Disclaimer: Don't own glee, never will, etc. etc.
A/N: Also, a lot of the places/events/etc. are fictionalized, so don't like, accept it as fact.
...
She only has three months until she has to start thinking about college, and that kind of scares the shit out of her.
Because, yeah, she lives in New York, and there's obviously plenty of options, and she's pretty sure that her parents would support her in whatever the hell she wanted to do, whether it was going to law school like her dad did or going to Australia to become a fucking dolphin trainer.
Her parents are awesome like that, and while most of the time she appreciates their laid-back, mistakes are only mistakes if you don't learn something from them attitude, she wished they'd be a little more strict on some things, like college, and life, and everything that's going to come after this last summer of her being a "child".
She's worked at the fair every summer since she was sixteen, so it's obviously not that unusual of an occurrence for her, but if her parents can't see or aren't concerned that one of the main reasons she asked for a job again this year was so she didn't have to think about what she was going to do with her life come mid-August, then they're a lot more purposely uninvolved than she originally thought they were.
She's on break right now, and the little employee lounge thing that they have is actually really cool; a couch and some bean bags, a flat screen TV and some surprisingly really fantastic wifi.
"Dude," she hears Mike say, who's frowning down at his DS. "You cheated."
"Did not." Sam replies, offended, stylus clutched tightly between his fingers. "You're just mad that Cyndaquil is obviously superior to Totodile – "
"You're not allowed to nerd-out around me." Santana yells from the yellow bean bag that she's sharing with Brittany. "I'm making that a rule."
Sam sighs and Mike frowns, but they both return to their game after Mike whispers, "Rematch," and Sam replies, "Alright."
...
Quinn's first impression of Santana was crazy bitch.
Her impression of Santana now is still crazy bitch, but the tone that her mind says it in is warmer than before.
The first week or so, Santana was openly struggling, and while Quinn had laughed about it a little bit, by the fourth day it was just a little...sad.
And even though Quinn knew next to nothing about concessions, she tried to help out, anyway, if only so Santana wasn't making a fool of herself alone.
That was the start of a good friendship. One where they called each other bitch and spent most of their time bickering over stupid, tiny, unimportant things, yeah, but a friendship, nonetheless.
It still is a friendship, really, but Brittany was hired about five weeks after Santana and though for a while there it was all three of them hanging out and having lunch together and watching TV in the break room, after about a month it was really clear that it wasn't quite Brittany and Santana and Quinn, but more, Brittany and Santana. And oh, hey, Quinn, too.
It doesn't bother her, though. Not really, because she has Kurt (who's basically a male Santana, despite being a little less bitchy and a lot more fashion conscientious) and Mike and Sam.
"Quinn, yo," someone says, and she looks over the back of the couch to Sam, who's biting his lip and staring intently down at his DS. "Um. Would you do me a favor and go grab me some...uh – goddamn, Chang, no fair – some nachos?"
She almost considers saying no, but then takes a look at the TV and then her watch and realizes that she really would rather not spend the rest of her break watching Jersey Shore and trying not to say anything that might offend Kurt, who looks completely immersed.
"I'll pay." He tacks on a second later and then fishes his wallet out of the pocket of his cargo shorts. He does it without looking away from the screen once, and Quinn is admittedly a little impressed.
...
The fair is busy, and Quinn frowns at herself for feeling a little irritation by it because really, what did she expect? It's early June, the weather is crazy nice for it being 7:13 in the evening and admission is only seven bucks.
Her feet subconsciously take her to the nearest concession stand with nachos on their menu, and she gets in line behind a guy and his kid. The little boy is wailing "I WANT A SNO CONE!" at the top of his lungs, and the dad looks like he wants to pull his graying hair out and slam his face against the pavement.
Quinn smiles in sympathy, although the guy can't see it, and mentally adds this event to the list in her head entitled Why Quinn Fabray Will Probably Never Have Children.
She smiles up at the older guy maning the ordering window and then fumbles with Sam's wallet when it comes time to pay. It's worn-out brown leather, and it's slim, which she guesses is partly due to the shortage of bills in it.
Pulling out the only bill, a five, she hands it to the man and tucks the wallet into her pocket before accepting the change and the box of nachos with a smile and a nod.
