Seeing is Believing (7/10)
Name: Seeing is Believing (7/10)
Rating: PG-13
Length: 3400
Spoilers: Sectionals
Pairing: Quinn/Rachel
Summary: I have had many adventures as an invisible man - H.G. Wells
Author's Note: I seriously keep getting all these exact numbers for my word counts. What's up with that? Anyway, this took a while because I changed what happened in it several times and settled on this because angst is awesome mixed with fluff. All I'm saying. And hey, sunsofwhiterain , I beat you for this chapter. SO HA. I like long comments, by the way. Would you like to leave me one?
[ one ] [ two ] [ three ] [ four ] [ five ] [ six ]
Quinn's dream is the same as it always is.
It's Central Park, at the reservoir's edge and the ducks are squawking out on the glassy surface as a little girl tosses pieced of bread onto the water. Rachel is talking animatedly with a few random fans, grinning widely as they compliment her and taking quick glances over at the girl every thirty seconds or so. Quinn is standing back a few feet, enjoying the way the sun hits Rachel's hair, perfectly happy to just stand there and watch her for the rest of her life.
The ring on her left hand is just a symbol of that. It glints in the sunlight, and she absently watches the light refract off of it as she turns her hand over and around in the air. Rachel gives a bright laugh, and it almost feels like Quinn's world brightens in accordance. She's smiling at the little girl who's wandered towards them with bread crumbs all over her hands, picking her up and swinging her back and forth a little, kissing her cheek and smiling brighter as the girl leans forward to kiss her cheek in response.
It's no coincidence that the little girl looks considerably like Rachel, and Quinn smiles brighter when the girl in Rachel's arms spots Quinn, squealing happily. Rachel glances back and makes sure the girl hasn't spotted a horse or something and sets her down and whispers into the little girl's ear before she nudges her toward Quinn with a grin on her face.
The girl runs straight into Quinn's waiting arms, allowing herself to be pulled up. She sets her head on Quinn's shoulder before she edges a little closer to her ear.
"Momma says she loves you," the girl whispers, like it's a big secret. Quinn smiles, pressing a kiss to the girl's forehead and she just feels happy, because this is her dream, this life.
But it really is all a dream.
//
Quinn hates that dream. It reminds her of Caroline, first of all, and even though she's decidedly over that entire situation, it sometimes sticks out at her when she sees people with her kids that once upon a time she could've had a kid. And she does want kids, at some point, but she hadn't wanted one as a recently turned seventeen-year-old possible lesbian, and the decision to let Caroline go, in the end, was easy. The little girl in her dream really was a mini-Rachel, and it burned, seeing her and imagining that she could have Rachel and a little girl and a life of happiness. It was stupid, almost - she was just a junior in high school, and she had regular dreams of being married and having a little kid, mixed up amongst dreams about legs and random ones with screaming Sue Sylvesters.
But, apparently, her life was just completely against normalcy.
When she opens her eyes, she realizes that it's four in the morning, and Rachel has somehow reversed their position and is currently sprawled out over most of the bed, her nose just brushing Quinn's hair and her hand wrapped around Quinn's arm. It's kind of really adorable, the way her nose is scrunched up and her eyebrows are knit together, like a puzzling thought has just entered into whatever dreamland she's hanging out in. Quinn's surprised when Rachel mumbles something and pulls herself closer to the (still, damn it) invisible girl, sliding her hand over Quinn's toned stomach and keeping it right over where her appendix once was.
She immediately thinks back to the day she had woken up and had been in so much pain, stumbling into her parents room bleary-eyed and practically doubled over. Her dad claims to this day that she had then thrown up, but she was probably so concerned with the feeling of her insides being ripped out that she doesn't remember it at all. It had been her freshman year, probably almost two years ago exactly.
Quinn's distracted from her thoughts even further when Rachel pulls herself a little closer, setting her head against Quinn's arm and fully wrapping her arm around the blonde. It's always like this, when they have sleepovers - one of them inevitably gets as close as possible to the other. She doesn't think much of it, really, and slides her arm around Rachel, pulling her a little closer and rubbing the small of her back. The smaller girl's expression clears up, and she smiles, making a happy noise.
