A Study of Attraction

Brittana oneshot. Rating for language.


Santana looked at the clock in the corner of her computer screen. 17:06. Her last participant had finished later than she thought they would, but it seemed the next one was running late anyway.

She sighed and stretched her arms up, leaning away from the statistics program running numbers and syntax on her screen. This was her last participant of the week. She'd been in the lab since 8am this morning, had barely been able to make time for lunch since the program that was running the experiment task had decided to take a nap and hide her data with no explanation – thankfully all could be saved, but not without forcing Santana to go on a wild goose chase through half of the folders on its hard drive, putting her in a pretty shitty mood – and now that she was just one hour away from being able to go home and take a nap, her last damn participant wasn't even attempting punctuality.

She leaned back into the laptop and scanned over the data for her final year social science thesis. The data looked like she was expecting it to, based on the literature she'd already spent hours digging through, and since the task wasn't too complicated there weren't any particularly obscure results. But this was just the first session. All of these participants had a follow up session in two weeks, not to mention the week in between would be filled with the previous week's follow up sessions. Just thinking about the hours she would have to pull with all of these participants made her head spin. She couldn't wait to get home, collapse on her sofa and-

The sudden knock on the door made Santana flinch out of her thoughts and she turned to see a blonde girl standing in the doorway.

"Can I help you?"

"Um, I'm looking for...Santana?" the blonde girl checked the name written on her hand. "This is the memory study, right? For course credit?" The girl seemed to be asking her a question but Santana was hardly paying attention, too transfixed by the girl, focused on the explosive blue of her eyes, the gently sway of her hair, the way the muscles in her toned arms shifted underneath flawless skin as she adjusted the weight of her bag, before crossing her arms and- wait, were those leg warmers?

"Uh, hi- yes, that's me- my study, I mean -not me, I'm Santana. Like you said." Santana's brain seemed to catch up to the girl's questions and tried to answer all of them at once. Santana blushed as she paused, trying to keep from sounding any more of a fool, and looked away for a moment to regain some composure. All went to hell when the adorable soft giggle from the other girl reached her ears, at which point every single cell in Santana's body actually swooned.

"Sorry I'm late, my cat was sleeping next to the door and he wouldn't move so I had to climb down the fire escape." The girl offered as she moved into the room. The explanation caused Santana's eyes to snap back to the girl's face so see whether or not she was being serious. She'd heard her fair share of sorry-I'm-late excuses from participants, but no-one had delivered one quite this ridiculous and kept a straight face at the same time.

"You couldn't have just picked him up and put him somewhere else?" Santana suggested as she stood to close the door behind her.

"Not yet. I still have some weight training to go before I can try lifting Lord Tubbington. I could pull my back if I don't properly learn the correct way to Clean and Jerk."

"Uh.." The correct way to what now? Santana has to take another moment to let that one sink in, before she turns around and directs the girl to the computer that runs the task, at a desk the other side of a privacy barrier. "Right. Well if you'll just take a seat...uh-"

"Brittany. Brittany S. Pierce." offers the blonde girl as she passes Santana and settles down at the desk.

"Brittany...Spierce?" Santana scoffs in disbelief. She's seriously starting to question whether this girl isn't just someone her friends sent in to wind her up. She's about five seconds away from saying as much and asking the girl to leave so she can get home early when the girl looks up at her looking mildly affronted.

"Yes. And I've had to deal with living in the shadow of Britney Spears for most of my life so I would appreciate it if you would never mention that again, please."

Well, shit. Santana was speechless for an entire minute, staring down at the girl – Brittany – before she decides to get this over with and murmurs a "sorry." before heading back to her desk to grab the consent form. She turns away just as Brittany replies with "I forgive you. But just because you're super hot." and actually stumbles over two of the five steps between where Brittany is sitting and the desk with her laptop.

She returns as gracefully as possible with the information and consent sheets. "So, uh, Brittany," she mentally kicks herself for fitting more non-verbal fillers into the last five minutes than she's ever used in her entire life. "If you could just read through both sides of this sheet, it's just some stuff about the study, and when you're done, read through these points and sign at the bottom of this side," Santana lays the sheets out on the desk in front of Brittany and leans over to point out where she needs the signature.

She realises too late that leaning in too close to Brittany – a girl whose presence alone is making her forgo coherent speech - was a complete rookie mistake, as she accidentally inhales the smell of Brittany's perfume combined with what Santana is assuming is just her natural scent plus some kind of fruity shampoo. Santana thinks that this smell might be her kryptonite, and immediately goes light-headed before letting out a small moan.

And then freezes altogether, because she actually fucking moaned.

And there's that giggle again. As if that's going to bring Santana any closer to her senses.

She tries to cough it off before pulling back a bit and quietly adding "...and if you could date here," pointing meekly at the line underneath the one she told Brittany to sign on.

