Crowd Surf: Another Ditch In The Road (You Keep Moving)
Title: Crowd Surf: Another Ditch In The Road (You Keep Moving)
Pairing: Santana Lopez/Quinn Fabray friendship
Rating: PG-13 for violent language and violence itself
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: AU
Summary: Crowd Surf ‘verse, involving little!Santana and Quinn and some of that past so vaguely hinted at.
A/N: Title from Savage Garden’s “Two Beds And A Coffee Machine” (because obvious author is obvious).
Warning: Story itself tends towards mildly disturbing, in terms of domestic violence, so if you’re easily bothered, might want to steer clear this time.
Freezing rain is beating harder than she’d like, tap dancing upon the roof over her head, and still Santana can hear the chaos raging downstairs. She curls tightly beneath her blankets, a pillow crushed over her ears, and still the battle below screams on.
These nights are by far the worst.
It hurts, to lie here and do nothing. She can hear it all downstairs-after all, it isn’t as though he is ever quiet. He isn’t, and she can’t be, and Santana hates them both for it. She is ten years old; she shouldn’t have to deal with this.
But deal she does, several times a week. Alone, for the most part; her brothers are down the hall, cloistered away in the safest corner of the house, and though she knows they can hear to some degree the nightmare going on below, they rarely say a word. She supposes it isn’t impossible to think they might sleep through the mess, but it’s far more likely that they are simply behaving the way her family has for as long as she can remember. Burying their heads. Turning away. Humming until the screams fade into shadows.
Santana wishes she could be like them, but she can’t. She’s never been able to tune out the tinkle of breaking glass, or the smashing wood, or the weeping. She hears it all in her sleep, tendrils of desperation winding through her every nightmare. It’s inescapable.
Teeth gritted, she clenches her hands around the pillow, pulling it down harder upon her head. It muffles the next string of curse words, but only barely; she can still make out bits and pieces, ragged and relentless.
She can still hear her mother’s cries.
Enough. Too much. She’s only ten years old, she isn’t equipped for a place like this. Not tonight. There’s a spelling test tomorrow, not to mention rehearsal for the holiday pageant. If she doesn’t sleep, she’ll be done for before they’ve made it through social studies.
Slipping from the bed, she laces her sneakers silently, not bothering to change out of her flannel pants and nearly dress-length Green Day t-shirt. She fumbles around for her jacket, draws it solidly around her shoulders. Flicks the collar up around her ears.
The stairs are tricky; she’d try for the window if it were any other season, but the last time she attempted to shimmy down the terrace in December, she nearly broke her arm. The looks he sent her for a week after the fact were unbearable, terrifying. She’s not willing to try again so soon.
So she makes for the stairs. Not the cleanest of escape routes, but if she knows the battle waging underneath her cautious feet, they’re both busy. Odds are good they’ll never hear her coming, never give a singular damn. Their preoccupation is sickening, but occasionally, it works in her favor.
She can hear him, bellowing with his dragon breath, screaming words she wishes she didn’t understand. Kids her age aren’t supposed to be familiar with phrases like “stinking cunt-whore” or “pathetic sniveling bitch.”
Kids her age also shouldn’t recognize so easily the slap of skin on wood.
Her life is different than other people’s.
“Fucking coward,” she hears him snarl, followed by the unmistakable collision of flesh meeting. She’s heard it enough times, spotted the action from around various corners of this prison they call a home, to identify the blow as a backhand. If she knows him-and, on nights like these, she wishes to God she didn’t-he’s used the left hand. The one wearing the gleaming, mocking wedding band.
“Fucking whore,” he adds. Santana has reached the last of the steps now, her thin fingers clutching the banister hard enough to cramp. She hears the roar, the squeaking protest, the crash. The coffee table, she thinks with sick certainty. The coffee table, and her mother’s-back? Yes. There’s always more noise when she falls back-first.
Falls. It’s a rich play for normalcy. If her mother truly fell as often as she goes around claiming, they’d be living in the center of a bubble-wrap sphere by now.
Another whistling shriek plows into her eardrums viciously enough to bring tears to her eyes; furiously, Santana scratches them away with blunt fingernails. Tears are worthless. She has spent years crying over this display. Crying, praying-none of it has ever mattered before. No point in continuing down that road; she’s better off burning the bridge and seeking out a sturdier one.
She shouldn’t look. Looking never helps anyone; even when she’s noticed, nothing changes. Their eyes will meet hers and slide away as though she isn’t there at all. It’s a waste of time, of energy. She should just leave.
