I'll Be There for You -- Glee: Quinn/Santana -- Chapter 7/8
Title: I'll Be There For You
Chapter: 7/8
Author: perfectly_vague
Rating: R (language, adult themes)
Disclaimer: I own zero rights to Glee.
Summary: Quinn's had it with Santana being a different person out in the world than she is behind closed doors. Same sucky summary... same request that you don't let it deter you! :p This is the result of one of the iTunes shuffle drabbles I posted not long ago. As always, any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated! Enjoy!
Before she could stop herself, Santana's hard-clenched fist crashed into the door of her apartment, slamming it shut and leaving a scar of her anger that was impossible to miss. Her outcry of heart-wrenching rage had only built up to a scalding boil since leaving the office, where she went as far as to take a taxi and leave her car overnight rather than drive and risk the recklessness she knew was inevitable. Not since Noah Puckerman had gotten Quinn pregnant in high school could Santana remember being this worked up, and a guttural groan of anger quickly turned to crushed sobs.
The rustic lamp suddenly shed its gentle glow from the end table next to the couch, illuminating a startled-awake Quinn, and causing Santana, in record time, to compose herself completely, dry eyes and all.
"What's happening, what's wrong?" she asked, the deep sleep she just left visible in her features.
An unexpected burn commanded Santana's chest, only to be instantly chilled by a shiver down her spine. It was the first time she heard Quinn's voice in almost a month.
On the plane back from her business trip, Santana was already grappling with what, if anything, she could say to Quinn when she returned. Her anger and defeat from their fight before she left combined with her guilty conscience after having one-night stands almost every night with different (blonde, female) locals left her intrinsically speechless. Knowing her spectacular talent for putting her foot further and further in her mouth, she wasn't sure if she should try and change that, and decided to let Quinn take the lead. Only she never did. When greeted in silence upon her return, Santana stubbornly confirmed to herself that them being over for good was true. In a weird way, not talking at all made the truth hit home more easily, and she was starting to think she preferred it that way.
As if her emotional entrance had been a figment of Quinn's imagination, Santana replied with her at times trademark incredulous sarcasm. "There's no need to, like, panic, I'm fine. It's just work stuff."
Quinn rubbed her eyes and sighed. "Okay..."
"And please, save the 'I told you so's' and 'serves you rights' for behind my back, because I really don't want to fucking hear it right now," Santana added as she walked through the living room without making eye contact.
"I wasn't going to!" Quinn shouted back, her voice cracking from the remnants of sleep mixed with frustration.
Santana paused just short of the bedroom and breathed deeply. She knew that she and Quinn were going to have to talk eventually, and she didn't want it to start with Quinn being the recipient of her misdirected anger. "I know. You're just trying to be nice, and I appreciate it and shouldn't be taking my day out on you." She left a beat of silence for Quinn to reply, and when she didn't, continued. "I'm sorry for waking you."
But before she could disappear from the room, Quinn cut in with a valid point that once again stopped the Latina in her tracks. "Santana, 'just work' has never pushed you to the point of tears before. I know things have been weird, but... you can talk to me about it. I'm kind of hoping you do now since I'm gonna like, wonder about it."
"Quinn -" she cautioned, unsure if this was really a good idea.
"-Was it Jerry? Did he say something? Do something?" Quinn paused, her expression sinking as a sinister thought overpowered her mind. "Oh my God, he didn't like... DO anything, did he? Like, touch you or..."
"No, no, nothing like that, but..." she felt her bottom lip waver and despite her greatest efforts, the tears Santana had so seamlessly eliminated came sweeping back like a powerful wind, "God, I feel like he might as well have, I feel just as... taken advantage of and disrespected... and fucking furious!"
Quinn shuffled the blanket to the floor and, lifting herself up from a laying position, pulled her knees to her chest, leaving three-quarters of the couch vacant. "Tell me what happened," she commanded softly, motioning to the empty space with a nod, which Santana affirmed by taking a seat.
Upon sitting, Santana crossed her legs Indian-style, suddenly feeling incredibly exposed as she absent-mindedly picked at the nail polish on her toes, the way she always picked at something when she was nervous. Her eyes met Quinn's in the rare moments that she could muster up the courage to do so, but apart from that, her stare remained downcast. "So, you remember how Jerry announced that we're getting a new Marketing division just for external affairs like, way back in late November?" Upon Quinn's nod, she took a breath and kept going. "Okay, well obviously I was really campaigning hard for the supervisor position, especially since it's everything I'm already doing but with the ability to focus on a specific, important group of people. And, the supervisor also gets their own team, which would let me actually utilize my benefits and vacations, and everyone in my department already asks me what to do anyway, so I pretty much already have experience keeping a bunch of incompetents in line. And even though I know all of this and Jerry knows all of this, I've been busting my ass the last few weeks, staying late, taking meetings, coming up with new strategies, all but fucking tattooing 'This job is mine, bitches' on my forehead."
