Disclaimer: Not mine. Characters belong to Ryan Murphy and a bunch of other people. I just like making them do my bidding.
Spoilers: I don't think there are any, but lets just say all episodes so far to be super safe.
A/N: So, this is basically boomwizard's fault. One of our conversations spiralled (as they so often do XD) and ended up with us discussing the topic of this fic. I'm still trying to get a feel for the characters, so if voices are off, that's totally due to my inexperience. ;) But I'm hoping to do better with that the more I write them. Consider this another experiment. Also, all mistakes are mine. :D
A/N: How's THAT for an original title? ^^
Warning: Pretty much all fluff. I mean, there's an argument. But it's a fluffy one.
"I don't understand why you're being so unreasonable about this." Quinn sighed, her back to the other girl as she busied herself with making coffee.
"I'm not being unreasonable, Rachel. You asked me for my opinion and I'm giving it to you."
"But it's wrong." Rachel stomped her foot, actually stomped it, looking for all the world like a moody toddler with her arms folded across her chest.
"Just because I disagree with you, it doesn't make me wrong." Quinn barked, an annoyed frown pulling darkly at her features.
"How can you possibly prefer cats over dogs?" Rachel shrieked, and Quinn grimaced at the slightly hysterical, glass-shattering tone of the question.
"Why do you have such a problem with it?" And Quinn was genuinely confused by the reaction, overreaction in her mind, because she never would have said anything if she'd known the other woman would all but explode upon hearing her, what she assumed was tiny, confession. "It's not like I told you I don't actually like Streisand or something." A strangled squeak and the sound of metal being jerked across tile pulled Quinn's body around so she was facing Rachel. The diva's face was ashen, fingers clutching the back of one of the kitchen chairs in a white-knuckled death grip.
"Quinn, I sincerely hope you're being facetious, because I don't think I can handle anymore surprises today, and certainly not one of such magnitude." Hazel eyes rolled and the blonde shook her head.
"You're being insane." Rachel's already tight posture somehow straightened even more and her eyes snapped wide in offence.
"I am not!" She argued, managing to pry a hand off the back of the chair and thrust a finger in Quinn's direction. "You are the one who isn't making an iota sense right now!" Fair eyebrows pulled together in a scowl.
"Don't insult me because I don't share your view on something. We're not in glee club arguing about song choices anymore." At Quinn's soft words, some of Rachel's bluster dissipated, but before she could say anything the former cheerleader continued. "Cats are independent."
"They're aloof!" Rachel sputtered, her face betraying every ounce of inability to understand what Quinn was saying she felt inside.
"Dogs are needy."
"They are loyal." Rachel retorted, speaking very slowly and clearly, as though that would suddenly make things clear to the blonde. "Cats don't know how to show affection."
"They don't need to whimper and whine and make people feel sorry for them. If you don't want to pay attention to them, they get over it and don't care. Move on to something worth their time."
"They don't have personality!" Rachel's voice was exasperated, and she finally managed to let go of the chair in order to make her way around the kitchen table.
"They have attitude. They're the badasses of the pet world." At that, the brunette paused and stared at Quinn.
"Have you been talking to Noah?" Quinn rolled her eyes again.
"No. But I know he shares my opinion on this." Rachel's dark ones narrowed.
"You can't use other people's arguments to prove a point." A single one of Quinn's eyebrows raised almost high enough to disappear beneath her sweeping bangs.
"Now you're just making up rules." She folded her arms across her chest and set a defiant look on the shorter woman. "Answer me this one, simple question." And Quinn paused for dramatics. "Have you ever seen a cat eat their own crap?" Rachel's face twisted into a look of disgust and Quinn jumped on it, pushing herself from the counter and throwing her own finger in the brunette's direction. "Look! You're grossed out! Why? Because dogs are gross. Cats, while smarter, are also cleaner."
"At least dogs don't leave their tail up, displaying their shame for the entire world to see." Rachel tried, wanting to find something to grasp in order to slow her descent down the slippery road of failure. Quinn's hands dropped to rest on her hips and she set a look on Rachel that told the other woman she wasn't going down easy.
"Cats don't care what people think of them."
"Only because they think they're better than everyone else." Infuriated, Quinn's hands went into the air.
"Is there some kind of traumatic childhood incident that I don't know about at the bottom of this? Did you once get upstaged by a tap-dancing cat or something?" Rachel gasped, eyes huge and glassy.
"Do you really think I could be upstaged by something as trivial as a tap-dancing cat?" The blonde let out a loud groan of frustration and sent her gaze to the ceiling, hoping the answer to ending this would fall from somewhere up there. It didn't. She let her head loll back down so she was looking at Rachel again.
"Don't look at me all puppy-eyed," She began, the threat in her voice minimal and feeling kind of bad for saying something she knew Rachel would find appalling. "You know I think you're amazing. Far more amazing than a cat doing any kind of dance. Tap or otherwise." She paused. "Except maybe interpretive, because that would be half impressive."
"What did you say?" Quinn blinked at her, pulling herself out of her brief reverie.
