"Addiction…it's zero to sixty in a manner of seconds. You think you are fine and then before you know it…you're just not there anymore and in your place is someone else entirely."

-Regina Mills


Emma


"I hate you, I - I just freaking hate you!" Henry's adolescent voice cracked as he screamed down the stairs of their two-story Colonial home. It was a new record, from fine to screaming in a matter of seconds. Emma clicked her tongue, thinking that she should get a sticker for that, or perhaps a cookie that said '#1 Mom' in fluorescent blue icing.

"Well, good!" Emma yelled back, hot-red in the cheeks and eyes tearing with frustration. "That's good for you! You'll have plenty of things to tell your therapist when you get older! You should be thanking me!"

"I don't get it!" Her son's livid, pimpled face appeared over the highest railing above her. "Why won't you let me go? Luke is going! Joseph and Kyle are going! Even Paige is going and her dad never lets her do anything! Why the hell can't I go? I don't even like Paige or Penny like that!"

"Well." Emma scoffed. "You might not but your hormones sure do!"

Henry's face crumpled into disgust. "Ugh! Mom! God! UGH! What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Hey!" She shot back, a finger pointing ineffectually at him. "Absolutely freaking not! Watch your language! Bonnie's first word will not freaking be something that she can't say in front of Mother Superior! Watch it! That is not how you're going to convince me to let you go!"

"Fine!" Henry let out a grunted huff of frustration and disappeared from view, his bedroom door slamming with a resounding smack a moment later.

Emma stood in her place at the foot of the stairs, seething, her breath fast in her throat and her hands balled into fists. She shouldn't let Henry get her this worked up. He was just being... teenage. It was pointless. She was usually better at that, at not rising to the occasion, but damn, she wanted to smack the kid! How had he thought she would say yes anyway?

Off to her right, keys in the front door jingled, announcing that her wife, Regina, had made it home. She tried to relax her stance, but before Emma could greet her, however, the door upstairs swept open again with a furious crash.

"THIS IS SO UNFAIR!" Henry bellowed. "I'M GOING TO BE THE ONLY ONE NOT GOING! YOU'RE GOING TO MAKE ME LOOK LIKE SUCH A LOSER! YOU'RE GOING TO RUIN MY SOCIAL LIFE! GOD, YOU SUCK! YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE THE COOL ONE! WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT?"

"I HAD A TEENAGER!"

"Ouch. Does that mean I'm the uncool one?" Regina asked, eyebrows so high they were brushing her hairline.

Emma just let out a grunt and shrugged.

"What is he yelling about now?"

She growled, picking up their always wailing one-year-old that had somehow made it to her feet and fighting against the blanket of exhaustion. Instead of answering, she called, "Ollie! Mommy's home."

"Mooooommmy!" Their youngest boy came skitting from the living room into the foyer, sliding across the smooth floor in his socked feet to throw his arms around Regina's knees.

"Hi, sweet pea." She gave him a kiss and, satisfied, he went running back to his previous activity in the living room.

"So?" Regina asked in a not unkind voice.

"A bunch of Henry's friends are going camping this weekend and he wants to go." Emma explained, hiking the sniffling Bonnie up her hip and habitually bouncing her a little.

"Oh?" Regina frowned, pulling off her Keds and hanging her shapeless jacket. "And why can't he go? What'd he do?"

"Nothing... well - kind of. He does still have a C in Art... a low C." Again Regina's eyebrows rose. They were both aware of the extra credit project that he, and in turn they, had worked on until the early hours the month before.

"Mostly I said no because some of those friends who are going are including Paige and Penny." She finished.

"I see."

"Yeah. So, you know... he hates me." She pushed a bot of Bonnie's hair out of her eyes and swayed. "I wonder if Jefferson knows the whole story about this trip. I don't see him letting Paige go camping with a bunch of boys."

"No. I don't either. I'll talk to him tomorrow."

Emma nodded and handed her the blonde baby, who instantly began to wail.

