[IN PROGRESS] Right There All the Time
So, coramilfs suggested this, and I figured ‘Why the hell not?’ Might take a while to finish, but I’ve got 8k words so far…
It was Friday and Emma was making fried eggs. Henry was sitting at the breakfast table, tapping his pen against his lip while reading over the contents of the notebook in his other hand.
He liked to think of this particular notebook as his Official Dossier, because that was a concept that both of his moms would appreciate: Mom, because of the implicit bureaucracy and the fact that he’d taken the time to develop a notation system with a reference key inside the front cover; and Emma, because he’d collected his evidence properly, with dates and times and pertinent details, just like a real detective. But sometimes, on those days when he was particularly frustrated with their total obliviousness, he thought of the notebook as his Big Book of Gay.
It had been just over a year since Emma had moved in with them, taking up residence in the good guest room. Looking back, he should have read more into that than he did, especially since Mom redecorated it and bought a new mattress and everything, but he was just glad that he wouldn’t have to spend his time with Emma in that cramped loft with his crying baby uncle and too many people and no privacy anywhere, ever. And his Mom’s reasons for inviting Emma to live with them had made so much sense: they had all that space; Emma couldn’t really afford to rent somewhere decent which wasn’t all the way out in Storybrooke Heights; the house was close to the school and the Town Hall and the Sheriff’s Station; it was less disruptive for him not to be shuttled between two households; they could share parenting duties more easily. All of that was true, but it had blinded him to the most important part of the arrangement, which was that, when you took him out of the equation, Mom had invited Emma to live with her, without any prompting, and Emma had said yes without even taking time to think about it.
Although the first weeks of their new living arrangements had been tense and awkward, with arguments breaking out everywhere over the slightest thing, somewhere along the way, things had started working out. When Emma had conceded that maybe she could put her clothes in the laundry hamper rather than on the floor and over every other surface, Mom had accepted that some fried food in the house occasionally wouldn’t kill them all. With each new compromise, things just kept getting better between his moms. Again, if he had been paying closer attention, Henry would have noticed how his mom was with Emma. To be fair to himself, he had been just fourteen then, and he was so used to how Mom was with him that he hadn’t thought twice about it when she showed Emma the same care and attention. But he should have picked up on the fact that she was already doing Emma’s laundry from the day she moved in, and making Emma’s favourite meals as well as his, and only ever calling her ‘Miss Swan’ when she was teasing her about something, and always with a smile in her eyes, and that she touched Emma.
Mom touched Emma freely and often. Once he noticed that, Henry couldn’t stop noticing it. There were little touches: a hand pressed to Emma’s back as Mom reached past her for something in the kitchen; casually wiping food from Emma’s cheek or chin with her thumb; a tap on the shoulder to catch Emma’s attention while she was on the phone to Grandpa; leaning into Emma, pressing against her whenever they sat next to each other, even on the bleachers at his baseball games. Later, he noticed the Totally Married Couple Touches: when Mom would lean over to brush the hair out of Emma’s eyes while she was reading the newspaper at the kitchen table; the shoulder massages for a work injury—which, yeah, Emma didn’t work that hard—when Mom made Emma sit in between her legs and lean back against her (not to mention the noises Emma made, because they might very well have scarred him for life); and the fact that Mom kissed Emma on the cheek every morning when she left for work. Every. Single. Morning.
