a|n: belated birthday fic for colourmayfade.

(sexy) back

He's late.

Not that she would expect the thief to know how to tell time even if he happened to own a watch (doubtful), but still…he and his men are never this late.

She resumes her pacing, seething quietly and trying not to care what might have delayed them when someone joins her in the entrance hall.

"I'm sure they're fine, Regina," she hears behind her, the words spoken with a kindness that's all too familiar, and entirely unwelcome. Back stiffening in her indignation, she whirls on Snow with a sneer at the ready.

"Am I supposed to pretend I know what you're blathering about?"

"You aren't waiting for Robin and his men?" Snow wonders, with a play at innocence that no longer suits her. "They have been gone a while."

"Please," Regina scoffs, but unease contracts her stomach to know she isn't the only one who'd noticed as much. "As if I care that a bunch of criminals are too incompetent to find their way back to the castle."

"I see," says Snow, face perfectly placid. "Well, be that as it may, I'm glad Robin is with them."

"And why's that?" Regina asks waspishly, resigned to the fact that humoring Snow will be the most judicious course of action in getting the woman to leave her alone.

"He has something to come home to," Snow says simply, matter-of-factly. "Trust me; he won't get lost."

Regina stares, uncomprehending. What the hell is the woman implying?

"You and I both know he would never miss dinner with his son," Snow continues, with such calculated sincerity that Regina grits her teeth hard enough to nearly break something. "I'm sure he'll return in no time, and then you can go back to…not worrying about it."

With that, Snow glides off, leaving her in considerably fouler spirits than before.

…

Regina lingers a while longer in the deserted atrium, immensely irritated and stalling for options.

She's two seconds from deciding to just go after them herself—can't trust a man to get anything right on his own—when there's a distant boom of raucous laughter.

The rumbling practically sends a flower vase teetering off an end table, and then the front doors are thrust wide open, streaming in sunlight to frame the silhouettes of half a dozen Merry Men.

Her eyes pull Robin out of the horde in an instant, drawn to lock on his easy, dimpled grin. He's leaned a casual elbow against the doorframe above his head, idly spinning a rucksack by its the leather strings while he chuckles over Much the miller's son's spirited reenactment of the more eventful parts of their journey.

She feels suddenly, inexplicably furious with him.

How dare he simply show up like this, after hours of forcing her to dwell on every manner of disastrous situations he might have strolled into because the idiot frankly just can't help himself? He might have gotten picked apart by flying monkeys, or fallen into her wicked sister's clutches somehow, because those are exactly the stupid sorts of things he'd do, always making messes for her to clean up, and how dare he return to the castle in one smug, whole piece?

"Thief!" Regina fumes, causing several heads to swivel around, and then several more to hurriedly look the other way as she advances on him in a blaze of hostility. "You're late."

Robin exchanges a bemused smile with his men as they hastily shuffle and scatter, which only serves to enrage her further.

"Milady," he greets her then, insolent as ever in his determination to play dumb at proper titles, and the man has some nerve, regarding her with such laughter in his eyes as he dips into a shallow, taunting bow. "A pleasure, as always."

"Do you have what I need?" she asks brusquely, fighting back the dark impulse to destroy everything in sight.

"I may." Mischief crinkles every corner of his face now as he innocently drops the satchel down by his side, its contents shifting in a telling manner.

Regina opens her mouth to demand that he give her the bag and stop wasting her time, but something in his gaze—a blueness there she can never avoid whenever he's bold enough to stand this close—thoroughly distracts her, until she's quite forgotten what she'd been about to yell at him.

His voice lowers several decibels then, acquiring a rough sort of quality that rubs her in a very wrong way, and she's finding it terribly difficult to look away from him. "Depends what it is that you've found yourself wanting for, milady."

His men have been dawdling some respectful distance away, counting coins and altogether doing a rather poor job of pretending not to eavesdrop on them, but here they drop their jaws and stare in morbid fascination, as though their fearless leader has just prodded a fire-breathing dragon in the eye.

Oh, she'll show them fire.

She never would've thought Robin foolish enough to risk his head in order to tease her so outrageously in front of an audience.

But then, he is a thief, a man of questionable values and petty pursuits, and of course he could never simply do as she's asked without uncovering some new way of infuriating her, as if he finds some perverse enjoyment in being sneered at and insulted.

Her gaze flicks traitorously down to catch on the crooked edge of his grin before glaring mulishly up into all that damnable blue again.

Regina draws herself to her full height, and though the vehement tilt of her chin barely reaches his collarbone, she's brought grown men to their knees with far, far less.

