Sorry it took awhile guys. I was busy with a bunch of stuff. Next update on Sunday or sooner..enjoy.
The next night her mother was worse, and she read only a little more of Job before she closed the book and said, "You're tired mom. Get some rest and I'll read more tomorrow."
"You have your father's eyes." Gertrude rolled her head on her pillow so she could see her only daughter in the lamplight.
"I close my eyes and I can see him when you read. You look so much like him." Gertrude smiled at her softly.
Santana sat frozen. Her mother had never talked like this before. It's the fever, she told herself.
"I loved him so much." Her voice was weak, barely a thread. "It was God's miracle that he loved me. So brave and strong, just like you. And then I lost him." A tear rolled down her cheek. "I tell myself it is part of God's plan, but I have been so lonely. Eighteen years."
Eighteen years alone. Santana shuddered at the coldness of it.
"I did not love you enough." Gertrude's tears were coming faster. "Later, I was better. I was better with your brothers. But I did not love you enough then. I am sorry."
"No mom." Santana's embarrassment was agony, but much worse was how helpless she was to stop her mother's pain. "No, it's all right. You were a good mother."
She shook her head weakly on the pillow. "No. But now it is all right. You have Brittany. Now you will get all the love I could not give you." She was openly crying now, the tears rolling down her cheeks, and Santana felt the room begin to swoop. This couldn't be happening. She had to stop it.
"Listen." She grabbed her mother's hand and held on tightly. "You took care of me. I had plenty to eat, and my clothes were always clean, and you never interfered or pushed me or made me feel like I wasn't a good kid. You gave me space to grow up and you took care of me. And I was fine. Really."
"You deserved more," Gertrude insisted, her eyes bright with tears.
Santana ran her hand through her hair, unsure of what to say next.
"I'm just glad you didn't die mom." Santana smiled softly at her mom. She seemed so tiny and fragile. And she realized that no matter how their relationship is, she loves her mom and she doesn't want her to be alone. Brittany's making me go soft.
"Mom, I don't like this stuff about you being lonely. Why don't you move down here? We'll take care of you." Gertrude stared at her for a minute before crying even harder, and Santana was dumb founded. Tears and feelings weren't her thing. She had no idea what she said to make her mother cry like a little child and she sat frozen, until Brittany walked in and took the Bible out of her hands.
"Go away," she said teasingly. "Crying is human stuff. You wouldn't understand" When the latina didn't move Brittany looked at her closely and softly rubbed her back comfortingly and said, "Breathe, Lopez," and Santana sucked in a deep breath. "Now go away."
Santana stood up and Brittany took her place on the bed. She pulled out a tissue and gently wiped Gertrude's tears away. "I know she's awful," Brittany teased, "but you shouldn't cry like this. You need all the liquid you've got; the doctor said so."
Gertrude kept crying silently, the tears sliding down her cheeks faster now, and Santana felt like hell.
"What did you say?" Brittany asked Santana, but she wasn't accusing her, thank God. "What were you talking about?"
"My dad." Santana took another deliberate breath. "And I told her I thought she should move down here so we could take care of her."
Santana watched Brittany's eyebrows go up in surprise, and then she said, "Of course. That's a good idea. Go away now. Make some tea."
Santana didn't understand what was happening, but she trusted her wife enough to take care of things and went down stairs. She made tea for all of them and found cookies that Brittany had made that day, and when she went back upstairs half an hour later, she met her wife coming out of her mother's room.
"She's sleeping." Brittany took the tray from the latina and put it aside and then wrapped the smaller woman in a hug. "You poor baby. Are you all right?"
Santana tightened her hold against the blonde's waist and rested her head on Brittany's shoulder. "She's never said things like that before."
Brittany held her for a while, enjoying the warmth and the comfort she bought and then loosened her grip and looked in to the latina's face. Santana looked so confused and lost that all the blonde wanted to do was kiss her till she felt better. Brittany smiled softly at her and put her palm on Santana's cheek with her thumb stroking the latina's face softly. "She's sick, San" Brittany told her. "It makes people feel vulnerable. They say things they keep hidden when they're feeling strong. Let's have the tea downstairs. Ok?"
Santana stared in to the deep blue eyes and felt herself getting lost in the love and care she found in them. She smiled softly at the blonde and nodded. Brittany kissed her on the forehead before grabbing the tray and led her back downstairs, and Santana watched her and remembered her mother's loneliness, and thought, What am I going to do when she leaves? The thought was so bleak that she even drank tea with the blonde although she hated the stuff.
