[For Dyson] Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing

[st_oriedqueen]

Her daughter running the stables meant Regina knew the horses from head to hock and beyond. She knew their temperaments, their quirks, their hearts... and it also meant that there was no one but Snow or the cowboy to bother her if she happened to slip out to the stables in the middle of the night.

Tonight, the moon had come up full and huge, and her memories likewise. Stolen kisses with Daniel, secret assignations with Mal or Tinkerbell, the clock in the tower stuck at 8:15 with the moon behind it, Neverland nights trying to find Henry, moonlit walks with Robin, and incongruously also moonlit rides with Graham and the wolf pack trying to find Snow. In an effort to banish them, she'd gone to the stall of her favorite, a pinto half-Arabian mare named Compass Rose who went by the barn name of Grace, with a grooming basket and carrots. The peaceful night, punctuated by the munching of hay, the whisk of Grace's tail or the soft whuffle when her muzzle looted Regina's pockets for treats, called to something in Regina, a deep, nameless yearning that ached and ached and ached.

At length, grooming the mare couldn't staunch the flow of grief, and Regina gave in to that yearning. She slipped a hackamore over Grace's head, transmuted her clothes to riding breeches and a loose-fitting top, and led the mare out of the barn. It had been half a century since the last time, but Regina leaped up to her bare back as nimbly as a rodeo acrobat, murmured praise to Grace and together they escaped into the night.

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[st_arknaked]

Escaping into the night was something Dyson was good at. And though he didn't have a moon born physiological urge to change there was something about the night and the the way it was lit up by the moon.

He'd shed his clothes some way from the inn, in a field at the back of the barn, and after a long hunt loped back to where he'd left them.

[st_oriedqueen]

Regina gave Grace her head, and for a time, the mare kept to a pleasant, springy trot. Soon, though, she took them into an enormous open field that looked almost silver beneath the moonlight. Beneath her, Regina felt Grace's muscles flex and tense like she wanted to run and Regina let her--full out and her hair streaming on the wind to match the mare's mane and tail.

The first snort, Regina took for playfulness and enthusiasm. The second had Grace slowing, her gallop collecting and her neck lifting. She tossed her head, snort and blowing. "What do you smell, girl?" Regina murmured and patted her neck.

Just then a flash of silvery-white loped between the trees and Grace shied, hard, spooking. Regina kept her seat, but the mare had caught the predator's scent and she feared Grace would hurt herself. She hopped down and did her best to calm her.

[st_arknaked]

He heard the horse before he saw it, smelled it too but that wasn't unusual as he was approaching the barn the scent of the woman buried underneath it faint enough he didn't recognize it.

He slowed, shifting even as he moved not wishing to scare the animal more than he had as he approached his clothes.

Then he saw Regina and stopped.

[st_oriedqueen]

Grace didn't understand what she saw and smelled. She whinnied frantically and nosed at Regina knocking her toward the approaching wolfman. Had she not been fuming, it would've been a sight, watching that majestic wolf shift into a man.

That man.

"No shirt, no pants, no clothes, no Cat in Captain's clothing. What do do you have? Because it's certainly not tactic, decency, or concern for others." The shrill anger in her tone wasn't helping Grace, so Regina pulled her voice down to a soothing murmur for a moment, stroking her neck and calming her, extremely effectively, anyone who knew horses would've noticed. "I'm fresh out of men's denim."

[st_arknaked]

"I didn't ask for any," her annoyance pricked his own and his voice held a growl. He paced the few yards to where he'd stashed his clothes and picked up his jeans gesturing with them before he started pulling them on.

"And would you rather I shift out here or in the hall by my room Highness? Doors require thumbs, and keys or someone to let you in if you don't have those handy. Middle of the night. Don't see a lot of people behind the barn this time of day." Except her, he always seemed to run into her in the darkness.

[st_oriedqueen]

"Majesty," Regina snapped. "I was never a princess and am always the Queen." It was Snow who'd added Evil to her name. But why did she care so much? He was only doing it to nettle her, and she was letting him succeed.

"I don't care what you do, or who you do it with, Wolf." Her gut told her abruptly that that was a lie and she hated him even more because of it. "As long as I don't have to see it."

[st_arknaked]

"We're not your kingdom," so what she was queen of exactly he didn't know. Even if a part of him, the part that had pledged loyalty to Trick, knew that a kingdom didn't make a king. Or queen.

"I come out to just before the tree line, in a sheltered area behind the barn when I shift to minimize who sees it." He knew the lie for what it was, he'd kissed her after all, but he didn't call her out choosing to needle her in other ways.

"And might I suggest investing in a blindfold?" His growled words were half chide and half amused arousal. Other parts of him were all amused arousal so thank goodness for his pants.

[st_oriedqueen]

Titles attached to the person of royalty, regardless of location. But she hadn't used her title in Storybrooke. It only mattered because he chose to strip her of her station. It wasn't a point she wanted to argue, here and now.

"Obscuring my vision only encourages you," she said with a derisive, but almost wry snort. After all, the less she saw, the better they seemed to get on. "And it's not your cock I care about seeing. It's your wolf and the horses." Her voice snapped and snarled, as much bitch as he was wolf and she hated it.

Lucky for him, horses feared fire, or he'd be dancing between fireballs.

[st_arknaked]

She'd totally mean his cock, and they both knew it.

"They don't usually mind. I change outside and downwind when I can, far enough away outside a door that I'm not a threat." Not that he would be in any event.

"If your mare was in her stall she wouldn't have even noticed."

