Chapter 7
This had to stop, Regina thought. This coming to her bed every night had to stop. She was not made of iron and it was becoming too much, awakening too many needs, too many feelings, with her hands itching to touch and her lips aching to kiss. Still, she did not move. Emma had a nightmare and she'd heard the name Neal and that alone was more information than Emma had ever given her.
When she caught herself with her hand tangled in Emma's hair, rubbing the golden strands between her fingers, wondering what she'd do when Emma picked up and left, she knew it was time to get up and get some thinking distance between herself and Emma.
She got dressed and got out of the house while she still could. Emma was like a magnet and by the time she'd come down from the bathroom the only thing she could think clearly about doing was to get back in bed and how there was no point in going out.
"You're thinking again."
"You're here again."
"I know. Maybe you should move back upstairs. This sofa bed is murder on my back."
"Emma, I'm trying to do the right thing here. Believe me, it's not easy."
"Is it okay to tell you that I wish you'd stop trying? If I promised that I don't want anything from you, that I'm not whoring myself out to you, would you be okay with just coming back to bed? We can do whatever you're okay with. We can have wild monkey sex or we can just snuggle…. I don't care. I just… Fuck… Regina…" Why are you begging? Just count your damned blessings and go back to your bed. The thing was… she just couldn't help herself. "I've been on my own for most of my life, okay? Like… a really, really big part of my life and this feels… like home in a way. Not that I have much to compare it against- nor am I asking- but yeah… like home. And all I really want is to be close to you. To touch you, to feel your skin and your hair. Just so that, for once, I'm not alone in the world, you know? I think you're really pretty when you look at me like that, you know? Like you could eat me up whole but there's something stopping you. So, I'd like that touch to come with sex… but if you don't like it, if you don't like the idea of that with a girl… or with a pregnant girl… can you, at least just hold me for a bit?"
"You're seventeen, Emma."
"I was born old, Regina."
"I'm thirty-five."
"I'm not asking you to marry me. I'm just asking for a hug."
What can you ask me crying that I won't do smiling? Regina felt herself moving forward despite herself, sitting on the edge of the sad old sofa bed and pulling Emma into her arms. When she slid her hands around Emma's torso, when she closed her arms around her, when she kissed her hair and her eyes, her nose, her mouth, she knew very well what she was doing- utter and complete madness though it was, because she knew then that there would come a time when she would have to let go of Emma and that it would kill her.
"Can I see you?"
Emma slowly undid the buttons on yet one more lamb's wool pajama, allowing it to open, to reveal first her breasts, then the stretched skin of her belly. Regina drew her finger down the exposed skin, from the small shoulder to the tip of a pert, full breast and down the curve of the Emma's belly as if she was committing the skin to memory, the color and the texture of it.
"You are so beautiful…"
"Regina, I'm a sure thing… I am asking you for this. You don't need to say those things. Not when you don't mean them."
Regina leaned in to kiss the line her finger had traced. When she finished, she told Emma. "You're an idiot, Emma Swan. And a stubborn one. You're beautiful. Angel-beautiful. You didn't need this much, you know? A little bit less would be fine. The way you laugh, and the way your eyes shine, the color of them. The colors of you. I wish you could see what I see…"
"Regina, please…"
"What do you want me to do?"
"Touch me." Regina looked at her, uncertainty shinning in her eyes. "Anywhere. Anywhere you want to."
Regina accepted the invitation, the order, whatever it was. She took Emma's earlobe in her mouth and sucked delicately and kissed down the column of her neck. She drew patterns on the clavicle that made Emma squirm and kissed her way down her breast until she reached the tip of the nipple. She opened her mouth and let the pert tip slip through her lips and suckled gently, then licked and when back to suckling. Emma moaned and grabbed Regina's face in her hands.
"I want to kiss you. Can I?"
Regina nodded and the heat rose to her cheeks leaving her flushed. She nodded and the eagerness of the gesture made Emma smile.
