It's hard to compartmentalize when he keeps jumping genres.

On their last night in Mexico, Santana has a plan that's bound to get someone in trouble.

Whatever’s pressing up next to Sokka’s knee, it certainly isn’t nothing. He’d leap back in revulsion and unadulterated horror, but then Zuko would be free to sauté him. Death, or coming in contact with an aroused Firebender? His life is full of impossible decisions.

"The dresses were pretty," Quinn comments. "It was going to be a beautiful ceremony." Her chest hurts at the thought, and Santana immediately eyes Quinn's heart monitor when the number displayed across it jumps.

Santana points her chopsticks at the beeping machine. "Yeah, that's basically a polygraph."

“I don’t have a crush on her,” Santana insists, putting a hand over her eyes. “Why would you say that?”

“You did,” Brittany says, pleasantly. “I don’t know how you could forget something like that. You used to tell me all the time that her boobs were really annoying. At first I didn’t understand how Mercedes’s boobs could make anyone mad, because they make me want to throw glitter in the air and kiss an elf on his little, tiny cheek, but then I figured out why you talked about them so much.” She looks at Mercedes, her expression sunny. “You have to tell me what you sacrificed to the boob fairy so she made you her favorite. I want to know your secrets.”

“What?”

“I think it was Matt Rutherford. That’s why he disappeared after sophomore year. Your boobs got totally bigger over summer break.”

Rachel Berry and Kurt Hummel are officially friends by their sophomore year of college. Now they have to figure out how to deal with the rest of the world.

"Am I in the chorus?" she whispered. For this, she would kill to be in the chorus. There weren't as many positions. It was an honor.

"You're not in the chorus."

The world tilted under her feet, but then she felt him squeeze her hand. "You're third understudy. Multiple roles."

Her eyes shot open. Rachel gasped for breath as she sought her name on the sheet, knowing that seeing it would make it real. "I'm... it's... that's in the playbill. Ahead of the chorus. That's... if a bout of strep throat hits, I'm on stage! I'm on stage with lines! We just need one convenient plague!"

"There's the Rachel Berry I know and, ahem, love," Kurt said, shaking his head.

He didn’t expect it to be this hard to stay away from her, to not touch her when she’s passing him in the halls, to call her ‘Berry’ again. They’re still friends, but it’s more buddy-buddy now. Painfully casual and stilted, always at least three feet between them and she keeps clutching her books in front of her like a shield, nervous and not meeting his gaze. It’s the way it was before Quinn slipped out from between them and they toppled into each other. He promised they’d be friends now, after, but it’s hard. It’s really, really hard.

Mike has nightmares about zombies in supermarkets.

He wonders when he started remembering her order. Or when he started noticing that she was like, an actual person instead of just another faceless customer.

The whole thing has you so fucking rattled you can hardly keep your voice from shaking. But at least Katniss didn't understand what the guy who loves crappies really wanted. At least there's that.


Because you know that Catnip knows the math too. And if she understood what the guy who loves crappies really wanted she would think Thirty-five equals four bottles of oil, eight pounds of beans, eleven sacks of grain and walk right into the blue house without a second thought.

“Rachel,” Quinn gasps. “I can’t stop.”

How Brittany finds out about and reacts to Santana's boob job.

“How about you come over here, instead?” He sticks his hand out, not totally confident that she’ll fall for this set-up twice. 

There was some shuffling at the other end. "Listen, Santana, my dad overestimates his ability to handle a grill. I need to go make sure he doesn't burn his eyebrows off." A pause. "Will you really break into my home and take my bedazzler if I called you from time to time?"

Santana laughed in spite of herself. "No, but just… don't overdo it."

"Fantastic! Talk to you later, Santana."

When she hung up, Santana fiddled with her phone for a minute before going into her address book and changing Treasure Trail to Rachel. Then she scrolled down to Trevor Lifeline and changed that one to try a friend first.

Maybe they understand one another more than anyone really thinks.

