fic: like a movie loves a screen - glee, mike/brittany, nc-17
Title: Like A Movie Loves A Screen
Author: zerodetorres
Characters: Mike/Brittany
Rating: NC-17
Length: 6,272
Summary: A dance with Brittany isn't just a dance. It's a conversation. She never confuses the words, never misunderstands the meaning.
Notes: For raychelnina. ♥
It's the first week of high school, and Mike Chang feels lost. He's not the loud class clown type like Noah Puckerman, nor is he physically imposing like Finn Hudson, but he isn't exactly on the other end of the spectrum either. He's just the nice, quiet guy who stays out of trouble and likes to goof off.
"What are you doing?"
Mike turns around abruptly, nearly losing his balance and face-planting. He laughs nervously and swipes the backs of his hands against his thighs. "Nothing."
The girl who'd walked in on him - a blonde whose name he remembers is Brittany - smiles. "Were you dancing?"
Mike flushes. "No."
Brittany skips to his side and slips one of her hands into his, the other coming to rest against his shoulder. Instinctively, Mike's hand slides to the small of her back, and her smile widens as she leads him across the empty choir room. There's no music, but rhythm vibrates through Mike's bones, and Brittany's body is warm under his palms.
He throws Brittany out and spins her around, and she giggles. On her way back, she lands flush against his body, her face dangerously close to his. He's known Brittany his entire life, but they haven't exactly been in the same circles. He knows her name, but he doesn't think he's ever even held a conversation with her. Until now.
"You sure you weren't dancing?" she asks, her words breathless against his cheek.
Mike laughs and lets Brittany bury her face into the crook of his neck, her fingers tracing his shoulder blades, down the musculature of his back. He hears her heart beating in her chest, and he knows his own must be even louder.
"It's better with music," she tells him before she twirls away to put some on.
The sound pulses through his body, and he grabs her and starts to move. It makes him feel delirious, and alive. He wants to ask her where she'd learned how to dance like that, but she flashes a smile at him and he forgets everything.
And when it's over, it's over. She presses a soft kiss to his cheek, thanks him for a good time, and skips out the door. He doesn't even get a chance to ask her if she'd like to do it again sometime.
--
She finds him again though, the next week. He's not dancing, not really. There's no music, and he's constantly looking over his shoulder to make sure nobody catches him in the empty classroom. He just feels it in his bones, the need to move.
He hears her before he sees her. Her steps are light but quick, and she skips over to the CD player in the corner to put on some hip hop before twirling into his arms and grinning sweetly at him.
"Not dancing again, Mike Chang?"
One hand finds the small of her back; the other reaches behind him to scratch the back of his head. He smiles sheepishly and feels the tips of his ears reddening.
Without another word, she spins out of his reach and starts to dance like nothing else matters. Her movements are sharp, trained, and he can't tear his eyes away. She motions for him to join her, and his body reacts instinctively, his muscles pulling him into the beat of the music. There's no choreography, no rules, nothing but adrenaline pumping through his bloodstream and a beautiful girl smiling encouragingly at him.
He's breathing hard when she stops abruptly and turns to him, eyes bright with excitement. She doesn't appear nearly as worn-out as he is. He's unsure how long they've been dancing, but he misses it already.
"That was fun!" Brittany chirps.
"Yeah," he manages to croak out.
"Same time next week?"
He nods, a little more enthusiastically than he means to.
Brittany beams. "Awesome."
She presses another kiss to his cheek and waves over her shoulder on her way out. He lingers in the empty classroom for another ten minutes before tossing his backpack over his shoulder and leaving. His cheek where her lips had brushed doesn't stop burning.
--
Brittany never misses a single meeting, which is weird because he's learned that she misplaces and forgets things like she gets paid to do it. But somehow, she always makes it on time to dance with him.
One of the first things Mike learns about Brittany is that she likes to be touched.
Not in a dirty way or anything. Well, maybe in a dirty way too, but that's nothing he really wants to know about. One day, he'll work up the guts to tell Santana to stop sharing the details of her lesbian ventures with Puck, because it gets around, and Mike prefers to stay in the dark about Brittany's sex partners.
Brittany just likes warm skin and gentle movements. She likes dancing and laughing and hats, but sometimes Mike thinks she likes being touched more than any of those things.
He figures it's why she's always brushing against him, why she likes tucking her hands in his pant pockets, why she smiles the most when they dance together rather than merely side by side. It's why she kisses him on the cheek before she leaves, grabs his hand whenever she's excited, and gives him the best hugs.
Navigating high school is tough sometimes, but once a week for an hour or two, he gets to just be himself.
--
"Can I borrow a pen?"
Embarrassingly, it'd taken him a good five minutes to work up the courage to tap on her shoulder. He realizes that outside the comfort of familiar steps, she makes him nervous.
Brittany turns around in her seat and blinks once at him from behind her lashes. Her eyes are piercing but kind, and she smiles. Immediately, Mike fights the urge to squirm in his seat. He feels his own pulse skyrocket.
"What happened to yours?" Brittany asks as she reaches down into her bag.
Mike shrugs his shoulders and tries to play it cool. "Forgot it."
Brittany's smile widens knowingly. "You gave it to Quinn."
Caught, he lets out a nervous laugh. "She never gave it back, and I didn't want to ask…"
"It's okay," Brittany reassures him. "I know she's super pretty. It's hard to talk to her sometimes." She pulls out a pen and drops it on his desk.
Mike looks down at the instrument and scrunches up his nose. "It's pink. And it has… hair."
Brittany presses her fingertip to his lips, silencing him. "Her name's Ramona. She has some body image issues."
Mike picks it up, feeling heat rising in his cheeks when he twirls it between his fingers. "Thanks, Brittany," he mumbles.
Brittany turns around, and he goes back to staring at the back of her head. He beats himself up for the rest of the day about not telling her that she's just as pretty as Quinn, if not more, and that she makes him nervous, too.
--
Freshman year comes to an end, and Brittany makes Mike promise that they'll hang out over the summer. So weekly dance sessions in abandoned classrooms move to Mike's living room, which inevitably also becomes the location for impromptu Disney marathons.
"You're kinda tactile, aren't you?" he asks her, watching as she runs her fingertips absentmindedly up and down his forearm.
"Is that like a fish?"
"No, it means-"
"It sounds like raw fish." She tilts her head. "Do you like sushi?"
He can't help but smile. "Yeah, Brittany, I like sushi."
"Awesome. Me too."
He smiles and gets his mom to make them a roll.
She leans her head against his shoulder. "Why don't people cuddle more?" she asks him, turning to bury her face against his neck. "It would solve a lot of problems."
Somehow, Mike doesn't see Barack Obama and Kim Jong-il cuddling out a peace treaty anytime soon, but he doesn't tell her that.
"I guess people are afraid," he finally says.
"Afraid of what?" She lifts her head to look at him. "Of cuddling?"
"Afraid of affection," he replies, even though he doesn't fully understand it himself. "Scared that it means something different to the other person."
"But-" She worries her bottom lip between her teeth. "Are you? Are you scared?"
His heart flips unexpectedly, but he brushes his knuckles across her cheek and smiles. "I'm cuddling you, aren't I?"
She beams and presses her face against his collarbone. "Yeah, you are."
--
He isn't really sure when everything starts changing.
Neither of them changes - not drastically, anyway - but the ties between them bend and twist under the strains and pressures of the high school social ladder. He's on the football team, mostly at his best friend Matt's insistence, and she's on the Cheerios, mostly at her best friend Santana's insistence. But he's pretty quick on his feet, and she flips better than anyone else on the squad, so Friday night games integrate easily into their lives.