Still, her gaze makes its way around that last wall, and there they are. Three times a week at best, doing the same dance. He has her by the throat this time, pinned against the fireplace. His eyes are wild, his teeth gnashing around gobs of spittle. His shirt is pressed clean, his pants free of creases. Three spots of crimson-brown have found their way onto his collar. A wound upon her cheek oozes freely.
She was right. Backhand, left hand, ironic hand. Every time.
She hates everything so much.
She tried once to stop it. Actively, viciously, tearing into the room with all the speed a seven-year-old can muster in the face of horror. Closing her eyes now, she remembers; the rush of facing him down, the defiant spread to her bony arms, the determined set of bowed legs. She remembers lips dragging back from the gaps in her smile, a snarl worthy of the beast lurking under his crisp blue button-down. She remembers her own voice, tinny and pathetic, echoing over and over within her head the way words do when uttered in an otherwise-silent room.
She remembers his hand. His fingers splayed, trimmed nails barely swiping skin as they raked up into sleep-mussed dark hair. The biting burn upon her scalp as he used the makeshift leash to haul her back up the stairs. The deadly silence, the burned-out, washed-out blank tone of his eyes. The slamming door vibrating for hours.
Her head shakes now, banishing the image. She was stupid once. No longer. Now it’s all about being careful. Being careful, and knowing when to look away.
Pristine hands are flying now, the whimpering body against the mantle straining away, and Santana thinks it strange there was ever a time when she liked that fireplace. Or that coffee table. Or the tile in the kitchen.
Her eyelids clamp down, her head twisting willfully in the opposite direction. This is useless. This helps no one. Fodder for more nightmares, and frankly, Santana has had enough of those. She misses the nights of waking up with visions of vampire fangs and Kermit the Frog serial killers. She misses childhood.
She is ten years old. This is all wrong.
She’s out the door and into the first snowbank before her body can register the change in temperature. Pelting down the street, the rubbed-down soles of her sneakers skidding upon icy concrete, she hurries as fast as her scrawny body will go. Operating on such little sleep, on a dinner consisting of half-done grilled cheese sandwiches she couldn’t bring herself to swallow, she wonders if she’s even heading in the right direction. The street lamps are shoddy here, light made flimsy by too-few tax dollars, and the frozen raindrops are still coming down with brutal force. She could have made a wrong turn somehow.
Then, suddenly, she’s here. Standing in the backyard, pitching pebbles at a ground-floor window, and she thinks there’s something incredibly sad about how thoroughly she knows this routine. This would be so awesome if they were just a little bit older, if one of them had a car, if they were sneaking out to meet friends or egg schools or-she doesn’t know, go bowling, maybe. If this became a weekly ritual out of fun instead of necessity.
Instead, she’s doing this, desperate, hopelessly nervous that for once, the window will stay shut.
She has no cause to worry; a tousled blonde head pokes its way out seconds later, dodging the final cast stone and squinting. “San?”
“It’s me,” she confirms, hands in her pockets. Anxiously, she sways. Slim shoulders follow the head, until Quinn’s whole torso is leaning out the window. Her breath skates icily from parted lips, eyes dark and heavy with sleep.
“Again?” she asks, reaching a hand out. Santana darts to the sill, grasps the proffered fingers, and allows the girl to yank her up and in. It’s a clumsy movement, but well-practiced, nearly silent.
She practically falls onto the carpet. Quinn, releasing her hand, sits on the edge of the bed and runs her fingers through knotted hair.
“This is the second time this week already,” the blonde observes, eyes flicking uneasily towards her door. Santana settles beside her, arms locked around her knees.
“He’s getting angrier,” she mumbles, careful to keep as quiet as she can. Quinn’s parents may be bad in a different way, but they are still bad. Getting caught might mean all kinds of terrible things, and then where would she go?
“Is she gonna leave?” Quinn queries, like she always does. Santana shakes her head.
Of course she won’t leave. Black eyes and busted lips are only moments; to up and walk away entirely would lead to unpayable bills, unanswerable questions, a life lived out of a car she doesn’t even legally own. Her life-their lives-and his are joined. Their lives are his. Santana knows this.
Still, she can’t help the angry beads of water wrenching from the corners of her closed eyes. She feels Quinn’s arm wrap around her shoulders, guiding her head to tuck under a gentle curving chin. Blindly, she clutches for the front of Quinn’s nightshirt and breathes.
