Easy Come, Easy Go, Glee, FRT/FRM
Title: Easy Come, Easy Go
Fandom: Glee
Character/Pairing:Jesse, Santana (mentions of Rachel & Brittany, but nothing heavy)
Disclaimer:Without prejudice, the recognisable characters used herein are the property of Ryan Murphy and Fox and are used without permission and not for profit. Please don't sue, I have massive student debt, so a lawsuit would be a real waste of money all in all.
Rating: It’s a difficult one, because there’s content that’s not strictly FRT, but it’s not quite FRM either. FRT/FRM (for language & thematic content)
Content Warning: The prompt specifically asks for this to deal with abuse, so there you go - it's not graphic, I just couldn't go there, but it is alluded to. More than once. And anyone who’s heard the particular song this refers to will know what else. Also, I’m still on a swearing kick, so there’s language in abundance, particularly from her.
Spoilers: Up to and including the music contained in the season finale (1.22 “Journey”)
Summary: Everybody's got a story, and hers is sadder than most.
Author's Notes: From a prompt at the glee_angst_meme (in fact, the only J/S prompt I found there). Also, I may have played with the finale just a little bit to make it fit the prompt (i.e. you have to pretend that Santana wasn’t at the hospital when Beth was born).
As for the way this story goes? It's difficult to go all-out-angst between these two, because you just know they'd bring the snark as well - they're both crazy dominant alpha personalities (albeit that that manifests differently) with very smart mouths. It's difficult to plausibly write her opening up to anyone let alone to him, but I've given it a shot. Also, if underage drinking (or the mention of it) offends you, don't go any further with this story.
She wakes up in her own bed the day after Regionals, when all the baby drama is over and it’s finally sunk in that after everything they still lost. This shouldn’t be entirely alien to her, except for the fact that she didn’t expect to, and that she’s not sure she knows why or how she actually got here.
She’s curled up on her side, head pressed hard into the pillow, arms crossed across her chest and she can tell just from that that she definitely has her pyjamas on. Well, she’s got something on that isn’t what she was wearing yesterday anyway.
But then, the skin on her face feels dry and her eyes feel a little like someone sanded them down. Has she been crying? It hits her in a whirl, and her head spins.
Yesterday. Regionals. That freaking song, with those freaking lines.
She has been crying. But what makes it worse, she remembers with a jolt, was who she was crying to.
He’s obviously not quite as much of a complete douche as everyone else in New Directions seems to think, because any other guy who’d come across her last night would definitely have used it as an excuse to sleep with her. Vulnerability was most guys ultimate kink.
The fact that she’s fully dressed and alone suggests he didn’t even try. She grips her upper arms tighter, and she’s actually glad of it.
o-O-o-O-o
“You do realise this is the guy’s bathroom, right?”
It’s only then she focuses on her surroundings for long enough to actually take them in. Great, she thinks, I can’t even run away properly. A hand swipes angrily at the tears on her face, because if there’s anything Santana Lopez does not do in the company of other people it is cry. She doesn’t respond to the vaguely amused question, she just rises and flies blindly towards the door.
But there’s a very solid presence between her and the door, one that in her blind flight she knocks straight into. She closes her eyes and curls in on herself instinctively, even as an arm closes round her to stop her from hitting the grey tile face first.
Well, that’s gentlemanly at least, and she takes advantage of it when her legs apparently stop working. It takes a while, and she doesn’t know why, for each of her senses to register different things - that she is definitely familiar with the scent, a mixture of sunscreen and sweat, and the pink she can see out the corner of her eye, and the voice.
It takes every ounce of what she has left in her body to put her hands against his chest and push away, because she’s pretty sure she’s going to be sick. The words, in his voice, have been going round and round in her head for the last half an hour. He takes a step backwards, and she leans over the sink, body caught in one enormous dry heave.
It’s not surprising, since she hasn’t actually eaten anything she could throw up, but she feels her body begin to burn with shame.
“Don’t you dare tell anyone about this.”
When her voice returns, she looks up and catches his eye in the mirror. He shrugs.
“What’s to tell, Santana?”
“Exactly.” She states defiantly. “Nothing.”
She’s impressed that he doesn’t even ask. There’s no hey why are you crying and she’s incredibly glad then that she ended up in the guys bathroom, however mortifying that was, because it meant it wasn’t Brittany or Rachel or anyone else who would try to rub her back and hold her and tell her everything was OK. Anyone who would ask her to explain what was wrong, because she’s not even sure she’s got a rational explanation herself.
“Thanks,” she offers, facing him again, wiping tears on the back of her hand, “for not letting me fall.”
