Crowd Surf Off A Cliff (10/13)
Title: Crowd Surf Off A Cliff (10/13)
Pairing: Santana Lopez/Brittany, side Rachel Berry/Quinn Fabray
Rating: R/NC-17ish
Spoilers: AU
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Summary: Santana Lopez hates school, Lima, and those damn Cheerios--for the most part.
A/N: Title swiped from the Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton song of the same name.
Maddeningly, it’s like nothing has changed. They see each other in the halls, between classes, in Glee, and nothing happens. Nothing explodes. No part of McKinley comes crashing down. There is no screaming, no bleeding, no dinosaur stampede or invasion of those creepy-ass bastards from Alien.
Nothing ends, but Santana can’t shake the feeling that it’s only a matter of time.
She tries to distract herself from such bleak thoughts, because frankly, Brittany doesn’t seem too damaged by what they’ve done. The smiles sent across the choir room are the same, but the girl hasn’t attempted anything further-which, if she’s honest with herself, is kind of making Santana crazier than ever. It isn’t that she wants to keep shoving Brittany away, but the idea that she could have fucked the girl until she screamed and then not received a follow-up in attention is just plain baffling.
When she snaps one afternoon and grouses this to Quinn, the blonde’s eyebrows just about dive into her hair.
“You’re kidding,” she says flatly, staring Santana down. It’s October now, nearing fast on November, and though it is too chilly for this sort of thing, they’re laying out on Santana’s roof. It’s the sort of activity she can only finagle her friend into doing once in a great while (Quinn’s got this whole mad thing about heights, ever since an incident with her tree house in the fourth grade), whenever Quinn is at a particularly serene place in her life.
Which, as she’s started tutoring Rachel Berry in Spanish-a circumstance both convenient and (in Santana’s mind) totally unnecessary, since Rachel is notorious for her precise note-taking skills and honor roll status-is unavoidable.
For the first time since Santana can remember, Quinn is more likely to be happy than not. It’s awkward, and confusing, and Santana is happy for her.
She only wishes her own life were traveling down a similar path. Instead, she gets this: memories of flicking her tongue between Brittany’s legs, of sticky heat and sweaty skin, of Brittany screaming her name until she was forced to clap one hand over the girl’s mouth to prevent them from being found out. She gets to indulge in dream after unwanted dream of things they haven’t even done (showers seem remarkably prevalent; Santana actually kind of hates shower sex, for all its bumbling, slippery nature, but the idea of pressing Brittany face-first into one of the dividing walls and pounding three fingers into her from behind is entirely too alluring). She gets, in short, to live inside her own head, feeling progressively more obscene every time the blonde turns a sunny smile on her as they sing about togetherness or undying love or whatever the hell it is Schuester’s picked out that week.
It’s making her completely insane, but not quite insane enough to break past her own guard rails. Which, Santana supposes darkly, she should be thankful for. It’s keeping the balance.
“Santana,” Quinn says, concern flashing all over her face, “let me see if I’ve got this right. You meet a girl-pretty as hell, totally into you for some ungodly, illogical reason-and you tell her you can’t be friends. You tell her this over and over again, until she finally takes the hint. And then, out of nowhere, you fuck the shit out of her in the locker room-and suddenly you’re the wounded puppy? Suddenly, you’re all upset that she’s not hopping along at your heels, desperate for another go-round?”
“Something like that,” Santana mutters, eyes on the sky. A cloud strongly resembling John Lennon saunters past; her gaze bores into it like it’s the most intriguing thing to cross her path.
“But you don’t want to date her,” Quinn presses, rising up on one elbow and fixing Santana with an arch look.
“Can’t,” Santana replies as coolly as she knows how.
“You just want to screw her?” Quinn asks, clearly doing her best to restrain the horror in her voice and doing a damn poor job of it. Santana flinches.
“Can’t really do that either,” she says, choosing not to comment on how, no, she does not want to ‘screw’ the girl. She just wants to make her happy. Very, very, scream-and-shiver-and-shatter happy. Again.
“Why?” Quinn demands, leaning over until her irritated face fills Santana’s entire field of vision. The dark-haired girl tries to glance away; Quinn’s fingers latch around both cheeks, squeezing like she’s some five-year-old who’s just swallowed a quarter. ”Santana. Come on, I'm done with this whole bottle-it-up routine. Talk to me.”
