Somewhat Less than Perfect
Title: Somewhat Less than Perfect
Fandom: Glee
Pairings/Characters: Quinn/Lauren Zizes, Santana, Puck
Rating: PG
Warnings: Language and mentions of sizeism
Length: 5381
Spoilers: Up to and including Prom Queen/2x20.
Summary: The story of how Quinn wound up not completely hating Lauren Zizes.
AN: This was written for ellydash as a part of the Glee Femslash Exchange. The prompt was "Quinn/Lauren, Lucy never would've done this."
Dear ______,
I’m sorry for being such a bitch to you before Prom.
Also, you’re totally hotter than me.
Love,
______.
Quinn was furious. This wasn’t the first time someone had slipped a nasty note into her locker-wasn’t even the first time since she’d transferred to this school-but this note in particular was causing her to lose all control.
The note, which Quinn had found stuffed into the vent of her locker, was folded into the shape of a card, with a messy sketch of Quinn with a moustache and missing teeth on the front cover. Quinn flipped the card over in hopes of finding some sort of name or message or something that would give her an indicator of who to get revenge on. Because, though she didn’t have the title of Head Cheerio to throw around anymore, Quinn had a fair collection of dirt on many of the current Cheerios that she would easily leak.
The card did, in fact, have a message on the back, as well as a giftcard to Breadstix taped beneath it. And as Quinn read it, her grip on the card tightened until the paper was quivering in her hands.
Hey, Caboosey
I thought you could give this to me when I win Prom Queen, just fill in the blanks.
Oh and have fun eating ice cream with your mom when you lose to me :)
xoxo -L
Quinn lowered the card and took a deep breath to focus herself. She knew it. She knew it was her-should have guessed sooner, even.
She went off to find the person who had caused her so much trouble in her Prom Queen campaign so far: Lauren Zizes.
---
Ever since back in middle school when she’d learned that her family was moving to Ohio, Quinn had planned to create a new identity. But along with the new nose, the Cheerios outfit, and the attention had come a sense of extreme paranoia-a fear that, somehow, someone would find out about her past and tell everyone she knew. She’d been so certain, Quinn had, that her plan would fail, in fact, that the big reveal of her identity to the whole school had become a frequent nightmare of hers. It was because of that that she had walked into Lauren’s trap those days ago with a vague sense if what she would encounter.
Pain, first and foremost, she’d predicted. Just thinking about the nightmares had sent an unpleasant jolt up Quinn’s spine that left her limbs feeling warm and uncomfortable. This then followed by a wave of embarrassment and complete panic. Then anger followed shortly after, leaving Quinn a confused mess incapable of doing anything except sit there and silently listen as her biggest secrets were told to everybody she didn’t want to know.
And, all in all, her nightmare-borne predictions were fairly accurate. When Lauren had stood before Quinn and told her about all the things she’d uncovered, Quinn did feel that tingle run up her back and leave her limbs feelings like jelly. She did feel embarrassed and ashamed and angry and depressed and too many other things to sit around and list all at once, just as she had upon waking from so many different nightmares not so long ago, during that brief moment where sleep and awareness seemed to blend together.
But there was one thing she wasn’t expecting, had never felt in those years of nightmares. Somewhere, in the back of Quinn’s mind, she had to admit that she respects Lauren a little for that. Because, yeah, it was a low blow, but that was exactly the kind of thing that people need to do at William McKinley High School to get any sort of attention and respect. Quinn thought back to when she was a freshman, newly transferred and slightly stumbling in her quest for popularity by the fact that she simply was not yet ruthless enough to command respect.
Yeah, Quinn thought as she looked back to that moment in the classroom with Lauren. There was something to respect in that.
---
Quinn stomped over to Lauren, who was at her locker putting away her books, and stood so close behind her that her head was practically on Lauren’s shoulder. “Zizes,” she said through clenched teeth. “We need to talk. Right now.”
Lauren sighed and turned away from her locker, seemingly unaffected by Quinn’s attempts at intimidation. “This had better be interesting, Fabray, and it had better be fast, because there’s a new batch of lightweights in the gym with my name on them.”
Quinn sighed, frustrated, and took a step back. She held up the card, briefly. “I thought we weren’t going to do this anymore,” she said.
---
After the ‘Lucy Caboosey’ incident, things had quieted down between Quinn and Lauren. Their conflict hadn’t been resolved so much as it had simply… ended. Lauren seemed, at least, to be guilty for spreading Quinn’s secrets around the school, and Quinn was, at least, more open with herself about her admiration (okay, and jealousy) of Lauren’s natural confidence that still felt so artificial and new on herself.
And maybe it was because of this combination of guilt and admiration/jealousy that lead to the current unspoken agreement between the two: no more sabotage. End the fighting. Forgive and forget.
Well. Quinn hadn’t exactly forgiven Lauren. Rather, she had simply taken inspiration from her mother and ceased thinking about the matter entirely. And, really, wasn’t that just the same?
---
“Give me one good reason why I would waste time I could be spending trying to hack into Stephanie Meyer’s home computer sending you poorly disguised love letters.” Lauren crossed her arms and leaned against her locker.
“Let me think,” Quinn said, sarcasm thick in her voice. “Maybe because you’ve been trying to ruin me for the past few weeks?”
Lauren snorted. “Please. Like I’d dedicate so much time and effort to you. Fabray, if I were really out to get you, I wouldn’t waste my time with pansy-ass cards. I could just take you to the floor right now in a real fight.”
“So this-” Quinn held up the card as if in evidence, “-wasn’t you? Right.” She dropped her arm back down to her side. “Then who do you think it was?”
“Quinn!” Santana called over-enthusiastically from the other side of the hall, waving. “Good luck running for Prom Queen, Quinn!” Santana’s voice was saccharine. “I hope you liked the ‘good luck’ card I made for you!” With that, Santana went off to chase after Kurt, who’d apparently given up on waiting for her to walk him through the halls and started to his next class.
“Oh, right,” Quinn said quietly, her cheeks reddening. She looked down at the floor.
“Yeah. Right,” Lauren repeated. “Now, why don’t you get on up out of my locker space.” It wasn’t a suggestion.
---
Just a few days later, the whole incident had been pretty much forgotten (aside from the few times Quinn ‘accidentally’ tripped Santana in Glee, of course). That is, it was until Quinn found herself being unceremoniously dragged into the Astronomy room by an angry Lauren Zizes as she was on her way to Math.
“What the hell?” Quinn was nearly shouting. “What are you doing? I’m going to be late!”
“Shut up,” Lauren said as she finished locking the door to the classroom. Her calm tone just served to infuriate Quinn more. Lauren turned and gestured towards the chairs, indicating that Quinn take a seat.
