The next Rockaway Parkway bound L-train will arrive in approximately 2 minutes. Please stand away from the platform edge.
Quinn can see them on the black and white monitor bolted to the dripping roof. Santana hugging her close, groping her ass before letting go. She knows it's a joke (Santana would probably cry if Quinn so much as blinked at her with any serious intent) but it angers her nonetheless.
They're not in some kind of a sorority with a shared bond of sisterhood. They share nothing.
The flush in her cheeks works as well for embarrassment as for anything more sinister, and she turns her face forward and to the side as they pull apart, letting Santana step on the train with a "See you soon, Gay 'til Grad," without the slap she deserves.
The next Manhattan bound L-train will arrive in approximately 2 minutes. Please stand away from the platform edge comes soon after, and she only just makes it up and over and down again before thestand clear of the closing doors please.
Her ears pop as she's thrown about in her place, the train hurtling under a river she's never even seen. She thinks she could live here, in this place where everything is strange unless you seek it out and make it your friend.
Someone steps on her foot as she changes trains, but she was too busy looking up at the signs instead of down at where she was going.
She wishes she'd packed less as she hauls herself and her bag up from the dirty connective tissue of the city and into the clean bubble of Grand Central.
Too busy looking at the signs, Attention customers, the 4.20 Metro North to New Haven has been cancelled, she steps out of the flow of people. Her bag heavy, she goes to seek something out and make it her friend.
It's not Santana's fault. Not exactly.
She's distracted when asked. Between Santana's double-speak and the distraction, she answers with the truth.
There is a professor.
She's not Quinn's professor, though. So two lies undone at once.
The distraction blinks at her in confusion for a moment, and then the last two people on earth become the first.
"They're going to end up dead," she mutters to herself, bag digging into her shoulder as she knocks on the door she knows isn't locked, inside a semi-converted warehouse she had no problem entering.
"Quinn?"
Rachel looks confused, but not like before.
"I have to tell you something."
The walls that form the doorway are between them and it should probably stay that way. She seeks it out anyway. She'll make it her friend.
Rachel actually closes the door, perhaps in anticipation of something trying to escape. "Quinn, it's okay. I already know."
She sets her bag down beside the couch, and watches Rachel set herself down on the couch beside it. She lets herself gravitate towards the afternoon light streaming in through the windows, the back of a kitchen chair providing an unstable perch.
"And what about that is okay?"
Rachel unsets herself, but doesn't come closer.
"That's not what I have to tell you. Although it will be implied."
"Quinn, it's okay if you don't want to." Now she does come closer.
"And although it will be implied," she continues as though Rachel hadn't interrupted. Distracting things aren't always worth the distraction. "The implication won't be correct."
"What do you mean?" And then a head tilt. Forward and to the side, that head tilt has tilted her own head in return time and again.
There is a professor. Dark hair and dark eyes and an annoying habit of tilting Quinn forward and to the side.
There is was a professor.
Three lies.
"What I mean is." She steps to the side. The side of the kitchen table, the side of Rachel's direct approach. Rachel faces the table, but Quinn steps out to the side of it. She runs her hands along the kitchen bench. "I've been attracted to you."
"Quinn, I know, and it's okay. It's very flattering, but—"
But. Rachel was right to anticipate something trying to escape.
Perhaps she should have anticipated it would be her.
It's almost too easy. There's a block on the bench, six shiny knives inside. Even as she takes one, Rachel and her tilted head, forward and to the side, remain in place. It's just a knife.
"Yes, but. I'm not telling you for that. That I knew long ago."
She wishes the knife were a little longer. She thinks the knife should be a little longer. Soon enough she will know if the wish was necessary.
"Then I don't…."
No. Quinn doesn't suppose Rachel does…. She's held the knife too long now, Rachel's voice tells her so.
"I lied," she says, "I don't have anything to tell you."
It shouldn't be so easy. Not too easy, but still. Easy. She read somewhere that a sharp knife through skin is like a hot knife through butter.
She thinks that's an accurate enough description.
Rachel's hand comes up in surprise, her mouth moves in surprise, but only the hand finds purchase on a reaction to Quinn's action. Bright, bright red bubbles from between Rachel's fingers. The hand pulls away, but she doesn't want Rachel to see, and the knife goes through material even easier than skin, and the first resistance she finds is—
—a rib? Perhaps she'll take an anatomy class next semester.
The distraction that was Rachel tilts forward, not to the side, towards Quinn. But she can't have that. She doesn't want that.
Far too messy.
She tilts Rachel back, knife handle now a distraction handle, until the distraction falls to the floor. Knife handle again.
Distraction on the floor, and close to no longer being a distraction any longer, she wipes the distraction's mess from the knife onto the distraction's pretty cheek.
"I'm sorry I lied. But it's okay, isn't it."
Her heavy bag becomes heavier, the closed door allows her escape.
The next Rockaway Parkway bound L-train will arrive in approximately 2 minutes. Please stand away from the platform edge.