Christmas Eve, and the emergency room at Columbia Presbyterian hospital is a disaster. At 2:13pm, Santana's pager goes off, and when she races downstairs to the doors of the pit, she finds herself in a sea of doctors. Quickly, she scans the group for Brittany, but it's Mercedes who she finds first.

"What is it?" Santana snaps, shoving her arms into the trauma gown she's given.

"Five alarm fire on one-seventeen. They're sending us twenty-nine, St. Luke's is getting the rest."

"Twenty-nine." She repeats, twisting her hands, and searching the room again for Brittany. "Fuck."

"I know. And on Christmas—"

"Sorry." Catching a glimpse of Brittany, Santana cuts her off. "I'll be right back."

Wasting no time, Santana cuts across the room. Brittany is gowned up, and giving instructions to Hayward, Lynn, and Porter. Plastics, she realizes, will be the lead on this, and she eyes her girlfriend with concern. It's Christmas, when she's already entangled in thoughts of her sister, and Santana sucks in a breath.

"Hey." Brittany finishes her instructions, and turns to Santana. "I paged Corcoran at home, and she's on her way. We've got eight kids coming in, what staff do you have?"

"Britt—"

"I'm fine." She shakes her head, cutting Santana off. "We've got a mass trauma incident, and I don't have time to deal with anything else. What kind of staff do you have."

Internally cringing at the clinical—and authoritative—way Brittany speaks, Santana quickly stiffens her spine and looks her in the eye, "I'm the only attending on. I've got Adams and Rose, boy McCarthy, and Hart."

"I want you and Rose on criticals, put Adams in charge of managing the interns on the rest."

"On it." She nods quickly. "But are you—?"

"On my way to brief cardio." She steps back. "I'm the head of plastics, Dr. Lopez, I've got work to do, and so do you."

Swallowing hard, Santana takes a step back. This isn't Brittany, her girlfriend. It's not Brittany who woke her up extra early this morning by kissing up the inside of her thighs. It's not Brittany, who tucks her son into bed and murmurs how she loves him against his forehead. It's Dr. Pierce, the head of plastic and reconstructive surgery. It's Dr. Pierce, who is in charge of running an entire mass trauma operation. It's Dr. Pierce, who will always, always put her personal qualms aside if it means saving a life. It's Dr. Pierce, and though Santana feels a little slighted by her girlfriend, she needs to check herself.

"Adams! Rose!" Santana barks, and they snap immediately to attention. "Eight peds coming in. We're gonna sort them. Adams, you're taking McCarthy and Hart and dealing with non-critical. Rose, you're with me on critical. Dr. Corcoran is on her way, but until then, we need to keep this under control."

The ambulances start to arrive, and Santana's team follows her direction. Their first two patients are minor burns, and Rose, always thinking on her feet, cordons off a section of the pit for their own makeshift pediatric burn unit, and Santana waits for things to get bad.

Until now, Santana has never really processed the smell of burnt human flesh, but suddenly, it's pervasive, and she fights the urge to vomit. She needs to separate, she knows she perfectly capable of separating, but all she can see in the face of her first critical patient, skin singed and peeling, an almost inhuman shriek coming from her throat, is Liam.

"Five year old female." The medic presents. "Firefighters pulled her out of the second floor apartment where the fire started. Lopez, the burns are in excess of fifty-percent of her body."

Bile rises in the back of her throat. She's seen necrosis. She's seen the effects of total organ failure. She's seen dying and death, more than she wishes, but this, it's something else. This, it's a particular kind of awful, the stuff of absolute nightmares.

"Parents?"

"Dad's critical, mom is—"

"Are you the doctor?" A tall woman with coal black hair runs, completely shaken, to Santana. Her arms are ambulance wrapped, and there's a sleeping infant in her arms. "We couldn't find her! It all happened so fast, and…my husband told me to take the baby out."

"I'm the doctor, ma'am." Santana shakes herself out of her trance as Rose attempts to put a fluid IV in the child.

"Please. Please save her. I…just please."

