A Million Reasons 2/3
Title: I Could Give A Million Reasons (why we should not be friends)
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Brittany/Santana/Quinn
Rating: R
Spoilers: Through all of season one
Summary: It doesn’t matter if Quinn likes girls, because she’s never going to do anything about it.
Notes: Written for Onomatopoetic. Title from Jay Brannan’s song Half-boyfriend.
They still talk to one another at school, of course, because they’re determined that by this time next year they’re going to be ruling McKinley, and they need to work together for that. But outside of school, Santana and Brittany have as little contact with Quinn as possible.
Quinn takes out her frustration on Rachel Berry, who she hasn’t seen since kindergarten because they’ve been at different schools, but is still as annoying as she was twelve years ago. And nothing really changes until sophomore year, just after they’ve joined Glee Club in an effort to take down the losers, when Quinn stays behind after a Cheerios practice to talk to Coach Sylvester about routines. Afterwards she walks into the locker room, expecting it to be empty, and instead finds Santana and Brittany, both topless, and Brittany’s hand moving busily underneath Santana’s pushed up skirt.
Quinn makes a strangled noise and they break apart, turning to her, but Quinn backs out fast and flees. She’s horrified with herself, because instead of feeling disgusted at what she saw, there’s a warmth low in her abdomen that she recognizes, and she’s desperate for it to go away.
That night, she sleeps with Puck.
It’s not bad, the sex; he makes her come twice, and she’s relieved afterwards, because it affirms that she does like guys, that they can turn her on as much as finding her female friends having sex can. But then she feels worse, partly because she cheated on Finn, who she loves, sort of, in a comfortable way, and mostly because she’s just had sex, which she swore she wouldn’t do until marriage. She’s never ever let Finn get further than first base and a half. She’s ruined everything.
It seems only fair a few weeks later when her period doesn’t come, and she ends up staring at a positive pregnancy test.
She sits there for a full hour, staring at it. She knows how she got here, and she knows she deserves it, but she wants to run away, or cry, or do something. Only she can’t, because she’s got to think about what she’s going to do.
She decides on telling Finn he’s the father, because she knows it’ll be better for the baby, and because she can’t face telling him that she cheated on him with his best friend. She cries when she tells him, because she’s scared, and because she’s just so ashamed of herself. Apparently, he tells Puck, because then she has to explain to Puck why he wouldn’t be a good father, which, honestly, is just exhausting.
And of course, what Puck knows, Santana knows, and what Santana knows, Brittany knows. Quinn’s hiding in a bathroom stall at lunchtime because she can’t face sitting with the Cheerios and pretending like there’s nothing wrong. When she hears the door open, she just sits silently, and hopes whoever it is will go away.
But then she hears Santana’s voice saying, “You in here, Fabray?” and somebody bangs on the stall door. “If that’s somebody else in there, then get the hell out.”
Sighing, Quinn opens the door. “What do you want?” she asks wearily.
“Hey, Preggo,” Santana says easily.
“Santana,” Brittany chides, and then she looks anxiously at Quinn. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” Quinn says shortly. “I’m fine. Who told you?”
“Duh,” Santana says, rolling her eyes. “Who do you think told me?”
Quinn’s eyes narrow. “I’m going to kill Puck,” she hisses.
“Easy there,” Santana says. “You’ll hurt your growth.”
Quinn glares at her. “What the hell are you doing here?” she asks them both. “Come to gloat?”
“No!” Brittany says.
“Well then,” says Quinn, “come to tell me that everyone’s going to know about this by the end of school?” Her voice shakes as she adds to Santana, “Guess you’ll like being Head Cheerio.”
“Shut up, Q,” Santana snaps. “Has it occurred to you that we might be here to help?”
Quinn stares. “No!” she says, half horrified by this turn of events, because she’s kind of gotten used to their weird dynamic. “Of course not!”
Brittany frowns, and abruptly, she pulls Quinn forward into a hug. Quinn stumbles, gasping, and tenses in Brittany’s arms, because outside of Cheerios and Glee practice, they haven’t willingly touched each other since that night at Quinn’s house. She fights to pull away, but Brittany holds on tighter, and after a few seconds she gives in, melting into the other girl.
