fic: faberry - Date Night: Faberry Style
Title: Date Night: Faberry Style
Chapter: One Shot
Author: lifeawakening
Pairing Rachel Berry/Quinn Fabray [Faberry]
Rating: PG
Words: 4,133
Summary: Written to fill this prompt. Rachel invites Quinn over for a date. They cook dinner, they cook dessert, they play games, and after all of that fails horribly, they fall asleep together. Loads of domesticated fluff with a fast timeline.
“Rach, I’m not sure about this,” Quinn protested, hesitating on the Berry doorstep. Rachel tried once more to tug on Quinn’s arm hard enough to get her through the door.
“Come on, Quinn! I invited, you accepted, and my fathers agreed to leave us alone for the most part. It’s just one date. I promise we’ll even play Monopoly if you want!”
Quinn chewed on her lip and shrugged the arm that was holding the bottle of Pepsi that she’d brought with her. “Fine,” she murmured, stepping through the doorway, “but if I make an ass out of myself again…”
Rachel laughed, taking the bottle of Pepsi from Quinn’s hand and steering her towards the kitchen, “You won’t! And like I said, my fathers are letting us have the run of the house this evening. They won’t even be around.”
Quinn smiled at Rachel’s apron-clad back as she followed the smaller girl into the kitchen. “So, what’s cooking, hot stuff?” Rachel threw a coy smile over her shoulder as Quinn took in the wrecked kitchen. “Geez Rach, did you use every ingredient in your pantry?”
Rachel huffed, “Of course not, Quinn. I completely avoided the jar of almonds in my pantry because of your allergy. Which obviously led to no peaches and cherries as well.” Quinn rolled her eyes with an easy smile as she watched Rachel throw a pinch of something into a pan of something else on the stove. “We’re having eggplant parmesan,” Rachel beamed.
Quinn smiled over Rachel’s shoulder, “Sounds great. Can I help with anything?”
Rachel turned from the stove to face Quinn, spoon in hand, “Yes, could you please get me the-”
“Rachel!” Quinn shrieked, eyes going wide as she stumbled towards the kitchen table.
“What is your problem Quinn?” Rachel questioned, swinging the spoon around the air in a frustrated manner as she watched in horror as Quinn ripped the table cloth off of the table, all of the dishes falling to the floor. “Quinn!” Rachel yelled, about to launch into a speech on proper etiquette when she smelled smoke. “What’s burning?” she idly questioned as she glanced down. “Oh, I am. I am! Quinn!” Rachel yelled, frantically throwing the spoon at Quinn (on accident, but Quinn still held it against her) and gesturing towards her apron that was very much on fire.
Quinn, who had been far ahead of Rachel in this situation, dove onto the brunette with the table cloth. They fell to the ground, effectively knocking the pan of food off of the stove and onto Quinn, who was on top of Rachel, who was covered with a table cloth. The food that fell on Quinn wasn’t hot, per se, but it didn’t feel great either. Her worry for her girlfriend however, was currently consuming her mind.
She ferociously beat the table cloth until a small hand wrapped around her wrist and she heard a muffled, “Quinn, it’s out.”
Quinn sat back on her heels (because at this point, she was straddling Rachel’s waist) and pulled the cloth back to reveal a mess of hair. “Are you sure? Did you check?”
Rachel blew some hair out of her face and fixed Quinn with a look, “Since you’re still sitting on me, no, I haven’t had the chance to check but…” she trailed off as her eyes roamed Quinn’s head and torso. “You got some dinner on you.”
Quinn mirrored Rachel’s gaze and eyed the mess of sauce, garlic, and bread crumbs that was currently coating her. “I was saving your life. I mean, you were actually talking so much that you failed to see that you lit yourself on fire.”
Rachel gave Quinn a look as she pushed the blonde off of her and stood up to survey the damage. Quinn knelt down and poked Rachel’s stomach through the holes in her apron and shirt caused by the fire. “Bummer.”
Rachel laughed as she wiped some sauce from Quinn’s face, “I can’t even see you under there.” That earned her a smile from the blonde as she turned to take in the rest of the scene. Half of their dinner was distributed evenly between Quinn and the floor. The dishes were broken and tossed across the kitchen floor. And the other half of the dinner was currently on fire. Rachel did a double take and hissed, “Damnet!”
Quinn raised her eyebrows at the rarely uttered explicit that came from Rachel’s mouth as the smoke detector began to go off. She whipped her head around to see the other pan of food on the stove that was billowing smoke from it. “Turn off the burner!”
