While they wait at the drive-thru window, Brittany drops the coins into a dip in the center console and asks, "Are you sure you don't want me to come with?"
Santana turns away from the windshield and the empty parking lot and catches the concern on Brittany's face. She offers a grim little smile and shakes her head. "Thanks, Britt. But I think it'll be easier if it's just us."
Brittany tilts her head forward, looking seriously through her lashes, and says, "If you're sure," right as the guy slides the window open and chirps her name.
Brittany reaches out of the car to take the milkshakes and hands them to Santana, who nestles one in the cup holder next to Brittany's Cheerios water bottle and cradles the other between her palms, letting the cold condensation seep into her skin.
"I am," Santana promises as Brittany drives away.
As they wait at the mouth of the road, Brittany leans forward against the steering wheel to see around the hedges. Two cars pass them, headlights straining against the darkness of the thick gray clouds in the sky. Brittany turns her signal on and jolts into the lane.
The stoplight is red ahead of them. She stops behind the cars that just passed.
"Santana, are you sure you're okay seeing him?" asks Brittany quietly, looking at her hands where she's coiled them in her lap.
Santana swallows and adjusts the cup against her thigh. It's freezing against her skin. "It's okay. I mean it," she says. She clears her throat and glances at Brittany. Her blue eyes. Her open expression. "This is… I need to be there for him."
There's a pause, and a quiver at Brittany's throat belies her nervousness. "Was he there for you?" she asks, tentative and solemn, fingers twisting tighter against her thighs.
A car honks. The light's changed.
"In his way," Santana answers, leaning her head against the glass of the window as Brittany pulls the car forward. She remembers changing her Facebook to "Interested in Women"—a sort of fuck you to Finn Hudson and the world he lived in—and how, among the small cluster of Likes, Dave's name had appeared quietly at the bottom. He'd hidden the action on his news feed.
When she added Brittany under "In a Relationship with," he'd liked it too. And hidden it.
"San?" Brittany coaxes.
She pulls her forehead from the glass and flashes a smile at Brittany to reassure her. She catches Brittany's eye again—that soft sweet concern—and her eyes crinkle under the weight of a warm, deep breath. She reaches across the car and steals Brittany's hand from the steering wheel. Brittany glances at her again; Santana kisses Brittany's knuckles and links their fingers. Brittany's blushing and smiling.
"I really love you, you know," Santana whispers, her voice higher and lighter than she expected.
Brittany squeezes Santana's fingers without looking away from the road. Her grin twitches bigger. "I really, really love you back." She sighs and turns halfway to check the left lane before switching them over. "But you didn't answer my question."
She shoots another look at Santana and Santana uneasily balances the milkshake on her knee. It's still cold and sweating through the plastic.
"I didn't need his help," she admits with a shrug. She swallows the guilty taste of the confession. She stares at Brittany with full eyes until Brittany chances another look away from the road. Santana smiles helplessly and explains: "I had you."
Brittany gives her a searing kiss in the drop-off circle, like she's branding her and saying goodbye all at once. When she pulls back and takes in Santana's face with lidded eyes, Santana presses softly against Brittany's lips, to soothe the ache. Brittany nudges their noses together as they draw away and it makes Santana smile.
"Don't have too much fun," says Brittany with a gentle smile. She puts the second milkshake in Santana's free hand, then leans forward to pull the door handle for her.
Santana just smiles and nods vaguely before she struggles out of the car with no hands.
"You have your keys and your phone?" Brittany asks, inspecting the floor mat and passenger seat.
"In my pocket," Santana answers, grinning so hard she's afraid her face will break. Brittany looks up, lips curled around a little oh, and Santana keeps grinning.
Brittany smiles back and shakes her head like Santana's a nut and says, "Okay. Call me when you want a ride."
Teasingly, Santana shrugs and hums, "I might be late."
Brittany just shakes her head. "Call me anyway," she says, softer and firm.
She goes straight to his room this time because she can feel the milkshakes getting milkier in the cups. When she gets there, though, one glance through the window stops her cold in her tracks.
Dave's crying. A woman is standing between him and the window with her arms folded. Her sharp voice bounces against the walls and the window in a harsh buzz. Dave's wiping at his eyes with his left hand. The monitor on his index finger keeps bumping his nose.
