Fic: Bread and Water [1/1]
Title: Bread and Water
Pairing: Santana/Brittany
Rating: R
Summary: My Brittany/Santana stories tend to use the same details. Let’s assume they’re all vaguely related to one another, and then pretend they’re stand-alones when the details contradict each other. Some of the stuff may seem familiar is all I’m saying. This is fluff
Spoilers:Through The Power of Madonna to be safe.
Santana was the kind of person who was quick to embrace change, but once she found something she really liked or loved, she tended to stick with it. When she finally found a cell phone that she really loved, it was one of those older flip phone versions which everyone mocked her about because they said she was regressing. But she loved it and only gave it up because Brittany, in some incomprehensible moment of folly, super-glued Santana’s phone shut (and then got mad at Santana for not answering her phone when Brittany called because Brittany forgot about her little prank). It didn’t bother her much-- she wasn’t in any hurry to answer anyone’s phone calls other than Brittany and she thought Brittany should be punished a little for ruining a perfectly good phone just because Brittany apparently hated that phone for whatever reason. It would have saved Santana a lot of time if Brittany had just told her the sight of that ratty old, but incredibly functional phone annoyed the shit out of her.
When she got home that day, she was going up the stairs in their condo to the bedroom when she heard Brittany laughing. Santana planned on pretending to be annoyed so that Brittany would feel obliged to make up for super-gluing her cell phone shut (with sexual favors, natch) but once she heard Brittany laugh and then appear at the top of the stairs, it was over. She was still ludicrously in love with Brittany even after so many years together, so all she could do was laugh, too and fondly tell Brittany “you’re crazy.”
Brittany stood at the top of the stairs, and she looked beautiful. So beautiful. All she was wearing was her underwear and a white Kajagoogoo t-shirt that fell just a couple of inches past Brittney’s thighs. Santana walked up the stairs and Brittany just waited and watched. She stopped when she was two steps away from the top and stared at Brittany for a long moment.
Brittany’s lips curled into a broad smile. “Hi,” she greeted softly. She looked down at Santana and her hand reached out to cup Santana’s cheek.
Santana never understood how gestures like that could feel simultaneously new and familiar. Brittany touched her like that a lot--but it still made her blush. It was instinctive-- muscle memory, really, because she ducked her head and pressed her cheek even closer into Brittany’s hand. “Hi,” Santana said.
Brittany leaned down just as Santana stood on her tiptoes and their lips met in a kiss. Santana pulled back and shook her head. “You’re crazy,” she told Brittany fondly.
“Yeah,” Brittany agreed because as long as Santana liked crazy, at least in her, she didn’t mind being called crazy.
Santana shook her head again and laughed. She looked up at Brittany and thought about how pretty Brittany was. So pretty.
“You’re so pretty,” Santana murmured.
Brittany raised an eyebrow. She tilted her head forward and grinned crookedly. “Come with me,” she said, taking Santana by the hand and leading her to their bedroom.
--
People told Brittany to careful of her-- no one believed that she could be faithful to Brittany. “When you guys are 40,” Sarah Wong told Brittany back when they were still in high school, “she’ll probably trade you in for two 20 year olds. Assuming you guys even know each other when you’re 40, which you probably won’t,” Brittany thought that was hilarious because Brittany had enough faith in her to know that was untrue, but Santana wished she could stuff the ballot to make Sarah the Prom Queen just so she could Carrie stupid ass Sarah Wong.
“Two 20 year olds!” Brittany cackled. “If you were 40, you’d never leave me for two girls who aren’t even old to drink in public with you yet.” Brittany paused. “Although we’re not old enough to drink in public yet, so maybe by the time you’re 40, you won’t like to.” Brittany tilted her head to the side. “We do a lot of things together that you don’t like to do in public,” she said.
