"I don't know, Santana," Brittany said seriously, shaking her head. "You know, if there really are ghosts, and they really are haunting this house, then it seems pretty wrong to be profiting from their misery. You know, it can't be a very happy existence, to be hanging around a rundown building with people who are still alive charging people money to come in and scream at them all night. The poor ghosts are probably just hoping for some peace and quiet in their own house and here we are invading their privacy. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this."
"Oh Brittany, come on, you know this isn't actual, real ghosts in an actual, real haunted house," Santana rolled her eyes, tugging with a mixture of impatience and excitement on her newly official girlfriend's arm. "This is just some lame attempt to freak out the dorky losers of Lima that can't handle a little fake blood and off key groaning. Watching Rachel Berry suck face with Frankenteen is way scarier than anything they could throw at us in here."
"True," Brittany agreed, deadpan.
She let herself be tugged forward by her girlfriend in the slow moving line to the "haunted" attraction's entrance, flinching slightly as Santana's long nails dug into her skin. Santana's voice was higher in pitch than usual, almost as rapid in speech as Rachel's during one of her long winded rants, and she kept bouncing from one foot to the next, shifting her weight as she continued to pull Brittany forward every half inch of space that the line allowed for.
"This is going to be a huge joke, Britt. It's gonna be all the Lima drama geeks in here covered in plastic guts and jerking around like spazzes in fake electric chairs, hanging out of cardboard jails and talking about wanting to eat brains. You know, not much different than spirit week except they're grabbing at our heads instead of our tits. Come on, this is gonna be a total laugh, this is gonna be like comedy gold of the semester!"
"I don't know, Santana," Brittany said seriously, even as she was aware of her girlfriend's huge grin and continued excitable gestures. "I don't think red liquid spread all over someone is funny unless it's Rachel Berry and a cherry slushie."
"What are you talking about, it's hilarious!" Santana demanded, giving her girlfriend a playful nudge in the ribs. "Britt, this place sprang into existence in Lima, Ohio. For that reason alone, it's gonna be the cheesiest, lamest shit we've ever laid eyes on."
"I don't like violence, Santana," Brittany reminded her. "I don't think I'll laugh when I have to think about poor bloody people who got murdered just because they didn't have our amazing sense of style."
"They aren't REALLY murdered, Brittany, they aren't really dead, none of this is real. It's all just lame people pretending to be creeps, probably people we all know. This is gonna be great. I'm gonna go in there and point at all of them and call their names out and laugh my ass off. I'm gonna push their stupid props over and take pictures with my phone and have Jewfro publish them in the paper with amazingly amusing headlines. This is gonna be tons of fun, you wait and see!" Santana informed Brittany with a cheeky grin, just as they stepped up to the ticket taker and handed theirs over.
She hadn't been looking at the person taking her ticket, too busy chortling about her plans to the blonde just behind her, so when the woman's long, sharp fingernails prodded her shoulder, Santana jumped, nearly deafening Brittany's eardrum with her shriek. The woman, made up in such a way that half her face appeared gruesomely deformed, her right eyeball hanging by only a few threads out of a dark, empty socket, cackled loudly, removing her hand from Santana very slowly.
"Go ahead, dearie- do your best to make it out alive!"
"Brittany, what did she mean?" Santana demanded, a nervous edge now clearly audible in her tone as both her hands reached to clutch onto one of Brittany's, anchoring her near. "Do my best? Isn't it a given I'm going to make it out alive? Why is she talking to me and not both of us or you?"
"Shh, it's starting," Brittany whispered, giving Santana's hand a reassuring squeeze as she began to walk forward. She didn't fail to notice that the brunette's steps slowed considerably, and her usually fast stride became something more of a shuffle as she positioned herself in such a way that Brittany was slightly ahead of her.
As they entered what looked like an old fashioned parlor, Brittany calmly took in her surroundings, noting the décor with some interest. She reached out to touch the red velvet couch, regarding the pictures on the wall of dark, gloomily old fashioned people with calm observance, and spoke aloud to Santana in a normal voice, narrating what they were seeing.
"Oh look, it's a zombie family."
Santana didn't observe this fact with anything near the calm that Brittany had. In fact, as she took in the slack-jawed couple sitting on the couch, the three children in outdated clothing shuffling forward towards them from the cobwebbed piano, her dark eyes grew huge, pupils dilating, and she dug her nails even harder into Brittany's arm, gasping out loud.
