Archive of Our Own

The Cheerios gymnasium had a very specific smell: desperation, sweat, and the faint chemical tang of synthetic glitter and smoke from confetti canons. It was an aroma Santana Lopez had grown to love, mostly because it meant she wasn't currently being singled out for a public vivisection of the soul. Today, that safety net was about to crash and burn.

Sue Sylvester stood on the top bleacher, megaphone in hand, her tracksuit a startling shade of crimson that looked like it had been dyed in the blood of her enemies– or perhaps just a very aggressive batch dye. She surveyed the squad with the cold, appraising eye of a Roman emperor trying to decide which Christians to feed to the lions.

"Pierce. Lopez. Front and center. The rest of you flabby dweebs can scatter. Go run laps until I forget what your faces look like."

The other Cheerios evaporated at the command and Santana felt her stomach drop through the floor. Beside her, Brittany was examining a loose piece on her pompom with the serene focus of a monk contemplating a mandala.

"Coach Sylvester," Santana started, her voice carefully neutral, "whatever Quinn told you about us being late to practice, there is a legitimate excuse and we can explain–"

"Silence!" Sue's voice bounced off the walls. "This isn't about anything that Quinn said. This is about a far more insidious substance that has plagued this cesspool of a school for far too long: emotional attachment."

Santana blinked. "What?"

"You two are soft!" Sue said, like it should’ve been obvious to the two of them. "You're weak, you're pathetic, and you have the mental fortitude of a wet napkin and the survival instincts of a baby bird who's trying to die. And it’s because of the way you girls act around each other."

Santana’s mouth was agape, eyes wide with surprise at what Sue was accusing them of. "What the hell does us apparently being ‘soft’ have anything to do with how Brittany and I act with each other? Is seeing two people actually being friends some kind of foreign concept to your cold, dead heart?" Santana responded with her usual snark.

"Oh puh-lease, I have seen the way you two look at each other during practice first hand." Sue stepped down from the bleachers, her platform sneakers thudding ominously. "It's a look that suggests weakness. Softness. It suggests that you ladies are more interested in playing hide-the-tampon in my pristine locker room than in securing yet another consecutive national cheerleading championship for William McKinley Highschool."

"That's not–" Santana tried.

"Oh but it is, I have eyes, Lopez! These eyes have seen things that would make a lesser woman than myself drink herself into a coma. I have seen how Brittany always gives you half of her orange slices at practice, I have seen you adjust her ponytail without asking when she was tired, I have seen you two share your Sylvester shakes with each other as if it’s part of your strangely sapphic daily routine, and it makes me sick. Not because it's two girls–I don't care about that, I'm a modern woman, I've slept with my fair share of female lawyers and one very confused mime–no, it’s not that, but because it suggests weakness. You're soft, you're domestic, you're basically a pair of purring kittens and I will not have my championship squad brought down by kitten energy!"

Santana couldn’t even form a coherent response. These were all normal friend things, right? Did anyone else around them question her and Brittany’s friendship like this? Her head was swamped with panicked thoughts.

Brittany finally looked up, her expression dreamy as always. "But kittens are cute…and they land on their feet. Isn’t that good cheerleading energy?"

"Silence, Pierce! You will speak when I have finished extracting the weakness from your sweet as cotton candy soul." Sue took a breath, building to her crescendo. "You are going to prove your strength of character tonight. You are going to strip down to nothing but your birthday suits–"

"Okay, pause. I'm gonna need you to run that by me again, because I could have sworn you just told us that we have to strip."

"I did."

"As in...we're naked."

"Naked as the dismal day you crawled out of your mother's womb, which, based on your performance at regionals last year, was a deeply mediocre exit."

"Excuse me?" Santana's voice jumped an octave.

"You heard me! You will shed the soft armor of modern civilization and you will take this knife" –she held up a hunting knife that looked vaguely ceremonial, the handle wrapped in leather–"and this dream catcher" –which was neon pink and bedazzled with Cheerios glitter, the cheap kind that flaked off if you so much as looked at it wrong–"and you will go into the forests of Lima, Ohio. You will survive the night using nothing but your wits, your primal instincts, and this laminated sheet of survival tips I printed off the internet in 2004."

