Over the last two weeks, time and time again, Robin has found more appreciation for his two late friends than he ever did before. And he hates himself for never realising it when their hearts were beating furiously with life, but parenting a one-year-old is hard. He hasn't the darndest idea of how Neal and Emma managed to do it so effortlessly. They were always smiling and cheery and on the go, and at this exact moment in time, Robin can't even get Henry dressed without Regina's supervision. It's not supervised because she deems it so, it's supervised because he doesn't feel comfortable doing it alone. He'll give it a go, struggle, and call her over as she's fixing Henry's breakfast.

Henry likes to kick. Everything. All the time. He's really energetic, especially when Robin is trying to get his pudgy little legs inside the stretchy fabric of baby trousers. It's as if no matter how careful he is, Robin is doomed to feel like Henry will end up being hurt in some way or another.

"You won't break him," Regina promises, taking over, yet again, this morning and easily manoeuvring Henry's legs the way she needs to dress him quickly. "Aren't you going to be late?"

He slips a glance at his watch - two minutes fast, as always - but yes, he absolutely is going to be late for his first shift back in almost ten days. He and Regina lucked out where it came to their jobs. Robin's boss has been one of the most supportive people since everything happened, and Regina being her own boss certainly took some stress off.

"Go," she says, picking up Henry from his changing table. "My mom is coming around later this afternoon, so you're in the clear until after that," she teases, kissing Henry's temple affectionately.

Robin is mesmerised by how quickly Regina picked everything up, from changing clothes to getting him to nap to scheduling meals and activities. Quite honestly, being around Regina exaggerates just how lost he feels, but he could hardly fault her for being brilliant, he just hopes she doesn't feel like she's having to pull his weight on top of it all.

He likes to mask his anguish with humour quite blatantly, and today is no exception. He swallows his worries and jokes, "No kiss for me before I go?"

Her eyes roll, then she turns to Henry as chastises in baby talk, "Your Uncle Robin is an idiot," and much to Robin's dismay, Henry's babyish response is to grin and gurgle wildly. "Oh, would you look at that," Regina smiles in amusement, "It would appear he agrees."

He hates that he laughs, but shit, that kid is cute.

"I'll see you later," he tells her on his way out of the loft, waving at little Henry before offering a final, "Call the bar if you need anything."

As he closes the door, Regina's, We'll be fine, echoes down the stairs.

….

It's absolutely mental how barely two weeks off work can make you forget how hard working in a bar actually is. Despite carrying Henry everywhere, despite still remaining active, his body is aching in places he forgot he could ache. Earlier that day he reached down to pick up a barrel and lug it downstairs, and about half-way down the concrete steps, his shoulders all but demanded that he stop.

Not to mention his feet. The aching. The burning. Ten hours shifts are brutal and he's suddenly remembering why.

"I can't decide what's worse, staying here feeling like this or knowing that I need to climb a steep ladder to bed later," Robin hisses through a chuckle as he parks his arse on the top stair of the stairwell to the cellar.

They've opened the backdoor to feel the cool air on their skin and for Lacey to sneak a cigarette before too many patrons begin to line up at the bar again.

"I'm going to say staying here is worse," she offers after a draw. "But I've not a single inkling as to what your home life is like now. How is it living with Regina?"

Robin's surprised to smile slightly, admitting that, "It's actually been alright. We're still bickering and whatnot, but it's all in good fun for now. Dare I say, I think we might actually be friends?"

Lacey looks out into the alleyway with an amused smirk, "Neal always said that beneath all that bickering there was something you were both too stubborn to see."

Robin chuckles, remembering all too well how disappointed Neal was when his matchmaking didn't pan out the way he'd hoped. "We both know Neal would say anything to keep from admitting he was wrong. Besides," Robin sighs and slumps a little, "The only thing between us right now is Henry."

"How's that going?" she asks.

Sighing again, Robin shrugs his shoulders in defeat, "Most of the time I feel like I'm in the way. Regina fell into the parenthood role so quickly, and I'm always seven steps behind."

