Title: Games For Days
Author: interpol..ice
Fandom: Glee
Characters: Quinn Fabray, Santana Lopez
Rating: Hard M
Words: 4,600+
Quinntana Week Prompt: Day 2 – Serial Killer
Summary: QW13. Quinn can't explain it. She's always had a hunger for blood and control. In equal measures, she had to have her fix. So she wasn't letting some hotshot detective ruin this circus she was running. When Quinn was presented with complications, she knew exactly how to take care of them. Detective Santana Lopez would never know what hit her.
Disclaimer: Glee is Ryan Murphy's & company. I own nothing except the glue that stuck the different characters and concepts in this one fic.
Author's Note: Yes, this is still a fulfillment of a Quinntana Week 2013 prompt. This is inspired and titled after a Julian Plenti song and I don't know how this will turn out because when I wrote this I went through so many mood swings and though it's supposed to be this dark fic but I was just 'loljk' in some parts so... yeah, it's sort of a satirical mindfuck.

Also, to those readers who've read my other Quinntana stuff, new stuff is coming in soon. I just had to get this out on the market because it's projected to be a longer fic than the first QW2013 entries.

Warning: Shit's gonna hit the fan. Will make normal people uncomfortable because of its graphic and gorey quality. Probably offends people. It's also a slow-paced grandma so, yeah. An indulgence on my part. Heed but still want to read? Let's get this baby going.

x x x

GAMES FOR DAYS

by

interpol..ice

x x x

The truth is, if you're really smart and if you're really careful, it'd be very easy to kill someone and get away with it.

And Quinn Fabray? Well, let's just say she likes trying her luck every now and then.

x x x

All the furniture in the basement is covered in plastic. This is one of Quinn's little rules for her cabin in the woods. The basement floor is plain old concrete and has drainage grills at the sides so Quinn could easily hose down the path of blood her victims make when she drags them into another room deeper down, farther back.

In that room, there's a headless body bleeding into a hot tub.

At the center of the main basement, Quinn's sat on a plastic-covered couch with a bottle of Alaskan Amber craft beer in her red hands. She watches TV, it's a re-run of Friends and she laughs quietly every two minutes or so.

And she's got specks of blood on her face. When she drags her tongue across her bottom lip, she can taste that sweet metallic tang and she washes it down with a long gulp of the ice-cold, malty liquid.

She thinks of the body in the tub (Finn Hudson, his driver's license says). Funny how two hours ago, Quinn had no idea what his name was. Two hours ago, he was such a sport, thinking it was kinky that she wanted to chain him, blind-folded, to the bed. He had cuffs around his wrists and ankles as she rode him and he came so fast that it irritated Quinn enough to just take the Swiss Knife out of her bedside drawer and stab him in his windpipe.

He weighs like a brick wall. Even with his big head cut off, he was still a pain to drag down from the ground floor and into the tub. Quinn relaxes on the couch, ignoring the ache in her biceps.

On the TV, there's Monica and Chandler kissing and then Rachel, Phoebe, and Joey walking in on them. They break apart and Chandler's all nonchalant and 'kissing my female friends on the lips is normal' and then, because he's really embarrassed, he moves for the exit. On his way out, Chandler stops to kiss Rachel on the mouth, to kiss Phoebe on the mouth, and to Joey and his expectant man-lips, Chandler just says, "See ya!".

She's enjoying herself because it's been a while since she's seen Friends. And honestly, Finn Hudson (or should she say Finn Heads-off?) could wait.

I'll clean it up later, Quinn thinks. Like she was twelve and she tossed all the clothes from her closet out onto her bed because she was suddenly unsatisfied with her entire wardrobe.

But it isn't that kind of mess. It is a dead-man kind of mess and that means she still has two hours tops until rigor mortis, when his body would stiffen and turn into a fat plank of wood.

