Just Drive Through The Night (‘Til We Find Some Kind Of Home)
Title: Just Drive Through The Night (‘Til We Find Some Kind Of Home)
Pairing: Santana Lopez/Brittany Pierce
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: Through 3x07.
Summary: That conversation didn't go remotely the way she'd expected.
A/N: I didn’t particularly intend to write Glee fic again, but last night’s episode was missing something major. Title and lyrics from Thriving Ivory’s “Some Kind Of Home.”
You don’t know why, yeah-
They put a bullet through your heart and told you not to cry
It’s like walking through sludge, finding her way back home again, and she’s not quite sure how she manages it without trailing into the street midway through. Her arms hang like stones from tense shoulders, her legs driving through the soggy brown leaves marring the pavement. Every step sends a throb up through her spine, ending somewhere behind her forehead where a pounding ache has set up shop. Everything hurts. Everything sucks.
The back door is unlocked, but no cars line the driveway. Unsurprising. Her parents are never home anymore. That fact that she managed to catch them long enough to spill the secret in the first place was nothing short of a minor miracle; the fact that neither of them had the time or the investment to do more than smile and nod came as no surprise at all. She tells herself she doesn’t mind. They were never really her concern, anyway.
This was.
She trips on the stairs leading down to her room, her foot sliding on the third step, and goes careening down another two before her hand slams down on the railing. It’s hard to be graceful when every inch of your body feels like it belongs to somebody else. At least she didn’t go all the way down, face-first. It would have been hours before anyone came home to help her up.
How apt that is, she thinks bitterly, tracing a knot in the wood with one absent fingernail. How truly perfect. Everyone cares so much at school, in Glee, about poor gay Santana, but where are they now? Where’s Hudson’s earnest, paltry remarks, or the love yourself ballads in crooning voices now, here, after this?
Isn’t it nice to have someone care between the hours of seven and three-fifteen each day? What more could she ask for?
Her feet slip and stumble down the last few steps, the room coming into hazy perspective. The clothes lining the floor, the product of two careful hours spent getting ready, arming herself for war. Turns out she wasn’t prepared in the least. Go figure, right? How long will it take the strip the shrapnel out from under her skin? Somehow, she doesn’t think two hours will be enough.
The lamp by her bedside is blazing. She doesn’t remember switching it on, but then, there’s a lot about this endless day she’s having trouble locking onto. Was it only just today her so-called friends were singing their heartfelt platitudes? Hard to believe. The scorch of battle has the tendency of displacing her from time, it seems.
Battles lost, no less. She should have been better equipped, gone in with guns at the ready, instead of tiptoeing behind enemy lines. She should have brought backup. But who on earth wants to staff that cavalry?
Her shoes clunk heavily against the floor, joined in a moment by the swish of her dress-the dress she so childishly thought would serve as armor somehow. Such a beautiful little dress, so feminine, draped lovingly around womanly curves. What was she thinking, choosing this dress? Did she really believe it would protect her, being beautiful? When has that ever really made a difference? Beauty is skin-deep, nothing more. It can never shroud the secret underneath. She should have known.
They’re called secrets for a reason, she remembers, and closes her eyes against the familiar sting. It’s a truth she should have clung to. She knows better, deep down; she always has. This family, this world-it’s all about the secrets. A few nice songs and a pretty dress can’t change reality. Secrets are meant to be kept.
But is it worth it? Laying awake each night, wrestling with herself? Putting on the show at school, at parties, with the whole world applauding her lies? Forcing herself to walk such a thin line, one that makes her so desperately miserable?
I don’t want you to die, Hudson had said, and maybe those were the only words out of his saintly, absurd mouth she truly believes in. She doesn’t want to die. She doesn’t want to live like this, either. So what else is there, but to tell the secret?
Does it really make her so selfish, to want to be herself, for once?
She sits on the mattress edge, shivering, exposed. Her fingers press into the rumpled bedspread, remembering a thousand moments in a life Before-moments spent clutching at these same sheets, wrapping them around her shoulders like a cape, pulling them up over her head, laughing, crying out-
She can’t do this by herself.
