Clockwork | Brittana

Chapter 6

Santana couldn't stand to look at the screen, she couldn't stand to listen to the words, all she could do was focus on her breathing and keeping her face a carefully controlled expression.

As if her dignity wasn't riding on this.

This whole thing was a double sided sword. If Brittany's article gets approved she gets exposed on a emotional and personal level, if she gets shoved into Maxim she just gets exposed. She wasn't sure which was worse, but she knew that she could ever earn a shred of respect, it would be with the article and not the photo shoot. A part of her wanted the feature to get approves solely for Brittany's sake. The girl had worked so hard on this already, it would be a shame to ruin it now.

She glanced at the blonde who was speaking in front of a few, more controlling, members of the marketing board and a public relations representative next to Quinn. Rachel Berry was sitting at the end of the table near Brittany and they played well off of each other, but it was clear that Rachel was giving most of the control to Brittany, this was her project. They outlined the timeline, the events they would cover, the shadowing process that integrated Brittany into Santana's work at Clockwork. When she finished there was a round of applause and the floor was opened to questions.

Santana wanted congratulate Brittany on her presentation right there, she knew the blonde had been nervous about it. She thought everything went perfectly.

They sat around the table, throwing pros and cons, wondering about the ramifications to their spring sales. It wasn't the first time that Santana had been talked about like she wasn't even in the room. Again, she felt completely objectified, even Brittany and Rachel's comments weren't directed in a manner that included her as a visible player in the discussion. Santana found herself falling back into the mindset that had long ago accepted that she had no control of her life and that her opinion didn't even matter.

In that moment she was bitter, and resentful and she just wanted to leave. She wanted to quit her job, tell all these people to go fuck themselves and go back into her basement and just live. Her pride asked her, how pathetic was she willing to become? She honestly would rather be slowly torturing herself with these people and have small moments that she could do what she loved, than get run out the the business all together because they wanted to objectify her.

"Now Mr. St. James," Rachel Berry's voice cut through her mental drama and Santana finally focused on what was going on around her. "While I understand, and even admire your hard hitting marketing ploy that plays on the strong public need for sex appeal, mixed with the American pastime of wanting the latest and greatest technology, I do believe that you are doing yourself a disservice by letting that be the only thing the Face of Clockwork seems to represent, when there are so many sides of Miss Lopez that we could utilize."

Utilize, Santana was almost offended at the word. The only thing people wanted to utilize her for was something to look at while they were masturbating.

Quinn couldn't keep her eyes off this editor, she wasn't sure how she could just waltz into a corporate meeting of this stature act so unbelievably confident. She was so assured that everything would work out you could almost feel it. She spoke amicably to the board members, ignoring their gruff superiority complex and acting as if they were just sharing ideas around a coffee table.

"Such as?" Jesse St. James was the latest Head of Marketing and was by far the worst thing that had ever happened to Santana's life at Clockwork. He was the orchestrator to her position as the Face of Clockwork, he pushed her to change everything about herself, he put her at the forefront of the conventions, the publicity, the magazines. It was him that wanted her to do Maxim.

"Miss Pierce and I, have done a little research," Rachel sent him a pleasant smile and a new image popped up on the presentation screen. "It seems like your buyer demographic is a little one-sided on the male to female ratio, and I believe that might be because of the continuing objectification of Miss Lopez."