Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 75th cycle. Now cycle 76!

"Step Seventy-Six, Trust Yourself"
(Kurt, Brittany/) Santana, Harry (OC)
Paper Heart series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

She hadn't realized until Kurt had pointed it out, but when he did, she knew it was true, that up until this point she had never been entrusted with Harry's care all on her own for several hours at a time. Even then, it had taken her by surprise when he had asked if she would take him, not just for the afternoon, or the evening, but overnight. He had his date with Jude, and Brittany really needed to study, and they had been saying all along that she was part of this parenting unit just as they were, so now they were finally going to start acting on it. Surprise or not, she had accepted immediately.

Inside though, her heart had been racing. What if she wasn't ready? What if she messed things up? They were putting the little guy in her hands and expecting her to be his caregiver all this time. She wasn't fooling herself into saying 'this is a piece of cake,' because she had seen what it was like, with Brittany and with Kurt, and yes, overall, Harry was an easy baby to look after, but he was still a baby, who peed and pooped and cried and woke up and had to be fed and had to be entertained… He was still fragile, and what if in all this she ended up breaking him?

No, she could do this. She was practical, way more than some people gave her credit for. She knew what needed to be done when it needed to be done, she just had to go for it.

It was easy to be happy around that boy. As soon as she walked into the room and he saw her, he actually recognized her, and he looked positively jolly to see her. So she picked him up, kissing the fingers he was stretching in her direction.

She'd had to tell her parents about this, of course. She couldn't just show up with an infant and not say anything. They had spent time with Harry before, whenever Brittany brought him over, and it was amusing, if bordering on odd, to see them get all grandparent-like around him. They knew her feelings for Brittany, knew the place she held with her, and Harry being her girlfriend's son, they had taken him on like a grandson with absolutely no need to think it through. That they would have reacted another way if the circumstances had been different, she didn't know, and she didn't want to know, so she didn't think about it. They were good to Harry, and they were happy for her, and that was the important part.

The afternoon had been easy. She knew what stories he liked to hear, and what toys he preferred. She knew to hold him so he would stay calm. She'd spent a couple of hours doing her homework with the baby in one arm, and he slept through it all. He had his bath, his dinner, and eventually he was sleeping.

When he woke up in the middle of the night crying, she'd been up, anticipating when he'd have to be fed, but Harry had other ideas. He was fussy like she'd never seen him, and no matter what she did, he would not go back to sleep. She knew her parents had to have been woken up, and if they were awake now, they were staying back, no doubt to let her handle things on her own. She appreciated this, though at the same time… He had never been away from both Kurt and Brittany for this long, and definitely never overnight. Was he realizing she wasn't either of them? Was he scared, looking for them? The thought made her so sad that she'd come close to calling one of them so they'd come to get him.

The next thing she knew, she was getting Harry's things together, dressing him up, and heading down to the garage to buckle him into his car seat. She would just drive him to Brittany, yes, that was the way to it. "I'll take you to her, alright?" she promised him, looking back to the still wailing child. "I'll take you to your mother."

As she drove, she kept talking to him, telling him the stories he liked, singing him the songs he most responded to… Somewhere inside, she felt like crying. If she couldn't take care of the baby, then what hope did she have with Brittany? She would see she couldn't be a mother to him, couldn't get him to sleep, and she would…

It was only as they'd reached a red light, a few streets from Brittany's house, that she realized Harry wasn't crying anymore. She turned to see his face and realized he had stopped and gone to sleep. "That actually works?" she closed her eyes for a moment, then pulled the car to the curb. Getting out of the driver's seat, she went into the back. Carefully, she'd taken hold of his hand. "You're alright…" she breathed, more to herself than to him.

Now that he had actually stopped, and she could think clearly, she realized how stupid she'd been, to think that one bad night that so happened to coincide with her being there for him had to mean that the world was all wrong. Harry loved her, too, she knew he did. He lit up when he saw her, just as he did when Kurt was there, or Brittany. She'd seen plenty of people pick him up and only get shrill cries out of him. He'd been at peace with her all afternoon, hadn't he? No concerns, no fear… It was just one bad night, but she'd fixed it now.

So they drove back to her house. Her parents had gone back to sleep, apparently unconcerned; she could do this on her own. Harry was returned to his crib, and she stayed nearby, in case he might wake up again. He didn't. The next time he did wake up, it was morning, and when he saw Santana, he smiled.

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!