There's Something About Sugar
Sugar leaned around one of the bleacher pillars along the side of the McKinley's playing field. Her eyes narrowed as she carefully surveyed the area. Out on the field the McKinley Titan's footballers ran into each other, tripped over their own feet and proved to anyone watching why they were the worst high school football team in Ohio, if not the Universe. A couple of girls sat on the bottom row closest to the entrance to the changing rooms tittering over their favourite players and sighing every time one came near.
Sugar nonchalantly sloped to the side of the stands and stood on tiptoes so she could see over the seats at head height, peering at everyone currently sitting in the stands. It was almost deserted apart from the stupid fangirls and she easily found her target almost immediately. On the top row at the far side sat her objective. She pulled down her designer sunglasses and settled them comfortably on her nose, as though this would afford her some anonymity, then climbed up the steps to the fourth row from the top. She stumbled into a seat suddenly when her prey looked up from reading a sheaf of papers and straight over at her. She attempted to cheer at the footballers to throw off the scent but garnered more attention after shouting at the top of her voice.
"What was that number nine? I've seen better hand eye coordination in blind synchronised swimming. You couldn't catch a football if it was on fire!"
The player wearing the number nine shirt looked over, bewildered at the sudden outpouring of abuse. The football hit him in the head the second he was distracted and he collapsed to the floor.
"You'd catch the ball better if your manboobs weren't jiggling in the way. They're almost as big as my mom's!"
"Sugar!" Coach Bieste roared through the loud speaker from the bench, "Zip it."
"Sorry, Coach!" Sugar shouted down to the field. "But you know those boys couldn't catch an STD in the boys' showers if it came up and bit them in the-"
"SUGAR!"
"Sorry, Coach. Aspergers."
Sugar watched in amusement as Nine dragged himself to his feet and took his helmet off. Oooh, he was cute with that floppy hair. Wait, no, focus. She sneakily side eyed her target only for her shoulders to slump in defeat when she was caught looking. Brittany was staring at her from her far corner of the bleachers trying to figure out why those insults sounded so familiar.
Sugar pulled her phone and pretended to be very busy on it until Brittany turned back to whatever she was reading. No longer under scrutiny, Sugar speed dialled a number.
"Maple Syrup to Whipped Cream," she said into her phone after hearing the other person pick up.
"I...what? Sugar?"
"What? How'd you know it was me?"
"I have caller ID, you crazy woman."
"Oh yeah, anyway..."
"Hold up, does that make me Whipped Cream?
"Uh..."
"I am not whipped! And why are you calling yourself Maple Syrup? You're not Canadian, have you ever even been to Canada? You know what, don't answer that because I just don't care."
Sugar ignored the snub and answered anyway. "Maple Syrup is sugary and you wouldn't let me have Sex Bomb for a codename. I am totally Canadian, eh. My folks were on their shotgun honeymoon and my mom dropped me like I was hot right alongside Niagara Falls."
Four hours drive away at Louisville University, Santana pulled her phone away from her ear and stared at it, thoroughly perplexed at the words emanating from it. "Sugar, did you want something?"
"Oh yeah, I forgot already. Status report. Rainbow Warrior seems sad about something. She's up on the bleachers on her own, looking miserable. Thought you might want to check in or something."
"Do you know what's wrong? Was someone mean to her? Did you see anything? Were there slushies involved?"
"No, no, there's been no reported sightings of a slushy. I know that we'd go straight to DEFCON 1 if anything like that happened. I've got the status list you gave me inside of my locker in joint top positioning with my Hope Solo poster. I didn't see anything happen, she just seems down."
"Hold on a minute, I've got a call on the other line. Oh, its 00-Squid Lips. Thanks for the intel, Sugar. I owe you."
"It's Maple Syrup, and you're-" Santana hung up. "Welcome." Sugar sighed and looked down to bench where Sam was being waterboy and chattering away into his phone.
"Santana, I just got my maths report back. I got a B minus!"
"Sam, please tell me you did not just ring me to tell me your test score."
"Uh no. Well you see, Britt didn't do too good. She seemed kinda upset, especially when she worked so hard for it. We spent all last night studying."
"What do you mean by 'all last night'?" Santana's voice suddenly acquired a hard edge to it.
"We were studying up until midnight and then I went straight home, I swear! Anyway she took off straight after class finished." He tried to look behind him at the bleachers without turning around which gave him the appearance of having an invisible itch he couldn't scratch.
"Thanks, Sammy boy. I gots it from here."
"Next time you hear from Merce-"
"Don't panic, Trouty. She will hear nothing but non horrible things about you."
"Thanks."
"Whatever. Stop using up my battery."
Brittany watched with an eyeroll as Sugar hung up her fervent half whispered conversation and Sam desperately tried not to look at her as he finished up speaking earnestly into his phone. To her complete non surprise her own phone began blasting out the theme tune to Fondue for 2.
