Author's Note: So, I really like writing Quinn and Rachel stuff, because it's a big honking challenge to make it work within the characters. Which is why I've written, like, nothing Glee-related that wasn't about them. But I actually really love Quinn with Puck (or, really, I love with Quinn with whoever the hell makes her happy, because gosh darn it, I really just love her character to pieces). So, naturally, I branch out and get all angstified.
When she was nine, Quinn's father and uncle took her and her sister on a weekend camping trip in the mountains. Quinn, bound and determined to do everything her sister and older cousin could do, insisted on being allowed to try rock climbing. She made it twenty feet off the ground before freezing up, her fingers tucked painfully into a wide crack, legs trembling as her feet perched precariously on a ledge.
Down below, her father and uncle were calling up to her, telling her that she could just let go and the rope and harness would catch her and they could lower her to the ground, but she was paralyzed. Though she knew it was impossible, it felt like her grip was pushing the crack further and further apart, until it would be too wide for her to hold onto and she would fall into oblivion. Her father had to pull on a harness and climb up to retrieve her, talking her small fingers out of the fissure in the granite until she was clinging to him with shaking limbs as her uncle painstakingly lowered them down.
It was a Thursday night when Quinn was smacked in the face with the realization that maybe things really weren't going to work between her and Puck anymore. They had been together on and off for years, since they came to a teary decision in a hospital when they were sixteen that the best gift they could grant their daughter would be to allow a well-off couple in Dayton adopt her so she would never have to deal with growing up in Lima. They had broken up more times than she could count, but always found their way back together in the end; they both used that as reasoning for why her followed her to Northwestern for undergrad, and then to Princeton when she bulldogged her way through the GRE and an epic interview to get into a master's program.
They were out for drinks with a group of friends that had come together during her first year at Princeton—five girls and seven boys and their respective partners—and Quinn was caught up in a story with one of her peers about a presentation they'd put together for class when Puck, clearly fed up and tired of being left out of the conversation, interjected with a smartass comment and a double entendre that left everyone else at the table wincing and Quinn flushing darkly.
"Clever," she mumbled to him, just loud enough for everyone at the large table to here, her hand clenching angrily at his knee. "Intelligent input." She smiled sweetly, her voice adopting a sugary and patronizing tone that she knew he hated. "Why don't you go get another beer?"
He glared at her, the muscles in his jaw clenching, and muttered "Know-it-all bitch," under his breath before standing abruptly and stalking off to the bar. The whole table pretended to not have noticed, busying themselves with their drinks or their phones or in grasping the hands of their own boyfriends or girlfriends, and Quinn fought the urge to roll her eyes.
That night, when he unconsciously rolled over in his sleep and wrapped an arm protectively around her stomach, she stared blandly at the illuminated numbers on the clock until she fell asleep.
She dreamed of being paralyzed on the side of a rock face, fingers gripping tightly at the cracks. The crack widened slowly, and she couldn't tell anymore if she was trying to hold it together or push it further apart.
He stumbled into their tiny house at ten till midnight, eyes glazed and cheeks pasty from the whiskey on his breath. Quinn, research for her dissertation spread across the table, ignored his fumblings and plugged her headphones into her laptop, determined to finish the section she was working on before falling into bed.
The sound of him retching on the front porch finally drew her away from her work, concern battling against frustration. Outside, he was slumped on the front steps, temple pressed against the railing and eyes shut tiredly. She knelt next to him, running a hand over his hair gently and sealing her mouth shut against the reek of stale whiskey and vomit.
"Come on," she muttered. She wrapped a hand around his bicep, tugging him to stand up. "You need to get inside."
"Okay," he said sloppily, leaning against her. He was all but draped over her shoulders, weight pressing down on her heavily. He stumbled away suddenly, moving towards the railing but falling short as he retched, and Quinn cursed colorfully as he managed to vomit directly atop her running shoes.
Reigning in the desire to shove him down the stairs, she left him leaning over the railing and stomped back inside. Childish frustration overran rational thought, and she slammed the door and locked it behind her. He could sleep outside.
The bed felt too big alone, but she didn't care. She watched the minutes click by slowly and drifted off to sleep just as sluggishly. He would be furious and hungover in the morning, and a part of her relished in the knowledge.
It was their biggest fight in weeks. Puck's fists were clench as his sides, his shoulders shaking with the effort of controlling his temper, and Quinn continued to push him, throwing insult after insult at him as she reveled in the comforting simplicity of her anger and the adrenaline of pushing him to the limit.