Just because she doesn't really want to get out of Rachel's unconscious embrace, she starts to look around the room. There's a huge bulletin board hanging over Rachel's desk, and the entire room is decorated with musical posters, some of them signed and some not. Rachel's bathroom door is open, providing a glance into the meticulously cleaned counter. On Rachel's bedside table, however, is a veritable gold mine.
There are all sorts of pictures - ranging from photo strips of Rachel and her dads through the years to acting head shots to posed photos of Rachel in all sorts of sequined dance outfits. Towards the forefront, however, are ones of the glee kids. There's one of Finn and Puck kissing either side of Rachel's face at a competition somewhere, another of Santana tossing Rachel into a pool with her trademark smirk displayed. There's one of Rachel talking animatedly to a delighted young child who had seen them perform at an invitational maybe three months ago. Quinn's actually in that picture, watching Rachel watch the girl with a half-smile on her face and one hand wrapped in Rachel's.
There are even more with Quinn, though, than anyone else. There's a picture Evan took of them after the state fair, with Quinn fast asleep on Rachel's shoulder in the back seat of the car. There's another picture Evan must have taken, of both of them running around in Rachel's back yard in the rain, Rachel having just gotten ahold of Quinn's waist to slow her down, mid-laugh. There's a fairly recent one that Quinn doesn't quite expect Rachel to have sitting on her beside table: one of Quinn and her parents and her sister, sitting around after another glee competition while they wait for the judges to decide.
It's not that Rachel hates Quinn's family - that's not why she's surprised. It's more that Rachel has never said anything one way or the other on Quinn's family, except to say that if her family ever treated her in a way she didn't like that Quinn had a home at the Berrys.
It had been a hard, horrible decision, moving back in with her parents. Only a week and a half after Caroline, and still trying to keep herself out of an endless cycle of self-doubt, and mostly succeeding due to Rachel, Evan, and Adam's superhuman efforts, her parents and her sister Chelsea had shown up at the doorstep.
They had talked the entire week, about the moving back in thing. Her parents were obviously trying to be better, and her sister seemed close to tears she was so apologetic, but she wasn't sure what to make of any of it. It was easy enough to take Quinn back in now that she wasn't as fat as a cow (no matter what Rachel or Puck or anyone said, she really was rather big towards the end) and she at least looked like the perfect little angel Quinn Fabray. But she was falling in love with her best friend who was a girl, and that certainly wasn't in line with the way her parents were.
The deciding factor had been the night her parents had invited all three of the Berrys and Quinn for dinner. It had been awkward and it was decidedly obvious that her parents were uncomfortable, but after a few highballs, her mother and Rachel were discussing the merits of My Fair Lady, Julie Andrews vs. Audrey Hepburn, and her dad was discussing something complicated but finance-y with Evan. Her sister had managed to drag out every single photo album of the entire family and was proceeding to show every single baby photo of Quinn to Adam. It wasn't exactly normal. But it was her family, now.
Her house was generally silent most days. Occasionally she would wander downstairs and watch a movie with her dad or make dinner with her mom. When Chelsea was home, they would all go out to dinner and laugh and have fun. Before, the house was filled with tension and she couldn't really breathe, but now, it was just a comfortable, complicated silence that she knew how to combat.
Rachel draws Quinn out of her thoughts once more, her eyes fluttering open to look blearily at the way her hand has settled on Quinn's invisible hip, flexing her fingers and pressing down a little. Quinn's pretty sure Rachel isn't entirely awake, especially when the girl burrows just a little closer and mumbles something about teddy bears into Quinn's shoulder and closes her eyes again.
Quinn smiles a little, placing her hand on Rachel's and rubbing more at her back, leaning down to kiss the top of her head, remembering vaguely Rachel doing the same to her before she had fallen asleep. She also remembers her return kiss along Rachel's jaw.
It's hard to be Rachel's friend when it sometimes seems as though they're so much more. When they're this close and it's warm and safe and Quinn feels protected and protective.
In the end, though, it's always just a dream.
//
Rachel's dream is going spectacularly unwell. Quinn is hiding, or, alternatively, is missing. Rachel can hear her, whispering and singing and laughing, but she isn't here, which is annoying. Because Rachel can't really be without Quinn, a fact made astoundingly obvious by her less than healthy reaction to Quinn's invisibility and subsequent day of hiding.
