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 76th cycle. Now cycle 77!

"Our Day"
Rachel/Quinn
Runaway Bride series
(no listings yet; sequel to 'You Can Breathe Now')

If her head didn't settle on one emotion soon, she would probably get sick. But the day had just sort of crept up on them and now… She could almost have laughed, thinking of it was though it had 'crept up,' when they'd been counting down the days, both of them, but then the first thing that had popped into Rachel's head that morning was 'wait, is it today already?'

That had been the promise they had made to each other, and they were going to hold to it. Today was the last day of school, of their senior year of high school at McKinley, and it would be the day where they stopped restricting displays of their relationship, and they let people know that they were girlfriends.

All it had taken was one moment where they'd almost been caught, and then the scenarios began to invade her mind. It wasn't a matter of her feeling pressured in any way to hide what she felt for Quinn, but she knew how nasty people could be and, never having experienced that brand of hate aimed at herself, she didn't know just what it would make her feel. If that wasn't bad enough, the thought of Quinn being put through that too might actually have felt worse than the thought of what she herself would get.

She'd gone and picked up Quinn so that they could drive in to school together, the same as they had done for all the time they had resorted to sneaking around. In all this time, since they'd stopped using the 'Quinn's car is in the shop' excuse, it had just become commonly accepted that they drove in to school together, and no one asked why or really cared to find out. If only it was that simple for the other thing.

Rachel had half forgotten about what was ahead of them when she'd reached Quinn's house and seen her walking toward the car. She was why it would all be worth it; she didn't doubt it for a second.

"Did you dress special for today?" Rachel smirked when the blonde sat in the passenger seat.

"Don't tell me you didn't," Quinn pointed out, smiling back.

"Fair enough," Rachel pulled the car back into the street and they were off to school.

The drive had become silent before they knew they were doing it, and eventually neither of them tried to break it; they wouldn't have known where to start. Quinn might have been playing it cool, but Rachel could see she was nervous, too. When the car was parked, they'd sat staring at the building ahead of them, then turned to each other.

"No matter what…" Rachel started.

"I know," Quinn smiled. "Same here." They'd started leaning toward each other, and when they'd stopped, there had been a moment where they realized: no, they weren't doing that anymore. If they wanted to kiss, they'd kiss. So they did. As they pulled apart again, they could hear someone talking loudly and they looked up, seeing a boy in a football jersey pointing at the car from across the lot. "Well that was fast," she frowned, but Rachel laughed, and so she did, too. For now, if only for now, the tension had broken, and they were ready to face the day.

"Come on, let's go," Rachel told her, and they got out of the car, meeting up again in front of it and, with a look down to each other, their hands clasped together. They were dating, girlfriends, in love… They had kept it to themselves because they liked it that way, but now they were ready for others to know, for better or for worse.

Somehow knowing that they were bound to be hit with any number of crude comments must have helped insulate them against whatever effect they were meant to have. All they felt like to either of them was a bunch of moronic boys being exactly what they were. Quinn did most of the retorting, though Rachel participated, too, which they would later describe as one of the strangest forms of solidarity and bonding they had ever experienced. The more they countered against the comments, the less frequent they became.

In the end, the only thing that really mattered, beyond the fact that they could be who they were and they enjoyed it, was that the people who actually mattered, the ones they would call friends, were a hundred percent behind them. Naturally there was the first reaction, which was always shock, as they were pulling a prank for some reason, but then after they vowed that it was not a prank but the truth, then they gave several variations on the fact that they were happy for them and they hoped things would work out. In some cases, Quinn and Rachel had a sneaking suspicion that the 'news' they were giving wasn't really 'news' to the ones receiving it. Both sides were playing as though this was brand new information.

The one which was always going to be the hardest, the one Rachel especially had dreaded from the very beginning, was telling Finn. After the oh so clever taunts had begun to circulate, it had been her fear that the news would reach him before she had the chance to explain herself, but by the time she did find her ex, he had not heard a word of it all, so she was able to tell him what everyone else was finding out. For his sake, she still felt the need to be careful. As he'd processed it all, she knew, somewhere, he was realizing this might have been in part the reason for her running off, the day they were supposed to be married. Things might be awkward for him for a few days, or weeks, but Rachel was confident that in time he would get past it.

What really mattered now was that they were officially, or, at least, publicly a couple, and the world hadn't ended. Instead, it felt like an entire new path had opened to them both, and they couldn't wait to walk across it.

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!