i apologise in advance, you'll know why when you see it. (more on this at the end.) also, as a bonus, there will be a short backstory oneshot explaining certain things posted on my tumblr in a little bit. i'll update with a link when there is one.
many thanks for the gang of three, as always but especially for this one.
.
She feels silly, caring so much.
But it's twenty-five, and it's a number that goes into one-hundred evenly, and it's two less than twenty-seven, so maybe after that she'll feel relief, but today Santana feels accomplished.
She's lying on her back, watching the sunlight leak slowly across the ceiling and drifting in and out of full wakefulness when sounds from the hallway cut through her consciousness. She's reaching to throw back the covers when Mike's head pokes around the open doorway.
"Hi," he says, overly cheerful and clearly up to no good. He doesn't even live here, so... "Everything's fine. Just... stay there, okay." He disappears. "Oh, and happy birthday," he calls out. "Stay in bed!"
Okay, then.
She grabs the remote from the nightstand, switches on NPH and Kelly, and folds her arms behind her head. It's only a couple of minutes before she can hear Jake's laughter from where he's hiding just outside the door, and then he and Mike appear in the doorway, Mike snapping his fingers to keep time, while they sing 'Happy Birthday' like they're in some kind of barber shop duet. Jake steps back and forth with Mike, not used to dancing and singing at the same time, but he doesn't let it get to him when he steps forward twice at one point.
When they're done, she applauds as they both bow, and then Jake scrambles up onto the bed while Mike retrieves something from outside the door.
"Happy birthday, Mommy," Jake pretty much shouts at her face.
...
(On her twentieth birthday, Mike bought her a necklace with a piece of metal with a single stone threaded onto it hanging from the chain, and a card signed from Jake. "It's slate," he'd said. "Look how clean it is."
Every year he and Jake pick out another stone to add to it. When Jake was barely one, Mike had let him point and that was the winner, and Mike cringed as he handed over a piece of malachite that was the brightest thing there. After that, Santana suspects he'd pre-selected a few for Jake to choose from.)
...
Birthdays are awesome, she's decided. Karen at the cafe gives her a cupcake with a single candle in it, which until it happens seemed like the sort of thing she would hate. The last hour of work is spent with more cake, this time with the addition of some seriously decent wine Mike shows up carrying, because why not get things started then.
Who cares that they both have work the next day, she's only going to turn twenty-five once.
She's at least a whole bottle in, spinning in one of the client seats, when she calls Jake at his friend Matthew's house to say good night, and then they — her and Mike and some people from work and from Mike's company; alright, her friends — head out for some food before they hit the dance floor.
For the record, African is maybe her new favorite food. She can even overlook the part where they ate with their hands.
...
She's mildly embarrassed that so many people she knows have shown up, but that's probably more Mike's doing than anything, because everyone loves a Chang. (It's been years now, but sometimes, only sometimes, she still feels like the girl who crashed that Halloween party, the party Mike was at and delighted to run into her.) But whatever, the club is banging, she's got very high heels and sluttier hair and it's her birthday, dammit, she's gonna get laid.
(She might have yelled this as they piled into a cab, Mike high fiving her with an amused shake of his head.)
...
Much later, she'd be grateful to be able to put one foot in front of another once, let alone twice, but whatever, the bar is holding her up and she can still move her hips to the beat. She's calling it success.
Mike's skinny black tie is around his forehead, and he's busting out The Sprinkler. It's ridiculous, when Santana considers that the guy gets paid to dance in some fancy pants ballet company, and yet he's out there degrading himself in this way just to make her laugh. Either that or it's the five shots of tequila. It could go either way.
She's just finished the fruity blue whatever the bar tender made her, because any more shots and she was probably going to fall off her shoes, and she's leaning over to steal a cherry from behind the bar when she feels warm hands curl around her hips. She's bent over the bar, heels perched on the foot rail and ass in the air, so when she goes to pull away she nearly goes face first into a tray of clean glasses.
"Hey, calm down," Lady McGropey says, "Calm down and guess who?"
She's could slap Mike. (She could kiss Mike.)
"Who could it possibly be," she gasps, straightening up and rolling her eyes at herself. "It couldn't possibly be someone who disappeared to the wilds of Russia for months and months," she inflects a pout into her voice, "leaving the poor, lonely lesbians of the greater Boston area with nothing but their vibrators to keep themselves warm at night."
The voice at her ear chuckles softly, and Santana turns around.
"My goodness, who is this stranger before my eyes," she presses a hand to her chest and bats her lashes, but she's being ridiculous (maybe those five shots she had to match Mike's are to blame) and she cracks up, throwing her arms around Toni's neck and pulling her into a hug.
"Happy birthday," Toni says, lips hovering at her ear, and the feel of her breath makes Santana shiver.