What's worse is that every time it seems as though she's close, she reaches out and grasps only empty air.
She doesn't realize how true this is until she wakes up with a fluttering of her eyes and her hands are grasping at a bed sheet, with Quinn nowhere to be found.
//
Kurt and Mercedes are waiting outside when she finally gathers her senses enough to realize she needs to go to school and that maybe Quinn is playing tricks on her and it'll all be okay. Even if it doesn't really feel okay, because Quinn could be anywhere, far away from Rachel, lying in a ditch and dying or something. Her brain feels like it's exploding and shutting down at the same time because it hurt, more than anything to lose Quinn. And it was heaven having her back. And now she was supposed to just be gone again?
Rachel has a strong urge to fall to her knees and curse The Powers That Be.
Kurt pats her shoulder with a small smile as she climbs into the front seat of his gigantic, shiny SUV and Mercedes immediately says something about everything being okay, or something. Rachel is unsure, because they're driving past the telephone pole Quinn's car had been wrapped around (kind of, not really) only two days ago. The pole is barely tilted, and there's no sign of anything, but Rachel can still see the smoking engine and the metal twisted around the pole, Quinn's door thrown open and the blood leading down the sidewalk...
Which only leads her back to the hopefully unnecessary fears about Quinn's current predicament, wherever she is.
Rachel knows she shouldn't really take it personally - Quinn was the sort of person to do things as she saw fit and often forgot to inform others of her plans unless she needed their help to put them in motion. Whenever Quinn stays over too late after school at Rachel's, she gets a call from her dad, explaining that she's fine and that she's with Rachel. It's comforting, Rachel supposes, that being with Rachel is good enough proof that Quinn is okay to Quinn's parents, but it isn't comforting at all that Quinn is incapable of at least leaving a note.
It also probably wouldn't be comforting to Quinn's parents, despite their apparent like of Rachel, that Rachel has recurring lewd dreams about their daughter.
But that's beside the point, because by the time they get to school, Rachel's not even breathing correctly, her chest rising and falling at an imperfect rhythm and cadence, and Kurt's getting yelled at by Santana while Brittany grabs Rachel's waist and pulls her into a tight hug in the middle of the school hallway.
This is how the entire glee club ends up in the auditorium at the beginning of the school day, all of them completely willing to skip their first period classes to hang out and revel in a sense of shared melancholia. It isn't technically the entire glee club - just the original members and two or three sophomore Cheerios who Quinn had taken under her wing. No one is quite sure what to say, or if they should say anything, but eventually, Puck breaks the silence.
"Where would she go?" he asks, rubbing at his shaved head a little. His mohawk had disappeared halfway through Quinn's pregnancy on a bet gone wrong and he had never bothered to grow it back.
Rachel wants to answer that she doesn't know, but she knows that the way she doesn't know is different than the way everyone else doesn't know. For all the glee club knows, Quinn is dead. Rachel has knowledge, at least, that Quinn was alive four hours ago.
"She hates it here, man. We all hate it here," Finn answers, his eyes boring into the stage floor with determination. "She'd go anywhere to get away from here."
"There are plenty of things here that she loves, Hudson," Santana snaps, her eyes staring straight at Rachel, probably making sarcastic remarks in her head about the state of Rachel's tear-stained face.
Puck only looks silently over at his childhood best friend and then at the space between him and Rachel, knowing exactly who's supposed to be sitting there. Rachel reads his thought process perfectly and a fresh round of tears takes over, her head shaking back and forth as she pulls her knees up and wraps her arms around them. She had elected not to wear a skirt today, hoping in a weird sense that wearing her 'normal' clothes would make Quinn happy and that she'd appear. No such luck, apparently.
"Yeah, like Warbuck," Brittany says sincerely, even though most of the people on the stage have no idea what she's talking about.
"Her teddy bear," Santana finally supplies, as everyone looks around uncomfortably at each other. "It's her teddy bear."
Rachel nods a little, feeling Matt slide his arm around her shoulder and rub her back. If anything, it only escalates the panicky, shaky feeling running through her and he drops his hand and murmurs that he's sorry and she can only nod a little more.