“I didn’t think you could cope with losing,” she wants to be imagining the concern on his face just then, because the tone is flat out smug superiority and that’s all she wants this to be between them now, “and a trip to the ER for a broken nose all in the one night.”
“Your concern is touching.”
“No hard feelings?”
She scowls, through the few tears still falling down her cheeks.
“Not about beating you,” he shrugs, “that was all but inevitable. About whatever it was I did that’s upset you.”
“How do you even know it’s anything you’ve done?”
She’s been taking steps back without even noticing, and now the cold tile of the wall is pressed into her bare shoulder blades. He simply stares at her, knowing eventually it’ll snap into her head that her body language, her behaviour, is utterly bizarre.
“Since you realised it was me, you’ve been looking at me like…” she feels the tears threaten again and he won’t make her cry again, but every time she makes eye contact with him, the lyrics hit her again like a punch in the gut and she’s not used to having to face the past quite this head on. “…like I, don’t know, kicked your puppy or outed you to your parents.”
The eyes that have been firmly focussed on the floor snap up, so hard that the back of her head cracks off the tile wall, blazing and unbearably sad all at once.
“Santana?”
She feels like there’s enough in her body language that’s begging him not to say her name again. When she runs this time, he may try to catch her, but she spins past his arm and out the door.
o-O-o-O-o
She drags herself out of bed eventually. The dress, her Regionals dress which she still secretly thinks looks a little like it was made out of someone's curtains, is lying in a heap on the floor, next to her shoes. Her handbag is on top, spilling its contents haphazardly onto her carpet.
She can see the torn strap from here, the frayed ends, remembers playing those torn edges against her fingers and trying hard not to think of the metaphors. She remembers smudged eyeliner and heavy lids and telling someone - basically a stranger, no less - her tragedy.
She tells no one her tragedy. Unless, apparently, you sing the right song at the right time. Or the wrong song at the wrong time, it depends how you view it.
She runs a hand through her hair, and the gold hairband she was wearing last night comes away in her fingers, and there's a laugh stuck in her throat somewhere.
o-O-o-O-o
Rachel’s dads pick her up, still sobbing because she hasn’t stopped since they lost, about a half hour after and she’s the first. They filter away quietly, until she’s the only one left. Even Brittany, who’s normally stuck to her side like glue, can’t bear to be there any more. But Santana doesn’t really have a home to go to in the same way that the others do, so she just watches them leave.
She could go home. But what’s there for her? Four empty walls and an aunt and uncle who long ago gave up trying to communicate with her. So, instead, she sneaks into theatre bar and sits in the corner, trying to find the nearest half-decent looking over-21 that she can talk into buying her a drink.
“Your head OK?”
It’s not. It’s throbbing, but she’s not going to say that to him.
“Shouldn’t you be celebrating?”
“We are.” She glances over at the sea of pink, and it makes her eyes as well as her head ache. He’s still in his stage outfit too, although he’s removed the braces.
“Then leave me alone.”
She spits viciously.
“I never knew you cared so much about all this.”
Neither did she, she thinks, neither did she. But it’s amazing what you’ll hold onto when you feel uncertain. And dammit, she is not going to cry again.
“I never knew you cared enough to be this annoying about it.” The words feel bitter, and she’s doing everything she can to make him step back, but it’s failing.
“You want to know a secret?” She doesn’t remember inviting him to sit down, but he does anyway, lowering his voice. “I’m not altogether as soulless as you’d like to think I am.”
“I don’t think you’re anything. I don’t think of you at all.”
“You - ” She flinches - she didn’t give him permission to sit down and she definitely did not give him permission to touch her - so she draws her hand back sharply. “ - you were pretty good out there. You’re not Rachel, but you can hold your own.”
“I don’t need your compliments,” she says sharply, “why are you still here?”
“Because you’re the only member of New Directions left,” he glances down at his hand, still hovering in mid air where she withdrew hers, “and I want to know why.”
“No. It’s because you saw me crying and it’s only now the curiosity has finally hit you.”
He shrugs, she’s not entirely wrong.
“Well, you know what? Fuck you.” She spits again. “Fuck you. It’s your fucking fault.”
She’s not sure what she means - whether she’s talking about the fact they lost, the fact that glee club is over and she’s not quite sure why that means quite as much to her as it does, or the fact that they chose that fucking song and now she can’t un-hear it as much as she tries. She’s not sure she wants to know what she means either, but she knows she’s going to cry again.
“I’m sure whatever I did, I didn’t mean it.”
