Aside from the up-and-down rhythm of her chest, Brittany doesn't move. No fussing in her sleep like she does sometimes, no rolling over and landing on the floor. A parade could probably come through the Chez Lopez living room and she wouldn't even snore.
And, honestly, this frustrates Santana more and more as the clock keeps ticking, as the minutes drag forward with their tick, tock, tick, tock, we're annoying and can't just hurry up to give people who need it some goddamn peace of mind. Brittany hasn't moved for four hours and even though Santana does not do the concern thing, staring at the silhouette on the couch scratches at her nerves the way Brittany's cat likes to claw up Santana's legs. Digging in deeper than it should be able to dig and yanking and putting on an angelic-looking face when Santana yelps and gets pissed off.
Not that it's upsetting her or anything, this whole tedious, stupid process of waiting for Brittany to rouse. It's not upsetting her because Santana Lopez doesn't do the getting upset thing, especially not over Brittany (or at least not since Brittany chose Artie), and especially not when she'll wake up sooner or later. But her irritation keeps lurking around, not really doing much except existing. Just existing and scratching. Making her wish Rachel was here so she could dress the other girl down from here to the backstage prep area at Tits Magee's, or whatever strip club Dad and his skeezy doctor friends are at tonight. Getting Santana to feel like, no, really, she needs to find some way or other to just murder the little so-called "angel" who's supposed to be helping Brittany.
Not that he's really doing anything, Santana fumes as she crosses her legs. She sinks further down in the armchair and instead of wondering if Brittany's never going to wake up, thinks about how she could follow the "angel" into the kitchen and before he even knew anything was up, knock him out with the carving board. Then, once he was unconscious, she'd have her pick of Mom's Wüsthof knives, and he'd get stabbed in the back, and then, after Santana got all the blood off the linoleum, she could go all Sweeney Todd up in this piece and cook him in some shepherd's pie or cheeseburgers or something and nobody would ever know the difference.
"You'd need a meat grinder for that!" he calls from the kitchen, somehow managing to drown out the blender with his voice. "And I'd shatter your mama's carving board before you could knock me out with anything in this house ... or on this block. Even in this town, unless your local library's got a secret section full of magic books and tomes on angelology."
Fucking great, she seethes. He can read minds too. Just what I needed. "The Lima library doesn't even have Twilight on the shelves yet." Which Santana doesn't mind, since theydo have a copy of Carmilla ... or did, until she lost it (put it on her own bookshelf and ripped the library's stickers off) — but the sparkly vampire book's supposed to be popular or something and she guesses that she should care if Kristen Stewart's a lesbian or not—
"She isn't!" shouts the angel.
The blender dies down, finally, but that doesn't keep Santana from raising her voice to say, "You know, what the Hell kind of angel are you supposed to be with all of this ... using the blender without asking, knowing who Kristen Stewart is, not-consensual mind-reading crap?"
She expects him to get his ass out here on feet, but instead there's a pop! noise and the sound of rustling feathers, and he appears right next to her, two strawberry Daiquiris in hand. Something inside Santana writhes and hurts to see him smirk like he does — he can't stand much taller than she does, petite and lithe and with slick hair and an oil-spill slick grin. He's the kind of guy who'd fit in perfectly on the Cheerios ... except that he looks about thirty-five (at least), and maybe he's a little too pear-shaped for Coach Sylvester to let near the team, but mostly he's just useless, and smirking like he just caught his first Pikachu.
And wearing a black leather collar so tight around his neck it might as well be a tourniquet, but since he's weird to begin with, it doesn't strike Santana as that bizarre. So he's a slimeball who just so happens to be into bondage, and wherever he calls home, there's some Master waiting for him. Just great for him — it's not making Brittany any moreawake.
Santana doesn't even arch an eyebrow at him while he sits there, shaking the glass at her until she takes it, and generally just looking like he wants her to punch him in the face. Sure, inside she feels like she ought to collapse and start trembling and begging him to just make Brittany better if he's supposed to be some big important angel guy — but he's not worth fussing over. Maybe he wants to think he is, but until he does something more than offer her a Daiquiri, he's just some creep who gets his rocks off by kidnapping sick girls from malls.
And taking them back to Santana's house.
And making them fruity drinks.
"I mean," Santana drawls, wrinkling her nose at him and daring him to prove her wrong about him. Do something angelic, smart-ass. "Come on, I mean ... you don't even have a name. And you're supposed to be important?"
He slinks down onto the coffee table — and seriously, what kind of guy slinks anywhere? — and tells her, "The name's Gabriel, Archangel. And you're Santana, and you're in love with her—" He gestures at Brittany. "And you can drink that, you know. I didn't poison it or anything."