“I…” Santana frowns. This shouldn’t be so hard; it’s fucking Quinn, for God’s sake. This is the girl who has seen her at her very worst and not batted an eye, the girl who watched her fall off her two-wheeler for the first time, who gripped her shoulder when Santana got her first tattoo, who picked her up the first night she tried a little too much vodka. This is the girl who has gone along with every harebrained scheme Santana has ever cooked up involving fireworks, spray paint, or stolen lunch money. The girl who cradled Santana on the nights her parents’ fighting grew to be too much, prompting the ten-year-old to clamber out her window and sprint under cover of darkness down the street. The girl who silently bandaged her split knuckles the day she found out her father was leaving, unable to process the jumbled emotions warring within her eleven-year-old body. The girl who accepts every word, every misstep, every shred of chaos that is Santana with a shrug and a glancing punch to the shoulder. It’s Quinn.
Quinn, who is staring at her now with unshrouded concern, because this is the first time in their lives Santana has held something back.
She inhales, a whistling breath through her teeth, and clenches her hands behind her head. “I’m scared,” she admits finally, raising her eyes to stare above Quinn’s hairline.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees one eyebrow curiously lift. “Of her?”
“Of me,” Santana says, voice rough with raw honesty. “She’s perfect, Quinn. Cheerios and all that shit aside, she is fucking incredible. I mean, have you seen her move? The way she dances, like there’s nothing between her feet and the air? And the way she speaks-it’s like she just loves every goddamn inch of this life. She’s so…vibrant, so lively, and everyone fucking adores her. She’s…Brittany.”
To her credit, Quinn waits wordlessly. Santana breathes.
“I don’t even know her,” she continues dumbly. “I don’t know her at all. She doesn’t know me. I don’t…I don’t get how this can be so strong, this thing between us. She’s a cheerleader with a nice smile, and that should be all, but it’s not. And I can’t deal with that right now. I’m…I’m barely getting through each day, you know? Like always. Get up, go through the motions, slam through every obstacle until it’s time to sleep again. My only focus is getting out. Except now…now, it’s not. Now it’s her. And when she approached me in that locker room, when she kissed me and didn’t give me that chance to squirm out, I thought maybe it would be enough. Just once, just one time, feeling her, feeling it-and then I would let it go.”
“But you haven’t,” Quinn finishes, brushing a lock of hair out of Santana’s eyes with startling tenderness when the wind stirs it. She blinks.
“Not remotely. And…I mean, you know me. You knew my dad. You know everything. Quinn, I can’t go two days without ramming my fist down someone’s throat. I go to that school every day, telling myself to chill the fuck out, to keep my hands to myself. And then I see Mallory, or one of her bitch friends, or Karofsky or Azimo, and I just…they’re soulless. They don’t care about anything outside of the moment, outside of putting on their letterman jackets and running everything. They’re futureless little machines straight out of a goddamn nineties teen flick, and still everyone falls to their knees in front of them. It makes me so fucking mad, what they have, what they haven’t done to earn it. And I lose it. I see the way everyone scurries out of their way, I see the way the teachers bow and scrape, I see the uselessness of it all, and it hurts. And I need to hurt something back.”
Her throat is beginning to burn. She swallows hard. “I can’t stop. I can’t stop hurting people, I can’t stop hating people. And my mom…she looks at me with this…emptiness. This hollow expression, like she’s too tired to even be disappointed anymore. She doesn’t even try to make me…better, or more worthwhile, or less him. She looks at me, and I can tell she wants something more, but I can’t…I can’t put my finger on it. I can’t give it to her.
“These looks Brittany keeps giving me? The ones she’s been giving me since that first week of school? They’re the looks my mom used to get on her face, before he left. These little hopeful smiles, like if she waits long enough for all the bad stuff to fade out, something really amazing will be left behind. Something to make it worth it. Brittany looks at me like she thinks that, even though she doesn’t know the first thing about me, even though I won’t let her near enough to see, there will still be that moment. Someday. When it’s all worthwhile, when it all makes sense. But the thing is, it won’t. Life doesn’t happen that way. Even if I make it out of this crappy town, even if I walk away forever, I’ll still be me. I’ll still have him. I’ll still be so angry, and so fucking certain of the stupidity of this whole thing, and...that’s just never going to be enough for her. She doesn’t know it yet, but someday, she will. I can’t watch that realization dawn again.”
