Love Me Apocalyptic

Chapter Eight: Paranoid Minds

I see it in your eyes
You're feeling paranoid
You know just what I've done
You know what I've become
I feel it deep inside
With all the pain & lies
I know just what I want
I am an animal

-Cage the beast, Adelitas way

Regina promised herself she would avoid making physical contact with Emma from now on at all costs. Only strictly communicating with her through phone was allowed. Of course, Emma noticed Regina's sudden ardent avoidance of her and would not let it go, bugging the mayor about it constantly. She would magic herself into Regina's professional and personal work spaces and Regina, in her blind panic to escape the rapturous hunger in her for the blonde, took to poofing away just as quickly. This lead to very not so amusing chase scenes across the town where they kept poofing from location to location (once on the roof of the clock tower) until Emma in fits of confusion would give up, only to later lay traps for the unsuspecting queen.

Though, with Regina's enhanced vampire senses, it wasn't hard to foresee them or avoid them which only pissed Emma off more. It would have been comical in any other situation other than this one.

And this was the way things were for a solid week, the amount of running and being on high alert for Emma's tricks and traps lent to Regina not being able to conduct any research or talk much to Whale about the experiments needed to prove her theory. And she was certain her theory would be right, though it would bring her no joy to be correct.

And then there came a time when Regina could no longer avoid Emma any longer. And it was because of the accursed monthly town hall meeting where all government officials had to meet to discuss changes needed, and good plans that had been incorporated that had worked so far. Regina had conveniently forgotten to remind Emma it was today in hopes the woman wouldn't come. It was a foolish hope for the woman managed to find out about the conference and sit down only three seats away from Regina.

Regina had cranked the AC up in the room so that she wouldn't smell human blood. The cold had a way of neutralizing her senses and of making blood smell duller to the beast inside her. But, it also had an unforeseen consequence.

The conference room was cold and Emma's nipples were hard, two dots of perfection straining against the flimsy white tank top she dared to call a proper shirt (and had irritatingly worn to this meeting). Emma rubbed her arms, cursing the fact she hadn't dressed warmer, unaware of the fact of what kind of show she was giving right now to one sharp eyed brunette. She hadn't been expecting the AC to be blasting like crazy in this room. She'd have to complain about it to Regina later. She knew it was the summer but still...this wasn't an icebox. They weren't hunks of meat to be chilled this far.

Maybe now that she and the mayor were forced to be in the same room together by government rules, the brunette wouldn't leave before Emma could get her two cents in. Had she done something to offend the mayor? Was Regina mad at her? That could be the only explanation as to why she was avoiding Emma so pointedly.

But while Emma was cold Regina felt like she was burning up. From her spot at the end of the table she was transfixed by Emma's image. The way she'd breathe out and her breasts would be thrust forwards, hardened nipples on full display. She couldn't help it, running her tongue over her lips as she imagined just what she would do to Emma's nipples, arousal flaring to life between her legs as her thoughts ran wild. She wanted to bite them, suck on them, twist them between her fingers- a loud pencil drop made Regina startle from her thoughts.

Emma had been fidgeting with her pencil out of boredom and to stave off the cold by form of distraction, and ended up dropping it. Her torso disappeared from view as she dipped down to find her pencil. She snapped back up within seconds, placing it back by her paper and trying to focus on the man lecturing on about new garbage truck pickup routes. But Regina's mind had raced off like a roller coaster gone mad onto another less than appropriate thought. She could see it in her mind's eye. Emma had dropped her pencil except it had rolled all the way under the table. That was only a ploy, because Emma would shoot back at her a devious grin and crawl under the table under the pretense of looking for her pencil when she was looking entirely for something else.

She'd make her way between Regina's legs on hands and knees, pulling them as far apart as the skirt in the fantasy the mayor wore would allow. Her palms would be warm against Regina's knee caps, hot breath ghosting up her thighs.

"Emma," Regina would hiss in reprimand, careful so she wouldn't raise the awareness of the others around them. But the blonde would only smirk hard and lean down to lick a long path from the inside of the mayor's knee up to the hemline of her skirt, before diving in face first, teeth tugging on the wet material of Regina's panties and pulling them down with a snap, as her fingers wrapped roughly on Regina's hips, pulling her in closer, stomach pressed against the lip of the table.

Oh, no, Regina groaned to herself in the present, as she felt her skin flare up. She was boiling in her own flesh now, about to cook from desire. The cool air of AC unit blew cold air on her skin, but it did nothing to stop the bead of sweat from rolling down the back of her neck. She knew she shouldn't do this; shouldn't even entertain the thought of it, but she had to. She shifted her legs only to hear a wet squelch; a literal pool of wetness had gathered between her thighs.

