Passion Perfect

Title: Fragments Of A Life Less Lived - Part 28
Author: heartsways
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: Once Upon A Time
Pairing: Regina/Emma
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Summary: Things are starting to change in Storybrooke.
Author's Note: You can find me on twitter: @heartsways or on tumblr

***

Part 28

Part 28

Henry had allowed Regina to put him to bed, suffering her goodnight caresses with a stoicism that Emma found quite endearing.  At least the kid was trying, she thought to herself as she lingered in the doorway to his bedroom.  He’d promised that he would, but it was clear he was doing it for her sake rather than his own.  There was a pained expression on his face as Regina drew the blankets up around him and kissed the top of his head, and as she drew away from his bed, Henry retreated into it as though it could offer him far more comfort than she ever could.

“Are you staying over?” he asked Emma tremulously.  He needed her more than ever now that the Evil Queen had seduced her with wicked charms.  Henry didn’t understand much about adult relationships and even less about why anyone would think that his adopted mother was capable of one.  But, if Emma was going to be involved with the Evil Queen, then it might just be the White Knight who needed saving, in the end.  And in his own tiny heart, Henry had already summoned up the courage to do just that, if he had to.  A curse simply couldn’t be broken without it.

Emma, catching Regina’s eye as the Mayor walked towards the doorway of Henry’s room, shrugged at her son.

“That kind of depends on your mom, kid,” she said easily.  As Regina passed her, Emma caught a faint scent of the perfume that Regina wore: as heavy and intoxicating as the woman herself was.  Regina’s arm brushed against her own, their fingers almost touching, and Emma caught the merest smile ghosting over Regina’s mouth. 

“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Emma continued, “I don’t actually live here.”

“Thank god,” Regina intoned, turning in the hallway and glancing over Emma’s shoulder.  “One untidy child is quite enough, thank you.” 

Emma rolled her eyes good-naturedly at Henry and he grinned at her.  Everything was better with Emma around, he thought happily.  Even the Evil Queen seemed less…well, evil.  He could sense her cracking around the edges just like he sensed the curse doing the same.  Change was in the air, like static energy, just waiting for the light to take hold and reduce the curse to burning ashes.

He couldn’t wait.  Because then he’d finally get his happy ending.

“Go to sleep, Henry,” Regina said sternly, glancing at Emma as she did so.  “No reading after we’re gone.”

“Breathing, however, is allowed,” Emma remarked, shaking her head and stifling a chuckle.

Regina let out an impatient sigh and tossed her head.  “Thank you, Emma, for your useful input, as always.”

Emma folded her arms over her chest and winked across the room at Henry.  “It’s why she keeps me around,” she nodded.

Henry saw the way that Regina looked at Emma; the way they looked at one another, too.  His mouth turned down and he gripped his bedclothes, tugging them up over his body.

“Gross,” he muttered. 

He didn’t see the strained expression that pulled at Regina’s features as she closed his bedroom door.  Nor did he see the dark look in her eyes that followed it.  She would hide it from Henry as she’d hidden it from Emma as best she could, for as long as she could.  If this was her happy ending, then Regina intended to make it stretch out ahead of her until time got the better of them.

***

“I guess this means I’m staying over then,” Emma commented dryly as she rolled over in bed.

Regina opened her eyes, turning her head on the pillow to look at the woman beside her.  “Does it?” she asked, a tiny smile puling at the corner of her mouth.

Emma shoved at her underneath the covers before sliding an arm across Regina’s torso.  She rested her chin on the other woman’s shoulder, moving up against her so that their bodies were touching.  It felt intimate, almost dangerously so.  Something Emma had avoided in her life as much as possible.

Once the chase was over, she always lost interest.  Commitment had never been an option.  It represented longevity, setting down roots – that sort of domesticity had never been her thing.  As a child, Emma had seen glimpses of it in her foster homes, a yearning for something that wasn’t rightly hers.  But it hadn’t lasted.

After moving from home to home as frequently as her childhood and her nature dictated, nothing else ever had.

This was different, though.  Emma knew it.  She knew it in the way Regina looked at her, gaze heated and impassioned.  She knew it in the routine they’d established without even recognizing that they’d done so.  Emma had come to Storybrooke for Henry’s sake.  But her desire to stay?  That was for her own.

She might not trust Regina; she might not even like her very much, but a life with her in it was anything but dull.  It was an odd sort of life, and one that Emma hadn’t anticipated, but she found herself intrigued enough by the other woman to allow that life some purchase on her heart and soul.  All the things she’d always run from.

Even if, she thought, propping her head up on one hand, Regina was quite the most impossible woman she’d ever met.

“Are you ever going to tell me about Mr Gold?” she asked suddenly, as Regina’s eyes flicked open and she fixed Emma with a dark stare.

“Your idea of pillow talk needs some work, dear,” Regina said in a low tone of amused criticism.  But her gaze was apprehensive and she shifted slightly in the bed, Emma’s fingers trailing across her abdomen.

“I just don’t understand why everyone’s so scared of him,” Emma persisted, as Regina let out an exasperated sigh, lips hardening into a tight line.  “You wanted me to leave town to get away from him, Regina.  And seeing as I’m not, I need to know what the Sheriff’s office is up against.”

“He’s a snake,” Regina told her.  But she wouldn’t be drawn further.

“He came to see me this morning,” Emma continued, ignoring Regina’s expression of discontent.  “Said he could be an ally.”

