Operation Happy Ending: Chapter Four

I don't own Once Upon a Time.

Please enjoy. This one is dedicated to snixxjuice214 who asked for a territorial Emma. I took a few liberties but I hope you like it.

It's dark in Regina's bedroom. Emma likes it. She likes how the dark curtains block out the morning sun and she likes that it feels like it is completely separate from the outside world. She likes having Regina all to herself. She likes to wrap her arms around the smaller woman and hold her tight to her chest. She likes that when she closes her eyes, she can feel Regina right next to her. Warm and present.

Emma hates, however, when Regina's phone rings in the middle of the night. The screen lights up and it buzzes loudly on the bedside table. Emma's eyes snap open and the sound sends shivers down her spine. She hates the sound. It reminds her far too much of that same buzzing that she heard in her ears over and over again when Cora shocked her. But more than that, far more present, is anger.

The first time Regina's phone buzzed, the anger was muted by sleep. Many nights passed between that first occurrence and the second but her annoyance nevertheless moved up a notch. And that was due to a single fact: when she answered the phone, Regina would mention one person. Sidney.

One week, he called three nights in a row and Emma almost broke Regina's phone. She, of course, said nothing to her love. Emma knew nothing was going on – nothing untoward, as Regina would say. Sidney, she knew without a shadow of a doubt, had nothing on their true love. But it irked her nonetheless.

But finally, he stopped calling. And Emma slept peacefully at night. She almost forgot that he had called Regina ever. One evening, however, Emma had been sleeping fitfully. Regina, a heavy sleeper now that her nightmares had more or less ceased, slept through the persistent beeps. Emma, on the other hand, had always been a light sleeper. So when Regina's phone lit up the first time and gave a small buzz, she heard and saw it. It faded after a minute and she slipped back into an uneasy sleep. The second time, she kept her eyes open for a good ten minutes, unable to convince herself to relax, to sleep. The third time, she had had enough. She sat up in her bed and glared at the phone. Sure enough, three messages from 'Sidney Glass' was proudly pronounced on the screen. Emma sneered. She reached for the phone but, before she could touch it, it began to ring obnoxiously.

Regina woke with a little snort that, at any other time, Emma would have found adorable. Now, however, she wasn't waking in a cute fashion because Emma or Henry had woken her. No. Someone else had woken her. Someone else had done what should only ever be done by her. And it sent a wave of fury through the sheriff.

"Mayor Mills," Regina answered sleepily. "Yes Sidney, what can I do for you?" Her voice was almost sweet when she spoke to him. And Emma knew that of course it was only because she was tired and confused and hadn't quite managed her frosty mayoral tone to address Sidney. But that didn't stop her from reaching across, taking the phone from Regina, and ending the call abruptly.

"Emma!" Regina said, shocked. "Why on earth did you do that?" The blonde didn't answer. She just tossed the phone to the end of the bed and smirked at it. The phone couldn't buzz as obnoxiously on soft fabric and she felt as if she had won a small victory.

"It's weird," she said to Regina in explanation. "It's weird that he's calling and texting you this late."

Regina sighed and Emma's brain jumped. She knew that sigh very well. Regina was exasperated. She used that sigh to denote the fact that she thought Emma was being deliberately infuriating. "He is my informant, Emma," Regina said slowly and clearly, as if speaking to a child. "He contacts me with information – that is how it works. You needn't be quite so irate."

Though, Regina thought to herself, I don't mind the view. Something about an irate sheriff just made her tingle in all the right places. Emma's hair was mussed from sleep. Her forehead was tight with worry and flushed with anger. Her muscles were tense and looked delicious.

"Your business hours are nine to five, Regina." And her voice was oh-so-stern and commanding. Regina wasn't a woman to take orders but stern Emma was a little exciting. "They aren't whenever the hell he wants to text you."

Regina blinked. There was more than just annoyance in Emma's tone, she realised. There was some quite genuine anger and not a small amount of venom within her words. The only scenario that had drawn such a violent reaction from Emma, in Regina's immediate recollection, was Cora. Even the though of the woman, her mother, made her shiver. Regina looked at her phone and back at Emma. She pursed her lips thoughtfully and pulled herself up so she sat with her back propped up against the headboard.

