Chapter four
Regina pulled up her driveway and pulled her hand up to rest on the two puncture marks adorning her neck. It wasn't that she was ashamed of what she did last night, and she certainly didn't care about Snow knowing. Her thoughts were more towards what Emma would say. Did she want her parents to know? Especially consider that she had already dropped something world changing upon them just the night before.
Deciding that she could just tell Emma what had happened and see how she felt about it, she just grabbed the to-go bag and made her to way to the front door.
As it shut behind her, she walked towards the kitchen in search of some caffeine, and a smile instantly came over her face when she saw that her blonde companion had obviously come down to make herself some and that she had left more than enough in the coffee maker for her, and she had even set out an empty mug for her.
The smile that was gracing her lips only widened.
"So charming," she muttered as she poured the liquid into the mug and then turned to make her way upstairs.
A moment later, she arrived at her bedroom door and took a deep breath.
She had a feeling that this could either be the best thing that ever happened or it could be a disaster. She had liked Emma for quite some time now and the vampire thing was a bonus as far as she was concerned, but the fact remained that there were many implications to consider. Especially, the immortality issue, but she just told herself that it wasn't something she would have to deal with today, and she just took a deep breath and pushed the door open to find a smiling blonde sat cross-legged on her bed.
Emma looked up from the random magazine she had been reading and her smile only grew at the sight of the brunette. Jumping up from the bed, she grabbed the to-go bag and coffee from her and said, "maybe we should go and eat at the table?"
Regina tilted her head and wondered whether it was just her imagination how hopeful she sounded.
"I assumed that you would jump at the chance to eat in here," she said with a smirk.
The blonde shook her head and said, "you're supposed to be a queen…"
"Okay…" the brunette frowned as she followed the vampire.
A few seconds later, they walked together into the dining room and Regina's eyes widened when she saw what was on the table. In a vase on the table, there was a bouquet of flowers beautifully arranged.
As the older woman stared at the gift, Emma came around her and placed the food on the table, looking at her apprehensively.
"What are these?" Regina asked.
"Calla Lilies, Carnations and Purple Irises'," Emma replied, now looking somewhat unsure of her gesture, she began to worry at her lip and before Regina could stop her, she began to mumble, "they represent refined beauty, wisdom, love, pride and admiration, and…I don't know…I just figured that no one has ever really brought you flowers before, but you deserve to get them all of the time you know…"
The brunette held up her hand to cut the blonde off, and she stepped forward to place a small peck on the younger woman's lips.
"Thank you," she whispered close to her face, "I love them."
A huge smile spread across Emma's face and she felt all of her worry about her gesture go away. Many people expected vampires to be complete badasses incapable of feeling, but the fact was that many were far more romantic than most mortals. There was just something about immortality that made her feel sentimental.
They stood close to each other for a few more moments, before the blonde whispered, "maybe we should sit down?"
Regina laughed lightly and nodded, allowing Emma to pull the seat out for her. This isn't what she had expected, especially after only one night. But she tried to remind herself that the woman was a Charming, which most certainly meant that she would need to get used to all of this and she had to admit that she really wasn't that adverse to being treated like a queen in a way that she had never truly had the opportunity to in the past.
A moment later, the sheriff took the seat next to her and accepted her 'special' breakfast order. Regina busied herself with unpacking her own meal of arugula and pistachio pesto quiche and when she finally looked up, she noticed that the blonde seemed to be hesitating.
"Drink up sheriff," she chuckled, making a point of placing a bite of her food into her mouth.
Emma smiled back at her, briefly wondering when the last time was that she had drank blood in front of anyone but Ruby or Belle, and then she lifted it to her lips, hungrily downing half of the cup in about five seconds.
Placing it on the table, she accepted a napkin from Regina and wiped her mouth, and said, "I guess we're meant to be talking…but you did just kiss me so I think I already know the way this is going to go…"
The brunette quirked an eyebrow at the saviour and swallowed before she said, "have you always been so…adorably…rambley…"
Emma opened her mouth to protest, before the corner of her mouth turned up and she asked, "adorably?"
Regina let out a sigh of faux frustration and replied, "don't make me reconsider all of this, Swan."
