Firstly, I'd really love to thank you ALL because to me, you reviewed this story's ass and it made me sooooo happy! :) so thank you. But I'd like to special mention 'luceroadorada' since you practically reviewed nearly every chapter and 'rhnalis' because you never review and you did my story and that means more than chocolate covered strawberries on a spring day so I love you a lot :)
But, saying that, I really struggled with this chapter. Because Brittany isn't well but that doesn't mean she has to come across as pathetic. I HATE when I see young girls believing that if they harm themselves, some boy/girl is going to come along and kiss their scars all better. Because even though that's beautiful and romantic and really lovely to think, they're not because self-harm is a gross addiction and nobody wants it. I know this - you really don't want it. So trying to write the way Santana behaves around Brittany's scars was really difficult but being a writer, I don't think I executed the 'realistic' approach very well haha! But let me know what you think. I'm a dreamer and I guess I can't escape from that.
Any mistakes are mine. Enjoy x
The Seventh Day
My heart hadn't stopped beating so fast for the whole night after I'd held Santana's hand and kissed her cheek goodnight. It had felt amazing and so right and yet I was fucking terrified.
I'd even woken up desperately gutted that Santana hadn't woken me up again. And however much I wanted to tell myself that I didn't know why I was so gutted, I couldn't seem to block out the loud voice yelling in my ear that it was because I liked her.
Liked her how though?
I wanted to hold Santana's hand. I wanted to kiss her on more than just her cheek and I definitely wanted to taste her. The smell of coffee just wasn't enough on my senses; I needed it everywhere else and I almost felt like I needed it now.
Like, right now.
I'd never felt this kind of urgency before, especially with a person. An urge that wasn't going to immediately harm me. Or kill me.
(maybe. probably. hopefully?)
Thinking of Santana made me want to give her everything. If I could take all the stuff that's in my head and heart and lay it all out on a tray, I would give it to her. And I wasn't too sure what to do with that thought because what did it mean?
Yesterday on the boat had been blissful and had her friends not been surrounding us, I couldn't even comprehend what I would have tried to do with Santana. I just had to look at her and it was like she knew something about me that even I didn't know and that comforted me. That comforted me a lot. Like she knew what was going on even though she didn't. Like I was a story and she never wanted it to finish.
I don't know, it was weird. No one had ever looked at me like that. But then again, no one had ever been Santana and I was more fucking grateful for that than anything else.
She was just beautiful and I guess I couldn't put it any other way.
So when I had woken up and she hadn't been there, I don't think I'd gotten out of bed so quick since all this began. It was like I needed to see her, especially her eyes, to know that the day would be okay and that it wouldn't end on the floor of my room in a mess I don't really want to think about. She oozed comfort right into me and I just had to be around it.
(i also wanted to stare at her lips for as long as i could but i didn't tell myself that when i skipped out the door this morning.)
She'd been playing with Ohana on the beach when I found them again around midday. She almost took my breath away, the way she was swinging Ohana around and her hair was flying in circles around her face.
There was an older man with them the spitting image of Santana and when he saw me, he smiled and knew instantly who I was. Santana blushed but smiled so wide, I felt incredible.
Her dad wasn't like any dad I'd met before. He picked Santana up and threw her in the sea and made jokes about her nipple piercing and I wondered how he knew about it since most fathers wouldn't.
(I tried to ignore the burning in my lower belly when I imagined the piercing.)
But Santana didn't seem to be bothered that he knew and laughed with him when he joked that soon she would get it stuck in all her wristbands in the shower.
"What do you think I do in there?" She squealed, slapping him on the arm.
"Well, you never know with you youngsters." Her dad quipped back, shying away from her next slap, a smirk on his face. "You're all horny and crazy these days, you could be up to anything."
Santana chastised her dad and smiled apologetically at me but I felt fantastic.
I felt almost free and I couldn't explain why.
Her dad invited me to dinner with them the next night at a karaoke bar since apparently it was Santana and Ohana's favourite and I'd rather be with Santana than my family so I said yes. When he'd left to take Ohana to the kid's pool, Santana turned to me and asked if I wanted to go on a road trip around the island with her and I could not think of anything else I would rather do with her.
