Extra strong water balloons
RosiePosie asked for a oneshot of a nosey Neal snooping around a teen Emma's room and finds contraception. He gives it to Charming who finds out Snow bought it for her.
Neal grinned as he tiptoed into his big sister's bedroom. She was out at netball practice, his mom was still in the school marking papers and his dad was downstairs watching the game. He had time to snoop around. He hoped he'd hit the jackpot and find her diary again. There was always something juicy he could hold against her in there. It be her latest drama with her best friend Danielle. That was much more fun that when they made up and they were "totes BFFs" and "totally like Poussey and Taystee to each other". It might be an entry all about how much she hated Mr McDaniel and how unfair he was. But the best of all was when she had a mushy entry about her boyfriend: Robert Brown. She would doodle little hearts all around their names together or write "Mrs Emma Brown" and talk about how they would have a little girl and name her Alysia and a little boy named Robert Jr. He threatened to scan the pages and tape them onto people's lockers at her school unless she was nice to him for a week (or longer if it was extra juicy gossip he found in there).
He started to search through her drawers beside her bed and found a small box of something. Apparently they were called condoms. He pulled one out of the box and found it to be some sort of clear balloon. Maybe they were extra strong water balloons and Emma was going to attack Neal for embarrassing her in front of Robert last week? Hey may have quoted sections from her diary to him… Anyway, that wasn't fair! He put the balloon back in the box and went down to show his evidence to his dad.
"Dad, Emma's plotting to soak me with water balloons!" Neal complained.
"What?" Charming said without taking his eyes off the screen. Neal put the box in his lap.
"I found these when I was…ugh… looking for some of my socks. Sometimes mom gets the ironing muddled. Anyway, I think they're extra strong water balloons. They're some brand called condoms. They say extra strong on the box" Charming suddenly turned the TV off and looked at the box. Neal didn't understand why his dad suddenly looked sick. Was he frightened of water balloons?
"Um thanks for bringing me the water balloons Neal. Listen, do you want to go and play with Nick at his house for a while? That way you know Emma won't sneak attack on you. I'll drop you off right now."
"Cool, thanks dad!" Neal said, going to grab his football for him and Nick to play with. He'd need to snoop around Emma's room more often.
As soon as Charming dropped Neal off he put his foot down and headed for the school to speak with Snow. She had to know about this.
Charming reached the elementary school in record time and rushed straight to Snow's classroom.
"Hey honey. I'll just be another ten minutes or so. Where's Neal?" Snow said brightly.
"He's at Nick's house. I had to speak to you about these." Charming fished the condoms out of his pocket and dropped them on Snow's desk. "Neal found them in Emma's room looking for his socks. Luckily he thought they were water balloons but what are we going to do about this Snow?" Charming said desperately.
"Well first, remind me to speak to Neal about snooping in his sister's room because there was no way he was looking for socks." Snow said calmly. "Secondly, we put them back where they were. Emma didn't buy those- I did."
"You what?!" Charming said, shocked. "Snow! Why would you buy Emma these? That means that she and Robert are…are…"
"Sexually active?" Snow finished for him, amused slightly at his inability to get it out. Charming nodded.
"Well yeah! Why would you encourage that? She's seventeen!" Snow smiled gently and rested her hand against Charming's arm.
"Well Emma came and spoke to me in confidence about being ready to take her relationship with Robert to the next level. I made sure she was ready and wasn't feeling pressured into doing anything she didn't want to, and then I figured I had two choices. One: I try and forbid her from making love with Robert, her steady boyfriend of the last two years. I demand that she remains celibate until marriage and buy her a chastity belt keeping the key hidden from her and install a GPS chip in her tooth with the signal linked to our phones so we always knew exactly where she was. The consequences of that would be Emma and Robert doing it anyway and possibly without the correct protection as they might not be able to access it. This could result in either an STI, pregnancy or perhaps both. The other option was buy her the condoms so that I at least know Emma is practising safe sex and doing it in a safe location and not in the back of a filthy car in some dingy parking lot."
"Please stop." Charming said, feeling queasy. That was his baby girl she was talking about. Snow took a step forward and placed her other hand on his chest.
"She's growing up, Charming." She said gently. "Whether we want her to or not. We need to do what's best for her to keep her safe. I know it's scary thinking of her being so grown up, but we should be grateful we raised her to be mature enough to discuss it first."
"And what if he's gotten what he wants and breaks her heart?" Charming countered. "Because I swear if he has…"
"If he breaks her heart then by all means you can kick butt. But seeing as I bought those a good few months ago and I see that more than one are missing I think he loves her too."
"You've been keeping this from me for months?! I thought we agreed no secrets, Snow?" Snow looked down, feeling a little ashamed with herself. He did have a point there.
"I know, and I'm sorry about that. I should have told you, but can you honestly say if Emma was around when you found out you would have been so calm? She needs to be able to trust us to trust her, Charming. You need to keep a cool head about this and just trust Emma to know what she's doing."
"But I don't want her to know what she's doing." He grumbled. "I want her to think these are water balloons too." Snow chuckled.
"Well unfortunately she doesn't, so let's just accept she's growing up, will we? Please?" Charming sighed as he looked down at his beautiful wife.
"Fine." He sighed. Snow reached up and kissed his cheek.
"Thank you." She said. "I'm glad we could agree on this." Charming wasn't sure he would say he agreed, he still wanted Emma to be his baby girl forever. But perhaps it was time for him to let her go just a little bit.