It's a shock when there's a knock at Quinn's door late in the afternoon of Friday the twenty-eighth of September and she opens it and it's Rachel Berry in a red coat with a little red hat on, a little pink case at her feet, the exact same Rachel Berry Quinn last waved to from platform B of Lima Central Station.
The Rachel says "Hi," in an anxious and relieved way, and Quinn turns around to glance at the pile of books on her bed, half expecting to see herself there like Alice in Wonderland, fast asleep.
I never fall asleep without meaning to, she thinks. And the bed is empty, she can feel her two feet firmly on the ground. Yet still it seems more likely that this is a dream than that she penciled Rachel into her datebook for November in New York and now suddenly here she is in September in New Haven.
It's difficult to be contemplative when someone is throwing their arms around you and telling you very quickly about texting and trains and going home and At the last minute and It's so good to see you and I don't have to stay.
Quinn returns the hug abruptly, like she's just remembered how hugs work. She can feel Rachel's body against hers: little and soft - but solid. She's definitely real.
As soon as that's established, Quinn thinks she should: pull away, fold her hands, smile, say "You definitely have to stay!", take her case, show her where the bathroom is, get her a glass of water, and ask about NYADA.
She can't do any of it. Can't in the sense of can't. She feels as though she's paralyzed – and, she notes dryly, she knows what it actually feels like to be paralyzed.
After a beat in which Quinn squeezes her eyes shut then opens them, like they're the only thing she has control over, Rachel pulls away, Rachel folds her hands, Rachel says "I mean, I should probably get back tonight anyway."
Quinn thinks she feels weirdly light now that Rachel's gone. Not gone gone. It's just a step back. But maybe she was holding her down – or up – or maybe – Quinn knows this feeling – when you push hard against a doorframe and then you stop and your arms float away without you.
Her whole body had been tense, she realizes. So tense she was just a block with eyes. And now her right leg is shaking like it used to after cheer practice when Sue was on maximum crazy.
She sits down quickly, feels her hands tap jaggedly against the bed.
"You gave me a shock, Rachel," she says, "In those clothes - it was like I was seeing a ghost."
She thinks that's it – the shaking - the clothes – a small red ghost – Rachel smiles and says "That's funny," takes the hat off, holds it behind her.
Quinn presses her fingers into the comforter. "The bathroom is on your right at the end of the corridor," she says. She shakes her head again at Rachel's confused "Thank you?" and laughs.
"You can stay, by the way," she says, "I mean I'm the one who wanted you to come." She stands up, tugs surreptitiously at the top of her jeans – they hang a little low – she normally wears a belt with them, but the buckle digs into her stomach when she's lying down – she was lying down less than a minute ago – she was lying down alone with her books.
Rachel doesn't seem to notice the surreptitious tugging. She's hanging her hat over the doorknob and laying her case flat and saying how if it's not convenient though, she can always check herself into a hotel, which could be fun, actually, because she has never checked herself into a hotel before – she's never even stood at the desk, because she's always so sleepy after traveling – really, she almost took a nap at the bus stop outside just now.
Quinn is smiling and trying to remember whether there are paper cups by the drinking fountain. "You're just lucky my roomie is so chill," she jokes, gesturing to the empty space across the room.
"Oh, right! I didn't even think of that – which is crazy because I know all about unchill roomies, I really do." Rachel waves one hand for emphasis. The other is busy opening Quinn's closet and diving straight in.
She shrugs off her coat and hangs it on a spare hanger, and Quinn bites her lip, doesn't mention that the hanger isn't spare at all – it's the padded floral one – and Rachel only thinks it's spare because she knocked it when she was fishing around - and somewhere in there there's a white silk dress on the floor.
Quinn spends the next ten minutes worrying about it while Rachel chatters away, teasing that she's going to go freshen up at the end of every other sentence. She's pulling things out of her case too and positioning them around the room on the floor like she's arranging flowers.
"Whoa, Mary Poppins," Quinn says, wondering if Rachel would notice if she just went and picked the dress up right now – maybe if she was casual enough…
Rachel looks her quizzically, but immediately starts humming A Spoonful of Sugar.
Quinn smiles, explains: "That's a lot of stuff for a little case." She edges towards the closet, asks "So tell me about this roomie from hell?" and those are the magic words, apparently.
Rachel rolls her eyes. "Let's not speak of her right now. I don't want to ruin Christmas."
