(no subject)
Title: Fixing the Plumbing
Pairing: Santana/Brittany
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Santana said it’s not cheating if the plumbing is different. So Brittany decided that if the plumbing is really different, then it’s really not cheating. And that’s where Brett came from.
Spoilers: Through Original Song
Anyone would've thought it was Santana's idea. After all, Brittany was dumb as rocks, right?
That was only partially true. Well, the rocks part, anyway. This had been Brittany’s idea from the beginning.
Sure, Brittany thought the word "circus" was spelled “sircus”, and yes, she had believed that the stork that was building its nest on her garage was getting ready to bring her a baby. She still believed in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, and yes, she even believed in what Santana had said about it not being cheating because the plumbing was different. In fact, that's where she'd gotten the idea in the first place.
What if the plumbing were really different? What if she, Brittany S. Pierce, were to have different plumbing? Then, if she were a boy, she couldn't be in a relationship with Artie, because hello, she wasn't gay or anything - a lesbian maybe, since lesbians liked acting, right, and hadn't Britt enjoyed the Rocky Horror show they'd put on? Maybe she had that word wrong...maybe she should ask Santana.
But that was the whole problem. Santana didn't want to talk to her, and so all of Britt's questions went unanswered - and Brittany had a lot of questions, not the least of which was Why won't you talk to me any more?
But if the plumbing was different...if Britt was different...then maybe...
And that's how it all started.
* * * * *
On Monday, Brittany came to school talking about her twin brother Brett who was coming back for a visit from boarding school (her imagination was only so good, and anyone who had met her parents, especially her mom, believed that the Pierces would be exactly the type of parents to name their twins Britt and Brett). Artie, not having known her for as long as Santana had, bought it hook, line, and sinker, even though she'd never mentioned a Brett before. Brittany was just so excited, and anyway, why would she lie?
Brittany could be a very good lesbian when she tried.
But when she wheeled Artie into glee that afternoon, still prattling on about how awesome Brett was and how excited she was to see him when he got in on Friday night, Santana was sitting right there, staring at her, shaking her head, and Brittany knew Santana didn’t believe it for a second. She knew better.
Brittany was sure that Santana was going to put an end to it then, before things even really started, but instead she just gave Britt a patented Lopez Glare and went back to filing her nails. Brittany was careful not to sit next to her, no matter how much she wanted to. She just reminded herself that that was what Brett was for, anyway, to give her a way to be with Santana.
By the end of the week, Brittany was exhausted. It had taken all of her less than considerable intelligence to come up with everything Brett, but now he had a credible life story: Brett was a baseball and soccer player who liked snakes, action movies, Grand Theft Auto, classic rock (which Brittany fortunately knew some about thanks to childhood road trips where her dad picked the music), and keeping up with trends.
And no, Rachel, that did not mean he would give fashion advice - he only followed guy trends. Britt was particularly proud of that one, because it meant that nobody would think twice about the fact that all of Brett's clothes were brand new, or that they would be once she went out to buy them.
The thing she was proudest of, though, was that Brett wanted to be a plumber - that was her own little joke there, you know, the plumbing is different and all that? Yeah…she’d laughed a lot when she first thought of that, but nobody seemed to think it was too remarkable except, of course, Santana, who had given Britt a really forceful Lopez Glare for that one.
Still, it was fun making stuff up about him, like the story she'd told where Brett jumped out of a tree when they were six and broke his arm. She'd picked that one because she had photographic proof at home - at six she, Brittany, had gotten gum stuck in her hair and had to get it all cut off…just before she broke her arm. She’d actually fallen out of the top bunk of her bunk beds to do the damage, which was a lot less cool than falling out of a tree in her opinion. Anyway, she'd been teased about the hair a lot, but honestly, she'd liked it short. It was easier to run and play when it was short because she didn't have to worry about getting her hair caught on anything.
She'd picked soccer and baseball for the same reason, namely that there were pictures of tomboy, bowl-cut Brittany playing those sports (well, t-ball, but that was close enough). And it was way too easy to come up with crazy stories about the things Brett did at boarding school, like sneaking out at night to visit his girlfriend at another school (not at all based on the many times she'd snuck out to be with Santana), or using a fake ID to get into bars (which Britt had also never done for Santana).
By that point, Brett was sounding pretty badass - so much so that even Puck seemed curious to meet him.
And that was when Brittany knew that she might have gotten in too deep. But she was in it already, so she had to stick with it - especially if she wanted to speak to Santana ever again.
