Only the beginning notes of the alarm clock sounded before Quinn's hand slammed into it and fumbled for the off button. She found it after a bit more struggling than usual, then tucked her head under her pillow and immediately fell asleep again.
/
Across town, Rachel woke to complete blackness. She blinked a few times before it finally clicked that there wasn't a light on in her room anywhere.
Then the panicking began.
It wasn't like she was scared of the dark, because that was simply foolish. There were no terrible monsters that hid in darkness and waited for the opportune moment to spring out and attack their prey, at least as far as she knew. No, she simply didn't like the darkness because she couldn't see where she was going or what was going on.
And maybe her cousin had let her watch a horror movie at three years old that had scarred her for life.
She ripped the covers off and launched herself toward where she knew a lamp was. After a bit of floundering in the dark, she found the switch and turned the lamp on.
After the initial relief of being able to see, Rachel froze.
This wasn't her room. Oh god, what was going on? How had she ended up in someone else's room – she glanced around – alone? Whoever this room belonged to, they weren't here at the moment.
A glance at the clock told her that it was just past six, and she was grateful for her internal clock for waking her up on time. She could use the extra time from not using the elliptical to figure out where she was.
She slid off the bed and stumbled slightly on her feet. Her body felt different, unbalanced slightly, but she dismissed it as having just woken up.
The entire room was mostly barren aside from a bookshelf and a bulletin board hung up on one of the white walls. Rachel stumbled over to it and squinted at the pictures, bewildered to find them blurry. Had she hit her head last night or something?
Giving up on trying to get her eyes to focus, Rachel turned and headed for the bathroom. Maybe she would just go about her morning routine as best as she could and hope the person would return and explain to her what was going on.
However, those plans were squashed as soon as she flipped the light switch.
Okay, there were two options here. Either she really had fallen and hit her head last night or she was still dreaming. That was the only explanation for why Quinn Fabray's face was blinking back at her in the mirror.
She reached up and rubbed her eyes harshly, and nope, she wasn't dreaming because that had actually kinda hurt. So the second option was out, which meant that unless she came up with a better idea, she must have hit her head hard last night.
But her head wasn't hurting, which it would have been if she really had.
Which left the ridiculous option that she had somehow switched bodies with Quinn. Which meant that Quinn herself was halfway across town likely having a panic attack much like she was.
Rachel peered at her reflection in the mirror and made a few jerky hand motions, which the reflection followed perfectly. Oh, this was bad. She pulled at the ends of her short hair – which felt really weird because her own hair had never been anywhere close to this short – and tried to figure out what to do.
She turned her phone off before she went to sleep, so she couldn't contact Quinn that way, and she very well couldn't just call her house and ask to speak to herself.
It was a weekday, which meant school, so maybe she could just find Quinn there. That is, if Quinn even decided to show up herself.
Okay, plan made. She was going to go to school and talk this through with Quinn and try to figure out a way to get back to her own body.
She began pulling open random drawers and stopped when she saw a pair of black-frame glasses. Quinn needed glasses? Well, that definitely explained why the pictures in the bedroom had been blurry. She glanced over the bathroom counter and spotted a contact case she'd passed over earlier in her panic.
Frowning, she glanced between the glasses and the contacts. She settled on staring down at the glasses for an entire minute before picking them up and putting them on.
Everything came into focus, and Rachel smiled victoriously at the reflection in the mirror. That was one mystery solved. Small victories.
Quinn looked nice in glasses, she decided as she studied Quinn's reflection. Odd, but nice. She should definitely wear them more often, and she made a mental note to mention it later.
But if she had made such a secret out of the fact that she even owned a pair at all, she likely wouldn't take too kindly to Rachel wearing them to school. So she slid them off and pouted in disappointment – wow, it looked odd to see Quinn's face matching her emotions – before frowning down at the contact case.
This was not going to be fun.
/
A half-hour after the alarm had went off, Quinn finally rolled over and drowsily swatted a hand until she found the switch on the lamp. She flopped back onto her back with a sigh and stared at the ceiling.
Wait, she didn't have glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling.
Oh my god, she was in Rachel Berry's bedroom. Aside from the obvious hint with the stars, she had been in here before when they'd been writing their Regionals songs together – or trying to, at least.
Which begged the question, why the hell was she in Rachel's bedroom? She frowned; she hadn't been drinking because her mom had been home and it was Thursday night, so it wasn't that. And well, she didn't really have any other explanation.
Rachel obviously wasn't here or she'd have been up – she glanced at the clock – thirty minutes ago.
Utterly confused, Quinn crawled out of bed and glanced around in the hopes an explanation would present itself. There wasn't a bag of her things anywhere, which meant that Rachel hadn't kidnapped her for some friend-bonding time.
