[GFS Exchange Fic] Stable by ellydash for abluegirl
Title: Stable
Author: ellydash
Recipient: abluegirl
Pairings/Characters: Quinn/Mercedes, Judy, Rachel, Will, Sue, Artie, Sam
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 5500
Warning: religious prayer, ableist language
Note: AU, post-“On My Way.”
Summary: After the accident, Quinn starts to recover in more ways than one.
She’s upside down, and it’s because she’s done something wrong.
I had a baby, Quinn remembers, but no, that isn’t right, not this time.
“Oh, shit,” someone says, far away, a man’s voice. “Oh, Christ, it’s a kid, a girl, she isn’t moving - can you hear me? Honey, if you can hear me, say something. We’re getting you help, okay? Talk to me -”
I made the pyramid collapse. Why did I do that? Coach Sylvester’s going to be so mad.
There’s broken glass on her tongue. Quinn can see the shattered, crumpled hole where her windshield used to be if her eyes are open, but that’s too much work. She closes them.
“Talk to me,” the man urges her, again.
He’s so insistent she knows she has no choice but to try. Quinn parts her lips, pain rocketing through her jaw, and lets out a small sound that isn’t a word, not even close.
“Good girl,” the voice tells her, “good girl, that’s a good girl, just stay awake, okay? Just stay awake. You’re gonna be all right. We’re getting you help. Everything’s going to be all right.”
She knows now, hearing this, that the voice belongs to her father, and she relaxes. He’ll take care of his little girl. She thinks, relieved, he sounds so proud of me.
__________
Quinn’s running down the road, sneakered feet slapping loudly against the concrete, panic burning in her chest. Something’s behind her.
“Immobilize her head,” the thing says, in her ear. “Could have a C-spine fracture. Jesus, Joe, loosen those goddamned chest straps, you wanna restrict her breathing? Where the hell’s your brain today? This fucking rig, buncha green assholes -”
She can see a sign up ahead. She’s almost there. If she could just run a little faster -
The sign’s too bright. Quinn can’t read it even when she squints, but she knows what she wants it to say.
__________
“Quinnie?”
She blinks in the harsh light, the muscle of her eyelids straining.
“Quinn! Oh, thank God. Oh, sweetheart, you’re awake. Thank God.”
It’s her mother’s voice. She tries to turn her head in the direction of the sound, but can’t. “Mom?” she croaks, and then, using a name she hasn’t used since she was seven, “Mama. Mama.”
“No, don’t try to move your head. You’re in a brace. It’s for your own good. You’ve had surgery. You’ve - I’m not sure what you remember, Quinn, but you were in a terrible car accident yesterday, your car was totaled, flipped over multiple times. It’s a miracle you’re still with us. I’ve been praying. I’ve praying so much. We have so much to be thankful for, baby.”
The car. It comes back to her in fragments as she stares at the ceiling panels, off-white with small puncture marks that look to her like old, unhealed wounds. The car. She’d been driving. Rachel. Rachel was with her.
“Is Rachel all right?” she manages, her voice cracked and thin.
“Rachel? Is that your little Jewish friend? Oh, Quinnie, she wasn’t in the car with you. She’s just fine. In fact, as far as I know she’s still in the waiting room right now with some of your other friends. A few of your teachers, too. They’re just worried sick about you. My baby, always so popular.”
“Mom,” Quinn tries.
“I know, I know. I’m sorry, I’m just so - you know, I told them to go home and get some sleep, it’s not like they can do any good just sitting around. They wouldn’t listen to me.”
But Rachel had been in the car with her - hadn’t she? Quinn tries to remember. There was something she had to do with Rachel. It was big. It was something she didn’t want to do.
It hurts to think, though; it feels like she’s running a marathon just remembering, and so Quinn stops trying to make it make sense. The ceiling wavers a little. The punctures look deeper.
“Tired,” she says, the word all she can offer her mother. Luckily, Judy seems to know what she means.
“That’s fine, baby,” her mother tells her, and Quinn feels the pressure of a hand on her forehead, smoothing back her hairline. “Sleep all you want. You’re going to need your energy.”
For what? she wants to ask, but there’s something dark in front of her eyes now, widening, letting her inside.
__________
She goes in and out on a thick, kind tide. Morphine.
Dr. Kirsch informs her that she has cauda equina syndrome, something like a spinal cord injury, but she’s a very lucky girl because the injury is right below her spinal cord and it could’ve been higher, it could’ve been worse, it could’ve meant total paralysis. Cauda equina syndrome, by another name, is incomplete paraplegia, and when Judy hears those words she begins to sob and shake her head back and forth, violently. Quinn wants to hit her.
There’s understanding and sympathy in Dr. Kirsch’s face when she looks at Quinn. She says, turning back to Judy, “Mrs. Fabray, it’s possible that the nerves aren’t too badly damaged for regrowth and at least some recovery of leg function. I know this is difficult to hear, but Quinn is, as I said, very lucky. We’ll just have to wait and see. This takes time.”
Talk to me, not my mom, Quinn thinks, with a flash of anger, and the heat of it makes her briefly dizzy. It’s her paraplegia. It’s her cauda whatever.
“Do you have any questions for me?” Dr. Kirsch asks Quinn, almost as if she’s heard the criticism. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions.”
Yes, Quinn has questions, but she isn’t sure she’s ready to hear the answers, not yet, so she tries to shake her head, forgetting, as she’s forgotten again and again over the past four days, that she’s stuck in a brace. “No,” she says, instead. It’s easier to stay with short words. It takes less effort.
“I have questions, doctor,” Judy interjects, and Quinn closes her eyes as her mother’s voice trails outside the room, mixing with Dr. Kirsch’s, the beat of their footsteps keeping time with their conversation. Quinn notices the sound feet make now.
__________
A week after she’s admitted, someone who presumably knows what they’re doing decides Quinn’s head brace can come off, and that she’s stable enough to be moved out of the ICU and into another room downstairs. The new room is pretty much the same, except there’s a second window and the new IV machine doesn’t beep as loudly and the night shift is quieter: fewer blurry conversations outside her door, fewer footsteps. Being out of the ICU means she’s allowed non-family visitors, if she wants. One at a time.
Being pronounced stable has the opposite effect on Quinn. The word makes fear tighten in her chest, bringing on the familiar panic that makes her run in her dreams. She’s stable, but her left leg only inches slightly when she tries to adjust it on the mattress, and her right leg doesn’t move at all. It buzzes, instead, nerves pricking on the underside of her skin. Stable means nothing’s changing. It means she’s staying put.
Rachel’s her first visitor, and when she walks into Quinn’s room, her expression apprehensive, carrying a small bouquet of flowers in a vase, Quinn unexpectedly bursts into tears.
“Quinn!” Rachel exclaims, and rushes to her bedside. “Did I do something? I’m so sorry, whatever it is - I didn’t mean to upset you. I’ll go if you want me to.”
“You’re not wearing a wedding ring,” Quinn manages, through her hiccupped sobs, and thinks, angry at herself for losing it over something so dumb, God, Fabray, get it together.