They want her to be okay, every one of them, because her okay makes them okay. If she’s okay, there’s nothing to fear, nothing to figure out; no guilty crosses to stagger under, no expectations on them. If she’s okay, Finn Hudson can sleep soundly, a momentary martyr in a war that never, ever drafted him in the first place. Kurt Hummel can obsess about his New York dreams, Noah Puckerman can stalk whichever unfortunate woman has caught his attention this time, Rachel Berry can belt to the rafters about how fucking wonderful she is. As long as she’s okay, everything is sunshine and cheesecake.
They need her to be okay, to smile and sing and say everything is beautiful again. They need the old Santana. They need it.
She’s not okay.
The number enters itself into the keypad practically without help, used so frequently, it doesn’t even require speed dial. She doesn’t life the phone to her ear, can’t even bring herself to raise it from where it sits on the bed, pressed against one naked thigh. She doesn’t have to.
Brittany will be here in seven minutes.
You see I, I’m barely hanging on here
And the way I feel, yeah, something’s gotta give
The door clicks open softly, the way it always does. Ever graceful, Brittany is the master of sneaking in-has been forever, thanks to a childhood spent mimicking her cats. Santana loves that about her. She’s never perfected that kind of stealth herself.
She doesn’t have to say a word, or even lift her eyes. Brittany is already in the room, latching the door behind her, whispering, “Oh, honey” the way no one else will ever been allowed to. She crosses the room in three steps, kneeling at Santana’s feet, and pulls her hand free of the blanket she’s been mindlessly, systematically unraveling for who knows how long now. The threads she has already pulled wrap tight around her fingers; Brittany immediately sets to work freeing her, yarn by yarn.
“It didn’t go well,” Brittany observes when she’s finished, still holding Santana’s hand between her own. “Your ab-ma.”
Something chokes in Santana’s chest, twisting aggressively until she gasps for her next breath. Brittany’s childhood nickname for Abuela seems to detonate inside of her, setting off a chain of mines she’d been unaware of until this moment. She swallows.
“No,” she rasps. “Not well. Not at all.”
Brittany only nods, accepting without pushing. She strokes down each soft fingernail on Santana’s hand with the pad of her index finger, eyes riveted to Santana’s face. “Okay.”
Not okay, Santana screams inside her head, hand clenching in Brittany’s. Everything but okay.
She doesn’t have to say it. Brittany is between her knees, hands reaching up to cup Santana’s cheeks gently. Her eyes are warm, sad, and Santana knows she’s already hurting for her. Has been since Finn opened his big damn mouth. Since the secret unleashed itself upon the whole of Ohio. It isn’t just her secret, she knows, but Brittany’s, too. And Brittany has been carrying it with silent strength from the very beginning.
Her head bows, tears pooling in tired eyes again, and Brittany holds firm. Her skin is chilly from the November wind, her cotton shirt soft as it presses to Santana’s bare chest. She should have taken Brittany with her, she thinks, crazy though she knows it would have been. To have Brittany’s hand in hers while those words tumbled out of her mouth, to have felt Brittany’s eyes drinking her in-maybe that would have proved something. That this isn’t just in her head. That she hasn’t just invented a story to explain away how different she is. That everything about this is real, and worthy, and-
But it wouldn’t have made a difference. Nothing ever does, to people who walk around with their eyes smashed shut. She knows that.
Still. To have had Brittany there would have meant she wasn’t alone. And that feeling, the one welling up right now as Brittany’s palms cradle tear-stained cheeks, as Brittany’s thumbs brush under eyelashes sticky with running mascara-
That’s the feeling she needs.
She realizes her hands are pulling at Brittany now, tearing at the wrinkles in her shirt-front until Brittany stands clumsily and climbs into bed with her. Her face is against blonde hair before she can stop it, her arms winding around and clutching like a little kid in the throes of a nightmare. Brittany used to cling to her like this at sleepovers, whenever her half-conscious mind concocted visions of ghosts or polar bears stalking through the shadowed room. It used to be Brittany who needed the protection, to be held while she whimpered and shook, to be whispered to until her whole body sank into Santana’s with relief.
