Four Times Brittany Inadvertently Breaks Santana (And One Time She Doesn't) (1/5)
Title: Four Times Brittany Inadvertently Breaks Santana (And One Time She Doesn’t), 1/5
Pairing: Santana Lopez/Brittany
Rating: PG-13 (vague sexual content, language, the existence of Puck) as a whole, G for this part
Spoilers: None in particular, as it's a self-constructed timeline.
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profits gained.
Summary: Santana's friendship with Brittany has always involved a couple of bruises.
A/N: It's been a long damn time since I've wandered into fic-land, but Brittana will not get out of my head. And I guess there are worse ways to kill time in a boring summer.
1
They are five-and-three-quarters years old the day Santana meets Brittany for the very first time.
It is one of the hottest days of the year on the neighborhood playground, the sun scorching magnificently in a cloudless sky. Santana is all knobby knees and scabbed elbows, with the brim of her Indians hat pulled low over dark eyes as she crawls, army-style, through a set of bushes. As happens most days, she is hunting Noah Puckerman and Finn Hudson. Normally, it’s a game she totally owns at, but today is different; the boys are wielding walkie-talkies and juice boxes.
Having neither of these in her grasp, Santana is very much at a disadvantage.
Worse, she has somehow lost track of both boys. This should be completely impossible; Noah might be slippery and annoyingly sneaky, but Finn is roughly the size of (and in possession of as much grace as) a baby giraffe, with the beginning of his sixth year tucked awkwardly into the waistband of his shredded jean shorts. This makes him consistently easy to locate-and, moreover, to steal snacks from. He’s never smart enough to see it coming, but has just enough self-respect not to burst out crying and give her away to the grown-ups who watch disinterestedly from the picnic tables across the park. Grudgingly, Santana respects him for this. Artie Abrams and Kurt Hummel, two other boys who occasionally come from the other side of town to make use of her sandbox (she even carved her name into the side three weeks ago, which, in Santana’s mind, is a legally binding sort of action), are not nearly so self-preserving.
For a moment, she allows herself to be distracted from the issue at hand, teeth gritted, as she imagines exactly what torture she’ll dish out the next time that Hummel kid runs weeping to his mother. No amount of Power Ranger action figures or weak-aimed sand-throwing will save him from that wedgie.
Her fantasy is interrupted by a pitiful attempt at a stage whisper, drifting from the bushes to her immediate left. “Come in, Puckasaurus.”
It’s Finn, hissing frantically and loudly, because the kid is totally stupid, and no one ever taught him how to be remotely stealthy. Santana almost feels sorry for him; clearly, his grandfather doesn’t love him enough to put on James Bond movies when his mom isn’t looking.
When no response issues from his walkie-talkie, his voice hitches up a notch. “Puckasaurus! Come on, man.”
Puckasaurus? Rolling her eyes, Santana reaches up to firmly adjust her baseball cap and crawls to her feet. From the sounds of it, Finn has set up camp in the tiny clearing on the other side of the brush. He’s barely small enough to fit in there, she knows-she ought to, it’s her hiding place. Two days after laying claim to the sandbox, she etched her initials carefully into the trunk of the clearing’s only tree. Therefore? Totally hers.
“Puck-a-saurus,” Finn growls as she edges closer to the clearing, taking careful steps as quietly as possible. “Where are you, man, I need back-up! I can’t hide in here forever, and she’s going to-“
Right on cue, Santana grasps a fistful of leaves and jerks them aside to reveal Finn, his too-long legs yanked up to his still-puny chest. His mouth swings open, giving her a perfectly disgusting view of three missing teeth and the remnants of a cheese sandwich from lunchtime. One grubby hand, grasping the red-and-black ‘talkie, falls lamely to his side.
“Find me,” he finishes, too defeated to even press the talk button. “Man, Lopez, how do you do that?”
“Well,” she drawls, hands on her hips, “for starters, I think to myself, ‘Where would the stupidest person in the world be?’ And then I just look there.”
Finn, being Finn, looks too impressed to realize he’s just been insulted. “Wow. Good plan.”
She rolls her eyes and huffs out a breath. “Whatever. Where’s Noah?”
“Puckasaurus,” he corrects her witheringly. “Puckasaurus is hiding.”
