fanfiction: Calm Before the Storm
Title: Calm Before the Storm
Chapter: 1
Fandom: Glee
Pairing(s): Santana L + Brittany S
Genre: Friendship, Romance, Angst, Comfort
Rated: K
Word Count: 2180
Disclaimer: I do not own Glee or any of it's characters etc.
Summary: Santana and Brittany's back story from when they met right up to high school.
Joan Eckart had taught children in preschool for almost seven years, in this time she'd come across many who's first language was not English and they always picked up the basics in only a few weeks, being so young of course, their minds were sponges. That was until a Puerto Rican girl and a Dutch girl joined her class around the same time in the fall of 1996.
She had simply observed them for the first few days as she usually did with children still learning to speak English, however unlike her previous pupils in their situation, they didn't make any effort to the communicate with the other children, choosing to keep themselves to themselves. After a few days they began coming in from the playground together.
A three-year-old Santana was sitting in the sandbox in her preschool's playground one morning, when a shadow fell across the hole she had been digging, she looked up scowling, expecting to see one of the children that spoke "Anglish" or whatever the word was. Instead she found herself looking in to the eyes of the little blonde girl in her class that like her, didn't know any of those words. Her glare softened a little, but she kept her eyebrows knitted together to show her distaste at being interrupted.
The girl simply smiled and sat down next to Santana, looking from the hole to Santana's dirty finger-nails, she produced a small plastic spade from behind her back that she had found in the preschool's playground toy-box. As she held it out to the dark-haired girl she smiled even more broadly and found Santana looking at her with wide eyes and her mouth in a tight straight line.
"Ben je oke?" the blonde girl asked with a concerned frown. Santana didn't know these words either, "No entiendo". They both sat for a minute looking at each other, wondering what to do, then slowly Santana lifted her pinkie and pointed to her chest and said "Mi nombre es Santana". The blonde girl didn't know what the first words meant but she had heard her teacher calling out "Santana" in class and realized that it must be this girl's name. She held up her own pinkie and pointed to her chin and said "Brittany."
Santana giggled and grabbed Brittany's finger with her own, "Amigos".
After three weeks Joan had seen improvement in neither Santana nor Brittany's English, between the two of them they had only managed (or been interested in) learning a handful of phrases; "Oops I did it again", "colouring in" (Brittany), "MINE!" and "Go away" (Santana).
However it wasn't until they got in to a fight that Joan decided it was time to call their parents.
It was cold that morning, so Brittany's mom had given her a pair of fleecy yellow mitts with ducks on them to wear. Brittany looked at them and began jumping up and down excitedly "Pato! Pato!" her mother frowned, confused. "Neen, eend." She spoke gently but firmly, at this Brittany looked up looking as confused as her mother. However she simply accepted the correction and skipped out to the car, too excited about showing them to Santana to wait.
When she arrived at the playground Santana was sitting expectantly on the bench nearest the car park, swinging her legs from side to side. As soon as she saw Brittany waving at her from a car window she jumped down to run over, she waited somewhat impatiently at the side-walk until Brittany was out her car before waving her own gloves in front of her, they were red with cats on them."Hola Brittany!" Brittany's mother heard this and was about to say something to the girl that was clearly the distraction stopping her daughter from learning English at preschool but stopped when Santana looked at her with big dark eyes and extended her mitted-hand with a nervous but clear "Mijn naam es Santana".
The woman smiled to herself at the slight mix-up of Dutch and Spanish before shaking the young girl's hand "Welkom Santana, Ik ben de moeder van Brittany." Santana nodded to show she understood, which both surprised and intrigued Brittany's mother. The meeting was sadly short-lived as the bell rang signalling for Brittany and Santana to go to their classroom, Brittany's mother kissed Brittany on the cheek and gave Santana a warm smile before returning to her car. The two girls shared a conspiratorial giggle before walking in to class with joined pinkies.
Miss Eckart sighed when she saw the two girls tumble in to class as usual, together. She rubbed her temples, turning away to gather her thoughts. Meanwhile a girl in their class, one Quinn Fabray was eyeing their brightly-coloured mitts with envy, her own gloves, once a pristine white were now a dirty shade of grey. She watched them take their mitts off and place them together in the middle of the desk they shared. Quinn didn't like these girls, they said funny words and never spoke in the only way Quinn could understand, but she liked their mitts very much.
