['She'd taken a role in a brilliant, absolutely profound film about two women who fall in love in a concentration camp. You'd imagined, when she told you, all of this happening, even before she'd managed to come to grips with it herself.' Rachel is shooting a really emotionally draining film, Quinn & others are there to support her. Features fababies, Santana, Kurt, angst & fluff. Compilation of drabbles that were originally posted on tumblr.]
it's a blessing (everyday someone shows up at the fence)
.
you're never an imposition. when you love someone, you know, you join in their war.
—abbigail, in a recent email to me
/
You knew the minute she got the script and let you read it a few hours later that all of this was bound to happen, but you're used to being the one with nightmares, and it's unnerving. When you wake without her in your arms, the night after she gets back from Poland, you don't wonder what had woken her up.
You make sure Nora is stil asleep—she's just turned 14 months old, and she looks just like Rachel, you think, which never fails to give you such hope of healing—but she's peaceful, her little face completely smooth, her eyelashes resting against her cheeks.
So you walk out of Nora's nursery and down the hall. Rachel had looked hollow—your usually bubbly, exuberant wife—when you'd met her at JFK in the late afternoon. She looks different than you're used to—she's lost a little weight, she's cut her hair—but it's not those things, not really, although you are shaken by them, no matter how much you try, for her, not to be.
But what you're really shaken by is when you find her staring out your kitchen window—your beautiful, stylish and completely remodeled brownstone on Central Park West—shoulders hunched. You don't even need to look at her eyes; you know they're haunted right now.
You make a little noise as you pad into the kitchen, and she slumps, but she doesn't recoil in fear. She turns toward you, and her face is sharper without the softness of her hair—you still think she's beautiful, she'll always be beautiful, but this is a lot of both of you to handle.
"Baby," you say, when you see her knotting her hands in front of her.
She'd taken a role in a brilliant, absolutely profound film about two women who fall in love in a concentration camp. You'd imagined, when she told you, all of this happening, even before she'd managed to come to grips with it herself. At first, it was an acting exercise that Rachel had gotten, as always, way into, and you've learned by now to just roll with it. When she'd told you she wanted to cut her hair for the part, you'd kissed her deeply, bought her Harry Winston, told her she was beautiful before and after, no differently—and you believe that, but you'd cried in your office at work the next day. It's been hard, watching Rachel become quieter as filming has gone on. She still bursts into song with Nora sometimes, but it's not nearly as grand as you're used to, and it's been two months since she touched you with anything near fucking—making gentle, soft love to Rachel is never something you don't want, but you miss her sure, powerful body sometimes.
Acting is her craft, though, and you staunchly support her, just as she does you with all of your theoretical whims, jaunts to Europe, fascination with architectonics, avid television watching. This, you're learning quite concretely, is what a marriage is about. Nora had been, in no uncertain terms, the best of times, and this is nearing the worst,
You aren't mad, or even thinking of being unfaithful: you're just watching your wife suffer. She'd gotten back from six days of filming in Krakow and surrounding areas, and when you'd met her at the airport she'd been bundled in a hat and scarf and coat, and she'd hugged you for a long time, just leaned into you.
She hadn't cried though, and you're sort of hoping she will now—you want her to be honest with you, even if that honesty is heartbreaking. Members of her family were killed where she just filmed, and her character in the film dies, and you have no idea how to ask about those things: Rachel has always been proud of her heritage, and the more you've read, the more you realize you'd have been put in those camps too, if you'd been brave enough to love who and what you do. Eleven million people died, and you both could've so easily been two of them if the time and space of your existence were just so slightly different.
She swallows across from you, her collarbones jutting from beneath one of your old tshirts from college. She's pulled on sweatpants over her underwear from when you'd fallen into bed after a few beers together.
"Did I wake you up?" she asks, voice softer than you're used to.
You shake your head. "I'm just—you know." You shrug helplessly, because you've been worried for the last eight weeks, since they started filming, but neither you nor Rachel really have many comforts.
She walks toward you and puts her arms around your waist, kisses you softly, the tucks her head into your shoulder. You hold her with all of your might, so gently, so strongly, and you feel hot tears soak your sweatshirt.
Neither of you say anything for a while until she just mumbles, "I'm so close to being done with this shit."
It's so unexpected that an ungraceful laugh overtakes you, and she looks up at you, confused for a moment, before she grins. It's so welcome tears prick dangerously at the backs of your eyes, but you just kiss her forehead. Her hair is buzzed a little unevenly right now for the last stretches of the film, but it's soft, and you know it'll grow back.
"It was awful," she says, calmly leading you back down the hallway. "It's—we visited earlier, so. You know."
You nod—at one of your conferences in Warsaw, Rachel had come and you'd taken a few days to vacation in Poland, and, upon her prompting, visited Auschwitz. It'd made you physically sick once you got back to your hotel—both the remnants of the place and your inability to comprehend it—which is another reason you think this film is so important: so many people haven't had their stories told, and this script is a gentle, aching one, quiet and, in so many shocking and human ways, lovely.
She shrugs. "But then there's you and Nora and everyone and—you're really real, right?"
You smile crookedly, lay down and tug her to your chest, make sure her ear is pressing to your sternum, just above your heart. "Totally really real, baby."
"Sometimes it's hard to get out of that headspace, filming," she says. "But then there's you."
It makes your throat tighten painfully, almost, how simply she says it. All you've ever wanted to be—in life, for yourself, for Rachel—is a safe space. Your academic work is about it, you try every day to make things just a little gentler.
"i've no idea why I married you," you say.
Rachel laughs, although it's exhausted and not nearly as loud as usual—but it's a laugh, and she's falling asleep, so you smile.
"I love you," she says. "And I'm sorry—"
You lean down and kiss her, then shake your head. "Do not apologize for this, okay? You're doing something so valuable and brave right now and I just want you to be okay."
She aims for your lips and misses, getting your chin, and you both laugh. "Come on, jet lagged human, get some sleep, yeah?"
"You'll be right here?" she checks.
"Well, yeah, it's my bed too."
"Idiot," she mumbles against your chest, breath warm, and you hold tightly. In a few months she'll—quite predictably, at that point—win an Oscar for her performance, which will make her the youngest EGOT winner by years. She'll be graceful and eloquent and always so respectful when speaking about her role in interviews, and she'll recover quickly, beautifully: she'll let you feed her dessert, let you take her to the park in the afternoons, let her hair grow out, start sparkling and laughing and booming classic Barbra in the shower at six in the morning again. But for now, she's fallen asleep listening to your life pound away, and for now, you see her through all of the shadows.