In one way or another, the two women had made their way up to Regina's large bed at some point during their evening in paradise. It had involved an extensive amount of naked stairway kissing and had taken them at least five minutes to actually reach the bedroom, where neither knew the extent to how long they'd throughly enjoyed each other's company. They'd finally fallen asleep together, both utterly spent and exhausted, not paying even half a mind to the fact that it's Christmas and it's the first time they'd shared a bed since the vacation.

Emma wakes with the sunlight drifting through lacy curtains that do nothing to shield the windows--serving no purpose other than looking pretty--and slowly comes to, yawning as she does. Before she even opens her eyes, she knows something is off. In her drowsy, still-asleep mind, she'd fallen asleep at her own apartment, so when she feels a smooth-skinned body spooned in her arms, her heart naturally leaps into her throat. When her eyes actually flutter open, however, her panic is stilled when she realizes who's in her arms, the memories of the previous night flooding into her now-coherent mind. It'd been so wonderful, it'd felt like a dream; and Emma would have easily assumed that it had been if not for the woman she's currently curled up against. Though perhaps, maybe she's still dreaming.

But then Regina's stirring, and Emma feels panic rush through her veins once more. With her brain fully functioning, she's upsettingly aware of how their previous morning-after had gone. She's indecisive in what action she wants to take next: either she can release her and get up, stopping any damage before it can hurt her, or she can keep spooning Regina like her heart isn't speeding like a goddamned teenage boy on the freeway.

She tries to do the first option; she really does. She tells her muscles to move and let go of the woman she's holding--commands them, truly. But they honestly must still be asleep because they don't listen; completely unresponsive as they insist on clinging to the brunette. Before she can decide what to do next, Regina fully wakes, groaning and sounding an adorably squeaky yawn as she comes to.

Emma's fear continues to grow--any second she'll be deserted. She clings onto these last moments, trying and failing to fully enjoy them, when Regina turns around in Emma's arms to face her.

"Good morning," she greets through a sleepy smile, then moves her chin upwards to press a kiss to Emma's lips.

The blonde's surprised for a second, then she can't help but kiss her back whole-heartedly, all the while feeling like an idiot for being so nervous a few seconds earlier. This isn't New York; this isn't a repeat of a year and a half prior. They'd both confessed their love, it's Christmas, with their son no doubt coming home any min--

Shit.

Emma's eyes snap open through the kiss she'd been enjoying, forcing herself to break away from it as an entirely different panic blooms in her chest. "Henry," she explains breathlessly to Regina's curious look.

Realization dawns on the brunette's makeup-smudged face, and she hops out of bed almost as fast as Emma does. It takes them approximately four seconds to realize that they're both stark-naked, only adding to their alarm.

"The clothes!..they're downstairs!!" Emma says in horror, and Regina freezes while searching for something suitable to wear in her dresser.

"Oh god--get them!" Regina groans, and Emma takes only a brief moment to appreciate hearing the brunette sound so unrefined while all out of sorts, before bolting from the room and down the stairs in nothing but her birthday suit. She jumps the last three steps, and runs into the living room as fast as her bare legs can take her. The sunshine streaming from the windows displays clothes strewn all across the room. Halfway through picking them up, she casts a glance out a window, and to her horror, she sees Henry's car pulling up the the curb. In a full-blown frenzy now, she collects all she can in seconds, and rushes faster than she's ever moved to the stairway and up the stairs. She trips on the last step, and the clothes launch from her arms, while she goes down in a pile of blonde locks and long limbs.

"Emma, what the hell?" Regina steps out onto the landing, fully dressed in a silk pajama set, and helps her up. She collects the articles, while giving Emma an eye roll. "What possessed you?"

"Henry..pulled up..." Emma gasps out, rubbing a hand over where she'd mightily banged her elbow.

"What?!" Regina's jaw drops, and she almost drops the pile filling her arms. "Emma, put clothes on!!"

"Well, excuse me for picking the bras off the living room floor!!!" Emma yells out, then as if sensing her current predicament, she rushes into Regina's room. The brunette follows her, dumps the clothes on the bed, and moves over to her dresser.