"You might be surprised," Lacey suggests after a final smokey exhale. "I don't know Regina as well as you, but I do know that she is a perfectionist with a flair for making everyone else think she lives the picture perfect life. She may seem put together on the surface but I'm sure deep down, you both feel the same way."

Robin scoffs lightly while Lacey closes up the fire escape, pushing himself from the steps. Lacey peers into the bar and then back to him. "Look," she says. "We are stocked for tomorrow. There are only a few regulars left. Go home and talk to her. Even if she doesn't feel as lost as you, the only way you are going to manage to co-parent is if you communicate to each other."

"I can't just up and leave you alone to close up," he counters, even though the aches and pains in his body are practically already out the front door. She insists that she can, even points out the number of nights last week she has already done by herself. "You're sure?" he asks for extra measure, but it takes barely a second before he's being ushered out of the door of the bar.

….

Robin considered texting her when he started heading back, but with the time he didn't want to risk any noise from her phone waking up Henry or ruining a stressful bedtime routine. He climbs the stairs quietly, watching out for the sixth one up, the creaky one, with a jump. He's surprised to find a bottle of wine sitting just shy of the doormat, an unmarked envelope taped to its side, assuming it's another neighbour going out of their way to be kind.

As quietly as humanly possible, he unlocks the door and lets himself inside. It's deadly silent, but the more he focuses, the more he can hear Henry's soft rhythmic snoring from the bedroom. Though, it's the sniffling that catches his attention. Sniffling and then a sigh.

"Regina?" he asks in a whisper, eyeing up the kitchen counter where the only lights are on, soft yellow tones from the bulbs. .

Her voice is soft and tearful when it mutters a lousy, "Over here," and sticks an arm out to the side for him to see.

When he peers over the breakfast bar, his eyes meet her red, puffy, teary ones. She's perched against the cupboard next to the stove, her legs pulled into her chest and a small collection of tissues by her socked feet - it would appear that Lacey might have been correct.

"You're early," she whines, clearly a little embarrassed as she starts to wipe madly at her damp cheeks. "You've never been early in your life and you chose today to start?"

"Remind me to never do that again," he mutters, joining her on the floor of the kitchen, sitting directly across from her so their legs run parallel to each other, stretched out. He references to the bottle of wine by the door, "Someone left this for us."

Regina is trying to calm herself down, barely listening to him as she exhales slowly and continues to dab at her eyes. Something about it all makes Robin begin to laugh gently. Maybe it's the relief of knowing that he isn't the only one feeling turned about, or maybe it's really hitting him that this is their life now. Whatever the reason, his brain decided laughter was the best response.

"Are you laughing at me?" she asks, her voice riddled with genuine hurt and her face looks as if she is about to crumble again entirely.

"No," he assures quickly, mentally kicking himself for caving to the strange hilarity of their fucked up situation. "Absolutely not. I just…" he begins to chuckle softly again, almost uncontrollably, as he explains, "If you'd asked me a month ago where I thought I would be right now… this is the last thing I could have conjured up."

Regina's gentle laugh in response lifts a weight from him, and she mumbles, "You never thought you'd be sitting on a kitchen floor with a woman you loathe as she sobs into a bag of chips?"

"Hey now," he defends himself, "I know we've had our issues in the past, but I'd be willing to say that we've been getting along quite famously. I think we can drop loathe from our vocabulary. There are chips?" he asks, looking around the floor for the snack.

She bows her head with the slightest him of a smirk, "There were chips."

They snicker together quietly, enjoying a short few seconds of silence before Robin explains, "Lacey seems to think that we need to talk more. That it might make me feel better and, by the looks of it, it might make you feel better too. What happened today? What brought out the chip monster?"

She laughs stressfully into a groan, dropping her head back against the wooden cupboard door. "He cried. All day."

Her breath shudders as she exhales, her eyes have filled with tears again, a few dripping here and there that she wipes away immediately. "And I mean literally all day. Nothing I did worked: I fed him, I changed him, I sang to him, I took him outside, I sat on the dryer with him in my arms. Nothing would calm him down."

