Chapter 6: The New Era

After having brunch with Brittany, Dani had spent the last few hours of her 'vacation day' watching reruns of Charmed in her bedroom. Nighttime was slowly closing in and she realised that she had been lethargic all day and painfully wasted a full four hours of time doing completely nothing. Removing the heated laptop that sat on her stomach, she glanced at her phone for the time.

Six o'clock. She was already into the fifth episode of the third season and her brain was growing tired of staring at a bright screen. Rubbing her eyes, Dani slipped out of bed and stretched herself out.

The Skype icon on her screen began to spring about in its place.

'Hey Dani, free in the next half hour?'

It was typical of Rachel to over-communicate, if that was even a word. Her phone had died about an hour ago, and she had been too engrossed with the TV show to plug the charger into the power socket. The moment the phone screen lit up, a flood of notifications, including missed calls and unread text messages, overwhelmed her phone to the point of turning itself off again.

'Meet us over at that bar two streets down from the diner, you know the one with the red door and big crazy sign?'

The place was better known as The Big Red Door. Basically, bars were created by drunk people – who lacked creativity – for the drunk people.

'This isn't an invitation, Santana and Brittany want you there. Oh, and bring your Georgia Girlfriend.'


Donning her classy leather pants, Dani shuffled her way through the murky waters of strangers and reached the booth where her other friends were at. Becca rose to peck her on the lips; grasping onto her hand, she pulled her Rockstar onto her lap, causing the latter to squeal with shocked delight. Santana sent a grunt from the other end of the booth, but it gets drowned out by the loud chatter from all corners.

"Hey babe,"

Smilingly hugging Becca, Dani couldn't help but graze her eyes over towards Santana's direction. The Latina's face monstrously contorted; seeing that, her stomach flipped forwards and the backwards. Calling Becca the name she had used to call Santana was doing things and creating an atmosphere of either tension or honest-to-God sickness.

Well, she did have too much sugar today.

An order of two Coronas with lime slices was placed onto the table – Dani's usual order. She turned her head and kissed thanks to Becca; grabbing onto one of the bottles, she took a quick swig before resuming her attention to the television.

"Holy shit, is that Mercedes?"

Dani couldn't tell who had said that because the speakers began to blare out another one of Mercedes Jones's new hit single. Clearly rising to the occasion, Mercedes pulled Tina and Kurt out of the booths and onto the dance floor (but really, there was no dance floor, so they looked quite ridiculous), while Rachel brooded secretly but plastered on the brightest grin she could muster.

"Oh my God, they have a jukebox! Santana, come on, can we go check it out? The leprechaun told me that the last piece of the rainbow that would lead me to the pot of gold is hidden somewhere magical and musical."

"I'm kind of tired, Britt. Can we go in a bit?"

"But-"

Interjecting, Dani stood and held out her hand. "Come on, Bree. Let's go."

The name naturally rolled off of her tongue, and suddenly she became worried that Santana – or even Becca, for that matter – would react badly to the new nickname for Brittany. It sounded so personal, as if another step closing the mutual gap between Dani and the grinning blonde. Taking her hand, they both left the scene before Santana could speak against her with spite.

As Brittany pasted her cheek against the glass pane of the jukebox, her eyes shone with youth, the gold light reflecting against her blue irises. The image of this innocent yet saucy dancer burned into Dani's mind, and she needed to pause for a bit before she reacted to the unanswered question.

"So, like the place so far?"

With a smug smirk and another mouthful of the Corona in her hand, the sarcasm crept its way out easily. "Yes, stuck in a booth with my ex-girlfriend and my girlfriend, I am absolutely loving it."

"Oh, come on. Join me on my hunt for the last piece of the rainbow – that'll make you feel better. Then when I get that pot of gold, we'll go get as many bear-claws as possible and give them to San and Owl Eyes, so they'll be happy, too."

"I'd love that."

Flipping through the selections of hillbilly country love songs to heavy ACDC rock oldies, Brittany bit her bottom lip in distracted disappointment. It was amusing how her eyebrows would furrow at certain songs, particularly the ones ranging back to the sixties, and the way that they would unknit whenever her eyes scanned over songs that she had done in Glee Club.

Brittany looked to Dani hopefully; fishing for a quarter in her pants pocket, the leather-clad girl punched the coin in and waited for the blonde to select her song. It didn't occur to her that she should have checked the song that Brittany had picked, but it was definitely because she trusted the girl enough, and not just in her music taste.