“You’re an ass, Fabray,” Santana says matter-of-factly. “But we’re going to help you anyway.”
Quinn squeezes her eyes shut against Brittany’s shoulder, because she sort of wants to cry again. “How?” she asks, her voice muffled by Brittany. “I’m pregnant, you guys. What can you do?”
“There are places,” Brittany says softly. “We can take you to one, if you want.”
“What?!” Quinn raises her head to look at her, stepping back in shock. “No! I can’t - I can’t do that!”
“Calm down, Juno,” Santana says, raising her hands in mock surrender. “We’re just saying - it’s an option.”
“No, it’s not,” Quinn says firmly. “Not for me.”
“Alright,” Brittany says. “That’s fine. We’ll just… be here for you.”
Quinn blinks, and looks down at the floor. “Why?” she asks hollowly.
“Because, stupid,” Brittany chides softly. “We’re friends.” She hesitates, and then adds, “Right, Santana?”
Santana sighs, and punches Quinn on the shoulder. “Right, Fabray. We’re friends.”
Quinn gives them a smile, and then bursts into tears.
---
True to their word, they stick by her, defending her from insults and taunts. They can’t stop her from being kicked off of Cheerios, or from sliding down the social ladder, but Santana kicks ass the first time Quinn gets slushied, and after that people just tend to ignore her in silence.
They even start to indulge her pregnancy cravings, and Santana barely even rolls her eyes when she has to run out for ice cream or pickles or whatever else Quinn has decided she needs. Brittany starts bringing two bacon sandwiches to school with her every day, just in case Quinn wants them. They start showing up at Quinn’s place regularly, bringing movies and fat free junk food that tastes like crap, or else forcing her out to the mall or to either of their places. When Quinn gets kicked out of home, the only difference they make is to show up at Finn’s place instead of hers.
Quinn goes along with it and tries not to think about too much, because every time she does, she sort of wants to cry, and she’s been crying way too much lately. It’s just that they’re so nice to her, and all she’s ever done to them is try to manipulate them.
It’s a little awkward at first, because whenever it’s just the three of them, Santana and Brittany are happy to cuddle on the couch, or hold hands, or sneak kisses. The first time Quinn catches them kissing in Brittany’s kitchen, when they’d only gone to get popcorn, a weird feeling comes over her that she doesn’t want to analyze, and she clears her throat loudly. Brittany blushes and pulls away from Santana, but Santana shoots a pointed look at Quinn’s stomach and drawls, “Yeah, because you’re in such a great position to judge, Preggo.”
Quinn blushes, and after that she just shrugs and ignores the way they’re perpetually in physical contact with each other. If she’s honest with herself - and she tries hard not to be - she doesn’t really mind what they do. It’s just that she really wants to mind.
She stops wanting to mind when everyone finds out about the real father of her baby. She doesn’t expect Santana or Brittany to be able to do anything about that - and in the end they can’t, because it all comes crashing down on her - but Brittany actually tries, attempting to deflect attention away from Quinn right before the drama unfolds.
Brittany has learning difficulties, but she’s not stupid. She makes stupid comments, sure, because she has some misguided notion that it’ll make everyone like her, and it actually works, so Santana and Quinn don’t try to stop her, but they’re calculated comments, designed for a purpose.
Sometimes, they can come in pretty useful.
Quinn isn’t there, so she doesn’t hear about it until after school while they’re waiting for Glee to start. She walks into the choir room to find only Santana and Brittany, and Santana shoots her a murderous look.
“You’d better be happy, Fabray,” she growls. “Do you know what Britt did for you this afternoon?”
Brittany’s biting down on her bottom lip, but her eyes are twinkling and it looks like she’s fighting not to smile. Quinn raises her eyebrows in question.
“She outed us to the entire Glee Club,” Santana hisses.
“What?” Quinn gasps. “Why?”
Brittany shrugs. “They all know that Puck’s the father,” she tells Quinn a little gently. “I thought if they were talking about us instead, Rachel or Finn might not find out.”
Quinn gapes at her. “But - but what about you guys?” she protests. Somehow, she doesn’t quite catch the memo that almost the whole club knows about her baby daddy. “You could lose everything over this!”
