Title: Just a Dream (½)

Pairings: Brittana. Minor Faberry

Friendships: over arching Unholy Trinity, sub line Quintana, Fierce/Quitt

Inspired by: Quinn's pink hair, Just A Dream by Nelly (audio on the page), me not wanting to write TifR

Rated: T (for Quinn and Santana's language)

Summary: If you ever loved somebody put your hands up

Word Count: 2,320

Disclaimer: I don't own Glee or it's beautiful women, er, characters.


Quinn Fabray was aware it was moderately sociopathic, her tendency to try on and wear personalities like outfits. She changed who she was on a daily basis, no warning, no remorse. Don't want to be the unpopular social outcast anymore? Okay, let's shoot for top of the social food chain. Head cheerleader has a nice ring to it. Pad your popularity resume, date the quarterback, make friends with the meanest and the nicest girl in school. They're already best friends and codependent on one another? Even better. Keep the lowest members of the class system down. Call people out on how they differ from the norm you've set. If they aren't beautiful on your scale, make sure they know it. Slushie the girl in knee socks and Mary Janes. She still have spirit in her? Crush it.

Tired of that trite existence? Don't want to be the virginal president of the celibacy club anymore? Have sex with the biggest man whore in the school. He's best friends with your boyfriend? Even fucking better. Granted, the whole pregnancy thing sort of threw that one into a whole other direction that you weren't entirely prepared for. The getting kicked out of your home and disowned by your father was a rather violent kick in the teeth. Not to mention the whole growing a human being in your body (completely destroying all the work you'd spent the last two years putting into those abs) and loving it before it really even exists only to give her away because you know, you fucking know, she'll be better off without you.

Yeah, all that self-esteem you thought you had? Gone.

Back to the basics. Rebuild your reputation. New quarterback, new boyfriend.

Maybe she should have just walked away from glee the first time she had the chance. Or the second. Or the third.

Why did she keep going back to it?

Change in the first string line-up? Switch it up, go with the flow. Bide your time. But fuck it all if these people don't get under your skin. Those stupid gleeks their annoying almost unyielding good-will. Sam and his promise rings, don't-pity-me- angry frown and mournfully adorable siblings. Puck's stupid chauvinistic smirk and sad eyes. Santana and her Ima-badass-from-Lima-Heights-Adjacent and stopped-being-subtle-the-first-thousand-times sex eyes at Brittany. And Brittany? God, that girl.

There were times you're convinced the whole 'vapid, blonde cheerleader' is a personality Brittany wears when she's around certain (most) people because there are the things that she says when only you can hear, or the way she looks at you like sheknows everything. You can hide from any one, present any front and the masses would line up to believe you've been like that from the very beginning, but not Brittany.

Or Rachel Berry, for what ever it matters.

That scene at prom shouldn't have happened. You can't believe you got so out of hand, but it was Rachel and the girl just pushes, and pushes and pushes. And you can't really help that you snapped because you can handle Britt seeing that side of you, because Britt won't call you out on it. Brittany can keep a secret, whether she means to or not. But Rachel has this weird obsession with getting everything out in the open, and it fucks with your plans because you like your secrets to be secret.

But you can't bring the diva down the way you would before because she's under your skin without you wanting her there. She's a part of your life without your permission. Every which way you turn, she's there. She's friends with your friends. She's dating your ex-boyfriends. And the only consolation you have is that even though you've fallen from social grace, she hasn't risen. And you can't explain it, that feeling of absolute panic that arises within you at the thought that she might one day be so farabove you that you aren't even in the same stratosphere anymore but there it is. There it is where it shouldn't be, so what do you do?

Dye your hair, pick up a cancer stick, rip holes in the knees of Britt's skinny jeans.

Be somebody else.

It's a hell of a lot easier than dealing at any point.

She's drawn out of her musings when the sound of crunching gravel taps her eardrums and she finds herself glaring passed the lit cigarette dangling between her fingers at the toes of shiny new white sneakers. Cheerio standard. Sue Sylvester standard.

"You look like shit, Fabray."

Santana.

Quinn starts to fight a smirk, but realizes that this new personality, this girl with the inverted cross on her shirt and a stud in her nose probably does smirk, so she lets it out even as she keeps her head ducked to cover it with pink-shaded hair. She brings the burning stick to her mouth and takes a drag, fighting like hell against the urge to cough it right back up. It's not an easy habit to pick up, deliberately filling your lungs with smoke and you've veins with chemicals and she's only been doing it four three days. At least she stopped throwing up afterwards.

"What the fuck do you want, Lopez?" he voice is gravel to her own ears so she can only imagine what it sounds like to her the person she might have once considered her best friend. Maybe. Those lines never were easily drawn. And if the darker girl is at all thrown off by Quinn use of language, it doesn't come across in her voice.

"School started, like, two hours ago and your sneaking smokes under the bleachers. Please tell me what's wrong with this picture."

Quinn can't help it, she snickers into her hand which quickly transforms into a shoulder shaking, full bodied cough. All phlegm and gunk, and it feels as disgusting as it sounds and she knows when she looks up Santana is going to be smirking down at her like she just proved her God damned point. She flings the cigarette away like it was at fault and kind of wants to kick something because she may have been the master of condescending looks, but nobody smirked like Santana Lopez.

She does look up, knowing she can't avoid it forever and wants to get it over with as quickly as possible, and immediately her eyes are drawn to the WMHS emblazoned on the other girl's chest. She could have guessed what the darker girl was wearing based on the shoes alone, but there was something about undeniable proof staring her in the face that made her fists curl in anger.