She takes another menacing step, meaning to corner him with her ire, to teach him a lesson or two about toying with a Queen who's killed and cursed entire lands, lest he ever forget all the things that she's done.

To her dismay Robin budges not an inch, and in fact he seems quite keen on meeting her halfway, with a brow lifted in challenge and the hint of a smirk at play on his lips.

She wonders if she's lost her touch, or if he's somehow stolen it from her.

"Does it look like I'm in the mood for games?" she snarls, loosening all the pent-up rage that had kept her pacing back and forth for the better part of her afternoon.

"Oh, I wouldn't dream of it," he tells her, very seriously, "for I'm certain that's not a game I could ever win with you."

He's not wrong about that, but even voicing her agreement aloud feels like surrendering something to him, and the thought of it displeases her greatly.

"I believe you've kept me waiting long enough." She scowls and snatches the squirming rucksack from his unresisting grip.

Robin watches her with nothing but the politest interest while she rips through knotted leather to stare down her nose at his offering, with every expectation that he'll have fallen short in this regard as well.

Her lips purse irritably.

No fewer than two dozen brightly colored newts blink dazedly up at her before resuming their frantic attempts at escape, climbing over one another to no avail she secures the bag shut again.

Regina notices then the boggy appearance of Robin's boots, caked in a muddy substance that's similarly streaked across his trousers and forearms. The past many hours return to her with a new kind of clarity, hours poured into her pacing hallways and his wading through swamp water at her command.

Hazarding a reluctant not-quite-glare back up at his face, she's met with the brunt of a full smile this time. Feeling peculiarly lightheaded, she brandishes the bag, trying to shove some space back between them as the newts rustle around in protest.

"These would have been nice to have two hours ago," she tells him peevishly.

"Still can't say thank you, then, can you?" Robin observes, dimples deepening the harder she glowers, and it's the last straw when he bites down on that insufferable grin, as though she's played directly into his hand and this is just a game to him after all.

"I'll say thank you when I feel a thank you has been earned." She turns an imperious eye toward the Merry Men, and they hastily straighten like a group of misfit boys caught by their high school principal. "Apparently, getting this one task done in a timely fashion was expecting too much from you."

"Now that's hardly fair, Your Majesty," Will pipes up. "We was just messin' around for old times' sake whilst Robin was mucking about getting you your voodoo lizards—" he waggles his fingers dramatically, as if to conjure up some sorcery himself, "—so you could do your fancy little bit of spellwork."

"Need I remind you that that little bit of spellwork is the only thing standing between you and the Witch?"

"It's no skin off me own back. She's a score to settle with you, not any of us," Will shrugs, earning an appalled look from Little John, but the younger man squares out his chest and stands his ground, more than ready for a fight if it comes down to it.

Regina might have been impressed with his spine (his stupidity) if she weren't so intent on delivering exactly that, if a fight is what they want from her, fist unfurling as she pulls every ounce of her fire magic to her fingertips and—

Robin's hand suddenly slips out of nowhere to ease a thumb around her wrist, in a gesture he's likely intended to be soothing, and she's so startled by the unsolicited contact that her power fizzes out in a tendril of smoke.

"Regina," he murmurs, low into her ear. "He didn't mean anything by it."

She's not sure what does it—the audacity of him to call her by name, or the manner in which he says it (gently, and most disconcertingly so)—but something inside of her snaps at the sound, and she cannot be rid of his touch, his kindness, his everything, quickly enough.

"How dare you," she thunders, wrenching free of his grasp, but still he stays, so patient and unmoving, so stubborn in his refusal to be wary of her anger, and she can't have that, no, she cannot.

She presses into him mercilessly now, her contempt unleashed in full. "Trust a thief not to keep his filthy hands to himself. Has it ever occurred to you to clean them for once?" She casts a scornful eye across the length of his form, sizing him up and clearly finding him wanting, curling a lip until it practically drips with disdain. "You reek of forests and peasantry."

She spits out the last word with all the venom she has at her disposal, and his smile finally falters, gaze fixed on something just beyond her shoulder.

"Papa?"

Regina freezes, stricken.

Robin's eyes have emptied of their usual laughter, the blue in them dulled until she could almost swear they've turned the dark grey shade of clouds before a storm.

She turns to find Roland peering uncertainly out from behind an ancient, rundown grandfather clock, with Snow emerging around the corner just a few seconds later, having come to investigate all the fuss and commotion that Robin and his men had brought back with them.

