Hi! I'm so sorry but if you follow Of Dolphins, Disney, and Best Friends, I'm discontinuing it in favor of this fanfic. I'm sorry but I have zero ideas for that one. Anyway, this is a kind of sad chapter. It's also REALLY long so be ready.

WARNING: Mild Mercedes bashing.

Chapter 3:

"I cannot believe you got a boob job." Kurt said, adding the finishing touches to the neon pink nail polish he was painting on Santana's toes.

"Yes, I know, you've been saying that forever. My translation, an hour since I showed up in this joint," the Latina replied, rolling her eyes at Kurt's stupid antics.

It was a week before their junior year at William McKinley High School started and this sleepover they were having was the first time they'd seen each other all summer. The lack of contact was due to Santana's cheerleading camp and Kurt's ever busy schedule of writing biography musicals for actors and actresses that no one had heard of, working at his dad's shop (he was really an awesome grease monkey), and shopping. It was originally for him, Brittany, Santana, and Mercedes but Mercedes was sick and Brittany had a family thing. Kurt wished the girls could've made it but he was relived and glad that he wouldn't have to deal with Brittany's 'specialness' and Santana and Mercedes constantly going at each other's throats.

Santana's 'summer surgery', as she called it, had shocked him when he first saw her and he was sure he was still in shock or else he'd be completely flipping out at the idiot in front of him for doing something so entirely stupid.

"What's so bad about it anyway? I look good now and every boy in school is going to want a piece of this. Except you of course," she said and he shot her a look. The Cheerio watched Kurt get out yet another color of nail polish. He was painting each nail a different color. It looked as if he was painting a rainbow on her feet.

Kurt shrugged at the question and concentrated on putting a fresh coat of paint on her big toe. "No, you looked good before. I may be gay but I know beauty when I see it and you were beautiful. Now you just look like any other stupid high school girl that needs to change their own bodies to feel good about themselves. I just can't believe you think that little of yourself," he said.

Santana eyes flashed dangerously and she pulled her feet away from his nail polish brush. "What now I'm not allowed to act like an average girl?"

"No, you're not," Kurt said simply.

"Why the hell not? That's not really up to you, is it?"

"You're right," the boy said, "but you're not allowed to act like you're a normal teen because that's all you'd be doing, acting. You're not a normal teen. You're better than all the other girls here, you're better than that. You're better than Lima. You're going to get out of here."

"I know that. This isn't about thinking I'm not worth anything; this is because I wanted to look hot."

Kurt sighed and gave her a sympathetic smile, the kind that she couldn't stand. She could take anger or sadness but she drew the line at sympathy. She didn't need people feeling sorry for her.

"Think about it," Kurt said, putting away the bright blue nail polish in Santana's bag, "If you weren't ashamed of yourself, you would say you got a boob job instead of talking about your 'summer surgery'." He said adding air quotes around the last two words.

Santana rolled her eyes and scoffed. "What do you want me to say? That I regret it? It's too late now and I'm not getting another surgery to fix it."

Kurt didn't respond to that, he instead got up and walked over to his desk. He opened a drawer and dug through it a little before taking out a picture and walking back to his bed. (A/N This is totally random and I apologize, but where is Kurt's bed in his old room anyway!)

He showed the picture to Santana. She recognized it of course. It was from nationals and it was of Santana, Brittany, and Kurt. They all had their Cheerios uniforms on and Santana was in the middle with Kurt and Brittany on either side. They all had their arms around each others' shoulders. They were all grinning from ear to ear.

"Look at this picture," Kurt said softly, "you look different but do you know how?"

Santana shrugged. She tried to only notice the lack of chest that she now had but she knew Kurt meant something else.

"I know and I think you do too. You were happy with yourself, you carried yourself differently because you weren't ashamed of anything. You hadn't done anything to change the beautiful person you were and still are," he said gently, pressing the picture into her slightly shaking hands.

Sometimes she really hated Kurt. Hated the way he knew exactly how you felt. The way he could get into your head. She didn't realize she was crying until Kurt was offering her a Kleenex.

"You're right," she said, sniffing into a Kleenex, "I don't even know why I did it. I asked my parents and I thought I'd look all cool because I begged for a boob job but they wouldn't let me. It wasn't in my plan for them to really say yes. I told them about how much better I'll look and all the benefits but looking back I think I was just persuading myself. I was just telling myself everything, trying to convince myself it was the right thing to do. I'm sorry I'm such a disappointment."

She broke down completely then, sniffed and letting out broken sobs. Kurt quickly reached over and put his hands on her shoulders. "Look at me," he commanded. She looked up at him through her red and puffy eyes. "You are not a disappointment. Don't think that for a minute. You made a mistake, we all do. Don't be so hard on yourself. And I'm sorry, too."

