Disclaimer: Nope still don't own Glee And I haven't even seen the first episode of season 3 yet, because apparently rural Australia is not worthy of the amazingness that is Glee! So yeah, I really don't own anything.
AN: So I know I originally said this was a one-shot, but I am now back by popular demand! Hahahahahahaha :) So this story is now going to be a multi chapter, and I have no idea where it's going to take me but I am now on for the ride! I hope I can live up to your expectations! Enjoy! Oh and a special shout out to imalemonadeaddict for being my first ever reviewer! You rock! As do my other reviewers, I love you guys :)
Rachel walked into Calculus, still decidedly on edge from her encounter with Santana in the bathroom that morning. All she wanted to do now was lose herself in a world of numbers where there were no blurred lines and every problem had an answer. She had just pulled out a textbook and was working on the assigned problems when a commotion from the front of the room gained her attention.
"You're late Miss Lopez." Their teacher, Mr Andrews, scolded the girl.
"Whatever." The Latina shrugged as she moved to go sit down, ignoring the questioning glances being sent her way.
"And where are you books?" Mr Andrews demanded, frowning down on Santana.
"I forgot them okay! It happens!" She snapped, fury emanating from her voice as well as a hint of what Rachel detected to be desperation. Rachel watched as their teachers face went a deep shade of red, a sure sign he was about to lose it.
Rachel decided that now might be a good time to intervene. "It's okay, she can share mine." She stood up, gesturing to the empty seat beside her. The Latina glared at her, but reluctantly moved to take the seat. They worked in silence, the sound of their pens scribbling across the page the only noise. Rachel let out a frustrated sigh as she got the answer to question four wrong again. She sneaked a glance towards Santana's page, noticing that the girl was working on number twelve, the last one to be completed on the page. Rachel had forgotten how good the girl actually was at maths. She had always suspected that the girl was smart, you needed high intelligence to come back with witty remarks as quickly as she could, but watching her as she worked confirmed that suspicion. A sudden hiss brought her back to reality.
"What are you staring at midget?" Santana was scowling at her, waiting expectantly for an answer.
"Umm...could you maybe help me with number four?" Rachel asked, her eyes wide. Santana leaned over, her eyes scanning the page.
"Here," she said pointing to a spot on the page "You already have the derivative of the function, so instead of differentiating it you have to integrate it." Rachel stared at her blankly, prompting her to continue. Santana sighed "You add one to the power and then divide through with the new power and add the constant."
"Thanks." Rachel smiled as she finally got the question right. Maybe she should have Santana sit with her in calculus more often, she made it look so easy. She sighed as the bell rung signalling lunch, she would have to finish the questions for homework. On an impulsive decision she reached out, grabbing Santana by the wrist, frowning at how easily her hand circled it.
"Sit at the Glee table for lunch today." Rachel offered, sending Santana an encouraging smile.
Santana snorted. "Look man-hands I know you think we're friends or whatever now but get it through your tiny skull, I do not need your help. What happened in the bathroom was a moment of weakness brought on by the crazy hormones that occur at that time of the month. I am fine."
"Just consider it." Rachel replied as she walked out of the room, noticing Santana roll her eyes. Rachel sighed as she caught Santana walking in the opposite direction. It was worth a try right? She grabbed a red tray from the cafeteria line, placing a peanut butter sandwich and a small yoghurt next to her bottle of juice before taking a seat next to Mercedes.
Santana leaned against her locker, letting her forehead rest on the gleaming metal. The emotional toll of the day was creeping up on her, it was getting harder and harder to act composed around the annoying and freakishly short brunette. It seemed like everywhere she went that midget followed her. And now she wanted to have lunch with her? Yeah right, like that was going to happen. She rubbed her eyes tiredly, she couldn't seem to shake her headache. And on top of all that she was starting to feel nauseous too, she wished the day could be over all ready so she could go home and sleep. Or at least attempt to sleep, ever since her Mami had gotten off the drugs she was a hell of a lot less willing to leave Santana to her own devices. She was startled out of her thoughts by the sound of an approaching voice.
"Hey. Are you okay?" A concerned Brittany asked, her smile turning to a slight frown as she took in the state of Santana.
"I'm fine Britt-Britt, just not feeling very well at the moment." Santana responded, forcing a smile onto her face. "C'mon lets go to lunch."
