Fic: They Say Bad Things Happen For A Reason [Part Three]
Title: They Say Bad Things Happen For A Reason [Part Three]
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 5700
Notes: see Part One
[Part One] [Part Two]
--
She walks back to her apartment, knowing that it would be pretty bad form to walk around town wearing the same clothes as the day before. Her phone beeps again in her pocket but the sound just makes her head hurt and she's not really up to talking to anyone right now. It's her day off, all she wants to do is drink six gallons of water and then pass out again on her couch.
With plans to do exactly that she fishes her keys out of her pocket and is in the process of opening the door when she she registers the sound of music coming out of her apartment and the smell of cooking. She steps backwards to look at the number by the door. Yeah, this is her apartment. She listens again and tries to make out what's going on in there but can't think of a reason there'd be music playing.
She palms her gun where it's holstered at her side and opens the door slowly, stepping in and trying to stay alert. Now that she's inside she can hear the clang of pans in the kitchen and the overwhelming smell of waffles and vanilla and coffee. Someone is in her fucking apartment. And they're...cooking?
Another step into the apartment and she's about to yell at her intruder when a scrabbling of toenails comes barreling towards her and a cocker spaniel is all of a sudden in front of her, jumping up her leg and wagging its tail back and forth.
Her heart pounds fast and hard against her ribcage as she bends down and takes a good look at the dog. Her dog. "Nemo?" Santana croaks, stroking a hand over the dog's head.
Footsteps make their way from the kitchen and soon after Santana hears a soft "Hey."
It's Brittany's voice, which once she saw Nemo she knew would follow, but she can't take her eyes of the dog. It's too much too soon and she still hasn't really recovered from her dream but Brittany's there, in her apartment, with their dog, cooking in their kitchen. Maybe she's actually still asleep. Or drunk.
She finally brings her eyes up and sees Brittany, arms across her chest and a worried expression on her face. Santana's pretty sure she's going to faint. Or have a heart attack. If she wasn't already nauseous from her hangover she'd definitely be by this point.
"Hi," she gets out after a long moment.
"I still had my key," Brittany says, answering a question Santana hadn't yet asked.
It breaks Santana out of her surprise and she starts feeling anger bubbling up in her. Brittany left. Why the hell is she back?
"What are you doing here?" She pushes past Brittany and into her kitchen as she asks it. "And what the fuck did you do to my kitchen?"
"I was making breakfast."
"Obviously," Santana continues, picking up a bowl of waffle batter and looking at the messy counter where her waffle maker sits, now covered in batter. She wonders for a second where the hell Brittany got the ingredients since she hasn't been grocery shopping in months.
"Where were you last night?" Brittany asks in a small voice as she walks further into the kitchen and hoists herself to sit on the counter.
"What's it to you? You don't live here anymore. You know that right?"
"Santana," she says in that dumb voice again but there's something else there and Santana turns on instinct, eyes roaming Brittany's face in an intense study. She's sees it then, it's small, but she knows Brittany better than anyone and six months can't take away that particular skill.
She shifts closer to the taller girl, standing in front of where she's perched on the counter. "What's wrong?"
Brittany looks away, eyes darting around the apartment and Santana can tell she's about to cry. Concern seeps through every bone in her body, anger washed away in place of a deep instinctual desire to comfort Brittany.
The blonde girl is about to answer when her damn phone rings again, echoing loudly in the silence of the kitchen and causing Nemo to start barking. "Shit," she says, distractedly grabbing her phone out of her pocket and stepping away from Brittany.
El Puckerone is lit up on her phone and she rolls her eyes realizing he was probably the one that had called her six times that morning. She flips open her phone, shrugging out of her jacket as she snaps out, "What?"
"Where are you?"
"My apartment, why?"
"Sit down."
She glances back at Brittany to see the other girl wipe at her eyes and slide off the counter. Santana moves into the living room.
"No. What the fuck do you want?" She hisses into the phone. "I kind of have a situation here."
"What?"
"Brittany's here," she says, low and fevered, hoping Brittany can't hear the way her voice shakes on her name.
