Two passing strangers in Time Square, New York. One glances down, reaches into her coat pocket.
The other smiles fondly to his left, waves at an old school friend across the street.
Their shoulders end up colliding.
Her steely charcoal orbs snap up, and she gives the man eyes that'd put a hole in solid wood.
He instantly throws his hands up, palms facing away. "Sorry. I guess I…" His grayish-brown eyes jaunt off across the street, falling upon the back of his disappearing school friend for a brief moment. "Wasn't lookin' where I was goin'."
She was the kind of person that had to bump you back if you accidentally bumped her, and then she was going to crack you in the throat on top of that, because she was still pissed about the infraction.
But not today.
"Just watch it next time!" She growls, voice escaping through the gaps of her caged teeth.
"Sorry." The man offers a tight smile, gripping his shopping bags more securely before somewhat awkwardly shifting off into the blizzard of pedestrians adorning the streets.
She keeps her two feet rooted to the pavement, pats the lump in her other pocket, and quickly reaches inside, pulling out her phone. With the little sleek device cupped, landscape, between both of her hands, she rapidly thumbs out a text.
On my way home baby. Left the gym early. Thai food? xXx
She slips the phone back into her jacket, takes a nice large breath, before blowing it back out as chilled misty vapor.
Several minutes later, when she's rounding the corner of a particularly long street, thai food's delicious aroma wafting up at her from the large white bag in her grasp, her phone pleasantly hums against her lower ribcage. For her short legs, her strides are long as she thumbs her phones pick-up button and slips the device through the sleek black curtain of her hair to her ear.
"'Sup?"
"Err…Santana, I just got your text. How about you pick up something Greek tonight instead? I threw up last time we had Thai, remember?"
She rolls her eyes, the ghostly essence of that rancid vomit somehow floating on her nostrils. "Yeah, only 'cause you got blitzed trying to impress Finn, asshole. I'm never gonna get the smell out of the carpet by the window. You know, he's still gonna give me some money so we can get new carpet, because if he hadn't egged you on you wouldn't have been drinking."
"How close to the apartment are you?"
Santana's brows knit as she crosses the dead street, short heels percussioning against the pavement. "Why?"
"No reason!" He responds, entirely too quickly. "…Except that I want Greek food?"
"Fuck the Greek food, Noah. Why do you sound so freakin' suspicious?"
"Suspicious?" He says, all too defensive. "What, what are you talking about woman?" A chuckle one could deduce as a nervous one flutters from his lips. "I just want Greek foo –"
"And why are you breathing so hard?"
"I'm, I'm not breathing hard, baby. What's with the Spanish inquisition?"
"Oh my God, did you just zing me with a racist joke?"
"What? No. Why're you always looking for somethin' that's not there?"
Just then a soft, feminine voice wisps into Santana's earshot. It's brief, but she could swear it whispered against her ear drum. Her forehead crumples in frown. "Wait, who's there with you?"
"W-What?"
That one word from her boyfriend, woven and slick with utmost panic, is all Santana needs to hear for the cogs in her mind to creak into a slow foreboding grind.
"Nobody's here, baby. It's probably just the TV…"
Didn't sound like the God damn TV. Sounded like you got some bitch up in my apartment.
"Ok." Santana says slowly, brows still knitted. "Well what do you want from the Greek place?"
His smile can be felt through his voice, as it carries jubilant ripples of glee into her ear. "The usual – and which shop are you heading to? I'm just, I'm really hungry. How long do you think you'll be?"
She slows her step, unable to deny the brooding mist forming in her gut. "Why does it matter how long I'm gonna be? I'm gonna be as long as it takes, aren't I?"
"Why're you getting pissed, baby? I just asked a simple question."
"I'll probably be another forty minutes or something; you know those damn places always like to keep you waiting for your food."
"Great. Thanks baby. I love you."
Santana pulls her phone away from her ear, frowns at it for a moment, before returning it. "Yeah…love you too. Bye."
"Bye."
.
.
.
Five minutes later, Santana is stood in front of her apartment door. She sets the bag of Thai food down gently on their welcome mat and squints at her front door as though, at any minute, the solid matter will fall away, and she'll be able to see what's going on on the other side of it.
"I swear to God, if you're smashing some slut in there, it's your balls." She whispers to herself, slowly twisting her key in the lock and opening the door.
She's quiet about it though. She's quiet and stealthy as she momentarily bends to thread her fingers through the handles of the Thai food bag, picking it back up. She's slow and quiet pushing the door closed, and she's quiet locking it back, heels soft-pattering merely a soft ruffle against the carpet. The apartment is quiet too, TV's off and everything's in its place.
It's strange. It shouldn't be, but everything coursing through Santana's veins as she quietly wanders towards the bedroom door says that it is.