“Well, obviously,” Santana snaps. “Where?” She can feel herself starting to lose patience; it’s very hot out, and she still doesn’t have a juice box. Unsurprisingly, Finn’s smug grin is doing nothing to improve her mood.
“Not my job to tell,” he says smarmily, reclining against her tree trunk with both sticky hands behind his head. “You’re supposed to find him. That’s the game.”
For a second, Santana visualizes how awesome it would be to grab Finn by his spikey hair and drag him to the slide. She could yank him all the way up the ladder and then throw him down, headfirst, laughing when he comes up with a mouthful of sand. It wouldn’t be the first time, and she has to admit: Finn Hudson is pretty funny when he’s trying to untangle himself from his own legs, blushing crimson all the while.
The only problem with this vision is, Santana is still much, much smaller than Finn. She needs Noah-or Puckasaurus, apparently-to help with the grunt work. Which brings her back to the initial problem.
She tries staring Finn down for another few seconds, but his grin only stretches irritatingly across his sunburnt face. She gives up, throwing both hands in the air and stomping out of the clearing. She’ll deal with his insolence (a word her mother keeps using to describe her older brother; she only half understands it, but it sounds fun when it rolls jaggedly off her tongue) later.
First, she’s got a mohawk to find.
Noah is especially irritating to track down, because, unlike Finn, he’s smart. Not as smart as Santana, of course, but he knows better than to hide in the same place twice. Plus, he almost always eats his snack as soon as he’s given it, because saving crackers or fruit snacks for later is just asking for them to be swiped. He’s kind of useless to her, in that way.
She’s creeping slowly around the edge of the bathrooms (Noah’s sneakier than any other kid she knows, but even sneaky kids can be surprised while peeing) when the door marked “Girls” flies open. On any other day, Santana would be quick enough-downright Matrix-y, even, which is another movie her Grandpapi let her watch while her mother was at work-to dodge out of the way, but it’s so hot and sticky, and her throat feels like someone’s been pouring sand in it. And, try as she might, she just can’t stop thinking about how goofy Finn looks when he’s being tossed off of high structures, which only makes her want to chuck him off that slide even more.
All of this combines to distract her completely, and when the door flips open and catches her square in the face, she’s too stunned to move.
It doesn’t hurt-not really, not since Santana’s, y’know, Santana. She’s taken worse just in dogfights with Noah and Finn, both of whom are bigger and stronger than her tiny frame (although, she reminds herself calmly, she’s smarter and faster, and her punches land more often than theirs, which is really what counts in a good fight club). This dumb door, in comparison to the meaty fists of hyperactive boys, probably won’t even leave a mark.
Still, she wasn’t expecting the blow. When you don’t expect something, it tends to hurt more than it should, just from being so embarrassing.
Even more embarrassing is the girl who steps out to meet Santana, whose round blue eyes are so wide with shock, Santana’s not at all sure if they’ll stay in the other girl’s pretty face.
“Oh,” the girl gasps, hands rocketing to cover her own mouth. Blonde hair, tied in a messy, irresolute ponytail, bobs with her entire body as she rocks forward on her heels. “Are you okay?”
Santana touches her mouth gingerly, then feels around her nose. “Yes,” she replies, and she’s pretty sure it’s the truth. Still, the girl moves in close and presses cautious fingers against her cheeks and nose. She’s too close, Santana thinks uncomfortably, for a complete stranger, but she’s very pretty and smells nice-much nicer than Finn and Noah, that’s for sure, although maybe not as nice as that dumb Hummel kid-so Santana isn’t sure she minds. Also, the girl’s fingernails have green polish on them, and Santana is pretty sure that is the coolest thing she has ever seen.
“I’m really sorry,” the girl says at last, tilting her head sideways to give Santana a final searching inspection. “Really.”
“It’s okay,” Santana mutters stiffly, confused, even though it’s pretty much not okay at all. She just got smacked in the face. She shouldn’t be taking this apology lying down; she should be tackling this pretty blonde girl into the dirt and punching her face in. At the very least, she should be scaring her with some shouting, the way she did to loudmouth Rachel Berry last week, before Quinn Fabray and her stupidly perfect hair stepped in and pulled Rachel to the safety of the swing set.
