#evilfire

Well, I’m glad I’ve dragged someone into the Swanfirequeen pit LOL, I love them very much. Sorry for the wait, I hope you will enjoy it!

They are cute, at least.

Between Neal’s face half-smashed against the pillow – Emma’s pillow –, Emma’s arm thrown over him, her fingers clasping his shirt, and the way their legs are tangled together with the sheets, for a second Regina is almost tempted to silently stand in contemplation instead of doing what she actually came there to do.

Except, well, it’s noon. And she did make coffee.

She sets the tray on the first available piece of furniture, heading for the window so that she can open the curtains. The sun hits Emma right in the face, making her grunt in protest as she squints.

“What the hell, Regina?” she eventually mutters, turning on her stomach so that she can hide her face in the pillow.

Neal, obviously, doesn’t so much as twitch.

Regina opts for unceremoniously dropping on her own side of the bed, so that she can climb to the middle and start attempting to shake him awake.

“Come on, time to wake up,” she says, loudly.

Emma mutters unintelligibly, so at least she’s still awake. Neal either ignores her or doesn’t wake up at all.

“Neal!” she insists, pinching his cheek for good measure.

That does get a reaction, if in the form of an inhuman guttural sound, closely followed by a dragged: “It’s too early for this.”

Regina rolls her eyes, though there is a fond smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “It’s noon.”

Neal huffs, curling a little more on himself.

“Come on, get up.”

He cracks one eye open. “Emma’s sleeping too, go bother her,” he says, because apparently it’s everyone for themselves in this kind of situation.

Emma emerges from the pillow, pulling herself up on her elbows, only so that she can glare at him, though it isn’t particularly effective, given that she has one eye closed and the other only half-way open.

“Hey, I’ve been living off coffee for two days!” she protests. “All the goblins are in cages, I deserve to sleep.” That said, she drops right back on the pillow.

“You did sleep,” Regina says. “Until noon.”

The fact that she decided to leave them be for that long is already a tiny miracle in itself, and one that was only possible through a ridiculous amount of self-control, they should count their blessings and get the hell up already. Before she decides to set the bed on fire, that is.

“Not enough,” Emma announces, before promptly turning her back on them.

Regina leans forward, crushing Neal in the process, so that she can pull at her hair. “Get up.”

That proves to be a mistake when Neal twists from under her, all too quickly for someone who is supposedly half-dead, and grips her waist, pulling her down. She lets out a frankly embarrassing yelp, growling out an extremely annoyed ‘Neal’ when she finds herself engulfed in a tight hug.

Neal, eyes closed once again, shakes his head. “Shush. Sleep.”

Alright, this one comes from my curiosity about the Neal x Regina ship (I just think they're neat!) and my brain's extremely annoying helpful ability to constantly ask "but what if [Character X] was present during [canon event Y]?"

Basically, a young (somewhere in the 12-to-15 range?) Regina somehow ends up stuck on Neverland (probably by messing around with something in her mother's workroom that she really should not have) and has to work with Baelfire to find her way back home.

It probably won't actually be all that shippy, aside from a sort of "look at the adorable sweethearts with their cute little baby crushes" kind of way.

And yes, it will be canon-compliant. (To me! And you have no evidence that I'm wrong!)

Summary: The first time Regina kisses Emma and Neal.

(See here for the tags, notes and first chapter)

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Kissing Neal just kind of—happens.

 It starts with him taking her out on a date. Sort of.

They share a son and a girlfriend, he’s always in and out of her house and eventually he comes to her with flowers, of all things, and offers a sheepish smile alongside a night out to get to know each other a little better. After all, up until now, they’ve shared a few spaces but always with Emma or Henry or both between them, it makes sense to try a little harder, doesn’t it?

(Regina wants to say no, something in her screaming intruder and wanting to keep him as far away from her as possible, but Emma is grinning in evident amusement and she knows it’d make her happy; besides, getting to know your enemy is always smart, isn’t it?)

It goes surprisingly well.

Conversation is a bit awkward in the beginning, but it helps that he’s too much of a dork for the whole thing to feel too serious: he takes out the chair for her with an exaggerated bow as soon as they have their table, even if it’s a barely passable restaurant with people yelling their lungs out in lieu of conversation, and it’s easy to snort at that. It also helps that he immediately seizes the opportunity to ask about stories of Henry, since Regina could go all day talking about him, and that apparently they are both big fans of pies.

(If he tries to insist that pumpkin pie is better than apple pie, she can forgive him, he just hasn’t tried hers yet.)

