Author's Note: Written for a friend, because I'm a loser and this was my penance. The songs mentioned can be found, in the order in which they appear, at the end of the story (they're kinda important). The title is from Dan Mangan's The Indie Queens Are Waiting.
To: Quinn Fabray
From: Rachel Berry
Subject: Re: re: re: people suck
1 Attachment: stranger
I'm so sorry! I can't believe he lied to you like that. That's absolutely deplorable behavior, and from a grown man, no less.
If I were still in Chicago, I would propose a midnight outing to do something juvenile and satisfying, like egging his car, to help your wounded pride. Perhaps you could have a hundred pizzas delivered to his house? Though, you might want to give his wife some advanced warning. She sounds like a decent enough woman—after all, she seems sounds like she was pretty understanding once she found out that he'd lied to you.
Maybe she'll join you in egging his car! It could salve both of your wounded egos…
It starts in a bar. The most unlikely of places, with an entire wall lined with almost two hundred beer taps and dozens of bottles of liquor. Waitresses are milling through the crowd, catering to patrons in chairs and in stools, leaning in flirtatiously under the guise of hearing orders over the roar of a basketball game on the screens scattered around the building.
Rachel is at a booth in the corner, white teeth flashing in the dim lighting as she laughs uproariously with her seven friends crowded into around the table. Empty glasses litter the tabletop, remnants of absurdly expensive beers and liquors sloshing around every time the table shakes with laughter. They are young and they are drunk, and the cheer from a successful performance only grows with each passing round of craft brews and aged scotch. Rachel is happy and comfortable, the presence of friends who she loves and trusts both familiar and not—it had taken all of her childhood and through most of college for her to find real friends who liked her for being her as much as they liked her for her voice. They are good to her, and she loves them, and their show is a success. This is Chicago and not Broadway, but she realized months ago that she doesn't care.
Quinn is at the bar near the door, conversing with a friend under the noise echoing around the cavernous room. They have been there since it was still daylight, a meeting about an assignment turning away from academia and venturing into casual conversation, relaxation, a needed break from the grinding pressure of graduate school and student loans and the never-ending search for an internship that will guarantee a job. Her fingers are wrapped loosely around a just-refilled glass, her posture immaculate even through the slightest haze of intoxication, and she half-listens to her friend and focuses the majority of her attention on the dark liquid in her glass. Her fingers move of their own accord, rotating the glass slowly on the polished wood of the bar, the slightest tinge of golden-brown capping liquid so brown that it's almost black. Despite the never-ending exhaustion of being a full time student and an almost-full time employee, the frustration of searching for a job in an economy that just isn't charitable to the young and the academic, she is content with the faint warmth of a friend at her side, a good beer sliding down into her stomach, and the knowledge that tomorrow, for the first time in weeks, she can sleep without being jostled by an alarm clock.
Sometime after the basketball game is over and the highlights are flashing silently on the televisions, when the noise has switched from sports commentary to a strange medley of classic rock and top forty, Quinn takes an opportunity to go to the bathroom when her friend has to take a phone call. She slips through the crowd, pausing only once to send a death glare towards a drunken man twice her age who thought it was clever to try and grab at her hip; she skims around the edges and makes her way to the relative quiet of the hallway leading to the bathroom.
As she is about to push the door open, it flies away from her, a small brown blur skipping through the doorway and almost slamming right into her; she manages to dance to the side, and almost trips over her own feet in her intoxication, but suddenly someone is grabbing her and keeping her from falling.
"I'm so sorry, I—" Rings out in the empty hallway, cut off abruptly. Quinn, righting herself carefully, looks up with every intention of reaming the drunk who ran into her, but is stopped dead in her tracks.
"Rachel?"
"Quinn," Rachel says slowly. "Hi."
"Hi," Quinn repeats, staring blankly at the girl in front of her. "What are you doing here?"
"Well, I was going to the bathroom," Rachel started, then paused, and flushed delicately. "My friends and I always come here after a show."
"You're in a show? Here?"
"That would be the obvious conclusion, yes," Rachel says, and Quinn rolls her eyes.
"That's not what I meant," she says shortly. "You live in Chicago?"
"I do," Rachel said. "I was in the ensemble in a traveling show after graduating, and a local director took a shine to me when we stopped her. He's got a six-month contract for a few shows here, and then we'll all move back to New York."