The football team sucks ass, but she never once makes fun of him for it like most of the other cheerleaders do. She marches to her own beat, but somehow still dances with flawless precision. Where others are confused by her quirkiness, he finds himself awed, curious.
The guys in the locker room start asking if he's gotten into the pants of that hot blonde cheerleader yet. He always shrugs and laughs it off, but as much as he knows Brittany gets around - she's not a slut, he's quick to clarify; she just has too much love in her heart, and no, he doesn't use those words either at the risk of being flat-out laughed at - she doesn't get around to him, and for the most part, he's okay with that.
He's just the lanky football player who loves to dance. Brittany shows him that he doesn't have to hide his rhythm in his room. Brittany makes it cool, makes it awesome, makes it fun.
With her, he is exactly who he wants to be.
--
A month into his sophomore year, he joins Glee for her. No, that's not exactly true. He joins Glee for himself, but he stays for her. When Coach Tanaka hands them all an ultimatum, he goes to Brittany first. She says nothing, doesn't tell him what to do, just squeezes his hand and smiles, and his choice becomes obvious.
She kisses him for the first time that night.
He's sprawled out across his bed, inattentively tossing a football up into the air, and she's seated at the foot of the bed, trying to untangle a slinky she'd found in his sister's room.
"Thanks for picking Glee."
Mike catches the football and turns to her. "Did you really think I wouldn't?"
Brittany shrugs her shoulders. "Finn didn't."
Mike scrunches up his face. "Finn's kinda…"
"A butthole?" She tosses the slinky aside.
Mike laughs. "Yeah, something like that."
She crawls up the length of his body and settles against his side. "Hey."
He smiles, tries to shake off his nervousness. "Hi."
She drapes her hand across his abdomen, and he takes a breath. It's nothing she hasn't done before, but something feels different. She props herself up onto her elbow and leans down. Her lips brush his once, gently, before pulling away. Instinctively, he licks his lips, expecting that to be it, but she presses down again, harder this time. Her mouth opens against his, and his hands slide to her back, pulling her closer.
He's seen her kiss other people - he doesn't know if that's masochistic or just weird - but it's nothing like he expects. It's soft and warm, and she sighs so quietly that he feels it instead of hearing it. Her tongue dips unexpectedly into his mouth, and he loses all coherent thought. Brittany's hand slips under the hem of his shirt, her palm sliding shamelessly up the side of his torso.
They kiss lazily for a few more moments before Brittany pulls away, presses one last kiss on his swollen lips and smiles down at him.
"You taste like frosted flakes," she tells him. "Before you put milk in them. You don't taste soggy."
He licks his lips. "Thanks… I think."
Brittany's hand slips out from under his shirt and wraps around his belt buckle. She kisses his jaw, down the column of his neck, and her fingertips squeeze into the front of his pants. Immediately, he grabs her wrist, even as his blood rushes south and stopping her is the last thing his body wants him to do.
Confusion flashes across Brittany's features, and there's a tinge of hurt there, like she can't figure out why he's stopping her. For a moment, he doesn't know, either.
"You're special," he blurts out, immediately feeling like a moron.
She blinks. "Don't you want-"
His hand runs up her spine. "Yeah, but…"
"Not right now?"
Mike breathes a sigh of relief. "Not right now."
She smiles faintly. "Okay. Can I still kiss you? I really like breakfast."
His hand slides to the back of her neck and pulls her down to meet his lips.
When Brittany finally tires of making out, she lies down on top of him and squirms around until she finds a comfortable position, then starts to drift off. She slips her hand back under his shirt and keeps it there.
--
Mike spends a considerable portion of his sophomore year making out with Brittany.
They're not dating. She does her own thing, and he understands that. But after a dance session, she'll push him down onto the couch and climb on top of him and just kiss him until neither can breathe.
It gets tougher to stop Brittany when she gets carried away and brushes a hand over his groin, but he manages. And maybe it's a little bit messed up, but he doesn't want to just be another notch on her bedpost, even though he suspects that's the most he'll ever get.
The thought makes his heart ache.
When the cute girl from his Spanish class asks him out, he turns her down. He doesn't really understand it, either.
--
"Man, you gay or something?"
Mike turns to Matt, seated on the floor beside him. "What the hell? No."
Matt shrugs and drops his Playstation controller. "Hey, I mean, I ain't got nothing against it. Just wanna know if my best bud's playing for the other team."
"Matt, shut up. I'm not gay."
Matt raises an eyebrow. "So is there actually a reason you haven't done it with Brittany yet? You know how much that perfect record means to her."
"She's more than a pair of legs, all right? I'm not going to sleep with her just so she can say she's done every guy on the football team."
Matt raises his hands defensively. "Hey, chill out. You know I respect the ladies. I'm just saying, she's not stupid. She's just open about that kind of stuff." When Mike doesn't respond, he continues, "You want her, don't you?"
Mike sighs. "Matt, that's not-"
"To yourself, I mean," Matt clarifies. "Like, this is gonna sound so lame, but you want to be enough for her?"
Mike's knee-jerk protest dies in his throat, his heart twisting at Matt's words. "I'm so screwed," he mutters.
Matt grins. "Not by her, you're not."
That earns Matt a hard shove to the chest.
--
Mike isn't a violent person by nature, but he wants nothing more than to punch a fucking wall. School's been out for all of four days, and his summer is already ruined. He knows he shouldn't feel betrayed or abandoned, but his feelings don't extend much further past that.
He holes himself up in his room and ignores everything.
It works for about twenty-five minutes before there's a knock at his bedroom door.
"It's me."
He wants to lash out, tell her to go away and stop identifying herself as 'me' because that could be anyone, but he feels horrible about the thought before he even gets to the end of it. Because it's Brittany, and the fact that she's even knocking to alert him to her presence means that she already knows.
He sits up on his bed and swallows hard. "You don't have to knock, Britt."
The door opens, and she lets herself in. She slides onto the bed next to him and reaches for his hand.
"Santana said you were upset," she offers quietly.
Mike looks down at his lap. "Matt's moving," he grinds out through his teeth, the words tasting acrid against his tongue.
She squeezes his hand. "When?"
"Next Saturday. Asshole doesn't tell me about it until this morning."
Brittany pulls him against her chest and kisses his forehead. "I'm sorry," she murmurs. "Only to Cleveland, right? You can still visit him and stuff."
"It just… sucks. Matt's my boy."
She nudges him up by the chin and presses a kiss to his lips. "I know."
She climbs onto his lap, her thighs bracketing his hips, and makes him lie down. He repositions himself on the bed, pulling her with him. He's a little rougher than usual, but if she's surprised, she doesn't show it.
This time, when her hand finds the waist of his pants and she tugs, he lets her fumble around until she unbuckles his belt and unzips his pants. He lifts his hips, groaning at the incidental contact. She tugs his jeans down his hips, and he helps her kick it off the rest of the way.
He grabs her hips to still her when she grinds down against him.
"Britt."
Brittany leans down and drops a kiss to his throat. "Hmm?"
He takes a breath to clear his head. "I don't want you to do this just to make me feel better."
A small frown draws across her face. "That's not why." She touches his cheek. "Mike, I'm having sex with you because I've wanted to for a long time but you always said later."
He's embarrassingly hard. It's making it difficult to focus. "I kept saying later," he explains, "because I didn't want to just be another number."
Brittany's features soften. "How can you ever be just that? You told me once that I was special, remember? Well, you're special, too."
He shuts his eyes for a moment, swirling in his own emotions. It's not how he imagined their first time would be, but he hasn't exactly sat down and plotted it out either. When he reopens his eyes, she's looking at him with mild concern.
