It becomes like a sort of cheer routine between them.
Sure, Santana is glad to have Quinn back; they fall back into routine almost instantly with Quinn and her cooking and her slow electro rock bands and her reading and her occasional bottles of chilled wines and Santana with her harmless snark and her retro TV and her slowly waning refusal to acknowledge a past that has shaped her more than Quinn will ever get her to admit.
It's almost like they're dancing together except they're carefully choreographing moves that will keep them in sync but at the same time keep them far apart. It's this fear of collision that keeps them in step with one another, keeps them dancing around and across each other; they're on the sidelines cheering for the same team, for this great game that they'll never be a part of.
It's frustrating, but it works.
/
It's the first dream that shakes her.
Sure, Santana's always been prone to vivid and authentic dreams. They've plagued her since as far back as she can remember; in fact, she remembers clearly her childhood which often saw her cuddled between her parents or huddled at the foot of her big brother's bed at night, willing away images of shadowed figures and two headed monsters. During her younger teen years those dreams shifted to less tangible but more threatening fears where she'd wake from fitful bouts of sleep sweating after dreams which often began as normal days at school and ended with her as the laughing stock of the entire student body.
Even now, she still gets them, although they're much vaguer, just bits and pieces of broken images and lots of falling and failing.
Something about this is different though. Much different.
She wakes with no sudden lurch, no sweat, no tears, not even any hoarseness in her throat from latent panicked cries or screams. There's just an odd calm and embers of a dream she can't quite remember flickering just out of her reach.
When she becomes more alert, she realizes that she feels heavy. It's not the typical weighed-down heaviness that she gets after a bad dream though. She doesn't feel trapped or paralyzed, just pleasantly fuzzy in a way that makes her want to burrow into the warmth and stay there until it's not as absorbing. She tries to bring it closer, arching a bit into the static heaviness only to realize that it's very much solid.
Her eyes flutter open.
She realizes first thing that she's not in her bed. There's no ceiling fan and this cream ceiling droops a bit into a modernized architectural slope. It's her living room. The suede of her couch against her back feels familiar once she connects the dots and the weight against her side, although less familiar, suddenly makes sense.
She glances to her side, over a mass of sleep tussled blonde hair, and spies a half empty bottle of wine and two tall glasses sitting on her coffee table.
She knows she wasn't drunk—neither of them were—there is too little of the wine gone and there's no pounding in her head to suggest she'd overindulged in anything, except probably reading. The latest Quinn suggestion that Santana quite frankly finds kind of confusing but keeps reading anyway because Quinn promises her it'll get better, is jammed tightly between their bodies which Santana assumes tangled together sometime during their sleep when their bodies unconsciously realized the covert dangers of two bodies on a really small couch.
Even now that Santana's awake enough to realize that it's Quinn Fabray—the same who got knocked up by her kind of sort of boyfriend in high school, who she shoved against lockers and tripped over on her ascent of the social ladder; the same Quinn Fabray who almost kissed her after years of absence and only months of this mutual redemption, the same Quinn Fabray who she almost kissed back and she's almost certain she would have kissed back if they had continued on that collision course that their winding pasts and intertwining futures had sent them on—who is tucked so firmly into her, she still can't help but use the arm trapped beneath the blonde to tug her in closer against her body and further away from the edge of the couch.
She just doesn't want her to fall, or at least, her mind screams it so loudly she knows it can't be anything but rationalization because she already knows this feeling.
She doesn't remember how it started the first time but she knows the inkling (that tiny static urge to look for half a second too long or let her fingertips linger across a quarter of an inch more smooth flesh than she really should) that swiftly turned into an itch, that turned into an ache so intense she thought she'd burn from it.
Last time, she had too much will to stop it—she tried so hard not to want it that all she really did was want it; this time, she doesn't have enough will to even try to stop it. She knows she should probably try harder—she knows it's not worth it, she's already told Quinn it's not worth it— but it's the little things that get her. It's this, falling asleep together on her tiny couch in her tiny apartment. It's the way Quinn always pushes her heels into Santana's thigh when they're both lounging on the couch until Santana just tugs her legs onto her lap and keeps them there until Quinn starts fidgeting. It's the way Quinn pulls her hair into a messy pony tail when she's washing dishes and always tries to flick soap suds at her whenever she tells her to tighten her pony. It's a lot of things; a lot of comfortable, familiar things that Santana has swore for the longest time that she doesn't want because she doesn't want her past. She doesn't want the heartache or the pettiness or the desperation, yet, here she is tangled in one of the greatest reminders of who she doesn't want to be anymore.
And, she doesn't want to move.
Quinn yawns tiredly against her neck and Santana tries to disengage, she tries to detangle and put space between them before Quinn can realize the position their sleeping selves have gotten them into, but Quinn traps her, flinging an arm around her torso and snuggling closer.
"Stop moving! You're comfortable," she husks sleepily, wiggling down to rest her forehead against Santana's neck.
Santana desperately ignores the warmth that seems to spread throughout her and rolls her eyes instead.
"Because clearly I don't mind being your personal pillow toy, Quinn," she huffs even though her hand seems to splay comfortably across Quinn's shoulder blades before her mind can even give it permission.
Quinn's short laughter puffs against her neck, a small smirk curling against her skin in a way Santana knows means that Quinn acknowledges her sarcasm and is gonna ignore it for the simple sake of annoying her.
"Ok, thanks San," she drawls, grinning in amusement. "You're actually not all that comfortable," she teases even though she's snuggling into her like she's a fucking giant teddy bear or something. "Should have kept the implants; might have been comfier,"
There's no moment of hesitation or embarrassment like the last time Quinn mentioned her little high school summer surgery; she recognizes instantly that Quinn is just fucking with her; that she's taking something that in this setting is just a secret between them and she's hollowing it. She's making light of that insecure little girl with all the secrets and the desperate urge to do anything to keep them. She's making light of the person Santana really isn't anymore.
"Yeah, well not all of us can just up and have babies to permanently push us up a cup size," Santana counters and Quinn doesn't tense like she expects her to; she doesn't huff and haul herself off of her; she just chuckles.
And then she laughs.
"You're such a bitch," she murmurs against her, but there's no harshness in her voice, no hurt, just amusement.
"Well I learned from this fervent blonde chick in my freshman year of high school. She had the craziest idea that together we could run the school,"
There's a moment of silence between them, where their breaths just mingle and the hum of the air conditioner creates an unconscious soundtrack,
"She still thinks so," Quinn pipes up finally, voice soft, even against the almost silence.
"Does she?" Santana asks, surprised.
"Well, she's tweaked her method a bit and changed the planned outcome to something more in the realm of inner peace and happiness instead of complete and total power, but she does,"
Santana allows Quinn's intended meaning to sink between them. She acknowledges it, maybe even inwardly appreciates it but she doesn't feel bad when she starts laughing.
"Sounds like she 's turned into a hippie," she speaks through her laughter.
She expects Quinn's annoyed huff and she even deserves the hard knee she gets to the thigh but as she settles back into the serene they've somehow created, she can't help but feel like they've danced a bit closer.
And that worries her a bit.
So, some more friendship to tide you guys over because I really finally know where I am heading with this story and I felt like it really needed more Quinntana friendship to get there! It's coming though, guys; hint: they really are gonna face their pasts together except this time, they'll get it right =D
Review please!