Title: If I'm Lucky, You'll Fade Away.
Pairing: Santana Lopez (Glee)/Alice Verdura (Hellcats) with underlying angsty Brittana
Rating: R for implied secks, and bad language.
Warning: In some places with no close-in-age clause; this may be considered statutory; in others it may just be considered hot. Also, spoilers for Glee and maybe some for Hellcats too; all aired episodes are fair game.
Summary: Written for the prompt: Crossover, Glee/Hellcats, Santana Lopez/Alice Verdura, cassette tape at livejournal's femslash_today 's Green Beer & Kisses: The [Totally Not] Annual femslash_today porn battle. Title from the Ice Nine Kill's song "Build Your Own Disaster,"
Santana crosses her forearm over her eyes effectively drowning out the flood of light glaring at her from her ceiling fixture. She wishes everything else in her life were that easy, that she could just brush her fingertips across her forehead and stop thinking, that she could splay a palm across her chest and stop feeling just as easily as she has stopped seeing. Of course, she can't; instead she focuses on her breathing; lets her breath fill her until her chest feels heavy, and then lets it go imagining her sternum weighing down forcefully on her heart with every exhale. It helps. A bit. Just enough; enough to distract her from the ache of being and feeling and seeing, but she knows that just enough for now is going to be nowhere near enough later when she has to finally force herself to look at her Euro History homework and know that somewhere else there is a certain blonde dancer asking someone-who-isn't-Santana (Santana really wants to believe it's Quinn, or Mike, or hell, even Berry, but she knows it's Wheels with that stupid condescending smirk of his) the reason why they've put an 'I' behind the two 'W's instead of another 'W' like they usually do. Fantastic, like she needed another reason to hate Euro History, now there are all these divergent feelings associated with the subject and Santana's not sure she'll ever be able to look at a history book without a pep talk first, ever again.
She flips on her bed, buries her face into her pillows and sighs.
"What?" A voice from across the room floats to her ears and Santana just shakes her head and groans. "I was listening," comes the defensive reply, and at that Santana has to actually endure the judgmental glower of her bedroom light just to cast her guest with a disbelieving stare.
"Really?" she asks, although her tone, and even more so, her eyes, clearly say 'bitch, don't even lie to me.'
Alice rolls her eyes.
"You quit the Cheerios. Quinn FaPray is just as annoying as her sister was. Your best friend won't lez out with you. I heard it all,"
Santana scowls and buries her face right back into her comforter.
"It's funny how I didn't say any of that," she mutters glancing over black sheets to watch as Alice slides her fingertips across the rack of old cassette tapes Santana has resting against her wall.
"It's funny how that's all you've said," Alice scoffs and Santana doesn't even have it within her to attempt a rebuttal; besides, if there are two people in the world that Santana Lopez doesn't ever really try to win an argument against, they are 1.) Sue Sylvester and 2.) Alice Verdura.
Santana purses her lips and shifts again until she's able to drape her arm off of the bed so her fingertips can graze her floor rug. She watches as Alice inspects her cassettes, raking her fingers across the withering pieces of paper stuck to them like her touch can somehow bring back the faded language scrawled across them. Santana can only imagine the things they say; she guesses the majority of them are things like 'N'Sync album' from when she was too young and naive to think that anyone sexier Justin Timberlake could exist in the world, and 'Best Album Ever' from when she was like 8 and almost positive that Christina Aguilera having a whole entire album in Spanish was like a sign from God that life could not get any better. She supposes that for every tape there is with her faded ill-formed scrawl, there's one with Quinn's as well, and probably two with Brittany's—and there it goes again, every fucking thing coming back to Brittany.
She seethes silently, wishing that everything in her life that has to do with Brittany, that has been touched by Brittany, that has been influenced by Brittany could somehow just ignite and molt to ashes, those stupid tapes first and she herself would probably burn last, bursting into eternal flames just to get all the Brittany off of her. It angers her most that she'd have to burn at all and she huffs.
"Did you really drive all the way from Memphis to fiddle with my shit?" she asks, glaring as Alice pulls a tape from the shelf
"No," Alice answers candidly, tinkering with the old stereo system that Santana hasn't used in years. "I drove all the way from Memphis because your dad spoke to my dad about how teenaged angst-y you've been lately and my dad thought it was a good idea for me to come out here and convince you to start cheering again," she fiddles with a few buttons on the stereo and for a glorious moment Santana thinks that the stereo is broken, but of course, the tape soon starts rolling and the sound of old crinkling static is replaced by the bluesy intro of a song that Santana can't quite place. Alice turns to her with a smirk like the stereo is just another thing in life that Alice Verdura has manipulated into working for her—sad part is, that's probably true. "And you know how I love to please my daddy," Alice beams and Santana just rolls her eyes because that's also sad, and also probably true.
