fic: we make plans (they never work out right) 6a/9
Title: We Make Plans (They Never Work Out Right)
Author: takeanotherturn
Rating: NC-17
Length: 3000+
Spoilers: Season 1
Warnings: genderswap, het sex
Summary: Based on this prompt from the glee kink meme. Boy!Rachel (Ryan) gets Quinn pregnant.
Quinn should've known that her resigned peace with Finn wouldn't last for long. Now he was constantly on her back to tell her parents about the baby. He just couldn't get it through his thick skull that they would not only not be happy about this latest development in their youngest daughter's life but that they'd probably send her off to a convent somewhere until she had the baby, where the nuns would take it away from her as soon as it was born and make sure it ended up in a 'good' Christian household like her own. Quinn couldn't imagine anything worse for her child.
And she had explained this, numerous times, but still Finn persisted. It seemed like the only time Quinn could get a moments peace was when she was with Ryan. At first it was a surprise to her, that someone who was usually so bossy and domineering could be so patient and submissive with her but she came to appreciate it greatly. He never pushed her to talk, he let her open up to him when and if she chose. He never tried to force her into telling the truth about the baby, even though he definitely had the right to. Even when she was giving him blowjobs -something that had become far more frequent in recent days, since the baby was now making her crave it's father's semen. Quinn tried not to think about how disturbing that was.- he was still as gentle and patient as that first time in the janitor's closet.
Being with Ryan was the only time she felt like she was in control of anything in her life anymore and she needed it. In a world where she was not even in control of her own body -now a slave to her cravings and hormones and seemingly constant need to urinate- she needed it more than ever.
It worried Quinn though that she could feel him becoming attached to their unborn child. Sometimes during their frenzied couplings, he'd put his hands on her now visible baby bump, caressing it until she batted them away. She couldn't let him get attached, not when she was going to give it away, it would only hurt him in the long run.
“Ballad,” Mr. Schuesters voice brought her out of her thoughts. “From Middle English 'balade'. Who knows what this word means?”
Quinn rolled her eyes, this was glee club not AP English.
“It's a male duck,” Brittany said instantly.
Schue just made a face, he'd given up on trying to correct Brittany a long time ago, and pointed to Kurt who had his hand raised. “Kurt.”
“A ballad is a love song,” Kurt explained, almost breathless with excitement.
“Sometimes, but they don't always express love. Ballads are stories set to music, so that's why they're the perfect storm of self-expression. Stories and music are the way we express feelings that we can't get out any other way.”
At this, Quinn perked up. She certainly had a lot of suppressed feelings that she needed to express. Finally it seemed like one of Schuester's assignments was actually going to benefit her.
“Now Sectionals are in a few weeks and there's a new rule this year. We have to perform a ballad,” Schue announced.
“Looks like my weekly letter to the Ohio Show Choir Committee finally paid off!” Ryan grinned at Quinn, who he was sitting next to, obviously excited by this new development.
Quinn couldn't stop herself from smiling back fondly. He was such an adorable nerd sometimes.
“Okay, so here's your assignment for the week, I'm going to pair you up and I want you to pick a ballad to sing to your partner,” Schue said. He bent down so he was all up in Artie's personal space. “Look them right in the eye, find the emotion you want to express and make them feel it.”
“I pick Quinn,” Finn said quickly.
Out of the corner of her eye, Quinn caught Ryan dramatically rolling his eyes and almost giggled.
“Oh no, no, no,” said Schue. “Too easy, your partners will be chosen by fate.”
A chorus of juvenile “Ooohs” sounded. Quinn just hoped she didn't get Santana...or Finn.
Their teacher picked up a top hat that was resting on the piano. “Oooh yeah. That's why I put all your names in this hat. Whoever you choose will be your partner.”
“I bet the duck's in the hat,” Brittany whispered conspiratorially to Santana.
“But Matt's out sick today,” Santana said, rather than try to explain to her best friend that the lesson had nothing to do with ducks. “He had to go to the hospital cause he found a spider in his ear.”
“I guess I'll just have to put my name in the hat for now,” Mr. Schuester decided. “Who's up first?”
