Work Text:
Thirty minutes in, Brittany got restless.
Her chair felt too hard, the fluorescent lights were giving her a headache, and the clicking of Santana's keyboard was driving her insane
They were supposed to be studying, Santana writing an essay for an English professor from hell, and Brittany... well, Santana was begging her to finish literally anything. Her side of the library table was a mess of bio homework, and a math sheet due 4 weeks ago.
Lima’s library was quiet. The loudest it probably ever got was when one Rachel Berry decided to participate in an impromptu duet with Schue Jr. next to the sheet music rack.
How they didn't get kicked out, Santana had no idea.
Point was, no one in this town read.
“Brittany, c’mon.”
“What?”
“All you’ve written so far is your name.”
“Thanks for your help with that by the way.”
Santana sighed,
“You're welcome, but you’ve got to finish something, okay?”
“Well, I could be finished with like, my four hundredth sweet lady kiss, but you wanted to come to the library of all places when you finally have some free time in town. Laundry is fun, I guess, but you can't really scissor properly over skype and-”
Santana cut her off,
“Okay no, we’re not talking about that in a public library. I'm out of the closet not an exhibitionist."
Now that she was turned to face her, she remembered why she always found it hard to say no to her.
With the way Brittany was looking back at her, if she wasn't actually aware of Santana's reasons, she might just be the world's best natural pouter.
“Fine. Five-minute break.”
Brittany gave the air an exaggerated punch in success and slid her papers farther away from herself.
Then her eyes caught Santana's purse, hanging from the backrest of her dark wooden chair.
Then her arms caught up.
“B.”
“There are no rules against me using my break to snoop in your purse.”
Santana knew she wasn't winning this one, it was her fault for not making rules. These are the kind of things you have to keep in mind when with Brittany, and this was her punishment for not remembering even though they've been an old married couple since they met.
She turned back to her essay.
“Don't expect to find any buried treasure or anything, last time I checked I don't have any maps with X marking any spots.”
“Hmm exactly what someone who doesn't want me to find their buried treasure would say. Suspicious.”
Santana let out a laugh despite herself.
“Whatever.”
Brittany unzipped the purse and started sifting through things with the same hand and finger movements she would use if sifting through a filing cabinet.
The way Santana had it organized made snooping easy, but hardly any fun.
An empty pouch where her laptop would be if not for her using it now, a small makeup bag, a mirror, everything had a place.
“Enjoying yourself?”
“It's like this purse went to military school.”
It was then Brittany’s finger skimmed over a black pouch. It should have blended in perfectly. It was smooth, sleek, and in its place like everything else. But to Brittany? It stood out like a sore thumb. Slightly lumpy, awkwardly poking out in some parts.
“So, does that mean you're done?”
She pulled it out, unzipped it, and her eyebrows shot up.
“No way, not right when I finally find something interesting.”
The brunette looked over, she didn't look amused,
“Interesting?”
She didn't sound impressed with Brittany's find either.
“Mhm. Better than buried treasure. It's like a mini stranded-on-a-desert-island-emergency-kit.”
“Hardly. If I were stranded on an island, I’d need a lot more than two ibuprofen, some hair ties and a lip balm.”
“Well, you’d have more on your island than me.”
She looked up at her girlfriend seriously.
“It would take me way longer to build civilization without-”
Her hand moved in the small pouch a second, feeling around for something interesting.
She landed on something that felt a little bigger than the rest of the bag's contents.
“-a lighter.”
Santana didn't react, just shrugged.
“True.”
“Wait, why do you have a lighter?”
She looked at it closer, turning it around in her hand. It was one of the cheap single-color ones from the gas station, nothing special about it. Just a hard, scratched piece of greyish almost silver plastic in Brittany’s hand.
“I don't like being caught without what I need. And I thought you thought this bag was end-times ready, it'd be weird if there wasn't a lighter.”
Brittany shook it, checking for any fluid.
“Now put it back, the librarian is going to think you’re trying to get your revenge on a very flammable science fiction aisle.”
Santana knew she was in trouble when that made Brittany smile.
Her thumb sharply spun on the metal wheel- once, twice.
No fire.
