LbN: QW14: Holiday Season.

Everyone she talked to said sophomore year was the hardest. Her twin cousins Louis and Amanda both said they'd wanted to drop out. Her dad said he nearly developed an alcohol problem. Her aunt Karen said she was hospitalized twice. And she hadn't believed them, until now.

"Damn it!" Santana said, throwing her pen. She'd worked through the numbers six times, just to make sure she had everything right. Unfortunately, she was right the first time. She would have to work through Christmas break this year, if she wanted to go on the Tropical Ecology class's field trip to Costa Rica the next summer. Worth it? Hell yeah, but she missed her family. And she wasn't exactly looking forward to breaking the news to her mom.

"What's going on?" Rachel asked, peeking her head around the privacy partition.

Santana sighed and stood up, stretching. "I just realized that I'm going to have to have a working Christmas this year. Say hi to Lima for me."

Rachel, who was packing at the moment, furrowed her brow in confusion. "Are you sure? You can't even manage it for a couple of days?"

"It wouldn't be worth the money for a ticket to just go for a couple of days. Especially since that would set me back a hundred and fifty dollars."

"Right," Rachel said, nodding. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I'm the one that went and picked a biology major. Can you take my family their Christmas gifts? The postal service is delayed up to two weeks, apparently."

"Absolutely. Give them here and I'll pack them now."

"I never thought I'd live to see the day when I was thankful for your crazy animal sweaters, Berry. But these are breakable, so here I find myself in that exact situation."

Rachel snorted with laughter. "Whatever. You've always loved my sweaters. Don't think I don't know about the unicorn one you swiped from me in January."

"I was planning on burning it as an offering to the gods of fashion," Santana deadpanned.

"Sure…."

"Oh, and make sure you get video of Burt meeting Kendrick for the first time."

Rachel rolled her eyes. Kendrick was the black, male, sports-loving version of Santana, so this trip was likely to be an adventure. "Right."

Later that day, after Santana had seen both Rachel and Kurt off, she sat in the empty apartment, trying to figure out a way to make the next three weeks not suck. It came to her after about a solid hour of pouting. She grabbed her phone and hit one of her programed numbers.

"Fabray Crematorium – you kill 'em, we grill 'em!"

"Gross, Quinn!"

The blonde's musical laughter floated through the phone. "What's up, sexy?"

"Besides missing my girlfriend? Curious about her plans for Christmas."

"Eurgh," Quinn groaned. "My mom's slovenly pig of a new boyfriend is all big on going to Aspen for the holidays. On her money, of course. I'm not looking forward to it."

"Tell her you're not coming," Santana said. "Come spend Christmas with me. I have to stay here and I'm going to be so lonely." There was silence, and Santana could basically hear the slow start to the famous Fabray Grin.

"I'll talk to her tonight."

Quinn showed up that Friday, all smiles. "Hey baby!"

"Thank god, you're here! I tried making a batch of Christmas cookies from scratch, and it…."

The smoke alarm went off at that moment.

"Shit!"

Quinn laughed as Santana dashed back into the kitchen. She rolled her suitcase in and left it next to the sofa. "Okay, what – holy crap."

"Don't judge!"

The kitchen was covered in cookie ingredients. It was a wreck. Flour was all over the counter, there were chocolate chips melted to the stove, egg was dripping from one of the cabinets, and Quinn didn't want to speculate about the suspicious green substance in the sink.

"Okay…let's just start from the beginning."

It took them around two hours to bounce back from Santana's catastrophic cookie attempt. Quinn conceded, by the end of it all, that the oven in the apartment was possessed by a demon, and absolved Santana of all responsibility for the extra crispy cookies. They finally had a good four dozen by the time dinner arrived, and they cuddled up on the couch to watch the Charlie Brown Christmas special.

"I could totally get used to this," Santana commented, snagging her fourth cookie and second slice of pizza.

"Me too. But you do know that we can't stay in and eat all break, right? We'll both have gained fifty pounds by the New Year."

"Right?" Santana agreed, laughing. Then her eyes lit up.

"Uh oh – you just got an idea."

"And an awesome one. I know something we can do tomorrow for Christmas Eve."

"Do I even want to know?"

"Don't worry. It's perfectly wholesome, and totally in tune with Christmas spirit," Santana assured her, giving her a kiss on the cheek.

The children's home housed about 40 kids, ages five to fifteen. Santana and Quinn had both spent the morning hanging out with the older kids, and the afternoon doing Christmas crafts with the younger group. As they left that night, the volunteer coordinator welcomed them back any time they wanted.

"We don't have enough people willing to spend time with the kids. The older ones need mentors especially. Come back anytime," she said.

Quinn hailed a cab a bit down the road, and the two of them rode back to the apartment in silence. When they got in, they stood in the kitchen for a moment, just looking at each other.

"Every year?" Quinn said.

"Every year," Santana agreed.

"Will you go back?"

"Yeah. I think that definitely just became a part of my weekly routine. Let's make dinner."

As they sat down to their leftover pizza and turned on A Christmas Story, Quinn nudged Santana.

"Yeah?"

"One day? You know, after we're done with school and everything…. I think I want to adopt."

Santana smiled and nodded.