Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 37th cycle. Now cycle 38!

PRE-CHRISTMAS NON-CHRISTMAS: It's already my third holiday season of Gleekathon, woo! So happy about that :D Anyhoo, just to explain what I'm doing for it this year: How it goes is I always have a set of stories with Christmas-y titles but non-Christmas-y plots, so to give an air of the season but not too much ;) First year was '12 Days of Christmas', last year was 'Reindeer'. This year's theme is "Christmas Movies" :) It'll run from December 8th to 19th, after which I have a slightly bigger undertaking to take us to Christmas Eve (stay tuned and find out, ha! ;)). So here we go!

"Borrowed Hearts"
Santana & Karofsky

She'd been quietly sipping at her coffee, observing the people waiting in line and finding them both intriguing and comical… kind of weird, basically. When he walked through the door she didn't wave at him, just waited for him to spot her and walk over. He sat across from her, still looking around like he was making sure no one was within earshot that could hurt him. "Okay, so I'm here," Karofsky nodded.

"I thought for sure you'd bail on me," Santana's expression barely changed.

"I don't even know why I'm here. You going to keep talking at me like you did yesterday?"

"As fun as that sounds, no. You do remember our little agreement though."

"You want us to pretend we're dating," he shrugged.

"Yeah, sweetie, no, it's more than that," she drummed her fingers on the side of her coffee cup as she spoke. "You and I need to walk back into that school, the image of high school sweethearts," she tilted her head with a smile that made him uncomfortable.

"Is that really necessary?"

"Well, it's up to you. We can sit here and work this out, or you can go it alone, until the day when someone asks a… very valid question about you and you have no way to answer them. And then you'll tell yourself 'gosh, if only I'd listened to Santana.' Trust me, you wouldn't be the first one," she beamed.

"Work what out?" he frowned, confused.

"Our… story," she explained. He looked at her, still clueless. "Let's start with something simple. When did we first go out on a date?"

"We… haven't…" he still wasn't getting it, which only made her groan.

"This is going to take a while, isn't it… Okay, let me rephrase that: when did you and I, the versions of us who find the opposite sex to be desirable, first go out on a date? This is the part where you fill in the blanks. Facts are going to be the legs this lying game of ours has to stand on, so come on…" she gestured at him and he finally understood.

"Right, okay, well… I guess… Last week?"

"I'm going to need you to sound a bit more sure of yourself," she gave a pointed bowing of the head.

"Last week… Last Tuesday," he nodded with satisfaction at his added detail.

"I was out Tuesday," she shot him down though, and he frowned.

"Fine, Wednesday?" he held his hands out, and she gave silent approval. "Okay then, Wednesday… took you to Breadstix," he offered.

"Aww, David…" she put a hand to her heart, 'emotional.' "Go on," she took a sip of her coffee. "What did we do?"

"Ate?" he shrugged, and by the look she gave then he guessed she was not referring so much to the date but to what came after. "Oh… well, did we…"

"On the first date?" she made to look offended. "Second base," she conceded.

"Deal," he nodded, apparently starting to get into these negotiations. "Have we gone out again since then?" She thought about it.

"Let's say twice more, three with today," she counted off. "And if I recall correctly, I think you may have gotten lucky on date number three… twice… Congratulations," she raised her cup to him.

"Seriously?" he chuckled at her self-congratulation.

"I'm just saying…" she shrugged. "You weren't too bad yourself."

"Well…" he gave the same sort of smirk she'd had and she laughed.

"There you go." He looked back at her, and he looked so very thankful to her all of a sudden. She gave a small nod and a smile, and they didn't speak further on the matter, instead getting back to their story. "So why did we go out in the first place?"

"Well…" he started, then paused. "I don't know."

"I'll tell you why. And pay attention because this is important. I reached out to you… about Kurt." He tensed, and she nodded. "Do you see where I'm going with this?"

"Look, Santana… I know… I shouldn't have let things get how they got, with him and me, and it sucks, but how am I supposed to fix it."

"This, us, this is how," she explained. "So I asked you to meet me so we could talk… and what began as a simple dinner discussion became… so much more," she intoned semi-dramatically.

"Okay," he agreed.

"Good. Now what do you intend to do to show your support to our smooth-faced friend?"

Maybe this would solve more than one problem… or create them… She wasn't sure. But she had a good feeling about this, that it would work out to everyone's benefit… but at the core a lot of those benefits were still of course her own. She hadn't told Karofsky everything. It wasn't so much about keeping secrets, but really it was a matter of what she was willing to offer up of herself. There were some things she still barely understood herself, so why would she dump them on someone who had even less of a clue? For the time being, the only person who needed to know already knew, because it was herself.

So on the next morning when they returned to McKinley, they had presented themselves to Principal Figgins, with the idea they had cooked up. At this point they were in the preliminary phase of looking like a couple but looking like a couple that maybe tried to hide this fact. She could tell he was nervous about the whole thing, about maybe missing the mark and screwing it all up, but she was with him the whole way. She wasn't going to let him down, and she wasn't going to give him a chance to screw up… She had stakes in this, too.

The biggest challenge up to date would be facing the Glee Club, to declare this story they had built together. For Santana's part, the hardest would be to see how Brittany would react. Would she be sad, angry, jealous, or would she not really care? She had been playing it cool where Karofsky was concerned, but inside she was terrified. She knew what was at stake though. She couldn't back down. So her fear went away, didn't disappear, just got easier to push down.

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!