Notes: to the reviewer that picked out the Game of Thrones reference, :D I didn't think anyone would get it!
...
April 2015
The bar they selected was no five star institution by any standard, that was for sure. The bodies of after work twenty-somethings were packed in like sheep in a barn stall. The air stuffy from overuse and body heat with nowhere to go. Music emanated from somewhere like a throbbing pulse, only the thump of the bass to be heard over the din. The space was probably half submerged underground, and the lacquered bar took up half the room.
Quinn and Santana had secured a spot against said bar, thank god. They nursed drinks they didn't purchase and wore coy smiles they wouldn't share. Santana sucked down her whiskey with her head bent towards Quinn, who was in mid joke, a girl in an unfortunate animal print at 5 o'clock her victim.
Maybe they were drunk again. Maybe that's how Santana's hand found it's way onto her waist. And maybe it's why Quinn was so enthralled with the velvet of Santana's collar bone beneath her fingertip. She idally grazed it with her elbow stationed between two puddles of sloshed drink casualties on the bar. The mass of people around them merely a sea of bodies, breaking against the shores of the bar in splashes of clinking glass and snapping fingers.
Here, the body language spelled out the sectioning of the crowd. Two necks bent down exchanging wry smiles, rings of square shoulders, and then there was them, grappling with gravity and hands everywhere and nowhere. If they had been somewhere in Chelsea and not downtown, there would be no mistaking their coupling.
But here, amidst the button down bro's and girls caked in foundation and desperation, they just looked like two very close college friends who liked to do things together. Everything together.
That was their game, and they excelled at it.
Dizzy with vodka numbing her tongue, Quinn was very confident of that fact. She clung to her drink, it's slick layer of condensation making that difficult, and opened her mouth to release a hearty laugh at something Santana said, although she couldn't recall what was so funny about it. They had won themselves 3 drinks each so far, and one round of celebratory shots with the bartender. She had been especially impressed with their tactics.
Quinn giggled into her drink as Santana's words tickled her ear. She found herself leaning into it, her chest heavy under the weight of her shallow breathing. Her hand tightened even further around the cheap tumbler when Santana carelessly grazed her bottom lip across her ear lobe. It was just carelessly, though.
"You're looking a little dry there, want a refill?"
Her eyes flew open at the voice presumably addressing her. Why the hell were they closed?
A textbook investment boy stood before her; chestnut hair swept to the side, crisp french blue shirt, single pleats with a tailor-made break, and a lopsided smile. One tall drink of water, as her mother would say.
Santana nudged her after what was probably an uncomfortable silence at her hand.
"Oh, um, yes, now that you mention it. Good eye," she recovered. From behind cardboard cutout boy came his clone, only dipped into a blonde color palette. He nodded at Santana and began salivating like a terrier. It would be an easy one for her best friend, Quinn could tell already.
She accepted the fresh glass of her most likely well vodka and cranberry with a shy smile. He was a junior something or other at J.P. Morgan, she found out. They bonded over their midwestern roots. He actually had witty jokes to accompany her trained laughter. Quinn sank into their rapport with as much contention as submerging her sunsoaked body into a backyard pool. He apologetically took an email for a beat that popped up on his Blackberry, corporate grade, and Quinn glanced to her left.
Santana was already fixated on Quinn and the progress of her new plaything. The blonde smirked in her direction, assuredly, that he was none the wiser. However, Santana's concern didn't wane. It was subdued dramatically by her whiskey haze, but it remained concerned nonetheless. Maybe it wasn't concern. It was something she'd seen before, though. If only she could see straight enough to put her finger on it…
"Sorry about that… Quinn right?"