Rachel sets the flowers down on Quinn’s overbed table, and reaches out to touch her arm before drawing back, clearly thinking better of it. “I didn’t - we didn’t go through with it,” she says, slowly. “I couldn’t do it. Not without you. I realized that it didn’t feel right, getting married without you right there next to me.” She shrugs her shoulders. “And when I realized that, my decision was very simple.”
Quinn says, her voice still unsteady, “Oh, Rachel.”
“I’m so glad to see you,” Rachel bursts out. “I’m so glad you’re all right, Quinn. They wouldn’t let me come see you at all while you were in intensive care, can you believe that?” She grabs a tissue from the overbed table, and hands it to Quinn, who reaches up, gingerly, to blow her nose. “You’d think trained nurses would understand that music has the ability to heal, but apparently this hospital is staffed with extremely rude and unfeeling people. I tried to explain to them that you and I have overcome so many obstacles to the delicate blossom of our newly budding friendship that we shouldn’t be able to let something like a hospital door stand in the way of my serenading you with a recuperative ballad or six, but they still wouldn’t let me. So even though it wasn’t my first choice, I sang in the waiting room instead. I asked Mercedes to help me out with some soothing harmonies, but she said she didn’t feel up to singing. It’s obviously important to respect everyone’s emotional journey during a trying time like this, but honestly, I was a little disappointed in her. We all need to realize that the most important thing right now is to put your needs first, Quinn.”
Quinn sniffs, calming down. Somehow, she’d forgotten what it was like, being on the receiving end of a Rachel Berry monologue. One piece of new information stands out, sticking her until she can’t think about anything else. “Mercedes? Mercedes was here? Is she still here?”
“She’s downstairs. So are Mr. Schue, and Ms. Sylvester, and Puck, and Sam. Everyone else is home right now, but I’m on strict orders to text them as soon as you’re ready for more visitors. We’ve all been sick with worry. Even Sue. She looks like she hasn’t slept this entire week. It’s been - we’re just so glad you’re going to be all right.”
Her eyes shine.
Quinn doesn’t know what to do with this, so she says, “I’m stable,” which is the only thing she can think of to say. Rachel smiles at her. She doesn’t touch Quinn’s arm.
Mr. Schuester smiles too, when it’s his turn to visit her, only it looks horrible, like he’s trying too hard to be cheerful, which he probably is. “Quinn,” he exclaims, and adds his large bouquet of roses to Rachel’s smaller arrangement on the overbed table. “You look great. Really great. How are you feeling?”
Quinn knows she doesn’t look great. At least he can’t see the mess of her legs, skinnier, already, from lack of use, tucked carefully under her blankets. She’s grateful for that. “Fine. Thank you.”
“You’re going to be back in that choir room before you know it,” he says, cheerfully. “We can’t win Nationals without you. We need your amazing voice to put us over the top. Don’t worry, we’ve got plans to keep you in the loop. I’ve got some great ideas for numbers, and Sue’s going to help us with choreography -”
She lets him talk, the way she let Rachel talk, because it’s easier than any other alternative. Eventually he pats her overbed table, awkwardly, the way he’d probably pat her head under other circumstances, and leaves, exchanging a quick glance with Coach Sylvester, who’s standing in the doorway waiting for her turn.
Rachel hadn’t exaggerated, for once. Sue looks exhausted.
“Hey there, Q,” she says, and clears her throat. Unlike Rachel and Mr. Schue, she isn’t carrying anything. “Schuester give you a disgustingly optimistic pep talk? Tell you you’ll be out of that bed and doing tuck rolls on my gym floor by Easter?”
Quinn attempts something that might be a smile, and fails. “What do you think?”
“You really wanna know what I think? I think,” Sue says, pulling up the chair by Quinn’s bedside and taking a seat, “that I’d honestly like nothing better than to tell you the same thing.”
“But you won’t.”
“No.” Sue crosses one leg over the other, and leans back. “No, I won’t.” She watches Quinn, looking for something in her face, maybe, and says nothing.
“This isn’t fair,” Quinn blurts out, suddenly, and the sound of tears in her voice again makes her feel even worse. “I’m supposed to be getting out of here. Out of Lima. It isn’t fair.”
Weak. She’s weak. Crying in front of Rachel’s one thing, but she knows better than to admit weakness in front of Coach Sylvester, of all people, even this new, strangely softer Coach Sylvester. Sue’s always told her Cheerios that life isn’t about being fair. Fairness, she remembers Sue saying once, is affirmative action for lazy people. I don’t want to hear you infants whining about what’s fair and what isn’t.
Sue’s still quiet, her expression measured and unreadable. Quinn presses her lips together, doing whatever she can to keep back the sob that’s back in her throat. She can’t cry again. Not now. Not with Sue.
“Oh, Q,” Sue says, finally, and reaches out, placing her hand over Quinn’s. It's warm and firm and unavoidable. “No, it isn’t, kiddo. It isn’t fair at all.”
Quinn turns her head away, towards the other, empty side of the room, because it’s too much, it’s too much from someone who wasn’t supposed to give her anything at all, and the tears leak inexorably out of her eyes, across the bridge of her nose. Sue doesn’t pull away.
__________
That night Quinn dreams she’s back in the oversized chair in Mercedes’s rec room, her belly heavy with the baby she can’t want, something on the television she can’t see.
“Come here,” Mercedes orders, behind her, and Quinn tries to get up, but remembers, just in time.
“I’m stable,” she tells Mercedes. “I can’t move my legs.”
“I thought you were stronger than that,” Mercedes says.
Quinn tries to look down at her legs, to see if Mercedes is right. They’re blocked from view by the mound of her belly, swollen over the tops of her thighs.
“You promised you wouldn’t tell,” she reminds Mercedes, her voice trailing up at the end to make it a question, and Mercedes answers, “It’s just the two of us here, Quinn. Who am I gonna tell?”
Just us. She’d stay in the rec room forever, if she could.
__________
She’s ready to see Mercedes the next day, or as close to ready as she’ll ever be, she guesses, and it isn’t until Mercedes is standing next to her hospital bed, holding her hand, that Quinn realizes they’ve done this once before.
“Do you want to talk or something?” Mercedes asks her. Quinn moves her shoulder in something like a shrug. “Do you want to pray? We could do that together. Or I could pray and you could listen.”
It’s the first time they’ve been alone in a room together since before Beth was born. Quinn says, her stomach wrenching with sudden anxiety, “Okay.”
They’d prayed together, sometimes, during those last months of Quinn’s pregnancy, in the evenings or whenever Quinn needed the comfort of Mercedes’s voice, reminding her that God’s love wasn’t the same thing as her father’s love: conditional and easily removed. She’d held hard to those prayers.
Mercedes says, quietly, “Lord, we your servants turn to you in the hour of our need to ask you to give us the strength of your spirit, the comfort of your presence, and the knowledge that we can carry on. Today, we ask that you please be with your daughter Quinn, who is suffering. Hold her in your arms, and comfort her. Help her realize that even when her world seems dark, she’s still a shining light that can never be extinguished. Amen.”
