Chapter 17
Santana
Britt...
Santana punched send and waited. They'd been playing text tag all morning. Although, honestly, she didn't know how much of it was really text tag and how much was Brittany just taking her time to reply. She had heard "I'm not mad" no less than eighteen times the night before. "Of course, I understand" came in at eleven times. She knew both of those things were true. Brittany wasn't mad, she was disappointed. And Brittany did understand, it just wasn't fair. It wasn't fair for either of one of them. Nothing was fair about being so far away.
She had said "I wish I could" probably a hundred times last night. She had said it to Brittany, to herself, to inanimate objects. That was true, too. She did wish she could go to Seattle. She wanted to be with Brittany. She wanted to be with Brittany anywhere and everywhere and in every way. And she would be. She'd be with Brittany sometime, somewhere, somehow. She knew that without question. It just wouldn't be then.
Brittany
?
Santana sighed at her reply. A question mark. Pretty fitting, though. There were so many things she hadn't told Brittany yet. So many things she wanted to say, but couldn't find the courage or the right time. She wanted to tell Brittany that she cried for hours after she left New York. She wanted to tell Brittany that she refreshed the Sea-Tac airport website every 30 seconds to make sure her flight landed safely. She wanted to tell Brittany she had never slept as well as she did when she was tangled up with her. She wanted to tell Brittany her apartment had never felt so quiet without her laugh. She wanted to tell Brittany she'd never felt more at home than when the blonde's clothes were thrown all over the floor. She wanted to tell Brittany she had already bought a plane ticket to Seattle for Thanksgiving. She wanted to tell Brittany that she was in love with her.
Santana
Hi.
But she couldn't just yet.
She looked up from her phone to find Kurt studying his sketches of Rachel's pre-premiere attire on the magnetic board. He loved weeks like this. He lived for weeks like this. He started months early with little paper outfits and a Rachel Berry made perfectly to scale on a tongue depressor. When the time had arrived, he was fully prepared with storyboards for each day. This was Kurt's time to shine. This was his week to be the king of the master closet.
"I hate weeks like this," Santana said. "I just don't understand why we need to have so many pre-parties and a pre-premiere event. That movie is going to bomb anyway."
"Rachel loves Premiere Week. I love Premiere Week. You're the only one who doesn't love it, Santana. You're outvoted."
"It's ridiculous."
"You're just mad because you can't sit around all day sexting with Brittany."
"I am mad about that, yes," Santana answered. "It doesn't make this any less ridiculous, though. Celebrating Rachel's overly inflated ego doesn't seem like the best use of my time."
"I've been meaning to ask about that," Kurt turned to her.
"Rachel's overly inflated ego?"
"No," Kurt shook his head. "I'm familiar with the ego, I mean you and Brittany and...you know."
"The sexting? That's none of your business," she answered with a growl.
"So, not well," Kurt tried not to laugh at her obvious annoyance. "But that's not what I wanted to know about either. How's the long distance thing?"
"It's hard." She subconsciously tapped her phone. "Harder than I thought it would be, and I knew as soon as she was gone that it was going to be fucking awful."
"Not finding enough time to talk?"
"We talk. Not as much as I'd like, but we do. That's not the problem. Don't get me wrong, I could talk to her all day. I do, some days. But, it's hard not seeing her, not being able to touch her. Those things are killing me. I don't mean to be a whiny bitch about it, but I really miss her."
Kurt gave her a sad smile, "It seems like it."
Santana shifted uncomfortably, trying to decide how much to say. "No, Kurt, I really miss her."
"I understand," he nodded.
"No, I mean, I miss her like...I'm completely in love with her, miss her."
"I know you are, Santana," Kurt said like it was an absolute foregone conclusion and she was an idiot for not having known that everybody in the universe knew this information.
"It's that obvious?"
"I'm not sure if the thing that tipped me off was your constant talking about her. Or if it was watching you drool over her while she here or the fact that you keep her hoodie in your bag and you sniff it every hour on the hour?"
"I do not!" Santana denied.
"Let's check," the man made a sudden move for it.
"Okay, okay," she told him. "Don't touch it, you'll wear off the Brittany smell."
"How is she?"
"Perfect," Santana answered proudly. Then she remembered last night's conversation, "Not thrilled with me right now, though."
"Oh? Trouble in paradise already?"
"It's hardly paradise when she's in Seattle and she wants me to be in Seattle next weekend, but I can't be. No, definitely not paradise."
"Ouch."
"Yeah, she tried to play it off," Santana winced with the memory. "But she was really disappointed. I felt like a huge jerk."