"You're not doing a good job at convincing me," she states, letting the sultry rhythm of the music wash over her; she may not have wanted it on, but now that it's on, she may as well enjoy it.
Alice makes a humming noise in her throat that could very well be an agreement, or as close to an agreement as Alice is likely to give.
"So, you admit you're doing a really bad job?" Santana presses.
Alice shrugs, nudging Santana over so she can lie on the bed beside her.
"Competition season and football season are over anyway, and cheering for basketball? Well, I used to personally slushee the basketball Cheerios," she offers as explanation. "Besides, you're close enough to an adult to do whatever you want. When have I ever lectured you about anything?"
Never, she has never, not that Santana is likely to admit that; still, besides Brittany and sometimes Quinn, Alice is one of the few true friends that Santana has and not even because their families have been friends for years that predates both of them, or even that when Santana was a freshman at McKinley, and Alice a senior, it was Alice's pull and example that saw her sitting comfortably far up the McKinley social ladder as Alice's alternate on the acclaimed Cheerios before she even finished her freshman year, but, because Alice scarily gets her sometimes in a way that most people can't even fathom.
"So," Alice nudges her in the side, "Go on. I can tell you're desperate to continue, so go ahead; tell Alice all your problems," She jokes. "Just know that if I ever need to bribe you…" She trails off and Santana doesn't even have to note that she's serious about that part; it's Alice, why wouldn't be serious about possible blackmail?
"Please." Santana snorts, more amused than anything else. "Did your dad ever find out about those nude pictures?" There's so much daunting in her voice that she sounds like her usual self, and she doesn't miss the way Alice perks up at the inflection.
"Touché," The university cheerleader nods, quite clearly actually impressed by the underlying ruthlessness. "So…?" She nudges her again and Santana is sure that there are only a few people that she will allow to keep nudging her like that without pushing them forcefully off of her bed; Alice is lucky she's one of them. Maybe.
"So…" She replies, drawing the word out as long as Alice did.
"What is it? You think you're gay or what?"
Oh, great! Now they're gonna have to have this conversation.
"I dunno," Santana shrugs. If she could bury herself into her own sheets, she would. "Maybe?"
"Was that Puckerman kid really that bad?"
"No," Santana answers instantly. Then again, "Yeah," She shrugs again. "Maybe," That's most likely her final answer, even though Alice is looking at her intently and if Santana had to chance a guess what that look means, she would assume it's a dare to be honest. She sighs. "It wasn't him. I mean, I've always kind of just felt this way,"
"Since when?" Alice asks, curiously, with just enough disbelieving to grate on Santana's nerves.
"I've just been really good at hiding it, ok!"
Alice holds her hands up in mock surrender.
"Ok," she says, settling back into the mattress; if she notices the way Santana is practically digging a grave out of sheets, she doesn't say anything about it. "So, since you've been into females since like forever, did you ever have a crush on me?"
Santana purses her lips regarding the Lancer Hellcat's cheer co-captain curiously.
"No." Santana responds quickly, smiling when Alice's smirk momentarily falters. She's lying.
"You're lying!"
"I'm not," She really is. "Maybe hero worship or something. Not a crush,"
"Please," Alice's smirk turns feral. "You know you'd jump at a chance to get on this. I'm the hottest girl you know,"
"Actually, I'm the hottest girl I know," Santana responds, too happy to get this conversation back on their usual jibing track; Alice isn't letting it go though.
"So, if I offered myself up to you right now, are you saying you wouldn't want a piece of this?"
Santana snorts.
"If Rachel Berry offered herself up to me right now; I'd probably tap that. This thing—," She wants to say this Brittany thing, she refrains. "—has dramatically affected my sex life,"
"Rachel Berry?" Alice asks. Santana can see as realization dawns on her. "Basket-Case Berry?" Santana hasn't heard that nickname for Rachel since freshman year; she makes a vow to use it as much as possible during Glee on Monday. "That's nasty. At least you had standards in your denial, Santana,"
Santana laughs. She's pretty sure she didn't.
