Rachel Berry stepped out of the subway as she looked at a few unfamiliar faces. She could see no one she knew, but still, she stepped out into the rainy afternoon in New Haven. She clutched the almost crumpled, yellow, post-it note that Santana had written her the two days ago.
"It's her damn address. You gotta see her, I can't march right up there, Berry. Her mother's needing her," Santana had said that while they were having a drink in Rachel's loft that same day.
"I'm not quite sure," Rachel had said earlier that day when Santana told her to talk to Quinn Fabray, since the blonde had gone down under – and never talked or communicated to any of the Glee club members, and from the rumors, she did not even bother to turn up in Lima for the holidays the last year and the year before it.
"Oh come on, Berry. Both of you has this weird connection," Santana made funny gestures with her fingers. "Just please do it."
Kurt and Dani had coaxed her to, and as Santana would've put it, it is the majority's claim, so Rachel had agreed.
"I fucking love democracy!" Santana had grinned once Rachel had said yes, and she quickly scribbled down the address that Quinn had given her two years ago. It wasn't that reliable, but Santana had said to start it from there.
So that's why she's standing there now, in front of a red brownstone building that seemed to be not opening any moment soon. She looked around, and saw some people heading towards the alley next to it, and she realized that people don't get in the front, they get inside the building from a small service exit.
She almost felt like she was like in one of those Agatha Christie novels or some kind of Nancy Drew character, and Rachel bravely stepped up. She showed up her driver's license for her recognition, and paid the big, burly, muscular guy who stands next to the service door with two five-dollar bills.
He pulled the door open for Rachel and quickly, no sooner that Rachel took a step into the room, she could smell the burning marijuana that pervaded the whole area. The thought of going back and telling Santana she's got the wrong dress seemed to be the very reasonable bright idea she could ever formulate, but if this was Quinn's given address – Rachel had wondered.
"Do you want a table, Miss?" a man materialized next to her and led her to the hallway. It was line with portraits of nude women. Some are black, an Asian, one Latina, another Latina, a brunette, another blonde, and then another brown-haired girl.
Rachel stopped. The man ahead of her was still talking and blabbering about this girl and that girl, but Rachel had stopped walking. Not only did her paces stopped, but so did her world, and it also felt like her heartbeat had stopped too.
On the portrait, was Quinn Fabray, her hair brown, with bright blonde locks. She looked so very different in her hair, but for a girl who was with Quinn for four years – she knew it was Quinn Fabray. Her Quinn Fabray.
Rachel gulped, Quinn had looked so beautiful in the picture. The man who had entertained her earlier came back to fetch her, or checked out that she hadn't died in the hallway and caught her standing in front of Quinn's photograph, gawking and staring openly.
"Ah, you like Magdalene," he murmured. "Great timing, I can hook you up with her for two hundred and fifty," he smiled, rather proudly. He took her hand and the two of them made their way to a table. Rachel got a seat in the middle of a smoky room, filled with people drinking and smoking cigars.
She was served with cold beer and she let her eyes wander across the room. None that she knew, and none that looked so suspiciously leering at her. A slow music started to fill the room, and Rachel could hear the applause that came from every man with eyes around the room. Heads turned to a small stage, where someone was standing.
Lights dimmed, and the spotlight was on her. Rachel's throat ran dry. It was her Quinn, the head cheerleader, the princess of the celibacy ball, the supposed-to-be prom queen, her best friend in secret, the girl she had learned to love, even under very difficult and complicated circumstances.
And her Quinn Fabray was dancing only with her shoes on.
The familiar lump on her throat caught up with her again, making her breathing difficult. The man, who had introduced himself as Philip, had watched Rachel like a hawk during Quinn's slow dancing in front of them. Rachel can't help but feel the warmth in her lower abdomen and it had traveled down south.
The brown-haired, hazel-eyed, once-blonde girl raked her eyes across the room, as men in suits and men in shirts threw bills at her as she danced on the small stage. Rachel Berry caught Quinn's hazel eyes and for a moment, a flash of shock and recognition flashed across Quinn's face.
However, the said look seemed to linger only for a fraction of a second. Wearing a more pained expression on her face, Quinn stepped down from the small stage and landed to a middle-aged man, who was too eager to catch Quinn in his arms. He threw a bundle of bills at Quinn as she strutted towards him.
