Playing Dolls (1/2)
“I can’t believe you suckered me into going camping.”
Santana pushes the accelerator a little harder. “Puck, do you think I wants to be stuck camping on spring break? We could have been in Miami. But noooo, Brittany and Rachel wanted to go camping.”
Rachel leans forward from her spot in the backseat, making sure both Santana and Puck can hear her. “I’ll have you know that camping will be a bonding experience that all of us will appreciate in the long run.”
Puck mocks, “Dirt and a bunch of lesbians that don’t let me watch when they do it. Sounds like an awesome bonding experience.”
“You can watch!” Santana glares at Brittany through the rearview mirror. “But S said no one watches so never mind.” Brittany leans her head back and hums a random Britney song.
Rachel pivots towards Quinn. “Quinn, you understand the joys of camping right?”
Quinn looks away from the window and at her girlfriend. “Uh, sure.”
Santana snorts. “Whatever. Just to warn you, I’m having obnoxious tent sex with my girlfriend, so Puck is staying with you two.”
Quinn snaps her attention to Santana with a glare. “No way.”
“God don’t be such a prude, Q. You weren’t such a priss when we were doing it in the cheerios locker room back in high school.”
Santana almost swerves the car off the road when Rachel screeches. “Quinn Fabray you had sex with Santana? You never told me that! How could you? We must get you tested at once!”
“You know what Berry screw you okay I’m clean.”
Quinn hisses, “Thanks a lot, Santana. Now I get to spend my vacation listening to her complain about you.”
Santana turns to face Quinn, and the car hits a pothole on the deserted road. Santana turns the wheel, overcompensating and sending the car into a flip. Screams fill the car as it rolls over three times before coming to a screeching stop.
At first all that Santana can focus on is the searing pain in her wrist and the smoke clouding her vision. The next thing she notices is Brittany’s crying from the back seat. When she notices Puck is no longer in the passenger seat, she feels her stomach drop.
Brittany whimpers, “S…I feel like a bat…I don’t know how to get down.”
“Just stay there, B. I’ll come out and get you.”
Santana starts fiddling with her seatbelt buckle and almost asks how Rachel and Quinn are but she’s too afraid to push the words past her lips. She finally gets the buckle to pop open and her body falls and lands with a thud on the roof of the car.
Santana hisses in pain, “Fuck.”
She wiggles her way slowly out of the car window and breathes out in relief when she sees that Brittany looks okay. The feeling isn’t long lived as she looks at Quinn who appears knocked out cold.
---
Rachel sits on the road with Quinn’s head on her lap, blood trickling from it and matting the blonde hair to her forehead. Brittany is shifting side to side nervously.
Quinn stirs, “Oww.”
Rachel smiles and blinks away tears. “You’re okay, Quinn.”
“I’m going to go find Puck.” Santana looks around. The road is lined with fields of wheat so she steps into the one on the right, figuring that’s the best place to start. She surprisingly finds Puck quickly. So quickly that she almost trips right over him.
“Puck, are you okay?” She finally focuses her eyes when she’s standing up straight and instantly realizes that the question was futile. His body is mangled from shooting through the windshield at 50 MPH. “Mother fucker. Why didn’t you wear your goddamn seatbelt?” Her thoughts scatter from disbelief to sadness to panic. Her best friend besides Quinn is dead and she’s probably going to jail for it.
She walks back to the others, and when she emerges from the field by herself, Rachel starts firing off question after question. Santana’s response is to puke the contents of her stomach all over the hot pavement.
She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “This is so fucked up.”
Brittany strides over and rubs Santana’s back. “Is he okay?”
“No, B. He is not okay.” She drops to the ground, rests her head on her knees, and repeats herself. “This is so fucked up.”
Quinn sits up from her position on Rachel’s lap. She feels a bit disoriented but otherwise okay. “We need to call for help.”
Santana’s head snaps up. “We can’t call for help, because your fucking midget girlfriend took all our cell phones away to get the true experience of the fucking wilderness!”
Rachel frowns deeply. “I could have never predicted something like this, Santana. We can wait for a car.”
“We’re in the middle of nowhere. We haven’t seen a goddamn car the whole time we’ve been on this road.”
Brittany chimes in, “What about that house we saw? It was like…a mile back or something. It looked like a Barbie dream house.”
