XXXVIII
Santana's POV
Apparently, I had more than enough time to prepare everything for her. Her RA had been an easier sell than I had expected. She had let me into Quinn's dorm without me having to resort to bribes or flirtation. All she required was a simple explanation that I was here to surprise my friend from high school.
Now that I thought of it, the ease of my entrance was unsettling. What if I had been a psychopath? I was definitely going to have to talk to Quinn about this.
Besides running through dangerous scenarios, I was biding my time by purposefully avoiding Quinn's desk. It was certainly challenging when there was a card with my name on it resting on a large, artsy looking book. I was itching to open both of them. I had never claimed to be a patient person.
Earlier, I had gone through some of her drawers to occupy my time.
It's a thing I do.
I took a guilty step back from the desk at the distinctive click of the key turning in the door. To my frustration, the door didn't open right away.
The anticipation of seeing her after four weeks was killing me. I was bouncing on my heels, shifting my hips with the ridiculous purpose of determining what the best way to stand would be for when she opened the door.
Open the fucking door, Q.
I mentally urged her, groaning at the sound of muffled voices outside.
"I'm sorry I can't this weekend, but I'll try to make it down next week!" My beautiful girlfriend called over her shoulder as she finally opened the door to step inside.
I was beaming. Just having her there, standing a few feet away from me had me cheesing like a complete goober. I was so madly in love.
I definitely captured that moment in my mind. Candid Quinn. I took in every detail, her hint of a smile as she set down her bag, her eyes intently focused on her phone as she texted while pushing the door closed with her other hand. Her smile must have been for me, because my phone buzzed on her desk.
She glanced away from her text screen in confusion.
And then she saw me.
"Santana!" She screamed with that one in a million Quinn Fabray smile, and jumped into my arms with as much force as she did after scoring the winning touchdown at our Powderpuff game junior year. She unintentionally hiked my dress up, past the point of any hope for modesty with the movement of her legs around me.
I inhaled deeply of her vanilla and citrus, closing my eyes, holding her body tightly against mine. She sure as hell wasn't lying when she said that she was going to hug me "so hard".
But, she kissed me even harder.
She started at my neck with fervent lips, before placing her hands firmly on my shoulders to jump down from our embrace.
"God I missed you." She professed between desperate kisses.
It was like coming home.
Quinn was an expert at physically resolving my insecurities. Admittedly, communication was not a strong suit for either of us. I had spent years hiding behind bite and venom, while Quinn found it difficult to use words that she never believed herself when others used them.
So yes, I had been worried about what this distance meant for us. I had been worried if she was as committed to making this work as I was.
But her kiss, her touch, it was my ultimate form of relief.
With each nip of her teeth on my earlobe, every postponed Skype date mattered less. With each surge of her tongue into my mouth, every mile of distance between us mattered less. With each grip of her fingernails into my skin, every denial of our relationship mattered less.
When she seemed completely and utterly torn between keeping our lips in constant contact and removing her shirt, it chipped away at any doubts or fears that I may have had about how things had changed between us.
Quinn was an artist, and not just because of what she could do on a canvas. She was a fucking master when it came to me and my body.
I wasn't sure if she felt the first piece of parchment hit her cheek. Or the second, or third, or fourth. After all, they weren't the only objects we were colliding with.
But it was when she tangled her fingers in dark twine rather than dark locks that she finally made note of the change in her surroundings.
I traced her hip bone with my thumb back and forth beneath her skirt, listening to the shallow of her breath as she absorbed the new additions to her dorm room.
She grasped the individual culprit that interrupted our physical reunion. I couldn't tell you which one she was reading because my eyes were focused on puzzled hazel. I was doing everything I could to drink her in now that she was near me once again.
I watched the gentle tilt of her head to the side before she looked around. Her fingers tightened ever so slightly on the paper by my cheek, her knuckles brushing against my skin.
"What have you done?" The corners of her lips turned down as she asked.
Instead of meeting my eyes she seemed to be analyzing every point at which twine met ceiling.
Her question was unexpected. It took me more than a second to respond. She didn't seem happy, and there was nothing pleasant to the surprise in her tone.
I went on the defensive immediately.