“That was very practical of you, B,” Santana told Brittany dryly, because honestly, Santana had no plans to leave Brittany, ever, so any speculation about the future was moot and not even up for discussion if those future plans didn’t include Brittany. And what she did with Brittany was private because it was theirs alone. Even when they were kids, Santana just knew.
“It’s you for me and me for you,” Santana told Brittany once.
The thing of it was, everything in her life was replaceable-- her phone, her car, her laptop, her iPod, her shoes, her clothes, whatever. But there would never be another Brittany and Brittany was really all she wanted. Brittany was her bread and water and everything else was empty calories.
--
The truth that she couldn’t admit to anyone (not even Brittany) was that Brittany was more likely to leave her than the other way around. She didn’t spent a lot of time thinking about that, because she had enough faith in her own appeal to be secure in Brittany’s love of her. But still, it was something she thought about nonetheless.
One would think there would be some things about Brittany that would annoy her-- when people were together long enough, there were inevitably things about the other person that initially seemed endearing and cute but became unbearably annoying. Quinn used to think it was cute that Rachel laughed in the shower even when she was by herself, but that always came up every time Quinn and Rachel fought. But she just loved Brittany so much that sometimes she annoyed the shit out of herself.
It didn’t mean she was always good to Brittany-- Santana wasn’t a nice person by nature, so she had more than her fair share of moments when she snapped or sniped at Brittany. But unlike everyone else, she apologized after she did and unlike with everyone else, she always tried to be good to Brittany. She honestly didn’t care about being good to anyone else, except her parents and that was because, shit, they were her parents. But she didn’t love her parents like she loved Brittany.
Brittany was the only person to whom she wanted to stay faithful, and this was true in ways that went beyond just the romantic, and it was definitely, emphatically, not subject to change. Santana could readily admit that she was a backstabber, but since people were never surprised that she was, could it really be considered backstabbing? The only people who truly inspired her loyalty was her family and Brittany. Oh, sure, she’d sold her brothers out to her parents when they were growing up for one reason or another, but she’d never hurt someone in her family when it mattered. Brittany was the only friend she’d never stab in the back and the only friend she considered a member of her family.
--
Their lives had long ago become so enmeshed with one another, it was impossible for Santana to think of a life without Brittany. There had been more than one occasion when her own mother called her Brittany. Brittany was over at the house so much, that Brittany’s name fell from the lips of the Lopez clan as easily and frequently as Santana’s name did. Brittany’s parents did the same, too. Once, when they were thirteen, Brittany’s mother called her Santana, and Brittany looked puzzled and asked, “when did you change my name to Santana?” Santana knew right away that Brittany wasn’t being sarcastic-- she was being literal. Later that night, Brittany declared “you know me better than anyone.” She seemed sad about it, which hurt Santana’s feelings and she spent a week punishing Brittany in little ways (subtle barbs, mean tones). It was another year before Santana realized that Brittany just felt like her family should know her best because she’d grown up with them. By the time they were 16 and hiding their relationship from their families, Brittany leaned in close one night and whispered, “In this whole world, I love you best because you know me best.”
--
They sat down to dinner and Santana tried to shake some salt into her soup. Instead, black pepper flakes came out.
“What the fuck?” Santana said, looking at the clear shaker with what was clearly salt in it. It was definitely the salt shaker, but pepper was coming out of it.
Brittany started to laugh and she pulled the salt shaker away from Santana. She unscrewed the top to reveal a circular piece of paper covering the opening of the shaker. On top of that small piece of paper was a heaping tablespoon of pepper. Brittany looked endlessly pleased. Brittany carefully put the pepper onto a napkin and then re-screwed the top onto the salt shaker. “See?” she asked. “It’s the salt shaker, but then pepper comes out.”
Santana raised an eyebrow. “Is it April Fools?”
Brittany smiled. “You’d expect it on April Fools.”
Santana laughed. She couldn’t be mad. She wasn’t even annoyed. “You’re crazy,” she said fondly.
Brittany grinned crookedly. “You like crazy.”
