Author's Note: Title is fully "(As Long As There Are) Stars Above You" and, yes, totally cheesy. But it's from pretty much the greatest love song, like, ever. So don't hate. Because if you hate on the Beach Boys, I will totally cut you.
There are things you know about her that no one else does.
You know that she's terrified of heights. Even though no one would ever guess it, every time she was standing atop of the cheerleading pyramid and you had your hands wrapped securely around her ankle to hold her in place, you could feel the tremors in her leg that came not from fatigue or poor balance or physical exertion, but from her fear of falling.
You know that she kept every dopey note, squashed dandelion, and leftover ticket stub from her relationship with Finn, all bundled together in an old tea tin that sits forlornly in the bottom drawer of her bedside table, alongside a sloppily handmade photo album she made with her sister the summer after kindergarten and the first stuffed animal her father ever gave her—a purple dragon with violently green horns and a cheerful grin. Every night, between brushing her teeth and murmuring her nightly prayers, she took all three out and ran her fingers over worn edges and scraps of paper, all sad eyes and trembling hands at the things she's lost.
You know that she yearns for control. Power means nothing to her, but control is everything, and every time she slips you can see the self-loathing flashing in her eyes. You knew before anyone else that she'd slept with Puck, your eyes flicking from the disgust in her downcast eyes to his slumped shoulders the day after and the pieces falling together in your head, and you resisted the urge to slam his head through a window because you know that she never would have slipped so greatly on her own.
You've known Quinn Fabray since the first day of preschool, and you know things about her that no one else does. The two of you snipe and complain and one-up each other constantly, bitch and moan and gripe about the other every day, but she's the one who comforts you in the ninth grade when your father has a heart attack, and you're the first person she admits her pregnancy to. You know her as well as you know yourself, to the point where you can predict her actions and reactions, words and deeds, gestures and quirked eyebrows.
You are shocked when, one night she is staying with you two weeks into the summer after Beth is born, she unexpectedly wraps a hand around the back of your neck and kisses you.
There are things she knows about you that no one else does.
She knows that you're deathly afraid of ants. You read all of the Animorphs books in grade school and had nightmares for weeks about the one chapter where all of the characters morphed into ants and were almost decimated by a swarm of ants from another hill.
She knows that you have a soft spot for Noah Puckerman that no one understands. You were never in love with him, never even really romantically interested in him, viewing him as social currency first and a person second; even so, though, over time he grew on you, and she knows that you consider him one of yours, someone who you're as willing to kick in the balls as defend fiercely to anyone else who tries.
She knows that you want desperately to be in love with Brittany, who is unbearably enamored with you. She knows that you regret the one time you slipped up while drunk and let Brittany take you to bed, that you tried time and again to let her down easily, that you had tried repeatedly to make yourself love her as more than one of your best friends because she was Brittany and she loved you in her unique no-holds-barred manner, but you just couldn't make yourself fall in love and you hated yourself for it.
Quinn Fabray has been your best friend, confidant, partner in crime, since the first day of preschool, and she knows things about you that no one else does. Though the two of you argue and snap and needle one another to death, she keeps your secret when you get drunk on Mrs. Fabray's gin one night and spill to her about how much you wish you could be in love with Brittany, and you watch her back silently and hunt down and dismantle the tiny number of morons who thought it would be a good idea to throw a slushie at her.
She is shocked, though, when she kisses you and you leap back belatedly, eyes wide and hands shaking and demanding to know how she knew.
There are things you know about her that no one else ever will.
You know that for ten weeks and three days after Finn found out about her sleeping with Puck, she wrote him an apology. Some were short and succinct, no more than two words printed delicately on a single sheet of notebook paper; others were three page explanations and requests for forgiveness, for understanding, for some semblance or possibility of friendship. You know because you watched her slip them into his locker every day, and watched him read them all and then toss them in a trash can, oblivious to her watching from down the hall; you know because you recovered every single one of them and bound them all together and cornered Finn Hudson one afternoon in January and hit him on the head with them like a puppy until he got it through his skull that he needed to stop feeling so sorry for himself.