Having a feeling where this was headed, Quinn spoke up. "So, it didn't pan out like you were hoping, I'm guessing?"
"Oh, no. Not only did I not get the supervisor position, I didn't even get moved to the new department! So, Andrew, Marcus, Riley -- remember Riley who showed up to the Parent Account presentation still drunk from the night before? All of them got transferred and a pay raise!"
Longtime missed compassion appeared in the blonde's eyes. "I'm really sorry."
"Wait," Santana replied, holding up a finger, "It gets worse. Back to the supervisor position... on the off chance that it wasn't going to be me, I figured it had to be Ray or even Luke, both hard workers in their own right, although they haven't been there as long as I have or can do as much as I can, but I digress. So, who actually gets it? Fucking Todd."
Quinn's brow furrowed. "Who's Todd?"
Santana bitterly smirked, knowing that reinforced her point. "Remember when I told you about that entitled little douche bag that Jerry only hired because his father is our head contact for the American Express account?"
"Yeah, but... that was, what..." Quinn looked skyward as she calculated in her head, "6 months ago?"
"Exactly. I've been there working like a dog for 3 years. Todd's been there 6 goddamn months, and if it weren't for Jerry ass-kissing his father, I guarantee he wouldn't have even gotten an interview."
"Wow," Quinn uttered, "I'm really sorry."
"But wait," Santana pressed on with mock excitement, "there's still more! We found out today that in addition to an insane pay raise, the Internal Marketing division also needs its own brand new wing."
Once again, Quinn appeared confused. "How is that even possible? Each time I was there, you couldn't take two steps without knocking into someone else's cubicle or office or sector. Where's it going to go?"
"Excellent question!" The satire in her voice was so over-the-top at this point, that Santana swore she saw Quinn fight a smile, which gave her the slightest rush of butterflies before being brought back to the reality of what she was about to say. "Since Maddie, Danielle, and myself are the only women, they decided to knock down our bathroom and turn the Men's into unisex to make room for the new wing."
"What?!" Quinn asked in disbelief, "Can they even do that?"
"It's legal," Santana answered flatly, "I checked."
"What about Maddie and Danielle? They must be pissed, too. The three of you should go to Jerry together so it's not just you on the front line."
The darker girl sighed. "They don't even care, not like they really should. They're receptionists who work 4 hours a day, they can totally hold it if they really feel uncomfortable. For me, that bathroom has been my one place of respite. Whenever I'm stressed, or need a minute, or the guys or heckling me -"
"- Or sexually harassing you," Quinn muttered pointedly. Santana didn't respond. She couldn't.
"I'm not trying to sound sarcastic or whatever, I'm genuinely asking..." Quinn began cautiously before releasing a deep breath, "How do you do it? Seriously, with everything that's happened over the years, how do you go to that place every day and not go absolutely crazy?"
While her first reaction was still to feel slightly defensive, Santana couldn't ignore the fact that she had asked herself that very question a lot, especially lately. But still, she knew she had her reasons. "Well... it's a respectable career, especially for someone my age, killer pay, close by -"
"But you don't love it. I know you don't. You don't even like it," Quinn interrupted in near-bemusement.
Running a hand over the clasp of the clip that held half her hair up, Santana laughed bitterly as she set her raven locks free. "I've known for more than awhile now that it wasn't going to be about finding a job I was crazy about for me, so I'm really not that bothered or surprised by that."
"What's it about then?" the green-eyed girl asked rhetorically.
But without missing a beat, Santana replied immediately. "Providing. Finding a skill and working your ass off and making the money you need to live the life you want. You remember what it was like at my house... We did without a lot, and that was after you and I both started working at the mall to pick up some slack."
"Yeah, but we got by," Quinn insisted.
Santana went back to picking at her polish. "Right, with freezing cold showers, one ancient car, and Family Dollar groceries. If I had a nickel for every time my dad lamented that he wish he could have given nicer things and a better life to my mom..." she allowed herself to momentarily get lost in her memories before snapping back to reality, the change visible in her deep brown eyes. "I just swore I'd never let that happen to me in my relationship...s."
