"So…are you seeing anyone?"

Cheeks tinged with red, Quinn runs a quick hand through her hair and lets out an embarrassed giggle.

"…I don't think I want to be having this conversation."

There's an indignant huff on the other end of the line, and she has to fight the urge to say something particularly nasty like, "boy I sure miss those days when you were too drunk to even pretend to give shit." Construction on the emotional barrier interstate of L.Q. Fabray was a massive undertaking that started sometime around sixth grade when kids were just beginning to test the limits of their cruelty, and she had grown a bit doughy in the middle. There's an entire bypass named in honor of Russell and Judy Fabray - a Spaghetti Junction of lack of support (that road project that began right around the time a blue plus showed up on an OB pregnancy test stick.) Quinn's been a good foreman, hands made for pounding away at rock and dirt and four years ago she would have gone for her mother's throat breaking new ground for an extension. But four years ago a Judy Fabray inquiry into her daughter's love life would have meant boys (and would have come only after a second of lucidity in which her youngest wasn't simultaneously a failure and a burden.)

Judy tries now, so Quinn tries, and you no longer have to go through a toll road emblazoned with appletini's to get to the "I'm just a pretty face" part of the highway.

"Quinnie," Judy teases, "don't get bashful on me now."

"I have nothing to be bashful about," Quinn says with an eye roll. "I live like a monk. A chain smoking monk who will die from unrequited heartache. The Patron Saint of Second Chance Virgins."

"You are terribly dramatic."

"I know."

"So there's no girl?"

"Oh, there's always a girl," Quinn says. She takes a break from pacing her bedroom floor to stick her tongue out at her reflection in the dresser mirror. "But, she's only mine in spirit not in theory."

"That's wonderful!"

"Thanks mom," she snickers.

"Oh shut up, you know what I mean…"

"I have a very vague, very scary idea of what you might mean."

"There's a lovely girl who works reception at my dentist - she's gay."

Quinn bites back a laugh as a wrecking ball tears through another part of the junction. "That's great for her, mom."

"I dunno, I just thought that if you ever decide to come to Lima that I could introduce you two. You never know, Quinn."

"I know I don't want to be set up."

"You wanna be a monk?"

"Maybe that's what I'm meant for." She hesitates, "Hey mom - did you give my number…hold on, let me call you back."

"What is it?"

Quinn smiles, briefly taking the phone away from her ear to admire the way Rachel Berry lights up the screen. "The girl," she says.

When Quinn switches over the line, she is greeted by a tiny sigh followed immediately with a watery sniff.

"Rachel?"

"I'm so sorry, I know it's the middle of the week and I'm sure you're ridiculously busy…" Rachel sniffs again and a lump the size of a tennis ball as formed in Quinn's throat.

Quinn is the world's foremost leading expert on making Rachel cry; every hitch of breath is as familiar to her as the back of her goddamned hand, she can paint those puffy eyelids from memory, and trace the bloodshot lines straight to the heart of the festering wound Rachel loves to ignore until the infection seeps. It always took so much to break the girl that Quinn used to measure her success in lip quivers and slumped shoulders (once upon an emotionally stunted time ago.) And for a while, she was quite good at being the cause of this pain, but even then witnessing the aftermath of someone else's Berry destruction was more than she could take. It kept Quinn up some nights. It resulted in lots of embarrassing, maudlin diary entries.

Quinn swallows and it stings like hell. "What's wrong?"

"I hopped a train. Honestly, I wasn't thinking - I mean, you are at Yale and I suspect are drowning in coursework…"

"My head's above water."

"…I just, I didn't know what else to do." Rachel sighs again and when she speaks, she pushes the words out carefully to hold back a sob. "That's a lie. I'm sorry again, you're just the only person I want to see right now, Quinn. I'm a total nuisance, but could you maybe have coffee with me? Fifteen minutes is all I'll take up of your time, I promise."

