Chapter Text
The first time she tries to ask him, Emma chickens out at the last second.
“Hey, kid?”
Henry looks up from the book he’s hunched over. They’re sitting in the diner waiting for their dinner, because it’s Emma’s week with Henry and, well, Emma can’t cook. Henry’s reading god-knows what, but she’s pretty sure it’s research to do with the author and the kid’s other mother’s elusive happy ending because every now and then he takes studious notes in a pad that has Operation Mongoose written neatly down the spine. Not that he lets her read anything, instead, covers the notes with his free hand as if she’s trying to peak- okay so maybe she is but- so not the point.
He’s looking at her now, waiting for her to talk.
“So I was wondering, you know, since you’re her son and all,” that earns her an eye roll, and Emma resists the urge to shout and point ‘there, see!’ because sometimes she really doubts that the kid isn’t actually in fact 100% Mills. “I wanted to ask- well- I was wondering if-“ 100% Mills is frowning now, his attention solely on Emma and she looks out of the window to avoid his eyes. “-if you could ask your Mom to bring that raspberry pie she bakes to lunch with the grandparents this weekend?” Emma improvises, ignoring how her guts are twisting and her voice pitches up at the end of the sentence.
Henry blinks and nods, but narrows his eyes at her, and it’s clear he doesn’t believe for a second that that was what Emma wanted to ask
She flaps under his unnerving gaze. “What?” She says, a bit too defensive.
Henry shrugs, eyes her for a moment more, before turning back to his book.
Emma breathes a quiet sigh of relief and tries to figure out why she feels as though she’s just been let off the hook. She tries to figure out at what point Henry started having whole conversations with her non-verbally. She watches as his mannerisms as he flicks through his notes, the way he fiddles with his pencil and the way his writing slants across the page. She watches and allows an affectionate smile to take over her face. Totally 100% Mills.
x
It takes Emma another few weeks to work up the courage to ask Henry again. Which is ridiculous, right? Because it’s just the kid, and the kid loves her and she loves him, and she had been getting better at this whole talking thing. And the question she wants to ask? Yeah, it’s really not a big deal. Like, at all.
They’re in the diner again, because Henry didn’t want beans on toast, and Regina was working late. Not that it was Regina’s week, only, somehow the three of them had more often than not ended up sitting around the table at 108 Mifflin Street during designated Emma-weeks. Emma’s not complaining, rather, she’s in heaven. Regina’s food trumps Granny’s any day (not that she’d ever say that to either woman), and the kid seems happy, with both his parents sat at the table devoting all their attention towards him. Well, mostly. But she tries not to think about the not mostly parts.
Emma drums her fingers against her thigh and definitely does not to let her mind latch onto that train of thought. Because each time it happens, when Henry leaves something essential at the house and they make a spontaneous trip back, Regina opens the front door and Emma has to tamp down the fluttering in her chest. The fluttering part of her that’s yearning for home.
Storybrooke is supposed to be home for her, now. But sometimes when she’s alone in the new flat, away from Mary Margaret and David and the kidlet, and when it’s Henry’s week at Regina’s, and she’s by herself- yeah, maybe it feels a little like the old days. And she stares and stares and stares up at the ceiling and counts the cracks- because it doesn’t feel quite like home, not really. Except sometimes when it does. Sometimes when it’s those not mostly parts where she catches Regina’s eye over the dinner table, and Henry is bouncing between them (he’s not quite hit the monotonous teenager phase yet, thank god) and something seems to just click.
So, yeah, it doesn’t help that their friendsnow, or that Henry will pick up the scent of lasagne in the oven and turn to his Mom with his best puppy dog eyes that he knows she can’t refuse, and it doesn’t help that Regina then turns to Emma with wide eyes and a questioning tilt of her head that Emma’s quickly discovering she can’t refuse, and it doesn’t help that they all file back into the house and set the table in a way that’s becoming so familiar and so routine it makes Emma’s chest physically ache.
It doesn’t help that she’s started to figure out that she wants what she can’t have.
She sighs, but stops her self-absorbed pondering a few moments too late because Henry’s already looking at her instead of his comic. Trust her to have such an intuitive kid. She smiles, too bright, too false, and Henry takes pity on her.
“What is it, Ma?” He asks.
“Huh?” Emma tries and fails to act natural.
“You’ve been fidgeting the whole time we’ve been in here, and now you’ve got the same creepy smile you had on a couple of weeks back when you asked me to talk to Mom about the pie,”
Emma scowls. “Do not,”
“Do too,”
“Do not!”
Henry snickers. “Totally do,”
“So I asked about the pie, big deal.” Emma sulks because she’s essentially a 5 year old trapped in an adult body.
“You asked about the pie, even though you knew she was already bringing it, because you were the one that asked Grandma to ask Mom because you didn’t want Mom to know it was really you who wanted the pie, you know, after that time where she mocked you for your love of baked goods? But the whole thing was pointless anyway because of course Mom knew that Grandma was only asking on behalf of you, so really-“
“Alright, alright!” Emma cuts him off with a grumble.
“So,” Henry says with a satisfied smile, and Emma thinks Mills Mills Mills. “What do you actually want?”
Emma sighs. “Nothing, kid. Forget I asked.”
“But you didn’t ask anything,”
“Yeah, well,” Emma huffs. “It’s not important.”
Henry’s silent for a while and Emma naively thinks she’s home free.
“Wait!”
Emma jumps as Henry gleeful shout hits her ear drums. “Kid, lower the volume a little, would you?”
