"Why worry, there should be laughter after pain
There should be sunshine after rain
These things have always been the same
So why worry now?"
— Dire Straits
"Mom, did you know that now that you're thirty-nine," the eight year old boy said, "you've lived almost half of your life expectancy? I learned about life expectancies in a book I read."
"I let you spend too much time in the library," Quinn huffed. She unlocked the door to their new apartment and let Alec walk in first. They'd only lived there for a few days, but already he was perfectly comfortable with dropping his coat and backpack right in the middle of the floor. "Pick it up, Alec."
He sighed like she'd just asked him to plow a field by hand. "Dad doesn't make me pick stuff up at his house . . ."
That's because your father is a disgusting, fuck-for-brains, shithead who's probably busy fucking some cheap whore right now — whoa, she said to herself, taking a deep breath, calm down, Quinny. He's not even here right now. "Well, you have to here – I'm sorry for the onerous burden."
"Dad doesn't think I know big words like that," Alec said with a slight lisp. "Dad always says that —"
"Let's not talk about dad anymore, alright?" Quinn said with a forced smile. "Tell me about your first day at school."
He shrugged as he sat where Quinn had patted on the couch. If she didn't stop him ahead of time he'd sequester himself in his room with a book and she wouldn't hear from him again until he got hungry.
"It was ok."
"Did you make any friends?" This was Alec's first day at the elementary school in their new town. When she'd caught Don in bed with Sheryl, his secretary, Quinn had known that she couldn't even remain in the same city with her husband. Ex-husband, she mentally corrected.
"Naw, not really." The small blonde was always loquacious, except when the lens was turned in his direction.
Quinn kept the frown from her face; she wanted to be confident for him. "What about your teacher, is he nice?" She hated herself a little for not meeting the man yet, he probably thought she was a horrible parent, but it was so exhausting, moving to a new town, setting up a new apartment. Quinn just hadn't gotten around to everything yet.
Another shrug. "He gave me a note to give you."
She took the small piece of paper.
Ms. Fabray, (One thing she had made sure to do was revert to her maiden name.)
I just wanted to let you know that Alec had a great first day! I can already tell that he's really smart and nice, and I'm really glad to have him in my class. I always try to meet with all of my students' parents at least once, just to introduce myself. Is there a good time for us to meet? It would only take a few minutes, just long enough for me tell you what your son will be working on this year and things like that.
I'm looking forward to meeting you,
Sam Evans
XxXxX
"Excuse me," Quinn said to a pleasant looking kid, "I'm looking for Mr. Evans."
The boy smiled. "Oh, that's —"
"Are you in one of those programs where you shadow a teacher to get career experience before college?" Quinn asked. "I did that in high school, too. I quickly found out teaching wasn't for me, but it was a lot of fun, especially getting to miss class."
He gave her a crooked grin. "Are you Ms. Fabray?"
Quinn cocked an eyebrow. "How do you know that?"
"You and your son have the same eyes." The boy extended his hand. "Plus, we have an appointment. I'm Sam Evans."
She could feel her face turning bright red. "Oh my God . . ." Quinn squeezed the bridge of her nose. "I'm such an idiot."
"Ah, surely not," the teacher smiled. "Alec gets his brains from somewhere, right?"
She really didn't want to look at him. "Err, don't you have to be at least twenty-one to teach?"
There was a snort of laughter. "I'm actually twenty-two. Bachelor's from Purdue with a teaching certificate; it made my mom proud, anyway."
Quinn just stared for a moment at those rosy cheeks and full lips. "I am so, so sorry."
"Not at all, I get it all the time. The price of youth, I guess." He motioned for her to take a seat in front of his desk. "Let's talk about your son."
Anything to keep from talking about me, Quinn thought as she sat. "Let's start over. I'm Quinn."
"Nice to meet you, Quinn. I'm Sam. It's really been a pleasure having Alec in class so far."
"Is there a rule that all teachers have to say that?"
Sam laughed. "It's lesson one for education majors. Seriously though, your son is obviously very smart, very well behaved, and I think he's adjusting well."
