A/N: Just note the rating change, guys. Not sure how that happened.

It's my birthday today. You and Henry are the only people who know that. You aren't awake yet, but I know you have something planned and that touches me more than you could ever know. I don't know what it is you have in mind but truthfully it doesn't matter, because I haven't celebrated a birthday in over thirty years and I think this is the first time I might want to.

This year, I actually feel like I have something worth celebrating.

It's only been six months since you came home but everything has changed, in the most marvellous and surprising of ways. I'm still at odds with most of the town and I imagine it will be many years before that changes, but I won't pretend that whatever leniency I've been granted isn't entirely due to you. It is, and I am very thankful to you for that.

Because of you, Henry is still my son. In the time he spent living with you and your family, my house was just that – a house. Without Henry, it was nothing of the home we had made for ourselves for ten years. Now, the fact that he lives with me once more is beyond anything I could have hoped for. That he actually wants to, provided we both spend time with you every day, is probably more than I deserve, but even a redeemed me couldn't care less about 'deserve' when it means having Henry back in my life.

He really needn't have worried about making that stipulation, though – you spend more time at this house than you do at your own.

Especially since that night.

I think it would surprise you if you knew how often I thought of that night. When I'm alone, or when we sit quietly together after one of us has put Henry to bed – both of us if he's lucky – I wonder how we wound up where we did. If I were to ask you now, you would say it was three glasses of wine on your part and the fact that I could never resist you in those god-awful jackets. I'm not sure I can articulate how much it was not the jacket, but rather the fact that for me, it was four months of wanting to spend ten more minutes with you at lunch, of suggesting we go for ice-cream after an already long afternoon outing, and of wishing you wouldn't leave immediately after Henry went to bed each night you came for dinner.

– You still don't know any of that.

So when you leaned over to brush your lips against mine for the first time, I didn't pull you closer by your jacket because I liked your jacket, but because I had wanted you to do that for months. I had only ever kissed a man's lips, so to kiss you was softer than I had imagined, and yes I had imagined it. The times I let myself were few – it seemed as pointless as it was dangerous – but when I did I'm almost embarrassed at how something as simple as the thought of your lips could affect me.

That's another way you've changed me. Before you, I wouldn't have dreamed of seeing something I wanted and not taking it; of sitting idly by and only watching and not having whatever it was that I desired. But though I imagined what it might feel like to kiss your lips, I never would have been the first to do it. Some of my inaction I suppose was due to fear – fear that it could ruin whatever the two of us shared so seamlessly with Henry if I was alone in my feelings. The rest I think was due to something else, something so entirely removed from me that it took me a while to understand.

The truth was I didn't want to take anything from you. Too many times were there in the past when I could scarcely differentiate between what I had taken and what had been freely given. But it was more than that too. It was a matter of giving – of you willingly giving something to me for no other reason than you wanted to. So in the moment that you leant towards me, hesitantly at first as if you expected me to pull away, I knew it wasn't because I had convinced you or manipulated you or even forced you.

You just wanted to.

You actually wanted to kiss me, and when you gave that to me – the way it felt to have your hand in my hair and your tongue tentatively touching mine – the only moment I can possibly compare it to in hindsight is kissing Daniel. And I'm not unaware of the magnitude of that.

Truthfully, I felt like a teenager again. Like I could have kissed you all night and that would have been enough. But when you grabbed my hand, laced your fingers through mine and pulled me from the couch in the direction of my bedroom, I knew kissing wasn't going to come close to enough. For either of us.

When you shut my bedroom door and pushed me against it, the feel of your body pressed so tightly to mine was unbelievable. I couldn't think, could barely stand, from the way it felt to have your mouth on my neck and the skin of your back beneath my hands. My one coherent thought at the time was that you had no idea what you were doing to me or how easily you were affecting me.

You probably still don't.

You might have had an idea later on though, when against the door you opened my slacks and slipped your hand inside and felt how wet I was for you. The instant you touched me you stopped moving entirely, and for a second I panicked because maybe this was your first time being with a woman and maybe this was moving too quickly and maybe you regretted it all. But then you swore and whispered my name as if you were surprised at what you felt, and began to move your fingers almost reverently, stroking me and pressing your mouth back against mine and swallowing my moan.

No one else has ever made me feel like that.

That was the first time you made me come against that door, and when you pulled back slightly to watch my face as it happened, your eyes held mine to yours because I couldn't look away either, not when you were watching me with an expression I can only describe as wonder, at how my body was reacting to you, maybe, or how the words please and Emma continuously fell from my lips as if I was accustomed to pleading with you for things.

That was also the first time you called me beautiful. You've since become much less quaint with your compliments during sex, though I'm not entirely complaining.

When you wake up I might tell you what that night meant to me. Beyond us, I mean, because as much as it meant for us as a couple, you can't imagine what it meant to me to have someone like you, someone so good and so worthy of love, give yourself to me in that way simply because you wanted to.

You're the saviour, Emma, and if I were to say anything to you about that night, it would be that because of who you are, you loving me made me feel as if I were good.

That was two months ago now and every day that has passed since has increased that feeling. It's not a matter of forgetting all that I did – I know that redemption goes hand in hand with an awareness and regret for what I've done – but when I'm with you I think less of my mother and Daniel and a younger Snow, and that can only be a good thing.

Instead I think of you and Henry.

The two of you give me reason to celebrate and today I will, because for the first time in a very long time, I don't feel like I need saving.

A/N: Wow I'm fickle. All it seems to take is one person saying 'why don't you keep going and write this' and I'm like TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT AND LET ME GIVE IT TO YOU! So whoever asked for happy got their happy – and slightly smutty, I guess, though I didn't intend that to begin with. But this is now complete, I swear. I have other OUAT stuff to write. Also, if you like, please review. They are always appreciated.