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Chapter Text

Brittany

  "Wake up Sam! It's time to go." My brother doesn't get out of bed and I'm starting to freak out because we only have 30 minutes to get ready and he still has to take a shower before we leave. I jumped on his back and hit him with a pillow.

"Get... your... ass... out... of... this... bed... NOW!" The pillow attack definitely didn't work because he hasn’t even moved a finger yet, so I had to take extreme measures. Three words: Ice Ice Baby

I grabbed my phone with a pink case, clicked on my playlist called "EMERGENCY" and turned up the volume. Vanilla Ice started to play and it only took Sam 3 seconds to get out of his bed and to start getting ready.

"Okay okay I'm up! Now pleaseee turn off that abomination of a song!" I'll never understand why my brother hates this song so much but I think that it's hilarious, and very useful sometimes. I gave him a hug (like I do every morning) and he left the room, covering his ears with his hands.

I chuckled and sat down on the yellow couch in our bedroom and grabbed my notebook to draw something, while waiting for Sam to take a shower. I used to have a bedroom for myself but last year I asked my parents if I could sleep in Sam's bedroom like we did when we were kids. I felt safer knowing that he was just a few steps away from me, in case something happened. My parents agreed because they thought that it would help me to get better. Sam thought that was a good idea too so I eventually moved to his room and my old bedroom became a little dance studio for me and sometimes a gym for my brother. It was a win win.

I only noticed that I was still vibing and listening to my emergency playlist when Noah came through the window and yelled, "DISCO SUCKS". The song that was playing belongs to his part of the playlist (he hates disco music).

"Good morning to you too," I said when he took my notebook to draw a pink mohawk on my unicorn. He signed the sheet with his nickname "Puckasaurus" and handed me the sheet to sign it with my name too. I laughed when he fake coughed because I forgot to draw a little heart instead of a dot on the letter "i" like I always do when I write "Britt". He took the page out of my hand, folded it and kept our master-piece in his wallet like it was the most normal thing ever.

He sat down next to me and gave me a kiss on the head before changing the emergency playlist to "Noah's Music". Apart from his family, I'm the only person who calls him Noah. He hates when someone besides his family does it (except for me of course).

“I’m The Only One” started to play and he grabbed me to dance with him. We were literally screaming at each other's face "When all your promises are gone I’M THE OOOONLY ONE"

When Sam entered the bedroom, already dressed up and smelling good. He laughed at us. "I swear to god, if I didn't know that you two were best friends, I would think that you are banging my sister." We laughed with him and Noah put on his womanizer look and said, "Who said I'm not?" "Shut up asshole" Sam and I said at the same time.

Noah grabbed a pillow and hit my brother's chest who took his blue Nerf and started shooting after Noah. "You're dead Puckerman!"

I was preparing myself to join the war but another person entered through the window and tickled me (my biggest weakness) in my back. I fell on the floor laughing like crazy.

"BLAINE STOP I CANT BREATHE!!" I was laughing at the begging but when he didn't stop, I started to panic and lose control of my breathing. Blaine noticed what was going on and stopped immediately. He said "shit" and the guys stopped fighting to go see what was going on. When they saw that my breathing wasn't normal, Sam turned to Noah and said "You know what do.“

Noah grabbed my hand and Sam and Blaine started to sing ‘Can't help Falling in Love With You’. A couple of years ago we found out that the lyrics of the song help me to calm down like nothing else can, so whenever I feel like I can't breathe, one of them just has to sing "Like a river flows surely to the sea, darling , so it goes some things are meant to be" and I'll be fine.

It's weird because it only works with the three of them and I know it because one time, when I was 10, I broke my leg when I first used my skateboard. I started to freak out because of the pain and my mom tried to calm me down by singing the song but she wasn't getting any results so she yelled at my brother to come outside and sing for me. And it worked.

The other time was in my first surf competition when I was 13. I was so scared of failing or disappointing my family that I panicked. My dad tried the same thing my mom did and sang for me but, just like her, he failed so he looked for Sam who had run off to talk to some girls. My father ran to him but when they returned, Noah and Blaine were sitting in the sand next to me and singing. The fear vanished and I got two victories in one day: I won first place in the competition and another couple of personal saviors.

