Chapter Text
"Alright Zach, what's three times two?" Ben asks his three-year-old son, kneeling down beside his bed and smiling as the child counts on his pudgy toddler fingers.
"Six," Zach replies and looks at Ben expectantly. Ben's smile stretches even wider.
"That's right!" He applauds, holding a hand up for a high-five. "What's six times three?"
That was a harder one, but they'd gradually been moving into bigger numbers the last few weeks. Zach furrows his brow. He counts on his fingers, folds his arms across his chest, and then analyzes his covers in deep thought. Ben hears a noise from the hallway and briefly looks over to see Mal leaning against the doorway, furrowing her brow the same Zach is as she listens. She must have already finished putting their other son, Tyler, to bed. That means he's running behind.
"Eighteen," Zach replies, brightening up as he remembers the answer.
Ben laughs. "That's right!" He exclaims and then pushes up off the floor to sit beside the small child on the bed. Zach scoots over against the wall and pats his blue striped sheets, indicating Ben can move forward. Ben chuckles and reaches across the bed to pick up the book his son had picked out. "Alright, champ, are we reading about Rapunzel and Eugene tonight, or are we - what's this?" Ben raises an eyebrow as Zach reaches out for the thick book in excitement.
"It's my word book," Zach explains, snuggling into his pillow and opening it up. "Aunt Jane said all the kids in the high schools get one, and she gave me this one to keep. See? My name is on it." He holds the book close to his nose, flips through the pages, and takes a deep inhale. "It smells like a good book," he mumbles as he curls into Ben's side. "She said it'd help me learn new words."
"It's called a dictionary," Ben raises an eyebrow, fighting a little smile as he looks up to see Mal still looking at them confusedly in the doorway. "Dad used to read through this when he was younger too. Not as young as you, though. You can look through it to find words you don't know or go through and see which ones you do know."
Zach nods, opens to the first page, and skims down the entries. He skips over the letter 'A's and goes straight for the first long word he sees. "Aardvark," he announces, nuzzling his sandy blonde hair into Ben's side as Ben leans back against the headboard and starts combing his fingers through Zach's hair. "An animal with a long snout and a long sticky tongue that feeds mostly on termites and is active at night." He looks up at Ben with his finger on that last description. "That means they're nocturnal like cats, right?"
Ben chuckles. He can't believe how much his son knows. He's well aware it isn't normal for a kid to be this knowledgeable, but he isn't going to we complain too much. It's nice to have someone to talk to like this. "That's right," He agrees. "Like cats and snakes and lizards and things."
"It must live in a hot climate," Zach reasons. "And it moves at night when it's not so hot."
Ben hears Mal shift in the doorway and he glances up to see she's dropped her hands in something like surprise. He smiles up at her, and though he can't see her expression, he figures it must be something like pride. She hasn't been able to come in to help him put Zach to sleep the last few months as Tyler tends to turn his furniture into animals when he's anxious for bedtime and she usually has to round up and return a herd or two to its original form. Zach, however, doesn't have magic and prefers reading aloud to his parents as part of his bedtime routine, so that's pretty easy for Ben to cover as Mal tried to calm Tyler down. However, he was exhausted tonight, so Mal gets to listen in on what he and Tyler usually work on in the evenings.
"Abacus," Zach reads. "An instrument for doing arithmetic by sliding counters along rods or in grooves."
Ben puts his finger down on the word 'arithmetic'. "What's that mean, champ?" He asks.
"Math," Zach shrugs. "It's like what we've been working on. Multiplications. Like two times two and six times six."
"Which is?" Ben prompts, and Zach puts the book down to tap his index fingers together.
"Four and thirty-six," Zach announces. "Which together are forty."
"Good job," Ben smiles over at Mal. She is standing very still in the doorway, and he can't tell if she's breathing or not. Zach keeps reading, mumbling by his side, and Mal slowly creeps into the room to hover by the foot of the bed. Zach finishes reading about 'abolitionist' and then reaches for a pencil on his headboard to circle the word, indicating he's interested in learning more about it. Ben isn't surprised - it's the same kind of concept he lives for. He leans forward to take Mal's hand and it's then that he realizes her face is drawn and taut and she's staring down at the book in Zach's lap like it's an evil thing she doesn't want around her son. Ben frowns. "What's wrong?" He asked.