“It’s gonna be forever,” she whispers hotly against the other girl’s neck. “It’s gonna be forever, Quinn, and I can’t stop it. God damn him, what if he kills her some night?”
The hand upon her back forms soothing circles, wide enough to contain all of tonight’s fear. The way Quinn touches her, it’s as if she thinks each stroke of her palm will wash away the hell Santana is so tired of living. Sometimes, cuddled in the middle of the girl’s confident embrace, Santana’s not so sure the idea is a stupid one.
She presses her face under the curtain of gold silk and inhales shakily, until the scent of blood and panic is obliterated by Pantene Pro-V and cinnamon mouthwash. Her body feels weak, her knees knocking painfully against one another; she’s started shivering again, uncontrollably. Quinn’s hand sweeps up and down her bent leg.
“It’s not forever,” the girl whispers as close to Santana’s ear as she can reach. “It’s not. God won’t let it be.”
“God hasn’t done anything to help,” Santana growls, but she’s too exhausted to funnel the proper amount of righteous anger into the words. Quinn makes a faintly disapproving noise, cradling the tiny dark-haired girl closer than ever.
“He will,” she says as confidently as she can through her yawn. “Be patient. He’ll be there.”
“And until then?” Santana raises her head, staring into lidded hazel eyes. “What am I supposed to do while I’m waiting for your God to step in?”
A roguish smile steals across Quinn’s lips. “Until then, you’ve got me.”
It’s enough to draw a reedy laugh from Santana’s weary chest. “Yeah? You’re my bodyguard then, huh? My Chewie?”
Quinn huffs even as her arms guide Santana onto her side, under the covers. “Please,” she snaps regally, “I am so the Jedi in this friendship.”
“You mean whiny like Luke?” Santana yawns. “Do you make out with your sister too?”
One of those safe, comforting hands slaps her shoulder jarringly. Santana grins.
They lay in silence for minutes, so long that Santana is sure Quinn has fallen asleep. Her eyes are heavy, her body still, and she is warm within Quinn’s grip. She sighs.
“It’s not forever,” she hears Quinn murmur just as she’s floating off towards relaxation. “But I am. I swear.”
Santana Lopez, in that moment, loves Quinn Fabray more than anyone else in the world. Coiled within her grasp, feeling the girl’s small chest rise and fall against her own, she nuzzles close and drifts away.
Pairing: Santana Lopez/Quinn Fabray friendship
Rating: PG-13 for violent language and violence itself
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: AU
Summary: Crowd Surf ‘verse, involving little!Santana and Quinn and some of that past so vaguely hinted at.
A/N: Title from Savage Garden’s “Two Beds And A Coffee Machine” (because obvious author is obvious).
Warning: Story itself tends towards mildly disturbing, in terms of domestic violence, so if you’re easily bothered, might want to steer clear this time.
Freezing rain is beating harder than she’d like, tap dancing upon the roof over her head, and still Santana can hear the chaos raging downstairs. She curls tightly beneath her blankets, a pillow crushed over her ears, and still the battle below screams on.
These nights are by far the worst.
It hurts, to lie here and do nothing. She can hear it all downstairs-after all, it isn’t as though he is ever quiet. He isn’t, and she can’t be, and Santana hates them both for it. She is ten years old; she shouldn’t have to deal with this.
But deal she does, several times a week. Alone, for the most part; her brothers are down the hall, cloistered away in the safest corner of the house, and though she knows they can hear to some degree the nightmare going on below, they rarely say a word. She supposes it isn’t impossible to think they might sleep through the mess, but it’s far more likely that they are simply behaving the way her family has for as long as she can remember. Burying their heads. Turning away. Humming until the screams fade into shadows.
Santana wishes she could be like them, but she can’t. She’s never been able to tune out the tinkle of breaking glass, or the smashing wood, or the weeping. She hears it all in her sleep, tendrils of desperation winding through her every nightmare. It’s inescapable.
Teeth gritted, she clenches her hands around the pillow, pulling it down harder upon her head. It muffles the next string of curse words, but only barely; she can still make out bits and pieces, ragged and relentless.
She can still hear her mother’s cries.
Enough. Too much. She’s only ten years old, she isn’t equipped for a place like this. Not tonight. There’s a spelling test tomorrow, not to mention rehearsal for the holiday pageant. If she doesn’t sleep, she’ll be done for before they’ve made it through social studies.
Slipping from the bed, she laces her sneakers silently, not bothering to change out of her flannel pants and nearly dress-length Green Day t-shirt. She fumbles around for her jacket, draws it solidly around her shoulders. Flicks the collar up around her ears.
