That night she sits down and spends an hour explaining to Britt that Kurt and Blaine are going to be borrowing her stomach for the next nine months in order to have a baby without consulting a stork. She makes a point of mentioning how nice and kind and amazing it is of her to do it. She figures the least this can earn her is some reward sex, and Britt loves it when she plays nice. They drink a bottle of wine in celebration (Brittany is celebrating the baby. Santana is celebrating the fact that Brittany seems to understand everything she was just told, and not one confusing association had sprung up in their conversation) and build a sheet fort in their living room so they can pretend to be having sex in a tent. She's promised Britt that someday, the two of them will go camping together. It's difficult to believe they never have, but for some reason holidays are the one part of their lives that never quite synched up. If she proposes, they'll have a honeymoon together as their first holiday. (In her head, she adds that to the pros.)

The next morning, she's rudely awoken by Lady Gaga blaring on her phone. Light is peeping through the windows but Britt is still fast asleep. They're still in their fort, sprawled stark naked on the floor boards. Brittany is using Santana's thigh as a pillow. It's vastly uncomfortable but she doesn't care. Sometimes she wonders what it'll be like when they're older, when they won't be able to crash out anywhere they please after hours of marathon sex, because their bodies will ache for days afterwards. That sounds like a pretty horrible existence, to her.

The phone is still ringing. She gropes for it in the pocket of the jeans she had hastily discarded the night before. The caller ID is flashing at her - PORCELAIN. She's not in the habit of borrowing Sue's nicknames but in Hummel's case it's too perfect to resist.

More importantly, why the fuck is Hummel calling her at such an indecent time?

She answers the phone with her eyes closed and sighs.

"Kurt," she says. Her voice is the rough hungover kind that takes a few minutes to settle into.

"Santana," he replies. He sounds cautious, and he isn't calling her Satan, so she figures she's done something to throw him off base a bit. Then she remembers the night before. Talking to Blaine. Offering her body as a ritual sacrifice for their happiness. All that jazz. She's surprised to find that she hasn't changed her mind overnight. It still seems like a terrible idea, but it's a terrible idea she wants to be a part of.

"What's up?" she enquires. She's too tired to be snarky. She'll think of a suitable insult in a minute, when her head's less foggy. As long as he's playing nice as well.

"I talked to Blaine."

There's a pause while he seems to wait for her to say something. She doesn't know what it is, so she keeps silent and wait for him to continue.

"He said that you'd offered to do the surrogacy for us?"

"Yep," she drawls, dragging herself to her hands and knees and figuring she should go and get some coffee, to see if it'll stop the gross pounding in her head.

"Oh." His voice is, like, genuinely shocked, which she should probably be insulted by except she doesn't have the energy. "You really did, then?"

"Yep, and you don't have to sound so surprised. Blainers is my best friend. You're sort of okay. And Britt's gonna be gone for the next seven months so I kind of need a distraction anyway."

She can almost hear the cogs turning in his head, all possibilities sorting themselves out and reaching exactly the same conclusion: Does Not Compute. Still, he must know not to look a gifthorse in the gob or whatever, because he doesn't question it again.

"Thank you," he says. It's kind of soft sounding and she suspects if she doesn't do something pretty soon, this conversation is going to get all kinds of mushy.

"Yeah, well, I'm hot and all kinds of smart. What better genes could your sprog ask for, right?"

He gives a sort of wry laugh, but doesn't bounce back with a cutting insult of his own. Maybe he's afraid she's going to change her mind if he riles her up.

"Do you want to come over later and talk about some of the details? You can bring Britt."

She's glad he offers, because Britt's gonna be gone in a month and she kind of wants to soak up all the time they can have together before then. Which, yes, includes marathon sex every time they're alone, but also kind of just sitting together and holding hands while they chat and enjoying her job as Britt-to-human translator whenever they hang out with their friends.

"Sure," she says amicably, glancing over her shoulder to gaze at Brittany's sleeping body, still tangled up in their sheets. As she watches Britt suddenly flings an arm out, no doubt acting some bizarre dream, and the whole fort collapses on top of her. She doesn't even stir.

Santana wants to laugh, but in the end it's just too adorable. She wakes Britt up with a cup of hot chocolate (she's never liked coffee, though it's Santana's main source if sustenance) and walks her to her rehearsal.

That evening, they arrive at Kurt and Blaine's to the smell of freshly baked cookies. Brittany squeals excitedly and bounces into the kitchen to help Kurt, who from what Santanas glimpses through the doorway is preparing some kind of dessert-centred feast, presumably for a major league football team judging by the amount of food. Blaine is attempting to help but stops when he sees her, and they head into the living room together.