Puck was up and out of his seat before Mr. Schue had even finished speaking. He may have thought school was for suckers but, as a betting man, Puck knew a little something about odds and he knew that going first gave him the best chance of avoiding being paired up with Ryan Berry. He may have been a fellow Jew but the dude made Puck want to set himself on fire ninety percent of the time.
He reached into the hat and pulled out a name. “Mercedes.” The girl in question just rolled her eyes in annoyance.
Artie went next. “Mr. Schue,” he read out, smiling awkwardly. Well...that was certainly going to be interesting.
Then it was Finn's turn. “Kurt,” he said, looking distinctly uncomfortable. Seeing the look on Kurt's face and the soft mocking laughs of their friends, Quinn didn't entirely blame him.
“Mr. Schue, I don't know if I can do this with another guy.”
“The fates have spoken Finn,” Schue said, making it clear that although Finn was his favorite, he still wasn't getting out of singing to Kurt.
Ryan was next and Quinn found herself sitting up straighter in her seat in anticipation. “Quinn.” Fate indeed. She would have smiled if Ryan didn't look like someone had just shot his puppy. What was that about?
One by one the rest were paired off -Tina with Mike, who's name Mr. Schuester had written down as Other Asian in a stunning display of racial insensitivity, and Santana with Brittany.-
Artie raised his hand. “Would you mind clarifying what kinds of songs you want us to sing?”
Never one to miss an opportunity to perform, Ryan leapt to his feet. “Why don't you let me demonstrate? Ballads happen make up a large part of my very extensive repertoire,” he said, moving to the piano, pushing Brad aside and taking his place. Before anyone could stop him, his fingers were moving deftly across the keys.
“She can kill with a smile, she can wound with her eyes. She can ruin your faith with her casual lies and she only reveals what she wants you to see. She hides like a child but she's always a woman to me,” he sang. “She can lead you to love, she can take you or leave you. She can ask for the truth but she'll never believe. She'll take what you give her as long as it's free. Yeah, she steals like a thief but she's always a woman to me.”
Maybe it was the way that Ryan kept glancing in her direction or the fact that the lyrics seemed to describe her in an eerily accurate manner, but Quinn couldn't help but feel that his heartfelt rendition of Always A Woman To Me was directed solely at her. She didn't know whether to feel flattered or offended.
“She's frequently kind and she's suddenly cruel. She can do as she pleases, she's nobody's fool. And she can't be convicted, she's earned her degree. And the most she will do is throw shadows at you but she's always a woman to me.”
A round of polite applause broke out as Ryan finished up the song. Frowning to herself, Quinn clapped along with them. Maybe things with Ryan weren't going smoothly as she'd originally thought.
-
Standing in front of a mirror in her dress for the Chastity Ball, Quinn had never felt more like a complete fraud. She could see it plain as day, her baby bump, the evidence that she had absolutely no business wearing that white dress, and if she could see it then other people would too.
“Sweetie, I am so proud of you,” her mother said, rubbing her arm. “The Chastity Ball is so important to your father.”
Quinn missed her Cheerios uniform, which managed to almost completely hide her sha...no, not shame. She was not ashamed of their baby. She didn't know when she'd stopped thinking of it as her baby and started thinking of it as theirs but she knew she had to stop. It was thinking like that, that lead to thinking about what it would be like to keep the baby with Ryan and that would only lead to places that Quinn couldn't allow herself to go.
Her mother moved behind her to zip the dress up, Quinn sucked in her stomach and silently prayed it would do all the way up.
But apparently God wasn't listening because the zipper stopped halfway up her back.
“Hmm, well that's odd, we had this custom made a month ago.”
“I had a really big lunch today at school,” Quinn scrambled to cover up the truth for just that little bit longer. “Really big tacos.”
She could see it on her mother's face, reflected in the mirror, she didn't believe her. She knew. Oh God, her mom knew!
Quinn waited for the tearful acknowledgement of her situation; she braced herself for the anger, the words of disappointment. None of it ever came.
