Emma and Regina are going to share their pasts with each other so they can take the next step in their relationship. Warning that this won't follow canon, but after last night's finale, screw the canon. Ours is so much better! I love hearing from you, so shoot me a review!
Emma's stomach had a way of demanding attention at inopportune moments. In culinary school it happened in the middle of several lectures and two cooking demos and had garnered enough attention that some of her classmates knew her as Grumbles, a despised nickname she somehow managed to shed after graduation. On the rare occasion August would dust it off from the archives, she would return the favor, calling him Pinnokes, referencing his uncanny ability to lie his face off to professors and sometimes women in an effort to wiggle out of assignments or score a date.
But a noisy stomach is normal, Emma reasoned, for anyone who spends their life thinking about, making, or tasting food. Still, it didn't make it any less embarrassing when her stomach began to howl in the middle of round three, Regina and Emma with their faces buried in each other. The blonde felt her stomach rumble and thought she may have gone undiscovered until Regina began to laugh into her, a low, vibrating giggle that immediately pulled Emma from the moment. She pried her head up like a flamingo from the sand and shot Regina a snarl.
"Are you laughing at me?"
Regina said nothing, her chuckle growing louder and more firm.
"I'll give you something to laugh about, bitch!"
Emma immediately got up, turned around, and straddled Regina's hips and began tickling her in the ribs until the brunette was squealing and howling with laughter. Regina threw her hands in front of her, trying her best to stop Emma's assault, but the blonde was too strong for her.
"Please! Stop! Emma! I—I hate—being… tickled!"
"Beg my indulgence, Your Majesty," Emma said with a smirk, slowing but continuing her thorough tickle torture.
Regina huffed but relented.
"Please! Please, stop! I beg your indulgence, Miss Swan."
Emma stilled her hands and leaned in closer to Regina, smoothing a thumb over the kiss-bruised lips she loved.
"Somebody's hungry," Regina said, her face pulling into a crooked smile.
"Normally I would have hit that wedding food pretty hard, but somebody took me off my game," Emma said, planting an accusatory finger squarely in her chest.
"We better feed the beast then," Regina said. "The options are pretty limited in the middle of the night out here."
Emma pouted, but then her eyes widened, suddenly overtaken by a jolt of inspiration. She disappeared into the bathroom and returned in a white tank top and black boy shorts. She grabbed her wallet and a key card, tossed a wink at Regina, and left the hotel room, only to appear moments later with her arms filled with an assortment of vending machine delicacies.
Regina raised an amused eyebrow and slid off the bed to grab a robe from the closet. Emma yanked the white comforter off the bed and laid it on the floor, scattering the treats into the middle unceremoniously, plopping herself down among the treasures.
As Regina approached, Emma looked up with a cockeyed grin, patting the empty space beside her enticingly.
"Carpet picnic?" Emma asked, as Regina sidled up to her. "What's your poison, mi'lady?"
Regina scoffed.
"Nothing in that pile, I can assure you. And I'm surprised a chef of your caliber and sophistication would eat peanut butter crackers and Goldfish."
"Oh, I don't. I got those for you. Those are the healthy snacks. These are for me," she said, holding up two Little Debbie Swiss Rolls triumphantly.
Regina shook her head, trying to suppress an amused smile.
"Such a child," Regina said, as Emma unwrapped the cakey chocolate from the package and took and enormous bite.
"Mmm, dat's tho goob, and door nah gebbing ebby," the blonde said with her mouth full.
Regina giggled and surveyed the pile and retrieved a bag of almonds, pulling open the bag and popping a few in her mouth.
"Come on, Regina. Live on the wild side," Emma said, approaching the brunette with the chocolate pinch between her fingers. "Close your eyes… Ok, now open up."
Regina obediently opened her mouth and waited, closing her lips around the cake. Emma pulled it back and put some of the filling on her finger, prompting Regina to open her mouth once again. She put her finger inside her lips, and Regina sucked on it eagerly.
