Quinn gagged on her plastic vampire teeth and halted in the middle of the street. She spat them out—with a lovely handful of saliva stringing from her lips—and glanced discreetly around. Nobody seemed to have noticed her third choking episode of the night.
At the rate she was going, she'd have the rubbery teeth lodged in her throat before they hit the last house.
She wiped them off and put them back in her mouth with a grimace, then looked around for Beth, who was dressed as Batman and blending alarmingly into the night.
"Quinn, it's gone!"
Rachel came surging up from behind her, top hat tipping. She had Beth's hand firmly in her grasp and Quinn frowned at her volume. She steadied her girlfriend's arm and shuffled everybody over to the sidewalk.
She calmly asked, "Wush wrong?"
"My ring!" Rachel shrieked like it was something Quinn should've known.
She looked frantic, a mad Mad hatter in her slipping top hat and fitted, flamboyant tuxedo. Quinn held her in place.
"The one I gosh you foe you burshday?"
Rachel stared, blinking.
Quinn rolled her eyes at herself and spat the rubber teeth back out. She ignored the face Rachel pulled and Beth's loud, "Ew, mommy!" and wiped the spit from her lip.
"Ew, mommy." Rachel echoed, nodding at Beth.
Quinn asked again, "The one I got you for your birthday?"
She was already scanning the road for glinting light, any flash of the blue stone on Rachel's ring. Rachel put Beth's sack of candy on the ground and held up her hand, fingers bare, nodding sadly. Quinn took her palm and kissed her knuckles.
"I had it when we left the apartment." Rachel said.
Quinn refrained from asking her why she was wearing it to go trick-or-treating dressed as the Mad Hatter because her girlfriend seemed upset enough already.
Rachel caught the question in her eyes anyway and immediately defended, "I don't like taking it off!"
Quinn's lips tipped up.
"Mommy." Beth whined, yanking on the cape strung around Quinn's neck until Quinn coughed and put a hand on her head.
She looked expectantly down at the masked face of her daughter.
"I need more candy."
Quinn lifted an eyebrow. "You have buckets full, honey."
"She knows mommy's going to eat it all." Rachel remarked, smiling.
She watched Beth struggle to pick up the heavy sack of candy and hand it back to her. Rachel took it with an amused, "Thank you, Miss," and Beth nodded.
Quinn's eyes were narrowed at Rachel. "Uh, who ate every Skittle in the house yesterday?"
"Quinn, my ring is missing." Rachel said, doleful again.
Beth wandered off to her side and Rachel bent over and held her cape—a smaller version of Quinn's—to keep her close.
"We're going to go back the way we came." Quinn decided. "Beth can hit all of the houses on the opposite side of the street and we'll find your ring."
"Deal!" Beth proclaimed, shooting forward and pulling on her cape like a dog.
She coughed after a few steps and Quinn took Rachel's hand with an amused, "Don't strangle her, baby."
Rachel let the cape fall from her grip. Quinn had taken to swooshing hers around dramatically—because really, how often did she get to wear a cape?—and she spun on her heel and let it billow around her just so that Rachel would crack a smile.
A lost ring really wasn't the end of the world.
Rachel's lips twitched. She murmured an affectionate, "Idiot," and followed after Batman.
…
With one house to go, the ring hadn't been found. Rachel and Quinn scoured the road and sidewalk and accompanied Beth to every door, showered praise and pride on her because she remembered to say "Please" and "Thank you" each time.
Rachel was moving considerably slower, dejected, dragging her shiny shoes and not looking very "mad" at all. Quinn's salivary glands seemed to have stopped working and the rubber teeth rubbed her gums raw.
Beth ran excitedly up the path to the last house and Rachel called after her, "Last one, baby girl!"
She made to follow, but Quinn tugged on the tail of her tuxedo jacket and kept her on the sidewalk. Rachel turned and Quinn smiled tiredly, smoothed out Rachel's orange vest and put her hands in the front pockets.
"What if we don't find it?" Rachel mumbled after a moment.
Quinn pulled her closer, right up against her. She smelled like pumpkin because she'd been baking all day—muffins, cookies, pie, pizza—laboring under the impression that Quinn and Beth would eat it all.
Quinn shrugged a shoulder, smiling at her. The fangs made it lopsided. "Ads oshay."
Rachel snorted under her breath, fixed Quinn's collar.
"I gesh you a new wa."
"I don't know what you're saying, Quinn." Rachel laughed. She rubbed her hands over the soft, double-breasted, purple velvet vest Quinn had pulled out of her attic two weeks ago. Paired with her high white collar and sharp jaw, Quinn looked villainous when she wasn't dribbling spit down her chin.
Quinn rattled off something else incoherently and tipped forward to kiss Rachel's neck. She pressed the plastic fangs playfully into her skin, and then pecked the spot soothingly when Rachel squirmed away.
Rachel reached up and tapped her jaw. "Take these out. You can't speak properly."
Quinn complied. She dropped the teeth into her hand and struggled to break the strings of spit that followed.