Used to be.
She’s gripping Brittany’s shirt like she’s never held to anything in her life, as if Brittany is threatening to stand up and walk out of her life forever. She’s clinging like she can’t breathe without Brittany, and maybe that’s the truth right now. Her lungs are aching with each ragged sob, her eyes feel as though they’ve been propped open for days. She can’t remember the last time she felt this empty, this hollowed out by exhaustion. It hurts just to be awake.
Brittany touches her, not as though she is fragile, but with the same steady strength she’s always had. Her hands run down Santana’s back and up into her hair, pulling a little here and there, keeping her grounded. She’s solid as long as Brittany is touching her, as long as Brittany’s mouth rests against her ear, whispering, I love you, I love you, I love you until the words bleed together into one long syllable. She’s alive as long as Brittany’s legs tangle between her own, as long as Brittany’s chest rises and falls under her, as long as it’s Brittany who is pulling the blankets up around her body and rubbing until the feeling returns to her skin.
They stay like this for minutes or hours-Santana couldn’t care less which-and never once does Brittany push. She doesn’t ask. She doesn’t demand. There are no expectations here, Santana understands, no claims as to what she should or shouldn’t do. This is why she loves Brittany, above all else: Brittany trusts her to take her own steps, to make her own decisions. Brittany will hold her hand, glare at anyone who gets in her way, give voice to all those beautiful, crazy words that live inside her head-but she will do it on Santana’s time. With her, always, never before. This is who they are, a team, with no leader and no one person calling the shots.
This is what love is. She knows it. This is what she was trying to explain when-
Brittany kisses the side of her head, the press of gentle lips that lingers so long, it begins to feel as though the kiss was always a part of her. Santana closes her eyes, inhaling the scent of cat dander and cherry popsicle that clings to Brittany’s every article of clothing.
“I want to get out of here,” she murmurs, positive the words are only echoing around her head. But Brittany hears, the way Brittany always does.
“You have to get dressed first,” Brittany replies, muffled against her hair. “You’re my girlfriend now. Can’t have the world seeing your goods.”
Laughter has never hurt so much.
It’s hard enough to walk the line in pieces
But you don’t have to do this on your own.
We can pass the time reading signs along the freeway
You don’t have do this alone.
The car zips along the highway at a speed somewhere between unreasonable and suicidal, but for once, Santana doesn’t find herself clinging to the seatbelt in terror. This is what she needs right now-to be alone with Brittany, to be free-and sure, maybe they’ll get pulled over, but who cares? Brittany’s at the wheel, and that’s reason enough to trust for her.
She leans her head out the window, basking in high-velocity wind so icy, it turns her ears bright crimson in a heartbeat. Brittany glances sideways at her across the armrests, grinning.
“It’s cold.”
“It’s freezing,” Santana agrees, surprising herself with a short giggle. It hurts to laugh, yes, but it feels so fucking good at the same time. Like crawling out of that bed felt, as Brittany meticulously handed her each article of clothing, piece by piece. Her heart aches, her skin pulsing with each breath, but she doesn’t feel quite so much like concrete anymore. It’s a start.
And Brittany’s hand grasping hers, fingers linked together, while her other hand rests on the steering wheel-that’s good, too. That’s perfect. She flashes for a second on Kurt and Blaine, the way they smile sappily at one another, the way they sing stupid songs in their own cars, and attend school dances without fear. They’re idiots, both of them-the hobbit more than the china doll-but they’re brave idiots.
Could she really be that person, too? Holding Brittany’s hand in the hall, kissing her against the lockers, running for Prom Queens together? Sometimes, she thinks she can. Sometimes, when Brittany’s skin shifts against her in bed, when Brittany’s mouth covers her own and breathes pure love into her lungs, when Brittany’s eyes shine through a crowded room-yeah, sometimes, she thinks it could work. This is Ohio, and that’s shitty, but if Kurt and Blaine can do it, who’s to say she can’t?
They’re called secrets for a reason.