Santana nodded in agreement. “Only in you.”
--
Brittany met Santana when they were eleven. She spotted Santana in line at the summer drill team tryouts the summer before sixth grade when they were transitioning from primary school to middle school. Santana didn’t talk to anyone, and wasn’t all that social, but Brittany could tell that Santana was going to make the team and that the other girls were going to seek out Santana’s attention. She didn’t talk to Santana then, but she thought about Santana every now and then for the rest of the summer.
They were in the same homeroom, but they only got to be friends during drill team practice. They went from strangers in the same homeroom one day to friends the next. They were besties by the time that first semester was over and Santana had a Christmas stocking at her house every year after that. Mrs. Lopez always brought over tamales on Christmas Eve for her woefully Dutch family and her parents completely loved Mrs. Lopez for it.
Looking back at those years, Brittany didn’t know why she and Santana ever bothered hiding their relationship, because God, their parents had totally known and all that angst and hiding had been for nothing.
But one thing she knew for sure was that she and Santana needed to hide their relationship from their classmates. Well, they didn’t have to hide it so much as they made an effort not to disclose it. But Brittany knew most people knew-- and she also knew most people thought that Santana was too good for her, or that Santana would get bored of her and dump her. They were seniors in high school when Brittany realized that Santana wouldn’t do either of those things.
Brittany knew she only got through middle school because Santana methodically practiced imitating her handwriting to perfection. Even now Santana could imitate Brittany’s handwriting so perfectly, it could fool everyone. She finally had to put a stop to it when they got to high school because she was afraid Santana would get caught and get in trouble-- Santana had a real future ahead of her and Brittany didn’t want to jeopardize that. It wasn’t that she didn’t get the assignments-- most of the time, she did. But when it came time to tests, things just got all jumbled in her head.
It always took Santana twice as long to do her homework because she was always trying to help Brittany finish hers. Santana was always done with her assignments before Brittany was even halfway through with her first one, but Santana never seemed to mind the delay. She never seemed to mind that she was doing homework way longer than she had to solely for Brittany’s benefit.
Brittany thought about all those times when Mr. Schuester pulled her aside to tell her life got better after high school. Spanish was one of the few classes she had a pretty easy time in because most of it was verbal and she processed information easier that way. Mr. Schuester could tell her something once and she’d remember it, but if he wrote it on the board or put it on a worksheet or she had to read from a textbook, forget about it. She just gave up.
“You get it, Brittany,” he told her. He touched her shoulder encouragingly. “You can actually speak and understand Spanish, and that’s more important than getting an ‘A’ on a test. Life only gets better after high school.”
“Don’t some people peak in high school?” she asked, because God, she was so worried that she was going to be one of those people and her life wasn’t all that great. The best part of her life was Santana and she wasn’t sure if their lives were going to take them in the same places back then.
Mr. Schue’s eyes flickered for a moment, but only a moment. “Yes,” he admitted. “But you’re not one of them.”
She barely passed any of his tests, but he gave her an ‘A’ anyway because she could demonstrate that she could actually speak it. She kind of always loved him a little for that, and she loved him anyway because of glee.
They left McKinley and Brittany decided on New York so she could dance, and also because Rachel and Quinn were both headed there, too, and she thought it’d be nice to have friends. She’d been certain that Santana would take Berkeley-- it was cheaper, but instead, Santana decided on Columbia and racked up debt.
“It’s only money,” Santana said. “And I plan on making a buttload of it after I graduate, so who gives a shit about student loan debt anyway?”
Her life was better than she thought it would have been, but not really all that different from what she hoped it would be. Their life together was good, so good and it made up for all the times when she was a kid and her older brother called her a retard or her older sister called her special needs. It made up for all the times when she felt stupider than her little sister and best-related to her baby sister who was almost ten years younger than she was. It made up for all the giggles in her classes, the notes home from school teachers, the assessments for learning deficiencies and the tearful arguments with her parents who insisted she just wasn’t trying hard enough. It made up for all the times girls and boys she made out with in school told her she was lucky she was pretty because she was stupid. It made up for every time she flushed with humiliation and shame over not being smart enough.
