[or, three times quinn takes care of rachel. faberry drabble, fluffy future stuff. ffn.]

...

my love took me down to the river (no one can take care of you like me)

.

i'm like everybody else: weak, full of mistakes, but basically good.
—junot diaz, this is how you lose her

…

1

She's completely asleep when you get home from class. Technically you're not really living together yet—you both still have apartments—but you spend the majority of the time at yours, partially because Rachel really liked the fact that most of your stuff is from Pottery Barn and Anthropologie, but mostly because it has far larger and numerous windows than Rachel's on three sides because you have a corner apartment (Rachel is steadily beginning to make more money than you, but Columbia had given you a pretty amazing stipend).

It's about four in the afternoon, and you'd planned on picking up your dry-cleaning and then maybe going on a walk in the park with Rachel—it's finally getting pleasantly warm outside—but then her workshop schedule is a creased reminder on your counter, and she's flung out exhaustedly on top of the duvet, in a thong and one of your t-shirts for boxing, sleeves cut away, hair curled from a shower.

You smile at her, kiss her forehead and drape a blanket over her before changing into one of her old NYADA t-shirts and boxers.

You go back to the kitchen, unfold the workshop schedule. You know, by this point, your brain is definitely not capable of remembering it, but you read it three times anyway. Today is Wednesday, and Rachel had basically worked on choreography from 8-3 today, with only a short forty-five minute lunch break. Most other weekdays don't look a whole let less crazy, and although you're balancing your final dissertation hours with teaching three seminars, you're certain that dancing and singing for eight hours is much more tiring, and you have no idea why they have to start that early. You add a quick note to the almost constant list of things on your hand for tomorrow—Rachel Th 7:30-2:30—and then you snap a picture of the schedule with your phone so you can reference it when you need.

You want to make things easier, you always want to make things easier because Rachel is always making the world better for you, always making it spin less frantically, giving you these grand gestures and daily gentle reminders that you're here, together, in this thing. You're quieter than Rachel, especially in your grand gestures—you think you've only made one at this point, dedicating your first book to her, although you're planning on making another soon by asking her to move in with you (or really, find a new apartment and start from scratch with something all your collective own), but Rachel has always been one for big moments. Usually involving song.

You know your love is the softer kind, but you love to give it—leaving love letters in the pockets of her coats, kissing her in the middle of Whole Foods on a Sunday just because you can, doing her laundry when she's out late for a show, making sure restaurants are vegan-friendly before you go on dates. And flowers, always, always flowers.

Rachel's still asleep and you go through the checklist on your hand:

Top Girls Act I Lecture Th

Update Dissertation pg 230-270 Fr

Camus Lecture Tu

dry-cleaning

Barney's is having a sale! Sa

San & Megan Su brunch Aamanns-Copenhagen

new gloves? Megan gym Fr noon

Rachel Th 7:30-2:30

You think you'll probably be able to get her to go the Barney's with you, so that's not really much of anything. But then you start going through your fridge to look at if you want to make dinner or get take-out, and you smile, because you know—you remembered.

You check to go make sure Rachel is still asleep, and she is, soundly, and it's still one of your favorite sights in the world, and then you start cooking: quinoa salad with parsley, tomatoes, chile powder; pureed avocado, garlic, and fresh lime on sourdough; plain Greek yogurt with honey and fresh fruit; orange sesame spinach salad and grilled soy chicken. You make lunches for yourself for Tuesdays and Thursdays because you're on campus all day—unless you meet someone for lunch—but usually you just make one at a time. But Mondays-Fridays are insane for Rachel now, and you know she'll grab the saddest vegan thing close by when she's stressed.

You wrap everything up in the plethora of tupperware you own—and sometimes you swear you are your mother's daughter—and put some of it in the refrigerator, some of it in the freezer. Then you carefully put a serving of vegan mac n cheese in a tupperware, and find Rachel's ridiculous vintage Wicked lunchbox that Santana and Megan had given her as a joke but she actually used, and put that, a soy yogurt, granola, a pear, a serving of kale salad, and some wasabi pears and roasted edamame mix in there, along with a napkin that you write your phone number on with a sharpie, then sign —Q.