Halfway through Emma tripping while attempting to put on her skinny jeans, Regina stops her, presenting a long-sleeved tee shirt and flannel pajama pants. Emma raises her eyebrow, and slowly takes them from her. "I didn't know you owned clothes like this."

Regina dramatically rolls her eyes, and crosses her arms after gesturing wildly towards the blonde. "Well, I suppose there's some things you have yet to learn about me. For god's sake, Emma, put them on, Henry has a key."

That gets Emma's limbs working again. Her eyes bug out, and begins violently kicking her jeans off, as the sound of a key scraping the lock sounds downstairs.

"Hello?" Henry's voice booms from the foyer, just as Emma yanks the tee over head.

"Oh, my god. Seriously, Gina, I think I'm gonna pass out." Emma gasps for air, throwing her sex hair into a messy ponytail.

"Keep it together," Regina hisses, before self-consciously running a hand through her own tangles. She then adjusts the front of her shirt and confidently starts down the stairs. Emma wills a straight face onto her features and starts after her.

Henry watches his mothers descend together, in disheveled clothing and exceptionally messy hair. Together. Alright, don't get your hopes up. He presses his lips together, and grips his car keys in his hand, then kicks the heavy door shut behind him.

"Hen--"

"--Kid," They both start at once, then clam up, staring at each other, waiting for the other to continue. Neither do.

Henry clears his throat awkwardly, then does again. He takes a few steps forward, and casts a look into the living room. Adorning the floor lays two black stilettos, and one bright red bra hangs off the back of the couch. He bites the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood in an effort not to laugh, as a deep blush shades his cheeks and the tips of his ears. "Um, I think you forgot something..."

Emma follows his gaze, and immediately turns as red as the bra on the couch, if not more so. Regina's jaw unhinges, and she turns on her sock-clad heel to face the blonde.

"I seem to recall you saying you picked the bras off the floor, as in plural," she whispers fiercely in her ear, and Emma lets out a sudden, loud snort of laughter.

As quietly as Regina had conveyed her angry statement, Henry had gotten the gist of it. He turns towards the door, but not without letting out a bark of laughter, badly hidden with a cough. "Is..now a bad time?"

"No, no!!" Regina calls out to him in a panic, her arms outstretched towards him. "Don't leave," she practically begs, and Henry's amusement simmers down into pity at her tone. He releases the knob from his cold fingers and turns to face them once more.

He doesn't say anything; just stares at both of them, waiting rather impatiently for one to start talking and explaining the situation. He should know what he's getting here--from what he can piece together, they slept together in more ways than one, but he's not sure what comes next. Will there be a repeat of last time? At the mere thought, he nearly casts his eyes upwards--that would be hell. He waits a bit longer--but as soon as it becomes clear that neither of his mothers plan on being cooperative, he huffs just the slightest bit, (with the clear knowledge that it's a childish gesture but he really can't help it) and crosses his arms. "Well?" He prods.

The two women look at each other, half in shame and half in stubbornness--neither wants to be the one to present the news, but they're fully aware that one of them needs to say something, stat. Angry Henry is not something either of them enjoy.

Finally, Emma steps up to the task. She stuffs her hands in the flannel pockets of the baggy pants (she still can't believe Regina has these in her wardrobe), and forces herself to look up at him when she talks. To her relief, he doesn't look angry at all, just sort of impatient and, to her surprise, worried and concerned. "Well," she starts off, then instantly hates how gravely her tone projected, so she clears her throat a bit more than necessary before starting over. "Kid, we made up." That's all she can think to say--because really, that's all that happened. It had been messy, full of yelling, misunderstandings, hurt feelings, kisses, and sex, but how else should the queen and the savior make amends? They've always been like this.

The dark shadows on his face slowly melt away, until a held-back hint of a smile adorns his features. "Really? You--"

Regina steps in next--quite literally, as she walks forward to put a hand on Henry's shoulder--and flashes him a rarely shown large grin, one that her cheeks can hardly hold. "And we have you, and only you, to thank for that, my sweet baby boy.." It's the start of a heartfelt speech, one that Emma feels as though she almost has no part in sharing although it's halfway about her as well. For a moment it's all too much, and Emma begins to feel as though it isn't real--how can all this be happening not even twenty-four hours after the horrible argument between the three of them? God, they really do have Henry to thank for all this: the vacation in the damn first place, asking them to have Christmas together, then forcing them to talk and resolve things by actually leaving the house. Well, damn.

