I entered the bathroom in a rush, but stopped right away when I saw the blonde that was leaning against the furthest sink, surrounded by a thin cloud of smoke. I stayed there for a minute, blue frozen slushie dripping from my whole body, awed by the contrast that was Quinn with her adorably short blonde hair, the baby blue sundress and the cigarette between her lips.
"You still smoke?" – It was the first thing out of my mouth before I could stop myself.
Quinn kept staring me up and down during another whole minute, and I wasn't really sure she would answer me because, let's face it, we hadn't really talked to each other since she came back to glee club three weeks ago, I guessed we were both avoiding the whole mothers-daughters drama. Yes, I was avoiding drama, hard to believe, huh? But then she just rolled her eyes good-naturedly and replied:
"It's not really that easy to quit…" – The whole staring thing going on was making me really nervous, Quinn rarely even looked at me in the past, and she only ever stared like that when she was ready to give me some mean remark. Well, that wet freezing feeling all over my body was most certainly not helping at all. I saw a quick flash of anger in Quinn's eyes before she spoke again, her voice laced with…was that pure rage? – "Who was this time?"
"The first one was Azimio, and I really couldn't see the other three for rather obvious reasons." – I shrugged before making my way to the sink in the middle. I jumped, making my bag fall to my feet, when Quinn practically yelled, in a tone way higher than her usual.
"THREE? What the hell? You were alone and they threw all four damn slushies at you? – I stared at her surprised by her outburst before shrugging again defeated.
I watched as Quinn angrily moved off the sink towards the door. She stopped with her hand at the door for a second, then she turned around to look at me again and I felt my knees going weak with the softness and caring that consumed Quinn's face, especially her eyes. I don't think I will ever understand how her mind works for her to be able to have such powerful mood swings. Then I focused again in her face and…God, those eyes! I could just spend the whole rest of my obvious star-like existence staring at them. Like, you know, forever. I didn't even think twice about that thought since it had shamelessly crossed my mind so many times during all these years.
I was so consumed trying to memorize, definitely not for the first time, that whole green sea and the way it was circled by a thin line of gold, that I didn't realize that Quinn was moving. It wasn't until she brought a chair closer to the sink that I saw she had taken my clean outfit out of my bag as well as my wash bag.
I looked at her questioningly and she smiled shyly at me. Shyly. Quinn Fabray never smiled shyly, actually lately she barely smiled at all, and when she did it was that gorgeous confident smile; she was still trying to heal, her walls always fully up. But this one was just breath-takingly different, she looked so free, open and almost innocent. - You may think that I pay way too much attention to Quinn when we were supposed to hate each other. The truth is, I am well aware of my slight obsession with her. - And again she got me out of my Quinn daze.
"I can't really go and punish them right away anymore, but I'll have a lil' talkin' with The Skanks later and we'll figure something out, the daddy's girls from the squad are completely terrified of the three of them. For now I figured I could just help you with all the cleaning." – At the beginning she assumed that fierce HBIC cold glare and her voice even dropped a bit and husked when she mentioned The Skanks and… Oh god, she should talk like that all the time. But then at the end her voice was soft and that shy smile was back…wait did she just say something about punishing them, as in like protecting me? I completely melted at the thought and the sight of her.
I really needed to stop with all that daydreaming while having Quinn around, because again I didn't realize her approach until she was filling my personal space and sitting me down in the chair, her face right above mine. I couldn't really keep my eyes away from her face. Most people think of Quinn as the very pretty and hot ordinary blond type, but there's just something about her that screams exotic to me, maybe it's the amazing lines of her cheekbones, of her nose – surgically modified or not-, her lips and that one eyebrow thing she does, also there's the possibility of it being her facial expressions and the way you can see, if you pay enough attention, she's fighting her emotions with the twist of an eyebrow or the way she scrunches her nose. Yes, I know, I'm a stalker, a creeper, it just took me long enough to accept that I have a crush, a huge one, on Quinn and now I just can't help but try to soak up every piece of her that I can get. Which is most possibly the reason I asked Finn for a break in our relationship, I already had too much to focus on and I was actually a little ashamed to admit, but he wasn't really in my top priorities, at least not on top of New York, West Side Story or either on top of trying to deal with my crush on Quinn. After New York he just kept losing any appealing to me.
There it was, that twist in her forehead and a certain panic in her eyes, it was undoubtedly there for just a second, and then she came back to her cool, relaxed expression.
"You should…I need you to take off your sweater so we can start the cleaning." Her voice failed in the beginning just to assume that sure-of-herself tone that she always had and…wait, did she just ask me to…oh, yes, I guess it does make sense. I nodded and silently took the slushie drenched sweater off my head. I really should start wearing at least a tank top underneath those sweaters.
