Author's Note: Thank you all for the great reviews! I love them! Thanks for reading :)

"So, you know eventually we have to talk about coming out to our families," Brittany said, shoving her books in her locker. Santana didn't look up from the mirror in her locker, tightening her ponytail and fixing her makeup. "I mean, I get what you were doing this weekend…distracting me and all…and it was fun, but it's actually important that we talk about this, San." Santana still didn't look up from the mirror.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Britt. I didn't do anything to distract you."

"San. You took me to the park, the zoo, and the aquarium in two days."

"I just know you like those things," Santana said, reapplying her lip gloss, "and I like to do things that you like."

"So, you're telling me that of the 48 hours in the weekend, you wanted to spend 18 of them sleeping, 12 of them having sex, 2 of them doing homework, and the remaining 16 hours playing with animals?"

"Yes. Although, I could have used a few more sex hours. Also when did you get so good at math?"

"When it counts," Brittany said, smiling. "Seriously, Santana, look at me." Brittany had used her full name. She knew she had to look at her, but also knew that this would be her downfall. Santana slowly raised her eyes so she was looking at her girlfriend. "We're talking about this tomorrow night. My mom is making me stay at home tonight since I've stayed at yours for like the last six days, and she wants you to come over for dinner tomorrow, so we can talk about it afterward, okay?"

"Okay," was all Santana could muster. Dammit.

Monday's were always rough. They had 6:00 morning Cheerios practice, 3:00 glee, and 4:00 afternoon Cheerios practice. By the time Santana got home at 6:30, she was dead tired. She threw her bags on the ground and sat down at the kitchen table, resting her head on it. She had already begun to doze off when her mother walked in.

"You hear that, mija?"

"No, mama," Santana said, turning her head so it was facing her mother but not actually taking the energy to lift it off of the table.

"That's the sound of peace and quiet. I love your brother…but he can be a handful." Santana just nodded. "So, where is Miss Brittany?"

"Home," Santana replied, yawning, "her mother is upset that she hasn't seen her in 6 days, or something, so she's making her stay at home tonight."

"Are you going over there later?"

"No, I'm tired, I'm going to bed. But I think I'm going to have dinner with them tomorrow night." Her mother nodded.

"You two seem happy lately."

"Mmhmm."

"Happier than you were last year."

"Mmhmm."

"So…I just…" she looked down at her daughter who had fallen back asleep at the table. "Mija," she said, gently nudging Santana awake. "You go upstairs and take a nap, I'm too tired to cook and papa is working late. I'll order us some pizza, okay?" Santana just nodded and trudged upstairs.

On Tuesday's Santana and Brittany always met at 2 in the library during their free period. Brittany always got there first because she had painting right beforehand and the classroom was right next to the library. Brittany snapped open her phone—it was 2:15 already, Santana usually wasn't this late. She started the long and arduous process of typing out a text message to her girlfriend when a quiet voice interrupted her.

"Brittany?" She looked up to see one of the freshman Cheerios looking nervously at her. She looked vaguely familiar, but Brittany couldn't place her.

"Yeah?"

"Is it cool if I sit down?"

"Okay," Brittany deadpanned.

"I'm Taylor…I know you probably don't remember me…" Brittany still didn't look up at her, struggling with her phone. She had dropped it a few weeks earlier during motocross practice and it somehow got stuck in Spanish, which made it extremely difficult to navigate without Santana. The little envelope signifying that she had received a new text message was on her phone, but she couldn't remember whether she was supposed to click abierto or borrar. She did eenie, meenie, miny, moe in her head, shut her eyes and clicked the button. The envelope was gone. Eenie, meanie, minie, moe always failed her.

"Hey, Brittany?" She had completely forgotten about the girl sitting across from her.

"Yeah?"

"I'm on Cheerios with you…"the girl said. Brittany wasn't sure what this girl was getting at. Obviously she was on Cheerios…she could plainly see that she had the uniform on. Brittany knew that sometimes she could be a little…well, confused…but she wasn't blind. Santana was not going to be happy when she got here and found this girl taking up their free period time. "I also went to that Gay-Straight Alliance meeting."

"Oh." Brittany said.

"I just thought it was really cool that you and Santana came. You know, you didn't have to…it's not like anyone's making your lives miserable for being gay." The girl looked down. "Anyway, see you at practice." The girl rose to leave.

