Fic: Of Love and Time Travel
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Santana/Brittany, Kurt/Blaine
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,556
Spoilers: S3, I Kissed a Girl
Warnings: Language
Summary: Blaine’s agreed to take care of my flummoxed caterpillars while I try to convince Lord Tubbington to go on a non-caterpillar diet. Hallway conversations wherein Santana and Blaine come to something of an understanding.
Author's Notes: Based on the following prompt by
expatiates: blaine doing something sweet/helpful for brittany and it making santana warm up to him a little. No time travel anomalies were harmed in the making of this fic.
*
Santana figures out that elbows aren’t a part of McKinley’s stupid zero tolerance policy pretty fast so she’s gotten good at throwing them when some miserable ass tries to crack some comment about her queer and here status. So she’s triumphantly striding away from some idiot hockey player crying out for his momma when she notices Blaine and Brittany at the end of the hallway.
Specifically she notices them hugging. And it’s one of Britt’s good hugs, the long, full ones that warm you up until you can feel it in your toes even on the coldest Ohio winter day. Zooming over there is just a matter of making sure Brittany doesn’t get any residual slime from Boytoy Anderson’s skull since Santana loves her girl but she’s not about to get any gel germs while getting her mack on.
As they part, she sees that Blaine’s carrying a modified aquarium case, the one that she’d noticed on Brittany’s dresser last week, which Brittany told her held the secret to time travel.
“Santana,” Brittany says, bouncing a little in her shoes. “Blaine’s agreed to take care of my flummoxed caterpillars while I try to convince Lord Tubbington to go on a non-caterpillar diet. He doesn’t understand that they’re not science in your stomach.”
Blaine shifts a little, and she waits for him to make some comment, anything ‘cause yeah, while she’s gotten good at throwing elbows, she’s a master of cutting people down with her words until they bleed. Anyone giving Brittany shit gets extra punishment care of Santana.
Blaine does that reflexive smile when someone's a little scared and that's real good, it means she's in control. He says, “I don’t have any pets and I always liked taking care of the caterpillars in elementary and I thought I could help Brittany.”
She blinks. “Huh. That’s…well. Nice.”
“You seem surprised.”
Brittany rubs Santana’s elbow, briefly which feels real good but it’s not like it hurts, she was made tough. Still she leans into the touch and misses it when Brittany pulls away.
She says, “I have an important meeting with the AV Club. It’s time Fondue for Two to officially be shown during homeroom as my presidential fireside talks. Fondue’s over fire, so it’s perfect.”
As she walks away, Blaine says, “She’s really invested in the school presidency.”
“Yeah, what of it? Hummel made the biggest mistake firing her. Brittany was born to rule.”
Santana was born to rule too, but she doesn’t mind being the lady behind the power for now. Plus Brittany’s got a few good policies that might just make this stupid school better while she appeases the masses with pixy sticks and talks of officially making their senior class trip to Mars.
She doesn’t have the heart to tell Brittany about NASA.
“I’m glad that Brittany’s invested in doing more for the school and engaging everyone,” Blaine says, so fucking diplomatic it makes her teeth ache. “Obviously I voted for the other guy, but I want to support her.”
“Your guy, you mean,” she says and Blaine’s smile is kind of hard to look at for too long or the schmaltz’ll blind her. “Ugh. So what, are you really going to take care of those bugs or are you humoring Brittany and plan on dumping them down the drain first chance you get?”
Blaine looks a little offended and Santana’s glad the question affected him even if she could’ve been meaner and maybe gotten him to make that weird crumply sad face he makes when Finn's irrationally dismissive of him.
“I’m not going to betray a fellow time travel enthusiast. I do hope Brittany doesn’t try to get weapons grade plutonium but I like her current methods. I think the idea of flux capacitors being caterpillars is adorable. If I take care of them long enough maybe they’ll turn into butterflies.”
“So do you and Kurt try to out gay each other or are you secretly the queeny one underneath the grandpa wear?”
“I don’t know, Santana, do you and Brittany try to out gay each other?” It’s a little tired and a whole lot bitchy. Santana’s impressed. She didn’t know Blaine had it in him.
“Yeah. It’s called sex.”
