Santana's plan has been ready since before she packed up that giant pennant and practically threw it at Carly from her dad's car window as she drove away from Louie U. Good riddance.

Forms filed? Check. Essays submitted? Check. Ritual sacrifice of the cheer uniform? Not literally, but figuratively? Check!

Burning the midnight oil and ridiculous amounts of organization meant she was on her way. Nothing holding her back. No strings ... well one little string. One very big little string that, really, her whole plan kind of hinges on.

One string that requires a pack of light purple post-its, an orange gel ink pen and one conspirator who swears on his dog's life to be able to give Santana the time to do what needs to be done.

Luckily, she has the foresight to use her train ride to do half of the work.

She stares at the door in front of her and inhales deeply, trying to remember why she thought this would be a good idea.

Oh yeah. Bruce fuckin' Willis and his flashbacks of doom.

She can't really blame him really. If anything, she kind of owes him more of a "thank you" than a "fuck you." After she disconnected that video call with Brittany (and that damned judgmental cat), the call during which she was continuously told she was stupid by her supposed-best friend, she involuntarily re-enacted the final scene of the movie.

The realization she came to was equally, if not more, shocking than the one featured in the film: Rachel likes her.

And not in the shoulder-punching, hair-ruffling, best-friend way.

Santana recalled every shy smile, adorable giggle and lip-bite. She remembered the way Rachel clung to her arm wherever they went or clasped their hands together when they walked side-by-side. The way that Rachel went out of her way and did little things for Santana …

…and she remembered Rachel's reaction to her reaction to being questioned about the nature of their relationship.

She was maybe, a little bit, sort of, kinda stupid.

She's over that, though.

But Rachel hasn't really come around to talking to her as often as before or sending a bazillion text messages like she used to, so Santana decides that it's time that Rachel gets over it, too.

Which is what has her staring at a door with post-its in her hand.

"This is fucking ridiculous," Santana murmurs to herself as she rips the first note from the stack and slaps it against the door. She steps back, looks at it and then frowns, rips it down and slaps it back on the door, this time a little lower.

She gets about fifteen notes into it before the door opens.

"What in the world is going on out here?" And suddenly Rachel is standing in front of her, her arms crossed over her chest. The frown on her face is immediately replaced by wide, shocked eyes. "Santana?"

"Shut the fucking door, Rachel. You're ruining it." When Rachel turns her head to look at her door, the taller girl grabs her shoulders and turns her around. "Also, your fuckin' friend sucks and shouldn't be allowed to own a friggin' dog. Go inside before I take my toys and go home."

With a firm push, Rachel, feeling more than a little bewildered, finds herself back inside her apartment, her front door slammed behind her. The sound of wood being smacked resumes.

"What are you doing here?" Rachel asks through the door.

"I'm not here. You're, like, dreaming or high or something. Figment of your imagination and all of that crap. Go away," her friend says, every few words punctuated by another slap on the door.

Rachel rolls her eyes and huffs. "You can't tell me to go away. This is my apartment."

"I didn't tell you to leave your apartment. If anything, I'm telling you to stay in it. Fuck, can you listen for once? Just ..." Santana answers, stopping to read the note in her hand. She smiles softly and places it in a specific spot on the door. "... just give me a few minutes, okay?"

"How many?"

Santana laughs. "You're so impatient, Rachel. And, for the record, you're not supposed to be here."

It's silent for nearly a full minute. "Speaking of where people are supposed to be," Rachel begins. "Aren't you supposed to be in Lima?"

"If there's anything I've figured out, it's where I'm not supposed to be," Santana says softly. "Not Lima and definitely not Louisville."

The frustrated brunette sits on the floor and leans her back against the wooden fixture that stands between her and her friend - between her and some weird surprise she's not sure if she's excited or terrified about.

