Chapter 11: Uncloaked Confessions
The silence in the car was charged with unspoken words but neither woman dared to break the unsettling quiet that had permeated the enclosed space. There were just too many things that could make this situation awkward and it was better just to ignore their existence all together.
Like the fact that Regina was wearing Emma's jacket.
Just as the pair had reached the squad car, the unfortunate freezing aftershocks of the curse had started to plague Regina's form, wracking her with violent shivers that made her stumble a little and fall into the side of the vehicle for support. Emma had wordlessly shrugged off her jacket and hung it around the Queen's shoulders as if she had done this every day of her life, fitting it snugly against the brunette's blazer and rubbing her biceps briefly in an attempt to restart her circulation. The blonde had then opened the car door for her and with an extended hand, ushered the mayor regally into the passenger seat.
They were also blatantly ignoring the expressions on each other's faces.
Emma, for her part, was doing her best not to notice the soft hiccupping sniffles that the brunette was trying to stifle as she attempted to collect herself. Most of them were clouded by the mayor's chattering teeth, but occasionally a rebellious emotion would crack through her voice and Regina's eyes would flick anxiously towards the sheriff as she tried to steel her face back into one of mild disinterest. Emma never looked.
Likewise, Regina was actively trying not to watch as the blonde tirelessly worked her jaw into a frenzy, surely grinding her teeth into a dusty paste. She certainly wasn't aware of the internalized rage gleaming in the sheriff's eyes as she stared intently out of the front windshield, just like she refused to notice how tightly Emma's fingers were gripping the steering wheel, her knuckles bleaching white in the effort to hold in her fury.
And they were most definitely ignoring the fact the Emma was still holding Regina's hand.
The blonde's left hand was busy driving while the mayor's right was content to clutch a leather coat that was not her own about her neck, but it seemed as though the other two had found each other again: Emma's stretching gracefully over the top of Regina's until their fingers were loosely laced together, the sheriff's thumb tracing aimless patterns across the brunette's skin.
Yes. They were definitely ignoring that.
Regina unlocked the door to the mansion and the deadbolt sounded like thunder in the echoing entryway, but the mayor pretended that she wasn't as on edge as she felt and sauntered through the entrance with purpose. The brunette slid the blonde's jacket off of her shoulders in one smooth movement and hung it in the closet like it was the most natural thing in the world.
She couldn't decide whether to feel appalled or overjoyed at the domesticity of it all.
Emma shut the front door and Regina closed the closet. And then they just stood there. Staring at each other.
Neither of them had any idea what to say.
What do you say to the woman who stole your son from you and then saved your life? How do you say thank you without feeling like you owe her something in return?
What do you say to the woman who has hated you since the moment her son picked you over her? How can you say I'm falling in love with you without her feeling like its some cruel sort of joke?
Emma was very aware of the fact that she had not been invited into the mayor's house, but her jacket had been hung up and she hadn't been chastised for anything yet, so the blonde assumed that this was Regina's way of accepting her public proposal to talk. After all, she'd apparently been willing to show up at the diner to meet with Emma the first time…
But sometimes Regina's signals were hard to read. Like now for example.
The brunette was just standing there with her arms crossed over her stomach, looking unsure and impatient, her face slowly starting to cloud over as she sunk into her own undoubtedly morbid thoughts. Her mouth scowled and her eyebrows pinched together as she stared off into the air, obviously envisioning something that wasn't directly in front of her.
Emma shuffled her feet. Well this is awkward.
Unable to take the silence anymore, the sheriff blurted out the first thing that came into her mind, "I talked to Gold."
Regina's eyes immediately cleared as they whipped up to meet Emma's, "And?"
The brunette replied with a little more rudeness than was probably due. She was feeling uncomfortably exposed in the sheriff's presence, and whenever that happened 'angry' was always her fail-safe fallback.
