Glee 1. Brittany Attends A Party

You're really too old to be out this late. Forty-one is too old to be anywhere near this much alcohol and conviviality after 10pm. Especially when you've been up since six, running back and forth from your yoga studio to the Whitney-Malik theatre where you're consulting, to the UCLA campus where you're adjuncting... So you're exhausted_ and _you have to teach an advanced modern choreography seminar tomorrow morning. At nine am.

But it's only 11:15 right now and this party is incredibly laid back, as Laura, your Whitney Malik co-choreographer assured you it would be. You and the cast of "White Lily Fences" were all invited back to Paula's LA suburb ranch, to sit on the cool flagstone steps of her crazy huge deck, bask in the flickering citronella torches, and inaugurate her new several-thousand-dollar slate fire pit. Someone hung Chinese lanterns. Someone else uncorked a few bottles of wine, and everyone fell on the crudités like it was the last supper.

About an hour ago you thought you might have smelled marshmallows roasting over by the fire pit. A few of the dancers had also sniffed the air, looking all panicky at the prospect of hot delicious sugar products entering their bodies by inhalation. You chuckled at their paranoia. Must have been someone in the crew.

You are now bemusedly watching Laura feed CDs into Paula's new sound system. Laura is by far your closest friend here tonight. Or really any night. You have been working with her at the Whitney since she was an intern and you were a backup dancer. Has it really been fourteen iterations of "The Nutcracker?" (And one ill-advised R&B interpretation that year the Whitney tried to be more 'experimental')

"Shit, there's one stuck in here."

Laura jams her thumb against the buttons mercilessly. She looks about six seconds away from a covert act of rage damage. Paula comes up behind her with a placating glass of chardonnay.

"Here let me. Xan might've left one of her mix CDs in here. She's kind of finicky about the bass levels."

Laura begins rifling through the plastic bin of CDs next to the tower speakers.

"When did you get a new housemate Paula?"

"About six months ago. She moved down from the hills. Something to do with a break up or a divorce, I forget. I thought when Jen moved in with Erick, I'd be cool picking up the rent and living on my own you know, but oh my god I hated it. Xan's so great to live with; she's out before me in the morning, in after me at night, and like, the funniest, most work-driven person I've ever met. It's kinda perfect."

"Are all these hers?" Laura asks, holding up a bouquet of hand-labeled plastic CD sheaths.

"Yeah. She's a producer on the side, so she gets some really interesting, if not always GOOD, music. Last week I caught her out here smoking cigars and playing electropop remixes of Johnny Cash classics. Wild."

Laura laughs then pauses, "ooooh. Here's one I wanna hear. _Amy Winehouse Covers Through the Ages_!"

She tosses the CD at Paula who effortlessly cues the soundsystem before joining you in a good leg-stretching sit on the flagstones.

The first track is an instrumental cover of "Fuck Me Pumps." Tepid at best.

"Have you met my friend Charice, Brittany? She's from Ohio too, well originally from Peru, but she lived in Ohio for..."

She's doing this because she always does this because once at some meeting or party or something you let it slip that you've pretty much been unattached for nearly twenty years. Maybe unattached isn't quite the right word. Solo. On Your Own... You're not sure how an ill-conceived pre-"apocalypse" wedding to Sam, the sweetest high school boyfriend ever, had somehow turned into a five year attempt to "make things work" and then slowly faded into a sad but quiet six-week-long divorce suit. But it did. And here you are.

That's not to say you haven't had lovers.

You're just. Busy.

You have a masters degree in astrophysics from MIT. You have a PhD from a Russian technical Institute where you worked for three years, suffered from terrible seasonal depression, and won craaaazy awards for your work. You have a box in your room with one silk ballet slipper in it from the beautiful Russian Ballerina who forced you to start dancing again with your body and heart as well as your mind. In that box you also have a copy of your letter of resignation from the field of astrophysics folded into a copy of your acceptance letter from Julliard. And what's more, you have a long and successful career in choreography, which has blossomed into a teaching career, which you love just as much- if not more.

Granted, that box under your bed also holds a unicorn pendant, about fifty photographs of you and a scowling fresh-faced Latina cheerleader, an unused plane ticket to JFK, and a yellowed t-shirt with the word "LEBANESE" printed on it. There's no real reason for those things (if anybody asked, you'd just say "high school").

Overall, you have a full and mostly content life.

You can live with coming home to an empty bed.

But Paula doesn't seem to think so, and as the second or third lukewarm song winds to a close she's still going on about some girl you need to meet because she's "bubbly, like you!" You smile politely and breathe a sigh of relief when Paula's super sharp bat senses catch the sound of gravel turning over in her driveway and she bolts off to greet whoever the latecomer is.

Then several things all go down at once and you're still not sure how it happened.

