A/N: A bit of a filler/ in-between chapter, but I felt it was time things came out into the open rather than tackle that as an afterthought following further storyline chapters :) I really hope it works and is sufficiently awkward :p. Thanks for reading!

Tossing and turning beneath the covers, Henry eventually gives up trying to get back to sleep with a sigh. The gap between the curtains reveals an inky slice of sky, and the clock beside his bed reads 6.37 AM. Ordinarily a late riser, it isn't often that he's up before his alarm, but his dreaming had been decidedly uneasy, and as he tries to smooth down an unruly curl attempting to form at the crown of his head, he remains plagued by a sense of doubt.

What are the others up to?

He doesn't know, and it's becoming clear to him that this is entirely by design.

His mothers have been behaving strangely for the best part of the week, and at first, he'd accepted Regina's suggestion that Emma simply seemed a little out of sorts and that she was worried about her.

"Even though I'm sure she's fine. You know how Miss Swan can be."

He does, and it had seemed a plausible excuse for the blonde's absence as she was presumably pacing the floors of the - slightly creepy! - old house she's come to call her own and grumbling as he's seen her do on several occasions, but the way that she'd behaved towards him that day in the drawing room was just plain weird.

As was Regina's concern following the incident. He is used to his mothers' unlikely camaraderie and care for one another, but generally, when the blonde decides to indulge in a bout of "teenaged moping" as Regina likes to call it, the brunette's concern will soon wear off to be replaced by snide comments he knows she no longer really means.

Mom was worried. For real worried.

Yes, and then she, too, had disappeared for a couple of days, and while he has no reason not to believe Snow's explanation that his mothers were both suffering the likely effects of food poisoning, he doesn't buy this for a second.

And, when Regina had shown up to chat with the Charmings, she'd mentioned Hyde and her uncertainty in the face of splitting herself from the Queen. She hadn't appeared unwell or agitated, and her conversation with Snow had seemed cordial and lacking in any tension that would suggest a need to be on alert. Still, she had warned him to leave Emma alone for the rest of the day, tempting him with a distraction he'd be unlikely to refuse, but not so cunningly that he'd been unaware of her blatant tactic.

What are they up to?

He's itching to know more. Dinner over at Emma's the other day had been pleasant and lacking in any real variation from the norm, but the others' behaviour at the table last night had once again suggested something might be going on beneath the surface. He's all too aware that the tone of the conversation had shifted the moment he'd been excused, and though he'd tried to catch snippets of what was being discussed under the guise of needing the bathroom while watching his show, he'd not gleaned any useful information.

What if something's wrong?

He frets, because, that's the thing, isn't it? His curiosity may currently be in the driving seat as it so often is, but looming over on the passenger side is his fear that the others might be in trouble. After all, it wouldn't be the first time! He just wishes they'd understand that he's not a baby anymore and that he might be able to help.

They never listen...

No. And the last time he'd brought this up, arguing his right to be included in covert discussions and town planning while traipsing after Snow with a clipboard as the Fair Queen made introductions and jotted down the details of the steady stream of strangers trickling into Granny's from the shipwreck in the woods, Regina had overheard him and had offered him a silky comment about their time spent in Neverland. He'd lamented the grand injustice of the fact to Emma later that night, and the blonde had simply snorted at his mother's chilly wit and piled on with her own entirely unfair opinion.

That was forever ago!

Yes. It was. And he pushes himself up and lands his feet on the plush pile of the carpet as he decides enough is enough. Something is going on, and Regina's rather flustered behaviour when she'd found him in the hallway last night and her urgent insistence that he get himself back to bed has set this belief in stone.

I'll go talk to her.

Padding resolutely from his bedroom and down the hallway to his mother's room, he imagines she might be rather unappreciative of the fact that he's waking her up to grumble at her. Still, he hopes that if he slips beneath the covers and uses the icy threat of his bare feet as a bargaining tool in the way he knows she hates, she'll at least listen to him in an attempt to keep warm. He also knows that she would never have the audacity to play the trick favoured by the blonde and simply turn around to offer him messy curls and feigned slumber that soon becomes the real thing in a bid to avoid uncomfortable subject matter.

"Mom."