Once Quinn was uncomfortably settled in a plastic desk chair (Lauren herself had simply taken the teacher’s swivel chair), Lauren began to explain. “I’m assuming it was Lopez who left this crap in my locker.” She held up a card, similar in design to the one Quinn had found but with a drawing of what was possibly a rhinoceros in a dress on the front.
“Probably,” Quinn agreed.
“The thing is,” Lauren said as she crumpled the card and tossed it in a nearby trashcan. “Nobody messes with The Zizes and lives to tell the tale. I’m going to be getting my sweet revenge, and I was thinking, me and you, we should team up.” Lauren smirked at the confused look on Quinn’s face. “We’re some tough bitches. And we can come up with a plan to make sure nobody wants to vote Lopez for queen of anything. Plus,” she added, “I see her as more competition than you, really, so I might as well get her out of the way.” Lauren shrugged at the scowl Quinn sent her.
“Fine. I’ll do it,” Quinn said, still annoyed. She wasn’t opposed to a little foul play to get something she wanted. Not to mention, she’d take any opportunity she had to screw with Santana. Just thinking about this, Quinn almost felt as if she were back on the Cheerios, stepping and clawing over everyone just to stay on top.
“Good,” said Lauren. “Meet me at Breadstix. Thursday. Six-thirty.”
---
Their meeting started out on a pretty uncomfortable note.
“Well damn,” Lauren said around a mouthful of spaghetti as Quinn sat down in the seat opposite her. “If you’d gotten here any later, I could have just ditched and left you with the check.”
Quinn narrowed her eyes, although the menacing effect of which was somewhat reduced when she reached for a breadstick. “Do you want to do this or not?”
Lauren rolled her eyes. “Whatever. So, anyway, I think that before Prom comes we could-”
“Did you say Prom?” And then, right there in the worst possible time at the worst possible place, Santana turned around in her booth chair, directly behind Quinn’s, to face the pair. “Hello, by the way.” She smiled in a way that was probably meant to be sweet but that looked to Quinn like some sort of deriding smirk.
“Santana.” Quinn put on her best fake smile. “What are you doing here?” It was a dumb question. This whole idea was dumb, actually. Quinn should have known Santana would show up here. Hell, she’d practically been living at Breadstix ever since she left the Cheerios.
“I’m here on a date with my hot boyfriend, Dave Karofsky, of course.” Santana gestured vaguely at Karofsky, who was sitting across from Santana and looking very uncomfortable. “And you? Talking about Prom… with her?”
Lauren spoke up, “Why don’t you two just screw off and let us eat in peace before I do it for you.”
Santana glared briefly at Lauren and turned back around in her chair, mumbling something about a ‘round two’ that Quinn couldn’t quite understand.
And then Quinn ordered her meal. And then the two sat in dead silence. For ten minutes.
“That’s it.” Lauren stood and tugged Quinn up by her wrist none too gently, walking them over to the girls’ bathroom.
---
“Why haven’t we gone somewhere else yet?” Lauren asked, clearly annoyed.
“We can’t!” Quinn stopped and then, suddenly paranoid, looked around the bathroom. It was empty. “We can’t,” she said again, quieter. “If we just leave now, Santana will get suspicious and start hounding us even more.”
Lauren groaned. “Ugh, you are the most useless secret agent I’ve ever worked with-and I say this as someone who’s done spy work with Puckerman.”
---
The two sat back down at their table, Quinn with a fake smile plastered onto her face and Lauren with a blatant scowl (which Quinn was hoping Santana would overlook, seeing as it didn’t look too different from her normal scowl).
Quinn shuffled uncomfortably in her seat. “So. What kinds of songs do you like doing in Glee?”
Lauren sent her a disbelieving glance. Quinn silently pointed to the booth behind them (where Santana was currently engaged in a debate with her waitress over what could reasonably be considered indecent behaviour for a couple at a public restaurant). Lauren let out a longsuffering sigh, rested her chin on her hand, and answered. “I like doing current stuff. You?”
And, all in all, the evening got better. Their question-and-answer session soon turned into something that more resembled a natural conversation. By the end of the night, Quinn and Lauren were casually bad-mouthing some of their past Glee assignments and song choices, comparing the training sessions for wrestling and Cheerios, and even joking around about Puck (Quinn had started to believe that Lauren didn’t really mean half of the things she was saying about Puck; she believed that that was Lauren’s way of showing affection. She even said so, at some point in the night. Things got a bit awkward again, after that, and Quinn just dropped it).
After a while, Quinn had completely forgotten that she didn’t want to be there and that she couldn’t stand Lauren. She’d forgotten that the two of them were meeting here to talk about Prom, not themselves. She’d forgotten that she didn’t want to be friends with Lauren.
After making plans to meet next Thursday at Lauren’s house (they were not going to let Santana waste more of their time), Quinn drove home with a smile on her face and a warm, pleasant feeling in her stomach.
---
The warm, pleasant feeling in her stomach was pretty much gone by the next day. But what wasn’t was surely destroyed when she saw that Lauren had gone back to scowling and sitting together with Puck away from her during Glee after school. There was really no reason for her to, but Quinn felt almost betrayed by the action.
She’d expected at least a smile.
---
Honestly, Puck leaning against her locker with a flirtatious grin on his face wasn’t the last thing Quinn had expected to see as she walked into school Monday morning. After all, he was Puck. But, still, he’d seemed to have calmed down a little bit ever since he’d started dating Lauren. Which is why Quinn was curious.
“What are you doing?” Quinn asked him somewhat awkwardly (they’d stopped talking after last year; it was too weird. But now Quinn was left somewhat unsure of where they stood with each other.)
“Hey, babe.” Puck raised an eyebrow at her. “You doing anything tonight?”
Quinn was wary. “No.”
“’Cause I was thinking maybe you could come over to my place. You know, drink a bit, watch New Moon, maybe have a bit of fun after that. My mom’s not gonna be home, you know.”
Quinn wrinkled her nose. “Aren’t you mistaking me for your girlfriend, Puckerman?” Her eyes suddenly widened. “You haven’t been just doing… this with other girls the whole time you and Lauren were dating, have you?”
“No. No! Damn.” Puck gestured to Quinn to lower her voice (he was talking louder than her). He looked around the hallway-mostly empty, by now; God, Quinn was going to be last for class-and then ran a hand through his mohawk. “Relax. She dumped me, okay?” Puck looked briefly down at the floor before continuing. “Yeah. She dumped me. So, do you wanna come over? Look, we could just hang out. Really.”
“Puck-” Quinn had trouble resisting him when he got like this-quiet and sincere and just honest. But, at the same time, she knew she couldn’t just jump back into some sort of relationship with him and pretend all of last year hadn’t happened. “I-I can’t.”