Spent, she closes her eyes and presses her lips into a thin line. Above her, she can feel the weight of Quinn’s frown.
There is silence for just about forever, and then Quinn says softly, “Hey, Lopez?”
She cracks one eye, chest crushing inward with self-pity. “What?”
The hand comes down faster and harder than anticipated, smashing across one cheek with single-minded force. Caught off-guard, Santana shrieks and flails automatically back, catching Quinn across the mouth with the back of her hand.
The blonde glares down at her, apparently unconcerned with the blow she’s just taken. “You,” she hisses murderously, “are a fucking idiot.”
Jerking up on her elbows, Santana gapes at her. “What the fuck, Fabray?”
Quinn pokes a finger into her face, glowering stonily. “I don’t even know where to start. First-idiot. You are not your fucking father. You’re a bitch, yeah, okay. You’ve got some anger management issues, and you would probably benefit from some serious fucking therapy, but Jesus, Santana. You’ve never done what he did. Ever. You’ve done some jacked up shit, but he was…he was incredible. He was beyond anything you could ever dream to do to someone. Get that through your fat-ass head right the fuck now, because I do not know how to say it more clearly.”
Cupping her cheek, Santana stares. “What-“
“Shut the fuck up,” Quinn snarls, threatening cocking her wrist back again. “Second-what the hell are you doing, plotting out what it is Brittany wants or needs or whatever? You’ve known her for like three months. You talk occasionally, you’ve fucked once, and that’s it. You think you, like, love her or some shit? You think you know what’s best? You think you can protect her from something? You don’t even know her favorite friggin’ color, Santana. You’ve never seen her house, or asked if she likes Thai food, or held a conversation that lasted more than a few tense-as-shit minutes. I know you think the sun shines out of her perfect little ass, but for all you know, the girl could be more fucked up than even you are. Get the hell over yourself, Lopez. Ask her on a fucking date, bring her a chocolate bar, but don’t do this noble Peter Parker bullshit. It is the stupidest thing I have ever heard from you.”
“I-“
“And third,” Quinn powers on, running both hands through her hair with blind aggravation, “will you knock off this feeling sorry for yourself thing? You are Santana motherfucking Lopez, all right? You think the world bends to the will of football players and Cheerios? The whole school respects your ass. Sometimes literally-your ass. Sure, they’re kind of petrified you’ll beat the shit of them if you’re crossed, but for the most part, they respect you. Okay? This whining, ‘my daddy issues are consuming my soul’ bullshit is so not going to help. You’re a fucking head bitch, babe. Own it.”
“Quinn-“
“Finally,” Quinn says, gradually growing calmer. “Finally, I’ve got this to say, and I'm thinking it'll sound kind of familiar. You want the girl? You can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t stop, even though you know there’s no rhyme, reason, or reality to it? Do something about it. Do something now. Because I’ve seen the way Finn looks at her, the way Mike dances with her. She’s not going to be available for long. She’s not going to wait around forever. She likes you, Lopez, and you’d do well not to fuck that up before you’ve even gotten started. You’re not going to find another girl that crazy again anytime soon. And believe me, she has got to be out of her fool mind, to want your whiny, punch-happy ass.”
She sits back on her haunches, rests her hands on her thighs, and smirks. Her lip is bleeding lightly, her hair a tangled mess. Santana has never seen her so satisfied.
“Where,” she asks at last, “did that come from?”
“Truth hurts, baby,” the blonde replies smartly. “What, you think you’re the only one with the right to snap people back to the real world?”
Two weeks ago, Santana would have immediately answered yes. Right now, she’s kind of thankful her best friend is an opinionated bitch with low tolerance for anyone’s whining apart from her own.
“What am I going to do?” she asks as calmly as she is able. Quinn smiles.
“Lopez, you are going to get your shit together.”
It is the best and worst advice she has ever received. Slowly, painfully, Santana grins.