It's a lot. This isn't Santana's first mass trauma incident, but it's still a lot. They stabilize six out of the eight kids, and they lose one, Santana throwing her scrub cap on the floor when he dies before they can even get him into surgery. But this little girl hangs on. This little girl, she screams and screams, until she's sedated—Santana swears she'll hear those screams until the day she does—and finally, St. James comes from plastics to scrub in for surgery with them and for now, remove the remainder of the charred skin from her body.

She's still alive, when they wrap her in dry gauze, nearly from head to toe, waiting, hoping, that she'll still be here for skin grafts when it's time. She's still alive, when they get her into a bed, and her mother, sedated, sobs at her bedside. She's still alive, when Santana, physically and emotionally exhausted, leaves her in the care of the shift nurses, finally, and realizes that she can't even remember that little girl's name.

"Go home, Rose." Santana tells her, looking down at her filthy scrubs. "Go home."

"Okay." She squeaks, probably unsure how to handle Santana when she's like this. "Merry Christmas, Dr. Lopez."

"Yeah." Santana can't help but scoff. "Merry Christmas."

It's 2:31 in the morning, when Santana starts walking back to her office. The flickering of Christmas lights on her floor proves to be too much for Santana, and she kicks the front of the nurses' station, cursing at the pain it causes in her foot. She was supposed to leave work nine hours ago, she's deliriously tired, and emotionally, she feels incapable of processing the horrific things she saw tonight.

When she finally makes it to her office, she stops short. She's taken by surprise when she sees Brittany there, legs splayed out in front of her, her scrubs similarly covered in soot and ash and who knows what else, eyes closed, and holding a sleeping Liam tight in her arms. As Santana gets closer, Brittany's eyes open, and she watches as she sucks in as much air as she can manage.

"I didn't realize you were done." Santana murmurs.

"You had the last patient in transit. I've done all I can do tonight."

"Are you—?"

"No." Brittany shakes her head, her doctor bravado completely shattered. "Not really."

"What can I do?"

"Take me home. Please. I just want to shower this off of me, get Liam's gifts under the tree, and go to bed."

"Okay." Santana doesn't try to change her mind, doesn't try to tell her that maybe Liam's gifts can wait to go under the tree until she gets a little sleep. She doesn't argue anything that she wants. She can't. She won't.

Wordlessly, Brittany hands Santana the car keys. They're both bleary eyed as they walk to the garage, but Santana sharpens up as she gets behind the wheel. She has Liam, she has Brittany, she needs to get them home safely. Before she even has the car in gear, Brittany's hand finds hers. It grasps her tightly, everything that needs to be said between them evident in a single touch. Santana offers a weak smile, and she drives, more Christmas lights passing in a blur.

They arrive back at Brittany's house, and she lifts Liam from his car seat. Santana watches, as she breathes him in, she watches as she cradles his head against her shoulder, the pad of her thumb caressing the scarred skin of his face. She watches as she kisses his tumbled mess of dark hair, carrying him through the door Santana holds open.

"Cookies for San'na." Liam mumbles in sleep. "Cookies."

"Okay, my love." Santana hears Brittany's voice crack, remembering, she's sure, all the things they'd promised Liam they'd do, before they worked an extra nine hours. "I'll make sure I put them out for him."

"Okey." He nuzzles her neck, and promptly starts snoring again.

Brittany puts Liam to bed. Santana doesn't go in with her. Though she usually does, she can sense that Brittany needs to be alone with him right now, and she'll respect that need. Instead, Santana rips of her filthy scrubs and throws them in the hamper in the bathroom, turning on the water, hot as it goes, and stepping under the spray, letting it wash away the stench of burn cream, ash, and God knows what else.

It isn't long before the shower door opens, and Brittany climbs in, naked and shaky. Santana, not used to this, takes a big breath, before she turns and wraps her arms around her girlfriend. For her part, Brittany doesn't cry, she just holds Santana tightly. She lets herself be held, and they stand there for a long while, hot water washing over them, cleansing them of the horrors of their evening. It turned Christmas hours ago, but neither of them feel very much like it. It turned Christmas, and Santana rubs her thumb behind Brittany's ear, holding her, soothing her, loving her, because that's all she thinks she can do.

