Don't Look Now (Cuz Here We Are: Living The Best Days Of Our Lives)
Title: Don't Look Now (Cuz Here We Are: Living The Best Days Of Our Lives)
Pairing: Santana Lopez/Brittany Pierce, Sam Evans, Tina Cohen-Chang
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: Through 3x22, for safety.
Summary: What does surprise him is the moment when Santana shifts to look at him and says, plainly and without a shred of uncertainty in her voice, “You wanna come to Chicago?”
A/N: Title from Eric Hutchinson's "Best Days."
Things sometimes don’t turn out exactly the way you expect, which is sometimes the easiest expectation in the world to make. So, when Brittany Pierce flunks out of her senior year, and Santana Lopez winds up putting off the Big Dream for another long batch of months in favor of mulling around a community school, Sam Evans thinks maybe it’s the sort of thing that isn’t obvious until it happens-and then, when you think about it, it’s the most crystal-clear thing in the world. Because, hey, Brittany was never all that great at showing up to her classes or working out her essays, and Santana was never all that great at leaving Brittany behind for all the gold in the Gringotts vault, so why wouldn’t they stick together when things got rough? It wasn’t as though Brittany’s mom was keen on the idea of her racing through a GED and booking out of town on the next available flight, and it wasn’t as though Santana could bring herself to argue with that jurisdiction. This was really the only thing that made perfect sense, in some stupidly bizarre sort of way.
Santana waits. Brittany plays the game again. And this time, when they come out the other side, it’s on equal terms: two high school graduates, pinkies linked, necking in victory against that big ol’ William McKinley sign. The way things should have gone down in the first place. Sam watches from a few feet away, arms folded across his chest and grinning, because even when things don’t turn out the way you expect, they still do turn out. Somehow.
He’s not all that surprised by any of this, honestly. What does surprise him is the moment-mid-July, when the three of them are draped upside down Tina’s living room sofa, waiting for her to return with pizza and a package of Double-Stuf Oreos-when Santana shifts to look at him and says, plainly and without a shred of uncertainty in her voice, “You wanna come to Chicago?”
The idea is not at all on his radar until that moment, but, weirdly, it becomes all he can think about after that afternoon. Chicago is a big place, big enough to lose yourself in and forget everything that’s gone wrong in the past-the getting cheated on, the losing the house, the strip clubs, and the girls who left him behind in favor of a shiny recording contract-and Sam thinks that maybe big is better this time around. He’s got a diploma in his hand and a little money squared away from taking Finn’s position at Burt Hummel’s tire shop. His abs are hotter than ever, and he’s almost completely kicked the dirty whisperings of Doritos in his ear to the curb. He’s on top, eighteen and ready to go places, and if these two beautiful girls-who admittedly are beautiful only for each other these days, but are still pretty hardcore anyway-want his company…
Why not?
***
Their apartment is bitty-bitty, like, shouldn’t be able to hold Sam and his DVD collection, much less two other human beings-but it grows on him right away. There’s something awesome about being away from home in this new, real way, without parents or surrogate folks hanging out over his shoulder, waiting to see what he does next. Not that he isn’t grateful to Burt and Carole for all they’ve done for him, letting him hang out long after Finn shipped over to Georgia and Kurt tackled New York without a steady plan in mind; he totally is. They’re the greatest not-parents a dude could have, and he’s already promised himself that a fifth of every paycheck is heading their way for the next few months, at least until he’s paid off that mishap with the iron around Christmas. He owes them at least that much.
But the thing is, he’s a grown-ass dude now, and grown-ass dudes really do need their own land to stretch out in. Even if stretching out sometimes means you collide with the hot lesbians across the hall.
Speaking of which.
Brittany and Santana are some of the greatest people he’s ever known. He kind of figured that out a long time ago, between the dating Santana thing and the sticking his tongue down Brittany’s drunk throat bit, but this past year really drove it home. They are really cool, and make surprisingly hilarious jokes, and after he teamed up with Artie and Tina to coax them into Friday night TV marathons, shit got real. Any girl who can make it through Dollhouse, and Battlestar, and who actually likes Fringe-really likes it, not just for Josh Jackson’s stubble-is more than okay in his book. And it helps that Brittany is the biggest sweetheart in the world, and that Santana can drive a baseball much farther than he’d ever expected, and that the pair of them somehow never make him feel weird about all the craziness that went down with Quinn two years ago. They’re great. The greatest. Santana helped him study for history all last semester, and Brittany brought him muffins when his grandma died, and, shit, they’re kind of his best friends right now.
But, God, they have a lot of sex.
***
He didn’t think about it, at first. Sex is natural, just part of the circle of life or whatever, and he’s always figured it’s none of his business who somebody wants to get down with. He never thought it was weird, hanging out around Kurt and Blaine, just like nothing was weird about Finn and Rachel (although that part is kind of a lie, because Finn and Rachel were always having the stupidest arguments, and-honestly-he’s not too surprised that they haven’t gotten back together since that afternoon at the train station). People are just people, and if people want to go rolling around with each other-peace, brother. Go for it.
He’s always believed that, and he still does now-except, where Santana and Brittany are concerned, it’s a little bit different. Not because they’re two pretty ladies or anything, but because they’re-
Always doing it.
And he means always.
He’s beginning to wonder if they might actually do permanent damage to each other, actually.
***
The first time he walks in on them, it’s his own fault. He’s gotten so used to being the only kid in the house that he’s sort of fallen out of the habit of knocking before pushing doors open-so, yeah, it was probably only a matter of time before him shouldering through the bathroom door led to this.
This being Santana propped upon their teeny-tiny sink, her pajama pants bunched around her ankles, Brittany kneeling on the puffy blue rug between her legs.
Oops.
He stands for a second, baffled to the point of paralysis, because even though they’re two hot girls-and even though he sees them make out all the time, and occasionally Friday night TV marathons would devolve into hands moving suspiciously beneath their shared blanket-he kind of has forgotten about them being anything other than Santana-and-Brittany. You don’t think about your best friends doing it-unless your best friend is, like, Robert Downey Jr. or something-so he’s sort of forgotten that this is even a thing.
Except it really, really is, as evidenced by Santana breathing in those short little puffs, her head bouncing repeatedly off the mirror as she arches into what is probably Brittany’s mouth. He can’t actually see, which is definitely a good thing, and suddenly, he doesn’t so much need to pee anymore. The image burns itself awkwardly into his brain, all pink cheeks and rumpled hair and Santana's shirt hiked up her (he's impressed, actually) abs, and he’s pivoting clumsily away, blurting, “Sorry, sorry!” before they can look up. It isn’t until the door slams shut again that he realizes maybe living with a couple is going to take a little getting used to.
In the meantime, he decides to count to knock and count to four-hundred before opening any door in this apartment ever again.
