Crowd Surf Off A Cliff (6/13)
Title: Crowd Surf Off A Cliff (6/13)
Pairing: Santana Lopez/Brittany, side Rachel Berry/Quinn Fabray
Rating: R/NC-17ish
Spoilers: AU
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Summary: Santana Lopez hates school, Lima, and those damn Cheerios--for the most part.
A/N: Title swiped from the Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton song of the same name.
“My head is exploding.”
Quinn’s voice, dull and gray, echoes tinnily in Santana’s ear. She winces into the cell phone, bumping her shoulder up to press it harder into the side of her head as she scrubs a particularly horrid dish.
“Should’ve had some water.”
“My head,” Quinn repeats dangerously, “is exploding. I have the fucking hangover from Hell. And do you know why I have this hangover?”
“Because you chugged too many fractions worth of a fifth after that fruity piece of shit you started off on?” Santana guesses, chipping at a sudsy patch of crusted chicken grease. Dish duty is a pain in the ass, but at least it shuts her mother up when Santana refuses to attend church on Sunday mornings with the rest of the family.
“Maybe it’s because,” Quinn growls, edgy and pissed off, “some bitch left my ass to pass out on Noah Puckerman’s goddamn piece of shit futon last night. Can you imagine who that bitch might be and where I might find her so that I can kick her sorry Latin ass, Lopez?”
Cringing, Santana sets the dish aside as a temporary lost cause and starts in on a plate instead. Quinn must be seriously angry, if she’s flying in the face of her religion with the whole breaking a Commandment thing over it.
“Look, Fabray, I’m sorry, I just couldn’t deal with-“
“You can’t deal with anything,” Quinn explodes, hissing into the phone a second later. Santana hears her swallow, and when she speaks again, it’s in a low rumble. “That’s the point lately, Lopez. Ever since we picked up our fucking schedules for this year, you’ve been a bigger miserable wreck than usual. Two weeks in, and you’re falling apart at the feet of some girl. It’s pathetic. Jewfro is cooler than you when it comes to emotion management.”
That’s a little cold, Santana thinks with an instinctual stab of irritation.
Quinn, ignoring the stony silence from the other end of the line, barrels on. “I know you hate school, Santana, okay? I know you think it’s a waste of time, I know you think it’s a big box of injustice and stereotypical profiling and all that bullshit. I know, because I know you, all right, better than you’ve been giving me credit for lately. I’m your best fucking friend. And I am telling you, as your best friend, that you have got to stop this. Ever since you mentally signed away the end of your summer, ever since you stepped back into that school-fuck, ever since you met that Brittany chick, you’ve been a spacecase and a half. It’s a mess, you are a mess, and sweetheart, when you’re making me look like the sane one in this relationship, we have a problem. Figure it out. Stop running away. Talk to the hottie with the legs, or push her down the stairs, or whatever it is you need to do, but do it. Like, now.”
She pauses, sucking in a breath. Santana waits.
“You done?”
“No,” Quinn snaps. “You also need to find your fucking songs for Glee, because if you show up in that choir room empty-handed, I am going to march down to Sylvester’s office and tell her you’re secretly dying to be her right-hand towel bitch. And so help me God, if you think I’m lying, just fucking try it.”
Santana almost laughs. Quinn exhales noisily into the receiver.
“Now I am done. Your turn. Asshole.”
She drops the plate back into the soapy sink and rubs her hands on a dishtowel. “Gross, I’m all pruney.”
“You’re fucking doing dishes while I yell at you again, aren’t you?”
“Never,” Santana teases, sobering when Quinn doesn’t reply. “Listen, I’m sorry. I’ve been kind of an asshole.”
“Kind of. Asshole.”
“Thought it was my turn,” she sniffs. Obediently, Quinn goes quiet. She sighs. “I’m sorry. Really. I don’t know what’s got me so crazy lately.”
“It’s the girl,” Quinn cuts in again. Santana scoffs.
