So When You Get That Feeling (Keep Dancing, Keep Dancing)
Title: So When You Get That Feeling (Keep Dancing, Keep Dancing)
Pairing: Santana Lopez/Brittany Pierce
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: Through 2x15.
Summary: Now it’s like Brittany is this weird song in her head, the kind that gets stuck there with its thrumming beat and its repeating lyrics, until you wake up in the middle of the night singing the chorus over and over again.
A/N: [Picture Show Project 11/14]- "I Am The DJ"
Never mind, I hear you all the time
Lovely, and amazing, and completely underwhelmed
Tell me why you switched to satellite
The record’s in your hands, please play my song again
Putting your heart on the line, it turns out, feels exactly as awesome as a stallion-kick to the sternum. It feels like losing every game you’ve ever played, like rolling over to find the four, strong walls of your bedroom have vanished, replaced by windswept desert. It feels like every grungy, lonely love song, playing to an audience of one at four in the morning, red lights rushing by.
It feels like the reason she never wanted to go here, and goddammit, if she didn’t have it right the first time. But Brittany wanted…and Brittany gets what Brittany wants. Most of the time.
Just not always in a timely manner.
Santana’s trying not to think about it too much. About the fact that she has spent this week rapidly unwinding the thick ball of string between them, all at once. About the fact that she has admitted-out loud, in front of a fucking teacher (sort of)-the whole kind of liking girls thing. About the fact that she got up on a stool and sang. To her best friend. In front of everybody.
As if leaving the Cheerios behind wasn’t enough of an epic change for the year.
It seems like the last time she blinked, everything just sort of started…falling down around her. One minute, her head is held high, her shoulders thrown back, the mask rooted firmly in place--and then, all of a sudden, the warm red polyester is gone, and so is the automatic status, and the sanity, and Brittany. Although, to be fair, Brittany has been gone a lot longer than that stupid uniform. Brittany has been gone ever since she fucked it all up, all those months ago, and though they started talking again pretty soon after the fallout-talking and other things, things Brittany doesn’t seem so happy about anymore; Santana knows the guilt weighs heavy on her mind, even though she pretends otherwise, even though she pretends to buy the lies Santana tries to offer-it’s not the same. It hasn’t been the same in a long time. Not since watching her spend a wedding dancing with a chair, and Christmas praying for working legs, and Valentine’s Day in the lap of a suspenders-sporting cripple.
Santana has been trying to hold it together, trying to remind herself that things change, and maybe that’s the natural order or whatever, but-this is Brittany. Brittany, who never used to cry after one of their get drunk and steal away to a private corner exercises. Brittany, whose eyes never used to stare through the wall of Santana’s bedroom on a Saturday night. Brittany, who used to light up when she saw Santana coming, no matter what.
Brittany’s been trying to pretend like things haven’t changed so drastically, but it’d be stupid of them to deny it. And that fact-that simple sense of losing her best friend to some idiot boy-is what pushed Santana to do the unthinkable. To forget the golden rule, to forget that she’s never going to be allowed to marry her motherfucking princess, and just say it.
She cringes away from the words in her head, the tearful, heartfelt echoes that seem to reverberate through her locker, through the sleeves of her favorite jacket, through the very infrastructure of the goddamn school. It’s everywhere now, and she can’t get away.
Confessions of love, it turns out, are exactly the sort of thing that follow you to your grave. Santana sort of wishes she had figured that out before all of this started.
But it’s too late for that, too late for running or backtracking-though God knows she’s trying-and now she’s got the added weight of Brittany’s sadness on top of her guilt. Which is just fucking perfect.
She wishes she could bat it away like it doesn’t matter, the way she did when Puckerman went balls to the wall crazy for the great white whale. She wishes for it to feel the same in her head as that brush-off, as the bullshit from Hudson’s she’s not worth it crack, or Berry’s working on a pole bit. She wishes the loss of Brittany-the way Brittany has always been-felt the same as the loss of Quinn’s respect, or even the way her mother started shaking her head when Sylvester called the house to insist that “Jugs McMexican keep her grubby implants out of my locker room.” She wishes the loss of Brittany could be just another coin in the purse, just another domino to knock down and prove wrong.