Jack (Jake?) drew her back in with his woolen voice. She laughed, letting her eyes fall to her drink swirling in her hand and affirmed his guess. They carried on as before, him leaning against the bar like he was at a senior mixer. By her guess, that stage of his life was not that far gone. His shoulders were not yet burdened. His shoes still held their shine. Her hand resting on his forearm lightly drew him in; the puppeteer deftly commanding her strings, and she was sure her intoxication was showing a little in her flushed cheeks. He liked college football more than professional, and used to love that ice cream parlor in Cincinnati too, but he was more of a rocky road kind of guy. It was a lot like the one near his apartment in Gramercy. They don't allow dogs, but the next one he gets he'll make sure is pet friendly.
Shit, wait, his apartment?
"It's got a great view if later you wanted to come see it," John (no, Jim?) trailed off. He scratched the back of his head and grimaced at Quinn's apparently obvious hesitation. "I'm sorry if that came off sleazy, shit."
Quinn shook her head, to both deny his statement and to get herself together. He was sweet, sort of.
"No, it wasn't the worst I've heard," she told him, patting his starched sleeve as he took a soothing gulp of his amber drink. He reddened a little and laughed despite himself.
"Okay, good," he said, still shaky from his fumble. He gravitated towards Quinn and she could see his green eyes drink her up in the dim lighting. "Because you're really nice, and pretty, and I don't want to make you feel…"
"She said no, buddy."
Quinn didn't have to turn around to hear where the voice thick with warning came from. She felt the radiating territorial heat against her back; Santana's presence ever unmistakable.
Justin (wait, no..) looked up, but didn't put any distance between them.
"I know, I wasn't…" he tried, but Santana took another step into their bubble.
"Then why don't you back off?" she snapped. Her hand found its way to Quinn's shoulder. The touch shook her from her spectatorship and she tried to turn towards Santana.
"It's fine, he wasn't doing anything, San," she soothed. Santana had finished her drink, and was clenching the fist where it once was.
"Oh, pleeeease, everyone in this bar knows what he was doing, Q," Santana slurred. The whiskey had only stoked this fire, it seems. Quinn stood squarely in front of her friend, she wasn't going to have a scene.
"Santana, relax, I'm fine," Quinn hissed.
"You're drunk, why don't you go sit down," Josh (it'll do) told her. His Adonis friend came up behind her and put a calming hand on Santana's arm, but it only escalated the already volatile situation.
"Get the fuck off me!" Santana shrieked. She shook him off with all the force needed to take down a tiger, and turned on him. "You don't know who you're fucking with, asshole. I'll rip your goldilocks out of your head, down to the root!" If Quinn hadn't pulled Santana into her and deadlocked her arms, she might have gotten a chunk. Quinn combed her memories for how she had always restrained a "Lima Heights" Santana back in high school, but her liquor addled brain could barely recall Santana's drink count.
"Santana calm down, we're leaving," Quinn spat in her ear, through clenched teeth. She dragged her, shoving her wallet into her fists, away from the quivering wingman with his hands held high like he was in a stick up. He wasn't far off, actually. She shot an apologetic look at Jason (at this point who cares). He shook his head and turned from the scene without a second thought.
Santana hadn't calmed down in the slightest by the time Quinn had hauled her, kicking and screaming, out onto the pavement, glistening under the city lights after a day of rain. She was still ranting and raving, hands gesticulating wildly about.
"Santana please!" Quinn cried. Her outburst seemed to halt whatever had been spewing from Santana's mouth. She stood, chest heaving and staring at Quinn like she was the one deranged.
"I know he looked like a direct descendent of Adam, but come on, he had Wall Street scumbag all over him," Santana reasoned. She'd lowered her volume at least. Quinn was still fuming.
"What the hell is wrong with you, we could have gotten kicked out, or… or arrested!" Quinn exclaimed. Santana stumbled backwards at the placement of blame, clearly taken aback.
"Are you seriously pissed at me? I did you a fucking favor, Fabray!" she proclaimed. She held her hand to her collar bone in self-recognition.
"Oh yeah? What favor was that? Saving me from the big, bad, financially stable halfway-decent guy?" Quinn replied, more vexed than angry, really. It was all so dramatic and quite frankly, she was tired and he was easy and why couldn't anything ever be easy?
