AN: This is a fic for my friend Kel. It's her birthday today!
Based on the prompt: Brittany and Santana help The Mack throw a party for Quinn's 30th birthday.
Her Golden Birthday (Or How to Celebrate Your Girlfriend Getting Older)
The stepladder beneath Mack's feet wobbled as she stretched her arm upward, the crumpled corner of a long, golden banner clutched in her hand. The ladder tilted forward and she dropped the banner, cursing as she gripped the top step and shifted her weight so the ladder didn't send her face first onto the floor. Where in the hell were those other two lady-lovers when she needed them? They were supposed to be at the house half an hour ago to help her with the decorations. Instead, Mack was stuck trying to hang the birthday banner on her own. She muttered to herself as she carefully stepped down from the ladder to retrieve the left side of the banner. She had managed, after several attempts, to get the right side hung, but the left was proving much more difficult.
She was mid-reach at the top of the ladder when she heard a knock at the door. Startled, Mack lost her balance and fell sideways. Her shoulder hit the soft carpeting first, followed by the rest of her body and the golden banner. The right corner had been torn off and she could see the paper clinging to the wood above her.
"God fucking damn it!"
The door opened and in came the troublesome twosome with their six year old terror twins trailing behind them. Santana had a wide box in her arms while Brittany and the brats carried in several plastic bags.
"Keep the language clean, Mack. Virgin ears are afoot," Santana warned her as she stepped around the ladder and into the kitchen.
Mack sat up and rubbed her arm, glaring at Santana before two children rushed towards her. Manny, the sweet talkative boy with dark shaggy hair, light brown skin, and amber eyes, wrapped his arms around her neck and planted a kiss on her cheek. Cam, the quiet girl with dark shaggy hair that matched her twin's and skin that matched Santana's, curled up on Mack's lap and rested her head on Mack's shoulder. Mack resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the two terrors. They always started off sweet, but eventually they would tear through the house, laughing as they clogged a toilet or knocked pictures off the wall. Still, they were her niece and nephew, if not by blood, then through the weird sort of love Mack felt for them.
Mack kissed both on the forehead before shooing them over to their parents and standing up. Santana was rifling through the fridge while Brittany settled the plastic bags on the counter. Party hats and noisemakers tumbled out of one while streamers and ribbons poked out of another. The others were filled with chips, dip, and bottles of pop. While the two of them set up the kitchen, Mack went back to the ladder and stared up at the archway she had planned to hang it from. Why couldn't she be taller? She sighed and put one foot on the lowest step of the ladder, but a hand on her arm stopped her. She turned her head to find Brittany smiling at her.
"I'll do this if you go keep Cam and Manny busy."
Mack rolled her eyes, but stepped off the ladder and handed the banner to Brittany. "I guess I can go play babysitter for a little while."
The two brats were clinging to Santana's legs while she moved bottles of pop from the counter to the fridge. When Mack scooped them up in her arms, Santana gave her the smallest of grateful smiles before going back to her task.
The kids kicked and laughed as she carried them around the corner, down the hall, and into the playroom she and Quinn had set up several years ago. As unofficial aunts to the little brats, they had decided it would be best if they had a designated place to play rather than giving them the run of the whole house. It would only last for a couple hours before the twins would get bored and tear through the house, but at least it gave them some peace for a little while. It was also possible that Mack and Quinn had grown fond of passing time in the room together, not that either of them would admit it to anyone else.
Mack used her ass to push the slightly ajar door open even further and carried the squealing children to the bunk bed on the far side of the room. They giggled as she placed them on the bottom bunk. The giggles turned into peals of laughter when she tickled their sides. The tables turned, however, when Cam escaped from her grip and helped Manny get loose. The free children lunged forward, knocking Mack down to the floor, where they poked at her sides. She had never been ticklish, but she could pretend she was for the little brats. By the time she sat back up and shoved them off her, she was sure her sides were going to be speckled with tiny bruises from their little hands.
