fic: You And Me And Never Us
Title: You And Me And Never Us
Character(s): Santana Lopez / Quinn Fabray.
Words: 1300.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don't owns the Glee.
Summary: There are plans on both sides that foil.
A/N: Italicized text comes from Rick Bragg's All Over But The Shoutin'.
Shit happens.
There are plans on both sides that foil.
One, scrawled on too-bright paper in the darkness of a too-bright room with lithe limbs covering still growing ones, reads: get on top, stay there, get out of Lima and take Brittany.
The other, tear-stained and partially ripped from the application of too much pressure, says: be pretty, stay that way, get a boyfriend, be prom queen, get out of Lima.
*
I used to stand amazed and watch the redbirds fight. They would flash and flutter like scraps of burning rags through a sky unbelievably blue, swirling, soaring, plummeting.
*
It’s Brittany’s idea, really, that they do this, that they include her, Quinn Fabray. Santana doesn’t like her but Brittany (however misguided) is right: they need her.
She’s pretty - too pretty (and Santana has never liked competition.) She’s flexible and sort of floaty. (Brittany’s floaty too, but Quinn’s seems born out of some weird entitlement and isn’t at all like Brittany’s natural grace.) She’s smart too. And though Santana doesn’t necessarily think Brittany’s dumb she knows that she might need another brain to make her plans work.
What’s most important is that Quinn’s the only other freshman on the squad she deems almost good enough to hang around.
(She kind of digs that she can shoot an ice glare as good as hers; she kind of hates that it’s worked against her a few times.)
When it comes down to it. She’s never been able to say no to Brittany (which makes the first time that she does feel even more like hell) so Quinn Fabray is here, in her backyard.
They lay flat on their backs, with the gentle hum of pool jets blending with the whisper of a breeze, pressed lazily into blankets Mrs. Lopez shoved into their arms on the way out. Parted pleats graze thighs and WMHS crosses chests. The uniform, red, so red, seems made for her body.
She feels something close to content. What she’s wanted since she went with Julian to her first McKinley football game in the seventh grade is finally hers. It’s Brittany’s too, which definitely helps her plan to get them the hell out of Lima. There isn’t much else she could ask for.
“What are stars?” Brittany asks curiously, her fingers dancing between a set of pleats on Santana’s thigh. She twitches lightly until she realizes that Quinn can’t see.
Quinn moves to speak. Santana hears something that sounds too much like science and cuts her off.
“Holes in the floor of heaven,” she says. She feels Quinn’s eyes on her, hears her swallow tightly but after a few short seconds she agrees.
Brittany’s content. That’s all she needs but somewhere in the back of her mind she thinks it’s nice that Quinn agreed; that, maybe, she gets that Brittany needs or deserves a little magic. Especially now, with her dad in a box under the flowers she helped her pick out.
It’s what she’ll come back to in a New York hotel room when the crack in Quinn’s voice chinks the wall she’d built against her.
It’s exactly what she’ll forget when she’s blind with rage in the middle of a hallway, the title she’s wanted for too long being ripped from her grasp again. She’ll smack Quinn Fabray and mean it.
She won’t regret it for months.
*
On the ground they were a blur of feathers, stabbing for each other’s eyes. I have seen grown men stop what they were doing, stop pulling corn or lift their head out from under the hood of a broken down car, to watch it.
*
It’s just that maybe she’d gotten carried away. But Quinn has been successful everywhere that Lucy’s failed and she’d always been good with minding adults.
(They were always the closest things she’d had to friends anyway. The ones who listened to her problems and found solutions by suggesting she just change herself.)
So, it’s really not her fault that she gets chosen for captain over Santana. She’d developed a “relationship” with Coach, however hard, and she’d trusted Quinn with the reigns.
They’re the only real friends she has, Santana and Brittany, and the only one’s she really had ever, so, she feels sort of bad that Coach chose her but not that bad. This works for her plan.
Santana looks ten shades of pissed until Brittany’s pinky wrapped around hers and her lips (way too close if Quinn had any say) whispered something to sooth her. They storm (Santana storms, Brittany follows) without so much as a word.