"Wait," Brittany said, before Taylor could completely get away. Everyone knew Brittany wasn't the best with words, but she was touched that this girl had come to her for support. "If you ever need anyone to talk to, or whatever, my phone number is in the tree." The girl looked confused.

"She means the phone tree that coach gave us if our practice schedule changes last minute, freshman." Santana appeared out of nowhere. Brittany gave her that be nice look.

"Her name is Taylor, she's on Cheerios and she's in the Gay-Straight Alliance, San."

"Ok, Taylor, it's in the phone tree. Santana directed her attention back to Brittany. "Why didn't you respond to my text?"

"I accidentally deleted it again," Brittany admitted, looking sheepishly down at her phone.

"Well, I've been waiting outside the janitor's closet for 25 minutes!" Santana pretended not to notice the freshman smirk. "Now we have to get to Glee." Brittany nodded and they linked pinkies and walked off towards the choir room.

Brittany's house was different than Santana's house. Not bad, just different. Santana had always figured her parents had been forced to adapt to a certain level of chaos, mischief, and general destruction, as a result of having three sons and a daughter like Santana. It was a matter of survival, like some form of hyper-speed evolution. The Pierce's, on the other hand, had three saccharine sweet girls, and their house reflected that level of calm. While the Lopez house was full of football and wrestling, the Pierce house was full of ballet and coloring books. It wasn't bad, it was just…different.

"Mom! We're home!" Brittany yelled as they walked in through the kitchen. There was delicious smelling sauce boiling on the stove and Santana suddenly realized how hungry she was. "Mom?" Brittany yelled again.

"In here, Britt!" It wasn't her mom's voice, it was her youngest sister, Grace, calling from the family room. She was laying on the ground on her stomach with a book open, while Brittany's mother stood over her, apparently answering a question.

"SANTANA!" Grace yelled, turning to see that Brittany brought Santana home with her. She ran over and nearly knocked the brunette to the ground. People forgot that despite Santana's attitude, she was actually kind of little and carrying a backpack and a Cheerio's bag.

"Hey Gracie! Where have you been?"
"Where have I been? Where have you been?" Santana laughed at her precocious response.

"It's true, Santana, where have you been? I haven't seen you for a week! It must be a new record…" Brittany's mom said, wrapping her arm around Santana.

"Sorry, Carlos randomly came home and my mom was making me stay home and spend time with him."

"Which was kind of silly," Brittany interjected, "because he spent all of his time with his roommate and his girlfriend."

"So it really ended up being me just hanging around the house just because Carlos decided to skip school for a week," Santana added.

"And all Carlos wanted to do is make out with his girlfriend whenever Maria wasn't paying attention," Brittany said, scrunching up her face at Gracie who stuck her tongue out and mouthed "gross".

"Which didn't really make sense to me…I mean, wouldn't you want to stay at college if you wanted to make out with your girlfriend all day?" Santana asked, her forehead scrunched, looking a little confused. "I mean, Christian is 22 and is probably going to marry his girlfriend, and my mom still makes him follow the open-door policy."

"Carlos definitely didn't get the smart genes, San." Brittany said, smiling. Santana looked adoringly back at her.

"Well," Brittany's mom said, a bemused look crossing her face. She would never understand her daughter's relationship with her best friend, although she had to admit that she also thought she would never get sick of their bizarre, finishing each other's sentences, rambling conversations. "I'm going to go finish dinner, which is probably burning by now, but I am certainly happy to have you both back over here." She squeezed Santana's shoulder again and patted her eldest daughter on the head. "Dinner will be ready in about thirty minutes, why don't you two go upstairs and get out of those uniforms?"

It took all of Santana's willpower not to smirk.

"So, Santana, whatever happened to Sam?" Mr. Pierce asked as he took a bite of his food. Santana just shrugged.

"We broke up."

"Oh, that's a shame," Mrs. Pierce said, taking another bite of the lasagna. "He seemed like such a sweet boy."

"He was very sweet," Santana said, fidgeting uncomfortably underneath the table. "He was just…a little boring I guess." Santana took a big bite of her food, hoping it would stop this line of questioning.