But Emma took the retort in stride. The mayor had just been through a harrowing experience and some residual terseness was allowed. And who was she kidding? It was Regina. The woman was always terse.
"He said that the curse is going to make you explode and destroy the town if we don't stop it."
"Marvelous. And how do we do that?"
Emma gulped and shoved her hands in her pockets. "Your true love has to kiss you."
Regina's unexpected laugh barked out of her like something foreign, the sound holding none of the humor that was supposed to adorn it. "Oh, that's rich! I'd start packing my bags now if I were you Ms. Swan, because I have no true love. Everyone who has ever loved me has died; and most of them very violently. So good luck with that."
Emma could see the sadness prickling behind the Queen's eyes as she tried to wave off the information.
The Savior muttered at the floor, "What about me?"
"What about you?" the Queen snapped back.
When the blonde didn't respond and just continued to stare sheepishly at the ground, Regina finally registered what she was insinuating and sobered instantly. "You think that you're my true love?"
The Queen was met with wide, nervous eyes. "Well, Gold kinda mentioned that I might be, seeing that you saved me from the well and then a death curse couldn't kill you. Something about true-love-magic-protection and stuff, and being that it had to do with me…" Emma tripped over her tongue, wishing vainly that the ground would swallow her whole and save her from her own blushing face as she resumed, "The only catch is that we have to be in love with each other for the kiss to work."
Regina stuttered like a school girl that had just had her secret crush announced to the class, "That… that is absurd."
"Is it really though?"
"Yes. It is. I don't even like you," Regina replied curtly, and she folded her arms defiantly back across her chest.
Emma just stared at her. "Seriously? That's what you're going with?"
"Yes."
"I think you're lying."
"I'm not. You irritate me to no end."
"Well right back at you, Your Majesty, but that doesn't mean I want to let the town rip you to shreds."
"I can't say the same for you."
"I think you would."
"Excuse me?"
"I think you would. Save me that is."
"I most certainly would not."
"You'd leave me to fend for myself in the middle of a bloodthirsty mob?"
Regina rolled her eyes. "In this hypothetical situation I'm sure that for whatever reason said mob was coming after you that you'd done something to deserve it."
Emma grinned smugly, "Are you sure you don't like me? Not even a little bit? Because I'm pretty sure you let me sleep with you in your bed last night."
The look of horror on Regina's face indicated that this was the absolute worst thing that she could have possibly said in that moment.
"That was for medical reasons!" the brunette shrieked.
"Medical reasons?" Emma almost laughed. Thank god she didn't.
"And how dare you throw that back in my face when you promised not to ever speak of it again!" The Queen bore down on the blonde, all venom and vitriol, her snarling lips too close to Emma's to be coincidental. "I am cursed after all. Or do you need a reminder of that fact?"
But the sheriff merely cocked a smarmy eyebrow in response. "I'm just saying you can't hate me that much because no matter how mad you're pretending to be right now, your curse hasn't thrown a lightning bolt at me yet."
Regina paused for a moment, genuinely surprised at this realization and little embarrassed by her outburst. But she recovered quickly, setting her jaw and snorting derisively in the blonde's direction, "Maybe the curse will disintegrate by itself. Or maybe I'm learning to control it. Either way, your… services… will not be necessary. I trust you can see yourself out." And with that she turned away from the sheriff and began pacing the length of her foyer.
Emma followed behind the mayor a few steps as if drawn by an invisible rope tied around her waist, not wanting to crowd the woman but at the same time not wanting to let her out of her sight. "Oh come on Regina! You know that's bullshit. The curse won't just lift itself and we won't even be able lift it unless we both believe that we're each other's true love. What would it hurt to try it once?"
"There must be some other way."
Emma threw her hands up in the air in exasperation. "Thanks. You're really stroking my ego here. I feel like a million bucks right now."
The brunette rounded on her, her fists clenching at her sides as she leveled Emma with a glare that should have sent her running for the hills. "Well, it's not like I picked you to be my true love, did I Sheriff? If you recall, I did try to kill you once before."
