AN: This is actually a school final project, and faberry is always an inspiration, so I did this. But for my final project, I used different names. This is my first time writing, so please be nice. :)
AN: I do not own the characters, the places, the musicians, music and writers I mentioned. Just the plot.
AN: Sorry, Al and D are their names in my project. I've changed em, so it's okay now. I think. Sorry for that.
Walking the halls of the dorm building, Quinn Fabray lugs her bags up the stairs to the fourth floor. Room 406 would be her new home for the next few years. She stops at the door, drops her rucksack and wheels her suitcases near the wall to fish for her keys inside the pocket of her jeans and opens the door. She grabs her bags and enters the room.
The first thing in her mind, it's small. Cozy? Comfortable. It has a bare maroon color on the walls. There are a few feet of hallway before the actual room. On the left is another door, Quinn assumes it's the bathroom. Two beds, one on the left, one on the right, both pushed up against the wall and a little over six feet of space and a small, long table in between the beds. In front of each bed are study tables facing each other. On the left side of the room, in front of the bed on the left side are two tall closets with mirrors as doors.
She checks out the bathroom. A sink and a mirror to the right. The tub-slash-shower on the left. Toilet straight ahead.
Quinn leaves her bags in front of the closet. She collapses on the bed on the left side of the room.
Her thoughts drift to her old home, where she grew up, Paradise, Ohio. Quinn Fabray was a small town girl. She grew up living a simple, ordinary and average life. She went to a public high school. She had high school friends that she probably won't talk to anymore. Her parents were closed off, busy working their time-consuming jobs. But she was in New York. Thanks to her parents' saving up money for her, she gets to live her decidedly ordinary and average future in New York. If it weren't for her parents, she would probably have stayed in Ohio, doing some more ordinary things with her ordinary life.
Quinn stares at the ceiling, trying to make out shapes when she hears the door knob turn. She lifts her head from the bed and sees a brunette girl enter the room along with her bags.
"Hey."
The girl whips her head to Quinn, surprised to see someone inside the room, as if she didn't know that she was supposed to have a roommate.
"Oh! Hey!"
"Guess you're my roommate? Rachel, is it?" Quinn flops her head back on the bed and focuses on the ceiling again.
"Uh, yeah. Or Rachel. Rachel Berry. What's your name?"
"Quinn. Quinn Fabray."
"Well then. Hi, Quinn." Rachel starts moving again, placing her bags beside Quinn's bags. She starts unpacking clothes and putting them inside one of the closets.
"So, Quinn Fabray, what brings you to New York? You a fan of rock music?"
"Uh, school. English literature."
"Cool."
Quinn hums, "Well, what about you? What brings youto the big apple?"
"Mmhm. Performance arts. Mainly, acting."
Quinn hums in reply and proceeds to move ever so slowly towards her stuff and unpack as well. She carries a box to her bed first and opens it, revealing a record player. She places it on top of her study table when Rachel notices it.
"Hey, cool! You have a record player. I've always wanted one of those."
"Yeah, it's new. I've started collecting records recently. My parents say I need to do something with my life and have more interests and hobbies."
"Well, let's see what you have!" Rachel stands up and checks Quinn's bags.
"Sure. Check 'em out." Quinn grabs two rolls of band posters and spreads them out on her bed. Rachel takes out a Beatles record and places it on the player while Quinn puts up band posters on her side of the bed.
All You Need Is Love starts playing and Rachel starts to sing along while unpacking. A tiny smile works its way on Quinn's face at her roommate's antics. (Also, her voice was amazing. That probably made her smile, too.) They continue unpacking and organizing their room to how they want it.
Her parents worked hard to get her to New York and she didn't want to add to the expenses, so she decided to get a cheaper housing arrangement. Quinn didn't know what to expect regarding her roommate. Would her roommate be the silent, leave-me-alone type? Or would she be overly annoying and noisy? Would she be gaining a new friend in her roommate?
She would. Rachel is kind and enthusiastic and interesting. And Rachel likes her music. That alone is enough. Quinn has found a connection with Rachel and she knows that Rachel will be a permanent fixture in her life.
