A/N: So, my first Glee fanfic! I've been watching the show for a while now (during an extremely productive weekend when I was determined to use my time to binge on Netflix), and became more and more obsessed until—well, this. I have in no way abandoned any of my other Harry Potter fics, though, and will definitely continue to write them. Anyway, enjoy!
QOTD: "I'm not a box. I've got more than four sides to me."
Disclaimer: I don't own Glee, Quinn, Puck, or any other characters that pop up in this. Especially since if I did, I'm pretty sure the show would either be a horror story or a really strange blend of Percy Jackson and Harry Potter.
o o o
The first time someone calls Quinn beautiful, she smiles with a faint blush on her cheeks and says a quiet "Thank you." It's the first time anyone besides her father has said it to her, and it feels good.
She isn't Lucy Caboosey anymore, she's Quinn Fabray, who is effortlessly beautiful and knows it. She knows that the ugly duckling becoming a swan is an overused cliche, but it's one that she likes—no, loves.
That freshman year, she gets called pretty or beautiful almost every day; by wannabe cheerleaders who can see Coach Sylvester's blatant favoritism and see her as an "in", jocks who wolf-whistle at her and make crude jokes, girls who breathlessly walk up to her and tell her that, asking how she can be so perfect naturally, and best of all, her new boyfriend, Finn Hudson, who might follow her around like a dopey puppy dog half the time, but says the words with such sincerity that she almost believes it.
Sometimes, when they tell her of her beauty, it feels like the first time someone told her that she was pretty—it is like flying, the feeling she gets every time the rollercoaster reaches the top and stops for just a split second. Other times, though, she just wants to throw up, run to the toilets and dry-heave up her tiny Sue-Sylvester-approved lunch. She wants to scream that she isn't beautiful, she is fat and ugly and molded by plastic surgery and waking up at five in the morning to run on the treadmill until she feels like collapsing, to keep herself from being Lucy again.
She never voices this, though. She smiles prettily like a proper lady should, and says a thank you, keeping her voice high and lofty to make sure it doesn't crack.
o o o
In sophomore year, a girl calls her Regina George. She knows it's a joke; the girl's a Cheerio hopeful, and she probably thinks that Quinn would like to be the Queen Bee, to be feared by everyone in the school.
And sometimes, she does like it. She knows that this is what keeps her from being slushied and turning into that wannabe Broadway star, Rachel Berry, but just like the word "pretty", it makes her feel uncomfortable as well.
She knows that Santana is the one that is really feared, even though Quinn technically presides over her; she's the one who can take down a three-hundred pound football player with a combination of words and inch-long nails. Brittany is even more exempt from slushies than she is (because no one, not even Rick "the Stick" Nelson would dare to harm someone so innocent and good).
Here's the thing: her life isn't a classic teen movie with a horrible made-for-TV sequel. Santana and Brittany aren't Gretchen and Karen, Berry isn't that girl Cady or Caddy or whatever, Finn definitely isn't Aaron Samuels, and her head hurts just trying to do this, to fit people into boxes with labels stamped on them.
Quinn will take being Regina George, though. At least for now, she's at the top of the metaphorical social pyramid (even though she knows how Mean Girls ends, although she really doubts she'll ever get hit by a bus or be betrayed by someone like Rachel Berry. That girl wouldn't know subtlety if someone sang it to her in a five-minute solo, complete with dance moves and horrendous facial expressions.).
o o o
Slut.
Preggo.
Little "Virgin" Mary.
She hears the whispers in the hall every day, sees the judgemental eyes on her growing stomach. The hockey players still whistle at her, but now it's mocking, designed to mare her feel ashamed.
"Hey, Quinnie!" She can hear someone call. "You'd put out for Puckerman and not for me? At least I know what a condom looks like."
It isn't funny, but the boys still cackle, saying, "Good one, Karofsky!"
The laughter pierces her ears, and she hurries away as quickly as she can.
Later on, she repeats this to Santana and Brittany, forcing herself not to cry.
