Do-do-do-do-do-dohae, psoh x ouat intoabar
Title: Do-do-do-do-do-dohae
Author: shifty_gardener
Prompt: Henry Mills delivers pizza to a pet shop and meets…Leon Orcot!
Fandoms: Petshop of Horrors, Once Upon a Time
Word count: ~5k
Rating/Contents: G, no warnings apply
Henry walked through the brisk night with a red pizza case held proudly over one shoulder. Bright fluorescent signs vied for his attention, but in vain. Mostly because he couldn’t read Chinese. Henry occasionally missed the peace and quiet of Storybrooke, but it was nice to be in a place big enough to have a Chinatown. Henry came to a stop at a pair of ornate doors and double-checked the address on his notepad. He knocked twice, sharply.
Of all the many and varied establishments to which he had delivered pizza, he never would have expected to deliver pizza to a pet shop. Then again, he’d never expected to be delivering pizza at all, despite how fun it had always looked in movies. Speeding around the city, briefly touching the lives of all kinds of people - the job satisfied both his wandering spirit and his nosiness bred of small-town life.
But really though, Henry wondered, knocking a third time. Who would order pizza from a pet shop?
The door opened, and Henry had his answer.
Standing in the threshold was a gorgeous man, wearing some kind of Chinese robe that was long and silky looking. His hair fell in a smooth curtain that defined his jaw and covered one of his eyes. Something about him put Henry instantly at ease in a way he hadn't felt since the last time he'd been in Storybrooke.
“Leon Orcot?” Henry asked, triple-checking the notepad.
The man - woman? - inclined his head. “I’m afraid that is my…friend. I am D.” He gave Henry the solicitous smile Henry had seen on his mother’s face a thousand times. He even had Henry’s mom’s signature deep-colored lipstick.
"Oh, well-"
D whirled around with a dramatic huff to call inside, "You said you were ordering dinner, not - this!!"
He waved his hand to indicate Henry in his delivery uniform galore -- a Pizza Palace t-shirt, matching baseball cap, and khaki pants --, his manicured nails catching the light. Henry decided not to take it personally, and took advantage of the moment to peer past D’s shoulder. Instead of the sterile room lined with cages he had been expecting, Henry saw a cozy sitting room with folding screens, lanterns and even an elaborately patterned chaise lounge. The scent of incense wafted out to him, instead of the heavy musk of many animals in an enclosed space. From the look of things, this pet shop doubled as a home.
“Weird,” Henry breathed. California was very different than Maine.
A blond guy walked up to the door then and pushed D out of the way. His hair was even longer than D’s and pulled back into a ponytail, but where D was all poise and charm, this one wore a garish star-spangled T-shirt and a seriously ‘90s jacket.
He leaned against the doorframe. His shoulders were almost inhumanly boxy.
The guy, who was probably Leon Orcot, clapped D on the shoulder. "I eat pizza for dinner all the time. It’s dinner food."
D began to protest but only got as far as "My dear-" when Leon continued, "Relax, your half has extra pineapple on it and it's all vegetarian.” He looked over at Henry and rolled his eyes. “We're in America! Learn to eat American food sometimes!"
D continued to glare.
Their easy antagonism reminded Henry of his moms. It was pretty cute, actually.
He was jarred out of this thought when Leon pulled out his wallet and handed him a twenty, "Here you go, kid, keep the change.”
He turned to D and resumed the argument, punctuating his points with wild gesticulations. After a minute, it became apparent the both of them had forgotten about Henry and the pizza.
"Uh, thanks!” Henry pocketed the money and, after a moment’s hesitation, put the pizza on the step at their feet. “Thank you for ordering from Pizza Palace. Eat like a king,” he mumbled by rote.
After one last peek inside the pet shop, Henry turned and left. He could hear their bickering to the end of the street.
*
When Henry had begun applying to colleges, the reactions from Storybrooke inhabitants had ranged from perplexed questioning to outright dumbfounded shock. No one in his family had ever attended, nor been interested in, college, being that they were either royalty from another reality or, in Emma’s case, an orphan turned felon turned bail bondswoman. On top of this, the last person that had tried to leave Storybrooke to pursue higher education had disappeared, her heart found in a box buried down by the Troll Bridge.
“What is the point of leaving for school?” Regina wanted to know. “Storybrooke is where he belongs.”
“Well, he might have to run a kingdom one day,” Mary Margaret said. “He has to learn administrative skills from somewhere: he can’t rule with fear, like you, or by birthright, like me.”
“C’mon Regina, let our kid live a little,” Emma said. “Or do I need to move out of the mansion for a while? Maybe Henry and I will move back to New York City for a few years.” She raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow.
Regina pursed her lips and acquiesced, and that had been that.
Henry liked college all right so far. It wasn’t that freedom was new or exciting -- he was already used to wandering around with no one knowing or caring what he did with his time. In a town as small as his own, he’d been able to sneak away if he wanted to as the adults were often busy with magic-related crises.
It was just a little weird being surrounded by people his age. Until the curse was broken, he’d been the only kid in the town that aged, so he had new classmates every year growing up. This had resulted in poor social skills and zero long term friends, endquote his psychiatrist, Jiminy Cricket. Sheriff Graham had sought out his company, and so had August, but neither of them had stuck around. In fact, both were dead. That might have been part of the issue.
The problem was that Henry had a really shiny car.
Well, that wasn’t the problem in and of itself, but a symptom of the problem. The problem being that his mother, no matter how long she’d spent in small town America, was still The Evil Queen, and she really didn’t know what was appropriate for a college kid. So when his mom told him she’d bought him a car, it definitely wasn’t a beat up Chevy.
