Chapter Text
Santana did not see the disaster that was duet assignment coming.
The duet she had done with Brittany in sophomore year was really fun; ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’ by Snoop Dogg. To Santana, the only thing that seemed different now was that there was the potential of free Breadstix and she was hyped for the whole thing. But after over a year of regular hook-ups with Brittany and next to no discussions about the broader implications, she was not prepared for what came next.
We should sing Melissa Etheridge’s ‘Come To My Window’.
Santana did the only thing she could think of, she shut Brittany down and high-tailed it out of there.
*
She decided to partner up with Mercedes for a diva worthy duet. She would fill Brittany in on the adjusted plan and hopefully everything would go back to normal. Instead, the next day she discovered Brittany had asked Artie fucking Abrams to be partners. Mercedes came her across her with a face like thunder a few minutes later and Santana decided not to enlighten her beyond a barked order:
“We need to practice tonight and then we need to fucking win this thing.”
They picked a song pretty quickly - ‘Diva’ - Beyoncé being one of the few artists that could do the combined attitude of Santana and Mercedes any justice. They had been practicing at Mercedes house for about an hour, working out some steps, dividing up verses, when Mercedes marched over to the computer, turned the music off and turned to face Santana with her head cocked to the side and her hands on her hips.
“What the hell is up with you?”
“What are you talking about Wheezy? I’m rocking this.”
“You’re singing like you wanna pound on somebody.”
“The song’s called ‘Diva’ right? I’m just giving it the swag it needs.”
“Swag? It’s more like a murderous death stare.”
She was still staring so Santana moved behind her to flip through the Beyoncé tracks, turning the volume all the way up.
“That song is tired anyway. We should do this instead.” The sirens at the beginning of ‘Ring The Alarm’ rang through the room and she heard Mercedes yell over the noise.
“Girl, have you lost your damn mind?”
When the bass kicked in and Bey started screaming, Santana joined in. She could feel her body start to radiate heat from the aggravation she’d been keeping squashed down all week. She was just starting to get some kind of release when Mercedes stopped the track and the room was plunged into silence.
“I thought you wanted to win?” She looked more genuinely puzzled and had lost the pissed off front.
“I do. That’s why we need a great song.” Santana decided to ignore her raised temperature and her ragged breathing. “We need to make the audience feel something, right?”
“Yeah - entertained. Not fearful for their lives.” Santana just blinked in response, still on the defensive. “Is this about Brittany?” At least she had the good grace to look scared as she asked. “Why don’t you just do your duet with her?”
“Listen Mahalia, I thought unlimited supplies of triple mayonnaise potato salad would be enough of an incentive to get you off your ass to sing.”
“First of a- wait. You listen to Mahalia Jackson? You’re comparing me to Mahalia Jackson?” A stupid smile worked its way across her face as she accepted it as a compliment.
“Yeah, well she was a fat-ass like you.” Mercedes was still smiling and turned to look at the computer again. It just frustrated Santana that Mercedes was seemingly becoming immune to her bitchiness.
“Okay Santana. You want a diva? You want attitude? You want to feel something?” Mercedes hit enter and spun around smiling. “Then what we need is Miss Tina Turner.”
*
The day of the performance Santana walked into the choir room to find Rachel turned around in her seat whispering to Kurt.
“It’s official.”
“So she’s his girlfriend now?”
“That’s what Finn said Artie is telling all the guys on the football team.”
She worked on keeping her face void of emotions as her mind started spinning. Mercedes was sat next to Kurt but looking straight ahead. Santana knew that the girl loved to gossip and felt a small shot of gratefulness as she took her seat.
Official girlfriend? She’d known Brittany six years and she’d never been anybody’s official anything. She didn’t stick with a lab-partner long enough to finish an assignment. And now she was dating Artie? They’d never even spoken before this week.
Mercedes interrupted her thoughts just in time.
“We’re going to kill it today. Those Breadstix tokens are ours.”
“Mm-mm.” Santana managed to force out a response as Brittany wheeled Artie in and they sat on the front row. “I like the pink shirt. You look hot today.” The compliment slipped out before she had time to filter it.
Mercedes stretched her back straight in her seat. “Let’s do this then” and then they were getting up and facing their backs to the audience for the start.
*
The second the horns started in with the intro, everything changed. It was the song - that fucking song - which Santana couldn’t wait to belt out in all its glory. To her left she saw Mercedes’ hair whip out to the side as she spun around singing and Santana launched into the choreography as well. The routine they had come up with was so damn sassy she wasn’t surprised to see drooling faces courtesy of Finn, Mike and Sam the second they turned around. Mercedes was belting it out doing her thing and Santana could feel her every vulnerability from the past week harden as she twirled and started in with her verse.
