Flu Love's Kiss 5
Chapter 5 - I miss you
"Mama bear, what's your twenty? Emma, are you listening? Over..."
"It's Henry," said Emma unnecessarily to the woman beside her. They both eyed the walkie-talkie sitting on the bedside table where it continued to chatter.
"What are we going to tell him," asked Regina.
Emma grabbed the walkie and pushed the speak button down. "Go ahead, Ankle Biter. What's up?"
"Emma, are you better yet?" asked Henry, since he could hear that her voice still sounded nasal over the static of the walkie.
"Uh, not yet, kid. But getting there."
"When are you coming home?"
"As soon as I can, kid, I promise. It's only been a day, Henry." Emma chuckled.
"I miss you."
Emma hesitated to glance at Regina who was listening to the two-sided conversation stiffly. "I miss you too, kid. Listen, it's getting late. Your mom's here, do you want to say hi?"
There was a pause on the other end. "Hi Mom."
Acutely aware of Emma's presence and the fact that her son had barely spoken to her in ages, Regina couldn't think of what to say so she settled for a fall-back motherly question. "Hi Henry... I hope you are being good for Miss Blanchard."
"Yeeees. She says I'm better behaved than Emma."
"I'm sure that's true." Regina smiled to herself.
"Okay, I gotta go. We're having ice-cream."
"Alright, kid, I guess duty calls," laughed Emma. "Good night."
"Brush your teeth, Henry," reminded Regina quickly.
A sigh came over the walkie. "Yes Mom. Night."
"This is a disaster, David!"
"Mar, it's going to be alright."
"No-it-is-not," insisted Mary Margaret. She scooped out balls of ice-cream and dumped them into the three bowls.
David sighed inwardly and let his arms fall onto the kitchen bench. There would be no convincing his wife otherwise when she was on a roll like this.
Mary Margaret glanced at the bedroom where she knew Henry was playing and then lowered her voice to a hissed whisper. "What am I supposed to think... Regina tried to kill Emma a few weeks ago even though all this time she's been in love with her?"
"Love?" said David incredulously. "When did she say that? Emma said it was one-sided."
"There's no such thing as one-sided Love Flu!" whispered Mary Margaret fiercely.
"Ah, so..." David moved his hand in an 'and-so-on' kind of way.
"Yes! Regina is in love with my baby girl." Mary Margaret covered her mouth with her hands like she'd just blurted out a secret.
David thought that was going a bit too far, maybe it wasn't quite as bad as that. He tried to be the voice of reason.
"Look, just because two people may share … an attraction for each other, doesn't mean they'll necessarily act on it."
Mary Margaret gave him a look. "I've chaperoned enough high school proms to know better, David."
"They're not teenagers," David pointed out, trying to be helpful. "Emma's a grown woman... I'm sure she knows what she's doing."
Mary Margaret set her jaw and started pouring chocolate sauce all over the ice-cream sundaes. Apparently she wasn't satisfied with trusting Emma to deal with Regina on her own. It made David suspicious again.
"Are you ever going to tell me about how you got Love Flu?" said David.
"No," said Mary Margaret simply, before calling towards the bedroom. "Henry, ice-cream!"
"I have no idea what I'm doing," said Emma.
"Miss Swan, just put it in."
"Gimme a break, it's not like I've ever done this before."
"Well, that much is obvious," said Regina loftily.
Emma growled in frustration. "Why are we even making this? I'm hungry now. It's going to take ages."
"For god's sake, you're worse than Henry. Fresh pasta cooks in minutes," said Regina. She took the bowl from Emma and let the freshly hand-made ravioli pieces topple into the pot of boiling water.
"Oh," said Emma, a bit sheepishly. "Well, I still don't see why we're cooking this fancy stuff when we could already be eating. What kind of person doesn't have a frozen pizza in the house? You've got a ten-year-old."
"Henry doesn't eat it and I certainly don't," sniffed Regina.
"Uh huh, sure." Emma grinned, thinking of Henry's secret Froot Loops stash. She watched the boiling water roil and started poking the pasta with a spoon.
"Can you cook anything, Miss Swan?" asked Regina disdainfully.
"Tacos. Mac 'n' cheese. Grilled cheese..." Emma listed her repertoire.
"Anything that doesn't involve cheese? Or a heart attack?"
"Aw how sweet. You're worried about my heart."
Emma's heart was the last thing she was worried about, thought Regina to herself. She stirred the chopped herbs fresh from her garden into the sauce and the aroma hit the air immediately.
"God that smells good," breathed Emma. Her empty stomach growled at the promise of the tasty food.
"Where'd you learn to cook anyways? I mean, it's not like they had ravioli in Fairytale Land... and I guess you wouldn't have done stuff like cooking yourself," said Emma, referring to Regina's status as a Queen.
"Ha, I bet that's why you're annoyed I can't cook... cos you had to learn from scratch and when you got to the real world you wouldn't have even known what a ravioli was."
Regina tried to ignore the close-to-the-truth jibes and grabbed the pot of boiling water off the stove with her right hand and moved to the sink to drain the pasta into the strainer.