"Are you okay Britt? I'm so sorry I didn't mean to..." Blaine was worried about me but I calmed him down, "Don't worry, I'm fine". He helped me get up and I smiled at the three worried boys in front of me. "I'm fine guys! And if we don't leave in 5 minutes, we'll be late for the bus!"

But Sam complained "No way you're going on a 5 hours bus trip after that" and Blaine and Puck agreed with him so I gave up. "Fine. We can take dad's car."

Noah screamed, "SHOTGUN" and ran downstairs. "Oh you wish," Blaine yelled and ran after his brother to see who would get to the car first.

I was about to grab my bags and leave the bedroom when Sam took my things and said, "I'll take this, Britt" and went downstairs. I put on my pink sweater and my yellow all stars, matching with my flower-pattern dress. I kept my phone in my backpack and remembered that I left my notebook on the window seat, so I went to get it. I grabbed my book, looked outside the window and saw Blaine and Noah fighting for the front seat and Sam laughing at them while putting my bags in the trunk. I took a look at the scraps of paper from the page that had been pulled out and held the book close to my chest, still looking outside. And I sighed....

"God I'm so damn lucky".

Chapter Text

It's only been 20 minutes since we left Seabrook and I already miss my parents a lot. They decided that I need a break from the real world before I go to college, or at least before I decide what to do with my life. They came up with the idea that it might be good if I spent the whole summer with my grandparents.
They live in a small town in North Carolina called Saint. The neighbourhood is lovely and everyone is like one big family. Everybody goes to church every Sunday morning and they have a town meeting every week. Each family brings food and there's a big dinner after every meeting.

My favorite thing about Saint are the big fields and the beautiful farms with horses and pigs and all the animals you can imagine. There’s so much space to run around and play with your friends. One of the fields has a single big tree, and when my parents were young, they built a tree house. It was kind of their little secret and when I was older, they told me and Sam about it. Even after all those years it still exists and it’s one of my favorite places to be in Saint. You can even stay the night and watch the most amazing sunrises.

Everyone in town knows who we are because my parents are from Saint and most of their childhood friends still live there. They are welcoming and they're all like family to me. I used to spend my summers there, but when I grew up my love for surfing just got bigger and bigger and I didn't want to miss all the fun that I could have at the beach with my friends. I still go there during the holidays because even though I love Seabrook, it's not possible to stay away from my grandpa and grandma for a long a time.
I was so excited to go because I miss my grandparents and my friend Marley, but if I was going to spend my entire summer in Saint, I would be apart from Blaine, Sam and Noah for 3 months and that was something that could never happen.

Blaine and Noah’s moms have been my parents’ best friends since high school. I call them auntie Melissa and auntie Alexa and they are amazing. We are neighbours and we basically live together and have every meal together. It's like a big crazy family. We have a game night every Thursday: we start with dinner (cooked by us kids) and then we play a bunch of games, sing karaoke and watch a movie. Sometimes we discuss family things too. It's basically when we have special announcements like a new boyfriend or a job promotion, or to talk about serious issues.

During one of those dinners my parents talked about how they wanted me to go to Saint for the summer, to clear my mind and to have some fun. Noah literally yelled at my parents.
"Hell no! There's no way I'm going to spend an entire fucking summer without her" and my father calmed him down "We know that the four of you kids are inseparable, so we talked with Mel and Alex and we decided that all of you are going to Saint". I almost cried "Oh my god... really?"

"It's all set up. You'll leave in 3 weeks." Alexa said.
Blaine jumped out of his chair and hugged my parents "Thank you so much Ellie and Steve.".
After dinner, my mom showed up in my room - I mean, Sam's bedroom (he was sleeping at Puckerman's) - and laid down next to me. She whispered in my ear, "I love you Sunshine, I just want you to be happy" and before I fell asleep with my mom hugging me, I answered her back, "I love you too mom."

