The Trouble With Love Is
Title: The Trouble With Love Is
Pairing: Santana Lopez/Brittany Pierce
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: Through S2.
Summary: A series of musical ficlets spanning the second half of season 2 (through Rumors).
A/N: Title from the Kelly Clarkson song of the same name.
I Let My Music Take Me Where My Heart Wants To Go
“I sat upon the setting sun, but never, never, never, never-
I never wanted water once.”
-Jennifer Damiano (originally Cat Stevens), “The Wind”
She doesn’t let herself do what she wants very often. It’s not about the discipline, or the willpower, or the being all that she can be. It’s just about fear.
Fear. Cowardice. Pussying the fuck out.
She knows it. It’s not for sport, a series of little mind games in which she convinces herself to keep up the charade. It’s reality. She is scared to death. Of life, of love. Of Brittany. Of the looks, of the sneers, of the changes.
Really, she knows she can fight off anything that comes her way. The slushies? Please. She practically invented the art. The remarks? There is no one at that school whose ass she can’t kick. Not one.
It’s the changes she can’t deal with. The fact that they will look at her differently. The fact that strange new people will want to be her friend, and people who have been petrified of her since grade school will suddenly man up and start throwing insults. The fact that Brittany’s hand will be warm and just a little sticky in her own as they walk down the hall, and everyone will know.
That’s what she can’t handle. She can’t handle being this terrified of what’s coming. But the idea that it might never come at all? That’s worse.
So she sings. She stands in front of the club of losers and misfits and she pours her heart out. She knows they don’t get what she’s saying, or why she’s saying it, or maybe they just can’t believe that she is capable of feelings like this. She can’t blame them. She has put so much effort into hiding those feelings since…she can’t even remember.
The music gets it out of her system. Not for good. Not in any real, tangible way. But for just a few minutes at a time, belting as loudly and as fiercely as she can, it feels like she can breathe again. Like the music is carrying her further than the rest of her life can even imagine going.
Glee really is the best part of her day, because Glee is the only time the fear recedes long enough to let her look Brittany in the eye, smile, and let words like love and hope and forever come splashing out of her.
Sit and Beg and Fetch the Names (As You Follow Your Dress Codes)
“Living well, and dressed to kill
But she looks like hell to me.”
-Green Day, “Fashion Victim”
She wonders why no one is commenting yet.
At first, okay, maybe they thought she was just acting out new staples of the fashion world. Two and a half years in that tight, restricting uniform; no one had even seen her in civilian dress until now. Maybe they just think this is how she dresses.
But, really, people? Overalls? They think this is her?
No one is commenting. No one is pointing fingers at her camo jacket, or her jeans, her combat boots, or her deliriously awful shoulder pads.
No one has noticed the shoulder pads? Seriously, what is she even worried about? This school is blind, deaf, and dumb to anything remotely gay. Anything that doesn’t scream it from the rooftops while wearing a feathered cap, anyway.
Maybe she should borrow that from Kurt next.
This is supposed to make it all easier, nudge open the closet door just an inch. Prepare everyone for her eventual-God, she can’t even think it. Not resolutely. “Coming out” just sounds so final. Once you’re out, can you ever really go back in?
Will she even want to?
She’s wearing these outfits, these outlandishly lesbian outfits, and she’s waiting for the first person to notice. To stop, and stare, and snicker. She’s waiting.
How unsurprising that the first person is Brittany, slipping an arm around Santana’s waist before practice and whispering, “That jacket is sexy” against her ear. How unsurprising that Brittany would notice.
Brittany seems to notice everything except what is really important.
Get Outta My Way, What Did She Say (She’s So, So Sorry)
“I guess I’m leaving you, it’s obvious
So wipe that stupid look right off of your face.”
-Hedley, “She’s So Sorry”
She hates her. I don’t. She does. She wants to light her hair on fire. But it’s such beautiful hair. She wants to burn her house down. Her parents wouldn’t like that very much. And what if the cats got stuck? She wants to ruin her. Except that wouldn’t do anything except make me more miserable, and if I get any more miserable than this, I’m going to have to tie myself to the train tracks.
“Sorry” is a word she’s heard far, far too many times, and right now? God, she hates it. She hates her.
You can’t. You never will. She’s the one person who-
The one person who was supposed to be there. The one person who was supposed to stay. To get it, and to get her, and to never walk out the door just because she said something stupid. She wasn’t supposed to run to-
I hate her. I hate her, I hate her, I hate her.