“What do you think I’m trying to do?” Rachel shouted, beating back the smoke with a fresh spoon as she turned off the oven burner. Quinn was at the ready with pot holders as she picked up the pan and dumped it in the sink. Rachel turned on the water and both girls stepped back as the smoke detector abruptly turned off. Both girls turned to the hallway where it was located and were faced with Rachel’s dads, arms crossed over their chests and bemused expressions on their face.
“Quinn, always a pleasure. Me and Ely here keep hoping you’ll learn how to cook so maybe you two can have a date without having Rachel light something on fire. Pizza or Chinese?”
Quinn shrugged, clumps off food falling off of her in the process, “Pizza sounds good.”
Rachel nodded, still trying to fix her hair, “We had Chinese last week, anyway.”
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Freshly showered and with blow-dried hair, Quinn tugged at the hem of one of Rachel’s t-shirts. Her Wicked one, which wasn’t so bad since it was half white and half green and kind of cool looking. She checked herself one last time in Rachel’s bathroom mirror, pulled her green pair of sweatpants (the ones she’d left at Rachel’s last week on accident) up a little higher, and walked into Rachel’s room.
Rachel, in gold shorts and her Frasier shirt (which Quinn had been shocked to find out was one of Rachel’s favorite shows. Rachel had claimed it was because Bernadette Peters had been in one episode, but Quinn had her doubts), was sitting in front of her DVD collection. Quinn’s bare feet padded over the carpet to kneel down beside Rachel, “Picking out a movie for later?”
Rachel nodded enthusiastically, “I was thinking Rent for tonight. Did you text your mom to tell her you were staying the night?”
Quinn nodded as she scanned the DVD in the other girl’s hand, “Can we not watch a musical tonight?”
Rachel winced, but put Rent back, “Fine, Quinn. Although I feel as if we’re neglecting our voices by not singing along to something, I’ll let you pick the movie.”
Quinn laughed, “Rachel, it’s summer. We have a whole other year of glee to practice our voices in.” Rachel opened her mouth to protest but Quinn shook her head rapidly, “No just, shhh. We’ll watch the new Alice in Wonderland.”
Rachel’s eyebrows furrowed as she stared at the case with a dejected expression, “I’ll never understand your love for that movie.”
Quinn shrugged as she stood up again, “You love it. You own it. Come on, I smell pizza.”
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Quinn tossed half of her last piece of pizza into the now-empty box. Rachel gave a disgusted snort at Quinn, “You know what they do to the cows to get the cheese right?”
The blonde rolled her eyes, “Shut up and eat your pizza. You know you can’t fight the temptation.”
Rachel playfully glared at Quinn before picking up her second piece. “I have nightmares for a week after, but pizza is the one thing I’ll allow myself to have once a month. I figure the cheese isn’t all that real anyway.”
Quinn snorted as she sipped her Pepsi, “I can guarantee you that it’s not. And it’s not like we get pepperoni, so just enjoy.”
Rachel’s dark skinned father, Michael, walked into the living room. “All right, kitchen is all clean. How was your pizza?”
Rachel grinned sheepishly at her dad, “Thanks Daddy… I’ll make it up to you. And our pizza was very good.”
Quinn looked up from the couch, “How was your pepperoni pizza?” she asked, giving Michael sad, doe-eyes.
Michael chuckled at his daughter’s girlfriend, “It was delicious,” he said before leaning towards the blonde, “and we left three pieces for you in the fridge.”
Quinn’s jaw dropped, “You are a god, Michael, thank you!”
Rachel looked up from picking the cheese off of her pizza, “Who’s a god?”
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“Okay,” Quinn dragged out, staring at the green package in her hand, eyebrow raised and a skeptical expression plastered on her face, “Vegan… cookies…. Yum.”
Rachel brushed past the blonde, setting down three mixing bowls full of measuring devices onto the kitchen table. “They will be very good, Quinn. You’ll see. I can’t believe daddy let us cook in here again.”
“I can’t believe that you want to cook again. Only you would set yourself on fire and come back for more.”
Rachel left and reappeared with a bag of flour and sugar. “Quinn, I’m telling you, persistence is the key to life. How do you think I got you?”
Quinn tore open the package and cringed at the powder inside, “Not by vegan cookies… that’s for sure.”
Rachel, disappearing and reappearing once more, set down the blender. Quinn watched her plug it in before speaking up, “Do you even need my help?”
Rachel, far too enthusiastically, ripped open the bag of flour and just dumped it into the biggest bowl, causing a comical “poof” as the bag emptied and a billow of flour wafted up. Wide brown eyes met cold hazel ones as Rachel grinned sheepishly, “Of course I need your help, Quinn! You look adorable covered in flour, might I add.”