Quinn whispers, “Amen,” the word carrying with it the old familiar sanctity of childhood, the sense of seal on an everlasting bond. She squeezes Mercedes’s hand, and Mercedes squeezes back in their old familiar reflex. “Thank you.”
“I’m just glad they let me in to see you,” Mercedes says, and bites her lower lip briefly. “When I heard about the accident - ”
“Don’t.” Quinn pulls her hand free, shaking her head. “Mercedes, it’s really okay, you don’t have to - ”
“I need to say this,” Mercedes interrupts. “Please, I just need to get it out one time. I know we had this thing where we decided we weren’t gonna talk about it, and we never even talked about not talking about it, we just - didn’t talk about it. But then Mr. Schue told us you’d been in an accident, and the first thing I thought was that I never told you how sorry I was. It hit me so hard I couldn’t breathe.”
Quinn’s still shaking her head.
“I’m sorry, Quinn. For a lot of things. I’m sorry I didn’t try harder to get together with you after you moved back in with your mom. I’m sorry I started dating Sam over the summer without telling you about it because I was too scared to bring it up with you in the first place. I’m sorry I didn’t sit you down and find out what in the hell was up with you when you fried your hair pink and wore that crazy-ass Joan Jett outfit to school every day for a month. And I keep thinking about that night in my rec room before the baby -”
“No,” Quinn snaps. “Do not keep talking.”
“Look, what I was thinking was that if I hadn’t been so damn surprised I might’ve - ”
“I can’t deal with this right now,” Quinn manages, and she doesn’t know if it has anything to do with Mercedes, but pain’s radiating up her spine and into her neck. “Don’t do this to me. I mean it. You can’t just - come in here and talk about things and then walk out that door and leave me here. It’s been almost two years - and you just decide it’s okay to bring it up now, when everything's over? God, what’s wrong with you?”
Mercedes presses her lips together, and even through the hot flush of anger Quinn looks at them and remembers how they’d felt against her own. She’d always believed that people were exaggerating how great it felt to be intimate with someone. It was nice, obviously, when Finn held her, and she didn’t really remember much about the time she’d slept with Puck, but given a choice between making out with Finn and a really great brownie, she’d take the brownie every time. It was just one of those things, she’d assumed, that everyone agreed to make sound better than it was. Like how people said you could do whatever you wanted to do with your life, when that obviously wasn’t the case.
And then that night, four weeks before Beth was born, she’d kissed Mercedes impulsively when they were sitting on her rec room couch, and Mercedes’s lush mouth had been so soft. Something had clawed inside Quinn when she’d pulled back, something so strong she couldn’t think of it as anything but what it was, spreading and pulsing between her legs, and she’d thought, wondering and terrified, oh.
“Thanks for coming,” she says, and the anger’s drained out of her voice, replaced with new exhaustion. Her back hurts so freaking badly. “I need you to leave now.”
“Quinn -”
“I hope you feel better.” Because I feel like shit, she doesn’t say, but Mercedes obviously gets the message. She flushes, her cheeks reddening, and adjusts her purse on her shoulder before turning to leave.
__________
“People don’t really look at you. They look - over you.”
“What?”
They’re rolling down the long hospital corridor together, Quinn’s lungs and biceps burning with the effort. She’d never really thought about it before, but apparently using a wheelchair wasn’t exactly as easy as she’d always assumed it was.
Artie stops ahead of Quinn, and wheels around to face her. She lets go of her grip, glad for a break, even more pleased she didn’t have to actually ask him for one.
“They don’t look at you,” he repeats. “I mean, some people do. If they want something from you, or they’re talking directly to you, or they have to look at you so they know how low they need to aim the slushee cup. But mostly people look over you and around you. I think it’s because they’re worried they’re going to stare or make you uncomfortable or something, so they just pretend like they don’t see you.”
Quinn doesn’t know how to respond to this.
“I’m just letting you know,” Artie says, looking away. “Nobody told me that was going to happen, and I kind of wish they had, so I’m telling you. I hope that’s okay.”
Nothing about any of this is okay. She says, anger welling up easily, “Just because we’re both cripples now doesn’t mean we need to be best friends.”
Artie regards her with a calm Quinn finds infuriating. “I get it,” he tells her. “How you’re feeling. I understand better than anyone else, what you're going through. It’s okay to be mad, you know. I was mad for a long time. It doesn’t help, though. It makes things harder, actually. What really helps is if you have someone to talk to. I’m not saying it should be me, but you need to talk to somebody.”
Quinn wants to throw everything she’s feeling back in his face. To shout that he doesn’t know what hard means, not like she does. They’re nothing alike, the two of them. That thing that’s been digging at her since the night in Mercedes’s rec room, that unnamable thing she won’t let herself think about because thinking about it makes it real - since Mercedes’s outburst, that thing’s been turned inside out, grafted onto her skin, hooked into her spine, wrapped around her legs. She can’t walk away from it now. Artie might get what it’s like to be in a wheelchair, but the similarities end there.
Artie says, “You could at least join a fight club. I know about two at McKinley. I mean, I don’t really know about them because of that whole first rule of fight club thing.”
The suggestion’s so ridiculous that her anger falls apart in the face of it, and she laughs, despite herself, the harsh, barking sound of it strange to her ears. It’s the first time she’s laughed in the three weeks since the accident. “Yeah. Maybe. I’ll think about it.”
Artie grins at her, the smile lopsided. “You’re gonna be okay, Fabray,” he says, and even though she isn’t ready to believe him, Quinn doesn’t mind hearing him say it.
__________
Mercedes doesn’t call or visit.
It’s not like she’s alone, though. Rachel’s at the hospital most days of the week after school, yammering on about McKinley and whatever new musical’s opening on Broadway next month and other things Quinn can’t remember, because she usually tunes out about thirty seconds into Rachel’s speeches. Rachel talks about everything that isn’t Finn, and that, at least, is good. That makes Quinn feel a little better. Rachel’s a lot easier to tolerate when she isn’t talking about how amazing Finn is.
Sam’s there, too, bringing her DVDs she can watch on her laptop. They’re usually old corny science fiction movies from the 1950s, where the aliens are just guys in badly made suits who don’t wear protective cups so you can see the outline of their genitals, to which Quinn always says, face wrinkling in disgust, “Gross.”
“They don’t have cups in space,” Sam explains, patiently, perched on the edge of her bed.
“Sam. Do I seriously have to explain this to you? It isn’t space, it’s a movie set with human actors. Who have access to protective cups.”
“It’s not just about them. There are filmmaking rules about this stuff. Princess Leia couldn’t wear a bra in space either.”
“I noticed,” she says, without thinking about it, and then feels her face heat. Luckily, Sam doesn’t seem to pick up on anything because the alien on the screen’s just zapped a human with some sort of death ray, and Sam, for some reason, needs to explain to her what the rules of death rays are. Quinn doesn’t care at all, but it’s nice, just the same, hearing Sam be excited. It makes her think of promise rings, and being taken care of, and how she’d felt holding his hand when they were dating, like she had a nice protective layer between herself and the rest of the world.
