Title: Days Move Easy
Pairing: Santana/Brittany
Rating: G
Summary: Future Fic
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Glee is not mine. Nor is the Dawes song ("If I Wanted Someone") that I stole for title.
Author's Note: I have two seminar papers due in the next five days which are horrifically unfinished. So instead of doing that, I wrote fanfic. Which I have not done in years.
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When they decide that they want to share their life with a child, adoption seems like the most natural option for them. Brittany's a dancer, after all, and her body is her work. And Santana can't do it-the only person she lets tell her what to do is Brittany. They're both pretty sure that 10 months of not being in control of her own body wouldn't be healthy for anyone-Santana or the baby. Even Brittany. Possibly the state of California entirely.
So they adopt.
It takes a while, and there are more hoops to jump through than Santana has the patience for. But in the middle of the night, when the frustration and the disappointments and the fears seem to overwhelm the process and threaten to spoil this, their most pure of hopes and dreams, it is Brittany who soothes and strokes and speaks softly about the future.
More than a year later, they're finally parents: A beautiful baby girl with the softest coffee-colored skin and the sweetest green eyes. Just three days old and already a heart-breaker. They name her Abigail Maria, and then they take her home. Brittany sits in the backseat and hums softly to their little girl while Santana slowly drives them home on the back roads.
The next few days are spent all getting to know each other. They introduce Abigail to the cat, Snapple, and they show her the room that's been decorated for months now. Or, Brittany introduces her to Snapple and shows her the nursery. Santana is always right there, always at her side with a bottle or a diaper or new sleeper. But these first few days, she lets Brittany take the lead. And so it's mostly Brittany who holds and snuggles and rocks the bundle of warmth in her arms.
The grandmothers arrive unexpectedly, all laden down with presents and excitement. They couldn't wait two more weeks until Christmas to meet their newest grandbaby. They coo and bicker good-naturedly over whose turn it is to feed or change or just hold and look at their wide-eyed granddaughter. All the while Santana watches with a half-exasperated smirk, reminding them that the infant is only days old and likes anyone with a steady arm and a warm bottle at hand.
Towards the end of the visit, the grandmothers pull Brittany aside, worried about Santana. With all the wisdom of experience and age and Oprah, she wonders if Santana truly wanted this, whether she was ready to become a mother. Santana's mother goes as far as to say that she never thought to see her daughter a mother herself, and maybe Santana just was missing that motherly instinct that they'd praised so much in Brittany these past few days.
Brittany's heart breaks a bit at that-that no one can see what she sees in the woman she loves-and she takes a moment to think how to respond, the warm and heavy weight of their daughter in her arms.
She could tell them about the nights Santana cried. How the first time their application for adoption was rejected Santana spent a weekend weeping in the safe security of their bed and her arms. She could tell them how in every interview and home study and parenting class Santana's hands shook just the tiniest bit, how behind the mask of indifference and devil-may-care was a panic and terror so acute it actually chilled her blood a little bit to see it.
She could tell them how tightly Santana gripped her hand as they signed the official adoption papers, how it took almost an hour for the color to fully return to her fingers.
Or she could tell them about last night. How like every night since their family became three, Santana was the one to wake up at the cries. How she was the one to stumble to the bassinet and then the kitchen, making the most adorable sounds Brittany had ever heard fall out of her mouth as she tried to keep their daughter from waking her other mother.
She could tell them about the promises and secret dreams she'd heard Santana whisper to their baby girl when she thought no one else was around; dreams about the future she was planning for the three of them, promises to always love her. Or how two mornings ago Santana had never returned to bed, and how she'd found the two loves of her life sleeping on the couch, their daughter carefully cocooned on her mother's chest, and Santana snoring gently. She could even show them the picture she took while her girls were asleep, the picture that even Santana doesn't know about yet. (It's already wrapped and packed away to take back with them to Ohio-Christmas morning is going to be amazing this year.)
But she decides not to tell them anything. These secrets belong to her, to Santana, and to Abigail.
Instead she tells them that there's nothing to worry about, that they're all happy. Adjusting, but happy. And because Mrs. Lopez has long known that there's no one who understands her daughter better than Brittany, the worry slips from her face. She pulls her daughter-in-law into a gentle hug, careful not to disturb the sleeping baby between them.
Twenty minutes later, when Santana returns from the store with diapers and formula and everything else they needed in hand, Brittany watches her face. Watches how Santana scans the room, stopping first on the fuzzy head of the baby sleeping in the arms of her grandmother, before catching locking her dark eyes with Brittany's shining blue ones.
And she sees there in her love's eyes exactly what she's always known was there; a heart so full of love.