Author's Notes: I've been working on this one for about a month now. It's slow burn at first, but will most definitely center around Emma and Regina's relationship as it evolves over time. Hope you enjoy the first chapter and don't forget to leave a review!

The Laundromat was empty at that time of night, which made it the perfect time for Emma Swan to do copious amounts of laundry in half the time it would normally take on any other given day. She had six loads in and was settled on the ratty old couch the Laundromat owners had put out near the windows. It smelled funky, but it was more comfortable than the hard orange plastic chairs that were bolted to the linoleum floor.

Outside, the rain came down harder than it had when she first arrived, and thunder rumbled just off in the distance. The florescent lights flickered and Emma glanced up at them in worry for a split second before turning her attention back to the open email on her phone.

The email was from her sometimes boss, Carl Evington, down at the local bail bonds office. It was just another means to make ends meet, but she only got handed the jobs that none of the men that worked for Carl Evington couldn't get done. Her tactic was to lure the men out on a date before either capturing them for their imminent arrest, or she served them with papers for them to appear in court. None of them ever suspected her and that made her the perfect candidate for some of the harder jobs and successfully go after the men who liked to slip under the radar.

Carl Evington had emailed her earlier in the evening about a job the next day. He had everything lined up and he just needed her to take the job. It was a good one, a man in his mid-thirties who had skipped four court hearings with his ex-wife over the custody of their children and child support payments. There was already a warrant out for his arrest and he had evaded not only the police but also the rest of the bail bondsmen that worked in and around Boston.

That meant good money, enough that she wouldn't have to stress about making her portion of the rent for the next couple of months at least.

It wasn't her only job since she couldn't rely on the money to get by. Three days a week she worked as a personal trainer at a local gym. It was a job that happened purely by accident, but when the owner of the gym approached her about a job, she'd taken it on the spot. Some weeks she made more money, working with some clients who came from money, but other weeks she was stuck with people in her own class, people who could barely pay the fee.

It wasn't the ideal life, it was far from it, but it was her life and she had to make the best of what she had. As an orphan, she had come to Boston when she was just twenty years old, broke, alone, living on the streets and panhandling just so she could eat. When she was twenty-one, she started dancing at a club in a poorer neighborhood, but that gig hadn't lasted too long as the women that worked in the club were drug addicts and the club's owner was a sleazebag who liked to pocket most of their tips for himself.

Not all bad had come from that job. She'd been living in a motel just down the street from the club at the time, and on her last night, before she walked out of there and never looked back, she met Ruby Lucas.

The gorgeous and leggy brunette had come into the club with her boyfriend. Emma had noticed her almost right away as she and the guy she was with did a line of shots at the bar. It had been amateur night where anyone could get up on the stage and dance, but it was all just a ploy for the sleazebag owner to try and rope in some new girls to work for him, making the job look far more glamorous than it actually was.

Ruby Lucas was a hit with the drunken crowd and Emma had stood at the side of the stage, watching her the entire time. She made it to her before the owner did and steered her towards the bar where her boyfriend was waiting. After she had a few shots with the couple, she and Ruby started talking. Emma stayed even after her shift had ended, drinking shot after shot of tequila with the couple until the club closed at four in the morning.

Ruby called her the next afternoon since one of the things they'd talked about over drinks had been the fact that Ruby and her lifelong best friend were looking for a roommate. Emma saw it as a way to get out of living at the motel and finding something better in life than the life she'd been living since she'd arrived in Boston a year before. It was then that Emma decided never to go back to the club, to find something else, anything else.

A week after they first met, Emma met Ruby's friend and roommate for the first time at a café just down the street from their apartment where Mary Margaret Blanchard worked as a waitress. The woman was a stark contrast from Ruby, shy and soft spoken, another plain-Jane just barely making it by in life. Yet, despite how different they all were, something had just clicked between the three of them.

Emma moved in just a few days later with a couple of boxes of stuff that fit in the backseat of her yellow Volkswagen Beetle and two duffel bags filled with clothes. For a week she slept on an air mattress on the second floor of the loft apartment, before she and Ruby had gone down to a second-hand store and found a bed for barely a hundred dollars that they had to drag four blocks back to the apartment since neither of them had any extra money for gas that day.

They struggled a lot to make the rent each month, to keep food in the refrigerator, and to pay the bills. Emma bounced from one minimum wage job to the other for a few years, until she landed her first job at the bail bonds office and then the job at the local gym.

