A/N: Thanks for the reviews, follow and favourites! They're always a huge encouragement and I appreciate them very much. Without further ado, presenting to you Quinn the bookworm and Santana the baker.


"Baby, I'm bored," Santana whined from her spot on the sofa; the same spot she had been lying on for the past hour.

They had originally made plans to spend the entire day at Central Park sunbathing and making out on the picnic mat, criticizing joggers and of course Santana's favourite - attempting to drown turtles with too-large, sodden slabs of bread.

Unfortunately, in their race down the stairs (yes, the elevator had broken down again), Santana had sprained her ankle. It was not a particularly bad sprain, just the type to cause some mild inconvenience for a few days. As long as Santana kept walking to a minimum, her ankle should be fine and dandy in a short time.

"Quinn, I'm bored," Santana whined again, as if she had not been loud enough the first time.

"I heard you. I'm just ignoring you," the blonde answered without looking up from her book.

Unlike Santana, Quinn had not been bothered by the need to move their activities indoors. Prior to the sprained ankle, she had already planned to do some reading at the park so for her, it was merely a change in plan; she could easily read at the loft as she could in the park.

"You're a terrible nurse," Santana huffed, displeased that she was not getting any attention despite her condition.

"Good thing I'm not a nurse then," Quinn answered distractedly as her eyes continued down the page. Jonathan Safron Foer really was a fantastic writer and he made her heart break.

She sniffed and reached for a piece of tissue paper on the coffee table.

"Are you crying?" Santana asked when she heard Quinn blow her nose into the tissue, "Over a book?" she felt the need to add.

"No, I'm sweating through my eyes," Quinn replied dryly, completely unabashed at the show of emotion, "Yes Santana, I'm crying. How can I not after reading this?" she flapped the thin book in her hands, her eyes shining with tears of unbridled joy at the gem she had found, a joy which obviously Santana did not share.

"Why am I attached to such a geek?" the brunette rolled her eyes and plopped back down onto the couch, "Here I am, crippled and bored to death, without a drop of sympathy from my girlfriend and instead of fussing over my wellbeing like a good girlfriend would do, there you are spending your time poring a book."

Quinn rolled her eyes at Santana's childishness but she did finally look up from her book, "It's not as if you've never sprained your ankle before. Besides, it's not a bad sprain. We used to get tons of those when we were in the Cheerios."

"Yeah, but it still hurts," Santana pouted, refusing to budge.

"Only if you move it, so stop squirming."

"Can you at least sit here with me, so I can put my head on your lap?"

Quinn sighed before obliging. She stood up from the single sofa she was on and moved over to the couch, where Santana happily dropped her head onto her thighs.

"There, now everybody is happy!" the brunette smiled up at her girlfriend and peace was restored for an hour.


After more whining and complaints from Santana, Quinn finally decided to put her book aside and get the ingredients needed for her girlfriend's new baking assignment.

"I don't think the bananas are ripe enough."

Santana turned to look at the bunch of yellow fruits Quinn is holding up and hummed in agreement.

"Well, what should I do?"

"Chuck it into the oven," Santana joked, measuring out the sugar and tossing it into the mixer with the flour.

"So they'll ripen?"

"Yeah," Santana muttered, distracted as she squinted at the next instruction while munching on a Skittle.

As she was beating the eggs in, she heard two little thud sounds and looked behind her shoulder to investigate. Two bananas stared out forlornly at her through the oven glass, "Why did you toss the bananas in the oven for?" she asked, slightly shocked as she hobbled over to the oven to turn the heat down.

"You told me to!" Quinn hurried over to retrieve her beloved fruits with a pair of tongs, "I've got it! Sit down!"

Santana burst out laughing, "Quinn I was just joking. Why don't you throw yourself in there for a suntan while you're at it?"

Slightly put out and very much embarrassed, Quinn placed the bananas next to the mixing bowl, which she then peered into. It was not out of curiosity that she did it; rather, her bent head allowed her cascading hair to hide her blushing face and boy was she glad she looked in.