Santana's eyebrows furrowed together. "What do you have to be sorry for?" she choked out.

"Don't do that with your eyebrows honey, you'll get worry lines," Kurt said, going back to fashionable, always thinking about looking good Kurt. He touched her forehead ever so slightly as if trying to smooth out the small creases. He then sighed and continued. "Well, I'm sorry you got that surgery. I'm sorry your parents let you get the surgery. I'm sorry you feel like you need to change yourself. And most of all, I'm sorry you didn't call me so I could talk you out of getting that surgery."

Santana didn't know what to say so the pair sat in silence although it wasn't awkward.

"Why is it that whenever I'm around you I end up crying?" Santana asked, showing Kurt a small smile.

"I don't know, I guess I just have that effect on people," he said and Santana laughed.

"You do realize that Sue's gonna be pissed at me. She's constantly preaching about not changing your body to please other people," Santana said.

Kurt snorted. "That's rich coming from her. Last year she told Mercedes that she had to lose ten pounds in a week or she'd get kicked off the cheerios."

Santana looked at him curiously. "Is that why she asked me and Britt how we stay so thin?" she asked.

Kurt nodded. "I treated her like she was nothing. I apologized but I still feel so guilty."

"I wouldn't," Santana said and Kurt looked at her in confusion and a bit of anger.

"Aretha is what you call a possessive friend. You're better off without her."

Kurt frowned. He shook his head and sighed. Santana had a point. Mercedes had become much closer to Quinn but if Kurt wanted to make a new friend, Mercedes would either convince him that they weren't good for him or if that didn't work, she'd chase them off herself.

"Whatever, I'm so screwed. I can kiss my Cheerios uniform goodbye," Santana said, jerking Kurt out of his thoughts.

"Let's not worry about that right now," he said quickly. He got up and put a movie in his DVD in his laptop. Music started and Santana looked at him curiously.

"The Sound of Music," Kurt said. "I used to watch it all the time with my mom when we were upset about anything."

Santana nodded and she tried to lose herself in Julie Andrews's singing but she was distracted by Kurt. He almost never brought her up, just the occasional comment. The one he'd made that one time that they were supposed to say 'Hello' in glee club had been rather morbid. She considered Kurt her best friend (what she had with Brittany couldn't really be classified) and yet she still knew almost nothing about him. It frustrated her. She needed to know things, not for gossip, but to feel close to a person. She'd shared her greatest secret ever with Kurt and she knew nothing in return.

She reached over and paused the movie.

"Hey," Kurt protested.

"Just listen to me for a minute and then we can go back to the movie because I actually like it a little but tell anyone and I'll cut you," Santana said and Kurt rolled his eyes, "I told you something big. Something that I couldn't begin to tell anyone else. And yet, I don't know anything about you. I don't care about equal sharing of personal information or whatever but I care about feeling connected with you. And I feel like we have a one way connection or something. I feel connected to you because you know things about me and the way I've shared information with someone I trust, I feel safer now. And I know what it's like to keep someone else's secrets. It's hard, yes, but you feel connected to that person. I want to be able to the same way with one of your secrets."

She cut off awkwardly. This whole rant head been off the top of her head and now she didn't know what to say. "So could I like... know one of secrets?"

She felt like slapping herself. Never had she sounded so stupid and childish. She sounded like a twelve-year-old at one of those stupid middle school sleepovers.

Kurt blinked not knowing where any of that had come from. But oh my God Santana had a soul! It was obvious from the beginning but the way she talked about connections and stuff, it was like she was an actual human being with feelings. That had nothing to do with sex! This whole friendship was getting weirder and weirder. He wondered if Miss Pillsbury had any pamphlets for this. That woman had a pamphlet for everything, even for things teenagers would never, and should never, have to worry about.

He sighed then because he got where Santana was coming from. He thought about it for a second but he knew there was only one secret he could tell.

"Fine, I'll tell you a secret. Something I've never told anyone, not even my dad," he said. Santana was startled at that. She knew how close he was to his dad. Even if things hadn't always been that way, they told each other everything now.

"Kurt, you don't-" she started.

"Yes, I do," he interrupted. "Let's start with one thing, I never meant to any of this from my dad. I'll explain how that makes any sense in a minute. I'm going to tell you the way my mom died."

Santana simply nodded, not knowing what else to do or say. Her heart was beating faster and she was having trouble breathing. Didn't she want to know this?

"It was a car wreck," he started. "I'll never forget that day. I'd just eight and my mom and I were on our way back from the zoo. It was really late and but I was still awake. I'd said that I'd stay up the whole time to keep my mom awake so I got a ton of sugary snacks at the zoo and I was super hyper. We were singing along to songs from the radio and my mom was looking over all me for a second. That was all it took, a few seconds. It was just a few seconds but we were going through an intersection when I saw headlights and then there was just... nothing. The last thing I remember is my mom's scared eyes."

