Visions

OQ prompt: After Marian comes back, Robin has dreams/visions of the life he could've had with regina (angst filled please)

He dreams of being in her arms. Him on his back, Regina on her side, tucked into him. Their legs tangled, her arm looped around his waist, her face pressed into the hollow of his neck, her breath washing across his skin.

He dreams of pulling the covers up around them, skin on skin, of her ankle wedging its way between his, of combing his hands through silky straight black hair.

He dreams of waking just before dawn to her lips on his neck and her dark chuckle and wandering hands, to her legs straddling his hips, to twitching in her grasp and staring into her eyes in the pale light, her pupils dark and wide, her lips quirked into a pleased half-smile as he comes alive with her touch.

But when he wakes, his arms are empty, and her smell, her touch—they are not with him; they belong to the realm of mere memory, haunting, false; and in the weaker hours of darkness, all he wants is to hold her again.

Names

angst prompt-semioq, marian can hear a distinct difference in how robin says her name and regina's. hers is more like a question, regina's is breathy and desperate. it makes how SHE says regina's name harsher and more bitter, which makes robin angry. but what kills robin, is how regina says his name (or doesn't) cold and indifferent, but with a sense of resignation :'(

When he says her name in the diner, it is a question. And that is wrong, so wrong,Marian?, he has never said her name like that before. Like he can't believe she exists, when they're supposed to be constants for each other, the one thing in a life of thieving and running and bending rules that never, ever changed. But that has changed for him, she can hear it.

And then he goes outside and says her name, the Evil Queen, but that is not what he calls her—he calls her Regina, wraps the name in the melted warmth of his voice, as though he thinks he might have lost the privilege of saying it and yet could not bear never to say it again. He used to say Marian with warmth like that.

When the Evil Queen saves her, he says it again, Regina, desperate and breathy and anxious. The only day she can remember him saying her name like that was the day she fell ill while pregnant with Roland. But even after that, she has to admit there's something different here, a fire he instills in the name that he's never attached to hers.

—

Regina opens her office door to him, clearly expecting somebody else, and he has a speech prepared for her, the words he's about to use to break their hearts. If he veers off script for even a moment, he knows what will happen, how weak he'll be—he'll collapse into her arms, and cry, and beg her to keep him here, hating himself for all of it, and he can't—he won't do that to her. She deserves better.

But his name is a question. Robin? She honestly didn't think he'd want to speak to her again. And his script falls away; he has to grip his hands together to keep himself from reaching for her, from begging her to say his name like she used to, like she did just yesterday on this same couch, a breathless, disbelieving, loving whisper. In trying to be kind and honest, to follow his code, he watches as he inadvertently stomps all over her heart, and he feels like a monster for it, knows, somehow, he's lost the right to hear his name from her lips marked with anything but sadness, resignation, regret.

(And so many names are that for her, heavy with old pains, and the one thing he'd promised himself those few weeks ago in the forest was that his would never be one of them.)

She is Regina to him—she will always be Regina to him—but his name, to her—it is pain.

The Couch

Can you fic her turning the couch around?

Regina walks away from the diner. She could use magic. But somehow that feels the same, worse than running, and she's determined to prove Zelena wrong about that—she isn't running away from her last chance at happiness. He's choosing not to walk after her.

Not that she's surprised.

She wouldn't walk after her, either.

She cannot face going home—she doesn't have a home, family, love, a place to feel safe and protected, she shouldn't, can't, never will.

So she lets herself into her office with the heavy brass key that still has an apple etched into its surface. The Evil Queen of Henry's storybook and her memorable detail. She scoffs, jams it into the lock. What a joke all of that is.

But when she does open the door, when she pushes it shut behind her, for apathy has set in like a spell over her pain, protecting her the tiniest bit from the urge to throw the door shut, to blast the room to pieces, that is when she remembers.

They cleared their picnic away a few hours ago, as he zipped her dress and combed her hair with gentle fingers and kissed the back of her neck, and—she halts that memory in its tracks before it breaks her.

They cleared the picnic away, but she doesn't need it to remember it all, smiling at each other over wine glasses and Robin sitting up on his knees and then crawling over her for kiss, after kiss, after kiss; the feel of the plush rug beneath her and his calloused hands on her skin—she cannot bear it.

With a wave of her hand, the rug's gone, and she's on the verge of doing the same to the couch, but that feels like admitting something is wrong, like admitting she cannot face it.

And yet she cannot look at the fireplace the sparked and cracked like her heart this afternoon, with warmth and life, and so she finds her solution, flicks her hand carelessly at the sofa, and when she blinks it has turned around and now blocks the fireplace and covers the rug.