No. Henry had been sent to college with a black, shiny Tesla, which, at the moment, was gathering dust in the dorm parking structure. Unlike his mom, Henry had done his research, and college movies had told him that there was supposed to be a measure of roughing it in the first year, of dirty laundry piling up in your closet, of eating ramen out of plastic water heaters - something Charming did sometimes when Mary Margaret was off at her monthly book club and Henry was sworn to secrecy about - and only eventually scraping enough money together to get a beat up Volvo or rusty truck.
So if Henry knew one thing for certain: If he wanted to pass as a normal college student, the Tesla could never be used. Ever. At least until Henry had to buy groceries next year. It would stay parked in the garage, gathering dust.
Keeping one secret from his floormates was totally fine, Henry decided. None of his friends needed to know about his wildly inappropriate car.
Or that fact that he was the son of a princess and the dark one’s son. Or that his other mom was the evil queen.
Thank god he looked like a normal person on the outside.
*
Henry’s friend group, all the humanities majors on his side of the hall, were all hanging out in his room the first Sunday afternoon of the term when he got a letter from his mom. He sat up from his sprawl across half of his bed to read it.
It was a short update - Your uncle’s fifth birthday party went well, Emma threatened to cut down my apple tree again, I noticed from your bank account that you bought doughnuts at 2AM on Monday, didn’t I teach you to make healthier choices? He was frowning down at it, wondering if he should start paying for everything in cash, when he noticed that the room had gone very quiet.
He looked up. Everyone was staring at him. Or rather, everyone was starting at the raven perched on his shoulder that was waiting for him to scrawl out a reply. He had about five minutes before it would start pecking his ear to either feed it or finish his response.
It took Henry a few seconds of looking between his friends and the raven before he remembered it was not normal to get letters by bird in the real world.
He scribbled a five word response and the bird swooped away. “Um. There is a perfectly good explanation for this, really.”
Everyone stared at him expectantly.
“My mom likes birds.” He winced and tried to turn it into a smile. “And…trains them. To send letters?”
His roommate, who was sitting at his desk, pointed to the picture of Snow and Charming Henry had put on his side of the windowsill. “Is that her?”
“No, those are my grandparents, actually.” Henry picked up the other picture frame. Regina, her signature smirk on her face, and Emma, blond hair billowing in the wind, looked up at him from behind the glass. “This is her.”
The lit major from room 302 wolf whistled. The girl from 305 said, “Is it just me, or does she look older than your grandparents?”
Everyone looked between the two photos.
305’s roommate craned her neck from where she was sitting on the floor to see. “Can grandparents even be that young?” She squinted at Henry. “How old are you?”
“Um. I was adopted.” Everyone kept staring. “…and that’s a really old picture of my grandparents! That’s been, uh, digitally retouched. A lot.” He laughed awkwardly. “Have you guys ever seen this video of a panda cub sneezing?”
For all that Regina reminded him not to talk about magic and to try to fit in - as if he wasn't going to try to network when he was a business major, thanks mom - she still kept sending him messages via raven. The poor things always arrived looking bedraggled and exhausted, and invariably tapped at the glass of his window or perched on his shoulder when he was talking to people. It seemed like maybe that one slip up would blow over, but doodles of birds started appearing on the whiteboard on his door and then the next week he was talking to the RA and the raven flew in her window. She yelled a lot and almost managed to hit it with her pillow and he hastily made his escape, raven intact but dignity in tatters.
The message that the bird so bravely conveyed, was Regina commenting on the other night’s 2AM pizza betrayed by his bank records. It was at that moment that Henry realized he needed an alternate source of income if he was going to keep up his doughnut habit and to be known as something other than “raven guy.” Pizza Palace down the street Even being known as or “pizza boy” would be better.
“Pizza boy.” He liked the sound of that.
*
He found himself delivering pizza to the pet shop again a few weeks later.
This time he noticed the sign above the door that read Count D with a scrawl of Chinese. Presumably the elegantly dressed man from earlier was a count, then. It seemed like a strange name for a pet shop, given that that Count was typically a European title. But it was unlikely “count” was a word in Chinese that just looked like an English one, like the word “king”….
When he knocked, a blond kid opened one of the tall doors. And next to him was a little girl in a flouncy princess dress.
Henry smiled down at the kid. He kind of resembled the blond guy from last time. "Are you here with your dad?"
"Nah, I live here!” The boy said, barely moving his mouth. “Have you met my older brother?"
“I think so,” said Henry. He shifted his hold on the pizza box.
“Oh, right!” said the boy. “Just a second. D!!!” He ran off into the shop yelling, girl in tow.
Henry waited around for a few moments, inhaling the sweet curls of incense that were diffusing from inside the shop out into the night air. The incense was strong, but not unpleasant, and unlike anything he’d ever smelled. In fact, it was almost intoxicating.
Henry felt a tap on his shoulder and jumped a little.
A sharply dressed man in a pinstripe suit had been standing behind him for who knows how long, and he solemnly handed Henry a note. He looked like someone’s driver.
"Uh," said Henry, and didn’t take it.
The guy held it out patiently, the folded paper stark white against his black, leather glove. "This is for you, from your mother."
It looked just like all of the other notes he’d gotten from his mom, but that could mean anything. Henry wasn’t a naturally cautious person but he really didn’t want to be cursed. Again.
He squinted at the man in a way his mom often told him off for, but gingerly accepted it. "You're not a flying monkey, right?” he asked suspiciously. “I thought all of you guys were gone."
The guy arched an eyebrow and inclined his head at something behind Henry.
Henry turned to find Count D standing in the doorway. His robes were a rich scarlet today, with an embroidered feather pattern. He was looking over Henry’s shoulder with interest, and when he turned his gaze back to Henry it seemed to be with a newfound esteem. Instead of the banal politeness of the last time they’d met, there was a knowing edge to Count D’s smile, and a speculative gleam in his eye. He looked a little menacing, actually, yet the feeling of ease Henry felt the last time he had encountered D came back, this time even stronger.
