authors note: okay, so i've fallen in love with glee!AUs recently, so i decided to write one of my own. in this brittana, new directions was never formed, but quinn still got pregnant and left the cheerios, and didn't come back the next year. brittany, santana and kurt are cheerios. this is probably set around the time of season two, except, obviously, not on that timeline.

i'm using a bit of a different style to the one i use normally, and so if it's terrible, please let me know! :) this is un-beta'd, so excuse mistakes :)

this is for beth (I Am Sparkles) as a belated birthday present. i love you. :) you've also got a faberry coming your way.

You are Santana Lopez, and with a smile pinned to your face and your Cheerios uniform exposing as much flesh as it can, you are perfect. Everything about you is wonderful, you are on top, you are a winner, and that is how it will always remain.

With a smile pinned to your face, you are everything. Yet, there's something more behind that drawn on smile, right? Something that you can't quite admit because you're scared, you're so very scared.

.

There are days when you wonder whether it's really all worth it. Each time you pull yourself out of bed in the morning there's that nagging voice that wonders what if you didn't wake up. Sometimes you doubt that anyone would care if you never got up again, but then you pull the thoughts from your mind because you're Santana Fucking Lopez and you're strong—you don't break down.

If only the one thing that made it all worth it could be yours, instead of just a friend. Maybe a best friend, but still, there's the line that you cannot cross. Brittany is your best friend and that is all you will ever be.

It screams at you, the wind, it howls and it mocks you. It's free, and you are tethered to the ground knowing that the one thing you want more than anything else is something you can never have. You can't fight the wind, and so you just stand there, letting it envelope you, and you pretend that you like the wind, the freedom of it, but instead it just reminds you of how tied down you are.

You are tied to the ground in the form of a perfect girl, in a perfect role, with a perfect smile, and you don't want it, not any of it while you don't have her.

.

Sometimes you try to convince yourself that you're okay. I'M OKAY, you'll yell, I'M OKAY, and yet it doesn't help because you know you're lying to yourself, and then you're disgusted that you even tried that freaky thing, when you tell yourself things that you are not. You don't need a therapist, you don't need help, and it certainly isn't depression that is crippling you and tying you down. It's not that, it can't be that.

I'M OKAY, you tell yourself, and you say it so much that you wonder why you don't believe it yet. You wake up in the morning and it's I'M OKAY, I'M OKAY, but you're not.

You try to make yourself something you are not and then you fall. You fall over and over again, and you can't even show it for an instant because, fuck it, you're strong, you're upheld, you are everything, and you will be everything as long as you are alive.

I AM NOT IN LOVE WITH BRITTANY, you tell yourself, and that is the worst lie.

.

She doesn't know. She'll never know how you feel and that is how it will stay. You do not show emotion, you don't. You're Santana Lopez and you are strong. You are Santana Lopez and you kiss, you fuck, and ditch whomever you end up with, and that is how it will always go.

Love does not exist. That is one thing you know for sure.

.

Perhaps it's her hair. Maybe her eyes, maybe her smile or her voice. You suspect that it is entirely her, entirely her and nothing else and everything that she is. She is perfect, she is she is she is perfect you know that it is everything, she is everything and they are nothing and yet you are afraid. You are afraid of what they will think of you if you walk down the corridor, hand in hand with Brittany, because you can't, because you're Head Cheerleader, and you are at the top, ever since Quinn got pregnant two years ago, and you are nothing, and you sneer down at the likes of Rachel Berry, because you are better than her, you are better than them all.

I AM EVERYTHING, you tell yourself frantically, because you are; you have to be everything.

And yet you are not, you are not everything because you're walking down the corridor with Brittany just a step behind, and you cannot tell her you're in love with her and you are breaking.

No. You are broken.

.

Cheerio practice begins to turn into a chore, and it's not something you enjoy anymore. You're the Head Cheerleader, for Gods sake, and yet the smile permanently pinned onto your face is a mask, not allowing exposure of the things you are truly feeling. The Cheerios dance around you and the pride that you used to feel is gone. You're there in the middle, smiling, and dancing, and you feel nothing.