Judy Fabray plastered on a painfully fake smile -much like the one Quinn knew she wore herself whenever she told Finn that she loved him- and embraced her daughter from behind. “No worries, sweetie. I'll just take it down to the tailor tomorrow and we'll let it out a little bit,” she said in an overly cheerful manner.
It was then that Quinn knew that the small, almost desperate, comforting touches Judy was giving her and her silence was all the support that she was ever going to get from her mother.
In some ways her mother's resolute denial was even worse than the anger Quinn had been expecting.
“The problem here is, honey, you know that I-I don't think you've been getting enough exercise ever since you quit the Cheerios, am I right?” Judy continued, looping the measuring tape around Quinn's waist.
Quinn briefly considered telling her that she got quite the daily workout having copious amounts of sex with the father of her child, just to see what her mother's reaction would be to that. “Yeah. Yeah, that's right,” she agreed instead, consciously feeding her mother's self-delusion.
“I mean, you used to spend hours ever day doing backflips and high kicks. So now, I mean, now you spend all your free time sitting on a stool in the dark singing showtunes. Do you know how many calories you burn singing? Not very many.”
Quinn looked at her mother with sad eyes, silently pleading with her to drop the act for just one second and tell her that everything was going to be okay.
“Judy!” Quinn heard her father call out. “Glenn Beck is on!”
Her mother's gleeful reaction kind of made Quinn want to cry. They were such a cliché; a family of blonde, bigoted conservative Christian Republicans that worshipped at the altar of Fox News.
“Oh wait, hold on, hold on,” her father hammed it up, holding his hand over his eyes as he entered the room. “Oh, I don't want to see!”
“Daddy, it's not like we're getting married,” Quinn said demurely. But one day, she knew, one day she was expected to marry a man just like her father.
Her father came up to her, peeking between his fingers before finally removing his hand from his face. Looking at her with pride, he leaned in and kissed her on the cheek as her mother picked up her gin and tonic.
“Oh, look at you!” he said proudly. “Speaking of getting married, how's that boy you've been dating?”
It probably said something that Quinn's thoughts immediately went to Ryan, rather than Finn.
“Yeah, he's not pressuring you at all is he?” Judy asked with a hint of concern.
“No.” At least not for sex. “No, he's a gentleman.”
“I'm glad to hear that,” Russell said, smiling approvingly. “That's why I'm inviting him over for dinner on Sunday.”
No. That was not going to happen, Quinn couldn't let Finn anywhere near her parents. He'd probably inform them of her pregnancy through song or something idiotic and disrespectful to her wishes like that. She'd knock him out and tie him to a chair before letting him even breathe the same air as them.
“Oh! Wonderful!” Judy breathed in excitement.
“Refresher?” Russell asked, moving to take his wife's half-empty glass. His own glass of whiskey clutched in his hand. Her parents called themselves social drinkers, Quinn secretly called them functional alcoholics.
“Oh, I don't want you to have to lift a finger for me. I'm your wife,” Judy said happily. Quinn watched them in dismay, knowing that was going to be her in twenty years time. She didn't want that. She didn't want a life where she mindlessly catered to her husband's every whim like a deranged Stepford wife, self-medicating with alcohol to the point where she'd never be able to feel anything more than numbness.
The worst part was that she knew she had a way out, she just wouldn't, couldn't, allow herself to take it.
-
“So that song you sang yesterday...” Quinn began tentatively, watching Ryan buckle his belt while she slid her underwear back up her legs. Finn was thankfully off practicing his ballad with Kurt, leaving her free to spend more time with Ryan, she would've been a fool not to take advantage of it. “Was it about me?”
“It didn't offend you, did it?” Ryan asked, suddenly looking worried.
“No. Not really...” She sighed, she knew that she shouldn't be talking about this with him. She should just leave well enough alone but she couldn't do that, not when she could feel Ryan pulling away from her. Not physically, they were having more sex than ever, but emotionally; ever since the day he sang Hello to her, he didn't even look at her when they made lo...had sex anymore. “Why did you sing it?”
“Because it's one of my favorite ballads and it suits my voice...and yes, given it's position on the playlist I made about you, perhaps it does remind me of you a little,” Ryan admitted, looking anywhere but at Quinn. “But not in a bad way.”