"What part of America are you from?" She asked, as she drove the jeep out the resort's gates. She looked hot and I felt like I finally understood where the girls at school had been coming from when they'd drooled over boys in magazines.
"Ohio." I replied, shielding my eyes from the sun. "You?"
Santana grabbed a pair of sunglasses from her bag and handed them to me. I smiled in thanks as she put a pair on as well.
"I'm actually from Sydney, that's where I grew up." She explained, turning onto the main street and heading south. "My mom was Australian and my dad couldn't bear to be without her so he stayed there and two years later, I was born."
I loved listening to Santana's voice and in the Caribbean air, it sounded ten times more tropical. You could almost smell the coconut dripping off it.
"And then when Ohana was born," She continued, indicating to over take a boy and his cow, "We moved to England because my father is a baker and they wanted to open up his chain in London. They wanted one in New York but my dad wouldn't go because the health care system was free in England and with my mom being so ill, we really needed that. So when mom passed away, she'd told him to go straight to New York and we've been there ever since."
I kept looking at Santana whilst a silence stretched out between us and when she turned and caught my eye, I smiled sadly and she winked back, clearly used to telling that story. So I reached across the middle compartment, took her hand in mine and interlocked our fingers. Once again, that same nervous heartbeat picked up and my hand felt on fire.
Santana had a small smile on as we drove further south, absentmindedly playing with my fingers, her other hand on the wheel. It felt so lovely, what she was doing and the fact we were driving together, just us two, where I could stare at her without worrying her friends were going to tease me.
And boy did I want to stare. She looked beautiful. She had a strapless black bikini on under a loose fitting black muscle tank with light faded baggy denim shorts, a leather belt and black converses, her hair tied up in loose knot at the top of her head and a red and gold tie circled around her hairline.
Stunning.
"You're staring," Santana said as we got closer to the airport. She smirked.
I grinned, looking down at my lap and blushing because I kind of felt like I didn't have any reasons to not stare anymore.
"I wish I could stare at you right now, too." She added and it made my heart flip.
We pulled up at a southern beach a half hour later and we managed to find a secret cubby hole near the back of the beach under a load of palm trees. Santana rolled out two towels and unpacked a huge bottle of water and a massive watermelon and two packets of Doritos.
She didn't tell me I had to eat a certain number. She just opened them and left them in between us. And because of that, I forgot about them and Santana had me talking about things I hadn't thought about for a really long time. Things like how on my fourteenth birthday back at school, my friend's Freya, Dora and I took part in a sort of dance off in the halls of the dance studios and we were against only boys yet we still won. And how we always put oranges and cucumber in our water because we were convinced it made our hair glossier.
And then sometimes Santana would seem to be just talking with her eyes. And I don't know how that was possible.
"Did you like school?" She asked, resting on her side, her head in her hand.
I smiled at then and replied, "I guess so. It was better than being at home anyway."
"Yeah," She smiled appreciatively. There was a beat before she said, "I would love to see you dance one day."
My heart sped up and I wasn't sure if it was because I hadn't danced in a really long time and wanted to (desperately), or whether it because it scared me slightly to think of Santana watching me.
"Maybe someday." I told her, getting slightly distracted at how warm her brown eyes were. "I'd like that."
She leant forward then, as if she was about to crawl on top of me and for a moment, I didn't bat an eyelid since the way she moved towards me felt so natural and normal. But then she hovered directly above me and looked down like she was looking at buried treasure. She lifted her finger and pressed it to my nose and I giggled. And then she took it to my temple and tucked my hair behind my ear so gently, I found my teeth over my bottom lip and my forehead creased.
And I stayed as still as I could as she traced her finger down to my brow and smoothed it with her thumb tip, my heart beating so fast, I wasn't sure it was beating at all.
"Britt," She said, looking so beautiful in just her bikini, "lets go in the ocean."
So we did. And for the first time that holiday, I didn't feel like my bones were going to break every time a wave crashed over me. Maybe it was because I felt stronger with Santana but I think it was because she had her hand in mine the whole time.
