A few weeks since they've been back together, and it is Robin who struggles more with finding their new balance. Robin who clings a little longer to Regina's hand as she leaves the house, Robin who flinches at the first sign of a fight, Robin who has nightmares of loneliness and hurt and pain, who wakes to her gripping his wrists and easing his hands into hers, tugging open his clenched fists, smoothing away his gritted teeth with her thumb.

Regina is perplexed. Cannot understand it. That should be her, and yet she's easing back into things quite well. It's a struggle at times, but she knows they'll get there.

It seems he's still having trouble with that.

Never more so than late one evening, when she's feeling pleasantly alive from a few glasses of wine and homemade dinner.

And from her liquidy thighs and heaving chest and shuddering spine as she comes down from her high, and Robin drops a few final kisses from the inside of her thigh to the back of her knee. Those definitely don't hurt.

She trails her toes up the back of his calf as he scoots up the couch, up her body to kiss her, and she makes quick work of the last bit of fabric that separates them, his trousers and boxers, hums as his lips find that spot on her neck that makes her squirm, though his hands haven't found her yet, haven't started to try and reach everywhere at once, to tug and twist at her nipples. Odd.

"Robin?"

He hums vaguely in her ear, quiet, reedy, strained.

That's not like him.

And neither is his silence. He's usually mumbling, grunting, talking to her, her name at least, asking her whether something works even though his smirk against her skin always gives away how well he reads her without her help, the occasional expletive slipping past his lips when she tugs at his hair in just the right way, rocks her hips into his unexpectedly.

She shifts against the arm of the couch, reaches between them, takes him in her hand. A gentle brush of her fingertips at first, and though when she trails her other hand down his chest, his muscles feel tense, his shuddering breath nevertheless washes across her neck.

"You ok?" she manages as she nudges him a little closer to her with her knee, begins to stroke more firmly. "You're quiet."

He only grunts in response, and she can't shake the sense that he seems a little off, tense for some reason that isn't arousal.

Still, when she gets the rhythm just right, and tilts her head back for a heady kiss, his hips jerk towards hers, his jaw going slack. His whimpering groan has pleasure, the anticipation of it, blooming in her belly, between her thighs, and she lets the leg on the outside of the sofa slide off the edge, bends the other until the length of her calf presses into his side. The muscles of his arms remain bunched and straining on either side of her head, the fingers of one hand curling into the cushions as she gives him one last stroke, starts to guide him to her.

She finds his lips again, and just when his tip brushes against her entrance, when she's biting her lip in anticipation, and then reaching out to nip his, he freezes up.

It's unmistakeable this time, the way he flinches out of her grasp, his forehead dropping to her shoulder, and he's shaking, the wet of tears on her skin.

"Robin," she asks, trying to get ahold of her own heaving breaths, "Robin?" and panic is the first thing to settle in her stomach. She lifts his face with both hands so she can meet his eyes, the initial rush of adrenaline subsiding, and when she does there is so much love in them, so much fear and uncertainty and guilt, but the trust, the intimacy, that stops her short of feeling hurt.

"What is it?" she asks, her thumb running back and forth against his jaw in what she hopes is a soothing gesture.

He's shifted back enough that their bodies have lost most of their contact. She shivers once, involuntarily, the brisk spring evening a bit too cold for lounging around the master suite en deshabille without the warmth of each other, especially as the pleasure skittering through her hasn't quite caught up with her head yet.

She has to smile, just a little, because even though she's utterly confused and maybe, she'll admit, somewhat hurt, he's pulling the throw blanket down and tucking it around her, and then around him, so that the cream knitting covers them both. They're facing each other on the couch, knees pressed together.

He looks hurt, equally confused, shy, tense.

"What's wrong?" she repeats, and she tries not to sound too terribly disappointed, too harsh, skims one palm from his knee to halfway up his thigh, encouraged when he smiles softly at the gesture, when his breath hitches even though there's clearly something stopping him here.

His hands are on her face then, cradling it, holding it, his fingers twisting in her hair. It takes him a couple of minutes to finally speak, and when he does his voice is broken, ravaged, soft, kind. "I promised myself I would be someone in your life who never hurt you."

She scoffs, says, "Well, that's ridiculous," then regrets it a moment later when he jumps under her touch and his fingers halt in her hair. She hadn't meant it like that. "No, I wasn't—" she sighs. She's still not good at this. "I just meant it's ridiculous to think that it's possible not to hurt people we love. Trust me. I know."

He swallows heavily, and she slides a hand around his neck, her fingers working their way into the hair at his nape.

"But I hurt you, and I love you, and…I'm sorry," he whispers, voice still rough.

"I know," she sighs, all three of those things, and this time she follows instinct, impulse, uses that hand at his neck to tug him closer, to guide his head to the crook of her neck. Her skin is still warm, a little slick with sweat, and he lets his lips rest there, not exactly a kiss, just the contact, the touch.

They stay like that for a few minutes. Breathing.

"Your hand is cold," she tells him when he begins to move it up and down her arm.

He flits his eyes pointedly to where she's begun to trace the muscles of his arm as well, to circle the edges of the lion tattoo.

"My hands are not cold," she protests.

He shrugs. "Your nails are long."

Regina smirks. "You like them that way."

He mock gasps, and there's that lightness returning. The flirting and teasing.God she's missed that. "I've been caught."

"Well, you are a thief."

His fingers begin to card through her hair again, and when he pulls back to look at her, he's finally smiling again. "Does that mean I can steal a kiss?"

Regina presses her lips together, then darts forward to catch his mouth for a kiss that lasts a little longer than she'd intended. And has a lot more tongue. Not that either of them complain. One of his hands wanders down her skin, over her ribs, swirling against her belly. "Don't have to steal those," she insists, and suddenly a rush of affection washes through her, unexpected tears burning at the back of her eyes as she reminds him, "I give them to you freely."

He just stares at her, and it's not often she renders him speechless, but it's always a particularly thrilling triumph when she does.

Especially since it has him tugging her to him with both hands around her waist, his lips gentle for the briefest of moments on her forehead before they're hot on her jaw, her neck.

"You're lovely in every possible way," he tells her, shoving the blanket out of his way so that his arms can move freely, "and I love you."

"That didn't make sense," she protests, "You used the same word to—" She sighs as one of his thumbs finds her nipple, grazing gently, just a whisper of pleasure at first. Her jaw falls open a little, her eyes fluttering shut.

"Regina?"

She blinks. "Hm?"

He nuzzles his face into her neck for a moment. "Nothing."

"What?" she asks more clearly.

He shakes his head, kisses her chin sweetly and catches her eyes for a moment, amends his earlier word. Croaks, "everything."