She’s clear on the fact that he has literally no idea what he’s apologising to her for, if that’s even what passes for apologising in his world. She’s not as angered by his insincerity as she feels she should be, after all, she’s not the one who had her heart broken, not by him anyway. Her heart has been broken since she was fourteen, and there’s no coming back from that.
o-O-o-O-o
She scoops the dress off the floor, tosses in the back of her wardrobe. She'll never wear it again, she has no need of it, and it only asks questions.
Questions of what happened to her after their performance. Why wasn't she at the hospital? Where did she go after they all left? She doesn't need those questions, she doesn't want to invite those questions.
Not when the imprint of an unwelcome hand - not the first and probably not the last but at least the most recent - is burned on her skin, and not when the memory of what happened next is suddenly so very, very clear.
o-O-o-O-o
“I believe the lady said no.”
Where he comes from, she’s got no idea, but there’s pink on the edge of her peripheral vision, just at the moment this turns from a few free drinks and maybe a quick grope into something entirely different. She’s stuck against the wall, legs clamped tightly together, and the strap ripped off her dress.
“Yeah,” There’s still a heavy hand on her waist, and she gropes for the top of her dress, because there’s a little too much of her on show, “who asked you?”
“Just go quietly, and we’ll forget this ever happened.”
She’s quietly impressed with just how forceful he can be, and for whatever reason - maybe she’s in a parallel universe or something - but his physical presence is reassuring to her. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see there's a hand around the aggressors wrist, apparently just tightly enough. She doesn’t expect it to work, but the weight on her waist is suddenly gone.
When her saviour looks down at her, the steely edge to his hazel eyes hasn’t yet disappeared. They’re still glinting green, aggressive in anyone’s terms, and if she could have physically stepped back from him she would have. As it is, she’s sure he notices her flinch.
“Um, thanks.” She chokes out, desperate to still the tremble in the hand that’s still searching for the top of her dress.
“Why are you…?” The eyes soften, returning to the green-gold they should be. “Santana, nothing scares you.”
“I’m…” She’s crying again, just great, and still groping for the top of her dress. “I’m just a little drunk.”
They share a look that says they both know it’s more than that, but he doesn’t say anymore. She yanks the dress back up to where it belongs, and is surprised when he hands her the end of the strap.
“Well, that’s no excuse.” He looks down the corridor at the retreating figure. “For him, I mean.”
She’s keen to push down anything she might feel approaching affection for him, because as a rule men just don’t get her affection. They get sex, they get attention, but they don’t get affection and they don’t get admiration, and that’s just how it is. She may be a cliché, but that’s how daddy dearest made her.
“It’s not like that’s the first time.”
She would rather she didn’t see the pity in his eyes, and she would rather that no one had seen her like this. She would rather not have been saved, than have been saved by someone like him.
o-O-o-O-o
She stacks her shoes back into her wardrobe more carefully. They're nice shoes. She might wear them again. She scoops the contents of her handbag together and tosses the whole lot on her bed.
Everything's there - purse, phone, keys, right down to her favourite lip gloss. She wasn't raped and she wasn't robbed and she's got him to thank for all of that.
That very thought makes her want to spit, if she's honest, because she doesn't want to thank him for anything. He started her downward spiral. She should not be grateful to him.
Before she thinks any more about this, she really needs to find an aspirin, because the corners of last night are closer than she'd like and the world is throbbing around the edges.
o-O-o-O-o
"You're not going to throw up, are you?"
She's trying to not get done on an indecent exposure charge, or lose her handbag, and get into the car simultaneously, and her co-ordination is so very off right now, so she just scowls at him in answer.
"I'll get a cab if you're that worried about your interior."
"Just - " there's something very unceremonious about the way he picks up her legs by the ankle straps on her shoes and pushes her into the car, but it's effective at least because her heels are no longer scrabbling at his paintwork, " - just let me know if you are."
She can't resist the eye roll. She's still not entirely sure this isn't a parallel universe, and she's a little too un-sober to really delve into what she's thinking about his motivations - or more importantly, his expectations - for being so nice to her when she's pretty sure he'd rather be celebrating. That's not to say that drunk her isn't extremely grateful, because otherwise, she'd just have made even more unwise choices tonight to go on an already long list of them.
And, dammit, still with the pink. She pinches the bridge of her nose.
"What?"
"You." She responds. "The shirt is seriously giving me a headache."
"You're fine." He laughs, and it's less of the superior tone she's heard before, and instead sounds somewhere in the general vicinity of genuine. "You've still got it in you to mock me."
"No, I'm serious. Were you trying to give the judges a migraine?"
"I'd take it off," "but then, that's not really appropriate, is it?"
