Much to her own surprise, Santana doesn't pull away from Brittany. She remains there, locked in a tight embrace. Locked in something that would ordinarily make her feel so wholly trapped. But this time, it doesn't. This time, she feels like if she lets go, the entire world will collapse around her. It's a horribly vulnerable feeling, especially for someone like Santana Lopez, but she's opened herself up to this vulnerability, and now, now she has no power to escape it.

"I should go to bed." Santana murmurs, finally, into Brittany's shoulder. It's covered in the dampness of her tears, and probably her snot, and she feels heat creep to her neck.

"You should." Brittany agrees, though she makes no effort to let her go. "Do you want me to drive you home?"

"You're at work, and I've already inconvenienced you enough." She shakes her head, her body shuddering as she finally detaches herself from the embrace.

"You haven't, and you wouldn't if I brought you home."

"I came in here yelling, and taking my top off. That's hardly a normal day at the office." Santana chokes out an embarrassed laugh, and tries to fix her scrub top. "I'm going to get an Uber. It's fine."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure." She nods. "I just…need to…"

"Okay, yeah, I understand that." Brittany nods, filling in the unspoken words. "Are you here tonight?"

"I'm off. I'm going back to days on Sunday. This fucked up schedule I've been working has me losing my mind."

"Do you…want to come by my house later? Maybe we can talk some more?"

"I…" Santana shakes her head, not at Brittany, but at her thoughts. "I don't know. I just…"

"I get it." She nods. "But I'll be home all night, if you want to come by, or call, or anything."

"Okay. Thanks for…" Her words trail off, but she waves her hand around. "Yeah."

Santana goes straight home from Brittany's office. She doesn't even go back up to her own. Her doorman has an extra set of keys, she has her cellphone, there's really nothing else in there that's a necessity right now. She's too damn emotionally drained to deal with running into anyone, honestly.

When she gets up to her apartment, she pulls off her scrub top, and she stands in front of the mirror for a long time. She doesn't know what possessed her to flash Brittany. She doesn't know why she thought it was a good idea to just air all her damn dirty laundry, in an effort to keep her from having to handle her past. She really thinks she needs that brain scan. Everything she's doing is an absolute disaster.

As she stands there staring, she palms her breasts. She feels the weight of her B-cups, a C, before the first surgery, but smaller, now, in the great irony of it all. She runs her thumbs over hard scar tissue, lumping, in places. She pinches the misshapen nipple, and winces in pain. She doesn't tear her eyes away from her personal shame. She doesn't let herself forget the physical manifestation of all the insecurity that is long settled deep inside of her.

She takes a shower, and another Ambien. She pulls down the blackout shades, and she buries herself beneath the covers. She doesn't disappear, not even in her sleep. She doesn't get a reprieve from her noisy mind. She dreams, she dreams too much. The dreams taunt and mock her. The dreams bring her biggest fears to live.

When she wakes up, the sun is setting. She drags herself up out of bed, and she turns on the coffee pot. Maybe she shouldn't drink it. Maybe she should let herself sleep tonight, so her body can adjusts. Maybe she should do a lot of things, but that doesn't mean that she will.

There's no food in the house, there rarely is. She considers calling for takeout, but then she finds a lonely packet of instant oatmeal in the back of the cabinet. She microwaves it, then wrinkles her nose, when she realizes it's blueberry. She hates blueberry, but she eats it anyway.

While she does, she scrolls through the messages on her phone. She sees one from Brittany. Hey, are you at the hospital? It's from last night. She's seen her since then. Everything happened since then. She wonders if she'd send her the same kind of message tonight. She wonders why she'd even want her to. Then she remembers that Brittany told her she could come by. Why would Brittany want that? Why, immediately after remembering it, is she actually considering going?

She waits for awhile. She tries to distract herself, so she doesn't do it. Then, when she resolves to go, she tries to distract herself, so when she does, it's after Liam's bedtime. He's a cute kid, but she doesn't think she has the emotional strength to be around a toddler tonight. She wonders how Brittany does it, when she has bad days. But maybe she never does.

It seven-thirty, she starts walking. She gets halfway to Brittany's, before she realizes that she's still in sweatpants with holes, and an oversized white t-shirt. She looks unkempt, entirely. She considers turning back to go home. But she doesn't. She keeps walking, until she's standing on Brittany's front steps. Unannounced, disheveled, and all around mess. Fitting, she thinks, as she knocks, rather than rings the bell, so not to wake up a sleeping kid.

"Santana." Brittany gives a half smile. She's in her own sweatpants, but somehow, she still manages to look put together. "Hey."

"I shouldn't have come." She blurts out, burying her hands in deep cotton pockets. "Sorry."

"I'm glad you did." Her smile widens this time, and Santana squirms. "Come in."

Every time Santana sits on this couch, she decides, she feels entirely awkward. Brittany leaves her there, as she goes into the kitchen. Santana doesn't know what to do with her hands, so she picks lint from her pants. She doesn't know what to do with her mind, so she stares at the monstrous cat, cleaning himself by the fireplace. She wonders what it would be like to be a cat, to lick your genitals in public, to not feel any shame. She tries to shake off the thought of being envious of a cat, when Brittany comes back in, two beer bottles in her hand.

"Sorry, I'm all out of wine. I meant to stop on the way home today, but Liam fell asleep in the car."

