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"I love you." Emma sucked in air through her teeth, heart pounding against her chest as she squeezed her eyes shut. She had said those three little words a thousand times before but…
But there was no disaster afoot. There was nothing threatening her life or the lives of those she loved. No one was about to go down in a fiery blaze of glory, slip through a portal, sacrifice their soul or, or…
Emma sighed, dropping her head into her hands. She wasn't sure she could do this if her life, or someone else's didn't depend on it. She'd always waited until the last minute because—what if they didn't love her back? What if they were happy she'd waited because then they'd be dead and didn't have to suffer the guilt of rejecting her. What if she screwed up and this was simply her wanting too much? Maybe she'd imagined the looks, the words, the touches.
Her heart clenched at the thought and her head shook from side to side. Her imagination was never that active, that… expressive. "I love you," she murmured on a rushed, relieved exhale.
"How sweet." Emma shot up, her eyes wide as she opened them and came face to face with Regina. Regina smiled innocently and with a flutter of lashes asked, "Practicing your speech for when you propose to the walking STD?"
Emma blinked, mouth open but lacking the words to ask Regina what the hell she was talking about. With a comment like that, she could only mean one person but her and Killian had broken up… months ago. She was at least 99.9% certain she told Regina and they'd proceeded to get blackout drunk in celebration before they'd passed out on the floor of her study.
"W-what," she eventually said. There was absolutely no way she had imagined that night, not when that was the night she'd actually realized where, or rather who her feelings truly lied with.
"You are the one who is stuttering, dear." Regina folded her arms, eyebrow raised in a way that Emma knew if the furry little thing could speak for itself, it'd be calling her an idiot as Regina so often did. "Shall I speak slower?"
And suddenly, Emma had all the confidence in the world. She relaxed, shoulders slumping as she shoved her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. Regina could be an insufferable witch when she wanted to be, but there was something about her when she was like that, that drew Emma toward her.
"No," she replied, a smile slowly spreading across her face. "No, I heard you."
Regina gave her the once over. "If that is true, then why the hell are you smiling? I was insulting you, Emma."
Emma. Not Miss Swan. Not Sheriff or Savior. She wasn't anyone to Regina. She wasn't a title, a Princess, a hero. Just Emma, and occasionally idiot. "And here I thought that was your idea of foreplay," she said, her smile transforming into something much less smile-like, and decidedly wolfish.
Regina blinked and stepped back, arms slack as they fell to her sides. As Emma watched her mouth open and close, she realized that for the first time, she had actually managed to stun the woman responsible for some of her most embarrassing moments in life, and pride filled her chest.
"What's wrong, Regina?" she teased, "Did you forget how to use your tongue? Because that would be… such a shame."
Said tongue peaked out from between dark lips and Regina's nostrils flared. Emma grinned. "Maybe we should sit down? Side by side, shoulders touching. My room isn't as nice as your study, I admit, and I don't have any tequila but—"
A hand clamped down over her mouth but her grin widened nonetheless as Regina growled. "You promised to never speak…" Regina began chiding her but as Emma shook her head, she trailed off.
There were no promises. They never spoke of that night, but she sure as hell thought about it. A lot. They drank, and talked, and drank some more. Then there was a kiss, and more drinking followed by even more kissing. Emma hummed as the memories flooded her brain. No. There were never any promises; that night, or the morning after when they both decided to pretend they didn't remember.
Until that very moment, she'd wondered if Regina did but she'd never asked. Seeing her looking so torn, however, Emma decided to put her out of her misery and moved back, away from the hand that made zero effort to keep her still. "I wasn't practicing for Killian," she said. "I was practicing for—"
Before she could finish, the hand returned and she sighed. Regina narrowed her eyes and questioned, "Have you been drinking?"
Emma rolled her eyes before shaking her head.
"Are you now, or have you ever been on drugs?" Regina continued.
Emma tilted her head. She'd experimented a few times during her childhood, but she could hardly see how her past drug use was relevant to the situation. She sighed again and raised her hand at Regina's look, holding thumb and forefinger less than an inch apart.
Regina nodded. "Maybe the idiocy isn't entirely genetic after all," she said it so casually that Emma was basically required to roll her eyes again. "Have you been to my vault recently and touched anything you shouldn't have, or been in the general vicinity of another magical practitioner while they were casting a spell?"
Using the hand already raised, Emma grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand away from her mouth. "I am not drunk or under the influence of drugs, nor am I under the effects of a spell, accidental or otherwise."
Taking her hand back, Regina huffed. "How would you know?"
Emma smirked because if there was one thing she knew for certain, it was that magic had one rule, one rule that could never be manipulated, changed, circumvented or outright broken, and Regina knew it.
She took a breath, smiled and said, "Because I love you."