"Oh thank God," Puck breathes out.
"What?"
"There was another break in," he continues. "Her apartment. They're pretty sure it was Pike again. The call came in sometime last night, that's why I was fucking calling you all morning."
Santana goes still, fear coursing through her. "Her apartment," she repeats.
"Yeah, she was fucking there too, but I couldn't find her after I got there. I'm just happy she ended up back at your place, Jesus."
She doesn't say anything, just looks back into the kitchen to watch Brittany fiddle around with the plates and the bowls she had out, Nemo trailing behind her and swishing in and out of her long legs as she moves about the room.
"Lopez, you there?"
"Yeah, I have to go. Thanks Puck," she says and then hangs up.
She throws her phone on the counter as she walks back into the kitchen. "Britt."
"Sorry," the other girl replies, swirling batter around in a bowl and avoiding Santana's gaze. "I had no where else to go. Tina's out of town and Mike's already staying with a friend and I still had my key and I couldn't stay at my apartment," she trails off. "I had no where else."
Santana swallows hard and takes a deep breath. "You can stay here," she offers. "As long as you need to. It's technically still in your name anyway," Santana says with a chuckle, hoping levity will break through the haze of pain that's surrounded both of them.
"Thanks," Brittany says, setting the bowl down and walking towards Santana.
Before she can do anything else Brittany has her arms wrapped around Santana's neck and her body is pressed up against hers in a tight hug. Santana's knees nearly buckle embarrassingly, her head starting to swim at the sensation. First Brittany is back in her apartment acting like she never left, cooking breakfast and listening to the radio and now they're touching, their whole bodies pushed together for the first time in six months.
Nemo starts jumping up on them and it's all too much again, like the last six months never happened and it's just another morning, standing in their kitchen together with their dog bouncing around them, demanding their attention. She's too stunned to bring her arms up around the other girl but Brittany breaks away before she has a chance to work up to it.
"I made waffles," Brittany says as she shuffles back to her bowl and gestures to a plate on the counter. "You should eat."
Santana walks to the counter and sits down feeling incapable of doing much else as the heat from Brittany's body still tingles across her skin, spreading across her like an itch she can't scratch.
"There wasn't any food in here," Brittany continues, disapproval coating her tone. "You need to take better care of yourself."
"I'm fine," Santana argues, her stomach turning over at the smell of the waffles. She can't decide if eating them would be a good idea, her hangover still lingering and Brittany's presence making her lightheaded. Nemo comes to settle at her feet, already comfortable back in the apartment.
Brittany shakes her head, an amused smile on her face but doesn't say anything else.
The syrup is already next to her plate and she covers a waffle in it before digging in, her face unable to suppress a grin at the familiar taste of Brittany's waffles. The taller girl could make exactly two things in the kitchen: waffles and grilled cheese. Everything else was mostly a disaster (aside from one kick ass sugar cookie recipe) but she excelled at those two dishes and it was one of the things Santana missed the most after she left.
She hears a light laugh come out of Brittany and glances up to see the other girl observing her, grinning at the expression on Santana's face.
Santana shrugs, a painful squeezing in her heart at the way Brittany looks, but some things are just undeniable. "They're still good."
Brittany smiles, wide. "I know," she says before walking around the counter to come sit next to Santana. "I already had some."
"When did you get here?"
"Last night," she answers, fiddling with an extra fork on the table.
"Puck told me about the break in."
"Yeah."
Santana sets her fork down and turns to Brittany, her brain shifting into work mode as she remembers the fact that Brittany's been the victim of a robbery twice in the past week, most likely by the same person. "What happened?"
Brittany shrugs, avoiding Santana's eyes. "I don't know, when the door came down, I ran to the bedroom and locked myself in the closet. My neighbors called the cops and that's where I was when they got there."
"I should probably go back to the station today," Santana comments.
"Aren't you off today?"
"Yeah, but with the dance studio robbery and now your apartment I should probably be doing some work."
Brittany locks eyes with Santana, a timid expression on her face. "Do you think you could stay? I kind of," she swallows and looks away. "I kind of don't want to be alone right now. Especially now that you're here."