They're now listening to an Adele record and both sprawled on the floor, staring at the ceiling. Quinn has put up her band posters, stacked her books on the table, the clothes are in the closet.
Rachel breaks the silence, "Hey, Q."
"Yeah?"
"We should put stars on the ceiling."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
…
"Hey, Q?"
"Yup?"
"I like this song." (np: Adele; Someone Like You)
"Me too."
…
"Hey, Q."
"Mm?"
"Wanna go out for a walk? Maybe we could find things we'd want in our room and get dinner somewhere."
"Mm, sure."
…
It's a few minutes, maybe five until Rachel actually stands up. She stretches, raising her arms above her head and stops the player and offers Quinn, who's still on the floor, a hand. They grab their things and walk out of the room, Quinn closes the door behind them.
Quinn and Rachel are having dinner at a small Chinese restaurant they found while walking around the streets of New York. They have just finished looking around random thrift and antique stores and bought a few, random things.
"Pretty cool, huh?" Quinn gently shakes the lava lamp they bought that afternoon. Quinn's lamp was blue and Rachel's, red. They also got some cheap, old but still functioning vinyl records and some Broadway and band posters to stick on the dorm room's walls.
"Yeah, I got one too, remember?" Rachel replies, after swallowing her noodles.
Quinn laughs, "Sorry. I've always wanted one of these. No college dorm room is complete without one."
"Where'd you get that from?" Rachel asks.
"Um, I don't know. I read it somewhere. Doesn't make it less true, though."
"Well, we've got two of 'em, so…"
"We're set for college, then." Quinn replies. She massages her temples; she's starting to have a slight headache.
"Hey, are you okay?"
"Hmm? Oh, yup, yeah. I'm fine."
They continue eating and talking about some of their interests – such as Broadway musicals and movie musicals and "How can you have not have watched Moulin Rouge?" – and some other nonsensical things and then it's almost 8PM and they're both tired from talking and exploring the city.
They walk back to their dorms and decide to watch a movie before bed.
When they get back to room 406, they change into their sleepwear so they could just fall asleep after the movie.
Rachel lies on her stomach, starts up her laptop and searches for Moulin Rouge. After Quinn gets dressed, she plops down beside Rachel.
"I don't know why or how you still haven't watched Moulin Rouge but you will watch tonight and you will pay attention and you will fall in love and your heart will break."
Quinn laughs at that and makes sure to lean closer to the laptop's screen.
Halfway into the movie, Quinn starts fidgeting. Her head is now throbbing. She tries to bury her head in the pillows but the pain doesn't go away.
"Hey Q."
"Yeah?"
Rachel stays focused on the movie and tells Quinn, "Stop fidgeting."
"Sorry." Quinn tries her best to keep still, but it's such an intense headache she just can't and she starts groaning because of the pain. Quinn is burying herself deeper into the pillows.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Rachel turns to look at Quinn. Quinn is pale and sweating. "Hey, you're pale. Do you need anything? Do you–"
The room starts shaking. The lights are flickering. Rachel is unmoving and shocked. She was about to start panicking when the "earthquake" abruptly stops. Everything is quiet and still, except for the flickering of the laptop's screen and Ewan McGregor's voice. Rachel turns to look at Quinn again and she's about to ask if the girl is okay.
Quinn has passed out.
The sunlight is streaming from the window's blinds to her face and she groans in protest. She turns her head to check the time, but instead she finds – or rather, she doesn't find the alarm clock. Her eyes grow wide. She's floating in mid-air. And then she drops back to her bed, except– this isn't her bed… Quinn shoots up, and looks around the room. She's in Rachel's bed. But there is no sign of Rachel in the dorm room. She strains to listen for the shower, nope. The water isn't running.
She shuffles around the sheets looking for her phone. Suddenly, she pauses as she catches movement in her periphery.