She slaps her hands to her stretched out thighs with a bitter scoff before her faces twists in frustration, every ounce of restraint she has flying out the window and she sobs softly, "And then my mother just strolls in here, takes him for no more than a second, and he's as happy as can be. He was fine when she was here, but the moment she walked out that door, he was screaming again. He needed Emma," she concludes with a defeated shrug. Sniffling away again when she admits, "And I am not Emma."

"You're most certainly not Emma," he agrees, not horribly, but he believes she needs to hear it. "And nobody expects you to be. Do you expect me to be Neal?"

She lifts her heavy eyes to his quickly and shakes her head. He despises the comfort he's feeling in her frustration, but tonight, right now, is the first time he hasn't felt like a complete failure. His heart aches for her, though, unsure as to why she feels the need to put on this strong front around him.

"You know I'd never judge you for struggling, right?"

Her lips tighten as she exhales a sighed breath through her nose, croaking out a measly, "I know," before pulling her knees up and close to her chin. "You put so much effort into organising our schedule, I guess I just thought the least I could do is not mess up."

"I feel better when you mess up, believe me," he admits. "The last couple of days, I've doubted myself more than I've breathed. I've wished to be as put together as you, for Neal to just miraculously show up again and help me."

"Well," she scoffs a laugh, "As you can see I'm not put together, and I'd do anything for Emma to give me any sort of advice right now."

"You know, you said Henry needed Emma today," Robin points out, crossing his jeaned legs, "Do you maybe think it's you that needs Emma? I don't doubt that Henry misses his mum or feels her absence, but you lost your best friend, and I don't know about you, but Neal was the lad I called anytime something good or bad happened…"

"Yeah," she whispers. "Emma was always there."

"I think we need to take some time to grieve the loss of their friendship. We've only really grieved the loss of Henry's parents, and they were much than that to us."

Regina's eyes narrow softly in his direction, and she shakes her head again with a disbelieving smile. "How did the guy who showed up to our date two hours late, drunk off his ass, end up the only voice of reason in my life?"

He smiles tightly and shrugs, taking her rhetorical question to be an agreement to his point. She leans far forward, reaching her arm for the bottle of wine next to his hips. There's no cork, so she twists it open and takes a hearty swig from it. The envelope fell from the glass and stayed by his side he curiously opens it up.

He snorts at the handwritten note inside, garnering Regina's attention as she goes for a second gulp. Reading it out loud, he says, "Recommended dose, one to two glasses as needed. Love, Mom."

She giggles into the rim of the glass bottle before freely admitting that, "It was a really rough day," with a bit more of a lighter air around her, sipping quickly again and offering him the bottle.

He takes it happily and pours a hefty swig into his mouth, wincing as he swallows. He's not much of a wine drinker in the first place, let alone warm wine.

"I miss them," Regina confesses, sinking into the cupboard behind her.

He misses them too. More than he can put into words. He's only ever felt loss like this once in his life, not that long ago, but he remembers how it felt for months like the world was going to end. After a while though, he began to realise that, despite that feeling, the world keeps turning and people keep living their lives.

"It'll get easier, I promise."

"How do you know?" she asks, a curious eyebrow raising as she reaches for the wine again. His lips twitch into a frown at the horrid memory, and she definitely notices. "Sorry."

"Don't be silly," he brushes off with a wave. "Let's just say it sent me on a downward spiral. I even messed up a blind date by showing up drunk off my arse and embarrassing myself." His eyes dart up, watching as the cogs turn until she realises that he's referring to their failed date. "But I got through it."

Robin stands up from the floor, fighting through the pins and needles in his legs as he offers his hands to pull her up too. She's as light as a feather, at least compared to the kegs he carries on the daily. He's standing closer to her than he thinks he ever has in his life, having to look down a little to see her face.

"How about on Sunday, we find someone to take Henry for a few hours and do something for them? They always wanted to take us bowling to see who would kill the other first."

It's a silly suggestion, but she smirks widely, nodding in agreement, "Sure. Let's do it."

I'd love to hear what you think! More coming sooooon!