Chapter 8

For the next week, Brittany and Santana spent a lot of time together. They talked about the months they had spent apart and how the break-up had felt. For the first time since getting back together, they aired out all of the fears that had sprung up after the events of that year. Brittany told Santana about how alone she had felt after she left, and how after they broke up she felt like Santana found it easy to cut her out because she wasn't all that important to her anyway. She confessed for the first time, even to herself, that she had always been afraid that Santana had only dated her because she was the only option. For her part, Santana told Brittany that she had been scared that Brittany was settling for her after Artie broke up with her, and when she had refused to break-up with Sam, she thought that their relationship hadn't been as meaningful to Brittany as it had been to Santana. That Santana was just another person she dated, no more special than Artie or Sam.

They talked and they talked until Brittany was sure she had completely rid Santana of the fear that she was keeping secrets. When she had calmed down significantly, Quinn had suggested they call Puck and set the record straight. At the end of the call, Brittany was surprised that Santana had only cursed once in Spanish.

As her two best friends were often cooped up in their room, or off on long walks, Quinn found herself spending her time with their neighbour Elaine. She was a strange woman, and Quinn wasn't sure what to make of her. She was extremely flirtatious, even after Quinn had said that she wasn't gay. But at the same time, Quinn had found that they had fallen into an easy banter with each other, similar to her back and forth with Santana. She was hilariously funny, though often very crass, and Quinn noticed that she never spoke of her personal life. She would either deflect with a joke, or quite conveniently have to leave. Quinn being who she was, found it almost tortuous that she couldn't pry anything out of her. All she knew was that she had moved to San Jose three years ago, was in no contact with her family, and had been dating the same boy for almost ten years.

"So you've known Santana for…wait for how long?" Elaine asked

"I think 18 years now. We met in kindergarten." Quinn replied.

"How cute" She said with a curious smile that Quinn thought looked somewhat longing.

"My relationship with Santana is anything but cute. We've been in competition all our lives. We only started to get along in middle school when we realised we could be more popular together than apart. But even then, I wouldn't say that we were getting along. We were kind of just…coexisting."

"Yet, here you are now…best friends?"

"Ah well… yeah. When we joined our school's glee club in tenth grade, things kind of changed. It took a while, but eventually we realised we needed each other."

"How?"

"I'm not really sure how. One day we kind of just…stopped hating each other. I got pregnant and Santana was grappling with being gay…and I guess we just… decided to stick together. There weren't a lot of people who stuck by me when I got pregnant…And not to say that Santana was great support during the pregnancy…but she didn't turn on me, and afterwards, when they quit the cheerios, I think she realised what it was like not having that protection. After that she and Brittany just sort of hung around me all the time and dragged me everywhere with them, till I got back to normal. Then-"

"Hold on…Hold on…I have about a million questions. You were pregnant in high school?"

"Yeah. Don't ask me about it though."

"Sore subject?"

"Long story"

"Mmhhh…okay. Well just one thing?" Elaine asked.

"Maybe"

"Did you keep the baby?"

"No" Quinn answered shortly. She looked away with a straight face, forcing her mind not to stray to her daughter Beth.

After a moment, Elaine decided to break the tense silence.

"Alright…So next thing. What the hell is the cheerios?"

"Oh!" Quinn said in amusement. "The cheerleading squad. I always forget that people don't know that. Everyone knows what the cheerios are back home."

Elaine gave a huge snort, jerking forward in her seat. "Santana was a cheerleader? Tell me you're joking!"

"I'm very serious." Quinn said with a huge smile. "After Brittany she was the best one on the squad…But don't ever tell her I told you that."

Elaine made a motion like zipping her mouth.

"Would never believe it. She's the least cheerful person I've ever met. Brittany I fully understand. Every bone in her body is probably made of rainbows honestly. But unless you're telling me that she joined in order to get into Brittany's pants…"

Quinn shook her head as she laughed. "Nope again. She joined because I made her. It was the fastest way to be popular in our school. After a while though, I think she genuinely started to like it. But Santana never admits to enjoying herself so she'll never tell you that."

