Author's Note: Personal Prompt: Maybe Baby - Regina asks Robin to move in with her/ he suggests they live together.

There's no place Regina would rather be than exactly where she is: on her porch swing, cuddled against Robin's side, a blanket over their legs and warm mugs of cider cupped in their chilly hands as they watch another brisk, fall Saturday fade away into dusk.

It's peaceful. Perfect.

The air is cool and crisp, the vague scent of a campfire wafting over from one of the neighbors. They're probably burning excess leaves – something Regina should get around to doing. But she'd promised Phee she could come jump in the massive pile she and Robin had spent the morning raking into the center of the yard, and the girl has a date tonight, so the burning will have to wait until tomorrow.

So tonight, she just sits, and rocks, her head resting on Robin's shoulder, one of his feet shifting forward and back to keep them swinging lazily.

"I love this place," he murmurs to her, turning to press a kiss into her hair. "I'm glad someone told you it was on the market, and convinced you to move back home."

Regina chuckles warmly, a small grin splitting her face at the memory of that bitterly cold but oh-so-hot Christmas break that had never ended.

Thank God she'd come home for the holidays, or she might be spending her autumn afternoons in that sterile apartment in D.C. instead of here where years of sneaker treads have scuffed the porch stain, and where her storm door creaks comfortingly every time it opens, and the smell of pie baking is starting to compete with the smell of smoke.

This place feels like a home, not just a place to live, and she loves it, too. She's glad, too.

She's in a mood, she must be – a sappy, romantic mood (autumn does this to her – something about the poetry of death in preparation for a coming rebirth in the spring, or maybe just too much pumpkin spice going to her brain, who knows, but it all seems so melancholy and cozy at the same time). Anyway, she's in some sort of mood, has to be, because as she sits there with him, she can't help but think that she'd like a hundred evenings like this, and then after that maybe a hundred more.

She wants porch swings, and pumpkins arranged in a line on the rail, and campfire air, and him. Wants his coffee cup in the sink and his warm divot in the pillow beside hers, wants the fresh woodsy scent of his cologne in her nose and the salty tang of his sweat on her tongue. Wants the warmth of him against her side like it is right now, and his warm hands on her icy toes the way they'll be tonight once they give into the cold and move inside to light the fireplace.

She wants a life, here, and she has one, but she wants… more.

The realization comes to her with the same sense of rightness she'd had when she'd decided to move back, and she smiles as her heart flutters and then races, her fingers finding his where they circle his mug. She weaves hers in alongside his own, and asks into the near-night, "Move in with me?"

She feels him still, and then shift a little, turning his head to look down at her; she lifts hers from his shoulder, sits up more fully, the sudden chill between their bodies most unwelcome.

Robin is smiling at her. "Yeah?"

Regina smiles back, and nods, says, "I'm perfectly content in this moment, and I want to repeat it. Every day. I have plenty of space, and… well, you're already here half the time anyway – it's silly for us to spend this much time together and still live in separate places. And I love you, but I am not moving away from my dream home, so you're just going to have to take one for the team here and—"

He cuts her off with a kiss (thank God, she was starting to ramble), one hand rising to thread chilly fingers into the hair behind her ear.

"Yes," he murmurs against her mouth a moment later, cold noses bumping as they both break into happy grins. "I'll move in with you, Regina."

She hums happily against his lips as she steals another kiss, then settles herself back down against his shoulder to watch the last dregs of daylight go purple and pink through the trees around them.

Sometimes she thinks it took her too long to come to her senses and end her marriage, or to accept that her past with Robin was pointing them toward a shared future. But then she has moments like these – perfect in their simplicity – and she thinks that maybe everything happened the way it needed to in order to bring them to this moment.

Maybe it's all about timing.