Santana's mother got steadily stronger and never referred to that evening again. But they finished Job, and Santana felt as though a knotted place inside had been freed. It shouldn't matter now, after all these years, that her mother loved her, had loved her then, and was sorry that she hadn't loved her more, but it did. For the first time she saw her mom as a real person with regrets instead of just a demanding shadow in her life, and when she let herself care about her mom, the world around her became an easier place.
The last thing Gertrude said to her before she left at the end of the week was "Take care of Brittany. She is so good for you."
"I will mom." Santana blushed slightly at the affection before she kissed her mom good-bye gently. "Take care of yourself. If you feel sick again, we'll come up and get you. Are you sure you don't want to move down here?"
"I am sure." She put her hand on her daughter's cheek as she must have seen Brittany do half a dozen times that week. Another surprise. "You must take care of yourself too."
Santana smiled and hugged her mom tightly."Be careful on the drive home."
Brittany heaved a sigh of relief when Gertrude was gone. She liked her, but pretending to be in love with Santana (yeah, pretending) for a week had been too difficult. It wasn't just that the latina had a nice, feminine yet strong, sexy body, the kind of body a woman could hold on to during great, earth-shattering sex. She'd never actually had great, earth-shattering sex, but she was sure that was what she'd have with Santana. No, it wasn't just her body, it was more that she was Santana, stubborn, brilliant, kind, rude, fascinating Santana, who scratched Jupiter's tummy while she watched the game on TV and crooned dumb dog songs to him during the commercials. She'd heard Santana once singing, "Brittany Lopez had a real dumb dog, and Jupiter was his name/Oh, Ju-Ju-Ju-pi-ter/Ju-Ju-Ju-pi-ter/Ju-Ju-Ju-pi-ter/And Jupiter was his name, oh." When she'd looked in, Jupiter was on his back in Santana's lap, waving his legs languidly in all directions while Santana scratched his stomach. They both looked ridiculous and she loved them both so much, she felt tears start in her eyes.
There were so many layers to Santana, and they were all inside that great body. She definitely had to get her head sorted. And she wasn't sleeping well. Between her concern for Gertrude and her lust for Santana, it had been a rough week. Well, at least it was all over and they could get back to normal living. She went into the dining room and found Santana sitting at the table.
"What are you doing? Are you hungry?" she asked, and then Santana turned her pale face to her, and she saw that the usual fiery brown eyes were dulled. She felt her wife's forehead. It was burning.
Terrific. "You have the flu. Get into bed. I'll call Evan. He can proctor your finals."
"I'm all right," Santana stated stubbornly. and she said, "No, this is contagious. You stay home. Go upstairs."
Brittany couldn't decide whether Santana was sicker than Gertrude, or if it was just that she hated being sick so much that she seemed sicker. She brought the latina books and tea and soup and the radio and the TV, and Santana still thrashed around feverishly unless Brittany was in the room with her. She read to the latina from her history books, and her voice seemed to calm Santana, the words keeping Santana's mind off her aches until she got so sick, she didn't care anymore.
Santana's fever went up, So Brittany moved in to the guest room to sleep because Santana insisted. One night Brittany woke up and found Santana standing dazed in the hallway.
"What are you doing?" she scolded the latina. "Back into bed."
"I thought it was midnight."
"It's three-thirty San, and even if it was midnight, you're still not supposed to be wandering around."
"I thought you'd gone," Santana said in a small voice that broke Brittany's heart as she realized that the latina had thought it was Cinderella's midnight.
"No San. I won't leave you. Get back into bed."
She lifted Santana in her arms, bridal style and the latina snuggled in to her burrowing her head at the crook of Brittany's neck. Brittany carefully carried her wife in to the bedroom and tucked her in gently. She stared at the latina for a moment before turning to leave. But a soft voice stopped her. "Come in here with me B. I'm cold," and Brittany slipped into bed beside the latina and held her next to her warmth until Santana was quiet again.
In the morning her fever had broken, and the blonde's began.
Santana still felt like hell the next day, but she knew just by looking at Brittany that she was worse.
"I can get up." Brittany pulled weakly at her arm. "You're still sick."