She ran her fingers through her hair and caught her breath—pretending to be ticklish could take a lot out of someone—before she stood up and ushered the twins back into the bunk bed. "Okay, nap time."
"We already had our naps, Auntie Mack," Manny said. He looked to his sister for support. Her head bobbed up and down so fast, Mack had to reach out to get her to stop for fear of it rolling right off.
She still shuddered a little at the title 'Auntie Mack' but she was getting better at accepting it. 'Auntie Quinn' had no problems adjusting, but Quinn was also comfortable around children. Mack wasn't, and she was starting to wish Quinn would come home early so she could help her with the twins. It would ruin the surprise party, but at that moment, with the twins looking at her with matching expectant expressions, Mack didn't give a shit.
Her eyes darted around the playroom until they landed on the set of Nerf guns hidden in the corner by a pillow Quinn had thrown at her the night before. She vaguely remembered cleaning up the room one day and finding the foam darts everywhere. She couldn't remember if the mess had been from the twins or her and Quinn. Either way, an idea started to take shape and she chuckled to herself as she retrieved the toy guns and brought them back to Cam and Manny.
"You two like this kinda shit, right?"
The twins looked at each other before turning back to Mack and nodding in sync. She handed each of them a fully-loaded Nerf gun and knelt down so she was eye level with them. She whispered her plan and the twins nodded along, their smiles growing with each word she spoke. When she pulled away, the two of them were giggling and sharing conspiring smiles. Mack flashed a smile of her own before getting to her feet and leading her troops out of the playroom.
Once the cake and drinks had been put away—both adult and kiddie beverages—Santana leaned against the counter and watched as her wife climbed up the stepladder. Brittany's striped tank-top pulled up as the blonde stretched to pin the left corner of the banner over the entryway to the kitchen. Santana stared until her wife looked down and caught her gaze. She cleared her throat and turned back to the counter to hide her smile. The smile grew as she heard footsteps from behind her. The footsteps stopped, and slender arms wrapped around Santana's waist.
"Were you eyeing the goods, Miss Lopez?" Brittany whispered in her ear.
"Lopez-Pierce," she replied before turning around to face her wife. "And what are you going to do if I was?"
Brittany smiled—the one that always meant she was up to something—and said, "Nothing, really. Just remind you that you can look, but not touch." Her hands moved from Santana's waist to the kitchen counter and she dipped her head down to Santana's ear. "Do you think you can handle that?"
Brittany pulled away and Santana's gaze flickered from her eyes down to her lips back to her eyes again. She nodded and Brittany smiled before leaning down to steal a kiss. The counter pressed into Santana's back, but she was too busy trying not to reach up and run her fingers through Brittany's hair to notice. Her hands curled into fists when Brittany's tongue slipped past her lips. She wanted to feel Brittany's skin beneath her hands, to roll her hips forward to meet Brittany's body, but she also wanted to win the little game Brittany had started. Teeth gently nipped at her lower lip, and Santana knew she was lost. She unclenched her fists and raised her hands to slip them under Brittany's shirt, to feel the muscle and skin inches away from her. Then her wife—her perfectly cruel wife—danced away and flashed another bright smile.
"We should probably get back to setting up the kitchen."
Santana groaned. "Fuck this party," she said as she followed her wife to the kitchen table. "And fuck Quinn for turning thirty. Do you know how old that makes me feel?"
"Honey, you're the youngest of us all," Brittany said with a laugh as she opened a bag of chips, "and I don't think Quinn will like you calling her old."
"Hey, I'm only a couple months behind you guys," Santana countered. There was a moment of silence as she watched Brittany pour the chips into different bowls. "God… Fabray is turning thirty." Brittany nodded in response and tossed the empty chip bag over her shoulder. "Then why does it feel like the three of us were tossing slushies just yesterday?"
Brittany chuckled and took her wife's hand. "Someone's getting a little nostalgic in her old age."
Santana pulled her hand away as she scowled at her wife. "Twenty-nine is not old!"