Her phone is floating in mid-air. Quinn stares at it for a good minute with wide eyes, shocked and confused. She tilts her head to the side and wonders if she's still dreaming or she's imagining things. The phone starts rotating in mid-air. She suddenly hears something drop. Quinn snaps her head towards the door and the phone drops back to the ground.
Rachel is standing in the doorway, stunned and her jaw dropped. What Quinn assumes to be breakfast is on the floor and coffee is all over.
After a few moments of just staring at each other, Rachel snaps out of it. Before the spilled coffee could crawl to ruin the paper bag, Rachel snags it up. "Oh! Oh God. I spilled the coffee." Rachel bends and starts to clean up. Quinn is suddenly in action trying to find tissues to clean up the mess.
"No, no. It's okay. Let me help. I'm sorry. I didn't… I don't…" Quinn tries to apologize, but she doesn't even know what happened. "I don't know what that was."
Quinn throws the used tissues away. Rachel brings the food on their bedside table. They sit on their beds facing each other.
"So…"
"I…"
They start talking at the same time. And then they both wait awkwardly for each other to go first.
After a few seconds of stalling, Quinn finally goes first, "I don't know what happened."
Rachel hums her agreement, "Is this… Um, is this, is it new?"
"This never happened before… I don't even…" Quinn trails off.
After a few minutes of eating silence, "Do it again, Q."
"…What?"
"Try and do it again."
"Uh… Okay." Quinn looks for her phone, grabs it and places on their bedside table and stares at it intently.
It doesn't budge.
"Are you sure you're doing your best? Try again."
Quinn looks at her, and then tries again. She stares at the thing for a good thirty seconds, but it doesn't even twitch.
"It's not working, Rachel. I think it's gone."
"But I saw you, you were rota–"
"I think it's gone," Quinn repeats. "That's good. It's gone. I'm gonna go and dress up and get us some coffee." Quinn stands up and heads for the bathroom.
What happened the previous night might as well never occurred because Quinn is ignoring it and Rachel doesn't know what to do about it nor what to say. Hey, Q, don't you remember making your phone float in mid-air? Quinn is ignoring it so much that Rachel might as well have conjured it up inside her head. She's anxious to bring it up because she doesn't want make things more awkward. But it is, and she has no idea what to do.
It may seem that Quinn has forgotten, but that isn't really the case. She still has the damned headache and it seems like it won't be going anywhere anytime soon. Sometimes it becomes too intense, but it doesn't last too long. Quinn is pretty sure she can handle it and takes aspirin when it's getting worse. It's nothing. It's normal. An everyday occurrence. Stress. Stress and anxiety, maybe because New York isn't Ohio. Stress is ordinary. Just like she is.
It was the first week of school. Quinn has survived 2 days of school, so far, with a headache that won't ever go away, and, apparently, her new telekinetic ability. She didn't tell Rachel about it and she's still trying to convince herself that it will go away. She's drifting during her classes. She keeps trying to focus, but somehow, she's always distracted. It is the first week of classes, so spacing out is probably acceptable.
Except for the times when her pen suddenly flies out of her reach when she's taking down notes, or when her laptop's mouse suddenly won't budge, or when she hasn't even opened her textbook yet and it somehow manages to flip to the right page.
Fortunately, nobody is around to notice these occurrences, or else, she'll probably blame the wind.
It was Wednesday. Quinn is sitting at the back of the classroom, at the top of the risers, not listening to the professor who's rattling on and on about Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe and the Grimm brothers. (Okay, maybe she can still grasp a few details here and there.) She's still trying her best to focus, but her headache today is worsening as the minutes pass.
The things on top of her desk begin to shake and she tries to hold her things still. But then, her whole table is shaking. She looks up towards the front; the pens and paper weights and everything else on the teacher's table are shaking. The professor stops talking abruptly, and turns to look at his desk. And then everything else is shaking, the lights are swaying. The students start to panic and run outside. Their professor realizes he's not imagining things; he starts to tell everyone to evacuate the building.
They all become totally confused when they realize that no one else is evacuating the building, but some students sense an escape. Quinn follows the students who are leaving. She heads towards the direction of the park.
