Disclaimer: I do not own these characters.

Author notes: Takes place in season two, before Santana has come out or spoken yet to Brittany about her feelings. Sorry if all of this isn't accurate, I haven't seen seasons three or four or the end of season 2, and I hope no one is offended by language. This is just how I think Santana would think.

Some days all I can think is how fucking glad I am that no one can look at me and tell what I really think or how I really feel, because if they could, my reputation as the most badass, untouchable girl in this stupid school would be gone faster than it takes Lauren Zizes to eat a king-sized Snickers bar. And speaking of Snickers, that's exactly what they'd all be doing. Actually, more like just straight up laughing their asses off.

Santana Lopez, having actual feelings that don't involve wanting to screw someone or metaphorically stab someone (always in the front where they can see it, no pansy backstabbing for THIS girl, at least not once I get to the final act)? Santana Lopez, having a single second of doubt or shame, one shred of hurt? Me, the biggest bitch in school, actually having feelings for someone and thinking it possible that they don't feel the same way, and CARING what other people would think?

No one would believe it. I barely believe it myself, and if it disgusts me to feel this small and weak, it would give everyone else a field day. All the girls whose guys I've stolen, all the guys I slapped down once I got what I wanted out of them, all the people who look at me, their completely inferior chests burning up inside because they know they'll never look as good or be as cool as me, that they'd never have the nerve to even try…what the hell would they do to me if they could see that more days than not, I feel just as pathetic as they all actually are? What the hell would they do if they knew that Santana Lopez, Santana the hottest piece of action in the history of this school, Santana who's tried out every guy who looked like he might have a decent sized dick and more besides…what the hell would they do if they knew I was a closet dyke?

It makes me feel weird, inside, shaky in a sick, spastic way, sort of like how Finn looks when he actually tries to dance. But every time I look at her or touch her, every second I'm around her, I get more and more sure that it's true. I'm a lesbian. I'm a lesbian, which probably means that any day now someone is going to offer me my own lame talk show and ask me to cut my hair and wear pantsuits or something. I'm a lesbian, and I'm in love with Brittany S. Pierce.

I never would have thought this would happen. I mean, Brittany? She doesn't even like to sharpen her freakin' pencils because she doesn't like to hurt them, but then she worries that the pencil sharpener isn't getting fed enough and will go hungry; deciding whether or not to write her name is like a battle of life or death to her. I once told her that there was nothing but air in her head, and she said, totally seriously, "No, people think that a lot but the doctor did check and there's brains in there. They just have a hard time working." Always before I've gone for the people who's DICKS are out in Stupidsville.

But Brittany…it's just so different with Brittany. I would say that I'm different with Brittany, but I'm not. The thing is that with Brittany, I'm exactly who I am, who I really am, and it doesn't matter. It's okay, with Brittany, when it isn't anywhere else in my life, because she likes me all the same.

I've known Brittany since junior high, but I didn't take any notice of her then. Sure, I thought she was pretty, but I was more jealous than anything, and I just watched her to make sure she wasn't going after any guy I had my eye on. It turns out I didn't have to worry, because more often than not Brittany would get lock on her way to class and end up walking up and down the staircase repeatedly because she kept following the arrows showing to go up and down without realizing that once you're up at the top or bottom by the door, you're supposed to go through it. We didn't really talk or hang around each other until high school, when we both joined the Cheerios, and even then, I didn't think much at first. Honestly, I thought she was sort of a putz, that she was dumb and gullible enough that I could sort of order her around and get her to do what I wanted and take the fall for me with things without her even realizing what was going on. I was sort of right, but it didn't take very long for me to realize that I didn't really want to do that with her at all. I didn't want to make her do anything.

Okay, so that's a lie. There were plenty of things she could do to me in bed that I didn't get up the nerve to ask for, even once we were getting horizontal. Even though I knew she would totally believe me if I told her it would make her see rainbows or that I was sick and it would make me healed or whatever. But the point is, I might have done that with anyone else, lied to get my way, but with Brittany, I didn't. Often, anyway. It wasn't me that was different, though, it was Brittany.

