Chapter 1
Apparently the first time Santana met Brittany was at a neighborhood block party when they were three. That's what their parents always told them, but Santana doesn't remember that. The first time she remembers meeting Brittany she was four years old. It was the first day of kindergarten and everyone else was already five. Santana's mom had had to petition the school board to enroll Santana a year early because she missed the cut-off by 2 months. She hadn't said so, but Santana had been nervous about being the youngest in her grade. She was on the small side, and she wasn't exactly outgoing. She had a sharp wit, and an even sharper scowl, and the kids in her neighborhood told her she was too small and too mean to play with them. So when she walked in on the first day with her mom, she wanted to be back at home. Still, she plastered on the scowl that at four years old she'd already mastered and let go of her mom's hand and walked into the classroom with her head held high. She hung up her backpack in her cubby and went to go sit at her desk. Around the classroom, she saw some of the boys pretending to wrestle and rolled her eyes at them. Some of the girls had started coloring at another group of desks. On the carpet, she saw a group playing Jenga, and when she looked over she saw a blonde girl try to take out one of the pieces, only to knock over the whole tower.
Whatever reaction she had been expecting from the girl, she wasn't prepared for her to burst into a face-splitting grin and then buckle over on the carpet laughing. Something about the girl got to her, and without noticing, she found a small smile replacing the smirk that had been playing at her lips. When the girl abruptly looked up and made eye contact with her, Santana quickly looked away, and hoped she wouldn't get caught for staring. Instead, the girl got up from her place on the carpet and walked over to where she was sitting at her desk.
"Hi, I'm Brittany! Do you wanna come play Jenga?" Santana was opening her mouth to say no when the girl--Brittany--grinned at her again. Santana saw she was missing her two front teeth, and she had the bluest eyes she'd ever seen. Instead, she heard herself saying, "okay" and getting up to follow Brittany back over to the carpet. Brittany skipped ahead of her, and as Santana approached, she patted the spot next to her for Santana to sit. Santana went over to sit next to her, and gave Brittany her best smile.
Brittany leaned over to her and whispered, "You never told me your name." Santana wasn't sure why they were whispering, but she decided she liked that the conversation was just between the two of them, because Brittany already had friends, and she was talking to Santana anyway.
"I'm Santana." Brittany smiled at her again and nodded, then leaned back over to her spot. The other kids had been setting up a new game of Jenga while she'd been talking to Brittany, and they were all about to start when Brittany announced, "Santana is on my team this round!" When Rachel Berry tried to argue that Jenga didn't have teams, Santana shot her the scowl she'd perfected and said, "They do now." She knew she'd made the right decision when Brittany gave her a secret thumbs-up.
When the teacher called for everyone to go to their desks, Santana found out that Brittany was sitting right next to her, and she was glad she had a friend. Brittany was friends with everyone in kindergarten, even the boys who were mean to her, and Santana was friends with Brittany. Brittany was loud where Santana was quiet, and she smiled when Santana scowled, and tickled her until she smiled again. Santana decided she didn't need other friends when she had Brittany, because Brittany was her favorite, and she thought she was Brittany's favorite too. If anyone ever tried to make fun of Brittany, Santana would scowl at them until they were too scared to say anything else, or she would say something even meaner back to them. When Finn Hudson called Brittany stupid and made her cry during recess, Santana punched him in the face and told Brittany she was a genius (which was true, Santana thought Brittany was the smartest person she'd ever met). Even though she had to go to the principal's office and she got grounded for a month, it was worth it because Brittany smiled again and then gave Santana a hug and called her brave, and no one insulted Brittany for the rest of the year.
Santana loved having Brittany as her best friend. She loved the days when her parents would have to work late and Brittany's mom would pick both of them up from school and they would go back to Brittany's house and play pirates and hide and seek, even when their games got so short because they always knew where the other was hiding. When they got older, Brittany would hide, and when Santana found her she would sit in the hiding spot with her until Whitney came and called them for dinner.
During the summer when Santana was ten and Brittany was eleven, they found out that their school was joining with one of the other schools in Lima, and in sixth grade they would have almost double the people they did before, Santana found Brittany hiding in her favorite tree (it only took her two minutes to find her, and that was because Whitney stopped her in the kitchen to ask if she was staying for dinner, because otherwise it would have been so much quicker). Santana climbed up and sat down next to Brittany on the platform her dad had built. He'd meant for it to be a tree house, but he'd only been able to build the platform before Whitney had convinced him he had no idea what he was doing. Santana knocked her knee against Brittany when she didn't look up when Santana sat next to her. Slowly, her eyes met Santana's, and she looked scared, with tears threatening to spill out of her eyes.