"You okay?"
He nods and slips his hands under her tank top, helping her pull it over her head. She reaches behind herself and unclasps her bra, then lets it slide down her arms. She tosses both articles of clothing aside. He sits up, and she sneakily rids him of his shirt before his lips land on her neck, her collarbone, the curve of her chest. He flicks his tongue over a nipple, his hands moving to her back to support her when she arches.
It's everything he's ever wanted since that first dance nearly two years ago. It's overwhelming. He just wants to worship her, worship her body, show her that he isn't just in it for the sex.
She lies him back down and rises slightly to roll her shorts and underwear down her legs. He removes his own boxers and suddenly feels exposed. Her nails claw lightly down his abdomen, lower until she's gripping him in her hand, her thumb rolling lightly over the tip. He bucks his hips and groans.
He doesn't tell her that he's never done this before, but he knows he's not her first, and he also knows that she can probably tell the difference. She doesn't seem to care either way as she strokes up and down his length a few times. The feel of her fist around him is almost unbearable, and he fights the urge to thrust hard into her.
"Wait, I-" He flails helplessly, then flushes hard. "Protection," he mumbles, reaching over to his nightstand and awkwardly pulling open a drawer.
His sudden lack of manual dexterity proves challenging, but before he can further embarrass himself, she takes the little square package from him and tears it open. In one fluid motion, she rolls the condom onto him.
She leans down to kiss him. He doesn't know how to react, where to put his hands, because she's still shamelessly stroking him. Her tongue licks into his mouth as she lowers herself onto him, and he very nearly loses it right then and there, buried deep inside her. He tightens his vice grip around her hips in an effort to contain himself.
She pulls away from his lips to look at him through the haze of arousal. "Mikey…"
He takes a breath and nods, and Brittany rolls her hips slowly, almost experimentally. His palms slide over smooth skin, curving around her sides until they come to rest against the swell of her breasts. She moves slowly over him, her forearms anchored on either side of his head, holding her up. She peppers kisses across his nose, his cheekbones, his lips, and he feels the pressure build between his thighs. He knows it'll be over embarrassingly soon.
He slides a hand between their bodies, palm gliding down her abdomen until his fingers reach her clit. She moans as he rolls the pads of his fingertips over her in small circles. It seems to stoke something in her; she presses her mouth hard against his, tongue delving in. Her hips move quicker, more erratically, and he's about to ask her to slow down when her body tenses and she clenches abruptly around him, the syllable of his name spilling from her lips as she bucks her hips harder.
The way she looks in that moment - cheeks flushed, lips swollen, eyes closed, mouth open - pushes him over the edge. Pleasure rockets through him, and it feels like she's touching him everywhere all at once.
He thrusts up to her as she grinds down, her hands grasping desperately at his shoulders as they ride out their orgasms together. She collapses against him, breathing hard, her breasts pushing against his chest. He's still inside her; she makes no effort to move. And even though he knows that on some level, sex is just sex, and he really has nothing to compare his experience with her to anything, he'd felt something.
Her nose scrunches up as she fights a yawn. "Maybe the Browns won't suck so bad next year."
He jostles her slightly and groans at the friction. "What?"
"You could go see a game with Matt. Don't miss him too much, Mike. You'll still see him sometimes."
Brittany raises herself off him and rolls over, flopping down on her back. Mike uses the opportunity to quickly dispose of the condom, then slides back into bed. He pulls Brittany under the covers, and she snuggles up against him. She slips a leg between his and smiles against his throat.
Matt's still moving away, and everything feels like it's shifting off kilter, but having Brittany in his arms pulls some of that sanity back. With Brittany's naked body pressed against his, Mike feels invincible.
--
Nobody owns Brittany; this much is clear to Mike. He hadn't expected that to change. He hadn't really known what to expect because frankly, he hadn't thought that far ahead. Maybe he should've.
All he knows is that he has trouble making the separation between carnal pleasure and all the things he doesn't know how to stop feeling when Brittany's straddling his hips and kissing his neck, her hands pressed against his sides as she groans into his mouth.
She always lets him hold her in the afterglow, and her kisses turn so gentle that they etch memory marks into his skin.
"Let's go to a movie," he mumbles against her bare shoulder after the fifth time. "And dinner. Dinner, and then a movie."
Brittany stirs, her wrist brushing his hipbone. "Like a date?"
He turns her around and kisses her once, softly. "Yeah, like a date."
Brittany pulls away slightly. "Mike, I'm sorry, I can't date you."
His heart sinks. The worst part isn't even the sting of rejection; it's how conflicted Brittany suddenly looks, like it hurts her that they're having this conversation, like she knows that she's breaking his heart.
"I don't want to stop kissing other people," she explains.
"I don't care about that," he says, even though he does. His throat feels dry.
Brittany shakes her head. "I don't want to hurt you," she tells him gently. "And I don't want you to resent me because I can't be elusive."
"Exclusive," Mike supplies with a bitter laugh.
"Yeah, that." She smiles sadly, apologetically, and slips her hand into his. "Mike, you have to know-it's not because you're not enough. It's just who I am right now." She brushes her knuckles against his cheek and tries again. "I don't want to hurt you."
On some level, he knows she's right. Watching her with other guys and sometimes girls at parties had been tough enough when they'd been uncomplicated friends with a penchant for making out with each other. To enter into a relationship knowing that Brittany would keep kissing other people is a death sentence.
And he knows, in all of Brittany's uncharacteristic insight, she understands what he's asking, maybe even more than he does. He knows it's hurting her to say no.
He knows all that, and yet he wants to scream about how unfair it all is, that he's fallen for the one girl with too much love, too much sexual confidence, and is unafraid to show both.
The kiss Brittany presses to his lips feels too much like goodbye.
"I love you," she murmurs. "You're so special to me."
He swallows against the lump in his throat, fighting the ache in his chest. He doesn't trust himself to speak, so he settles for nodding and a forced, "Yeah."
She burrows her head under his chin and holds him until she has to leave.
--
They grow apart. By mid-summer, they've stop interacting altogether.
Brittany is surprisingly easy to avoid. He has a sneaking suspicion she isn't exactly trying to find him either, and it's tough, because Mike blames himself for letting his feelings get in the way of their relationship when he knows that it's really nobody fault.
When his mom gets him a job at a local Asian arts camp, and Tina Cohen-Chang smiles up at him with bright, warm eyes that remind him of Brittany's, he kisses her. It's not fair to Tina, he knows, but he also knows that Tina and Artie had suffered a pretty miserable breakup, so she's not exactly innocent either.
Their relationship should be destructive, Mike thinks, but Tina's a sweet girl, funny, cute, charming, and by the end of summer, over dim sum and many, many games of Left 4 Dead, Mike falls for her too.
--
A dance is what rekindles them. Nothing else would be as appropriate.
He doesn't even know what draws him to the empty classroom where he'd first danced with Brittany, but at the end of the first day of his junior year, he's standing in front of the door with his heart in his throat.
In a way, he knows why he's here. He misses it, misses dancing, misses her. Misses the way she feels against him, warm and fluid. Misses her smile, the sound of her laughter, and the way she laces her fingers through his and holds on like she'll never let go.
But she did. Or he did. One of them let the other slip away.
Brittany's sitting on a desk when he enters the room. Her legs stop swinging when she notices him, and she allows a guarded smile.
"Hey," she greets.
He'd seen her earlier in the halls, caught a glimpse of her blond hair in his English class, but it's been over a month since they'd last spoken, and nervous energy boils at the pit of his stomach. He wonders if he'll always have this reaction to her.
Brittany tilts her head. "It's me, Brittany. Did you forget already?"
