"So, was it worth it?"
Santana takes a swig of the wine in her hands, fingers playing along the edge of the label fraying against the cool glass of the chilled bottle.
She picks idly at the wet paper, ignoring the cloudy hazel eyes that are no doubt piercing into her from where Quinn is wrapped in blankets on the floor next to the mattress Santana calls her bed.
This is the second bottle this week. She's lost count of the number for the month but Quinn picks the best wines—and has never been ID-ed in her fucking life—so Santana reasons that's why she lets her stay.
It's at least legit why she let her stay the first time because seriously, not letting her get roofied and raped by some frat skeeve at a party isn't an invitation for Quinn to show up at her apartment a week later in the middle of the night but she came with an already chilled bottle of aged semi-sweet red and Santana had had a kinda shitty day so that was that.
The second time, Santana was less nice about it but Quinn had let it slip she had taken the bus to get to her apartment—apparently, she never really got back into good graces with the 'rents after the getting knocked up thing and then the moving to New York thing came with the price of her selling her car—so Santana let her stay then just so her not letting Quinn get raped at a frat party deed wouldn't be undone by Quinn unsuspectingly getting raped on a bougie bus back to campus.
It kinda spiraled out of control after that. Quinn started crashing on her couch almost daily because campus living sucks and her roommates are crazy and Santana just kinda stopped complaining because letting Quinn borrow her couch and car—even since high school, Quinn, despite being taller than her has been the only person who doesn't adjust anything when driving her car—often equates to a fully stocked fridge, home-cooked meals, a full gas tank and like now, the occasional bottle of liquor.
It's not so bad really. It's not like they're friends or anything; it's just kinda like sponsoring a hobo who isn't really homeless.
A not-really-homeless hobo who she just happens to get tipsy with on a frequent basis…
It seriously isn't as bad as it sounds; or at least it isn't as bad as Santana really kinda hoped it'd be.
Quinn's actually pretty funny when she's drunk. It seems that when she has a lot less to be angry about, she becomes an overly philosophical drunk instead and when Santana has a lot less to be overemotional about, she's more than content to just giggle over Quinn's theories of everything.
Occasionally though, drunken Quinn lends her mouth as the patron of vague ass questions and as much as Santana tries to ignore them, curiosity gets the best of her and like now, she finds herself leaning over her bed, head-on facing Quinn's far too bright stare.
She rolls her eyes—mainly at herself for not being able to resist the temptation to find out what the fuck Quinn is talking about— handing over the almost finished bottle of wine.
"Was what worth it, Fabray?"
Quinn shrugs.
"You know,"
Actually, Santana doesn't know or she wouldn't have wasted her breath asking. She says as much and maybe her approach is a bit aggressive or something because Quinn rolls her eyes this time.
"Everything," she clarifies, which once again, so not helpful. "High school, the backstabbing, the betrayals, the meaningless sex. Was it worth it?"
Santana lets out an annoyed growl, flopping back against her bed and flinging a forearm against her closed eyelids to shield herself from Quinn's gaze.
Sometimes Quinn is relatively ok, and then she goes and ruins it all by doing something like this.
They've been doing really fucking fantastic in public with this them-having-never-met-before-the-try-outs scheme. It works for them—or for Santana particularly— because no one delves into Santana's past and no one delves into Quinn's really either and maybe there are a few downsides to this like sometimes Santana's snark falls short because of it (like last week during practice when Quinn couldn't seem to stick her extension and Santana nailed a perfectly timed "What happened, Quinn? You used to be good!" but no one really batted an eyelash because clearly the only reason that'd really sting is because of the history between them) but ultimately, it's worth it and they do kind of drop the pretense when they're alone together anyway.
And by drop the pretense, Santana means tread very lightly over the less volatile subjects sprinkling their intertwined past. But that's kinda the thing though; that's why this thing—whatever not-really-friendship is happening between them now—works, because there are no not-volatile subjects between them so they need this layer of gloss over them or else they're really just two people linked by a series of really fucking unfortunate events.
Events that Santana would rather not dwell on but Quinn seems to thrive on and now they're at a sort of drunken crossroads with their conflicting emotions and Quinn's eyes are heavy on her and her limbs and lips have been made heavy from the alcohol and… well, was it worth it?
She's not even fucking sure.
"I don't—" she shrugs heavy shoulders. "You tell me. You went through it too,"
Aversion 101.
"I didn't finish it though,"
Deflection 101. Reason number six billion and twenty two why she and Quinn can't be friends; they've studied from the same handbook—they'd never get anything civil done.
Quinn shrugs, leaning up on her elbows to pass the bottle back to Santana. Santana swishes the liquid against the glass bottle and it barely slaps the surface, a clear indication that she's too drunk for this conversation; of course, that doesn't stop Quinn.
"I mean, of course I finished high school, but you finished it. Rumor has it you even have an eight by ten on Sue Sylvester's hall of fame,"
"It's actually a twenty-four by thirty-two,"
Quinn laughs, the sound reverberating from deep in her throat and curling warm around Santana like a cocoon. She shivers from the force of it or from the surprise of it or from something completely unrelated to the way Quinn's lips pucker around the sound and her cleavage heaves beneath the low cut of her halter.