“Sorry,” Henry mutters although he doesn’t look so sorry. Instead he looks as though he’s just figured it all out. Which is a little terrifying. “This is about my Mom, isn’t it?”
Emma’s blush answers for her.
“Emma,” Henry says, and now she feels like she’s being patronised. By her very own kid. “If you want to ask my Mom something, you need to talk to her in person, instead of asking other people to ask her stuff. It would be nice, you know? To have more people just talk to her.” He says the last part of the sentence so gently and sincerely and with such hopeful eyes that Emma feels her heart well up with love.
“Henry, it’s not so much the asking your Mom something as it is asking something about her,” Emma eventually admits because she wants to reassure the kid that she’s not afraid to talk to Regina.
At least, not in that sense anyway, nope, Emma’s becoming more and more afraid to talk to Regina for a much more terrifying reason; she’s developing this thing. The kind of pathetic, torturous feelings thing that makes her entire body blaze at the very thought of the woman. And okay, so maybe it’s not a new thing. Her feelings towards Regina have always been complicated- angry and frustrating and begrudgingly respectful, even grateful - but realising how much she cares? How much she wants? goddamn it- it’s like driving a fucking tanker of oil into an already roaring fire.
“What do you want to ask about her?” Henry’s suspicious, and Emma squirms.
She fiddles with the napkin in her hands, the one that’s been fiddled with so much it’s nearly disintegrated, before she finally blurts out, “Does your Mom exercise?”
It turns out she’s beaten Henry at his game, because whatever it was he thought she was going to ask, it wasn’t that. Small wrinkles settle on his forehead where he’s frowning.
“Exercise?” He asks, an eyebrow raised.
“Yeah, you know? Gym, weights, cardio, all that jazz,” Emma rattles on. “Does she do it?”
“Why?”
“I was just wondering,” Emma says, shrugging to prove her point.
“I don’t ‘just wonder’ about your exercise routines,” Henry says, doubtful.
“Geez, kid. I was just asking. No crime there, right?”
He narrows his eyes even more.
“So?” Emma asks again, because it’s out now and there’s no point backing down. “She must exercise, right? Some kind of workout, because there’s no way she gets a body like that from sitting at her desk all day, even if those heels she wears must be doing things to her calves-“ Emma stops short, abruptly aware of who her audience is.
Henry is smirking at her like he knows something she doesn’t. Worrying.
“What?” Emma says, wary of his look.
Henry considers her for a moment, taking a long drag on the straw of the milkshake he’d wrangled out of her. He makes a show of slurping up the drink, before he picks up his comic again. He reads for a good 30 seconds, and Emma wonders if she should prompt him again, when suddenly he says, “She does pilates.”
“Pilates?” Emma repeats.
“Mhmm,” Henry sips at his drink again.
“Anything else?” Emma’s not sure she’s flexible enough for pilates.
“She runs,” Henry says, nonchalant.
Emma’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “I’ve never seen her out running,”
“She goes early,” Henry says, and Emma’s instantly suspicious because it’s like the kid knows exactly where this conversation is headed.
That doesn’t stop her from asking though. “How early?”
Henry drops his comic shut on the table and clasps his hands in front of him, fixing Emma with his best serious face. “6.” He answers, or rather, challenges.
Emma tries to hide her wince. “That early, huh?”
“Yep,” Henry says, still staring.
“Okay, that’s cool,” Emma tries to shrug the conversation off, whilst she wonders whether her body will forgive her if she gets up at the crack of dawn to go running with Regina. “So, what d’you want to do this evening, kid?”
But Henry ignores her question in favour his own. “Why do you want to know what time my Mom runs, Emma?”
There’s something about the way that Henry says my Mom that has her insides warm. It’s soft, but fierce, and suddenly the kid is only 70% Mills, and a strong 30% Swan. Okay, make that 75 to 25, because Henry’s staring at her the way she’s seen him analysing the chess board. Regina has been teaching him how to play, and on Sunday evenings, when Emma comes round to pick Henry up for the week, she’ll usually find them sat across from each other at the dining room table. Henry watching the board, Regina watching Henry. Emma will sit and watch both of them, (well, mostly), getting hissed at and swatted away by Regina when she tries (and fails) to sabotage the game by taking the white knight piece and knocking the black queen on her ass.
“I don’t know,” Emma’s cheeks are warm and she makes a point to look around to see if their food will be coming any time soon. “I just- I was thinking, because I run as well right? I could, maybe, possibly go running with her?” Emma lets out, anxious and embarrassed.
“You want to exercise with my mom?” Henry is asking, slowly, his face screwed up in confusion, and Emma momentarily panics that Henry has gotten the wrong end of the stick, and thinks that exercise is a code word for something decidedly more R-rated (not that Emma would object to something decidedly more R-rated, but she is not opening that can of worms right now), before she realises the kid is just the kid, and his emphasis was more on the ‘with’ part.
“Yeah, with your mom. That’d be nice, right? She’d have a jogging buddy or whatever,” Emma smiles brightly.
Henry’s still studying her, and Emma feels like she’s waiting for approval. Which is absurd, because she’s the parent and he’s the offspring, not the other way around. Henry takes a while, regardless, and Emma can almost see his mind at work – trying to work out the moves and motivations behind Emma’s questions. But whatever his conclusion, it must be affirmative, because all at once Henry’s posture relaxes and he shifts from slightly-terrifying-interrogator, to adorable-but-spoilt-brat.
“Cool,” he grins. “Can I have another milkshake?”