She stared hard at Rachel, also covered in flour, before lightly cracking her neck and taking a deep breath. She released the breath, “How can I help you, Rachel?”
Rachel handed Quinn the glass measuring cup as Quinn snorted out some flour from her nose, “Get the appropriate amount of water, please. And try not to get any flour in it.”
Quinn seethed, “Oh sure. Don’t worry. I’ll try not to get any flour anywhere, since that seems to be my problem.”
Ten minutes later, Quinn scooped the brown sugar from her hair and wiped the wet flour from her face enough to be able to open her eyes. She gave Rachel an incredulous look as the guilty girl stood, also covered in assorted cooking ingredients, holding the blender. Rachel calmly set the blender down and wiped her eyes off before meeting Quinn’s. “Well,” she spoke evenly, “last week it was the vegan cake that failed. This week it was the vegan cookies.”
Quinn stared at her girlfriend, on the brink of snapping at her and kissing her. “I don’t think it’s the recipes that fail, Rach.”
Rachel’s eyes lowered as she huffed, “It’s horribly inconvenient that I cannot cook, you know. It’s one of the few things that I can’t do and it irks me greatly.”
Picking up a sponge, the blonde lovingly patted Rachel’s face, earning her a swat on the arm. “You know what you can cook?”
“What?”
“Ice cream sundaes. Yours are the best, hands down. Why don’t we clean this up and we’ll have those later?”
Rachel brightened up substantially as she pulled Quinn in for a messy hug, “You’re right! We even have vegan ice cream.”
Quinn’s face contorted with pain over Rachel’s head as she mumbled, “Oh, that’s great, I was so worried about that.”
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Quinn sat at the now clean kitchen table, her head propped on her hands, as the shorter and paler father came into the kitchen. “Ely,” Quinn greeted with a smile.
The man hesitated a little at seeing Quinn. “Quinn, hello.”
Quinn frowned, but smiled again when Rachel came bouncing back into the room with her arms full of board games. “Okay Quinn, I brought out the traditional date night board games that we’ve found through trial-and-error that we both love. I think we’ll start with Scrabble! Dad, would you like to join us?”
Ely’s eyes flickered between the Scrabble box and Quinn as he rubbed his jaw, “T-that’s okay girls, I promised Michael that we’d watch movies tonight. I’ll just be on my way,” he muttered, scrambling from the kitchen.
Quinn groaned and buried her face in her hands, “He didn’t even get what he came into the kitchen for!”
Rachel bit back her laughter as she wrapped her arms around her girlfriend, “Oh love, you only threw the Scrabble board at him one time, and you were very aggravated. Also, in the right, because “Espanol” definitely wasn’t allowed in and you totally would have won. He’s totally over it.”
Quinn groaned louder as she leaned back into Rachel’s embrace. Hazel puppy eyes met amused brown ones as Quinn muttered, “I’ll try to be better, I promise.” After a moment of silence, “But can we play Monopoly first?”
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“Bull shit!” Quinn yelled as she slammed her fists onto the table, moving half of the houses off of the board.
“Quinn,” Rachel hissed through clenched teeth, “if you are not mentally capable of figuring up the correct rent for the electric company, how am I supposed to trust you to be banker?”
“You can’t take away the banker’s job halfway through the game!”
“I can and I am.”
“Fine. I get to be the dog.”
Rachel gasped, “Quinn! You know I always get to be Toto, you can’t trade halfway through the game.”
“Hypocrite!” Quinn shouted, reaching for Rachel’s dog that was mocking her from its spot on her electric company square.
Rachel stood up and folded her arms across her chest, “If you touch that dog I swear to you Quinn Fabray, you will be sleeping alone tonight. You are just the worst loser I’ve ever met.”
Quinn’s eyes shone with fire as her face turned stoic. She stood up, picked up the side of the board nearest her and smirked as all of the pieces fell to the floor.
Rachel’s chest rose and fell with heavy breathing and her arms stayed crossed as she stormed out of the room.
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“J-o-h-n,” Ely said as he laid down his tiles. Quinn’s eyes snapped up and met Rachel’s from across the table. Rachel rubbed her ankle against Quinn’s under the table in a soothing motion.
“Dad, you’re aware that you cannot use proper nouns in Scrabble.”
Michael watched Quinn from out of the corner of his eye with a smirk playing on his lips. He glanced across the table at his husband, who was staring at his tiles, oblivious to Quinn’s building rage. “No, not the name. You know when someone calls the bathroom the ‘john’? I mean it like that.”
