A.N. This is a conversion that I wrote for another fandom. The story is finished and I will probably update it here twice a week. Also, this is a love triangle book, since it's already finished it already has a ending pairing. It's up to you to guess it really. Gonna try to update The Upside Down as well.
"Everything, has changed."
New York City is five hundred percent a horrible place to be. There's no question about it. It stinks, it's hot, and there's just so many damn people.
It's one of the reasons she skipped out on going to the gym often. That, and residual laziness really.
The only reason why she was here now was because the gym in her apartment building was being "remodeled". In reality, she thinks someone finally died in there and they're cleaning up the evidence.
It was, of course, packed. It was toward the middle of the city, but it was the only one you didn't need a one hundred dollar plus membership to workout in.
Her graduate student wallet couldn't take that, but it could take planet fitness' free trial. She wasn't going to be in there long anyway.
She was only doing enough exercise to burn off about 500 calories, so she could put them back on at her bestfriend's gathering later that night.
The way she works out this should only take about three miles on the elliptical and 4 reps of the 40 pound bar. She'll be out in like an hour. Which is great, because she didn't know how much more she could take of alphas staring at her ass, and the smell. Oh God, the smell.
The ass ogling may very well be her fault. These new floral fabletics leggings just fit her too damn perfectly and she definitely should have saved them for when she could afford the expensive gym that could afford scent filters. No seriously, it stunk so bad her eyes were watering.
She aimed to get started on the elliptical, only to be hindered when the damn thing won't turn on. She presses every single button around and nothing happens.
She must be very obviously struggling because someone walks over and takes pity on her. There's a bang of machinery and then suddenly her feet are spiraling.
"Sometimes these things need a good kickstart." A soft, alpha voice says conversationally.
"Thank you. Do you work here?"
"Me? Oh, no. Just come here often enough to know that it's shit."
The soft voiced alpha woman, is absolutely gorgeous, like so gorgeous she wonders why she would even dare step foot in a place like this.
"I'm Rachel." She holds out her hand.
"Santana." The handshake is firm. Like Rachel has been doing it frequently for a while now.
"Nice to meet you, Santana." Rachel decides to get onto the machine right next to her. Something, Santana is sure, was not going to happen originally. She's flattered to say the least.
"Sorry if this seems too forward, but you're really pretty, and I was wondering if you wanted to go out sometime. I don't normally do this type of thing and I feel very weird right now, so please say yes so I can stop talking and embarrassing myself-" Rachel holds out a sleek blue business card with a bright gold star in the middle (someone used vistaprint). Santana places it back into her hand with her number scrawled onto the back. Apparently, Rachel is the type that carries business cards and pens in her gym shorts.
"I would like that, Rachel." Santana smiles, amused at Rachel's sudden change of confidence. She walked over with so much, and then suddenly it was gone. Santana found that endearing.
"Oh! That's nice. Um, I didn't think this far ahead, okay. Shit." Santana just lazily steps/pedals on the elliptical as she watches Rachel flounder.
"I'll call you later with details?" She got it!
"I'm looking forward to it."
"Great. I'm going to walk away now because my break was up like 15 minutes ago."
Santana chuckles to herself as the woman slowly walks away.
The party is in full swing by the time she gets there. She did that on purpose.
Mercedes is nowhere to be found so she takes that as her opportunity to start stuffing her face with hor d'oeuvres.
Unlike herself, Mercedes had graduated with her bachelor's in education and decided that was enough. Soon after she met her alpha, Sam, and they settled down in suburbia rather quickly.
Santana hadn't wanted just her bachelor's in education. She wanted her master's because she's a perfectionist. She's in her second year of grad school through NYU. Mercedes had told her it wasn't necessary. It was a waste of time. She wouldn't get paid more or enter in a higher position than she would have with just her bachelor's. But Santana didn't listen.
It was hard to keep up their friendship as Mercedes got deeper into it with Sam and Santana got deeper into her studies. They haven't talked nearly as much as Santana would've liked.
That's what she came here tonight to fix. Sam and Mercedes had gathered many of their closest friends for some sort of get together. Santana wasn't asking questions, she was just there for Cedes and the food.
A tap to her shoulder startles her almost enough to drop her crab puff. She turns around to face the perpetrator.
"Having fun there?" Cedes says with a concerned look. In her defense, Santana's mouth is visibly full and she looked downright capable of murder with the prospect of dropping her snack.
"Cedes" It's a bit muddled, with the full mouth and all, but the point is delivered. She hastily chews and swallows. Somehow without choking to death.
"Hello, beautiful! How have you been?" Mercedes looks a bit miffed at the fact that she has to ask that, but she's still curious.
"I'm good. School is fine. You know me." Santana just shrugs. She smiles politely as approaches behind Mercedes' shoulder.
"Hello, Sam."
"Hi, San. Do you mind if I steal this one away for a sec?" She does. She does mind a whole lot, but it doesn't seem she has much of a choice as Sam leads his omega away.
"So much for getting your best friend back." Santana mumbled to herself. She headed toward one of the beverage collections, grabbing a spring water. She opened it and took a sip.
