Fic: Shoebox of Photographs [Glee, Santana/Brittany]
Title: Shoebox of Photographs
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Santana/Brittany
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5k
Summary: She's sixteen when she starts collecting people.
Spoilers: Up to 1.18 (not massively, but let's be safe)
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue.
Notes: I sat down to write my next nerdverse installment but instead I wrote this. oO oops. I was also too lazy to actually do the math on what year Santana would be what age and what grade and what movies came out that year or blah blah blah, so the timeline is mostly probably inaccurate but you know what, I DON'T REALLY CARE. I'm committed to my work like that...
If there was one thing that people didn't really know about Santana Lopez it was that she was a collector.
When she's five, she likes to collect rocks. There's a box in the corner of her closet full of different kinds, some shiny, some dull, but she loves all of them. She doesn't tell anyone because even at five she realizes the importance of not appearing like totally lame, but at night she sneaks into her closet, turns the light on and shuts the door. She spends hours looking at all her rocks, turning them over in her palm and watching the light play over them.
At five, her favorite rock is this big quartz her mom buys her at a science museum. She'll learn, when she's older, that it's actually called an amethyst, but the label at the museum store said QUARTZ and that's what she remembers. It's purple and pretty and she likes it best when she turns it under the light of her closet, watches the light reflect off the crystal.
At eighteen, her favorite rock is still a quartz, but this one is a small polished tiger's eye. She finds it on a Tuesday. She's eight.
There's this really great park outside her house. Well it's not really a park so much as a little mini forest and it's great for finding new rocks. In the afternoon, instead of doing things most kids her age do like homework or watching TV or hanging out with friends, she sneaks off into her forest and looks for rocks. She doesn't notice the other girl right away, it's rare that anyone else would be on these trails anyway so when she hears the soft voice behind her she almost falls over (she actually does fall over, but she doesn't like to tell people that).
"What are you doing?"
When she turns around enough to face her intruder she's surprised to see that the voice behind her belongs to a blonde girl she recognizes from her school. Brittany, she thinks. The other girl, already tall for her age, is looming over her, staring quizzically at Santana's crouching form, her dirt stained hands, and the small Ziploc bag beside her knee, already full of rocks.
Santana thinks about lying, making up some excuse for why she's searching around in the dirt, but for some reason her voice disobeys her and "Looking for rocks," comes out before she can say anything else.
"Cool!" Brittany exclaims, crouching down beside her and putting her hands down beside Santana's, palms on the ground. "Can I help?"
Santana doesn't say yes, just looks at the other girl and nods a little, gives a shrug that says whatever before going back to her task. It takes her a little bit to adjust to having another person help her, but it's kind of fun. She gets to share her excitement over a good find with someone else for the first time and Brittany never wavers once in her enthusiasm. An hour later Brittany finds a particularly awesome rock.
"Wow! Look at this one," she exclaims, holding it out for Santana to inspect.
It's really cool. Like really cool. Not as cool as her amythest, but she likes it a lot regardless. It's all brown and orange and goldish and smooth like the rocks at the museum. She wants it. Bad.
But Brittany found it and she can feel the dread creeping into her stomach like seeing a really amazing toy on TV and then not getting it for Christmas. She has manners at this age and she's not a complete and total bitch yet and she knows that finders keepers is definitely the law of the land and therefore Brittany will be starting her rock collection with an extremely cool new rock.
But then, before she can think of some way to convince Brittany that the rock is really dumb and she should just throw it back on the ground (where Santana can come back later and retrieve it), the blonde is pressing the small cold rock into her palm, eyes bright with happiness and excitement. She thinks it's just so that Santana can look it over but Brittany's moving away from her and going back to look for more rocks, not hovering over her hand like Santana would be, protecting her newfound property.
"You like it, right?" Brittany asks, looking over her shoulder, her eyes wide and innocent and that's when Santana realizes it. Brittany just found one of the coolest rocks she's ever found on this trail and she's giving it to Santana.
"It's great," she whispers in an awe-filled voice, alternating her gaze between Brittany and the new rock. "Thanks."
"Good!" And Brittany's back to crawling through the dirt.
Santana decides right then and there that they were going to be best friends. And so they are.
--
When she's seven, she likes to collect bottle caps. There's a box for these too that sits right next to her rock collection in her closet. At seven years old her favorite bottle cap is from a bottle of Miller Chill her dad drinks one Sunday evening. She sneaks into the kitchen late at night and digs the cap out of the trash and whenever she holds it she feels all kinds of rebellious, like having the bottle cap to a beer is the same as drinking one.
At eighteen, though, her favorite bottle cap is from a bottle of ABC root beer she drinks when she's thirteen. It had been a long day in the summer and she remembers being tired, and hot, and sick of having to do these dumb pre-highschool cheer camps.
By thirteen she was joined at the hip with Brittany, so fused together that people already considered them one entity, so she knows, that if she's in a bad mood, Brittany probably is too. But when her best friend comes to sit with her on the front porch of her house, there's a wide infectious smile on her face, and she's holding two brown bottles, dripping with condensation in the humid summer air.
"Hey," Brittany greets, handing her a cold bottle and taking a seat next to her.
"Hi," Santana returns, twisting the cap off of the bottle and taking a long sip of the liquid. The root beer feels good going down her parched throat and she gulps at it greedily before hearing Brittany giggle next to her.
She wipes her lips with the back of her hand before asking, "What's so funny?"
"Life," Brittany answers and if it were anyone else Santana might roll her eyes (she's already adept at doing so at thirteen), but she starts giggling instead because this is Brittany and Santana's pretty sure that in Brittany's world, life is pretty funny.
"Yeah," Santana agrees with a chuckle and another long pull of her root beer.
"I love you, you know," Brittany says with the same humor in her voice as before. It's not the first time Brittany's said it to her, it's not like Santana has never heard the words, or has never said them back, but even at thirteen she can recognize that Brittany's really the only person in her life that says it and makes it feel like it's true, like Santana can't not believe in it. It makes her chest feel tight every time, even though she doesn't really know why.
