Author's Note (07/08/2012): I fixed some things that I'd been meaning to address basically since I wrote this. There are no real content changes, but rather just a handful of little research-based things that I didn't do correctly the first time around because I was a) drunk, and b) lazy. Finally getting around to it because studying for my cost account final is boring. If you're someone who pointed out what was wrong, you know who you are, you're ace, and I make no guarantees that I fixed things correctly, but I took a stab at it.
August 2012
Villanova is weird. She never thought she'd end up a school in a place like Pennsylvania, but Brittany convinced her to apply ("The name is so cool!") and they offered her a scholarship, so…Pennsylvania it is.
Brittany isn't there. She's off with some bohemian free-love modern dance troupe, driving around the country in a caravan of Volkswagen microbuses that look straight from the seventies and calling Santana at all hours of the night. They had planned to stay together, but Brittany doesn't want to start school yet and Santana doesn't want to wait, so they compromise with an agreement of no expectations and no attachments and the simplicity of early high school with the maturity they earned from fake relationships and forcible outings and slushies to the face.
Santana at twelve never considered college, Santana at fourteen never considered college beyond cheerleading at Ohio state, and Santana at sixteen never considered college without Brittany, but Santana at eighteen is on an almost-full academic scholarship to a pretty decent school and completely alone. She always thought that she and Britt would be shacking up in a crummy dorm room together for the first few years, twin beds shoved together and one of those blanket-tents that Brittany loved so much perpetually shielding them from fluorescent overhead lights; maybe an apartment off-campus once they could convince their folks that they wouldn't burn a building down without RA babysitting them, where they could have privacy and their own bedroom and their bed and somewhere that was home.
Instead of all that, though, Santana has a bumbling roommate who would rather plug in and play Warcraft, a lumpy twin bed with no blanket-tent that feels too small and too big at the same time, and a school where no one cares about Lima Heights or Sue Sylvester or how much of a sex-bomb Santana is at all times but especially when she sings. Instead, she has no one looking out for her, no one watching her every move, no one expecting anything of her. She has a library and classmates who somehow get past her awesome rack enough to have intelligent conversations with her, professors who don't talk down to her when she scoffs and says "you're fucking wrong, son" to a peer. She has calls every other day from Brittany and the car her parents let her bring because she earned her scholarship, and a bus that she can take to the off-campus freshman parking lot, and Quinn Fabray driving up from her dorm at George Washington University to meet her every Saturday afternoon for lunch.
December 2012
"I can't believe I let you drag me out here," Quinn mutters, glaring at the menu in front of her between glances at her watch. "I need to study."
"Shut up," Santana says lazily, not looking up from a Twitter update on her phone. "I don't like eating alone."
"You didn't have to come. We both should study." Quinn's reaching for her ridiculously oversized purse ("That thing looks like a bodybag, Q. Did you finally kill your roommate? I swear to god, I am not trying to bury a body in Pennsylvania in December, the ground is more frigid than you are.") when Santana looks up, fingers latching onto the corner of a textbook.
"Nuh uh!" Santana snaps. She's around the table and snatching the entire bag away from Quinn before the book is halfway free. "No way are you studying your boring-ass economics crap when you're at lunch with me, Juno. I'm too fabulous to be ignored."
"My classes aren't boring," Quinn says snippily. "They're more interesting than your stupid finance courses. And you're the one who couldn't be bothered to stop tweeting long enough to speak actual words."
"You have my undivided attention, sweetcheeks," Santana says. She leans forward, elbows on the table, and bats her eyelashes at Quinn, who simply rolls her eyes. Santana blows a kiss at her and winks. "There's the puritan blush. I missed that. Are you sure you don't want to transfer to Villanova?"
"Sorry, I got enough religious indoctrination in Ohio. I don't need any more of that. Ever."
"Whatever, Quinnocence, I've already boned like three different girls this semester. It's not as uptight as you think just because it's a Catholic school. As long as you make an appearance at mass every now and then, no one gives a shit."
"I'm not Catholic, genius. Never have been."
"Who cares? You had a Jesus poster over your bed, celibacy queen. Close enough."
"And I don't want to move. Or leave GW. I happen to like it there."
"Whatever, all you do is study and read your weird hipster books."
