Title: Four Benches and a Bed
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Pairing: Swan Queen (Emma Swan/Regina Mills)
Spoilers/Warnings: Not really.
Summary: Bench No. 1 is at the docks. There have been other benches before; Storybrooke is littered with them after all. They are in parks and hospitals, in gardens and diners, and by the roads. There are lots of them. But Bench No. 1 (yes, capitalized) is at the docks.
Disclaimer: This is purely fictional. I don't own any of this.

…

A/N: Yup, this is me jumping on the bench bandwagon. Although I'm pretty sure the episode is going to crush all and any hope, but who cares. Have some bench fluff.

…

Bench No. 1 is at the docks. There have been other benches before; Storybrooke is littered with them after all. They are in parks and hospitals, in gardens and diners, and by the roads. There are lots of them. But Bench No. 1 (yes, capitalized) is at the docks.

Actually it's two benches.

The wind blows in their faces, disarranging Regina's carefully coiffed hair, making the tip of Emma's nose cold and red. Emma glances at the already cold cup of coffee sitting forlornly beside her, and Henry's book, and pulls her feet up to the bench, crossing her legs and hunching over a little in order to calm the sick, twisty vortex of worry that is making her stomach writhe.

Regina paces in front of her. Four steps to the left, twist, turn, four steps to the right, rinse and repeat.

"How can you be so sure, Miss Swan?"

"I don't know, all right," her voice sounds alien to Emma's own ears, all weird and hoarse. "I have this hunch, I have this feeling that something bad is going to happen."

"You mean other than all the bad things that have already happened?" Regina's tone is harsh and skeptical.

"Yes, something even worse."

"And his book says nothing about it?"

"Nothing. Zilch. It's a big, fat, five hundred page nada."

"Have you tried asking him?"

"Yes," Emma's tone is emphatic. "Repeatedly."

"And?"

"You know him. He still hasn't forgiven me for lying to him. He has his shiny, new father. Nothing else matters to him right now."

"I cannot say why but I just had the strongest sense of déjà vu."

"Yes, all right," Emma throws up her hands in defeat. "Now I know exactly how you felt when I came to Storybrooke."

Regina smirks, triumphant but humorless.

"Well, what goes around."

"Can we focus?"

"Of course, dear. Now, if Henry hasn't told you — are you sure you aren't projecting? Because he is ignoring you in favor of a man you loathe?"

"I don't—" Emma sighs. "I've seen these odd, scared looks he keeps giving Gold. Not to mention the other day when I entered the room, he looked totally freaked out, and Gold had this really ugly look on his face. But when they saw me, they both went really quiet." Emma frowns. "And then there's the things that Gold keeps muttering to himself when he thinks he's alone, about seers, and boys who need to be taken care of, and what would Bae say, and he gets this really crazy look in his eyes — I don't know!"

"Yet nothing implicitly suggests—"

"Maybe I've been a mother for all of five minutes, as you said—"

"I apologized for that!"

"No, but it was still true, wasn't it? And maybe I am being melodramatic, but I think there's some truth to what they say about mothers knowing when their child is in danger." She looks up at Regina who stopped pacing a while ago. "You don't believe me."

"Why do you think I'm here?" Regina begins pacing again.

Emma snorts. "It can't be my winning personality." And then she remembers the situation, and her face falls again. "What do you know about seers?"

"Not much. My mother might've known but, well."

Emma looks at her bleak expression. "I'm really sorry about that, Regina, if I'd known that Sn—"

"Yes," Regina cuts in sharply. "Let's keep it civil, shall we? Let's not mention names that might take this in some direction other than civil, please."

Emma nods, miserable. "So, we know nothing."

"I'm afraid we're at a dead end right now, unless one of us goes and asks Rumplestiltskin."

Emma suddenly feels like crying as she wraps her arms around her stomach. She wants to rock back and forth like a scared child. Instead, she says, "Regina."

