A/N: An update has been in order for quite some time. My apologies for the tardiness but my muse went on vacation to the moon and I recently recovered it. Truth be told, I had half this chapter written but halfway through I kept hitting dead end after dead end. Gah. Special thanks to RedBlackandLights for being divine and putting up with my over perfectionist –with a dash of OCD- self. Also, I'm in desperate need of a beta as I want you guys to enjoy this story completely without cringing halfway through like I've done! As always, thank you for the lovely reviews (normally I reply to each and one of you but I couldn't this time!) favs & followers. Hope you guys enjoy this new chapter!
|Chapter 3: Of Propositions and Arrivals|
The wedding reception was in full swing. Dance partners were waltzing –well, more like trying to waltz from here to there to a melody that was unknown to many of them. The occasional twerkers –brought to you by fellow co-workers that were either divorced or not caring that much about their marriage- making an appearance near the open bar, their whistles and drunk slurs making a few of the guests amused. A few cougars were nursing their drink and winking at young men moving suavemente on the dance floor. But the cherry on top was his father. He was in the middle of the dance floor, his arms enveloping Regina as he swayed and twirled her around the dance floor. He leaned closer and dropped a kiss to her cheek and Regina smiled sweetly at him. They kept dancing and laughing until a man older than her, Robert, kindly asked for a dance and she willingly placed her hand atop Robert's shoulder as he led the dance. His father turned around and their eyes met for a second, John nodded his head at him and turned around looking for his new bride and resumed dancing with her.
The couple looked happy, in fact everyone looked happy.
Everyone except him.
Robin couldn't smile at the picture in front of him. If it had been under different circumstances he might've laughed along with this woman, might've danced with his new stepmother, but he couldn't. Instead he stayed by his reserved spot and stared straight ahead his eyes landing immediately on the purple dressed beauty. He caught glimpse of Robert twirling Regina around and around, his hand resting possessively around her waist and why was he feeling this way? Why was he fuming when Robert gently pulled her closer to him in order to dance to a softer melody? Why was he struggling to breathe when Robert pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and –Oh God, was she actually blushing? Was she actually laughing along with Robert when he murmured something in her ear? No, this was becoming too much. His feelings were getting the best of him. He needed to calm down. NOW. So he glanced towards his father again, saw him kissing his new bride and almost gagged. Shook his head in order to clear himself of those images and rose from the table, excusing himself to his aunt who was kindly telling him the story of how her beloved dog Paoli died in the hands of her neighbor, the dog slayer. He walked out towards the balcony, applying more force than he intended on the doors which elicited a big BANG as they closed again.
He needed a fresh breath of air to calm himself, to perhaps grasp his feelings a little better. He leaned against the wooden railing and focused entirely on the scenery in front of him.
The moon was high in the sky, countless stars scattered across it creating the most beautiful scenery Robin had ever seen. Suddenly Regina's giggles morphed into the beautiful sound of owls and crickets. His father's image bended and broke, instead it was only this scene the one that he saw. The whole image was painted across the serene lake and he was tempted, tempted to walk down the steps towards the dock to witness this beauty closer. It instantly relaxed him, the summer breeze sweeping through his tuxedo, tangling with himself and taking with it his tension, his worries. The quietness that surrounded him was unnerving, calming the anxiousness that had settled on the pit of his stomach. But it soon returned when the ballroom door opened and the quietness was replaced by the blasting of "Sweet Child O' Mine", a song that his father would never tire of hearing and judging by the cheers, neither would the guests. The intruder closed the door almost immediately, the quiet now being replaced by the click-clack of heels.
Hers
Robin needn't to turn around to know just whom they belonged to and why she was out there walking closer to him. He felt her eyes hovering over his form and instantly closed his eyes expecting her questioning.
"It's beautiful out here," she whispered after a minute, sympathy written in every word.
"It is," he agreed and she resumed walking towards his side, her arm tangling with his.
"Have you seen my best friend? I'm afraid I lost him somewhere between the I do's," she murmured sympathetically as she leaned her head atop his left shoulder and rubbed his arm up and down.
A sigh left his lips and he rested his head against his palms.
"Hey-" she leaned against him and placed her hand atop one of his against his cheek forcing him to look at her. "You know you can talk to me about anything right?"
He answered with a soft sigh and a nod of his head.
Of course he knew that he could always count on her. He knew that she would listen to him complain about life every day. But this was different. This was far more complicated. Here he was, 26 years into life, his whole life planned out beforehand but nothing had gone according to it. No. He didn't get into a graduate school, therefore he cannot receive his master's degree in English literature. No PhD's for Robin Locksley, nothing but his father's pub. So yes, here he was unhappy with his father's fifth wedding and mourning the life he sure as hell lost.