"Okay," Santana says because even though everything in her wants to leave the apartment there's a stronger instinct to give Brittany whatever she wants. She was really never able to reprogram that part of her brain.
"Thanks," Brittany whispers, putting her hand over Santana's on the table and smiling at her.
Santana can feel her heart start to speed up and she's pretty sure she's going to have a serious medical condition pretty soon if this keeps up. She's staring at her hand where Brittany's touching it, trying to fight the urge to either flee or grab her ex-girlfriend and kiss her. She doesn't think either option would be very healthy right now.
She settles for squeezing Brittany's hand before releasing it and standing up. "Well I think I'm going to take a nap," she says. "Long night last night."
Brittany frowns at that and Santana realizes how it sounds, like she was up all night doing god knows what, but she doesn't correct her. Let Brittany think she was out sleeping with half of the city for all she cares, anything to even the tables at this point.
"Okay."
"Okay, well. You know where everything is. I'll just be," she gestures to the couch, visible from the kitchen.
"The couch?"
"Uh," and then Santana realizes what she just revealed. "It's comfy."
Brittany looks kind of skeptical of that reason, she's been on that couch hundreds of times before, in fact Brittany bought the damn thing, but she doesn't argue so Santana walks into the living room and settles down.
"I'm going to take Nemo for a walk," Brittany calls.
"Don't go far," Santana responds before she can catch herself. It's a familiar exchange, said hundreds of times whenever Brittany would leave to walk the dog. She closes her eyes and hopes Brittany doesn't notice or something but when she hears "I won't," said softly from the back of the couch she can almost feel Brittany smiling. The door opens and closes and Santana lets out a long breath, praying to whoever will listen that she can survive this new arrangement.
Despite all the awkwardness and pain she feels at having Brittany back in her space, she falls asleep to the smell of waffles and the sweat pea of Brittany's shampoo all around her and feels legitimately comfortable for the first time in months.
--
"I don't know why we need to go. It's not even legit," Santana argued for the sixteenth time that afternoon, sitting on the corner of her bed as she put socks on.
Brittany stood on the opposite side of the room in nothing but her underwear, surveying their open closet as she tried to pick an outfit. "Our best friends are getting married, S. We have to go."
"They're not getting married. They're signing a bunch of papers. There's not even going to be booze." She was whining but she didn't care. It was Saturday. She had the day off and Brittany was in her underwear. Going to watch Quinn and Rachel sign their lives away to each other wasn't really on the top of her to-do list today.
"They are too getting married. And we have to be there. We're the witness people or whatever," Brittany said, turning to stare at Santana with a look that left no room for argument.
"Fine," Santana grumbled, regretting for the tenth time that night Quinn got Santana drunk and made her agree to being a witness. She reminded herself again not to play drinking games with Quinn Fabray, she always lost.
Brittany abandoned her search in the closet and came to stand in front of Santana, her hands coming up to rest on her shoulders as the blonde girl leaned into her, looking down and smiling. "It's not going to take that long and then we'll come back here and do whatever you want."
"Whatever I want?" Santana repeated, intrigued.
"Yup, for the rest of the night," Brittany continued, pushing Santana further on the bed before moving to straddle her. Santana's hands settled on Brittany's bare legs and she enjoyed the feel of soft skin under her palms. "And then in the morning I'll make you waffles."
Santana felt her stomach growl at the offer and she smiled up at her girlfriend. "Deal," she said, sealing it with a kiss.
Brittany pressed harder into her, her hands gripping Santana's hair and her tongue teasing her lips.
"How much time do we have?" Santana asked in between kisses.
"Hour," Brittany mumbled before pushing them back onto the bed, giggling.
--
There's a warm weight pressing into her side as Santana comes back to consciousness and a blanket draped over her that wasn't there when she laid down. She realizes the weight is Nemo and the morning comes back to her in a flash, pushing the dream she just had out of her brain. Brittany is in her apartment.
As if on cue, the tall blonde girl waltzes into the living room, stopping when she notices that Santana is awake.
