So Destined I Am To Walk Among The Dark (2/2)
Title: So Destined I Am To Walk Among The Dark (2/2)
Pairing: Santana Lopez/Brittany, very minor Quinn Fabray/Rachel Berry
Rating: R: violence, sexuality
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: Mild ones for the first season or so of Dexter. Yep. You read that right.
Summary: This is not a TV show. But if it were? Santana would be anything but the hero.
A/N: This might well be the weirdest thing I've ever written. Let’s call this a practice round for all the suspension of disbelief I’ll be asking from my readers in The Beast. Title from Coheed and Cambria's "Blood Red Summer."
***
All the same, even if it’s not wise, things continue to progress from there. She doesn’t wake up in the middle of any more kills, though the blackout periods are still happening far more frequently than they used to, and for that, she’s grateful. Santana can handle the killing, and even the knowing about it; it’s the act itself she’s unprepared for.
There’s a massive difference between waking up with blood under your nails and physically watching your own fingers dig into a wound.
She knows she should take that temporary loss of control as a sign and stop this thing she’s building with Brittany. She knows that would be the best thing for everyone. The blonde might miss her for a couple of weeks, but then she’d meet someone with a few less homicidal tendencies, and Santana could just go back to the way things used to be. Belting Puckerman in the gnads to relieve a little tension when weeks go between kills, mocking Quinn when Rachel pins her to the couch with all her Smurfette strength, kicking Mike’s ass at rummy. Easy. No strings. Play it close to the chest, Lopez.
All of which would be a downright awesome plan, if she could just convince herself to stop dialing Brittany’s number.
Except the kills keep rolling in, and each time she wakes, she’s a few steps closer to that familiar doorstep. And now there’s something even more tempting to consider.
Brittany?
Is really good at taking care of those pesky post-stabbing urges.
Her body has been pissed at her for the last few weeks, all that time gone without sex, without completing the ritual. Blackout, stab, dump, fuck. That’s the way it’s supposed to go. Meeting Brittany threw that off-kilter for a while.
But now that they’ve gotten the kissing thing on the road, Santana finds the rest comes pretty damn easily.
She’s barely through the door of the apartment-the actual apartment; she used to go straight for the kill the second Brittany was within grabbing distance, but sometimes crazy people walk their dogs at night, and, well…it would spoil the whole of her lucky run if she got arrested now for something so menial as indecent exposure-before Brittany’s all over her. Which she’s all for. Couldn’t appreciate more, honestly. Brittany is one hell of a lover.
Fuck, she’s one hell of a woman.
Seriously-Santana’s been a lucky bitch of late.
She fists a hand in Brittany’s sleep-tousled hair and yanks hard as the blonde walks them both toward the first available surface. Santana really couldn’t care less where they wind up; all she can feel is the heady pulse of need, familiar and wild, and when Brittany shoves her backwards onto the couch, she can barely think straight enough to remember the next move.
Luckily, Brittany’s got it covered, dropping to her knees on the carpet and arching up, hands locked around the back of Santana’s neck to drag her down. Fevered kisses turn into languid ones, Brittany’s tongue plunging deep and slow into Santana’s mouth, swallowing the last of the tiny echoing protests. The ones saying this is stupid. The ones saying this will end her. The ones saying Brittany so deserves better.
For Christ’s sake, the woman plays Candy Land and dreams of one day owning a duck farm. A duck farm. And she’s boning a serial killer?
Complaining is improbable at best, however, with Brittany running her fingers up the back of Santana’s skull, tracing letters and shapes into her scalp. Santana pushes forward, fully intending to leave this stupid piece of furniture and ride Brittany hard against the floor. She has to make her mark. She has to make it last. She has to do it now.
But Brittany’s palm is firm between her breasts, holding her back, mouth transferring a thousand unnamed secrets. Brittany’s hand is moving down, shoving the jacket off her shoulders, easing the shirt slowly over her head. Brittany’s teeth are catching and releasing against her skin, tilting her head back with the thumb of her free hand until Santana’s throat is completely at her mercy.
It’s all about Brittany tonight, and though Santana-the-killer isn’t quite sure how to handle that, Santana-the-woman is nearly keening with desperation.