While the teacher wasn't looking and the two girls were distracted by the falling snow outside the window, Quinn edged over to their desk, watching them carefully, just as she was about to pick up the red pair of mitts they got down from the bench they had been standing on to look out the window. Quinn panicked and blindly grabbed at the mitts before scuttling back to her own desk, her spoils clutched tightly in her small hands.
Santana and Brittany didn't notice the missing mitts as the teacher was now talking and they were both listening to her, seemingly trying to understand what she was saying. Quinn grinned, feeling victorious over those funny-speaking girls, however when she looked down at her prize her face fell in dismay: she had one red and one yellow mitt.
When it was time for the children to go outside and play, Quinn rushed out before Santana and Brittany could even glance her way, they smiled at each other and reached over to where they had put their mitts at the start of the day, but Santana's left and Brittany's right mitt were no where to be seen. They both looked under the table, under their chairs and in their bags, but the mitts were of course not there.
The teacher noticed them dawdling at their desk and called for them to hurry on outside before all the snow melted. Santana by now was panicking "Pero mi guante! Mi gaunte!" this was only met by a frown and even when Brittany began speaking quickly and urgently in Dutch Miss Eckart simply herded them out the door.
Once outside the two girls joined their un-gloved hands together for warmth as well as emotional comfort, staring around the playground feeling even more alienated from the other children than they had in the previous weeks at preschool. Over by the jungle-gym Quinn was waving the stolen mitts around in front of the boys faces, who looked impressed. "And they didn't notice you taking them?" Finn asked with a frown. "They can't even speak properly, they're probably too stupid to see anything." she replied, Noah chuckled and tried to grab hold of the red mitt, but Quinn yanked them out of his reach, holding them high up in the air above her.
Santana who was still gripping Brittany's hand tightly, had been looking around the playground holding back tears when she saw the other blonde girl in her class waving something red around in the air, she pulled Brittany over towards the jungle-gym and pointed. Brittany immediately saw Santana's red mitt and her own yellow mitt on Quinn's other hand.
Brittany wasn't an angry little girl, so when rage bubbled up inside her she didn't quite know what she was supposed to do, she looked to her right to see what Santana was thinking but before she could even turn her head she felt Santana's grip on her hand loosen and she turned her gaze back towards Quinn just in time to see Santana walk up to her and push her over before gushing out a stream of angry Spanish "...esas son las minas! Dar de neuvo!"
Quinn pulled herself to her feet and looked from Santana to Finn and Noah who had backed away slightly, looking frightened. "What is she saying? She just sounds stupid!" Brittany knew very little English words but she knew what "stupid" meant because her mom had taught her not to use it when she went to preschool and hearing this girl use it to describe Santana made her even angrier, "Ze is NIET stupid!" she cried as she began walking towards Quinn to push her back to the ground, but before she was halfway there a snowball hit her square in the face.
Noah looked down incredulously at his hands, unable to believe what he had just done. Brittany fell to the ground covering her face in her hands and started to cry, this pushed Santana over the edge and with a strangled yell she launched herself at Noah.
"Please have a seat Mr. and Mrs. Pierce, Mr. and Mrs. Lopez." Joan Eckart was tired and frustrated and just wanted to go home, she wanted this to go as quickly as possible. Both girls' parents looked as though they shared her feelings, Brittany's father spoke first: "Whatever it is my daughter is in trouble for.. I'm sure it's a misunderstanding, she's a good girl." This was natural of course, what parent would think anything bad of their young child? Santana's mother however did not looked surprised to find herself summoned due to her child's misbehaviour, "Santana has two older brothers, so it's only naturally she's going to be more open to confrontation. Though I'm interested to know what started this 'fight' in the first place, she's not the kind to go around shoving people over without a good reason." She glared at Joan and tightened her grip on her daughter's shoulder.
Brittany and Santana had been looking at their feet, not understanding the adults' conversation going on in English, but at the mention of Santana's name they both looked up at each other with worried expressions.