She sinks onto it, the sofa they abandoned yesterday in favor of the rug because it felt too formal, and as she curls up in her heels and tights and dress, legs tucked into her chest, eyes blank and staring, she cannot help but imagine that his scent clings to the fabric. Or perhaps it clings to her.

Perhaps, worst of all, it is in her imagination, there only to haunt her, forever.

Her Face

Robin tries to remember that once he would have gone to hell and back to get his Marian back. And now he can't get Regina's heartbroken face out of his head. thank youuuu xxx

Robin hurries out of her office, carefully avoids glancing at the fireplace where they made love not twenty-four hours ago. He's gone a few hundred yards, hopefully, thankfully out of earshot (or maybe not, and then perhaps she'll follow him, stop him, argue, though he knows, he knows she won't) before a dry, heavy sob cracks through his lips. He presses a fist over his mouth, tries to keep it in, though his shoulders shake, and his steps become more stumbling, less assured. Another cry breaks through.

He keeps walking, tries to remember what he told her yesterday, that he once would have gone to hell and back to be with his Marian, but then he thinks of Regina's tearful little smile, I just never thought I'd have this, of the pure joy in her face just now that crumbled into agony, and nothing,nothing will get his love's heartbroken face out of his head.

Outsider

fbdarkangel prompt: Outsider

This kind of love has not been hers for so long. In fact, it's never really been hers, not once—she and Daniel had been children, had been hiding, had never gotten farther than breathless kisses stolen in the dark corners of the stables, and no man after him had ever cared—

But now one does, and he's swirling his tongue against the skin of her neck, pushing aside her half-unzipped dress to reach her collarbone, the swell of her breasts as her fingers twist in his hair.

She would almost feel guilty for letting her mind wander, for relaxing and reveling and not giving back as good as she's getting, but with his thigh wedged between her legs, his hands deliciously calloused and warm as they pull down the top of her dress and trail over heated skin, his breath quick in her ear, his length pressing against her hip, she thinks he must not mind.

And this kind of love—the kind where he finds it pleasurable to bring her pleasure, where his hands curl into her with her every gasp, where he sighs her name into her ear like a benediction—she doesn't feel like such an outsider from that anymore.

Evil Queen Outfit

OQ prompt...evil queen outfit?

We're going to call this "fluff that devolves into mild smut". Happy miserable finale tonight, guys. Hope this cheers you up a little as you wait.

"How did you think it worked?" Regina asks, amused, her voice low and quiet, the only sound in their dimly lit bedroom save for Robin's slow breaths behind her and the rustle as he exchanges his suit for a cotton T-shirt and drawstring pants.

"Magic?" he teases.

Regina smirks as she drops another hairpin onto her vanity and tilts her head to reach the next. "You think I wasted magic in the Enchanted Forest on my hair?"

Robin sinks onto a stool beside her. "The thought had crossed my mind. From the looks of it, it would've been magic well used to get your hair free of all of those binds at the end of the day."

Words of protest die on Regina's lips as a pin tangles in one of the twists and pricks painfully at her scalp. "All right, then," she sighs, dropping her hands away.

"Hmm?"

But when she looks he is grinning that toothy grin, scooting closer, his fingers working to comb and smooth the freed piece of hair, guiding her neck to tilt away from him so that he has better access. He tugs another clasp free. A twisted curl of hair tumbles to her shoulder, and he winds his fingers back around it to leave it mostly straight again. He wouldn't dare take over for her without her permission, but now that he has it, she gives in freely, sighs as he combs and weaves his fingers through the knots at the base of her neck.

"Were you spending a lot of time staring at my hair?"

He hums as his fingers knead against her nape, easing her strained muscles after a long evening with her hair piled on top of her head. "I might have been," he concedes, unweaving the final bit of braid at the top of her head.

"I seem to remember you staring at…other things."

"Only because you started dragging me into empty stock rooms and kissing me senseless." (And if he sounds frustrated by the memories, she knows it's frustration of the kind that had him flexing his fingers this entire evening, at the anniversary ball Snow had deemed it entirelynecessary to hold, to keep himself from mussing her hair.)

She can't really argue with that.

She shivers as his breath whispers across her skin. "Why do you like doing this so much?"

He drops a kiss to the side of her neck, takes the brush she holds out over her shoulder and starts to run it through her dark, silky hair, slow, meticulous strokes from her scalp to the ends he holds in his palm, careful not to pull at knots. "Well, for starters, I think it's fairly obvious to just about anyone that I like your hair."