"You can go to bed, if you want." Brittany murmurs when she steps out, drying herself quickly and pulling on sweatpants and a long sleeved shirt from the Boston Marathon. "I'm sure your exhausted, and you don't have to stay up with me to do the gifts."

"I'd rather be with you." She shrugs. "I've never been Santana Claus before."

"I really love you." Brittany cracks a at that. "And I'm sorry…"

"Don't be. You were doing your job."

"I know, but you were concerned about me."

"And you did what you had to do to get through it, personally and professionally. You amaze me, Brittany Pierce."

"I'm just doing my job. As a doctor, as a mother…"

"That doesn't make you any less amazing." Santana pulls her tank top over her head, biting back a wince at how tender her chest feels after such a long day. "It probably makes you more amazing. And…I really love you too."

Together, they carry gifts from Brittany's office closet down the stairs, creeping past Liam's room. It may not have felt like Christmas when they came home, but somehow, Brittany manages to turn it on. Somehow, when Brittany puts the tree lights up, so they can work beneath them, it's like the spirit was just re-activated. The horrors of the evening are still in Santana's mind, churning around in there, but for just a moment, it's her and Brittany. For just a moment, they're making magic for their—for Brittany's son.

"I have gifts too." Santana takes a bite of the cookie Brittany offers to her—to play Santana Claus, she reminds her—and looks down a little. "I…uh, I mean, I could give them to him after Santa gifts, or…they could be Santa gifts too. Whatever you wanna do."

"You bought them, honey, it's whatever you want to do." Cocking her head to the side, Brittany gives her that adoring look.

"Well…he's your kid, so I don't want to make decisions like that."

"Consider for a second that he wasn't." Brittany starts, and Santana feels her heart, right in her throat. "If youwere making the decisions for Liam, what would you choose?"

"Britt, I—"

"It's not a trick question, I swear. I just want to know."

"I—" Santana thinks for a moment. She thinks of Liam. She thinks of herself, of how she fits into this family. She just thinks, and given how tired she is, it makes her head hurt. "I'd rather he had them from Santa. I got him gifts because I wanted him to have the things I picked, not because I wanted credit or anything."

"Alright then, Santana Claus." Brittany kisses the cookie crumbs from the corner of her mouth, stopping to look into her eyes for an instant. "Santa it is."

Going back upstairs, Santana carries the whole duffle bag she'd left in the closet a week ago. Slowly, she's been moving things into the house, so the bag was unassuming, even filled with wrapped boxes of LEGOs, Plah-Doh, new trains, and even a tiny doctor's coat, embroidered with Dr. Pierce, because she'd seen it online and absolutely couldn't resist it. Brittany smiles at her as she takes the gifts out, she smiles at her when she puts them under the tree, mixing them in with all of the gifts Brittany had bought him. She smiles, even as her lashes flutter with exhaustion. She smiles, and what Santana feels for her, she doesn't even think she can describe.

They go to bed. Liam's gifts are all nestled beneath the tree, and there's a half-drank glass of milk and half-eaten cookies on the table. Brittany has the tree lights turned off, but the ones she'd hung on the outside of the house burn brightly. It bathes the bedroom in an ethereal sort of light, and when Santana crawls into bed beside Brittany, and pulls her into her arms, that's the glow that's cast upon her. She looks like an angel, Santana thinks, white light in golden hair. She looks like an angel, and sometimes, especially given the circumstances of her day, and how she'd truly done what was best for every single person in that hospital, Santana thinks that maybe she actually is.

It seems like they've barely fallen asleep, when the sound of Liam's voice comes over the baby monitor on Brittany's side of the bed. Mashing froo then snow! he sings out, and while the sound gets smaller on the monitor, it gets louder outside the bedroom door. There's the thud of his little body against the door, and Brittany drags herself to her feet, mumbling for Santana to stay in bed.

"Mama! Mama! I waked up!

"I see that, Li." Brittany rasps, lifting him into her arms. "Good morning, my love."