"I know," Santana replies, playing with the bottle cap she twisted off in her hand and feeling the sharp edge of it cut into her fingers. "I know," she repeats, smiling and bumping her shoulder against the other girl.
At the time, the moment is pretty insignificant, lost in the collection of many hot summer afternoons and hundreds of bottles of soda and millions of times Brittany says the same three words to her, but when she's older, looking back at her life, for some reason this afternoon, this bottle of root beer, and these specific three words come back to her the most.
Maybe it's the way Brittany looked at her, or the way her voice sounded, soft and warm, mingling with the warmth of the sun on their faces and the hot breeze that ruffled their hair. Maybe it's that Brittany knew exactly what Santana needed, a cold soda and a happy reminder that she's loved, or maybe it's the way Santana realized that she so sick of summer camps and school and all the other things thirteen year olds are sick of but she can't imagine ever getting sick of this - sitting with Brittany, her hair a sweaty mess and her thighs aching from exhaustion, but her heart light as air and an exuberance in her lungs that wasn't there five minutes ago.
She doesn't think anything of it when she first takes that bottle cap and puts it in her box (it's instinct more than anything), but at eighteen, when she pulls it out to look at it, a storm of memories comes out.
--
When she's ten, she likes to collect movie ticket stubs, much to the annoyance of her mother who considers them nothing more than trash. She doesn't keep these in a box, but she does keep them in her closet. There's this large poster board sized corkboard that rests against the back of her closet, half obscured by hanging clothes but easily accessible. A few weeks after she decides to start collecting the stubs there, it's already covered in the tiny pieces of paper. Some are from midnight premieres of Harry Potter that she will never admit to having gone to and some are from cheesy romantic comedies that she sees with Brittany to pass the time on a lazy Saturday morning.
At ten, her favorite ticket stub is the one to The Notebook. She doesn't admit it after they see the movie, because, again, she's not like, lame, but she loved it. A lot. Ryan Gosling is her summer crush that year and Rachel McAdams has this laugh in the beginning of the movie that makes her feel all warm and gooey like she believes in things like love and destiny and soulmates.
At eighteen, her favorite ticket stub is this one that's nearly falling apart - it's frayed at the edges and the words are barely legible, almost destroyed by being washed in the pocket of her favorite jeans. But Santana is well acquainted with this stub and she can still make out the name of that stupid action flick she and Brittany saw when they were fifteen. The actual movie isn't that memorable and even though she can kind of recognize the faded title that's not why the ticket stub is important.
When the see the movie she'd already been kissing her best friend for months and by fifteen she's doing a really good job of pretending like that is totally normal. They're not like dating or anything gay like that, just making out on Santana's couch when her mom works late or in that treehouse in Brittany's back yard when they finally escape her little sister.
Santana doesn't analyze it because she doesn't want it to stop and she's pretty sure if she thinks about it for more than two seconds she'll realize just how gay it really all is and will have to actually do something about it. But Brittany seems content to ignore all the implications of their kissing and just go with the flow, happy to tangle her fingers with Santana's and press their lips together while hiding from the world.
They don't do it in public, obviously. Santana is a master commander at keeping secrets anyway so it's not hard to hide the fact that her new favorite afternoon hobby is making out with her best friend, who is a girl.
But then, they go see this movie that Brittany wants to see. Santana's skeptical because she's pretty sure she saw the preview and some guy definitely gets his head blown off and his arm mutilated and that's just the trailer. Brittany can barely watch The Little Mermaid without getting freaked out, much less something as gory as she expects this film to be. But while Santana may be good at a lot of things, refusing things to Brittany is not one of them, so they go to the theater.
The thing that's memorable isn't so much that she buys both of their tickets and their popcorn and some orange soda Brittany loves (with only one straw) and it all feels suspiciously like a date. No, the thing that's memorable is that Brittany picks a seat in the back of the theater and ten minutes after the film actually starts, slides her hand to settle on Santana's thigh.
It's not really the hand that's shocking, or the feel of Brittany's lips on hers that follows, those are two things she's definitely felt before, but it's always been in the privacy of an empty house or behind the locked door of a bedroom. Now, it feels startlingly public, like she's on stage and in a spotlight and someone is definitely going to notice them.
And sure, the theater is empty, and it's dark and they're in the back, but Santana can't stop the fear that grips her throat and flips her stomach over because she put too much effort into being popular and she'd be really pissed if this is what topples her.
"Britt," she says, gently, because this is still her best friend and she does want to make out with her, just not in a place where someone she knows can walk in and see them. So she puts her hand on Brittany's where it's gripping her thigh and pulls away far enough that Brittany would have to lean way over the armrest to kiss her again. "We can't do that here."
Brittany pouts and Santana hates the way that, in the dim light from the movie, she can almost see the glisten of her lip gloss smeared across Brittany's mouth. It makes her want to kiss Brittany again and the next question doesn't help to strengthen her resolve. "Why not? I like kissing you," Brittany states, as if that was what was stopping Santana.
"I know, we just can't do that here," she whispers back, looking around the theater to confirm yet again that there's no one else there.
The look on Brittany's face tells Santana that her friend isn't really happy about this new rule, but Santana needs her to understand. Needs her to understand that she still wants to kiss her and that when they get home later and lock the door to her bedroom, put on that new song Brittany won't stop humming, she'll tug Brittany down to the floor, wrap her legs around the other girl, and block out the world for long moments. They just can't do that here, in this theater.
Santana sighs with relief when Brittany finally seems to understand. "But we can later?"
"Yeah," Santana answers, head bobbing up and down in what she imagines is an embarrassingly eager manner.
"Okay, good," Brittany replies, sitting back in her chair but keeping her hand on Santana's thigh. Santana keeps her hand there too, lets her fingers intertwine with Brittany's and settles back into her seat. She looks at their hands, gripping each other and thinks that this probably looks pretty gay too, but they're besties and holding hands is way easier to play off than shoving her tongue down her friend's throat.