The stairs are tricky; she’d try for the window if it were any other season, but the last time she attempted to shimmy down the terrace in December, she nearly broke her arm. The looks he sent her for a week after the fact were unbearable, terrifying. She’s not willing to try again so soon.
So she makes for the stairs. Not the cleanest of escape routes, but if she knows the battle waging underneath her cautious feet, they’re both busy. Odds are good they’ll never hear her coming, never give a singular damn. Their preoccupation is sickening, but occasionally, it works in her favor.
She can hear him, bellowing with his dragon breath, screaming words she wishes she didn’t understand. Kids her age aren’t supposed to be familiar with phrases like “stinking cunt-whore” or “pathetic sniveling bitch.”
Kids her age also shouldn’t recognize so easily the slap of skin on wood.
Her life is different than other people’s.
“Fucking coward,” she hears him snarl, followed by the unmistakable collision of flesh meeting. She’s heard it enough times, spotted the action from around various corners of this prison they call a home, to identify the blow as a backhand. If she knows him-and, on nights like these, she wishes to God she didn’t-he’s used the left hand. The one wearing the gleaming, mocking wedding band.
“Fucking whore,” he adds. Santana has reached the last of the steps now, her thin fingers clutching the banister hard enough to cramp. She hears the roar, the squeaking protest, the crash. The coffee table, she thinks with sick certainty. The coffee table, and her mother’s-back? Yes. There’s always more noise when she falls back-first.
Falls. It’s a rich play for normalcy. If her mother truly fell as often as she goes around claiming, they’d be living in the center of a bubble-wrap sphere by now.
Another whistling shriek plows into her eardrums viciously enough to bring tears to her eyes; furiously, Santana scratches them away with blunt fingernails. Tears are worthless. She has spent years crying over this display. Crying, praying-none of it has ever mattered before. No point in continuing down that road; she’s better off burning the bridge and seeking out a sturdier one.
She shouldn’t look. Looking never helps anyone; even when she’s noticed, nothing changes. Their eyes will meet hers and slide away as though she isn’t there at all. It’s a waste of time, of energy. She should just leave.
Still, her gaze makes its way around that last wall, and there they are. Three times a week at best, doing the same dance. He has her by the throat this time, pinned against the fireplace. His eyes are wild, his teeth gnashing around gobs of spittle. His shirt is pressed clean, his pants free of creases. Three spots of crimson-brown have found their way onto his collar. A wound upon her cheek oozes freely.
She was right. Backhand, left hand, ironic hand. Every time.
She hates everything so much.
She tried once to stop it. Actively, viciously, tearing into the room with all the speed a seven-year-old can muster in the face of horror. Closing her eyes now, she remembers; the rush of facing him down, the defiant spread to her bony arms, the determined set of bowed legs. She remembers lips dragging back from the gaps in her smile, a snarl worthy of the beast lurking under his crisp blue button-down. She remembers her own voice, tinny and pathetic, echoing over and over within her head the way words do when uttered in an otherwise-silent room.
She remembers his hand. His fingers splayed, trimmed nails barely swiping skin as they raked up into sleep-mussed dark hair. The biting burn upon her scalp as he used the makeshift leash to haul her back up the stairs. The deadly silence, the burned-out, washed-out blank tone of his eyes. The slamming door vibrating for hours.
Her head shakes now, banishing the image. She was stupid once. No longer. Now it’s all about being careful. Being careful, and knowing when to look away.
Pristine hands are flying now, the whimpering body against the mantle straining away, and Santana thinks it strange there was ever a time when she liked that fireplace. Or that coffee table. Or the tile in the kitchen.
Her eyelids clamp down, her head twisting willfully in the opposite direction. This is useless. This helps no one. Fodder for more nightmares, and frankly, Santana has had enough of those. She misses the nights of waking up with visions of vampire fangs and Kermit the Frog serial killers. She misses childhood.
She is ten years old. This is all wrong.
She’s out the door and into the first snowbank before her body can register the change in temperature. Pelting down the street, the rubbed-down soles of her sneakers skidding upon icy concrete, she hurries as fast as her scrawny body will go. Operating on such little sleep, on a dinner consisting of half-done grilled cheese sandwiches she couldn’t bring herself to swallow, she wonders if she’s even heading in the right direction. The street lamps are shoddy here, light made flimsy by too-few tax dollars, and the frozen raindrops are still coming down with brutal force. She could have made a wrong turn somehow.
