Saturday, September 15th, 2001

Lima Catholic Church, Lima, Ohio

Santana's eyes shot open and rolled back at the shrill yell of her abuela from downstairs like they did every single morning. She sighed deeply and stretched, her clenched fist colliding with the wall of her box room with a loud bang.

"Santana!" her abuela hollered again, stomping up the stairs and banging on the door until Santana yelled back: "Yes, I'm awake, how could I not be!"

"Niña impertinente," her abuela tutted. "Go and get your breakfast. You have your first ballet class today, remember? We're going to be late."

Swinging her legs over the side of her bed and rubbing her eyes, Santana briefly wished that she was at her best friend Quinn's house on the other side of town. Quinn's mother would meekly knock on the bedroom door and smile nervously as she presented them with bacon sandwiches and orange juice in the morning. Abuela had thrown cold water over Santana once, but it wasn't the same.

Quinn wasn't going to go to ballet classes. She had violin lessons on a Saturday morning, and then sometimes her father would take her to the golf club and let her practice on the driving range. She had taken Santana once, but her father had chastised her and ranted when he thought Santana wasn't looking (or couldn't understand English) and hadn't let Santana use any of his golf clubs, so she had never done it again. It was a shame, because Santana liked golf. She could knock the ball fifty yards, easily, revelling in the satisfying thunk and swish of the club against the tee and in the air, feeling a little skip in her heart as the ball sailed out into the distance.

Santana stretched again, taking the two steps out of her room and swinging downstairs, holding onto the railing of the upstairs hallway and landing lightly on the floor below. To put it one way, her abuela's house was cosy. There wasn't a lot of room anywhere and Santana supposed this would still be the case even if each wall and surface wasn't adorned with pictures of Spanish saints or of Jesus Christ.

The house they were going to buy was much bigger, her father said. When her parents were in town they would take her out for the day and after they had bought their ice creams and traipsed around the zoo, they would drive over to Quinn's side of town and her father would point out estates and tell her that one day, they would be living there too.

'Just you wait, Santana,' he would say, his fingers drumming the steering wheel with a sort of nervous excitement. 'You, your mother and I, that'll be our house soon…You can go to school with Quinn, and she could come over all the time. We could have a pool. You could have horses,' he had offered, glancing over at her expectantly.

She had just nodded blankly, her mind whirring with the idea of her parents compared with the idea of a house with a huge bedroom and a pool and a horse.

"Santana!" her abuela shouted again, "Use the stairs!"

"Sí, abuelita," she called over her shoulder, uttering the same tired line of yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. Santana had probably been resignedly agreeing with her grandmother since the beginning of time.

She hopped up onto a stool and poured herself a bowl of cereal, swaying her legs around underneath the seat in time to a Spanish song that was playing on abuela's old radio. She was looking forward to ballet class. She was quietly confident.

Quinn had a video player and a set of tapes that of ballerinas dancing, and the two of them would watch, rapt with astonishment at the way the dancers moved their bodies and how beautiful it was in time to the music. They would throw themselves around Quinn's bedroom, pointing their toes and arching their backs and imagining that they were the ballerinas from 'The Nutcracker'. They didn't know what they looked like, but Santana assumed it was quite professional.

"You want hot chocolate?" her abuela asked, thudding into the kitchen and switching the kettle on. "Santana!" she said sharply, smacking her palm down on the chipped plastic counter. Santana jumped out of her reverie, the images of herself dancing around on stage in a beautiful gown dissipating and being replaced with those of her grandmother and her stern frown.

"Sí, por favor," she replied distractedly, reaching out for another bowl of cereal and flinching as her abuela slapped the back of her hand away from the box in the middle of the table. "Ay!"

She wriggled in her seat and tried to reach past her grandmother's arm, but to no avail.

"No more of that. We can't have you growing any bigger. I don't want to have to be buying you another leotard in a year's time if you continue with this…ballet."

Santana wasn't sure if her grandmother was joking – she never could tell - but she pulled her arm back anyway, affronted.