"They aren't weird, Santana. Just because there aren't pictures of naked girls in them doesn't mean they're weird." Quinn sniffs primly. "And I do more than study and read."
"Dumb concerts by crappy bands who make waily, whiny music that isn't really music doesn't count, either. Seriously, Q, just fill out the paperwork and transfer. I need a decent wingman and you need to get that stupid stick out of your ass once and for all. We can kill my roommate and hide her in your ginormous purse until the ground thaws out. She's like fifty pounds, we can take her."
Quinn snorts uncharacteristically, and her eyes widen and cheeks flush even more, a hand flying up to clap over her mouth. With absolutely perfect timing, their waiter returns to take their orders. Santana is almost shaking with laughter at the fact that Quinn is almost purple, and neither of them can get their order out in full sentences.
Two hours later, they're standing in the parking lot down the block and shivering in the wind while Quinn fumbles in her bag to find her keys. She keeps dropping them, and is complaining under her breath about numb hands and winter winds and the fact that Santana stole her scarf.
"Christ, it's cold as balls out here," Santana mumbles. She hunches her shoulders down and ducks her head, burying her chin in the aforementioned scarf and pressing against Quinn's back in search of a windblock.
"Keep it in your pants, Lopez," Quinn says drily. "You're not my type."
"Oh, please," Santana says. She braves the cold to bring her hands out of her coat pockets and— just because she can—latches onto Quinn's hips to spin her around abruptly.
"What are you—" There's a wide-eyed, calculating, comfortably familiar look of distrust across her face, and Santana presses in closer. Mostly she really is just that cold and Quinn is barely tall enough to block some of the wind, but the flare of color darkening on Quinn's cheeks and her stiffening posture are a certain bonus.
"Don't lie, Q," Santana says. Her voice is low and silky and almost carried away by the wind, and she presses even closer just because Quinn isn't stopping her. "I'm everyone's type."
Quinn's phone rings shrilly from somewhere in the depths of her purse. Her eyes dart down to where it's hanging limply from one hand, and Santana smirks.
"You should probably answer that. Might be important." With a wink, she steps back, hands falling from Quinn's hips as her eyes dart up and down Quinn's frozen form once. It takes everything she has not to burst out laughing, but instead she just points at Quinn's purse before making her way towards her own car. "Your bodybag is ringing. You should do something about that."
Half an hour later, her phone chimes to indicate a text message.
Don't think I don't realize you're stressing about finals. You're going to ace them and you know it.
Santana smiles without meaning to, because this is new Quinn, college Quinn, the one who edits Santana's papers, and spends hours of free time seeking out local bands and concerts to check out just because she can, and quietly reminds her that Brittany isn't gone because she doesn't want to be with Santana.
She's barely set the phone back down when it whistles once more.
And I want my scarf back, you thieving whore.
April 2013
Her mousy roommate doesn't come back in the spring, and Santana has the room to herself. She drops a stupid amount of her spending money of a memory-foam mattress topper for a full and shoves the beds together in a corner and makes a blanket-tent because she has friends now—real friends, who won't betray her for a cheerleading captaincy or out her in a hallway or tell her she's destined for nothing but a stripper pole—but she never lets them in her room. Brittany's calls start to taper, from every other day to twice a week to once a week until there's almost nothing for the three weeks leading up to Easter. She gets a voicemail from an unlisted number in which Brittany sounds high and happy and laughing while she explains that her phone died because she forgot to take it out of her pocket when she dove into a pool fully clothed.
Santana saves the voicemail and listens to it, alone in her room under her tent with the lights off and a playlist full of Britney Spears and Adele and Lady Gaga looping quietly in the background. She saves it to remind herself that they decided that this was for the best, way back in June, that long distance would hurt them, that they were both free to do what they wanted until they were together again. She saves it to turn away the guilt she gets when she hooks up with one of her lab partners on a Tuesday morning in a secluded study room, and she saves it to remind herself that holding Brittany down to eighteen years of shared memories and love and daily phone calls is like pinning a butterfly to a piece of cardboard.