"Robin-" she murmured after placing a kiss on his shoulder, coaxing him to look at her. "Talk to me," she softly caressed his cheek, thumb rubbing against the neatly trimmed corner of his mouth.
"It's just this whole thing! It's just-" he shook his head and gazed up at the moon.
She arched her eyebrow, pulled her hands away from him and crossed her arms in front of her.
"No. Not like that," he grabbed her hands again and tangled his fingers with hers. He was about to continue, but instead he gave her a slight shake of his head before turning around and walking down the steps of the balcony, pulling her along with him.
They walked hand in hand down the dimly lit passage that made way to the dock until they reached the end where a couple of lounge chairs were positioned. Instead Robin sat down on the edge of the pier and pulled Regina down with him. They rid of their shoes, he rolled up his dressing pants and submerged their feet in the lukewarm summer water.
"Are you going to tell me what's going on in that pretty head of yours?" Regina amusedly asks after a minute of just staring at their reflections.
He just gives her a nod and bites on his lower lip.
"It's just-" he swallows hard and cleared his throat. "This whole thing! This whole wedding is making me think about my future and it's just so fucking scary-" frustrated with himself and his inability to express his feelings, Robin kicks a little at the water and rolls his eyes at himself. How could he put into words what has been plaguing his head for a few months now? Will she laugh? Will she agree? Will she run away? Better to just go ahead with it.
"I have all these plans set up and life rarely goes my way and I just want to have some sense of stability. I want to get at least something right in my life. I don't want to marry five times like my father has. I don't want to give false hope to-"
"Robin-" she whispers against his shoulder. "Life rarely goes the way we want it to. That's why we must be open to everything. I have witnessed three of your father's weddings and he looks happier each time Robin! That doesn't mean he did something wrong, it means he got at least something right."
"For the fifth time?" he rolled his eyes at her, suddenly annoyed at her point of view of this predicament he found himself in.
"Even if it's for the tenth time, if the man is happy, if it makes him happy to change wives every two years then so be it Robin," she shrugs and offers him a small smile.
"This is not about him Regina. It's about me," he turns sideways to face her.
She looked more beautiful than ever tonight. Her long hair hanging over her left shoulder in subtle waves, the purple dress contrasting perfectly against her fair skin and that v-neck tempting him in more ways he ever thought were possible. Finding courage in her beauty he leaned forward closer to her and took her hands in between his.
"I have been thinking about this for a while now Regina," he swallows hard and almost changes subject with the confused look she threw his way. Almost. "You once proposed me something that has been quite beneficial for the both of us and now I'm making you a proposition of my own. We are each other's best friends, we know our deepest darkest secrets and what if we just-" he swallows hard and met her gaze. "If by the time we're thirty we're both still single and childless, why don't we just do both things together."
Eyes wide open and mouth slightly agape Regina stared at him, searching for answers within those blue orbs of his but found nothing.
"Robin," she managed to whisper after a second, her breathing growing shallower with every passing moment.
"Robin, no. No," she refused to believe this. They both had agreed on this whole sex without feelings. It was going so well so far! But has this gotten out of proportion? Was her best friend developing feelings for her? Worst yet, was she? Was her mind already considering how amazing their life together would be? Was she actually excited with this? No. This was so fucking complicated. She knew deep down that something like this could happen. There was that fucking voice in the back of her head that whispered, no, more like screamed at her to back out of this. To stop having sex with this man altogether after the first time but fuck! He was so addictive, made her feel so alive. No. This needed to end. This needed to end right now.
"You can't have feelings for me," she all but begged after standing abruptly from the wooden edge. "You can't!" a hand rose to her mouth trying to suppress the gasp that was about to move past her lips.
"Regina!" he calls her, coaxing her from that panic induced trance she was in. "I'm not in love with you Regina."
Desperation was written in every line of his face, his eyes searching for answers within hers, begging her to come back, sit next to him and just forget that this happened.
But they knew they couldn't. Because the moment they started doubting each other, their dynamic shifted. So she turned back around and kept on walking, up the steps and into the ballroom, all the while ignoring his calls.
It took him several moments before he pulled his feet from the lake and followed her inside the ballroom, careful not to slip by his wet feet.
..:::..
He spotted her sitting on a bar stool, her hand going through her hair several times as she tried to calm the nerves that overcame her.
He passed a few drunk dancers, his father that waved merrily at him, almost tumbled against a waiter with trays of empty champagne glasses until he finally reached her.