She allows Brittany to bite down on her shoulder, tucking a finger into the strap of her bra and dragging it lazily down. She allows Brittany to suck hard enough to leave reminders behind, trailing across her skin in a constellation no one else will ever understand. She allows Brittany to free her body, tracing and tickling and caressing until she feels like crawling from her skin and melding in absolution with the astonishing creature pinning her down.
When Brittany kisses down her stomach, tonguing her abs tenderly, fingers working the zipper of her jeans, Santana can only groan. She lifts her hips at the blonde’s beckon, allows the material to slip from her body to pool on the floor. Brittany, hair mussed to extremes, eyes sparkling with wicked delight, burns a kiss directly there, through that last barrier, and Santana jerks on instinct.
It would be embarrassing to shatter from that alone, but Brittany’s pulling her underwear down with agonizing patience and guiding Santana’s legs over her shoulders and, God, it’s amazing she’s made it this far.
Sex, with most people, is just another thing. Just another pattern to muddle through, another ritual to complete. It’s the final piece of this puzzle she can’t stop living, the release of the last of whatever it is that drives her existence. Sex purges the darkness from her system, for lack of a less corny explanation, and she’s never had to question it.
Leave it to Brittany to make that complicated.
Not that she’s complaining because, again, Brittany is great at what she does. Like what she’s doing right now with her tongue, for example, which is pretty much making Santana see stars and Tweety Birds and what-the-fuck-ever else. Head thrown back against the couch cushion, she threads one hand in blonde hair and hangs on for the ride, moaning like there’s no such thing as neighbors on this earth.
Another thing she loves about Brittany: where so many girls would chastise Santana for being so vocal at four in the morning, all this girl does is raise her head, meet Santana’s eyes, and delicately, torturously poke her tongue out to lick as lightly as she possibly can. It is easily the hottest, most cruel bit of teasing Santana’s been witness to in years, and all she can do is laugh and pull on Brittany’s hair until the girl gets back to work.
Then she’s thrusting her hips up to meet Brittany’s mouth, digging her fingers into the striped couch, crying out until the glass ornaments on the mantle quaver, and holy hell-she feels so normal. A normal girl, with a normal girlfriend, being fucked in a totally normal way until she has the most clock-stopping orgasm of…well, okay, that part’s too extraordinary to be normal.
But the rest of it? Yeah. Normal.
Her limbs are pretty much jello when Brittany crawls up and plunks herself down on Santana’s lap, kissing her with fierce adoration, and all Santana can think is there is no way she’s ever letting this go.
It’s not reasonable.
It’s not safe.
It doesn’t matter.
She loves this girl. Fucking loves her. Fuck Dexter. Fuck anyone who ever suggests that bad people can’t have good things. Fuck the fact that she was born a monster, totally fucked in the head and the heart, totally and utterly incapable of keeping a good thing going. Fuck it.
She loves this girl.
And she’s going to keep this one patch of normalcy-just one-if it kills her.
***
She gets kind of good at deluding herself into thinking she can go forever keeping Brittany in the dark-and by that, she means it literally. Brittany becomes hers at night, to an unquestionable degree, until Santana finds herself at the apartment even when she hasn’t just stripped a new token for her chest. She gets really good at believing those times are all that count, actually, to the point where she almost forgets that Brittany does things in the hours between dawn and sundown.
The first time she runs into Brittany in the real world, the blonde is wearing sunglasses, heels, and a black button-down shirt. Santana stares for a full moment before recognizing her.
Brittany, naturally, doesn’t seem to find it strange.”Hey, baby,” she greets, grasping Santana by the collar and kissing her as easily as ever. Standing at Santana’s elbow, Quinn arches an eyebrow.
“Uhh,” Santana manages, torn between the desire to sink into Brittany’s arms and never emerge again and the realization that Quinn is not above being a huge bitch in situations like this one. “Britt, this is…”
“Quinn Fabray,” her alleged best friend fills in, extending a hand and smiling in her formal ‘this is new’ way.
“Hey, Quinn,” Brittany says cheerfully, pumping the offered hand up and down and pushing her sunglasses onto the top of her head. “How’s it going?”
“Stunningly,” Quinn replies, shouldering Santana harder than is necessary. “You made a new friend, S? And you never told me?”
“Yup,” Santana mutters. “Imagine that.”
She ducks the next blow in time to hear Brittany’s gorgeous laugh. “I see she’s as easy to break down with everybody. Good to know I’m not special.”