The women were not only her roommates, but they had become her best friends. Family. And family was something she had been yearning for all her life, something she thought she'd never have or ever find. As an orphan, she'd given up on the hope of having a real family a long time ago.

It had been nine years to the day since she first met Ruby Lucas and Mary Margaret Blanchard and moved into the loft apartment above Ray's, a convenience store and sub shop. The neighborhood was on the cusp of one of the upper-class areas in Boston's South End, separated by one single city block that made all the difference in the quality of life, the rich from the poor.

Emma found herself thinking back over the years a lot more in the last couple of weeks, just as she normally did when the money got tight. Mary Margaret's shifts at the café had been cut back and as a supply teacher in the middle of summer, it meant she needed those shifts more than anything, and Ruby's bartending job at the local gay-friendly club was steady, but the money and tips she brought home weren't always enough. Emma needed the job that Carl Evington was offering her.

"Damn it!"

Emma turned as a woman stumbled into the Laundromat, dragging a white hamper behind her. She couldn't help but watch as the woman dragged her hamper over to one of the machines and tore off her beige trench coat that was soaked right through. Emma had never seen the brunette woman before, but if there was one thing that was for certain, it was that this woman did not belong at a Laundromat at one in the morning during the middle of a rainstorm.

Emma watched curiously as the woman dragged her hamper over to the furthest machine from the door and started pulling out her clothes angrily. Emma tucked her phone into the front pocket of her plaid button down shirt and stood up slowly from the couch.

The woman swore under her breath as a few articles of clothing fell onto the floor, which was the furthest thing from being clean. Emma could tell from the way the woman was dressed that she came from money. From the clean lines of her pinstripe slacks to the five-inch Prada heels and the expensive looking silk white blouse that was almost soaked through at the shoulders.

"Damn it," the brunette growled as she shut the front of the machine door only for it to pop back open. After several failed attempts, she turned on her heels and looked over at Emma. "You there. Do you know how these machines work?"

"I do."

"Can you help me?"

Emma scoffed at the tone of the woman's voice. She hadn't even bothered to say please. "You need to feed the quarters in and put the detergent in. Once the quarters are in, you'll be able to shut the door and the cycle starts automatically," she said evenly and raised an amused eyebrow when the woman just rolled her eyes. "These machines are ancient, sure, but they work. Most of the time."

"Quarters?" The brunette looked at her in surprise before reaching for her soaked trench coat she'd laid on top of one of the machines. She checked all the pockets before retrieving an expensive looking leather wallet.

"Yeah, five quarters," Emma said as she tentatively took a step closer to the woman and pointed to the slots where the quarters went in. "Buck twenty-five a load. Same goes for the dryers."

The brunette scoffed in annoyance, but she looked defeated as she opened her wallet. After a minute passed, she pulled out a crisp twenty. "You don't happen to have any change to break a twenty, do you?"

Emma laughed. "No, but see that nifty looking machine over there? You can get change from that," she said as she hooked a thumb over her shoulder at the change machine beside the vending machine near the front of the small Laundromat. "Doesn't always work with larger bills, though, just so you know."

Emma tried not to laugh at the look on the woman's face. It was hard not to, but something told her that if she did, the already angry woman would become absolutely furious. Emma wasn't in any mood to deal with an angry and annoying stranger at one in the morning.

"Look," she started and offered a friendly smile. "The café just across the street is open until two-thirty. I'm sure someone there will give you change."

The woman closed her wallet and shook her head before she pulled on her soaked trench coat. She hesitated, glancing at her clothes in the machine and the empty white hamper that sat beside her.

"Would you mind watching my things?"

"You want me to watch your things?"

"Is that a problem?"

"Lady, it's the middle of the night and I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to trust a complete stranger to look after your things."

"I can pay you if that's what you're after," she said, making a move to open up her expensive leather wallet and Emma just scoffed. "What?"

Emma shook her head, dug a hand into her tight jean pocket, and pulled out a handful of quarters. "Here," she said as she handed them over to her. "Let's just say you owe me, all right?"

When the brunette woman didn't take the offered change from Emma, she just shook her head and placed them on top of the machine before walking back over to the ones she was using to switch her laundry into the dryers. She busied herself with her own laundry and after five minutes, she realized that the change she'd given to the brunette was the last of what she needed for the dryer.

Emma glanced over at her and frowned when she noticed that the brunette had figured out the machine and was sitting on one of the hard plastic chairs while scrolling through her phone.