Sue slapped the dreamcatcher and the knife into Brittany's hands and Brittany accepted them like they were holy relics. Santana grabbed the survival tips and began reading them.

"The second tip on this list says to slather your body in honey to ward off bears."

Brittany studied the dreamcatcher and held it up to the fluorescent light. "This is pretty. My mom has one of these, but hers has more beads. She says it catches bad dreams and turns them into good ones. Maybe this one catches bad thoughts and turns them into...cheerleading routines?"

"Sweet, innocent Brittany, it's not for your bedroom, it's a test." Sue took three calculated steps backwards away from the two of them, her tracksuit making that distinctive swish swish sound that would haunt the nightmares of McKinley students for generations. "Out past the old Snyder Road, there's a stretch of state forest. Five miles deep, no trails, no cell service, nothing but trees and the ghosts of hikers who thought they were tougher than they were. I'm dropping you two off at the edge of it tonight. You'll walk until dawn. If you make it to the other side, there's a ranger station on the north end, and you pass. However, if you don't..."

She let the silence hang in the air.

"We die." Brittany concluded, her voice remarkably calm and accepting of this possibility.

"Ha! You wish. If you don't, you're off the squad and I will be forced to tell the entire school that you two quit because you have cooties. But not just any plain old cooties, the kind that lasts forever…the shame cooties."

Santana's brain was struggling to process this information. It was like someone had taken the concept of hazing and run it through a blender with ‘survival show’ and ‘war crime.’ "This has to be illegal. You can't just–"

"I can do whatever I want. I'm Sue Sylvester! I've had sex with three U.S. senators and a man who later became a Supreme Court justice, and not a single one of them called me 'illegal' to my face."

"That's not how the law works, like, at all." Santana said weakly.

"The law is a suggestion, and I'm a mandate."

"This is insane," Santana said. "This has to be a violation of at least seventeen different child protection laws."

"Child protection laws my ass– they mean nothing, Lopez! It’s a piece of paper written by people who have never stared into the abyss of a regional cheerleading competition and wondered if their soul was worth the price of a trophy! The answer is yes, for your information. It absolutely is. Now, disrobe!"

The other Cheerios had all stopped their laps to watch from the doorway. Santana could feel their stares and she could feel her face burning.

Brittany, without a hint of hesitation, began unzipping her Cheerios jacket.

"Brittany, what the hell are you doing? You cannot seriously be going through with this."

"I'm following the spirit of the challenge," Brittany said, letting the jacket fall to the floor. She then pulled off her top. "The dreamcatcher says we have to be pure of heart and light of clothing."

"The dreamcatcher is a piece of factory made garbage, Britt! It doesn't say anything!"

"It says a lot, actually. You just have to listen." Brittany was now down to her underwear, standing in the middle of the gym with the same casual confidence she usually reserved for talking about Lord Tubbington or going through the motions of one of her ridiculously overcomplicated dance routines. She held up the dreamcatcher. "The feathers are pointing east. That's a good sign."

Sue nodded approvingly. "See, Lopez? Now that's character, that's surrender to the process. You could learn something from your... whatever she is to you." she said, waving her hand around.

"She's my friend," Santana said through gritted teeth, her hands shaking as she unbuttoned her skirt.

"She's your crutch," Sue corrected. "And I'm kicking the crutch out from under you."

Santana stripped down to her underware, her arms instinctively crossing over her chest. She felt a thousand times more naked than Brittany looked. Brittany was just standing there, bathed in the fluorescent gym lighting like a goddess of chaos, dreamcatcher in one hand, knife in the other. 

"Beautiful," Brittany said, looking at Santana.

"Shut up."

"I meant the knife."

"Shut up."

—

Twenty minutes later, Santana found herself standing at the edge of a forest so dark it looked like someone had cut a hole in the universe and filled it with nothing. The car that Sue had driven them in, a beat up minivan that smelled like protein powder and disappointment, was already disappearing down the gravel road, its taillights winking out like the last hope of humanity.

The air was cold. Really cold, like the kind of cold that seeped into your bones and made you question every life choice that had led you to this moment.