Quinn bared her teeth, and bit on the man's necktie. She tugged at it as she gave the man a lap dance. However, she still looked around, and she caught Philip's meaningful look on his eye. She strutted towards him, much to the other man's disappointment. His disappointment didn't last long, though, for a paler blonde woman had overtook Quinn's task on grinding her body against the man.
Rachel left three hundred dollars on the table for Philip to collect.
The taxi ride to a cheap motel was not short at all. The traffic was heavy, and the rain had turned the road into a slick, sticky, muddy runway of yellow cabs and honking vehicles. Rachel and Quinn spent their time in the backseat.
The ride itself wasn't filled with conversations. Though Quinn did not act as if she knew Rachel at all, she treated the petite brunette as if she was more than a friend. She curled up to Rachel, and fell asleep on the brunette's chest.
Rachel was too happy to complain either. It's alright they can't catch up on each other, having Quinn beside her felt so right, and sometimes so wrong – she's confused. But she did not want it to stop either.
The cab pulled up next to an inn, and Rachel woke the sleeping Quinn and they got out of the car. Quinn made her way straight to the hotel, tugging at Rachel. They made it through the elevator, and it was only then, when the elevator door has closed that Quinn seemed to be more like the Quinn that Rachel once knew.
"Hey, Quinn," Rachel said as she turned to Quinn, almost in a whisper.
"Hey," Quinn croaked back, not really meeting Rachel's eyes. Instead, she was staring at their reflections on the elevator door.
"Long time...no see," Rachel drew in her breath as Quinn's face turned into a scowl.
"You'll tell them, won't you? You'll tell them that Quinn Fabray had turned herself into a whore. It doesn't matter, anyway," Quinn snickered bitterly. "I don't care anymore, I don't care."
"No, Quinn. I won't," Rachel shook her head. Quinn looked at her strangely.
"Why wouldn't you?"
"Because...because maybe you had your reasons," Rachel said, her mouth running dry. The elevator dinged, telling the two of them that they have reached their floor. As the door opened, Quinn morphed her innocent looking eyes into sultry, lusty ones.
Their room was in the far corner of the hallway, so Rachel and Quinn walked almost separately, but the two of them had wary looks for each other. They reached it, and Rachel opened the door, and held it up for Quinn.
"Thank you," Quinn whispered at her, and Rachel just nodded.
The soft click of the door told Quinn that it's just them now. She looked up at Rachel, who was standing awkwardly by the door. "May I use the shower?"
"Yeah, sure. You can stay the night, here..." Rachel said. Quinn stood up and quickly went into the shower. Rachel watched the fake brown-haired girl as she retreated to the adjacent room. Suddenly, and idea clicked inside her mind. She dialed hotel's room service hotline.
"Excuse me, do you have any bacon recipes?"
Quinn showed up twenty minutes later in a simple terry robe, only to find Rachel bent on lighting a small candle. Rachel smiled at her as she straightened up.
"I thought...I thought you'd be hungry. I ordered some fakeon salad and some bacon stuff," she smiled, albeit awkwardly. "I also asked for some wine."
Quinn blushed. She hadn't felt this luxury for a long time. "Thanks, Rachel."
"It's nothing," Rachel smiled wide, feeling a bit more comfortable as Quinn became more and more like herself in front of her. "Let's dig in. I'm famished!"
Quinn smiled, shyly this time, and then she looked down at her toes. She's not wearing her heels and she seemed like, a little shorter. Maybe Rachel just grew up a few inches more or something. Quinn sat on the bed, and Rachel sat on a stool and they shared the dinner brought up by the hotel service.
The following moments, they spent it all in silence, for once in her life, Rachel felt like words aren't enough, that words won't matter. Just being there with Quinn, safe and sheltered by the four walls of the hotel room, for now, it was enough. For the moment, they were enough.
Rachel woke up with a start. Her body felt like jelly, she's too tired to do anything but focus her eyes on the ceiling. Her phone started vibrating on the bedside table. It was Santana, calling her.
"'lo?" her groggy sleep voice sounded dry on her throat.
