Title: When Worlds Collide
Pairing: Quinn/Rachel
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: 1.06, "Vitamin D"
Summary: Quinn and Rachel shop for a yellow dress together.
"I can't do your stupid number. I don't have a yellow dress, and there isn't one that will fit me."
Those were the words that had gotten her to this place, standing next to Rachel Berry in, embarrassingly, a thrift store, on a Saturday afternoon when normally she would be at the tanning bed or, better yet, on her couch watching Audrey Hepburn movies and recovering from a late night of cheering at the football game and going to a party with her fellow Cheerios.
"I can't wear that," she said, wrinkling her nose at the shirt that Rachel held up for her inspection. "Somebody else has owned it."
"Yeah, somebody else like Madonna. This is an incredible dress. You couldn't find it new in a store at the mall; this dress is vintage. And it has history," said Rachel loudly, drawing attention to them.
Quinn hunched over until the racks hid her face the way they did Rachel's.
"Look at it," continued Rachel, warming to her subject. "It has beading, which gives it texture, and sequins, which will catch the light and make you glow."
"I don't want to catch the light and glow," hissed Quinn, taking the dress from Rachel's hand and shoving it back onto the rack. "That is precisely what I don't want. To stand out. Do you know what it's like to know that everybody is judging you for putting on weight?"
Rachel frowned and looked at the ground briefly.
"But you're pregnant," she said. "People will understand. It's good for the baby for you to put on weight."
"People don't know that I'm pregnant," said Quinn. "Use your head."
"The others in glee do, and they don't judge you," protested Rachel, but she pulled another yellow dress off of the rack and handed it to Quinn dejectedly. "But you can wear this one, I guess. It accentuates the sternum and will take focus off of your stomach."
"Thank you," replied Quinn. When she looked at the tag, her heart sank a little. A size 4. That was what she got for being pregnant.
*/*/*
"You know," mused Rachel in the car on the way home, turning herself in her seat to face Quinn, who kept her eyes on the road, "In that yellow dress, you'll probably look a little bit like Marilyn Monroe."
Quinn's gaze slid to Rachel, then snapped back to the road as she slammed on the brakes at a red light.
"Really?" asked Quinn, in spite of herself.
"Oh, yes," said Rachel, nodding. "Now that you're pregnant, especially. Marilyn Monroe was a size 12. People don't realize it, but girls who have curves are very attractive. Like Mercedes, for instance. I've heard guys say that they'd want to bang her because of the meat on her bones."
"So you're saying that I'm going to look like Marilyn Monroe when I get fat?" asked Quinn, not quite managing to keep her voice from squeaking.
"Marilyn Monroe was not fat!" exclaimed Rachel, her eyes flashing. "She was beautiful. And even though she was beautiful, she was married to Arthur Miller, because she valued his mind more than his looks."
"Arthur who-"
"He's a playwright. Death of a Sales-"
"I've seen you look at my boyfriend," challenged Quinn, grasping for anything to say that would stop Rachel before she got warmed up to her playwright rant. It was one that Quinn had heard twice before, with Tennessee Williams ("a legendary example of homosexual creativity") and Stephen Schwartz ("technically a composer, he redefined musical blockbusters on Broadway"), and she knew that Rachel could go on for twenty minutes, at least, about some dead man that Quinn would never care about.
"Please," said Rachel, rolling her eyes and shutting her mouth.
"Is that all?" asked Quinn, surprised. It wasn't like Rachel to be quiet.
"Looking at boys means nothing."
"It's not the looking that I'm concerned with," decided Quinn, wondering what, exactly, the knot in her stomach when she saw them together meant. It was hard to articulate. "It's the touching. I see your grabby hands; I know what those hands do to you in your bed at night."
Rachel smirked, rather than blushing like Quinn expected, and tossed her hair over her shoulder.
"Please," she said again, and Quinn thought that if she rolled her eyes any harder, she'd fall over. "Boys are easy."
"What?" was all Quinn could ask.
"Boys are easy," repeated Rachel. "Anybody with two breasts and flirty eyes can turn their head. Or actually, just anybody with two breasts. It's girls who are harder."
"Girls?" asked Quinn, who was beginning to feel like a parrot.
Rachel smiled at her in a way that Quinn had never seen before, and reached over to touch her arm gently. Quinn pulled away before she realized what she was doing, even though Rachel's touch had made her arm tingle.
"See?" asked Rachel. "Girls are harder. They see your breasts, but they have them too. And they want to be won, but they have a hard time understanding that sometimes knights in armor are overrated."
It was hard for Quinn to swallow. She wanted Rachel to touch her again, for longer, and she understood what Rachel was saying. She had her knight in armor. She had two of them. But in that moment, all she wanted was to be touched by the pretty girl who was sitting next to her, and she couldn't for the life of her remember why she liked jocks so much.