Except, of course, Brittany has never been just another anything. And it is getting increasingly difficult for Santana to fall back on a memory that doesn’t revolve around all those years of really getting each other. All the years of Brittany’s warm hand in her own, of hearing Brittany’s fevered, determined whisper against her skin in the darkness: I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.
Serves her right, she thinks now as she bangs her head lightly against the cafeteria table, for ever believing something like that could be real.
It’s her own damn fault for being so scared all the time, for taking Abuela’s advice to heart at five years old, for letting herself believe that Brittany would never get bored, or get mad, or get love from somebody else. It was foolish, and ignorant, and so beyond selfish-and, though Santana has no problem being selfish most of the time, she kind of hates herself for this instance.
Everyone makes fun of Brittany for believing in Santa Claus, but Santana’s the one with the wacked-out notions of reality. Santana’s the one who should have known better by now.
She’s been trying to push through it, trying to pretend like it never happened. Like she never opened her big mouth and tried to Stevie Nicks her way back into Brittany’s number-one slot. Like she never stood there in that hallway, eyes darting, wetting her lips with a painfully dry tongue every few seconds just to keep from passing out. Like she never felt that hazy blackout moment of euphoria when Brittany replied that of course, she loved her. Of course. Like it had never been a question. And then, not a second later, the hammer came smashing down, and Santana had all but ran away, and now-
Now it’s like Brittany is this weird song in her head, the kind that gets stuck there with its thrumming beat and its repeating lyrics, until you wake up in the middle of the night singing the chorus over and over again. Now it’s like Brittany is this record in her head that won’t shut off, no matter how many times Santana visualizes heaving the whole jukebox off a balcony. Brittany keeps playing, and playing, and all Santana wants is to rewind this last week and take it back.
It sucked, the way it was before, but at least it was a manageable kind of suck. The kind of suck where she could lie through her teeth, put all her emotion into an orgasm, into straddling Brittany on one of the few Saturdays they’ve had left and pretending she didn’t see the sadness in dark blue eyes. It was the kind of suck she’s been handling since they entered high school and started letting other people get in the way. Since the everybody talks principle shattered their bright little bubble.
It sucked, and it was exhausting pretending it didn’t, but Santana could do it. She was good at it. Fuck, not like she hadn’t gotten more than her share of practice.
Now that she’s said it, though, and turned the pressure in her heart from a dull ache to a steady, shrieking song, it sucks more than she could ever have imagined. No one even knows about her yet (no one outside of the New Directions, anyway, who are still a band of utter assholes, but, strangely, the kind of assholes she doesn’t so much loathe), so no one’s looking at her in the hallways, but it turns out maybe the being found out part wasn’t the worst thing about being in love with Brittany. The worst thing, it turns out, is knowing-without doubt, without question-that Brittany is the song in her head that will never stop playing. The one whose words and melody she has been singing all her life, the record which-despite all scratches, all age-plays on and on.
The worst part is knowing that she, in turn, is not Brittany’s song. Not the only one, anyway, and definitely not the one she’s choosing to play. Where it feels as though Santana has only this one aged record, set on an infinite loop inside a jukebox she can’t quite bring herself to sell, Brittany seems to have a whole damn iPod at her disposal. Brittany can switch albums at will, can rotate through whatever songs she likes-and, unlike Santana, Brittany seems to know how to stop singing the same broken song in the middle of the night.
Santana is pretty sure her song is still in there somewhere, buried under longing and regret and the sheer anxiety that this change won’t be a permanent one. She’s pretty sure Brittany hasn’t given up on her completely, because if there is one thing Brittany has promised in that forever sort of way, it’s that she is Santana’s. That she loves Santana. Even if she can’t love her the way Santana needs.