He greets confidently, letting himself into the master bedroom, before anything else he might mean to say dies on his lips; eyes wide and mouth forming a perfect O of shock when dark eyes fly open and the brunette yelps in an uncharacteristically high voice

"Henry?!"

Her shock is mirrored by her bedmate as Emma blinks at him over the darker woman's shoulder, a smudge of lipstick that definitely isn't her own muddying her jaw.

"Henry!"

Regina repeats in a much sharper voice, but he ignores her in favour of turning heel and fleeing the room.

"Oh god, oh god..."

The brunette hisses, scrambling out of bed before turning around to offer the younger woman a hard shove to the chest to send her sprawling back onto the pillow.

"Ow..."

Emma winces, her head smacking against the bars of the headboard, and Regina offers her a commiserating grimace as she insists

"Stay here!"

"But-"

"-The last thing he needs is both of us running after him right now! And you have nothing on underneath."

The Mayor reminds the blonde distractedly, before hurrying from the room in the wake of their son.

"Henry..."

She appeals, checking the boy's room before catching the sound of footsteps on the stairs and following them swiftly.

"Henry."

She repeats, entering the kitchen on bare feet to find the boy sitting at the table looking unusually pale.

"Oh, Henry, I'm sorry. I-"

"-What were you two... What?"

"Well... The thing is..."

"Hey..."

Emma greets uncertainly when Regina slips back into the bedroom. Glancing at the clock on the darker woman's nightstand, she makes it about twenty minutes that have passed since the Mayor hurried out of the room, and she's fairly sure her heart is still located somewhere much too high up in her throat.

"You said you'd set your alarm!"

The brunette hisses as she perches on the edge of the bed, her hair unusually wild, and the younger woman imagines this might be down to the fact she keeps squeezing it with her fists as though trying to hold her head together.

"I did! I set it for seven. It went off when you were downstairs. I-"

"-Well, why didn't you set it earlier?!"

"I..."

Emma starts, shrugging as she's not really sure how to answer that. She'd actually considered changing it to seven-thirty when she'd struggled to get to sleep, deeming it unlikely that Henry would be up any earlier than necessary to get to school, but she doesn't imagine arguing her case will go down all too well just now.

Seemingly on the same page, Regina sighs as she admits

"He's never up this early... He also usually knocks."

She muses irritably, shivering as the heating has yet to kick in and slipping back beneath the covers to face the blonde.

"How is he?"

Emma asks warily, and the Mayor pulls a face.

"Surprised, to say the least. I started to explain that you'd had too much to drink to drive home last night, but when he asked me why you hadn't just stayed in the guest room, it was pretty obvious from his tone that he had a fairly good idea of the answer... I wasn't really sure what to say then. I'm not good at that."

"Minimising childhood trauma?"

"Not knowing what to say."

Regina corrects, and Emma swallows before asking uncertainly

"Shall I try talk to him?"

"You think I'm incompetent?"

The Mayor snaps, and the blonde shakes her head as she replies awkwardly

"I just meant that I have more explaining to do than you do in the kid's eyes."

"You do."

The brunette agrees, but she keeps any sense of malice from her tone and instead offers her companion a sympathetic shrug before appeasing softly

"I said we'd talk later. All of us. After school. For now, he's gone for a walk. He needed to get out."

"Are you sure that's wise?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well... He's probably freaked out and confused, and who knows what else. Is he okay just walking around town like that?"

Emma frowns, and Regina shakes her head as she scolds irritably

"He's not a fool, dear. He needs some space to collect himself, which I'm sure you can understand as well as I can. He's not about to do anything dangerous or dramatic. He's not you."

"I'm not dramatic."

"Not on purpose, but you do have a tendency to veer toward the first part, and then the rest of us feel obligated to add the latter to keep you from doing something stupid... Henry's not about to go and do something like that. I trust him."

"I never said I didn't-"

"-You're worried about him. As you should be. I am too, but he and I have lived together for most of his life, and I know him better than you do in some ways. I'm not saying that to be cruel, I'm saying it because it's the truth. And anyway... It's not the first time this has happened."

"What?!"

Emma hisses, pulling the throw over her shoulders to keep warm and studying the darker woman intently as the latter rolls onto her back.