On her way back she looks down at the food in her hands and sighs, "Goddammit." Sam likes jalapenos, she's pretty sure (she vaguely recalls him once saying, "Dude, nachos aren't truly nachos if there's no jalapenos"), and when she turns to start heading back to the concessions, something hits her elbow, and she jerks away, effectively spilling cheese and tortilla chips all down the front of her.
"Fuck," she mutters, unable to do anything at the moment besides just stare at the mess.
"Oh my god," a feminine voice says next to her. "Oh my god, are you alright?"
"I probably just ruined this shirt, but other than that – well."
"You – right. Right. I – oh my god, I'm so sorry, here, hold on – "
And then there's a hand pressing napkins onto her shirt and trying to mop away the cheese while she licks what she can off her fingers and forearm.
She laughs, "Here – I think you might be making it, um, worse, so," and then takes the napkins from the girl and crumples them before squashing them into the nacho tray, which now sadly only contains one chip and a small blob of cheese.
"Shit," she says when she looks down at her shirt, because it's going to be hell to get the staining out and because she's just realized that she's going to have to go through the rest of the night looking like a slob that never washes her uniform.
And then she curses again, because she's pretty sure that she just wasted about three dollars that weren't hers.
"I – hi." She says, and looks up, catching the eye of the girl that's eying the yellow mess on her shirt with a slight wince.
"Hi."
Quinn senses the beginnings of an awkward silence, because neither of them are giving any indications that they will be moving along any time soon, so she says, "I'm Quinn," but doesn't offer her hand, because she's pretty sure the brunette wouldn't appreciate the mixture of cheese and saliva coating her fingers.
"Rachel Berry," she replies, and Quinn smiles.
"Nice to meet you," she says. "And I would shake your hand but um. Yeah."
"Of course," Rachel replies, and then moves to take the small tray out of Quinn's hand. "I'll throw this away for you, it's the least I could do."
"Okay. Thank you," Quinn says. "I should probably – "
"No, no, hold on." Rachel jogs to the closets trash can, which is about fifty feet away, and then jogs back. "Let me – I'll buy you some more nachos, it's – I'm sure you were looking forward to eating them."
Rachel seems a little out of sorts, but Quinn is sure she would be flustered too, if she just spilled someone's food all over them.
But then again, she also doesn't know Rachel Berry well, or at all, really, so she could very well act like this on a regular basis.
Quinn laughs lightly. "Well, um. They weren't for me, but..."
She doesn't know how to say, "Yeah, that'd be awesome if you could buy me some more food, seeing as it is kind of your fault that its currently all down my front."
"That'd actually be...much appreciated," she says. "And...uh. Could you get jalapenos, please?" She feels like a child asking their mother for a toy.
"Of course." Rachel nods, and then points to a nearby bench. "Could you – would you sit over there so I don't, um, lose you when I come back?"
Quinn nods, and Rachel nods back and smiles slightly before she says, "Okay. Hold on like, three minutes," and stalks off towards a concession stand while Quinn turns the opposite way and heads toward the bench.
She could easily take off back to the employee lounge and tell Sam that she got the last order of nachos and then dropped it all over herself and that she's really sorry, and she kind of wants to, because this has never happened to her and she doesn't really know how to deal with it.
But the polite part in her wins out, and she waits patiently on the bench, picking at the hardened substance clinging to the material of her shirt.
She suddenly feels uncomfortable, and she can feel people staring at her a little too long as they pass by. She watches a group of teenagers maybe a few years younger than her point and then laugh before dipping their spoons in their ice cream and walking off in the direction of the Ferris wheel.
Her knee starts bouncing up and down, and she wills herself to stop, because it probably seems like she's getting impatient. She's not. She's just getting restless, and the combined anxiety of waiting for Rachel to come back with nachos for Sam and the feeling she can't seem to shake that everyone seems to watching her, isn't really doing that much good for her slight (okay, more than slight) claustrophobia.
"Hi, hey, sorry for taking so long," Rachel says, and Quinn stands up jerkily to meet her. "It was – the line was kind of long, and then the cheese machine stopped working for a second, and – "
"Hey, whoa. It's fine," she says, and then takes the food when Rachel nods and hands it out to her. "I – um. Thank you. Not for – for spilling food on me, obviously, but for buying this." She almost adds, I'll pay you back, but then realizes how horrible that would sound, considering both her and Rachel know that there's about a seventy percent chance they will never see each other again. "And you should, um, try and ride that spaceship thing, if you've got time. It's my favorite. Gets a little messy when someone pukes, though."