"Robin," she laughs lightly, turning her attention to piling hairpins back into their case.

"I like being the person who sees you like this. I'm proud and flattered and delighted and about a hundred other things to be the person you let in behind all the braids and hairpins and feathers and corsets. Well," he admits, the brush stilling as he sweeps her hair behind her shoulders, "I liked the corsets. But I think I would've liked taking them off more."

"I'm sure you would have."

"I didn't mean—"

She smirks at him in the mirror, her brow raised, and then she's abandoning her chair to straddle him in his, hands splayed on his neck as she tilts his head for a kiss.

"I haven't finished brushing your hair," he protests against her lips, even as one of his hands skims up her belly and ribs under her robe, moves to cup her breast.

Her lips find his Adam's apple, and sure enough, she feels a heavy swallow beneath her lips, a gasp in her ear as she presses her hips into his, her nails dragging up his chest, "I'm quite certain that my hair will need further brushing later. And," she continues, grinding her hips again, smirking at his weighted exhale in her ear even as she shivers with the pleasure that ripples up her spine, the friction of him against her with only his cotton pants between them and the way his thumb is teasing at her nipple combined into delicious little shocks, "If you're lucky, I might just let you help."

Too Late

OQ prompt: Robin realizes he chose wrong but its too late

Angsty as fuck. Sorry.

They're all on the ground, unconscious as the snow monster raises his foot to crush them.

And that is when Robin's eyes flicker open to see Regina, a fireball burning in her hand. He blinks to clear away his blurry vision, and as he does he sees the fireball fly through the air and onto the creature's shoulder, its arm falling to the ground with a thud and disintegrating.

Robin scrambles back on the ground to reach for his bow, glancing around at his companions, all of them still unaware.

Regina must never see it coming, the stomping foot that somehow makes its wait over her head. Falls. Presses her into the ground.

"No!" Robin screams, and the tears come quickly, though he is numb to them, and he scrambles towards her, tries to find his feet, stumbles.

One of her arms raises limply, throws another fireball at the creature, and it collapses into a small pile of snow, but when he reaches her, she is gasping, ribs cracked, blood staining her gray dress and pale skin.

"No, Regina, please." He kneels beside her, catches her hand, grips it like an anchor, turns and yells, help, help us, help me, but none of the others wake.

"Robin?" she croaks. He turns back to her, her hazy eyes and stuttering breaths and pale, pale cheeks and lips.

"I'm here." He presses her hand to his chest with both of his. "Don't you dare leave me."

"'m cold," she murmurs, "tired."

"No no no, come on, Regina, you're strong, you can fight this."

"Why?" she gasps, coughing weakly, and her breaths are shallow, wheezing things, and her word breaks him.

"You want to see Henry again, don't you? He loves you." Robin swallows, leans forward, cradles her jaw, stains his hands red with her blood from the gash there. "Ilove you."

Her eyelids blink open again at that, just for a moment, and there's a softness, a gentleness there that leaves him more in love with her than ever.

Her eyes fall shut again. And when he frantically moves his hand over her ribs, they have stilled.

"No," he sobs, his hands shaking as he cradles her face, tries to get her to move again, to stop this, open her eyes. He falls forward, his forehead pressed into hers, kisses her cooling lips. Nothing happens. "I love you," he gasps again, the tears trapped before they fall. He is growing too numb to cry, shaking, and he says it over and over again until it is just a collection of sounds, "I love you, I love you."

But it is too late for that.

She is gone.

Disappointment

oceanssapart prompt: do you need more? i love reading your writing so if you need me to feed you prompts i pretty much will haha! what abouuut oq + disappointment

Regina so little expects Robin to pay her any mind after what happened at the diner that she wouldn't allow herself to call it disappointment that nestles into her stomach and grips at her heart that first night. Why should he come and see her?

But a night and day pass, and he does; he knocks on her door and smiles sadly at her, tells her he knows what she's been fearing, promises it isn't true; he's always seen the truth of her beneath the harsher things she thinks of herself.

That is when disappointment sets in, anger, frustration, terror, this pervasive sense of entrapment, because if his feelings haven't changed, if his love is true and true love is the strongest magic of all, if it can break any curse, then why has it cursed them to love each other and be apart? And she thinks of Daniel's still-warm lips, of kissing them over and over and failing to bring him back to life, and wonders if maybe those who have cast a curse out of vengeance lose the right to break their own.

