(Author's Note: Thanks to terriblemuriel for invaluable development help, and congratulations on her recent nuptials with JJ, whose symbiotic influence and brilliant Brittanalyses have forever changed this story.)
For years, basically since she figured out how to do it at thirteen, Brittany's thought of touching herself as something to do when her body is aching too badly to ignore it. Like being hungry when all you have is a granola bar in a scraped, linty wrapper at the bottom of your backpack. It does the trick but it's no plate of spaghetti and meatballs.
But these days, she's stopped calling Artie when she feels horny. She's realized how much fun it is to do it for herself. No one else to please, no getting frustrated when Artie isn't pushing her buttons. And best of all, since she's started to spend a lot more time in her head, she's just now starting to realize how much is inside of it.
She remembers taking a road trip to Michigan to visit an aunt at around age nine. She and her parents had been driving for about an hour so far, and her mom was showing her with a finger where they were on a US map. She'd asked, where's the line between the green state and the purple state? and squinted through the window glass at the horizon, so far away that all signs of living things shrank into nothing, just a thin line between land and sky that kept becoming more land. Her parents just laughed. The world, her mom said, is a big big place. Even if they all kept driving like this for the rest of their lives, in loops and strings and rows like a skittering cockroach, they could never see it all.
It was too strange to understand back then, but now Brittany can see her own mind like that: open and endless. She can follow long strings of thoughts and there's always more and more to follow, branching into others like roads, until she's dizzy and feels that same vacuum in her belly that happens when she leans over the balcony of a tall building so she can't see the wall.
At first, she just misses touching Santana so much that she imagines the way they used to be. She'll pick a memory like she's pulling a card out of a deck. Today she chooses a Saturday morning in early spring when Santana left Brittany in bed, sleeping, to take a shower, and crawled back into bed with her, still wet and clammy. Brittany closes her eyes, tracing lines over her inner thigh, and works the color back into the memory. San's grapefruit and gardenia scented shampoo. Her damp body pressing Brittany's clothes to her back like a freshly-licked stamp as she spooned her. The tug of San's teeth on her earlobe and her quick fingers loosening the drawstring of Brittany's pants. The way San's wet hair stung the insides of her thighs like jellyfish tentacles until it warmed against her skin.
Then, once the memory's so full she can almost touch it, she begins to warp the corners. The room slows and gets brighter. She smells a trace of dark honey in the shampoo. And when San spoons her, her teeth release Brittany's earlobe. She kisses the nape of Brittany's neck and whispers:
"I want to be with you."
On the way to Detroit in the school van, Brittany plays with Artie's hand: tracing the lines of his palm like a fortune teller, bending and unfolding his fingers, turning it over and over in her own hands. He closes his eyes. His face is smooth, peaceful; he suddenly looks so young, and she gentles her fingertips so they barely graze his skin. She's almost afraid it's going to powder and spoil like a moth wing.
She watches land stretch from before to behind them and wonders what Santana is doing right now back in Lima.
After they'd won Smarty Pants in Ohio, when she fetched her backpack from the green room, she'd kind of hoped to see a text from Santana. But there was nothing. Her heart sagged a little.
She shouldn't have been worried. The next day, San stopped her outside the choir room. Her eyes followed the other Glee kids who passed through the doors and stood two steps farther back from Brittany than she used to. Her shirt that day was loose and black. She hasn't worn white since Karofsky slushied her.
"I watched," she said.
"I know."
San's eyes flicked from the door to her feet back to the door before settling on Brittany's shoulder, light and hesitant as a butterfly.
"I was so proud of you," she said. Brittany wanted to take the three steps that would close the space between them and squeeze her so tight their ribs would lock together. But she only let herself grin—almost as big as she wanted to. And like a room in a dark house when someone turns on a light in the room next door, San's mouth tipped into a soft, helpless smile.
Brittany's fingertips have stopped in the pit of Artie's palm. His eyes flutter open beneath his glasses.
"Everything okay, baby?"
"Yeah." She offers a quick smile to prove it. In the seat in front of them, Tina nuzzles deeper into Mike's shoulder. Brittany's pulled her own hand back, woven her fingers together, and tucked her hands in her lap.
"Nervous?"
"A little." It's the truth. She knows she just got lucky with the cat diseases. The categories here could be anything. Science. Computers.
"Brittany, you won that thing for us back in Lima. Without you, we wouldn't all be heading to Detroit right now." He takes her wrist, pulls her fingers apart, and closes her hand between his. "You're going to be great."
She nods without smiling.
"Want to study?" he asks, and reaches in the backpack at his feet for his heavy study book. She takes it from him, opens it on her thighs, and lets Artie rest his chin on her shoulder while they go through the pages together.
The quiz bowl goes off without a hitch. They're on fire, all four of them. They've all been packing themselves with the candy and soda and pretzels put out for them in the green room and they're hopped up on nerves and sugar. Brittany looked up the channel and time before she left, and she knows the Glee kids and her family and especially San are all watching. She blows a kiss: San will know who it's for.
This'll show everyone who's called her stupid. Even—she remembers this with a special sting—even Mr. Schuester.
When she gets the tiebreaker question, her heart is mouse-quick. Not because she's nervous, but because she knows how excited San is going to be. And how proud.