Santana scoffed, nearly lost her grip on her clutch as she waved it about, and snarled back, "What exactly was your plan, Quinn? You were going to go back to his place, pray he wasn't some Patrick Bateman in the making, let him fuck you once or twice and then what? Did you actually think he was going to offer you breakfast tomorrow morning, besides his own limp 5 inch sausage?"
Quinn's hair fell into her face as her head shook side to side. There was no way to reason when she was this far gone, drunk on entitled rage backed by the distilled grains sloshing in her stomach or whatever whiskey was derived from.
Santana deflated, and reached for Quinn's hand to pull them towards a cab.
"Whatever, lets just go."
"No," Quinn declined. She pulled her hand close, as if it might follow on it's own against her will. Santana retracted her own apprehensively. "You're drunk, San, go home."
Santana crossed her arms and leaned into her incredulity.
"Alone," Quinn emphasized. Her tongue enunciated bitingly and she stood on the zippy side street a pillar of immovable anger.
Santana clicked her tongue in her cheek and growled, "Whatever." She backed away, swaying a little as she extended her arm to hail a cab. Her glare morphed into an eyeroll and by the time she turned around a cab had squealed to a halt before her.
Quinn watched her clamor into the belly of the yellow beast and as the taxi sped off towards Brooklyn, she sent a text to Rachel.
Sent drunk Santana home in a cab. Text me when she's gets there?
She had no more than hoisted herself up into a flagged cab of her own when her phone lit up.
Will do. I'm making toast as I text.
...
Santana groaned as her consciousness began to illuminate behind her eyelids and filter through the sweet, dark oblivion of her sleep. She was horizontal, still constricted by the stupid dress she'd worn, and her hair was sticking to the side of her mouth. She was a vision, truley. In a great stretch and scrunching of her face, she finally forced her eyes to open, and brought her world into focus.
She nearly leaped out of her skin at the sight of Rachel Berry, poised and beaming in that pitiful way where she was so there for you. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, which was still made as Santana sprawled out spread eagle atop it.
"Jesus christ, Berry. What the fuck," she mumbled. Her voice felt and sounded like she swallowed gravel.
"You came home drunk and I fed you and put you to bed," she announced. Her bangs shook as she nodded to herself, for what reason Santana couldn't fathom.
"Do you want a medal?" she deadpanned. Rachel smiled.
"No thank you, I've got plenty of those," she said sweetly. She held out a full mug, more like a preemptive caffeinated peace offering. "I figured you might need a pick me up."
Santana sat up slowly to receive it, although her body creaked in protest to the movement, or maybe that was the bed. She gripped the handle and slurped the steaming liquid beneath the dollop of foam that floated happily on top.
"Mm, is this from that fancy new robot you got for Christmas? Hanukkah, or whatever," Santana asked.
Rachel nodded, "The Nespresso machine, yes! It's great isn't it? You can use it whenever you want, or just ask me and I'll make you something." She seemed to fidget in her seat in excitement at this much dialogue being exchanged between the two of them. Santana might have been disturbed by it as well, had she had any wits about her at all.
"Look at you, you're like one of those helpful little house elves that make shoes or presents. You even manage to look the part," she gibed. Rachel hummed in faux agreement and stood up from her perch. She made to walk back into the living area but paused, and tried to fight the urge to pry, ultimately succumbing to it.
"So what did you do?" she piped up. Santana, who was engrossed in the consumption of her coffee blinked at her.
"Um, what?" Santana rasped. Rachel crossed her arms as her disapproval took over.
"I mean, what did you do to Quinn to make her so mad at you?" Rachel prodded.
Santana chortled, standing up to peel off her day old clothes in favor of something more forgiving on her senses.
"That is none of your business, and anyway, why do you always assume it's me, Berry?" she snapped. Rachel bristled a little and looked away bashfully as Santana's shimmied out of her dress.
