apologies for the incredibly long break in posting.
this is what i would consider the end of chapter one.
...
It's late and busy and there are twenty-seven people in a space built for seventeen, so when Rachel shows up at the salon on Friday night, pulling her coat off as she stands by the front desk, Santana is ready to throw her out. No; is going to throw her out. Who the fuck does she think she is, showing up like this?
It's been building inside her, for days or weeks before this became a valid outlet for her desire to just grab Rachel by the shoulders and scream, "what do you want?" in her face. It doesn't even matter, really, why Rachel keeps showing up — when she was showing up, anyway — she'd known that nothing good would come from letting old things back into her life. She loves being right, but not like this.
"This place is like a night club," Rachel says as Santana storms over.
"What are you doing here," she shouts over the music.
Rachel's looking around at the overly filled space, people sitting on the couches with their freshly done hair and glasses of fruity drinks. "I was hoping you could fit me in—"
"Are you serious right now," Santana snaps, and perhaps her tone was lost in the noise or Rachel needs her eyes and ears checked, because she doesn't seem to notice that she's in serious danger of losing her spleen. "I could fit you in last Saturday. Clearly you couldn't and now I can't fit you in."
"Last Saturday," Rachel says, like she has no idea what Santana is talking about. "But I don't— Cassandra was supposed to—"
"No, you don't anything," she slams down the scissors she's holding, because she might actually stab Rachel in the middle of her confused-looking face and deflate her giant, Gonzo nose, and steps further around the front desk. She's on a roll now, and some of the things she's been wanting to say aren't going to be held back by the tremble in her balance anymore.
Jake's been quiet all week — not sad, just out of sorts, and Santana's not sure he'd even know why he feels the way he does if she asked — and this damn hobbit is not going to just waltz in here like the queen of fucking hobbit land.
Rachel does not get to do this to Jake.
"You don't bring presents to my kid," she says, taking another step forward.
"I'm sorry, I didn't realize—"
"And you don't tell him you'll see him next week, and then not show up." She thinks she might have made her point, because Rachel's backed up to the door now, her eyes wide and afraid. "He's five. He doesn't get it."
"I would never— I thought Cassandra called you. I got stuck in the—"
"I don't care where you were," she spits out, because it doesn't matter where Rachel was.
Rachel looks away and frowns for a moment, before continuing. "Santana, I apologize," and her hand sneaks out to rest on Santana's wrist where her arms are now folded over her chest. "I didn't mean to upset you."
"Jake, you leprechaun, not me," she snaps, jerking her arm away from Rachel's touch and stepping back. Rachel flinches. "And ps," she's pointing now — and all these years later she can't help but think that's how she knows she's serious, "stop putting obscenely insulting tips on your bill, which—" oh, that's not relevant, "is something you've stopped doing now. So. Yes," she takes another step back. "Keep not doing that."
The haze of her anger is receding, the music loud in her ears again. She turns her head and can see people watching them. Shit.
"I'm really sorry I upset Jake," Rachel says, the tip of her tongue tracing the corner of her mouth. "That is the last thing I ever meant to happen and," she sighs. "This was a mistake." She shakes her coat open, and starts to tug it up her arm, and wait, what?
"Where are you going," Santana frowns, that really unattractive scowl that Jake calls her Vulcan face settling into place.
"Uh," Rachel stutters, still pulling at her coat while trying to hold onto her purse.
"Sit down," Santana says, and that's weird because she's pretty sure she meant to say something like, 'don't come back.' "Just… I'm nearly done. Just wait."
Apparently she's not done seeing how hard she can press at this until it hurts.
…
She's pretty sure Monica, the woman in the chair before Rachel, just got the best haircut Santana's ever given. She'd just picked up the scissors, ignoring Rachel sinking onto the bench behind her, and started cutting. There are tiny flecks of hair all over her pants — she'd been too spaced out to stand out of the way as they fell, the rhythm of the blades sliding together over each strand the only sound in her head.
Stacey's dealing with Monica now, and that was technically her last client for the night. It's close to 9pm, which is closing.
Rachel's still sitting by the door.
She rakes her hand through her own hair, wincing as her finger catches on the stitches of her weave, and wonders if she can escape out the back door and over the fence. Probably not, and somewhere Sue Sylvester is mocking her through a megaphone.
It's been two months now, which doesn't seem right because how has she not snapped before now? Anyway, they have a routine down, which makes her laugh because, uh. They have a routine down. Tonight's is minus the very little talking they did, but Santana can ignore the awkward and just watch her fingers stroke down each lock of Rachel's hair, making sure she doesn't miss any with the conditioner and ignoring the bare column of neck that's exposed as always.
There's not a single split end she can find, and she looks pretty hard.
Rachel's sitting in her chair, hair combed out and Santana grabs the blow drier when Rachel turns around. "Wait," she says, grabbing at Santana's wrist again. "Last week you would have cut it."
The annoyance bubbles up again and she can't stop the roll of her eyes, but she shoves the blow drier back into it's place and Rachel lets go.
"I was thinking," Rachel says, settling back into the chair. "What do you think about something—" she pauses to lick at her lip. "Something dramatic. It's why I came, actually."