Everyone's silent for a little while, everyone sniffling and trying not to devolve into the crying mess Rachel is currently being.
"She can't be...you know. She just can't," Puck mumbles, loud enough for the three or four people closest to him to hear. Rachel, quite inconveniently, does hear him and shivers a little at the implication that Puck, Quinn's champion in several ways, in a roundabout way, has contemplated that Quinn could be dead.
Her phone rings suddenly, the now familiar Sex on Fire blaring through the silence. Puck looks up confusedly as Rachel looks down at it and presses the off button before she can even really see the number.
//
The rest of the school day is hell on wheels and most of it is spent in the bathroom crying into Santana or Brittany's shoulder anyway, so Rachel does not honestly expect glee to be any better. Of course, it decides to get worse.
Mr. Schuester already looks apprehensive when he notices the tension in the room and the swollen eyes being sported by a number of his students. Rachel notices the way his eyes linger on her with a sort of fear outside of his fear of her talking too much, and she knows exactly what the problem is when he starts pulling out new sheet music.
"As you know, our state competition is a week from now. And...we need to re-work our set list, due to Quinn's...disappearance. So I brought in a couple of songs," he says, watching the entire club shift nervously and Finn's arm around the back of Rachel's chair drop to her shoulder and squeeze.
"Mr. Schuester, I assure you, Quinn will be back by then," she says, standing up quickly, because something in the way he's saying this makes the blood in her brain rush around and it's hard to hear over the whooshing it makes. He almost sounds resigned, and even though Rachel herself is not in the best state of mind about this situation, she is not ready to give up. She's not ever ready to give up.
"Rachel..." he starts, setting down the music on the piano and moving closer to her. Just as his hand lands on Rachel's shoulder, she feels it. A hot feeling of overwhelming something, right in her hands, and she's jumping away from him and shouting.
"She'll be here!" she screams, pointing at him accusingly. He, for his part, stops in his tracks, watching her warily. Behind him, she can see the surprised looks on everyone's faces, because no one's seen her really snap, not even her closest friends. Only Quinn knows what to do with Rachel when she gets like this, and that knowledge does nothing but make Rachel want to curl up in a ball and die.
So she runs.
//
Finn is the who picks her up from where she's sitting in front of the telephone pole, handing her off to Santana, who has the good sense to not say anything even though Rachel can tell she wants to scream at her for being stupid. Puck is waiting in the back seat once they all get in Finn's car, and Rachel remembers what Quinn had said the day before at their lunch: It's nice to know I picked a good group of childhood friends.
Rachel's really thankful too, especially when they let her go into the house alone and unsupervised because she just wants to sleep.
Except, when she finally pulls of her shoes (she realizes vaguely that she's once again put her inside workout shoes in an outside environment) and crashes onto her waiting bed, she crashes right into something and bounces right back off and onto the floor.
Quinn is immediately near her, her hands on Rachel's head, giggling a little, and all Rachel can think is, is this a dream? because it has to be. It must be.
"Quinn?" she asks, her voice croaking just enough for the giggling to stop and Quinn to take a breath of air in, hovering over.
"Rachel," Quinn mutters, right before she gasps a little, "Rachel, oh my God, I'm so sorry, I totally forgot to tell you where I was going - "
"You're okay," Rachel says, ignoring whatever Quinn is trying to say, because her thing is seeming much more important right now. She sits up a little, feeling Quinn's hands slide down to her shoulders and then closing her eyes and reaching for Quinn's face. "You're okay," she whispers, sliding her fingers all over the girl's face.
"Yeah," Quinn says, and Rachel can feel her breathing pause and then re-start, like Rachel's fingers had stumbled on a reset button along her lips. "Yeah, I'm okay."
Rachel pulls the girl in for a hug, laughing a little in relief when she hits a solid body that has no gaping wounds and that is so decidedly Quinn, judging only by the feeling of warmth that seeps through her body. They sit like that for a good few minutes, Rachel just breathing Quinn in, until it's just not enough.
She pulls back a little, sliding her fingers back down towards Quinn's lips and feeling Quinn's hesitant smile forming there. She wants to kiss her in this moment, more than any other, ever before.