Later, when they get home, and Brittany slips her hand down Santana's pants for the first time, it's a lot harder for Santana to deny how gay the whole thing is.
--
When she's thirteen, she starts collecting insults. It's not a conscious thought or anything but when she gets to middle school it just happens. Part of it, she thinks, is from following Quinn's lead. They're friends by this point, having gone to school together for years, and having had their parents arrange playdates since they were young, but it's more out of habit than actual friendship. It's not that she doesn't like Quinn, it's just different.
So when she's thirteen, she already stands over Quinn's left shoulder, manages her best glare and insults whoever it is Quinn has deemed they're going to bully that week. It doesn't take long before she realizes she kind of has a talent for insults. Brittany? Not so much.
They're thirteen and Quinn is top dog, and since Santana is at her left shoulder it means Brittany is at her right. It happens without any questioning, even Quinn Fabray seeming to understand that Santana and Brittany are kind of a package deal. But Brittany's glare is really more of a blank stare and her insults do more to confuse the person than actually hurt their feelings.
Santana decides that if they're going to survive the changes in their social climate, that her best friend really needs to up her game. Even at thirteen Santana is already skilled at recognizing the importance of social status. Coupled with her vast array of insults that she can sling at people, she's like a veteran soldier on the battlefield that is middle school social politics. What good are her skills if she can't train her best friend?
Maybe it's a little bit weird, but there's actually a box in her closet for the insults she comes up with and one night when Brittany's over, she pulls it out from under that big stuffed teddy bear she swears she doesn't have.
"You need to stop calling people a two-headed platypus, it doesn't make any sense, Britt."
Brittany tilts her head to one side. "Why? It's weird," Brittany argues. "I'm calling them weird. What normal platypus has two heads?"
"I get that, but they don't," Santana answers, but it doesn't seem to be acceptable to her friend. "Just trust me," she settles with.
And that Brittany accepts. "Okay."
Santana pulls out the notebook she keeps in this box, pages full of bizarre and scathing insults she's thought of and scrawled down so she didn't forget them. She flips to a blank page and settles the book between them.
"Let's brainstorm," she suggests.
They spend the next hour with their heads pressed close together over Santana's notebook, scribbling down some of Brittany's more brilliant suggestions and delivering them in the funniest voices they can muster.
At thirteen, her favorite insult is Treasure Trail. It's weird and kind of scandalous which makes Santana love it all the more and when she suggests it to Quinn one day the blonde girl smiles at her conspiratorially and tells her it's excellent. She hears Quinn say it to Rachel Berry a week later and the look on the brunette's face is a satisfying enough reward for Santana, even if she didn't get to say it herself.
At eighteen, when she pulls out that old book full of insults, her favorite one isn't something she came up with. It isn't even an insult at all really. Her favorite thing in that notebook is the page filled with the ideas she brainstormed with Brittany that night. There's nothing particularly stellar on that page, though some of the suggestions Brittany came up with are still pretty humorous years later.
But at eighteen, her favorite thing in her collection of insults is the little hearts Brittany drew absentmindedly in the margins. They're all over the page, some big, some small and some with the letters S and B written in the middle. Santana thinks it's those hearts she likes the most.
--
She's sixteen when she starts collecting people. It starts with Quinn. She's been one of Quinn's minions since thirteen when middle school started being a place where everyone divided into cliques and Santana was smart enough to recognize which were the good alliances and which were the bad ones. They get to high school and it's not long before Santana learns how important it is to know people. Friends become important, not for having someone to confide in, or eat ice cream with, or any of that sappy crap, but as people to make her look better. And at sixteen, Quinn Fabray is the girl to know. At least for a little while.
When Quinn falls from grace, Santana decides to keep her anyway. She tries to convince herself that it's a strategic move - nothing keeps Quinn Fabray down for long and she'd bet good money that a year from now the ex-Cheerio would be back on top, the hallways parting before her like the Red Sea again. That's what she tells herself and it's not really a lie, but there's a small part of her that thinks of Quinn as a real friend, not just the kind she collects. She's not Brittany or anything, because that's a whole different situation, but she's known Quinn since she was a kid and she just doesn't have the heart to throw away such an old piece in her collection.
The next person she adds is Puck. Once she has Quinn, it becomes apparent that it's not just friends that you need, but having a boyfriend seriously boosts your social capital in school. So, Santana goes after Noah Puckerman, because she's always been one to aim high and Puck is easily the hottest guy in school, or so people say. He's disgustingly easy to collect, a few swishes of her Cheerio's skirt and a wink and he's practically eating out of her hand.
When Puck falls from grace, Santana keeps him too. She gives the same reasons as she gave for Quinn, that it's only a matter of time before he's back on top, but somewhere along the way Noah Puckerman like, becomes her friend or something. She thinks maybe it's the time he catches her making out with Brittany in a bathroom at his house. It's some stupid party of his and she had one too many wine coolers and it all led to her tugging Brittany upstairs and pressing her against the bathroom counter. Puck stumbles in, long minutes later and his eyes get comically large as he processes the scene.
For whatever reason, Puck never tells a soul. Days later, when they talk about it in their mutual emotionally stunted way, and Puck bumps his fist against her shoulder in companionship, she decides that she doesn't really have the heart to throw away a surprise like Puck. When he makes the stupid decision to start dating Mercedes, she gives a really good impression of territorial rage. He's a part of her collection, he has to remain that way.
Santana's been collecting things since she was five and she knows that a great collection has all the rare items, the hardest to find gems, the most nostalgic-inducing objects. Quinn is undeniably shiny and any collection worth having is one that includes Quinn Fabray. Puck, is duller, but still rare and he's interesting enough to add pizazz to her collection.
Santana's seventeen when she realizes she wants to add Brittany to her collection.