"And neither is thirty or forty or fifty unless you make yourself feel old," Brittany told her before placing a kiss on her cheek. She pulled away and gave Santana a soft smile as she said, "So stop trying to make yourself older than you are, sweetie."
Santana grumbled under her breath. She started to respond when something thwapped against her forehead and fell to the ground. She rubbed her head and looked down to find a purple and yellow Styrofoam dart on the floor. Childish giggles reached her ears and she narrowed her eyes as she looked in the direction the laughter had come from. The tip of a Nerf gun stuck out from the wall at the entrance of the kitchen. She took a step toward it before another dart smacked her in the side of the head.
"Whoever the hell keeps shooting Mamí with the darts is so going to regret it," she warned, only to be met with more giggles. "I mean it!"
Another barrage of darts flew into the kitchen from both sides, raining down on both Santana and Brittany. Peals of laughter echoed through the house accompanied by the clicking sound of the toy guns until, finally, the guns ran out of ammo. Santana and Brittany looked at each other, each of them with darts in their hair and piled at their feet, before they took off running in different directions to chase down the children who had been firing foam darts at them.
Santana caught up to Manny near the end of the hallway. Peals of laughter bounced off the walls when she wrapped her arms around him, flipped him upside down, and avoided his kicking legs while she prodded his sides. Meanwhile, Brittany reached Cam halfway up the stairs. The Nerf gun fell on the carpeted stairs when she hauled the little girl up and slung her over her shoulder.
"Mamí, help!" Cam pleaded when they reached the foot of the stairs, meeting up with Santana and Manny. Santana raised an eyebrow and locked eyes with Brittany. The two of them carried their children to the living room and dropped them on the couch. Brittany took the Nerf gun out of Manny's hands and he giggled when a leftover dart fired at her face, sticking to her forehead. She went cross-eyed for a moment as she pulled the dart off then tossed it on the couch.
"Little Honeys, let's get something straight," Santana started, but she was cut off when another barrage of darts flew at her and Brittany.
"Auntie Mack!" The twins bounced on the couch, laughing and cheering as Mack fired darts at their mothers from the top of the stairs.
Santana tensed and slowly turned around to find Mack with a third Nerf gun still half-loaded. She took a step towards Mack, who flashed a smile before running back towards the room she shared with Quinn. Santana took off after her, quickly clambering up the stairs after the fleeing woman while Brittany took a seat between the children. She pulled several yellow and purple darts out of her shirt before smiling at her children and putting her arms around the both of them, pulling them close to her sides in a hug.
The footsteps of her wife and Mack's pounded against the floor above her accompanied by her wife's shouts. The noise was loud enough that Brittany didn't hear the knocking at the front door until the door was shaking in its frame. She kissed her kids on the head and got up to let in the impatient guests. When she opened the door, she found Puck and Lauren waiting outside, both with their hands raised, poised to knock. They pulled her into a hug that threatened to crush her before stepping inside. The twins were on them as soon as Brittany shut the door.
"So where's the birthday babe?" Puck asked as he lifted Cam and placed her on his shoulders. She held on, her hands in front of his eyes and her chin resting on his shaved head. He gently pulled her hands away and held them as he waited for an answer.
"It's a surprise party, Puckerman," Lauren answered. Manny was in her strong arms, upside down and trying to kick free. "It wouldn't be much of a surprise if she was here while we all piled in." He shrugged and she rolled her eyes. "It's a good thing you're pretty."
He grinned at his girlfriend before turning back to Brittany. "And Santana? This party's gonna suck if I don't have my best drinking buddy."
A crash from upstairs was the only response he needed, but then there was a thud, followed by loud, Spanish expletives. Brittany cringed when something shattered above them. Judging by the sound, it was something fragile and expensive. Not long after, Santana and Mack trudged down the stairs, their hair a mess of tangles. They carried shards of a white and blue vase in their hands.
Brittany looked them both over for a moment. "Don't tell Quinn?"
