Ha ha ha wow hey guys sorry for that teensy hiatus that just happened. I had to survive my last semester of college and things were completely bonkers for a while (and also Fabrastings and Orphan Black happened but it's whatever), but now I'm BACK and here is more story.
There are three more swirlies before her alarm goes off, each one exactly the same as the last, and as Quinn drags herself through her morning routine, she thinks she might be more exhausted now than she was before she went to sleep.
She blasts the radio on the way to school, and when she steps out of her car she's grateful for once that her boots give her blisters; the vague stinging keeps her from falling asleep upright. It can't force her brain to function, though, and it takes her four tries to twist the correct combination on her locker. When she almost picks the wrong notebooks she clenches her jaw and hits her forehead against the locker beside hers, because trivial daily tasks should not be this difficult.
The images from last night keep popping up in her head—god, she still can't tune out dream-Rachel's voice pleading for her to stop—and Quinn starts to wonder if she's literally sleepwalking around WMHS right now.
"Maybe if you just… I dunno, toned it down a little, they wouldn't say stuff like that."
"Finn, I refuse to belittle my singing abilities just so our fellow glee club members will feel better about their own. If they would just work harder and genuinely improve, they wouldn't have to deal with the talent gap by making subtly hurtful remarks."
There's no way Quinn is conscious, because finding Rachel and Finn arguing in the middle of the hallway is way too great to be reality.
"Look, Rach," he says, digging his hands deep into his pockets; maybe that's where he keeps his Rachel Berry Study Guide. "I know it sucks when they treat you that way, but don't let it bother you. You said it yourself—they only do it because they know how great you are."
Rachel waits a beat. "I guess you're right."
Quinn rolls her eyes just as Finn smiles.
"And, like, that's my point. They already know—everyone knows—so maybe you don't need to prove yourself anymore. Maybe you can, y'know… ease off the gas a bit." He pauses, his smile shrinking. "I meant that as in, the gas pedal in a car. Like, you can slow down and stuff."
"I understood the metaphor, Finn," she says, and apparently Quinn is the only one to notice the exasperation beneath the forced calm.
"Great!" Finn replies, grinning again. "So, I'll see you later?"
"I'll see you later," she echoes, and he leans forward a bit like he's expecting a kiss but she turns and walks away instead. Rachel notices Quinn before she can pretend to not have been listening, and she gets a quiet "Hello, Quinn" as Rachel passes.
She takes a breath to say "Hey" back before she remembers she's supposed to be avoiding Rachel as much as possible, and then she's thinking about those stupid swirlies that didn't actually happen, and she slams her locker door so hard that a girl across the hallway jumps.
.
Quinn only goes to the Skanks' spot under the bleachers in hopes that a cigarette and some adrenalin will wake her up, but instead of finding the whole group, it's just Ronnie reading a book. Ronnie looks up at Quinn's footsteps and shoves it into her jacket pocket, but not before Quinn gets a look at the cover—it's The Metamorphosis.
"Mack and Sheila went to break into the vending machine," Ronnie grumbles.
Quinn lights a cigarette. "Okay."
"If you tell anyone about—"
"I really don't care."
Ronnie lights up as well and takes a long drag before letting it out slowly. "It's not even about a butterfly. He's a fucking cockroach thing." She flicks some ash away. "Fucking depressing."
"Only sometimes."
Ronnie's silent for a moment. "Figure out what you're doing to Berry yet?"
Quinn lets out an empty laugh. "So she told you guys about that." She shakes her head. "Like I need a fucking babysitter or something."
"She just likes talking shit about people. She thinks you're gonna flake."
"I won't."
Ronnie gives her a look. "So, what are you gonna do?" she asks again.
"I don't know yet," she replies after a beat, clenching her jaw.
"Mack'll give you hell if you take too long."
She wets her lips and breathes in more smoke. "She'll give me hell no matter what I do."
"Awww, look at you kids bonding," The Mack says from behind Quinn, who does her best not to flinch at her sudden presence. "Whatcha talking about?"
"Nothing," she says automatically, turning to face her.
"Nothing, huh?" The Mack pulls a Twizzler from the pack in her hand and bites off a piece. "Why doesn't Berry look upset?"
Quinn fidgets with the lighter in her pocket but doesn't break eye contact. "I haven't done anything yet."
"Tick, tock, Quinnie."
"I said yet," she snaps. "It'll happen."
The Mack smirks and takes another bite of her Twizzler. "That's more like it," she purrs, and her breath smells like strawberry candy. "Bitch looks good on you."
Something coils in her stomach. "Fuck you," she replies, trying to sound apathetic rather than flustered but failing miserably, and she walks past The Mack and away from the bleachers.
"I'll think about it," The Mack calls out.
Quinn can't get to the auditorium fast enough.
.
She's been trying to play this melody for ten minutes, the same melody she's been playing since school started, but she keeps fucking it up every single time and her hands are shaking in frustration.
Her finger hits the wrong note again and she slams her elbows down onto the keys, then buries her face in her hands and tries to take deep breaths. She can feel moisture behind her eyes but she pushes it away; they're just tired tears, angry tears, and they have nothing to do with anything else besides the fact that she's fucking exhausted and she can't play this fucking song right.
Quinn sighs finally and folds her arms along the keys, resting her temple against her wrist and letting her eyes droop closed. She just needs a second to relax, and she'll be fine.
She pounces, grips Rachel by the shoulders, and pushes her to a kneeling position.