The opening refrain of the next song starts playing and you recognize the arrangement. It's actually a cover of a cover of "Valerie," with the music slowed down a beat or maybe a beat and a half. To make it more danceable. Your mouth quirks up because the first song you ever choreographed all by yourself was also a slowed-down upbeat version of "Valerie."

Paula appears and starts introducing the newcomers to the people by the firepit. You can't really see what's going on but you're also not looking because Paula's friend Charice might see.

But then. All the skin and hair on your body prickles and feels like it's standing on end. You maybe even stop breathing because you KNOW that voice. Belting out "Valerie" over the scratchy background noise on the CD. It's a poor recording. but. You know that voice intimately and deeply. And yeah, it's been two decades, and she probably doesn't sound like that anymore, but you'd be willing to bet your entire mini-cacti collection that the singer on track five or maybe six is Santana Lopez at nineteen or twenty.

And you have so many questions, like how did she get a spot on that shitty CD and why did she record Valerie and how did Paula's roommate get a copy and how can YOU get a copy?

And then, abruptly, in the middle of "did you find a good lawy-" the sound cuts out.

You scowl and get up to see if you can covertly steal the CD and that is when you see a woman angrily jamming buttons on Paula's bass adjuster. Oh. Dear.

She is standing with her back to you, shoulders rigidly hunched; she is playing with the levels of the sound system. Her legs are fit, toned, clad in dark slacks. She's also wearing heels and some kind of blazer and her hair is pulled behind her ear in a loose, messy French braid. The prongs of a pair glasses stick out behind her ears.

"Um, I don't think Paula wants anyone messing with that. Apparently her housemate is particular about the levels or whatever," you say.

A string of Spanish you have no desire to repeat floats up to your ears.

"- I am the damn 'housemate' - don't appreciate people playing my goddamn track on my goddamn CD that's for personal use- didn't even ask- and what's more-"

She turns around and you ready yourself for an earful but then she catches sight of your face. Her whole expression freezes and then, as if all the strings animating her facial muscles had been snipped at once, her mouth and eyebrows and cheeks and ears just _sag_. And she gawks at you.

It takes you a full minute, you are embarrassed to admit, to fully recognize her. She looks so different from the hurricane of a girl you watched board a bus to New York, all flying hair and fire-eyed determination. Her hair is shorter now and maybe a bit duller than you remember, and there's a silver wisp in it just along her left temple. There are so many more lines around her eyes and mouth than you remember, so much more sleek definition to her jaw and cheeks, such a sharpness at the corner of her eyes... but time will do that.

You gawk right back her. Never in a million years had you ever expected to see...

"Santana," you whisper.

"Brittany S. Pierce." She says. Is it a question? You honestly can't tell.

Her face comes to life again.

"It's so good to see you!" She tells you, brightly moving in for a loose hug, "What, what in the world are you doing here?"

"I work at the Whitney with Paula. Cast party, yknow."

She laughs, "I meant in LA. Last I heard you were in Russia or something."

"Oh. Russia, yeah. I retired from the physics circuit and moved here about fifteen years ago."

"With Sam?" It's a bland question. Her face isn't giving anything away. Neither is her voice.

You chuckle. "I haven't talked to him in about as long. Um, I think he remarried and had some kids a few years ago. They live in Kentucky. Or Kansas. I forget."

She just kind of stares at you. You realize she's still holding the CD.

"When did you make a record? I feel like someone in Glee would've told me about that."

"I didn't. Not really. It was just an undergrad project with some friends." She waves at the plastic crate of CDs "This is a terrible music selection for a party. That's actually my throwaway bin."

You reach over, take the CD away from her. She doesn't really resist. You tuck it into your purse.

"No." You say, simply, "you don't belong in a throwaway bin. Ever."

Notes:

1. This is a multi-chapter piece

2. This is my first/only fanfic story


	2. Wednesday Was Good To Santana Lopez

As far as Wednesdays go, this one has been particularly gentle. You rolled out of bed at seven, such a luxury, but you didn't have court til ten. You spoiled yourself with an extra-long jog and a stop at the local local library, where the book you wanted was FINALLY in.

At nine-fifteen, you bounced into your office, pressed the little button on your phone for your all too-patient assistant.

"Joan, when I go in to confab with Ellis and his client, can you manually raise the temperature of the conference room by 2 degrees every 3 minutes?"

"Like we did last week?"

"Exactly like that."

It might be a dirty trick, but you took a few bio classes in college and you never forgot that heat and stress can make a highly effective argument on the human body You smirked as you ordered coffee.

By 10:30 you were sitting down at one of your firm's nondescript conference tables, coffee mug of ice water in one hand, precariously overloaded legal brief folder in the other. The representative for the trucking company your client was suing was already seated across from you. And. Despite the fixed "68 degree" reading on the air conditioner, he was sweating.