It is a little whiny, but mostly it sounds like something hot and salty is burning through her throat, and Regina pauses in her pacing to look at Emma's pasty white face, and limp blond hair, and green eyes huge and unnaturally bright with moisture.

She steps forward carefully, silently, and sits on the edge of the other bench, facing Emma, hands clasped in front of her.

"I will not let him hurt our son," she says in that tone which brooks no argument but Emma just stares straight ahead before staring down into her cross-legged lap. Regina notices the way she has her arms wrapped around herself, and how her whole body is trembling lightly, and she reaches forward to lay a hand on the other woman's elbow, a little surprised at how easily the gesture comes to her.

"Emma. Look at me," she waits until Emma does, and then she leans forward a little, earnest. "I won't let anything happen to Henry."

"I am a terrible parent."

"No," Regina says, the fingertips of her other hand lightly touching Emma's chin. "Because I know you won't let anything happen to Henry, either. We can protect him together. I don't think even the Dark One can beat the Savior and the Evil Queen's combined powers."

And Emma tries really hard but a choked sound and a tear somehow escape, and her hand tangles with the one on her elbow, her grip strong, and she nods.

Regina lets her hold her hand and offers her a tissue from somewhere inside her coat.

"We'll do it together. For Henry."

"For Henry," Emma echoes.

The wind whips at the pair of them, and the benches are hard and uncomfortable, but they stay like that, both of them, for a long while.

...

And, see, it is that pact which leads to Bench No. 2, which is in Regina's garden, beneath her apple tree — well, one of her apple trees. It isn't the one Emma butchered all those months ago. This one is in the neat little side garden on the left side of the house, surrounded by pretty shrubbery.

The battle is over, they foiled the Dark One's plans to hurt their son, and Emma has left their little boy safe in the arms of his grandparents for the time being, before getting out of the house. For some reason she finds her feet making their way towards Mifflin Street, battle weary and exhausted as she is, she lets them wander on. And somehow she knows that she will find Regina here, under this tree, alone and hunched over. She straightens when she sees Emma.

"You look terrible."

"You say the nicest things," Emma says. "You were supposed to get yourself looked over by Whale."

"So were you."

"I'm fine."

"So am I."

"Yeah?" Emma points at the numerous scrapes, cuts, and bruises in sight. "What are these? Fun marks?"

"How gauche. I shall wear my wounds like a medal of honor and all — isn't that what people say?"

Emma steps closer. "Some of them need stitches, Regina. This one is absolutely hideous!" she points to a large, diagonal gash on Regina's forehead; Regina scowls.

"Have you looked in a mirror lately? You are no beauty today, and you look ready to pass out!"

Emma chuckles as she sits down beside her. "I am a little exhausted. And do you mean I am a beauty on other days?"

"I never gave you permission to sit."

Emma rolls her eyes before reaching for and taking Regina's hand. Regina's eyebrows climb towards the gash in her forehead.

"Miss Swan, what do you think you're—" she begins, but then there is a warm, tingly sensation on the skin of her hand, and she looks down to find Emma's fingertips tracing a large, shallow cut in her palm, soft, little tendrils of magic emanating from them and gathering around and over.

Emma's magic is white — not blinding, silver white, but a gentle, comforting one — with flickers of green and gold here and there. The cut in Regina's palm is healed, and Emma moves on to the large, egg-shaped bruise above her elbow.

"Emma," Regina says as fingers trace a gentle circle over her forearm, but, "Hush," Emma says. "Let me concentrate, I'm not an expert at this."

Regina is quiet; there isn't a lot of conversation after that point, actually.

There is only Emma's thumb tracing the gash on Regina's forehead; all the painful sensation that had gathered in the wound flaps dissipates like helium from a balloon, and Regina sighs with relief as she feels the skin on her forehead smooth out.

"Not too much, too fast," she warns gently, because she knows this magic is coming from inside of Emma who is already working with depleted reserves.

"It's fine," Emma mumbles, concentrating on running her fingertips over every cut and scrape on Regina's cheeks.