“No, we won’t,” Brittany says easily. “Santana and I are at the top of the chain. If anyone slushies us, they’ll be the outcasts.”
Quinn stares, her mouth hanging open. “Britt,” she whispers, and then she steps forward and hugs her tightly.
“Thank you,” she whispers. She steps back to look at the two of them. “Thank you,” she says again. “Honestly.”
Santana raises an eyebrow, but then the other kids start filling into the room, so they can’t talk anymore.
Five minutes after that, Finn storms in and punches Puck in the face.
By that night, Quinn’s been kicked out of her second home, and has moved into Puck’s. Santana and Brittany come over and stay the night, and Brittany hugs her while she cries. Santana doesn’t say anything, but that’s comforting enough anyway.
After that, Quinn’s willing to put up with anything they do, because no matter what Brittany said, they’ve put everything at stake for her. She stops forcing herself to think of the two of them as wrong and instead, remembers the certainty in Santana’s voice when she’d told Quinn she loved Brittany. Sometimes, she even lets herself feel jealous of them both.
---
Time goes on, and other dramas take over people’s lives. There’s Jesse, for one thing, causing friction with the rest of the group, and Kurt’s embarrassingly obvious attempts to get Finn to fall in love with him, and then there’s the lead up to Regionals and all the conflict with Vocal Adrenaline and somewhere in the middle of that Quinn finds herself at yet another house, living with Mercedes. Plus, there’s Rachel’s mom issues, but most people don’t really pay a whole lot of attention to that, other than to wonder if she’s going to leave New Directions to join Vocal Adrenaline.
And so they dance and sing and rap their way to Regionals, and then all of a sudden, it’s competition day, and her mom is there and there’s water running down her legs, and Beth is coming. Now.
Afterwards, when she’s finally home - and it’s her real home now, with her mom fussing over her, and the chair where her dad used to sit horribly empty - and Beth has been adopted by Shelby, Quinn allows herself to drift away for a few days and think of nothing at all. It’s nice, not worrying about anything and not thinking about anyone, and she’s annoyed when somebody comes into the room and forces her to snap out of it.
It’s Santana, of course, who’s shouting at her, and Quinn catches the words, “…Gone now, so get the fuck up and do something…” as well as, “… and seriously going to have to get a personal trainer on your ass because no way in fucking hell are you getting back on Cheerios like that…” but in between she catches Brittany grinning at her.
“B,” she says, once she’s actually sat up and can look at them without blinking from the unexpected light, “please, can’t you shut your girlfriend up?”
Brittany doesn’t have to do anything, because Santana stops abruptly. Quinn knows why; she’s never said the word girlfriend before about the two of them, and this is a momentous occasion. Come to think of it, she’s not sure Santana and Brittany even use the word themselves.
“Shove over, Juno,” Santana says after a minute. “We brought movies.”
---
It turns out the movies aren’t enough to cheer her up, because she’s been pretty depressed ever since she got home from the hospital. She doesn’t even smile all the way through The Hangover, and Brittany keeps glancing anxiously at her. At the end, when Quinn just sighs, Santana rolls her eyes and reaches over to her bag.
“Here,” she says, pulling out a bottle of vodka. “I was hoping we wouldn’t have to resort to this.”
Quinn’s eyes widen, and she casts a worried look at her closed bedroom door. Before all of this, her mom would have killed her if she’d known there was alcohol in the house, but she’s been so worried and awkward around Quinn lately, so Quinn thinks she could probably do just about anything and her mom would still forgive her.
Still… “Put that away, S,” Quinn says firmly. “I don’t drink. Not since it sent me to Puck.”
“Oh come on,” Santana scoffs, “like it was the alcohol that did it. Man the fuck up Quinn, and just admit you wanted him.”
Quinn swallows. Hesitantly, she reaches out for the bottle.
They drink it straight, passing the bottle between them. Quinn hates the taste, but she forces it down anyway. She remembers feeling happy last time she drank. She wants to feel that again.
The buzz hits her suddenly, while Santana and Brittany are still mainly sober. It’s probably because she doesn’t drink often, not since nine months ago, and she doesn’t recognize the feeling of being tipsy until she’s already tipped over into being drunk. She realizes how far gone she is when she’s laughing and falling against her bed, but the realization only makes her laugh harder, because the thought of being drunk just seems so funny, all of a sudden.