He still looks small in that bed.
Once a minute or two or ten have passed, with the cold sinking out of the milkshakes and into Santana's skin and freezing her to the spot, the woman turns abruptly and shakes her head. Santana jumps awkwardly to the wall beside the window; by cautiously angling her head, she sees the woman's closed eyes.
Santana's shoulders relax. The voice inside has stopped. Soon, the woman shakes her head and speaks—one more time—and pauses by the door. Santana panics and arranges a casual pose as the woman sweeps into the hallway.
"Oh," says the woman, eyes hard. She must be Dave's mother.
"Mrs. Karofsky," Santana tries, polite and careful. Even last year—even for prom—they've never met.
Mrs. Karofsky nods primly and scans Santana head to toe. She sniffs like she can smell Lima Heights under the Cheerios uniform and it sends a shiver down Santana's spine. "And who are you?"
With a gulp, she answers, "Santana. Lopez."
Mrs. Karofsky's eyes narrow. "Do I know you?" She jerks her head toward the window and sneers faintly. "Why are you visiting my son?"
Her eyes catch on the milkshakes in Santana's hands.
"We dated last year," she says firmly. Mrs. Karofsky hasn't recognized her from the commercial—or so it seems—so maybe she can give Dave one last boost with her lingering credibility. One last batch of sour brownie points.
But Mrs. Karofsky's angry expression instantly slackens into boredom. "Oh, right," she sighs, digging keys out of her purse. "The Mexican."
Santana's eyes and mouth drop wide open, but Mrs. Karofsky is walking past her down the hallway before her verbal barrage escapes her lips.
"It was lovely meeting you," Mrs. Karofsky calls over her shoulder, and even Santana can only sound that deeply sarcastic on a very good day.
"Shit, Dave," Santana says as she smacks the milkshakes on the table beside a basket of hideous flowers. She clutches the railing and bends over him while her lip quivers.
He looks at her in surprise, but his expression is still wounded. He's still wiping at his tears with his big hands. Santana gulps and swats them away; replaces them with her own. She brushes her thumbs against his cheeks the way she's only ever done for Brittany.
"I'm fine," he gurgles, words as wet as his eyes when he squeezes them shut. He pushes her away by the wrists and smears at his face angrily. "It's fine."
"Dave," Santana pushes, swiveling to perch on the edge of the bed with her thigh wedged against the rail, "Dave, you don't have to be fine." Her voice breaks and she can't pull his hands away from where they wipe his eyes raw and red. "It doesn't have to be fine."
Dave starts hiccupping, the way he does when he swallows funny, and she bites her lips and tugs again at his forearms. Slowly, he relents; his fingers stall across his face until he's just hiding behind them. She can hear his whimpered sobs. His slumped shoulders shiver intermittently.
Again, she pulls, and now he lets her lay their hands together in his lap. The feel of the plastic monitor under her thumb makes her breath hitch along with his. Tears still follow the tracks down his cheeks.
She watches him quietly, sadly, and his eyes drift open and closed with new pain like he's blinking in slow motion. She squeezes his hands because it's the most physical reassurance she's comfortable offering; though she cares about him, the idea of him reminds her too much of her former self. She's long since tired of giving away pieces of herself that really belong to herself. Or to Brittany.
As she swallows, though, and looks with empathy at his fluttering eyelids and quivering chin, she realizes there may be another kind of piece she can offer him. So, she takes a deep breath, steels herself, and finally manages to say the words out loud: "My grandmother won't talk to me anymore."
It makes her heart speed up, like she's back in the kitchen with her feet shifting firmer against the floor, staring in shock as her grandmother's face contorts in a rage she hasn't seen since she was six and still leaving her bike out in the rain by accident. Her gaze drops with the weight of the feeling and when she finally forces herself to look back at his face, his eyes are open and squinting, like he thinks he knows what's happening and he's afraid to be right.
She shrugs one shoulder, drawing her hands back onto the bedspread beside his knee and along the plastic rail. She licks her lip. Her heart's still beating too fast. "When I told her, she… she got really mad."
