A/N: A huge thank you to everyone who favourite-d either me or the story and who read it, and an enormous thank you to those who took the time to review as well. I was amazed at the response. ^.^
So, this is just something that popped into my head watching Santana stare at Brittany when Quinn was talking about the future, then compounded by them holding hands…I hope it's up to standard! This is unbeted, so any mistakes are mine. Proudly so. As ever reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated, but thank you just for clicking and reading!
We are in her back garden, covered by her old tent, lying on a patchwork quilt that her grandmother made us for Christmas one year. Each patch is a diamond – No San, look they're squares, you just have to tilt your head – some plain blocks of colour, some with bright yellow ducks with orange bills and feet splashing in unrealistically blue puddles. It's sun-faded in one corner, the corner that always ends up outside of the tent no matter how hard we try to prevent it – I can't help being so awesome I dance in my sleep Santana.
The threads are pulling away at the other edge from when Lord Tubbington stole all the covers one night and I Britt asked me to take them back – nicely though San – and was unsuccessful.
There are any number of stains; from juice boxes that we forgot about and stepped on, from when I was ill and she brought me soup and the quilt to cheer me up, makeup from when her first boyfriend dumped her and she wouldn't stop crying because he said she was a bad kisser – he was wrong, and I hear his hair still glints red dye number 5 in the summer, no matter how much he has shaved his head – and numerous grass stains from picnics.
But it's our quilt.
We aren't really touching, just the fingers of her right hand tracing the edges of the fingers of my left, but even that's enough for my whole body to feel it.
I like to imagine we are both thinking about the same thing; Quinn finally getting over herself, how Trouble Tones were totally robbed, how tolerable Berry can be when she isn't trying to fight for attention. And Quinn talking about the future. But by the faraway look and small smile on her lips – dark purple tonight, reminding me of a plum, ripe, smooth, sweet - I'm sure she is thinking about how the section of sky we can see is so pretty.
When we were ten we had our first sleepover outside. Britt wanted to see the night sky, so I snuck back into the front room and stole her dad's sewing scissors so the tent had a sunroof.
I got in so much trouble for that and had to sew a patch back over – creamy pale blue with cotton wool clouds – but every time it got too windy or rained too hard, it failed, and eventually stopped being replaced. But her smile and the thank you hug I got when she could fall asleep under the stars was worth sewing a million and twelve stitches a hundred times over.
She turns to me, languidly, like a cat, brushing one arm along my stomach, fingers probing at muscles, settling between the same ribs she always does.
Am I in your plan?
The words are clear in the musty silence enveloping us in the tent, and I smile slightly, fingers trailing through yellow, sleek and slightly crackly from hairspray at the top, falling into a soft Cheerio-issue curl, lost without the elastic supporting it. She doesn't need to add by plan she means my future.
Yes.
I kiss where yellow meets peach and I can feel her nuzzle closer into the hollow of my collarbone.
Was I always?
I almost miss it, the light tickle of her breath against my skin, the words pulling away from my ear on the wind. But I hear it. And it hurts that she has to ask, an unintentional reminder of me when fighting was easier, better, than admitting what we were.
Are.
Will be.
I pull her upwards and closer so her forehead is now more on my cheek and her breath – steady, constant, calming – runs across my jaw. My eyes list to the side where the tent has three holes in the sides.
Remember how the tent got those holes Britt-Britt?
The first one made on a day when the sky was…grey, dark grey like the steel pads we use to scrub pans with. Fat rain clouds lazily dragging across the sky, sunlight long since tired of trying to filter through. She was wearing a new denim jacket that we had both covered in pink BeDazzler rhinestones so it spelt 'Britt-Britt' on the back with a purple heart underneath and we wanted to play Prince Britt and Princess San with a real castle. Her mum tried to put the tent up by herself deciding that instructions were for the unimaginative, but ended up putting one of the tent pegs through the material.
Twice.
And we decided that a tent fort and truth or dare was so much cooler at 12.
The first time we wore high heels – I was sick and tired of being so short so my heels were at lest two inches taller than hers – tipsy from our first 'cool kids' party, she leant our foreheads together, a lazy, brazen smile covering her face. She still looked so beautiful, even after hours of dancing. Her green dress slightly darkened underneath her arms and between her breasts, skin quickly prickling and strands of hair pulled away in the evening wind.
When I think about it, I can still feel the heat from her cheeks, the sickly vodka-spiked scent of her breath flowing so easily into my opened mouth and the way our fingers were moving, leaves caught in a teasing dance. Then she got bolder and kissed me. I was so shocked I took a physical step back, and the second hole was created when we were 14.
The third hole was from when I first saw her angry. Really angry. I was still wearing the 'Lebanese' shirt, with my body warmer safely zipped closed over it. She was holding an end of the tent material in one fist and the mallet in the other, her face red and scrunched like a discarded ball of paper from trying not to cry. Her metallic blue jacket looked like Dracula's cape with the speed she was spinning and pacing and stomping without doing anything. I watched for forever as she steadily got the tent up, even with two tent pegs left over but with no obvious home, and as tears of frustration escaped down her cheek.
I took a deep breath and finally walked over to her, spinning her, causing her to drop the mallet she was still holding. But looking into her eyes, stormy, angry, so very frightening, everything I had planned got caught in my chest, flowing through the chambers of my heart but headed to my toes and not my throat.
I traced around the letters on her shirt instead.
You're not. You are anything but stupid Britt.
She pushed me away.
And yelled.
There was so much yelling that it hammered at my brain and made my chest ache and made my throat search for what she wanted to hear. When she had been silent for ten minuets and I still had nothing to say, she growled in frustration and stuck the last two tent pegs into the side of the tent, wiggling them to make sure they were secure in the ground.
And the third hole was made in the tent on one of the worst days of my life, of our life, when I managed to make another in hole her hope, her heart, her happiness. We were 16.
I remember. We should make another tent castle soon.
She's trying to distract me from the last hole, to let me know that I don't have to answer her question and she won't be mad. As silence falls, she tries to pull away, to where she was before, but I shift pulling her closer still. Moving so we are nose to nose, my eyes flickering between her constant ones. She cocks her head, as much as she can whilst pressed against the quilt and the right side of her mouth quirks, left hand moving to play with the wisps of hair at the base of my neck.
Today she is wearing her Cheerio's uniform, with most of her makeup gone after the performance, and an old grey hoodie of mine that's too short in the arms for her and stops before it reaches her waist. I can't help but move closer and push our lips together briefly before looking back to her eyes.
Britt, you were always in my plans, even before I knew why.