Her right leg isn’t buzzing as much as it used to, and she can wiggle her toes pretty well, even bend her knee a bit. Her left leg’s stronger. She kicks out a little when swimming in the therapy pool, feeling the water resistant around her foot, and Carmen, holding her upright so that she doesn’t go under, exclaims, “Great job! You’re doing so well!”
God, she’s just kicking her foot. It’s not like it’s a perfect back stand spring jump or anything. She still can’t walk, even on crutches, and honestly, she doesn’t see the point of throwing a party every time her foot moves four inches, even if Carmen thinks it’s so fantastic.
Quinn’s released from the hospital three months after the accident, almost to the day. Everyone tells her how ecstatic she must be: the doctors, the nurses, Carmen, her mother, over and over until she starts to say, “Yes, I’m so happy,” because it makes them stop repeating it. At least it’s nice to be out in the fresh air, away from that sour smell that sticks to the hospital. That part she doesn't have to pretend to enjoy.
She takes out her phone five times on the car ride home, and puts it away five times. She doesn’t text Mercedes.
__________
[11:24] Heard you’re back. Welcome home
The buzz of her phone on her nightstand wakes up Quinn, and she stares at the screen for too long. Mercedes had said the same thing to her once before, the first time she’d walked into the Jones house with her suitcase, pregnant and terrified and alone. Welcome home. It meant something different, then, or at least it felt like it had.
What had Artie said, about needing someone to talk to? Quinn hates to admit it, but he might've been right. Maybe it’s just something she has to do and get it over with, fast. Like ripping off a Band-Aid. She's always been the kind of person who pulled those things off millimeter by millimeter, feeling each hair yank out of her skin. Maybe she can say everything once, really quickly, and then never say it again. She isn't sure, but she thinks that might work.
Quinn texts, quickly, before she can stop herself:
[11:26] Come over tomorrow?
She waits, heart in her throat, until the phone buzzes again, and when she looks, it’s with the same feeling she’d had when she opened the large envelope with Yale University on the return address, like her life suddenly depends on the answer.
[11:29] Ok
Just two letters, but they make Quinn feel what hours of physical therapy haven’t managed to accomplish yet: they make her feel like something’s started to change.
__________
She tells her mother to please leave the house for the afternoon, and not to worry, she’s perfectly fine on her own, and if she needs anything she can have Mercedes get it for her.
“But what if you need to use the - you know, facilities?” Judy asks, looking worried.
“Mom,” Quinn says. “Please.”
It doesn’t take too much convincing, probably because her mother wants to get out of the house almost as much as Quinn wants her out. She makes Quinn promise to call if there’s anything wrong, anything at all, “because I’m sure that little friend of yours - I shouldn’t say little, she’s really a big girl, isn’t she? - doesn’t know the first thing about caring for the disabled.”
“I’m not ‘the disabled,’ Mom,” Quinn snaps. “I’m me, and I can take care of myself, okay? Just go.”
Judy does, in a rustle of keys. Her heels click fast against the hardwood in the foyer, and then she’s gone.
It’s the little things that make Quinn realize how different her life is now, how much she’d taken for granted before. When the doorbell rings twenty minutes later, she rolls up to the front door, grabs the doorknob with her right hand, and then rolls herself back with the left, bringing the door with her so there’s room for Mercedes to step inside. It’s more effort then she’s ever put into opening a door in her entire life.
Mercedes looks just as nervous as Quinn feels, which, weirdly enough, makes Quinn feel less nervous, almost immediately. She invites her in, leading her into the living room.
“No, I’m okay,” she insists, warding off Mercedes’s quick offer of help as she hoists herself out of her chair, grabbing onto the couch. She’s gotten pretty good at this, over the past couple of days; she has just enough feeling in her feet that she knows if she’s got a good enough grip on the floor to leverage herself from seat to seat. “Did you want something, a drink or -? I didn’t even th - ”
“Quinn,” Mercedes says, and sits down next to her on the couch. “Girl, someday I’m gonna stop apologizing to you, but I guess today isn’t that day. I’m sorry I said all those things back at the hospital. You were right. I was being stupid and selfish.”
This is the part where Quinn’s supposed to talk. She doesn’t know what to say. She says, looking down at her hands, “No. You weren't.”
“It was my -”
“I miss you,” Quinn blurts out, and there, it’s out, or at least part of it is, but she feels the rest of it loosening slowly, and it doesn’t feel as horrible as she thought it would. “Nothing’s been the same since Beth was born. I thought it was all about her. I still think a lot of it is, because it hurts when I think about her. It hurts so much. But part of it is you. I bet you didn’t know those two months I was living at your place were the happiest months of my life. Did you know that?”
“No,” Mercedes says, quietly. “No, I didn’t.”
“Can we have that again?” She isn’t going to cry. Not this time. It’s too important to get this out without crying. “Can we try to get that back? I want to try. I want that more than anything. You were my best friend. You - ”
She feels Mercedes’s fingers on her jaw, the pressure light, and when she turns to look at her, saying, “I never stopped -” Mercedes leans in without warning and kisses Quinn.
Quinn gasps against Mercedes’s mouth - oh, God - and she kisses back, and she kisses back. It’s better than she’d remembered, and even though she’d tried as hard as she could not to remember, she’d memorized every second of that kiss back on Mercedes’s rec room couch. But they’re on Quinn’s couch now, and there’s no baby between them, only two years of walking around each other without saying the things they mean, and the only thing Quinn wants to do now is make up for it for as long as Mercedes will let her.
Mercedes makes a small sound when Quinn drags her lower lip between her teeth, not biting exactly, just pressing hard. There’s an answering wrench of arousal between Quinn’s legs; it’s the first time in weeks she’s felt anything as strong as that. Maybe the first time since the accident.
“Quinn,” Mercedes says, breathing a little harder than she usually does. “I should tell you. I’m not - I mean, I always thought I was - I guess I don’t know, now. All I know is that I want to kiss you. I’ve wanted to kiss you for two years. That’s it. I really don’t know if I - if I like girls, or just you.”
“I think I might be, though.” Quinn blurts, and that’s the other part of it come loose from that dark, buried part of her, out into the world. She still can’t say the actual word. “I think I am. I’m pretty sure I am. I mean, I don’t think it’s just you. It’s you, obviously, but -”
“You like girls,” Mercedes finishes, and Quinn lets out a long, anxious breath. Someone’s said it. Someone who isn’t her. “You know that’s okay, Quinn, right? I mean, it’s okay for Kurt, and Santana, and Blaine, and Brittany. And it’d be okay for me, if that’s how it ends up being. So it’s okay for you too.”
It isn’t the response she’d been expecting, not exactly. She says, “It is what it is, I guess,” and when Mercedes looks like she’s going to object to that statement, Quinn adds, quickly, “Yes. I know it’s okay. I know that.”
She still isn’t there yet, maybe, but someday -
Mercedes moves in to kiss her again, this time cradling Quinn’s head in between her two firm hands. Quinn’s eyes are closed, to keep from getting dizzy. She’s moving fast. She isn’t stopping.