Rachel scrunches up her nose at this, and Quinn grins, hoping to reassure Rachel that she's half kidding. "It was nice meeting you," Quinn says, and she does mean it, despite the soiled state of her clothing.
Rachel smiles lightly, "You too," and then waves slightly before she turns on the heels of her flip flops (in the direction of the space ship ride, Quinn notes with accomplishment).
...
"Took you long eno – um, why does it look like a giant cheese monster took a crap on your shirt?" Sam reaches up for his nachos and Quinn drops his wallet onto his lap. "Thanks. But no, hey, really."
Santana looks up from the exact same position that Quinn left her in and snorts, clapping sarcastically. "Nice one, Fabray. You trip over your shoelace or something?"
"No," she sighs and then falls into the couch next to Kurt, who is also exactly where she left him, except instead of Jersey Shore on the TV, it's True Life.
He glances at her, and then does a double take. "Oh my god," he says, wide eyes glued to her shirt, like the sight of it has somehow personally offended him. "What circle of hell did you fall into? Do you know how hard it is to get nacho cheese out of clothes?"
"I – I didn't," she says, blinking at him. "But...now I do?"
He shakes his head, then goes back to his TV.
"No, but Quinn, really," Brittany wonders. "Did you trip over those cords that they use to power the rides? 'Cause I do that a lot, too."
"No," Quinn shakes her head and laughs, because Brittany's telling the truth, and Quinn has witnessed a lot of those instances. "Rachel bumped into me."
"Are we supposed to know who that is?" Mike asks.
"Not really. I – well, I don't even know who she is, really, besides the girl that created this gigantic stain and bought me – well, Sam – another plate of nachos."
"Oh," Sam says, rubbing some cheese off the corner of his mouth before wiping it on his shorts. "So, should I have thanked her, then?"
Quinn shrugs. "I guess. I don't know. Probably."
"Okay, well; thank you, Rachel," he says, saluting the sky. He picks up his DS, and then Santana drops her phone in her lap and groans.
"You sound like a cow," Kurt says absently, then chuckles a little.
"Yeah, kind of," Mike says. "What are you mooing about?"
"Our break's over in fucking seven minutes," Santana says.
There's a small silence, and then they all let out little mooing sounds of their own.
...
Running the knock the three bottles down with on softball stand wasn't really what she had in mind when she'd first had the idea to start working over here during the summers (and admittedly, she's a little jealous that Kurt gets to work the Tower of Doom even though she's been here a year longer), but for the $12.50 that she's getting per hour, she'd scrape the dried-up gum off the undersides of tables if they asked her to.
A little boy winds up and throws his last softball while his parents stand off to the side, talking quietly.
"Sorry," Quinn says, and smiles down at him. "Better luck next time."
He shrugs, and then walks over to his parents who pat him on his head and then lead him to other (more exciting, Quinn thinks) parts of the fair.
She tucks a hand into the pocket of her half-apron and stuffs the five dollar bill into the rubber band holding all the other bills.
Quinn finds it a little funny how something that's so obviously rigged still manages to make such a huge profit.
Someone clears their throat, and she looks up. "Sorry. Five dollars per rou...oh. Hello."
Rachel smiles, apparently pleased at the surprise that Quinn can feel on her features, and responds, "Hi."
"What – um," Quinn smiles back, and then stupidly repeats, "Hi," back to her. "Did you want to play?"
Rachel shrugs. "Sure." She pulls a pink duct tape wallet out of her back pocket. "How much?"
"Five dollars," Quinn says. "Or I could just let you play for free. Since you replaced those nachos, and everything."
"It's no big deal," Rachel says, and then drops the bill on the counter before Quinn swaps it with three softballs. Rachel steps back, winds up, and then throws, and Quinn's sure that if this game was far, Rachel would have just won the gigantic frog hanging in the back corner. "I'm still really sorry about your shirt, by the way, and I will most likely continue to be sorry for forever."