"What have I done? What the hell do you mean by that?" I reflected her accusatory tone, and even turned it up a notch.
Her lips thinned in the way they always did when she was feeling anxious. My "surprise" was what was making her feel that way. I didn't want to believe it.
"Calm down, San. It's just, what if my roommate comes back? How did you even attach these to the ceiling?" She went on as if she didn't know how hurt I would be by her reaction.
Also, she should have really known better than to tell me to calm down.
She was fucking paranoid about her roommate coming back early and how long it would take to remove the gesture, before she even understood it.
Her response was a swift punch to the gut and then some. My vulnerabilities were outlined once again for her on parchment paper, but I hadn't realized until that moment how vulnerable I still was. At times, Quinn, and our relationship, had made me feel invincible.
I hated how fragile I suddenly felt, as if she once again had the power to make or break me.
"Calm down, calm down?! Are you kidding me? Your roommate is supposed to be gone the whole weekend. What? Do you think she's going to drive all the way back from Jersey because she forgot her favorite pen or something? Your paranoia is out of control." I tried to keep my voice low so as to not call attention of the dorms on either side of hers, but I was irritated to say the least.
God, it felt like everything lately was on her terms, and I was a little fed up with all of her fucking rules.
"You don't get it! This is my future that you're screwing with, Santana." Quinn clearly had the same thought in mind, because she was basically hissing at me instead of yelling.
This was far from the reunion that I had anticipated.
"Your future? What about our future?" I was sick and tired of everything being about Quinn's "future".
It wasn't even her future that she was laboring to protect. It was the future her family wanted her to have.
"You're being selfish and short-sighted. I would lose everything if my father found out, and my mom isn't like yours. You know that." Quinn ranted as she stormed to retrieve her shirt that had landed on the ladder for her roommate's lofted bed.
She was right. My mother was about as independent as people come, but her mother lived to please Russell Fabray.
But, she would still have me, and all of our friends. She would still have that genius fucking brain of hers, her talent, and her unrelenting ambition.
"You would not lose everything. You're being dramatic, and I'm not pushing you to come out, I'm just asking for you to loosen the fuck up a little." My voice strained with effort.
This wasn't the first time that we had argued over this, but this time, this time felt different.
We couldn't even have our arguments at full volume. I had to express myself at a level just above a passionate whisper, and it was just serving to fuel my anger.
"I'm not being dramatic. If my father caught even a whisper of us, he has all of the resources in the world to discover exactly what we are to each other. You are one huge risk for me. Stop acting like some sort of victim." She pulled her shirt over her head with such force that I was afraid her head was going to get caught in the sleeve.
As she covered the skin that I had been aching to touch for weeks, I had a brief flash of regret. Part of me wished that I would have just bit my tongue. Part of me wondered which position we would be in now, or what surface we would be on now if I had just taken down the twine and parchment without argument.
The other part of me was fighting. Logically I knew that she loved me as I did her. Logically I knew that her extreme attempts to keep us a secret had nothing to do with how much she cared for me. But, there was still something in me, a voice in my head, that reminded me that I was something of which to be ashamed.
Ever since she realized just how much Puck and Mercedes had gathered about our relationship without our confession, she had seemingly redoubled her efforts to make sure that no one else discovered our secret. It irked me that she had been more comfortable with PDA before we were an item than she was after. She used to be comfortable with me taking her hand. She let me slow dance with her at Junior Prom, but refused me for our Senior Prom. She was even conscious of the length of our hugs.
A couple months ago, she had fallen asleep with her head on my shoulder while we were having a movie marathon at Mercedes'. Tina had joined us while Quinn was sleeping, and when my girlfriend's eyes had fluttered open to ascertain Tina's presence, Quinn had basically sprinted out of the room with the excuse of getting drinks.
"Victim? You are everything to me, and I'm just your dirty little secret." I gripped the wooden post of her bed during my verbal attack.
It wasn't a whole truth. It was just that dreadful echo in the back of my mind.
I swallowed at her steely, offended expression. I knew that I had gone too far.
"You can't pretend that this is just about your dad. This is about the perfect image that you neurotically feel the compulsion to maintain. Heaven forbid that Quinn fucking Fabray is a lesbian. You can't stand the thought of people looking at you like a second class citizen." I accused her, and my stomach turned with the pained flinch of her angelic features.
