A/N:Here's the thing, guys: If I don't feel like I can give you an update that amounts to anything, I just don't update. I have spent the last couple of weeks writing, watching my computer crash, rewriting, deciding it's not good enough, and starting again. That, along with other things, has kept me away, but I do truly hope you enjoy this chapter. I see the next chapter possibly being the end, so just a little heads up there.
All my love,
~R
Emma awoke to soft touches and morning sunlight. Her eyes fluttered open to see her gorgeous brunette girlfriend smiling back at her.
"I ordered some breakfast from room service," Regina said in a whisper, careful not to annoy the newly-awoken blonde with loud noises. "It's out on the table, if you'd like some."
The blonde leaned up to capture plump lips and wrapped her arms around the woman in front of her. She hummed in pleasure, but pulled back with a pout.
"And here I was, thinking that you would be my breakfast," she faux whined, a smile crossing her face as she leaned in for another kiss.
"I can't be your lunch, dinner, and breakfast, mi amor," Regina giggled as Emma kissed her way down the brunette's neck. "You'd get bored of me far too soon."
"Never," the blonde mumbled around the skin she was kissing. She reached her hands up and untied the knot of the fluffy white robe the tan-skinned beauty was wearing. "You're too perfect." Her thin lips traveled over newly revealed skin, drawing moans and shivers out of the brunette.
"Emma," it came out as a mix between a moan and a command, as tan hands came up to press against strong shoulders. "We really need to eat… and not that," a giggle escaped the brunette's lips as the blonde latched on to a sensitive spot behind her ear. She reached up once again to gently push the blonde away. "Emma, it's ten o'clock, we haven't had breakfast, we still have to pack up and drive home, and unfortunately, I have a stack of papers by a certain creative writing class that I have to grade before the weekend is over. Plus, you need to build up all the calories you worked off last night."
"Or..." the blonde suggested, "we can work off more calories with something a little more fun."
Regina shot the woman a glare she hadn't seen since the time she tried to kiss Regina in her office before they were dating. Emma pulled back and put her hands up in the air, feigning innocence.
"Fine, fine," the blonde laughed, reaching back to pull the brunette into a tight hug. "I'll have you know that that glare didn't turn me off all those weeks ago, and it still doesn't," she said, leaning in and giving the other woman a peck of the top of the head before standing up and making her way to the room service cart.
Regina jumped out of the bed and followed the blonde, questioning what she had just said. "What look, Miss Swan?"
"Miss Swan? Really, sweetheart?" Emma asked with a smile. "It's just like when we first started seeing each other. You give me the sass, the 'Miss Swan', and the 'I'm-going-to-kill-you-if-you-ever-come-onto-me-again' glare, but deep down, you secretly just want to jump my bones."
"I most certainly did not do any of that," Regina argued.
"Oh, you most certainly did, Professor Mills."
"Whatever," Regina conceded. "Maybe I just wanted you to stop staring at my breasts, or maybe I was trying to get you to actually learn a thing or two in my class."
"I learned a lot in your class," the blonde replied, loving the satisfied smile she received. "I learned that you like to have complete control of all situations, which is why you have an unreasonable amount of rules that you expect all students to remember- we don't, by the way. I learned that you have this incredibly sexy scar above your lip that just drives me wild. You run your tongue on it when you're deep in thought, by the way. I also learned that sometimes you wear really short skirts with no undies… but maybe that's only because I manage to remove them from your beautiful body before we have to leave for class in the morning."
Regina slapped the blonde's shoulder, scoffing at the woman's antics.
"Okay, okay," she admitted. "I have a lot of rules and short skirts and dirty looks, but the rest of what you said means nothing to me."
"Are you telling me you didn't even want to jump my bones a little bit?" Emma asked, putting her plate down to wrap her arms around her girlfriend. She looked down at the brunette with her most adorable puppy eyes and a huge pout on her lips.
"No." The response was abrupt and accentuated by an offended gasp. "Stick you lip in, mi amor. If you leave it out too long, a bird might come by and poop on it."
"What?!" the blonde broke out in loud, shocked laughter. "What did you just say?"
"What?" Regina questioned back. "It's something my mother used to say when I was a child. She says it to Henry as well."
"I love your family."
"You'd better. You're going to be a part of it for a very long time," Regina reached up and wrapped her arms around the blonde and pulled her into a kiss. "Now, my love, finish your breakfast and we can have some of that fun that you were talking about before we go home, don't you think?"
"Yes please!"
Regina sat in her home office, her glasses perched on her nose and a stack of papers cutting her view off from the rest of the room. Emma stepped inside the door and smiled at the sight, remembering a thousand more reasons that she loved the woman in front of her.
"Henry is bathed and getting ready for bed," Emma whispered across the room, hoping not to startle to busy woman. "I figured mommy would like to say goodnight before the little man lays down."
The brunette looked up with a smile, moving out of her seat and towards the door. "I'd love that, actually," she said as she slipped around the blonde. "I just graded your paper, too, if you'd like to see my comments. The rest of the class is getting theirs back tomorrow, so you could look at it then, too."