As she lifts her right foot to take another step forward, she hears it.
A soft throaty giggle.
A soft, sultry, throaty giggle. Then a dull thud rumbles through the walls; all coming from beyond the bedroom door.
"Mother fucker." She angers under her breath, quietly reaching behind the black bookcase for the bat she's always kept there, whilst gently placing the bag of take-out on a nearby table.
Her trembling tan fingers curl around the bedroom door's handle, and her nostrils flare to accommodate the deep sustaining breath she draws into her lungs, before she cranks it down and aggressively nudges the door open.
The bat almost tumbles from her grasp at what she sees…
For a moment, everything's precarious. Blurred. But then she nods to herself in some sort of acceptance that this is really happening, and that's when she loses it...
"You piece of shit!" She hollers, striding over towards the bed, bat seized tightly within her two hands as she winds it back high over her shoulder.
Noah finally reacts; he jumps up, thin maroon duvet spilling from his sweat-sheened torso as he throws his hands up to absorb the bat's barbarity. Though he instantly jerks them away when Santana throws a particularly hard swing into them. They were going to be purple and fat for weeks. "Fuck! Santana, stop! I'm sorry!"
"How about you wipe that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look off of your face and stop me from decorating these walls with this whore's brains?" As if to punctuate her murderous mood, she abruptly flings the bat towards the wide-eyed, blonde-haired stranger sat in her bed holding the sheets up around her pale body. The woman squeezes her cat-like blue eyes shut tightly, drops the sheets, and holds her hands up protectively in front of her face, but the bat meets brutally with the hard wall behind the headboard, leaving an evil, deep, dent.
"Holy shit!" Noah throws a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure that the woman's head is still on her shoulders, and when he turns back around, Santana's throwing her entire shoulder into a fist that's headed for his jaw.
His legs momentarily falter, feet stammering backwards towards the bed as he clutches his jaw in wince. Then, as if in need of confirmation for what's just happened, he glances at the woman lain beside him, whose mouth is hanging slightly agape. Acceptance settling in, he prods around his square jowl, drawing his fingers back in search of blood.
"Yeah, joto," Santana spits, Spanish twang adding a whole new level of hostility. "I just clocked you in the jaw. What?" She challenges with a shrug.
"Brittany, you need to get out of here, fast."
"Brittany?" Santana tries the name out on her tongue, disgusted by its flavors. "Is that your name, you little slut?"
"…Y-Yeah." The ruffle-haired blonde nods, unsurely. She cautiously slides out from beneath she sheets, grabs her white blouse from atop of the dresser and quickly shrugs it on, bleeding an apologetic gaze over the emotional woman stood across the room shaking, whilst she buttons herself up with stumbling fingers. "Look, I didn't know...I'm really sorry." She offers, hastily kicking into the pair of jeans she's just snatched up from the floor.
Santana slings an aggressive knife-like hand in the blonde's direction. "You think I wanna hear you talk, bitch? Right now, I don't even want you breathing. If you speak again, I'm going to punch your face inside out, got it?"
Brittany gulps the frog in her throat down, forgetting to breath and do almost everything else, except nod whilst blinking profusely.
Santana then allows her fiery eyes to flit back to the piece of shit sat cradling his jaw on the bed, his chest still heaving in heavy breaths from the shock of the assault. "What did I tell you, puto, huh?" She shouts. "I told you that if I ever found you cheating on me, I'd make sure they never found your body, right?"
"Santana," Noah sighs, long and hard. "I'm…" He shrugs one shoulder hopelessly when he realizes that all of the things he could say are what a woman's naked body is to a gay man, inadequate. "I'm…" He tries again, fails.
"A piece of shit." Santana finishes for him, nodding her head slowly around every syllable, like she's talking to the most retarded person on the planet. "Fuck you cabron. You told me you loved me on the phone just now, you fuck!" She says, voice crackling, like a worn vinyl record, under the weight of the tear-ache in her throat. "You'll both be hearing from me."
Brittany sits the steaming mug down and perches herself on the corner of the desk. She reaches over, gently taps a few fingers to the broad muscular shoulder belonging to the man sat in front of the computer with his back to her.
He twists around jumpily, letting out a long breath when he sees that it's just Brittany. "Hey." He says, not even looking at her, but instead glancing around the office.
She tilts her head to the side, softly asks. "You ok, Noah?"
"Yeah," He breathes out, finally giving her his eyes.
She nods at the mug sat on the desk, strings of steam belly-dancing up towards the ceiling from it. "I brought you some coffee."
He allows his face a smile, although it's slight thanks to the pain that thunders throughout his jowl when he attempts a rich smile. "Thanks Britt. Just what I need, coffee to keep me alert." He performs another quick glance around the office.