"You're just like everyone else! Pushing me to do what you want. Pushing me to be who you want me to be." She reproached.
I had stepped over the line, and she was merely following suit.
The thing was, we had both done so well during the past year to stand our ground when the other person would cross the line. We were both prone to losing our tempers, but we weren't 16 anymore. We had learned how to fight without resorting to going straight for the throat.
I didn't know what she could have said to me that would have wounded me more. I wanted her to be who she wanted to be, not who I wanted her to be.
Right?
Or was I just like everyone else?
"Fuck, Quinn, you know that's not true!" I argued, and closed some of the distance between us as the sound of my blood began to pound in my ears.
"Isn't it? You want me to come out, you want me to study art, you want me to quit my sorority, you want me to drop everything to come see you, you want me to ignore my father. You're just one more person whispering in my ear, and I can't take it." She listed her examples with practiced precision, and all I could do was scowl.
"I want you to be happy." My voice weakened with this assertion, but I still wasn't entirely convinced that I had been doing anything wrong.
It was true that I wanted her to be happy. But did I just want her happiness to happen my way? I wasn't sure of that anymore.
"And who the fuck are you to tell me what is going to make me happy? These are my decisions, Santana." Quinn reminded me.
"Yeah? And what's next, Q, huh? What's the big plan for the perfect little daddy's girl? What timeline does he have for you for your proper engagement duration and your marriage to the perfect blue-blooded white man?" I mocked her with more malice than I thought I was capable of directing at her anymore.
It wasn't that I was ready for an engagement or marriage or anything like that. I just, whenever I thought of those things in passing or whatever, it was always her. My future was pretty unclear in general, but she was always a part of it.
"What are you asking me right now?" After a few deep breaths her expression had softened. My face mirrored the movement of hers.
What was I asking?
I wasn't asking her to come out, I knew that. But Quinn never spoke about what things would be like when she did. She didn't respond to me when I would talk about how great it would be to not have to spend so much energy on hiding or when I had my dorky rambling moments about going on actual dates.
During our first relationship discussion when I had asked her if she wanted a secret relationship her answer had been "For now, yes." It was an answer that promised that our hidden state would not be an indefinite one.
I had told her that I would never push her for what she wasn't ready for, and I hoped that that wasn't what I had been doing. But hell, it had been a year, and that "For now" was the only real sign that I had that things would change eventually.
"I will wait for you. But, at the very least I need to know that this is not the way you will treat me forever, and that this is not the way that you will treat yourself forever. Can you tell me that, Quinn?" Any bite from my tone had vanished. I rested one hand on her hip and the other on her cheek.
She leaned into the touch of my hand, and I took that as a good sign, despite how fast my heart was beating.
Although we had our share of disagreements on her choices, I hadn't straight up asked her if we were ever going to have a non-secret relationship. It was possibly the most important question I had ever asked her. I was hanging in the balance here.
She remained silent, her mouth did not even open to speak. In fact, she glanced away after a few moments under my gaze.
"I'm proud of you. I want to introduce you to my new friends as my girlfriend. I want to be able to stop lying to our friends. You fought for so long for me to show more of myself to other people and yet you ask me to hide a significant part of who I am." I explained, watching her slight smile at my declaration of pride. Her face darkened at the finish, however.
"You said you would wait. You promised that you understood." Her teeth gritted and she yanked my hand down from her cheek by my wrist.
"I will wait for you. I'll continue to deal with the dropped phone calls, and your insane paranoia about how platonic you sound when you speak to me while others are around. I will do all of it. Every time you take your hand from mine it cracks away at what you have helped me build behind closed doors. But you are worth it, and I love you so much that it fucking hurts. Here's the thing though, I need to know that it won't be like this forever. I need to know. Do you ever see yourself being open with me?" I implored her to answer.
It was the same question, although far more specific. This was the most important question that I had ever asked her. This was a make it or break it question.
"I don't know." Her eyes leveled with mine at her response. It was almost a whisper, but I heard it loud and clear. I also recognized the fear in her almond shaped eyes.