So Quinn dips her toes into the distraction while she can. She promises herself that she'll start dealing with the dead body when the episode ends.

x x x

She's an architect. Five years under the Rhode Island School of Design's Architecture Program made sure she became a pretty damn good one. She works at a big architectural firm in the Upper West Side. Quinn's got the skill set and the looks so her peers are impressed, her superiors respect her, and somehow, after two years there, she's already making sixty-three thousand dollars a year.

She's brilliant at work, yes, but Quinn knows very well that she's being overpaid.

x x x

Quinn owns a two-bedroom condominium at 101 West 87. The main color scheme to her apartment is power white and sensible brown. Her interior designer said that this was a good color palette for her because it should impart onto Quinn a calm and earthy feel in addition to giving her more energy and clarity. And whatever, okay? Because even though her own sister is this respected name in the same business (which Quinn doesn't understand up until now), Quinn doesn't want to come crawling back to Fran for her furnishing opinions. And so, Quinn doesn't argue with her Asian interior designer's unimaginative suggestions. When you're paying five thousand bucks a pop for someone's goddamned 'expertise', you fucking take it.

And so, the living room is furnished with white couches and chairs. Things like coffee tables and end-tables are made of glass. Her rug was from the back of a Kodiak bear her father shot down in 1995, as some sort of homage because Tatiachi, her interior designer, said something about bringing elements of your family into the picture to give your new home the feel of the childhood home you grew up in.

Five thousand bucks for bullshit like this? Why yes, because fuck Fran Fabray.

The master bedroom has got a very lush bed. Tatiachi recommends maroon, brown, caramel, and crimson covers. The sheets and pillow cases have to be pastel colors from the left end of the visible spectrum. Black and white photos and expensive paintings Quinn has bought and collected from auctions line the walls and the hardwood floor is a beautiful dark brown Calamander that Quinn had shipped in from India. The other room, her home studio which she has, ironically, grown more predisposed to sleep in, contains all the tools of her craft. Deadlines keep her up at night and sometimes, Quinn feels like if she has to draw another line, she'd literally explode on the spot. Exhaustion will take her in mid-work and there are days when she wakes up with the morning sun blaring lines through her Venetian blinds, with the knowledge that she has once again used tracing paper as a sorry excuse for a pillow.

x x x

An hour of running six miles, of kick boxing, of swimming freestyle, they all torch up about six hundred calories. A night of murder burns even more. That's enough calories that Quinn doesn't feel compelled to retch out her dinner every night, a habit she picked up (along with the horrifying title, 'Lucy Caboosey') in middle school.

x x x

Quinn's parents died in a mysterious accident (which was really all Quinn's tinkering anyway) that resulted in an exploding car and the pre-cremation of Mr. and Mrs. Russel Fabray. In their last will, they leave Fran, Quinn's older and only other sibling, the Fabray Estate in the Hamptons where the two girls grew up.

And, probably to spite her for getting pregnant when she was sixteen, Quinn's parents leave her three hectares of woods and shrubbery in Staten Island. And with it, right smack dab in the middle of it, is the crematorium Ronald Fabray, Quinn's grandfather, ran in the late seventies. This crematorium, it spreads out for roughly an acre as a compound, walls around it and all.

When Quinn first visited the property, the grounds around the main building were thriving with weeds and the plants, they were all dried out and shrivelly. The air stank of sulfur and failure. She breathed all that in as she looked on at the ghost of an abused building before her. Branches from nearby trees have cracked the windows open, vines creeped up the sides of its stone walls. Rain and muck have left their own version of piss stains on it.

This... This 'gift' is what her parents leave her to appear gracious and loving.

x x x

The compound is a run-down shithole and Quinn just knows that the locals here have fucking urban legends and dumb campfire stories about this place. Forty years after its last use and a great repair job as one of Quinn's first investments, the crematory furnace is whipped into functional form. She puts it to good use.