"Right," Quinn said slowly. "But you're…here. In a bar. In a beer bar."
Rachel huffed indignantly. "What is that supposed to mean?"
Quinn smirked, crossing her arms over her chest. "Well, I guess I figured you for more of a fruity-drink-with-an-umbrella kind of girl."
"As opposed to what? A wine cooler kind of girl?" Rachel asked coolly.
Quinn clamped down on her lower lip, struggling to remind herself that she was an adult, that she had grown up, that it would be pointless to lash out at Rachel as she so often had.
"I'm sorry," Rachel said, guilt tingeing her voice. "That was out of line."
"It was," Quinn muttered. "Whatever."
"I'm sorry," Rachel said again. "I… can I buy you a drink? To make up for it?"
Quinn sighed. "Sure," she said flatly. "Can I pee now?"
Rachel rolled her eyes, but stepped out of the way gallantly, holding the door open for Quinn. She half-bowed, sweeping one arm out. "As you wish," she said brightly.
"Right," Quinn mumbled before disappearing into the bathroom.
It started in a bar and it felt a little bit like a second chance.
To: Rachel Berry
From: Quinn Fabray
Subject: you're an idiot, berry
1 Attachment: no_one
First order of business: you're a moron. Don't make me fly up there and smack some sense into you, because you know I will.
Second order of business: you're completely wrong. About everything (and no, I don't actually mean everything. Just everything you said in your email.)
I mean, honestly. In what context could you consider yourself a failure? Let's be objective here. At the ripe old age of 26—which, okay, I can admit feels REALLY OLD right now, because I'm right there feeling that pain with you—you're not just getting by or getting started. You don't just have a job, you have a career, one that millions of people would kill for, and you didn't just happen into it—you worked for it, you earned it, you deserve it. You've had your aspirations for your entire life, and you didn't let anyone stop you from reaching them, and you didn't try to shortcut your way to getting what you wanted. You put in the hard work and the practice and all of that, and no one in their right mind would say that you haven't earned everything you've got.
And what happened with Shelby sucks, to be blunt. I'm not going to lie: right now, a huge part of me is wishing I'd never let her adopt Beth, because I really want to punch her in the throat. Or send the really annoying new admin from the office to follow her around constantly, because that would drive anyone to insanity. She's bitter and frustrated and angry that you made it when she couldn't, but she had absolutely no right to take it out on you. You've given her more chances to be your mother than she deserved, and though I'm grateful that she's clearly been wonderful for Beth, she's been terrible to you. What she said was out of line to say the least, and if you'd let me I'd tear her a new one the next time we spoke (but yes, I know that you don't want me to, so don't worry. I'll be nice).
What it all comes down to is that she was wrong and you have done nothing wrong. You worked to get to where you are today, and if you could do it all over again, I honestly hope that you would, because you're a great person who's done great things, who deserves great things.
It grew into a friendship.
There were some things that hadn't changed. Rachel was still loud and talkative, constantly filling the silence with chatter and singing, her voice a regular echo off of every room she entered. Quinn was still defensive and arrogant, her shoulders stiff and her eyes guarded as she metered out every word with precision and care, censoring her thoughts threefold before voicing them.
There were some things, though, that had. Rachel was less obsessive, less pushy, more relaxed. She flitted from topic to topic in conversation with little regard for continuity or relation, her paratactic ramblings jumping from musical theater to beer to politics to eastern Asian religious practices. Quinn was more active, more fidgety, more prone to feeling trapped in the confines of her own body and whatever building she was in. Rachel was still loud, but Quinn was more prone to cutting a conversation short and excusing herself for the afternoon to go for a run or take on a climbing wall, the overwhelming need to move overriding etiquette or studies or rationality. Quinn was still regulated by anxiety and fear, but Rachel was more likely to focus a conversation on someone besides herself, to listen patiently, to bring levity to a situation at unexpected times.
They're in a coffee shop when Rachel became privy to Quinn's addiction to adrenaline.
"That's a terrible idea," Rachel exclaims. "Why would you even think about doing that? The chances of injury or death are astronomical!"
Quinn shrugs laconically, a lazy smile on her face as she pulls her feet up onto her chair and wraps her arms around her legs. "It looks like fun?"