“You have a playlist about me?” Quinn asked, flattered. “How many songs are on it?”
“As of yesterday, fifty eight.”
Quinn bit her lip as she smiled, her cheeks turning pink. She stepped closer to him, smoothing her hands up his chest to rest on his shoulders. “Thank you.”
“For what?” He asked guilelessly, his hands automatically coming to rest on her hips.
“I know that this can't be easy for you but...you've been so good to me, really,” Quinn said, gazing up into his doe-like brown eyes that were blazing with intensity as he looked at her. “I just...thank you for being so amazing.”
The corner of Ryan's mouth twitched up and he bent his head so their foreheads were resting together. “I can be better, if you'd let me.”
“I know.” She leaned up and kissed him tenderly, hoping that even though she couldn't tell him how she felt, he'd feel it and know. “But I can't.”
You'll thank me for this one day, Ryan.
-
It was a Wednesday and Quinn's world was falling apart. As if things weren't bad enough with her own mother knowing, now Finn's mom did too. She'd caught him singing to a recording of the sonogram of the baby, which Quinn would've thought was incredibly sweet if she wasn't so furious.
Carole Hudson was a smart woman, if she started asking questions, if Finn told her the lie Quinn had fed him about the hot tub and that they'd never actually had sex, she'd realize that the baby wasn't his. And if she didn't, the poor woman thought that she was going be a grandmother...She was just another person that was going to get hurt when the truth came out.
“I can't believe you told your mom, what if she tells my mom?” Quinn hissed at Finn, if they were somewhere a little more private than the school hallway, she would've been screaming at him.
“She's not-”
“Half the school knows, your mom knows.” My mom knows. “Who else do you want to tell, huh?”
“She's not going to tell anybody-”
“You're wrong, I'm right,” Quinn cut him off, poking his chest. “I'm smart, you're dumb.”
“Quinn, it's okay-”
“No, no, no!” She didn't want to hear it. Quinn was verging on the edge of hysteria, yet another thing had been taken out of her control, it was all slipping away too fast to save. She just needed everything to stop so she could catch her breath and think for one second. She needed Ryan.
“You're wrong, I'm right. I'm right!” she said loudly, walking away from Finn before she did something truly drastic.
“She's doesn't talk to other moms!” she heard him yell at her retreating back.
Shaking her head, Quinn made a beeline for Ryan's locker, hoping that he'd still be there. What she found when she rounded the corner horrified her.
Ryan was pressed back up against his locker, looking vaguely terrified, and being molested by the school crazy, Suzy Pepper. Quinn barely managed to tamp down the part of her that felt like hitting her with a chair.
Holding her head up high and attempting to adopt the posture of Quinn Fabray, head cheerio and school tyrant, she marched over to the pair. “What's going on here?”
“I-I...” Ryan stuttered, looking at her pleadingly as Suzy practically wrapped her whole body around his arm.
“I was just admiring Ryan's arms,” Suzy sighed dreamily. “Your biceps are so firm.” She squeezed said bicep, sending Quinn into a possessive rage.
No. This was not happening. Not today. Mine, the primal part of her brain growled, urging her to crush her rival. And that's what Suzy Pepper was, even if she was only mildly attractive and not so mildly insane, if she was interested in Ryan then she was Quinn's competition.
“Yes, they are,” Quinn snarled, wrapping herself firmly around Ryan's other arm, clearly staking her claim. “And they're off limits, especially to you,” she said in a tone that obviously meant ”Get your hands off my man, you crazy bitch.” She reached up and hooked her fingers around Ryan's collar for extra emphasis.
Ryan's confused eyes darted back and forth between them, the poor boy had obviously never had two women fighting over him and didn't have a clue what was going on.
Suzy narrowed her eyes at Quinn, obviously trying to figure out why she was acting like an extremely jealous girlfriend, but eventually backed off.
“Come on, Ryan,” Quinn said, tugging on his hand to drag him away. “We need to practice our ballads for Glee.”
She held his hand as she pulled him down the hall. She knew that people were staring, she knew that word of it would get back to Finn, but for the moment Quinn honestly didn't care what people thought of her. They could all go to hell.