The blonde just laughed and nodded, before she said, "but seriously…we do need to talk about…things…"
"Well as for the subject of your vampirism, I wouldn't want to rob Henry of his chance to find out everything he wants to know, so that can wait until later. As for you and I…I don't think there is much question…we are both adults who are attracted to each other. I see no reason that we can't…"
"You're making this sound like some kind of professional deal," the blonde chuckled.
Regina rolled her eyes and said, "I'm just trying to make the point that we can be…together…"
"As in girlfriends?" the sheriff asked hopefully, perking up at the idea. However, when Regina didn't answer straight away, she quickly corrected, "I mean, it's probably too soon for that, right?...we should probably at least go on a date first…"
The blonde faltered when she realised what she had said and she looked up at the woman cautiously, hoping that she wasn't moving too fast.
"A date?" the mayor asked with a smirk, grateful that she could finally get a word in edge-wise.
Emma bit the inside of her cheek and berated herself for being so nervous. Just the day before, Regina was her best friend who she had no issue being around, other than the overwhelming attraction of course. But now that their relationship had changed so dramatically, she couldn't help but be a little anxious. It wasn't as if she could just run away if things got weird between them, they did have a son together, after all. However, when she looked at Regina, she could tell that the nerves were pointless, though that did nothing to help with the word vomit that seemed intent on escaping her mouth.
"I just figured…we should probably go on a date if we're serious about this…Henry already saw us together so it isn't like we can just have a no strings attached kind of thing, plus that isn't really what I want…"
"Emma," Regina laughed, which caused the blonde to blush profusely and Regina cocked her head and she considered whether anyone had ever thought about if a vampire could blush. "Stop rambling and just ask me out."
The blonde nodded and cleared her throat, "do you want to go out with me on Friday?"
The brunette nodded and said, "you can pick me up at seven."
Emma blew out a relieved breath and resisted the urge to fist pump the air as Regina brought her coffee up to her lips.
Before Emma could pick up her own cup, her phone rang out to interrupt the comfortable silence and the sheriff looked down at it contemptuously.
"Pongo ran away again…"
Regina raised her eyebrow and said, "are you supposed to be at work, Emma?"
The blonde bit the inside of her cheek and shot the woman as an adorable look as she possibly could, "I have my phone and it's not like anything ever happens…I was having a very important discussion with my boss…"
"Go to work, sheriff," the mayor laughed.
She pouted and let her shoulders sagged, until Regina leaned forward and kissed the pout away, which made a dopey smile spread across her lips.
"Can you meet me at the school to pick Henry up? I'm sure he won't want to have to wait much longer."
Emma nodded and said, "yeah, sure. I'll see you later."
With that, she stood and leaned down to steal another kiss, mostly because she could and she walked away reluctantly, with her cup in hand.
Regina watched her go for a moment, before she blew out a contented breath.
"How did telling Regina that you're a vampire, translate to sleeping with your best friend?!" Ruby whispered urgently.
Emma rolled her eyes and placed the bear claw done, "one: I thought you were my best friend, and two: how could you possibly know that?"
"One: good answer, Swan and two: she smelt like you this morning, plus, the two little holes in her neck were a dead giveaway," the waitress replied, looking around to see if anyone was listening to their conversation. Thankfully, there wasn't anybody else at the counter and she doubted that Granny cared enough to listen to her conversations, not after she had been scarred by hearing her granddaughter discussing the more intricate details of her relationship.
The blonde cringed and said, "you saw those?"
"I wasn't the only one who did…" the wolf replied, looking down at the counter as she considered whether she should be telling the blonde her potentially traumatising news.
Emma looked at the waitress expectantly for a few moments, before she not-so-subtly cleared her throat, which caused her to look up and sigh.
"Snow may have been here when Regina was collecting your breakfast…and she may have looked like she had a mini breakdown when she saw the bite marks on Regina's neck. I know that Snow isn't always the smartest, but I'm pretty certain that she put two and two together…"
The blonde closed her eyes in frustration and allowed her head to fall into her hands with a groan, "why did she have to find out so soon?"
"You wanted to keep it a secret?" Ruby asked with a furrowed brow.
The saviour shook her head and replied, "I wanted to at least have the first date done, you know, so I could have something to actually tell my parents, instead of 'I slept with the woman who spent years trying to kill both of you'."