They nodded and replied, "Don't tell Quinn," before carrying the broken pieces to the kitchen and dumping them in the trashcan. After they covered the evidence with the empty chip bags, they came back to the small reunion of gleeks in the living room.
The reunion continued to grow as Rachel walked through the door with Finn on her arm, followed by Mike and Tina with their daughter Jada, who was dressed in a pink and black dress with red bows in her pigtails. Brittany and Santana showed her to the playroom, where Cam and Manny were playing a board game. Artie appeared soon after with Kitty. The left hand she had resting on his shoulder sparkled due to the ring on her finger. Finally, Sugar walked in with a full-grown Teen Jesus, who still sported his dreads. She swore they were only friends.
Shelby Corcoran showed up with a fourteen-year old Beth just as Brittany was setting up Mack's laptop and opening Skype. She smiled over her shoulder at the former show choir coach and the purple-haired teenager before sending a call to Sam and Mercedes. Mercedes answered with a smile and a wave and Sam ducked his guppy face into the video feed to say hello.
"When is Quinn supposed to get here?" Mercedes asked from her dressing room in California.
"Mom just texted me and said they're a few streets away," Mack said, "so they should be here in like two minutes." Mack never thought she would be able to call another woman 'mom' after the shit her Ma had put her through. After years of the woman sucking her wallet dry, blaming her for their problems, and always taking her brother's side, Mack had called it quits and walked out. Luckily, Judy Fabray was fond of her daughter's girlfriend and allowed her to stay as long as she needed. And slowly, very slowly, Mack found a real family in the Fabray household, even if Judy had intimidated her at first.
"Mack, I'm not sure how many surprise parties you've attended," Rachel started as she pushed through the crowd of grown up geeks, "but generally the lights tend to get turned off before the surprised person arrives."
Mack shrugged. "I figured she'd be surprised enough walking in and seeing all the old losers in one place," she said. Rachel huffed, but Mack continued, saying, "If it makes you feel better, you can go hide under the rug."
"I think hiding could be fun," Brittany said. Santana nodded beside her and Mack rolled her eyes. This group of losers was going to give Quinn a heart attack if they all popped out and shouted surprise. Then again, it was always a good idea to keep Quinn on her toes.
"Fine. Go hide. And not a sound out of any of you until you've gotten the signal."
"Wait. You never told us what the signal was," Finn said when Mack started to usher them down the hall. Three doors slammed outside the house and Mack shook her head.
"You guys will just have to guess for yourselves," she told him as she herded everybody into the playroom with the three children. The front door creaked open and Mack quickly shut the door to the playroom and hurried down the hall to greet Quinn and her family.
The Fabray women were chatting amongst themselves as they slipped their shoes off. Bags of clothes and who knew what else surrounded them. Mack wondered if the bags were all Quinn's or if the other Fabray ladies had bought stuff for themselves as well. A small smile started to form as she listened to Quinn talk to Judy and Franny about their afternoon together. Her eyes widened, however, when she caught sight of the laptop in the kitchen. It still had the video call with Sam and Mercedes playing. She nearly stumbled over her feet in her rush to get to the laptop. She placed herself between the screen and Quinn.
"Mack, what are you doing with the computer?" Quinn asked as she joined her girlfriend in the kitchen.
"Eating," was the first thing Mack could think to say. Quinn raised an eyebrow and looked at the bare kitchen counters. Then her eyes drifted to the table, where bowls of chips and dip had been set. "I mean um… I looked up a dip recipe and made it. For you. For your birthday." Judy and Franny were shaking their heads behind Quinn and Mack knew she was blowing it.
Quinn narrowed her eyes before she walked over to the kitchen table. "This looks like the stuff we get from the store."
"Yeah, the dip I made sucked so I went to the store to get stuff that didn't, you know, suck," she said. Quinn stared at her for several seconds and Mack could feel sweat trickling down the back of her neck. "You know what? I think I left the toilet running in the bathroom," she said, and left the kitchen before Quinn could ask her anymore questions. She made sure to take the laptop with her. When she was sure Quinn hadn't followed her down the hall, she opened the door to the playroom. Before she could speak, a loud chorus of voices echoed through the house.
