Present Time

"What was that?"

Pulling his gaze away from Brittany's retreating form, Puck's lips twitched into a wider smile when his girlfriend launched herself into his chest, her arms reaching up to loop around his neck. The pleasure and want that poured through his body at the feel of Quinn's lips against his nearly made him forget her question, forget that he was supposed to be watching out for Brittany, but he managed to recollect everything when they separated for a while. Quinn's hazel eyes were bright with barely suppressed excitement, full mouth curving into a huge grin as she waited in expectant silence.

"Britt has a visitor," He informed her lightly, though his own gaze darkened in curiosity. "Apparently they are in her room, wanting a private talk. That's a bit worrying on its own, I think."

Quinn hummed in agreement, head tilted slightly to the side. "Who is it?"

"I don't know. Do you want to know?" Puck teased her lightly, stealing another kiss, deepening it until she squirmed and pushed him away, face flushing red as she panted, nodding in response to his question. "Okay." Another breath-stealing kiss. "Whatever you want, I will deliver."

Pulling away slightly, Puck signalled Finn, gesturing towards the snotty man who had spoken to Brittany, asking his taller friend to stop the dude from leaving just yet. It was just their luck that he had gone around asking everyone if they needed refreshment, and was only just about to exit the room. Finn nodded and gave Puck a thumbs-up in return, moving swiftly to clamp one large hand down on the man's shoulder and squeeze harshly.

The squeak that the man emitted drew everyone's attention, and Puck could only roll his eyes in fond amusement. Really, sometimes, Finn was like one of those huge henchmen that villains in cartoons had. Though right now... Was scaring a little employee of the White House a punishable offense?

"Yo, waiter dude," Puck called, strolling over with Quinn and smacking Finn's hand off. "Who wanted to see Brittany Pierce?"

The small man had straightened with affront at being called a measly 'waiter', but one look to a benign Finn was almost enough to quell that show of bravado. "It was a private message," He sniffed, taking one cautionary step away from the taller guy.

Puck's eyes narrowed and Finn shuffled closer, prompting the panicking employee to stumble back another step. "I am not entirely sure of her identity," He quickly changed his stance, "but she asked for Ms Pierce by name, and she was in the audience when New Directions was performing. She was seated fairly near the front."

"What did she look like?" Finn rumbled, clearly interested.

"Uhhh... Black hair and dark eyes. She was dressed in a black dress, with her hair up." He winced when Puck lifted his hand, but let out a visible sigh when the mohawked man merely patted his bruised shoulder lightly.

"You may depart," Puck waved his hand, and the man did so, hastily. No one in this room was going to get any refreshment they had asked for, it would seem.

"'You may depart?'" Quinn mocked from his side with a smile, "Are you British? And, was that really necessary?"

"Aw babe, it was just something I saw on TV once. When was I going to get the chance to try it out?" He countered, before turning back to the subject at hand. "Black hair and dark eyes. Did any of you notice someone like that in the audience?"

"Yeah, like half the women, dude." Was Matt's reply, and Mike nodded. Finn shrugged.

The girls and Kurt conferred for a while, before Kurt spoke up with an irritated sigh. "Perhaps, if he had given an apt description of her dress or features, we might have. As Matt said, half the women in the audience tonight were dark haired and it was near impossible to see the colours of their eyes in the darkness."

"I wasn't looking at the people," Finn mumbled, and Rachel reached over to pat his arm consolingly.

"Thank you, Finn, for keeping your attention on your dance steps." The tall boy grinned over at her, and she returned his smile.

"Odd," Puck mused, shaking his sleeve to look at his watch. "I'll give them five minutes before I go after her."

"It's funny, though," Kurt was speaking to Mercedes, though his voice carried enough for Puck and Quinn to hear, "I could have sworn I saw Santana sitting at a table with Mother near the front today. I couldn't be sure because the woman's back was to me," He continued, "but the glimpses I caught just brought Santana Lopez to mind."

Puck noticed Quinn paling next to him, and his brow furrowed. "Lopez upped and left years ago," He scoffed, drawing the blonde closer to his side. "There is no way she's gonna just show up here, in the White House... Babe?"