And they were naked.

Completely, utterly, humiliatingly naked. Not even any underwear to save their last shred of dignity now.

Santana's arms were wrapped around her chest so tightly she was practically giving herself a hug, which would have been fine except that the position made her boobs look weird and that was just adding insult to injury. She had the hunting knife clutched in one hand, and she was seriously considering using it on the next person who made eye contact with her. Not that she would be seeing anyone other than Brittany for a while.

"I think I can see the stars better without clothes on," Brittany said, tilting her head back to look up at the sky. Her voice was airy, like she was commenting on a particularly good milkshake rather than the fact that she was standing in the middle of nowhere with her entire body exposed to the elements. "Like, clothes block out the bottom part of the sky, so you only get half the stars, but now I get all of them."

"Britt, we are naked in the woods in September. The only thing I'm looking at is the nearest way to get warm and also maybe kill coach Sylvester."

"The stars are really pretty though."

Santana turned to look at her best friend– God, there was that word, friend, which had been doing a lot of heavy lifting lately, because Santana had started to notice things about Brittany that she probably shouldn't be noticing. Things like the way Brittany's hair fell across her shoulders, or the way she laughed at things that weren't funny, or the way her body moved when she danced, or, in this case, the way her body looked in the pale moonlight, which Santana was definitely not looking at right now.

That was a lie, she was looking. 

It was hard not to. Brittany was standing there like she didn't have a care in the world, one hand holding the dreamcatcher up to the sky like she was offering it to the moon, her long blonde hair catching the starlight, her skin pale and perfect and–

Oh my God, stop it. Stop it right now. She's your friend, you are both straight, she definitely doesn't think about you the way you've been thinking about her. Not that you’ve been thinking of her as anything other than your best friend. Ha ha. This is fine.

"Okay," Santana said, her voice tight. "Okay. This is actually happening. We are naked. In the middle of nowhere. Alone."

"It's kinda fun," Brittany said.

"It is not fun! It is a psychological warfare tactic conducted by a woman who once made us run drills in a thunderstorm because she said it would 'electrify our performance energy'!"

"That drill really helped, though. My toe touches were way higher after."

"That is not the point!" Santana was pacing now, her bare feet crunching in the gravel. "We have no clothes, we have no map, we have a knife that probably can't cut butter, we have a glittery dreamcatcher, and we have to survive in the Lima woods while searching for a ranger station five miles away. Do you know what lives in the Lima woods? Ticks, that's what. Ticks and probably some raccoons that have developed a taste for human flesh because the garbage at the gas station has become radioactive!"

"It's okay," Brittany said, stepping closer. She threaded the dreamcatcher into Santana's fingers. "We have teamwork, and the knife, and the dreamcatcher will catch any bad dreams that try to get in."

"The bad dreams are already in, Brittany! They're us! We are the bad dreams happening right now!"

"Then let's turn them into good dreams."

"I cannot believe this is happening to me right now. And I cannot believe how well you are taking this."

Brittany just smiled at Santana, that easy, guileless smile that made Santana's stomach do something weird and complicated and unidentifiable. "It’s okay, let's go. I think the ranger station is that way."

"How do you know?"

Brittany pointed at a tree. "The moss is growing on that side, which means north is that way. And also I saw a sign on the drive here that said 'Ranger Station →' and I'm pretty sure we were going east."

"Since when do you know about moss and directions?"

"I don't, I'm just guessing. But it sounds smart, right?"

Santana stared at her for a long moment. "You're going to get us killed."

"Probably. But at least we'll die together, and that's kind of romantic if you think about it."

Santana stopped breathing momentarily.

Stop. Saying. Things. Like. That.

Brittany suddenly started walking toward the treeline. Santana stood frozen for a moment, watching her silhouette disappear into the dark.

"You are going to get so much poison ivy on your butt!" Santana called after her.

"You're going to get it on your butt anyway if you don't follow me!"

Santana swore under her breath, a long, elaborate string of Spanish and English that would have made her abuela wash her mouth out with soap. Then she ran after her.