Recovering, she replied, "Well you came in last night in a tizzy about how much of a bitch she was and how much you hate her which means that you did something." Santana had popped her head through a t-shirt that was a few inches shorter than it probably should have been. A wince of regret flashed across her features. She hated how her incessantly nosey roommate was always right about everything. Only a few minutes after waking up and she already had to relive her drunken mishaps. She said as much as she glared at Rachel on her plod into the kitchen. "Don't walk away from me!" she heard her grumble.
A familiar spicy aroma emanated from where Kurt stood at the stove and Santana scowled. He continued to break up his sizzling breakfast with his spatula, unaware of her standing behind him.
"Is that my chorizo, Hummel?" she growled. He jumped about 2 feet backwards from his eggs. She was about to rip him a new one when Berry came scurrying across the tile.
"Don't avoid the subject Santana," she chastised her. Santana whipped around to give her the best 'fuck off' glower she could muster as Kurt slunk off with his plate of eggs into his room. She felt those invasive eyes narrow at her in return as she navigated her way around the couch to plop down and turn on the television.
Her head was pounding and the back of her skull felt like a nail was hammered into it and Rachel suddenly blocked her view of whatever reality show rerun was squabbling on MTV.
"What are you doing, Santana?" she scolded with her hands on her hips. Santana dropped her head backwards onto the back of the couch and groaned. She heard the soft stomps of Rachel approaching her and felt the remote ripped from her limp grasp. "Go fix it!" she cried.
"For fuck's sake, can I regain consciousness first?" Santana griped. She tried to massage her temples, hoping it would erase Berry from her line of sight when she sat upright again. To no avail. She stood before her, fuming for no real reason other than her need to shove her giant beak into everyone's business. Not even everyone. Just Santana.
Rachel made it quite clear she wasn't budging. And frankly, her fuming mug was a little terrifying. She was prematurely gifted at this whole Jewish guilt thing.
"Fine," Santana relented, "I'll fix it. Just… stop looking at me like that, it'll make it hard to get to sleep tonight." Rachel broke character at the effectiveness of her own tactics for a beat, and then she resumed her stance. Santana had begun her trudge back into the solitude of her room.
"Wait," Rachel called, "You aren't going to tell me what happened?"
"No fucking way. So you can, what, add it to your Quinn and Santana journal you've been keeping score in since 10th grade?" Santana jeered. Rachel was so flustered her words only came out in clipped "never's" and "I don't's" amidst nonsensical sounds. Santana didn't give her a chance to deny it before she shut the door on their conversation. She could still hear the muttering through the wood as Rachel carried on outside. It made Santana wonder if maybe that wasn't such a crazy accusation.
Quinn enjoyed the guilty pleasures of cupcakes, as most uppity blonde white girls do, and that's where Santana found herself within the hour, waiting outside Magnolia at 30 Rock for her best friend. For a Sunday, it was pretty desolate, and Santana was nothing if not grateful for that. She didn't want a huge audience for this confrontation. It's not like she was opposed to apologizing, she had done enough of that in her lifetime, for sure.
This time she had crossed a line, a big, fat, white line painted on the ground and she just waltzed right over it. She was so stupid. Stupid booze and stupid boys and stupid Quinn for getting her all mixed up in the same bullshit that drowned her in high school.
Now she had to sit here, and convince Quinn, and herself, that she was just drunk and she didn't mean to get territorial and this is nothing to her. Quinn is nothing to her, except a friend. And old friend who she has sex with occasionally. Period. Full stop.
God this sucks. Her stupid fucking temper.
A mop of blonde emerged from the subway entrance to her right and Santana nodded her over. Quinn approached her with a wry smile and took her hands out of her pea coat pockets to receive the pastel peace offering.
"What's this? Trying to bribe me into forgiving you?" Quinn asked playfully. She popped open the box and surveyed her gift.
"Maybe," Santana replied, a little too earnestly. She shook it off, and plucked a speckled chocolate egg from atop one of the confections. "Anyways, nobody should spend Easter Sunday alone, especially a good christian like you, Q."
