A/N: So this idea popped into my head the other day and this happened. The quote that follows has always been my favorite quote and I've always wanted to write a story based on it. In fact, I've included it in several other things I've written, but recently I wanted to do something with Glee. At first I wanted it to be with Kurt, but then I realized that Brittany would make for the perfect "she" in the narration. This is what came of it.
Disclaimer: I do not own Glee, for if I did, I would have each episode end with an encore performance like the one during Glee Live (which I won't spoil for you if you haven't seen the videos of it).
"We lay there & looked up at the night sky & she told me about stars called blue squares & red swirls & I told her I'd never heard of them before. Of course not, she said, the really important stuff they never tell you. You have to imagine it on your own."
~Brian Andreas
The first time she met Brittany, Santana had been lying on her back in the field behind the middle school. It was right after the first seventh grade dance – an actual dance that made all the kids feel like they were finally reaching their teenage years, when in reality most of them were still far too immature for their age. Santana had gone with her boyfriend-of-the-moment, a kid named Tyler, whom she could have cared less about, to be honest. It was all for the image – all the cool kids had a significant other, so Santana, of course, had to as well.
But the dance hadn't gone so well. The DJ sucked, her brand new shoes turned out to be a size too small, and when Tyler had disappeared at one point, she went off in search of him only to find him in a janitor's closet kissing another girl. So she yelled at him, kicked him in the shin, and then stalked back into the gymnasium. The rest of the dance she stood on the side, wishing that she could cry so that maybe somebody might notice her and ask her what was wrong, but unfortunately, she wasn't all that sad about the breakup with Tyler and as a result, no one noticed her standing in the corner alone.
About an hour before the dance actually ended and her mom would come pick her up, Santana snuck out the back door. She slipped off her shoes and walked barefoot across the damp field, relishing the feel of the soft blades curling between her toes. She stopped about halfway from the building. Here it was perfect – the music was but a mere whisper on the wind and the lights were dim enough that when she looked up, she could see far more stars in the sky than she had ever seen at home in Lima Heights.
Santana laid down on the ground, ignoring the grass stains that were sure to turn her red dress brown, and folded her hands behind her head, forming a pillow for her to rest on as she looked upwards.
Looking at the stars always calmed Santana for some reason. She thought it had something to do with the way her father used to take her outside late at night when she was much younger and point out all of the constellations that he was fascinated with, but had never gotten a real chance to really study, since her mom had gotten pregnant at nineteen with her older brother. But that all changed when her daddy lost his job at the factory and was forced to take on two jobs – a day shift at a grocery store and a night shift at a McDonald's down the street. Their nights together came to a quick end, as her father began coming home after she went to bed and would leave before she woke up. The few times they did see each other, he would snap at her for bugging him with her "endless questions" and eventually Santana just stopped talking to him altogether.
"What are you doing?"
Startled, Santana gasped and sat up, only to be met with a pair of knees in her face. Looking up past a billowy pink skirt, she found a long-haired blonde girl with blue eyes smiling down at her with a curious gaze.
"Why aren't you at the dance?" the girl continued, plopping herself down on the ground next to Santana.
She eyed the girl, who was staring at her with eyes wide and head cocked to the side.
"I…I got tired of it," she said, somewhat truthfully.
The blonde haired girl nodded. "I can understand that. I love to dance, personally. But those songs weren't that good, and every time a boy asked me to dance they kept pushing their crotch into my butt, which I didn't want." Here the girl scrunched her nose in disgust. "So I went out into the hall to get a drink of water and saw you leaving."
Santana frowned. "So…why'd you follow me?"
The girl smiled. "You looked like you needed a friend." She stuck out hand. "I'm Brittany."
Santana glanced down at the hand, hesitating before taking it. Brittany's hand felt warm in hers, somehow molding perfectly – no, almost perfectly – in her own. There was something not right about the way she was gripping her hand, but Santana shrugged it off.
"Santana Lopez."
Brittany nodded and then with a small turn of her frame, fell backwards onto the grass. Santana looked down at her, somewhat taken aback by the sudden movement, and felt her breath catch as Brittany smiled up at her, her blonde hair splayed around her head like a golden halo against the dark ground.
"Show me what you were looking at," Brittany said, patting the ground next to her.
Wondering why she felt heat rise to her cheeks, Santana lowered herself slowly down next to Brittany. They weren't exactly touching, but with their shoulders so close that she could feel the heat radiating from the blonde girl, they might as well have been.
Turning away from Brittany, Santana looked back up at the stars and lifted her hand to start pointing out the few constellations she knew.
"That's Orion's belt, and there's the rest of Orion," she said, pointing.
"I don't see," Brittany replied. Suddenly her hand appeared in Santana's vision, slipping into her own, so that Santana's was covering her's. "Show me."
Trying to breathe slowly as her heart decided to speed up for some unknown reason, Santana slowly wrapped her fingers around Brittany's hand and traced out the outline of the great warrior in the sky.
"There's his sword and his legs," she told her, hoping that her voice wasn't shaking as much as she thought it was, "and if you follow it down you can see the brightest star in the sky. That's Sirius, the Dog Star."
Brittany giggled. "That's not a dog, silly. That's a Blue Square."
Santana frowned, dropping their hands onto the grass between them. Turning her head, she looked at Brittany, who was still smiling upwards at the stars that were reflecting brightly in her blue eyes.
"A what?" Santana whispered breathily.
Another giggle escaped Brittany's lips as she turned to look at Santana. In this position, their noses were a hair's breadth from touching, and it took all of Santana's willpower not to cross her eyes to look down the slope of her nose at Brittany's.
"A Blue Square. It's a type of star. There are lots of them, didn't you know? Blue Squares and Red Swirls and Green Squiggles…"
Santana shook her head. "Those don't exist, Brittany."
Brittany frowned at her. "What are you talking about, of course they do. They're right there!" She swept her free hand upwards, gesturing toward the great expanse of sky above them.
"Then how come I've never heard of them before? My dad used to look at the stars all the time and he told me about the Red Giants and White Dwarfs but never anything about blue circles or red polka dots."
Brittany sighed. "Not circles and polka dots, Santana! Squares and Swirls! And of course he didn't tell you about them! The really important stuff they never tell you."
"Oh? And why's that?"
She shrugged. "I think…I think you just have to imagine it all on your own."
Santana blinked as the words sunk in. Then slowly, she felt her own mouth turning upward in a smile that mirrored Brittany's.
"Alright, then. Why don't you show me what else I haven't imagined yet?"
Brittany returned the smile and turned back toward the sky as she began to point out different stars and gave them names that only she seemed to know. Santana watched her eyes glitter as they darted from one region of the night sky to another before turning back to look up at the stars herself and follow the patterns that Brittany outlined with her pointer finger.
And as they lay there, renaming constellations and stars, Brittany shifted her hand that Santana's was still covered. But instead of removing it as Santana feared for a brief moment, she turned it so that their fingers interlaced and their palms pressed together.
This time, they fit together perfectly.