xoxo- I admit I did a little dance over your review, it kind of looked like Brittany's dinosaur dance in the prom episode actually. I was just really happy that Santana's motivations were understood. I don't think I could continue this if people thought she was 'evil' rather than 'fragile.' Santana has hurt me, but I don't really understand why people retaliate against their loved ones and deliberately try to make them look bad in front of others. It lacks logic to me, and speaking of logic, I'm glad you liked Brittany's logic being actually awesome. I wish they did that on the show more too!
Puff614 – Love this quote from you! "Santana will realize that she needs Brittany not just to make her feel innocent again, but because she really does care about her, and that caring is ok" because I think that's a big part of Santana's own 'road to becoming unicorn' because both Santana and Brittany have their own path they need to take in this story to become better people. I'm glad you liked it. :)
Taeblancaxoxo – Thanks for reading and I'm glad Tomas didn't put you off too much! I'd love it if Mrs Pierce would change her opinion of Santana, but unfortunately she remains narrow minded and judgmental to this day. Unlike the rest of the characters no growth really happens with her, so she won't appear much in later chapters.
I have lots of alerts and favorites now :) I just wanted to say as well, that I hope the fact that this is a real life story isn't putting people off from reviewing. None of the people in it know I'm doing this, so it's just me and I won't be offended if people have opinions about things the characters do. I don't have anyone I can talk about these events with irl and this might not make much sense but I really want to hear what you think because my brain isn't… 'typical' and it's hard to know if there's something I should have done that a more typical brain would have thought of, or if what I've done is the right thing.
Chapter 8 – On Vaginas and Understandings.
Brittany S. Pierce, Present.
I've always liked being on my own. If I couldn't be with Santana, then my own company seemed a pretty good second best.
Lord Tubbington and I are similar in that way. When I'm not around, it's not like he'll hang out with Katie and my parents, he'd rather stay under my bed by himself. It's kind of like how I preferred to hide in one of the janitors closets all day when Santana wasn't at school. Sometimes, even when I am around, Lord Tubbington just wants to be near me rather than to be held. I think all cats have Asperger's syndrome.
Santana hated being on her own, even for a second. As we grew older, this only seemed to get worse.
She craved any sort of attention, good or bad. I don't know if she even knew the difference. She would substitute sexual attention for love and intimacy and use how other people treated her to define who she was. My brain is unable to really know how other people see me, but this became the most important thing to Santana. It became even more important to her than I was. I'd be here all day if I tried to tell you about all her conquests to stay on top of the Cheerio pyramid (both literally and figuratively). If people thought she was special, feared her, wanted her, wanted to be her – then she could feel okay about herself for a while. But it never could last. Like an addict she'd be back throwing herself at people as I watched her wondering why I could never complete her like I used to, and like she still did for me.
Brittany S. Pierce, age 14-15.
Brittany liked being on the Cheerio's, and Santana had been right about persuasion in numbers to get them on the squad. At tryouts, Coach Sue Sylvester had no defense against the three of them, an unholy trinity hell-bent on getting on the squad. After their audition, Quinn had fluttered her eyelashes and persuaded and Santana had backed her up with sass and force. Brittany had just confused the woman with a hit of her random logic which may have actually been the most helpful of all, as it stunned Sue into silence and probably kept her from formulating any more arguments against having them on the squad. Had they auditioned alone, they knew they probably wouldn't have all made it, but as a group they had been unstoppable. The first time Quinn and Santana had put the uniform on, to them it had felt like success. Brittany was just glad she had a uniform and didn't have to think of what to wear anymore.
Santana was vague when she finally told Brittany about what happened with Tomas. Brittany didn't react much to the news except to try and be positive about it, thinking that Santana would want her to be impressed. Santana could tell Brittany was trying to be supportive, though she wasn't sure if Brittany even understood all of what she meant, especially when she asked Santana, "Where did you go down… to? The mall?"
If she was honest with herself, Santana was as confused as Brittany about what had happened. In their own separate ways, they were both trying to make sense of it, as if something like this had a way of making sense at all.
Santana was even more vague with Quinn, preferring to allude to a mysterious guy she was pleasuring beyond any proper identifiable scale, and letting her decide for herself.
"It's too hot for me to even talk about Quinn, and you should stop asking me afore's you break out in a sticky hot sweat and rust that chastity belt of yours."