"So, are you seeing anyone new?" Santana looked down at her food, not knowing how exactly to proceed. When she looked up, Brittany's sister, Alexis, was looking right at her, smirking. Alexis was a Sophomore at McKinley and a fellow cheerleader, therefore pretty aware of the nature of Santana and her sister's friendship.

"Oh, you know…" Santana said, unable to lie in front of Brittany. "You know Britt and I are doing a duet at Sectionals for Glee this year?" Santana said, desperately trying to change the subject.

"No, she didn't!" Mrs. Pierce clapped her hands, excitedly.

"Good for you, girls." Mr. Pierce said, still chewing his food. "What song are you going to sing?"

"Oh, it's just this song from Rent…" Santana trailed off. Dammit…this wasn't going well. Maybe they hadn't seen Rent?

"Oh, we saw Rent in Cleveland when they were touring, years ago!" Mrs. Pierce said. "What song? I don't remember there being any…" she didn't finish her sentence and furrowed her brow. Santana tried to decide if Mrs. Pierce just didn't want to acknowledge that she remembered the duet and suspected that it was the song the girls were singing or if she really just liked her own lasagna and that's why she had shoveled a forkful into her mouth.

"Yes there are, dear." Mr. Pierce said, piling seconds of lasagna on to his plate. "Remember, there's that funny duet those lesbians sing. You know the one…" Panic was building in Santana's eyes and she looked up from her plate and saw Alexis staring straight at her.

"So, mom, how's your book group going?" Mrs. Pierce began talking about the latest book the group was reading and Alexis gave Santana a small smile.

The rest of dinner passed uneventfully and Brittany and Santana went upstairs to work on their homework. Santana laid down on her stomach in Brittany's bed. Instead of Brittany following her, as usual, she sat in her desk chair and pulled her knees to her chest.

"Ok, San, we're at least talking about this. Blaine said we could at least try and come up with a plan."

"I just don't understand why this is so important to you, B?"

"I've told you, Santana. I love you, and I want to be able to tell everyone. I don't like sneaking around, I don't like that we can't even tell my parents what duet we're singing at Sectionals without arousing some suspicion, and I don't like that we have to depend on my sister to bail us out when we get close to outing ourselves." Santana didn't say anything. "You know that freshman I was talking to today?" Santana nodded. "She came over to thank us for coming to that meeting. She said something about how it meant a lot, seeing as we didn't need support since we're like, at the top or whatever. It made me feel like a hippogriff."

"Hypocrite." Brittany just scrunched up her face.

"That we're walking around like we don't need help, like we rule the school and we don't care what anybody thinks, when we can't even tell our families the truth. When you don't even feel comfortable, at a Gay-Straight Alliance meeting to actually say that you are gay."

"I did say I was gay!"

"No, you didn't, you said 'everyone knows I'm with Brittany.'" It was like she had selectively impeccable memory, Santana thought, shaking her head.

"Plus, the longer this goes on, you know they're going to find out eventually." Santana finally looked up to face Brittany. "I mean, we're not sneaking around anymore. Glee Club knows, now the kids in the Gay-Straight Alliance know, the Cheerios know, your Aunt knows, it's not like we live in a bustling metropolis, this is Lima. Eventually it's going to get back to our parents whether you like it or not. It's better coming from us."

"Come here."

"What?"

"Come here." Brittany got out of her chair and laid down next to Santana, who kissed her lightly on the forehead, then the nose, then both of her cheeks, and then her lips."

"If this is some attempt to distract me again, it's not going to work, San."

"I know. It's just you're cute when you get all serious and start lecturing me and stuff." She kissed her lightly on the lips again. "So…what's our plan?" Brittany broke out in a huge grin.

"Well, I was thinking that, you're right, we know better how your parents are going to react than mine, so we should talk to them first. Aren't Christian and Carlos going to be back in town for Thanksgiving soon?" Santana nodded. "So why don't we tell them before Thanksgiving so that we can get it over with your family all at once. That way we can learn from how it goes with yours and figure out how to do it with mine."

"Great, so I can ruin my relationship with my family first?"

"Oh, you know they're going to be fine. They're practically begging you to just come out."

"Ok, whatever you say, B." Brittany squealed and pulled her into a tight hug which quickly became a long makeout session, in place of studying for their Spanish quiz. At this rate, Brittany was never going to learn how to open her text messages herself. At the moment though, she didn't really care.