Count D accepted the pizza, inexplicably insisting, "Come by any time; you're always welcome," before shutting the door in Henry’s face. As he blinked at the closed door, Henry put a finger on what he’d sensed. Power. This Count, whoever he was, had the direct and amused stare of the powerful and morally dubious. But he didn’t give off the slimy vibes of Mr. Gold; in fact, the Count reminded him of his mother.
“Huh,” Henry said aloud to himself. His brain drawing the comparison should have been disturbing, but the resemblance was actually pretty comforting.
Before he could follow this train of thought, however, Henry felt something peck at his ankle and nearly tripped over his mom’s favorite raven. He jumped in surprise and suddenly remembered the man with the leather gloves. He whirled around, but no one was there. The raven ruffled its feathers and continued pecking him until Henry pulled out a small bag of bird feed he’d taken to carrying in his pockets for moments like this.
The bird flew off before Henry could write a reply, like, Hey, Mom, do your ravens ever shapeshift?
*
Midterms came and went, pizzas were delivered, and tip money was spent on doughnuts. And much to Henry’s surprise, he actually took the Count up on his invitation a few weeks later. It was Sunday afternoon, and Henry’s floormates were off on a Disney-themed scavenger hunt. Henry’d taken one look at his RA’s Snow White costume and had begged off, claiming he had plans. Objectively, he knew his grandma was good looking, but he could do without seeing the sexy costume version of her.
Henry had wandered into the parking garage in a daze, trying to scrub the cosplay of his extended family from his brain, and for some reason ended up driving to the pet shop.
He hovered outside, feeling a little silly. It felt weird to be there as a visitor instead of delivering a pizza, but he had been invited. When he mustered the courage to pop his head in the door, D looked up with a smile from where he was handing a slice of cake to the small, blond child. Henry saw that the table was already set for tea.
“I’m happy you remembered my invitation,” D said, apparently unsurprised to see him. “Do come in.”
The scent of incense was heavy in the air as Henry ventured inside. The blond guy with a ponytail, whose name was possibly Leon, was there again, and didn’t look too surprised when Henry sat down at the table next to him. D had guests over regularly, then.
Possibly-Leon kept his gaze focused on him. Henry sipped his tea, unfazed by the scrutiny. By the time he was halfway through his cup, Possibly-Leon snapped his fingers and said, “You’re the pizza guy, aren’t you? I’m Leon.” Leon paused just long enough for Henry to mumble out his name before he continued, “So, you’re in college then?”
“Yep, I’m a freshman.”
“Ah, and delivering pizzas to pay the bills?” Leon nodded. “The American dream. I get it, kid.”
Henry toyed with his teacup. “No, actually, it just seemed like it would be fun?” he admitted. “This is what college kids do, right? Get a crappy job? Plus, my mom said it’s good to case out new places.”
Of course, Emma’s advice might not be very relevant, Henry knew, given that she had spent her days pre-Storybrooke as a thief or a bail bonds woman. College kids didn’t exactly need to know escape routes.
“Well, I don’t think that’s what your mom meant. Shouldn’t you be off doing- stuff?” He stabbed a piece of cake with conviction and pointed with it at Henry. “Being social? Joining clubs? You should do a sport!”
Henry watched Leon’s fork circle in the air as he punctuated each remark, wondering if the piece of cake was going to fly off.
“Uh, I wasn’t really raised to do any team sports.” He didn’t live in a neighborhood with other kids and hadn’t had many friends growing up.
D joined the conversation. “What about martial arts?” he offered. “Martial arts are a great pastime. Whatever form you choose, they inspire patience, restraint, focus and inner strength.”
“He dragged me to a wushu performance, once,” Leon said, mouth now full of blueberry muffin.
D made a face as Leon sprayed crumbs over his side of the table. “Must you persist in being so uncouth, my dear detective?”
Leon paused long enough to swallow and take a gulp of tea. “I thought it was going to be lame, but then there were prop swords and stuff.”
“You’ll have to excuse the detective,” D told Henry. “There is more to wushu than just ‘swords and stuff.’ It is a combination of different techniques standardized by the Chinese government around 50 years ago. Many of the more effective styles were honed over centuries by monks’ observations of animals. It is nominally now a performance art, but it is still just as deadly.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Leon smiled fondly at D. “Just make sure before joining that it’s not one of those where you’re stuck wearing dresses, like D here.”
The comment was directed at Henry but was clearly for the Count’s benefit. The two of them began arguing, and quickly forgot Henry was there.
Henry shared an amused glance with Leon’s little brother, who pushed a tray of cookies across the table before going back to quietly playing with the raccoon by his side.
Henry smiled to himself. The argument made him feel at home, like he was back in his mother’s study and Emma was over. He took another cookie. Except here, he thought happily, he was allowed to eat as many sweets as he wanted.
*
The next time he stopped by the pet shop was when he’d had a lot of homework but couldn’t find a seat in the library. And the time after that, Henry had needed a nice, uncluttered place to do a problem set. Then, finals were quickly approaching, and his roommate had a habit of studying with loud music, and Henry might as well drop by the pet shop where he knew there would always be tea on hand to go with the pineapple buns Henry brought to share.
So far not a single one of his mother’s ravens had come and made him look weird, thankfully. He didn’t want to get weird looks from D or Leon, as well. Although his mother had sent the nameless messenger a few times.
Henry noticed that Leon was around constantly. Supposedly he had a nine to five job as a detective, but he seemed to be in the pet shop even when Henry came by during the awkward 5 hour gap in his schedule he had on Wednesdays.
An hour and a half into one such Wednesday visit, Leon walked in and put down one of those pink cardboard boxes you only get from bakeries. With any luck, it would be doughnuts today.