"Okay. Do you mind if we sit at the Glee table today? Me and Mike were practising our dance and he asked me. I like sitting at the Glee table! Everyone is so happy and they talk to me and Kurt even gave me half of his cookie once! Please San?" Santana groaned internally. Of course Brittany would want to sit at the same table as her brand new personal midget stalker. And there was no way she could say no to Brittany, it was like against the law or something. She sighed.
"Sure Britt, let's go."
The two walked into the lunchroom together, joining the line for food. Brittany grabbed a plate and piled a heap of pasta in the middle, adding a few cookies around the outside for her dessert. Santana simply held onto her thermos of Sue's master cleanse, ignoring the food options around her. Mutually they walked towards the Glee club, sliding into seats at the end of the table. Santana laid her head on Brittany's shoulder, allowing her eyes to drift closed as she listened to the surrounding conversations.
"What's wrong with her?" Quinn asked, nodding her head towards Santana.
"She said she wasn't feeling good." Brittany replied absently, busy looking down worriedly at the Latina. "I don't know what to do to make her feel better." She pouted, looking up for suggestions.
"Normally when she feels sick she likes to drink excessive hot chocolate and will only eat apples." Puck spoke up, earning some suspicious looks from around the table. "What? I've known her since we were in diapers, I know what she's like when she's sick! 'Sides, I treat my women right!"
"Okay, but apples?" Mercedes asked questioningly.
"They taste good." Santana mumbled, not bothering to open her eyes or lift her head. Puck was right though, apples were the only thing she liked to eat when she wasn't feeling well, and the crisp sweetness of the apple seemed to go perfectly with hot chocolate, almost instantly making her feel better. Gosh how long had it been since she had hot chocolate? She missed the steaming cup of chocolaty goodness, but there was no way she was going to put that liquid sugar into her body now. She swore just thinking about it made her gain a pound, which was simply not acceptable anymore. She reached out blindly to grasp her master cleanse, taking a long sip of the weight loss drink.
"See! I bet that's hot chocolate in her thermos now! Right San?" Puck stated proudly. Santana said nothing, simply cradling her drink to her chest. Rachel frowned, maybe she had been wrong about her suspicions and the girl was simply just sick and emotional. A loud rumble broke her out of her thoughts and she glanced around to notice Santana biting her lip sheepishly.
"Girl you gotta eat!" Mercedes exclaimed whilst eyeing the Latina. "Here, you can have my apple. Gotta keep your strength up when you're sick!" Santana opened one eye and shook her head, denying the snack being offered. Mercedes simply raised her eyebrow at the girl until she relented and accepted the fruit. She slowly started to eat the apple, chewing each bite carefully and deliberately as her friends watched her. She could feel that familiar sensation of guilt rising up in her stomach at eating the food as she debated internally. It's just an apple, apples are healthy. And loaded with sugar. Natural sugars are good for you. So are vitamins and they have no calories.
Santana closed her eyes, willing the feeling to go away. It was twisting inside her stomach, making her feel physically ill and she couldn't stop it. She clamped a hand to her mouth as she felt the bile rise up her throat, winning the battle. In one swift movement she was out of her chair and running across the cafeteria towards the bathrooms.
"I guess she really wasn't feeling well." Sam said as he watched Santana run across the cafeteria and disappear into the bathroom doors, her red skirt flipping up behind her.
"Maybe she's pregnant?" Tina asked.
"Yeah, it was only a matter of time." Kurt added. The rest of the Glee members nodded in agreement, except for a select few. They all knew Santana slept around a lot so the possibility was definitely feasible.
"She's not pregnant." Brittany said in a quiet voice. This time it was Puck, Quinn and Rachel who nodded their agreement.
"She'd kill herself before she let herself get pregnant as a teenager." Quinn said, pursing her lips.
Mercedes scoffed. "Does her reputation really mean that much to her?"
"Yes, but that's not the reason." Puck spoke up.
"Well what is?" Kurt demanded, glancing between the three who were closest to the girl. They seemed to have a silent conversation with their eyes before Puck spoke up.
"Santana's nearly seventeen; her mom's just turned thirty-three. You do the maths. She had a pretty crappy childhood, she's not going to force it on someone else."
Quinn gave a bitter laugh. "Why do you think she was so mad at me last year? She lost it when I told her that I was thinking about keeping Beth, she's only just started talking to me again."
Rachel's brain was whirling as she took in the information that had been offered. She had no idea about Santana's life, always assuming that she was simply a spoilt brat. She knew that the girl couldn't have been pregnant, she was pretty certain the Latina's problem had less to do about getting fat and more to do with getting skinny. Rachel was just relieved that no-one had picked up on the fact she knew the girl wasn't pregnant but had no idea about her past. The rest of the group fell into silence as they noticed Santana approaching. She slid into her seat, her face noticeably paler than it was before, before laying her head down on her arms.