"Don't be stupid." Quinn's already toed on her shoes and grabbed her dorm key from its place on the desk. "We'll get coffee, and then you're coming back here for the night, and whatever's wrong I'm gonna make go away if I have to murder to do it."

"What about your roommates? I don't want to impose."

"I told you not to be stupid," Quinn tells her gently. "I'll see you soon."


"One…two…three."

Rachel sputtered, blinking to keep the water out of her eyes and remained perfectly still while Quinn dried her face. Post their mostly silent walk from the train station (the only bit of conversation occurring when Rachel suggested Starbucks and Quinn scoffed - her hip sensibilities affronted) the two sat on the patio of a local coffee shop. Rachel's words were carefully measured, Quinn occasionally watched the traffic from over Rachel's shoulder and never being one to pry, she let Rachel take on the persona of Lucretia D'Amato (former ballet dancer who never left the corps, bitter instructor to ten year olds), and paid for two lattes and a bowl of clam chowder without making a fuss.

Once in the privacy of the dorms, Quinn excused herself to the bathroom where she filled the sink, dutifully held Rachel's hair back and plunged her face into the water.

"Ready to talk about it?" Quinn asks, draping the towel back over its rack.

Rachel's breathing deeply, and Quinn's watching the way Rachel's jaw muscles clench under the weight of everything she can't say. She watches Rachel's eyelids flutter shut, she watches Rachel's lips part and the slight unfurling of Rachel's tongue, and Quinn almost swears she can see the sadness hanging in the ether - a noxious, yellowed string she wants to yank. Rachel squares her shoulders and shuts her mouth, keeping the bad trapped for now.

"What's Scooby Snax?" Rachel traces the lipstick writing across the mirror with a finger.

Quinn shakes her head and drags her eyes over her roommate's loopy cursive. "Emma likes to use the mirror as a memo board," she says.

"Oh. And what are Scooby Snax?"

Quinn shrugs. "Did you ever wonder what it would be like if Zooey Deschanel and Natalie Portman's character from Garden State got together and had a baby? I didn't, and now I live with the perfect blend of the two. I think Emma's cosmic retribution."

A smile flickers across Rachel's mouth. "Answer the question."

Quinn's gaze flits from the mirror ("Gone to get Scooby Snax. Make pancakes, wench. Love - EM") to Rachel and back again. "Tell me why you're sad."

"You first."

"Scooby Snax is what Emma likes to call weed." Quinn rolls her eyes. "She keeps trying to make it happen, but it's never gonna happen."

"I knew it!"

Quinn snickers, easing her way out the door. "Of course you did." She adds as she flops down on her bed, "You're lucky you're all teary-eyed or else I wouldn't let you pick the movie."

Rachel hangs back in the bedroom doorway for a moment. She whips her head back and forth as though checking for spies and says, "What if…what if I wanted to have a snack?"

Quinn pauses, momentarily stunned. "You're not serious." She laughs.

Rachel frowns. "I'm completely serious, Quinn. Lucretia has a small recreational drug history. Nothing out of control, of course, but she finds comfort in altered states of consciousness. I've got to get a feel for the character."


"This is almost ritualistic. I mean, you've got your little kit- and the way you gingerly remove each piece like they're sacred halves of a whole, and did you mean to always take three turns to the right, then three turns to the left when you use the grinder? I just noticed that you did, but I couldn't tell if it was deliberate behavior."

"You nervous?"

Rachel looks sheepish. "A bit, to be honest. I can't stop thinking of my D.A.R.E. essay, and now it's becoming this symbol for all of the promises I won't keep."

Quinn laughs. "Just watch me," she says. Quinn puts the pipe to her lips, flicks the lighter and touches the flame to the edge of the bowl. She inhales deeply and when she lets it back out again it's in one, long stream.

"How could something so simple seem so complicated," Rachel says. With an embarrassed giggle she covers her head with her hands. "I'm failing Lucretia. Do you mind if I put on some music? I need to find my center."