***
The second time it happens, it’s their fault, but he still feels bad about it-the same way you’d feel bad about walking in on your parents. Thing is, even though his name is on the lease, he’s having trouble believing that this is really his place, and that he’s got any real rights to it. He can’t remember the last time a bed, or a kitchen, or a front door actually belonged to him, what with all the motel-hopping and Hudson-Hummel bunking he’s done in the last few years. The idea that this is all actually his, that the key on his ring means nobody can tell him otherwise, is still baffling.
Besides, they were the ones who invited him. Without their friendship, he’d probably still be Burt Hummel’s cheerful tire slave, and it’s not like that would be so horrible, but this-this is so much better. Living on his own, collecting paychecks from a job he actually earned (with something other than his rippling torso muscles for reference), makes him feel like an honest-to-God man.
A man who answers to a pair of lesbians.
Hey, he’s secure enough for this shit.
Anyway, the point is, it’s their fault, because all he’s doing is coming home from his afternoon run. All he’s doing is looking for a damn shower, and anyway, it’s frickin’ 3:30: Brittany is supposed to be at work, and Santana has her Mom-I-swear-I’m-going-to-make-us-both-proud Western Lit class today. Why the hell they’re sprawled on the living room floor, half-naked and giggling, he honestly can’t say.
But he feels really damn weird about his decision to yank his shirt off before hitting the bathroom all of a sudden.
It’s worse when Santana glances over her shoulder, barely bothering to slow the pulse of her hips atop Brittany, and smirks. “You’re early.”
His jaw flops open, the sweat cooling under his armpits and making him feel wildly uncomfortable. “I-you-what?”
Brittany pokes her head around Santana, and Sam struggles to keep his eyes on their ugly maroon couch instead of the way her fingers coil possessively along Santana’s bare waist. “Hi, Sam!”
“I-hi-I’m gonna-“
He bolts to the bathroom, ears burning, and does his best to pretend he doesn’t hear Santana half-groan, “And we’ll buy your poverty-stricken ass a shirt tonight, if you ask real nicely” after him.
***
It becomes a regular enough thing, and after a while, the novelty and horror give way to careless irritation. After the first three months, he starts to think he’s seen at least as much of Santana and Brittany as the football team back at school. A little too much for best friends, but whatever; they never seem embarrassed, and he figures he should just follow their lead. Either way, they’re going to make fun of him tomorrow for how loudly he just screamed upon rounding the corner to find Santana's hand buried in Brittany’s shorts against the kitchen table. He might as well just deal.
The constant sexing aside, they really are good roommates. They pay their way without a single overdue fee, and keep the fridge stocked when it’s their turn to go shopping (which he prefers, because Brittany, at least, is good about ignoring the tantalizing call of Cool Ranch in favor of leafy greens), and they’re always up for a rousing game of Mario Kart when he needs one. It’s just like he imagines living with Artie and Puck would be, except everything smells a lot better and the only grungy socks he ever steps on are his own.
It’s actually pretty great, having the two of them around, and he doesn’t think anybody else would fit the bill the way they do. Especially when he comes home from an achingly long shift, his hands cut to hell from a shattered bottle of gin (which he then had to pay for, fuck it all), to find a couple of chicken legs and half a baked potato resting in the oven.
“We ate,” Santana informs him, off-handed as ever. The plastic rims of her glasses skid down her nose half an inch as she thumbs through an anthology the rough weight of his Xbox. Sam smiles.
“But we saved you the best legs,” Brittany chimes in, tossing a rubber ball against the refrigerator door. “Cuz it was your turn to not get all rumbly at two AM.”
He retrieves the plate and flops down on their shitty maroon couch, laughing when Brittany’s next toss misses completely and rebounds off the side of Santana’s head. It’s the sort of thing that happened all the time at home, and somehow always ended in an epic whipped cream battle-and yeah, maybe they can’t spare the Cool Whip tonight, but it doesn’t matter. Watching them wrestle on the floor, Santana jerking the ball out of Brittany’s hands and pinning her by the wrists in order to follow Sam’s exact instructions on where to tickle the crap out of her, he feels as much at home as he has since walking out of the sturdy new Evans household two years ago.
That doesn’t happen with just anybody.
***
It would only be better, he thinks sometimes with a pang of homesickness, if Artie and Tina could have come along. Their little fivesome had been so great after the Conquering Heroes had left McKinley and Glee behind, when Finn put on that adult uniform, and Rachel starting auditioning for real live Broadway shows, and Kurt picked up an internship at a smallish fashion magazinw. They had been so good together, walking Tina through her break-up with Mike (who was, at last glance, spending an awful lot of time in New Haven), and Artie through his directorial magnum opus (a performance of RENT that gave Sam the chance to kill “One Song Glory” in front of maybe a whole seventy-five people). They’d won Sectionals together, and placed second at Regionals, and even though Santana had been forced to watch both from the sidelines as a secondary coach, it had felt pretty awesome to wave another trophy over their heads. They could never have done it without Artie or Tina, and Sam sometimes feels a little weird about abandoning them for Chi-Town.
But Artie seems happy at his little film school in Michigan, and Tina sends weekly emails detailing the wacky fun she’s having in the dorms at her own university, so he guesses it all worked out for the best. Missing people isn’t so bad. He’s kind of grown used to it over the years.
It’s only when he’s laying in his room alone, hands clasped behind his head and trying not to mull over the husky whimpers floating across the hall, that he thinks having more friends than just Santana-and-Brittany could maybe do him some good.
***
The bar seems a good enough place to start, even if half the crowd is rowdy and the other half is decidedly too smart for Sam’s taste. Not that he doesn’t like smart girls (and, sometimes, smart guys; Kurt Hummel was always pretty damn charming, save for the whole dating-a-human-set-of-eyebrows thing), but the college kids who roll through that door seem obsessed with Poe and Schrodinger, and the political situation in Nepal. None of which Sam knows-or cares-a damn thing about.
It takes a few weeks after he starts actively looking for someone to talk to before he finds a girl-one with pretty red hair and bright gray eyes, who doesn’t lead in with any topic better found in a university coursepack. Her name is Cassie, which he likes, and she smiles a lot, which he likes even more, and when he finds out she’s going as Black Widow next Halloween, the thump against his breastbone is stronger than it’s been since Mercedes first pressed her lips shyly to his.
Cassie works most of the same shifts he does, and she’s sweet-really sweet, sweet enough to want his phone number only after a long after-hours conversation, and too sweet to come back to his place until the third week. He’s so proud, walking her up to that chipped front door at last, that he kind of forgets for a second where it is he’s living-and who shares his space.