He paused behind Henry and looked over his shoulder. "What're you working on, kid?"
Henry wasn't a kid anymore, but secretly liked being called that. It reminded me of how Emma talked. Maybe it was a law enforcement thing.
“I’m writing a paper on this Russian novel -- ” Leon made a face, which Henry returned. “I know, I know, that sounds terrible, but this is a non-depressing one, somehow. I’m writing about how nature is pure and humanity isn't."
“I think you’ve been spending too much time around D,” Leon said with a chuckle. “Watch out or he’ll have you wearing lipstick, too.”
“Very amusing, detective,” D called from across the room where he was giving a chinchilla a dust bath. He sounded half-dismissive, half-annoyed and Henry resumed talking, a little louder, to prevent Leon from getting sidetracked by an argument.
“I’m trying to gather quotes, but along the way I've been noticing all of these parallels where the main character's lover is actually his dog." Henry took a sip from his teacup and tapped the page of dog-related quotes he’d written out. “I was joking at first, but all of this evidence is really convincing.” He frowned. “These two characters are supposed to be in love, but this relationship looks pretty unbalanced, to me.”
Leon ruffled his hair. "Okay, now you’re just procrastinating."
He batted Leon’s hand out of the way and nearly hit the blond kid’s raccoon friend that was sitting on the table. “Sorry, Pon-chan,” Henry said, patting it on the head in reparation. “Speaking of procrastinating, why did your brother name the raccoon after his friend? That girl in the dress that shows up every once in a while?”
“What are you talking about?” Leon said, a line of confusion between his eyebrows.
D laughed and the melodious sound carried across the room, washing over them like the incense that curled through the air. Pon-chan the raccoon tugged at Henry’s notebook and he went back to studying with a sigh.
*
Christmas break came and went. When he returned to school, Henry judged he had squirreled away enough wages to keep him in midnight doughnuts until graduation, so he quit being a pizza boy and joined the wushu club. Or at least he thought he’d joined it, but it felt more like it had adopted him. He had heard from his roommate that martial arts program at his school were like a mafia, but the wushu club was more like a cult. It was nice.
Quite a few people were in his classes, and there were also upperclassmen, grad students and even some adults from the community in the club. It was much closer to mixed demographic Henry was used to socially (and would one day rule, if his mother and grandmother had any say in it). Best of all, none of them seemed like the type to throw a Disney-themed party.
With new friends came new study groups, and he became so busy that his visits to the pet shop became sporadic. When Emma asked after Leon and the Count when he was home for Spring break, he realized with surprise that he’d only stopped by a handful of times since December.
Henry changed his return flight from Sunday night to Sunday morning, so he could drop by the Count’s and bring him some of his mom’s (non-poisoned) apple tart and stay for a few cups of tea.
When Sunday afternoon came, Henry happily tromped down the pet shop’s steps to the doorstep, and shifted the dessert box to his hip so that he could knock with his right hand. His knuckles were met with little resistance as the door eerily swung open slightly at first tap.
He pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped inside. A queasy feeling was growing in his stomach. The shop looked unchanged, but it felt empty and cold. The pervasive smell of incense was absent, and the air was still, devoid of the rustles and cries of animals. He hurried into the back and opened the next door, and where a corridor of doors usually wound into the heart of the building, there was only a dingy back room.
Henry reached out to touch the white, undecorated wall in front of him. His hand was shaking. "What happened?" Henry wondered aloud. His voice sounded frantic in his ears.
An answer came from behind him. "He left."
Henry startled and spun around. Leon was sitting on the floor, his back to a wall, a piece of folded paper in his hands. Empty beer bottles lay around his feet.
"He just disappeared,” Leon said. “I’m supposed to be clearing out his stuff - he has no known relatives on record, and -“ his expression was mild, even wistful, but he sounded too choked up to finish his sentence.
“What do you mean, he just left?” Henry couldn’t process this - Count D had been placid as ever when Henry had seen him two weeks prior. And even if he had chosen to suddenly move, Henry couldn’t believe he wouldn’t take Leon with him.
Leon seemed to hear this train of thought. “He said I wasn’t allowed to come along.”
Leon and Count D had seemed even more married than his two moms, so this made no sense to Henry. There had to be something Leon was leaving out.
“That’s ridiculous!” Henry told him. “Was there a curse involved?”
“Either way,” Leon said, ignoring his last sentence. He gestured clumsily with a twirl of his wrist. “We’re natural enemies, Count D and I. We were never meant to get along.”
“My moms are, too,” Henry said, and Leon gave him a skeptical look. “Don’t let that stop you from finding happiness. Just because someone is a little evil and has maybe killed some people in the past, shouldn’t matter if you care about each other!”
Leon gave a weak smile. He tipped his head back until it hit the wall with a muted thud, and stared at a spot on the ceiling. “It’s better off this way. At least I know he’s out there somewhere. I guess I loved him, because I knew I had to let him go.”
Nothing about this was right. Leon was the last person Henry would expect to give up on something. Usually he came at problems head on and bulldozed through them with sheer stubbornness.
“Believe me,” Henry said. “I know a lot about true love, Leon, and I know that you have to go find him. You belong together.”
Leon unfolded and refolded the paper he was holding. He looked up at Henry, finally meeting his eyes. “He could be anywhere by now. Anywhere in the world.”
Henry stood over Leon. He had found that there was magic in this world, if you knew where to look for it.
“True love always finds a way,” he said, and held out his hand, an offer to help Leon up.
Leon took it.
*
Henry never saw D or Leon again, but one day, 10 years later, he got a raven. The moment he unfolded the note, he knew who it was from. The sweet smell of incense clung to the paper, and Henry felt like he was transported back to his afternoons at the pet shop.
