Authors Note: So I'm a little late today, sorry about that but better late than never!
This chapter picks up exactly where we left them at the end of the previous chapter.
"Fuck."
The curse escapes Santana's lips as the full implication of Kurt's words burrows its way past her happiness and pokes at her brain just enough to get it to sit up and take notice. She says it so quietly that she barely hears her own voice but with her current position, arms around Rachel and chin resting on her shoulder, the diva hears it loud and clear and she responds by tightening her hold on the cheerleader.
"Tell them or not" Rachel whispers turning her head so her lips graze Santana's ear, "I'm okay with whatever you choose and I'll back you up if you need it."
She could pull it off, she could say that both she and the father had been tested at the same time and she had meant that both of them were in the clear. Kurt might buy that even as pedantic as he was and if the worst came to the worst and he questioned it she could just go all Lima Heights and scare the shit out of him.
As she pulls back from the hug with Rachel, the diva's hands slide down her arms until the grasp her own and squeeze them reassuringly and Santana can't help but gaze at the girl in front of her. The diva was smiling at her reassuringly and Santana was sure she would, as she had promised, back her up no matter what she told Kurt. Santana knew she wouldn't even blink or complain for a second afterwards since the singer knew how sensitive she was about her condition.
But as she gazed in to Rachel's eyes she saw something else, behind the love and reassurance was an unmistakeable spark of hope and in that moment she realizes what her choice really is. It's not just between keeping her secret or telling everyone, but also between letting Rachel know she's proud to be with her, to be having children with her or letting everyone else think that Rachel slept with some random guy who didn't care enough to stick around when she needed him. It's a choice between denying Rachel and their children to everyone in the room as well as to Rachel herself or accepting them publicly as her own.
Really it's not a choice; as far as Santana was concerned there was only one option.
Without looking away from Rachel or loosening her grip on the other girls hands, Santana speaks. "I am the babies' father."
Santana knew it was the right thing to do as soon as the words had spilled from her mouth because even with the gut wrenching fear now settling in her chest, the look of sheer happiness that that now graced Rachel's beautiful features made it all worthwhile. WMHS could go to hell, Rachel and the babies were the important things. She risked a glance at Brittany who was grinning widely at her and Quinn that was glaring at the rest of the Glee club as if daring them to have a problem with Santana's statement.
"The other parent."
Rachel's correction draw's Santana's attention back to the diva sitting before her and the look of love and pride that Rachel directs towards her gives her the strength to carry on. "Yeah, I'm the other parent" she turns for the first time since she had re-entered the choir room to glare at the rest of the Glee club, "And they only people that know about that apart from our parents and doctors are in this room right now. So if anything we discuss right now makes it out into the general population of this school, I will hunt every one of you down and ends you. Clear?"
Santana glances from person to person around the room and is a little surprised that instead of the hate or disgust or even just surprise she had been expecting, they wore expressions of curiosity, confusion or just plain boredom.
"We know you've claimed the babies as your own Santana. We understand so there's no need to remind us." Kurt says, "I'm just curious why you thought it was necessary to get tested as well and how your negative result has any effect on them."
Santana rolls her eyes. Of course they wouldn't get it, she'd have to spell it out word for word to them and she's pretty sure most of them still wouldn't believe it. She glances back at Rachel who has arranged her face into a blank expression but Santana easily recognizes the new tension in the diva's body. She has understood the situation just as well as Santana and grasped the fact that the Latina has the opportunity to back out of the whole discussion, to blow off her statement and meaningless and go with the status quo.
'She's scared' Santana thinks to herself, 'She's scared I'll run and hide and after the emotions she just showed me, she is trying to hide that fear from me.'
"No you don't understand." Santana says her gaze not leaving Rachel's, "I'm not just claiming them, they are mine. Biologically. I am the father. I am the one who got Rachel pregnant."