Forgets, and keeps forgetting, because nobody’s home when he boots in the door and bends exaggeratedly at the waist for her to walk ahead of him. She laughs, and he thinks that maybe he’s better at making friends than he thought.
She sits next to him on the couch, close enough for her thigh to brush his, and he’s just working up the courage-halfway through Ferris’ crazy antics on his ill-advised day off-to reach for her hand when the door bangs open again. It sticks there, plastered to the wall, Santana’s back bending it awkwardly on rusty hinges, and the breath whooshes out of Sam all at once. How this could ever slip his mind, he doesn’t know, but by the looks of Cassie’s wide-eyed shock-and why shouldn’t she be so surprised? Brittany’s tongue is very visibly thrusting past Santana’s parted lips, moving in time with her pelvis, and he’s pretty sure they’re both more than a little drunk right now-it was a bad call not to warn them ahead of time.
Cassie is still sweet at work, and pretty friendly, but he’s way too embarrassed to invite her over again anytime soon. Friend-making, he realizes, isn’t the hard part. It’s the whole “letting his roommates know” bit that he needs to work on.
***
In January, he begins seeing this kid named Michael. It’s weird, at first; he hasn’t kissed a boy since the days before Lima was even a blip on the screen-not counting that time during sophomore year, when Puck jammed him triumphantly against his locker door after a big win-and he was beginning to think he’d forgotten how. Not that it’s a whole lot different from kissing girls, really; harder in places, and a little clumsier, but when things boil down to the quick, Michael tastes as good as any cheerleader Sam has ever fooled around with.
Santana is more excited than anyone, which is kind of flattering and awkward at the same time. The day he comes home and sheepishly admits what’s going on, she flings both arms in the air and tackles him onto the carpet.
“Our little Sammy’s growin’ up and getting himself some ass!”
Brittany nods sagely, pausing mid-sit-up to add, “Always wear a condom. I’m pretty sure you won’t get pregnant, but better safe than sorry.”
They like Michael, and Michael doesn’t seem to mind them, although there is that one weird moment when Sam has to admit that, yes, he’s seen them naked, but no, it isn’t how it sounds. Everything is fairly awesome, actually, because Michael likes video games, and cars, and has this wicked sweet spot for Buffy that makes Sam’s toes all tingly, and things are great-
Except, it turns out, having his own place to make out at isn’t quite as incredible as he would have thought. Because having his own place to make out at means having a steady soundtrack in the background. And it ain’t quality dirty-time music.
“Is that-“ Michael pauses, his mouth pulling from Sam’s with a maddening little pop. “Do you hear that?”
He’s trying his best not to, as he always does, but yes: that is the sound of Santana throatily growling out a string of Spanish. And yeah, that does sound suspiciously like a bedframe rocking brutally against a thin wall. And that squeaking sound is the one Brittany sometimes makes when her body is strung too tight, when Santana has already driven her to her peak three times in one sitting.
(He really wishes he didn’t know these things, but if there’s one thing his best friends lack, it’s the ability to keep sex secrets.)
“Seriously,” Michael mumbles when Sam arches up to catch a pierced earlobe between his teeth, “do you hear-“
“Nope,” Sam replies hastily, and bites down. “Not a thing.”
Michael’s great, but they really need to find somewhere else to do this thing. Because, for some reason, the knowledge that his lesbian roommates are working as hard as they can to make an impossible baby across the hall is seriously cramping his style.
***
By February, he and Michael are pretty much done for, which is a bummer, but also kind of a relief. It turns out dating a dude is almost as dramatic as dating a chick, even when that dude is cool and has a remarkably boss Spider-man tattoo on his left calf. In the end, they part as the sort of friends who never really speak again, and Sam figures at least it was an experience.
Brittany leaves an angel-food cake on the floor outside his room, and he-by new force of habit-manages not to step right in it the next morning. It makes him smile.
Santana’s cheerful, “Don’t worry, we’ll mail-order you something buff and sexy” at the breakfast table, maybe a little less so.
***
He doesn’t know how he always winds up on laundry duty. It’s supposed to be a steady rotation between him and Santana (Brittany isn’t allowed near the dryer anymore, after a weird catastrophe involving four bounce sheets and a lit sparkler), but somehow, Santana’s week seems never to come. He threatens to start washing only his own stuff, but then there’s this whole episode where every article of clothing-save for a pair of ratty Family Guy boxers and a bright orange Fruit Loops shirt-goes mysteriously missing from his bedroom, and he relents. When it comes to Santana, there’s not much else a guy can do.
Anyway, they haven’t asked him to clean out the shower in over a month, so he supposes it all breaks even in the end.
Laundry isn’t so bad; it’s actually all very straightforward, once he gets the hang of girl-clothes. Some need to be washed only in cold water, some have to be hung up instead of tumble-dried, and it’s really awkward how many different materials are involved (his entire wardrobe consists of cotton, cotton, and the occasional canvas sneaker), but whatever. It’s all soap and water, right?
Until he gets to the underwear.
The underwear are the worst fucking part, the stuff he can’t begin to wrap his head around. First off, what the hell do girls need so many different patterns for? He can always tell which ones belong to Brittany, with their tiny stegosauruses (okay, those are kind of badass), or their penguins, or ballet slippers, and it makes him feel kind of dirty. (Santana’s are even worse; half the stuff in her pile looks strikingly familiar, like he’s seen them in a strip club far, far away.)
And the bras are so insane. Not that bras on their own are bad or anything, because hell, bras mean boobs, and boobs are pretty great. But there’s a gaping difference between unsnapping a girl’s bra and washing one for her, and he realizes how damn lucky he is to be a guy in the first place. Bras are so jumbly and awkward, prone to getting all tangled in each other, and more than once, he finds himself bent double over the washing machine, whimpering in defeat.
Santana always seems to know when he’s been bested by panties, too. She grins that big mean grin as he stumbles through the door, red-faced and lugging an over-full hamper, and all he can do is stick his tongue out as he passes.
He’s going to fix the laundry rotation someday, and then they’ll see how she likes the Great Bra Debacle of 2014.
***
They’re shouting at each other when he comes home on a Thursday evening, and for a second, Sam honestly thinks he’s exhaustedly walked into the wrong apartment altogether. Brittany and Santana don’t shout at each other, unless they’re using much sexier words than he wants to listen to. They don’t seem to fight at all, in fact; not the way Kurt and Blaine sometimes did back in the day, or how Tina and Mike misery-raged all through their last summer together. It’s as if they’re linked on some psychic level, one that Sam can’t help but be jealous of, because it means he will never be their best friend the way they are for one another.
Santana and Brittany get each other, so for them to be screaming this way is more than unsettling. It flat-out makes his skin crawl, the hair prickling on the back of his neck, and for a second, he just freezes there on the landing. What do you even do when The Perfect Couple starts to snap?