Author: ellydash
Recipient: abluegirl
Pairings/Characters: Quinn/Mercedes, Judy, Rachel, Will, Sue, Artie, Sam
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 5500
Warning: religious prayer, ableist language
Note: AU, post-“On My Way.”
Summary: After the accident, Quinn starts to recover in more ways than one.
She’s upside down, and it’s because she’s done something wrong.
I had a baby, Quinn remembers, but no, that isn’t right, not this time.
“Oh, shit,” someone says, far away, a man’s voice. “Oh, Christ, it’s a kid, a girl, she isn’t moving - can you hear me? Honey, if you can hear me, say something. We’re getting you help, okay? Talk to me -”
I made the pyramid collapse. Why did I do that? Coach Sylvester’s going to be so mad.
There’s broken glass on her tongue. Quinn can see the shattered, crumpled hole where her windshield used to be if her eyes are open, but that’s too much work. She closes them.
“Talk to me,” the man urges her, again.
He’s so insistent she knows she has no choice but to try. Quinn parts her lips, pain rocketing through her jaw, and lets out a small sound that isn’t a word, not even close.
“Good girl,” the voice tells her, “good girl, that’s a good girl, just stay awake, okay? Just stay awake. You’re gonna be all right. We’re getting you help. Everything’s going to be all right.”
She knows now, hearing this, that the voice belongs to her father, and she relaxes. He’ll take care of his little girl. She thinks, relieved, he sounds so proud of me.
__________
Quinn’s running down the road, sneakered feet slapping loudly against the concrete, panic burning in her chest. Something’s behind her.
“Immobilize her head,” the thing says, in her ear. “Could have a C-spine fracture. Jesus, Joe, loosen those goddamned chest straps, you wanna restrict her breathing? Where the hell’s your brain today? This fucking rig, buncha green assholes -”
She can see a sign up ahead. She’s almost there. If she could just run a little faster -
The sign’s too bright. Quinn can’t read it even when she squints, but she knows what she wants it to say.
__________
“Quinnie?”
She blinks in the harsh light, the muscle of her eyelids straining.
“Quinn! Oh, thank God. Oh, sweetheart, you’re awake. Thank God.”
It’s her mother’s voice. She tries to turn her head in the direction of the sound, but can’t. “Mom?” she croaks, and then, using a name she hasn’t used since she was seven, “Mama. Mama.”
“No, don’t try to move your head. You’re in a brace. It’s for your own good. You’ve had surgery. You’ve - I’m not sure what you remember, Quinn, but you were in a terrible car accident yesterday, your car was totaled, flipped over multiple times. It’s a miracle you’re still with us. I’ve been praying. I’ve praying so much. We have so much to be thankful for, baby.”
The car. It comes back to her in fragments as she stares at the ceiling panels, off-white with small puncture marks that look to her like old, unhealed wounds. The car. She’d been driving. Rachel. Rachel was with her.
“Is Rachel all right?” she manages, her voice cracked and thin.
“Rachel? Is that your little Jewish friend? Oh, Quinnie, she wasn’t in the car with you. She’s just fine. In fact, as far as I know she’s still in the waiting room right now with some of your other friends. A few of your teachers, too. They’re just worried sick about you. My baby, always so popular.”
“Mom,” Quinn tries.
“I know, I know. I’m sorry, I’m just so - you know, I told them to go home and get some sleep, it’s not like they can do any good just sitting around. They wouldn’t listen to me.”
But Rachel had been in the car with her - hadn’t she? Quinn tries to remember. There was something she had to do with Rachel. It was big. It was something she didn’t want to do.
It hurts to think, though; it feels like she’s running a marathon just remembering, and so Quinn stops trying to make it make sense. The ceiling wavers a little. The punctures look deeper.
“Tired,” she says, the word all she can offer her mother. Luckily, Judy seems to know what she means.
“That’s fine, baby,” her mother tells her, and Quinn feels the pressure of a hand on her forehead, smoothing back her hairline. “Sleep all you want. You’re going to need your energy.”
For what? she wants to ask, but there’s something dark in front of her eyes now, widening, letting her inside.
__________
She goes in and out on a thick, kind tide. Morphine.
Dr. Kirsch informs her that she has cauda equina syndrome, something like a spinal cord injury, but she’s a very lucky girl because the injury is right below her spinal cord and it could’ve been higher, it could’ve been worse, it could’ve meant total paralysis. Cauda equina syndrome, by another name, is incomplete paraplegia, and when Judy hears those words she begins to sob and shake her head back and forth, violently. Quinn wants to hit her.
There’s understanding and sympathy in Dr. Kirsch’s face when she looks at Quinn. She says, turning back to Judy, “Mrs. Fabray, it’s possible that the nerves aren’t too badly damaged for regrowth and at least some recovery of leg function. I know this is difficult to hear, but Quinn is, as I said, very lucky. We’ll just have to wait and see. This takes time.”
Talk to me, not my mom, Quinn thinks, with a flash of anger, and the heat of it makes her briefly dizzy. It’s her paraplegia. It’s her cauda whatever.
“Do you have any questions for me?” Dr. Kirsch asks Quinn, almost as if she’s heard the criticism. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions.”
Yes, Quinn has questions, but she isn’t sure she’s ready to hear the answers, not yet, so she tries to shake her head, forgetting, as she’s forgotten again and again over the past four days, that she’s stuck in a brace. “No,” she says, instead. It’s easier to stay with short words. It takes less effort.
“I have questions, doctor,” Judy interjects, and Quinn closes her eyes as her mother’s voice trails outside the room, mixing with Dr. Kirsch’s, the beat of their footsteps keeping time with their conversation. Quinn notices the sound feet make now.
__________
A week after she’s admitted, someone who presumably knows what they’re doing decides Quinn’s head brace can come off, and that she’s stable enough to be moved out of the ICU and into another room downstairs. The new room is pretty much the same, except there’s a second window and the new IV machine doesn’t beep as loudly and the night shift is quieter: fewer blurry conversations outside her door, fewer footsteps. Being out of the ICU means she’s allowed non-family visitors, if she wants. One at a time.
Being pronounced stable has the opposite effect on Quinn. The word makes fear tighten in her chest, bringing on the familiar panic that makes her run in her dreams. She’s stable, but her left leg only inches slightly when she tries to adjust it on the mattress, and her right leg doesn’t move at all. It buzzes, instead, nerves pricking on the underside of her skin. Stable means nothing’s changing. It means she’s staying put.
Rachel’s her first visitor, and when she walks into Quinn’s room, her expression apprehensive, carrying a small bouquet of flowers in a vase, Quinn unexpectedly bursts into tears.
“Quinn!” Rachel exclaims, and rushes to her bedside. “Did I do something? I’m so sorry, whatever it is - I didn’t mean to upset you. I’ll go if you want me to.”
“You’re not wearing a wedding ring,” Quinn manages, through her hiccupped sobs, and thinks, angry at herself for losing it over something so dumb, God, Fabray, get it together.