And there was that smile again. The smile that seemed to burn deep into her very soul, the smile that at least temporarily could wash away all her fears and doubts and make it possible not to care what other people thought of her or what why would whisper about her behind her back. So she tells them.
"I'm a girl. I always have been and I have always believed that I am. Double X chromosome and everything." Santana takes a steadying breath, "But I'm different. I have male reproductive organs. Fully developed and apparently fully functional." She adds with a smile towards Rachel.
She gives them the summary version of the doctor's latest chimera theory before continuing. "The babies are mine. Conceived when we were drunk, before we got together, before I understood what I felt for Rachel and before I knew I could even have children because up to that point I had been told I probably wouldn't be able to. I know that isn't an excuse, but I don't regret it for a second because it brought Rach and I together and she's giving me a gift I never thought I would have."
Now there are expressions of shock and surprise but no disgust. At least not yet, who knew what would happen when the surprise wore off.
"And I will remind you what I said before." Santana says pulling on her best bitchy attitude, "If anyone discusses this with anyone currently outside this room, if I so much as hear a whisper of a rumor about me, I will make every day of the rest of your school career hell. Do I make myself clear?"
Before anyone can answer, Quinn offers her own threat "And just in case anyone thinks that Santana might not be able to back that threat up if the news gets out, I will. And I promise you this, Santana might make your school career hell, but I'll make you wish you had never been born. Got it?" she demands.
Most people nod, even Mercedes, but Kurt is just gazing at Santana with an expression that seemed to indicate he was thinking hard.
"Nope" he says after a moment, "I don't believe it. The whole thing is just too farfetched" he says with a wave of his hand.
That got everyone's attention, surprised glances being shared between various couples in the group and with Mercedes actually leaning away from him as if to avoid the explosion she's pretty sure is about to be directed at Kurt.
"And why pray tell Lady Hummel" Santana asks through clenched teeth, "would I make something like that up?"
The boy seems unconcerned, "Maybe because you don't want us to find out who the actual father is."
"How can you even be serious right now?" Santana demands, "If that was the case, why the fuck would I make something like that up when we could just not tell you?!"
Kurt shrugs, "You have to admit it kind of hard to believe, so unless you have any proof…"
"What exactly do you expect me to do?" Santana interrupts, "Whip it out and show you? Because there's no fucking way that's going to happen."
"And Santana doesn't have to prove anything anyway." Rachel says rising from the chair she's been sitting in to stand next to the Latina, "This is one of those occasions Kurt when your opinion really doesn't matter to either me, Santana, the babies or anyone else. So believe it or not, we really don't care."
Rachel links her arm though Santana's, "Now I think we can consider today's practice over so if you'll all be kind enough to excuse us, Santana and I have some celebrating to do."
Quinn watches as the two girls collect their belongings and walk out of the room with their heads held high before she turns on her heel and glares at Kurt, "Listen to me you idiot. I also don't care what you believe or don't believe, but the same applies to you as it does to everyone else. One word, one rumor and you'll be my first stop. Do you understand me?"
This time it is Quinn who turns and slides her arm into her girlfriends, "Come on babe, I think we should go celebrate too."
Santana barely makes it half way along the corridor before she pulls Rachel into a currently empty classroom, closing the door behind them and slumping against the door with a sigh of relief. Rachel can't help but giggle.
"That's twice."
"What?" Santana asks confused.
"That's twice you've said something that tells everyone nearby something we'd decided to keep quiet about."
Santana is suddenly watching Rachel very closely, "Are you upset with me?" she asks worriedly as she steps over to the other girl and links their hands together, "I really didn't mean to do it Rach and if you're angry or upset, I'm sorry, I'm really sorry. But I was just so happy with the news I honestly didn't think…"
"It's okay San" Rachel interrupts as she pulls the Latina in for a hug, "Actually I'm proud of you. I know how scared you were, and yes" she says before Santana interrupts, "scared is the right word. I know how scared you were of the truth coming out and you've just told more people in one go than has known for all your life. And without running away."