Emma returned to the couch where her brown messenger bag sat on the floor beside her three canvas laundry bags. She pulled out her wallet and pulled out a couple of dollar bills as she walked over to the change machine and fed them in. A few hard smacks to the side of the usually defunct machine with her hand was all it took for her three dollars to turn into quarters. She was aware the woman was watching her from the other side of the narrow Laundromat.

There was something odd about the look in the brunette's intense brown eyes, but Emma tried to ignore it as best as she could while she fed each of the three machines she'd stuffed six loads of clothes into and they came roaring to life.

Emma went back to sitting on the couch and she pulled her phone out from the front shirt pocket. She opened the email back up, read through the details Carl wrote out and since he was always cut to the chase, she could tell this job would be equal parts challenging and easy. She typed up a quick reply and sent it, casting a glance up at the brunette who was fidgeting as she sat on the uncomfortable orange chair.

Almost an hour went by and Emma was in the middle of folding her clothes on the long table by her set of machines when she noticed that the uppity and tightly wound woman had left, her clothes in the dryer and her hamper sitting in front of the machine. Emma looked around the small Laundromat and shrugged before going back to folding her jeans meticulously.

"You said I owe you," the brunette said, her voice purring as she placed a large Styrofoam cup of hot coffee from the café on the table near Emma and thankfully not too close to her freshly washed and folded clothes. "I figured I'd pay back what I owe you now since the rain finally stopped."

"It's like two," Emma said and with the look on the woman's face, she immediately felt bad. "Not that it matters," she added with a forced smile. "I'll take coffee any time, day or night."

"You're welcome," she said with a tight smile that made the scar on her upper right lip more defined.

"Thanks," Emma muttered, feeling like a complete idiot. "I see you figured the machines out."

The woman didn't say a word as she walked to the back of the Laundromat and instead of sitting down on the chairs that were bolted to the floor, she leaned up against the machine next to the one she was using and busied herself with her phone.

Emma left the coffee off to the side while she folded the rest of her clothes and carefully piled them into her canvas laundry bags. She caught the woman looking at her several times in the course of ten minutes, each time their gaze met, the brunette would quickly look away, turning her attention back to her phone as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.

Emma pulled the drawstring on both bags, pulling them tightly closed and hoisted them to the floor. She grabbed the third, folded it and stuffed it into her messenger bag before she slung the wide strap over her shoulder. Not forgetting the coffee the woman had brought for her at two in the morning as form as paying her back for the handful of quarters she'd given her, she opened the lid and took a tentative sip.

Her eyes widened in surprise as it was made exactly how she always ordered it; almost black with one sugar. She turned to thank the woman properly, but the brunette was on the phone, chattering quietly to whomever she was talking to in the middle of the night.

With a shake of her head, Emma managed to grab on to both of the canvas bags and her coffee without dropping either and headed out the door and around to the small parking lot along the side of the building where she parked her car. She placed the Styrofoam cup on the roof and rummaged in her pockets for her keys. She groaned in annoyance and dropped the canvas bags to the ground, thankfully not in a puddle, and started to rummage through her messenger bag to no avail for her keys.

"Fuck," Emma groaned loudly and with a quick look around the street and the parking lot, she left the coffee and her laundry and dashed back inside the Laundromat.

She immediately went to the couch, rifling through the deep creases in between each cushion and after a minute of searching, she was highly aware that the brunette was watching her every move. Emma winced inwardly when she felt something sticky on her fingers and she pulled her hand out from in between the cushions quickly.

Her phone started buzzing, startling her, and she fumbled with it to get it out of her pocket as her messenger bag strap slid off her shoulder and it fell to the floor.

"Hey, Mary Margaret," Emma said as she answered the call. "If you're worried about where I am and if I'm still alive and breathing, I'm just about to head home. I kind of lost my keys."

"What?" Mary Margaret asked, but she didn't sound surprised. "Where?"

"Laundromat."

"Do you want me to bring you the spare set you have?"

"Don't do that," Emma replied with a heavy sigh. "I'll find them."

"If you can't, call me and I'll come down with the spare," Mary Margaret replied. "If I can find them, that is."

"Thanks, MM. Don't wait up."

"I'm not waiting up for you, sweetie," she laughed. "See you soon."

Emma hit the button to end the call, placed her phone back in her shirt pocket and resumed her search around the couch. She caught sight of the swan keychain just behind the couch along the wall and snatched it up with a relieved sigh.

