the rhythm of my heart (beats for you)
Wood and metal. The ping of stick against cymbal. Wood against skin. The crisp snap of the other stick against the stretched skin of the snare drum, answered by the low thump of the beater against the plastic head of the bass drum.
Ping. Snap. Thump.
He had taught her how to play, back when they were together. The memories of him putting the sticks in her hands, showing her how to hold them, how to position her feet on the bass drum and hi-hat pedals, encouraging her through those first tentative beats, flood her mind now. She taps out a slow pattern on the ride cymbal, keeping time to the imaginary song in her head. Hoping that somehow, he can hear her, wherever it is he may be now.
She thinks back to the unbridled joy she would see in his face when he would play, in the basement of the Hummel-Hudson house, or in the choir room at McKinley during Glee. He never looked so free, so alive, as he did then, his hands and feet operating independently and yet perfectly in sync. Sometimes he would close his eyes and just feel the beat, become one with it, while other times he would smile so wide she would think his face was about to crack.
She had never truly loved him, not really - but she thinks she might have at least gotten close to it in those moments.
He had said she was a natural, that she had an instinctive feel for rhythm. She supposed that was probably due to her dance training as a kid, which had served her well in Glee, though she knew she wasn't anything close to the dancer Brittany was, or Mike. Maybe the piano lessons she had taken also helped.
He'd once confessed to her that he only ever truly felt like he really knew who he was when he was playing, when it was just him and two sticks of wood against the metal and plastic in front of him. Not when he was on the football field. Not even when he was on stage with the rest of the Glee Club.
She hadn't known what to say to that. At the time, she couldn't really understand what he meant, and he found it difficult to explain further.
But now, she thought she understood. She knew that she felt the same freedom he had, allowing herself to get lost in the rhythm, in the memories of who he had been and what he had meant to her.
When she had gotten the call, the horrible, terrifying phone call that had awakened her from a deep, dreamless sleep and plunged her into a nightmare, she knew that she had to ask his mother for this one thing. Just this one thing, even though she felt as though she had no right to ask for anything at all.
The request was made in the form of a voice mail she'd left for Kurt in a shaky, broken voice. She was Quinn Fabray, and she'd never begged for anything in her life except her father's love and her mother's attention, but she knew how she sounded in that message, and honestly, she didn't care one bit.
So she'd been pleasantly surprised when she visited the Hummel-Hudson home upon her return to Lima – she'd missed the funeral due to exams and an overdue research paper, and maybe due to her own nearly unbearable sadness - and found the drums and cymbals all packed up, the black cases labeled with sticky notes bearing two words in Kurt's perfect handwriting: For Quinn.
Puck had come by in his pickup, happy to do what he could to help her, his eyes red-rimmed and his voice hoarse (allergies, he'd claimed, but she knew better), and hefted the precious instruments into the truck bed before clutching Kurt to him in a bear hug and making the delicate boy promise to call him if he ever needed anything. Then he'd jumped back into the truck and told her that he'd meet her in front of her house, and he'd get everything into the basement for her.
An hour later, Puck was gone and she was left alone in her Journey T-shirt and old, comfortable jeans in the basement with her thoughts and a vague memory of how to set up a drum kit.
(He'd said it was important to know how to set it up and tear it down, because you didn't get to hire people to do that for you right away.)
An hour after that, she had everything together. It had taken her a little longer than she'd expected, because he'd been so tall and had such long arms that she had to adjust everything to her own height and proportions. Everything had to be positioned and re-positioned several times before it felt right to her.
Now here she was, sitting down behind the kit with one light on above her, and it feels like a spotlight to her. She takes a deep breath and lifts the sticks, remembering what he had told her about how it all comes from the wrists and from the core, about keeping her heel up off the bass drum pedal and trying not to slouch.
Ping. Snap. Thump.
The slow beat quickens. A tear rolls down her cheek. Damn it, she thinks: how could he just...leave them all like this? Her sadness suddenly morphs into anger: at him, at a world in which nineteen year old boys could suddenly just vanish from the lives of their families and friends without warning, at a God who would allow such things to happen.
Her vision blurs now, but her hands and feet do not falter. The beat is strong and sure, steady and powerful, in time with the increasingly fast pace of her own heart.
He'd once joked, when he had first started teaching her, that she 'hit like a girl.'
Later, after she'd learned and gotten much, much better - because learning to play the drums was a challenge, and she did not back away from a challenge, not ever - the joke became a statement of pride.
Yeah, she hit like a girl. She hit hard.
Wood against metal, striking the aptly named crash cymbals. Crash. Wood against the clear plastic heads on the tom-toms, with the black circles at the center. Boom. The bass drum sounds like a cannon. Pow. The snare drum is like a rifle shot.
He would have loved it. He loved to play hard. The Glee club's focus seemed mostly to be on current pop hits or Broadway show tunes, but he loved classic rock the most, the music his mother had always played in the house as he was growing up. Led Zeppelin. Kiss. Boston. Fleetwood Mac. Journey, of course.
And suddenly she's crying so hard that she can't even see anymore, can barely breathe. Then, and only then, does she stop playing. Her sobs fill the sudden quiet of the room, raspy and sharp-edged, as though there's a saw in her lungs.
