4: Duck and Cover

With her knees tightly hugged in front of her chest, Santana's eyes were pinned on the little space beneath the door. She could make out shadows of bodies and saw feet passing by. She heard girly voices talking and giggling and fading again each time the main door squeaked twice, once at being opened, once at being closed.

Frozen still she sat in her lair, contemplating at what point she hadn't been careful enough. After spending so much time in the wilderness, Santana definitely knew her way around the woods. She knew how to set a trap, which fruits to eat and which to leave.

She had also become a master of covering her tracks.

"Be a girl for once." her mother had yelled at her when she was little and playing with her older brother, giggling, free, not minding if she'd get dirt on her clothes or bruises on her arms.

Her fake lashes and a boob job were evidence enough that she had definitely accomplished that mission. Everyone would agree that she knew how to dress, how to do her hair… she remembered how Brittany used to braid her hair; how she would slowly run her fingers through her dark locks and take her time to place every single strand of hair exactly where it belonged. It always took hours, but Santana didn't mind. She would never get impatient with Brittany in such situations. Also, she couldn't help but think that the blonde was doing this on purpose; greedily stealing all the time she could get in these rare moments of intimacy with Santana. No one braided Santana's hair nowadays, though and she wore it down, just out of principle.

She also knew how to do her make-up so it would emphasize her best features. Brittany never liked it when she wore a lot of make-up. In one of her sweet moments she had told Santana she shouldn't be hiding her face; that her natural look was perfect. She had said it casually while searching through her closet as Santana was copying Quinn's homework for both of them. She had said it as if it was nothing special, just a random fact and she probably didn't even remember the situation. But Santana remembered. And now that Brittany wasn't there anymore to tell her anything, Santana hid her face perfectly; just because she could; just because Brittany had told her not to.

Yes. She knew how to cover her tracks.

And yet, here she was, hiding from the Minotaur. The monster had set the whole forest in flames just to scare her out. All she could do now, she figured, jittering and shivering in the bathroom stall, trapped between fire and quicksand, was to hold out and wait. At some point the flames would die, she would be able to return and everything would get back to normal.

Normal. Everything would soon be normal again.

"I found you."

There it was again. Sitting stock-still Santana felt the little hairs on the back of her neck raise at the terrifying epiphany.

All she ever wanted was to belong. The door squeaked open once again and two of her former Cheerio teammates entered. They went on about homework assignments and boys and the latest charts music and what-not. A little sob escaped Santana's throat, barely audible, but painfully real. Her brain was only filled with one sentence now:

"I will belong."

References:

"Duck and Cover" was a suggested method of personal protection against the effects of a nuclear weapon which the United States Government taught to school children from the early 1950s into the 1980s. Yes that happened. Watch it on youtube! Do I compare coming-out to the explosion of a nuclear bomb? Maybe. "Duck and Cover" surely is ineffective in both situations, though.

"Be a girl for once" is something I stole from Rizzoli and Isles. When Jane's mom said it something broke inside me and I just HAD to use it.

"I found you" is from Gantz, which seems to inspire me way too much. Kei Kurono has just killed a whole lot of aliens and the one survivor comes to take revenge. Kei is at school in the middle of a lesson when the very sentence I used pops into his head and he realizes it's the alien talking to him. Weird, huh.