That's when Brittany places a gentle, concerned, hand to his bouncing knee. "Noah, what are you looking for?"
"Nothin'." He shrugs a shoulder indifferently, flashes a tiny smirk and spins back round in the swivel chair to his computer. "Everything's grand, Britt."
"Why didn't you tell me you were living with her?"
And just like that, Noah's pseudo 'everything's grand, Britt' shatters, leaving jagged little shards on the desk, which he's sure are reflecting his guilty face back at him.
"You told me you weren't serious. But, you were living with her." Her tone is neither abrasive nor accusatory. It's soft, curious, and almost fragile, as though just to blow on it would have it shrivel away.
Noah finally twists back around in his chair, looks his colleague in the eye, before shrugging somewhat sorrowfully. "I love her Britt. We just have our problems, but I do love her."
After a few moments, Brittany just shrugs a shoulder and nods, the heels of her shoes humming quietly against the side of the desk as she casually swings her toned legs. "I can see why you love her. She's like, totally beautiful."
Noah frowns, knowing that look from when he drools over dirty magazines. "Britt –"
"And she's that fiery kind of passionate, too."
He dips his head slightly, peering at Brittany under his eyelids, his features twisted with incredulous. "Seriously, are you really getting a boner for my ex girlfriend right now?"
Brittany quickly looks down at her lap, pushing Noah's shoulder when she sees there's not a tent in her skirt. "I don't have a penis, silly." She puts her palm to her chest, and pleads. "I'm a girl. Everybody knows girls don't have penises," A sultry smirk then carves out in the corner of her mouth. "Well not real ones anyway."
"Britt?"
"Huh?" She says, coming back from her girls-with-real-penises thought form.
"This is weird."
"This is life." Brittany counters, a playful smirk patterning her lips. "You know, I don't know why you even bothered with me when you had Santana waiting for you at home every night. She's mind-blowing, like, beyond belief." She dips her head on those last two words for emphasis.
Noah secures both of his hands on Brittany's shoulders, as if to bring her back down from the stars and ground her. "Brittany, she threw a bat at your head, intending to kill you – maim you for life, at the very least."
Satisfied that he's gotten Brittany to realize just how much vitriol Santana feels for her, he drops his hands back to his lap and leans back in the chair.
"Right, but she was upset, Noah." Brittany reasons. "I understand. I probably would've been the same."
"No, Santana's pretty much always like that." He says, sitting up and glancing around the office again, before settling his eyes back on Brittany. "Angry. If it's not one thing it's another. Do you know how exhausting it is to live with someone who's constantly pissed off? Apart from the angry sex she used to just spring on me, it's not a lot of fun."
Curiosity wriggles Brittany's eyebrows as she says, "Have you ever tried asking her why she's so upset all the time?"
"Britt, you're not getting it. She's never upset – if only. She's angry."
"But Noah, anger is just hurt with all the theatrics."
He eyes her in child-like wonderment for a moment, if not for anything else but for the profound simplicity of her statement.
"…So, have you ever asked her why she's always so upset?"
"No." He mumbles.
"Why not? You should always acknowledge how your partner's feeling, right?"
"No, she's not a feelings kind of girl. She likes to watch UFC."
"Me FC? What's that mean?"
"No, not you you. The letter 'u'. You know UFC, right? The Ultimate Fighting Championship, where lean, muscular guys punch and kick chunks outta one another?"
"Oh, UFC. Right, gotcha. But, maybe she just likes to watch half-naked men get sweaty together."
"Nope. She likes to see them knocking each other out, because she's an angry person."
Brittany nods silently, before clasping her hands in the dip of her skirt and staring at them. "I almost feel like I should talk to her, or something. I mean, I knew you guys were together and I still let you tap this. I kinda feel like I owe her something," She looks up, "You know?"
Noah quickly scoots his chair towards the woman, eyes flitting around the office as he leans close to her and whispers a harsh: "Brittany are you crazy?"
A slow grin creeps over her features. "A little bit."
"She wanted to murder you last week. I still haven't worked out why she didn't. So just," He sucks in a large breath and blows it back out again. "Lay low and keep out of her way."
"So you want the woman you say you love to just keep going through life angry, without ever having talked to anybody about why she's so upset all the time?" Brittany asks, as though unimpressed with Noah's apathy.
"She's dangerous!" Noah finally spits it out. "Ok, she's the niece of Alsarvio Lopez, one of New York's biggest organized crime mobsters. All she has to do is make a phone call, and I could be gunned down at a distance without anybody even hearing the gunshot."
Brittany raises her eyebrows, "Shit, that's insane. Really?"
"Yeah, so just stay out of her way. It was a stupid idea for me to take you back to mine in the first place. I guess I just got lost in my boner." He sighs, frustrated with himself.
What do you think so far?