He can’t quite make out the sentences in full, but words are seeping out to greet him: Santana growling something like, “Fuck’s sake-saw her-you know-“ and Brittany returning with a shockingly steady, “-hate-don’t do-like you haven’t-“
They sound furious on a level he hasn’t personally felt, not even when Quinn and Finn were fooling around behind his back, and something clenches in the pit of his stomach. Are they actually breaking up back there? And, if so, where does that leave him? They’ve been his best friends for almost two years now, and, just as importantly, they need three paychecks to keep this place afloat. If they split-if one of them walks away-then what?
Breathing doesn’t feel as automatic as he’s used to, and all of a sudden, it dawns on him that he just can’t stay here. Not while they’re fighting like this, not when listening is making him feel like a little kid in footie pajamas, eavesdropping on Mom and Dad as they battle it out over bills. He’s been there before, and even if it all worked out okay, he’s not sure he can handle it from anybody else.
Moving as quietly as he knows how, he shuffles his iPod and an armful of X-men books into his arms and creeps back out the door again. The small carport outside, which none of them make use of thanks to their spectacular lack of a vehicle, is silent and dark, the perfect place to curl up and pretend the world isn’t such a scary place.
They find him there an hour later, half-dozing to the Blues Brothers soundtrack, and he’s so relieved to see Brittany’s arm protectively wound around Santana’s middle that he nearly cracks his head on the wall in his scramble to stand up.
“You’ve reached an all-time creep high, Blondie,” Santana tells him easily, nose crinkling when Brittany nuzzles at her ear and whispers something. He doesn’t even care when they burst into giggles, too preoccupied with his own dumb grin.
“Does this mean you’re not breaking up?”
Santana gives him her patented you took stupid pills again, didn’t you? look. “Not even gonna ask, Evans. Don’t even wanna know.”
He flings his arms around them both, ignoring the way Santana’s tiny fist beats at his shoulders in surprise.
***
Tina comes to visit for Spring Break, and Sam thinks he’s never been so happy to see someone in his life. She shows up when Santana and Brittany are shut away in their room, napping off their earlier “nap,” and Sam instantly hauls her out on a long walk around the neighborhood. He points out all his favorite haunts-the pizza place with the heavenly pepperoni that he needs to take it easy on, the gym whose owner forked over a free membership after Santana and Brittany just about mounted each other on one of his tumbling mats, the bar where Sam makes a meager, but respectable enough, living-and grins when Tina tucks her arm through the crook of his elbow and says she’s totally jealous.
“You could move here, too,” he says happily, pleased when she ducks her head almost shyly against his shoulder.
“And, what? Live in your room?” she teases, flicking a green streak of hair over her shoulder. She’s back to the old punk look this month, and he privately thinks that this is how she looks the prettiest: the glitter of her earrings catching sunlight, her black hair shiny and smooth before popping with jarring color. He wonders sometimes how Mike ever could have let her go, when her smile is this bright and her eyes are that excited.
“We could afford a bigger place,” he informs her, brushing away the thoughts, “if you were here. Four paychecks, that’s a lot of rent.”
“I dunno if I could handle the dream team like you do,” Tina tells him. “I love ‘em to death and everything, but-“
“They’re actually really cool to live with,” he says, which isn’t all true-he remembers Cassie, and detangling bras, and that time he came home to find them buck-naked on the kitchen floor with a blackened brownie tray sitting on the stove-but feels right anyway. The two of them are heartily nuts, but they’re still the best friends he’s ever had-the two of them, and Tina Cohen-Chang, whose hand is soft and confident when it slips into his.
“I’ll think about it,” she says, and it’s good enough for him. The important part is that she’s here, and that this place is his home, and that the old gang doesn’t feel any less awesome after almost a whole year apart.
(He knows he should miss Artie as well, and he does, but somehow, he feels stupidly lucky to be strolling the streets of Chicago with only Tina for company today.)
***
“He’s with Rachel now.”
“Shut up.”
Santana flicks a half-eaten bit of popcorn across the room, and Tina dodges it with a scrunched up expression of disgust.
“Really is. Puck’s living in her dorm, pretending to be her cousin whenever an RA comes by. And Finn’s on his way to Iraq, and Quinn’s doing this long-distance thing with Mike-“
Sam watches her closely, searching for any signal of misery, and finds none. It turns out that not only is Tina their go-to for McKinley-kid gossip, but she’s also officially grown up and out of her first love. It’s sad, in a way, and yet Sam can’t help grinning goofily when she leans heavily back against his chest.
Brittany eyes them both, biting her lip, but Santana seems stuck on the Rachel-and-Puck thing.
“That asshole has seriously settled down? For Berry?”
“She told him if he ever wanted to see what was under her skirt, he had to let her make an honest man of him,” Tina chuckles. “I think she was doing a production of Sense and Sensibility at the time or something, kind of explains the whole cheesy-romance vibe.”
“That, and she’s Berry,” Santana deadpans. Sam laughs, his heart stumbling a little when Tina drags one of his hands up off the carpet and toys with the spaces between his fingers.
He can imagine what it would be like, doing this every night: Brittany stretched out with her back to the couch cushions, an arm around Santana’s middle; Santana, flinging bits of snack food down at them and rolling her eyes; Tina, leaning back to press a playful kiss to the underside of his chin-
Brittany’s eyes narrow gleefully at him, her eyebrows jumping. He shakes it off, determinedly turning his attention toward the television.
“Anybody up for some Sarah Connor?”
“More Summer Glau?” Santana groans. “Dude, when are you ever going to get over that shit?”
“Hey! How dare you speak ill of River Tam!”
He wins in the end, mostly because Brittany tugs on Santana’s hips until they’re chest-to-chest, her mouth moving in broad strokes across Santana’s skin while he and Tina turn away. He wins, and they sink into a long night of gunfire and Lena Headey’s angry eyes, and even though Santana keeps whining that she’s so much hotter when she’s making out with girls in flower shops, he doesn’t care. Because the thing is, these are his best friends in the world, and a pretty girl with green streaks in her hair is rubbing the pad of her thumb along the inside of his wrist, and maybe this isn’t the foursome anybody would have seen coming the year they took Nationals and returned as gods to Small-Town, Ohio-
But, whatever. Who needs expectation, anyway? Sam Evans has two lesbros, and a job, and one really tiny, totally badass apartment. He has an Avengers poster, and an autographed photo of the Cubs, and an email waiting in his inbox from his mom, asking if he still needs a new toaster after his roommate accidentally dropped their old one out the window. He’s got a life in the big city, and maybe it doesn’t include a ninja mask, or a guitar, or a football helmet like he would have dreamed in high school, but so what? Sam Evans has Santana Lopez, and Brittany Pierce, and-just maybe-Tina Cohen-Chang.
