1. Mus
Santana suspected something was going on in the kitchen when food started going missing. Stray crackers. The odd crouton. Breadcrumbs.
She thought she might be going crazy, until one morning she heard a soft squeaking noise escape from under the countertop, and she opened the cupboard door to two sets of eyes, black and round like the heads of pins, that belonged to two small, twitching lumps of fur.
Santana let out a shriek loud enough to wake the spirits in the heavens and leapt straight into Brittany's arms.
"Ohmygod, it's a—"
Brittany twisted around the squirming load in her arms and peered at the source of the commotion.
"Cat food?"
She felt Santana's hand smack against her bicep. "No!" Santana said, and her heart beat so fast that Brittany could feel it pounding through her skin.
"Honey, look at me. It's OK."
Santana did, and she rested her head on Brittany's shoulder and soaked herself in Brittany's relaxed confidence until her breathing slowed and the adrenaline rush faded away.
"Aww, they're cute," Brittany said, turning so Santana could see the two tiny creatures huddled together in a knot, one with black fur and the other with cream.
"Do we... have to kill them?" Santana asked in a soft voice.
"No, honey. Not at all."
2. Cleaning
Lord Tubbington's least favorite place in the whole house was the bathroom. Not because the litter box was there, oh no, but because his humans always expected him to clean up after them.
Rose petals, candle wax — did they have any idea how hard it was to clean that out of the grout between the tiles? — and once, most distressingly, half a gallon of spilled maple syrup.
Seriously, who eats pancakes in the bath?
3. Recipes
For as long as Santana has known her, Brittany has never needed a recipe.
"I just taste the flavors in my head," she explained when Santana had asked her about it once, after she'd turned a loaf of farmer's market bread, two Golden Delicious apples, a block of sharp cheddar cheese, and a leftover jar of horseradish mustard — really, Brittany, apples and horseradish? — into a panini that'd make Giada De Laurentiis jealous.
"Recipes always pick the weirdest flavors. They're confusing."
Some days, when Santana's rummaging around in the fridge looking for something edible, Brittany comes to her rescue.
"Are you making breakfast?"
"No."
"Are you baking?"
"No."
"Then out of my kitchen."
Santana's stomach loves it when Brittany's feeling territorial.
4. Precision
When Santana is baking, the kitchen transforms into a chemistry lab, the countertops littered with measuring spoons and cups, and bowls of various sizes, and an actual scale that scares Brittany a little bit.
Lately, Santana's been on a cupcake kick, so Brittany's not surprised to return home after class to air heavy with vanilla and a constellation of perfect looking cupcakes scattered across the dinner table.
"It's like a cupcake-atrium," Brittany marvels.
Santana looks up from the cupcake she's icing with decisive swirls of a pastry bag and tilts her head. "Like a planetarium?"
"A cupcakearium." Brittany smiles and wraps Santana into a hug from behind. "Hi," she breathes into Santana's neck.
"Hi yourself." Santana sets down the pastry bag and turns around in Brittany's arms, regarding her creation with a satisfied smirk. "You've got to try this. I call it 'Come to Jesus.'"
Brittany gives her a look that says Really, Santana? but obediently opens her mouth and takes a bite of the offering and everything is suddenly vanilla and chocolate buttercream. Her eyes widen, and she says with reverence, "I want to live on Planet Cupcake."
Santana leans close and licks the tip of Brittany's nose and smiles at her confused look. "Icing. Don't want to let it go to waste."
Brittany loves it when Santana's feeling precise.
5. Lift
You can't believe she's never gone ice skating before. OK, maybe you can because her dad's not exactly the hockey type and her mom's from the Dominican Republic and do they even have ice there anyway?
So you teach her. Baby steps: how to hold on to the rail around the rink, how to fall down and get back up again, how to glide.
She's laughing now, her black hair streaming behind her, and she's so beautiful that you don't even know what you're doing until you're doing it, catching up to her from behind, whispering Trust me in her ear, lifting her up, and she's so light, so fragile but you know you'll never let her fall, and then she's flying...
6. Lion
This never would have happened if Brittany and Santana could keep their hands off each other for more than five seconds.
