A/N- Another long one for you! So this whole chapter was inspired by some great reviews I got with questions in them. I did some rereading and realized there's some plot holes in this story big enough to drive a truck through… So here's to making those holes a little smaller ;).
Flashbacks are in italics!
Kathryn was only about a week into her first semester as a senior, and already Regina's political science seminar was proving to be the death of her. She truly enjoyed the class, but it was so much work, and it covered everything she had ever learned in her past Poly Sci classes.
She wasn't the only one on high alert as the first semester wore on. Though neither one said anything explicitly to her, Kathryn could sense that something was off with the Swan- Mills women. It was something in the way that the whole house seemed subdued in the mornings, something in the lack of corny jokes that Emma normally told, even Henry seemed to be quieter (though that wasn't really saying much considering how loud the seven year old was).
It wasn't until she walked in on Emma pacing up and down the living room one morning, running late for her first lecture, clutching crumpled papers that Kathryn found out the reason Emma hadn't gotten her tenure yet was because her latest novel was 'too risque' and the university wanted to make sure she wasn't making waves. She had to publish again (in a more 'appropriate genre') before they would consider pushing her tenure through.
Regina was fighting her own fires with the seminar she was teaching. This day, they were beginning class with a case study on famous displays of civil disobedience. Doctor Mills was whipping through a power point at breakneck speed when a member of the board of the university came in and took a seat in the back of the small lecture hall. The class was only for majors, and so there were only twelve seniors in it. Kathryn knew that it was normal for board members to sit in and audit classes, but she had never heard of anyone having the audacity to sit in on one of Regina's lectures, let alone her senior seminar.
Regina just ignored the man, though Kathryn (from her countless hours of observation) could see the professor's shoulders tense marginally.
Doctor Mills flicked to the next slide and the class continued on. The blonde lost herself in the lecture until Regina stopped on one of her final slides, the scene caught Kathryn by surprise because of its familiarity. The protesters were wearing the same shirts that she saw in the photo on the wall of the Swan- Mills' home, the DC monument glowed brightly in the background, but it seemed to be just off to the side of the photo that Kathryn was used to seeing.
She could identify the knee she knew belonged to Regina just half cut off, and some of Emma's blonde hair had barely made it into the photo displayed on the screen, but it was unmistakably from the rally Regina had dragged Emma to all those years ago.
"Can anyone tell me what mistake was made by the protestors in this photo?" Doctor Mills asked over her reading glasses.
Kathryn had absolutely no clue, but she was on the edge of her seat to hear more about Regina's murky past.
"Traffic violation." A brave voice called from the back row. It was Brian, a kind blonde boy that Kathryn was used to seeing over the past for years.
"Exactly. The protesters obstructed traffic and upwards of a hundred of them were arrested for being a disturbance."
Regina was about to click to the next slide when a voice from the front row stopped her, "Weren't you at that protest, Doctor MIlls?"
The professor's eyes widened marginally as she regarded the girl who had asked. Kathryn identified her as Astrid, a kiss ass with whom Kathryn had butted heads with multiple times. As much as the blonde disliked Astrid, the girl had a point, there was a rumor floating around the upper echelons of the Political Science department that Regina was quite the activist in her day. Most of what Kathryn heard, though, was too general, not any specific protest or cause.
Regina smiled, but it was her deadly sort of one with her eyes as cold as ice. She knew she had two options, confront the rumor she had heard head on, or lie and hope it went away. Regina didn't do anything the easy way, so she took a sweeping glance of the room, including the board member, before answering, "Yes, that is correct. I was the president of the student body when I attended this university. As such, I showed my support for various student organizations and attended many rallies, that was just what you did back then."
The professor had a faint soft smile as she recalled the times that were 'back then'.
"So were you arrested?" David ventured to ask.
"Yes, I spent the night in an overcrowded holding cell with many of the other attendees of the rally."
Regina removed her reading glasses entirely. There were only five minutes left in this class, she could spare them in the interest of humoring her students. She had given them a lot of reading over the past weekend, and they deserved a little reward.
Kathryn sensed this slight weakening of the barrier, and decided to go for it, "Just how many times were you arrested, Doctor Mills?"
She asked it with a slight smirk that she was doing her very best to conceal. To her relief, Regina answered with a smirk of her own.
"I've been arrested ten times, no actual charges were ever filed." The students all twittered in excitement, and Regina allowed them to ask questions until the clock struck eleven thirty and she ended the class.
Kathryn packed her things, walking out with David in the back of the pack. She thanked Doctor Mills for the lecture, and watched surreptitiously as the man on the board of the university got up from the seat he had been occupying and approached Regina. Kathryn watched the brunette's expression morph from relaxed openness to an immediate defensive posture.