Forget expectation; reality says, without a doubt, that Sam Evans pretty much has it all.
Pairing: Santana Lopez/Brittany Pierce, Sam Evans, Tina Cohen-Chang
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: Through 3x22, for safety.
Summary: What does surprise him is the moment when Santana shifts to look at him and says, plainly and without a shred of uncertainty in her voice, “You wanna come to Chicago?”
A/N: Title from Eric Hutchinson's "Best Days."
Things sometimes don’t turn out exactly the way you expect, which is sometimes the easiest expectation in the world to make. So, when Brittany Pierce flunks out of her senior year, and Santana Lopez winds up putting off the Big Dream for another long batch of months in favor of mulling around a community school, Sam Evans thinks maybe it’s the sort of thing that isn’t obvious until it happens-and then, when you think about it, it’s the most crystal-clear thing in the world. Because, hey, Brittany was never all that great at showing up to her classes or working out her essays, and Santana was never all that great at leaving Brittany behind for all the gold in the Gringotts vault, so why wouldn’t they stick together when things got rough? It wasn’t as though Brittany’s mom was keen on the idea of her racing through a GED and booking out of town on the next available flight, and it wasn’t as though Santana could bring herself to argue with that jurisdiction. This was really the only thing that made perfect sense, in some stupidly bizarre sort of way.
Santana waits. Brittany plays the game again. And this time, when they come out the other side, it’s on equal terms: two high school graduates, pinkies linked, necking in victory against that big ol’ William McKinley sign. The way things should have gone down in the first place. Sam watches from a few feet away, arms folded across his chest and grinning, because even when things don’t turn out the way you expect, they still do turn out. Somehow.
He’s not all that surprised by any of this, honestly. What does surprise him is the moment-mid-July, when the three of them are draped upside down Tina’s living room sofa, waiting for her to return with pizza and a package of Double-Stuf Oreos-when Santana shifts to look at him and says, plainly and without a shred of uncertainty in her voice, “You wanna come to Chicago?”
The idea is not at all on his radar until that moment, but, weirdly, it becomes all he can think about after that afternoon. Chicago is a big place, big enough to lose yourself in and forget everything that’s gone wrong in the past-the getting cheated on, the losing the house, the strip clubs, and the girls who left him behind in favor of a shiny recording contract-and Sam thinks that maybe big is better this time around. He’s got a diploma in his hand and a little money squared away from taking Finn’s position at Burt Hummel’s tire shop. His abs are hotter than ever, and he’s almost completely kicked the dirty whisperings of Doritos in his ear to the curb. He’s on top, eighteen and ready to go places, and if these two beautiful girls-who admittedly are beautiful only for each other these days, but are still pretty hardcore anyway-want his company…
Why not?
***
Their apartment is bitty-bitty, like, shouldn’t be able to hold Sam and his DVD collection, much less two other human beings-but it grows on him right away. There’s something awesome about being away from home in this new, real way, without parents or surrogate folks hanging out over his shoulder, waiting to see what he does next. Not that he isn’t grateful to Burt and Carole for all they’ve done for him, letting him hang out long after Finn shipped over to Georgia and Kurt tackled New York without a steady plan in mind; he totally is. They’re the greatest not-parents a dude could have, and he’s already promised himself that a fifth of every paycheck is heading their way for the next few months, at least until he’s paid off that mishap with the iron around Christmas. He owes them at least that much.
But the thing is, he’s a grown-ass dude now, and grown-ass dudes really do need their own land to stretch out in. Even if stretching out sometimes means you collide with the hot lesbians across the hall.
Speaking of which.
Brittany and Santana are some of the greatest people he’s ever known. He kind of figured that out a long time ago, between the dating Santana thing and the sticking his tongue down Brittany’s drunk throat bit, but this past year really drove it home. They are really cool, and make surprisingly hilarious jokes, and after he teamed up with Artie and Tina to coax them into Friday night TV marathons, shit got real. Any girl who can make it through Dollhouse, and Battlestar, and who actually likes Fringe-really likes it, not just for Josh Jackson’s stubble-is more than okay in his book. And it helps that Brittany is the biggest sweetheart in the world, and that Santana can drive a baseball much farther than he’d ever expected, and that the pair of them somehow never make him feel weird about all the craziness that went down with Quinn two years ago. They’re great. The greatest. Santana helped him study for history all last semester, and Brittany brought him muffins when his grandma died, and, shit, they’re kind of his best friends right now.
But, God, they have a lot of sex.
***
He didn’t think about it, at first. Sex is natural, just part of the circle of life or whatever, and he’s always figured it’s none of his business who somebody wants to get down with. He never thought it was weird, hanging out around Kurt and Blaine, just like nothing was weird about Finn and Rachel (although that part is kind of a lie, because Finn and Rachel were always having the stupidest arguments, and-honestly-he’s not too surprised that they haven’t gotten back together since that afternoon at the train station). People are just people, and if people want to go rolling around with each other-peace, brother. Go for it.
He’s always believed that, and he still does now-except, where Santana and Brittany are concerned, it’s a little bit different. Not because they’re two pretty ladies or anything, but because they’re-
Always doing it.
And he means always.
He’s beginning to wonder if they might actually do permanent damage to each other, actually.
***
The first time he walks in on them, it’s his own fault. He’s gotten so used to being the only kid in the house that he’s sort of fallen out of the habit of knocking before pushing doors open-so, yeah, it was probably only a matter of time before him shouldering through the bathroom door led to this.
This being Santana propped upon their teeny-tiny sink, her pajama pants bunched around her ankles, Brittany kneeling on the puffy blue rug between her legs.
Oops.
He stands for a second, baffled to the point of paralysis, because even though they’re two hot girls-and even though he sees them make out all the time, and occasionally Friday night TV marathons would devolve into hands moving suspiciously beneath their shared blanket-he kind of has forgotten about them being anything other than Santana-and-Brittany. You don’t think about your best friends doing it-unless your best friend is, like, Robert Downey Jr. or something-so he’s sort of forgotten that this is even a thing.
Except it really, really is, as evidenced by Santana breathing in those short little puffs, her head bouncing repeatedly off the mirror as she arches into what is probably Brittany’s mouth. He can’t actually see, which is definitely a good thing, and suddenly, he doesn’t so much need to pee anymore. The image burns itself awkwardly into his brain, all pink cheeks and rumpled hair and Santana's shirt hiked up her (he's impressed, actually) abs, and he’s pivoting clumsily away, blurting, “Sorry, sorry!” before they can look up. It isn’t until the door slams shut again that he realizes maybe living with a couple is going to take a little getting used to.
In the meantime, he decides to count to knock and count to four-hundred before opening any door in this apartment ever again.