Rachel sets the flowers down on Quinn’s overbed table, and reaches out to touch her arm before drawing back, clearly thinking better of it. “I didn’t - we didn’t go through with it,” she says, slowly. “I couldn’t do it. Not without you. I realized that it didn’t feel right, getting married without you right there next to me.” She shrugs her shoulders. “And when I realized that, my decision was very simple.”
Quinn says, her voice still unsteady, “Oh, Rachel.”
“I’m so glad to see you,” Rachel bursts out. “I’m so glad you’re all right, Quinn. They wouldn’t let me come see you at all while you were in intensive care, can you believe that?” She grabs a tissue from the overbed table, and hands it to Quinn, who reaches up, gingerly, to blow her nose. “You’d think trained nurses would understand that music has the ability to heal, but apparently this hospital is staffed with extremely rude and unfeeling people. I tried to explain to them that you and I have overcome so many obstacles to the delicate blossom of our newly budding friendship that we shouldn’t be able to let something like a hospital door stand in the way of my serenading you with a recuperative ballad or six, but they still wouldn’t let me. So even though it wasn’t my first choice, I sang in the waiting room instead. I asked Mercedes to help me out with some soothing harmonies, but she said she didn’t feel up to singing. It’s obviously important to respect everyone’s emotional journey during a trying time like this, but honestly, I was a little disappointed in her. We all need to realize that the most important thing right now is to put your needs first, Quinn.”
Quinn sniffs, calming down. Somehow, she’d forgotten what it was like, being on the receiving end of a Rachel Berry monologue. One piece of new information stands out, sticking her until she can’t think about anything else. “Mercedes? Mercedes was here? Is she still here?”
“She’s downstairs. So are Mr. Schue, and Ms. Sylvester, and Puck, and Sam. Everyone else is home right now, but I’m on strict orders to text them as soon as you’re ready for more visitors. We’ve all been sick with worry. Even Sue. She looks like she hasn’t slept this entire week. It’s been - we’re just so glad you’re going to be all right.”
Her eyes shine.
Quinn doesn’t know what to do with this, so she says, “I’m stable,” which is the only thing she can think of to say. Rachel smiles at her. She doesn’t touch Quinn’s arm.
Mr. Schuester smiles too, when it’s his turn to visit her, only it looks horrible, like he’s trying too hard to be cheerful, which he probably is. “Quinn,” he exclaims, and adds his large bouquet of roses to Rachel’s smaller arrangement on the overbed table. “You look great. Really great. How are you feeling?”
Quinn knows she doesn’t look great. At least he can’t see the mess of her legs, skinnier, already, from lack of use, tucked carefully under her blankets. She’s grateful for that. “Fine. Thank you.”
“You’re going to be back in that choir room before you know it,” he says, cheerfully. “We can’t win Nationals without you. We need your amazing voice to put us over the top. Don’t worry, we’ve got plans to keep you in the loop. I’ve got some great ideas for numbers, and Sue’s going to help us with choreography -”
She lets him talk, the way she let Rachel talk, because it’s easier than any other alternative. Eventually he pats her overbed table, awkwardly, the way he’d probably pat her head under other circumstances, and leaves, exchanging a quick glance with Coach Sylvester, who’s standing in the doorway waiting for her turn.
Rachel hadn’t exaggerated, for once. Sue looks exhausted.
“Hey there, Q,” she says, and clears her throat. Unlike Rachel and Mr. Schue, she isn’t carrying anything. “Schuester give you a disgustingly optimistic pep talk? Tell you you’ll be out of that bed and doing tuck rolls on my gym floor by Easter?”
Quinn attempts something that might be a smile, and fails. “What do you think?”
“You really wanna know what I think? I think,” Sue says, pulling up the chair by Quinn’s bedside and taking a seat, “that I’d honestly like nothing better than to tell you the same thing.”
“But you won’t.”
“No.” Sue crosses one leg over the other, and leans back. “No, I won’t.” She watches Quinn, looking for something in her face, maybe, and says nothing.
“This isn’t fair,” Quinn blurts out, suddenly, and the sound of tears in her voice again makes her feel even worse. “I’m supposed to be getting out of here. Out of Lima. It isn’t fair.”
Weak. She’s weak. Crying in front of Rachel’s one thing, but she knows better than to admit weakness in front of Coach Sylvester, of all people, even this new, strangely softer Coach Sylvester. Sue’s always told her Cheerios that life isn’t about being fair. Fairness, she remembers Sue saying once, is affirmative action for lazy people. I don’t want to hear you infants whining about what’s fair and what isn’t.
Sue’s still quiet, her expression measured and unreadable. Quinn presses her lips together, doing whatever she can to keep back the sob that’s back in her throat. She can’t cry again. Not now. Not with Sue.
“Oh, Q,” Sue says, finally, and reaches out, placing her hand over Quinn’s. It's warm and firm and unavoidable. “No, it isn’t, kiddo. It isn’t fair at all.”
Quinn turns her head away, towards the other, empty side of the room, because it’s too much, it’s too much from someone who wasn’t supposed to give her anything at all, and the tears leak inexorably out of her eyes, across the bridge of her nose. Sue doesn’t pull away.
__________
That night Quinn dreams she’s back in the oversized chair in Mercedes’s rec room, her belly heavy with the baby she can’t want, something on the television she can’t see.
“Come here,” Mercedes orders, behind her, and Quinn tries to get up, but remembers, just in time.
“I’m stable,” she tells Mercedes. “I can’t move my legs.”
“I thought you were stronger than that,” Mercedes says.
Quinn tries to look down at her legs, to see if Mercedes is right. They’re blocked from view by the mound of her belly, swollen over the tops of her thighs.
“You promised you wouldn’t tell,” she reminds Mercedes, her voice trailing up at the end to make it a question, and Mercedes answers, “It’s just the two of us here, Quinn. Who am I gonna tell?”
Just us. She’d stay in the rec room forever, if she could.
__________
She’s ready to see Mercedes the next day, or as close to ready as she’ll ever be, she guesses, and it isn’t until Mercedes is standing next to her hospital bed, holding her hand, that Quinn realizes they’ve done this once before.
“Do you want to talk or something?” Mercedes asks her. Quinn moves her shoulder in something like a shrug. “Do you want to pray? We could do that together. Or I could pray and you could listen.”
It’s the first time they’ve been alone in a room together since before Beth was born. Quinn says, her stomach wrenching with sudden anxiety, “Okay.”
They’d prayed together, sometimes, during those last months of Quinn’s pregnancy, in the evenings or whenever Quinn needed the comfort of Mercedes’s voice, reminding her that God’s love wasn’t the same thing as her father’s love: conditional and easily removed. She’d held hard to those prayers.
Mercedes says, quietly, “Lord, we your servants turn to you in the hour of our need to ask you to give us the strength of your spirit, the comfort of your presence, and the knowledge that we can carry on. Today, we ask that you please be with your daughter Quinn, who is suffering. Hold her in your arms, and comfort her. Help her realize that even when her world seems dark, she’s still a shining light that can never be extinguished. Amen.”