I hear I have you to thank for this pet you sent to my doorstep, the note said in elegant calligraphy. It was signed from both of them.
Author: shifty_gardener
Prompt: Henry Mills delivers pizza to a pet shop and meets…Leon Orcot!
Fandoms: Petshop of Horrors, Once Upon a Time
Word count: ~5k
Rating/Contents: G, no warnings apply
Henry walked through the brisk night with a red pizza case held proudly over one shoulder. Bright fluorescent signs vied for his attention, but in vain. Mostly because he couldn’t read Chinese. Henry occasionally missed the peace and quiet of Storybrooke, but it was nice to be in a place big enough to have a Chinatown. Henry came to a stop at a pair of ornate doors and double-checked the address on his notepad. He knocked twice, sharply.
Of all the many and varied establishments to which he had delivered pizza, he never would have expected to deliver pizza to a pet shop. Then again, he’d never expected to be delivering pizza at all, despite how fun it had always looked in movies. Speeding around the city, briefly touching the lives of all kinds of people - the job satisfied both his wandering spirit and his nosiness bred of small-town life.
But really though, Henry wondered, knocking a third time. Who would order pizza from a pet shop?
The door opened, and Henry had his answer.
Standing in the threshold was a gorgeous man, wearing some kind of Chinese robe that was long and silky looking. His hair fell in a smooth curtain that defined his jaw and covered one of his eyes. Something about him put Henry instantly at ease in a way he hadn't felt since the last time he'd been in Storybrooke.
“Leon Orcot?” Henry asked, triple-checking the notepad.
The man - woman? - inclined his head. “I’m afraid that is my…friend. I am D.” He gave Henry the solicitous smile Henry had seen on his mother’s face a thousand times. He even had Henry’s mom’s signature deep-colored lipstick.
"Oh, well-"
D whirled around with a dramatic huff to call inside, "You said you were ordering dinner, not - this!!"
He waved his hand to indicate Henry in his delivery uniform galore -- a Pizza Palace t-shirt, matching baseball cap, and khaki pants --, his manicured nails catching the light. Henry decided not to take it personally, and took advantage of the moment to peer past D’s shoulder. Instead of the sterile room lined with cages he had been expecting, Henry saw a cozy sitting room with folding screens, lanterns and even an elaborately patterned chaise lounge. The scent of incense wafted out to him, instead of the heavy musk of many animals in an enclosed space. From the look of things, this pet shop doubled as a home.
“Weird,” Henry breathed. California was very different than Maine.
A blond guy walked up to the door then and pushed D out of the way. His hair was even longer than D’s and pulled back into a ponytail, but where D was all poise and charm, this one wore a garish star-spangled T-shirt and a seriously ‘90s jacket.
He leaned against the doorframe. His shoulders were almost inhumanly boxy.
The guy, who was probably Leon Orcot, clapped D on the shoulder. "I eat pizza for dinner all the time. It’s dinner food."
D began to protest but only got as far as "My dear-" when Leon continued, "Relax, your half has extra pineapple on it and it's all vegetarian.” He looked over at Henry and rolled his eyes. “We're in America! Learn to eat American food sometimes!"
D continued to glare.
Their easy antagonism reminded Henry of his moms. It was pretty cute, actually.
He was jarred out of this thought when Leon pulled out his wallet and handed him a twenty, "Here you go, kid, keep the change.”
He turned to D and resumed the argument, punctuating his points with wild gesticulations. After a minute, it became apparent the both of them had forgotten about Henry and the pizza.
"Uh, thanks!” Henry pocketed the money and, after a moment’s hesitation, put the pizza on the step at their feet. “Thank you for ordering from Pizza Palace. Eat like a king,” he mumbled by rote.
After one last peek inside the pet shop, Henry turned and left. He could hear their bickering to the end of the street.
*
When Henry had begun applying to colleges, the reactions from Storybrooke inhabitants had ranged from perplexed questioning to outright dumbfounded shock. No one in his family had ever attended, nor been interested in, college, being that they were either royalty from another reality or, in Emma’s case, an orphan turned felon turned bail bondswoman. On top of this, the last person that had tried to leave Storybrooke to pursue higher education had disappeared, her heart found in a box buried down by the Troll Bridge.
“What is the point of leaving for school?” Regina wanted to know. “Storybrooke is where he belongs.”
“Well, he might have to run a kingdom one day,” Mary Margaret said. “He has to learn administrative skills from somewhere: he can’t rule with fear, like you, or by birthright, like me.”
“C’mon Regina, let our kid live a little,” Emma said. “Or do I need to move out of the mansion for a while? Maybe Henry and I will move back to New York City for a few years.” She raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow.
Regina pursed her lips and acquiesced, and that had been that.
Henry liked college all right so far. It wasn’t that freedom was new or exciting -- he was already used to wandering around with no one knowing or caring what he did with his time. In a town as small as his own, he’d been able to sneak away if he wanted to as the adults were often busy with magic-related crises.
It was just a little weird being surrounded by people his age. Until the curse was broken, he’d been the only kid in the town that aged, so he had new classmates every year growing up. This had resulted in poor social skills and zero long term friends, endquote his psychiatrist, Jiminy Cricket. Sheriff Graham had sought out his company, and so had August, but neither of them had stuck around. In fact, both were dead. That might have been part of the issue.
The problem was that Henry had a really shiny car.
Well, that wasn’t the problem in and of itself, but a symptom of the problem. The problem being that his mother, no matter how long she’d spent in small town America, was still The Evil Queen, and she really didn’t know what was appropriate for a college kid. So when his mom told him she’d bought him a car, it definitely wasn’t a beat up Chevy.