"How does the risk of quadriplegia and/or dying seem at all fun to you?"
Quinn shrugs again. Her fingertips tap against her shins arrhythmically. "It looks like it'd feel like flying."
"You're not flying, you're falling," Rachel says flatly. She half-glares at Quinn over the rim of her coffee mug. "You can't go through with this, Quinn. What if there's a mistake and your parachute fails to deploy? You'll have an infinite amount of time to think about it as you fall, plummeting towards the earth at a fatal speed, until you finally hit the ground and splat. Like a bug. Or a watermelon."
"That isn't going to happen." Quinn rolls her eyes. "Dramatic much? It's totally safe."
"It's jumping out of a plane! That's the exact opposite of totally safe!"
Quinn scoffs, rolling her eyes again. "You're just a coward."
Rachel's now-empty mug hits the table heavily as she glares at Quinn and sniffs indignantly. "It has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with self-preservation. Natural selection sides with self-preservation."
"Yeah, well, it'll be fun," Quinn throws back. "It's an adrenaline rush."
"Right." Rachel's eye roll is almost identical to Quinn's. "Because that's a great reason to do something—because it shocks your body into a fight or light response, to the point where it secretes excessive amounts of adrenaline."
"Exactly!" Quinn says triumphantly. She points at Rachel with a bright grin and sticks out her tongue. "Right on the money." Her feet fall to the floor, one heel tapping mercilessly against the tile beneath it.
"So…do you want to come try it with me?" Her knowing smirk grows into a smile when Rachel chokes on the tiniest remnant of her coffee.
"Are you insane?" Rachel wheezes out. "Why on earth would I agree to jump out of a plane with nothing but nylon and polyester to keep me from dying from the impact?"
"So that's a no?"
"That's a no," Rachel says firmly. She rolls her eyes yet again, but smiles indulgently. "But I'll come with you if you want."
"Yeah?"
"Of course."
They're at the same bar when Quinn discovers Rachel's unexpected spontaneous side. A late lunch had been pushed back into early drinks, and a shared love of obscure beer had turned early drinks into late drinks. The steady influx of water and egregiously unhealthy appetizers has kept them sober, and suddenly its midnight on a Tuesday in March and Rachel has decided she wants to play paintball.
"I'm sorry, did you just say paintball?"
"Yes, Quinn." Rachel hops from her barstool daintily and yanks her coat off the back. "It'll be fun! Have you ever played?"
"Once," Quinn says, distracted. "In high school. It was Sam's birthday."
"Well, then, you know what I mean, then!" Rachel says. "It's so much fun, come on, put your coat on."
"Rachel, it's the middle of the night. You have a show tomorrow. I have class tomorrow."
"Quinn." Rachel's exasperation is evident, her foot tapping quickly on the floor. "Relax. Come on, it'll be fun. You can be tired for one class—you can even miss one class and still be okay—and you and I both know it."
"You have a show," Quinn repeats, even as she slides from her barstool, fingers fidgeting with her keys.
"This show has been going on for months. I can do it in my sleep." Rachel tugs Quinn's coat off of its perch on the back of Quinn's chair and hands it to the other girl, leaning around her momentarily to drop a small stack of tens on the bar. Her fingers fasten around Quinn's arm, dragging her bodily out of the bar.
It grew into a friendship, and it felt less like a second chance and more like a first.
To: Rachel Berry
From: Quinn Fabray
Subject: Re: re: Where are you?
1 Attachment:disarm
I know it's stupid, but now that I know he's going to be okay, I can't help but still be mad at him. What does that say about me? He almost dies from a heart attack and as soon as I know he's going to recover I go back to being angry at him? I just can't help it…I feel like everything I hate about him, everything that he did that I can't forgive, is so embedded in me that I'll never get rid of it. I'm an adult, for God's sake, and I can't feel anything towards my father but overdrawn teen angst…
To: Quinn Fabray
From: Rachel Berry
Subject: Re: re: re: Where are you?
3 Attachments: climb_on; fearless; jubilee
It's not stupid, but you are being ridiculous. You have every right to remain angry at him, Quinn—the fact that he had a heart attack doesn't erase or negate or gloss over the fact that he threw you out on the street when you were a teenager. Frankly, you showed far more grace towards him than he deserved in going back to Lima when he was in the hospital.