Mike drops his backpack and walks over until he's standing directly in front of her, so close that his hands are itching to slide up along her thighs. "Silly," he teases, trying for a smile. "How could I ever forget you?"
Brittany beams and hops off the desk, throwing her body against his and crushing him with a tight embrace. Her arms loop around his neck; his instinctively wrap around her waist.
"I've missed you," she murmurs into his shoulder.
"I've missed you so much," he replies, squeezing his eyes shut as he breathes her in.
Her body feels familiar in a way that's comforting. She fits against him snugly, like two adjacent pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
"You're dating Tina," she says when they pull apart. There's no jealousy in her voice, no resentment. It's just a statement.
"Yeah." He forces a laugh. "We met at Asian camp." He shuffles nervously. "I'm sorry."
Brittany presses a fingertip to his lips, silencing him. "Don't be sorry. You like Tina?"
His head tilts in a nod. "Yeah, I do."
"Good." Brittany smiles knowingly. "She's a really good kisser."
It doesn't surprise him, not anymore. He takes her hand and twirls her, loving the laugh that bubbles from her throat. There's no music, but the steps are etched into his memory, and they dance with each other like they've been doing it together their entire lives.
A dance with Brittany isn't just a dance. It's a conversation. She never confuses the words, never misunderstands the meaning. A silent apology passes between them, and Mike immediately feels lighter.
He stops their movements abruptly and looks at her. Her lips curl into a smile, her fingers slipping through the hair at the nape of his neck.
"We're okay?" he asks.
She nods and presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth.
--
A few months into the school year, Brittany starts dating Artie. Mike doesn't really get it, but his heart has had time to heal, and it doesn't sting nearly as much as he'd thought it would.
People change. He understands that much. People's ideals about relationships change as well. Besides, he's with Tina, so it isn't exactly like he's on the market. Still, he wishes it were him she keeps smiling at. He's rarely bitter, but he knows he'd be a better boyfriend than Artie.
He realizes with a heavy heart that what he and Brittany have is really bad timing.
--
They dance together at sectionals, against the backdrop of Santana belting out Valerie.
Even with the bitter aftertaste of Artie and Tina accusing them of cheating, there's nothing that can possibly ruin their performance.
She hugs him after, her face buried against his collar. "You were amazing," she whispers.
"You were perfect," he whispers back. Are, he keeps thinking. Present tense.
She pulls away just enough to meet his eyes, and she smiles at him like she knows what he means anyway.
--
Brittany doesn't like conflict, confrontation, but those are exactly the things she currently has in her life.
Her solution is apparently to hide out in Mike's room until it's over.
He tries to distract her from the names Artie Abrams and Santana Lopez, the two people warring for her affections. She isn't exactly difficult to distract, but the lines of worry never quite fade from her features, and he wants nothing more than to kiss them away.
She curls up next to him on his bed and runs her fingertips up and down his arm. He's halfway through a story about his locker room shenanigans with Puck when Brittany sits up abruptly.
"How do you know when you're in love with someone?" she asks him.
Mike's hand grazes her thigh. "You just feel it."
Brittany turns, her eyes suddenly boring into his. "Are you in love with Tina?"
Mike swallows hard. "I think so."
Brittany frowns. "I think I'm in love with more than one person. Do you think that's okay?"
"Yeah, but-" He envelopes her hand with his and intertwines their fingers. "If those people only want you, then you have to choose."
Brittany flops back down on the bed and sighs. "Why is everything so complicated? I just want to do the right thing."
"I know." He brushes a kiss to the crown of her head. "You're going to figure it out."
"Let's leave everyone behind and move to the Bahamas together," Brittany offers. "We'll live in a little hut on the beach and eat mangos all day. You can bring Tina if you want."
"Okay," he laughs, but his heart suddenly starts to hurt.
What he doesn't tell her is that he doesn't want to bring Tina, and he thinks that Tina's started to notice, too.
--
A week after prom, Brittany shows up at Mike's with red-rimmed eyes and mumbles something about breaking up with Artie, and Santana dating a new transfer student with a rock star name. Tina's there, too, and the three of them spend the rest of the night playing Mario Kart, with Mike and Tina trying to convince Brittany that she shouldn't feel guilty for throwing banana peels on the race track.
Brittany leaves a few hours later, in a considerably better mood. As soon as the front door closes, Tina leans back against the couch and stares up at the ceiling.
"The first one never really leaves you, huh?"
Mike doesn't know what she means until he realizes how tightly he's clutching the controller Brittany had abandoned. He smiles sadly at Tina. "I guess not. Do you still-for Artie?"
"No, but…" Tina laughs. "Artie isn't Brittany."
He takes Tina's hand and presses a kiss to her knuckles. "I'm sorry, T. I really do love you. I just-"
"I know," she cuts him off, but not unkindly. "You don't have to explain, Mike. We had a pretty good run."
Tina presses a kiss to his cheek, offers a reassuring smile, and leaves.
--
The next time he sees Brittany, she pulls him aside.
"I thought you were in love with Tina," she says instead of a greeting.
Mike smiles faintly. "I was."
Brittany frowns. "Then I don't understand. Why did you break up with her?"
Mike takes a deep breath and cradles Brittany's hand in his. "Remember when I said that sometimes you have to choose?"
"Yeah." A moment later, realization settles across Brittany's features. "Oh! Oh."
"This isn't… there's nothing on you, Britt," he reassures her. "Tina just figured it out. It was a friendly breakup, I promise."
Brittany's smile is sympathetic as she wraps him in a hug. "I'm sorry."
He squeezes her tightly. "Thank you."
"Oh," she adds noncommittally, "and I found out what tactile means. It's not fish."
--
Nationals are in New York, and they're separated into hotel rooms the night before the competition. Mike's roommates, Finn, Puck and Sam, decide to sneak out for the night, but Mike's featured in a dance number the next day and needs the rest, so he curls up and attempts to let the quiet lull him to sleep.
Before he can nod off, his hotel room door opens, and he turns to see Brittany letting herself in. She tosses the key card on the dresser and climbs into bed with him, sliding under the comforter and reaching for him.
"Hey," she mumbles.
"Hi," he whispers back. "How'd you get in?"
"Swiped Sam's card." She reaches for his hand and ends up grabbing a fistful of his shirt. "Can I stay here for a while?"
"Of course." Mike readjusts himself to accommodate Brittany's body. "Nervous about tomorrow?"
She smiles. "A little."
Brittany pulls herself closer, and before Mike can process what's happening, her lips are pressed firmly against his, and she's kissing him. He reacts from memory, his hands finding her hips and tugging her closer. Her hands press small palm prints into his forearms as her tongue dips into his mouth, and he groans at all the feelings suddenly rushing through him, all the feelings he'd never quite been able to let go.
She pulls away and meets his eyes. "I just need you to know… I didn't dance with you because I thought you were a good dancer, even though you totally are. I didn't kiss you because you picked glee club, even though I thought it was awesome that you did. And I didn't have sex with you to get a perfect record." She drops a soft kiss to his lips before continuing, "You're the one person who has never been confusing. Even when we were apart, I knew everything would be okay. Everyone thinks I don't know what's going on. They think I don't notice the way people treat me. But I do, and Mike, you've always taken care of me."
Mike's chest tightens as realization dawns on him. "Brittany…"
"Mikey." She kisses his shoulder, his neck, his jaw. "Let's go to a movie. And dinner. Dinner, and then a movie."
Mike threads his fingers through blond hair and brushes the pad of his thumb over Brittany's cheekbone. "Like a date?" he teases, nudging his nose against hers.
Brittany giggles. "Yeah, like a date."