Unlike Santana's mother, Judy Fabray had cared about the previous Dalton dance incident and Quinn had been given serious consequences, including being thrown into their high school Celibacy Club. Judy even made a large donation to the school every six months to make sure the club was properly funded and maintained with guest speakers coming in to talk about why abstinence was always best. Of course, part of the deal was that Quinn had to remain president of the club for all terms that she remained at Mckinley.
Quinn, held by the bounds of Celibacy Club, couldn't say she had gone as far as Santana yet, but she had been developing a steady reputation of being a real tease, flirting with everyone but letting them know they couldn't have her. Santana's reputation as being 'the easy one' in contrast, began to snowball, especially since Jacob Ben Israel who had a notorious gossip blog and an equally notorious wild imagination, had taken to predicting what 'pleasuring beyond any identifiable scale' could mean very seriously.
Rumors spread quickly, and to Santana and it didn't matter that people were looking at her differently, it mattered to her more that they were looking at her at all, and she enjoyed every minute of it. There were definitely perks to being in the spotlight.
Frustrated by Brittany's lack of sexual knowledge and obvious lack of understanding about what Santana was painfully trying to tell her about Tomas, Santana had realized that she had to give Brittany the full sex talk. She was certain of it after Brittany pointed out several 'raccoons' in the cinema watching a romantic comedy with them, freaking out the cleaner who thought he had to call animal control. 'The Talk' came complete with a recap and quiz questions at the end. Brittany was so full of information about hard-on's and ejaculation and the like, that she was overwhelmed and tended to overflow with it and answer any old question with the answers to Santana's quiz.
In History class, Mrs Mack had called on Brittany in class, and had asked her who the president is, and Brittany had answered "vaginas."
Other times, she'd answer questions with "mating." For reasons unknown to Santana, she seemed stuck on that term. After announcing the capital city of West Virginia was Mount Vagina in their Geography lesson, Mr Fitzgerald had promptly sent her to Principal Figgin's office as it wasn't her first offense answering a question in this manner. It wasn't even her second, third or fourth.
The one thing Santana couldn't convince Brittany of was that babies didn't come from the cabbage patch, or from storks like in the old Roadrunner cartoons. Apparently it all depended on whether you had a vegtable garden or not.
"But you told me yourself San, they come from cabbages, like in Peter Rabbits garden!" Brittany said, visibly getting upset.
"I know Brittany, but I was just a kid then."
In Santana's opinion, that was just another frustrating thing about Brittany. Once someone said one thing to her she found it hard to overwrite it with a new thing. Stuff from her childhood would get stuck in her mind and be her guide as to the way things were. Half of her information about the world came from cartoons she'd watched even up to ten years ago. Santana knew that this was part of her disorder, she knew that Brittany's brain would always have a resistance to change and that wasn't her fault.
It was just that change was so important to Santana now. Everything was about getting ahead and being on top and that meant updating yourself with the times like Madonna had done all her life. Your clothes couldn't be last season, you couldn't speak retro unless retro was in and music was frequently being outlawed at McKinley High for becoming lame, even if it had only been released this year.
All the current trends may have gone over Brittany's head, but Santana's strange behavior didn't. Brittany started to feel like she was waiting in a queue to spend time with her. She had to wait for Quinn to not be around, and she had to wait for the drooling guys in school to leave them alone. Sometimes, she had to wait for Santana to come back to herself. It was like she got stuck on another setting and even after everyone left, Santana would still be bragging and showing off like she was a whole other person.
Brittany just wanted 'her Santana' back. It was a lot harder to 'fix' Santana when she got stuck than it was for the repair man to fix the settings back to normal on their washing machine at home. Santana didn't even seem to want to be fixed.
Santana wasn't sure what she really wanted. She was starting to feel like every day she drifted further away from Brittany who was stuck fast in the same place year after year. For a while, drifting had sort of felt like she was moving away from a warm bright light into cold darkness but after a while she turned all those feelings off assuming that this was just what growing up felt like.
It wasn't the safe and comfortable world of childhood Brittany still lived in but that was as it should be. Santana figured she wasn't supposed to feel good anymore now that they were older, it was about being successful and popular and achieving. Adults or even teenagers obviously don't get to be happy as well as being successful. She had to bury herself in adult things now, things which would get her noticed. Things, which would distract her from what was going on at home.
Things like, 'the list'.
The list was started by Santana at cheer camp. Quinn, the protégé, was in a private room with Coach Sue and some of the seniors. It was an honor, but she hated it as Sue made her slap herself with anything handy at any given moment, just for her own amusement.
