AN: Aw, y'all really like Brittany! Me, too, so please enjoy a bit of Britt from the POV of her best friend, Santana. FYI, Nena is a Spanish term of endearment. It means "baby girl" if your parents/grandparents say it, but it's sort of the equivalent of the American term "babe" if someone your age uses it.
As I pulled up to Britt's house, she was already outside, running to her car.
"Britt, where are you going?"
She looked like a little girl caught eating cookies before supper. "Oh, San…I, um, I was going to Rachel's house…to come up with some new choreography for glee."
Without me? I must have done a bad job hiding my disappointment, because Brittany stammered: "Oh! Oh, San, I didn't mean it."
"Didn't mean what?" I asked, confused.
"I wasn't really going to make up a dance without you. It was just all I could think of! I didn't want you to be mad at me, but I'd rather have you mad at me than sad."
"Why would I be mad, Britt?" I asked.
"Well…'cause you don't like Ra… RuPaul, and sometimes you don't like Quinn, either, and you used to date Puck. And then you were having sex with him, but not dating."
"Nena, what does that have to do with anything?"
"Well…Okay, Rachel? She's really sad? So she's even dancing and singing sad. And even though she dresses like she's home-schooled and is really dumb about being cool, I like singy-dancey-Rachel, so when she dances and sings sad, I feel sad."
Fuck. I hate Man-Hands, but I can't stand it when Britt's sad.
"Tina and I asked Quinn and Puck, and Quinn thinks Rachel doesn't really like Jesse," Brittany continued. "I mean, part of her does, but part of her doesn't."
"Let me guess: part of her is still in love with Finn."
"That's what Puck thought, too, but nope."
"Who is she in love with then, Mr. Shue?" I asked. Britt giggled, and grabbed my hand. She started swinging our linked hands back and forth.
"No, silly! Okay, close your eyes and picture Rachel in the middle of a circle. Then put all the boys in glee all around the circle. Now, who is Rachel leaning toward?"
"What? I don't know, Nena."
"Oh, I thought for sure you'd get it. 'Cause people's bodies say stuff their mouths won't say, and you're body-smart, so…"
I closed my eyes and tried to rewind to recent glee practices. I've tried to keep a sharp eye on everyone to make sure they have the choreography, to keep on top of any gossip, and to scout out weaknesses that I could use to my advantage.
Had I really missed something? I'd only been paying attention to Rachel and Finn or Rachel and Jesse. Well, she'd had some chemistry with Mike when they danced, but there was someone else I'd seen her talking to. Someone who treated her differently than he treated just about anyone else. Someone who let her get away with things no one else would get away with, like calling him by his first name. When he slouched in his chair, he slouched toward her. He raised eyebrows at her and kind of pouted when she said stuff to him. She would touch his arms sometimes when they talked. "No way," I said with a groan.
"See? You saw it, too! You don't like him anymore, though, right? 'Cause that's what you said both the out-loud way and the body way."
"No, sweetie. I'm not interested in Puck, even though he is smokin' hot. But that doesn't mean we should hook him up with Rachel Berry! She and Jesse are like the perfect, dorky-Broadway-wannabe couple!"
"Nuh-uh," Brittany replied, letting go of my hand and shaking her head. "See, Jesse and Rachel are like glee choreography. It's pretty and perfect and the audience can usually guess what will happen next. It's pretty easy to do, and it's not too fancy, because the singing part is more important. And Rachel and Finn are more like a Cheerios routine. It's harder to do, and the dancing is the whole performance, so your body gets lost in dancing it, and that's all there is in the whole world." As she was talking, she demonstrated, shifting from the choreography from Somebody to Love to the choreography to our Cheerios routine from Nationals last year.
"So what are Rachel and Puck like?" I asked.
"They're like you and me: a Mia dance, or a Sonya dance." Then, she started dancing again, and it took me a while to recognize it as Katee's role from the "Hometown Glory" routine on So You Think You Can Dance, Season 4. Her body reeled and reached, ankles and toes flexed, every inch of her holding and releasing tension as the steps required, dancing until she had to stop because there was no one to lift her or catch her like Joshua had lifted and caught Katee.
Mia Michaels and Sonya Tayeh were Brittany's favorite choreographers, and So You Think You Can Dance was Brittany's favorite show. We both loved watching talented dancers work with some of America's best choreographers, even though the judges sometimes picked the wrong dancers for the top twenty, just to make the show more dramatic. Sonya and Mia mostly created contemporary pieces full of angles, dancers collapsing in on themselves, or expanding.
"We're a Mia dance? Mia dances are so sad," I said.
"Not all of them, but even the sad ones…the audience never knows what will happen next. You have to dance them with your whole heart. And if your heart is broken, that's okay, because the broken is part of what makes it beautiful."
"What if being broken means he can't let himself love her?" I asked, so soft I almost didn't recognize my own voice.
Brittany looked at me, stared for a second, then gave me a soft kiss.
"It'll be scary, but he'll figure it out. See, Puck? He doesn't trust his heart, and his head is mean. Like if you scare Maxi, or step on her tail? She hisses and bites, because she's hurt or scared. The only other time she bites is if you pet her too much. It's like she gets too happy, and that scares her, so she tries to chase it away. Like her head tells her she's not allowed to be that happy. So it seems like she's being mean to me by biting, but she's being meaner to herself. Get it?"
She was trying to look casual, only glancing at me sideways from under her bangs, but I knew her better than that. She was saying that my head was mean, too.
"Okay, okay. We'll go help RuP…Rachel. We'll help Rachel get Puck."
And there were other things, too—things I didn't know how to say to her. But from the way she took my hand and twirled me, I was sure she understood.
AN- Thanks for reading. Drop a line to tell me what you thought, or to make any comments or requests.