Title: Soft
Pairing: Santana Lopez/Brittany Pierce (Glee)
Word Count: 4,428
Rating: MA for coarse language, violence, and sexual situations
Summary: "The rest of the Glee club stares at you in shock, and you think you hear Puck mutter something about girl's going soft. In all truthfulness, you kind of agree with him."

Disclaimer: Glee and all related characters are owned by Fox Networks. No profit has been made through the publishing of this work of fiction; it was created for entertainment purposes only.

You sigh contentedly as Brittany snuggles into your shoulder. Her long fingers dance gracefully over the skin of your forearm, leaving little trails of heat in their wake. If it weren't for the hobbit's caterwauling, you think you could sit like this forever and not be bothered by it.

Your eyes roll almost of their own accord when Berry immediately launches into some ridiculous diatribe about rebuilding team bonds and immersing yourselves in the essence of teamwork. You miss the TroubleTones, more than you're willing to admit, so instead you simply sit in the back with Brittany and scoff.

Fetus Face catches it and turns to fix you with what you can only assume is intended to be a withering stare. He mostly just looks like he can't quite work out how to master his own oversized digestive system. He makes an underhanded comment about how you need to put yourself out there and you're bristling before the words even finish leaving his lips.

You're about to cut into him when you feel a light squeeze on your thigh. You settle for a piercing baleful glare in his direction and then ignore him completely.

The rest of the Glee club stares at you in shock, and you think you hear Puck mutter something about girl's going soft.

In all truthfulness, you kind of agree with him. The vast majority of the student population still gives you a wide berth as you walk down the hallways, but the ever present wave of intimidation that used to precede you and billow in your wake has faded considerably. People avoid you out of habit now, rather than out of the respect you command or the fear you inspire.

It bothers you, quite a bit actually, but you let it go. For Brittany's sake. For Brittany, who keeps saying how far you've come.

Mr. Schue finally cuts Rachel off and dismisses you all. You don't have Cheerios practice on Thursdays anymore, so you're free to go home.

Brittany walks you to your locker and you promise to call her later tonight, once your homework's done.

You walk home quickly, not wanting to get caught in the cold. You curse your father for insisting on maintaining connection with his roots in Lima Heights Adjacent, because his roots fucking slashed the tires of your car and Prancy Smurf's father still hasn't gotten around to checking for any other heretofore unseen damage to it. Who knows how long you'll be stuck walking to and from school. At least you live nearby.

You notice a group of guys loitering at the corner a couple blocks from your place, but dismiss them once you notice their McKinley letterman jackets. Stupid jocks probably looking to pick up some weed in the Heights. A couple of them catcall at you, but you breeze by them without even a word. You're not gonna start something here. You're not that stupid.

It's not until the first fist connects with the side of your head that you realize that something was going to start whether you wanted it to or not.

You give as good as you get at first, but there's only so much a five foot two, hundred-something pound girl can do against three high school football players.

It's not until the fourth kick to your gut that you admit to yourself that you're not likely going to be able to finish this something either.

By this point, it's all you can do to remain conscious, curled up on the ground and covering your head as best you can to protect it from the flurry of unforgiving blows pounding into your tiny body. Your back is pressed against a chain link fence, so they can't get to your spine, but they can still stomp and kick into your mostly exposed left side and front. And they do. Over and over and over.

Finally, just as your vision is beginning to fade from red to black, the boys leave. The last things your pain-clouded brain recognizes before the unconsciousness seeps in is the snarled words filthy fuckin' dyke and something wet hitting your cheek.

When you come to, it's gotten a bit darker outside, and the cold of the evening has already set into your bones and muscles. With supreme effort, you pull yourself to your feet (staving off a wave of throbbing pain and the subsequent blackout by sheer force of will alone) and half-stumble, half-walk the last two blocks to your home. Your parents are on yet another one of their many business trips (this time for two weeks), so the house is dark and empty when you eventually manage to force your shaking hands into service unlocking the front door.

In the time it takes for you to crawl (literally crawl, on all fours like an animal, it's humiliating) up the stairs and into your bedroom, you've already considered and discarded the idea of taking a hot bath in favor of falling into your bed as you are.

Just before you fall asleep you rouse enough to send a brief text to Brittany, cancelling your weekend plans (thank God it's Thursday - one missed day won't spoil your 4.0 GPA, because you don't even want to think about going to school like this) with the excuse that you're really sick and you're just going to sleep it off. You learned long ago that if you just say it's a stomach thing, Brittany will be over in a flash to play nurse with soft piano music and cream of potato soup, so you're sure to mention a high fever. Brittany knows that a fever means contagious, and with her baby sister still so young, she doesn't want to risk becoming a carrier. She'll hate it, but she'll stay away.

