You Lose All Your Friends (That’s The Thing About Trust)
Title: You Lose All Your Friends (That’s The Thing About Trust)
Pairing: Santana Lopez/Brittany Pierce
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: Through 1x13.
Summary: It makes her crazy, that any one of those idiots might think they know the first thing about them.
A/N: [Picture Show 7/14]- "Trust"
You appear as a child
With your heart on your sleeve
But you’re acting exactly as you do in my dreams
I said you, you are not what you seem
People assume Brittany’s dumb more often than Santana can put up with. They think she’s silly, flaky, flighty-and maybe that’s all true, maybe she really is kind of ridiculous sometimes, but Santana has never believed that to be a bad thing. Her head lives in the clouds, her feet tap-dancing their way through her own special land, and sometimes, it makes it hard to get her attention when you need it-but Santana likes that about her.
Brittany being who she is balances Santana better than she thought she would ever need.
People think Brittany’s dumb, and she’s not. School isn’t her thing, numbers and words swimming across the page in uneven strokes, and her focus isn’t the greatest, either, but that doesn’t make her stupid. It doesn’t make her any less perceptive or brilliant than anybody else. In fact, compared to the rest of the losers in this school, Santana thinks Brittany is pretty much a goddamn social whiz kid.
And, honestly? Sometimes, she sort of wishes that weren’t so true.
Brittany is smart where it counts, and calculated, and so aware of the world around her that things can get a little scary. Brittany knows exactly what she’s doing, even if it takes her a few minutes longer than most to get there. Santana believes that with everything she is.
So when Brittany lets slip the sex isn’t dating rule-the new mantra of their friendship, the one that has kept them afloat through Quinn Fabray’s pregnancy, and joining the goddamn New Directions, and learning that they actually don’t hate singing and dancing like a couple of jackasses-in front of a whole slew of losers…Santana can’t assume it’s a mistake. She can’t assume it wasn’t intentional. Brittany just doesn’t do stuff that way, like people think she does. Like a moron.
Brittany-her Brittany, the Brittany who falls asleep with her mouth open and a hand clenched around Santana’s shirt, the Brittany who swirls them both around and around in the kitchen and dips Santana right when the timer dings, the Brittany who bites down on every argument before she can make them-isn’t a moron. No matter what other people think.
She catches hold of Brittany’s sleeve when the phone call is over, pulling her into the bathroom and snarling, “Get out,” to the band of freshman girls tittering by the sinks. Standing there, between sink and stall, hand on her hip, she can’t think of what to say. She can’t think of anything.
“Why?” is the best she’s got. Brittany tilts her head.
“Because,” she answers, “they’re our friends.”
“They’re not,” Santana insists, punching a sink hard enough to bruise her knuckles. Brittany makes a disappointed face, mouth thinning as she catches Santana’s hand and turns it over gently.
“You need to stop hitting things.”
“And you need to stop telling people our secrets.” Santana becomes abruptly aware that she is shouting and closes her eyes, zeroing in on the tender pressure of Brittany’s touch upon her injury. “I just-remember the last time someone found out about us?”
Brittany looks at her steadily, with eyes that plainly state how well she remembers. They both do, Santana knows. It isn’t the sort of thing you forget.
“They’re our friends,” Brittany repeats, “whether you want them to be or not.”
Santana wants to scream that there isn’t anything close to friendship in that choir room, that those idiots would tear them both apart without a second thought. That revenge is a lot more tempting than loyalty when it comes to the bullied.
Besides, Puck is their friend-Puck, and Quinn, and even that idiot Hudson, and she wouldn’t trust a damn one of them with their secret. That’s why she works so hard to pretend the threesomes with her ex-boyfriend are his idea, and why she brings so much alcohol to Quinn’s dumb little girl-time sleepovers. She has done everything in her power to keep these plates spinning-Brittany, the noise in her head, the promise she made herself, the appearance they’ve crafted for the rest of the world-and here, in one fell swoop, with one off-hand remark, Brittany has brought it all crashing down.