—

The woods weren’t the deep, ancient, and mystical forests of fairy tales. They were the scraggly, second growth woods of Ohio suburbia, full of thorny bushes, discarded fast food wrappers, and the frequent loud chirping of some kind of creature that Santana couldn’t quite pinpoint. But at night, with no clothes on and no phone, it felt like the Amazon rainforest.

"This is fine," Santana muttered, stepping over a branch. "This is a fun adventure. This is a bonding experience."

"We should make a nest," Brittany said.

"A what?"

"A nest. Like birds. Or Lord Tubbington when he escapes his harness and has to sleep in the garage."

"Lord Tubbington weighs forty pounds and is addicted to chain smoking. I am not taking survival advice from your cat!"

"He's very resourceful. He once built a fort out of pizza boxes and sustained himself for three days on crumbs and spite."

"Okay, one, that's kinda impressive. I’ll give him that much. Two, we are not building a nest. We are going to keep walking for as long as it takes until we reach that goddamn ranger station. I’m not staying here any longer than I need to."

"The dreamcatcher says we shouldn't fight the wilderness, we should embrace it."

"The dreamcatcher is going to be fire kindling into a torch in about ten minutes if you don't stop quoting it."

"There’s no need for violence, San. All we need for a torch is, like, just a stick right? We can totally set a stick on fire if you want."

Santana dragged her hands down her face and groaned. "I was more so just using the torch as a means of threatening the dream catcher, but sure, let’s try to make fire on a stick. Might make it easier to get the hell out of here."

They eventually found a sizable stick along with some dead branches near a creek. It was almost pretty, in a terrifyingly post apocalyptic way. Moonlight filtered through the canopy, casting everything in silver and deep shadow.

Santana took charge. She grabbed the knife, which was heavier than she expected, and she grabbed one of the fallen branches to try to shave off some bark. The knife was so dull that it barely even made an indent.

"This knife is a piece of crap!"

"It's a spirit knife," Brittany said, gently taking it from her. "It's for symbolic shaving. And for cutting fruit, if we find any."

"We are not going to find fruit. And if we do, we are going to find poison berries and die. Sue Sylvester is then going to find our skeletons and use them as pyramid props."

Brittany ignored her. She walked over to a large oak tree and started carving something into the bark with the knife.

"Are you vandalizing a tree right now?! How are you even making any marks with that thing??"

"It's a message for the forest spirits," Brittany said, her tongue poking out in concentration. "It says 'Santana + Brittany = Forever'. The forest spirits will protect us. They owe me, I left out a bowl of milk for them once."

"You left out a bowl of milk for stray cats, Brittany. Not forest spirits."

"The spirits are very adaptable. They'll drink whatever's available."

Santana sat down heavily on a fallen log, her head in her hands. "This is the stupidest thing I have ever done. And I once let Quinn Fabray convince me that drinking a jar of pickle juice before a competition would make my splits deeper."

"It did make your splits deeper, though. Your legs were basically a straight line."

"That's not the point!"

Brittany finished her carving and came to sit beside her. She was close, close enough that their bare thighs touched. Santana felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the temperature.

"We're going to be okay," Brittany said softly.

"How do you know?"

"Because I know you, and you're the most stubborn person I've ever met. You're not going to let Sue Sylvester break you, you're not going to let a few trees and some raccoons break you, and you're definitely not going to let a spirit knife being dull break you."

"Stop being reasonable, it's ruining my outrage."

"I'm not being reasonable, I'm being spiritual. It's different."

Santana didn’t say anything in response, she just stared at Brittany, studying her face. Her expression showed no sign of fear or even discomfort despite being naked in the middle of the woods in almost pure darkness. It was reassuring, her genuine sense of confidence in their ability to make it through tonight. She didn’t even look disheveled in any way– under the dim moonlight she could still make out Brittany’s freckles scattered across her cheeks, the slight part in her pink lips as she breathed in and out, the barely noticeable sparkle in her bright blue eyes, the way her hair practically glowed golden, she was just pure perfection. Maybe staying lost in the forest forever wouldn’t be so bad as long as Brittany was there with her.

Brittany soon brought her out of her little trance that she seemed to have been stuck in. 