Quinn raised one eyebrow in disbelief but didn't comment. She picked up a cupcake and took a bite, then scrunched her nose almost instantly.
"You know you just paid way too much for subpar cupcakes, right?" Quinn taunted. Santana threw her hands in the air.
"Yeah, well I'm not the cupcake aficionado like you are, Quinn. I just googled cupcakes and NYC and this was what came up first," she snarled, with her arms crossed. "If they're that horrible, I'll eat them all." She made to snatch the box back, but Quinn kept them out of her reach, eyes sparkling with mirth at Santana's vexation.
"I'll eat them, I'm just giving you a hard time," she assured her. She took another bite and began to walk with Santana down the street through Rockefeller Center. The wind whipped down 49th street and burned their faces with faint frostbite, but all in all it was a tepid spring day.
Quinn led them silently past the gilded buildings of the tourist trap. She passed the box laterally to Santana who helped herself to a mint green one with chocolate cake. Quinn seemed much less off put than she had been the night before, almost like she'd forgotten why the cupcake bribery was necessary. She was preoccupied with the art deco deities made of metals and who knows what else, set into the cement above the entryways of all the buildings. If she wasn't completely on edge waiting for Quinn to open the floor for a very uncomfortable conversation, she might have found them interesting too.
Still, all the way to 5th Avenue they'd made it, and no flicker of vindictive Quinn. It was actually more terrifying, this suspense. Quinn most certainly knew that, with her slow, even steps. She wanted Santana to simmer in her own imagination for a little.
"I'm not mad anymore, so you can stop looking at me like I'm going to throw these cupcakes in your face," Quinn spoke, after what seemed like hours.
"Oh," Santana breathed. "okay..."
Quinn looked up at the buildings poking at the clear sky, "We've known each other for a long time, San. I get it. It's a natural instinct when we're here in this new place."
Santana swallowed a lump, "You do?" she questioned, not expecting this. Quinn turned to her and smiled affectionately. Santana reddened.
"Well yeah, you care about me, and I care about you," she continued. Santana tried to regulate her breathing. "It's only natural that when a guy comes up to me like that, that you react the way you did." Santana groped in the blind recesses of her mind for words but her mouth hung open slightly, just gulping in air as they crossed the Avenue that was blocked off, strangely enough. Quinn strolled out into the street, looking left and only left as street savvy locals only do. Santana might have made a dry comment on Quinn's newfound confidence, how she wove in between the pedestrians with ease. If she was tasked with spotting her on the street, she would never have pinned the blonde head cooly bobbing in and out of sight. Slowing to a more leisurely speed, Quinn sat them both down on some steps and placed the box between them.
"Look, I appreciate it, I do," Quinn went on. Santana felt herself tense up. This was it, it was taking this turn now, down the road of gentle rejection. Not that there was really anything to reject, they weren't a thing. Not really. "I guess I got so angry because I don't need anyone to protect me anymore, San. I've made it this far by myself and I'm pretty proud of that."
It's ok, just take it, because it doesn't matter because her and Quinn aren't like that… wait what?
She must have said that out loud because Quinn was looking at her strangely.
"I said I don't need you fighting my battles. But its ok, you just were doing what you used to always do when we were younger," Quinn reiterated. Santana was still stuck on the first part, slowly digesting it.
"So, that's why you were pissed at me?" she managed to get out, digressing only slightly. Quinn furrowed her brow and cocked her head to the side
"Yes," Quinn confirmed, apprehensively. She looked quite befuddled when Santana let out a belly of air and even laughed a little. Well the bullet had barely grazed her ear but she had somehow dodged it. "What did you think I was mad about?" Quinn asked.
Shit. She froze again, and the way Quinn was looking at her, as attentive as a hawk eying his dying prey, she knew a lie wouldn't get past her, not a word.
"I, um, I guess I thought you were all in a gay panic over me being super territorial," she sputtered. Not the most delicate phrasing, but oh well. There it was. Quinn made a thin line with her lips. Santana grabbed a cupcake and proceeded to blockade her mouth with it, in case any other repressed thoughts decided to burst forth.
