The Love Hack by mariacomet


Author's comments:

Happy Thursday everyone. Today's flight will be a lovely waltz through the sky invoking butterflies, nervous moments and a "thing" that is TOTALLY not a date. As usual, thank you all for the response and the comments and the kudos. I don't think I wouldn't have gotten half this far without your support. We are about 5 chapters away from the end, can you all believe it? Still, a lot more story to tell. Recline your seats back and enjoy. This is your Captain speaking.

As always if you want to say "hi", you can find me on Twitter under "mariacomet".

Btw, if you haven't already, you might want to check out "Trust" which is another SQ story I just tossed up. It's MUCH shorter and MUCH more unsafe for work. I can shill my own stuff, right? That's totally allowed? I did anyway! Muhahahahaha.

Scott-Prough- I am absolutely an Earper and Oncer! Also a creampuff (Carmilla). I haven't watched the "Bold Type" yet but I am sure that once I do, I will be whatever that fandom name is.

pFire274 - Thank you. Working on the "more", I promise!

MiDushiNoSushi - Appreciate the well wishes for myself and my family. It IS a lot of progress for our ladies and it will continue for a few chapters until...well...you'll see. But in this chapter we take a look at Emma's pertential scale and get Regina's highly subtle opinion on it.

Guest - Glad you liked the last chapter. I made all of you go through a lot of angst so right now we're just going to keep with R and E and let them explore how they feel. And next chapter, there's a pillowfort.

Betagamma - Totally not a date. Just a thing. Yanno, that looks exactly like a date. They are both trying to be brave for one another. It won't always be easy but they are trying. They both recognize there's something special between them and while still terrified, they are trying to hold unto it.


Chapter 28 - The one with "the thing"

Regina heard Emma call out a hello to Belle, and she studiously adopted a "working hard" pose that would convey that this visit and their plans for that night did not throw her.

At all.

Earlier, when Emma texted she was on the way, Regina sought out a mirror without thinking and began to primp. She then berated herself for the sudden attack of a schoolgirl crush. It didn't stop her from wondering if she should have worn a grey suit and not a black one. A lighter color might make her seem more approachable.

She hadn't gotten a thing done after that.

A knock came at her door and Emma peeked in, engaging grin at the ready. Regina waved her in and realized that, for whatever reason, Emma had abandoned the casual-jeans-and-t-shirt look. She wore a crisp button-up dark blue shirt, top two buttons left open. A charcoal vest was tossed over it coordinated with slacks of the same color. Emma's hair was in a loose ponytail and she was wearing drop earrings capped at the end with a small rhinestone.

It was quite a fetching ensemble, she thought as her head began to feel feverish. Her fingers splayed flat on her desk, fingertips itching to do something. Her toes curled in the same desire to move.

This was just Emma, she reminded herself.

"Am I interrupting," Emma asked.

"You—you're dressed."

They had decided to do "the thing" the weekend directly after Portland. The plan was that Emma would drive in today, Friday, to help look at resumes sent over from the temp agency. After that, in the evening would be the "thing."

"Well, driving naked seemed like a bad idea. This is my more 'professional' look but…" She kicked up a leg. "Still have sneakers." She came a little closer. "Do you like it?"

Regina couldn't cobble two words together to answer Emma's question. She tried to kick-start her mind, but it sputtered and refused to function. She wanted to say how beautiful Emma was, but if she said that, it would surely make things awkward. Yet, the reality of that truth swept everything else.

She cleared her throat. "It's very nice, but it's your wardrobe. What I like is irrelevant."

"I kinda like it. I have to get used to it. I am not doing heels. I don't care how successful we get. I will break something." She tilted her head. "But you don't like it?"

Between the "the thing" tonight and that question, it felt like someone had kicked over a basket of butterflies in her stomach. "I…" Her eyes flooded with an appreciative glow, she could feel it and couldn't stop it. "I like it very much."

"Very much?"