She saves it until she gets drunk on sweet tea vodka on a Friday night, alone in her room and watching old glee club performances and Brittany's dance recitals on her laptop, and sleeps clear through the day until Quinn calls her, somewhere between livid and terrified because Santana is an hour and a half late. It's only after she's hung up on Quinn's unbearable moment of sympathy ("Shut the hell up, you don't know shit," she'd snarled before throwing the phone away) that she thinks that maybe, maybe it's time to delete the message.
An hour later, there's a knock on her door, and another, and another solid minute's worth until she drags herself out of bed to find Quinn standing in the hallway. Her clothes are just as they've always been, her hair's short and carefully tousled and obnoxiously hot again, and her eyes are sharp and cutting as always, but just because nothing is different doesn't mean everything hasn't changed after just one semester at college. Her hands are on her hips, shoulders back and eyes narrowed and spine ramrod straight in a perfect imitation of her head cheerleader posture, but there's a softness to her that's still new and a sympathy and concern that makes Santana want to throw a punch.
"Go away."
"No."
"Fuck you."
"Right, because a pity fuck is exactly what you need," Quinn says airily. She shoulders her way into the room and makes herself at home on Santana's futon. "I'm going to need something to sleep in, because when I left DC I thought I was signing up for lunch, not getting wasted and watching all of those cheerleading movies you pretend you don't own."
"I hate you," Santana mumbles, shutting the door.
"All's fair," Quinn says, waving a hand dismissively. "And please tell me you have something besides that disgusting sweet tea vodka."
Santana wakes up with the sticky-sweet taste of rum in her mouth and the realization that she's half on top of Quinn's still-sleeping form and her hand is somewhere that could be considered half-inappropriate, but before she can do anything Quinn's rolling over and away, sound asleep but pulling Santana's arm with her anyways.
Too hungover to think it through, Santana just closes her eyes and pretends that the smell of Quinn's shampoo and the feel of lithe muscles pressed against her isn't completely different from Brittany.
July 2013
Santana elects to stay at school for the summer, taking some extra classes and working half-days at the campus gym, because home is Brittany and Lima and everything she doesn't know how to face. She moves from her freshman dorm to a shoebox of a single apartment on campus. They're usually reserved for grad students, but the lab partner she fucked in the study room in March is working in the housing office and does her a favor in exchange for some physics tutoring and an easy agreement that they can be friends without fucking. She helps Santana move into the new place and late that night, after she's left and Santana is unpacking alone, she pauses and thinks that somehow, she has some healthy friendships in her life for once. Even the people she's fucked actually like her now.
Brittany calls twice between May and July, and Quinn visits six times to get drunk and bitch about the idiots she has to work with at her internship at some stuffy think tank in DC. Santana drives down to DC three times over the summer, spending a weekend with Quinn in the shoddy brownstone on Constitution Avenue that Quinn shares with eight—eight—other student interns. Bouncers in DC seem to love her cleavage more than the ones in Pennsylvania, so they get let in anywhere and keep each other from doing anything too terribly stupid.
They sleep together for the first time the week after the fourth of July. It's Santana's second visit and the city seems almost empty after the holiday celebrations have ended and tourists cleared out, and she spends a Saturday letting Quinn drag her around the National Portrait Gallery and to a lame movie in Chinatown. They get drunk in Quinn's room, her roommate gone for the weekend, and wake up together in Quinn's bed at two AM, fully clothed and tied in a knot together and there's no telling who moves to kiss the other first, but neither of them stops to think either because Quinn's on her back with Santana biting down on her shoulder and hiking the hem of her dress out of the way.
On the drive home the next day, freshly full of awkwardness and uncertainty from her good-bye with Quinn—who had a glaringly obvious bite mark on her shoulder and hickies on throat and chest that she desperately hid underneath a sweatshirt despite the sweltering DC heat— Santana tries to call Brittany for the first time in two months.
It's not like Brittany's been celibate—she knows the number is at around nine or ten now, at least—and Santana's fooled around with some classmates and coworkers, but this is different. This is Quinn, who knows them and knows before and just knows. This is different, and when Brittany answers, distracted and breathless and laughing, Santana's words stick in her throat until all she can say is I miss you before Brittany's being shouted at by someone in the background and hangs up with a flurry of I miss you, too and I love you and I'll be home soon.