Snowstorm

Regina babysitting Roland

The Snow Queen's storm strikes at sunset, fierce and unexpected; two feet of snow fall in an hour, icicles crusting over glass, the sky darkening and completely overcast, taking everyone by surprise. Regina calls the Charmings to make certain that Henry is inside and cared for, speaks to him for a moment, and as she puts the phone in its cradle she hears rapid but quiet raps against the door. When she opens the door, she has to look down to find Roland, shivering and snow-covered, tear tracks on his face.

"Regina!" he gasps when he sees her, grabbing her around the legs, making her shiver as the snow melts onto her tights and skirt and clumps of ice begin to stick and trail down her legs.

"Roland?" she hugs him to her, barely notices her own shivers at the cold air against her wet skin, quickly brushes as much of the snow from the boy as she can, and lifts him into her arms, throwing the door shut behind her.

His teeth chatter into her ear and his fingers feel icy on her shoulders. She walks him to the living room and throws a ball of fire into the fireplace, has it roaring in seconds, tugs a blanket off the couch expertly with one hand and sits with him beside the fire, helping him tug off his soaked-through coat and boots. "Roland, sweetheart, what happened?" she asks, wrapping the blanket around and around his body and setting him right next to the red and orange flames. He has no signs of serious illness; he's all right, has already begun to warm to a more normal temperature, but he looks so frightened, and she cannot blame him, for he must have been trekking through the snow by himself for some time now.

"I was hav-having an adventure," he explains, scooting forward on the carpet so that his knees knock into hers, "but I lost Daddy, and then I saw this house and I remembered that Da-Daddy said you would always help me," he has been calm, but he grows hysterical at his story, scared again, and Regina sits up on her knees, drawing him into her lap.

"Your Daddy is right, and you were a very smart boy, to come here." He sighs and snuggles into her, his body gratifyingly warmer. Robin she thinks, who will be panicking at the loss of his son, who has probably spent the last twenty minutes trecking frantically through snow that is heavy enough to cover any tracks in minutes.

"I'm going to call your Daddy and tell him you're safe, okay?"

—

Robin picks up on the first ring. "Please tell me you—"

"He's here. A little wet, but completely unharmed. We're sitting by the fire, and I'm going to go make him some hot cocoa in a minute."

She hears through the static a relieved huff of breath. "Oh, thank God."

She swallows heavily. "Would you like to come get him?"

"I'll be there after the storm passes. I've just ducked into Granny's."

"Are you certain you don't want to—"

"You'll take perfectly good care of him, and now that I know he's safe, there's no reason to venture out in this." She doesn't ask what Marian has said to this plan. Isn't sure she'd want to know.

—

Robin comes late that evening when the snow finally subsides. Roland is asleep on the couch next to the fire in some of Henry's old clothes. Regina's never thrown out a stitch of them.

Roland almost seems to have a sixth sense for it, because he wakes the minute he hears Robin's voice in the house. "Daddy?" he asks.

Robin strides the rest of the way to the couch and squats next to his son. "Hello, my boy."

Roland throws his arms around Robin's neck with a giggle. "Daddy!"

Robin picks him up and rests him on his hip.

Regina watches them from the end of the room. "Take the clothes please," she offers.

"Are you certain?"

Regina looks again at Roland's clothes, remembers Henry making snow angels and sledding in their backyard in that little blue coat, remembers hanging it to dry in front of this fireplace after many other blizzards. But Roland needs the coat more than she needs the memories. "Yes, I'm certain."

She steps forward, kisses Roland's forehead.

Robin catches her hand on the way out, squeezes it. "Thank you," he breathes.

She almost wants to bristle; it was nothing, but the sincerity in his eyes makes it so easy to answer, "Of course." How she wishes it didn't. Hating him would be so much easier than this. Anything would be easier than this.

Once the door closes behind them, she cradles her hand against her stomach, stares blankly ahead for several minutes, tries to find anything else within her, but all she feels is hurt, and sad, and alone.

Story

littlevoiceswhispering prompt: Oh yay! Thanks :D So my prompt is this: "Regina has become quite skilled at predicting which one of them Roland will ask to read him his bedtime story." Whether it's EF or Storybrooke can be your choice.

This is my celebration of reaching 500 followers littlevoiceswhispering was the 500th and won a prompt.

Regina has become quite skilled at predicting which one of them Roland will ask to read him his bedtime story.

A few weeks after her arrival, the Snow Queen manages an attack of ice shards that lands Robin in the hospital, drugged up and bandaged around his abdomen.