She forced her eyes back down to her paperwork. "Yes." Regina pinched her side to try and regain her senses. "Your parents have a bunch of resumes for you to offer your opinion on. Henry told me that we can have 'time to ourselves' tonight as long as you give him 'Emma time' tomorrow. On that topic, your parents want to have a family dinner tomorrow night. They probably let you know that the moment you arrived in town."

"They probably would have. Except I came here first."

The butterflies got out again. "You did?"

"Yup." Emma dipped her hands in the pockets of her vest which hung to her hips. "Ah, I don't ever want you to feel pushed by me but—can I tell you I missed you?"

She realized the awkward position she had put Emma in. Her own uncertainty caused Emma doubt where the boundaries were. "You can always say that to me. I missed you, too."

Emma flicked her index finger toward Regina then back to herself. "So, this—this is weird, right? I don't know if you're nervous. I'm a little nervous."

Emma's admission was a relief. The line of her shoulders relaxed. Emma's casual honesty had always been disarming, but more importantly, right now it felt familiar. It was a little like finding an English television station in a foreign country where she didn't speak the language.

"I am too," Regina said. "I think we're both just trying to understand the expectations."

"But the entire point is not to have them. That's why it's a 'thing' and not a date. We're just going to go and hang out with each other."

Regina nodded, trying to chisel that into her head. Maybe that would keep the former cocoon-dwellers at bay. That, and a sensible plan. "About tonight, we settled on the restaurant, but we didn't talk about how we are getting there."

Emma's mouth hung open in an O. "Um, well, it wouldn't make sense to take separate cars, but uh, I guess picking you up would seem too 'date-y'."

Regina was the planner between them. "What if we meet here, outside, at 7."

"Sure," Emma said. "So, I guess I'll see you then."

"See you then."

As soon as Emma left, Regina sank her head in her hands. "Hanging out," she muttered. "Just hanging out. Right."

A little later, she received a text from Emma, "Hey Regina. Marco."

She didn't remember the inside joke from the Winter Festival right away, but when she did, it gave her yet another reminder that Emma hadn't changed just because they were exploring untrodden paths.

Polo, she texted back.

Regina was trying to kill her.

Though, really, in a court of law a judge probably wouldn't believe that wearing a skirt was a murder weapon.

It entirely was.

Regina's skirt, slit on the side, offering hints of luscious skin applied the gas to her libido and revved her engines. She was stuck at the starting line raring to go. The way Regina ate, how she occasionally fussed with the edges of her hair, her smiles—playful, touched, amused—none of them did anything but put pressure on the accelerator.

She ignored it, like she had on the drive here and when they'd walked into the restaurant and as they ordered appetizers.

"How did you meet Neal," Regina asked, after their entrees were ordered. Before that moment, they had discussed things they were working on that didn't directly involve Cybersheriff. Tonight, by mutual agreement, talking about Cybersherrif was off limits.

"We were both trying to hack the same ATM."

"Romantic," Regina said, and took a dainty bite of one of the mini eggrolls they had ordered as an appetizer. Emma knew nothing about Vietnam cuisine, but Yelp rated this restaurant highly, so maybe eggrolls weren't just Chinese? She would google it later.

"What about you and your husband?"

"My mother picked him out of several eligible men as someone who would best assist in my ambitions. I then systematically befriended him and his girlfriend so I could break them up."

"Romantic."

Regina's mouth twisted. "I made him miserable, but he was malleable. After a few years, I felt guilty enough to let him go. He was a good man. He wanted to go to counselling and really try to work at our marriage." She sighed, fingertips massaging her temple for a moment. "He didn't realize it was, and always had been a sham."

"So, we really suck at this. Like—on every level."

It made Regina give a small burst of a laugh.

Good.

There was this uncertainty bouncing up and down between them that kept yelling "look at me!" They were both doing their best to ignore it. Emma recognized that for someone like Regina, who thrived on rules, this place they were in must feel like the Wild West. Lawless, uncharted, and probably dusty.

Emma, on the other hand, didn't want to push, and it was hard to know when she was. She wished Regina came with a traffic signal—red, yellow, green. Anything but green meant stop, but she didn't know when the light would change, so she kept reading into what Regina said and did.

