An Accident of Paradise, Chpt. 20
Fandom: Glee
Rating: PG-13
Chapter: 20
Summary: Rachel, Quinn: the progression of a friendship, the moments between. Such things aren't always pretty.
Author's Note: So, surgery was had. And then surgery was had again. And surgery will be had a third time sometime in the relatively immediate future. All of which are my way of explaining/apologizing for almost a full month since my last update. And to make up for it, a double update.
After finally getting a shower of her own, Quinn went to the public library while Rachel went with shopping with her parents for a birthday gift for her grandfather. She found herself too distracted to study effectively, however, and spent two hours doodling in between the lines of the English paper she was supposedly editing and wondering exactly how proactive Rachel was going to be in announcing the turn in their relationship to the world. She imagined that the brunette had already leaked it to her fathers, probably before they even made it into the mall; the thought of Rachel standing between them with her hands on her hips as she explained explicitly the recent developments to her fathers drew an inadvertent smile to Quinn’s lips.
She finally gave up on her studies, realizing that she was hardly going to get anything productive done when all she could think about was either the blissful feeling of losing herself in the sensation of Rachel kissing her, or the hundreds of scenarios of how out of hand things at school could get if Rachel made a Public Service Announcement about their newly evolved relationship. Packing her things back into her bag expertly, she shuffled out of the library and took the roundabout drive back to the Berry’s house. Both of Rachel’s fathers’ cars were in the garage, and as Quinn shut her car door she heard the telltale sound of clanging metal and arguing floating up from the basement-the air conditioner had been acting oddly recently, and it seemed that the Misters Berry were taking a stab at a home repair. Quinn took advantage of their absence from the central areas of the house and slipped up the stairs silently.
In the hallway upstairs, she could faintly hear Rachel singing in her room, no doubt practicing for her next Myspace performance. Quinn bypassed the door to her own room and continued down to Rachel’s. She stood in the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb with her arms crossed, and watched as Rachel mindlessly straightened her desk and sang along with the music wafting from her speakers.
“Hey,” she said softly when the song ended. Rachel turned to face her slowly, a small smile on her lips.
“Hi,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
Quinn rolled her eyes at Rachel’s almost insufferable politeness, moving into the room and taking a seat at Rachel’s desk. “Can we talk for a minute?”
“Sure,” Rachel said. She smiled brightly and sat down at the foot of her bed.
Quinn fiddled with a hole in her jeans, trying to organize her thoughts. “We didn’t really sort a whole lot out this morning,” she started carefully. “And I guess I was hoping that-I was wondering if we could kind of try to pin this whole thing down. Where we stand and all that.”
“Okay,” Rachel said slowly. “Where do we stand?”
“Well, that’s kind of what I’m trying to figure out,” Quinn said. She smirked when Rachel rolled her eyes. “Seriously, though. What’s going to change? Are we… dating?”
“I don’t know,” Rachel said, voice soft. “I’m certainly not averse to dating you.” She paused. “Where do you want us to stand?”
Quinn sighed. “I don’t know altogether,” she admitted. “Like I said earlier, I’m… I’m really kind of terrified right now. I have no idea what’s going to happen. And a part of me is as scared of being back in the spotlight-for any reason, with any relationship-again as I am of everything else.” She bit her lip, weary of looking at Rachel for fear of the other girl understanding exactly what she was saying and being hurt by it.
“In the spotlight,” Rachel murmured. “You want to keep this a secret?” Quinn could feel the hurt in Rachel’s voice, as tangible as a black eye, and she swallowed deeply.
“No,” she said, ashamed of the waver in her voice. “I don’t want to lie to anyone about anything, much less about this. But,” she added, and flinched when she saw the spark in Rachel’s eyes dull slightly. “Can we… not make a spectacle out of it? Like, our friends knowing is not big deal, but I really don’t want to go back to my life being public forum for the whole school.”
“I have to ask,” Rachel said delicately. “Is this because you’re ashamed to be with a girl, or ashamed to be with me?”
“No!” Quinn said, shaking her head. “I get it if that’s hard to believe, because it’s kind of hard for me to believe, too. But that doesn’t really bother me all that much at all. I thought it would, but after everything else, that just doesn’t seem important.
“It’s just… it’s more that… I don’t know,” she mumbled out, flustered. “It used to be that everything I did was focused on popularity and maintaining that popularity. And if I’ve figured out one thing in the last year, it’s that that just doesn’t matter too much. And I don’t want to go back to that. I never thought I’d want to hide in the background, but honestly, right now just in general I’d rather do that than be back in the center of attention.