"I'm not that sick B." Santana put her hand on the blonde's cheek. "I'm all right. Get back in bed."
"No." Brittany had crawled out of bed and staggered past her out onto the landing. When she turned to go down the stairs, she put out her hand for the rail and missed, and as she fell forward, Santana caught her and picked her up, her heart pounding from the adrenaline rush she'd gotten when Brittany started to topple. Santana carried her into the room and pulled back the covers and gently put her wife down and then she popped the thermometer into Brittany's mouth.
"Stay there B." She tucked in the covers tightly around her wife. "I'll put water on for tea."
Santana could tell Brittany wanted to argue, but the blonde was too sick. Santana sympathized; she'd never felt as bad in her life as she had the past week. No wonder her mother had cried. She brought a tray of tea and crackers up and put it on the table. Then she checked her wife's temperature. "One hundred and one." She shook the thermometer down and put it in her own mouth and crawled in bed beside her wife.
"That's got my germs on it," Brittany said, and the latina looked at her incredulously over the thermometer. "Oh, right. We've got the same thing."
A minute later Santana took the thermometer out and looked at it. "Just under one hundred. That's lower than yesterday, right?"
"Right." Brittany closed her eyes. "You were one-oh-two yesterday."
"Good. I'm the one getting better, so I'm the boss."
"Ha."
"Shut up. We're going to be smart about this. We're going to sleep and drink juice and tea until we float, and we are not going to go charging around like we're healthy when we know we're not."
"Does we mean you too?"
"Of course it means me too. What did you think it was, the royal we?"
"I thought maybe it was one of those nurse things. I feel awful; do you feel awful?"
"Yes." Santana put her arm around Brittany. "Where does it hurt?"
"I just ache all over, like somebody's been beating up on me."
"That's the fever. Go to sleep."
"Yes, Boss." She rolled over closer to the latina, to snuggle against her side.
Santana kissed her forehead. It felt as if it were on fire. "I'm sorry baby," she said softly to the blonde who was snoring slightly.
By the next day Santana's temperature was back to normal. Brittany's rose to 102 and stayed there, and Santana called the doctor, frantic with worry.
"If it goes higher, we'll hospitalize her," Dr. Hummel said. "But she should be able to ride this out."
Hospitalize her.
Santana went upstairs and looked at her wife sweating in her sleep. Brittany in a hospital. The thought made Santana shiver unpleasantly. She crawled in bed beside her wife and held her tightly, and the blonde sighed and snuggled closer, still asleep, and Santana put her cheek on her hair and for the first time in her life was afraid. She couldn't imagine life without Brittany and that scared her more than anything.
People called for Brittany.
Julie was distraught, but Santana absolutely refused to let her in the house. "It's really contagious. She'd be frantic if she thought you might get it. You know how she feels about you."
"Oh, Santana." Julie started to cry.
"I'll call you when the fever's gone," she promised. "You can come over and try to keep her in bed then." Julie had to be content with that.
The kids were equally unhappy.
"Can't we just stand in the yard and wave to her through the window?" Andrew asked.
"She wouldn't recognize you. This is a bad fever. But I'll tell her you're all concerned. And I'll call you as soon as the fever's gone so you can all come back."
"That's really nice of you," Andrew said. "I know you're not crazy about having us all over there."
Santana felt as if she'd been hit. She searched for something to say. "Actually, I miss having you around. There are no cookies, and you've all spoiled Jupiter so rotten that he expects attention all the time. I'll call you the minute her fever breaks, trust me."
Bill called. "I heard about Brittany. This is rotten timing. I just found out that the little jerk I'd saved the January show for has decided painting is no longer his life. When she wakes up, tell her she's got that show if she wants it. Even if she doesn't want it, actually. I'm in a bind here."
"She wants it," Santana said. "Go ahead, set it up. I'll tell her as soon as she's lucid again."
Sam came to the door, and Santana refused to let him in.
"Just let me see she's all right." Sam's face was drawn with worry.
Santana felt a spurt of anger and then Sam's obviously real concern got to her. At least she got to see her; Sam wasn't even going to get that.
"Look, I can't let you in. The doctor is worried about this getting out. I swear he comes to see her every day."
"Take care of her." Sam looked at her with distrust. Santana felt her insides flare.
"She's my wife Stan, I will take care of her" She slammed the door in his face.
