Another fic written for diva_off, with the prompt apathy. Again, I'm in love with Matt, and you'll see more of my fics for him soon.
8:30, hot Wednesday night in late August, Santana's not expecting the boy on the other side to be Matt Rutherford, holding a bottle of bad tequila and wearing a look that dares her to say no. So she doesn't, just pushes the door open, walks away into the kitchen.
Her parents won't be home for another four hours from whatever dinner party they're at tonight, and she's spent the last hour trying to prepare dinner for herself.
Two seconds from ordering pizza, she realizes that he's already set to making something, instead opens the bottle and takes a long drink, barely chokes. Matt makes grilled cheese and scrambled eggs, and the natural progression of these strange things called teenage relationships lead them up the stairs to her room.
The extra sway to her hips is mostly intentional.
Ten years later, the same knock will come, and she recognizes the boy on the other side, with his perfect smile and bad tequila. His cutoff and board shorts are replaced by jeans with (almost) no sag and a collared shirt with a tie that's (almost) straight. It's very Mr. Schue.
She waits for him to come in, smiles as he hands her the bottle, leads him to the kitchen. He makes grilled cheese (she doesn't keep eggs in the house).
They eat at her kitchen counter, casually flirt.
Next to each other on her bed, shoulders touching, they eat silently. Pass the bottle back and forth between them (she can almost taste him on the rim, a definite boyishness lingering).
All those teen movies could never capture this, grilled cheese, scrambled eggs in her room with a good-looking boy and tequila. Neither of them cares about the other, but both are popular, hot and bored on a stuffy Wednesday at the end of summer.
He gives a little-half smile (how did he manage to look so perfect?), hands her the half-empty bottle (how had they had so much already?), she doesn't hesitate in pulling his face towards hers, drinks in the taste of cheese and tequila and apathy.
If either of them had cared at all, she would have made a joke, told him to brush his teeth, shared a laugh. One of his large hands finds her thigh, and she marvels at the size of them as she deepens the kiss.
One large hand reaches over, cups her neck gently as he leans in and kisses her softly. Pulls back to share a smile with her and then moves his chair over to be closer. They stay here for a while. He tastes like tequila and her past. She doesn't mind.
The tequila stays on the counter.
For a moment, she contemplates a relationship with this boy, with his beautiful muscles and his perfect smile and his willingness to bring her tequila and dinner.
But it won't happen, because this means nothing except company on a boring night before they return to homework and Glee and those losers that are sort of their friends now.
They're both fucked-up for no reason at all, and every reason there is, so they choose to be fucked-up together. It's not a bad arrangement.
They're remarkably put together for the people they were ten years ago. He traces careful designs against her hip and looks at her like she's the most beautiful woman in the world.
She believes him.
He helps her finish the tequila, kisses her neck softly, puts his clothes on, picks up the dishes and the bottle. Won't return to say good-bye because of being a fucked-up, apathetic teenaged boy.
She tells herself she doesn't mind, prefers Brittany anyway.
She wakes up to an empty bed, almost cries, steels herself, goes downstairs for lonely coffee.
In less then a week he will be gone, packed up and left Lima and Glee and her, and instead of caring, she will beg her daddy for money for a boob job and find another apathetic, teenage boy with a less than perfect smile who's not quite as fucked up and move on with her life. She doesn't care, and the apathy almost makes it okay that he's gone.
She finds him standing in her doorway with a grocery bag, shirt from last night hanging loosely over his shoulders, jeans hanging low over his hips without his belt. In his quiet way, he explains that she didn't have eggs. Before he can muster so much as a half-shrug, she wraps her arms around him, breathes in his scent.
It feels strangely right, egg carton digging into her shoulder, his musty early morning smell, t-shirt soft against her face, this boy from her high school who left so long ago and has come back.
It doesn't matter, because he is fucked-up, she is fucked-up, they're barely friends. He's leaving and she might be a lesbian. They don't have feelings for each other, just both happen to be lonely, hot and popular (and a little drunk) on a Wednesday night in late August. He had tequila, she had a bed. Basic equation of a fucked-up teenage relationship.
It does matter, because he came back, she never left, they haven't seen each other in ten years and they still care. He buys her eggs and kisses her softly, and those just might be (probably are) feelings, and it's the real world now.
It's strange how little they miss apathy as they stand in her doorway.