So Does This Make Us Both The Other Woman?

25. A Series Of Dates (And Excessive Nudity, But No One's Complaining)

"Emma, why am I-" She stops short as she enters the bedroom. "-here, exactly?" she finishes, a moment too late.

"Oh, good." Emma turns and Regina gapes at her, blinks down and can't quite pull her eyes back up. "You can help me pick something to wear." She wraps one arm around her middle just below her chest and Regina tears her eyes from somewhere south of there and manages one long, slow once-over while Emma squirms under her gaze.

Her very appreciative gaze. "I think this will do quite nicely."

Emma rolls her eyes. "Yeah, I'm going to The Rabbit Hole in my underwear. I'll be the most popular girl there."

Once, the day after they'd first met, Regina had filled up a basket of apples and taken them to Granny's as a thinly veiled threat. And then Emma had opened her door in a tank top and panties and she'd promptly forgotten exactly what she'd been there for. She'd gone on and on about apples until she'd found her bearings again, forcing herself not to look down or think any more about the woman she'd desperately wanted gone.

Today she has no such compunctions, not when all her cards are on the table and she never has been all that skilled at subtlety, and her eyes rove again to the soft swell of Emma's breasts peeking out under dark lace, to a well-defined abdomen and the curve of her hips and a surprising preponderance of freckles dotting-

-A full-body blush that only gets deeper the longer that Regina rakes her eyes along the curves of Emma's skin. "You want us to go out for drinks when we can stay in? Like this?"

She takes a step forward, stalking closer to Emma as though magnetically drawn, and Emma scoots backwards. "Uh. Actually...I kind of agreed to go out tonight with Hook, I guess. Someone told him to ask me out." She glares at Regina.

Regina's eyes darken, and it's easier now to look away and glare right back at Emma. "I did not!"

"He seems to think you implied it. And I felt bad, okay? You and Mary Margaret kept talking about how noble and selfless I am and I've been avoiding the poor guy for a week and...we're dating, right?"

"Are you asking me for a confirmation of your relationship status?" She wants to be furious, to seethe at Emma's insensitivity in asking her over for this, but she's truthfully too befuddled by the decision in the first place to start raging in full. "Did you invite me here to vet your clothing choices for Hook?"

"No!" Emma shakes her head. "I...I wanted..." She sighs. "I don't know."

Regina peers through the closet behind Emma, wrinkling her nose at some of Emma's more...creative clothing choices. Are those plaid pants on the shelf? "Here," she says curtly. She retrieves the loosest long-sleeved turtleneck she can find and a pair of loose pants. "Wear these."

"And here I thought you wanted me in my underwear." But Emma pulls them on anyway, staring at her reflection in the mirror. "I'm sorry. I'm not being as obnoxious as this sounds. Or maybe I am."

"You are," Regina confirms archly, turning to leave the room. The irritation is swelling, frustration with Emma and her indecision and being involved in it like this rising, and she doesn't want to be here, getting angrier with her with every moment.

"I just...wanted to give you a fighting chance." Regina turns. Emma stands in the doorway, fingers slanted against the doorposts and lips pressed together as she ducks her head. She looks so young like this, tentative and uncomfortable with her own audacity. "You know if you wanted it." She manages a smirk that emerges more like a grimace. "Aren't you supposed to be seducing me?"

And that might have been a whole new level of obnoxiousness if not for the uncertainty on her face, the eyes that don't quite meet Regina's that she's come to recognize as Emma unsure if she's worth it, after all. Emma is embarrassed to ever acknowledge her effect on the people who love her.