"Oh…I mean, thanks for the beer. You didn't have to get me anything, I'm fine."

"I'd be a terrible hostess if I didn't." She sits down beside Santana, keeping, as Santana notices, a respectable distance.

"I don't think so." Santana shakes her head, avoiding looking in Brittany's eyes. Avoiding, mostly, having to see whatever it is that Brittany thinks about her. "I don't know why I'm here."

"That's okay." Brittany laces her fingers together in her lap, and Santana feels a knot in her stomach, unsure of how Brittany is eyeing her.

"You want to ask, don't you?"

"What? No. I don't want to ask anything you don't want to tell me."

"You're a doctor, Brittany. A plastic surgeon. If you put a baby born with their stomach outside of their body, I'd sure as hell want to ask questions about it."

"You didn't show me your breasts as a surgical patient, Santana." Brittany's tone is dry, and Santana huffs. She doesn't react well to this calm that Brittany exudes. Santana is reactionary, and when there's nothing to react to, she just comes across as raving and hysterical. Fortifying herself, she tilts back her head, and she downs half the beer in a single swallow. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

"Okay."

"You're the first person who's seen them in fifteen years." Santana murmurs. So apparently she is going to talk about it, as much as she doesn't want to.

"Oh?" Brittany takes a slow sip of her beer. She's so maddening, Santana can hardly handle it.

"When you're a freshman in college and start hooking up with a girl in your physics class, who you have a massive crush on, and she looks like she's going to vomit when you take your shirt off, it's kind of a deterrent." Santana tells her, voice flat and emotionless. "They're disgusting."

"They're scarred." Santana notices Brittany's eyes cast over to a picture of Liam, and she shakes her head.

"It's different. It's totally and completely different."

"Except that it's not."

"God! You're so frustrating!" She finishes the rest of the beer, and puts the bottle down just a little too hard on the table. "He was a baby. he didn't do anything to bring it upon himself."

"At the end of the day, a scar is a scar. It doesn't matter how you got it."

Santana closes her eyes. She takes a breath. She tries not to let herself cry, because she thinks maybe, it's the worst thing she could do. She's already proven when a mess she is. She's already cried in Brittany's arms today. She won't do it again. She can't do it again. She shouldn't have come here, she shouldn't have… Her thoughts are broken by a palm on the back of her hand, and when she opens her eyes again, she sees Brittany's, too soft, too caring. In some ways, it's worse than seeing judgement. Judgement, she can walk away from. Judgement, she's known her whole life. Judgement isn't dangerous. But this, this is. This is the most dangerous thing she's ever known.

"Not everyone thinks like that."

"You think I don't know that, Santana?" Brittany shakes her head and pitches the bridge of her nose. "But that doesn't change that I do."

"I got an infection." Santana tells her, after several minutes of silence. "My father had gone on and on about what a great surgeon his friend was, and on and on about how much money he'd spent on this gift he gave me. I wasn't an idiot, I knew I wasn't normal to be as red and tender as I was weeks later, and I knew what came out of the incision sites wasn't normal either, but I hid it."

"Santana, you don't have to—"

"I was so damn scared of him." She continues, waving off Brittany. "I figured it would somehow be my fault, so I just tried to wait for it to go away. I—"

Santana has to stop. She has to take a breath. She's too overwhelmed by this. She's been keeping all of this inside for most of her life, and yet, here she is, with this woman she's just getting to know. Here she is, getting weepy, and spilling her darkest secrets. Here she is, entirely unable to stop, no matter how hard she tries.

"My choir teacher found me passed out in the bathroom. I had a hundred-and-five fever, and the whole top half of my body was swollen."

"Spitting?"

"And deep abscesses. Even that damn doctor couldn't get through the swelling without hacking me up. I lost the implants, and half my fucking nipple on a surgery I don't know why I even wanted in the first place."

"I'm sorry." Brittany, with her hand still on top of Santana's, lets her fingers lace through the smaller ones beneath. The sensation jolts Santana, and she looks into her eyes, feeling her breath get stolen away.

"No, I'm sorry. This is the kind of shit I was talking about. The shit you don't need. I'm in my thirties, I've never been in a relationship. I hook up in bar bathrooms. I work too much. I drink too much. I'm as insecure as a thirteen year old. I take sleeping pills. I'm selfish and I'm a mess."

"You save children's lives. You play trains with my son. You lose your mind when you think people don't have the best interests of your patients at heart. You know what good coffee is. You play by the rules, because you think that's the best way to win. You're passionate about anything I've ever had a conversation with you about. You're an amazing kisser. You're the most frustrating person that I've ever met, and yet, I want to talk to you all the time. Your brilliant, you're absolutely beautiful, and the fact that you don't even realize it makes me see it even more."

"This isn't a list making competition." Santana takes her hair out, then puts it back up. She stops looking into Brittany's eyes, but she feels them anyway.

"Then let me win." Brittany leans in, brushing her nose against Santana's.

"Why?" It comes out as a squeak, overwhelmed by her presence. "Why do you want to?"

"Because the prize is you." She whispers. She doesn't take Santana's lips in her own. Santana knows, she wants her to make the decision, to take that step. But she doesn't. Not yet.

"Some prize."

"Yeah, it is some prize. I've made my choice. I think you're worth it. Now you choose. You get to decide, do you believe me?"