“It still doesn’t work…” Rachel trailed off, meeting Quinn’s heated look that was still trained on her, “it’s still someone’s name.”
Ely pouted but removed the tiles anyway with a glum, “Pass…”
Next was Quinn, who proudly placed “unicorn” on the board. She smirked, “I’ve been waiting three rounds for that one. Triple word score!” she yelled, leaning over to make sure Rachel wrote it down correctly.
After Rachel lectured Michael heavily on putting down “bitch” and having it be accepted because it was a proper scientific name, despite his obvious ulterior motives, it was Ely’s turn again.
“J-e-w!” he placed, smiling. Quinn’s eyebrow shot up at the same time that Rachel’s mouth snapped open.
“Dad, I’m sorry but-”
“Fine!” Ely shouted, throwing the e and w onto the floor. He replaced them with o, k, and e to make “joke! What this game is when I play with you two! You two are the most over-competitive people on this planet! I don’t care if you rip your heads off playing games together, I’m not sticking around to have another board thrown at me while playing the buffer.” And with that, the shorter man stood up and stomped to his room.
Michael chuckled, ignoring both Rachel and Quinn’s blushes, “Ignore him. We all know he’s where Rachel got her over dramatics.”
“Hey!”
“Why don’t you two play something a little calmer? We have Guess Who? you know.”
Quinn scoffed, “Please, we’re a little too old for that one, Mr. Berry,” she said, sending Rachel a small, knowing smile that only the brunette ever saw.
“Really, Daddy, we may as well play Go Fish for that matter,” Rachel scoffed, a twinkle in her eye as she caught Quinn’s gaze.
Michael shrugged and started upstairs to find Ely. Quinn called after him, “Michael? Can you apologize to Ely for me?”
Michael shot Quinn a smile over his shoulder, “Always do!”
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“Is your person wearing a hat?”
Rachel scoffed from her position on her stomach on the living room floor, “Of course not! A hat would take away from their facial structure.”
Quinn cocked an eyebrow but said nothing as she dropped some more faces. Mirroring Rachel’s position, Quinn eyed Rachel over her tiles, “Your turn.”
“I’m thinking.” Quinn smirked as she watched Rachel inspect the faces in front of her. They’d been playing board games for over three hours and Quinn knew Rachel would soon want to move onto the dessert and movie portion of the date. Sighing quietly, Quinn took this quiet opportunity to just stare at Rachel - her Rachel. She’d marveled at the girl’s persistence at not letting anything ruin this date - not the typical ruining of dinner, the horrible choice they always made to play board games and angering her dads. It wasn’t all bad, Quinn thought, and Guess Who? really was their favorite game to play together, oddly enough.
Quinn tilted her head to the side and smiled as Rachel chewed on her bottom lip and tucked a bang behind her ear. She chuckled silently as Rachel pinched her nose in concentration. That caught her attention however, and the brunette shot Quinn a quizzical look, “What’s so funny?”
Quinn smiled, “You’re beautiful.”
Rachel smiled shyly and ducked her head, “I love you.”
“I love you too,” Quinn stated, “now go, Berry.”
“Ever the romantic. All right, does your person have a big nose?”
Quinn turned her attention from her tiles and smiled brightly at Rachel, “Yes! Yes she does.”
It took Quinn letting Rachel give her an extra helping of dessert and promising to watch Rent after Alice in Wonderland to get Rachel to talk to her again. She did it all through tears of laughter, only fueling Rachel’s anger.
"Oh come on Rachel," Quinn groaned out, watching Rachel dump another spoonful of vegan ice cream into her bowl, "you know it was funny! I'm so clever!"
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“Quinn?” Her question was met with a grunt in response, and Rachel chuckled, “Do you want more ice cream?”
Quinn groaned, “No, dear Lord. I don’t want people thinking I have a baby bump again,” while setting her empty bowl onto Rachel’s desk. Rachel got up and placed hers next to Quinn’s before turning to face her.
Quinn had sprawled face down onto Rachel’s bed, taking up the entire thing. “You promised me Rent.”
Quinn grunted again, and Rachel, in a lithely manner, jumped onto her bed and onto Quinn. She kissed the blonde behind her ear and Quinn felt her smile into the kiss. Quinn smiled into the pillow that her face was buried in and murmured, “Put the movie in. Stop taking advantage of me.”
Rachel giggled as she leaned over and grabbed the DVD remote. “I already have the DVD in there, just gotta hit the lights.”
“You don’t think I’m getting up to do that, do you?”
