Chapter Text
Breakfast at the Mansion is a tense affair.
Regina sits at the head of table like a brooding matriarch, half her face concealed under enormous movie-star sunglasses. She communicates only in grunts; Isaac thinks better of offering to clear up.
Regina had insisted on rescuing both boys from the “Heathen House”, much to Henry’s friend delight. She motioned them all to follow and they exited in a victory march, the hottest part of Beyoncé's Partition pulsing through the rooms. Emma felt every head turn to watch, mouth agape, the cowgirl MILF strut down the stairs and out the door. It made her smirk. You wish, kids.
Once outside, Regina instructed Emma to call a taxi and held her son’s face in her fingers, turning it this way and that in a medical examination.
“Are you drunk?”
“No, Mom, of course not,” he looked back at his mother with trepidation, “But you are. You’re in a cowboy hat.”
“Which looks lovely on you, by the way, Madame- Regina,” Isaac chirped from the curb.
Emma gave his shoulder an understanding squeeze.
Henry is pouring his Mom another glass of orange juice - communicated via two grunts - when there’s a knock at the door. Regina turns her head towards Emma, expectant.
“On it,” she croaks, feeling pretty damn hungover herself.
Behind the door is the biggest bouquet of flowers she’s ever seen, attached to a pair of male legs.
“Madame Mayor, I want to express my sincerest apologises for last night. I didn’t -”
“Not the Mayor, kid.”
Eli pokes his head out from behind the bouquet. “Oh. Hey, Emma. Is she inside?”
Emma releases a huff of irritation - how is every teenage boy under the sun able to confess his undying love for Henry’s Mom and she can’t? “She’s really not in the mood for visitors.”
Eli’s face falls. “Can you give these to her then?” He pushes the flowers into her hands - they’re so heavy, he must have spent tens of dollars - and fumbles in his pocket for a note. “Give her this too?”
Emma takes the note and suppresses an eye roll: ‘Sorry’ with a kiss. “Isaac!” She yells behind her, “Your brother is here!”
An hour later, Regina is nudging Emma’s bedroom door open. Her cheeks flush, as if she’s been caught watching porn, not an episode Friends.
“Hey,” she says, feigning something casual. It’s difficult when Regina is standing there in navy silk pyjamas, no makeup on, hair curly from air drying. From the bed, Emma can smell her expensive body moisturise. The woman in the doorway makes a perfectly normal domestic action so stupidly difficult.
“Did you buy me an outrageously large apology bouquet?”
“Er,” she almost says yes, though Regina’s expression is impossible to gage, “Do I…have something to apologise for?”
“Absolutely. You let me embarrass myself in front of Storybrooke’s youth.” There’s a smile in her words, the revealing of a secret they’ve formed together.
Come inside Emma thinks, willing it - they’ve spent the last month teetering in one another’s doorways, never once crossing the threshold, but fuck is she desperate for Regina to now.
“Did you keep it?” She asks instead, reaching toward their secret, “The cowboy hat.”
Regina’s eyes dance with mischief. “Of course.”
I’ll get over it, she thinks, a lie, as she lies against cushions, pretending to watch the TV when really, she’s watching Regina and Henry snuggled up on the opposite couch, the brunette’s chin resting on their son’s mop of hair, it’s been a month, I just need to adjust.
Mother and son gasp at the same time, Emma doesn’t know at what, she won’t take her eyes off them to check the screen, and Regina chuckles at their matching reaction, kissing Henry’s head. Emma loves how he lets himself be a kid with Regina; curled into her like he’s still the boy who knocked on her door and said, “Are you Emma Swan?”.
Hangovers make her emotional; she blinks at tears.
“Ma,” Henry says sleepily, “There’s room for you too.”
They spend the afternoon watching nature documentaries, their son sandwiched between them, and Regina’s arm, slung over Henry’s body, brushes against Emma’s.
Evening arrives too soon, threatening to end what’s been a perfect day of family feels and bubbling, nearly boiling over, gayness.
Emma wanders into Henry’s bedroom, to ask if he wants to walk with her to the corner shop (because Regina had written ‘Milk’ on the grocery list and Emma always liked to buy before Regina pointed out).
“Um, Ma,” he says quietly, looking up from his phone, “Can we talk?”
She sits beside him on the bed, heart racing to attention. She has a horrible feeling that he will say-
“Ma… last night, it kinda looked like you and Mom were about to, um, kiss.”
That. That is what she’s been fearing, hidden beneath mooning eyes and smiles that linger long after Regina has turned her head, she fears that her kid has been collecting it all. She fears that he will ask her to stop, and that she will have to listen.
She looks down at her hands, knotting her fingers together, building up the courage to ask the question that would end all them. “Would that be the worst thing?”
“No!” He exclaims, sending her fear scattering, “It would be really, really nice to know you have each other, Mom is so much happier when you’re around, but…I like how we are now, and if you broke up, you might go back to hating each other again.”
He says that last bit to his hands, just like his Ma, unable to face answers to scary questions. Emma takes them in hers and squeezes, just like she does with his Mom, still learning to ask for comfort. “First of all, I would be crazy to let your Mom go, and second, us dating is about as likely as…Gold bleaching his hair, well, gold.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
Emma and Henry leap like cats from the bed at the voice in the doorway. She stares at the other woman, a stammer in her mouth. “Gold bleached his hair?”