November 2013
Thanksgiving rolls around, and Brittany still isn't home because her dance company picked up a last-minute mini-tour that goes until January. Her parents, having been told by Santana herself that she's staying at school for the holiday because Brittany is going to be there with her, are going on a cruise in the Bahamas. Somehow, it doesn't even hurt when they don't respond to the voicemail she leaves them two days before they leave, pitiful and childish and asking if she could maybe come with them.
Instead, she gets the TA for one of her seminars to buy her half a case of cheap wine and shoves it in the trunk with every cheerleading movie she owns and an overnight bag and drives to DC, where Quinn is staying for the holiday to avoid her mother and assuage her rich white girl guilt by volunteering at three different soup kitchens on Thanksgiving day.
She persuades Quinn to blow off the third volunteering project of the day—whatever, it's 8:30 at night and all the homeless in a thirty block radius have already hit up both of the other two kitchens Quinn dragged her too—and they start working their way through the wine.
"Where's Brittany?" Quinn finally asks. She sounds too sober for the two bottles they've split, but the room is spinning around Santana as she tries to stand while rolling her eyes, and instead she just flops back on the bed and lets her eyes slip shut.
"Right now? Probably in Boise fucking some dancing vegan hipster who composts and takes a reusable bag to Whole Foods."
"I take reusable bags to Whole Foods," Quinn says mildly.
"Yeah, well, you're a hipster and you dance, so it fits," Santana mutters. "She'd fuck you, too."
"Lucky me." Her voice is dry and quiet and just enough to pull at the edges of Santana's consciousness and pop one eye open. There's something to her expression—wary and afraid and guarded—that swiftly, suddenly throws Santana back to the tenth grade and a now-homeless, pregnant Quinn Fabray on her doorstep looking for somewhere to stay now that her family and the Hudsons have thrown her out, and Santana's parents bustling by with a careless denial and the excuse that they don't have time to deal with another problem-child teenager. Her teeth grind together at the memory and she swears to herself that it isn't guilt, but all her insistence does is catapult her towards the resigned and afraid look marring Quinn's features the first time they woke up after having sex.
"That's not why I slept with you," she blurts out.
"I'm sure," Quinn says dully. She's staring at her empty wine glass, rolling the stem slowly between her fingers and focusing on the light reflecting off glass that looks far too clean to have held any red wine.
"And it's not because I thought you were Brittany," Santana adds, and even though they both know she's lying, she doesn't say anything when Quinn moves to lay next to her on the bed, or when Quinn kisses her and tastes cold and sharp and clear like water, or when Quinn lays her out more fully on the bed and undresses her and skims her hands along Santana's body until something that sounds horrifyingly like begging is tripping from Santana's lips. She doesn't say anything that matters, because Quinn is here and Brittany is fucking other people, because her parents don't care and her grandmother threw her out, because Quinn understands and Quinn gets it and Quinn just knows.
She ignores the fact that she falls asleep with drying tear tracks on her cheeks and Quinn wrapped around her tightly from behind.
July 2014
It's only two weeks into the new semester when her advisor shows her a brochure for a seven-month study abroad program in Barcelona. It starts in the middle of May and goes through the new year, and Brittany's been asked to join some legitimate and professional ballet company in Los Angeles, and Quinn's eyes look timid and uncertain and so frighteningly unlike her, so she fills out the paperwork. By the first week of March, she's been accepted and her scholarship will cover it, so she sets out polishing her Spanish and learning the idiosyncrasies of the language from Spain as compared to Mexico and spends half of spring break in a drunken haze in her apartment with Quinn, sleeping and fucking and drinking until neither of them can move without chafing or wincing or throwing up. By the time Quinn's driving back home, they've barely said ten words that aren't somehow related to harder or more or ohgoddon'tstop, and Brittany hasn't called in five weeks.
Spain is hot and new and different and she loves it. She immerses herself in the language and Barcelona and her work study job, and finds at least four women a day—and about fifteen men—leering at her in a strangely European way that feels less like perversion and more like appreciation. She's only been there two days when she fucks a waitress in the bathroom of the bar two blocks from where she's living, and after that, the floodgates open. She spends almost as much time screwing as she does studying, and by the time summer ends, she has a reputation as a ladykiller and an absolute life-changer in the sack and she loves it.
