The Sexual Harassment Suit Will Not Be Filed

Well, that was her tongue down Regina’s throat.

Emma had forgotten for a moment. Because it was a good kiss. A really, really good kiss. Regina’s mouth just fit to hers, lips moving in sudden harmony, moving against hers, under hers, her tongue pushing against Emma’s in a way seemingly designed to elicit the outright pornographic moan that Emma felt rise up in her throat. So for a good twenty seconds, Emma’s mind was blank and all she could think was A. she was kissing the fuck out of someone, and B. they were kissing the fuck out of her right back.

Then she stopped and oh God, oh God, she was kissing her boss. Her boss Regina. Another woman Regina. Boss-lady Regina. Regina Mills.

Her

Fucking

Boss.

Emma pulled away, seeing the exact same storm of indecision on Regina’s face that must’ve been on hers. Almost confusion over what had happened, the sudden passion that had seized them (her? them?). The fact of how pleasurable it had been, how heated it had been, and the fact of who it had been with, and how, and why.

She’d kissed her fucking boss and her fucking boss had liked it.

Just… in Emma’s opinion.

Because just like that, Regina snapped shut again, her face blank except for the slightest pursing of her lips, reddened as they were by a trace of Emma’s lipstick. Emma’s eyes were drawn to it—Regina seemed to be on the verge of sucking on her lower lip, maybe? But restrained herself.

Regina’s teeth showed a sharp, ivory white as she spoke. “I think you should go.”

Emma said, in a voice about as small as it could get without consciously being a whisper, “oh.”

She felt numb, and other than, a strong sense of curiosity at her own numbness. She really hadn’t known her own heart could just flatline like that. She wasn’t in high school anymore. She didn’t crush on people that hard. Only apparently she had been crushing on Regina exactly that hard, and apparently she’d actually hoped there could be something there… on second ten of the twenty second kiss, thinking this could be a heavily censored story for the grandkids one day. And then… nope. Flat-out denial, everything burnt to cinders in a second. She felt like gagging on sobs, vomiting as she cried, but, dead-faced, she turned around and went for the door.

Jesus. Her fucking boss…

***

Emma didn’t bother going back to her desk. She went straight to the elevator. She was probably fired, and if she was operating on more than a fifth-grade reading level, she might’ve thought to collect some things from her desk. No, no, not under Regina’s watchful eye, tail between her legs, gathering up her things like she was looting a corpse. She didn’t care if it took ten hours, she’d wait for Regina to leave, then get her things. The security guards all liked her, they’d let her in for a few minutes, believe her when she said she wouldn’t drop a deuce on anything. Right now, she just had to go. Just go. See if there were anywhere she could scream her lungs out without getting the police called.

She was walking through the lobby with vague plans of ducking into an alley, crying her eyes out, and maybe getting stabbed by a mugger for good measure, when suddenly Ruby was in front of her. She held a box.

“Regina wanted me to give you this,” she said. “You really thought me and her were dating?”

“I don’t know what I thought,” Emma replied, stiffly taking the box as Ruby passed it to her. Her severance papers, probably. Hell, maybe all of her personal stuff. Regina wouldn’t even let her sulk back to box it up herself—maybe she’d had it cleaned out while they were talking. Maybe she was some kind of psycho who off on humiliating her employees before she fired them.

Maybe you shouldn’t have kissed your fucking boss, Em-ma.

“Hey,” Ruby said, noticing that the temperature dropped ten degrees just looking at Emma. “Everything okay?”

“It’s fine. I’m fine. Go, go, get out of here. Mistress Regina probably wants a latte.”

“Alright,” Ruby agreed, looking like she’d much rather sooth and comfort Emma by any means necessary. On any other day, Emma would’ve loved that. “Call me if you need anything?”

“Yeah.” Emma would not sniffle. She would not. “Of course.”

With a nod and a final sympathetic look, Ruby headed back. It occurred to Emma that she’d just seen Ruby for the last time. She’d just seen everyone for the last time.

She couldn’t think about that. The box in her hands was solid, one of those Amazon jobs, a block of cardboard taped shut at the top. Emma got out her keys and dragged them along the taped opening, and was jostling her keys back into her pocket when her phone rang.

Like another ball had just been added to her juggling act, Emma mixed up tucking the box under her arm and switching the keys for her phone, finally stopping to put her keys firmly in her pocket (the phone maddeningly, insistently ringing) and then drawing the phone out. She answered it in a huff. “What?”

“Don’t open the box here,” Regina said.

Emma looked around. On the second floor, overlooking the first floor lobby, Regina was leaning on the baluster, staring down at her. It was too far for them to really hear each other without phones, mollifying the ridiculousness of the situation somewhat, but Emma still felt like shouting across the thirty or forty feet between them. Preferably something rude.

“What do you care?” Emma asked. “What is it, anyway? Seven Habits of Highly Efficient People Who Don’t Get Fired For Sexual Harassment?”

Even from a distance, Emma could see Regina’s brows knit together. “Who fired you?”

“You did!”

“You’re not fired.”

“Yes, I am!”

“Emma, who would know better, you or me?”

Emma realized, familiarly enough, that she was being ridiculous. She took a deep, calming breath and tried to force her brain out of sleep mode. “So what’s in the box?”

“Go home. Then open it.”

“Oh, so the bomb only takes me out?”

Forty feet between them and Regina managed to fill it all with confused indignation. “It’s not a bomb!”

“Office supplies, then? You gonna frame me for stealing office supplies.” Emma shook the box. “Maybe a tablet…”

“If it is a bomb, I’m sure shaking it’s a good idea.”

“You said it wasn’t a bomb.”

“You said it was!”

“Well I say things, okay, I think out loud!”

“Good to know you do your thinking some way.”

Emma harrumphed. Maybe the kiss had just been so good because Regina hadn’t been talking. “What is it?”

“Go home and find out. I gave you the rest of the day off for a reason.”

“Tell me or I’ll open it.”

“I said not to open it!”

Emma peeled the tape back. “Mills…?”

“Don’t open it in public, dummy, it’s a vibrator!”

Oh.

Well then.

Regina took her own calming breath—more affected by their whatever than Emma had figured—and then lowered her voice from the shrill hiss that had just gone into Emma’s ear. Resuming the seductive timbre it’d had in her office. “I would really like it if you were… inspired by me. The same way I am by you. Especially if you could send me… proof? Shall we say?”

All the air had left Emma’s lungs, never to return. “Proof. Okay,” she wheezed.

“You have my phone number,” Regina finished, and hung up her phone. Without a second look, she turned around and walked.

Well, that ass was inspiring.

Her legs decidedly unsteady, Emma put one foot in front of the other, the lobby stretching before her for an eternity, each of them determined to outlast the other.

She wasn’t fired.

She was going to masturbate while thinking about Regina Mills.

While filming herself doing it.

For Regina Mills.

She wondered how this would affect the bonus situation…