Author's Note: Prompt #165: Secrets and Lies. Part two of two.

Note: There are three additional Breaking In prompts on Ao3, that can't be posted here due to adult content. They're for prompts "BIn domesticity" (a Labor Day weekend sneak peek), "BIn Snapchat Sexting", and "BIn sex in public (not the bar)". If you want to read those, please head on over to Ao3 and check them out!

Correction: their homey evening could have been improved upon after all, he decides – but not until later when he and Regina are lying in her bed, naked and a bit breathless. It's then that he thinks perhaps not having to wait until Henry had left the room to kiss her might have made for a slightly more pleasant evening.

He itches to reach out when they're alone, all three of them. To steal a kiss from her cheek or her lips, or even just hold her hand. He skates his palm over her bare skin, now, while he can, and thinks it would be nice to someday not have to wait until the children were tucked away asleep to show her some casual-and-kid-safe-but-more-than-friendly affection.

But secrets are what she wants right now, so secrets are what they have.

In spades, apparently, he thinks, his mind wandering back to their early conversation.

Harvard. He can't believe she was holding out on him.

It's a sore spot, clearly, but he so desperately wants to know her, all of her, so he can't help asking, "You have a degree in economics—" because he'd caught that little drop "—and an MBA?"

She sighs and rolls her head toward him, her lips pursing a bit before she says, "You can go ahead and add the 'from Harvard.' I know you're thinking it."

"You're bloody brilliant," he marvels, reaching over and drawing his fingertips down the smooth skin of her bicep.

But she mutters a dry, "Surprise, surprise," and he thinks he may have misstepped.

"I'm not surprised," he assures her. "Not that you're smart, anyway, I always knew that. But you're… really, really smart."

"I was really, really not allowed to be less than perfect," she corrects, shifting again until she's lying on her side facing him. There's a bit of space between them, though, her arm curling on the mattress between them, her toes bumping his calf. There's a hint of something in her expression that he can't quite read as she continues, "And no, I don't have a degree in economics. I hated economics. I nearly left Harvard before declaring my concentration."

Robin lifts his brows at that, asks her, "Left? Why?"

"I'd done the prereqs for ec, and I hated them," she tells him. "I wanted to transfer to Boston College with Daniel and study Marketing, but he convinced me not to. He said it was the only time he'd ever take Mother's side over mine – and I hadn't even told her yet." For half a moment, she bites in the inside of her lip in a way he finds charming, and then she confesses, "I wasn't going to. I was just going to transfer, and she was going to have to live with it."

"That would have been eventful," he smirks, dropping his hand to cover hers and playing idly with her fingertips as they talk.

"Mm," she agrees with a sardonic lift of her brows. "But Daniel said you don't get into a top five school and then transfer to the number 30, or whatever Boston was then. He said if I was that willing to incur her wrath, then I should just say screw ec, and pick a different concentration – something I wanted. So that's what I did."

His first impulse is to say that that was daring of her – a thought that has him cursing her mother yet again, because something as simple as changing your major shouldn't be considered a risk that requires courage. And yet.

He doesn't get a chance to say anything, though; she's still talking.

"She was livid," Regina tells him, predictably. "We had a huge fight when I finally told her. She said I was throwing my life away because I didn't like when things were hard or uncomfortable, and that I was a quitter, and an embarrassment. Daddy tried to smooth it all over, as usual, and convinced me to make ec a secondary field of study—" she frowns and clarifies "—a minor. He said I had half the classes done already, I might as well stick it out and call it a compromise."

"And your mother was happy with that?"

"Daddy told me to suggest it as my idea, not his, so she'd feel like I'd thought over her arguments and was being sensible." She rolls her eyes and makes Robin snort when she adds, "Mother still tells people I double majored."

"Of course she does," he mutters, tracing his index finger between her pinkie and ring, her ring and middle, middle and pointer. Regina's fingers splay and then curl around his, drawing their joined hands to her lips to press a soft kiss to his knuckle before settling them back on the mattress again. His heart melts like a chocolate candy in a warm pocket (something he has very recent personal experience with thanks to Roland), and he repeats the tender gesture in kind and with interest, his lips brushing each of her knuckles in turn until her lips curve and her eyes warm.

