The first time he sees her, he thinks of wildfire.
Kurt's marching up to her where she's leaning against the wall where they sell concessions for their football games, her cheerleading jacket the same color as the red bricks behind her. She has—of all things—a cigar dangling from her glossed lips, but it suits her in a way; it's not the thick ones that his father smokes, the ones that fill the living room with smog and make his mother stare disapprovingly. It's thin and almost dainty-looking, nut-brown and pleasing to look at.
She catches sight of them and swears. Loudly.
"Santana! You'll ruin your voice!" Kurt's in full mother-hen mode, slightly overbearing and frowning as he holds out his hand and waits for the scowling girl to drop it in his palm. Kurt winces slightly and shakes his fingers quickly, dislodging the ash and watching it fall to the ground. She doesn't look even remotely sorry, but they must be friends, or at least something approaching that; when they walk towards Blaine, Kurt has an arm curled around her bicep, steering her with the same firm pressure that he used when he was parading up and down Lima's mall with Rachel.
When Kurt introduces her with a beaming "Santana, this is my boyfriend, Blaine, "she gives him a sidelong glance and the corner of her full mouth curls—and then he's going, going, gone.
Santana Lopez is the devil reincarnate, of this much he is definitely certain of.
He's yet to see her act kindly towards anyone—not to her fellow cheerleaders, whom she rules with an iron fist akin to dictatorship, not to the kids in Glee, who, as much as they snap at her and mutter about passive-aggressively in the hallways, do seem to enjoy her presence from time to time—with the exception of the blonde and bemusing Brittany Pierce, who, frankly, Blaine doesn't see the appeal of. She's cute, sure, but she's bland, even as Puck reverently explains the details of a supposedly fantastic blowjob the girl had given him in junior year. She pales in comparison to Santana, who differs from her in all of the ways that make the boys stare fearfully at her when she talks down the hallway; dark-haired and demonic, with a viciousness so provocative that it makes Blaine suck in his breath sharply.
He's gay, he knows that. He's enjoyed the way Kurt melts under his hands and curls like a comma when they're huddled in his bed, fingers tracing each other's hipbones. But Blaine goes from feeling moderately guilty to awful whenever Kurt's excitedly explaining his plans to eventual revival of Funny Girl and he thinks, unbidden, of Santana and the round curve of her ass under her miniscule Cheerio skirt; the way she had bent at the waist to pick up her backpack when the three of them had met for coffee at the Lima Bean. She'd been ungracious even then, simply rising and shrugging when Kurt had asked her where she was going. Blaine had bleated a goodbye against his better instincts and Jesus Christ, Santana had given him a look like she wanted to eat him alive.
Or maybe she just wanted him dead. One of those.
Mercedes has a pool party during the summer and Blaine spends most of it being sedentary so that his boyfriend won't see the massive fucking erection he suddenly has from the sight of Santana Lopez in her goddamn bikini. It's ridiculous and several types of inane; Kurt had pulled over on the way to Mercedes's house to slip a hand up his shirt and sharply twist his nipples in a way that made Blaine bite his lip until he drew blood. He hadn't thought of her then—there wasn't any room for Santana Fucking Lopez when Kurt was looming over him with that hungry look that meant he was five seconds from burying his face in Blaine's crotch. Maybe they haven't had sex yet, but Kurt can get damn busy with his fingers when he's in the mood.
He ought to be fine. Blaine, desperate to at least be hard for a good reason, thinks immediately of his boyfriend's pink mouth and the way he had freckles scattered across his shoulders that he had once spent an hour kissing. His dick nearly wilts and Blaine tries to scuttle to the house under the pretense of going to the bathroom, fervently wishing the floor to swallow him up.
(And if he nearly convulses at the thought of the word 'swallow', well—he's allowed to be a little pathetic, just this once).
As fate would have it, Santana's occupying the bathroom when he reaches it. She's touching up her lip gloss and looking cruelly gorgeous in a bikini that had Finn stammering when he greeted her. It's thin and green, and Blaine is all too aware of the possibility of him untying the straps and biting the delicate curve of her neck.
