When she decided to come to New York, this is definitely not the outcome she expected.
She thought she'd be paving the way, finding a school for Brittany, an apartment to keep them both safe, and a job to support her love while she pursued dance school.
Because no matter what happened between them, she'd had faith in the eternity of their love. She and Brittany were best friends, and therefore loved deeper than Santana thought possible. She was sure they would always find their way back to each other.
Even though they broke up.
Even though they started seeing—or sleeping with—other people.
Even though one of those other people was Rachel.
She can't even explain how it happened. When pressed by Quinn (who she stays in touch with, though they seemed to have less time for each other once things with Rachel started up and Quinn, around the same time, started sleeping with a steady stream of Yale ladies), she couldn't even really pinpoint when it started. She knows she was simultaneously jealous of and repulsed by Rachel in high school—repulsed by her wardrobe, her grating personality, jealous of her voice, her fucking legs, her soulful eyes, her…well, the more she thinks on it, the more she realizes she had been attracted to Rachel back then. She had just been very distracted with Brittany and very good at repression.
But then they'd lived together. Then they'd come to depend on each other more. They'd laughed and teased each other, shared food and stories and time together. They'd formed a bond—with Kurt as well—that was upset slightly the first time Rachel slept with a woman and spiraled into an identity crisis. Kurt hadn't known how to help, and Santana found herself unexpectedly disturbed by the news that Rachel was bisexual.
It took several months and a spontaneous kiss from Rachel late one night to realize that her distress was due to the fact that, somewhere over the past year or so, she'd developed a crush on Rachel Berry.
(And really, she should have expected that kiss; Rachel had just tried to make her a non-vegan dinner and they'd been sharing a bottle of wine.)
Things aren't perfect; that just isn't possible. After a year and a half of living together, Kurt decided he'd like to move out, so Santana and Rachel had moved to a one-bedroom apartment while Rachel finishes up her schooling and Santana begins hers. They get on each other's nerves sometimes—Santana is organized, but sloppy, Rachel is disorganized, but clean, and it isn't quite in a way that balances out. Santana still gripes about vegan food, and Rachel sometimes refuses to kiss her until she brushes her teeth if she eats so much as a cheese sandwich—though, if she wants, Santana has ways of coaxing kisses out of Rachel regardless of what she eats (she's beginning to think Rachel doesn't really care what she eats and actually refuses kisses in an attempt to invite seduction). They are constantly battling over whether to watch Once Upon a Time or Pretty Wild on Netflix. But they've been together for over a year, and so far, they are very happy.
And, to Santana's surprise, very much in love. She had honestly not believed she could ever love anyone else the way she loved Brittany, but Rachel is proving every day that it is very possible for her.
Rachel is definitely one of the students expected to go far once she leaves NYADA. In fact, she probably could have left NYADA already and found roles, but in true Rachel Berry fashion, she'd decided to finish the years of school she set out to complete before advancing her career. Not that she hasn't started. She'd been in several off-Broadway productions and many NYADA productions. She's currently starring in NYADA's production of Yentl (a student's amalgamation of the original story and play with Streisand's music interspersed), which is certainly generating some buzz around campus and in the city. The school newspaper—produced mostly by students who had decided their niche was critiquing or writing performing arts rather than, you know, performing them—had done a few interviews with Rachel over time, but are planning to put out a rather big interview about her role in Yentl soon.
Even so, when Rachel comes home that evening subtly sparkling, Santana doesn't know immediately how to react.
The fact is she doesn't notice it at first. She is a little bit busy with her Geography homework (stupid gen ed classes), so when Rachel opens the door to the apartment and steps in, Santana merely raises her head, smiles, and greets, "Hey, baby," then looks back at her book and waits for Rachel to come over and give her the greeting kiss she is accustomed to (which, hey, sometimes she's the one who gets up to give one to Rachel, she isn't always this aloof).
When Rachel gives a sort of sullen, "Hello," and begins to edge away toward the bathroom, without the kiss, Santana definitely notices.
