CHAPTER NINETEEN: LOVE ACCORDING TO FRENCH CANADIAN SPACE MERMAIDS
(In which there's a time jump, Henry defies authority, and Mary Margaret plays matchmaker - so you know that's going to snowball into a fiasco.)
Valentine's Day brought a dance at Storybrooke High, in attendance of which Henry found himself wearing an ugly blue tuxedo-ish costume thing that his grandmother had picked out. He didn't have a date, of course, since part of his grounding following the "Grace-slash-Gretel Incident" forbid him from dating... as well as any sort of driving. He'd had to ride between his grandparents in David's truck, which was rather humiliating - though Henry suspected his grandfather would have let him drive if Regina hadn't seen them off with a stern look... and from the tittering comments that Mary Margaret made on the way, he sorely suspected she believed dancing with girls and potentially finding his true love to a Journey song would somehow bypass and invalidate the terms of his grounding.
Henry loved his grandparents, but they had a way of completely disrespecting both of his moms under some delusion that their parenting and leadership skills were superior to everyone else and that being soulmates who had saved each other with true love multiple times meant they could take executive action in anything regarding matchmaking. It was kind a massive pain in the butt!
And it was totally embarrassing having to accompany his grandparents into the gymnasium which was decorated in what Henry supposed his grandmother considered the closest thing short of a wedding reception to a royal ball that could be put together with a handful of fairy-nuns ... and probably, in part, was because crazy circumstances had intervened to interrupt Emma's wedding reception ball before the guests had even finished gathering in the town meeting hall... which was literally razed to the ground... but later repaired with magic, minus the giant cake Granny had made and the stacks of wrapped gift boxes and bouquets of roses that Mr. French had grumbled about for weeks, though to be fair, Emma had really wanted yellow tulips and was shot down by the woman who was now taking over the karaoke machine system by the portable assembly stage where a big bowl of construction paper hearts was perched on a pedestal for a Valentine's Day version of Secret Santa.
Ugh.
And he just knew they'd probably try to be hip and mashup pop tunes, which would just make it worse. He still had nightmares of the video from Emma's bachelorette party... which he found Hook watching for the knock-down-drag-out-hair-pulling-clothes-ripping fight between his moms after Emma finally figured out that Regina had killed Graham.
His birth mom could be so unbelievably dim sometimes. And she didn't have syphilis and monkey herpes to blame for that one!
She wasn't exactly being brilliant where it came to Henry's misbehavior of late, either, but he'd long ago figured out that Emma's superpower only worked with complete strangers in situations with zero emotional investment, which never happened in this town, so it was useless and her clinging to it was about as useful as Jack clinging to that wardrobe in the middle of the ice cold Atlantic... and if this dance was going to have the entire soundtrack to Titanic, he might drown himself in the punch bowl!
Which was located in a dark corner by the bleachers, and that's where Henry sequestered himself, as far from his grandparents and the other bowl of construction paper hearts as humanly possible. Forced social interaction did not true-love-finding-make... at least not in New York where kids acted normal instead of this weird mix of boring Curse personalities and Enchanted Forest etiquette-obsessed upbringings... well, aside from Gretel, anyway, who got labeled the school rebel and slut for defying the status quo.
It had been Gretel's idea to take those pictures of Grace, which to be fair, was for the shitty reason to embarrass the younger girl, because Grace was the most well-endowed girl in his class and seniors had to treat freshman like crap. Probably, Gretel was just jealous that all the guys drooled over Grace while she herself was tall and athletic - not the fairy tale ideal. In that, Henry felt bad for Gretel, that the boys were already indoctrinated into what the feminine ideal was, and she didn't fit it, so she had to be slutty to get guys to notice her. But on the other hand, she'd always had a mean personality, ever since she set him up for shoplifting, so he should have known better than to buy stolen vodka from her... which then lead to a weird, brief, and rather uncomfortable secret boyfriend/girlfriend situation.