By 11:15, your case had settled. In your favour. Not even surprised. The interns hadn't nicknamed you Santan Lazerpants for nothing.

By 6:00, your day was looking pretty perfect. Your dry cleaning came back early, and the date you didn't want to go on (with that Charice girl your housemate set up with literally Every Single One of her friends) got cancelled due to her having to work late.

Yes. This Wednesday has been a good one for Santana Lopez.

You are currently sharing your couch with a bottle of wine and the two briefs from a different case. You're distractedly watching the live finale of The X Factor. Rachel is guest-judging and Quinn will murder you if you don't support. She texts you every 19 seconds:

_Didn't Rachel's face look cute in that shot._

_Isn't Rachel giving such great feedback._

_Look at her little feet bouncing to that song._

_My baby is soooo smart._

If you roll your eyes anymore they _will_ fall out. You consider changing out of your work clothes and into pajamas. But you know that Paula, your housemate, who is in the process of hosting the "impromptu gathering" she's been planning all week, will only drag you out and make you show your face. Hopefully Charice won't be there.

You mute the TV as Rachel opens her mouth to deliver a soliloquy of feedback on some undercooked group number. You still don't get what Quinn sees in her. She's so bubbly. so fucking bubbly. Not fake bubbly, the kind that you can feel good about hating, but sincere bubbly. Like she just wants everything too much, loves everything too much.

That's cynical, you chide yourself. You were pretty bubbly for a few years, when you were a teenage dream with Brittany, and when you lived in San Diego with Mara. That was almost a decade. God. She would have made anyone bubbly. She was so bright.

You swallow thickly. Now really isn't the time. Mara is gone; you are not; you wish you were. If someone said to you, describe your life in one sentence, that would have been it. She's gone and I wish I were too.

Rachel has stopped talking now and the group members are dewy eyed because she talked to them.

Rachel's fame makes you sick. Sick with pride. You'd never tell her that. Although she pretty much knows. You've written some sappy birthday and Hanukkah and Opening Night cards over the years. It's funny, you think, how as a child you tried so hard to be soft for Brittany and tough for everyone else, but the minute she left, you became soft to everybody, but hard as a rock when her name came up.

Quinn and Rachel and you had gotten a lot closer since you moved to California in your twenties. Ironic, really. When you were all within 100 square miles it was fighting, fighting, fighting, Quinn repressing, Rachel crushing, you loudly mourning Brittany. You were like the alley cats in heat who lived behind the HummelPezBerry loft and at whom you used to throw water balloons until Rachel found out and ripped you a new one.

Rachel who is now wobbling her chin as she tells some goth singer he (she?) didn't get her Yes vote.

_Rachel is too sympathetic to these sissies._ You text Quinn, so she knows you're still watching.

_ She has a heart the size of a football field._

Your responding _and an ego to match_ is expected, at this point. And, sadly, entirely unoffensive.

You think you hear a knock on your door, so you go still and try to pretend to be asleep or in a drunk stupor or dead. The nice thing about renting from Paula is that 1) she's almost never home when you are, 2) you basically rent half a house but don't have to pay taxes on it, and 3) (most importantly) after a while she _will_ stop knocking.

Nothing.

You decide it was the stairs creaking and slip into the kitchen to secure some ice water for yourself, idly wondering if 40 is old enough to start menopause because sweet Jeebus you are hot all the damn time. Risking being spotted, you slowly push the window over the kitchen sink open and let the night breeze bathe your face.

Paula must've hung Chinese lanterns outside because the little spools of light bouncing off the deck are glorious. There aren't that many people there. None of them are near the kitchen; they're all down around the fire pit. The suggestion of marshmallow on the air lures you outside.

Before you know it, you're standing in front of the beverage table being interviewed by Charice who _was_ in attendance and _did_ spot you within a milisecond of your exit from the safe womb of the house.

"And do you ever deal with like really big criminal cases?" she asks "like drugs?"

"Not really. Civil litigation is the boring kind of law."

"Oh." She shrugs. "So do you sing? Paula said you were into music?"

"No, I don't sing," you run a hand across your throat,

"I had nodal surgery when I was about 25, so... Anyway. I'm a producer for what might be the tiniest company in the city. We specialize in soundtracks. Usually for after school specials. Don't do drugs, have safe sex, listen to elevator music, that kind of thing."

Charice laughs at that, so you must be doing something right. You wish you knew how to send off a not-interested vibe without being bitchy. Charice is a totally fit, curvacious, bodacious, tattooed to the max, Liza-haircut-rocking panasian chick in her late thirties. She's totally a catch. You know it (because you are also totally a catch), she knows it, and you suspect by the way she's got one eye on you and one roving the deck, that she also knows everybody else knows it.