Puck looked entirely lost for a short moment before clearing his throat and saying, “Yeah, okay, yeah,” and walking off down the hall.
As Quinn watched him leave, she had to ask herself why on earth Lauren would dump him. Because she knew this breakup was somehow Lauren’s fault-there wasn’t a doubt in her mind. There was no way Puck would do something to ruin their relationship, not with how happy he had been for the past few months.
And, besides, Lauren had always seemed more distant and aloof to Quinn, anyway. In fact, she frustrated Quinn to no end with the way she acted. It was as if she just wanted Quinn to be upset with her. And that was why Lauren simply had to have caused the trouble with Puck.
Quinn had decided. She was going to find out why Lauren had dumped Puck, and she was going to find out today.
---
Quinn wasted no time; she followed Lauren into the girls’ bathroom and cornered her while she was washing her hands.
“Lauren, I-”
“No.” Lauren turned off the water and looked at Quinn’s reflection in the mirror. She sounded weary.
“But listen-”
“No.”
Quinn growled. “Look, your boyfriend has been hanging off me all day.”
Lauren turned and stared her down. Quinn felt suddenly dizzy. “What do you want?” Her voice was harsh, more so than usual.
But Quinn was not going to back down. Puck’s upset, you know. He was happy with you. I haven’t seen him that happy before.”
Lauren looked around the bathroom, the only sign of discomfort Quinn could make out, and said testily, “Are you done yet?”
And, suddenly, Quinn saw red. “This is your fault.” And, really though, it totally was. She just hated Lauren and the way she’d just dismiss Quinn like that, or the way she’d walk around with her head held high as if she were somehow better than Quinn, or the way she’d manipulate Puck (and Quinn) and make him (and her) actually happy for just a little bit and then just go back to treating him (and her) like nothing had ever happened.
Quinn’s hands curled into fists. “You were just using him like some plaything! Did you even care about him at all?”
Quinn let the question hang, let the bathroom hang in an uncomfortable silence. Lauren turned and met Quinn’s eyes. She spoke slowly, “Get out of here.” Her voice was low.
Quinn, shocked both by Lauren’s tone and her lack of direct insults and threats, decided to get out of there.
---
She couldn’t get that moment out of her head. Quinn felt, not for the first time in her life, like an asshole, and she hated it. Not only had she possibly screwed up her chance to work with Lauren to take Santana down, she’d also irrefutably proved to herself that she’d gotten way too personally involved in this not-quite-a-friendship with Lauren for her own good.
Quinn had always known, even back when she was still called Lucy, that to be popular she would have to be able to use people without growing attached. If she got to like somebody too much-well, she’d seen the heartbreaking effect of that last year with Puck and Beth. And she knew she could never let that happen again.
As she drove to Lauren’s house for their second meeting, Quinn felt as if she was betraying herself. She just couldn’t say how.
---
Quinn and Lauren sat on opposite sides of the large couch in the Zizes’s living room. Quinn was, at the moment, staring at the blank TV in front of her and drumming her fingers against her thighs absently.
Things were uncomfortable at best. Aside from a mumbled greeting (on Quinn’s part) and an unenthusiastic hum (on Lauren’s), the two had barely said a word to each other. In fact, the last time they’d spoken before today was in the girls’ bathroom three days ago, when any progress they’d seemed to be making in their fragile relationship was undone in a poorly-timed fit of long-standing frustration.
“This is stupid,” Lauren said, breaking the silence. “Can we just brainstorm already and get this meeting over with?”
“Well it’s not like I like being here, either,” Quinn replied defensively. She’d been acting that way for the past two days, defensive. If she continued to follow the pattern, within a few seconds she would start to get- “I-look-sorry,” Quinn said with a sigh as she drew her legs up to her chest. “I shouldn’t-I was out of line.” She wasn’t good at apologizing. The more sincerely she meant to say something, the more jumbled the words became in her head.
“Yup,” Lauren said and left it at that.
And, once again, that should have been the end of that. But Quinn still had this urge to just talk to Lauren, for some reason or another. She wanted to know more about her. She briefly got an image in her head of Lauren and herself sitting close together on the couch and laughing at something that had happened at school that day (probably at someone’s expense) while their legs and very occasionally the tips of their fingers touched.
“So, um.” Quinn leaned slightly towards Lauren. She kept her voice down although she couldn’t fathom why: “What did happen with you and Puck?” She hesitated. “I won’t tell anyone.”
Lauren shrugged, apparently unconcerned, apparently calmer than she was three days prior. “I’m getting out of this shit town,” she said. “I’m going to Hollywood. Puck’s not going anywhere.”
“So you just left him?” Quinn asked. She was frowning, though significantly less hysterical than before.
“Clean cut.” Lauren stared blankly at something just to the side of Quinn’s head before clearing her throat. “Now, if you’re not going to talk about Prom, at least try to make yourself somewhat useful and go get some popcorn ready. Tonight’s a Jersey Shore marathon on MTV, and I would rather spend my evening with Jwoww than with you.”
Clean cut, Quinn thought. It didn’t make sense to her, very much a person who would rather cling to her past and not part with it without kicking and screaming. She simply didn’t have the resolve for a clean cut.
Lauren had seemed to pick up on the lengthy silence. “We’re not gonna have some lame Hallmark moment where we talk about feelings, okay? Puck and I-we had fun. We got too attached. Now we’re done. And I’m done dating people unless they manage to seriously impress me. End of story.”
“Right,” Quinn said distantly, still lost in thought. As her mind caught up with the conversation, she spoke again, “Yeah, right.” She suddenly felt very silly for even asking in the first place. Why should she care about Lauren and her relationships again? This was just a friendship (acquaintanceship, even) of convenience.
“So, about Santana,” Quinn began, directing the conversation to what she’d really come to talk about.
---
Quinn found herself distracted in Glee. She found herself paying less attention in class. She found herself spending more time wondering just what it would take to get Lauren to really smile at her.
Those thoughts were terrifying and exciting and, overall, inconvenient. Quinn fought to ignore them.
---
It was during their final covert meeting-just nine days before Prom-that Quinn and Lauren managed to finally come up with a plan that would cause Santana’s popularity to plummet.
“So, we’re going to tell Jewfro that her relationship with Karofsky is a lie?” Quinn asked. “But what good would that do? She can probably get a last minute date even if Karofsky does ditch her.”
“That’s the thing, though.” Lauren had this sort of discomforting grin on her face that made Quinn suspect she enjoyed planning her schemes out just as much if not more as actually going through with them. “We’ll tell Jacob that she’s only dating Karofsky and running for Prom Queen with him at all to hide her feelings for someone else.”
Quinn suddenly liked the sound of this plan. Lauren continued: “We’ll tell him that she’s hiding the fact that she’s crushing on Finn.”