Maybe if she could keep it light, keep making Regina laugh, it would be okay.

"We do suck at it," Regina agreed. "My first crush was on a teacher my freshman year of high school. She taught history and wore perfume that smelled like gardenias. She had an awful time controlling her class but she was passionate. I…used to buy her books and leave them on her desk when I was sure no one was around. 'Wuthering Heights,' 'A Room with a View,' 'Agnes Grey'. Of course, I acted completely apathetic in her class around my friends."

"Did she ever figure out it was you?"

"Never." She paused before she said the next part. "My friends weren't kind to her. I didn't join in, but I didn't stop them either."

Emma pursed her lips and strummed at the edge of her napkin. "Do you think you would now?"

"Now." A dry chuckle escaped her. "Now, I would read every single one of them the riot act until they were in tears." She leaned back, shoulders straightening. "Good people deserve better. I wanted to do that then, too, but...I knew I could lose my influence, and I couldn't allow that."

"No better than me sizing up marks to steal credit cards from, probably," Emma said easily. "Actually, I probably would have wound up working at a store your friends shopped in. Best way to do it was to work retail a few days and attach software to the credit card scanner."

Regina's brows shot up. "Sometimes you terrify me."

"Hey, reformed hacker is reformed, remember?"

Regina reached across and touched her hand. "I am very much aware of that." Emma's eyes fell to their hands. Regina didn't keep her hand there long, withdrawing it to take a long sip of water.

Fuck, Emma thought. Things would be fine, and then it would suddenly be awkward, like one of them had tripped. She released a puff of air and forged ahead with the conversation.

"My first crush was a girl who rode a Harley, had a nose ring, and wore a leather jacket. But I thought I was just lusting after the Harley."

Regina chuckled and the evening righted itself again. "Can I ask you about prison?" Emma shrugged, honestly not minding. "Were you scared?"

"Mostly, I was bored and frustrated. Three of us in a cell—but it was minimum security, so no bars. Everything was gray. I mean everything. They wouldn't let me use a computer because of what I had done. There was other stuff to do—pool, ping pong, weights—but they kept shutting down the library because inmates snuck in there to smoke weed. It was kind of like a really, really low-budget summer camp you couldn't escape from and without nature. I felt like I was crawling out of my skin. I started gambling with my inmate allowance because I was bored. I taught a computer basics class because I was bored. I worked out because I was bored."

"You experimented with your sexuality because you were bored?"

Emma's cheeks colored. "That wasn't how it started. It started because I met someone who reminded me of my first crush, and she let her interest be known loud and clear. But after that, yeah, kinda."

Regina paid close attention to the silverware, rearranging her fork and knife so they were parallel. "And was your relief from boredom extensive in that way?"

Emma translated that into what she thought Regina was actually asking. The corners of her eyes crinkled. "Are you asking if I was a slut?"

Regina's eyes widened into big, round circles. "I was asking no such thing."

Emma let her off the hook and answered while enjoying her still shocked expression. "I was with my first prison girlfriend—I use that term loosely—for a couple months. After her, I occasionally had a thing. I mean, there's a certain amount of planning involved for the whole thing so you don't get caught. Spontaneity was hard to come by."

"My first girlfriend was a cliche. It was in college—as if that stereotype needed me to give it more credence. I arranged for us to be roommates, so we could hide it more easily. It would have been a disaster if it had gotten out."

"You didn't 'arrange it' by killing someone, did you?"

"Please, I only maimed them."

Emma rested her chin in her hand. "Sometimes you terrify me."

Regina's eyes sparkled. "Reformed Ice Queen is reformed. No, I just asked both of our roommates if they would mind switching. Nothing diabolical."

"So, what happened to Miss Cliche?"

Regina's head dropped a fraction, her tone thoughtful. "She got tired of hiding, and I had no intention of making it public. I had a plan for my life mapped out. I wasn't about to deviate from it for anyone." She shook her head as if trying to dismiss the memory. "It's just as well, she was majoring in theater arts. It never would have worked."