“I’m not ashamed of this,” she said firmly. “I need you to know that. But I’m also just so tired of people watching my every move. And if everyone in school knows about this, people are going to be watching us all the time. I don’t really have it in me to deal with that, not right now, not after everything else that’s happened.”
Rachel was quiet, fiddling with the charm on her necklace, her brow furrowed in thought.
“This is Ohio,” she said suddenly.
“Yes,” Quinn said slowly. Her forehead creased. “I’m aware.” The unspoken confusion weighted her voice.
“This is Ohio,” Rachel said again. “People have vandalized my dads’ cars because they’re gay. I didn’t go to preschool with the rest of our class because the director wouldn’t let the daughter of two men into the school. Daddy has to drive almost an hour if he wants to go to church when Dad and I go to synagogue.”
Quinn remained silent; her stomach ached and she wondered how it was that she had grown up in so close-minded a home and come to be inexplicably unperturbed by the idea of dating another girl.
“People will be cruel,” Rachel continued. “I’m very aware of how difficult that will be. I’ve been dealing with such issues my whole life, and I’m entirely prepared to continue dealing with them, no matter how they may increase of change, if I am publicly in a relationship with another girl.”
She paused, and seemed to be forcing herself to look Quinn in the eye. “All that taken into consideration,” she said delicately. “I will not hide who I am. I never have and I will not start now.”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Quinn said defensively. Almost of their own volition, her arms crossed protectively over her chest, and she sat back in her chair, as if to add space between them in case Rachel pounced in attack.
“Isn’t it?” Rachel said. Her voice was pained, and it made Quinn’s throat hurt.
“No,” she shot back, shaking her head vehemently. “I’m not saying that we should lie to anyone. There’s a difference between hiding our relationship from everyone and not advertising it.” She frowned. “Nothing is that black and white.”
“Some things are,” Rachel said.
“Seriously?” Quinn said, incredulity dripping from her voice. “Rachel, you can’t honestly believe that there is only one right way to do things.”
“Perhaps not only one,” Rachel conceded. “And perhaps not at all in some situations. But this situation? Yes, I think there is one proper way to handle it, and that is to not give more power and support to a narrow-minded prejudicial majority simply because they’re a majority. Nothing ever changes if the oppressed continue to cower from the disdain of the oppressors.”
“Seriously?” Quinn said again. “Oppressors? This is high school. We’re teenagers! This isn’t about oppression or politics or social change, Rachel! This is about you and me. And in case you didn’t notice, half of ‘you and me’ is me, and I am already going through enough stress and complications in my life without becoming a poster child for rebellion and repression.”
Quinn shoved herself to her feet, anger burning at her skin; she felt like it wouldn’t be much of a stretch for there to be steam coming out of her ears. Rachel, still seated on the bed, looked somewhere between incredulous at Quinn’s outburst and appropriately cowed; Quinn snatched her backpack up from where she’d set it on the floor and stalked out of the room.
In her own room, she hurled her bag across the room, barely flinching when it slammed into the side of her bed and fell to the floor. Her own anger surprised her; she could barely sort her thoughts out through the fog of frustration and hurt and sheer fury bubbling in her mind, much less understand why Rachel’s convictions were so suddenly infuriating her.
She paced up and down agitatedly, an anxious feeling seeping into her limbs once more. She wondered if her still-tender abdomen could handle a second run of the day, or another round of yoga, or any other kind of activity that might calm her or siphon off some of her angry energy.
With a frustrated sigh, Quinn dropped down on her bed, flopping back gracelessly crosswise. She cursed herself as much as she did Rachel; after all, this was Rachel Berry she was talking about. Of course the same girl who put a gold star sticker after her name every time she wrote, the girl who shrugged off slushie facials, the girl who determinedly and continuously tried to pilot the entire glee club through high school social hierarchies, the girl who used her two gay fathers and their connections with the ACLU as a way to get Finn a job, would refuse to even consider not making any relationship she was in public knowledge.
For the first time since Rachel kissed her, Quinn felt that maybe it would be Rachel that could keep their fledgling romance from ever taking off. Quinn knew she was incapable of handling a gossiped-fueling relationship at school right now; as strong as she was determined to be in the face of everything that had occurred, she nonetheless had only so much energy to devote to keeping herself afloat. The strain that still marked her every encounter with Finn or Puck; the ache in her stomach that lingered long after the bruising and swelling had disappeared; the awkward politeness and unbearable longing the pinched in her chest every time she spoke with anyone from her family; the stress of juggling glee club and her AP classes, especially the upcoming exams; not to mention the looming college applications that sat bookmarked on her computer… frankly, as Quinn ran through it all in her head, she was amazed that she had yet to collapse in a pile of stress-broken jello.
