A/N: For comfortablyobsessed (which is like the most awesome url!), who asked for Pezberry, NY, where Rachel is trying to pluck up the courage to do something about her crush on Santana. Thanks!
Rachel’s almost filled two complete notebooks. Little ones, more commonly used by journalists when they’re jotting down notes in the movies, but the sentiment is still the same. She’s sitting at her desk she’d had her dads ship from Ohio, supporting her head in her hands with her elbows on the desktop as she stares down at the filled pads. Her forgotten pen is hanging awkwardly from her fingers while her teeth worry her lower lip, her eyebrows furrowed, dark should-get-them-trimmed-soon bangs hanging over her eyes.
She can’t believe she’s almost filled two complete notebooks.
What she should do, she thinks, right hand wavering minutely, the pen slightly bobbing with her motion, is sweep these notebooks off of the desk, straight into her wastebasket. Then, as she piles other discarded combustibles on top, she’ll go into the kitchen and pick up the latest bottle of cooking wine, as well as the matches, and send her private thoughts into an empty but hopefully satisfying death courtesy of flame.
But, no. She mentally shakes her head. With her luck, she’d set the whole loft on fire. She doesn’t want to do that.
So. Finally letting her left hand drop down, slapping against the surface of the desk, Rachel’s stomach flips as her fingers slowly reach over to flip the closer notebook open.
not like she doesn’t know that she’s doing it. It would be very anti-Santana if it were truly on accident. I don’t believe it for one
She flips a couple more pages.
spend time getting to know those lips of hers
Rachel slams the notebook closed. If she were being completely honest, she doesn’t know why she’s bothering to read over these again. She knows what they say.
Musings and rants and complaints about her very inconvenient attraction to her very feminine roommate. Her very feminine female roommate.
The one who had seemingly hated her for years.
The one she’d thought she’d continue hating for years to come.
A darker hand than hers suddenly appears in her line of sight, a trim presence pressing against Rachel’s shoulder at the same moment the first of the two notebooks gets plucked up into the earlier mentioned hand. Finely filed nails easily slip under the cover, and, with a horror that fills her with cold, spreading fear, Rachel watches as Santana rests her hip against her desk, opening the notebook with a smirked, “What’s this? ‘Secrets of a Former Member of the Hobbit Nation’?”
“No,” Rachel jerks, trying to grab Santana’s arm before she reads what’s written there, “Santana, please – ”
But Santana’s lips, the ones Rachel had spent countless small pages describing and daydreaming about, part as Rachel’s very feminine female roommate starts reading aloud, “’I can’t believe that I, Rachel Barbra Berry, Broadway-bound ingénue with nothing to lose, has, indeed, found something that makes me feel completely unprepared. I don’t think I have to go into detail as this is only for my eyes, but, suffice to say, to perhaps remind myself years in the future after, hopefully, this infatuation goes away – ‘Jesus, Berry.” Santana interrupts herself, shaking her head, “But do you write as terribly as you speak – ‘I am afflicted with the worst of unrequited hopefully passing fancies: that of my roommate San…’” Santana’s voice abruptly cuts off within mid-reading of her name, and Rachel can’t even breathe to alleviate herself of the tension radiating out of her body.
Her desk creaks, and that’s only how she knows Santana’s moving; snapping her eyes open as a rush of air batters against her cheek, what she first sees is the green of the notebook held rigidly in front of her face, and, practically on impulse, she pushes back so her desk chair rolls backwards, banging against her bed.
But, “What the hell is this?” Santana’s voice is low and high at the same time, and her hand is now pressing against the back of Rachel’s chair, over her shoulder, making Rachel feel like she’s cornered, her other still holding the notebook up.
Rachel straightens her back. She can fake this. “I asked you not to read that.”
Santana scoffs, and the notebook falls to bounce against Rachel’s thigh, sliding down between her legs and finishing by slipping off the chair seat, landing askew on the stone floor. “That’s not an answer,” Santana continues after watching the descent of the notebook, looking back up to meet Rachel’s gaze, eyes sharp and darker.
“It’s…” Rachel wets her lower lip. She’s not sure she understands what Santana’s expression is telling her. Her heart spasms. “It’s all I’ve got. I don’t – ”
But Santana’s face is so close to hers, Rachel can’t do anything but recoil, feeling her pulse jump in her throat. She can’t read this. She wishes she could read this.
Because if she could read this, she’d know what to do.
Please God, she thinks, staring into Santana’s eyes, heart fluttering and body inhaling, trying to predict what each motion Santana makes means, tell me if I should lean in or laugh the whole thing off.