Then, suddenly, she’s here. Standing in the backyard, pitching pebbles at a ground-floor window, and she thinks there’s something incredibly sad about how thoroughly she knows this routine. This would be so awesome if they were just a little bit older, if one of them had a car, if they were sneaking out to meet friends or egg schools or-she doesn’t know, go bowling, maybe. If this became a weekly ritual out of fun instead of necessity.
Instead, she’s doing this, desperate, hopelessly nervous that for once, the window will stay shut.
She has no cause to worry; a tousled blonde head pokes its way out seconds later, dodging the final cast stone and squinting. “San?”
“It’s me,” she confirms, hands in her pockets. Anxiously, she sways. Slim shoulders follow the head, until Quinn’s whole torso is leaning out the window. Her breath skates icily from parted lips, eyes dark and heavy with sleep.
“Again?” she asks, reaching a hand out. Santana darts to the sill, grasps the proffered fingers, and allows the girl to yank her up and in. It’s a clumsy movement, but well-practiced, nearly silent.
She practically falls onto the carpet. Quinn, releasing her hand, sits on the edge of the bed and runs her fingers through knotted hair.
“This is the second time this week already,” the blonde observes, eyes flicking uneasily towards her door. Santana settles beside her, arms locked around her knees.
“He’s getting angrier,” she mumbles, careful to keep as quiet as she can. Quinn’s parents may be bad in a different way, but they are still bad. Getting caught might mean all kinds of terrible things, and then where would she go?
“Is she gonna leave?” Quinn queries, like she always does. Santana shakes her head.
Of course she won’t leave. Black eyes and busted lips are only moments; to up and walk away entirely would lead to unpayable bills, unanswerable questions, a life lived out of a car she doesn’t even legally own. Her life-their lives-and his are joined. Their lives are his. Santana knows this.
Still, she can’t help the angry beads of water wrenching from the corners of her closed eyes. She feels Quinn’s arm wrap around her shoulders, guiding her head to tuck under a gentle curving chin. Blindly, she clutches for the front of Quinn’s nightshirt and breathes.
“It’s gonna be forever,” she whispers hotly against the other girl’s neck. “It’s gonna be forever, Quinn, and I can’t stop it. God damn him, what if he kills her some night?”
The hand upon her back forms soothing circles, wide enough to contain all of tonight’s fear. The way Quinn touches her, it’s as if she thinks each stroke of her palm will wash away the hell Santana is so tired of living. Sometimes, cuddled in the middle of the girl’s confident embrace, Santana’s not so sure the idea is a stupid one.
She presses her face under the curtain of gold silk and inhales shakily, until the scent of blood and panic is obliterated by Pantene Pro-V and cinnamon mouthwash. Her body feels weak, her knees knocking painfully against one another; she’s started shivering again, uncontrollably. Quinn’s hand sweeps up and down her bent leg.
“It’s not forever,” the girl whispers as close to Santana’s ear as she can reach. “It’s not. God won’t let it be.”
“God hasn’t done anything to help,” Santana growls, but she’s too exhausted to funnel the proper amount of righteous anger into the words. Quinn makes a faintly disapproving noise, cradling the tiny dark-haired girl closer than ever.
“He will,” she says as confidently as she can through her yawn. “Be patient. He’ll be there.”
“And until then?” Santana raises her head, staring into lidded hazel eyes. “What am I supposed to do while I’m waiting for your God to step in?”
A roguish smile steals across Quinn’s lips. “Until then, you’ve got me.”
It’s enough to draw a reedy laugh from Santana’s weary chest. “Yeah? You’re my bodyguard then, huh? My Chewie?”
Quinn huffs even as her arms guide Santana onto her side, under the covers. “Please,” she snaps regally, “I am so the Jedi in this friendship.”
“You mean whiny like Luke?” Santana yawns. “Do you make out with your sister too?”
One of those safe, comforting hands slaps her shoulder jarringly. Santana grins.
They lay in silence for minutes, so long that Santana is sure Quinn has fallen asleep. Her eyes are heavy, her body still, and she is warm within Quinn’s grip. She sighs.
“It’s not forever,” she hears Quinn murmur just as she’s floating off towards relaxation. “But I am. I swear.”
Santana Lopez, in that moment, loves Quinn Fabray more than anyone else in the world. Coiled within her grasp, feeling the girl’s small chest rise and fall against her own, she nuzzles close and drifts away.