“It’s not the girl.”
“It’s the girl,” Quinn repeats stubbornly. Santana flings her hands into the air, nearly dislodging the phone in the process and sending it to a sudsy, soggy death.
“Fine, it’s the fucking girl.” Defeated, she sags against the counter. “Fuck me, I don’t even know what it is about her.”
“New Hottie is extremely hot,” Quinn observes helpfully. “And it would explain why you’ve been such a spaz lately. I mean, Santana, nothing’s even happened this year. Aside from your valiant efforts to break your knuckles, anyway, but how is that news?”
She’s got a point; the Cheerios, though big on the sneering and throwing confectionery treats from around corners, haven’t been especially creative in their labors as of yet. The jocks are all too damn terrified of what Santana could do to their precious testicles to even come near her, and it’s too early to worry about flunking grades finding their way to her mother’s email inbox. The only thing that’s getting on her nerves is this obnoxiously gorgeous girl.
Santana isn’t one to be thrown off-kilter by a pair of killer legs and the abs of God. It’s the least comfortable sensation ever, after a Slushee down the bra.
“There is the Glee thing,” Santana points out weakly. Quinn coughs out a chuckle.
“If one of us should be so concerned with ‘the Glee thing’, it oughta be me. Santana, Rachel is going to hear me sing on Thursday. What if she doesn’t like it? What if she thinks I sound like a screech owl being shoved into a blender or, or a…Disney Channel twerp?”
“Yes, Q, your lesbian-ass self is clearly meant for the Wizards of Not-Hogwarts, or whatever,” Santana replies dryly, secretly pleased that their little spat is over so instantaneously. This is the best part about being friends with Quinn: even when she’s being crazy, even when she’s been flipping out for no reason whatsoever and acting like a tool in the process, Quinn will call her out on it once-and only once-and they will move on until the next time Santana fucks up. There’s an easy rapport here that she’s never found with anyone else, and expects never to find again.
Except, something dark and surreptitious mutters from behind her sanity, she’s already kind of at that bare-it-all place with a certain other blonde.
She’s trying not to think about it when Quinn calmly asks, “So, what did she say to you, anyway?”
“Who?” Santana stalls, leaning heavily against the counter. Water seeps into the back of her tank top, frigid on her lower back.
“The girl who sent you running out of Puck’s place,” Quinn says, and Santana can actually hear the smirk.
“She…wants to be friends,” she says uneasily. “Still.”
An exaggerated gasp stings her ear. She scowls as Quinn pitches her voice an octave higher that usual and wails, “Well, bless my stars, Santana Lopez. She wants to be friends? How unreasonable and wayward of her!”
“Shut the fuck up,” the dark-haired girl snaps, rubbing her forehead. “You know the deal there, Q. You know my feelings on the subject.”
“Fuck and run, yeah, I got it,” Quinn says in her normal voice. “And, uh, how’s that working out for you?”
“Screw off, Fabray.”
“No, I’m serious,” Quinn insists. Santana hears some shuffling in the background, followed by a grunt that likely means the blonde has thrown herself into a mountain of pillows. “You’ve never had a serious relationship-“
“Honey, I’m hurt,” Santana cuts in mockingly. “You mean what we have isn’t serious?”
“Shut the hell up and listen, douchebag. You’ve never had a serious relationship, you act like a spaz on the rare occasion you actually find yourself interested in a girl for more than how loudly she can moan, you’ve got daddy issues coming out your pores…”
Good humor evaporating, Santana scowls. “Low blow, Fabray. You’re treading a thin line here.”
Quinn knows as well as anyone that her parents’ divorce--and the man whose fists and adultery set it off--is strictly out of bounds as a conversation topic. She has only broken this law twice, doing so solely when she’s had damn good reasons. Which, given how fucking absurd she’s been acting, Santana supposes this qualifies as.