"I can imagine." Kurt shifted around some of his designs on the board. "And now, I understand why you're not into Premiere Week."
"It's hard to care when I'd rather be with her."
Kurt laughed, "You've got it bad."
When he didn't get a normal bitchy response, he turned again to see her smiling. "I do."
"Well, I've known you for a long time, and I've never seen you like this. Not even with Quinn."
"Not even close," Santana replied. "Quinn was like Little League. She was a practice round. She was the pre-rinse cycle. All those things that seem really stupid, but you have to live through them to get to the really good stuff."
"And I suppose that Brittany's the really good stuff?"
"Brittany is...the stuff that I want. I need her stuff. I just wish her stuff was here instead of in Seattle. So I could enjoy her stuff. And she could enjoy mine and we could continually put our stuff together. We'd be mixing our stuff together right now."
"TMI."
"You know you like it," Santana told him with her usual sass. "It's hot. We're hot."
"What do you like, Kurt?" Rachel asked, entering the room and making a straight shot to the sketches on the board. She pretty much glazed over her own question, though, when he pointed to a couple drawings and said, "Switch these."
"Not a chance, Rachel," Kurt refused. "It's perfect. I've spent months on this to get it perfect. They were picked specifically each day to build to a beautiful crescendo on Premiere Night."
"Kurt, please," Rachel argued. "Nobody puts together a Premiere Week wardrobe like Rachel Berry. Us Weekly said so."
"I am the one who puts together Rachel Berry Premiere Week wardrobes," Kurt reminded her.
"Switch them!" Rachel commanded as she floated over to her vanity and pulled out a tube of mascara.
"No, never."
"Do it."
"Rachel, trust me when I say, your week of fashions has been perfectly planned and you should really back the the hell off."
"You guys make me want to barf," Santana added just because she could. "Rachel's going to look like a drunk slut at the end of every night no matter what she wears."
"Speaking of drunk sluts," Rachel addressed her, "Finn will not be going to any Premiere Week activities, so you'll need to come up with some spin for that. Or whatever it is that you do that makes me look good."
"Who is distracting that doofus for an entire week? He's aware that there will be all kinds of cameras to mug for, right?"
"I asked him not to accompany me on any red carpets. I'm phasing him out of my public persona."
"Phasing him out of your public persona?" Santana asked slowly. "Where do you come up with this shit?"
Rachel waved around her mascara before handing it off to Kurt, "It'll give us a couple of weeks of the mags running headlines about our mysterious status. I'm planning on giving an exclusive to the gossip rag that prints the most flattering picture of 'Single Rachel Berry.'"
"Are you trying to tell me you're getting divorced?" Santana asked trying not to get her hopes up.
"Not divorced."
"Damn!"
"Separated."
"Yes! One step closer," the publicist said as she raised her fist in triumph. "Almost there, Kurt!"
"Great news," Kurt commented as put the final touches on his painted eyelashes, "Does this give me a gay vibe?"
Santana gave him the benefit of a close look before saying, "I can safely say that your gay vibe can be seen from space. No, no, actually it can be seen from further away than that. We're talking galaxies far, far away. Like a planet where everything is the opposite of what we know. Where being gay is actually the norm. And even the gayest of all the super gay, incredibly heterophobic aliens see your gay vibe and think, whoa, dial it back, homo."
"So, too much?"
"Just a bit," Santana told him.
"What if I go a bit lighter?" he asked checking himself out.
"Whatever floats your big gay boat," she said.
She had intended on helping him find something lighter when she felt the vibration of her phone. She loved that little shock she got. Both physically and emotionally. Brittany had pressed a button in Seattle and she felt the vibration in New York. How sad was it that she loved that? How far gone does someone have to be, that they love something so simple?
Brittany
Hi.
Santana
Are you busy?
Brittany
I have about 20. Call me.
"Hey," Santana got the attention of the other two and held up her phone to signal what she was doing. They both waved her off while they squabbled about clothes or some other stupid crap that Santana couldn't care less about. She reached into her bag and pulled out Brittany's sweatshirt as discreetly as she could. It didn't work out very well for her.
"You should really wash that already," Rachel said obnoxiously when she was caught.
"Oh, leave her alone," Kurt said. "Let her be weird about her girlfriend's shirt. It's all she has."
"Thanks so much for that, Kurt," Santana hissed.
"I was trying to help."
"You're not."
Santana headed out the door, but not before Rachel complaining, "You're not helping poor, devastated Santana and you're not helping me with these questionable choices. You need to foc-"
She shut the door on that conversation and took a seat on the ninth step down of the grand staircase before she dialed Brittany's number. She sat the Washington sweatshirt in her lap and waited through the two and half rings.
