part 3! #cantstopwontstop. i played lacrosse in college and used to play horse all the time with my coach. i was especially good at hitting the goal post which was fun in theory but unfortunate during actual games.


Lunch in the university dining hall passes quickly without incident. The Boston and Minnesota players are segregated at tables at either end of the room and eyeing each other cautiously, while the rest of the girls are scattered in between, chatting amicably. Santana would laugh if everyone at her table wasn't so tense, the way things were going you'd think they were all in high school and not fresh out of college.


Santana cleans and clears her plate, waving a goodbye to Quinn and Mercedes Jones, another ex-teammate, as she doesn't follow them back to the dorms. She spends the two hours between lunch and second session napping on the common room couch of a random building of classrooms, avoiding running into Brittany in their room and stirring up even more trouble.


She didn't interact with Brittany again until the tail end of the afternoon tryout when all the forwards were scattered across the offensive zone peppering the goalies with shot after shot and the ice was riddled with hockey pucks.

Santana was working on the near side of the goal, trying to sneak wrist shots in the tiny puck-shaped gap between the goalies skate, leg pad and the post.

"Horse," Brittany calls out to her, nodding her head towards the goal when she's got Santana's attention.

"Excuse me?" Santana asks, dumbfounded, one eyebrow raised with a slight grimace.

"Let's play horse. You know, the basketball game? You shoot and if you make it I have to shoot the same shot, and if I miss, well that would give me an H," she explains, as if it was the most obvious thing in the universe.

"Uh, okay," Santana agrees, mostly because she has never been able to say no to a challenge ever since she can remember. And it would feel good to kick Brittany's ass without the consequence of a smashed up nose and sore ribs.

"You first," Brittany orders, skating a languid backwards circle around Santana, eyes flickering back and forth between the goal and her opponent.

When the goalie moves quickly from making a kick save to sliding across the goal mouth to face Santana, she makes one simple deke to her left and snaps a shot perfectly into the far top corner of the net, easily past the streaking glove hand of the goaltender.

Brittany whistles low and long. "Someone isn't messing around."

"Never," Santana urges, skating a long arc back towards Brittany. When she gets close enough, Santana whispers "good luck," as if she was certain that Brittany was well on her way to her first letter.

Santana almost misses how fast Brittany goes from rolling her eyes to turning on a dime and flicking the shot exactly in the same place as Santana.

"Alright I see how this is gonna go," Santana says mostly to herself, planning out her next move. Brittany just sports that shit-eating grin again. Maybe Santana underestimated how good Brittany would be, after all she is technically the second best forward in the country, she was bound to be a standout shooter.

"I'm not sorry about your nose, by the way, you fucking deserved it," Brittany says matter-of-factly, winding up for a slap shot that sizzles just right of the net.

"Yeah, well I'm not sorry for that black eye or that hit this morning, you really do need to keep that pretty head of yours up and that cocky mouth of yours shut," Santana spars back, shooting one that is padded away by the goalie's blocker.

They exchange shots back and forth until Brittany calls "left pipe but not in" and pings one off the left goal post and into the corner of the rink. Santana's shot misses the post by a millimeter, and Brittany barks "HA!" and smugly assigns her an H.

By the time Coach Taylor blows the whistle and yells, "on the line, let's wrap this up!" Santana is a "HOR" and Brittany a "HO".

"It's not over, ya ho," Brittany crows in mock seriousness, changing direction with a hop and shooting off down the ice with a grace that finds Santana trailing her eyes after. Brittany may be the most fluid thing on skates Santana had ever seen.

"Let's go, Lopez," Quinn laughs, bumping Santana in the shoulder and into motion as she glides towards the end line. Santana follows, shaking her head to clear it before skating down the ice and readying herself for the final conditioning sprints of the day.