Zach looks up immediately and sets the pencil and book aside. "Mommy..." He whines, leaning on his knees with his arms outstretched. "Are you feeling sad?"
"No, baby," Mal smiles a little tight, scared smile. He knows the look, but he hasn't seen it for a while. Not since Zach was born. There's the occasional exception - when their toddlers go near stairs or when they first started standing or when Ben tosses them into the air, but for the most part, he doesn't see the 'I don't like this at all' face. She takes Zach into her arms and hugs him tightly, and Ben tilts his head at her while Zach's head is turned away. She ignores him, which raises Ben's concern even more.
Ben puts a hand on Zach's back. "Bud, it's time for bed," he announces. "I'll read more of your new dictionary with you tomorrow, but Mom and Dad had a long day today. You can stay up a little longer and read, or you can go to bed now."
"I'll go to bed," Zach yawns. He climbs back into his covers and then pushes the dictionary away. "You can answer my questions later." Ben snorts, pulls the covers up around the little three-year-old, and then kisses his hair as Zach closes his eyes. He and Mal walk to the door, glancing back every so often as parents are wont to do. Ben lets her into the hall before him, shuts the door softly, and then turns with an open mouth to reask Mal what happened. He doesn't get a syllable out before she's practically exploded into rushed whispers.
"You're doing multiplication with him?" She demands, clutching her hair. "And he's reading a dictionary? He's four! He's not even four - he'll be four in three months! How long has this been going on?"
Ben blinks. "Is it a problem?" He asks. "You already knew he liked reading."
"Well, I mean, I'm glad that he's smart and everything, but..." Mal chews on her lip with wide eyes darting back and forth without landing on him. "Don't you think he's too young?"
"He's gifted," Ben shrugs. "I have no idea where he gets it from, but he catches on so quickly. We've been doing multiplication together now for almost two weeks. I'm trying to get him to learn his fours and sixes."
"I thought you were doing additions?" Mal questions, biting her lip and turning from one side to the other as if she can't decide which direction she wants to go. "I thought you were going to be starting subtractions once he got the hang of it."
"We did," Ben shrugged. "He caught on really fast. He can do two-digit addition and subtractions in his head and everything else on paper. So I moved to multiplication." He catches her hand as she spins around in a frantic circle. "Hey - what's the issue here? He's smart, so what?"
Mal rips her hand free only to wave it in front of her like she burned it and she's trying to shake off the pain. "I don't know that stuff, Ben!" She snaps in a whisper. "What's a noc- a n- an animal at night! and multiplication is like... second grade here, right?"
"Third," Ben corrects quietly.
"That's not better!" Mal snaps. "Why is he growing up so fast? Why is he learning so much? I mean, I'm happy - I am! He's such a brilliant, perfect boy, but he's going to grow up thinking I'm a dunce because I can't answer any of those questions!"
"You can't answer what six times six is?" Ben drawls slowly, though he understands her panic now. Auradon schooling system is intimidating enough to Mal, whose Dragon Hall classes barely taught them to read and write. If not for Yen Sid, the vast majority of Island Children would have had to retake elementary courses in High school, and some of them still can't read or write.
"Of course I can!" Mal snaps. "But... but... he's going this fast and he's just going to keep going! I just had my baby Ben - I don't want him to be big yet!"
"You're not going to lose him," Ben tells her, taking her hands and squeezing them tightly. "Mal, he adores you. Did you see how sad he got when he thought you were sad in there? You're his whole world. He and Tyler both think you're the literal sun." He drags her into his arms and lets her claw around at his collarbone for a hold before wrapping her hands around his back and letting out a little breath.
She's a good mom. She lifts Zach up to pick books off of higher shelves and retrieves toys that Tyler likes to hurl across the room and she lets all three of them - Ben included - curl into her when they watch movies together and she's the stabilizing rock that holds his little family together. But he gets how this scares her. After all, Zach won't be little forever, and his questions are only going to get more complex and hard to answer.