It sounds dumb, right? Because she's been friends with Brittany since they were eight and she's been doing the naked horizontal tango with the girl since they were fifteen. But she's never really felt like she had Brittany. Not in the way she has Quinn or Puck.
Which is just completely absurd, because Brittany has always been her one constant, the one thing that never went away or dulled with age. She never got sick of being with Brittany and Brittany never got tired of telling Santana that she loved her and why she feels the need to collect Brittany she has no idea. She just knows that she's got this little collection of people and she'll never feel like she has a complete set until she has Brittany.
It's funny, because Santana thinks it would be hilarious if she kept this collection in the closet like some big gay metaphor for whatever it is she is doing with Brittany, but obviously, she can't keep like, human bodies, in her closet without being some serial killer person or whatever so she has another box. It sits next to her rock collection and her bottle cap collection, neither of which will she ever throw out, and it's filled with pictures.
She almost puts the pictures up on the walls of her closet, spread out so she can see them all at once but she realizes that's not really stifling the whole serial killer thing because she's seen enough Law and Order to know that only serial killers and stalkers have closets like that.
When she's eighteen, looking through the box, she thinks that it's her most prized collection.
The first picture is of her and Quinn in their Cheerio's uniform. Quinn had just made head cheerleader and Santana was ceremoniously dubbed her second-in-command. Coach Sylvester takes the picture of them one day after practice and Santana thinks that maybe Coach collects people too. She certainly collects trophies. She sneaks into her office later that day, at her own peril, and finds the picture sitting out on the desk. For a minute she's disappointed that she didn't discover some drawer filled of old pictures of head cheerleaders but she can't deny that having it sit out like that makes it easier to add it to her collection. So she grabs the picture and sneaks away as fast as she can. It's the first picture she puts in the box.
The second picture is of her and Puck. She's still in her Cheerio's uniform and he's in his football uniform and she thinks the picture almost looks normal, like they're an ordinary midwestern couple - cheerleader, football player, a stereotype, it practically screams American Heartland. But Santana knows better and she remembers when the picture was taken (by Brittany after a game) and she remembers the blow job she gave the mowhawked boy minutes later under the bleachers. They were never normal. They would never be normal.
The third picture is of glee club, taken after they took regionals and all their smiles are wide, their faces projecting surprise and joy and exhaustion. Her arm is wrapped tightly around Brittany and Quinn and she looks, happy. She remembers the party afterwards when they all crushed into Puck's hotel room and got drunk on whatever cheap liquor they could find as high schoolers. She remembers the rest of the club like, hanging out with her, and laughing with her and dancing with her and completely failing to be afraid of her. It's one of the only times she remembers thinking of them as her friends.
The fourth picture is of her and Quinn again but this time they're in a hospital and there's a pink bundle in Quinn's arm. The blonde's hair is matted with sweat and she looks kind of similar to the last picture. Her face a mixture of happiness and tiredness and awe. Santana is standing by the side of the bed and Rachel Berry is on the other side. Santana thinks it's the only picture, besides the glee club one of course, that she and Rachel Berry are in together. From the look on both their faces, neither she nor Rachel are pretty excited about being in the picture together.
She can remember the day vivdly, Quinn going into labor and Brittany pulling on Santana's arm as she raced through the hospital corridors to get to their friend. Rachel was already there, holding onto Quinn's hand and when Brittany made them stand there so she could take a picture with their new addition, Santana couldn't refuse. Even to this day she's still shit at saying no to Brittany.
There are more pictures in the box but her favorite one is fifth. It's of her and Brittany on graduation. They're standing close together, both in matching red robes and caps and massive smiles on her face. The picture isn't anything special really, it's a pretty standard best friends graduation picture, but Santana remembers what happens next, right after her mom took the picture. She can still feel Brittany's lips against her own and the knowledge that the whole student body of WMHS was watching them and that she didn't give a shit. At all. It's exhilarating and frightening and she had never been more happy in her life.
For the first time ever she felt like she actually collected Brittany, she finally had her and her collection was finally complete.
When she was sixteen she made this box so she could collect people but at eighteen, when she's cleaning out her closet and moving out to college, she realizes that this is a collection of memories. Memories so dear to her that she's glad her sixteen year old self decided to start the collection, no matter how misguided.
--
She never throws any of them out and when she moves into a brand new apartment at the age of twenty-two, Brittany helps her organize a closet specifically for them. She's never really shown Brittany the collections, not thoroughly, even though her girlfriend knows they exist.
So when they're twenty-two and they've finished moving into their new apartment, exhausted and excited, Santana brings the boxes out to their living room. There's no real furniture in the room, so Santana takes a spot on the floor and spreads them out in front of her, grabs Brittany's hand and pulls her down to sit next to her.
Brittany's whole face lights up when she realizes what Santana's showing her, like she's being bestowed this great honor, and seriously, Santana doesn't think anyone's ever loved her the way Brittany does.
When she's twenty-two, she likes to collect memories. Her favorite, is the way Brittany's face looks when she sees that old tiger's eye and then the ABC root beer bottle cap and even that page full of hearts. Santana won't ever forget the way Brittany picked up the movie stub, reverently, like it was a prized possession (which, to Santana, it was).
At twenty-two, this is her favorite memory. Brittany sees the picture of the two of them at graduation and Santana wants to memorize her girlfriend's smile forever. She wants to etch the way Brittany whispers "I love you," against her lips into the back of her brain and when Brittany pulls out a small black box and asks her shyly, like she's not sure how Santana's going to respond, "Marry me?" Santana thinks that nothing will ever top this moment.
--
When she's twenty-eight, Santana meets her newborn baby for the first time. Brittany is in a hospital bed, sweaty and exhausted and looking like she wants to smack Santana for ever convincing her that this would be a good idea, but the blonde's face softens as she greets their new addition and Santana can't help the way her mind wanders to a closet full of rocks and bottle caps until Brittany looks up at her and tugs her down by the collar of her shirt.
