[quinn tells rachel she's in love with her. little headcanon drabble in current verse.]
...
Comme des Enfants
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I remembered the fox. One runs the risk of crying a bit if one allows oneself to be tamed.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
...
One of your favorite things to watch is the slowing of Quinn's hands when she starts speaking to a child. You know her schedule her final year at Yale is a overwhelming some of the time, and when you spend weekends together in either New York or New Haven, you usually drag her out from the library to go on a quiet date—to dinner, a slow walk around a park or campus afterward: All press and hush, the knuckles of her hands and these achingly sweet kisses, the dimple scar dimple lower spine.
She's never really been quiet—not in a shy sort of way, although you're learning that so much of this new Quinn is introverted in small ways, that she feels life physically—so much of her body is a quiet thing, and she's always had this dialect of control and recklessness. On nights like this, though—after brick over pizza and one beer, chocolate truffles—she is what you think might be her most open self. Sometimes you forget things about her, forget how the backs of her teeth align, the shape of her thumbnails. They are small things but they are important, and when Quinn is holding your hand and wandering around Yale's campus in March when she's twenty-one, quiet and brave, speaking little small phrases to you sporadically in French, you learn them over and again.
On this particular night you learn again that she is a mother. It is a profound thing for you to learn each time: Quinn's eyes when she sees little girls walking hand-in-hand with someone shift slightly, dim in this bright, soft fog. Tonight there's a small child—a little girl with deep brown, messy hair, a pink t-shirt, little white leather sandals, scuffed—running around in circles by her parents, who are sitting in the grass close by where you're walking.
She sees the two of you, seems taken by Quinn. She runs over, without words, and stops right in front of both of you. You glance over at her parents, who are watching but not getting up too hurriedly to stop her. She stares up at Quinn—big, big eyes and those fine, long, young eyelashes, little nose and lips and chin—and Quinn stills. Her entire being takes on this calm, and you feel it next to you. Usually she speaks with her hands, holds them out to demonstrate her thoughts on the world.
But tonight she kneels in front of the little girl, one knee on the grass, and sets her hands on top of her knee. "What's going on?" she asks, this incredibly serious, gentle tone that you've never really heard from her before.
The little girl doesn't say anything, although she seems mesmerized.
"How are you?" Quinn asks.
You watch in some sort of wonder as the child takes one of Quinn's hands in her own and pats it with the other, then points up towards what Quinn refers to as the harvest moon: orange and imposing, spectacular and this sort of infinite thing.
Quinn nods and says, "Lune," and the child holding her hand smiles and then begins to laugh in this beautifully young way. She leans in and kisses Quinn's cheek and then runs back off in the direction of her parents, who wave.
You feel Quinn take a deep breath. You feel her hold it. For a few moments you are worried about her, about what you can possibly say, but then she straightens up and kisses you deeply.
After she backs up with a little tug on your bottom lip with her teeth, you rub the small of her back before hugging her tightly. She doesn't speak very often to Shelby, but you know she keeps pictures of Beth in her wallet, sends presents frequently—mostly books.
You want to say so many things. But instead you rest your head in the crook of her shoulder, kiss her neck. You wait.
Eventually she shrugs. "Remember that song from earlier?"
You smile into her skin and take her hand. You know now to talk extensively about the Diwali episode of The Office because if there's anything you've found that lightens Quinn's eyes even a little it's—according to her description—"brilliantly written dry humor riddled with unexpectedly poignant moments."
You watch Quinn laugh and sing a bit of the song with you, and the, all of a sudden, outside of one of the least impressive buildings on campus, she casually says, "I'm in love with you," before continuing on about Steve Carell.
You stop suddenly, tug on her hand. "Quinn?"
She turns to face you, and her eyes get big.
"You know what you just said?" you ask.
She takes a deep breath. "I meant it." She smiles. "I'm so in love with you."
You don't have anything to say, so you kiss her instead. "I'm in love with you too," you tell her softly.
"Well that's convenient."
You laugh, take her hand with a good-natured roll of your eyes. "Say it in French?"
"Aren't you needy all of a sudden?" she says, but then whispers, "Je suis en amour avec vous," in your ear.
You shiver involuntarily and Quinn smiles—sad and full and beautifully, all fall ash and spring everywhere—and you start walking again back towards her apartment. You've not yet had I'm in love with you sex, and you can't imagine anything much better.
You're gentle with Quinn, later, on her white sheets, the paleness of her skin, the way she shuts her eyes. You're usually gentle but tonight is different, because she is always remarkably sexy but in the wane harvest moon she is young.
She wakes up in the middle of the night, turns over in your arms so she's facing you, which wakes you up.
"Did you have a nightmare?" you ask, and she shakes her head, kisses you gently, laces your fingers together.
"We should wonder more often," she mumbles.
"About what?"
"No," she says. "Just, wonder. Be in wonder. About everything."
"I think you're just amazing," you say.
She laughs. "The little girl tonight—she didn't remind me of Beth," she says quietly. "She reminded me of—if we had children I want them to look like yours."
"Quinn."
She shrugs. "I was sure because I wanted her to always think of the moon in French."
When you wake up in the morning, you watch her sleep: pillowed and soft, smart, tender, patter-hearted and ventricled. She is so wonderfully young.