"Seriously, Santana," she begins. "What are you doing here? And why didn't you tell me you were coming to visit." She closes her eyes as she listens to the soft sound of Santana's hand hitting her door, the rhythm almost soothing her frayed nerves.

"It's supposed to be a surprise and I'm not here to visit."

"You're just going to stick things to my door and leave?"

Santana laughs again and Rachel frowns.

"Anyone ever tell you that you're short-sighted?" she teases from her side of the door. Another purple note, another light smack on the door.

"Never."

"Guess I know you best, then," Santana offers.

Rachel pouts, suddenly very glad to have a barrier between them. "I used to think so."

Santana slaps the door harder. "Cut that shit out. We're best friends for-fricken-ever or some shit, remember?"

It's quiet for another minute or two. Then Santana knocks.

The smaller girl scrambles to get up but, with her hand on the doorknob, doesn't allow herself to throw open the door. She'll show Santana who's impatient. She's going to open the door nice and slow. Maybe she'll get a glass of water first. Or maybe she'll count to one hundred or answer her Daddy's email. Rachel's train of thought is interrupted by another short rap on the door.

"Hey, you still got that note from when you came to see me at school?"

Rachel tries to open the door but finds that the handle won't turn. From her side, the taller girl holds it firmly.

"Nuh uh. I wanna see it. Slip it under."

Inside the apartment, Rachel's arms drop to her side and then she kicks the door. "Not until you let me open the door. I want to see what you're doing."

"Don't trust me, huh?"

"Of course I trust you."

"Then slip it under the door." Santana waits a beat. "Unless you don't have it anymore."

Rachel audibly gasps. And it's not a small gasp either. It's a chest-clutching, lung-filling intake of air that can only result in one thing.

The smaller girl stamps her foot and huffs as she leans forward and uses the peek-hole to glare at her friend. "How dare you suggest that I would throw away something that, quite obviously, has meaning to me! Don't have it anymore? I kept it in my dorm room through the end of the term and it was one of the first things I unpacked when I moved into this apartment, Santana Lopez. Maybe you would have thrown it away ..."

Santana calmly knocks on the door, effectively silencing the other girl.

"Prove it."

She can hear a shuffling from the other side of the door and the taller girl smiles to herself. Rachel, she knows, never backs down from a challenge. In under a minute, a bright pink note slides into the hallway.

"Thank you. That wasn't so hard, was it?"

The other girl leans up on her tip-toes to peer out of the peek-hole again. "Okay, you saw it. Give it back."

"In a minute," Santana replies as she takes out her bright orange pen and scratches it against the paper.

The door flies open and Rachel is staring at her, her mouth open in shock and her eyes furiously searching the darker eyes in front of her for an explanation. "How could you?" She thrusts her arm forward for the note. "Give it back."

Santana holds the note over her head. "Not yet."

Without another word, the smaller girl surges forward and tries to jump up to grab the note from her friend's grasp. She lands on Santana's foot, making her howl in pain.

"Fuck, Rach!" She hobbles a few steps in a feeble attempt to walk it off. When she sees Rachel reach for the paper, she shoves it down her shirt. "You gonna come and get it?"

Wide brown eyes dart from the front of Santana's shirt to the smirk the girl is wearing. Rachel's face practically glows red.

The taller girl steps closer, holding her hand over the neck of her shirt just in case Rachel gets any ideas. Not that it would be a bad thing but, Santana's kind of hoping to get to the point and she knows that groping in the hallway usually comes after the grand gesture and not before.

Not that she wouldn't make an exception.

"Calm down, okay?" Santana's voice is unusually soft as she gazes into her best friend's eyes. "It's just that I had a plan and you being here kind of screws that all up. So, I have to improvise and you have to let me. Can you do that?"

"No."

"No?"

"I want to but you have to understand how this all seems to me," Rachel explains. "You've barely talked to me for the past two weeks, you show up in my building and vandalize my door and then you ruin our note." The smaller girl's forehead wrinkles as her brows push together. "If you don't want to be my best friend anymore, then you should just tell me instead of playing games."