A hesitant knock on the door interrupted her frustrated thoughts. She bit down on her lip, unsure if she wanted to speak to Rachel just yet; the decision slipped out of her hands when, after a ten second silence, Rachel opened the door anyways and slipped inside, shutting it behind her. She stood contritely by the door, hands linked behind her back and shoulders slumped, and Quinn felt the edges of her anger dull slightly at the utterly adorable site of a completely cowed Rachel Berry.
“What’s the point of knocking if you’re just going to walk in anyways?” she asked snippily. Her anger was only slightly dulled, she justified to herself; it would be foolish to expect her to melt just at the fact that Rachel looked apologetic.
“I’m sorry,” Rachel said quietly. “But I wanted to speak to you.”
“Whatever,” Quinn said. She leaned over the side of her bed and hauled her backpack up, ripping the zipper open and generating far more noise than was necessary as she dug through her notebooks in a desperate attempt to fill the discomforting silence.
“Quinn, I’m sorry,” Rachel said again. Her voice was stronger this time, though still more timid than usual, for all that it floated over the sound of Quinn’s rustling. “Your request was not unreasonable, and I was reacted instinctively and possibly harshly, and without proper consideration of your viewpoint. It was childish of me, and I apologize.”
Quinn stared at the cover of her calculus textbook as she turned Rachel’s words over and over in her head. Her anger was quickly vanishing, retreating faster and faster with every second Rachel stood contritely and waited for Quinn’s reaction to her apology. She knew it was her turn to say something, to respond, to admit that while Rachel had been unfair, Quinn had still reacted far more drastically than was called for. Yet her eyes remained glued to her textbook, fingers tracing absently along the title; no words of apology or acceptance seemed able to rise from her throat.
After a painfully long silence, Rachel sighed softly. “I understand that you’re still upset,” she said carefully. “I’ll give you some space. Please come find me when you’d like to discuss this further.” She turned to open the door, and paused.
“And I promise not to be so selfish about it this time, too,” she added.
She had opened the door and was halfway out into the hall when Quinn spoke, almost inadvertently.
“I’m not easy,” she said suddenly.
Rachel halted her exit, looking over her shoulder with a thoroughly confused expression on her face.
“I’m not easy,” Quinn said again. She finally looked up at Rachel, eyes and voice dull. “I mean, not in the Puck sense of easy. I’m bitchy and cranky and angry and apparently way more screwed up than even I knew.”
“You aren’t,” Rachel said.
Quinn snorted half-heartedly. “You could at least try to make it sound like you believe that,” she said dully. “We both know it’s true.”
“We all have our flaws,” Rachel said. She slowly shut the door behind her. “You can be unnecessarily cruel when you want to be. I talk far too much and have a bad habit for being stupidly honest. It doesn’t make either of us bad people.”
“I’m not easy to be with,” Quinn said with a shrug. “Ask Finn. I mean, you could even ask Brittany or Santana; I’m not even easy to be friends with.”
Rachel matched Quinn’s shrug with one of her own. “I don’t care,” she said. “I know all this, Quinn. I’m entirely aware of how frustrating you can be, and I don’t care.”
Quinn stared at her blankly. Rachel’s declarations felt like they should mean far more than they actually did. Her mind acknowledged that the words were kind and loving and that they should evoke some kind of warm emotional response, the kind that made her feel like she might glow brightly from how the emotions they stirred up. But instead of that warmth, so familiar from the many times Rachel had been so caring with her, spreading in her chest, all that Quinn could acknowledge was the clamoring voices in her mind telling her that this was just the first sign of why things would never work with them. Beyond all of Quinn’s emotional baggage and Rachel’s obnoxious tendencies and the suffocating social limitations of school, beyond the fact that a tiny part of Quinn still took to heart the warnings bellowed by her father and preacher and Sunday School teachers that homosexuals were doomed to hell, beyond the fact that a huge part of Quinn still screamed that she was not ready in the slightest sense for another relationship, there was the fact that they had completely polarized ideas of how to approach a new relationship at the stages of their lives they currently stood in.
An ache spread from Quinn’s temples, across her forehead and creeping around her skull; the confusion and frustration and remaining vestiges of anger were threatening a migraine, so Quinn did the only thing she could think of and tossed her textbook away, stood from the bed and crossed the room and pinned Rachel by the shoulders against the closed door all in one fluid movement. Rachel squeaked in surprise, looking up at Quinn with confusion written across her face. Quinn stared down into wide brown eyes and, just as the pain in her temples was started to increase, she wrapped one hand around the back of Rachel’s neck and kissed her roughly.