Tyler gets a little older to where he's now three and Zach is four and Tyler is no longer attempting to create a zoo in his bedroom before bedtime. Ben and Mal start rotating again, and Mal learns very quickly that Zach's bedtime routine is now very far out of her depth. A stack of various encyclopedias - some children's and some not - sit beside his bed with his dog-eared and marked-up dictionary in a prized position on his headboard. She manages to help her baby get through brushing teeth and pajamas without fumbling too much, but then Zach is curling up into his pillow and pulling the blue comforter he got at Christmastime around his shoulders as Mal skins the spines of the encyclopedias for something she recognizes. "The Plant World", one reads. "How Government Works - for children", says another. "You can speak French!" a third announces.
"Can we read my dictionary?" Zach asks after patiently waiting about thirty seconds as Mal examines each of the unfamiliar titles beside his bed. Mal nods with a swallow and Zach retrieves his blue and white dictionary and opens it up in the middle. She takes a deep breath to calm herself and then panics again when the first word Zach reads is unfamiliar.
"Minuend," He mumbles as he lays his head down on her shirt and leans the book open on her legs. "A number from which another number is to be subtracted."
Mal's skin crawls. Now that she's thinking about it, the word sounds vaguely familiar in the back of her head. Maybe it was included in a lesson years ago or something. But the fact she didn't know it is the problem. If he asks any questions, what will she say?
Luckily, most of the words are pretty straightforward and there isn't a lot that she misses. There are mislead and mission and mistake, all of which are pretty okay, and then the occasional word like mirth or a mite.
"Mite - o - chon - drian," Zach sounds out and then pauses to yawn. "One of the parts found in the cytoplasm of a cell outside the nucleus that provides the cell with energy released from the breakdown of nutrients."
"Baby, do you know what that means?" Mal blurts out. Her head is spinning. It's somehow easier to remember what the various terms mean from her high school classes when Zach is sounding out the big words so carefully, but she still only has a vague recollection of what it means.
Zach nods. "We're made up of cells," he explains, running a hand up his arm. "And cells have DNA that tells them how we need to be built. And this is part of a cell that makes energy." He curls up closer to her arm. "Dad told me about it a while ago."
Of course Dad told him. Dad is smart and was taught these things as a child. Mom was not.
"Mitosis," Zach begins, yawns widely, and then looks at the page through half-lidded eyes to finish. "Process of cell division by which two new nuclei are formed, each containing the original number of chromosomes." He finally sets the book down, rubs his eyes, and then rolls over onto his pillow. Mal reaches over to tuck him in. "Mom?" He calls, eyes closed as he mumbles against his pillow. "How does a cell get the same number of DNA when it becomes two new ones?"
Mal's mind blanks out and she stammers a little as she slides off his bed onto her knees. "I, uh, I think they double, baby. They double up and then divide."
Zach squeezes his pillow, opens his eyes, and looks up. "But... they're already doubled?" He ponders aloud. "They're in a twisty spiral."
That Mal remembers. Her teacher had a giant stretchable model that Evie and Doug once rented out and examined in their dorm room. "Maybe they double the twisted DNA?" She suggests, relaxing a little as she runs a hand up and down Zach's back.
Zach shrugs and buries his face into his pillow. "I'll ask dad tomorrow," He yawns. "Goodnight mom."
Mal sits down hard on her tailbone with every bone in her body vibrating. Her son's words go through her like a bullet. 'I'll ask Dad'. She slowly forces herself to get up and walk to the door. She pulls it shut before she collapses beside the frame and presses her fingertips to her head.
Why is he asking questions like this already? Why doesn't she know the answers? Has he already caught on to the fact she's not nearly as smart as he and Ben are? How much longer does she have before he realizes she's a complete idiot who has no chance of ever learning half of the things he practically downloads into his brain?
Ben finds her there, on the floor outside her son's room mumbling 'questions' and 'cells' underneath her breath. And at three a.m the following morning, when he's awakened by the light of her phone as she reads a seventh-grade lesson on cells and biology, he doesn't say a word.