"Are those…. Are those egg shells?" She pointed to the little bits in the batter, her face scrunched up in disgust.

"Oh. Is that what they are?" Santana stopped stirring to take a closer look, "I thought they were sugar lumps," she shrugged once then continued stirring.

Quinn blinked and waited but after ten seconds had passed without Santana stopping, she just had to ask, "Aren't you taking them out?"

Her girlfriend looked at her as if she had gone insane, "Do you know how long that would take me? I don't mind them a little crunchy."

When Quinn continued to stare at her in disgust, she threw up her hands and grumbled, "Okay fine! I'll take them out but you're going to help!"

"Why should I help? You're the one who broke the shells in. You create the problem, you fix the problem," she picked up the packet of Skittles and rummaged through for purple, "Did you eat all the grape-flavoured ones again?"

Santana briefly glanced over from where she was picking up egg-shells with a fork, mumbling Spanish expletives under her breath that Quinn knew were aimed at her, "No. They came without the purple. Stop stealing my Skittles!" she snatched the pack out of Quinn's hands and set it by the mixing bowl. There, she hovered over her treasure protectively.

"Fine. Be a selfish bitch and get fat all by yourself."

Quinn deliberately waited another minute before she acted. She glanced once at Santana's stomach, looked back down at the table then looked over again. When she felt the brunette's curious eyes on her, she quickly turned away.

"What?"

"Nothing," she answered a little too quickly.

"No, what?" Santana asked again, eyes flitting down to her own midsection a little self-consciously.

Again, Quinn answered the same way, making sure to add an unconvincing shrug this time around, "Nothing!"

"Seriously Q, what?"

Quinn bit her lip, gave just the right amount of hesitation to convey her reluctance before pasting a concerned expression on her face, "You know how I was just kidding earlier on about getting fat on the skittles?"

Santana's fidgeting fingers and tapping feet manifested her nervousness, and Quinn couldn't help but draw out the moment. God, her girlfriend was just too precious. Not to mention excessively vain. Consider this a lesson in "Don't mess with the Quinn Fabray".

Pasting a concerned expression on her face, she leaned forward and poked Santana in her tummy, "Did you actually gain a little weight? Just a little mind you. Maybe a couple of pounds?"

The change in Santana's whole demeanor was gratifying to watch. Her mouth dropped open and she looked down at her completely lean body in horror, "What? Where? Take over," she commanded, pushing the fork and bowl at Quinn before hobbling as fast as she could out of the kitchen. It was an easy guess as to where she was going.

Two minutes later, Santana stomped back in, scowling with one hand clenched over a weighing scale and the other holding her shirt up, "My abs are still here! Gain weight, my ass!"

"Maybe you should check your ass?" Quinn batted her lashes and smiled sweetly as she looked up from her work.

"Screw you," Santana sulked, grabbing the bowl back from Quinn.

"I thought you already have sweetie but we can do it again if you like," she giggled, pressing a kiss to the top of Santana's head before heading out to watch some television. While baking really wasn't her thing, riling her girlfriend up was.

As she was leaving, she thought she heard a little, unhappy "Humph, she's lucky I love her" being muttered from behind.

Ten minutes later, when Quinn returned to the kitchen to check on Santana's progress with the egg shells, she walked in to see Santana looking over her shoulder, trying to get a good look at her own butt.

She smirked. So easy.


"Santana, where do you keep the vanilla essence?" Quinn asked as she checked the cupboards, flipping through the bottles in there.

"I asked you to buy it, didn't I?"

"No, you didn't. You asked me to get Vanilla ice cream."

"No, I didn't. I wrote Vanilla Essence you greedy pig. Check the list!"

With a huge sigh, Quinn headed to her bag to pull out the crumpled piece of paper containing the grocery list. She scanned the list and heaved out another sigh, "You just wrote vanilla," she jabbed a finger at the word, scrawled out in Santana's messy handwriting.

"Yeah see, I told you I told you to buy it."