As soon as her lips touched Rachel’s, the ache in Quinn’s head vanished, and she all but melted into the kiss. Her thumb slid along Rachel’s jaw, her other hand pressing into the door and barely holding her up. Rachel made a soft noise in the back of her throat, her hands falling to Quinn’s hips and tugging her closer.
It was the first time Quinn had initiated a kiss, and it made all the difference in the world. Still so used to the height and breadth and dominating presence of Finn or Puck, Quinn found being the taller and more dominating actor in a kiss to be both unnerving and intriguing. The delicate feel of Rachel’s smaller form between herself and the door was terrifying and intoxicating, and without even meaning to, Quinn found herself pressing closer. The hand that had been holding her weight fell to Rachel’s shoulder, fingertips skimming down the bare skin of Rachel’s arm until she found Rachel’s hand on her waist and threaded their fingers together. Rachel’s other hand flexed tighter on Quinn’s hip, pulling her even closer. Quinn pushed their joined hands against the wall, lost in the moment of sensation and simplicity and action over thought, and her lips moved from Rachel’s, across her jaw and down to her neck. Rachel’s hand shifted from Quinn’s hip to her lower back, fingernails digging into skin under her t-shirt; Quinn arched forward at the feel of Rachel’s nail sliding up her spine, drawing a gasp out of her.
“Jesus Christ,” Quinn muttered breathlessly, her forehead dropping down to rest on Rachel’s shoulder.
“Or something,” Rachel mumbled. She slipped her hand out from under Quinn’s t-shirt, raising it to slide her fingers through Quinn’s hair. They remained still, breathing heavily, for a long moment, before Rachel spoke again. “I’m sorry,” she said once more, her voice soft. “I understand why you don’t want to make a big deal to people at school about this, and I respect that. You’ve got enough on your plate and I don’t want to add any more to that than I already have.”
“Thank you,” Quinn whispered. Her words came out more as a breath than vocally, skimming along Rachel’s collarbone and drawing a shiver from her.
“I still firmly believe that pandering to the prejudices of the majority is a bad idea,” Rachel continued. “And I would like to not make this a secret for too long, if only because I believe that will put unnecessary strain on the both of us and lead to more problems within the relationship than it would prevent and-“
“Rachel,” Quinn interrupted. “If you don’t shut up, I won’t kiss you again.”
Rachel’s teeth clacked together audibly.
Quinn straightened up slowly, remaining close to Rachel, their hands still intertwined. “Thank you,” she said again, making sure to look Rachel directly in the eye. “And we don’t have to hide anything, especially not from our friends, but we’ll just… keep the PDA and all to a minimum around everyone else, okay?”
“Okay,” Rachel said. She nodded, her dark eyes solemn. She hesitated, her brow furrowing slightly in thought. “How are we going to define this? When our friends ask, what do we tell them?”
Quinn took a deep breath. “I… don’t know,” she finished weakly. “What do you want to tell them?”
Rachel remained quiet, and Quinn could practically see the wheels in her head turning as she pondered the question.
“We should tell them that you’re my sugar momma,” Quinn suggest suddenly. “We’ll get you a pimp hat.”
Rachel snorted and rolled her eyes, and Quinn grinned cheekily. “And a cane,” she added. “With a big ruby on top.”
“Or, we could just tell them that we’re together,” Rachel said. “We don’t have to put a particular title on it. But I’m with you and you’re with me and we’re together and there’s no one else involved. Just us.”
“Or we could do that,” Quinn agreed reluctantly.
They leapt apart suddenly as Rachel’s dad’s voice floated up the stairs. “Dinner’s ready, ladies!” he bellowed. They both frantically straightened their hair and clothes, and Quinn glanced in the mirror and cursed her fair skin for flushing so easily.
“Coming!” Rachel opened the door and called down. She glanced back at Quinn, holding out her hand. “Shall we?”
Quinn took her hand, pausing to straighten her hair in the mirror once more; Rachel rolled her eyes and tugged at her hand. “They don’t care,” Rachel said casually. “Don’t worry about it.”
Quinn grumbled incoherently at her, but allowed herself to be pulled out of the room. As she followed Rachel down to the stairs, she pulled the brunette up short before they entered the kitchen. “I still think we should get you a pimp hat,” she whispered nonchalantly in Rachel’s ear before sauntering past her into the kitchen.
Rachel paused, coughing slightly, before following her into the kitchen. When her dad’s back was turned after he handed Quinn a platter of mashed potatoes, she smiled broadly at the blonde and winked; her smile widened impossibly more when Quinn flushed delicately and bit her lip as she carried the food into the dining room.
As she set the mashed potatoes on the dining room table, Quinn, for the first time since Rachel had initially kissed her, considered the possibility that this might possibly be the first thing all year to go right.
