"Ay, dios mio, Rachel! Would you please stop pacing! I can hardly hear myself think over the sound of your tiny stamping feet!"

Rachel stopped in her tracks at the sound of Santana's pleading voice just long enough to cross her arms over her chest and glare at her girlfriend. Normally at this hour, she would be at the theater, preparing for the night's performance - but not this night. Nor any night for the foreseeable future, it seemed, thanks to the Mayor's emergency closure of all the theaters in New York City due to the outbreak of some kind of virus or something. Rachel shook her head in annoyance, both at Santana and at her inability to remember the actual name of the virus that had caused this calamity.

"Well, I'm sorry, Santana. I don't mean to inconvenience you with my presence, now that my livelihood - no, my very life, my very reason for being - has been snatched away from me by some - some - some kind of airborne plague!"

The Latina rolled her eyes behind her glasses and put down the magazine she'd been trying (and failing) to read for the last hour. Rachel had been beside herself since the announcement had been made at City Hall, and she clearly had no idea what do besides stomp back and forth across the living room.

"Babe, you know I hate this whole virus situation as much as you do. But stomping a hole in the middle of our apartment is not going to help or change anything."

"It makes me feel better," Rachel said defiantly, huffing in annoyance. "That helps something."

"Ay, that's not what I meant. Please, Rachel, just sit down or lie down or do something, anything, but what you've been doing." Santana closed her eyes, lowered her head and pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers. She felt bad for Rachel, she really did. But if the diminutive diva didn't stop pacing and fuming, she was going to drive them both crazy. Well, crazier than they already were, anyway. Then an idea came to her, and she said brightly, "Or - or - maybe go sing in the shower? You love that."

"Four tiled walls are no substitute for an audience, Santana," Rachel replied coolly. "How many times do I have to tell you? I -"

"Need applause to live," Santana finished for her, cutting her off. "I know, I know. You've said it a billion times."

Suddenly Rachel made a bee line for the coffee table, where the pile of trashy magazines Santana had bought was scattered in a glorious mess. Santana looked at her curiously with one raised eyebrow.

"Where's my phone? I need to call the Mayor. He'll listen to me, I'm sure of it."

She rifled through the mess of magazines, trying desperately to locate her iPhone while Santana observed her with a mixture of amusement and annoyance. Of course Rachel thought the Mayor would listen to her over the small army of medical experts that had stood with him at City Hall when he'd made the announcement that Broadway would be going dark indefinitely. Why wouldn't he? After all, she was the hottest thing in musical theater. That mattered way more, right?

"Oh my God! Rachel, please. Stop!" Santana exclaimed. "You're going to mess up my quarantine reading!"

"Well, what else can I do, Santana? I'm a performer!" Rachel threw her hands up in desperation. "That's what I was born for - what I was meant to be. You know that. If I'm not performing, I...I don't know who I am. I'm not - I'm not good at anything else."

The Broadway starlet collapsed in a heap onto the couch next to her girlfriend, draping an arm over her closed eyes and moaning in despair. Santana watched her silently, biting back the kind of snarky remark that she would have made a couple of years ago, back when Rachel was a student at NYADA and Santana had moved in with her after dropping out of college at Louisville, before Rachel had been 'discovered' by a sharp-eyed talent scout and their world had changed forever. She'd seen firsthand how Rachel had blossomed once her performing career began, and as much as she hated to hear her go on and on about it, Santana had to admit it was true: Rachel really was born to be on stage. So she looked at her with soft eyes and said instead:

"Hey. That's not true. You're good - great, even - at a lot of things. You only think you aren't."

Rachel straightened up at that, turning to look at Santana in surprise. She knew that Santana loved her, but even so, compliments from her were as rare as diamonds in the sand. To hear her say something like that made her heart soar almost as much as it did when she was singing under the lights.

"You...you really mean that? You're not just saying it to make me feel better, are you?"

Santana finally closed the magazine she'd been holding open on her lap all this time and tossed it back onto the pile, heaving a sigh. Us Weekly would have to wait.

"God, Rachel," she said, rolling her eyes. "No, I'm not just saying it to make you feel better. I'm saying it because it's true." She took her lover's hands in hers, then let go of one to gesture to the large, stylishly furnished apartment they'd made their home with some of the money Rachel had earned after she'd won her first Tony Award, among a slew of other prizes. "Look at this place. What do you think it would look like if I'd decorated it?"

"Um..." Rachel thought back to their high school days, and the times she'd spent in Santana's room at the Lopez family home, affectionately nicknamed Casa de Lopez. "The walls would be painted black?"

Santana laughed. "You remember. Yes, the walls would be black, and festooned with posters of Amy Winehouse and Fleetwood Mac. But because you decorated it, we have walls that are painted in soothing earth tones, with enlarged Playbill covers and canvases and sculptures by Kurt and Blaine's art scene friends all over the place."

