Ship: Brittany/Santana.
Rating: Eventual NC-17.
Summary: Santana's eyes were two black spheres: they absorbed everything and not let anything slip away. Not that Brittany wanted to know more. She hadn't liked what she had seen on the surface, then she doubted that what lurked in depth could please her (inspired to the Hush, Hush saga by Becca Fitzpatrick).
Author's Note: He there anybody! This is my first fic here! I call this 'my baby', since I care about it so much you have no idea. I don't know if you have read the wonderful book "Hush, Hush". Anyone who has not done yet, do it, because it's an absolute masterpiece!
However this Brittana long is my humble tribute to the writer of the book, let's say that this is the most romantic way to see it.
The prologue is a brief glimpse of the two protagonists. In fact, the book itself is descriptive, yes, but it is in first person, I wanted to turn it into third, highlighting both Brittany that Santana; I hope I've have done it right.
Thank you for reading of favorite / following this if you do.
The wonderful poster that was created by RenoLover / EdyFerrone who is also translating this story from Italian to English!
Leave me a comment to let me know if you like this!
/
Chapter 1 Biology
For if God did not have pity for the angels who did evil,
but sent them down into hell, to be kept in chains of eternal night till they were judged;
(2 Peter 2:4)
Loire Valley, France. November 1565.
When the storm broke, Noah had just invited the daughter of a pastor under the grassy bank of the Loire. They had to retreat to the gate of the boy's property; otherwise they would get sick. The girl clutched to his companion's chest, so that he could hold her hard, as if to protect her. The fence was close, so close that they both breathed a sigh of relief, as the rain kept pouring down violently, preventing the view of what is before them.
Noah looked up suddenly to his left, noticing something moving snappy toward that side. A curvy shape presented itself before his eyes, now filled with fear. He looked to his right, but his companion had disappeared.
That figure had neck, legs and arms totally uncovered making him guess that it had a shape similar to a human being, a woman in particularly.
The stranger stopped in front of him with wet hair that was thrown violently on the face, creating an even denser aura of mystery around her.
"Who goes there?" The boy said, putting his hand on his sword, carefully deposited in its sheath.
The girl smiled a grin that was barely perceptible because of the long hair covering her wet face.
"Don't make fun of the Duke of Langeais," he warned his interlocutor, "I asked your name, tell me."
"Duke?" The girl leaned against the tree next to her. "Or bastard?"
Noah finally drew his sword. "Take your words back! My father was the Duke of Langeais. And now I am the Duke!" He screamed, cursing because the answer seemed childish and clumsy.
The girl shook her head. "Your father wasn't the old Duke."
That insinuation made blood boil in his veins, so he raised his sword and asked: "And what about your father?" He didn't know yet the names of all his vassals, but he was learning. The girl's last name would have stuck into his mind. "I will ask you once again: who are you?"
Suddenly, the girl took a few steps toward him, not caring at all that the son of the Duke could recognize her or not. By now her neck was a few inches from Noah's sword, but it didn't take long: with a decisive, but not too violent gesture, she moved the tip of his sword, and said to him: "I am the devil's servant."
Noah frowned.
"You're crazy." He replied through gritted teeth, evidently frightened. "Get out of my sight."
A minimum step forward, or some other movement, and he wouldn't have waited another second to hit her with his sword.
And suddenly the ground under Noah's feet began to shake violently. Gold and red flames exploded behind his eyelids. He found herself bent over, with nails embedded in his thighs, trying to make sense of what was going on.
His mind was reeling, as if he had lost control.
The mysterious girl bent down so she could look into his eyes.
"Listen to me carefully. I need something and I'm not leaving until I got it. Do you understand?" She said, leaning toward him and touching his chin, squeezing it between her index and thumb.
Noah gritted his teeth and shook his head to declare his identity, his refusal. He would have gladly slapped her, but he couldn't.
He was trapped in the grip of these strange events.
"You have to swear loyalty." The girl said, standing up. "Get on your knees and kiss my feet."
Noah wanted to laugh, but his throat didn't respond to the command, while his right knee began to bend, as if he was hit from behind, although there was no one behind him, and suddenly he found himself in the mud. He rolled on his side, shaken by retching.
"Swear." The girl repeated.