"Something wrong?" she asks, closing her Geography book and trying to catch Rachel's eye (Rachel's head is down, concentrating way too much on taking off her shoes). So Santana tosses her book aside and rises from the couch.
When she is about two steps away from Rachel, she notices.
"Oh my god," she grins slowly, "You're sparkling. You're like a vegetarian vampire or whatever, what even?" she stifles a chuckle.
Rachel huffs, "Oh, yes, hilarious. It's just the look I've been going for."
Santana tries to reign in her amusement. "Seriously, how did this happen? Does NYADA offer arts and crafts now?"
Rachel draws in a slow breath and says, "Someone got…a little overenthusiastic with some glitter."
"Uh huh. And why was there glitter?" A pause, and in that moment, Rachel lifts her head just slightly and Santana comes to recognize the well-known expression of hurt on Rachel's face. "Oh my god. You got glitterbombed?" Rachel's eyes drop again and she nods, slightly. Santana stares a little bit, taking in the individual pieces of glitter glinting on Rachel's cheeks, in the part of her hair, on her eyelashes. "Why?"
"I wish I knew," Rachel answers sadly, "I mean…I'm me. I have two dads, I'm bisexual and I'm playing a gender nonconformist onstage. I don't understand."
"I'm sorry," Santana offers, feeling terrible for laughing. It feels like something they should be able to just laugh off, because the idea of Rachel being glitterbombed is ludicrous, but Rachel's expression destroys any humor Santana sees in the situation. She moves to hug her girlfriend, but Rachel shrinks away, "Don't. You'll get glitter all over yourself and then we'll just find it in the apartment for months. I'm going to go get in the shower."
"Okay," Santana agrees, swallowing down the strange hurt at having her hug rejected. She takes Rachel's messenger bag for her—which is mostly clear of glitter—and brushes off any excess glitter into the trash before a thought occurs to her.
She sits down on the couch and opens Rachel's bag. Really, she thinks, Rachel would probably berate her for snooping on a normal day, but she figures if she has a good reason, it should be fine. Besides, she finds what she's looking for fairly quickly, and takes out a copy of NYADA's newspaper.
Sure enough, there is Rachel, dressed as the Anshel persona, on the front cover. Santana scans the article, her brows furrowing with uncertainty the longer she looks.
What hadn't Rachel said that may have upset some people?
The part where she'd never felt genderqueer herself but because she was called a tranny in high school she felt her face might make her suited to the role?
The part where even though she loved her fathers, sometimes she had wished as a child that she'd had a mother and a father?
Maybe her assertion that Jews were more likely to be queer?
Santana scowls at the paper, because none of this sounds like Rachel. Then she remembers, a night two weeks ago, in which Rachel had come home giddy and drunk, and as Rachel dragged her to the floor and began to put her mouth all over Santana's body, Santana caught, through the haze of passion, that she'd just had her interview with the paper and was very excited about it.
So, Santana growls to herself, They thought it would be more interesting to see what kind of answers she'd give trashed. Very funny.
She'd always been pretty skeptical about the people on NYADA's newspaper. To her, it just looks like those who realized they really didn't have the chops to perform were going to just become critics, which just figured. She could see it now, an excited, drunk Rachel responding to pressing, leading questions, which the jealous reporter took out of context, just to make Rachel look like a self-loathing queer.
One details hurts the most, though: the fact that Rachel, when drunk, had repeated one of the insults she and Quinn used to toss around.
Santana had never felt more ashamed of the way she had treated Rachel than that moment.
She'd felt shame before, sure. There had been a period of processing how in the world could Rachel actually like me? when they first got together, and they'd discussed together how their troubled past might affect them. Rachel had assured her, many times, that what had happened was forgiven, asserting, "We were kids, Santana."