I used to measure myself against her, back in junior high, when we first started out in the Cheerios, to try to make myself feel good compared to her, to try to make sure I would always come out on top over her. I mean, come on, she was a pretty, insanely flexible blonde white girl, and I was a Latina from Lima Heights. I already has strikes against me as far as the popularity thing goes, so I'd have to work twice as hard to get the attention she'd get just for being a blonde who could do splits. But I figured, I was smarter and way more badass, I was just as hot, and I actually knew the name of what I was doing when I screwed someone. Maybe that Pinnochio-nosed Kelly Clarkson wannabe Rachel could outsing me and maybe Quinn could upstage me once in a while, and maybe that Tina Stammers had the hot Asian thing going, but at least with Brittany, I told myself, I would always win out as better.

But I was wrong. Brittany is better than me, where it really counts. Damn it, you know I have to be head over heels to even think something this Broadway musical sappy, but…Brittany is a better person than me. And she's the only one who could ever make me feel like that matters.

I used to look at her to feel good about myself by telling myself that I was better than her, but now it's sort of the opposite, and I look at her to feel better about myself because she thinks that I'm the best. She makes me feel good in a different way, not a sex kind of way, though let me tell you, she's got that covered too…just for me. She makes me feel okay for being Santana, the real Santana, the one that no one else knows. She doesn't judge me. I don't think she even knows how. No matter how much of a bitch I am, she still thinks I'm nice and sweet, and around her, I sort of want to live up to that.

She doesn't care if I'm tough or badass or cool or anything else, and with her I don't have to be. I can relax around her, let down my guard and just be, just feel, and nothing I do and nothing I am makes her turn away. She's the only person I could ever feel okay about letting see me cry, and the only one who would know that all I want is for her to hold me until I'm through. She's the only person who could see that, and not have her view of me afterward changed at all. I never knew how unsafe I felt, just getting through each day, until I the first time Brittany put her arms around me, and suddenly everything felt right. Warm, comforted, loved…that was what it was, to let her hold me. To let myself go in her arms.

I should have been scared. It was out in public, the hallway of our high school, and no matter how much we both brought up us screwing around with each other, that was different, because girls going all Katy Perry on each other was cool, as long as they had streams of guys keeping them straight too. But me, former Cheerio, crying on another girl out in public for everyone to make fun of if they wanted to?

I should have just wanted to Slushee my own self in the face for that. But I didn't. Because it was Brittany, and she makes it all seem okay.

Puck, Finn, Sam, any of the other guys I've been with- and believe me, I've lost track- they don't matter, any of them. They were nothing to me, and any girl with a working sex drive will probably come to the same conclusion with their all effort, no payoff approaches. What they were, I'm sort of figuring out now, were ways to pass the time, ways to try to feel something and make other people feel something, and know I was the cause. A way to make people want me and know that if they did, that meant I was hot and good at what I was doing and everything else, and I could make them do whatever I wanted…that I could feel good because I could. That I could feel in control.

That I could feel normal.

That was pretty much how it was. Being with guys made me feel normal, not so empty and scared inside, because everything I did with them was something I was choosing, something that would paint myself into looking and being looked at in a certain way, the right way. But with Brittany, I don't have to do or be or try anything to get what I worked so hard for with them. Brittany just fills the empty without me having to do anything at all. With Brittany, it's all her.

All she has to do is shoot that sweet little smile of hers my way, or take my hand and swing it back and forth when we walk, and my stomach does backflips. Not like the nasty kind where you're gonna projectile vomit, like after a hangover, but the neat kind, like when you've just had the orgasm of your life. Which, by the way, is nothing I've experienced from any guy, you're better off going solo if actual satisfaction is what you're after….or asking Brittany to cuddle, because it's pretty much a given what will happen from there.

Cuddling. That's something I actually DO with Brittany, and I like it, just as much as the sexier parts, because with Brittany, even laying down on her futon with my head in her lap to watch the Care Bears or My Little Pony is somewhat sort of sexy. All day I walk around with my head up or tilted at a sarcastic angle, holding myself the right way, somewhere between a strut and a sashay just so they all know exactly who it is they're dealing with here. But the second my ass hits Brittany's bed, or Brittany's couch, it's sort of like being a kid again, only with more fun body parts to snuggle up to. I can relax up against her and let her play with my hair, and it's sort of like I'm me, totally, but a different me. Not the me who grew up in Lima Heights Adjacent on insults and smacks, whose family would have looked at me like I was crazy if I asked for a hug. With Brittany there's no fights, because even the Powerpuff Girls upset her when they start punching people around. There's no being a badass because she won't get it, and there's no putting on masks, because she'll see around them and bat them aside. I'm just a girl, just Santana, all of me, and even if it hurts like hell, somehow it doesn't seem as hard as usual.