It was genius, Quinn decided. Nobody would want to vote for someone who was secretly crushing on someone else’s Prom Date-that would be pathetic. Now, the only thing left for them to do was to tell Jewfro (which Quinn was planning on letting Lauren handle, since she seemed to have developed an immunity to the guy’s general creepiness), and they would be set for a Santana-free Prom.
After arranging a few more details, Quinn was ready to leave Lauren’s house for the last time. The whole thing was a little bittersweet, honestly. Despite all her initial attempts to prevent this very scenario, Quinn had grown to somewhat like Lauren, bad attitude and all.
She wasn’t sure exactly what to do or say. As she stood by the door, fiddling with her car keys, she called out to Lauren, “Good luck.” After a brief moment, she added, “You know, with running for Prom Queen.” And, yeah, maybe it was too little, too late, but it felt good to say.
Lauren turned on the couch to face Quinn. “I don’t need luck,” she said, but not unkindly.
Right, Quinn thought to herself. She should leave. And it wasn’t until she was halfway out the front door that she heard Lauren call her name. “Yeah?” she asked, leaning back in the doorway to see Lauren.
“I just-” Lauren turned back to the TV. “Good luck. To you too.”
It took nearly the whole drive home for Quinn’s smile to disappear.
---
Quinn did not have good luck. Neither did Lauren, and neither did Santana. In fact, she had very bad luck, losing her crown and very possibly her boyfriend in the same night.
---
Quinn leaned against the side of her car, staring vacantly at the night sky. (She was probably getting her Prom dress dirty. Her mom would probably be upset.) She searched for constellations among the scattering of stars, but couldn’t find any-couldn’t think of their names or shapes. (Her feet were sore from the heels. She briefly considered kicking them off and just leaving them in the street.) The moon was bright that night, and Quinn stared at it until her vision started to cloud over.
The wind blew gently, and, for the second time that night, Quinn felt the chill of tears against her cheeks.
She hated this. This ever-familiar, bitter feeling that all the surgery and scare-tactics and schemes in the world couldn’t help her. She hated that this feeling was so familiar in the first place. It was times like this when Quinn just wanted to do something drastic. Something big and irreversible. Something that would get her out of this recursive loop of disappointment once and for all.
Quinn wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand, slightly smudging the mascara she’d so recently re-applied back in the girls’ bathroom with Rachel watching over her. She was done being sad, she decided; tonight would be the night where she’d live up to nearly four years’ worth of promises and finally make something of herself.
She got in the car, tossed her heels into the backseat, and drove off, unsure exactly of her destination.
---
Quinn felt as if she were in some sort of dreamy haze as she drove. She drummed her fingers anxiously against the steering wheel, and-for what wasn’t the first time and what almost certainly wouldn’t be the last-she considered just getting on the Interstate and driving as far away as she could from Lima, Ohio, until she ran out of gas. She didn’t do it (never had, never will), but just the thought of driving off into the night had her feeling almost lightheaded.
At some point, she picked up her phone and dialed Lauren. Quinn just missed her already, and she was tired of this ‘temporary acquaintanceship’ idea she’d previously drilled into her head. Quinn wanted a friend, and after this horrible night she felt like she deserved one.
“What do you want?” Lauren said, the faint noise of the school’s Prom music playing in the background through the line.
Quinn didn’t even let Lauren’s sour greeting get to her. “Come see me,” she said. “Let’s go to Breadstix.”
Lauren hesitated, then answered, “Fine. You’re paying.”
---
Even by the time Lauren had shown up and sat across from Quinn (and shot her an entirely expected confused and slightly annoyed glance), Quinn was still in that odd mood. That odd mood that struck her whenever she got the feeling that the path she was currently walking was simply setting her up for failure after failure; that mood where she felt like just grabbing Lauren’s hand and asking her to run away together.
Quinn took a smaller risk, instead. She decided to forego her usual iced tea and order a diet soda instead.
“Why’d you call me here, Fabray?” Lauren didn’t seem as angry with Quinn’s seemingly random call as Quinn would have guessed.
“I thought we could-could talk.” About what, Quinn didn’t know (she hadn’t thought too far ahead of whether Lauren would actually show up or not, honestly). Upon seeing Lauren’s expectant look, Quinn asked, “How are you doing? I mean, after-” She gestured vaguely in the direction of their school. It suddenly struck Quinn how ridiculous they must look sitting there in their Prom dresses at after eleven at night. She resisted the urge to look around and see if anyone was staring at them.
“I’m fine,” Lauren said. After a moment of silence, she added, “It’s not like I cared about some Prom thing, anyway.” She tapped her fingers against the glass of her drink, not looking at Quinn. “Anyway, I’ll deal. What about you?”
“I’m fine,” Quinn said, surprised to find that she actually meant it. Just an hour ago, she’d felt like the title of Prom Queen was the most important thing she could achieve with her life. But now, sitting at a booth in Breadstix in the middle of the night wearing a ridiculous dress with someone she likely couldn’t have cared less about just a few weeks ago but who now felt to Quinn like some sort of confidant, Quinn was done with that life. She was sick of always living on a set schedule, tired of the grudges and the betrayal and the fake best friends and everything else that had seemed so appealing to her when she was a child sitting alone in the back of the lunch room. Now, Quinn wanted to live her life and screw what other people think. She wanted to be happy. She wanted to-
Quinn stood from the table, walked over to Lauren’s seat, and leaned in and kissed her. The kiss was quick and chaste, but it was great. Even though Lauren could piss Quinn off like no other, she still made her feel so alive in a way that nobody else could quite manage, and Quinn found herself smiling into the kiss.
After another second, Lauren gently pushed Quinn’s shoulders, ending the kiss. “What the hell was that?” Quinn felt that this was very possibly the closest to pleased she had ever heard Lauren sound.
There were a lot of things Quinn didn’t know right now-she didn’t know when exactly she’d started feeling this pull towards Lauren, she didn’t know how they were going to work this out at all, she didn’t know who she’d be able to tell, she didn’t even know how they were going to last together for more than three days before killing each other-but there was one thing she did know. “I’m trying to impress you.”
And, with that, she leaned in and kissed Lauren again, longer this time. Quinn wasn’t expecting a response (she was sort of expecting Lauren to start using her as a punching bag any moment now), and when Lauren threaded one hand in Quinn’s hair and pulled her closer, she smiled so wide she practically ruined the kiss.
Quinn pulled away first, this time, and walked back to her seat as casually as she could. “So. Did it work?”
Lauren laughed, actually laughed, before putting on a straight face and responding bluntly. “No. Not really.” She raised an eyebrow as if in challenge. “Try harder next time.”
Maybe Quinn should have been insulted-maybe she would have been, just one day ago-but right now those words only made her more determined to blow Lauren away the next time.
end.