After they jump and hug and whoop and squeal, the four of them run to get their stuff out of the green room. They head to the motel, where they've got two rooms with two double beds each: one room for Artie and Mike, the other for her and Tina. Of course, what that really means is they're going to wait for Ms. Hannon, their club advisor, to go to bed, and swap so the couples can be together. Tina and Mike are looking at each other like they've got big plans.
It's not even ten when Ms. Hannon turns in. She must be tired from driving that big school van all the way from Lima. It takes about ten seconds after that for Mike to dive into their room with his duffel bag over his shoulder. Britt drags her things out the door, closing it behind her just after she hears the triple sigh of Tina, Mike, and the bedsprings. God, Brittany hopes the walls are thick.
In her new room, Artie's waiting for her, looking giddy. He wraps his arms around her neck and she lays him down on the bed. But before he can kiss her, she hears her phone ringing from her purse.
It's Santana.
"Sorry, I have to take this," she says, and he raises his eyebrows but doesn't argue.
"Hi," she answers. She pockets her card key, walks out of the room and shuts the door behind her.
"Britt." San's voice feels like that first moment in the shower when the hot water soaks into her hair and soaks it to the tips.
"Did you watch?" Brittany looks up and down the narrow gray hallway before sitting down, back to the wall, a few paces from her door.
"Of course I did. You were amazing."
"Thanks."
She waits for San to say something else. Silence. She keeps waiting.
"You won it," says San, finally. "Everything."
"Something like that."
More silence comes after that, and Brittany closes her eyes as if she can look over the state line and through that flat space until her eyes reach San's body. She'd bet money San's sitting just at the foot of her bed, nested in dark pillows, the way she does when she's unsure about something and needs space to think.
"I was thinking about you," she tells Santana.
"Yeah?"
"Mhm. I was hoping you were watching me when I got those questions about World War Two because you helped me study for that test last week."
She can hear Santana breathing. Thinking breathing.
"I was—I mean, I am—so proud of you."
Brittany lets the words wash over her for a minute. The dirty hall of the motel is gone behind her closed eyelids. She can only see that image of Santana on the floor, guarding herself with pillows from some danger Brittany can never quite imagine.
"I miss you," she says, finally. She can't even hear San's breath now.
"Miss you too." A beat. Then, stronger: "Britt, I have to go."
"I know. Me too." She looks back at the door. Artie's still behind it, waiting. "Night, San,"
"Night, Britt."
After she hangs up with Santana, Brittany walks to the ice machines and back, just trying to work the lump from her throat. She has to look happy for Artie. Happy and nothing else. She jumps from one foot to the other in the little alcove, trying to shake the Santana out of her skin. It's the first time since the lockers that San has told her she misses her.
By the time she comes back, Artie looks like he's memorized every inch of the ceiling.
"What took you so long?" His voice is clipped, fast.
"Sorry. You know I've missed her, Artie." She doesn't need to say who.
He takes a deep sigh, squeezes his eyes shut, and then opens them again. He tilts his mouth into a tight smile.
"I know you have," he says, milder, and pats the place next to him on the bed. She settles down beside him and buries her nose and mouth into his chest. He smells like forest and mulch and powder and—well—boy.
"Kiss me," he says. Brittany swings her knee over his hips and straddles him. He braces her waist with her hands and sighs as if he's been holding the sigh in for a hundred years, and she feels how hard he is already. She thinks about how long she's made him wait. Her stomach softens and turns with something like love. Something—but not quite.
She undresses him and herself, grinds against him and lets his hands wander her body. She puts on the condom for him, even though he knows how to do it himself now. Sinking onto him feels weird after all of those times lately that she's touched herself while thinking of Santana. Somehow she feels further away from him now that she and Santana aren't sleeping together anymore.
Miss you too. San's voice on the phone—so soft, at the edge of cracking. The way she sounds just after Brittany's made her come.
The thought of that voice saying other things gives Brittany a shiver so deep she forgets where she is. Instead, she imagines the scene rewound, re-imagines a night where she straddled Santana's hips instead, sank her body onto San's fingers, and rocked so they crooked into that pit only San can find. The one that makes her feel like San's fingers are stretching and sprouting in every part of her. Santana letting her set the pace, the way Artie lets her tonight. San's hands in place of Artie's, bracing her thighs. She's in San's dark bedroom and they're buried in her swishy sheets and the only bright thing is Santana's skin.
"Brittany." Artie's voice, husky and close, cuts through her fantasy. "Open your eyes."
She realizes with a shock that she's closed them. She never closes her eyes. Not with Artie.
Her eyes return to his and settle. Her own moment is gone. Her hips belong to Artie for the moment, moving and he guides them with his hands until he's finished. It doesn't take long.
"You didn't…?" He cocks his head. She shrugs, gives him a little what-can-you-do smile, and rolls over to lie next to him. She kisses his warm shoulder and ribs. "Oh." He sounds disappointed. "Do you want me to… you know?"
"No. It's okay," she tells him. Nuzzling into his shoulder, she closes her eyes again and lets the thought of Santana grow inside her chest again. Her chest suddenly feels full of something dark and liquid. She loses the smell of Artie because it feels like she's stopped breathing. Like somehow, the need to breathe is gone.
"I love you," whispers Artie into her hair. Brittany feels the sluggish liquid slowing her heartbeat and pretends she's sleeping. She feels him press a kiss to her hair and tries to imagine herself feeling something different.