#mush

The week their son turns five, his big sister is away at camp.

Samira can’t say no, Norah’s wanted to go to karate camp since before summer began and it’s not her fault that Teddy’s birthday falls in right in the middle of July, the same two weeks that the camp runs their programme.

Still, she goes and Teddy misses her like he’s lost a limb.

In reality, neither Samira nor Emery thought he would’ve minded quite this much. Their age gap wasn’t big enough that they didn’t have anything in common, but their personalities were so contrastingly different that it sometimes amazed their parents that they even got along together.

Norah was loud and bold - a true Walsh personality as Emery’s mother liked to affectionately put it - and Teddy was quiet and considerate, usually clutching to his stuffies or his books when he was unsure about something.

They didn’t really do any activities together either, not unless Samira or Emery forced them to, Teddy finding Norah’s karate skills a little too rough and unfairly matched for him, and Norah being beyond bored whenever Teddy fished out another otter book Samira had got him for them to read together.

It wasn’t to say they didn’t get on but Emery really didn’t think Teddy would miss his sister this much.

She had thought this was going to be easier.

She had thought Teddy would like having his birthday in total peace and quiet.

Apparently not.

Teddy’s birthday falls on a Friday.

Norah leaves the Monday before.

Both Emery and Samira take her down to the bus station, help her onto the bus, making sure she has everything she needs and that someone is there to look out and after her while she’s away from home.

Teddy sits on Samira’s hip while they wave her off, one hand holding onto Samira’s shoulder, the other wound around his favourite otter plushie, Molly, tightly squeezing her to his chest. He buries his face into his Amma’s neck as the bus drives away.

He’s utterly silent on the car ride home.

Emery can see him staring at his feet through the rear-view mirror, practically sat on his hands, gaze fixed on the floor.

“You okay back there, ted?” She asks gently.

He’s inherently a quiet boy by nature but this was unusual, even for him. Car rides like this, he was usually asking questions about whatever was going on outside the car or wherever they were going to with his nose pressed up against the glass.

He doesn’t say anything to respond, just keeps looking at the footwell of the back seat like it’s the most interesting thing in the world.

Samira squeezes her knee to let it go, figures he might just be tired and trying to stay awake, that they’ll sort it later. Emery turns back to the road but keeps her gaze on their son through the mirror, a frown identical to his knitting her brows together.

Later rolls around after Samira’s left for the night shift and they’re all supposed to be in bed and fast asleep.

First there’s the creak of the bedroom door.

Then the strip of light coming from the hallway.

Then finally, a damp sniff that makes Emery wearily blink her eyes open.

“Teddy?”

A little silhouette appears in the doorway, clutching Molly in one arm and his blanket in the other, his hand on the doorknob.

He sniffs again and Emery can tell he’s been crying.

She sits up slowly.

“What’s the matter, bud?”

He rubs at his cheek with one clumsy fist, though she can’t see his expression through the dark. Even at five, he doesn’t want his mother to see him with tears on his face.

“Can’t sleep, Mama.” He says quietly, sounding more defeated than hopeful, like he’s been tossing and turning for hours.

Emery checks the time, nearly three in the morning, and she sighs. “Do you want to sleep in here with me? We’ve still got some time before Amma gets back.”

He just nods and his feet patter quietly against the hardwood floor as he pads over to Emery’s side of the bed. She opens up the covers and he climbs in with her, tucking himself up into her arms as she lies down, Molly pressed between them.

“Are you comfy?” She asks gently.

“Yeah.”

“Why couldn’t you sleep, baby?”

He’s quiet for a long while before he finally manages, “Just couldn’t.”

Her face falls a little at the notion that he doesn’t want to tell her the real reason he’s restless but he’d never been very good at telling people what he needed in the first place. Emery doubted he was old enough to understand yet.

As if on cue, he immediately proved her wrong:

“Do you miss Norah?” He blurts out into the dark.

She blinked, surprised. “Yeah, bud. Of course I do. You?”

“Yeah…when does she come back?”