But…jesus. Thank god Rachel hadn't let slip that her girlfriend was one of the people who used to call her…that (and maybe Quinn did it more at times, but still). But what she said…the fact that she still thinks about it…and the fact that a part of her still worries what being called that might mean for her attractiveness…
Santana shoves the newspaper back into Rachel's bag and walks purposefully toward the bathroom door.
She opens the door quietly and listens. The splash of water is too regular, too rhythmic, for Rachel to be moving around much. As she closes the door and begins to remove her clothes, Rachel must hear her, "Santana?"
"Yeah, babe, it's me," she answers. As the apartment only has one bathroom, they've been lenient for a long time about using the bathroom while someone is showering—dating back to the days they lived with Kurt. Still, the sounds of the shower change, and Rachel is clearly not just standing under the spray anymore, so Santana slides her shorts down her legs so that she's naked and begins to move the curtain aside.
Rachel jerks her head to look at her, appearing shocked, but before she can protest, Santana is stepping into the shower behind her and taking the bottle of shampoo from her hands.
"What are you—"
"Shhh," Santana shushes, "Just let me do this. I mean, you said yourself you don't want to find glitter all over the apartment for months." She squeezes some shampoo into her palm and gently uses her hand to tip Rachel's head back slightly. Her slight height advantage has never been so useful as now, when Rachel stands in front of her, head tipped back, water running down her breasts, while Santana lathers her hair gently, massaging her scalp, gathering up her hair(shorter than it usually is, to better accommodate her wig for the role) to ensure it is all clean.
She spends much longer on Rachel's hair than is at all necessary, nearly five minutes, just massaging and allowing suds to circle down the drain. She doesn't actually know if she's getting to all the glitter, because she's really not that much taller, and the water and shampoo make it hard to actually see Rachel's scalp. But she just keeps going, until there's nearly no shampoo left to work with, and she finally leans forward to wrap her arms around Rachel's chest, ignoring the vaguely uncomfortable feeling of shampoo-slick hair and slippery skin meeting her own still mostly dry flesh.
"Thank you," Rachel murmurs, moving her own arms to wrap around Santana's and just leaning into her, her head resting against Santana's shoulder and cheek. Santana hums lightly, but doesn't speak, just holds Rachel gently as the spray gradually soaks them both.
After almost a minute, Rachel says, "I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I…I think I had a bad interview."
"I'll say," Santana agrees, then immediately regrets it and squeezes Rachel in apology, "I had a hunch and found your paper," she explains.
Rachel sighs, "I had the sense I was getting too drunk, but I was just so excited, and the reporter seemed so genuine and interested."
"I'll bet he was," Santana growls, "I think the best you can do is roll with it. Pretend it was a character study and you were playing a drunk, snobby, ignorant teen star with a steadily growing sense of entitlement or something."
Rachel forces a laugh, "Oh, God, I could swear I didn't say half of what was in that article, did I come off that bad?"
"Only in context," Santana assures, squeezing her again. "I know you. I'm sure in person you came off as genuine and excited and too honest. He definitely got some things out of you I know you'd rather were secret. And then he spun it to be inflammatory, because that's what journalists do."
Rachel is silent for a long moment, "I suppose I should have known that. I've been practicing interviews since I was four years old."
Santana laughs sharply, "Yet I doubt your dads let you practice them drunk."
Rachel exhales and deflates, "I guess the best I can do is admit my mistake and move on. Then wow everyone with the show."
"Which you will do," Santana assures, "Also with your hotness. Like, is it weird for me to say that, holy fuck, you make a smoking hot boy-Yentl or whatever the hell?"
Rachel's voice is amused, finally, "Oh, yeah? You like a little androgyny?"
"I don't know," Santana admits, "Maybe more than I thought I did, because yeah, you in that hat and vest and tie…" One of her hands slips out from under Rachel's arms and begins to drift lower, circling her belly and running lightly over her hipbones.
Before Santana can touch anything really erotic, Rachel turns around in her arms and smiles up at her. The hurt in her eyes is less, her smile is genuine, and Santana can't help but smile in response. "I can't believe you're making me feel sexy in that role."