There are children running around with their pets, parents sitting on the grass having picnics, couples jogging past her. She sits down on a bench and starts asking herself and the universe how and why such a strange thing is happening to her, of all people. She wonders if she will be able to find a way to become normal again.
Quinn decides to call her father, because even though her parents aren't around most of the time, she is still their daughter and they will always be there for her.
"Hello?"
"Dad." Quinn sighs.
"Hey, Quinn! How's New York? Classes have begun, yes?"
"Yeah. It's fine. Dad, I need to talk to you about something."
"What is it, honey? Is something wrong?" Quinn is quiet for a minute. How do you tell your father that you're not normal?
"Hey, Q. Talk to me."
She takes a deep breath, "Something's… Something's happened, dad."
"What is it? Are you hurt?" Her father's voice becomes concerned.
"No, no. I've… started having headaches that won't go away, dad. I think there's something wrong with me. I've been taking the aspirins the nurse gives me, but nothing works." Once she's begun, the details start coming out of her mouth and she's rambling. "Weird things start happening to me, once, I woke up and I was floating. After that, my phone was floating in mid-air. And my pens keep flying out of my hand when I'm writing, and the mouse won't move. The laptop's mouse, I mean. And then, this morning, there was an earthquake, except there wasn't really an earthquake. Everyone ran out of the classroom. Dad… I think something's really wrong with me. This isn't normal. I'm not normal anymore, dad." Tears are prickling her eyes, but she doesn't cry. She takes a deep breath, waiting for her dad to respond.
Her father is silent for a minute. Quinn suddenly realizes that she rambled like a lunatic; she's anxiously worried about how he'll react.
There's a sigh on the other end of the line, "Q, I need to tell you something..." Her dad sighs again and takes a deep breath. "Quinn, honey, those things you're experiencing, the telekinetic abilities, they're actually normal. At least, for us, for our family, it is."
Quinn might have stopped breathing for a while, "…What?"
"It's in our blood, Q. The reason I haven't told you, is because I thought you didn't have it. Your mother didn't have this ability, and if you did, you were supposed to experience the headache when you were seven. You're just a late bloomer, I guess."
Quinn hangs up on him and heads to her dorm. She passes through alleys instead of walking on the streets, because the lamp posts start to explode when she walks by it. Bins and boxes fly out of her way.
When she arrives at the dorm, she slams the door behind her. She's fuming. Rachel cringes at the slam and stands up from her chair.
"Hey! What's wrong?" Rachel asks her.
Quinn stares at her for a while. Then she screams in frustration. The room seems to have exploded with her frustration as well, because everything they own is in the mid-air. Quinn looks shocked and it seems like time has stopped moving; everything is in the air, unmoving. Rachel, although freaked out and wide-eyed, is still concerned. "Quinn."
Gravity starts working again; everything drops back to the ground.
A minute passes.
"Are you okay? What's wrong?" Rachel asks.
Quinn starts yelling while pacing the space between their beds. "He knew! He knew and he didn't tell me! Now I'm a weird freak! I'm not normal and it's his fault!"
"What? Who knew? Hey, calm do–" But Quinn leaves the room again.
Quinn goes back to the park and sits on the same bench. The kids from earlier are getting ready to head back home. The sun starts to set on the horizon.
She realizes that her phone is ringing, and she's about to decline the call, but she sees that it's her father calling her. And that he's been calling her the entire time. She picks up but doesn't say a thing.
"Hey, hey. Quinn? Are you there?" There's a few moments of silence on both lines, and then her father sighs. "Look, I'm sorry, Quinn. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I honestly didn't know." Quinn sighs and waits for her dad to continue. "What you have, what we have, it's something special. You should be proud of it. You aren't normal. But you aren't a freak. You're–"
Quinn cuts him off, "Look, dad. I have to go." She hangs up on him twice on the same day.
Quinn heads back to the dorm. Rachel is eating dinner from a box. Rachel takes one look at her, and offers her a boxed meal of Thai take-out. Quinn takes the box and drops down on her bed.
