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 55th cycle. Now cycle 56!

"That Giant Leap"
Rachel/Sam & Nell (OC)
Sam & Nell, Samchel series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

Rachel woke up that morning, and even as she was still in the process of really waking up, she could feel eyes staring at her… and she smiled to herself. She turned over in the bed, and as expected, there was the face staring at her.

"What are you doing over there?" she asked of the small blonde standing at the edge of the bed. She was staring back at Rachel like she had to make sure… "It's okay, I'm awake," she announced, and then she had better be ready to snatch her up or else she'd be about to get jumped on. But she scooped the girl, and she brought the giggling thing to rest at her side. She sat up on her knees, looking down at Rachel with intent. She was going to be three in just a few months' time, and she wouldn't have believed it but then she just looked at her and… her little Nell wasn't so little anymore. She was getting taller, so much that it was hard to imagine how small she'd been when Rachel had first met her. "Where's your dad?"

"The kitchen," Nell declared.

"Want to go and find him?" Rachel asked, and Nell nodded. "Okay, let's go find him." She stood, taking up the girl as she stood on the mattress, arms outstretched, ready for the taking. Rachel brought her close, kissing her cheek. "Morning, lady," she smiled, taking her off toward the kitchen.

It had taken some convincing for her fathers to let her spend nights at Sam's house from time to time. No matter how much they had allowed both the boy and his daughter into their lives, the idea of their teenage daughter sleeping over at her boyfriend's house was not an easy step to take. But then Rachel had well taken to her position as Nell's mother, and they had to make compromises. They would still be under a roof with parental supervision, and even if they weren't at the Evans house, they were covered by Sam's mother's involvement. Whether or not they were aware that the two of them had already gone on to 'share a bed' for more than sleeping, they didn't say anything and Sam and Rachel didn't ask, so that was that.

They found Sam in the kitchen, eating his way through a bowl of cereal. When they got there, Rachel put Nell on her feet and the girl moved up to her father. "Hey," he took her up and put her on his knee. "Want some?" he asked her, taking his spoon, and she nodded, so he took a small scoop and presented it for her to take. She placed her small hands over his, helping to guide the spoon, and then she ate the cereal gathered on it. He watched Rachel, who was preparing her own breakfast. Even without seeing her face, he could tell what was probably going through her mind.

Senior year was ending for her, everything… They had just returned from Nationals, where they had won, and now graduation was fast approaching. She had already been accepted at NYADA, and she was supposed to make her move there at the end of the summer. This meant the moment they had been dreading for over a year was coming as well. Rachel would be over there, while Sam and Nell remained in Lima for his own senior year.

They had tried their best to prepare Nell for what was going to happen. The two-year-old had been told that Mommy was going to a special place, and little girls couldn't go there, which meant she would have to stay where she was, in Lima with her dad, until she was just a bit older. It almost made it sound like something you'd tell a child when someone died, but at least it looked like it worked. Nell would ask Rachel about the special place, and what she would do there, and Rachel would tell her. They were pretty sure once Rachel actually went, and Nell started to miss her, it would be another story, but they weren't there yet, so they would get to that when they needed to.

Later that morning, while Nell was having herself a heated conversation with her stuffed bee toy, Rachel watched her, and again she felt eyes on her, so she turned to Sam. "So I was thinking…" he started, and she took one more look at Nell before coming back to sit with him. "I know you're gonna have to go there at one point, but… well we do have the whole summer ahead of us."

"Yeah?" Rachel wasn't sure where he was going with this yet.

"What if we spent it over there, in New York, all three of us," he explained, and the thought made Rachel smile. "It'd be good, that way Nell could start getting to know the city…"

"I don't know if she'd remember it," Rachel pointed out.

"Maybe she won't, but maybe she will… And in a year that's where she'll live anyway, right?"

"Right," she smiled. That was the plan anyway, for Sam to go to college in New York, so he and Nell would move up there and they could be reunited, their whole little family.

"And, hey, if you could choose between a summer in Lima and a summer in New York…"

"No contest," she laughed. "How are we going to pull it off though? I mean the two of us, fine, but Nell…"

"You found an apartment, didn't you?"

"Still working on it," Rachel shook her head.

"If you had the apartment by this summer we could stay there, and if anything needs fixing, I can do that." The idea was sounding better and better by the minute… especially if it meant spending more time with the guy she loved and their daughter… She couldn't even remember the time back before they would all refer to her as Nell's mother, and the other way around. And Sam, he'd been so supportive of her the whole time, especially when the whole NYADA process had started. They had never been stronger as a pair, and she did honestly believe that they could make it through that 'hell year' of being apart.

"Then summer in New York it is."

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!