No. Wait. That's not right.
This never should have happened, no matter what the circumstances were, no matter who was holding hands or trading sappy little kisses in the orange juice aisle.
I saw him long before they did. He marched up to them, twisted and ugly, and what came of his mouth was even uglier. "Dykes," he spat.
"Shove off," I said, and out of the corner of my vision I saw Brittany take half a step in front of Santana. I know you can handle yourself, Brittany, but let me do this. Let me do something I'm good at.
He looked at me with eyes dulled by hate. "Are you a dyke too? You're all going to hell."
"Yeah? I'll make sure to say 'Hi' to you when I get there."
His mouth opened, a cannon readying for another volley, but I was done listening.
"Get out of here," I said, and I let a little bit of wild come to the surface, let it pulse under my skin, flash with teeth. You're not the only crazy one here.
His mouth snapped closed, and he backed away, retreating someplace safe like the front of the store, or whatever dark hole he'd crawled out of.
I turned back to them, and Brittany eyed me with that blank, unreadable expression she always wore when she was shaken.
Santana just looked at me curiously. "Where'd you learn that, Q?"
"Learn what?"
"That Force Ten death look."
"The Mack taught me." And she had, on the second day I'd joined them under the bleachers. "You gotta make it a weapon. Make it yours."
Santana smirked. "Nice." But then she smiled — a genuine, scrunchy Santana smile, the kind she usually reserved just for Brittany — and she linked her arm in mine. "Hey, Q... thanks."
"You're welcome." They'd always be welcome.
7. Whirlwind
It had been three days, twenty-one hours, and thirteen minutes since the last time they'd had sweet lady kisses, and Brittany was wilting in the heat of that killer drought, her normally verdant image of Santanaland scoured by whirlwinds of desolate sand and jagged tumbleweeds.
As much as she looked forward to their trip to Nationals, she also knew that the last-minute rehearsals and preparations for the trip would sweep them up and keep them apart. It's why she'd made such a fuss to her parents about booking a hotel room to themselves. And if her parents insisted on a room with two beds? She didn't care — they'd christen them both.
She stewed the entire bus ride to Chicago: five interminable hours of listening to Finn's braying voice and Rachel's self-absorbed prattle. Five hours of her fingers twined with Santana's, of their thighs brushing together in their Cheerios skirts, and every touch of Santana's skin burned like a blast of superheated wind.
Her patience held as they arrived at the hotel. It held as they unloaded the bus. It even held through the endless check-in process. But once the desk clerk handed her the keycards to their room, she grabbed Santana's hand and pulled her through the lobby and into the elevator, not even waiting for Mr. Schue to finish his arrival speech.
They barely made it inside the room before Brittany was consumed by the heat that had spent all day rising in her body, heat and moisture colliding in an EF5-rated tornado called Wanting Santana, and then she went wild far beyond the point of politeness, and she flung the scratchy hotel comforter off the bed along with a pillow, and pushed Santana down on to the sheets.
It was hours later before they realized that the housekeepers had left the sliding glass door to the balcony wide open to air out the room, and that the unfortunate linens had ended up in the swimming pool far below.
Santana covered her mouth with her hand in a futile attempt to stifle her laughter. "You're never going to live this down you know," she said between giggles. She wore nothing but a sheet and the afterglow, and she was so very beautiful that Brittany didn't even care that her pillow had ended up in the pool.
Brittany shrugged and cast a meaningful look at the other bed in the room.
"Oh? You want a second shot at declaring war on pillows?"
Brittany leaned forward and kissed Santana's snark into a different kind of sound.
8. Diner
There was never a good time for a waitress to quit, but quitting an hour before lunch rush was just twisting the knife, and as everyone watched the departed peel out of the parking lot, Wheezy sighed and dug the "Help Wanted" sign out from the cupboard under the cash register.
"Y'all quit your gawking," Wheezy said, waving the dishrag in her hand for emphasis. "You too, Brittany, unless you want to come out here and start taking orders."
The last time that had happened, half the diner ended up with the wrong food and Brittany had earned exactly four pennies in tips. It was much safer in front of the grill, even if it was hotter than hell and left her smelling like hamburgers after every shift.