Ruby thought about this for a moment, before she said, "you could just lie and say that you went on a date first. I'm sure they would appreciate that far more than discussing whatever had led up to that bite…"
Emma just groaned again as she considered what Snow must have been imagining in the moment she had seen the mark, but she just shook it off and said, "it's not that I'm ashamed of being Regina, I mean…it could be best thing that ever happened to me, other than Henry…But they only just found out a huge secret that I've been keeping, how are they going to deal with this?"
"They're not going to disown you, Emma," the brunette replied sympathetically, "it may be a lot to take in, but they both love you too much to ever even think about it. You just need to give them a fair amount of time to process everything and then go and talk to them if they don't come to you…"
"So you're saying that I can just repress this for a while?" Emma asked hopefully.
"Well you do have your own issues to deal with right now, you need to figure out exactly what you're going to tell Henry…and on a side note, I think it would be pretty traumatising if you told him that one of your abilities is that you're irresistibly attractive…"
Emma just sighed and replied, "I know that, Ruby, but I don't know how much detail to give him. I feel like I should just tell him the things that he will think is awesome…but it isn't all awesome, you know?"
Ruby cringed when she thought back to some of her more horrifying moments as a wolf and she briefly wondered whether she would ever tell her children that she had eaten her first boyfriend. Shaking her head, she said, "you should tell him what you feel he needs to know. If you leave out anything really important, then he won't really know you…and isn't that the point of telling them in the first place?"
"I guess…"
The brunette was about to make another suggestion, but she saw someone raising their hand for a waitress and she allowed her eyes to flutter shut in frustration when she realised that her break had probably ended ten minutes ago.
"Go before Granny threatens to fire you again," Emma laughed as she rose from her seat, "I'll call you and let you know what happens."
"Okay," Ruby sighed as she grabbed her notepad and made her way over to the customer.
As consciousness began to seep through oblivion, Emma's brows knit together and the first thing that she registered was the intense pain. It felt as though every muscle in her body was on fire, an intense, blistering fire that was ceaseless and unbearable.
The muscles in her face tensed and she attempted to slowly open her eyes, though it felt as though they had been somehow cemented shut. Finally, she managed to rip the lids open and she immediately hissed at the light flittering in through the window.
Snapping her eyes shut, she took heaving breaths, but immediately noticed that it was doing absolutely nothing to help. Frantically, she tried to catch her breath, but eventually she realised that if her not breathing was going to kill her, then it probably would have already. So experimentally, she tried to simply close her mouth and found that not taking any breaths didn't help with the incredible pain coursing throughout her body.
"Emma," she heard someone whisper and she violently winced at just how loud the sound was, though she was sure that Talia had deliberately made a point of being as quiet as possible.
"What…" she began, but she just winced again when she realised just how sandy dry her throat was.
"Em…" the brunette sighed in relief, "it worked…"
With great effort, Emma brought her heavy arm up to cover her eyes so that she could successfully open them, though the light still hurt significantly and she instantly felt the sweat that must have been dripping from every pore of her face cover her arm.
The moment she opened her eyes, she saw the very much concerned expression of her roommate.
The blonde tried desperately to push herself up into a sitting position, but just as she managed to get up a fraction of an inch, she let out a garbled little scream as an intense shot of pain through her abdomen.
Just to make herself feel slightly better, she allowed herself to take a few pointless deeps breaths and she could already feel her eyes beginning to become heavy as she looked over the Talia.
"W-what the h-hell did you do to me?" she asked, her voice cracking on practically every syllable.
Talia looked down in shame for a moment, before she said, "I'm really sorry, I had to do it…"
Emma swallowed hard and ran her hand over her face and down to her neck, which seemed to be the source of all of her pain and she hissed again when her fingers made contact with two puncture holes.
"How c-could you?" she said blearily, already feeling herself losing consciousness again.
The brunette sighed, the guilt in her stomach only intensifying. She had absolutely hated the person who had done this to her, but she only hoped that she wouldn't be losing the only friend she'd had in a long time.
"I couldn't let you die," she replied to the woman whose eyes were beginning to droop, "so you better survive the next forty-eight hours…"
The blonde closed her eyes again, the pain had started to cause waves of nausea to crash over her and she was beginning to hope sincerely that this was just some hallucination brought on by the fever that was wracking her body.
Her head lolled as the pain was becoming too much and she just about managed to ask sleepily, "what happens after forty-eight hours?"