[Part 11]
Pairing: Santana Lopez/Brittany, side Rachel Berry/Quinn Fabray
Rating: R/NC-17ish
Spoilers: AU
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Summary: Santana Lopez hates school, Lima, and those damn Cheerios--for the most part.
A/N: Title swiped from the Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton song of the same name.
Maddeningly, it’s like nothing has changed. They see each other in the halls, between classes, in Glee, and nothing happens. Nothing explodes. No part of McKinley comes crashing down. There is no screaming, no bleeding, no dinosaur stampede or invasion of those creepy-ass bastards from Alien.
Nothing ends, but Santana can’t shake the feeling that it’s only a matter of time.
She tries to distract herself from such bleak thoughts, because frankly, Brittany doesn’t seem too damaged by what they’ve done. The smiles sent across the choir room are the same, but the girl hasn’t attempted anything further-which, if she’s honest with herself, is kind of making Santana crazier than ever. It isn’t that she wants to keep shoving Brittany away, but the idea that she could have fucked the girl until she screamed and then not received a follow-up in attention is just plain baffling.
When she snaps one afternoon and grouses this to Quinn, the blonde’s eyebrows just about dive into her hair.
“You’re kidding,” she says flatly, staring Santana down. It’s October now, nearing fast on November, and though it is too chilly for this sort of thing, they’re laying out on Santana’s roof. It’s the sort of activity she can only finagle her friend into doing once in a great while (Quinn’s got this whole mad thing about heights, ever since an incident with her tree house in the fourth grade), whenever Quinn is at a particularly serene place in her life.
Which, as she’s started tutoring Rachel Berry in Spanish-a circumstance both convenient and (in Santana’s mind) totally unnecessary, since Rachel is notorious for her precise note-taking skills and honor roll status-is unavoidable.
For the first time since Santana can remember, Quinn is more likely to be happy than not. It’s awkward, and confusing, and Santana is happy for her.
She only wishes her own life were traveling down a similar path. Instead, she gets this: memories of flicking her tongue between Brittany’s legs, of sticky heat and sweaty skin, of Brittany screaming her name until she was forced to clap one hand over the girl’s mouth to prevent them from being found out. She gets to indulge in dream after unwanted dream of things they haven’t even done (showers seem remarkably prevalent; Santana actually kind of hates shower sex, for all its bumbling, slippery nature, but the idea of pressing Brittany face-first into one of the dividing walls and pounding three fingers into her from behind is entirely too alluring). She gets, in short, to live inside her own head, feeling progressively more obscene every time the blonde turns a sunny smile on her as they sing about togetherness or undying love or whatever the hell it is Schuester’s picked out that week.
It’s making her completely insane, but not quite insane enough to break past her own guard rails. Which, Santana supposes darkly, she should be thankful for. It’s keeping the balance.
“Santana,” Quinn says, concern flashing all over her face, “let me see if I’ve got this right. You meet a girl-pretty as hell, totally into you for some ungodly, illogical reason-and you tell her you can’t be friends. You tell her this over and over again, until she finally takes the hint. And then, out of nowhere, you fuck the shit out of her in the locker room-and suddenly you’re the wounded puppy? Suddenly, you’re all upset that she’s not hopping along at your heels, desperate for another go-round?”
“Something like that,” Santana mutters, eyes on the sky. A cloud strongly resembling John Lennon saunters past; her gaze bores into it like it’s the most intriguing thing to cross her path.
“But you don’t want to date her,” Quinn presses, rising up on one elbow and fixing Santana with an arch look.
“Can’t,” Santana replies as coolly as she knows how.
“You just want to screw her?” Quinn asks, clearly doing her best to restrain the horror in her voice and doing a damn poor job of it. Santana flinches.
“Can’t really do that either,” she says, choosing not to comment on how, no, she does not want to ‘screw’ the girl. She just wants to make her happy. Very, very, scream-and-shiver-and-shatter happy. Again.
“Why?” Quinn demands, leaning over until her irritated face fills Santana’s entire field of vision. The dark-haired girl tries to glance away; Quinn’s fingers latch around both cheeks, squeezing like she’s some five-year-old who’s just swallowed a quarter. ”Santana. Come on, I'm done with this whole bottle-it-up routine. Talk to me.”