Quinn whispers, “Amen,” the word carrying with it the old familiar sanctity of childhood, the sense of seal on an everlasting bond. She squeezes Mercedes’s hand, and Mercedes squeezes back in their old familiar reflex. “Thank you.”
“I’m just glad they let me in to see you,” Mercedes says, and bites her lower lip briefly. “When I heard about the accident - ”
“Don’t.” Quinn pulls her hand free, shaking her head. “Mercedes, it’s really okay, you don’t have to - ”
“I need to say this,” Mercedes interrupts. “Please, I just need to get it out one time. I know we had this thing where we decided we weren’t gonna talk about it, and we never even talked about not talking about it, we just - didn’t talk about it. But then Mr. Schue told us you’d been in an accident, and the first thing I thought was that I never told you how sorry I was. It hit me so hard I couldn’t breathe.”
Quinn’s still shaking her head.
“I’m sorry, Quinn. For a lot of things. I’m sorry I didn’t try harder to get together with you after you moved back in with your mom. I’m sorry I started dating Sam over the summer without telling you about it because I was too scared to bring it up with you in the first place. I’m sorry I didn’t sit you down and find out what in the hell was up with you when you fried your hair pink and wore that crazy-ass Joan Jett outfit to school every day for a month. And I keep thinking about that night in my rec room before the baby -”
“No,” Quinn snaps. “Do not keep talking.”
“Look, what I was thinking was that if I hadn’t been so damn surprised I might’ve - ”
“I can’t deal with this right now,” Quinn manages, and she doesn’t know if it has anything to do with Mercedes, but pain’s radiating up her spine and into her neck. “Don’t do this to me. I mean it. You can’t just - come in here and talk about things and then walk out that door and leave me here. It’s been almost two years - and you just decide it’s okay to bring it up now, when everything's over? God, what’s wrong with you?”
Mercedes presses her lips together, and even through the hot flush of anger Quinn looks at them and remembers how they’d felt against her own. She’d always believed that people were exaggerating how great it felt to be intimate with someone. It was nice, obviously, when Finn held her, and she didn’t really remember much about the time she’d slept with Puck, but given a choice between making out with Finn and a really great brownie, she’d take the brownie every time. It was just one of those things, she’d assumed, that everyone agreed to make sound better than it was. Like how people said you could do whatever you wanted to do with your life, when that obviously wasn’t the case.
And then that night, four weeks before Beth was born, she’d kissed Mercedes impulsively when they were sitting on her rec room couch, and Mercedes’s lush mouth had been so soft. Something had clawed inside Quinn when she’d pulled back, something so strong she couldn’t think of it as anything but what it was, spreading and pulsing between her legs, and she’d thought, wondering and terrified, oh.
“Thanks for coming,” she says, and the anger’s drained out of her voice, replaced with new exhaustion. Her back hurts so freaking badly. “I need you to leave now.”
“Quinn -”
“I hope you feel better.” Because I feel like shit, she doesn’t say, but Mercedes obviously gets the message. She flushes, her cheeks reddening, and adjusts her purse on her shoulder before turning to leave.
__________
“People don’t really look at you. They look - over you.”
“What?”
They’re rolling down the long hospital corridor together, Quinn’s lungs and biceps burning with the effort. She’d never really thought about it before, but apparently using a wheelchair wasn’t exactly as easy as she’d always assumed it was.
Artie stops ahead of Quinn, and wheels around to face her. She lets go of her grip, glad for a break, even more pleased she didn’t have to actually ask him for one.
“They don’t look at you,” he repeats. “I mean, some people do. If they want something from you, or they’re talking directly to you, or they have to look at you so they know how low they need to aim the slushee cup. But mostly people look over you and around you. I think it’s because they’re worried they’re going to stare or make you uncomfortable or something, so they just pretend like they don’t see you.”
Quinn doesn’t know how to respond to this.
“I’m just letting you know,” Artie says, looking away. “Nobody told me that was going to happen, and I kind of wish they had, so I’m telling you. I hope that’s okay.”
Nothing about any of this is okay. She says, anger welling up easily, “Just because we’re both cripples now doesn’t mean we need to be best friends.”
Artie regards her with a calm Quinn finds infuriating. “I get it,” he tells her. “How you’re feeling. I understand better than anyone else, what you're going through. It’s okay to be mad, you know. I was mad for a long time. It doesn’t help, though. It makes things harder, actually. What really helps is if you have someone to talk to. I’m not saying it should be me, but you need to talk to somebody.”
Quinn wants to throw everything she’s feeling back in his face. To shout that he doesn’t know what hard means, not like she does. They’re nothing alike, the two of them. That thing that’s been digging at her since the night in Mercedes’s rec room, that unnamable thing she won’t let herself think about because thinking about it makes it real - since Mercedes’s outburst, that thing’s been turned inside out, grafted onto her skin, hooked into her spine, wrapped around her legs. She can’t walk away from it now. Artie might get what it’s like to be in a wheelchair, but the similarities end there.
Artie says, “You could at least join a fight club. I know about two at McKinley. I mean, I don’t really know about them because of that whole first rule of fight club thing.”
The suggestion’s so ridiculous that her anger falls apart in the face of it, and she laughs, despite herself, the harsh, barking sound of it strange to her ears. It’s the first time she’s laughed in the three weeks since the accident. “Yeah. Maybe. I’ll think about it.”
Artie grins at her, the smile lopsided. “You’re gonna be okay, Fabray,” he says, and even though she isn’t ready to believe him, Quinn doesn’t mind hearing him say it.
__________
Mercedes doesn’t call or visit.
It’s not like she’s alone, though. Rachel’s at the hospital most days of the week after school, yammering on about McKinley and whatever new musical’s opening on Broadway next month and other things Quinn can’t remember, because she usually tunes out about thirty seconds into Rachel’s speeches. Rachel talks about everything that isn’t Finn, and that, at least, is good. That makes Quinn feel a little better. Rachel’s a lot easier to tolerate when she isn’t talking about how amazing Finn is.
Sam’s there, too, bringing her DVDs she can watch on her laptop. They’re usually old corny science fiction movies from the 1950s, where the aliens are just guys in badly made suits who don’t wear protective cups so you can see the outline of their genitals, to which Quinn always says, face wrinkling in disgust, “Gross.”
“They don’t have cups in space,” Sam explains, patiently, perched on the edge of her bed.
“Sam. Do I seriously have to explain this to you? It isn’t space, it’s a movie set with human actors. Who have access to protective cups.”
“It’s not just about them. There are filmmaking rules about this stuff. Princess Leia couldn’t wear a bra in space either.”
“I noticed,” she says, without thinking about it, and then feels her face heat. Luckily, Sam doesn’t seem to pick up on anything because the alien on the screen’s just zapped a human with some sort of death ray, and Sam, for some reason, needs to explain to her what the rules of death rays are. Quinn doesn’t care at all, but it’s nice, just the same, hearing Sam be excited. It makes her think of promise rings, and being taken care of, and how she’d felt holding his hand when they were dating, like she had a nice protective layer between herself and the rest of the world.