"You become a vampire."
Emma took a deep breath as she finished telling the story.
She had wanted to downplay the horror of what had happened to her, but Ruby had made it clear that wouldn't be the best idea. Now that she looked at her son's expression, she kind of regretted it. The boy looked as though she had destroyed his dreams of how awesome vampirism truly would be; plus, he was obviously dealing with thinking that his mother had to go through something so painful.
Looking over to Regina, the blonde silently asked if what she heard was okay, but the brunette was wearing a very similar look to that of their son and she was torn between thinking about how happy she was that these people cared about her and also the fact that they looked so horrified by her past.
"Do you guys have any questions?" she asked, shifting uncomfortably on her seat on the coffee table in Regina's living room.
The sound of her voice seemed to break Henry out of his trance and he jumped up off the couch and threw his arms around his birth mother, hugging her closely.
"That sounds…awful…" he mumbled asked her shoulder, obviously feeling bad for asking her to asking her to tell him everything about her being a vampire. He certainly wanted to know more about Talia, but he felt as though it would be a rather difficult story for his mother to tell, so he decided to ask her another time.
Emma smiled sadly and brought her hand up to rest on his back, patting it softly, she said, "it got better, kid."
The pre-teen nodded and leaned back so that he could look at her and he replied, "do you like being a vampire?"
The saviour covertly swallowed hard as all of the negatives sprung to mind and she looked over to the other woman in the room. She could tell from the look on her face that she thought that Henry had heard enough for one day. Emma resolved to talk more about everything that worried her about her 'condition' later, and she decided to say something that she knew would cheer Henry up that wasn't really a lie.
"Well I get to have super speed and it makes me very…persuasive…"
Henry smiled at this and resisted the urge to say 'awesome' in light of what else she had told him, so instead he went with, "cool."
Emma smiled down at him and pulled him back into a hug, before she looked over to the woman on the couch and asked, "what about you, Regina?"
The brunette smiled reassuringly and shook her head, "I believe if either of us think of anything else, we can always ask you another time."
"Of course," the blonde replied instantly.
Regina smiled at her and the saviour softly pushed Henry back so that she could look at him, "do you want to watch a movie?"
The boy nodded eagerly and Emma said, "why don't you go and get your laptop and we'll start making the popcorn."
Henry quickly hugged her again, before he smiled at his other mother and ran off to do as he was told.
"You assume that I have popcorn?" the mayor asked with a quirked brow as she rose from her seat.
Emma smirked at the other woman and asked, "you did for every other movie night we've had."
"Speaking of which, you've also invited yourself to stay…"
"I had a feeling that you wouldn't object, madam mayor," the sheriff chuckled as she invaded the other woman's personal space.
Regina laughed lightly, also stepping closer, so that they were inches away.
"You have an excellent point, sheriff Swan."
"Don't worry though, your majesty, I'll go back to Ruby's once the movie ends," Emma said, causing Regina to furrow her brow in confusion. "I think we should have an actual date before our next sleepover, you know?"
"I suppose," the brunette sighed, though she couldn't help but smile at how considerate the other woman was.
Emma laughed at her, before she leaned forward to steal a quick peck.
Once they parted, the blonde asked, "are you sure that everything I said was okay?"
"I know it was difficult to discuss, Emma, but there's nothing that you could say that could change my opinion of you."
"So nothing could make you want to cancel our date?"
"I would lose my chance at another sleepover if I did, so I would rather not," the brunette laughed.
Emma was about to lean forward to give her a longer kiss to show her how much that meant to her, but her super senses caught the sound of feet hitting the stairs and she took a step back.
A moment later, Henry appeared in the doorway and furrowed his brow.
"Have you already made the popcorn?"
"We're doing that right now, set up the movie, kid," the sheriff replied.
Henry nodded and watched them walk in the direction of the kitchen, he was rather curious as to what they had been doing, but considering the shift in the nature of their relationship, he was sure that he would be better off not finding out for the sake of him not being too grossed out.
A/N Hope you enjoyed, reviews would be much appreciated XD
Just so you guys know, the reason that I skipped over the sex scene is because I'm not comfortable writing smut, so I'm sorry if you were hoping for it.
If anyone would like to write the missing scenes, feel free to pm me :)
Also, I need to thank PerditusFic for helping through the many rewrites of this chapter haha