Elaine was quiet for a minute, looking as though she was deeply in thought. Then she nodded, as if this was an acceptable answer, and spoke again.

"Alright. And lastly…What do you mean 'you got back to normal'?"

Quinn frowned slightly, confused, and then realised what Elaine was talking about.

"Oh…well I sort of lost it in my senior year. It wasn't pretty. I don't really know what happened. Probably got tired of trying to be on top. I'd given myself quite the reputation. The perfect girl next door kind. You can imagine how hard it was for me to keep that up after having a baby."

Elaine nodded with a weak smile.

"Yeah...so in my senior year I…rebelled...I guess you could say. I dyed my hair, got a tattoo and started smoking. Ask Santana and Brittany, they love to tell people about it." Quinn said, shaking her head.

"I most definitely will" Elaine said, with a glint of anticipation in her eyes. "You people all have crazy stories. I feel like I should visit this Lima, Ohio. It's not normal at all. I guess it makes sense why you all are so strange. Explains too why Brittany and Santana have such a strange connection."

"Ohh?" Quinn raised her eyebrows.

"What do you mean…'oh'? You've known them all these years and you're telling me you haven't noticed?"

Quinn thought for a moment.

"I know they have a connection. Anyone who sees them together would know they have a connection…Or something. But I don't know if I'd call it strange."

"HA!" Yelled Elaine. "If I didn't know better I'd say they could read each other's minds. The other day, I was over with Britt while Santana was still at work. I was sitting next to her on that couch," She pointed to the couch that Quinn was sitting on.

"Mhh" Quinn made a noise to show she was listening.

"She had been lying with her eyes closed for so long I thought she was asleep. Then all of a sudden she sits up straight and looks towards the door. Next second, Santana walks in."

Quinn laughed. "She probably heard her coming."

"That's not all"

"Do go on then" Quinn motioned with her hand for her to continue.

"When Santana walked in, they didn't even speak to each other. Brittany got up, walked over to her and gave her a long hug. Like….I think it was close to ten minutes before they broke it up."

"So? With what they've told me about their schedules it doesn't surprise me that they hug that long after..."

Elaine held up her hand to stop Quinn talking.

"Then, they pulled back and looked at each other. They still didn't say anything, but Brittany was stroking up and down Santana's arms-

"Yeah I've seen them do that load of times. And then did one of them nod?"

"Yeah!" Elaine exclaimed in astonishment. "Brittany nodded and then walked off to their bedroom. She came back after another ten or so minutes, whispered in Santana's ear, and then Santana got up and left. Brittany just sat back down on the couch with me, and told me I had to leave in about 30 minutes."

"Yeah, they used to do that all the time, usually after cheerios practice. I eventually just assumed it was something they did when one of them was super tired. I still don't know how they know what the other person wants in that moment cause they don't talk, and it's not always the same thing. Sometimes it's food, sometimes it's a bath, sometimes its's sex." Quinn sighed as if not knowing was a huge inconvenience.

"And you're saying you don't find that strange?"

"I guess I've been around them so long that it became normal. Plus I've seen them do far stranger things."

"Like what?" Elaine asked hungrily.

"One time they had a whole conversation just with touches. I watched it with my own eyes so I knew they hadn't whispered or something. We were at a sleepover, and people didn't believe Brittany when she said that she often didn't have to actually say anything for Santana to understand her. So when Santana had gone to the bathroom, one of our friends told her to get Santana to suggest they go watch a movie that weekend."

Elaine looked as though she were watching her favourite tv show. She was hanging on to Quinn's every word.