Ten minutes before rush, the hottest woman Brittany had ever seen walked in through the front door, but instead of sitting down at a booth, she struck up a conversation with Wheezy at the register. Brittany spied on them from her spot behind the ticket rack while trying to plate four orders at once, and her mouth went dry as she watched Wheezy hand the woman a clean apron with a smile.
.x.
Brittany's brain was filled with caramel skin and perfect cheekbones and deep black hair tossed up in a messy bun, and the grill didn't feel nearly as hot as it did earlier in the day, before Santana showed up and pushed the flames straight into Brittany's belly.
In her head, she was pressing Santana up against the prep table, her thigh between a fantastic pair of legs and her hand loosening the tie that kept the black waves of Santana's hair from their natural cascade. In her head, Santana was saying, "Kiss me. I want you to kiss me..." over and over, until Brittany finally bent down and their lips touched—
"Brittany, what is going on in that fool head of yours?"
Brittany knew her ears had to be cherry red, and she kept her head down and stayed quiet. Maybe if she kept scraping at the grill Wheezy would go away.
Wheezy scowled as she brushed past on her way to the front counter. "Pay attention to the food, okay?" Then under her breath, "Thank the Lord Santana knows what she's doing."
.x.
Brittany was wiping down the grill with a rag when she felt someone behind her. She turned around and almost dropped the rag out of surprise when she saw it was Santana. Her eyes flickered between Santana and the prep table, Santana and the prep table, and she felt her ears burning hot for the second time that day.
"H— Hi," she stammered, feeling more shy than she'd ever felt before.
Santana smiled a small, tentative smile, and her eyes looked down and away. "I... umm... You're the only person I haven't met yet. And I just wanted to say... I'm—"
"Santana. I know I'm not supposed to know your name because you haven't told me yet but I heard it from Sam. So I kinda jumped the gun and I'm sorry." It poured out in a long rush before she could stop herself. Smooth, Brittany, real smooth.
This time, Santana smiled a real smile. "That's OK," she said. "Sam told me your name too, so we're even. Nice to meet you, Brittany."
Brittany twisted the rag in her hands and tried to think of something to say. Anything. God, Santana was beautiful. Brittany wanted nothing more than to sit down and maybe talk with her when she didn't feel so on the spot. Ask her, just ask her.
She finally did. "Are you hungry? Can I make you a burger after close?"
"Only if you make one for yourself."
Wheezy would never have to know.
9. Denver
"What are we doing in Denver again?"
"Well, someone had to go to a lawyer conference, and someone's wife decided that it would be a good idea to come along for a visit."
"And what does someone's wife think of that idea now?"
Someone's wife looked out the window of the car at the fat snowflakes glowing orange-white under the streetlamps and the dirty snowdrifts that lined both sides of the street. The city wore two feet of new snow and the idea of spending an evening downtown looked a lot less appealing than it did on the flight from San Francisco.
"Someone's wife should have checked the calendar first."
"Then it's a good thing this rental is a lezbaru, right Britt-Britt?"
"Can this lezbaru get us over there?" Brittany pointed out the windshield, over the hood of the Subaru, and to a boxy looking store with a bright neon sign that read "LIQUOR STORE - DRIVE THRU OPEN 24HRS".
A drive through liquor store. What a concept. In the light of day the idea of it would have been terrifying, but now it glinted with the perfection of a diamond nestled in two feet of fresh powder.
"What do you say to experiencing Denver from the comforts of our hotel room?" Santana said.
"Buy a bottle of Macallan and you've got yourself a date."
10. Tacos
"Thank you for choosing La Roca. Let me know when you're ready to order." The tinny drive-thru speaker didn't do the voice on the other end any favors. He sounded like a walking zygote.
"A'ight." Brittany turned to Santana and said, "Ay, what you want? What you like?" and she sounded like a sleazy Tijuana pimp.
Santana rolled her eyes. "The usual."
Brittany stuck her head out of the truck and said, "Tacos. Six tacos," but it sounded more like "Sex tacos," in her pimp voice.
What a troll.
The speaker crackled. "Pardon?"