The same Santana who had been avoiding her like the plague, never answering Brittany's calls or texts, and staring pointedly at the wall any time Brittany tried to speak to her. Brett, Brittany had decided, was her best chance with Santana, even though Santana, unlike the rest of the glee kids, didn’t believe a word she said about Brett because she knew there was no Brett. But Brittany persisted, and she kept her eye on Santana where she was sitting across the room, gauging her reactions, watching her go from aloof and vaguely pissed off to suspicious and then, finally, on Friday afternoon when Brittany was relating a story about how Brett stopped their cat from reading her diary at the beginning of the summer, Santana’s suspicion became curiosity, even amusement. And then, right then, Brittany knew this was going to work.
Gotcha, she thought, not even trying to hide her smile. Fortunately her default expressions were happy and confused, so nobody seemed weirded out by her smiling out of nowhere.
All the brain exercise, it seemed (or at least she hoped), wasn't going to be wasted. That meant that it was time to let her body do the talking, and to hope against hope that it worked out - especially with Santana.
* * * * *
While Brittany couldn’t turn on a computer, and they often confused the hell out of her (what was up with facebook? There was nothing about faces or books about it!), she could find things on the internet if she absolutely had to - and figuring out how to become Brett was something she had to go to the internet for. Normally she would’ve asked Santana, but they weren’t speaking, and this wasn’t exactly something she could talk to Artie about, so she went to the school librarian instead, sitting at a computer with her on Friday after glee and staring blankly as she found pages and pages of information.
“I hope this helps you, dear,” she said, gathering everything she’d printed and holding it out to Britt.
“Thanks.”
“Good luck…I can tell transitioning must be a very tough thing to do. I hope things go better for you than they did for that Hummel boy.”
“You mean I’ll have to change to another school?” Brittany asked, eyes getting big. This had never occurred to her as a possibility. Why would she get kicked out? She wasn’t doing anything wrong!
Okay, maybe it was a little wrong to con her boyfriend and the girl she wanted to be her girlfriend, but if the plumbing was different then it wasn’t cheating, and if it was Brett who was with Santana then Brittany wasn’t at all to blame, right?
The librarian seemed to sense some of Britt’s clueless panic, though, because she reached out and patted Brittany’s arm. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
Brittany took a deep, relieved breath, looked down at the papers in her hands, and nodded, slipping them into her backpack. “Thanks again,” she replied, and then she was off to the drive in front of the school where her mom waited for her every day.
“Did you have a good day at school, Britt?” she asked, just like she did every day, and Brittany wasn’t worried any more.
“Yeah,” she replied, putting her bag down in her lap, staring at it intently like she could see the papers inside if she only stared hard enough. It wasn’t working, so she figured she’d try something else. “Hey mom? Can I borrow the car tonight?”
“Of course! Anything for you, sweet pea.” And she smiled again, and Brittany smiled back, and it felt like things were really going to be okay, especially when they got home and Britt got a chance to browse her papers and found out this wouldn’t be as hard as she thought.
She found some ace bandages in her bathroom that she kept for Cheerios injuries (but since she wasn’t a Cheerio any more this was probably the most action they were going to see for a long while). She tried wrapping them around her chest a couple of different ways - one bandage, two bandages, over a sports bra, no bra at all. It was hard to do by herself and it kind of hurt, but she could still breathe and stuff so that was okay. And a pair of rolled-up socks in her pants looked good enough, but she was too girly and curvy in all the pants that she owned so she figured she’d add that later, after she’d done her shopping.
And was it ever a shopping spree. She’d amassed a lot of allowance in the past few weeks; when she wasn’t going out with Santana, she didn’t really spend that much. Artie always bought her stuff when they went out, and she didn’t ever feel like going anywhere by herself, so all the money her parents had given her was just…there, ready to be spent. And she spent it, too, buying Brett all kinds of clothes - jeans, shirts, shorts, even underwear. It was weird, though…people didn’t seem surprised or upset when she walked into a store and went straight to the men’s department, but they gave her weird looks when she carried guys’ clothes (especially the underwear) over to the dressing rooms.
But Brittany, being Brittany, tuned it out, whipping out her bandages in the dressing rooms to try on all the clothes she - no, not she, Brett - needed for this little plan. It was kind of fun, actually, looking in the mirror and realizing her boobs were so mashed against her chest that they looked like man-pecs instead of boobs.
