I'm sorry if this is a little slow going, but I feel like I have to explain a lot of the backstory before we get into the actual story, so this is pretty much going to be a lot of that and not much of anything else. I promise it'll get interesting though, so please PLEASE comment/like/review!
Graduating from high school had always been the plan, and getting the fuck out of Lima had always been the plan, no matter what other people might have thought from the girl who was born and raised in Lima Heights Adjacent. She didn't know what they had expected her to do- work a shitty job at Walgreens, blow the manager in the back for some days off, start selling weed or prostituting herself or, as Rachel Berry once very sweetly pointed out, work on a stripper pole, but none of those things would be coming to fruition.
Admittedly, even Santana had no idea what exactly she was going to do with herself when it came time to get out of high school, but she had been sure of three things- she would go to some sort of college, she'd get the fuck out of Lima, and she'd be taking Brittany with her, wherever it was. Two out of three wasn't bad, in retrospect.
It was time to start over. It was time to forget the Santana of Lima. It was time to stop hiding who she really was. With the help of Ms. Pillsbury, she'd secured an amazing scholarship to a state university. No one there would know what she'd done in her life; it was a complete fresh start, a chance to see what she could do out on her own. She'd been dying for the moment to come for months. It was like shedding her summer skin and starting fresh.
She had managed to wrangle Puckerman into making the drive down with her to haul her piles of boxes up to her dorm, and the entire car trip was filled with sexual tension (from Puck) and a serious need to get the fuck out of that car (from Santana). Still, she needed someone's help, and Puck had to put those stupid obnoxious muscles to use sometime. She had been deftly aware of what he would be expecting, and so she had quickly shot that down.
"Puck, you're not getting laid for this." she told him over the phone as she walked across her room, haphazardly folding things and stuffing them into bags. Everything she owned would be going with her, just in case she didn't want to look back.
"Whatever you say, San." had been his response, and she could literally hear the way he didn't believe it in his voice. He thought that he'd get to christen her new bed or something, and while that might have happened years ago, there was no way.
Even if it should have been awkward, Santana had long ago fallen into this pace with Puckerman, and they had reached an awkward understanding where sex was no longer something that needed to be hidden, but was openly made known and often discussed. It was just, for once, she wasn't interested.
She was glad that she only lived on the second floor of her dorm- she wouldn't have to take the elevators that smelled like piss and that looked like they were dying to go crashing down and kill her, and she was closer to the lobby, which meant closer to the vending machines when she was up too late and needed a caffeine fix.
Shuffling tons of boxes into the elevator, Puck leaned against it before winking at a girl standing nearby as the doors shut. Immediately, Santana was rolling her eyes.
"Really, Puckerman? Did you agree to this so you could hit on the hot college chicks?"
He looked over and gave her a one-shoulder shrug, almost challenging her to be surprised, and she really couldn't be, all things considered.
Shuffling to her door she used the key and, despite a little extra work, it opened and reveled her room to her. Her scholarship included a little extra money, so she had a private dorm- two beds, no sharing her food, no dealing with someone she'd probably want to kill- it was worth the extra grand she'd dropped.
Immediately she was extracting things from boxes, slapping Puck's hand when he tried to go through her underwear, giving his opinions on which ones she should wear and which ones she should not, and directed him on how to push the beds together and where to set her TV. After an hour or so the two of them crashed on her newly-made queen bed, Puck already fucking it up by digging into a slice of pizza and spilling sauce on the comforter.
Santana immediately gave him a look of disgust, scooping it up with her finger and rubbing it against his shirt. "Alright, you've officially overstayed your welcome." she mumbled, grinning at him as she grabbed him by the wrist and attempted to pull him up and off the bed. It took much coercion when Puck realized he really wasn't getting laid and an agreement to give him the entire pizza box before she had him back downstairs and out the door.
Trudging back up the stairs, Santana was ready to crash. She knew she had a floor meeting the next day, but the rest of the evening was free, and she could spend it staring out her windows, hoping to subconsciously soak in where all the buildings were so she wouldn't look like that girl the next morning. Just as she was wondering if she should maybe look it up online and attempt to find a bookstore the next morning, she stuck her key in the lock and it didn't budge.
Furrowing her eyebrows, she pulled the key back out and gave it another attempt. No dice. She swore loudly, glad no one else was in the area to see how incredibly embarrassing this was. Of course, the moment she's alone in a huge city she's never been to something like this would happen and fuck her up. Skipping back down the steps, she drummed her nails against the front desk as she explained her problem. The RA took her key and left her standing there, waiting for what felt like hours before she finally returned.
"Your key's broken." she said flatly, as if this was to be expected.
'Oh, no big deal, I'll just sleep on the floor then, I don't need any of my clothes or money or anything.' Santana thought to herself, giving the girl a look that clearly showed how she felt about the circumstances.
"We called the locksmiths, but they're backed up today with all the moveins. They should be here in about two or three hours." she added, already clicking away on her computer, not meeting Santana's eyes.
"Two or three hours?" Fuck. Of course this was the way things were going to go. She finally started to think things were going her way, she got a scholarship to a huge university and a private room and she never had to go back to Lima again, she never had to talk to her parents again and here she was, and she didn't even have a room and-
"Santana?" Whipping her head around, hands on her hips, her eyebrows furrowed as she saw who was standing in front of her, looking positively different than she had ever seen him. Blaine Warbler, in the flesh, in sweatpants, carrying a box that looked much too heavy.
There were so many things wrong with this picture.
"Blaine Warbler?" she demanded, one hip jutting out as she licked her lips. Despite the fact that he had transferred from Dalton and had graduated with her, Santana had never stopped assuming his last name was Warbler- or she didn't care to find out what it was.
Immediately he gave her a look, one that signified that he knew she knew his name wasn't Blaine Warbler, and she ignored it.
"Look, just come upstairs and hang out with me until they call you for your key." He said calmly, and she almost wanted to roll her eyes. He had always been overly courteous; he had always cared too much about other people.
One part of her wanted to ignore this. Stubborn to a fault, she wanted to sit right in front of her door and cross her arms until someone appeared with her key and she could go back to pretending that she had left all of Lima behind. But what choice did she have?
"Yeah, okay." she said lamely, giving the woman behind the desk a look that could set her on fire before she followed Blaine, rather grudgingly, toward the elevators.