There was nothing clumsy about that kiss. There was purpose and strength. Emma's lips were firm and demanding, unwilling to let Regina regret or fear or in any way run away from her. When Regina gasped into her mouth, Emma invaded her mouth with her tongue and demanded more. Regina was happy to concede. A jolt shot from her mouth to her sex, a rush of wetness marking her thighs.
"Emma… I'm not sure how to… please you."
"So you've never been with a girl?"
"No. Have you?"
"Regina… I'm seventeen. I've been around a bit. A fair bit more than you, it seems. Don't worry. We'll figure it out, okay?"
"Okay." Regina whispered because anything louder could, quite possibly, break the spell. She took Emma's mouth, and kissed the girl- no, the woman. It was a kiss made of all the loneliness, the hunger, the hope, the capacity to love that still lived in her. It was a kiss that had her moaning and wanting more skin, more heat from Emma. Something entirely too surprising in its urgency. She fisted her hands on Emma's pajama, on the silk strands of hair until she had to stop for air.
Her lungs burning, she smiled into Emma's mouth. "I like that."
Emma's chuckle was throaty and hot. "Yeah… I like it too. Can I have more?"
Regina nodded and got busy again this time on Emma's neck, her shoulders, her arms, her hands. Her fingers. Dear Lord, Emma's fingers… Regina sucked them one by one, her tongue cradling the pad of each finger, promising so damned much. Emma shivered as Regina's tongue traced the lines of the flower tattooed on her wrist. She nearly melted when Regina's hand went to the silk ties of her pants. "Are you sure, Emma?" She asked and the only thing Emma was perfectly certain was that she'd burst if Regina didn't make good on the promises of her tongue.
"Take them off me. Please."
Regina helped her stand and pulled the silky wool down column-like legs with something a lot like reverence. On her knees, Regina looked up at Emma's body, so perfect, so full of life. Emma ran her fingers through Regina's hair and time became something of an elastic band, tensing slowly, pulling, pulling with the intensity of a gaze, of the sensation. Regina kissed down the side of Emma's hip bone, and then down a smooth thigh. A hand roamed up and settled on Emma's belly, the baby quiet for now.
Time was an elastic band.
The elastic pulled slowly, tensed up, readied. Regina inhaled Emma's warm scent of sleep and pajama and arousal and the elastic snapped and everything moved forward again, light speed fast, All Regina knew is that she had to try, she had to taste Emma. It never occurred to her that she had no clue what she was doing. Slowly, with remarkable restraint, she traced a line of kisses up to Emma's sex that had Emma gasping for air, slumping into bed and opening herself to Regina. Her fingers dug hard into Regina's shoulder, all patience gone. "Touch me, Regina, please, touch me."
Regina almost lost her courage then. What was she doing, dear god, what was she thinking, but Emma was impatient and demanding and she called Regina back, demanded her attention."Regina!" Which was somewhere between a moan and tantrum. Regina smiled because there was a power in that she had never felt before- never had before- when she asked "Tell me what you want."
… … …
Regina resurfaced when the winter sun was already on the afternoon side of the sky. The light was golden and she was alone in bed. The fire was roaring in the fireplace which explained why she was not cold and shivering given that she was decidedly naked. She moved to find her clothes and her muscles were beautifully sore, lovingly used and all she wanted was to get Emma back into the warmth of the bed and stay there for the rest of the winter, maybe even her life.
Emma was humming in the kitchen. She could give Regina awards for problem solving. Her current shape was not the easiest to navigate and yet, Regina had made her feel like the sexiest of women, the best of lovers. She poured hot water into two cups and made powered chocolate milk. Regina seemed to have a fondness for packets, which was good when you got up, sore and well used at 2 in the afternoon.
