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“Just watch them,” Lily says, setting the controller aside to grab chips. “I don’t even think they know they’re doing it. Mom moves her head whenever Mom walks in.”
“Which mom?” Henry asked. “Dragon Mom or Mayor Mom?”
“Mayor Mom tilts her head, like she’s just waiting for it.”
Henry drank from his root beer and thought. Mom and Mal were pretty affectionate. They didn’t really over do it, but they held hands a lot. The kissing thing he hadn’t noticed but he hadn’t been watching that closely. Mostly they were happy, and Mom deserved to be happy. Mal was a pretty chill step-mom too. She still liked to use magic for most of the cleaning stuff which was kinda funny, because sweeping really didn’t take that long, but she’d just wave her hand and it was done.
Mom wanted her to learn to be more modern, and had a temporary ban on magical house-cleaning, which meant even the most basic of house-maintaining tasks were complicated, and involved Maleficent learning what different cleansers were and learning paper towels and scrubbers. At least she found it all fascinating and found Mom’s ban humorous, rather than annoying.
That was the part of Mal that was so strange. She was patient, all the time, in a way Mom never was, and Emma was almost worse than Mom. Maybe that was why the kiss thing was so funny coming from Mom.
Mom didn’t have patience for waiting for the kettle to boil if she was in a hurry. She cooked dinner on a schedule, so it was done at the right time, and she liked them to be on time to eat it.
So maybe that was how the kissing fit in. It was efficient. Now that it had been mentioned to him, he watched for it.
Mom tilted her head just a little as Mal walked past at breakfast. Mal got her coffee and Mom got a kiss on her forehead. Mal found her again at the doorway, kissing her as she put on her boots.
After school, Mal got home first and started working on the kitchen table, because the town was complicated, food had to return to the supermarket with magic, and the recycling had to integrate into how food was replaced. Also everyone had better cell phones and the dwarves had been nagging her and Mom for fiber internet, which was a whole headache and a half because Storybrooke didn’t exist.
He sat beside her, working on his math, then his periodic table for chemistry, then his magical creatures homework, because the fairies had finally decided to integrate stuff from the old world. Insisting they watch Harry Potter had actually been a really good idea, even if Nova had believed that their books would need to be snappy to be effective.
His was currently held down by one of Mom’s sculptures of a horse and on of Mal’s extremely thick engineering books. Apparently to magic up a fiber network, one had to understand how a fiber network worked, which meant that she’d devoted much of her time to reading incredibly dense volumes at speeds that were not human.
Lily was jealous, because that would have been useful in school.
Mom arrived, took the time to hang up her coat and hat, then walked up behind Mal, who tilted her head up without moving from her place on the page. Mom kissed her forehead, lingering and smiling.
“How’s the internet?”
“I’m tempted to construct it like a spiderweb, just to irk the ungrateful townsfolk of yours.”
Mom glanced over the map and the gridlines Mal had started to draw in along the roads, sewers and electric. “So far it does not look very web-like.”
“Give me time.”
They kissed again, this time Mom sneaking a real kiss while Mal drew more red lines on the map of the town.
“I’ll start dinner.”
“I activated the dish-cleaner.”
“Dishwasher,” Henry corrected gently.
“Right. That. I made it walk.”
“You mean run,” Mom called from the kitchen. “Thank you.”
“You used magic on the pots and pans,” Henry whispered, looking up from his book. “I mean, I would if I could, so I don’t see why it’s a problem.”
“The roast chicken–” Mal shook her head. “Besides, magic is gentler on your mother’s precious roasting pan than soap would ever be.”
“She doesn’t want Zelena to feel bad.”
Mal leaned closer to him, eyes wide with surprise. “That’s it?”
“Yeah, Zelena’s used to doing everything with magic, and she can’t.” Henry set down his drawing of two trolls and kept his voice low. “Mom doesn’t want her to feel bad that you can use magic. It’s why Mom barely does.”
“It’s bad enough that your mother has a fiancee, let alone a magical one?”
“Yeah.”
“Well then, in the interests of calm in the house,” Mal sighed, pressing the center of her forehead. “I will learn to scrub pans.”
Mom returned to with the salad, setting it on the table before she rubbed Henry’s shoulder. “How’s homework?”
“Luckily for me it’s an illustration of a dangerous creature.”
Mal shook her head, feigning frustration. “I’m still disappointed he didn’t chose dragons.”
“Wings are hard to draw.”
Mom hovered behind him, touching his neck before she walked past Mal again. “Thank you for the dishwasher.”
“It’s not a bad little creature,” Mal said, folding up her map for the evening. “That’s enough of that.”
“Good, I need someone to cut onions, and Henry’s busy.”
“Very.”
Mom touched him again, and it hit him, that he waited for her. He knew she’d touch his hair, or rub his shoulder. She always touched him. She touched Mal. Her hands said that she loved him a hundred times a day. Mal…was also precious to her. She was family.
He didn’t mean too, but he titled his head as they walked behind him, and the lips that touched his forehead were too warm to be Mom’s.
Mal had kissed him.
And he’d moved, ready for it. Watching them from the dining room, he listened to them talk about nothing in particular and realized that he’d made room her for too. He was accustomed to Mal, and like Mom, she was family.