A/N: Hello! Toda (if any of y'all ship tiva too... the pain...) for reading/following/favouriting/reviewing, you guys are awesome. I considered adding this to chapter 19 and making it one big chapter, but it would have been so much longer than the others that I decided against it. Also, the next chapter has a slight trigger warning on that this one doesn't, and so if anyone doesn't wish to read the next chapter I wanted them to still have as much of the resolution as possible.

Enjoy chapter 18!

I could live in your old car

With the broken stereo

I want to be wherever

Wherever you are

Don't take my word for it

Just look at me and know that I love you

Don't take my word for it

Just look at me and know that I do

Look at me and know that it's true

-Angus and Julia Stone, Wherever You Are

When Emma woke up, she was surprised to realise that, in spite of it being more than a couple of hours later; late morning, she guessed from the sun blaring in through the window, she hadn't been woke once by Regina. The latter woman was no longer in bed, but Emma could hear her on the phone in the corner of the room, and so kept her eyes closed to feign sleep.

"…You were right, Ruby." Regina sounded more relaxed, more blissful than she ever had in Emma's presence as she spoke to her friend on the phone. "I just wanted to thank you… Yes, she is… don't make me regret telling you, Ruby." Emma giggled to herself. "I may be in later… Ok, bye." Regina hung up the phone, and sat on the edge of the bed.

"I know you're awake, Emma."

"No I'm not." Emma muttered, burying her face under the covers.

"Eavesdropping is frowned upon in this land, unless I'm mistaken."

"I like hearing you talk like that, so sue me." Emma sat up and smiled at Regina. "Come lie back down for a while."

Regina leaned over the woman, giving her a slow, extended kiss that failed to erase the smile that had been forming naturally on her lips. As Emma moved her hands to the edge of Regina's shirt, however, Regina begrudgingly pulled away. "Henry's on his way over, the three of us are having lunch together."

"In bed? Come on, I'm tired." Emma whined, reminding Regina of their son. Laziness most definitely ran in the family.

"Get up." Regina raised an eyebrow at Emma, and attempted to be stern.

Emma simply smiled, her head tilted to the side. Regina was frankly annoyed at how sickly sweet that smile made her feel inside. "Don't direct that smile at me, Miss Swan."

"What - this smile?" Emma smiled even brighter, her eyes lighting up, just to annoy her.

"Yes, that one. In the interests of honesty, I fell in love with you the first time - well, the new first time - I saw you smile like that." Regina admitted begrudgingly, but feeling happy that she had when Emma pulled her onto her lap for a kiss.

"Can you believe how easy this feels? It's like we've just sort of… fell into a relationship."

Regina allowed herself to smile for a moment, before settling on a frown. "For now, yes. But you and me both know that a relationship between us will be far from perfect."

"It doesn't have to be perfect."

"Have you seen the other couples around here, Emma? Your parents are nauseating, and the hordes of others aren't far behind."

"It's not a competition! Relationships don't always have to start as these giant, romantic displays. They could just be two people, who are happier together than they are apart. Like you and me."

"And that's good enough?"

"That's good enough for me." Emma finished, planting another short, married couple-esque kiss on Regina's lips before nudging her so she'd stand up before she joined her. "Come on, let's get ready."

Henry arrived a little after 1pm, and thankfully didn't raise any questions about where Emma had slept last night after going to see Regina, or why the two kept stealing apprehensive, childish glances at each other.

After the three had settled down at the table with their food, Regina gave Emma an overly violent nudge under the table to broach the subject of their new living arrangement.

"So Henry." Emma inhaled, "If it's ok with you, you're going to live here for a while. With your mom. And me." Emma babbled, the words leaving her mouth much too fast, and she wished that she hadn't volunteered to be the one to break the news.

"What, the three of us?" Henry assumed he'd misheard.

"Yes, the three of us. Your mom is really trying to be a good person, and we both think that maybe if us two stay here we can help her do that, help her remember how to. What do you think?"

"Yeah, that's… cool." Henry took a second to process. "I mean, if it's going to help mom then of course I'll do it." The boy finished eating and left the table hastily before the conversation got any more emotional.

"Well, that went… I don't know how it went actually." Emma laughed a little, and looked across the table at Regina who seemed shell-shocked herself.

"He seems fine with it."

"That's good, right?"

"Of course. I've missed him being here full-time. It's just… that boy is remarkable. The way he takes things on board, and doesn't stop to think about it. He's always been intuitive; I think he knows what's going on."

"He knows what's going on, we just told him."

"Not what I was referring to."

"I don't think we should tell him yet." Emma confessed after a moment of deliberation. "One thing at a time."