"I'm still scared Rach. You know that tweedledum and tweedledee won't be able to keep their mouths shut no matter how much I threaten them or how much they believe me or not." Santana sighs again and hugs Rachel closer, "Everyone's going to know Rach, and what happens after that…"
"It'll be okay" Rachel assures her girlfriend, "I'll be here whatever happens and I'm sure Quinn and Britt will have your back too. Quinn looked really pissed off at Kurt earlier."
"I already couldn't have done it without you Rach." Santana encourages Rachel's chin up with a finger and leans down to press her lips against Rachel's for a moment, "When I looked in to your eyes I could see the hope in them and I knew how much it would hurt you and me if I denied the babies. It's one thing to not tell people if they don't ask, but to actively lie about it? I know you would have backed me up and would never have complained about it, but I couldn't do that." Santana reaches down with one hand and places it gently on the little bump in Rachel's stomach, "I thought about it and for a moment it would have been so easy. But I couldn't do that to them, I couldn't do that to me and most of all I couldn't do that to you."
Rachel returns Santana's kiss, "I love you so much right now San."
"I love you too Rach."
"Let's go home because your right, we should celebrate."
"And tell your Dad's" Santana reminds Rachel.
"And tell my Dad's."
And with that, Rachel takes Santana's hand and leads her out to her car.
"Dad? Daddy?"
They had parked at home and walked the few blocks to Rachel's old home. To be honest Rachel wasn't expecting her fathers to be home when she let Santana and herself into the house with the key she still kept. It was still really too early for them to be back from work yet even though she and Santana had been to Glee practice, but she called out anyway just in case they happened to be home for some reason. While there wasn't a car in the drive, the garage door was closed and locked and the alarm had set in perimeter mode, so someone could be home. It turned out they weren't.
Santana walks through to the living room and collapses onto a sofa. "So, what do we do while we're waiting for them?"
Rachel pretty much scampers over to the sofa, climbing up to straddle Santana's lap, sitting face to face with one leg on either side of the cheerleaders and her short skirt riding up enough to give Santana a view of her white cotton panties. "We could celebrate…" she suggests before bending down to press her lips against Santana's.
"Rach, I'm not about to do that here when your Dads could walk in any second."
Rachel continues pressing little kisses over Santana's face and neck, "They won't be home for ages yet."
"No Rach, not going to happen."
Rachel's hand slides under Santana's Cheerios skirt and gently cups the girl, "We could go upstairs. My old room will probably be exactly as I left it."
Santana's head lolls back onto the sofa and she closes her eyes but is unable to suppress the moan that escapes from her throat when Rachel squeezes her through her compression shorts, "Fuck Rachel!"
Which is exactly what she was about to do.
It had been a trying day at the office and right now all Hiram wanted to do was collapse onto the sofa for a while and unwind. Maybe a soak in the tub would be in order. It was his turn to make dinner but he really didn't feel like standing in front of the cooker for a while, LeRoy would be happy enough with take out this once. He closes the front door behind him while trying to remember if his husband had still been in the building when he'd left for work, because one of them had forgotten to turn on the burglar alarm.
Just as he steps into the living room he hears a thump from upstairs. He freezes and listens hard and just as he was about to write the whole thing off as his imagination he heard three more thumps in rapid succession. It sounded like it was coming from upstairs, so he visits the coat closet in the hallway and pulls out the wooden baseball bat they kept there for just these sorts of occasions and slowly climbs the stairs.
He pauses to listen again at the top of the stairs and is rewarded by a thump coming from the direction of the guest bedroom, which was odd since there wasn't much in there worth stealing. With on hand wielding the bat and the other on the door handle, he takes a steadying breath before quickly throwing the door open and stepping inside.
"Rachel!"
"Daddy!"
"Fuck!"
Hiram drops the bat almost automatically and clamps one hand over his eyes as his other searches for the door knob again, pulling the door closed behind him as he steps back out of the room.