If Quinn changed personalities like outfits, then Santana wore this one like her favorite pair of sweatpants. Comfortable and loose. The pair you know you should throw out because they haven't flattered you in ages (they never really did) but you keep them around because you can slip them on without thought or strain.

"Eyes are up here, Fab-gay." Snark, Quinn could deal with snark.

"Nice outfit, Lez-pez, how much of your soul did that particular brand of conformity cost you?"

Santana clicked her tongue and the former head cheerleader winced, suddenly aware of the headache she'd gotten from smoking and hacking up half a lung. "Oh yes, please, lecture me on conformity when you're sitting there looking like every other fake-ass punk wannabe burnout that I've ever seen in my life."

They glare at one another for a moment, two alphas looking for a weakness, any weakness, to exploit. Quinn sees one first, she must have because she's never know Santana to hesitate, and it's there, written all over tanned features. Dark, baggy circles under her eyes, worry lines etching themselves at the corners of her mouth and small wisps of hair out of an otherwise uniform ponytail. "I look like shit?" she rehashed, "Have you looked in a mirror lately or do they all shatter as soon as you do?" She watches as Santana's nostrils flare and her jaw moves like she's grinding her teeth, and Quinn realizes starkly that the other girl was holding back. She sort of want to play with it, see how far she can push the other girl until she snaps, but it's the way that notion mirrors her earlier thought about Rachel that makes her stop. "Spit it out, Santana, before you fracture something," she rolls her eyes and digs through the messenger bag by her feet until it produces a ballpoint pen. Just because she was willing to listen didn't mean she had to look interested.

She starts with random swirls on the inside of her wrist, no particular pattern in mind and she forces herself not to glance up when the sound of gravel grinding gravel picks up again and she can only assume the cheerleader in front of her it dragging her feet across the ground. Nerves? From Santana Mother Fucking Lopez?

"I need your help."

It's quick, strung together like one word and low, off to the side like the smaller girl was no longer looking at Quinn, but the (sort of) blonde had been straining to hear it and did so without any trouble. Still. "I'm sorry? What was that?" she glanced up through pale eyelashes.

Santana's nose was flared something fierce and her lips were pressed almost painfully as she glared down on an unnaturally calm Quinn. "Your help. I need your fucking help." Their little staring contest begins again and know that she knows what to look for Quinn can pick up on things easier. Like the way Santana keeps her hands at her thighs, purposefully not crossing them across her chest or how the nails on her right hand have been bitten down to the quick. She was nervous as fuck and trying like hell to remain open and honest. But her head was still held high, proud. It would be endearing, perhaps even a little heartening, if the blonde didn't already know exactly what this pertained to.

"Brittany finally gave you the ultimatum then?" she dismissed apathetically, eyes back down on the ink staining her wrist. Punks were apathetic, right? Rebellious, don't-give-a-fuck types?

Whatever, that's how she was going to play it.

"She told you about that?" her voice was crossed somewhere between a groan and a whine and from the upper limit of her vision Quinn could see tan hands drop further along tan legs from how heavy shoulders deflating.

Quinn snorted. "If by that you mean everything then yeah, she told me that. You realize you aren't her only friend, right? There are other people in the world she talks to." Santana's fingers twitched against the underside of her skirt, and the blonde shook her head at the faltering gesture. Just because the Latina was anti-social and hated everyone, didn't mean Brittany was the same. It made more fucking sense that the other blonde was the most friendly and open person Quinn had ever met, considering the girl was head-over-fucking-heels for her polar opposite. "Besides," she shrugged like the information she was about to deliver didn't matter, "Who do you think told her to give you one?"

She keeps the pen moving against her skin but her eyes are totally focused on Santana's right hand curling into a fist. The darker girl was left-handed, but Quinn knew she liked to swing with her right first to get a fight off the ground and if she was going to get decked she wanted some sort of forewarning. But the fight went out of her almost as quickly as it came and she was shoulders-slumped and angst-y once more. "I can't believe she told you." It irks Quinn more than it probably should, that Santana was willing to give up that quickly.

"You can't seriously be mad at her for it," but the look she's giving the darker girl is wholly ignored. Quinn had spent a lot of time with Brittany over the summer, and yeah, they talked about it. They talked about everything. Brittany didn't work things out in her head, she was more of a talker and Quinn? Well, Quinn was good at listening to what Brittany wasn't saying. And for everything bit of information she gleaned from the taller girl, there were about a million more that stayed locked up in her head. "You told her you were in love with her, then got pissed when she wouldn't break up with the first decent relationship she had since Mike Chang in the eighth grade for you, even though you were still with Sam. And then when she does break up with him you blow her off rather than talk to her because you're scared and when you both finally get to a good place, you freak again and make out with half the football team at Puck's party. She had to talk to someone and considering you're the one she normally goes to and that avenue was kind of off limits, you should thank God she loves you enough to go to the only other person in the whole fucking world who knows you well enoughnot to flip her shit about it."

Santana's glaring at the ground and Quinn's back to wanting to kick her to get some sort of reaction that she could work with. The blonde huffs and throws her pen back into the bag, blowing on the ink on her skin to dry it and, wait… did that kind of look like a five point star?

"She loves me?"

Quinn blinks and looks up to find Santana's fingers twisted together uncertainly. "You're a fucking idiot, but yeah, she loves you. She's fucking in love with you, and you already know that."

"So you'll help me." She stating it now, not asking and the former head cheerleader realizes that it was had been coming down to this point from the very beginning.

"Yeah, I'll help you," she sighs and adds "bitch" for good measure, just because she could.


Thoughts? And yes I'm aware I should be working on This is for Real, but it's hard.