genessia | revelations and heartaches make you realize [Closed to Regina Mills]

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revelations and heartaches make you realize [Closed to Regina Mills]

Who: Neil and Regina
What: Neil decided to dad at Charlie, Neil turns to Regina to get some advice...and help not freaking out.
Where: The Dancing Donner in Fayren
When: After Regina's off work
Warnings: potential discussions of troubled childhoods, mistreatment of children, and violence. Also relentless schmoop, cursing aplenty.

Neil didn't bother to change before heading out to see Regina, save to grab a jacket to throw on over wifebeater and jeans. A good part of his day had been spent at the firing range in Genessia City, testing his marksmanship--he'd never fired a gun before, but he remembered them from his childhood. Most of the jobs he was best suited for seemed to involve potential use of a firearm, so he wanted to be ready just in case.

He preferred his magic and his blade, but he'd learned to use even a bow and arrow in the Night Dragon's service. If there was a weapon he would be facing, he was going to make sure he knew how it worked.

Making it to the Dancing Donner with a minute or two to spare, Neil ordered himself a drink and found a table near the door, keeping his back to the wall to settle in and wait for Regina--and try to stop himself from obsessing over the situation with Charlie. It wasn't anything he'd ever experienced, by the grace of the gods, but he'd heard stories from some of the other kids in the group home...kids that had been fostered or adopted, then ended up right back in the home because of any number of reasons, and some of them fucking sucked.

Families that hit kids, or worse. Families that said and did horrible things without remorse, or who committed the most unforgivable of sins: made them feel like they didn't belong.

He kept telling himself he hadn't done anything wrong. He'd yelled, he'd cussed her out--she'd done the same thing, that was just Charlie and it was one of the reasons they got along. She was a really good kid, a really good kid--she hadn't done anything wrong or unusual. She just made the mistake of talking to an older guy that might have the wrong kind of eyes.

Taking a sip of his drink--and making a face because it was awful--Neil glanced at the door again, hoping to find the one person that could drag him out of his own head and let him sort out all the unexpected worry and guilt and strange, searing affection he had for the little firebug.

...and like she'd been listening to his thoughts, she walked through the door the second he glanced up.

Sighing in relief, he stood up and waved to get her attention...and said to hell with it and walked over to meet her, reaching for her hand as he approached.

"You are a beautiful sight--and I'm glad to see you, too." he quipped with a smile, bringing her hand to his lips to press a quick kiss to her palm. "Either smack me or kiss me, 'cause I can't shut off my fuckin' brain."

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It was cute that he thought he needed to wave to get her attention, as though she saw anyone else in that bar when she'd felt his panic in every unpunctuated, uncapitalized line of his texts. Even cuter that he stood and crossed the bar to her. Kissing her palm was less cute, more powerful and sent a ripple of fire through her that made her want to take him back to her room, or just take him, instead of kissing or smacking.

She didn't do either until they'd made it back to he table he'd claimed, only curved her fingers up to pat his cheek in an affectionate threat. And when they did sit, she stole his glass and took a sip-- "What did you order? Pixie's piss?" -- and made a face that matched the one he'd made moments before.

"Hell if I know--I asked for ale, I got that." Neil growled, scowling as he scanned the tavern for signs of a server--giving Regina a brief glimpse of the man he was at home, harsh and hypervigilant, dark eyes alive as they viewed, assessed, and prepared to take action in any given situation. "Pretty sure pixie piss tastes better than that crap--hang on a sec."

Shedding his jacket, leaving him crowded comfortably close in just a wifebeater, Neil called a tongue of dragon fire into his palm, concentrated--then let it roll off his palm and into the glass. It immediately caught, flaring in a brief blaze before the fire winked out, leaving not so much as a scorch mark on the tabletop.

And in its wake, there were two glasses instead of one--now containing what appeared to be some vintage of red wine.

Picking up one, Neil took a cautious, experimental sip...then nodded his approval before lifting his glass to her for a toast.

"To putting me outta my misery." he joked before tapping his glass against hers and taking a long, healthy swallow of his drink. Crass, probably, but he wasn't here to taste, he was here to drink. And talk to Regina.

...and maybe steal a kiss or two. Why the hell did she always have to look so damn good?...

"So," he finally sighed, setting his glass down and leaning back in his seat, sprawling a little as he stretched his legs out under the table and comfortably let his ankle rest against one of hers, "I guess I have a kid. How the hell do I make her not hate me for yelling like a damn moron?"