"Shut up and drive."
o-O-o-O-o
He put her in the car. His car. He put her in the car - his car - and he drove her home. He didn't have to do any of that, so why had he?
She's allowing the aspirin a few minutes to work before she climbs into what she's sure will be one of the most restorative showers of her her life, and this is what she's spending those few minutes thinking about?
His is not the first car she's been bundled into like that. It's not the first car she's been bundled into in a little drunk. It's not the first car she's been bundled into with her clothes in disarray. It's the first time the person doing the bundling didn't seem to have any agenda.
It's the first time they've been trying to take her home, make her safe, rather than either hit her or have sex with her.
She swallows hard.
o-O-o-O-o
It's a longer drive home than it should be, mostly because - if she's honest - she gives him a few wrong directions along the way. She's truly in no hurry to be home, because all that awaits her there is an empty bed, too many thoughts, and her impending hangover. He doesn't look like he minds when she tells him she's got it wrong again, but she knows there's only so many times she can do it before he cottons on to her, and asks her for a straight answer. So, they're finally at the end of her road, and she's staring out the window.
"My mother killed my father.”
The connection between her brain and her mouth is gone now, and she looks up at him from under heavy lashes and smudged eye make up, and she can only imagine she’s an absolute mess. She’s holding the torn strap of her dress, fingers picking at the stray ends. She isn't pitching for pathetic, but she's pretty sure that's where she's landed up.
“You don’t - ”
“When I was fourteen.” She finishes, breaking across his protest, because this has been her secret for far too long now. “So you wanted to know why I was crying? Think about the song you sang tonight.”
“That’s - ” It’s not like she actually expected him to react, but the reaching silence at the end of his word surprises her. She watches fingers tighten and release on the wheel, filling the silence without saying a word. “I had no idea.”
“Do you ever think about the words you’re singing?” She doesn’t know why she’s suddenly curious. She does. There’s a meaning behind everything she sings, everything she does, where there wasn’t before. She wants to know if he understands that. “Really think about it?”
“No.” He hesitates. “Maybe I should.”
“Maybe.” Is her quiet agreement. “It’s here, on the right.”
o-O-o-O-o
Why does she feel like a traitor?
She was drunk. And even if she hadn't been, it's her right to tell her story - if what she says even counts as a story - to whomever she wants.
She still feels like a traitor, if not to New Directions, then to herself, for telling anyone.
She remembers his reaction. That's the clearest part - the blank space that followed her confession - the space in which no one knows what to say. No one knows how to follow - 'my mother killed my father' - it's a real show stopper as confessions go.
She's seen it before - the whitening of knuckles around whatever they're holding on to, the tightening of the lines around their eyes, the delibarate breath - trying to figure out what to say to a girl who's more broken than they could have guessed.
She's certainly more broken than he'd guessed. That much was written all over his face.
o-O-o-O-o
“I’m not going to try and sleep with you.”
In any other situation, she’d be tempted to roll her eyes. It’s the fact that he feels he has to clarify his stance; it’s almost enough to make her laugh.
“Great.” She chuckles. “I’m not going to try and sleep with you either. Sleeping with the enemy isn’t exactly my style.”
She's a liar. Sleeping with the enemy is exactly her style, but it's not how this night ends.
“I’ll forget what you told me,” he continues, a hand strong on her waist even though she could hold herself up if she wanted to, “if you ask me to.”
“You won’t,” she assures, “you can’t forget these things.”
She knows, because she’s tried, but once you know them, once you’ve seen them, they live with you every day. And you can work your hardest to push them so far down they’ll never find their way to the surface, it doesn’t matter, because everyone has a weak point and eventually, in the subtlest ways sometimes, they will find their way to the surface again. She’s been living with this reality for nearly three years now.
Besides, cynically, he had enough on her to last pretty much forever. Not only was this the best gossip to break out of New Directions, probably ever, but the fact that she’d broken down about it in the arms of the enemy just made it all the better.
She looks up at him, and though it’s hard not to think of him as the enemy, she is also almost tempted to think that he’s done more for her tonight than any of her fellow McKinley students would have and he’s taken steps towards redemption - if you believe in that kind of thing - in her eyes.
“Just don’t use it against us?”
His eyes widen.
“That’s what you’re thinking about?”
“Yeah,” she shrugs, “kinda.”
“You’re not the competition any more. By the time you guys get to Regionals next year, I’ll be in California. I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”
She’s looking in her bag for her keys, her back to him, a steadying hand still on her hip, glad she has her own entrance to the house. The door swings open, and he steps back.
“Just for the record, Santana, I wouldn’t have.” The words are progressively quieter as he retreats into the darkness. “Wanted to, that is. Some things are…off limits.”
