The Pay-off Chapter 4 (Patreon)

http://archiveofourown.org/works/3977032/chapters/9088867

They held themselves there for a long moment—the time it took the moon to come out from behind a cloud—both wanting to see how long this could last. Then they broke. Neither wanting to know how quickly it could end, either.

***

Regina slept beside Emma. On the other side of Henry.

***

Emma woke up first, for once. Like her body had finally gotten enough sleep. She kissed Regina awake, then Henry. Right cheek, left cheek. Her family. Loved ones. Clan. All those bullshit words people who had people used to mock people who didn’t—she finally felt like she had it. Not some crazy magical freak-out, a mother and a father and friends and family all forced upon her out of the blue, but something she’d discovered.

“Come on, losers,” she said cheerfully. “Up and at ‘em.”

***

The walk felt better—legs stretching with every stride, leaves greener, sunlight brighter. Everything magical. Like her storybook had finally found its plot. She got her son back, she got Regina back, and then—

Then what? Needled a little voice in her head with a petulance like Henry at his worst. You get to the wedding and what happens?

She didn’t care. Wouldn’t care. She’d been afraid of being happy too long. The world had told her to seize onto being happy, and now she was supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth? No. It would all work out. It would.

***

They made such great time that Regina—the relentless taskmaster of the past three days—let them make camp early. They stopped trailblazing by a pond Regina thought only she knew about, the water clear right down to the bottom, every fish seeming to swim in a valley of thick air. Regina set Henry to fishing. His cast needed immediate, intensive work.

“How can a son of mine not know how to fish?” Regina asked as she and Emma went to gather firewood. “Perhaps I don’t expect him to be able to bring down an elk at his age, but a fish? How much fight can a fish put up?”

“The other you wasn’t really the outdoorsy type,” Emma explained.

Regina sighed. “All the more reason to teach him before we… go back.”

Emma picked up a fallen branch, swinging it through the air before tucking it under her arm. “So you don’t think we’re crazy anymore?”

Regina looked back at her, shaking her head with a slowness that tingled like a lie at Emma’s superpower. “Whatever else you are, you’re not crazy. Which means the whole world is crazy instead. Not the first time I’ve had that particular thought…”

“Hate to disappoint you, but the real world isn’t much better. It does have indoor plumbing, though. Trust me, you’ll thank me later.”

Regina picked up a comparatively narrow log, tested its sturdiness by thumping it against a tree trunk, then passed it back to Emma. There was something delicious about her steadfast competence—it reminded Emma of how coolly calm she could be about the most powerful of magic. Back in Storybrooke, that’d annoyed Emma. However much she tried, she couldn’t be the sorceress Regina was. She didn’t feel that competitiveness now. Why would she? They were a team.

Emma set down the branches she’d been pack-muling. “Come over here,” she told Regina.

Regina looked at her dubiously. “Why?”

Emma shifted on her heels. “I wanna see if you’re just that damn beautiful up close.”

Regina took a half-step toward Emma, almost involuntarily it seemed. Looking over Emma’s shoulder, she could see the pond in the distance—a fair ways away. Not too close for sound to carry… not if Emma gagged her with her hand as she had last night…

Regina shook herself out of it. “Emma, we need to talk.”

Emma nodded agreeably. “We should talk. Definitely. Continue that conversation we started the other night. You were begging me to do something to you, but we never quite established what it was… if you’ve forgotten, I have a few suggestions…”

Regina held herself still, though heaven help her, she wanted to be closer to Emma. She never wanted to be so far from Emma that she couldn’t be grabbed and kissed and… damn. She couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Emma saw she wouldn’t budge and sauntered closer, her hips swaying, her walk brusque and flexible and a little domineering—the swagger of it—Regina wouldn’t have minded if Emma walked right over her.

“I mean it,” Regina said seriously, her hands bunched together. “We need to talk.”

Emma stopped with a sigh. “Yeah, some things never change.” She reached out, placing her hand on Regina’s forearm. When Regina didn’t push it away, Emma smiled and tugged. Regina came close enough for Emma to at least pet her hair. “We can talk after.”

“Emma…”

“You cannot…” Emma said, equally serious, as her hand delved into Regina’s trousers, “taste that goddamn good…” Regina shivered as she was touched. It felt better with the gloves, because she knew it would feel even better when it was Emma’s bare hands, somehow. “And not let me have any more.”

Emma took her hand away. Brought it to her mouth. Regina thought if she could just watch how Emma licked her fingers another dozen times, she wouldn’t need to be touched.

“What happens when we get to the wedding?”

“The wedding?” Emma asked, looking down at her own ring finger as if, perhaps while she’d been asleep, Regina had slipped an engagement ring on her and booked a chapel.

She wouldn’t put it past her.

“Robin’s wedding. Which I’m supposed to stop because he’s my True Love and if I just kiss him…” Regina stopped. Her eyes went to Emma’s fingers. They were still wet, why’d they still have to be wet? “He doesn’t really feel like my True Love right now.”

“I don’t know!” Emma said. “We’ll figure it out! Everything’ll go back to normal!”

“Last night felt normal,” Regina said softly. “It felt right.”

“I don’t know if I’m really Regina Mills True Love material,” Emma tried to joke, though her delivery had a deathly cadence.