"Why not? It's totally sexy," Santana assures, acutely aware that what was in the article might be on Rachel's mind. So she leans forward and kisses her softly, wrapping her arms more firmly around her, feeling Rachel's hands grip her back and shoulders, suddenly possessive, suddenly passionate.
Santana keeps the kiss slow for a moment, hoping to express her feelings the way that Rachel tends to like. It isn't always easy, just flat out telling Rachel how she feels. That's never been easy. It was terrifying to tell Brittany that in high school, and that moment of rejection has made it harder since. But Rachel always says she can tell how Santana feels through her actions. So Santana likes to try to make those grand and powerful.
She raises her hands to Rachel's shoulders and runs them down her arms, gradually disengaging them from her own body until she's holding both of Rachel's hands, still kissing her, then turning her body so that Rachel's back is to the side shower wall. She leans into her, pressing their bodies together until Rachel's back and the backs of her hands hit the wall. Rachel groans into the kiss a little as the slick, soft skin of their breasts slide together, and Santana moves closer so that their hips meet, her thigh pressing just slightly between Rachel's.
Rachel's legs part, but Santana doesn't take the invitation, instead keeps kissing, releasing one hand to tangle it in Rachel's hair. Rachel takes advantage of her free hand to run nails down Santana's back, then press against her lower back, trying to move her closer. Santana resists and retreats her thigh. It's not often that Rachel wants to hurry sex—she's usually the one playfully berating Santana for having her face between Rachel's legs like two minutes into the encounter (but, like, it's really hard to resist being between those thighs), and Santana senses this desperation and isn't happy about it. She's trying to make Rachel feel sexy and loved.
She kisses down Rachel's neck, allowing her hand to drift, too, tracing Rachel's collarbone. Her mouth and hand reach Rachel's breasts nearly simultaneously, and she cups one breast while her lips press all around the other one, skirting the nipple. Rachel pulls her hair firmly with her free hand, making Santana groan deeply. Almost on instinct, she bites down on the soft flesh, and squeezes firmly with her hand at the same time. She hears Rachel's head tip back to softly thud against the shower wall as she lightly moans.
Santana grabs Rachel's free hand again, keeping it pinned to Rachel's side. She's trying to go slowly, and things like hair pulling—one of her many weaknesses, a subject about which Rachel is immensely knowledgeable—just makes her lose control. She kisses and licks the wet skin, teasing the nipples with light flicks of the tip of her tongue, grazing her teeth lightly, making Rachel squirm beneath her.
It's hard, going so slowly, but Santana keeps focused on her task, increasing the intensity so that she's licking Rachel's nipples firmly, circling and flicking and closing her lips around them, and suckling and nipping on her breasts with the goal of leaving actual hickeys, like they're still in high school. She watches as Rachel's breath starts coming in pants, her back is arched off the shower wall, and her hips are rolling toward Santana's, desperate for contact. Santana stands up, taking advantage of her slight height advantage to smirk down at Rachel.
"God," Rachel moans as she looks up at her, "What are you doing to me?"
Santana frowns melodramatically, "Well, I thought I was turning you on, but if you'd rather just bathe…"
Rachel groans in frustration and surges forward to connect their lips painfully, their teeth bumping as she scrapes them against Santana's lip, her tongue stroking and pressing at Santana's mouth. It's impossible to resist such a desperate kiss, and Santana is returning it with equal fervor, so that by the time Rachel sags back against the shower wall, both their lips are dark and subtly swollen, evidence of their passion.
"Don't give me any sass. You know exactly what you're doing," Rachel growls at Santana.
"Yeah, I think that's why you like fucking me so much. I've got mad skills," Santana boasts with a little grin. Rachel tips her head back in frustration, and Santana takes the opportunity to lean forward to nip at her neck again. She licks up to snag an earlobe between her teeth, then murmurs, "I'm just getting so fucking wet putting my mouth all over you, I don't want to stop." Rachel's breath catches, so she chuckles lowly and continues, "But maybe it's time to see how wet you are."