She doesn't notice when a small, slight figure pads into the room, or feel it at first when a pair of strong arms wrap themselves around her heaving shoulders, when a curtain of long, dark hair sweeps lightly against her neck.
"Oh, Quinn," a voice says softly into her ear.
She's here, at last. She'll make everything all better. She always has.
"Rachel," she breathed, as the arms release her and the figure walks around to stand in front of the drum kit, in the light, where she belongs. "How did you get in here?"
"Your mom gave me a spare key." Her soft breath sounds loud, somehow. "I – we – missed you at the funeral. Everyone was asking me about you. I told them you had exams, an overdue paper, like you said, but I – I was crying, and not just for him, but – but because you weren't there, and I – I just missed you so much."
Her voice cracks as she speaks. It sounds small, far away, almost like Quinn's imagining it. Quinn frowns. It's not right. Rachel's voice should never sound small. It's the biggest one she's ever heard.
"I...I'm sorry, Rachel. I wanted to come, but I...I just couldn't. I had to deal with it...I had to be alone for a little while, just to get myself together. I know you understand. Right? I know you do. Please...please say you understand."
She gets up from the seat behind the drums then, and they walk towards each other, as though there are magnets inside them, drawing them together, compelling their movements.
"Of course I understand, Quinn. Who knows you better than I do?"
They hold each other, stroking each other's hair. Their greatest solace, their most unfailing source of comfort, has always been in this closeness, in these quiet moments when it's just them, and no one else is around. When they don't even have to talk, really. When words fall away, meaningless, and the touch of hands and fingers and lips say everything that could possibly need to be said.
Except now it's not just them. There's another presence in the room with them. They both feel it, and it's a welcome presence.
He's there, and he's smiling and happy and he knows they're together, really together, and it's more than okay with him.
"He didn't understand it at first, you know. When I told him about us. He was upset, and he said some things, and it hurt. But then he took some time, and he thought about it, and he called me a couple of days later. And you know what he told me?"
She's got her face buried in Rachel's luxurious hair, so thick and dark it seems almost to have been spun from the same thread that makes up the blanket of the night sky. Her voice is muffled and barely audible, but she knows Rachel hears her when she asks her what he'd said.
"He said that if he couldn't be with me, he was glad that I was with you. Because you were the only other person he trusted to protect and take care of me the way he – the way he wanted to. And he said he always figured that things between him, and you, and me, that they had less to do with him than they had to do with us. That, really, it was always about you in the end."
She has no words for that. They both know it's true. It just took her longer than everyone else to come to the same inevitable conclusion.
Breathing in deeply, inhaling the scent of shampoo and conditioner and everything that is Rachel, she pulls away and says the only thing she can think to say, because she's helpless to say anything other than the single most true thing in her life. She says it like a promise, like a prayer and a vow, like she's swearing with her hand on top of every holy book that exists in the world.
It's only three words, but they mean everything.
Rachel looks up at her when she says the words, and she smiles at her like she's the greatest thing ever - and God, when she does that, she can almost believe it.
"He tried to teach me how to play too. Did he ever tell you about that?"
"No, I don't think so. How did it go?"
"Not well. He said I lacked rhythm and coordination. Can you believe it?"
Quinn smiles and shakes her head, chuckling to herself. Because really, who else could've gotten away with leveling such a criticism at Rachel Berry?
She finds herself walking back around behind the drum kit, suddenly tired and needing to sit down, but not trusting the old couch that's set off to the side, against the wall. Once she's comfortable, the sticks find their way back into her hands. She absently taps them against each other while Rachel looks at her curiously. Her fingers itch.
"I'm glad...I'm glad he told you that. About us, I mean. Not the other thing."
"He was actually smarter than he looked, sometimes. But you know, he really cared about you. He cared about...about all of us. And he wanted nothing more than to see us – all of us – achieve our dreams and live happy lives. I guess he just never thought that would mean he'd have to figure out what that meant for him. And then...he never got the chance."
Ping. The ride cymbal. Sssshhh. The hi-hat, opening and closing. Click. The sticks being set down atop the snare drum.
"Come on." She gets up, walks over to Rachel, who hasn't moved, still standing in the light. She takes her hand, raises it to her lips, kisses the knuckles lightly.
"Where are we going?" Rachel asks. "Dinner? I haven't been to Breadstix in forever. Not since before...you know."
"Yes." She pauses. "After we visit the cemetery. If we go now, we'll get to spend a good hour with him and still beat the dinner rush."
Rachel looks surprised, but happy. Her eyes suddenly glisten with tears.
"I...I think he'd like that," she says quietly. "I would too."
And as they walk toward the stairs leading up and out of the basement, their hands still clasped together, Rachel asks, "Can we call the others? Maybe they'd like to meet us there, or at Breadstix." There's a plea in her voice, and Quinn knows she can't deny her, as much as she'd prefer to spend this time with her alone.
"Of course. Whatever you want." She tugs Rachel up to the top step, reaches past her to switch off the light in the basement.
"Then let's go."
- fin-