The brunette’s lips twitch. “Seriously, Emma. Isn’t it obvious?”
And she doesn’t feel as though she can keep hiding behind another hair dye joke. “What’s…obvious?”
Regina crosses the threshold, gaze on Emma. Her eyes are sunset warm, unframed by eyeliner or mascara, and Emma is completely at their mercy.
Henry fidgets beside her. “I feel like I should go-”
“That I’ve been flirting with you for the past month.”
Emma’s mouth falls open.
“Okay, gross, bye moms,” and Henry continues the cat agenda by darting out his room at feline speed.
Regina laughs, the motion making the corners of her eyes crinkle. She looks at Emma, waiting for her to collect the pieces she’s scattered.
The pizza night with Isaac, her open bedroom door, Henry’s orchestra recital in the red dress, holding hands, a workaholic leaving the office early for an impromptu Friday afternoon home yoga session, dancing, whispering, lying on Isaac’s floor, drunk, a breath away from kissing. Just this morning, Emma had walked past the upstairs bathroom, arms weighed down by the flowers she planned to leave outside Regina’s door, and heard the brunette singing something that sounded suspiciously like ‘Stacy’s Mom’. (That also explains why Regina’s single English, non-grunt sentence had been “The lawn could use a trim, Emma,” confirming that she had not only heard the song, but watched the music video).
Her mind speeds through the past month’s scenes like a highlights reel until, finally, she arrives at the same conclusion Regina has many a time before: that she, Emma Swan, is an idiot.
“You knew this whole time that I had a ginormous crush on you, didn’t you?”
Regina tries to arrange her expression into anything resembling innocence. She fails. “I…had an inkling.”
Emma’s eyebrows swoop up her forehead. “And did you enjoy yourself? Sending me into a spiralling gay panic every day.”
Regina bites her bottom lip, “I may have had some fun, yes.”
A disbelieving, giddy laugh darts out of Emma. There’s still so much space between them, and she has permission to close it now, she’s sure, nearly sure -
“Does this mean…” She flaps a hand in the aching space, wanting to be certain but struggling to accept that Henry’s capital H Hot Mom has been thinking of her the same way.
“It means,” Regina says softly, “That I’ll let you decide where we’ll eat dinner tonight. And make it greasy, please. I need to soak up what’s left of this hangover.”
Then she turns on her slippers, like they’re her pointed, Storybrooke crushing boots, and sashays down the hallway towards her bedroom, knowing full well that Emma is staring at her ass in those silk pyjama pants. “Is this a date?” Emma manages to call out, before she closes the door.
And it’s Henry who answers from the neighbouring room, exasperated, “Yes, Ma, it’s a date.”
Epilogue
They’re walking into the movie theatre, trying to out-pitch each other on the craziest deaths that might happen in the new Marvel instalment, when Isaac stops short, cutting both Henry’s words and the blood supply in his arm.
His stomach sinks as he looks at the scene playing out in front of them: his Mom, with her hand on his Ma’s waist, leaning in close to swipe a piece of popcorn. Then, to eschew any doubt that this is ‘more than friends’, his Mom takes another kernel and feeds it to his Ma, who is smiling up at her all gooey and gross.
He’d known it was date night for them, every Friday was, and Emma had told him earlier that they were going to “catch a movie.” She had been moving the lawn, something she did way too often to be normal, and Regina was lounging on a deck chair outside, observing. They were so weird sometimes.
Henry had figured that their date plans meant his Mom’s feet on his Ma’s lap and Netflix - followed by a glass of the “best apple cider you’ve ever tasted”, an in-joke Henry isn’t sure he wants to know. That’s what he usually saw, before he escaped the house to meet friends or go fishing with his gramps.
Thinking fast, he pushes Isaac behind the nearest standing advertisement.
His friend is staring at him with wide, wide eyes. “How long have they been together!?” He keeps trying to peer past Henry, who is taller, and blocking him like a bouncer.
“I dunno, like a month.”
Isaac frowns. “Is this why you haven’t let me come over since the party?”
“More because you’re always going on about how hot my Mom is.”
This makes his friend smirk, “Emma agrees with me.”
And Henry wants to shave both his eyebrows off.
“I think it’s cool though,” Isaac continues, “Your Moms getting together, it like, makes sense.”
And Henry wants to hug him, so he does.
He pokes his head round the poster board and relaxes. The coast is clear: simp Moms have disappeared.
They join the short line of Marvel fans to buy their tickets. Isaac pokes him in the shoulder. “Do you think they’ll sit in the back row and make-“
“Finish that sentence and you’re buying me nachos, a hot dog and an extra large slushie.”
Isaac mimes zipping his lips shut. “I won’t say anything.”
“Or think anything.”
Isaac mimes extracting a thought from his brain and flicking it away. “Or think anything.”
Henry gives the Emma Effect at try - a tentative, hopeful smile that has a 99% success rate on Regina. “Can you still get me a slushie though? Mom only gave me ten bucks.”
Isaac, who isn’t love with Henry, says no.