Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 71st cycle. Now cycle 72!
"For All We Know"
Rachel/Quinn (+ Santana/Brittany)
Runaway Bride series
(no listing yet; sequel to "That Which We Don't Have")
They'd been at the mall one afternoon, to buy their respective presents for Mercedes' birthday, when Rachel had seen the dress in the window and told Quinn how good it would look on her. Quinn had chuckled, but finally she'd agreed to try it on, and in the end she had bought it. As they were standing at the register, that was when the plan had come together in Rachel's head: she knew how she would put this date together.
A week later, Quinn would be sitting at home when she would get a message from Rachel, asking if she'd taken her new dress out yet. Of course she hadn't, and she told her that much. Rachel had requested for her to put it on and meet her at the mall, because she really wanted to see her in it again. Quinn hadn't been too sure what that was about, though deep down she could sort of figure her girlfriend had something planned out, but what that something was, she couldn't say. Either way, she had agreed. She definitely remembered the sort of stunned speechless look on Rachel's face when she'd seen her try it on the week before, and if she could replicate that, then she wasn't going to question a damn thing.
She had put on the dress, which went hand in hand with fixing her hair, the whole picture, before heading off to meet with Rachel. When she found her, she was standing outside a restaurant, waiting in line. She looked like she was waiting on something, someone. She was looking at her phone, peering through the window wall into the restaurant. Quinn smirked to herself, figuring she was anxious for her to show up.
"You're not actually planning for us to eat here, are you?" she spoke, and Rachel looked up. It was taking all her might not to react to the dress, and Quinn had to say she had a similar problem when it came to Rachel's own dress, which was also new, even to her. "It's their busiest night, especially at this hour."
"I know," Rachel nodded, looking down to her phone, and she smiled. "Come on," she signalled for her to follow and they stepped up to the woman at the door; she'd been the first in line. "Sorry, I think there's a table now," she nodded. The woman looked aggravated, like she'd had to deal with her already, but then she looked into the restaurant and blinked.
"Right," she took a pair of menus and guided them into the restaurant.
"How did you…" Quinn started to ask, but then she saw… Was that… What were Santana and Brittany doing here, they… Now she understood. The pair of them, they'd been here already, they'd had a table: they'd just vacated it, a table for two. As they were passing by, she swore she could see them smirking like they knew something. Once they were seated, she could finally look at Rachel again. "What have you been up to?"
"There's a lot of people around here, aren't there? It's kind of loud, I hope you don't mind. Guess we'll just have to mind our own business," she planted her chin in her palm, victoriously. Quinn looked around, and she allowed herself to do something she sometimes couldn't do: she smiled at Rachel, with all the love she had for her.
"Fancy place for a date, I'm going to develop a standard," she teased, and Rachel laughed.
"I can keep up," she promised.
"I bet you can."
Throughout dinner, Quinn had tried every so often to suss out what Rachel had planned for the rest of this night, but she wasn't going to get anywhere. She still tried, which in the end became a game for them both. This wasn't about putting on a big show, even though getting them to the dinner at all had involved an amount of planning and trickery. This was about them having a date, like anybody else, and that was going to be the theme in a way. They were going to have a normal date, with normal date topics. Some questions they would ask one another they already knew the answer to, but they'd pretend as though they didn't. And as normal dates went, nothing beat dinner and a show, so after they left the restaurant, they went off to the movie theater.
"So, same tactic then? What's crowded right now?" Quinn asked, staring at the listings.
"Oh, no, not this time. We need something more low key, something… something we won't mind missing parts of."
They'd found their movie, bought tickets. They'd just had dinner, so they weren't going to bother with popcorn or candy or anything of the sort. And while everyone else was busy doing just that, the two girls had been able to get into the theater and pick out their seats strategically.
"Down in front, those lower rows," Quinn had pointed.
"No one goes there," Rachel frowned. "It's way too close."
"Yeah, exactly," Quinn gave her a look, and Rachel let out a breath and smiled. "You're not the only one with tricks up your sleeve, you know?"
The way the room was set up, once they'd sank into those seats, all they had to do was wait for the lights to go down and they'd be as good as invisible. Rachel had been right, no one had gone there, no one but them, and overall, save for them, there were no more than ten people in the theater when the room went dark. As soon as the trailers had started, Rachel had felt Quinn's fingers lace with hers, and she'd turned to find her smiling. It was all she could have wanted out of this night, to make her happy, and she had done it. Everything else was bonus.
When the credits had rolled, the lights had come up, and behind them, the rest of the small audience started to get up. Rachel and Quinn remained in their seats.
"If we stayed here, would they kick us out?" Rachel wondered.
"We could always try. Until someone notices us, there's nothing to stop us, is there? We can say we got the wrong time on our tickets," Quinn pointed out, sinking a little lower in her seat. Rachel did the same, grinning to herself. "Besides, I wouldn't mind seeing the movie again… Kind of missed a few bits."
"I just want to stay here, with you," Rachel confessed. Quinn took a quick look around the theater before leaning over to kiss her.
"There's nowhere else I want to be right now."
THE END
A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!