The unbearable heat went up from the Noah's hands to his neck. He had to use all his strength just to be able to clench his fists. He laughed of himself, but there was no joy in his laughter. He had no idea how she could, but he was sure that girl was making him feel weak, sick.
And he couldn't revolt to it.
So he decided to say what he had to, but in his heart he swore that he would kill that girl sooner or later.
"Lady, I swear loyalty." Noah hissed.
The girl held out her hand, helping him up. "Come here at the beginning of the month of Cheshvan. In the days between the new moon and the full moon, I will need your services."
"Two weeks?" Noah was trembling in fear and anger. "I am the Duke of Langeais."
"You're a Nephilim." The girl sprawled a naughty smile.
Noah had a curse on his lips, but he decided to swallow it down. "What did you say?" He asked in an icy tone full of poison instead.
"You belong to the biblical race of Nephilims. Your real father was a fallen angel. You're only half a mortal." The girl's dark eyes claimed the gaze of his interlocutor, not interrupting the iced look.
From one corner of Noah's hidden mind the voice of his instructor resurfaced, reading the Bible and explaining the breed born from the union between the fallen angels and mortal women. A frightening and powerful race. Noah was shaken by a chill, which was not only due to disgust. "Who are you?"
In response, she turned and walked away. Noah wanted to follow her, but failed to order his legs to move. But while kneeling on the ground and bleary-eyed from the drops of rain, he could see two large scars on the girl's half-covered back.
From what he could see, they formed an inverted V.
"You're a ... fallen angel?" He screams. "Your wings have been torn, right?"
The girl, angel or whoever she was, didn't turn, but Noah didn't need any confirmations. "This duty I owe you." He shouted. "I demand to know what it is!"
In the humid air of the cemetery, a laugh resounded, while the curvaceous figure receded, becoming more and more blurred.
/
Lima, Ohio. April 2012.
She enters the biology classroom and gasps. Attached someway to the blackboard, there are a Barbie and a Ken. Their arms are crossed so that their hands are touching, and they're naked except for fake leaves placed at strategic points. Above their heads, written in bold pink, hangs: "WELCOME TO HUMAN REPRODUCTION (SEX)."
Next to her, Quinn Fabray whispers: "That's why school prohibits the use of cameras: a photo like this on the school magazine would be enough to convince the Ministry of Education to cut biology off. And that would make this time available for something really productive, like taking private lessons from pretty boys and aristocrats."
It's her recurring idea, she loves the male gender, especially if they're tall, blond or black. It really deosn't matter, the important thing is that they have some nice interesting muscles.
"You're strange, Quinn. I thought you've been waiting for this course since the beginning of the semester." The blue-eyed blonde girl answers.
Quinn looks down: "This lessons can't teach me anything I don't know already, Britt."
"What? Weren't you a virgin?" She asks her best friend.
"Keep your voice down." Quinn says worried, winking at Brittany a second before the bell rings, sending them all to their seats, the two girls next to each other.
Coach Sylvester enters overwhelmingly in the classroom: "Places everyone, you idiots." She breaks in.
She considers the teaching of biology class a marginal activity if compared to her work as coach of the Cheerios, and they all know it.
"You guys may haven't noticed that sex is more than a 15 minutes quickie in the back seat of the car. In fact, it's science. And what's science?"
"Pure boredom." Someone shouts from the back of the classroom.
"The only subject I'm not a total crap in." Someone else adds.
The eyes of the coach focus on the first line. "Brittany?"
"The study of something." She answers, interested in the words of her coach. In fact, if it weren't for all the jokes in the background, the lesson would even be interesting.
The coach nods, smiling, because she's felt the slight interest of her student. "What else?"
"The knowledge gained through experimentation and observation." Perfect, she has given an elaborate answer. Maybe even too much.
"Say it with your own words." Ms. Sylvester admonishes.
Brittany touches her upper lip with the tip of her tongue and tries an alternative to her words, the ones spoken earlier. "Science is an investigation."
"Science is an investigation." The coach repeats, rubbing her hands. "Science transforms us all into spies."
This way, it almost sounds funny, but Brittany has spent enough time in the coach's class not to delude herself. "A good investigation takes a lot of practice." She continues.
"Sex takes a lot of practice too." Someone comments again from the back of the classroom. There are some giggles, but they're isolated because Ms. Sylvester has already pointed her warningly finger against the boy who has spoken.