"Quinn, please! What on earth—"
"Stop," Quinn interrupts, shoving Rachel closer to the toilet. "Stop trying to talk to me, stop trying to fucking—just stop." She gives Rachel one last push and then pulls the lever, and she lets go when she feels Rachel sag beneath her. "Stay the fuck out of my life," she growls as she leaves the stall.
"Quinn."
She ignores the voice and keeps heading for the door.
"Quinn," she hears again, and then there's a hand on her shoulder.
The bathroom dissolves around her but the pressure on her shoulder doesn't, and when she opens her eyes, she's looking up at Rachel.
"You were asleep," Rachel says, and her hand is still on Quinn's shoulder. "Are you okay?"
The physical contact and Rachel's voice send a jolt through her system and she abruptly sits up. "I'm fine," Quinn says vaguely as she stuffs her left foot into its boot and reaches for the other one.
"You're welcome to stay if you'd like. I just need to use the piano."
Quinn ties her laces into a hasty knot. "I told you to fuck off," she mutters, not quite managing the hostile, authoritative tone from her dreams, and leaves the stage as quickly as possible.
She needs to get Rachel off her back, and she needs to do it now.
.
"Now" ends up being the next day, when she's finally figured out a plan. It's not a swirly (because of reasons that she refuses to overanalyze), and she has to rely on the douchebags of the student body to do what they do best, but it's specific enough to humiliate Rachel, and Quinn doesn't even have to lay a finger on her.
It happens during lunch. Quinn is on her way to pass in a (very) late paper when she rounds a corner just in time to see Rick the Stick fling a slushy at Rachel. Quinn stops in her tracks and heads in the other direction, toward Rachel's locker as fast as her boots will carry her. She takes a piece of paper out of her pocket; Rachel wrote down her combination for Quinn last year when they were working on their mashup, so Quinn could get sheet music while Rachel brainstormed, and it had been sitting in the bottom of her desk drawer until last night.
She spins the dial and the lock clicks open and she all but yanks it from the door. What she's looking for is immediately right in front of her face: Rachel's spare set of clothes is folded neatly on top of a collapsible plastic shelf. Quinn grabs them and closes the locker, taking the lock with her as she goes to the bathroom down the hall.
The stalls are empty and she's glad she doesn't have an audience as she puts Rachel's clothes in the nearest sink and turns both of the faucet knobs on full blast. It's not that she feels bad about what she's doing… she just knows it's a completely dick move. But that's the point, the whole reason why she needs to do it in the first place. She needs Rachel to understand that she's done being the Quinn Fabray that Rachel's convinced is still there somewhere, done letting Rachel think she's ever going back to the version of herself that everyone pretended to like.
She's done, and she needs Rachel to be done, too.
Quinn leans back against the wall as Rachel's clothes continue to soak, twirling the lock around on her index finger as she waits.
It barely takes any time at all; the door opens and Rachel appears, her sweater drenched in strawberry corn syrup, and her eyes are glassy and disbelieving as she looks from Quinn to the lock to her clothes in the sink and then back to Quinn.
"Quinn," she says quietly, and her voice cracks. "What—?"
"Stop," Quinn interrupts, her voice low and firm, and she places the lock on the base of the sink, near the faucet. "Stop trying to talk to me, stop trying to f—" The "fix me" gets caught in her throat and she clenches her jaw. "Just fucking stop."
Rachel swallows thickly, and after a beat, nods. "Okay."
Quinn leaves the bathroom without another word, but the door swings closed just slowly enough that she can hear Rachel turn the faucet off.
She goes directly to the bleachers, keeping her mind completely blank except for the sentence "I did it," so she can tell The Mack and get her off her back and return to being the money counter. Quinn thinks this might actually be the first time she's looked forward to interacting with her, let alone been happy to see her leaning against one of the support columns.
"Hey, kiddo," The Mack greets, her tone overly sweet as she gives Quinn a once-over, as if it's obvious what she's just done. "Got anything to share with the class?"
Quinn takes out a cigarette and brings it to her lips. "I did it," she mutters as she tries to get her lighter to work.
The Mack's smirk widens. "Did what? Come on, don't hold out on us," she says, gesturing to Ronnie and Sheila, who are both sitting on the couch.
"The thing you wanted me to do to Berry," she replies, and she hates how close she comes to saying "Rachel" by accident. "It's done."
Sheila rolls her eyes. "Details, bitch."
Quinn takes a long drag and holds it in for a beat. "Somebody slushied her, so I broke into her locker and stole her extra clothes." She flicks some ash away. "Then I soaked them in the bathroom sink so she couldn't change."
The Mack crosses her arms. "Does she know it was you?"
"Yeah," Quinn replies, wetting her lips. "She knows."
She looks positively delighted. "Well shit, I'm impressed. Didn't think you had it in you."
"Surprise," Quinn deadpans, then puts out her cigarette. "I gotta go."
The Mack's attention is already back on Ronnie and Sheila, who are plotting revenge against some teacher Quinn doesn't know, so she turns away and starts back toward the school, wincing a bit with every other step.
Fucking blisters.
.
Quinn's the second-to-last person to get to her English class; Rachel arrives just before the bell, practically swimming in what looks like one of Finn's button-up flannel shirts, cinched at her waist to keep it from looking like a really short dress, and there's a single blotch of slushy still visible on her skirt.
Quinn's heart is racing and she tells herself it's just adrenalin, the satisfaction from a job well done.
Rachel doesn't say hello to Quinn, doesn't even look in her direction, and she sits in Quinn's row, several seats ahead, so Quinn can only see her if she leans over.
She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, wondering if there's a difference between feeling like the weight's been lifted off your shoulders and feeling empty.