It also makes her much more talkative than she should have been, and before she knows what’s happening, she’s pouring out her feelings about Santana and Brittany’s relationship, and the way she wants to hate it - has always wanted to hate it - but has never really been able to. Neither of them say anything, they just listen, and giggle, because they’re getting drunker too, and occasionally look at each other, so Quinn goes on and on, talking about church and about expectations, and about how she’d really only slept with Puck because she really liked boys, but she couldn’t stop thinking about girls. Specifically because she couldn’t stop thinking about how she’d caught Santana and Brittany in the locker room, and the way it made her feel.
There’s a sudden silence when she says that, and dimly, Quinn’s aware that those particular facts weren’t ever supposed to get spoken out loud. Santana’s face settles into something that’s half stony fury and half something else she can’t place.
“So what you’re saying,” Santana says, voice low and dangerous, “is that you gave us all that bullshit because you were having gay panic issues?”
“Yeah!” Quinn says brightly, pleased that Santana’s grasped the concept so quickly. “That’s it!”
“San,” Brittany warns. “Don’t.”
Santana looks at her, and then back at Quinn. There’s still that weird look on her face, and Quinn giggles at the thought that Santana might be about to beat her up. But then Santana just sighs and takes the bottle out of Quinn’s hands.
“Go to sleep, Fabray,” she says, and pushes Quinn until she’s lying down on her bed.
Quinn obediently closes her eyes and lies still, and once she’s lying there, she realizes that she’s so incredibly tired. She doesn’t think she could get up if she tried.
She can hear Santana and Brittany whispering to each other as she falls asleep.
---
When she wakes up in the morning, the others are passed out on her bed, which, since she came home, has thankfully been upsized to a double. Quinn barely takes a second look at them, and then runs to the bathroom, grateful her mom’s already at work.
She’s just finished puking her guts up, and sat back on her heels, when the hazy memories of last night, and all the things she told them, come back to her. She raises herself back up on her knees and throws up again.
Part 3
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Brittany/Santana/Quinn
Rating: R
Spoilers: Through all of season one
Summary: It doesn’t matter if Quinn likes girls, because she’s never going to do anything about it.
Notes: Written for Onomatopoetic. Title from Jay Brannan’s song Half-boyfriend.
They still talk to one another at school, of course, because they’re determined that by this time next year they’re going to be ruling McKinley, and they need to work together for that. But outside of school, Santana and Brittany have as little contact with Quinn as possible.
Quinn takes out her frustration on Rachel Berry, who she hasn’t seen since kindergarten because they’ve been at different schools, but is still as annoying as she was twelve years ago. And nothing really changes until sophomore year, just after they’ve joined Glee Club in an effort to take down the losers, when Quinn stays behind after a Cheerios practice to talk to Coach Sylvester about routines. Afterwards she walks into the locker room, expecting it to be empty, and instead finds Santana and Brittany, both topless, and Brittany’s hand moving busily underneath Santana’s pushed up skirt.
Quinn makes a strangled noise and they break apart, turning to her, but Quinn backs out fast and flees. She’s horrified with herself, because instead of feeling disgusted at what she saw, there’s a warmth low in her abdomen that she recognizes, and she’s desperate for it to go away.
That night, she sleeps with Puck.
It’s not bad, the sex; he makes her come twice, and she’s relieved afterwards, because it affirms that she does like guys, that they can turn her on as much as finding her female friends having sex can. But then she feels worse, partly because she cheated on Finn, who she loves, sort of, in a comfortable way, and mostly because she’s just had sex, which she swore she wouldn’t do until marriage. She’s never ever let Finn get further than first base and a half. She’s ruined everything.
It seems only fair a few weeks later when her period doesn’t come, and she ends up staring at a positive pregnancy test.
She sits there for a full hour, staring at it. She knows how she got here, and she knows she deserves it, but she wants to run away, or cry, or do something. Only she can’t, because she’s got to think about what she’s going to do.