"Yeah, because I'm supposed to just trust some jerk-ass son of a bitch who think he's an angel." Although she's never met one before, Santana got dragged down to Saint Michael's Catholic Church for Sunday school while she was a kid and she knows that angels do not look or act like this guy. For one thing, they have wings. For another, they're not douchebags.
He shrugs. "You weren't so skeptical while I was helping her."
"Yeah, well, if you helped her, then why hasn't she woken up yet?"
Instead of an answer, Santana gets two fingers pressed into her forehead and the sudden sensation of everything around her spinning. Of her stomach flailing while someone tries to rip it out of her.
And then everything feels so cold her bones start shivering.
When she opens her eyes, the living room's gone, replaced by a vast expanse of what looks like nothingness — snow and ice falling from a frozen black sky; dead, broken, gnarled trees that twist and turn in patterns Santana thinks should not exist, and seem to crawl and move regardless of the absence of wind; voices crying out in pain; screams that echo around the emptiness and penetrate into Santana's chest — she looks to her left and sees nothing. To her right, nothing. Back to her left—
And Gabriel's fingers are on her forehead again.
She comes back around in the living room, curled in a fetal position on her armchair, forehead to her knees and hands clenched around the daiquiri glass, shuddering like a one-girl earthquake — everything still feels cold, even as she feels sweat start beading up on her forehead. Something worms around in her chest. Wraps around her lungs until she has to cough, until her heart wants to rip out of her ribcage because it's terrified that she won't breathe again. Her neck threatens to snap under her head, which must've gotten replaced by an anvil, but she still forces herself to look up, to meet Gabriel's gaze. And not noticing his sober expression, she forces a smirk, tries to demand to know what he was thinking ... but the only noise she gets is the slow, sticky sound of trying to peel her tongue from the roof of her mouth.
"That was Purgatory, Foxy." His chuckle is bone-dry and bitter; with a snap of his fingers, the daiquiri changes into a glass of water, and he instructs her to drink it. She does; it doesn't help, and he keeps talking anyway. "That's where I've been since my big bro, Lucifer, got a little too stabby with me—" He must sense what she's thinking (which explains the mind-reading, she thinks to herself), because his hand snaps up and motions for her to keep quiet. "Long story, the Apocalypse was involved, here's a hint for you:don't. ask."
"I thought angels lived in Heaven," she points out — because Purgatory or no Purgatory, nobody tells Santana Lopez what to do. Nobody.
"Not dead ones." He shrugs, chugs his drink and magics up a bottle of whiskey. "So I've been kicking around there for a while, and I'm out now. And I'm never going back—"
"And Brittany—"
"Is involved in some big-time shit going on between Heaven and Hell. She's tapped into angel radio—"
"Excuse me—"
For a moment, he looks like he's going to answer — but then the collar tightens. Starts choking him. He hacks and gags, sounds just like Britt's cat when it has a hairball. It's almost enough to make Santana chuckle ... until she remembers that her head's still swimming, and Brittany's still passed out on the couch.
The collar chills out. Gabriel shudders and shakes his head. He sighs, takes a deep breath and then another — then another shake of his head. Must be some kind of reflexive thing.
"Look, kid," he snaps. "I can't tell you everything right now. SparkNotes version: I'm important. She's important. Looking out for her? That's my job — but there's big things going around, so ... consider yourself deputized. Make sure she doesn't wander off a cliff because the sun looks shiny or whatever's going on inside her head." He runs his fingers back through his hair, and for the first time, his expression softens. When he turns her hazel eyes up at her, they're sympathetic, not glinting like razorblades and needles.
"Pray if you or Blondie need me and for fuck's sake, I can't stress this enough—" He snaps his fingers; Santana's empty water glass turns back into a daiquiri. "Be. really.goddamn. careful."
On his way out, the rustling feathers sound louder than before. So much so that Santana almost misses the breathy whisper of her name in Brittany's voice.
She's on the sofa in the space of a blink. The daiquiri falls to the floor behind her. The glass shatters and, vaguely, she thinks that she can just clean it up later, before Mom gets home from her book club and Dad gets back from work and strippers.
All that matters now is Brittany. That Brittany's awake, and safe, and still thinks that ballads are ducks.
Santana wraps her arms around Brittany's shoulders and buries her face in Brittany's neck, pulls Brittany so close that there's barely room enough for breath between them. Brittany asks her things that Santana can't hear right now; she just shakes her head and clings that much fiercer.