Fandom: Glee
Pairings/Characters: Quinn/Lauren Zizes, Santana, Puck
Rating: PG
Warnings: Language and mentions of sizeism
Length: 5381
Spoilers: Up to and including Prom Queen/2x20.
Summary: The story of how Quinn wound up not completely hating Lauren Zizes.
AN: This was written for ellydash as a part of the Glee Femslash Exchange. The prompt was "Quinn/Lauren, Lucy never would've done this."
Dear ______,
I’m sorry for being such a bitch to you before Prom.
Also, you’re totally hotter than me.
Love,
______.
Quinn was furious. This wasn’t the first time someone had slipped a nasty note into her locker-wasn’t even the first time since she’d transferred to this school-but this note in particular was causing her to lose all control.
The note, which Quinn had found stuffed into the vent of her locker, was folded into the shape of a card, with a messy sketch of Quinn with a moustache and missing teeth on the front cover. Quinn flipped the card over in hopes of finding some sort of name or message or something that would give her an indicator of who to get revenge on. Because, though she didn’t have the title of Head Cheerio to throw around anymore, Quinn had a fair collection of dirt on many of the current Cheerios that she would easily leak.
The card did, in fact, have a message on the back, as well as a giftcard to Breadstix taped beneath it. And as Quinn read it, her grip on the card tightened until the paper was quivering in her hands.
Hey, Caboosey
I thought you could give this to me when I win Prom Queen, just fill in the blanks.
Oh and have fun eating ice cream with your mom when you lose to me :)
xoxo -L
Quinn lowered the card and took a deep breath to focus herself. She knew it. She knew it was her-should have guessed sooner, even.
She went off to find the person who had caused her so much trouble in her Prom Queen campaign so far: Lauren Zizes.
---
Ever since back in middle school when she’d learned that her family was moving to Ohio, Quinn had planned to create a new identity. But along with the new nose, the Cheerios outfit, and the attention had come a sense of extreme paranoia-a fear that, somehow, someone would find out about her past and tell everyone she knew. She’d been so certain, Quinn had, that her plan would fail, in fact, that the big reveal of her identity to the whole school had become a frequent nightmare of hers. It was because of that that she had walked into Lauren’s trap those days ago with a vague sense if what she would encounter.
Pain, first and foremost, she’d predicted. Just thinking about the nightmares had sent an unpleasant jolt up Quinn’s spine that left her limbs feeling warm and uncomfortable. This then followed by a wave of embarrassment and complete panic. Then anger followed shortly after, leaving Quinn a confused mess incapable of doing anything except sit there and silently listen as her biggest secrets were told to everybody she didn’t want to know.
And, all in all, her nightmare-borne predictions were fairly accurate. When Lauren had stood before Quinn and told her about all the things she’d uncovered, Quinn did feel that tingle run up her back and leave her limbs feelings like jelly. She did feel embarrassed and ashamed and angry and depressed and too many other things to sit around and list all at once, just as she had upon waking from so many different nightmares not so long ago, during that brief moment where sleep and awareness seemed to blend together.
But there was one thing she wasn’t expecting, had never felt in those years of nightmares. Somewhere, in the back of Quinn’s mind, she had to admit that she respects Lauren a little for that. Because, yeah, it was a low blow, but that was exactly the kind of thing that people need to do at William McKinley High School to get any sort of attention and respect. Quinn thought back to when she was a freshman, newly transferred and slightly stumbling in her quest for popularity by the fact that she simply was not yet ruthless enough to command respect.
Yeah, Quinn thought as she looked back to that moment in the classroom with Lauren. There was something to respect in that.
---
Quinn stomped over to Lauren, who was at her locker putting away her books, and stood so close behind her that her head was practically on Lauren’s shoulder. “Zizes,” she said through clenched teeth. “We need to talk. Right now.”
Lauren sighed and turned away from her locker, seemingly unaffected by Quinn’s attempts at intimidation. “This had better be interesting, Fabray, and it had better be fast, because there’s a new batch of lightweights in the gym with my name on them.”
Quinn sighed, frustrated, and took a step back. She held up the card, briefly. “I thought we weren’t going to do this anymore,” she said.
---
After the ‘Lucy Caboosey’ incident, things had quieted down between Quinn and Lauren. Their conflict hadn’t been resolved so much as it had simply… ended. Lauren seemed, at least, to be guilty for spreading Quinn’s secrets around the school, and Quinn was, at least, more open with herself about her admiration (okay, and jealousy) of Lauren’s natural confidence that still felt so artificial and new on herself.
And maybe it was because of this combination of guilt and admiration/jealousy that lead to the current unspoken agreement between the two: no more sabotage. End the fighting. Forgive and forget.
Well. Quinn hadn’t exactly forgiven Lauren. Rather, she had simply taken inspiration from her mother and ceased thinking about the matter entirely. And, really, wasn’t that just the same?
---
“Give me one good reason why I would waste time I could be spending trying to hack into Stephanie Meyer’s home computer sending you poorly disguised love letters.” Lauren crossed her arms and leaned against her locker.
“Let me think,” Quinn said, sarcasm thick in her voice. “Maybe because you’ve been trying to ruin me for the past few weeks?”
Lauren snorted. “Please. Like I’d dedicate so much time and effort to you. Fabray, if I were really out to get you, I wouldn’t waste my time with pansy-ass cards. I could just take you to the floor right now in a real fight.”
“So this-” Quinn held up the card as if in evidence, “-wasn’t you? Right.” She dropped her arm back down to her side. “Then who do you think it was?”
“Quinn!” Santana called over-enthusiastically from the other side of the hall, waving. “Good luck running for Prom Queen, Quinn!” Santana’s voice was saccharine. “I hope you liked the ‘good luck’ card I made for you!” With that, Santana went off to chase after Kurt, who’d apparently given up on waiting for her to walk him through the halls and started to his next class.
“Oh, right,” Quinn said quietly, her cheeks reddening. She looked down at the floor.
“Yeah. Right,” Lauren repeated. “Now, why don’t you get on up out of my locker space.” It wasn’t a suggestion.
---
Just a few days later, the whole incident had been pretty much forgotten (aside from the few times Quinn ‘accidentally’ tripped Santana in Glee, of course). That is, it was until Quinn found herself being unceremoniously dragged into the Astronomy room by an angry Lauren Zizes as she was on her way to Math.
“What the hell?” Quinn was nearly shouting. “What are you doing? I’m going to be late!”
“Shut up,” Lauren said as she finished locking the door to the classroom. Her calm tone just served to infuriate Quinn more. Lauren turned and gestured towards the chairs, indicating that Quinn take a seat.