She decides on telling Finn he’s the father, because she knows it’ll be better for the baby, and because she can’t face telling him that she cheated on him with his best friend. She cries when she tells him, because she’s scared, and because she’s just so ashamed of herself. Apparently, he tells Puck, because then she has to explain to Puck why he wouldn’t be a good father, which, honestly, is just exhausting.
And of course, what Puck knows, Santana knows, and what Santana knows, Brittany knows. Quinn’s hiding in a bathroom stall at lunchtime because she can’t face sitting with the Cheerios and pretending like there’s nothing wrong. When she hears the door open, she just sits silently, and hopes whoever it is will go away.
But then she hears Santana’s voice saying, “You in here, Fabray?” and somebody bangs on the stall door. “If that’s somebody else in there, then get the hell out.”
Sighing, Quinn opens the door. “What do you want?” she asks wearily.
“Hey, Preggo,” Santana says easily.
“Santana,” Brittany chides, and then she looks anxiously at Quinn. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” Quinn says shortly. “I’m fine. Who told you?”
“Duh,” Santana says, rolling her eyes. “Who do you think told me?”
Quinn’s eyes narrow. “I’m going to kill Puck,” she hisses.
“Easy there,” Santana says. “You’ll hurt your growth.”
Quinn glares at her. “What the hell are you doing here?” she asks them both. “Come to gloat?”
“No!” Brittany says.
“Well then,” says Quinn, “come to tell me that everyone’s going to know about this by the end of school?” Her voice shakes as she adds to Santana, “Guess you’ll like being Head Cheerio.”
“Shut up, Q,” Santana snaps. “Has it occurred to you that we might be here to help?”
Quinn stares. “No!” she says, half horrified by this turn of events, because she’s kind of gotten used to their weird dynamic. “Of course not!”
Brittany frowns, and abruptly, she pulls Quinn forward into a hug. Quinn stumbles, gasping, and tenses in Brittany’s arms, because outside of Cheerios and Glee practice, they haven’t willingly touched each other since that night at Quinn’s house. She fights to pull away, but Brittany holds on tighter, and after a few seconds she gives in, melting into the other girl.
“You’re an ass, Fabray,” Santana says matter-of-factly. “But we’re going to help you anyway.”
Quinn squeezes her eyes shut against Brittany’s shoulder, because she sort of wants to cry again. “How?” she asks, her voice muffled by Brittany. “I’m pregnant, you guys. What can you do?”
“There are places,” Brittany says softly. “We can take you to one, if you want.”
“What?!” Quinn raises her head to look at her, stepping back in shock. “No! I can’t - I can’t do that!”
“Calm down, Juno,” Santana says, raising her hands in mock surrender. “We’re just saying - it’s an option.”
“No, it’s not,” Quinn says firmly. “Not for me.”
“Alright,” Brittany says. “That’s fine. We’ll just… be here for you.”
Quinn blinks, and looks down at the floor. “Why?” she asks hollowly.
“Because, stupid,” Brittany chides softly. “We’re friends.” She hesitates, and then adds, “Right, Santana?”
Santana sighs, and punches Quinn on the shoulder. “Right, Fabray. We’re friends.”
Quinn gives them a smile, and then bursts into tears.
---
True to their word, they stick by her, defending her from insults and taunts. They can’t stop her from being kicked off of Cheerios, or from sliding down the social ladder, but Santana kicks ass the first time Quinn gets slushied, and after that people just tend to ignore her in silence.
They even start to indulge her pregnancy cravings, and Santana barely even rolls her eyes when she has to run out for ice cream or pickles or whatever else Quinn has decided she needs. Brittany starts bringing two bacon sandwiches to school with her every day, just in case Quinn wants them. They start showing up at Quinn’s place regularly, bringing movies and fat free junk food that tastes like crap, or else forcing her out to the mall or to either of their places. When Quinn gets kicked out of home, the only difference they make is to show up at Finn’s place instead of hers.
Quinn goes along with it and tries not to think about too much, because every time she does, she sort of wants to cry, and she’s been crying way too much lately. It’s just that they’re so nice to her, and all she’s ever done to them is try to manipulate them.