Their faces are inches apart when Brittany says, in a low voice full of warning. "You are not collecting babies."
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Santana/Brittany
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5k
Summary: She's sixteen when she starts collecting people.
Spoilers: Up to 1.18 (not massively, but let's be safe)
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue.
Notes: I sat down to write my next nerdverse installment but instead I wrote this. oO oops. I was also too lazy to actually do the math on what year Santana would be what age and what grade and what movies came out that year or blah blah blah, so the timeline is mostly probably inaccurate but you know what, I DON'T REALLY CARE. I'm committed to my work like that...
If there was one thing that people didn't really know about Santana Lopez it was that she was a collector.
When she's five, she likes to collect rocks. There's a box in the corner of her closet full of different kinds, some shiny, some dull, but she loves all of them. She doesn't tell anyone because even at five she realizes the importance of not appearing like totally lame, but at night she sneaks into her closet, turns the light on and shuts the door. She spends hours looking at all her rocks, turning them over in her palm and watching the light play over them.
At five, her favorite rock is this big quartz her mom buys her at a science museum. She'll learn, when she's older, that it's actually called an amethyst, but the label at the museum store said QUARTZ and that's what she remembers. It's purple and pretty and she likes it best when she turns it under the light of her closet, watches the light reflect off the crystal.
At eighteen, her favorite rock is still a quartz, but this one is a small polished tiger's eye. She finds it on a Tuesday. She's eight.
There's this really great park outside her house. Well it's not really a park so much as a little mini forest and it's great for finding new rocks. In the afternoon, instead of doing things most kids her age do like homework or watching TV or hanging out with friends, she sneaks off into her forest and looks for rocks. She doesn't notice the other girl right away, it's rare that anyone else would be on these trails anyway so when she hears the soft voice behind her she almost falls over (she actually does fall over, but she doesn't like to tell people that).
"What are you doing?"
When she turns around enough to face her intruder she's surprised to see that the voice behind her belongs to a blonde girl she recognizes from her school. Brittany, she thinks. The other girl, already tall for her age, is looming over her, staring quizzically at Santana's crouching form, her dirt stained hands, and the small Ziploc bag beside her knee, already full of rocks.
Santana thinks about lying, making up some excuse for why she's searching around in the dirt, but for some reason her voice disobeys her and "Looking for rocks," comes out before she can say anything else.
"Cool!" Brittany exclaims, crouching down beside her and putting her hands down beside Santana's, palms on the ground. "Can I help?"
Santana doesn't say yes, just looks at the other girl and nods a little, gives a shrug that says whatever before going back to her task. It takes her a little bit to adjust to having another person help her, but it's kind of fun. She gets to share her excitement over a good find with someone else for the first time and Brittany never wavers once in her enthusiasm. An hour later Brittany finds a particularly awesome rock.
"Wow! Look at this one," she exclaims, holding it out for Santana to inspect.
It's really cool. Like really cool. Not as cool as her amythest, but she likes it a lot regardless. It's all brown and orange and goldish and smooth like the rocks at the museum. She wants it. Bad.
But Brittany found it and she can feel the dread creeping into her stomach like seeing a really amazing toy on TV and then not getting it for Christmas. She has manners at this age and she's not a complete and total bitch yet and she knows that finders keepers is definitely the law of the land and therefore Brittany will be starting her rock collection with an extremely cool new rock.
But then, before she can think of some way to convince Brittany that the rock is really dumb and she should just throw it back on the ground (where Santana can come back later and retrieve it), the blonde is pressing the small cold rock into her palm, eyes bright with happiness and excitement. She thinks it's just so that Santana can look it over but Brittany's moving away from her and going back to look for more rocks, not hovering over her hand like Santana would be, protecting her newfound property.
"You like it, right?" Brittany asks, looking over her shoulder, her eyes wide and innocent and that's when Santana realizes it. Brittany just found one of the coolest rocks she's ever found on this trail and she's giving it to Santana.
"It's great," she whispers in an awe-filled voice, alternating her gaze between Brittany and the new rock. "Thanks."
"Good!" And Brittany's back to crawling through the dirt.
Santana decides right then and there that they were going to be best friends. And so they are.
--
When she's seven, she likes to collect bottle caps. There's a box for these too that sits right next to her rock collection in her closet. At seven years old her favorite bottle cap is from a bottle of Miller Chill her dad drinks one Sunday evening. She sneaks into the kitchen late at night and digs the cap out of the trash and whenever she holds it she feels all kinds of rebellious, like having the bottle cap to a beer is the same as drinking one.
At eighteen, though, her favorite bottle cap is from a bottle of ABC root beer she drinks when she's thirteen. It had been a long day in the summer and she remembers being tired, and hot, and sick of having to do these dumb pre-highschool cheer camps.
By thirteen she was joined at the hip with Brittany, so fused together that people already considered them one entity, so she knows, that if she's in a bad mood, Brittany probably is too. But when her best friend comes to sit with her on the front porch of her house, there's a wide infectious smile on her face, and she's holding two brown bottles, dripping with condensation in the humid summer air.
"Hey," Brittany greets, handing her a cold bottle and taking a seat next to her.
"Hi," Santana returns, twisting the cap off of the bottle and taking a long sip of the liquid. The root beer feels good going down her parched throat and she gulps at it greedily before hearing Brittany giggle next to her.
She wipes her lips with the back of her hand before asking, "What's so funny?"
"Life," Brittany answers and if it were anyone else Santana might roll her eyes (she's already adept at doing so at thirteen), but she starts giggling instead because this is Brittany and Santana's pretty sure that in Brittany's world, life is pretty funny.
"Yeah," Santana agrees with a chuckle and another long pull of her root beer.
"I love you, you know," Brittany says with the same humor in her voice as before. It's not the first time Brittany's said it to her, it's not like Santana has never heard the words, or has never said them back, but even at thirteen she can recognize that Brittany's really the only person in her life that says it and makes it feel like it's true, like Santana can't not believe in it. It makes her chest feel tight every time, even though she doesn't really know why.