"I ironed your leotard. It's on your bed. Go and put it on and you can have your hot chocolate just before we leave." Abuela glanced at her watch, her brow furrowing; either ignoring or not noticing Santana's remonstrations.

"How we getting there?"

"Walking."

Santana scowled before slinking up to her room, dragging a brush through her hair and pulling her leotard on over a pair of brand-new tights. She wished they had a car.

"Well, you're probably running now," her abuela stated when Santana came back downstairs clutching a ballet bun scrunchie and a handful of bobby pins. Santana scowled again and dropped to her knees in front of the chair so her grandmother could do her bun.

"Ow!"

"Get used to it," abuela snapped, expertly twisting Santana's hair around her fingers. "No pain, no gain."

Santana complained for the next ten minutes in between sips of hot chocolate until her thick dark hair was perfectly positioned on the top of her head and it was time for her to go. Her grandmother helped her tug the sleeves of her parka on and pressed a couple of dollars into her hand and a kiss onto her forehead.

"You know where the church is, yes?"

Santana nodded, pulling on her best white trainers and grabbing the duffel bag containing her brand-new ballet shoes.

"The money is for a drink on the way home, Santanita. I know when you spend it on sweets. I will know!"

Santana smirked and ran down the driveway and onto the streets of Lima Heights Adjacent.

Rachel awoke to her dad's booming voice calling her down for breakfast.

She sprung out of bed, remembering today instantly for its significance highlighted in gold on the family calendar on the noticeboard downstairs. She was already dressed in her ballet outfit, it seemed, having dropped off to sleep in between routines performed around her basement to songs from Funny Girl. Her hair was already tied up and her neck a little stiff.

"Good morning!" she sung to her fathers, completing the day's vocal warmup as she skipped down the stairs.

She pirouetted into the kitchen to Hiram clapping and Leroy smiling from behind the morning paper.

"Good morning, sweetheart," Hiram said, getting to his feet and clapping his hands together again from the middle of the kitchen. Rachel grabbed the entertainment section of Leroy's paper and climbed up to sit at the table in their dining room, studying the pages intently. "Cup of coffee?"

Rachel opened her mouth, but Leroy cut her off. "For God's sake, Hiram. We're not giving our daughter coffee. She's not even ten years old yet." He sighed, removing his glasses.

"Fine, fine. I still think you're being ridiculous and…uptight! Coffee has not been proven to have any negative effects on the developing brain, and it's not like I'm suggesting she has coffee every single morning. A little energy never goes amiss at the ballet, Leroy. You know that."

Leroy sighed again, defeated.

"When can I have coffee?" Rachel enquired, cocking her head to the right and blinking with wide brown eyes. "And can I please have some Lucky Charms for breakfast?"

Hiram gasped audibly and threw his arms up in the air. "Lucky Charms, Leroy. They're basically just refined pure sugar, honestly, I can't believe you would endorse –"

"Fine! She can have Lucky Charms and a cup of coffee." Leroy shook his head, his tone flat.

Rachel grinned at Hiram and he winked back.

A bowl of Lucky Charms and half a small cup of weak coffee later, Rachel was tiptoeing around the room, her arms extended in a graceful curve above her head. She did the move over and over again until her fathers cheered and showered her with praise and exchanged pleased glances, their hearts filled with pride over their precociously talented little girl.

Rachel whirled round and round, allowing her vision to lag so she could pretend the room was full of people, all beaming at her and clapping their hands while she twirled. Her proud fathers, adoring fans, enamoured critics, whooping Broadway executives. Maybe a few friends, too.

The basement was her sanctuary, yes; but that didn't mean she wouldn't appreciate another little girl, preferably Jewish, incredibly talented in both music and dance, who enjoyed an early night and a good musical, in the room with her.

School hadn't really been her scene so far. It wasn't like she was bullied, not particularly. A girl with blonde hair and a sharply critical gaze would sometimes knock Rachel's building blocks over or scribble on her paintings, but Rachel could quite easily brush it off and pretend it was an accident and the girl wasn't being mean to her on purpose.

She felt sorry for the girl, anyway. Her father would sometimes come and pick her up and he would never smile, but he would stare at Rachel and her dads walking across the playground hand in hand.

