It had only been a few days since Santana had moved into the loft with Kurt and Rachel, but she was already noticing some discouraging things about the small diva with the big voice. For one thing, she wasn't eating very much. A girl her size, Santana figured, probably doesn't eat a whole lot anyway, but Rachel was hardly eating anything at all. A cup of yogurt here, a bit of fruit there - that was pretty much it.
More disturbingly, the chatty Rachel she had known in high school was almost completely absent. When she wasn't doing homework, she was mostly staring out the window at the Brooklyn skyline and sighing loudly. Where were the new friends she'd thought Rachel would be making at NYADA? Where were the members of the Barbra Society or whatever weird extra-curricular clubs she'd been sure Rachel would have joined?
This was concerning, to say the least. She wanted to discuss it with Kurt, but unlike Rachel, the slightly built boy she'd known in high school had grown into a shockingly tall young man, with a coterie of admirers he'd assembled around himself with barely any effort at all. He was always out with several people, it seemed, going to parties, meeting even more people, expanding his social circle and his horizons, while Rachel was…just sitting around and – doing what, exactly?
Missing her old life back in Lima?
Santana found that hard to believe. For as long as she'd known Rachel, the smaller girl had talked about practically nothing other than getting out of Lima, moving to New York, and taking first Broadway, and then the rest of the entertainment world, by storm. Santana had secretly been very taken with Rachel's energy, her confidence, her absolute belief in what she saw as a destiny written in the stars.
This Rachel, the one currently sitting in her chair by the window and staring out the window yet again, absently humming an aimless tune (when she wasn't sighing out loud), resembled that one only physically. She had the same long, luxurious dark hair, the same wide chocolate brown eyes, the same full, pillow-like lips…but the fire, the focus, the sheer will, all the things that made up the animating force of the Rachel who had led the McKinley High glee club to the National Championship three times in four years - winning twice - were missing.
As she watched Rachel playing with the ends of her hair while she followed the lazy ascent of birds wheeling around the New York City sky, it suddenly hit her.
"You know, since I've been here, I've noticed a change in you," she said from where she stood in the kitchen area of the spacious loft they shared. "And I don't like it."
Rachel started at the sound of Santana's voice, as though she hadn't been aware of the other girl's presence.
"What do you mean?" she asked, shifting in her chair to face Santana. "I haven't changed. The setting and the circumstances of my life have changed, but I most certainly have not."
"Yes, you have." Santana shook her head 'no' to emphasize her point. "I've been watching you, Rachel, and you're definitely not the same now as you were back home."
A weary sigh passed through pursed lips. Rachel turned back to the window, defiantly. "I don't know what you're talking about, Santana."
"You've changed. You hardly talk at all, I don't hear you sing nearly as much or as loudly as I thought I would, and I hear you walking around the loft sometimes at night when you think Kurt and I are asleep."
"So I may have developed a touch of insomnia recently," Rachel replied with a shrug. "It's happened before. It will pass, Santana. Nothing to worry about."
"Look, short stack. I know you, and I know when you're lying." Santana walked over to the couch and sat down so that she could be closer to Rachel when she revealed her suspected reason for the other girl's troubling behavior. "Something's up with you, and I think I know what it is."
"Oh, really?" Rachel scoffed. "So tell me - what's your diagnosis, Dr. Phil?"
Santana let out a short bark of laughter at the riposte. It reminded her of the feisty girl she'd known back home. "Good one, tiny. But it's not Dr. Phil talking here - it's Auntie Tana. And one thing your Auntie learned from her long, if unsuccessful, relationship with Brittany S. Pierce is how to read people. How to tell what they're feeling, and what's behind those feelings."
Rachel turned slowly to face her, an unspoken question written in the expression on her face. It was all there, plain as day, despite her adamant denials.
"You're lonely."
The tiny diva scrunched her face up in disgust, like she'd just eaten something really sour, and Santana instantly knew that another denial was coming.
"What? Don't be ridiculous, Santana. That - that's simply not true."
"Yes, it is. You're lonely. Look, I get it. New York is...it's a really big city, Rachel. It's easy to feel small here, smaller than you ever felt in Lima."
Rachel turned away, faced the window once more. Santana saw the sadness in the eyes reflected there, the memories of times gone by that haunted her, and her heart clenched with pain.
"I'm not lonely, Santana - I'm…I'm simply adjusting to things, that's all. You know, new, unfamiliar surroundings, all that. It hasn't been as easy as I thought it would be."
"I get that. I even understand it," Santana said, nodding. "You wanna know why?"