"Okay." He laughs softly. "Okay, Britt, let's go on a date."
fin.
Author: zerodetorres
Characters: Mike/Brittany
Rating: NC-17
Length: 6,272
Summary: A dance with Brittany isn't just a dance. It's a conversation. She never confuses the words, never misunderstands the meaning.
Notes: For raychelnina. ♥
It's the first week of high school, and Mike Chang feels lost. He's not the loud class clown type like Noah Puckerman, nor is he physically imposing like Finn Hudson, but he isn't exactly on the other end of the spectrum either. He's just the nice, quiet guy who stays out of trouble and likes to goof off.
"What are you doing?"
Mike turns around abruptly, nearly losing his balance and face-planting. He laughs nervously and swipes the backs of his hands against his thighs. "Nothing."
The girl who'd walked in on him - a blonde whose name he remembers is Brittany - smiles. "Were you dancing?"
Mike flushes. "No."
Brittany skips to his side and slips one of her hands into his, the other coming to rest against his shoulder. Instinctively, Mike's hand slides to the small of her back, and her smile widens as she leads him across the empty choir room. There's no music, but rhythm vibrates through Mike's bones, and Brittany's body is warm under his palms.
He throws Brittany out and spins her around, and she giggles. On her way back, she lands flush against his body, her face dangerously close to his. He's known Brittany his entire life, but they haven't exactly been in the same circles. He knows her name, but he doesn't think he's ever even held a conversation with her. Until now.
"You sure you weren't dancing?" she asks, her words breathless against his cheek.
Mike laughs and lets Brittany bury her face into the crook of his neck, her fingers tracing his shoulder blades, down the musculature of his back. He hears her heart beating in her chest, and he knows his own must be even louder.
"It's better with music," she tells him before she twirls away to put some on.
The sound pulses through his body, and he grabs her and starts to move. It makes him feel delirious, and alive. He wants to ask her where she'd learned how to dance like that, but she flashes a smile at him and he forgets everything.
And when it's over, it's over. She presses a soft kiss to his cheek, thanks him for a good time, and skips out the door. He doesn't even get a chance to ask her if she'd like to do it again sometime.
--
She finds him again though, the next week. He's not dancing, not really. There's no music, and he's constantly looking over his shoulder to make sure nobody catches him in the empty classroom. He just feels it in his bones, the need to move.
He hears her before he sees her. Her steps are light but quick, and she skips over to the CD player in the corner to put on some hip hop before twirling into his arms and grinning sweetly at him.
"Not dancing again, Mike Chang?"
One hand finds the small of her back; the other reaches behind him to scratch the back of his head. He smiles sheepishly and feels the tips of his ears reddening.
Without another word, she spins out of his reach and starts to dance like nothing else matters. Her movements are sharp, trained, and he can't tear his eyes away. She motions for him to join her, and his body reacts instinctively, his muscles pulling him into the beat of the music. There's no choreography, no rules, nothing but adrenaline pumping through his bloodstream and a beautiful girl smiling encouragingly at him.
He's breathing hard when she stops abruptly and turns to him, eyes bright with excitement. She doesn't appear nearly as worn-out as he is. He's unsure how long they've been dancing, but he misses it already.
"That was fun!" Brittany chirps.
"Yeah," he manages to croak out.
"Same time next week?"
He nods, a little more enthusiastically than he means to.
Brittany beams. "Awesome."
She presses another kiss to his cheek and waves over her shoulder on her way out. He lingers in the empty classroom for another ten minutes before tossing his backpack over his shoulder and leaving. His cheek where her lips had brushed doesn't stop burning.
--
Brittany never misses a single meeting, which is weird because he's learned that she misplaces and forgets things like she gets paid to do it. But somehow, she always makes it on time to dance with him.
One of the first things Mike learns about Brittany is that she likes to be touched.
Not in a dirty way or anything. Well, maybe in a dirty way too, but that's nothing he really wants to know about. One day, he'll work up the guts to tell Santana to stop sharing the details of her lesbian ventures with Puck, because it gets around, and Mike prefers to stay in the dark about Brittany's sex partners.
Brittany just likes warm skin and gentle movements. She likes dancing and laughing and hats, but sometimes Mike thinks she likes being touched more than any of those things.
He figures it's why she's always brushing against him, why she likes tucking her hands in his pant pockets, why she smiles the most when they dance together rather than merely side by side. It's why she kisses him on the cheek before she leaves, grabs his hand whenever she's excited, and gives him the best hugs.
Navigating high school is tough sometimes, but once a week for an hour or two, he gets to just be himself.
--
"Can I borrow a pen?"
Embarrassingly, it'd taken him a good five minutes to work up the courage to tap on her shoulder. He realizes that outside the comfort of familiar steps, she makes him nervous.
Brittany turns around in her seat and blinks once at him from behind her lashes. Her eyes are piercing but kind, and she smiles. Immediately, Mike fights the urge to squirm in his seat. He feels his own pulse skyrocket.
"What happened to yours?" Brittany asks as she reaches down into her bag.
Mike shrugs his shoulders and tries to play it cool. "Forgot it."
Brittany's smile widens knowingly. "You gave it to Quinn."
Caught, he lets out a nervous laugh. "She never gave it back, and I didn't want to ask…"
"It's okay," Brittany reassures him. "I know she's super pretty. It's hard to talk to her sometimes." She pulls out a pen and drops it on his desk.
Mike looks down at the instrument and scrunches up his nose. "It's pink. And it has… hair."
Brittany presses her fingertip to his lips, silencing him. "Her name's Ramona. She has some body image issues."
Mike picks it up, feeling heat rising in his cheeks when he twirls it between his fingers. "Thanks, Brittany," he mumbles.
Brittany turns around, and he goes back to staring at the back of her head. He beats himself up for the rest of the day about not telling her that she's just as pretty as Quinn, if not more, and that she makes him nervous, too.
--
Freshman year comes to an end, and Brittany makes Mike promise that they'll hang out over the summer. So weekly dance sessions in abandoned classrooms move to Mike's living room, which inevitably also becomes the location for impromptu Disney marathons.
"You're kinda tactile, aren't you?" he asks her, watching as she runs her fingertips absentmindedly up and down his forearm.
"Is that like a fish?"
"No, it means-"
"It sounds like raw fish." She tilts her head. "Do you like sushi?"
He can't help but smile. "Yeah, Brittany, I like sushi."
"Awesome. Me too."
He smiles and gets his mom to make them a roll.
She leans her head against his shoulder. "Why don't people cuddle more?" she asks him, turning to bury her face against his neck. "It would solve a lot of problems."
Somehow, Mike doesn't see Barack Obama and Kim Jong-il cuddling out a peace treaty anytime soon, but he doesn't tell her that.
"I guess people are afraid," he finally says.
"Afraid of what?" She lifts her head to look at him. "Of cuddling?"
"Afraid of affection," he replies, even though he doesn't fully understand it himself. "Scared that it means something different to the other person."
"But-" She worries her bottom lip between her teeth. "Are you? Are you scared?"
His heart flips unexpectedly, but he brushes his knuckles across her cheek and smiles. "I'm cuddling you, aren't I?"
She beams and presses her face against his collarbone. "Yeah, you are."
--
He isn't really sure when everything starts changing.
Neither of them changes - not drastically, anyway - but the ties between them bend and twist under the strains and pressures of the high school social ladder. He's on the football team, mostly at his best friend Matt's insistence, and she's on the Cheerios, mostly at her best friend Santana's insistence. But he's pretty quick on his feet, and she flips better than anyone else on the squad, so Friday night games integrate easily into their lives.