"Karofsky?" Santana says with disbelief. Quinn almost expects her to say something comforting, but instead she snorts. "Please. He wouldn't be able to get it up anyway. You know Kara?"
She nods, thinking of the pretty brunette Cheerio, wondering where Santana is going with this.
"Get this. You know who he invited her over to his house last year to "have fun"? She sat on his bed, waiting for him in her bra, and do you know what he did?"
She shakes her head, and Santana continues.
"He broke down. Apparently he suffers from erectile dysfunction or something. He even showed her the pills and everything. The poor girl had to spent an hour comforting him. Unless he wants that to get out, I'd recommend he doesn't say anything about anyone else."
"He's just a lemur," Brittany adds, and Quinn gives her a confused look. "Lemurs are monkeys in disguise. They don't want to admit that they're just like everyone else, so they insult monkeys and take all their food away."
"Britt, I don't think that lemurs live with monkeys in the wild."
"McKinley's like a zoo, though, and the monkeys and lemurs are together in the zoo. You're like the queen monkey who had sex with a gorilla and is having a hybrid baby, and the lemur is trying to use this against you, even though the gorilla could definitely beat him in a fight."
"Huh," Santana seems to think about this for a second. "You know, I think you actually got more out of metaphors in English than I did."
"We'll be your friends forever," Brittany promises. "Even if you have a gorilla baby."
o o o
When she starts dating Sam (after making it extremely clear that she doesn't care about his sexual orientation, as long as he's honest about it), it's feels like a fresh start for her. She can be Q again, beautiful and popular and one-half of a perfect cheerleader-football player couple. She doesn't expect what happens, though.
"Tease," A red-headed boy who she vaguely recognizes as a member of the lacrosse team coughs as she walks by in the hallway.
"Prude," she hears in second period. She pretends that it isn't anything, but she can feel the back of her neck begin to burn.
At the end of the day, a girl with bobbed dark hair walks up to her, hand on her hip. "You know, I was just wondering how a girl who got pregnant can be a part of the Celibacy Club. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't pregnancy usually involve sex?"
"A person can choose to be celibate at any point of their life," she replies stiffly. "Gandhi did it for many years after he was married."
The girl casts a look over her, and shrugs. "Whatever," she says dismissively, walking away. "Just so you know, though, no one is ever going to forget what happened last year."
Somehow, though, the school does forget about her (well, not her, but Beth and what happened with Puck). Other things happen; Kurt transfers out of McKinley and to an all-boys private school, Brittany starts dating Artie, of all people, and Sam treats her like a princess, defending her as best he can against anyone who stills whispers "tease" or "prude" to her (even though she knows that Sam is becoming frustrated, wondering why she never ventures beyond his abs when they make out).
o o o
Vote Quinn and Finn for Prom Queen and King!
She inspects the posters closely, making sure they look straight enough. This is the first time that she's tried to knowingly manipulate what other people should think of her. Yes, maybe prom queen doesn't mean anything, but if she wins, she'll be Quinn Fabray, Prom Queen 2011, not Quinn Fabray, Slut, or Quinn Fabray, Born-Again Prude.
She walks off with her head high, making sure to smile and say, "Vote Quinn and Finn for the Prom Royal Couple!" every so often, just so it sticks in the back of their minds.
Her hard work all comes crashing down when Lauren puts up the Lucy Caboosey posters, though, and instantly, she reverts back to her eight grade self, helpless and confused why everyone is laughing and pointing at her. She tears down the posters and runs away, fighting back tears.
She ends up in the girl's bathroom, and sobs quietly into the cheap toilet paper. She knows she's been a bitch to Lauren, and she probably deserves everything that's coming to her, but—
She doesn't know. Not really. Having everyone find out about Lucy has been her worst nightmare since freshman year and her reinvention, and no one will vote for her as Prom Queen if they know (and losing Prom Queen means losing Finn to Rachel again, who he loves even though she doesn't look like someone on the cover of Seventeen magazine, and calls beautiful without a nose job).