"Keep in mind that they weren't dating at this point yet. So Santana comes back and sits down next to Brittany and I'm telling you it was the craziest thing I've ever seen. Brittany took Santana's hand and just sort of played with her fingers for a few seconds and then stopped, still holding Santana's hand. Then Santana started stroking up and down Brittany's arm with her other one. And then they turned to each other and looked at each other for a while. Brittany smiles, leans her head on Santana's shoulder and intertwines their hands. After a few seconds, Santana goes, "Hey Britt, there's a new Disney moving coming out this weekend. Do you wanna go see it?"

"NO way!" Elaine shrieks in disbelief. "She must have heard you guys talking about it"

'Nope. I thought that too at first. But I was looking at the corridor she was going to have to come out from and I hadn't seen her. At most she would have had to hide behind the wall. So I went and stood there while everyone was talking, to see if I could hear them, but I couldn't make out what they were saying. And they were talking much louder than we had been."

"No way" Elaine repeated, this time in a more awe struck voice. "I'm not sure if I want to be that connected to someone." She said thoughtfully after a while.

"Me neither" Quinn said.

They were silent for a moment.

"Must be nice though" Elaine added.

"Must be really nice" Said Quinn.

**************************************************************************

When the second week of Santana's vacation time started, she and Brittany had become closer than ever. They also finally had the time to take Quinn round the city they now called home, and they walked most places so that they could experience everything more fully. As Tuesday drew to a close they were all hot, sweaty and tired. Brittany had made them walk the entire length of the park, and now Santana had kept them in the bookstore for over an hour.

"Enough guys! We have the whole week to do these kinds of things. Why do we have to kill ourselves today?" Quinn whined loudly.

"Don't be a baby preg…Quinn" Santana snapped, with a cautious look at Brittany, who wasn't even paying attention.

Quinn imitated a whip crack

"Oh shut up! You don't know how she can get. If you did you'd listen to her too."

"Whatever helps you sleep at night Santana" Quinn said smirking. "But I bet you can't say no to her."

Santana thought about this for a while. She knew what Quinn was doing, but would she take the bait?

"You know what Q? I don't really care" Brittany was now paying attention to their conversation, thinking that they were fighting. "Maybe you're right, and I can't say no to her, but I don't really want to. Britt is awesome…she's so awesome and we both know that I don't deserve her. So if me listening to everything she says keeps her happy then 'no' won't even be in my vocabulary, no matter how loudly you crack your annoyingly stupid whip."

"AAWW Santana" Quinn mocked, laughing and trying to pinch her cheeks. "That was so sweet. Shall I call Britt over so you can repeat it?"

"If you want to fall asleep to the sound of sweet sweet lady loving then yeah…go ahead" Santana said, stepping aside to give Quinn a clear line of vision to where Brittany was standing.

Quinn scrunched up her face in disgust and then raised her hands in surrender. Santana laughed loudly and then tuned to Brittany, who was successfully pretending not to eavesdrop.

"Britt" Santana called. Brittany ignored her, keeping up the ruse.

"Britt baby" Santana called again, walking towards her. Brittany turned to her with raised eyebrows.

"Mmhh?"

"Are you ready to go? Quinn bee is nagging." Santana tossed her head In Quinn's direction as she caressed her hands up Brittany's arms gently. Quinn rolled her eyes.

Brittany smiled sweetly at her, feeling her heart swell with so much love that she felt it might burst. She nodded her head, afraid that her voice would break with all the emotions she was feeling. Santana smiled at her and then turned back to Quinn.

"Alright your highness, we can leave. Let me just go pay for these" she lifted the three books she was balancing in one hand, "you guys can start walking out, I'll catch up."

As she walked up to the counter, Brittany followed her with her eyes, jumping slightly when she heard Quinn speaking so close to her.

"You ok Britt?"

"Huh? Yeah of course. Why wouldn't I be okay?"

Quinn shrugged. "You're looking at her funny"

They started walking out of the store.

"I wanna do something for her this week. Whether or not she gets her songs approved, I want to do something special, with her mum and my parents and…" she trailed of, taking a deep breath, "and Puck"

Quinn stopped just as she was pulling the door open. "Puck?"

