"Santana," her mother calls. "Let's go, out of bed, you're running late."

Santana pulls the covers further over her head. "Not going today."

"Excuse me?"

"Mama, please, I feel terrible," she whines.

Her mother approaches her bed and pulls the covers back. She feels Santana's forehead and frowns. "You're not running a fever."

"It's not my head," Santana says. "Stomach bug or something. It's going around."

"We let you sleep all through the evening and night," her mother says. "Stop being a baby. Let's go. Up."

Minutes later, Santana sits at the kitchen counter, trying to eat some toast. The thought of swallowing food makes her nauseous.

"Eat your breakfast," her mother says.

Santana tears off a corner and chews it slowly. She studies her mother: the dark eyes, the stern expression, the worry lines. It's the first time she's seen her mother since everything happened. She wonders how her face will change after she knows.

"Don't be late for school," her mother warns, picking up her purse and car keys. "See you tonight. Feel better."

She takes a last sip of coffee and heads out the door. Santana sits motionlessly on her chair, feeling something creep over her. It wraps around her stomach and throat, making her breathing hurt. She thinks of the video, of Finn, of random faces all over McKinley who will know. Who might already know.

Without warning, she vomits all over the kitchen floor.

…

Her phone vibrates on her night stand. She was waiting for it to do that.

"Where are you?" the text message reads.

"Home. Couldn't do it. Sorry, brittbritt."

She falls asleep. She dreams that the smear campaign video plays all across the country. President Obama meets with her parents to explain to them that their daughter is a lesbian. Her parents ask why this had to happen to them and Finn Hudson says it's because she lit a piano on fire.

She wakes up, disoriented, and feels an immediate plunge in her stomach. Her new reality is still real.

She hides from it by going back to sleep.

The next time she awakens, she feels a comfortable pressure on her body. It's Brittany. She's lying beside her, holding her close. Santana knows even before she opens her eyes. She'll stay here, just like this, hiding from everyone and everything. She breathes deeply through her nose, and the pure scent of Brittany calms her.

Santana sighs. "Sorry I wasn't at school," she mutters.

Brittany shifts her body. "You okay?"

Santana chews on her lip, feels her stomach tighten. "I don't know," she answers honestly.

"Have you eaten today?"

"No."

"San."

"I tried to, but I threw up."

Brittany sighs. "Open your eyes. Let me take a look at you."

Santana squints in the bright sunlight. Brittany's frowning with concern. She looks haggard, like she hasn't slept much.

"How bad?" Santana asks. "Do I look like a hot mess?"

Brittany smiles at that. "Well…you look like you've had a lot of sleep. Like, too much sleep," she says.

Santana raises an arm from beneath the covers and traces the purple shades of skin under Brittany's eyes. "And you look like you haven't," she says.

"Rude," Brittany says, but she kisses Santana gently. "Wake up, okay? I'm going to get you something to eat."

Santana doesn't want to wake up, but she nods because—well, it doesn't seem as awful now that Brittany's here with her.

Brittany makes her a peanut butter and banana sandwich and some coffee. Santana sits up in bed, back against the headboard, and takes small bites and sips. Brittany sits across from her and watches her with a worried look on her face.

"So what's the news at school?" Santana asks. She tries to sound nonchalant with the question, but she knows Brittany sees straight through it.

Brittany plays with a thread on the duvet. "Well…Finn figured out why you got so upset."

"Oh? How? Somebody broke it down for his mountain troll self?"

"Mr. Schue talked to him after we left yesterday," Brittany says.

"I bet he acted all innocent about it," Santana spits. "Probably got all wide-eyed and horrified. Mr. Schue probably took pity on him. Asshole."

Brittany shrugs. "Everyone's really worried about you. Mercedes and Quinn want to come see you after school. Oh, and Tina, too."

Santana scoffs. "So where are they, then?"

Brittany looks confused. "At school," she says. "Tina has a math test in fifth hour and she doesn't want to miss it."

"Wait, what? What time is it?"

"Did the Time Fairies get to you?" Brittany asks, cocking her head. "It's, like, noon."

"So you're skipping?"

"No….I thought it was only skipping if we did it together?"

Santana smiles for the first time since the previous morning. "No, Britt," she says with quiet amusement. "It's skipping any time you leave school before you're supposed to."

"Oh," says Brittany. She smiles. "Well, I guess I'm skipping, then."