The naïve and paranoid locals? Well, at least now, Quinn can give them something real to talk about. Quinn's going to flood this place with ghosts.

x x x

It really irks Quinn that Kitty Wilde's been assigned to the upcoming Motta Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. It's a high-profile project and the fact that Quinn's senior architects put Kitty Wilde, a third-year intern, on the job for the on-site analysis makes her murderous.

And as we all now by now, with Quinn Fabray, that word is not limited to just its figurative context.

Her supervisors reason with Quinn before she can question the assignment and they say that they need her here in New York. The senior partners leave it at that while the junior partners share jokes behind her back, saying that it's because she was responsible for the hike in male intern attendance.

Now, Quinn's too goddamned pissed to be flattered. She does not fucking care about the fucking male interns.

x x x

Bad days at work like this have Quinn splurging a small fortune at the hardware store.

So she's rolling her cart down the maze of tools and supplies, trying not to think about how much better the Motta project would be if she had a part in it. Instead, she takes account of the items she's got in her cart. There's an axe, and a new power drill, a light-weight chainsaw, and a pair of garden scissors that look like they wouldn't give way when cutting an arm in half by the elbow.

She buys more rope and duct tape. Also, she throws another three packs of disposable garbage bags into her cart because really, you can't get enough of those. The key to lugging dead body parts around without getting blood all over the walls or the carpet is multiple-bagging. That easy.

When she gets to the counter, the man behind it who's tending the register, steals perplexed glances at her as he scans her questionable power tool purchases. He's one of those rough-looking punks who's sports a mohawk and here he is, finding Quinn, angelic-looking Quinn, strange beyond his comprehension.

Quinn arcs one of her eyebrows at him. Not so full-on that he'd be intimidated, but she does this with the slightest smile, hoping the whole gesture would open up a window for small-talk. Quinn's not sure why, but she's interested in what he has to say.

And it works because then Puck (she reads from his name-tag, now that he's angled himself towards her) opens his mouth to say something. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were in the business of killing people." he jokes, trying to be playful.

He fucking hits the jackpot and Quinn tries to not collapse onto the floor in a fit of sniggers. She does, although, allow herself a wide grin. "Well, you never know, right?" she shoots back, gracing him with a quick wink after he hands her back her Mastercard.

x x x

Quinn drives a tafetta white Honda Civic to work and to get around New York. It's a hybrid model, to give off the impression the Quinn actually cares or something. The Civic's speedometer has these fabulous "eco" bars that tell her she's driving economically (by glowing green) or if she's wasting precious natural resources (by glowing blue). Besides its good mileage and its easy feel, one of the car's perks is its massive leg space. An accident in high school had her in a wheel chair for ten months so she relishes this leg space and feels weird bouts of freedom because of it.

Her music in the Civic is... Dionne Warwick, Destiny's Child, and the Beach Boys.

x x x

Now, for her shady after-work hobbies, she uses her Ford C-max.

The C-max is a small family car that has handy features like the hidden compartment in the second row's footwell, behind the driver seat. You just lift open the floormat and you've got enough room to fit in the chunky valuables that you want to keep safe and out of view, like an iPad or a video camera or a 9mm pistol.

It's got sliding doors. Perfect in case she wants to kidnap or kill a kid or something. She hasn't tried it yet, but her scheme-in-progress involves luring them in with candy.

Quinn always carries a heavy plastic sheet and towel and even a shower curtain on board for blood control. The seats in the back can fold over and become this great big trunk space when she needs it to be. This massive trunk space is an angel. Especially when it came through for her when she killed those four teenagers on a camping trip. Return of investement, Quinn calls it.

Also, it shouldn't be a total surprise or anything, but the car is more quiet than steam shooting out of a kettle and it comes in a gorgeous tuxedo black with windows tinted the same deep shade. The C-max gives her the stealth she needs and despite having corpses in her trunk every other night, she doesn't worry. This is because her car's not going to give anything away and because Beethoven's Ninth makes her feel magnificent and untouchable.

Still, Quinn doesn't fall short of taking precautionary measures. She still has enough sense to slap on a new sticker of a fake New York license plate on whenever she's on her secret businesses. Just to be safe.