“So what were we doing last night?”

“I never said—“

“I know you didn’t,” Regina admitted. “I didn’t either. But the way you kissed me… the way you touched me… is Robin going to touch me like that, when I’m his True Love? Am I going to forget all about this? Is that my Happy Ending?”

“I said I don’t know. I just know we have to stop the wedding and then…” Emma puffed her cheeks out. “We just stop the wedding.”

“It’s in three days. How can you not have a plan for three days from now?”

Emma raised a finger. “You’ll get used to that very quickly, knowing me…”

Regina broke away from Emma’s gaze, angrily hoisting twigs off the ground. “I don’t even care about True Love’s Kiss or Happily Ever After, any of that! I can barely believe it just thinking it through in the light of day. But I trust you. So fine. You’ll think of something. So just tell me what last night meant to you.”

“C’mon, Regina…”

“C’mon?” Regina questioned. “A minute ago, you were all but drooling over the prospect of having me on the grass all over again, now it was, what, just passing the time?”

“It wasn’t that. You weren’t that. I just—I’d been in a cell, for years. Not one familiar face, not one friend—the first day I get out, someone I cared for died right in front of me. And then you were there and…” Regina was slowing down in collecting twigs. Emma knelt down beside her, stopping her. “Like you said. It felt good. It felt right. Why does it have to be anything other than that? Why’s it have to be True Love? Can’t it just be… fun?”

Regina huffed a breath.

“Well, you can’t tell me you’ve never had fun!” Emma said indignantly. “I know I have!”

“That wasn’t fun. You held me! I felt the breath soften in your lungs and your heartbeat slow down until you could’ve died in my arms. You’re telling me you could’ve had that with anyone? That if Hook were still alive, you’d—“

“Don’t,” Emma said, an instant warning.

Regina didn’t take it. “If it’d been me that died,” she said, “would you be lying with someone else. Explaining to them how… fun they were?”

Emma grabbed a branch from Regina and threw it off to the side, only realizing how petty the gesture was when it hit a tree with a tiny thak! “I don’t remember you complaining. I wanted someone to kiss, I wanted someone to hold, it was a week’s journey and you—you wanted the same things! Who cares if it only lasts a week?”

The twigs made a motley collection of rattlings as Regina dropped them all at once. Grabbing Emma by either side of her face, about to kiss her but not daring to. “Because I want more than a week.”

Emma swallowed. The twinge she’d nursed all day, the heat she’d felt being alone with Regina, it was nothing compared to how her body responded to this passionate, possessive Regina. It was intoxicating, just being the center of her attention.

“What we want doesn’t matter,” Emma said slowly. It sounded like what Snow would say, but it was so hard to think of her at a time like this. “We have to think of—what’s best for—what’s best,” she finished. Though it felt like there was more.

Regina leaned in. Their first kiss, that first day, felt like nothing compared to how Regina kissed her now. Like everything Regina felt was finally spilling out of her, and that electrical current could pass through Emma with just the touch of their lips.

“We go the other way,” Regina said. “You and me and Henry. We find a ship. We sail away, leave Snow White and Prince Charming and all the rest to be as evil and as awful as they want.”

Emma shook her head. Tried to say no, but couldn’t. She could only shake her head.

“Without me being here, Snow won’t have any trigger. She’ll calm down. She can be a good queen, I know. And we can be happy. Just the three of us. Far, far away…”

“These are my friends,” Emma said helplessly. “My family. I can’t just leave them here to live out some… someone’s sick joke!”

“What about me? Am I some joke? Being happy, these feelings I have for you, are they only because of your Author?”

“No, I don’t—I don’t know. I don’t think we were supposed to meet.”

“But we did. And if we keep going, that all goes away. I go back to Robin, you go back to Hook, why, just tell me why?”

Regina’s hands were still on Emma’s face, but no longer preparing her for a kiss. They were clinging to her like without Emma’s skin, Regina might fall right into the earth.

“Because it’s the right thing to do.”

“And I become a monster,” Regina said, doubt curdling into bitterness. “As bad as Snow White. Worse…”

“Not anymore. You’re a hero, Regina. And you have, we have, a wonderful boy…”

“And this, me, the me you kissed and—she just goes away? I just cease to exist?”

“I don’t know!”

“You stop caring about me?” It was a bitter question, but Regina’s words weren’t bitter. They were just another kind of tears, like the ones falling down her cheeks.

“I’ll always care. Always be your friend, your sister, whatever the world, whatever the curse, whoever and whatever you are, I’ll…” Emma bowed her forehead to Regina. “You, the real you, the hero—I’ll always find you.”

Regina cried then. Not like before, the strong tears, the ones she allowed herself. Now she sobbed and all Emma could do was hold Regina to her chest, in the midst of the scattered firewood they’d gathered, and let her be miserable. Tell her it was okay to be miserable. That it would pass. That she’d be happy again. Words Regina had maybe never heard in any of her lives.

Lies.

“Three more days to the chapel,” Regina said. “Will you stay with me? I don’t… I don’t wanna kiss anymore. But if you could hold me, like you did before…”

“Of course,” Emma said, wondering if this was how Mary-Margaret had hated herself after what she did to Lily. “You can count on me.”