Regina had already raised her hand in a summoning gesture, like opening a cabinet or turning a page, and laughed softly to see he'd had the same thought -- "Next round's on me," she murmured, voice pitched below the noise and intimately near his ear. And since her hand was raised already she turned it to stroke over the meat of his bicep, in a gesture that might have looked friendly from the outside, as long as no one noticed the bite-bruise beneath her hand.

"I could give you the short answer," she all but purred and sipped the pleasant wine she was tempted to call 'fireberry'. "Stop yelling like a damn moron."

But it wasn't a fair answer, because he hadn't been a moron, just a parent. "You're afraid the shit's going to flow downhill and you won't be there to stop it. That's a lot for a kid to handle." Regina tilted her chin and smiled quietly at him. "It's a lot for me to handle."

For a second, Neil could only watch her as she ran her fingers over his arm--and over the bruise of her teeth that still marked his skin. It made him want to kiss her and drag her back to her room at the inn again, both at the same time. Both would be enough and nowhere near enough...

Taking a healthy swallow of his wine to wet the mouth and throat that had gone suddenly bone dry, and tried to listen to the answer to his damn question rather than devolve into fantasies. He shifted his foot under the table, gently jostling hers, and that reminder of contact helped to clear his head.

So did her reminder of that first night in his room, using his own words against him. Watching her as she smiled at him, he shook his head with a smile of his own as he leaned forward again.

"Wouldn't know it to look at you." he observed, leaning over to quickly kiss her temple. "Evil Queen my ass, Queen of Grace Under Pressure's more like it." Looking down into his wine glass, he shook his head. "I just--it wasn't anything, y'know? I met her earlier in the day, that first day I showed up when you 'n me went for drinks? And I've just been helpin' her out. She's a fire mage--pyrokinetic, she calls it anyway--so I offered to help her with her powers, bound her dreams so she could sleep at night..."

Licking his lips restlessly, he followed by rubbing a hand across his mouth with a little shake of his head.

"She got dealt a shittier hand than she deserved--rivals yours, from where I sit. Worse, 'cause her folks loved her and she lost 'em. I wasn't trying to be her dad, I was just trying to...keep that shit from rollin' downhill, like you said. Like I said."

He snickered, shaking his head as he nudged her foot under the table again with his own.

"You got too good a memory...so how do you do it? Handle teenagers. Like a mom--I mean, should I apologize for what I did? Or just for being a dick about it?"

How was this her life now? Giving a man who thought he was a sociopath parenting tips, over drinks in a tavern that wouldn't have been out of place in her realm. She shook her head in free-floating amusement, not attached to anything particular he'd said.

"Tautological," she replied, just to be a brat, and sipped the wine. "Queenliness is defined as Grace Under Pressure, more or less." Poise, grace, and being a little more refined.

"As for Charlie, whether you were trying to be her dad or not, you stepped in his spot." She glanced up at him, trying to gauge how he'd react to an observation that he did that a lot. Sighing softly, she rested her hand on the back of his wrist. "Just like you keep stepping into Robin's."

Another roll of her shoulders broke the tension she felt at saying that, and she moved to turn the touch into a meaningful caress, fingers separating and feathering along the sides of his wrist. "She's young, and fathers are special to little girls. She's got to learn that you can care like her dad and she can let you without betraying him.

"Don't apologize for caring. Apologize for yelling, and ask her what else you did wrong. She might be able to tell you. And if she can't, at least she'll know it mattered enough to ask."

Her lips pursed and her throat tried to cinch tight at memories of Henry, but she sipped her wine and shrugged it all back. "She'll come around, just let her hang onto her dad for a little while. Be her friend first."

The mention of Robin stung, but not because he was a rival--he was her mate, Neil didn't compare to that and he never would. She loved him, and she always would, he wanted her to love the guy. He was her soulmate.

Neil was okay with the guy having her soul--he could settle for her heart. It was just gonna take time for her to figure it out...and watching her struggle while she did fucking sucked.

So the wrist under her hand turned, pulling his arm back until he could mesh their fingers, pressing them together not unlike she had the night they met. He held on, firm but gentle, and tried to will a little of that reassurance into her while she spoke.

He waited until she was done before he caught her chin, turned her head to face him, and kissed her--the quickest brush of lips to smooth away the last of that brief, unhappy little frown.