"Surprise!" The voices quickly died off when they saw it was only Mack standing in the doorway. Her hand tightened around the doorknob. She could hear Quinn's footsteps quickly approaching, but she refused to look down the hall. It was a little too late to come up with another lie. She still refused to look at Quinn when she reached her.
"I was wondering where you guys were hiding," Quinn said. "Why are you all hanging out in the playroom?"
"Auntie Quinn, they keep stepping on our toys!" Manny shouted from somewhere in the back of the room.
"Maybe we should take this to the living room?" she suggested. She slipped her hand into Mack's and gave a gentle tug before leading her down the hall, laptop still in hand. The rest of the guests followed after her, grumbling to themselves.
"You were supposed to be surprised," Finn mumbled when they made it to the living room
"And I was," Quinn said as she took a seat at the kitchen counter, "but that was when I saw all of your cars parked on the street."
Mack glared at the guests. "Did any of you have the sense to park somewhere else?" Shelby raised her hand, but everyone else looked down at the floor. Mack turned back to Quinn. "Your friends are all morons, Fabray."
The blonde smiled as she took the laptop out of Mack's hands and placed it on the counter. "Honey, even if they had hidden their cars, there's a big banner hanging in front of the kitchen that says 'Happy Birthday'," she reminded the smaller woman. Mack's eyes widened and her cheeks flooded with a bright red color. Quinn laughed and kissed her on the reddened cheek. "Thank you," she whispered as she pulled away. There was a coughing sound behind them and Quinn turned around and found Mercedes and Sam watching her from the computer. "You two are definitely a surprise."
"Happy Birthday, Quinn," they said with matching smiles.
"Sorry we can't be there with you," Mercedes said, "but we'll make up for it when we get back from my tour."
"Worldwide, right?"
Mercedes nodded. "Worldwide, baby. Starting with Cali."
"Keep slayin' 'em, Wheezy!"
"Thanks, Satan," Mercedes yelled back before focusing back on Quinn. "Have a drink for Sam and me, birthday girl, and we'll give you a call back after the show."
"Knock 'em dead," Quinn said with a bright smile before they exchanged goodbyes and hung up.
"I'm glad you were surprised by at least one thing," Mack mumbled before leaning up to place a kiss on Quinn's lips. After she pulled away, the rest of the gleeks and family members swarmed the birthday girl and Mack quietly slipped out of the crowd. While she had managed to find a family with the Fabrays, she still wasn't overly fond of most of Quinn's old glee friends. She decided she'd spend some time with the brats instead; at least until the adult beverages were cracked open.
Quinn, on the other hand, enjoyed catching up with the friends from high school. She often met with them when she had time, but never had they all been together. The ring on Kitty's finger surprised her more than anything else, but it was nice to see that both were happy. Sugar was still waiting for someone to sweep her off her feet in some grand romantic gesture. Joe still couldn't meet her eyes for long periods of time even though it had been years since the boner incident in high school. Puck and Lauren both clapped their hands on her shoulders and held out a wrapped box for her to unwrap later. When Beth stepped up to her with a thin, wrapped box in her hand as well, she ignored the present and pulled the teenager in for a hug.
"I like what you've done with your hair."
"Someone showed me a picture of you in high school."
Quinn hardly had to guess who had showed her that picture. She would have to remember to have a chat with Mack about showing Beth old photographs. Shelby was next. Despite their rocky relationship while Quinn was a senior, they had eventually worked things out with Rachel's help. When Rachel and Finn approached her with a gift, Quinn mentioned she hadn't seen their kids in the playroom.
"Well, Tony and Oscar are at dance camp," Rachel said. "You should see it. They're so cute in their little tap shoes and tiny tuxedos."