“I was kind of hoping. I’m already in bed.”
“You were sorely mistaken. You’re not even in bed, you’re on top of me.”
“Not for long,” Rachel wisely stated, swinging herself off of the bed to turn off the lights. Quinn scrunched up her nose at the sudden lack of warmth before turning over and propping herself up with the pillows.
The room went dark and Quinn’s face was illuminated by the TV screen only. Her hazel eyes followed Rachel’s form as she walked around her room, searching for another remote and her water bottle.
“Smurf,” Quinn called out, smirking at Rachel’s sudden stiffness. “Can you bring me my water bottle too?”
Rachel’s hand wrapped around the second bottle and Quinn smiled; up until the bottle hit her square in the chest. “Hey!” Quinn yelled, indignantly, keeping up her glare until Rachel cocked an eyebrow, hands on her hips.
A smile broke over Quinn’s face as she patted her lap, “Come ‘ere. Let’s watch Rent.”
Rachel hesitated briefly before smiling and cautiously climbing back into bed. Rachel climbed up between Quinn’s legs and rested her head against the blonde’s collarbone. Quinn wrapped her arms around Rachel’s abs and pulled her closer as Rachel excitedly hit play. The familiar title sequence started up and Quinn shook her head, resting her cheek against Rachel’s hair.
Rachel smiled up at Quinn and laced her fingers through the ones Quinn had rested on her abs. “You know you love it.”
Quinn smiled at their reflection in Rachel’s vanity mirror, “Yeah, I know. Just don’t tell anyone.”
Ten minutes into the movie, Quinn felt eyes on her. Well, on her jaw. “What is it?”
“I‘m sorry.”
Quinn shifted a little in order to see Rachel’s face. “Why are you sorry? Oh, because you can’t cook to save your life?”
“Well, that. And because you’re a poor sport during our games when you lose… and because you didn’t dodge the spoon I threw in a moment of panic…”
Quinn’s brow furrowed as she scrunched her nose up, “You call that an apology?”
Rachel grinned coyly, “I’m glad you accepted it, Quinn.” Placing a kiss on the girl’s jaw, Rachel turned back to the movie. “Now, please stop talking during the movie.”
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Five hours later, Quinn groggily blinked open her eyes, cringing against the harsh blue light coming from the TV. She was laying flat on her back, the covers bunched at her feet and the pillow still propped against the headboard. She lifted her head and took in Rachel’s sleeping form. The brunette still had her head on Quinn’s collarbone with both arms wrapped around Quinn’s waist.
Quinn gently fumbled around for the remote, silently cursing out the harsh light from the TV. She started feeling under Rachel’s thigh when Rachel started squirming. “No, no,” she quietly murmured, sleepily, “the hand is the best place to start. Don’t forget the artichokes.” A blonde eyebrow shot up as Quinn openly laughed.
“Rach, come on, wake up real quick,” she whispered, shaking the other girl. Rachel only grunted and frowned in her sleep, squeezing Quinn tighter.
Quinn smiled in victory as she finally found the remote, and then smiled in satisfaction as she shut off the TV. She lifted her head up enough to get a pillow under it before wrapping her arms around Rachel as best she could.
She was just drifting off to sleep when she felt Rachel slide up and place a tender but lingering kiss to her lips. “Thank you for another perfect date,” was groggily whispered in her ear before Rachel began to slide back down Quinn’s body.
Quinn’s grip tightened and stopped her, “Rach, the date went wrong in like, every way, as usual.”
It was too dark to see each other, but Quinn heard a quiet laugh drift up to her. “When are our dates ever just normal? Nothing about us is normal, it’s to be expected.”
“Then why do you call them perfect?” Quinn questioned.
“It’s like every other time I spend with you, Quinn. We don’t have to be doing anything in particular, it’s still going to be irrevocably perfect because it’s with you and they’re constant flaws that drive me insane but somehow I get over them because, well, you get it.”
Quinn grinned, “I get it, rambles. Who would’ve thought that you and I would have regular catastrophic dates that end with us happily falling asleep together?”
Rachel leaned down and kissed Quinn soundly again before sliding down to rest her head on Quinn’s collarbone again. “Everyone but us, apparently.”
Quinn laughed quietly as she felt Rachel’s breath even out. She tightened her grip around the brunette and buried her face in her hair, smiling softly.
Rachel nuzzled her face into Quinn’s neck and softly breathed in, placing a chaste kiss there before whispering, “And thanks for saving my life.”
Quinn mumbled into Rachel’s hair, “Thanks for throwing a spoon at me,” before drifting off to sleep.