Santana narrows her eyes and tilts her head as she listens to her friend talk. She could argue that Rachel is the one who's suddenly too busy to Skype and who started inconsistently answering texts. She could tell Rachel that she's not vandalizing anything and, if she'd look at her door, she'd realize that. She could even show her the note that's firmly wedged into her bra to prove that she didn't ruin anything.

But she doesn't.

"Maybe I don't."

The shock on Rachel's face is almost heartbreaking. "You don't?" she asks, her voice small. Santana can't remember a time when Rachel's voice wasn't larger than life.

"I was kinda hoping that transferring schools and moving to the city would give me a little leverage to upgrade," Santana says as she digs the note out of her shirt, hands it to Rachel and walks past her.

She steps into Rachel's apartment, raises one eyebrow at the girl who is staring dumbly at her and then shuts the door.

It takes a full minute for Rachel to realize that she's in the hallway outside of her apartment. And that Santana is inside. She's not clear on how that happened and her brain is having a hard time parsing it out. She lifts her hand to knock on the door and demand entrance to her own apartment when she sees "ridiculously short" and squints to read the post-it that caught her eye.

She reads it three times before she realizes it isn't a joke about her height but a ... compliment?

Ridiculously short skirts + Rachel's legs = distraction (of a good the best kind)

In Santana's world, that's a compliment, Rachel supposes. She takes a step back and lets her eyes scan over the notes.

Rachel + stardom = no shit, Sherlock (headliner!)

Rachel + fake ID = awesomely unexpected badassness

Rachel + jokes = adorably lame

These were compliments, right?

Cell phone - Rachel's texts = :(

The little brunette smiles and then her eyes widen.

Rachel's giggles = music

She touches the paper on her door and then lightly knocks. "Santana, what is all of this?"

The taller girl leans back from where she stood peeking at her friend through the hole in the door and shrugs even though the other girl can't see her. "Math," she says as she turns and rests her back against the door. "And for the record, I suck at math. Brittany kind of helped me because, as you know, I wasn't really putting the formula together."

It's silent on the other side of the door, so Santana clarifies. "Third row, fourth one in."

Rachel finds it and traces over the note with her finger.

Rachel + Santana = not funny or ridiculous

"San," the smaller girl starts, "I don't get it."

Santana shrugs again. "It's math. I showed all the work and I'm pretty sure I came up with the right answer. I guess you'll have to let me know. And don't let the fact that I can lock you out of your apartment color your answer."

Rachel's breath hitches when she sees a note that doesn't start with her own name.

Santana - Rachel = :(

"So, what do you think? Does it add up right?" Santana asks from her side of the door. "My hand is not on the deadbolt right now, in case you were wondering."

"I think that, uhm," Rachel clears her throat, "I think that the work you've shown is really good, but I don't see your final answer."

There's a laugh from the other side of the door. "You're holding it, Gidget."

Rachel looks down at the very familiar bright pink note she's holding. As she reads it, her free hand comes to rest on her chest.

S + R = BFFFs 3

She takes another look at her front door and sees an empty spot right in the middle of the rows of notes. With a little slap, she presses the note against the door and steps back to assess it.

"I think," she begins softly, "I'm pretty sure it checks out but if you want to maybe go over it with me, I think we should make sure, don't you?"

No answer.

"Santana?" Rachel knocks on her door and then frowns at the fact that she's knocking on her own door. She tries the handle and the doorknob easily turns.

Santana is sitting cross-legged on the couch (really, it's just a cheap futon but Rachel likes to pretend it's a real couch because grown-ups who have their own apartments in New York should have couches). Her shoes are off and she's facing the door. "I was going to say 'come in' but then I thought that maybe I've been presumptuous enough for one day."

Rachel sits primly at the far end of her futon. "I don't know what to say."