She should be doing all the things that Santana Lopez does, but for some reason, she just doesn’t feel like it. Because this girl, comforted by the apparent lack of injuries, is beginning to sport the biggest smile Santana has seen in her life, and she isn’t missing any teeth at all. Her blonde hair bobs again as she thrusts out a sparkling clean hand, with colored yarn bracelets trailing all up and down the wrist.
“I’m Brittany,” the girl says, and Santana chokes a little on nothing at all. She can’t remember ever shaking hands with someone her own age before; that’s something only grown-ups do, and she doesn’t want to be one of those, not ever. But Brittany is beaming at her like sunshine bottled up and tied with a rainbow, so Santana shrugs and clasps the offered hand with her own mud-caked one. She winces a little, noting the dirt under her nails and the residual jelly on the backs of her fingers, but Brittany doesn’t seem to notice or care. She simply gives the smaller girl’s hand a solemn pump and releases it.
Instinctively, Santana shoves both hands as deep into the pockets of her shorts as she can and squares her shoulders. She kind of wants to run away, though she can’t explain why. She doesn’t even want to find Noah anymore; he can stay lost all night, for all she cares. Suddenly, she wants nothing more than to go home and wash her hands until they sparkle like Brittany’s.
The girl in question is still watching her intently, blue eyes burning holes through Santana’s darker ones. She shakes her head and scowls a little.
“What?”
“I’m Brittany,” the girl repeats, then inclines her head with a distinct air of ‘and you are…?’ until Santana’s mouth squeaks open.
“Oh. Right. Santana.”
“San-tan-a,” Brittany tries out, rolling her tongue visibly around each letter. Fascinated, Santana watches the other girl’s mouth. She’s never liked her name much-has never really thought about it, she supposes, but the way the syllables fit in this girl’s mouth is astonishing. It’s like Brittany’s small pink tongue was made for those seven letters. The way she says it, Santana thinks curiously, it’s as though hers is the tastiest name in the world.
“I like it,” Brittany says brightly, slapping her green-nailed hands against her knees. “Nice to meet you, Santana.”
“You too,” Santana mutters, and again, she’s pretty sure she’s telling the truth. That’s twice in one day-it’s starting to get a little weird.
The girl beams, starting to back away. “I gotta go,” she says by way of explanation when Santana merely stares blankly after her. “I just had to go to the bathroom. My dad’s taking me out for ice cream.”
Part of Santana (the hot part; she can feel sweat snaking down her back, pooling under the waistband of her shorts in an ugly, clammy way) wants to finagle an invitation to come along. The other part-the weird, confused, just-got-hit-in-the-face-with-a-door part-is still staring with slack-jawed finesse. Brittany, to her credit, doesn’t seem to find this at all strange.
“I’ll see you around,” she says cheerfully, grasping Santana’s attention with another smile that makes the smaller girl feel like her heart’s in one of Finn’s chokeholds. She nods dumbly back.
It’s only when Brittany is almost too far away to hear that she calls out. “Hey! Wait!”
The blonde girl pivots so she’s walking backwards, eyes fixed on Santana’s sweaty face. “Yeah?”
“You seen a stubby little kid around anywhere?” Santana hears herself ask. It’s not the question she wanted to blurt (she thinks), but it will do. “With a stupid mohawk?”
Pausing, Brittany bites her lip thoughtfully. “Is a mohawk a haircut that makes you look like a baby lion? Like Simba?”
Santana’s mouth twists uncertainly. “Yes?”
“Oh!” Blue eyes light up, and Brittany points excitedly in the direction of that accursed door. “There’s a kid like that in there.”
“In the girl’s room?” Santana demands, disbelieving. Brittany shrugs.
“I guess. I saw him when I was washing my hands. He kept doing this.” Pulling a horrible face (which, in Santana’s opinion, just serves to make the girl look prettier), Brittany drags one finger violently across her own throat. When her face clears, she shrugs again and smiles. “He was weird.”
“Very,” Santana agrees, eyes gleaming. She has to hand it to Noah; the girl’s bathroom is totally new and unexpected. Which means he’ll never see her attack coming from in there. Brittany is still standing there, waiting, until Santana remembers to dig one hand out of her pocket and wave.
“Thanks!” she shouts, and though the word feels a little clumsy as it clings to her lips, she finds she doesn’t mind as much as usual.
