FIC: You're Just Scared (Love What You Got)
Title: You're Just Scared (Love What You Got)
Pairing: Quinn Fabray / Santana Lopez.
Words: 2800.
Rating: R.
Disclaimer: I don't owns the Glee.
Summary: It’s summer time and Quinn’s still hovering between pissed off and heart broken so picking up a camera seems the perfect way to fill her time. Until Santana becomes her muse. Then what?
Additional:The idea came from a graphic created by @hysterical-blindness based on a prompt where Quinn is a hipster photog and Santana's her muse. Title comes from Armor For Sleep's "Smile For The Camera."
She’d had a plan. A plan that seemed infallible until her life script presented an entrance by Rachel Berry and a mess up with Puck and … Finn. Fucking Finn. There was a bunch of Quinn, too, but blaming herself made things a little too real.
(She could blame Santana, too, because Kurt might have won prom queen, but she was right behind him in votes.)
She was sure she could find blame in any one and any thing, but regardless of fault she was tired of the cycle of disappointment.
Quinn was never supposed to be disappointed.
(Lucy knew disappointment all too well.)
A perfect nose was supposed to cure her anxiety; the perfect body was supposed to attract a great guy. And being the perfect cheerleader was supposed to sustain her reign at McKinley.
She never factored in the possibility that perfect wasn’t an option, that happiness might lie somewhere beneath the surface or that you could fall quicker than you could climb.
Maybe she got too caught up with competing with Santana or trying to make herself love Finn or hating Rachel Berry.
Or there was the possibility that she got caught up in the process of convincing Finn he was the father of her child (which was a lot easier than she expected) and quelling whatever misguided feelings she had for Puck.
Whatever the trigger her plan had failed and perfection didn’t seem forthcoming.
*
She spent the beginnings of her summer hulled in her room cross-legged on her bed hovering over books. She found solace in words and experiencing someone else’s happiness seemed a good enough cure for a while.
Except it didn’t last long and two weeks and eleven novels in she was both tired of her room, in need of the light of the sun and bored out of her mind.
(She was also still fuming, a little sad, but mostly pissed.)
But boredom and her tire of reading landed her on Amazon and then there was a starter Nikon D3000 in her cart and a couple books and there was a moment where she figured spending this much money on something she only thought she might interested in was silly, but Amazon already had her card info on file and she’d done a great job of saving up in the last two years. So.
*
She didn’t even know she was doing it until she was, but even when the realization hit her she couldn’t stop. The lighting was perfect and the focus soft and the subject was fl-
“Fuck are you doing, Fabray?” Santana snapped half-furious, half-amused. It was hard to tell.
When Quinn lowered the camera she expected to be met with an expression she was familiar with: maybe slanted eyes and a sneer or eyebrows quirked in judgmental curiosity. She definitely wasn’t expecting a smile.
It must have shown on her face because it was gone in an instant. Pursed lips that looked like acid was dammed behind them parted with ease.
“Stop being a fucking creep.”
Quinn started to wonder if her camera was playing tricks on her. This wasn’t the girl she’d seen behind the lens.
“Yeah, whatever,” Quinn snapped finally and turned on her heels, her hair whipping behind her.
“Fuck are you going?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
“I don’t think it’s your business to take stalker photos of me either, Swimfan, but that’s not what I asked you,” she quipped with a harsh raise of her shoulders.
“Yeah? Well. That was an accident.”
“How do you take acciden-” she started but Quinn had already spun on her heels again with a conviction that said she the conversation was over.
*
Quinn could have acted like the whole encounter didn’t happen. She’d done that with a number of things that hadn’t gone as expected, but with all her attention focused on the photos she’d taken in the past week it was a little hard.
It was mostly hard to ignore the fact that the camera took to Santana naturally. She dinged around in Photoshop for ages trying to figure out how to edit the images. When it came down to it they were sort of perfect the way they’d been captured.
She hated it.
*
Hey. Would you mind doing a shoot for me?
She’d started and deleted the text message at least six times in the last half hour. The part of her that still had a semblance of pride kept pressing delete but the part of her that was really enjoying taking pictures kept typing it.
The part of her that realized her eye, camera and Santana were a triumvirate of sorts hit send on the seventh go.
It was for the art.
Sure.
It wasn’t at all the response she expected. No.
(Maybe a little snark quickly followed by no, but not an easy and simple sure.)
She shrugged both to dull her thinking on it and wipe away the feeling of excitement bubbling up midway between her stomach and chest.
She mused that it was because of the high taking pictures gave her.
It was mostly true.
*
“So, you wanna come to my house and watch Cruel Intentions? New stash of DVDs just came in from Amazon,” Santana said sipping the caramel iced coffee nestled in her palm.
