She shivered slightly and pulled the zipper of her jacket up a little higher. It was starting to get cold inside the car, with the engine not running the heater also wasn't working and by now she had sat there long enough that the chill of the autumn night had started to creep in. Once again she looked up to the house straight ahead, where there was nothing to be seen.
Brittany sighed. Santana was in there for so long already and she didn't know whether she was supposed to take that as a good sign or a bad one. Maybe her abuela had been hidden and Santana had had to search every corner of the house, old people did get lost sometimes, didn't they? Or maybe she was feeding Santana all kinds of stuff Sue would never let them have, as Brittany knew how excellent a cook Santana's grandmother was, but then again, she pondered, if that was the case wouldn't Santana have called her in, to eat with them? She had always been over here, too, when she had been only Santana's best friend. Or maybe...
Brittany stopped abruptly in her musings when the front door opened, light spilling out onto the porch into the cold night and inside the light a Santana-shaped shadow. She took two steps down the front-stairs, slow steps, swaying as if she didn't see, shoulders hanging and Brittany bounded out of the car. One leap and she had gathered Santana into her arms, only to have the girl fall completely into her.

Brittany didn't ask any questions, the way Santana's shoulders were shaking and the sounds of her sobs muffled by Brittany's varsity jacket were all the answers she needed. Fingers as shaky as the rest of her body dug into Brittany's back, making her feel like a tree you wanted to desperately climb but couldn't. No, she remembered, the figure of speech was a rock, but then again she wasn't Rachel Berry and when the girl she loved more than anything in the world was crying in her arms she didn't give a fuck about metaphors.

She pressed her lips to Santana's temple, placing a soothing kiss right beneath her hairline which made Santana hold her even tighter. The skin her lips touched was cold and Brittany remembered that they were outside, at night, in late November. They couldn't stay here, for more than one reason.

"Give me your keys Santana, we need to get somewhere warm before we get sick." Brittany murmured into her ear, gently detaching herself a bit, so that she could reach into Santana's pocket and fish out the car-key. Santana didn't respond, simply following silently when Brittany took her hand leading her to her car and tucking her into the passenger seat.

The silence lasted as Brittany backed out of the driveway, rounded the corner and passed two blocks until she was at loss for where to drive, home to Santana's, probably empty, house, her own, Breadstix to get them breadsticks or somewhere completely different. She turned her head right to the girl staring out of the window into the night. "Where do you want to go?" she asked softly. Santana turned her head, regarding Brittany with an empty gaze, no longer crying though the traces on her cheeks still shone wet. "Nowhere, anywhere... I don't care." she said.

So Brittany just drove on without any aim, sort of like they had when the had first gotten their license and had been enjoying the freedom of being able to go wherever whenever for the first time, only then she reflected, the atmosphere had not been so sad but she also hadn't had Santana's hand covering her own on the gearshift, lacing their fingers.

It's those fingers which kept Brittany grounded on the tasks at hand, namely driving safely and being whatever Santana needed right now, otherwise she be afraid of Santana bailing, going back to denying her feelings or worse breaking up with her now that her abuela seemingly didn't take it well. Well that and that state video proclaiming Santana's lady-loving ways, that might have made the bailing a bit more difficult. Yet the fingers were there, curling tightly around Brittany's own, a silent promise of not letting go.

On impulse she lifted their hands to press a kiss to Santana's knuckles. Just because she could, just because it felt right. It finally drew a reaction out of Santana. "If it weren't for you, I wouldn't even know why I was trying," she said, her voice low, hoarse from crying.

She knew it was an inappropriate feeling, but nevertheless the flutter in her belly was there when she heard Santana say those words, to hear that she was not a dumb blonde, an easy lay but someone worth trying for, fighting for. It set her heart at ease, filled it even more with love.

"We're trying together, and we'll get by," she promised in the most optimistic voice she could produce, holding Santana's dark sad eyes with her own, before she placed another soft kiss to their joined hands.

"Sometimes I envy you your family," Santana confessed a minute later, her gaze once again directed out of the window.

"They are yours too, you know," she replied quietly. "Yeah, but still..." Santana trailed of and Brittany understood. She too had wished Santana's family to be like her own, who, when they told them at dinner a few days back had beamed and professed how happy they were for them and then her mother had fetched dessert from the kitchen like every other night Santana had stayed over. That night Santana had confessed later in bed, that Brittany's father had pulled her aside to give her the formal 'treat my daughter well'-speech, which consisted of "You always made her happy. Continue to do so." She had given her dad an extra big hug the next morning.

"She'll come around, honey, just give her a little time. She always loved you."

It was meant to be encouraging not wrenching a sob from Santana's throat. "No, she won't. She said it made her uncomfortable and now that I have made my choice, she made hers."

She didn't know how to respond to that, this went far beyond jerks in the hallways telling Santana she needed to be "straightened out" or the inept attempts of Finn Hudson to right what he made wrong in the first place, those she had handled springing to the defense of her girlfriend and shooting dirty looks, but Santana's abuela was a bigger thing and also one where she couldn't do anything.

"I know it's stupid." Santana said as she angrily wiped the fresh tears from her eyes, "she should be the one to feel bad about not seeing that being gay doesn't change a thing about who I am."

Brittany wanted to interject, assure Santana she was right, it didn't change one thing about the wonderful person she was, but she knew better than to interrupt Santana when she got to the point where she let some of her feelings out. "It's just that I always admired her, she was such a strong woman who always had her own way of doing things. I really hoped she would be proud of me being honest." She sounded so forlorn Brittany couldn't help herself, she pulled up right and flung herself over the center console, enveloping Santana in a tight embrace. "She should be!" Brittany whispered in her ear fiercely. "She really should be. You're so much stronger than her Santana and I'm more than proud to call you my girlfriend."

Santana kissed her, clinging to her and kissing her as if her life depended on her alone. "You're my girlfriend," she murmured against Brittany's lips, having Brittany breathe in the words before she exhaled them as "Yes I am. Proudly so."

They held and kissed each other until the car started to get cool once again, Brittany detaching herself reluctantly from Santana. It was starting to get late. "Do you want to go to my house?" She asked. "Yeah..." she replied after a pause, recalling Brittany's words in her head. "Yeah, might as well get used to it."

"You've been over since we were seven, what's there to get used to?" She reached for Santana's hand again, holding it tightly curled in her own. "It'll be okay."