FIC: A Dream That Keeps Waking Me
Title: A Dream that Keeps Waking Me
Author: amaltheaz / pseudohuman / boldlikelove
Pairing/s: (Past) Rachel/Quinn
Rating: PG-13
Length: 1,164 words
Spoilers: AU
Disclaimer: I don't own Glee, or anybody in Glee. And this is so not used for profit.
Author's Note: I'm in a very angsty mood. RL is kind of bad. Not like, life-threatening but just, it's one of those phases in your life when all you're experiencing are just lows and even more lows, y'know? I know I'll get back up again and right now I'm just embracing whatever lows I'm having by putting it into my writing. I didn't want to use this time to write BYDKT... I'd end up killing off Quinn in childbirth or something so I decided to concentrate on the stories that I've been meaning to complete. This is a short unbeta-ed one-shot and I'm not really sure if it's any good and the ending is extremely abrupt but it's all that I've got for this story. So um, yeah, here it is.
Author's Note #2: Song title comes from a John Mayer song.
A Dream that Keeps Waking Me
Groggy brown eyes blinked open, weary and reluctantly. A brunette head turned to the side, greeted by the luminous sight of red numbers 2.37 A.M. blinking and burning into her retinas. She let out an annoyed groan as her hand shot out from under the covers, reaching for the loud, ringing cell phone on her bedside table.
"Hello?" she mumbled sleepily, covering her mouth when she began to yawn.
"Rachel."
"Quinn," she sighed in reply, no tone of surprise in her voice. Why should she be surprised? It wasn't the first time that the blonde called her in the middle of the night. She knew what Quinn was going to ask her. It was the same question every time. "Can I come up?" and Rachel was always too weak to say no. Sure, she'd try to delay the inevitable and tell Quinn that no, she couldn't come up, that she really should try to sleep in her own bed, that Rachel couldn't bear to have her here, but the thing was, Rachel had never been able to say no to was like a script they always ran through but never made changes to and this time wasn't any different. But she still had to try. "Quinn…" she said, repeating the blonde's name, tired and reprimanding. Quinn hastily cut her off before she could say no, because Rachel always said no.
At first.
"Please Rachel, I- I miss you."
Rachel sighed. "What if I have somebody here with me?" she asked, wanting to try something new.
Quinn stilled. "D-do you?" she whispered shakily, her frozen heart caught in her throat at the thought that somebody was occupying her space.
But it wasn't her space anymore.
"No," came the resigned reply and Quinn let out a silent sigh of relief. "But we can't keep going on like this, Quinn. We're not together anymore."
The blonde swallowed thickly. "I can't sleep without you," she replied, her bottom lip quivering, wanting so desperately to have her limbs tangled with bronzed ones and her body pressed deliciously against Rachel's petite form. It was the only way she could get any sleep nowadays. There was nowhere else that she could.
She tried.
Rachel squeezed her eyes shut, trying to keep herself from letting out the groan that vocalized just how much she needed Quinn to just be gone. How much more of this could she take? "You're the one that broke up with me, Quinn. I can't just keep letting you back in when you're just going to leave in the morning." The brunette bit down on her lip, mentally demanding herself to not cry, thinking to herself that Quinn Fabray did not deserve any more of her tears.
Blonde eyebrows furrowed deeply as tears fell down porcelain cheeks. "Rachel, please. I just- Please let me inside," she begged, as if she could see the last bit of the rope dangling above her and she was jumping with all her might trying to catch it.
"Quinn…" the brunette sighed, feeling a throbbing in her temple. She needed to go back to sleep. She had a big day tomorrow - today, whatever and she needed to not have Quinn here with her because it was just going to end the same way as it always did and Rachel didn't want to start the day with her soul torn to pieces. She was just too tired to deal with it.
She could hear the blonde calling out her name through the phone and Rachel realized that she had been silent for awhile now. She shook her head as she sat up in her bed, trying to find the words that would get through to her ex-girlfriend.
Finally, she asked quietly, "Why should I?" It was so quiet that Quinn wasn't even really sure that she heard it but she was about to answer anyway when Rachel only continued, and the blonde found herself completely unprepared for what she heard next.
"Tonight isn't any different from any other night, so please tell me. Why should I let you come up here, sleep in my bed with me? I'll tell you how it's going to go. We'll be lying down a foot apart but eventually you, yes you, will turn on your side and grab hold of me. And I will let you because I have missed you; because I have missed your warmth; because I have missed just thinking how perfectly we fit together. Then the sun rises and I'll wake up. Alone. And if it isn't for the fact that your scent still lingers, hours after you leave, I would think you a dream." Rachel paused, a bitter chuckle rumbling in her chest as everything that she had just said, played out in her mind. And then she sighed brokenly, "But you're never a dream, are you Quinn?"
Leaving the blonde no chance to reply, Rachel went on, "You're real. And right now you're asking me to give you permission to come up and make me feel the pain of wondering all over again."
"So tell me Quinn, why should I let you up here?"
Tears streaked down her face as Rachel recited everything that had been sitting inside her broken, broken heart for so long. She had said it to her friends, her parents, her therapist, but it never crossed her mind to tell it all to the source of her broken, broken heart. She became aware then that Quinn had been quiet this whole time. She could only hear the blonde's ragged breathing through the speaker and she wondered what was going through the blonde's head.
Every heart-breaking truth was a stab to her hollow, empty heart, and it made her absolutely sick to her stomach that she ever made Rachel feel that way. But Quinn was selfish and she just wanted the chance to lay next to Rachel, to hold the brunette in her arms and feel her warmth. The blonde barely put up a fight to stop her words from flowing into the phone when she softly whispered, "Because you love me."
Rachel bit down on her trembling lip, resisting the desire to loudly cry out her pain because god, it was true. She did and she would always love Quinn. No amount of time or distance or even anger seemed to lessen that love and Rachel hated it. Nobody else had as much power over her as Quinn did.
"Yes. I do love you," she finally said, sniffling as she let her tears fall down her cheeks and down to the mattress. She thought absently of the random patterns that tears made on Egyptian cotton.
"But that's not a good enough answer any more," she added before pressing the hang up button.
Rachel burrowed herself under her covers as she cried herself to sleep while the blonde stood outside of her apartment building with the phone in her hand, looking up to the window where she knew Rachel's apartment was.
On the ground were the pieces of her own broken, broken heart.
THE END