"Hi," Santana croaks out, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and sitting up. Nemo jumps up as she moves, bouncing off the couch to stand by Brittany.
"Hey, I was just gonna order Chinese for dinner. You want some?"
"What time is it?" Santana asks, still a little disoriented from being asleep. She looks out the window and notices how dark it is.
"7:30."
"Holy crap."
"Yeah, you were out like a light," Brittany agrees and Santana recognizes the concern in the other girl's tone, she can almost hear the words you're not getting enough sleep that Brittany leaves unsaid.
"Long week," Santana explains, lamely.
"Right," Brittany says. "Did you have plans for dinner or do you want me to order something?"
Santana's stomach growls, loudly and it gets a giggle out of her ex-girlfriend. "Yeah," she answers, a small smile on her face. "Ginger chicken-"
"With broccoli, no snow peas, chicken lo mein," Brittany finishes. "Good to see some things don't change."
She watches the other girl walk into their kitchen and head for the phone when she feels, not for the first time, all out of sorts and she doesn't know if she'll survive eating dinner with Brittany. Just the two of them, in the apartment they used to share and eating Chinese from a restaurant they ate at twice a week.
"I told Quinn I'd call her about dinner," she adds quickly, thrown in Brittany's direction.
The blonde girl spins, phone in one hand, menu in the other, to look at Santana. "Oh," she responds, her face lighting up. "Invite her and Rachel over, that will be great. Do they still order the same things?"
The expression on Brittany's face is bright and eager and Santana actually feels kind of guilty for a moment. She gets so focused on how terrible her life was when Brittany walked out that she forgets that the other girl lost stuff too. Brittany got the dog, but Santana got the friends. Then she stops feeling guilty. Brittany got their damn dog. She pats Nemo on the head affectionately when the dog wanders over.
"Yeah, creatures of habit," she answers, referring to how neither of them, not Santana, not Quinn, not Rachel, ever ordered anything different when they got Chinese.
Brittany smiles and turns back to the phone punching in the numbers and holding it to her ear. Santana grabs her phone off the counter and walks back through the apartment towards the bedroom, praying that Quinn doesn't have any plans tonight.
Her friend answers on the third ring. "Hey," her friend greets.
"Hi, what are you doing for dinner?"
"Uh," Quinn replies, "Rach and I were going to go to that Italian place over on 2nd. Nick's."
"Come over here. We're ordering Chinese."
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong. I'm inviting you over for dinner. What the hell?"
"S, you never invite us over there."
"Well I am right now."
"Wait," Quinn says in a low, calm voice. "Did you just say we?"
"Yeah, um. Britt," she stumbles on the name, still unused to saying it again. "Britt and I are ordering Chinese."
"Come again?"
"There was another robbery," Santana explains. "At her apartment. She's staying here."
"Holy shit."
"Yeah. So do you want to eat the fucking Chinese she just ordered for you or not?"
"We'll be right over."
--
Quinn is true to her word and they arrive not long after, Rachel smiling brightly and Quinn holding two six packs of beer. She hugs Quinn as Rachel scrambles past her, greeting the dog in the entryway that they hadn't seen in months.
"Where is she?" Quinn whispers in her ear as they embrace.
"Kitchen," Santana replies, equally as soft.
"Brittany!" They hear, loud and high pitched, as Rachel enters the kitchen. There's a commotion and an equally high "Rachel!" as she can imagine both girls are hugging and jumping. Rachel and Brittany were good friends once upon a time, both of them finding company in each other when both Santana and Quinn worked long and strange hours.
Quinn rolls her eyes at the sounds and Santana lets out a small chuckle as they walk into the kitchen and Santana sets the beer Quinn brought on the counter.
Exactly as she imagined it, Rachel and Brittany are hugging and jumping around, bright smiles on their faces and Nemo has joined in on the fun. They stop moving when Brittany notices Quinn and she looks over, this time with a hesitant but no less happy expression. "Quinn," she says, and almost reverently.
"Hey, Britt," the blonde greets. "Long time."
"Yeah," Brittany agrees, walking over and hugging the other girl quickly.