And so she does.
Rating: PG-13
Length: 3400
Spoilers: Sectionals
Pairing: Quinn/Rachel
Summary: I have had many adventures as an invisible man - H.G. Wells
Author's Note: I seriously keep getting all these exact numbers for my word counts. What's up with that? Anyway, this took a while because I changed what happened in it several times and settled on this because angst is awesome mixed with fluff. All I'm saying. And hey, sunsofwhiterain , I beat you for this chapter. SO HA. I like long comments, by the way. Would you like to leave me one?
[ one ] [ two ] [ three ] [ four ] [ five ] [ six ]
Quinn's dream is the same as it always is.
It's Central Park, at the reservoir's edge and the ducks are squawking out on the glassy surface as a little girl tosses pieced of bread onto the water. Rachel is talking animatedly with a few random fans, grinning widely as they compliment her and taking quick glances over at the girl every thirty seconds or so. Quinn is standing back a few feet, enjoying the way the sun hits Rachel's hair, perfectly happy to just stand there and watch her for the rest of her life.
The ring on her left hand is just a symbol of that. It glints in the sunlight, and she absently watches the light refract off of it as she turns her hand over and around in the air. Rachel gives a bright laugh, and it almost feels like Quinn's world brightens in accordance. She's smiling at the little girl who's wandered towards them with bread crumbs all over her hands, picking her up and swinging her back and forth a little, kissing her cheek and smiling brighter as the girl leans forward to kiss her cheek in response.
It's no coincidence that the little girl looks considerably like Rachel, and Quinn smiles brighter when the girl in Rachel's arms spots Quinn, squealing happily. Rachel glances back and makes sure the girl hasn't spotted a horse or something and sets her down and whispers into the little girl's ear before she nudges her toward Quinn with a grin on her face.
The girl runs straight into Quinn's waiting arms, allowing herself to be pulled up. She sets her head on Quinn's shoulder before she edges a little closer to her ear.
"Momma says she loves you," the girl whispers, like it's a big secret. Quinn smiles, pressing a kiss to the girl's forehead and she just feels happy, because this is her dream, this life.
But it really is all a dream.
//
Quinn hates that dream. It reminds her of Caroline, first of all, and even though she's decidedly over that entire situation, it sometimes sticks out at her when she sees people with her kids that once upon a time she could've had a kid. And she does want kids, at some point, but she hadn't wanted one as a recently turned seventeen-year-old possible lesbian, and the decision to let Caroline go, in the end, was easy. The little girl in her dream really was a mini-Rachel, and it burned, seeing her and imagining that she could have Rachel and a little girl and a life of happiness. It was stupid, almost - she was just a junior in high school, and she had regular dreams of being married and having a little kid, mixed up amongst dreams about legs and random ones with screaming Sue Sylvesters.
But, apparently, her life was just completely against normalcy.
When she opens her eyes, she realizes that it's four in the morning, and Rachel has somehow reversed their position and is currently sprawled out over most of the bed, her nose just brushing Quinn's hair and her hand wrapped around Quinn's arm. It's kind of really adorable, the way her nose is scrunched up and her eyebrows are knit together, like a puzzling thought has just entered into whatever dreamland she's hanging out in. Quinn's surprised when Rachel mumbles something and pulls herself closer to the (still, damn it) invisible girl, sliding her hand over Quinn's toned stomach and keeping it right over where her appendix once was.
She immediately thinks back to the day she had woken up and had been in so much pain, stumbling into her parents room bleary-eyed and practically doubled over. Her dad claims to this day that she had then thrown up, but she was probably so concerned with the feeling of her insides being ripped out that she doesn't remember it at all. It had been her freshman year, probably almost two years ago exactly.
Quinn's distracted from her thoughts even further when Rachel pulls herself a little closer, setting her head against Quinn's arm and fully wrapping her arm around the blonde. It's always like this, when they have sleepovers - one of them inevitably gets as close as possible to the other. She doesn't think much of it, really, and slides her arm around Rachel, pulling her a little closer and rubbing the small of her back. The smaller girl's expression clears up, and she smiles, making a happy noise.