Her right leg isn’t buzzing as much as it used to, and she can wiggle her toes pretty well, even bend her knee a bit. Her left leg’s stronger. She kicks out a little when swimming in the therapy pool, feeling the water resistant around her foot, and Carmen, holding her upright so that she doesn’t go under, exclaims, “Great job! You’re doing so well!”
God, she’s just kicking her foot. It’s not like it’s a perfect back stand spring jump or anything. She still can’t walk, even on crutches, and honestly, she doesn’t see the point of throwing a party every time her foot moves four inches, even if Carmen thinks it’s so fantastic.
Quinn’s released from the hospital three months after the accident, almost to the day. Everyone tells her how ecstatic she must be: the doctors, the nurses, Carmen, her mother, over and over until she starts to say, “Yes, I’m so happy,” because it makes them stop repeating it. At least it’s nice to be out in the fresh air, away from that sour smell that sticks to the hospital. That part she doesn't have to pretend to enjoy.
She takes out her phone five times on the car ride home, and puts it away five times. She doesn’t text Mercedes.
__________
[11:24] Heard you’re back. Welcome home
The buzz of her phone on her nightstand wakes up Quinn, and she stares at the screen for too long. Mercedes had said the same thing to her once before, the first time she’d walked into the Jones house with her suitcase, pregnant and terrified and alone. Welcome home. It meant something different, then, or at least it felt like it had.
What had Artie said, about needing someone to talk to? Quinn hates to admit it, but he might've been right. Maybe it’s just something she has to do and get it over with, fast. Like ripping off a Band-Aid. She's always been the kind of person who pulled those things off millimeter by millimeter, feeling each hair yank out of her skin. Maybe she can say everything once, really quickly, and then never say it again. She isn't sure, but she thinks that might work.
Quinn texts, quickly, before she can stop herself:
[11:26] Come over tomorrow?
She waits, heart in her throat, until the phone buzzes again, and when she looks, it’s with the same feeling she’d had when she opened the large envelope with Yale University on the return address, like her life suddenly depends on the answer.
[11:29] Ok
Just two letters, but they make Quinn feel what hours of physical therapy haven’t managed to accomplish yet: they make her feel like something’s started to change.
__________
She tells her mother to please leave the house for the afternoon, and not to worry, she’s perfectly fine on her own, and if she needs anything she can have Mercedes get it for her.
“But what if you need to use the - you know, facilities?” Judy asks, looking worried.
“Mom,” Quinn says. “Please.”
It doesn’t take too much convincing, probably because her mother wants to get out of the house almost as much as Quinn wants her out. She makes Quinn promise to call if there’s anything wrong, anything at all, “because I’m sure that little friend of yours - I shouldn’t say little, she’s really a big girl, isn’t she? - doesn’t know the first thing about caring for the disabled.”
“I’m not ‘the disabled,’ Mom,” Quinn snaps. “I’m me, and I can take care of myself, okay? Just go.”
Judy does, in a rustle of keys. Her heels click fast against the hardwood in the foyer, and then she’s gone.
It’s the little things that make Quinn realize how different her life is now, how much she’d taken for granted before. When the doorbell rings twenty minutes later, she rolls up to the front door, grabs the doorknob with her right hand, and then rolls herself back with the left, bringing the door with her so there’s room for Mercedes to step inside. It’s more effort then she’s ever put into opening a door in her entire life.
Mercedes looks just as nervous as Quinn feels, which, weirdly enough, makes Quinn feel less nervous, almost immediately. She invites her in, leading her into the living room.
“No, I’m okay,” she insists, warding off Mercedes’s quick offer of help as she hoists herself out of her chair, grabbing onto the couch. She’s gotten pretty good at this, over the past couple of days; she has just enough feeling in her feet that she knows if she’s got a good enough grip on the floor to leverage herself from seat to seat. “Did you want something, a drink or -? I didn’t even th - ”
“Quinn,” Mercedes says, and sits down next to her on the couch. “Girl, someday I’m gonna stop apologizing to you, but I guess today isn’t that day. I’m sorry I said all those things back at the hospital. You were right. I was being stupid and selfish.”
This is the part where Quinn’s supposed to talk. She doesn’t know what to say. She says, looking down at her hands, “No. You weren't.”
“It was my -”
“I miss you,” Quinn blurts out, and there, it’s out, or at least part of it is, but she feels the rest of it loosening slowly, and it doesn’t feel as horrible as she thought it would. “Nothing’s been the same since Beth was born. I thought it was all about her. I still think a lot of it is, because it hurts when I think about her. It hurts so much. But part of it is you. I bet you didn’t know those two months I was living at your place were the happiest months of my life. Did you know that?”
“No,” Mercedes says, quietly. “No, I didn’t.”
“Can we have that again?” She isn’t going to cry. Not this time. It’s too important to get this out without crying. “Can we try to get that back? I want to try. I want that more than anything. You were my best friend. You - ”
She feels Mercedes’s fingers on her jaw, the pressure light, and when she turns to look at her, saying, “I never stopped -” Mercedes leans in without warning and kisses Quinn.
Quinn gasps against Mercedes’s mouth - oh, God - and she kisses back, and she kisses back. It’s better than she’d remembered, and even though she’d tried as hard as she could not to remember, she’d memorized every second of that kiss back on Mercedes’s rec room couch. But they’re on Quinn’s couch now, and there’s no baby between them, only two years of walking around each other without saying the things they mean, and the only thing Quinn wants to do now is make up for it for as long as Mercedes will let her.
Mercedes makes a small sound when Quinn drags her lower lip between her teeth, not biting exactly, just pressing hard. There’s an answering wrench of arousal between Quinn’s legs; it’s the first time in weeks she’s felt anything as strong as that. Maybe the first time since the accident.
“Quinn,” Mercedes says, breathing a little harder than she usually does. “I should tell you. I’m not - I mean, I always thought I was - I guess I don’t know, now. All I know is that I want to kiss you. I’ve wanted to kiss you for two years. That’s it. I really don’t know if I - if I like girls, or just you.”
“I think I might be, though.” Quinn blurts, and that’s the other part of it come loose from that dark, buried part of her, out into the world. She still can’t say the actual word. “I think I am. I’m pretty sure I am. I mean, I don’t think it’s just you. It’s you, obviously, but -”
“You like girls,” Mercedes finishes, and Quinn lets out a long, anxious breath. Someone’s said it. Someone who isn’t her. “You know that’s okay, Quinn, right? I mean, it’s okay for Kurt, and Santana, and Blaine, and Brittany. And it’d be okay for me, if that’s how it ends up being. So it’s okay for you too.”
It isn’t the response she’d been expecting, not exactly. She says, “It is what it is, I guess,” and when Mercedes looks like she’s going to object to that statement, Quinn adds, quickly, “Yes. I know it’s okay. I know that.”
She still isn’t there yet, maybe, but someday -
Mercedes moves in to kiss her again, this time cradling Quinn’s head in between her two firm hands. Quinn’s eyes are closed, to keep from getting dizzy. She’s moving fast. She isn’t stopping.