Name: Chris
Title: 5 Boys Who Broke Quinn Fabray's Heart
Fandom: GLEE
Genre: General
Rating: G
Summary: She's like a one woman wrecking crew. [Quinn centric.]
More insomnia equals GLEEfic I guess. It certainly isn't the weirdest thing I've done at five am. Just so you know, I wrote this in about an hour so it probably sucks pretty hard and is entirely unbetaed. You've been warned.
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"here is the secret nobody knows: i carry your heart, i carry it in my heart" - e. e. cummings
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What you don't know is that Quinn Fabray spent much of her middle school days thinking that she would grow up to marry Matt Rutherford.
He was sweet and funny and they sat beside each other in Ms. Ellis's English class. When creative writing hour came around every week, they would push their desks together and map out alternate lives full of pink ponies and chocolate toothpaste, where little brothers didn't exist and you didn't always have to be just so.
For nine months, Quinn and Matt created their dream world every Thursday afternoon.
For eight months, two weeks, and a day Quinn designed the perfect wedding and her dream house every night under her ruffled comforter.
"You're cool," Matt tells her. "Most girls would tell me it's gross to want a pet frog."
It is gross. But he's always wanted one. But he doesn't need to know that.
So long as she never has to touch it.
Matt asks her on her first date over Thanksgiving weekend. She begs her father for three hours - it's only a movie and it'll be daytime. His parents are going to pick them up and drop them off, very safe. Very respectable. He finally agrees and she spends two days picking choosing her outfit.
They watch Harry Potter, and Matt is nice. Like always. He buys her candy and lets her have the arm rest and it's all exactly what she wanted.
She's feeling pretty good when she walks into school on Monday. People are looking at her and she hears someone mention Matt's name. no surprise. People like Matt. And people want to be like Quinn.
Then she goes into the bathroom to check her hair and the door's barely open when she hears Santana, with way too much attitude for an eleven year old, talking loudly about how Puck told her that Matt only went out with Quinn because it would boost his rep and that she was obviously desperate for him. "Besides," Santana adds, "Puck's been on him for weeks to just do it and get it over with."
Quinn doesn't go to school on Thursday's for the rest of the semester. After Christmas she switches to another English class. That Brittney girl isn't so bad when she stops talking.
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The first time Finn Hudson sees Quinn in her Cheerios uniform he walks into the doorframe of Mr. Schuester's classroom and drops his stuff all over the floor.
"What do you think?" Santana hisses, careful not to let Mr. Schue's conjugations get interrupted. He's already threatened her with detention twice this week. "Puck says that Finn's a shoe-in to make second string quarterback."
"Second string?" Quinn's nose wrinkles.
Quinn can all but hear Santana roll her eyes. "We're Freshman." She flicks the end of the blonde's ponytail. "And when Jeff Wilkes graduates this year, then Finn gets his spot."
There is no one cooler at McKinley High than Jeff Wilkes.
It takes her less than a week before Finn is carrying her books home from school and asking her Dad if he can walk her over to Baskin Robbins after dinner.
Finn is exactly what girls like Quinn look for. He's cute and pliable and not afraid to have everyone know that she is without question in charge in their relationship, he's the quarterback and even after a year he doesn't press her about sex.
Mrs. Hudson raised him right - he's a gentleman, and she's waiting. It's that simple.
Only she doesn't.
Her heart is beating a bit too painfully in her chest when she sees her boyfriend waiting at her locker the morning after she has sex with Puck, smiling at her and trying so hard to act like he doesn't notice that Rachel Berry has those crazy eyes of hers fixed on his back. Quinn sniffs. As if Finn would ever actually go there.
Reaching into his backpack, he pulls out a package of Hershey's Kisses and hands them to her, shy smile on his face even now and kisses her cheek before heading off to Math. ("Why do they need numbers and letters?")
"Finn."
He turns back. Puck walks down the hall towards him from his locker, like a bad cliché come to life, growing larger behind his best friend's shoulder until they're both looking at her.
("I made a mistake, a stupid mistake and ended up somewhere I never should have been. I'm sorry.")
It's too much, the way he looks at her, trusting and full of something like wonder, still, and she can't stand to have that look taken away from her. "Love you," she manages, all the other words stuck to the roof of her mouth, grating against her tongue.
His whole face breaks into a grin, like it always does. "Love you, too."
She throws him a kiss and he heads back down the hall, Puck's "Dude, you're so whipped" echoing in her head the rest of the day.
It's still warm out, Indian Summer and more humid than Ohio should ever be, but a shiver races up her spine. It feels like a warning in the air, silence before the storm comes crashing down.
Or maybe, deep down, she's already bracing herself for the fallout.
