Silence is thick, oppressive, punctured only by the clack of her heels against pavement. The din of drunkards and late-shifters gathering for one last meal of the day feels worlds away as she rounds a corner with a swish of her trench and steps into the alley, deftly dodging a half-crushed Coke can that's gathered too much slime to have been recent litter. A howl pierces the night and it's joined by a stray cat bursting from under a pile of boxes and screaming betwixt her legs to the main street's safety.
Her quarry pauses. She's heard the cat, probably also the heels. She turns, her choppy blonde hair fluttering in the smothering breeze, and it's all Spencer can do to not flinch beneath a hazel glare. "Detective." The throaty voice carves a path to her ears and slinks deep within.
She shudders, then clutches at her jacket to feign a chill that's anything but psychological. "Fabray," she answers in similar rasp. The alley is caked in darkness but Spencer swears the woman's eyes glow enough to illuminate everything. She thinks for a split second that it might not have been the best idea to trail one Quinn Fabray into such a belly-of-the-beast place, especially by herself.
"Wasn't one meeting enough?" Quinn smirks, taking measured steps closer and tucking her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket.
Every muscle tenses, a thousand springs coiled in stark anticipation. Spencer tells herself it's defensive; she's staring down a woman she's accused repeatedly of murder. The alternative is too…everything to even consider, and likely in violation of a hundred regs. "Just because we can't bring charges against you yet…" she snarls.
"So you're going to stalk me instead." Quinn plucks a cigarette from one pocket. "Don't think I didn't notice you outside the diner, watching me. Staring, even. With a rather curious look in your eye…" The cig wedges itself between her lips, and she draws a smile around it before flicking a match in her other hand.
Another shudder rips through Spencer and gooseflesh pricks at her arms. She jams her fists into her trench's pockets. "This isn't a game, Fabray," she growls and inches forward. Her cell nudges insistently at her hand, practically climbing over her fingers to dial her partner's number by itself.
"Not one to me either, detective," Quinn shrugs and pulls at the cig. A smoky 'o' slithers out moments later. "Does your chief know you're putting in such strenuous after-hours work?"
Her fingers twitch, itching to seize Quinn by the collar and throw her in a cell. Or against a wall, and rip that cigarette from her lips and- She chokes on a sudden influx of saliva and swallows heavily. "It's worth it if it means catching you in the act. If it means stopping you."
One perfect eyebrow arches. "Oh? Well, here I am," she says and slides even further into Spencer's personal space. "Alone with you in a dark alley, middle of the night. What's your next move, detective?" A finger traces along a button of her trench, near her waist. "Beat a confession out of me?"
With a quick strike, she snatches Quinn's wrist in a death grip and twists it away from her. Liquid heat races up her arm and stains every inch of her skin. "Did you do it?" she asks, seethes even though she's losing touch on where - and whom - she's directing that anger.
"Oh come on, Hastings!" Quinn rolls her eyes and flexes her arm from Spencer's grasp. "You already tried the direct approach, remember? Thousand-watt bulb in my eyes? You and your squirrely partner slapping the table and shaking your fingers at me? Didn't work then, did it?" She takes another long drag and exhales through her nostrils this time. The smoke and those eyes make her look almost otherworldly.
She has to close her eyes to protect herself against the billowing haze. And to re-center herself, because there's only so long she can look directly at the sun and not desperately want to burn herself on it. On her. "I remember the fear on your face," Spencer says after a beat, eyes slitting back open, "when you thought we had enough to lock you up."
"That wasn't fear, detective." Quinn's constant smirk turns feral. Deadly. "You and I…we're a lot alike, aren't we? Brilliant, beautiful, driven…" One last pull and she drops the cig, grinding it to dust beneath her booted heel.
"Except one of us didn't put a gun to Puckerman's head. Or plunge a knife into Hudson's chest."
Quinn snorts, an indelicate sound so out of place against the rest of her. "Does the world really miss someone like them?" she mutters and breaks their stare-down to glance over her shoulder. "You know as well as I do exactly what they did."
Blood's in the water and she's entirely too much a shark to not swoop in and feast. Or maybe they both are, dueling great whites circling the remains of a whale. "Is that an admission of guilt?" Spencer asks and takes an inch forward. She'd take several - all the better to stop Quinn from running, she tells herself - but there's only maybe one or two more remaining between them.
"No, detective, just a statement of fact," Quinn says as her eyes snap back to Spencer's own. A frenzied green churns the hazel. "There are millions of loathsome people in this world. That doesn't mean I killed any."
A siren beats warnings against the inside of her skull but she presses onward. "But you hated them personally, correct?"
Quinn's nostrils flare. "You asked me this question before."
"And I didn't like your answer before," she bites back and leans forward ever so slightly.
"Very well," Quinn sighs and rakes a hand through her hair and sweeps down along her neck. "So what if I did?"
"That gives you motive." She can almost see the pulse pounding against Quinn's throat. Her own heart beats a matching rhythm.
"It gives a lot of people motive."
"Only you actually saw what they did." The cliff is in sight and she can't possibly stop herself from leaping. "Saw them standing over her, pushing her against the wall, ripping her-"
She's crossed that line, and she knows it before Quinn so much as twitches. Words die in her lungs as the tension erupts and her back's slamming against a wall with a leather-clad arm crushing her to where she can't hardly even gasp. Molten breath cascades over her face and that stormy green gaze burrows deep. Her own hands seize and spasm before grasping and pushing at Quinn's waist.
