Disclaimer: I do not own Glee, nor do I own the characters.
Author's note: Obviously, this is a completely canon portrayal of the secret romantic relationship between Quinn Fabray and Santana Lopez. Initially set in the summer between seasons one and two. Story idea is mine, as are all mistakes because this is unbeta'ed. The rating will be bumped up... eventually.
Her life is a polished routine. Every day, she wakes up at 7:30 and steps begrudgingly into the blue fuzzy slippers she has laid out the night before. She walks the ten steps to the stairs, walks down the twenty-four steps, takes a deep breath and forces a smile as her mother's face comes into view. She prepares and eats her precisely weighed oat cereal and on Sundays she allows herself a single slice of bacon before she heads back upstairs to shower.
From Monday to Friday, she gets dressed and then heads off to school, where she takes her notes, sings her songs in Glee club, and comes home. On Saturdays, her mother goes out and she represses the sinful urges she has been taught are wrong and curses herself if she can't, before working on homework until dinner.
Every day, she eats, makes idle chitchat, showers again, and goes through her daily ritual of self-examination. First, she lifts her pajama shirt and pokes and prods at her stretch marks – the ones that only she can see – and rubs the lotion on them that the doctor said would help. Then, she pats the contours of her nose with her index fingers, reminds herself that her name is Quinn now, not Lucy, and nods, as if she feels a little better. She doesn't feel better, because she doesn't feel anything. She's turned that part of herself off and she will never access it again. She's become really good at that in the last year, avoiding her feelings. Feelings lead to pain, and she's not ready for pain, physical and otherwise. She reminds herself of that as she heads to her bed and rubs her moisturizing lotion into her skin, making sure not to miss a spot. She then says her evening prayers and tucks herself in early, ready to wake up every morning and repeat the process.
She is working her moisturizer into her left leg, taking simple pleasure in the fact that her legs feel silky smooth as she's just shaved them, when her routine is interrupted by a simple knock at her door. "Quinnie?" comes her mother's voice, soft and dripping with false excitement, the same way she says everything.
"What?" she replies, all but growling at the woman standing on the other side of the door. She does not take kindly to interruptions.
"Santana is here to see you," Judy informs her.
"Send her in," Quinn sighs, though her brows are heavily furrowed as she looks up at the door, waiting for it to open. Of all the people who could come visit her, she doesn't expect to hear that it was the Latina. She's gotten used to Puck coming by, she always denies his requests to see her, but she and Santana have always been the sort of friends who say hello on the first day of school and goodbye on the last. If Quinn expected Santana to be visiting anyone, she would have expected her to visit Brittany. She's not oblivious to what the blondes are doing when they are together, and while morally, she does not approve – because she's been told that homosexuality is wrong and she is working hard to redeem her image with God, she never openly criticizes them either. She believes that Jesus will forgive them for their sins, just like she has been praying that he forgives her for her indiscretions over the course of the last year. Her hand instinctively makes its way to her neck and she traces her index finger over the vertical section of the cross, then the horizontal.
Santana's footsteps pad down the hall and her arms are crossed tightly over her chest as she makes her way into Quinn's room. Her mere presence seems to taint the purity of the white walls that her mother had freshly painted for her just a week earlier. Quinn doesn't turn around, but she swears she feels Jesus frowning in the portrait above her bed, or maybe it's her imagination. Pushing the thought out of her mind, she arches a perfectly tweezed eyebrow, her only way of inquiring why Santana Lopez is in her room, and closes her moisturizer, the dull clicking noise of the cap saving them both from the thick silence.
"I don't know why I'm here," Santana admits, tightening her arms over her chest. That makes two of us, Quinn replies, though she does so in her head so as to not offend the other girl. She has a master plan for the upcoming school year, and it would be easier if she had Santana with her, rather than against her.
"I- I made a mistake," the Latina stammers, looking at an indiscriminate spot on the wall and seeming like a mere shell of herself. Quinn tilts her head to the side, trying to process this 'new' Santana. It makes her seem almost normal, though Quinn is well aware that normal is about as relative a term as was ever invented. Running her fingers through her blonde locks, she decides to let Santana confess her own mistake, because if she were to try and guess, they could be there all night, and she is vaguely aware of the ticking clock that is almost calling out to her, reminding her that she should be asleep in fifteen minutes. She forces her eyes to remain on the other girl, and gasps a little as Santana's arms drop to her sides.