Brett, Brittany decided, was a pretty hot guy. Because, of course, Brittany’s mind had the two completely separated: Brett the guy, Brittany the girl. Brett, who had a thing for feisty brunettes and getting into trouble, and Britt, who was committed to staying with her wheelchair-bound boyfriend who was always so nice to her. There was, of course, some overlap, but Brittany’s mind worked in blacks and whites, not grays, and though every time she thought about what Santana would think of this pair of jeans or of that shirt, it sent a little jolt of sadness through her - but she told herself she was feeling it for Brett, who was sad he hadn’t met Santana yet. And it worked, too - so well that by the time Brittany had all but exhausted her pocket money, Brittany was exhausted, but Brett wanted to go straight over to Santana’s to be introduced.
So, even though her back hurt and she was tired, mentally and physically, from all it took to get Brett ready, Brittany took Brett’s shopping bags to the nearest handicapped restroom (it had to be a single stall, because the idea of going into a girls’ bathroom and coming out a guy was too weird) and started getting dressed. Bandages, undershirt, underwear, awesome blue plaid shirt that picked out the blue of Brett’s eyes, baggier jeans than Brittany had ever bought in her life, then the rolled-up socks down the front, and-wow.
Brett really was a pretty hot guy.
There was only one problem - the hair. Brittany had way too much hair. That meant she either had to chop off her hair - and no way was that happening, Santana had said more than once that she loved it the way it was - or get a wig.
No contest, really.
There was a costume shop in Lima, Brittany knew, but it was probably closed by now - so although it made Brittany uncomfortable to go out with Brett looking so unfinished, she piled as much hair as she could under a baseball hat, put her clothes into the shopping bags, and left the bathroom to go buy a better hat with more space under it, like one of those fedoras she’d seen.
In the shop, paying for the hat, Brittany made an effort to lower her voice when she said she wanted the receipt in the bag, and despite her weird hair bulge, she got a “have a nice day, sir,” in return, which sent her out of the store grinning, because Brett was a huge success, especially when Brittany got to the car, put her hair up in a bun, and tucked it under the fedora. Very handsome. That just left one thing to do…introduce Brett Pierce to Santana Lopez, and hope Santana didn’t cut him with her vicious, vicious words.
Chapter 2
Pairing: Santana/Brittany
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Santana said it’s not cheating if the plumbing is different. So Brittany decided that if the plumbing is really different, then it’s really not cheating. And that’s where Brett came from.
Spoilers: Through Original Song
Anyone would've thought it was Santana's idea. After all, Brittany was dumb as rocks, right?
That was only partially true. Well, the rocks part, anyway. This had been Brittany’s idea from the beginning.
Sure, Brittany thought the word "circus" was spelled “sircus”, and yes, she had believed that the stork that was building its nest on her garage was getting ready to bring her a baby. She still believed in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, and yes, she even believed in what Santana had said about it not being cheating because the plumbing was different. In fact, that's where she'd gotten the idea in the first place.
What if the plumbing were really different? What if she, Brittany S. Pierce, were to have different plumbing? Then, if she were a boy, she couldn't be in a relationship with Artie, because hello, she wasn't gay or anything - a lesbian maybe, since lesbians liked acting, right, and hadn't Britt enjoyed the Rocky Horror show they'd put on? Maybe she had that word wrong...maybe she should ask Santana.
But that was the whole problem. Santana didn't want to talk to her, and so all of Britt's questions went unanswered - and Brittany had a lot of questions, not the least of which was Why won't you talk to me any more?
But if the plumbing was different...if Britt was different...then maybe...
And that's how it all started.
* * * * *
On Monday, Brittany came to school talking about her twin brother Brett who was coming back for a visit from boarding school (her imagination was only so good, and anyone who had met her parents, especially her mom, believed that the Pierces would be exactly the type of parents to name their twins Britt and Brett). Artie, not having known her for as long as Santana had, bought it hook, line, and sinker, even though she'd never mentioned a Brett before. Brittany was just so excited, and anyway, why would she lie?
Brittany could be a very good lesbian when she tried.
But when she wheeled Artie into glee that afternoon, still prattling on about how awesome Brett was and how excited she was to see him when he got in on Friday night, Santana was sitting right there, staring at her, shaking her head, and Brittany knew Santana didn’t believe it for a second. She knew better.