Quinn shook her head, gaze flickering between Puck's worried face and the door. Back when they were all in high school, Santana had been her closest friend. They had shared most of the same classes and had built up a really strong bond. But that had been before the Latina had just left when they were twenty-one without much of a goodbye. If it had really been Santana, Quinn wanted to see her.

If it had really been Santana, and if it were really her who was talking to Brittany right now, so much shit was going to hit the fan tonight.

Continued Flashback

High School sucked. In fact, Santana groused, high schools were fucking wastes of space.

Six months of her life spent with America's high school system was six months already wasted. Why the hell was she here anyway? As if anyone in their right mind wanted to sit on their ass the whole day and be privy to dumbasses digging lint from their bellies or stuffing tiny people into lockers, and stuck up bitches whose goals in life were to make other people as miserable as they secretly were. She had so many other better things to do, and none of them included getting involved in a glaring contest with Schuester, who'd stare at her oh-so-disappointedly for mispronouncing a Spanish word. Just because she was Latina didn't mean she was fucking ace at that language. Racist bastard. Racist paedophilic bastard.

Sue Sylvester had swept into the school and somehow wrangled the position of cheerleading coach – no one was really asking how she accomplished that – which meant that Santana didn't really have a choice in joining the team. She, Quinn, Brittany, Rachel, Mercedes and Kurt were the first to be roped into joining, going along with some crazy scheme Sue had which involved turning 'lazy, robotic, sorry excuses for teenaged American homosexuals into a triple threat that not even a circus of warbling terrorists armed to the teeth with guns could beat'. No one really understood that analogy, but they went along with it. After all, being on the team was fun enough for everyone. They got to act, they got to dance, and best of all, they got to sing. Whilst they'd been on the road, the children had realized that they all had at least a fraction of a good voice – and, most importantly, they sounded fantastic together. Once Rachel and Kurt found out that schools could have something called Glee Club, everyone was sold. They were performers and, being in high school, they didn't really get a chance to really showcase their talent – as Rachel pointed out often enough that Santana itched to introduce her knuckles to that face. Together, they set up that club as an extracurricular at the school, and reluctantly accepted Schuester as their director. They wanted Sue, but she was too busy trying to get the school's team of lacklustre cheerleaders up to par. Everyone was of the general consensus that the Spanish teacher was creepy and peculiar and had this weird tendency to turn up whenever there was a fight amongst students ("A chance to touch underage children? He is so there!" as Santana had mocked whenever they heard of any new incidents), but he was the only one available. Well, he and that bug-eyed guidance counsellor, but you know. Where he went, she went too. Kinda like Chang and Eng, except that would be so wrong.

One thing that Santana did like about school, though, was the boys. Emphasis on the boys. Most of them weren't sexually experienced (part of their charm, really) or even particularly well versed when it came to the proper way to woo a girl, but it was still a great step up from being touched by disgusting, dirty-fingered, beer-bellied perverts on the back of a truck. Compared to that, inexperienced boys who lasted as long as a dead battery was a definite improvement, sex wise. Santana liked having that feeling of power, the feeling of absolute control over people who were bigger, taller and stronger than her. It was an absolute rush.

And oh, the girls. The girls. Doing them was even more awesome, because she was debauching virgins. It was definitely as fun as it sounded. And it wasn't just random people whose V-cards she swiped. She got Puck's, Finn's, Matt's and Quinn's (to her everlasting amusement). Quinn was actually her first girl, but she was going to take that secret with her to the grave. That time had been all awkward and shit, but luckily for her (and her rep); Quinn had been way too intoxicated to remember a whole lot of the fumbling.

Underage sex and drinking. She was a total badass. Guys liked that she wasn't another simpering female (it didn't hurt that she was smokin'), and girls were drawn to that badassery. Sex made school so much more tolerable.

But aside from Glee Club and cheerleading (uniforms) and sex in spacious gym showers, Santana really fucking hated high school.

}{}{}{

Brittany, on the other hand, loved school. She loved cheerleading; she loved glee club; she loved the fact that she and those of her age group would be able to graduate on year early thanks to Sue and their parents insisting they keep up with their studies while on the road. School – and the amount of people so close to her in age all congregated together in one place – amazed her and nearly made up for them not travelling in their big family group again. Those days, the adults had told the children soberly, were over for them. Lima, Ohio was their new permanent home. That was a little off-putting and many complaining sessions were had between the children, but there wasn't anything they could do about it now, was there? One day, though. They were going to venture out of this dead end town and put their mark on the world. Brittany could hardly wait.

