Hello my lovelies! I know I shouldn't, but if you know anything about me you know I can't help myself, so I've started another story. This time, with an awesome coauthor and good friend, images-in-words! Although slightly unconventional for me to have a Santana/Cassie pairing instead of Shelandra or PezBerry, I've decided to change it up a bit with this story, and I hope you'll find it tasteful and refreshing. Let us know what you think! Love always, Hayley

Hey, everybody. This is my second collaborative effort with the wonderful and talented Hayley, and I couldn't be more excited to share it with you all. Get ready for all the unusual pairings, sassy dialogue and emotional exploration you can handle. We hope you enjoy reading this story as much as we've enjoyed creating it. Please let us know what you think! ~ images-in-words

Chapter 1: Zen and the Art of Color Coding

Brooklyn was called "America's Fourth Largest City" at one time, but to the three kids from Lima, Ohio, who stood in the middle of a loft in the Bushwick section of that New York City borough, it might as well have been another planet. They'd been to the larger cities in Ohio, of course - Cleveland, Dayton, Cincinnati - as part of their high school's competitive show choir, but only briefly, and none of those places had looked like this. Brooklyn was tough, forbidding, pretty much nothing like the suburbs in which they'd grown up, but that was exactly what they liked about the place. Well, that and the fact that the rent was cheaper here than anywhere else they'd looked.

Santana Lopez looked out the window with a critical eye. So this was the big, bad Apple? It didn't look like anything she couldn't handle. Her roommates and fellow first-year students at NYADA (the New York Academy of the Dramatic Arts), Rachel Berry and Kurt Hummel, were more the typical wide-eyed small town kids, looking around at everything as though they'd just been released from a sensory deprivation tank, but Santana wasn't intimidated. There wasn't much that intimidated her. No, she wasn't actually from the tough Lima Heights Adjacent neighborhood, as she'd often claimed back in high school, but she'd spent enough time there visiting some of her less parentally-approved friends to know how to act in places like this.

Don't look like a victim, and you won't be a victim, they said. Damn straight.

She laughed at that last thought. The only straight she was, was straight-up bitch, and this city was about to learn that first-hand. Let Kurt and Rachel tremble at the sheer size of the new world into which they were about to plunge. Santana Lopez knew no fear. She'd survived being a cheerleader under the world's most insane coach, one Sue Sylvester - if she could survive that, she was sure she could survive anything.

"I still think we waited too long to move in," Kurt called from his position in the loft, looking through the kitchen window. He motioned for movers to put loads of boxes in the corners, knowing that as soon as they left the trio could start to sort through their things and make their new place feel like a home. "I mean we start classes tomorrow."

"Oh, Kurt, where's your sense of adventure?" Rachel piped up, her eyes ever-lit with optimism. Santana couldn't help but roll her eyes. "It's not like we have to unpack everything at once, and-"

"That's easy to say now, before classes have started," Santana cut her off, annoyed at Rachel's logic, which was unreasonable to say the least. "But after tomorrow, we're going to be swamped and frustrated because we're never going to be able to find a damn thing we need if we're constantly having to search through all these boxes…"

Although Kurt had color coded everyone's things, that didn't make their situation less stressful. Of course they'd had to wait until the first to get the keys to the place, and classes just had to start on September 2nd. Santana shook her head, amazed and the number of boxes being dragged into the loft. How could three people own so much stuff?! "I'm never going to find my textbooks or my dance bag in this mess," she sighed. "And I have an 8:30 tomorrow morning. Dance 101. I need my stuff."

"And you'll find it," Kurt waved his hand, blowing her off. "Don't be so negative, you're mucking up the atmosphere."

"I'm doing what?" Santana stared him down. "This is a polluted metropolitan concrete jungle, Ladyface. I'm the best thing that's happened to the atmosphere here in years."

Kurt huffed, crossing his arms over his chest. "If you say so." His haughty tone clearly indicated that he didn't believe her for a second.

Inserting her small frame between her two friends, Rachel decided it was time to play referee before tempers were lost and harsher words were said. It was far too soon for them to be fighting amongst themselves. No, they should be celebrating - or at least they would be, once the movers were finally done getting all their belongings into the loft. The bottles of wine she had snuck from her fathers' wine cellar would see to that.