"Don't you go acting all chaste and as though you never almost let Henry walk in on you doing who-knows-what when you were fucking the simian."

"Regina..."

The blonde snarls, and the darker woman glances to her side before letting out a deep sigh and coming clean.

"Sorry, I just needed to spread some of the discomfort. I have no idea what you did with that... thing... Nor do I wish to know. I'm just making assumptions given that you and Henry were living in close quarters at the time... I can't claim the same excuse, however."

"You and Robin?"

"Of course not! I live with a nosy teenager, you think I don't know how to be discreet?"

"Honestly? I have wondered at times."

Emma muses, earning herself a jab in her ribs beneath the covers.

"Hush... Not Robin. Graham. When Henry was... Four? Five? He had a nightmare and came bursting into my room demanding I go and open the drawers at the bottom of his wardrobe to check for scorpions."

"Scorpions? Here?"

"Yes, scorpions, and yes, here. In his imagination, at least. He'd seen a picture of them in one of the books he found in the school library, and for the best part of the next six months he was terrified they were lurking in his wardrobe once I'd turned the lights off."

"Really?"

"Mm... Eventually, scorpions were replaced by a scratching at the window which was surely a monster. In that case, it did actually turn out that I needed to cut back the wisteria which had overgrown the trellis, but I'm not sure it really warranted the collection of action figures set out across the room on duty every evening."

Regina chuckles, fully aware that there are more important things they should be discussing than relics of Henry's childhood fears, but she can't help herself from indulging the blonde whenever the opportunity arises. Once upon a time, she would have recoiled at the very notion of allowing Emma any part of her private relationship with Henry - the one the younger woman had vetoed and thrown frivolously away as she'd insisted at the time - but things have changed and then some, and she has both a better understanding of blonde's side of things regarding Henry's adoption, and a private sense of delight that overcomes her when she dares share something intimate about their son's time with her and her alone.

"Better safe than sorry."

Emma smirks, and Regina nods, narrowing her eyes as she doesn't trust the sly curve of the blonde's lips.

"So?... What were you doing to Graham?"

The younger woman demands impishly.

"Fortunately, not very much. Our clothes were still on and mostly still in the right place. Given Henry's age at the time, it wasn't a subject we'd ever discussed before, and while I'm sure he was aware of the concept of couples kissing one another as a gesture of love and romance, he was a little panicked when he walked in on us "wrestling" on the bed."

"I'll bet!"

The younger woman laughs, still feeling shaken, but finding that she feels a great deal better as she appreciates the dull blush colouring the brunette's cheeks.

"Your Majesty!"

She hisses, nipping her lip as she's awarded a flicker of fury that belongs only to the Queen.

"Behave yourself."

"No, thank you... So, what happened?"

"Nothing much. I told Graham to get out, and assured Henry that we were just having fun but that he shouldn't wrestle with his friends or he'd get into trouble. Given his nature, this was hardly an impossible ask, and given his innocence, the matter was soon dropped, but he brings it up now and then now that he has a better understanding of what was actually happening. Usually when he wants something or disagrees with my decisions. The subject of Violet has seen a frequent reprise of his scolding me that I should do anything so repulsive as his mother."

"Mm. Shame on you."

"Apparently so. Perhaps he's less judgemental when it comes to you as his expectations are lower..."

Regina muses silkily, smirking when the younger woman raises a brow and nods to suggest she might be onto something.

"Maybe, but he would still loudly announce he was entering the kitchen with his hands thrown over his eyes if he knew Hook was over."

"Who could blame him?"

"Hey!"

"He would do the same as he got older when it came to Graham. Until recent changes in my way of thinking - making friends and denouncing evil and all of that - I'd always adamantly insisted that he was mistaken and that there was nothing going on between us... I suppose I did that a lot; insisting Henry was wrong."

"Yeah, well, if you'd told him otherwise in the case of the Curse, he'd have been labelled crazy... It's so weird, though."

"What is?"