No. Henry had been sent to college with a black, shiny Tesla, which, at the moment, was gathering dust in the dorm parking structure. Unlike his mom, Henry had done his research, and college movies had told him that there was supposed to be a measure of roughing it in the first year, of dirty laundry piling up in your closet, of eating ramen out of plastic water heaters - something Charming did sometimes when Mary Margaret was off at her monthly book club and Henry was sworn to secrecy about - and only eventually scraping enough money together to get a beat up Volvo or rusty truck.
So if Henry knew one thing for certain: If he wanted to pass as a normal college student, the Tesla could never be used. Ever. At least until Henry had to buy groceries next year. It would stay parked in the garage, gathering dust.
Keeping one secret from his floormates was totally fine, Henry decided. None of his friends needed to know about his wildly inappropriate car.
Or that fact that he was the son of a princess and the dark one’s son. Or that his other mom was the evil queen.
Thank god he looked like a normal person on the outside.
*
Henry’s friend group, all the humanities majors on his side of the hall, were all hanging out in his room the first Sunday afternoon of the term when he got a letter from his mom. He sat up from his sprawl across half of his bed to read it.
It was a short update - Your uncle’s fifth birthday party went well, Emma threatened to cut down my apple tree again, I noticed from your bank account that you bought doughnuts at 2AM on Monday, didn’t I teach you to make healthier choices? He was frowning down at it, wondering if he should start paying for everything in cash, when he noticed that the room had gone very quiet.
He looked up. Everyone was staring at him. Or rather, everyone was starting at the raven perched on his shoulder that was waiting for him to scrawl out a reply. He had about five minutes before it would start pecking his ear to either feed it or finish his response.
It took Henry a few seconds of looking between his friends and the raven before he remembered it was not normal to get letters by bird in the real world.
He scribbled a five word response and the bird swooped away. “Um. There is a perfectly good explanation for this, really.”
Everyone stared at him expectantly.
“My mom likes birds.” He winced and tried to turn it into a smile. “And…trains them. To send letters?”
His roommate, who was sitting at his desk, pointed to the picture of Snow and Charming Henry had put on his side of the windowsill. “Is that her?”
“No, those are my grandparents, actually.” Henry picked up the other picture frame. Regina, her signature smirk on her face, and Emma, blond hair billowing in the wind, looked up at him from behind the glass. “This is her.”
The lit major from room 302 wolf whistled. The girl from 305 said, “Is it just me, or does she look older than your grandparents?”
Everyone looked between the two photos.
305’s roommate craned her neck from where she was sitting on the floor to see. “Can grandparents even be that young?” She squinted at Henry. “How old are you?”
“Um. I was adopted.” Everyone kept staring. “…and that’s a really old picture of my grandparents! That’s been, uh, digitally retouched. A lot.” He laughed awkwardly. “Have you guys ever seen this video of a panda cub sneezing?”
For all that Regina reminded him not to talk about magic and to try to fit in - as if he wasn't going to try to network when he was a business major, thanks mom - she still kept sending him messages via raven. The poor things always arrived looking bedraggled and exhausted, and invariably tapped at the glass of his window or perched on his shoulder when he was talking to people. It seemed like maybe that one slip up would blow over, but doodles of birds started appearing on the whiteboard on his door and then the next week he was talking to the RA and the raven flew in her window. She yelled a lot and almost managed to hit it with her pillow and he hastily made his escape, raven intact but dignity in tatters.
The message that the bird so bravely conveyed, was Regina commenting on the other night’s 2AM pizza betrayed by his bank records. It was at that moment that Henry realized he needed an alternate source of income if he was going to keep up his doughnut habit and to be known as something other than “raven guy.” Pizza Palace down the street Even being known as or “pizza boy” would be better.
“Pizza boy.” He liked the sound of that.
*
He found himself delivering pizza to the pet shop again a few weeks later.
This time he noticed the sign above the door that read Count D with a scrawl of Chinese. Presumably the elegantly dressed man from earlier was a count, then. It seemed like a strange name for a pet shop, given that that Count was typically a European title. But it was unlikely “count” was a word in Chinese that just looked like an English one, like the word “king”….
When he knocked, a blond kid opened one of the tall doors. And next to him was a little girl in a flouncy princess dress.
Henry smiled down at the kid. He kind of resembled the blond guy from last time. "Are you here with your dad?"
"Nah, I live here!” The boy said, barely moving his mouth. “Have you met my older brother?"
“I think so,” said Henry. He shifted his hold on the pizza box.
“Oh, right!” said the boy. “Just a second. D!!!” He ran off into the shop yelling, girl in tow.
Henry waited around for a few moments, inhaling the sweet curls of incense that were diffusing from inside the shop out into the night air. The incense was strong, but not unpleasant, and unlike anything he’d ever smelled. In fact, it was almost intoxicating.
Henry felt a tap on his shoulder and jumped a little.
A sharply dressed man in a pinstripe suit had been standing behind him for who knows how long, and he solemnly handed Henry a note. He looked like someone’s driver.
"Uh," said Henry, and didn’t take it.
The guy held it out patiently, the folded paper stark white against his black, leather glove. "This is for you, from your mother."
It looked just like all of the other notes he’d gotten from his mom, but that could mean anything. Henry wasn’t a naturally cautious person but he really didn’t want to be cursed. Again.
He squinted at the man in a way his mom often told him off for, but gingerly accepted it. "You're not a flying monkey, right?” he asked suspiciously. “I thought all of you guys were gone."
The guy arched an eyebrow and inclined his head at something behind Henry.
Henry turned to find Count D standing in the doorway. His robes were a rich scarlet today, with an embroidered feather pattern. He was looking over Henry’s shoulder with interest, and when he turned his gaze back to Henry it seemed to be with a newfound esteem. Instead of the banal politeness of the last time they’d met, there was a knowing edge to Count D’s smile, and a speculative gleam in his eye. He looked a little menacing, actually, yet the feeling of ease Henry felt the last time he had encountered D came back, this time even stronger.