The football team sucks ass, but she never once makes fun of him for it like most of the other cheerleaders do. She marches to her own beat, but somehow still dances with flawless precision. Where others are confused by her quirkiness, he finds himself awed, curious.
The guys in the locker room start asking if he's gotten into the pants of that hot blonde cheerleader yet. He always shrugs and laughs it off, but as much as he knows Brittany gets around - she's not a slut, he's quick to clarify; she just has too much love in her heart, and no, he doesn't use those words either at the risk of being flat-out laughed at - she doesn't get around to him, and for the most part, he's okay with that.
He's just the lanky football player who loves to dance. Brittany shows him that he doesn't have to hide his rhythm in his room. Brittany makes it cool, makes it awesome, makes it fun.
With her, he is exactly who he wants to be.
--
A month into his sophomore year, he joins Glee for her. No, that's not exactly true. He joins Glee for himself, but he stays for her. When Coach Tanaka hands them all an ultimatum, he goes to Brittany first. She says nothing, doesn't tell him what to do, just squeezes his hand and smiles, and his choice becomes obvious.
She kisses him for the first time that night.
He's sprawled out across his bed, inattentively tossing a football up into the air, and she's seated at the foot of the bed, trying to untangle a slinky she'd found in his sister's room.
"Thanks for picking Glee."
Mike catches the football and turns to her. "Did you really think I wouldn't?"
Brittany shrugs her shoulders. "Finn didn't."
Mike scrunches up his face. "Finn's kinda…"
"A butthole?" She tosses the slinky aside.
Mike laughs. "Yeah, something like that."
She crawls up the length of his body and settles against his side. "Hey."
He smiles, tries to shake off his nervousness. "Hi."
She drapes her hand across his abdomen, and he takes a breath. It's nothing she hasn't done before, but something feels different. She props herself up onto her elbow and leans down. Her lips brush his once, gently, before pulling away. Instinctively, he licks his lips, expecting that to be it, but she presses down again, harder this time. Her mouth opens against his, and his hands slide to her back, pulling her closer.
He's seen her kiss other people - he doesn't know if that's masochistic or just weird - but it's nothing like he expects. It's soft and warm, and she sighs so quietly that he feels it instead of hearing it. Her tongue dips unexpectedly into his mouth, and he loses all coherent thought. Brittany's hand slips under the hem of his shirt, her palm sliding shamelessly up the side of his torso.
They kiss lazily for a few more moments before Brittany pulls away, presses one last kiss on his swollen lips and smiles down at him.
"You taste like frosted flakes," she tells him. "Before you put milk in them. You don't taste soggy."
He licks his lips. "Thanks… I think."
Brittany's hand slips out from under his shirt and wraps around his belt buckle. She kisses his jaw, down the column of his neck, and her fingertips squeeze into the front of his pants. Immediately, he grabs her wrist, even as his blood rushes south and stopping her is the last thing his body wants him to do.
Confusion flashes across Brittany's features, and there's a tinge of hurt there, like she can't figure out why he's stopping her. For a moment, he doesn't know, either.
"You're special," he blurts out, immediately feeling like a moron.
She blinks. "Don't you want-"
His hand runs up her spine. "Yeah, but…"
"Not right now?"
Mike breathes a sigh of relief. "Not right now."
She smiles faintly. "Okay. Can I still kiss you? I really like breakfast."
His hand slides to the back of her neck and pulls her down to meet his lips.
When Brittany finally tires of making out, she lies down on top of him and squirms around until she finds a comfortable position, then starts to drift off. She slips her hand back under his shirt and keeps it there.
--
Mike spends a considerable portion of his sophomore year making out with Brittany.
They're not dating. She does her own thing, and he understands that. But after a dance session, she'll push him down onto the couch and climb on top of him and just kiss him until neither can breathe.
It gets tougher to stop Brittany when she gets carried away and brushes a hand over his groin, but he manages. And maybe it's a little bit messed up, but he doesn't want to just be another notch on her bedpost, even though he suspects that's the most he'll ever get.
The thought makes his heart ache.
When the cute girl from his Spanish class asks him out, he turns her down. He doesn't really understand it, either.
--
"Man, you gay or something?"
Mike turns to Matt, seated on the floor beside him. "What the hell? No."
Matt shrugs and drops his Playstation controller. "Hey, I mean, I ain't got nothing against it. Just wanna know if my best bud's playing for the other team."
"Matt, shut up. I'm not gay."
Matt raises an eyebrow. "So is there actually a reason you haven't done it with Brittany yet? You know how much that perfect record means to her."
"She's more than a pair of legs, all right? I'm not going to sleep with her just so she can say she's done every guy on the football team."
Matt raises his hands defensively. "Hey, chill out. You know I respect the ladies. I'm just saying, she's not stupid. She's just open about that kind of stuff." When Mike doesn't respond, he continues, "You want her, don't you?"
Mike sighs. "Matt, that's not-"
"To yourself, I mean," Matt clarifies. "Like, this is gonna sound so lame, but you want to be enough for her?"
Mike's knee-jerk protest dies in his throat, his heart twisting at Matt's words. "I'm so screwed," he mutters.
Matt grins. "Not by her, you're not."
That earns Matt a hard shove to the chest.
--
Mike isn't a violent person by nature, but he wants nothing more than to punch a fucking wall. School's been out for all of four days, and his summer is already ruined. He knows he shouldn't feel betrayed or abandoned, but his feelings don't extend much further past that.
He holes himself up in his room and ignores everything.
It works for about twenty-five minutes before there's a knock at his bedroom door.
"It's me."
He wants to lash out, tell her to go away and stop identifying herself as 'me' because that could be anyone, but he feels horrible about the thought before he even gets to the end of it. Because it's Brittany, and the fact that she's even knocking to alert him to her presence means that she already knows.
He sits up on his bed and swallows hard. "You don't have to knock, Britt."
The door opens, and she lets herself in. She slides onto the bed next to him and reaches for his hand.
"Santana said you were upset," she offers quietly.
Mike looks down at his lap. "Matt's moving," he grinds out through his teeth, the words tasting acrid against his tongue.
She squeezes his hand. "When?"
"Next Saturday. Asshole doesn't tell me about it until this morning."
Brittany pulls him against her chest and kisses his forehead. "I'm sorry," she murmurs. "Only to Cleveland, right? You can still visit him and stuff."
"It just… sucks. Matt's my boy."
She nudges him up by the chin and presses a kiss to his lips. "I know."
She climbs onto his lap, her thighs bracketing his hips, and makes him lie down. He repositions himself on the bed, pulling her with him. He's a little rougher than usual, but if she's surprised, she doesn't show it.
This time, when her hand finds the waist of his pants and she tugs, he lets her fumble around until she unbuckles his belt and unzips his pants. He lifts his hips, groaning at the incidental contact. She tugs his jeans down his hips, and he helps her kick it off the rest of the way.
He grabs her hips to still her when she grinds down against him.
"Britt."
Brittany leans down and drops a kiss to his throat. "Hmm?"
He takes a breath to clear his head. "I don't want you to do this just to make me feel better."
A small frown draws across her face. "That's not why." She touches his cheek. "Mike, I'm having sex with you because I've wanted to for a long time but you always said later."
He's embarrassingly hard. It's making it difficult to focus. "I kept saying later," he explains, "because I didn't want to just be another number."
Brittany's features soften. "How can you ever be just that? You told me once that I was special, remember? Well, you're special, too."
He shuts his eyes for a moment, swirling in his own emotions. It's not how he imagined their first time would be, but he hasn't exactly sat down and plotted it out either. When he reopens his eyes, she's looking at him with mild concern.
"You okay?"
