Clockwork | Brittana

Chapter 15

Her phone was ringing. Brittany balanced her knife on the cream cheese container and crossed into the living room with her bagel. She plopped onto the couch and picked her phone up from the coffee table.

"Hello?"

"Hey Brittany, it's Quinn."

"Oh, hey," Brittany frowned into the receiver, wondering what reason Quinn would have to be calling her about an hour before they were supposed to be in for work. "What's up? Is something wrong?"

Quinn laughed lightly and it eased Brittany's worry, "No, it's just that Santana is taking the day off, so I just wanted to let you know before you came into Clockwork today."

"Oh..." Brittany took a small nibble from her bagel still mildly concerned, "is she alright?"

"Yeah, she's fine. She's just been up all night on a bit of a geek out. She was still awake when I woke up for work this morning and I just sent her to bed."

Brittany's lips tugged into a smile, she could just see Santana in her basement working over her computer and listening to music. She found it charming that Santana let time get away from her to a point where she needed to be pulled away from her work and told to sleep.

"She's going to be out until around ten," Quinn continued, "but she wanted me to ask if you would want to come over and go over her project with her?"

"Really? Are you sure? I wouldn't want to impose..."

"No, no, please. She'd probably love to talk to someone about it, I stopped talking to her about her work a long time ago."

"I would really like that actually."

"Great, she'll text you when she finally rolls out of bed."

They made polite farewells and Brittany took another bite of her bagel. She couldn't help but feel like this was coming at the perfect time. The past few days at Clockwork had been... interesting, to say the least. Brittany was honestly pretty proud of herself. She had been the picture perfect image of a professional. Always keeping a respectable distance, her eyes never lingered too long, her smiles were never anything that could be considered more than friendly.

Santana, who was an expert at putting up a front in the face of her coworkers, had played along expertly. Granted, she had been prone to blush a little more than usual, and tired to say in her office with Brittany and Kurt as often as possible. She had small moments, where she would intentionally keep Brittany at arms length, like when they were alone in the elevator, or in the computer lab. Brittany didn't take it personally, if anything she was flattered.

Because in those moments, when they had escaped from the rest of the Clockwork staff, Santana's eyes were the one's that had been lingering a little too long. There was a genuine attraction in those dark orbs. Brittany was looking forward to some time alone with the Latina, time where they didn't have to worry about prying eyes.

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Santana was sitting on the steps outside when Brittany arrive at the Lopez-Fabray home, sipping from a mug of coffee and reading a magazine. Brittany was willing to bet that it wasn't one that had her picture on it. She looked up with a smile when she heard Brittany's footsteps.

"Are you ready to play hookey with me?" her eyes sparkled from behind her glasses.

"I can't think of a better way to spend my day," Brittany grinned and settled down next to the brunette on the steps. "What are you reading?"

"An old professor of mine had her dissertation published," Santana passed the article to the journalist who looked it over.

"Holly Holiday?" she squinted at the author, "is that pen name?"