"I know," Santana replies, playing with the bottle cap she twisted off in her hand and feeling the sharp edge of it cut into her fingers. "I know," she repeats, smiling and bumping her shoulder against the other girl.
At the time, the moment is pretty insignificant, lost in the collection of many hot summer afternoons and hundreds of bottles of soda and millions of times Brittany says the same three words to her, but when she's older, looking back at her life, for some reason this afternoon, this bottle of root beer, and these specific three words come back to her the most.
Maybe it's the way Brittany looked at her, or the way her voice sounded, soft and warm, mingling with the warmth of the sun on their faces and the hot breeze that ruffled their hair. Maybe it's that Brittany knew exactly what Santana needed, a cold soda and a happy reminder that she's loved, or maybe it's the way Santana realized that she so sick of summer camps and school and all the other things thirteen year olds are sick of but she can't imagine ever getting sick of this - sitting with Brittany, her hair a sweaty mess and her thighs aching from exhaustion, but her heart light as air and an exuberance in her lungs that wasn't there five minutes ago.
She doesn't think anything of it when she first takes that bottle cap and puts it in her box (it's instinct more than anything), but at eighteen, when she pulls it out to look at it, a storm of memories comes out.
--
When she's ten, she likes to collect movie ticket stubs, much to the annoyance of her mother who considers them nothing more than trash. She doesn't keep these in a box, but she does keep them in her closet. There's this large poster board sized corkboard that rests against the back of her closet, half obscured by hanging clothes but easily accessible. A few weeks after she decides to start collecting the stubs there, it's already covered in the tiny pieces of paper. Some are from midnight premieres of Harry Potter that she will never admit to having gone to and some are from cheesy romantic comedies that she sees with Brittany to pass the time on a lazy Saturday morning.
At ten, her favorite ticket stub is the one to The Notebook. She doesn't admit it after they see the movie, because, again, she's not like, lame, but she loved it. A lot. Ryan Gosling is her summer crush that year and Rachel McAdams has this laugh in the beginning of the movie that makes her feel all warm and gooey like she believes in things like love and destiny and soulmates.
At eighteen, her favorite ticket stub is this one that's nearly falling apart - it's frayed at the edges and the words are barely legible, almost destroyed by being washed in the pocket of her favorite jeans. But Santana is well acquainted with this stub and she can still make out the name of that stupid action flick she and Brittany saw when they were fifteen. The actual movie isn't that memorable and even though she can kind of recognize the faded title that's not why the ticket stub is important.
When the see the movie she'd already been kissing her best friend for months and by fifteen she's doing a really good job of pretending like that is totally normal. They're not like dating or anything gay like that, just making out on Santana's couch when her mom works late or in that treehouse in Brittany's back yard when they finally escape her little sister.
Santana doesn't analyze it because she doesn't want it to stop and she's pretty sure if she thinks about it for more than two seconds she'll realize just how gay it really all is and will have to actually do something about it. But Brittany seems content to ignore all the implications of their kissing and just go with the flow, happy to tangle her fingers with Santana's and press their lips together while hiding from the world.
They don't do it in public, obviously. Santana is a master commander at keeping secrets anyway so it's not hard to hide the fact that her new favorite afternoon hobby is making out with her best friend, who is a girl.
But then, they go see this movie that Brittany wants to see. Santana's skeptical because she's pretty sure she saw the preview and some guy definitely gets his head blown off and his arm mutilated and that's just the trailer. Brittany can barely watch The Little Mermaid without getting freaked out, much less something as gory as she expects this film to be. But while Santana may be good at a lot of things, refusing things to Brittany is not one of them, so they go to the theater.
The thing that's memorable isn't so much that she buys both of their tickets and their popcorn and some orange soda Brittany loves (with only one straw) and it all feels suspiciously like a date. No, the thing that's memorable is that Brittany picks a seat in the back of the theater and ten minutes after the film actually starts, slides her hand to settle on Santana's thigh.
It's not really the hand that's shocking, or the feel of Brittany's lips on hers that follows, those are two things she's definitely felt before, but it's always been in the privacy of an empty house or behind the locked door of a bedroom. Now, it feels startlingly public, like she's on stage and in a spotlight and someone is definitely going to notice them.
And sure, the theater is empty, and it's dark and they're in the back, but Santana can't stop the fear that grips her throat and flips her stomach over because she put too much effort into being popular and she'd be really pissed if this is what topples her.
"Britt," she says, gently, because this is still her best friend and she does want to make out with her, just not in a place where someone she knows can walk in and see them. So she puts her hand on Brittany's where it's gripping her thigh and pulls away far enough that Brittany would have to lean way over the armrest to kiss her again. "We can't do that here."
Brittany pouts and Santana hates the way that, in the dim light from the movie, she can almost see the glisten of her lip gloss smeared across Brittany's mouth. It makes her want to kiss Brittany again and the next question doesn't help to strengthen her resolve. "Why not? I like kissing you," Brittany states, as if that was what was stopping Santana.
"I know, we just can't do that here," she whispers back, looking around the theater to confirm yet again that there's no one else there.
The look on Brittany's face tells Santana that her friend isn't really happy about this new rule, but Santana needs her to understand. Needs her to understand that she still wants to kiss her and that when they get home later and lock the door to her bedroom, put on that new song Brittany won't stop humming, she'll tug Brittany down to the floor, wrap her legs around the other girl, and block out the world for long moments. They just can't do that here, in this theater.
Santana sighs with relief when Brittany finally seems to understand. "But we can later?"
"Yeah," Santana answers, head bobbing up and down in what she imagines is an embarrassingly eager manner.
"Okay, good," Brittany replies, sitting back in her chair but keeping her hand on Santana's thigh. Santana keeps her hand there too, lets her fingers intertwine with Brittany's and settles back into her seat. She looks at their hands, gripping each other and thinks that this probably looks pretty gay too, but they're besties and holding hands is way easier to play off than shoving her tongue down her friend's throat.