She Skypes and texts and chats with Quinn regularly, and pretends not to notice when Quinn's eyes always seem to dart to and away the newest hickies adorning her neck or jaw or collarbone, fresh and visible late at night when she's home and casual and out of her makeup. She regales Quinn with her sexcapades instead, and talks seriously about the cultural differences and how she's understanding Spanish in a way she never did in Lima, and cries when Quinn just nods empathetically from an ocean away at how much everything in Spain reminds Santana of her grandmother's disapproval.
Brittany emails, every now and then. Her ballet company is putting on Swan Lake and she just barely lost out the lead role to the prima ballerina, having to settle for a secondary role and the jealousy of everyone who thought she couldn't go from a modern dance troupe in a microbus to actual ballet. Every email ends with I love you and I miss you, and even though she hasn't seen Brittany in two years, it makes Santana's chest hurt anyways.
When Quinn awkwardly steers conversation towards the fact that her sister and brother-in-law are flying to London over Christmas and offered to bring her along, Santana doesn't understand it, but she leaps at the opportunity and almost offers to pay for a ticket from London to Barcelona herself.
Instead, she travels to London and spends Christmas and New Years with Quinn, playing tourist and taking pictures at the Tower of London and of soccer hooligans and riding on the second story of the double-decker buses and cramming into a red phone booth together. They sleep together every night but only have sex once, on New Years, when they're both too sober and too serious and too uncertain about life and Brittany and loneliness to do anything else but stay in Quinn's hotel room while her sister and brother in law go out a God knows where. It's slow and simple and nothing Santana's ever done before. Somehow, watching Quinn shudder and break apart around her is nothing like a consolation prize.
Quinn flies back to DC two days later, and Santana travels back to Barcelona to finish her last week of work study before flying back home. They don't talk about it, and when Brittany somehow remembers to call to welcome Santana back stateside, she lies through her teeth about her holidays.
"Pretty boring, really," she says, staring at the reflection of a girl she doesn't understand anymore. "I had a lot of work to do, so I missed all the fun parties."
January 2015
It's been almost three years when she finally sees Brittany again, and the Saturday lunches she once shared with Quinn have become weekends in bed. She's just made her way home from one—tired and deliciously sore and too sated to care about the long drive or the bus ride back to campus or the fact that she has a paper due in two days that she hasn't started yet. She's not thinking about anything outside of the way Quinn had looked, arching up underneath her and crying out as her back bowed to almost unnaturally flexible angles, when she freezes at the sound of her name.
Brittany is sitting on a bench outside of her apartment building, a duffel bag beside her. Brittany, in some weird flowing bohemian shawl-thing and tights and ballet flats, hair loose around her face and blue eyes brighter than anything Santana's ever seen. Brittany, with those tiny freckles across her face and an even more toned body and even more grace than ever. Brittany, who's been gone for almost three years and never expected anything more than Santana can offer, dancing across the country and letting the rest of the world see the smooth lines of her shoulder blades and the beautiful curve of her back and the graceful strength of her legs.
Santana freezes and drops her backpack and her keys and stares, and suddenly Brittany is there, hugging her and almost crying and squeezing her so tightly that it hurts, and for just that minute in time, nothing feels more right than to squeeze right back and fuse herself to the other girl and kiss her through the tears she can't stop from falling.
An hour later, they're on the same bench Brittany had been waiting on, Santana practically in her lap, neither caring about the fact that the security guy just inside keeps staring at them, or that people who know Santana are throwing confused and intrigued glances their way while walking by. A half hour after that, Brittany's duffel bag is half-falling off the couch where she dropped it and Santana is biting down on her lip to stay quiet while her hands hold Brittany's mouth in place until she cries out and jerks off the mattress for a single, unending moment.
When she wakes up, there's a missed call from Quinn—who always left a bitchy, hilarious, deadpanned voicemail to make sure Santana made it home without dying from her kamikaze driving—and a text message.
If you crashed into a guardrail on the way home, I refuse to come visit you in the hospital, you lazy bitch. 3
Santana glances over at Brittany's sleeping form, sprawled across the bed and beautiful as ever, and deletes the voicemail without listening to it. The text message sits, unresponded to, in her phone, and she slides back over and pulls Brittany's arm over her.
She falls sleep with Quinn's text message burning into the back of her eyelids and Brittany's soft breaths beating against the back of her neck.