"I'm glad to hear that," Quinn said, glad that they were getting down to business and leaving her idiocy behind – he did look very young, though. With golden hair, those cheeks, and wide eyes, her son's third grade teacher looked to be about sixteen years old. Well built, Quinn couldn't help but notice, but still sixteen. "I was a little worried; Alec's always been introverted."
"I've noticed that he hangs back at recess and gym," Sam said. "I've introduced him to a few of the other students I thought might have similar interests to Alec, but he usually sticks pretty close to me at recess."
"It's something that's always kind of worried me, in the back of my mind," Quinn said.
The last time she talked to someone his age, it had been to the kid bagging her stuff at the grocery. She gives herself a mental kick, because that really sounds condescending, even though she's the only one who heard it.
"I wish he could make friends more easily," she added.
"I'm sure he will. I always try to give them group work, you know, because they're so young, so hopefully Alec will find someone he likes to work with."
Technically, twenty-two's an adult, but when you reached nearly forty, you realized that numbers like eighteen and twenty-one were nothing but arbitrary dates. Obviously, this guy is a professional, but it's just weird.
"Well, thank you for taking an interest. I just worry, I guess it's a mom thing."
"Good moms tend to do that," the teacher smiled, standing and extending his hand. "If you have any other questions or concerns, my email and cell number are both on the information sheet that all the kids have."
Quinn stood and shook his hand; it enveloped hers, was scratchy from what she supposed to be sports; he looked like he worked out. "Thank you. It was nice meeting you, Mr. Evans." Yeah, that in no way fits his face. I feel like I should call him "Dude."
"You too, but call me Sam. Mr. Evans does feel weird when it's not a eight year old saying it."
She walked out feeling a little bit better. He was obviously a nice guy, and he seemed to know what he was doing, no matter his age. And the school must have confidence in him. Quinn decided she was glad that Alec was in his class. It could only be a good thing for her son to see that not all men are dicks.
Alec didn't know the specifics of why his parents divorced, how could you explain that to an eight year old? But he was smart enough to pick up on her animosity for his father, though she did try to hide it. It could only be good for him to have a caring male role model.
There was definitely an opening for that job these days.
One Week Later
She woke to pain.
Everything hurt. Her toes hurt. Her eyes hurt. Quinn managed to lean over the side of the bed and vomit onto the floor. She had enough wherewithal, barely, to be thankful that she'd managed to turn over and not choke to death.
Her hair is sticky on her face, and her eyes felt like they'd been sealed shut with grit. It's sheer will that forces them open, and she has to immediately clench them shut again under the blazing light of her bedside lamp. Her face aches.
It's several long minutes before she can open her eyes again, slowly this time. At first it was a trial just to see and breathe at the same time, but she's finally able to add hearing to the mix. It's Alec's voice, he's laughing. He's talking to someone else, a voice she doesn't recognize. Quinn stares at the clock for a long time, hoping that her persistence will force the numbers to make some sort of sense. 7:56.
Two things hit her at almost the same time. First, the fact that she should have picked Alec up from school five hours ago. Next, another spasm of vomiting. Back over the side of the bed, so another mark in the victory column because she doesn't choke to death.
She wipes her mouth on the sheet and doesn't even care. The throbbing in her head feels like someone's twisting a screwdriver in her ear, but she, finally, manages to sit up. Quinn holds her arms tight around her sides and waits for the world to stop spinning.
The wine. You'd have to be a real ass to drink a bottle of wine in the middle of the day and pass out in a drunken stupor. She doesn't know how Alec got home, but from the cadence of his voice he's alright, so she pushes that aside for just a moment. The guilt will come momentarily, she's sure, when her brain regains the capacity to process more than just pain.
Don, his asswipe ex-husband. He'd called to tell her that he was getting married to his whore because she was pregnant. That's what had set off the drinking. She was sure that had been in the living room. You'd have to be pathetic to get tanked in your own bed. The irony of that last thought wasn't lost on even her alcohol soaked mind.
The pain's still the worst she's ever felt, probably including childbirth, but that was nearly a decade ago so the memory's deadened a little. This is almost certainly worse. But now the maternal guilt is competing with the hangover. She's got to beg Alec for forgiveness for forgetting to pick him up and find out how he got home. God, if the school called Don . . . Surely they wouldn't. He lived almost a hundred miles away. But who else?