Not that she noticed that stuff.
Or not that noticing that stuff means anything because of course she noticed that stuff; she's only human. It's just that she hasn't really heard Quinn laugh— like really laugh— in so long that she'd forgotten how pleasant a sound it can actually be.
She almost doesn't want it to end.
"Fine, twenty-four by thirty-two," Quinn concedes, chuckles tapering off into curiosity. "What I'm saying is, being where you are now right now, do you regret what it took to get here? Like, would you change it if you could even if it meant being somewhere different?"
'I—" she thinks about Glee and Brittany and where she ought to be versus where she is. She thinks about a one bedroom apartment in New York and a school for performing arts with her singing and the perfect blonde girlfriend dancing through their apartment. She had it all planned out back then and now she wouldn't even know how to get it if it tickled her palm and pleaded to be touched.
She sighs.
It's not that she doesn't want it still—God, she wants it so fucking badly—but in hindsight, she doesn't even know if there were any right decision she could have made back in high school to get it.
She does know though, that if she had to trade that twenty-four by thirty-two for the New York apartment and the perfect girlfriend, it'd take less than a heartbeat, so she guesses it wasn't really worth it. She almost says as much but then she remembers that she's talking to Quinn Fabray and admitting her regrets is akin to admitting a weakness and she's still not entirely sure that Quinn's not collecting her weaknesses to use against her in the future so she shrugs instead.
"I dunno. What do you think?"
Quinn gazes at her, her eyelids heavy and her cheeks flush from the alcohol. For a terrifying moment, Santana's almost sure Quinn is going to point out all she could have done, all the times she fell short, all the times she didn't even try, but Quinn falls back against the flurry of blankets she's propped upon, hazel eyes searching the ceiling.
"Honestly," her voice floats like it's travelling great distance, like Quinn's not even here—she probably isn't. "I don't think you're all that happy here, Santana,"
As annoyingly meddling Santana knows Quinn to be, that surprises her. The way the words drift and cling to her, like it's something that had to be said for her to realize the truth behind it, surprises her even more.
"I pretend to be asleep sometimes, San, but I can hear you come in and I don't even have to look to know it's a different girl each time. And I just listen to the footsteps and I can always tell yours apart because they're heavy. It's like you're walking to your death or something but I can't—I don't—understand why you do it if it doesn't make you happy and then I realized it's because you're still searching for happiness," She sounds more distant that ever, the wistfulness coating her vocal cords like thick syrup. "You gave it up when you had it in high school,"
She wants to deny it.
She wants to say she's just fucking peachy here.
She wants to say that she never had this happiness Quinn thinks she saw in her. Or even if she did have it, she didn't give it up; it was torn from her fingertips abruptly and replaced with despair until she found it within herself to cling to contentment.
She wants to say so much but sad hazel eye are searching her, daring her to be honest, and suddenly it makes sense.
Quinn's searching too.
New York was a pit stop.
Quinn hasn't stopped searching.
She's searching her now.
"So, was it worth it?" Quinn asks again.
She's reaching, searching out for something Santana's never really gave to her. Honesty.
"No," she's not sure if the puff of air the word travels on comes from her lungs or manages to squeeze its way from her heart but it's the truth. "I'd change almost everything,"
Quinn nods, her breath deep and shaky as she sighs..
"Me too," she admits softly. "You know one thing I'd never change though?"
"Hmm?" Santana asks, suddenly exhausted from the emotional strain of this conversation.
She's expecting Quinn to say Puck or Beth or anything to do with the Baby Gate that so suddenly shook McKinley to its core but Quinn leans up on her elbows once again, lips curling tight into a small smile.
She extends her hand to Santana, fingertips brushing hers gently.
"Hi," she grasps Santana's hand, shaking firmly, "Quinn Fabray,"
The day they met.
Freshman year in the torture chamber of a trailer Sue Sylvester rented to use as a waiting room for Cheerios tryouts.
Fuck, that's probably where all their troubles started. That day, in that trailer, her hand clammy as it grasped Quinn's tightly.
If there was a single moment in high school that she can pinpoint that set her train on course for wreckage then that was it.
If there was a single moment that she could change; one singular moment that she could do differently so that everything would be different, so that she had never put on that pleated skirt, so that she'd never had been so worried about her image and her reputation that she repeatedly chose the closet over her best friend, so that she'd never have had a Brittany to lose in the first place…
Yeah, she'd not change it either.
"Hi," her hand is clammy beneath Quinn's but she grasps tightly. "Santana Lopez. Are you a flier or a tumbler?"
Sorry updates are taking so long, guys! Finals pretty much killed me. lol Also, sorry that the pace of this story is dragging so slowly, but I really think they need to repair their friendship before they move into a stage beyond friendship. Anyway, review please! Also, you can always hit me up on my Tumblr: downlikeyourinternet (dot) tumblr (dot) com