Fandom: Glee
Character/Pairing:Jesse, Santana (mentions of Rachel & Brittany, but nothing heavy)
Disclaimer:Without prejudice, the recognisable characters used herein are the property of Ryan Murphy and Fox and are used without permission and not for profit. Please don't sue, I have massive student debt, so a lawsuit would be a real waste of money all in all.
Rating: It’s a difficult one, because there’s content that’s not strictly FRT, but it’s not quite FRM either. FRT/FRM (for language & thematic content)
Content Warning: The prompt specifically asks for this to deal with abuse, so there you go - it's not graphic, I just couldn't go there, but it is alluded to. More than once. And anyone who’s heard the particular song this refers to will know what else. Also, I’m still on a swearing kick, so there’s language in abundance, particularly from her.
Spoilers: Up to and including the music contained in the season finale (1.22 “Journey”)
Summary: Everybody's got a story, and hers is sadder than most.
Author's Notes: From a prompt at the glee_angst_meme (in fact, the only J/S prompt I found there). Also, I may have played with the finale just a little bit to make it fit the prompt (i.e. you have to pretend that Santana wasn’t at the hospital when Beth was born).
As for the way this story goes? It's difficult to go all-out-angst between these two, because you just know they'd bring the snark as well - they're both crazy dominant alpha personalities (albeit that that manifests differently) with very smart mouths. It's difficult to plausibly write her opening up to anyone let alone to him, but I've given it a shot. Also, if underage drinking (or the mention of it) offends you, don't go any further with this story.
She wakes up in her own bed the day after Regionals, when all the baby drama is over and it’s finally sunk in that after everything they still lost. This shouldn’t be entirely alien to her, except for the fact that she didn’t expect to, and that she’s not sure she knows why or how she actually got here.
She’s curled up on her side, head pressed hard into the pillow, arms crossed across her chest and she can tell just from that that she definitely has her pyjamas on. Well, she’s got something on that isn’t what she was wearing yesterday anyway.
But then, the skin on her face feels dry and her eyes feel a little like someone sanded them down. Has she been crying? It hits her in a whirl, and her head spins.
Yesterday. Regionals. That freaking song, with those freaking lines.
She has been crying. But what makes it worse, she remembers with a jolt, was who she was crying to.
He’s obviously not quite as much of a complete douche as everyone else in New Directions seems to think, because any other guy who’d come across her last night would definitely have used it as an excuse to sleep with her. Vulnerability was most guys ultimate kink.
The fact that she’s fully dressed and alone suggests he didn’t even try. She grips her upper arms tighter, and she’s actually glad of it.
o-O-o-O-o
“You do realise this is the guy’s bathroom, right?”
It’s only then she focuses on her surroundings for long enough to actually take them in. Great, she thinks, I can’t even run away properly. A hand swipes angrily at the tears on her face, because if there’s anything Santana Lopez does not do in the company of other people it is cry. She doesn’t respond to the vaguely amused question, she just rises and flies blindly towards the door.
But there’s a very solid presence between her and the door, one that in her blind flight she knocks straight into. She closes her eyes and curls in on herself instinctively, even as an arm closes round her to stop her from hitting the grey tile face first.
Well, that’s gentlemanly at least, and she takes advantage of it when her legs apparently stop working. It takes a while, and she doesn’t know why, for each of her senses to register different things - that she is definitely familiar with the scent, a mixture of sunscreen and sweat, and the pink she can see out the corner of her eye, and the voice.
It takes every ounce of what she has left in her body to put her hands against his chest and push away, because she’s pretty sure she’s going to be sick. The words, in his voice, have been going round and round in her head for the last half an hour. He takes a step backwards, and she leans over the sink, body caught in one enormous dry heave.
It’s not surprising, since she hasn’t actually eaten anything she could throw up, but she feels her body begin to burn with shame.
“Don’t you dare tell anyone about this.”
When her voice returns, she looks up and catches his eye in the mirror. He shrugs.
“What’s to tell, Santana?”
“Exactly.” She states defiantly. “Nothing.”
She’s impressed that he doesn’t even ask. There’s no hey why are you crying and she’s incredibly glad then that she ended up in the guys bathroom, however mortifying that was, because it meant it wasn’t Brittany or Rachel or anyone else who would try to rub her back and hold her and tell her everything was OK. Anyone who would ask her to explain what was wrong, because she’s not even sure she’s got a rational explanation herself.
“Thanks,” she offers, facing him again, wiping tears on the back of her hand, “for not letting me fall.”
