Title: Do You Wanna Dance
Summary: Emma had been so lost in thought that she hadn't even noticed her father watching her with a concerned expression. His soft voice startled her when he asked, "How come you're not out there?" Emma wrinkled her nose. "I don't dance."
Word Count: 2706, according to OpenOffice.
Spoilers: Set mid-2x10, "The Cricket Game."
Characters: Emma and Charming with guest appearances by Henry, Snow, and Granny.
Rating/Warning: K+, mostly for language. As per my usual, here be slight family angst and a good dose of daddy/daughter fluff. Bring a toothbrush.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. It's been over a month since we've had new material, however, and it's driving me nutsy. I borrowed the characters in an effort to stay sane (though sane is relative, I suppose ;)).
Author's Note: ClaraFrench asked me for a story involving a ball or a party and a father-daughter dance. Add that prompt to my recent oldies kick (sometimes I swear I should have been born thirty years earlier than I was), mix it around a bit, and you get what you see below. Title comes from the song of the same name by many, many bands, though the Beach Boys' version is my favorite. Many thanks to my fellow author and friend since we were toddlers JMHaughey for helping me choose the title. Feedback is love! Enjoy!

Emma Swan was pretty much partied out.

The Welcome Back From the Enchanted Forest party at Granny's was still in full swing. Emma had practically eaten her weight in delicious, real-world food: Regina's surprisingly tasty lasagna, moist and sugary cake, and Granny's famous cherry pie. The tacos she and Henry had made had come out quite well if she did say so herself. Although, the less she thought about the little surprise her parents had accidentally given her before she made those damn tacos, the better.

Basically, ready-made food she could just serve herself off a plate or out of a casserole dish was something she would never take for granted again.

Along with eating, Emma had also mingled and joked around and just generally had a good time. Various people had been plying her with drinks all night – mead took a little getting used to but it was surprisingly good – and in the interest of full disclosure, she might have been a bit tipsy.

Apparently Granny's jukebox had some special setting that allowed it to play the songs in its library at random with no need for money, so they'd had music playing for quite a while, too. All of the songs that had played so far were golden oldies, and Emma was beginning to wonder if anyone in Storybrooke had ever heard a song that came out after disco died.

Although the sounds of the 1960s were clearly not the songs the denizens of the Enchanted Forest had grown up hearing, the idea of dancing to music was apparently universal. It was when the dancing started that Emma made herself comfortable in a booth with yet another glass of mead. Emma Swan did not dance, not even a little bit. She wasn't very good at it, and she'd felt ridiculous on the rare occasions she'd tried dancing when she was a kid.

Her son, however, had clearly inherited none of her self-consciousness. He was holding court in the middle of the diner, doing a pretty mean twist. The Dwarfs were all lined up behind him in an effort to copy his movement. Even Leroy joined in for about a second and a half. Emma hid a smirk; something told her he was a little tipsy, too.

Snow, who'd been dancing with David, laughed when she saw her grandson attempting to do the swim to "La Bamba." She let go of David's hands, dashed over, and grabbed Henry's hands instead. After letting out a surprised but thrilled giggle, Henry went with it, swinging his arms with his grandmother's as they kicked their feet towards each other in opposite directions.

Emma watched them, waiting for the inevitable moment when Snow and Henry ended up kicking each other – a carefully choreographed dance, this was not. That moment never came, or if it did, she didn't see it. An out-of-breath David plopped down in her booth then, sitting across the table from her. She slid him a glass of water Henry had asked for and forgotten. "Thanks," he panted before downing a large gulp of water.

"Don't mention it," Emma said, shrugging while hiding an amused smile. Her father certainly had some moves but the activity had taken more out of him than he'd expected.

They sat in silence while David caught his breath. Emma watched everyone else having fun with a vague sense of longing. She didn't enjoy sitting on the sidelines but she couldn't seem to gather up the courage to go out there and let loose, either. Every time she'd let loose as a kid, every time she'd started relaxing and having the tiniest bit of fun, something had come along to put an end to it. If she made friends with a kid she was living with, either she or the other kid would be moved somewhere else. If she got placed in one of the nicer homes, the system would eventually move her to one of the awful ones.

After a while, she'd stopped trying to have fun. After a while, she'd stopped wishing for one of the families to send her to dance lessons like the other little girls in her class. After a while, she'd even stopped dancing around the room to music because what was the point?