River deep, mountain high
If I lost you, would I cry?
Rag-dolls and school packs and faithful puppies. Why did singing about this crap make her feel so much better?
She and Brittany did go River Deep; they were best friends. Santana focused on the fact that she didn’t have to cry about losing her because she hadn’t lost anything.
Who cared if she was his ‘girlfriend’? They could just wait and see how long that would last. Four days ago, Brittany had wanted to sing a queer anthem with Santana and now she was somebody’s girlfriend? Brittany had slept with half the guys at this school and she still always found time for Santana so what threat was Artie? Santana would show up at Brittany’s house and just try and see the girl turn her away. They’d be screwing on her kitchen floor in no time.
She kicked her knee, flicked her hips one last time and finished with Mercedes at her side, ready to take on the world again.
*
She and Mercedes were robbed. Losing to Quinn and Sam was a joke and jumping them in the parking lot for the Breadstix vouchers seemed like a good idea until Mercedes convinced Santana that it would be safer, if less satisfying, to go together anyway and she’d pay.
They had a good time. If they were honest, they got on well when they weren’t both fighting over the same thing. Santana liked the fact that sometimes Mercedes just shut up and let them sit in silence. It was strangely comforting; like she was being supportive without actually getting in anybody’s business. And in the silence over the ‘Stix she realised she couldn’t remember the last time she had made it through a week where she was this angry without starting a fight or smashing up something in the house.
The day Santana told Brittany she loved her she thought she was going to explode in anger and regret.
Over the blood pounding in her ears, she did manage to hear Brittany say ‘I love you’ back but the only thing she took away was that Brittany chose Artie over her. All those months of rationalising that things were still the same and nothing had to change were dashed in an instant.
She was parked in the corner of the lot so when she got to her car she was free to bawl her eyes out for 40 minutes without being seen. Part of her thought maybe Brittany would come after her.
After all the crying she went numb. She felt completely blank. All that was left was a voice in her head, laughing. Because ever since the duet disaster there had been a nagging feeling, implied but never said, that if she could just choke out the words and finally admit how she felt, Brittany would change her mind.
Brittany would want to be with her. Only her.
That all the fear Santana had been crippled by, all the panic and shame, would be finally okay because Brittany would be by her side.
It was on the drive home that the rage kicked in and she embraced it. Rage was an easy emotion for Santana and was preferable to anything else she could be feeling right now. Everyone in every song on the radio was unbearably happy and obnoxiously in love, so she screamed obscenities and curses at them as if they could hear. She shoved her iPod connector into her car radio, just to make it stop and by some small miracle, the first song that played on her shuffle was ‘You Oughta Know’ by Alanis Morissette. And that song knew exactly what it was all about. She turned the volume up until the car windows were rattling in their frames and had 4 minutes 9 seconds of relief from feeling like her internal organs were imploding. And when it finished she put it on repeat. If she could only hear Alanis screaming her pain, then maybe she wouldn’t be able to hear her own.
*
When she got into the empty house she immediately connected her iPod to her Dad’s expensive sound system, turned the volume as high as it would go, and started again.
She was singing along; well, screaming mainly. She wasn’t using any of the techniques she had learned from glee club, she was just forcing each word out and felt it as it dislodged things stuck at the back of her throat and in the pit of her stomach. She sang so long and so hard that her lungs burned with lack of oxygen and her legs were shaking with adrenalin.
She’d been at it 20 minutes when her mother came home. She didn’t say anything, just stood there, arms full of groceries, staring at her frenzied daughter.
“I didn’t break anything.” was all Santana could manage to choke out through her breathlessness.
*
“How do you get the band geeks to practice with you in the auditorium when it’s not even for glee?”
She had cornered Rachel at the end of lunch one day the following week after a nagging idea had lodged in her head.
“Hello Santana. You know, you could have just asked me this yesterday when we spent two hours together in glee. Instead you contributed nothing to our rehearsal and are now choosing to keep me from an important geography class.”
“There’s no such thing as an important geography class, Danny DeVito, so just answer the damn question.”
“Well, I am quite persistent in convincing them the situation is mutually beneficial.”
“So, you just annoy them into submission?” Rachel’s brow twitched and her smile grew decidedly less polite.
“I use my skills to convince them Santana. Maybe it would be wise for you to simply use your own skills if you wish to rehearse a private project.”
“Cutting to the point…”
“You have a certain penchant for intimidation. Quite frankly I’m surprised it wasn’t your first solution.”