"I can't believe Mike didn't tell me you were back," she says when she pulls back. "I'm going to shave his head while he's sleeping."
"Don't do that, I asked him not to tell. And," Toni's smile quirks, and she slips her hands back over Santana's hips, "since I come bearing nothing but myself," she pulls Santana closer, "I hope you'll accept a mere token of my affection, on this very," she leans in, cheek brushing against Santana's, "special occasion." Her lips press against the skin under Santana's ear, skimming along her jaw and finally capturing her mouth.
It's slow and hard and oh, happy birthday to her. Clearly she's psychic, because yes, she is going to get laid.
...
It's her birthday and she can leave at 2am if she wants to.
...
It's only the pointed staring from the cab driver that keeps her from orgasms before they get somewhere with a bed.
The cab takes them to Toni's place, even though she has roommates and Santana's apartment is empty.
Toni's been to her place before. She's met Jake a bunch of times — she taught him how to cartwheel when he was three. But they don't have sex at her place. It's obviously not about hiding the fact that they sleep together sometimes (Mike had high fived her as they left the bar. And seriously, her babydaddy is so dead for not warning her. She could have been wearing spanx or something!) it's just never been about more than a good source of orgasms from someone she knows isn't going to ask for more or turn into a psycho.
Plus the girl is like Stretchella Armstrong levels of flexible. There's a reason beyond "orgasms" that they've been doing this for years whenever Toni's in town. They're good orgasms.
...
Santana's pretty sure someone needs to call 911, because ow. She can't even tell if it's hangover ow or morning after a night of awesome sex ow, it's just all one big ow.
She hobbles into the shower and just leans against the wall letting her skin get its rehydration on for a while.
Being twenty-five sucks.
...
Toni's already awake when she stumbles into the stupidly bright living area. Girl is looking incredibly tanned for someone who was in Russia, but Santana doesn't actually know if that's the only place she was dancing. That's not the kind of relationship they have.
There's coffee waiting for her though, because they might not be in anything resembling a relationship but they are friends of a kind, and anyone who knows Santana for more than a day knows there must always be coffee, or else there's just Snix.
...
She's hiding in the office when Stacey sticks her head through the door. "You're 3 o'clock is here." Bitch is being far too loud for Santana's liking. "Oh, it's that woman. The one you don't like."
"Which one?" There are so many people this could be.
"The one that was singing with the Boston Pops the other week. Rachel something. You know her."
"What?" What? Only about fifty percent of anything is making sense right now. "Oh, right."
Fuck, why now? Her head is killing her, and she has to actually cut Rachel's hair this week, because it's been a month since she fixed that disaster with Rachel's hair. She did some teenage hipster's blowout this morning, and Santana's pretty sure the girl left the salon in love with her thanks to her badass attitude of not talking and refusing to take her sunglasses off. Maybe she can do that now, too.
Rachel's sitting in the chair Santana had been spinning around in last night, doing something with her phone, and she doesn't look up when Santana steps up behind her. She watches for a moment, because why not, and then coughs loudly, just to make Rachel jump.
Rachel totally jumps. "Oh, excuse me. Good afternoon, Santana." Shit, she's perky. Santana hates perky, but she especially hates this perky. And she very especially hates this perky when she's hung over.
"Sup, Gidget. Let's do this thing."
...
"Oh, I almost forgot." She's brushing little bits of hair off Rachel's neck when she twists around. "I have something, hold on," Rachel bends down to dig around in her giant purse and Santana spends a second being concerned that she might fall in and disappear. Rachel stands, taking a moment to smooth down her skirt — it's almost knee-length but tight from waist to thigh, and Santana wonders who finally taught her to dress.
"Here," she holds a box, gift wrapped in gold paper, out towards Santana.
"You got me a present?" She stares at the overhead lights reflecting in the shiny paper. How does Rachel even remember it's her birthday?
"It's for Jake. You said he just turned five?" Rachel's eyes blink up at her before shifting away, obscured by her lashes. "It's just something to— If things had been different— What I mean is, five years is a lot of birthdays."
"Cinco, in fact. That's five, FYI." A part of her wants to refuse, because what the hell? It's herbirthday.
"Santana, please," Rachel forces out, "I know this doesn't actually make up for anything but please accept this in the spirit in which it is intended, which is me wanting to start to make amends."
Okay, she's really confused, and Santana doesn't think that's entirely a result of the tequila still taking up residence in her blood stream. Rachel may have run, too, but Santana ran first. There's no one to blame, if it's even something worthy of blame, for Jake's lack of aunts and uncles except her. No one but her.