"Britt!" Sam woke me up from my thoughts. "It's your turn to pick a song," he said, looking at me through the car mirror. Noah begged, "please don't choose sh-..."
"SHOUT" Blaine and I screamed at the same time. Noah complained, "Fuck." Sam chuckled because, just like me and Blaine, he knows that deep down Noah likes when me and Blaine sing this song (which we do at least once a day). Me and Blaine were singing and dancing in the backseat and I could see Noah quietly singing along with us and Sam.
The rest of the trip was basically just us singing and playing games. It was mostly fun, except for the time when I had to pee and there was no service area, so Sam stopped the car and I did it in the middle of a highway.

During the last hour of our trip we could only see farms and big fields with animals and lots of trees. I saw the beautiful landscape passing by quickly through my car window. "Oh, how I missed the countryside," Sam sighed. "And Marley.." I teased and Noah raised his eyebrows, confused "Dude, you have a girl and you didn't tell me?" Sam's face turned red and he said, "She's just a friend.” I winked at Blaine, who was sitting next me, and I whispered to him "Hm hm. We’ll see about that."

Marley is my best friend from Saint. We have known each other since we were kids because our families are friends and her mom works at my grandma's flower shop. We talk on the phone all the time, but I haven’t seen her personally since last year. I really miss her. Sam doesn't admit it, but I know that he has a crush on her since, like, forever and I'm pretty sure that she likes him too but both of them are too shy to take the first step. If they don't do anything about their feelings this summer, I will have to step in and find a way to put those two together.

I was looking outside of the window and I saw Saint's welcome sign: "Welcome to Saint. We are happy to have you". I was already feeling so excited and warm just thinking about hugging my grandpa and grandma. I started to recognize my parents' friends' houses, some shops and the town library. "We're almost there," Sam said, and 2 minutes later we were parked in our grandma's driveway.

My grandma was holding this cute colored poster saying "Welcome family! We missed you" and my grandpa threw confetti. Sam honked at them and Noah stuck his head out of the car window and yelled "PUCKSAURUS IS HERE!!" Sam stopped the car and Blaine and I ran into my grandparents' arms and hugged them tight. "We missed you so much!" I said. "We missed you too my babies!" my grandpa cried.
My grandmother grabbed Sam's face and hugged him. "Sam you are so grown up!" and he chuckled, "Grandma we face time every week". My grandparents are old, but they have young spirits. They have social media and my grandpa post photos of us every day. He even posted one picture of Blaine buying his first bow tie.
Noah greeted my grandma with a hug and did his "secret handshake" with my grandfather. They are rock n' roll besties.

I heard a voice inside "I need help here!" My grandma laughed and said, "I almost forgot! Come here to meet my family kiddo". I was confused about who was inside because my grandparents live alone, so I thought that it might be one of their employees.

When the girl stepped outside, she was shielding her eyes from the sun, so that I couldn’t see her face. I immediately noticed the dark, flowy hair falling down onto her shoulders. When she saw us, she dropped her hand to wave at us and her eyes locked with mine. It felt like she was staring right into my soul. She smiled. I decided there and then, that it was the most beautiful smile I have ever seen.

"Hello, I’m Santana.”

Chapter Text

Santana

I got up at 6am, put on my red dark boots and my black cowboy hat – I looked smoking hot – and I went downstairs to pick up an apple for Snixx.

Snixx has been my mate, my best friend and my confident since I was 10. She’s a pretty good listener for a horse. Snixx is a Friesian with long dark hair, which is only one of the few things we actually have in common.

My moms adopted her because her mother rejected her when she was born. Her owners didn’t know how to fix the situation, so my mom Holly just decided to go for it and bring her home. My other mom Cassie didn’t like the idea at first but once she saw the little Foal, she immediately fell in love. It’s funny, because that is exactly what happened to me.

Just like Snixx, my mother rejected me too. I was only a month old when my biological mother dropped me off at an orphanage. She didn’t even bother to knock on the door, she just left me at the orphanage’s entrance in the middle of the night with my clothes on and a little blanket wrapped around me. Now that I think about it, that kind of sounds like I’m Harry Potter.