The look Snow gives her is carefully blank, but the boy—he can't have grasped the meaning of what Regina's just said, but he's read his father's face well enough, and the unspoken threat in how she's tensed and simmering most dangerously in front of Robin, like a bomb that's about to explode.

Forehead lined with a childlike concern, Roland shifts away from his papa's guarded expression to regard Regina with…not fear, not exactly, but something that hovers uncomfortably close to it, and her cheeks begin to warm in shame.

The entrance hall has gone deathly still, and she struggles, feeling terribly exposed in all that oppressive silence, to gather air to her lungs.

Distantly, she registers a slight pattering of footfalls, and then a low, chuckling oomph as Roland collides into his father's outstretched arms.

"And how was your afternoon, my boy?"

"The best, Papa. I helped Granny make cookies!"

"Did you?"

"With brown sugar, and tree nuts, and cim—cimna—cimmanon."

"These cookies must have been quite good, for I see you've decided to save a few crumbs for later, hmm? Right here, and here, and—"

A squirming shriek of laughter, and Roland seems to have all but forgotten the scene he'd just stumbled upon.

The Merry Men, for their part, have suddenly developed a keen interest in Regina's marble flooring, studying the cracks there while removing various remnants of the forest from their beards and outer garments.

But Robin…

Even as he bounces his boy on one hip and murmurs good-natured nothings into his ear, Robin's attention never wavers from her, pressing, daring her to turn and feel the burn of his scrutiny.

Forcing her face into something cold and impassive, Regina sweeps a look of indifference over the men crowding her atrium, the clock as it chimes out the number of hours past midday—anywhere but Robin's eyes, fearing what color she'll find in them now.

Wordlessly excusing herself, she takes steely, measured strides toward the corridor, clenching her bag of newts and half-waiting (half-hoping) for him to stop her, to hear the apology she'll never give aloud.

But her name doesn't come, not even a call of milady as she endeavors to walk away from him in a way that doesn't feel like a retreat, head held high while she brushes past Snow with every line of her body haughty to the last.

…

As soon as she's certain she hasn't been followed, she poofs the rest of the way, landing several feet embarrassingly off course and throwing out a hand to steady herself against the balcony ledge.

It's an effort to calm her breathing, and by the time her pulse has found an even rhythm again, the newts have begun to fidget, wriggling indignantly when she tightens her grip on the bag. They grow more restless the longer Regina stands there, scowling at the horizon.

Acres of green stretch out to touch all that blue in the sky, and she resolutely turns her back to the view, having seen more of him in it than she'd ever care to admit.

She's never understood why he and his men had elected to abandon their vagrant ways and take up refuge in her castle. After all, as Will had so thoughtfully pointed out, there's only one person the Wicked Witch is after.

Perhaps the thief is finally coming to realize that living within these walls, where evil goes by another name, is not without its own perils.

Regina wonders what sort of witch his boy must think her to be, now.

Forcing her thoughts away from the forest, she regards the rucksack in hands. The spell requires moonlight and more than a little preparation (harvesting newt eyes and extracting the toxins from their skin are hardly simple undertakings), and at the very least, it will distract her mind by giving her hands something to do.

Loosening the leather straps, she peers down at her amphibian hostages. As the first newt lifts a forlorn gaze to hers, she hears a gentle "Regina?" on the other side of her door, unmistakably feminine, and unmistakably Snow's.

"Not now," Regina growls, whipping around to engage the empty room with a hostile expression in the event that Snow doesn't take no for an answer (it certainly wouldn't be the first time).

But she's uncharacteristically mindful of her privacy today, it seems, and Regina begins to wonder if Snow hasn't given up on her altogether when the silence stretches thin behind her door.

"Regina?" Snow tries again eventually, with a firm knock this time.

No such luck, then.

Regina is debating whether to sneak out by way of the balcony or confront Snow head-on, perhaps bully the woman into leaving her alone, when she vaguely registers an unpleasant slimy sensation over the back of one hand.

She jerks away on instinct and a newt, looking rather stunned, goes soaring past her before landing deftly onto paved stone and slithering rapidly toward the marble balustrade, determined to escape her for good.

By the time she's recovered enough from her astonishment to fling a hasty stunning spell in its direction, immobilizing the creature mid-leap, six other newts have managed to slink out of the rucksack, running amok in further search of freedom.

Biting back curses under her breath, Regina tosses her magic left and right, jagged slivers of light that reflect uselessly off of flat stone surfaces when they miss their mark, and then—

"Regina, are you there?"

Snow's voice is distinctly louder now, bouncing back and forth against the room's vaulted ceilings in irritating echo.