Regina demands, not especially comfortable with the subject matter, but Emma shakes her head and makes no further mention of the Curse and the circumstances surrounding their initial meeting one another, and instead muses curiously

"You and Graham. Sometimes I forget the whole 'on-repeat' thing you had going on in town, and that some of the situations I walked in on had been playing out for the best part of twenty-eight years. I can't imagine your immediate priority waking up in Storybrook was getting busy with the Sheriff, but I forget how long some things actually went on for. It's just so crazy to me that you and Graham were a thing for much longer than any relationship I've ever been in. By a lot!"

"... Why do you do that?"

The darker woman sighs irritably, meeting the blonde's subsequent look of surprise with a glower.

"Do what?"

"Why do you always have to make things weird?"

"I make things weird!? You enslaved an entire kingdom and seduced a guy using one of his own organs, and I'm the weird one?"

"Indeed."

Regina sniffs, but she's unable to keep her amusement from her expression when Emma simply stares her down pointedly.

"Alright, it's a little odd. Although, I'd argue it's hardly my fault that you have commitment issues."

"Had."

"Hmm?"

"I had com... Never mind."

The blonde grumbles, turning to face the window when the darker woman's smirk spreads knowingly.

"I'll tell you what is crazy, dear. Give you a whip or some rope and you're confidence made flesh. Take them away and try to have a pleasant conversation with you, and you're so damned awkward it makes me blush sometimes."

Regina teases, playing pale curls gently through her fingers.

"Oh, you just-"

But the younger woman stills as the sound of the french doors being opened and closed comes from downstairs.

"He'll be back getting ready for school."

The Queen muses, matching the expression Emma pulls when the Sheriff turns back around to face her uneasily.

"I think it's best if we stay put for a moment and let him get himself sorted in peace."

"What the hell are we going to tell him later, though?"

The blonde frets, and Regina shrugs.

"The truth? Not all of it, not about what happened in the Enchanted Forest or why I had to swap my sheets for the ones from the spare room-"

"-We should have just said that! We should have just explained that the bed was stripped and that's why I stayed in here."

"Mm, although Henry is not five, and however friendly you and I might have become, friends don't tend to sleep together when they live ten minutes walk from one another. Also..."

Regina sighs pointedly, rubbing at the smear of lipstick colouring the younger woman's jaw.

"It's more like twenty minutes walk."

Emma mutters, and the brunette smirks as she reminds her companion silkily

"And that might count for something if you hadn't opted to sleep in your car despite the temperature dropping to the mid-twenties and then insisted you weren't miserably unwell for the entirety of the following week, just because Miss Lucas fell asleep on your bed when you were living at Granny's, and you were that opposed to sleeping next to her."

"How do you know about that?"

"I knew all sorts of things about what you were up to at the time. I was hoping for ammunition. As for that situation exactly, Henry told me when I asked him why you were sporting the complexion of dishwater and if it was perchance anything serious. Sadly, no such luck."

"Sorry."

"Mm."

"... Do you think he'll understand, though? Do you really think he'll be okay with it?"

"He's uncovered much worse, dear!"

"True... I'm still kind of dreading laying it all out there."

Emma admits, and Regina nods in agreement.

"It will be an awkward conversation, I have no doubt, but I don't think planning out our words and how we mean for it to go will do us much good. We'll just have to answer whatever he decides to ask of us... Given his age, I doubt he'll wish to ask us much!"

"I hope you're right!"

The blonde chuckles before falling silent as they each listen to the sound of footsteps downstairs in the hall. A moment later, the front door opens and closes as Henry leaves for school.

"Poor kid. He's not likely to have a productive day."

She sighs.

"Yes, poor kid to have parents that are happy."

Regina counters, and the blonde studies her pensively as she considers this response.

"... I guess it's not the norm that we're happy at the same time."

"Well, my happiness used to depend almost directly on how unhappy you were at any given moment, so that was sort of a given, but you're right. In more recent times, we've rarely been in sync unless we've been struggling."

She smiles, before climbing reluctantly out from the warmth of the throw and moving over to her closet to select an outfit.

"We can stop by yours so that you can grab something on the way."

"On the way?"

"To speak to Hyde."

"Oh!"

"There's more to life than romance, Miss Swan."

"Fuck off."

Emma scoffs as she rolls out of bed and summons her jeans from the limbo of the brunette's previous spell.

"Pure poetry."

Regina teases dryly, turning heel for the bathroom with the request that the blonde prepare some coffee.