With you on my shoulder
By HeartofSummer
Genre: Brittany and Santana romance
Copyright: If I owned them, a lot of the shows awesome characters would be forgotten, since I'd only be writing about these two. So this is purely for entertainment purposes.

A/N: I realized there was no actual scenes in which I could detect Brittany in the pilot episode, and for a fact, Brittany and Santana aren't really seen together much the first few episodes. Actually, it's mostly Quinn and Santana. Soooo, I thought unlike a lot of people that they actually might become such close friends somewhere in the beginning of the show!
This is my first chapter and hopefully, there will be many more. I'm working on the idea to follow each episode, and try to make the side story and relationship of Brittana/Santittany evolve in a natural way. Be honest, help me keep the characters in character and please tell me if you like it, and want more!

I also want to send a thank you to the amazing Jasmine, who let me pour out all my ideas to her, and who reads the chapters and dares to be honest with me when I need her to be.
I hate OOC and so, I'm glad we can both discuss the do's and don't's of Brit and San. Huge hugs for you!


Chapter 1: Cheerios is a lifestyle

(Santana)

"Did you hear about the new girl?"
"That she was home schooled?"
With a bang I bust out of the booth and ignore the frightened girls, too occupied to meet my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I pull out the ribbon from my hair only to start making a new, tighter one.
It was always the same with new students. I didn't really care about what was said about them, because they rarely made any difference to the natural order of things. I caught a glimpse of the three girls hurrying out of the bathroom, as Quinn joined my side, washing her hands and leaning in only to touch her eyelids, making sure her make-up sat right.
"New girl?" She asked nonchalantly.
"Seems like it," I replied in a less than even a little interested tone.
"I heard she's supposed to be this amazing dancer," Quinn offered with seemingly no interest in the matter, leaning back, only to look over at me.
"So?"
"So, she could be useful." I raised an eyebrow, this time actually eyeing the real Quinn, not just her reflection.
"Make it work." Quinn simply says, before leaving the bathroom, me following one step behind. We did our usual walk down the corridors, talking about nothing, enjoying the way the mass of people just parted for us, like we were royalty. Meanwhile I made small notes in my head about what I heard from the crowd.

"Blonde-"
"Big tits-"
"Threesome-"
"Dance teacher-"
"Affair-"
"Badger-"
"Brittany-"
"Sex with a-"

I stop abruptly, finding my victim in the form of Lucy Stone, one of my cheerio underlings. I make sure to put my best bitch face on and let Quinn pass three more lockers to get to her boyfriend.
"What's the deal about this new girl?" Lucy looked a little taken aback for me to actually talk to her directly, but she quickly hid it and said:
"She's supposedly this half German, home schooled girl-"
"I don't want her entire life story," I snap, staring the girl down.
"Well, her name's Brittany Pierce-"
"Anything useful?" I bite off, my heart skipping a beat in recognition of the name, shrugging it off and not worrying about the Brittany Pierces of the world but instead enjoying the satisfaction of watching the girl tremble, her non cheerio friend looking like she was about to cry.
"She slept with her dance teacher, THE Sparky Polastri." I give a half smile, and throw a:
"See you at practice," before turning to go to my locker. But doing so, I see a girl standing with her back to the corridor, a waterfall of blonde hair flowing down her back. Before going as far as thinking, I go straight up to her, not bothering to open my locker, saying:
"Cheerio practice is at three. Make sure you'll be there." The girl spin around and let her dark, clear blue eyes bore into mine. She looks a little speechless, and shocked to see me, but I don't give her a chance to say anything. I wasn't going to give her the time of day just because she'd already gotten herself a reputation.
"Don't be late," I throw over my shoulder as I turn around, already walking away, joining Quinn, Finn and Noah Puckerman in their way to the classroom.

"Did you know that sharks fall in love and live together forever?"

I look at the blonde, raising one of my eyebrows to mask my shock. What is this, some kind of opening line, some kind of thank you? She was obviously extremely socially disabled, just like I remembered her.

"I think that's swans." I tell her, looking up at my leg again, which I am trying hard to keep in place beside my ear, straight and nice, stretched up towards God's a-

"I don't like swans - they scare me. But I like ducks. Does ducks do it?" I let my leg down – slowly, in case Coach Sylvester is secretly watching from somewhere - and take a serious look at her for the first time since I realized she went to this school. Her whole body was turned towards me, even her leg, which she was keeping up without seeming to think twice about it. And her eyes were filled with something I'd seen in loads of other students, even cheerleaders. Admiration.
Though my knowledge of swans and sharks had never been the reason for that before. I knew this only because I'd had a few too many late nights home alone with only the soothing voices and animal sounds from Animal Planet to keep me company.