They pull apart and everyone seems to look at Santana. It's a weird moment, four friends reunited in her apartment and it's the first time anyone but herself has been in here in months. Her mouth opens and closes and she looks at all of them but can't find anything to say.
Brittany saves her. "Food should be here soon, you guys want a drink?"
The taller girl smiles at her as she says it and the moment feels shockingly familiar, Brittany coming to Santana's rescue in awkward social moments, always the fun hostess when Santana couldn't be.
"We brought beer," Quinn answers, pointing to the two six packs on the counter. Santana notices them again and grabs a bottle for herself, twisting the cap off and taking a long pull.
"Santana," Brittany chastises. "That's rude."
She wants to snap at that, tell Brittany that it's not her fucking place to say shit like that but the doorbell rings before she can get the words out and Brittany's out of the kitchen in a flash, opening the door and greeting the delivery man.
"She looks good," Quinn comments as she grabs a beer for herself.
"Yeah," Rachel agrees.
Santana just keeps drinking.
--
Cartons are spread across the kitchen table, settled around packets of soy sauce and fortune cookies and a good amount of empty beer bottles. Santana's grateful for the beer but Quinn didn't bring nearly enough and she's trying to find an excuse for opening a bottle of something harder without sounding like an alcoholic. She hopes Quinn will ask first.
"So you're living over on Washington now, Brittany?" Rachel asks.
"Yeah, it's not much," Brittany answers, bringing up some noodles to her mouth with her chopsticks. "But I don't need much."
Santana scoffs at that, the alcohol making it hard to restrain her reactions but she tries to turn it into a cough when Brittany turns at the sound.
"You okay?" Quinn asks, patting her on the back as she keeps coughing.
"Yeah," she points to the empty beer bottle in front of her friend. "You want another drink?"
Quinn eyes her. "You got anything stronger?"
And this, this is why Quinn is her best friend. "Yeah," she replies, getting up from the table and walking over to the cabinet where she keeps her liquor. The only cabinet not empty in the kitchen.
"Quinn mentioned you had been robbed again, that's terrible, Britt," Rachel says as Santana returns to the table with two tumblers full of whiskey. She sets one in front of Quinn and keeps the other for herself. Brittany eyes the liquid suspiciously as she answers.
"Yeah, it was pretty scary, but they think they know who did it so...," she trails off.
"You do?" Rachel directs this question towards Santana.
Santana just keeps drinking and ignores the question, partly because she really doesn't want to talk about this and partly because she loves that annoying twitch Rachel gets in her eye when Santana ignores her. It's too much fun.
Quinn catches on, like she always does, and rolls her eyes. "Roger Pike," she answers for Santana. "We're pretty sure Pike did both places."
"Pike?" Rachel asks. "The guy Santana arrested like six million times?"
"The one and only," Santana joins, taking another sip of her whiskey.
Rachel blinks at Santana. "Why would he go after Brittany? Is he trying to get back at you or something?"
It's dumb because Santana's been a cop for years. Years. It's dumb because Rachel Berry lives in the goddamn clouds and spends way more time observing herself in the mirror than other people. And it's dumb because Santana realizes in that moment how she's been way too preoccupied with Brittany that she's not doing her goddamn job.
Why would Pike go after Brittany? It doesn't make sense. If he's working for the mob again it's not like the dance studio is high on their list of places to put under their thumb. And her apartment? That's personal. It's about her. And Berry's probably fucking right. If it's about Brittany it's probably actually about Santana.
Pike met Brittany accidentally. They were questioning him at the station when the girl stopped by, dropping off lunch Santana left at home. It was a moment, a quick one, but Pike saw Brittany and then he saw Santana and he put two and two together. Wouldn't shut up about her "hot blonde girlfriend" the whole interview. Shit.
"Santana?" Brittany's voice cuts through her thoughts, concerned and questioning.
She glances up from the table. "Hmm? Sorry, I just," she fumbles for an excuse. "Work stuff, I just remembered something."
Her company seems to accept that but all three of them give her weird looks. She's happy when Quinn throws back the rest of her whiskey and stands up, holding out a hand to Rachel.