***
The second time it happens, it’s their fault, but he still feels bad about it-the same way you’d feel bad about walking in on your parents. Thing is, even though his name is on the lease, he’s having trouble believing that this is really his place, and that he’s got any real rights to it. He can’t remember the last time a bed, or a kitchen, or a front door actually belonged to him, what with all the motel-hopping and Hudson-Hummel bunking he’s done in the last few years. The idea that this is all actually his, that the key on his ring means nobody can tell him otherwise, is still baffling.
Besides, they were the ones who invited him. Without their friendship, he’d probably still be Burt Hummel’s cheerful tire slave, and it’s not like that would be so horrible, but this-this is so much better. Living on his own, collecting paychecks from a job he actually earned (with something other than his rippling torso muscles for reference), makes him feel like an honest-to-God man.
A man who answers to a pair of lesbians.
Hey, he’s secure enough for this shit.
Anyway, the point is, it’s their fault, because all he’s doing is coming home from his afternoon run. All he’s doing is looking for a damn shower, and anyway, it’s frickin’ 3:30: Brittany is supposed to be at work, and Santana has her Mom-I-swear-I’m-going-to-make-us-both-proud Western Lit class today. Why the hell they’re sprawled on the living room floor, half-naked and giggling, he honestly can’t say.
But he feels really damn weird about his decision to yank his shirt off before hitting the bathroom all of a sudden.
It’s worse when Santana glances over her shoulder, barely bothering to slow the pulse of her hips atop Brittany, and smirks. “You’re early.”
His jaw flops open, the sweat cooling under his armpits and making him feel wildly uncomfortable. “I-you-what?”
Brittany pokes her head around Santana, and Sam struggles to keep his eyes on their ugly maroon couch instead of the way her fingers coil possessively along Santana’s bare waist. “Hi, Sam!”
“I-hi-I’m gonna-“
He bolts to the bathroom, ears burning, and does his best to pretend he doesn’t hear Santana half-groan, “And we’ll buy your poverty-stricken ass a shirt tonight, if you ask real nicely” after him.
***
It becomes a regular enough thing, and after a while, the novelty and horror give way to careless irritation. After the first three months, he starts to think he’s seen at least as much of Santana and Brittany as the football team back at school. A little too much for best friends, but whatever; they never seem embarrassed, and he figures he should just follow their lead. Either way, they’re going to make fun of him tomorrow for how loudly he just screamed upon rounding the corner to find Santana's hand buried in Brittany’s shorts against the kitchen table. He might as well just deal.
The constant sexing aside, they really are good roommates. They pay their way without a single overdue fee, and keep the fridge stocked when it’s their turn to go shopping (which he prefers, because Brittany, at least, is good about ignoring the tantalizing call of Cool Ranch in favor of leafy greens), and they’re always up for a rousing game of Mario Kart when he needs one. It’s just like he imagines living with Artie and Puck would be, except everything smells a lot better and the only grungy socks he ever steps on are his own.
It’s actually pretty great, having the two of them around, and he doesn’t think anybody else would fit the bill the way they do. Especially when he comes home from an achingly long shift, his hands cut to hell from a shattered bottle of gin (which he then had to pay for, fuck it all), to find a couple of chicken legs and half a baked potato resting in the oven.
“We ate,” Santana informs him, off-handed as ever. The plastic rims of her glasses skid down her nose half an inch as she thumbs through an anthology the rough weight of his Xbox. Sam smiles.
“But we saved you the best legs,” Brittany chimes in, tossing a rubber ball against the refrigerator door. “Cuz it was your turn to not get all rumbly at two AM.”
He retrieves the plate and flops down on their shitty maroon couch, laughing when Brittany’s next toss misses completely and rebounds off the side of Santana’s head. It’s the sort of thing that happened all the time at home, and somehow always ended in an epic whipped cream battle-and yeah, maybe they can’t spare the Cool Whip tonight, but it doesn’t matter. Watching them wrestle on the floor, Santana jerking the ball out of Brittany’s hands and pinning her by the wrists in order to follow Sam’s exact instructions on where to tickle the crap out of her, he feels as much at home as he has since walking out of the sturdy new Evans household two years ago.
That doesn’t happen with just anybody.
***
It would only be better, he thinks sometimes with a pang of homesickness, if Artie and Tina could have come along. Their little fivesome had been so great after the Conquering Heroes had left McKinley and Glee behind, when Finn put on that adult uniform, and Rachel starting auditioning for real live Broadway shows, and Kurt picked up an internship at a smallish fashion magazinw. They had been so good together, walking Tina through her break-up with Mike (who was, at last glance, spending an awful lot of time in New Haven), and Artie through his directorial magnum opus (a performance of RENT that gave Sam the chance to kill “One Song Glory” in front of maybe a whole seventy-five people). They’d won Sectionals together, and placed second at Regionals, and even though Santana had been forced to watch both from the sidelines as a secondary coach, it had felt pretty awesome to wave another trophy over their heads. They could never have done it without Artie or Tina, and Sam sometimes feels a little weird about abandoning them for Chi-Town.
But Artie seems happy at his little film school in Michigan, and Tina sends weekly emails detailing the wacky fun she’s having in the dorms at her own university, so he guesses it all worked out for the best. Missing people isn’t so bad. He’s kind of grown used to it over the years.
It’s only when he’s laying in his room alone, hands clasped behind his head and trying not to mull over the husky whimpers floating across the hall, that he thinks having more friends than just Santana-and-Brittany could maybe do him some good.
***
The bar seems a good enough place to start, even if half the crowd is rowdy and the other half is decidedly too smart for Sam’s taste. Not that he doesn’t like smart girls (and, sometimes, smart guys; Kurt Hummel was always pretty damn charming, save for the whole dating-a-human-set-of-eyebrows thing), but the college kids who roll through that door seem obsessed with Poe and Schrodinger, and the political situation in Nepal. None of which Sam knows-or cares-a damn thing about.
It takes a few weeks after he starts actively looking for someone to talk to before he finds a girl-one with pretty red hair and bright gray eyes, who doesn’t lead in with any topic better found in a university coursepack. Her name is Cassie, which he likes, and she smiles a lot, which he likes even more, and when he finds out she’s going as Black Widow next Halloween, the thump against his breastbone is stronger than it’s been since Mercedes first pressed her lips shyly to his.
Cassie works most of the same shifts he does, and she’s sweet-really sweet, sweet enough to want his phone number only after a long after-hours conversation, and too sweet to come back to his place until the third week. He’s so proud, walking her up to that chipped front door at last, that he kind of forgets for a second where it is he’s living-and who shares his space.
Forgets, and keeps forgetting, because nobody’s home when he boots in the door and bends exaggeratedly at the waist for her to walk ahead of him. She laughs, and he thinks that maybe he’s better at making friends than he thought.