"San, are you still gonna be my best friend next year when there's all those new kids?" Santana softened in the way she only ever did for Brittany, and her voice was gentle and honest when she replied.
"Of course I am, Britt Britt. You're my most favorite, and we're gonna be best friends forever." Brittany smiled a little, and looked up to meet Santana's eyes again. Her face got serious when she held up her pinky in front of Santana.
"Cross your heart?" Santana put up her pinky and took Brittany's, smiling wide at her. "Cross my heart." They sat there with linked pinkies, their knees knocking against each other on the platform until Whitney called them inside for dinner. When they walked inside, it was with their pinkies linked.
When they went back to school, Quinn Fabray decided they were going to be her best friends. Quinn was popular, which meant that Brittany and Santana became popular too. Brittany had always been popular, and Santana had been popular by association, but when Quinn became their friend, they became the most popular trio in school. Quinn was the leader, and Santana loved her because she was mean too, and she was never afraid to cut back at someone who'd said something to any one of them, or towards anyone else who she thought deserved it. She scowled almost as well as Santana, and between the two of them, the hallways parted like the Red Sea when they walked through it. When Brittany said just that, they'd jokingly come up with the name 'Unholy Trinity' and it had stuck. They'd walked down the hallways, Quinn first, and Brittany and Santana following behind her with linked pinkies, watching students part around them.
Santana liked being popular, because then no one was focusing on the fact that she was younger than they were, and no one was saying anything mean to Brittany that might make her cry. Santana loved being popular. And then, in eighth grade, Noah Puckerman asked Santana to go on a date with him, and Santana missed the time when it was just her and Brittany.
She didn't tell Quinn and Brittany when it happened. It was on Friday, and they went to the creek after school together. Quinn was already in the water when Santana swung out, but she didn't jump in. Brittany caught the swing when it came back, because she could tell. When it was Santana, Brittany could always tell. She dragged Santana behind the tree.
"Why didn't you jump?" Brittany frowned at her, and her eyes were curious.
"Noah asked me on a date next Friday." Santana said it quietly, and she was looking at her hands playing with her fingers when she replied. She heard Brittany squeal before she looked up.
"San! That's awesome! What did you say? You said yes, right?" Brittany was practically buzzing.
"I told him I would tell him on Monday." She scowled at how excited Brittany was about this. She didn't want to go out with Noah, that would change everything.
"How come San?"
"What if it changes everything, Britt Britt? We've never had a date before, what if it's bad? What if he tries to kiss me? What if he wants us to spend time together all the time and then we can't hang out?" Santana was practically hyperventilating when Brittany grabbed her hand. Her eyes were bright, and Santana could tell she'd had an idea.
"San, it's perfect! It'll be okay, we can practice and kiss each other first, that way you've already done it before your date with Noah!" Brittany dropped her voice lower to a whisper, "Besides, I've never kissed anyone before either, and I wanna do it too." Santana could feel her heart beating out of her chest, and she looked at Brittany with wide eyes.
"Are you sure, Britt?" Brittany just held up her pinky for Santana to take.
"Cross my heart, San." Brittany dropped their linked pinkies down to her side, pulling Santana a step closer to her before leaning in to kiss Santana. It was quick and innocent and Brittany tasted like the sweet tea they'd been drinking earlier and her favorite chapstick and Santana thought that if kissing was like this maybe she wouldn't mind kissing Puck on her date, because kissing Brittany was one of her favorite things they'd done, and they both pulled back with shy smiles and blushing cheeks.
Quinn called out to them from the water, and Brittany smiled at Santana before running off and jumping in. Santana stayed behind the tree a minute longer, touching her fingers to her lips and whispering to herself, "Cross my heart."
On Monday, Santana told Noah she would go on a date with him, and on Friday he kissed her at the end of their date and it wasn't anything like kissing Brittany had been and she didn't like it at all. She went home and asked her mom and dad about it. The expressions on their faces made Santana immediately regret asking, and when she heard them talking about it that night when she was supposed to be sleeping, she knew that whatever it was was something she shouldn't talk to them about again. Still, whenever Brittany came around, sometimes she couldn't help it, because she didn't know why she felt like that and her parents wouldn't answer her.
By the time high school started, Santana's dad had moved out, her mom was gone even more for work (Santana only saw her sometimes on certain weekends), she started dating Noah and nicknamed him Puck, she learned that Google could tell her all about what she was feeling--and what she was feeling was apparently gay and not something her parents agreed with--and she stopped bringing up Brittany to her mom on the rare occasion she saw her.