Author: takeanotherturn
Rating: NC-17
Length: 3000+
Spoilers: Season 1
Warnings: genderswap, het sex
Summary: Based on this prompt from the glee kink meme. Boy!Rachel (Ryan) gets Quinn pregnant.
Quinn should've known that her resigned peace with Finn wouldn't last for long. Now he was constantly on her back to tell her parents about the baby. He just couldn't get it through his thick skull that they would not only not be happy about this latest development in their youngest daughter's life but that they'd probably send her off to a convent somewhere until she had the baby, where the nuns would take it away from her as soon as it was born and make sure it ended up in a 'good' Christian household like her own. Quinn couldn't imagine anything worse for her child.
And she had explained this, numerous times, but still Finn persisted. It seemed like the only time Quinn could get a moments peace was when she was with Ryan. At first it was a surprise to her, that someone who was usually so bossy and domineering could be so patient and submissive with her but she came to appreciate it greatly. He never pushed her to talk, he let her open up to him when and if she chose. He never tried to force her into telling the truth about the baby, even though he definitely had the right to. Even when she was giving him blowjobs -something that had become far more frequent in recent days, since the baby was now making her crave it's father's semen. Quinn tried not to think about how disturbing that was.- he was still as gentle and patient as that first time in the janitor's closet.
Being with Ryan was the only time she felt like she was in control of anything in her life anymore and she needed it. In a world where she was not even in control of her own body -now a slave to her cravings and hormones and seemingly constant need to urinate- she needed it more than ever.
It worried Quinn though that she could feel him becoming attached to their unborn child. Sometimes during their frenzied couplings, he'd put his hands on her now visible baby bump, caressing it until she batted them away. She couldn't let him get attached, not when she was going to give it away, it would only hurt him in the long run.
“Ballad,” Mr. Schuesters voice brought her out of her thoughts. “From Middle English 'balade'. Who knows what this word means?”
Quinn rolled her eyes, this was glee club not AP English.
“It's a male duck,” Brittany said instantly.
Schue just made a face, he'd given up on trying to correct Brittany a long time ago, and pointed to Kurt who had his hand raised. “Kurt.”
“A ballad is a love song,” Kurt explained, almost breathless with excitement.
“Sometimes, but they don't always express love. Ballads are stories set to music, so that's why they're the perfect storm of self-expression. Stories and music are the way we express feelings that we can't get out any other way.”
At this, Quinn perked up. She certainly had a lot of suppressed feelings that she needed to express. Finally it seemed like one of Schuester's assignments was actually going to benefit her.
“Now Sectionals are in a few weeks and there's a new rule this year. We have to perform a ballad,” Schue announced.
“Looks like my weekly letter to the Ohio Show Choir Committee finally paid off!” Ryan grinned at Quinn, who he was sitting next to, obviously excited by this new development.
Quinn couldn't stop herself from smiling back fondly. He was such an adorable nerd sometimes.
“Okay, so here's your assignment for the week, I'm going to pair you up and I want you to pick a ballad to sing to your partner,” Schue said. He bent down so he was all up in Artie's personal space. “Look them right in the eye, find the emotion you want to express and make them feel it.”
“I pick Quinn,” Finn said quickly.
Out of the corner of her eye, Quinn caught Ryan dramatically rolling his eyes and almost giggled.
“Oh no, no, no,” said Schue. “Too easy, your partners will be chosen by fate.”
A chorus of juvenile “Ooohs” sounded. Quinn just hoped she didn't get Santana...or Finn.
Their teacher picked up a top hat that was resting on the piano. “Oooh yeah. That's why I put all your names in this hat. Whoever you choose will be your partner.”
“I bet the duck's in the hat,” Brittany whispered conspiratorially to Santana.
“But Matt's out sick today,” Santana said, rather than try to explain to her best friend that the lesson had nothing to do with ducks. “He had to go to the hospital cause he found a spider in his ear.”
“I guess I'll just have to put my name in the hat for now,” Mr. Schuester decided. “Who's up first?”