For the sake of trying to win over the Queen, Emma chose not to mention her Freudian-slip in referring to the blonde as her true love. She just smirked to herself instead.
"Well if it's any consolation, Madam Mayor," Emma over-pronounced the words just because she knew it grated on Regina's nerves, "over the last couple of months I've thought about killing you a lot too. You just happened to get to the execution stage faster than I did."
Emma grinned as she closed in on the Queen's personal space, "But you're not trying to kill me now, are you?"
"Don't tempt me, dear," Regina intoned darkly, and for a moment her eyes flashed with a gleeful malice that made Emma question her motives. The brunette caught the brief hesitation and sneered in her minor victory.
Her voice was syrupy sweet and just reeked of condescension when she purred, "And quite frankly I find your weak excuse to make out with me just as crude as I find you. So I suggest that you go find someone else to fulfill that diluted fantasy of yours before I really get angry."
It was the self-satisfied smirk that Regina tacked onto the end of her comment that did it.
Emma's own anger bristled as the mayor's insults crawled under her skin and pricked at the backs of her hands. "Fantasy? Well someone thinks rather highly of themselves. Believe me, being shot down by you has never been something on my bucket list."
The blonde was fuming in spite of herself. She couldn't help it: Regina just knew all of her buttons to push and she did so with alarming dexterity, taking each of Emma's insecurities out of its box to poke and prod at it until it screamed. She made remaining on the side of good a constant struggle.
"God, it's a miracle that I continue to save your ass at all."
"I never asked you to save me," Regina replied bitterly. Emma swore she could almost see the Queen's walls shooting up in front of her eyes as the brunette fought to close herself off from the situation.
"No, you didn't. You're a conniving, egotistical, self-serving bitch that has made my life a living hell since I got here. But I keep doing it, and will keep doing it, until I physically can't do it anymore."
"–you're a little bit of a masochist aren't you–"
"And you wanna know why? Because I care about what happens to you! There, I said it. I care about you. Henry would be devastated if you disappeared and I would… miss you too. And if you think that makes me weak or stupid… fine. But in the long run, I'm just saying, you could do a whole lot worse than me, lady."
"And just what is it about you that I'm supposed to think is so fantastic, Ms. Swan? Is it your gross affinity to drown everything you eat in cinnamon or the way you manage to trip over something every two seconds? Or maybe it's your sparkling criminal record that I'm supposed to find intriguing?"
Emma was pretty much yelling into Regina's face now, "There are lots of things that are great about me! Or I don't know, how about we start with the fact that no one can rip my heart out of my chest! Hm!? That's pretty frickin' cool if you ask me! So yeah, at least I never have to worry about your dear old mom doing that!"
"A pity really when I think about it."
"Oh come on Regina!" Emma practically screamed. "We have a kid together!"
"Henry is my son, not yours!" the brunette bellowed back.
"Ugh! Of course that's what you took from what I said. Jesus, you are so infuriating!"
"As are you!"
Emma was about ready to yank her hair out. "I mean, it's just one kiss! Are you really gonna risk everyone's life, Henry's life, just because you're afraid of kissing me?"
And there it was. A glimmer of hope. Was the mayor actually blushing?
So the blonde tried a new tactic. "Or are you just afraid that it won't work?"
The silence that followed Emma's words was so icy that it physically stung her skin.
"I said no, Ms. Swan. End of discussion," Regina growled.
"Why? What harm could it possibly do? Best case scenario, the curse ends and you don't explode. Worst case scenario we… well… we just…" Emma floundered for words she didn't have and stopped. Her brain didn't really see a downside to kissing Regina. Worst case scenario their relationship stayed exactly the same, just with one misguided kiss under their belts.
"We just what, Ms. Swan?"
