Anonymous said:

(Brainstorming prompts to see what sticks or might help you out.) Belle or Bae needing Arthur in particular to do something for them and feeling weird about asking him because he has so much else on his plate.

Anonymous said:

Belle and/or Bae get Arthur addicted to their favorite tv show while he's recovering.

It was kind of weird having Dad around all the time. Like, Bae had lived at his dad's for a few weeks before his birth mom died, but both his parents had been working at the time (although they had kind of worked their schedules around one of them always being with him). This time, though, his dad was working much shorter hours because he was still getting better and a lot of days he didn't go in at all. When Bae got out of school, his dad would come pick him up. When he got home, Dad was the one who helped with homework. Dad cooked dinner and breakfast. Dad made his lunches.

Bae hadn't ever really had a guy around that much before in his life, and it was kind of nice to see his father every day. Mom seemed to like it, too. Especially the part about dinner being ready when she got home from work. The first few times she was a little awkward, like she couldn't really figure out what she should be doing if dinner wasn't ready, but after that she just seemed a lot happier when she got home.

Dad was watching TV with him, too. That was kind of interesting during the Ultimate Spiderman marathon.

"This is a lot better than the Spider-man cartoon I used to watch when I was a kid," his dad had said at one point. "That one was a little...strange."

"Yeah?" Bae asked, turning around to look at his father. His dad didn't really talk much about his life before he'd shown up, but he was kind of curious. He'd never been to Scotland, and his dad had grown up there.

"We got it a few years after America did," he replied. "But cartoons were very different when I was a boy. They didn't really think children could tell good quality from bad, although I watched it and loved it, so apparently they were right."

"I used to watch Looney Tunes when I was little," Bae said. "Mom didn't like Tom and Jerry, though."

"I bet she didn't," Dad said with a little laugh. "I really can't believe people thought that was appropriate for children, though I suppose most of it went over my head anyway. I always felt bad for Tom."

"I felt bad for the coyote," Bae admitted. "He just seemed really hungry."

"Me too," Dad replied, reaching out to ruffle Bae's hair a little. "And you didn't miss much with Tom and Jerry. Jerry was a jerk."

The show came back from commercial then and Bae turned back towards the TV, watching with his father as Miles Morales made his first appearance. It was quiet for a little while as they both watched the show, but at the next commercial break Bae decided it was time to ask something he'd been wondering for awhile.

"Hey dad?" he asked, perching on the edge of the sofa. "Would you ever wanna go back to Scotland?"

"What do you mean?" dad asked.

"Like, to visit?"

"Oh," his father replied, looking ahead for a minute. "I hadn't really thought about it, to be honest."

"Don't you miss it?" Bae asked him. He couldn't imagine leaving Maine forever, much less America. His friends were all here, and his family, and Bae hadn't ever known anything but Storybrooke. Where would he even go if he left?

"I don't know," Dad replied. "I've been here for a long time now, and you and your mom are both here. Why do you ask?"

Bae shrugged. He didn't want to ask to go to Scotland. His dad had a lot of things going on right now, but Bae wanted to see where his dad had come from. He didn't know a lot about his father's life. He knew about where his mother had grown up, even though he'd never been to Australia, but he hadn't realized until his dad was going into surgery that he didn't even know the names of his other grandparents or if they were even still alive.

"Maybe we can go sometime," Dad continued. "I think you'd like it."

"Yeah?" Bae replied.

"Yeah," Dad said. "It's really pretty, and you'd like the cities I think."

"Okay," Bae said, nodding in agreement. "That'd be fun."

"Good," Dad replied.

After that, they went back to the show. Dad eventually fell asleep on the sofa, but Bae stayed up to watch the show until Mom got home. She took one look at them and put a finger to her lips to keep Bae from waking up his father.

"Come with me to the kitchen," she whispered, walking into the other room and waiting for him to join her.

"We should probably let your dad sleep," she said as soon as Bae was out of the living room. "His medicine makes him tired."

Bae nodded, getting a can of soda from the fridge and hopping up onto one of the stools at the counter.

"How many of those have you had today?" his mom asked immediately, gesturing towards the can.

"I dunno," he fibbed. It would have been his third.

She picked it up off the counter without a word and put it back in the fridge before getting him a glass of water. Bae grumbled a little, but knew it was useless to argue and wasn't really worth the trouble he would have had to go to to try to get the drink back. Anyway, Dad didn't track his soda so he could always have more when she was gone.

"How was your day?" Mom asked, leaning against the counter and grabbing an apple out of the bowl in front of him. "Did you and your dad have fun?"