Rating: PG-13
Chapter: 20
Summary: Rachel, Quinn: the progression of a friendship, the moments between. Such things aren't always pretty.
Author's Note: So, surgery was had. And then surgery was had again. And surgery will be had a third time sometime in the relatively immediate future. All of which are my way of explaining/apologizing for almost a full month since my last update. And to make up for it, a double update.
After finally getting a shower of her own, Quinn went to the public library while Rachel went with shopping with her parents for a birthday gift for her grandfather. She found herself too distracted to study effectively, however, and spent two hours doodling in between the lines of the English paper she was supposedly editing and wondering exactly how proactive Rachel was going to be in announcing the turn in their relationship to the world. She imagined that the brunette had already leaked it to her fathers, probably before they even made it into the mall; the thought of Rachel standing between them with her hands on her hips as she explained explicitly the recent developments to her fathers drew an inadvertent smile to Quinn’s lips.
She finally gave up on her studies, realizing that she was hardly going to get anything productive done when all she could think about was either the blissful feeling of losing herself in the sensation of Rachel kissing her, or the hundreds of scenarios of how out of hand things at school could get if Rachel made a Public Service Announcement about their newly evolved relationship. Packing her things back into her bag expertly, she shuffled out of the library and took the roundabout drive back to the Berry’s house. Both of Rachel’s fathers’ cars were in the garage, and as Quinn shut her car door she heard the telltale sound of clanging metal and arguing floating up from the basement-the air conditioner had been acting oddly recently, and it seemed that the Misters Berry were taking a stab at a home repair. Quinn took advantage of their absence from the central areas of the house and slipped up the stairs silently.
In the hallway upstairs, she could faintly hear Rachel singing in her room, no doubt practicing for her next Myspace performance. Quinn bypassed the door to her own room and continued down to Rachel’s. She stood in the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb with her arms crossed, and watched as Rachel mindlessly straightened her desk and sang along with the music wafting from her speakers.
“Hey,” she said softly when the song ended. Rachel turned to face her slowly, a small smile on her lips.
“Hi,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
Quinn rolled her eyes at Rachel’s almost insufferable politeness, moving into the room and taking a seat at Rachel’s desk. “Can we talk for a minute?”
“Sure,” Rachel said. She smiled brightly and sat down at the foot of her bed.
Quinn fiddled with a hole in her jeans, trying to organize her thoughts. “We didn’t really sort a whole lot out this morning,” she started carefully. “And I guess I was hoping that-I was wondering if we could kind of try to pin this whole thing down. Where we stand and all that.”
“Okay,” Rachel said slowly. “Where do we stand?”
“Well, that’s kind of what I’m trying to figure out,” Quinn said. She smirked when Rachel rolled her eyes. “Seriously, though. What’s going to change? Are we… dating?”
“I don’t know,” Rachel said, voice soft. “I’m certainly not averse to dating you.” She paused. “Where do you want us to stand?”
Quinn sighed. “I don’t know altogether,” she admitted. “Like I said earlier, I’m… I’m really kind of terrified right now. I have no idea what’s going to happen. And a part of me is as scared of being back in the spotlight-for any reason, with any relationship-again as I am of everything else.” She bit her lip, weary of looking at Rachel for fear of the other girl understanding exactly what she was saying and being hurt by it.
“In the spotlight,” Rachel murmured. “You want to keep this a secret?” Quinn could feel the hurt in Rachel’s voice, as tangible as a black eye, and she swallowed deeply.
“No,” she said, ashamed of the waver in her voice. “I don’t want to lie to anyone about anything, much less about this. But,” she added, and flinched when she saw the spark in Rachel’s eyes dull slightly. “Can we… not make a spectacle out of it? Like, our friends knowing is not big deal, but I really don’t want to go back to my life being public forum for the whole school.”
“I have to ask,” Rachel said delicately. “Is this because you’re ashamed to be with a girl, or ashamed to be with me?”
“No!” Quinn said, shaking her head. “I get it if that’s hard to believe, because it’s kind of hard for me to believe, too. But that doesn’t really bother me all that much at all. I thought it would, but after everything else, that just doesn’t seem important.
“It’s just… it’s more that… I don’t know,” she mumbled out, flustered. “It used to be that everything I did was focused on popularity and maintaining that popularity. And if I’ve figured out one thing in the last year, it’s that that just doesn’t matter too much. And I don’t want to go back to that. I never thought I’d want to hide in the background, but honestly, right now just in general I’d rather do that than be back in the center of attention.