Quinn's eyes widened before becoming serious. "Are you saying you did it for me?"
Santana's cheeks burned. "Well, yeah, in part at least, I mean, how could I not? You were brought up in ridiculous money and no one's life should be turned upside down because their parents are assholes. I mean of course I wanted to be stable and have nice things for myself, too, but in order to put us up in a nice place and have a good car and go on trips and make sure I could really go in with the big gestures, I had to make the money to accommodate that. I don't really see how that's a bad thing."
Quinn's expression was hard to read, and Santana waited nervously as she could see her forming a response in her head. "I'm not saying it's bad, it's just... I never needed any of that stuff, or even wanted it, really. I mean, yeah, it was nice at times and I always appreciated it, but.. I only really wanted you, Santi."
As if something had startled them, both of their gazes jumped to a deadlock, and while she couldn't speak for Quinn, Santana was brought back to junior year of high school:
"You need a nickname," Quinn stated abruptly, breaking the silence of Santana's dark bedroom and postponing their attempts at early bed on school nights like she almost always did.
Santana rolled over to face her girlfriend, eyes adjusting to make out her face in the blackness. "Why's that?"
"Because..." she began to 'reason'. "Santana is kind of a mouthful. Especially during sex," she added, causing them both to laugh. "Plus, no one pronounces it the real way, the way your parents do. It's so much prettier."
She scoffed. "Yeah, that's 'cuz no one gave my parents the memo that this is Ohio, not Puerto Rico. You could just shorten it to 'S', that's happened before."
"So, you call me Q and I call you S? What are we, badly-written TV characters?" Quinn retorted sarcastically. "I want something more unique. Something no one else calls you."
"Don't even THINK about anything ga -" Santana cut herself off before Quinn could scold her for making 'gay' synonymous with 'stupid' and chose a different word, "lame - like pumpkin or cookie or pookie if you expect me to answer."
Quinn's gaze narrowed. "Please, give me a little credit. How about... Santi?"
"Santi?" she replied with raised eyebrows. "Where does the 'e' sound come from?"
"I don't know, nowhere, just..." a troublesome smirk appeared on the blonde's lips, "I mean, I could call you Santa if you prefer."
"Um, no..."
"Or Satan, but that wouldn't separate me from most of the Glee club," Quinn continued to jab.
"Quinn..." she warned.
"I'm kidding, I'm kidding," Quinn relented. "But no one calls you Santi, right? It can be just for you and me."
Santana rolled her eyes, but couldn't help but smile while doing so, which seemed to be an epidemic when she was around Quinn. She didn't love the nickname. All she could think was that it sounded like something a drag queen would be named, or that it rhymed with pantie. But nonetheless, the idea of having one more thing for only she and Quinn to share won her over.
"Okay," she exhaled with a bigger smile this time, "Santi it is."
Quinn cleared her throat before tentatively speaking up once more. "But yeah, what I mean is, you should do something that makes you happy. At the end of the day, that's what's most important."
Santana swore her ears were ringing. She wanted to speak, but the rushing of her head seemed to paralyze her vocal chords. We could still be happy. Together, she thought and tried to will herself to say it aloud.
"I'm living proof that it's possible to pay the bills while doing something that you love." Quinn went on. "I know that... maybe this isn't the best time to bring this up, but I actually found a place. A one-bedroom. It'll be available in 3 weeks."
A burgeoning weight sunk Santana's stomach, and choked back the tears that were challenging her resolve all-too-frequently as of late. "Oh," she feigned excitement for her, "that's great. Where at?"
"Um, it's on the Lower East Side, so it'll be a bit of a commute. It's nothing fancy, but... I like it, you know?"
As much as her former resolutions that their relationship was over, Santana had secretly clung to the hope all along that they could turn things around and have a second chance. But seeing now that Quinn was settled, doing well, and moving on with her life, she knew she had no place to prevent that -- for either one of them.
She stopped to gather herself before forcing a grin. "Yeah, no, that's great, Quinn. I'm proud of you."
Stunning olive-colored eyes shimmered. "Thank you."
After a moment of hard-to-bear silence, Santana moved to her feet. "Well, I'm spent and I'm sure I've kept you up long enough."
Quinn half-smiled. "Okay. Good night, Santana."
Turning around in the doorway of her bedroom, Santana took a few seconds to preserve one of her now-limited moments of sharing a home with her high school sweetheart and love of her life. "Good night, Quinn."
