Prompt: The first time Santana found herself actually contemplating starting a relationship with Rachel

I should've never thought of you

It's cold.

In fact, it's downright freezing (and completely disgusting).

Yet still, Santana takes a sip and grimaces as the coffee trickles unpleasantly down her throat. It's the fourth time in the past five minutes she's accidentally done that, and that would be alright if the coffee was meant to be iced but it wasn't. It was meant to be hot, black, full of sugar, and filling her with invigorating caffeine but instead, it's sitting in her hands and has been for the past half an hour.

To be precise it has been sitting there, untouched and forgotten, for exactly 34 minutes.

Coincidentally, it has also been 34 minutes since Rachel walked into the kitchen and started cooking dinner. Not that Santana noticed of course. No, Santana absolutely did not notice when Rachel casually sauntered in and put her iPod in the docking station. Nor did she notice when her friend started doing an adorable little dance along to the music while she was chopping up a pepper.

Nope. Not at all. Definitely not…

Except that she totally did.

She noticed every tiny detail about the entire scene, almost as though it had played in slow motion. From the way that Rachel's hair was still slightly damp from her shower, to the way she chopped in time to the beat, to the way she stuck her tongue out slightly in concentration when she removed the seeds. She noticed it all.

And to make matters worse, this was not the first cup of coffee that had been neglected due to Rachel Berry's presence. The fact was that, as much as Santana wanted to deny it, whenever Rachel entered a room, Santana's head seemed to go into outer space.

It had started simply. A look of appreciation here and there, noticing Rachel's choice of clothing (which seemed infinitely better in New York than it ever had in Lima), or enjoying the smell of her perfume. Little things that didn't need to mean anything complex. But over time Santana had found that those small and rather unimportant things had turned into very important things indeed.

Now those same appreciations were accompanied by an uncontrollable swirling in her stomach, an inexplicably dry throat, and a light sheen of sweat on her palms. Rachel made her feel nervous, she made her feel confused, and without a shadow of a doubt, she made her feel turned on.

The very notion that she could possibly find Rachel Berry attractive seemed ridiculous, yet it was completely and utterly undeniable. After all, she had tried to avoid this conclusion for the past 3 months, but still here she was, having reached it all the same.

At first she had tried to tell herself that it was just lust. After all, Rachel had gained all this confidence since she moved to New York, and confidence was downright sexy, but time had washed that idea firmly away, because it wasn't just the physical that Santana was noticing (and enjoying). Sure, she couldn't help but notice Rachel's legs, toned from her rigorous dancing regime at NYADA, and her lips, full and soft, but it was much more than that. It wasn't just her ass, and her abs, it was all these other things that were captivating Santana's mind too.

The way she ran her hand through her hair when she was nervous, the way her eyes lit up when she smiled, the way she walked, the way she spoke, the way she sighed, the way she sang, the way she did just about everything and anything. It was all firmly etched in Santana's brain, as though someone had gone and tattooed all these fine details onto her frontal lobe and now they couldn't be ignored.

It was in that very moment, a moment that to anybody else wouldn't have seemed particularly special at all, that Santana finally realised something that she probably should have understood weeks ago.

Rachel's knife cut down sharply into the soft flesh of the pepper, her bum wiggling along to the music as she did, and as the cool metal blade hit the hard wood of the chopping board Santana's brain finally accepted the undeniable truth.

Santana didn't want to be holding a cup of cold coffee in her hand, she'd prefer it to be Rachel's hand occupying that space, their fingers wrapped around each other's. Santana didn't want her lips to be touching the smooth ceramic mug, she wanted them to be locked onto Rachel's, kissing her furiously into the night. Most importantly, as painfully cheesy as it was, she didn't want to be taking that girl she met on the subway on a date tomorrow night, in fact she couldn't care less about her, she'd much rather be taking Rachel out instead.

Rachel turned round, a soft smile on her face, "You're quiet, Santana. Something on your mind?"

Santana shook her head, plastering a smile on her face and hoping it didn't seem too fake, "Just been a long day, that's all."

But that wasn't all, and she knew it.

As much as she didn't want to be, she was completely and utterly falling for Rachel Barbra Berry, and it seemed she was powerless to stop it.