I can't get over the response for the last chapter. Some of your insights were amazing, and so spot on that it hurt. Thanks everyone!

To heath47, sorry to have tugged at your heart strings. But I think you'll find that it was Santana, not me, which means I really don't have anything to apologize for :P Thanks for commenting.

To OnTheEdgeWithYou94, no, I find my Santana adorable too. Even when she's behaving like a crazed maniac, because I know where it's all coming from. ; ) Thanks for your comments, I'm glad you're enjoying this.

To shine90, I'm never serious when I don't have to be. It's a certified rule of mine. I was just pulling your leg. But seriously, if you didn't want kids, you should've told me before. Now they have to go into care, and become statistics, because I don't want them either :P xxx

To WakingUpInWonderland, Hey. I LOVE knowing that the last chapter made you smile. Knowing how to make people smile is a super power. I'd love to be able to do it more often : )

To Stalpankaka, LOL! I've said your name before lol – well typed it. But me being sad, I just spoke it out loud, and I've got to say that it's a tongue twister in all the best possible ways! I don't mean to be overwhelming. Our San's just got some issues. They're definitely not going backwards; you think Britt would allow that? Just read this chapter and you'll see ; )

To Kris6, Once again, thank you for the amazing insight into this story and characters. I actually sat down with a cup of tea – saddo that I am – just to read your review. Thank you :D

Chapter Nine

Mercedes fingers through the rack of shirts, tugs the sleeve of one she thinks she likes the look of, and then shakes her head, dropping it. "Girl, I know it's been a whole two weeks since Christmas and everything, but you really missed out on that chocolate gateau. Boy, I almost ate the spoon."

"Right, so that's where all the spoons I used to have in my apartment have gone. I thought I had rats, and the whole time I just had a bad case of greedy black woman."

Mercedes nudges her friend, and Santana stumbles back a little, the two of them quietly chuckling in the women's section of the shop.

"So how did the visit to see your parents go? You never let me know on the phone the other day."

Santana suddenly looks over her shoulder. She turns and begins to half-heartedly eye the tall stand of sunglasses just behind her, and stuffs a hand into her jacket's pocket, her fingers rotating the two dice in there. "…It was cool."

"...Cool?"

"That's what I said. Did I s-s-stutter?"

"Girl, you better drop that tone."

Santana closes her eyes and sighs, before lifting their lids again and spinning back around. "Fine," she growls. "I apologized to them for not visiting sooner, I cried, I put the flowers down on their graves, and then I got the hell up out of there. Happy?"

"Ecstatic."

"Good, now can we please talk about somethin' else? – The damn weather or somethin'."

"How 'bout we talk about that hunk of chocolate over there who's givin' you the eye?"

Santana throws a look over her shoulder, and clocks what any sane woman would consider a gorgeous-looking guy staring at her. His chiseled jawline grows more defined with his wolfish grin, and he puts exclamation on it with a smooth stud-like wink.

Santana quickly turns back around, catches her best friend giving her a look that says, 'You better get all up on that. I will if you don't.'

The Latina shrugs, her gaze taking a feigned interest in the shirts hanging up in front of her. "I'm not lookin' for anythin' at the moment. Go right on ahead."

"Honey please, I bet your vibrator's dead from all the constant use."

Santana rolls her eyes away from the shirts, until she's side-eying her friend in deadpan. "Leave my vibrator out of this."

Mercedes falls into a fit of chuckles. "Which one?"

"All of 'em, that's which one."

"You haven't gotten any good dick since you kicked Puck's mowhawkin' ass to the curb. I'm just lookin' out for my girl's needs."

Santana scoffs. "Yeah, like that asshole could ever fulfill my needs. Like that," she says, holding up her thumb and index finger an inch apart – if that.

"Urgh!" Mercedes shudders, like she has a bad taste in her mouth, as she pulls a shirt from the rack, curiously inspecting it. "I don't know how you put up with that for two whole years. Some guys be like females down there it's so small."