"Sanna come?"

"It's a little early for Santa. We're going to get in my bed with Santana for a little while, okay? And then we'll go downstairs."

"Doccer Santana not Sanna."

"I know that." She laughs a little. "But Santana's still sleeping, and we want to go look and see what Santa brought with her, right?"

"Doccer Santana! Doccer Santana! Wake up!"

"Shhh, baby, it's very early. We're just going to have a little more of a rest, and then I promise, we'll go downstairs before Grandma and Grandpa and Maribel come, okay?" She sets him down on the bed, and he crawls up, cuddling into Santana.

"Okey, I be quiet!" He shouts in Santana's ear, and she burrows into her pillow to keep from laughing. "Doccer Santana, you seepin'?"

"Little bit, Sir." She peeks one eye up, and his face is nearly pressed to hers.

"I not seepin'."

"I see that."

"I needsa find my Tub-a-ton."

"He's right here, Li." Brittany pats the bed, and he hops up. She yawns wide, but Santana knows that she's well aware they're not going back to sleep.

"Hi, Tub-a-Ton. I's Cripsmas."

"We can get up." Santana mouths to Brittany. "If you want to…"

"Yeah? We only slept for like four hours."

Santana waves off that concern. She's definitely gotten by on far less than four hours of sleep, and it Christmas, after all. It's Christmas, and there's an excited little boy in bed with her. It's Christmas, and for the very first time in her life, that actually means something to her. She could have slept four minutes, and would have still wanted to get up, would have still wanted to see the grin on Liam's face grow bigger and bigger. This is one of those moments, those never knew she wanted moments, and she's going to take every bit of it in.

"Okay, Li, Santana says it's time for us to get up, and that I'm not allowed to be a lazy ones anymore."

"I tickle you lazy bone!" Liam giggles, diving forward and tickling Brittany's ribs. "Wake up wake up you lazy bone!"

"I think maybe you need some help, Sir." Santana winks at Brittany, and she tickles her other side. Brittany giggles, and Santana feels this urge to kiss her, just a quick peck, but a kiss, nonetheless.

"Mercy! Mercy!" She rolls over the side of the bed dramatically. "I'm up! I'm up! And now who's the lazy bones?"

"No me! No me!"

"Not me either!" Santana follows Brittany and Liam's lead, rolling over the side of the bed. "Looks like it's Lord Tubbington."

"I get you, Tub-a-Ton." Liam tries to lift him with one arm, his bad arm still not really of much use to him, despite the fact that physically, it's completely in fact.

"I'll help." Brittany scoops him up, always making Santana laugh, the way she'll cradle him like a baby. "You don't want to miss it, do you, Lord Tubbington?"

"Maybe Sanna bring you cheese. I bring you cheese if I don't."

"That's pretty nice of you." Santana ruffles his hair. "Would you bring me cheese?"

"No, you no like cheese. I bring you wontons."

"I—" She shakes her head laughing, in absolute awe, the things this child notices about her. In absolute awethat she's such a big part of his life that he knows what she likes it doesn't like. It's dumb, probably, and also a little unnecessarily intense, but still…it's a thing for her, a big one, particularly after that thing he accidentally said, that she decided she didn't need to tell Brittany about, because that a thing at all…maybe. "I'd love wontons. But maybe I'll settle for some special French toast, and some coffee this morning. What do you think?"

"Yes! Yes! Yes! You make it?"

"If Mama says yes, I'd love to make you both Christmas breakfast."

"Mama say yes! Mama say yes!"

"Hmmm." Brittany pretends to think, though her eyes sparkle when she looks at Santana. "I think Mama definitely says yes."

They go downstairs and right into the kitchen. Liam wiggles in his seat, trying to catch a glimpse of the Christmas tree in the other room, and Brittany pours a steaming cup of coffee for Santana, and then for himself. Santana feels Brittany's eyes on her back as she cooks, she feels her smile, and she thinks, she thinks so much, that maybe Brittany feels how right this is too. Maybe Brittany feels like this is how it always should have been, that there was never a universe that should have existed where they weren't having Christmas breakfast together, a wiggly little boy between them.