"Leave me alone," her eyes held the hopelessness her heart felt.
"Well I'm not," he replied and sat down on the stool beside her all the while asking for two shots of Patron to the bartender.
Regina didn't say anything. She only muttered a thank you to the bartender after he placed the drink in front of her but other than that, nothing.
And it was funny really, the speakers were blasting energizing music, the DJ screaming for a limbo line –and since when did his dad acted like a seventeen year old?- but the silence he felt, more than heard, was deafening. Regina wouldn't even look at him, much less directed him a word and he was getting restless, anxious, afraid.
He was about to step away and give her some time to herself before she shook her head and without looking at him muttered six little words that shook him to his core.
"We can't keep doing this to ourselves."
The lump that formed in his throat wasn't unexpected nor did it went unnoticed. It made him swallow hard against it and nod quietly as he downed his drink in one gulp. The warmth, that pleasurable scratch of strong alcohol against his throat was calming to say the least.
"We can't," he agreed.
"It'll be not too long before we start developing feelings for one another and that's just something I can't deal with right now," she muttered fully engrossed on her drink.
So you can't deal with real feelings but you can deal with assholes that just want you for your body? Yeah good call Regina Mills. But he never told her that. Instead he agreed to give themselves the space they needed.
That night instead of falling asleep on the couch after watching a movie, they went to their respective bedrooms.
But neither one of them fell asleep well into the morning.
..:::..
"I've been thinking about your proposition"
It has been two months since his father's wedding. During those two months they have fell back into their old routine however there had been no sex, nothing physical whatsoever. Just simple touches that were considered normal to share between two friends. There had been no mention of that night's conversation either, nothing until today and it definitely took Robin by surprise.
"What?" Robin's eyes grew as big as saucers and he stopped with his scrambled eggs for a minute.
She was sat on the bar stool much like that fateful night, propped up on her elbows as she stared at him cooking breakfast in front of her.
"I just-" a sigh left her mouth and she stepped off the stool, made her way around the island before she took the wooden spatula from his hand and bumped her hip against him in order to make some space for her.
A couple of moment passed before either one of them spoke a word so he took that opportunity to fill their matching cups with their sixteen ounces of pure Colombian caffeine fix. It was funny really, how this Englishman changed his tea for this "aberration" of a drink but he really didn't cared that much. Not when she enjoyed it that much.
"I think it's a very plausible idea," she turned off the stove, placed the eggs on their respective plates and looked at him straight in the eyes.
"I mean it does make sense. We've been together since day one, we get along so well and look at us-" she waved her hand around the kitchen and pointed their plates. "We're practically married already!"
Robin could only chuckle at her.
"I think we deserve to have at least something to come back to if life doesn't work right?"
"Yes we do," he replied excitedly. Finally she was getting what he had been trying to explain to her all those months ago. They needed to have some stability secured in the future in order to distract them from the now. To make them relax if life didn't went the way they planned.
"But I'm only giving you three babies," she let out after taking a sip of her coffee.
"Four babies and a cat."
"Three babies and a golden retriever. Nothing more, nothing less," she held his gaze with her own and arched an eyebrow in challenge, ready to strike, daring him to change her mind.
"Okay okay," he held his arm up in surrender. "But I'm naming the dog!"
|Present|
She sniffled against his collar and he could cry along with her himself. But he didn't, instead he held on for dear life as if parting away from her would send him back to his homeland alone.
"I never thought I'd actually see you again," she murmured against the skin on his neck and he had to suppress a sigh.
This was going to be harder than he thought.
"I'd convinced myself too," he replied and he tangled his fingers with that soft hair of hers, twirling it slightly at the end.
They stayed a few moments like this, wrapped in each other's arms, their eyes gazing into each other's in a competition they both won. He reached for her cheeks and rubbed the tear tracks with the pad of his thumb, his gaze fixed directly on hers.
God she was so beautiful. The way her cheeks tinted a deep red when their gaze met made his heart beat a little harder. The way she tried to hide her blush by gazing down, but him preventing that from happening by lowering his head and meeting her gaze once again. Jesus he wanted to kiss her right now. Wanted to delve his tongue into that warm cavern of his mouth, a mouth he ached for on a daily basis. But instead of kissing her, instead of hugging her once again he cleared his throat.
"Shall we go proceed now?"
"Good lord, I forgot you had that dreadful accent. It sounds less pronounced over the phone!" she let out in order lighten the mood to which he chuckled loudly.
"Need I remind you that you once had this accent too."
"Yeah but it never sounded so bad," she chuckled and winked at him before turning around and picking his handbag. "C'mon, Emma is waiting in the car."