"You're sweet," she murmurs affectionately, and Robin grins, leaning in to steal a kiss.

"You started it," he teases against her lips before dropping his head back to his pillow and asking, "What was your major, then?"

She scoots a little closer, their legs tangling, fingers unraveling so she can drape her arm over his ribs as she answers, "French and Francophone Studies. I'd been taking French forever, and I got to study literature, and art, and take a summer in Paris. And Mother got to tell people that I wanted to go into international business. So it all worked out. We both won, and we both lost."

"Huh. When you said you'd had to take French, I didn't realize that meant you actually spoke French."

Her noise wrinkles adorably. "Did you think I mimed it?"

"No," he chuckles. "I just mean… I took German for two years, and I'm lucky if I can read an Oktoberfest menu. But if you majored in it, you must actually still be able to speak it, right?"

She laughs, nodding, and then tipping her chin up a little, showing off as she says to him, "Oui, je parle français. J'ai longtemps détesté la langue, mais le français m'a permis d'échapper à mes cours d'économie, alors j'ai mis ma rancune de côté. Je n'ai plus beaucoup de raison de le parler ces temps-ci par contre."

Well, that's sexy.

Robin shakes his head slowly, and tells her, "I have no idea what you just said, aside from 'Yes, I speak French.'"

Regina laughs at him again, and translates: "That I resented it until it got me out of economics, and I don't have much use for it anymore. I thought that I might – I got Mother on board by convincing her that I'd have some business foundation with the ec minor but with the added benefit of being bilingual – I could work in Paris or Montreal or Monaco. And then I got the MBA, and got to study marketing after all, which has been a great asset for me at work. But then Henry happened, so…" She shrugs a little, and says, "In the end, Mother and I both managed to be content with it, and majoring in French couldn't hold a candle to the disappointment that was the baby out of wedlock with a man who was inarguably beneath me. So she lies a little about the economics, and spins the French into an asset, and it annoys me, but… it's one of the few things we don't argue about anymore, so there's that, I guess."

"You found an impasse."

"Mmhmm. After a semester, I found a lot of freedom in it. It wasn't what I wanted or what I would have chosen, but it could have been worse. And it was leagues better than ec."

"Then why are you so bitter about it?" he wonders, his hand skimming down and tugging at her thigh until she lifts it. He skims his grip to her knee then uses it to draw her leg up over his hip, his fingers starting to trace lazy patterns over the soft skin between there and her waist.

"It was a lot of pressure," she tells him, her nails scratching lightly at his back in a way that makes goosebumps flare all up along his side, his neck. "When I started middle school, my mother came into my room and pinned a piece of paper up on my bulletin board. It became not-so-affectionately known as the The List. Twenty colleges or universities that I would be applying to. Ten that would be acceptable, and ten safeties." One brow lifts, her tone dips low and dry. "You want to know what my safety schools were?"

"I have a feeling I don't, but yes."

She ticks them off one by one, tapping each of her fingers against his ribcage. "U Chicago, U Penn—which is an Ivy League school, but Mother didn't like that it sounds like a state school, so it was the least acceptable Ivy—Johns Hopkins, Rice, Notre Dame, Emory, Vanderbilt, University of Virginia, Wellesley and Sarah Lawrence."

For a moment Robin just stares at her, and then he says needlessly, "Those are good schools."

"Yes," she says with that same bitter brightness she'd had earlier when he'd said the same for Stanford. "The List was roughly the top 20 schools in the country, plus or minus a few. They're goal schools for a lot of people – they're the 'I hope I get it' schools. They were my safeties. Those were the 'you didn't do well enough' schools. Those schools were failure."

God, he really despises her mother.

"Dare I ask what was on the other list?"