And with that, she's out the door.
Quinn hurries to the closet – it's two steps – she's not sure it's possible to really hurry with two steps – and yet she feels like she's run up a flight of stairs when she reaches in and rescues her poor dress, shakes it out and hangs it with another.
It takes her a good thirty seconds – this hanger is wire – her head is light - her hands are still shaking.
Quinn asks Rachel three times what she wants to do and each time gets a cheerful variation on "Whatever you would normally do!"
Unfortunately what Quinn would normally do on a Friday afternoon is study, and what she would study this particular Friday afternoon is the systematized murder of a million or so Jewish children. She's pretty sure that would ruin Christmas too – or Hanukah – or Chanukah – or whatever they called it on The OC.
She already had the presence of mind to kick those particular library books under the bed while Rachel was in the bathroom, but now that they are having an argument about which one of them will sleep on the floor, Quinn's not so sure that was a good idea.
She's having this horrific vision of Rachel glimpsing the word Holocaust by the light of the moon and thinking Quinn keeps the books there like a porn stash.
She grimaces, nearly misses a beat in the game of "Yes!" "No." they're playing.
Rachel can be stubborn when she wants to be – and right now she wants to be stubborn about Quinn's back. She breaks pattern suddenly – a bold move – risky - she starts "But if – "
"If you're about to say it's your fault I got hit by a truck in the first place, let me just get the jump on you with 'That's a load,' and so help me God Rachel, if you don't stop saying it, I will organize for you to get hit by a car just so we can call it even." Quinn frowns, tugs a rug out of the top of the closet. "Or maybe a golf cart." She shakes her head. "A bicycle." She nudges Rachel on the way to her pillows, qualifies: "Gently."
Rachel shows no signs of listening, says "Oh!" like if she was a cartoon a light bulb would appear over her head, grabs her case and throws herself down on the floor. She leans violently around the room, gathers up her phone, her copy of Barbra: A Life, a travel pack of tissues and an eye patch, lines them up on top of the case. For a finishing touch, she scrambles over to Quinn's desk, scrambles back with the cup of water she gave her earlier, says "There," as she sets it down.
She looks up at Quinn, beaming in triumph. "Behold my nightstand."
Quinn raises an eyebrow. "You do know I can just pick that stuff up and put it on the actual nightstand, right?"
Rachel turns a nervous eye towards her creation, like she thinks Quinn's going to make a play for it, right here right now.
"What are you going to do?" Quinn asks. "Sit there till bedtime?" She's laughing now. It's impossible not to laugh when Rachel is fierce about small things.
Quinn drops one of her pillows down into Rachel's lap, leaves the room in search of extra bedding.
Rachel calls out "If that's what it takes," after her, and she laughs again – she laughs all the way to the laundry room and several steps back.
In the end they get coffee, and Quinn thinks it's probably the dullest thing two human beings can ever do together.
This is why people should give me six to eight weeks notice before showing up, she thinks to herself. In the right circumstances, she is good at entertaining, but she's not relaxed about it.
It's funny. Quinn watches Rachel put sugar in her soy latte. She leans in like she's counting the grains, leans back while she stirs, takes a deep breath when she brings it to her nose, squeaks when she sips it before it's cooled, sets it down and wrinkles her nose like she's miming a sneeze. Somewhere along the way there are jazz hands. This is Rachel. She was born to perform. Quinn was not. And yet somehow she loves it anyway.
It wasn't always that way. Before Glee, performance was her whole life – in the sense that even her enjoyment of it was an act. It was a means to an end – all of it – even mastering the double nine with hours to go before her first cheer competition - even the first time she tied the ribbons on her ballet slippers herself – it was mistaken for an eagerness to get up and jeté her way around the house, when in reality it was all about the smile on her mother's face – the way she clasped her hands together and called her father into the room.
Quinn is a people pleaser, that's what it comes down to. Even when she was selfish, vain, crazy, whatever else so many people have called her, it was never about pleasing herself. That is something different altogether. Something she's just starting to get the hang of – maybe.
She has sugar on her fingertips. She licks them clean.
Rachel has stopped talking a mile a minute, and Quinn has been lazy about picking up the conversational slack. A silence has fallen, and Quinn is looking at Rachel – really looking at her face – for the first time since she arrived.
"You look sad," she says. Her fingers still feel sticky. "Are you sad?"