The joke drifted away, Regina's brow furrowing. "When my husband and I divorced, it made the papers in New York. My lawyer's secretary gave a 'tell all' interview, sharing everything and anything she'd overheard. It didn't make me look very good." She tested the prongs of her fork with her fingertip. "They never did."

Emma couldn't fight Regina's past for her. She didn't have the means to go back in time and stand by the side of the woman going through those days. She wished she did. The thing that always struck Emma about Regina was how alone she sounded when she spoke about her past. Emma had been poor and an orphan, so her own solitude made sense. Regina, though, she had a family. She had a golden ticket.

Still, they had spent most of their lives in the same way—alone.

"My mother was very disappointed that I couldn't make it work," Regina said. "She is a big believer in doing whatever is necessary to get what you want. There was something in the way she treated my father that I could never put my finger on when I was little. In public, she said all the right things to him and was affectionate with him. In private though, she was constantly correcting him."

"And you, too?"

Regina nodded. "And me, too. She would do it with a small smile or a pat, like she was trying to help. But it was all the time. And all that 'affection'—she used it. She used it like a tool to make us think or do what she wanted."

"Your dad doesn't seem to have been like that. From what little you've told me."

"No. He was—" She withdrew further into herself, stopped fussing with the silverware, and placed her hands in her lap. "I think the way I love Henry is because of what he taught me. I think that's the part of me that's from my father." She met Emma's eyes and held them, not holding back the mourning of her father or the pride in that part of herself. "I guess this isn't the most fun topic of conversation."

"We can talk about this MMORPG I just started playing."

Regina cocked her head. "I have no idea what you just said."

"Regina, if you want to talk about your dad or Henry or paperclips—"

"Paperclips?"

"—or whatever, I'm good. Look, we both know each other and we know we like each other. That's the hard part, right? So, we can just be ourselves. Whatever that means. Okay?"

Regina answered her with an unrestrained smile that slowly curved up her lips until it was fully freed. "Okay," Regina said.

Once again, Emma's body quickened. She ignored it.

Well, she tried.

The conversation flowed and, right about the time dinner came, Emma relaxed. Their banter built and fell away when they talked about deeper things. After dinner, they drove back to Regina's house, and Regina asked if Emma wanted to go for a walk.

"So, I'm thinking this went pretty well," Emma said, darting a glance at her to try and gauge whether she agreed.

They walked beside one another slowly, drifting into the quiet Storybrooke night. "I'd like to do this again, but Emma, I still don't know…"

Emma turned toward her to stop her. "I'm not asking you for anything, remember?"

"You deserve…"

"So do you." Emma's voice was strained, believing it with all of her heart.

Regina stepped closer and tugged on Emma's vest, their eyes meeting. "Could we…" she left it hanging there for a long moment. "Could we try this?" Regina reached out and linked her fingers with Emma's.

The smile inside Emma was gargantuan, it battled to take over her eyes and mouth. It stomped over her intentions of being cool and casual. "Yeah." She squeezed Regina's hand to give her another source of affirmation.

They kept walking, hand in hand.

Emma wrote the Pertential Scale on the whiteboard. "So, here it is," she said to Regina. "And so, like, right now I'm at 40. Which is great for me."

"40." Regina stared at it, frowning then sitting forward. "That is the stupidest thing I have ever seen."

It was a week after their "thing" and technically this long lunch in the conference room at city hall was another "thing". Emma brought Chinese food. They bantered for a bit and even held hands. Taken in by this new level of closeness, Emma decided to explain her philosophy of quantifying her life.

Emma wondered if she had explained it right. "No, see, it's two parameters to make it a more complete value."

Regina, expression not changing, rapped her fingernails on the top of the table. "And yet you rate yourself as a 40?"

"My point was that it's a good thing. Like, yay, it went up. Because of," she gestured between them, "y'know, of everything."

"40," Regina said again, standing and crossing towards Emma. "If I may?" Regina pulled the marker from Emma's fingertips. "You have two variables, yes? 'A' which is 'how good a life you are providing for yourself' and 'B' which is 'how much good you are doing for the people around you'."