Once breakfast is done, and Brittany wipes syrup and sugar from his little fingers and face, he tears into the living room, gasping when he sees just what Santa has left for him. It's a sight that Santana thinks will be burned into her memory forever—the kind of memories she needs, after last night had burned too many more that she wished she never had in there. It's probably the most beautiful sight in the world, the sight of a child seeing magic for the first time, and she doesn't even bother to take a picture, she doesn't even bother trying to capture something that simply cannot be.

"Sanna camed! Sanna camed! Mama! Doccer Santana! Sanna camed! He bringin' me presents!"

"He brought you a lot of presents." Brittany chokes out, more in awe, Santana thinks, then even she can imagine. "I knew you were the best boy."

"I bee'd brave at the hopsital and I only yell sometimes! I no naughty engine, I a useful engine!"

"You're a very useful engine, love." She sits down on the floor cross legged and watches Liam spin in circles. Santana, figuring she wants the same perspective, sits beside her, and Brittany reaches over and squeezes her hand.

"I open all this presents now." Liam plops down right on Santana's lap. "You help me?"

"I'd love to help you, Sir."

So she does. Santana holds the boxes for Liam so he can get the paper off with his left hand. She helps him undo tape and plastic and twisty ties. She feels him vibrate with excitement, she hears him whoop with joy. By the time he's done, there's paper and ribbon and toys everywhere, and Brittany sits back with her camera, smiling at them like she won the lottery. There's a knock on the door, and Liam leaps to his feet, nearly tripping, before Brittany catches him.

"Gramma and Grampa! Gramma and Grampa!"

"It might be." Brittany nods, looking down at her pajamas. "Or it might be Maribel, and Santana's mama will see what we look like when we're not dressed."

"I show Maribel my p-jamas!"

While Brittany helps Liam, clad in his pajamas and doctor coat, get the door, Santana gathers up the discarded wrapping. She stacks his things up neatly beneath the tree. The hour of excitement and disarray was wonderful, but she can't help her base instinct to clean up and make the room presentable for company. The fact that they're still in their pajamas is enough of a deviation from her norm—as a child, she was all dressed in velvet and white tights, her hair pulled and poked and pinned, before she could even look at the tree—so she'll straighten up a little, at the very least.

"Mija."

Maribel enters the room, just as Santana is shoving the last of the wrapping into a big black garbage bag. Santana can smell her perfume, still Caleche, always Caleche, and there's not a wrinkle in her skirt or blouse, even after driving all the way from Westchester. It amazes Santana, still, how the most classy woman she's ever seen managed to give birth to her, who somehow wrinkles her scrubs walking from her office to the operating room, to her, who is prone to angry fits and expresses too much emotion. Even in the midst of her divorce Maribel Lopez was pure class, and thought it something she thinks she should probably envy, Santana doesn't. She loves her mother, that's for certain, but she doesn't want to be her.

"Morning, Ma." She ties the bag and sets it down, the goes to hug her mother. "Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas to you too. This really is such a lovely place. Have you finished moving in yet?"

"Doccer Santana!" Liam runs into the room, a box tucked under his arm. "I needs help! I got anover one!"

"Another one?" She scoops him up with one arm, laughing. "Liam, where are we gonna put all these presents?"

"Mary-bell gaved me this! We needa keep it."

"And Maribel gave us this." Brittany comes in, bottle of expensive champagne and two crystal glasses in hand. "We're saving it for the first night you live here-live here."

"As opposed to just regular live here." Santana gives a playful roll of her eyes. "Thanks Ma, you didn't have to get us a gift."

Maribel waves Santana off, watching Liam squirm uncomfortably in her arms, "I think someone's ready to open."

"Yes! Okey! I ready, Mary-bell!"

"Here, buddy, why don't we let my mom help? Seems only fair, since she brought you the gift, right?"

"Yes! She here, not like Sanna."