Regina and she were standing too close together. The brunette was livid; her incensed chest was heaving slightly in anger and her eyes were glistening in a silent challenge as she clenched her fists at her sides. Emma just wanted to kiss the frown right off of her face.
So she did.
Emma launched forward and kissed the Queen squarely on the lips. Regina squeaked a little in surprise and shoved the blonde off of her. "Just what do you think you're–?"
The sheriff crashed her mouth against Regina's again, grabbing at the mayor's blazer around her waist and pulling the insufferable woman into her body. Regina jerked back for a second time, albeit with a little less force than before, and pushed tersely at Emma's biceps.
"See, I told you, nothing happ–"
Regina should have seen the next kiss coming by now, but she didn't stop it fast enough. Emma's lips were moving over hers once more and the mayor found herself relenting to the onslaught ever-so-slightly, if only for a moment. A traitorous moan hummed in the back of her throat as the sheriff took her bottom lip between her teeth and sucked softly on the painted flesh.
"Ms. Swan!" Regina exclaimed a little breathlessly, breaking their kiss with much more willpower than she would have thought necessary. This time she didn't even bother to push the blonde away, instead settling for throwing her hands up between their torsos as a blockade.
She stared at the Savior incredulously, "It didn't work."
Honest green eyes bored into her soul, darkening at the brink with a wild edge of lust as her mouth pulled up at the corner, forming into an irritably mischievous grin. "I know," Emma drawled.
"Then why were you still trying to kiss me?"
"Because I didn't want to stop."
Regina felt something inside her shatter. In spite of everything that she had put this poor woman through, Emma still wanted her. She wasn't shrinking away from her in fear. She wasn't using her emotions as a power play. The blonde had no ulterior motive… other than she wanted to kiss the Queen.
The sensation of being wanted was magnetizing and hypnotic, and Regina craved to drown in the feeling. Longed for it with the essence of her very being. To just be swept up and carried away by the strong jaw and toned biceps of Emma Swan.
Any rational protest she had been concocting died in her throat as she collided with the Savior. Her hands were everywhere as she tried to consume the blonde, digging into hipbones and running up her back, pushing and pulling in the rash desire to feel skin as she balled the black tank top in her fists.
Emma gasped against her lips as she returned the assault with vigor, her fingers weaving through ebony locks to tug and scrape along the Queen's scalp, pulling the brunette with her as Regina backed the sheriff into the desk perched against the wall. It caught Emma right underneath her ass and she suddenly found herself sitting on it, with the mayor's body pressed firmly between her legs as her blood-red fingernails dragged themselves over denim-encased thighs.
The blonde's head fell back as Regina laid waste to her jaw, peppering it with wet, open-mouthed kisses before trailing them down the long column of her neck to her clavicle, biting and sucking with such force that Emma was sure that the Queen was leaving marks. A needy moan escaped her as Regina's tongue circled the hollow at the base of her throat and her fingers clenched harder into the brunette's hair, holding her wantonly against her purpling skin.
"Oh my god, Regina," Emma managed to breathe.
The Queen suddenly jumped back from her like she had been burned by hot coals. Terror tugged at her features as her brain seemed to catch up to what her body was doing.
"I can't do this." Regina backed away from her, shaking her head as if trying to clear the cobwebs from it. "Not again, I… I just can't."
The brunette turned away from Emma and walked further into the foyer, her fingers pacing over her lips as they tried to memorize the imprint the blonde had left on them.
"What am I doing?" she repeated more to herself.
Emma saw the panic in her eyes, heard it in her voice; that survival instinct to flee, to leave before you were left, the predisposition to cut yourself off before you got in too deep. Hell if she wasn't feeling it herself but Emma remained resolute. She was not going to run from this.
It felt too good, too right, to give it up.
She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but there was just something about Regina that made her want to protect the brunette no matter what. The woman was more than capable of taking care of herself, but all Emma wanted to do in that moment was wrap her up in her arms and shield her from everything that had ever hurt her, from anything that had ever made her lose her trust.