"Let our girls do the cooking," she says with a smirk, propping her feet up on his lap. He frowns at her slightly but doesn't try and defend Kurt, which in itself is unusual.

"I want you to know," he says instead, "how totally awesome it is that you offered to do this. It really means a lot to us."

"Duh, or why would I be doing it," she replies. He seems to consider this a good point because he shuts up. She genuinely can't handle all this mush.

They chat idly about Santana's job hunt for a minute, until Kurt and Brittany emerge from the kitchen wielding plates full of food. Britt bounds over to proudly show Santana the cookies.

"Kurt let me ice them," she announces. "It was awesome."

Every cookie on the plate is decorated with a wobbly red heart around a small S. It's sort of adorable.

Kurt feeds Blaine a small piece of cake, and then all of a sudden Brittany's pouting.

"You never bake for me," she points out to Santana.

San mentally updates the list of things to do in Britt's absence from get a job, have a baby, to get a job, have a baby, buy a cookbook.

"So, what exactly is the plan here?" she asks, once Kurt and Blaine have settled on the loveseat across from her. She knows they've probably been planning to make awkward conversation for at least half an hour while being uncharacteristically nice to her and never acknowledging the reason she's there, but she's not sure she can stomach that. "One of you jerks off into a turkey baster and I just go to town?"

Blaine blushes slightly, but Kurt doesn't even look surprised at her crassness anymore. He just rolls his eyes and offers her another cookie.

"We were thinking we'd do the 'Mr and Mr Berry' trick," he says. "Y'know, so we never know who the genetic father is?"

She nods. She'd met Rachel's dads just the once, back in Lima, at their high school graduation. Somehow she, Britt, Kurt and Blaine had ended up sitting with them in some hilarious 'queer corner' at the New Directions family celebration afterwards. They'd been fantastically obnoxious - it had certainly explained a lot about Rachel, that was for sure. She still finds it kind of hilarious that they claim not to know who fathered the Glee Club's resident starlet - as if the Jewish nose and relatively Caucasian skin didn't give it away. But Kurt and Blaine aren't dramatically different in colouring, and if they're borrowing her genes then it's not like the baby's going to inherit Kurt's porcelain skin anyway. There aren't any obvious flaws in the plan.

"Okay, cool. So when are we pulling the trigger?"

Brittany is sat cross legged on the sofa next to her, making two gingerbread men make out and not paying any attention to the life changing conversation happening around her. Kurt and Blaine exchange a look and have one of those stupid silent conversations that make her want to vomit with the soppiness of it all. They turn back to her before she can comment on it, though.

"Well, sometimes it can take a few attempts to conceive, so we thought we should start trying as soon as possible. In case it takes years or something."

That kind of boggles Santana's mind. She hasn't really considered the fact that there's no guarantee it will work. She'd built up a picture in her head of her and Britt having one session with the turkey baster, and then three weeks later a little pink strip on a pregnancy test, and the whole thing would be over by New Year's. But it's more likely it'll be months before one of their tadpoles even sticks. That makes the whole situation significantly more awkward. Is it stupid to go job hunting when she's trying to get pregnant, for example? Because she'll just be taking maternity leave a couple of months in anyway. And if Britt leaves on tour before she's knocked up, will Santana have to wait until she gets back to try again? She doesn't exactly want anyone else fiddling down in her nether regions, and it seems like it'd be a pretty awkward thing to try and do herself.

She feels the beginnings of second thoughts creeping into her mind, but quickly buries them, because what kind of an ass would she be if she pulled out now? She can see in their eyes and tiny smiles how much this means to them. For one of the first times in her life, she feels like she's being a halfway decent human being, and it's a slightly wonderful sensation.

"So, what, I'll just call you up next time my ovaries spit out a little goldmine of DNA, and we go from there?"

The boys have another tiny silent conversation before turning back to her with stupidly wide smiles, and nodding. She wants to make some sort of joke about their puppy dog eyes - especially Blaine's, because, just, really? - but Britt's hand is on her knee and Kurt's nose is crinkled up in happiness and Blaine is giving her one of his looks that says she's the best friend ever, and she sort of believes it for the first time. She feels really, really warm and fuzzy and tingly in ways she doesn't plan on analysing. She's not gonna suddenly join a charity and take a vow of abstinence and devote her life to helping others, but right now, she feels pretty darn good.

She takes a cookie from Britt, and uncrosses her legs. Nobody but her even knows that it's metaphorical.