Bonnie was thirteen months old and in the thick of an unhealthy dose of separation anxiety. Of course, she knew both of her mothers quite well but it always took the cherub-faced girl a moment to realize she was simply with her other mother and not some gargoyle stranger who was planning to take a bite out of her.

She watched Bonnie try to push away from Regina, her face turning pink and then red. If Emma were being honest, she wasn't sure it was her mother that the baby was anxious about parting with as much as the binky they had just weaned her from a few weeks before. Bonnie had held onto it with the jaws of life and had been prone to bouts of tears since then.

Regina just softly pat her butt, used to the screaming, waiting, as she always did, for Bonnie to realize she was safe. "Well you're right, he definitely can't go. I thought that extra credit project brought him back up to a B in Art."

"It did."

"I see."

"Yeah." Emma sighed and moved back toward the living room where Oliver was peacefully curled up in the crook of the couch, reading a book as though minutes before his older brother hadn't been trying to initiate World War III in the next room.

"I'm sorry he's behaving that way. I'll talk to him too."

Emma just nodded and ran her fingers through her slightly tangled hair, remembering that she hadn't kissed her hello. "Hi, by the way."

"Hi." Regina smiled. "How was your day? You look tired."

Emma chuckled, weren't they both tired? Tired was just another name for having a teenager... also having a baby... also having more than one child - also being alive...they suffered from a severe case of all four of those. She flopped onto the couch, her eyes immediately closing. "It was fine. Busy. Storybrooke really needs a Whole Foods so I don't have to drive so far for one." She was lying when she said that her day had been fine. It had been hard. Henry was pissed. Again. He had been since minutes after she had picked him up from school. Also, just like every other day since Bonnie's new anxiety, she had spent the majority of the day screaming her head off unless she was on Emma's hip, which made doing anything very difficult and made her body ache. Oliver had been pushed by another boy at school because of his pink striped leggings, which meant that she had spent an hour in the school's office - again - while Bonnie intermediately screamed from Oliver's lap in the waiting room.

Emma was... tired.

They had simply bit off more than they could chew this school year, taking on too many extracurricular activities. Emma had never been this tired. But it was all right because now the day, at least the hard part of it, was over. There was just dinner, bath time, and then bed time. Thank god. She could take her shoes off and start fantasizing about the very hot shower she would take after the kids were in bed.

"I'm glad that your day wasn't too hard. I know Bonnie is in a difficult phase right now." Regina sat on the opposite side of the couch, apparently not realizing that Emma had been lying through her teeth. Emma wasn't upset by that fact, she knew that Regina's head was still back at work. Emma would tell her more after that shower.

"Well, today was a weird day for me..." she began to ramble on, playing with a now calm Bonnie's chubby feet. Sharing their days was their usual interaction post work. Regina would come home and begin to speak of her day and Emma would sit and listen. Well - Emma would try to sit and listen. She always did. She would focus tightly on the first few sentences, knowing that she had absolutely no interest in the topic at all and, therefore, she needed to try all the harder. Then around the third or fourth sentence, Emma's mind would begin to wander. She would nod and smile in the proper moments but really her mind was wondering about the late assignment Henry hadn't turned in or Bonnie's teething. Emma couldn't feel too bad though, she knew Regina did it too. It wasn't that they didn't care, as much as it was that they had been hearing the same types of stories for ten years. They had lost their appeal.

About halfway through Regina looked up with a crease in her brow, making Emma jump guiltily. She had been dozing a little. "Did something happen with dance tonight?"

"What?" Emma asked, pinching the bridge of her nose. She had a headache.

"Ollie's class. It's Friday."

Emma let out a curse far too colorful for the young ears present and jumped to her feet. "It's Friday? Why was I thinking it's Wednesday? That doesn't even make sense, if it were you wouldn't even be home yet! Shit! We're late! Did Henry leave to go over to Joanne's? Did you see him leave?"

