Disclaimer: Glee is obviously not mine. If it were, we'd be having lots and lots of baby-gay Quinn and Faberry!feels every single episode.
A/N: This one could be read as a kind of continuation to my other one-shot, Lie My Way Back Home.
Quinn Fabray was very clear about the things she liked and she disliked. For example, she was really enjoying her time in Yale, she liked almost all her classes and she liked the fact that she seemed to be completely free from her past and her regrets for the most time. Papers and midterms, on the other hand, she disliked with a passion she used to fake roaming through the halls of McKinley High. She hated being evaluated, or as she called it, judged.
All her life, she had felt people judging her. First they had judged her looks. Lucy Caboosey, they had called her. Poor old Lucy, she's so fat, she'll never get a boyfriend. That coincided with the time that she actually realized she did not want a boyfriend that much. Boys were gross. Besides that reasoning, there was the hint of a realization in the back of her mind that she wouldn't really have minded a girlfriend.
It was the judgement of her father that prevented the realization from becoming full. It was in the middle of the summer, and her father had taken Quinn for ice cream. That was a rare occasion by itself, he was never really available, his phone going off in the middle of dinners and family nights spent in front of the tv. When he was not working, he would declare his office off limits to the rest of the household, reminding them he deserved some peace and quiet after working so hard for his family to have a good life.
Quinn could still remember the ice cream parlour as if it was just yesterday. Holding on to her father's big hand, feeling incredibly protected by a simple gesture, they had joined the queue of parents with children of different ages.
It was also the first time Quinn had ever seen her. The little girl looked younger than herself, a fact that would prove to be wrong, and she was between two strong looking men, jumping around, sending everyone toothless grins. Quinn had found herself smiling then, not really knowing why. There was just something so contagious about that grin. It seemed to her that the other girl was made of pure joy.
That was when the judgement hit the hardest. It was the harsh, cold voice of her father's that condemned the Berrys and managed to make the little girl cry. It was her father's hand that suddenly grabbed her own little hand a little too hard and pulled her out of the store. She had spent the ride back home listening to her father go on and on about how the Berry men deserved a place in hell and how unfortunate that little girl of theirs was for being a part of their sinful lives.
Quinn had managed to forget about that incident for a while. Then highschool had begun and her world had turned upside down. It shouldn't have been that way, really. She was finally free from all that extra weight and she had a new face, with blinding shiny platinum hair. She was the dream of everyone in highschool. The boys wanted to be with her, the girls wanted to be her. She was the queen, at the top of the so-called pyramid, literally when it came to cheerleading, and metaphorically in the halls of the McKinley High. She had power. For once, she was the one doing all the judging and nothing could stop her.
Then she got pregnant. Whenever she thought about it now, she could see where it all started going wrong. The brunette coming back into her life, trying to steal her boyfriend. She could remember how threatened she was by the notion of losing her status as the queen bee. She was scared that if the brunette succeeded, she would be vulnerable to the judgement of others. That's the girl who couldn't keep her boyfriend, they would say, no wonder, everyone knows Quinn Fabray doesn't put out, wonder why is that, they would question, wonder why she didn't do more to keep her boyfriend. But she still couldn't bring herself to do more to keep Finn with her. Feeling trapped like that had brought back all the old insecurities, and then the whole thing with Puck had happened.
It was really stupid, when she thought of it. All her life, she just wanted to be. But she didn't even know how to do that anymore. How pathetic is that? She thought to herself, how pathetic is that even after she had miraculously survived that car crash, she couldn't figure out who she really wanted to be with this new given chance at life.
But Yale was good for her. Here, noone cared about what she was doing, who she was friends with or what she was wearing. She could spend all her spare time in the library, reading every book that she could lay her hands on and she could eat all the junk food while doing so and nobody would be there to chastise her for not watching out for her weight or lecture her about manners.
Yale was everything that her home was not. And Quinn liked that very much. Ever since she had come here, that hint of a realization, which had been supressed in the back of her mind for a long time had also started growing. This time, it didn't scare her that much. This time, she took her time and tried to just go with it. She started finding herself checking girls out, secretly at first, then more openly. She found that she no longer wanted to run to her dorm room and lock herself inside, crying, when a drunken girl hit on her at a party. She found that she was the only one to judge her here.
That she liked very much. However, she was now faced with another addition to her list of things she disliked: fixing stuff. Fuck all the jokes about lesbians being handy in situations like this. She was hopeless when it came to repair. Currently, she was sitting sprawled across her floor, trying to figure out just where the pipe in her bathroom was leaking. She had tried the desk at the entrance of the hall she was staying at but they had told her to hang in there since the handyman would be busy until later that day, or possibly early tomorrow.
It was at a moment of desperation that she dialed Rachel Berry's number. She realized what she was doing when she heard the chipper voice of the diva reach her ears, but it was too late to hang up anyway.
"Hi Rach."
"Quinn! Hi! Is everything okay? Not that you can't just call me but this is a little out of the blue, considering you only ever email me." Quinn felt the pang of guilt tug at her chest. Not now, she thought. "I'm glad that you called, though." Her mood was slightly altered after hearing that.
"Say Rach, you wouldn't know anything about fixing pipes and finding leaks, would you?" she asked before she could help herself.
"Pipes? Quinn Fabray, are you intoxicated right now? Is this a prank call? If so I am not amused by your show of immaturity." Rachel's voice at the other end of the line is irritated at best.
"No, no, no, God no. I'm serious. Let me explain," she paused for a moment and continued, "I came home after my classes to start on a paper that's due next week. You know how much I hate writing papers, so I decided to procrastinate and take a bath. That's when I found my bathroom under water and pretty much ruined, and I can tell which pipe is leaking but I can not for the life of me locate the actual leak and I'm sitting on the floor all wet and I don't know why I thought you could help but I called you anyway and here we are."
Quinn held her breath without even realizing when she noticed there was no reply. Then suddenly, like a ray of sun escaping between two grey clouds, she heard her laugh, forceful and full with melody.
"At least one of us thinks that this is funny." She said, tring to sound annoyed, but ended up sounding amused anyway.
"I'm sorry for laughing at your misfortune Quinn but you must admit that this phonecall is turning out to be quite unexpected for me. Did you call the handyman?"
"I have. He doesn't have any time tonight until very late. There's a possibility he can only make it tomorrow."
"Could you possibly get the management to cut your water? Maybe then the damage wouldn't be so bad."
"You're a genius! I'll ask them." She stood up from the floor, shaking like a dog just for the hell of it.
"Quinn?"
"Yeah?"
"Will you be okay on your own now? I have to go to an audition real soon otherwise I wouldn't…"
"It's okay Rach. Thanks for everything."
"You're very welcome Quinn."
"And Rach?"
"Yes, Quinn?"
"Good luck. Not that you need it."
"Thanks."
It took Quinn five minutes to shake off the grin that was plastered on her face and put on dry clothes to go find somebody who could cut the water off.