Once Quinn was uncomfortably settled in a plastic desk chair (Lauren herself had simply taken the teacher’s swivel chair), Lauren began to explain. “I’m assuming it was Lopez who left this crap in my locker.” She held up a card, similar in design to the one Quinn had found but with a drawing of what was possibly a rhinoceros in a dress on the front.
“Probably,” Quinn agreed.
“The thing is,” Lauren said as she crumpled the card and tossed it in a nearby trashcan. “Nobody messes with The Zizes and lives to tell the tale. I’m going to be getting my sweet revenge, and I was thinking, me and you, we should team up.” Lauren smirked at the confused look on Quinn’s face. “We’re some tough bitches. And we can come up with a plan to make sure nobody wants to vote Lopez for queen of anything. Plus,” she added, “I see her as more competition than you, really, so I might as well get her out of the way.” Lauren shrugged at the scowl Quinn sent her.
“Fine. I’ll do it,” Quinn said, still annoyed. She wasn’t opposed to a little foul play to get something she wanted. Not to mention, she’d take any opportunity she had to screw with Santana. Just thinking about this, Quinn almost felt as if she were back on the Cheerios, stepping and clawing over everyone just to stay on top.
“Good,” said Lauren. “Meet me at Breadstix. Thursday. Six-thirty.”
---
Their meeting started out on a pretty uncomfortable note.
“Well damn,” Lauren said around a mouthful of spaghetti as Quinn sat down in the seat opposite her. “If you’d gotten here any later, I could have just ditched and left you with the check.”
Quinn narrowed her eyes, although the menacing effect of which was somewhat reduced when she reached for a breadstick. “Do you want to do this or not?”
Lauren rolled her eyes. “Whatever. So, anyway, I think that before Prom comes we could-”
“Did you say Prom?” And then, right there in the worst possible time at the worst possible place, Santana turned around in her booth chair, directly behind Quinn’s, to face the pair. “Hello, by the way.” She smiled in a way that was probably meant to be sweet but that looked to Quinn like some sort of deriding smirk.
“Santana.” Quinn put on her best fake smile. “What are you doing here?” It was a dumb question. This whole idea was dumb, actually. Quinn should have known Santana would show up here. Hell, she’d practically been living at Breadstix ever since she left the Cheerios.
“I’m here on a date with my hot boyfriend, Dave Karofsky, of course.” Santana gestured vaguely at Karofsky, who was sitting across from Santana and looking very uncomfortable. “And you? Talking about Prom… with her?”
Lauren spoke up, “Why don’t you two just screw off and let us eat in peace before I do it for you.”
Santana glared briefly at Lauren and turned back around in her chair, mumbling something about a ‘round two’ that Quinn couldn’t quite understand.
And then Quinn ordered her meal. And then the two sat in dead silence. For ten minutes.
“That’s it.” Lauren stood and tugged Quinn up by her wrist none too gently, walking them over to the girls’ bathroom.
---
“Why haven’t we gone somewhere else yet?” Lauren asked, clearly annoyed.
“We can’t!” Quinn stopped and then, suddenly paranoid, looked around the bathroom. It was empty. “We can’t,” she said again, quieter. “If we just leave now, Santana will get suspicious and start hounding us even more.”
Lauren groaned. “Ugh, you are the most useless secret agent I’ve ever worked with-and I say this as someone who’s done spy work with Puckerman.”
---
The two sat back down at their table, Quinn with a fake smile plastered onto her face and Lauren with a blatant scowl (which Quinn was hoping Santana would overlook, seeing as it didn’t look too different from her normal scowl).
Quinn shuffled uncomfortably in her seat. “So. What kinds of songs do you like doing in Glee?”
Lauren sent her a disbelieving glance. Quinn silently pointed to the booth behind them (where Santana was currently engaged in a debate with her waitress over what could reasonably be considered indecent behaviour for a couple at a public restaurant). Lauren let out a longsuffering sigh, rested her chin on her hand, and answered. “I like doing current stuff. You?”
And, all in all, the evening got better. Their question-and-answer session soon turned into something that more resembled a natural conversation. By the end of the night, Quinn and Lauren were casually bad-mouthing some of their past Glee assignments and song choices, comparing the training sessions for wrestling and Cheerios, and even joking around about Puck (Quinn had started to believe that Lauren didn’t really mean half of the things she was saying about Puck; she believed that that was Lauren’s way of showing affection. She even said so, at some point in the night. Things got a bit awkward again, after that, and Quinn just dropped it).
After a while, Quinn had completely forgotten that she didn’t want to be there and that she couldn’t stand Lauren. She’d forgotten that the two of them were meeting here to talk about Prom, not themselves. She’d forgotten that she didn’t want to be friends with Lauren.
After making plans to meet next Thursday at Lauren’s house (they were not going to let Santana waste more of their time), Quinn drove home with a smile on her face and a warm, pleasant feeling in her stomach.
---
The warm, pleasant feeling in her stomach was pretty much gone by the next day. But what wasn’t was surely destroyed when she saw that Lauren had gone back to scowling and sitting together with Puck away from her during Glee after school. There was really no reason for her to, but Quinn felt almost betrayed by the action.
She’d expected at least a smile.
---
Honestly, Puck leaning against her locker with a flirtatious grin on his face wasn’t the last thing Quinn had expected to see as she walked into school Monday morning. After all, he was Puck. But, still, he’d seemed to have calmed down a little bit ever since he’d started dating Lauren. Which is why Quinn was curious.
“What are you doing?” Quinn asked him somewhat awkwardly (they’d stopped talking after last year; it was too weird. But now Quinn was left somewhat unsure of where they stood with each other.)
“Hey, babe.” Puck raised an eyebrow at her. “You doing anything tonight?”
Quinn was wary. “No.”
“’Cause I was thinking maybe you could come over to my place. You know, drink a bit, watch New Moon, maybe have a bit of fun after that. My mom’s not gonna be home, you know.”
Quinn wrinkled her nose. “Aren’t you mistaking me for your girlfriend, Puckerman?” Her eyes suddenly widened. “You haven’t been just doing… this with other girls the whole time you and Lauren were dating, have you?”
“No. No! Damn.” Puck gestured to Quinn to lower her voice (he was talking louder than her). He looked around the hallway-mostly empty, by now; God, Quinn was going to be last for class-and then ran a hand through his mohawk. “Relax. She dumped me, okay?” Puck looked briefly down at the floor before continuing. “Yeah. She dumped me. So, do you wanna come over? Look, we could just hang out. Really.”
“Puck-” Quinn had trouble resisting him when he got like this-quiet and sincere and just honest. But, at the same time, she knew she couldn’t just jump back into some sort of relationship with him and pretend all of last year hadn’t happened. “I-I can’t.”
Puck looked entirely lost for a short moment before clearing his throat and saying, “Yeah, okay, yeah,” and walking off down the hall.