You slosh some ice into your sprite. Sprite. Because you made a rule not to drink after 11, for no real reason. Actually, it had been Mara's rule because alcohol made her tired and she'd oversleep. You just followed it because it was a way to be closer to her. You still follow it. Just like you still catch yourself brewing coffee for two, buying the kind of yoghurt she loved and you hated, and wearing your wedding band on your finger and hers around your neck. It's like you're doing a marriage all by yourself. Which. Well. You guess you kind of are. You guess she wouldn't have wanted that.

You are suddenly aware of the fact that you're straddling an awkward pause. Charice has asked you a question. You want to ask her to repeat it, but the stiff veil of silence between the two of you is so relieving. She raises her eyebrow expectantly. You draw in a breath to formulate some sort of bs answer. And that is when you hear your own voice.

Coming out of the speakers of the very expensive sound system Paula let you bolt to the deck.

_ Well sometimes I go out by myself, and I look across the water_

You must have left that box of "destroy" CDs out here last night. Shit. Well. Not like anyone here knows you or would be able to tell even if they did.

"Excuse me just a second,"

You slip off leaving Charice and your sprite and weaving your way silently across the deck to the gorgeous and beautiful mixing board where someone has crunked the fuck out of half your levels.

Aw helllllll to the no...

_I miss your ginger hair and the way you used to dress_

Damage control takes a couple of verses, and then you quickly press eject and slide in the closest CD.

Some party guest slips up behind you and you hope to god they don't try to put a paw on your shoulder because you hate that and your patience is already thin.

"her housemate is particular about levels or whatever," a disembodied voice says, half laughing.

You whirl around, still annoyed.

Once at cheer camp, when you were fifteen, someone cracked an egg on your head for a prank (it was probably Quinn). You remember, now, the sticky, slow, slide of cold slipping down your neck and back. Looking at the face that belongs to the voice feels like that; chill, messy, slipping.

The woman in front of you is tall and lean. Her light blond hair is cropped short, close to her head, one of those feathery pixie cuts you cannot help but find sexy. Her face is tan and very subtly crinkled with laugh lines around the corner of her lips and the edges of her bright blue eyes. Oh. You know those eyes.

She has one hand on her hip, one holding a drink. She's smiling openly, blankly at you. You: a stranger.

Confusion dances across her face for a microsecond.

"Santana?"

On your honeymoon, Mara made you go sky-diving. Ok she didn't so much make you go as bribe you with promises of late night favours. She booked a whole morning class where you sat side by side and learned how to pull a ripcord, read the wrist meter, fold a parachute up and put it in its backpack. You'd spent most of the morning staring at your sparkling wedding bands and wondering what they'd look like against the backdrop of the sky and the rapidly-approaching ground.

Finally it had been 'go time.' The little plane the sky-diving company took you up in was rickety and it shook like the devil. You almost peed yourself twice. During take off. Finally you were in the air in the right location, at the right height. Mara jumped first; you jumped second. You will never forget the foot-free rush of terror that stung your body as you plummeted toward the ground. You still can't remember if you shrieked. Even after you pulled the ripcord and began floating down, the whole-body fear of falling all too fast to the ground ricocheted through your chest over and over.

You feel that way now, staring at Brittany, attempting to make small talk.

"I thought she lived with someone called Alexandria? or Xander? like from Buffy... Xan?" Brittany asks

"Xan, San, sounds the same."

"Yeah..."

You think you ask her a Life Question or two. You don't remember. You maybe babble about something (what?). At some point she takes your CD.

You don't protest her stealing your voice recorded, as it seems she has stolen your voice in real life in this moment. It's all so sudden, this once special person from your deep past appearing like a sandstorm on the horizon, with no warning and limitless potential for destruction.

The love you can so clearly remember feeling for her as a youth seems so foreign a concept in this moment. In the sparkle of her eyes, though, and the tilt of her head as she plays off "you don't belong in anyone's throwaway bin," like it's nothing, you see traces of something so familiar that you don't have words for it.

The only thing you can think to say is, "coffee. Do you want to get coffee? With me? Sometime? In the near future. And catch up. In a place that isn't my housemate's noisy-ass party. At a time that isn't when I should be in bed?"

You don't know why you asked. You immediately start to panic.

"It's just. It would be nice to catch up with an old friend." You amend.

"Santana," Brittany says, half chiding, "we're hardly _old_. But yes, it would be my pleasure."

She hands you a business card.

"That's my personal number. So keep it to yourself." She winks. You nod.

An hour later, after texting Quinn an apology for vanishing, and assuring her you aren't in the midst of a suicide attempt, you unfold your body in your bed.

Your glasses, phone, and wedding rings are all tangled together on your nightstand, and beneath them, a business card with a dancer embossed on it.

Yes. This Wednesday was definitely a good one for Santana Lopez.


End file.

Glee