(Author's Note: Thanks to terriblemuriel for getting me unstuck from the last few scenes. Next chapter is writing itself and should be up soon.
TOTP readers: look for an update after this story is caught up.)
Things with San aren't totally back to normal, but they're okay. When she gets back from Detroit they go to the mall and eat ice cream by the courtyard fountains. San treats. Her dad has been doing really well in the past couple of months and gives her money all the time. That's the way he tries to show he cares. Like Christmas freshman year when he gave San a fat wad of money instead of a gift. Santana bought matching bracelets for the two of them. Expensive. Chain link. San herself fastened it around Brittany's wrist the first time. Like she was trying to say, at least you belong to me.
"I love when the gumballs are finally soft," she tells Santana, prying two with her tongue from the pocket of her cheek where she had stored them while eating the ice cream.
"God, I will never get why you like bubble gum ice cream." Santana shakes her head and licks a drip of strawberry to keep it from running down the cone.
"Cause it's two in one. You get ice cream, and then you get gum."
San smiles, shrugs, and looks at her lap in that weird shy way she has now. Brittany wants to shake her sometimes. To remind her who she's talking to.
They've cranked the fountain jets up to summer setting. Mist wets the backs of their shirts as they sit on the lip. Brittany bites the softened gumballs and shatters their sugar shells. They're quiet like that for a few minutes. Santana runs her tongue over the surface of her scoop: not sexy, but careless, like a child, like no one is watching. Brittany is.
"Come over after this?" she asks.
San shakes her head without looking up from her ice cream cone.
"Why not?"
"I said no," she snaps. "Let it go."
The two of them sink back into silence. Brittany's gum is bitter already. It never lasts long. She spits it into a napkin and crumples it into a tight ball in her fist.
It's funny, but Brittany finds herself doing the same thing to Artie that San is doing to her. She'll spend time with him in public, like at school and in the Lima Bean and at the movies, but she always finds some excuse when he wants her to come over. His kisses have started to taste weird to her.
It's not so simple, though. Brittany loves him—she really does—and the last thing she wants to do is wipe away that brightness from his face that makes her heart float to the top of her chest like a bobbing balloon. He's so happy when they're together that it makes her happy to be with him. And she doesn't have to tiptoe with him. If Artie's a bird, like Santana, then Brittany's a Disney princess: he flies to perch on her hand, or her shoulder, and chirps and hops, and she can dance and sing without scaring him away. It's easy.
Artie's not dumb. He knows things are weird with Santana. Brittany told him it's because San's been stressed out and pulling away. That's true enough. Something in him must know, though. She thinks back to that time they played Mario Kart after Landslide. His cocked eyebrow. Besides, he was on the phone for the sex-is-not-dating slip. If he knows anything, though, he isn't spilling.
"Come over tonight," he asks Brittany at her locker, the afternoon Mr. Schue announces their Born This Way assignment. "Let's work on our shirts together." He grins. It's clear he isn't really talking about making shirts.
San sweeps in on the other side and pretends to ignore them as she opens her locker. She's making too much noise, slamming her books against the back panel like they've done something to annoy her. Brittany tries not to look at her but she feels her shoulders turning slightly away from Artie.
"I've got dance," she says. San pauses with a book in her hand before slipping it into her backpack. San knows her dance schedule. She knows Brittany is lying.
"Tomorrow, then."
"Maybe. Yeah."
The three of them linger—Santana, Brittany, Artie—for just a beat too long. Just long enough that Brittany feels her heart speed up and waits for something to happen.
Nothing does, of course. Artie coughs and shifts, and it's like they've been turned back from stone. San shuts her locker and walks away. Brittany takes the handles of Artie's wheelchair and drives him in the opposite direction. The hallway noise and movement swallows Santana's retreating body.
"So what is your shirt going to say?" she asks Artie, but she forgets to listen to his answer.
Brittany couldn't be prouder of Santana when she fixes Karofsky. When she comes up in front of the whole Glee Club and defends Kurt in front of everybody. I did this for us, she says, and she doesn't look at Brittany, but Brittany knows exactly who us means. Her heart bobs in her throat.
Or at least, she thought she knew.
Then, when Santana twines her fingers into Karofsky's in front of everyone, the way San would never do with her, Brittany feels like someone's popped her heart with a needle: the collapsed shell drops from her throat to her gut.