She clenches her free fist against the words, against that stern expression flickering in her mind, and lets the wind batter her face. It hurts. Everything sort of does right now. Somehow, she doesn’t think that’s going away anytime soon.
Driving with Brittany, moving, having some sense of freedom-that helps. Not much, maybe. It’s not enough to change everything. They can’t leave town, can’t fly free to some other city, some other state, buckle down in New York on their own. Not now. Not yet. Give it an hour or three, and they’ll have to turn around, go right back to the heart of the problem. Tomorrow, she will have to get up and go to school, listening to assholes tell her they could “straighten her out,” watching Finn Hudson’s stupid face glow with pride as he tells himself again and again how much he helped her this week. Tomorrow, she will say good morning to parents who paste dim smiles on apathetic faces, who don't bat an eye even when she shares with them the most important secret she’s ever kept. Tomorrow, she will sing in front of a handful of people who care just as long as they have to-nice, always nice, but never, ever enough.
Tomorrow, she will drag her feet past Abuela’s immaculate house, glancing through the windows, not daring to hope she’ll see the worn smile and lined face responsible for raising her in the first place.
Tomorrow.
But this is tonight, slouching in Brittany’s sticker-patterned car, with Brittany singing loudly along to some Spice Girls song on the radio. This is now, with Brittany holding her hand, glancing fitfully back and forth from the road to her face, silently gauging her mood with a look. This is the only moment she can afford to focus on.
Brittany, who loves her more than anything in the world. Brittany, who has been there for her since the very beginning. Brittany, who is the only person she has ever wanted to share the worst day of her life with, because Brittany is the only person who could hope to make it better.
With Brittany, it isn’t about platitudes or patronizing gestures. With Brittany, it isn’t about outing or proving a point. With Brittany, it isn’t about anything at all except this: the heartbeat drumming against her palm, the fingertips dancing across her skin, the smile meant only for her.
Today, she was mocked.
This afternoon, she was disowned.
Tonight, she is loved.
She’s not okay. She is miles from okay. But she’s getting there. And Brittany will be by her side every step of the way.
Maybe that’s not enough for life, but it sure as hell is enough for now.
Pairing: Santana Lopez/Brittany Pierce
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: Through 3x07.
Summary: That conversation didn't go remotely the way she'd expected.
A/N: I didn’t particularly intend to write Glee fic again, but last night’s episode was missing something major. Title and lyrics from Thriving Ivory’s “Some Kind Of Home.”
You don’t know why, yeah-
They put a bullet through your heart and told you not to cry
It’s like walking through sludge, finding her way back home again, and she’s not quite sure how she manages it without trailing into the street midway through. Her arms hang like stones from tense shoulders, her legs driving through the soggy brown leaves marring the pavement. Every step sends a throb up through her spine, ending somewhere behind her forehead where a pounding ache has set up shop. Everything hurts. Everything sucks.
The back door is unlocked, but no cars line the driveway. Unsurprising. Her parents are never home anymore. That fact that she managed to catch them long enough to spill the secret in the first place was nothing short of a minor miracle; the fact that neither of them had the time or the investment to do more than smile and nod came as no surprise at all. She tells herself she doesn’t mind. They were never really her concern, anyway.
This was.
She trips on the stairs leading down to her room, her foot sliding on the third step, and goes careening down another two before her hand slams down on the railing. It’s hard to be graceful when every inch of your body feels like it belongs to somebody else. At least she didn’t go all the way down, face-first. It would have been hours before anyone came home to help her up.
How apt that is, she thinks bitterly, tracing a knot in the wood with one absent fingernail. How truly perfect. Everyone cares so much at school, in Glee, about poor gay Santana, but where are they now? Where’s Hudson’s earnest, paltry remarks, or the love yourself ballads in crooning voices now, here, after this?
Isn’t it nice to have someone care between the hours of seven and three-fifteen each day? What more could she ask for?
Her feet slip and stumble down the last few steps, the room coming into hazy perspective. The clothes lining the floor, the product of two careful hours spent getting ready, arming herself for war. Turns out she wasn’t prepared in the least. Go figure, right? How long will it take the strip the shrapnel out from under her skin? Somehow, she doesn’t think two hours will be enough.