He'd heard of Emma Swan. The woman that Regina witnessed getting kicked out of her apartment by her landlord, apparently for not having enough money to pay the rent. She would've kept on walking, would've ignored the scene in front of her but she couldn't, not when there was an eight year old that would most definitely spend his night sleeping inside their run down car, or worst, the streets. Regina couldn't do that to them and so she'd offered to help them for a few months until Emma, who had recently moved from Tallahassee, found a new apartment. But soon enough Emma turned into her only friend in New York and Henry became almost like her own son in many ways. They became inseparable. They've lived in the same apartment until recently when Emma found a bigger place for her and Henry to live in. Luckily it was only two blocks from Regina's, so they could visit each other as much as they wanted to. To be fair, Robin couldn't wait to meet said girl.
Side by side they walked, Regina leaning into him and pointing to the SUV in the far end. Inside a young man –which Robin had to guess was Henry- waved excitedly from his place in the back seat.
"And that's Henry. The brightest and most loving child a mother could ever ask for."
Was that longing in her voice? Robin didn't know, what he did know was that the fiancé was nowhere to be seen.
"May I ask. Where is the fiancé?"
Daniel. He reminded himself. His name is Daniel. He who must not be named. Wasn't Daniel –ick- supposed to pick him up with her? Wasn't Robin supposed to meet said guy today and perhaps have a talk about his interests as well? He couldn't help it but be overprotective of Regina. There was something incredibly hard about letting go of one's best friend like that. So yes, Robin wanted to meet Daniel as soon as possible, needed to have a serious conversation with the man.
"Oh he's stuck at work tonight," she shrugged. "Besides, it's poker night, he probably would've hurried off," she chuckled at the joke she only seemed to get.
"Well ok. I would like to meet him soon though," he had no other choice but to swallow down the bile rising in his throat.
Where the hell did that came from?
"And you will. Tomorrow at noon we're all having lunch. Every bridesmaid, every groomsmen, my parents, his. Everyone. Is that okay with you dad?" she winked at him and he just shrugged at her.
"Hey, I just care a lot for my best friend," he lowered his gaze and failed to notice the small smile that appeared on Regina's lips.
Once they reached the SUV he dropped his suitcase and backpack in the trunk, he sat on the backseat where an overly excited and friendly Henry was already shaking his hand and presenting himself.
"Sorry for the sugar loaded kid. Somebody-" Emma threw a glance at Regina, "decided to stop for ice cream on our way here. I'm Emma by the way," she offered her hand which he shook gladly.
"Pleasure to finally meet you Emma."
"So Robin, mind to tell me where are you staying?" Emma asked as she started the car and backed away from the parking.
"Oh yes, here," he pulled from his back pocket a folded up picture with the information to his hotel.
"That won't be necessary," Regina piped up from the passenger seat, her socks covered feet laying atop the dash.
Well some things never change, Robin thought with a smile.
"I cancelled your reservations. Robin, you're gonna stay with me," she said and Emma did a double take as well as him.
"Why would you do that?" Why would she? That was the only place where he could go at the end of every day for the next few weeks and unwind from this awful situation. And now she was robbing him the luxury of that?
"I just thought it'd be better"
Yes for whom? For you? Or for me? Damn it Robin stop overthinking stuff. You both would sleep in different rooms. Besides she has a fiancé now, maybe she'll spend most of her nights at his place. Won't she? Wait, but what if it goes the other way around? What if he's the one that spends most of his nights at her place? Would you be willing to go through a night of that torture? Sure, you can put up with them getting married and everything but could you endure a night of being restless in bed when you know that a couple of feet away from you the love of your life is bedding another man? Would you? Would anyone?
"What about Daniel," wasn't he not supposed to be named?
"Daniel is staying at his place and I'm staying at mine until the wedding," she offered him a small smile and glanced at Henry. When she was sure that he was engrossed on his PS Vita she looked at Robin again. "He's intent on not having sex until after the wedding," offered him a wink and settled back into her seat.
He swallowed hard and nodded. He caught glimpse of Emma's roll of eyes on the rearview mirror and audible groan. Well there's that.
"Okay."
As he gazed at the city lights and the sunset Robin thought of one thing.
Could he sleep a few feet away from her without their nights spent together haunting him? Without picturing her naked and tangled with his body? Without craving to bury himself into her depths one last time?
Well, shit.
Needless to say, it was at that exact moment Robin Locksley knew that he was completely and utterly screwed.
Thoughts? I made a promise to myself that I will upload the new chapter sometime this week. If I don't, follow me on twitter (FraiseDandelion) and threaten me until I do!
