there before the grace of you go i (753 words) by whyyesitscar / @itcameuponamidnightqueer
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Warehouse 13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Myka Bering/Helena "H. G." Wells
Characters: Myka Bering, Helena "H. G." Wells
Summary:
Some people are meant to never wear clothes. Myka Bering is one of them. [small bering and wells drabble]
Please tell us why you like this fic so much!
Awwww cute! And Helena is right, Myka is breathtaking. It's these short moments between them, that make them them. I have heart-eyes!
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PROMPT: World famous singer Santana does a Bruce Jenner type interview, where she comes out to the world, talks about her sexuality, the ways she's been forced to hide it, & the secret relationship she's had with close friend/back up dancer/whatever Brittany, that she's had to keep secret for years.
PROMPTED BY: Tumblr Anon
RATED: T
TITLE: all i ever wanna be (is somebody to you)
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“Ready?”
“I guess.”
“Can we get a little more light on Santana—it is okay if I call you Santana, isn’t it?”
“You already asked me that.”
“Remind me what you said.”
“I said yes.”
“Sorry.” A smile. “Even talk show hosts get star-struck sometimes.”
“It’s okay; I won’t tell anyone.”
“Okay, we’re rolling in 3, 2…”
/
March 2001
The only way you’re getting through this is because you can see Brittany cheering you on from behind the camera. She’s giving you double thumbs-up every time you glance her way, and it makes you smile even if you only put five seconds between glances. Sugar keeps trying to swing your focus back to her. As if that’s possible whenever Brittany’s in the room.
You shift on your couch, trying to find the most comfortable position as Sugar runs through the intro to this “very special episode of What’s a Motta With You?” The producers fought hard for you to do the interview at their studio but you wouldn’t budge. If you were going to do this—and it took a lot of talking with Brittany to realize this was a good thing to do—you were going to do it on your terms. You didn’t care who got the story, just that someone got it from you.
“—and today I’m here with chart-topper Santana Lopez in her wonderful home. Santana, I might have to steal these chairs from you for my studio.”
“They are comfortable, aren’t they?” you smile. Brittany picked them out, you want to say, but you have to save it for later. Sugar’s got a whole outline down.
“Everything in this room looks cozy, but we’re not here to talk about your beautiful home.” Sugar shifts in her chair and smiles the smile of a journalist ready to ask questions. Journalist is a generous description of her work, but you like her all the same, and there’s no avoiding her now.
“You just got back from your first tour as a solo artist; how was that?”
You smile and relax. You can talk about music. You can talk about music for days. You remind yourself that even though Sugar already knows what this interview will reveal—and that’s terrifying—she’s smart enough to start it on familiar ground. She won’t let you talk about music for days, but you could.
“It was definitely an adjustment. Good in some ways. I didn’t have three other girls to argue about choreography with,” you chuckle.
“But bad in other ways?”
“Well, I didn’t have three girls to argue about choreography with.” Brittany rolls her eyes behind Sugar—you’re such a dork, she says, and you did that on purpose. “The stage is a lot bigger when you’re the only one on it.”
Sugar asks questions about your musical journey for the next half an hour, diving right into your beginnings with Star and its three other founding members—Mercedes Jones, who left about a month after you did and who’s sold just as many solo albums as you have; Tina Cohen-Chang, who stayed because good singers make her better, and also because someone has to show Mercedes’s replacement how the group works; and Rachel Berry, an annoyingly talented singer and, put simply, the reason you left.
Your feud with Rachel was nasty and public, and you tell Sugar that you wish you’d both handled yourselves better. You don’t regret leaving the group but you came very close to making Rachel an enemy, and given that she’s the darling of every media outlet, your agent wisely advised against doing that. You can look at her without wanting to set her face on fire, but it doesn’t mean that you’ve stopped thinking that way.
“And when we come back,” Sugar tells the cameras, “we’ll have an exclusive look at Santana’s first steps into the world of television.” The producer gives her a thumbs-up signaling that the cameras are off and Sugar twists her neck; you can hear every pop and crack. “This isn’t airing live so we have more than the length of a commercial for a break, if you need to rest.”