The lamp by her bedside is blazing. She doesn’t remember switching it on, but then, there’s a lot about this endless day she’s having trouble locking onto. Was it only just today her so-called friends were singing their heartfelt platitudes? Hard to believe. The scorch of battle has the tendency of displacing her from time, it seems.
Battles lost, no less. She should have been better equipped, gone in with guns at the ready, instead of tiptoeing behind enemy lines. She should have brought backup. But who on earth wants to staff that cavalry?
Her shoes clunk heavily against the floor, joined in a moment by the swish of her dress-the dress she so childishly thought would serve as armor somehow. Such a beautiful little dress, so feminine, draped lovingly around womanly curves. What was she thinking, choosing this dress? Did she really believe it would protect her, being beautiful? When has that ever really made a difference? Beauty is skin-deep, nothing more. It can never shroud the secret underneath. She should have known.
They’re called secrets for a reason, she remembers, and closes her eyes against the familiar sting. It’s a truth she should have clung to. She knows better, deep down; she always has. This family, this world-it’s all about the secrets. A few nice songs and a pretty dress can’t change reality. Secrets are meant to be kept.
But is it worth it? Laying awake each night, wrestling with herself? Putting on the show at school, at parties, with the whole world applauding her lies? Forcing herself to walk such a thin line, one that makes her so desperately miserable?
I don’t want you to die, Hudson had said, and maybe those were the only words out of his saintly, absurd mouth she truly believes in. She doesn’t want to die. She doesn’t want to live like this, either. So what else is there, but to tell the secret?
Does it really make her so selfish, to want to be herself, for once?
She sits on the mattress edge, shivering, exposed. Her fingers press into the rumpled bedspread, remembering a thousand moments in a life Before-moments spent clutching at these same sheets, wrapping them around her shoulders like a cape, pulling them up over her head, laughing, crying out-
She can’t do this by herself.
They want her to be okay, every one of them, because her okay makes them okay. If she’s okay, there’s nothing to fear, nothing to figure out; no guilty crosses to stagger under, no expectations on them. If she’s okay, Finn Hudson can sleep soundly, a momentary martyr in a war that never, ever drafted him in the first place. Kurt Hummel can obsess about his New York dreams, Noah Puckerman can stalk whichever unfortunate woman has caught his attention this time, Rachel Berry can belt to the rafters about how fucking wonderful she is. As long as she’s okay, everything is sunshine and cheesecake.
They need her to be okay, to smile and sing and say everything is beautiful again. They need the old Santana. They need it.
She’s not okay.
The number enters itself into the keypad practically without help, used so frequently, it doesn’t even require speed dial. She doesn’t life the phone to her ear, can’t even bring herself to raise it from where it sits on the bed, pressed against one naked thigh. She doesn’t have to.
Brittany will be here in seven minutes.
You see I, I’m barely hanging on here
And the way I feel, yeah, something’s gotta give
The door clicks open softly, the way it always does. Ever graceful, Brittany is the master of sneaking in-has been forever, thanks to a childhood spent mimicking her cats. Santana loves that about her. She’s never perfected that kind of stealth herself.
She doesn’t have to say a word, or even lift her eyes. Brittany is already in the room, latching the door behind her, whispering, “Oh, honey” the way no one else will ever been allowed to. She crosses the room in three steps, kneeling at Santana’s feet, and pulls her hand free of the blanket she’s been mindlessly, systematically unraveling for who knows how long now. The threads she has already pulled wrap tight around her fingers; Brittany immediately sets to work freeing her, yarn by yarn.
“It didn’t go well,” Brittany observes when she’s finished, still holding Santana’s hand between her own. “Your ab-ma.”
Something chokes in Santana’s chest, twisting aggressively until she gasps for her next breath. Brittany’s childhood nickname for Abuela seems to detonate inside of her, setting off a chain of mines she’d been unaware of until this moment. She swallows.
“No,” she rasps. “Not well. Not at all.”