The two of them were sitting in the Lima Bean post-shoot, Santana looking around, her facial expression parked on the corner of I’m Judging You Ave. and What The Fuck Way. Quinn leaned over the camera in her lap, taking another look at the photos she’d taken.
This was the third time they’d done this. Met up somewhere - the park, the train tracks, and the McKinley gymnasium - and hung out awkwardly after, sharing limited conversation and coffee. But they’d never actually done anything to close to friendship.
“Never seen it.”
“No wonder you’re so repressed.”
Quinn scoffed, “Just because I’m not bounding into the beds of whoever comes calling doesn’t mean I’m repressed.”
“Whatever. Bounding into beds is fun. You really should try it,” Santana said, voice thick with sarcasm that said she understood it was a crack at her but she wasn’t biting.
*
“The alphabet?” Quinn asked her eyebrows furrowed.
“Yeah,” Santana said easily, “Wait, please tell me you understand what happened.”
“I-I do. I just don’t know how that could feel nice but-”
“No ones ever gone down on you? Finn really is worthless.”
Quinn blushed, “That’s none of your business.”
“Whatever.”
*
Quinn spent most of her time alone editing photos. She’d found an edit that took the Santana photos from sort of perfect to perfection. They were only subtle effects, because they seriously didn’t need much but they added exactly what she was missing.
She knew with the right lighting she could capture the same effect raw because for as ugly as Santana acted she was ten times as beautiful.
(Lucy would have told her in a heartbeat, but Quinn wouldn’t.)
The other part of her free time was split between reading and hanging out with Santana under the guise of taking pictures of her. Reading happened more often, but she’d also spent a considerable amount of time hanging out with her too, even after she’d put down her camera.
*
“What’s it like?” Quinn asked seemingly out of the blue. It wasn’t random, to her, because she’d been mulling it over at random for the better part of two weeks. She was hoping she wouldn’t have to explain what she meant but this was Santana and she liked making people squirm.
“What’s what like?” Her face was the portrait of ignorance but the hilt in her voice near the end of her question screamed cognizance.
“Um,” Quinn swallowed. “That thing. The thing we were talking about when we watched Cruel Intentions.”
“You’re gonna have to spell it out for me.”
“Nevermind. It doesn’t matter,” she said before asking how Brittany was. Santana hadn’t mentioned her at all this summer. She had been smirking before she frowned. She didn’t even try to hide her anguish. The way Santana’s body collapsed almost made her feel bad.
Almost.
*
Santana didn’t like clothes.
Quinn should have remembered that or at least caught a hint from the way Santana dressed in skirts as criminally short as Rachel’s and three times as tight.
But she hadn’t.
So, the sight of Santana in a black t-shirt that said “Fuck You, You Fucking Fuck Bourbon Street 09” (which she recognized from Nationals sophomore year) and a pair of red girl briefs from American Apparel both caught her by surprise and nearly made her cover her eyes.
She was sure Santana heard the slight intake of breath when hers had hitched but if she had, she wasn’t letting on.
“Um,” Santana said, “Can you close the door? I’d rather my mom not walk in on me while I roll this blunt.”
“Huh?” She closed the door regardless of her confusion. Santana didn’t respond. She just took a seat at her desk and pulled a small baggy out of the back of one of her desk drawers and dropped what looked to be a small cigar on the table.
“You really smoke cigars?”
Santana looked at her like she’d grown two heads for a second before her face softened into an expression Quinn didn’t want to identify. That was an expression reserved for people who liked each other.
“Yeah, something like that. Here,” she said tossing Quinn her iPod, “Make yourself useful and start the ‘On A Cloud’ playlist for me.”
“Sure,” she said. She scrolled through the playlist, past “Getting My Mack On”, “Lapdance” and “Sweet Shit For Britt” before scrolling back up to the requested playlist when she realized she passed the O’s.
Something mellow with a raspy rappers voice on it started up. She was about to ask who it was when the smell hit her.
“What is that?” She asked frowning.
“I’m seriously starting to believe you’re from another fucking planet. You do go to McKinley, right? You’re not like a droid or anything?”
Quinn rolled her eyes.
“You’ve known me forever,” Santana said.
“It’s not like we were friends.”
Santana looked like she might respond, her lips tight like a flood of acid and daggers were just waiting to escape but the moment passed.
“It’s weed, Q. Seriously,” she said again, exasperated, “You didn’t smoke with Puck bef-,” she started but she closed her mouth.
It was silent for a moment.
“I’m not sure what you know anymore, but weed is a drug. A wonderful drug,” she said condescension like syrup coating her words, “It relaxes you and makes every song sound better, feel better even. Not to mention the orgasms are mind-blowing-”
Quinn turned red.
“Yeah. You have to stop that.”
“Stop, what?”
“Turning red every time I mention sex. It’s lame.”
(Which was often. Santana was Puck without the penis.)
“Oh.”