He nods and slips his hands under her tank top, helping her pull it over her head. She reaches behind herself and unclasps her bra, then lets it slide down her arms. She tosses both articles of clothing aside. He sits up, and she sneakily rids him of his shirt before his lips land on her neck, her collarbone, the curve of her chest. He flicks his tongue over a nipple, his hands moving to her back to support her when she arches.
It's everything he's ever wanted since that first dance nearly two years ago. It's overwhelming. He just wants to worship her, worship her body, show her that he isn't just in it for the sex.
She lies him back down and rises slightly to roll her shorts and underwear down her legs. He removes his own boxers and suddenly feels exposed. Her nails claw lightly down his abdomen, lower until she's gripping him in her hand, her thumb rolling lightly over the tip. He bucks his hips and groans.
He doesn't tell her that he's never done this before, but he knows he's not her first, and he also knows that she can probably tell the difference. She doesn't seem to care either way as she strokes up and down his length a few times. The feel of her fist around him is almost unbearable, and he fights the urge to thrust hard into her.
"Wait, I-" He flails helplessly, then flushes hard. "Protection," he mumbles, reaching over to his nightstand and awkwardly pulling open a drawer.
His sudden lack of manual dexterity proves challenging, but before he can further embarrass himself, she takes the little square package from him and tears it open. In one fluid motion, she rolls the condom onto him.
She leans down to kiss him. He doesn't know how to react, where to put his hands, because she's still shamelessly stroking him. Her tongue licks into his mouth as she lowers herself onto him, and he very nearly loses it right then and there, buried deep inside her. He tightens his vice grip around her hips in an effort to contain himself.
She pulls away from his lips to look at him through the haze of arousal. "Mikey…"
He takes a breath and nods, and Brittany rolls her hips slowly, almost experimentally. His palms slide over smooth skin, curving around her sides until they come to rest against the swell of her breasts. She moves slowly over him, her forearms anchored on either side of his head, holding her up. She peppers kisses across his nose, his cheekbones, his lips, and he feels the pressure build between his thighs. He knows it'll be over embarrassingly soon.
He slides a hand between their bodies, palm gliding down her abdomen until his fingers reach her clit. She moans as he rolls the pads of his fingertips over her in small circles. It seems to stoke something in her; she presses her mouth hard against his, tongue delving in. Her hips move quicker, more erratically, and he's about to ask her to slow down when her body tenses and she clenches abruptly around him, the syllable of his name spilling from her lips as she bucks her hips harder.
The way she looks in that moment - cheeks flushed, lips swollen, eyes closed, mouth open - pushes him over the edge. Pleasure rockets through him, and it feels like she's touching him everywhere all at once.
He thrusts up to her as she grinds down, her hands grasping desperately at his shoulders as they ride out their orgasms together. She collapses against him, breathing hard, her breasts pushing against his chest. He's still inside her; she makes no effort to move. And even though he knows that on some level, sex is just sex, and he really has nothing to compare his experience with her to anything, he'd felt something.
Her nose scrunches up as she fights a yawn. "Maybe the Browns won't suck so bad next year."
He jostles her slightly and groans at the friction. "What?"
"You could go see a game with Matt. Don't miss him too much, Mike. You'll still see him sometimes."
Brittany raises herself off him and rolls over, flopping down on her back. Mike uses the opportunity to quickly dispose of the condom, then slides back into bed. He pulls Brittany under the covers, and she snuggles up against him. She slips a leg between his and smiles against his throat.
Matt's still moving away, and everything feels like it's shifting off kilter, but having Brittany in his arms pulls some of that sanity back. With Brittany's naked body pressed against his, Mike feels invincible.
--
Nobody owns Brittany; this much is clear to Mike. He hadn't expected that to change. He hadn't really known what to expect because frankly, he hadn't thought that far ahead. Maybe he should've.
All he knows is that he has trouble making the separation between carnal pleasure and all the things he doesn't know how to stop feeling when Brittany's straddling his hips and kissing his neck, her hands pressed against his sides as she groans into his mouth.
She always lets him hold her in the afterglow, and her kisses turn so gentle that they etch memory marks into his skin.
"Let's go to a movie," he mumbles against her bare shoulder after the fifth time. "And dinner. Dinner, and then a movie."
Brittany stirs, her wrist brushing his hipbone. "Like a date?"
He turns her around and kisses her once, softly. "Yeah, like a date."
Brittany pulls away slightly. "Mike, I'm sorry, I can't date you."
His heart sinks. The worst part isn't even the sting of rejection; it's how conflicted Brittany suddenly looks, like it hurts her that they're having this conversation, like she knows that she's breaking his heart.
"I don't want to stop kissing other people," she explains.
"I don't care about that," he says, even though he does. His throat feels dry.
Brittany shakes her head. "I don't want to hurt you," she tells him gently. "And I don't want you to resent me because I can't be elusive."
"Exclusive," Mike supplies with a bitter laugh.
"Yeah, that." She smiles sadly, apologetically, and slips her hand into his. "Mike, you have to know-it's not because you're not enough. It's just who I am right now." She brushes her knuckles against his cheek and tries again. "I don't want to hurt you."
On some level, he knows she's right. Watching her with other guys and sometimes girls at parties had been tough enough when they'd been uncomplicated friends with a penchant for making out with each other. To enter into a relationship knowing that Brittany would keep kissing other people is a death sentence.
And he knows, in all of Brittany's uncharacteristic insight, she understands what he's asking, maybe even more than he does. He knows it's hurting her to say no.
He knows all that, and yet he wants to scream about how unfair it all is, that he's fallen for the one girl with too much love, too much sexual confidence, and is unafraid to show both.
The kiss Brittany presses to his lips feels too much like goodbye.
"I love you," she murmurs. "You're so special to me."
He swallows against the lump in his throat, fighting the ache in his chest. He doesn't trust himself to speak, so he settles for nodding and a forced, "Yeah."
She burrows her head under his chin and holds him until she has to leave.
--
They grow apart. By mid-summer, they've stop interacting altogether.
Brittany is surprisingly easy to avoid. He has a sneaking suspicion she isn't exactly trying to find him either, and it's tough, because Mike blames himself for letting his feelings get in the way of their relationship when he knows that it's really nobody fault.
When his mom gets him a job at a local Asian arts camp, and Tina Cohen-Chang smiles up at him with bright, warm eyes that remind him of Brittany's, he kisses her. It's not fair to Tina, he knows, but he also knows that Tina and Artie had suffered a pretty miserable breakup, so she's not exactly innocent either.
Their relationship should be destructive, Mike thinks, but Tina's a sweet girl, funny, cute, charming, and by the end of summer, over dim sum and many, many games of Left 4 Dead, Mike falls for her too.
--
A dance is what rekindles them. Nothing else would be as appropriate.
He doesn't even know what draws him to the empty classroom where he'd first danced with Brittany, but at the end of the first day of his junior year, he's standing in front of the door with his heart in his throat.
In a way, he knows why he's here. He misses it, misses dancing, misses her. Misses the way she feels against him, warm and fluid. Misses her smile, the sound of her laughter, and the way she laces her fingers through his and holds on like she'll never let go.
But she did. Or he did. One of them let the other slip away.
Brittany's sitting on a desk when he enters the room. Her legs stop swinging when she notices him, and she allows a guarded smile.
"Hey," she greets.
He'd seen her earlier in the halls, caught a glimpse of her blond hair in his English class, but it's been over a month since they'd last spoken, and nervous energy boils at the pit of his stomach. He wonders if he'll always have this reaction to her.
Brittany tilts her head. "It's me, Brittany. Did you forget already?"