"You okay Santana? You went kinda silent there for a moment, and you usually have a lot to say about everything all the time so you're sorta freaking me out a little."

Well shit, she was definitely staring for an awkwardly long time. God forbid she can recognize when her best friend looks good. Even if it was at an entirely inappropriate time. While they’re both completely naked. And right next to each other. Alone. 

"Right, um– I was just thinking we should probably start walking again. I’m freezing my ass off just sitting here." She responds while standing up.

Brittany squints her eyes and scans Santana up and down as if she knew there was something Santana wasn’t telling her. Talk about feeling exposed. Santana lets out a dry cough while her eyes dart away, praying Brittany doesn’t press any further. Though she simply shrugs and follows Santana’s motion, ready to continue their hike to the other side of the forest.

—

The first mile or so wasn't absolutely terrible. There was a kind of adrenaline fueled energy that came from being naked in the dark with only a knife and a dreamcatcher for company as well as the confusing and unwanted thoughts she had been having about the girl next to her, and Santana was able to channel that into a brisk walking pace that kept her blood moving and her mind occupied.

The second mile was far worse.

The adrenaline had worn off, and in its place was a bone deep exhaustion that seemed to be settling into every muscle she had. Her feet were already sore from walking on the prickly, uneven ground, her skin was covered in goosebumps and mosquito bites, and she was pretty sure she had stepped on something that might have been a pinecone or maybe a small animal– she didn't want to know which one it was.

"We should stop for a break," Brittany said, somehow not sounding tired at all. This girl's stamina was seriously insane. "I want to look at the dreamcatcher in the moonlight again."

"We can't stop. If we stop, we die."

"That seems a little dramatic."

"That's survival, Britt. You stop, you die. That's how nature works."

"But if we die, we don't have to go back to school tomorrow, which is kind of a win."

Santana couldn't argue with that logic, so she slowed her pace.

The forest was quieter now compared to when they first entered, to her surprise. She'd always assumed woods were constantly full of sounds– crickets and owls and whatever other nature noises were supposed to happen– but the forest was almost silent now. Just the rustle of wind through the leaves and the soft pad of their footsteps on the forest floor.

And their breathing.

And the occasional sound of Santana cursing under her breath when she stepped on something sharp.

"This is a test of character," Brittany said after a while. "Coach Sylvester wants to see if we're strong enough to be Cheerios. Make sure we don’t soften each other up too much."

"I know what it is. I'm not stupid."

"I didn't say you were stupid, I just said it's a test." Brittany's voice was gentle, that soft, slightly dreamy quality that made everything she said sound like a lullaby. "I think we're passing."

"By what metric? We're naked, cold, lost, and walking through a forest in the dark with a dreamcatcher and a knife. I'm pretty sure the only thing we're passing is the threshold between sanity and madness."

"That's a beautiful way of saying it."

Santana snorted. "I wasn't trying to be beautiful, just realistic."

"Everything you say is beautiful, you just don't realize it most of the time. But I do, I hear it all the time."

There it was again. That thing Brittany did where she said something that made Santana's heart do a weird little flip flop and twist in her chest. Brittany probably didn't even mean it that way– or any sort of way for that matter. She said things like that to everyone, because she was Brittany and she saw the world through a filter of kindness that no one else seemed to have.

But Santana couldn't help the way she felt when Brittany said things like that.

Stop it. This means nothing, you’re just stressed and lonely and clinging onto anything nice that the world has to offer right now. Which seems to be Brittany, unfortunately.

—

They continued walking for what felt like hours. Santana's sense of time had abandoned her somewhere around the third mile, replaced by a fog of exhaustion and cold that made everything feel surreal and dreamlike. The trees all looked the same, the sky all looked the same, the only thing that kept her grounded was the sight of Brittany's silhouette moving ahead of her, the dreamcatcher swinging from her hand like a pendulum.

"Santana," Brittany said suddenly, stopping so fast that Santana almost walked into her.

"What?"

"I found a cave."

Santana blinked. She stepped around Brittany and saw it– a dark opening in the side of a rocky outcropping, barely visible in the dim light. It was small, maybe six feet wide and four feet high, but it was something. Better than where they were right now.

"A cave," she repeated.