She could pretend that the blonde girl's father wasn't being mean on purpose, too. She overheard him once, muttering something along the lines of 'an abomination', 'do they not know there are children around', and 'don't look, just pray for them'. She asked her daddy what an abomination was and he didn't look her in the eyes when he told her that she shouldn't ever worry what men like that said about anything.

Perhaps she would meet new people at middle school.

"Daddy," she asked, regaining her balance, "what colour shoes should I wear?"

"What colour shoes do you want to wear, Rach?"

"Gold, please, daddy."

"As you wish." Hiram whirled around elaborately and exited the room in search of the pumps. Leroy looked at him over the top of his glasses with foolish adulation.

"So, sweetie." Leroy put down his paper and watched Rachel make an admirable attempt to drink the rest of her cup of coffee, his eyes crinkling.

"Dad?"

"Are you excited for class, then? Know anyone going?" Leroy kept his tone light and informal, careful. He was finding it difficult to hide quite how worried he was about how Rachel was getting on at school, with her peers. He knew already that Rachel was driven, one-track minded, stubborn, proud and incredibly talented; and he knew what could happen to her in the future. The classes - piano, tap, art, dodgeball (somewhat unsuccessful), and now ballet – were Hiram's idea, but Leroy had only consented because he hoped that Rachel would find someone she could connect with.

Rachel was bright and frank to an extent Leroy sometimes forgot. "No, but I don't talk to anyone, really. You know that," she said with a frown, picking up a pen and doodling stars over the front of the sports pull-out of the paper. Sensing her dad's disquiet, she continued with a smile. "I expect there'll be some nice girls at the ballet. I don't really mind, anyway."

Leroy returned his daughters smile. "Ah, okay then. Don't do that, Rach." He placed his hand on top of hers, stopping her from drawing, and gave it a little squeeze.

"Here!" Hiram called, "Your shoes. We should probably get going. Are you going to want us to come in with you? Because I should probably take my better jacket, then, I mean, it is at the church hall…"

Rachel hummed, lacing up her ballet pumps. "No, it should be okay."

Hiram picked up his car keys and Leroy swept Rachel up into his arms, carrying her, shrieking and giggling, to their four by four silver Audi.

Kurt woke up with the shaft of bright sunlight that hit his face at eight in the morning, every morning. He groaned, rolled onto his front, buried his face in the pillow; but it was still there, the whole room illuminated by this one tiny gap in the curtains.

He ran his hands through his hair and blinked the sleep out of his eyes, yawning.

"Dad?" he shouted out, wondering if Burt had already left to go to the shop, if he had forgotten that today was ballet day and it was very important. Kurt wouldn't hold it against him if he had, but it would be a shame.

"Morning, son," Burt called back. "Bacon?"

Kurt didn't particularly like bacon, but his dad did. "Yes, please."

He padded downstairs, his alien-patterned pyjamas trailing along the ground behind him. His dad had picked them for him and he didn't know Kurt's size or that Kurt preferred plain bottoms with colourful pockets, but it didn't really matter. He could hear his mom's music filtering up the stairs, growing louder with each step he took toward the large open-plan kitchen-diner.

It was Kirsty MacColl today. "Kurt," his mom said with a smile when Kurt opened the door. "Come here, darling." She beckoned him over and he skipped across the room to her chair, dodging his father's affectionate hair ruffle and carefully lowering himself into his mother's arms.

Kurt found himself inhaling her scent quite desperately, desperately trying to cling onto some vestige of his mother as herself. He couldn't understand the change, not really. He just knew that she was starting smell less like his mom with every passing day, less warm and sweet and lovely, and more like the white walls of the hospital she kept having to go to, clean and disappointed and stale.

And he knew that her eyes kept glossing over while she sat and watched him and his dad play cards or read together, and she would cry a little when she didn't think he was looking.

"How did you sleep?" she asked after they had disentangled themselves.

"Good," Kurt replied simply. "I could hear your music though, mom. What was it?"