Quinn knows she's holding onto threads, that are breaking all too quickly before her very eyes. Maybe, though, winning Prom Queen can make them weave themselves back together, into a perfect tapestry of love and happiness.
Maybe the world just likes to give her false hope. Still, she doesn't complain when girls say that they're voting for her because of who she was before. After all, she still has a chance at being Prom Queen.
o o o
She spends the summer before senior year listening to Lana del Rey. Quinn doesn't know how, but for some reason, she relates to the singer, with her low words and tales of broken hearts and dreams. She dyes her hair pink and chops half of it off, and starts smoking American Spirits, even though the smoke makes her cough and she can't help but think of her lungs getting blacker by the second.
Quinn meets the Skanks two weeks before the start of the school year at the crappy 7-11 only wannabe middle schoolers go to. Mack is brasher than she's used to, and Sheila and Ronnie mostly ignore her. Still, she likes this new role better than her old cheerleader or Prom Queen one, and definitely better than the Slut or the Tease.
Now, she hears Fuck-Up or Lima Loser when she walks by the underclassman, and snorts when she remembers how much the juvenile insults had bothered her.
She doesn't care anymore. She's a Skank now, the new, Unbreakable Quinn Fabray, even if she knows that this isn't who she was meant to be (she isn't the success story or perfect girl, and won't—can't—be that ever again).
Maybe she's gone crazy. Maybe she always has been, just a little bit. Maybe this is just what she's meant to be. She doesn't care.
(Quinn doesn't know why she rejoins the New Directions, but afterwards, she feels a little bit more like herself, whoever that is.)
o o o
At graduation, she walks up and accepts her diploma, giving waves to her friends and family.
Principal Figgins shakes her hand and says flatly, "Congratulations, Miss Fabray. You've managed single-handedly to pull McKinley back up to the most mediocre school in Ohio."
Quinn wonders if that's supposed to be an insult, but judging by his serious look, she guesses that it was a compliment, albeit a horribly worded one, even for Figgins.
Still, she says thank you, and gives him her patented smile, making sure to only show four of her teeth.
She's engulfed in a flurry of hugs and kisses on the cheek afterwards, and tries to thank as many people as she can. She hugs Rachel just a little longer and tighter (I'm so sorry for what I did to you.), kisses Kurt on the lips instead of the cheeks, enjoying his spreading blush (I should have stood up for you when I could.) and gives Finn a gentle hug, one somehow more meaningful than when they had been girlfriend and boyfriend and had deluded themselves into thinking they were truly in love with each other (I shouldn't have lied. It would have made everyone so much happier.).
Mr. Schuester hugs her as well (once again almost crossing the line between caring and inappropriate), and wishes her good luck at Yale.
"You're a true-blue success story, Quinn," he says.
Success. It's all she's ever wanted to be, more than head cheerleader and Prom Queen and even the Queen Bee of the school. She's going to Yale now, a third of the Ivy League trifecta. She should be happy. She is happy. Really.
She doesn't want Puck to finally show up, and kiss her one last time. She is finally happy. She is.
o o o
At Yale, she is Quinn Fabray, perfect daughter and young woman who got in with a combination of smarts and class. She makes sure to turn heads when she walks through the door, both female and male, but also be kind and sweet, always there to lend a helping hand or pencil.
She keeps her trail of straight As and A pluses, and meets Biff McIntosh during her second week of Psychology. He's the perfect combination of arrogant and endearing, handsome and jarring. She doesn't date him at first, choosing to go with the shaggy dark-haired TA and the first-year professor instead (although she actually doesn't know if she should count the latter as an actual "thing", seeing as he kissed her once then said that it would be "unprofessional" to do anything else).
When she does start seeing him, though, she feels as if she's made the right choice.
Biff has opinions on everything, from processed meats to gay marriage (he hates the former, especially baloney, doesn't care much about the latter seeing that it doesn't affect him). He has a string of love-struck admirers, all unabashedly wanting to be his. She spends months worrying about his opinion on her before he reassures her that she's perfect and shouldn't ever change anything.
