Chapter Text
How long has it been? Emma can’t quite say. But it’s been a long time since she last felt like she would never have a home.
And now here she is, in Home Number Three, laying on the bare floor of her new living room with nothing but the moonlight spilling in through the windows to light the room with its faint glow.
Home Number Three!
She wonders what the little girl who had kept track of the houses she was placed in would think if she saw what would one day be hers. Would she even believe it to be true? Would she think she was dreaming, trapped in another false reality that she would wake up to find did not truly exist? Too used to how easily she was looked over in search for something better, pushed away as soon as she proved to be too much, never the one, Emma knows that little girl would have never believed this would one day be her home. She would not believe she would be starting a family, expanding the one she has already had for two decades of her life now. But this isn’t a dream; she doesn’t need to pinch herself to wake up. This is hers.
It’s been so many years since Pamela shook her small hand in the social worker’s office, so many years since she promised Emma that she would do everything within her power to make sure Emma felt at home and like part of the family. Emma doesn’t know what her life would have been like if Foster Mother Number Twelve had never turned into Mom, but she knows meeting Pam was one of the best things to happen to her.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone get quite this excited about wood floors before.”
Emma smiles at the sound of Regina’s voice. In the empty room, it echoes slightly, bouncing off the walls they spent their weekend painting warm but neutral tones that invite the sunlight in the daytime. They will hang photographs and proudly display captured memories on these walls as they combine their two apartments, their two lives, and fill their home. Their home! She can’t get over it, absolutely none of it. She can’t believe where she’s at in life, or that she’s here with Regina, her very best friend, the soul that best complements her own.
She raises up onto her elbows and easily locates the dark figure in the shadows of the entryway. She can’t wait to find out what Regina looks like bathed in the golden light of a fire crackling and burning in their fireplace, can’t wait to walk into their furnished living room and find Regina relaxing on one of their new sofas at the end of a long day at the office, can't wait... Emma honestly just can’t wait until they’re living together in a house that equally belongs to each of them, until she gets to come home to Regina every day, wake up with her every morning. The amount of joy the thought of just living with Regina in their new house fills her with is unbelievable.
Her eyes sweep around the room, traverse from one end of the tray ceiling to the other, dip down to follow the shape of the mantle and the white brick fireplace. The window is where she stops, the bay window that overlooks the garden; it had been one of Emma’s few must-haves, a reading nook, a space big enough for them both to curl up in. “These windows are pretty amazing, too,” Emma breathes out with a laugh that is almost embarrassing in its giddiness. They’re just windows, but they’re the windows in her house with Regina and maybe, just maybe, Emma’s getting emotional and can’t help how much it’s showing. But she’s waited so long for this. She can see their future here, and it’s overwhelming in its perfection.
Regina doesn’t seem to think she’s ridiculous—not even in the joking way she often does. She hums softly and agrees, “The windows are rather nice.”
“That’s because they’re our windows.”
Regina does laugh this time, a rich sound that easily fills the quiet living room. She wants a lifetime hearing Regina’s laughter in this house, is so ready for every single room to be full of life. “Are you finished declaring your unending love to the house yet, hmm? If you want to make it to the pier before it gets crowded, we should get going.”
With one last look around the room for the night, Emma gets up from where she had lain while waiting for Regina to finish the phone call she had stepped away to take. They’ll be back tomorrow with a moving truck full of their combined belongings. They’ll pile boxes in corners of the rooms and Emma will put together exactly zero pieces of furniture because Regina has already forbidden it after discovering that Emma’s skillful hands just aren’t made for putting things together. (Emma still swears Regina bought a cursed table when she moved into her apartment. Nobody could have put that thing together. It wasn’t Emma’s fault.) But tonight they have plans for a late night walk during one of the last firework shows for the summer, and all of this will be here tomorrow.
Wrapping her arms around Regina, she expels a lengthy but contented sigh into the special warm space that has been collecting her soft breaths for years now. It makes Regina hum and offer more of her neck to Emma, and Emma buries a few gentle kisses there for safekeeping. “You know, we always said we would do this. The house. The shared bed. The family and growing old together. We had no idea what life would have in store for us, but we had always been so certain that we would end up here, that we would face it together.”
“I never doubted we would,” Regina whispers. Her smile is in her voice, light in the breathiness of her admission.
“Never?”
Regina tilts her head back and lets Emma see the honesty in her eyes. “Not even when it felt like an impossibility. You wanted it, and I wanted you. I knew that that would always be enough.”
It always has been.
They could have never found each other again after the years they spent living separate lives. They could have given up on trying to build a bridge to connect those separate lives after they realized how difficult it was when there were hundreds of literal miles between them. They could have let the first fight be the last, the last time they argued and the last time they tried to make it work.