She taps them out obligingly: "Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Duke, Brown, Stanford, Northwestern, Columbia, Cornell. In order of Mother's preference." Jesus. His fingers squeeze supportively at her hip as she says, "That list hung in front of me for six years every time I sat down to do my homework, or study for a test, or…" She shakes her head, exhales and repeats it: "Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Duke, Brown, Stanford, Northwestern, Columbia, Cornell. If you'd like it backward: Cornell, Columbia, Northwestern, Stanford, Brown, Duke, Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Harvard. Alphabetically, it's Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Harvard, Northwestern, Princeton, Stanford, Yale. I spent a lot of time staring at that list. I hated that list."

"I already kind of hate that list," Robin mutters darkly, his hand winding around her waist protectively.

"My therapist hated it too. She worried it was triggering; I said it was 'inspirational.'" She says the word with double the bitterness of Stanford or her safety schools. "I just knew that Mother would never let go of it, and taking it down wouldn't change how she felt if I didn't make it. It was triggering, but I couldn't tear Mother up and throw her in the wastebasket so what was the point in doing the same to the list? So it stayed up, and it put a lot of pressure on me. To do better, to be perfect, to work harder. I was never allowed to be average; I had to excel. If I didn't excel, I wouldn't make the schools on the list."

She says it so matter of factly, it makes resentment burn in his chest on her behalf. Robin's own father had certainly bawled him out for not being better than he was, but Robin had been putting up rather a poor showing. His father had been asking for a bit more fucking effort, not perfection or excellence. And even with that, he remembers the way it had felt and how much he had hated it. No wonder she doesn't like to talk about uni.

He strokes his fingers up her spine, makes her shiver and shut her eyes for a moment as she continues, "Daddy used to tell me that Mother would never push me so hard for those schools if she didn't think I was smart enough to get into every single one of them, but Mother had this delightful habit of calling me a 'stupid girl' any time I did something she thought was ill-advised, or overdramatic, or…" She opens her eyes again just to roll them. "So I wasn't sure where he got that idea."

"You're not stupid," he tells her, loathe to interrupt when she's spilling her guts like this, but he's heard her mutter it under her breath before when she thinks she's done something ill-advised or overdramatic, so clearly that's an insult that had seeped in like poison. He'll give her as many whispered antidotes as she needs.

"Of course not; I went to Harvard," she says with a little too much irony. "And there were times where I'd grow a backbone and call her on it, on how dumb she thought I was, how she was always saying it, so how did she expect me to go to any of the schools on The List. And she'd scoff and say I was being childish and that she'd said nothing of the sort. And it would make me so angry, because I knew she had, she knew she had, but 'Oh, no, no, I would never call you stupid, Regina; you're a very bright girl – even if you don't always live up to your potential.'"

"That's insane."

"That's gaslighting," she says, pressing her body a little closer to his. "The Cora Mills special." And then she scowls, aims her gaze somewhere near his chin and speaks quietly: "She used to tell me that if I didn't try harder, I'd never get an Ivy League education. But I was already trying hard. I don't know how I could have tried any harder than I did at school – just like I was trying hard at equestrian, and at being as close as possible to 100 pounds, and at keeping the curl out of my hair when it wasn't braided, and a six-minute mile, and at eating everything I needed to eat to get healthy once I was in treatment. I feel like all I ever did was try hard to be better, and it was never enough – until the day that acceptance letter came.

"My mother has never been prouder of me than she was that day, and I just remember this feeling of relief. I'd done it. Even if I didn't go there—because I still thought that was an option—I got in. I could breathe again. And I wasn't stupid, because stupid people don't get into Harvard." She bites her lip, one eyebrow quirking slightly. "And then I actually enrolled there, and all the pressure came rushing right back. I was afraid that I'd only gotten in because Mother had been there to push me, and if she wasn't there looking over my shoulder and constantly berating me… would I fail? I'd be the daughter who failed out of Harvard – that's worse than not getting in at all. What would she tell her friends at the Club? She always said I wasn't living up to my full potential; what if I got all the way there and couldn't hack it? I couldn't even really enjoy that I'd made it; I was too scared I'd still somehow mess it up."