Santana shakes her head and takes a bite of her sandwich.

"Can you really blame me?" Brittany asks her. "I was worried about you."

Santana tilts her head and extends a hand across the covers. Brittany takes hold of it and moves her thumb across Santana's palm, rubbing tiny circles into her lifelines.

"I'll be okay," Santana assures her. "I'm just being a little dramatic right now."

Brittany kisses Santana's open palm. "No you're not," she says. "I know what dramatic Santana looks like. Remember sophomore year—your Dashboard Confessional phase? I never knew what that guy was so depressed about."

Santana smiles, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes.

"Come on," Brittany says. "Let's go downstairs."

"Why?"

"We're going to watch a movie. You need to be cuddled and you need your mind to go somewhere happy. Like maybe—Carebears the Movie?"

"False," says Santana. "I don't even own that."

"That's not my fault, I tried to give it to you for Easter that one time. Okay, so DuckTales it is."

Santana rolls her eyes and starts to feel like herself again. She lets Brittany lead her by the hand to the den, where she is wrapped in a blanket, pulled into Brittany's arms, and kissed over and over while Scrooge McDuck and his nephews search for the lost lamp.

…

It's almost five p.m., and Finn has no idea why Brittany just showed up at his house.

"Britt?" he says when he answers the door. "What are you doing here?"

"Can I come in?" she asks.

"Yeah, of course." He stands aside for her. "What's up?"

"I'd like to talk to you."

"Er…sure. Let's go to the kitchen. You want a glass of water or anything?"

They settle around the table and look across at each other. Brittany plays with the centerpiece for a few seconds.

"I want to talk about Santana," she says.

"Oh," says Finn, pulling the sleeves of his sweater down. "Should have known."

Kurt appears in the doorway and notices their serious faces. "What's going on?" he asks. "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah," says Brittany. "I just wanted to talk about what happened in the auditorium yesterday."

"Look, I feel really bad," says Finn. "But I'm ready to move past everything and for all of us to be friends again. I want to be there for Santana. I'm not angry anymore."

"Um," says Brittany. Her voice wavers a little bit. "Well, I am angry."

"Britt, come on," says Finn. "You do realize this wasn't a black-or-white situation, don't you?"

"Right, here we go," Brittany says, fiddling with her scarf. "Talking down to me like you always do. I know you think I'm dumb—maybe you're right, maybe I don't have the highest IQ. But I have a really high SQ. Like, Afroman levels of high."

When Finn blinks in confusion, she says, "SQ. Santana Quotient."

"Right," says Finn.

"Look," says Brittany. "What you did was wrong. It's not okay that you outed her the way you did. She wasn't ready for this, and I want you to apologize."

Finn's jaw clenches. He sits up straighter and pushes his chest out. Kurt glances between the two of them with appraising eyes, then tentatively sits down at the far end of the table.

"Brittany, I will apologize," Finn says. "I've already told you I feel bad. But are you listening to what I'm saying? It's not like she's the innocent victim in this situation. I wouldn't have said that stuff to her if she hadn't been insulting me again. She sort of got what was coming to her."

Brittany's face contorts in anger, but before she can say anything, Kurt speaks.

"No," he says firmly, settling his eyes on his half-brother.

Finn snaps his eyes to him, getting defensive. "Kurt, you're not even part of this conversation."

"It's never okay to out someone," Kurt says calmly. "Never. No matter how badly they may have treated you. Britt's right."

"It was her choice to make," Brittany says angrily. "And she had a very clear idea of when she was going to do it, and you took that from her."

Finn shakes his head, blinking at Brittany, deriding her ignorance. "Of course," Finn says dryly. "I'm obviously the bad guy. She didn't do anything wrong."

"No, she did a lot of wrong things," Brittany says. "She can be a very mean person. She should have lain off you." She blinks across the table at him. "She was bullying you. I know. I've watched her bully people for years."

"And you just thought you'd sit back and not say anything about it?" Finn sneers. "Thought you'd just let her keep going?"

"Santana is the way she is for a reason," Brittany says. "I can't change her any more than you can change Rachel."

"Ah, let me guess," says Finn. "The reason she's like that is...a dysfunctional family? Her doggie died when she was little? She didn't get a pony for her birthday? Come on, Brittany, none of us had a perfect childhood."

Brittany is quiet for a few moments. She stares at her folded hands and bites her lip.