"Do you want sushi?" she blurted suddenly, to keep from leaning over so that Rachel's hand, so carelessly placed on the edge of her seat, would touch her thigh.
"I love sushi!" exclaimed Rachel as Quinn made a sharp turn, wheels squealing, into the restaurant parking lot. "And apparently you do, too."
Quinn made a noncommittal noise and tried to pretend that food cravings were making her crazy. Rachel didn't seem fazed, though, and when they ordered at the counter, Rachel paid for both meals.
"You don't have-" began Quinn, but Rachel pressed her finger to Quinn's lips to stop her.
"My dads gave me a credit card for emergencies," she explained. "And since you'll have hospital bills to pay in eight months, I think this counts as an emergency."
Or a date, thought Quinn as she slid into the seat across from Rachel at the table. Rachel smiled at her, and got her napkins and a fork, and brought their food when their number was called, and Quinn felt fluttering in her stomach that, for once, didn't feel like morning sickness.
For once, Rachel didn't talk about glee or Broadway or musicals while they ate, and Quinn actually enjoyed (and followed) their conversation. Rachel didn't mention ambition once, which was uncharacteristic, and when Quinn admitted that her parents had given her a car when she became president of the Celibacy Club, Rachel had the grace not to laugh.
"What are you parents going to do when they find out?" asked Rachel, setting down her chopsticks and leaning forward.
Quinn ran her chopsticks through her rice and pursed her lips.
"They would probably make me have an abortion if they found out soon enough," admitted Quinn finally, "Even though we don't believe in murdering babies. But it's different when it's your own daughter."
"So they can't find out," said Rachel quietly. She had a look of determination in her eye, one that made Quinn reach across the table and grab Rachel's hand.
"Don't do anything, Berry," she threatened, squeezing Rachel's fingers until they turned white.
Rachel squeezed back and met Quinn's eyes.
"Well, somebody has to look after you," she replied, and Quinn pressed her lips together even harder to keep her eyes from tearing up.
"I'll drive you home," said Quinn, pulling her hand back from Rachel's and wiping her nose with her napkin. She pushed back her chair and reached for the trays, but Rachel beat her to it and threw their trash away before Quinn could take a step.
It turned out that Rachel was a better date than even Finn.
In the car, Rachel produced the Spring Awakening CD from her purse, and it was all Quinn could to do to keep from making a snide comment. She settled for, "Do you just keep that with you in case of emergencies?", which she considered to be fairly nice.
"This won the Tony for Best Musical of 2007," said Rachel matter-of-factly. "And has a cast of young performers, making it an especially remarkable feat."
Quinn couldn't keep the smile off of her face. The old Rachel, the one that she knew and hated, was back. But somehow, Rachel's quirks didn't irk her as much as they normally did. Maybe it was because Rachel was smiling at her around the words of the song, or maybe it was because Rachel Berry was in her car, singing to her, and had actually been kind of fun to hang out with all afternoon. Sure, Rachel was just a tenth grader, and an annoying glee club geek at that, but she was pretty, and she sang really well, and –
"That's my house, on the right," blurted Rachel, right before the final high note in the song.
Quinn jerked the wheel to the right, and the tires squealed, and Rachel laughed at her openly.
"Thanks for driving me home," she said, grabbing her bag and releasing her seat belt. "I had a really nice time today. I mean –"
Rachel broke off then and stared at Quinn, who had moved closer through out Rachel's speech. Rachel bit her lip nervously when she noticed where Quinn's eyes had landed.
"Wait," she said, and for once the words didn't come out of her mouth at warped speed. "Was this a … date?"
Quinn blinked then, and processed the confusion on Rachel's face, and sat back hurriedly.
"God no," she said, laughing loudly to cover her mortification. "You're a girl. We couldn't be on a date. I was just teasing, because of what you said earlier-"
Rachel shook her head and grabbed Quinn's hand.
"I have two dads, Quinn. I don't think that gender should stop people from doing anything that they want to do."
And then Rachel did the most remarkable thing. She leaned forward and placed her hand on Quinn's cheek, and then, without hesitation, she kissed her. Right there in Quinn's car, with the sun setting behind the houses and the neighbors raking leaves in their yard, Rachel pressed her lips to Quinn's. And Quinn couldn't think about what to do with her hands, or the people that were watching, because she was so overwhelmed by the feeling that this was something she had longed for without realizing it. So she kissed Rachel back.
Rachel pulled away and smiled at her.
"You're going to look so gorgeous in that dress," she said as she opened the door and climbed out of the car. And then she was gone, down the sidewalk and into the house, and Quinn couldn't seem to remember how to get the car to go backwards down the driveway.
She also couldn't remember why she had spent years using guys to try to find something that had apparently been waiting for her in the form of Rachel Berry's lips.
But she did know that, however weird it was, she wanted Rachel to kiss her again.