Rachel and Santana had frozen when the door had been thrown open, their heads turned towards the noise it had made when it smacked against the wall behind it. Neither of them moves for a long moment as they stare at the door, then Rachel closes her eyes as Santana's drop to the baseball bat now lying on the floor.
"You know, this would never have happened if we'd used your room." She points out.
"There weren't any sheets on my bed." Rachel reminds the Latina.
"And you couldn't wait, yes I remember." Santana says with a grin.
"Where do you think you're going?" Rachel asks as Santana makes to climb off of her.
"Rach, your father just walked in on us." Santana says.
"I don't care. If you stop now not only will I be highly embarrassed, I'll be incredibly horny and you won't be getting any for a month."
"And if you are that horny honey" Santana says as she leans down to let her lips ghost over Rachel's ear, "Just how far through that month do you think you'd get before you were begging me to fuck you?"
But she doesn't stop and a few minutes later Rachel adds to her embarrassment by screaming Santana's name so loudly that it echo's throughout the house. At least she wasn't horny any more, for the moment at least.
"Are you okay Honey?" Rachel asks.
The girls are getting dressed after cleaning up and Santana is sitting on the edge of the bed in her spankies and sports bra turning her Cheerios top over in her hands and gazing at it with a blank expression. Rachel had been watching her, though the term leering might have been more appropriate, from where she had been standing as she had pulled on her clothes.
"Your Daddy just walked in and saw us having sex Rachel, how can I be okay?"
Rachel steps over and sits down next to Santana placing a reassuring hand on her knee. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asks.
"He saw me naked Rach, on top of you. He saw me defiling his only daughter!"
Rachel tries not to laugh since that would probably be taken the wrong way and instead settles for a little sigh. "Okay San, listen to me. Daddy already knew exactly what you do with me," she places her hand on the little bulge on her stomach, "This sort of gives it away. And it was Daddy that told me about my biological mothers cravings when she was pregnant with me, and I don't mean the food ones. He already knew we have had sex and probably assumed we still did, I mean we live together after all with no parental supervision, what teenagers wouldn't take advantage of that? So everything's going to be okay, nothing's going to change except probably you'll both be a little embarrassed around each other, but sooner or later everything will get back to normal."
"He saw me Rachel."
"Granted, I doubt any girl would be particularly happy with her girlfriend or boyfriend's father seeing her like that, but it's not really worth worrying about Santana."
"No Rach, you don't understand. He saw me… me!" Santana says gesturing towards a certain part of her body, "I've never shown that to anyone that didn't have to see it. Never!"
Suddenly Rachel understands what's worrying her girlfriend. "You have San, you showed me remember?" Santana blushes and Rachel smiles at her reaction, "And yes we might have been a little drunk at that point, or a lot drunk, but you showed me and I gave you my honest reaction at that point in time. Do you remember what I said?"
"You said I was beautiful." Santana answers after a moment.
"I told you that then and I'll tell you that now and I'll tell you that every day for the rest of our lives if it takes that for you to believe it. You are beautiful Santana, every inch of you and yes, that includes your penis. You're perfect for me as you are. You're beautiful as you are. And I don't want you to ever doubt that. If someone sees you and doesn't like what they see, that's their problem not yours."
Rachel watches Santana's reaction and can tell the other girl isn't totally convinced yet, "Look at me Santana, do you think I'm beautiful?"
"Of course you are Baby." Santana's response was instant.
"Do you think everyone thinks I'm beautiful? And be honest."
"Well their stupid if they don't." Santana says
"But they don't, very few people do and I've accepted that."
"That's not true!"
"It is San, trust me. Oh a lot of people might think I'm attractive or that I look good on a stage, but that's different. And I'm pretty sure there are people out there that would take one look at me and hate what they see, whether it's the color of my hair or the shape of my face or whatever. But their opinion doesn't matter to me, there's only one person whose opinion is important to me and I know exactly how she feels. So remember that whenever someone looks at you and might not find you attractive that there are always going to be people like that even if you were a super model. What matters is what people who love you and who you love think and I know you're beautiful."
