A/N: For Quinntana Week 2012, Day 3: College!AU. This is part one of a two-shot, due to work preventing me from completing the fic on time. Expect the second part to be posted sometime next week. :) And to those of you who left me the lovely, much much much appreciated reviews on my UST submission, perhaps there will be some "resolution" in the near future...
She only agrees to it because Quinn still eyes anything with four tires and a steering wheel warily and there's an incurable limp in her step.
"It's twelve hours," Quinn tells her, sitting cross-legged on her bed and rifling through a print-out of the directions, suitcases packed all around her.
The words barely register. Santana is trying to calculate how two people's lifetimes of belongings are going to fit into her Camaro.
"Drop your classes," she says. "Summer is about sun and sand, not holing yourself up in a stuffy lecture hall."
Quinn's gaze is sharp when it reaches hers.
"I know you're just as ready to leave this place as I am," she says levelly.
Santana stands up and hauls the first suitcase out of the room.
Somewhere just outside of Pittsburgh, Quinn has her nose buried in the Columbia course bulletin. Now that her own major has been decided, her new mission seems to be figuring out Santana's.
"Gender History," she says.
"Thumbs up," Santana responds, squinting against the hot sun bouncing off the car ahead of them.
"Geopolitics."
"Sure."
"German," Quinn says with a hint of exasperation.
Santana shrugs and says, "Why not?"
Quinn lowers the thick volume onto her lap.
"You'll have to say no to something eventually, Santana," she says.
Santana turns on the radio and finds the jazz station. "Well, I have until September to do that, don't I?" she says, then turns up the volume.
There's only one Diet Coke left in the vending machine.
"Fuck you, Pennsylvania," Santana mumbles. The woman standing in line behind her gives her a scathing look, to which Santana doesn't bother to react.
She exits the service area and walks back across the parking lot.
Quinn is leaning against the passenger side door, arms folded across her chest, cheeks flushed from the summer heat. She doesn't acknowledge Santana when she comes to stand next to her.
"We're sharing," Santana says, lifting up the soda can. She pops the lid and takes a swig of the cold, sweet liquid, then hands the can over to Quinn. But Quinn still doesn't move. When Santana follows her line of vision, it's on the cars moving on the highway.
"Two short flights could have saved you from this, you know," she says. She bumps her shoulder lightly against Quinn's, adds, "And my ass from being so sore."
Quinn blinks, then she turns away from the highway.
"Did avoiding your fears work out for you?" she asks Santana. Pointed. No malice. She reaches for the soda can in her hands.
Santana watches her tip her head back to take a drink. "In a few ways," she responds, her grandmother's steely glare still vivid in her mind.
Quinn doesn't say anything, but she leans closer to Santana perceptibly, her presence solid. It doesn't feel as much like a gesture as it does habit, forged from years of standing side by side in hallways and on football fields and lit stages.
Now, they stand somewhere between there and whatever's coming next, passing a can of Coke back and forth until its contents are gone. Then Quinn says, "Let's get back in the car. I'm overheating."
When they enter the limits of New Haven, there isn't much fanfare. Quinn doesn't shift from her position in the passenger seat, where she passed out two hours ago. Santana's soreness has mushroomed from her ass to every single one of her limbs and vital organs.
She manages, miraculously, to navigate to the residence halls without the help of Quinn's precise directions.
She pulls into a parking spot, turns the engine off, and says her companion's name.
Quinn doesn't react.
Santana grabs her keys and climbs out of the car, walking around to the passenger side.
"Wake up and say hello to your home for the next four years, Fabray," she says, nudging Quinn's arm.
Quinn stirs and mumbles, "This is a parking lot."
"You're a genius. Get up. It's 11:52 and they close at midnight."
They locate the main office just in time and collect Quinn's keys. Then, five minutes later, they stand at the entrance to her dorm room.
Santana eyes the tiny room they'll be sharing for eight weeks, the single bed pushed against the far wall.
"Cozy," she says wryly.
Quinn brushes past her and sets her duffle bag on the dresser.
"I was lucky enough to get a single. Can you imagine you with a roommate?"
Santana is offended.
"I'd make a great roommate," she protests, dumping her pillow onto the bed.
Quinn raises an eyebrow.
"You hate everyone," she says.
Santana is too exhausted to argue a mostly accurate statement, so she just shrugs and begins to undress.
Quinn's gaze stays on her for a beat, then she turns away and pulls a set of sheets out of her bag.
As soon as the bed's made, Santana collapses onto it and stretches her limbs, sighing at the blissful coolness of the sheets and the way her muscles are beginning to relax.