"I think it's a little soon to be dating, we've only just met?" Brittany turns, confused, to look Santana right in the eye. "Wait, do you ask all of your participants out? Is this part of the study?"

Santana starts laughing then. Really laughing, mainly at herself. Because she can feel the blush rising in her cheeks and knows that she's beyond words at this point and laughter is pretty much all she can do, because this girl has been in the room for all of ten minutes and Santana can already tell that she's never met anyone like Brittany. She was just not ready for this. It's completely overwhelming.

And, oh God, she thinks I was asking her out.

Brittany continues to watch as Santana tries to cover her mouth and hold back her laughter. Laughter at her, because she said the wrong thing again. Brittany bites her lip as the girl in front of her turns away and leans against the wall to hold herself up as the chuckles rack her body. Brittany is shocked, really. Usually when people laugh at her they have the common decency to do it behind her back. She lets out a small sigh before muttering "doesn't matter", grabbing her bag, standing and heading for the door.

"Brittany, what-" She hears Santana choke out from behind her. As she reaches the door she turns back to cut her off. Santana's laughter dies instantly and her face drops at the hurt expression on Brittany's features.

"Sorry for wasting your time." She says flatly before pulling the door open and trying to leave with as much dignity as possible. Try being the operative verb. She feels something pulling on her bag that stops her in her tracks.

"Brittany, wait," Santana quickly steps forward to the door, "your bag's caught." The brunette quickly unhooks the strap from the handle, and Brittany moves to take her leave again, but finds once more something is catching the strap of her bag. She turns and looks down to find Santana's hand.

"Please let go." She says quietly. Hasn't she humiliated herself enough? But she notices the grip on the strap just tightens.

"Let me apologise." Santana pleads quietly. She really hadn't meant to upset the girl – she's not even entirely sure how she did it, honestly from having her stumble over thin air to literally moaning, Santana was quite sure that Brittany has had the upper hand since she walked in. "I- Wh- Look, I didn't mean to upset you in any way..." Santana tailed off as blue eyes looked straight through her.

"You were laughing at me." Brittany states, and Santana actually feels like the worst person in the entire universe right then.

"I'm so sorry – that wasn't at you, I swear. I was laughing at me."

"I'm not stu-...I'm not an id-..." Brittany paused and took in a deep breath, looking away for a second. "Why would something I said make you laugh at yourself. That's ridiculous." Santana has to bite her lip. Brittany looks like a sad puppy, it's several different shades of adorable but it really bothers Santana to see her like this. She realises she might actually have to confess that the blonde has been knocking her for six since she first got there.

"Because you make me nervous." Santana offers, looking pretty bashful but keeping eye contact with Brittany the entire time. They can both tell she's not lying. The corner of Brittany's mouth quirks up.

"Really?" She enquires with a glint in her eye.

Santana nods. "Absolutely." She almost whispers, her eyes never leaving Brittany's. Brittany smirks, and then quickly turns and walks over to the desk with the sheets Santana had laid out for her. She pulls a pen out from her bra of all places, bends over the desk and signs the consent form. She then makes to leave the room but turns back to Santana and leans in as if about to grace Santana with a secret.

"Well, when I get nervous I just imagine everyone around me is naked." Brittany pulls back and hits Santana with a wink before turning on her heel and strutting out of the lab as if this conversation had never happened.

Santana's struck dumb, and is almost too busy just watching Brittany go – which: damn, what a view – before remembering what they were both doing there in the first place. Santana leans out of the doorway.

"Wait, what about the study?" She calls after Brittany, who glances back over her shoulder.

"You can study me some other time," She states casually, still walking away.

"But you signed the form!" Santana can't wrap her head around what exactly Brittany is doing. The girl in question turns around to face Santana whilst - with a confident grace Santana could never possess - still walking backwards.

"Check the date." She delivers, adding one more wink – Santana wasn't ready for it, she almost collapses against the door frame – before turning back around and disappearing round a corner. And then she was gone.

Santana turns back in to the lab and walks over to her computer, muttering "check the date?" before it clicks. She turns and – more eagerly than she will ever admit – crosses over to the study computer, picking up the consent form and reading over Brittany's responses several times, before her face cracks into a smile and she almost rolls her eyes at herself. She pulls her phone out of her pocket and enters the phone number Brittany had scribbled on the 'signature' line.

Date: Dinner and a movie?


A/N: Hi there, I hope you enjoyed reading this. If it wasn't obvious, I am a psychology student and this was inspired by the studies I've been working on recently (note: this has never actually happened with any of my participants!). I hope you enjoyed it, I kind of wrote it all in one sitting on a whim so when I started I didn't know how it would end. As always, this is unbeta'd so if you spot any errors feel free to let me know :-) Have a nice day!