A/N: I'm genuinely sorry I've become such a slow updater, but it should get better once I get a normal schedule again. As an apology, I give you two chapters at once here. My dear, dear beta xxraquelita made that possible, putting up with my deadlines, answering all my confused questions about both canon and Ohio, and correcting all my errors. But dear, dear readers, thank you for all your support to keep this monster going, and enjoy this chapter! Let me know what you think.
Thursday night, Santana got back to the Hummel-Hudson house at half past ten, which she supposed was quite a bit later than any reasonable curfews for teenagers. However, she had not been able to bring herself to care more than sending off a short but carefully composed text message to Kurt: I'm at Britt's. Will get home late and ignore any eventual curfews. Don't wait up. Her thumb had hovered for a while over the send button, trying to rephrase it so she could cut the word "home" out, but gave up after a while and just sent it anyway. Kurt's reply had pinged in her inbox two minutes later. Dad says it's fine. We'll probably still be up though. Busy night. It was not until she rang the doorbell a couple of hours later, cursing herself for not thinking about the fact that she did not actually have a key to the house, that she paid any attention to what Kurt could have actually meant by that.
The front door was swung open by a Kurt that was bursting with excitement in a way Santana had only seen him do once before, when he announced that he was going to prom with Blaine.
"What's with the happy face?" she asked as she stepped into the hall and slid past him to dump her bag on the floor.
"It's not official just yet but all the votes are counted," Kurt said, almost breathless, and Santana froze for a second.
"And?" she asked, not sure what to believe.
"And it looks like I won," a grumpy voice said from the doorway to the kitchen, and Santana looked up to watch Burt step out into the hall. "Big time."
Santana let out her breath so slowly she briefly wondered if she was doing it correctly, and then suddenly her legs were moving and her arms were rising and before she knew at all what she was doing, she was wrapping her arms around a shocked soon-to-be Congressman.
Friday was crap. There was no getting around it. There were looks, which Santana did her very best to ignore with a haughty expression and pursed lips. There was Calculus, which she was normally good at but for some reason it refused to be interesting that day. There was a pool of grape slushy on the floor outside of the cafeteria which she somehow stepped in and then was constantly reminded of as her shoes made a sticky noise with every step she took.
And then there was that election for senior class president, which had almost vanished from Santana's mind, that popped right back up again as Figgins announced the results through the PA system right before lunch.
The rest of the day was a fuzzy blur of hugging Brittany, being happy for Brittany, glancing over at Kurt who was looking positively depressed, head pounding due to way too much to think about, and trying to focus in History class.
Once Santana had said goodbye to Brittany, who ran off to some kind of meeting about the presidency at Figgins' office, she fiddled open her locker and dug out her homework, closing it with a bang. She turned around to lean up against it instead and wait for Kurt. She had gotten a brief glimpse of him a couple of minutes earlier, hugging Blaine in front of his own open locker.
She sighed, inspected her fingernails, and could not help but think that she might collapse onto the floor unless she really made an effort. However, Kurt's arrival did the trick. It only took her a quick glance at him to start frowning, because there was something off. He was clutching the strap of his messenger bag too tightly again. His jaw line looked too tense and his chin was up too high. Santana knew that was what Kurt looked like when he tried to mask things, and she knew how miserable he had been looking all day, so she heaved herself up from her leaning position and folded her arms.
"Finn's at football practice, he said he had to stop by Rachel's house anyway, so he'll get a ride from someone on the team," Kurt said quickly, and Santana suspected he only said it to try and stop her from asking what was wrong.
"Don't give me that 'too proud and haughty to feel' look, Hummel. Spill."
She knew that it worked, because Kurt huffed and looked away. Santana could swear that she could see him tracing the inside of his right cheek with his tongue annoyingly.
"Don't be ridiculous," he said and started stalking towards the exit without looking her in the eyes again. "I'm fine."
It was Santana's turn to huff a little, and she stared after him for a second before she swung her backpack over her shoulder and started following him out. She kept quiet until they were outdoors in the chilly wind and she was alongside Kurt instead of right behind him.
"You really need to realize that I know you better than to think that you're 'fine' when you're clearly not," she said with a mix of snappiness and determination that she knew would catch Kurt's attention.
He actually stopped a little to look at her – not enough to completely interrupt his fast walk, but still very much noticeable – before he turned back to focus on his car at the opposite end of the parking lot.
"Okay," he said slowly without meeting her eyes, "Fine. Whatever. I'm upset."
"I'm guessing it has something to do with not winning Senior Class President?"
They reached the car and Santana could hear Kurt sigh from the other side as she rounded it to get into the passenger seat, and then heard the locks click open. They climbed in, closed the doors and fastened their seatbelts with an almost simultaneous click.
"I just congratulated Brittany on winning the election," Kurt said without reaching for the ignition. "She'll do a great job and she earned it."
He paused and pursed his lips before he continued.
"I just really wanted to win."
"I get that it sucks," Santana tried carefully. "But Kurt, it doesn't… your entire life doesn't have to depend on this."
"I realize that compared to what you're going through, I probably seem like a pitiful, spoiled brat with my problems, but I just… it was my last shot at getting into NYADA."
He turned to look at her this time, and Santana could see every muscle in his face fight away the crying that was simmering just beneath the surface.
"I have nothing to add to my application," he continued, biting his lip a little. "I didn't get anything in 'West Side Story,' I didn't get Senior Class President, I have nothing but 'member of Glee club' to put on there, and I just…"
"Oh please," Santana said and folded her arms. "You'll be fine. Okay, so you're not posing on every club photo like Rachel Berry. So what? Come up with something else to put on there!"
"Like what?" Kurt said, a bit stiffly at Santana's harsher tone, and finally turned the key to start the car and backed out of the parking lot without really looking at her.
"I don't know," Santana said and threw her arms about. "Campaign manager to your dad's campaign? The Celine Dion thing you did for Nationals with the Cheerios last year? Whatever."
She looked intensely at Kurt who, thankfully, had his eyes fixed on the road and not at her. She was not sure why she was being so forceful or why she sounded so annoyed and almost angry. She tried to sort through her emotions and thoughts quickly, just to get the greater picture, but was not sure it helped very much. All she could conclude was that she was not angry with Kurt, but that she did understand his frustration.
Kurt looked thoughtful, a bit scared, and so stubborn that Santana almost raised an eyebrow just for the heck of it, but then she realized that he was not looking her way anyway.
The reason for her pushiness hit her not so much suddenly as it did hard.
He thinks it's the end of the world when it's supposed to be the start.
"Kurt, the thing is that no matter what, you'll be fine," she heard herself say and was suddenly scared that the autopilot she had discovered the past week had taken over again. She blinked for a brief moment to be sure she was the one in control over what she was saying.
"You told me yourself that you used to tell the guys that threw you into the dumpster that one day they'd be your employees? It's true, so don't just give up. It doesn't depend on this single thing. Even if you don't get into NYADA, you'll just, I don't know, sit down and sew for a year and then launch some great, crazy collection and be an overnight fashion star."
Kurt, eyes still firmly fixed on the road, let out a little laugh at that and Santana felt a pang of accomplishment when she realized that she was getting through to him.
"You'll be fine," she finished with a wry smile, happy that Kurt was not looking at her, because she would just look smug, and all of a sudden she was rather aware that it was not her best trait.
When they stopped in front of the next traffic light, Kurt turned to her slowly and looked at her so solemnly that she almost blushed.
"You're way much nicer than you think you are," he said and Santana could not help but snort, even though she could not will the then-very-much-existent blush away.