Chapter fifteen
"Do we have any popcorn?"
Cora frowned and looked up from her laptop and over to her daughter entering the kitchen. She was sure that the cheerleader had spent at least a couple hours looking for an outfit for the party, so she wasn't quite sure why she would be in her sweatpants and a slouchy t-shirt asking for popcorn.
"I think there may be some in the cupboard," the mayor replied.
Regina nodded and said, "thanks mom," before she went over to search through the snack cupboard and she also quickly grabbed two sodas from the refrigerator.
"Didn't you mention that you and Emma would be spending your night at Kathryn's house?" Cora asked before the younger brunette could slip out of the kitchen.
Regina's footsteps faltered and she considered what she should say. She knew that her mother would freak out if she discovered that Emma had just had a panic attack and she could guess that the blonde probably didn't want Cora Mills coming up to check on her right now.
"I didn't feel like going so I'm just going to watch a movie with Emma," Regina replied and jiggled the popcorn for emphasis.
Cora narrowed her eyes at the middle child. She knew that she was holding something back, but all evidence pointed to the fact that Regina was doing everything she could to make Emma feel safe and at home in Storybrooke so the mayor was sure that if there was something serious going on, then she would tell her. Plus, what was the worst thing that could happen while watching a movie? She had been much more worried about Emma going to a party anyway so it was kind of a relief.
"Okay," she finally replied, "enjoy" she added before she turned back to her laptop, trying to hide her smile. She'd been waiting to see if Emma and Regina would actually become friends and she didn't really want to make a big deal about it.
Regina in fact did see the smile but decided against commenting on it. Instead, she slipped out of the kitchen and upstairs as quickly as she possibly could.
She opened her door slowly and had to hope that the blush she could feel on her cheeks wasn't obvious when the sight of Emma sat on her bed came into view.
This was the first time that the blonde had been in this room and it was adorably clear that she didn't really know what to do with herself. The young genius had been looking around all of the pictures and decorations around the room that Regina had to assume she had never gotten the opportunity to have in any of her foster homes.
Just as every other time Regina thought about the teen's past, she felt a twist in her stomach. She mainly felt it because she was so against her parents fostering Emma in the first place, if she had managed to complain enough to get her way, then who knows where the blonde would have ended up? It could have been her fault that she never met her and she would have lost the chance to have a fixed place to stay for as long as she wanted since she couldn't really see Cora sending her away the moment that she turned 18.
"You got a notification while you were gone," Emma announced and gestured at the desk she had thrown her phone onto after texting Kathryn to say that she wasn't feeling well.
Regina forced herself to unroot her feet and walked into the room. A part of her would have been willing to stand and stare at the blonde much longer than she had, but she couldn't exactly justify remaining there for much longer.
"Thanks," she said with a smile and placed the snacks down on the desk as she grabbed the device.
She expected a text back from Kathryn, but she had to stop herself from rolling her eyes when she saw that it was from Killian:
'Kathryn said that you're 'sick', so does this mean that you're finally having a date with Emma?'
She threw the phone down to the desk, hoping that the reaction didn't look too suspicious.
It did cross her mind that watching a movie could be interpreted as a date, but she adamantly refused to consider this further. Emma had just had a panic attack and she didn't need her creepy foster sister who had a crush on her to exploit the vulnerability.
She grabbed the popcorn and the sodas and slipped on top of the covers, making sure to leave a significant amount of space between herself and Emma.
She handed her one of the soda and placed the popcorn between them before she picked up the remote.
"Did you pick a movie?" she asked with a smile.
Emma frowned at the phone, tempted to point out the fact that the cheerleader hadn't replied to whatever the message was, but she decided that would be rude. She turned her attention back to Regina, hoping it was impossible for someone to tell that she felt a flutter in her stomach. She had expected Regina to help her calm down and then offer her an out for the party. But she certainly hadn't expected the brunette to forgo the party for herself in favour of watching a movie that she probably wasn't really interested in.
"Well...we could watch Far From Home but I haven't watched any of the other MCU movies…I'm not sure if it would make sense," Emma replied, about to suggest that Regina could pick another movie that she would enjoy more. After all, she had probably only suggested Spider-Man because Henry told her that she liked the comics and she thought that it would help to calm her down.
However, before she could say that, Regina said, "oh, we can start with Iron Man if you want?"
Emma drew her eyebrows together and asked, "aren't there 23 films?"
"I mean I wouldn't object to skipping the Incredible Hulk, but if you want to watch them all, I've only watched the first few so I wouldn't mind catching up with them…" Regina replied with a shrug.
"But it would take 49 hours to watch them all and that doesn't include Endgame…"
"Of course you know that," Regina replied with a laugh, "we could watch two or three a week until we catch up?"
Emma nodded at this without much hesitation before her mind could think of some possible ulterior motive for why Regina would suggest such a commitment. It wasn't as if her parents didn't already think that she was making an effort, so suggesting spending at least an extra four hours a week together could only mean that the cheerleader actually liked her company.
It also seemed like a massive bonus that her wanting to spend time with her wouldn't involve a large amount of people making her anxious.