For a second her eyes darted over my torso and I felt myself blushing, then with a little scrunch of her nose she averted her eyes and stopped by my side, carefully she inclined my head towards the sink. She smiled one last time to me and started the water. Her fingers brushed my hair under the water taking the worst of the slushie with them. Her fingertips started massaging my scalp and I completely lost any sense of reality except for that amazing feeling. Not that the idea of Quinn helping me clean myself was something that I ever thought would be part of my reality. In my dreams, for sure, she appeared in my dreams at least twice a week, mostly in her Cheerios uniform…
"Rachel? Uh, Rachel." – Her voice got me out of my head and I no longer could feel her fingers in my head and neither could I hear the sound of the water running…oh no, did I… I opened my eyes to find Quinn still standing right above me, her face as well as her voice completely amused. – "I think you fell asleep on me." – Yep, sure did.
"I apologize, Quinn. No-one actually ever did this for me, therefore I wasn't aware this could be so enjoyable." – What the heck am I saying? She is so going to flip now and… is that a smile?
"No problem, Rachel. You know the scalp is a very sensitive area to the touch, that's why scalp massages are so enjoyable." – She kept looking at me with that very amused smile until her face dropped and her smile turned almost apologetically. – "I think I took care of the worst part in your hair, but they made one hell of a mess with the rest of your body, Rachel. You need a shower." – I panicked, it's homeroom which means that the gym is locked meaning there's no way to get to the showers, so I would have to be like that until at least second period and… I felt Quinn's hand rubbing my bare arm soothingly and I almost forgot what I was panicking about. Her touch was so soft and warm in my still freezing skin. – "Hey, don't worry. I already figured it out while you were asleep." She smiled teasingly at me. Does this girl have any kind of smile that is not just completely sexy? – "I just have to go really quick at my locker, I'll be right back."
And with that she was gone, and I was alone in the girls bathroom in only my black bra and my short plaid skirt. - Yes, although I'm aware that people think otherwise, I know that my skirts are really short sometimes, well I like my legs. – I couldn't help but be afraid that she had left me there just to go get some cheerios and make my embarrassment worse or that she just decided to left me here and not help at all. And then – barely ten minutes later, for the sake of being fair to her – she was back with a jacket and a bunch of keys. She handed me the jacket and gathered my bag and my clothes. She turned to me and my confused face must have been really endearing because a smile appeared in her face instantly. Then her eyes roamed through my body and I watched as she kept staring and started biting on her bottom lip, blushing furiously a second later when she met my eyes. Was she just checking me out? .God. Nah, it couldn't be. She so was and I couldn't help but give her a knowing smile. She blushed even more and I didn't even know Quinn could blush, even less that she would look so cute all pinky.
"I assumed you wouldn't want to walk around the school only in your bra, even though first period already started. Put the jacket on, so we can go." – I wanted to tackle her, seriously, she was being so attentive – and yes I found it really weird but didn't really want to question it while everything was so good – and she was still a little pink in the cheeks.
Although I couldn't help but wonder where we were going, and when I asked her what the keys were for she gave me a mischievous smirk, arched an eyebrow at me and opened the door. I quickly put the jacket on and followed her to the empty hallway.
"Since we were Sue's biggest stars, Britt, Santana and I had separated showers from the other cheerios, and we were the only ones that had the keys for them. Plus, as Head Cheerio I also had the keys to our locker room." – Quinn explained, but it didn't make any sense and I was feeling like there was something implied there that I should have figured out.
"Hm, okay, but you're not a Cheerio anymore." – I stated the obvious and Quinn looked at me with that same smirk. I almost heard the 'click' as I placed everything. – "You made a copy of them." – And then another 'click'. – "You're taking me to the Cheerios locker room. Gosh, Quinn, no way, Coach Sylvester will hunt me down if she finds out." – At that she scoffed.
"Yes, I made a copy in my first year. And no she won't, only the Head Cheerio has the keys, not even Sue has them. The worst that can happen is that we may find B and S doing it in one of the showers. Which, I may add, is not really a pleasant thing to witness." – She kept going while I stopped in the middle of the way dumfounded. She noticed I wasn't following and turned around. – "Come on, are you telling me you had no idea?" – She looked a little panicked then, so I nodded letting her know that I did. It was just that hearing it like that…and oh god, what if they were actually here? My face must have showed my terror, because she continued quickly. – "Don't worry, they're not really doing that anymore, at least not until Santana figures all her stuff out. And I really need to stop telling you all of this." – She added as a second thought, looking guilty, as we started walking again. I nodded dumbly processing all the now confirmed knowledge.
"They make a really cute couple." – It truly came out before I even knew I was thinking about it. A second later I was immensely grateful it did, because Quinn was beaming at me as we reached the locker doors.
