Disclaimer: Glee's not mine.
God she hated this fucking song. Ever the consummate showman (or as close as one could come when one phones in every emotion except the negative ones), Santana had finished he duet with Mercedes before chasing after her AWOL prom date. She'd wanted to chase after him the second he made a break for it, if only to escape ABBA, but it had seemed kind of shitty to ditch Kurt twice in one night. Now, though, Kurt had her crown and his gel-headed boy toy and the rest of the frigging world rallying behind him, so Santana was free to go rescue Dave.
He wasn't in any of the bathrooms or the locker room where she had figured he would be hiding. Instead, just as she was about to throw up her hands in irritable defeat and go back to the dance, Santana heard an all-too-familiar wet snuffling coming from the choir room and knew she'd hit pay dirt.
Dave was sitting on the middle riser, crown dangling limply from his fingers and his face buried in his other hand. His shoulders were doing that awful trembling hitch they always did when he was sobbing and trying not to at the same time. For someone so wrapped up in the pursuit of machismo, Santana thought as she sat daintily down next to him, Dave could be kind of a crybaby. Dave started at her presence, looking up defensively with his jaw already locked in a scowl even though his face was blotchy and his nose was running. When he saw who it was, Dave snorted and rubbed his eyes on his tux sleeve.
"What d'you want?" he asked brusquely.
"Just wondering why my date decided to make a scene and ditch me in the middle of prom," Santana said in one of her patented poison-sweet tones. Dave sighed and snuffled, taking the jibe harder than Santana had expected.
"We were supposed to be protecting him, Tana," Dave asked. Santana didn't have to ask whom he was referring to; if names weren't mentioned, both of them knew who the other one meant. "This wasn't supposed to happen, you know? This was supposed to just be a fucking school dance where him and that stupid Hobbit could be cuddly and shit and people couldn't resist being fucking pricks about it."
"It's not like assholes being assholes is really a newsflash," Santana said, arching an eyebrow. She was as pissed as the next person about what had gone down with the prom royalty voting, but it didn't seem like something to cry over.
"You don't get it," Dave snapped, thick fingers clutching around his crown hard enough to make the plastic creak. "His whole night got fucking ruined. I was supposed to be looking out for him, and I couldn't even do that." He sighed. "I couldn't even fucking dance with him without fucking the whole thing up."
He wiped his nose on the back of his hand and jacket sleeve and for once actually looked his age. Usually his bulk and walls of bitter defense made him seem about twice as old, but now he was really just the scared, hurt teenage boy underneath. Santana sighed. Dave was such a fucking Boy Scout; the kind of squeaky-clean Boy-Next-Door who tried and tried and tried so damn hard to please everyone around him. Even if the hard shell of douchebag on the outside was nigh impenetrable sometimes, these flashes of the squishy bleeding heart underneath always gave him away. Santana shook her head and stood, sweeping her hair over her shoulder.
"Let's go," she said, her voice not quite the pitch-perfect bossy bitch she usually took with him.
Dave looked up at her, eyes still bleary. "Huh?"
"This prom friggin' bites and you owe me IHOP," Santana clarified. "So let's am-scray, huh?" She held out a hand to help him up and after a second to wipe his eyes again Dave took it. Their fingers interlaced as Dave abandoned his royal trappings on the piano bench and Santana couldn't help feeling a little stronger for it. Their relationship might have been fake, but it was easy; no sex, minimal groping, Kurt and Brittany never had to be mentioned by name, and none of it was anybody's business but theirs. She'd die before saying it out loud, but now that they were "together" Dave was probably the only real friend Santana had other than Britt. And if high school was going to be as dangerous and lonely as this, it was kind of nice for both of them to have mandatory back up.
The two of them kept their heads high as they walked, the two baddest, fiercest bitches in the school even as they escaped unseen out the back door.