Only two small things were left on the stairs with me, a small golden necklace with a little songbird and a tape record with a note: “This will help to calm her down. Please take care of my little girl the way I wouldn’t have been able to. I love you dearly, Mommy”.

Apparently, my mother wrote the song that was on the recorder because when I was about 8 years old, Quinn and I searched for the song all over the internet and we couldn’t find it. We googled the lyrics, we asked my music teacher to write down the chord progression to look for it and we even once went to a music store to look for sheet music, but we didn’t find it. And believe me, we were pretty good detectives. I was totally bummed out because I thought I would finally find out who my mother was or at least who wrote the song, but Quinn was there to cheer me up. The day before, she had taken 3$ her mother had forgotten in the living room, so she went to a small corner shop and bought both of us some popsicles.

Quinn’s mom was (and still is) the owner of the orphanage, so she was basically raised with me and the other kids. She and her mother lived there too, because her mother said that she could take better care of the kids that way and Quinn was able to make many friends.

But this is not like one of those sad stories that we see in movies about kids being abused or human trafficked or whatever. It was never like that.

The orphanage is a big, fancy house in Louisiana. We had one big bedroom for the girls and one for the boys, a big living room, a library, a games room, a huge kitchen and my favorite part, a huge garden. We were really just one gigantic family living in an enormous villa.

There was nothing I loved more than playing with my friends outside, especially with Quinn. We used to play football and choreograph dance numbers for Spice Girl’s songs.

One time, when we were 8 years old, we sneaked out to go to the 24 hours shop and buy the “Spiceworld” album. We were never caught, because Quinn and I were like ninjas. Pretty badass for a couple of 8-year old girls.

Not that we didn’t get I trouble for a bunch of other stuff.
One time, we snuck into the boy’s room in the middle of the night and shaved off one boy’s eyebrows and drew on the other boys face with Quinn’s mom make-up. It’s not that we wanted to do that, but David and Azimio had made fun of one of the younger girls the day before.
She was playing jump rope and they kept tripping her from behind, so of course we had to avenge her. After that, none of the boys would be brave enough to make fun of the younger girls again, because they knew what would come for them.

When I stepped into the barn I was ripped out of my thoughts when someone caught my attention.

“Good morning Frankenteen. Already up?” I greeted my friend Finn who was brushing Snixx. I gave my lady the apple I brought from the kitchen.

“Good morning Satan. I mean Santana,” he corrected himself. I punched him in the shoulder and he chuckled, “I know how much you like to take her out for a ride in the morning to watch the sunrise, so I woke up early to get this girl ready.”

I put on a big smile and teased him, “You are sooo in love with me Finnocence!”

He laughed at my joke and warned me, “Yeah, yeah, don’t get used to it. I only did this because
a) I was bored and b) your mothers are paying me to do it.” For that, I gave him the finger and we both laughed.

I met Finn when we moved to Saint last year. He was on the football team with my big brother Mike. They became great friends and started to hang out at our house all the time. One day, my moms invited his parents over for dinner and we have been best friends ever since.
Burt and Carole are a lovely couple and Finn’s brother Kurt is the most fabulous guy I have ever met. Kurt and I have a tradition to go shopping every Saturday, though most of the times we don’t actually buy the clothes, we just try them on and have a fashion-show. I mean, it’s not like I’m one of those gold-shitting donkeys or anything.

After that we have lunch and just gossip and talk about everything. I think that we really helped each other, we have a lot of things in common and can relate to each other, but mostly that we both have big brothers who don’t like to do the same stuff we do and like to get on our nerves.
“Alright madame, time to go.” I put on Snixx’s saddle and jumped on my horse and she immediately started running.

I heard Finn yelling, “SEE YOU LATER, I LOVE YOU” and when I yelled back, “I LOVE YOU TOO” my cowboy hat almost fell off my head, but luckily, I grabbed it in time.

When I was off our property, Snixx slowed down and the whole world disappeared. There was nothing except the orange sun and the horizon still lilac and pink, fruit of dawn, and my thoughts.
I thought about how grateful I am for my life and my family and for the second time today, it made me go back in time and remember the happiest day of my life: the day I was adopted.

