The bell above the door to the diner jingled as Regina entered, making her way to the bar to sit next to the sheriff.
Emma glanced over with a smile and a quirked eyebrow. "Where's your other half?" she asked curiously.
Regina rolled her eyes with a fond, exasperated smile. "He wanted facial hair and didn't want to wait for the testosterone to kick in."
"Okay..." Emma lifted both eyebrows then. "You know that doesn't explain why he's not here with you, right?"
The smile widened. "He tried to use magic to grow a bit of scruff on his chin, and ended up looking like a mountain man." Emma cut in with a loud snort, but Regina kept talking. "And then the spell couldn't be reversed, and he hadn't bought shaving equipment yet, so he stole one of my razors for shaving my legs and banished me from the house while he gives himself a crash course on beard removal."
Emma had continued to chuckle quietly through the last half of the story, and by the end, she was wheezing silently and wincing in sympathy at the mental images it provided. "Oh god," she giggled. "Oh man, that's brutal."
Regina agreed with a nod and took a sip of her coffee when it was set down in front of her.
Ten minutes later, just as Emma was getting ready to head back to the station, the bell rang again, and both women looked up to see Zephyr step through the door, cheeks pink with self-consciousness and riddled with tiny nicks and cuts. That was eclipsed, however, by his radiant smile and the neatly trimmed little patch of red hair on his chin.