In that split second of hesitation, the thief's hard-earned newts scatter and disappear, leaving Regina suspended somewhere between rage and reluctance for Snow to find her in such a state of intense frustration.

The woman has always had a knack of choosing just the wrong moment to make her approach, with her advice and her accusations and whatever else she's come to deliver this time.

Snow will be none too pleased to discover that the Queen has left the castle without a bodyguard, Regina thinks with grim satisfaction as she churns the air into a billow of purple, spiriting her down to the courtyard below and then beyond to the stables bordering the edge of the woods.

Her fury is forefront again as she stalks forward, seething through her teeth and bulldozing her way between two ivy-twined maples. She follows the sounds of a babbling brook toward its source, refusing to stop and dwell on what, exactly, has gotten her so worked up.

The sun has set fire to the sky above, a blaze of blue she cannot bear to look on right now for all that it will burn her too.

In her confusion she feels dangerous, volatile, with one vicious thought as she forges ahead: God help any unwelcome witnesses to her folly should she happen upon them, for she won't be the one in need of protection then.

…

It occurs to Regina at some point that she doesn't have the faintest clue where to go about replacing the damn newts she'd lost. She's certainly no stranger to getting her hands dirty in other ways, but at least in this, she'd always had guards—and now thieves—to do her bidding.

Still, any standing body of water seems like a promising place to start, and a half hour of marching stubbornly onward later she finds herself at a riverbank, empty rucksack clutched in hand as she leans her weight into a tree and steps gingerly out of her heels.

She eases over the wet, worn smoothness of the pebbles underfoot, hitching up hemlines and keeping a watchful eye for anything that slithers or glints neon-bright in the sun. Magic crackles quietly, clinging static-like at her fingertips, ready to stun the first thing that moves.

Instead, her gaze catches on a pair of dark brown boots, resting beside a large slab of rock where a green leather vest with round bronze fastenings has been discarded.

Several other items of clothing have been likewise strewn along the bank, heading for the river in a progressive state of undress—a set of gloves, trousers in a crumpled heap, a long-sleeved tunic that the modest current is endeavoring to drag underwater, and there the trail ends.

Regina's grip slackens, the bag in her hand slipping, and then falling, floating, forgotten, away from her.

She doesn't mean to stare.

He doesn't seem to notice.

Robin's back is to her, the muscles there moving languidly as he rolls his shoulders and reaches with a porous stone for a troublesome spot along his spine. His skin glistens where the sunlight has fallen to touch it, rivulets trickling down, down, to meet with the river lapping up his backside.

She…

He…

Regina is paralyzed, shock and something else (something warm and spreading) betraying her every impulse to run and rooting her firmly to the ground. She watches helplessly while he arches sideways and stretches his neck, releasing a deep, satisfied groan with the movement before he resumes his scrubbing, focusing on his chest next.

If she leaves now, he'll never have to know.

Her body, it seems, has other ideas.

Robin shifts and bends, rubbing a lazy palm across his abdomen, and a twin set of dimples carved low into his back makes a scandalous appearance, drawing her gaze further downward to tease out the contours of his bared form below.

His hands begin to dip in kind, reaching to grasp beneath the water, arms cording and flexing with the steadiness of his ministrations, and Regina's mind goes wild on her, imagining how he might feel (how he might say her name) if she were to—

It's not until her eyes dart reflexively back up his spine to the base of his neck that she realizes he's gone absolutely still. His head is tilted to the side as though listening intently for something, his entire body suddenly tense with the knowledge that he's no longer alone.

Caught, she summons a scowl to her defense just in time as Robin turns halfway and glances over one shoulder.

His jaw unhinges slightly to find her barefoot on the riverbank, dress hiked carelessly up to a knee. She breaks from his stare to pluck indifferently at a stray bit of leaf on her corset, acutely aware of how absurd she must appear to him.

"Regina?" His voice is low, bewildered.

"I was looking for newts," she informs him stiffly with a vague gesture toward the water, hating how foolish the words make her sound.

Robin's silent a moment before inquiring evenly, "Were the ones I obtained not suited to the task?"

"I didn't have the chance to find out," she tells him, still determinedly avoiding his gaze. "I…lost them. They got away."

"I see."

His tone is unreadable, unbearably so, and she's sorely tempted to just cut her losses and let him have the damn stream to himself when a hint of his old amusement resurfaces. "Any luck yet?"

She huffs out a laugh that's equal parts weary and exasperated. "Clearly not."