"So, what happened today?" Rachel asks, caustiously.
Quinn looks at her, and suddenly sobbing. Rachel rushes to sit beside Quinn and tries to comfort her. "Hey, hey. It's okay." But Quinn cries harder. All Rachel can do is hold her while she cries, rubbing circles on her back. After a few minutes and the occasional sniffle, Rachel feels Quinn's breathing even out. She falls asleep with Quinn in her arms.
Quinn is in the middle of Times Square. There are no lights, all that she can see, is illuminated by the moon. She blinks, and then the billboards and advertisements light up. Quinn looks up towards the sky and sees New York's sky scrapers tower above her. The buildings seem to be growing taller by the second. She blinks again and looks around her. There are now people walking around her. The city is busy again. Another blink. Everyone seems to be growing taller. Suddenly, she's looking up again. Is everything growing? No, she realizes she's just her normal size.
The alarm clock beeps. Quinn wakes up with a start. She still has a headache. Rachel left a note saying that she went to class and that she should eat breakfast already.
Quinn doesn't even feel like getting up. So she doesn't.
She misses her classes for the day.
When Rachel arrives at the dorm that afternoon, everything is a mess. She spots Quinn sprawled in bed, asleep. There are cartons of meals, boxes of pizza, cans of sodas and empty bottles of water everywhere.
She just sighs and starts to clean up the mess.
Quinn shoots up in bed. She's sweating. She checks to see the time and sees that it's 2AM. It was the same dream from last night with the sky scrapers and strangers towering over her.
She doesn't go to school for the rest of the week.
She continues to have the same nightmare every night.
Rachel comes home again, to a mess. She cleans it up again. Frankly, she's getting tired of cleaning up after her roommate.
She stares at Quinn, who's surprisingly in bed, awake and staring up at the stars on the ceiling that they put up.
"Quinn."
Silence.
"Quinn."
More silence.
"Quinn." Rachel throws an empty plastic bottle towards her friend's face.
"Ow. What!" Quinn finally looks at her.
"What is going on?" Rachel is exasperated and frustrated.
Quinn blinks at her and stares at the stars again.
The next morning, Rachel wakes up, goes inside the bathroom, and dresses up to leave. Quinn wakes up when the door shuts. She checks the date on her alarm clock on the bedside table and sees that it's the weekend. She vaguely wonders where Rachel's off to on an early Saturday morning.
Maybe Rachel has plans. She sighs and gets up to brush her teeth and change into clean clothes. She sulks in their room.
After half an hour, the door opens again. Rachel enters the room carrying what appears to be breakfast.
"Good. You're dressed. Here." Rachel thrusts a bag towards Quinn. "Eat that."
Quinn starts to protest, "I'm not–" But Rachel cuts her off. "No. No objections. You are going to eat. And you are spending the day with me. Because you need to get out of this room." She's about to start protesting again, but Rachel gives her a look and she just shuts up.
They eat in silence.
Rachel is dragging her around the streets of Manhattan. They look through book shops, antique shops, and thrift stores. She stands inside each store awkwardly while Rachel looks at the random stuff and shows it to her.
Rachel drags her inside a pizza parlor for lunch. She eats half a slice of pizza.
Rachel sighs. "Look. I don't know what you're going through. I don't have super telekinetic make-things-float powers–"
"Shh!"
Rachel just continues, "–and I honestly don't know what's wrong with you." Quinn looks down at her lap, Rachel stares at her with pity. "What you have, it's special. You should be proud of it. It's not something you should be ashamed of."
Quinn stands up abruptly, looking towards the door. "Can we go now?"
Rachel manages to drag her inside some old building before it starts pouring. Quinn has no choice but to follow Rachel inside the building. It's an old theatre, with foldable seats, with red cushions. Some of the few lights illuminating the theatre are flickering. The rain seems to have gotten heavier; Quinn can hear the downpour of rain on the roof and the faint sound of thunder rumbling.
"What are we doing here?" She asks Rachel, who's already on her way up the stage. She sits in the front row while Rachel sits down on the stage, her legs dangling on the edge.