Dave's mouth opens a little; he shakes his head. He speaks in a dry rasp, like a hinge in need of oil, abused by the lingering cut of the belt and the strain of crying: "Why?"
They both know the question hurts, but Santana considers him and constructs her answer. She knows he needs to know; he knows she needs to tell him.
"She said I should have kept it a secret," she admits, so so quietly. Her hands tangle by her hip and her eyes dart away. She stares at the ugly flowers and the heartless pre-printed card pinned among them. "She said I… shamed her," she elaborates, tucking her lips between her teeth and feeling tears prick her eyes. Trying to translate vergüenza brings back that stabbing pain. Her abuela's wide, angry eyes.
The difficult translation feels like a fucked-up metaphor.
Dave is looking at her strangely when she finally turns back. He's looking at her like she's a new person. He looks strangely hopeful and she can't figure out why. "Really?" he asks. Like his heart is an egg she's cracked against the table and then lovingly swaddled in velvet. The gaps in sound from his brutalized voice makes her feel too heartsick to hate him for making her relive this.
"Yeah," she says, soft instead of harsh. The change surprises her still.
"That was my mom," he says after a moment. Santana frowns as he looks back down at his hands and picks at his nail again; it's that signal that makes her wait for more. He rolls his eyes sadly at the ceiling—they're glistening wet again—and gasps, "She said I can be cured," as fresh sobs break out.
Santana's eyes drift closed and she squeezes them, hard, against the sting of matching tears. She remembers her youth—her adolescence; she remembers the first dream she had about touching Brittany, and her first long shower in the morning trying to scrub it off her skin; she remembers their first kiss and her first secret, earnest trip to confession; she remembers rubbing her tears into Puck's shoulder while he grunted atop her.
"Dave, we both know that's not true," she whispers, because she's seen him wear the same haunted expression she still sometimes sees in the mirror.
He doesn't answer. He just keeps crying. Maybe he's crying harder.
She reaches out and touches his shoulder. She has to shift further onto the bed to do it; her hip bumps his knee and he shies away.
He's been crying for a little while when his off-key whines turn into, "What am I going to do?"
Santana swallows and forces herself to look him in the eye. She's been trying to answer that question, but there are too many variables.
Instead, she promises, "We'll think of something." When he runs his hand under his nose and stares miserably at the bedside table—noticing the milkshakes with surprise—she says, "I wasn't kidding when I said I'd back you up."
He takes a shaky breath, sniffles, and flops his hand unhappily over the top of the closer McDonald's cup. "She's my mom," he says helplessly.
"You can live in my fucking basement if you have to," Santana blurts. She bites her lip when he turns sharply toward her.
Dave holds his breath for three full seconds. "You'd do that?" he gasps, confused and afraid and almost hopeful.
Santana drops her hand from his shoulder and rubs her arm uneasily. "My parents aren't home a lot, so you could probably squat there for a while," she plans aloud, scanning the bed sheet like she's reading the ideas off paper. "You could transfer back to McKinley. Even if word gets out, you pack some punch there. I can back you up."
Even if Sebastian's apparently turning over a less douchy leaf, she knows Dave can't afford Dalton. Especially without parents.
She's talking as fast as the thoughts come, so she's surprised when she looks up and he's gaping. Stunned. Her eyebrows push together and she opens her mouth to ask when he stutters, "You—you'd do all that for me?"
She blinks at him. "Duh," she says, suddenly wondering if she's missed something. Misinterpreted something.
He blushes quickly—again, she's struck by how his light complexion mirrors Brittany's, the way he reddens in big bashful patches—and says, "Sorry, I guess—" He shrugs. "I figured you didn't actually like me that much." His eyes slide to his hand on the plastic cup. "Especially after the shit I pulled on Hummel."
"No," she says immediately, shaking her head with wide eyes. "Dave, that's never—" She falters and feels her expression soften. "Maybe it was stupid at first, but I think…" She sucks in a breath and admits it, because he needs to know: "We're sort of similar, you and I."
He looks at her with this hopeful, vulnerable face and smiles his tiny, crooked smile. "You think?" he says, in a voice too small for her to deny him.