Just because she doesn't really want to get out of Rachel's unconscious embrace, she starts to look around the room. There's a huge bulletin board hanging over Rachel's desk, and the entire room is decorated with musical posters, some of them signed and some not. Rachel's bathroom door is open, providing a glance into the meticulously cleaned counter. On Rachel's bedside table, however, is a veritable gold mine.
There are all sorts of pictures - ranging from photo strips of Rachel and her dads through the years to acting head shots to posed photos of Rachel in all sorts of sequined dance outfits. Towards the forefront, however, are ones of the glee kids. There's one of Finn and Puck kissing either side of Rachel's face at a competition somewhere, another of Santana tossing Rachel into a pool with her trademark smirk displayed. There's one of Rachel talking animatedly to a delighted young child who had seen them perform at an invitational maybe three months ago. Quinn's actually in that picture, watching Rachel watch the girl with a half-smile on her face and one hand wrapped in Rachel's.
There are even more with Quinn, though, than anyone else. There's a picture Evan took of them after the state fair, with Quinn fast asleep on Rachel's shoulder in the back seat of the car. There's another picture Evan must have taken, of both of them running around in Rachel's back yard in the rain, Rachel having just gotten ahold of Quinn's waist to slow her down, mid-laugh. There's a fairly recent one that Quinn doesn't quite expect Rachel to have sitting on her beside table: one of Quinn and her parents and her sister, sitting around after another glee competition while they wait for the judges to decide.
It's not that Rachel hates Quinn's family - that's not why she's surprised. It's more that Rachel has never said anything one way or the other on Quinn's family, except to say that if her family ever treated her in a way she didn't like that Quinn had a home at the Berrys.
It had been a hard, horrible decision, moving back in with her parents. Only a week and a half after Caroline, and still trying to keep herself out of an endless cycle of self-doubt, and mostly succeeding due to Rachel, Evan, and Adam's superhuman efforts, her parents and her sister Chelsea had shown up at the doorstep.
They had talked the entire week, about the moving back in thing. Her parents were obviously trying to be better, and her sister seemed close to tears she was so apologetic, but she wasn't sure what to make of any of it. It was easy enough to take Quinn back in now that she wasn't as fat as a cow (no matter what Rachel or Puck or anyone said, she really was rather big towards the end) and she at least looked like the perfect little angel Quinn Fabray. But she was falling in love with her best friend who was a girl, and that certainly wasn't in line with the way her parents were.
The deciding factor had been the night her parents had invited all three of the Berrys and Quinn for dinner. It had been awkward and it was decidedly obvious that her parents were uncomfortable, but after a few highballs, her mother and Rachel were discussing the merits of My Fair Lady, Julie Andrews vs. Audrey Hepburn, and her dad was discussing something complicated but finance-y with Evan. Her sister had managed to drag out every single photo album of the entire family and was proceeding to show every single baby photo of Quinn to Adam. It wasn't exactly normal. But it was her family, now.
Her house was generally silent most days. Occasionally she would wander downstairs and watch a movie with her dad or make dinner with her mom. When Chelsea was home, they would all go out to dinner and laugh and have fun. Before, the house was filled with tension and she couldn't really breathe, but now, it was just a comfortable, complicated silence that she knew how to combat.
Rachel draws Quinn out of her thoughts once more, her eyes fluttering open to look blearily at the way her hand has settled on Quinn's invisible hip, flexing her fingers and pressing down a little. Quinn's pretty sure Rachel isn't entirely awake, especially when the girl burrows just a little closer and mumbles something about teddy bears into Quinn's shoulder and closes her eyes again.
Quinn smiles a little, placing her hand on Rachel's and rubbing more at her back, leaning down to kiss the top of her head, remembering vaguely Rachel doing the same to her before she had fallen asleep. She also remembers her return kiss along Rachel's jaw.
It's hard to be Rachel's friend when it sometimes seems as though they're so much more. When they're this close and it's warm and safe and Quinn feels protected and protective.
In the end, though, it's always just a dream.
//
Rachel's dream is going spectacularly unwell. Quinn is hiding, or, alternatively, is missing. Rachel can hear her, whispering and singing and laughing, but she isn't here, which is annoying. Because Rachel can't really be without Quinn, a fact made astoundingly obvious by her less than healthy reaction to Quinn's invisibility and subsequent day of hiding.