She smiled again, her wise green eyes lighting up. "Etta James. Were you not a little nervous?"

"Nervous?" Kurt feigned cluelessness, just in case. They had been forgetting an awful lot of things lately. He didn't want to get his hopes up. "Why would I be nervous?"

His dad wandered over, catching Kurt off guard, managing to ruffle his hair and chuck him under the chin. Kurt squeaked but stopped suddenly, the noise too loud, or their house too still. "You have ballet today, right? I bought you that…leotard…thing? That was okay, right? I did ask your mother when she told me to pick one up, honestly…"

Kurt giggled with relief. "No, that's right! Where is it? I thought you'd forgot!" he exclaimed, regretting his words the second they left his mouth when his father winced very slightly and his mother's face fell despite itself.

"It's in your closet," Burt said quickly, filling the quiet while Kirsty MacColl sung a gentle ballad about lost love. "I hope it's the right colour…I wasn't sure whether to get green, or blue, or red…"

Kurt resolved to start buying his own clothes. He turned to leave the room when he heard his mom call out: "Kurt! Wait."

She got to her feet slowly – everything she did was slow these days – and ignored Burt's worried glance, taking Kurt's hand and leading him upstairs and to her own bedroom and her own closet. Her strength varied from day to day. Sometimes she wouldn't even leave her room at all, but lie in bed and stare out of the window, or lie in bed and read some of the books she had always wanted to.

Kurt watched her take each step warily, her knuckles white on the railings. It reminded him a little of the time he had forgotten to drink his milk before bed and had woken up in the night thirsty, ready to go downstairs and get himself a glass of water. He heard voices outside his door, though; and so he had stopped and peered through the gap beside the hinges and watched his father carry his mother in his arms up the stairs, achingly slowly and tenderly, her head buried into his chest and her hand banging lightly against the bannister with every step his father took. He went back to bed and pulled the duvet up around his chin, willing himself not to cry; because even though he didn't properly understand why his mother was too weak to walk up the stairs herself, he could understand by the silent tears shining on his father's cheeks and his mother's shaky breaths that it was upsetting and he knew he was upset, too.

"Mom?" he asked in a small voice when she paused at the top of the stairs. "Are you –"

"Yes, Kurt. I'm fine."

They made it up to her room where Kurt perched on the corner of the bed and watched her file through her wardrobe, reaching to the very back and retrieving a box.

"Here."

Folded neatly at the bottom of a shoebox were an elegant silvery-grey leotard, a pair of grey ballet pumps, and a silver sweatband. Kurt's heart was pounding in the way it always did in times of anticipation, and now it was fluttering with something extra, something tiny and hopeful. He didn't know what he felt, which was unusual.

"Mom," he started, looking up at her. She sat down beside him and took his hand.

"I bought them a while ago. When you first started talking about dance classes. I guessed that your father, wonderful as he is, probably wouldn't be able to get you the right stuff." She took a deep breath. "The pumps are my old ones, you know. I used to love ballet. Your grandmother would drive me all around the state, to recital after recital, competition after competition, and I loved it, the feeling when you see your shadows on the floor of the dance hall and it's like it's a different person moving. It's so beautiful, Kurt. I hope you love it like I love it."

Kurt's narrow shoulders hunched as he leant into his mother's side, holding her and feeling her right there, her own heart beating faster than usual and her face a strange ethereal mixture of sadness and happiness. Up here, she smelt a little more like her, with her dressing gown that matched the fabric of the bedcovers and the pillow she had kept since she was thirteen; in the room with Kurt and his ballet effects and Burt's shirt lying crumpled up on the floor, she was different.

"I think I will," Kurt whispered into his mother's side, and she turned to him and kissed him on the cheek.

"I love you."

"I love you, too."

His mother took another deep, wavering breath, and gave Kurt a smile which showed a few too many teeth. "Go on. Scoot. Your father will be burning your bacon."

Kurt took his box and ran downstairs. He sat on his father's shoulders, watching while he cooked their bacon, picking at it when it was done and gently pulling his new leotard on at the same time.

"Come on, kid."