Chapter: 7/8
Author: perfectly_vague
Rating: R (language, adult themes)
Disclaimer: I own zero rights to Glee.
Summary: Quinn's had it with Santana being a different person out in the world than she is behind closed doors. Same sucky summary... same request that you don't let it deter you! :p This is the result of one of the iTunes shuffle drabbles I posted not long ago. As always, any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated! Enjoy!
Before she could stop herself, Santana's hard-clenched fist crashed into the door of her apartment, slamming it shut and leaving a scar of her anger that was impossible to miss. Her outcry of heart-wrenching rage had only built up to a scalding boil since leaving the office, where she went as far as to take a taxi and leave her car overnight rather than drive and risk the recklessness she knew was inevitable. Not since Noah Puckerman had gotten Quinn pregnant in high school could Santana remember being this worked up, and a guttural groan of anger quickly turned to crushed sobs.
The rustic lamp suddenly shed its gentle glow from the end table next to the couch, illuminating a startled-awake Quinn, and causing Santana, in record time, to compose herself completely, dry eyes and all.
"What's happening, what's wrong?" she asked, the deep sleep she just left visible in her features.
An unexpected burn commanded Santana's chest, only to be instantly chilled by a shiver down her spine. It was the first time she heard Quinn's voice in almost a month.
On the plane back from her business trip, Santana was already grappling with what, if anything, she could say to Quinn when she returned. Her anger and defeat from their fight before she left combined with her guilty conscience after having one-night stands almost every night with different (blonde, female) locals left her intrinsically speechless. Knowing her spectacular talent for putting her foot further and further in her mouth, she wasn't sure if she should try and change that, and decided to let Quinn take the lead. Only she never did. When greeted in silence upon her return, Santana stubbornly confirmed to herself that them being over for good was true. In a weird way, not talking at all made the truth hit home more easily, and she was starting to think she preferred it that way.
As if her emotional entrance had been a figment of Quinn's imagination, Santana replied with her at times trademark incredulous sarcasm. "There's no need to, like, panic, I'm fine. It's just work stuff."
Quinn rubbed her eyes and sighed. "Okay..."
"And please, save the 'I told you so's' and 'serves you rights' for behind my back, because I really don't want to fucking hear it right now," Santana added as she walked through the living room without making eye contact.
"I wasn't going to!" Quinn shouted back, her voice cracking from the remnants of sleep mixed with frustration.
Santana paused just short of the bedroom and breathed deeply. She knew that she and Quinn were going to have to talk eventually, and she didn't want it to start with Quinn being the recipient of her misdirected anger. "I know. You're just trying to be nice, and I appreciate it and shouldn't be taking my day out on you." She left a beat of silence for Quinn to reply, and when she didn't, continued. "I'm sorry for waking you."
But before she could disappear from the room, Quinn cut in with a valid point that once again stopped the Latina in her tracks. "Santana, 'just work' has never pushed you to the point of tears before. I know things have been weird, but... you can talk to me about it. I'm kind of hoping you do now since I'm gonna like, wonder about it."
"Quinn -" she cautioned, unsure if this was really a good idea.
"-Was it Jerry? Did he say something? Do something?" Quinn paused, her expression sinking as a sinister thought overpowered her mind. "Oh my God, he didn't like... DO anything, did he? Like, touch you or..."
"No, no, nothing like that, but..." she felt her bottom lip waver and despite her greatest efforts, the tears Santana had so seamlessly eliminated came sweeping back like a powerful wind, "God, I feel like he might as well have, I feel just as... taken advantage of and disrespected... and fucking furious!"
Quinn shuffled the blanket to the floor and, lifting herself up from a laying position, pulled her knees to her chest, leaving three-quarters of the couch vacant. "Tell me what happened," she commanded softly, motioning to the empty space with a nod, which Santana affirmed by taking a seat.
Upon sitting, Santana crossed her legs Indian-style, suddenly feeling incredibly exposed as she absent-mindedly picked at the nail polish on her toes, the way she always picked at something when she was nervous. Her eyes met Quinn's in the rare moments that she could muster up the courage to do so, but apart from that, her stare remained downcast. "So, you remember how Jerry announced that we're getting a new Marketing division just for external affairs like, way back in late November?" Upon Quinn's nod, she took a breath and kept going. "Okay, well obviously I was really campaigning hard for the supervisor position, especially since it's everything I'm already doing but with the ability to focus on a specific, important group of people. And, the supervisor also gets their own team, which would let me actually utilize my benefits and vacations, and everyone in my department already asks me what to do anyway, so I pretty much already have experience keeping a bunch of incompetents in line. And even though I know all of this and Jerry knows all of this, I've been busting my ass the last few weeks, staying late, taking meetings, coming up with new strategies, all but fucking tattooing 'This job is mine, bitches' on my forehead."