"That's a baaad word, Mommy!"

Emma flinched, but Regina covered for her. "She knows, sweetie. Mommy didn't mean it. Hop up and get your shoes on, please."

"HENRY! YOU MISSED THE CARPOOL! YOU'RE GOING TO BE LATE FOR SOCCER!" Emma skipped to the stairs to yell up them.

"Yeah. I know. I forgot." Henry appeared behind her with his cleats hanging over his shoulder. "Can I have a ride, please?"

Emma sighed and gently pushed him toward the door. "Well, if you would stop yelling at me, kid, I would remember the day of the freaking week. Yeah? Great. Let's go. Ollie?"

Their quiet six-year-old skipped into the foyer, a small smile on his lips. "I'm ready, Mommy."

"Thank you, sweet pea."

The boys headed down the driveway to Emma's Prius while she jammed her feet into her comfy sneakers, cramping her toes. "Do you have her?" Emma asked over her shoulder. She knew that Regina had extra work to do, she always did in the evenings but the thought of another drive where Bonnie screamed the whole way turned her headache into a preemptive migraine.

Regina looked uncertainly from Bonnie, who was already beginning to fuss again as Emma got closer to the front door and back to Emma. It took a moment but she clicked on a smile. "Of course. I have a few phone calls to make but I can make those later."

Emma gave her a relieved smile, squeezed her hand, and headed out toward the car.


"Stop it! ... Stop it! ...Seriously? Stop!"

Henry was hitting Ollie.

Then Ollie was hitting Henry.

"Guys, I mean it!"

"Ow! Mom!"

"Oliver!"

"Ahhh! Mommy!"

"Henry!"

"What? He hit me first!"

"Henry, you are freaking sixteen! Deal with it!"

"Mooo-"

"Do you want to go to soccer practice?"

"Uh, yeah. I have to." Emma could hear the eye roll in his voice. "Coach would kill me if I didn't. We have a game tomorrow. Tonight's a scrimmage."

"Ollie. Do you want to go to dance?"

"Yes, Mommy."

"Then both of you need to sit down and freaking be quiet before I put you in an early grave!" She snarled in that number one mom voice, the one that all three children, well maybe two and a half, knew not to mess with.

Both boys sat back solemnly and did their best to hide their smiles. They didn't believe their mother's threat for a minute.

Emma pulled up to the gate of the small high school's soccer field and had to stifle a sigh. "Okay, first kid - out."

Henry turned to get out, scrambling over Ollie. Emma waited for his hand to lash out and smack Ollie again, but it didn't. Instead he paused, one foot out the door.

"What's wrong? You're going to be late."

"Nothing." He smiled his softly gawky grin and leaned forward to kissed her cheek. "I'm sorry about what I said before, Mom. I didn't mean it."

Warmth flooded through her chest feeling like hot soup on a cold day. Henry was changing, he had turned into a fully-fledged teenager – already was, and with that came all of the attitude and hormones, but every now and then she got a glimpse of the sweet round-faced boy she had given birth to sixteen years ago.

"Oh." She ruffled his hair, loving the half smile he gave her in response. "Thanks. That feels good to hear."

"Okay." He smiled one more time and then was gone.


Outside of Storybrooke Dance, Oliver shuffled his way into the front seat and threw his arms around her neck. "I'm sorry I hit Henry, Mommy. I know I'm not supposed to."

Emma gave a happy laugh and wrapped her arms around her little boy tightly. Henry really had no idea the type of influence he held over Oliver, did he?

"Awe, thank you, sweet pea. Okay, run inside. You're late. Mom will be the one to pick you up, okay?"

"'Kay!" Ollie jumped out of the car and ran inside, his dance slippers slapping happily against the concrete as he went. "Love you, Mommy!"

"Love you too, Ollie!"

Emma headed home then to relieve Regina of Bonnie, who disappeared into her office instantly with an apologetic expression and a promise to pick up Henry and Oliver. So Emma bounced the little girl on her hip and sang repetitive courses of the wheels on the bus while she made dinner.