Regina can feel the cool, ornate, wrought iron handle pressing into the small of her back, and she can feel the light wind that carries the gentle pine scent, and Emma's scent which is a little sweaty and a little bit smoky from the battle, with something underneath that is as sharp as adrenaline, yet so very gently sweet. Emma's wrist smells vaguely like lilacs, purple blue veins standing out, her fingertips rough, callused and blistered: she hasn't healed herself.

Before she can comment on this observation, Emma cups her cheek and closes her eyes, and Regina can feel a warmth that courses down and through her whole body, dissolving knots and dissipating tensions. It is a wonderful feeling, and she wonders as her own eyes flutter close where the hell did Emma even learn to do that, unless she is doing it instinctively which is a feat in itself. She opens her eyes when she feels Emma sag a little against her, and she gently but swiftly disengages the hand on her cheek.

"That's enough, Miss Swan. No need to burn yourself out."

Emma mumbles a sleepy okay, not opening her eyes. And then she collapses in Regina's arms.

...

Which of course brings us to Bench No. 3 but in time, in time, because the interval in between is filled with Regina's wordless cry, or maybe it is a full word, maybe it is even "Emma!", and a hurried but failed attempt at revival, and a sudden, bone-crushing fear in her heart, and Regina Mills never did scare easy, but in those few, in between moments she is so scared she can barely breathe, and furious.

She is furious with Emma for expending so much energy doing so much magic in so short a time, but mostly she is furious with herself for not stopping her sooner. She gathers the unconscious woman in her arms and magicks them both into the ER, appearing right in front of a sputtering Dr. Whale — who, to his credit, stops sputtering at once and takes Emma from her as soon as the smoke clears.

Exhaustion, they say. Acute exhaustion.

Snow and David and Henry and Ruby traipse in after a while, and the room is so full, Regina thinks there won't be any space for her. So she steps away into the hallway and sits on a small bench that is made of unforgiving little planks with too much space between them so that it pinches her thighs every time she moves, and one of the wooden legs is shorter than the other three so that it makes the whole thing rock unsteadily. That's where Regina sits and stares angrily at her unblemished, healed hands, and for some reason feels like punching them clean through the teal grey, sloppily painted wood of the bench. There is a half broken, rusty nail poking out of one of the handles where her sleeve gets caught again and again, and she is sure the bottom must be full of old, moldy wads of chewing gum. No, Bench No. 3 is not a bench Regina will be particularly fond of reliving.

"How's she?" she asks Whale when he comes out of the room, throwing back a deceptively casual smile towards Ruby. "Is she all right?"

"She's going to be fine. Shouldn't over exert herself for the next few days is all."

Regina nods and sits down and rocks the bench as her sleeve gathers new tears.

The Charmings and Ruby leave after a while; Henry strays to the bench for a goodbye hug, and a kiss to her cheek, and to say that he is glad that she is all right. Regina's heart is suddenly so, so full.

The corridor empties out but Regina sits on her bench, and well — just sits, until the buzz of the fluorescent light is deafening in the silence around her, and then she gets up and walks into Emma's room.

Emma is sleeping.

For a long moment Regina watches from the doorway: the rise and fall of the thin hospital blanket, the steady drip of the IV, the soft shadows gathered in the curves and corners of the other woman. Emma looks completely out of place in the sterile room of whitewashed walls and chrome cabinets. This isn't where she belongs, Regina thinks. Emma belongs — but that really is a whole other debate, isn't it? Because Regina can't really find a place where Emma belongs completely, destined always to be an interloper. In this they are both the same. And maybe, well … she takes that maybe and shoves it somewhere far away. She steps forward towards the sleeping woman, contemplates magicking herself out of there, and sits beside Emma, almost at the edge of the bed. She starts with the hand that has the IV in it, smoothing over the cuts and calluses and blisters from wielding a sword, and a long, flat bruise that wraps around the wrist, before moving to the other hand.

She is good at it, she has years of practice, but instead of just hovering over the wounds, she can't help but trace them with the tips of her fingers, just like Emma had in her inexperience.