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Until she was eight, Quinn lived next door to Artie Abrams.
Artie and Quinn were born only four days apart and they're close the entire time they're neighbors. Both shy children, both like to dance, both get good grades in school. They laid in the grass under the sprinklers all summer and told secrets and made animals out of clouds.
For a long time, Quinn pretends to forget that time before the car crash and the Abrams' moved to a one level house on the other side of town.
She sits beside him, hands on her belly, as Tina and Mike dance around the auditorium, the clacking of their tap shoes perfectly synched to Artie's singing.
Quinn knows what its like; to watch someone else do the one thing you want the most in the whole world and know you just can't. It's why Finn kept finding her in the stands while Coach Sylvester drilled her (her) squad through a routine patched around their missing captain. That should have been her.
Her hand finds its way to his shoulder and when he doesn't shrug her off, she thinks about the boy who used to let her eat all the blue popsicles in the pack and the boy who looks at Tina like she's everything he could ever want.
She's the first one to speak when the number is over. "Hey."
Artie adjusts the wheels of his chair to look at her without craning his neck. "Hi, Quinn."
Her eyes stray to the center of the stage of their own accord, to where Mike is trying to show Finn a few steps. "They were really good."
"Yeah." His voice holds no bitterness, no jealousy. Only a little wistfulness. It's hard not to be envious of Mike. When he dances, he has complete control. He's sleek and powerful and alive. It's beautiful.
Again, she places her palm on his shoulder, fingers pressing a little firmer this time. "So were you."
A small smile ghosts his lips. "Thanks, Quinn." Artie turns more fully to face her, his eyes falling down to her rather impressive bump. "Getting close, huh?"
Quinn's own smile isn't nearly as genuine as Artie's. "A few weeks. Kinda scary."
"You'll do great," he assures her. "You always have."
Silence falls, but not one the kind she hates, like when Sarah talks about wishing the baby would just come out already and Mrs. Puckerman eyes Quinn like she's the Whore of Babylon, flavored Catholic, who broke her son. (Mrs. Hudson has her own version.) No, quiet with Artie always reminds her of being a kid. She wishes she could go back, stay there. All these things; babies and love and the hardest decision she'll ever have to make, she isn't ready for it.
Tina laughs when Mike dips her again in demonstration, and Artie's eyes slide shut. "I hope all her dreams come true."
Quinn isn't ready to be a mom, but seeing her daughter's face, that's become her dream. Her wish. The countdown in her head whenever a tiny foot thuds inside her stomach. The word sounds different when Artie says it. More precious, more mystical. The echo as he rolls away is deeply meant and even better understood before.
"Me too," she whispers, but he's already gone.
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Ms. Corcoran brings Beth in to Quinn's room before she takes her home, so they can say goodbye. Puck clenches his jaw, eyes bright, and walks out.
He never even holds her.
Later, when Mercedes and their moms are helping her get her things together to go home (her home) he walks back into the room, not looking anywhere but at the scuffed sneakers it seems like he's been wearing as long as she's known him.
"We'll give you two a minute," her Mom says. As they leave, Quinn sees Mercedes squeeze Puck's hand, briefly.
During the last few weeks of her pregnancy Quinn read a lot. No really, A Lot. It helped her avoid Mrs. Puckerman and kept her mind off things, and there was little else to do when the baby kept her up all night playing the bongos on her kidneys. As a result her head takes these spontaneous trips sometimes when she sees certain people and certain things.
She looks at Puck, looking down at the tiny hospital bracelet they cut off Beth when they signed the adoption papers and she got one that listed Shelby Corcoran as her mother instead of the sixteen year girl she's never going to know, and it hits her.
Quinn Fabray destroyed Noah Puckerman when she handed him the pen with the adoption agency's logo down the side. She didn't just break him, but ground him into dust. Like the romantic anti-hero, all damaged and Byronic.
(Here had been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence.)
It's a lot to take in for someone she used to consider the emotional equivalent of a dog chasing its tale.
"I knew that if I held her," he says softly, "I'd never be able to let her go."
Sitting on the bed, Quinn takes his hand in hers and holds it to her heart. "We did the right thing." If she says it enough, maybe it'll stop hurting. "She's going to have a Mom who can give her everything. A Mom who isn't a high school kid who got careless."
He shudders out a hard breath that sounds like it hurts. "We could have been a family."
His 'family' sounds like a wish, like the turning point of a whole life. Sounds like forever. He looks up, staring at her as if he knows he's probably the most tragic thing she's ever seen in life right now, and not caring. He lets her sees this. See him.
Quinn doesn't think she's ever felt like she was so important to another person before.
It scares her to death.
