Sorry for the delay, everyone. Some how last week exploded with commitments. But here is some light hearted Charming family fun to start your week. Again, a HUGE THANK YOU to all of my loyal readers and reviews. You are all AWESOME! I hope it's worth the wait! As always, Please review!

Chapter 20 – Family Night Part 2

I carried my baby brother into the living room from my parent's bedroom. While they finished cleaning up from dinner, I had offered to get the little squirt ready for bed. I chalked it up to sibling bonding, but in reality I didn't want to be put on dish duty. If there was one household chore that I despised it was cleaning dishes; especially caked on baked on casserole dishes.

I saw Henry flitting about behind my parents. At first I thought he was putting the clean dishes away, but upon closer inspection, it was obvious that he was searching for something. "Kid?..."

"Hmm…" He didn't look at me, he just continued his search. "Ah, found it." He pulled a mason jar full of popcorn kernels from the back of the pantry closet. His next mission consisted of finding the air popper.

"What are you doing?" I asked him, but I was looking at my parents. I had Neal propped up on top of the island with my hands tucked under his little arms to keep him steady. His chubby hand reached out toward my face to grab my nose. Which was infinitely better that grabbing my hair.

"Making popcorn…Isn't it obvious?" he said in a snarky tone.

"Kid, we just ate dinner, like, twenty minutes ago…" I laughed it off, figuring that he was joking. It wasn't like Henry to speak to anyone like that unless it was in jest. But, apparently my mother didn't think so. She spun around with the spatula that she was washing still in her hand flinging water at David, Neal, and myself in the process, "Henry, you do not speak to your mother that way."

"Sorry…" Henry looked at me with pleading eyes. I just shrugged as I accepted a piece of paper towel that David handed me to wipe off the water. I had no idea what had gotten into her at that moment. She had a weird look on her face, it somehow showed annoyance and mischief all mixed together; if that was even possible.

"Snow, relax…" My father pulled the spatula from her hand to dry it off. He reached around her to give her a side hug, "he was just teasing." She cracked a small smile but didn't respond.

I got up from my perch and slipped Neal into his walker. I walked toward the refrigerator and as I walked behind Henry, I smacked him in the back of the head with my hand. "Owe…what was that for?" He asked rubbing the back of his head with his own hand.

"For pissing off your grandmother," I responded. I reached into the fridge and pulled out a bottle of beer. I looked at the brand label to make sure that the cap was a twist off; I didn't want to have to fight my way to the utensil drawer for the bottle open in the crowded kitchen.

"What are you doing?" My mother asked me on my way past her when I went back to my seat at the island. The sharp up pitch in her voice made it sound as if I was about to break some federal law.

"What?" I looked at her dumbfounded. She pointed to the bottle that I set on the counter. "Oh…" I pinched my eyebrows and raised my shoulders with a shrug. Wasn't it self explanatory? "Popcorn and beer…two great foods that tastes great together. It's kinda like peanut butter and chocolate." She reached up and pulled the bottle away from me, "Hey…what are you doing?" I whined. I found myself doing that a lot more toward my parents lately. I guess that was part of the parent/child relationship going full circle thing.

"You can't drink that in front of your child," what the hell was she talking about. It wasn't like this was the first time that I had a drink in front of Henry. I always made sure to show him that my actions were responsible. Besides wasn't it her to told me to let him have one small drink of champagne at her 'not a birthday party' party? What in the world had gotten into my mother tonight?

The shocked expression on my face hadn't left, it only intensified when my mouth gaped open, and I couldn't define my reaction as anything but confounded. "Seriously? Then what the hell did you buy it for if I can't drink it?" I looked to my father for help. He just snickered as he pulled another dish to dry from the strainer. He was no help.

"I bought it for your father…" he playfully stuck out his tongue in my direction as she made her announcement. He grabbed the bottle and took a swig of my beer. I pushed my open palms in his direction as if to say 'what the hell.'

"Oh no…" I argued. I gave him a smirk that said 'watch this', I was going to play dirty. "No, if I can't drink it in front of my kid, then he can't drink it front of his kid. Especially when said kid, wants one." I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms waiting for my mother to make her next move.

"She's right," my mother picked up the opened bottle of beer and poured it down the drain with the rest of the used dish water. Well, that wasn't the reaction I was expecting. She was supposed to give in to my pout.

"Mom…" I said with the same offended tone that my father used to say "Snow…" at the same time. She ignored both of us. She turned to the fridge to pull out some other drink.

"Sunny D?" I asked in disbelief, I held up the bottle that she handed me. "You're giving us Sunny D to drink with popcorn on game night?" I looked over to my son who was leaning against the counter with a full bowl of popcorn in his hands. He had a shit eating grin plastered, all over his face. I narrowed my eyes at him, "you two had this little charade planned out, didn't you?"