Rachel looked disgusted. "Quinn."
"Mm." Quinn cleaned herself up and smiled widely. "Better?"
Her gums were a violent red.
Rachel reached up and palmed her cheek, rubbed it softly. "Sure, baby."
"I was saying…" Quinn held Rachel by her oversized, patterned bow tie to make sure her girlfriend was listening. "It's just a ring, Rachel. I'll get you a new one."
Rachel's lips turned down. "I want that one."
"Why?"
"Because…" Rachel shrugged and glanced around, annoyed that she had to give a reason. "I'm—it's special."
"Why is it special?"
Quinn tugged on a lock of the orange, curly hair of Rachel's wig and pushed the top hat back out of her face.
"Because you got it for me." Rachel said. She quietly added, "And it's blue."
Quinn hummed. "Topaz blue."
"And expensive." Rachel whispered, looking guilty.
Quinn spied Beth coming back down the path, swinging her plastic pumpkin candy bucket in giant circles. She smiled at Rachel and stepped back, fixed her tuxedo collar.
"You have me, baby. You don't need a ring." She reasoned smugly.
Rachel's lips quirked. "I want a ring."
Quinn stared at her—held her gaze—and reached out for Beth's hand.
"Mommy, I got, um, I got some M&Ms." Beth peered into her bucket and then thrust it in Rachel's direction. "We can share."
"That's kind of you, sweetheart." Quinn said, eyes still on her girlfriend.
Rachel looked bewildered with her stare.
They headed towards their apartment building, just a block away from the little New York neighborhood that reminded Beth of Lima, and Quinn bumped shoulders with Rachel, held her hand inside Rachel's tux pocket.
"How about a different kind of ring?" Quinn ventured, searching her face.
Rachel's eyes widened. Her step faltered and her foot landed on Quinn's cape, jerking her back. Quinn rubbed at her throat while Beth laughed.
"Quinn Fabray." Rachel said lowly.
Quinn shrugged, smiling. "I haven't yet."
Rachel stared at her, flickering her gaze between Quinn's playful eyes.
"Rachel, you be the bad guy." Beth requested, skipping backwards to capture their attention. Her mask was crooked now, her cape sideways. "Go—um—run and let me chase you."
Rachel tore her gaze away from her girlfriend and obeyed, just a bit distracted.
"I don't think Batman can catch the Mad Hatter." She remarked skeptically.
Beth gasped and lunged for her, and Rachel held her top hat to her head and took off up the brightly lit street, tuxedo tail flapping behind her. She looked over her shoulder at Batman and caught Quinn's thoughtful smile.
…
Beth dumped her plastic pumpkin bucket and sack of candy out on the coffee table as soon as she got home, pleading for Rachel and Quinn to, "Check it! Check it!"
Rachel discarded her bow tie and jacket and plopped her top hat on Beth's head, and Quinn got rid of her vest and cape, loosened her collar and tipped onto the couch next to them with an exaggerated groan.
"Mommy." Beth laughed.
"Mommy's feet hurt." Quinn complained, propping them up on the coffee table. Rachel put an arm around her shoulder and squeezed.
"That's why bats fly." Beth informed proudly.
Rachel leaned around Quinn to see her. She whispered loudly, "Mommy would make a terrible vampire, wouldn't she?"
Beth nodded enthusiastically.
Quinn would protest, but she'd spent half the night trying to keep all of her saliva in her mouth while gagging on rubber teeth. Rachel kissed her cheek and sat forward to look at the candy.
Beth followed, climbing onto the floor with her elbows up on the coffee table. She rocked side to side impatiently.
"We can share, Rachel!" She offered, grinning. Her hair was mussed and without the mask the black make-up around her eyes made her look like a raccoon. "Mommy eats all the M&Ms, but you can have, um…Starburst."
Rachel smiled fondly at her, smoothed down her hair. "Thank you, sweetie, but I'm okay."
Quinn took an exceptionally deep breath and Rachel glanced at her—eyes closed, head tipped back against the couch pillow, probably asleep in her powdery make-up and red lipstick. Her hair had long come free of its regal up-do.
Rachel chuckled quietly and patted Quinn's knee.
She checked over the candy for open wrappers, weird substances, anything suspicious, with Beth bouncing eagerly next to her. Rachel had declared the entire pile safe and edible and was in the process of shoveling it all back into the sack when a "ping" sound stopped her.
Right there, between a clump of mini Kit-Kats and box of Nerds, was her ring. She gasped and held it up, stared at the bright blue topaz stone, the birthday present Quinn had saved up for. Rachel glanced at her girlfriend, teary eyed and incredibly relieved.
She sat back on the couch and hugged her arm, kissed her cheek, watched Quinn smile in her sleep.
Beth was tearing open her candy—not the M&Ms yet, because those were mommy's, of course—and Rachel slipped the ring into her vest pocket and tipped into her girlfriend's side.
Maybe she'd keep it to herself for a day or two.
She was just a bit curious about what other sort of rings Quinn would come home with.