Puck was up and out of his seat before Mr. Schue had even finished speaking. He may have thought school was for suckers but, as a betting man, Puck knew a little something about odds and he knew that going first gave him the best chance of avoiding being paired up with Ryan Berry. He may have been a fellow Jew but the dude made Puck want to set himself on fire ninety percent of the time.
He reached into the hat and pulled out a name. “Mercedes.” The girl in question just rolled her eyes in annoyance.
Artie went next. “Mr. Schue,” he read out, smiling awkwardly. Well...that was certainly going to be interesting.
Then it was Finn's turn. “Kurt,” he said, looking distinctly uncomfortable. Seeing the look on Kurt's face and the soft mocking laughs of their friends, Quinn didn't entirely blame him.
“Mr. Schue, I don't know if I can do this with another guy.”
“The fates have spoken Finn,” Schue said, making it clear that although Finn was his favorite, he still wasn't getting out of singing to Kurt.
Ryan was next and Quinn found herself sitting up straighter in her seat in anticipation. “Quinn.” Fate indeed. She would have smiled if Ryan didn't look like someone had just shot his puppy. What was that about?
One by one the rest were paired off -Tina with Mike, who's name Mr. Schuester had written down as Other Asian in a stunning display of racial insensitivity, and Santana with Brittany.-
Artie raised his hand. “Would you mind clarifying what kinds of songs you want us to sing?”
Never one to miss an opportunity to perform, Ryan leapt to his feet. “Why don't you let me demonstrate? Ballads happen make up a large part of my very extensive repertoire,” he said, moving to the piano, pushing Brad aside and taking his place. Before anyone could stop him, his fingers were moving deftly across the keys.
“She can kill with a smile, she can wound with her eyes. She can ruin your faith with her casual lies and she only reveals what she wants you to see. She hides like a child but she's always a woman to me,” he sang. “She can lead you to love, she can take you or leave you. She can ask for the truth but she'll never believe. She'll take what you give her as long as it's free. Yeah, she steals like a thief but she's always a woman to me.”
Maybe it was the way that Ryan kept glancing in her direction or the fact that the lyrics seemed to describe her in an eerily accurate manner, but Quinn couldn't help but feel that his heartfelt rendition of Always A Woman To Me was directed solely at her. She didn't know whether to feel flattered or offended.
“She's frequently kind and she's suddenly cruel. She can do as she pleases, she's nobody's fool. And she can't be convicted, she's earned her degree. And the most she will do is throw shadows at you but she's always a woman to me.”
A round of polite applause broke out as Ryan finished up the song. Frowning to herself, Quinn clapped along with them. Maybe things with Ryan weren't going smoothly as she'd originally thought.
-
Standing in front of a mirror in her dress for the Chastity Ball, Quinn had never felt more like a complete fraud. She could see it plain as day, her baby bump, the evidence that she had absolutely no business wearing that white dress, and if she could see it then other people would too.
“Sweetie, I am so proud of you,” her mother said, rubbing her arm. “The Chastity Ball is so important to your father.”
Quinn missed her Cheerios uniform, which managed to almost completely hide her sha...no, not shame. She was not ashamed of their baby. She didn't know when she'd stopped thinking of it as her baby and started thinking of it as theirs but she knew she had to stop. It was thinking like that, that lead to thinking about what it would be like to keep the baby with Ryan and that would only lead to places that Quinn couldn't allow herself to go.
Her mother moved behind her to zip the dress up, Quinn sucked in her stomach and silently prayed it would do all the way up.
But apparently God wasn't listening because the zipper stopped halfway up her back.
“Hmm, well that's odd, we had this custom made a month ago.”
“I had a really big lunch today at school,” Quinn scrambled to cover up the truth for just that little bit longer. “Really big tacos.”
She could see it on her mother's face, reflected in the mirror, she didn't believe her. She knew. Oh God, her mom knew!
Quinn waited for the tearful acknowledgement of her situation; she braced herself for the anger, the words of disappointment. None of it ever came.
Judy Fabray plastered on a painfully fake smile -much like the one Quinn knew she wore herself whenever she told Finn that she loved him- and embraced her daughter from behind. “No worries, sweetie. I'll just take it down to the tailor tomorrow and we'll let it out a little bit,” she said in an overly cheerful manner.