Lindsay, Rhonda, Maggie and Leah, four girls who were all currently in favor with Santana, were all lying on the floor in their shared cabin, exhausted from a full day of boot camp routines. Brittany was sitting on the floor with Lord Tubbington, fascinated by a spinning toy with a ball inside that he'd probably stolen from the camp leader's owner's Maine Coone.
To everyone's annoyance she had insisted on bringing her cat with her, insisting he could give them advice on the tick tock cheer leading stunt move they were trying to pull off by the end of the week. It was a dangerous move for beginners but then again, Coach Sue didn't care about little things like that. Santana watched the two out of the corner of her eye as they spun the toy around continuously, Lord T with his over sized paw, and Brittany with her long slender fingers. Santana wondered which, cat or girl, would get sick of the game first. She bet on Lord Tubbington.
Everyone longed for the free time at the end of the day which almost always turned into gossip sessions, except Brittany. She hated them because so many people crowded into her space and talked about things she didn't really understand. On the first night, Santana had scolded her for not being friendly enough.
"Brittany, you could have at least pretended that you were interested in Rhonda's story about sneaking into the boys cabin!" Santana said.
"Why? They aren't going to like me anyway," Brittany sighed, "and besides, Rhombus isn't a ninja like me. You know they all saw her."
Santana had giggled in spite of herself. Rhonda was even taller than Brittany and nowhere near as stealthy and quick. She also walked with a bit of a gangly stoop on an angle, much like the aforementioned shape, and yes, she was impossible to miss.
It was the third night of camp now and news had begin to slow to the point where everyone was getting restless. Brittany was hanging upside-down from one of the top bunks, dangling her arms down and swinging them backwards and forwards. Santana took the lull as an excellent opportunity to move the focus to herself and called everyone over. Brittany shook her head when Santana gestured for her. She was humming the Purple People Eater song and didn't want to stop until she had finished.
Ten minutes later, when the purple creature had finally joined the Rock and Roll band and the song was over, Brittany surveyed the group from upside down. She could tell something big was going on. Everyone in their cabin were speaking in hushed excited voices. Lord Tubbington had gone to raid everyone's bags for snacks so he was no help and couldn't be sent in the circle on a recon mission. Brittany would have to do it herself, so she slid down to the floor and inched her way closer to the group, army style.
Everyone was poring over a page full of names written in a special order down the page. It looked like a long list of girls in their year at Mckinely High. Santana's name was at the top. There were many names missing, names of girls considered too unpopular to mention. That hobbit, Berry, was one of them. Nobody cared what girls like her did. Of course, all members of the Cheerio's were present.
Santana explained to Brittany later that the person on top of the list was the person who had gone the 'furtherest' sexually and she was going to make damn sure that her name stayed at the top. She knew she could ignore comments like slut and whore so long as she had the whole squad and then some looking at her in awe. Nobody had actually gone all the way yet and Santana was relieved. That was one problem she didn't have to deal with yet.
The second problem was of course, Brittany. She was the only one who hadn't even kissed somebody yet. Santana took a deep breath. She needed to get Brittany included in this somehow and she needed to protect her. If this kept up, Brittany was only a step away from a slushie facial and that was unacceptable. Brittany would freak out, the coldness of the ice would get to her sensitive skin and Santana just couldn't deal with people laughing at Brittany when she'd inevitably start screaming.
Years ago now, Santana had vowed to protect Brittany and she wasn't going back on that now. She'd been doing it for years and had done it well, but she was slipping, she needed to stop Quinn rolling her eyes at her and she needed to get people talking to her at camp instead of pretending she wasn't there.
"Um… you guys," Santana started, "there's a person here that has almost been as sexy as me." She wanted to protect Brittany, but she wasn't going to give up the top spot on the list for it.
The girls were immediately intrigued, "Who?" they asked in hushed whispers looking around at each other."
Santana jerked her thumb at her friend crawling on the floor, "Brittany."
"What?" they all said together a look of shared disbelief on their faces.
"Yeah," Santana nodded, "It's just, she's super cools about it. Like she don't even care."
"Wow," the girls said all turning their heads in Brittany's direction.
Looking up at them from the floor, Brittany saw the attention was on her and immediately felt uncomfortable. She hoped they'd stop staring soon.
"Hey Britts," Santana said, "it is true isn't it? You're way prommie in this list aren't you?"