Santana tried to sleep in the guest room the first night, but she was too worried about her wife, and when she finally crawled into their bed and held her wife close, Brittany slept better, without moaning or tossing, so Santana convinced herself that it was better that she stay with her wife and hold her. In the few moments that Brittany was lucid, she worried about Santana.
"You're so pale San," she said weakly. "Are you eating?"
"Yeah B. Vegetable soup. Do you want some?"
But the blonde would eat only a little and then fall back into feverish dreams. Sometimes she'd cry out and then Santana would hold her, wishing she knew what the blonde was so afraid of so she could fix it. For the first time in her life, her schedule was completely disrupted and she was getting no work done, yet she didn't care. When at the end of the week Brittany's temperature finally dropped, Santana was so relieved that she walked around the house fist pumping the air.
Midway through the week of her flu, Brittany got up in the middle of the night and went into the studio to paint. She'd been dreaming of Santana and of painting, dreaming of how much she loved the latina and wanted her, and of how much she wanted to paint in big, passionate strokes, of all the things she couldn't think about too much when she was healthy because she was afraid. The fever made her dizzy, but it also made her forget her fear, and she dragged one of the big canvases she'd stretched out of the corner and began to lay in charcoal lines for a portrait of Santana, blocking in her shoulders and her brow and jaw line and her arms and hands. The next night she began to paint her, not in her usual meticulously detailed strokes, but in huge slashes of yellow and orange and red, full of strength and menace and passion and heat. She knew exactly what she was doing, and the fever drove her on. She painted for three nights straight while Santana slept exhausted from caring for her, and on the fourth night her fever broke.
She went into the studio and stared at the canvas. The portrait was huge and glowing and more sexual than she could ever have imagined herself painting; it was everything she'd thought about Santana and repressed, and if it felt good to have it all out, it was terrifying to look at it. She took the painting down from her easel and turned it against the wall, and put the other large canvas in its place.
You did it once sick, you can do it again healthy, she told herself, and began to draw on the canvas in charcoal, tentatively at first and then gradually using the same large, sweeping lines that she'd used to draw the first portrait. She loaded a four-inch brush with paint and laid on big patches of black and blue and gray and white, blocking in mass and light. When the dawn broke, she wiped the paint from her fingers and crawled back into bed.
"Hey beautiful. Sleep well?" Santana walked into the room carrying tray and smiling softly at the blonde. Brittany just groaned and turned around,
"How are you B?" Santana sat down beside her on the bed, holding the tray on her lap.
"I'm fine." Brittany leaned her head forward. "Feel."
Santana put her hand on her wife's forehead, and all the tension went out of her when it was cool under her hand. She put the thermometer in Brittany's mouth.
"If you're normal, you're well," she said, and then she laughed.
Brittany was never normal.
When she took the thermometer out a minute later, Brittany said, "That's not soup, is it?"
"Chicken noodle. Excellent for invalids. Ninety-eight point six. Good girl, Cinderella."
Brittany looked stubborn. "I want a hamburger with onions and pickle and mustard and tomato."
"A hamburger? Britt, I don't think—"
Brittany set her jaw. "I want french fries. I want onion rings. I want a large, large Coke. I want a chocolate milk shake. I want a hot fudge sundae."
Santana started to laugh. "No B. You'll get sick again. Start small. I'll go get you a hamburger and a Coke, and while I'm gone, you eat the soup."
"I don't want the soup." Brittany scowled.
"If you eat the soup, I'll get you the burger"
They stared at each other for a minute, refusing to back down. Then the blonde sighed.
"Fine"
"Thanks B" Santana kissed the blonde's forehead and left and when she was gone, Brittany poured half the bowl of soup into the toilet and flushed away the evidence of her rebellion. Then she went into the studio.
The portrait of Santana stared back at her, roughed in on the canvas, cold and brooding in gray and white and black. She looked powerful and confident, the Santana she saw the first day. The portrait was going to be terrific, she knew that just from the beginnings, and she couldn't decide why it depressed her so much. You're just weak from the fever, she told herself, and went back to bed to wait for her hamburger.
"Did you eat your soup?" Santana asked her when she got back, and she said, "No, I poured it in the john." She wolfed the hamburger, washing it down with the bubbly Coke with visible pleasure. When she handed Santana the empty paper cup, she said, "Now I feel like a real person again."