Quinn alienates this memory like a tumor from the rest: she’s certain down to her bones that if she were to pinpoint it on a timeline from where she first caught sight of Rachel Berry in the contestant waiting room to the day she said goodbye to her, this is where they started to go wrong.

“– and I know from experience he doesn’t know the first thing about fashion. What do you even talk about?” 

“Why do you even care?” she fires back, and then lowers her voice. The last thing she wants is to wake up Olivia. “We talk about the same shit everyone else talks about. Our friends. Things we want to do when we get out of Lima. The damn weather. What So You Think You Can Dance would be like if it was set in space. Since when did people have to have everything in common to be in a relationship? I don’t remember you going on about James Cameron or ninjas or whatever when you and Sam were dating.”

Quinn sputters a little. “That’s different.”

“Yeah? Go ahead, tell me how.”

There’s silence, and Mercedes feels satisfaction surge in her chest. 

A hair cut in New York and hanging out because they’re both too bored to remember they hate each other doesn’t an epic friendship make.

When Santana's hands slide under Brittany's Cheerios uniform, Brittany sighs and says, "You look really pretty. Thanks for staying." Then she whispers, "I love you," very quietly against Santana's ear, just in case she isn't ready to hear it.

“But I definitely don’t want to go prom with Finn, and I don’t want you to go to prom with anyone—except maybe me, but I’m really not sure that that’s a good idea, and not just because you don’t have a dress and it’s in four hours, so.”

Rachel’s lips curl into a little smile.  “You sound like me right now.”

“Is it annoying you?”

“It’s … kind of endearing, actually,” Rachel says, biting her lip, and Quinn sighs deeply, wondering how the hell she got here.

“Yeah.  That’s sort of how it happened to me, too.”

In Lima, it’s part of the local folklore.

Remember what happened to her family? Someone will say, when the Gazette runs another article on her successful career in New York. Remember?

Everyone does, of course. Things like that don’t happen in Lima.

Santana sighs. "What everyone says about it getting better after high school—that's all bullshit, isn't it?" "It will get better for you," Emma is quick to reply. "Then why," Santana asks, "can't it get better for you too?"

“I always guessed you were pretty cool, since Finn’s a cool guy when he’s not making my girlfriend cheat on me, and he liked you. But it’s nice to find out for sure.”

It isn’t the best compliment she’s ever received, or the most memorable, but it’s about her, not her singing or any of her other artistic endeavors. She wants to crush it to her, to carry it around, to write it on the inside of her arm: a cheat for when she needs a quick reminder that someone likes her company. Rachel Berry, pretty cool. 

“You’re pretty cool too, Sam,” she tells him, and sure, it’s not the most original response, but at least she’s managed to keep the tide of gratitude she’s feeling out of her voice.

Sam smiles at her, bending down to grab his backpack, and he keeps his eyes trained on her as he reaches for the strap.

“It’s the hair,” he says, lightly. “People love the hair.”

"No, no, no! Sometime when I don't have to watch you and Berry make goo-goo eyes at each other and plan duets. Which, by the way, I've seen RENT. That song wasn't subtle at all."

Before Mercedes could defend herself any further, Santana pushed past her and out the door, muttering something about stupid baby gays and leaving Mercedes alone with her thoughts.

"If you thought that Landslide was subtle, then you'd better have another idea too!" she called after Santana, but Santana was already gone.

When Karev pisses off a resident, Santana realizes she’s doing some weird sort of cuddling thing. Her head is pressed up under Tina’s chin and Tina’s humming along with the background music as Meredith and Derek break up and make up again.

She turns abruptly in Tina’s hold, realizing that they’re cuddling and they’re close, close enough that Santana’s lip grazes Tina’s chin when she breathes out. “Why are you here?”

Tina nods to the television. “Watching Grey’s,” she says, her eyes not leaving Santana’s.

“We’re not dating,” Santana says firmly. The words feel weird in her mouth – clunky and dry and something terrible like regret. “Your cable better really be broken.”

“It is,” Tina says softly, her hands linking at the small of Santana’s back, pushing her down gently. “Totally broken.”