It's a measure of how much agony you're in that you can't even muster up the energy to feel guilty about the lie. You just know that Brittany can't see you like this.

When you wake up again, the first thing you become cognizant of is an overwhelming need to use the toilet. Moaning softly, you stumble into the bathroom, noting with faint relief that movement seems to be coming to you a great deal easier than it did when you first got home.

You squint blearily at the digital clock sitting on the bathroom counter for several minutes before realizing that you still have your contacts in. With slightly steadier hands than before, you remove the lenses, flicking them carelessly into the bathroom sink. After you wash your hands and brush your teeth - even half blind, you know it's not good that that much of your spit came out pink - you head back into your room.

Standing in front of your full-length mirror, you shrug painfully out of your Cheerios uniform and give your underwear clad body a once-over. Gently, you prod at your black and blue mottled ribs, gasping and blinking back tears every time you find a particularly tender patch of flesh. Based on the fact that you can still breathe normally with relatively little pain, it doesn't seem like anything's broken or cracked, just really fucking bruised. Silver lining, you suppose.

You stumble back over to your bed, wrestling with the drawer of your night stand for a few moments until you manage to find your glasses. Once they're perched securely on your nose, you fumble for your phone.

If your face didn't hurt so much, you'd be smiling at the 17 text messages you find on it, all from Brittany, and all expressing varying degrees of sympathy and affection. You fire off one quick text, a simple xoxo to let her know you're still alive (barely).

You check the time and start a little when you realize it's a day later than you thought it was. No wonder you feel so wobbly.

After you've changed your underwear (because your skin was starting to crawl, you'd been wearing them for so long), you consider your clothing options, opting for the infinitely comfortable oversized sweatshirt and sweatpants combo after a moment's deliberation.

You wince internally at the state of your uniform, the black smudges and rust brown splatters standing out in vulgar contrast against the normally pristine scarlet and white of the fabric. You leave it all in a pile outside your bedroom door for the housekeeper. It costs your parents a little extra when she has to do your dry-cleaning, but at this point you really couldn't care less. Their mild irritation is much less intimidating than Coach Sue's wrath.

Stewing it over for a few moments, you decide to move yourself - and as much of your bedding as your starved, aching body can carry - downstairs.

After you've gotten everything arranged to your satisfaction, you wander slowly into the kitchen to find something to line your stomach. You don't think you have the energy to actually make anything, so you just grab half a French loaf and a bottle of Sprite from the fridge.

Simple seems like the best choice now considering how much of your own blood you may or may not have ingested in the past 36 hours. If the color of your toothpaste spit was any indication, it was a lot.

You catch sight of yourself in the faint reflection of the liquor cabinet as you pass by, and it makes you gasp aloud.

Your face is a swollen, lumpy mass of purple and blue bruises, and your bottom lip is split in at least three different spots. With a sigh, you turn back to the refrigerator and grab two bags of frozen peas before shuffling back to the couch.

Once you're comfortably settled (or as comfortably settled as you can be, considering you're basically a walking bruise), you lean back and plop one bag of peas on each side of your face, leaving only your nose and mouth exposed so you can still eat and breathe.

You only manage to muscle down a few bites of bread and sips of soda before you begin to doze off again.

You keep a steady application of food and drinks to your stomach and frozen objects to your face for the rest of the weekend. The housekeeper says nothing about the state you're in, but leaves a bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol by your soda before she leaves. You remind yourself to ask your parents to at least triple her tip this month.

By the time Monday morning rolls around, you almost feel human again. You still look like a prizefighter after an especially brutal match, despite the best efforts of concealer and frozen vegetables, but in comparison to how you looked on Saturday, it's still a vast improvement.

You can walk, sit, and stand with hardly any pain, but you shudder to think what it would do to you to suffer through Cheerios practice, so you forge a quick note from your father to get you out of it for the week, just to be safe. Coach will kill you, of course, but at least by then you'll be able to face it without wincing every time you move too quickly.

When you get to school, it doesn't take more than fifteen minutes for news of your fearsome appearance to circulate through the halls of McKinley at least twice. Each theory is more insane than the one before, and you neither confirm nor deny anything.

Jewfro approaches you with a camera and mike at some point between homeroom and first period, but the look you level at him has him backing away and tripping over his own feet before he even gets within three yards of you.

