you think I already know that?" Regina hissed as she began to pace; her disdain for the town she had created beginning to seethe in her abdomen. "I'm trying."
"I know you are. And I'm just trying to help."
"Help?" The brunette spat out the word like it was dirty and whirled around to pierce Emma with an icy glare, her eyes flashing with a sickly green spark like a dying firecracker in a hayfield. "What do you know about it that could possibly help?"
"Regina, calm down."
"Don't tell me to calm down!"
"Regina…" Emma's voice deepened in seriousness and she prayed that it wouldn't crack and betray how terrified she actually was of the furious woman in front of her. Her hands were outstretched before her like someone would if they were approaching a suicide jumper on the edge of a building, which for all intensive purposes, she felt like she was.
Emma pointedly looked at Regina's fingertips.
Regina snarled as she followed the sheriff's gaze and saw her own hands betraying her rage, crackling with neon sparks, her palms gleaming with green as she could see the curse swirling around under her skin like freezing molten lava.
The poison in her system not quite in full possession of her yet, Regina managed to take several deep calming breaths. Shutting her eyes and attempting to still her inner fury, she clenched and unclenched her fists menacingly as she willed her heartbeat to quiet and her breath to even out, feeling the churning cold retracting further and further under her skin until the green was no longer visible. She shivered once as the curse had settled back in its resting place around her heart and cocked her head slightly to the side in discomfort at the sensation.
When Regina finally opened her eyes again they were back to their sullen brown. "Get out," she growled.
"I don't think that's a good idea."
Immediately appalled by the blonde's insolence the curse flared back to life within her, Regina's jaw grinding painfully tight the instant she felt the anger rear its ugly head, pulsing through her chest in its numbing wrath.
But before the glow could return to her skin Emma talked over any retort she had started to make, "Think about it, Regina. I'm the only one that can touch you without getting hurt. What if you need me?"
"That is ridiculous. I don't need you," the mayor instantly rebuked.
"You scorched Mary Margaret, launched my dad over a lawn, and nearly ignited an entire pack of dwarves! I'm pretty sure you'd be in jail if it wasn't for me!"
"So?"
"So?! Wouldn't you say you're a little out of control?"
"I'm fine."
"You're fine?"
"I'm fine."
"But what if I–"
"I'm fine," Regina insisted, more for her own benefit than Emma's.
"You're obviously in pain."
"I am fine, Ms. Swan."
"Goddamn it, Regina! I'm trying to help you!"
"Why?!" the Queen bellowed. "Because you pity me?!"
"Because you shouldn't have to go through this alone!" Emma screamed back.
Silence erupted in the space between them as her words hung suspended in the air like an echo off of a distant canyon wall. Regina's face crumpled slightly and Emma reached out to gently touch her shoulder. Her hand was not shrugged off and there was no accompanying green glow to alight their joining skin.
"You once told me that the worst curse imaginable was not having someone, and I'm not going to let that happen to you," the blonde stated softly. Regina crossed her arms in front of her torso in a show of defiance, but she ended up looking more like a child trying to hold in a stomachache, especially when she turned her big wounded eyes upward to scrutinize Emma's face.
"It's partly my fault this happened to you anyway," the sheriff continued. "So why don't we just lay here for a while? I'm exhausted, and I know you must be. And who knows, maybe my freaky Savior-powers will siphon out some of that green junk while you're asleep."
The mayor's eyebrows pinched together in an indecisive scowl.
"I won't tell anyone," Emma implored.
Regina wanted to protest. Wanted to be strong. Wanted to be vengeful. But right now she was just tired. And sad. And immensely lonely if she let herself admit it. And having another body in bed next to her was exactly what she needed.
The corners of her mouth turned down in a slight grimace as the first few fingers of sunlight snuck past the drawn velvet curtains to accent the shine in the mayor's eyes. A soft 'okay' fell from her lips as she turned away from Emma and crawled under the covers of her over-sized bed, curling in on herself until she was just a small defeated ball of sadness underneath the comforter.
Emma, for her part, slid in effortlessly behind Regina without words and contoured the rest of her body against the trembling queen, draping a shielding arm around her waist and pulling the brunette flush against her own torso.
Regina tensed for a moment at the voluntarily intimate contact, but wherever Emma touched she felt a warm sort of relief seep into her cold exterior and after a while she couldn't help but be enveloped by the blonde's safe embrace. Reluctantly she let herself relax and with a gentle sigh her eyelids fluttered shut, allowing her once again to drift off into a, hopefully, far-less fitful slumber.
Emma held the woman's fragile body close to her own long after the mayor had fallen asleep. She had never realized exactly how tiny Regina was. She was so domineering and callous most of the time that Emma had her built up to be larger-than-life, towering miles above the unprepared blonde in her worst fever dreams, cackling like the evil witch the town had made her out to be. But the broken woman in front of her couldn't be over 5'5 and she fit seamlessly into all of the nooks and curves of Emma's body: the brunette's butt pressed back into her pelvis, her spine brushed neatly against the blonde's abdomen, and her shoulder was the perfect resting height for Emma's chin to fall onto.
And when she finally felt Regina's chest begin to rise and fall in the steady rhythm of guaranteed unconsciousness, the sheriff allowed herself to nuzzle her nose into the brunette's hair and smell the faint aroma of her shampoo.
This was definitely someone worth protecting.