Burt was stood in the doorway while Kurt positioned his sweatband on his forehead in the mirror beside the shoe-rack and pointed his toes, trying out the pumps. He stared out over their hallway somewhat listlessly, vaguely aware of his son's hair bouncing around in front of him and his wife's wiry frame moving to sit at the top of the stares.

"A bit higher, Kurt," she called with surprising strength, making Burt blink and startle. "You'll want to keep your hair out of your eyes, trust me."

Kurt pushed it up a little higher, properly catching sight of his own eyes in the mirror. Blue, grey, green, and glassy; just like his mother's.

"Alright, son. Come on." Burt shuffled out of the door and Kurt waved goodbye to his mom; feeling a sudden wave of excitement and taking his father's hand and skipping as they walked away, together.

The dance teacher was called Ellie Priscott. She had grey hair tied up in an elegant bun and stood at the front of the room, regarding her class with a hardened eye. She had already run them through some warm-ups and basic skills, and it was time for them to come up with their own routines to a lovely little piano ditty composed and played by her husband. Ellie's Ballad, he had called it. When she had asked why he had called it a ballad when there weren't any words, he had kissed her and told her that she was utterly indescribable, and she smiled at the memory.

She wondered whether or not to put them in groups. It was quite a large class, larger than she could ever remember seeing in Lima; seventeen little girls and one little boy.

Yes, she decided in the end. She clapped her hands, the class collecting around her in a circle, each of them staring at her with enthusiastic intent. They always started like this. She saw herself in them; saw the start of her own personal journey reflected in their shining seven-year old faces. The years would amount for them, too. At ten, bloody feet and missing birthday parties because of classes; at fifteen, painful diets and a budding resentment; at twenty, amounting pressure and the realisation of just how lonely it was to be a ballerina; at twenty-five, a dislocated kneecap and an uncertain future.

"Alright," she said calmly, keeping her toes pointed and her back stiff. "Your task is simple – I will put you into groups, and you shall create your own thirty second routine to the music which will play every five minutes. Okay?"

"Yes, Miss Ellie," the class chorused, and she held up a silencing finger to the girls at the back who had already begun organising themselves into groups.

"I'll be doing your partners."

She pointed at a few of the children, randomly allocating them two others and sending them off into a corner of the room. Left at the end was a girl with tanned skin and a scowl, a girl with an eager smile, and the boy whose hair was coming loose from his grey sweatband. It was entirely coincidental, Ellie thought to herself, but she would have grouped these three together anyway. Something about the hardness of the darker girl, the barely disguised nervous energy of the girl with the gold ballet pumps, and the way the boy clasped his hands together and blinked his piercingly clear eyes.

"Yes," she murmured out loud, "this could be good."

"I'm Rachel Barbra Berry. Pleased to meet you!"

Rachel stuck her hand out in between her two partners and beamed.

Kurt took her extended hand and shook it warily, smiling. "I'm Kurt Hummel. Nice to meet you, too."

Santana flatly declined the greeting. She folded her arms, briefly casting her eyes upon both of her partners and nodding her head. "Santana."

"Lovely to meet you! I expect our partnership will be long and successful." Rachel chose to ignore Kurt's chary side-glances and Santana's open stare of contempt and pressed on. "So, Kurt. Santana. How should we start our dance?"

Kurt listened to the music for a few seconds before responding. "Maybe we could start off –"

Rachel interrupted him. "Or we could bloom when the music begins, like flowers. And as the music grows, we grows. The music is making us bloom."

She demonstrated, bending her body and extending it slowly, in time with the notes of the piano. Kurt and Santana exchanged a fleeting look, Kurt's eyes widening and Santana's frown deepening.

"Just imagine that we're flowers. We stand in a circle, like this," she paused to position them, "and when it starts, we all open our petals to the light."

There was an ominous moment's silence.

"What are you on about, dwarf?"

"It's a well-known…move, Santana. I've seen it lots of times in professional ballet shows. And I'm taller than you, if I may say so." Rachel smiled kindly. She was helping Santana out.