Jesus, that's so damn sad, she thought, and before she realized what she was doing, another gulp of mead went down her throat.

She'd been so lost in thought that she hadn't even noticed her father watching her with a concerned expression. His soft voice startled her when he asked, "How come you're not out there?"

Emma wrinkled her nose. "I don't dance."

A pained look crossed his face for a fraction of a second. In that split second, Emma realized what he surely had: if she'd grown up with him and Snow, she would have danced. She would have learned waltzes and minuets and whatever other ballroom dances they had in the Enchanted Forest. And as a carefree young princess, she would have danced around the castle to the inner music only little kids could hear.

Then he shook off his emotions and gave her a light smile. "Aw, come on. Everyone dances."

"Not me."

Now he looked at her with such a thoughtful and concerned expression that her heart skipped a beat. She'd had very few people, if any at all, ever try to figure out the why of something she'd said. She was used to everyone taking her at face value and not caring enough to dig deeper, not caring enough to try to figure out why she felt a certain way or why she did certain things.

She wasn't used to anyone caring why she was the way she was, and she certainly wasn't used to anyone attempting to help her heal the wounds of her past. It was so foreign to her that she wasn't entirely sure she liked it.

(Well, of course she liked it, but it was also terrifying and somewhat incomprehensible to her, and she didn't know how to make sense of it.)

"Why don't you dance, Emma?" he asked her softly.

She responded with the simple truth: "I don't know how."

The sentence had come out pained, and Emma winced. David shut his eyes for the briefest of moments and swallowed hard. Then he looked her in the eye, smiling kindly. "You must know something."

Emma shrugged. "The only thing I can really do is the hand jive from Grease." And the only reason she knew the hand jive was because one of the older girls in one of her foster homes had taught it to her along with a bunch of hand-clap games.

David frowned in bewilderment. Of course, Emma thought, sighing. Why the hell would he know Grease? After making sure no one was paying them the slightest bit of attention, Emma demonstrated it for him.

A smile curled on David's lips. "I can tell just from watching that that you have some natural rhythm. Whether you realized it or not, you matched your hand movements with the beat from the jukebox." He nodded towards the dance floor. "Why don't you give it a shot?"

Oh, hell no. Not with all these people around.

Her hesitance must have shown on her face because David pushed the glass of water aside and slid out of the booth. Then he held his hand out to her while begging her with his eyes to trust him.

Maybe it was the alcohol coursing through her veins. Maybe it was the little girl buried deep within her who'd longed to dance with her father. All Emma knew was that she suddenly found herself reaching up, grasping his hand, and allowing him to pull her to her feet.

David led her away from the main part of the diner and drew to a stop in the little corner beside the counter. Though the music blasting from the jukebox threatened to drown out any and all conversation, they were somewhat hidden from view here, so they stayed. "All right," he said as he let go of her hand and faced her, "the first thing you need to do is not think too much. Moving your body to music is natural; every culture in the world has some form of dance. Overthinking it is what makes it awkward."

Emma swallowed hard. Essentially, he wanted her to relax. He wanted her to let go. That? Was going to be hard.

The song blaring through the jukebox's speakers changed to – of all things – Sam Cooke's "Twisting the Night Away." David grinned at his good fortune. If there was ever a song to teach someone to dance to, it was that one. "Now find the beat and move."

"You say that like it's so easy." She'd meant for it to sound like a grumble but it came out more like a whine.

"It is. Okay, listen. Hear the drums?" He paused, waiting for his daughter's nod. "They're giving you the beat. On one and three, hear it?"

Okay, yeah, Emma heard the drums and she could count the beat with them but what she was supposed to do with that information was beyond her. She must have looked as lost as she felt because David took her hands and pulled one of her arms towards him while pushing the other towards her.

The suddenness of the gesture surprised her but she was even more surprised that her feet followed suit on their own. One second she was standing still and the next she was twisting her legs on the balls of her feet. A grin curled on David's lips as he shook her hands in his. "That's it. Now loosen up a little. Just go with it."

They fell into a rhythm, and Emma finally understood what David had meant about moving to the beat. She also understood what he'd meant about overthinking it. If she tried not to think and just let herself move, she could do the twist almost as well as Henry.

Granted, the twist wasn't hard, but that wasn't the point.

The song ended, and David let go of his daughter's hands. "See? You can dance."