"We watched TV, mostly," Bae replied. For some reason, he didn't really want to talk about what he'd asked his dad. He didn't want his mom to know he'd been interested, but also wanted to keep that to himself. Bae didn't know what Mom and Dad knew about each other, but he did know that they had their own lives apart from him.

Most of the time it didn't bother him that they were dating, but it felt weird sometimes sharing them with each other. It was especially hard that his mom was splitting her time now, because she had always been 'his' and he hadn't had to share her attention with anyone else before now. He was also kind of jealous that his dad and mom had memories that weren't with him, because he didn't have a lot of memories of his dad. Sometimes it still kind of hurt that he'd missed out on having a father for so long. It was funny - he'd never missed having a dad until he'd found out that he could have had one all along.

"You guys have had a lot of time together this week," she said, bringing him back to where he was. "Have you liked it?"

"Yeah," he said almost instantly. "It's been a lot of fun."

It wasn't a lie, but he'd known there was really only one right answer before he spoke. His parents were a million times happier when it was two of them together than either one had been alone. Even if he hadn't liked having his dad around, he'd never have tried to make them less happy for his own sake.

Mom was looking at him with a little smile on her face and she came around and kissed the top of his head.

"Do you know you're my favorite child?" she teased him, like she'd always done when he was little.

"I'm your only child," he continued the game, letting her ruffle his hair before he started smoothing it down.

"That's why you're my favorite," she replied. "But you're a good kid, you know?"

He shrugged, because what else did you say to that?

"So how's your dad been feeling?" she asked him before the silence could get too loud. "Has he been doing okay during the day?"

"He's okay," Bae replied, glad to have something else to talk about. "But I think his seatbelt bugs him in the car."

He'd noticed his dad had started tugging his seatbelt awkwardly while he was driving like he was trying to make it more comfortable and not doing well at it.

"That's not good," she said. "Anything else you think I should know?"

"Not really," he said. "He's just been normal."

"And how are you holding up?" she asked, looking at him more seriously now.

"I'm fine," he replied, a little startled. "School is fine."

"I meant you," she said. "Not your grades. I know this month has been really rough on all of us - this whole year has, really, hasn't it?"

"I guess so," he said, although she was right. It had been a really, really hard year. A lot of good things had happened, but then so had a lot of bad things, too. It was really weird trying to explain everything that had been going on. Between his dad and his birth mom and Killian and George and his dad being bit by the spider and his mom being sick and then cancer and dating it was so much to try to take in, and even the good things sometimes felt like one more thing thrown on top of everything else. Sometimes he just wanted everything to go back to the way it had been before when nothing interesting happened, but then he felt guilty because going back to that meant no Dad and he didn't want to lose him, either.

"You and I haven't had a lot of time just the two of us, have we?" Mom asked, and Bae didn't even bother answering, because they both knew the truth.

"You've been busy," he said at last. It was true, though. She had been going crazy the last few weeks trying to get Dad to appointments and everything on top of work (February was always her busy time) and taking care of him and the house. Even before that, though, he'd seen her a lot less than usual.

"I have," she replied. "But still. I'm sorry I've sort of been ignoring you. I mostly wanted to make sure you had enough time with your dad, but I think that I might have gone too far in the other direction."

"It's okay," he said.

"No it's not," she said back. "I'm not used to there being three of us yet, really. And the thing is, there are three of us now and I think we've all been sort of acting like there are three different sets of two instead of like a group of three and that was wrong."

He didn't know how to react to that, but he never was when Mom apologized for things like that. Whenever she started, he felt his insides start to get smaller and his outside started to feel like he was going to crumble if he moved. It was a hard thing to explain, how much her loving him and wanting to protect him sometimes made him feel so bad, like she could see right through him. She was defending him from herself, but there was a big part of him that sometimes felt like he should defend her, too, because nobody ever defended her.

"Anyway," she said at last. "My point is, I'm going to try to start acting like a real family with two parents and everything from now on. And that means I want to start spending a lot more time with you, okay?"

"Okay," he said, because that was something he could do. He could agree with her and let her love him because she was his mom and she was going to make everything be alright. That's what she'd always done, and he trusted her more than anyone else in the whole world.

Mom gave him a giant smile and he smiled back.

"You wanna keep me company?" she asked him. "I thought it'd be nice if I made dinner tonight since your dad's been doing it since his surgery."

"Sure," Bae replied. "What are we having."

Mom went to the fridge and looked in it for a little while.

"Spaghetti sound good?" she asked, glancing over to him. "It's that or burgers."

"I like spaghetti," he said. "Dad's tastes different."

"It does," she replied. "But different can be good, too."