Title: Smart Talk
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: none
Summary: Who says Santana's the smart one in the relationship?
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Fox and Ryan Murphy. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made from this work of fiction.
When people thought of Brittany – for some reason no one actually knew her last name, and were thankful she was the only 'Brittany' in school since the other one was forced to move to Belgium or something – their first thought was blonde cheerleader, which was very true. Their second thought was usually dumb as a post, which was not true at all.
It was not a fluke that Brittany had made it to her sophomore year. It was not the teachers being generous or her friends letting her cheat off their test papers – except in Spanish; that was a language she never really understood – or sneaking into the teacher's office to change her marks – although her and Santana had snuck in for entirely different reasons. She was actually just good in school. Not just good, but rather brilliant.
The day that the rest of Glee found out was a day they would remember for as long as they remembered Brittany herself.
There were three different Physics classes: academic, regular and remedial. All of Glee was in one of the regular classes with the exception of Brittany, who was generally assumed to be in remedial physics, and Finn, who didn't take physics at all. The teacher of the 'Glee class', as he called it, had assigned a group project that involved creating a rollercoaster that was required to meet certain specifications: it needed a loop, and jump and needed to hold a little metal ball that was their 'car'. The glee club had split into two different groups of five, but they were collaborating in the middle of rehearsal.
Santana was staring at her notebook, fiddling with her pencil, and listening to the increasingly stupid ideas of what to do for the project. Two separate coasters had been built and were resting on the table before her, but neither of them were working properly. When the idea of lining the rails with butter was suggested, Santana had finally had enough.
She threw her notebook on the table and glared at all of the surprised faces that turned toward her. "Are you all really that deficient? Why don't we just ask someone in academic physics? They did this project months ago." She rolled her eyes at their confused expressions.
Rachel piped up from across the table, "But no one here is in academic physics." The unspoken obviously caused Santana to raise an eyebrow and Rachel started to duck behind Quinn before she realized what she was doing. There was a chorus of agreement that made Santana roll her eyes again.
"That's where you're wrong, and I'm right. Honestly, what would you people do without me?" She turned slightly in her chair and called over her shoulder, "Britt, can you come here a sec?" She turned back to the table with a smug look on her face, but the rest of the club looked at her like she was insane.
Brittany broke off her conversation with the pianist about rainbows and puppies, and skipped over to where Santana was. She stood behind the brunette and gently ran her fingers through thick black hair. "Yeah, Santana?" Santana closed her eyes briefly, shivering, before a knowing look from Quinn brought her back to her senses.
"Can you tell these people how to fix their roller coasters? Their complaints are making my ears hurt." And then Santana sat back to watch her girlfriend work her magic.
Brittany moved from behind Santana's chair to look at the coasters closely, twisting around to see them from every angle. The rest of the Glee kids just watched with bemused expressions on their faces. Brittany smiled before saying, "Well, if you're going to make this look work, you're going to have to raise the level of your initial drop, or at least make the radius smaller; there is no way the ball will have accumulated enough acceleration to make it all the way around. The ball is still 50 grams right? I'd say make the drop around 60 centimetres, instead of 45, that way the centripetal force will be enough to keep the ball on the track. Oh, and you might want to change the material you're using for the rails, the coefficient of friction is way too high with this stuff. You guys don't need to use simple machines like we did, right?" She glanced at Santana, who shook her head.
Brittany straightened and smiled that sunny smile at the dumbfounded group. When they all just stared back at her like she was from another planet, her smile dimmed just a little bit. Santana saw it and reached out to grab Brittany's hand, squeezing slightly. "Thanks, babe." Brittany grinned again and leaned down to brush her nose against Santana's – they had a strict no-kissing rule while in public, though that was one they had broken quite a few times, usually at Santana's insistence.
"Okay, I'm going to go find Tinkles. He promised to talk to me about harmonic frequencies. I need to write a report on it for next week. See you later," Brittany waved at her friends before skipping away.
Santana turned to watch her go – Brittany really did have a fantastic ass – before turning around and smirking. "Told you."
"But….how…?" Rachel seemed to be the only one who could string words together – no surprise there, really – but not quite coherently yet.
Santana explained, feeling proud that she had the smartest girlfriend, "She's in academic physics, math and chemistry. She's planning on going to Princeton and has already been invited to their summer program for high school students,"
"But she though a ballad was a duck!" Kurt yelled, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
"Yeah, well, words aren't her strong point; numbers are. So, why don't you all take her advice and make those changes. I have somewhere to be, and I think I've helped you all enough for today." She headed for the door, leaving behind a group of very puzzled Glee members, all of whom were sifting through their memories for hints of Brittany's apparent genius. Quinn would eventually remember that when her sister still lived at home, Brittany had come over, looked at Jen's college textbook and pointed at an equation in Jen's notes, saying "That's wrong." Quinn hadn't thought anything of it at the time.
Before she reached the door, Santana grabbed Brittany's wrist and dragged her out of the music room with her, heading for the girl's bathroom. Brittany closed the door behind them and barely had time to lock it before Santana pressed her up against the flat surface and kissed her hard, over and over again. When they had to break for air, Santana tilted her head and asked, "So we're still on for chemistry tutoring later?" Brittany nodded, knowing that very little tutoring actually happened during those sessions, but found no reason to complain. Santana smiled, "Excellent. Now, have I ever told you that you talking smart turns me on?" She had, but Brittany wasn't really able to speak by this point, her mind distracted by Santana's sneaky fingers. "Now, I should probably say thank you for helping me out with the project, hmm?" And with that, Santana dropped to her knees and Brittany's eyes slammed shut.
"I can talk about trigonometry or kinematics if you want, Santana."
"Not now, B."