She tried again. She knew there was enough fluid in it for at least one good flame.
Santana's hand went to cover the lighter.
The librarian wasn't close, girls like her learn not to sit too close to the teacher's desk on the first day of school before they learn what a fraction is, of course she chose a seat farther back.
There was still a librarian though. An authority figure that would kick out the highschooler playing with a lighter no hesitation.
Brittany wouldn't actually light anything on fire, Santana knew that. She prided herself on knowing Brittany as well as she did more than she let on, but she also knew she was never one to turn down some mischief.
She looked back to her girlfriend, whose eyes were stuck on the bright orange and yellow sparks jumping in the air for a split second before dying, brows knit in concentration.
Her hand changed shape, relaxed, no longer flat and straight like a block redacting the lighters existence, but gently cupping, making sure it was out of sight, fingers curled over where the flame would appear if Brittany succeeded, to cover it too.
Now she was just openly staring at Brittany’s face, a small smile forming.
How could she not?
Brittany's tongue was practically stuck out in focus; she was the very image of adorableness.
Before long, the mechanical clicking of the lighter became background noise to Santana's view, instead of a threat under her skin.
The blonde was playful with it now, nudging it forward with every try, smiling back at her girlfriend.
Spark. Spark. Nothing.
But after jumping, they died landing inside the curl of Santana's fingers now.
Brittany moved with the safety net of knowing Santana would move her hand away if it actually lit. That she would stop if the lighter decided that her seventh, eighth, ninth try was finally worthy of fire, and things went too far.
A safety net that didn't exist. Not really. Not in the way she thought it did.
Ten, eleven, twelve mechanical crunches. None with product. It wouldn't light. They could keep playing. The grey plastic was on her side.
Santana kept looking at her the same way, hand unmoving.
Brittany knew they could keep playing, and that she had made friends with the toy. Santana didn't. Santana must have known it was a working lighter; it was hers after all.
Her thumb paused on top of the striker. She shook it again, lightly this time. There was enough fluid in it, it should've lit at least once by now.
She moved her thumb fully away from the rusty gear, thumbprint now sore from its texture, but that was beside the point. That’s not why she stopped trying.
“...You’d move your hand, right? If it lit?”
Santana didn't move. She didn't even look around. Not at any of the things that should've helped her answer.
Not at all.
Her eyes never fell at her hand to contemplate if the burn was worth it. Not even at the desk to see if any of the papers would catch the prospective flame, or at her surroundings to check for the librarian.
Her eyes stayed locked on blue ones.
“If you wanted me to.”
The silence that fell on them wasn't the kind you go into a library looking for, it wasn't the kind of thing that could be artificially created with rules and atmosphere.
It was the type of quiet that was made by two people, never on purpose, but always ended the same way. With one of its victims stuck trying to catch a thought midair, and the other calm.
Brittany tried for a joke, a laugh not hitting the air quite the way it needed to sound genuine.
“And if I didn't? If I didn't ask you to move your hand and your end-times lighter finally worked? It would burn you.”
Santana blinked.
Then she shrugged, hand still cupped over a lighter with metal that had gone cold by now.
“Fire is pretty to look at sometimes, I get it.”
More silence.
Brittany reached to get the library kind of quiet back and put the lighter back in its respective place in the pouch.
“Dork. You trust me too much.”
Zip, grab, drop bag.
Santana's hand stayed in the air, and she made a joke of turning it over dramatically, inspecting it.
“Huh. Really? 'Cause... Looks like my hand isn't burnt. Gotta be doing something right.”
Brittany swatted it away,
“Dork.”
"Your dork."
Santana grabbed the pouch and put it back in her purse, turning back to the screen in front of her like nothing,
"Breaks over."
"...You never really answered my question."
"What question," she said it flatly, eyes on computer, hands on keyboard.
"I asked you if you would have moved your hand. Like, if I didn't ask you to. The librarian wouldn't even have noticed the fire, it would've been tiny, and she's like, a hundred years old."
More clicking. More words being typed.
"So... That means you would have, right? Would have moved."
Santana finally turned to face her, fingers paused. She shrugged one last time.
"Well, I know you would've asked me to."