"Kathryn!" A kind voice echoed across the mostly empty library cafe. It was just past noon and most students had given up studying for at least a lunch break, but not Kathryn. She was trying to work through the complex text she had been assigned for her advanced criticism class, but it wasn't going well.
"Professor Swan." The babysitter replied with a smile, "How are you, today?"
"Great, and you?"
"Hanging in there." Kathryn gestured to the book she had been wading through.
"You look like you could do with a break."
"You read my mind."
Five minutes later and they were treading the mainly empty path around the lake. Emma visibly relaxed when they walked far enough to be away from prying eyes.
Kathryn wondered what Emma wanted to talk about, but was confident she would find out soon enough. Emma never was good at withholding.
"How's Gina's seminar going?"
"Great." Kathryn remembered back to the lecture that morning and the man auditing the class, "Horrible, but great."
"Sounds about right." Emma chuckled.
They walked in silence for a bit longer, Emma rolling a tennis ball around in her palms. Kathryn recognized it as the tennis ball that Henry had spent hours the day before throwing against the garage door while the babysitter did her advanced calculus homework on the front porch.
"So I heard there was a visitor in class this morning?" Emma phrased it as a question, though Kathryn could sense that she already knew the answer.
"Yeah, some official university guy."
"I think they're onto us."
From that remark, along with the paranoid look on Emma's face, and Kathryn couldn't hold back a short bark of laughter. The literature professor raised an eyebrow, and Kathryn had to explain herself, "Sorry, you just sounded like an undercover agent in a black and white cop thriller."
Emma finally cracked a smile, "Yeah, I guess you're right."
Kathryn nodded a greeting to a freshman she recognized who was just passing them, jogging around the lake, "No offense or anything, but how did you keep your relationship quiet for so long anyway?"
"When we first started dating, we were so young and stupid, it didn't matter. Then everything just snowballed. It wasn't easy, still isn't." Emma got this faraway look as she recalled those early days of their relationship.
Regina knocked on the door of the dorm room, shooting a dirty look at the freshman loitering at the bulletin board a few feet away. She shifted from foot to foot, waiting for the door to open. And when it did, she hardly gave time for a greeting before barging in.
Emma smiled and pulled the door shut behind her girlfriend, "Were you scaring my freshmen again?"
"No."
"Liar." Emma smirked. She followed to where Regina had already sat herself down on Emma's bed, "You know you make me a bad example when you just come around here sniffing for sex." She teased.
Regina faked an offended expression, "I don't sniff for anything."
"Yeah right."
"I knew I shouldn't have dated an undergrad." Regina said, already pushing Emma down and crawling up her to steal a kiss, "So immature."
"I'm not immature, I'm an RA! You do realize you're only three years older than me, right?"
"It's an important three years. Now shut up, and kiss me already."
Emma rolled her eyes, but complied. She didn't miss the sideways glances she got at the next floor meeting when she told her freshmen that there were more important things to be doing at college than drinking and screwing, but she couldn't find it in herself to care, because she was already hopelessly in love.
"We were just stupid kids then. We had no idea what we were getting in to." Emma laughed, it was the soft, slow kind that Kathryn had learned to associate with the blonde talking about her wife, "Not that it changed anything when we actually knew what we were doing."
"Oh my god, these freshmen are killing me." Regina complained. She threw the paper down on her desk in front of her and dropped her head into her hands, "Why did I agree to take this position?"
Emma smiled from her position on the couch, "Because it's the top undergraduate program for political science in the country and because they were practically begging you to join them, and because you have a five year plan to take over the department and never have to teach a freshman seminar again." She rattled off the list that Regina had given her two years ago when she had accepted the position at their alma mater.
"Right." The brunette sighed and dropped her pen onto the discarded essay, "How's the next great american novel going?"
Emma looked down to the macbook in her lap, before giving up, shutting the top, and placing it on the coffee table. She slumped down further on the couch, barely remaining upright. When they had bought the brownstone, Regina had offered to convert the guest room into an office for Emma, or at least make room for two desks in the office, but Emma always prefered to work from the couch instead.
"It's certainly going."
Upon graduation, Emma soon realized that a degree in creative literature was not the best path to a lucrative career, but she managed to publish a few children's books and was now working on her very own poetry collection.
It was a slow process, but she was doing what she loved, and she couldn't ask for more than that.
"It took a while, but when I finally got it published, it was like the damn broke."
Kathryn knew the book. It came out when she was still in highschool and her literature teachers are it up. She recalled the young woman's sudden rise to the spotlight as she was lauded one of the top writers to watch.
"Offers were pouring in from everywhere for me to teach, Stanford, Harvard, hell, even some universities in England."
"So why chose here?"
"Same reason everyone else does." Emma smiled sadly, "It's the top university in the country, and Regina was here. She was settled, we had gotten married a few of years prior and she was really making a name for herself. I couldn't just up and leave."