A certain select number of football players are almost conspicuous in their adamant intent to keep their hands pocketed, but you don't think anyone really notices other than you. You keep your chin up and your gaze hard whenever one of them passes by, and the look of intimidated awe in their neanderthalic faces is worth the pain it causes to repress your near constant urge to shy away. Clearly they didn't expect you to be walking anytime soon.

No one in this school is ever going to call you soft again.

It's not until second period that you understand your mistake. Brittany.

Brittany, who extracted a promise from you not two weeks ago that you wouldn't engage in any more fighting. While she was inclined to agree that Finn really had that slap coming to him, she insisted that violence was not the answer, and you dutifully agreed. You were tired of fighting at that point anyhow, so it was an easy promise to make. At the time.

You wish desperately for the ground to just open up and swallow you whole after the first time she sees you. The disappointment in her eyes is so palpable you can practically feel it from across the room, and it hurts worse than any fist or shoe ever could.

You keep your head down and your shoulders hunched defensively for the rest of class, only lifting your chin after she's passed you by (without a word - you think you might cry right here, right now).

You do your best to keep up your false bravado through the rest of your classes, despite the shame and guilt roiling in your gut.

You want to go to her, to explain that it wasn't your fault, that those dickheads fucking accosted you. You want to tell her how they called you ugly things and beat you 'til you couldn't even cry anymore. But you don't. You won't.

She was so proud when you finally came to terms with being out, when you finally just let yourself be you. You can't take that away from her. You can't tell her that it's the sole reason you look like three day old ground beef, not some stupid remnants of your pride pushing you into an unnecessary confrontation.

Because you know, the second you say any of that, she'll find some way to blame herself. She'll insist that she pushed you (even though fucking Finn Hudson is the only one who can claim credit for that), or that she should have somehow known and been there to protect you (the wave of relief you feel that she wasn't makes your head spin).

So you accept the weight of her disappointment, even though it feels like a knife to your heart. You accept it because it's better than the alternative, better than bringing any clouds into that beautiful place she lives in. She'll forgive you eventually, if you apologize enough. You hope.

You sit in the back left corner during Glee, and remain silent. The rest of the members look at you curiously and just a little bit fearfully as they filter in, but don't say a word to you. A few days ago, you would have smirked in satisfaction, but now you just wonder how much they must hate you, that they don't even bother to ask you how you are or what really happened. Not even Mr. Schue. Not even Quinn. Whatever. You don't need them and their pity anyhow.

When Brittany walks in, little bit of you dies when she sits in the front right corner without even a glance in your direction, but you take it.

She doesn't say a word to you the whole rest of the day.

Or the next day.

Or the day after that.

By the time Friday arrives your bruises have all faded to a sickly yellow-green and your scrapes are little more than pink scars scattered across your dark skin. The distance between her and you, however, gapes like an open wound.

She walks into the choir room after school, and it's clear that she's been crying. It takes everything in you not to rush to her side. You've never been more grateful for Puck when he sits beside her and pats her shoulder comfortingly, and you don't think anything could hurt more than knowing that you can't be the one to do it because you're more than likely the reason for the tears in the first place.

He shoots you a look over his shoulder that you can't read. It seems fierce and full of pity at the same time, and that just makes you cringe even more. When Glee ends, Brittany turns and takes two steps in your direction, eyes brimming with more sorrow than you thought it possible for any one soul to hold, before you have to run.

With a strangled sorry you flee for the safety of your empty house.

Up until that point, at school, you were able keep your head high. But once you're home, where it's dark and quiet and there's no one to witness your weakness, you sob into your arms like you've lost your last chance at heaven. Once or twice you wonder if maybe you have.

You fall asleep with your face half buried in the soggy pillow, and your last thought before your eyes close is to wonder if pillows can grow moldy, because yours hasn't been properly dry in days.

You wake a couple hours later to the sound of the doorbell being rung repeatedly, and it takes you a minute to figure out that you're still on the couch in your uniform.

You catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror in the entryway as you pass by and grimace at your reflection. Your cheeks are stained with dark mascara smudges from your little Niagra Falls reenactment earlier, but you can't bring yourself to care enough to do anything more than rub at them half-heartedly as you amble to the door.

You experience a brief flash of irritation at the insistent manner in which this person is ringing your doorbell, but it dies as soon as you open the door.

Brittany stands with her finger hovering over the doorbell button, looking about as bad off as you are.

You stand there in shock, mouth opening and closing several times, completely at a loss.

It's only when she flings herself at you that you're able to move again. You pat her back bemusedly and tug her the rest of the way inside while she weeps incoherently into the crook of your neck.

You think she's trying to tell you something, but she's too worked up to manage anything more than a few muffled syllables and a hiccup or two.