"Mmm, I admit. That's good," Regina said.
Emma smiled at how cute she was, a smudge of chocolate on her cheek, her hair mussed from hours of lovemaking.
"That was my absolute favorite treat when I was a kid. I would buy them with my allowance and hide them, so the other kids in my foster home wouldn't steal them from me," Emma said with a dry laugh.
The little smile that had snuggled on Regina's face suddenly slipped away, and a tiny frown appeared at her brow. She took a deep breath and flexed her jaw. Regina reached out a hand and placed it on Emma's thigh.
"Emma, tell me. Tell me what it was like," Regina said, her words thick and purposeful.
Emma sobered quickly at Regina's words, placing her half-eaten snack back in its packaging on the blanket. She looked at her girlfriend with wide, uncertain eyes.
"Honestly, it's not a pretty story, Regina. There's a lot of stuff in there that I've buried so deep, even things I've never spoken out loud," she said, her voice suddenly roughed with sandpaper and etched with remorse.
"Ok, I understand, we don't have to go there," Regina said, a hint of hurt etched in her features. She was quiet for a moment, her eyes cast down. But then she looked up, suddenly determined. "You know what? No. I want to know you, even the painful parts. Will you…I want you let me in. If you're ready."
Emma examined Regina carefully. She'd only shared bits and pieces of her past with David and Ruby, and even then just one-off stories. And the worst of it had long since been hidden away, even from herself. She didn't want to wallow in it because she knew plenty of kids who had it much worse. Plus, she couldn't change it now.
But Regina's expression was so sincere, so loving that she wished she could just reach into herself, pull out her most painful memories, and hand them over in neatly wrapped box, tied with a bow. She wanted to share them with Regina, but she didn't want to have to relive those moments. They were memories of a child who felt unlovable, abandoned by the world, and let down by the adults in her life. That felt like another person. Another world. And she didn't want to look back.
But she looked at the woman beside her, sitting in her bathrobe in the middle of night with chocolate on her face. She was suddenly overcome by the sensation that this person right here next to her was the love of her life, her chance to discover the kind of happiness that people like her—with the kind of start she had in life—had slim odds to find.
She wanted to move forward with Regina, so she knew she had to do this. To get to the other side, to get to the next stage in their relationship, they had to cross this threshold where they shared their painful pasts with each other. And she could start. She could do this. She was strong now. She filled her lungs with air and placed her palm upon the hand on her leg, giving it a squeeze. She raised her other hand and wiped the chocolate clean of Regina's face and smoothed her cheek.
"Ok. Just, bear with me. I'm… I'm not exactly sure where to begin."
Regina returned the squeeze to her hand, bringing it up to kiss the knuckles before returning the linked hands to their resting spot on Emma's leg.
"I don't know who my parents were, but I was born in Maine, and they abandoned me as a newborn. I've been told things about how I was found and why they left me and all that, but I don't know how plausible those stories are or how much of it to believe. It all starts to feel like mythology anyway, like it happened to someone else," Emma said, hugging her knees into her chest.
"I didn't realize until first grade that most kids had moms and dads and didn't live in different houses, like, every year. But in those early years, I was kind of ok. I was fed and clothed. I was skinny and quiet, really kind of stuck in my shell—I hardly talked. In fact, I heard one of my foster moms describe me as the mute one. That was until I turned four, and I was moved to a home where I met this other girl. Lily. She was my best friend, like a sister to me. Total firecracker. We did everything together, and she helped me kind of find my voice, you know? We were each other's shadow. And then one weekend, when I was 11, I went running to her room to find her, and she wasn't there. They told me she'd been adopted. Just like that, she was taken away from me. I cried for weeks. I wouldn't eat. I begged to see her, for her to come back, but I…I never saw her again," Emma said, a couple of stray tears finding their way down her face.