"You were always a real person B. Don't get out of bed for a while. You were sicker than Mom and I, so it's going to take you longer. Sleep, so you don't have a relapse."
Santana waited until she'd obediently closed her eyes and she could hear her wife's breathing slowly and steadily. Then she kissed her and went downstairs to deal with the chaos left by their illnesses. They had bills, and yard work, and cleaning, and people coming to stay for Christmas in four days.
But when she looked into things, there was no chaos. Brittany had made a note of all the things she'd done while Santana was sick. She'd paid all the bills ahead of time. She'd sent the dry cleaning out, so all Santana had to do was pick it up. Brittany had made Christmas tree ornaments and left them in a box on the buffet. She'd hired Andrew to do the yard work, but when Santana called to ask him how much they owed him, Andrew refused to be paid.
"We all came over and did it together so it was done in a flash. Besides, we wouldn't take money from you. You're like family. When can we come back?"
"Come tomorrow," Santana said, touched. "I'll get a tree. We'll put Brittany on the couch to supervise and you all can decorate."
"Great," Andrew shouted. "Christmas cookies. Eggnog. There are still three of us here. We're not going home until Friday. Thank you. Oh, boy."
"Great," Santana said, not sure it was. "I'll get the tree."
But she didn't have to. Brittany had ordered a tree and evergreen swags and several bunches of mistletoe from a farmer who called to say he'd be delivering them that afternoon.
"Brittany already ordered a tree?"
"Yep, she ordered all this stuff a couple of weeks ago. Said you were all gonna get the flu or something, and you wouldn't be around to do it yourselves. How are you?"
"We've all had the flu," Santana said through her amazement. "We're better now."
The grocery delivered Brittany's Christmas dinner order just as Santana hung up the phone with the farmer. A frozen turkey. Lots of bread for stuffing. Red and green sugar for Christmas cookies. Candy canes for the tree. Cranberry sauce.
What had happened to scatterbrained Brittany Pierce? Who was this woman who knew she was going to be sick and planned ahead for it? Not Brittany Pierce, who let the ravens feed her.
Brittany Lopez, she thought. My wife. My wife, the adult.
Santana's throat closed with emotion, and she leaned against the stair post until she got her composure back. Then she heard her wife moving upstairs and went up to see if she was all right. Brittany was throwing up her hamburger and Coke in the bathroom.
Santana sighed softly. It comforted her to see that Brittany Pierce wasn't lost in Brittany Lopez.
"I told you so," she said to her wife, the adult. "Now will you have some soup?"
The next day Andrew baked Christmas cookies while Santana and Olivia and Tracy struggled to get the tree straight. Brittany directed them from the couch, and they all finally decided that the tree was just crooked and there was nothing to be done about it.
"I like it better crooked." Brittany smiled at the tree and cuddled Charity happily. "It has more personality."
"Just what this house needed," Santana said. "More personality."
For tree trims, Brittany had woven little baskets of red and white gingham and filled them with bleached white baby's breath. She'd made stuffed doves of white velvet, and little stuffed pears of yellow velvet, stuffed gingerbread men and women of brown velvet trimmed in white rickrack and tiny round buttons. But as far as Santana was concerned, the best of the ornaments were quintessential Brittany, little hand-painted salt dough figures of all of them: Andrew in a chefs hat carrying his bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough, Lacey with a paintbrush wearing a dress covered in ivy, Olivia holding a women's history book and wearing an ERA T-shirt, Tracy sitting cross-legged tickling Jupiter, Evan looking gloomy as he looked at his apple, Julia holding her sides laughing, Bill holding canvases, Julie beaming and clutching pink roses, Sam with a stethoscope and small animals peeping out of all his pockets. Brittany had even done Grey and Harpers looking scholarly and Caroline carrying a microwave stuffed with books. They all looked rounder and cuter than in real life, like elves instead of realistic portraits, but Brittany had caught their personalities and the students were charmed.
"Take them home with you when you go," Brittany told them. "Merry Christmas from us."
Santana's figure had her laptop under one arm and Jupiter under the other and she was wearing her letter-man jacket. Santana kept turning it in her fingers, fascinated by the detail. "How'd you know what the jacket looked like?"
"I found it in your stuff. I tried it on too. It's really warm."
Later, when they were all stuffing themselves with warm Christmas cookies and milk, Santana went upstairs and got the jacket. When she came down, she put it around Brittany's shoulders as she sat at the table.