"Should we go in?"

"I don't know…what if there's a bear in there?"

"Then we use the knife."

"To fight a bear? With the ceremonial spirit knife?"

"No, silly, to cut the dreamcatcher and free the dreams. The bad dreams will scare the bear away."

Santana stared at her. "That makes absolutely no sense."

"Do you have a better idea?"

Santana didn't have a better idea, come to find out. She was cold and tired and her feet hurt and she was pretty sure she was starting to see things out of the corner of her eye that weren't actually there. A cave, even a cave that might contain a bear, was better than standing in the open.

"Fine, but you go first. You're the one with the dreamcatcher."

Brittany smiled, that bright, uncomplicated, and all too easily satisfied smile, and ducked into the cave.

The cave was empty. No bears, no monsters, no nothing, just a small, dry space with a sandy floor and the faint smell of earth and stone. It was warmer than outside, which wasn't saying much, but it was enough to make Santana's shivering subside from "uncontrollable" to " slightly manageable."

They sat in the dark for a while, not talking. Santana could hear Brittany breathing beside her, slow and steady, and she found herself matching her breath to that rhythm just to have something to focus on.

"I'm really cold," Brittany said quietly.

"Me too."

"We could share body heat."

Santana's heart stopped. Then started again, racing so fast and hard that she could hear her pulse in her ears. "What?"

"Body heat, it's a survival thing. When people are cold, they huddle together and share heat. I saw it in a documentary about penguins."

"Penguins?"

"Yeah! They stand in a big group and take turns being in the middle where it's warm. We don't have enough people for a big group, so I don’t really know how we would do that, but we have two people, so we could at least do a small group."

"That's not how huddling works."

"It's how our huddling works."

Santana wanted to argue. She wanted to point out all the reasons why pressing her naked body against Brittany's naked body was a terrible idea– reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with survival and everything to do with the fact that Santana had been having thoughts about Brittany that she'd been trying very, very hard to ignore.

But she was cold, and Brittany was right. Body heat was a real survival strategy that they should probably make use of. Purely for survival reasons, of course. 

"Fine," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "But if you tell anyone about this, I'll kill you."

"That seems like an extreme reaction to sharing body heat."

"Brittany."

"Okay, okay. I won't tell anyone." There was a rustling sound as Brittany shifted closer. "Are you ready?"

"No."

"Well too bad. I'm going to count to three. One... two..." She didn't even say three, she just moved, pressing her body against Santana's, wrapping her arms around Santana's waist, tucking her head against Santana's shoulder.

Santana's entire body went rigid.

Brittany was warm. Like, almost scorchingly warm. And soft in all the ways that Santana had been trying not to think about. Her skin was smooth against Santana's, and she smelled like… like Brittany, like vanilla and something magical and the faint lingering scent of the deodorant she used.

It’s not like they had never cuddled before or anything. They frequently entangled themselves with each other during sleepovers while watching TV, or draped their bodies over the other during downtime at school, or rested their heads on each others shoulder at lunch, or did that weird and almost subconscious thing where they hook their pinkies together as if they needed to be tethered together at all times. Those are all normal friend things, every girl does those things with her best friend. Sure, her heart sometimes skips a beat when Brittany holds eye contact for a little too long or her face heats up ever so slightly when Brittany rests her hand a little higher on her thigh than usual, but at the end of the day it was purely platonic.

This situation, however, was really testing Santana. It’s one thing to spoon each other fully clothed within the safety of one of their houses, but having Brittany’s very naked body pressed up against her also very naked body in a cave in the middle of the forest? How is anyone supposed to be normal about that?

"Your heart is beating really fast," Brittany said, pulling Santana out of her own head for the second time that night.

"That's because I'm cold. Your body is in shock when you're cold."

"Hmm…I don't think that's true."

"Shut up, Brittany."

Brittany giggled, and the sound vibrated through Santana's chest. "Okay."

They lay there in the dark, tangled together, and Santana tried very hard to think about anything other than the girl pressed against her. She thought about cheerleading, about school, about the time she'd accidentally walked in on Coach Sylvester recording herself dancing to “Physical” and had to pretend she hadn't seen anything for her own safety.