He gave as good as he got, hurling out barbs and insults, picking apart her every fault as she alternated between seething and screaming. She put the toe of her boot through his acoustic guitar; he threw his fist through the wall next to her shoulder. She went deathly calm, leveling him into silence with a steely glare before spitting at him to leave; he shoved past her to the door, muttering loud enough for her to hear that he was glad his daughter didn't grow up with a bitch for a mother.
She threw a book at the door as he stormed out, the fury in her chest giving way to the broken sob pushing its way past her lips.
She was half-asleep when she heard him shuffle into the room quietly, and faked sleep while he changed and slid into bed behind her. She kept her breathing slow and steady when he put an arm around her stomach protectively and pressed a soft kiss to her bare shoulder, mumbling an apology against her skin before going slack and asleep behind her.
Long after he had started to snore softly, she rolled over in his arms, her leg slipping over his as she buried her face in his shoulder, whispering her own apology over and over again.
She dreamed of rock climbing again, watching in fear as her fingers in the crack shoved the rock wall apart and, no matter how hard she tried to stop herself, she pushed it apart until there was nothing left to hold onto and she fell away, hands grasping for anything she could as she did.
They split up again at New Years her last year of school. They were both drunk and angry, and she stormed out of the party they were at alone and stalked off without him. When she made it home two hours later, he was frantic and waiting, and torn between rage and fear. He all but screamed at her, hands thrown around desperately, and her own fury returned as she screamed right back. Half an hour after she stumbled into the house, he slammed out the door after bellowing that if she walked out of the house drunk he would lock her up forever.
The next morning, she woke up hungover on the couch, mouth dry and one arm numb from dangling over the side while she slept. She shuffled into the bathroom and made it out of the shower before she realized that the drawers on the dresser hung haphazardly open and empty, that there were unadorned clothes hangers strewn on the floor, that his gaming consoles and guitars and the steel-toed boots he wore for his construction job and always toed off into a corner in the kitchen were all gone.
There was an envelope with enough money to cover half of the rent until the lease ran out on the kitchen counter, and no note.
She slept on the couch for the rest of the semester, unable to find sleep in a bed that felt too big. She finished her dissertation a month before she needed to and spent the remainder of the semester going out almost every night and tumbling into the bed of anyone who would make her forget. Her friends tried to reign in her exploits, to tame her drinking, but she brushed them off far too easily with a disdainful glare she had perfected in the fifth grade and continued on in her ways.
A week before graduation, a box appeared on the doorstep from UPS, holding her gown with the drape and the trim for her completed Masters degree. She sat on the cheap faux-hardwood floor of the front hallway, fingers tight and trembling as they tangled in the black material, and remembered when she had bought her gown for her undergraduate ceremony, modeling it for Puck girlishly and blushing when he pulled her into his lap and kissed her and mumbled against her jaw that he was proud of her. Her fingers tangled in the material and she curled up against the wall and cried.
Her parents didn't come to her graduation, even though she sent them an invitation and tickets. Her sister called and congratulated her, but was too busy at work to make it. Brittany and Santana sent her a gift as an apology for not having the cash to make the flight from California—well, Brittany sent it, Quinn was sure, and just included Santana out of default. She dressed slowly and fussed with her hair and makeup the morning of the ceremony alone, and determinedly avoided thinking about the fact that no one outside of her friends in her program were there to see her graduate.
Five hours later, she extracted herself from her friends, laughing and happy despite being alone, and studied the leather envelope in her hands that contained her Masters in international politics. The heavy trim on the sleeves of her robe pulled her shoulders down, hot in the early summer humidity.
She looked up from the heavy paper in her hands, squinting in the sunlight, and her chest constricted when she saw him leaning against a tree trunk, hands in his pockets and shoulders slumped. Her throat dried up, and he straightened slowly and made his way over to her, pulling his sunglasses off as she came to a stop in front of her.
She stared at him, fingers tight around her degree; he stared levelly back at her, his hands shoved back into his pockets. Seconds ticked past, and he moved first, moving forward and tugging the diploma out of her hands and pulling her tightly against him. Her arms went around his waist automatically and she buried her face in his chest, fingernails digging into his shirt.
That night, she fell asleep on the lumpy bed in the apartment he had moved into, her head on his shoulder and his arm sticking to the sweaty skin of her lower back as he clutched her to his side even in sleep. For the first time in months, she didn't dream of rock walls or cracks or falling, and woke up with the first smile she could remember all year.