She doesn’t. She really doesn’t. She just hates that word, that “sorry.” Those two syllables that make up everything that has gone wrong this year. How did this even happen? Last year-last year wasn’t like this. Last year, they had each other, and maybe there were other people-other stupid boys-but they didn’t count. Not like their friendship did. Not like their lo-
Not love. Hate. Hate her. Hate her so fucking much for doing this to me.
It’s not her fault. It’s really not. The words, the barbed words that pushed her away, those were Santana’s. All Santana’s doing, and even as she did it, she knew they would end in travesty. She could tell from that look on her face-
No. It’s Chang’s fault. For stealing Tina away from Artie. If Tina was still with Artie, Brittany never would have-
She would have dated Chang instead, and then I’d never get her back. Fucker’s too fucking perfect. At least Cripples sucks at everything remotely life-related.
It’s her fault. Santana’s. Only Santana’s. But that knowledge aches far too much to be validated for more than a passing beat.
I hate her, she insists, staring at her ceiling as she lobs a tennis ball in the air and catches it for the thousandth time. I hate her, I hate her, I hate her.
And I hate fucking “sorry.”
I Guess It’s Not The Way You’ve Always Planned It (Looks Like You’re Heading For A Crash Landing)
“Your head is hanging, trying to beat those goodbye blues
I bet you’ll be fine.”
-Schuyler Fisk, “From Where I’m Standing"
They’ve broken up.
She can barely form her mouth around the words, hardly dares to speak them out loud for fear something will change. Wheels will come inexplicably bursting through her front window on those stupid robotic legs, belting some “come back to me” bullshit song in his stupidly decent voice, with Chang and Other Chang doing some stupid mutual Asian choreography, and Brittany will fly back into his arms, and this will all be over before it starts.
She can’t say it, because she really can’t handle that scene (and she really can’t afford to explain to her parents their sudden lack of window pane), but she can think it. She can think it all damn day.
They’ve broken up.
And she’s right here.
Someone had to catch her, and this time, that someone was the right someone. This time, she was here, not off whimpering anxieties and poor metaphors or analogies or whatever about...lizards and shit…
She’s where she’s supposed to be, nestled on her couch with her arms around Brittany, face pressed against the back of that familiar blonde head. She’s where she’s supposed to be, old Winnie the Pooh cartoons on the TV, listening to Brittany’s contented little sighs around the lines she softly quotes. She’s holding her girl, and maybe her girl isn’t technically Her Girl just yet, but the fact that she is on her couch, in her house, curled in her arms-it’s a start. It’s a fantastic, wonderful, exhilaratingly terrifying start.
She sucks in a breath and forces herself to smile when Brittany’s head turns towards her. She’s not ready, but she doesn’t have much of a choice. Chances like this don’t come around too often.
They’ve broken up.
Baby, Don’t Follow Their Lead, Cuz You Never Know (Just How The Story Ends)
“You are so confused, and baby, it’s just like you
To say anything else.”
-Cartel, “Say Anything (Else)”
Okay, so that didn’t go quite as planned. Since the plan was to be at the Pierce household by four, and it is now five-fifteen, and she is still sitting in the same crumpled heap on her bathroom floor from when she got home at three-
Yeah, okay, so the plan was to do something big. To take the chance life gave her by the horns, or the ass, or whatever. To go over to Brittany’s, and to let her ask that question, that fateful Prom-related query that was supposed to end in tearful kisses or dirty floor sex or…something.
Instead, she’s picking lint off the fuzzy blue rug on the floor and meticulously reading the shampoo instructions over and over and over.
This is not even close to correct.
She texted. She almost didn’t do that much, almost let the terror drifting over her body in steady waves numb her to the knowledge that Brittany would miss her. Brittany would worry. Brittany would come over-
And then, just like that, Santana would be announcing her gay-ass ways all over YouTube. Because that is what Brittany does, undeniably: she gets Santana to do things.
Things she’s not ready for.
She sent that text, fingers fumbling and tripping and skipping. “I can’t.” Two words, and it took her five minutes to get them out. Another five to hit send. Three blocks away, she knows Brittany’s head bent with disappointment, can see that expression in her head with such clarity. It’s familiar enough. She’s been putting it there forever.
But she’s not ready. She said she was, yes, but she wasn’t. Okay? That’s not her fault. That’s not a crime. And Brittany will understand. Some day. Someday, they’ll laugh about this, about how Santana was so scared that she actively blew her best friend off when they were supposed to go to Prom together and Make Memories. Someday, they’ll laugh until their guts burst.