Opening the bedroom door leads to a fresh assault on her senses. The lights are brighter in the rest of the house and the sound from the TV is murder on her brain and her ears. But there's her son, sitting happily on the couch with, with. She doesn't know. Admittedly, she might know the person, but there's not a single organ in her body that's functioning correctly at present.
"Mom!" He looks happy to see her, so maybe she hasn't ruined his life. She still can't place the other person. Who the hell is sitting on her couch? He looked sort of uncomfortable.
"Mr. Evans brought me home! He made grilled cheeses!"
Oh, God. It's the teacher, the young one. The one who looks like a mix between a frat boy and a lifeguard, looks like he's just arrived from a photoshoot for Abercrombie & Fitch. Another wave of nausea hits her and she can't stand up straight.
"Whoa!" It's that second voice she'd heard earlier, the one she couldn't recognize.
Suddenly, she's all wrapped up in arms and a hard chest. She's deposited on the couch.
"Are you sick, mom? We got home and you were on the couch. Mr. Evans said you probably didn't feel so good. He carried you to your bed! Like a princess! He didn't kiss you to wake you up, though. He said you should rest."
The teacher's voice interrupts her silent prayer for death. "Hey, Alec, why don't you go get that book you were talking about earlier? The one you said was lost in your room somewhere?"
"That'll take a long time to find."
"That's ok. I really want to see it."
The sound of his feet on the hardwood was something like gunfire in her ears, though that discomfort had to wait in line. Quinn was now aware enough to be totally, completely, mortified.
"God . . ." she managed to croak.
"Can I get you anything?"
He's leaning over her, peering at her. The light's behind his head so it's difficult to make out his face. Quinn can only imagine that he looks disgusted.
"I am so, so sorry," she croaked.
His voice is very gentle and soft, probably something learned from dealing with eight year olds all day. "We waited after school for a little bit. The office has his dad's number on file, but Alec said that calling him probably wouldn't be a good idea."
She manages to push herself into a sitting position.
"I hope it's ok that I brought him home and kinda invited myself in. You, uh," his hand reached back to scratch at his hair. It's a stupid time to wonder if he dyes it. "You didn't look like you were feeling so great, so I wanted to make sure everything was alright."
"I am so, so sorry." Part of her thinks she might have already said that, but she can't come up with anything better. "I'm not usually like this." Quinn hopes that clarifies things a little.
"I'm glad," he smirks. "Cause if you were, you'd be dead." He picks up the empty bottle from the coffee table. "This stuff's Night Train. The alcohol content's so high Guns N' Roses wrote a song about it."
She has a vague memory of walking down to the liquor store after she'd hung up on her ex-husband.
Before she can come up with an answer he gets up. She sort of hopes that he's just going to leave so she won't have to face him. But there's no such luck. He returns with a glass of water, pushes that into her hand. He seems pretty familiar with her apartment. Of course, having brought her son home from school, he's been here for five hours now.
When the water hits her tongue with a metallic twang it dawns on Quinn how awful she must look, how rancid she must smell. The feeling in her body has returned just enough for these facts to really, really bother her.
"I, I can't thank you enough."
He shrugged. The gesture made him look even closer to her son's age.
"You must think I'm a horrible mother."
"Nah. I think you just had a bad day." He glanced towards the smaller of the two bedrooms. "Alec told me that you and his dad aren't really, uh. Well, it's none of my business."
Another wave of guilt hit her, probably worse than the nausea. Obviously her son knew that his family had broken apart; they were living a hundred miles away from his father. But she felt horrible over the fact that it had affected him so deeply that he was telling strangers about it. She didn't know what she should have expected.
"I am a horrible mother." She was saying it to herself, but of course the other person in the room heard it, too.
"I'm sure that's not true." He pushed her hand, the one holding the glass, closer to her. "Drink up. I was in college not too long ago, so I know my way around a hangover."
"You don't look like you're old enough for college." Whatever connects her brain to her mouth still hasn't reattached. She probably vomited it out onto her bedroom floor.