You open your mouth, intending to say no, but you realize just how tired you are, just how much you also need to crack your neck. A break might be nice.
“There’s finger foods in the kitchen,” Brittany offers from behind you.
You crane your head backwards to look at her, following her as she walks to the couch and sits next to you. You could watch her walk anywhere; you could just watch her move. Sometimes you think she’s from another planet where everyone learns how to embody peace before they take their first steps.
“Shouldn’t you be in makeup?” you smile. “Your part’s coming up soon; wouldn’t want to let the camera see your third eye.”
“Hey, if I had a third eye, it would be the best third eye in the world.” Brittany sits down next to you and slings an arm across the back of the couch. Instantly, you feel safer. “They already did my face,” she explains. “Can’t you tell?”
“You look beautiful to me every day no matter what’s on your face.”
“And people think I’m the soft one.”
You dart your eyes around the room out of habit even though this is your house and you shouldn’t have to. Brittany opens her mouth to tell you that Sugar’s gone, but you cut her off with a kiss. One day you’ll kiss her without checking first. Until then, you can only hope her patience doesn’t run out.
Brittany hums as you pull away, resting her head on your shoulder. “How did you know what I was going to say?”
“How did you know I knew what you were going to say?”
“That sounds like something from Friends. You know, where everyone finds out that Monica and Chandler are totally doing it?”
“It does,” you laugh. “We’re kind of like that episode too, huh?”
“I think that means Sugar is Joey.” Brittany twists her head on your shoulder, craning to look up at you. “Kinda makes sense, doesn’t it?”
You agree and laugh, and kiss her again. Then she kisses you.
You’d have forgotten about Sugar if she hadn’t walked back into the room.
/
“You’re an accomplished singer and dancer, and now you’re about to add ‘reality television star’ to that list,” Sugar begins. “Tell me more about that.”
The air in the room is different; you’re sure everyone can feel it. (You hope everyone can feel it.) It’s heavy, sagging with everything you’re about to say. A part of you wants to get it all out as fast as you can, and the other part is hiding somewhere behind the couch.
“Well, it’s still in the early stages of development,” you answer. “We’re hoping it will be a day-in-the-life type show, following me from home to the recording studio. Giving the public a glimpse into my life outside of the spotlight, essentially. Kind of like The Real World but without six other people.”
“But with one other person,” Sugar prompts, and this is it. This is the question you can’t back away from.
Brittany is giving you a thumbs-up again. Her eyes, though, are different this time. They are more earnest, more loving, and more nervous than you’ve ever seen them. It throws you more than the question itself. Answering the question is a simple matter of calming your racing heart long enough to speak. Making Brittany feel relaxed lies in what you say after you do, and you’ve never been that great at voicing your feelings. If you were, this interview wouldn’t even be happening.
But it is, so you take a deep breath, put on your business face, and answer. “Yes.”
“Who?”
You smile and look off-camera. Who cares if Sugar told you not to when Brittany is looking at you like that? “Brittany Pierce,” you smile, “my girlfriend.”
(Later, when you watch this special on TV—when Brittany finally convinces you to—you’ll blush at the footage they play of your acceptance speech at the Grammys, the thing that got the tabloids buzzing in the first place.
It was your first solo award; there was no way anyone could have expected you not to thank Brittany. You know, those few people who knew about her, anyway. The gratitude had poured out of you without thought that night—and yet you still managed to keep your words vague. Brittany was “my biggest supporter” and “my rock” and “I don’t know how I’d make it a day without you.” It was enough for people to speculate—and they did—but it was also enough for you to deny.
(And you did.)
So you watch them replay it and you still blush, but it doesn’t last as long this time. Because Brittany is your biggest supporter and your rock, and you don’t know how you’d make it a day without her sitting next to you, holding your hand; or hugging you when the whole thing’s over and you don’t want to answer your phone; or smiling as you kiss her on the lips the next morning for the paparazzi camped outside your beach house.)
/
Brittany joins you for the last segment. You let her tell the story of where you met, how Brittany was one of your backup dancers and how every time you thought she wasn’t looking, you stared at her. Like, unabashedly, wide-eyed stared at her. She winked at you every time, and it was all you could do not melt or combust or run laps around the stage. She made you feel things you thought only existed in movies and soap operas. She still does, if you’re being honest.
