One of the biggest changes in her life, since the day she had found Alice lurking a few hundred feet away from the team's camp, was how Robin regarded things. 

She had always been looking for some adventure, whether she had picked up the magic book her aunt Regina had given to her or when she trusted Gothel to teach her some awesome sorcery spells.

She was still that person, cherishing an action filled hunt more than sitting at a coffee table and listening, for what must have been the hundred time, to the story of how Henry and Ella met.

Seriously, they reminded her too much of David and Snow, who even in their late forties hadn't been able to stop making heart eyes at each other. Though, she could kinda relate with the sentiment now. Meeting someone special in a special way was, in every meaning of the term, memorable. But listening to those old stories was not her thing.

She loved adventure.

Alice was an adventure.

Every smile she procured was intriguing, every of her laughs was alluring and every breath caught between them when their eyes locked was thrilling.

So Robin didn't find the idea of spending some time sitting close to Alice in the small hut of hers bothersome at all. Quite the opposite, actually. When she walked in, following after Alice, she was excited to see how the other girl lived.

Unlike the times she had been in the rooms of her friends for the first time back in Storybrooke, she was looking forward to find out more about Alice from the way her hut was decorated; what trinkets she kept from her journeys, what things she had saved from her childhood. Robin was sure each of those items were a lot more interesting than any boy group poster or poorly hidden, pre-teen Hello Kitty collection, her so-called friends possessed.

So when Robin stepped inside, she tried to drink in everything at once: The size of the hut which in the most generous way could only be described as 'tiny', the sturdy looking cupboard straight ahead, on which a tea set rested, next to the big mirror with its blurry edges and the small stool in the middle, show casting a pile of books and a basket filled with wool.

While Robin's gaze shifted from one detail to another, Alice carried a kettle from the kitchen unit in the right corner to the fireplace harboring a dimming fire. Candles, tea cups, bowls and a vase were placed on the sim, looking particularly unorganized. Above it all towered a painting of a ship on the raging sea, painted in dark blue tones. Was it romanticism? Impressionism? Expressionism? Robin could not recall and wished for a moment she would have paid more attention in art class.

"How have you been?" Alice asked as she hooked the kettle in.

'Besides seriously pining for you?' Robin thought while her eyes scooted over the bowed form of Alice in front of the fireplace. The light of the fire warmed the color of her hair and skin.

Robin's heart clenched. Clearing her throat she replied, "Great. And you?"

"I've started preparing for winter, which means a lot of preserving vegetables and meat," Alice said while feeding a few more logs to the fire.

Turning around Robin noticed the products of Alice's work. Jars piled up next to the cupboard and meat hung from the roof to dry. Having little to no experience in preparing for winter in the Enchanted Forest, Robin could only guess on how much time the other blonde had spend on the task.

"Sounds bothersome," she commented.

"Not so much. It reminds me of when I used to live in the tower with my papa. It's a tiring but rewarding work."

Robin's heart ached. In Alice's voice she could hear the typical smile whenever Alice remembered her time with her father. A smile drenched in joy but burdened with regret and despair. "You must miss doing these things with him."

"As long as I have my memories of him and me doing this together, there is a part of him that's here with me," Alice said in a soft voice lowering towards the end of the sentence.

Robin thought about her life with her mother in Storybrooke and how she had always complained and nagged when her mother had made her help her in the garden or insisted on doing stuff together, like baking or cooking. The memory spun thick threats of nostalgia in her chest. More often than not, she had given her mother a hard time but she swore herself to do better in the future.

Shaking her head she reminded herself of the here and now. She had yet to finish exploring the private realm of Alice's hut and – if she finally found a way to actually manage – addressing her interest in Alice without the other girl misunderstanding. Based on Alice's behavior earlier, there was a slight chance she reciprocated Robin's feelings. There was not enough evidence, though.

During the past weeks, after she'd discovered she had fallen head over heels for the wonderful Alice, she had given asking out Alice a lot of thought. She had opted to provide an entry like talking about her interest vaguely at first, telling Alice how she had never really been interested in boys but not any girl in particular. Until now. But this tactic seemed too straight forward. The safer option was to propose meeting each other for more than Robin's favor of delivering the letters between Nook and Alice and see how it goes. But Robin was afraid she couldn't keep her infatuation with the blue eyed beauty concealed for long and it would show itself in a not so smart move which would scare off Alice inevitably.

Sucking in a deep breath she pushed down the ideas in hope for an opening during their tea time.