So, instead of shutting him down, she rolls her eyes and looks at her finger as she traces shy patterns on the blanket with her thumb. "Yeah. Kinda." Before he can give her crap for it, she glances up and nods at the milkshake. "You better drink that shit, since I brought it special."
He grins bigger at her and pulls it into his lap. He pops the lid off and snaps the wrapping off the spoon; when he brings the first spoonful toward his lips, he dips it toward her like he's toasting with a glass.
She snorts and hops back on the bed. When her back touches his knee again, he doesn't pull away.
"I had a plan," he says quietly, once he's made a dent in the shake.
She pulls her eyes away from the business card among the ugly flowers. She frowns to focus her thoughts. "For coming out?" she asks just as quietly, like it's junior year and she's still afraid someone will hear them.
He's staring hard into his shake, like it's some big feat of concentration. "Yeah." His voice shakes between pitches and he clears his throat painfully. "But"—his eyes flash to hers for a moment—"the whole thing started with me doing it myself, you know?"
Santana laughs because she can't help it; because now, she really can't deny how motherfucking similar they are. "I know exactly what you mean," she drawls bitterly, zoning out at the floor tiles and laughing breathily at the memory of Finn goddamn fishface Hudson to keep from breaking back into tears.
Dave's breath catches and she glances at him with interest. "I heard about that," he says, and she can't tell if it sounds like that because of his neck or because of what he's saying.
She turns back to the floor and kicks her legs. "Yeah." She laughs again and it sounds hollow.
Dave doesn't say anything for a moment. She hears the spoon scraping the sides of the cup. "It's kind of funny," he says like it's not funny at all. "How you spend so much time planning, you give 'em long enough to figure it out."
"Real fucking funny," Santana says, and again it's too tired to sound bitchy. She sounds defeated; more than that, she sounds like she's commiserating. With Dave Karofsky.
Dave shrugs in her peripheral vision. "You figured me out pretty quick," he acknowledges.
Santana looks up at him and frowns. "That's true." She'd forgotten about that. Her gaze edges along the wall as she thinks. "But I think it's a little different for… when you're both on the same team." She licks her lips and checks his face.
"Maybe," he says. "But…" He purses his lips; hedges; regret spreads into his eyes and temples. "If I'd done it… my plan…" He shakes his head and begins again. "I mean, I had it planned, like, even in the summer. I started planning it when you called me out like I was wearing a fucking rainbow t-shirt." He gestures at her helplessly and chuckles in disbelief. "If I'd started when I thought of it… Hell, if I'd started the week before Valentine's…"
His voice wavers at the end and he cuts off. He ends with another shrug and aims his wet eyes at the window.
"I had a plan, too," she offers with brightness that turns bitter. He turns back to her with a half-smile. The sympathetic one.
It makes her smile back, despite what she's about to say. She has to look at her hands to force the words out. "Maybe it's for the better, because I was going to tell my abuela first." She laughs again, sadly and emptily. "I thought she'd have my back when I told my parents. Who knew it'd be my parents who didn't care."
When Dave doesn't say anything for what feels like a full minute—he doesn't even move the spoon in the melting milkshake—she laughs again and looks up at the ceiling, at the God she feels more and more is just mocking her, and she says, "I was going to pack a fucking bag, you know? So I could take off."
"Me too," he says, and the way the word cracks makes her turn in alarm. Tears are spilling over again and he looks at her in despair. In agony. "But I didn't know where I'd go if I needed to use it."
"Dave," she chirps in panic. She crawls up the bed—closer to him than she's been since they forced that slow dance last fucking spring—and loops her arm over his big slumped shoulders. "Dave, God," she says, "you could have called me. You could have come to me."
He's hysterical again, hiccupping and gulping instead of breathing, and he actually leans against her shoulder as he gasps, "I felt so alone. I still feel so alone."
She clutches him against her and wonders what the fuck she's supposed to say.
"I think I would have called you," he admits once he's quieted down and drawn away from her embrace.
She lets him separate them and curls her knees up into her corner of the little bed. "I hear I'm your emergency contact," she says, watching his face closely.
He just glances at her and twists his lips as he chooses his words. "I would've felt bad about it." He moves the spoon through the melting ice cream. "But I would've called."