Having a feeling where this was headed, Quinn spoke up. "So, it didn't pan out like you were hoping, I'm guessing?"
"Oh, no. Not only did I not get the supervisor position, I didn't even get moved to the new department! So, Andrew, Marcus, Riley -- remember Riley who showed up to the Parent Account presentation still drunk from the night before? All of them got transferred and a pay raise!"
Longtime missed compassion appeared in the blonde's eyes. "I'm really sorry."
"Wait," Santana replied, holding up a finger, "It gets worse. Back to the supervisor position... on the off chance that it wasn't going to be me, I figured it had to be Ray or even Luke, both hard workers in their own right, although they haven't been there as long as I have or can do as much as I can, but I digress. So, who actually gets it? Fucking Todd."
Quinn's brow furrowed. "Who's Todd?"
Santana bitterly smirked, knowing that reinforced her point. "Remember when I told you about that entitled little douche bag that Jerry only hired because his father is our head contact for the American Express account?"
"Yeah, but... that was, what..." Quinn looked skyward as she calculated in her head, "6 months ago?"
"Exactly. I've been there working like a dog for 3 years. Todd's been there 6 goddamn months, and if it weren't for Jerry ass-kissing his father, I guarantee he wouldn't have even gotten an interview."
"Wow," Quinn uttered, "I'm really sorry."
"But wait," Santana pressed on with mock excitement, "there's still more! We found out today that in addition to an insane pay raise, the Internal Marketing division also needs its own brand new wing."
Once again, Quinn appeared confused. "How is that even possible? Each time I was there, you couldn't take two steps without knocking into someone else's cubicle or office or sector. Where's it going to go?"
"Excellent question!" The satire in her voice was so over-the-top at this point, that Santana swore she saw Quinn fight a smile, which gave her the slightest rush of butterflies before being brought back to the reality of what she was about to say. "Since Maddie, Danielle, and myself are the only women, they decided to knock down our bathroom and turn the Men's into unisex to make room for the new wing."
"What?!" Quinn asked in disbelief, "Can they even do that?"
"It's legal," Santana answered flatly, "I checked."
"What about Maddie and Danielle? They must be pissed, too. The three of you should go to Jerry together so it's not just you on the front line."
The darker girl sighed. "They don't even care, not like they really should. They're receptionists who work 4 hours a day, they can totally hold it if they really feel uncomfortable. For me, that bathroom has been my one place of respite. Whenever I'm stressed, or need a minute, or the guys or heckling me -"
"- Or sexually harassing you," Quinn muttered pointedly. Santana didn't respond. She couldn't.
"I'm not trying to sound sarcastic or whatever, I'm genuinely asking..." Quinn began cautiously before releasing a deep breath, "How do you do it? Seriously, with everything that's happened over the years, how do you go to that place every day and not go absolutely crazy?"
While her first reaction was still to feel slightly defensive, Santana couldn't ignore the fact that she had asked herself that very question a lot, especially lately. But still, she knew she had her reasons. "Well... it's a respectable career, especially for someone my age, killer pay, close by -"
"But you don't love it. I know you don't. You don't even like it," Quinn interrupted in near-bemusement.
Running a hand over the clasp of the clip that held half her hair up, Santana laughed bitterly as she set her raven locks free. "I've known for more than awhile now that it wasn't going to be about finding a job I was crazy about for me, so I'm really not that bothered or surprised by that."
"What's it about then?" the green-eyed girl asked rhetorically.
But without missing a beat, Santana replied immediately. "Providing. Finding a skill and working your ass off and making the money you need to live the life you want. You remember what it was like at my house... We did without a lot, and that was after you and I both started working at the mall to pick up some slack."
"Yeah, but we got by," Quinn insisted.
Santana went back to picking at her polish. "Right, with freezing cold showers, one ancient car, and Family Dollar groceries. If I had a nickel for every time my dad lamented that he wish he could have given nicer things and a better life to my mom..." she allowed herself to momentarily get lost in her memories before snapping back to reality, the change visible in her deep brown eyes. "I just swore I'd never let that happen to me in my relationship...s."