Mike drops his backpack and walks over until he's standing directly in front of her, so close that his hands are itching to slide up along her thighs. "Silly," he teases, trying for a smile. "How could I ever forget you?"
Brittany beams and hops off the desk, throwing her body against his and crushing him with a tight embrace. Her arms loop around his neck; his instinctively wrap around her waist.
"I've missed you," she murmurs into his shoulder.
"I've missed you so much," he replies, squeezing his eyes shut as he breathes her in.
Her body feels familiar in a way that's comforting. She fits against him snugly, like two adjacent pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
"You're dating Tina," she says when they pull apart. There's no jealousy in her voice, no resentment. It's just a statement.
"Yeah." He forces a laugh. "We met at Asian camp." He shuffles nervously. "I'm sorry."
Brittany presses a fingertip to his lips, silencing him. "Don't be sorry. You like Tina?"
His head tilts in a nod. "Yeah, I do."
"Good." Brittany smiles knowingly. "She's a really good kisser."
It doesn't surprise him, not anymore. He takes her hand and twirls her, loving the laugh that bubbles from her throat. There's no music, but the steps are etched into his memory, and they dance with each other like they've been doing it together their entire lives.
A dance with Brittany isn't just a dance. It's a conversation. She never confuses the words, never misunderstands the meaning. A silent apology passes between them, and Mike immediately feels lighter.
He stops their movements abruptly and looks at her. Her lips curl into a smile, her fingers slipping through the hair at the nape of his neck.
"We're okay?" he asks.
She nods and presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth.
--
A few months into the school year, Brittany starts dating Artie. Mike doesn't really get it, but his heart has had time to heal, and it doesn't sting nearly as much as he'd thought it would.
People change. He understands that much. People's ideals about relationships change as well. Besides, he's with Tina, so it isn't exactly like he's on the market. Still, he wishes it were him she keeps smiling at. He's rarely bitter, but he knows he'd be a better boyfriend than Artie.
He realizes with a heavy heart that what he and Brittany have is really bad timing.
--
They dance together at sectionals, against the backdrop of Santana belting out Valerie.
Even with the bitter aftertaste of Artie and Tina accusing them of cheating, there's nothing that can possibly ruin their performance.
She hugs him after, her face buried against his collar. "You were amazing," she whispers.
"You were perfect," he whispers back. Are, he keeps thinking. Present tense.
She pulls away just enough to meet his eyes, and she smiles at him like she knows what he means anyway.
--
Brittany doesn't like conflict, confrontation, but those are exactly the things she currently has in her life.
Her solution is apparently to hide out in Mike's room until it's over.
He tries to distract her from the names Artie Abrams and Santana Lopez, the two people warring for her affections. She isn't exactly difficult to distract, but the lines of worry never quite fade from her features, and he wants nothing more than to kiss them away.
She curls up next to him on his bed and runs her fingertips up and down his arm. He's halfway through a story about his locker room shenanigans with Puck when Brittany sits up abruptly.
"How do you know when you're in love with someone?" she asks him.
Mike's hand grazes her thigh. "You just feel it."
Brittany turns, her eyes suddenly boring into his. "Are you in love with Tina?"
Mike swallows hard. "I think so."
Brittany frowns. "I think I'm in love with more than one person. Do you think that's okay?"
"Yeah, but-" He envelopes her hand with his and intertwines their fingers. "If those people only want you, then you have to choose."
Brittany flops back down on the bed and sighs. "Why is everything so complicated? I just want to do the right thing."
"I know." He brushes a kiss to the crown of her head. "You're going to figure it out."
"Let's leave everyone behind and move to the Bahamas together," Brittany offers. "We'll live in a little hut on the beach and eat mangos all day. You can bring Tina if you want."
"Okay," he laughs, but his heart suddenly starts to hurt.
What he doesn't tell her is that he doesn't want to bring Tina, and he thinks that Tina's started to notice, too.
--
A week after prom, Brittany shows up at Mike's with red-rimmed eyes and mumbles something about breaking up with Artie, and Santana dating a new transfer student with a rock star name. Tina's there, too, and the three of them spend the rest of the night playing Mario Kart, with Mike and Tina trying to convince Brittany that she shouldn't feel guilty for throwing banana peels on the race track.
Brittany leaves a few hours later, in a considerably better mood. As soon as the front door closes, Tina leans back against the couch and stares up at the ceiling.
"The first one never really leaves you, huh?"
Mike doesn't know what she means until he realizes how tightly he's clutching the controller Brittany had abandoned. He smiles sadly at Tina. "I guess not. Do you still-for Artie?"
"No, but…" Tina laughs. "Artie isn't Brittany."
He takes Tina's hand and presses a kiss to her knuckles. "I'm sorry, T. I really do love you. I just-"
"I know," she cuts him off, but not unkindly. "You don't have to explain, Mike. We had a pretty good run."
Tina presses a kiss to his cheek, offers a reassuring smile, and leaves.
--
The next time he sees Brittany, she pulls him aside.
"I thought you were in love with Tina," she says instead of a greeting.
Mike smiles faintly. "I was."
Brittany frowns. "Then I don't understand. Why did you break up with her?"
Mike takes a deep breath and cradles Brittany's hand in his. "Remember when I said that sometimes you have to choose?"
"Yeah." A moment later, realization settles across Brittany's features. "Oh! Oh."
"This isn't… there's nothing on you, Britt," he reassures her. "Tina just figured it out. It was a friendly breakup, I promise."
Brittany's smile is sympathetic as she wraps him in a hug. "I'm sorry."
He squeezes her tightly. "Thank you."
"Oh," she adds noncommittally, "and I found out what tactile means. It's not fish."
--
Nationals are in New York, and they're separated into hotel rooms the night before the competition. Mike's roommates, Finn, Puck and Sam, decide to sneak out for the night, but Mike's featured in a dance number the next day and needs the rest, so he curls up and attempts to let the quiet lull him to sleep.
Before he can nod off, his hotel room door opens, and he turns to see Brittany letting herself in. She tosses the key card on the dresser and climbs into bed with him, sliding under the comforter and reaching for him.
"Hey," she mumbles.
"Hi," he whispers back. "How'd you get in?"
"Swiped Sam's card." She reaches for his hand and ends up grabbing a fistful of his shirt. "Can I stay here for a while?"
"Of course." Mike readjusts himself to accommodate Brittany's body. "Nervous about tomorrow?"
She smiles. "A little."
Brittany pulls herself closer, and before Mike can process what's happening, her lips are pressed firmly against his, and she's kissing him. He reacts from memory, his hands finding her hips and tugging her closer. Her hands press small palm prints into his forearms as her tongue dips into his mouth, and he groans at all the feelings suddenly rushing through him, all the feelings he'd never quite been able to let go.
She pulls away and meets his eyes. "I just need you to know… I didn't dance with you because I thought you were a good dancer, even though you totally are. I didn't kiss you because you picked glee club, even though I thought it was awesome that you did. And I didn't have sex with you to get a perfect record." She drops a soft kiss to his lips before continuing, "You're the one person who has never been confusing. Even when we were apart, I knew everything would be okay. Everyone thinks I don't know what's going on. They think I don't notice the way people treat me. But I do, and Mike, you've always taken care of me."
Mike's chest tightens as realization dawns on him. "Brittany…"
"Mikey." She kisses his shoulder, his neck, his jaw. "Let's go to a movie. And dinner. Dinner, and then a movie."
Mike threads his fingers through blond hair and brushes the pad of his thumb over Brittany's cheekbone. "Like a date?" he teases, nudging his nose against hers.
Brittany giggles. "Yeah, like a date."
"Okay." He laughs softly. "Okay, Britt, let's go on a date."
fin.