My mother was quick to jump to his defense, "Emma…" she started, but I shut her down.

"Talkin' to the kid…" He was easier to break than she was. "Henry?" I used my mother tone, but it was the mother glare that would get him all of the time. I didn't even realize that I had a 'mother glare' until Henry came into my life, I guess it was one of those instinctual things.

"I just wanted some popcorn," he tried to act all innocent. But I just added the tilt of the head to the mother glare. The glare came in three parts. The first part was the narrowing of the eyes, the second part was the raise of an eyebrow while still keeping one eye narrowed, and the final part was the tilt of the head both back a little and to the side. The tilt just added that little bit of emphasis that would give that last push. It was the look that told every kid, 'don't mess with me, kid, I brought you into this world, I can take you out.' I watched him lift his index finger from the bowl and point it in the direction of my mother.

"Henry…" she sounded offended.

"Sorry Grams, but did you see her look? That look scares me," he admitted trying to defend himself.

"And where do you think that she got it from?" he gulped at her response. Now he was getting the look from his mother and his grandmother.

I went to the refrigerator but this time I pulled out two beers; one for me and one for my father. "I'm on to you, mother. This is your way to coerce me into playing that game I hate."

"And which game is that, Emma? You hate so many of them, it's hard to keep track." Oh, guilt ridden deflection; my mother was getting good. I was going to have to step up my game.

"Oh, no…you know which game I'm talking about; that one that you love to play, where you stick the word on your head and your partner has to guess it? You thought that if you got me to argue over something else, I would give into the game."

I was about to continue my protest, but suddenly I had a wonderful idea. My mother loved that game, mainly because she was so good at it. And she was competitive. But she was always partners with my father, those two always had their silent conversations with each other and during the game their little superpower was always on overdrive. "I'll play it, on one condition," my willingness to concede attracted everyone's attention. So, I smirked and gave my demands, "Dad is my partner."

My father was quick to say "okay" with a smile. But my mother was a bit bewildered. By nature, humans are a creature of habit and game night for my mother was no exception. It was like there was an unwritten rule that said she was always partners with my father; both in life and in game land. And I; I was mixing it up. "Okay…" she said dragging out the word with trepidation in her voice. I smiled; this was going to be fun.

You see, I had this trick up my sleeve. And since my mother thought her little stunt was fair game; then it was only appropriate that I retaliate. Right? It seemed logical to me. I just had to figure out how to get my father to catch on without drawing attention to us. My plan was simple, but it required a bit of an explanation.

A couple of weeks after JC showed up in Storybrooke, I read an article about ASL, American Sign Language. I was reminded of something that we used to do in high school. Some people might have called it cheating, but I called it being resourceful. Final exams were stressful, no matter what the class. I was studying hard for them that year, because I didn't need to add bad grades to the list of things that Mr. Cooper had to be pissed about. JC was studying for his final exams as well; it was his spring semester in his freshman year of college. One of his requirements was a semester of a foreign language and he thought that it would be cool to take ASL. Throughout the semester he used me as his ASL study partner. The most that I picked up was the alphabet. But that was enough. That was when the idea to take the best student in the class and teach them the alphabet in ASL came to life. Our school did not have any deaf students so the teachers really didn't know the language. Anyway, to make a long story short, my friends and I picked the smartest kid that we could convince to go along with our plan, and talked her into giving us the answers to the multiple choice and true and false, during the test in sign language. It worked perfectly. And I aced my exams that year.

Anyway, as I sat in my office that day and read the article, I absentmindedly began to run the ASL alphabet. Just to see how much I could remember. Believe it or not, I remembered it all. But what I didn't realize was that David was sitting at his desk watching me; until he asked me what I was doing. I relayed my story to him and when he seemed intrigued I taught him the ASL alphabet. Storybrooke didn't have any deaf residents so nobody really knew of the language. The closest person the town had to being deaf was Dopey, who was mute, and he used DSL, Dopey Sign Language. Most people just communicated with him through the other dwarfs. So as for my plan for game night; once I was able to get my father on board it would be easy, discreetly spell out the word on each other's head, in American Sign Language.

Setting up the game was easy, everyone got a head band and we shuffled the word cards. I was feeling pretty confident; especially since I had sat strategically at the table. We sat across from our partners, so I made sure that my mother was next to me; that way she didn't have a full on view of what I was doing, she only had a side view. "Why don't we make this game a little more fun," I suggested quickly gaining the looks of my family, "why don't we put a little wager on it."

"Someone is feeling a little confident, tonight?" Yeah, leave it to my overly competitive mother to make a comment like that.

"No, I'm serious; losers cook dinner and clean up afterward for a week. What do ya think?" I winked at my Dad. He understood my clue. He knew that he was going to need to look for something; my only hope was that he remembered what I taught him.