But here they are together, in their home, preparing for the life they had always known they wanted to have.
If Emma closes her eyes, she can hear the footfalls of kids and the barking of a dog, Regina telling them all to be careful and take the noise outside while Emma chases after them like the biggest child of the bunch. She can see herself in the kitchen with a little one beside her on a Wednesday morning making Regina a special breakfast (because every day should be about reminding people they’re special, not just holidays on a calandar, they’ll teach their children). She can hear sneezes and coughs and mumbles of I’m all right when Regina will force her to stay in bed so she can get better even though Emma will protest.
If she closes her eyes, Emma can see her future with Regina.
But Emma doesn’t close her eyes.
Emma slides her fingers through Regina’s and soaks up the warmth and love that Regina pours straight into Emma’s body when she presses her mouth to Emma’s. Because the future is in front of them and they’re on the road to get there, but god does Emma love what she has right now in life. Her present, her current, here right here, right now, is beautiful and full of all the things she once believed she would never experience for herself. And she’s not going to waste a second of it.
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Chapter one had been their beginning, an introduction to each other, themselves, love, and life.
Chapter two has been their fresh start, a rediscovery, trials and tribulations, and is coming to an end as they take the final steps to bring their lives together.
Chapter three...
A burst of color brightens the dark sky above the river, the fireworks booming loud in her ears. But Emma’s not watching the fireworks. Because the thing is, once you’ve seen one spectacular fireworks show, you’ve basically seen them all. There isn’t anything special about the buzz in the night air, nothing magnificent about the spray of color. But the way Regina’s eyes light up with the reflection of the gold and purple in the sky, her face illuminated? No matter how many times Emma witnesses the way Regina’s cheeks lift into a smile, the way her eyes scrunch up and her nose wrinkles at the bridge, Emma feels herself fall a little more in love each time. Regina has and always will be breathtaking.
Chapter three will be the chapter of love, not discovering it, not learning how to do it again, but simply loving.
She’s found her home and her roots are buried deep, messy and tangled and permanent. But now it’s time to live in it.
“How cliche would it be if I kissed you right now?” Emma whispers into Regina’s ear after a particularly loud boom makes the crowd gasp with excited wonderment.
Regina’s body shakes against the front of Emma where she’s been comfortably leaning the entire time they’ve been on the pier. “To say you see fireworks when we kiss,” Regina guesses in a low voice when she turns her head back with a raised eyebrow. The amusement that flecks her eyes is almost as bright as the burst of silver that is fizzling out in front of them.
Grinning, Emma shrugs but nods her head. “I mean, clearly you already do because, come on, it’s me, but yeah.” Regina shakes her head and bites back her laughter. Emma squeezes her hands around Regina’s hips and tickles her sides until Regina’s breath startles out and she can’t help but laugh. Her nose brushes Regina’s cheek, as does the warm caress of Emma’s breath as she whispers. “No holding back laughs. Don’t hide those.”
The air feels warmer when Regina hums and turns around to face Emma, leaning back and then pulling Emma closer to her until their bodies are pressed as closely as they can possibly be while standing in a group of people on the pier. Smoothing her hands over Emma’s back, she tilts her head and quickly moistens her lips, eyes focused on Emma and Emma only. Emma loves how Regina looks at her like she’s the only person around even when the exact opposite is the truth. It makes her feel seen in a way that would make her feel uncomfortably vulnerable if not for how much adoration floods Regina’s face.
They’re smiling when they both lean in for the kiss, and then laughing under their breaths, Regina with a smirk and Emma with a lopsided grin, when they notice the boom and sizzle of the next burst of colors that illuminate the sky. “Perfect timing,” Regina murmurs right against Emma’s mouth, the whisper of her breath the only thing softer than the passing of her lips over Emma’s.
When they kiss, slow and deep despite their surroundings, Emma doesn’t see fireworks.
Her eyes are closed and the warm pressure of Regina’s mouth makes Emma dizzy and everything a little fuzzy. She grows warm from head to toe from the liquid heat that slips down her spine and spreads throughout her.
But Emma still doesn’t see fireworks.
Because Emma sees every smile, every touch, every time Regina’s held her hand and it meant something like she always wanted for it to mean something. She sees them studying and running around as kids, acting out the stories they would later turn into art projects. She sees them sharing kisses in secret and making plans to be together forever. She sees them flirting through texts and on the phone late at night as adults, tentative but wanting. She sees them falling into each other again and again, holding each other, always wanting to be closer closer closer.
Emma doesn’t see fireworks. Because fireworks are gone almost as soon as they appear, a moment of beauty that doesn’t last.
What Emma sees is permanent. She sees Regina, and Regina is everything.
Emma doesn't see fireworks. Emma sees everything.