"Yeah"

"Why on ea-"

"He's important to her. And it's about her, not me" Brittany cut her off quickly, trying to convince herself more than Quinn.

Quinn stared at her for a moment before turning back to walk out of the door shaking her head slowly.

"What?" Brittany asked

"She's just right about what she said earlier."

Brittany stopped dead in her tracks and grabbed Quinn's hand, spinning her around harshly.

"She doesn't need you encouraging her to think she doesn't deserve me. I'm doing everything I can to get her to stop thinking that and it's really starting to piss me off that everyone we know seems to want to keep her thinking she's this horrible person while I'm…I don't even know…Like some snow white angel of the sun that's too good for her. I'm not going to stand for it anymore."

She paused to take a breath, but Quinn cut her off.

"Britt stop. Stop. I wasn't talking about that. I know she deserves you."

Brittany narrowed her eyes suspiciously but softened her demeanour and let go of Quinn's hand.

"I meant she was right about you being awesome."

Brittany beamed, suddenly back to her bubbly self.

"Oh okay. Good"

Quinn laughed at her friend's change in personality.

"Jeez you can be scary Britt. I see what S was talking about."

"Only when I have to be" she said shrugging. "I usually leave it up to Santana. It makes her happy."

Quinn laughed again.

"By the way, snow white angle of the sun" Brittany laughed. "I knew you were listening to us" Quinn said, smirking.

Brittany stumbled slightly. "Uh okay…yeah…But only because I thought you guys were fighting at first. Then how could I stop listening when she was saying all those things."

"Mmmhh" Quinn hummed, nodding but remaining unconvinced.

"You guys didn't have to wait, I said I'd catch up" Santana said as she found them standing just outside the door to the bookstore.

"We actually-"Quinn started, but was quickly cut off by Brittany.

"We didn't wanna leave without you S. Come on lets go home, I'm starving."

"We just ate B" Santana said laughing, linking her arm through Brittany's.

"Yeah well…that was before we spent hours walking around a bookstore." Brittany said in mock annoyance.

Santana looked towards the floor apologetically, "sorry baby, you should have said something, we could've left sooner"

Seeing genuine regret on her girlfriend's face, Brittany brought their joined hands up to her mouth and kissed the back of Santana's hand.

"It's ok baby I was only kidding. I really love watching you get so excited by books. You didn't hear me complaining did you?"

Santana shook her head with a smile.

"Um...I complained" Quinn interjected.

"Yeah several times Ice Quinn. Did I look like I cared?"

Brittany couldn't help but laugh. Santana was getting creative with the nicknames.

"Britt!" Quinn called, looking at her expectantly.

Brittany shook her head. "Sorry Quinn, that was a good one."

Santana smiled widely and squeezed Brittany's hand.

"Whatever" they heard Quinn mutter.

****************************************************************************

On Thursday, Quinn had declared visitor's choice and demanded that they stay in the apartment, so they had called Elaine over and were sitting around the coffee table which was covered in several boxes of Chinese food, packets of chips and bowls of dip. There was a movie playing that they had all stopped watching in favour of telling Elaine more stories about their high school days.

"What!?" Elaine shrieked, howling with laughter.

"I can't make it up. It was kind of touching at the time I guess...but mostly it's just-"

"Hilarious!" Santana cut in. Brittany nodded, trying to resist the infectious combined laughter of Elaine and Santana as she retold the story of Quinn performing 'It's a man's world'.

"IT WAS A GOOD PERFORMANCE" Quinn yelled, trying to gain some control of the conversation.

"Quinn, you sang great. But the choreo…" Santana broke off in another fit of laughter. Brittany was going red in the face trying to keep her laughter in.

Quinn looked as though she herself was struggling to keep from laughing. Finally, after one look at Brittany she burst out laughing too, followed closely by Brittany.