“It’s going to be in the paper tomorrow,” she warns, sagging against the sink and staring down its drain. “And on that Jacob idiot’s blog. Everyone will know.”
Which shouldn’t matter, not if sex isn’t dating, but the very idea still makes her stomach wrench like it’s going to dispel her lunch right here and now.
“They’re our friends,” Brittany insists a third time. “They won’t tell. They won’t do that to us.”
Santana can’t believe that. Maybe Brittany can, or maybe she’s just making it up to soothe them both, but either way, Santana’s not that trusting. She can’t afford to be, not with the Head Cheerio position up for grabs, and Sylvester breathing fetid, championship breath down their necks, and Quinn giving her those looks in class. She can’t afford to believes that Wheels, and Aretha, and Vampire Chang, Mistress of the Night would actually have their backs. Not when they have no earthly reason to do so.
She shakes her head, unclenching her jaw slowly, painfully, and takes her hand back from between both of Brittany’s. “Fine. They know now, either way, there’s no taking that back. I just hope you’re right.”
Worse comes to worst, she thinks, accepting Brittany’s pinky with her good hand, who the hell would believe anything that falls from those lame-ass mouths? Gossip about the two hottest girls in school doing the nasty would go much, much further, if it hadn’t spilled from Tinkerbell’s lips, or Rollerboy’s Twitter feed. It’s bad, them knowing, but it could be much, much worse. And hey, if they take sectionals, maybe their tiny guppy brains will forget all about this.
Either way, the incident proves once again what she has always known-what the other kids in this school would absolutely shit themselves to realize-about Brittany S. Pierce:
For all her innocence, her pretty blue eyes, her misspelled words-she is a goddamn genius.
You appear as a devil
Like a wolf in the woods
But you’re acting exactly
As we expected you would
People think Santana is a bad person, a real black-hat type, but Brittany doesn’t see it. They all think she’s mean (okay, true), and sarcastic (also true), and heartless (the furthest thing from truth that has ever been). They think she would push her own grandmother under a bus, if it came to that, which is the stupidest thing Brittany has ever heard. If only because Santana’s Abuela is downright terrifying.
She makes her granddaughter look like a harmless little kitten, from where Brittany’s standing.
Anyway, the idea that Santana is a bad person is just ridiculous. She’s harsh sometimes, sure, and maybe she gets a little too much joy from watching people cry, but whatever-Brittany finds that funny herself, once in a while. It doesn’t make her, like, evil.
But, for whatever reason, other people don’t seem to get that. Even their friends-girls like Quinn, guys like Puck-are more likely to call Santana a raging bitch than to actually listen to what she’s saying. Which makes Brittany mad, but, at the same time, is a weird sort of relief. It feels good-better than it should, probably-to know she’s the only person Santana truly trusts. The only person Santana leans on when things get bad.
Feeling that way probably makes her a far worse person than Santana has ever been, but she can’t help it. She needs Santana. It feels good to be needed in return.
Still, when things go wrong-like at sectionals, watching their setlist being performed by other groups-and everyone turns on Santana first, the anger doesn’t take long to well up. Brittany can taste it, coppery and ugly on her tongue. She hates when people treat Santana like the bad guy.
Even worse is when Santana lets it happen. Santana knows it was her fault that the setlist got leaked-was right there beside her when that video camera was out-and still, she doesn’t turn on Brittany. She never has before, and Brittany’s not sure what it would take to cut that final cord between them. She’s not sure it could ever snap, no matter how sharp the knife might be.
Santana may get mad sometimes, like about the sex isn’t dating slip-up, and she might hide beneath thick layers of protection, even from Brittany, but she never, ever gives up when it matters.
It’s all Brittany’s fault, that this has gone downhill so quickly, but Santana doesn’t care-and, as far as Brittany’s concerned, that makes her more than a good person. It makes her great. It makes her a hero.