As she lowers her head to kiss her way down Rachel's neck again, she hears Rachel choke out, "M'dripping."
"I didn't mean from the shower, babe," Santana responds just before closing her mouth around a nipple. Rachel groans and arches her body in such frustration that Santana has to fight to keep her arms pinned. She grins. She knows that her being an ass is just winding up Rachel more.
She's running out of patience herself, though. She is just as wet as she told Rachel, and she's dying to know whether Rachel is, too. She slowly begins kissing lower, down Rachel's stomach, crouching as she does so, until—
The shower spray hits her on the side of the face, completely breaking her flow, and she lets go of Rachel to quickly stand up, spitting out water and wiping it out of her eye. Rachel, for her part, begins to laugh.
Santana glowers, but that expression hasn't intimidated Rachel for years now. So instead, she takes Rachel's shoulders and moves her, bodily, so that she's against the rear wall of the shower. It's especially lucky, now, that they have a tub shower. They'd really wanted it in an apartment because Rachel sometimes liked to relax in a hot bath after a long day, but right now, it's fortuitous because Santana can get on her knees without drowning.
She presses Rachel against the wall and kneels to demonstrate just that; the water sprays her back harmlessly. She isn't holding Rachel's wrists this time, and her hands slowly follow her body's trajectory, pausing to pinch Rachel's nipples on their way down. Rachel tangles her hands in Santana's hair now, trying to push her head between her thighs, but Santana resists by latching her mouth onto one of Rachel's hipbones. It's a place that always produces interesting results. Rachel describes the sensation as somewhere between the building of an orgasm and being tickled, so Santana darts her tongue erratically over Rachel's hipbones, riding the squirming buck of her hips as she does so, until another fierce tug on her hair forces her to let go, and Rachel's hands successfully shove Santana's mouth directly where she wants it.
Her tongue is sliding between folds almost before she is even aware of it, and the taste hits her almost immediately, heady and delicious and uniquely Rachel. She nearly whimpers, both at the grip of fingers in her hair and the savory moisture on her lips and tongue. It's surprising, although it shouldn't be, how wet Rachel is. It's just that the rest of her body is soaked from the shower, made flavorless by the water running down her skin, that the sudden taste of Rachel feels like waking up.
Rachel's groan hits her, through the background sounds of water pattering onto her back and splashing hollowly onto the plastic of the tub and shower walls and her own humming moan in her ears. She shifts, nudging with her lips and tongue to press her mouth more fully onto Rachel's clit, wrapping her lips around it gently to suck, just for a moment, just enough to make Rachel keen and arch off the shower wall, ceasing when she knows the sensation will just be too much. Rachel whimpers, her hands stroking at Santana's hair absently, no longer gripping with such intensity. Santana swirls her tongue and opens her eyes carefully, feeling water on her face, and peers up through the droplets on her eyelashes to try to meet Rachel's eyes.
As if sensing Santana's gaze, Rachel tips her head forward to look down at Santana. Their eyes meet, and Rachel smirks. The fingers threaded in Santana's hair tighten, very hard, and though most of the motion is from Santana's mouth itself, suddenly having her head held still is restrictive in a way she hadn't expected.
When she feels Rachel's hips rise in a slow grind against her tongue, she whimpers. Since she'd had more experience with women when they first got together, sex was usually something Rachel invited by seduction, and Santana largely controlled (not like Rachel didn't work hard to get Santana off, just that she tended to let Santana choose even the way that would happen). This, this Rachel taking control of the sex, taking control of Santana's body, is…different. Intoxicating.
Hot.
Her head is held still, and it's all she can do to try to flick her tongue effectively as Rachel holds her head firmly by the hair with both hands and bucks and grinds herself onto Santana's mouth. Rachel still stares down at her. Her eyes are hazy, heavily lidded, her mouth parted, little gasps of pleasure escaping her. But through her erotic expression, Santana can tell…Rachel can barely believe she's doing this.