She stays put until Brittany is out of sight.
Pairing: Santana Lopez/Brittany
Rating: PG-13 (vague sexual content, language, the existence of Puck) as a whole, G for this part
Spoilers: None in particular, as it's a self-constructed timeline.
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profits gained.
Summary: Santana's friendship with Brittany has always involved a couple of bruises.
A/N: It's been a long damn time since I've wandered into fic-land, but Brittana will not get out of my head. And I guess there are worse ways to kill time in a boring summer.
1
They are five-and-three-quarters years old the day Santana meets Brittany for the very first time.
It is one of the hottest days of the year on the neighborhood playground, the sun scorching magnificently in a cloudless sky. Santana is all knobby knees and scabbed elbows, with the brim of her Indians hat pulled low over dark eyes as she crawls, army-style, through a set of bushes. As happens most days, she is hunting Noah Puckerman and Finn Hudson. Normally, it’s a game she totally owns at, but today is different; the boys are wielding walkie-talkies and juice boxes.
Having neither of these in her grasp, Santana is very much at a disadvantage.
Worse, she has somehow lost track of both boys. This should be completely impossible; Noah might be slippery and annoyingly sneaky, but Finn is roughly the size of (and in possession of as much grace as) a baby giraffe, with the beginning of his sixth year tucked awkwardly into the waistband of his shredded jean shorts. This makes him consistently easy to locate-and, moreover, to steal snacks from. He’s never smart enough to see it coming, but has just enough self-respect not to burst out crying and give her away to the grown-ups who watch disinterestedly from the picnic tables across the park. Grudgingly, Santana respects him for this. Artie Abrams and Kurt Hummel, two other boys who occasionally come from the other side of town to make use of her sandbox (she even carved her name into the side three weeks ago, which, in Santana’s mind, is a legally binding sort of action), are not nearly so self-preserving.
For a moment, she allows herself to be distracted from the issue at hand, teeth gritted, as she imagines exactly what torture she’ll dish out the next time that Hummel kid runs weeping to his mother. No amount of Power Ranger action figures or weak-aimed sand-throwing will save him from that wedgie.
Her fantasy is interrupted by a pitiful attempt at a stage whisper, drifting from the bushes to her immediate left. “Come in, Puckasaurus.”
It’s Finn, hissing frantically and loudly, because the kid is totally stupid, and no one ever taught him how to be remotely stealthy. Santana almost feels sorry for him; clearly, his grandfather doesn’t love him enough to put on James Bond movies when his mom isn’t looking.
When no response issues from his walkie-talkie, his voice hitches up a notch. “Puckasaurus! Come on, man.”
Puckasaurus? Rolling her eyes, Santana reaches up to firmly adjust her baseball cap and crawls to her feet. From the sounds of it, Finn has set up camp in the tiny clearing on the other side of the brush. He’s barely small enough to fit in there, she knows-she ought to, it’s her hiding place. Two days after laying claim to the sandbox, she etched her initials carefully into the trunk of the clearing’s only tree. Therefore? Totally hers.
“Puck-a-saurus,” Finn growls as she edges closer to the clearing, taking careful steps as quietly as possible. “Where are you, man, I need back-up! I can’t hide in here forever, and she’s going to-“
Right on cue, Santana grasps a fistful of leaves and jerks them aside to reveal Finn, his too-long legs yanked up to his still-puny chest. His mouth swings open, giving her a perfectly disgusting view of three missing teeth and the remnants of a cheese sandwich from lunchtime. One grubby hand, grasping the red-and-black ‘talkie, falls lamely to his side.
“Find me,” he finishes, too defeated to even press the talk button. “Man, Lopez, how do you do that?”
“Well,” she drawls, hands on her hips, “for starters, I think to myself, ‘Where would the stupidest person in the world be?’ And then I just look there.”
Finn, being Finn, looks too impressed to realize he’s just been insulted. “Wow. Good plan.”
She rolls her eyes and huffs out a breath. “Whatever. Where’s Noah?”
“Puckasaurus,” he corrects her witheringly. “Puckasaurus is hiding.”