Silence filled the room as Santana waited for a reply that, surprisingly, didn't come. Now it was her turn to let out a long, wistful sigh.
"Because I'm lonely too." She rose from the couch to place her hands on Rachel's shoulders, giving them a slight squeeze. "So…let's be lonely together."
"Wait, what? What does that even mean, Santana?" Rachel's voice was soft, but filled with frustration. "You say that you know how I feel, but do you? Do you really? You just got here. I've been here for two months." Tears pooled in her eyes, threatened to fall. "Let's face it, I'm…I'm just not good with people. I'm terrible at making friends. You remember what it was like for me when the glee club was first starting, right?"
"I do," Santana said evenly, disguising the pain and guilt she felt over the things she had said and done to Rachel back then. "But things changed for you. And they can change for you again."
"Why?" Rachel cried, collapsing into the other girl's arms, sobbing into her blouse, wetting her shoulder with tears. "What's different? I meant what I said, Santana - I'm still the same hopeless person I was back home in Lima." She sniffled, the words coming out as jagged and broken as she felt. "People here don't get me, any more than they did there."
Santana stroked Rachel's hair, made soothing shushing sounds as the smaller girl struggled to compose herself. She felt Rachel's body tremble with the effort to stifle her tears and reclaim her dignity. In the past, she hadn't always known what to say to comfort and console a friend who was hurting. That was something she'd learned in her time with the glee club. The compassion and empathy that had been extended to her when she'd faced dark and difficult times had changed her forever. In fact, Rachel had been one of the first to console her in those moments.
Now it was time to return the favor.
"The difference, estrella, is that now, you have me," she said, stepping away so that she could place a finger beneath Rachel's chin and raise the other girl's eyes to meet her own. "The difference is that I'm here, and I'm not going to let you fall into a chasm of self-pity like you did back in the bad old days."
Rachel stared up at her, wondering what she meant. There was real hope in her eyes now, the first hope Santana had seen since she'd been there. Hope, and a question about what "being lonely together" might possibly mean.
It wasn't the moment she used to imagine, when she'd thought about what it might be like to kiss Rachel, but she'd be damned if now didn't feel like the exact right moment.
She took Rachel's face in her hands and lightly grazed the other girl's lips with her own. Gently, tentatively, letting Rachel know that if this wasn't what she wanted, she could back away now, no harm, no foul. But the smaller girl surged upwards to connect their lips firmly, forcefully, with all the strength she had in her lithe little body.
They stood there like that for a while, not talking, not even moving, just kissing and kissing and kissing until their lungs burned for air and their bodies burned for other things. But there would be time for those other things. Right now, Rachel was weary and hungry and in need of sustenance.
"Santana, I -" Suddenly Rachel felt shy, wanting to ask so many things of the girl holding her in her arms, refusing to let her fall. "How did you know I wanted to…?"
The taller girl chuckled, knowing what Rachel was trying and failing to ask. "I knew because I've been wanting to do it too. I've wanted to do it for a while now, in fact. Since before Britt and I broke up, even."
"Is that why you left school in Kentucky and came up here? Because you had feelings for me?"
"I left school in Kentucky because I hated it there." Santana made a face to illustrate just how much she'd hated school there. Rachel laughed. "I came up here because I was lonely there, and I knew that you and Kurt would welcome me. But okay, yes, my feelings for you were part of it too."
She took Rachel's hand and led her back to the kitchen, where the smaller girl sat at the little table while Santana poked her head inside the refrigerator to see if there was anything inside that she could cook for them. She frowned, sighing, at the emptiness she found there. Then she brightened, realizing that meant she could take Rachel out for dinner instead.
"Get your coat," she commanded, closing the refrigerator door. "Im'a take my girl out for dinner."
Rachel's normally wide eyes grew wider still. "Your girl? You mean, we're - we're going out on a date? But, Santana, I'm a mess. Look at me! My eyes are probably all red and puffy from crying, I'm in a sweatshirt and jeans. I couldn't possibly -"
"No buts. You look beautiful, as far as I'm concerned, and I'll fight anyone who says differently. So come on, get moving." Santana made shooing motions with her hands. "Up with you. We've got two months' worth of lost time to make up for, and I wants us to get started now."
"And they used to call me bossy," Rachel laughed as she ran into her bedroom to get her coat and purse.
"That's because you were," Santana shot back. "But that's okay. Real talk? I kinda liked it. But I can be bossy too, short stack. You'll find out later just how bossy I can be."
Rachel's loud giggles were all the answer she could muster to that.