Rachel takes a while to answer and Quinn thinks Of course she's sad. Of course there's a reason she's here.
She feels deflated – sort of foolish, even though she's right – even though Rachel says "Yes, that would be me – sad – that's the word."
There are a lot more words that follow though, and far too many of them have 'Finn' in between.
Quinn wants to lecture Rachel – badly – like the way you want to scratch an angry mosquito bite. But this is not the time. She's beginning to think 'sad' doesn't cover it. Rachel is on the verge of tears – and not the trademark Rachel Berry kind – not the emotional outpouring during a song, not the explosion of drama queen everybody is so used to. It's quiet, blinked-back, small and sort of frightening. And the more she talks, the fewer and further between the Finns become.
Rachel does miss him. She makes that clear – repeatedly. But that's not what this is about.
"It's just hard," she says, letting her hair fall forward to shield her cheeks. "It took me so long to make friends," she looks up at Quinn, nods her way, says "Friends that matter," and Quinn's hands fall together with the emphasis.
Rachel looks back at what's left of her latte. "And now, I don't even have friends that don't matter, you know? I mean, I don't even have a Rory to say hi to every other day."
She sniffles between 'to' and 'every'.
Quinn hesitates. She slides a hand forward across the table and touches the tips of her fingers to Rachel's. It doesn't quite feel like enough, so she taps her index finger with her own before withdrawing.
It's like cooking, she thinks, It's like how you never put all the salt in at once. She rubs her fingertips together. Or the sugar.
Rachel's shrugging self-consciously now.
Quinn smiles. "I get it," she says, "I think everybody feels that way. We've all been pulled up at the roots, Rachel, and it's going to take time to make new friends…" She looks up, the door is open, she says distractedly, "That's all…"
It's the worst possible moment for Joe to show up. It's the worst possible moment for him to be followed by his band of merry men and women.
The thing about Joe: people like him. Not a lot – not as much as Quinn does – but a lot of people like him a little and that's just enough to make him what you would call popular. It's strange, really. The life of the party he's not. He's quiet and sensible and Quinn sometimes wonders if he's ever made anyone but her laugh in his life.
She casts a glance at Rachel as they approach, via the vending machines. She wonders if she'll like Joe. It's not as though Finn ever had much of a sense of humor.
She shakes her head. Rachel will like him, the same way everybody else does. It's almost impossible not to like someone that genuine. Joe means everything he says and says nearly all of what he means, and that makes a lot of people feel safe. It makes Quinn feel safe, because she knows he isn't going to try to pull anything on her.
Rachel's looking at her and nodding hopefully. Joe's cracking open a Dr Pepper. Quinn is torn between looking casual and looking very serious – one of them might have the troops passing right by – if only she knew which.
She who hesitates, she thinks, when Joe catches her eye, and then Oh god, this could not be worse, when the blonde girl whose name she can't remember waves enthusiastically.
Quinn panics. Rachel has raccoon eyes. She grabs her paper napkin and leans over the table to wipe the mascara away, and when Rachel flinches like she might have been going to hit her or something, Quinn doesn't have time to feel affronted, or to remember why maybe she shouldn't. "Hold still," she says simply, and Rachel does.
Seven seconds later Rachel could pass for a non-committal goth. Ten seconds later there are six extra people at their table, five of whom make a show of knowing Quinn's name, and Rachel is raising both eyebrows and shaking Joe's hand.
"You didn't tell us you had a guest coming, Quinn," a boy with too many freckles says, and Quinn grits her teeth to avoid replying with 'That's because I don't tell you anything, whatsyourname.'
Instead she says, "Rachel dropped in from New York. She's at NYADA. You'd all better get her autograph before she leaves."
"What's NYADA?" someone Quinn knows is named Emily asks, and before she can make her feel suitably ignorant, Joe fields it.
"New York Academy of Dramatic Arts," he says promptly, and then he responds to something freckle-face said with "Quinn told me."
Someone she's pretty sure is named Andrew asks if Rachel's an actress, and freckles says his cousin was in an episode of Two and a Half Men. Quinn rolls her eyes, says pleasantly "Not that kind of an actress, Geoffrey." She has never met a Geoffrey in her life.
Rachel explains that she's a singer, mostly, but she has been Maria in West Side Story, and that's what she's at NYADA for – for singing – and dancing – and acting – for Broadway, above all things.