"Well I've got a huge trial to prep for tomorrow so we should get going."
Rachel takes the offered hand and stands up with Quinn, dusting off her skirt. "Well, thank you for a lovely evening."
"God, who the fuck says lovely anymore?" Santana retorts, forcing herself to react normally.
"I do, Santana. It's a perfectly acceptable word," Rachel answers ignoring the way Santana's eyes roll over in response, but smiling as Brittany laughs at them.
They walk to the door. Quinn kissing Santana goodbye on the cheek and Rachel doing the same. "Brittany, it was so good to see you," Rachel says, embracing the taller girl.
"Yeah, don't be a stranger," Quinn comments as she follows suit.
"You too," Brittany says, waving at them as the leave out the door Santana opened.
The door shuts behind them and it's just Brittany and Santana again, standing in the entryway staring at each other.
Brittany breaks the silence first. "Right, well I should clean up."
"Yeah."
They shuffle into the kitchen and start putting away the boxes, packing up the leftovers for the fridge and throwing out the rest. When Santana opens the fridge to stuff the cartons in it she's shocked at how full it looks, yogurt, milk, cheese, bread, fruit, even that weird flavored water they used to buy. She hasn't seen her fridge this full in months. Six months to be exact. An irrational urge to swipe it all into the garbage sweeps through her. She hates the way Brittany just showed up and slammed back into her life like this.
"Well, that's the last of it," she hears from behind her. She shuts the door and heads to the counter where she abandoned her whiskey when Quinn and Rachel left. "I'm going to head to bed," Brittany says, watching Santana pour more whiskey into her glass with an open look of disapproval.
"Okay."
Brittany heads to the couch, Nemo following when Santana realizes what she's doing.
"No," she interjects. Brittany looks up at her curiously. "Take the bed," she demands.
"What? Santana, I'm not going to kick you out of your own bed."
She wants to say it's our bed and I can't sleep there without you but instead she just repeats, "Take the bed."
There must be something on her face or in the way her hand shakes where it's holding the tumbler because Brittany doesn't argue, just stands up and walks back through the apartment into a bedroom Santana hasn't slept in for six months.
Nemo, however, stays near the couch, looking up at Santana with a pitiful expression. She throws back the rest of her whiskey, letting it burn down her throat and into her stomach and welcomes the fuzziness that enters her head with gratefulness.
She shrugs out of her clothes quickly, pulls the blanket and pillow out from under the couch and lays down, her dog coming to lay, like always, by her side. She strokes a hand down his back and tries to ignore the sounds of Brittany getting ready for bed back in the bedroom. It's familiar and foreign all at the same time and it makes Santana want to throw things. Instead, she closes her eyes and lets the sound wash over her, for a moment allowing herself to fall asleep pretending it's just another night, six months ago, when everything was right in her world, no matter how painful it will be when she wakes up.
--
"Thought you might be out here," Puck said, coming out the door to the back alley of the station.
"Don't tell, Britt," she responded, holding up the lit cigarette in her left hand.
He laughed. "I won't have to, you know that."
"True."
"You get anything out of Pike?"
Santana made an annoyed sound. "Ugh, he was useless. Brittany showed up with my lunch and he caught a glimpse of her. Wouldn't shut up about it the whole damn time."
"That's not good. Not that I can blame the guy," Puck replied, leaning his back against the brick wall beside her and waggling his eyebrows up and down.
"Watch it Puckerman, she is not fodder for your fucking spank bank."
"You can't tell me what goes in there, babe."
"No, but I can beat the shit out of you until you stop thinking about it."
Puck let out a chuckle but he knew it was true so he punched her softly in the arm. "Sucks about Pike though. I know you've been after him for awhile. Britt has bad timing."
"I know, I want to be mad at her, but she brought me an Italian sub," she said, amused affection in her tone.
"Ooo, can't get mad at that, no fucking way."
"I know, right?"
He looked around for a second. "Did you eat it?"
She laughed. "Yes! And even if I hadn't I sure as hell wouldn't give it to you."
"Fair enough."
--
"Sorry about today," Brittany said as Santana walked in the door.
"What?"