“I…” Santana frowns. This shouldn’t be so hard; it’s fucking Quinn, for God’s sake. This is the girl who has seen her at her very worst and not batted an eye, the girl who watched her fall off her two-wheeler for the first time, who gripped her shoulder when Santana got her first tattoo, who picked her up the first night she tried a little too much vodka. This is the girl who has gone along with every harebrained scheme Santana has ever cooked up involving fireworks, spray paint, or stolen lunch money. The girl who cradled Santana on the nights her parents’ fighting grew to be too much, prompting the ten-year-old to clamber out her window and sprint under cover of darkness down the street. The girl who silently bandaged her split knuckles the day she found out her father was leaving, unable to process the jumbled emotions warring within her eleven-year-old body. The girl who accepts every word, every misstep, every shred of chaos that is Santana with a shrug and a glancing punch to the shoulder. It’s Quinn.
Quinn, who is staring at her now with unshrouded concern, because this is the first time in their lives Santana has held something back.
She inhales, a whistling breath through her teeth, and clenches her hands behind her head. “I’m scared,” she admits finally, raising her eyes to stare above Quinn’s hairline.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees one eyebrow curiously lift. “Of her?”
“Of me,” Santana says, voice rough with raw honesty. “She’s perfect, Quinn. Cheerios and all that shit aside, she is fucking incredible. I mean, have you seen her move? The way she dances, like there’s nothing between her feet and the air? And the way she speaks-it’s like she just loves every goddamn inch of this life. She’s so…vibrant, so lively, and everyone fucking adores her. She’s…Brittany.”
To her credit, Quinn waits wordlessly. Santana breathes.
“I don’t even know her,” she continues dumbly. “I don’t know her at all. She doesn’t know me. I don’t…I don’t get how this can be so strong, this thing between us. She’s a cheerleader with a nice smile, and that should be all, but it’s not. And I can’t deal with that right now. I’m…I’m barely getting through each day, you know? Like always. Get up, go through the motions, slam through every obstacle until it’s time to sleep again. My only focus is getting out. Except now…now, it’s not. Now it’s her. And when she approached me in that locker room, when she kissed me and didn’t give me that chance to squirm out, I thought maybe it would be enough. Just once, just one time, feeling her, feeling it-and then I would let it go.”
“But you haven’t,” Quinn finishes, brushing a lock of hair out of Santana’s eyes with startling tenderness when the wind stirs it. She blinks.
“Not remotely. And…I mean, you know me. You knew my dad. You know everything. Quinn, I can’t go two days without ramming my fist down someone’s throat. I go to that school every day, telling myself to chill the fuck out, to keep my hands to myself. And then I see Mallory, or one of her bitch friends, or Karofsky or Azimo, and I just…they’re soulless. They don’t care about anything outside of the moment, outside of putting on their letterman jackets and running everything. They’re futureless little machines straight out of a goddamn nineties teen flick, and still everyone falls to their knees in front of them. It makes me so fucking mad, what they have, what they haven’t done to earn it. And I lose it. I see the way everyone scurries out of their way, I see the way the teachers bow and scrape, I see the uselessness of it all, and it hurts. And I need to hurt something back.”
Her throat is beginning to burn. She swallows hard. “I can’t stop. I can’t stop hurting people, I can’t stop hating people. And my mom…she looks at me with this…emptiness. This hollow expression, like she’s too tired to even be disappointed anymore. She doesn’t even try to make me…better, or more worthwhile, or less him. She looks at me, and I can tell she wants something more, but I can’t…I can’t put my finger on it. I can’t give it to her.
“These looks Brittany keeps giving me? The ones she’s been giving me since that first week of school? They’re the looks my mom used to get on her face, before he left. These little hopeful smiles, like if she waits long enough for all the bad stuff to fade out, something really amazing will be left behind. Something to make it worth it. Brittany looks at me like she thinks that, even though she doesn’t know the first thing about me, even though I won’t let her near enough to see, there will still be that moment. Someday. When it’s all worthwhile, when it all makes sense. But the thing is, it won’t. Life doesn’t happen that way. Even if I make it out of this crappy town, even if I walk away forever, I’ll still be me. I’ll still have him. I’ll still be so angry, and so fucking certain of the stupidity of this whole thing, and...that’s just never going to be enough for her. She doesn’t know it yet, but someday, she will. I can’t watch that realization dawn again.”
