'Turn off that damned song, Berry,' Quinn said from her vantage on the couch.
'I don't think it's fair that you abuse me in my own home, Fabray,' Rachel responded, shifting from her position next to the blond and gliding over to the radio, where Katy Perry's song about California (filled with fallacy, if Rachel might add––she'd been to California, and the girls there were certainly forgettable) was blaring softly. 'What would you rather listen to?'
'Maybe we could not listen to anything for a while, if you don't mind,' she said, sitting up and straightening out the papers on her lap. 'We'd probably have better focus.'
Rachel wanted to say that she couldn't focus on homework when Quinn was there, regardless or whether or not they listened to any music, but she held back.
Quinn didn't usually like that mushy bullshit.
'Okay,' came Rachel's soft reply instead, as she returned to her companion. 'So, did you read section two?' She grabbed the American history textbook from Quinn's lap and flipped open to chapter seven, section two. The Missouri Compromise.
What the hell did she care about the Missouri Compromise right now.
But Quinn was focused––or at least she pretend to be. She was a dedicated and driven student, though she'd once admitted to Rachel that it was really only because she didn't want her teachers to think she'd given up on herself completely. To which Rachel had responded that Quinn hadn't given up on herself at all; not really. But it was a sensitive topic for her, for them both, and once it had been broached, it was usually shoved back under the rug again until both of them returned to their respective levels of comfort.
Rachel wished Quinn would open up to her more, but she just didn't. It wasn't because she didn't trust her, she'd once said. It was just that she didn't like talking about herself, or her own problems. She liked distractions. So, what could Rachel really do but acquiesce? She wanted Quinn to be happy, to be comfortable.
'Skimmed,' she replied.
'Well, I could teach you about it, if you want, Quinn,' Rachel offered. 'Give you a brief synopsis?'
She nodded, quietly. There was something off about the way she averted Rachel's gaze, the way her arms were protectively encircling her bloated waist, the way her teeth gnawed on her bottom lip. Rachel desperately wanted to reach out, to ask her what was wrong, what was on her mind, but she didn't want to overstep boundaries.
They were still experimenting with those.
One would think that Rachel, being the ingenue, the debutante, the leader in so many other social and professional fields, would be more aggressive in the relationship; but she wasn't. With Quinn, things were simply different. The best way she could think to describe it was how Galinda and Elphaba did in For Good: Who can say if I've been changed for the better? But, because I knew you, I have been changed for good.
Yep. Of course, she would naturally liken it to Wicked. How Quinn changed her. Quinn didn't understand her obsession with musicals and Broadway, but Rachel didn't expect her to. Most people didn't. Either way, she kept such parallels to herself. But in her head? In her head, that song represented how she felt about Quinn. And one day, she wanted them to sing it. It was actually a secret dream of hers to sing it at sectio––
'Well, Berry?'
'Oh, right! My apologies, Quinn, I got distracted.'
'Even after we turned off the music,' Quinn said with a roll of her eyes.
'You distract me,' Rachel finally said, with a nervous smile. She was testing her.
She glanced up at the brunette and said, slowly, 'You know how I feel about that mushy stuff, Rachel. Save it for the stage.'
...And thus ended the test. Once again, Quinn failed. Or was it Rachel who had failed?
'Sorry, Q, I didn't––'
'Don't call me Q.' Quinn said it in a way that couldn't be described as anything other than biting.
Rachel was temporarily taken aback, her heart beating rapidly as guilt and confusion set in. She opened her mouth a few times to ask why but she stopped herself, studying the look on Quinn's face and deciding that, judging by the lachrymose frown that suddenly adorned her features, it was best to let this one go.
'Finn used to call me that,' she said, after a pause.
The air between them suddenly stiffened, and Rachel felt her heart drop.
'Do you miss him?' Part of her didn't really want Quinn to answer. Part of her (that sick, masochistic part that her dads had often criticized) did. Quinn was brutally honest, and if she did, she would tell her, there was no doubt of th––
'Yes. Yes, and no.' Quinn said, running her tongue over her lips, suddenly dry. She reached over and took hold of one of Rachel's now-clammy hands, and gave it an uncharacteristically gentle squeeze. 'It's not that I miss Finn, as much as I miss... what it meant. I don't know, Rachel. Sometimes I just wish things were easy, like they were with him.'
'Are you saying I'm high maintenance or som––'
'No, Rachel, for once, this isn't about you.'
'Then what is it about?' Rachel was starting to edge dangerously on the side of anger, despite her efforts to control herself. She was pushing; she wanted Quinn to open up. She couldn't help it, now. She was frustrated.
Boundaries be damned.
'I don't know, it's hard to expl––'
'Just try, Quinn. It can't be that ha––'
'It's because with him I was only living with one sin, okay?' It came out with a shout; ripped out of her chest with such an intensity that she felt as if she'd coughed up her entire heart; as if she was totally exposed. Perhaps she was. It was a strange sensation of release. Release, and pain.
Rachel sat there, numbly, attempting to process what had just been said. 'If you're uncomfortable with our relationship, Quinn, all you had to do was say so,' was what she finally managed to choke out, slightly more caustically than she had intended.
'I'm not,' she protested, swallowing. 'I'm not.'
Sighing out the lingering residue of her anger, Rachel scooted closer to Quinn and put a hesitant arm around her shoulder. Quinn responded at first with a little jump––she still wasn't exactly used to all this physical contact between them––but then eased into Rachel's form, resting her head on her shoulder. She let out a long exhale, and for a time, they were silent, just breathing in tandem.
Quinn liked it when they stayed like this; when they were just together.
It was when she felt the most protected, the most secure, the most safe. When Rachel was holding her, when they weren't speaking, when the only sound was that of their steady, hushed breathing.
It was the only time where she didn't have to work to be liked.
She and Rachel may have been dysfunctional on some levels, but on this one? They meshed.
And so they stayed like that, homework and notes and grades temporarily forgotten, academic cares traded for more ones more weighty.
Quinn wished they could stay like that forever.
And though she didn't know it? Rachel did too.