"Yeah, well luckily for him it wasn't that small, 'cause I'm not down with anybody else's 'Hello Kitty' but my own – and even that's a damn handful at times."

"Girl, stop it," Mercedes sniggers, hanging the shirt back up whilst shaking her head.

The moment's quiet that then ensues sees Santana suddenly thinking about Brittany and everything she's laid bare to the blonde so far. It's not much but, inexplicably, it's feels like everything to her. She's known of the ditzy woman's existence for maybe four months, and the blonde's already managed to find out more intimate things about her than anyone else in her life has, including her best friend, whose broad back she's taken to guiltily staring at.

When Mercedes suddenly turns around, Santana flinches slightly, pretends she's just flicking her hair out of her face. "Uhh, why don't we go get food now? My stomach thinks my mouth's gone on strike," she proposes, fingers still rotating the dice in her pocket.

"And I'm supposed to be the greedy one?"

It's been so long since she's logged onto Facebook, that she's certain her profile will have been deleted by now. But as she clicks the mouse's cursor over the Facebook link in Google, her profile expands to fill her computer's plasma-flat monitor, appearing just as it had when she'd gotten bored of the site all those many months ago.

She taps the keyboard's keys, logs herself in, and immediately rolls her eyes at the endless notifications flashing at her in the top left corner of the page.

Most are Mafia Wars game requests.

If I play mafia wars with you mother fuckers, it's not gonna be some dumb Facebook game. That's for damn sure.

A few of the notifications are messages, just information about various bar and nightclub events.

Even fewer are comments on old pictures and statuses that she's posted.

Then there's the one friend request.

Santana drags the mouse about its mat, clicks the cursor on the red alert, and watches the page transform into another profile which exists under the name: It's Brittany Biyaatch!

The profile is as open as the woman behind it, and the profile picture is just…

"Jesus, I think my IQ just dropped ten points lookin' at this shit," Santana quietly husks to herself. But she doesn't veer from the page, instead tentatively veering deeper into its pockets with a click to Brittany's photo albums.

There are numerous albums, both from a few years back and present day, but there's one in particular, entitled Rockaway Beach day out with the gorgeous little niece, and its cover picture is one of a little blonde girl buried up to her neck in golden sand, her thin little brows furrowing out the sun's glare. Brittany's sat right beside the small child, holding a furiously blowing flag in the petite girl's five inch high sand belly, as she grins sideways and waves at whoever's taking the picture.

Sold, Santana clicks her way into the entire album, watching picture upon picture load into the webpage; some of sand castles and other various sand monsters, and others of Brittany and her niece pulling faces like the one in the blonde's profile picture.

Her dark charcoal orbs then lower towards a slightly startling picture of Brittany, wearing nothing but a skimpy red bikini.

Santana drops her eyes to her lap, only to have them flicker back up at the picture a few seconds later...

Everything's on show, the luxurious bulge of Brittany's slightly shiny breasts as the mounds of skin disappear off beneath the bikini bra, the oh so toned definition of her thighs and calves as her sun-kissed feet vanish into the sand. Then there's those abs, which are undoubtedly more carved out than the Latina's own.

Santana quickly clicks the back button, catching the cover picture of one other album just as she's about to exit the browser. This album has no title, but she knows she doesn't want to click it, purely for the simple fact that the cover picture holds an image of Brittany and some brunette all giggly and joint at the lips in some dark nightclub.

As she stares at it, she doesn't know how or what she feels about what she's looking at – just knows that it doesn't feel particularly good…

She snaps her tongue against the roof of her mouth when the telephone begins to ring, placing the steaming tray of half-cooked chicken breast fillets on top of the stove. Putting one hand to the other, she tugs an oven glove loose, using this free hand to grab the phone off of its base.

This shit better be good.

"Hello?" she answers.

"Hey, Santana. It's me, Brittany."

Santana's mitted hand slows on its way to the oven's handle, before eventually just flopping down naturally to her side, hitting her thigh with a small smack. An intense frown riddles her brow. "Hold up, how'd you get this number?"

