["Quinn glances up, then smiles drunkenly, genuinely. Her hair is gotten longer since you saw her over spring break, and it's summer so there's a few freckles spread across her nose. 'Hey Rachel,' she says." something like: or, 3 times rachel comes to terms with dark things about quinn (on the couch). angsty, fluffy, gentle drabble.]
stand before me beloved (& open out the grace of your eyes)
.
because i have breathed/ this word:/ i want
—sappho, fragment 22
…
1
You're not that drunk.
It's early in the summer, June, breaking night with residual fireflies and smoke from heady cigarettes and stars.
You put her number back in your phone a few weeks ago, when she'd visited after Santana told you that she and Spencer had broken up. Mostly you just didn't want to drunk text or call her, but now you think maybe you need her name and her number and her New Haven area code as some sort of comfort.
She's in Providence for the summer, writing poetry at Brown. But when you show up at your apartment after having a few drinks with friends, there she is on your couch, hair falling into her eyes, a book spread on her lap.
She doesn't hear you come in, and you don't know where the hell Santana is, but there's a half-empty bottle of wine and a few beers on the coffee table in front of the couch. You walk back out of the apartment and try to collect yourself before walking back in and clearing your throat.
Quinn glances up, then smiles drunkenly, genuinely. Her hair is gotten longer since you saw her over spring break, and it's summer so there's a few freckles spread across her nose.
"Hey Rachel," she says, puts aside the book. She's in a Yale t-shirt and running shorts, bare feet tucked beneath her. Never in your life did you expect those clothes make you want to burst into tears, but they do, very concretely.
"Where's Santana?" you find yourself asking.
Quinn laughs lightly—and she seems a little brighter—and says, "Nice to see you too."
You collect yourself and sit down on the far end of the couch. "It is nice to see you, Quinn." Your voice is raw when you say it, rougher than you intended.
She bites her lip and takes a deep breath. "How have you been?"
You haven't really talked to Quinn in almost a year, and you glance at her suddenly nervous fingers fiddling with the edges of the book. For the first time you allow yourself to look at the scar down the underside of her arm, and by now its pink, closed, and healed.
There are so many things you want to ask.
She catches you staring.
"What are you reading?" you ask, quietly, softly.
Quinn smiles, puts the book between you. "Anne Carson's translations of Sappho's work," she tells you, then points to the page. Her hands are steadier than you've seen them in a long time. "104B," she reads, "Of all stars the most beautiful." She smiles, looks up. "Makes me think of you."
You swallow, look her in the eyes, glance down at her lips. You've missed her—tangibly and abstractly, her unexpected moments of sweetness, the quietness of her belonging. You should talk to her, you think, but—
"Santana drunkenly went to get ice cream," she says.
A laugh bursts its way from your throat. "I hope she brings enough to share."
Quinn laughs too, and she pushes aside the book and puts her arm out. "Come here."
To that, you've never been able to say no.
.
2
It's mid-September her first year in New York, everything turning the gold of her eyes.
You're working on memorizing the script for your first Broadway show, and Quinn is gently falling asleep on top of some very large poetry anthology on her couch across from the armchair you've curled up in. She's lovely and young and messy right now, struggling to keep her head up and her eyes open, and you just sort of peek over the top of your script and watch her try to keep reading for a while before you gently say, "Do you think you should get some sleep, baby?"
"I should finish this," she mumbles, trying to lift her head more.
Among all of the reasons you've fallen so in love with her, this is one of them—"Quinn," you say, "when's it due?"
"Um," she says, then yawns. "I've already read the pieces in undergrad, but it's for my seminar next Thursday."
You roll your eyes and fight back a laugh. "You're fine then, sweetheart. And you deserve rest, you know?"
She sighs and allows her arm to flop down from the couch. She's currently topless because you'd been forcing her to ice her back—its pops were getting louder and more worrisome lately—and for a moment you're jolted from the warmness of this moment when you see all of her scars, stretched out in front of you so bravely.
You want to ask her about some of them sometimes; you want to tell her over and over again that she's worth so much more than her stitched skin. But you don't always know how, don't know those words—if those words even exist.
You stand and walk over to the couch, lift her book and hand it to her. She turns over and rests the back of her head against your lap, rests the book against her chest.
"Sappho?" you ask, kissing her forehead and looking at the text.
"Mhm," she mumbles.
"Come to bed with me," you whisper.
She smiles up at you exhaustedly, puts down the book.
You walk hand in hand to her bedroom, pull back the fluffy white duvet. She climbs in and then you fold her up in your arms. You hum something lilting and gentle because you don't know how to tell her something that comes close to stay forever.
She's asleep quickly, her breathing evening out, and you smile into the skin between her shoulder blades.
"And I on a soft pillow will lay down my limbs," you mumble, kiss the skin over her spine.
.
3
You're so, so angry at her. She's falling asleep on the couch, left arm in a sling, the bandages over the stitches over her ribs covered by a soft sweatshirt.
You get in from picking up her antibiotics and pain medication from the CVS down the block, and she turns her head, eyes heavy.
"Hey baby," she says, and her voice is still rough from the time she'd spent on the ventilator. She'd gotten to go home that morning after a week in the hospital.
You put down the meds on the kitchen table and then walk over and drop a gentle kiss on her lips, assure yourself with her breath.
It's almost eight pm, and you're amazed she's still awake. "Everything go okay?" she asks.
You smile despite yourself at her gentle concern, despite how mad you are at her for almost dying, for almost leaving you forever. "I acquired all of your drugs successfully," you say.
She laughs lowly, rasping a little, but she's on enough of her pain medication that she seems to not be too uncomfortable yet.
"Come here," she says, lifting her right arm sort of pitifully. You roll your eyes at her and situate yourself so that her head is resting on your lap comfortably. You sift your fingers through her soft, bright hair and hum a little bit.
Quinn's pretending to watch The Breakfast Club but her eyes are drifting closed quickly, and you hum along. You think about how you should talk to her about the worst things you had to think the past week: what she wants to happen if she dies. You should ask about what she would want to wear to her funeral. If she would even want to be buried or scattered as ashes somewhere else.
And you're about to, you're so close, because you can always see her lips turning blue because she can't breathe when you close her eyes, because you can always feel her breath rattle.
But then you glance over at one of her perpetually-open books, and you know Sappho by heart.
So now you wait, because Quinn is alive, and Quinn is here.
She falls asleep gently her right hand tucked just under your shirt, slung over her head, and you say, "As long as you want."