Quinn's eyes widened before becoming serious. "Are you saying you did it for me?"
Santana's cheeks burned. "Well, yeah, in part at least, I mean, how could I not? You were brought up in ridiculous money and no one's life should be turned upside down because their parents are assholes. I mean of course I wanted to be stable and have nice things for myself, too, but in order to put us up in a nice place and have a good car and go on trips and make sure I could really go in with the big gestures, I had to make the money to accommodate that. I don't really see how that's a bad thing."
Quinn's expression was hard to read, and Santana waited nervously as she could see her forming a response in her head. "I'm not saying it's bad, it's just... I never needed any of that stuff, or even wanted it, really. I mean, yeah, it was nice at times and I always appreciated it, but.. I only really wanted you, Santi."
As if something had startled them, both of their gazes jumped to a deadlock, and while she couldn't speak for Quinn, Santana was brought back to junior year of high school:
"You need a nickname," Quinn stated abruptly, breaking the silence of Santana's dark bedroom and postponing their attempts at early bed on school nights like she almost always did.
Santana rolled over to face her girlfriend, eyes adjusting to make out her face in the blackness. "Why's that?"
"Because..." she began to 'reason'. "Santana is kind of a mouthful. Especially during sex," she added, causing them both to laugh. "Plus, no one pronounces it the real way, the way your parents do. It's so much prettier."
She scoffed. "Yeah, that's 'cuz no one gave my parents the memo that this is Ohio, not Puerto Rico. You could just shorten it to 'S', that's happened before."
"So, you call me Q and I call you S? What are we, badly-written TV characters?" Quinn retorted sarcastically. "I want something more unique. Something no one else calls you."
"Don't even THINK about anything ga -" Santana cut herself off before Quinn could scold her for making 'gay' synonymous with 'stupid' and chose a different word, "lame - like pumpkin or cookie or pookie if you expect me to answer."
Quinn's gaze narrowed. "Please, give me a little credit. How about... Santi?"
"Santi?" she replied with raised eyebrows. "Where does the 'e' sound come from?"
"I don't know, nowhere, just..." a troublesome smirk appeared on the blonde's lips, "I mean, I could call you Santa if you prefer."
"Um, no..."
"Or Satan, but that wouldn't separate me from most of the Glee club," Quinn continued to jab.
"Quinn..." she warned.
"I'm kidding, I'm kidding," Quinn relented. "But no one calls you Santi, right? It can be just for you and me."
Santana rolled her eyes, but couldn't help but smile while doing so, which seemed to be an epidemic when she was around Quinn. She didn't love the nickname. All she could think was that it sounded like something a drag queen would be named, or that it rhymed with pantie. But nonetheless, the idea of having one more thing for only she and Quinn to share won her over.
"Okay," she exhaled with a bigger smile this time, "Santi it is."
Quinn cleared her throat before tentatively speaking up once more. "But yeah, what I mean is, you should do something that makes you happy. At the end of the day, that's what's most important."
Santana swore her ears were ringing. She wanted to speak, but the rushing of her head seemed to paralyze her vocal chords. We could still be happy. Together, she thought and tried to will herself to say it aloud.
"I'm living proof that it's possible to pay the bills while doing something that you love." Quinn went on. "I know that... maybe this isn't the best time to bring this up, but I actually found a place. A one-bedroom. It'll be available in 3 weeks."
A burgeoning weight sunk Santana's stomach, and choked back the tears that were challenging her resolve all-too-frequently as of late. "Oh," she feigned excitement for her, "that's great. Where at?"
"Um, it's on the Lower East Side, so it'll be a bit of a commute. It's nothing fancy, but... I like it, you know?"
As much as her former resolutions that their relationship was over, Santana had secretly clung to the hope all along that they could turn things around and have a second chance. But seeing now that Quinn was settled, doing well, and moving on with her life, she knew she had no place to prevent that -- for either one of them.
She stopped to gather herself before forcing a grin. "Yeah, no, that's great, Quinn. I'm proud of you."
Stunning olive-colored eyes shimmered. "Thank you."
After a moment of hard-to-bear silence, Santana moved to her feet. "Well, I'm spent and I'm sure I've kept you up long enough."
Quinn half-smiled. "Okay. Good night, Santana."
Turning around in the doorway of her bedroom, Santana took a few seconds to preserve one of her now-limited moments of sharing a home with her high school sweetheart and love of her life. "Good night, Quinn."