February 2015
Brittany's been back for three weeks, shacking up in Santana's apartment, and Santana hasn't talked to Quinn since she came home. There are three voicemails and seven text messages she hasn't acknowledged, and she tells herself that it doesn't hurt that Quinn eventually stops trying. Quinn was always one to cut her losses and leave the deadweight behind, after all, and ever since Brittany came back, Santana is nothing but deadweight, letting Brittany anchor her.
She comes home on a Thursday to Brittany sitting with her laptop, brow furrowed, as she browses Expedia.
"Hey," Santana says guardedly. She drops her keys and backpack on the kitchen table, side-eying the visible laptop screen. "Planning on going somewhere?"
"The company wants me back," Brittany says distractedly. "Simone—she was the lead in Swan Lake—is pregnant and they want me to audition for her spot for the next tour. Have you ever been to Moscow?"
"As in Russia?" Santana asks. "Not even close." She sits down on the coffee table, eyeballing Brittany carefully.
"When would you have to leave?"
"March," Brittany says. Her tongue pokes out momentarily in concentration, and Santana resists the instinctual tug in her stomach that prods her towards tossing the laptop to the floor and mounting Brittany. "They're taking a break to rehearse and do a workshop with an arts school in New York."
"Right." Santana clasps her hands together in her lap, staring down at her knees. Once upon a time, she was stronger than this. Once upon a time, she barely ever begged for even Brittany. And once upon a time, it hurt so much more to think that Brittany was going to leave again. Because it was inevitable, after all, that Brittany would always leave.
"You could come with me," Brittany says. Her eyes dart up momentarily from the computer screen, a smile spreading across her features. "I mean, after you're done for the semester. We're going to be in Russia and like…Europe and all for the whole summer. You liked Spain, right? You should come."
"Britt," Santana croaks out. Her throat hurts, and she doesn't know if it's more from the easy smile on Brittany's lips or the fact that where once she would have followed this girl to hell and back, now she just wants so simplicity back in her life. "I can't."
"Why not?" She finally looks at Santana, really looks at her, and frowns. "I mean, you'd have to pay for like train tickets and stuff, but you can bunk with me in the hotels, and it'll be super fun and we'll go all sorts of cool places and—"
"B, I can't," Santana says loudly. She winces at the surprise crossing Brittany's face. "I mean…I'm already signed up for that internship in Alexandria, and I have work at the gym until that starts, and I just—I was gone almost all of last year, and I really need to stay here now."
Quinn— with her sarcasm and hipster books and devastating beauty and the way she shudders and trembles and falls to pieces so with a kind of old Hollywood grace that not even Brittany's slender strength and smooth movements can emulate—is here, and she hovers, unspoken and refused in the air between them. Santana winces again and refuses to believe that this could be about Quinn.
"But, San," Brittany starts.
"I'm sorry, B," Santana mumbles. "I love you, you know I do, but I can't. I just—I can't. It's not because I don't want to be with you, but I just… I have a life here, now. I like it. And it's not the kind of life you want."
"That's not fair," Brittany says. Her chin is starting to tremble, her shoulders stiffening, and a lump rises in Santana's throat at the sight of it. "I love you."
"I love you, too," Santana manages to say. "You know I do."
"But you won't come with me?"
"I can't," Santana says. "Britt, I'm in college. I have another year left. I have a job, an internship, the beginnings of a career here. I know you're not someone who can be—who can be tied down to one place. You shouldn't be. It wouldn't be fair to you, or the rest of the world."
Through the pain in her chest and the knotting in her stomach and the tears welling in her eyes, Santana suddenly and vehemently hates how she's even started talking like Quinn. There's almost nothing left of her Lima Heights vocabulary, and she wants to drive to DC and pummel Quinn with her own dictionary just for the hell of it because she's never realized before how naked she feels when she speaks so simply.
"Santana," Brittany says. "I love you."
The tears are breaking loose, starting to slide down against her skin and burn sharply, and there's nothing she can do to stop them. "You know I love you, Britt," she mumbles out. "You know I do. But I can't keep you here, and I can't leave. It'll just make us hate each other."
"That's not fair," Brittany repeats. She's on the verge of crying now, too, and Santana sinks into the self-loathing that rises at the sight of it.