It wasn't working. At all.

Every breath Brittany took pressed their bodies closer together, every small adjustment brought new points of contact– a thigh brushing against a thigh, an arm tightening around a waist, fingers resting on the curve of a hip.

"I think this is working," Brittany said. "You're not shivering anymore."

"That's because I'm warmer now."

"See? Penguins know what they're doing."

"You're not a penguin. Neither am I."

"I could be if I really tried. Nothing's truly impossible."

Santana laughed despite herself. "You're so weird."

"I know. It's my best quality."

They fell silent again, and the minutes stretched out into something that felt like hours. Santana's eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough that she could make out the outline of the cave ceiling, rough and uneven, and she stared at it because staring at Brittany was entirely out of the question.

"Santana?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I ask you something?"

"Depends on what it is."

"Well you won't be able to know until I ask."

Santana grunted, not really having the energy to humor Brittany at the moment. Still, she knew she would end up asking anyway, even if she said no. "Fine, shoot."

"Do you…ever think about kissing me?"

The question hit Santana like a physical blow to the chest. She felt her entire body seize up, felt her heart start hammering against her ribs, felt her eyes widen to an extreme degree, felt a flush of heat spread across her skin that should've been physically impossible considering how cold it was.

"What?"

"Do you ever think about kissing me?" Brittany repeated, her voice perfectly calm, like she was asking about the weather. "Because I think about kissing you. Sometimes. Like when we're practicing and you're spotting me, or we’re watching TV together, or I see you across a room, I just think about what it would be like."

Santana's mouth opened and closed. No sound came out. She felt like she was about to implode on herself.

"Britt, that's–" She stopped and swallowed. Her throat felt tight and dry. "That's a weird thing to say."

"Is it? It doesn't feel weird. It feels natural."

"It's weird because we're– we're friends. We’re best friends. We're cheerleaders. We're not–" She couldn't finish the sentence, she didn’t really know how to. Her mind was frazzled and her heart was beating out of her chest and her eyes were beginning to sting with tears for some reason.

"Not what?"

"Not the kind of people who kiss each other."

"Why not?"

"Because–" Santana struggled to find the words. "Because that's just not how it works. Girls like us don't– we can't just–"

"Can't just what? Feel things?" Brittany shifted, pulling back just enough to look at Santana's face in the dark. "I feel things all the time. I feel things about you all the time. And I think you feel things about me too."

"I don't–"

"You look at me when you think I'm not watching. You look at me the same way I look at you."

Santana wanted to deny it. She wanted to say that Brittany was imagining things, that she was reading too much into normal friend behavior, that this was all just a product of the stress and the cold and the weirdness of the situation.

But she couldn't. She couldn’t do that to herself or Brittany.

Because Brittany was right.

"Brittany, we can't–"

"Can I kiss you?"

The question hung in the air between them, fragile and terrifying. Santana's brain was screaming at her to say no, to push Brittany away, to pretend this conversation had never happened. This was dangerous territory. This was the kind of thing that could ruin everything– their friendship, their reputation, their place on the cheerleading squad, their entire lives at McKinley.

But there was another voice too, a quieter voice. A voice that had been whispering for months, growing louder every time Brittany smiled at her, every time they touched during practice, every time they fell asleep side by side at sleepovers.

Say yes.

"Why?" Santana asked, her voice meek and barely audible. "Why do you want to kiss me?"

"Because I want to know what it feels like. And I want to know with you."

That's not an answer. That's not nearly enough of an answer.

But it was, that was all that was needed to push Santana over the edge.

"Okay," Santana heard herself say, almost disconnected from her body on some different astral plane of existence. "Okay."

Brittany moved slowly, giving Santana time to pull away. Her hand came up to cup Santana's cheek, gentle and warm, and Santana felt herself lean into the touch without meaning to.

And then Brittany's lips were on hers.

The kiss was soft and tentative. Brittany's lips were warm and slightly chapped from the cold, and she tasted like the mint gum she'd been chewing earlier. It was nothing like the kisses Santana had imagined– and she had imagined them, she could admit that now, if only to herself– but it was also everything.

