Living with Santana was hard.
The fact that Rachel had ended up sharing a dorm room with her in the first place had seemed like a nightmare. There had been an administrative error, and while NYU would never have usually paired people from the same high school, something had gone wrong and they had been matched up based on their roommate compatibility forms.
Santana had insisted - loudly - that it just wasn't possible; there was nothing about her that was compatible with someone who wore knee socks. But the dorms had been assigned, and that was that. Six months into their freshman year, things were going a lot better. But.
There was a lot about living with Santana that frustrated Rachel to no end. The
number one point on that very long list was taking place in Santana's bed right now. Santana was, if Rachel may be so blunt, a raging bitch during her period. The only thing that made her feel even slightly better was, apparently, curling up in bed with a heating pad, watching a violent movie on her laptop, and stuffing her face with a bag of Cheetos.
Rachel cannot stand the smell of artificial cheese flavoring, and Santana knew it. And yet every month they had this fight.
She dropped a jumbo bag of Hershey's Kisses on Santana's stomach and sighed.
"I'm going out. Please don't put the bag in the trash in here."
...
Every month, Santana made up for it by dragging her to bars, and clubs, and book readings that Rachel never would have guessed Santana would enjoy. It was kind of how they ended up not hating each other.
"Sorry for being a cunt, grab your coat," was her exact apology the first time.
As they stood on line in the fall New York evening, Santana tapped her foot for a good five minutes before turning to Rachel.
"Can you just, I don't know, try not to be you for one night?"
Rachel had been too stunned to say anything, and was about to move out of the line and leave, when they were waved in and Santana grabbed her by the arm and dragged her inside. They were with other people, and it would have been rude to just leave, anyway.
Five shots in, and she was talking to two adorable gay boys. They were fun and hilarious and she missed her dads so much in that moment, as the two boys chatted about whether or not going to Pride was too cliche, she almost jumped in with, "well my two gay dads blah blah blah." But Santana's words were still in her ear and instead she asked whether they'd been to Pride before. They had, and Rachel hadn't - not in New York - so she let them tell her about it.
Months later, Troy and James took her to Pride with them, and it was awesome, but the next morning she let her iPod alarm play for a good five minutes, just to piss Santana off.
...
They were sitting in a cramped bookstore that was almost certainly engaging in several fire code violations with the number of people packed in, waiting to hear Gloria Steinem speak about her new book. It was ridiculously hot, even though it was getting close to winter, and Rachel cannot stop fidgeting.
"Would you stop it," Santana hissed at her.
"I have to pee. I drank a lot of water because it's so hot in here, and I have to pee."
"Oh. Well go."
"I'm never going to be able to get back in, and even if I can I'm going to lose my place, and I really want to see Ms Steinem, and-"
"Just go. I won't let anyone take your seat," Santana hardly glanced at her. She was looking at some flier in her hand, and appeared to be paying no attention to Rachel at all.
"O-okay. Um. Thanks."
"Hurry up."
When she returned, Santana's bag was sitting on her seat and she was giving a woman in a stupid hat the eye.
...
Rachel was drunk. Incredibly, ridiculously drunk.
Finn had cheated on her with some girl at OSU, and then had the gall to confess his sins and decide for her that they were over. It would have been anyway, but he had cheated her out of dumping him, too, and she was just so angry that Santana had dragged her to the bar around the corner that didn't give a shit that they were underage.
She had ranted into her first and second shot, cried into her third shot, and then her drink, and now her head was resting on her fist on top of the bar.
Santana was just coming back from the bathroom, and she placed her hand on Rachel's back as she slid back onto her stool. "Time to go, munchkin."
Normally Rachel would have reacted to the name, but she was focusing on breathing through the swirling in her stomach that had increased with the warmth radiating through her shirt and up her spine.
"Okay," she muttered into the polished wood, and then Santana hauled her up from the bar and half dragged her outside into the freezing night air.
"Cold," Rachel whined, and pressed herself into Santana's coat-covered body. Santana just wrapped her arm around her, and steered her away from the curb she was dangerously close to falling off.
...
When she came back later that night, Santana was passed out, and the Cheetos bag was on the floor next to her bed.
Rachel tried not to gag as she took it to the bin down the hall, and set her alarm extra loud for the morning. She also pulled a Almond Joy out of her cupboard and put it next to Santana's phone.
...
Rachel was easy to live with.
Santana was never going to tell her that, though.