“So you’re gonna smoke this with me,” there wasn’t a hint of choice in her statement and a shrug of her shoulders that said she knew she’d won.
*
Santana was right. Smoking was relaxing. It made Quinn feel like she was nearly floating and there were clouds in her brain. It also made her super hungry and silly, way silly which was why sitting in the trunk of Santana’s too expensive BMW SUV with their feet dangling in the dark and Santana’s ice cream dripping everywhere seemed way more amusing than necessary.
“Let me take a picture,” Quinn said between giggles. She didn’t wait for a response before she started snapping. Santana was too busy trying to dam the river of melted ice cream sliding down her jaw to protest.
She swiped it away with her thumb and then sucked on it, but another rivulet went streaming down her arm. She frowned and then flecked her tongue out to lick the path from her forearm to her wrist. There was a jolt in the pit of Quinn’s stomach that made her stop snapping pictures. She lowered her camera and crossed her legs.
“S’wrong,” Santana said around a mouthful of ice cream, a dopey grin on her face.
“Nothing,” Quinn said quickly. Santana shrugged.
They were in silence for a minute.
“If you tell anyone this, I will deny it, but you’re not so bad when you’re only being a half-bitch,” Santana said with a crooked smile.
Quinn just stared at her for a long moment before-
“What are you-” but she didn’t finish because Quinn’s mouth was covering hers. It didn’t take long for Santana to take control by threading her fingers into the hair at the base of Quinn’s neck to tilt her head for better access.
Santana’s mouth was warm and tasted like weed and ice cream, but there was another sweetness Quinn couldn’t define. One, she mused, was Santana’s very own.
She was lost in the way their mouths worked together and the way Santana took control with ease, kissing with passion and purpose that delivered desire but not need.
The way Santana sucked on her bottom lip with an unexpected gentleness before dragging her teeth across it with the right amount of pressure prevented Quinn from suppressing a whimper.
And she was about to release a moan because the hand sliding up her shirt felt so-
There was a hand up her shirt.
She pulled back.
*
“It didn’t mean anything,” Quinn said after a week of equal avoidance. Santana hadn’t contacted her and she hadn’t made a move to contact Santana.
They wouldn’t even be on Quinn’s couch if Santana’s cable hadn’t gone out. She broke and sent Quinn a text (Cables out. Need to watch Real Housewives. Can I crash?)
“Duh.”
“I was just…”
“Ok.” Santana said shortly.
*
It freaked Quinn out when the Santana in her pictures became the one in her life. The one who smiled when she thought no one was watching and frowned when she realized they were. Capturing her had shown her just how easy it was for Santana to switch between the two.
*
“These are … wow,” Santana said, her mouth slightly agape. “I mean I didn’t think I could get hotter but…”
“You’re not hot,” Quinn said flatly, watching Santana hover behind her laptop. Her finger on the right arrow key looking through all the pictures she’d taken over the summer. There were pictures of all of Lima, quite a few self-portraits but mostly there was just Santana. She felt like she should be embarrassed or nervous but she wasn’t. They were excellent if she was being honest with herself.
“What?” Santana said her eyebrow raised in question, her eye squinting in disbelief. “Have you seen me?”
“Yeah,” Quinn said nodding, “You’re … beautiful. Hot cheapens it,” she muttered.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
*
She really wasn’t sure how she ended up nearly naked on Santana’s blood red comforter.
(Except she was. Because the conversation went something like:
“So do you wanna know what it feels like or what?”
“What I-“ but Santana was already covering her mouth and doing that thing to her bottom lip and-)
“Stop that,” Santana said against her collarbone. She raised her head, dark hair sliding over shoulder, lips close to cherry red.
“Stop what?”
“Covering yourself,” she said grabbing Quinn’s hands and lacing her fingers through them. She splayed them out around Quinn’s body and there was a near second where she thought of the cross, but the moment was fleeting because Santana’s lips were between the valley of breast and then they were-
“Oh.”
Maybe Santana should’ve sung a song about her own mouth because it was warm and wet and humming-
“Fuck.”
-down there. And that felt amazing, but then Santana’s tongue was making slow measured strokes that made fire stoke in her belly and then she realized that that was an A, and that was a B and then there was a-
*
“The irony of you coming on ‘O’,” Santana said snaking her body up the bed and resting beside Quinn. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and looked like she might be contemplating kissing her but the expression was gone before it could register. Quinn figured she imagined it.
“That was …” she started. She closed her mouth when she couldn’t find the words.
“I know,” Santana said smugly, turning over and grabbing a pillow.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking a nap,” she said like it was obvious. She shut her eyes and drew her knees to her stomach. Quinn breathed in silence, mulling the question over for several long moments.
“Can I touch you?”
*
Maybe she couldn’t have perfection but there was this. And this? This could be worth the trouble.