Brittany pulled back after a moment, her forehead resting against Santana's. "Was that okay?"

Santana couldn't speak. She nodded, her throat still tight.

"Can I do it again?"

Another nod.

This time the kiss was longer. Brittany's hand slid from Santana's cheek into her hair, and Santana's arms came up to wrap around Brittany's waist, pulling her closer. The angle shifted, their bodies aligning in a way that sent a shiver down Santana's spine that had nothing to do with the cold.

This is happening. This is actually happening.

They kissed until they ran out of breath, then pulled apart, breathing hard. Santana could feel her heart pounding in her chest, could feel the heat radiating off her skin, could feel the ghost of Brittany's lips still pressed against hers.

"Wow," Brittany said.

"Yeah," Santana agreed. "Wow."

"Can we do that again when we get back to school?"

Santana's brain short circuited at that question. "What?"

"I liked that. I want to do it again. But maybe not in a cave, because the floor is sandy and I think I have dirt in my hair. Also I can’t really see you very well at all so that kinda takes part of the fun away."

"That's– Britt, we can't just– that's not how this works."

"Why not?"

"Because–" Santana took a deep breath. "Because we're not– this doesn't mean we're–"

"Boyfriends? Girlfriends? I know. But it could mean we're something. Even if we don't tell anyone."

"You want to keep secrets?"

"All I know is that I liked what just happened and I want to keep doing it. I don't really care about the rest. You’re still my best friend no matter what."

Santana stared at her in the darkness, trying to read her expression. Brittany's face was open and honest, as always, her eyes bright with something that Santana was afraid to name.

"This is crazy," Santana said.

"I know. It's the best kind of crazy."

Santana thought for a moment. She doesn’t think she would mind this arrangement; no labels, no commitment, no need to address the feelings she's feeling right now. Brittany seems to be pretty casual about this anyway. This doesn’t have to be anything deeper than just two friends kissing each other. For whatever reasons.

"Are you sure this is what you want?" She eventually asks.

"I'm sure."

Brittany leaned in and kissed her again, softer this time, like she was sealing a promise. And Santana kissed her back, because in that moment, in that cave, in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a knife and a dreamcatcher and the girl she'd been trying not to love, she couldn't imagine doing anything else.

—

They slept curled together in the cave, Brittany's head resting on Santana's arm, the dreamcatcher hung on a small outcropping of rock above them. Santana didn't sleep much, she was too aware of every breath Brittany took, every small movement, every soft sound she made in her sleep.

When dawn broke, pale and gray, filtering through the cave entrance, Santana watched the light hit Brittany's face and felt something crack open in her chest and fill her entire body with a heavy saccharine sensation.

God, she really was in trouble. But she chose to ignore it and push those feelings down for as long as humanly possible.

They found the ranger station by noon, emerging from the forest like two ghosts– dirty, exhausted, still naked, but alive nonetheless. The ranger on duty, a middle aged man with a handlebar mustache and a profound lack of surprise, handed them two sets of sweatpants and a phone to call Sue.

Sue picked them up an hour later, drinking a protein shake and looking thoroughly unimpressed.

"You survived," she said, like it was a disappointment that they actually made it out of the forest.

"Barely," Santana muttered.

"The dreamcatcher worked," Brittany added, climbing into the back seat. "It caught all the bad dreams and left only pure ecstasy."

Sue looked at her for a long moment, eyes narrowed and mouth turned into something resembling a grimace. "I don't want to know what that means."

Brittany sighed with an adorable pout. "No one ever does."

—

Back at school on Monday, things were different.

Santana found herself looking at Brittany across the cafeteria, across the gymnasium, across the hallway, and feeling something twist in her chest. Brittany would catch her eye and smile, it was that same smile, the one she'd always given her, but now it felt different. It felt like a secret. Like something sacred between them that no one else deserved to know about.

They didn't talk about the cave, they didn't talk about the kisses, they didn't talk about the way Brittany's hand would brush against Santana's when they thought no one was looking, or the way Santana's heart would race every time they were alone together.

But something had definitely changed, and neither of them was willing to say what. Not yet, at least.

All Santana knew was that she didn’t want this to stop.