She traces the features she has seen reflected so many times in her son's, smoothing a cut in a dark golden eyebrow, and softly taking away the swelling from a puffy eye. Her fingers trace a downward path on one pale cheek, cup it gently, and then she pours her magic into the other woman, a thumb unconsciously stroking the chin.

Emma opens an eye, the one that hadn't been puffy to begin with, to look at her.

"This feels kinda nice," she rasps. "I'm all … tingly."

Regina's glare is sharp as lasers, but she doesn't remove the hand or move away.

"In all my years," she says, "I've never met someone so supremely idiotic. What were you thinking?"

"Wasn't."

"Do you ever? I should've left you there to rot!"

Emma nods sagely. "Humus for your apple tree."

Regina looks like she is about to make a scathing remark but takes a deep breath instead, and doesn't say anything, though the sound of molars grinding against molars is clearly audible.

After a while Emma presses her cheek into her hand, indicating it is enough. "Okay, stop now," she says. "I can do the rest of the healing on my own."

"Shut up."

"Really, Regina, I don't want you to exhaust yourself and—"

"Unlike some idiots I know, I'm well rested and healed. How do you expect to look after my son if you keep indulging in such foolhardy things?"

Emma pouts.

"You scold like a grandma!"

Regina's eyes twinkle suddenly. "I am, you know."

"Oh, please! Not you, too!"

"The topic has been breached before, I presume?"

"I don't care a fig for that!" Emma raises an IV infused hand to touch Regina's cheek lightly. "You are not my grandmother!"

"My, what turn of expression! You don't care a fig!"

"Mary Margaret has a stash of Regency romances hidden behind the encyclopedias."

Regina's lips twitch. "You don't say."

Emma nods, and then frowns. "Enough! Don't make me yank your hand away from my cheek!"

Regina checks the flow of magic. "Nothing's stopping you," she says placidly.

"Well, maybe I like having it there."

Regina's eyebrows journey upwards. They look at each other for a moment before Emma says, "I think without the pain, the morphine is going straight to my head."

"Or it's just your penchant for speaking without thinking first."

"Oh, yeah. I'm hopeless, aren't I? Did you meet Henry?"

Regina nods, suddenly smiling widely. "He kissed my cheek."

"Now there's progress for you!" Emma says, and then before she can stop herself, "Care to demonstrate?"

Regina looks at her wide pupils, and thinks of the things she might care to demonstrate with this woman, and shakes her head.

"You should sleep," she says, releasing the gentle suggestion from the fingertips of the hand still cupping Emma's cheek.

"No, but…" Emma says, or tries to; her eyes grow heavy and eventually flutter close. "No' fair," she mumbles sleepily.

Regina waits till her breathing evens out into the smooth rhythm of slumber before tucking the blanket around her sleeping form. She sits there for a bit, delaying her departure, thinking over Emma's last, sleepy request, her hand lingering in the ghost of a touch over a pale cheek and soft, blond curls, until a familiar and unwelcome step rings in the empty corridor outside.

And then, just for the heck of it, she waits until the pixie-haired woman is right at the door, before bending down, placing a kiss on Emma's cheek, and vanishing in a suspicious puff of smoke.

She is pretty sure there was an enraged gasp in her wake.

...

Bench No. 4 now, that is a little problematic. It's a little after No. 3, and it involves a very warm and bright spring day, a stout, little bench in the Mossbury Park, surrounded by lots of pigeons and doves, and maybe a couple of crows, dew slippery grass, and hydrangeas towards the end. It involves Emma Swan in a white tank top, and a checkered button down shirt that once belonged to her dad, but that she claimed as her own not long after her return from her sojourn in fairytale land, and a pair of jeans that are the color of faded evening skies and not painted on for a change, and sneakers. Sitting there on the bench like that, hair blowing every which way, she looks years younger.

"Hi," she waves when she sees Regina. "You came."