Immediately realizing her mistake, she begged Brittany with her eyes to say yes, even though it was pointless. Brittany would never notice her expression and if she did she would never lie.
"Vaginas," Brittany said, her answer to everything lately.
Santana grinned triumphantly. Yeah, that answer would do.
"How come the boys from school don't talk about it?" Leah asked, "She's not just you know, going with losers to rack up the tally is she?"
"No way," Santana assured her, "she's into boys from other school's mostly, but the dudes she's been with at our school don't wanna say anything because…um… I threatened them not to 'cause I don't wanna face it but she's serious competition for me. I bet she might even have a perfect record of having made out with every guy in our grade by senior." Santana hoped they wouldn't notice that she'd just lied through her teeth, as she slotted Brittany's name into second place on the list.
It worked, the girls all suddenly looked at Brittany with new appreciation and for the rest of the week and beyond, they made an effort to include her. Even better, Quinn name was near the bottom. Santana was finally on top. She felt like a god.
The next day, Brittany felt almost like a god too. The list, which was now displayed for all to see in their cabin, had somehow made girls come up to her and be friendly and ask her advice about their 'problems' between cheer routines.
Some girl with really long hair from their math class was even talking to her right now.
Brittany remembered her, and mentally mapped out how many seats she usually sat away from her. She never forgot anyone who called her a retard, and she could hear still the girl's laughter in her head that cackled from her mouth every time Brittany tried to answer a question in class.
How was I supposed to know that x did not actually have to just equal 'just x' and could in fact equal y or some other letter, Brittany thought, trying to break out of her literal way of thinking.
She figured this girl had to be a lot closer to actual retardation than she was, because she'd just asked her about the 'best kind of panties to get you feeling totally hot' as if it was the most important thing to know in the world. She couldn't understand how having that knowledge could be important to this girl, but Brittany assumed she was probably talking about comparing the brands of the thick woolen thermal kind that Brittany would never wear herself even in winter because they were way too scratchy. It wasn't like she'd even tested any of them out let alone all of them, so how could she know?
Brittany wrinkled her nose and told the truth, "I don't ever wear those, sorry." Being popular is so overrated, she thought.
Santana was alarmed and mistakenly thought Brittany had suddenly given up on wearing underwear cold turkey and made a mental note to do something about that ASAP, urging Brittany to make sure she 'sat like a lady' in the meantime. The girl however, had been delighted, and interpreted Brittany's answer as the best way to tease a guy was to go without any, and she had ran off giggling.
Brittany's popularity suddenly soared. She wondered if she was popular enough to start a Unicorn Club, just like she'd read about in the Sweet Valley High series. She liked that idea a lot, and she knew that it would probably make Santana happy if she could get along with more people.
On the last night, everyone went to bed early, having exhausted all possible avenues of gossip. Brittany lay in bed looking at the ceiling. She'd barely slept all week, it was too hard not being in her own bed, and it was so dark. There were no glow in the dark stars on this ceiling. Santana lay underneath her in the bottom bunk, reading by torchlight, her reading glasses perched on her nose. Brittany knew Santana must think everyone was asleep or she wouldn't have pulled her glasses out. She didn't know why Santana was so embarrassed by them, she thought they made her look smart and looking smart was a really good thing. Brittany tossed and turned, drifting in and out of sleep. She could hear Rhonda's gentle snores and Leah talking in a deep sleep talking about the Herkie jump.
Brittany felt a presence and opened her eyes slowly to see Santana face leaning over hers, appearing to be studying her with a strange and almost alien expression. Her eyes were bright and her features were lit up by a small sliver of light coming through a crack in the blinds on the other side of the room. Brittany briefly wondered if she was dreaming, everything about Santana seemed so surreal. Her presence seemed to flicker eerily in and out, at times making eye contact with Brittany, then seeming to be lost inside herself. Brittany wondered where Santana's mind had gone and what she was thinking about. It made Brittany forget where she was as well. Instead of being in the top bunk in the dark, they could have been transported elsewhere, like a strange abduction. For all Brittany knew, they could be now floating aimlessly in space.
"Will you be president of my unicorn club?" Brittany asked, figuring she wouldn't respond if she wasn't real.
Santana immediately shushed her, pressing her hand over her mouth, careful to make sure Brittany could still breathe through her nose. She left her hand there for moments longer than necessary, staring at Brittany as if she was in a trance. Brittany stared back at her, equally transfixed. The only thing Brittany could see was Santana's face. Her eyes wandered to the blackness around them, and then quickly back to Santana. She hoped Santana would stay in the light. She wasn't bothered by the darkness as long as she could see Santana. That was kind of how she felt about her life as well, if she considered everything she didn't understand to be like darkness.