When she and Santana were younger, they had a tendency to fixate about the wrong thing. They cared about popularity and status, they cared about what Coach Sylvester and everyone else thought about them, they cared about things like fancy cars, nice shoes and the latest technological advances and having those gadgets.
They still did sometimes.
But the one thing they always got right was each other. They’d left their hometown, they’d moved in and out of apartments, traded in hoopties for slightly more dependable cars before buying their first new cars, ever. They applied and interviewed for jobs (although technically, Santana interviewed and Brittany auditioned). Their wardrobes upgraded and their appliances were the expensive kind from Williams-Sonoma and not from Target. They had friends come and go out of their lives and had changes in their family. The things they fought about when they were kids were not the kinds of things they fought about now, but they fought about things now that they never fought about when they were kids, so it evened out. There’d been lots of changes in their lives, but not each other.
--
Santana brought two glasses of wine into the living room and set them on the coffee table. She smiled at Brittany and then moved to sit down in the space next to Brittany.
Brittany scrambled over and Santana sat right in Brittany’s lap.
“Brittany,” Santana scolded, exasperated, but she was laughing.
Brittany wrapped her arms around Santana’s waist. It felt good to have Santana in her lap.
“I can’t help it if the earth is moving. It’s physics. You can blame science.”
Santana chuckled and moved off Brittany’s lap. She sat close enough that their knees touched. She palmed Brittany’s cheek and gazed at Brittany’s face. Brittany was smiling at her and she looked so pretty. So pretty.
“You’re crazy,” Santana said affectionately.
“I know,” Brittany said, leaning forward and pressing a quick peck to Santana’s lips. She pulled back and peered into Santana’s eyes.
“I love you anyway,” Santana teased.
Brittany grinned at her. “I know.”
THE END
Pairing: Santana/Brittany
Rating: R
Summary: My Brittany/Santana stories tend to use the same details. Let’s assume they’re all vaguely related to one another, and then pretend they’re stand-alones when the details contradict each other. Some of the stuff may seem familiar is all I’m saying. This is fluff
Spoilers:Through The Power of Madonna to be safe.
Santana was the kind of person who was quick to embrace change, but once she found something she really liked or loved, she tended to stick with it. When she finally found a cell phone that she really loved, it was one of those older flip phone versions which everyone mocked her about because they said she was regressing. But she loved it and only gave it up because Brittany, in some incomprehensible moment of folly, super-glued Santana’s phone shut (and then got mad at Santana for not answering her phone when Brittany called because Brittany forgot about her little prank). It didn’t bother her much-- she wasn’t in any hurry to answer anyone’s phone calls other than Brittany and she thought Brittany should be punished a little for ruining a perfectly good phone just because Brittany apparently hated that phone for whatever reason. It would have saved Santana a lot of time if Brittany had just told her the sight of that ratty old, but incredibly functional phone annoyed the shit out of her.
When she got home that day, she was going up the stairs in their condo to the bedroom when she heard Brittany laughing. Santana planned on pretending to be annoyed so that Brittany would feel obliged to make up for super-gluing her cell phone shut (with sexual favors, natch) but once she heard Brittany laugh and then appear at the top of the stairs, it was over. She was still ludicrously in love with Brittany even after so many years together, so all she could do was laugh, too and fondly tell Brittany “you’re crazy.”
Brittany stood at the top of the stairs, and she looked beautiful. So beautiful. All she was wearing was her underwear and a white Kajagoogoo t-shirt that fell just a couple of inches past Brittney’s thighs. Santana walked up the stairs and Brittany just waited and watched. She stopped when she was two steps away from the top and stared at Brittany for a long moment.