Not that the others can see it. She can tell from the way Artie keeps popping his jaw, and the upturned nose on Kurt’s face, and the scowl Tina is trying to hide, that they don’t trust Santana. They don’t trust her, they don’t believe in her, and they definitely don’t love her. Not like Brittany does. Not even a little bit.
All they know is Santana’s sass, her rage, her aggression-and that means they expect nothing better from her than a sharp comeback and a intentionally-thrown routine. They expect her to ruin them on purpose, to be a traitor. They expect her to throw her head back and laugh at them, to walk away with a mean joke, never to look back.
They don’t expect guilt. They don’t expect shame. They probably don’t even think she’s capable of things like that.
It makes Brittany sick, seeing that here, in this room, just days after insisting with such venom that these were Santana’s friends, too. Ours, shared, trusted.
No wonder Santana didn’t believe her.
She admits that the whole thing was her fault, and tells them she didn't mean to, didn't know what Coach would do with the song list. It's not entirely true, but it's close enough, and all she can think is that she wants them to stop looking at Santana that way. With disgust. Disbelief. Anger.
It works, for a minute; she stands uncomfortably, hugging herself as they stare at her. They don't seem surprised by her admission, and it strikes her that maybe these people don't expect so much from her either. Not that it matters; before she knows it, Santana is deliberately drawing their fire again, pulling the focus back to her. Telling them the truth-the truth that, until now, only Brittany knew: that she likes Glee. That she likes being here. She doesn’t say she likes any of them-which Brittany is pretty glad for, because that lie would be way too easy to sense-but it's enough to get their attention.
Sort of. Now every member of the group is staring at them both, like they expect the two of them to sprout bat wings and fly, cackling, through the window, or something. Everyone clearly thinks they've finally done it: destroyed the New Directions, once and for all.
Everyone except, strangely enough, for Rachel.
Rachel is loud, and annoying, and Brittany spends a lot of their rehearsal time coming up with new and inventive ways to trick her over the edge of the Grand Canyon, but somehow, it’s Rachel who smiles softly, sadly. It’s Rachel who says, in the simplest set of words Brittany has ever heard leave her mouth, “I believe you.”
Rachel says it, and even though none of them really like Rachel, and none of them even come close to respecting her, that’s somehow the end of the discussion. Rachel believes Santana-believes both of them-and the argument is over. They’re already moving on, trying to come up with a new plan, greeting Finn when he comes through the door out of nowhere. No one sees the look Santana shoots her from across the room-I told you so, and it’s okay, and we’ve got this, all bound together with that signature Santana eyeroll. No one sees what she sees.
They think she’s a bad person, because, even when she’s apologizing, it’s rough. Even when she’s admitting something she’s never admitted to the group before, it sounds angry. It sounds hard around the edges, just like they’d expect, because not a single one of them knows that this is just how Santana is. Hard around the edges. Rough. Broken, in her own secret way. Not a single one of them sees how much Santana really cares, even when she doesn’t want to. Nobody gets it, what Santana has given up.
She doesn’t want them to. Brittany knows that, so Brittany doesn’t say a word. The secret-this secret, one even more important than the sex isn’t dating bit-means the world to Santana. This is the secret that keeps her tied together.
It sucks to see them look at her, sneakily, out of the corner of suspicious eyes. It sucks to see how bad they still think she is. It sucks, knowing how stupid they are, and not being able to prove it.
But it doesn’t matter. As Santana comes to stand beside her, a hand finding Brittany’s under the table and squeezing once, she forces herself to push past it. Yes, they’re all idiots, and yes, she’s super mad at each and every one of them for believing Santana is so much less than she is-but this isn’t the time for that. Right now, they need to pull it together and win the crap out of sectionals, and they need to do it on the fly. Beating their expectations can wait.
For now, it's enough to know that Santana gets her the way she gets Santana, even if no one else ever will. For now, maybe having other friends seems kind of overrated--and maybe that's okay.
She's pretty sure Santana isn't going anywhere.