"Yeah, and Emmy is at baseball camp," Finn said with a proud smile. "She's their best batter and you should see the arm she has. There was a runner trying to get home and she lobbed that ball from the outfield to home. Guy didn't know what hit him."
"It's a small field," Rachel whispered but she quickly added, "but she really is quite talented, even if she can't carry a tune."
It was a little hard to keep up with the rest of the news Rachel and Finn shared with her, but she nodded along with each word. Thankfully, Tina and Mike approached her and offered her tickets to the next show they would be putting on in their theater.
"Dancing, singing, theater. It's going to be awesome," Tina told her, hands waving as she spoke. She was always excited when she talked about the performance theater her and Mike managed together. Granted, she did most of the managing. Mike was better with public relations. They both excelled when they performed, though.
Quinn accepted the tickets with a smile and went on to speak with Artie and Kitty. They were the only two Quinn hadn't seen since her trips back to McKinley. She was surprised Mack had been able to track the two of them down. She found out they had caught up with one another a few years after graduation and the two of them had clicked. In fact, according to Kitty, they had clicked multiple times and with great enthusiasm. And on that note, Quinn decided it was time to make an exit so she could find her long-time girlfriend. She excused herself from the conversation before the couple could regale her with the story of the time Kitty had surprised Artie at his office. Once she was free of her guests, she escaped down the hallway to find Mack.
She found the elusive woman hiding out in the playroom, watching the children play. Quinn smiled as she slipped through the doorway and took a seat next to Mack on the lower bunk bed. Her hand found Mack's and her fingers slid between the other woman's fingers. She rested her head on Mack's shoulder and for a moment enjoyed the silence between the two of them. She loved seeing her friends all together again, but she wanted to be close to Mack, and that wasn't going to happen in the large gathering. She knew the other woman still had problems when it came to fitting in with Quinn's old friends—she had once said they were too good for her, despite what Quinn told her—yet she had still called them up and invited all of them over for a surprise party.
"I thought you weren't a kid person," Quinn whispered as she watched Cam, Jada, and Manny wrestle on the floor.
"Lesser of two evils," Mack replied in an equally soft voice. She turned to face Quinn and said, "There's less of them than there are those gleeks of yours."
"It's a good thing Rachel and Finn didn't bring their kids then," Quinn said. "Who knows what you would have done then."
"We have a basement with a big screen. I would have figured something out," Mack replied. Quinn rolled her eyes, but she placed a soft kiss on Mack's lips afterwards. "What was that for?"
"For being a goofball," she said before capturing Mack's lips in an even deeper kiss that left them both breathless when they broke apart. "And that was for being amazing and doing all this."
Mack shrugged. "The two Nutjobs helped. You gonna go kiss them, too?"
"Depends on how drunk I get tonight."
"I asked if you were going to kiss them, not scream at them until they ran home," Mack teased before looking down at their joined hands. She ran her thumb over the back of Quinn's hand, back and forth and back again, enjoying the smoothness. "Happy birthday, Quinn," she mumbled. She rubbed the back of her head as she said, "I have a gift for you, but you can't really open it front of people, so you're gonna have to wait until everyone leaves."
"I don't know if this is kinky Mack or mysterious Mack, but consider me intrigued."
"What does kinky mean?"
The sound of Jada's tiny voice startled the two women. They both turned and found three children staring at them with wide eyes, waiting for an explanation.
"Well shit."
Later that night, the guests trickled out two at a time. Each pair gave Quinn a hug, one person clumsier than the other depending on who drank that night and who was the designated driver. Rachel's hug lasted a little too long for Mack's liking, but she had also drank much more than her normal tolerance level of two wine coolers, so Mack let it slide. Puck and Lauren were the last to leave. Puck was leaning heavily on Lauren, who had matched him drink for drink. The two of them were taking a cab home and would be back in the afternoon to get the car.
Judy and Franny had left not long before them. Both were sober as neither one wanted to deal with the flight back to Ohio with a hangover. Judy pulled Quinn into a tight hug before they left and had wondered at how her baby girl could grow up so fast. Franny just watched until her mom let go of her little sister. Then she wrapped Quinn in a hug of her own.