"Santana, Kurt, please. Let's not fight on our first day here. We've got a lot to do, and not a lot of time to do it. Santana, you're right - we shouldn't wait to unpack at least some of our things. Let's find the most important things, the things for which we have the most immediate need, first, and then devote some time each day to unpacking the rest." She couldn't tell whether or not Santana was mollified by her suggestion, so she turned to Kurt. "And Kurt, I'm certain that your color coding system is very nearly as efficacious as mine, so I have no doubt that we'll be able to find said important things quickly and easily. Is this plan agreeable to you?" The fashionable boy nodded, indicating that he was on board. She turned to the other girl. "Santana? Is that acceptable?"

"Sure," she said, letting out a sigh. "I guess so. But if I can't find my dance bag, one of you is buying me a new one - and I assure you, those things are not cheap."

"We will find your dance bag," Rachel rolled her eyes, motioning for Santana to move out of the way of the group of movers positioning their couch in the corner of the loft. "Let's just get everything in here and we'll worry about the rest later. We need to take this one step at a time."

Santana grumbled something unintelligible, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning her body against the doorframe of the bathroom while the last few movers finished up and Kurt paid them. "I guess the first thing we need to do then," she spoke and then smirked at Rachel's rapt attention to her wording. "The first step," she corrected herself. "Would be to sort out these boxes by room and color." she knew if she didn't get on the organization bandwagon they were never going to accomplish anything.

"Right," Kurt pulled the loft door shut and locked it, wiping his hands together. "I'm going to start with my clothes first…" his eyes scanned the labels on the boxes.

"Shocker," Santana made jazz hands at the boy. "We wouldn't want anything to remain folded a minute longer than it absolutely must, after all."

"Ha ha," Kurt deadpanned. "Very funny." He squinted at one of the labels, then clapped his hands happily. "My sweaters! Come to papa…" he said, lifting the box and carrying it to one of the bedrooms, stopping short when he realized that there was no door. "Why...why is there no door to this room?" He looked around the loft, and his face took on a slightly greenish pallor as the true horror of things became clear. "Why are there no doors to any of the bedrooms?" His voice, high even at the calmest of times, came out as a strangled shriek. "Rachel, did you know about this? You know, when you talked to the realtor?"

The petite girl looked back at him with the expression he knew meant she was deep in thought, trying to recall each and every detail of what was said when she'd spoken with both the realtor and the landlord. "No...but maybe that's one of the reasons why the rent is so low," she said slowly. "Oh, well." She shrugged. "We'll adapt. That's what we do, right? We adapt and evolve to the changing circumstances of our lives."

"Changing circumstances? Rachel, I did not sign up for a situation in which one or both of you could possibly see me in any stage of undress! Or, worse, I could see one of you! We have to do something about this!"

Santana could barely suppress her laughter at Kurt's rapidly escalating distress. The poor guy looked like he was about to hyperventilate himself right into a coma.

"Settle down, settle down, Porcelain," she called out. "Calm yourself, please. Or at least go faint on the couch. Everything will be fine. We'll just, like, put up some curtains or something to create the illusion of privacy."

Rachel, who'd been looking glum at her friend's emotional state, brightened at Santana's words. "Yes! That would work. It's both economical and requires minimum manual labor. Very good idea, Santana."

San smirked. "It's a privacy curtain, Hobbit, not a miracle from God…" Rachel's over-enthusiastic nature sometimes drained the energy right out of her. She searched for and found a few of her boxes, color-coded purple. Stacking them on top of each other, she found her previously claimed bedroom and took them there, after which she found her bedframe and dragged it, followed by her mattress. This is gonna take more effort than I had hoped, and it's already 3:30. "Can I suggest, if we're going to be busy unpacking 'essentials,' that we order Domino's or something for dinner?" she called from her room, shoving boxes to the side to make room for more. "We really don't have the time to be messing with the kitchen supplies. Santana needs her beauty sleep."

"Santana needs to calm herself," Kurt called back with a loving eye roll. "But pizza isn't a bad idea."

"Pizza is never a bad idea," Rachel added.

"Then it's decided," San took a break from pulling heavy things around and wiped her hands on her pants, pulling her phone out of her back pocket. She made quick work of finding the number to the nearest Domino's and making sure they would deliver before calling and ordering two medium pizzas. One veggie special for Rachel and Kurt, since she knew they were into that sort of thing, the other half-cheese, half-pepperoni. The trio worked in silence for a little while, thankful when their dinner arrived. They multitasked their way through the rest of the night, pulling out essentials like shower supplies, a few dishes, bedding, and clothing for the next few days. By 10:30, the three of them were beat and knew they needed to pull things together for their first day at NYADA, which would come sooner than they hoped.

"I call first shower!" Rachel announced, running towards the bathroom before anybody could actually protest.