She could shave Rachel's head, that would definitely be dramatic. The thought's not as cheering as it should be. "What exactly did you have in mind," she asks. She can see Rachel scratch at her eyebrow in the mirror. Her nails look like they've just been done.
"I'm not sure. I've never had a statement haircut before." Rachel pauses, and seems to come to some sort of decision before turning around again. "In high school, I tried out for Cheerios freshman year." Santana doesn't remember that. "Obviously, I didn't make the cut. But Coach Sylvester complimented my pony, and for some reasons I always held onto the vague hope that I'd perhaps have some use for it one day."
Santana hums a "Ahuh," because what the fuck is Rachel talking about? Who cares about some bullshit high school dream that died six years ago?
"Anyway, I think it's time for something different. And I think you can do that for me." She turns back around for the second time, seemingly done.
Rachel likes metaphors, and even though Santana got kicked out of the fanciest college in the country, she gets what Rachel's trying to say.
Santana scoops up a section of Rachel's hair, most of the back, and settles it between her fingers. "Okay, then," she says, and slices it clean off to the base of Rachel's neck, the outer edge of the blade pressing into her skin.
Rachel's teeth sink into her lip, a wispy noise leaking out as she breathes. Santana meets her eyes in the mirror, raises an eyebrow.
After that, Rachel just closes her eyes, her fingers flexing against the arms of the chair.
People are packing up and filtering out behind her, calling out goodbyes that she ignores in favor of watching the blade of her scissors move through Rachel's hair. The stereo cuts out, and Rachel's hair is like silk, even while wet, and she spends moments combing through each lock over and over until every strand hangs perfectly.
(This hair cut is almost a shame, because seriously, Rachel's hair is just that fucking awesome.)
When she's finished the back, she rolls her seat around to the side of Rachel's chair and takes in her profile. Her eyes are still closed, but she doesn't move when Santana runs her fingers down the still-long hair at the front, pulling it straight and then slipping the scissors through it.
(It's not something she does very often, wielding her scissors in such a brutal manner, but there are some people who truly mean it when they say they want something different, and the first blow is the most satisfying. She's not the best at reading people, that was never her role, but this is something she gets.)
Rachel hasn't flinched once, even when Santana pulls the chair Rachel's sitting in back from the bench. Santana moves in front of her, and as she goes to touch the front of Rachel's hair her eyes flutter open. She doesn't look at Santana's hands where they hover near her head, just focuses on Santana's face so close to her own.
Santana's fingers slip around the hair falling at the side of Rachel's face, and she fixes her eyes on the part in Rachel's hair. As the blade of the scissors slips around the lock, Rachel finally looks away, eyes closing again before the blades close.
By the time she's done, Santana's beginning to think Rachel's fallen asleep, but when she switches the hairdryer on, Rachel sits up straighter. As each lock dries it curls loosely, and she coaxes each one to sit neatly against the next. Even without product, and the light in the salon dim — when did that happen? — her hair is just so shiny, and she loops a lock around her finger for a moment, before settling it into place along Rachel's jaw.
She steps back, watching Rachel sit there in stillness. Everyone's gone now.
"You can look now," she breaks through the silence, and after a long moment Rachel's eyes open, blinking a couple of time.
She leans forward in her seat, squinting at her own reflection. "Oh," she breathes, and her hand raises, fingers skirting along the ends of curls. One lock catches before pulling back into place, and Rachel laughs soundlessly.
Santana leaves Rachel to stare at herself in the mirror, putting a few things away and then perching at the front desk. The street lights outside filter in through the front glass, the only lights left on inside coming from the back, and Rachel steps through the band of darkness in between, fingers still trailing over the edge of her hair.
She stops beside where Santana is sitting, the wrong side of the desk for a client, and lays her hand on the desk. "I think I like it."
"You think," Santana says neutrally.
"You have to get used to these things, but yes, I think so." Rachel touches her hair again, and Santana pulls her hand away before she realizes what she's doing.
"Stop touching it," she says. "I just spent all that time fixing it."
Rachel lowers her hand. "Sorry." She steps back from the desk, digs around in her purse, and Santana's close to sighing in defeat because, seriously, something else? But Rachel just pulls her wallet out, flipping it open to get her Visa out.
There's something sad about the lack of photos inside. Santana thinks about her own wallet with Jake and Mike's faces smiling behind the little plastic window, and wonders if people read as much into that as she's doing to Rachel right now.
No tip later, and Rachel's gone. "I promise to call, myself, if I can't make it next weekend," she says as she's holding the door open.
Santana throws a halfhearted wave from where she sits, not at all happy about the situation, but the weird buzz of anger, or whatever it was, that's been with her all week is finally gone.
…
When she and Jake moved into their own place, it came with an interesting side consequence: actual time to herself. Little boys — four months old and endlessly screaming and eating and shitting, or four years old and turning everything into a race and a fight — consume every corner of the space they occupy, filling it up with their crazy levels of energy.