Brittany’s lips curled into a broad smile. “Hi,” she greeted softly. She looked down at Santana and her hand reached out to cup Santana’s cheek.
Santana never understood how gestures like that could feel simultaneously new and familiar. Brittany touched her like that a lot--but it still made her blush. It was instinctive-- muscle memory, really, because she ducked her head and pressed her cheek even closer into Brittany’s hand. “Hi,” Santana said.
Brittany leaned down just as Santana stood on her tiptoes and their lips met in a kiss. Santana pulled back and shook her head. “You’re crazy,” she told Brittany fondly.
“Yeah,” Brittany agreed because as long as Santana liked crazy, at least in her, she didn’t mind being called crazy.
Santana shook her head again and laughed. She looked up at Brittany and thought about how pretty Brittany was. So pretty.
“You’re so pretty,” Santana murmured.
Brittany raised an eyebrow. She tilted her head forward and grinned crookedly. “Come with me,” she said, taking Santana by the hand and leading her to their bedroom.
--
People told Brittany to careful of her-- no one believed that she could be faithful to Brittany. “When you guys are 40,” Sarah Wong told Brittany back when they were still in high school, “she’ll probably trade you in for two 20 year olds. Assuming you guys even know each other when you’re 40, which you probably won’t,” Brittany thought that was hilarious because Brittany had enough faith in her to know that was untrue, but Santana wished she could stuff the ballot to make Sarah the Prom Queen just so she could Carrie stupid ass Sarah Wong.
“Two 20 year olds!” Brittany cackled. “If you were 40, you’d never leave me for two girls who aren’t even old to drink in public with you yet.” Brittany paused. “Although we’re not old enough to drink in public yet, so maybe by the time you’re 40, you won’t like to.” Brittany tilted her head to the side. “We do a lot of things together that you don’t like to do in public,” she said.
“That was very practical of you, B,” Santana told Brittany dryly, because honestly, Santana had no plans to leave Brittany, ever, so any speculation about the future was moot and not even up for discussion if those future plans didn’t include Brittany. And what she did with Brittany was private because it was theirs alone. Even when they were kids, Santana just knew.
“It’s you for me and me for you,” Santana told Brittany once.
The thing of it was, everything in her life was replaceable-- her phone, her car, her laptop, her iPod, her shoes, her clothes, whatever. But there would never be another Brittany and Brittany was really all she wanted. Brittany was her bread and water and everything else was empty calories.
--
The truth that she couldn’t admit to anyone (not even Brittany) was that Brittany was more likely to leave her than the other way around. She didn’t spent a lot of time thinking about that, because she had enough faith in her own appeal to be secure in Brittany’s love of her. But still, it was something she thought about nonetheless.
One would think there would be some things about Brittany that would annoy her-- when people were together long enough, there were inevitably things about the other person that initially seemed endearing and cute but became unbearably annoying. Quinn used to think it was cute that Rachel laughed in the shower even when she was by herself, but that always came up every time Quinn and Rachel fought. But she just loved Brittany so much that sometimes she annoyed the shit out of herself.
It didn’t mean she was always good to Brittany-- Santana wasn’t a nice person by nature, so she had more than her fair share of moments when she snapped or sniped at Brittany. But unlike everyone else, she apologized after she did and unlike with everyone else, she always tried to be good to Brittany. She honestly didn’t care about being good to anyone else, except her parents and that was because, shit, they were her parents. But she didn’t love her parents like she loved Brittany.
Brittany was the only person to whom she wanted to stay faithful, and this was true in ways that went beyond just the romantic, and it was definitely, emphatically, not subject to change. Santana could readily admit that she was a backstabber, but since people were never surprised that she was, could it really be considered backstabbing? The only people who truly inspired her loyalty was her family and Brittany. Oh, sure, she’d sold her brothers out to her parents when they were growing up for one reason or another, but she’d never hurt someone in her family when it mattered. Brittany was the only friend she’d never stab in the back and the only friend she considered a member of her family.