“Santana, the thing is, I think you really like this girl. No, really,” the blonde adds when Santana opens her mouth with a mortifying little squeak of protest. “I really, really do.”
“I’ve spoken to her three times,” Santana objects.
“You’ve never heard of love at first sight?” Quinn counters prissily. Santana coughs. “Don’t need a whole lot of talkin’ for that.”
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
She hears a rustle and takes it mean Quinn has shrugged. “A little, but that doesn’t change anything. I saw it the second she ran into you that day, San. You looked at her the way I know I look at Rachel: kind of loony, sort of creepy, entirely stupid. Like you could keep looking forever without getting bored or needing to blink.”
“I’m not you, Q,” Santana says quietly, meaning a hundred little things at once. Quinn makes a small sound of assent.
“No, you’re not. But you’re not totally different either. And San, you know how I really knew you wanted her? In a way you haven’t wanted anyone since I’ve known you?”
Santana says nothing. She hears Quinn smile, hears the way her eyes crinkle at the corners, and grips the counter tightly.
“You didn’t hit her when she used you as a human crash cart,” Quinn says fondly. “You didn’t look like you even wanted to try. Santana, since we were eleven years old, since your father walked out, you have met every person on this earth with fists or fuck yous, but with this girl…you just stared. And you told her it was okay.”
Santana swallows against an orange-sized lump, frustrated with herself. “You’re such a sap, Fabray.”
“And you’re opening up to being human for the first time since puberty,” the other girl replies simply. “Ease into it, Lopez. Don’t hurt yourself.”
“Fuck off,” she tries to say again, but it comes out more as a breath than anything. Quinn’s laugh rasps against her eardrum.
“Whatever will our peers say when they find out Santana Lopez is in possession of an actual beating heart? Woman, your reign of vampire terror will be over.”
In spite of herself, Santana can’t ward off a burst of laughter. “Shit,” she gasps when she can breathe again, “don’t tell Puck. Without his fear to keep it in check, the earth will shoot off its axis and collide with the moon.”
“Gotta put the world first,” Quinn giggles. “We’re like superheroes or some shit.”
“Absolutely,” Santana agrees, leaning her forehead against the cabinets and filling her lungs as far as they will expand. “God. This has been such a fucked up semester.”
“All two weeks of it,” Quinn adds, probably too cheerfully for someone with an alleged hangover from Hell. Santana nods bleakly.
“Two weeks. Goddamn, we’re going to be here forever.”
“Look on the bright side,” Quinn says after a beat. “That gives you a really friggin’ long time to get over yourself and sweep New Hottie off her fancy feet.”
Santana breathes for several minutes, staring into the sink as bubbles sweep gently from side to side. Because she is Quinn, the blonde lets her.
At last, Santana’s lips part. “I can’t date her, Quinn. I can’t even be her friend.”
It isn’t what she wanted to say, but it’s true nonetheless.
“And why the fuck not?” Quinn demands, because of the two of them, Quinn has always been the romantic. She believes in love conquering evil, in the healing properties of some well-thought-out lyrics and a bewitching piano solo, in a world where sexual orientation is just a guideline and eyes meeting across a crowded room can change everything.
Santana believes in nothing of the sort.
“I just can’t,” she says feebly, curling her shoulders protectively up around her ears. Quinn makes a sputtering noise.
“You like her.”
“Yeah.”
“You really fucking like her. And she likes you. Enough to stalk your mean, grouchy ass, even. Enough to take your insults and your high-horse bullshit attempts at nobility.”
“Yeah,” Santana says again, flatly. Quinn makes that obnoxious confused noise again.
“You don’t make a damn bit of sense, Lopez.”
“I know,” she seethes, crushing the phone against her ear until it hurts. “Jesus, Fabray, I’m aware that I’m out of my goddamn mind. I’m aware. Thank you.”
There’s a pause. “Well,” Quinn says at last. “As long as you know.”