It was then that Quinn knew that the small, almost desperate, comforting touches Judy was giving her and her silence was all the support that she was ever going to get from her mother.
In some ways her mother's resolute denial was even worse than the anger Quinn had been expecting.
“The problem here is, honey, you know that I-I don't think you've been getting enough exercise ever since you quit the Cheerios, am I right?” Judy continued, looping the measuring tape around Quinn's waist.
Quinn briefly considered telling her that she got quite the daily workout having copious amounts of sex with the father of her child, just to see what her mother's reaction would be to that. “Yeah. Yeah, that's right,” she agreed instead, consciously feeding her mother's self-delusion.
“I mean, you used to spend hours ever day doing backflips and high kicks. So now, I mean, now you spend all your free time sitting on a stool in the dark singing showtunes. Do you know how many calories you burn singing? Not very many.”
Quinn looked at her mother with sad eyes, silently pleading with her to drop the act for just one second and tell her that everything was going to be okay.
“Judy!” Quinn heard her father call out. “Glenn Beck is on!”
Her mother's gleeful reaction kind of made Quinn want to cry. They were such a cliché; a family of blonde, bigoted conservative Christian Republicans that worshipped at the altar of Fox News.
“Oh wait, hold on, hold on,” her father hammed it up, holding his hand over his eyes as he entered the room. “Oh, I don't want to see!”
“Daddy, it's not like we're getting married,” Quinn said demurely. But one day, she knew, one day she was expected to marry a man just like her father.
Her father came up to her, peeking between his fingers before finally removing his hand from his face. Looking at her with pride, he leaned in and kissed her on the cheek as her mother picked up her gin and tonic.
“Oh, look at you!” he said proudly. “Speaking of getting married, how's that boy you've been dating?”
It probably said something that Quinn's thoughts immediately went to Ryan, rather than Finn.
“Yeah, he's not pressuring you at all is he?” Judy asked with a hint of concern.
“No.” At least not for sex. “No, he's a gentleman.”
“I'm glad to hear that,” Russell said, smiling approvingly. “That's why I'm inviting him over for dinner on Sunday.”
No. That was not going to happen, Quinn couldn't let Finn anywhere near her parents. He'd probably inform them of her pregnancy through song or something idiotic and disrespectful to her wishes like that. She'd knock him out and tie him to a chair before letting him even breathe the same air as them.
“Oh! Wonderful!” Judy breathed in excitement.
“Refresher?” Russell asked, moving to take his wife's half-empty glass. His own glass of whiskey clutched in his hand. Her parents called themselves social drinkers, Quinn secretly called them functional alcoholics.
“Oh, I don't want you to have to lift a finger for me. I'm your wife,” Judy said happily. Quinn watched them in dismay, knowing that was going to be her in twenty years time. She didn't want that. She didn't want a life where she mindlessly catered to her husband's every whim like a deranged Stepford wife, self-medicating with alcohol to the point where she'd never be able to feel anything more than numbness.
The worst part was that she knew she had a way out, she just wouldn't, couldn't, allow herself to take it.
-
“So that song you sang yesterday...” Quinn began tentatively, watching Ryan buckle his belt while she slid her underwear back up her legs. Finn was thankfully off practicing his ballad with Kurt, leaving her free to spend more time with Ryan, she would've been a fool not to take advantage of it. “Was it about me?”
“It didn't offend you, did it?” Ryan asked, suddenly looking worried.
“No. Not really...” She sighed, she knew that she shouldn't be talking about this with him. She should just leave well enough alone but she couldn't do that, not when she could feel Ryan pulling away from her. Not physically, they were having more sex than ever, but emotionally; ever since the day he sang Hello to her, he didn't even look at her when they made lo...had sex anymore. “Why did you sing it?”
“Because it's one of my favorite ballads and it suits my voice...and yes, given it's position on the playlist I made about you, perhaps it does remind me of you a little,” Ryan admitted, looking anywhere but at Quinn. “But not in a bad way.”