"I'm a performer. I belong in the theatre."
"Yeah, but I'm not. What am I doing here?" Quinn asks her.
Rachel ignores her and continues. "I wasn't born a performer, though. My parents enrolled me in lots of different activities. They made me play soccer, basketball, swimming, and all the sports you could think of. And I sucked at all those things." She pauses, takes a deep breath, and continues. "My parents would not give up. They started enrolling me in ballet classes and voice lessons. And I fell in love with it. With performing. I have been practicing all my life to be a performer. And they were so proud of me when I got my dancing medals and certificates and ribbons. My parents keep telling me that I was special, and that I was a star – am a star." Quinn had to smile at that. But Rachel continues, "They told me that I have a gift."
Quinn is confused and she looks at Rachel. "I don't see where this is going."
"I am a performer. That is my gift. And you," Rachel looks at her intently, "you have a gift." Quinn is detaching herself again and looks down at her hands on her lap.
"You're– Do you not see how special you are?" Rachel stands up on the stage. "You have a gift, and you're supposed to be proud of it. Yes, Quinn. You aren't normal. But you aren't a freak. You are special. You are anything but ordinary." Quinn is still staring at her hands. She remembers her father telling her the same words over the phone.
"Are you even listening anymore?" Rachel sighs.
There's a loud crack of thunder. The lights in the theatre flicker momentarily. Thunder booms again, louder this time. The light beams start swaying. Rachel looks up towards the ceiling.
There's a loud snap.
Rachel sees the light beam heading towards the ground, towards her. She's too dumbfounded to move.
Everything stops. The beam stops falling. She's staring at it and thinks that maybe time stopped.
At that moment, she can hear Quinn screaming at her. Her senses must be coming back now. She's expecting the beam start falling again.
"Rachel! HEY! RACHEL! MOVE!"
Rachel snaps her head towards the audience seats. Quinn is standing on her feet, with her right arm extended towards the stage, staring intently at the beam but flickering to her eyes every other second. "MOVE RACHEL!"
She suddenly gains use of her legs again and jumps down the stage towards Quinn. When Quinn drops her hand, the beam crashes to the stage. Rachel faints. Quinn almost misses catching her.
Quinn has managed to hail a cab in the rain and support Rachel's body until they get to their dorm room. The rain has drenched both of them. When they arrive at their dorm, Rachel wakes from unconsciousness. Quinn grabs Rachel some clothes and tells her to go change in the bathroom. Quinn grabs a towel and dries her hair. After Rachel comes out of the bathroom, Quinn hands her a towel as well. Then she takes her turn to change in the bathroom.
They're both silent for a while; Rachel, from the shock and Quinn, thinking about what Rachel told her.
A few hours pass, it's already 11PM. The only lights in the room are the lava lamps they bought after moving in.
Quinn is staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling and breaks the silence. "I understand… What you were trying to say today, I mean. I understand now." Rachel turns her head to look at Quinn. Quinn continues. "It's because I'm so used to being average. To being a normal kid. I'm not really special. I hardly see my parents, although I do love them, and I know that they're always there for me. I don't exactly have close friends. Acquaintances, maybe, but not friends. Not like you." Quinn pauses, turns her body to the left so she could face Rachel.
"We're hardly even lived together for a month, yet here you are, being kind and nice. And you like some of the things that I like." Quinn closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and carries on with her speech. "You didn't even know what was going on, but you understood me."
"That's because I'm…" Rachel pauses, probably for dramatic effect, "sort of psychic."
There's a few seconds of just the sound of pouring rain outside the dorm. Quinn suddenly laughs. Rachel laughs along with her.
"Hey, Rach. I think, maybe, I can live with being un-average. I think, I'm okay with it now, Rachel."
"That's good. I wouldn't be alive if you weren't okay with it." Quinn sees the outline of Rachel's smile in the faint light that their lava lamps produce.
That night, Quinn Fabray dreams of growing big, just as tall as New York's sky scrapers.