"What time's orientation?" she asks, sleepy. Her question is partially muffled by the pillow in which her face is buried.
"Eight," Quinn says from somewhere across the room.
Santana groans, inching closer to the wall to make more room on the bed. "Don't wake me, okay?" she mumbles. She's already beginning to fall asleep.
"I won't," Quinn says, voice low, closer now.
A few moments later, the light flicks off and the mattress shifts as Quinn crawls into the bed. She stretches out, her body grazing Santana's in the tiny space.
Right as Santana is about to succumb to sleep, she feels Quinn's fingers slide down her forearm and curl around her wrist, rousingly tight.
She blinks into the darkness.
"Thank you, Santana," Quinn whispers, warm against the back of her neck.
Santana doesn't know what to do or say other than to hum in response. It takes a lot longer for her to fall asleep than she expected, even after Quinn's grip has fallen away.
She fits right in.
With Quinn's stolen map in the back pocket of her Daisy Dukes and plenty of free time to roam around, she learns the campus within two days. She figures out which lecture classes are large enough for her to crash, strolls into the library when she pleases, and even makes friends while sunning out on the Green one day.
"You know what you're doing is questionable—legally, right?" Quinn asks her over dinner one night.
"Oh, please," Santana says, stealing a fry from Quinn's plate. "You're paying them enough for the both of us."
Quinn moves her plate out of reach. It earns her a glare.
"I have a scholarship," she says, ignoring Santana's dirty look.
"And what exactly do you propose I do while you Ivy League it up all summer?" Santana asks. She reaches for her beer. She's positive her fake ID is going to get her through the next eight weeks of Quinn Fabray.
Quinn shrugs.
"Sun and sand? Video chat your girlfriend?" she asks.
At these words, Santana narrowly avoids dropping her drink and successfully manages to nudge a fork over the edge of the table.
"So much for keeping my cool," she grumbles.
She looks up. Quinn is staring.
Santana kneels down to get the fork, and to collect some courage. When she sits back up, Quinn is still looking at her, eyebrows raised high.
"I broke things off," Santana says, before Quinn can demand an explanation.
There's a long, silent pause between them. Then Quinn asks,
"What?"
Her voice is less surprised, softer than Santana expects.
"When?"
Santana clears her throat and rubs at the condensation on her glass.
"A month ago," she says. "Graduation."
Quinn blinks.
"Wow," is all she says.
"Look," Santana says. "I'd rather not…you know," she says, gesturing between them.
"Why? You need more time?" Quinn asks sardonically. "It's not like we've had 30-something days or anything."
"Hey," Santana responds sharply. "Uncalled for."
Quinn flushes and turns back to her meal. She eats slowly and silently for a while, and Santana takes the time to down the rest of her drink and request another. When Quinn speaks again, it's to ask,
"What did you illegally learn about International Relations today?"
Santana smiles into her glass. They spend the rest of the meal discussing nation power.
Santana gets a text from one of her new friends the following weekend. It's an invitation to a party.
She stands in front of the mirror in Quinn's dorm room, applying her lipstick, and spies Quinn tugging on a sparkly sleeveless shirt in the reflection.
"You sure you can handle being in a room full of lesbians?" she asks.
"Can you?" Quinn asks, coming up next to Santana and grabbing a hair brush.
Quinn may have a point. Lima's lesbians didn't exactly make themselves known. Through no fault of her own, Santana's Sapphic experience has been primarily limited to Brittany, that one night during nationals she snuck out of their hotel in New York to go to a gay bar, and...
"Well, we've all been to cheer camp," she says.
Quinn snorts in response.
"Attractive," Santana says. She steps into a pair of black heels, then turns back around to face Quinn. She still doesn't quite have the height advantage. "Keep doing that. The girls'll love it."
"Not as much as they're going to love you," Quinn says, reaching up and tucking a lock of hair behind Santana's ear.
"Whoa," Santana feels her skin prickling where Quinn touched her. "Is that sincerity I hear, Fabray?"
Quinn cuffs her in the arm for that, and fuck—the girl's still got guns.
Santana complains about the blow for a solid five minutes, but it's mainly to distract her from the fact that her heart is racing.
Drunk college Quinn is a lot more relaxed than her high school counterpart, Santana concludes. And possibly gayer.
At the party, Quinn integrates comfortably, flitting around the cramped apartment living room and making conversation. Santana half-watches her from where she's sitting on the couch with her new friend, Nadine.
"So what's the story?" Nadine asks with a suggestive grin. "High school sweetheart? Friend with benefits? Best friend's girl?"