He should have known better, that she was the type of person to use what dirt she had on him to get him to be her accomplice in various rebellious activities, and while Henry didn't entirely disagree with some of her objections to the conservative social conformity of the Enchanted Forest way of life that had taken root here after the Second Curse, he wouldn't have used her methods... if he hadn't been on the desperate side of fitting in without being asked why he wasn't doing so in the stereotypical 1950's fashion that seemed to be the middle ground these fairy tale characters had settled on for the degree of acclimating to comparatively socially ultramodern the Land Without Magic they could tolerate.
In short, the best defense was an offense in which you acted like a womanizing dick.
"It's a woman's duty to make a man feel strong and in charge." Killian's advice summed up what the men in his family thought, so being a misogynist prick just went hand-in-hand with that worldview, and people just accepted it. As long as you were, in some twisted capacity, perving on girls like you couldn't wait to get some princess ass, then everyone saw it as being a healthy and virile young man always on the lookout for some poor damsel to rescue (who would bestow her kindness with some sexual favor that would never, of course, be spoken of until after one's wedding day) as one would certainly turn out to be true love, and one didn't let any moss grow on that stone once puberty started, because the sooner you found that special someone, the sooner you could get hitched and start popping out kids.
It seemed to Henry that a person should have to find a way to feel strong and in charge all on their own, not expect someone to basically sacrifice their strength and independence so their partner could feel better about themselves. But that's how people rolled in The Enchanted Forest.
So, school dances were really just the crape paper and pop music equivalent of débutante balls to ensure everyone got paired up. And the majority of the kids seemed perfectly cool with that. But Henry wasn't in the majority, he was in the punch bowl crowd and joined the freaks and geeks at the sidelines. Gretel, of course, was the defecto head of the weird loners, black-painted lips spread as she picked her teeth with a toothpick from one of the finger sandwiches. She'd no doubt gotten a glare and a dress code violation talk from Mary Margaret but had failed to make her way to the girl's bathroom to remove her Goth make-up and fishnets.
"Look'n sharp, Swills," she catcalled and Henry just grimaced and grabbed a cup before finding a spot along the wall, that just happened to be occupied by a pale looking Baelfire.
Henry took a breath before joining him. It was still weird that the boy was his father, but it helped that he was a nice kid and cool in a nerdy sort of way that was, well, not unlike Henry himself. Of course, being the youngest in their year and late in joining, he was immediately in the outcast group. Well, that and everyone knew he was Henry's father but were forbidden to talk about it - just as everyone had been given a talk about Pinnocchio when August got de-aged without any memories of the sex-addict writer he was before who'd spoken at an assembly about writing and had to be hustled off of the stage when he got a little too descriptive of his inspiration in Bangkok; being only ten at the time, he'd thought August was talking about a table tennis match, but now - gross. Impressive. But still gross.
"So... is this your first dance?" Henry asked after taking a sip of his punch.
Bae answered with a grimace, "With girls. Pan held a dance of sort in Hamlin. He got us all high on pixie dust and tried to kidnap me. Other than that... I snuck into a few fancy dinner dances in London, when I was desperate, to pick the coat check room, but the only formal dancing I've done was a few lessons with Wendy for a party I never made it to." After a pause, he asked, "You?"
"I wish. My mom made me go to cotillion starting when I was eight. It was always square-dancing, though. I think it was supposed to be punishment."
"Square dancing?"
"Trust me. It's just awful. That's when I knew I had to start trying to find my birth mom. No sane parent would make their kid square-dance."
The screeching of the microphone suddenly made everyone yelp and cover their ears. Accept for Snow White who was holding it and exclaimed, "EVERYONE! IT'S TIME FOR THE FIRST DANCE! GIRLS PICK FIRST!"