That's when she realized that nothing was blurry. She frowned and blinked a few times; she wasn't wearing her contacts.
So either she'd developed spider powers in the night or something was very wrong.
She headed over to Rachel's desk to see if she could find anything but stopped when she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror.
"Oh, shit."
/
After a spectacular fight with the contacts, Rachel gave up and stuck the glasses into the pocket of her jeans. She'd settled for the jeans and button-down shirt that had been hanging in the front of the closet, deciding that she didn't want to spend all morning rifling through Quinn's closet. Then she'd spent a good ten minutes just staring at Quinn's reflection in the mirror before realizing what she'd been doing.
A set of car keys and a wallet were sitting on the dresser by the bedroom door, so Rachel grabbed them and slipped out into the hallway.
None of the lights were on, which Rachel took to mean Quinn's mother wasn't awake yet. She got the feeling no one in this house got up before six thirty, so getting up early was actually going to work out in her favor.
She crept down the stairs, careful not to trip in the gloom, and was making her way to the front door when a voice stopped her in her tracks.
"Quinnie?"
Rachel cursed her luck and turned to face Judy Fabray, who was bleary-eyed and confused-looking. She forced a smile. "Morning?" she offered hesitantly.
"What are you doing up so early, sweetie?"
Trying to avoid you, Rachel thought mutinously. Out loud though, she said, "I need to talk to, um, Rachel about something before class." It felt odd saying she needed to speak to herself.
Judy's frowned deepened, but then she gave a pitying sort of smile that confused Rachel. She sighed. "I understand, and I won't try to stop you because I know you'll just ignore me anyway. I just don't want to see you hurt again."
Rachel Berry had never been this bewildered in her life. She stared at Judy and tried to keep the confusion off her face; it would look suspicious to not know what she was talking about.
"Go on, then," Judy said with a wave of her hand. "I'll see you when you get home tonight."
Relief surged through Rachel, and she smiled at Judy as she began walking backward toward the door. "Yeah. Uh, see you then."
She fumbled with the front door for a few seconds before opening it and all but stumbling over her own feet to get outside before she gave herself away.
/
The Berry men were waiting when Quinn came downstairs, and they both frowned at her and beckoned her over.
"Are you okay, sweetie?" one of them – Leroy? – asked as Quinn reluctantly took a seat at the kitchen table. He leaned forward and pressed the back of his hand against her forehead. "You don't feel like you have a fever."
Quinn frowned. "I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be?" God bless Rocky Horror for giving her some semblance of an acting skill. Inwardly, she was panicking like never before. She had no doubt Rachel could fool her mother, but Quinn? This was bad.
"You got up late, so we thought you might be coming down with something," Hiram said. "Are you sure you're okay?"
Before Quinn could respond, her phone vibrated, and she welcomed the distraction. She pulled it out of her pocket – Rachel owned something that wasn't a plaid skirt or animal sweater, who knew? – and opened the new text message to find it was from herself.
Well, how's that for a mindfuck?
Rachel was obviously as confused as she was, because the message was in all caps and for all intents and purposes screaming at her to meet her in the school auditorium as soon as she possibly could.
"Um, sorry," Quinn said as she shoved the phone back in her pocket and stood from the table. "Since I woke up late, I need to hurry to school. Um, Glee things."
Both men looked at her with identical expressions of worry, but Quinn smiled and waved before running for the door without making it look like she was running. She grabbed the backpack she'd set by the door when she'd initially came down the stairs, and left as fast as she could.
/
As she was almost blind – curse you, contacts – Rachel shoved the glasses onto her face as soon as she was alone in the auditorium. She was pacing impatiently while she waited on Quinn to arrive. She'd received a reply from her own number saying that Quinn was on her way; that's when she had taken to pacing like a caged animal.
"Please don't tell me you're not wearing my glasses," her own voice groaned, and Rachel whipped around to see Quinn headed her way, arms crossed and glowering up at her from in front of the stage.
Rachel sniffed haughtily. "So what if I am? I've never worn contacts before, for your information."
She scowled when she saw Quinn smile and lean against the stage. "You couldn't get them in, could you?"
"No," Rachel grumbled, and Quinn laughed and hauled herself up onto the stage. "This is weird," she remarked when she was looking down at her own face, with Quinn's facial expressions.
"Tell me about it." She reached up and took the glasses off Rachel's face and shoved them into her hands. "Don't wear those. I look stupid with glasses on."
Rachel frowned down at her. "You do not." She replaced the glasses on her nose, ignoring the heated glare she was getting. "You look nice." Quinn continued to glower, so Rachel continued to ignore her. "And anyway, we have more important things to worry about than how you look in glasses."
"Fine," Quinn huffed. "I'm not too concerned with how we got this way, just how we can get back to normal. Any ideas?"