Neither of them are talking to her now but she can’t worry too much about that because Finn Hudson, clumsy and popular and painfully, somewhat, adorable, won’t stop fumbling invitations to Breadstix. She’s declined six times but the high of her promotion made her a little hungry so she accepted.
She spots Brittany and Santana before they do her and she can feel the sneer spreading on Santana’s too-pretty-for-her-attitude face. Her eyes, which have always mesmerized and unsettled Quinn, pin holes into the side of her head until she turns and gives a curt smile. Santana rolls her eyes in response.
She’s never really had to worry about getting friends to like her again since she’s never had them, but she can’t even pay attention to the compliments Finn can’t seem to stop rattling off because she’s too worried about getting them back.
It’s hard, but not as hard as she imagined it would be, to get them back on her side. Brittany’s easy of course. She’s legitimately happy for Quinn’s title, but Santana is another case entirely. She promises that things won’t change, that they’ll still be friends and she’ll make sure to get her the good positions and the best spotters. It’s not much, but it seems to be enough for now.
She’ll wish later, when the little girl with Puck’s eyes is growing in her womb, that it had been the promise of friendship to get Santana on her side. Because a dutiful sidekick with the ability to turn heads with her rewind isn’t what she needs when everyone seems to be against her.
It’s what she’ll get when she can’t take anymore of the jabs life seems intent on dishing and a chin rests on her shoulder, smiling.
It’s what she won’t be thinking about when getting her spot back is more important than Santana’s secret. It’s what she won’t consider an option as she reads in the corner of the choir room and ignores that pained expression Santana can’t seem to shake.
She won’t regret it for months.
*
Once, when I was little, I watched one of the birds attack its own reflection in the side mirror of a truck. It hurled its body again and again against that unyielding image, until it pecked a crack in the glass, until the whole mirror was smeared with blood. It was as if the bird hated what it saw there, and discovered too late that all it was seeing was itself. I asked an old man who worked for my uncle Ed, a snuff-dipping man named Charlie Bivens, why he reckoned that bird did that. He told me it was just its nature.
Character(s): Santana Lopez / Quinn Fabray.
Words: 1300.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don't owns the Glee.
Summary: There are plans on both sides that foil.
A/N: Italicized text comes from Rick Bragg's All Over But The Shoutin'.
Shit happens.
There are plans on both sides that foil.
One, scrawled on too-bright paper in the darkness of a too-bright room with lithe limbs covering still growing ones, reads: get on top, stay there, get out of Lima and take Brittany.
The other, tear-stained and partially ripped from the application of too much pressure, says: be pretty, stay that way, get a boyfriend, be prom queen, get out of Lima.
*
I used to stand amazed and watch the redbirds fight. They would flash and flutter like scraps of burning rags through a sky unbelievably blue, swirling, soaring, plummeting.
*
It’s Brittany’s idea, really, that they do this, that they include her, Quinn Fabray. Santana doesn’t like her but Brittany (however misguided) is right: they need her.
She’s pretty - too pretty (and Santana has never liked competition.) She’s flexible and sort of floaty. (Brittany’s floaty too, but Quinn’s seems born out of some weird entitlement and isn’t at all like Brittany’s natural grace.) She’s smart too. And though Santana doesn’t necessarily think Brittany’s dumb she knows that she might need another brain to make her plans work.
What’s most important is that Quinn’s the only other freshman on the squad she deems almost good enough to hang around.
(She kind of digs that she can shoot an ice glare as good as hers; she kind of hates that it’s worked against her a few times.)
When it comes down to it. She’s never been able to say no to Brittany (which makes the first time that she does feel even more like hell) so Quinn Fabray is here, in her backyard.
They lay flat on their backs, with the gentle hum of pool jets blending with the whisper of a breeze, pressed lazily into blankets Mrs. Lopez shoved into their arms on the way out. Parted pleats graze thighs and WMHS crosses chests. The uniform, red, so red, seems made for her body.
She feels something close to content. What she’s wanted since she went with Julian to her first McKinley football game in the seventh grade is finally hers. It’s Brittany’s too, which definitely helps her plan to get them the hell out of Lima. There isn’t much else she could ask for.