By the time they've been dating for a few weeks, Quinn knows everything about him; the names of fifteen of his closest relatives, every food that he's ever tried and liked, his entire family history, the schools he went to and the friends he made there, all the sports teams and clubs he's been made captain of—hell, at this point, she wouldn't be surprised if he told her his Social Security number.
In contrast, he barely knows anything about her. He knows the easy stuff, sure—how her mother kicked out her father after she discovered he had been cheating on her with a woman fifteen years younger, the fact that she loves raspberries but hates strawberries, the way that she had felt when she got her acceptance letter to Yale, how she was floating and drowning in her own excitement all at once.
Biff doesn't know about her pregnancy, though. He doesn't know how she used to be a horrible person, not this perfect girl who never even swears, crying "fudge" when she stubs her toe or "shoot" like she's a little third grader who claps her hands over her ears when someone says "heck".
He doesn't know about when she was a Skank and had pink hair, doesn't know about Puck or Sam or Joe or even Finn, doesn't know about her one night stand with Santana at Mr. Schue's almost-wedding, and barely even knows anything about Glee club.
Biff doesn't know anything about all the past roles she's played; he only knows this one, the one that she's starring in right now, but doesn't know how long she can hold onto anymore.
When she brings Biff to Lima, she probably should have been prepared for the onslaught of insults directed towards him, especially after he spends the entirety of Toxic texting his brother William.
She doesn't expect for Mike and Santana to spill every intimate detail of her life, of all the productions she's had a lead role in before, though. She doesn't expect for Biff to call her a slut and a whore, either.
She definitely doesn't expect Puck to throw him into the dumpster, especially since she's basically ignored every one of his texts for the past two months (she had been so caught up in being Quinn Fabray for Biff, and for what? For this, for him to leave and go back to Yale alone?).
Puck tells her that he loves her, and asks for her to tell him to stay in Lima. She wonders which Quinn he really loved (loves, apparently); was it Regina George, or the pregnant slut, or the pretty girl?
She chases after him anyway, tells him "Stay.", kisses him as sincerely as she can, like he's her lifeline (which Quinn do you love? Do you love me? Why do you love me?).
o o o
When she's 26 years old and living in a small house in Connecticut with Puck, he proposes to her, giving her what may be the sappiest speech ever (but she feels her heart leap inside her anyway, for the knowledge that yes, he does love her, he really does).
That night, while she's trying to sleep (a hard thing to do, especially since Puck drools a lot and always seems to mumble about yam and blue cookies), her thoughts turn, once again, back to high school.
Quinn wonders if she ever really was herself (if she is now). She's been playing roles all her life, the prude or the perfect girl or the Prom Queen.
"Who am I?" she whispers, staring up at the blue-grey ceiling.
"Whuzzat?" Puck asks, turning over and yawning. "Did I leave out the soy milk again? Because I keep telling you, it tastes horrible anyway, so you might as well just buy chocolate milk."
"Soy milk does not taste horrible," she replies. "It's healthy. Besides, you don't even drink it. You just leave it on the counter with the cap off all night to annoy me."
"Your pissed-off face is cute," Puck says. "It's all scrunchy and you look like a baby kitten while doing it. But I can put the soy milk back if you really want me to."
"It isn't that," she sighs. "I put it in the fridge before bed. Just—" She stops and thinks for a second. She could brush it off, say that she had another nightmare about the flower in Little Shop of Horrors swallowing the house.
"Who am I?" she asks, taking the plunge.
"Huh?" Puck looks confused for a moment. "What do you mean? You're you. Lucy Quinn Fabray."
Quinn knows that he's probably still half-asleep, thinking about the wonders of chocolate milk. Still, that one sentence seems to say everything, is everything that she is and has ever been.
Who am I?
Me.
o o o
Whew! So, how was it? Feedback, review, favorite, follow?