You are, Santana aches to snap breathlessly, but Brittany doesn’t look mad. On the contrary, she’s beaming like she’s just won a year’s supply of ice cream and a round-trip vacation to Fiji.
Santana can remember with perfect clarity the last time someone looked that excited to see her. The recollection makes her heart burn.
“It’s good to see you, San,” Brittany says, like they didn’t go three rounds on her kitchen table just last night. “You look good in the light. Not at all like a sparkle-creep.”
It takes her a second to get the reference, and when she does, the smile on her lips refuses to die. Quinn peers at her like she’s taken the opportunity to grow a whole new head. Possibly that of a parrot or a District 9 alien.
“Well,” Brittany says at last, “I’ve got to…”
“Yeah,” Santana stammers, “me too, there’s a…thing…”
“But I’ll see you tonight?” Brittany nudges, licking her lips in an absent way that makes Santana want to throw her against the nearest mailbox and improve the overall nature of this day.
“Right. Tonight.”
Brittany moves like she wants to kiss her again, but Quinn’s giving them both the mother of all fish eyes. She settles for squeezing Santana’s bicep as she passes, fingers stroking lightly downward as she releases. The dark-haired woman closes her eyes.
“S.”
Don’t answer. Maybe she’ll forget. Fabray’s more or less like a guppy anyway-
“Santana.”
She starts walking again, hands in her pockets. Quinn throws an impressive punch for being in motion, deftly ruining the phantom sensation of Brittany’s hand on her skin.
“Santana Lopez, do not ignore me!”
“What?” she asks mildly. Quinn rolls her eyes.
“Don’t what me, woman. Who the hell was that?”
“Brittany,” Santana replies with a shrug. The blonde’s hands fly humorously into the air.
“Yeah, got that part. You know that’s not what I was asking.”
She can’t blame Quinn for being confused, or interested, or somewhat disbelieving. In all the years they’ve known each other, Santana hasn’t held down a single relationship. Not for a week, not for a day. She’s pretty sure Quinn had settled into labeling her asexual.
All of which she understands.
None of which makes her want to share her feelings.
“You found…a girl,” Quinn blurts, as if ‘girl’ is synonymous with ‘the Holy Grail’. Santana squints up at the few clouds dotting an otherwise crystal sky.
“Would seem that way.”
“A…human girl,” Quinn continues blankly. Santana shoots her a glare.
“Watch it, Fabray.”
“A normal, pretty human girl,” Quinn finishes, ignoring her completely. “How the fuck did you manage that?”
She wants to snap back with something witty and articulate-anything that’ll put Fabray in her place. She wishes she had that sort of confident retort readily available.
But the fact of the matter is, Quinn’s got a point. She has no idea what she’s done to get someone like Brittany in her life. To draw her attention, to keep her around. She’s got no fucking clue.
All the same, when Quinn opens her mouth to add another smart-ass, belittling comment, Santana rears back and decks her in the ear as hard as she can.
Quinn may be right, but she’s still a bitch, and Santana can only take this pretending-to-like-her thing so far while retaining what little’s left of her sanity.
***
Talking about Tina isn’t planned. It’s just something that sort of happens one night. Weirdly, though it’s the first time she’s ever told the story, Santana doesn’t fumble the details.
Granted, she’s not telling the whole thing, because the whole thing involves more blood and gore and Santana playing the Oscar-gold lead role. But she’s telling more than she ever intended of a story she had genuinely planned to carry with her to the grave, and that…well, that’s something.
They’re sprawled on Brittany’s bed, fresh off of what Santana would generously categorize as the best shower sex of her life (which, in turn, came fresh off of the best wall sex of her life) when the topic comes up. Or sort of comes up. It’s not like Brittany knows enough about her past to ask anything concrete, especially when she’s drowsy and content, wrapped around Santana like the world’s sexiest koala.
In fact, she’s pretty sure Brittany has no idea what she might get in response when she kisses Santana’s neck and murmurs, “It’s okay that you have secrets, you know.”
It’s not her fault the simple statement make Santana jump like she’s been tasered.
“What?” The question comes out breathless and not remotely as cool as intended. She cringes into the pillow as Brittany blows a gentle stream of warm air onto her skin.
“I don’t mind. I just wanted you to know that. Cuz, like…there’s something about you that’s, I don’t know…”
“Weird?” Santana offers numbly, half-muffled by the pillowcase. Brittany giggles.