Brittany only nods, accepting without pushing. She strokes down each soft fingernail on Santana’s hand with the pad of her index finger, eyes riveted to Santana’s face. “Okay.”
Not okay, Santana screams inside her head, hand clenching in Brittany’s. Everything but okay.
She doesn’t have to say it. Brittany is between her knees, hands reaching up to cup Santana’s cheeks gently. Her eyes are warm, sad, and Santana knows she’s already hurting for her. Has been since Finn opened his big damn mouth. Since the secret unleashed itself upon the whole of Ohio. It isn’t just her secret, she knows, but Brittany’s, too. And Brittany has been carrying it with silent strength from the very beginning.
Her head bows, tears pooling in tired eyes again, and Brittany holds firm. Her skin is chilly from the November wind, her cotton shirt soft as it presses to Santana’s bare chest. She should have taken Brittany with her, she thinks, crazy though she knows it would have been. To have Brittany’s hand in hers while those words tumbled out of her mouth, to have felt Brittany’s eyes drinking her in-maybe that would have proved something. That this isn’t just in her head. That she hasn’t just invented a story to explain away how different she is. That everything about this is real, and worthy, and-
But it wouldn’t have made a difference. Nothing ever does, to people who walk around with their eyes smashed shut. She knows that.
Still. To have had Brittany there would have meant she wasn’t alone. And that feeling, the one welling up right now as Brittany’s palms cradle tear-stained cheeks, as Brittany’s thumbs brush under eyelashes sticky with running mascara-
That’s the feeling she needs.
She realizes her hands are pulling at Brittany now, tearing at the wrinkles in her shirt-front until Brittany stands clumsily and climbs into bed with her. Her face is against blonde hair before she can stop it, her arms winding around and clutching like a little kid in the throes of a nightmare. Brittany used to cling to her like this at sleepovers, whenever her half-conscious mind concocted visions of ghosts or polar bears stalking through the shadowed room. It used to be Brittany who needed the protection, to be held while she whimpered and shook, to be whispered to until her whole body sank into Santana’s with relief.
Used to be.
She’s gripping Brittany’s shirt like she’s never held to anything in her life, as if Brittany is threatening to stand up and walk out of her life forever. She’s clinging like she can’t breathe without Brittany, and maybe that’s the truth right now. Her lungs are aching with each ragged sob, her eyes feel as though they’ve been propped open for days. She can’t remember the last time she felt this empty, this hollowed out by exhaustion. It hurts just to be awake.
Brittany touches her, not as though she is fragile, but with the same steady strength she’s always had. Her hands run down Santana’s back and up into her hair, pulling a little here and there, keeping her grounded. She’s solid as long as Brittany is touching her, as long as Brittany’s mouth rests against her ear, whispering, I love you, I love you, I love you until the words bleed together into one long syllable. She’s alive as long as Brittany’s legs tangle between her own, as long as Brittany’s chest rises and falls under her, as long as it’s Brittany who is pulling the blankets up around her body and rubbing until the feeling returns to her skin.
They stay like this for minutes or hours-Santana couldn’t care less which-and never once does Brittany push. She doesn’t ask. She doesn’t demand. There are no expectations here, Santana understands, no claims as to what she should or shouldn’t do. This is why she loves Brittany, above all else: Brittany trusts her to take her own steps, to make her own decisions. Brittany will hold her hand, glare at anyone who gets in her way, give voice to all those beautiful, crazy words that live inside her head-but she will do it on Santana’s time. With her, always, never before. This is who they are, a team, with no leader and no one person calling the shots.
This is what love is. She knows it. This is what she was trying to explain when-
Brittany kisses the side of her head, the press of gentle lips that lingers so long, it begins to feel as though the kiss was always a part of her. Santana closes her eyes, inhaling the scent of cat dander and cherry popsicle that clings to Brittany’s every article of clothing.
“I want to get out of here,” she murmurs, positive the words are only echoing around her head. But Brittany hears, the way Brittany always does.
“You have to get dressed first,” Brittany replies, muffled against her hair. “You’re my girlfriend now. Can’t have the world seeing your goods.”