"I'll try to keep that in mind." he replied softly after he drew back, then dropped his forehead into his free hand so he could run a hand over his head and back to his nape, undoing the knot he had his hair in to relieve some tension to stave off the first little discomforts of a building headache.

"Like, consciously--I never knew my parents, I don't...really know what it's like to miss 'em. Hell, I don't even know much about caring for people, I haven't done much of it in my life." Scrubbing his hand back and forth through his hair to let it shake loose, he wrinkled his nose. "I find it pisses me off a lot."

This constant kissing and handholding had to stop. It made it next to impossible to maintain a train of thought, which would be annoying even if she didn't care about the subject matter. It also gave her too much license to engage in the habit herself.

Which, obviously, was why when he dropped his head into his hand, her fingers joined his at the back of his neck. One odd finger-scuffle later, the knot in his hair had come free, he'd shaken his hair loose, and her hand carded through it, smoothing it down--until her hand settled at the back of his neck, thumb working away the muscle tension beneath his occipital ridge.

"For someone who hasn't done much caring and is pissed off by it, you fall into it easily enough."

The only advantage to the elastic bands he'd discovered in this world for binding his hair was that he could get it completely off his neck, unlike the leather thongs he tied it back with when he trained or fought back home. Aside from that, they were too much of a good thing and hurt when they came out--annoying, until Regina's fingers joined his, getting the damn thing loose without pulling out pieces of his scalp along with it.

Then she was running her fingers through his hair, and the world seemed to crawl to a stop for a second as he sat there with his head in his hand, her fingers stirring insidiously delicious ripples of sensation that ran down his spine, coaxing a hum of pleasure from deep in his chest, so low and rough it could have been a purr. Her hand finally settled on his nape, thumb sliding with sure, firm strokes along the base of his skull that turned that low sound into a sigh.

"Caring doesn't piss me off, it's when the people I am currently caring about are at risk of being fucked with. Or have been fucked with--that part is complete bullshit." His eyes had drifted shut at some point, but now opened as he turned his head only as much as was needed to look into her face without dislodging her hand from its new home.

"Or is that--whatchacallit? Tautological again? People I care about being fucked with being bullshit."

"No." A small, teasing smile appeared on her lips, as she leaned toward him to take advantage of his tipped-up mouth. It wasn't a kiss, precisely, more the sweet and playful brush of her mouth against his, a sip of his breath, and nuzzling her nose and lips against the roughness of the hair around his mouth.

Chest swelling with the fondness that kept drawing her back to him, she worked at the knots of tension at the top of his spine, and intermittently stroked through his hair. If he hadn't specifically said he wanted to drink, she'd have met him in her room where they could stretch out on the couch together and continue this conversation in privacy.

"It's definitional."

Neil's smile matched hers as she leaned in, lips teasing over hers without ever really catching, her breath warm as it fluttered across his face, teasing and just comfortably slithering into his personal space--something he was usually hyper vigilant about. There was no discomfort, though, as her nearness pricked across his senses, washing over his skin and tripping those primitive instincts he honed to a fine edge--the usual adrenaline soaked run, fight, kill was replaced by a warm and electric mine, mine, mine, seeking rather than repelling.

Catching her upper lip for a split second, he ghosted a kiss against the shallow valley of the scar on her upper lip, the barely there contact ending on another low hum that vibrated through the air as her thumb found a knot and pressed until it melted into liquid heat that spread down his neck and into his shoulders, making his eyes shut again.

"'Definitional'--now I think you're just makin' fun of the dropout." he joked, his voice growing a little smoother, softer as she touched him--before his breath caught when her fingers glided back up into his hair, then rushed ragged out of his lungs. "That's not even a word, you're puttin' me on."

"It is, and I'm not," she murmured without lifting her mouth from his, because she knew if she pulled back even a little, she'd dive back in for a real kiss, deep and sweet and hungry. "Means the same as occupational hazard or comes with the territory."

Her hand in his hair tugged softly, a somewhat deliberate reminder of the last time she'd done it, when his face had been between her thighs and she'd been crying out his name. Possibly a miscalculation on her part... definitely a miscalculation on her part. Her abdomen tightened, fluttering with fresh arousal.

The hand at his nape closed, tightening, as she breathed out again. "Why are we here? We can drink in private." Or lie together on a couch and kiss between moments of conversation. Until they couldn't talk anymore.

Neil's head followed that gentle tug, head shifting on his hand and eyes rolling back just before they shut--because he was thinking about that himself.

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revelations and heartaches make you realize [Closed to Regina Mills]

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