"Found her yet?" Santana asked on the other line. That's when Rachel remembered about Quinn. Speaking of which...where was she? Thoughts about last night flooded through her mind like a fast-paced silent movie.
The endless legs, soft skin, wet with sweat, sweet scent, luscious lips, warm hands, warm bodies grinding together, erratic breathing, pulse rate tearing every speedometer, vibrating with ecstasy – they were all in Rachel's mind.
"Yello?" Santana's voice tore her from her reverie. "Berry?"
"No..." Rachel said. For some reason, she was able to lie about Quinn. For some reasons, she wanted to keep the knowing of Quinn to herself. She wanted to keep Quinn to herself. "She was...no I did not find her...she's not here."
She could hear Santana's sigh on the phone, and Rachel almost buckled in lying. But she had kept her ground. "'Kay, Berry. Thanks. When's you's coming back to NY?"
"This afternoon," she said. Her train ticket back to New York is still in the afternoon.
"M'kay. You wanna spend dinner at my place? Britt's having veggie bacon."
"Will do," Rachel swung her legs from the bed, and got out of the bed. She continued to the bathroom, and on the walls of the room, and on the mirror, she could read the red smears of lipstick. Quinn's shade of red.
Dear Rachel,
I know your sleeping well, so I did not try to wake you up. Thank you for the dinner you've shared with me, and for the best and happiest night of my life. When I left Lima, I've wanted to be in New York. For some reason, I didn't have the courage to be there. Because you were there and I was too afraid to go against everything I was raised up. Funny how it turned out, right?
I thought that, when I get out of Lima, and away from you (please don't take it so wrong) and find a man I could fall in love with, I would feel a little bit of normalcy. But instead of finding a man that could help me feel a bit of dignity for myself, I met a man who pushed me into the dark of the underworld.
Maybe this is what they mean by holding on to the knife's edge. Too many times, I turn my head away when they kiss me, because I can't take it. Even if I am just this way, a girl who sells her flesh for money, and so many men had ravaged my body, there's is just one thing I can be proud of.
You're the only person I've ever kissed because I wanted to kiss you, with no ulterior motives. Finn didn't even count, bless his soul, because I only wanted to be with him so that I can rule the school. Thinking back about it just made me laugh at myself. Twenty-one year-old me would have slapped some sense into me back then. But seventeen-year old me would have fought back, you know.
The point is, I have always wanted to be with you. I've always loved you. If you thought that the first time I met you was freshman year, you're wrong. I met you far earlier than that. We were in BreadStiX and you were with your fathers. You were wearing a red headband and you looked so cute in your argyles. Mom and Dad gave your fathers dirty looks, but I smiled at you, and you smiled back at me, without your two front teeth.
I remember myself asking Frannie if you were an angel. But Frannie said angels had wings. Ever since then, I have loved you, unfortunately, we met the second time when we were in high school, and the circumstances weren't that – approving.
You were the best, though. You became the best friend that I had, and for a time, that was enough. When we graduated, I thought that maybe, it would be the best time to confess my love for you, but, as I would put it, the circumstances weren't that approving. My parents made me go to Yale so I can get a proper degree and a normal life, maybe get married with a man to provide me with a good life. I've wanted to go after you, in New York. But, unlike Santana, I never picked up the courage to tell my parents about who I really am. So this what happened to me.
Even if I want to stay in your arms, even if I am overjoyed that you've found me, perhaps, nothing can ever fix my brokenness. No detergent or disinfectant can washy away the stains in my soul. A person like me is not what you deserve, I've dreamed of this night, and the morning after, you would make me breakfast, but in the course of the years I have been on this job, my heart had gone numb.
I won't forget your good-bye kiss, Rachel. But, all I ask of you is, don't try to find me again. Don't see me anymore, please. It's been the best gift from high above to know you, and I won't forget you.
Love always,
- Q.
Rachel sighed and touched the mirror with her fingertips, tears streaking down her face. Quinn had loved her, and she did love Quinn, far more than anything else. With Finn, it was a different kind of love, it was a love that was held up by need.
With Quinn, it was the kind of love that was ever-present. It's constant. But at the same time, it's not what it was supposed to be. She sighed, took a paper towel from its holder, turned on the sink to wet it, and wiped the red lipstick stains on the mirror.