"Well Noah gave it to me in case I couldn't get through to his cell when...you know. But I never used it because he always picked up after, like, two rings. I completely forgot that he gave it to me until today, when I was going through my contact list for names of friends that I could match together on this online love calculator that I found. It lets you email them the results after and everything. So cool."

"Uhh...right."

"Soo," Brittany drawls in a goofy voice, and Santana imagines the blonde nudging her playfully if they were stood side by side, "you feel like coming round to hang out for a bit today? Get to know each other a little better? Tell me your favorite kind of Hershey's kiss, and I'll tell you mine. You know, that sort of thing?"

"Uhh..." Santana hesitates, heart bouncing, turbulently, against the walls in her throat, because God dammit this woman's forward and knows what she wants, and Santana can deal with fighting off seven girls at once – 'No fuckin' problem. Bring it on.' – but fuck is she struggling to figure out how to deal with Brittany's nature, as well as the current question posed. "...I, uhh, I, I thought I said we'd do this slow?"

"You don't have to come here if you don't want to. I just wanna spend some time with you, Santana. You can totally pick where and when," the other voice suggests, tone fluffed with an almost heartbreaking mix of velvet softness, hope, and utmost consideration.

Santana combs shaky tan fingers through her hair, ruffling the silky strands back and forth in an act of unconscious stalling...

This is so fucking strange. She's pulled a gun on this woman, intending to do damage, and...she's attracted to her, and this is all so unfamiliar, and it's fucking terrifying.

All of it.

She wants to believe that she'll step out of the Twilight Zone at any second, and everything will be in colour again.

But as the silence prologues, so does the grayness that appears to be coating everything.

She eventually huffs out a sigh, a little discombobulated, and oh so frustrated. "How the fuck are you even a real person, when you can be so God damn normal about this? Tell me that!" she challenges, certain chords of her husky voice dipping into aggressive tones.

"I just, I guess I understand...stuff? – well, you. I understand you," comes the other woman's feather-like but weighty response.

But it doesn't matter; it could have fallen from Brittany's lips like a feather falls to the ground, and it would still have irked Santana right down to her bones.

"What the fuck are you talking about? You don't know me from Adam or Eve. Let's just get that straight."

"I know that coming to my place to call a bonfire was difficult for you, but you were totally a soldier and did it anyway. Annnd I also know that I was so, so proud of you – like, you have no idea how proud. Being able to just share that with you, and then the flower? They were my two favorite Christmas gifts."

Santana scoffs. "And just what the hell makes you think I need anybody to be proud of me?"

"But, everybody wants someone to be proud of them, Santana, even if that someone is you being proud of yourself."

The Latina finds herself unable to counter; cat's got her tongue, and just won't give it the fuck back.

Brittany recognizes the silence. It's the same one that everybody falls under when she says something that's so innately logical to her. She'll never understand why people do it, when this simple logic is so innately a part of them too.

"Santana, are you still there, or did you drop the phone in the toilet bowl on accident, 'cause I did that once, and the toilet tank still rings every time you flush it."

Santana frowns to herself in another moment of stretching silence, before shaking off her undecided feelings over what Brittany's just said to her. "Look," she says, glancing at the wall clock with a sigh, "you can, uhh…" She ruffles the soft black strands at the back of her head, lets her slightly trembling hand slip down to rest on her hip. "If you come here you gotta keep your little hands where I can see 'em at all times, and don't try to steal anything. I don't let strangers in my apartment so, seriously, don't make me regret this."

"Only thing I'm trying to steal is your heart," Brittany says under her breath, her impish smirk so vivid in her voice that one could probably do a rub art of it, like those charcoal gravestone rubbings.

Santana pulls the phone away from her ear, stares at it unblinking for a second, and then slowly returns it. "Yeah, well good luck with that," she says, the you're gonna need it implied.

"Thanks," the blonde chirps. "So I'll see you in, like, a half hour?"

"An hour and a half," Santana quickly says, just to be a bitch about it.