“Sometimes. But I was gonna say guarded.”
Santana falls silent, shutting her eyes against the sudden crippling fear that this is it. The moment that undoes it all. The moment when she has to tell that final too-massive lie, the one that they won’t be able to work around.
“I’m not going to push,” Brittany assures her, like she’s reading Santana’s mind right now. Her left hand draws lazy circles across Santana’s bare stomach, trailing over her bellybutton just lightly enough to tickle.
“Why are you…” Santana pauses, trying to collect herself. “Britt, where is this coming from?”
She feels the other girl shrug, nuzzling nose-first into her hair. “Dunno. Just felt important. Because…sometimes you get this look in your eyes. Like you’re scared to death of something you can’t put into words. I get that.”
You don’t, Santana thinks helplessly, arching her back when the hand on her stomach traces up to cup one breast tenderly. “Britt-“
“It’s okay,” Brittany repeats firmly. “You don’t have to tell me anything. I’m not into you for your past, Santana. I like you now.”
And just like that, it’s spilling out of her. Carefully, so as not to add in any of the most incriminating, murderous details, but all the same…
She never looks away from Brittany’s dresser as she speaks. Somehow, she can’t bring herself to see the expression on the other woman’s face as she weaves the tale that changed everything.
Eighteen years old. Cocky, charming, cavalier. Not what she’d call up on the life experiences. Positive that, no matter what, she would never get caught. Never face down any sort of consequence for the thing holding the reins. Rookie mistakes, every single one; she’s a little surprised it took her that long to make them.
Tina Cohen-Chang was a nice girl. That was just the best way to describe her: nice. She came from a nice Asian family, treated her friends well and her vague acquaintances even better, had a soft spot for kittens and boys in wheelchairs. They worked together at a gallery, before Santana really felt comfortable getting out there and peddling her own wares. It was mostly grunt work, the stuff office bitches are made for, and Santana kind of loathed it on paper.
But in reality, life wasn’t bad. The work was easy enough, the hours were lax, and Tina was cool to hang out with. For all her niceties, it turned out the girl had a real penchant for interesting shit-particularly the likes of heavy metal death bands and a quality lighter collection. Her hobbies made her interesting in a way Santana never would have noticed if not for whatever very peculiar set of stars chose to toss them together.
Before long, they were more or less inseparable-less, rather than more, because Santana wasn’t up for sharing the more kill-oriented parts of her life with anybody. Although, weirdly, she kind of felt like Tina would get it. Get her, even. Tina was like that.
Sort of, she adds silently, the way Brittany does.
They spent days working and nights crashing on Santana’s floor, rocking out to The Clash and thumbing through old copies of comic books Santana had never considered checking out before. Tina’s tastes ran a little fourteen-year-old-boy-ish sometimes, but that wasn’t bad.
She was the first friend Santana had made since that first junkie kill. She was allowed a little slack.
They never slept together or anything like that, but Santana couldn’t deny the intimacy between them, even then. There was just something about Tina that put her at ease-maybe dangerously so, but she appreciated it anyway. With Tina, she didn’t have to be The Badass, or The Pyro, or (silently) The Murderer. She was just Santana. Tina was just Tina. They worked.
She bites her lip now, remembering what that felt like-having a friend for the first time. Having someone to lean on, someone to trust with all but her very darkest of secrets. Until Brittany danced her way into her life, she’d mostly forgotten how good that could be. How much she’d missed it.
A tendril of breath on the back of her neck stirs her back into the story.
It was only a matter of time, with the way they were doing things, before Tina caught wind of something she shouldn’t. Santana was careful, but back then, careful didn’t mean what it does now. Careful was keeping her head down and her mouth shut in public. Stupidly, she had thought that would be enough.
She didn’t take into consideration what might happen if she started doing reckless things that threw off her usual routine. Like, for example, crashing at a friend’s house several nights in a row when the last blackout clocked in at a month and a half before.
It was only a matter of time, really, before it happened.
Because Tina was a nice girl and good friend. Neither of which are personality types characterized by letting loved ones sleepwalk out of bed and down the street alone.
Sleepwalk. Right. She feels guilty for using that one, but it’s honestly what Tina thought. There’s much less harm in letting Brittany assume the same, rather than letting her know the truth of the matter.