"Does the sound bother you?" Regina asked, a little confused as to the origin of Emma's emotion. She reached down to the phone, intent on turning it to silent, but Emma's fingers curled around the slender wrist. The blonde took a moment to just enjoy the thrum of Regina's pulse before she looked up at Regina.

"It's not the sound." She tilted her head to the side and examined Regina intently. "You really don't understand why I'm annoyed, do you?"

Now it was Regina's turn to feel the twinge of annoyance, a little flicker of anger and frustration. Emma was never one to be particularly verbose but this back and forth was infuriating Regina. "Understand what?" It was late and she just wanted to sleep. She didn't want this conversation to be drawn out for any longer than necessary.

"You don't understand why I don't like it. Him. Why I'm always hanging around for some reason or another when he comes into your office."

Regina rubbed her tired eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose. "Enlighten me."

"He wants you, Regina. He loves you." Emma's eyes darkened in a mix of anger and something undeterminable to Regina. "And while I might understand how he could love you, I will not tolerate it. I won't tolerate his eyes lingering." Emma laid Regina's arm – the arm she had been holding tenderly, fingers encircling the wrist – on the woman's lap. Then she shifted so she was on her knees and resting back on her haunches, facing her Regina. She reached up to trace a line slowly, so slowly, down Regina's neck. It felt, to the darker woman, like she was painting a line on her skin and it burnt quite deliciously. When she moved, Regina could still feel where her finger had been as if she had left some part of her behind, a reminder of the woman. The line continued, with a little swirl into the hollow of Regina's collarbone, down her side, down her waist. There Emma paused and curled her hand gently around the swell of her hip. "I won't tolerate him thinking he can have what is mine."

Those words jerked Regina out of the seductive haze she had allowed to cloy her senses. "I am no one's possession, Miss Swan," Regina snapped. Her eyes narrowed at the presumptuous blonde.

Emma's eyes flashed in challenge. "I don't mean possession, Regina. And you can deny it all you want but I know that you are mine. If that hickey doesn't tell you," Emma's eyes felt like a physical weight as they grazed – being entirely too prideful, in Regina's opinion – over the rather prominent hickey on Regina's neck. "Then I will remind you."

Emma shifted so she was sitting cross-legged. She leant forward. "You are mine in this house. Within these walls, you are mine – mine to infuriate by leaving my jacket on the back of my chair and mine to kiss when you walk through the door after a long day in the office. You are mine to share a beautiful son with and to raise him with. You are mine to know and to touch." Emma leant in suddenly and Regina gasped as the blonde licked a line up her throat, up to her ear. The chill air on then wet skin made Regina shiver. Emma nipped at the lobe and growled her words. "Mine to taste." Regina moaned quite uncontrollably. Emma grinned wickedly at the sound she had elicited. "Mine to hold at night and mine to wake up with in the morning. Mine to love."

Emma moved back onto her knees and shuffled a little closer. She smiled gently at Regina. She let herself – though, in truth, she would never be able to resist the almost magnetic pull of her lover's lips – move forward and pressed her lips to Regina's tenderly. "And mine to protect," she murmured.

That snapped Regina back into the conversation. "Protect?" she whispered. "From Sidney?"

Emma nodded seriously. "Yes."

Regina smirked and pulled away. "Are you jealous, Emma?" she taunted.

Emma frowned. "Yes. I am." Regina's eyes widened. She hadn't expected that Emma would answer in the affirmative – rather, had expected a blustered retort and a huff before the blonde settled down and they both forgot the whole discussion. But Emma repeated herself. "Yes I am. I don't like that he texts you at night. I don't like that he thinks of you at night, thinks of calling and talking to you, and acts on that. Is it so wrong of me not to want him to think he has a chance with you?" Emma's eyes flickered down to their bed sheets, a hint of worry in them. "I don't want him to have a part of you that I can't have."

"We have a past, Emma, Sidney and me," Regina said scoldingly. "A past that you were not privy to. Of course he has a part of me."

"Then don't give him any more of you," Emma begged. "Please Regina."

"You are being irrational, Emma."