It’s probably not appropriate for Santana to laugh until she cries.
[Part 7]
Pairing: Santana Lopez/Brittany, side Rachel Berry/Quinn Fabray
Rating: R/NC-17ish
Spoilers: AU
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Summary: Santana Lopez hates school, Lima, and those damn Cheerios--for the most part.
A/N: Title swiped from the Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton song of the same name.
“My head is exploding.”
Quinn’s voice, dull and gray, echoes tinnily in Santana’s ear. She winces into the cell phone, bumping her shoulder up to press it harder into the side of her head as she scrubs a particularly horrid dish.
“Should’ve had some water.”
“My head,” Quinn repeats dangerously, “is exploding. I have the fucking hangover from Hell. And do you know why I have this hangover?”
“Because you chugged too many fractions worth of a fifth after that fruity piece of shit you started off on?” Santana guesses, chipping at a sudsy patch of crusted chicken grease. Dish duty is a pain in the ass, but at least it shuts her mother up when Santana refuses to attend church on Sunday mornings with the rest of the family.
“Maybe it’s because,” Quinn growls, edgy and pissed off, “some bitch left my ass to pass out on Noah Puckerman’s goddamn piece of shit futon last night. Can you imagine who that bitch might be and where I might find her so that I can kick her sorry Latin ass, Lopez?”
Cringing, Santana sets the dish aside as a temporary lost cause and starts in on a plate instead. Quinn must be seriously angry, if she’s flying in the face of her religion with the whole breaking a Commandment thing over it.
“Look, Fabray, I’m sorry, I just couldn’t deal with-“
“You can’t deal with anything,” Quinn explodes, hissing into the phone a second later. Santana hears her swallow, and when she speaks again, it’s in a low rumble. “That’s the point lately, Lopez. Ever since we picked up our fucking schedules for this year, you’ve been a bigger miserable wreck than usual. Two weeks in, and you’re falling apart at the feet of some girl. It’s pathetic. Jewfro is cooler than you when it comes to emotion management.”
That’s a little cold, Santana thinks with an instinctual stab of irritation.
Quinn, ignoring the stony silence from the other end of the line, barrels on. “I know you hate school, Santana, okay? I know you think it’s a waste of time, I know you think it’s a big box of injustice and stereotypical profiling and all that bullshit. I know, because I know you, all right, better than you’ve been giving me credit for lately. I’m your best fucking friend. And I am telling you, as your best friend, that you have got to stop this. Ever since you mentally signed away the end of your summer, ever since you stepped back into that school-fuck, ever since you met that Brittany chick, you’ve been a spacecase and a half. It’s a mess, you are a mess, and sweetheart, when you’re making me look like the sane one in this relationship, we have a problem. Figure it out. Stop running away. Talk to the hottie with the legs, or push her down the stairs, or whatever it is you need to do, but do it. Like, now.”
She pauses, sucking in a breath. Santana waits.
“You done?”
“No,” Quinn snaps. “You also need to find your fucking songs for Glee, because if you show up in that choir room empty-handed, I am going to march down to Sylvester’s office and tell her you’re secretly dying to be her right-hand towel bitch. And so help me God, if you think I’m lying, just fucking try it.”
Santana almost laughs. Quinn exhales noisily into the receiver.
“Now I am done. Your turn. Asshole.”
She drops the plate back into the soapy sink and rubs her hands on a dishtowel. “Gross, I’m all pruney.”
“You’re fucking doing dishes while I yell at you again, aren’t you?”
“Never,” Santana teases, sobering when Quinn doesn’t reply. “Listen, I’m sorry. I’ve been kind of an asshole.”
“Kind of. Asshole.”
“Thought it was my turn,” she sniffs. Obediently, Quinn goes quiet. She sighs. “I’m sorry. Really. I don’t know what’s got me so crazy lately.”
“It’s the girl,” Quinn cuts in again. Santana scoffs.
“It’s not the girl.”