On that same note…you are nothing like him. He pushed you so hard to be who he wanted you to be, and you broke free of that and became someone else. Do you know how many people we went to high school with were able to make it out of Lima, much less Ohio? You managed to overcome everything that happened in high school and with your family and not only finish school, but go to college, go to graduate school, and start a successful career. I would say that you and I are the lucky ones, but luck has nothing to do with it—we've worked for who we've become, and the fact that you've succeeded so admirably at it in the face of how you grew up speaks far more to your character than any well-deserved feelings of resentment towards your father.
It gets better when Rachel leaves.
After two months of a surprisingly comfortable friendship, Rachel's director's contract in Chicago ends and the entire cast and crew pack up to follow him back to New York. The weeks leading up to their departure are a flurry of packing and organizing for Rachel, stressing and studying for finals for Quinn, and Quinn suddenly walks out of one of her finals on a Thursday and realizes that Rachel's flight left yesterday and Quinn's had her phone off for four days straight.
She isn't sure if she's disappointed or not to turn on her phone and sort through six voicemails and thirty-odd text messages from her mother and sister and friends, but nothing more than a "good luck" text from Rachel. She dials Rachel's number as she boards the train, but hangs up when the voicemail recording of Rachel's voice clicks in.
She gets home—for the first time in two days, she thinks disgustedly, after spending the 48 hours immediately before her exam holed up in a study room in the library with a handful of her classmates as they struggled through the review—and finds a six pack of craft brewed beers sitting on her counter with a gold star sticker stuck brightly to the cap of each bottle and a piece of stationary. Don't you dare decide to go and try something as stupid as bungee jumping without talking to me first is written in delicate cursive under an email address.
She spends two hours digging through her iTunes library until she finds a pair of unexpected Journey covers that a boy in her dorm freshman year had burned for her, and sends it in an email. Actually, I was thinking about hang gliding before bungee jumping.
Rachel's response is waiting for her the next morning, a rambling soliloquy examining the recklessness and shortsightedness of youth with a cover of Schooldays attached. Quinn shoots an email back at her immediately, mockingly including an instrumental piece and a one line message. Sometimes, you take yourself too seriously, Streisand.
It gets better after Rachel leaves, and neither of them has the courage to try and understand why.
To: Quinn Fabray
From: Rachel Berry
Subject:
2 Attachments: what_i; subbuteo
Quinn, I don't know what you want me to say. I'm sorry for snapping at you on the phone, but the fact is, we're both grown women now and harping on the past, no matter your good intentions, is hardly going to be beneficial to either of us. I long ago came to terms with how miserable I was in high school, and though I've moved on and learned to accept that it was what made me who I am today, the last thing I want to do is dredge up memories of it.
I appreciate that you want to apologize, I really do. However, for all of your good intentions, it does nothing but remind me of how unhappy I was as a teenager. I'm sorry if me being unable to hear out your apology prevents you from alleviating your guilt, but I can't do it. The past is the past, and I want to leave it there. It's been clear to me, from the onset of our friendship, that you feel terrible for how you treated me when we were younger. You've more than made it up to me over the past few years, just by being my friend. I don't need to hear an itemized accounting of and apology for how you acted towards me in high school, because how you feel about it is very clear. I don't need to hear you say that you're sorry because I already know, and focusing on it isn't something I have the capability of doing.
I can't tell you what to do about your guilt. I wish you'd just let it go. You're my friend now, one of the best I've ever had, and I don't want for you to feel guilty or upset about things that happened ten years ago. I understand that you've always felt a need to make amends for your unsavory actions as a child, but honestly? You're not helping anyone by focusing on your guilt—not me and not you. I've moved on and accepted it and grown up. You've grown up, and now you just need to accept it and move on.
To: Rachel Berry
From: Quinn Fabray
Subject:
3 Attachments: breath_away; die_die; amazing
It doesn't go away.
Quinn is used to friendships that wax and wane. She's no longer close with her friends from high school—Santana is somewhere in California, Brittany bouncing around the country with different dance companies, Finn engaged and smitten in Mississippi, Puck popping up on her radar a few times a year with an email or a postcard from some obscure city. Her friends from college are less scattered, but she habitually lets distance determine friendship, and she's perfectly content with that.