"You didn't eat any Chinese last night did you?"
Quinn scowled, unamused. "We are literally in the plot of that stupid Lindsay Lohan movie, and you're wondering if I ate a cursed fortune cookie?" Rachel shrugged and avoided Quinn's gaze. "Whatever. When this happens in movies, don't the characters usually have to come to some life-altering conclusion before they return to normal?"
"I believe so, yes," Rachel said with a nod. "Anything you'd like to share?"
"I'd rather stay in your body," Quinn deadpanned.
/
Rachel had an odd day. After Quinn refused to test a method to return to their own bodies, she'd ignored all of Rachel's attempts to persuade her otherwise. When the bell had rang, she'd simply turned and left, leaving an irritated Rachel behind.
Her day had been odd because people had actually made an effort to speak to her. Kurt had appeared out of nowhere while she'd been walking to class and had commented on her clothes, saying how fitting they were. He'd disappeared without noticing Rachel's bewildered facial expression.
Then Santana and Brittany had cornered her in English, and despite her initial misgivings, she'd enjoyed playing games with them in the back of class for the entire period. She'd also ended up winning the majority of the Hangman matches, which had annoyed Santana and caused her to mutter something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like 'damn lesbian genius'. Once again, Rachel was left confused.
She spent her free period with Sam and Puck, which was even more odd than Santana and Brittany. Everyone knew that the Unholy Trinity was friends, but Sam and Puck? Well, that was a new one. She'd simply sat by and watched while the two guys had argued the merits of remaking the first Assassin's Creed game; they'd seemed to all but have forgotten about her until the bell rang for the end of the day. Then they'd both smiled apologetically at her before hugging her and rushing away to football practice.
/
Quinn's day was rather underwhelming. She'd broken into – if you could really call it that – her own locker that morning and spent the majority of the day being ignored as she read in class.
Although, she had missed hanging out with her friends, even Sam and Puck.
So when she joined Rachel in the auditorium after school – after another irate text message and no desire to face the Berry men – she was really missing her own body.
"Well," Rachel began as soon as the auditorium door had clicked shut behind her, "as I've never really kept my opinions from you, I can safely assume that it wasn't me that caused this switch. Therefore, it can only be what you refused to tell me this morning."
Quinn gave her a scowl, though it was half-hearted. "And if I don't tell you?"
"Then we're stuck in these bodies forever," Rachel said harshly. "And I don't know about you, but I think today was long enough in your body. I'd like mine back now. So just tell me, so things can go back to normal."
"If I do tell you," Quinn snapped, "then things won't be able to go back to normal. I'll tell you, then everything will be weird between us, and I don't want that."
Rachel blinked at her. "You mean you actually like talking with me?"
"Not at the moment, but yes," Quinn ground out reluctantly. "But that's not the thing."
"Then just tell me!" Rachel cried exasperatedly. "I'm not just going to give you the cold shoulder over some stupid little secret. I mean, I know you wear glasses, I know your mom doesn't want you to get hurt by talking to me but she lets you anyway, I know you play video games with Sam and Puck on the weekends, and I know Santana tries to insult you by calling you a lesbian despite the fact that she's one herself."
Quinn froze, and she suspected she looked like a deer in headlights; Rachel blinked at her, brows furrowed.
"That's what you didn't want me to know?" she asked. "That Santana teases you? Everybody in the school knows that. What's the big deal?" She faltered when Quinn felt the blood drain from her face. "What?"
That was enough for everything that Quinn had been trying to hold in to burst out. "She's teasing me because I am! She's known for a while now, and I let her do it because it makes her feel better to know that she's not alone! Sam and Puck know because they're my self-named bros, and we bonded over video games and girls! And Kurt thinks I'm crazy because out of all the people in the world, I like you! You, the short, loud, annoying, conceited, kind, adorable, selfless one I tortured for over a year! Are you happy now that you know why our bodies switched?"
By the end of everything, she was breathing hard and tearing up, and Rachel was gaping at her with her jaw on the ground.
Quinn threw her head back. "Can I have my body back now?" she roared. "Because I'd like to go hide under a rock for the rest of my life, or at least the rest of high school!"
As she stood there feeling like utter shit, she blinked and found herself staring at Rachel, the real Rachel. She looked down at herself and could have cried from happiness.
They were back in their bodies.
Before she could make good on her promise and run, Rachel crashed into her front and wrapped her in a rib-crunching hug. Quinn stood there limply and debated whether to toss her aside – carefully – and made a break for it.
"You should have just told me this morning," Rachel mumbled into her shoulder. "Really, we could have just saved ourselves a whole lot of trouble."
Quinn peeked down at her and let out a disgruntled sound. Rachel pulled back with a frown, arms still wrapped around Quinn's waist, and leaned up to kiss her.