She cast one last look at the brunette, who was still engrossed in her phone call, and she left, jogging out to her car in the parking lot and she let out another sigh of relief to find that her canvas bags and her coffee hadn't been stolen. She wedged her canvas laundry bags into the backseat of the yellow Volkswagen Beetle and got in, but not before she rolled the window down to grab the coffee off of the roof.

The drive to the apartment was barely five minutes as it was just down the street, about half a mile give or take. She swung around in the parking lot and into her reserved spot in between Mary Margaret's tan Jeep Wagoneer and Ruby's old red Camaro. That was one of the things they had all bonded over in the beginning was the fact they all drove vintage vehicles that had seen them all through many ups and downs in their lives.

Emma noticed right away the brown Ford pickup parked in the only visitor space behind the building. She rolled her eyes as she should have known that Mary Margaret had brought David Nolan back to the apartment for a nightcap after their date. Emma didn't hate the guy, he was nice enough and Mary Margaret was in love with him, but he was married still even though he and his wife were separated, and their affair, as Ruby referred it to, had been carrying on for years.

Emma sat in her car and finished off the coffee the brunette stranger had bought for her, still marveling over how she'd got her order right. Not even Mary Margaret remembered how she took her coffee and sometimes Ruby got a little too much milk or got cream instead. How had the brunette even known how she took her coffee? It was too coincidental to have been a wild guess.

She tiredly dragged her canvas laundry bags up the narrow stairs to the loft apartment, making sure to make more than enough noise so that Mary Margaret would hear her. She had walked in on her and David one too many times in some compromising positions, and the last thing she wanted was for that image to be seared into her brain before bed.

"They've been at it for the last hour," Ruby said from the little alcove at the top of the stairs.

"Figured as much," Emma sighed and she dropped her bags down by the door. "What are you doing home? Weren't you working tonight?"

"Business is always slow on Wednesdays," Ruby replied. "Luc decided to shut down early on slow nights. Said if he doesn't, he's losing too much money. Nobody is happy right now but Luc."

Emma leaned against the brick wall beside the door and grimaced in disgust when she heard Mary Margaret and David moaning just beyond the door. "Please tell me they aren't doing it on the couch again," she muttered under her breath, watching Ruby as she lit up a cigarette and pushed the window in the alcove open a little wider. "You know Ray hates it when you smoke in here."

"Ray went home to his wife hours ago after he shut down the store," Ruby replied. "And I'm almost a hundred percent certain that they're not doing it on the couch right now."

"I can hear them."

"Try the table."

"We eat at that table!"

"Not anymore," Ruby snickered and she motioned to the canvas laundry bags. "Finally caved and decided to get it done, huh?"

"Yeah, fifteen dollars later. Well, technically eighteen."

"I thought you only had your usual six loads to do tonight?"

Emma sighed and joined her in the alcove, sitting across from her on the window seat. "Yeah, it was my usual, but there was this woman who came in and god, she was absolutely clueless, Rubes. She had absolutely no idea how to use the machines and she didn't even have any quarters. She asked me if I had change for a twenty and when I told her to go over to the café and get some, she offered to pay me to watch her shit. Can you believe that?"

"Rich bitch?"

"She sure looked and acted like one," Emma nodded. "Definitely not from this part of the neighborhood, that's for sure."

"What the hell was she doing there in the middle of the night? Don't those rich bitch types have their own machines?"

"Don't know. Didn't ask."

"You know Em, as much as I love you and as much as I know Mary Margaret loves you, wouldn't it kill you to make some other friends?"

"I have friends, Ruby."

"We don't count. We're practically family," Ruby replied pointedly and Emma's mouth gaped open, but nothing came out. "See, you know I'm right."

"I don't get along with most people. You know that."

"You get along with us just fine. Look, why don't you come out tomorrow night to the club—"

"Thursdays are singles nights. You know that I'm not looking for a relationship right now."

"Come to the club and meet some new people. I'm not telling you that you need to hook up or anything here, but you can find some friends there, Em."

"I got a job to do tomorrow night. Carl sent me an email with all the details. I already took it. Some other time, Ruby and preferably not on a Thursday night either."

Ruby laughed and playfully poked at her jean-clad thigh. "Fine, come on Friday night, even if just to keep me company during the slow period before the rush. Drinks will be on the house. What do you say? Don't say no."

"Fine, but only if you tell them to stop fucking on our dining room table. I'd like to get some sleep tonight without being traumatized by them. Again."

Ruby laughed harder that time and flicked her cigarette out the window. With a wink, she sauntered over to the door and pounded on it twice. "If you two don't stop fucking like rabbits right now, I'm going to get the fire hose and douse you with it!"