"Well, see," Brittany begins, voice now glum, "I can't 'cause I have this doctor's appoin – I'm totally screwing with you!" she chuckles, before altering her request. "So I'll see you in an hour and a half then?"

"I guess," Santana mutters, folding her arms.

"Awesome!"

.

.

Whilst constantly rolling her eyes at her own behavior, she bustles around her lounge; clearing dirty plates from the coffee table, collecting empty beer cans from the floor and trashing them, but even with her frequent sighs and eye rolls, her hands still continue to beat the wrinkles out of the sofa cushions.

She buzzes past the mirror at one point, refuses to check how she looks though.

She's drawing the line at that.

"Fuck, are you really doing this shit?" she asks herself, standing in the middle of the room, a little pushed for breath.

In that moment there's a crisp knock on the door. An anxious heat boils in her gut, searing up and spreading throughout her chest just beneath her sternum.

She looks down at her body. "Jesus Christ, if I have to tell you to behave one more time, you aint gettin' any vibrator action for a month. Am I making myself clear?"

She nods slightly when she thinks her body's understood, runs a hand through her hair, and crosses the room, blowing out a breath before unlocking the front door, and pulling it ajar.

"Hey Santana." Brittany immediately chirps, with a merry little wave.

"'Sup."

"Just my nips; outside is f-f-freezing!" the blonde shudders, stepping inside.

Santana notes the orange marigold in the blonde's hair as she breezes past her. "...Right, well, uhh, go take a seat, and don't touch anything, 'cept the sofa you're about to sit down on!"

Santana then moves off into the kitchen, inventing various tasks for herself whilst eying the chirpy blonde sat on the sofa, like a potential victim warily watches an attacker's knife strokes through the air so that he can dodge them. She told herself she'd wash the pans later, when she could be bothered with it, but boy are they calling her now.

After walking towards the sink, she twists the faucet on and squeezes the uncapped bottle of washing up liquid into the pooling water, watching it rise and bubble with suds. In the midst of this, she throws another side eye glance over at Brittany, watches the woman slide the single flower out from her braided blonde hair, gazing happily at it, before slipping it back in.

There's nothing else to do once the pans are washed and hand dried. Kitchen's spic and span, unfortunately, so Santana pulls open the door to her fridge, peering inside. She grabs a bottle of water, purposely slams the fridge door and twists off the cap, swigging from the cold bottle as she paces, somewhat, from one end of her small kitchen to the other, stalking Brittany's every move...

Some seven minutes later, when her bladder is almost painfully full, Santana finally begins her steady gait towards the sofa. She thuds the coffee table, a little menacingly, with the now empty, capped, bottle she'd been drinking from, and slumps her body down a whole sofa cushion away from Brittany.

The two of them just stare at one another…

Brittany briefly frowns, her sapphire blue orbs dropping in an attempt to see her own chin. "Do I have food at the corner of my mouth, 'cause I just gobbled down a Chicken Tikka wrap on the way here? I used a wet wipe, but I know I can be a little messy with food, so…" she shrugs.

Without a word, Santana reaches forward and snatches the television remote from the coffee table, hitting a button which sees the nicely-sized plasma screen pixilate with moving images and sound. She then grabs that empty bottle, beats it repeatedly off of her upper thigh.

When Brittany suddenly smirks, it throws Santana completely. "What are you smirkin' at?"

The blonde waves it off, smirk now a small chuckle. "Nothing."

"I asked you a question."

"…I gave you an answer," Brittany shrugs a soft shoulder, brow slightly caterpillared like she doesn't know what more she can do.

Santana continues to beat the bottle off of her thigh. "Well you were laughin' at somethin'."

"Sometimes I just burst out with spontaneous fits of laughter. It runs in my family. When my grandfather did some research into it, he discovered that we descend from a species of natural born clowns." Brittany says, somewhat sadly from what the Latina can tell. But she's not sure whether the blonde's fucking around or not.

She's never sure of anything around this damn woman, and her first instinct is to flee this torturous unfamiliarity.