"Let me paint you a picture, detective," Quinn growls. "You're alone, at night, with someone you think is a dangerous killer. How do you think this ends?"
A reply just gurgles in Spencer's throat before it's pulled from her entirely by lips crashing against her own. Her eyes slam shut of their own volition and she can only revel in the surprise, then bruising pleasure, for a handful of staccato heartbeats before teeth clench her lower lip and tug fiercely. Flesh gives way and she can feel blood smear across her chin, chasing Quinn's lips as they drag roughly along her jaw and latch onto her neck.
Her breaths come in shallow gasps, leaving Spencer almost lightheaded against the lips and teeth and tongue that sear her throat again and again and the crushing arm against her collar bone that eases seconds later, only to be replaced by a hand that rakes into her trench and across her chest. Her eyes snap open, blinking to clear an array of blurry stars, and her vision swims with blonde hair as Quinn slips and slides up to nip at her ear. A knee tries to nudge between her own but Spencer can tell by Quinn's hissed "Fuck," that she can't find enough leverage through that tight skirt.
A smirk crosses her lips. At last a weakness, though she struggles still to keep from buckling beneath the heat. She eases her grip on Quinn's jacket and skims a hand up her back and over her shoulder just as Quinn reaches one of her own down to fumble at Spencer's belt buckle.
She's seconds from losing any remaining control, she knows, and Spencer snatches at the jacket's collar as she hears the button of her pants pop open and Quinn's accompanying chuckle against her neck. She pushes, with every ounce of adrenaline coursing through her veins, and clearly catches Quinn off-guard because she jolts back and gapes and gives Spencer exactly the window she needs to jerk them around and slam her against the wall.
She leans in, her nose brushing against Quinn's as the heady mix of smoke and expensive perfume and sweat winds its way inside. The blood that still trickles from her mouth probably makes her look downright bestial, with how Quinn's eyes explode in a viridian fire. Her skin is feverish, her nerves aflame, and Spencer's certain she's left marks to last days as her nails rake up Quinn's thigh, taking the skirt with them, and hoist it around her waist. An inferno laps at her fingers as they slip closer and then along the…nothing but scorching wetness.
The surprise can't even register in her mind before Quinn groans "Fuck, Hastings," and worms a hand down to tug at the zipper of Spencer's slacks. She only gets it down an inch when they're loosened just enough, and Quinn snakes beneath the waistband of white cotton.
Spencer hasn't so much as a half-second to hiss Quinn's name when a finger circles her once, then twice, and she nearly wilts to the ground. A whispered jumble of words brush her lips as Quinn spins a lurid tale of just how wet she is, they both are, and what her boss would think if he could see them now.
Spencer's halfway through a grunted, "Shut up!" when two fingers plunge inside to the hilt with such a force that she nearly rises to her tiptoes.
A voice yells in her head with every thrust, deep and masculine and rough with cigars. What the fuck is wrong with you, Hastings? it roars over their synchronous moans. You're investigating her for murder! She growls and lolls forward and bites into Quinn's neck. What would your mother think?! A thumb slides over her clit and draws shapes, or maybe even letters, over and over and over. You don't deserve that fucking badge!
Her free hand slams into the wall next to Quinn's head and she flexes her fingers against its rough concrete. A nail breaks. Disgrace! Angry tears streak from her eyes and she snarls, "Harder!" into Quinn's ear. Disgrace! The coils tighten. Her vision tunnels. A tongue sweeps up her neck and flicks at her earlobe in perfect rhythm with the fingers scissoring deep inside her. Disgrace!
A murmur creeps over the gasps that sound more like sobs with each passing beat. "Let go," it oozes. "Give in."
Disgrace!
She comes in an explosion of shivers and a cacophony of apologies to all formless figures glaring hateful in her head, and Quinn strokes her almost gently through every second.
Several still minutes pass. "Did you do it?" Spencer asks, wheezes, again once her breath isn't coming quite as much in pants. Her fingers uncoil from where they've carved half-moon designs and drag slowly down Quinn's thigh, drawing a shudder from her.
Spencer feels more than hears the raspy laugh against her neck, joined a moment later by a tongue laving against one of the bruises burned into her skin. It takes nearly every bit of her remaining strength to keep her knees from buckling again as she sucks in a gasp. Teeth nip at her ear - a weakness she wasn't even aware she had until tonight - and then she feels Quinn slide out from between her and the wall.
Quinn leans in one last time with a smirk to flick her tongue across Spencer's lip, or more accurately the tiny cut in the middle of it. Hazel bores into Spencer for a beat as she draws back, and Quinn spins and walks away without so much as a backward glance.
The air around Spencer stills and the roar of blood pounding in her ears finally dulls as Quinn fades into the night. She shifts to buckle her pants and wrap her trench back around her and shut out the chill that nips at her flushed and dampened skin, and as she tucks her hands into the pockets she feels a card prick at her finger.
She plucks it out, brow furrowing, and scans over it. A business card of some sort, apparently, though all that's printed on it is LQF and a phone number labeled 'cell'. She shoves it back into her jacket and swipes a hand across her face, taking the remains of tears with it. Can't even consider the implications of what she's done, of what they did, of what that card means and how her heart skips a beat at the mere thought.
Tomorrow she'll convince both herself and the rest of the world that she busted her lip while singlehandedly taking down a pair of thieving perps. Tonight, she just thumbs through the droplets of blood and etches every second into mournful memory.