It wasn't the first time she had gotten this wet and this quickly and she began to get concerned for her health. Could she get dehydrated from all this? Another concern for another time. She had to do something about this arousal, but she wouldn't make it to the bathroom, her legs were shaking too much and what if she had a wet mark on her pants? She couldn't go up like that. She knew in the back of her mind that these were all weak excuses, but the infection had left her rational mind descending into animilistic reasoning especially around Emma.

She only had a split second of control left-trying to talk herself out of doing it, because if she got caught she could never live this down- before she cupped the apex of her thighs over her pants with her right hand anyways, looking up to make sure that everyone was paying attention to the man up front. They were and even he himself was too far away from her to notice her, enthralled in his work.

She let her fingers trail down to her soaked pants- fuck, she had soaked them this bad already?- and without preamble began to rub back and forth as discreetly as she could, her eyes flickering open and shut as she bit her lip hard to keep her gasp at bay, free hand gripping the table in a white knuckled grip. Cracking an eye open to watch for if anyone had noticed, she sighed in relief before resuming her fantasy.

Emma's tongue would be teasing, flicking light touches over Regina's clit and the brunette would squirm in her seat, wanting to tell Emma to hurry up but unable to without drawing attention to herself and her current predicament. Instead, she lightly kicked her under the table, right in the ribs. The resulting gust of surprised air would blow over Regina's core and send tingles right up and down her back.

Emma would then enable a vice like grip on Regina's ankles, holding them down with her hands before leaning back in and blowing a stream of cool air into wet heat. Again Regina shivered.

Emma pressed her lips to the darker woman's thigh. "You like that don't you," she mouthed. Green eyes gleamed in challenge from under the table and Regina rolled her eyes. "Either get on with it or go back to your seat," Regina quickly wrote down a note on a scrap piece of paper and handed it down to Emma. The woman looked at it before curling her fingers, demanding a pen to write a response with.

Regina hastily handed her one, before hearing her name getting called out. "Madam Mayor, what do you think of this?"

She gave a somewhat satisfactory answer given how she hadn't been paying attention for the last ten minutes and had to hastily look at the slides to get a clue. Given how the man nodded his head before finally moving on, she had passed and it was safe to say she wouldn't be called upon for a good amount of time. Everyone's eyes slid away from her as she feigned interest, feeling like she had left Emma to her own devices for too long. She was just about to look down when she felt something long and hard slide into her without warning.

She half jumped out of her chair, banging her knee of the table.

"Are you okay?" Sidney looked over at her and she nodded her head tersely before settling back down, eyes fixed on the powerpoint slide. Once it was safe to look down, she shot Emma a glare. The blonde only smirked back at her.

Then she reached a hand in between Regina's legs and began to skillfully move the pen back and forth. Sneaky little vixen. So that was what she wanted the pen for.

Even only midway through her day time fantasy and Regina knew she was close. She could smell it on herself, feel it in the way her walls were clenching around greedily wishing they could be clenched around something for real and not a product of her mind. Her lips were clamped iron tight, killing most of the sounds of pleasure that crawled up her throat, neck veins bulging. It was harder to mask the occasional squeaking of her chair as her hips rolled in it, or the sounds of her slick heat coating her fingers. White was gathering behind her eyes; it wouldn't be long.

With one last desperate grind, palm flattening into her crotch, she shoved her fist into her mouth and bit down hard, eyes squeezing impossibly tight as she rode out her orgasm silently, body shuddering in great heaves and tears leaking free onto her notes. It seemed to stretch on for forever and when it was done, she opened her eyes and removed the fist from her mouth, noting that she had left angry looking bite marks. God, she felt so much better after all that.

The lights went on all of a sudden and Regina snatched her hand free from her pants, wiping the stickiness on the side of her pant leg that had seeped through her thick material. People were looking at her for a cue and she cleared her throat, her voice still going out husky regardless. "That concludes today's meeting. Break for lunch."

They looked a little surprised at the abrupt ending but didn't question it, instead packing up their stuff and going on their way. She waited impatiently for them to go, the coldness of wetness now sitting between her legs like a guilty reminder of what she had done. She couldn't believe she had just jerked off in the middle of a meeting. That was so irresponsible. So low brow and unfitting of her status as mayor, a position that required her to be responsible. What was wrong with her? She could have gotten caught!

No, it wasn't her fault. It was just every time she was around the blonde, she started feeling this way. Hot and heavy and out of control of her own body. She really needed to start avoiding the woman, for her own health and sanity.

And of course the blonde in question had to linger behind just as everyone was gone. "Hey, Regina," the woman started, getting up and walking to her and turning the full power of her hard nipples on the brunette who felt her traitorous body heat up again. Emma needed to put those things away before Regina did something she would regret.