Joan cleared her throat before saying a little nervously "One of the other students appeared to take a liking to the girls' gloves, from what I can gather she took one of each while the girls weren't looking." At this Santana's father looked angry, "So our daughters were subject to thievery and yet they are the ones being reprimanded? How exactly is that fair Miss Eckart?"
Joan was now struggling to keep her cool, "Let me remind you Mr. Lopez that it was Santana that initiated the physical contact." "She's three-years-old and some strange kid takes her stuff? Of course she's going to react badly to that, she doesn't understand how to handle the situation otherwise."
"I understand that she was provoked, but the main reason I called you here today is to discuss your daughters' lack of progress in picking up English." This caught Mr. Lopez off guard, "What do you mean? Santana tells me she's been learning lots of new words at school."
"Well that's true, but she's been learning Dutch from Mr. and Mrs. Pierce's daughter here, and if I'm not mistaken Santana has been teaching her Spanish. Neither girls have shown any interest in communicating with the other children, if you want the situation to change I'd suggest putting one girl in another class."
Both sets of parents turned to confer with one another and then with the two girls. Joan obviously didn't understand a word they said when they addressed their children but she didn't need to speak Dutch or Spanish to understand the distressed expressions on both Brittany and Santana's face. Brittany's father spoke next, "Well, if that's what it will take for Brittany to learn English before she starts kindergarten, it's probably for the best." Joan visibly relaxed, happy to see they agreed with her.
Mr. Lopez however, did not agree, "And pass up the chance for our girls to be trilingual before they even start high school? I don't think so- " Brittany's mother interjected: "You mean, bilingual, if they remain together they wont pay any attention to learning English."
Mr. Lopez looked thoughtful for a moment before answering, "Then I'll hire an English tutor, Brittany can attend Santana's lessons too. If they don't behave themselves and pay attention then we can separate them here, but personally I think you'd be wasting a life-altering opportunity for your daughter if you didn't give her the chance to become fluent in three languages before she reaches the third grade. That is my final word on the matter, now if you'll excuse me I have a date to take Santana for ice-cream."
With that he picked Santana up and he and his wife headed out the door, but not before Santana turned over her Papa's shoulder and waved her pinky at Brittany.
Chapter: 1
Fandom: Glee
Pairing(s): Santana L + Brittany S
Genre: Friendship, Romance, Angst, Comfort
Rated: K
Word Count: 2180
Disclaimer: I do not own Glee or any of it's characters etc.
Summary: Santana and Brittany's back story from when they met right up to high school.
Joan Eckart had taught children in preschool for almost seven years, in this time she'd come across many who's first language was not English and they always picked up the basics in only a few weeks, being so young of course, their minds were sponges. That was until a Puerto Rican girl and a Dutch girl joined her class around the same time in the fall of 1996.
She had simply observed them for the first few days as she usually did with children still learning to speak English, however unlike her previous pupils in their situation, they didn't make any effort to the communicate with the other children, choosing to keep themselves to themselves. After a few days they began coming in from the playground together.
A three-year-old Santana was sitting in the sandbox in her preschool's playground one morning, when a shadow fell across the hole she had been digging, she looked up scowling, expecting to see one of the children that spoke "Anglish" or whatever the word was. Instead she found herself looking in to the eyes of the little blonde girl in her class that like her, didn't know any of those words. Her glare softened a little, but she kept her eyebrows knitted together to show her distaste at being interrupted.
The girl simply smiled and sat down next to Santana, looking from the hole to Santana's dirty finger-nails, she produced a small plastic spade from behind her back that she had found in the preschool's playground toy-box. As she held it out to the dark-haired girl she smiled even more broadly and found Santana looking at her with wide eyes and her mouth in a tight straight line.
"Ben je oke?" the blonde girl asked with a concerned frown. Santana didn't know these words either, "No entiendo". They both sat for a minute looking at each other, wondering what to do, then slowly Santana lifted her pinkie and pointed to her chest and said "Mi nombre es Santana". The blonde girl didn't know what the first words meant but she had heard her teacher calling out "Santana" in class and realized that it must be this girl's name. She held up her own pinkie and pointed to her chin and said "Brittany."
Santana giggled and grabbed Brittany's finger with her own, "Amigos".