Regina can't wave back. Regina's hands are full of pale blue and pink sachets of sugar and creamer, and two cups of coffee she picked up from Granny's on her way. Up until the moment she saw Emma, she wasn't sure whether she wanted to see her at all or not. But then it's Emma, and she is smiling, and for a moment Regina forgets the reasons she'd thought it would be a bad idea, and, instead, thrusts a cup of scalding coffee in Emma's face.

"Oh," Emma says. "I thought we could grab some later at Granny's, but okay. This is better."

Regina still has enough presence of mind left to produce a tissue, wipe the bench before sitting beside the Sheriff, and wipe the bottom of the cup before putting it down. Emma laughs and unceremoniously dumps sugar and creamer in her coffee and stirs.

"So why did you call me here?" Regina says as she carefully tears a sachet of creamer.

"Because," says Emma.

"Because?"

"Don't you get tired of being coped up in there all the time? What do you even do? Watch movies? Read? Cook?"

"I have ways to occupy myself," Regina says stiffly.

"Well," Emma says, takes a big sip, and burns her tongue. "Ow. This is hot! Well," she says again. "I don't care. You're having coffee with me right here, right at this time, every day now."

"Am I? And why?"

"Because."

"Your reasons are impeccable, dear."

"Aren't they just!" Emma beams.

After that they just sit for a while, sipping their coffees, talking about their son, commenting on random things. Eventually Regina makes to put down her empty cup when Emma leaps in.

"Here, let me!" She takes it.

The air around both the empty cups is suddenly alive with green and gold flickers as they are levitated towards the dustbin standing between two sturdy little shrubs. Emma looks so very proud for a moment.

"You shouldn't be so cavalier about it," Regina says.

Emma's smile falters a little. "Well," she says sullenly. "Maybe I was trying to impress someone."

"Me?" Regina's tone is incredulous.

"No, Gepetto!" Emma points to the old man walking serenely on a trail some distance away.

"You know you're just an overgrown silly child," Regina says, but she is smiling.

Emma shrugs, suddenly pink.

"Who's teaching you? Blue?"

"Nah," Emma makes a face. "She said she would but I asked Nova — you know, Sister Astrid?" Regina nods. "Yeah, I asked her. Blue sort of … creeps me out. Her pictures in Henry's books are hardly PG. Mother Superior indeed."

"Indeed," Regina says, eyes laughing.

"Yeah. Sister Astrid it is."

"I never realized Sister Astrid was such an expert at magic," Regina remarks.

Emma's response can be classified as an undignified giggle as she pulls her legs up and sits cross-legged on the bench. "No. We've had some hilarious incidents! But we make do. It's all quite all right," she gives a lop-sided smile, and Regina feels her heart flutter a bit. "I'm mostly working to control it, not become an expert at it."

Regina nods, and then cautiously, hesitantly, she reaches for the hand that's resting on soft, blue denim; Emma quirks a questioning eyebrow, but does not immediately retract the hand.

"So what else do you do all day?" Regina says as her thumb traces the luck line from Emma's wrist to the top of her palm.

"I, uh—" Emma suddenly finds it hard to speak; Regina's grip is gentle enough that she can take her hand away any time. She chooses not to. "I still have the Sheriff's duties," she eventually says. "And David's teaching me how to fence."

"Well, well. So that's how you got these?" Regina says, now tracing the calluses on the hand. A flick of her thumb and they're gone.

"Hey!" Emma protests, though she kinda likes the shiny, smooth skin. "I earned those!"

"I'm sure you did, dear," Regina squeezes her hand soothingly, "but I'd rather you didn't keep them."

That makes Emma shut up and look again at her unblemished hand.

"It does look nicer, doesn't it?" she seeks confirmation.

"Yes, it's a very pretty hand," Regina says, and Emma beams at her.

And perhaps it's that delight, coupled with the effect Regina's hand holding is having on her heart rate and adrenal glands, that causes an unwitting burst of magic, and Emma finds herself levitating a few inches above the bench, and going rapidly higher.

"Seriously, Emma!" Regina exclaims as her arm is yanked unceremoniously in the air.