"No," Quinn tried patiently, "You told me to get vanilla." When Santana continued staring at her blankly, she added with exasperation, "You just told me to get vanilla. Vanilla with a full-stop."

"Figures your fat ass would buy vanilla ice cream," Santana snickered as she walked over to the cupboard to join Quinn in rifling through their pantry stock.

"How was I supposed to know Vanilla referred to Vanilla essence? I'm smart but not that smart! I can't read minds," she shot back.

"I'm glad you've finally realised the limits of your brain capacity. How about this one?" Santana read as she limped back to the mixing bowl with a small bottle of herbs, "It says here All Spice," she popped off the cap to shake some of the contents into the bowl before Quinn could stop her.

"Why did you do that for!" Quinn hurried back to the table but Santana had already stirred the herbs in with her whisk.

"What? It says All Spice right? There has got to be some vanilla essence in there."

Quinn sank down into the chair in defeat, hands over her head, "It's over."


The couple stared down at Santana's finished work between them. The baker's laptop sat next to the plate, the screen displaying a delectable loaf of banana cake. Their eyes darted to and fro between their own lumpy, black cake set on the table to the perfect one on the screen.

Quinn was the first one to break the silence, "It doesn't really look the same, does it?"

She tilted her head to get a better look. Maybe it would look better from a different angle.

"Maybe you should stand on my side. I think it looks quite similar if I look at it like this," Santana demonstrated by squinting, partially closing her eyes more and more and more until eventually, she gave up and closed them completely, "There they look the same now."

Quinn huffed out a laugh, then bent over to sniff at the cake, "Maybe it just looks bad. That doesn't mean it tastes bad yeah?"

Happy that Quinn had just given her a way out, Santana nodded enthusiastically and sniffed the air, "Yeah, totally. It smells like er someone has just baked in here."

That wasn't a complete lie. The kitchen did smell like someone had just baked in there but it also smelled like a fire had just been snuffed out.

"Okay, so here's a fork. You try it!" Santana offered generously.

"What? No! You're the baker. You try it."

"No way. I've put in all the work so you eat first."

"No can do. The baker always tastes first."

"That's right. I'm the baker so I get to choose who tries it first."

"You know what? Let's just try it together," Quinn extended her right hand out for a shake.

"Fine," Santana rolled her eyes and accepted the compromise, "On three. One. Two. Three."

They both dug their forks in. Or rather, they attempted to dig their forks in but the cutlery simply bounced off.

"Oh well. We tried," Quinn concluded after a few tries, utterly relieved that she would not have to eat what now appeared to be a paperweight. The only reason why she had even decided to eat the rock was because she had not wanted to hurt her girlfriend's feelings but the next time Santana suggested baking, she would definitely remember to distract her with sex.

And just when she thought the matter was over, Santana suddenly came up with a grand plan, "Oh I know! Maybe it's just the outside that's hard. I can cut away the charred parts."

When Santana came back with the knife, Quinn thought stabbing herself with it would be a better use of the tool.


"Why thank you Santana," Rachel glanced down at her tiny slice of cake. She stared it for a long time before looking up in confusion, dragging her eyes from an equally-confused Kurt, to Quinn and finally to Santana, "What's this for?"

Quinn could hardly blame her for her apprehension. Before today, Santana had never set foot in the kitchen to bake. And she sure wished it had stayed that way. The only consolation was that after chopping off the inedible parts, what was left was just a morsel. Nobody could get poisoned from just a morsel right?

Santana shrugged, "Quinn and I were bored so we decided to bake."

Quinn shot her girlfriend a glare, "Santana was bored so she decided to bake."

She thought it was important to clarify that.

Strained laughter bubbled from Rachel's throat, "Well thank you for giving us a piece of this.. erm… what's this?"

"Banana cake," Kurt supplied, looking as uneasy as Rachel must be feeling.

"It's my first try so I thought as my roommates, you deserve a bite."

Ever softhearted and ready to do anything when the friendship card was pulled, Rachel practically melted in her chair as she gushed, "Awwww, Santana, that was so sweet. Thank you!"