"Stay warm, B" she said, and went into the kitchen so she wouldn't have to talk about it. When she came back out, Brittany'd put her arms through the sleeves and was cuddled up in the jacket, her blonde hair tumbling over the shoulders like a golden waterfall.
"I want to know how to make these." Olivia turned her ornament over and over and marveled at the details, so Brittany told them how to mix the salt dough, and then showed them how to make the little sausage figures while Santana watched. It was all warm and comforting, like a family, and it made her a little nervous to be so warm and comforted, but she couldn't tear herself away.
The next day the students left, and Quinn came into town. She stayed at the inn but spent every waking moment with Brittany. Evan began to haunt the house, which Santana didn't mind, and Sam began to drop by every afternoon, which Santana did mind.
"What the hell is he doing here?" she asked Brittany on Christmas Eve afternoon. "The party doesn't start until seven."
"He's a friend. Friends come by anytime."
"I should have told Caroline that," she said, and Brittany stiffened.
By eight the house was full of people who were full of good cheer and eggnog. The house looked like a Better Homes & Gardens photo spread, the Christmas dinner table looked like a Norman Rockwell magazine cover, and Brittany looked like a witch-queen in a long, low-cut green velvet dress she'd found at the secondhand clothing store in town. Santana knew it was secondhand because the blonde told her when she asked for help with the zipper. "It sticks," she said. "I think the last person who wore it jammed it." Santana eased the zipper up, watching the creamy flesh of her back disappear in the shortening V, noticing that Brittany wasn't wearing a bra, using all her restraint to keep from reaching around and cupping the blonde's breasts. Since then the blonde had wrapped a thick red curtain rope around her waist and put holly in her hair, and Santana knew she should be wincing at how bizarre the blonde looked, but she couldn't take her eyes off her.
"That holly should be mistletoe," she heard Sam tell her at dinner, and Brittany said, "That's in the hall."
Santana made a note to keep an eye on the hall. And an eye on Brittany. Brittany was drinking a lot, she noted, finishing her own third cup of eggnog. Santana will just have to watch her wife.
"I cannot think who you remind me of." Brittany leaned precariously over Quinn to see Evan. She was showing a lot of creamy cleavage, and Santana reminded herself to make a note to tell her wife not to bend over. "It's been driving me crazy ever since I met you." Brittany looked at Quinn, who had a peculiar expression on her face. "Have you had too much eggnog, or do you know?"
"Both." Quinn took Evan's hand in hers.
"Well, who?"
"Eeyore," Quinn said.
"E. York?" Brittany echoed.
"No. Eeyore. From Winnie the Pooh."
"Oh, my God." Brittany fell back in her chair and laughed until she got the hiccups.
"Who's Eeyore?" Evan asked suspiciously.
"Absolutely my favorite childhood character." Quinn looked into his eyes with drunken affection. "I loved Eeyore. I still do."
"Oh." Evan didn't pull his hand away. Santana resisted the urge to tell him there were probably germs on Quinn's hand and poured herself another cup of eggnog. What the hell? She wasn't driving. Neither were they. Another great thing about Prescott: everybody lived within walking distance.
"I have ivy in my bathroom," Grey said to Santana. "I don't think I mind, but I'm constantly surprised when I go in there."
"Wait until she paints the snakes in." Santana shook her head at the thought. "There's one in my bathroom that stares at me while I wash my face."
"This is just perfect, honey," Julie told Brittany. "This is the best Christmas I ever had."
"I love you, Julie," Brittany said a little drunkenly. "I wish you weren't married to such a—"
"Christmas cookies in the living room," Santana said loudly. "Not to mention Lizzie Borden and her headless father. And there's a surprise for everyone on the Christmas tree. Could I see you in the kitchen for a minute, Brittany?"
"No." Brittany smiled lovingly at her and took her breath away. "But I'll be good."
Santana caught Sam glaring at her. she glared back.
"Come on, Sam," Brittany said just as brightly as Santana had a few moments before. "Santana, bring some more eggnog. Isn't this just lovely?"
Brittany put Christmas rock on the stereo and watched while everyone found his or her ornament, and the room became warm with laughter. Such nice people.
"Tell me what to do about Evan," Quinn whispered in her ear. "I can't get him to make a pass."