She was laughing and every time she fell over from a wave crashing into her back, I laughed too. She was so cute and so perfect and why was I thinking these things?
But then we got out I realised I'd lost both bandages on my wrists and I suddenly felt naked and my throat closed up as my hands fumbled to decide which wrist to cover up first. My breath quickened and my head went all faint and I thought I couldn't collapse in the sea because I'd drown and Santana wouldn't notice since I couldn't see her anymore.
"Fuck," I tried to choke out but it sounded a lot more like a wail as my head went fuzzy and my chest felt like the blood there was doing laps. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."
I tripped over my own legs and I thought I was going to faint and it was all I could do to remain covering up the huge pink lines that decorated my wrists like deep vertical craters, lined up like soldiers and yelling at me in their angry painful voices. My knees stung as I fell to the ground and my breath completely went and I'm sure my eyes were swaying all over the place.
I did not want this to happen with Santana.
"No, no, no, no."
"Brittany?" A voice came when my mind was swirling. "Britt?"
I heard splashing beside me and suddenly I was lifted out the water and under the palm trees and trying to breathe was like trying to open your eyes when you first wake up. I got stuck there, like my throat was refusing to work anymore. And the panic that swept through my veins was like a torpedo on a mission to destroy the world and in my mind, I kept hearing the words, 'this is it' and I didn't know what that meant, I was just trying to focus on not passing out and getting rid of the pins and needles in my legs.
But Santana held my chest to hers and looked me straight in the eye and literally demanded, "Breathe."
Again, and again, and again, like it was actually me who had forgotten how and not my throat.
"Breathe."
There were flashing things in my vision and I did try to do as she was saying but I couldn't concentrate on anything other than my throat and how it was pulling in on itself.
"Brittany," Santana's voice shot through my thoughts. It was almost scary how demanding and authoritive it was. "Breathe."
And even though it felt like inhaling toffee, eventually I did.
When I finally came round and realised what I'd done, I dug the heels of my palms into my eyes in so much embarrassment because fuck, how had I lost control so easily?
"Oh, shit," I almost cried.
Then I remembered my wrists and before I could grab them to cover them, Santana caught them in one hand and brought her other hand to my chin.
"Don't even think about it." She said, her bottom lip trembling. And I wanted to kiss it because it shouldn't be trembling.
Was she scared?
"Santana," I gasped, but she silenced me instantly.
She moved all our picnic stuff out of the way, lay herself down and brought me into her chest so I was cradled there. Her hand was in my hair, rhythmically stroking it, over and over, her heartbeat echoing into mine and slowing it completely.
I think we were sleeping for a good two hours. I felt like I'd slept for a thousand years.
We woke up when the sun had nearly set and because I moved, Santana sat up slowly and brought me with her. We watched the last rays of the sun disappear behind the tree tops to our right huddled under a towel together. She found my jumper and placed it over my head and she was so delicate with my wrists as she pulled them through, it was like she was handling stardust.
Without a word, she packed all our stuff into her bag, slung it over her shoulder and scooped me up. I clung to her neck and before I could stop myself, I'd already leant down and kissed the dip where her neck reached her collarbone.
(I swear I just wanted to taste it. Just once. Just to see what it was like.)
She paused.
I'd kissed her there again before my mind caught up and this time I held my lips on her skin. She seemed to shiver back into action and slowly dumped our stuff into the jeep and stopped to just hold me there, like she was cautiously waiting for my next move.
So I kissed further and further up her neck, along her jawline, until I reached her chin. I didn't know what I was doing but my tummy was in flutters and she just felt so amazing against my lips I couldn't stop if I tried.
I stilled as she propped me carefully down on the bonnet of the jeep and spread my legs either side of hers. I took in her coffee colored eyes in the fading daylight and then I took in her lips and her forehead and kissed her there. I kissed her eyelids, her nose, her cheeks, her chin and when I went to her lips, her breath hitched so loudly, I thought she'd hiccuped.