"Mom, I'm not sure that's a good idea…you can't cook." I feigned offense to my son's comment.

"Thanks, kid. You're still alive, aren't you?" I retorted.

"Yeah, but that's mostly due to school lunches and the deli that was next to our apartment building in New York." I felt my face blush with embarrassment. My kid just told my parents that the only thing that kept him alive for a year was subpar school meals and a New York Deli. This was war.

I opened my mouth to fire a remark back to my son only to be interrupted by my mother who was about to diffuse our banter. "Ok, losers cook and clean for a week…got it...let's start." So, I settled for a 'you're going down' smirk, instead.

I was impressed; it only took three turns for my father to catch on to the plan. I guess working together in law enforcement kept us keen on each other's body language. From what I could tell, my mom and Henry were so focused on each other that neither of them caught on to the excessive hand movements that my father and I were both doing. Every once in a while I would shake my hand in a manner that made it look like I was just shaking out a small cramp or something.

We had a solid lead at 7 to 2. The first team to make it to 10 was declared the winner. With each passing turn my mother was getting more frustrated with Henry's ability to ask meaningless questions to figure out his word. "Does it have seven legs?" he asked my mother.

The look on her face was priceless, "Henry, what on earth has seven legs?" she dropped her face into her hands.

"A spider that was in accident and had to have a leg amputated," he replied as a matter of fact. I couldn't help but laugh at that one. Especially when he came up with a back-story about how the spider was drafted into the war. It was the spider's job to bite the enemy injecting poison into their veins that would cause death, but the spider was hit by stray shrapnel causing it to lose his leg, thus sending him back stateside and being discharged from the arachnid army.

Then it was my father's turn. His word was toast. I quickly spelled it out for him before he asked his question. He was really getting the hang of the sign language spelling. He was even able to tell the difference between a sign and my stretching my hand to make it look like it was bothering me for some reason.

"Is it brown and sometimes crunchy?" he asked while I rubbed my hand.

I nodded to my father, but before he could say the word my mother spoke up, "Is there something wrong with your hand, honey?"

"Ah…no" I answered quickly.

"Toast," he yelled to try to pull her attention to him.

She lifted my hand to inspect it, "It's nothing, Mom, I just hit it off of the desk at work and it's a little sore." Sounded like a reasonable excuse.

"Maybe you should put some ice on it." She suggested. "Henry, go get your mother an ice pack." Henry jumped up before I could protest. Dad had just gotten, toast, and we only needed two more points. I couldn't sign with an ice pack on my hand. At least it was my turn to guess next.

Henry returned with the ice pack for me and we returned to the game, it was my mother's turn, "Is it purple?" she asked about her word. Henry shook his head with a frown. Yes, it was my turn. David quickly signed out flashlight, but it was a long word. Too long, really, he forgot to make a couple of letters and the look on his face was enough to give my mother pause. She sent him a curious look but didn't say anything. I was, however, able to pick up on the word and asked my question, "Does it shine?"

"Yes," my father answered, but I let the turn slide with a fake guess of light bulb. Hopefully that was enough to throw her off of our trail of deception.

Henry was up, still on his same word as before, bicycle. "Is it covered in slime?" he asked my mother. She just slowly shook her head in disgust.

It was back to us. But now, I suddenly had an unnecessary ice pack on my signing hand. The word was sandwich, and I had to sign it with the wrong hand. I started slowly, David tried to make it look as if he was thinking of a question, but "hey…" was what I heard coming from my son's mouth. "She's using sign language," he accused.

Shit, how the hell did he know ASL? "I am not…" was the only defense I had. I was caught, by my kid, no less.

"I can't believe that you two were cheating!" My mother sounded offended, but then a smile crept across her face, "We win!" She declared.

"What? No! You don't win, it is 9 to 3." I protested. I wasn't going down without a fight. But I was a little confused when she took the icepack from my hand and began to inspect it again.

"I don't see a bruise," she sounded puzzled, "you said you hit it on your desk?" I just looked at her. Where was she going with this? Then she started squeezing it.

"Owe, owe, owe…" damn my mother was strong.

"Don't cut yourself while you're cooking this week, dear." She let go of my hand and leaned over to kiss my cheek, "cuts hurt when you're washing the dishes." She got up and walked around the table to my father; she leaned down and gave him a kiss on the top of his head. He beamed at me, so sure that he wasn't in as much trouble as me, "you might want to make sure you have enough blankets for the couch, Charming. Come on, Henry, let's get some ice cream."

I ducked my head when I saw my father's icy glare. I somehow got the feeling that the next week of my life was going to be hell. But it was worth it, if it got my family to think about something other than Mr. Cooper for just a minute, then it was definitely worth every ounce of cooking, cleaning, and snide remarks from my father.