'You're awake. I shouldn't dawdle enough like that, but, we all have our off days.'

Quinn was stood above Rachel, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, a thin, flexible apron attached around her waist.

The kitchen was cool, a double window opening to a large garden of greens and blues. Decked in purples and blacks, with the cupboard doors being white, Quinn kept it clean, uncluttered.

Rachel would have admired it if she wasn't terrified.

'I'm not going to cater to you with false cries for help, or mercy. Cleary, you are beyond morality. Perhaps you think you're above it, that wouldn't surprise me.'

G-d, Rachel had been stupid. She'd followed a stranger, a completely random woman, back to her car without a second thought. I really must be desperate.

Pushing that away, she focused on the immediate needs. She was tied up. But if knots were made by humans, they could be undone. Gently, enough that it was almost imperceptible, she fiddled with the rope around her hands, struggling against the weight of her back against it, but wary of moving too much.

'I must admit,' Quinn began, placing the thick blade down on a marble countertop. 'It's refreshing. On the rare times people wake before, well, the obvious happens, there's an awful lot of screaming and mess.' A smile of pearly white deviousness. 'Thank you, for your cooperation.'

There. Looseness around her left wrist, Rachel slowly slid her hand down, giving her fingers freedom to work on the tight, layered knots directly. 'You can hardly blame them.' Digging her nails between two lines of twine. 'It must be quite shocking to wake up in a kitchen so clean.'

A chuckle left Quinn's lips, and her smile seemed genuine for a moment, searching through a rotating rack of slender spice bottles. 'Paprika, garlic, and thyme, what do you think? With a zest of lemon?' Quinn tilted her head and studied a frowning Rachel. 'What spices do you usually have with your roasts? I value your opinion.'

'I'm vegan.' Even for a murderer, Quinn had a sick sense of humour.

'Oh! Grass fed. Wonderful.' There was that grin again, a dark glint in hazel eyes.

For a moment, the room was still, and Rachel stopped trying to escape, as realisation sunk in. 'Ah. If you were just a murderer, you would have killed me already.' Furiously, then, she untangled the network of fiddly rope, loosening around her wrists faster than she dared think about.

'But instead, I take my time. Waste not, and all that.'

'I never actually,' Rachel felt the loop of rope slide off her hand, and breathed a slight sigh of relief, 'Eat grass, that is a terribly overdone stereotype, of which someone as clear intelligence, such as yourself, should be aware.'

'Of course I know, but-'in a moment, the knife was back in Quinn's hand, in another, it was pressed against Rachel's throat, the sharpness digging into skin. Quinn's other palm was pressed into Rachel's belly, hard, and she dug in her nails.

'Move a millimetre, and this knife goes through your throat. It'll slice through skin, then vocal chords and windpipe. With some effort,' Quinn dug the blade in even more and slid it slightly to the left, 'I could even break through bones and that fragile spinal cord of yours.'

Rachel felt blood rush to her head, but stilled herself, heat trickling down her neck. She didn't dare breathe, seeing the sincerity in the curve of Quinn's brow, the shine of her eyes.

'Sensible. I'm not going to knock you out.' She twisted her palm, scratching through the thin fabric. 'I imagine you would like some dignity in this. What I am going to do, is tie you back up, and then I'll decide what to do with you.' Her face softened, though her grip did not. 'If it is any consolation, you're the bravest meal I've ever had.'

Quinn moved the knife away. A small glob of red fell onto Rachel's chest, and Quinn used Rachel's now ripped shirt to clean the rest. Soon, Rachel found her hands bound to her ankles, tight enough that it hurt, and her clothes on the floor.

'Sorry,' Quinn had murmured apologetically, with a wince, 'But I really do need to see you.'

Her voice quiet, resentful, Rachel murmured 'I'm an actress. My body is hardly something I'm ashamed of. Especially considering the circumstances.' If it were other, nicer, circumstances, she would be downright proud of her body, walking around bare with not a care in the world.

As it was, she simply laid against the cool metal of the table, the gooseflesh this time not accompanied by a relaxing bath.

For a moment, Quinn stood there and simply admired Rachel, from both points of view that she could. Not only did Rachel look delicious, with her long legs and toned stomach, but she was stunning, too. Eyes of brown, sparking with defiant life. Hair, cascading down to her breasts and shoulders, shining under the bright overheads.

