Chapter Text
Lucas Berry has the lung capacity of a fully grown man, Santana decides. She can hear Rachel shushing him through the curtains that separate their rooms. She’d taken Kurt’s old space when he moved out to live with Blaine, and the setup hasn’t changed that much in the last couple of months.
It means, of course, that there’s really not all that much privacy, and every time Lucas screams, both of them are woken up.
She can hear the slight strain in Rachel’s voice as she tries to calm him down. He’s been up every hour tonight and it must be finally getting to Rachel.
It’s hard enough on a day-to-day basis, what with Brody bailing as soon as he found out about the pregnancy. Rachel could have made him pay, but he was demanding a paternity test, and she told Santana she just wanted him out of her life. If he was so terrible to her, how could she ever think he’d be a good father to Lucas?
But that's left Rachel coping almost entirely on her own. She won’t ask for help from Santana, even though Santana would offer—even if it is just to watch him for half an hour so Rachel can have a bath in peace.
After another ten minutes of Lucas screaming, Santana can hear the increasing hysteria in Rachel’s voice, and knows she’s got to do something. She pushes her sheets away and grabs an old pair of sweats lying on the floor beside her bed, pulling them on before making her way through to Rachel’s room.
“Hey,” she says. Rachel looks like she’s about to burst into tears right along with Lucas, and Santana walks a little more cautiously into the room, because she’s not really sure she can deal with both of them crying at once.
“Do you want...” she trails off when Rachel just seems to be looking at her helplessly, and decides that actions are better than words right now. Reaching her arms out, Santana gets hold of Lucas, cradling him to her body, making sure to hold the back of his head secure against her shoulder, because she remembers reading that babies can’t support their own weight, so it was important to do it for them.
“I—I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” Rachel says. “He just—he won’t stop, and I’ve tried everything.”
“It’s okay,” Santana says, bouncing a little on her feet as she tries to rock Lucas to quiet. “Why don’t you get back into bed, and I’ll take him through to my room for a little while.”
Rachel looks like she wants to protest, but exhaustion must win out, because she eventually just nods and murmurs, “Thank you.”
It takes another few minutes of constant rocking, but Lucas quietens down. Santana thinks about going back through to Rachel’s room and putting him back down to bed, but she’s almost certain he’s going to start crying again the minute she lets go of him, and Rachel really looked like she needed a break.
Struggling a little with holding him in one arm while maneuvering bedsheets with the other, she curses quietly, before remembering that, shit, she’s holding a kid in her arms, and while he probably doesn’t understand a word she’s saying at the moment, she should probably start learning to curb her constant swearing before he starts to talk.
Eventually, she manages to slide into bed, and props herself up into a half-sitting position with her pillows, before settling Lucas on her chest. She doesn’t think she’ll go back to sleep like this, she’s not even sure she’d dare, just in case Lucas rolls off her, which, well he can’t really roll at all, yet, but the thought still worries her. Even so, she closes her eyes and relaxes back, enjoying the quietness of the apartment and the warm feeling of Lucas snuggled against her body.
~
When she opens her eyes again, she’s startled to see Rachel standing a few feet away, looking at her with a soft smile on her face.
“Sorry,” Rachel says quietly, as soon as she sees Santana’s awake, and Santana notices her cheeks are a little red, probably because she got caught staring at them. “It’s just—you looked kind of cute.”
Santana glares at her, because no, she does not do cute, and if it wasn’t for the kid still asleep on her chest, she’d show Rachel just how not cute she is.
Rachel doesn’t seem to notice Santana’s glare, or at the very least, she chooses to ignore it. “He’s probably going to need feeding soon,” she says.
“Oh, um. Do you want to take him?”
“Do you mind if I just wait here until he wakes up?”
Santana shakes her head and Rachel comes to sit on the bed beside her. She relaxes back against the pillows with a sigh and Santana figures even the few hours of uninterrupted sleep she got last night weren’t anywhere near enough.
“Thank you,” Rachel says after a few seconds of quiet. She looks at Santana quickly from the corner of her eye before refocusing on the bedspread. “I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t taken him. I couldn’t—”
“It’s okay,” Santana says, reaching out to squeeze Rachel’s arm. “Really. You shouldn’t have to do this alone.”
“But—I got myself into this. You shouldn’t have to—” Rachel shakes her head in frustration.
“Hey. It’s okay. I like him. And you’re my friend. And I want to help, okay?” Santana realises the words are true the moment she speaks them. She really does want to help. She looks down at Lucas, still asleep on her chest and squeezes her arms around him a little tighter.
“Okay,” Rachel says after a second. “But I still need to say thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Santana looks up to see Rachel’s smiling at them again. “You really do look cute,” she says.
Santana rolls her eyes. “Take that back or he’s all yours again.”
“Never.”
~
It’s easy to fall into routines, and after a couple of weeks of getting up every other night with Lucas, Santana doesn’t really remember anything different. Rachel still has to get up once every night to feed him, but other than that, manages to sleep through most of the nights Santana takes without almost any interruption.
Of course, he still wakes them both up when he starts to scream, but except for when he’s being exceptionally difficult, he usually quiets down as soon as Santana picks him up and starts rocking him, and she knows there’s a big difference for Rachel between waking up and having to get out of bed, and waking up and knowing Santana’s got it.
She kind of really likes that Rachel knows she can be relied upon.