"Can I interest you in some breakfast slash lunch?" She asked coming back into the living room and sitting down on the bed messy from their morning activities. Regina sat up in bed and created space for Emma and the tray. She brought her knees to her chest and just studied Emma, beautiful Emma who would, one of these days, up sticks and leave because that's what happened to people in her life. That's what happened in her life- she was alone. "Regina? Hey? Where did you go? You're thinking and it's not good. Oh God! You're not regretting it, are you?"
"No." Regina smiled but even she knew that it looked as fake as a two dollar bill. She moved to Emma and placed a kiss, almost chaste on a shoulder exposed by the unbuttoned pajama top. "I'm hungry. What did you make us?" She could not absolutely regret it, any of it. But she could fear. She did fear. "I'm sorry. No. No regrets."
"Promise?" Emma's smile was anxious and when Regina nodded in assent, she lunged into the woman, into arms that instinctively opened for her in unreserved welcome. "Eat. There's bacon." Emma picked up a crispy slice and put it in Regina's mouth.
… … …
Regina had her wish- and it was a very old one: to spend a winter's day in bed with a lover, snow and roaring fireplace. "Draw me as one of your French girls, Regina."
"You need to watch another tragedy, Emma." Regina commented but took her sketchpad and began to draw Emma as she was, naked, bathed in the warm light of the fire with nothing but a smile on her.
"Did you have a bad dream?"
"No." Regina replied and concentrated harder on the drawing.
"Regina, I don't have a lot going for me in life but I do have this one skill. Let's call it a superpower. I can tell when anyone is lying and you, lady, are."
"Emma… I…"
"You don't have to talk about it. But it sounded bad." Regina nodded and continued, head down, drawing, from memory it seemed because she continued with her work and didn't look up at Emma for some time. "I do that too, you know? If you don't talk about it, it didn't happen sort of thing."
"But it did. It did happen."
"Was it about your husband? The dream, I mean…"
"He thought I was having an affair."
"Did he get mean about it?"
Regina shrugged. "He was… jealous."
Emma did her best not to move though her first instinct was to go and check the woman for bruises which was stupid because the husband had been dead for... "Regina? How long ago did he die?"
"Eight years."
"Have you been alone all this time?"
"I'm better off alone."
"Trust me, Regina, no one is better off alone."
"I am."
Emma digested that in silence. "Did he hurt you?"
Regina sighed and answered, still drawing, as if the person drawing and the person speaking were not one and the same. "He was right, you know?" She nodded at something Emma hadn't asked nor said. "After some time, he was right. Not in the beginning. Mother made it quite clear where I stood: that I was to please Leopold in every way."
"Right… so you knew which way your bread was buttered."
"Prosaic, but true."
"So if you had fucked around, you would have dropped your bread butter side down on the muddy floor…"
"Again, true. Mother went as far as suggesting a couple of children to… huh… cement my position."
"But he didn't want that."
"No, he didn't."
"Because he had another kid."
"Yes. Mary Margaret. It was enough for me too, for a while because I was only eighteen. But he never let me forget that she was his daughter, not mine. I was hers: her driver, her babysitter, her playmate. Not her mother. She wasn't my daughter. It got lonelier. He was jealous. And he got even more jealous as time passed. He accused me on a daily basis of cheating on him. Sometimes, he tried to get the truth out of me. I tried to leave but Mother… He left marks on me. I was out one day and the Sheriff, he came to speak to me. No one ever did much of that, you know? I didn't go to Daniel's funeral and I was married to the Mayor and richest man in town in under a month after that so people just drew their own conclusions, you know? I went from normal teenager to black widow in that time.
"But Graham? He talked to me, he asked me about things. He bought me a cup of coffee and he sat with me. I think he saw a bruise and just kept on asking. I never admitted, of course. I do have my pride. But he used to sit with me and talk. Just talk. He was a friend when I needed one. Just a friend. But Leopold…And after him, Sydney. He nearly closed down the newspaper when he decided I was fucking Sydney Glass.