Regina appeared a bit later to give the girls a quick kiss before leaving to pick up the boys.


They arrived in a calamity of noise, screaming and arguing while Regina marched after them, her face twisted into fury, glaring and snarling. "You both have things you would like to attend tomorrow, do you not?" She was shouting. "Right. Then calm down!"

"Oh great! I'm starved!" Henry dropped his soccer things just inside the kitchen door, plopped down at the table, and immediately shoved a roll into his mouth whole.

"Excuse me, mister!" Regina smacked him lightly on the back of the head. "Wait for everyone else."

He guffawed lightly, cheeks full to exploding and took Bonnie to put her in her high chair.

"Did you wash your hands?"

Henry rolled his eyes as though this wasn't the routine every night but pulled his brother up so that they could wash before dinner.

"And put away your bags, both of you. They don't belong on the kitchen floor!" Regina called after them.

Over dinner they spoke of school and work, telling jokes that, on Henry's part, were not always the most appropriate - just like every night.

After dinner was bath time for Bonnie and Oliver, some mindless TV, and then straight up to bed - just like every night.

Emma and Regina spent some time doing their usual nightly activities; paperwork for Regina and light tidying for Emma. Then they got ready for bed, too tired - as usual - to stay up late.

Just as she did every night, on her way upstairs Emma opened Oliver's door as she went by. "Put the book away, sweet pea!"

There was a yelp and the muffled light coming from under his covers went out.

"I know I had more to tell you about today." Emma called from the bathroom. She had pulled her tired legs into it, expecting that highly anticipated shower, only to decide she was too tired. Instead, she pulled on the overly large t-shirt she slept in and clicked off the light.

"Hmm." Regina nodded from her place in front of her vanity. "I saw Oliver's knee."

"Yeah. It's that stupid kid again. I don't see how his teacher doesn't believe this is bullying." Emma flopped in elegantly across the soft bed and then wiggled her way under the covers. The feeling was better than sex.

"Did I ever tell you," Regina asked, brushing through her hair, "that when I spoke to his teacher last she told me that we simply need to stop letting Ollie dress himself?"

Emma gave a snort. "In other words, he would stop being picked on if we forced him into jeans instead of leggings. Yeah, well, she's a dick."

Regina chuckled, climbing into bed and let her head fall against Emma's shoulder. "And Henry?"

"He apologized. We're good until I piss him off again."

"That seems about right. Oh. What time is Henry's game in the morning?"

"Um, eight."

"Right." Regina pulled her hair back into a ponytail and sank into the sheets.

Emma clicked off the light and sighed, cuddling into Regina's side. "Is this our week to bring snacks or is it next week?"

"I think it's next week." Regina answered, her voice already thickening with sleep.

Emma ran her hand lightly but affectionately over Regina's stomach, not at all surprised when her wife batted it away.

Henry was Emma's child from a previous relationship, if you could call it that, but Regina had carried both Oliver and Bonnie. Emma was sure that any woman after two pregnancies would retain a little weight and the forty pounds that Regina's body stubbornly had held onto seemed completely natural. They didn't bother Emma at all, but Regina adamantly disagreed. Stomach touching was no longer allowed.

"Sorry." Emma habitually apologized, her hand instead moving to gently cup one of Regina's breasts.

"That's all right." Regina shifted a little, getting comfortable.

They shared a small smile before their lips met in a tired kiss.

Ten minutes later they both were resting back on their pillows, eyes drooping.

Regina chuckled to herself in the darkness. "It must be Friday."

"What? No!" Emma liked to pretend that it hadn't become a routine as regular as Monday night pizza and Henry's soccer practices but both women knew it was true.

Regina just tittered in response, making Emma glare as she rolled to her side into her sleep position.

Oh well. She decided as she drifted off.

Scheduled sex.

There were worse things in the world.