Count D accepted the pizza, inexplicably insisting, "Come by any time; you're always welcome," before shutting the door in Henry’s face. As he blinked at the closed door, Henry put a finger on what he’d sensed. Power. This Count, whoever he was, had the direct and amused stare of the powerful and morally dubious. But he didn’t give off the slimy vibes of Mr. Gold; in fact, the Count reminded him of his mother.
“Huh,” Henry said aloud to himself. His brain drawing the comparison should have been disturbing, but the resemblance was actually pretty comforting.
Before he could follow this train of thought, however, Henry felt something peck at his ankle and nearly tripped over his mom’s favorite raven. He jumped in surprise and suddenly remembered the man with the leather gloves. He whirled around, but no one was there. The raven ruffled its feathers and continued pecking him until Henry pulled out a small bag of bird feed he’d taken to carrying in his pockets for moments like this.
The bird flew off before Henry could write a reply, like, Hey, Mom, do your ravens ever shapeshift?
*
Midterms came and went, pizzas were delivered, and tip money was spent on doughnuts. And much to Henry’s surprise, he actually took the Count up on his invitation a few weeks later. It was Sunday afternoon, and Henry’s floormates were off on a Disney-themed scavenger hunt. Henry’d taken one look at his RA’s Snow White costume and had begged off, claiming he had plans. Objectively, he knew his grandma was good looking, but he could do without seeing the sexy costume version of her.
Henry had wandered into the parking garage in a daze, trying to scrub the cosplay of his extended family from his brain, and for some reason ended up driving to the pet shop.
He hovered outside, feeling a little silly. It felt weird to be there as a visitor instead of delivering a pizza, but he had been invited. When he mustered the courage to pop his head in the door, D looked up with a smile from where he was handing a slice of cake to the small, blond child. Henry saw that the table was already set for tea.
“I’m happy you remembered my invitation,” D said, apparently unsurprised to see him. “Do come in.”
The scent of incense was heavy in the air as Henry ventured inside. The blond guy with a ponytail, whose name was possibly Leon, was there again, and didn’t look too surprised when Henry sat down at the table next to him. D had guests over regularly, then.
Possibly-Leon kept his gaze focused on him. Henry sipped his tea, unfazed by the scrutiny. By the time he was halfway through his cup, Possibly-Leon snapped his fingers and said, “You’re the pizza guy, aren’t you? I’m Leon.” Leon paused just long enough for Henry to mumble out his name before he continued, “So, you’re in college then?”
“Yep, I’m a freshman.”
“Ah, and delivering pizzas to pay the bills?” Leon nodded. “The American dream. I get it, kid.”
Henry toyed with his teacup. “No, actually, it just seemed like it would be fun?” he admitted. “This is what college kids do, right? Get a crappy job? Plus, my mom said it’s good to case out new places.”
Of course, Emma’s advice might not be very relevant, Henry knew, given that she had spent her days pre-Storybrooke as a thief or a bail bonds woman. College kids didn’t exactly need to know escape routes.
“Well, I don’t think that’s what your mom meant. Shouldn’t you be off doing- stuff?” He stabbed a piece of cake with conviction and pointed with it at Henry. “Being social? Joining clubs? You should do a sport!”
Henry watched Leon’s fork circle in the air as he punctuated each remark, wondering if the piece of cake was going to fly off.
“Uh, I wasn’t really raised to do any team sports.” He didn’t live in a neighborhood with other kids and hadn’t had many friends growing up.
D joined the conversation. “What about martial arts?” he offered. “Martial arts are a great pastime. Whatever form you choose, they inspire patience, restraint, focus and inner strength.”
“He dragged me to a wushu performance, once,” Leon said, mouth now full of blueberry muffin.
D made a face as Leon sprayed crumbs over his side of the table. “Must you persist in being so uncouth, my dear detective?”
Leon paused long enough to swallow and take a gulp of tea. “I thought it was going to be lame, but then there were prop swords and stuff.”
“You’ll have to excuse the detective,” D told Henry. “There is more to wushu than just ‘swords and stuff.’ It is a combination of different techniques standardized by the Chinese government around 50 years ago. Many of the more effective styles were honed over centuries by monks’ observations of animals. It is nominally now a performance art, but it is still just as deadly.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Leon smiled fondly at D. “Just make sure before joining that it’s not one of those where you’re stuck wearing dresses, like D here.”
The comment was directed at Henry but was clearly for the Count’s benefit. The two of them began arguing, and quickly forgot Henry was there.
Henry shared an amused glance with Leon’s little brother, who pushed a tray of cookies across the table before going back to quietly playing with the raccoon by his side.
Henry smiled to himself. The argument made him feel at home, like he was back in his mother’s study and Emma was over. He took another cookie. Except here, he thought happily, he was allowed to eat as many sweets as he wanted.
*
The next time he stopped by the pet shop was when he’d had a lot of homework but couldn’t find a seat in the library. And the time after that, Henry had needed a nice, uncluttered place to do a problem set. Then, finals were quickly approaching, and his roommate had a habit of studying with loud music, and Henry might as well drop by the pet shop where he knew there would always be tea on hand to go with the pineapple buns Henry brought to share.
So far not a single one of his mother’s ravens had come and made him look weird, thankfully. He didn’t want to get weird looks from D or Leon, as well. Although his mother had sent the nameless messenger a few times.
Henry noticed that Leon was around constantly. Supposedly he had a nine to five job as a detective, but he seemed to be in the pet shop even when Henry came by during the awkward 5 hour gap in his schedule he had on Wednesdays.
An hour and a half into one such Wednesday visit, Leon walked in and put down one of those pink cardboard boxes you only get from bakeries. With any luck, it would be doughnuts today.
He paused behind Henry and looked over his shoulder. "What're you working on, kid?"