Even if she’s too busy loving some four-eyed kid in a wheelchair, and Santana wishes she could hate Artie so much more than she does. She wishes she could find it in her to run his legless ass over with her car, to send him soaring off the highest staircase. She wishes he wasn’t such a decent guy, despite all his moronic behavior, and that Brittany didn’t smile at him the way she does. Brittany doesn’t smile that way at people who don’t deserve it.
Except Santana. Santana’s not sure she’s ever deserved the gifts Brittany has spent years giving.
Even so, deserving or not, she can’t bring herself to let go. She wants to, of course, because who the fuck wouldn’t after being shot down like that? She wants to, but there is just something about Brittany-about her smile, about the sway of her hips and the crook of her finger, about the way her hand still finds Santana’s sometimes, when she’s not paying attention, when she forgets where they are. There is just something about Brittany’s song that was made to last, as if every note was crafted specifically to fall from Santana’s tongue.
It’s dumb, to have believed Brittany would wait for her when she never had the intention of giving in, and it’s even dumber to believe that Brittany will come back to her eventually. It’s maybe the dumbest thing in a lifetime of seriously idiotic mistakes, and Santana really has to stop beating her head against this table, because Tina is starting to give Mike this look, like she’s about to call psych services or something.
“What?” she snaps. Tina bucks back from the table, eyes baby-rabbit wide.
“N-nothing.” It’s almost funny, how Girl Chang only stutters now when Santana’s around to scare the living shit out of her. Almost funny enough to make the rest of her situation seem not so horrendously dire.
Except she’s in love with a girl who’s in love with somebody else, and Santana’s not sure the definition of “dire” stretches much further than that.
Mike looks at her with creepily wise eyes, and Santana finds herself a breath away from asking his opinion on the subject. Mike knows Brittany, more or less, and he technically already has a history of stealing girls from Artie. Mike might have some insight.
But then, worrying about other people’s opinions is sort of what got her here in the first place. She settles for sipping at her milk carton, pretending Team Asian isn’t gaping at her the way they are.
Brittany is the song in her head that will never stop playing, so maybe she should stop wasting so much energy trying to change that fact and start working on a way to pull herself back to the top of Brittany’s personal Billboard. Maybe, instead of weeping into her chocolate milk and inducing mild brain damage, she should be fixating on a way out of this mess-for good this time, not just another seedy patch-up job. This isn’t something that can be fixed with sex and a smile anymore. They are so far beyond that now.
Brittany isn’t playing her song on repeat just now, but Santana still sees her dancing to it, when she thinks no one is watching. Santana still sees the familiar curve of her back, the familiar sweep of her arms, the glow behind her smile that has only ever belonged to Santana. It doesn’t happen often-here, there, when Brittany shuts out the world and falls into the beat instead-but it happens. And maybe Brittany hasn’t left Artie yet, and maybe she never will, but the fact that she is still dancing to the song-their song-means something. Something Santana’s not sure she’s entirely ready to hear, though she may not have a choice.
Brittany still loves her. Brittany is so yours, proudly so. Brittany just has to find a reason to play Santana’s song again, like she always did before I’m not in love with you and I’m just here because excuses, excuses, excuses. Santana just needs to remind her.
She slams the carton back onto the table, hard enough to fire drips of chocolate onto Tina’s knuckles and the green sleeve of Mike’s shirt, and grins. “Thanks, kids,” she tells them breezily, with a confidence she doesn’t entirely feel, and pushes to her feet.
This sucks, the whole breadth of it, and she still wishes she hadn’t said those stupid words in that stupid choked voice-but she did. It’s done, it’s over, it’s out there. She can’t keep walking blind anymore. There's still a tiny glimmer of hope, but she’s running out of time.
As she strides from the table, she hears Tina’s confused voice reply, “You’re-welcome? What even-“
“Don’t,” Mike tells her calmly. It’s nearly enough to make Santana laugh. Clueless bitches.
She doesn’t need Chang’s expert advice on getting Brittany back. No one knows Brittany even half as well as she does. She doesn’t need anybody else.
She’s already said I love you. She’s already done the hardest part.
All that’s left now is to get Brittany back to humming her song.