"So, screw Harvard, basically," Robin surmises, and now he gets it. Hell, now he agrees. Now, he's thinking of "accidentally" breaking that stupid mug in her kitchen, because fuck her mother for wanting to make sure Regina kept reminders around of how much she'd pushed her all those years ago. Reminders that it had paid off.

"Basically," Regina sighs. "Thank God I was in therapy; I don't know how I'd have made it through that summer after high school with my sanity and my health intact if I hadn't been."

"But you did," he points out with another squeeze at her hip. "And you made it through college. Your mum was wrong – as per usual." She smiles, sort of – it doesn't come close to reaching her eyes, and only one side of her mouth actually manages to turn up. "She lied; you had what it took. Maybe she pushed you, but you're the one who did the work. She can take credit all she wants, but you got yourself to Harvard. And you found a way to push through it once you were there."

"I got lucky. I made friends. Not many, but enough, and the right ones. It helped to have other people who were struggling with the same level of schoolwork—or even better, not struggling. I had a, uh… good friend who was a math major. It was like having a math tutor, except he wasn't paid by my mother and never let me feel like an idiot." Her smile goes a little warmer and a bit more genuine as she continues, "And I met Daniel at a house party two weeks in – he had a friend on campus, so he was there a lot. He'd always wanted to go to Harvard, but he hadn't gotten in, and couldn't afford it anyway. So he just hung out there, like he belonged. And I'd never have met him if I had gone to Stanford, and I'd never have had Henry, so… In the end, I suppose I should be grateful, but…" Regina lifts a hand to rake it through her hair, sighing wistfully and rolling toward her back. "God, I envied him. I envied Boston College, I envied that he had choices."

She shivers a little, then rolls close again, winding her arm over him; Robin is suddenly very aware that her nipples are now tight little points. She's cold, he thinks, so he sits and reaches for the nearest edge of the quilt, tugging it over their bodies and cocooning them in it.

As he does, she tells him, "I never felt like I had choices before Daniel. I had set parameters of acceptable options, but very few actual choices. I don't want to make the same mistakes with Henry – I want him to excel, but I want him to feel like there's more to life than test scores and Ivy League schools and extracurriculars that look good on your record."

"He does," Robin assures her while she wriggles in close again beneath the covers and Robin brings a hand up to scratch lightly at the base of her skull the way she likes. "You know he does. You broke the cycle; he's a happy, well-adjusted kid."

"I pushed him toward French," she admits guiltily. "I should've pushed him toward Spanish, Daddy would have loved it, and it's a part of him. He should get to find that connection with himself, but… I knew I could at least help him with his homework if he took French. Is that awful?"

Robin wonders how long that one's been weighing on her, tangling his fingers in her hair and giving it a gentle tug as he soothes, "Not at all. Slogging through all that math is hard enough."

He'd meant it as a little joke to break the ice, but it just makes her sigh deeply, tugs the edges of her frown closer to the covers.

"I'm worried about his math," she admits. "I know I shouldn't be, he's great at everything else. And I don't want to be like her. But I have it so ingrained in me that anything below an A- is failing – and I don't feel that way, I don't agree. I'm happy with Bs for him, if he tried his best. But Cs…" Her eyes widen a little, her head shaking slightly, and she looks so bloody miserable at her own confession. "I don't want to make him feel like he's not smart, and I really do believe it's okay if he's not great at some things, but… I'd like him to bring them up to Bs. I can help him with his homework, sort of. They've changed it all now from when we were in school, but we go through it together. But he struggles with tests, and in-class work."

"He struggles in general, right?" Robin reasons. "It's just that with the homework you're there to help him fix his mistakes before he hands it in."

Her brows lift, fall. "Yeah. In class, he's on his own. And it shows."

Tugging her with him, Robin rolls to his back, waiting until she's pillowed her head on his chest to press a kiss into her hair and assure her, "There's nothing wrong with being a C-student in math. At least I hope not, or I'm in trouble." She laughs softly, scratching her nails lightly over his chest, and it occurs to Robin that, "Of course, my grades might not be very encouraging, considering I tend bar for a living."