"Hi, Santana."
Her heart always skipped a beat. It always did.
"Are you still mad at me?" Santana asked as she leaned her head against the rails of the stairway.
"I'm not mad," Brittany replied. Nineteen.
"I want to see you."
"I want to see you, too," Brittany answered. "But I understand. " Twelve. How far would those numbers go up before they were in the same room again?
"I miss you."
"I'm right here."
"You know what I mean."
"I miss you, too. You know that already."
Santana swallowed hard. She did know that, because Brittany didn't hold back. Not like she did. "I love you."
"...What?" It was whispered.
"I love you. I'm in love with you. I love everything about you. Your laugh. The way you make those butter smiley faces on your toast. The way you kiss. That cute butt wiggle you do when you're excited that I'm not sure if you even know you do. The way your body feels against mine. The way you sound in the morning. The way you move. You're perfect. And you're going to say that you're not, but you're perfect for me. We are perfect together. Whether it's fate or meant to be or some big fucking random coincidence that we met, it doesn't matter. And I should have told you this while you were here, or hired a skywriter, or did some other romantic over the top bullshit, but i couldn't wait for the next right moment. So, I love you."
Santana was pretty sure that the next forty-six seconds was the longest of her entire life. She knew that's how long it took, though. She watched the second hand on the clock go from 3:27:16 to 3:28:02.
But at 12:28:03 in Seattle, she heard an emotionally strained, "I love you too."
Santana blinked away the tears that had formed in eyes. She took a deep breath in relief, "You do?"
"I love you more than anything else in this world, Santana," Brittany confided. "Duh! I have for a really long time."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because if I would have told you I loved you after our second phone conversation, you would have changed your number."
"No, I wouldn't have."
"Yeah." Brittany said in disbelief. "You would have freaked out. I was freaked out, so I know you would have freaked out."
"No."
"Yes," Brittany said with no room for doubt.
"Fine, I would have freaked out," Santana admitted. "Okay? You're right. Are you happy?"
"I'm so, so, so happy right now, Santana," Brittany told her sincerely. "I love you. You love me. I'm happy."
"Say it again."
"What? I'm happy."
"You know what."
"I love you, Santana." She could actually hear the smile across all the miles. She could hear the love in her voice. It was there. It was real. "I love you."
"Oh my god, that sounds good," Santana laughed and wiped away a stray tear.
"Feels good."
"Did we just make this a million times harder?" Santana asked suddenly worried.
"Just because we just said it, doesn't mean it wasn't true before. So, I don't know how we made it any harder than it already was."
"I can't imagine it being harder than not being able to hug you right now."
"Just hug me?"
"Doing other stuff would be nice, too," Santana said.
"Uh huh," Brittany agreed wholeheartedly. "Hey, I have a question."
"What's that, babe?"
"Cute butt wiggle?"
"You do it."
"When?"
"When you're excited. It's somewhere between a butt shake and a hop. It ends up being a wiggle."
"I don't do that," Brittany contended.
"Yes, you do."
"Nobody has ever told me that before."
"Maybe you only do it for me, then," Santana replied. "Maybe I'm the only person you've ever been excited enough about to do the cute butt wiggle."
"That's probably what it is."
"Most likely." Santana couldn't wipe the grin off her face. "It's okay that you do something really embarrassing around me. I think it's adorable and I love you for it."
"I'm glad you brought up embarrassing things," Brittany segued. "Kurt sent me a pic after you'd fallen asleep using my sweatshirt as a pillow a couple days ago. I wasn't going to tell you, but now you're not playing fair."
Santana really wished she had some great story to defend that, but she didn't. "Yeah, so. It's soft and it smells good."
"I bet it does."
"Just like my girlfriend."
"Lucky girl."
"She's amazing."
"How amazing?" Brittany teased.
"Amazing enough to make me fall in love with her."
Brittany exhaled, "I wish I could kiss you right now."
"Me, too, Britt. Me, too."
"Instead," Brittany groaned, "I have to get back to work."
"Already?" Santana checked the clock. Time always went too fast when she was connected to this woman.
"Yeah."
"Okay," Santana said. "Hey."
"What?"
"I love you, Britt."
"I can't believe you told me the first time while I was on my lunch break," Brittany commented. "Way to make sure the rest of my day pales in comparison."
"I couldn't help it, I just love you."
"I'm not really complaining." Brittany laughed lightly. "I love you, too."
"One more time."
"I love you, San," Brittany told her again. "I'll talk to you soon, okay?"
"Not soon enough."
As Santana disconnected, she realized how true it was. It was never soon enough. It was never enough, period.