She forced her eyes closed, but still the images of two perfect round nipples burned in her mind. "Yes, Emma what is it?" she said in as even of a voice as she could muster, looking over at her notes. There were smudges were her tears had fallen.

"Why are you avoiding me?" Emma asked, getting right to it. She didn't have the patience for Regina ignoring her anymore.

"Emma, I'm not-"

"Quit the bullshit. You are."

"I'm busy-"

"Not true," Emma cut in.

Running out of options, Regina floundered. "I'm mad at you-"

"Stop lying to me. This whole time you've been lying to me and I know you have, and you know I know that you are. So I'm giving you a chance to tell me the truth." Emma was leaning in as Regina sat back, desperately trying to avoid looking at Emma's chest. It was right there, and it was so tempting. Emma smelled, so tempting. Regina bit the inside of her cheek, trying to pull herself together before she reached over the desk and crashed Emma's lips onto hers.

"Emma..." she croaked out of a dry throat as Emma noticed the mayor acting oddly and leaned in more. The mayor only leaned back more, squirming in her seat and pointedly looking at her notes while her hands were clenched.

Why was Regina behaving this way?

Then Emma looked down at her shirt and saw why. "Oh. Um, sorry," she mumbled out, suddenly embarrassed. And crossed her arms over her chest. "I didn't mean to flash you."

Regina relaxed a bit at this, her shoulders lowering. "I'm just tired. With the changes and all," Regina answered in a low voice, still not looking at Emma as she got up, taking her pad with her and placing it over her crotch.

Emma didn't detect a lie in that. But she tipped her head to the side. "This about the menopause?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Regina said brusquely as she began to brush out from the office. Emma followed after her, grabbing her by the wrist. "Hey," she said softly as Regina sharply turned to face her. "We don't have to talk about it. But if it makes you feel better, you'll still look banging hot even as a grandma."

Regina smiled at that, shaking her head in amusement. Emma would never cease to amuse her. Her words helped to take Regina's mind a bit off of her predicament, but there was no way she could let Emma know what she was now. She was determined to finish or fix this before the blonde would ever find out.

"Thank you," she said and Emma let her go.

But as she watched Regina leave, she rubbed the fingers of her hand together. The one that had been on Regina's wrist. Regina's skin had been deathly cold and worst of all, there had been no pulse underneath it. She gulped, Whale's words coming back to haunt her.

Something had happened to Regina and Emma needed to figure out what. Though, an overwhelming portion of her already knew what. She just didn't want to think about it.

But, she would need to confirm it because for better or worse she needed to confront this. If her friend was in danger she was going to do everything she could to figure it out. To repair it. After all, wasn't that what a savior did?

She'd get Regina to eat or drink something and that would give her all the answers she needed.

With grim determination, she strode off.

Emma invited Regina to Granny's diner. Lately the mayor had been avoiding this spot and on the rare occasions she was here, she barely ordered anything, just fidgeting with her water or tea. And then of course, she was racing off, avoiding Emma during their period of cat and mouse.

Now, though, Emma had given Regina an ultimatum. That Regina had to come meet her in the diner and that was final. Regina had tried to bullshit her way out of it of course but Emma had shot down every lie.

"If you really aren't avoiding me as you claim to do so, then prove to me you're not. And if don't want to talk about the changes going through your body we don't have to and won't. I swear I'm not going to bring them up," Emma had steely uttered out and hung up on Regina before the mayor could protest.

And then she had left to the diner and waited there, glancing ever so often at the watch on her hand as the minutes ticked by.

7pm hit and left and Emma began to suspect Regina wouldn't show up. The woman was very punctual and it wasn't like her to be late. Emma's hands wrapped around her root beer as she glared with precision at the door. Every time it jangled open her hopes were raised only for them to be dashed once more when it turned out not to be Regina.

"Waiting on someone? A date perhaps?" Ruby asked, coming to stand by Emma. She had noticed the antsy state of the sheriff and wanted to find out why.

"No. I'm waiting on the mayor. She's late."

"That's not like her," Ruby commented.

"I know," Emma quietly agreed. She was itching to call the mayor but decided to hold off. She'd give Regina ten minutes more and then she would call it quits.

Ruby leaves to attend to some orders and the minutes tick by. It's on the last minute that Regina finally strides through the doors, looking nervous and fidgety to be here. She slides into the seat in front of Emma.

"I didn't think you'd come," Emma commented. She knows Regina must have been warring internally in a debate on whether to come out not and that her sense of responsibility forced her here.

"Well, here I am," she tried to say with an airy attitude but she couldn't pull off the easy smile. She looked like she wanted to bolt from here. The mayor's poker face was leaving a lot to be desired. Emma wondered what was the bothering the mayor so much. But she knew directly asking her wouldn't do anything or get them anywhere. So she didn't delve further into it.