"I know right! It kinda amazes and scares me how Britt got S totally wrapped around her little finger. And I shouldn't tell you neither of those things, 'cause Santana is so gonna kill me, but is so good to talk to someone else about it." – She looked torn, and scrunching her nose in that adorable way her face assumed a sad expression. She opened the doors rushing me inside before continuing. – "Santana keeps coming to talk to me and we go over and over again about all the things that could go wrong if they came out as a couple and I can see where she comes from. I mean, just thinking about all that happened to Kurt here, and seeing as her mom is just as religious as Russel. They probably wouldn't support her at all and she would end up being kicked out like I was." – I had never seen Quinn talking about it so openly, her face showed all the hurt I could only imagine she felt, I mean the hurt I felt from the way Shelby treated me is probably not even half of how much Quinn's parents hurt her. Obviously the use of her father's first name did not go unnoticed either, and I realized that Quinn doesn't really have a father anymore.
"I didn't know you guys talked about things like that. To be completely honest I never understood the kind of friendship you two had. You were always competing and calling each other out on stuff." – I didn't know how she would react to that but I really had no idea how they could work like that. Quinn kept walking to the back of the locker room, passing all the lockers, the showers and getting to a set of doors in the back of the room, she opened it and stepped inside before answering.
"That's how we worked most of the time since we met each other. We would call each other out in all the shit we did and we would always push each other trying to bring the best we could out of ourselves and out of each other. It didn't really work that well most of the time, we spent just so much of our time fighting that we couldn't really work on having a proper friendship." – She locked the doors behind us and took a sit in one of the weirdly placed couches that were around there. – "I always knew about her and Britt, I mean I was the third wheel and it was so obvious. But that was something that I never used in any of our fights and I think she really respected me for that or whatever. I was a bitch but I could see that through the years Santana became more and more of a bitch because she couldn't really deal with whatever it was between them." – It made an awfully huge amount of sense now that Quinn was putting everything out there and I must say it really surprised me that she was talking so much about it. Apparently it surprised her too, because she looked torn again for a minute, before she finished her explanation. – "After New York we kind of bounded again and I spent the beginning of the summer with them, and things went back to how it used to be, until I joined The Skanks. But now, with the whole thing with your m…with Shelby and Beth, I don't want to be like the person I was during all those years, because that was not me." – Now I was completely shocked, not only for Quinn's sensibility of not calling Shelby my mother, but I never expected to witness this kind of change on Quinn. Yes, I always tried and saw past all her walls and her masks, but I never expected Quinn to break them all. I really needed to work on masking my feelings, because seeing my expression she smiled knowingly at me and finished. – "I decided that I should start by changing my relationship with Santana. So I went to her, and laid everything out, told her that I knew about everything and that I wanted her to talk to me. She was terrified in the beginning about everyone knowing it. Eventually I got her to calm down and we spent a whole weekend just talking about everything: Brittany, Beth, Finn, my punk phase. We still have to work a lot with the yelling at each other about our bullshit, but I think we're really going to make it. Talking with Santana made me realize a lot of things about myself that I've been trying to ignore since ever."
She looked so pleased with herself and I couldn't help but feel really proud of her, I mean this is the girl I always hoped was underneath all of the pressure and the anger. I really didn't want to pressure her now that she was willingly opening but I needed to know one more thing.
"Why are you doing this Quinn? I mean I get you wanting to amend your relationship with Santana. But why are you helping me? Not that I do not appreciate it immensely, I just really don't understand why are you talking to me, telling me all of this now." – She smiled warmly at me, got up and went to one of the lockers. She came back with a bottle of shampoo and soap, handing me both.
"I told you, Rachel. I don't want to be that bitch anymore, I decided to do all the things that I always wanted to do but didn't do because I was too stupid to take control of my own life. And pursuing that relationship you offered me so many times before is one of those things. It's about time for me to get it right." – She kept smiling at me as she took my free hand and rubbed it with her thumb. Did all of this really just happen? Quinn was actually taking control of herself and she wanted to pursue a friendship with me – just the fact that she actually used the word 'pursue' said a lot to me already – and she is going to get it right…Damn, did she actually realized that I didn't write the song for Finn at all? She squeezed my hand before letting it go and I missed the contact at the exact moment. – "Go ahead and take your shower, I'll be waiting here and if you're quick we may get in time for second period, we do have Mr. Schue together, right?"
I was only able to nod and give her a little smile, you can't really blame me that was a lot to process in a ridiculous short amount of time. I reached one of the showers and turned around, just to make sure that Quinn was actually going to wait. And there she was sitting in the couch again, smiling at me. And I could most certainly get used to have that smile directed at me.
