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Lucy Q. Fabray gets her soulmate mark when she’s five. It says Santana Lopez, but it’s fine, her father says laughing too-loudly, we know that you’re not going to grow up to be a lesbian. Her mother tells her that platonic soulmate connections are more special even because they’re rare; she’ll have the best best friend forever. She’s kind of excited about it, honestly.
Santana Lopez gets her soulmate mark on her fifth birthday, exactly. It says Brittany S. Pierce. Her abuela banishes her from the house, screaming, and Santana cries, she didn’t do anything, her abuela was the one person who she thought would always love her. The mark tells her that Brittany will, she thinks, but she tells everyone for years that she doesn’t believe in the marks at all. They’re for romantic losers, she doesn’t want a soulmate, one guy to stay with forever? Could never handle all of her.
Brittany S. Pierce gets her soulmate mark at five too. It says Quinn Fabray. Her parents don’t care, because they have way more important things to worry about than soulmates at this point, like figuring out everything about how she’s going to be starting school. Her mom does take the time to read the name out loud to her, though, and Brittany likes it. She thinks it sounds pretty, just like her.
~*~
Quinn, Santana, and Brittany all meet in the Cheerios their freshman year of high school. They become best friends almost immediately, because it’s probably what they were made for, and don’t know what do with their soulmate marks besides that.
Santana falls in love with Brittany hard and fast, and she would tell her, but. Brittany doesn’t have her name on her wrist, she has Quinn’s, and it feels like the biggest tragedy of Santana’s young life.
Quinn’s a good Christian girl, and Santana’s her best friend like they were made for each other; no one else could ever take half as much pleasure in helping her tear down the lower orders, but then turn around and protect her weaknesses rather than punching her in the face.
Santana and Brittany sleep with lots of boys (mostly together) and Quinn doesn’t have sex with anyone at all (so she says), but somehow she’s the one who gets pregnant anyway. When the whole Glee club and then the whole school find out about her pregnancy, Brittany’s the only one who still says that she believes Quinn didn’t have sex with Puck.
(She didn’t have sex. She was raped. Sometimes she wonders if Brittany knows.)
Quinn’s parents kick her out, and Santana’s mother is still tenaciously on good terms with her own mother after all these years; she won’t let Santana invite a girl to stay with him. Brittany’s parents take her in. “We couldn’t let our daughter’s soulmate stay out in the cold,” Mrs. Pierce says, and Quinn thanks them profusely, and wears extra-long sleeves even though they’re not in fashion so that they never see her mark.
~*~
In the spring of their junior year Santana finally confesses to Brittany anyway. She was so sure that her love would be unrequited; when Brittany says she loves her too, for an instant Santana’s the happiest she’s ever been. But then Brittany says that she loves lots of people, she loves Quinn too, she loves Artie, and Santana’s heart stops for a second; but she’ll still be Santana’s girlfriend. Okay then, she can work with that.
~*~
Senior year of school is just the worst for Santana, she’s outed as a lesbian on national TV. She could try to deny it, if she wanted, but she just can’t anymore. She can’t deal with this school, where she used to be on top of the pile and now she’s dumped straight to the bottom, she can’t deal with life.
Spending time with Brittany is the only thing that makes her feel happy, all winter, and that’s what she needs to get through.
~*~
After they graduate they scatter to the corners of the earth. Well, Quinn goes to New Haven, and Santana goes to Kentucky and then to New York; Brittany stays in Lima because she didn’t graduate at all.
They should try to stay in the same city, probably, if not even closer nearby, but it’s harder when you have three moving parts instead of two, and harder still when one star of the constellation isn’t actually moving at all. Quinn could go to New York, maybe, or Santana could go to New Haven; but Brittany’s stuck in Lima, and when both of them offer reluctantly to stay there with her she tells them to go away and separate. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them if Quinn’s near her soulmate and neither Brittany nor Santana are, and besides, they’ve been with each other too long, too young, they should maybe take some time to stretch and cool down before they go dancing again.
~*~
That year, Quinn misses Santana and Santana misses Brittany and Brittany misses Quinn so much. It’s not just a physical pain all the time but a mental one too; it’s hard to concentrate, hard to want to eat or sleep even though not doing those things only makes everything worse, hard to enjoy the things that you normally love, whenever you’ve had your soulmate around you for a while and now they’re gone.
They visit each other as much as they can, Santana and Quinn going back and forth some but mostly converging on Lima as the most efficient reunion point. It’s hard, but Quinn’s learning political science and feminist theory and her own confidence at Yale.
When Santana moves from Kentucky to New York she learns about singing and the entertainment industry and how to be somewhat happy without her soulmate again too.
~*~
Quinn and Santana finally hook up at Mr. Schue’s aborted wedding. It’s a long time coming, but Quinn doesn’t begrudge Santana the years that she wasted trying to be a model daughter, and Santana’s so happy that she got to be just with Brittany for a while first.
~*~
When Quinn graduates from Yale, of course she comes to New York, zooming sure as a spring whose tension has finally been released. Santana’s living in a house with Kurt and Blaine and Rachel and Tina and some guy named Adam, who Rachel’s been dating for most of the last couple years, and sometimes Tina’s boyfriend (or occasionally girlfriend) of the week; Santana kicks out her girlfriend of the moment the day that Quinn calls her up to tell her she’ll be coming.
Brittany’s twenty-two, so she’s not in high school anymore, but she’s still in Lima; Santana makes the arrangements and Quinn drives the U-Haul and soon enough Brittany’s moved into the house too. They’re happy together, and if the directions of feelings in the triangle are unbalanced sometimes, there’s still enough love around to get by.
They’re all holding hands in a circle one day, Brittany grasping Santana’s right wrist with name written on it, Santana’s hand covering Quinn’s soulmate mark, and Quinn’s fingers strong and delicate over Brittany’s, when Brittany says, “this soulmate stuff is all so stupid, you guys. We all have two arms. Why didn’t they just write on both of them?”
“They?” asks Quinn, with a delicate raised eyebrow.
Santana pulls on both of their hands and brings them closer to her. “Come on, guys, we have the whole day off all at the same time for once, can’t we think of anything better to do?”