Just a little something; have some Roland/Regina/Robin feels.
When they find out that Zelena is gone, and that her spell has been activated, he sees the panic and hurt beneath her collected veneer. He keeps glancing at her—he needs to offer her some sort of comfort—but his hands ache to reach for her, to touch her, if only for a moment. He knows it's not the time or place, but everyone in the room must know that they're together. If not because he's been very obvious in the last few days (and he knows he has, and dares to think she might've been as well), Henry had seen them kissing. He is a young man, a boy with a boy's belief in the simplicity of happiness, and he's no doubt told the others with excitement that his mom is dating Robin Hood. Ah, well. He doesn't mind, not at all (she thinks he should, he knows, but he doesn't, nobody can make him feel shame for his feelings for the woman formerly knowns as the Evil Queen, not even that woman herself), but he wonders sometimes if she does mind the idea that people may know. What she's told him today about her first love makes it even clearer why openness scares her.
So he settles for stepping closer to her, close in case she needs him, but never possessive or patronizing or even really protective because everyone in the room also knows that she can (at least physically) handle herself just fine alone.
She puts a hand on her hip as she's talking, slides it almost behind her back, and he makes a sudden decision. A way to appease both of their desires. He threads his fingers between hers, behind her back, where it will remain their secret.
He has to hand it to her, she doesn't even flinch. But he flatters himself he isn't imagining it when her shoulders relax a little and she takes a deeper breath. She doesn't pull away.
Later, when they're on their way to the diner, he holds his hand out to her on her doorstep. It's her decision, to be open with everyone or not, he'll let her do what she wants, what makes her comfortable, and he wonders when, if it's ever been her decision to be open about a relationship or not.
She looks down at his hand, and, to his momentary surprise, takes it without hesitation, offering him a wide smile that reaches across her face and deep into her eyes. It's the bravest thing she's done all day, he thinks, besides telling him about the tattoo. She's admitting to her vulnerability, that she's grown attached, and that's the strongest word he'll presume to use yet, but he knows it's not the right one, there's one stronger and more apt.
They hold hands for about five seconds before chubby hands start to pull ineffectually at Robin's thumb, trying to remove it from Regina's hand. "Papa," Roland sighs, exasperated, "I get to hold 'Gina's hand!" he demands, and his little boy had asked after her when he'd remembered where he'd gotten the favorite stuffed toy he's been toting everywhere in Storybrooke. Regina laughs a delighted laugh, her head thrown back, and he's mesmerized by the way the light of the setting sun throws patterns against the line of her neck, and the crinkles next to her eyes. She opens her hand to the boy, and Robin thinks that however pleasurable it was to hold her hand in his own, this is infinitely sweeter, his little boy taking a shine to her.
Robin smiles at Regina's surprise when Roland has to drop one of their hands in order to hold his ice cream, and he chooses to drop his papa's rather than hers.
"I like holding 'Gina's hand, Papa!" Roland declares, when Robin asks if he hadn't perhaps better hold the ice cream cone with two hands.
Robin can sympathize, he really can. "Me too, my boy, me too." And as they walk to the diner, their hands all joined, Roland licking at his ice cream and Regina smiling that smile, he feels blessed she's decided to share the privilege with them both.