"Yeah, Kid, your unrelenting ass forcing us on each other finally paid off." She says with her usual gruff humor: her seemingly only way of showing affection to him, as well as throwing a punch in the general direction of his bicep underneath layers of clothing.

Henry laughs at that, then more at Regina's glare towards Emma for the comment, then all of the sudden, Emma remembers what day it is. "Okay, Mister. You know the drill. Get up there and change into your pajamas like the rest of us--you're not opening presents looking like that," she jabs her thumb up the staircase before gesturing towards Henry's overwhelmingly stylish winter garb, something he no doubt inherited from Regina. Emma's slightly jealous of that though she'd never admit it; she can hardly tell when colors clash, let alone create such a nicely put-together outfit.

Henry rolls his eyes in a forced attempt to look unamused by her sudden change in topic, then walks swiftly past them, lumbering up the very stairs where Emma had nearly spit her head open five minutes prior.

Left alone once more, they had the opportunity to say anything. They could've talked about what they would say next to Henry about their current state, could've worked out last minute kinks in their still-fragile relationship. But what Regina chooses to address is, of course, the bra.

"Allow me to just make one thing clear: you left...my bra...hanging off the couch..where my--our son can see?!" She crosses her arms, vigorously working the muscles in her mouth to keep herself from smiling while staring at the blonde.

"Well, Madam Mayor, I had two options. One: grab what I could and run like hell, boobs flying. Two: play a game of hide and seek with our stupid clothes from yesterday's night of fun, find everything, and allow our son to walk in and see me as stark-ass naked  as the day I was born. Forgive me for picking option one." She says haughtily, happily playing along with the banter Regina had started.

"Well, Sheriff, it looks as though you passed." Regina smirks while raising a brow, making Emma's brain blur and her floodgates break free from whatever had been holding it back.

"Do I get a prize?" She asks stupidly, in an attempt to match her lover's sexiness, but ends up sounding a bit more like a beggar. She can hardly mind though, if her non-subtlety means she can experience again even half of what she had last night. She thinks back to the excessive amount of times she came while victim to Regina's magic-free spell-like effects on her body, and instantly has to cross one of her legs tightly in front of the other.

"Well...that remains to be seen." Regina teases in an entirely non-innocent way, an almost growl roughening her words.

A groan interrupts their foreplay, shaking them from their sultry gazes and bringing them back to reality with a blush. "God--save it for the bedroom, you two," Henry cringes, reappearing at the foot of the stairs wearing black sweats and a white tank that uncomfortably displays to his mothers that he'd been hitting the gym more than a few times over his latest semester.

"Jesus, Kid, do you have some sort of radar in your head that picks up when the worst times to show up are? For everyone involved?" Emma jokes, earning a good-natured biff on the back of her head from her son.

"Yeah, that's just about as plausible as your lie detector." He fires back dryly, then smirks when he watches her become extremely defensive.

"I have a lie detector and you know it!"

"Oh, yeah? Then how come it didn't pick up anything after I told you I've never smoked weed?"

"What?!"

"I'm joking."

"Are you?!"

"I don't know, what does your lie detector say?"

"ARRRRGGGGHHH!"

Regina grins and shakes her head as she listens to the two of them, thinking not for the first time that it's like having two children in the house instead of one--and not even Henry is a child anymore.

They fall into place like snowflakes finding their rest on a windowsill as the who women take the couch, each with a mug of steaming coffee in hand, and Henry kneeling on the floor, dishing out the presents. For a moment, it seems as though they'd been doing this for years upon years--even as though they'd both raised Henry like all of their minds liked to trick them after the missing year. And for a moment, while Regina settles back onto the plush cushions watching her son so happy next to the tree, she can pretend that he's much younger, still her little prince. And for that moment, it seems as though he really is.