The two girls walked back to the booth as the speakers started to sound, and Dani almost dropped the beer bottle onto the floor.

"It's like, he doesn't hear a word I say / His mind is somewhere far away / And I don't know how to get there."

Kurt shot Dani a sharp look, eyes wide and mouth agape. "Oh my fucking lord, is that Dani?"

"It was one time, and I was like, fifteen, okay!" Burrowing herself in shame, Dani hugged Becca and hid behind her girlfriend's tresses. Everyone whooped with excitement, but Santana stayed unusually and awkwardly quiet.

"Don't resist, Rockstar." Grabbing the other Corona like a mike, Becca winked seductively. "You know you want to."

This set Santana on fire.

"Like fire and rain / You can drive me insane / But I can't stay mad at you for anything,"

Everyone became drunk with passionate love (and the help of some vodka shots). In the next moment everyone was prancing about on the dance floor, a mess of grinding bodies that merged with the familiar voice of their friend that boomed from the soundbox. Despite the embarrassment of being featured in some (literally) garage band song, Dani was enjoying her night more than she had initially thought she would.

"And I wouldn't change a thing!"

Stepping away from her seat, Santana pushed her way through the crowds of moving sweat, squeezing her way out of the big red door. A feeling of discomfort settled in, pulling Dani away from her dancing friends and instead sucking her into the black hole of sadness that was her ex-girlfriend. Brittany was seemingly oblivious to her girlfriend's departure – well, she did have about five too many drinks.

"Hey you,"

"Oh, um, hey."

The two girls just stood with a distance between them, an air of unpleasant awkwardness hanging over them. All Dani wanted to do was move closer to her and hug her by the waist, most hopefully as a friendly gesture, but she knew that it would never be as innocent as it was an act of lust. When Santana was nervous, she had clammy hands – but this time, they hung coolly over the iron fence as she gazed out into the river that split the city into two.

A balmy summer breeze blew across Dani's sticky skin; propping her elbow onto the fence and her head onto her hand, she unconsciously began to bite softly at her already-short fingernails.

"What's up?"

"Nothing much,"

She wanted to say something – anything, really. For one thing, Dani couldn't stand the unbearable silence that stayed between them like some permanent plague any longer, and for the other, she disliked seeing Santana being, well, un-Santana-like.

It was unlike the Latina to be so antisocial and quiet, and to be honest, it was making the other girl slightly more and more unnerved. Balancing her weight on alternative legs every five minutes, it was obvious that Dani was quickly becoming jittery with anxiousness.

"How have you been lately?"

"Okay,"

Every time Dani tried to reach forward to Santana, the latter would pull back.

"Anything interesting happen at work today?"

"No,"

"Gunther still being a big fat bitch?"

"Yeah,"

The mindless conversation was numbing her brain and she was growing tired of it. A conversation took two people, and if one didn't want to put in the effort to hold up even half of the talking action, then what good would the conversation even come down to?

"Brittany seems like she's having fun,"

"Yeah."

Dani leaned towards Santana, closing the gap in between them. When their forearms touch, the Latina almost side-stepped and bolted away, but her feet stayed glued to the stone pavement. It was one of those odd moments of being too close for comfort.

"Are you?"

There was a pregnant pause before she answered; sighing loudly, Santana's dry skin rubbed against Dani's sticky sweat. Neither girls seemed to give much thought to that fact that they were practically within kissing proximity, and the air of awkwardness somewhat dissipated.

"You should, the stuff you people have on me right now is blackmail gold."

A laughter slipped out from Santana, and Dani couldn't help but join in with a soft chuckle. The shoulder-bumping was small, but it certainly was better than the physical and emotional distance that used to put the two apart.

"Yeah,"

Dani touched Santana's cheek with her plump lips and grabbed her hand.

"Come inside, it's getting warm out here."

The Latina stared and simply smiled, "Okay."


#Hey guys, chapter's pretty small. From now onwards, I will be writing mini-chapters and updating weekly (twice sometimes, depending on how many reviews I get ;)) so the story will become more progressive. The whole point of doing this is because I have my seniors finals up, and they're pretty important in determining if I go to university or not, and also I like the idea of having small chapters so it won't risk me over-writing shits inside. :)

#Thanks for the tons of support guys, it means a lot that you read whatever bullcrap I put on here. A lot of the stuff that I write are related to whatever things happening in my life, most particularly the whole Dani-Santana Cold War, and it's awesome that you guys love the whole thing.

#Review, review, review! It'll certainly put me in a writing mood. Pizza works just fine as well, by the way!