Emma removed her hands from Regina and shuffled back on the bed. "Irrational," she repeated flatly. "Not wanting to have to worry that a man I distrust incredibly and the woman I love are-"

"Are what?" Regina spat. "Having an affair? Oh yes, Emma, that's right. We're having a dark, dirty, sordid affair." Regina flung the sheets off her and stood, gliding to the opposite side of the room. She couldn't be close to Emma in that moment. She spun. She needed to be close to Emma, to show her how ridiculous, ludicrous, laughable, irrational that suggestion was. To correct her. She jabbed Emma in the chest and shoved her. "Is that really the trust you have in me?" she sneered.

Emma scrambled off the bed and frowned at Regina. "It's not you I don't trust."

"Prove it," Regina hissed. "If you trust me then you will allow me to contact Sidney whenever I deem it necessary, and he contact me."

"No! I don't understand why you can't tell him to leave you alone!" Emma snapped back. She placed her hands firmly on her hips and her eyebrows pinched together. "What don't you understand about this, Regina?" she sighed. "Would you like it if August texted me all the time?"

"I wouldn't care," Regina told her. "You are mine and I trust you." Both statements were true and they knew it. Emma was hers, as Regina was Emma's, and Regina did trust her, as Emma trusted Regina…but Regina would care if August texted Emma late into the night. Come to think of it, Regina quite suddenly and irrationally despised August.

"You trust me," Emma prodded, knowing that Regina was close to realisation, "but do you trust him with me? Do you trust his intentions? Trust him not to want a dark, dirty, sordid affair with me?" There was the barest hint of mockery in her tone as she repeated Regina's words because she already knew the answer. "I've known August for a long time. Longer than I've known anyone else. I guess we've got a sort of a past together," she said thoughtfully. "Not to mention that he is pretty good looking."

"Enough," Regina called out. "What exactly are you trying to prove, other than the fact that you like to think of others in our bedroom?"

Emma clenched her jaw. "I'm trying to prove that you don't like the thought of August texting me at night. Don't deny it Regina." She couldn't. She despised the thought. "I don't like Sidney texting you." Emma waved her hands at the walls that surrounded them. "This is our space, Regina. We've made it ours with every night that we've spent together. Every fight and every make up super sex session. That Sidney intrudes on that…" Emma shook her head. "I don't like it, Regina," she said plainly. "In fact, I really, really hate it."

"Then what do you propose?" Regina asked stiffly. "That you never contact Mr Booth and I never contact Sidney? Because that is ludicrous."

"No," Emma said. She sank, tired now, down to the bed. Regina hesitated for a brief moment before she sat with Emma. She reached out and entwined her hand with Emma's, who squeezed it thankfully. "I don't want you to never talk to him again," she said. "That's not fair. I just…I don't want you to give him any leeway. You're his mayor; you're not his girlfriend. I think," she looked sideways, hopefully, at Regina. "He can text you during work hours or when something is really important, I guess. But is it really so wrong to ask that he doesn't text you in our time? Or the middle of the night when you're trying to sleep?" Regina shook her head. That wasn't an outrageous suggestion. "You don't mean to, I know, but you give him ideas. When he gets to call you whenever he wants, it means that you are available to him. It means that he has access to you."

Regina softened as she took in how tense Emma was, how tight her eyes and her shoulders. "Would you like me to inform him of this change now?" she asked quietly.

Emma glanced up through her lashes at Regina. "You agree with me? To this?"

"So long as your friend, Mr Booth, is under the same restrictions," Regina commented dryly.

"Done," Emma agreed immediately. "And no. You can tell him in the morning. For now, just…can I just hold you?"

Regina lost the last of her icy mask as she smiled shyly at Emma. "I would like that," she said, nodding. And so, Regina pulled down the sheets. Emma clambered over to her side and Regina slid in next to her, waiting for Emma to make herself comfortable and turn to her with open arms, into which Regina snuggled happily.

"I love you," Emma murmured. Regina, lips pressed to the sensitive skin of Emma's shoulder, smiled and brushed a kiss over her collar.

"And I you. Go to sleep."

It's bed time here for me so I thought I would post this one as well. I hope that this was alright, snixxjuice214, and that everyone enjoyed it. Reviews are love. Please post a scenario you would like to see/read. Oh, and I am elizadownunder on tumblr. Happy reading, readers :)