“Really,” Regina remarked.  “I would think twice before getting into bed with him.”

“Yeah?  I got into bed with you, didn’t I?  That worked out pretty well.”

Regina sat up, twisting away from Emma’s embrace and clutching the bedclothes against her for a moment.  “Well then, I’m sure you have nothing to worry about when it comes to Mr Gold.”

Rising from the bed, she walked across the room and pulled out her nightgown from the chest of drawers, pulling it on over her head and then leaning in to push at her hair in the mirror.  She could see Emma’s reflection behind her, how the blonde was sitting up in bed and frowning. 

“Come on, Regina,” Emma urged from across the room.  “If he’s dangerous, then – “

Regina let out a snort, tossing her head and turning to look at Emma.  “Leave him alone, Emma.  He’s not the sort of person you want against you.”

“You talk about him like he’s some sort of ogre,” Emma said, shaking her head.  “I’m not afraid of him, and I’m not afraid of what he might do.  As Mayor, don’t you think you should be supporting the Sheriff’s office instead of shutting down our investigation?”

Moving back to the bed, Regina slid underneath the covers and pulled them up over her body.  Emma was gazing at her with curious eyes and Regina avoided them adroitly; some questions were best left unanswered.  Some secrets, she decided, best left untold.  Especially her own.

“As Mayor, dear,” Regina said patiently, “I work in the town’s best interests.  Investigating Mr Gold isn’t conducive to that and won’t end well.”  The condescension in her tone made Emma bristle, her body tensing, and she stared at Regina, shaking her head.

“So you just let him get away with making deals, taking advantage of people and doing whatever he wants?”  Emma’s mouth was agape in appalled surprise.  “How can you even tolerate that?  You control everything in this town, Regina.  But not him.  Why?”

Truth was an odd thing, Regina thought to herself.  The desire to share it, pervasive and unexpected, burning in her chest.  But it was also the sole facet of her life that would ruin everything: this intimacy, Emma’s affection, her own growing feelings.  No matter how much she might want to earn Emma’s trust, confessing the truth wouldn’t do that.  Because Regina’s truth was dark, black with murderous intent, stained with the blood of those she’d conquered. 

She doubted that Emma could or would ever forgive that.

“He’s a necessary evil,” she said quietly, as Emma drew close to her. 

“A necessary evil?” the blonde echoed, as Regina settled in the bed and lay her head onto the pillow.  “Regina, evil isn’t necessary.  Nobody should have to live with that.”

A sad smile crossed Regina’s lips and she reached up, sliding her palm over Emma’s naked shoulder.  The other woman leaned into her touch and for a moment, it felt like comfort that passed between them.  But it wouldn’t last; the good never did.  And in a life that had been betrayed by good and nurtured by evil, there was no doubt in Regina’s mind that Emma would fall prey to Mr Gold sooner or later.

It troubled the Mayor that she knew she wanted to prevent it almost as much as she knew that it was an inevitability.  Because good and evil were always at one another’s backs, each trying to assert their will over those who were weak.  And as someone who had succumbed to the rich intoxication of blackness and commandeered evil for her own gain, Regina knew only too well its endless depth and danger.  It had changed her in ways she barely wanted to contemplate, much less expose.

The last thing she wanted was for Emma to see it, lest it might change her, too.

“I know you think you can change the world, Emma,” Regina said softly, an underlying tenderness in her voice.  “And you think you can change the people in it, too.”

“No,” Emma shook her head, grasping Regina’s hand in her fingers and squeezing it.  “I just want to do what’s right; what’s good.  That’s what I do.  That’s what I’m here for.”

Her voice was quietly impassioned, her fervency clear.  It shouldn’t have moved Regina in the way that it did; it shouldn’t have touched and tugged at her chest.  As she looked down at their joined hands, Regina knew with a creeping dread that Emma had changed her, too.  That she would never be the same again.  That love, in all its forms, had taken up residence in her heart and broken it.  Her life had been so lonely, carved from desperation and anger.  She’d forgotten how to love.

Remembering was just too painful to contemplate.

Pulling her hand from Emma’s, Regina hunkered down in the bed under the covers, isolated, alone. 

“If you really want to do what’s right,” she said, “then you’ll leave this alone.  You’ll tell Graham to leave this alone.”

Emma frowned at the space in between them, barely inches and yet it felt like miles.  She watched as Regina turned, facing away from her, the hitching of her shoulders the only indication that the Mayor felt anything at all.  It would be easy to allow the emptiness between them to take hold, to let it separate and split them and push them further apart.

But hadn’t there been enough of that in their lives already?  Hadn’t they both ached with solitude for so many years that it had become second nature?

With a decisive gleam in her eyes, Emma scrambled forwards on the bed, sliding down behind Regina and thrusting an arm around the other woman.  She felt Regina stiffen, but there was little resistance to the warmth of her body, her breath on Regina’s neck and the touch of her fingers on the faint swell of a belly.

“Once upon a time, you told me to leave you alone,” Emma whispered, hearing Regina sigh and wondering at how pained it was, how full of regret and grief such a tiny sound could be.  As she rested her head against Regina’s upper back and closed her eyes, Emma listened to the sound of their breathing, slowly becoming synchronized.

A few moments passed before Regina shifted slightly, reaching down to lay her hand over Emma’s. 

“You should have listened,” she said.  Then, taking her hand from the one that pressed against her body, Regina reached up and turned off the bedside lamp, plunging the room into darkness.

***