Henry sighed and almost wished a portal would open up and suck him to another world as he, along with the other boys, carried his cup of punch to stand on the half court line while the girls cued up at the giant punch bowl by the stage where Mary Margaret was beaming excitedly. Henry ended up next to Gretel's brother Hansel, the shorter, older boy looking less than thrilled himself with the proceedings. Henry had sort of become friendly with Hansel even though him and Gretel's didn't much hang out her anymore. He wouldn't say that they were friends, but Hansel helped his father out with auto-shop and driver's ed during his free periods and so probably on account of being Gretel's brother didn't completely ostracize Henry for being kinda friends with her instead of just using her for sex like the older boys in their class.
"BAELFIRE!" Snow called out, smiling happily as she preened over a girl named Mary who'd seemed to have a bit of a ctush on Baelfire in spite of his family situation... perhaps because she was kind of ditz.
"Good luck with that one," said Hansel and Bae squared his shoulders and walked to his potential social doom.
"JACK HORNER!"
As Jack skulked out of the corner to join Betsy Botter, daughter of the town's bakers, Hansel remarked, "Should be another bowl full of condoms."
"Yeah," Henry agreed with a snort. "I can't really see how anything good can come of encouraging teenagers to get seriously romantic. Sometimes I think just because my grandparents found true love, they think every 'meet cute' is automatically fated to be forever. Of course, I guess that means by their definition a meet cute is pulling a lying murderer out of a pile of corpses or getting attacked by flying monkeys with the guy whose wife you murdered. Sometimes I think sharing a heart halved their I.Q.'s. But then, near as I can tell, you don't really need a lot of smarts to make a living in the disease infested feudal wasteland that's the Enchanted Forest. No offense."
Hansel grinned and responded with a shrug, "None taken. My father wanted to be an architect, but being a peasant and all, and after our mom died, there was no chance of him impressing some lord to even have a chance at an apprenticeship. You pretty much do what you were born into unless some person with magic uses you as a pawn in their own game and it just happens to make your situation better. Like your grandfather. Of course, then you get into the matter of denying that magical person to assert your free will, and you get screwed in other ways. Plus, I mean, even though he had the kingdom, the queen, and the title, he still had to hide his true identity, because then he'd been a fraud with no right to King George's kingdom. Really, he's just a consort, but you're grandmother's followers vouch for him, because they want that land should we return. Which, I imagine, is part of the reason behind King George riling up the forest dwellers and farm fanatics. At this point, the only real reason to support your grandparent is that they have powerful magic users on their side, i.e. potential dangerous enemies, as well as Prince Eric's navy and Midas' financial backing. But if they could form an alliance between all of the less powerful sorcerers, get militia support from the disenchanted mercenaries who've been sidelined by the Merry Men and make the pirates legitimate privateers, and get control of the fairy dust diamond mines, then it would be fairly easy to conquer your grandparents' kingdoms. They may act justly compared to many, but strategically, they only won that war because of your other grandfather."
"Yeah, they do kind of completely such at both strategy and tactics," Henry agreed, rolling his eyes, while wondering who Hansel was talking to, because that was not the version of history his grandmother taught. The losers, probably, which he supposed meant the peasants who suffered for harboring Snow White in defiance of the Evil Queen and then kept on suffering because their beloved monarch let their oppressor/tormentor go back to her fortress with all of her evil supplies and followers on a jinx that basically meant she could murder as many people as she wanted and burn the seven kingdoms from the mountains to the sea - she just couldn't harm Snow and Charming in the process.
This being a prince thing, as far as Henry was concerned, had lost a lot of its appeal. Plus, there was the only bastard issue that his grandparents didn't know that he knew about or that they'd issued some degree at a town hall meeting that said he was legitimate on their say-so, as if that would mean anything to the growing numbers of disenchanted Enchanted Foresters who didn't think David was a legitimate ruler and ever since Mary Margaret fucked up at being mayor, questioned her ability to lead a kingdom. Plus, it's not like anyone was looking to marry a guy with two mothers, one who'd been the Evil Queen and one who'd been the Dark One, and whose father had been the son of the Dark One... and whose family basically brought some magical catastrophe upon everyone else on a regular basis and never held themselves accountable for it.