Brittany was sure that Santana was going to put an end to it then, before things even really started, but instead she just gave Britt a patented Lopez Glare and went back to filing her nails. Brittany was careful not to sit next to her, no matter how much she wanted to. She just reminded herself that that was what Brett was for, anyway, to give her a way to be with Santana.
By the end of the week, Brittany was exhausted. It had taken all of her less than considerable intelligence to come up with everything Brett, but now he had a credible life story: Brett was a baseball and soccer player who liked snakes, action movies, Grand Theft Auto, classic rock (which Brittany fortunately knew some about thanks to childhood road trips where her dad picked the music), and keeping up with trends.
And no, Rachel, that did not mean he would give fashion advice - he only followed guy trends. Britt was particularly proud of that one, because it meant that nobody would think twice about the fact that all of Brett's clothes were brand new, or that they would be once she went out to buy them.
The thing she was proudest of, though, was that Brett wanted to be a plumber - that was her own little joke there, you know, the plumbing is different and all that? Yeah…she’d laughed a lot when she first thought of that, but nobody seemed to think it was too remarkable except, of course, Santana, who had given Britt a really forceful Lopez Glare for that one.
Still, it was fun making stuff up about him, like the story she'd told where Brett jumped out of a tree when they were six and broke his arm. She'd picked that one because she had photographic proof at home - at six she, Brittany, had gotten gum stuck in her hair and had to get it all cut off…just before she broke her arm. She’d actually fallen out of the top bunk of her bunk beds to do the damage, which was a lot less cool than falling out of a tree in her opinion. Anyway, she'd been teased about the hair a lot, but honestly, she'd liked it short. It was easier to run and play when it was short because she didn't have to worry about getting her hair caught on anything.
She'd picked soccer and baseball for the same reason, namely that there were pictures of tomboy, bowl-cut Brittany playing those sports (well, t-ball, but that was close enough). And it was way too easy to come up with crazy stories about the things Brett did at boarding school, like sneaking out at night to visit his girlfriend at another school (not at all based on the many times she'd snuck out to be with Santana), or using a fake ID to get into bars (which Britt had also never done for Santana).
By that point, Brett was sounding pretty badass - so much so that even Puck seemed curious to meet him.
And that was when Brittany knew that she might have gotten in too deep. But she was in it already, so she had to stick with it - especially if she wanted to speak to Santana ever again.
The same Santana who had been avoiding her like the plague, never answering Brittany's calls or texts, and staring pointedly at the wall any time Brittany tried to speak to her. Brett, Brittany had decided, was her best chance with Santana, even though Santana, unlike the rest of the glee kids, didn’t believe a word she said about Brett because she knew there was no Brett. But Brittany persisted, and she kept her eye on Santana where she was sitting across the room, gauging her reactions, watching her go from aloof and vaguely pissed off to suspicious and then, finally, on Friday afternoon when Brittany was relating a story about how Brett stopped their cat from reading her diary at the beginning of the summer, Santana’s suspicion became curiosity, even amusement. And then, right then, Brittany knew this was going to work.
Gotcha, she thought, not even trying to hide her smile. Fortunately her default expressions were happy and confused, so nobody seemed weirded out by her smiling out of nowhere.
All the brain exercise, it seemed (or at least she hoped), wasn't going to be wasted. That meant that it was time to let her body do the talking, and to hope against hope that it worked out - especially with Santana.
* * * * *
While Brittany couldn’t turn on a computer, and they often confused the hell out of her (what was up with facebook? There was nothing about faces or books about it!), she could find things on the internet if she absolutely had to - and figuring out how to become Brett was something she had to go to the internet for. Normally she would’ve asked Santana, but they weren’t speaking, and this wasn’t exactly something she could talk to Artie about, so she went to the school librarian instead, sitting at a computer with her on Friday after glee and staring blankly as she found pages and pages of information.
“I hope this helps you, dear,” she said, gathering everything she’d printed and holding it out to Britt.
“Thanks.”
“Good luck…I can tell transitioning must be a very tough thing to do. I hope things go better for you than they did for that Hummel boy.”
“You mean I’ll have to change to another school?” Brittany asked, eyes getting big. This had never occurred to her as a possibility. Why would she get kicked out? She wasn’t doing anything wrong!
Okay, maybe it was a little wrong to con her boyfriend and the girl she wanted to be her girlfriend, but if the plumbing was different then it wasn’t cheating, and if it was Brett who was with Santana then Brittany wasn’t at all to blame, right?