I have known a lot of stupid cheerleaders through the years, but this is not stupid. This is just... absurdo. It was the same thing when she was younger, and we used to play house. She always wanted to be the mum and the cat at the same time. She would go around cooking, using a vocabulary made up based on her kitten. We used to play almost every day, but when I turned nine my mum got a job in Lima and we moved here. Turns out it wasn't just a job my mum had waiting for her, and she left us a week before my tenth birthday with some guy called Mica.

Me and Brittany had lost contact for obvious reasons. Our families hadn't been friends, and we were only nine year-olds, so all we could muster was a few letters back and forth before we both got new friends and forgot about each other. Well, forgot is a strong word.
But when my mum left, I lost interest in almost everything but myself. I made taking over school my new project, because even though I didn't have any pink and fluffy feelings for Quinn, I knew we would be a great monarchy.

Now, even though I'd thought about Brittany occasionally over the years, I couldn't just bow down to her. My place was to carry the pillow with Quinn on top, as I stood there on my pedestal, only keeping the weight of her up by knowing that the rest of the school was standing beneath me, carrying me on top of their quivering shoulders.

"I wouldn't know." I shrugged, stretching my arms out in front of me, then to the side, then back, preparing myself for the pyramid.

"Oh." I looked back at her, all disappointed. I don't ever recall having disappointed her, and it felt very wrong to do it now.

"They might." I said, trying to sound positive. She finally let her leg down, leaning in towards me, eyeing me with those wide, piercing blue eyes.

"Santana, you do remember me don't you?" I blinked, remembering what my mum used to call her, and really understood why. I nodded, and the smile she gave me just proved the point. Irresistable.

"Take your places, Cheerios! No slackers on my team!" I snapped out of it, looking up at Coach Sylvester.
"Don't hold your breath for a pep talk from me," I snapped. "You're just gonna have to figure the world of the cheerios out on your own." I turned to look at her, but Brittany had already hopped away and was taking her place at the bottom of the pyramid. I was slightly impressed by the way she managed to intimidate me without being intimidating. It hit me how fragile she looked down there, even though she was smiling. I think that was the moment when I knew things had to change – the Quinn pillow was too heavy for one person anyway.

"You think this is hard? Try being water boarded, that's hard!"

"This geek club joke is getting on my nerves!" Quinn whines as we are on our way to the lockerooms. Last week her boyfriend joined some kind of club I didn't even know existed. Before, me and Quinn had always thought it was some kind of made up shit that Rachel Berry had come up with so she could get her Broadway on any time she wanted to. Not so much.

Cool and kind of hot Finn had out on nowhere joined a club where they sing for fun. Okay, so usually I don't hate on singers, I've got the gift myself. But this was different. It was gay, they danced like my grandpa and they had like a law of only singing show tunes and Broadway songs. At least, that's what I've heard.

I could understand why Q would be upset, obviously. But come on, this was just a bit too much of a pity party for my taste. I wanted to push one of my pompoms down her throat just so I could stop hearing about "the geek club" for like, one second.

"I mean, that midget is so going to wish she was never born! She's gonna wanna-"

"- rip out her vocal cords and feed them to raccoons?" I offered, sighing.

"Exactly!" Quinn agreed and kept going. "And I'll make her pay for-" I stopped listening then and there, because Brittany was standing by my locker, looking up into the ceiling. Odd, I thought, since practice was out an hour ago and I'd seen her leave quite early. Had she been waiting for me that long?
I'd hardly spoken to her since her first practice last week, just a few words here and there. Nothing mean though, which had been noticed by the others. Quinn had even asked me about it, and I'd just simply answered with a shrug. They could think I was nice to her because she was the new girl, but I wouldn't explain myself. Heck, I did like her. She was a great cheerio and totally nice to everyone. Besides, she had taken the advices I'd given the cheerios about dating guys to make them look good to heart. Just last week I'd seen her with both Lucas and Chad, which was a good number for such a short time.

Didn't say much though. Just some stray comments here and there. I thought I'd gotten rid of her expectations, but was a little disappointed, I guess, that she didn't seem to mind.