Rachel nods in agreement while Santana and Quinn shake their heads. “No fucking way. That looked like a Barbie dream house that a kid set on fire. We’ll wait for a car.”
---
Two hours later and not a single car, airplane, or any sign of life besides them came by. So the girls managed to take what wasn’t ruined and set up a tentative campsite near the wreckage. Brittany starts a fire and they sit around it for warmth.
“I propose we go to the house in the morning.” Brittany nods in agreement with Rachel’s suggestion.
“What about no fucking way did you not understand? It looked creepy. Creepy house means creepy people that don’t wash themselves.”
Quinn rolls her eyes. “Look, I agreed with you before, Santana. But enough is enough. We need help and if that’s our only option we need to take it.”
“Fabray, be the little princess that you are and sit there with your mouth shut.”
“Don’t give me an attitude when this was all your fault.”
Santana stands with her fists clenched. “My fault? My fault? Seriously, Q, you’re the one dating the person at fault. Rachel Berry and her amazingly gay adventure ideas.”
Quinn stands and goes nose to nose with her. “Want me to start talking about your girlfriend while we’re at it? And how brilliant she is?”
“I’ll kill you, Fabray.”
“Like you killed Puck?”
Santana tackles Quinn to the ground, throwing punches at her already injured face. Quinn covers her face as best she can before grabbing Santana’s injured wrist and twisting hard. Santana’s face contorts in pain. Quinn slams her face first into the ground with her arm pinned painfully behind her back.
Brittany and Rachel gasp at the scene before them. They’ve witnessed Quinn and Santana’s fights before many times but never quite this intense. She can’t stand seeing her girlfriend in pain anymore so Brittany walks over to them. She wraps her arms around Quinn from behind like she’s giving her a big bear hug. She growls, “Stop the violence!” She squeezes just enough so that Quinn is immobilized and picks her up, moving her towards the tent. “Go in there and don’t come out for a while. You’re in time out.”
Quinn listens but still looks pissed as hell, and Rachel quickly moves into the tent with her. Brittany helps Santana off the ground and hugs her. She murmurs in Santana’s ear, “It was an accident. That’s not anyone’s fault.” She kisses Santana’s forehead and they cuddle up in a sleeping bag to attempt a few hours of rest.
---
In the morning they pack up and Rachel carries a backpack of the few supplies that she has. Santana has the urge to rip it off her and throw it somewhere, but she doesn’t. Even though it’s a scorcher of a day and she can feel the sweat dripping down her back, Brittany is holding her hand and that somehow always keeps her calmer, sweaty palms and all.
It seems that Brittany’s estimate of a mile is a little off. Rachel notes they have at least walked two and a half and there is still no house in sight when Brittany suddenly points ahead of them. “There! There it is!”
The house is large and a pale pink, though you can barely tell with the vines and weeds grown over it. The mailbox is bent and the grass is tall. It’s clear the place is unkempt but they’re hoping it’s not unlivable.
Santana presses forward in front of the others and peaks in the window and sees a living room. The place looks normal enough on the inside. The furniture is outdated but normal in appearance. “Santana, honestly! That is such an invasion in privacy.”
“I’m making sure we aren’t about to get killed, Berry. God.”
Brittany walks up to the door and knocks politely. They wait, Brittany curiously and the others anxiously, for someone to answer the door. No one does so Santana pulls a pin out of her hair and sticks it into the lock. When Quinn gives her a weird look she simply shrugs. “What? It always works in the movies.”
“I’ll go around back.” Brittany hops off the porch and Rachel and Quinn follow her.
Santana sticks her tongue out of the side of her mouth in concentration and then notices they’re gone. “Oh, nice. Leave me all alone. Real nice.” She falls forward through the doorframe when the door opens suddenly and lets out a little shriek. If the others heard it, she’ll totally deny that noise came from her.
She stands and dusts off her and cautiously takes a step forward. “Hello?” She’s answered with silence and it creeps her out. On the coffee table is a half eaten sandwich. “Anyone home?” She moves into the kitchen and lets out a loud scream because a large person starts barreling their way towards her. She doesn’t have time to process what she’s seeing because a needle is pressed into the juncture between her neck and shoulder and she’s falling helplessly to the ground. Her head smacks against the tiled floor and her vision blurs before she blacks out.