She picks another piece of lint, rolls it between her fingers, and turns her attention to the conditioner.
Damn The Day That I Forgot, Came So Close and Almost Lost
“Back and forth and side to side; right ain’t wrong if wrong ain’t right
But I will love you day and night, cuz I still ain’t over you.”
-Augustana, “I Still Ain’t Over You”
God. She was right there. Right there, and staring with haunted blue eyes, those same eyes that bridge the gap between disappointment and acceptance over and over again. She was right there, believing as she always has that Santana will do this again, will break her, will let her down, will tell her lies and then turn around and dash every hope she’s ever built.
She didn’t even look surprised.
That’s the worst part, the hardest to take. She didn’t even have the ability to look stunned when Jewfro stuck his damn microphone under Santana’s nose and crowed something about Karofsky and soulmates and gag. She didn’t even shake her head when Santana’s mouth, doing its own bidding the way it so often does, betrayed them both.
She just looked at her.
Sad. And certain.
Santana wants to put her fist through someone’s spleen. She wants to crash cars and burn down the auditorium. She wants to tell Schue exactly what she thinks of his constant over-shares, and to rip Berry and Fabray new ones for the way they’ve been carrying on over the second stupidest boy in this school, and to tell Chang to hold on to what he loves, because Artie has this sick, insane ability to take girls he doesn’t even deserve and make them love him.
She has the mad desire to fix and destroy everything in her world, but none of that matters, because she has managed to do both-repair and rip anew-the one thing she wants. Again. Over the course of two days.
She just keeps doing this. She can’t seem to stop. And no matter how many songs she sings, and no matter how many times she’s there at just the right moment, the fact that they always come back to this is just-revolting. Staggering. Horrifying.
Unsurprising.
She needs to stop. She needs to throw in the towel. She needs to just let it all go.
The problem is, Brittany will always be there. In her classes, in Glee, in her dreams at night. Brittany will always be there, waiting, watching, expecting nothing but failure. And she will always accept Santana when she comes crawling back. Always.
For once, she wishes she didn’t have to crawl. She wants to stand tall, walk proud, be the Santana Lopez she ought to be.
Instead, she slinks off down the hall, tail between her legs, brain already churning over the next plot to crash and burn and disappoint.
Pairing: Santana Lopez/Brittany Pierce
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: Through S2.
Summary: A series of musical ficlets spanning the second half of season 2 (through Rumors).
A/N: Title from the Kelly Clarkson song of the same name.
I Let My Music Take Me Where My Heart Wants To Go
“I sat upon the setting sun, but never, never, never, never-
I never wanted water once.”
-Jennifer Damiano (originally Cat Stevens), “The Wind”
She doesn’t let herself do what she wants very often. It’s not about the discipline, or the willpower, or the being all that she can be. It’s just about fear.
Fear. Cowardice. Pussying the fuck out.
She knows it. It’s not for sport, a series of little mind games in which she convinces herself to keep up the charade. It’s reality. She is scared to death. Of life, of love. Of Brittany. Of the looks, of the sneers, of the changes.
Really, she knows she can fight off anything that comes her way. The slushies? Please. She practically invented the art. The remarks? There is no one at that school whose ass she can’t kick. Not one.
It’s the changes she can’t deal with. The fact that they will look at her differently. The fact that strange new people will want to be her friend, and people who have been petrified of her since grade school will suddenly man up and start throwing insults. The fact that Brittany’s hand will be warm and just a little sticky in her own as they walk down the hall, and everyone will know.
That’s what she can’t handle. She can’t handle being this terrified of what’s coming. But the idea that it might never come at all? That’s worse.
So she sings. She stands in front of the club of losers and misfits and she pours her heart out. She knows they don’t get what she’s saying, or why she’s saying it, or maybe they just can’t believe that she is capable of feelings like this. She can’t blame them. She has put so much effort into hiding those feelings since…she can’t even remember.
The music gets it out of her system. Not for good. Not in any real, tangible way. But for just a few minutes at a time, belting as loudly and as fiercely as she can, it feels like she can breathe again. Like the music is carrying her further than the rest of her life can even imagine going.
Glee really is the best part of her day, because Glee is the only time the fear recedes long enough to let her look Brittany in the eye, smile, and let words like love and hope and forever come splashing out of her.
Sit and Beg and Fetch the Names (As You Follow Your Dress Codes)
“Living well, and dressed to kill
But she looks like hell to me.”
