AN: This is for Day 4 of Quinntina Week over on Tumblr. The theme is Libraries and Bookstores.
Thanks to Becca. She's good people.
If you feel a need, send me some love in the form of a review. That would be lovely.
Tina Cohen-Chang had spent most of her senior year fighting for the role in Glee club that she was assured she would get if she remained loyal and hard working. Those qualities didn't actually amount to anything in the Glee Club, so she spent the remainder of her time working on ways to really seal her way to New York.
Now, she was really here. So what if she was still a senior, she had her acceptance letters to NYADA, NYU and even to Parsons the New School of Design, in case she was better suited for costume design than on the stage. After all, she had gotten some rave reviews for the costumes she had designed and made for the group.
It was Spring Break, and Tina was ready to scope out what New York had to offer. After looking at all the campuses, and doing the tours with her parents, her parents decided to do the tourist things that Tina had already done when New Directions came, so she was on her own in the city that in months would be her home.
Plan number one: Scout out the best locations at each campus for easy access to books and sheet music to both buy and borrow because since she'd have bills, her book budget was going to have to go down and that wasn't even including how much space could fit into her dorm. No, suddenly bookstores were a lesser priority. Tina had to find the libraries.
The libraries at each school were a given and she'd already seen them in the campus tours, so now she was going to Upper West Side to see Columbia's library or more importantly, see what she could do before she got kicked out for not being a student or maybe even arrested for trespassing.
After a solid hour of exploring and having not even one person suspect her of no good, except that one couple that were using a study break to make out in the stacks in one of the lesser known parts of the Dewey Decimal Point System.
She got one the subway and headed to find New York Public Library. All she could remember was that it was near Grand Central Station, or at least in that general direction. The aim was to find one or the other by using the map as little as possible, because if she did have a purpose, wandering would give her a better layout of the land. Or that was the general idea.
Tina came across the library and it was amazing. It was nothing like Lima Public Library. Sure she might have done some Googling on it, but that doesn't really compare to seeing the real thing. 'This was reaching a new level of nerding out' she thought to herself, as moved another 3 feet to the left to take a picture, accidentally knocking someone else over in the process.
As she bent down to help them up and apologize profusely, she noticed that this random stranger wasn't that much of a stranger after all.
"Quinn?" she asked as she helped her get to her feet.
"You'd think I'd have better balance, considering the years of cheerleading and dancing," Quinn shrugged it off.
"Oh god! Is everything okay, you didn't hurt anything?" Tina's mind started to flashback to the last time she had actually danced which was just after Quinn's accident and she was having serious back pain at the time.
"Only my pride," and pausing to look at her camera, "but not me or my camera." Quinn finished with a smile.
"What are you even doing here? I thought you'd be up at Yale cracking books and breaking hearts. Isn't that the regular for the college bound?" Tina joked.
"Not quite. Santana has been staying with Kurt and Rachel and erasing boundaries. After some issues, Rachel put her foot down and kicked Santana out. So, Santana called me to play peacemaker."
"Is that working out for her?" Tina asked.
"Maybe for her, not so much for me. All the fighting between Santana, Rachel and Kurt is not something I can put up with long periods of time. So, I ran away to see the sites and maybe, get some of my readings done," Quinn explained, including pointing to the previously unnoticed book bag at Quinn's side.
"Are you sure Santana called you just for a peacemaker? Not to make anything else?" Tina probed hoping to clarify the rumors that had been circulating.
"Make war plans? I gave up my plans for world domination after high school, Tina" Quinn huffed, but the slight curve of her lips gave away the joke.
"Not what I was talking about, you and Santana seemed quite together at the wedding. Especially, when you two seemed to disappear together at the end of the night."
"We were sharing a room to split costs. College is expensive and so are hotel rooms," Quinn tried to evade Tina as much as she could. She wasn't lying, they were sharing a room to split costs.
"And all the slow dancing?"
Quinn laughed, "We are friends, both single at a wedding. I've slow danced with you before, does that mean we are secretly dating?"
Tina stilled instantly. Quinn was confused at the reaction.
"Nothing happened with Santana." Quinn clarified, as best she could considering she was a terrible liar.
"You are a terrible liar." Quinn was mainly baffled that Tina was apparently a mind reader.
"I'm not secretly dating Santana. Something happened at the wedding, but it's not going to happen again," she told Tina, except Tina still seemed to be defensive.
"So, it seems that everyone had somebody at the wedding. Mike didn't even talk to me. Santana stopped talking to me, and I'm pretty sure you stopped noticing me months ago," Tina seemed on the verge of tears.
Quinn, decided to move them into a slightly less public area than the stairs of the New York Public Library. They ended up sitting against one of the outside walls with Quinn's arm wrapped around Tina.
"What is this actually about?" Quinn hesitantly asked.
"Senior year sucks. Everything about it is just fucked up, at least when the majority of people didn't care about me. I had Mike, and for part of it I had you. But now you two went on to find lives, leaving us all behind. But Santana didn't leave it all behind! No, she keeps coming back and stealing my roles. I could have been there for you at the wedding. Shared a hotel room. Shared more then a hotel room," there was a plea of desperation in Tina's voice.
"Sounds a lot like I'm your last resort or this is quite the act of desperation," Quinn's voice had lost any of the warmth for any of that conversation.
"You know it's not like that. We had a connection. Couldn't you see it? Performing with you was like nothing else, especially during I Kissed A Girl with Santana. I thought we could have been more, but you just never seemed interested and there was Mike to factor in. But we could have been amazing, and made such sweet music together, and I'm way more flexible that Santana"
"Tina, that was a year ago. We haven't really talked in months. You didn't tell me what you are doing in New York," it was unusual for Quinn to be in the position to break hearts that could break hers too.
"Colleges. I'm looking at colleges, I'm going to be in New York next year. I got accepted into NYADA, NYU and Parsons." Tina informed Quinn, even going to get the letters from her bag, before Quinn's hand stopped her.
"I'll take your word on it", Quinn said and smiled at her.
"I'm sorry for making such an ass out of myself. I try and just focus on the fact I'm getting out of Lima, but some things just make me a bit crazy," Tina apologized.
"It's okay, I know about crazy. How about we start small, we go for coffee and go from there?" Quinn suggested.
"How about we explore the library instead? Isn't that why you came here in the first place?" Tina got up first and held out her hand to Quinn to help her up, in a far more surprising move, Quinn didn't let go until they were in the library.
They explored the library for a solid hour, until Quinn's cellphone rang and interrupted the couple making out in the stacks in an underused part of the Dewey Decimal System. Except, this time somewhere between Comparative Religion and the Legislative Process, Tina and Quinn had looked at each other and the books and everything else seemed to fade away. They both leaned forward and captured each other's lips in a fierce kiss, and they had stayed that way until the phone had rang. They just ignored it, Quinn muttering that it'll go to voicemail.
Until it rang again, and Quinn noticed it was Santana demanding that Quinn come back to broker peace.
Quinn and Tina said their farewells with promises to talk soon.
Tina's eyes followed Quinn as she walked away, and once again found herself muttering, "Curse you, Santana Lopez"