Maribel finds a chair to sit in, and much like he'd done to Santana an hour and a half earlier, Liam sits down on Maribel's lap. She's gentle with him, so gentle, and Santana feels pang in her chest. It's not a what could have been pang, as she would have expected, given how different her mother's interaction with her girlfriend's son is than what it had been with her, but one of what might still be. In spite of herself, Santana's eyes drift upward to the Christmas tree. She doesn't mean to, but her eyes catch sight of that figurine Brittany had hung toward the top, the woman with a swollen belly. She glows in the tree lights, and Santana sucks in a breath.

"Hey." Brittany wraps her arms around Santana's waist from behind, making her jump a little as she shakes off her completely insane thoughts. "Sorry, did I scare you?"

"Little bit. Lack of sleep, I guess…"

"I know." She hums into her ear. "I could honestly go up to bed and sleep until tomorrow."

"I was thinking about starting another pot of coffee in a few minutes…or, another pot of coffee every few minutes until bedtime."

"Is it wrong that I'm considering letting my son go full free for all on the sugar so he crashes early?"

"As a pediatric medical professional, I'd say uh, yeah. But as the other exhausted adult in this house, I say get me the Pixie Stix."

"I'm sure my father will have them in his pocket." Brittany snorts, and Santana tilts her head up to look in her eyes. "Hey."

"Hi."

"You okay this morning?"

"I am." She nods, pressing her chin against the top of Santana's head. "I'm usually so good at separating work from my personal life, but last night after I got Li, I just kind of snapped."

"For good reason. None of us were prepared for that."

"Except that I was." Brittany shakes her head. "I've been on both sides of it. But I'm okay now. You're okay, Liam's okay."

"We're okay." Santana repeats.

"We're okay, and it's Christmas. I couldn't have asked for a better Christmas morning than having my two favorite people in bed with me. I don't want to wake up without you another day."

"Brittany." Her voice is barely a whisper, and she swallows hard at the sincerity in her voice.

"I want—"

"Mama! Mama, Mama, Mama!" Liam's excited shouts break them from their moment, and they turn to him, standing in a Percy bathrobe, layered over his doctor coat, grasping two new engines in his hand. "Mary-bell buyed me this!"

"Well it's a good thing you stayed in your PJs then, isn't it? Now you have a bathrobe!"

"No. This is a coat." He crosses his arms over his chest, and looks at Brittany very authoritatively.

"It's a bathrobe, my love. Like I have, and like Santana has."

"No." He repeats, looking at Maribel for confirmation. "This is a coat."

"It's…" Santana watches her mother as he squeezes Liam's weak right hand. Gentle, again, so gentle. "It's more like an inside coat, niño. A coat for you pajamas."

"I wear it in the hopsital? For sleepin' time?"

"I…" She looks to Brittany for approval, and she nods. "That sounds like a very good place to wear it. Just not outside. You wouldn't want Percy getting all dirty."

"No! He a clean engine!"

It continues to amaze Santana, the way her mother is with Liam. It amazes her too, the way she interacts with Whitney and Pierce, when they arrive. It actually allows her to relax, to sink back onto the couch with Brittany, to let Liam snuggle between them. It allows her, truly, to feel like all of the pieces of her life are coming together, and though she's loved her mother for her whole life, there's something new today, some grownup sort of respect for her, some sense of gratitude that she can't put into words.

After dinner, and cleaning up, everyone leaves. The Pierces go back to their hotel for the night, and Maribel goes back to Westchester. It makes Santana a little sad, thinking of her mother alone on Christmas night, but Maribel waves off her concerns, telling her she's going right to bed anyway. It makes Santana a little sad, because her father is a terrible human being, and her mother deserved better than the years of her life she put into him and their marriage. Her mother deserved better than being someone's puppet, and being forced to compromise herself for an insecure and emotionally abusive man. Her mother deserved more than she got, and so did Santana. They deserved this relationship, the one that they've spent the last few years cultivating. They deserved the chance to feel like they were worth something, and they deserved it thirty years ago, not just now.