Blaine smirks, just a quick second before he buries it under a sigh and exaggerated eyeroll but Santana so caught it. It’s something she doesn’t really bother paying attention to, ‘cause she is not about knowing about Hummel’s sex life in any way. Well. Maybe it’s a bit more interesting than that she thought. He has been wearing a suspicious amount of turtlenecks, lately.
Peace offerings aren’t her thing. But looking at Blaine, his stupid, stupid clothes and shiny please-love-me-please needy eyes, she thinks about how Brittany was more than happy to entrust Blaine with something Brittany’s convinced is the secret to creating her time travel machine (the popcorn maker Santana had brought over to let Brittany tinker with had been a dismal failure).
“Don’t let the bugs die,” she says, finally, looking anywhere but at Blaine’s face, because he’s so fucking earnest, it might incite her to stomp on his foot, a natural and justifiable reflex. “You know, butterflies are Brittany’s favorite.”
“I liked dragonflies but you don’t seem them around much anymore.”
“Whatever,” she mutters. “I’d rather smash fireflies down my bra than keep talking to you.”
“Not the season for them,” Blaine says mildly and she can’t help but laugh. That’s his idea of a good comeback? God, he needs help. Not that she’s offering to work on him, the damage is done, she swears she can see little lions on his bow tie, what is up with that?
“God, you really did think it was a super swell idea to sing one of your mating songs to me to make me feel better about my entire life changing without my say.”
She expects him to bitch about calling it a mating song. What she does not expect is his voice dropping and him leaning into her personal space. Does he not read fuck off vibes at all?
“Listen, if you ever did want to talk, about anything, believe me, my out coming out...let’s say I didn’t always go to Dalton, okay? Kurt and I, we’d listen.”
“I’ll pencil you in my appointment book between never and when hell freezes over.” She can feel a lump, hard and tasting of her grandma’s cooking, right in her throat. “Why do you care so much about time travel anyway? Secret nerd another part of your damage?”
“Brittany promised me the second trip once she gets her machine working. There’s a lot of musicians I want to high five and I’d rather do it during the prime of their careers.”
He's given in actual thought. Total nerd.
“Wait, what do you mean, second?”
“Well, Brittany said you had dibs on the first trip. I’d do the same for Kurt if I had my own time machine, although I'm pretty sure he’d want to go forward in time just to stay ahead of fashion trends and I’m not sure we’re ready for 2050’s hottest style in today's world.”
“He’d dress up as disco pilgrim if Vogue had a fashion shoot.”
She’s surprised Blaine laughs, sudden and sharp. That he covers it up and looks around guiltily is not a shocker.
“Relax, he’s not lurking around the corner. God, you’re totally the needy one in the relationship.”
Blaine considers this as they walk to their respective classes. Before they part, he says, “Takes one to know one.”
That’s just sad, no one's worthy of her comments, so she waves her had at him, dismissing him, which he politely accepts, calling after her, "Take care, Santana."
But, as Santana’s stomach does that pleasant flip-flop as she sees Brittany breezing into the classroom, clearly glowing from success with the AV club negotiations, she has to hand it to Blaine, he isn’t exactly wrong. She needs this and just having Brittany close makes her skin tingle and the smile is so easy when it's all for Brittany.
“Blaine said he’s going to take real good care of your caterpillars.”
“Flummoxed caterpillars are the best,” Brittany says, like she’s agreeing to something else, pulling Santana’s notebook over so she can draw a big heart in the margins. “Blaine’s such a good rapper, I thought he’d be perfect for their needs.”
“Right,” Santana says, doubling over the heart with her pen just to see Brittany grin. While she’d love to never endure anyone in New Directions rapping, maybe he isn’t completely awful. But that doesn’t mean she likes him or anything. He’s still competition and totally dewy-eyed and there’s only one source of sunshine that makes this awful world better and she’s sitting next to her.
“So where do you plan on time traveling first?” She asks Brittany, because she's curious and this class is super boring.
“I’ve always wanted to have a pet dinosaur. Something small at first so Lord Tubbington and he can get close. I’ll raise it as a egg so that Lord Tubbington will think it’s his son.”
“That’s brilliant, Britt,” Santana says and they spend the rest of the class planning on how exactly they’ll take care of a baby dinosaur and if Brittany can find a fire-breathing dinosaur since those are her favorites.
end