The professor bounced and caught her tennis ball with easy athleticism that made Kathryn jealous, "A couple months later, and I was pregnant with Henry, teaching my first lecture series, and it all just fell into place."
"And Henry, how did you manage with him for so long?" Kathryn didn't know where this sudden confidence she was feeling came from, but it just felt right and natural to be able to talk this out with the older blonde.
Emma didn't seem to have any reservations either, "My friend from college, Ruby. She's one of the few people around here who knows, and she was a blessing when Henry was first born. She's just been amazing with everything really." Emma shook her head as though there was more that she wanted to add, but didn't yet, "I know the area may seem small when you're still a student, but with the city just a short bus ride away, there's never been an immediate threat of Gina and I being found out."
One question kept nagging in Kathryn's mind though, "So how have you gotten away with the whole 'husband' thing for seven years?"
"God, that was a disaster waiting to happen." The blonde bounced her tennis ball easily as she began to explain, "It all started my first day of teaching, that evening there was a party for all the staff to celebrate some of the science professors getting their research published in a quarterly review…"
"So that's Doctor Gerritsen and Doctor Norton, they did work together on thermal dynamics." Melanie explained, nodding at two older men in sports jackets who were talking with other similarly dressed men, "And over there is Doctor Rand, head of the mathematics department."
Emma took it all in, trying to commit to memory the names that her coworker was telling her, "There's so many professors here, how do you keep track?"
"Years of experience." The older redhead laughed. She had been working at the University nearly twelve years by then and taught most nonfiction writing courses.
Emma smiled and took a sip of her wine, surveying the room to try and catch a glimpse of her wife. They had taken separate cars, and she hadn't seen Regina since they left their home.
Finally, she spotted the brunette speaking closely with an attractive young man with dark, full hair, "Who's that man over there?" Emma asked with an edge in her voice. She knew it was ridiculous to be jealous of some man she didn't even know, but she couldn't help it.
Melanie mistook the edge for something else, "Good taste. That's Graham, he's part of the economics department. But don't get your hopes up, word on campus is that he and Regina have had a thing for ages."
"Regina?" Though she didn't mean for it to happen, the brunette's name came out as a hoarse whisper.
"You probably know her as Doctor Mills, she's the cold brunette that he's talking to. I wouldn't cross her if I were you. No matter how attractive he is."
"No!" Emma said, far too loudly for the quiet room that the staff was milling about in. All eyes turned on her and Melanie and Emma felt heat rise in her cheeks at the attention, "I just mean- I wasn't- I'm married."
"That's wonderful, dear. Tell me all about him."
Most people lost interest and returned to their own conversations, but Emma could feel the dark eyes of a certain brunette on her as she stumbled to cover her mistake, "Well, he's uhm, he's the smartest person I know. And he's guarded, but so very kind. I love him more than anything."
"He sounds lovely, why didn't you bring him tonight?"
"He's out of town. He uh travels a lot, for work."
"What does he do?"
Emma saw her wife smirk slightly, waiting to see how Emma would get her way out of the mess she had made, "He's an engineer."
"And he travels?"
"Yes, he's a military contractor so they send him all over." Emma smiled at her own random idea, "So it's always so hard to try and get him to things like this."
"Of course."
Later that evening, Regina was the first home and she was already changed and waiting in the study with a tumbler of cider by the time Emma pushed tiredly through the door. The blonde didn't bother in changing before following the light down the hall to the study and dropping hard on the couch.
"Fancy seeing you here." Regina teased, finishing her drink.
"Come're." The literature professor insisted, opening her arms and scooting against the back of the couch expectantly.
Unable to resist her wife looking so adorably exhausted, Regina complied, and they cuddled up together on the sofa.
"So I hear you're sleeping with Graham." Emma said, nuzzling her nose in the crook of her wife's neck.
"I hear you're married to an engineer who 'travels all the time'." Regina shot right back.
"Should I be jealous of your boy?"
"Only if I should be jealous of yours."
"Sounds good." Emma conceded, "I love you."
"I love you too, baby." Regina promised.
By this time, Emma and Kathryn had made a full circuit of the lake and were now back in front of the library where they had started.
"Well I guess I had better stop distracting you, and let you get back to the whole studying thing."
"Yeah, it's great stuff." Kathryn smirked.
"I'll see you later." Emma said, she bounced her tennis ball, nearly missing it as it shot back crooked off the gravel path.
A/N- Everyone get ready, I'm seeing like two more chapters so if there's any last minute things you want to see addressed, make sure to PM me or leave it in a review, and I'll do my best to get it in here! Thanks so much for the amazing reviews you've been leaving, keep those coming :).
Love, Ms. Informed.