Sugar presses you both for every detail you’ve already agreed to give her, and when she’s done and the cameras are off, she hugs you and smiles. You’re pretty sure only half of that smile is because of all the money she’ll make off this interview. It’s more sincere than Sugar usually is, so you call it a win and smile back.
The crews leave and your living room goes back to being just your living room, only this time everything looks different. Surely that couch wasn’t the same one you sat on two days ago.
“Things are gonna change,” Brittany says, circling her arms around you and resting her chin in the crook of your neck.
“I know.”
“Still time to take it back.”
You think back to the interview. It was one of the last questions Sugar asked you—Do you wish you could undo any of this?—and fear had answered yes, at first. But, since you’re not so big on the saying-feelings thing, you pushed aside your fear, sat back, and took a moment to think.
It’s been hard, you’d said. It’s been hard the last few months and it’s been hard my whole life, even if I didn’t really know why it was hard. And, you know, Brittany made it hard, too. The very first time I met her I thought, ‘This is a woman I want to tell everyone about.’ But I couldn’t. It’s instinctual, I think, to keep good things secret. Politics and career ramifications aside, it’s always a special feeling to have something that’s yours—just yours. And I think I was that for Brittany, too. I tried for a long time to pretend that I was okay keeping it like that. But secrets have a way of becoming stifling really fast. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized I wasn’t keeping Brittany secret. I was keeping me secret, and that’s just not how I want to interact with the world.
You still haven’t answered my question, Sugar pried.
Would I undo it, would I take it back? Sugar nodded. No, you finally said. No, I wish I’d done this sooner.
“San?”
You sigh yourself back to the present and slide your fingers along Brittany’s arms, coming to rest atop her hands.
“Still time to take it back,” she repeats.
“I know.”
“Will you?”
You lean back and smile. Brittany is kissable at every angle.
“No.”
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***Just a few more hours and few more spots remain, get registered for a memberships pronto!!!***
She writes and deletes, writes and deletes, and pretends not to notice when Rachel rolls her eyes. Going to college, working, raising a kid, and maintaining a monogamous relationship—she was succeeding where her parents had failed miserably. There won’t be any stopping today. She understands Brittany’s urge to get all of these moments on video because Quinn is absolutely certain this moment can’t be duplicated. Santana’s hands do that thing they always do when she believes what she sings. Quinn is pretty much done with religion, but she’s ready to be converted right now. “You know,” he says from the doorway, “life doesn’t stop just because you do something new. Bills and kids and boyfriends—we’re all still here. We want you, too.” Noah tries to tell her that books do the same thing, but books aren’t as deceptive. They have one path and you don’t have any choice but to follow it. Books don’t make you think you can change the ending. “Mike, pepperoni me. I need something with a little less cheese than this girl.” “Do you think Santana will let me coach her?” “I think you should try really hard not to let her kill you while I’m gone.” She thinks that if she could splash her face with water after encountering every new impossible problem, she wouldn’t feel so stressed. The last time she voiced that to Noah, he hung a spray bottle around her neck. He kisses her forehead and it’s like splashing her face with water a dozen times. http://archiveofourown.org/works/646408/chapters/1610778?view_adult=true
"But the country is paranoid and lovers all over are paying for it" http://archiveofourown.org/works/646408/chapters/1291120?view_adult=true Damn this chapter is good.
[Text below for those who can't view well on phones]
“I know every one of your posters, Naoms. I’ve never seen this one.” A playful pinch to the back of her hand. “Tell me about it.”
Naomi shrugged. “It’s nothing, really. Just an old suffragette poster.”
“What’s in the corner?” Emily pointed to a grey shape. It looked faintly like a person.
“Oh, that’s my gran. She was only nine. Wasn’t even supposed to be there. She got in lots of trouble that day.” Naomi said it like it was no big deal. Emily was boggled.
Emily gawped at her with wide eyes. “I’ve seen this in textbooks. That’s your gran.”
“Yep.” A nonchalant pop on the ‘p.’
“She changed history.” Emily shook her head. “Unbelievable.”
