Disclaimer: Alas, G.L.E.E. is not mine.
No Ordinary Passion
Rachel didn't remember the first time she met Quinn. It seemed strange, after all the heated conversations and loaded looks, that their first encounter could have been so normal as to have been forgotten. But it had been and now, though Rachel concentrated hard on recalling the way her lover's hair had looked framing her pale face or the way her eyes had leant weight to everything she said, as they always did, she had to admit that she'd be lying if she said that first meeting had stuck out in her mind. Everything about Quinn had grown so familiar, so important to her, that to try to pinpoint when it had become so would consume all of her energy until finally she would just acknowledge, as she must have known she would, that it had been a gradual but steady process. It had ended in today's horrible English class, where Quinn and Finn sat a few seats in front of her and she had no choice during the teacher's dull performance of gothic short stories but to look longingly over at the blonde girl who had effortlessly captured Rachel's heart before apparently leaving her forever.
How could she be gone? Rachel wondered, after they'd fought so hard and so long, at first against their feelings for each other and then for them. Quinn could be cruel and cold, of course, but Rachel told herself that icy hearts were strong and Quinn's had, for whatever reason, aligned itself with her. It would not break. Maybe it hadn't- Rachel didn't know. It was completely possible that Quinn's devotion had never even mildly matched Rachel's; Rachel wasn't sure anything could. After a year of the both of them scrambling to date the same boy, she'd felt something akin to a deep respect for her romantic adversary. Her determination matched Rachel's and that was rare. And then Rachel realised that the respect and admiration she had for this fearless girl surpassed any of the feelings she'd ever had for someone else. So Rachel did what Rachel Berry did best- she used every resource and recital at her disposal to show Quinn that she would honour her for as long as she was allowed.
Looking into Quinn's eyes while talking to her at her locker or singing her solos, Rachel found that there was something she couldn't quite recognise in the other girl's eyes. It was a fierce and uncompromising look and though it should have deterred her, it only made Rachel more desperate to spend time with Quinn so as to decipher what it was she was saying so firmly without words. They were arguing on the stairs one day, Rachel quietly but hurriedly affirming her love while Quinn told her to shut her mouth, when Rachel suddenly stopped talking. She looked up at Quinn, whose height and the top stair placed her so far above her admirer, and finally Rachel knew what that element was, the one that set Quinn's eyes apart from any she'd ever seen. It was love, something so intense that Quinn struggled to control it and keep it contained. How could I have missed it? Rachel shook her head and wondered at how it's accompanying fear and self-control that determined everything Quinn did didn't help reveal that love to her earlier. She's so scared, all the time, of how she feels. When she this aloud, at last, she saw the breath leave Quinn's body with the last remnants of her composure. In a single moment, both girls had been set free, and the love Quinn held in her eyes became theirs to share as both a burden and joy.
But happiness was not something either girl was used to and the world didn't seem particularly interested in allowing them any for long. Their undoing started and the air that had cleansed Quinn of her anxiety was returned to her as warm, whispered rumours. The fear she'd defiantly shed at times- as she walked down the hallway heavily pregnant, or shamed, or knowing her girlfriend was waiting for her at the end of it- weighed on her shoulders again, this time pressing her further into the floor than she'd ever previously gone. Rachel found her on her knees in the bathroom one day, adamant that she would not cry over the words hurled at her by classmates, but unable to stop scrubbing at the graffiti written about her on the door of one of the stalls. The unique life that existed in her eyes was dying and every time she closed them to kiss Rachel goodnight, her girlfriend worried that it would be gone when she opened them again. It never did disappear- Rachel still saw it now as Quinn glanced around the classroom while the teacher read aloud- but the kisses did.
The story they were studying was Edgar Allen Poe- so dark and theatrical, normally Rachel's favourite sort- but the teacher's passionless delivery and Quinn's presence a couple of rows in front of her lead Rachel to drift off. She remembered tickling Quinn in the backseat of her car during a thunder storm after sneaking out to the school car park at lunch time. The rain made so much noise hitting the windows that Rachel could barely hear her girlfriend's laughter. But then Rachel remembered the day that Finn had come up to her in that very same car park and put his over-sized hand on her shoulder, looking down into her face and saying just the one word that Rachel didn't yet understand; "sorry". The humiliation she felt as she stood outside under the grey clouds waiting for Quinn to arrive only to see her walk over to her ex-boyfriend as soon as she got out of her car, fitting back under his arm and walking to class as though she'd never stopped last year. The crack that Rachel heard right before the rain started and tumbled down onto where she stood, realising for the first time that she was truly alone. The water soaked through her clothes and ran off her nose and shoulders as she questioned whether she'd been wrong all along; none of the brilliance she'd seen in Quinn's looks had ever been for her. Rachel caught herself and sat up as the teacher read on, forcing herself to listen to what was being said, though she couldn't bring herself to stop staring at the back of Quinn's head.
That she loved me I should not have doubted; and I might have been easily aware that, in a bosom such as hers, love would have reigned no ordinary passion.
Rachel's eyes filled with tears. And then, slowly, Quinn turned her head to focus those irreplaceable eyes on hers.