So Santana jumps up again, her feet taking her into the kitchen. "You want a drink?" she half barks, the open fridge door shielding her entire body, besides her legs.

Brittany grins, utterly sweetened by the offer. "Oh my God, that would be awesome, Santana. What do you have?" she calls back.

"You'll get what your ass is given," Santana grumbles under her breath, as she takes out a bottle of Fanta, and pours a generous glass.

Heading back over to the sofa again, she hands Brittany the beverage. "Don't spill it," she warns as their hands momentarily brush with the exchange.

"Thank you," the blonde smiles, before taking numerous short little sips from the fizzy orange liquid. She then lowers the glass from her strawberry-pink lips, blinks and rubs her stomach with her other hand. "Wow! This is so fizzy I could burp for days."

"Burp, and I swear I'll be tempted to make you eat it back down again," Santana mumbles, resuming her seat a cushion away from Brittany. "But if, for whatever reason you can't hold your gas, let me know in advance so I can throw open the window. We clear on that?"

Brittany's shoulders gently shudder with her chuckle as she shakes her head. "We're good on that."

"Good. Now hush so that I can watch my daytime TV."

Despite the demand for hush, the two descend into brief periods of small-talk, either when something on the television piques mutual discussion out of them, or when Brittany brings something up.

Everything's easier than it was for Santana say fifteen minutes ago. Or at least it seems that way, if her body's behavior is anything to go by. Her shoulders have become a tiny bit more lax, her heart has cooled off slightly with its assault on her insides, and somebody seems to've put a cap on her constantly-poised-to-slash tongue.

But her arms are still folded across her chest, whilst she repeatedly sneaks small side eye glances at the woman beside her, telling herself that she's just keeping an eye on the drink in the blonde's grasp to make sure she isn't spilling it.

But there are parts of her that know better.

"Ooh, ooh," Brittany suddenly pipes up, pointing at the television with child-like excitement. "This song reminds me of the TV show, Glee. I love Glee. Do you like Glee too, Santana?"

"I don't watch that shit."

"Well," the animated blonde begins, quickly leaning forward to set her drink down on the table, "there are these two smokin' cheerleaders in it, who're totally digging each other. They kind of remind me a little of us, actually."

"Are you serious?." Santana raises a brow, unimpressed. "I'm nothin' like that fool, Naya. I'm way hotter, and I'd mop the floors, windows, and walls with her constantly-cryin' ass."

Brittany smirks, victoriously pumping a fist in the air. "So you do watch it. I knew it!"

Santana rolls her eyes and sighs, mumbling, "My friend, Mercedes, has it on sometimes when I go there."

"Oh my God, you totally TiVo it, don't you? You're so cute."

Everything then falls into a different kind of hush than the one preceding it. There's a frost in this one that would challenge the weather just beyond the windows.

"Santana, did I say something wrong?"

"No."

Now just shut up and watch some damn TV with me.

With the stealth of an inconspicuous spy, Brittany scoots across the couch so that she's near brushing shoulders with the frowning Latina. She then reaches out and gently pulls Santana's folded arms apart. "Is it ok if I put my arm around you?" she whispers, as if it'll just be their little secret should she get the go ahead.

Santana stays quiet, only giving a quick stiff nod after more than a few lengthy moments of inner deliberation.

Brittany smiles so hard that her cheeks almost begin to glow with their ache. She feigns an over-the-top yawn, and lifts her arm with it, slipping her limb lightly around the smaller woman's tense shoulders. "I've always wanted to do the yawn thing. But forget about that; is this ok?" she asks, still maintaining this soft whisper.

"It's cool," Santana nods once at the television, outwardly cool, calm, and collected, when the inside of her stomach is fluttering with more butterflies than she ever thought possible. She'd think it was on a wash cycle if she didn't know any better.

Holy shit! Are you gonna be sick? Bitch, don't be sick! Just do that breathing shit you saw on Mercedes' yoga DVD, and suit the fuck up!