He feels himself harden again and scowls. He feels thirteen and undeniably stupid.
"Anderson," she says out of the side of her mouth, "I'm a little fucking busy, so you're gonna need to wait. Go cop a squat or something."
"No problem!" Blaine says quickly, and nearly chokes on it. Kurt once told him that Santana can smell fear, and he knows he's got it steeped into his pores right now.
Santana, to her credit, does not disappoint. She bares her teeth at him and crooks a finger, and he walks like a man damned to hell—and then, oh, the graffiti in McKinley's bathroom can't be lying at all, not with the way he's suddenly pressed against her and she's fiercely kissing him like she's trying to crawl inside of him, one luridly-painted nail trailing down his bared stomach. Santana scrapes her teeth against the column of his throat and he gasps twice in rapid succession when she presses her heart of her palm flat against his cock. Blaine hasn't been this hard since he'd first slid a shaking hand down his shorts when he was twelve, and she's not making it easier with that unrelenting fist around him and jerking him so hard that he nearly sees stars when he comes.
"I—I—I" he stutters while she washes her hands in the sink. She lifts an eyebrow and adjusts the left strap of her bikini (Blaine does not think about slipping it down her shoulder and worrying the skin until it flushes a dull red) and says breezily, "Don't worry about it, Brando. Consider it my good deed of the day."
Blaine thinks Brando? and for a minute, he is so absurdly happy that he almost makes himself vomit.
It's winter and he thinks he's safe from Santana and her wiles. He's had months to drown himself in Kurt, who is soft like an Impressionist painting and has a smile the sunrise. Santana scowls, smokes more cigars, and kisses Brittany, who is entirely too safe and much too tedious, in the girls' bathroom. They don't talk much except for the casual conversation about Spanish homework or their weekly musical prompt for Glee. Sometimes she slides a slender hand against his and he shivers, but then he thinks of Kurt, and moves away. Blaine's fully aware that he wants to be with Kurt as long as possible, that the boy's the best thing that's happened to him.
He can't fuck it up for a girl that he's not even that attracted to. Santana's pretty, but she's rude and biting in a way that makes him slightly repulsed. She also appears to have dismal taste he thinks, watching her swan down the hall with Brittany in tow—apparently taking a day off from Cheerios practice in a leather jacket that he'd seen Puck wearing a few months earlier and a skintight dress that had Blaine averting his eyes quickly in their shared Chemistry class. Christ have fucking mercy, he isn't ready for Santana to saunter up to him and ask him to help her practice her range and he's twice as stupid as he always thought he was, because he agrees.
Blaine knows he probably deserves to die (or something else suitably painful) when he ends up raking his chest against Santana's perky tits and working a finger into her without any warning while she swears at him in rapid Spanish. She curses him, curses his "goddamn, soul-sucking, disease ridden whore" of a mother, curses Kurt in another language that is said too quickly for him to immediately recognize it (she tells him later, blowing smoke out through pursed lips, that it's still Spanish, just in a different dialect).
When she orgasms, Blaine widens his eyes to watch. Her thighs, strong and glowing with sweat, clench and then tremble into relaxation, and her pupils dilate so far that he feels anxious, hands firmly gripping her waist. "Okay?" he asks tentatively, and she laughs directly into his face.
Blaine asks, half in his mind, half aloud to the topless girl next to him, exactly why this is happening at all.
"I always want what I can't have." Is all she says.
Blaine blushes when he says squeakily, "You want me?"
"Not so much," she says, and casts a glance at the leggy, giggling Brittany Pierce by the football field's chainlink fence, "this is just easier, that's all."
Sometimes he thinks about Kurt, and the way he promised to love him as much as he could. Sometimes he meets Santana halfway between both of their houses and they rock together along with whatever song is playing on the radio (one time, it's Bob Marley's "Is This Love?" and Blaine stops and cries with his head pressed to the steering wheel while Santana files her nails and texts Brittany on her iPhone). There are a few times where Santana turns suspiciously wet eyes to Blaine's ribcage and speaks very softly into his skin.
And there are fewer times when he scrawls a hickey beneath her navel and thinks that well, he could be doing worst things. Couldn't he?