Rachel, though, as she is wont to do, staunchly defies convention, and their friendship manages to grow and expand in spite of hundreds of miles separating them. Though Quinn had never before considered the internet a viable way to foster a friendship, she has a stark realization one day as she's driving to the airport to pick up Rachel: it's been two years since she ran into Rachel one night at a bar, and two years less two months since she actually saw the other girl face to face. Yet somehow, she counts Rachel as one of her best friends.
The week of Rachel's visit to Chicago, a rare break between her packed schedule of rehearsals and performances, is rushed and strained. A crisis strikes at work the second day Rachel is there, keeping Quinn at work for almost two days straight; she spends what feels like half of her time in the office sending apologetic text messages to Rachel, who cheerfully responds promptly each time. When she finally makes it home, her entire apartment has been cleaned, her kitchen is fully stocked, and Rachel is alphabetizing her bookshelves. Quinn, having run the last thirty hours on nothing but granola bars and energy drinks, collapses on the couch with a beer and gripes for an hour before realizing that she's been neglecting her guest almost the entire time she's been there.
She calls in sick for the next three days and indulgently lets Rachel drag her around the city on her spontaneous whims, subjecting them to an outdoor performance of Othello, a house party with college students hosting a beer pong tournament, a riotous game of freeze tag with a gaggle of ten-year-olds in the park, and an ill-advised attempt at ice hockey. She drives Rachel to the airport for her return flight with a splint on her sprained wrist that she fully blames Rachel and ice hockey for.
"Honestly, Quinn," Rachel huffs indignantly as they make their way into the airport. "It's really not my fault that you're this breakable. And it's not my fault you're completely lacking in the necessary coordination for ice skating."
"I didn't say it was your fault," Quinn says moodily. She watches, arms folded over her chest and a smirk on her lips, as Rachel struggles to balance her suitcase and purse and boarding pass. "I just said I was going to blame you."
"Right," Rachel says, rolling her eyes. "Because that's completely mature."
"Says the woman who convinced me to play beer pong two days ago. I didn't even play beer pong in college!"
Rachel sighs, coming to a halt at the security line. Quinn holds back a laugh and elbows Rachel in the side good-naturedly, drawing a smile and a return elbow from the other woman.
"I'm sorry about your wrist," Rachel says finally, just as the line starts to move in front of them.
Quinn snorts. "You are not," she throws back. "You did a victory lap after you checked me into the wall so you could score."
"I'm not sorry I won," Rachel said loftily. "Just that you happened to get injured in the process."
"I hate you," Quinn mutters, and Rachel giggles.
"Take care, okay?" Rachel says, turning to face her. "And it's your turn to come visit next time."
"Yes ma'am," Quinn says sullenly. She sighs at the cheerful smile on Rachel's face, finally uncrossing her arms and hugging Rachel tightly. "I'll see what I can do. Now, get out of my city."
"At times like this, I really struggle to remember why it is I like you," Rachel says with a sniff. She hugs Quinn once more, arms wrapping around the taller woman briefly, before stepping back and gathering her luggage. "Take care of your wrist. Remember what the doctor said. No partaking in any of your ridiculous adrenaline-inducing activities."
"Go away!" Quinn said brightly, walking backwards away from her. "I'm need a chance to miss your big dumb face."
"I love you, too," Rachel called back, rolling her eyes. "Even if you're an idiot."
Quinn stuck her tongue out and gestured rudely with her splinted hand.
It wasn't going to go away.
To: Rachel Berry
From: Quinn Fabray
Subject: Re: re: re: You're a terrible influence
2 Attachments: hit_hard; laughing
…and really, I feel like things shouldn't hurt this dramatically by now. I mean, I'm an adult, for God's sake, and all I want to do is pout around the house and eat ice cream because I got dumped. This isn't high school, after all; I should be able to handle crap like this with a lot more maturity than I am. It wasn't even that serious of a relationship, but I'm letting it get tied into knots over it anyways.
I can't help but feel like this is some sort of…I don't know, comeuppance? Like I've messed with enough people in my life, and I let that side of me have control for so long when I was younger, and now I'm getting some sort of convoluted payback. I don't know why I'm thinking like that now, ten years later, but now that it's popped into my head, I can't get rid of it. It's like this slap in the face, and now all I can think about it everyone I've hurt, and if they felt as shitty as I do now, and all I want to do is to track them down and apologize and try and make it up to them (don't worry, I won't start trying to apologize to you again; I know how much you dislike that).