Santana fights down her sip of vodka tonic. "If by 'benefits' you mean getting punched in the face and by 'friend' you mean my bitchy competition for head cheerleader, then ding ding ding for option number two."
"Wait. Hold up," Nadine says, lifting a hand. "You were a cheerleader? This is too good."
Santana may have found her new best friend.
"I got to stick my hand up girls' skirts," she explains.
"I take back all judgement I may have implied," Nadine says with solemn respect. Then she adds, "Do you still have your uniform?"
Santana smirks and peers over at Quinn.
"We both do."
Nadine oohs. "Kinky," she says, looking Quinn up and down.
"Kiss your blatant dreams of a threesome sweet goodbye," Santana says, cutting in on the leering. "Quinn's straight."
"That hand on her ass is telling me otherwise."
Santana takes a closer look and, well, she'll be damned. There is a hand on Quinn's ass, and that hand is attached to a girl who is currently leaning into her. And Quinn is leaning right back in.
"Fascinating," Santana says.
"Spaghetti lesbian?" Nadine asks, taking a sip from her beer bottle.
"Hilarious, but no," Santana says, but she watches to see if anything else happens between Quinn and the girl.
It looks relatively tame. Quinn is smiling and chatting, and she doesn't lean in any further, so Santana decides to let it go.
She turns back to Nadine and changes the subject.
She lets it go for the rest of the night; all throughout the remainder of the party and during their walk back to the dorms, she lets it go.
She doesn't give it a second thought until she has to press a now drunker Quinn into bed and crawl in next to her. And then, she looks at Quinn's sleepy face, feels the warmth radiating from her, and the thought flies right back into her wayward mind.
It's never been particularly easy to be around Quinn. From the moment Santana began to understand her feelings toward girls, she began to understand what it meant that her heart always pumped a little bit faster and harder in Quinn's presence. Almost just as quickly, she buried that knowledge, because frankly, the pain of the unrequited could kiss her ass.
But now, Santana thinks about how the girl at the party was touching Quinn fairly intimately, and how Quinn was fairly comfortable with it, and she wonders...
"Quinn?" she asks.
Quinn opens her eyes slowly and tilts her head to the side to meet Santana's gaze.
"Hmm?" she responds sleepily.
Santana doesn't say anything, but—just to see, just as an experiment, really—she lifts her hand and slides it, slow and careful, from Quinn's lower stomach all the way up her flat torso, and just barely grazes the underside of one of her breasts. She searches Quinn's face for any sign of protest.
There is none.
Instead, Quinn's eyes fall shut and she sighs. Then, stunningly, she mumbles,
"If you're going to start something, it's only fair that you finish it."
Santana feels something tighten in her stomach and she freezes, hand resting on Quinn's abs.
"Finish it how?" she asks, the nerves setting in more insistently.
Quinn, eyes still closed, reaches up and clasps Santana's hand. Then she presses it against her breast, humming softly as soon as Santana's touch makes contact.
Santana's face grows hot.
Quinn is warm and unfathomably soft, even through the fabric of her shirt. Santana can't help it that her fingers instinctively tighten, that her thumb grazes over Quinn's nipple.
Quinn's hand falls away. She responds with a barely perceptible gasp and a slight arch of her back.
"Fuck," Santana whispers. She repeats the motion and feels Quinn's body reacting to her touch, the contours of her nipple hardening underneath the pad of Santana's thumb.
"Feels good," Quinn murmurs. Her voice is faint.
Santana shifts closer, leg nudging up against Quinn's. Their positions—she on her side and Quinn flat on her back—afford her a perfect view. Her eyes travel up to Quinn's face again and she takes in her slightly parted lips, how her head is still tilted toward her.
It's then, when she's struck by how badly she wants to lean in and kiss her, that Santana realizes just what the fuck she's doing.
Her hand that's touching Quinn goes slack.
Quinn's eyes flutter open, meeting Santana's again. She frowns slightly.
"I shouldn't be..." says Santana, pulling her hand away and moving back. "This isn't...
It's probably appropriate that she sounds as idiotic as she feels. She takes a second to regain her composure, and then looks back at Quinn.
"Go to sleep," she urges.
Quinn's frown deepens.
"After that?"
"You won't remember that in the morning," says Santana, beginning to feel a little sick with herself.
Quinn looks offended, and for a moment, in the minuscule corner of her mind that's still functioning as normal, Santana wonders if she's ignited pre-college angry drunk Quinn. It is her luck that she happens to be sharing a bed with her.
But there seems to be nothing to worry about in that arena, because then, without uttering another word, Quinn turns onto her side and away from Santana.
When they wake up the following morning, if Quinn remembers anything of what happened, she doesn't let on that she does.