"Six. Tacos. Six tacos."
"I'm sorry, how many?"
Santana couldn't stand it any longer. She leaned across Brittany and snapped, "Six! Seis!"
Brittany put a hand squarely on one of Santana's boobs and pretended to push her away. "Ay! Calm down, honey. I got dis." And then she squeezed her hand playfully.
What a fucking troll.
"That— that'll be nine dollars, OK?"
"Si," Brittany said, and she put the truck in gear and pulled forward so suddenly that Santana had to scramble back out of Brittany's lap.
Brittany — lean, blonde, sun-freckled Brittany — was definitely not the person the kid running the window expected to see, and as scandalized as Santana was, even she had to admit that his stunned expression was pretty epic.
The kid flailed like an uncoordinated toddler as money and tacos traded hands. Brittany smiled, all blue-eyed innocence, and said a breezy, "Thank you!" before driving away from the window and the taco stand and the kid who didn't even know what hit him.
11. Movie
There's a movie playing on the screen of the drive-in theater, but Santana has no idea what it is. Nor does she care, not when Brittany's sitting in her lap, digging fingers into her hair, and kissing her like an Oscar's on the line.
Brittany always smiles into their kisses with perfect happiness, as if each kiss is a present she never expected to receive. Her kisses are never ordinary because to kiss that way is a waste. Because human time isn't infinite. Because they have too much to lose. Because they've been lost before, and it was the worst thing in the world to bob alone in the deep water until they swam away from the bad and found themselves reunited on the shore of the good.
Is there a movie on the screen? Santana doesn't care, because no film could be better than the perfection in her arms, the gift of soft kisses along her jaw, or the sound of Brittany saying "I love you," in her ears.
Their reality is far better than fiction.
12. Ton-up
The bike that pulls up at the end of the driveway isn't the ride Santana was expecting to see, but as she takes in the image of Brittany astride a classic motorcycle she realizes that Brittany's planned this to perfection.
Santana's eyes take in Brittany from the ground up: the black engineer boots, the tight jeans with the cuffs rolled up, the black leather jacket; and when Brittany turns her head to look at Santana through dark sunglasses it's like Brittany reels her in on a line. Now she gets why Brittany had suggested she find a headscarf and a pair of shades to complete her outfit — she'll be riding to the drive-in in style.
"Hey, baby," Brittany drawls. She leans back on the seat and props a booted foot up on the footpeg, so casually sexy that it leaves Santana a little breathless.
"Brittany—"
"It's Britt for tonight, babe," she says with a grin.
"All right, Britt. Anyone ever tell you you're crazy hot?"
"Naw, I'm nothin compared to the girl I'm lookin at," she says with a shrug, and the collision of bashfulness and cool makes Santana's heart flutter. "You ready to scoot?"
"Yep."
Britt tilts her head down and regards her from over the top of her sunglasses. "Think you're gonna get cold back there, mouse?"
Considering that Santana's wearing heels, a circle skirt, and a low cut sweater, that answer is probably yes. But what she really wants is to see what Britt's got going on under that motorcycle jacket. "Maybe."
Britt smirks and shrugs out of the jacket, revealing a tight white t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The long lines of muscle in her arm flex invitingly as she holds the jacket out for Santana to take.
It's much heavier than it looks, and it smells like Brittany and leather and a trace of motor oil, and when she slips it on she's wrapped in a cocoon of Brittany's warmth and the feeling of perfect safety.
She hitches up her skirt and settles onto the seat behind Britt, and when the engine fires up it sends a primal rumble straight through her body. She squeezes Britt so tightly out of reflex that a razor blade couldn't fit between them, and she feels Britt's delighted laugh more than she hears it.
They fly through the streets, and if Santana accidentally brushes her hand up against Britt's chest a time or two or several along the way, it's all in good fun, because no matter how awesome this costume party is going to be, it won't compare to what's going to happen after they get back home.
And when they pull into the parking lot of the throwback drive-in to the whoops and hollers of their friends, and Britt helps her off the bike and pulls her close to her side, murmuring, "Baby, you're the most beautiful girl I know," Santana knows she has everything in the world to look forward to.