Lima wasn't that big of a town to begin with, but the addition of six families made it seem as though a whole new community had arrived to take it over. With Sue in their midst, that wouldn't have been that far off.

But that wasn't any of Brittany's concern. All she knew was that life was wonderful. She had amazing parents, awesome friends, and a... ...a something of a sister in Santana. She wasn't too sure what it was yet. She liked (loved?) Santana and looked up to her as a younger sister did to an older, sure, and she was three years younger than the Latina, but it didn't mean that she was completely clueless as to what had taken place prior to when the older girl came home smelling of smoke and something else, hair and clothes dishevelled. It was always then that Santana was at her most indulgent with the younger blonde, and though Brittany enjoyed Santana's company during moments like those, she couldn't help but wrinkle her nose in faint disgust when Santana drifted through the doors on a cloud of smoke and sated lust.

"You smell funny," She'd complained once when she was thirteen and Santana was sixteen, "were you with Noah again?"

"No," Santana had responded lazily, flopping back on the bed. "Jason. Basketball team. Tall, curly hair, good kisser." She had sighed with a smile, one arm draped across her face so that Brittany couldn't see her eyes, "He does this thing with his –"

Brittany had instantly clapped her hands over her ears because ew. She had made the mistake of listening through one of those sentences before, and she had not been able to look at Matt the same way for weeks.

Most of their talks went along those lines, until Santana started talking about the girls she had been with. Brittany had been slightly appalled when Santana mentioned Quinn, because what, but she felt a funny stab in her stomach whenever the older girl brought up another girl. When Santana was with boys, the feeling was barely there, but when she was with a girl, it felt like someone was doing that Chinese needle thing to her. Ackin-juncture or something. Sue got it on a regular basis and it looked scary, okay? Mike Chang had assured her once that you couldn't really feel the needles, but she wasn't fooled. They were needles.

}{}{}{

On the day of Santana's seventeenth birthday, they shared their first kiss. It wasn't fourteen year old Brittany's first kiss by any means – Sam had taken it, and nowadays she made out with Artie with startling regularity – but it was her first lip-on-lip with another of the same gender. A bit of her wondered if kissing someone who was technically but not her sister was wrong, but for that moment, she was content to follow Santana's lead.

They were having their own private celebration at home, since the Pierces were at work. Brittany had baked a rather sad, deflated looking muffin for Santana, sticking as many candles as she could onto it before bringing it out to the backyard, where Santana was lounging. When the whole muffin went up in flames, the older girl had managed to stop screaming long enough to fetch a cup of water and pour it all over the concrete, ultimately putting out the fire and spreading bits of muffin everywhere. The two of them were left staring at the remains.

Perhaps dipping the muffin dough liberally in vegetable oil before putting it on the plate hadn't been the best idea, but Brittany had honestly thought that that was what the recipe had instructed her to do. And now, it was ruined. She couldn't help the tears that leaked from the corners of her eyes, and when Santana had wrapped her arms around the younger girl, she cried tears of relief.

Everything could have been so much worse, she knew that, and her parents were going to kill her if they heard of this. There was a reason, after all, that they had banned their daughter from using the kitchen appliances, ever.

But Santana had merely hugged her close and placed a kiss on her ear, murmuring assurances that Brittany was sweet and that this birthday was no worse than other birthdays because "I still get my birthday kiss, right B?"

And Brittany had smiled messily through her tears and nodded, turning her head to do as she did every year and place a kiss on Santana's tanned cheek. This year, though, Santana shifted so that Brittany ended up kissing her on the lips, something that had the blonde pulling backwards and stuttering out wide-eyed apologies. Santana merely shrugged and did it again, prolonging the chaste contact and tugging Brittany closer. It hadn't progressed to anything more, though Brittany caught Santana looking at her rather oddly a few times over the passing days. She didn't think too much about it, and they didn't speak of or repeat it for such a long time that the incident was beginning to fade from Brittany's mind.

At least, not until Brittany turned sixteen and Santana was eighteen, going on nineteen.