The rest of the story is…not the rest of the story. It can’t be. Because the rest of the story, the way Santana remembers it, involves Tina seeing Santana in a scuffle with a man who had only half gone under. The rest of the story, as it truly stood, involves Tina trying to save Santana’s life.
She can’t take responsibility for what happens when she’s out. She knows that. She has to believe it if she wants to keep functioning in this world. There’s a system to this life, and it’s not a good one, it’s not an ethical one, but it is still her system. She can’t toss it aside.
Because she tried. With Tina, she really did. She tried to convince herself that the kills didn’t have to happen. That, if she just spent enough time with another person, let them snuggle warmly under her skin and get to know the person she truly was, everything else would just melt away. Like magic. Like the touch of God. Like rainbows and kittens and sugar cubes.
All of which, she has come to realize, are both stupid and highly undependable.
Using Tina as a friend was bad enough. Using her as a roommate was worse. Pretending that she was a safe, normal girl with safe, normal tendencies?
That’s what got her killed.
The way she tells it to Brittany is tame compared to the truth, but it’s still pretty horrendous. The knife blade is still there. So is the copious expulsion of blood. So is the sensation of death on her skin as she held the rapidly cooling body of the last friend she thought she'd ever allowed herself to have.
The hand that held that knife is not the same.
Nor is the sound of crimson droplets flicking from the ends of her hair.
Nor is the look of absolute terror and betrayal in Tina’s eyes as she faded.
The way she tells it to Brittany is bad-a girl stumbling into an accident, a girl dying a hero’s death; she even punctuates it with some flourishes that are all lie, like the beauty that would have been her funeral, had her body ever been found-but the reality was so much worse. Santana kills, it’s true, but she doesn’t kill people who will be missed, and she definitely doesn’t kill the few people in this world she cares about.
Except for that one time.
Except for the only time that mattered.
She’s shaking when she finishes. When she reaches up to wipe her dry mouth with the back of her hand, Brittany seems to misread the action as a bid for clearing tears away. The blonde pulls on her shoulder, rolling Santana over and holding her close, face to chest.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers into the top of Santana’s head, kissing her again and again. “I’m so sorry.”
Santana is struck with the mad compulsion to blurt out, There’s more, that’s not it, you don’t know everything. For a minute, she toys with what that might be like: to tell someone, to finally let word vomit take over until it’s all out of her head. Until it’s on the shoulders of someone else, for a change.
In TV shows, the lovable killer always has a right-hand companion, someone who stands by and does not judge the hellish things that must be done.
In TV shows, there is always trust, and love, and forgiveness, even when it is certainly not deserved.
This is not a TV show.
Real life isn’t like that. Real life isn’t about forgiveness at all costs and neatly-bound endings. Real life isn’t about continuity and character development and black-and-white rolling credits.
She kills people-and not because they deserve it, or because she’s some kind of self-righteous vigilante, or because she’s doing God’s work. She kills people because she is ill. Because there is something inside of her that shouldn’t be, something she was born with, something she can’t cut, or burn, or wish out. She kills people because, when she's out, she has no control, and when she's got it together, she is too big a coward to behave like a good person should.
She is too afraid of what they’ll say if she turns herself in. If she ever points them in the direction of that lake. If she ever shows them her token box.
Santana can kill three nights a week for the rest of her life, but she cannot-will not-be someone’s lab rat, or prison mate, or candidate for the chair.
If this were a TV show, she would be able to tell Brittany everything, and still know she’d be there in the morning, as cheerful and interested as ever. Barring that, if this were a TV show, she would be strong enough to get up and walk away, saving Brittany from everything that is bound to come.
This is not a TV show.
Santana is not that strong.
And when Brittany tilts her chin up and presses their mouths together, full of promise and love and more dedication than Santana knows what to do with, whispering that it’s okay to keep secrets, that it’s okay if they never go to Santana’s place, that it’s okay to just lay here, undisturbed and undetected forever, she knows. Clear as fucking day, she knows.
She should let her go.
She should walk away.
Serial killers aren’t exactly wired for love and commitment and doing things right.
But Santana doesn’t care.
She’s not a good person.
She’s not a hero.
She needs something to hang onto.
This will never in a million years work, but she’s going to try anyway.
Because this is not a TV show.
And the ending isn’t scripted in advance.