It’s a little awkward at first, because whenever it’s just the three of them, Santana and Brittany are happy to cuddle on the couch, or hold hands, or sneak kisses. The first time Quinn catches them kissing in Brittany’s kitchen, when they’d only gone to get popcorn, a weird feeling comes over her that she doesn’t want to analyze, and she clears her throat loudly. Brittany blushes and pulls away from Santana, but Santana shoots a pointed look at Quinn’s stomach and drawls, “Yeah, because you’re in such a great position to judge, Preggo.”
Quinn blushes, and after that she just shrugs and ignores the way they’re perpetually in physical contact with each other. If she’s honest with herself - and she tries hard not to be - she doesn’t really mind what they do. It’s just that she really wants to mind.
She stops wanting to mind when everyone finds out about the real father of her baby. She doesn’t expect Santana or Brittany to be able to do anything about that - and in the end they can’t, because it all comes crashing down on her - but Brittany actually tries, attempting to deflect attention away from Quinn right before the drama unfolds.
Brittany has learning difficulties, but she’s not stupid. She makes stupid comments, sure, because she has some misguided notion that it’ll make everyone like her, and it actually works, so Santana and Quinn don’t try to stop her, but they’re calculated comments, designed for a purpose.
Sometimes, they can come in pretty useful.
Quinn isn’t there, so she doesn’t hear about it until after school while they’re waiting for Glee to start. She walks into the choir room to find only Santana and Brittany, and Santana shoots her a murderous look.
“You’d better be happy, Fabray,” she growls. “Do you know what Britt did for you this afternoon?”
Brittany’s biting down on her bottom lip, but her eyes are twinkling and it looks like she’s fighting not to smile. Quinn raises her eyebrows in question.
“She outed us to the entire Glee Club,” Santana hisses.
“What?” Quinn gasps. “Why?”
Brittany shrugs. “They all know that Puck’s the father,” she tells Quinn a little gently. “I thought if they were talking about us instead, Rachel or Finn might not find out.”
Quinn gapes at her. “But - but what about you guys?” she protests. Somehow, she doesn’t quite catch the memo that almost the whole club knows about her baby daddy. “You could lose everything over this!”
“No, we won’t,” Brittany says easily. “Santana and I are at the top of the chain. If anyone slushies us, they’ll be the outcasts.”
Quinn stares, her mouth hanging open. “Britt,” she whispers, and then she steps forward and hugs her tightly.
“Thank you,” she whispers. She steps back to look at the two of them. “Thank you,” she says again. “Honestly.”
Santana raises an eyebrow, but then the other kids start filling into the room, so they can’t talk anymore.
Five minutes after that, Finn storms in and punches Puck in the face.
By that night, Quinn’s been kicked out of her second home, and has moved into Puck’s. Santana and Brittany come over and stay the night, and Brittany hugs her while she cries. Santana doesn’t say anything, but that’s comforting enough anyway.
After that, Quinn’s willing to put up with anything they do, because no matter what Brittany said, they’ve put everything at stake for her. She stops forcing herself to think of the two of them as wrong and instead, remembers the certainty in Santana’s voice when she’d told Quinn she loved Brittany. Sometimes, she even lets herself feel jealous of them both.
---
Time goes on, and other dramas take over people’s lives. There’s Jesse, for one thing, causing friction with the rest of the group, and Kurt’s embarrassingly obvious attempts to get Finn to fall in love with him, and then there’s the lead up to Regionals and all the conflict with Vocal Adrenaline and somewhere in the middle of that Quinn finds herself at yet another house, living with Mercedes. Plus, there’s Rachel’s mom issues, but most people don’t really pay a whole lot of attention to that, other than to wonder if she’s going to leave New Directions to join Vocal Adrenaline.
And so they dance and sing and rap their way to Regionals, and then all of a sudden, it’s competition day, and her mom is there and there’s water running down her legs, and Beth is coming. Now.
Afterwards, when she’s finally home - and it’s her real home now, with her mom fussing over her, and the chair where her dad used to sit horribly empty - and Beth has been adopted by Shelby, Quinn allows herself to drift away for a few days and think of nothing at all. It’s nice, not worrying about anything and not thinking about anyone, and she’s annoyed when somebody comes into the room and forces her to snap out of it.