~
He’s not really crying today. Just making these little noises of discontentment every time Rachel tries to put him in his bouncer for his afternoon nap.
Santana knows sometimes when he’s being difficult, Rachel takes him for a walk around the block in his stroller, and he’s usually asleep by the time she gets back. Today, though, Rachel’s got a fuck load of work to do—she can’t afford to put him in daycare full time, so he’s just there when she’s got a class and the rest of the time, she copes as well as she can.
“I could take him for a walk if you want,” Santana says after the third time Rachel’s tried to put him down. It’s her day off, so she’s got absolutely nothing to do, well, except for the laundry she’s been putting off for a good week, and that can wait some more.
Rachel raises her eyebrows.
“C’mon. It’s not like I mind. And, I mean, I’m pretty sure a cute kid is a great way to meet people. He can be my wingman at the park.”
Rachel looks kind of scandalised and Santana tries to feel sorry for all of a second before she starts laughing at Rachel’s expression.
“You are not using my son as a means to meet women. It’s—it’s—just no, Santana.”
“If I promise to keep it in my pants?” It’s not like she would really do anything like that, but Rachel’s too easy to rile up sometimes, and she’s got to get her fun somewhere.
“Make sure he’s wrapped up,” Rachel says with a huff of resignation when she realises Santana’s teasing her. “It’s cold out. There’s the green—”
“Snowsuit by the door. I know.” She resists the urge to roll her eyes at Rachel’s overprotectiveness and grabs Lucas’s coat. She holds her arms out for him and Rachel hands him over.
“Let’s get you all bundled up,” she says, bouncing him a little in the air before sitting down and holding him on one knee. Lucas gurgles in response and Santana’s pretty sure there’s a smile as well. The baby books say that at two months, he’s probably more likely to just be mimicking rather than smiling at anything, but Santana thinks maybe he’s just maturing quicker than the average baby.
~
She may have only been joking, but the woman approaching her with a gigantic smile is the third in half an hour. Seriously, what is it with women and other people’s kids? It’s like they’re communal property.
“Oh,” the woman says, bending down in front of Lucas’s stroller and waving her fingers. “Your son’s adorable.”
And that’s the other thing. “Thank you,” Santana says, because she does have some manners, sometimes. “He’s not mine, though. He’s—” She doesn’t really know what to call him, because ‘he’s my friend’s son’ doesn’t really cover it, neither does ‘I’m just looking after him’ even though that’s all he really is to her and that’s all she’s doing.
The woman looks at her expectantly for a second, but then Lucas coos and reaches out a hand and she’s back to looking stupidly at him. “Bye bye,” she says, after a second, and Lucas moves his hand some more. It kind of looks like he’s waving goodbye, and Santana can’t help but smile. He really is adorable.
~
By the time she’s walked to the park a few blocks away, Lucas is, as predicted, fast asleep. She decides to walk around for a little while, it’s not too cold, and she’s sure Rachel could use the peace and quiet.
After an hour or so, she heads back, and finds Rachel on the sofa, surrounded by notes for one of her theory classes. She looks up when Santana comes through the door and mouths thank you. Santana smiles and nods her head.
She leaves Lucas in his stroller, because it’s silly to risk disturbing him—they’d learnt that one the hard way—and makes a space for herself on the couch.
“People kept thinking he was mine,” she says quietly.
Rachel looks at her for a second, then over at Lucas. “He kind of smiles like you, sometimes anyway,” she says.
It’s a ridiculous thing for Rachel to say, and the immediate tight feeling in Santana’s chest is completely the result of her recent bout of exercise, and absolutely nothing else. It takes her a second to make her voice work, but, “Toothless and hideous,” she says. “Thanks. Really.”
~
Santana’s at work when Rachel calls. She’s not supposed to have her phone with her, but her manager’s really good about the fact she’s down as an emergency contact for Lucas while he’s at daycare, just in case they can’t get hold of Rachel for any reason.
She doesn’t even have time to say hello before Rachel screams down the line.
“He started talking!” She says, and Santana can hear the excitement in her voice. “He said—well I think it was either ‘car’ or ‘cat’, I don’t know. But he spoke, Santana!” The line goes slightly muffled for a second, then she can hear Rachel faintly speaking to Lucas. “Say it again, Lucas. C’mon, for Santana.”
Santana grins. Okay, so she knows at barely four months old, he probably wasn’t actually saying anything, but still.
~
When she gets home that evening, Lucas is babbling away to himself, almost like now he’s found out how to form words, he doesn’t want to stop. They’re really only noises, baba and gaga, but he looks so happy and pleased with himself.
“Hey, Lucas,” she says, bending down to pick him up. He giggles at her and she grins back. “Have you been talking Mommy’s ear off?”
“Mama,” he says.
Rachel squeaks from behind her and Santana turns, pointing at Rachel and repeating him. He’s still watching her, though, when he says it again, and even though Santana knows he’s not actually associating any one person with the word, there’s a small part of her that wouldn’t mind at all if she were Mama to Rachel’s Mommy.
The thought shocks her enough that she settles Lucas back on the sofa almost immediately.
“I’m gonna grab a shower,” she says. “Some idiot at work today spilled coffee everywhere and I’m sure I’m still covered in it.”
Rachel just says, “Okay,” and Santana doesn’t breathe properly again until she’s in the bathroom, alone behind the only goddamn door in this apartment.
“Fuck,” she whispers, leaning her head back against the door and banging it lightly against the wood. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”