Regina wrote down a very neat and precise A, followed by a B, and then began to draw money symbols around both. "When I had access to my mother's coffers I could help thousands of people if I wanted to. Am I really any better than someone who helps a dozen, but does it by offering blood, sweat, and tears? Variable A has the same weakness. Living up to your potential may involve contacts, education, any number of things that some people have in abundance and some don't. So, you've created a scale that anyone can game simply by being wealthy."

Emma studied the scale she had drawn, gaping, as Regina, in minutes, dismantled what took her years to create. "Rich people are a statistical anomaly. You always toss out the outliers[m4e1] if you want accuracy, right?"

Regina didn't fight that, instead she wrote "Henry."

"Emma, would you say that Henry would be high on either of those two variables? He is still trying to understand what his potential is, and while he does what he can to help others, I think he has a while to go before he's Mother Theresa. Are you saying that his worth is low?"

"Of course not. I mean, that's another outlier, really. I wouldn't apply this to a kid."

"I see. And at what age, then, is suitable to apply it?" Regina sounded calm and reasonable, but she was flicking the marker up and down.

"Well—"

"If I have bad days when I don't 'live up to my potential' or 'don't do much good', my son still considers my worth to be high. My town considers it to be high. And I hope, so do you. Am I wrong?"

Emma gave a nervous smile. The question was dangerous. "It's supposed to measure where you are compared to where you could be. Your perception of your potential. It doesn't try to determine 'worth'."

"All grading systems have an impact on morale and confidence. Where is the parameter that gives you credit just for being you? Where is the line that says you are more than these two variables? Because that scale should start at a 100%. Emma, the trick is to hang on to that with all your might, and not let anyone or anything make you feel it's not 100%." She tossed the marker onto the table and folded her arms over her stomach. "You have an entire scale that reduces you, and you've had it for years."

The instinct to apologize rose in Emma, except she didn't entirely understand what she would be apologizing for. "If I just erase this, can you forget I mentioned it?" she asked, and inched toward the eraser.

Regina fixed her with a glare. "Don't joke about this. Is this scale what caused you to punish people who swindle others? Is this part of why you feel the need to charge in and save the day?"

"Can we back up a step, please?" Emma scratched the back of her neck and claimed a chair a few feet away. She settled in and took a moment to regroup. "Look, I just wanted something to help me make sense of things. I needed something."

Regina came to sit beside her and took her hand. "My mother made me believe that I could either be perfect or worthless, that was all there was in her eyes. There are so many people who will tear you down, Emma. Because you have something they want, or they aren't thinking, or because they can. Don't help them do it." She lifted from her chair long enough to gently kiss Emma's temple. "You have to start each day at 100, because I can't stand…" Her fingers brushed the hair from Emma's face. "I can't stand the thought of you not seeing yourself that way."

Emma felt her vision blur with tears, and all she could do was hold tighter to Regina's hand. "I'll try."

"I don't always do a good job of it either, but you help. You very much help, Emma."

"Can I ask you something? Do you still have that escape plan box?"

"Yes."

Regina had showed her the box once. It was hidden in the floor safe in her home office, just under her desk chair. Inside she had petty cash, passports, and stacks of pre-paid credit cards, as well as a list of hotels, flight numbers, and flight times. Regina had told her that she double-checked the details every other week—like a ritual.

"That box scares me. I feel like it's this ticking time bomb, you know? And I'm wondering if it makes you feel like less than you are." Regina's expression was confused, so Emma went on. "It's a reminder of what scares you the most, and it's there with you every day. It helps you feel safe and in control. Like the scale for me. But maybe it also messes with you. Makes you doubt yourself. "

Her eyes dropped as she considered Emma's words. "It's possible. I don't think I'm ready to get rid of that box, Emma. I don't know if I'll ever be, but...maybe I can at least move it out of my office. Put it in a safety deposit box. Maybe that's progress."

"I'll work at updating my scale." Emma leaned forward till her head was on Regina's shoulder. Regina lay her cheek against Emma's hair, fingers combing through the ends.

"So—we start at 100," Emma said.

"Start at 100," Regina echoed, and it felt like a vow.