Quinn gestures at the laptop on the desk, and Rachel swings her chair towards it.

"…Girlboner Jams?" Rachel quirks a brow.

"Emma likes to get on my computer and make playlists everyday."

"She sounds adorable," Rachel says in all seriousness and clicks play.

"I want to set her on fire," Quinn says. "Okay, I'm gonna shotgun it to you."

"You're gonna what?"

Quinn rolls her eyes. "Open your mouth, breathe in when you see smoke, hold it and breathe it back out again."

"Oh." Rachel clears her throat and squirms in her seat. "Alright."

Quinn pulls hard off of the pipe. As the smoke trickles down her throat she watches Rachel wring her hands. As the smoke blows across the very bottom of her lungs, Quinn watches Rachel tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. As the smoke spreads to the top and her chest burns from holding it back, Quinn watches Rachel wet her lips before parting them.

With a hand on her knee to anchor her to the world, Quinn leans forward closing the gap between them. Rachel's got her eyes screwed shut, and Quinn tilts her head and opens her mouth, and it'll be the brief second their noses touched that'll keep her up tonight.


"You ever notice how your name doesn't go together?" Rachel leans her head back on the desk chair and spins it around.

"What?" Quinn doesn't bother to look up from the book in her lap.

"Your name," Rachel says. "It sounds funny all together." She abruptly stops spinning. "How can you even read? Being awake is taxing on me right now."

"Hanging out with the Skanks for one summer gave me the opportunity to learn how to become productive while high. Back then those skills were mostly used to bat mailboxes, but I channeled them into a positive." Quinn tosses the book aside. "Now, what about my name?"

"Listen to it - Lucy Quinn Fah-bray. Lucy Quinn Fah-braaay."

Each time she says it, Rachel puts a different inflection on Quinn's last name. It makes them laugh for fifteen minutes straight.


"This is the best popcorn I've ever had, I swear. It's like I can taste every molecule and each one is more delicious than the next."

"Yeah," Quinn says shoving her mouth full. "Pop-Secret is the shit."

"I'm going to write them a thank you letter." Rachel runs a finger along the inside of the popcorn bag gathering butter and salt. Her eyes practically cross in delight when she licks it off.

"I'm going to help you. They need to know how awesome they are."


"I talked to Finn last week. He's moving in with his girlfriend - she sounds very nice, and I was completely happy for him. I mean, I'm still happy because that's the emotion you're supposed to feel for someone you cared so deeply about being in a good place in their life. But - okay, I realize this is entirely selfish and stupid so please forgive me, what if I chose wrong? Maybe I'm just Lima good - my movement professor seems to think so what with the way she embarrassed me in front of the class today. What if I let a pipe dream ruin my only chance at true love and there's some blonde in Gatlinburg living my life."

"Rachel, you don't wanna be in Gatlinburg."

"I know, but in theory…"

"No theories." Quinn rolls over on her side to face Rachel; she props her head up with one hand, and lets the other tug at an errant string on the bedspread. "Your professor's a bitch, and you are exactly where you're supposed to be. Think about it, there are over a billion people on this planet and right now I could be laying here with any one of them, but I'm not. My atoms are next to your's - they're supposed to be. You're Rachel Berry by way of New York, not Lima and definitely not Gatlinburg. No one was meant to be here more than you."

"I kind of want to cry, but my eyes are dried out." Rachel chuckles softly.

"That's what I'm here for."

Quinn turns on her back. She puts one hand under her pillow and lets the other dangle in the space between she and Rachel - their pinkies touching.


Girlboner Jams:

Trailer Trash Tracys - Candy Girl

Flight Facilities - Crave You (Adventure Club remix)

Prince - Darling Nikki

Deftones - Hole in the Earth

Now, Now - Wolf

The Weekend - Wicked Games

Lana Del Rey - Blue Jeans

Interpol - Untitled

Listen: (slash)iateyourheart(slash)girlboner-jams