You know that, though she hates the way her father tore her down and threw her out, every time she prays she asks God for her father to forgive her and take her back as his daughter. You would have found a way to destroy Russell Fabray, without hesitation or remorse, if she didn't still love him so deeply.
You know that she is constantly torn between ambition and faith, uncertain if she cares more for the life of success that was always expected of her or the quiet life in the church that she always found comfort in imagining. Her faith, even through pregnancy and homelessness and a broken family, disgrace and slushies and cruel taunting, is an unshakeable core, and you know that she prays every night because she believes and trusts in God to listen, to give her guidance, to eventually tell her somehow if she's meant for a corner office or a lectern.
You are absolutely blindsided when she stares at you, her fingertips pressed lightly to her lips when you ask how she knew and she whispers out that she didn't, that she wanted to, that she didn't know you wanted it as well. You stare at her, hands still shaking and your mind unable to form a coherent thought other than the echoing words I wanted to and I didn't know you wanted it, too.
There are things she knows about you that no one else ever will.
She knows that, though you've followed your parents' scholastic plan for you and will find yourself a cushy position at a big-eight accounting firm, you'd really rather study design and architecture and build beautiful, striking buildings that make people stop and stare out of sheer appreciation. You will follow the plan that guarantees success and not disrupt the status quo, that you will succumb to a life enclosed in offices and buildings that lack imagination and sunlight, but she knows that you'll always dream of cathedral ceilings and grandiose sweeping windows.
She knows that you used to bring home every straight-A report card with a smile and proud shoulders, every quarter and every semester until halfway through the first semester of the seventh grade, when you realized that perfect grades were the expected minimum and your parents would never congratulate you for achieving them. She knows that you only followed her and Brittany onto the Cheerios because your parents expected perfection, just like hers did, and perfection was more than just the grades you had taken such pride in; it was perfect grades and a perfect social life and a perfectly padded resume for college applications. She knows that your silent rebellion that they'll never know about manifests in sweat and sex and one-time hookups in cheap hotels with boys and girls from school whose names you'll forget in two months, that you half want them to catch you and call you a whore and care.
She knows that you hate cheerleading and Sue Sylvester, that you don't like choreographed movement or regimented shouting, that you wanted to run track. She knows that you only put up with Coach Sylvester for hers and Brittany's sake, that you only keep yourself from slapping the other Cheerios for the sake of maintaining the perfect status your parents demand of you.
She looks completely blindsided, though, at your shaking hands and wide eyes and the way you know your shoulders relax and chest loosens and you feel like every weight in your world disappears when she says I wanted to. Your hands fall to your sides as you stare at her, and you watch in wonder as her eyes, for the first time since Finn joined glee and her world started to slip sideways, were light and unburdened by sadness or guilt and shining happily at the tiniest vestiges of a rare smile tugs at your lips.
You've known Quinn Fabray since the first day of preschool. You know her dreams, her fears, her prayers, her regrets. You have been at her side through a distancing relationship with her sister, her pregnancy, her father throwing her out, her status at school plummeting, the father of her child making her life unbearably difficult at times, giving up her newborn daughter. You are there to prop her up every time she starts to cry, and to follow through on the violence she'd never find in herself to deliver when it needs to be done.
You've been in love with her for as long as you can remember. It lay dormant and buried, through years of school and boyfriends and Puck and Finn and Beth and Brittany, ignored and pushed away in a desperate attempt to maintain the most important relationship in your life.
You've been with her since the second week of the first summer after Beth was born, when she was staying over at your house one night and kissed you out of the blue and whispered I didn't know you wanted it, too. She still prays every night for her father's forgiveness, and you still prepare yourself for an accounting degree that you don't want. But suddenly, Finn's self-pity and Russell Fabray's idiocy and your parents' dictation of your life and Brittany still being in love with you don't hurt as much anymore, because now Quinn Fabray isn't just standing at your side. Her fingers tangle with yours and you can feel the subtle warmth of her body pressed against your side from where she stands, and you remember that she knows everything about you and still wants you.
And in the face of that, nothing else really seems to matter all that much.