"I'm sure some will turn up soon enough." He seems content to leave it at that, casually palming water and rinsing his neck as though he has no qualms about her standing there, watching him finish his bath.

Regina glares intently at a spot near her feet, where a small turtle has been meticulously poking his way through the rocks. She's already half-dreading Robin's response when she asks him, every inch of her voice kept carefully neutral, "And how is Roland doing?"

But it's Robin's turn to chuckle this time, the sound of it rueful (the feel of it touching deep in her chest) as he explains, "My boy…is actually rather upset at the moment, as it turns out."

The turtle has stopped to inspect a leaf she's just flicked from her gown. "Is that right?" she wonders tonelessly.

"Indeed." Robin pauses. "He demanded to know what I'd done to make His Majesty so cross with me."

A startled "Oh!" is all Regina can say, drawn from her intense perusal of the ground to find his eyes crinkled in a smile.

"Well…good," she recovers with a sniff when he offers nothing more, pulling her shoulders back into rigid, formal lines. "If you'll excuse me, thief, my time is needed elsewhere. I trust you can manage not to get lost on your way back?"

Gathering her skirts and what's left of her pride, she turns to go.

"If I may be so bold," Robin calls after her (still smiling, from the sound of it), "where do you plan on looking next?"

She stills.

"For your newts," he clarifies needlessly, brushing a thumb across his lower lip as if he could hide that growing smirk of his from her.

Regina bristles instantly, but she has no answer for him, can't even bother to tell a good lie, and he watches her, warm-gazed, while she struggles in silence.

"I'll get you more, milady," he tells her at last, in the husky-low tenor of a vow, and she marvels at how he can continue to be so damnably resistant to her deplorable treatment of him.

Her tongue pressed obstinately to the roof of her mouth, she gives him a curt, wordless nod.

Still can't say thank you.

Robin inclines his head to the water, looking pleased and trying not to rub in the fact that she's now doubled her debt to him, when an air of contemplation crosses over his features.

"There is just one small problem," he says, rather gravely. "My hands are certain to get quite filthy again, I'm afraid."

He's teasing her, fearlessly as ever, and the knowledge of it relieves knots inside of her that she'd studiously ignored until now, unspooling warmth into her belly.

"Your concept of 'clean' was always questionable at best," she dismisses immediately, the insult slipping out of her like a bad habit, but it's softer than she's accustomed to, her usual disdain gentling into something that could almost be mistaken for fondness. "You can only take the man out of the forest, after all."

"Fair enough," Robin concedes, warring with another grin. "You have my apologies for any grievances you've been obliged to suffer on my account." His voice somehow finds the room to drop yet another octave lower. "I know how partial Your Majesty is to the company of forest scoundrels such as myself."

Her thin-lipped, mulish expression seems to confirm as much to him, and he turns to face her fully now, every roguish curve of his smile on vivid, vexing display as he slows to a stop.

Regina's mind is a rebellious thing, tripping and stumbling over the rest of his body—the front of him every bit as defined as the back, with a thin trail of hair diving down his navel—and a traitorous flush colors her cheeks, catching flame when he levels her with an easy, meaningful stare.

She should have expected it of a thief, to play dirty and steal her composure in steady, unsettling increments. She'd told him she was in no mood for games, but this…this feels a lot like losing.

It galls her to no end, that she should walk in on him naked in a stream and find herself the one all the more exposed for it, somehow.

Robin averts his gaze then, holding it carefully to the water. "You know," he mentions lightly, "I thought I might have seen a newt or two swimming about earlier."

Taken aback, Regina stares at him, unsure of what he's getting at, but then his smile goes lopsided, edging into a shyness that makes him look almost boyish. It stirs up an odd sensation in her chest, a quickening in her heart that she doesn't want to understand.

She could scorn him as she's always done, and the sting of it would be that much sweeter knowing he's the one who might have something to lose this time.

She could.

She could…

He shifts to meet her eye again, and Regina feels the blue there smoldering, any lingering amusement he'd felt at her expense slowly fading into something else as he begins to wade deliberately forward, unhurried in his approach.

Her lips part on a scathing remark that never quite forms, and as he moves closer, his throat bobbing with a thick swallow, she cannot be bothered to find the resolve to make him stop.

Her eyes feel heavy, half-lidded, as they stray treacherously down to the water's surface, undoing her inch by breathless inch, a seductive unveiling of angular hipbones, a smattering of hair, the silhouette of him below.

Robin stills in front of her, the look of him positively molten and terribly, terribly inviting.

His voice is hoarse when he speaks again.

"Would you care to join me, milady?"