“What are stars?” Brittany asks curiously, her fingers dancing between a set of pleats on Santana’s thigh. She twitches lightly until she realizes that Quinn can’t see.
Quinn moves to speak. Santana hears something that sounds too much like science and cuts her off.
“Holes in the floor of heaven,” she says. She feels Quinn’s eyes on her, hears her swallow tightly but after a few short seconds she agrees.
Brittany’s content. That’s all she needs but somewhere in the back of her mind she thinks it’s nice that Quinn agreed; that, maybe, she gets that Brittany needs or deserves a little magic. Especially now, with her dad in a box under the flowers she helped her pick out.
It’s what she’ll come back to in a New York hotel room when the crack in Quinn’s voice chinks the wall she’d built against her.
It’s exactly what she’ll forget when she’s blind with rage in the middle of a hallway, the title she’s wanted for too long being ripped from her grasp again. She’ll smack Quinn Fabray and mean it.
She won’t regret it for months.
*
On the ground they were a blur of feathers, stabbing for each other’s eyes. I have seen grown men stop what they were doing, stop pulling corn or lift their head out from under the hood of a broken down car, to watch it.
*
It’s just that maybe she’d gotten carried away. But Quinn has been successful everywhere that Lucy’s failed and she’d always been good with minding adults.
(They were always the closest things she’d had to friends anyway. The ones who listened to her problems and found solutions by suggesting she just change herself.)
So, it’s really not her fault that she gets chosen for captain over Santana. She’d developed a “relationship” with Coach, however hard, and she’d trusted Quinn with the reigns.
They’re the only real friends she has, Santana and Brittany, and the only one’s she really had ever, so, she feels sort of bad that Coach chose her but not that bad. This works for her plan.
Santana looks ten shades of pissed until Brittany’s pinky wrapped around hers and her lips (way too close if Quinn had any say) whispered something to sooth her. They storm (Santana storms, Brittany follows) without so much as a word.
Neither of them are talking to her now but she can’t worry too much about that because Finn Hudson, clumsy and popular and painfully, somewhat, adorable, won’t stop fumbling invitations to Breadstix. She’s declined six times but the high of her promotion made her a little hungry so she accepted.
She spots Brittany and Santana before they do her and she can feel the sneer spreading on Santana’s too-pretty-for-her-attitude face. Her eyes, which have always mesmerized and unsettled Quinn, pin holes into the side of her head until she turns and gives a curt smile. Santana rolls her eyes in response.
She’s never really had to worry about getting friends to like her again since she’s never had them, but she can’t even pay attention to the compliments Finn can’t seem to stop rattling off because she’s too worried about getting them back.
It’s hard, but not as hard as she imagined it would be, to get them back on her side. Brittany’s easy of course. She’s legitimately happy for Quinn’s title, but Santana is another case entirely. She promises that things won’t change, that they’ll still be friends and she’ll make sure to get her the good positions and the best spotters. It’s not much, but it seems to be enough for now.
She’ll wish later, when the little girl with Puck’s eyes is growing in her womb, that it had been the promise of friendship to get Santana on her side. Because a dutiful sidekick with the ability to turn heads with her rewind isn’t what she needs when everyone seems to be against her.
It’s what she’ll get when she can’t take anymore of the jabs life seems intent on dishing and a chin rests on her shoulder, smiling.
It’s what she won’t be thinking about when getting her spot back is more important than Santana’s secret. It’s what she won’t consider an option as she reads in the corner of the choir room and ignores that pained expression Santana can’t seem to shake.
She won’t regret it for months.
*
Once, when I was little, I watched one of the birds attack its own reflection in the side mirror of a truck. It hurled its body again and again against that unyielding image, until it pecked a crack in the glass, until the whole mirror was smeared with blood. It was as if the bird hated what it saw there, and discovered too late that all it was seeing was itself. I asked an old man who worked for my uncle Ed, a snuff-dipping man named Charlie Bivens, why he reckoned that bird did that. He told me it was just its nature.