She sits next to him on the couch, close enough for her thigh to brush his, and he’s just working up the courage-halfway through Ferris’ crazy antics on his ill-advised day off-to reach for her hand when the door bangs open again. It sticks there, plastered to the wall, Santana’s back bending it awkwardly on rusty hinges, and the breath whooshes out of Sam all at once. How this could ever slip his mind, he doesn’t know, but by the looks of Cassie’s wide-eyed shock-and why shouldn’t she be so surprised? Brittany’s tongue is very visibly thrusting past Santana’s parted lips, moving in time with her pelvis, and he’s pretty sure they’re both more than a little drunk right now-it was a bad call not to warn them ahead of time.
Cassie is still sweet at work, and pretty friendly, but he’s way too embarrassed to invite her over again anytime soon. Friend-making, he realizes, isn’t the hard part. It’s the whole “letting his roommates know” bit that he needs to work on.
***
In January, he begins seeing this kid named Michael. It’s weird, at first; he hasn’t kissed a boy since the days before Lima was even a blip on the screen-not counting that time during sophomore year, when Puck jammed him triumphantly against his locker door after a big win-and he was beginning to think he’d forgotten how. Not that it’s a whole lot different from kissing girls, really; harder in places, and a little clumsier, but when things boil down to the quick, Michael tastes as good as any cheerleader Sam has ever fooled around with.
Santana is more excited than anyone, which is kind of flattering and awkward at the same time. The day he comes home and sheepishly admits what’s going on, she flings both arms in the air and tackles him onto the carpet.
“Our little Sammy’s growin’ up and getting himself some ass!”
Brittany nods sagely, pausing mid-sit-up to add, “Always wear a condom. I’m pretty sure you won’t get pregnant, but better safe than sorry.”
They like Michael, and Michael doesn’t seem to mind them, although there is that one weird moment when Sam has to admit that, yes, he’s seen them naked, but no, it isn’t how it sounds. Everything is fairly awesome, actually, because Michael likes video games, and cars, and has this wicked sweet spot for Buffy that makes Sam’s toes all tingly, and things are great-
Except, it turns out, having his own place to make out at isn’t quite as incredible as he would have thought. Because having his own place to make out at means having a steady soundtrack in the background. And it ain’t quality dirty-time music.
“Is that-“ Michael pauses, his mouth pulling from Sam’s with a maddening little pop. “Do you hear that?”
He’s trying his best not to, as he always does, but yes: that is the sound of Santana throatily growling out a string of Spanish. And yeah, that does sound suspiciously like a bedframe rocking brutally against a thin wall. And that squeaking sound is the one Brittany sometimes makes when her body is strung too tight, when Santana has already driven her to her peak three times in one sitting.
(He really wishes he didn’t know these things, but if there’s one thing his best friends lack, it’s the ability to keep sex secrets.)
“Seriously,” Michael mumbles when Sam arches up to catch a pierced earlobe between his teeth, “do you hear-“
“Nope,” Sam replies hastily, and bites down. “Not a thing.”
Michael’s great, but they really need to find somewhere else to do this thing. Because, for some reason, the knowledge that his lesbian roommates are working as hard as they can to make an impossible baby across the hall is seriously cramping his style.
***
By February, he and Michael are pretty much done for, which is a bummer, but also kind of a relief. It turns out dating a dude is almost as dramatic as dating a chick, even when that dude is cool and has a remarkably boss Spider-man tattoo on his left calf. In the end, they part as the sort of friends who never really speak again, and Sam figures at least it was an experience.
Brittany leaves an angel-food cake on the floor outside his room, and he-by new force of habit-manages not to step right in it the next morning. It makes him smile.
Santana’s cheerful, “Don’t worry, we’ll mail-order you something buff and sexy” at the breakfast table, maybe a little less so.
***
He doesn’t know how he always winds up on laundry duty. It’s supposed to be a steady rotation between him and Santana (Brittany isn’t allowed near the dryer anymore, after a weird catastrophe involving four bounce sheets and a lit sparkler), but somehow, Santana’s week seems never to come. He threatens to start washing only his own stuff, but then there’s this whole episode where every article of clothing-save for a pair of ratty Family Guy boxers and a bright orange Fruit Loops shirt-goes mysteriously missing from his bedroom, and he relents. When it comes to Santana, there’s not much else a guy can do.
Anyway, they haven’t asked him to clean out the shower in over a month, so he supposes it all breaks even in the end.
Laundry isn’t so bad; it’s actually all very straightforward, once he gets the hang of girl-clothes. Some need to be washed only in cold water, some have to be hung up instead of tumble-dried, and it’s really awkward how many different materials are involved (his entire wardrobe consists of cotton, cotton, and the occasional canvas sneaker), but whatever. It’s all soap and water, right?
Until he gets to the underwear.
The underwear are the worst fucking part, the stuff he can’t begin to wrap his head around. First off, what the hell do girls need so many different patterns for? He can always tell which ones belong to Brittany, with their tiny stegosauruses (okay, those are kind of badass), or their penguins, or ballet slippers, and it makes him feel kind of dirty. (Santana’s are even worse; half the stuff in her pile looks strikingly familiar, like he’s seen them in a strip club far, far away.)
And the bras are so insane. Not that bras on their own are bad or anything, because hell, bras mean boobs, and boobs are pretty great. But there’s a gaping difference between unsnapping a girl’s bra and washing one for her, and he realizes how damn lucky he is to be a guy in the first place. Bras are so jumbly and awkward, prone to getting all tangled in each other, and more than once, he finds himself bent double over the washing machine, whimpering in defeat.
Santana always seems to know when he’s been bested by panties, too. She grins that big mean grin as he stumbles through the door, red-faced and lugging an over-full hamper, and all he can do is stick his tongue out as he passes.
He’s going to fix the laundry rotation someday, and then they’ll see how she likes the Great Bra Debacle of 2014.
***
They’re shouting at each other when he comes home on a Thursday evening, and for a second, Sam honestly thinks he’s exhaustedly walked into the wrong apartment altogether. Brittany and Santana don’t shout at each other, unless they’re using much sexier words than he wants to listen to. They don’t seem to fight at all, in fact; not the way Kurt and Blaine sometimes did back in the day, or how Tina and Mike misery-raged all through their last summer together. It’s as if they’re linked on some psychic level, one that Sam can’t help but be jealous of, because it means he will never be their best friend the way they are for one another.
Santana and Brittany get each other, so for them to be screaming this way is more than unsettling. It flat-out makes his skin crawl, the hair prickling on the back of his neck, and for a second, he just freezes there on the landing. What do you even do when The Perfect Couple starts to snap?