No one else would probably guess it, but sometimes it really does suck to be me. The hotness and talent aside, and believe me, I'm not brushing those off because those are huge, more days than not, I'm lonely. I might pretend otherwise, but I know people don't really like me. They fear me, or they're offended by me, or they want to screw me or get in my good graces, but they don't like me, not who I am as a whole. And that's sort of what makes me scared. I want them to like me, even if I can't stand most of them. I want them to think I'm pretty, I want them to think I'm talented and smart and badass and everything they want to be too. I want them to be jealous of me and everything I'm trying to be, something so special they can't help but love and hate me for it at the same time. I want to be all of it, but sometimes I feel like such a damn outcast that I can't even be normal, let alone special.

Here in Lima Heights, if you really want something, you don't go around blabbing or crying over it because either someone else is gonna snatch it away from you, or they're going to laugh at you for it. If you want something, you get on the defensive and go for it, whatever it takes, or it's gone faster than Lindsay Lohan's newly purchased crack. You attack before you get attacked, and you stake a claim whether or not you really want it, just so no one else can get it. So I guess that's what I did with guys- staked out my claim just so people would think I wanted it and was up for it, just so the guys would know I wasn't someone they could reject and I wasn't someone they could force. I thought I enjoyed it, in the moment. But it wasn't them. It was the power, the control, all along.

I liked being their bitch and making them my bitch, and I liked being wanted. But feeling loved, feeling good about me? Really enjoying them? That wasn't part of it at all. I didn't even know that could be part of it, before Brittany.

It's more fun with her, and when I'm with her, I'm happier. I enjoy every part of her touching me, and it's not about the power or control, because if I'm totally honest, I don't really have it. I can't make myself turn off how she makes me feel, and I can't make myself feel something different. But as good as it is and can be, it also hurts about ten thousand times more, because even when I'm with her and everything feels so right, I want more, and that's the part that makes me feel like I'm wrong. Or at least that other people will think so.

It's getting to the point where I can't really hide it anymore, not from myself and not from Brittany, and telling her that I'm crying over the plight of pink winged lightning bolt-assed pony isn't really cutting it anymore. I'm crying when I go to sleep and she's not there too, when any sappy song in Glee Club comes up that makes me think of her, and with Rachel the Hobbit singing some Barbra ballad every time she breathes, that's way too many times to keep up the badass bitch routine where people might believe it much longer. I feel like I'm breaking when I'm not with her, but being around her, and worst of all, letting her hug or try to be nice to me, makes me feel like I'm shattering inside even more.

Definitive proof I do have a heart, even if it is black and oozing out pus and Britney Spears Curious perfume.

It's stupid. I'm Santana Lopez from Lima Heights Adjacent. I don't care what people think of me. I'm a mean, judgmental bitch and I'm proud of it.

But I do care. Even if I hate everyone and think they all suck, I don't want them to think the same thing about me. And anyway, I guess I don't really hate them…even if they do suck.

I care. So much that Rachel the Dwarf Queen, of all people, could actually hurt my feelings, making that comment about how I'm going to get a job working on a pole. So much that when I had to choose between the Cheerios and the Glee Club, I almost chose the Cheerios, just because I knew that other people would think less of me if I didn't. So much that I blew my college savings for fake boobs over the summer, because one guy told me that mine were not only too small, but also different shapes. So much that every time someone praises Rachel or Tina or Quinn, or anyone else but Brittany, I feel like I have to say something to cut them down, right away, just in case they start to feel like they're better or other people start to think they're better than me.

I care so much what other people think that I can't be with the girl I love, because people will make fun of me. And that's what really fucking hurts…that I'm not really a bitch at all. I'm just a coward.

Weird as it is, Brittany is stronger than me. Because she would never care, and she would never let other people keep her from showing her love. She just loves, and that's it, other people all be screwed. Not usually literally, but with Brittany, it's totally possible.

I wish I could be like that. And maybe one day I will be. But right now, I'm not sure what's bigger yet…my love, or my fear.

End