Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 63rd cycle. Now cycle 64!

"Backlight"
Quinn/Finn, Rachel/Puck
Sunshine Girls series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

At first she didn't want to tell him what they were going to dinner for. Maybe he'd find it silly for her to be there, more or less spying on Rachel and Puck's date. But Rachel had asked her to be there, and she had agreed to it. In the end she had been honest, didn't want to build this evening on a lie and have it blow up in their faces. Things could have been much worse between them, but they had found a way to make it work, so now that it was, she wasn't going to wreck it. If he didn't want to come, then she would just have to go on her own.

But Finn had agreed. He knew as well as she did how much those two had been miserable since their break up. He would have heard Puck's side while she'd heard Rachel's.

"And we deserve a date, too," he had pointed out with a smirk.

"Yeah, we do," she had agreed.

So, they had readied themselves for their deserved date. Finn came to pick her up, and the smile on his face when he saw her was about enough to almost make her forget the original purpose of this night.

At the restaurant, they'd been given a table well out of view from where Rachel and Puck would be sitting. If Puck spotted them, they could give the simple excuse that they were there on their own date night and, if somehow Finn got caught in that lie, Quinn would say that she had wanted to be near Rachel, for moral support, rather than the other way around. She doubted Puck would have been too upset at the actual reason, but she didn't want to risk it, for her friends' sake.

They had arrived before Rachel and Puck, which gave them a chance for some alone time. "We should do this more often," Quinn decided with a smile.

"Spying?" Finn asked.

"No," she laughed. "Just… this…"

"Well there is Nora," he reminded her.

"There are enough of us that we could afford leaving her with a babysitter every once in a while. Or we could bring her. She's quiet most of the time, and who knows how long that'll last."

"What if one time we bring her, and one time we don't, and then we keep alternating like that," Finn suggested.

"That's a good id…" she stopped, seeing his gaze lock far past her. She turned and saw what he did. Rachel and Puck had arrived. "Don't stare, he might see you," she muttered, even well out of earshot.

"Right," he averted his eyes, while she kept looking.

"It's alright, they're sitting now, he's got his back to us," she informed him. Rachel could see them though, and the two girls locked eyes for a moment, which Rachel hid beneath a smile to Puck when he looked to her. "Okay, that's good," she turned back to Finn. "Let me know if you see anything."

"Like the waitress?"

"No, I mean with them. If you see that things look bad, or…"

"Why don't we just switch places, that way you can look without having to turn all the time?" he offered. She looked over her shoulder again, making sure they weren't looking.

"Okay, go, go," she agreed, and they both stood, swapping places. When the waitress came, she paused, looking at the two like they hadn't been sitting this way the last time she'd come to them. "We're ready to order," Quinn switched the subject, and the waitress shrugged it off, grabbing her pad and pen.

She knew, for however much she wanted to focus on Finn, she would be distracted by her task, especially when they didn't have food to keep them minded, so she had taken to asking him about what he wanted to do for the current assignment in Glee Club. She could have asked him about his project for this class or his test for that class, but it would have only flustered him, and she preferred to keep him in a mood that was about things he loved and gave the most energy to. This had managed to do the job, and they had discussed song choices until their meal arrived.

Every so often she would sneak a glance toward the other table, almost like taking a breath. She wasn't seeing anything that told her Rachel needed her, so she didn't stay focused on them. She was having a great time with Finn, too. They really did need to do this more often. She was so happy now, with where things were headed, for all of them. It had not been ideal, any of it, to become parents at their age, but it had happened, and they had chosen to keep Nora. They weren't going to spend the rest of their lives with pity and what-ifs. This was their life and they were making it work.

When the waitress had come back and asked if they wanted dessert, Quinn had told her that they wouldn't, and that they'd take the bill. Finn looked at her, confused, like he would have gone for a piece of cake.

"We'll go grab a cinnamon bun or something," she promised him.

"Why can't we have it here?"

"Look at them," she smiled, nodding to the other table. Finn made a great show of sneaking a glance over his shoulder. "They're doing fine without us," she told him, looking on to the two of them. She couldn't see Puck's face, but Rachel's was lit with a smile that told Quinn she was very happy.

Finn paid for dinner, and then they snuck their way around, leaving Breadstix without Puck or Rachel ever realizing they'd gone. Later that night, she would text Rachel, letting her know about how they'd gone. She didn't want to interrupt what was happening in any way.

"I think this weekend we should do something," she told Finn as they sat to their cinnamon bun. "You, and me, and Nora, for a day."

"Sounds great," he smiled.

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!