“Well, obviously,” Santana snaps. “Where?” She can feel herself starting to lose patience; it’s very hot out, and she still doesn’t have a juice box. Unsurprisingly, Finn’s smug grin is doing nothing to improve her mood.
“Not my job to tell,” he says smarmily, reclining against her tree trunk with both sticky hands behind his head. “You’re supposed to find him. That’s the game.”
For a second, Santana visualizes how awesome it would be to grab Finn by his spikey hair and drag him to the slide. She could yank him all the way up the ladder and then throw him down, headfirst, laughing when he comes up with a mouthful of sand. It wouldn’t be the first time, and she has to admit: Finn Hudson is pretty funny when he’s trying to untangle himself from his own legs, blushing crimson all the while.
The only problem with this vision is, Santana is still much, much smaller than Finn. She needs Noah-or Puckasaurus, apparently-to help with the grunt work. Which brings her back to the initial problem.
She tries staring Finn down for another few seconds, but his grin only stretches irritatingly across his sunburnt face. She gives up, throwing both hands in the air and stomping out of the clearing. She’ll deal with his insolence (a word her mother keeps using to describe her older brother; she only half understands it, but it sounds fun when it rolls jaggedly off her tongue) later.
First, she’s got a mohawk to find.
Noah is especially irritating to track down, because, unlike Finn, he’s smart. Not as smart as Santana, of course, but he knows better than to hide in the same place twice. Plus, he almost always eats his snack as soon as he’s given it, because saving crackers or fruit snacks for later is just asking for them to be swiped. He’s kind of useless to her, in that way.
She’s creeping slowly around the edge of the bathrooms (Noah’s sneakier than any other kid she knows, but even sneaky kids can be surprised while peeing) when the door marked “Girls” flies open. On any other day, Santana would be quick enough-downright Matrix-y, even, which is another movie her Grandpapi let her watch while her mother was at work-to dodge out of the way, but it’s so hot and sticky, and her throat feels like someone’s been pouring sand in it. And, try as she might, she just can’t stop thinking about how goofy Finn looks when he’s being tossed off of high structures, which only makes her want to chuck him off that slide even more.
All of this combines to distract her completely, and when the door flips open and catches her square in the face, she’s too stunned to move.
It doesn’t hurt-not really, not since Santana’s, y’know, Santana. She’s taken worse just in dogfights with Noah and Finn, both of whom are bigger and stronger than her tiny frame (although, she reminds herself calmly, she’s smarter and faster, and her punches land more often than theirs, which is really what counts in a good fight club). This dumb door, in comparison to the meaty fists of hyperactive boys, probably won’t even leave a mark.
Still, she wasn’t expecting the blow. When you don’t expect something, it tends to hurt more than it should, just from being so embarrassing.
Even more embarrassing is the girl who steps out to meet Santana, whose round blue eyes are so wide with shock, Santana’s not at all sure if they’ll stay in the other girl’s pretty face.
“Oh,” the girl gasps, hands rocketing to cover her own mouth. Blonde hair, tied in a messy, irresolute ponytail, bobs with her entire body as she rocks forward on her heels. “Are you okay?”
Santana touches her mouth gingerly, then feels around her nose. “Yes,” she replies, and she’s pretty sure it’s the truth. Still, the girl moves in close and presses cautious fingers against her cheeks and nose. She’s too close, Santana thinks uncomfortably, for a complete stranger, but she’s very pretty and smells nice-much nicer than Finn and Noah, that’s for sure, although maybe not as nice as that dumb Hummel kid-so Santana isn’t sure she minds. Also, the girl’s fingernails have green polish on them, and Santana is pretty sure that is the coolest thing she has ever seen.
“I’m really sorry,” the girl says at last, tilting her head sideways to give Santana a final searching inspection. “Really.”
“It’s okay,” Santana mutters stiffly, confused, even though it’s pretty much not okay at all. She just got smacked in the face. She shouldn’t be taking this apology lying down; she should be tackling this pretty blonde girl into the dirt and punching her face in. At the very least, she should be scaring her with some shouting, the way she did to loudmouth Rachel Berry last week, before Quinn Fabray and her stupidly perfect hair stepped in and pulled Rachel to the safety of the swing set.