"Oh that," Quinn said. She peered at Santana trying to hold it together out of the corner of her eye and a smirk crept up into her cheek. "I don't mind that, I mean it was actually kind of hot." At this, Santana choked on the dry cake filling her airway. Quinn nipped lightly at her own pink treat as she looked out into the street, grinning cheekily at her own doing.
Santana swallowed lumps of cake furiously in an attempt to put respiratory system at ease. As the sun rose to bathe the street in warmth, it hit Quinn's face and Santana found herself doing that terribly cliched act of staring dumbly. She just couldn't help it, and until she cleared her throat, there wasn't much else to do but admire this upgrade she didn't remember trading the old Quinn for.
That girl, doe-eyed with clips in her hair and a tearful chip on her shoulder, was gone. Sitting next to her was this independent and self actualized person, more so that she had been in their former years as insecure head bitches in charge, surviving solely off of green juices and the fearful admiration of their peers. Quinn didn't have to convince Santana; she saw it now. Somewhere along the line, her best friend had built a more sturdy version of herself out of the sticks and stones she'd been bombarded with all her life. Some of those stones cast by Santana herself. This Quinn didn't need protection, not anymore.
Well shit, Fabray.
If Quinn was aware of Santana staring at her, she let her indulge.
"Hot, huh?" Santana finally managed to croak, hoping the moment hadn't passed. Quinn looked back in her direction and shrugged.
"Sure. Every girl wants to be wanted like that, to be the one people fight over," she elaborated. Quinn held the conversation as if they were talking about the consistency of the frosting and not Santana proclaiming Quinn as hers. It freaked Santana out, so it must not sit well with tight-like-my-bond-with-Jesus Quinn, on Easter of all days.
"Okay," she sighed, narrowing her eyes at Quinn who lapped at the creamy topping innocently. "McKinley's favorite damsel in distress slays her own dragons now. Noted."
Quinn nodded, and added, "Yep, took a page out of your book. The results exceed my expectations." She stared intently at Santana, as if the words were placeholders for her mouth while something else entirely danced behind her eyes. Still, she licked the frosting. Lick, lick, lick. It was so damn hypnotizing.
Before Santana could make heads or tails of any of it, a mass of technicolor seemed to take over the street in front of them, out of nowhere. People adorned with what appeared to be parade floats on their heads were wandering around in the vacant space where 5th Avenue was usually bumper to bumper with vehicles.
A peal of laughter erupted from Quinn, and she stood up suddenly.
"Oh my god, it's the Easter Parade! I forgot about this!" she exclaimed. She looked down at Santana who was befuddled by what was happening. Quinn bent down to grab the box of what was left of the cupcakes and began climbing the steps. "Come on! Lets get up higher so we can see better."
Santana groaned as she stood up. Turning around, she realized that in her emotional crisis, she didn't realize they were sitting on the steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral. Quinn had settled on a spot on the northern corner of the elevation, against one of the turrets of the scaffolding obscuring the facade. Santana made her way over to her blonde companion. She was already craning her neck to take it all in.
It was bizarre, that's for sure. Most people were in head-to-toe costumes based around their headgear. There were the occasional old black ladies dressed to the nines in their sun hats and frilly dresses, but the rest were all about their art installations. What any of this menagerie of costumes had to do with Easter, Santana hadn't the slightest idea. But Quinn seemed to be enjoying the spectacle, and so they stood on the steps and enjoyed the view.
"This is as close to a church as I'll ever get, just so you know," Santana quipped. Quinn grinned back at her wickedly and nodded.
She quipped right back at her, "Yeah, you'd probably light on fire otherwise. Don't want to risk it." There might have been an actual glint in her eye, like the sort poems waxed dramatically on and on about. It also might have been the sunlight. Who can say.
Santana laughed as she bumped Quinn's shoulder, agreeing, "Exactly."