"I'm sorry," she says instead. "I just—I can't go on tour with you. I can't."
"I want you to come," Brittany says in a small voice. "I miss you, all the time."
Santana falls to a seat on the couch, her knees curling up to her chest. "I miss you, too, Britt," she whispers. "I always have. Every day. I just—I can't."
"We're meant to be," Brittany says softly. "All these years, it was always you and me."
"You're my best friend," Santana answers. The tears are tracking unhindered down towards her chin and dripping off onto the material of her jeans, but she doesn't have the energy to wipe them away. "You always have been and always will be. I just—the last few years, it wasn't fair to either of us."
"Was it—did you—did you meet someone?" The stammer is so uncharacteristic, so unexpected, that it throws Santana off for long seconds before the can understand the question.
"No!" she says automatically, and then flinches because there's no angle of this situation where that isn't a lie. "Maybe. Kind of. I don't know?"
Brittany slumps back into the couch. "So you did," she mutters. "I thought we weren't going to do anything serious."
"I didn't think it was," Santana says hesitantly. "I didn't mean for it to happen."
"I slept with people, but it was never real. It was just fun."
"I know." The words ache as the leave her lips, and her throat feels like sandpaper. Suddenly, desperately, she wants nothing but to be in Quinn's bedroom, listening to Quinn bitch about some stupidly intellectual economic theory that's too advanced for any college freshman to understand. The fact that Quinn understands them anyways, solely because she isn't supposed to, is more appealing than anything ever has been before.
"I'm sorry," she adds. "I really am."
Long minutes of silence pass, and Santana just stares at the denim of her jeans in silence. It's Brittany who finally moves, standing from the couch smoothly and slowly. Santana watches, chin resting tiredly atop her knees, as Brittany moves around the room and collects her things, stuffing them into her duffel bag.
It only takes her fifteen minutes to pack, and Santana still hasn't moved by the time Brittany finally moves to kneel in front of her.
"I love you," Brittany says simply, once more.
"I know," Santana whispers. "I'm so sorry."
"I know." The same words sounds so different coming from her, and she leans forward to press a kiss to Santana's lips. "And I want you to be happy."
"I'm sorry," Santana says again, unable to handle the bright blue of Brittany's teary eyes. "I didn't mean to—"
"I'll be okay, San," Brittany says. She smiles wryly. "I can still talk to you, right? As friends?"
"Yeah," Santana mutters. "Anytime."
"Okay." And with that, she's on her feet and slipping into her coat and wrapping a scarf around her neck, hoisting her duffel easily and moving towards the door.
She pauses, the door half open in front of her, and Santana can't muster the energy to do more than glance up at her. "It's Quinn, isn't it?" Brittany says quietly. "We still talk sometimes, she told me when you slept together the first time and—I mean, it's Quinn." She pauses, a rueful smile tugging at her lips, and Santana's stomach rolls at the sight of it.
"Who wouldn't fall for Quinn?" Brittany finally says. She readjusts her duffel bag and opens the door the rest of the way. "I can't say I'm happy for you, but I still hope you're happy. For real happy. Not fake happy like you were in high school, because you deserve to really be happy."
All Santana can muster is a gravelly "Thanks", and then, with nothing more than a click of the door shutting, Brittany is gone again.
May 2015
There are three weeks between the end of the spring semester and the beginning of Santana's internship in Virginia, and Quinn hasn't spoken to her yet. She finds someone to cover her shifts at the gym, packs up her car with a full case of the disgustingly sweet white wines Quinn likes so much, and drives down to DC, where she knows Quinn is also killing time before her own internship starts.
The first time she knocks, Quinn shuts the door in her face. The second time, she's graced with a muffled "Go home!" through the door. It's not until four hours later and her sixth attempt that Quinn finally gives in and opens the door.
"Hi," Santana says dumbly.
"Brittany came back, didn't she?" Quinn says. Her voice is cool and smooth, so like it was in high school, and it makes Santana shiver.
"Yeah, she did."
"I got the message when you stopped talking to me," Quinn says. Bitterness flashes through her eyes before they slide back into a practiced mask of boredom. "Go home."
"She's gone," Santana blurts out. "I mean, she's been gone since February, but she wanted me to go with her on some trip across Russia and Europe, and I just—I didn't want to leave," she finishes lamely.