Regina lifts her head and smiles down at him. She even opens her mouth to disagree, but he knows her, and he knows "bartender" isn't a career choice she'd want for Henry, no matter how much she might claim otherwise to spare his pride. So he forges ahead before she gets a chance to lie so kindly, and says, "And besides, all those other things he's so good at will bring his average up. Maybe he won't be valedictorian, but you don't care, right?"

"I know…" she answers, reluctantly, her smile falling away, her chin dropping to rest on the wrist she'd had propped on his chest. "But if he's getting Cs now, what's he going to get in algebra, and calc? What if I'm so afraid of becoming my mother that I'm not helping him gain a strong foundation? What if I'm being too helpful at home because I don't want him to think he's stupid, and it's keeping him from learning?"

She could worry herself around anything in the world, he thinks, brushing her hair back from her face tenderly.

And then he remembers, "He got a B on that one on the fridge, right?"

He'd seen it the other night and complimented Henry on a job well done.

Regina's whole face lights up, her chin lifting as she smiles proudly. "Yeah, he did. He likes his teacher a lot this year. I think her teaching style is more his speed – or maybe he's just better at this kind of math, who knows."

"So maybe it'll sort itself out," he tells her encouragingly, combing his fingers along her scalp again. "The year's young, still. Maybe this new teacher will catch him right up."

Regina nods, her teeth digging into her lip for a second, her expression looking a bit less burdened than it had before. "Yeah, maybe. I'm probably worrying over nothing.

"He's your son, you're supposed to worry about everything," Robin teases her. "Or so I hear. Thankfully, I don't have to worry about grades quite yet."

Regina chuckles softly and presses a kiss to his chest, then rests her head there again and mutters, "Just wait. Preschool was easy."

"Oh, I'll be fine," he dismisses. "My girlfriend went to Harvard; I'll just send him to—ow!"

She pokes him in the ribs hard enough to actually hurt, but she's laughing as she mutters, "Not funny."

He kisses an apology into her hair, and then for a few minutes they just lie there together, warm and cozy beneath the covers, her bare skin soft against his side, his legs, beneath his fingertips as he coasts them along her shoulder, then dips beneath the blankets.

Regina sighs contentedly, and murmurs, "This is nice – having you here, not having to wait until Friday. I like when we get time together like this."

"Me too," he whispers, that free hand continuing to travel slowly southward. He presses blunt nails lightly against her back as he descends, his intent clear as he suggests, "We should make the most of it."

Regina chuckles, tipping her head up and finding his neck with her lips. One soft kiss and she's flirting, "Again?"

"Mmhmm," Robin hums, his fingers clenching slightly as she kisses his neck again. "Regina…"

And again.

And again, her "Mm?" vibrating against his skin.

Robin bites his lip and then grins, asking her, "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?"

She snorts midway through another supposed-to-be seductive kiss, and Robin delights in the way she cackles as quietly as she can manage, muffling herself against his neck and then sighing, "You did not just say that."

"It's the only French I know!" he defends, as she lifts her head to give him a look (but she's still grinning, her nose scrunching with it). "I have to keep up."

Her grin falters at that, one of her hands lifting to cup his cheek as she assures warmly, "You don't. Please don't ever think that you have to keep up with me. I was groomed to be this way. I don't need you to speak French or know advanced calculus, or have a college degree, or... be anything but yourself."

Her thumb strokes over his chin, across his lip, and Robin presses a kiss to it and tells her, "Noted."

He resists the urge to respond with I love you, too, because she hadn't said that, not really. And they haven't said that, and it would ruin this lovely moment they're having to say it now, wouldn't it?

So he nips teasingly at the pad of her thumb instead, and enjoys the way it has heat flickering in her eyes again. She stares at his mouth for a second, her tongue peeking out to wet her lips and then her fingers veer off down his throat, the distance between their faces suddenly shrinking.

Regina's voice dips low and sultry as she tells him, "But… in answer to your question…" She leans in the rest of the way, her lips brushing his as she murmurs, "Oui."