She's not going to yell, even if they are five-hundred dollar boots.

It's cold, and early, and if Mike doesn't have coffee waiting for her, she might actually strangle him. Winter has dragged on longer than she can ever remember; it's still completely intolerable, but the hint of a break in the weather has brought everyone out, and they are getting in her damn way.

"Jake, get off of there."

Boots, fine, whatever, she can get those fixed. Her kid's head, if he falls off the icy ledge and cracks his skull open, not so much. Jake jumps off the garden edge he's balancing on, and steps on her toe again, leaving another mark behind with his bright orange sneakers.

She will not yell, but she seriously needs some coffee or someone is going to get maimed with a pair of scissors.

...

Normally she'd still be in bed, the pillow over her head failing to block out the sound of shitty dance music coming from the lounge room as Jake's footie pajama-covered feet thump on the wooden floors. The Xbox for his fifth birthday had been her idea, but the dance games to go along with it were all Mike. She finds repetitive gunfire oddly soothing, but J-pop at 9am on a Saturday morning is too much, and she usually ends up telling Jake they'll be evicted and he'll have to go live with his Grandma if he keeps making so much noise on the floor.

This morning she'd prefer even unintelligible wailing over fighting through the crowd of enthusiastic tourists out shopping and local joggers, just to get to where Mike is sitting at the back of the cafe. There's an iPad resting on his propped up knee, two large, black coffees, six packets of sugar and a bottle of Nantucket Nectar on the table.

"Hey, we have the same shoes," Jake says as he ducks past the queue, slapping his hand against Mike's Air Jordan I Retros.

"That's 'cause we're both awesome. Come here," Mike pulls Jake over and kisses his forehead. "Where's your mom?"

"I'm here," Santana says, finally pushing past the crowd and dropping into the seat opposite Mike. "Is this place always so fucking stupid at this hour?"

"Hey, language, I don't care if you haven't had your coffee yet." Mike stuffs his iPad into his backpack, and hauls Jake onto his lap.

"It's fine, he knows he's not allowed to swear until he can grow enough hair on his face to shave." Santana winks at Jake as he giggles, because they have a secret deal that he can curse at home, but only if he really means it. (There's a list on the fridge of reasons why he might really mean it.)

Santana hands Jake his juice and goes about dumping half the packets of sugar into one of the coffee cups. She lets Mike and Jake go on about something she doesn't care about, almost certainly how much the Celtics suck this season and how they can't wait for Truck Day because this will be Jake's first time going to stand on Van Ness and watch them load up. She doesn't get it, the Boston sports thing, even if she enjoys baseball. Besides, she'd much rather just listen to Jake talk a mile a minute about how they're going to go to every game this season, all three of them, because Mike scored some admittedly choice season tickets.

Since he started school in the fall he's gone from being a grown version of the tiny baby she'd brought home from the hospital five years ago to this proper person-shaped kid, and the shit that comes out of his mouth now, it blows her mind. From the moment he opened his mouth, he's been a talker — not in that obnoxious way of kids who just don't shut up about anything, in truth he's really kind of shy for a someone related to her — but his vocabulary has just exploded with exposure to thirty-two little brats every day, and it's enthralling to listen to.

Still. She really would rather be in bed, Jake eventually quitting his game and curling up with her to tell stories about dinosaurs or ballerinas (one time it was about ballerina dinosaurs, and her ribs had ached from laughing), but the idiotic new girl on the front desk took a booking for 9am, when they are most definitely not open. Any other salon on Newbury would be open, but not hers. She likes to sleep in, and as if she's going to make any of her staff come in when she herself doesn't want to be there. People called her insane when she cut her Saturday morning hours, but it just increased the growing hype around them, and it hasn't made a difference to their revenue. They stay open later than most places, and Friday nights got written up in some local street press as the place to be seen pre-night out; it was a sort of joke by a journalist friend, but it had been picked up by some blogs and, yeah, it shoved them up the food chain a bit.

Apparently whoever this booking is for wouldn't take no for an answer — no, their PA wouldn't — and had just kept offering more money until Julia or Joanna or whatever her name is was too flustered to keep saying no.

It better be someone fucking amazing, but she's still not getting up until she's finished her first coffee.

...

She's practically napping in her seat when Jake leaps off Mike's lap and picks up his backpack.

If something happens to him today, Santana's going to kill Mike. She knows she's just tired and annoyed because she had to wake up early, but the day has her on edge, and the only thing she gives a shit about is Jake, so.

Mike just better fucking take care of him.

(Mike is, let's be real, the best dad ever. They both recognize terrible fathers, from various points in their lives, and Mike's done nothing but prove every expectation Santana had about Jake's life completely wrong.

She probably knew he would when she was four months pregnant and he'd given her his bed after she had to move out of her dorm.)

"Kick butt, today, okay," is all she says, because people telling her to be careful had never done any good, and she knows Mike will give him the tools to be safe rather than some pointless lecture.

"You do know how to skate, don't you," she says to Mike, her tone only giving away a little of her concern.

"Not even a little," Mike replies, laughing. "You ready, kid?"

"Yeah," Jake nods, his Miami Heat cap bobbing up and down. He starts to dash away with a "bye, mommy," tossed over his shoulder, but screw that. Santana grabs the back of his hoodie hanging out from underneath his jacket and pulls him back between her knees, wrapping her arms around him from behind.

"No, mommy, not in public," Jake cries, but she's not having any of this. She kisses his cheek and tightens her arms around him. "See you later, my man," she says, and she hears him heave a dramatic sigh.

"Bye, mommy," he says again, but he kisses her back after she lets him go. She'll probably cry if he ever truly doesn't want to kiss her goodbye.

"I'll drop him by the shop after lunch, yeah?" Mike says, hitching his own backpack over his shoulder and the two boards under his arm.

"Whenever, he's excited to get you on a Saturday and I'm busy as fuck, so this worked out well." Mike usually has a matinee performance, but his show's on hiatus because of snow damage to the theatre. Seriously, screw this winter, but that worked out awesome for their Christmas plans.

"Okay. Later, San," he drops a kiss on her forehead, while she stays slumped back in her seat as they head out.

It's after 9am now, and she knows it — whatever, her bitch of a manager will be there setting up, so it's not like she's left some old so and so freezing on the street — but she really is not happy about whoever this is having bullied their way into an appointment. She's even less happy about the fact that if she'd called them back and told them to fuck off, whoever it is would probably fuck up her business just by opening their mouth. It's the one part of her job that she hates, that she's beholden to these weird, rich bitches and their continued patronage. Boston's not like New York or LA, where you get a name by doing people who already have a name.

The salon's on the same block as the cafe, and she grabs her second coffee and calls out a goodbye to Karen behind the counter. The coffee's no longer scalding hot, and she practically shoves her face into the cup as she makes her way down the street and into the salon.

...

All things considered, it isn't the worst day of her life, but this is probably going to make it number one for the year, and it's only January.

'This' being: Rachel Berry, yapping into her phone as she stands leaning against the front counter of her salon. Rachel Berry, complaining about the tardiness of her hairstylist, inside her salon. Rachel Berry, being her bitchass 9am appointment.