What's worse is that every time it seems as though she's close, she reaches out and grasps only empty air.
She doesn't realize how true this is until she wakes up with a fluttering of her eyes and her hands are grasping at a bed sheet, with Quinn nowhere to be found.
//
Kurt and Mercedes are waiting outside when she finally gathers her senses enough to realize she needs to go to school and that maybe Quinn is playing tricks on her and it'll all be okay. Even if it doesn't really feel okay, because Quinn could be anywhere, far away from Rachel, lying in a ditch and dying or something. Her brain feels like it's exploding and shutting down at the same time because it hurt, more than anything to lose Quinn. And it was heaven having her back. And now she was supposed to just be gone again?
Rachel has a strong urge to fall to her knees and curse The Powers That Be.
Kurt pats her shoulder with a small smile as she climbs into the front seat of his gigantic, shiny SUV and Mercedes immediately says something about everything being okay, or something. Rachel is unsure, because they're driving past the telephone pole Quinn's car had been wrapped around (kind of, not really) only two days ago. The pole is barely tilted, and there's no sign of anything, but Rachel can still see the smoking engine and the metal twisted around the pole, Quinn's door thrown open and the blood leading down the sidewalk...
Which only leads her back to the hopefully unnecessary fears about Quinn's current predicament, wherever she is.
Rachel knows she shouldn't really take it personally - Quinn was the sort of person to do things as she saw fit and often forgot to inform others of her plans unless she needed their help to put them in motion. Whenever Quinn stays over too late after school at Rachel's, she gets a call from her dad, explaining that she's fine and that she's with Rachel. It's comforting, Rachel supposes, that being with Rachel is good enough proof that Quinn is okay to Quinn's parents, but it isn't comforting at all that Quinn is incapable of at least leaving a note.
It also probably wouldn't be comforting to Quinn's parents, despite their apparent like of Rachel, that Rachel has recurring lewd dreams about their daughter.
But that's beside the point, because by the time they get to school, Rachel's not even breathing correctly, her chest rising and falling at an imperfect rhythm and cadence, and Kurt's getting yelled at by Santana while Brittany grabs Rachel's waist and pulls her into a tight hug in the middle of the school hallway.
This is how the entire glee club ends up in the auditorium at the beginning of the school day, all of them completely willing to skip their first period classes to hang out and revel in a sense of shared melancholia. It isn't technically the entire glee club - just the original members and two or three sophomore Cheerios who Quinn had taken under her wing. No one is quite sure what to say, or if they should say anything, but eventually, Puck breaks the silence.
"Where would she go?" he asks, rubbing at his shaved head a little. His mohawk had disappeared halfway through Quinn's pregnancy on a bet gone wrong and he had never bothered to grow it back.
Rachel wants to answer that she doesn't know, but she knows that the way she doesn't know is different than the way everyone else doesn't know. For all the glee club knows, Quinn is dead. Rachel has knowledge, at least, that Quinn was alive four hours ago.
"She hates it here, man. We all hate it here," Finn answers, his eyes boring into the stage floor with determination. "She'd go anywhere to get away from here."
"There are plenty of things here that she loves, Hudson," Santana snaps, her eyes staring straight at Rachel, probably making sarcastic remarks in her head about the state of Rachel's tear-stained face.
Puck only looks silently over at his childhood best friend and then at the space between him and Rachel, knowing exactly who's supposed to be sitting there. Rachel reads his thought process perfectly and a fresh round of tears takes over, her head shaking back and forth as she pulls her knees up and wraps her arms around them. She had elected not to wear a skirt today, hoping in a weird sense that wearing her 'normal' clothes would make Quinn happy and that she'd appear. No such luck, apparently.
"Yeah, like Warbuck," Brittany says sincerely, even though most of the people on the stage have no idea what she's talking about.
"Her teddy bear," Santana finally supplies, as everyone looks around uncomfortably at each other. "It's her teddy bear."
Rachel nods a little, feeling Matt slide his arm around her shoulder and rub her back. If anything, it only escalates the panicky, shaky feeling running through her and he drops his hand and murmurs that he's sorry and she can only nod a little more.