But Santana won't be bitter. She's learned so much from Brittany about how to let go of the past. She's learned that all she can do is live each moment she has, and live it without regret. So she goes upstairs with her girlfriend and Liam. She takes off the dress and pantyhose that she'd put on for dinner. She washes the makeup from her face, and she changes into a clean set of pajamas. She brushes her teeth, and when she comes out of the bathroom, Liam is passed out like a starfish in the center of Brittany's bed.

"Well, someone was tired." She quips, tying up her hair and taking a pair of socks from the top drawer.

"I think at least two someones." Brittany stifles a yawn, which, in turn, passes to Santana, who can't hold it in. "Or three."

"Definitely three."

"Do you mind if he sleeps with us tonight?"

Santana shakes her head. There are so many things she considers saying; I never mind that, or I really like waking up with both of you in the morning or please don't ever ask me that again, I feel as comfortable with your son in my bed than without, but she doesn't say any of them. She just shakes her head. That's enough, she thinks. That's enough for Brittany to understand.

Santana watches as Brittany shifts Liam so he's not taking up the entire bed. She smiles at the way he curls his knees into his chest and murmurs about his "coats" in his sleep. She smiles at Brittany kissing his dark hair. She smiles, and she realized that maybe she's smiled more today than she's ever smiled in her life. Last night was rough, it was horrific, but the gratitude she feels today, for her mother, for her girlfriend, for the little boy she gets to love, it's a happiness like she's never felt.

She crawls into bed beside Brittany and Liam, and she props her head up on her hand. Brittany looks at her, that way she does, and she turns to the nightstand beside her bed. She opens the drawer, and she takes out a box. For a brief instant, Santana loses her breath. For a brief instant, she thinks…until her brain processes the shape of the box, until she realizes that it's not what she thought—hoped? No, that can't be. She's not ready for that. She couldn't possibly be hoping for something like that. Not any more than she could possibly be imagining that a dark haired Christmas tree ornament could be her.

"I know we said no gifts—" Brittany starts.

"Brittany."

"Wait, hear me out. We said no gifts, I know, I really do, but you've been giving me a gift every single day—"

"No, Britt, seriously."

"No, Santana, I'm serious. Just think of it not as a gift from me—"

"As you hold a black velvet box in your hand?"

"It's not a Christmas gift."

"Well it's Christmas, and it's a gift, and you're giving it to me. It's pretty much impossible for me to see it as anything but that."

"Would you rather I wait until tomorrow?"

"I didn't get you anything…" Santana whispers, embarrassed.

"But you did. You gave me this. You gave me Christmas where I didn't feel so unbearably sad. You gave me yourself, as a rock. Even last night, when I was in full work-mode and keeping it together, it was you. You're so much more special than you know. You're so much more important than you know, and I wanted to remind you of that, every single day."

"I'm just me."

"I've told you before, you being you is all that I want. You being you is everything that I need. It's not a ring." Brittany shakes her head, holding up the box, and Santana refrains from saying that she's already figured that out. Mostly, because she feels a lump in her throat, and she probably forgot how to use English words, but also, because she doesn't want Brittany to stop talking. Not now, not ever. "It's not a ring. It's not that I didn't think about it thought, trust me, I just didn't want to freak you out. But a promise…it's a promise that I'm going to love you infinitely. It's a promise that I will buy you one, but not on Christmas, and not until you tell me that it's something that you want."

I do. Santana's mind screams. It's crazy and irrational and probably way too soon, but if there was a ring in that box, I'd say yes in a second.

"I love you. I've loved before, but never like this, Santana. Never in this way that makes me see the rest of eternity. I've never loved anyone the way that I loved you, and I just want you to know that."

"I do." Santana gasps for air, taking the box with shaking hands, and opening it to reveal a tiny gold symbol. A twisted reminder of that infinity Brittany speaks of, a reminder that will lay at the base of her throat, and tell her that she is loved. "Britt."

"Santana." Brittany reaches over, placing her hand on top of Santana's.

"I love you like that too." She breathes, looking into Brittany's eyes, looking down at the sleeping child between them. "I didn't get—"

"I don't want anything. Not anything but this, knowing that you'll always be mine."