Later, when they get home, and Brittany slips her hand down Santana's pants for the first time, it's a lot harder for Santana to deny how gay the whole thing is.
--
When she's thirteen, she starts collecting insults. It's not a conscious thought or anything but when she gets to middle school it just happens. Part of it, she thinks, is from following Quinn's lead. They're friends by this point, having gone to school together for years, and having had their parents arrange playdates since they were young, but it's more out of habit than actual friendship. It's not that she doesn't like Quinn, it's just different.
So when she's thirteen, she already stands over Quinn's left shoulder, manages her best glare and insults whoever it is Quinn has deemed they're going to bully that week. It doesn't take long before she realizes she kind of has a talent for insults. Brittany? Not so much.
They're thirteen and Quinn is top dog, and since Santana is at her left shoulder it means Brittany is at her right. It happens without any questioning, even Quinn Fabray seeming to understand that Santana and Brittany are kind of a package deal. But Brittany's glare is really more of a blank stare and her insults do more to confuse the person than actually hurt their feelings.
Santana decides that if they're going to survive the changes in their social climate, that her best friend really needs to up her game. Even at thirteen Santana is already skilled at recognizing the importance of social status. Coupled with her vast array of insults that she can sling at people, she's like a veteran soldier on the battlefield that is middle school social politics. What good are her skills if she can't train her best friend?
Maybe it's a little bit weird, but there's actually a box in her closet for the insults she comes up with and one night when Brittany's over, she pulls it out from under that big stuffed teddy bear she swears she doesn't have.
"You need to stop calling people a two-headed platypus, it doesn't make any sense, Britt."
Brittany tilts her head to one side. "Why? It's weird," Brittany argues. "I'm calling them weird. What normal platypus has two heads?"
"I get that, but they don't," Santana answers, but it doesn't seem to be acceptable to her friend. "Just trust me," she settles with.
And that Brittany accepts. "Okay."
Santana pulls out the notebook she keeps in this box, pages full of bizarre and scathing insults she's thought of and scrawled down so she didn't forget them. She flips to a blank page and settles the book between them.
"Let's brainstorm," she suggests.
They spend the next hour with their heads pressed close together over Santana's notebook, scribbling down some of Brittany's more brilliant suggestions and delivering them in the funniest voices they can muster.
At thirteen, her favorite insult is Treasure Trail. It's weird and kind of scandalous which makes Santana love it all the more and when she suggests it to Quinn one day the blonde girl smiles at her conspiratorially and tells her it's excellent. She hears Quinn say it to Rachel Berry a week later and the look on the brunette's face is a satisfying enough reward for Santana, even if she didn't get to say it herself.
At eighteen, when she pulls out that old book full of insults, her favorite one isn't something she came up with. It isn't even an insult at all really. Her favorite thing in that notebook is the page filled with the ideas she brainstormed with Brittany that night. There's nothing particularly stellar on that page, though some of the suggestions Brittany came up with are still pretty humorous years later.
But at eighteen, her favorite thing in her collection of insults is the little hearts Brittany drew absentmindedly in the margins. They're all over the page, some big, some small and some with the letters S and B written in the middle. Santana thinks it's those hearts she likes the most.
--
She's sixteen when she starts collecting people. It starts with Quinn. She's been one of Quinn's minions since thirteen when middle school started being a place where everyone divided into cliques and Santana was smart enough to recognize which were the good alliances and which were the bad ones. They get to high school and it's not long before Santana learns how important it is to know people. Friends become important, not for having someone to confide in, or eat ice cream with, or any of that sappy crap, but as people to make her look better. And at sixteen, Quinn Fabray is the girl to know. At least for a little while.
When Quinn falls from grace, Santana decides to keep her anyway. She tries to convince herself that it's a strategic move - nothing keeps Quinn Fabray down for long and she'd bet good money that a year from now the ex-Cheerio would be back on top, the hallways parting before her like the Red Sea again. That's what she tells herself and it's not really a lie, but there's a small part of her that thinks of Quinn as a real friend, not just the kind she collects. She's not Brittany or anything, because that's a whole different situation, but she's known Quinn since she was a kid and she just doesn't have the heart to throw away such an old piece in her collection.
The next person she adds is Puck. Once she has Quinn, it becomes apparent that it's not just friends that you need, but having a boyfriend seriously boosts your social capital in school. So, Santana goes after Noah Puckerman, because she's always been one to aim high and Puck is easily the hottest guy in school, or so people say. He's disgustingly easy to collect, a few swishes of her Cheerio's skirt and a wink and he's practically eating out of her hand.
When Puck falls from grace, Santana keeps him too. She gives the same reasons as she gave for Quinn, that it's only a matter of time before he's back on top, but somewhere along the way Noah Puckerman like, becomes her friend or something. She thinks maybe it's the time he catches her making out with Brittany in a bathroom at his house. It's some stupid party of his and she had one too many wine coolers and it all led to her tugging Brittany upstairs and pressing her against the bathroom counter. Puck stumbles in, long minutes later and his eyes get comically large as he processes the scene.
For whatever reason, Puck never tells a soul. Days later, when they talk about it in their mutual emotionally stunted way, and Puck bumps his fist against her shoulder in companionship, she decides that she doesn't really have the heart to throw away a surprise like Puck. When he makes the stupid decision to start dating Mercedes, she gives a really good impression of territorial rage. He's a part of her collection, he has to remain that way.
Santana's been collecting things since she was five and she knows that a great collection has all the rare items, the hardest to find gems, the most nostalgic-inducing objects. Quinn is undeniably shiny and any collection worth having is one that includes Quinn Fabray. Puck, is duller, but still rare and he's interesting enough to add pizazz to her collection.
Santana's seventeen when she realizes she wants to add Brittany to her collection.