Letting her eyes wander to the left side of the hut, she saw that there wasn't much left to be seen. In the far away corner stood Alice's bed, a closet at its one side and some sort of chest high furniture covered with a drape to the other. In front of Robin was a table with three chairs, one of which was taken by a soft toy rabbit. What stroke her eyes was the chess board set up on the table. While Robin did not understand much of the old-fashioned game which only nerds and old men with cranes would play in her former world, she could see that somebody had been playing. On both sides of the board white and black figurines had been moved and next to it were others that had been taken out of the game.

Moving to the table Robin ran a gloved hand over a white figure looking like a tower, called rook, if she remembered correctly.

"Nice chess board."

"Thank you," Alice replied brightly from behind her.

"Have you been playing?" Robin turned around and witnessed Alice taking off her voluminous coat, beneath which she wore almost the same outfit from when they met; a white blouse and leather vest but instead of the red skirt she'd wore now a blue pattered one. It pulled on Robin's heartstrings nonetheless, especially when her eyes caught on the sight of the colorful bracelet she made for Alice hanging on her wrist as if it belonged there.

She was beautiful.

Then again, Alice would probably look good wearing nothing but rags and the bracelet. Though Robin did not want to dwell on the idea of Alice in nothing but rags for too long. Feeling a blush rise she turned to the chess board again, focusing hard on the carved wooden pieces.

"Not for a while. I am still not sure about my next move on the black side. It appears that I am hard to beat," Alice said cheekily.

Robin hummed amused. Her eyes roamed over the board once more, trying to figure out something about the unfamiliar game.

"Do you play?"

Chess was one of those activities that did not seem too alluring to Robin. But when she turned around and saw Alice smiling at her pleasantly, she couldn't bring herself to bluntly say "No". She shrugged instead. "I don't know how. Never learned it. Where I come from we have other games. Though I've also grown tired of Candy Crush pretty quickly."

Alice's eyes widened and her mouth opened, half agape, half smiling. "You've crushed candies?"

Robin snickered and decided that she loved this expression of Alice caught in between curiosity and wonder. "It was a game on my phone," she explained and placed her bow and quiver next to the door to fish out her phone and wiggled it in the air in front of Alice. "Remember this?"

Alice nodded and took a step closer. "So you can crush candies inside this thing as well?"

Laughing Robin replied, "It's not so much about the candies. They aren't even real candies to begin with." Scrolling through her apps, she noted with a scowl how she must have uninstalled the game at some point.

"What is the purpose then? If it's not about the candies and you can't even have the candies why is it even called Candy Crush?" Alice asked, clearly irritated.

"Exactly! That's why my highscore was remarkably low when I stopped playing it." Disappointed, that she couldn't show Alice what she meant, Robin returned the phone to the pocket of her vest and added dryly, "It was a typical time-waster."

"Although crushing candies sounds quite enjoyable and it can't be madder than playing croquet with a stubborn flamingo anyway," Alice said with a smirk.

"Crushing candies for real does sound fun!" Robin agreed grinning. "Maybe we should do that some day. I could take you to a candy store in Tiana's kingdom."

Her grin dropped when she realized the date-like potential of her suggestion. Cold panic rushed through her veins as she observed the smirk vanishing from Alice's face.

'Here you go with your imposing,' Robin chided herself. But before she could reminiscent about possible escape routes she watched Alice's face transforming into a look of surprise. Slowly a shy and cute smile followed, leaving Robin breathless.

"I'd like that," Alice murmured sweetly. "Very much."

Even if somebody would have held a gun at her head, Robin wouldn't have been able not to smile back. Giddiness had knocked the panic out of her body so fast she became dizzy. Perhaps it wasn't impossible her feelings were returned. Perhaps she should make her intentions clear about this Candy date.

Courageously she leaned forward and –

A sudden, shrill and hellish loud whistle boomed through the limited space of the hut, startling Robin out of her state and making her jump a little to her own shame.

Alice seemed shocked as well as she gasped with wide eyes.

Her face turned red and she giggled nervously, "Gosh, I've totally forgotten the tea." Nibbling on her lip she rounded Robin, who had yet to catch herself, and grabbed the chess board, before balancing it towards the cupboard. "Could you take care of the kettle, please?"

Robin had a hard time coping with the fact that she'd almost asked Alice out for a Candy date. Eventually she was able to swallow her surprise down and took the kettle away from the fire, while Alice set the table.

A/N: Candy date? Anyone? XD

Leave a vote and or comment if you liked this chapter! :)

Also check out my other story Seattle Love Story in which the British Alice Jones meets the American woman, Robin Mills, by a happy accident. There is an external link to the story at the end of this part. ;)