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 69th cycle. Now cycle 70!

GLEEKATHON FOURTH ANNIVERSARY CYCLE - It's October again, which means another year of Gleekathon is about to wrap up! At the end of the month it will have been four years since I've started doing my daily stories! As always, I will be celebrating this with a special cycle of stories to touch on my favorite stories I've done throughout the year. There will be two installments each on Thursdays, Saturdays, Mondays, and Wednesdays. The remaining days will feature, as they have in the last several months, new chapters of the latest story in my Doctor Who/Glee crossover series. As far as the anniversary stories go, it will be as I've done before, taking those past stories and either doing a prequel, sequel, POV swap, genre swap, alternate ending, or additional scenes.

This story is a POV SWAP to "Face to Face" a Runaway Bride series story originally posted on September 18 2013.

(This is a shift day, which means there will be two stories posted today!)

"These Two Alone"
Santana, Brittany, Quinn, Rachel
Runaway Bride series extra
(no series listing yet)

Brittany had called her from her landline, asking for help with her cell, which was acting up. Once they had fixed the problem, which was barely that at all, they'd gone on talking. They were making plans for the next weekend, and Brittany suggested they invite Quinn.

"Yeah, alright," she'd told her, and Brittany said she'd text and ask if she was available. "Hey, so tomorrow afternoon, I was thinking…

"Oh wait, Quinn just texted back already." There was a beat, and Santana thought she heard Brittany snort. "I think she's hitting on me." Santana blinked and sat up from her bed.

"Excuse me?" she asked, which sounded exactly like 'I will cut her.'

"I don't know, it's really… Hang on." A few seconds later, there was a beep from her phone, and Santana looked. Brittany had forwarded the message, which Santana didn't even know she knew how to do. When she read the message, she was both livid and, frankly, a tiny bit turned on. But once she read it a second time, she realized something wasn't right.

"I don't think that's about you."

"Then who's it about? Does she have a secret boyfriend?" Brittany sounded suddenly intrigued.

"Well if she does, that boy hasn't got… boys. Quinn Fabray, you sneaky little…" Damn it, Berry, get out of my head, there's no way that could be…

"Should I tell her she made a mistake or…"

"No, hang on," Santana told her and, by the sudden silence, she knew, "You already did, didn't you?" Silence again.

"Yes." A few seconds went by, then… "She wrote back. She says she'll see me at school tomorrow and she'll explain then."

They'd left it at that for the night, not that there was much else to be done. It was late, and she had a big test in the morning. She couldn't worry about Quinn and her secret sexcapades. She let Brittany go, telling her to get some sleep already, that she was going to need it.

The next morning, she was at her locker when Quinn popped up, and Santana knew Brittany had told her about telling her about the message. This was probably going to be her telling her to keep her mouth shut unless she wanted Quinn to shut it for her, or any some such attempt to sound harder than she was. Quinn Fabray may have been good, she knew damn well that Santana Lopez was good too; she was excellent.

"We need to talk," Quinn started, and Santana played coy.

"So you talked to Brittany?"

"Yes, and she told me that she told you about the… incident, from last night."

"Incident, is that what we're calling it?"

"Santana, let's not go there, alright?"

"Where exactly should we go then?"

She and Quinn had been through this kind of thing countless times. One would have something over the other, and they would work out who really had the upper hand. It could all go one way or the other and back again, but the impression she got off the blonde as she stood in silence was a new one, she had to admit. It wasn't so much calmer as it was more calculating, like she really couldn't afford to get this one wrong. They'd really stumbled on something big, hadn't they?

That was when Santana had seen her, standing some paces behind Quinn, trying not to be seen. But she had seen her, seen the concern in her eyes, and recalling the misplaced message from the night before, she knew all of a sudden that she had been thinking about Rachel Berry for a reason. That was who the text was meant for, that was who Quinn was… Holy sweet hell…

Then Quinn started to talk. And she kept on talking. And all the while, all Santana could do was to listen.

"Look, I don't know if you've got it figured out or if you think you've got it figured out, and I don't care. That text, the one I sent to Brittany by mistake, it was meant for Rachel. Yes, that Rachel. We were texting each other back and forth, and one of those messages ended up sent to the wrong person, and I think we both freaked out a little when that happened. The thing is, we've been seeing each other, me and her. In secret, behind closed doors, but still even though neither one of us is ready yet to say it to other people, we're together, and she's my girlfriend. It started the day she was supposed to marry Finn. I almost had an accident driving over there, and that was when it finally hit me.

"It hit me that this girl I'd spent so much time being mean to in the past, who drove me crazy, this girl… I was falling for her, that I could love her, and I'm pretty sure I do, now more than ever. I asked her to meet me, to walk away from Finn and that place and come to me, and I told her all that. I don't think either of us knew what we were doing, but that was alright, because we could figure things out together. We took it slow, started spending more time together. That turned into dates… movie dates…

"And it turned into kisses, and seeing what we were ready for. We're taking our time, but whatever we do, wherever we go, we decide together and… I don't think I've been this happy in a long time… I don't think I've been this happy in my entire life. She's the reason I feel that way, she's… all the reasons. It's like I'm finally who I'm supposed to be, who I was trying to figure out all this time. We're keeping it to ourselves not because we want to lie, and not just because we don't know how people will react. Right now it's new, and it's ours, and that's how we want it to be. We don't have that much time left before we're out of here, before I'm at Yale and she's in New York. So it's our secret. No one knows except for you and our parents. She told her dads, I told my mom… Four people know, and you're one of them. I know we haven't always seen eye to eye, but I'm asking you, Santana… You know what this is like, you went through it… something like it, with Brittany. I need to know that I can trust you, that you won't tell anyone, not until we're ready."

In that moment, she wasn't seeing Quinn Fabray the head cheerleader, her rival for the top of the McKinley social food chain, the one she would tear down in a second sometimes if it meant being more popular than her. She was seeing Quinn who was and had been her friend, sometimes, when no one else would. And above all else she kind of saw herself, scared and trying to figure things out when this realization had come to her, scared of losing the one thing, the one person, that made the madness worth it, made her crazy life not so crazy anymore, if only in the space of their connection. This secret wasn't ammunition, she wasn't going to use it.

Instead, she reached over and embraced her friend. She said nothing, just held her. When they separated, Quinn matched her silence, and she went on her way. Santana didn't move. She was staring back at the brunette who'd heard every last word of the long speech. She was crying, and Santana had never seen her look so happy. She left, didn't intervene. One day, she would insist on knowing more. The craziest thing was she wasn't all that surprised. There'd been something between those two from day one, and she had thought it would either come to an all-out brawl or an all-out hookup.

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!