But now she was standing by my locker – in regular clothes too, which was different. She had lime green shorts and a blue, silky looking tunic. Her hair was out too. I felt my heart skip a beat.

"Brittany?" She turned her head towards me, looking half woken up, and smiled a little tiredly.

"Lopez, Q, come with me." The harshness came from an angry coach Sylvester hurrying up behind us. She stopped and stared at Brittany like she didn't know her.

"Who's this social outcast?" she muttered, proving me right. Brittany looked away from me, wondering.

"It's Brittany Pierce. The new girl." Quinn said, trying to be helpful. The coach looked bitter, but switched to her positive sounding tone as she said:

"Sorry there, Brittany. I didn't recognize you out of the cheerio costume."

"That's okay coach." Brittany said.

"No, it's not okay." She sucked in some air and put her head on a tilt. "Poor Brittany. The cheerios costume will assist you in school. You will rise above everyone else in this dump. Being my cheerio gives you the opportunity of not studying, beeing able to bully whoever you want, even teachers, I migth add, and having the privilege of getting away with it." Sue gave a half smile, like she pitied Brittany for not realizing that, like not knowing these facts made her really dense. "As long as you don't get fat or knocked up." She added as an afterthought and smiled again.

"Now run along home and feed all your blind owls and HIV positive squirrels that you have hiding in your pink room. I bet they're waiting for you." Then she turned around, expecting us to follow her just like that. And of course we did.

"That's my dad."

I turned around as I heard Brittany's words and looked at her with a questioning face. Then we rounded the corner and she went out of sight.

"These waltzing basement rats are threatening the cheerios budget," Sue said as she hurried towards the auditorium, in which we could hear tunes coming out. "They are to become the new laughing stock of the school, so take a good look at them. Use any methods you please, I don't care if you force them to go through with a sex change as long as you make their lives a Living. Hell."

"Don't worry about it, coach Sylvester. It's already done." Quinn reassured her, looking as much like a warrior as Sue herself. We busted through the doors and came out on one of the balconies. Sue and Quinn leaned out to see, but I simply folded my hands on the railing.

The music was good, really good. I knew I wouldn't be able to say it to any of them if I wanted to keep my spot, but they kind of rocked.

For once Rachel sounded good, and Finn, damn that boy sure could bring it. Besides, who knew a wheelchair kid could play a guitar? I noticed Quinn was rubbing her hands together, and realized she probably liked it too. It was hard to listen without wanting to jump up and down and clap my hands together. How could these total nobodies make me want to bust it?

I let my thoughts travel back to Brittany. Was she still waiting for me? The song ended, and I found myself slightly disappointed as Mr Schuester's voice was heard and Coach turned her back and left. Me and Quinn looked at each other and went out behind her. She was already gone, so we started walking towards the exit, Q complaining even louder than before.

"Manhands were all over him, I can't believe it! That he would even think of singing and dancing around like some loser when I'm his girlfriend! He's bringing down my rep-"

"I forgot my cell," I said and hurried away from Quinn, hoping to escape a headache.

"See you," she called after me, still fuming from watching Finn preform.

Brittany wasn't waiting for me, but a pink post it sticking out of my locker was.

0709807797
In case practice gets cancelled.
X Brit

I fished out my cellphone and pushed in the numbers, saving it. That was Quinn's duty, really, but I didn't care. I smiled and put the cell back in my bra before hanging my bag over my shoulder and going towards the doors. My footsteps echoed in the empty hallway and I closed my eyes for a moment, letting myself actually enjoying this brief moment of calm. Like the way it smelt, the way the afternoon sun was sipping in through the windows and the way some dust particles were flying around in the air.

"Damn, we were really good!" It was that black chick who ruined my moment.

"We r-r-really w-were!" And that Asian kid. They sounded out of breath and tired, coming out from the auditorium. And sure thing, I saw their red shapes appear before me, walking to the drinking fountain. I reacted like an angry bull would have.

"Out of my way, Lima losers!" They moved away quickly, and I went out the the doors, head held high, almost hearing the black chic roll her eyes. I wondered if their happiness depended on their personality or Glee club. Then I shook my head, sighing a little bit in the warm air as I went to my cabriolet and threw my stuff in the passenger seat. Too bad I was gonna have to bring both those things down.

A/N: Feedback is a writer's best friend, so tell me what you think!