He can’t quite make out the sentences in full, but words are seeping out to greet him: Santana growling something like, “Fuck’s sake-saw her-you know-“ and Brittany returning with a shockingly steady, “-hate-don’t do-like you haven’t-“
They sound furious on a level he hasn’t personally felt, not even when Quinn and Finn were fooling around behind his back, and something clenches in the pit of his stomach. Are they actually breaking up back there? And, if so, where does that leave him? They’ve been his best friends for almost two years now, and, just as importantly, they need three paychecks to keep this place afloat. If they split-if one of them walks away-then what?
Breathing doesn’t feel as automatic as he’s used to, and all of a sudden, it dawns on him that he just can’t stay here. Not while they’re fighting like this, not when listening is making him feel like a little kid in footie pajamas, eavesdropping on Mom and Dad as they battle it out over bills. He’s been there before, and even if it all worked out okay, he’s not sure he can handle it from anybody else.
Moving as quietly as he knows how, he shuffles his iPod and an armful of X-men books into his arms and creeps back out the door again. The small carport outside, which none of them make use of thanks to their spectacular lack of a vehicle, is silent and dark, the perfect place to curl up and pretend the world isn’t such a scary place.
They find him there an hour later, half-dozing to the Blues Brothers soundtrack, and he’s so relieved to see Brittany’s arm protectively wound around Santana’s middle that he nearly cracks his head on the wall in his scramble to stand up.
“You’ve reached an all-time creep high, Blondie,” Santana tells him easily, nose crinkling when Brittany nuzzles at her ear and whispers something. He doesn’t even care when they burst into giggles, too preoccupied with his own dumb grin.
“Does this mean you’re not breaking up?”
Santana gives him her patented you took stupid pills again, didn’t you? look. “Not even gonna ask, Evans. Don’t even wanna know.”
He flings his arms around them both, ignoring the way Santana’s tiny fist beats at his shoulders in surprise.
***
Tina comes to visit for Spring Break, and Sam thinks he’s never been so happy to see someone in his life. She shows up when Santana and Brittany are shut away in their room, napping off their earlier “nap,” and Sam instantly hauls her out on a long walk around the neighborhood. He points out all his favorite haunts-the pizza place with the heavenly pepperoni that he needs to take it easy on, the gym whose owner forked over a free membership after Santana and Brittany just about mounted each other on one of his tumbling mats, the bar where Sam makes a meager, but respectable enough, living-and grins when Tina tucks her arm through the crook of his elbow and says she’s totally jealous.
“You could move here, too,” he says happily, pleased when she ducks her head almost shyly against his shoulder.
“And, what? Live in your room?” she teases, flicking a green streak of hair over her shoulder. She’s back to the old punk look this month, and he privately thinks that this is how she looks the prettiest: the glitter of her earrings catching sunlight, her black hair shiny and smooth before popping with jarring color. He wonders sometimes how Mike ever could have let her go, when her smile is this bright and her eyes are that excited.
“We could afford a bigger place,” he informs her, brushing away the thoughts, “if you were here. Four paychecks, that’s a lot of rent.”
“I dunno if I could handle the dream team like you do,” Tina tells him. “I love ‘em to death and everything, but-“
“They’re actually really cool to live with,” he says, which isn’t all true-he remembers Cassie, and detangling bras, and that time he came home to find them buck-naked on the kitchen floor with a blackened brownie tray sitting on the stove-but feels right anyway. The two of them are heartily nuts, but they’re still the best friends he’s ever had-the two of them, and Tina Cohen-Chang, whose hand is soft and confident when it slips into his.
“I’ll think about it,” she says, and it’s good enough for him. The important part is that she’s here, and that this place is his home, and that the old gang doesn’t feel any less awesome after almost a whole year apart.
(He knows he should miss Artie as well, and he does, but somehow, he feels stupidly lucky to be strolling the streets of Chicago with only Tina for company today.)
***
“He’s with Rachel now.”
“Shut up.”
Santana flicks a half-eaten bit of popcorn across the room, and Tina dodges it with a scrunched up expression of disgust.
“Really is. Puck’s living in her dorm, pretending to be her cousin whenever an RA comes by. And Finn’s on his way to Iraq, and Quinn’s doing this long-distance thing with Mike-“
Sam watches her closely, searching for any signal of misery, and finds none. It turns out that not only is Tina their go-to for McKinley-kid gossip, but she’s also officially grown up and out of her first love. It’s sad, in a way, and yet Sam can’t help grinning goofily when she leans heavily back against his chest.
Brittany eyes them both, biting her lip, but Santana seems stuck on the Rachel-and-Puck thing.
“That asshole has seriously settled down? For Berry?”
“She told him if he ever wanted to see what was under her skirt, he had to let her make an honest man of him,” Tina chuckles. “I think she was doing a production of Sense and Sensibility at the time or something, kind of explains the whole cheesy-romance vibe.”
“That, and she’s Berry,” Santana deadpans. Sam laughs, his heart stumbling a little when Tina drags one of his hands up off the carpet and toys with the spaces between his fingers.
He can imagine what it would be like, doing this every night: Brittany stretched out with her back to the couch cushions, an arm around Santana’s middle; Santana, flinging bits of snack food down at them and rolling her eyes; Tina, leaning back to press a playful kiss to the underside of his chin-
Brittany’s eyes narrow gleefully at him, her eyebrows jumping. He shakes it off, determinedly turning his attention toward the television.
“Anybody up for some Sarah Connor?”
“More Summer Glau?” Santana groans. “Dude, when are you ever going to get over that shit?”
“Hey! How dare you speak ill of River Tam!”
He wins in the end, mostly because Brittany tugs on Santana’s hips until they’re chest-to-chest, her mouth moving in broad strokes across Santana’s skin while he and Tina turn away. He wins, and they sink into a long night of gunfire and Lena Headey’s angry eyes, and even though Santana keeps whining that she’s so much hotter when she’s making out with girls in flower shops, he doesn’t care. Because the thing is, these are his best friends in the world, and a pretty girl with green streaks in her hair is rubbing the pad of her thumb along the inside of his wrist, and maybe this isn’t the foursome anybody would have seen coming the year they took Nationals and returned as gods to Small-Town, Ohio-
But, whatever. Who needs expectation, anyway? Sam Evans has two lesbros, and a job, and one really tiny, totally badass apartment. He has an Avengers poster, and an autographed photo of the Cubs, and an email waiting in his inbox from his mom, asking if he still needs a new toaster after his roommate accidentally dropped their old one out the window. He’s got a life in the big city, and maybe it doesn’t include a ninja mask, or a guitar, or a football helmet like he would have dreamed in high school, but so what? Sam Evans has Santana Lopez, and Brittany Pierce, and-just maybe-Tina Cohen-Chang.
Forget expectation; reality says, without a doubt, that Sam Evans pretty much has it all.