"Uh oh," says the airborne Savior, peeking down.

"Control your emotions!"

"Shouldn't I control my magic, instead?"

"Whatever makes you stop imitating a hot air balloon faster, dear," Regina squints up at the Savior's haloed head, a teasing glint in her eyes.

Emma's eyes suddenly widen in panic as she casts a glance at the wide blue yonder with nary a cloud in sight, and imagines herself floating away à la Marjorie Dursley.

"Don't let me go!" she squeaks.

"I won't. Unless you plan on dangling me in your wake all over Storybrooke, in which case I'm afraid I'll have to put my foot — or hand — down, dear."

Panicking very much now, Emma closes her eyes and thinks with all her might of the ground. The result is instantaneous and somewhat dramatic: Regina's hand is yanked from her grip, and Emma finds herself sprawled ass first in the hydrangeas, very unsure how it all came about. Regina stands up to check and almost doubles over with laughter.

...

And this is where we come to our bed.

Now, see, you might have been misled to believe that the bed in question is of the four-legged, headboard-and-foot, mattress laden, blanket covered variety, but I'm afraid that assumption is incorrect — this bed inclines more towards the soil-filled, grass-edged, plant-strewn, very organic type. The one good thing, perhaps, are the hydrangeas which are pretty to behold, even though many get unceremoniously crushed under the Savior's unsavory bottom, it is still a sight to look at: Emma Swan, prone, perplexed, and very, very pretty amongst bunches of pale blue hydrangeas.

Regina has a sudden, overwhelming sense of where Emma belongs.

Surprisingly it's not on her knees in front of the Evil Queen (though in a fashion … but that's for later, I suppose). No, Emma belongs in that warm spring day, Emma belongs with blue skies and pine scented wind, and emotional bursts of magic, sprawled in that bed, surrounded by blue and green. Emma belongs in her father's worn, faded checkered shirt, and an old jeans butter soft after countless washes.

And, Regina thinks, as she lends the Savior a hand and pulls her up, and then right into herself, as her arm goes around her waist and her hand cups a sun-warmed cheek, as she leans in: this is it, she thinks, this is where Emma belongs, and where she belongs.

And then there is quite a bit of kissing, witnessed by Bench No. 4, which yet might be our favorite bench of all, though they say in the greater context of things a bench is a bench is a bench. Or it's not the bench that matters but the people on it, even though one of them is rumpled and sore-assed and slightly pouty, and the other cannot stop smiling.

And later, neither woman will be sure who initiated it, or whether it was their respective magical energies, so drawn to and complimentary of each other since the moment magic came to Storybrooke, which brought them together, but the truth is neither woman will care. Destiny, it might seem, is a wicked and frivolous thing, and always so very set on happening, but Emma doesn't mind. She kinda likes where it has brought her — them.

Bench No. 4 has a little heart and a date scratched into a corner. If you ask Sheriff Swan, she will tell you it's vandalism, and won't be tolerated. What she won't tell you is that this particular act was committed with a police issue Swiss knife. She will talk about sand papering and repainting, but so far Bench No. 4 has seen neither sand paper nor a can of paint. It's starting to get scuff marks on the seat from frequent use, though, and dark brown circles of sloppily treated cups of coffee on one side. The other side is stubbornly clean.

By the time the hydrangeas are replaced with late autumn flowers, and white clematis blooms behind the bench, and the wind gets a freezing nip again, there will be two very clear seat prints on it. You can see them even now if you squint a bit.

~fin~

A/N: My God, but it is hard to think up bench scenarios! I left one out, in the end. Also, yes, I know this gets too cheesy at some points. But c'mon. After the horror that the show is becoming, I think we all need all the cheesiness and fluffiness we can find. I really hope you enjoyed it.

Also:
*Let's just assume that Storybrooke has a little central park thing, and call it Mossbury Park.
*The trouble I had to go to in order to look up spring/early-late autumn flowers. Now, I'm no expert, but hydrangeas are beautiful, as is Sweet Autumn Clematis.