[Since you noticed the way, sometimes, when you kissed her after movie and a beer, she shrank away—something, you think, to do with the smell, the colors, the taste. Since you saw Quinn's wrists. Since you saw them again.
rachel & quinn talk about what happened during quinn's junior year. part of current universe headcanon. healing. definite faberry.]
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fall in, fall out, fall along
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don't fear the future. i'm in it. we're here.
—leigh stein
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It's not like you've ever wanted to have this conversation; in fact, you've been dreading it for a while. Since March, since Santana told you things. Since you noticed the way, sometimes, when you kissed her after movie and a beer, she shrank away—something, you think, to do with the smell, the colors, the taste. Since you saw Quinn's wrists. Since you saw them again.
You know Quinn goes to therapy every Friday morning. She's told you that she loves her therapist here, that they work on important stuff to do with processing her childhood, her relationships, the past year; they also make little plans for going forward, and it's weirdly and ridiculously cute to watch Quinn come over Friday night with a determined set to her jaw and say, "I'm taking you on a date and afterward I would like you to top me. We already have safe words, but we'll have to review those first."
And you have absolutely no doubts that she's continuing to heal. You go a few times to your own counselor just to ask questions on how to treat most of what seems to come up sometimes: Quinn still occasionally has nightmares, flashbacks during sex; sometimes in quiet mornings you catch her feeling the scars on her hands with the pads of her fingers, over and over, her eyes closed, chin trembling. You ask questions about what exactly her medications do, what would happen if she missed a dose. And it's because you love her deeply, and you want to be with her for the foreseeable future, that you make sure to ask questions about how to care for yourself as well as her. You go four times and generally get the answers and tips you need, which is of great comfort.
You talk to your counselor about asking Quinn about what actually happened. Details. Because Quinn doesn't talk about why she curls up, eyes closed, when you push too hard during sex; why nightmares make her fuzzy and cranky the entire next day; what to even begin to do with some of her scars.
You don't even really have time to fully discuss it in counseling before in May, before the week of finals your senior years, Quinn brings you breakfast in her fluffy apartment bed and then pats your knee.
"Rachel?"
"Mmmm?" you say around a bite of bagel.
"We need to talk."
You almost spit the bagel out, because things have been so good—she'd woken you up with her tongue swirling around your bellybutton.
She sees your expression and then shakes her head, pushes her sleep-messy hair behind her ears. "Oh god, not like that."
"Baby," you whine, drawing it out. "Don't scare me like that."
She laughs a little but it's for show—there are circles under her eyes. "So I've been speaking to my therapist about this for a while, and we're going abroad in a little bit, and that's a big transition. And I know you have questions and I think—you probably need to know what happened."
"Honey," you say. "Only whatever you're comfortable telling me." You pat the duvet next to you and she curls up, rests her head against your shoulder. You hold your cup of coffee in one hand and rub her shoulder with the other.
"I want to be honest with you," she says, this tiny little voice. "I think—you probably need to know some of it for longterm type things."
"Okay," you say. "Hey, I love you, you know. You're here and I'm here and no matter what you tell me, it was in the past and we're not there right now, okay?"
Quinn takes a deep breath. "Yeah."
"I might cry," you warn.
She laughs. "I'll definitely cry. But, hmmm. I guess—Before Spencer, I had sex with this girl Jill," she says, and rubs your hand in little circles with her thumb when you can't help but stiffen. "I let her—asked her—to do lots of unsafe BDSM things to me. Without safe words. The little scar on my hip? She burnt me with a cigarette once."
Your immediate response is to throttle something, and Quinn seems to notice your knuckles blanching against her Yale mug. "I'm okay," you work out, take a few deep, calming breaths.
"Yeah?"
"Mhm." You kiss her softly, to be sure.
"Okay. Well. I guess then—during Spring term last year I started having hallucinations. They were scary and usually involved WWII."
You have no idea what expression you're making but Quinn shakes her head and hurries on.
"But—bipolar and whatever and I got diagnosed. But—we've talked about my mood stabilizer, so you know how it works."
"It's a nifty thing," you say, purely to make her smile. You're already on the verge of tears.
She tilts up one corner of her mouth. "It is. But last March, they put me on one that didn't work. So, that was—do you know what a mixed episode is?"
You've spoken in-depth with your counselor about bipolar I, and you've read articles Quinn's shown you. "Mania and depression?" you offer up.
Quinn nods, "Depression on speed," she says, and even laughs a little. "But anyway. Yeah, so, I had a mixed episode. And it started to get worse and I just, got drunk everyday because I couldn't breathe or be conscious without feeling like my entire body was ripping in half."