"And then Mother died. I thought I was finally free. Daddy asked me to be careful but I made plans. I was going to run away and see the world. I was going to work in a coffee shop in Rome or serve mai tais on a sunny beach in California and Leopold would be just a bad dream." Regina lifted the sketchpad and gave it to Emma. The fire was slowly dying down to embers and Regina stood to add more wood to the fire and to give herself time.
Emma looked at the woman in the picture, radiating light and warmth and determination. Not her at all.
"He got mean one night. That night he believed that I was fucking the mechanic, Mr. Tillman. He called me all sorts of things, whore, bitch… you get the picture… nothing really bad, but then threw me against a wall, dislocated my shoulder. He had paid for me. So I was his to do with as he pleased. He pushed me onto the bed and he showed me that he was my husband, the only man I'd ever open my legs for.
"Do you want to know the funny thing, though? He apologized. When he told me to get up and there was blood – from my nose, from my… he got me to the tub and he put me in the shower. He washed me, cleaned me up, he told me… he cleaned me up… and he apologized. He said I pushed him too far, that something came over him and… that I had to forgive him. Because I made him do bad things."
"Did you?"
"I couldn't move. I couldn't say a word. I knew that if I said yes, everything would go away. For that night at least, that it would just be so simple, but I couldn't get a word out. And he kept on telling me to forgive him and when I couldn't say the words, he was just so mad... He pushed me out of the bedroom, he told me to go to Daddy's house, because I was just hurting him too much.
"But I couldn't move, Emma. I just went down on the floor when he let go of me, and it was the dirtiest I've ever felt.
"Do you know how someone dies of a heart attack, Emma? It's not like in the movies, you know? It takes time. It takes a lot of time. He said he couldn't breathe because I was upsetting him and I thought good. And I thought I hope you die. He tripped. He tripped on my feet and he fell down the staircase. I always hated that staircase, the stupid marble and the burgundy runner, the cherry wood, the pretentiousness of it all. He fell down that stupid staircase and I almost told him I told you so. Except I didn't. I never told him anything because it was his house and his family and his life and I was just an add-on, a decoration… a mistake from the decorator.
"He tried to get up and he couldn't. His heart was dying. The heart dies first, then the brain. So he stood there, his eyes wide open on me, asking me, begging me to help him. He asked me to help him. He cried. He cried.
"I sat there, watching him die, thinking that it should take a very long time. That he should die slowly so that he had time to remember all the times I made him a bad man… so that he could remember all the times he rammed his fingers into me and hurt me like that. I hoped it took a very long time so that he could die knowing what he took from me.
"I don't think he did, though. He always believed he was one of the good guys. I hope he's burning in hell, Emma. I wish that he was still dying and that I was still seeing him die… I wish…" Regina struggled for breath, because her throat was closing, closing around the words and the memories. "I wish that it hadn't been over so soon. That he could have hurt more…"
Emma pulled the blanket around her shoulders because no matter how warm the room was, she didn't think she'd ever be warm again. They call them accidents because it's nobody's fault.
Yeah… shit.
She looked at the sketchpad in her hands, at the perfect creature Regina had drawn. "This is not at all like me, you know? I'm nothing like this. I'm all fucked up. I'm nothing like this at all." But it was good to know that someone could look at her and still see that.
She saw Regina out of the corner of her eye, poking at the fire, embers flying all around her from her careless poking. She expected tears. There were none. Guess you can't cry for that son of a bitch. There was, however, a bone deep exhaustion about the set of the shoulders. Emma stood, wrapped in her blanket, and sat on the lip of the fireplace waiting for the poking to stop. When it didn't, she took Regina's hand in hers, tossed the fire poker to the side pulled and Regina into her. The woman resisted valiantly but Emma was an unbeatable force. She closed her arms around Regina and didn't open them again until the thrashing stopped. Screw the game plan. Fucking screw it.
Then, she just pulled Regina back to the old sofa bed and lay down, pulling the woman to her. She closed her arms around her, her baby cradled in the womb between them, rocking them back and forth until they both feel asleep.