After dinner, when they are taking a walk and her chest is shaken by laughter, her steps falter when she catches sight of Robin and Marian, with Roland between them, all clearly so happy—Regina is mostly over it, she loves Emma, she doesn’t want to run back into his arms anymore, but she still feels a little sick, the disappointment and hurt and not good enough hitting her at full force, stealing her breath away.

Neal grabs her arm, pulls her in the opposite direction. “There’s ice-cream!” he all but yells, enthusiastic. “Let’s get some, we can take it home, Emma and Henry will love us forever!”

She follows, a little thunderstruck for the few seconds that it takes her to realize that the sudden turn is probably not a coincidence, that they weren’t noticed and that she’s grateful.

She feels something in her softening, and she realizes that for pretty much the whole night she has forgotten to be resentful of him.

C-Chocolate; H-Hugs; R- Rudolf; I-Ice Skating; S-Santa Claus;      T-Tree; M-Mistletoe; A-Angel; S-Snowman.

  Chocolate&Marshmallows [EvilFire]

It was two months since the return from Neverland, two months since Neal’s proposal for a date at Granny’s, two months since the failure of that attempt. And after two months, while Emma had started to go out somewhere else with someone else, he was still going everyday to the diner.

Anyway, that afternoon looked different, not only because Mrs Lucas and her grandaughter were decorating the place for Christmas, but most of all because that festive atmosphere had penetrated little by little inside him and it wasn’t a good feeling at all. He had never liked that feast, because it was the one of family, of joy, and during all those years spent in different worlds, it didn’t make him feel nothing but void and loneliness. That year it tasted probably even more bitter; of course, this time he wasn’t physically alone, he had a son, he had a father, he had Emma, and yet all of these relationships were revealing themselves to be fragile and complicated.

“What are you doing? Don’t you drink that?”

Neal looked quickly away from the window when he heard that voice at little distance and his confused expression turned into a surprised one, when he found in front of him the famous Evil Queen who was staring at him with a raised ayebrow and the arms crossed to her chest.

“The chocolate… It’s more than a quarter that you deliberately ignore it” she continued, not aving received any ansie, hinting with a nod to the not steamy cup.

The man looked down on the drink and instively touched the ceramic. It was icy, so icy that maybe in a little while it would have become a pudding. He didn’t admitted that aloud though, as he didn’t ask explanations about the careful and suspected observation of him made by the woman, after all.

“It’s too sweet… Maybe I’ve mistaken ordering the chocolate with all these marshmallows…” he simply answered eventually, hinting a smile.

“really? And yet, you seem the right kind of person with sweety candy tastes” she commented with sudden irony and also a trace of acidity, in spite of the meaning evoked by the two adjectives.

 Neal frowned a bit and looked at her again, confused. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

Regina started to laugh softly. ‘It means that you seem and idiot and idiots are made of sugar’, she would have liked to say, but instead she metaphorically bit her tongue and shook her head, as to let the topic fall.

Then, without being invited, she approached the opposite chair and take a sit right in front of him. The strangeness of that act seemed to go unnoticed anyway, quite the contrary he hinted a new smile and slightly pushed the cup and the little plate with the marshmallows towards her.

“Go on, have a taste… Clearly, it’s the Evil Queen the one with sweety candy tastes, after all” he invited explicitly her, with an amused tone.

The woman rolled her eyes, trying to appear annioyed, but didn’t wait for a second invitation. In fact, not wasting more time, she grabbed one of the mrshmallows and let it slip inside the hot – or better, cold – chocolate.

“Mmm” she simply murmured, when she found herself tasting that explosive mix of sugar.

The truth was that the surplus of sweetness usually made her feel sick too, but in that moment that diabetic hug was a cuddle she didn’t want to refuse, a comfort she felt she needed.

“You can finish it all..” Neal said, watching her amused and even unexpectedly softened by the scene.

“If you insist…” she replied, hinting a smile as well this time, and moving again the hand aiming for a new marshmallow.

Still watching her with curiosity, Baelfire raised his arm to call Ruby’s attention and ordered something for hismelf too: a coffee. Hot and bitter.

They shared the needed time for that light meal and they spent together also a little more. They talked, made ironic jokes and revealed serious considerations, but in the main they remained in silence and both smiled sincerely and peacefully for the first time since a long.

OMG! If I were Regina, I would be like 'What the Hell?' Frustrating indeed and Regina being Regina, will have one look at Robin Hood and think, ooh, he's hot and think it's him but won't even consider Neal even though she might be seeing him too in the vision but will discount him as her true love because of his connection to Emma.