Kurt watched Santana's fists clench and cut the argument off before it could even begin. "I think it's a good idea." He didn't because it didn't fit with the music, but that didn't matter. He was used to compromise. "What could we do next?"

"How about we spin," Rachel demonstrated, "into an arabesque, while the music climbs around us." She smiled widely at her adoring audience.

"The music isn't climbing," Kurt pointed out, irritation piquing. "It's staying the same, so we should stay the same."

Santana nodded firmly. "Yeah. Just 'cause you want it to climb, doesn't mean it is. It is not." She also wasn't entirely what an arabesque was.

Rachel's brows furrowed in confusion at these two amateurs telling her what to do.

"We should move around one another, like," Kurt took a few deliberate steps, weaving around the stunned figure of Rachel and the somewhat belligerent figure of Santana, "a step with every note of the piano."

Santana turned to Kurt, her expression unreadable. Kurt thought it might have been something akin to respect. "Should we move up and down, too?"

She showed Kurt a sequence herself and Quinn had practised just yesterday in Quinn's bedroom, where they extended their arms above their heads for a step and swooped them down for a step, over and over again. It fit with the music and they would still be able to look up, so they wouldn't collide. Kurt nodded when she was finished.

"Yeah, we could –"

Rachel couldn't stop herself. "Your feet are wrong."

Santana scowled. The screen cut off the ballerinas' feet. "What's your point, Berry? You already been to lessons?"

"No." Rachel blushed. "I just really think that we should be doing the arabesque –"

"No," Kurt and Santana said simultaneously. Kurt continued, "we could do that other thing, and then the arabesque thing afterward, maybe."

Rachel huffed.

Their terse discussions continued for a further twenty minutes, Kurt's exasperation growing, Santana's annoyance flaring, and Rachel's frustration increasing with every disputed dance sequence. They clashed, their talents different but equal. Rachel's was polished and innate, Kurt's was raw and natural, and Santana's was instinctive but uncertain.

Santana and Kurt were forced to begrudgingly accept Rachel's talent when their teacher clapped her hands and demanded that they show the rest of the class their performance so far.

"Follow my lead," she hissed at them, beaming at the assorted class members like nothing was wrong.

The music begun, and they began a haphazard routine in which Rachel stood in the middle and contorted her body into various shapes while Kurt and Santana rushed to copy them.

They followed Rachel's lead for about thirty seconds. It descended into a strange, mad routine, where the three of them would follow whoever was on the right; taking steps and extending their bodies and spinning round, up and down, pointing their toes, even an extravagant leap from Rachel, until the music stopped and they stood breathing heavily and looking at the floor.

Ellie paused. She had been writing notes. "Good start, you three. Keep at it."

She wrote – 'odd group – doesn't make much sense, but works'.

Rachel took Kurt and Santana's hands either side of her and squeezed them as they faced the class. Kurt squeezed back and Santana didn't pull away; in fact, Rachel could have sworn she felt her grip tightening.

"How was it?"

Santana stood in her doorway, panting, having run home. "It was alright," she said evenly. "Have we got any Dots?"

"You bought some on the way home. I can tell. Greedy child. Do you want to carry on with this ballet?" Santana's abuela tapped her foot and threw some spices into the big pot of rice she was cooking.

"Yeah. It was good. Yeah."

Santana did a perfect arabesque in her kitchen before running upstairs.

"How was class, darling?"

Leroy revved up the engine to their car, watching Rachel carefully as she buckled herself in.

"It was fantastic, dad. We made the best routine, our teacher said it was super good –"

"We?"

"Yes, me, Santana and Kurt. They're my new friends. I can't wait for next week…"

Rachel chattered happily, bouncing a little in her seat and singing along to the Wicked soundtrack which was playing in the car.

"Son. How was class?"

Kurt tugged on his dad's hand as they walked home, urging him to walk a little faster. "It was great. I can't wait to tell mom."

"Maybe you could tell me."

"Okay. I learnt all these new moves and I made a routine with two girls in class who were my partners, and it was really good. I'm good, dad," he said, a little cautiously.

"At ballet?"