No.

In order to focus, Quinn took things step by step.

Step the first: Decide what to eat.

A fork in her hand, she moved in close to Rachel. First, she prodded her belly, nodding in appreciation. Next, the round of her ass, twice, to check the firmness. Finally, Quinn gave Rachel's calve an experimental squeeze, then a sharp poke with the fork. Perfect.

Step the second: Mark where to cut.

Marking pens were reasonably cheap, and lasted a long while. It was hardly as if Quinn sold the meat she caught – goodness, no. She made the pens last, then.

It only took a second of her charting a course down Rachel's plump calve to hear a tutting, and a second more for a sigh. She looked up, arched a blonde brow, and met Rachel's eyes. 'Something to share with the class?'

Step the third: Avoid smiling.

'Shoddy art skills. If that's really where you're going to carve my leg, well, then you'll leave plenty of tender meat behind.' Rachel risked a nod. 'I'm still not a fan of the idea of being dinner, but at least put some effort into this.'

Quinn spun her pen around between two fingers, standing up again to talk to Rachel proper. 'You're vegan. What do you know about meat, let alone meat as sumptuous as yourself?' Quinn gave in to the impulse, licked her lips, and gazed at Rachel, hunger burning in her stomach.

For a moment, Rachel was almost flattered.

Then she snapped back to the reality of what was happening. 'I may not eat the flesh of animals myself, but I'm far from naïve. I worked in a diner before you, shall we say, sprung me away. Sometimes, customers would order something more difficult than a burger. We had to cater to them, and some of my coworkers became dab hands at carving meat fast and efficiently. Neither of which I imagine you are.'

The twitch at the sides of Quinn's mouth had been threatening her for too long now, and all of a sudden, it won, her lips upturned, and a smile escaped the carefully carved façade.

Step the fourth: Eat them, or throw caution to the wind.

The silence in the room had grown solid, stifling. Quinn had laid out her chopping board, ready for a leg of Berry, her knives, ready to slice and carve, and her spices, ready to enhance what she imagined to be a perfect flavour.

It was the knife she picked up now, running a forefinger down the solid handle, walking over to Rachel. She pressed it into her knee, at the calve, salivating already.

Looked into Rachel's resigned eyes, the fire still burning despite everything.

'I have a choice. A choice I've never made before.' She kept the knife where it was. 'I can cut through your leg, cook you up, live as normal. I wouldn't regret that. But, there's a strange Different to you. I think, before I eat you, I want you understand that.'

Her eyes travelled down Rachel's torso, to the mess of rope that trapped her wrists to her ankles.

'I could also cut through those ropes. Postpone your inevitable dinner date. You could stay in the spare room, it's been used twice in the past four years, clean sheets and everything.' Quinn took great pride in her ability to host guests.

'I'd need your assurance,' she met brown with hazel, 'That you wouldn't try to fight back, or run to tell someone, or anything. I'm sorry, I know that's unfair to you, but if you do, I'll kill you before you can get out the front door. But it'll be messy and you deserve a better end. We all do. So, Rachel Berry, what do you say?'

There was a full length mirror in the guest room, and Rachel stood still nude in front of it, rubbing the red marks out of her wrists.

Somehow, she had not only survived her encounter with a suave cannibal, she had gotten a very comfortable room out of it.

All temporary.

With a damp face cloth, she methodically wiped away the stretch of ink on her leg. It was foolish to think of her room as anything more than a finely carpeted larder.

Though, if larders had a collection of books beautiful as this one did, Rachel wouldn't mind spending a few days here. Or weeks, she decided, as she ran a finger down the spines, dashing from romance to histories to sci-fi. Fleetingly, a vision flashed behind her eyes of teasing Quinn about the last one, but it dissipated sooner than dust in sunlight.

Quinn isn't my friend. She literally wants to cook me, once she finds out what keeps me ticking.

Rachel would stay mysterious, then, for as long as she could. Hold everything back, it was a survival method.

When Rachel walked into the kitchen to find Quinn making coffee and humming a positively ancient love song, hair all spidery strands in a messy bun, wistful look on her face, she knew it would be harder than that.