"Hey," she couldn't help but smile at her caller, the smile evident in the inflection in her voice.
"Hey baby. How's your day going?"
"About a million times better now I've spoken to my wonderful girlfriend." Brittany giggled. "How's your day going?"
"Oh you know..." She looked at the test in her hand and crumpled it up and threw it in her bag. "School."
"Yeah. I know. I can't wait until tomorrow. I'll be home by eight at the latest. I can't wait to see you."
"Me too," Brittany's smile could be sensed in her words. "San, there's something I got to tell you." She said with a sly glance down at Sam who suddenly found the disaster of a football game very interesting. "I think Sam's stalking me."
"Whu-what?"
"You know we're study buddies and he's really cool at showing me tricks on how to make it easier to figure out the questions, and magic tricks too, not wanky ones though, but he walks me to class and we eat lunch together and sometimes if he can he'll walk me home. He's sitting at the bottom of the bleachers right now. What if he's in love with me?"
"Uh... uh...uhhhh. Listen, B. If that mop headed, life preserver faced, pasty white school-boy strippergram is bothering you, I'll shave his Bieber head. Oh gross, I just pictured how he'd look."
Brittany chuckled, "Like a weird lady parts face."
"Britt, that's too gross."
"And Sugar's being weird as well. Like, weirder than usual. What if she's in love with me?" This thought somehow repulsed both girls at once, even more so than the thought of Sam crushing on Brittany. "Or... what if..." Brittany hummed, "You've got something you want to tell me, Santana?"
There was a momentary silence down the phone line and then Santana sighed in relief. "Oh, thank god. Okay, I might have told Sam-"
"Threatened."
"Threatened Sam," Santana acquiesced, "to keep an eye on you for me and make sure, you know, you're okay. But if you're getting serious creeper vibes, Britt, I will staple his pufferfish lips together."
"I know, I know you would, I love you too. And Sugar? Is she on the payroll too? She's acting odder than usual. They're not very covert, you know."
"Sugar...I don't..." Santana could hear the ominous silence down the phone. "Apart from being naturally weird she might be the back up's backup. And she came to me and offered, what could I say? Trouty's phone balance is unreliable. I know for a fact he spends most of his call time on Aretha and then calls me up to tell me about his stupid math score! Uh... so how did your math test go today?"
"I just want to forget about it."
"Britt..."
"I know. I did all this studying and still sucked."
"You don't suck. Except for when, you know," Santana cleared her throat, suddenly conscious she was in the college library. "Ahem. Just say the word and I'll be right over and we'll run away to Europe or Antarctica, or anywhere you want and to hell with everyone's bullshit."
"Sant-"
"I mean it, B. I spend all week thinking about you and waiting for the weekend just wishing it would hurry up, and then on Sunday night I don't want to leave you. And I don't know if I can take much more of Sam's spy impressions when he calls. I thought he was murdering Sean Connery the other day but it turns out it he was supposed to be Liam Neeson."
"You should have bribed Tina instead," Brittany looked around as though expecting Tina to materialise nearby. "At least I don't usually notice when she's around, she's so quiet in stealth mode." Brittany could hear Santana laughing down the line and smiled at the sound. "I cant wait until you get here. There's something I need to talk to you about."
"Hmmm?"
"Okay, so, every Thursday night we have a movie night at Tina's house. Me and Sam and Tina and Blaine, and Sugar turns up too even though I'm pretty sure she dumped Rory before he left so she can't be in the pity party club. Anyway, it has to be Thursday because you're back on Friday but, Sam's got nerd con next week so our movie marathon of heartbroken separation angst and sulking has to be moved to Friday, and we were wondering if you want to go? If you don't I wont go, that's cool."
"Uh, yes?"
"Awesome. I'm going to try to persuade Sugar to host this time."
"Sugar? Why if you're usually at Tina's?"
"That's what I want to talk to you about. We had a glee club meeting at Sugar's one evening, naturally I was snooping around and I saw something."
"I don't want to know if you saw her parents getting it on."
"No, her parents weren't even there. That's why the movie night has to be moved. We need to snoop some more."
"What did you see?"
"I'd rather not say over the phone. I don't know who could be listening. Except for Sugar, she looks like she's going to topple over if she tries to listen in any harder."
Brittany stared at Sugar until the younger girl made a great show of checking the time, grabbed her bag and ran off, slapping number Nine's butt as she skipped past him.
"Did you hire JBI? He might have tapped the line."
"Naw, I did try to threaten him but he's more scared of you than he is of me after you went all Britney Spears on him. I think he's way too scared to even look at you, Britt, after you kicked the crap out of him. Ah, damn. I've got to go, my class is going in now. I'll see you tomorrow babe. Love you."
"Love you too."
a/n I reject Glee's reality and substitute my own