I stumbled back, and registered the devastatingly unfamiliar rise of water from behind my eyes. It had been almost a year since I had cried.
"Santana—" She moved to catch me as if she feared that I would fall.
She didn't realize that I already had. Her answer to my question had shoved me off a ledge. She was no longer capable of catching me.
Breathe.
I begged my body. It should be such a simple task. Breathing. It's something that we do each and every day without the need for conscious thought.
It was over. It wasn't something that I could even begin to process yet, but the truth was there.
She knew me, better than anyone else in the world, and she knew what devastated Santana looked like. I watched with distant interest as her face flashed with panic.
"Baby no. You can't. We can't be-" She was trying to wrap her arms around me.
She was fighting to keep me close. Unlike the day in the choir room, after my parents paid a visit, I wasn't pulling her back into me after pushing her away. I was just pushing.
I couldn't breathe. The weight was too great. Breath had escaped my chest and no matter how many sharp intakes of air that I tried to take, I couldn't seem to catch it. It didn't help that I had soft desperate hands reaching for my face, and a voice pleading with hot distress against my skin. Her lips made contact with my cheeks, forehead, jaw, and eyelids several times, but I was too dizzy to really absorb it.
I needed her arms around me, holding me as tightly as she could possibly muster to do. But I couldn't have that anymore. I couldn't let myself collapse into her. I couldn't do what I needed to do if I did.
I had to leave. We had to end. This had to end. I couldn't resign myself to limbo with the woman that I wanted everything with.
"I'm sorry." I gasped, and fire replaced panic as her eyes shifted from hazel to green.
I never thought I would let her go. I didn't think that it was something that I was capable of doing. She had labored to show me what I deserved. From that night in the storage room on, she had worked so fucking hard to get me to see the good in myself. She had made me feel worthy of love.
She had promised me forever, but I never thought to discuss what forever meant.
"Don't you fucking say it." She threatened.
I moved in to hug her, but it was her turn to push me away. Push and pull. I had almost forgotten this part of our dynamic. Almost.
"No. I don't want your goodbye hug." She turned her head away, and by the tremble of her upper lip I knew exactly why she did so.
I had found some semblance of breath. Even at the end we were still us. When one was losing it, the other always found strength.
"We'll be frien—" I asserted, trying yet again to reach out for her.
Fire and ice. Light and dark. Push and pull.
Was this our destiny all along?
"Friends Santana really? We don't do friends. We do hate or we do love, but we never worked as friends. How could you do this to me?" She was grimacing behind her tears now, and I knew all of her fears of abandonment were coming to fruition.
This is exactly what she had worked to convince herself not to expect all along.
She yanked an entire string of twine down with her on her crouch to the floor. At least she knew how easy they were to remove. I almost laughed bitterly at the thought.
She pointed forcefully to the door before I could make any further move to comfort her.
Who was I to comfort her, in any case? I was quickly becoming a sobbing mess myself. My face was wet and my hands were shaking. I knew that I should walk away.
"I love you." I needed her to know it. It was probably selfish to say it.
"Then don't leave." Her final plea. I was well aware of what it meant. Quinn Fabray didn't beg or plead for anyone else but me. She, like me, didn't allow others to see her break. We had been an exception for one another. In so many ways.
It broke my fucking heart.
Was it really so bad? I had found my paradise. Sure, it was only behind closed doors, but some people didn't get to experience it at all.
"I need more." And with those words, I knew it to be true.
She didn't follow me when I rushed out of her dorm room, while still doing everything I could to not make a spectacle of myself. Not that I cared in that moment, but I knew it was what Quinn would have wanted.
Each piece of parchment had possessed a reason as to why this had been the best year of my life. I had never expected for it to be over.
A/N: Where to start? This has been an incredible journey for me and I appreciate all of the support and feedback I have received as well as every single reader. I never expected anything like this when I started, and it has been such a humbling and rewarding experience.
This was the final chapter. However, I have a future fic outlined that will take place in this same alternate universe. So, although Locked In and Loving to Hate It is over, the story is not. You can author alert me or follow me on Tumblr at quasisuspect if you want to keep in the loop. Otherwise, I may come back and eventually edit this note with the name of the new fic.