Regina thought for a moment that she could also suggest watching the TV shows, but she forced herself to hold onto that for when they finished the movies. It would take at least 16 weeks to get through them all at the rate she had suggested and she kind of hoped by then that she and Emma's relationship would feel much easier by then. Though she wasn't quite sure whether she was also hoping that she would be her girlfriend by then, even if she would very much like to call every one of these MCU nights a date.
Instead of saying anything, she just opened the Amazon app on which she knew that Cora had probably paid for every superhero property available for Henry and she made short work of finding the first Iron Man movie.
S
-The next day-
Emma sat cross-legged on Alice's couch and continued to read the book in her lap as she waited for the British girl to return from the kitchen.
Usually, she found reading to be the easiest thing in the world, it was something she could do whereby no one expected anything from her. She didn't have to spend time figuring out facial expressions or body language, especially when she went with non-fiction as she so often did.
However, on this occasion, she was having some trouble focusing on the words on the page.
Usually, not being able to get through a sentence meant that she was anxious about something, this time, though, she was thinking about something entirely different.
The night before, she and Regina had watched both Iron Man and Iron Man 2, which meant that she had gotten to spend over four hours with the brunette and that she would next week and the week after that if the cheerleader kept her promise.
A few weeks ago, Emma would have assumed that Regina would have only suggested this to get on her parents' good side and that she would have gone back on it as soon as she possibly could. Now, though, she had the distinct feeling that she somehow actually enjoyed spending time with the socially awkward girl who her parents had decided to take in.
Even if watching two movies didn't exactly give them much time to talk, it still felt like they were much closer than they had been before and she got the feeling that the longer they spent together, the less awkward it would start to feel.
It was strange to think about, but she could actually see herself being as comfortable around Regina one day as she was around Lily.
She was brought out of her thoughts by the sound of plastic rustling as Alice placed some snacks on the coffee table.
"Consider this my way of apologising for last night," the Brit said as she slipped onto the couch next to her friend, "I would have come if it wouldn't have meant leaving a seven year old alone…"
Emma just smiled brightly at her friend as she reached over to grab one of the sodas and she replied, "it's really okay, I didn't even go to the party anyway…"
Alice frowned. She had been surprised when Emma had asked her to come to the party, mostly because she had been surprised that the girl would want to go in the first place. It quickly made sense when she said that she had been invited by Regina, which was why she had felt so bad when she realised that she couldn't go.
This seemed like a good chance for her to see whether the cheerleader possibly liked Emma as much as the blonde clearly liked her. Even if Alice had never been told directly how she felt, the way that Emma seemed to take every opportunity to bring up the brunette made it pretty obvious how she felt.
It was for this reason that Alice was determined to check what the chances were that Emma's foster sister could break her heart so that she could try and threaten her if she was somehow leading her friend on.
However, from her experience of her own crush on a certain Will Scarlet, she knew that she would never pass up the opportunity to spend time with him, so she would have thought that Emma would be a least a little annoyed that she had missed the chance to spend a whole evening with Regina outside of school. Even if it meant going to a party.
"You could have still gone without me," Alice replied.
Emma nodded and said, "I know, but…" she trailed off and considered bringing up the panic attack. Alice certainly knew that she got them, but the very thought of thinking about them made her anxious and she didn't want to get too far into that right now since she was sure it wouldn't be long until she would be talking about what happened with Archie. Plus, she hardly thought that the panic attack was too essential to the story of what happened since it wasn't exactly implausible that she didn't want to go to a party. "When I told Regina that you couldn't come, she asked if I would prefer to stay home and watch movies with her…"
Alice's eyebrows shot up and she tried not to audibly say 'aww'. Usually, with cheerleaders, she would assume that there was some kind of ulterior motive for that, but it seemed like if Regina wanted to somehow humiliate Emma, it would make more sense to bring her to a place with all of the very people who she wanted to see said humiliation, so this was probably a sweet gesture, right?
"Okay well I feel a lot less guilty now," Alice laughed and reached over to also grab some snacks, "you should thank me for an evening with your crush."
"I don't…"
Emma clamped her mouth shut when Alice just looked at her with an unimpressed expression. It was a knee jerk reaction to say that she didn't have a crush on another girl, especially after the last time someone found out that was something that she often experienced. However, now pretty much everyone knew about her sexual orientation and that meant that she had no reason to deny it.
To be fair, it strangely made logical sense to her that she would be so attracted to Regina, even if her feelings still baffled her to such a high degree.
"Okay...yes I should thank you," Emma replied and looked intently at her can that now seemed to be unfairly difficult to open.
Alice took a moment to inspect her. It was painfully obvious that she was uncomfortable with talking about her feelings. If it was anyone else, she probably would have teased her about the crush some more, but Emma had long since told her about the whole low-EQ situation and it just felt like it would be mean to do so.
"Okay, Mario or Twilight Princess?" she asked instead of pushing the subject.
Emma looked up from her lap and smiled in appreciation at the abrupt change of subject and replied, "we never finished Super Mario World."
Alice nodded and jumped up to set up the console, "okay, but you're Lugi this time."
"That's fine, he jumps higher," Emma replied.
Alice scoffed and was about to point out that Mario had more traction as she kneeled down to turn on the console, but a dinging had her pulling her phone out of her jacket.
She made short work of checking the notification and drew her eyebrows together when she saw that it was an email on her school account from Killian Jones with the subject 'Operation SwanQueen'.