"You're asking me? I'm living with a woman who won't make a pass." Brittany watched her beautiful, sexy wife talk to Evan and sighed. Then the latina looked up at her and smiled, and Brittany felt heat all through her.
"Still?" Quinn sounded drunkenly sympathetic. "What a waste. Now help me with Evan."
"I think you're just going to have to invite yourself home with him."
"What if he says no?"
Brittany snorted. "Evan is gloomy not insane. Besides, he's crazy about you."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." Brittany grinned at her. "Go get him."
"Right." Quinn squared her shoulders and marched across the room to her prey.
"What am I going to do about Quinn?" Evan asked.
Santana looked around the room until she found Brittany. She was talking to Quinn. Good. That means she's not with the wife-stealing vet. She smiled at her wife and the blonde smiled back, and Santana felt heat all through her.
Right, Evan was saying something.
"What?"
"Quinn." Evan looked at Brittany's painting gloomily. "What do I do?"
"Ask her to come home with you. Offer to show her your etchings."
"I don't have any etchings."
Santana nodded. "Good. Quinn probably hates etchings."
"Then why would she come?"
Santana couldn't help it; she started to laugh. "Because she wants you."
"Really?" Evan's face almost brightened. "How do you know?"
Santana thought about telling him how she knew when Quinn was in the mood to go home with someone but decided not to.
"Brittany told me. Brittany knows everything."
"This is true." Evan's eggnog was making him philosophical. "Sometimes I think that Quinn and I could never be happy, and then I think of you and Brittany. If Brittany can make you warm, Quinn can make me happy."
"I don't think anybody can make anybody else anything." Santana tried to be careful so she didn't get lost in her any's. "Brittany didn't make me warm."
Evan looked at her condescendingly.
"What are you talking about?" Santana asked, irritated, and then Quinn was beside them.
"I should probably start back to the inn." She looked at Evan and batted her eyes.
Here's your chance, old buddy, Santana thought, and nudged Evan.
Evan looked startled. "Oh?"
Santana closed her eyes and sighed. She liked Evan a lot, but sometimes—
"Is it dangerous to walk back to the inn alone?" Quinn asked, still looking at Evan.
"Well—" Evan stopped, helpless.
Santana looked around for Brittany. This was obviously her kind of problem, getting two people together. Unfortunately, she couldn't find her wife. That bothered the latina. Brittany was supposed to be there with her. She was going to have to find her wife and explain that to her, but first she had to take care of Quinn and Evan.
"Yes, it's dangerous to walk back alone." Santana stopped to think. Just getting Evan to walk Quinn home wasn't going to do it; she was going to have to actually get Quinn into his apartment for the night. "But it's more dangerous at the inn," she said carefully. "You really shouldn't be staying there, Quinn. The doors don't lock."
Quinn looked at her with hopeless contempt. Well, she deserved it, that last bit had been feeble. She had to do better, but the eggnog was fogging her brain.
What would Brittany say?
"They have rats," Santana said suddenly. "Big suckers. They've been known to carry off small children. You're small, Quinn. An especially big rat might grab you. And there you'd be." She stopped. Where would she be? "Rat snacks."
"Rat snacks?" Quinn looked incredulous.
Santana shook her head. "It would be terrible, just terrible." She drank some more eggnog.
They were looking at her as if she were insane. Santana had seen the look before when Brittany had gone into one of her narrative fits in front of strangers. "So," she said, winding her story up in a hurry. "You really shouldn't be staying there. We'd let you stay here, but we don't have any room. So maybe you should stay somewhere else." Santana looked at Evan, who was looking like a bemused codfish. Quinn, on the other hand, had the look of a woman on whom light had dawned.
Santana kicked Evan smartly on the ankle. "Have you got any room at your place, Evan?"
"Ouch," Evan said, and Quinn said, "Would that be too much to ask, Evan, if I stayed with you?"
"What? Oh. No." Evan took a deep breath. "Absolutely not. My pleasure."
Santana sighed in relief and looked around to see if Brittany had come back. She hadn't.
"You know, being married to Brittany has taught you a lot," Quinn said when Evan had gone for their coats. "She couldn't have done any better herself."
"Where is she?" Santana looked around the room again. She was definitely gone. Quinn said something, but she didn't hear.
There was mistletoe in the hall. That damn vet.
A/N
OMG Twist. lol..hope you liked it. R&R