Bigger Than Us [Brittana!musings]

Brittany has always been waiting for Santana and promises herself every day to be patient; but it's just so hard to wait when the other fixes her with that smoldering stare and heady lullabies that rasp against the delicate cusp of her ear.

Sometimes she feels fragile like porcelain (is this what Kurt feels under Karofsky's misguided affection? It hurts too much to think about, so she simply smiles at the boy with baby hands and tries to make him feel happy again) under Santana - that one time where they broke her Mama's vase by accident and it shattered pretty on the floor. Brittany wonders if that's what her soul looks like. Fragmented but tragically beautiful. The noise and melancholy feeling makes her head hurt.

So instead she smashes their lips together with drunken abandon, wishing and wanting the love that she pours into every heated stroke to be returned, but knowing inside that Santana will never admit it unless she feels she's ready.

And honestly, she doesn't think that will be anytime soon without divine intervention. So she settles for fingers crawling up sticky inside the other cheerleader, and moans that sound like the world is coming undone by her feet.

It is hot and sexy and sensual, but not romantic. However, Brittany thinks she can live with that.

(Until Artie asks her out.)

.:---:.

He is so sweet and awkward and she is just so tired of waiting that she accepts, and suddenly they are wheeling down hallways and kissing gently. His lips are soft and hesitant, a temporary reprieve from the scorching Latina kisses that sear into her soul. Artie makes her feel good, and it's enough that she can ignore the feelings for Santana for just a little while longer.

She is serious about being a good girlfriend and Santana would find it endearing if it wasn't so sickening; they dance around each other with clandestine glances and lidded looks when people aren't looking. Brittany thinks that maybe, this part of her life can be easy.

But then Santana fucks it all up by kissing her again.

(But not those sloppy, sensual kisses. It screams of affection and tenderness and faint desperation and take me back.)

.:---:.

Sometimes Brittany wishes she never met Santana. They are only brief, fleeting moments when her heart is torn between two choices. But then she thinks of constellations and forgotten math homework and secret little smiles (ones that nobody else will even see, because the arrogant beauty is HERS) and she feels guilty, so then her fingers flick across her keyboard and dials the number by heart.

She isn't sure why her stomach feels like it's about to explode when that groggy voice answers on the other line.

(She remembers sweat and heat and a staccato beat repeating like a broken record.)

Brittany never makes anything easy, but really, that's Santana's fault.

"San?" Sleeplessness has left her in an imagined breath of peppermint air, and she can likewise hear chocolate eyes opening wide in the darkness.

"Yeah?"
It's sad how much control the Latina holds over her, despite she be the one pulling the strings. She smiles into the speaker with a nagging feeling that she is sealing her own fate.

"Come over."

Santana doesn't mention that it's two in the morning; she just rolls out of bed and vanishes.

(This time Brittany kisses her in the half-dark; the stars align and She implodes on herself as a firm hand rests on the base of her spine and Imissedyous are whispered all across her lips.)

.:---:.

He makes her feel safe and wanted, but he always watches her like she's a child on the verge of becoming a girl. Santana touches her like she is the woman she wishes to be but can never read those eyes - in them hold everything and nothing and oh fuck she wants to be her own person. It's hard, when it seems her soul has merged with somebody else's.

There is only ever one person that understands.

It is Quinn that she has always gone to in secret; the other blonde makes her heart sing ever so quietly. Despite holding everything she was ever against in her stomach she is still so pure, allowing Brittany to weave fairytales into her locks and ramble nonsensically when the words don't stop. She says that her cat has run away again and it's sad - when will she realize that this is her home? Her cat always comes back eventually but it seems a distance has grown between them.

When Quinn watches her with green-brown eyes and an unwavering knowledge that this is about more than her cat, she kisses her. Understands how Puck could fall in love with the girl who grew up too quickly, and fell down just as fast. They remained locked for a moment before the other pushes her back with a sad smile, twining ruffled strands around her elegant fingers.

"I can't replace her." And suddenly she is the woman she wants to be for a second; and decides that she doesn't want to grow up. If she remains like this, she is too old to bound back from heartbreak.

"I know." Quinn holds her while she cries, allowing her to shatter completely so that she can begin to heal. Her captain offers a piece of broken porcelain to her with those honey eyes.

(They smile together, though there is nothing amusing at shared devastation. It just looks so beautiful.)

.:---:.

It's over. It came as a stuttering confession that neither of them wanted to hear. All this happened too fast and they were in too deep - so they broke it off before anybody could get hurt. He thanks her for being kind and honest and herself, she in turn kisses him one last time and walks away with tears in her eyes. Brittany knew that she was never his as he was never hers, but it's the underlying sense of abandonment as people leave one by one.

Kurt is the one that finds her - broken and cradling her head, wishing for all these conflicting emotions to just STOP - and for a second he doesn't know what to do. But as her oceanic blue connects with his stormy grey-green he sees himself in the taller girl (he thinks of nights watching his phone and zooming in on the grainy picture of a disheveled mohawk, wishing away the feelings that would choke him and make him feel like glass) and silently goes over to her. He sits down and she interlaces their fingers, tracing over the babysoft skin like she loved to do before things got complicated.

"They're all leaving." She mutters tragically, drawing her knees in tighter and resting her head to watch him. He smiles sadly (and he looks like a fragmented rainbow, all sad and hopeful and unsure).

"Darling, I never left."

.:---:.

Santana is tired when she confronts Brittany. There are circles under her whirlwind eyes, deep and aching from nights spent sleeplessly in a cocoon of slow suffocation. She hates how Brittany makes her feel weak and powerless - a feeling she's tried too hard to forget, now it comes back to haunt her in the form of boyfriends and two sets of eyes glaring into her back - against her own body. Her mind tells her not to linger but her heart overrules all thought, touching and smiling and drinking the blonde in. Brittany sees all this but chooses not to comment. Because the Latina knows.

She has always known.

The terrified look in her face makes her want to grin and cry all at once, a peculiar mix of brazen confidence and unresolved fear. When Santana reaches out Brittany leans into her hand, feeling languid and natural and right. Santana marvels at the skin that she has touched so many times but never really felt.

Brittany wants to stop waiting and Santana wants to feel again, but neither of them understand how to form coherent sentences into tangible emotion (but they are well aware of inflicting and fixing tragedies with a single touch). The blonde is the only one that makes her warm and happy and all that other shit she swore she didn't want, but realized she needed.

"This is fucked up."
"Yeah."
They are alone in the chalky hallways and their own thoughts, breaking through a woven web that has made them stray from eventual salvation.

(There are stars in their eyes as they kiss, tender and sweet and full of promises made a long, long time ago. Everything is moving back and fast-forwarding at once; it sweeps gravity out from under their feet and makes the two pairs of eyes that watch smile around the edges.)

As Brittany nestles a hand on Santana's heart, she scolds herself for doubting that she'd never find her way back home.

.:---:.

"You think we can be okay?"

She looks so sensual with bruised lips and flushed cheeks, spreading insecurity that is always locked up deep. Santana is bad with emotions but good with Brittany, and this query is all she needs.

They are broken but slowly healing, pieces being put back into place with utmost care. Santana feels like reassurance in the most primal of ways; each touch snaps one part of her mind back into position. Their mind.

"I think we can."

.:---:.

Sometimes Brittany finds a fragment and delivers it to Santana. She smiles and runs her fingers along the shard, pressing it back into a crevice along her soul.

(It is the gentle smile and butterfly kisses that make her shudder, loving herself for waiting and Santana for being her own divine intervention.)





[OOC: Different style is different. Lemme know what you think!]