Santana finally moved her hand from Brittany's mouth and began tracing up her cheek.
Brittany broke the silence. "In the books the Unicorn club always looked out for each other. I just want to be treasurer and look after the treasure. That just means I'm in charge of taking care of valuables, like you are?" she whispered barely audibly.
Santana's nails began lightly grazing down her neck. It was a place Brittany hadn't been touched before. She felt all the panic warning signs, it always felt like standing on the shore and being faced with a powerful wave that was about to crash into her and having nowhere to run. She didn't know why she fought through them because she would have pushed anyone else away. But not Santana. As Brittany's heart rate accelerated, she wondered why. Why is it that I want Santana to touch me and not other people? she thought trying to keep her palms from sweating and her body from shaking.
Santana frowned, responding to what she'd actually said out loud. "How do you figure that I'm valuable?"
"Well," Brittany breathed, "Puck said you're swag and booty. That's other words for treasure right?"
Santana exhaled a soft breathy laugh. "No, he said I had swag. It's like stupid slang for having style or some shit. And booty is like, your ass."
"You're not plunder?"
"No." Santana shushed her again and began drawing patterns on her stomach, creeping as high and low up and down in the space as she dared.
Brittany closed her eyes and lay back, determined to stay in the moment without having her brain completely cut out and blank itself out like it usually did when she was overwhelmed by something.
Santana rounded the corner of her ribs again and Brittany mumbled something.
"Hmm?" Santana whispered.
"Can I keep you anyway?" Brittany asked, her eyes big and brighter than ever, like orbs illuminated in the darkness.
Santana's heart beat fast in her chest, almost as fast as she could feel Brittany's heart beating under her hands. It was hard to understand the twists and turns of Brittany's brain and remember where they'd started, but in her own way, Brittany was asking if she'd be hers so she could take care of Santana, in her mind, treasurer as to treasure. It was sweet and it moved Santana. She explored Brittany's hipbones. She felt either not completely altogether here, or more present than she'd been in a long time. She wasn't sure which. As if her hand had a mind of its own, it was suddenly moving lower. Santana felt overpowered by a need, that she realized wasn't a superficial one of gaining power, it came directly from her, or what was left of the real her. Her movements became hurried and frantic dragging her nails across her, her face ghostly, in a reverie of desire that she'd kept hidden for too long.
Santana chanced a little lower and felt the skin under her hand suddenly shudder and Brittany's hips bucked as she stifled a scream. Santana clapped her hand over Brittany's mouth again, but Brittany wouldn't be silenced. "What was that?" she asked, "did you feel that?"
"No." Santana said too quickly, the moment broken. But before she could stop herself she had asked, "Did it feel good?"
Brittany nodded. "Yeah," she said breathlessly, "does this have something to do with that stuff you told me about va…"
"No," Santana turned away, torn.
"Do girls ever do that stuff with other girls?"
Santana's face was pained as she stared into Brittany's innocent trusting face which suddenly got a lot brighter when Rhonda hefted herself up and shone a torchlight directly on her. Brittany covered her face and curled into herself, hating the bright light as Santana tried to quickly pull Brittany's pajama top down.
"What were you guys doing?" Rhonda asked suspiciously, "I heard this really weird noise."
"Nothing," Santana said forcefully.
"Brittany?" Rhonda asked, knowing quite well that she didn't lie about anything, and had thus far had owned up to all of the pranks she and Lord Tubbington had played even before they'd been caught.
Santana looked hard at her. This was it. This was the moment that she was going to lose the entire reputation she'd built up. The parties would be over and so were people making way for them in the halls at Mckinley. It would be slushie facials for them both now. Santana held her breath, ready to run, though she didn't know where she would go.
"It was alien," Brittany said suddenly, looking at the ceiling as if a UFO had come down, "It was like someone I've never seen before doing things I've never had happen to me. I liked being probed, but I think I entered another planet."
Rhonda sighed. "Well, could you keep your next abduction quiet? Some of us like sleeping, you know."
Santana's eyes widened. Brittany hadn't exactly told a lie. She'd specifically left out the word 'an' literally only saying it was 'strange' rather than 'extraterrestrial' but she'd used language relating to aliens for the rest of it to deceive Rhonda without deceiving her. Brittany was a genius. An honest literal one, but still a genius.