But by God, how this car is perfect for dead bodies on the go.

x x x

When stacked up next to her younger sister, it isn't just birth order that Francine Delilah Fabray comes first in.

Quinn didn't grow up wearing Fran's hand-me-downs but she wishes she did. Fran just doesn't share with Quinn. Her old clothes go to the little girls' orphanages in South America. Fran makes it off to their parents that she just doesn't want Quinn to be seen dressed in leftovers and that Quinn deserves something better. She says that to her parents and they eat it all up, but really... Fran just doesn't share with Quinn.

When they were girls, when Fran was nine and Quinn was going on five, Quinn always had these bruises on her shins.

Lucy tripped again, Fran would say.

And like trained dogs, their parents would believe her.

A year later, Fran cuts a huge lock of hair on the side of Quinn's head. She cuts it so close to the scalp that Quinn's already got a bald patch at age six. And Fran leaves her younger sister there in the living room, making little Quinn hold the scissors with a menacing order of "stay still and don't ever let these go". Their mother walks in on Quinn twenty minutes later, Quinn's pudgy fingers still tightly clamped around the scissor handles. The next thing, cats scavenging their trash bins outside scatter to the four winds, the birds sat on the branches of courtyard trees shoot out of the trees and flap for their lives.

Because when Mrs. Fabray screams, the world kind of ends.

x x x

Frannie's tall and gracefully powerful. Frannie's a willowy golden tree that casts an endless shadow. A shadow that has been spitefully cradling Quinn ever since she could remember.

It's been over a decade when she's finally come out on her own as Quinn Fabray. But Fran, fucking Fran, she still calls her "Lucy".

x x x

Fran threw up what she ate to keep her size 2 ever since she was thirteen. After university, she got a fancy degree in interior designing and she now does work for ridiculously rich men who divorced their first wives and shacked up with women a decade younger than they were.

Quinn tries. But she always gets the short end of the stick.

Fran got the bulk of their parents' money and threw it away on so much useless shit while Quinn is forced to sit back and watch as her sister makes poor life choices.

One. Fran buys a tiny yacht because the guy she's in love with is the vice president of the West Hampton Yacht club. The guy she's in love with is also engaged to another woman.

Two. Fran throws a charity ball for breast cancer awareness and in her hostess speech, she mentions their late Aunt Dolly and how she battled it courageously 'til the very end. It was either Fran lost every ethical shred inside or her by lying her perfect ass off to a hall of two-hundred people or that she had gone completely retarded, forgetting that Aunt Dolly actually died of leukemia.

Three. Fran buys a villa in Tuscany and Fran doesn't even know what 'hello' is in Italian so just thinking about it physically pains Quinn that for three days, she has to take Xanax and Klonopin in turns, keeping their foil packets in her purse the whole week.

Because what Quinn wants is to buy a new crystal-steel knife set that she could've made magic with. They're reported to be so sharp, they could cut through bone with the slightest force. Imagine the seconds that'd take off de-boning a Bluefish Tuna... the minutes off mutilating a corpse?

x x x

The Fabray Estate was never a warm place. Moreso when Quinn's parents were still alive. She hates visiting here, even when it's just Fran who's around today. Fran and her new staff of cleaning ladies and drivers and gardeners that Quinn has never seen in her life before.

x x x

They're in their father's old study. To Quinn's surprise, Fran hasn't done any redecorating with it. Unlike Quinn, Fran actually adored their father. And this gesture, of not re-arranging his desk, his books, it pissed Quinn off because Fran shouldn't even be that reverent about anything.

Fran, sat in their father's old leather chair, asks, "What are you doing here? What do you need, Lucy?"

And Quinn calls her on everything. On the impulse purchases, on the whole fucking charade ball she's put on, on the money Quinn would rather have being spent on saving the hungry children of Africa than on a lousy and doomed unrequited romantic prospect.