"Yes. You'll have to take me every week now, or…pirouette right here, in the street." Kurt smiled at his father, his big hand clasping Kurt's like a bear.

Burt chuckled. "I'll take you every week, yes, Kurt."

"You still have to pirouette."

Kurt giggled at his dad and skipped the rest of the way home, his spirits the highest they had been in a long time.

Sunday, March 15th, 2013

Dance Studio, Floor 2, New York Academy of Dramatic Arts, New York City, New York

"Get up!" Rachel screeched, spilling hot coffee down herself in her haste to tie her hair up. "Get up, get up, get up! We're going to be late!"

Santana groaned from behind her privacy partition, burrowing her head beneath her pillow. "Fuck off, demon…woman…"

Kurt giggled, passing through the kitchen while brushing his teeth. "Good morning, sunshine. How are you feeling?"

"Like shit. I don't want to fucking go."

It was their third month of living together, all three of them having decided that there was no place for them other than New York at different points after graduation. High school hadn't been altogether kind to their relationship. Santana referred to it as a blip, Rachel a time sent to try her, and Kurt a slap to the face.

Rachel gasped so exaggeratedly she choked on her own breath. "You better be joking with me, Santana. This has been planned for months. Kurt and I were insistent you not go out last night, but no. You simply must accompany your colleagues to post-work drinks. We've been practising this routine for months! You know how important it is! Get dressed. You probably don't have time for a shower, so we'll just have to hope the bar smell dissipates on the walk to the subway station…"

Kurt laid a gentle hand on Rachel's back and mumbled in her ear, "Enough.", spitting his toothpaste into the sink beside the coffee machine. He paused beside Santana's curtain on the way back to his own. "You are coming, right?"

He cocked his head to the side, blinking reproachfully. Rachel bit her lip in the kitchen, leaning against the counter worriedly.

"Yes…" Santana groaned again, clutching her head as her feet hit the ground. "Don't look at me like that, Lady. I'm coming, alright," she growled. "Is she wearing her gold shoes again? If she is then I literally won't be able to look at her without throwing up."

"I heard that!"

"Yeah, I said it loud. Make me a cup of coffee and get me a breakfast muffin." Santana shuffled into the bathroom, moaning lowly and cursing at the bright light of the loft.

Rachel shook her head, draining the last of her coffee and breaking off half of a granola bar. "Kurt, I can't do my hair properly…"

She usually could, of course. She was just nervous. Herself and Kurt's passing of their dance class relied on this performance and NYADA was strangely lax about letting non-students use its facilities, so a bored Santana had been recruited to help them out in performing their final piece – a ballet trio recital. It would be easier to practice, because they lived together. And she had been enthusiastic at first, but it had dwindled with every day she had to go to work straight after practice and with every moment she realised that helping with this assignment was not going to grant her an automatic place at NYADA.

Rachel thought it was testament to her growth as a person that she had refrained from screaming at Santana the night before when she had come stumbling in at three in the morning. It would've been counter-intuitive, she reasoned with herself, and Santana was just a bit lost. Rachel could understand that. Her first few weeks in New York had been some of the most trialling of her life and she was entirely and wholly lost before the arrival of various guiding lights, good, bad, and otherwise. There was no point in regretting anything now. Santana would come through. She had to.

"Sorry, Rachel. No can do. I'm positioning my sweatband."

Kurt posed in front of the cracked mirror, pouting, smiling, checking there wasn't any evidence of his poppy seed bagel between his teeth.

"Kurt…" Rachel leant her forehead against the tabletop.

The reflection of a scowling Santana appeared behind him, looking a little more human with her hair up and her makeup on. Kurt snatched the breath spray that she clutched in her right hand with a grin, knowing that she would be too tired to protest it.

"Bitch," she spat, making her way across the kitchen and picking up the other half of Rachel's granola bar. "Jesus Christ, Berry," she said, casting a disparaging eye over Rachel's dejected form staring forlornly over the table and out of the window.

"Santana…"

"Fine. You're pathetic."

Santana gathered Rachel's hair in her hands and pulled it up, twisting it around her fingers and gripping the first few tendrils in place.