The darker-haired girl laughs. "Had I known that's all it took ..."

Rachel turns her head and gives her the funniest looking frown she's ever seen. It's like she's trying to frown but she can't because she's already smiling.

"Look, I don't do this stuff well. The last time I tried something like this," Santana stops. "Okay, I've never actually tried something like this, but you know, the whole telling people how I feel stuff? The last time I did that ended up hurting a lot and, it wasn't like a bandaid. It hurt like a bitch right away and it kept right on hurting."

"Brittany."

"Yeah," she confirms. "I told her I would wait for her. I told her I wanted to be with her forever and that a year apart didn't have to mean anything because I'd wait." Santana presses her lips into a thin line. "And she pretty much said not to bother because a year is a long time to waste."

"I'm sorry, I didn't know." Rachel looks down at her hands as she twists her fingers together.

"S'not important now." Santana shrugs. "Because I got over it. It stopped hurting ...," she begins as she scoots closer to Rachel and untangles the girl's fingers and winds them up with her own, "... something better kind of distracted me."

"Let me guess," the smaller girl says, her voice lighter than before, "ridiculously short skirts?"

Santana laughs and squeezes the other girl's hand. "They sure don't hurt but, no," she says. "You rarely stood up during our Skype talks and you never once sent me that kind of photo message. For future reference, photos like that are not only accepted but highly encouraged."

She lets out a nervous little chuckle. "So, am I way off base or ..."

"You know you're not," Rachel answers. "You wouldn't have done all of this if you weren't certain."

"Maybe."

"Definitely."

"Possibly."

"Absolutely."

"Rachel ..."

"... Santana ..."

"I do still want to be your best friend," the darker-haired girl admits. She lets go of Rachel's hand and cups her cheek, forcing the other girl to make eye contact with her. "I just don't want to only be your best friend, okay?"

Rachel bites her bottom lip as she nods firmly. "It's definitely okay," she says nervously, her eyes flicking down to Santana's mouth.

The girl's lips are curved up into a soft smile (not the smirk she'd almost expected) and when she meets her eyes, she can't help but melt a little at Santana's gentle gaze and the way that her thumb is caressing her cheek.

Santana's pretty sure it was Rachel who leaned in first. Though, later, Rachel will insist it was Santana and that she wouldn't have deigned to initiate a kiss because she'd already ruined the door surprise (kind of). There was no way she was going to mess up any of Santana's other plans.

Not that she expected her to have planned their first kiss.

Expecting and hoping are different.

And maybe it wasn't how Santana planned it (in the hallway, in front of a door-full of notes), but maybe this was better. Her hand on Rachel's cheek, the smaller girl's hand covering it, as they paused only briefly before pressing their lips together. Two pairs of brown eyes closing at the last possible moment: one looking for signs of hesitation and the other wary to close in case, when she opened them, it turned out only to be a dream.

"I can't believe this is really happening or that you're really here," Rachel whispers, the words soft puffs of air against the darker-haired girl's mouth.

"Yeah, about that," Santana begins, pulling away only as far as she has to in order to be able to look into Rachel's eyes, "I don't want to be a walking U-Haul joke or anything but I was considering moving in. And by considering, I mean that I'm planning on in. Maybe even counting on it."

"What - here?"

"No, your hallway. It's spacious and, you know, great view of the elevator," the darker-haired girl says, pointing behind Rachel toward the hallway. "Yes, here. Not only would I have a place to live, but you'd be able to see How to Suck in Business as many times as you want and still be able to afford to eat." There's a twinkle in her dark eyes as she says, "Consider me the bearer of a shit-ton of lemonade."

"Santana, this place is full of NYADA students. You're going to get sick of all the noise and, really, it's kind of a constant musical around here," Rachel says, "Wouldn't you rather be in a place where you can start your future with people you want to be surrounded by?"

"I plan to," Santana replies, smiling as she looks into Rachel's eyes. "Here. With you."