She should be doing all the things that Santana Lopez does, but for some reason, she just doesn’t feel like it. Because this girl, comforted by the apparent lack of injuries, is beginning to sport the biggest smile Santana has seen in her life, and she isn’t missing any teeth at all. Her blonde hair bobs again as she thrusts out a sparkling clean hand, with colored yarn bracelets trailing all up and down the wrist.
“I’m Brittany,” the girl says, and Santana chokes a little on nothing at all. She can’t remember ever shaking hands with someone her own age before; that’s something only grown-ups do, and she doesn’t want to be one of those, not ever. But Brittany is beaming at her like sunshine bottled up and tied with a rainbow, so Santana shrugs and clasps the offered hand with her own mud-caked one. She winces a little, noting the dirt under her nails and the residual jelly on the backs of her fingers, but Brittany doesn’t seem to notice or care. She simply gives the smaller girl’s hand a solemn pump and releases it.
Instinctively, Santana shoves both hands as deep into the pockets of her shorts as she can and squares her shoulders. She kind of wants to run away, though she can’t explain why. She doesn’t even want to find Noah anymore; he can stay lost all night, for all she cares. Suddenly, she wants nothing more than to go home and wash her hands until they sparkle like Brittany’s.
The girl in question is still watching her intently, blue eyes burning holes through Santana’s darker ones. She shakes her head and scowls a little.
“What?”
“I’m Brittany,” the girl repeats, then inclines her head with a distinct air of ‘and you are…?’ until Santana’s mouth squeaks open.
“Oh. Right. Santana.”
“San-tan-a,” Brittany tries out, rolling her tongue visibly around each letter. Fascinated, Santana watches the other girl’s mouth. She’s never liked her name much-has never really thought about it, she supposes, but the way the syllables fit in this girl’s mouth is astonishing. It’s like Brittany’s small pink tongue was made for those seven letters. The way she says it, Santana thinks curiously, it’s as though hers is the tastiest name in the world.
“I like it,” Brittany says brightly, slapping her green-nailed hands against her knees. “Nice to meet you, Santana.”
“You too,” Santana mutters, and again, she’s pretty sure she’s telling the truth. That’s twice in one day-it’s starting to get a little weird.
The girl beams, starting to back away. “I gotta go,” she says by way of explanation when Santana merely stares blankly after her. “I just had to go to the bathroom. My dad’s taking me out for ice cream.”
Part of Santana (the hot part; she can feel sweat snaking down her back, pooling under the waistband of her shorts in an ugly, clammy way) wants to finagle an invitation to come along. The other part-the weird, confused, just-got-hit-in-the-face-with-a-door part-is still staring with slack-jawed finesse. Brittany, to her credit, doesn’t seem to find this at all strange.
“I’ll see you around,” she says cheerfully, grasping Santana’s attention with another smile that makes the smaller girl feel like her heart’s in one of Finn’s chokeholds. She nods dumbly back.
It’s only when Brittany is almost too far away to hear that she calls out. “Hey! Wait!”
The blonde girl pivots so she’s walking backwards, eyes fixed on Santana’s sweaty face. “Yeah?”
“You seen a stubby little kid around anywhere?” Santana hears herself ask. It’s not the question she wanted to blurt (she thinks), but it will do. “With a stupid mohawk?”
Pausing, Brittany bites her lip thoughtfully. “Is a mohawk a haircut that makes you look like a baby lion? Like Simba?”
Santana’s mouth twists uncertainly. “Yes?”
“Oh!” Blue eyes light up, and Brittany points excitedly in the direction of that accursed door. “There’s a kid like that in there.”
“In the girl’s room?” Santana demands, disbelieving. Brittany shrugs.
“I guess. I saw him when I was washing my hands. He kept doing this.” Pulling a horrible face (which, in Santana’s opinion, just serves to make the girl look prettier), Brittany drags one finger violently across her own throat. When her face clears, she shrugs again and smiles. “He was weird.”
“Very,” Santana agrees, eyes gleaming. She has to hand it to Noah; the girl’s bathroom is totally new and unexpected. Which means he’ll never see her attack coming from in there. Brittany is still standing there, waiting, until Santana remembers to dig one hand out of her pocket and wave.
“Thanks!” she shouts, and though the word feels a little clumsy as it clings to her lips, she finds she doesn’t mind as much as usual.
She stays put until Brittany is out of sight.