"When we were in first grade," she says in a low voice, "Santana really wanted this blue sled for Christmas."

"Okay…" says Finn.

"We had seen all these commercials on TV," Brittany continues, "and it looked awesome, and it was a two-seater, and she said that was perfect because we'd be able to go sledding together. So she begged her parents for it for weeks. Like, probably even before Halloween. And on Christmas Eve her parents placed this huge present under the tree. And she knew it was the sled. She called me that afternoon and told me. We were so excited that we forgot to take Lord Tubbington to Christmas tea with the other cats.

"And then later that night, when her parents threw their annual Christmas Eve party, Santana was helping to clear the table and accidentally knocked a glass of wine onto one of their friends. Red wine. It got all over this lady's new Christmas dress. So her parents were like, really embarrassed and really furious. And the next day, when she woke up, there wasn't a big present under the tree anymore."

"They took it back?" Kurt asks.

"No," Brittany says. "When they went to her abuela's Christmas party later that day, they gave the sled to her cousin Lucy. They made Santana write the card and give it to her, right in front of everyone, and then they made her sit in the basement for the rest of the party."

Finn's mouth hangs slightly open. Kurt stares at Brittany with an expression that's hard to read.

"When Santana got her summer surgery last year," Brittany continues, "her grandmother told her that it was 'about time she did something to get a boyfriend.'"

"They wanted her to get that surgery?" Kurt asks disbelievingly.

Brittany shrugs. "Her family doesn't really understand her. They have no idea how talented she is or what she cares about. They just want her to look the part of the perfect daughter. You know, perfect grades, perfect boyfriend, all of that. They expect that of her, and when she can't meet their expectations, they tear her down. A lot. So she just…retreats into herself and projects this façade of what she thinks she's supposed to be, or what people want her to be. And everybody thinks it's real."

"So you're saying…" Finn says slowly, "…that she's mean because her parents are mean?"

"I'm saying…that I think you learn how to love other people based on the kind of love you're shown," Brittany says. "Her parents aren't bad people, but they're not like your parents or my parents. It's normal in her house to insult and to humiliate. She didn't grow up with confidence or self-assuredness or constant support. She's scared, like, all of the time. She's terrified for them to see that campaign video."

"I didn't know all of that," says Finn.

"I'm not saying it's an excuse for how mean she was to you," says Brittany. "'Cause it's not."

"But it's certainly a new perspective," says Kurt.

"How does she deal with that?" Finn asks.

Brittany looks at him. "She has other people in her life who are good at loving her. The real her."

"You," says Kurt. "With everything else, she has you."

Brittany shrugs her shoulders. "I'm lucky," she says simply. "For some reason, she lets me in. She doesn't act like Shrek around me."

"I'm sorry, what?" Kurt asks.

"Oh come on, you know," Brittany says impatiently. "'Ogres are like onions, Donkey,'" she says in a deep Scottish accent. "'They have layers.' Santana isn't an onion with me like she is with everyone else. She's just Santana."

"I didn't realize you loved her back, Britt," says Finn. He stares down at the table. "I sort of suggested to her that you didn't," he mumbles.

Brittany doesn't say anything. Finn looks up at her, sees the outrage on her face, and blurts out, "I didn't mean to—"

"You shouldn't have done that," Brittany says in a quiet voice. Her tongue rests against her teeth; she looks away from him. "You shouldn't have done that," she repeats.

"I'm sorry," Finn says. "I'm really—"

"When her parents find out about everything, it's going to cause a lot of hell for her," Brittany cuts in. She still won't make eye contact with Finn. She clears her throat. "I just want you to realize that. I know she's hurt you—I know she's hurt a lot of our friends—but she's going to need a lot of support. And I'll be expecting you to give her some."

"Yeah, of course."

Brittany stands up and slings her purse over her shoulder. "I need to go. Thanks for listening."

She strides across the kitchen. When she reaches the doorway, she pauses and looks over her shoulder at Finn.

"Just so you know, I do love her," she states. "More than you can imagine. Not that it's any of your business."

Finn gapes at her. Kurt looks between them again. Brittany walks purposefully to the door and out into the cool November night.

…

Santana doesn't want to sleep at her house that night. She feels too anxious around her parents. She doesn't know when that campaign ad will air and the not-knowing is killing her.

"Can we get away from here?" she asks Brittany. "Maybe go stay in a hotel somewhere?"