[st_oriedqueen]

"So it's fine for you to run around naked in the middle of the night, but I can't go for a ride?"

It occurred to her only after she'd barked the words that his nakedness and her riding could be construed all together differently. And occurred to her so viscerally that spots of crimson stained her already flushed cheeks.

"I wanted out of my cage every bit as much as you." That sounded almost plaintive by contrast, the old panic of boundaries enforced by magical plants and her mother's will turning Queenly anger into something at once young but also powerfully primal.

Why did he alway seem to hit her in her weakest points?

[st_arknaked]

"I didn't hear myself say that," and he hadn't meant it that way either. She just put the worst possible conclusion to everything he said or did for some reason.

He stalked toward her in a round about way, moving to the left in an arc then back ultimately coming closer as he moved.

"Nor am I trying to keep you caged."

[st_oriedqueen]

Grace shied at his approach - or at Regina's increasing tension. Either way, Regina patted her neck and released her grip on the headstall of her hackamore. If Grace needed to bolt, Regina would let her.

Her own shoulders stiffened, eyes going wide and white round the edges. Everything in her strained away from him and toward him at once. Like she had at the Carnival, she stood, trembling, paralyzed by her own reactions. Fire rose and flitted to her fingertips and flickered in her eyes, an old, instinctive reaction to being threatened.

"People have lost their hearts for less," she warned, low and responsive to his approach rather than his words.

[st_arknaked]

He squelched it as quickly as it surfaced but the pain still flickered across his face albeit briefly. His eyes darkened with it though, with something deep in him, or perhaps with the emptiness from deep within him.

"Too late for that."

[st_oriedqueen]

Possibly because she recognized it, or possibly because the threat had her focused on every signal he gave off, Regina didn't miss the pain. The darkness.

Gaze narrowing, she lifted a hand to touch his bare chest. Testing. She didn't sink her fingers in, didn't try to take it out, but she didn't need to to feel that his heart's energy was wrong somehow. She pursed her lips in consternation, thrown out of her panic by the possibility that they were the same somehow.

"For me too." Her heart might be there in her chest, but it was a yawning abyss of grief and loss where the only light was Snow.

[st_arknaked]

He flinched when she touched him, but didn't pull away, lifting his own hand to cover hers.

"Well aren't we special."

[st_oriedqueen]

Regina flinched away from the bite in his words. She'd gotten too used to being praised for openness and vulnerability. Forgotten that her blackened heart was still raw to the touch.

She pulled her hand away--tried, intending to go and put an end to the pointless masochism that was trying to engage with Dyson. But his gaze wouldn't let her get away. "We aren't anything. You...are an unmannerly pain in the ass."

[st_arknaked]

"And you're a prickly bitch." He didn't release her as she pulled her hand away, though his grip wasn't tight enough to stop her if she'd really tried and tugged her even closer instead so they were almost nose to nose.

[st_oriedqueen]

Regina blinked, startled as much by the words as his sudden proximity. Her mouth curved unbidden, surprised into something that wanted to be a smile. "I've been called a lot of things in my day, but never that."

For someone used to being called 'monster', 'demon spawn', 'evil', 'black-hearted', "prickly bitch" was almost an endearment.

[st_arknaked]

If she told him the names she'd been called he'd tell her he didn't think she was any of those things, but for the moment he just cocked his head and smiled a feral smile.

"So," he drawled, without pulling away. "Still wanting to go for a ride?" The tone made it ambiguous as to if he meant the horse or was referencing the masquerade.

[st_oriedqueen]

The moment collided with others in her mind - in an alley outside a tavern, in a farmhouse with a bottle of whiskey, in a forest when her heart had been given, lost, forgiven...

A kiss in the dark.

It didn't have to mean anything.

"That depends on whether we're talking about now or next week." She missed the dry, flat tone she'd aimed for, words falling out husky and somehow suggestive.

[st_arknaked]

He angled his head, shifting closer ever so slightly as though he was about to kiss her, but he didn't his words coming his lips a whisper away from her own.

"You look like yourself," and he'd told her a week because she hadn't been, and maybe he hadn't been either, that night at the carnival.

[st_oriedqueen]

His breath fanned her lips and sent a shiver down her spine, pushing buttons she didn't know she had. And in response, her hand skimmed down his chest, then her fingers hooked in the waistband of his jeans. Her knuckles rocked against the hard muscle of his abdomen, asking, seeking, inviting.

"No masks," she agreed, and lifted her head to brush her mouth against his. "Do you want to go for a ride, wolf?" Yes, she wanted to hear that he wanted her, but it wasn't a girlish plea. It was a full-throated womanly offer from a queen. She looked like herself because she was herself--he'd invited her to be.

[st_arknaked]

The muscles of his abdomen flexed against her knuckles and he nipped at her lower lip a low growl in his chest. He'd more than invited it, he'd almost demanded it and the way his eyes flashed it was clear he appreciated the gift.

"If you're offering I'm game, highness."

And then he kissed her.

[st_oriedqueen]

His mouth covered hers and in answer, she opened the button on his jeans with one hand. The other immediately curled behind his head and into his hair. If some part of her wept for nominal infidelity to Robin, it wasn't a part in evidence in her kiss.

She wasn't offering. She was taking and encouraging him to do the same. He'd called forth her power and now she wanted his in return.

[st_arknaked]

He dragged one hand up her arm to the throat of her blouse, picking one button then a second before sliding his hand inside, over the curve of her breast.

"You're wearing too many clothes."