“Next Friday. Ten days.”

There was a brief pause. She could hear him thinking.

“But my birthday is on Friday. This Friday.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Does she not want to come?”

She felt a little pang in her heart that that’s what he’s thinking.

“Of course she wants to come.” She says, hoping her voice is reassuring enough through the dark. “She’s away at camp at the moment, do you remember? She’s far away.”

“Can’t she come back? Just for the day?”

“It’s a long way for her to come here and back in one day, okay? We wouldn’t want her to be tired, would we?”

“No.”

“I know she’s written you a card though. And she got you a present so you’d know she hasn’t forgotten about you.”

“She did?”

“Uh-huh, Amma helped her get them for you.”

She can feel him peering at her, even through the dark of her bedroom, trying to decide whether or not she’s fibbing to make him feel better. When he settles and decides she’s not lying, he burrows in a little closer.

“Mom?”

“Mm?”

“What are we doing for my birthday?”

She laughed gently, running a hand through his thick, dark hair. “That’s a surprise, little man.”

“Can I bring Molly with me?”

The stuffy’s fur rubbed against her cheek as she placed a kiss on its plastic nose. “Of course you can.”

The otter went everywhere with him, had done since he was a baby. Emery couldn’t remember exactly but she was fairly sure it had been a present from Al-Hashimi when he’d been born and for some reason, he’d just latched onto it. Wouldn’t sleep without her, hated going places without her, didn’t like to put her down in places he felt she’d be neglected.

Emery sometimes joked the otter was their third child with the way he insisted she was looked after.

That said, it warmed her heart that he cared.

“Are you ready to get some sleep yet?” She asked with a yawn.

“Yeah, think so.”

“Do you want a goodnight kiss?”

“Yes please.”

She smiled and leaned forward, pressing a soft kiss to his forehead, a routine they’d followed his entire life. He pushed Molly up between them.

“You have to give her a goodnight kiss too.”

“I already did.”

“Again.”

Emery chuckled and did as she was told, then snuck another one to Teddy’s cheek, wrapping her arms around him and settling further into bed.

“I love you, Teddy. You know that, right?”

“Mhm.” He mumbled, sleep already beginning to take him. “Love you too, Mama.”

_

The day his birthday rolls around, he spends the entirety of the previous night curled up between Emery and Samira, not even bothering to try and go to his own bedroom.

It almost works as an advantage for Emery.

As always, she wakes earlier than her wife and child and with Teddy still asleep and wrapped up firmly in Samira’s arms, she manages to slip out unnoticed.

She spends an hour blowing up balloons and letting them float to the ceiling of the living room, hanging up the happy birthday! lettering across the wall and delving into the back of the cupboard to retrieve the tiny cardboard box she always bought for when people woke up on their birthdays.

When she padded back to the bedroom, Teddy and Samira were already stirring, him sitting up with his hair sticking out all over the place. His eyes widened when he saw Emery.

“Mama! It’s my birthday!”

She grinned. “That’s right. Happy birthday, buddy.” She popped the tiny box down on the dresser and pulled him into a hug, letting him wrap his legs around her waist and his arms around her shoulders.

Even at five, he was getting bigger and bigger, and she knew it wouldn’t be long before he was too big or too old to want to be picked up by his mother anymore.

She was still mourning that with Norah.

She treasured it where she could.

Samira smiled at them from where she was sat against the headboard. “Good morning to you too.”

Emery grinned over Teddy’s shoulder. “Morning, my love. Our baby is five, did you know?”

“Wow, it must’ve slipped my mind.”

Emery laughed and let Teddy back down to the floor. She crouched in front of him. “Why don’t you go and brush your teeth and then we can check out what’s in the living room for you, huh?”

He nodded enthusiastically, his face lighting up like the Fourth of July. He was out of the bedroom before Emery could even straighten up again.

She smiled at her wife and picked up the box off the dresser again.

“For you, my love.” She said, perching on the bed and passing it to Samira, earning an eye roll from her wife as she accepted the gift.