"We would expect nothing less," Santana called back, flopping herself down on the couch in their makeshift "living room" which more or less consisted of their sofa, a ton of boxes, and half of an entertainment center (the other half which they still had to assemble). Although Santana absolutely loved dance, she was nervous to start the class at such an early call time. Mornings weren't exactly her thing, and she'd heard stories about her professor being kind of a hard ass. Her muscles were already aching from the move, and she wanted to make a good impression.

"I hope she leaves some hot water for us," Kurt whispered conspiratorially, drawing a soft laugh from Santana.

"I hope there is hot water. And soundproof walls. You just know that Rachel turns a shower into a command performance, with an imaginary audience of thousands."

Moments later, they had their answer regarding the walls, as the first notes of Defying Gravity came through the sound of running water and clanking pipes, loud and clear. Kurt and Santana laughed. The college experience was likely to change all of them in numerous ways, but some things would never change, and Rachel's tendency to sing at every opportunity was one of them.

When an unexpected scream nearly took the bathroom door off its hinges a few minutes after that, making both of them jump in surprise (Kurt throwing the issue of Vogue he'd been leafing through straight up in the air, Santana nearly losing her grip on her phone), they had their answer regarding the hot water. The sound of running water abruptly stopped, and Rachel's furious face, surrounded by a curtain of dripping wet hair, emerged from a crack in the door.

"This is not funny. So don't you dare laugh."

The two of them looked at each other with expressions of disbelief, then threw their heads back and laughed louder than they'd ever laughed in their lives. It almost drowned out the sound of Rachel stomping her foot on the linoleum floor and slamming the bathroom door shut. Almost. Santana knew she'd have to call the building superintendent about the hot water in the morning before she left for class, but this made it all worth it.

She was the only one of the three of them who didn't mind taking a quick cold shower (Kurt didn't have classes until early in the afternoon, so he decided to hope that the water problem would be corrected in time for him to shower before then). It was better for her hair, and good for her muscles since she needed to stretch them out before bed. She did so quickly and then changed into yoga pants and a tank top, making up her bed so she could still get some decent sleep before her 6:30 alarm went off.

Sometimes I wonder if it would have been easier to just live on campus, she sighed, setting the alarm on her phone. Then I wouldn't have to get up so damned early. Or maybe next semester I'll just try to avoid such early classes. Does NYADA even have night classes?

She reached down and checked her bag to make sure she had everything she would need for the next day, skimming through her schedule quickly. Dance 101, Theatre History, and Ballet 100 tomorrow… she was thankful, at least, that her schedule started on a Tuesday and hoped that it wouldn't be as bad as having three hard hitting classes on a Monday. At least they're all in the same building...I have July for BOTH dance classes? Are there no other dance professors? Damn…

So she was supposed to have the hard ass for not one, but two classes, both of which met twice of week. It was clear to Santana that she was in for one hell of a semester. Suddenly there came a knock at the door frame, diverting her attention. She looked up, adjusting the glasses she hated for anyone to see her wearing. It was Rachel, now dry and calm, looking much less like a spitting cat and more like herself again.

"Yes, short stack? You can come in."

The hastily hung privacy curtain parted, and Rachel stepped into the barely furnished room. "I just wanted to wish you the best of luck tomorrow," the girl said earnestly, twisting a lock of her hair between her fingers. "This is going to be a challenging time for all of us, but if we stick together and support each other like we did in glee club, I know that we can not only meet the challenges ahead, but rise above them with flying colors."

Santana found that she had to smile. Yes, Rachel's excitability and ebullience could be - and frequently was - exhausting, but the little diva cared more than anybody she'd ever known. The heart on her sleeve beat 24/7 with positivity and good intentions, and Santana found that strangely admirable, if slightly insane.

"Thanks, Rachel. Good luck to you too. Now go rest those golden vocal cords of yours - I'm sure you've also got a big day ahead of you."

Beaming her signature megawatt smile, Rachel clapped her hands together softly. "Yes, I certainly do. And I can't wait for it to arrive! It is the first step on the road to stardom for me, after all. And you'll be able to say you were there when it happened."

"Oh, joy. Well, on that not at all narcissistic note - goodnight, Rachel."

"Goodnight, Santana." With that, the girl marched out of the room as though she was headed right onto the Broadway stage. And maybe she was, at that. Rachel had always been ambitious, working towards this dream since early childhood. Still, Santana had to roll her eyes one last time at the girl before she tossed her class schedule back into her bag, turned out the lamp on her nightstand, and closed her eyes. Faintly, she heard Rachel making the same speech in Kurt's room as sleep began to claim her. Before she knew it, she was as out as the lamp.