You put it all in the fridge with post-it saying Happy Thursday! and get out a good bottle of chardonnay, head to the couch and turn on Netflix to find something to watch, just in time for Rachel to stumble out of the bedroom blearily.

"Hey baby," you say.

She smiles at you and rubs her eyes, plops down half in your lap and half on the couch, which makes both of you laugh, and then she snuggles into your side.

"I take it workshop was easy, then?" you say dryly, pointing your remote at a rerun of Sons of Anarchy before Rachel scoffs tiredly and takes the remote away from you.

You're not surprised when she immediately goes to The Office—that's entirely your fault, you'd gotten her hooked—but you don't protest in the slightest. "How about Thai tonight?" you ask, and she nods, then nods again when you gesture toward the wine. You pour two glasses and she takes one, sipping lightly.

"Really, though, how was it?" you ask, because she's Maureen in the next Rent revival, and—

"You just want to know about the leather pants," she whines, although it's playful.

"Not true," you say. "I know you've not even gotten to costuming yet."

She laughs with a snort. "God, who knew you'd ever be such a perv, Quinn Fabray."

You smile and kiss the top of her head, and you order green curry and pad Thai from your favorite place, and share a bottle of wine and watch The Office passively while she tells you all about her costars, the choreographer and the director. You kiss, after a while, slowly and languidly, with no pretense for anything else: you know she's tired, and some nights, you don't want to do anything but kiss her like you have all the time in the world.

You go to bed early—and you're exhausted too; you'd gotten up early that morning to get a workout in before office hours—and tonight you hold Rachel tightly, bury your face in her hair that, most days, smells like your sleep soundly that night, perhaps with the knowledge she's there. Sometimes a student will ask you something about nihilism without anxiety, and you mostly understand it in that, you know that if you died tonight, it would be after you'd loved with as much fullness as you could. You know that Rachel is always scared of you dying, and sometimes you're scared of who would take care of her if you did, but you are full. Of love, of goodness, of forgiveness. She has made you so, so full.

When you wake up in the morning Rachel has already left, but as you go to make coffee, you see twenty-four post-it's up on the wall. Pink, of course, and Rachel's always loopy, childlike handwriting: The half-life of love is forever.

It's from a Junot Diaz book you'd given her during college, before you'd ever dated. You set the kettle to boil and get the coffee ground and measured, put it in your French press, smiling the entire time.

You have a life with her. Lifetimes, universes, diluted time. You want to explain the sublime apocalypse by the way she kisses—although, in classes, you obviously don't—but you know you understand the theory you teach because the last of all you know is Rachel: who has a word for the end of the world?

.

2

"Quinn," Rachel whines. "You're going to get sick."

You run your hand through her hair and she looks up at you from where she's curled up on the couch, wide eyed, and then a cough rattles through her and she sniffles pitifully. "I don't care."

Rachel huffs as best as possible with a stuffy nose, propping herself up on her elbow. "You should care. You always—"

"Babe," you cut her off. "We live in a city with like eight million other people. Your cold is not the only thing that would make me sick this winter. Plus, I'm your girlfriend"—you almost say fiancé, but this is not the way you want to propose—"and I'm very much in love with you, so I'd like to take care of you."

Her resolve on the matter visibly wanes, and she sighs and stretches out an arm. You crawl behind her, still in your slacks and blouse from work. You'd gotten home and found her in a tiny ball on the couch, blowing her nose with disdain. You'd called her understudy—Rachel has performed through the stomach flu, a broken wrist from a very graceful ice skating accident a year ago, various other sprained ankles and viruses; the only shows she's called out sick for are when you've been in the hospital—but her voice is raspy and she can't really breathe through her nose at this point, and she'd nodded sadly when you'd asked if it was okay.