“One of these years you’re going to forget and then where will we be?”

“Darling, the day I forget to give you a present as a thank you for when you brought our children into the world is the day you can divorce me right then and there. It’ll be what I deserve.”

Samira laughed. “Okay, I think that’s a little dramatic, hm? I’ll settle for a kiss.”

Emery grinned and conceded, leaning forward and pulling her into a kiss, strong and adoring.

“I love you.”

“I love you too, you big idiot.”

Samira opened the little box of cardboard and smiled, shaking her head when she saw the tiny cupcake on the inside, the icing practically drowning in sprinkles.

“Teddy helped, I’m guessing?”

“No that was my idea, actually. Thought it might hide how shitty my icing actually is.”

Samira laughed and kissed her again. “Thank you, baby.”

“You’re welcome-“

“Mom! Amma! Hurry up!”

Samira groaned. “Well, it was nice while it lasted.”

Emery chuckled. “Eat your cupcake. You get an extra five minutes.”

“No, no, I’m good.”

With the expertise that only an emergency doctor could achieve, Samira took the cupcake in her hands and split it perfectly down the middle, shoving one half into her mouth and the other into Emery’s, earning a muffled huff of laughter.

“It’s supposed to be for you!”

“Well, I couldn’t have done it without you tending to my every whim and putting up with me when I got fat so eat up, go.”

“In fairness, you looked very sexy when you got fat. We could’ve had another one if you carried on the way you were going.”

“Don’t be a kiss-ass. I can still divorce you. Go.”

_

Teddy gasps so genuinely when Emery takes her hands away from his eyes that Samira nearly cries.

He’s at the age where he’s still so genuine about everything, where even the simplest things are magical and amazing, even when they’re mundane.

When Samira presents him with a book about the differences between English and American mustelids, he practically vibrates on the spot. When Emery offers to build Lego with him for an hour, he reacts as though she’s just discovered unicorns are real.

And when Samira presents him with the gift that Norah had picked out for him, a copy of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials and a Pantalaimon bookmark, it’s as if he’s just been made king of the world.

Samira’s not sure if it’s the animals on the front cover that makes him happy or the happy birthday wish scribbled on the inside in Norah’s somewhat-practiced handwriting. Either way, he looks over the moon.

“Mama! Mama! Look!” He says eagerly, showing Emery the bookmark. “Look what Norah got me!”

“Oh, cool, bud. What’s that, a ferret?”

“No!” He says but he’s smiling. “It’s an ermine! See the white fur?”

“Oh, yeah, an ermine. Silly me.” She stole a glance at Samira, sneaking her a self-deprecating eye roll. She looked backed to their son. “Do you like it? Is it good?”

“It’s the best.”

“Yeah? Norah picked good?”

He nods enthusiastically. “Very good.”

Samira chuckles as Teddy practically buries himself in the couch, pulling the first book into his lap and opening it eagerly, Emery coming to stand with her wife to watch him.

“His sister has good taste.”

“Oh yeah? Did she see the animals on the cover and call it a day?”

Samira laughed. “That she did.”

“I don’t know where he gets the obsession.”

“Me neither.” Samira nodded her agreement. “Sometimes I worry he got swapped out at the hospital and we’ve accidentally taken someone else’s baby home but then…” A fond little smile came over her features as she watched him. “…then I watch him and I see you.”

Emery raised an eyebrow, following her gaze. It was no revelation that Teddy was the spit image of Emery, with marble white skin and thick, dark hair that lightened to a golden-chocolate colour in the sunlight, but even his mannerisms were the same, even now.

He was reading his book the same way Emery read a chart at the hospital; focused, controlled and clear. Their frown, studying and attentive, were identical.

Emery wrapped her arm around Samira’s waist, nuzzling her cheek against her wife’s. “I love you, Samira.” She mumbled quietly. “And I love our children.”

Samira smiled warmly. “I know you do.”

“I’m going to have to start getting you more than a cupcake every year, aren’t I?”