Laughter has never hurt so much.
It’s hard enough to walk the line in pieces
But you don’t have to do this on your own.
We can pass the time reading signs along the freeway
You don’t have do this alone.
The car zips along the highway at a speed somewhere between unreasonable and suicidal, but for once, Santana doesn’t find herself clinging to the seatbelt in terror. This is what she needs right now-to be alone with Brittany, to be free-and sure, maybe they’ll get pulled over, but who cares? Brittany’s at the wheel, and that’s reason enough to trust for her.
She leans her head out the window, basking in high-velocity wind so icy, it turns her ears bright crimson in a heartbeat. Brittany glances sideways at her across the armrests, grinning.
“It’s cold.”
“It’s freezing,” Santana agrees, surprising herself with a short giggle. It hurts to laugh, yes, but it feels so fucking good at the same time. Like crawling out of that bed felt, as Brittany meticulously handed her each article of clothing, piece by piece. Her heart aches, her skin pulsing with each breath, but she doesn’t feel quite so much like concrete anymore. It’s a start.
And Brittany’s hand grasping hers, fingers linked together, while her other hand rests on the steering wheel-that’s good, too. That’s perfect. She flashes for a second on Kurt and Blaine, the way they smile sappily at one another, the way they sing stupid songs in their own cars, and attend school dances without fear. They’re idiots, both of them-the hobbit more than the china doll-but they’re brave idiots.
Could she really be that person, too? Holding Brittany’s hand in the hall, kissing her against the lockers, running for Prom Queens together? Sometimes, she thinks she can. Sometimes, when Brittany’s skin shifts against her in bed, when Brittany’s mouth covers her own and breathes pure love into her lungs, when Brittany’s eyes shine through a crowded room-yeah, sometimes, she thinks it could work. This is Ohio, and that’s shitty, but if Kurt and Blaine can do it, who’s to say she can’t?
They’re called secrets for a reason.
She clenches her free fist against the words, against that stern expression flickering in her mind, and lets the wind batter her face. It hurts. Everything sort of does right now. Somehow, she doesn’t think that’s going away anytime soon.
Driving with Brittany, moving, having some sense of freedom-that helps. Not much, maybe. It’s not enough to change everything. They can’t leave town, can’t fly free to some other city, some other state, buckle down in New York on their own. Not now. Not yet. Give it an hour or three, and they’ll have to turn around, go right back to the heart of the problem. Tomorrow, she will have to get up and go to school, listening to assholes tell her they could “straighten her out,” watching Finn Hudson’s stupid face glow with pride as he tells himself again and again how much he helped her this week. Tomorrow, she will say good morning to parents who paste dim smiles on apathetic faces, who don't bat an eye even when she shares with them the most important secret she’s ever kept. Tomorrow, she will sing in front of a handful of people who care just as long as they have to-nice, always nice, but never, ever enough.
Tomorrow, she will drag her feet past Abuela’s immaculate house, glancing through the windows, not daring to hope she’ll see the worn smile and lined face responsible for raising her in the first place.
Tomorrow.
But this is tonight, slouching in Brittany’s sticker-patterned car, with Brittany singing loudly along to some Spice Girls song on the radio. This is now, with Brittany holding her hand, glancing fitfully back and forth from the road to her face, silently gauging her mood with a look. This is the only moment she can afford to focus on.
Brittany, who loves her more than anything in the world. Brittany, who has been there for her since the very beginning. Brittany, who is the only person she has ever wanted to share the worst day of her life with, because Brittany is the only person who could hope to make it better.
With Brittany, it isn’t about platitudes or patronizing gestures. With Brittany, it isn’t about outing or proving a point. With Brittany, it isn’t about anything at all except this: the heartbeat drumming against her palm, the fingertips dancing across her skin, the smile meant only for her.
Today, she was mocked.
This afternoon, she was disowned.
Tonight, she is loved.
She’s not okay. She is miles from okay. But she’s getting there. And Brittany will be by her side every step of the way.
Maybe that’s not enough for life, but it sure as hell is enough for now.