You spend the night watching Funny Girl and making her favorite sweet potato soup, giving her tight shoulders a massage, letting her stick her snotty nose into the crook between your shoulder and collarbone. You make sure she takes NyQuil—with a pout and more gross-tasting faces than necessarily, but still—and she falls asleep almost immediately after that.

She's substantially better the next morning—her nose is still stuffy, but her throat isn't sore—and you make her breakfast and cancel your office hours for the morning so you can just stay in bed lazily with each other. Like clockwork, four days later you'll be in the hospital with pneumonia, and Rachel will say, I told you so, and she'll be sad and upset until you crack a joke about Descartes, which will make her smile, and you'll grimace in pain but lift your hand to wipe her tears anyway.

But for now: you both breathe with open lungs; she makes your body feel infinite, perfect, even when all she's doing is holding your hand.

.

3

Some days you have to use a cane, and Rachel is still performing, so it's not like you're in significantly better shape than her. She tells you daily that you're the prettiest girl she's ever seen, and then sometimes she laughs and squeezes your hand and tells you, "Obviously you're a lot more than that."

Nora and her husband Hector—a doctor at Brigham-Women's—are coming over for Hanukkah with your granddaughters tonight, Emily, who is six, and Taylor, who just turned four. Rachel scurries around all day, wrapping presents and cleaning, and you mostly just help her when she needs.

She's reaching for plates, though, and it's just habit that you walk up behind her and put your hands on her hips. She turns to smile at you gently, one side of her mouth quirking up.

"I'd really love to make out with you right now, honey, but—"

You roll your eyes, although you still—after forty-six years of knowing her—feel a blush creeping into your cheeks. Sometimes you still feel seventeen and wholly unprepared for how much you adore her. "I was just going to get the plates down," you say.

Her smile grows at that, and she kisses you once, deeply, then scoots aside, playing grabass with no abandon, putting her hand into the back pocket of your pants while you reach up and grab the fine China off the shelf in the cabinet (and it was your great-grandmother's after all).

But it's something you do—have always done—even when you're sore and the nerve damage from when you were seventeen fully presents itself, all the years of the world wearing on your body, despite every doctor's best effort to lessen it: you're still taller than Rachel, and she has taken care of you for almost half a century, and you think in as many ways as possible, you've taken care of her too.

She starts putting the plates around the table, and you hand her the Menorah with another kiss, and Nora—who looks more like Rachel the older she gets—and her family gets there. Rachel, Emily, and Taylor immediately launch into preparations for a musical, and they drag Hector off with them to be their props manager. You and Nora watch them race down the hallway, shaking your heads, and Nora helps you finish with the salad, then rubs the small of your back. "Everything feeling okay?" she asks, so gently, and Nora's softness—she is soft in ways neither you nor Rachel had ever been able to be—is maybe what you're most proud of.

You nod and pull her into a hug. She wraps you up tightly, and buries her nose into your shoulder, just like always.

"Your mom's taking incessantly good care of me," you say.

You feel Nora laugh a little, and then she backs up and squeezes your hand and says, "You've always both taken wonderful care of each other, Mom."

You kiss her forehead—you're still taller than Nora too—and you say, "I know, honey," because you do, because you are so sure of this, so certain. You and Rachel have lived universes together, held each other's hands through cities from rooftops and streets. You've pointed out so many stars for her to wish on.

The kids come scampering back in, and you have dinner and then they perform a show for you. Your heart is big in your chest, pumping and pounding against ever-fragile ribs. Rachel holds your hand while Emily and Taylor finish their performance, and then she's clapping, helping you up from the couch without a second thought. You get the dessert plates, and you know you've really always been dancing with her in this careful, beautiful, reckless thing: you will circle and orbit and touch into infinity, you think, until someone, finally, declares a word for the end of all things.

But your family is alive and visceral and stunning tonight.

And, for now, there is no such word.