A few seconds later, there's a tapping of metal against glass and everyone's attention is drawn toward the center of the livingroom.
"Okay, first we would like to thank everyone for coming. You're probably wondering why you're all here." Sam inquired, and the room nods along.
"Well, we have an announcement...we're pregnant!"
Santana isn't quite sure why it seems like the room is suddenly closing in on her. Maybe she ate too much too quickly, or maybe that feeling that everyone is moving so quickly without her is finally starting to really penetrate her psyche.
It's not until then that she realizes both of the happy couple's parents are here and everyone is congratulating them and she should be too, but she can't.
She needs some air.
She settles for the kitchen, it would be too hot outside, and someone would surely see her leave. There isn't anyone in there as far as she can see, so she darts into it.
"Some party, huh?"
Santana jumps so harshly, her off the shoulder blouse switches to being off the other shoulder.
The woman, an alpha if the way she's standing is anything to go by, sips lazily on a beer. She's taller than Santana herself, and vaguely familiar.
"Uh, it's okay." Santana cowers a bit under the woman's gaze. She fumbles with the cap of her water and deftly takes another sip.
"Yeah. There's going to be another Sam running around. Get right with your God while you can." A smirk slips out from behind the beer bottle.
Santana laughs a bit, "Do I know you? You seem familiar."
The woman seems to hesitate a bit before holding out her hand, "Quinn. I don't think you do know me." Santana shakes her hand happily.
"Santana."
Quinn nods, "So how do you know Thing 1 and Thing 2 in there?"
"Cedes and I went to college together. I was with her the day she met Sam actually."
"Was it love at first sight?" Quinn takes another sip of her beer.
"Not at all. We both hated him. He said something stupid. For the life of me, I can't remember what it was, but it was very stupid. But, he kept coming back and somehow he got Cedes to fall in love with him somewhere in there." Santana smiles a bit bittersweetly.
"And you?"
"Huh?"
"How do you feel about Sam?" Quinn smiles conspiratorially.
"I-it doesn't matter how I feel about Sam. he treats Cedes nice so that's enough for me. Anyway, how do you know them? Are you family?"
"Depends on who you ask."
"Oh."
There's a lull in the conversation, before Santana speaks up again.
"Do you know what time it is? I have class in the morning."
Quinn pulls out her phone, she turns the screen on revealing the time (9:48) and her phone wallpaper.
"Who's that?" Santana asks with a nod toward Quinn's phone.
Quinn hesitates again, this time it seems like she's really battling with herself.
"My daughter. Beth." And there it is. A flash of disappointment flutters across Santana's face momentarily.
"Oh. You're mated?" It was odd. Normally, you could simply tell by smell if someone was mated. Santana didn't know how to explain it, but biology was weird. Basically, Quinn didn't smell mated. Santana took a step away. If she was mated, they were probably standing a bit too close to be considered kosher.
"No." Quinn takes a step or two closer. Leaving them a bit closer than they were before. It's simple and leaves Santana with more questions than answers but she doesn't ask any of them.
Eventually, Quinn takes pity on her.
"The result of a one night stand. I thought the hangover I had to deal with the next day was the last thing I had to attribute to her, then 9 months later there's a knock on my door and baby on my doorstep. All pretty dramatic if you ask me."
Santana listened attentively as Quinn spoke. She had a feeling she didn't talk about this much to anyone.
"I wouldn't give the kid up for anything, though. She's kind of the reason why we have a roof over our head." Quinn frowned for a second before taking another sip of her beer.
Santana studied the alpha for a long moment. Then, she gasped. "That's where I recognize you from! You have a YouTube channel about parenting. They've shown a couple of your videos in my classes before." Santana mumbles the last part a bit shyly, realizing she may have been a bit too excited just then.
Quinn sighed, "Damn. I was hoping I could get away without that coming up."
"Why?"
Quinn scrunched her nose up and winced. "It's embarrassing."
"I don't think it is. From what I've seen, you're a good mother. And you're helping others. That's nothing to be embarrassed about." Santana smiles softly and touches a hand to Quinn's shoulder.
It's then that their isolation is finally broken. Sam steps into the kitchen with an odd look on his face. Quinn shrugs off Santana's hand with a roll of her eyes.
"There you are, San. Cedes was looking for you. What are you doing in here?" Sam narrows his eyes at Quinn slightly, who only shrugs and chugs the rest of her beer.
"I was just cooling down from the rager you're throwing in there." It's slightly sarcastic, and Santana isn't sure where the confidence is coming from, but it's much appreciated. She can practically feel Quinn's body loosen from its tense state Sam had caused.
"Ohhkay. Well, don't be a stranger." Sam walks back into the main room with a confused shake of the head.
"That was weird."
Quinn only nods slowly, staring down into the empty beer bottle.
"Well, um, I better head out. It was nice meeting you, Quinn. And thanks for keeping me company."
"Uh, yeah. No problem."
Santana heads for the exit, but stops suddenly, "Oh, and Quinn"
Quinn looks up from the bottle, "Yeah?"
"Beth is beautiful. She looks exactly like you." Santana turns back around without another glance. She slips out of the front door and towards her car.