“I’m not ashamed of this,” she said firmly. “I need you to know that. But I’m also just so tired of people watching my every move. And if everyone in school knows about this, people are going to be watching us all the time. I don’t really have it in me to deal with that, not right now, not after everything else that’s happened.”
Rachel was quiet, fiddling with the charm on her necklace, her brow furrowed in thought.
“This is Ohio,” she said suddenly.
“Yes,” Quinn said slowly. Her forehead creased. “I’m aware.” The unspoken confusion weighted her voice.
“This is Ohio,” Rachel said again. “People have vandalized my dads’ cars because they’re gay. I didn’t go to preschool with the rest of our class because the director wouldn’t let the daughter of two men into the school. Daddy has to drive almost an hour if he wants to go to church when Dad and I go to synagogue.”
Quinn remained silent; her stomach ached and she wondered how it was that she had grown up in so close-minded a home and come to be inexplicably unperturbed by the idea of dating another girl.
“People will be cruel,” Rachel continued. “I’m very aware of how difficult that will be. I’ve been dealing with such issues my whole life, and I’m entirely prepared to continue dealing with them, no matter how they may increase of change, if I am publicly in a relationship with another girl.”
She paused, and seemed to be forcing herself to look Quinn in the eye. “All that taken into consideration,” she said delicately. “I will not hide who I am. I never have and I will not start now.”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Quinn said defensively. Almost of their own volition, her arms crossed protectively over her chest, and she sat back in her chair, as if to add space between them in case Rachel pounced in attack.
“Isn’t it?” Rachel said. Her voice was pained, and it made Quinn’s throat hurt.
“No,” she shot back, shaking her head vehemently. “I’m not saying that we should lie to anyone. There’s a difference between hiding our relationship from everyone and not advertising it.” She frowned. “Nothing is that black and white.”
“Some things are,” Rachel said.
“Seriously?” Quinn said, incredulity dripping from her voice. “Rachel, you can’t honestly believe that there is only one right way to do things.”
“Perhaps not only one,” Rachel conceded. “And perhaps not at all in some situations. But this situation? Yes, I think there is one proper way to handle it, and that is to not give more power and support to a narrow-minded prejudicial majority simply because they’re a majority. Nothing ever changes if the oppressed continue to cower from the disdain of the oppressors.”
“Seriously?” Quinn said again. “Oppressors? This is high school. We’re teenagers! This isn’t about oppression or politics or social change, Rachel! This is about you and me. And in case you didn’t notice, half of ‘you and me’ is me, and I am already going through enough stress and complications in my life without becoming a poster child for rebellion and repression.”
Quinn shoved herself to her feet, anger burning at her skin; she felt like it wouldn’t be much of a stretch for there to be steam coming out of her ears. Rachel, still seated on the bed, looked somewhere between incredulous at Quinn’s outburst and appropriately cowed; Quinn snatched her backpack up from where she’d set it on the floor and stalked out of the room.
In her own room, she hurled her bag across the room, barely flinching when it slammed into the side of her bed and fell to the floor. Her own anger surprised her; she could barely sort her thoughts out through the fog of frustration and hurt and sheer fury bubbling in her mind, much less understand why Rachel’s convictions were so suddenly infuriating her.
She paced up and down agitatedly, an anxious feeling seeping into her limbs once more. She wondered if her still-tender abdomen could handle a second run of the day, or another round of yoga, or any other kind of activity that might calm her or siphon off some of her angry energy.
With a frustrated sigh, Quinn dropped down on her bed, flopping back gracelessly crosswise. She cursed herself as much as she did Rachel; after all, this was Rachel Berry she was talking about. Of course the same girl who put a gold star sticker after her name every time she wrote, the girl who shrugged off slushie facials, the girl who determinedly and continuously tried to pilot the entire glee club through high school social hierarchies, the girl who used her two gay fathers and their connections with the ACLU as a way to get Finn a job, would refuse to even consider not making any relationship she was in public knowledge.
For the first time since Rachel kissed her, Quinn felt that maybe it would be Rachel that could keep their fledgling romance from ever taking off. Quinn knew she was incapable of handling a gossiped-fueling relationship at school right now; as strong as she was determined to be in the face of everything that had occurred, she nonetheless had only so much energy to devote to keeping herself afloat. The strain that still marked her every encounter with Finn or Puck; the ache in her stomach that lingered long after the bruising and swelling had disappeared; the awkward politeness and unbearable longing the pinched in her chest every time she spoke with anyone from her family; the stress of juggling glee club and her AP classes, especially the upcoming exams; not to mention the looming college applications that sat bookmarked on her computer… frankly, as Quinn ran through it all in her head, she was amazed that she had yet to collapse in a pile of stress-broken jello.