-Green Day, “Fashion Victim”
She wonders why no one is commenting yet.
At first, okay, maybe they thought she was just acting out new staples of the fashion world. Two and a half years in that tight, restricting uniform; no one had even seen her in civilian dress until now. Maybe they just think this is how she dresses.
But, really, people? Overalls? They think this is her?
No one is commenting. No one is pointing fingers at her camo jacket, or her jeans, her combat boots, or her deliriously awful shoulder pads.
No one has noticed the shoulder pads? Seriously, what is she even worried about? This school is blind, deaf, and dumb to anything remotely gay. Anything that doesn’t scream it from the rooftops while wearing a feathered cap, anyway.
Maybe she should borrow that from Kurt next.
This is supposed to make it all easier, nudge open the closet door just an inch. Prepare everyone for her eventual-God, she can’t even think it. Not resolutely. “Coming out” just sounds so final. Once you’re out, can you ever really go back in?
Will she even want to?
She’s wearing these outfits, these outlandishly lesbian outfits, and she’s waiting for the first person to notice. To stop, and stare, and snicker. She’s waiting.
How unsurprising that the first person is Brittany, slipping an arm around Santana’s waist before practice and whispering, “That jacket is sexy” against her ear. How unsurprising that Brittany would notice.
Brittany seems to notice everything except what is really important.
Get Outta My Way, What Did She Say (She’s So, So Sorry)
“I guess I’m leaving you, it’s obvious
So wipe that stupid look right off of your face.”
-Hedley, “She’s So Sorry”
She hates her. I don’t. She does. She wants to light her hair on fire. But it’s such beautiful hair. She wants to burn her house down. Her parents wouldn’t like that very much. And what if the cats got stuck? She wants to ruin her. Except that wouldn’t do anything except make me more miserable, and if I get any more miserable than this, I’m going to have to tie myself to the train tracks.
“Sorry” is a word she’s heard far, far too many times, and right now? God, she hates it. She hates her.
You can’t. You never will. She’s the one person who-
The one person who was supposed to be there. The one person who was supposed to stay. To get it, and to get her, and to never walk out the door just because she said something stupid. She wasn’t supposed to run to-
I hate her. I hate her, I hate her, I hate her.
She doesn’t. She really doesn’t. She just hates that word, that “sorry.” Those two syllables that make up everything that has gone wrong this year. How did this even happen? Last year-last year wasn’t like this. Last year, they had each other, and maybe there were other people-other stupid boys-but they didn’t count. Not like their friendship did. Not like their lo-
Not love. Hate. Hate her. Hate her so fucking much for doing this to me.
It’s not her fault. It’s really not. The words, the barbed words that pushed her away, those were Santana’s. All Santana’s doing, and even as she did it, she knew they would end in travesty. She could tell from that look on her face-
No. It’s Chang’s fault. For stealing Tina away from Artie. If Tina was still with Artie, Brittany never would have-
She would have dated Chang instead, and then I’d never get her back. Fucker’s too fucking perfect. At least Cripples sucks at everything remotely life-related.
It’s her fault. Santana’s. Only Santana’s. But that knowledge aches far too much to be validated for more than a passing beat.
I hate her, she insists, staring at her ceiling as she lobs a tennis ball in the air and catches it for the thousandth time. I hate her, I hate her, I hate her.
And I hate fucking “sorry.”
I Guess It’s Not The Way You’ve Always Planned It (Looks Like You’re Heading For A Crash Landing)
“Your head is hanging, trying to beat those goodbye blues
I bet you’ll be fine.”
-Schuyler Fisk, “From Where I’m Standing"
They’ve broken up.
She can barely form her mouth around the words, hardly dares to speak them out loud for fear something will change. Wheels will come inexplicably bursting through her front window on those stupid robotic legs, belting some “come back to me” bullshit song in his stupidly decent voice, with Chang and Other Chang doing some stupid mutual Asian choreography, and Brittany will fly back into his arms, and this will all be over before it starts.
She can’t say it, because she really can’t handle that scene (and she really can’t afford to explain to her parents their sudden lack of window pane), but she can think it. She can think it all damn day.
They’ve broken up.
And she’s right here.
Someone had to catch her, and this time, that someone was the right someone. This time, she was here, not off whimpering anxieties and poor metaphors or analogies or whatever about...lizards and shit…
She’s where she’s supposed to be, nestled on her couch with her arms around Brittany, face pressed against the back of that familiar blonde head. She’s where she’s supposed to be, old Winnie the Pooh cartoons on the TV, listening to Brittany’s contented little sighs around the lines she softly quotes. She’s holding her girl, and maybe her girl isn’t technically Her Girl just yet, but the fact that she is on her couch, in her house, curled in her arms-it’s a start. It’s a fantastic, wonderful, exhilaratingly terrifying start.