"At the station," she continued, walking over to help Santana with her jacket. "Earlier when that guy saw me."
"Oh, babe, it's fine. You brought me my favorite sandwich and I got to lord it over Puck all afternoon."
Brittany laughed, making Santana smile before saying, "Come over here and kiss me."
She pressed their lips together when her girlfriend bounded over but Brittany pulled back and furrowed her brow, their faces still close together.
"Santana," she started.
"I know, I know. I'll quit tomorrow," Santana said, stopping Brittany's lecture before it could start.
"What do you want for dinner?" Brittany asked, disengaging from Santana and walking towards the kitchen.
Santana thought about her day, about long endless interviews with Roger Pike and the way he wouldn't shut up about her girlfriend and she watched Brittany walk into the kitchen, her legs and hips moving with a dancer's grace. It all made up her mind for her.
"You," she answered, coming up behind Brittany and grabbing her around the waist.
Brittany giggled before turning around and wrapping her arms around Santana's neck.
"Sounds delicious," Brittany said before kissing her.
--
Pike was sitting in the interview room the next morning, looking gleeful and unconcerned when Santana walked in and took a seat at the table across from him.
"Good morning, Roger. How are we doing today?"
"Fanfuckingtastic, Detective. I jacked off to your pretty blonde girlfriend for hours last night."
Her fist clenched under the table and she staved off the desire thrumming through her body to punch the guy in the teeth.
"Why don't we stick to business, Pike?"
"Oh, this is business now," he responded, a glimmer in his eye that unsettles Santana.
"Where were you on Tuesday night at 9PM?"
"With my wife," he answered.
Santana laughed, loving the opening he just gave her to throw something back in his face. "Now come on, Roger. We both know that's not true. I put your wife behind bars years ago. She's rotting back there as we speak."
The other man clenched his jaw for a moment, before letting a smile cross his face. "You know what, Detective."
"What?"
"You can put me away for however long you want, for whatever crime, but let me tell you something right here and now."
"What's that?"
"First thing I'm gonna do. First thing? When I get out," he continued, smile widening sickeningly. "I'm going after your girl, Lopez. The way you went after mine."
--
Nemo lets out a yap as she bolts up on the couch, the dream clinging to her brain, screaming the last words in her ears. She gasps for breath, feeling like she just ran a marathon and swings her legs over the side of the couch, resting her head in hands.
She looks at her watch. Only 2AM. Shit. Her hand pets her dog on the head slowly, back and forth, the repeating motion calming her churning stomach as she tries to sort her thoughts out.
Soft footsteps make their way from the bedroom and soon a sleepy looking Brittany is standing in the living room and Santana's heart clenches at the sight, so soon on the heels of her dream.
Brittany flips the small table lamp on and squints at Santana. "You okay?"
"Yeah, sorry. Did I wake you?"
Brittany avoids the question. "Bad dream?"
"Something like that," Santana answers, wiping at her eyes when she realizes tears are starting to form. What the fuck?
The taller girl comes to sit next to Santana, settling so close their thighs are touching. "You want to talk about it?"
"No, not really. Go back to bed."
"Santana," Brittany responds, knowingly and seriously Santana wishes she'd stop doing that. Saying her name in that voice like she knows what's going on, like she has a fucking right to know.
"I'm serious, Britt, I'm fine." She doesn't know if it's the alcohol still lingering in her system or the fear and adrenaline mixing in her head from the dream but she can't get off the couch like she wants to, can't push Brittany away when the other girl wraps an arm around her and pulls her back down.
Her eyes are wide open as Brittany pushes them both down onto the couch and tangles their limbs together as they'd done thousands of times before. She wants to tug away and get up, yell at Brittany that it's not fair, she can't make her feel like this when she's just going to leave again but she can't fight the warmth that surges through her everywhere their bodies touch and she feels her hands stop shaking as she sinks into the feeling.
She tells herself that she'll get up in a minute, once she settles down and feels like she can actually form words without stuttering but she falls asleep before she even has the chance, snuggled in Brittany's embrace on their couch, their dog curled up at their feet.
Part Four