"I was in eight foster families by the time I was 14. Most of the families were ok and just wanted the help around the house or the money. But some of them… there was abuse—physical and emotional. But I escaped the worst of it. I got really good at, like, playing dead, you know? Sometimes there was no food for me, but I think I was honestly more starved for love—" Emma said, the word itself like a clap of dust to the pain deep in her heart.
Tears began trickling down Emma's cheeks in earnest, and Regina's face clouded with a dark, angry shadow, her blood bubbling with hatred toward these animals who neglected and hurt Emma. She looked at the strong, beautiful woman in front of her, trying to picture a skinny, knobby-kneed blonde girl, hair in a ponytail, wide green eyes, and she couldn't imagine someone wanting to to do anything other than hold her, protect her, and love her. Regina thumbed away the tears and leaned in to kiss her cheeks, letting her lips linger on each side. When she pulled back, Emma gave her a faint smile.
"But I had one foster mom. When I was 15. She was really into cooking shows. She wasn't the best cook in the world, but she had five foster kids, and she'd cook for all of us. She asked me to help her because I was the oldest, and we'd watch these shows together—Barefoot Contessa, Giada, Rachel Ray, whatever was on—and I loved it. I became kind of obsessed with it, actually, and I started experimenting with cooking, reading everything I could find. I obviously couldn't afford to go to restaurants and actually taste different foods, but I learned everything I could get my hands on. My foster mother eventually let me take over, and I would make meals for the week whenever I had free time to cook."
"So that's when I got a job at a restaurant and then another and another. I needed to make money, and I wanted to be around the food. And then finally I met David. That's when everything changed. That was the beginning of my journey, really, when I began to figure out who I was. Through the food, really."
"So that's my sad tale of woe. But I also got some really lucky breaks along the way," Emma said, regarding Regina more fully for the first time since she started talking. She looked at the brunette pointedly, adding, "and I think I have a pretty great shot a happy ending."
Emma gave her a crooked smile, but Regina's eyes were cast down, and she seemed to be lost somewhere in her own mind. Emma suddenly wondered if she'd shared too much. She wasn't sure what she was seeing in those brown eyes, so she stilled, waiting for Regina to do or say something.
As the seconds ticked on, Emma's uncertainty grew, but then Regina seemed to pull out of her reverie and locked onto green eyes. She turned to face Emma and pulled her knees from her chest.
Regina reached down at Emma's waist and grabbed the hem of her tank top and pulled it over her head, tossing it in the direction of the bed, leaving her girlfriend naked from the waist up. The blonde looked at her, feeling surprised and a little exposed, but she just opened her own robe and pulled Emma onto her lap facing her. She tugged her in further so their skin was flush against each other, and then she wrapped the robe around the blonde so they were burrowed in their own tiny little world.
Their bodies adhered to one another, their breasts and bellies smashed together in an effort to get as close to one another as possible. Together their skin was so warm, so soft, and Emma felt so… safe. Regina hung her chin over Emma's shoulder, and a few hot tears landed on the skin of her back. Reaching her arms around Regina's back under the robe, she rubbed soothing circles with the palms of her hands.
"You amaze me. You are the bravest person I have ever met, Emma," Regina whispered.
Emma wanted to tell Regina she was brave too, to compel her to share her own story so they would be on even footing, so they could cross this bridge together. The words were on the tip of her tongue. She desperately wanted to say them. But she stopped herself, and instead she let Regina cry, just holding her for long minutes that suspended time and let them pause the world.
Finally she felt Regina suck in a deep breath.
"My mother used to say that love is weakness. But it's you make me feel so strong—stronger than I've ever felt," Regina said, her voice hoarse from crying.
"Regina, you are so strong. I've never met someone with as much strength and conviction—"
"I act strong, Emma. There's a difference."
She pulled her head back to once again look at Emma's face, dropping a gentle kiss on her lips. "So, I guess it's my turn then."