“I didn’t think you could cope with losing,” she wants to be imagining the concern on his face just then, because the tone is flat out smug superiority and that’s all she wants this to be between them now, “and a trip to the ER for a broken nose all in the one night.”
“Your concern is touching.”
“No hard feelings?”
She scowls, through the few tears still falling down her cheeks.
“Not about beating you,” he shrugs, “that was all but inevitable. About whatever it was I did that’s upset you.”
“How do you even know it’s anything you’ve done?”
She’s been taking steps back without even noticing, and now the cold tile of the wall is pressed into her bare shoulder blades. He simply stares at her, knowing eventually it’ll snap into her head that her body language, her behaviour, is utterly bizarre.
“Since you realised it was me, you’ve been looking at me like…” she feels the tears threaten again and he won’t make her cry again, but every time she makes eye contact with him, the lyrics hit her again like a punch in the gut and she’s not used to having to face the past quite this head on. “…like I, don’t know, kicked your puppy or outed you to your parents.”
The eyes that have been firmly focussed on the floor snap up, so hard that the back of her head cracks off the tile wall, blazing and unbearably sad all at once.
“Santana?”
She feels like there’s enough in her body language that’s begging him not to say her name again. When she runs this time, he may try to catch her, but she spins past his arm and out the door.
o-O-o-O-o
She drags herself out of bed eventually. The dress, her Regionals dress which she still secretly thinks looks a little like it was made out of someone's curtains, is lying in a heap on the floor, next to her shoes. Her handbag is on top, spilling its contents haphazardly onto her carpet.
She can see the torn strap from here, the frayed ends, remembers playing those torn edges against her fingers and trying hard not to think of the metaphors. She remembers smudged eyeliner and heavy lids and telling someone - basically a stranger, no less - her tragedy.
She tells no one her tragedy. Unless, apparently, you sing the right song at the right time. Or the wrong song at the wrong time, it depends how you view it.
She runs a hand through her hair, and the gold hairband she was wearing last night comes away in her fingers, and there's a laugh stuck in her throat somewhere.
o-O-o-O-o
Rachel’s dads pick her up, still sobbing because she hasn’t stopped since they lost, about a half hour after and she’s the first. They filter away quietly, until she’s the only one left. Even Brittany, who’s normally stuck to her side like glue, can’t bear to be there any more. But Santana doesn’t really have a home to go to in the same way that the others do, so she just watches them leave.
She could go home. But what’s there for her? Four empty walls and an aunt and uncle who long ago gave up trying to communicate with her. So, instead, she sneaks into theatre bar and sits in the corner, trying to find the nearest half-decent looking over-21 that she can talk into buying her a drink.
“Your head OK?”
It’s not. It’s throbbing, but she’s not going to say that to him.
“Shouldn’t you be celebrating?”
“We are.” She glances over at the sea of pink, and it makes her eyes as well as her head ache. He’s still in his stage outfit too, although he’s removed the braces.
“Then leave me alone.”
She spits viciously.
“I never knew you cared so much about all this.”
Neither did she, she thinks, neither did she. But it’s amazing what you’ll hold onto when you feel uncertain. And dammit, she is not going to cry again.
“I never knew you cared enough to be this annoying about it.” The words feel bitter, and she’s doing everything she can to make him step back, but it’s failing.
“You want to know a secret?” She doesn’t remember inviting him to sit down, but he does anyway, lowering his voice. “I’m not altogether as soulless as you’d like to think I am.”
“I don’t think you’re anything. I don’t think of you at all.”
“You - ” She flinches - she didn’t give him permission to sit down and she definitely did not give him permission to touch her - so she draws her hand back sharply. “ - you were pretty good out there. You’re not Rachel, but you can hold your own.”
“I don’t need your compliments,” she says sharply, “why are you still here?”
“Because you’re the only member of New Directions left,” he glances down at his hand, still hovering in mid air where she withdrew hers, “and I want to know why.”
“No. It’s because you saw me crying and it’s only now the curiosity has finally hit you.”
He shrugs, she’s not entirely wrong.
“Well, you know what? Fuck you.” She spits again. “Fuck you. It’s your fucking fault.”
She’s not sure what she means - whether she’s talking about the fact they lost, the fact that glee club is over and she’s not quite sure why that means quite as much to her as it does, or the fact that they chose that fucking song and now she can’t un-hear it as much as she tries. She’s not sure she wants to know what she means either, but she knows she’s going to cry again.
“I’m sure whatever I did, I didn’t mean it.”