“It’s the girl,” Quinn repeats stubbornly. Santana flings her hands into the air, nearly dislodging the phone in the process and sending it to a sudsy, soggy death.
“Fine, it’s the fucking girl.” Defeated, she sags against the counter. “Fuck me, I don’t even know what it is about her.”
“New Hottie is extremely hot,” Quinn observes helpfully. “And it would explain why you’ve been such a spaz lately. I mean, Santana, nothing’s even happened this year. Aside from your valiant efforts to break your knuckles, anyway, but how is that news?”
She’s got a point; the Cheerios, though big on the sneering and throwing confectionery treats from around corners, haven’t been especially creative in their labors as of yet. The jocks are all too damn terrified of what Santana could do to their precious testicles to even come near her, and it’s too early to worry about flunking grades finding their way to her mother’s email inbox. The only thing that’s getting on her nerves is this obnoxiously gorgeous girl.
Santana isn’t one to be thrown off-kilter by a pair of killer legs and the abs of God. It’s the least comfortable sensation ever, after a Slushee down the bra.
“There is the Glee thing,” Santana points out weakly. Quinn coughs out a chuckle.
“If one of us should be so concerned with ‘the Glee thing’, it oughta be me. Santana, Rachel is going to hear me sing on Thursday. What if she doesn’t like it? What if she thinks I sound like a screech owl being shoved into a blender or, or a…Disney Channel twerp?”
“Yes, Q, your lesbian-ass self is clearly meant for the Wizards of Not-Hogwarts, or whatever,” Santana replies dryly, secretly pleased that their little spat is over so instantaneously. This is the best part about being friends with Quinn: even when she’s being crazy, even when she’s been flipping out for no reason whatsoever and acting like a tool in the process, Quinn will call her out on it once-and only once-and they will move on until the next time Santana fucks up. There’s an easy rapport here that she’s never found with anyone else, and expects never to find again.
Except, something dark and surreptitious mutters from behind her sanity, she’s already kind of at that bare-it-all place with a certain other blonde.
She’s trying not to think about it when Quinn calmly asks, “So, what did she say to you, anyway?”
“Who?” Santana stalls, leaning heavily against the counter. Water seeps into the back of her tank top, frigid on her lower back.
“The girl who sent you running out of Puck’s place,” Quinn says, and Santana can actually hear the smirk.
“She…wants to be friends,” she says uneasily. “Still.”
An exaggerated gasp stings her ear. She scowls as Quinn pitches her voice an octave higher that usual and wails, “Well, bless my stars, Santana Lopez. She wants to be friends? How unreasonable and wayward of her!”
“Shut the fuck up,” the dark-haired girl snaps, rubbing her forehead. “You know the deal there, Q. You know my feelings on the subject.”
“Fuck and run, yeah, I got it,” Quinn says in her normal voice. “And, uh, how’s that working out for you?”
“Screw off, Fabray.”
“No, I’m serious,” Quinn insists. Santana hears some shuffling in the background, followed by a grunt that likely means the blonde has thrown herself into a mountain of pillows. “You’ve never had a serious relationship-“
“Honey, I’m hurt,” Santana cuts in mockingly. “You mean what we have isn’t serious?”
“Shut the hell up and listen, douchebag. You’ve never had a serious relationship, you act like a spaz on the rare occasion you actually find yourself interested in a girl for more than how loudly she can moan, you’ve got daddy issues coming out your pores…”
Good humor evaporating, Santana scowls. “Low blow, Fabray. You’re treading a thin line here.”
Quinn knows as well as anyone that her parents’ divorce--and the man whose fists and adultery set it off--is strictly out of bounds as a conversation topic. She has only broken this law twice, doing so solely when she’s had damn good reasons. Which, given how fucking absurd she’s been acting, Santana supposes this qualifies as.
“Santana, the thing is, I think you really like this girl. No, really,” the blonde adds when Santana opens her mouth with a mortifying little squeak of protest. “I really, really do.”