"That won't be part of your homework today." She answers, then changes the subject. "Brittany, you've been sitting next to Quinn since the beginning of the year.
Brittany nods, even though she has a bad feeling about this.
"And both work for the school newspaper." Brittany nods again. "I bet you know everything about each other."
Quinn kicks Brittany slightly. Pierce knows exactly what her friend is thinking: their teacher has not the faintest idea on what they know about each other. And it's not about secrets buried in the pages of their diaries. Quinn and Brittany are to be considered twins, different twins.
Then the coach turns to the whole class: "In fact, I'm sure each of you knows a lot about the person who's sitting next to you. And that's a reason that made you choose these places, right? It's about custom. Unfortunately, the best detectives aren't into custom. It makes the investigative instinct lazy. That is why, today, we're going to change your seats."
Brittany opens her mouth to complain, but Quinn is faster. "What's the point in that? We're in April, we're almost at the end of the school year. You can't do such a thing right now."
Sue Sylvester smiles. "I can even do this on the last day of the semester. And if you don't pass my course, next year you'll find yourself back here, where things like this are going to happen again, and again, and again."
Quinn glares at her. She's famous for this look, so sharp that you can almost hear her hiss.
Apparently immune to Quinn's look, the coach explains to them what she has in mind:
"All those sitting on the left side of the bench, your left, jump to the place in front of you. Those in the front row - yes, you too Quinn - get to move to the last."
Brittany greets Quinn with a nod as she pulls firmly the notebook into her bag and zip-closes it. Then she turns slowly, inspecting the room. She knows the names of all his classmates, except for one. The girl who has moved. The coach never calls her and she never complains about it.
She sits idly at the bank behind her, her dark eyes focused straight ahead as usual. For a moment, the blonde struggles to believe she has always been sitting there, day after day, staring into empty spaces. For sure, she's thinking about something, but her instinct tells her that she shouldn't know what it is.
The girl puts her biology book on the bank and slides on what has been Quinn's chair.
Brittany smiles. "Hi, I'm Brittany."
The look of her new mate moves, studying her from side to side, and the corners of her lips lift. Brittany's heart skips a beat. And in that fear, a feeling of sadness slips on her like a cold shadow.
The next instant the feeling is gone, and girl who has raven-hair gathered back by a purple headband continues to observe her and her smile's no longer an amused smile, but a smile that promises troubles.
Brittany focuses on the blackboard. Barbie and Ken stare back at her eyes, but strangely they seem cheerful.
"Human reproduction can be a thorny issue ..." The coach says.
"Ouch." A chorus of students pulls out. The same students who had moved a row back, thanks to the coach's stupid idea.
"It requires maturity. And as for all the sciences, the best method is to investigate. During the rest of this lesson, let's put this into to practice trying to find out as much as possible about your new mate. Tomorrow you'll bring a report with whatever you've found out and, believe me, I will check that it corresponds to the truth. This is biology, not literature, so don't romanticize the answers. I want to see a real collaboration and a true team effort." And in the sentence there's the implicit warning not to dare to do otherwise.
Brittany stays still. The ball is in her new mate's court. Smiling at her hasn't proved to be a good move.
She wrinkles her nose, trying to figure out what he smell reminds her of. It's not cigarettes, it's something more intense and nauseating. Cigars maybe.
"What are you writing?" Britt asks, noticing that the girl has started writing something on the paper that it's no longer white as it was before.
"She speaks my language." The mysterious girl says as she writes these words, with a simple hand movement, smooth and lazy at the same time.
Brittany leans forward, trying to read the rest of her list, but the girl immediately covers the paper, folding it in two halves.
"What did you write?" She repeats.
The dark-haired girl reaches out to take Pierce's white paper, sliding it toward herself, and then crumpling it; and before Brittany can complain, she tosses it in the trash basket behind the desk.
Score.
Brittany stares at the basket for a moment, half shocked and half angry. Then she flips her notebook open to the first blank page and, pencil in her hand, she asks: "What's your name?"
She looks up in time to catch another cold stare. It seems like it to wants to warn her that the girl isn't going to tolerate any more questions about her.
" What's … your name?" She repeats though, hoping that the hesitant tone in her voice is just imagination.