As Quinn watched him leave, she had to ask herself why on earth Lauren would dump him. Because she knew this breakup was somehow Lauren’s fault-there wasn’t a doubt in her mind. There was no way Puck would do something to ruin their relationship, not with how happy he had been for the past few months.
And, besides, Lauren had always seemed more distant and aloof to Quinn, anyway. In fact, she frustrated Quinn to no end with the way she acted. It was as if she just wanted Quinn to be upset with her. And that was why Lauren simply had to have caused the trouble with Puck.
Quinn had decided. She was going to find out why Lauren had dumped Puck, and she was going to find out today.
---
Quinn wasted no time; she followed Lauren into the girls’ bathroom and cornered her while she was washing her hands.
“Lauren, I-”
“No.” Lauren turned off the water and looked at Quinn’s reflection in the mirror. She sounded weary.
“But listen-”
“No.”
Quinn growled. “Look, your boyfriend has been hanging off me all day.”
Lauren turned and stared her down. Quinn felt suddenly dizzy. “What do you want?” Her voice was harsh, more so than usual.
But Quinn was not going to back down. Puck’s upset, you know. He was happy with you. I haven’t seen him that happy before.”
Lauren looked around the bathroom, the only sign of discomfort Quinn could make out, and said testily, “Are you done yet?”
And, suddenly, Quinn saw red. “This is your fault.” And, really though, it totally was. She just hated Lauren and the way she’d just dismiss Quinn like that, or the way she’d walk around with her head held high as if she were somehow better than Quinn, or the way she’d manipulate Puck (and Quinn) and make him (and her) actually happy for just a little bit and then just go back to treating him (and her) like nothing had ever happened.
Quinn’s hands curled into fists. “You were just using him like some plaything! Did you even care about him at all?”
Quinn let the question hang, let the bathroom hang in an uncomfortable silence. Lauren turned and met Quinn’s eyes. She spoke slowly, “Get out of here.” Her voice was low.
Quinn, shocked both by Lauren’s tone and her lack of direct insults and threats, decided to get out of there.
---
She couldn’t get that moment out of her head. Quinn felt, not for the first time in her life, like an asshole, and she hated it. Not only had she possibly screwed up her chance to work with Lauren to take Santana down, she’d also irrefutably proved to herself that she’d gotten way too personally involved in this not-quite-a-friendship with Lauren for her own good.
Quinn had always known, even back when she was still called Lucy, that to be popular she would have to be able to use people without growing attached. If she got to like somebody too much-well, she’d seen the heartbreaking effect of that last year with Puck and Beth. And she knew she could never let that happen again.
As she drove to Lauren’s house for their second meeting, Quinn felt as if she was betraying herself. She just couldn’t say how.
---
Quinn and Lauren sat on opposite sides of the large couch in the Zizes’s living room. Quinn was, at the moment, staring at the blank TV in front of her and drumming her fingers against her thighs absently.
Things were uncomfortable at best. Aside from a mumbled greeting (on Quinn’s part) and an unenthusiastic hum (on Lauren’s), the two had barely said a word to each other. In fact, the last time they’d spoken before today was in the girls’ bathroom three days ago, when any progress they’d seemed to be making in their fragile relationship was undone in a poorly-timed fit of long-standing frustration.
“This is stupid,” Lauren said, breaking the silence. “Can we just brainstorm already and get this meeting over with?”
“Well it’s not like I like being here, either,” Quinn replied defensively. She’d been acting that way for the past two days, defensive. If she continued to follow the pattern, within a few seconds she would start to get- “I-look-sorry,” Quinn said with a sigh as she drew her legs up to her chest. “I shouldn’t-I was out of line.” She wasn’t good at apologizing. The more sincerely she meant to say something, the more jumbled the words became in her head.
“Yup,” Lauren said and left it at that.
And, once again, that should have been the end of that. But Quinn still had this urge to just talk to Lauren, for some reason or another. She wanted to know more about her. She briefly got an image in her head of Lauren and herself sitting close together on the couch and laughing at something that had happened at school that day (probably at someone’s expense) while their legs and very occasionally the tips of their fingers touched.
“So, um.” Quinn leaned slightly towards Lauren. She kept her voice down although she couldn’t fathom why: “What did happen with you and Puck?” She hesitated. “I won’t tell anyone.”
Lauren shrugged, apparently unconcerned, apparently calmer than she was three days prior. “I’m getting out of this shit town,” she said. “I’m going to Hollywood. Puck’s not going anywhere.”
“So you just left him?” Quinn asked. She was frowning, though significantly less hysterical than before.
“Clean cut.” Lauren stared blankly at something just to the side of Quinn’s head before clearing her throat. “Now, if you’re not going to talk about Prom, at least try to make yourself somewhat useful and go get some popcorn ready. Tonight’s a Jersey Shore marathon on MTV, and I would rather spend my evening with Jwoww than with you.”
Clean cut, Quinn thought. It didn’t make sense to her, very much a person who would rather cling to her past and not part with it without kicking and screaming. She simply didn’t have the resolve for a clean cut.
Lauren had seemed to pick up on the lengthy silence. “We’re not gonna have some lame Hallmark moment where we talk about feelings, okay? Puck and I-we had fun. We got too attached. Now we’re done. And I’m done dating people unless they manage to seriously impress me. End of story.”
“Right,” Quinn said distantly, still lost in thought. As her mind caught up with the conversation, she spoke again, “Yeah, right.” She suddenly felt very silly for even asking in the first place. Why should she care about Lauren and her relationships again? This was just a friendship (acquaintanceship, even) of convenience.
“So, about Santana,” Quinn began, directing the conversation to what she’d really come to talk about.
---
Quinn found herself distracted in Glee. She found herself paying less attention in class. She found herself spending more time wondering just what it would take to get Lauren to really smile at her.
Those thoughts were terrifying and exciting and, overall, inconvenient. Quinn fought to ignore them.
---
It was during their final covert meeting-just nine days before Prom-that Quinn and Lauren managed to finally come up with a plan that would cause Santana’s popularity to plummet.
“So, we’re going to tell Jewfro that her relationship with Karofsky is a lie?” Quinn asked. “But what good would that do? She can probably get a last minute date even if Karofsky does ditch her.”
“That’s the thing, though.” Lauren had this sort of discomforting grin on her face that made Quinn suspect she enjoyed planning her schemes out just as much if not more as actually going through with them. “We’ll tell Jacob that she’s only dating Karofsky and running for Prom Queen with him at all to hide her feelings for someone else.”
Quinn suddenly liked the sound of this plan. Lauren continued: “We’ll tell him that she’s hiding the fact that she’s crushing on Finn.”