"If anyone else asks tomorrow, tell them the same thing okay?" Santana asked, slipping back to her own bed, though she knew she wouldn't sleep.
Brittany nodded. She wasn't sure on the details so she wondered if she and Santana had mated. The thought of it filled her with a strange excitement though she didn't know why.
After she got home and did some research, Brittany discovered that girls really could like other girls. Boys could like other boys too. It was called being gay, which Brittany thought was a great word to call it, because she was happiest when she was with Santana. She also read about the fact that some people were afraid of people being gay and they thought it was wrong. Brittany wondered if they were talking about Rhonda and her mom or if they meant more people still.
Brittany didn't really care. Society and its social didn't mean much to her. Unless something was brought to her attention, she remained unaware of how the majority of people lived their lives anyway. She'd been told that she often came of as stupid or rude, but at the same time the good part was that she was open to just about everything and danced to the beat of her own drum.
If everyone joined the Unicorn Club, then everyone would never be afraid to be themselves, Brittany decided. That was the main rule of being unicorn, you had to know and love yourself. And, if all the unicorns wanted to align themselves to a sexuality whether it was with boys or with vaginas, then, in Brittany's eyes, that was okay. She would make them tags showing what kind of unicorn they were. To love yourself was to be a uni-corn, to love just one sex must be a homosex-icorn or a lesb-icorn and to love both must be to be a bi-corn.
The treasurer of the Unicorn club was the most important job of all because all people were treasure, but especially Santana.
Brittany wasn't exactly sure if she loved herself, she'd never considered it. The only thing she was sure that she loved was Santana. So did that make her a Santan-icorn?
Was she even anything else?
Being at camp had done a lot to bring Santana and Brittany closer again, and they were once again holding pinkies as they walked to class, swinging their hands between them.
As happy as Santana was with Brittany at school, it couldn't take away the fact that Santana was in her own private hell at home.
She began to admit to herself that she wasn't as happy as she pretended to be about Tomas's arrangement, she wouldn't have minded it as much had it just been the one time, but he kept asking for it. Anytime she looked like she might start to refuse he just smiled at her and said that he could tell their parents.
He wasn't worried about Craig finding out, but Santana was scared to death about what Maria would do. Every time he came into her room, she never said no. As much as she wanted to say no, she just grit her teeth, leaned down and tried to keep liking the way he looked at her, although after a few weeks, it was almost like he was smirking at her as she looked up at him. She may have never said no, but she never said yes either. Was this supposed to be what love was about? She began staying up and leaning against her door at night until she was sure Tomas had gone to sleep. She wished she could tell Brittany everything, but mostly she wanted to pretend it wasn't happening and that she couldn't feel anything. She didn't think there was a way out. There never seemed to be a way out of things that hurt her, and she'd always just had to act like she didn't mind.
Her whole life, both her mom and her dad had excused various things they did by saying "You understand, right Santana?"
They said it when they couldn't turn up at Santana's kindergarten graduation and she was the only kid there all alone.
They said it when she wanted a doll for her birthday and all she got was dumb sneakers and not even cool ones.
They said it when she was sick and nobody stayed home with her.
They said it when her dad left.
They said it when her mom left to spend the night with her boyfriend every night of the week leaving Santana with only TV dinners.
"You understand right, Santana?"
When she allowed herself to feel, she only felt anger, because it was an emotion that tended to multiply and breed, drowning all the others in its swell. Her mother and Craig continuously got on her nerves, and it was hard to sleep at night with all the noise they made when they were home. Santana was long past these sounds frightening her, but when she was little she had lay awake in the night, wondering if her mother was being hurt by whichever boyfriend of the time was staying over. Now, Santana was just over it and she wanted them all gone. It wasn't like they were a family when they were here anyway.
All Santana's feelings seemed almost like they were suffocating her, like she could barely breathe when she was at home.
She wanted to just bury the pain, yet she didn't know how. Instead, she always ended up doing the very thing she'd sworn she wouldn't do, and it always ended up in an extra tick for Santana's name at the top of 'the list,' and with her failing Brittany somehow. She hated herself for that.
Brittany and Santana had spent today's Spanish lesson together, sitting outside the room practicing their adjectives under a tree. Mr Schuester only came out occasionally to check on them and the other pairs.