It’s Santana, of course, who’s shouting at her, and Quinn catches the words, “…Gone now, so get the fuck up and do something…” as well as, “… and seriously going to have to get a personal trainer on your ass because no way in fucking hell are you getting back on Cheerios like that…” but in between she catches Brittany grinning at her.
“B,” she says, once she’s actually sat up and can look at them without blinking from the unexpected light, “please, can’t you shut your girlfriend up?”
Brittany doesn’t have to do anything, because Santana stops abruptly. Quinn knows why; she’s never said the word girlfriend before about the two of them, and this is a momentous occasion. Come to think of it, she’s not sure Santana and Brittany even use the word themselves.
“Shove over, Juno,” Santana says after a minute. “We brought movies.”
---
It turns out the movies aren’t enough to cheer her up, because she’s been pretty depressed ever since she got home from the hospital. She doesn’t even smile all the way through The Hangover, and Brittany keeps glancing anxiously at her. At the end, when Quinn just sighs, Santana rolls her eyes and reaches over to her bag.
“Here,” she says, pulling out a bottle of vodka. “I was hoping we wouldn’t have to resort to this.”
Quinn’s eyes widen, and she casts a worried look at her closed bedroom door. Before all of this, her mom would have killed her if she’d known there was alcohol in the house, but she’s been so worried and awkward around Quinn lately, so Quinn thinks she could probably do just about anything and her mom would still forgive her.
Still… “Put that away, S,” Quinn says firmly. “I don’t drink. Not since it sent me to Puck.”
“Oh come on,” Santana scoffs, “like it was the alcohol that did it. Man the fuck up Quinn, and just admit you wanted him.”
Quinn swallows. Hesitantly, she reaches out for the bottle.
They drink it straight, passing the bottle between them. Quinn hates the taste, but she forces it down anyway. She remembers feeling happy last time she drank. She wants to feel that again.
The buzz hits her suddenly, while Santana and Brittany are still mainly sober. It’s probably because she doesn’t drink often, not since nine months ago, and she doesn’t recognize the feeling of being tipsy until she’s already tipped over into being drunk. She realizes how far gone she is when she’s laughing and falling against her bed, but the realization only makes her laugh harder, because the thought of being drunk just seems so funny, all of a sudden.
It also makes her much more talkative than she should have been, and before she knows what’s happening, she’s pouring out her feelings about Santana and Brittany’s relationship, and the way she wants to hate it - has always wanted to hate it - but has never really been able to. Neither of them say anything, they just listen, and giggle, because they’re getting drunker too, and occasionally look at each other, so Quinn goes on and on, talking about church and about expectations, and about how she’d really only slept with Puck because she really liked boys, but she couldn’t stop thinking about girls. Specifically because she couldn’t stop thinking about how she’d caught Santana and Brittany in the locker room, and the way it made her feel.
There’s a sudden silence when she says that, and dimly, Quinn’s aware that those particular facts weren’t ever supposed to get spoken out loud. Santana’s face settles into something that’s half stony fury and half something else she can’t place.
“So what you’re saying,” Santana says, voice low and dangerous, “is that you gave us all that bullshit because you were having gay panic issues?”
“Yeah!” Quinn says brightly, pleased that Santana’s grasped the concept so quickly. “That’s it!”
“San,” Brittany warns. “Don’t.”
Santana looks at her, and then back at Quinn. There’s still that weird look on her face, and Quinn giggles at the thought that Santana might be about to beat her up. But then Santana just sighs and takes the bottle out of Quinn’s hands.
“Go to sleep, Fabray,” she says, and pushes Quinn until she’s lying down on her bed.
Quinn obediently closes her eyes and lies still, and once she’s lying there, she realizes that she’s so incredibly tired. She doesn’t think she could get up if she tried.
She can hear Santana and Brittany whispering to each other as she falls asleep.
---
When she wakes up in the morning, the others are passed out on her bed, which, since she came home, has thankfully been upsized to a double. Quinn barely takes a second look at them, and then runs to the bathroom, grateful her mom’s already at work.
She’s just finished puking her guts up, and sat back on her heels, when the hazy memories of last night, and all the things she told them, come back to her. She raises herself back up on her knees and throws up again.
Part 3