As Regina leaves her hallway meet-up with the Charmings to decide how best to proceed, she sees Marian waiting in one of the plastic hospital chairs. She hasn't seen him yet, but she's been told that Robin has not yet regained consciousness, and it seems Roland has not gone a day that he remembers without a goodnight from Daddy. He is crying on his mother's lap, struggling, squirming, fighting her attempts at comfort.

"Regina!" the boy cries when he sees her.

Marian looks up.

Regina swallows, and approaches slowly, carefully, kneels in front of him with another glance at Marian that she hopes reads as a promise of safety.

"Your papa is going to be okay, Sweetheart," she says, raising a tentative hand to just above his knee, ignoring the way Marian's arms tighten around Roland and she backs a little into her chair. Roland comes before this woman's fear and distaste and hatred, however well deserved.

"Will you read me a story?" Roland begs.

"I—"

Marian nods once, barely a movement.

"All right," Regina agrees.

She sits in the chair next to Marian, makes a book appear—one of Henry's old favorites from this age, a Magic Tree House. As she opens to the first page and begins to read, she expects the boy to snuggle into Marian, but when she's halfway through the second page, he crawls over the thin plastic arms of their chairs and settles onto her lap. His weight is so comforting—nothing quite like the trust of a small child, nothing quite like its closeness and comfort. Marian tenses, but she lets him stay.

And that is how their little tradition starts. On comfortable, normal days, he wants Daddy to read him a story and kiss him goodnight.

But on stressful days, after scary days, after nightmares—he comes into their room, bypasses Robin, climbs straight into Regina's arms, and asks her to read him a story.

Wildflowers

Robin picking wildflowers for Regina, please :)

Regina offends him horridly when he offers her a bundle of wildflowers, and she bestows her thanks and her kiss upon his son. (Not really—he catches the way her teeth dig into her bottom lip, her tongue peeking out of the side of her mouth, a hint of what must be a wink, teasing.)

"Daddy said the flowers reminded him of you," Roland tells her, bouncing forward on the balls of his feet.

Her gaze shifts to Robin for a moment. "Did he now?"

"Mhm," Robin agrees, biting his lip as he smiles at Roland.

"And why is that?"

Roland cranes his neck up to hear Robin's answer as well, and Regina's challenging smirk softens as Robin's hands settle gentle at her waist. "They manage to find a way to live and flourish no matter what."

Regina opens her mouth to tease him for such saccharine words in the hopes of joining Roland in her good graces, but the absolute earnestness of his gaze, the way his thumbs are drawing slow circles into her hipbones over her dress, gives her pause. She darts forward to kiss the corner of his mouth.

And that grin of his, when she pulls back—damn it, he knows he's won, but she finds she cannot bring herself to mind.

Are you trying to flirt with me?

actorsdream prompt: Drabble prompt: OQ "Are you trying to flirt with me?"

"You should let him talk to you, Regina."

"Did your wife send you to say that to me, Charming?" He ignores the facade of derision in her tone, smiles gently, easily at her.

"Nope."

"Did he?"

"Regina, why is it that you always suspect some sort of conspiracy, rather than genuine concern for you?"

She barks out a harsh, dismissive laugh, doesn't answer.

"He's made a mistake, but he only wanted to—"

"A mistake? A lucky escape, I think, is what you meant."

"Regina—"

"What?" she snaps.

"You are a…complicated woman."

He watches as her eyebrow arches and she retreats into a quip that's meant to misdirect the conversation. "David, are you trying to flirt with me?"

He pointedly ignores her interruption, quells her protestation with a half-hearted glare. "Regina, you are a complicated woman, but that doesn't mean you should be keeping yourself from being happy."

She scoffs. "Yes, and Robin's entirely free of blame. He's the one who walked away."

He takes a step towards her. "No, he's not, Regina, and he knows it. Just like I did when I didn't trust Snow."

"Because of my curse," she reminds him. "Maybe we should all decide that I'm going to be the villain of this town, and move on."

"Is that really why you refuse to hear him out?" He picks up one of her hands and holds it between his. "Because I think you know you're not a villain anymore."

"Yes, and look where that's gotten me." She rips her hand out of his. "Not all of usalways find each other and have happy endings."

He studies her as she stands there, waiting, perhaps, for him to grow angry, deciding whether she'd rather cry with somebody around to hold her hand or punch him for pushing.

"You love him?"

"Yes."

"And he loves you?"

"Yes," she growls.

"Then I think you owe it a chance."

"I don't owe that thief anything."

He shakes his head, clasps her hand briefly. "Not for him. For yourself."

David leaves her with a palm pressed to her belly, her jaw locked and brow knitted, wishing the woman who has become part of his family, who he's grown to trust, would learn to trust herself.