The way she says it is so matter-of-fact, you tug her closer to you. "Baby," you say, and takes a deep breath, turns her head into your shoulder.
"I self-harmed a lot. I stuck like, um, needles—I stuck them in my hips and my hands. The little dots there are from them," she starts to sound ashamed, and you'd wondered about the divots on the tops of her hands, the tiny marks on her hips.
"And you know more about this because we've talked but I kind of stopped eating for a while."
"You're such a lovely cook now though," you say and make a big show of the spread of bagels and vegan egg-substitute omelets she made. You feel her press a kiss to your neck.
"Rach?"
You sense the hesitancy in her voice. "I love you."
She nods and stays very quiet and very still for a few minutes. You scratch her back lightly.
"I sort of tried to commit suicide a few times," she lets out, a little rush of words.
From Santana, you knew this happened once, so you don't act shocked or surprised. You don't have words for her either, though, so you put down your coffee mug on the nightstand and lay back. You tug her to you, so that your legs are tangled and your arms are around her waist; your noses are almost touching.
She starts to cry, silently, when she says, "I didn't want to exist and I never really planned anything I just, I wrote last letters for people because I was just having so many impulses. Like, I walked in front of a car once. It stopped though. And Spencer had to spend a few nights with me on the roof of the library because I wanted to jump."
You don't know if there's anything for you to say, and you don't think right now is the time to kiss her, so you just thumb her cheek instead.
"I took a bottle of Vicodin once, and I took sixteen sleeping pills once. With vodka. And it made me really high and sick and I don't know if I wanted to die but—" Her chin starts to tremble and her voice breaks; she closes her eyes— "I just wanted to be able to sleep," she says, and a few tears clump her lashes together, then make their way down her cheeks.
Your chest feels like it's being strangled, but you can't imagine how Quinn's chest must feel right now, so you tug her closer to you, kiss both of her closed eyelids.
"And then—my wrist and there was a knife in the kitchen and—I had to spend a weekend in the psych unit at the hospital," she admits, like it's some sort of unforgivable sin. "On suicide watch."
She's crying fully now, which is the only reason you're not—by something that seems like a miracle, you've held it together. Possibly this is, you're learning, what it means to be strong for your partner. Because this conversation needs to happen and if you start to cry, Quinn will break down completely.
"I bruised myself with things and the little tiny scars on my ribs are from a razor and I cried everyday and I had to drink and self-harm to sort of stay alive and I never wanted to have to tell you any of it because I wasn't good and I still have nightmares from it sometimes and I know I'm still not—"
"Quinn," you say, with some air of practiced finality.
"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I'm so sorry."
You shake your head. "No. You're here, okay."
You tug her hand to your chest.
"We're here, we're together." You kiss her gently enough to make your own spine ache. "You're so very alive, Quinn. So alive."
She sniffles with the hint of a smile.
"And—you're the best. You're not just good. Like, you play with little kids on the subway. You bring me flowers every time you see me. You're sweet and you're sexy as hell. Your brain is a cracked little genius but look at how much healing its done even in a year."
"Yeah," she says.
You nod your head. "Your love is the best love, Quinn."
She burrows her head into your chest at that, shakes with a few lingering tears. "I love you so much," she says, breath warm against her stolen t-shirt.
You smooth her hair. "I'm so fucking glad you didn't die," you say.
She laughs a little into your chest, then raises her head. "Me too." She smiles. "Really goddamn fucking glad."
She kisses you softly and then sits up. She asks about walking around campus—you know by now sometimes Quinn needs to go outside when spaces are too small around her—so you pull on a pair of leggings, lace your fingers with hers.
She buys you tea and a cupcake to share from the coffee shop on campus, and hen you move to sit on a bench she tugs you to the grass instead.
She smushes frosting against your nose and then licks it off, laughing. You kiss her cheek, put your head on her shoulder. She eats the majority of the cupcake and you sit in silence for a bit.
It's sunny and bright, and the clouds are the sort of superfluous ones that float but never rain. There's a part of you that wants to ask her to marry you right now, but there's an even larger part of you that knows you don't even have to: You are each other's.
You take Quinn's left hand and trace the scar on the underside of her wrist all the way up to the base of her hand. "Thank you for telling me," you say.
She shrugs. "I just love you lots is all."
You kiss her. A man walks by playing 'You Are My Sunshine' on the harmonica, and you say, "Well will you look at all the years I see ahead of us," while you trace the lines on her palm.