Thank you so much everyone for the great response on this story!
Dear Guest that reviewed the previous chapter: Okay, so I had most of this written out before hand, but your review was taken in for consideration, and the ending of the chapter is just for you!;)
"OUCH!" Emma jumped quickly from the couch in the study, making her way quickly to the source of noise. A spooked Mollie ran past her in the other direction, seeking somewhere to hide. She turned the corner to see a disgruntled Regina sprawled across the pristine white floor at the foot of the grand staircase.
"Goddam cat."
"Are you alright?" Emma asked, worried, holding out a hand and pulling Regina up to sit on the stairs.
"Yes I'm fine." The brunette replied shortly, "The stupid cat tripped me halfway down the stairs."
"You're bleeding." Emma tells her, gently probing her eyebrow, and the brunette involuntarily flinched. Regina reached up to touch it, but Emma batted her hand away.
"I think I hit my eye on the banister." She grimaced.
"Come on, let's get you some ice." Emma leads her towards the kitchen and onto a bar stool, "Here." Emma pressed an ice pack to her eye, and Regina feels the incessant need to tell the blonde how cold it is, though this is already blatantly obvious since it came out of the freezer.
Maybe the fall did something to her brain.
Regina blinks the strange thoughts away.
"I have to work tomorrow with a messed up face." She grumbles.
"No one will even see you tomorrow, Gina, you're just going to be in the office all day." Emma's attempts to reassure her do nothing of the sort.
"I have a meeting." She snipes. Even Emma winces at the thought of that.
"Oh, that's too bad." If Emma is trying to make her feel better she is failing miserably, though it is refreshing to have someone that doesn't lie purely to make her feel better, since it always ends up making her feel worse in the long run.
Maybe she's being a little dramatic.
In all fairness, she did curse an entire kingdom, so she supposes this is minor in the grand scheme of things.
"Uh, Regina?" She suddenly focuses back on the room to find Emma waving her hand in her face. She swats it away.
"Stop that." Regina frowns.
"Well, you kinda spaced out on me. Maybe you should get checked out at the hospital." She ignores the dramatic rolling of Regina's eyes.
Well, one eye, since she can't really see the other under the ice pack.
"Regina?"
"I'm not going to the hospital. I'm not having that imbecile Whale coming near me." The brunette says firmly.
"There are other doctors, you know."
"That's not the point dear, and you know it." Emma's brow scrunched up in confusion.
"Do I?"
"I'm not going."
"Fine, whatever." Emma holds her hands up in surrender, "Just tell me if you don't feel alright, okay?" She gently lifts the ice pack to inspect her girlfriend's eye, and hopes that she hid her grimace upon spotting the coloring skin. Regina's face darkened.
"I'm cancelling my meeting tomorrow." The brunette states. Oops.
"Don't do that! You can… cover it up with make up right?"
"And how would I know that? From my years and years of beauty training? Oh wait…" Regina pretended to think. "Oh yes! I haven't had any!"
"Jeeze, calm down, alright? We'll figure something out."
10 minutes later:
"Okay Regina, so you bought hundreds of dollars of make up that does nothing." The mayor's head falls to the table with a dull thud.
"Shit!" She says through gritted teeth, grabbing her face.
"Regina, even I could have predicted that that would have hurt." Emma's eyes widened when she gets hit with the instant death stare.
"It's not my fault the cat hurt your face!" Regina reaches for her phone.
"I'm cancelling the meeting." Emma grabs it out of her hand.
"Don't! Stop being so dramatic, Regina. Lets try something else first." The brunette doesn't reply, and sits pouting at the table.
Oh god… Emma thought. Think of something… something… Emma types a number out into her phone.
"Who are you calling?" She silences Regina with her hand.
"Regina?" Snow's voice answers promptly.
"Uh, hey Mom, it's me, Emma." The blonde greets awkwardly.
"Oh hello, Emma. What's up?"
"We've kind of had an…" She searches for the right word, "Incident."
"What kind of incident?" Her mother sounds instantly wary.
"Could you just get over here and bring as much make up as you can?"
"Well, I guess-" She cuts her mother off.
"Great, see you in say… fifteen minutes? Thanks." She hangs up the phone and passes it to Regina. Then looks at her face. The brunette is positively seething.
"Really Emma? Snow, really?" Regina asks.