Quinn and Mack had sobered up hours before the party ended, which was a blessing, considering how much trouble Mack had with the stairs when she was drunk. Brittany, Santana, and the twins had fallen asleep together in the guest room. Mack and Quinn had taken to calling it the Lopez-Pierce room since they were the only ones who really used it. Beth was asleep on the couch, curled up under a comforter with a party hat on the side of her head. Shelby always let her spend the night on Quinn's birthday so they could have mother-daughter bonding time. Quinn gently removed the blue party hat and kissed the sleeping girl on the forehead. Mack hesitated before she pulled the blanket up higher, over the girl's shoulder. Beth mumbled in her sleep and moved slightly, but otherwise didn't wake up.
Once they were in their own bedroom, Quinn collapsed onto their bed and groaned. She was not as young as she used to be and all of the socializing had taken a lot out of her. Mack was still up, however, and going through their closet.
"Honey, come to bed," Quinn said. "The present can wait until tomorrow morning, I promise."
"Keep your pants on, Fabray." Mack dug through the closet for several more seconds before she closed the door and came to the bed, hands hidden behind her. After she sat down, she placed a large box on Quinn's lap and gestured for her to open it.
"If something pops out of this box, Mack, I'm going to kill you," Quinn warned her, but Mack just told her to unwrap it and find out. Quinn watched her face for any sign of deception before she started to peel off the layers of wrapping paper. Once it was uncovered, she opened the box and found a smaller one inside, wrapped with the same paper as the first. She glared at the girl next to her, but Mack just smiled.
Quinn went through five boxes, each one smaller than the last. With each box, Mack seemed to get more and more restless. Quinn could feel her fingers tapping against the mattress and by the time she got to the smallest wrapped box, Mack's knee was bouncing up and down. When she opened the last wrapped box, she found a small, black case covered in velvet waiting inside. Carefully, she pulled it out and ran her thumb over the dark material.
"I uh… I found it a couple months ago while we were having a fight," Mack said. "It was that really bad one after you proposed to me."
"That was six months ago and you said no," Quinn added as she stared at the black box in her hand.
Mack rubbed the back of her head. "Yeah," she said, "I was a dumbass."
"You were scared."
"So were you, but that didn't really stop you from asking," Mack pointed out before shaking her head. They were getting off track. "Just so you know, I don't need a piece of paper and some fancy ceremony to prove to the world how much I love you."
"Mack—"
"I've been thinking on it, though, about some of the stuff you said that night when I finally came home," she pressed on. "Quinn, I don't need those things, but I want them. And I was scared to want them before, but I'm brave now. You make me brave, Fabray, and you're the only one I want those things with."
Quinn tried to respond, but no words would come, so instead she threw her arms around Mack and tightly hugged the smaller girl.
"Is that a yes?" Mack asked, and Quinn nodded. "But you haven't even seen the ring yet."
"I'm sure it's beautiful," Quinn said in a tight voice, "but right now you're the only thing I want to see."
Mack smiled at that and finally wrapped her arms around the other woman. She buried her nose in Quinn's short hair and squeezed her eyes shut. "Happy birthday, Quinn."
"Thank you, Mack," Quinn whispered. "Thank you for everything."
Suddenly, Mack pulled away and there was a grin on her face. "Hey, I guess that's two things I managed to surprise you with today."
Quinn gently smacked her arm with the back of her hand before pulling her in for another kiss. When they broke apart, they were both smiling again.
"You're a goofball, Mack."
"Yeah, but I'm the goofball that you're gonna marry," Mack teased.
"Yes," Quinn said, her smile softening as she spoke. "The goofball I'm going to marry," she repeated. She liked the way it sounded.
Quinn didn't get the chance to look at the ring that night. The two of them were too busy celebrating her birthday and Mack's proposal the best way they knew how: Wrapped up in one another.