Ruby came by, pad and pen ready. "What can I get you?" she asked the mayor who shook her head.

"It's alright. I won't-"

"Get her a coffee only," Emma interjected, knowing Regina was going to avoid ordering food.

"Alright," Ruby said, and she had a look on her face like she had smelled something weird. Regina watched as Ruby left, a contemplative look on her face. She knew Ruby suspected her of something. And as she watched with keen eyes and sharp hearing she made out snippets of conversation.

"Regina...smells weird," Ruby sighed, rubbing her nose. "Why?"

"She smells like something from the Enchanted Forest. Like one of our mortal enemies," Granny said gravelly from behind the counter to her granddaughter. "Something needs to be done." As she says this she looked right into Regina's eyes, words filled with menace, and the mayor felt a shiver roll down her back. Wolves, her vampire instincts told her. Kill, kill, run, run. She was torn between fight or flight. Would they do something to her? She needed to leave.

She slowly turned her attentions to Emma. "I really don't need the coffee from here. It tastes watered down. I have a perfectly good Keurig at home-"

"Well, I ordered it already. No use in wasting it," Emma said, trying to infuse as much seriousness into her voice as she could. And it was because it was a serious thought that ran through her head. Regina could sense this and the unease radiating off of her only doubled. She clutched her hands on top of the table, the knuckles turning white.

Ruby came by with the cup of coffee and placed it down in front of Regina before hastily retreating.

"Vampire," came huffed out, under Ruby's breath. Too quiet to be heard by Emma, but Regina heard it.

They knew. The wolves knew. And wolves and vampires were mortal enemies. She needed to stop them from knowing. From telling others. But how?

Her skin prickled to retreat.

To fight.

To pierce the flesh on Ruby's neck and taste her dying breath.

She struggled to draw her attentions back to Emma. For once, her mind was not obsessed with her in the normal manner. Right now, she registered as a threat to the beast inside Regina.

"So, Emma, here I am. What is it you wanted? I've proved to you I don't hate you by showing up to your impromptu meeting. Now, if you don't mind I'll be leaving so that I can focus on office work." Regina got up and Emma reached for her wrist, tugging her back down. Regina's skin was cold and still no pulse beat underneath her flesh.

Regina reluctantly sat down, taking in a shuddering breath. Her feeling of something bad, of being trapped, only increased.

Leave! Her vampire side hissed at her. Leave now! But she couldn't, without arising more suspicion. Emma stared at her hard. Was it possible...that the woman suspected her?

Had she given her intelligence less credit than she deserved?

"Here. You haven't touched your coffee," Emma nudged the cup of cold brown liquid towards Regina, her eyes watching the woman suspiciously but trying to come off as something else; as causal.

Regina knows this is a test. A test she cannot fail. She eyes the drink, dreading it. It's funny how she used to love it so much before and now it disgusts her. It smells like shit and looks like it too. Her shaking hand wraps around the Styrofoam as she gathers her resolve. Who knew drinking a cup of coffee could be so stressful? She smiles wanly at Emma and lifts the cup to her lips, trying to hold her breath.

The liquid slides down her throat like thick sludge and she manages to get through half of it before she sets down the cup down harshly and pants heavily to regain her breath.

"You haven't been eating lately. I'm worried for you Regina."

Regina smiles but its weak. "It's just the stress of all that has happened so far. But I'll be fine." But she's not fine and her stomach twists painfully and it's all she can do to hold back the bile rising up her throat as she tries to normally walk towards the restroom. "Excuse me, I have to use the bathroom to freshen up before we go."

She barely makes it to the stall, retching into the toilet on her knees. All the coffee comes back up and she immediately feels better after she flushes it all down, wiping her mouth with some tissue paper. The relief only lasts a short while because this action is irrefutable evidence that something is very, very wrong with her. And she knows it, and so does Emma.

The bathroom door clicks shut as heavy boots slowly approach Regina as she stands up to see, unexpectedly, that Granny is there. Her face is hard and she's got a shotgun in her hand.

"Regina."

Her name drops from Granny's lips like stones, and she feels the rocks gather in the pit of her stomach. The shotgun gleams menacingly in the fluorescent light and she can't bare to see her own reflection in it. Pale skin and eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep.

Granny's hold on the weapon tightens.

And Regina panics. Not for herself, but for the other woman. She doesn't want to hurt her. "Granny, please."

Voice soft. Broken.

There is a banging on the door. "Regina, are you in there. Open the door!" It's Emma, knocking on the locked door.

Regina feels like her throat is too tight to voice anything anymore. Fear holds her still. There is no compassion in Granny's eyes. And now she begins to fear for herself.

"I knew I smelled a filthy blood sucker in my shop."

Granny slides the barrel of the gun slowly towards Regina's collarbone, face impassive, and fires.