"No, San."

When Santana asks why not, Brittany says, "Because you won't want to come back."

So she goes to Brittany's for the night. It turns out to be just as hard as staying at her own house. It's difficult to sit through dinner with the Pierce's when she knows that their opinion of her—this girl who has been their daughter's best friend for years—will soon change for the worse. She tries to invest herself in the table conversation—something about Ashley's squabble with a boy in her class—but she can't stop imagining how Brittany's parents will react to the campaign ad. Brittany catches her eye and smiles in her It's okay, San kind of way.

They offer to clean the kitchen after dinner. Brittany loads the dishwasher and Santana cleans the table and counters. There's a drop of congealed spaghetti sauce on the stove that she just can't wipe away. She scrubs and scrubs, lost in thought, not paying attention to Brittany when she starts talking.

"San." Brittany turns the water off. "Hey. Santana."

"Yeah?"

Brittany glances around and sees that they're alone. She dries her hands on a dish towel and pulls Santana into a backwards hug.

"It's just another Friday night at my house," she murmurs into Santana's ear. "Relax."

Santana breathes out and leans back into Brittany. "Sorry. I'm just really on edge."

Brittany stills for a moment. Then she whispers, "Put your jacket on. We're going for a ride."

"Where?"

Brittany raises her eyebrows as if to say You'll see. Then she ducks her head quickly, kisses Santana firmly on the mouth, and goes to retrieve her jacket and car keys.

…

Something about the crisp night air, the heat blasting in Brittany's Jeep, the hickory smell of autumn turning to winter—it soothes Santana. And the sight of Brittany's eyes shining brightly as she drives—it reminds Santana that there was a reason she chose to go for the things she truly wanted.

Brittany drives them to a 7-11. When she pulls into the parking lot, she grins triumphantly at Santana.

Santana cocks her head in confusion. "Britt?"

"Come on, San. 7-11. It's, like, heaven."

Now Santana grins. "And why are we at 7-11?"

"Because we—" Brittany stretches across the console and kisses her—"are going to get slushies."

"To drink or to throw at someone?"

"To drink, crazy face. Come on."

They sample all the flavors before they choose. Santana opts for cherry; Brittany opts for blueberry. (They promise to share.) They grab some candy and chips, too.

"This tastes much better when it's in a cup and not dripping down my face," Brittany says as she pays for their treats. The guy at the cash register stares at her and she says, "What—like that's never happened to you?"

Santana giggles and tugs on Brittany's jacket. "Come on, Britty, let's go."

…

When they're in bed later, all curled up together under the blankets, Santana looks into Brittany's eyes for a while. Brittany lets her.

"I'm still scared," Santana says.

"I know," Brittany replies.

"What do you think's going to happen with my parents?"

Brittany sighs and plays with the chain of Santana's necklace. "It's going to take a while…but they'll come around."

Santana feels something well up in her throat. "I'm worried they won't," she whispers.

Brittany adjusts her head on the pillow and searches Santana's face. "I think they will," she says after a minute. "And I think you know that, deep down. It's just that it's going to be a slow path to get to that point."

Santana nods; the tears in her eyes start to leak out.

"Remember that one summer when you only wore overalls and your parents were so mad?"

Santana laughs. "Oh God," she says, wiping her eyes. "And my dad took me down to the rail yard and told me that if I wanted to look like one of the workers, that I could just get out of the car right then and there?"

Brittany giggles. "You considered it, though."

Santana shrugs a shoulder. "I wanted to ride the trains."

"But…remember they finally just got over it? Even though your grandmother wouldn't stop calling you 'Pedro' cause she said you looked like a boy—"

"—that nasty old bitch."

"—but your parents eventually just gave up and let you wear them. I mean, not that they were thrilled or anything, but…."

"Yeah."

"So maybe this'll be like that."

Santana rocks her head a little bit, thinking about it. She seizes Brittany's fingers and plays with them one-by-one, examining the pads, mapping out what Brittany's fingerprints would look like.

"I love you," she says quietly. She raises her eyes to meet Brittany's. "I don't know how I'd do this without you."

Brittany laces their fingers together. "Well…" she says, "you'll never have to." She scoots forward and kisses Santana—tenderly and protectively. Santana receives her kiss as if she's been drowning in an ocean and has just been thrown a buoy. She kisses back strongly, claiming Brittany's love with abandon.