"Where have you been?"
The Mayor glares at her son as he wanders merrily through the front door. He rolls his eyes at her in a way that's infuriatingly familiar and she places her hands on her hips irritably. The dinner she has prepared has only been sitting on the table for a couple of minutes, but her son's tardiness is still entirely unacceptable, and not at all like him.
"Take your shoes off, you're tracking mud. What have you been doing anyway? You're filthy!"
"Emma rigged a tyre swing up in the woods because the castle got busted in the storm. It was sick!"
Busted? Sick? Really?
Despite her bemusement over the questionable vocabulary being taught to her son, she's actually a little surprised that he's seemingly spent the day in the company of the Sheriff. She herself has only caught glimpses of the younger woman this past week, finding the days to drag on so much longer without the irksome blonde barging in every ten minutes to rile her up.
In fact, if she were to spare the situation some thought, she would say the Sheriff has been avoiding her.
And she has been driving herself a little mad admittedly, waiting warily for Emma to serve up whatever twisted comeback her queer mind conjures, but as the days have passed uneventfully by, she wonders if perhaps Emma's ignoring her is not a form of punishment in itself.
She hates to admit it, but if this is the case, it is having the presumably desired effect of pissing her off.
"Doesn't the Sheriff have better things to do than frolic about in the woods all day?"
"Uh, it's Saturday."
Henry replies in his best 'um, duh!' voice, causing her to purse her lips in disapproval.
"And anyway, Emma got her paperwork done early because Ruby came over to help her with her filing yesterday."
"... Ruby?"
Well, that's new...
"Yeah, she's been helping her most of the week."
"Is that so?"
Regina frowns as she goes about plating up the lasagna that sits steaming on the dining room table. She hadn't been aware that the blonde and the waitress were anything more than polite acquaintances; not imagining the two to have a great deal in common. She would have thought Ruby's chirpy, flirtatious extroversion would be something the Sheriff might find grating rather than endearing.
Not that she has any interest in the company Emma chooses to keep.
Of course not.
"Yesterday I was dirty, wanted to be pretty, tomorrow, I know, I'm still dirt..."
Emma sings along absentmindedly to the music blaring loudly from the battered CD player on her nightstand. It's an old model, capable of running off both electricity and battery power, but the cable has long since become unusable. She has found that since moving into Mary Margaret's, the batteries she feeds the player seem to have a mysteriously short shelf-life; often coming home to find them dead, or - twice now - simply missing.
Apparently, Mary Margaret isn't a fan of Marilyn Manson... Who'd have thought?
She sits slouched against the iron headboard of her bed, a bowl of microwave popcorn resting in her lap, and she breaks up her half-assed singing with oddly timed pauses to catch the kernels she tosses up into the air in her mouth.
She still wears her jeans from earlier and the knees are soiled with dirt. She suspects Regina will have given Henry a hard time about the similar state of his clothes and feels a small pang of guilt. She doubts the brunette herself has ever sustained so much as a grass-stain in her entire miserable life.
Ah fuck... Back to Regina again.
She sighs irritably, scolding her mind for wandering so carelessly back to forbidden territory. In response, her memory flashes treacherously with the image of the Mayor lying spread out, gloriously naked, on her own goddamned desk.
"Shit."
The onslaught of erotic images is nothing new; this past week has left her permanently exhausted as she has struggled to catalogue and tame her emotions in regard to the darker woman. She is lost. They have started this sordidly twisted game and, technically, it's her turn to play a hand.
She just can't decide whether she wishes to take it.
At first, after being freed from her humiliating imprisonment by Ruby - an event which has led to a surprising camaraderie with the younger woman for which she is genuinely grateful - she'd been furious; deciding that if she were to see the Mayor again in hell it would be too soon. She had spent that first evening tossing and turning in her narrow, creaky bed; furiously cursing the impossible brunette under her breath.
Since then, she has calmed down, and while still angry at being treated like a mere plaything, she finds herself more and more frequently thinking longingly of flawless skin and dark, glittering eyes.
It's her turn to play a hand, but she has come to one, disillusioning realisation.
She can't win this.
There's a line; invisible, but it's there. The Mayor's little stunt at the station had toed it dangerously, but Emma has since come to the conclusion that the brunette had stopped just short of crossing it. And, of course, she herself is to blame for that, because she had allowed herself to be used in such a way. True, she had struggled and even begged the darker woman not to continue with her intense ministrations. Still, she knows that if she had really, truly needed Regina to stop - if she'd poured the effort being spent on useless yelping and bucking into forming a concise sentence that served to let the brunette know she didn't wish to continue; that the Mayor was actually hurting her in any way - the game would have come to a halt. She'd allowed herself to be treated in such a way, and so the Mayor had continued to play her winning hand.