It kind of makes me want to run away for a while. Which is kind of hilarious, in a really pathetic kind of way, I guess.
Even if that's all melodramatic bullshit, I still feel like I should be able to deal with a breakup better than this. There should be something different in how I handle getting dumped at seventeen and how I handle it at 27, right?
To: Quinn Fabray
From: Rachel Berry
Subject: Re: re: re: re: You're a terrible influence
1 Attachment: lets_dance
It never really felt like it changed.
Except, Quinn thinks drily, that it absolutely had. And of course it would be Rachel who first had the courage to point it out, because God knows Quinn was never the one to acknowledge change.
She sits at her desk, staring at the laptop screen in front of her. Her desktop hums softly to one side, the light from its monitory adding to the brightness from her laptop, the two computers illuminating her otherwise-dark office. The entire floor is empty, save for her and Wade, the night watchman, while she puts the finishing touches on the report she was running and formats it for the meeting she has in two days. The cursor blinks dully at her, glaring up from the composition box for the reply to Rachel's email she'd automatically tried to start.
Then she had paused, the weight of the words Rachel hadn't really spoken hitting her like a ton of bricks and freezing her fingers atop the keyboard.
I feel like there's been a shift of some kind in our friendship, and perhaps I'm mistaken, but I think I would be remiss in not pointing it out. I tried to put it out on paper—so to speak—in my own words, but I just couldn't make it sound right. Please listen to the Over the Rhine track first, and then the Perishers track, and then the Langhorne Slim. I think by now you probably have a strong appreciation of my insistence on the ordering of songs when trying to make a point; this is no exception.
Quinn sighs tiredly, propping her chin in her hand and staring thoughtfully at the computer screen. She considers reaching for her phone and just calling Rachel, a part of her convinced that this is one of those conversations that should probably be an actual conversation, but decides against it. The entire basis of the friendship, with the exception of a shared taste for dark beer that had brought them together in the first place, has been written communication; changing that now seemed almost sacrilegious.
Sometime after Wade's walked by her office the second time and the three songs Rachel sent her have played on a seemingly endless loop, Quinn finally moves. Her fingers slide lightly over the keyboard, brow furrowing as she stalks through her music library for the songs she's thinking of. Teeth closing over her lower lip, she hesitates once more, if only briefly, before sending her email.
With a tired smile, she stows her laptop away in its case and shrugs into her coat. She bids Wade goodnight with a reminder that the pizza from her dinner meeting is in the break room fridge if he wants any, and is stepping out in the lobby when her phone rings. Rachel's face— multi-colored with paintball splatters and pouting magnificently after the first time Quinn beat her at paintball—flashes on the screen. Quinn smiles a little wider and brings the phone up to her ear.
"Hey."
To: Rachel Berry
From: Quinn Fabray
Subject: Re: Question for you…
3 Attachments: cool; she_says; loverlight
1. Stranger (Lissie)
2. No One Sleeps When I'm Awake (The Sounds)
3. Disarm (The Smashing Pumpkins)
4. Climb On (A Back That's Strong) (Shawn Colvin)
5. Fearless (Pink Floyd)
6. Jubilee (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
7. Faithfully (Clem Snide)
8. Don't Stop Believin' (Petra Haden)
9. Eyedroxide (Griggleschpot)
10. Schooldays (Kate and Ann McGarrigle feat. Rufus Wainwright)
11. What I Make Myself Believe (Lowen and Navarro)
12. Subbuteo (Admiral Fallow)
13. Breath Away (Duffy)
14. Die Die Die (The Avett Brothers)
15. Amazing (Johnette Napolitano)
16. Hit Hard (Love and Logic)
17. Laughing With A Mouth Of Blood (St. Vincent)
18. Let's Dance To Joy Division (The Wombats)
19. Come Out Of The Shade (The Perishers)
20. Born (Over The Rhine)
21. Say Yes (Langhorn Slim)
22. Cool Me Down (From Good Homes)
23. She Says (Come Around) (The Rave-Ups)
24. Lover Of The Light (Mumford and Sons)
no_one_3