"You're gonna make someone a good wife someday," joked Emma, but the laugh fell off her face when Regina hissed and jerked her free hand out of the burning steam.
"Are you okay?"
Regina turned to the woman at her side and pierced Emma with an ice-cold stare. "Don't ever say that again."
Dinner was fairly strained after that.
Henry waited until he heard Mary Margaret and David go to bed. He stood against the door to his room peeking through the gap. Once he heard their door shut and saw that all the lights were off he grabbed his backpack and started shoving things into it starting with candy bars, a flashlight, and of course... the book.
Although he'd read it many times before, he'd sat up tonight under the covers with a flashlight going over it again to make sure he hadn't missed anything. He flicked through every page that had a picture and re-read every story where there was even a mention of the Evil Queen.
The book had left stuff out he'd decided, shutting the cover with a slap.
He pulled his coat on over his pyjamas and shoved his feet into sneakers. Like a thief he snuck out of the darkened apartment building and hit the pavement at a run.
He only hoped he wasn't too late.
Emma and Regina were already in bed but not asleep. Emma was fidgeting around trying to get comfortable and Regina was trying to ignore it. The brunette was nearing the end of her patience and was just about to yell at Emma to stay still when a strange noise came from downstairs. It sounded like someone was moving around but trying not to attract attention.
"Did you hear that?" whispered Emma, instantly alert to the possibility of intruders.
"It's just-" started Regina.
"Where's my gun." Emma rolled across the bed as far as their joined hands allowed to reach for the pile of her stuff and clothes still on the floor where she'd dropped them but her weapon wasn't there.
"Emma, no!" Regina pulled on her hand. "It's Henry."
Emma let out a short-lived sigh of relief but an uneasy feeling soon came over her though as she realised that without her right hand she and the gun would be useless at defending against an attack anyway. Regina must've recognised the sound of her son foraging around the house but Henry's being there wasn't a comforting thought either.
"Oh god," said Emma, turning back to face her. "What is he doing here? It's the middle of the night."
"He's supposed to be at your mother's," hissed Regina, wondering if letting her son wander all over town was a genetic failing.
"We can't let him see us like this!" Emma held up their joined hands.
"What are we going to tell him," asked Regina quietly.
"Nothing! We'll just send him to bed."
Regina let out a small laugh at Emma's parenting naivety. "If you think that will work."
The door burst open to Regina's bedroom and Henry's shadowy form stood in the doorway backed by the light from the hall. "Mom, what've you done with Emma!"
Emma instantly realised that her hasty plan of keeping it a secret from the boy wasn't going to work again. "Henry, I'm here."
"What has she done to you," said Henry, coming into the dim room to stand with crossed arms at the bottom of the bed.
"Henry, nothing," sighed Emma. "We're sick-"
"Why are you taking care of her? She's the Evil Queen. She probably put a spell on you to make you do it."
"Henry, it's not like that..." started Emma.
"She doesn't care about you," Henry insisted stubbornly. "She doesn't care about anyone but herself."
"Henry! Listen kid, I'll explain if you just let me. Um, there's this love spell thing-"
"See! I told you," Henry interrupted angrily.
Emma growled in frustration. "Regina, a little help here?"
"Henry, you can't run away in the middle of the night... it's not safe," pleaded Regina.
"You're the worst thing in this town and you already tried to poison me. I'm not afraid of you anymore," Henry's voice cracked to contradict him. "And I'm going to get Emma back."
Henry stomped out of Regina's bedroom and a few seconds later they heard his own bedroom door slam shut. At least, the kid intended to stay the night.
Emma grabbed her phone and scrolled through her few contacts before tapping to make the call. After a few rings a sleepy voice answered.
"Emma?..."
"Mary Margaret. Don't freak out okay, but Henry's here."
"No, he's supposed to be here..." Her mother's voice sounded confused over the phone.
Emma sighed. "Yeah I know, he came over to Regina's by himself. I just wanted to let you know so you didn't find him missing in the morning."
After they both lamented the boy's running away a bit more, Emma hung up the phone and threw it onto the bedside table.
"Regina-" started Emma.
"Go to sleep, Miss Swan," said Regina, lying on her right side with her back to Emma. Her left arm was bent behind her at an awkward angle to accommodate their joined hands.
Emma thought back to all the times last year when Henry would get around town by himself and his alarming habit for running away into the woods. It had worked in her favour when she and her son had been sneaking around behind Regina's back to meet up in secret. But now that she was supposedly more responsible, she realised how worrying it was to be on the other side of that behaviour. The sight of Regina's tightly clenched jaw confirmed that this definitely wasn't the first time for the brunette however. Had she been aware of all the times Henry had disappeared on her?
Emma couldn't sleep but she kept dead still, fighting against the temptation to fidget. She lay there for a long time, tired but waiting for sleep to come, too busy thinking and worrying about Henry. The sound was so soft she almost didn't hear it at first. But then she realised sadly that the woman next to her had been unhappily married for years and was probably well-used to keeping quiet.
Regina was crying in her sleep.