River Deep, Mountain High
Femme Avenger
Rated T: Some language, drug use, sexytimes.
a week after they stop talking, Brittany goes up in front of the Spanish class to deliver a speech, en espanol, about verbs. Santana silently watches her stand by Shue's desk, piece of crumpled notebook paper clutched in her hands. Her eyes, usually droopy with disinterest, are now wide as she runs her tongue across her lips in apprehension. Brittany's gaze flits over the classroom before finally coming to a rest on Santana.
Usually when it's the blond cheerleader's turn to read in front of the class, and she misses a word, or says the whole thing in Spanglish, or pronounces Hola "Whole-lah" or gives J's H sounds, and the class giggles at her, it's Santana who snaps: "Silencio, motherfuckers! I'm trying to learn about conjugated verbs, here." Even once she wrote a little sign that said "Muy bien!" and held it up while Brittany read. Though later the cheerleader admitted that the word bien reminded her of beans and made her feel more hungry than encouraged.
Santana raises her hand.
"Yes, Santana?"
"Shue, may I be excused to use the lady's room?"
Shuester raises his eyebrows. "Santana, somebody's about to present-"
"It's an emergency."
"I-okay. But, you know the rule, before you leave you have to ask en espan-"
"White boy, please." Santana rolls her eyes.
"Right. Go ahead."
She tries to pretend she doesn't feel Britt's gaze on her as she exits the classroom, or hear the stuttered beginning and the snickers through the door as she shuts it.
The next day she finds Brittany standing outside her locker slowly eating a bologna sandwich. She wants to either turn and walk the other direction or chastise Brittany for eating a bologna sandwich because, really? Gross.
Instead she just opens her locker without a word.
"I want to see you tonight. Will you come over?" Britt asks patiently, never taking her eyes off Santana as she takes another bite of her sandwich. Santana sighs.
"I don't know if that's such a good idea."
"Please." There's a tone of desperation and, coming from somebody who's two main emotions are pleased and confused, the word hits Santana somewhere low in her gut. She finally turns to look and Brittany, who's stopped chewing. Her cheeks are still full of sandwich. It would be cute of the cheerleader didn't look so much like the thought of her friend denying her request made her want to throw up all the processed meat in her stomach.
"Okay," She finally acquiesces. "Okay."
When Britt tells her that she's just broken up with Artie, and they can be girlfriends now, Santana cries. Which is weird for a lot of reasons, namely the fact that she is Santana Lopez, Head Bitch in Charge, and crying isn't really her thing. The last time she could doing this, she was watching a Clint Eastwood movie with her dad, and she just couldn't help it, because he looked so tough on the outside but on the inside he was just so soft and he really cared for Hillary Swank, even if he wouldn't admit it.
"Oh gosh," Brittany looks perturbed and pulls a stack of note cards out of the pocket of her jeans, She shuffles through them, squinting her eyes a little bit. "Quinn made me all these note cards, telling me what I should say to you-because usually I can't talk pretty like she can-she said it would make you really happy if I told you I'd broke up Artie and that we can be gay together now."
"It does make me happy." Santana wails, and she feels like an idiot, but no matter how hard she tries she can't seem to stymie the flow of the tears. "I'm just so happy, I'm so happy, I don't know why I'm doing this. I'm sorry." And then she feels it-Brittany's hands, her mouth, soft and full and warm, on her face. Her eyelids. Her cheeks and her nose and her temples and chin. The shell of her ear. Everywhere but her lips. She whispers,
"I'm here, I'm here, I'm here," as if Santana didn't know that already. But the words and her hands and her lips slide over her, crash into her and she feels bizzarely comforted.
Sometimes Santana knows that Brittany is smarter than she lets on. Maybe even the smartest person she's ever been friends with.
Two days later, Santana's facebook status is "In a relationship with Britt Pierce" and the day after that, on her way to chem, she gets a slushie facial so cold, so wet, so demeaning, that it would make John Wayne's balls shrivel.
Brittany hums to her while she gently washes the blue food dye out of her hair in the girls' bathroom. She dabs the corn syrup out of her eyes with a wet paper towel, and even rubs it out of her eyebrows. She sits outside while Santana goes into a stall to clean her downstairs and change into her cheerios sweats and hoodie. When she comes out, Brittany says:
"You can cry again, if you want." And then "Or you can punch whoever slushied you or spread a vicious rumor, or whatever. But you can't break up with me because you're scared." She pauses. "My dad's a lawyer and I'm pretty sure I can sue you for that, or something."
Santana licks her sticky lips and leans into kiss her girlfriend.
They've been dating for two months before they actually get down to business, if you catch her drift. Truth be told, Santana's a little bit scared because, truth be told, she's never really been naked in front of anybody. In fact, nobody's ever even actually touched her lady bits.
At least not for long. And not while she was sober.
With Brittany before, it was always just scissoring. Santana lifting their skirts and pushing their panties down to their ankles and rutting away on top of her. Sometimes it was drunk fumbling under the waistband. With boys-she doesn't even want to think about with boys. It was like with Britt, except less. It just didn't feel good. She felt like a mortar being ground into by a pestle, over and over.
Or whatever.
With a little help from a joint Britt had rolled that now sat half smoked in an ashtray on Santana's bedside table, they take off their clothes. They don't kiss or touch or talk. Ingrid Michaelson croons from a stereo somewhere in the background. Santana's bay windows are open and they can hear the buzz of passing cars, the vibrations of crickets and cicadas. When they sit on the bed, criss cross apple sauce, facing each other and naked as the day they were born, Brittany finally says:
"I feel like Mellissa Ethridge should have prepared us for this."
Santana crawls into her lap, places a soft kiss on her lips. All the tension in her belly uncoils when she feels her girlfriend smile into the kiss. She moves down to her jawline, the valley of her neck, her mayonnaise-colored shoulders dusted with constellations of freckles.
They're under the blankets, breathing in stale recycled air. Brittany enters her and she tenses up, grabbing at her back frantically. Santana hears the blond breathe comfortingly into her ear, against the side of her face.
"I'm here," she sighs, moving her fingers inside her. Santana relaxes. It's not like a mortar but a gentle, dependable tide. "I'm here, I'm here, I'm here..."
Britanny puts her mouth you know where and Santana is fairly certain that she just splits right open at the seams, and everything just falls out of her. Her eyes closed, she can see it: her heart, her liver and her lungs. Her intestines and pancreas. They all spill out, completely superfluous, and she is left light.
"San," Brittany begins. They're watching Zombieland naked. "Where do the ducks go when Lima Lake freezes over?" It's winter now, and they've been dating for nearly seven months. They had just gone ice skating on Lima Lake hours prior.
"I don't know, Britt." Santana says evenly. She turns to face her girlfriend and smiles gently.
"Do they hide?"
"Maybe. Tell you what." She takes Brittany's hand. "Why don't we go down there tomorrow morning and see if we can find them."
The cheerleader beams-really beams-and she might be easy to please but it's hard to make her really happy. She squeezes Santana's hand. Santana beams back.
Yeah.
She's a badass.