"Shocking," Quinn says with a sneer. "Santana Lopez, clinging to the status quo."
Santana clenches her fists against the instinctive rise of anger at the insult. Quinn's eyes dart down to the flinching muscles, and she sneers yet again.
"Go home," she repeats, and moves to shut the door, a hollow look of triumph spreading in her eyes.
Santana shoves her shoulder into the door, manhandling it open and stalking into the apartment. Quinn stumbles back in surprise before her eyes narrow into a glare.
"Get out," she hisses.
"No," Santana says, crossing her arms. "I'm here to apologize, so stop being a stubborn bitch and shut up and accept it like an adult, okay? I will tie your sweet ass up and gag you if I have to if that's what it takes, and that's really a waste of handcuffs and a scarf so shut up and sit your stupid self down and let me apologize, okay?"
She glares until Quinn scoffs and throws her hands up, leaning against the back of the couch with her arms crossed over her chest.
"Close enough," Santana mutters, and she ignores the incredibly exaggerated eyeroll Quinn offers in return.
"Britt came back," she starts. "Obviously. Back in January. I got home from the last time I came to see you, and she was just—there. On that bench outside of my building. And I thought that was what I wanted, and she's somehow even better in bed than she used to be and— hey, shut up and stay put, will you?" She latches onto Quinn's shoulders and twists around, pinning the other girl to the wall behind her while they glare at each other.
"I thought that was what I needed," she continues. "I was wrong. Is that what you want to hear? I always thought it was Brittany, that it was me and her, that she was everything I wanted, but the more I was around her the more I just wanted to be here. I was wrong."
"Say it," Quinn breathes out. They're almost sharing air at this point, and somehow Quinn's hands have snuck out to grip at Santana's hips tightly, fingers digging in almost painfully. "Just say it and mean it, and we move on and I fuck you over the back of the couch and everything is fine."
Santana's grip wavers, her entire body shivering at the statement—Quinn is many things now that she had never been in high school, but she'll never be crude, her eloquence always reduced to breathlessness in bed—before she grips tighter, almost to the point of bruising, at Quinn's shoulders.
"I want you," she grinds out. "More than I want Brittany, or anyone else. I couldn't stop thinking about you even when she was there. You were her placeholder, and then you became the new Brittany in my life even if I never thought that was possible for anyone, so stop trying to make me talk about this crap and fucking kiss me already."
She doesn't wait, and instead jerks her way forward until she can kiss Quinn almost violently, her hands flying out to press into the wall just to keep herself upright. Quinn practically melts into her, and they stumble over to the couch, where Santana pins her down and goes down on her until she can't even move anymore.
They wake up, hours after the sun has set, still on the couch, in a tangle of limbs and torn clothes. Santana groans and stretches and realizes she's sprawled atop something warm and pale and blonde, and a split second later realizes that it's Quinn, half-asleep and in complete disarray but somehow still staring her down with the most disarming look.
"I have an internship in Alexandria starting in a few weeks," she offers cheekily, chin resting on Quinn's sternum. "Still haven't found a decent place to live."
Quinn is silent, staring appraisingly and unblinkingly for long, painful seconds before she speaks. "If you wreck my security deposit, I will throw you out in a heartbeat and you're still paying me back in full."
"Right," Santana says, distracted by a line of smooth and unmarked skin on Quinn's neck. "Now shut up and let me nail you again."
"Such a romantic," Quinn mutters, even as she tilts her head to the side.
"Never," Santana says, the words mumbled against Quinn's throat. She glances up into a gaze that expects everything and, for the first time since she left Lima, Ohio, it's more promising than it is terrifying.
"Maybe for you," she mumbles against Quinn's skin. She feels, more than hers, a sigh sliding out past Quinn's lips, and smiles to herself before continuing on with her work.
Brittany is probably in Russia by now, stunning the world with her dancing, but Santana can't imagine being anywhere but on a thrift store couch, blanketing a shorter blonde who expects everything where Brittany expected nothing, who plans everything instead of floating along in life, who would rather offer a sneer than a smile. Santana smirks against the skin of Quinn's stomach, laughing quietly when it draws a tremor out of Quinn, and keeps moving forward.