It was genius, Quinn decided. Nobody would want to vote for someone who was secretly crushing on someone else’s Prom Date-that would be pathetic. Now, the only thing left for them to do was to tell Jewfro (which Quinn was planning on letting Lauren handle, since she seemed to have developed an immunity to the guy’s general creepiness), and they would be set for a Santana-free Prom.
After arranging a few more details, Quinn was ready to leave Lauren’s house for the last time. The whole thing was a little bittersweet, honestly. Despite all her initial attempts to prevent this very scenario, Quinn had grown to somewhat like Lauren, bad attitude and all.
She wasn’t sure exactly what to do or say. As she stood by the door, fiddling with her car keys, she called out to Lauren, “Good luck.” After a brief moment, she added, “You know, with running for Prom Queen.” And, yeah, maybe it was too little, too late, but it felt good to say.
Lauren turned on the couch to face Quinn. “I don’t need luck,” she said, but not unkindly.
Right, Quinn thought to herself. She should leave. And it wasn’t until she was halfway out the front door that she heard Lauren call her name. “Yeah?” she asked, leaning back in the doorway to see Lauren.
“I just-” Lauren turned back to the TV. “Good luck. To you too.”
It took nearly the whole drive home for Quinn’s smile to disappear.
---
Quinn did not have good luck. Neither did Lauren, and neither did Santana. In fact, she had very bad luck, losing her crown and very possibly her boyfriend in the same night.
---
Quinn leaned against the side of her car, staring vacantly at the night sky. (She was probably getting her Prom dress dirty. Her mom would probably be upset.) She searched for constellations among the scattering of stars, but couldn’t find any-couldn’t think of their names or shapes. (Her feet were sore from the heels. She briefly considered kicking them off and just leaving them in the street.) The moon was bright that night, and Quinn stared at it until her vision started to cloud over.
The wind blew gently, and, for the second time that night, Quinn felt the chill of tears against her cheeks.
She hated this. This ever-familiar, bitter feeling that all the surgery and scare-tactics and schemes in the world couldn’t help her. She hated that this feeling was so familiar in the first place. It was times like this when Quinn just wanted to do something drastic. Something big and irreversible. Something that would get her out of this recursive loop of disappointment once and for all.
Quinn wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand, slightly smudging the mascara she’d so recently re-applied back in the girls’ bathroom with Rachel watching over her. She was done being sad, she decided; tonight would be the night where she’d live up to nearly four years’ worth of promises and finally make something of herself.
She got in the car, tossed her heels into the backseat, and drove off, unsure exactly of her destination.
---
Quinn felt as if she were in some sort of dreamy haze as she drove. She drummed her fingers anxiously against the steering wheel, and-for what wasn’t the first time and what almost certainly wouldn’t be the last-she considered just getting on the Interstate and driving as far away as she could from Lima, Ohio, until she ran out of gas. She didn’t do it (never had, never will), but just the thought of driving off into the night had her feeling almost lightheaded.
At some point, she picked up her phone and dialed Lauren. Quinn just missed her already, and she was tired of this ‘temporary acquaintanceship’ idea she’d previously drilled into her head. Quinn wanted a friend, and after this horrible night she felt like she deserved one.
“What do you want?” Lauren said, the faint noise of the school’s Prom music playing in the background through the line.
Quinn didn’t even let Lauren’s sour greeting get to her. “Come see me,” she said. “Let’s go to Breadstix.”
Lauren hesitated, then answered, “Fine. You’re paying.”
---
Even by the time Lauren had shown up and sat across from Quinn (and shot her an entirely expected confused and slightly annoyed glance), Quinn was still in that odd mood. That odd mood that struck her whenever she got the feeling that the path she was currently walking was simply setting her up for failure after failure; that mood where she felt like just grabbing Lauren’s hand and asking her to run away together.
Quinn took a smaller risk, instead. She decided to forego her usual iced tea and order a diet soda instead.
“Why’d you call me here, Fabray?” Lauren didn’t seem as angry with Quinn’s seemingly random call as Quinn would have guessed.
“I thought we could-could talk.” About what, Quinn didn’t know (she hadn’t thought too far ahead of whether Lauren would actually show up or not, honestly). Upon seeing Lauren’s expectant look, Quinn asked, “How are you doing? I mean, after-” She gestured vaguely in the direction of their school. It suddenly struck Quinn how ridiculous they must look sitting there in their Prom dresses at after eleven at night. She resisted the urge to look around and see if anyone was staring at them.
“I’m fine,” Lauren said. After a moment of silence, she added, “It’s not like I cared about some Prom thing, anyway.” She tapped her fingers against the glass of her drink, not looking at Quinn. “Anyway, I’ll deal. What about you?”
“I’m fine,” Quinn said, surprised to find that she actually meant it. Just an hour ago, she’d felt like the title of Prom Queen was the most important thing she could achieve with her life. But now, sitting at a booth in Breadstix in the middle of the night wearing a ridiculous dress with someone she likely couldn’t have cared less about just a few weeks ago but who now felt to Quinn like some sort of confidant, Quinn was done with that life. She was sick of always living on a set schedule, tired of the grudges and the betrayal and the fake best friends and everything else that had seemed so appealing to her when she was a child sitting alone in the back of the lunch room. Now, Quinn wanted to live her life and screw what other people think. She wanted to be happy. She wanted to-
Quinn stood from the table, walked over to Lauren’s seat, and leaned in and kissed her. The kiss was quick and chaste, but it was great. Even though Lauren could piss Quinn off like no other, she still made her feel so alive in a way that nobody else could quite manage, and Quinn found herself smiling into the kiss.
After another second, Lauren gently pushed Quinn’s shoulders, ending the kiss. “What the hell was that?” Quinn felt that this was very possibly the closest to pleased she had ever heard Lauren sound.
There were a lot of things Quinn didn’t know right now-she didn’t know when exactly she’d started feeling this pull towards Lauren, she didn’t know how they were going to work this out at all, she didn’t know who she’d be able to tell, she didn’t even know how they were going to last together for more than three days before killing each other-but there was one thing she did know. “I’m trying to impress you.”
And, with that, she leaned in and kissed Lauren again, longer this time. Quinn wasn’t expecting a response (she was sort of expecting Lauren to start using her as a punching bag any moment now), and when Lauren threaded one hand in Quinn’s hair and pulled her closer, she smiled so wide she practically ruined the kiss.
Quinn pulled away first, this time, and walked back to her seat as casually as she could. “So. Did it work?”
Lauren laughed, actually laughed, before putting on a straight face and responding bluntly. “No. Not really.” She raised an eyebrow as if in challenge. “Try harder next time.”
Maybe Quinn should have been insulted-maybe she would have been, just one day ago-but right now those words only made her more determined to blow Lauren away the next time.
end.