Regina placed a chaste kiss to the blonde's cheek and stepped out of the room to go tend to her son. When she returned back minutes later, she saw the blonde sitting in her chair, brow furrowed, reading glasses perched on her nose and squinting at the paper before her.
"I've never seen those spectacles before," Regina observed aloud. "When did you start wearing reading glasses."
"Once I was old enough to afford them on my own," the blonde mumbled absently as she furiously flipped the pages of her essay.
"You don't wear them often?" the statement was more of a question as Emma had lived with her almost half a semester and the brunette had never seen them.
"I don't like using them unless I absolutely have to," the blonde filled in the blanks for her lover.
"Is my handwriting that bad?" the brunette questioned with a frown. "I know I've worked on a lot of essays tonight and my hand was getting tired, but I didn't think it was too terrible to read."
"Your handwriting is fine, Reggie."
The brunette stepped forward, genuinely curious as to what Emma was looking so closely and flipping so furiously to find. After watching for several moments, the professor carefully pried the paper out of the blonde's hands and gently sat in her lap.
"What are you searching for, dear? Maybe I can help you find it," she offered gingerly.
"You want to know what I'm searching for?" Emma asked incredulously.
"Well, I must say you're making it hard not to wonder."
"I'll tell you what I'm looking for, but I don't want to upset you, alright?" the blonde said, setting her reading glasses on the desk in front of the couple and wrapping her arms around the brunette.
"So…?" Regina trailed off, hoping she wouldn't have to ask.
"I'm looking for the reason that you gave me a C," the blonde admitted. "I mean, I know I'm not super great at writing, but it was a fictional story of whatever we imagined, and I thought I did really well writing about what I did. I even double and triple checked it before I turned it in," Emma explained. "Hell, Regina, I even had your mother and Professor Hook read over it to make sure I had alright ideas and perfect grammar."
The brunette nodded her head along with Emma's words, her eyes widening with shock towards the end. "You went through that much trouble for one assignment?" she questioned, shocked.
"Duh!" the woman sitting beneath her almost shouted. "Your class is the most important to me, Regina. I want my assignments to be perfect for you so that it's easier and so that… Well, mostly so that it's easier on you, but no matter how hard I work, I can't get better than a C+."
"I gave you a B- that one time," the professor said quietly.
"On something that your very own mother called A+ work, Regina! I know she doesn't teach anymore, but Rubes had her for an English course her freshman year, and she said Cora was tougher on students than you are." Emma sighed. "I just don't know what else I can give."
The brunette looked down into her lap where her hands sat, twisting and fidgeting with one another.
"Would you like my honest opinion, dear?" she asked in a whisper.
"That's kinda what I'm supposed to get, isn't it?"
"I suppose," Regina conceded. "Well, for starters, your story is a little outlandish. An evil queen is unhappy with her life, and is tricked by some imp to bring all the people of her land to the twenty-first century?"
"You asked for fiction," the blonde argued.
"Which is why I've accepted the plot, though I still think it slightly strange," Regina agreed. "Beyond that, I think you have wonderful characters and interesting development throughout the story. It truly was wonderful and entertaining."
"So why does my grade say different?" the blonde questioned, defeated since she already knew the answer. "It's because of us, isn't it?"
"Maybe?" Regina shrugged and laid her head on the blonde's shoulder. "When I went to the board, their biggest concern was that I would let you pass my class with an easy A because we were together. I assured them it wouldn't happen. I guess I might be taking it a step too far."
The blonde in chair just shook her head and laughed, "I don't think my grades have ever taken a harder hit than what you're giving them, Professor Mills."
" I can change them if you'd like," the woman offered with a shy smile. "It may look suspicious to the rest of the faculty, but I can always assure them that those were your rightful grades, and maybe I'll even tell them why I had graded you so harshly the first time."
"Nah," the blonde shrugged. "I'll just have to work harder on the next assignment. Maybe you can give me a heads up so I can get a head start?"
"You see, this is precisely the thing the board was worried for; good grades, head starts, other...stuff," the brunette's cheeks heated up as she remembered one of the board members asking her to keep down her after-hours office meetings with Emma.
"I think I've worked hard enough to receive this one, haven't I?"
The professor thought long and hard before finally relenting, "Fine. There's only two weeks left in the semester, and I was planning on giving you all the time to write however many pages you wanted to about something you're passionate about. Tomorrow's class is time to brainstorm and ask any questions you may need answered. Beyond that, you're on your own until the last class. Then you have finals, which is really just turning in the paper," Regina explained with a shrug. "So now you know, dear, but since this counts as your final, I cannot help with it at all. I'm afraid that includes the brainstorming, too."
Emma pulled the woman even closer to her, and planted a kiss on her forehead. "No worries, babe. I have the perfect idea. Now let's go to bed, yeah?"
"I'd like that," Regina agreed, moving to stand, but being caught off guard as the blonde lifted her up bridal style. With a loud screech of something between laughter and shock, the brunette grabbed her girlfriend by the neck and connected their lips. "You always have the most perfect ideas, my love."