A hesitant knock on the door interrupted her frustrated thoughts. She bit down on her lip, unsure if she wanted to speak to Rachel just yet; the decision slipped out of her hands when, after a ten second silence, Rachel opened the door anyways and slipped inside, shutting it behind her. She stood contritely by the door, hands linked behind her back and shoulders slumped, and Quinn felt the edges of her anger dull slightly at the utterly adorable site of a completely cowed Rachel Berry.
“What’s the point of knocking if you’re just going to walk in anyways?” she asked snippily. Her anger was only slightly dulled, she justified to herself; it would be foolish to expect her to melt just at the fact that Rachel looked apologetic.
“I’m sorry,” Rachel said quietly. “But I wanted to speak to you.”
“Whatever,” Quinn said. She leaned over the side of her bed and hauled her backpack up, ripping the zipper open and generating far more noise than was necessary as she dug through her notebooks in a desperate attempt to fill the discomforting silence.
“Quinn, I’m sorry,” Rachel said again. Her voice was stronger this time, though still more timid than usual, for all that it floated over the sound of Quinn’s rustling. “Your request was not unreasonable, and I was reacted instinctively and possibly harshly, and without proper consideration of your viewpoint. It was childish of me, and I apologize.”
Quinn stared at the cover of her calculus textbook as she turned Rachel’s words over and over in her head. Her anger was quickly vanishing, retreating faster and faster with every second Rachel stood contritely and waited for Quinn’s reaction to her apology. She knew it was her turn to say something, to respond, to admit that while Rachel had been unfair, Quinn had still reacted far more drastically than was called for. Yet her eyes remained glued to her textbook, fingers tracing absently along the title; no words of apology or acceptance seemed able to rise from her throat.
After a painfully long silence, Rachel sighed softly. “I understand that you’re still upset,” she said carefully. “I’ll give you some space. Please come find me when you’d like to discuss this further.” She turned to open the door, and paused.
“And I promise not to be so selfish about it this time, too,” she added.
She had opened the door and was halfway out into the hall when Quinn spoke, almost inadvertently.
“I’m not easy,” she said suddenly.
Rachel halted her exit, looking over her shoulder with a thoroughly confused expression on her face.
“I’m not easy,” Quinn said again. She finally looked up at Rachel, eyes and voice dull. “I mean, not in the Puck sense of easy. I’m bitchy and cranky and angry and apparently way more screwed up than even I knew.”
“You aren’t,” Rachel said.
Quinn snorted half-heartedly. “You could at least try to make it sound like you believe that,” she said dully. “We both know it’s true.”
“We all have our flaws,” Rachel said. She slowly shut the door behind her. “You can be unnecessarily cruel when you want to be. I talk far too much and have a bad habit for being stupidly honest. It doesn’t make either of us bad people.”
“I’m not easy to be with,” Quinn said with a shrug. “Ask Finn. I mean, you could even ask Brittany or Santana; I’m not even easy to be friends with.”
Rachel matched Quinn’s shrug with one of her own. “I don’t care,” she said. “I know all this, Quinn. I’m entirely aware of how frustrating you can be, and I don’t care.”
Quinn stared at her blankly. Rachel’s declarations felt like they should mean far more than they actually did. Her mind acknowledged that the words were kind and loving and that they should evoke some kind of warm emotional response, the kind that made her feel like she might glow brightly from how the emotions they stirred up. But instead of that warmth, so familiar from the many times Rachel had been so caring with her, spreading in her chest, all that Quinn could acknowledge was the clamoring voices in her mind telling her that this was just the first sign of why things would never work with them. Beyond all of Quinn’s emotional baggage and Rachel’s obnoxious tendencies and the suffocating social limitations of school, beyond the fact that a tiny part of Quinn still took to heart the warnings bellowed by her father and preacher and Sunday School teachers that homosexuals were doomed to hell, beyond the fact that a huge part of Quinn still screamed that she was not ready in the slightest sense for another relationship, there was the fact that they had completely polarized ideas of how to approach a new relationship at the stages of their lives they currently stood in.
An ache spread from Quinn’s temples, across her forehead and creeping around her skull; the confusion and frustration and remaining vestiges of anger were threatening a migraine, so Quinn did the only thing she could think of and tossed her textbook away, stood from the bed and crossed the room and pinned Rachel by the shoulders against the closed door all in one fluid movement. Rachel squeaked in surprise, looking up at Quinn with confusion written across her face. Quinn stared down into wide brown eyes and, just as the pain in her temples was started to increase, she wrapped one hand around the back of Rachel’s neck and kissed her roughly.