I kissed the corner of her mouth first. Delicately. Softly. More gentle than I'd ever been with anything else. Her hair had fallen out of her knot long ago and it was now swept over one shoulder, damp from the ocean. I ran my fingers through it, before pushing it back over her shoulder and cupping her neck. And then I pressed her so lightly into me, our lips barely even touched.
But they did. Oh god they did.
She tasted of watermelon and it was all I could do not to engulf her. So instead, I stuck my tongue out and traced the outline of her lips, moaning at the taste and the way she felt against me. She let her mouth hang open slightly as I took her bottom lip that had been trembling earlier between my teeth and pulled her closer, taking my other hand and wrapping it around her shoulder. I brought my legs around her ass and she moaned when she fell even further against me. Her hands moved from my waist, up to my neck and with one swift movement, she had her right hand at the nape of my neck and her left clutching my jaw like I was suddenly going to vanish.
I let her run her tongue along the walls of my mouth and down my neck and along my collarbone and I sighed so fucking deeply when she moaned out, "beautiful," her head tilting sightly to the right and her fuller lips warming my whole mouth.
She was perfect and she was invading my senses and I adored it.
She sucked my whole tongue into her mouth and when she reached the end, she tapped it with her own tongue, kissed it gently on the top, then down each side, before swallowing it once more with her lips and I couldn't even decipher what my own name was.
She kissed my chin then like it was going to break and then she brought my arms upwards, interlocked our fingers and lifted me onto the bonnet so I was lying flat on my back. She stepped up onto the wheel, pressed her hands either side of my face, pulled back and looked at me, her chest heaving up and down in time with my hurtling heart. I lifted up onto my elbows and took her lips again, kissing her delicately before biting her bottom lip and bringing her down on top of me. When I released her, she smiled with her eyes still closed and I couldn't bring myself to think of anything else other than how beautiful she looked in this light.
(And then when she opened them again, she looked drunk on kissing and I smiled because I felt just the same.)
"Brittany," She breathed into the evening air, taking my hair and tucking it behind my ear. "I cant- I just...I... Wow."
I smiled because I knew what she meant.
An airplane took off behind us in the near distance and we both looked at each other at the same time. Santana grinned and I grinned and just as we were about to leap back into the jeep to head towards the airport, Santana took another look at me, kissed my collarbone, my neck, my jawline, my lips and then my wrist beside my face where one of her hands was interlocked. She looked back at me and whispered down against my lips, "mine."
I moaned and I definitely didn't mean to.
So I propped myself onto my elbows, leant forward and kissed right in the middle of her boobs and licked my way all the way back to her lips.
"And this," I whispered, biting her lip, "is mine."
(and I swear I've never felt more empowered in my life.)
(because here, right in this moment, with this brandy skinned Australian-British-American Latina girl draped above me like the most soothing nighttime sky, under a diamond canvas surrounded by coconut and vanilla and everything coffee, I was exactly where I was meant to be.)
Santana kept looking at me as we climbed back into the jeep and drove nearer the airport. She couldn't stop and neither could I and whilst the wind blew through our hair and the jeep hummed louder and louder as we picked up speed, she still had her eyes on me and for once, I didn't worry about the road. We had just done something which I knew had been accumulating since the moment we'd laid eyes on each other and it was so relieving and so beautiful and so fucking right.
Her smile didn't leave her face either and as we pulled up just outside the metal perimeter of the airport, she leant back in her seat and whispered, "you're so perfect, Brittany."
And I shook my head and told her I'd never seen someone as perfect as her. So she kissed my lips once more before climbing out the door and scooping me out the other side, all the while smiling, smiling, smiling.
smiling.
She gently stood me up and took my hand and led me to the edge of the fence, the long grass around us tickling my thighs and making me all too aware of what had just happened with her. I felt my heart quicken and my smile grow and everything just seemed like for once, I was actually underwater when I wasn't.
(and despite what had happened on the beach, having a girl's hand in my hand and having a girl's lips kiss my lips was maybe that something I hadn't realised I'd been searching for my whole life and that maybe - just maybe - I hadn't been searching for adventure. Maybe I'd been searching for Santana.)