"What? Do you want to cancel the meeting tomorrow?" Regina opens her mouth, "Actually, don't answer that. She's helping so just deal with it, all right? Now, keep the ice on your face – it'll keep the swelling down." Much to Emma's surprise, the brunette reluctantly presses the ice back to her eye.
"Fine. As long as she doesn't laugh." Regina finally admits. Emma stands and presses a kiss to the brunette's hair.
"If she does I will personally kick her out, okay?" The mayor manages to crack a smile.
"Thank you."
"Don't worry about it, sweetie. Want me to make some coffee?"
…
A few minutes later someone knocks on the door, and Emma answers it, knowing it to be her mother. When she swings open the door, yes her mom is standing there, but so is…
"Ruby?" The blonde asks.
"Well, I don't really have much make up," Snow says, "But I know that Ruby does."
"So here I am!" The feisty brunette announces, grinning, holding up the huge case that Emma can only guess holds an excessive amount of make up.
"Thank you, you guys. You really are life-savers!" Emma thanks them profusely, and then explains to them what they are doing there.
Regina hears footsteps enter the room from behind her.
"Hey Madam Mayor." A voice greets. Wait, was that Ruby? Said woman walks around her, placing a large case on the dining table.
"Hello." She manages politely, looking towards a sheepish-appearing Emma and Snow.
"Lets see what we've got to work with." The overly-peppiness of Ruby is already biting at Regina, but hey, at least she's not laughing.
Maybe the focus of the town isn't actually to embarrass her. That's doubtful.
Regina mentally rolls her eyes. It's not like she doesn't speak to Ruby! She speaks to her practically everyday when she gets coffee from Granny's, let alone the fact that the brunette is practically BFF's with her girlfriend.
Ruby reaches forward and takes the ice from her face with surprising gentleness. Her and Emma had already wiped off all of the make up they'd attempted to use earlier.
Ruby visibly winced when she caught an eyeful of her bruise. So did Snow. So did Emma, actually.
Could it really have gotten worse in the last ten minutes since she'd previously looked? Clearly yes, it could have.
"Yikes, that's quite a shiner you've got there. Bar brawl gone bad?" The brunette grins at her, and she can't help but crack a smile back. Damn Ruby for not letting her stay annoyed for at least a little while.
"I'm afraid not, just the annoying animal that was forced upon me." She glares in Emma and Snow's general direction.
"So can you cover it up?" Emma butts in.
"Oh sure," Ruby waves her off as she begins to rummage blindly through her cosmetics, "I've had a lot of practice. You know like when you wake up after a night out with a mystery bruise and no idea how it happened?"
"I can't say I've ever had that problem, actually." Snow tells her, furrowing her brow in confusion.
"Whatever, Miss Perfect," Ruby waves her off, and Regina snickers, "We'll practice it now, and I'll come and do it again in the morning, okay?" Ruby asks, and Regina nods silently – relieved, and also slightly ashamed that she's so self-centered about her looks. Ruby then takes her hand and begins swiping all sorts of different make up onto her arm, trying to find her color. When she has them all lined up she begins gently dabbing one to underneath her eye with a soft brush.
She still winces.
"Sorry."
"Its fine." The brunette answers. She can handle it. Maybe. She hopes.
In her peripheral vision she can see Snow cooing over the cat. Stupid Snow. Stupid cat.
Ruby glances over at the pair in the corner, holding Mollie.
"I really can't stand cats." Ruby whispers to her conspiratorially.
"Ugh, tell me about it." Regina agrees; as she is loathe to admit to another human being that she could find Mollie even a little bit adorable. God forbid Emma ever find that snippet of information out, she wouldn't shut up for days.
"They drive me crazy! It's probably my resident wolf, but they absolutely stink!" Regina smirked.
"Don't let little-miss-sunshine-and-rainbows over there catch you saying that."
"Oh God, could you imagine the massacre?!" Ruby complained, while grinning darkly back, "The entire town would be forced to go into mourning for a week!"
"Don't give her any ideas, Ruby, it could end up being an annual holiday." Regina said back, her eyes widening over-dramatically before the pair of them burst into raucous laughter.
"Hey, I heard that!" Snow whines over their hysterics, because perish the thought that not everyone has a freakish connection with animals.
It is at that moment when Mollie decides that she's had enough of Snow White, and promptly scratches the entirety of her forearm. While the brunette attempts to convince everyone that it doesn't hurt, Regina chuckles to herself.
God, I love that cat.
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