I was 9 when Holly and Cassie brought me home. Holly was my music teacher in school and she used to spend most of the breaks between classes with me.

I felt like an outsider in my school. The orphanage didn’t have its own school, so we had to go to public school. My classmates never understood me like my friends from the orphanage did and started judging me.

Quinn got herself into a lot of trouble trying to defend me when the other girls made fun of me. One time a girl called me homeless in the middle of the hallway, so Quinn took out the eggs her mother packed her for lunch and threw them at her. That’s the kind of friend Quinn was and still is.
But she couldn’t be there for me always, so often times I just stayed in the classroom with my music teacher Holly and played games and sung.

She loved to hear me sing and one time she called me songbird. When I heard the name, I looked to my necklace. I started crying and opened up my heart and I told her my story. She listened to me and gave me a hug and I remember thinking, that she was the most amazing person I ever met. What I didn’t know, is that she would become my favorite.

One day of school, only a couple days after I told Holly about my mother, was especially hard. Quinn was home sick and Holly had to work between classes, so I had nowhere to go. A few girls saw their chance and started cornering me on the school yard. Normally I was a pretty self-confident kid, especially when I was in the orphanage with the other kids, but somehow school was a completely different story. All my confidence and pride just went away.
After school I didn’t want to go home and didn’t know what to do. When I was wandering around the streets I saw Holly. I didn’t want to bother her even more outside of school, but I unconsciously started following her home without her noticing me. When we arrived at her farm, it was already getting dark out and I didn’t know exactly where I was.

I got scared because I couldn’t find my way home, but I couldn’t knock on their door, because Holly would get mad at me, I thought. So, I decided to hide inside their barn, sleep there and follow her back to school the next day.

The hay was pretty comfy and not too much time passed until I feel asleep, surrounded by the sounds of animals bustling about.

“Holly honey, come fast, there is someone hiding in here!!”
I was startled out of my sleep by the woman yelling for her wife. I was scared shitless and knew that I would get in more trouble than I’ve ever been in. When Holly came and recognized me, she sat me down and asked me what had happened. I explained everything and she told me that she wasn’t mad. Cassie calmed down eventually too, but she wasn’t amused about me hiding in there without them knowing. She just kept talking about how bad it would have been if something had happened to me.
“Santana, even though I am not mad, I don’t know what Quinn’s mom will say about this. I’m gonna have to tell her what happened. I can’t promise you that she will be as calm about this as I am. I have to take you home now, sweetie,” Holly explained.
I didn’t want to go, but I had no choice.

After all of this, everything went so fast. Holly and Cassie decided to adopt me after everything that happened. Cassie needed a little convincing, but who was she to say no to the love of her life.
I met my big brother Mike and my little sister Sugar. They both have been adopted too.

In the beginning, it was a little bit hard for me, because I missed my friends from the orphanage and I wasn’t used to having a proper, functioning family. The first days, I didn’t even leave my bedroom because I was scared and afraid but they didn’t rush me and told me to take my time and that I would eventually find my place in the family.

The moment I realized that this was my place to be was one day after dinner, when Holly made us stay up all night to watch the sunrise, because according to her, it would be the most beautiful sunrise of the century. We played games all night to keep Sugar awake, but everyone was sleepy and dying to go to bed, except for me.

10 minutes before the phenomenon we went outside and sat down on the grass with our pyjamas on. I sat down next to Mike, Sugar placed herself in the space on the ground between my legs and my moms hugged each other behind us. And then I saw it.

The orange sun and the horizon, still lilac and pink, fruit of dawn, lit up the fields and the house. It brought me a strange sense of peace and happiness. I looked around and everyone was sleeping and hugging each other. I smiled and felt a tear stream down my face and I realized that I found my place.

9 years later I’m watching what feels like to be the same sunrise. The wind blowing in my hair and the warm summer breeze melting my heart.
I smiled and leaned down to hug Snixx.
“This is where I belong.”