Really, at this point, his family was basically third in line behind The Lannisters and The Habsburgs in terms of being a fucking mess of murder, incest, and stupidity.
Sometimes Henry really wished he could go back to being that naive ten year old who believed all of the heroics and selfless do-gooding in his book. 'Cause it pretty much sucked being a cynical teenager who'd had to realize the hard way that it was all a bunch of "written by the victors" bullshit.
"HENRY MILLS!" his grandmother's voice pulled Henry from his thoughts, and Henry silently swore as he realized Grace had pulled his name, which could only mean Mary Margaret had some fairy bewitch the damned thing in her weird obsession to pair him up, because, it seemed, since things imploded and collided fatally between his mom and stepfather, she needed a new matchmaking project to maintain her delusion that she was a good judgment of character with regard to romance.
Hansel caught him as he was about to head up, whispering, "Me and Gretel are gonna sneak out. Meet us at the car in the lot after the first dance if you're in."
Unable to answer with the spotlight on him, Henry strode forward to meet Grace with an exchanged awkward smile. She'd never been informed of his peeping and things were probably better that way. Henry liked Grace. They even had a few dates when he was thirteen... until his life got weird and she said she thought it best that they didn't see each other anymore, and he was honestly okay with that. She was a nice girl. A bit on the flighty side, maybe having inherited some... eccentric mentality from her father, and her dad frankly scared him, but she was still a good person who hadn't deserved to be shamed.
"So... this is obviously a setup," she said and Henry sighed.
"Yeah, sorry. My grandma... I think since my step-dad died and my mom made it clear she was not going to be set up on any blind dates, I'm her project. The Enchanted Forest motto seems to be that 'single people are unhappy people doomed to die alone and you have to get over heartbreak by getting under someone of the opposite sex as soon as possible'," Henry explained with a grimace. "So, she thinks I was actually into Gretel, which means I need a distraction from that trainwreck situation by getting involved with a pretty girl so I don't have to actually bother with any kind of self-reflection about why I got involved with her to begin with, because love is about pretty people and dancing and adventures, not talking, and getting to know each other, and compatibility."
"Wow, that's super romantic," snorted Grace.
"Yeah, I left out that they should preferably be some family relation or, you know, look like them," Henry stated.
"Look like them?"
"You look like my mom when she was fifteen. Which would be less weird if my grandmother hadn't actually seen video or had a vision of what my mom looked like," he groaned. "I mean, I liked Harry Potter and all, but what was up with him marrying a girl who was like his mom's doppelgänger? Women have really weird concepts of true romance, I think."
"And not men? Wasn't your step-dad also your step grandad?"
"Pretty sure that was less about romance and more about my step-dad being a sex offender sociopath with cottage cheese for a brain.," Henry pointed out. "My grandma's thinking more along the lines of this ending with 'I'm sorry that I got way too into playing house and accidentally kissed you passionately' followed immediately by a marriage proposal."
"Well, I can pretend to be playing house with you," shrugged Grace, "if it'll get your granny off your back."
"You don't mind?" Henry asked, surprised, as My Heart Will Go On began.
"Oh, I do like you, Henry," she told him, "and I would totally sleep with you if you wanted, because I think you're a nice guy even if you've been acting like a jerk, but I can't see us getting married and having babies. More of a... friends with benefits type situation."
"Er... um..."
"No pressure," she told him.
"Um... that's... flattering," Henry finally managed, "but... I think... I'd rather just be friends without the benefits. I... ah... got in enough trouble with Gretel, and-"
"It's cool!" she laughed and pecked him on the cheek, which Henry noted got a swooning look from his grandmother to his grandfather where the two were now setting up a keyboard. So, it was definitely about to be a go on some stupid duet thing.
"You know, ah," Henry cleared his throat, "I was thinking of skipping out with Hansel and Gretel. Hansel finished rebuilding his car and they want to take it for a spin, if you want-"
"To make it look like we're sneaking out to snog?" Grace giggled. "Sounds way more fun than this! I saw the playlist and I hate Celin Dion!"