Santana was a little embarrassed to admit that Rachel was right and normally she would just bully the band into doing this. But there something here that she wanted to actually achieve. After a week of singing angry rock in her bedroom she wanted to actually do something with it. She wanted to work it into her own performance, just like they did with songs in glee, but she wanted to do this just for her. And ideally she would have willing participants to help.
It turned out that bribing Brad the Piano Man with a bottle of Cognac she swiped from her parent’s liquor cabinet was all it took to get the whole band on board. Brad ran a tight ship.
*
Which was how she found herself standing in the choir room after school, nervously clutching sheet music bought off Amazon, with a 12-piece band looking to her for instruction.
She decided not to elaborate on what they were doing there and instead just set them to work. She chose the best pitch for her voice and looked to the drummer to match her tempo, the guitars fell into place and the even brass players found a way to fit into the song. Brad kept making small changes to the piano music that the others adjusted to follow and he gave Santana these facial nods and flicks that helped shape her vocals. Before she knew it, they were creating a performance.
Santana had started this because it was helping her to deal; but in turn, her fractured emotions were completely elevating the performance. Once they had all found a groove they just didn’t stop. The guitars were wailing, the drummer was a machine and Santana felt she must have sung through the chorus a hundred times.
Despite Cheerios, despite glee, despite every showboating fight she had ever started, for the first time she felt a clarity in performing and it was completely exhilarating.
They stayed late. Far later than Santana had been expecting but no one said anything about it; no one bitched or complained. As they were wrapping up she saw a group of the musicians smirking to each other and felt herself ready to jump into attack mode, imagining gossip surrounding what had prompted her to do this, but then she caught their nods and muttered congratulations and was amazed to find they were preening. Everybody was excited about what they were doing.
Brad was the last one to leave the room.
“Think we can do this again tomorrow? Maybe in the auditorium?” He looked at his watch and pulled a questioning face. “Lunchtime? That way there’s a time limit.”
He nodded, remaining silent as always and left Santana feeling happy and human for the first time in a week.
*
When the next day came, Santana didn’t know if she could handle anyone in the audience watching her being that open and honest on the stage but she also knew that she needed someone to witness what she had done.
“I’ve been working on something outside of glee. I’m doing it this lunchtime in the auditorium. You should come and watch. See how attitude is really done.”
“Pass.”
“What? You scared I’m gonna be better than you?” Mercedes just rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Just don’t bring anyone else. The rest of glee can’t handle all a’this at its most awesome.”
“I don’t remember saying I was gonna be there.”
“What am I keeping you from your weave appointment?”
“Girl please, you have more store-bought hair up on your head than I do.”
Santana thought that she might actually be starting to really like this girl.
*
'cause the joke that you laid on the bed that was me
And I'm not gonna fade
As soon as you close your eyes and you know it
And every time I scratch my nails down someone else's back
I hope you feel it...well can you feel it?
Well, I'm here to remind you
Of the mess you left when you went away
It's not fair to deny me
Of the cross I bear that you gave to me
You, you, you oughta know
The stage lights were on, so at first Santana didn’t even know if Mercedes had turned up. She tried not to think about it and focused on singing for herself. The energy of the night before was there again as soon as they had started back up and even standing in the middle of it, she could tell how good, how special, it sounded.
At one point, she was bent over, with the microphone close to the floor, trying to make sure the power in her voice didn’t shift into just screaming. It was then, with her face dipped below the spotlight that she saw Mercedes sat about halfway back. She was sat on her own, bag on the seat next to her, hands in her lap and her face was completely unreadable.
*
It was over all too fast and then the band were whooping and hollering their applause. Even Brad looked pretty pleased. Santana glanced over to Mercedes and she was clapping but it seemed like polite applause; she didn’t even stand up.
Everyone packed up quickly in order to get to afternoon classes but Mercedes didn’t move from her seat. After Santana helped put the microphone equipment away, she walked down to sit next to where Mercedes was still staring at the stage.
She didn’t say anything for an age and Santana was torn between nervousness that Mercedes didn’t get it and wanting to yell at her to just say anything.
“You should fight Mr Schue for a solo in New York.
Singing like that…” She shook her head. “But I don’t think you can sing that song. It’s too…. It was like watching…”
She turned her head to look at Santana in the half-light.
“I don’t think you want to use all of that just to win a competition.”
Santana had no idea what to say.
“You wanna talk about it?” Santana kept silent. Mercedes got the picture anyway. “Miss Turner would have been proud. And you’re lucky Rachel didn’t see that or she’d cut your vocal chords out in your sleep.”
That one got a laugh.