Spent, she closes her eyes and presses her lips into a thin line. Above her, she can feel the weight of Quinn’s frown.
There is silence for just about forever, and then Quinn says softly, “Hey, Lopez?”
She cracks one eye, chest crushing inward with self-pity. “What?”
The hand comes down faster and harder than anticipated, smashing across one cheek with single-minded force. Caught off-guard, Santana shrieks and flails automatically back, catching Quinn across the mouth with the back of her hand.
The blonde glares down at her, apparently unconcerned with the blow she’s just taken. “You,” she hisses murderously, “are a fucking idiot.”
Jerking up on her elbows, Santana gapes at her. “What the fuck, Fabray?”
Quinn pokes a finger into her face, glowering stonily. “I don’t even know where to start. First-idiot. You are not your fucking father. You’re a bitch, yeah, okay. You’ve got some anger management issues, and you would probably benefit from some serious fucking therapy, but Jesus, Santana. You’ve never done what he did. Ever. You’ve done some jacked up shit, but he was…he was incredible. He was beyond anything you could ever dream to do to someone. Get that through your fat-ass head right the fuck now, because I do not know how to say it more clearly.”
Cupping her cheek, Santana stares. “What-“
“Shut the fuck up,” Quinn snarls, threatening cocking her wrist back again. “Second-what the hell are you doing, plotting out what it is Brittany wants or needs or whatever? You’ve known her for like three months. You talk occasionally, you’ve fucked once, and that’s it. You think you, like, love her or some shit? You think you know what’s best? You think you can protect her from something? You don’t even know her favorite friggin’ color, Santana. You’ve never seen her house, or asked if she likes Thai food, or held a conversation that lasted more than a few tense-as-shit minutes. I know you think the sun shines out of her perfect little ass, but for all you know, the girl could be more fucked up than even you are. Get the hell over yourself, Lopez. Ask her on a fucking date, bring her a chocolate bar, but don’t do this noble Peter Parker bullshit. It is the stupidest thing I have ever heard from you.”
“I-“
“And third,” Quinn powers on, running both hands through her hair with blind aggravation, “will you knock off this feeling sorry for yourself thing? You are Santana motherfucking Lopez, all right? You think the world bends to the will of football players and Cheerios? The whole school respects your ass. Sometimes literally-your ass. Sure, they’re kind of petrified you’ll beat the shit of them if you’re crossed, but for the most part, they respect you. Okay? This whining, ‘my daddy issues are consuming my soul’ bullshit is so not going to help. You’re a fucking head bitch, babe. Own it.”
“Quinn-“
“Finally,” Quinn says, gradually growing calmer. “Finally, I’ve got this to say, and I'm thinking it'll sound kind of familiar. You want the girl? You can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t stop, even though you know there’s no rhyme, reason, or reality to it? Do something about it. Do something now. Because I’ve seen the way Finn looks at her, the way Mike dances with her. She’s not going to be available for long. She’s not going to wait around forever. She likes you, Lopez, and you’d do well not to fuck that up before you’ve even gotten started. You’re not going to find another girl that crazy again anytime soon. And believe me, she has got to be out of her fool mind, to want your whiny, punch-happy ass.”
She sits back on her haunches, rests her hands on her thighs, and smirks. Her lip is bleeding lightly, her hair a tangled mess. Santana has never seen her so satisfied.
“Where,” she asks at last, “did that come from?”
“Truth hurts, baby,” the blonde replies smartly. “What, you think you’re the only one with the right to snap people back to the real world?”
Two weeks ago, Santana would have immediately answered yes. Right now, she’s kind of thankful her best friend is an opinionated bitch with low tolerance for anyone’s whining apart from her own.
“What am I going to do?” she asks as calmly as she is able. Quinn smiles.
“Lopez, you are going to get your shit together.”
It is the best and worst advice she has ever received. Slowly, painfully, Santana grins.
[Part 11]