Emma gave a shrug, smiling almost shyly. She'd just had a dance lesson with her father, of all people. She suddenly felt as if she were eight years old, in the midst of her first father-daughter dance at school. "Yeah, maybe."

"No maybe about it," he said, running his thumb over her cheek. Then, after giving her a soft smile, he headed back to the booth.

Emma followed him and eased back down on the bench, conflicting emotions fluttering in her stomach. Part of her hadn't wanted him to stop. Part of her had been embarrassed that she'd had to be taught to dance at twenty-eight years old. And part of her couldn't believe she'd danced at all.

David took another gulp of water, winked at her, and headed back to the party, still in full swing in the middle of the diner.

She watched everyone for a while as she drained her glass. Henry had switched from the twist and now seemed to be leading the Dwarfs – minus Leroy – in some sort of line dance. Were line dances to oldies a thing? Not that it seemed to matter. Even if they weren't a thing, Henry was making them one.

The songs changed, and as they did, Emma found herself humming along and even finding the beat in the percussion, just like David had taught her. It was when she caught her foot tapping along to the beat that she admitted to herself that maybe she did have some natural rhythm after all.

Just as she was about to get up for another glass of mead, David stepped up to her and held out his hand. "May I have this dance?" he asked, a smile lighting his face.

The pure love for her swimming in his eyes made hot tears prick in Emma's own. The tears only built when she recognized the song: The Happenings' version of "I Got Rhythm."

Aw, crap, how could she say no to this? She'd never once been anyone's girl. Now she was … she was her father's little girl. Since she had a reputation to uphold, she blinked back the tears and gave a halfhearted roll of her eyes. Still, she took her father's hand and once again allowed him to pull her to her feet.

They didn't go to the corner this time. No, this time he dragged her out into the middle of the makeshift dance floor. Out of the corner of her eye, Emma saw a soft smile pull at the corners of Snow's mouth. "The tambourine's counting the beat for you on this one," David murmured to her.

"I hear it," she said with a nod.

They started with the twist, just like he'd taught her, but after a moment, she let him lead. He let go of one of her hands and raised her other arm. She had no idea how she knew what to do, but she spun around under their clasped hands and then raised her arm so David could spin as well. He grinned at her as he took her hand again.

Just go with it, he'd said, so she was. It seemed to be working well enough, and she was even having a fair bit of fun. And those pesky tears may have brimmed her eyes again when David murmured along with the song, "I got starlight, I got sweet dreams. I got my girl, who could ask for more?"

Before she knew it – and, in all honesty, before she was ready – the song was over. "Thank you for the dance, Emma," David said as he let go of her hands.

"You're welcome." Only then did it really hit her that she'd just danced with her father in front of a diner full of people.

Jesus, she could usually hold her liquor a lot better than this. (On some level, she knew that she hadn't done this because of the mead she'd consumed. Not completely. It may have given her the push she'd needed to agree, but she'd done it because somewhere deep inside her, she'd desperately wanted this. Blaming the alcohol was easier, though.)

A quick look around proved that although they'd certainly been noticed, she and David had only become the center of attention for two people: Henry and Snow. Henry appeared shocked that she'd danced at all while Snow looked thrilled for her husband and touched that Emma had allowed him the opportunity.

Just as Emma's cheeks began to flush from embarrassment, Henry exclaimed, "All right, Mom! You have moves!"

Everyone chuckled. "Yeah, well, don't get too used to seeing those moves," Emma said, pulling her son in for a hug. As she let him go, she idly wondered if maybe there was a thing or two she could teach him. "Hey, kid. You know how to hand jive?"

A confused frown furrowed Henry's brow. "How to what?"

Well, then. It appeared that it was time for her to conduct her own lesson. She made a big show of pushing up her sleeves. "Watch and learn."

It did not at all surprise her that her parents decided to join the lesson. What did surprise her was that the Dwarfs decided to join in as well, even Leroy. Her breath caught in her throat but a gentle smile from Snow and a wink from David calmed her down. Everyone caught on quickly, and pretty soon the entire diner was doing the hand jive.

Just as Emma was about to go get another drink, Granny brought one over to her. "You looked thirsty."

"Thanks," Emma said as she accepted the mead and took a large gulp.

"Welcome home, Emma," Granny said, patting her cheek like … well, like a grandmother. Then she was off again; a hostess's job was never done.

Home. She was home, wasn't she? And as Emma glanced around, watching everyone have fun and watching her son dance with her parents, she smiled. It was great to be home.