--
Their lives had long ago become so enmeshed with one another, it was impossible for Santana to think of a life without Brittany. There had been more than one occasion when her own mother called her Brittany. Brittany was over at the house so much, that Brittany’s name fell from the lips of the Lopez clan as easily and frequently as Santana’s name did. Brittany’s parents did the same, too. Once, when they were thirteen, Brittany’s mother called her Santana, and Brittany looked puzzled and asked, “when did you change my name to Santana?” Santana knew right away that Brittany wasn’t being sarcastic-- she was being literal. Later that night, Brittany declared “you know me better than anyone.” She seemed sad about it, which hurt Santana’s feelings and she spent a week punishing Brittany in little ways (subtle barbs, mean tones). It was another year before Santana realized that Brittany just felt like her family should know her best because she’d grown up with them. By the time they were 16 and hiding their relationship from their families, Brittany leaned in close one night and whispered, “In this whole world, I love you best because you know me best.”
--
They sat down to dinner and Santana tried to shake some salt into her soup. Instead, black pepper flakes came out.
“What the fuck?” Santana said, looking at the clear shaker with what was clearly salt in it. It was definitely the salt shaker, but pepper was coming out of it.
Brittany started to laugh and she pulled the salt shaker away from Santana. She unscrewed the top to reveal a circular piece of paper covering the opening of the shaker. On top of that small piece of paper was a heaping tablespoon of pepper. Brittany looked endlessly pleased. Brittany carefully put the pepper onto a napkin and then re-screwed the top onto the salt shaker. “See?” she asked. “It’s the salt shaker, but then pepper comes out.”
Santana raised an eyebrow. “Is it April Fools?”
Brittany smiled. “You’d expect it on April Fools.”
Santana laughed. She couldn’t be mad. She wasn’t even annoyed. “You’re crazy,” she said fondly.
Brittany grinned crookedly. “You like crazy.”
Santana nodded in agreement. “Only in you.”
--
Brittany met Santana when they were eleven. She spotted Santana in line at the summer drill team tryouts the summer before sixth grade when they were transitioning from primary school to middle school. Santana didn’t talk to anyone, and wasn’t all that social, but Brittany could tell that Santana was going to make the team and that the other girls were going to seek out Santana’s attention. She didn’t talk to Santana then, but she thought about Santana every now and then for the rest of the summer.
They were in the same homeroom, but they only got to be friends during drill team practice. They went from strangers in the same homeroom one day to friends the next. They were besties by the time that first semester was over and Santana had a Christmas stocking at her house every year after that. Mrs. Lopez always brought over tamales on Christmas Eve for her woefully Dutch family and her parents completely loved Mrs. Lopez for it.
Looking back at those years, Brittany didn’t know why she and Santana ever bothered hiding their relationship, because God, their parents had totally known and all that angst and hiding had been for nothing.
But one thing she knew for sure was that she and Santana needed to hide their relationship from their classmates. Well, they didn’t have to hide it so much as they made an effort not to disclose it. But Brittany knew most people knew-- and she also knew most people thought that Santana was too good for her, or that Santana would get bored of her and dump her. They were seniors in high school when Brittany realized that Santana wouldn’t do either of those things.
Brittany knew she only got through middle school because Santana methodically practiced imitating her handwriting to perfection. Even now Santana could imitate Brittany’s handwriting so perfectly, it could fool everyone. She finally had to put a stop to it when they got to high school because she was afraid Santana would get caught and get in trouble-- Santana had a real future ahead of her and Brittany didn’t want to jeopardize that. It wasn’t that she didn’t get the assignments-- most of the time, she did. But when it came time to tests, things just got all jumbled in her head.
It always took Santana twice as long to do her homework because she was always trying to help Brittany finish hers. Santana was always done with her assignments before Brittany was even halfway through with her first one, but Santana never seemed to mind the delay. She never seemed to mind that she was doing homework way longer than she had to solely for Brittany’s benefit.