It wasn't really visible with her arms crossed, but now, Quinn's eyes just can't peel away from Santana's breasts. They're like two high beams on a car and as much as she wants to look away, she can't bring herself to do it she's so… shocked. Santana must have spent some time in front of a mirror herself, trying to figure out how to cross her arms just perfectly so that it wasn't as noticeable. Quinn, of course, knew about puberty, but there was no way that puberty was responsible for the melons that her 'friend' was now sporting on her chest.
"I don't know why I did it," the Latina mumbled, moving to sit on the edge of Quinn's bed, despite the fact that Quinn hadn't invited her to do so. "I wanted everyone to notice me more, but they hurt and they're so big." Quinn was pretty sure that the other girl was sniffling, which was something she never thought that she would see.
"You just said that you wanted everyone to notice you more, I'm pretty sure that covers why you felt the need to have a boob job," she replied, unsure of what to say. They were not these people. Santana did not seek comfort, Quinn did not give it to her. Their friendship was about as fake as Santana's boobs. What Santana and Brittany had, that was real. She was envious of that – not the physical portion, but just the companionship and sense of belonging that they gave each other. At the end of the day, even if everyone else rejected them, they would have each other. Deep down, she longed for that, but she hid it under a wall of fake confidence. That's who Quinn Fabray was. Fake. She had built herself up to be who she needed to be to survive.
"This is a bad idea, I shouldn't have come," Santana whispered, hanging her head as she crossed her arms over her chest again.
"No," Quinn insisted. Was it bad that she found it mildly comforting that someone was obviously in a worse off state than she was in that moment? She was sure that that made her a terrible person, but it was the truth. "It's not that bad," she lied. She liked to think that she had become an expert liar, but admittedly, that was not one of her best and Santana's face told her so. "Okay, so I'm sure it can be hidden. Underneath a Cheerios uniform, it won't even be that bad."
It was true. The uniforms made everyone look alike – that was the point of a uniform. Homogeny and sameness, but also exclusion. Her uniform had once excluded her, made her part of the elite, a standard that was unattainable to most. She would get back there some day, she was sure of it.
"I still have an old uniform from when I was pregnant. I'm sure it will fit and you'll see that it's not that bad," she smiled, rubbing Santana's arm gently before getting up to pull the uniform out from the bottom drawer of her cabinet. Santana was staring at her with a vacant expression, like she wasn't even in her room at that moment. It was scary, because that was how Quinn spent most of her days. Pretending like she wasn't wherever she was. She wasn't a daydreamer, and she had no idea about where she would rather be, or what she would rather be doing, so instead, she put on a smile and focused on becoming the Queen Bee of WMHS.
Moving back to her bed, Quinn handed Santana the uniform top and gasped as the other girl started stripping without a second thought. Turning around quickly, Quinn could feel the eye roll aimed at the back of her head. "They're just tits, Fabray," Santana reminded her. She didn't understand how Santana could be so at ease about changing in front of another girl. During gym, she always changed in the stalls so that no one else would see her. Then again, Quinn had always been more modest than Santana, except for the part where she had tipsily handed her virginity over to Noah Puckerman.
Sighing heavily as she heard the distinctive zip of the Cheerios top, Quinn turned around and automatically nodded her head. "See, you barely even notice with the uniform on," she fibbed. Santana still looked like she had two cannonballs hidden in her bra, but the uniform did help to hide it, at least a bit.
"Thanks," Santana mumbled, getting up to stare at herself in the mirror. "Do you think anyone else will notice?"
"This is Lima, everyone's going to notice," Quinn shrugged, no malice in her voice, after all, she was simply telling the truth. They lived in a small town, people had little else to do here but gossip. Meeting Santana's eyes through the mirror, she tilted her head to the side as the Latina's teeth worked on her bottom lip.
"You won't tell anyone, will you?" she asked.
"No," Quinn replied, and in that moment, she meant it. After all, she knew all about secret surgeries and running away from things you would like to change. She was an expert, even. She'd been running her whole life.