It hurts just to see their hands pressed together. She wonders whether San feels this way when she sees Brittany and Artie in the hallways. She pictures Karofsky on top of San, those rough fingers touching her in all of those soft smooth beautiful places Brittany knows as well as she knows her own body. She knows Santana will let him touch her. Maybe he's already had her.
Then, San's hand twitches in his like she wants to let go. Her eyes snag on Brittany's for just one second, but that one second is enough. She's scared. She's still scared. And she won't let go of Dave's hand.
"We on for tonight?" Artie asks after Glee. After San and Karofsky have left. Brittany still feels stuck to her chair. She shakes her head.
"Modern. I forgot."
Artie huffs.
"Baby, I feel like I haven't seen you in forever."
"That's silly, Artie. I see you every day." She tries to sound light, normal.
"You know what I mean."
"Soon." She pivots on her chair and folds one of his hands between hers. "I promise."
Brittany has no trouble figuring out what to put on her own shirt. People have been calling her dumb as long as she can remember.
She's in the choir room, after school, alone, standing in the same spot where Santana stood yesterday with Karofsky's hand in hers. She thinks of the instant their eyes met and Brittany felt all of San's love and fear like a punch to the chest.
I don't want to be with Sam, or Finn, or any of those other guys. She thinks about how awkward Santana looked at Glee, stiff under the weight of the arm Dave wrapped around her shoulders. She's always been putting on a show when it comes to boys. Brittany doesn't understand why she can't let all of it go. Why she has to keep pretending, even now that Brittany knows.
Santana is never going to wear that word she hates so much on her chest, much less print it on a T-shirt. But then she thinks of a way. There's that one restaurant near her house with the best ever hummus that she thought was called "lesbian food" for the longest time, and wondered how lesbians had special food, until she heard someone say it out loud. Sometimes her brain twists words like that when she reads. But Santana's doesn't.
So maybe she'd wear this. Everyone would know what it meant—but she wouldn't have to say it.
She makes her shirt, and Santana's, and folds and wraps them into one tight bundle that she tucks into her backpack.
Brittany shouldn't be surprised when Santana refuses to wear the shirt. But she is surprised at how angry she gets at San's refusal.
She's said her piece. The part she planned out before, about how proud she was of Santana for telling her how she felt. That she knows how much it hurt. Which she does, from San, when she refused to sing a duet. The one other time Brittany let herself get angry at Santana.
Now, all San can think to do is swear her to secrecy. Again. And accuse Brittany of not loving her enough. Again.
Brittany's frustration is foaming—boiling—in her chest. And for once, she lets it spill out.
"I do love you. Clearly you don't love you as much as I do or you would put this shirt on and you would dance with me." She shoves the shirt into Santana's arms and leaves her, striding through the halls, burning and miserable.
The choir room is empty and dark. Brittany decides to skip the first few minutes of math and gather her thoughts.
Brittany stares at the letterpress under its cloth cover and thinks about the fresh warm shirt she'd made for Santana, the black letters slightly rough under her trailing fingers as she imagined San putting it on, holding her hand, lacing their fingers together.
Of course that was never going to happen. She's still so mad she's shaking. She's just sick of it. When Santana shot her down and broke her heart, she got Brittany back right away without even saying she was sorry. Now, even though Brittany keeps telling her she loves her over and over, somehow Santana gets to pout and deny it and push her away? It's not fair.
After all, if it weren't for Santana's shame—shame for Brittany—she would never have been with Artie in the first place.
Brittany knew Santana wasn't going to show up for the dance. She knew it. But when Sam says she must be making out with Karofsky, Brittany's shocked again at how much she feels hurt, feels it in her body.
Even though San's not there, Brittany dances like she is. Not like when she used to dance for San in the studio, dance lighter and freer and stronger for her eyes, but to show her she can be strong. That even though Santana can still hurt her, she can't break her. And she can't break her down.
Except that Santana is there.
Brittany thinks she's imagining her at first: that still figure near the back of the auditorium, stiff as a little peg in a dollhouse. Right next to Karofksy, who's sitting just as stiff, arms crossed over his chest.
It's then that Brittany sees it. Santana is wearing the Lebanese shirt. No jacket, no vest. Just the shirt: plain and naked.
And just like that—way too easy—all of Brittany's anger melts to pity and desire and love.