"Seriously," Alice says, and when Santana blinks, they are literally that much closer. "If it's that bad, we should fix it now; we wouldn't want the lowlight of your school year to be trying to jump Berry's bones, now would we?"
It takes a moment for the words to settle in with Santana and the sudden proximity thuds in with it.
"Are you offering me sex?" She asks, dumbly, because well, there are a lot of things that Santana has done, and there are a lot of even worse things she's seen Alice do, but this, this isn't Alice style at all; not unless she wants something, and Santana can't even begin to imagine what she'd get out of this. "No strings attached?"
The music in the background comes to a sort of big band crescendo which Santana might actually find comedic if she weren't busy trying to sort out intentions and such.
"Like I'd miss a chance to say I've seduced yet another," Alice says with just enough cockiness that Santana believes her. Maybe. Mostly.
She crosses her arms over her chest—even though the action is far less intimidating when they are in such close proximities—and eyes the older cheerleader carefully.
"And what would you know about seducing a female?"
Alice laughs.
"College, Santana. Land of experimentation. I mean, half of our squad are Sapphically inclined, and the ones who aren't, probably are,"
Well, fuck, Santana needs to get to college like now; she can see it happening too, rejoining the Cheerios, she and someone-who-she-absolutely-will-not-think-about—Brittany, Brittany, Brittany!—getting scholarships most probably to Lancer; her filling Alice's shoes once again, Brittany—fuck, someone-who-she-absolutely-will-not-think about—dancing; no having to worry about slushees or being tossed into garbage cans. It sounds too good to be true.
"Including you, apparently," Santana says, trying to mask her zone out, even though the snark just isn't in her today and her voice reflects as much.
Alice just shrugs, completely unfazed by the judgment. For some reason though, Santana finds herself completely unwilling to let this go.
"Ok, so, suppose we have sex, what am I them? Just another spring on your steps of rising self esteem?"
"Whoa," Alice actually looks affronted. "Let's not mix up my issues with yours!" She objects. "Daddy issues? Maybe. Self esteem issues? No. Look, you're wound up because you're in love or whatever it is; I'm just offering a release,"
It's pretty tempting; almost too tempting to refuse. Santana is pretty wound up, because well, Brittany and even if she had a desire to keep sleeping with Sam, which she doesn't, he spends most of his time like jacking off to Avatar or some shit like that; besides, Alice is hott, older, and, well, hot. Fuck, she doesn't even know why she had to think so long about that; this feelings shit is really fucking with her brain.
"And no one finds out right?"
Alice rolls her eyes, exasperated.
"Of course no one finds out,"
Their first kiss is tentative; Brittany—fuck, she needs to stop doing this to herself—isn't the only girl she's kissed, but she was the first and the most recent and the person she's kissed consistently for the longest, so this is different in a way Santana can't explain. It's not like when she's with Puck or Sam and these dazzling images of long, pale, smooth legs, and rounded hips invade her mind and make her buck harder and scrap her nails down hard, taunt muscle; it's just, well, Alice is lean and slender and they curve together in all the right places and it's good, fuck, it's great, and because of that, it feels kind of wrong. She feels almost guilty for enjoying this, for sinking her body perfectly between thighs that are soft and toned all at the same time—but aren't Brittany's—for skating her fingertips across abs that don't jump at her touch— like Brittany's. It almost feels like she's cheating, but she isn't because Brittany is somewhere not understanding her Euro History homework with a stupid boy who won't formulate cheers on spot to help her get it, she's somewhere laughing at jokes she doesn't get and never will because he doesn't care enough to explain them to her, she's somewhere with him, enjoying herself, so what the fuck does Santana have to feel guilty about? She put herself out there, gave her heart still beating to Brittany outside of her locker and Brittany chose him, so fuck it, Santana will enjoy herself.
She sinks harder into Alice's body, rocks her hips so Alice feels it even beneath those ridiculously short shorts and sinks her teeth into Alice's plump bottom lip until she gasps into Santana's mouth and Santana collects it and kisses her hard, harder than she's ever kissed anyone.
"Rough much?" Alice gasps, face flushed, and chest heaving with the sheer effort of trying to refill her lungs.
Santana smirks.
"I thought you could handle it," she breathes, voice rough with arousal.
Alice smiles, more animalistic than Santana has ever seen her, and sinks her teeth roughly into the side of Santana's neck, a sure sign that yes, yes she can handle it, and Santana groans, feeling the unspoken declaration to her very core.
Fuck it; yes, she will enjoy this; she'll enjoy it if it kills her.
The end.