She beamed as she picked up her fork and stuck it into the cake, but Quinn doubted very much that she would still feel the same way after tasting the "cake".

"Thank you Santana," Kurt smiled as he too picked up his fork, "Quinn, aren't you eating?"

"Not in this lifetime. I would rather.." Quinn mumbled but is forced to stop when Santana kicked her in the shin from under the table, "I've had my share," she gritted out through clenched teeth and unable to resist, added under her breath, "And have since spat it out."

Thankfully for her, the last part went unheard by her companions.

"Oh," Rachel said delicately after placing a forkful of cake in her mouth. Quinn could see she was struggling not to grimace, "Erm. Is that nutmeg in your banana cake?" she swallowed painfully and with difficulty, and Quinn was impressed she could actually taste something beyond the burned flavour that had permeated the whole cake.

"You added pepper?" Kurt coughed and grabbed for the pitcher of water that Quinn had very kindly and subtly prepared on the table.

"Is it that bad?" Santana frowned as she stared hard at what she had been slaving over the past two hours, "I've already chopped off all the charred parts."

Kurt chuckled nervously, his eyes still watering, "Is that why the cake is so small?"

"Maybe," Santana's answer was ambiguous as she brought up the plate to sniff, "Can you guys taste the vanilla essence?"

Kurt was about to answer when a gagging sound from Rachel attracted their attention.

"Sorry," she wheezed, thumping herself hard on the chest, "I think I just swallowed a skittle."


That night, Quinn sat at the bottom of the bed, Santana's foot in her hand.

"Oooh yeah, that's the spot. Fuck yeah. That feels so good," Santana moaned as Quinn massaged her swollen ankle.

The blonde shook her head in amusement, "If you continue like that, Kurt and Rachel are going to think we're going at it again."

"Yeah, then should I be louder?" Santana chuckled, her eyes twinkling with mischief.

She looked so mighty pleased with herself that Quinn couldn't help bringing her lips down to kiss the foot in her hand.

"Eeeew Quinn," Santana tried to pull her foot away but Quinn held on tight, "My foot isn't clean."

"I don't care," she smiled and bent down again to kiss Santana's toe, "I love you, even with your smelly feet."

"My feet don't smell!" Santana protested with a frown, "I've already showered."

"The point is I love you and do you know what that means?" she continued, insistent that Santana understood she really did love her.

Quinn knew she had her mood swings and her temper tantrums, and sometimes, she said things she didn't mean to say when she got mad. As her girlfriend, Santana often got the brunt of her anger. It didn't help that Santana herself had an equally vicious tongue. As with anything they did, when they fought, they fought hard. But that didn't mean she loved Santana any less. If anything, it meant she loved Santana more because she could be certain that no matter how acerbic she was on any given day, Santana was not going anywhere.

"I love you means I love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that no one loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that I love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else."

So what if she was quoting Jonathan Safron Foer? The words had come so easily to her because she had meant it with every fiber of her soul and every inch of her heart.

"Damn."

And that was not the reaction she had been expecting.

"He's good."

"Who's good?" Quinn asked, completely baffled.

"That Foie Gras guy you were reading this morning."

'Who?"

"The one you were crying over? You just quoted from the book right?"

Quinn laughed and nodded in relief. There was always a danger that Santana would be a prick during one of her more sentimental moments. That girl sometimes really didn't know how to handle other people's feelings. She was glad today was not the day.

"Jonathan Safron Foer," she corrected.

"Whatever. Can you say that when we have sex? I bet it would be really, really hot. You know what? Let's try it now," Santana extracted her foot from Quinn's hand, replacing the limb with her entire body as she practically leapt into the blonde's lap to kiss her very soundly on the mouth.

"But your ankle," Quinn managed breathlessly in between kisses.

"You can do all the work," Santana growled out before ripping off Quinn's nightie.

It seemed Kurt and Rachel would have cause to complain again the next morning.


Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. The quote about love was taken from Jonathan Safron Foyer's wonderful book 'Everything is Illuminated'.

Until next time!