"I wanted you to embrace all your awesomeness, Santana. I never asked you to include me in your coming out statement!" The moment the last word left her lips, Brittany gasped. "Wait, that didn't come out ri-"
"You let me put myself out there for all of the school to come after me and I wasn't allowed to say you were my GIRLFRIEND? How is that okay Brittany? Just... how?" She was yelling now. She didn't care. To think that Brittany expected her to come out, but wouldn't do it for her was just something that had never occured to her.
"Well of course you can say I'm your girlfriend!" Confidence had returned to her eyes. "I mean, you kinda haven't asked me yet, so I guess you shouldn't, but that wasn't what I meant." An arched brow signaled Santana's willingness to listen. "You said we were gay. You are gay, Santana. I don't think I am. I don't know what I am."
"I guess you're bi then, right?" The palpitations that had radiated throughout her chest began to recede. A wrong label was nothing to be afraid of. "Sorry, Britt, I shouldn't have done that. You're right." Santana sidled closer to Brittany, gently backing her against the lockers on the side of the hall. Belatedly, she realized that they'd been having this very private conversation in the midst of the school, with more than a few people around them. She glanced around. "Did you want something, peasants? Because I's about to gets my mack on, and I don't need an audience." The area cleared quickly as the lesser students scurried from under her dark gaze.
Brittany had watched the exchange silently, not moving from where Santana had left her. Now she spoke. "I don't know if I'm bi, Santana. It doesn't seem like the right word either. It's like bicycle - you told me when we were kids that it was called that because it had two wheels, not like my tricycle with three. So bisexual means two sexes. But there's like, so many other things you can be. But then there's pansexual, but that makes me think of panhandling and that's begging and that didn't work, but I don't know yet. I could just say queer but it seems like a cop out, and I really was starting to understand it better but then things changed and now I just don't know."
Santana was stunned. She had always known that the right piece of information could and would set Brittany's mental filing system to work, correlating and philosophizing over the most seemingly random facts into one cohesive whole. She just hadn't known that her realization of her own orientation would set this one going. "How did me realizing I was gay make things hard for you Britt? I don't understand."
"Huh?" Brittany had gotten a slightly distant look in her eye, one that Santana knew usually meant that she was either daydreaming or making a connection. "Oh, no Santana, not that!" She giggled softly. "Things changed because Miss Holliday went away and we hadn't finished talking. Miss Pillsbury tries her best, but she's no help when it comes to this kinda thing. Did you know that she and Dr. Carl never even had SEX? I mean, how could you be married and not have sex, that's like, illegal, isn't it? I wonder"
"Focus, Britt." Santana gave a small sigh. Brittany didn't exactly have a train of thought; she had bumper cars. "So Miss Holliday was helping you figure out what you are? Don't you just, like, know? I mean, I hear what you're saying about there being more to sexuality than straight, gay, or bi, but then wouldn't that just make you pansexual?" Tears began to well up in Brittany's eyes. "Wait, what did I do? Britt-Britt? Honey?" Santana reached up, gently grasping soft cheeks between both hands, as she tried to wipe away tears that started to fall even as she watched. Tears caused by someone else, she could handle with ease, even though it killed her. Tears that she herself caused scared the living crap out of her. "Please, Britt, talk to me. I'm sorry?" Even as the question came out of her, she knew that she'd gladly walk back into that AV room and kiss Jewfro if it would make Brittany smile.
Brittany sniffed, lifting her eyes to meet the dark ones staring back at her. "I just, I don't KNOW what I am, and I don't like not knowing. Because if I don't know what I am, how can I be sure that I'm the right person for you? And that can't be right, because you're the one I love more than ANYTHING and so when I can't figure it out, it makes me think that I really am just stupid, and you don't deserve to be stuck with someone stupid. But it's HARD and I don't like it and, oh Tana-" she trailed off. The nickname no one at McKinley had ever heard her use had slipped out before she could catch it. She waited for the girl in front of her to tense and look around, but brown stayed locked with blue, only a slight nod of the dark head indicating that what she said had been noticed, and that it was okay. She began again.
"Tana, I don't know what to do when we aren't friends. But if I'm not good enough to be your girlfriend, I don't know what to do as your friend without being friends who talk with their tongues super close and I LOVE you, I really do, but-" The final words were swallowed up as Santana finally realized the real problem and rushed to kiss the lips of the girls she'd adored for as long as she could remember. For the very first time, Santana Lopez and Brittany Pierce were standing in the hallways of William Mckinley High School, kissing like there was no tomorrow, not caring that they had once again developed an audience, albeit a much more appreciative one than what had gathered earlier.
It was the clapping that brought them back to themselves.
Santana made a conscious decision to end the kiss slowly, reducing it to a soft, almost chaste pressing of lips before placing a last, lingering kiss on the corner of Brittany's mouth. Rather than pulling out from the circle of arms she found herself in, she unwound her own hands from about Brittany's neck and spun carefully. She ended up placing her small hands atop the long, slender fingers that were wrapped around her waist, and leaning back against her girlfriend's chest. 'My girlfriend,' she thought, before she remembered. "Hey Britt-Britt?" she asked softly, still smirking at their friends, who were still watching, waiting to see what happened next.
"Yeah Tana?" Santana could feel the smile against the top of her head as the name was once again spoken.
"Wanna be my girlfriend?" If the excited squeal that nearly deafened her a moment later hadn't been a clue, her near bifurcation from the tightening of Brittany's arms assured her of the answer. Even so, she waited.
"YES! A million, trillion times yes!" The kiss that followed put Santana crosseyed and nearly knocked her out, not that she was complaining.
The rest of New Directions broke out once more into clapping and cheering, and the last few minutes of the day were taken up with explaining the beginning of the fight, Santana being amazed that literally no one in the club cared that they were together, except to be happy for them, and fielding questions from a few of the fellow students with stronger back bones. It seemed like the thing that had started the whole argument - Santana taping her coming out speech in for a school PSA against bullying - was no longer a big secret. But really, it didn't matter to her anymore. She'd gotten what she wanted most - Brittany.
"Britt?"
"Hmm?"
"I figured out the right label for you."
"Santana, I told you, I just don't know right now. I don't want to have a label just because you put one on me. I'm not something you shoplifted."
"I know, I know. But I think you'll like this one anyway. Just hear me out, okay?"
"Okay."
Santana rolled over onto her side, waiting as Brittany did as well, so that they were facing one another on the bed. A small, tan hand reached up and smoothed a strand of blond hair behind a perfectly shaped ear. Foreheads leaned forward simultaneously and met in the middle. A gentle breath, a reassuring smile, and she spoke the words that were ringing throughout her heart.
"You are simply love, in its purest form."