Her instinct is to call him on it—because he didn't call her, not when it mattered—but she knows with sick certainty that, if her phone had all that hate in it, she wouldn't have used it, either.
"Oh, I forgot!" She leans back and digs in her jacket pockets. Her left has her phone, keys, and license; her right has what she's looking for. She pulls out a shitty prepaid cell phone and holds it in front of him. "Here, I picked this up so you can text me when you're, like, bored all day."
Dave actually smiles—then he grins a little—and he takes it from her. He moves to grip the milkshake between his legs so it won't spill and flips the phone open. "Nokia," he says with a smirk. "Old school."
"I saved the number," she ignores him and points, "and I added some people who are actually worth contacting."
He obediently opens the Contacts list and his smile swims strangely when he sees half the Glee kids listed, plus *Santana carefully tacked at the top and *Trevor Hotline right below it. That makes him frown and turn back toward her.
More nervously, she hugs her knees to her chest and explains, "It's… a suicide hotline, for gay kids." She swallows and makes herself amend, "Kids like us." He looks back at the phone in wonder and she says, shrugging uncomfortably, "I—I looked it up last year."
His head snaps left and his eyes dig right into her. She almost flinches, but he needs to hear this, too. Still, she lets herself look away from him; instead, she inspects the nail polish chipping off her left pinkie. "When things got bad with Britt," she says after she's mustered some courage, "like, really bad…"
She glances at him. Though she's speaking slowly, he just watches her. Waiting patiently.
So she looks back down and surges ahead. "It was before I talked to you about prom and whatever. While she was with Artie and we weren't talking, and…" Her eyes drift shut and she shudders. "It was really bad." She swallows and says it again, because fuck, has she been waiting forever to say it. "It was so fucking bad, Dave," she almost sobs, and she leans her forehead against her knees to protect herself from that awful feeling she came to know so well. The feeling she lived inside, like a second skin.
He doesn't interrupt her. So she takes a second to smooth her ragged breathing. "She was the only one I talked to, you know?" she says, realizing distantly that these are secrets she's telling. She's too deep to stop, though. "And how the fuck could I talk to her when we weren't talking? And, fuck, it was her I wanted to talk about…"
She wipes her nose and snivels. When she doesn't pick up again after a moment, Dave says softly, just as ragged as her, "I wish I'd thought to do that. Look up somebody to call."
"It's not your fault," she insists again. She peels away from her knees to stare hard at him, determined through her gathering tears. "You're still here, and now you've got at least two people you can call."
He's swallowing the last of his milkshake and then he's asking out of the blue, "Is that why you showed me those videos?"
"What videos?" she asks, idly flipping through the stock wallpaper choices for his crappy new mobile.
"About the suicides, and stuff."
She looks up at the way he wavers on suicides. He's staring at the cup he just emptied.
After a moment of debate, she wets her lips and tells the truth: "Yes."
He keeps staring at the cup like it's got tea leaves in the bottom. She actually cranes her head a little to check, but there's just the half-moon of melted shake dribbled in the crease at the bottom.
"I kind of wish we weren't so alike," he says, like it makes him want to laugh and cry at the same time. He quickly wipes his eyes with his wrists and she guesses he mostly wants to cry.
She laughs, sad and almost crazy, like she's making up for it. "Me too," she teases, but she's sort of glad to realize he put her pieces together on his own.
"I should call Brittany," Santana finally sighs, when it gets toward the late end of dinnertime. She turns to Dave and checks his expression. "You said that guy's coming later."
He nods and bites his lips. He looks nervous again: the way his eyes don't meet hers. Then, his expression clears and he aims a little smile at her. "Checking up with the missus?" he jokes, a little sadly.
Santana grins at him but doesn't contradict it. She opens a text to Brittany instead, asking for a ride. "You want me to have her come up?" She waggles her eyebrows, thumb hesitating over the Send button.
He waves her off and slurps at the second milkshake. It's soup by now, but still tasty soup. "Nah, she doesn't like me."
It's kind of true, but Santana raises an eyebrow in challenge. "Because you bullied Kurt?" she guesses, wondering what he thinks is the cause.
"Because I got to take you to prom," he says, and his face goes so soft and sweet that she almost pukes.