And really, it's not often someone has had Santana Lopez on her knees, held by the hair, fucking her face.
There's really no other word for the rough way Rachel rubs herself against Santana's lips and tongue. The surcease of power and the way Rachel stares at her is making Santana way more aroused than she thought possible. But then she smirks as she realizes, it's not as though Rachel has her completely under her control.
Santana lifts her hand from where it's just gripping Rachel's thigh. The other is braced against the shower wall behind Rachel, but…both don't need to be used to balance her. So her free hand trails smoothly up Rachel's inner thigh until, on a downward thrust of Rachel's hips, Santana's fingers graze Rachel's heat.
Rachel gasps and slows, and Santana uses her moment of surprise to slide two fingers inside. Rachel has gone absolutely still, and Santana takes the moment to pump and curl her fingers steadily, licking enthusiastically, until Rachel begins to slowly roll her hips again. Then, Santana stills her hand completely, letting Rachel pick back up the pace, and fuck herself on Santana's fingers while grinding herself against Santana's mouth.
(She feels a little bit like Rachel's sex toy, which is…ridiculously…hot.)
And then, so soon, even through the noise of the shower and her own muffled sounds of pleasure, Santana recognizes the way Rachel's breathing changes and the hands somehow tighten more on her hair.
She glances up, and she can see it on every part of Rachel's body: the way her abs have tightened, her shoulder have bent back slightly. The way she can no longer focus on Santana because her eyelids are fluttering, and her head is slowly, slowly, tipping further and further back, and the roll of her hips has become hard, frantic and—
Rachel bucks fiercely; Santana feels a brief, tiny jolt of pain as her teeth are bumped through her lip and the hands in her hair pull. And then Rachel's hips are rolling slowly, deliberately, steadily and gently, up and down on Santana's fingers and against Santana's tongue, and Santana can feel Rachel's core pulsing as if it's her own heartbeat, roaring in her ears.
After what feels like nearly half a minute of Rachel riding out her orgasm against Santana's face, the fingers in her hair loosen, and Santana slides her own fingers out of Rachel and reaches up to help her slide down the shower wall and sit. Rachel groans and bonelessly leans against the wall, her eyes closed, until Santana kisses her several times on the face, and she giggles, opening her eyes.
"Hi," Rachel says shyly.
"That," Santana declares, with a kiss to Rachel's nose and then lips, "was one of the sexiest things you've ever done."
"Really?" Rachel asks.
"Really," Santana nods, "I love you, and I love our sex. But one of the reasons I love you so much is that you know what you want, and you make it happen by any means." She waves a hand, "I've just never seen you do it in bed quite so…forcefully."
Rachel tries to hide her face, but Santana can see her smile, "This is hardly a bed, Santana."
Santana snorts, "Yeah, well. Maybe we can take Round Two there, and you can take control of me. Do whatever you want to me. I mean it."
Rachel's eyes are suddenly smoldering from between her fingers, and Santana has a strange sense that she's just unleashed some kind of sexually insatiable monster.
In the days that follow, NYADA's (powerful, well-respected) GLBT organization releases a statement condemning the glitterbomb attacks and threats directed toward Rachel Berry.
In the next week's NYADA newspaper, a letter written by the president of the GLBT organization is published, praising Rachel Berry for her courage sharing the struggles and strife she experienced growing up queer and Jewish with gay fathers, and complimenting her sassy tongue-in-cheek humor. The club's president also points out that Rachel's struggles were the result of the hegemonic patriarchy, and that should be the real focus of the rage anyone felt toward Rachel's comments on her life experience.
Several weeks later, Yentl opens at NYADA, to critical acclaim of the newly-adapted musical, and especially to its lead.
Santana is in the audience that opening night, and denies crying throughout Rachel's performance for the next five years. But she does cry, because, she knows, she is watching Rachel Berry make it happen for herself.