"For forever," Quinn repeats, and then resets the bottles. "Again, it's whatever. I have a washing machine."
The ball collides with the bottles with a clang. Rachel huffs slightly in annoyance, and Quinn feels the corner of her mouth tilt up. "I assumed as much. But that stain will be, excuse me, hell to get out, washing machine or no."
"Do you normally not cuss?" Quinn wonders, stacking the bottles once more. "Because...well. It's New York." She tacks on the, "No offense," just in case.
Rachel snorts softly, "I'm not from here. I thought that was obvious."
"The population of New York is very diverse," Quinn says. "And tourists usually look more...like that." She points over Rachel's shoulder to a family of four in I heart NY t-shirts.
Rachel throws the ball and misses, then smiles. "I blend in well, then." It's not really a question.
"Yeah."
"Good. That's good. I'm going to school here this year and I've been a bit worried about...fitting in," Her cheeks pinken. "Sorry, that was – you don't care – "
"Where?"
Rachel hesitates for a beat before answering, "Juilliard."
Quinn's eyebrows disappear into her hairline. "That's – wow. Isn't that – wow."
"Thank you."
"Doesn't that school have like, a 10% acceptance rate?"
Rachel shrugs, and then looks down at her feet a bit bashfully before looking up again.
"Modest," Quinn says, thinking out loud. "Um. Sorry. I didn't – "
"No, no, you're fine," Rachel says. "And – ah. What about you? For college?"
Just hearing the word sends an evil shiver down Quinn's spine, and she stutters awkwardly, "Well I – um...uh..."
"Sorry, sorry. I was being a little nosy, wasn't I?"
Quinn shakes her head. "No that wasn't – um. You're fine. Golden, even. It's just...I don't know."
And that's the truth, because when it comes to college and what comes after this summer at the fair, that's exactly her problem; she doesn't know.
"NYU, maybe?" She says, pulling a name out of her ass.
Rachel nods, "That's a nice school," and Quinn's pretty sure that she doesn't want to know whether Rachel really means it or not.
"Yeah. So, um, anyway, are you here by yourself?"
"Oh, no," Rachel laughs. "I'm with my dads. We're staying with a friend."
Quinn can't respond with anything else besides, "Uh..." because her brain is still trying to recover from the plural use of dads.
She's not homophobic or anything, because this is New York and she has two gay friends (and a bisexual one,), she just really did not see that coming.
"Dads?" She asks.
"I – yes," Rachel says, and Quinn's response is to shrink a little bit when Rachel tenses her shoulders and stands up just a little bit taller (which isn't much). "Is there a problem with that?"
"No – Jesus, no, of course not. I was just surprised, is all."
"Oh," Rachel relaxes, and so does Quinn. "Sorry. It's habit to get defensive."
"Defend away. I understand."
Rachel smiles, and it seems a little strained, and then pulls a phone from her pocket to check the time. "I'd better head back. I promised I wouldn't be out past 8:30, so..."
Quinn nods. "Right, yeah. Of course."
She watches as Rachel begins backtracking, and then waves when she says, "Bye, Quinn."
And Quinn knows that she probably won't "see her later", but she says it anyway.
...
The people that don't live in New York, usually don't fully realize the truth to the statement the city that never sleeps, because the street outside of Quinn's window sounds just as busy at 3:30 AM as it would at maybe 3:00 in the afternoon.
It's kind of funny, because that's the only thing that her and her parents (and her sister, when she was still living with them) would agree that they liked; the constant noise of people living their lives and going places and making memories a mere doorway away.
Quinn rubs her bleary eyes, and takes one last look at her Chrome tab that's opened to the search results of college (That's all she typed, because she worried that if she elaborated on it even the smallest bit, she was running the risk of giving herself a panic attack) and then exits out before closing her laptop and setting it on her nightstand.
She takes comfort in the din of sounds outside her bedroom, because, she figures, there has to be at least one person out there feeling the same weight of nervousness gnawing at her gut.
...
A/N: So, yeah, read/review/favorite/add to alert/criticize/flame/whatever you want to do. All of that (besides the criticize and flame) would be much appreciated.
Also, if you care, an update for TTTT might be on the way.
And again, if you care, no, this story and TTTT might not (probably will not) be updated in any sort of organized fashion. Sorry.