She sucks in a breath and forces herself to smile when Brittany’s head turns towards her. She’s not ready, but she doesn’t have much of a choice. Chances like this don’t come around too often.
They’ve broken up.
Baby, Don’t Follow Their Lead, Cuz You Never Know (Just How The Story Ends)
“You are so confused, and baby, it’s just like you
To say anything else.”
-Cartel, “Say Anything (Else)”
Okay, so that didn’t go quite as planned. Since the plan was to be at the Pierce household by four, and it is now five-fifteen, and she is still sitting in the same crumpled heap on her bathroom floor from when she got home at three-
Yeah, okay, so the plan was to do something big. To take the chance life gave her by the horns, or the ass, or whatever. To go over to Brittany’s, and to let her ask that question, that fateful Prom-related query that was supposed to end in tearful kisses or dirty floor sex or…something.
Instead, she’s picking lint off the fuzzy blue rug on the floor and meticulously reading the shampoo instructions over and over and over.
This is not even close to correct.
She texted. She almost didn’t do that much, almost let the terror drifting over her body in steady waves numb her to the knowledge that Brittany would miss her. Brittany would worry. Brittany would come over-
And then, just like that, Santana would be announcing her gay-ass ways all over YouTube. Because that is what Brittany does, undeniably: she gets Santana to do things.
Things she’s not ready for.
She sent that text, fingers fumbling and tripping and skipping. “I can’t.” Two words, and it took her five minutes to get them out. Another five to hit send. Three blocks away, she knows Brittany’s head bent with disappointment, can see that expression in her head with such clarity. It’s familiar enough. She’s been putting it there forever.
But she’s not ready. She said she was, yes, but she wasn’t. Okay? That’s not her fault. That’s not a crime. And Brittany will understand. Some day. Someday, they’ll laugh about this, about how Santana was so scared that she actively blew her best friend off when they were supposed to go to Prom together and Make Memories. Someday, they’ll laugh until their guts burst.
She picks another piece of lint, rolls it between her fingers, and turns her attention to the conditioner.
Damn The Day That I Forgot, Came So Close and Almost Lost
“Back and forth and side to side; right ain’t wrong if wrong ain’t right
But I will love you day and night, cuz I still ain’t over you.”
-Augustana, “I Still Ain’t Over You”
God. She was right there. Right there, and staring with haunted blue eyes, those same eyes that bridge the gap between disappointment and acceptance over and over again. She was right there, believing as she always has that Santana will do this again, will break her, will let her down, will tell her lies and then turn around and dash every hope she’s ever built.
She didn’t even look surprised.
That’s the worst part, the hardest to take. She didn’t even have the ability to look stunned when Jewfro stuck his damn microphone under Santana’s nose and crowed something about Karofsky and soulmates and gag. She didn’t even shake her head when Santana’s mouth, doing its own bidding the way it so often does, betrayed them both.
She just looked at her.
Sad. And certain.
Santana wants to put her fist through someone’s spleen. She wants to crash cars and burn down the auditorium. She wants to tell Schue exactly what she thinks of his constant over-shares, and to rip Berry and Fabray new ones for the way they’ve been carrying on over the second stupidest boy in this school, and to tell Chang to hold on to what he loves, because Artie has this sick, insane ability to take girls he doesn’t even deserve and make them love him.
She has the mad desire to fix and destroy everything in her world, but none of that matters, because she has managed to do both-repair and rip anew-the one thing she wants. Again. Over the course of two days.
She just keeps doing this. She can’t seem to stop. And no matter how many songs she sings, and no matter how many times she’s there at just the right moment, the fact that they always come back to this is just-revolting. Staggering. Horrifying.
Unsurprising.
She needs to stop. She needs to throw in the towel. She needs to just let it all go.
The problem is, Brittany will always be there. In her classes, in Glee, in her dreams at night. Brittany will always be there, waiting, watching, expecting nothing but failure. And she will always accept Santana when she comes crawling back. Always.
For once, she wishes she didn’t have to crawl. She wants to stand tall, walk proud, be the Santana Lopez she ought to be.
Instead, she slinks off down the hall, tail between her legs, brain already churning over the next plot to crash and burn and disappoint.