Santana was leaning on Brittany's shoulder and Brittany had circled her arms around the smaller girl and was holding up their flashcards in front so they could read off them and practice saying the words, not that Santana needed any practice.
Sitting under that tree, Santana had felt a sense of peace and contentedness that she hadn't felt in a long time and suddenly she wanted to tell Brittany everything, but she couldn't find the words. She turned her head and focused on Brittany's blue eyes and started telling her what had happened in Spanish, finding that it came easier that way.
"…y sólo quiero detener esto. Sólo quiero desaparecer."
Brittany stared at the flashcards in her hands and wrinkled her nose in confusion, wondering what Santana was saying. None of it was written on the cards. When Santana got to the parts that were hard to talk about, her voice dropped to a whisper and her hands shook.
Brittany dropped the flashcards and took Santana's hands. Unlike the 'alien invasion', this situation wasn't unfamiliar to her at all. She was so used to being in a situation where it was like people were speaking in a language that she didn't know, so when Santana actually did switch languages like this, it almost barely made a difference. She was so used to not knowing how to communicate with the people around her, that not knowing the right words back in the correct tongue felt like how life was for her all the time anyway.
She watched Santana's face, listening to her talk. The rest of the world was confusing but she had memorized Santana by heart. She knew that when Santana's voice got low and scratchy like it was right now, that meant she was trying not to cry. She had memorized most of Santana's expressions. She saw many of them often, and others so rare, sometimes only when they were alone. She knew that when her eyes would enlarge and then narrow slightly, and her eyebrows came closer together with her lips slightly parted, that meant she was confused at something Brittany had said. She had a special expression for Rachel Berry which came with an exaggerated eye roll. The higher Santana put her nose in the air and and when she rolled her eyes at others, the more defensive she was feeling and that usually meant someone had put her down at home. When her forehead wrinkled and her mouth tightened into a thin line Brittany knew that she had to hug her and get her away from everyone quickly because she was just about to burst into tears. She wasn't at that point now, but she was close.
Brittany also knew that Santana had many smiles and not all of them were nice because some of them came after insults. There was one smile though, that Brittany only saw when they were alone. It was a slow kind of smile and her eyes seemed to soften impossibly. Brittany had first seen it the day they met, the first time they had linked their pinkies together. She knew it was a special smile and she knew it was only for her, and it always had been.
Brittany had heard that people were all supposed to have the same expressions when they felt stuff like happiness sadness, anger or shock like when they felt surprised. Yet that couldn't be true, because Santana was the only one that she could really see.
She studied Santana now, the expression on her face was the same look she got when Maria accused her of wrecking the latest of her relationships.
Three boyfriends before Craig, Maria had been dating a lawyer, and when he'd left her Maria had glared at her daughter telling her that she needed to quit the bad language, up her grades and stop getting so many letters home from Principal Figgins because obviously nobody wanted a daughter in law who was trouble. The look on Santana's face then had been pure shame and it was the same now. She was still whispering but the words weren't coming as fast now.
Brittany wanted to find ways to tell Santana that she cared. She had spent many hours silently holding Santana and saying nothing.
Now she wanted to use words, but it was like she didn't have a voice.
She had found recently that she could borrow other people's voices and use quotes from movies or songs, but as much as she meant every word of what she was saying, sometimes the fact it was a quote worked against her and made her sound insincere. She wished she knew what to say to the dark-haired girl. She tried anyway, doing her best to look in Santana's direction, going as close as she could to meeting her eyes before she spoke.
"I've seen the best and the worst of you. And I understand with perfect clarity exactly what you are: you're a hell of a woman."
Santana stopped whispering and looked at her through her lashes coated with unshed tears. "Isn't that from Buffy?"
Brittany nodded. In the show when Spike had said that, he had told Buffy how much he cared, and it had cheered Buffy up and given her strength. But, in spite of them being good words, they didn't seem to work on Santana, so feeling defeated Brittany went back to silence.
A couple minutes later she tried again and decided this time to tell Santana how she felt without words, so she pulled Santana closer so that she was half in her lap and wound her arms tighter around her. Santana gratefully leaned her head on her shoulder, curling her body into her as close as she dared.
Santana always felt so privileged because she knew that Brittany would have pushed anyone else in the same position away. Santana could feel her friends heart beating faster and her breathing becoming slightly erratic as her body overreacted to their close proximity, but it wasn't panic anymore. She knew Brittany was okay, and as long as Brittany was holding her like this she felt okay too.