"What are you looking at?" She snapped, her voice slightly muffled as it came through her arms. The group immediately resumed their light chatter to appease the girl. She might be sick, but she was still the HBIC and frankly quite scary, even if she was slightly nicer to her fellow glee clubbers. The topic changed to the subjects they had after lunch. Mike, Tina and Artie had geography, Mercedes and Kurt had fashion design, Puck, Sam, Finn, Lauren and Quinn all had U.S. history and Brittany had art.
"What do you have next Santana?" Sam asked curiously.
"None of your bees wax Trouty." She shot back, sitting up to glare at him. He raised his hands in silent surrender, eyes wide. She finally relented with a roll of her eyes. "Literature."
"Hey, same as Rachel!" Finn exclaimed, grinning widely until Santana shot him a death stare.
Artie wrinkled his nose. "I didn't know you read books." He said, eyeing her suspiciously.
"Santana loves to read! Her favourite's Little Women, she reads it all the time." Brittany announced, rifling through a bag at her feet. She pulled out a tattered copy of the book. The cover was faded, most of the pages had been dog tagged and the spine of the book was held together with sticky tape. "See!"
"Brittany!" Santana hissed and grabbed the book back, shoving it into the bag at her feet as a slight rush of heat covered her cheeks. Lucky the bell rang before anyone could question her further. The group scattered, each going to their final classes of the day. Santana walked in silence to her Literature class, trying to ignore Rachel who was walking with her, taking a quick detour to her locker to get her books. They walked into class, Rachel taking her usual seat up the front and Santana walking past her to sit at the back. Their teacher walked in, clapping her hands to gain the attention of the class.
"Okay guys today we are going to start by doing a little writing exercise. I want you to take out your pens and paper and write me a paragraph on absolutely anything. It can be about your pet cat if you really want it to. Now this is to benefit yourselves only, so don't be afraid to write down what you feel, you can keep it anonymous if you want. Like I said, this is purely to improve your personal writing skills nothing else. Once you've done that hand it in to my desk and start reading chapter five of Pride and Prejudice."
Santana sighed heavily, she was not in the mood to do another one of her teacher's stupid writing exercises. She grabbed out her favourite pen and started writing on her notebook. After filling up half the page she ripped the paper out and walked to the front of the room, dropping the folded half on Mrs Higgins' desk. The teacher looked up and gave Santana a small smile, a hint of concern passing through her eyes as she noticed the girl's pale figure. Mrs Higgins was like Mr Schue in the way that she cared about her students. Well some of her students, and Santana had worked her way into that group. Unlike Mr Schue she rarely chased up what was bothering the student, choosing to offer them silent support in the form of smiles and ignoring forgotten homework or rude remarks.
A shaggy haired kid in the second row put his hand up. "Miss did you finish marking our essays?"
"Ah yes, I'd forgotten about them." Mrs Higgins stated as she grabbed a pile of papers and started distributing them around the room. Rachel smiled when she saw the red mark at the top of her page. Ninety-three percent was definitely an A and she felt she deserved it after the hard work she put into that essay. Mrs Higgins raised her eyebrow as she handed back Santana her essay, she had known for a fact that the Latina had only read the book three days before the essay was due. Santana shook her head slightly at the unspoken question, the same answer she gave after every assignment.
"The top mark for this assignment was ninety-eight percent and this was achieved by a student who wishes to remain anonymous. It would seem that some of you need to work a little, or a lot, harder to beat them."
Rachel's good mood deflated slightly, there was always one student who beat her every time and guessing by the fact they remained anonymous every week it was the same person. Oh well, her mark was still higher than the rest of her mentally challenged peers. Santana bit her lip as she hurriedly placed her essay in her file, away from prying eyes. That was not a mark she wanted other people to see. She opened her copy of the famous book and tried to look busy for the rest of the class, hoping to avoid suspicion. She had just gotten lost in a world away from her own when the bell rang, startling her and causing her to jump in her seat.
Their teacher spoke over the noise of excited students trying to leave school for the day. "Santana, can I see you for a moment?"
Rachel frowned at this, she had been hoping to ask a question on their new task, but it looked like she was going to have to wait. She watched as Santana walked carefully to the front of the room, her book bag slung over one shoulder.
