Chapter 7

Santana sipped her coffee slowly, wrapping her gloved hands around the Starbucks cup in an attempt to warm her frozen fingers, and once again tried to stop her eyes from drifting to the tall blonde cheerleader in front of her. They stood about a metre apart, Will and Emma standing with Santana and Brittany huddled up with Quinn who was chatting animatedly.

They were stood, at 8.00am in front of the school, waiting for the bus to take them to the museum and shivering in the cold wind. It was the 1st of December and the kids had just returned from thanksgiving break, only 23 days before they broke up again for the Christmas holidays. Thanksgiving had gone by largely unobserved by Santana, who had spent the 4 days off watching 'To catch a predator' re runs on television and ignoring Taylor's insistent phone calls. She had never celebrated the holiday as a child and it seemed weird to start now, plus the thought of watching the parade alone in her apartment with a thanksgiving dinner for 1 made her cringe. So she crashed on the couch for 4 days instead, finishing all her marking, eating goldfish crackers and mouthing along with Chris Hansen "This is dateline NBC...would you take a seat?".

But the holiday had passed quickly and now, here she was, compulsively checking her watch and shivering on the side walk. Santana had convinced all 18 of her twelfth grade students to come along and they stood in little groups along the pavement, with the exception of Azimio and Karofksy, who she had simply 'forgotten' to give permission slips to. After being forced by Figgins, they had returned to her class last week to the disappointment of everyone in the room. But seeing as she could barely stand them for just one hour in the classroom, she definitely wasn't going to inflict a whole day's worth of them on herself and her other students. And she got the feeling they probably weren't so eager to spend the day with her either, so it made sense to not even bother telling them.

Santana clenched her jaw to stop her teeth from chattering as another blast of icy wind swept past her. So far she had purposefully avoided all attempts at conversation made by Will and Emma, having woken up in a bad mood and knowing that forced small talk with the bush baby would only irritate her further. She didn't dislike Emma exactly, she just found her childish innocence and exaggerated femininity annoying, and the way she fawned over Will made Santana want to hurl. Usually she could force a diplomatic friendliness with the woman, but right now she just wanted to get on the bus and and get warm, she didn't feel up to talking until she could feel her feet again.

It really was a horribly cold morning. As it got closer and closer to Christmas, the weather had dropped accordingly and Ohio was currently enjoying one of it's icyest December's 1st's on record. There was a light sprinkling of fresh snow on the ground, gradually melting into slush, and the roads had been covered with salt grit every day that week.

She took a last mouthful of her drink, before pushing it into the bin behind her and watched as Puck joined Quinn and Brittany, throwing his arm casually over the smaller blonde's shoulder. He was closely followed by Mike and Sam who stood to the side of the girls, throwing between them a gradually disintegrating snowball that was mainly ice anyway. Completing the group, Blaine, Rachel and Kurt made room in the huddle, Rachel dwarfed by the huge duffel coat she had on. As they shuffled into the group, Puck must have done something to annoy Quinn, as she shook his arm off of her irritatedly and made a point of going to stand next to Blaine.

Not being able to stop her eyes flicking to Brittany, Santana noticed with a faint frown that the girl was visibly shaking with the cold. As usual she was wearing her cheerios uniform, with a heavy letterman style jacket over the top that had her name in a looping cursive on the back. She wore a red scarf, wound tightly around her neck and partly covering her mouth but she had no hat and no gloves. Her cheeks and nose were tinted red by the frigid air and she had balled her hands into fists, tucking them tightly under her crossed arms. Looking down, Santana was pleased to see that she had at least put on a pair of sheer skin coloured tights under her cheerios skirt, but her legs still shook slightly, her whole body tensed against the freezing wind.

A tall black boy standing with a group from her other class leant around his friends to call out to Santana.

"Ms. Lopez?"

"Yeah?"

"Is this bus coming, or...?"

Santana looked at the clusters of hopeful students who turned to hear her answer and pushed up the sleeve of her trench coat to check her watch again. The bus driver was exactly 7 minutes late.

"Of course it's coming" It came out a little sharper than she intended, but she was freezing and watching Brittany shiver made her feel even colder.

"The roads are really icy, I'm sure he's just driving super carefully..Just wait"

Will and Emma turned to look at her

"You ok Santana?"

"I'm fine"

They exchanged a look and Will tried again, gently asking

"You want me to ring the driver? See if he's on his way"

Santana sighed

"Yeah I guess"

As Will got out his phone to ring the driver, Santana saw Mike and Sam edge behind Brittany, hands over their mouths to stop from laughing. In his glove Sam held the remains of the snowball they had been messing around with. As Mike watched excitedly, he quickly pulled Brittany's jacket away from her neck and pushed the ice down the back of her cheerio's top. She squealed loudly, her eyebrows shooting up and her mouth forming a perfect O in shock. Ripping off her scarf and jacket she stuck her hand down the back of her tight uniform frantically, pulling at it desperately as she tried to release the snow that burned painfully.

Feeling soft hands on her shoulder she stopped, allowing Santana to reach just under her top and brush the ice away, the wool of her gloves tickling Brittany's exposed skin. And then the warm hands were gone and Brittany wrapped her arms around her torso as the wind blew against her bare shoulders. Now the immediacy of the cold had gone, Brittany felt stupid and as she looked around to see most of the assembled students watching her, her cheeks blushed red.

