"No, Tubbs, absolutely not. There is no way you're getting a tattoo."

From the center of the bed, Lord Tubbington side-eyes Brittany folding laundry by her desk.

"You'll regret it. I promise. And you'll get mad and take it out on the Spaniel down the street. Also, those friends of yours aren't really your friends if they only care about a tattoo. They won't like you any less if you don't get one."

Lord Tubbington bites his tongue to stop from hissing out what he really wants to say; namely, that Brittany nearly got a tattoo last year, and the fact that she didn't had nothing to do with whether Santana wanted her to or not. Rather, it had everything to do with the fact that Brittany got caught by her parents outside the tattoo parlor.

"I know what you're thinking, Lord T., and you're so wrong."

Brittany walks over to the bed and plops herself down. Not quite on the edge, but instead near that sweet spot she always manages to find: the one that disturbs all the equilibrium of the bed, and creates some kind of weird tidal motion across the mattress, so that Lord Tubbington feels the area under his body shifting upwards and his actual body reacting with a horrific movement all of its own. Air borne for a moment or two before he can hunker back down in his God-given rightful place in the middle of the covers, Lord Tubbington briefly wonders if Brittany knows how their little game of see-saw with the bed disturbs his mental reasoning. She certainly always seems to pull the flop-on-the-bed trick when they're in the middle of an intense discussion.

It's patently a dirty trick, regardless: Brittany has no idea what it's like to be propelled into the air when there's so much you to be propelled there.

"It did make a difference whether Santana wanted me to or not. Just not in the way you're thinking. She kept quiet till right before we were at the tattoo parlor, then she told me about her great-aunt who got a tattoo at 17 and now it's all weird and saggy. Then she said to me it was my choice; that she'd love me either way, but when we're 90 I might regret it."

Lord Tubbington is skeptical. He doesn't hide it very well; his tail always twitches from side to side when Brittany tells him something Santana's done that seems far too sensitive to be likely.

"I told everyone that my parents stopped me because, like you, Tubbs, they would never have believed it was Santana anyway. And she would have gotten embarrassed that she wasn't the one being a badass and pushing me through the door to get matching tattoos."

Brittany picks him up, and he figures that since she's disturbed his comfortable arrangement in the quilts anyway, and now also disturbed his weekend tattoo-plans to boot, he might as well surrender fully. His jacket chafes a little bit and his sunglasses start to slip, but Brittany re-adjusts them and he ends up on her lap.

"I forgave you for your gang, Tubbs, so you owe me. I'm just being a good parent."

Lord Tubbington tries a sarcastic growl. It comes out halfway between a hiss and a purr; Brittany keeps rubbing his stomach regardless. He wonders briefly if this is why Santana often enters the Pierce house looking mad as hell and leaves it looking as if she, too, has just been blind-sided by bed see-saw and then petted like she's the best thing in the world. Then he does laugh, genuinely, this time. He might turn a blind eye to the activities that happen in Brittany's bedroom most of the time, but even he's not disinterested enough to miss the dirty double meaning in his words.