His eyes twinkle when he grins. "I'll take that as a compliment." He stood up from the couch. "Can I help at all before I go? Alec's already eaten, and we did his homework. He said he brushed his teeth, but he was super quick, so you might want to check on that."
Again, mouth to brain, some component was missing. "Are you some kind of angel?"
He laughed, and it sounded really manly, which she knew was a strange observation. "I'm going to say goodbye to Alec. He's got my number if you need anything." He did an odd little half salute, half wave. "Feel better, Ms. Fabray."
"Um, it's Quinn." Evidently, he'd carried her to her bed, which was mortifying on it's own, but that probably earned him the right to call her by her name.
"Feel better, Quinn."
XxXxX
She made a point to arrive early the next day, twenty minutes before school let out. For some reason it was important to her that her son's teacher see that she could actually handle something so simple as picking her child up after school.
It's probably weird that she'd dressed far better than she normally would for a simple trip to an elementary school. Strangely, it's important that she show this guy, this kid, that she's not a total fuck up, in spite of what he saw the day before. The memory of that still made her want to retch.
"Hey, it's nice to see you again!"
In her limited and extremely awkward encounters with her son's teacher, he always seems so genuine and real, which is probably a good trait in a third grade teacher. It's obvious that he's not judging her based on what he saw yesterday. She can't remember what he was wearing last night, but today he's got a cardigan paired with a skinny tie. It's as if someone had taken him to a store named "Hip Young Male Teachers R Us."
"I just wanted to thank you again for everything you did last night." She made sure there were no other parents around before she said that. Things like that could easily be misconstrued, especially when the young teacher in question was vaguely attractive. More than vaguely.
"It was nothing. I'd do the same for any of my students." He moved a little closer and whispered, "Well, maybe not for Travis." The teacher nodded in the direction of a burly looking boy who was walking out the door with a woman Quinn assumed to be his mother. "Travis eats boogers and doesn't care who knows it."
He pulled a form from his desk. "Would you mind signing this? It just says that I'm on the list of people who can pick Alec up from school." He made a funny face. "Don't wanna go to prison for yesterday, you know?"
She signed her name, but said, "You won't have to do it again. I'm really, really sorry about all that."
"Hey, we've all had those days."
"You've drank yourself into a stupor after learning your ex-husband is getting remarried and having another kid?"
"Ok, maybe not specifically that, but would it make you feel better if I told you that I've dated two different lesbians that later married one another? I didn't handle it very well."
"Are all your parent/teacher conferences this interesting?"
"Rarely."
Alec chose that moment to walk over from the classroom bookshelf. "Can I take this one home, Mr. Evans?"
"Sure thing, bud." To the boy's mother, he said, "Alec's definitely gonna win our class reading competition."
Quinn brushed her son's hair away from his forehead. He wasn't old enough yet that this small gesture of affection from his mother signified social suicide. "What's the prize?"
"Everyone else wants to go to a baseball game," Alec's face screwed up in disgust at that prospect, "but if I win, Mr. Evans said that he'd take me to the Natural History Museum."
"That's really nice of Mr. Evans." To the young teacher, Quinn said, "You don't have to make special arrangements for him. He'll survive a baseball game."
"No, I won't."
The teacher grinned. "Nope, if he wins, he gets to pick. Besides, I think it's awesome that one of my kids actually wants to learn."
And Quinn couldn't help but think that it was awesome that her son had such a nice teacher. She tells him to go get his things so they can go home.
"Seriously, though," Quinn said. "I really can't thank you enough for yesterday. And not just for getting him home and taking care of him. Thanks for," she blushes, "for not judging me."
The teacher gave that grin that she was quickly starting to like. "There's a lot more to you than one bad day, I'm pretty sure of that."
This guy looks like a kid but talks like an adult. And walking out, Quinn's really happy he's her son's teacher.
To Be Continued . . .
So, this idea has actually been percolating since 2011 when Chord Overstreet guest starred on The Middle. I hope you like it, because there's a lot more to come! Let me know in reviews! Also, my other story, "I Was Stoned On Love, I Guess," was originally a oneshot, but then I got the inspiration to write more. So check that out if you like the idea of Sam and Quinn bumping uglies. I might write more there, too, so I'm leaving it marked as incomplete.