The thing that hurts the most is just how you good you are at acting you're okay. Nothing of what you are feeling shows through, and you are Santana Lopez, smiling, floating through the hallways, and you are invincible. You are everything; you are everything.

I AM EVERYTHING, you tell yourself I AM EVERYTHING I AM I SWEAR I AM EVERYTHING.

And yet you know that is a lie.

.

You sneer down at the losers, you throw slushies at them, taunt them, and you fire insults at them. You're jealous, though, of all of them. Because they are free, and you are not. I AM EVERYTHING, you tell yourself, getting sick of the lie that you continually repeat, I AM EVERYTHING.

You're joking, and you're laughing with the Cheerios, and one of them makes a comment about you running out of guys to shag, soon, and you laugh.

"Maybe you'd better switch to girls," Kurt Hummel, one of your fellow Cheerios says jokingly.

You laugh, you laugh and then you turn the conversation, terrified, because if he knows it is all over. I AM EVERYTHING; you repeat, I AM EVERYTHING.

I AM NOT IN LOVE WITH BRITTANY, you tell yourself again. Maybe if you say it enough times, it will become the truth.

.

Coward, you hiss at yourself in the mirror. You're shaking, wiping the lipstick from the corners of your mouth and making yourself look perfect (I AM EVERYTHING, I SWEAR I AM, I AM EVERYTHING).

You are not perfect, and your hand shakes; thinking of what you're trying to do, or rather, say. Three words should not be so difficult to say, and yet you are shaking, and you feel sick, because you can't tell her, you can't, you can't, and yet you must because you must be everything you have to be everything.

Without Brittany, you don't think that you can be everything.

You smirk at the mirror, turning on your heel a way you have done a thousand times before, and you feel like Santana Lopez, the real Santana Lopez, and then you step out into the unknown, to tell your best friend that you love her.

You love her.

I AM EVERYTHING; you tell yourself as you step closer to your fate, I AM EVERYTHING.

.

"Britt?" you whisper, walking up to her as she goes through some of the more complicated steps in the newest Cheerio routine.

She finishes off with a twirl, and turns to face you, her face lighting up, and then you are scared. You are terrified of what she might say when you tell her how you feel, and a part of you wants to run away, and say you didn't come for anything in particular. You are a coward, and you know that, and yet you can't wait any longer to know the ending of your story.

"I need to tell you something," you say, and your voice shakes and you are shaking and you are so scared, you are.

She smiles, and steps closer, and you can feel a breath catch in your throat, and you think maybe that this is what heaven is like—maybe love does exist.

"Listen, Britt," you begin, and you have no idea where to go from there. You open your mouth and then close it, and she nods at you to go on, and you're yelling inside your mind because what can you say, how can you go on?"

"Fuck it," you shout, and then your voice softens, thinking of whom you are speaking to, "Britt, I think I'm in love with you."

You can't bring yourself to look at her face until you are finished, and your voice is shaking, and you are shaking, and you can't you can't you can't.

"No." you continue, "I know I'm in love with you, and…" you stop, and slowly raise you head, looking to see Brittany's expression.

Her expression is everything you might have dreamed of, filled with love, and the pure simplicity of everything, everything and nothing else. "You are everything," you whisper, and that is when she leans in to kiss you.

Her lips are everything, she is everything, and everyone who thinks that you are wrong is nothing, and YOU ARE EVERYTHING, YOU ARE EVERYTHING.

All of the pain, the numbness, the loneliness is gone in one small capture of your lips, and she catches your heart even more than before, and you are gone, and you don't care what anyone thinks, don't care about your position as Head Cheerleader, or the fact that Puck is crawling back to you, and expects to be in your bed within a week, and all of the world is you and Brittany, and, really, you couldn't think of anything more perfect.

"Wow," you say, drawing apart from Brittany, and you see it in her eyes, you see the everything that she makes you.

She smiles at you, and you're lost for what to say, and so Brittany herself breaks the silence. "You know, you're everything too, Santana."

For once, that statement is the truth.

authors note ii: please don't favourite without reviewing. :)