(and that was terrifying.)
We found a spot just at the end of the runway, beneath the long grass and swirling wind. No one could see us. And that made me feel invincible. We didn't know when the next plane was due to leave but judging from the fact one landed a couple hours ago and from where we were lying we could see tiny people in the distance boarding a dimly lit Boeing, we knew it wouldn't be long. So we turned onto our backs, looked up into the stars and waited. I felt Santana breathe next to me and I was reminded of earlier.
"I'm sorry, Santana, I-"
"Brittany." She interrupted, finding my hand in the grass beside me. I closed my eyes because nothing had really felt this good before.
"But really, Santana." I pushed, squeezing her hand. "You shouldn't have seen that."
She seemed to think about this for a while and I found myself desperately wanting to know what about.
"I just, I-"
"Brittany." She interrupted again. "Please stop."
(I wondered if she meant me talking or if she meant something else.)
We were silent for a solid ten minutes before she spoke so softly into the night air, it was like the insides of my ears were being massaged.
"Mom once had bandages like yours on her wrist." She whispered, tracing her thumb across my pointer finger where she held my hand. I felt my wrists burn from being naked and Santana instantly soothed them with her fingertips as she brought my hand to her chest and rested it there. She traced the patterns of the veins there and seemed to ignore the scars like bridges over them. "When I visited her the day she died, I didn't know it was our last day together. To anyone else, it looked like she was getting better but as I sat with her and held her hand in mine, she turned to look at me and she was so feeble. She had these dark circles around her eyes - purple, like she'd been bruised there. And maybe she had since simply opening her eyes in the morning was difficult."
I felt Santana swallow and so I rolled over and curled into her side. Santana instinctively started playing with my other hand as well.
"She looked so broken and so defeated and I knew that she wanted to go. I don't think she had a choice whether she was going to live or die but I do believe she had a choice whether it was when I was there or when I wasn't." She continued, pulling her lips in and releasing them in a gentle pop. They seemed to petrude more so than other lips I'd seen. I loved them.
Santana swallowed thickly and a faint smile sort of echoed at the corners of her lips. "Mom had told Dad to take Ohana to the park and as he swung her on the swings at the top of the hill that looked over London, he would know when she'd gone, since she didn't want Ohana to see her go and she didn't want him to see her looking so fragile in her last moments."
(Santana and her family were possibly the strongest people I'd ever met.)
"She died with my hand on her heart and I swear I could hear it slow and then stop."
I felt my heart clench and my eyes fill and it was the first time I'd cried in a while - and it wasn't even anything to do with me.
"But Brittany," Santana continued, tracing her fingers up and down my arm, "I swear it's like my mom knew about you. She used to say to me as we lay upon her hospital bed together that there would be someone I'd notice one day who I'd instantly want to protect and love and make smile every day. And she said I'd know the moment I laid eyes on them that there was something in them I needed to find and bring to life but with you, Britt..."
She trailed off and it nearly killed me because I was hanging on to every single word she was saying. People only said these things in movies and to have her so eloquently whispering them like a script she was writing whilst she was speaking made my heart feel like thunder.
She sighed and I pressed closer into her. She responded by pulling my arm right across her waist so it was draped there and I could have fallen asleep with the way she stroked her fingers up and down was I not so invested in what she was trying to say to me.
"You're so different." She finally settled for. I just waited patiently for her to continue. "You're so lost and so sad and so confused yet there's more life in you than anyone I've met before and I'm not sure where I see that." She paused like she wasn't sure she was allowed to say these things. I watched her as she crinkled her eyes in frustration and her nose flared a little before she opened her mouth again.
"Because I look at you and I can full on see that you are so obviously unhappy - your bones stick out at every chance they get and your eyes... Britt, they look just like my mom's did before she died and you just... You're so beautiful and you're so right and when I look at you, my whole body flips because it's like I'm looking at someone who stepped right out of my actual dreams and into my actual life and there is nothing I feel more in my heart than wanting to see you smile, every day, every single fucking day and I don't even know how this happened when at the beginning of this week, I didn't even know you existed."