"Not that there's anything wrong with black paint and glow in the dark posters," Rachel volunteered. "There's room for all tastes when it comes to interior design."

Rolling her eyes, Santana shook her head at the obvious attempt to somehow make her feel better about her teenage decorating preferences. "That's...not really the point. Or - or how about the kitchen? I remember when you said you were like your dads - firmly committed to takeout. But in the years we've lived here together, you've not only taught yourself how to cook, you've actually become pretty good at it."

She chuckled at the still vivid memory of a younger Rachel trying to master the intricacies of their oven, back when they lived in a loft in Brooklyn. "Sometimes I even forget about how you almost burned the place down several times back when you were first starting out."

"Thank goodness for that building-mandated fire extinguisher training," Rachel said with a rueful laugh. "Or rather, your ability to remember it in the heat of the moment. No pun intended."

Santana groaned anyway. "Good one, short stack. The point is, you're not only good at performing. You're good at lots of things. Even some things you never thought you'd be able to do at all. Hell, you're even decent at laundry now. I'm still proud of you learning how to fold a fitted sheet. Ask Terri Schuester - that's no easy feat."

"It's really not. Finn couldn't do it either, which is one of the reasons why his term of employment at Sheets n' Things was so brief."

"I'd forgotten he worked there. Then again, he probably did too, right after he left."

"Not nice." Rachel lightly smacked her girlfriend's arm. Nonetheless, she smiled widely, and some of the light that had been in her eyes before the Mayor's edict had come down returned. "I mean, probably, but still. Not nice. You just made him frown in heaven."

"Nah. He knows I always keep it real, and I'm hilarious."

Rising from the couch, Rachel stretched her arms above her head and then went over to one of the several large storage closets their apartment featured, all of which she kept meticulously organized. Santana watched as her face took on the slightly scrunched look of determination she always wore when she was inspired to do something.

"Uh-oh. I know that look," Santana remarked. "What are you up to now, and am I going to regret whatever you're about to do later?"

"I've got an idea."

The smaller woman rummaged around in the closet for a few moments before pulling out a long, slender object that was sheathed in some kind of protective bag. "Ah!" she exclaimed triumphantly. "I knew I still had this."

"What is it?" Santana asked, genuinely curious. She turned her entire body in her seat to get a better look at whatever it was her girlfriend had pulled out of the closet.

"My old video camera. Remember all those YouTube videos I used to make?"

Santana got up to help Rachel unzip the protective bag. "How could I forget? I thought you'd stop when we graduated from high school, but you kept right on doing it all through college."

"And it's a good thing I did, because it was one of those videos that caught that talent agent's eye and brought him to the Spotlight Diner to see me."

The memory made Santana smile. It had been a stroke of unbelievable luck - but as improbable as it was, that was the moment that had turned everything around for both of them.

"Point well taken," she conceded. "But what's that got to do with now? Oh, wait." The light went on in her head, and her smile grew wider. "If the audience can't come to the theater to see you -"

"Then I'm going to come to them, through the magic of technology and the Internet," Rachel finished, nodding firmly. She peered at the small camera, mounted on its three slender legs. "Just like old times."

"Just like old times," Santana said with a chuckle. "Think there'll be room in your set for a duet with me?"

Rachel's eyes were soft as the blush that colored her cheeks as she looked up at her girlfriend. She was genuinely touched by the request. "Of course."

Sometime later, as they waited for the video to finish uploading, they stretched out on the couch with Rachel's laptop between them, waiting for the opportunity to watch the finished product along with the rest of the dormant city. Rachel gratefully accepted a glass of perfectly chilled wine from Santana without taking her focus off the screen, which was so perfectly Rachel that Santana couldn't help but roll her eyes in mock annoyance.

"Damn, we still sound great together," she proudly declared around a sip from her own glass. "If I do say so myself."

"And that was so much more satisfying than singing in the shower."

"Well, I was hoping we might do a bit of that later," Santana replied with a Cheshire cat grin. "I mean, the acoustics in there are fabulous, after all."

Rachel giggled. "You're incorrigible."

"No, I'm hilarious. Remember?"

This prompted Rachel to roll her own eyes even as she laughed once again. Then, before she could reply, the laptop beeped, signaling that the video was finally finished uploading. She clapped her hands in excitement.

"Ooh! It's done!"

"Great. I feel like we should have popped some popcorn for this."

"You know popcorn is bad for my throat," Rachel admonished gently. "All right. Are you ready to watch?"

"More like, is the whole damn city ready to watch?"

Rachel tapped the touchpad on the laptop, and the video began to play. "Let's find out."

"You know, I'm thinking maybe quarantine's...not gonna be so bad after all," Santana murmured.

"Hush! I'm about to sing Defying Gravity."

"Then again, maybe not."

"Santana!"