"Yes?" she questioned. "I know this isn't about my assignment so what's wrong?"
"No, top of the class again Santana, well done. I was wondering if I could speak to you about what you wrote today?" Rachel's jaw dropped at this. Santana had been the one beating her all year? So she was not only better at calculus she was better at literature as well. Rachel mentally checked the other classes she had with the girl – chemistry and physics. Surely she wasn't beating her in those as well?
"What do you mean what I wrote, I didn't put my name on it!" Santana said, sounding a little panicked.
"You're the only one in this class who writes with a purple pen." Mrs Higgins stated. "Now, do you mind..." she trailed off, looking at Santana for confirmation. The girl said nothing, just narrowing her eyes which the teacher meant was a sign for go ahead. She grabbed the piece of paper and started to read the words the girl had wrote.
"Do you believe in fairytales? The idea that a perfect guy, your very own prince charming, will just come and sweep you off your feet and you can live happily ever after? Here is an example of my fairytale. Once upon a time there was a beautiful young girl who had a baby princess while studying to graduate school. The baby's father was a handsome prince charming who had to leave the palace before the beautiful girl found out his name. The beautiful girl was so upset by this she started taking magic pills and drinking magic potions to make her feel better. These potions made her so happy that she couldn't stop taking them, which meant she had to leave her baby princess on her own all of the time. This made the baby princess sad at first, but she found another young princess and they became best friends. As these princesses got older they started talking about which prince charming they were going to give their special present too. These presents were very special as a princess could only give it to a prince once in her life. The princess didn't want to tell her friend that a prince her mother had invited home had already taken her present away when she was seven. The princess pretended that she gave her present to a different prince charming instead. The prince didn't mind because the princess had grown quite beautiful by then and that had made her one of the best princesses in the kingdom, even the grumpy witch thought she was okay and let her join her team of best princesses. Although the grumpy witch did think her fairy godmother had helped her become beautiful, she didn't believe that the princess had just bought some better bras, but that didn't matter. Then the princess started to worry that she wasn't thin enough and that no prince charming would ever want her and this made her feel very sick. But that's okay because like in every fairytale a prince will come along and save her and they will live happily ever after. And that would be the end. There's just one problem- I'm not a princess and this isn't a fairytale, this is reality. Life has no happy endings. And I think it's time I accepted that."
"That's not your usual style Santana." She said gently, watching the Latina's face for any form of emotion. The girl's face betrayed nothing, a hard look set on her face.
"Whatever, can I go now? I have Cheerios." The teacher nodded, watching as the girl walked off. Rachel decided this was her cue to leave, she would come back and ask later. She slipped out unnoticed, feeling like she had just witnessed a very private part of Santana's life. She decided to head to the auditorium and sing out her confusion; Mr Schue worked late on Mondays so she knew it would still be unlocked.
Several hours later and feeling refreshed and vigorous from her vocal work out Rachel headed out to the carpark. She glanced at her phone to check the time when she realised it had started getting dark outside. A movement next to a small red car Rachel recognised as Brittany's caught her eye. She knew the blonde had been picked up earlier that day for a dentist appointment so she wondered why her car was still in the lot. A light dawned in her head as she remembered Quinn mentioning that she drove the Latina to school today and she reasoned that Brittany must have left her car for Santana to drive home after the late practice instead of walking in the dark. Rachel didn't know why but Santana often drove Brittany's car around rather than her own.
Rachel squinted making out a shape that was definitely Santana placing a bag in the boot. She watched as the girl moved to the driver's side, seemingly leaning against the car for support. She watched as the girl brought a hand to her stomach and then to her head as she stumbled a little. Rachel's breath hitched as she watched Santana slump down to the floor, landing in an ungraceful heap.
So what do you think? Still worth continuing, or have I lost my writers touch? If it is worthy I will try and update within the next week :) Actually you are pretty lucky I updated at all this week, had the dreaded maths exam 2 days ago, hence the cool mathematical talk at the start of the chapter. If it's any consolation (which it totally isn't to me) next week is physics exam so you may get some cool physics talk. It's also graduation next week which my year gets to help plan (small school, only about forty-fifty kids in my year – it's pretty cool actually when you can name every person in your year and the year above you – so graduation is a huge deal!) which means after next Friday my year rule the school! Get to be a senior at the same time as the Glee kids! Woohoo! And after that is spring break (two whole weeks!) so you can expect updates then! If you still want me to continue that is... Anyway, cya later alligators :D