"She has a new family," Quinn states, blunt, unapologetic, releasing her hold on his hand.
Puck hardens back into place and leaves without a backwards glance. It's done. They're over, whatever they were. What just happened will never be mentioned again.
Later, when she hears that Puck drove straight into Cincinnati that night and slept with the first girl his fake ID brought him into contact with, Quinn refuses to cry.
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Quinn takes to spending lunch in the library when she can't handle anymore of Mercedes and Kurt's daily dish fest on the happenings and wardrobes of the McKinley student body.
That's where she is, on the floor by the window, caught up in Goodnight Moon when she realizes that she didn't just grab her water bottle, but a bright yellow sneaker.
She looks up and Mike Chang is smiling down at her, apparently amused to have her fingers slipping into the strings of his favorite shoes. "I don't think they go with your outfit, Q." He falls down beside her, lanky limbs more graceful than they have the right to be, and plucks at the hem of her blue dress.
One thing about Quinn that only Santana and Brittney know; Quinn's first kiss, when she was twelve outside the city pool at sunset, was with Mike.
He'd been new to Lima and came in one day with Matt and Finn. He stared at her the whole day.
"Go for it," Santana said. Quinn decided she would - when Matt wasn't around.
He told her she was beautiful and asked if he could walk her home, waited for her on the bench while she changed into dry clothes. Mike held her hand right away, so she kissed him.
It lasted all of three days.
Now, he knocks his knee against her and asks her how things are going as if the before never happened.
She shrugs, letting her book come to rest against her now empty belly. (It's a shock, sometimes.) "Okay."
"Then why are you in here, reading that?" he tips his head at her book, that same smile from four years ago on his face.
"Sometimes," she says simply, "quiet is nice."
Nodding, he leans his head back against the shelf. "Fair enough."
(He's the first person who hasn't asked, and she thinks she loves him a little for it.)
They stay that way for a bit, while Quinn says goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere, and Mike moves to face her and starts drawing on her ankle with a green marker.
"That better be washable," she warns and he chuckles, the sound and warm and cozy in the afternoon sunlight.
He gives her a look, that Mike look that says more than all the words he never utters. He's the silent type - which Quinn appreciates, being that she's still the biggest piece of gossip walking. She goes back to her book.
And she doesn't look up again until Mike has wrapped a hand around her ankle and pulled it onto his leg so he can draw both sides. She looks at what he's done, and sees a vine winding its way around her skin, full of leaves and flowers, a little bumblebee on the just of her anklebone. "It's beautiful."
"You're beautiful," he replies, and oh God, he sounds exactly the same.
For the first time since she got pregnant, she comes close to believing it. Believing him.
Mike has never lied to her.
He asked her to the Fall Formal back in freshman year, but she'd already settled on Finn. They never spoke of it again. But yeah, she knew.
The rasp of faint calluses on the tips of his fingers send goosebumps spreading along her skin like brushfire. Who knew ankles were so sensitive. Of course Mike notices, and his dark eyes light with something that she's been pretending to ignore for the two years his friends have held her hand in the halls.
Hot salt burns behind her irises, and she wipes at her eyes with the page of her book. "I'm not ready, Mike."
It doesn't seem to phase him though. He's patient. "Okay. But I've been here for four years, Quinn. I'm not going anywhere."
And she cries.
Mike pulls her against him, her head falling into the crook of his neck and shoulder. It's nice there, really nice, and she could get lost there if she let herself.
Truth is, she's scared. Quinn doesn't want to let herself get used to Mike. Everything she had and everything she was a year ago is gone. Another loss, so soon, is more than she can handle.
("I'm so afraid of you," she never says, "because I couldn't take it if I lost you, too.")
Laughing one of those sad, watery laughs when she sees a gaggle of freshman boys watching them, Quinn pulls away and scrubs her hands over her cheeks. "You're going to be my next baby daddy by the end of the day, you do realize that?"
His grin is big and open and so genuine it makes her ache in places that are still healing. "Lucky me."
Quinn laughs a real laugh this time, lets Mike pull her to her feet, and walk with her to Chemistry. He dances a little along the way, all easy elegance and not once does he bump into anyone.
She notices Puck's glare trained on the two of them so she sits, pretending she doesn't see him trying to catch her eye for the rest of the hour. The opportunity he's after isn't going to happen.
("I could love you." It's Matt and Finn and Artie and Puck and those who's names she's long forgotten she ever knew. "And we all know how that turns out.")
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fin.
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There you have it. Where this came from, who knows, probably spwaned from the fact that I have irrational LOVE for Mike Chang, I DON'T EVEN KNOW.
'Here had been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence.'- The Scarlet Letter