Despite having hated the other woman's guts for over a year, both had somehow went out and gotten a gift for the other, and in one way or other, both had a way of presenting themselves that morning. It had been simple--Regina had gifted Emma with some passive-aggressive cooking tools, a not-so-subtle jab at the blonde's non-existent skills in that department, and Emma had previously stuck a pair of rather ugly slippers into a gift bag for the occasion. Both had swapped gifts with the other with a rich blush on the side, both with a profuse promise to give the other something much better next year. Or more like tomorrow.

Henry, once again, had been spoiled rotten by both his mothers, despite his age. Emma thinks back to the day before when she'd accidentally killed his level 103 video game character and desperately hopes that the new (ridiculously expensive as well as gory) game he'd wanted so badly will compensate for that. She doesn't look forward to him discovering that, and finds herself making the present opening go as slow as possible in order to prevent the television from switching on.

Regina curls a protective hand around her mug as she shifts closer to the blonde on the couch, a non-discreet way of asking for a Christmas morning cuddle. Once situated the way she'd wanted to be in Emma's arms, she takes a long sip of coffee before asking, "Have you forgiven your mother yet?"

Emma briefly tenses up, then relaxes. Casting a glance down at the comfy brunette snuggled up against her, she sighs. "Not really--well, not explicitly. I should, though, right? I mean...if you can forgive her, I should."

Regina slowly shakes her head. "It doesn't matter what I've done--it's only if you want to or feel like you can."

Emma considers this, thinks it over so hard that she doesn't see Henry firing up the T.V., but even if she had, all she would have seen was a small, affectionate smile and a glance from Henry, who, with a shake of his head, just pressed cancel and started over. Finally, she comes to her conclusion. "I feel like I can. After all, what do I have to still be mad about? I have everything I need right here."

It was a somewhat dangerous statement; one that sounded a lot like commitment and a whole lot more like love, but it makes Regina's eyes swim and her heart melt, and she presses herself closer to her lover's chest. Emma takes out her phone, almost calls Snow, but settles on a text. She's going to take this slow, as slow seems about all they can handle.

Emma: Merry Christmas, Mom.

Mary Margaret: Merry Christmas, Sweetheart. I love you.

Her mom replies to the text almost as quickly as Emma had sent it, but she finds herself not minding that. With a smile, she locks her phone once more, and sets it aside as she focuses on the woman and the family right in front of her. It hadn't been forgiveness, there was no apologies, nothing of importance except for the fact that it began to bridge the gap, and the fact that both mother and daughter already felt a burden lift from their hearts.

It isn't everything, but it's a start.

And, Emma realizes, as she casts a glance around her surroundings, that's what all of this is. It's new, but it's all Emma's ever wanted: love, family, and everything in between. Sure, it had been extremely complicated, filled with screaming and tears, and heartbreak--besides having taken them much too long--but what else is expected from equally matched stubborn pains in the ass? Somehow, every hiccup and bump seems to fit perfectly in the mold of their story, and looking at it now, within a certain world of paradise, everything seems perfect.

A new beginning.

For once in their lives, Emma and Regina feel completely content, and neither one can wait to see what the future holds.

-Fin.

AN: BEFORE ALL OF YOU FREAK OUT, AN EPILOGUE IS COMING. THIS IS NOT THE END, THE END. But, it is in a way, the end. I'm equally sorry and happy to say that it seems as though this story has finally run its course! I want to thank EVERY reader, EVERY voter, and especially EVERY commenter for their support. Without you guys, I swear this story would have never made it past chapter two. I'm honestly surprised how far it's gotten!

THIS IS NOT GOODBYE THOUGH! Besides having an epilogue that will hopefully be written and published soon, I have a new fanfic, Memorize Me, and it would mean the world if my lovely readers here would choose that book to read next and help me take that one off the ground, as I have high hopes for that.

As if that isn't enough, I also have a prompts one-shot booklet, where every one of you guys can send me any kind of Once Upon a Time prompt either in direct message or in a comment, and I will write a oneshot especially for you! And of course, I will give credit for your amazing ideas.

Again, THANK YOU. I can't thank you enough. I hope to see you all again very, very soon. I have lots planned for the future of my writing!

And, of course, vote and comment ;)