After three weeks Joan had seen improvement in neither Santana nor Brittany's English, between the two of them they had only managed (or been interested in) learning a handful of phrases; "Oops I did it again", "colouring in" (Brittany), "MINE!" and "Go away" (Santana).
However it wasn't until they got in to a fight that Joan decided it was time to call their parents.
It was cold that morning, so Brittany's mom had given her a pair of fleecy yellow mitts with ducks on them to wear. Brittany looked at them and began jumping up and down excitedly "Pato! Pato!" her mother frowned, confused. "Neen, eend." She spoke gently but firmly, at this Brittany looked up looking as confused as her mother. However she simply accepted the correction and skipped out to the car, too excited about showing them to Santana to wait.
When she arrived at the playground Santana was sitting expectantly on the bench nearest the car park, swinging her legs from side to side. As soon as she saw Brittany waving at her from a car window she jumped down to run over, she waited somewhat impatiently at the side-walk until Brittany was out her car before waving her own gloves in front of her, they were red with cats on them."Hola Brittany!" Brittany's mother heard this and was about to say something to the girl that was clearly the distraction stopping her daughter from learning English at preschool but stopped when Santana looked at her with big dark eyes and extended her mitted-hand with a nervous but clear "Mijn naam es Santana".
The woman smiled to herself at the slight mix-up of Dutch and Spanish before shaking the young girl's hand "Welkom Santana, Ik ben de moeder van Brittany." Santana nodded to show she understood, which both surprised and intrigued Brittany's mother. The meeting was sadly short-lived as the bell rang signalling for Brittany and Santana to go to their classroom, Brittany's mother kissed Brittany on the cheek and gave Santana a warm smile before returning to her car. The two girls shared a conspiratorial giggle before walking in to class with joined pinkies.
Miss Eckart sighed when she saw the two girls tumble in to class as usual, together. She rubbed her temples, turning away to gather her thoughts. Meanwhile a girl in their class, one Quinn Fabray was eyeing their brightly-coloured mitts with envy, her own gloves, once a pristine white were now a dirty shade of grey. She watched them take their mitts off and place them together in the middle of the desk they shared. Quinn didn't like these girls, they said funny words and never spoke in the only way Quinn could understand, but she liked their mitts very much.
While the teacher wasn't looking and the two girls were distracted by the falling snow outside the window, Quinn edged over to their desk, watching them carefully, just as she was about to pick up the red pair of mitts they got down from the bench they had been standing on to look out the window. Quinn panicked and blindly grabbed at the mitts before scuttling back to her own desk, her spoils clutched tightly in her small hands.
Santana and Brittany didn't notice the missing mitts as the teacher was now talking and they were both listening to her, seemingly trying to understand what she was saying. Quinn grinned, feeling victorious over those funny-speaking girls, however when she looked down at her prize her face fell in dismay: she had one red and one yellow mitt.
When it was time for the children to go outside and play, Quinn rushed out before Santana and Brittany could even glance her way, they smiled at each other and reached over to where they had put their mitts at the start of the day, but Santana's left and Brittany's right mitt were no where to be seen. They both looked under the table, under their chairs and in their bags, but the mitts were of course not there.
The teacher noticed them dawdling at their desk and called for them to hurry on outside before all the snow melted. Santana by now was panicking "Pero mi guante! Mi gaunte!" this was only met by a frown and even when Brittany began speaking quickly and urgently in Dutch Miss Eckart simply herded them out the door.
Once outside the two girls joined their un-gloved hands together for warmth as well as emotional comfort, staring around the playground feeling even more alienated from the other children than they had in the previous weeks at preschool. Over by the jungle-gym Quinn was waving the stolen mitts around in front of the boys faces, who looked impressed. "And they didn't notice you taking them?" Finn asked with a frown. "They can't even speak properly, they're probably too stupid to see anything." she replied, Noah chuckled and tried to grab hold of the red mitt, but Quinn yanked them out of his reach, holding them high up in the air above her.
Santana who was still gripping Brittany's hand tightly, had been looking around the playground holding back tears when she saw the other blonde girl in her class waving something red around in the air, she pulled Brittany over towards the jungle-gym and pointed. Brittany immediately saw Santana's red mitt and her own yellow mitt on Quinn's other hand.