"You know," Brittany suddenly says, sneaking a mischievous eye towards the quiet woman resting against her arm, "I managed to get two tickets to the UFC event that's supposed to be coming to town next week. Wanna come see some dudes beat each other up with me?" she proposes, voice light and chirpy.

Santana slowly steers her squint towards the blonde, unaware of the size that her deep brown discs grow to once Brittany's words sink in. "Get the fuck out of town! You have UFC 144 tickets?" Though, as soon as her excitement peaks it dwindles again, when she realizes that this outing is going to require her to be seen out in public...with Brittany, because – nobody can tell her any different at this point– she's certain that people will just know if they're seen out together.

Her forehead then suddenly wrinkles in a forehead-twister of a frown, as she steers the conversation back: "Hold up a minute." She leans away from the arm that's propped up on the back of the sofa around her shoulders. "How the hell do you know that I watch UFC?"

"Elves told me in my sleep," Brittany responds, face so straight you could walk a line on it...

Santana just maintains her frown, blinking to herself, before she looks back up into those ambiguous sapphire blue orbs.

"I swear," Brittany whispers, noting the utter confusion riddling the Latina's features, whilst inwardly appreciating the fact that she's being allowed to witness how cute the sight is from this close up. "So you wanna come with me to the event?" she chirps again.

Santana has to turn her gaze towards the television to think about it, knows that she's probably going to have to deal with being seen out in public with this woman sooner or later. It pains her to question whether or not she has the balls just yet, because she's Santana 'Beat a bitch down' Lopez, but she knows that any glance – no matter how non-judgmental or fleeting – may just send her toppling straight off the deep end…

After what seems like an eternity, to both of them, she eventually mumbles, "I'll think about it," never looking away from the television.

Brittany smiles, nodding. "Alright, well take all the time you need, Santana."

"I will, don't worry about that."

.

.

.

.

"Wait, before I go, could I quickly check my email real quick?"

With worlds of suspicion circling her dark coffee hues, Santana slowly looks from the pleading blonde to the computer situated in the far corner of her lounge. She presses her hand to the front door, slowly pushing it back in, before folding her arms. "What do you really intend to do with my PC?" she probes, having learned, the hard way, that this blonde is always capable of the unexpected.

"Nothing." Brittany shrugs. "I just really have to check my email."

"What for?" Santana interrogates through a side-ward squint.

"It's personal," Brittany's fast to respond. "But it's really, really important?"

Santana wonders what could be personal to a woman who always seems so open, but then again she's not all that convinced that the tall blonde is telling her the truth.

"…Two minutes. And don't mess anythin' up on there!"

Brittany smiles wide, merrily crossing the room to take up a seat in the swivel chair that's poised just in front of the computer desk.

"One minute and fifty-six seconds left, one minute and fifty-five seconds left, one minute and fifty-four seconds left," Santana chants, tapping her foot.

Brittany just giggles at the computer screen, and twists from side to side in the chair as her palm moves the mouse about its mat…

The moment Brittany's out of the front door and it' been locked, Santana races over to her computer, dropping down into the still warm chair. She finds the Firefox browser open with two different tabs.

She clicks the Facebook tab first, watching as the page fills the screen.

Santana Lopez and It's Brittany Biyaatch are now friends.

She blinks at the small notification, slowly shaking her head in sheer incredulous – before she remembers the other tab that she has yet to click. She lets the cursor hover over it, and taps the mouse's left button.

Another page expands to fill the screen.

Love calculator Results

These are the results of the calculations by Dr. Love:

Santana Lopez & Brittany Pierce:

82%

Dr. Love thinks that a relationship between Santana Lopez and Brittany Pierce has a very good chance of being successful, but this doesn't mean that you don't have to work on the relationship. Remember that every relationship needs spending time together, talking with each other etc…

"Where on earth do you come from?" she quietly asks the silent lounge.

So who else thinks that Santana wants to screw the living breath out of Brittany's lungs? *raises hand*

And those are the results of a real love calculator test that I did for San and Britt.

As always, thoughts? And thanks for reading.