It sounds dumb, right? Because she's been friends with Brittany since they were eight and she's been doing the naked horizontal tango with the girl since they were fifteen. But she's never really felt like she had Brittany. Not in the way she has Quinn or Puck.
Which is just completely absurd, because Brittany has always been her one constant, the one thing that never went away or dulled with age. She never got sick of being with Brittany and Brittany never got tired of telling Santana that she loved her and why she feels the need to collect Brittany she has no idea. She just knows that she's got this little collection of people and she'll never feel like she has a complete set until she has Brittany.
It's funny, because Santana thinks it would be hilarious if she kept this collection in the closet like some big gay metaphor for whatever it is she is doing with Brittany, but obviously, she can't keep like, human bodies, in her closet without being some serial killer person or whatever so she has another box. It sits next to her rock collection and her bottle cap collection, neither of which will she ever throw out, and it's filled with pictures.
She almost puts the pictures up on the walls of her closet, spread out so she can see them all at once but she realizes that's not really stifling the whole serial killer thing because she's seen enough Law and Order to know that only serial killers and stalkers have closets like that.
When she's eighteen, looking through the box, she thinks that it's her most prized collection.
The first picture is of her and Quinn in their Cheerio's uniform. Quinn had just made head cheerleader and Santana was ceremoniously dubbed her second-in-command. Coach Sylvester takes the picture of them one day after practice and Santana thinks that maybe Coach collects people too. She certainly collects trophies. She sneaks into her office later that day, at her own peril, and finds the picture sitting out on the desk. For a minute she's disappointed that she didn't discover some drawer filled of old pictures of head cheerleaders but she can't deny that having it sit out like that makes it easier to add it to her collection. So she grabs the picture and sneaks away as fast as she can. It's the first picture she puts in the box.
The second picture is of her and Puck. She's still in her Cheerio's uniform and he's in his football uniform and she thinks the picture almost looks normal, like they're an ordinary midwestern couple - cheerleader, football player, a stereotype, it practically screams American Heartland. But Santana knows better and she remembers when the picture was taken (by Brittany after a game) and she remembers the blow job she gave the mowhawked boy minutes later under the bleachers. They were never normal. They would never be normal.
The third picture is of glee club, taken after they took regionals and all their smiles are wide, their faces projecting surprise and joy and exhaustion. Her arm is wrapped tightly around Brittany and Quinn and she looks, happy. She remembers the party afterwards when they all crushed into Puck's hotel room and got drunk on whatever cheap liquor they could find as high schoolers. She remembers the rest of the club like, hanging out with her, and laughing with her and dancing with her and completely failing to be afraid of her. It's one of the only times she remembers thinking of them as her friends.
The fourth picture is of her and Quinn again but this time they're in a hospital and there's a pink bundle in Quinn's arm. The blonde's hair is matted with sweat and she looks kind of similar to the last picture. Her face a mixture of happiness and tiredness and awe. Santana is standing by the side of the bed and Rachel Berry is on the other side. Santana thinks it's the only picture, besides the glee club one of course, that she and Rachel Berry are in together. From the look on both their faces, neither she nor Rachel are pretty excited about being in the picture together.
She can remember the day vivdly, Quinn going into labor and Brittany pulling on Santana's arm as she raced through the hospital corridors to get to their friend. Rachel was already there, holding onto Quinn's hand and when Brittany made them stand there so she could take a picture with their new addition, Santana couldn't refuse. Even to this day she's still shit at saying no to Brittany.
There are more pictures in the box but her favorite one is fifth. It's of her and Brittany on graduation. They're standing close together, both in matching red robes and caps and massive smiles on her face. The picture isn't anything special really, it's a pretty standard best friends graduation picture, but Santana remembers what happens next, right after her mom took the picture. She can still feel Brittany's lips against her own and the knowledge that the whole student body of WMHS was watching them and that she didn't give a shit. At all. It's exhilarating and frightening and she had never been more happy in her life.
For the first time ever she felt like she actually collected Brittany, she finally had her and her collection was finally complete.
When she was sixteen she made this box so she could collect people but at eighteen, when she's cleaning out her closet and moving out to college, she realizes that this is a collection of memories. Memories so dear to her that she's glad her sixteen year old self decided to start the collection, no matter how misguided.
--
She never throws any of them out and when she moves into a brand new apartment at the age of twenty-two, Brittany helps her organize a closet specifically for them. She's never really shown Brittany the collections, not thoroughly, even though her girlfriend knows they exist.
So when they're twenty-two and they've finished moving into their new apartment, exhausted and excited, Santana brings the boxes out to their living room. There's no real furniture in the room, so Santana takes a spot on the floor and spreads them out in front of her, grabs Brittany's hand and pulls her down to sit next to her.
Brittany's whole face lights up when she realizes what Santana's showing her, like she's being bestowed this great honor, and seriously, Santana doesn't think anyone's ever loved her the way Brittany does.
When she's twenty-two, she likes to collect memories. Her favorite, is the way Brittany's face looks when she sees that old tiger's eye and then the ABC root beer bottle cap and even that page full of hearts. Santana won't ever forget the way Brittany picked up the movie stub, reverently, like it was a prized possession (which, to Santana, it was).
At twenty-two, this is her favorite memory. Brittany sees the picture of the two of them at graduation and Santana wants to memorize her girlfriend's smile forever. She wants to etch the way Brittany whispers "I love you," against her lips into the back of her brain and when Brittany pulls out a small black box and asks her shyly, like she's not sure how Santana's going to respond, "Marry me?" Santana thinks that nothing will ever top this moment.
--
When she's twenty-eight, Santana meets her newborn baby for the first time. Brittany is in a hospital bed, sweaty and exhausted and looking like she wants to smack Santana for ever convincing her that this would be a good idea, but the blonde's face softens as she greets their new addition and Santana can't help the way her mind wanders to a closet full of rocks and bottle caps until Brittany looks up at her and tugs her down by the collar of her shirt.
Their faces are inches apart when Brittany says, in a low voice full of warning. "You are not collecting babies."