Henry wasn't a kid anymore, but secretly liked being called that. It reminded me of how Emma talked. Maybe it was a law enforcement thing.
“I’m writing a paper on this Russian novel -- ” Leon made a face, which Henry returned. “I know, I know, that sounds terrible, but this is a non-depressing one, somehow. I’m writing about how nature is pure and humanity isn't."
“I think you’ve been spending too much time around D,” Leon said with a chuckle. “Watch out or he’ll have you wearing lipstick, too.”
“Very amusing, detective,” D called from across the room where he was giving a chinchilla a dust bath. He sounded half-dismissive, half-annoyed and Henry resumed talking, a little louder, to prevent Leon from getting sidetracked by an argument.
“I’m trying to gather quotes, but along the way I've been noticing all of these parallels where the main character's lover is actually his dog." Henry took a sip from his teacup and tapped the page of dog-related quotes he’d written out. “I was joking at first, but all of this evidence is really convincing.” He frowned. “These two characters are supposed to be in love, but this relationship looks pretty unbalanced, to me.”
Leon ruffled his hair. "Okay, now you’re just procrastinating."
He batted Leon’s hand out of the way and nearly hit the blond kid’s raccoon friend that was sitting on the table. “Sorry, Pon-chan,” Henry said, patting it on the head in reparation. “Speaking of procrastinating, why did your brother name the raccoon after his friend? That girl in the dress that shows up every once in a while?”
“What are you talking about?” Leon said, a line of confusion between his eyebrows.
D laughed and the melodious sound carried across the room, washing over them like the incense that curled through the air. Pon-chan the raccoon tugged at Henry’s notebook and he went back to studying with a sigh.
*
Christmas break came and went. When he returned to school, Henry judged he had squirreled away enough wages to keep him in midnight doughnuts until graduation, so he quit being a pizza boy and joined the wushu club. Or at least he thought he’d joined it, but it felt more like it had adopted him. He had heard from his roommate that martial arts program at his school were like a mafia, but the wushu club was more like a cult. It was nice.
Quite a few people were in his classes, and there were also upperclassmen, grad students and even some adults from the community in the club. It was much closer to mixed demographic Henry was used to socially (and would one day rule, if his mother and grandmother had any say in it). Best of all, none of them seemed like the type to throw a Disney-themed party.
With new friends came new study groups, and he became so busy that his visits to the pet shop became sporadic. When Emma asked after Leon and the Count when he was home for Spring break, he realized with surprise that he’d only stopped by a handful of times since December.
Henry changed his return flight from Sunday night to Sunday morning, so he could drop by the Count’s and bring him some of his mom’s (non-poisoned) apple tart and stay for a few cups of tea.
When Sunday afternoon came, Henry happily tromped down the pet shop’s steps to the doorstep, and shifted the dessert box to his hip so that he could knock with his right hand. His knuckles were met with little resistance as the door eerily swung open slightly at first tap.
He pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped inside. A queasy feeling was growing in his stomach. The shop looked unchanged, but it felt empty and cold. The pervasive smell of incense was absent, and the air was still, devoid of the rustles and cries of animals. He hurried into the back and opened the next door, and where a corridor of doors usually wound into the heart of the building, there was only a dingy back room.
Henry reached out to touch the white, undecorated wall in front of him. His hand was shaking. "What happened?" Henry wondered aloud. His voice sounded frantic in his ears.
An answer came from behind him. "He left."
Henry startled and spun around. Leon was sitting on the floor, his back to a wall, a piece of folded paper in his hands. Empty beer bottles lay around his feet.
"He just disappeared,” Leon said. “I’m supposed to be clearing out his stuff - he has no known relatives on record, and -“ his expression was mild, even wistful, but he sounded too choked up to finish his sentence.
“What do you mean, he just left?” Henry couldn’t process this - Count D had been placid as ever when Henry had seen him two weeks prior. And even if he had chosen to suddenly move, Henry couldn’t believe he wouldn’t take Leon with him.
Leon seemed to hear this train of thought. “He said I wasn’t allowed to come along.”
Leon and Count D had seemed even more married than his two moms, so this made no sense to Henry. There had to be something Leon was leaving out.
“That’s ridiculous!” Henry told him. “Was there a curse involved?”
“Either way,” Leon said, ignoring his last sentence. He gestured clumsily with a twirl of his wrist. “We’re natural enemies, Count D and I. We were never meant to get along.”
“My moms are, too,” Henry said, and Leon gave him a skeptical look. “Don’t let that stop you from finding happiness. Just because someone is a little evil and has maybe killed some people in the past, shouldn’t matter if you care about each other!”
Leon gave a weak smile. He tipped his head back until it hit the wall with a muted thud, and stared at a spot on the ceiling. “It’s better off this way. At least I know he’s out there somewhere. I guess I loved him, because I knew I had to let him go.”
Nothing about this was right. Leon was the last person Henry would expect to give up on something. Usually he came at problems head on and bulldozed through them with sheer stubbornness.
“Believe me,” Henry said. “I know a lot about true love, Leon, and I know that you have to go find him. You belong together.”
Leon unfolded and refolded the paper he was holding. He looked up at Henry, finally meeting his eyes. “He could be anywhere by now. Anywhere in the world.”
Henry stood over Leon. He had found that there was magic in this world, if you knew where to look for it.
“True love always finds a way,” he said, and held out his hand, an offer to help Leon up.
Leon took it.
*
Henry never saw D or Leon again, but one day, 10 years later, he got a raven. The moment he unfolded the note, he knew who it was from. The sweet smell of incense clung to the paper, and Henry felt like he was transported back to his afternoons at the pet shop.
I hear I have you to thank for this pet you sent to my doorstep, the note said in elegant calligraphy. It was signed from both of them.