"Holy fuck Brittany, they're moving towards us! Pick up one of the chairs, fend them off, hurry…holy shit they're coming at us!"
She almost sprinted to the next room, dragging Brittany after her, and then stopped short. She had found herself in a bathroom with blood splattered on the walls, over the toilet, and filling the exposed bathtub and sink. Inside the bathtub lay the mutilated body of a young woman, eyes open, and crouched over her, blood dripping from his mouth, was a young man who turned to the girls with a feral growl.
Santana's screech of horror was so shrill that Brittany flinched, and she almost knocked the both of them over and straight into the tub of blood in her haste to move on to the next room. Brittany followed on her heels, trying to talk to her over the loud, pounding music playing over the intercom system in every room.
"Hey, honey, it's okay. Remember, you said it isn't real. Remember, you said this is just a lame, ridiculous-"
"HE'S FUCKING EATING HER!" Santana bellowed, clinging onto Brittany with such desperation in her grasp that she was almost straddling her piggyback. "Brittany, we have to get out of here, they're all insane, they're going to kill us, we have to get out!"
The words had barely left her mouth before a hooded figure leap out from behind a dark curtain, popping out right in front of Santana's face. Santana's scream even drowned out the music as she darted forward, dragging a bemused Brittany after her.
The next room was no better for her; they found themselves wandering into a mock operating room, with several bloodied surgeons- one with a muzzle over his face, streaked with blood, one dressed as a clown, and the other in a vampire's stereotypical clothes- all hunched over the opened body of a young woman bearing a strong resemblance to Brittany. Brittany's eyes only briefly flickered over this scene, however. Her attention was on her girlfriend, who stared with horror stricken gaze, her hands trembling where they grasped at Brittany, an audible whimper escaping her throat.
"Brittany, this is horrible, this is so wrong…Brittany, we have to get out, we have to get out of here, right now, OH MY GOD THEY JUST THREW BLOOD AT ME!" Santana hollered, jumping a minimum of eight inches in the air when one of the "surgeons" squirted a syringe filled with clear water in her direction. " THEY THREW BLOOD AT ME, I'M GONNA BE A ZOMBIE VAMPIRE!"
"No, you can only be a zombie vampire if you eat a person and then drink their blood, I think," Brittany mused, shaking her head. Encircling Santana's shoulders with her arm, she stroked her girlfriend's hair, keeping a protective grasp of her as she leaned close to talk into her ear.
"It's okay, baby, we'll get out, I promise. No one will get you, not with me around to keep you safe. I've got you, okay? I'll go ahead the rest of the way, you hold onto me and close your eyes, and everything will be okay."
"Promise?" Santana nearly whimpered, taking Brittany's offered arm with clingy grasp.
"Of course I promise," Brittany reassured her, dropping a kiss on the side of her head. "I've got this, babe. Let's do this."
She lead her the rest of the way through the house, holding onto her shoulder, her hand, guiding her, putting her body in between Santana and everything in the house that might try to come between. The whole night Santana kept her head down, her eyes screwed shut, and kept a panicky grasp of Brittany, not loosening her hold even slightly. Brittany kept up a running murmur of commentary, telling her when to turn, when to lift her feet, and all the time assuring her that she was doing great, that she was okay.
The whirring noise of the chainsaw at the attraction's end was enough for Santana's head to snap up, her eyes flying open, and she ran with gasping breaths until they were once more back in the parking lot near her car. Doubled over, catching her breath, she accepted Brittany's arms wrapping around her, the hand gently stroking her back as Brittany gave her comfort.
"You're okay baby, you're safe. We're out now."
She could feel the smaller girl shaking as Santana buried her face against Brittany's shoulder, her arms winding around her as well as she burst out with her indignant response.
"Oh my god, those people are all psychos. Anyone who made that place, anyone who pays to go into that place is insane! What kind of insanity would make a person go in there willingly?! What kind of horrible, sick person thinks that is fun?!"
Anyone else in the Latina's life would have pointed out that twenty minutes ago, that insane, horrible, sick person she had just described had been her. But Brittany just kissed the top of her head again, holding her close, and when Santana finally lifted her head up and slipped into the driver's seat, acting as though nothing had happened whatsoever that was out of the ordinary, Brittany didn't say a word to indicate otherwise.
This was the way things were sometimes, when you were the girlfriend of Santana Lopez. For some people, this would be irritating, even maddening, but for Brittany, being able to be there for her girlfriend in her self inflicted stubbornness was simply what she was there to do, just one piece of what it meant to love her girl.