The librarian seemed to sense some of Britt’s clueless panic, though, because she reached out and patted Brittany’s arm. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
Brittany took a deep, relieved breath, looked down at the papers in her hands, and nodded, slipping them into her backpack. “Thanks again,” she replied, and then she was off to the drive in front of the school where her mom waited for her every day.
“Did you have a good day at school, Britt?” she asked, just like she did every day, and Brittany wasn’t worried any more.
“Yeah,” she replied, putting her bag down in her lap, staring at it intently like she could see the papers inside if she only stared hard enough. It wasn’t working, so she figured she’d try something else. “Hey mom? Can I borrow the car tonight?”
“Of course! Anything for you, sweet pea.” And she smiled again, and Brittany smiled back, and it felt like things were really going to be okay, especially when they got home and Britt got a chance to browse her papers and found out this wouldn’t be as hard as she thought.
She found some ace bandages in her bathroom that she kept for Cheerios injuries (but since she wasn’t a Cheerio any more this was probably the most action they were going to see for a long while). She tried wrapping them around her chest a couple of different ways - one bandage, two bandages, over a sports bra, no bra at all. It was hard to do by herself and it kind of hurt, but she could still breathe and stuff so that was okay. And a pair of rolled-up socks in her pants looked good enough, but she was too girly and curvy in all the pants that she owned so she figured she’d add that later, after she’d done her shopping.
And was it ever a shopping spree. She’d amassed a lot of allowance in the past few weeks; when she wasn’t going out with Santana, she didn’t really spend that much. Artie always bought her stuff when they went out, and she didn’t ever feel like going anywhere by herself, so all the money her parents had given her was just…there, ready to be spent. And she spent it, too, buying Brett all kinds of clothes - jeans, shirts, shorts, even underwear. It was weird, though…people didn’t seem surprised or upset when she walked into a store and went straight to the men’s department, but they gave her weird looks when she carried guys’ clothes (especially the underwear) over to the dressing rooms.
But Brittany, being Brittany, tuned it out, whipping out her bandages in the dressing rooms to try on all the clothes she - no, not she, Brett - needed for this little plan. It was kind of fun, actually, looking in the mirror and realizing her boobs were so mashed against her chest that they looked like man-pecs instead of boobs.
Brett, Brittany decided, was a pretty hot guy. Because, of course, Brittany’s mind had the two completely separated: Brett the guy, Brittany the girl. Brett, who had a thing for feisty brunettes and getting into trouble, and Britt, who was committed to staying with her wheelchair-bound boyfriend who was always so nice to her. There was, of course, some overlap, but Brittany’s mind worked in blacks and whites, not grays, and though every time she thought about what Santana would think of this pair of jeans or of that shirt, it sent a little jolt of sadness through her - but she told herself she was feeling it for Brett, who was sad he hadn’t met Santana yet. And it worked, too - so well that by the time Brittany had all but exhausted her pocket money, Brittany was exhausted, but Brett wanted to go straight over to Santana’s to be introduced.
So, even though her back hurt and she was tired, mentally and physically, from all it took to get Brett ready, Brittany took Brett’s shopping bags to the nearest handicapped restroom (it had to be a single stall, because the idea of going into a girls’ bathroom and coming out a guy was too weird) and started getting dressed. Bandages, undershirt, underwear, awesome blue plaid shirt that picked out the blue of Brett’s eyes, baggier jeans than Brittany had ever bought in her life, then the rolled-up socks down the front, and-wow.
Brett really was a pretty hot guy.
There was only one problem - the hair. Brittany had way too much hair. That meant she either had to chop off her hair - and no way was that happening, Santana had said more than once that she loved it the way it was - or get a wig.
No contest, really.
There was a costume shop in Lima, Brittany knew, but it was probably closed by now - so although it made Brittany uncomfortable to go out with Brett looking so unfinished, she piled as much hair as she could under a baseball hat, put her clothes into the shopping bags, and left the bathroom to go buy a better hat with more space under it, like one of those fedoras she’d seen.
In the shop, paying for the hat, Brittany made an effort to lower her voice when she said she wanted the receipt in the bag, and despite her weird hair bulge, she got a “have a nice day, sir,” in return, which sent her out of the store grinning, because Brett was a huge success, especially when Brittany got to the car, put her hair up in a bun, and tucked it under the fedora. Very handsome. That just left one thing to do…introduce Brett Pierce to Santana Lopez, and hope Santana didn’t cut him with her vicious, vicious words.
Chapter 2