A few minutes later, the door opened and David sheepishly stepped out as he pulled on his faded grey t-shirt, muttering an apology before he dashed down the stairs and out the door. Ruby made a flourish towards the door and Emma just laughed before she grabbed her laundry and followed her inside their apartment. Mary Margaret was nowhere to be seen, thankfully, and Emma headed up the stairs to the loft where her room was without another word.

[X]

She was used to late nights and early mornings, normally able to run on a few hours of sleep before it caught up with her after a handful of days. That Thursday morning was no exception as she made her usual run to the café for her morning coffee before she headed downtown to the bail bonds office to fill out some of the paperwork for the job she had later that day.

It was busy at the café, formerly Granny's Diner, now aptly called The Perk, the Friends reference not lost on anyone who frequented the café. Emma got in the long line at the coffee and espresso counter and waited. She noticed a few familiar faces sitting at the small round tables and in the booths, regulars who had been coming since before the new owners bought the place from Ruby's grandmother five years prior. There were a lot of others she didn't know or recognize, but they all hailed from the same crowd.

Fucking hipsters, she thought with a frown sliding over her lips and she took a step when the line moved forward.

Ahead of her was a brunette who was chattering quietly on her phone and dressed to the nines. Emma watched as the woman tapped on the person in front of her and asked to cut ahead as she was running late for a meeting. The bearded man just looked at her and laughed, turning back around and ignoring her when she tapped him on the shoulder once more.

Emma rolled her eyes. She'd seen those types many times before at The Perk. Most were from the richer side of the neighborhood, stopping in for their morning espresso or other fancy drink because there wasn't any Starbucks within ten city blocks. Emma pulled out her phone from her light grey jacket and swiped at the screen, checking the email her sometimes boss had sent her the night before and reviewing the details he'd listed off for her.

"The line is moving," an impatient woman said from behind her. "Move with it, will you?"

"Rude," Emma said under her breath and took the three steps forward and stopped. She turned to face the woman behind her, a redhead with a fiery glare in her eyes and rolled her eyes as she turned around to face the front of the line.

It took almost ten minutes before the brunette in front of her was finally at the counter, but she was too engaged in her phone conversation to acknowledge the barista waiting to take her order. The people in line behind Emma started to grumble and complain and Emma tapped the woman on the shoulder lightly.

"You're up."

Emma gasped when she turned around with a huff. It was the same woman she'd run into at the Laundromat in the middle of the night. Despite Emma's obvious recognition of her, the woman barely cast a glance at her before she lowered her phone to her chest and turned around to place her order. She took her time, scanning the menu that hung on the boards behind the counter and then observing the pastries in the display case next to the register before she finally spoke.

"A large house blend with two and a half shots of espresso, light on the vanilla, two sugars with a splash of low-fat milk," she said evenly. "And a lemon tart. To go."

"Anything else?"

"No."

The woman paid for her order with a credit card before she stepped aside to wait for her order and Emma stepped up to the counter with a smile on her face at the stressed looking barista, a girl barely out of her teens and definitely out of her element in a place like The Perk.

"Extra house, half milk, two sugars, please."

"Anything else?"

"No, thank you," Emma replied with a wide smile and she handed over a couple of dollar bills, and when the barista gave her the change, she stuffed it into the tip jar beside the register.

Emma turned to look at the brunette, but she was already grabbing her coffee the barista placed on the counter in front of her and she stormed out of the café, barking into the phone at whoever was unfortunately on the other end of the line.

"Ma'am! You forgot your—damn it," the young man behind the counter stammered as he held up a small bag with the lemon tart she'd ordered in it.

"Here, I'll run it out," Emma said and he nodded, quickly making her order up and she dashed out of the café as quickly as she could with her coffee in one hand and the brunette's lemon tart in the other.

Emma glanced up and down the street quickly, knowing there was no way she could've gone too far. She spotted her just up the street and she started to walk quickly but stopped when the woman got into a black town car that was idling at the curb. She raised the bag and faltered as the car sped off, merging into the early morning rush-hour traffic before taking a right at the next corner.

Emma sighed and looked at the bag and with a shrug, she pulled out the lemon tart and took a bite before she stuffed the small bag in a trashcan nearby. She crossed the street and got into her yellow Bug, not paying so much as an afterthought to the rude brunette woman whom she had run into twice in less than twelve hours.

Little did Emma know at the time, it wouldn't be the last, but the first of many random meetings with the beautiful brunette stranger over the next coming days and weeks.