Prompt: Vacation
Character: Brittany
Words: 972
Brittany tried to imagine it. Having her entire life uprooted. Leaving her home unexpectedly. Without her parents. She tried to imagine a life without anything familiar. Without her own clothes, toys, or books. Now, she imagined being four years old, and not yet able to communicate in a way anyone understood.
This is how she kept her cool when Ethan took every single toy out of the toy box in the living room. When she turned her back for a second to make lunch, while Santana was throwing a load of laundry in to wash and turning back only to discover that he found the remote for the TV and turned the volume up to ear-splitting. When he overturned an entire family sized box of Cheerios on the kitchen floor.
Where Brittany and Santana spent ample time listening to Hani, their twelve-year-old, Galen, who was eight, and even little Jayden, who was two, Brittany spent countless hours in those early days with Ethan just watching him. She steered him clear of danger of course, and talked to him, but how else was she going to learn the important stuff about him?
So, for all intents and purposes, Brittany was Ethan's shadow.
So far, this was what Brittany knew about Ethan:
He was freaked out by change. He didn't seem to need sleep. He screamed a lot and threw impressive tantrums. None of Brittany's old high school superpowers as The Human Brain seemed to serve her in figuring out what was causing him to be so upset. Mostly, she just tried to keep things the same as much as possible. But that was hard, when Jayden was knocking over blocks Ethan stacked, and when everyone in the family was constantly cleaning up rows of toys Ethan left behind.
Brittany didn't like to admit it, but sometimes, it was really hard being a mom.
Resettling Ethan at night was like trying to contain the wind. He was everywhere. In the bedroom with her and Santana at two in the morning, fully dressed somehow, despite the fact that they had been working with him on putting on his own clothes since he got here three weeks ago.
"Mama!" he announced happily, because, to him, they had been mama from the start. Brittany tried to be grateful for the words he did have. That mama was one of them. But she couldn't shake the feeling that his calling them mama was more by default than anything. They were the adults caring for him. So they were mama. It wasn't about love or attachment, at least, not yet.
"Hey, Ethan," she said, as Santana moaned softly and rolled over. She'd just worked eight hours and then came home and was with the kids until bedtime, while Brittany taught dance in the evenings. They shared kid-duty at night, but Brittany always took the first shift.
She took his hand and walked him back to his room, trying to think. "You got dressed. That's really good. I'm proud of you," she said, trying to ignore the fact that, in the process of inexplicably figuring out on his own how to dress himself, Ethan had clothes strewn everywhere.
As usual, Ethan didn't comment, or even seem to hear her. His well-visit at the pediatrician had revealed that he was behind in a lot of ways, including socially. They tried to include him in conversations, but so often, he just didn't seem to hear. That didn't mean, though, that she was going to stop trying.
"When it's night time…when it's dark out…we stay in our rooms and sleep or play quietly," she explained for the millionth time. Galen seemed to grasp the rule immediately, and even Jayden fell into the habit after some time, but getting Ethan into a routine was almost impossible.
"One!" Ethan announced happily.
"One?" Brittany asked, yawning.
Ethan's face split into a happy grin. "Two!"
"Two, that's right. What's next?"
"Three!"
She expected him to stop by five. Definitely by ten. But Ethan kept counting all the way up to nineteen, without help.
Brittany couldn't help but smiling. All of these days, and finally, they'd connected.
"When I first came here, was I good?" Ethan asked. It was still hard to believe sometimes - how far he'd come in just six years.
"You were awesome," Brittany confirmed.
"Because I could count, right?" he asked, like he already knew the answer.
"No, because you're Ethan," Brittany corrected gently.
Ethan looked past her, over her shoulder, a look of confusion on his face. "That doesn't make sense. I can never not be Ethan."
"I just mean I think you're awesome all the time, even when you're not doing anything at all." Brittany tried to explain.
"Then why didn't they want us? Why did we have to go?"
Brittany tried not to show her surprise. While Galen rarely talked of home, and Hani and Jayden couldn't remember theirs, she had never expected this conversation from Ethan. Still, as his mom, she owed him honesty and understanding. "They couldn't keep you safe."
She just breathed, listening to the silence and letting him process what she'd said. His next words didn't make sense. At least not at first:
"Thank you."
"For what, honey?"
"For keeping us. And keeping us safe."
"You're totally welcome."
"Eye."
When he said it like that, sometimes it still startled her. Smiling, Brittany recovered fast, kissing his forehead. "Elle."
"Oh," he giggled.
"Vee."
"Eee."
"Why?" she asked, like a question.
"Oh," he said, a realization.
"You," they finished together.
Because for Ethan, love was collaborative. So an "I love you" exchanged was more than a pleasantry. It was a mystery. Parts that couldn't go together without another person to help them make sense.
It was a whole story - their story - in eight little letters.
The End.