Fran, with her shiny and golden head of hair, her symmetric and beautifully cruel face, takes Quinn's angry seething in stride. She says to Quinn, rather simply, rather thoughtlessly,"I won't apologize for my hobbies."

Quinn shouldn't even be surprised. Quinn shouldn't even be disappointed. This is Fran. Fran thinks she's got God wrapped around her finger.

Still, the burning, volatile feelings swell quickly within Quinn. She pictures volcanoes sputtering out blood. She feels herself sweating. Impatient fingers touch and rub at her temple and she finds that it's moist and cold. She suddenly feels stuffed in the wooden guest chair she's sitting on, across her sister, Fran seeming sorry. Emphasis on seeming.

Tolerance. Tolerance is a joke.

She kicks back her chair and shoots straight up in righteous fury. "What about me? What about my hobbies?" Quinn yells before taking their late father's Chinese porcelain ash tray and flinging it onto the floor.

There's a satisfaction, seeing the white shards against the brown hardwood. A bigger satisfaction to see Fran's eyes tearing up and her mouth trembling in horror. It's like Quinn's just destroyed all of Fran's wonderful memories of mighty Russell Fabray, sat behind his desk, flicking cigar ash into the same (now broken) ash tray.

Quinn leaves before either of them connects with their urge to speak or scream.

x x x

Some days, she really thinks how the world would be so much better off if Fran was gone. Like, literally. Fran. Fucking dead. Her size-2 body in a ditch somewhere foul and dirty. Even as a corpse, she'd be the most attractive thing to look at.

Quinn has so many of these fantasies that really, the fact that there are that many prevents her from carrying any of them out due to her inability to choose the best one.

At work, she makes a quick ink sketch of Fran's head on a stick, being roasted over a bonfire. It's so hilarious that Quinn vows to buy a frame for it tonight.

One of the keys to a perfect murder is location. Either you do it somewhere random, where there will never be a connection between it, you, and your victim... or you do it somewhere completely isolated.

You don't eat where you shit.

Which is why she makes her grandfather's lands her own personal playground. The vast wooded area, the dilapitated buildings, and the isolation was pregnant with all sorts of possibilities to Quinn. When she realizes this, she is suddenly grateful that her parents endowed this rundown piece of shit unto her.

When she took possession of the land and inherited her measly share of her family's fortune, she designed a cabin about fifty feet from the mortuary. Like any cabin it has a living room with a fireplace and animal-skin rugs, a small kitchen, a cozy bedroom and a bathroom.

Where Quinn spends most of her time, though, is in the basement. The cabin's basement connected with the mortuary's basement, the room where the incinerator, the crematory furnace, was kept. The cabin's supposed to be the victim's bridge between life and a fiery end. She drew the plans up herself, including a secret tunnel and giving the different sections of the basement either tile or concrete flooring and plenty of exhaust fans.

When she had the cabin built, she told construction that she intended to open up the mortuary again. This was a lie. When they finished, she made up some excuse of being denied a business permit so the little worker bees wouldn't wonder why she'd want to build and soundproof a cabin, and rennovate an old mortuary in the middle of nowhere.

Suspicion. Quinn kills that too.

x x x

A quick, clean murder involves careful planning and perfect execution, both of which Quinn Fabray is fucking king at.

What you want is for no one in the planet to trace the crime back to you and this is all a matter of employing certain preventive measures.

When committing a murder, try not to leave glaring evidence lying around. The victim's clothes and personal items have to be destroyed or transformed into something despairingly unrecognizable. There's enough DNA in a strand of hair, in a drop of blood to identify a victim, to connect people to a crime. A trace of genetic material can get her convicted just like that so Quinn's very thorough about cleaning up after herself. The crimescene is wiped down and everything is put back into place. Bedsheets are burned and Quinn rinses off the blood on the plastic sheets before washing them and using them again, for the next kill. Bleach works like a charm and her murder instruments are gathered up and given a good wash in a variety of cleaning solutions.

x x x

Modus Operandi. That's how you get caught. If they figure out how you operate, if they find a pattern, you're fucked. So Quinn mixes it up every now and then.