She’s clear on the fact that he has literally no idea what he’s apologising to her for, if that’s even what passes for apologising in his world. She’s not as angered by his insincerity as she feels she should be, after all, she’s not the one who had her heart broken, not by him anyway. Her heart has been broken since she was fourteen, and there’s no coming back from that.
o-O-o-O-o
She scoops the dress off the floor, tosses in the back of her wardrobe. She'll never wear it again, she has no need of it, and it only asks questions.
Questions of what happened to her after their performance. Why wasn't she at the hospital? Where did she go after they all left? She doesn't need those questions, she doesn't want to invite those questions.
Not when the imprint of an unwelcome hand - not the first and probably not the last but at least the most recent - is burned on her skin, and not when the memory of what happened next is suddenly so very, very clear.
o-O-o-O-o
“I believe the lady said no.”
Where he comes from, she’s got no idea, but there’s pink on the edge of her peripheral vision, just at the moment this turns from a few free drinks and maybe a quick grope into something entirely different. She’s stuck against the wall, legs clamped tightly together, and the strap ripped off her dress.
“Yeah,” There’s still a heavy hand on her waist, and she gropes for the top of her dress, because there’s a little too much of her on show, “who asked you?”
“Just go quietly, and we’ll forget this ever happened.”
She’s quietly impressed with just how forceful he can be, and for whatever reason - maybe she’s in a parallel universe or something - but his physical presence is reassuring to her. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see there's a hand around the aggressors wrist, apparently just tightly enough. She doesn’t expect it to work, but the weight on her waist is suddenly gone.
When her saviour looks down at her, the steely edge to his hazel eyes hasn’t yet disappeared. They’re still glinting green, aggressive in anyone’s terms, and if she could have physically stepped back from him she would have. As it is, she’s sure he notices her flinch.
“Um, thanks.” She chokes out, desperate to still the tremble in the hand that’s still searching for the top of her dress.
“Why are you…?” The eyes soften, returning to the green-gold they should be. “Santana, nothing scares you.”
“I’m…” She’s crying again, just great, and still groping for the top of her dress. “I’m just a little drunk.”
They share a look that says they both know it’s more than that, but he doesn’t say anymore. She yanks the dress back up to where it belongs, and is surprised when he hands her the end of the strap.
“Well, that’s no excuse.” He looks down the corridor at the retreating figure. “For him, I mean.”
She’s keen to push down anything she might feel approaching affection for him, because as a rule men just don’t get her affection. They get sex, they get attention, but they don’t get affection and they don’t get admiration, and that’s just how it is. She may be a cliché, but that’s how daddy dearest made her.
“It’s not like that’s the first time.”
She would rather she didn’t see the pity in his eyes, and she would rather that no one had seen her like this. She would rather not have been saved, than have been saved by someone like him.
o-O-o-O-o
She stacks her shoes back into her wardrobe more carefully. They're nice shoes. She might wear them again. She scoops the contents of her handbag together and tosses the whole lot on her bed.
Everything's there - purse, phone, keys, right down to her favourite lip gloss. She wasn't raped and she wasn't robbed and she's got him to thank for all of that.
That very thought makes her want to spit, if she's honest, because she doesn't want to thank him for anything. He started her downward spiral. She should not be grateful to him.
Before she thinks any more about this, she really needs to find an aspirin, because the corners of last night are closer than she'd like and the world is throbbing around the edges.
o-O-o-O-o
"You're not going to throw up, are you?"
She's trying to not get done on an indecent exposure charge, or lose her handbag, and get into the car simultaneously, and her co-ordination is so very off right now, so she just scowls at him in answer.
"I'll get a cab if you're that worried about your interior."
"Just - " there's something very unceremonious about the way he picks up her legs by the ankle straps on her shoes and pushes her into the car, but it's effective at least because her heels are no longer scrabbling at his paintwork, " - just let me know if you are."
She can't resist the eye roll. She's still not entirely sure this isn't a parallel universe, and she's a little too un-sober to really delve into what she's thinking about his motivations - or more importantly, his expectations - for being so nice to her when she's pretty sure he'd rather be celebrating. That's not to say that drunk her isn't extremely grateful, because otherwise, she'd just have made even more unwise choices tonight to go on an already long list of them.
And, dammit, still with the pink. She pinches the bridge of her nose.
"What?"
"You." She responds. "The shirt is seriously giving me a headache."
"You're fine." He laughs, and it's less of the superior tone she's heard before, and instead sounds somewhere in the general vicinity of genuine. "You've still got it in you to mock me."
"No, I'm serious. Were you trying to give the judges a migraine?"
"I'd take it off," "but then, that's not really appropriate, is it?"
"Shut up and drive."
o-O-o-O-o
He put her in the car. His car. He put her in the car - his car - and he drove her home. He didn't have to do any of that, so why had he?