Kurt was crying and Santana was struggling not to.

"The other driver was on his phone. He was looking around on the ground, trying to find it because it was ringing. He ran a red light and we didn't have one. I forgot what happened when I woke up in the hospital that's why my dad doesn't know what happened. The other driver was badly hurt but recovered so he told my dad what happened. But my dad will never know my side of the story, he'll never know that we were both singing to the radio or we'd made a run for Dairy Queen and I was still eating my ice cream cone. He'll never know that the strongest memory I still have of her is her eyes right as we were crashing, she'd never looked so scared. The doctors tried to get me to remember the accident, I don't know why, but my dad told them to leave me alone. I remembered about three days later when I had a nightmare about it. The memories were just there when I woke up screaming. I think I would've had nightmares earlier but they had me on this really strong pain meds that wouldn't let me have dreams or nightmares. They made me feel weird and detached so I stopped taking them but then I had that nightmare and I was really sore so I started taking them again."

He was hugging his knees and rocking back and forth ever so slightly. He didn't seem aware he was doing that. Santana was rubbing small circles into his back, trying anything to comfort him. She was amazed he could keep his voice so calm and even.

"I was OK by the way. Just a bad concussion. The airbag probably would've killed me but my mom somehow threw her arms over me and it broke one of her arms. It's weird, you call it divine intervention if you want, but she didn't look like someone who'd died in a car accident. At her funeral she just looked like she was sleeping."

His voice cracked on the last word and he broke, just broke. Santana didn't know what to do. She'd seen him cry but this was so, so different. Kurt always looked so strong even when he was crying because he didn't seem to care that he was crying in front of other people. She stroked his hair like she did when her younger sister that no one knew about had nightmares. The first sign that something was wrong was that he didn't seem to care that she was touching his hair.

He was just fine in about five minutes and was blowing his nose and drying her eyes.

"Any questions?" he asked, sniffing.

"If it's all right, didn't you get hurt at all? I don't mean to be blunt but your mom died and you seem fine."

"I got a bad concussion and some small scars from broken glass. The most obvious one is this one," he said pointing to a scar on the back of his neck that Santana had noticed a few times but never mentioned despite her curiosity.

"I had some brain damage and it causes migraines and nose bleeds and stuff like that but I have medication. You would not believe the amount of pills I had to take!"

And just like that he was joking about his terrible situation like it was nothing, like every eight year old had to take a crap ton of medication after being in a car accident that killed their mother.

"For what?" Santana asked although she wasn't sure she wanted to know.

"Um, for the migraines, panic attacks, pain meds, depression, anxiety, and mild PTSD," Kurt answered, staring at the ceiling to think and counting the items off on his fingers.

"Oh and because of the brain damage, I had a few seizures and I needed meds for whenever I looked like I was experiencing symptoms."

Santana nodded not knowing what to say. "That sounds like it sucked."

"Not really," Kurt shrugged, "some of the meds made me feel like a zombie but without that I would have nightmares and when I have migraines I needed my medication or else I'd just start crying and not be able to stop. Have you ever had a migraine?"

Santana shook her head no. "Pray that you never do," Kurt said gravely. "Yeah I was fine after the accident physically. The only real problem was trying to swallow the pills."

They both laughed weakly. "And here I was hoping you'd tell me who you had a crush on," Santana said, wiping her eyes.

"Would you like that better?" Kurt asked, chuckling softly.

"Honestly, no," Santana said. Kurt looked at her curiously, "I said I wanted connection and I definitely got one. I feel like I matter now."

"You've always mattered and you always will," Kurt said. He reached over to his laptop and opened the cover. Julie Andrews was there, just as they'd left her, and she would never know what had happened. If only life had a pause button.

"I think we both need some cheering up now," he said and Santana laughed. It's funny when right after you've cried really hard and long over something sad, you seem to laugh at everything, as if you're just looking for a reason to be happy even if its fake or stupid.

They watched the rest of the movie curled up next to each other, so close they might have been one person or maybe Siamese twins. But even with all the tears, red eyes, stuffy noses, used Kleenexes littering the bed they were laying on, and looking as if they'd just gotten kicked out of hell, the two teenagers had never felt more at peace.

A/N Holy crap that was long. Seriously 3,000 words, I didn't think I had it in me. I hope you enjoyed that. This chapter also showed my take on how Kurt's mom died. I also have her named Elizabeth. By the way, Chris Colfer (if anyone doesn't know who he is, I have nothing to say to you) really does have a scar on the back of his neck. He said in an interview that it's from he was little and one of the lymph nodes in his neck got infected and he needed surgery. If you don't know what a lymph node is, go look it up. I don't have time to be a human biology teacher too. Reviews are Love. (^_^)

Peace, Love, Glee

Julez