But if those roles were to be reversed...
She knows that she, too, had been skating on wafer-thin ice with her use of the letter opener, but she had taken care to keep to the rules. The brunette had been clear that she didn't wish to be visibly marked or come to any harm, and she had been meticulous to follow that request, however loosely.
She doesn't see how she can beat that experience.
Unlike herself, Regina won't readily permit pleasure to cross over to pain.
Unlike herself, Regina will opt out before things threaten to soil her reputation.
To threaten her dignity.
She wants to believe that she's simply kinkier than the brunette - more daring - but she knows deep down the way the decks are currently stacked and that the playing field is uneven. The Mayor may degrade her however she sees fit because she's messed up somewhere along the line and has presented herself as nothing more than a piece of cheap entertainment. She can't beat Regina, because the brunette refuses her not just dominance, but respect.
And isn't that what she's really pissed off about?
It's her turn to play, but at some point during this horrendously shitty week, she has come to the conclusion that she doesn't want to further her apparently futile attempt to demean the Mayor.
She has been trying to think of a way to shock the darker woman the way she believes the brunette deserves to be shocked and has come up empty. All thoughts being too ludicrous; too dangerous; too painful.
Too risky of being turned down.
Turned away.
No. She wishes to shock the darker woman, but she will have to do so by altering the rules of their heated little battle of oneupmanship. Rather than a half-assed attempt to degrade the Mayor while delicately toeing that damned invisible line, she decides - after thoughtful consideration - that she will instead endeavour to even the playing field. To force the Mayor to admit that she's not merely some plaything to be messed with when bored and then left to lick mournfully at the deep wounds sustained to her ego.
Not that the playing field was ever even to begin with.
The Sheriff's lips - slightly shiny from the buttery popcorn - form a slow smile as she ruminates over this thought. No. So far as Regina is concerned, there was never any competition. She finds the blonde cheap, tacky, disposable as Sheriff, and ultimately useless as a human being. Eyes flickering over to the mirror that hangs a little crookedly - brilliant, talk about irony when trying to disprove a point! - on the adjacent wall, Emma studies her reflection.
Messy hair. Dirty clothes. Junk food. Singing too loud. A rogue popcorn kernel balancing precariously on a crease of her shirt.
If she can't beat the Mayor with kink-fueled antics, there is, perhaps, another way. Admittedly, the thought of stringing the brunette up and slicing her own name into the delicate flesh of the darker woman's perfectly globed ass cheek is highly arousing... But proving the Mayor wrong... Well, that seems as though it would be the ultimate prize.
"Henry... You there, kid?"
Henry rolls over onto his stomach to fetch the walkie from the opposite end of the bed, careful not to crush the comic in his hand.
"Emma?"
There's a brief pause while on the other end of the crackly line the blonde winces guiltily when faced with her son's unabashed delight at having her call him, before she pulls herself together and promises herself she will simply buy him an extra-large ice cream the next time they hang out.
"Hey, kid... I need some, um, information..."
"What is it?"
Henry's eyes light up at the fact that the Sheriff is relying on him for whatever intel she requires, and he quickly rephrases his question to let her know that he is completely efficient.
"What can I help you with, Emma?"
She smirks fondly at the strangely pompous quality of the kid's voice and plays along.
"I need to know what your mom has planned for tomorrow night."
"Um... Nothing, I don't think... Why?"
"It's uh-"
She's about to tell him that her question is relevant to Operation Cobra, but finds she can't bring herself to lie to him like that, so she simply clears her throat and appeals for his silence.
"It's just something I need to know for this thing I have planned... Sheriff stuff..."
"Oh... Ok?"
"Henry, I need you to make sure she stays home tomorrow night, and that the spare keys are under the mat... I need to talk to her about something, but she can't know I was asking, ok? Can you do that? Can you keep it a secret?"
"Of course. You can count on me!"
"I know. I always can."
Henry grins and on the other end of the line, the Sheriff smiles fondly, despite feeling more than a little guilty for getting the kid caught up in her game.
"Oh crap, I better go, Emma. I can hear my mom coming up the stairs."
"Ok, night... And, Henry?... Umm... Sleep well, yeah?"
She cringes, feeling hellishly awkward and deciding she possesses not one ounce of motherliness in her entire being. Henry's smile widens, however, and he beams at the walkie in his small hand.
"You too, Emma, sleep well!"
She grins sheepishly and depresses the communication button, placing the walkie carefully next to her pillow. She replays her son's words over again in her head and smiles when she imagines that tonight, finally, she will indeed sleep well.
Very well.