She's allowing the aspirin a few minutes to work before she climbs into what she's sure will be one of the most restorative showers of her her life, and this is what she's spending those few minutes thinking about?
His is not the first car she's been bundled into like that. It's not the first car she's been bundled into in a little drunk. It's not the first car she's been bundled into with her clothes in disarray. It's the first time the person doing the bundling didn't seem to have any agenda.
It's the first time they've been trying to take her home, make her safe, rather than either hit her or have sex with her.
She swallows hard.
o-O-o-O-o
It's a longer drive home than it should be, mostly because - if she's honest - she gives him a few wrong directions along the way. She's truly in no hurry to be home, because all that awaits her there is an empty bed, too many thoughts, and her impending hangover. He doesn't look like he minds when she tells him she's got it wrong again, but she knows there's only so many times she can do it before he cottons on to her, and asks her for a straight answer. So, they're finally at the end of her road, and she's staring out the window.
"My mother killed my father.”
The connection between her brain and her mouth is gone now, and she looks up at him from under heavy lashes and smudged eye make up, and she can only imagine she’s an absolute mess. She’s holding the torn strap of her dress, fingers picking at the stray ends. She isn't pitching for pathetic, but she's pretty sure that's where she's landed up.
“You don’t - ”
“When I was fourteen.” She finishes, breaking across his protest, because this has been her secret for far too long now. “So you wanted to know why I was crying? Think about the song you sang tonight.”
“That’s - ” It’s not like she actually expected him to react, but the reaching silence at the end of his word surprises her. She watches fingers tighten and release on the wheel, filling the silence without saying a word. “I had no idea.”
“Do you ever think about the words you’re singing?” She doesn’t know why she’s suddenly curious. She does. There’s a meaning behind everything she sings, everything she does, where there wasn’t before. She wants to know if he understands that. “Really think about it?”
“No.” He hesitates. “Maybe I should.”
“Maybe.” Is her quiet agreement. “It’s here, on the right.”
o-O-o-O-o
Why does she feel like a traitor?
She was drunk. And even if she hadn't been, it's her right to tell her story - if what she says even counts as a story - to whomever she wants.
She still feels like a traitor, if not to New Directions, then to herself, for telling anyone.
She remembers his reaction. That's the clearest part - the blank space that followed her confession - the space in which no one knows what to say. No one knows how to follow - 'my mother killed my father' - it's a real show stopper as confessions go.
She's seen it before - the whitening of knuckles around whatever they're holding on to, the tightening of the lines around their eyes, the delibarate breath - trying to figure out what to say to a girl who's more broken than they could have guessed.
She's certainly more broken than he'd guessed. That much was written all over his face.
o-O-o-O-o
“I’m not going to try and sleep with you.”
In any other situation, she’d be tempted to roll her eyes. It’s the fact that he feels he has to clarify his stance; it’s almost enough to make her laugh.
“Great.” She chuckles. “I’m not going to try and sleep with you either. Sleeping with the enemy isn’t exactly my style.”
She's a liar. Sleeping with the enemy is exactly her style, but it's not how this night ends.
“I’ll forget what you told me,” he continues, a hand strong on her waist even though she could hold herself up if she wanted to, “if you ask me to.”
“You won’t,” she assures, “you can’t forget these things.”
She knows, because she’s tried, but once you know them, once you’ve seen them, they live with you every day. And you can work your hardest to push them so far down they’ll never find their way to the surface, it doesn’t matter, because everyone has a weak point and eventually, in the subtlest ways sometimes, they will find their way to the surface again. She’s been living with this reality for nearly three years now.
Besides, cynically, he had enough on her to last pretty much forever. Not only was this the best gossip to break out of New Directions, probably ever, but the fact that she’d broken down about it in the arms of the enemy just made it all the better.
She looks up at him, and though it’s hard not to think of him as the enemy, she is also almost tempted to think that he’s done more for her tonight than any of her fellow McKinley students would have and he’s taken steps towards redemption - if you believe in that kind of thing - in her eyes.
“Just don’t use it against us?”
His eyes widen.
“That’s what you’re thinking about?”
“Yeah,” she shrugs, “kinda.”
“You’re not the competition any more. By the time you guys get to Regionals next year, I’ll be in California. I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”
She’s looking in her bag for her keys, her back to him, a steadying hand still on her hip, glad she has her own entrance to the house. The door swings open, and he steps back.
“Just for the record, Santana, I wouldn’t have.” The words are progressively quieter as he retreats into the darkness. “Wanted to, that is. Some things are…off limits.”