“You have a playlist about me?” Quinn asked, flattered. “How many songs are on it?”
“As of yesterday, fifty eight.”
Quinn bit her lip as she smiled, her cheeks turning pink. She stepped closer to him, smoothing her hands up his chest to rest on his shoulders. “Thank you.”
“For what?” He asked guilelessly, his hands automatically coming to rest on her hips.
“I know that this can't be easy for you but...you've been so good to me, really,” Quinn said, gazing up into his doe-like brown eyes that were blazing with intensity as he looked at her. “I just...thank you for being so amazing.”
The corner of Ryan's mouth twitched up and he bent his head so their foreheads were resting together. “I can be better, if you'd let me.”
“I know.” She leaned up and kissed him tenderly, hoping that even though she couldn't tell him how she felt, he'd feel it and know. “But I can't.”
You'll thank me for this one day, Ryan.
-
It was a Wednesday and Quinn's world was falling apart. As if things weren't bad enough with her own mother knowing, now Finn's mom did too. She'd caught him singing to a recording of the sonogram of the baby, which Quinn would've thought was incredibly sweet if she wasn't so furious.
Carole Hudson was a smart woman, if she started asking questions, if Finn told her the lie Quinn had fed him about the hot tub and that they'd never actually had sex, she'd realize that the baby wasn't his. And if she didn't, the poor woman thought that she was going be a grandmother...She was just another person that was going to get hurt when the truth came out.
“I can't believe you told your mom, what if she tells my mom?” Quinn hissed at Finn, if they were somewhere a little more private than the school hallway, she would've been screaming at him.
“She's not-”
“Half the school knows, your mom knows.” My mom knows. “Who else do you want to tell, huh?”
“She's not going to tell anybody-”
“You're wrong, I'm right,” Quinn cut him off, poking his chest. “I'm smart, you're dumb.”
“Quinn, it's okay-”
“No, no, no!” She didn't want to hear it. Quinn was verging on the edge of hysteria, yet another thing had been taken out of her control, it was all slipping away too fast to save. She just needed everything to stop so she could catch her breath and think for one second. She needed Ryan.
“You're wrong, I'm right. I'm right!” she said loudly, walking away from Finn before she did something truly drastic.
“She's doesn't talk to other moms!” she heard him yell at her retreating back.
Shaking her head, Quinn made a beeline for Ryan's locker, hoping that he'd still be there. What she found when she rounded the corner horrified her.
Ryan was pressed back up against his locker, looking vaguely terrified, and being molested by the school crazy, Suzy Pepper. Quinn barely managed to tamp down the part of her that felt like hitting her with a chair.
Holding her head up high and attempting to adopt the posture of Quinn Fabray, head cheerio and school tyrant, she marched over to the pair. “What's going on here?”
“I-I...” Ryan stuttered, looking at her pleadingly as Suzy practically wrapped her whole body around his arm.
“I was just admiring Ryan's arms,” Suzy sighed dreamily. “Your biceps are so firm.” She squeezed said bicep, sending Quinn into a possessive rage.
No. This was not happening. Not today. Mine, the primal part of her brain growled, urging her to crush her rival. And that's what Suzy Pepper was, even if she was only mildly attractive and not so mildly insane, if she was interested in Ryan then she was Quinn's competition.
“Yes, they are,” Quinn snarled, wrapping herself firmly around Ryan's other arm, clearly staking her claim. “And they're off limits, especially to you,” she said in a tone that obviously meant ”Get your hands off my man, you crazy bitch.” She reached up and hooked her fingers around Ryan's collar for extra emphasis.
Ryan's confused eyes darted back and forth between them, the poor boy had obviously never had two women fighting over him and didn't have a clue what was going on.
Suzy narrowed her eyes at Quinn, obviously trying to figure out why she was acting like an extremely jealous girlfriend, but eventually backed off.
“Come on, Ryan,” Quinn said, tugging on his hand to drag him away. “We need to practice our ballads for Glee.”
She held his hand as she pulled him down the hall. She knew that people were staring, she knew that word of it would get back to Finn, but for the moment Quinn honestly didn't care what people thought of her. They could all go to hell.