Quinn has sketches, story-boards of how she's going to catch, torture, kill, and dispose of her next victims. At her home studio she sometimes has them magic-taped onto the wall in front of her while she's working on her building blueprints. This is so she can internalize the flow of her next job.

x x x

Quinn once had a dream where she hacked someone to death while she was in a Poppin' Fresh mascot suit. It was glorious but it wasn't at all practical which is why its appeal only existed in the realm of dreams.

Moving on to a serial killer's wardrobe. Listen up because they don't have fucking magazines or style guides or runway shows on this. Essentials include: gloves, raincoats, goggles (sometimes, blood gets in your eyes and fucks up your vision spectacularly) and footwear with good traction (blood is seven times more slippery). Variety is the spice of life so don't wear a special fucking uniform for the occasion or people might start to recognize you.

A warning. Once you wear something for a kill, you can say goodbye to it. Shoes, jeans, underwear, they are burned along with the corpses. Or, if you're feeling charitable like Quinn every other blue moon, you can wash those clothes three times before sending them off to the Salvation Army.

This is why Quinn never wears anything fancy when she's out hunting. Imagine having to turn a perfectly fine Prada dress into ash. Quinn would rather kill people naked because it makes for less fuss.

x x x

There are many ways with which you can avoid leaving your fingerprints on anything or anyone you touch. You could use liquid nitrogen or perchloric acid (only after a few days of scrubbing). They burn the skin enough to melt the lines on your fingers into an incomprehensible mess.

Quinn isn't big on these means though. Quinn cares about her skin in a way that only an obsessive rich white girl can. So, instead, what Quinn does is simple. She uses gloves. Not leather ones, because they're annoyingly absorbent and collect DNA, inside and out. She doesn't use latex gloves either because they are known to give victims a particular kind of rash. So Quinn chooses Neoprene gloves because of their protective properties and the dexterity enabled by their snug fit.

If she wanted to, Quinn could fucking knit in these gloves.

x x x

Don't kill anyone you have close associations with. The first thing the police are going to do is question relatives, friends, and co-workers. You don't want that drama. No fucks must be given.

(Unless it's a sexual fuck because sexual fucks are part of the lure-and-trap of Quinn's intricate plans. Sexual fucks are allowed.)

x x x

When the CSI arrive at the scene, they take pictures, collect every little suspicious piece into these small plastic bags, and send them off to a lab for analysis. There they will put these items on the hot-seat. They will poke it, mix it with colored liquids, put it under special lava lamps and whatever sophisticated forensic tricks they've got hidden under their lab coats so, as a brilliant murderer, should be extra careful.

Don't give those fuckers anything that they can work with.

x x x

Quinn can't really give a figure when it comes to frequency, but ever since she's started, the longest she's gone without killing anyone is four months. She's offed enough people to have a planned to impulse kill ratio (it's three to one, thank you very much).

Like snakes biting off more than they can chew, their prey still being digested inside of them for days, Quinn savors the satisfaction of the kill. Of the control, of the power it took to steal someone's life force away from them. Like a snake, so full from the meal that they can go for months without hunting again, Quinn goes through a satiety. She won't feel the need for some time. There's a week when she won't be thinking about it at all. That week which fools her enough to have delusions. That she's normal. That she's a sane person.

It isn't long before her blood-lust kicks in again. Before the walls of her studio room are lined with frenzied, violent sketches in dark red ink.

x x x

One weekend, about a year after her parents passed away, Quinn buys five packs of cards at every convenience store, every gasoline station, every magic shop she comes across. There are all these decks just to get one card. One card, the same suit, the same face and rank. She's got forty of these and she aims to scatter them to every corner of the big apple.

Every nook and cranny of New York is going to live in fear of her. Quinn's making sure of that.

. . . . . x