Santana reached down, picking the girls jacket off the floor, stony faced as she saw the back covered with ice and grit. She looked at Sam and Mike, eyebrows raised. They stared back guiltily, visibly sorry as they saw Brittany shivering sadly. The rest of the Glee kids watched apprehensively, they had thought it was pretty funny at first but looking at Santana's face they realised that laughter was not the correct response and turned to look at the two boys disapprovingly.

"You're idiots" Santana stated coldly, "Grow up"

She turned to Brittany and reached out to grab her wrist, tugging gently

"Come on, I have something you can put on in the car. You can't wear this" she said, gesturing to the dripping jacket.

As she led the girl to the car park Will called out to her

"He'll be about 5-10 minutes, apparently the traffic's really bad"

She twisted her head and nodded at him to show she'd heard

"Yeah ok" she called back

They walked round the side of the school, Santana very aware that she was still holding Brittany's wrist and came to a stop by an immaculate black Mercedes Coupé. It had been a graduation present to herself and she could tell by Brittany's raised eyebrows that she was impressed.

She let go of Brittany's wrist and dug in her pocket to find her keys. Opening the trunk she shook Brittany's jacket to get the worst of the snow off and then laid it down inside her car carefully.

"I can keep it in here till we get back from the museum if you like" she looked up at Brittany who was watching her closely "There's no point carrying it around"

Brittany smiled "Thanks"

"Just remind me when we get back to school"

Brittany nodded and Santana leant into the back of her car, reaching forward to grab an oversized grey jumper that was tucked behind the car repair kit she didn't know how to use. It was her old college jumper, the 'Ohio State Buckeyes' logo printed in the middle and her name stitched in red thread to the right, above it. She kept it in the car in case she got cold on long drives and it was slightly rumpled from where she hadn't folded it neatly the last time she put it back.

She held it out to Brittany, slightly embarrassed that she was offering her a jumper that would be far too big for her and hadn't been out of Santana's car for at least a month. Brittany smiled, as though this was the kindest thing anyone had ever done for her, and eyed the logo before pulling it over her head.

"You played college football?" She asked, when her head had re-emerged

Santana looked at her questioningly before guessing she was referring to the jumper and laughing slightly

"Oh, no" she smiled "I was a cheerleader"

"Really? At college?...you must have been pretty good"

"Well I was captain in high school" Santana didn't know why she was showing off all of a sudden but the way Brittany looked at her admiringly made her continue "and then co-captain at Ohio State"

"Wow" Brittany paused "I guess you were really good then"

Santana shrugged, smiling, in a way that clearly agreed that yes, she was pretty good and busied herself in the trunk, making sure everything was tidy and folding Brittany's jacket neatly into the corner.

Brittany studied the jumper again, pulling the material out to the side so she could read the name.

"Santana..."

"Yeah?"

Brittany looked up "That's your name?..."

Santana nodded

"I like it"

Santana felt herself blushing for no reason at all and turned to the trunk, pushing it shut so she didn't have to look into Brittany's piercing blue eyes.

"Santana! Brittany!...come on the bus is here"

She looked over to see Will standing at the entrance to the car park, beckoning them over hurriedly.

She turned to Brittany, who had tucked her hands into the sleeves of the jumper that fell to just above the hem of her cheerio's skirt. Santana tried not to ask herself if it was weird that for the second time in a month, Brittany was borrowing her clothes.

"Let's go, I'm freezing"

Brittany flashed her a bright smile, her teeth gleaming white as they walked towards Will.

"Me too"

When they reached the sidewalk, Brittany turned before running to join her friends where Sam and Mike were waving her over, anxious to apologise.

"Thanks Ms." She paused, wanting to say something else, but not really sure what.

"You're kind of great"

Santana laughed, ignoring how her stomach had flipped at Brittany's words and was relieved when Will smiled too, relieving the tension she had felt under the cheerleader's stare.

"Yeah she is pretty great" he agreed "You're lucky to have such a good teacher" before shepherding Brittany and the rest of the students onto the bus.

Santana sat with Will at the front, quickly joined by Emma who had been busy sorting out a minor disagreement between two boys at the back.

Emma slid in behind them and put her head over the red vinyl of their seat, looking between them with a gentle smile.

"All set?"

Santana smiled back, surprised at the lack of irritation she felt with Emma's head practically resting on her shoulder, and nodded.

"All set"

...

Okayy, embarrassing for me, I thought fall break was thanksgiving break so that's what I meant when I said it last chapter. I'll go back and change it at some point.

4 points for iwasalsothelipsinrockyhorror for getting the whole Taylor / Heather Morris's real life boyfriend thing. I'm not trying to make a Heya point, I just thought it would be funny, and I was right...it's hilarious.

Also, I know there seems to just be an awful lot of blushing and smiling going on at the moment between them but I promise it will get good soon, I'm settin tha scene guys.

I'm putting this up now cause I'll be away all weekend so I won't update again till maybe Monday? So if there are mistakes, I'm sure there will be, then I'm sorry but that is the price we must all pay for a hastily written update.

Thank you so much for all your reviews, really, I feel so happy and loving towards you all when I read them. Seriously, so thanks :)

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