Everyone's silent for a little while, everyone sniffling and trying not to devolve into the crying mess Rachel is currently being.
"She can't be...you know. She just can't," Puck mumbles, loud enough for the three or four people closest to him to hear. Rachel, quite inconveniently, does hear him and shivers a little at the implication that Puck, Quinn's champion in several ways, in a roundabout way, has contemplated that Quinn could be dead.
Her phone rings suddenly, the now familiar Sex on Fire blaring through the silence. Puck looks up confusedly as Rachel looks down at it and presses the off button before she can even really see the number.
//
The rest of the school day is hell on wheels and most of it is spent in the bathroom crying into Santana or Brittany's shoulder anyway, so Rachel does not honestly expect glee to be any better. Of course, it decides to get worse.
Mr. Schuester already looks apprehensive when he notices the tension in the room and the swollen eyes being sported by a number of his students. Rachel notices the way his eyes linger on her with a sort of fear outside of his fear of her talking too much, and she knows exactly what the problem is when he starts pulling out new sheet music.
"As you know, our state competition is a week from now. And...we need to re-work our set list, due to Quinn's...disappearance. So I brought in a couple of songs," he says, watching the entire club shift nervously and Finn's arm around the back of Rachel's chair drop to her shoulder and squeeze.
"Mr. Schuester, I assure you, Quinn will be back by then," she says, standing up quickly, because something in the way he's saying this makes the blood in her brain rush around and it's hard to hear over the whooshing it makes. He almost sounds resigned, and even though Rachel herself is not in the best state of mind about this situation, she is not ready to give up. She's not ever ready to give up.
"Rachel..." he starts, setting down the music on the piano and moving closer to her. Just as his hand lands on Rachel's shoulder, she feels it. A hot feeling of overwhelming something, right in her hands, and she's jumping away from him and shouting.
"She'll be here!" she screams, pointing at him accusingly. He, for his part, stops in his tracks, watching her warily. Behind him, she can see the surprised looks on everyone's faces, because no one's seen her really snap, not even her closest friends. Only Quinn knows what to do with Rachel when she gets like this, and that knowledge does nothing but make Rachel want to curl up in a ball and die.
So she runs.
//
Finn is the who picks her up from where she's sitting in front of the telephone pole, handing her off to Santana, who has the good sense to not say anything even though Rachel can tell she wants to scream at her for being stupid. Puck is waiting in the back seat once they all get in Finn's car, and Rachel remembers what Quinn had said the day before at their lunch: It's nice to know I picked a good group of childhood friends.
Rachel's really thankful too, especially when they let her go into the house alone and unsupervised because she just wants to sleep.
Except, when she finally pulls of her shoes (she realizes vaguely that she's once again put her inside workout shoes in an outside environment) and crashes onto her waiting bed, she crashes right into something and bounces right back off and onto the floor.
Quinn is immediately near her, her hands on Rachel's head, giggling a little, and all Rachel can think is, is this a dream? because it has to be. It must be.
"Quinn?" she asks, her voice croaking just enough for the giggling to stop and Quinn to take a breath of air in, hovering over.
"Rachel," Quinn mutters, right before she gasps a little, "Rachel, oh my God, I'm so sorry, I totally forgot to tell you where I was going - "
"You're okay," Rachel says, ignoring whatever Quinn is trying to say, because her thing is seeming much more important right now. She sits up a little, feeling Quinn's hands slide down to her shoulders and then closing her eyes and reaching for Quinn's face. "You're okay," she whispers, sliding her fingers all over the girl's face.
"Yeah," Quinn says, and Rachel can feel her breathing pause and then re-start, like Rachel's fingers had stumbled on a reset button along her lips. "Yeah, I'm okay."
Rachel pulls the girl in for a hug, laughing a little in relief when she hits a solid body that has no gaping wounds and that is so decidedly Quinn, judging only by the feeling of warmth that seeps through her body. They sit like that for a good few minutes, Rachel just breathing Quinn in, until it's just not enough.
She pulls back a little, sliding her fingers back down towards Quinn's lips and feeling Quinn's hesitant smile forming there. She wants to kiss her in this moment, more than any other, ever before.
And so she does.