Brittany wasn't an angry little girl, so when rage bubbled up inside her she didn't quite know what she was supposed to do, she looked to her right to see what Santana was thinking but before she could even turn her head she felt Santana's grip on her hand loosen and she turned her gaze back towards Quinn just in time to see Santana walk up to her and push her over before gushing out a stream of angry Spanish "...esas son las minas! Dar de neuvo!"
Quinn pulled herself to her feet and looked from Santana to Finn and Noah who had backed away slightly, looking frightened. "What is she saying? She just sounds stupid!" Brittany knew very little English words but she knew what "stupid" meant because her mom had taught her not to use it when she went to preschool and hearing this girl use it to describe Santana made her even angrier, "Ze is NIET stupid!" she cried as she began walking towards Quinn to push her back to the ground, but before she was halfway there a snowball hit her square in the face.
Noah looked down incredulously at his hands, unable to believe what he had just done. Brittany fell to the ground covering her face in her hands and started to cry, this pushed Santana over the edge and with a strangled yell she launched herself at Noah.
"Please have a seat Mr. and Mrs. Pierce, Mr. and Mrs. Lopez." Joan Eckart was tired and frustrated and just wanted to go home, she wanted this to go as quickly as possible. Both girls' parents looked as though they shared her feelings, Brittany's father spoke first: "Whatever it is my daughter is in trouble for.. I'm sure it's a misunderstanding, she's a good girl." This was natural of course, what parent would think anything bad of their young child? Santana's mother however did not looked surprised to find herself summoned due to her child's misbehaviour, "Santana has two older brothers, so it's only naturally she's going to be more open to confrontation. Though I'm interested to know what started this 'fight' in the first place, she's not the kind to go around shoving people over without a good reason." She glared at Joan and tightened her grip on her daughter's shoulder.
Brittany and Santana had been looking at their feet, not understanding the adults' conversation going on in English, but at the mention of Santana's name they both looked up at each other with worried expressions.
Joan cleared her throat before saying a little nervously "One of the other students appeared to take a liking to the girls' gloves, from what I can gather she took one of each while the girls weren't looking." At this Santana's father looked angry, "So our daughters were subject to thievery and yet they are the ones being reprimanded? How exactly is that fair Miss Eckart?"
Joan was now struggling to keep her cool, "Let me remind you Mr. Lopez that it was Santana that initiated the physical contact." "She's three-years-old and some strange kid takes her stuff? Of course she's going to react badly to that, she doesn't understand how to handle the situation otherwise."
"I understand that she was provoked, but the main reason I called you here today is to discuss your daughters' lack of progress in picking up English." This caught Mr. Lopez off guard, "What do you mean? Santana tells me she's been learning lots of new words at school."
"Well that's true, but she's been learning Dutch from Mr. and Mrs. Pierce's daughter here, and if I'm not mistaken Santana has been teaching her Spanish. Neither girls have shown any interest in communicating with the other children, if you want the situation to change I'd suggest putting one girl in another class."
Both sets of parents turned to confer with one another and then with the two girls. Joan obviously didn't understand a word they said when they addressed their children but she didn't need to speak Dutch or Spanish to understand the distressed expressions on both Brittany and Santana's face. Brittany's father spoke next, "Well, if that's what it will take for Brittany to learn English before she starts kindergarten, it's probably for the best." Joan visibly relaxed, happy to see they agreed with her.
Mr. Lopez however, did not agree, "And pass up the chance for our girls to be trilingual before they even start high school? I don't think so- " Brittany's mother interjected: "You mean, bilingual, if they remain together they wont pay any attention to learning English."
Mr. Lopez looked thoughtful for a moment before answering, "Then I'll hire an English tutor, Brittany can attend Santana's lessons too. If they don't behave themselves and pay attention then we can separate them here, but personally I think you'd be wasting a life-altering opportunity for your daughter if you didn't give her the chance to become fluent in three languages before she reaches the third grade. That is my final word on the matter, now if you'll excuse me I have a date to take Santana for ice-cream."
With that he picked Santana up and he and his wife headed out the door, but not before Santana turned over her Papa's shoulder and waved her pinky at Brittany.