You shush her soothingly and guide her gently over to the couch, kicking your bedding off of it (you never bothered to move back into your room) before sitting her in its place.

You only leave her side long enough to grab a box of tissues and a bottle of water for her, and her watery thank you makes you smile until you remember that she's still upset with you.

She manages to calm herself down after a few minutes, but she still hasn't spoken. You sit next to her awkwardly, not sure if you're allowed to comfort her or not, so you inch a little closer - just enough so that if she wanted to lean on your shoulder, she could, but far enough so that you're not actually touching.

She seems to notice your cautiousness, and for a moment you're afraid she's going to start crying again. Instead, she flings her arms around your neck once more, gripping you so tightly you almost can't breathe.

It takes a few seconds for the words she's mumbling into your cheek to process, and when they do, your eyes widen in comprehension and horror at the repeated I'm so sorrys and why didn't you say somethings.

Apparently, sometime between lunch and Glee earlier today, Puck had overheard several football players talking about putting it to some dyke the previous weekend, and he had passed on what he'd heard to Brittany. You make a mental note to give him a piece of your mind later. You promised no more violence, but you'll be damned if you can't put your words to work just as well as your fists.

Slowly, slowly, she pulls the whole story from you, one reluctant sentence at a time. She starts crying again almost immediately, but insists that you continue regardless. When she asks you why you didn't tell her in the first place what really happened, it's several minutes before you can explain that you didn't want to hurt her or give her a chance to take any of the blame. You're certain if you had been stronger or smarter about everything you could have somehow avoided this whole mess, but you don't say that part out loud.

She cries even harder and calls you silly and kisses your face over and over again and you think maybe you should hug Puck after you're finished laying into him with your vicious, vicious words. Because even though she's crying and you hate that it's over you, at least she loves you again.

You offer her an apology of your own - you're not sure what for, but you're certain there's something you should probably apologizing for (there always is) - until she fixes you with a gaze that says she doesn't want to hear another word about it. So you press your lips together and watch her carefully, unsure of your next move.

She stands, gently pulls you to your feet, and with a pillow in one hand and your fingers laced in the other, she leads you up the stairs and into your room without a word.

Silently she tosses the pillow to the head of the bed before turning and tenderly stripping you of your clothes. Your hands reach out to return the favor but she catches you and gives you yet another look that stills your motions completely.

Once you're completely nude, she presses you softly into the mattress, tugging and pulling until you're splayed out flat on your back while she hovers over you.

Starting with your hairline, she begins slowly and methodically laying kisses on every single inch of your skin. She makes her way down your left arm, and lavishes special attention to your knuckles and the tips of your fingers. When she repeats the process on your other hand, you realize what she's doing. She's kissing your injuries. Every single mark, cut, scrape, or bruise she comes across receives her attention.

When she gets to your ribs, you feel tiny drops of wet warmth splash across the tender, still-purple flesh, but she quickly kisses them away before you can say anything. You brush a thumb lightly across her right cheek, and move to dry her left as well, but she catches your wrist and sets it gently back down on the mattress with a tiny peck before moving back to her task.

By the time she's finished and is working her way back up again, your own cheeks are wet with silent tears you can't even explain. She kisses those too.

Your skin is practically humming from all the attention it's received, but you don't want to assume anything, so you remain still.

She leans in and gives you the deepest, sweetest, and most passionate kiss you've ever been given before moving her questing lips to your cheek, your neck, your collarbone, your breasts, your stomach, until finally her mouth moves over where you need her most.

With the same slow, methodical pace, she brings you to the brink. She says your name once and it rings out in the silence, pulling you out of the haze she's wrapped you in. You prop yourself up on your elbows and look down at her where she's nestled between your legs like it's home. She looks back at you, blue eyes filled with so much love and adoration you almost can't take it, and then she takes you over the edge.

As your body quakes and pulses with aftershocks, she slides two fingers into your core, and with a soft, loving motion, crooks them, as if beckoning to you from within. Obedient to her call, you come. She slides her thumb up and circles it over your clit while repeating the beckoning motion until you come a third time before she finally comes back to rest beside you.

She lies down next to you on her back and pulls you to her, arranging you so that your head is settled against her heart (you spare a brief second to wonder when and how she got naked too) and her lips are pressed against your forehead. Her arms enfold you gently and her legs tangle possessively with yours and you swear if you died tomorrow, you wouldn't have a single regret.

This kind of soft, you could be this kind of soft for the rest of your life, if she could too. This kind of soft is worth not fighting for.

The last thing you hear before you drift off is the gentle strains of her voice, singing softly into your hair.

And I love you, I love you, I love you

Like never before.