“I’ve spoken to her three times,” Santana objects.
“You’ve never heard of love at first sight?” Quinn counters prissily. Santana coughs. “Don’t need a whole lot of talkin’ for that.”
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
She hears a rustle and takes it mean Quinn has shrugged. “A little, but that doesn’t change anything. I saw it the second she ran into you that day, San. You looked at her the way I know I look at Rachel: kind of loony, sort of creepy, entirely stupid. Like you could keep looking forever without getting bored or needing to blink.”
“I’m not you, Q,” Santana says quietly, meaning a hundred little things at once. Quinn makes a small sound of assent.
“No, you’re not. But you’re not totally different either. And San, you know how I really knew you wanted her? In a way you haven’t wanted anyone since I’ve known you?”
Santana says nothing. She hears Quinn smile, hears the way her eyes crinkle at the corners, and grips the counter tightly.
“You didn’t hit her when she used you as a human crash cart,” Quinn says fondly. “You didn’t look like you even wanted to try. Santana, since we were eleven years old, since your father walked out, you have met every person on this earth with fists or fuck yous, but with this girl…you just stared. And you told her it was okay.”
Santana swallows against an orange-sized lump, frustrated with herself. “You’re such a sap, Fabray.”
“And you’re opening up to being human for the first time since puberty,” the other girl replies simply. “Ease into it, Lopez. Don’t hurt yourself.”
“Fuck off,” she tries to say again, but it comes out more as a breath than anything. Quinn’s laugh rasps against her eardrum.
“Whatever will our peers say when they find out Santana Lopez is in possession of an actual beating heart? Woman, your reign of vampire terror will be over.”
In spite of herself, Santana can’t ward off a burst of laughter. “Shit,” she gasps when she can breathe again, “don’t tell Puck. Without his fear to keep it in check, the earth will shoot off its axis and collide with the moon.”
“Gotta put the world first,” Quinn giggles. “We’re like superheroes or some shit.”
“Absolutely,” Santana agrees, leaning her forehead against the cabinets and filling her lungs as far as they will expand. “God. This has been such a fucked up semester.”
“All two weeks of it,” Quinn adds, probably too cheerfully for someone with an alleged hangover from Hell. Santana nods bleakly.
“Two weeks. Goddamn, we’re going to be here forever.”
“Look on the bright side,” Quinn says after a beat. “That gives you a really friggin’ long time to get over yourself and sweep New Hottie off her fancy feet.”
Santana breathes for several minutes, staring into the sink as bubbles sweep gently from side to side. Because she is Quinn, the blonde lets her.
At last, Santana’s lips part. “I can’t date her, Quinn. I can’t even be her friend.”
It isn’t what she wanted to say, but it’s true nonetheless.
“And why the fuck not?” Quinn demands, because of the two of them, Quinn has always been the romantic. She believes in love conquering evil, in the healing properties of some well-thought-out lyrics and a bewitching piano solo, in a world where sexual orientation is just a guideline and eyes meeting across a crowded room can change everything.
Santana believes in nothing of the sort.
“I just can’t,” she says feebly, curling her shoulders protectively up around her ears. Quinn makes a sputtering noise.
“You like her.”
“Yeah.”
“You really fucking like her. And she likes you. Enough to stalk your mean, grouchy ass, even. Enough to take your insults and your high-horse bullshit attempts at nobility.”
“Yeah,” Santana says again, flatly. Quinn makes that obnoxious confused noise again.
“You don’t make a damn bit of sense, Lopez.”
“I know,” she seethes, crushing the phone against her ear until it hurts. “Jesus, Fabray, I’m aware that I’m out of my goddamn mind. I’m aware. Thank you.”
There’s a pause. “Well,” Quinn says at last. “As long as you know.”
It’s probably not appropriate for Santana to laugh until she cries.
[Part 7]