Santana smiles and Rachel leans over to kiss her, "You shouldn't be ashamed of your body Santana. I'm not saying walk around naked to show it off or anything, but if someone happens to see you or if you want to wear a bikini or a tight dress and someone has a problem with it? Well, it's their problem, not yours. And if they treat you any different then they're not worth knowing."
"And anyway Daddy wouldn't have seen it anyway." She adds with certainty.
"How do you know?"
"Because this" Rachel slides her hand down between the cheerleader's legs to squeeze her through her spankies, "was deep inside me when the door opened, filling and stretching me like only you have ever done. So all he saw when he opened the door was your body pressed against mine. He might have seen a little bit of ass or breast, but I can assure you he's not interested in that, especially when they belong to his daughter's girlfriend."
"He wouldn't have seen anything?"
"No Honey, he wouldn't have seen anything." Rachel assures her girlfriend, "Now are you ready to go downstairs?"
Santana doesn't answer immediately, but when she does she asks "Quinn and Britt have sometimes asked if they could see it. Do you think I should show them?"
Rachel smiles back at her girlfriend, if Santana's even considering letting her best friends see her it's a step forward in accepting herself for who she is.
"That's really your decision Baby."
"Would it bother you if I did?"
"Let me ask you this, are you interested in them? Sexually I mean."
Santana shakes her head, "They've always been there for me when I had no one else. I love them like sisters and I know they feel the same way about me though we'd probably never admit it to each other, but I'm not attracted to them like that. Their just curious I guess and I suppose most people would be, but they've never pushed too hard and they've always respected it when I said no."
"In that case, no, it wouldn't bother me. But I'd want to be there if you decide to do it."
Santana nods and once she finishes getting dressed, they head downstairs to see Rachel's fathers.
Once they had cleaned up and dressed, the girls descended the stairs to find out, in Rachel's works, how sever a cardiac event her father had had. They found him on one of the sofas in the living room with his head in his hands and LeRoy standing watching him in confusion. Hiram didn't look up as they walked in.
"Hi Honey, Santana" LeRoy says as he walks over and gives first Rachel and then Santana a hug, "Just what exactly have you don't to break your father Rachel? All I can get out of him is 'I shouldn't have seen that'"
Santana can feel her face heating up, but apparently Rachel has no problem telling her father, "He walked in on us in coitus I'm afraid." She says with a small frown, "It was probably a bit of a surprise for him."
"That's an understatement." Hiram says without raising his head from his hands, "Rachel baby, not that we aren't glad to see you, but exactly what were you doing in the guest bedroom?"
Rachel's eyebrows shot up, "Having sex Daddy. I mean I know it's different between two girls and two men, but I would have thought you would have recognized that."
Hiram makes a rather strangled noise and LeRoy chuckles, "I think he got that Rachel, but I think his point was why you were in the house at all. I'm pretty sure I remember you moving out…"
"Oh we have news!" Rachel declares before turning to Santana, "Do you want to tell them baby?"
Santana had been wishing the ground would open up and swallow her up until this point, so she's happy with the change of subject and nods, "I got a call from the doctor today with my test results. I'm negative, I'm not a carrier so our babies are going to be fine." She says with a grin.
Apparently Hiram has forgotten the events of the guest bedroom because he and LeRoy are both suddenly hugging the girls in an impromptu four way hug.
"Dad, Daddy, I really need to breath now." Rachel says after a few minutes.
"I'm sorry honey" Hiram says as he wipes away a few tears that had collected at the corner of his eyes, "It's just such wonderful news. Our grand babies are going to be healthy!"
"How about we go out for dinner to celebrate?" LeRoy suggests.
Authors Footnote: So what do you think? Should Santana show Quinn and Britt? How are the Glee club going to react, and what will happen the next day at school?