As soon as her lips touched Rachel’s, the ache in Quinn’s head vanished, and she all but melted into the kiss. Her thumb slid along Rachel’s jaw, her other hand pressing into the door and barely holding her up. Rachel made a soft noise in the back of her throat, her hands falling to Quinn’s hips and tugging her closer.
It was the first time Quinn had initiated a kiss, and it made all the difference in the world. Still so used to the height and breadth and dominating presence of Finn or Puck, Quinn found being the taller and more dominating actor in a kiss to be both unnerving and intriguing. The delicate feel of Rachel’s smaller form between herself and the door was terrifying and intoxicating, and without even meaning to, Quinn found herself pressing closer. The hand that had been holding her weight fell to Rachel’s shoulder, fingertips skimming down the bare skin of Rachel’s arm until she found Rachel’s hand on her waist and threaded their fingers together. Rachel’s other hand flexed tighter on Quinn’s hip, pulling her even closer. Quinn pushed their joined hands against the wall, lost in the moment of sensation and simplicity and action over thought, and her lips moved from Rachel’s, across her jaw and down to her neck. Rachel’s hand shifted from Quinn’s hip to her lower back, fingernails digging into skin under her t-shirt; Quinn arched forward at the feel of Rachel’s nail sliding up her spine, drawing a gasp out of her.
“Jesus Christ,” Quinn muttered breathlessly, her forehead dropping down to rest on Rachel’s shoulder.
“Or something,” Rachel mumbled. She slipped her hand out from under Quinn’s t-shirt, raising it to slide her fingers through Quinn’s hair. They remained still, breathing heavily, for a long moment, before Rachel spoke again. “I’m sorry,” she said once more, her voice soft. “I understand why you don’t want to make a big deal to people at school about this, and I respect that. You’ve got enough on your plate and I don’t want to add any more to that than I already have.”
“Thank you,” Quinn whispered. Her words came out more as a breath than vocally, skimming along Rachel’s collarbone and drawing a shiver from her.
“I still firmly believe that pandering to the prejudices of the majority is a bad idea,” Rachel continued. “And I would like to not make this a secret for too long, if only because I believe that will put unnecessary strain on the both of us and lead to more problems within the relationship than it would prevent and-“
“Rachel,” Quinn interrupted. “If you don’t shut up, I won’t kiss you again.”
Rachel’s teeth clacked together audibly.
Quinn straightened up slowly, remaining close to Rachel, their hands still intertwined. “Thank you,” she said again, making sure to look Rachel directly in the eye. “And we don’t have to hide anything, especially not from our friends, but we’ll just… keep the PDA and all to a minimum around everyone else, okay?”
“Okay,” Rachel said. She nodded, her dark eyes solemn. She hesitated, her brow furrowing slightly in thought. “How are we going to define this? When our friends ask, what do we tell them?”
Quinn took a deep breath. “I… don’t know,” she finished weakly. “What do you want to tell them?”
Rachel remained quiet, and Quinn could practically see the wheels in her head turning as she pondered the question.
“We should tell them that you’re my sugar momma,” Quinn suggest suddenly. “We’ll get you a pimp hat.”
Rachel snorted and rolled her eyes, and Quinn grinned cheekily. “And a cane,” she added. “With a big ruby on top.”
“Or, we could just tell them that we’re together,” Rachel said. “We don’t have to put a particular title on it. But I’m with you and you’re with me and we’re together and there’s no one else involved. Just us.”
“Or we could do that,” Quinn agreed reluctantly.
They leapt apart suddenly as Rachel’s dad’s voice floated up the stairs. “Dinner’s ready, ladies!” he bellowed. They both frantically straightened their hair and clothes, and Quinn glanced in the mirror and cursed her fair skin for flushing so easily.
“Coming!” Rachel opened the door and called down. She glanced back at Quinn, holding out her hand. “Shall we?”
Quinn took her hand, pausing to straighten her hair in the mirror once more; Rachel rolled her eyes and tugged at her hand. “They don’t care,” Rachel said casually. “Don’t worry about it.”
Quinn grumbled incoherently at her, but allowed herself to be pulled out of the room. As she followed Rachel down to the stairs, she pulled the brunette up short before they entered the kitchen. “I still think we should get you a pimp hat,” she whispered nonchalantly in Rachel’s ear before sauntering past her into the kitchen.
Rachel paused, coughing slightly, before following her into the kitchen. When her dad’s back was turned after he handed Quinn a platter of mashed potatoes, she smiled broadly at the blonde and winked; her smile widened impossibly more when Quinn flushed delicately and bit her lip as she carried the food into the dining room.
As she set the mashed potatoes on the dining room table, Quinn, for the first time since Rachel had initially kissed her, considered the possibility that this might possibly be the first thing all year to go right.