My heart had picked up speed so quickly, I wasn't sure I remembered what it was like when it was slow. But Santana looked so honest and so painfully vulnerable in this starlight that I couldn't help myself when I crawled on top of her, pressed my knees either side of her hips and kissed her.
Hard.
And I wasn't even sure the tiniest bit where this urgency came from, I just knew that crawling on top of Santana and kissing her hard right now was my priority.
She kissed me back with so much vigor, I felt my heart expand and explode in my chest and had she not been resting beneath me, I was certain my ribs would have snapped and my spine would have crumbled in her palms.
And then we heard the plane start moving and I squealed slightly because I'd never done this before. But Santana pulled me close down to her side so we could both see and whispered, "are you scared?"
(and once again, I wondered whether she meant about the plane or something else.)
"A little, yeah," I replied honestly, gripping her waist and kissing her neck. I felt her smile and I knew it was because she was happy.
(I think I was too.)
"What if it doesn't take off?" I suddenly thought, lifting up and checking where the plane was. I saw it humming towards the start of the runway and I felt my stomach drop with anticipation.
Santana laughed. Loudly. "Britt," She breathed, pulling me down against her again, "just hold on to me, don't let go and I promise you'll be okay."
And I believed her.
Santana was like an angel to me. Someone who was so selfless and who would do anything for you, even if you hadn't asked. The kind of girl who would fight a war for you, just so you didn't have to and who lit fires in the darkness so you could find your way home.
I hadn't realised how much I'd craved being that person for her as well, until just this moment.
We could hear the plane get louder and louder as the pilot drummed the engine faster and faster and with every rolling turn of it's speeding wheels galloping towards us, my heart beat one beat quicker until all we could hear was the plane and each other.
I wanted to scream.
But then there was silence as it lifted off the ground, and right over our heads we saw the wheels and the lights and the engines float off into the distance and the most powerful gush of wind blew it's entire strength right over our bodies and I couldn't hold back my scream anymore.
It was so extraordinary I was momentarily deafened but we screamed so loud, I wondered whether I was screaming at the plane or at my family.
It was only when Santana turned to watch me scream that I knew the answer.
When the plane was some way over the ocean ahead of us and Santana had brushed the hair off my face and I'd brushed the hair off hers, I burst into laughter and then tears and then I wasn't so sure what it was I was actually feeling anymore.
We sat up together and Santana took my face in hers and kissed me again.
"Fuck," I said, wiping my tears off my cheeks, "Why am I even crying?"
Santana giggled. "Because you'll never have my J-Lo ass, I know, I get this all the time."
I burst out laughing again, pushing her back down into the grass, but it only made me cry more. So Santana reached her arm up, tucked my hair behind my eyes, wiped my tears with her thumb for me and looked at me quizzically.
"Beautiful," She whispered into the darkness and I couldn't understand how she could make me feel so many things in one moment.
"Really? Right now?" I replied, rubbing my eyes with my hands. Santana clasped my wrists and pulled them away from my face.
"Yes," She said sternly, as if she was surprised as well. "Now more than ever."
I stopped, sighed and bit my lip, looking at her. "Why are you so nice?"
She smirked. "I'm really not, babe," She said and it made my heart jump. "Ask Quinn or Rachel and they'll tell you a totally different story."
"Yes but they are so much stronger than I am, I bet if you insult them, they insult you back just as hard." I hiccuped then and it made me laugh.
Santana laughed too. "I would never insult you. I don't look at Quinn and Rachel and see what I see when I look at you."
I smiled then because Santana had a habit of saying things I never thought someone would say to me, and as we made our way back to the jeep, she clasped my hand again and I don't think there will be a day I won't lose my breath when she does that.
When we got back to the resort, nearly everyone was in bed and I wished more than anything I could get in Santana's. But she surprised me by leading me to the beach, grabbing some towels and climbing atop the stacked sun beds.
We didn't wake up until Valerie came over with a bowl of fruit in the morning and a lecture about sleeping on a public beach.
Please review if you'd like! It would make my terribly disastrous week. Thanks guys! :)