"Ow!"

"No pain, no gain."

Rachel began humming to distract herself from Santana's expert hands pulling at her hair.

"No humming."

Rachel pouted. "Kurt, tell her."

"I'm not telling anyone anything that isn't 'we need to go right now because we're going to be late and we're going to embarrass ourselves in front of all the people who hate us anyway'."

Everyone hated everyone at NYADA. That was just the way it was. There was no college bonding experience on any level other than the superficial, and that was that. To Kurt, it was a case of 'don't hate the player, hate the game', but everyone else – Rachel included – hadn't realised they were playing any sort of game at all. Or they had, and they had just chosen to embrace it, like it was completely normal to trample all over other people in your own precarious journey to the top. Something about it didn't sit right with Kurt, something about the fakeness and triviality he was surrounded by made his stomach twist; something about looking over his shoulder and worrying about what his peers would think as he walked the corridors of his own school made his fists clench. Compromise was no longer an option.

"One sec…" Santana said, her voice muffled by the hair grips she held between her lips. "Okay. Let's go, bitches."

Rachel stopped in the doorway. "Who's locking up?"

"Is there even any point? We literally have nothing worth stealing. We don't even have walls. Our TV is itself stolen."

"Fuck you, Hummel. Just because my cousin is in a gang it doesn't mean that the license –"

"I guess I'm locking up!"

"For the love of God, Berry…"

"Do you even know the dance anymore, Santana?" Kurt drummed his fingers on the pole in the middle of their subway carriage, unable to sit still.

Santana's voice was laced with sarcasm. "Of course." She lurked behind dark glasses, drinking her third coffee of the morning, her thick coat bundled around her frame like a blanket.

Kurt raised his eyebrows, his real concern being that he wasn't actually altogether bothered if Santana ended up messing the recital up for him. He didn't care about passing the class.

Rachel had her eyes closed, running through the performance in her head over and over again, composing herself by humming the tune of their show piece.

"No humming, Berry, what have I told you?"

"Santana!" Rachel broke her mediation with a sharp yell, her frustration building to a level she was incapable of keeping to herself. "For God's sake!"

"Ladies," Kurt said slowly, "let's focus on the task in hand."

Santana scowled and Rachel gave a pained look across the carriage at no one in particular. Kurt sighed, and the rest of the journey was silent.

The three of them looked at the stage floor before them, their backs to their audience.

"Have we got this?" Rachel took Kurt's hand on her right, and Santana's on her left.

"Need you even ask?" Kurt's smile was weak, but it was returned by his partners.

"Please. We can dance circles around these basic bitches."

"Santana."

"We always have been able to, Berry, don't downplay this. It's a sad reality that all your classmates will have to face up to once they manage to pull their heads from their asses." Santana grinned, and gave Rachel's hand a little squeeze. "When does this music even start?"

"Shit," Kurt hissed. "Balls." He broke from their line and gave an apologetic half-smile, half-grimace to the ballet class, scuttling towards the speaker system in the corner. "Sorry…forgot to start the…yeah…"

They stared back at him, scathing and unforgiving. Fuck them, he thought, linking his hand through Rachel's once more.

"We have twenty seconds, I think…" he said, taking a deep breath.

"Is now when we confess our undying love for one another? I feel like I'm about to face the firing squad. Fuck." Santana could feel her palm going sweaty clasped against Rachel's, her own nerves suddenly making their existence apparent in an uncomfortable constriction in her chest. Maybe she did care.

Rachel muttered under her breath, her eyelids fluttering with every second.

"Are you praying?" Kurt whispered incredulously, his eyebrows shooting up past his grey sweatband.

"So what if I was?"

"You're ridiculous."

"Oh, fuck. Listen, if I screw this up, please don't kick me out."

Kurt and Rachel spoke simultaneously. "What?"

"I love you? You guys are my best friends?"

"Oh, God."

The slow, melancholy opening notes of Ellie's Ballad began playing around the auditorium, and the three of them began to move as if they were shadows of one another; their routine twelve years in the making, missteps and mistakes abound, finally perfected.