"That I think you're more talented-" Rachel lifted her hands and waved Quinn into silence.
"No, no. The bit about my eyes?" The taller woman's forehead creased slightly, then smoothed in understanding before tightening in what Rachel perceived as annoyance. "What was it you called that expression?" Dark eyebrows twitched upwards and Rachel slowly began walking forward. "Was it by chance a term of endearment?" Once close enough, Rachel stretched out an arm and fingered the hem of Quinn's t-shirt, glancing down at it and then back up in a manner reminiscent, Quinn fleeting thought, of George Clooney. "I don't think people are in the habit of saying 'kitten-eyed'."
"Well, it's not my fault some people don't see things my way. The right way." Quinn quipped, matter-of-factly, meeting Rachel's eyes once she lifted them again. "Maybe if I said it enough, it would catch on."
"Ever the trend-setter." And Rachel smiled for the first time since their conversation had gotten started. Quinn lifted a hand to brush dark bangs to the side of the shorter woman's ear, frowning slightly.
"Why is this such a big deal?" She asked, voice hushed, and let her hand drop to Rachel's shoulder, where her thumb moved back and forth in slow, short lines just above the brunette's collarbone. Rachel's sigh was deep and heavy.
"Because…" She began, and then was quiet for so long Quinn thought she wasn't going to continue. But she did, moving her hand away from Quinn's shirt and stepping fully into the blonde's personal space so that their bodies were touching and her forehead was pressed into the junction of the taller woman's neck and shoulder. "I judge people quickly. Sometimes too quickly. And most of the time I hold tightly to those initial judgements and can't break away from them." She paused, pulling her lower lip between her teeth to nibble on it. "It's like I put everything into a tidy square the second I meet someone, and I find it difficult to let anything in that might make the square suddenly turn into a rectangle. Does that make sense?" Quinn responded with a quite murmur of affirmation, whispered against dark tresses. "And then your square was the tidiest of all."
"That doesn't sound like a good thing." Rachel chuckled and Quinn felt the vibration of it against her neck, warm breath rushing over it to raise goosebumps there.
"No, but then I started to get to know you. And I got to a point where you were a circle, this fascinating circle that I didn't know what to expect from, and I was okay with that because I knew I had all the time in the world to figure you out."
"And what am I now?" Quinn asked, sounding amused and smiling into Rachel's hair.
"A dodecahedron." Rachel replied immediately, but her voice wilted a little. Like some kind of beautiful, dying flower. "Or you were." And a tremor of surprise shook Quinn's insides, because Rachel's voice hitched on the last word, like it always did right before she was about to cry.
"Rachel? What-" The brunette cut her off, pulling back sharply from Quinn but not fully leaving the embrace, and stared up at her with wide, tear-filled eyes.
"You're not supposed to be a cat person!" She all but squealed, dark eyes growing impossibly wider as her body seemed to shake from her head to her feet with some kind of wild panic. "You're supposed to love dogs! I have an entire folder dedicated to dog breeds and the ones that would be most complimentary to us both, personality and aesthetically. You supposed to love dogs, Quinn!" And now Rachel's lips was trembling. "So we can love dogs together." Quinn's mouth dropped open a little as she stared at Rachel, her brain too slow on the uptake and the lips before her moving too fast for her to process everything said up until then. "I don't know what you are anymore, and I'm supposed to!" And those lips pulled down, the bottom one pushing out into a pout. "I'm supposed to know everything about you. And now I don't. What if there is an entire side of you I haven't discovered yet?" Even though she knew it was inappropriate, that it would probably be misinterpreted, Quinn felt laughter bubbling inside her and couldn't stop it from escaping. As expected, Rachel instantly frowned and tried to pull away. "I would have thought by now you would know when not to laugh at something I'd said, Quinn." But the blonde held fast, grabbing Rachel by the wrists of her rapidly receding arms and pulling her back in.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." She said quietly, wrapping her arms tightly around the smaller women and holding her close. "I didn't mean it to sound like that." Rachel made an indistinct noise of protest, but slowly stopped fighting. "You know me better than anyone, Berry." Quinn murmured into the top of the dark head before her, lips pulled into a smirk and her voice holding a tinge of amusement. "Sometimes I think you know me better than I know myself. Like, you know what I'm going to say even before I think it."
"That's just my sixth sense." Rachel sighed, her voice lowed from it's previous eye-exploding frequency, and Quinn giggled.
"It's more than that. And just because I like cats more than I like dogs, it doesn't mean you don't know me." She grinned. "Doesn't change my shape. It just means that even after all we've been through, we still have stuff to find out about one another. New things to talk about."
"And that's good?" And Quinn didn't think she meant them to, but the words came out more like a question than a statement, and the blonde moved her hands to Rachel's shoulders and pushed the shorter woman back so he could look at her. She nodded, smiling at Rachel and lifting a hand to cup her cheek.
"Yes. That's good." Then, clutching Rachel's chin between her thumb and forefinger, Quinn brought their lips together in a brief, but thoroughly reassuring kiss.