Brittany thought about all those times when Mr. Schuester pulled her aside to tell her life got better after high school. Spanish was one of the few classes she had a pretty easy time in because most of it was verbal and she processed information easier that way. Mr. Schuester could tell her something once and she’d remember it, but if he wrote it on the board or put it on a worksheet or she had to read from a textbook, forget about it. She just gave up.
“You get it, Brittany,” he told her. He touched her shoulder encouragingly. “You can actually speak and understand Spanish, and that’s more important than getting an ‘A’ on a test. Life only gets better after high school.”
“Don’t some people peak in high school?” she asked, because God, she was so worried that she was going to be one of those people and her life wasn’t all that great. The best part of her life was Santana and she wasn’t sure if their lives were going to take them in the same places back then.
Mr. Schue’s eyes flickered for a moment, but only a moment. “Yes,” he admitted. “But you’re not one of them.”
She barely passed any of his tests, but he gave her an ‘A’ anyway because she could demonstrate that she could actually speak it. She kind of always loved him a little for that, and she loved him anyway because of glee.
They left McKinley and Brittany decided on New York so she could dance, and also because Rachel and Quinn were both headed there, too, and she thought it’d be nice to have friends. She’d been certain that Santana would take Berkeley-- it was cheaper, but instead, Santana decided on Columbia and racked up debt.
“It’s only money,” Santana said. “And I plan on making a buttload of it after I graduate, so who gives a shit about student loan debt anyway?”
Her life was better than she thought it would have been, but not really all that different from what she hoped it would be. Their life together was good, so good and it made up for all the times when she was a kid and her older brother called her a retard or her older sister called her special needs. It made up for all the times when she felt stupider than her little sister and best-related to her baby sister who was almost ten years younger than she was. It made up for all the giggles in her classes, the notes home from school teachers, the assessments for learning deficiencies and the tearful arguments with her parents who insisted she just wasn’t trying hard enough. It made up for all the times girls and boys she made out with in school told her she was lucky she was pretty because she was stupid. It made up for every time she flushed with humiliation and shame over not being smart enough.
When she and Santana were younger, they had a tendency to fixate about the wrong thing. They cared about popularity and status, they cared about what Coach Sylvester and everyone else thought about them, they cared about things like fancy cars, nice shoes and the latest technological advances and having those gadgets.
They still did sometimes.
But the one thing they always got right was each other. They’d left their hometown, they’d moved in and out of apartments, traded in hoopties for slightly more dependable cars before buying their first new cars, ever. They applied and interviewed for jobs (although technically, Santana interviewed and Brittany auditioned). Their wardrobes upgraded and their appliances were the expensive kind from Williams-Sonoma and not from Target. They had friends come and go out of their lives and had changes in their family. The things they fought about when they were kids were not the kinds of things they fought about now, but they fought about things now that they never fought about when they were kids, so it evened out. There’d been lots of changes in their lives, but not each other.
--
Santana brought two glasses of wine into the living room and set them on the coffee table. She smiled at Brittany and then moved to sit down in the space next to Brittany.
Brittany scrambled over and Santana sat right in Brittany’s lap.
“Brittany,” Santana scolded, exasperated, but she was laughing.
Brittany wrapped her arms around Santana’s waist. It felt good to have Santana in her lap.
“I can’t help it if the earth is moving. It’s physics. You can blame science.”
Santana chuckled and moved off Brittany’s lap. She sat close enough that their knees touched. She palmed Brittany’s cheek and gazed at Brittany’s face. Brittany was smiling at her and she looked so pretty. So pretty.
“You’re crazy,” Santana said affectionately.
“I know,” Brittany said, leaning forward and pressing a quick peck to Santana’s lips. She pulled back and peered into Santana’s eyes.
“I love you anyway,” Santana teased.
Brittany grinned at her. “I know.”
THE END