So Does This Make Us Both The Other Woman?

23. A Dozen Starts (Nothing Finished, Nothing Gone. Except The Meatloaf)

Emma's eyes are slightly glazed over, her lips parted and she's nearly panting in wholly embarrassing ways, and Henry says, "Should we leave you two alone for a while?"

"You're trying to seduce me," she finally manages, gesturing toward Regina with a vigorous shake of her head. "You're actually pulling out all the stops and trying to seduce me into letting you in."

Henry wrinkles his nose and Regina smiles obliquely and offers, "Is it working?"

"Get inside. Now." Emma skitters backward, her eyes still glued to a spot just around Regina's midsection, and Regina reseals the pan of meatloaf as she watches, feeling very satisfied with herself.

Never underestimate Emma Swan's appetite.

"So what is this, family dinner again? Or are you just here to make fun of my New York china?" Emma calls out as she leads the way up the stairs. Henry immediately heads for his new room, barely pausing to set the pan he'd been carrying on the counter in the kitchen before he runs off.

"Oh, no." Regina sets down her own pan and turns to smile at Emma. She can feel the way her lips split into something predatory and hungry, eyes dark and inviting, closer to the queen she'd once been than the mayor Emma knows. It's a comfort zone she hasn't entirely given up, and from the audible gulp she hears from Emma's general vicinity, she's still got it. "I thought I made it clear with the food. I am trying to seduce you."

Emma licks her lips. "Regina..."

"I considered going about it differently." She stalks across the room toward Emma, a hand stretching out to clamp onto the sink behind Emma as she stands, a breath apart from her. "Insinuating myself into every single crevice of your life until you couldn't conceive of a moment without me." Fingers splay across her abdomen, holding her back in the most intimate of ways, and she leans in to murmur in Emma's ear, "I hear that that works well, anyway."

Emma shoves her lightly, pushing her back toward the fridge. She's smirking and rolling her eyes, seemingly unimpressed, but there's a low shudder passing through her shoulders that intimates otherwise. As does the way she waits, expectant, for Regina to keep going.

Regina cocks her head, lips pursing speculatively. "But I don't think that's what you want, is it?"

"What do I want?" Emma asks, slightly breathless. Her forehead is creasing and she's still glancing at the meatloaf on the counter like she hasn't eaten anything all day, but for the most part, her eyes are fixed on Regina. Like Regina's going to make this all right. Like she wants Regina to find the right answers to make her close the gap between them again and give them what they're straining for.

Those answers are never going to be so simple, though, not when they're coming from such starkly different value systems that what's I've always wanted you to one of them is I didn't want you enough to the other. So Regina's eyes narrow invitingly and she hums, "We'll see soon enough," as she turns to open the cabinet behind her.

She finds cheaply made china inside it, and begins searching for forks and knives when Emma says suddenly, "You have to stop me from kissing you."

"Do I?"

"Yeah." Emma pulls the drawer next to the sink open, retrieving the silverware Regina's been hunting for, and she ducks her head in a sheepish little flush and mutters, "I don't want to lose my head around you again. So if you want to...I don't know, whatever you're planning on doing...I need to not wind up yanking off that dress- which is much too short and obscenely tight for a casual dinner, by the way, so Henry's definitely onto you–"

"Oh, you noticed the dress behind the meatloaf, did you?" But she curbs her smirk and follows Emma as she sets the table in the open dining room area near the door. "Henry's been onto us for a long time."