"Call me Santana. I'm serious. Call me." She says with a wink, so Brittany is convinced that she wants to tease her.
"What do you do in your spare time?" She asks, turning her gaze back on the notebook.
"I have no spare time."
"Look, I suppose that for this task will cost us a grade, so … do me a favor?" Britt asks, sounding resigned already, even though they had spoken little.
Santana leans back in her chair, her hands dangling down toward the floor. "What kind of favor?"
Brittany is sure it's an innuendo or something, then she tries desperately to cling to some excuse to change the subject.
"Spare time …" Santana repeats thoughtfully. "I take photos."
Then Britt writes 'snapshot' on the paper.
"I haven't finished yet - she says - I have a nice collection by an editor of the school newspaper, which aspires to be a dancer, but doesn't know if she is going to succeed, so she's decided to focus on prestigious universities such as Stanford, Yale and ... what is that other large university that starts with H?
Brittany stares at her for a moment, shocked by how damned much she knows about her.
She wants to know how she knows these things.
And she wants to know it now.
"Eventually you won't go to any of these three." She just says.
"Really?" Britt asks without even thinking.
Santana hooks the bottom of her chair with her fingers and pulls Brittany closer to her. Pierce is evidently undecided whether to shift away fast and show herself scared, or to ignore her and pretend to be bored.
She chooses the second option.
"Even if you would get the best results in all universities, you'd snub the stereotype of success. You point to a different success, perhaps as a dancer. And you have three major flaws." Santana says, shifting her gaze from Britt's blue ones directly to the wall in front of them.
"And what are these flaws, if I may?" Brittany asks, beginning to be too bothered by the mysterious behavior of her new companion.
"Number one: you keep your life on a leash." She says, scoring the number one on her hand. "Number two: you don't trust no one and three, you spit judgments." She explains, with a smile on her face, as if to reproach the fact that her life is relatively boring.
Okay, well, Brittany is shocked by these words, because even though they are flaws, they are completely true. She has described her and the bad thing is that the dancer can't understand how she knows these things, they're so ... intimate.
"Do you sleep naked?" Her thoughts are interrupted by the embarrassing question, which forces her almost to let her jaw drop.
"You're the last person to whom I'd say that." She answers quickly.
"Have you ever done anything illegal?" She just asks some questions in bursts, so that she can escape her questions.
"Nope." Brittany lies. She knows that occasionally exceeding the speed limit doesn't apply. Not with her. "Why don't you ask normal questions? Like ... My favorite type of music?"
"I don't ask what I can guess." She answers simply, lowering her head and avoiding eye contact.
"You don't know my favorite music." Actually, Brittany has said it to convince herself that she can't do it, it would be too much.
"Baroque. Anything about you is all order and control. I bet you played the cello in the school band, but then you decided to devote yourself entirely to dance."
"You're wrong." Another lie. But this time Brittany feels a chill down her spine. Who's this girl?
"What's that?" Santana suddenly asks, giving it a tap with the pen inside of her wrist. Instinctively, Brittany pulls away.
"A birthmark." Brittany replies hastily.
"It looks like a scar. Have you tried to kill yourself?" And after this question, their eyes meet for more than five seconds, and Brittany could tell that the girl is just having fun with provoking her. "Are your parents married or divorced?"
"I live with my mom." Once again Brittany tries not to dwell on unnecessary explanations.
"Where is your dad?" Santana asks curious, though obviously in her eyes there's a hint of amusement.
"He's dead." She replies, looking down.
"How?" Santana asks, overwhelmed by a wave of evident displeasure.
"Killed. But these are private matters, if you don't mind."
There's a moment of silence and Santana's look seems to soften. "It must be hard." Her voice anticipates the sound of the bell, which pushes her to get up and cross the door, leaving Brittany strange inside and totally missing the object of the lesson.
"Hey!" Brittany shouts. "I haven't written anything about you!" She actually points out that her paper is still blank.
Santana turns around, come back and takes her hand gently, and then picks up a pen from the pocket of her bag to write her phone number on the palm of Brittany's hand.
Brittany smiles. A smile that emphasizes how much of a fool Santana is to her right now.
"I won't call you!" She says as Santana walks away, showing her back to her and making a slight gesture with her hand. "I'm serious!"