"I agree. But, in spite of that, if he asks, I'm not going to withhold the truth from him. He's growing up, whether we like it or not, and he deserves to know what's going on between us." Regina ended this with a brief smile, and Emma moved her arm across the table to join hands with the other woman's. Short but sweet, she tapped it and got up.

"Yeah, you can imagine how that conversations going to go." Regina's face paled somewhat upon hearing that, and Emma realised that perhaps Regina needed encouragement and reassurance rather than jokes about her son disowning them. "I didn't mean that. The other week he was bugging me about confessing my feelings for you, the kid won't be able to shut up when he finds out."

"Let's keep it to ourselves for now then." Regina relaxed again. "Do you know, I've yet to see you stop smiling for even a moment today."

"I'm allowed to be happy, Regina. I haven't slept like that in months. Plus, the company wasn't half bad." Emma raised her eyebrows, a grin spreading once again on her face.

"I'm inclined to agree." Regina took a hesitant breath. "I still we do need to talk though."

"Didn't we do all of that last night?"

"Emma.." Regina looked in her eyes, trying to coax around the semblance of happiness and find some earnest feeling out of them.

"Right. Right, ok, let's go and sit down." Emma said with trepidation, honestly afraid that she had done it again; been too happy too soon, and now Regina was going to put a stop to it.

Emma's hand hovered over Regina's back as she was led into the next room, but she thought better of it and returned it to her side. The woman signalled for Emma to sit on the couch, as if she was a child in trouble, while Regina herself paced up and down the room with her arms defensively crossed over her stomach.

"I want to make sure that you aren't having second thoughts about all of this before it continues any further. It's better for you to leave now than to get caught up in more than you require." Regina announced, a thinly veiled attempt at formality.

"Seriously? After everything we said yesterday?" Emma was in disbelief that Regina was still so reluctant to trust her even after everything, and it put her on the opposite side of trust issues for once.

"It's fair to say I bared my soul to you last night. I've found that even when you have love to give, it doesn't always happen the way you want it to. I don't want you to feel pressured in any way into staying if you don't want to. I know that in the past, you've been… difficult to pin down."

"Don't go there. Don't try and insult me, Regina."

"I wasn't trying to. You can understand… I knew it had to be said."

Emma took a deep breath. "Sure, I've moved around a lot. A hell of a lot. That's how I was raised; 'Don't get too used to it here, Emma, you'll be moving soon.' The more you repeat something in your head, the harder it is to look past it. I became used to the idea that every place I went was just a stop gap, before some bigger event. I didn't know what it was that I was running to, I just knew that it better be good for all of that to be worth it. And then Henry came and found me." Emma looked down at her lap and smiled to herself, "And it was like… that was it. This was what I'd been waiting for. Sure I was scared, but all the things that are worth doing make you scared at first. Then the curse broke, and suddenly I had… a family. The family I never thought I'd get, and I couldn't believe my luck. When I first started feeling these things for you, I didn't want to accept them. I thought I already had more than I deserved, but then you decided that I was what you wanted and… I'm not going to run anymore, Regina. I've got nowhere to run from, and nowhere to run to."

"And you won't change your mind? Can you be absolutely sure? I'm sure I'd much rather know now than get too used to this only for it to end."

"I'm not going to change my mind."

"Good." Regina finished, still tensed and pacing, refusing to approach Emma in case she said something she would regret, or worse, something she wouldn't regret. "Tell Henry I'm sorry, but I need to go and have a lie down for a while. You and him can spend some time together, I fear I've been keeping him too much to myself for the past week."

"Ok." Emma agreed hesitantly, "are you.."

"I just need some time. To get my head around all of this, I haven't stopped yet to really think."

"Are you having second thoughts?" the idea filled Emma's throat.

"No, I'm not." Regina smiled wanly, "I can assure you. You said this morning that we'd fallen into a relationship, and you were right. While it's undeniably what I want, 'falling' into things isn't in my nature. This just isn't easy for me to accept, and I would appreciate some time in the quiet where I can wrap my head around it." Emma looked down, and Regina finally crossed over to her and laid a trembling hand on her cheek. "I promise you, Emma. I'm not changing my mind. I love you. There's just some questions that I.. don't want to ask, and I know if I stay in here any longer I will do."

"Fine." was all Emma responded as Regina left the room, secretly a little glad that Regina hadn't asked them.

A/N: I'm going away again... I'M SORRY I'M SORRY. I'll be back in a couple of days though, and I'll upload the penultimate chapter at some point between Wednesday and Friday. So bear with :)