Henry sighed in relief and as soon as the music ended, he let Grace pull him by the hand toward the door that led out to the athletic field. From there it was a short walk to the parking lot and the blue and white-racing-striped 1969 Dodge Charger, the back of which was occupied.
When Henry knocked on the window, Gretel turned and popped the door open, revealing a somewhat disheveled and panicked looking Baelfire.
"I poached us a locksmith from Lambchop. Told him he didn't need to pick the lock on my chastity belt, but apparently Baelfire is a good boy," she pouted.
"You gave Henry syphilis," Bae reminded sourly. "I'm not sure there's enough of those condom things in this world that would get me to have intercourse with you."
"Yeah, yeah, blame it on Georgie Porgie for sticking something more than his finger in my pie!" Gretel scoffed and raised a brow at Grace as she got out. "What's with her? Hansel didn't say this was a 'plus one' situation, did he?"
"I'm his cover story," Grace said with a shrug. "His grandparents think I'm his best match and we snuck out to having sex and make more illegitimate royal babies."
Gretel snorted. "Your grandparents are really awful at grand-parenting."
"Tell me about it."
Hansel came jogging toward them, then. "Sorry. Couldn't get away from Muffy. Felt like I was picked for tribute. I'd rather fight to the death than dance with some of those bougie snobs."
"But dancing leads to at least some of them putting out," pointed out Gretel who pointed to Grace. "She's Henry's cover-slash-underaged-true-love-match-booty-call."
"Just as long as she won't tattle."
"Tattle about what?"
"We're sneaking into the mines," Baelfire explained.
"Wait, what?" Henry exclaimed.
Hansel explained, "The Dwarfs found a new crop of diamonds, which I'm guessing, way things go, will probably be destroyed by some new big bad shortly. We're gonna nick some of them as insurance. You've been down there, right?"
"Yeah, not recently, but sure," Henry told him, nodding. He hadn't heard about the new crystals, but then he'd mostly been under house and library arrest. He frowned a little. "That's why you invited me? Because I know my way around the mine?"
"And we invited Baelfire," said Gretel, "because he's good at picking locks and unlikely to be missed, since most people either don't know him being the new kid or avoid him like the plague on account of his father and, you know, the dead thing. Don't take it personally. Think of it like... Ocean's Eleven. You both got necessary skills. Which, I guess, makes Gracie the useless love interest that distracts from the heist plot-"
"Hey!" Grace hissed. "I am not useless. And I'm a fake love interest."
"Can we just go already?" Hansel huffed. "We do have to be back by midnight for the last dance or we will get in trouble. So, either you guys are in and we go, or you stay here. But we can't waist any more time joking around."
No one bowed out, none of them really wanting to go back into the gymnasium as another song from the Titanic soundtrack began blaring into the chilly night. As they piled in and drove off, Gretel behind the wheel and speeding like a Fast and Furious movie, Baelfire wondered aloud at how anyone found a love story that ended with hundreds of people dying, one of the couple drowning, and the survivor settling for a second rate marriage as the epitome of romantic cinema.
"How should I know?" Getel replied. "Our dad loves The English Patient and that's a boring-ass story about some guy who crashes his plane, is horribly injured and burned, gets cared for by some nurse who falls in love with him - only for the guy to croak at the end in a cave in a fucking desert. Adults are weird," she swerved off the highway and slammed on the breaks. "Ready for some spelunking?"
AN: The title is from a John Oliver joke that lead to a satirical pre-filmed CNN piece intended for what news worthy event? (the end of the world.) "Lambchop" is Gretel's nickname for Mary from "Mary Had A Little Lamb" whom I imagine as being a relation of Bo Peep and "Muffy" is "Miss Muffet", who's got quite the tuffet and severe arachnophobia.
Next up: August pays Emma a "friendly" visit.