(Their apartment — the one where Mike had slept on the couch until his roommate could find somewhere else to live and she had a way to help with rent — was as small as her closet back in Lima. The real one, not the metaphorical one. Jake's crib lived in her bedroom, and not only because in the beginning she was the one who had to get up with him a million times every night.
There was nothing they could do but put up with being in each other's faces, and each other's everything else. Mike saw her in various states of undress so many times, coming in to pick up Jake when he'd cry, the fact that he'd also seen her naked and sweating and screaming — sex and child birth have some weird commonalities — wasn't even an afterthought. They'd had no choice but to become incredibly comfortable with each other; they were on the same side in the battle between them and the squirmy little thing they'd accidentally brought into the world.)
Even with Mike, there was no escaping the way Jake's very presence leaves room for little else, and without him there's no ignoring it, either, at least when he's with her. She loves her kid, but now that Jake spends Sunday nights with Mike, it's given her hours and hours all to herself.
She's never worked out what to do with them.
The tv's on, and she's halfheartedly picking at a bowl of pasta. It's not late, but she had a glass of wine and she's sleepy from that and the heating turned up high, the only light from the tv and a lamp in the corner. She changes the station from a Law & Order rerun — she's seen this one before. The killer's the super hot lesbian, which makes her sigh — through a handful of stations until she finds Josie and the Pussycats on Cartoon Network. Cartoon girls in catsuits? Yes, thank you.
She's practically asleep sprawled out on the couch when her phone vibrates against the glass of the coffee table, and she kicks it closer to the edge with her foot so she can reach out and snag it. The background is a picture of Jake on his first day of school, her sunglasses perched on his nose and a Red Sox cap on his head, and she swipes across his face to open the one— two— what the fuck, three— messages she just received.
She frowns up at her phone, the first message is from Erin, the second from Toni, and she presses her finger to Erin's message.
holy shit you just got a shout out on—
Her phone starts vibrating in her hand, Mike's face appearing on the screen and the Gumby theme song blasting from the speaker, and she stabs at the answer button.
"What the fuck—" she barks, as Mike says "What the fuck," and they both pause for a second.
"You go," she says, sitting up on the couch.
Mike waits a beat, and then, "You just got name dropped by Rachel Berry on the Grammys red carpet."
She pulls the phone away from her ear, blinks at the screen as it lights up again. Why was Mike even watching the— actually, "why are you watching the red carpet for the Grammys," she asks when she brings the phone back to her ear. Way easier question to deal with.
"Because I am. Santana, the Grammys red carpet. For her hair. That's huge," Mike breathes, his voice rising with excitement. In the background she can hear Jake yelling about Rachel being on the television.
She has no idea what to say to this. She hangs up with a short, "I have to go."
Famous people aren't her clients, rich people are. This has never happened to her before, and for it to come at the hands of Rachel is making her brain whiteout a little. The remote is on the rug by her foot, and she picks it up, flipping over to E!. The red carpet's got another fifteen minutes to go, and she hits the program guide button. It'll be on again as soon as it's over.
Her leg bounces as she waits and the sign of her impatience annoys her. Santana's not sure what she's expecting to see, but she has to see it. She goes to the bathroom, to kill some time, and then wanders into the kitchen and pours herself another glass of wine. Halfway back to the couch she turns back, bringing the bottle with her.
Katy Perry has some weird indie thing going on that makes Santana uncomfortable over how hot she finds it. At that point she grabs her phone again, opens up the browser and types Rachel's name into the search box.
The news results at the top are all for music news sites, mostly stuff she's never heard of but one of them is Rolling Stone and as she waits for that to load, the live coverage ends and loops back around to the start again. She ups the volume on the tv then looks back at her phone.
There's no actual way she's reading what's in front of her.
She's never heard of the specific artist Rachel's done vocals for, but even she knows what Def Jam is and how huge this must be that they're debuting a track at the fucking Grammy Awards. She scrolls down a little further and there's a tiny bio about Rachel having been on Broadway and the guy, Eden Hill, having seen her in, shit, Chicago, and liked her voice.
She doesn't get any further before Rachel's face is on her tv screen, and the fact that she's just sitting there watching this happen in her lounge room makes her feel a little dizzy. Rachel's talking, on her tv screen, and her hair looks amazing. She can't seem to pay attention until Rachel's hand, on her tv screen, comes up to play with her hair and it snaps her back into the moment, "Stop touching your hair," called out like Rachel can hear her.
"This is a new look for you," the skinny red head with the microphone — Kelly Osbourne? — says, and Rachel just keeps touching her hair and smiling.
"It is, it is," she laughs, her gaze flicking to the floor for a moment. "It seemed like a good time for something new."
"Definitely different," the interviewer says, "who'd you trust with such a big change."
Rachel looks up at that, the tip of her tongue pressing into the corner of her mouth for a second. "Santana Lopez, up in Boston," she says, her eyes tracking to the camera as she answers.
Maybe there's more to the interview, but Santana doesn't hear it, too busy scrambling for the remote to hit rewind.
She watches it over and over, but it's the same every time, and the tightening in her stomach is too. She lies in bed later, stuck on the fact that she still has no contact number for Rachel. Not that she knows what she'd do with it.