Maybe that was what true love was… finding someone irresistible in spite of all their flaws.
Emma approached the brunette's back cautiously, lightly brushing her waist with her fingertips. Regina flinched at the contact but didn't pull away, so the blonde entangled her limbs around the Queen from behind and rested her hands on the taut abdomen hidden by a button-up shirt. She tugged the Queen's form against her own frame until the brunette was leaning fully against her chest. Then Emma placed her forehead on Regina's shoulder and sighed.
They stayed like that for a long moment. Emma didn't rush her; she didn't even know if words were needed. But if they were, Emma would wait for Regina to decide.
The mayor lightly cleared her throat before speaking. "I'm sorry for snapping at you, Emma, I just… I don't know how to love very well," she murmured softly, and the sheriff could actually feel the weight of the words pulling down the Queen's posture.
"You know," Emma mumbled into Regina's shoulder, placing a quick kiss there before she continued, "love is a pretty big word. It's something that I don't say unless I really mean it, and sometimes I don't even say it then either. But right now there's too much pressure, with the curse, and the town, and for us to be in love… so let's just talk about something else. Something not as serious."
She gave the brunette in her arms a gentle, reassuring squeeze before she took a deep breath to settle her own nerves, swallowing down the fear of rejection as she tried to summon the courage to say what she wanted to. She needed to be brave so that Regina could be brave.
The fact that Regina wasn't looking at her with those huge soulful brown eyes helped to feed her confidence a little. Whenever she felt the Queen staring at her she could never remember what she wanted to say.
"I like you," Emma admitted and cringed as she waited for the expected barrage of insults to come hurtling her way. But instead she felt the slight shiver that skittered up the mayor's spine at her words. So she said it again, "I like you. A lot."
A huffy voice came from in front of her. "You're just saying that because you want to save the town."
"Nope. The town has nothing to do with how I feel. Curse or no curse, I still like you."
Emma began to slowly kiss up the mayor's back, pressing her lips into the olive skin with every untold confession.
One on her shoulder blade, covered by the swanky blazer. "I like how you challenge me."
One at the juncture of her neck. "How you call me on my shit just like I call you on yours."
The next one over her pulse point. "I like how you fight for what you want…"
She stayed where she could feel Regina's pulse fluttering under her skin and sucked, loving it when the brunette's breath hitched in her throat. "…and how you refuse to back down."
She flicked her tongue lightly over the mark she'd just made. "I like how much you love Henry and always try to do right by him."
Regina's resulting scoff at this particular admission made Emma smile against the mayor's neck. "I also like how you don't know how to take a compliment." She bit down where she had just left off and the brunette trembled.
"And despite what you may think," the blonde kissed up higher as she continued her assent, "I actually do like how arrogant you are."
She scraped her teeth over Regina's skin and goosebumps erupted over the mayor's flesh, "Even if it usually pisses me off."
Emma nipped and nibbled leisurely on the Queen's throat, lingering over the delicate skin until Regina's palms were clutching madly at the arms still clasped around her waist. A breathy whimper escaped the entrapped brunette and Emma smirked devilishly as she pressed forward.
"I like your eyes." Kiss. "And your lips." Kiss. "And your ass." Kiss. "And your sexy voice…"
Emma kissed the spot behind the mayor's ear before ghosting her hot breath over its shell in a whisper, "And to top it all off… I really like kissing you."
Unable to endure the delicious torture any longer, Regina twisted in the sheriff's arms and pulled the blonde into a dizzying kiss so full of desperate passion that when they eventually broke for air they both were a little light-headed. The brunette claimed her lips again and again as she wove her fingers through the curls at the base of Emma's scalp, holding the sheriff to her so fiercely that one might have thought that she was the only thing anchoring the Queen to the ground.
Regina's voice was hoarse when she finally rested her forehead against the blonde's and whispered five perfect little words against Emma's still slightly parted lips, "I really like you too."