"Okay, I guess it was a bit…"

"RIDICULOUS" Santana provided, gripping her sides and gasping for breath.

Suddenly, Brittany heard a phone ring. She strained to hear the ringtone over the loud laughter around her.

"Santana I think your phone is ringing…Santana..." She pulled Santana to her and cupped her cheeks intending to get her to focus, but was distracted by the lusty look she found in her eyes.

"Hi" Santana said, licking her lips and glancing down at Brittany's lips. Then she leaned upwards and captured Brittany's bottom lip between her own lips. Brittany hummed in approval and pulled Santana up from the ground to sit in her lap, all without disconnecting their lips.

Santana laced her arms around Brittany's neck and then let her tongue trace over Brittany's top lip.

Brittany opened her mouth and took Santana's tongue into her mouth, greeting it with her own.

"Okayy, what the fuck just happened?" Elaine asked, shocked at the sudden change in mood.

"I don't think that was meant to happen…but these two easily distract each other. You get used to it after a while. Hey Britt! BRITTANY!" Quinn yelled.

Brittany slowly pulled away from Santana and looked at Quinn with an annoyed expression.

"Wasn't there a reason you were calling Santana?"

Brittany was confused for a second and then her eyes widened and she looked back at Santana.

"You're phone is…" she paused to listen, "Was…ringing."

Santana shot up and ran to the kitchen island where her phone was lying. She picked it up, then froze looking down at it.

"Everything okay?" Brittany asked, getting up and walking to stand beside her. Santana didn't say anything, she just kept staring at the phone.

"Santana?" Brittany asked, concerned.

"Baby can you…I can't...Can you? Please?"

"Can I what baby?"

"Call her back" Santana said, handing her the phone. She looked like she was going to throw up.

"Yeah" Brittany said quietly, taking the phone with one hand and using the other to rub soothing circles on Santana's lower back. She unlocked the phone with her fingerprint (Santana had added it before they moved to San Jose) and went to the call history. One missed call from Emma, Santana's manager. Now Brittany understood. This was the call they had been waiting for all week.

"Hello?" She heard from the other end. She jumped and quickly brought the phone to her ear. She hadn't realised she had pressed 'call back'.

"Hi Emma. It's Brittany." Brittany tried to sound as normal as possible.

"Hi Brittany. How are you?"

"Good thanks. I'm good"

Santana was looking at her, begging her to hurry up, so instead of asking Emma how she was, or waiting for her to ask where Santana was, she plunged right into it.

"I'm here with Santana too. Did you hear from the producers?"

"Oh… right into it? I suppose Santana is freaking out?"

Brittany nodded before remembering that Emma couldn't see her. "Yeah, a little bit."

"I get it. Well, I have only good news." Brittany grinned at Santana.

Quinn had stood up too now, and was walking back and forth in small strides, watching Brittany, and Elaine was looking from Santana, who had her fingers crossed over her face, to Brittany, to Quinn.

"Yeah?" Brittany asked.

"Very good news. Every song has been approved-"

Brittany didn't hear what was said after that. She had screamed loudly, and was now hugging Santana so tightly she could barely breathe.

"YOU DID IT BABY!" She yelled. And then she pulled away and looked at Quinn, still holding Santana in her arms.

"APPROVED"

"APPROVED?" Quinn yelled.

"EVERY SINGLE ONE APPROVED"

Quinn screamed and ran to them, hugging Santana from the back.

Santana looked to be in shock. She was blinking rapidly, and kept repeating 'approved' under her breath.

"Approved Santana. You did it. Emma said-"Brittany suddenly remembered the woman on the phone.

"Emma?"

"Yeah still here Brittany. Been waiting for all the yelling to stop."

"Sorry" Brittany chuckled.

"Don't be. This is good news. Great news. Santana has worked so hard and there's only up from here. She deserves this."

"Yes. Yes she does." Brittany agreed, looking into Santana's eyes.

"Approved" Santana whispered, finally breaking into a smile.