People aren't really listening, except Joe, and Quinn thinks that's probably her favorite thing about him – that he listens.
A second later she's not so sure. "I already knew all of that," he says, "And also that you can hit a perfect A5, which I had to google. There was a lot of stuff about paper." He opens a packet of Cheetos and holds it out to Rachel, then to Quinn, turns back to Rachel, says "If Kelly Clarkson is amazing then you are amazing."
Quinn wants to say 'She is amazing,' loudly. She would have if she wasn't already feeling a little embarrassed. It's one thing to cheer someone on – it's another to do the cheering when they're not even there.
Matters are made worse when some guy she doesn't remember even laying eyes on before says "Oh, you're Rachel Berry?"
Quinn fidgets subtly. She hopes Rachel's ego is big enough to assume word has spread from New York. A year ago she would have been sure of it, but these days… These days Quinn barely even sees the makings of a diva sitting across from her.
She forgets about being embarrassed for a moment and watches Rachel. Right at this moment she's demurring so politely with Joe that she's dangerously close to telling somebody she is not actually amazing.
It's just not right.
"Come on," Quinn says, grabbing their empty foam cups, "Let's get out of here."
When she stands up Joe says "Later," which is nicely understated, Quinn thinks. Two other people, including not-Geoffrey, attach her name to Bye. The enthusiastic waver goes with "See you Tuesday," which sounds that much more personal than 'See you in Spanish.'
Quinn says a generalized "Uh huh," and then she and Rachel have escaped.
Outside Rachel folds her arms, smiles and says "It's going to take time to make new friends," and "That's all," and "Everybody feels that way."
Quinn drops their cups in the trash, dusts her hands off. "I don't even know most of those people," she says.
Rachel laughs in a monosyllabic kind of way. "Ha! That doesn't help."
Quinn shrugs and starts walking, says "Rachel," like you shake your head. There are a lot of things she could say right now but they all feel a little too Dr Phil. Rachel's only been here an hour and ten minutes. They should still be on the weather. There certainly should not have been crying of any sort.
And maybe Rachel's thinking the same thing, because she starts launching into detailed raptures about how long the lawn is and how tall the trees are, and when the sun falls down around the top of Harkness Tower it's how old the buildings are and how pretty the sun is, and Quinn laughs lightly, says "I'm pretty sure the sun is the same."
They've gone about fifty slow paces in peaceful inconsequence when Rachel asks, in a small voice "Do you ever talk to anyone from McKinley?"
Quinn feels like someone has just shaken her awake. She yawns. "Not in the last few months."
Rachel laughs Ha, again, and it's a little quieter and more deliberate. "It's only been a few months," she points out.
"I got a post-card from Mercedes?" Quinn offers, "She says she goes everywhere on roller skates now and sometimes shoots whip cream from her bikini top."
"She does?" Rachel asks wistfully. She shakes her head. "I mean, you did?"
Quinn frowns. It hadn't occurred to her that Rachel might be pining for her own postcard from Mercedes. It hadn't exactly occurred to her that she missed… everyone. That she missed Glee. She could swear she was listening intently to everything Rachel said over coffee about friends that matter and friends that don't, and yet somehow she didn't get it - until this moment – that for all intents and purposes the two were interchangeable.
Mercedes comma me, she thinks. And Rory.
Quinn winces. Suddenly she feels bad for not introducing Rachel properly to people – for making her leave so soon when she might have wanted to stay. And just as suddenly she realizes how long she's been silent, that she never gave Rachel's non-question a non-answer. There was no 'Yeah,' no 'Mmhm,' no 'Sure did.'
Only silence.
She's looking at her feet for so long she nearly goes to the wrong door when they get back to the hall. Twice, she makes an abrupt left turn, and she can feel Rachel swinging into line at her side and smiling up close. When they finally get to the door and she's keying in the code Rachel starts to ask, teasingly, if she's sure she has the right –
It clicks open before she can finish.
Quinn turns back around, holding the handle. Rachel's a step below, looking up at her, and she feels tall and ungainly suddenly, like a scarecrow.
"Santana emailed me at the start of the semester," she says quickly. "Did you know she's in New York?"
Rachel's eyes widen. "No," she wails, like someone's just stolen her lottery ticket and won.
Quinn thinks the waterworks might be about to start again. She feels hard and absent. She says "Yeah, so anytime you need a friend." She walks inside and holds the door for One, two.