She holds out her hands, and Rachel sets the gift in them. It's heavy, and whatever's inside rattles a tiny bit, but she tucks it under her arm and scratches at her nose. "I'll make sure he gets it." She's not a complete asshole, and it's for Jake. Rachel can atone for whatever she likes if this is how she wants to do it. "Thanks."
"Thank you," Rachel says quietly, gathering her things.
Though for what she's being thanked, Santana has no idea.
...
She's totally awake when Mike lets himself and Jake into the apartment later that day. Absolutely awake. Not at all sleeping on the couch at five-thirty in the afternoon.
"Wake up," Mike says loudly, right in her ear, and then the asshole has the bad manners not to let her smack him in the face as he ducks out of her reach and goes into the kitchen. "If I have to be awake and in this much pain, so do you."
"Screw you," she groans into the throw pillow she's pulled over her head.
"No thanks, I like it when girls enjoy it," Mike calls out. "But if you're nice, you can have this burger."
Santana's stomach growls so loudly it hurts, and she's off the couch and into the kitchen, where Mike is pulling food from a paper bag. She grabs a handful of fries and pulls herself onto the kitchen bench.
"Jake," Mike yells, and she tosses a fry at his face.
"Please, shut the fuck up."
"Language," Mike says, smacking at her leg before handing her a burger.
"Yeah, language, Mommy," Jake giggles as he comes running into the kitchen. "Can I sit up there, too?"
"No," Santana and Mike reply in unison.
"Why not?"
"Because I'm a grown up, and you're not."
"Santana," Mike sighs. "Because if you fall, you'll hurt yourself. If your mom falls, she'll land on her head, and that's thick enough to protect her brain." Santana throws another fry at Mike, but Jake accepts that and climbs into a chair at the table, taking off his Hornets cap and hanging it on the back of the chair.
It's not until they're done eating and Mike's gone home that she remembers the gift from Rachel.
"Hey," she nudges Jake with her foot, and he makes a noise of annoyance from the other end of the couch. She pokes him again. "There's a present for you in my bedroom."
Jake hits pause on his DS and scrambles up onto his knees to face her. "What is it?"
"I dunno, I don't have x-ray vision. Go get it off my bed." He does, and when he comes back he almost trips on the corner of the rug in his rush. He sits the box on Santana's legs, and picks at the edge of the wrapping.
"Who's it from," he asks.
"A friend of mine," is the answer she settles on, not because it's true but anything else is just confusing.
"Do I know them," he says, and it's weird to realize that there is no one in her life that isn't also in his life.
"Nope," she shakes her head. "But that's okay. Open it." She's curious herself to see what Rachel could possibly have thought was an appropriate gift for the son of a high school acquaintance that she knows nothing about.
Jake pulls at the wrapping, tearing through the shiny gold paper printed with white, hand-drawn stars. It gives way to a shrink-wrapped box, one that Santana knows from spending almost every Saturday lunch break for the last year and a half in Newbury Comics contains—
"Qees!" Jake shrieks, and stars pulling at the plastic. "Mommy, look! They're the new ones!" He's having trouble getting the plastic open, and Santana tears through it before he starts hyperventilating in his excitement.
Jake pulls the box down onto the floor and rips open the top to reveal rows of smaller boxes, each containing a tiny rubber figurine. "Can I open all of them," he asks, eyes bugging out and his fingers wriggling over the edge of a box.
"Go ahead, J-man." She watches Jake go through the entire case, opening each box carefully, tiny hands working carefully not to damage the box, and then ripping through the sealed bag inside. He sets each toy in a row on the edge of the coffee table, tongue between his lips as he concentrates on lining them up perfectly, grouping the couple of duplicates together.
Rachel's… everything, her entire existence, confused Santana in high school. Frustrated and annoyed and on very rare occasions didn't entirely repulse her, yes; but mostly Rachel's unrelenting Weeble-ness baffled the shit out of her, because just why? Nothing in Santana's twenty-five years on this planet has given her a reason to presume goodness in anything — and when you've stood in the middle of the street with a two year old kicking and screaming because he doesn't want to go to Gymboree that day, you stop seeing even your own loin fruit as angelic — but Rachel back then saw sunshine and rainbows everywhere. The girl wanted to be friends with Quinn Fabray for fuck sake, so maybe the pleasure is in the pain.
She'd never been the focus of much of Rachel's crazy outside of her general obsession with glee club, so she has nothing to measure this against. Rachel was obviously being a nosey creep — the joke there writes itself — that day at the salon, but this was… thoughtful, in a way few people bother to be. And expensive, which makes Santana's skin itch with annoyance.
Her head still hurts too much to think about it now, but she's going to have to eventually, if only to work out some choice ways to tell Rachel to calm her tits.
.okay, so i'm sorry. i hate OCs as much as anyone, but i think you can see why this was necessary here. five years is a long time, guys. would you want santana to be lonely for five years?