The next weekend, Tomas had a friend over. Maria and Craig were home and over dinner they had spent the entire meal praising Tomas's straight A's in school.
Ben, Tomas's friend was wearing that same smirk Santana saw so often on Tomas's face. Santana didn't know yet that Tomas had crudely filled him in on how far she had gone with him already. Tomas had told Ben in private that Santana was easy and he could share her if he wanted.
Santana had sat in the den with Ben playing video games for about an hour, while Tomas was in the other room constantly texting someone. She was feeling good. Ben was pretty cool and she was enjoying kicking his ass at this old game, Tekken 2.
When Tomas finally came in, she said goodnight to Ben, and went up to her room. She didn't lock the door. Her parents were close by and she figured Tomas would be playing Tekken with his friend for at least another two hours anyway so she wouldn't even see him tonight.
She decided to just call it a night. She switched off the lights and burrowed down under the blankets. It was cold, and she pressed her feet together trying to warm up, hoping that sleep would overcome her soon.
She heard gentle footsteps outside her room. When they paused she guessed it was her mother checking she was asleep. She squeezed her eyes tighter not wanting her mom to think she was awake and to yell at her for something or other.
The footsteps resumed and came closer until Santana felt the bed shift, a spot next to her sinking with someone's weight.
She figured it was Tomas.
She closed her eyes tighter hoping he would leave.
He didn't.
Eventually she spoke softly, "Please Tomas, not tonight. I just want to sleep." It was the first time she'd been direct about saying no.
"I'm not Tomas," the voice said back.
"Ben?"
"Yeah."
He got up from her bed and closed the door exactly as Tomas had done the first time he ever came into her room.
Then he told her to be quiet, because her mom was down the hall.
"You'll be special," he whispered to her, "the first of your friends, probably. You'll be the only one to have had this experience and it doesn't even matter because you've done stuff anyway. It's best to just get the rest done. You understand that, right Santana?"
Yeah, Santana knew she understood.
He dimmed the lava lamp by her bed that she kept on because secretly she was still just a little scared of the dark. And it happened. Quickly, unemotionlessly, and with fumbling hands and without words, Santana lost her virginity.
She stared at Brittany's glow in the dark hearts on the ceiling and counted them. One. Two. Three. Four. She slowed down.
She cried out when she got to thirteen. It hurt more than she thought it would. She lay back again staring at the hearts. Brittany had been trying to arrange them in the shape of a duck. As hard as she had tried over the years, she could never see the duck even though Brittany insisted it was there.
Maybe she had just never tried hard enough. Ducks have bills right? Where could it be? Webbed feet, where were the webbed feet? THERE!
Santana gasped. She saw it. It was kind of odd shaped, but it was cute and Brittany had made it just for her to look at before she went to sleep.
Ben took her gasp as an indication that she enjoyed it. Without looking back he slid off her and he was gone.
Santana had never felt more alone in her life. She reached her hands in the air and traced the shape of the duck in the air. Once. Twice. It gave her little comfort. All the lights were off in the house now and all was quiet. It was the kind of silence that was deafening because of how much meaning it held. This kind of silence meant that she had just given away a part of herself and nobody cared. Nobody was here whispering to her that they loved her, nobody was here making their side of the bed creak with their weight, there was no steady breathing sounds beside her. She was abandoned, used, dirty, a slut.
I have to get out of this bed, she thought and jumped out of it as if it was on fire. It wasn't good enough. She needed something.
Anything.
I have to get out of this house.
Before she knew even what she was doing, she had slipped outside and was running in the darkness to Brittany's house. She didn't even care what Mrs Pierce would say. She didn't stop for a second, she kept running all the way there, puffing heavily, the sounds echoing into the stillness of the night.
Three things:
1. I have now finished with Santana + Boy scenes. Thank god. Any other times I can just mention now, rather than follow her and have it be an actual scene. They had to be in it though, because if you asked her the question "What events in your life make you, you?" she would have said the one with "Tomas" in the last chapter and this one with "Ben" for sure.
2. "The list" is not the same as "the Glist" mentioned on the show, we're nowhere near that timeline yet. In my head, years later when she was feeling desperate Quinn copied Santana's idea, hoping for the same rise in popularity and that's where the Glist on the show came from. I think a lot of people in the real world make lists like that, not just my "Santana."
3. Vaginas. That is all.
Oh, and I consider everyone who reads this story as part of the Unicorn club. :)
Let me know what you think!