When Mr. Schuester goes off on Quinn for falling asleep in glee rehearsal for the second time that week, it takes everything within her to just nod solemnly and say it won't happen again (which is what she said the first time) instead of rolling her eyes.
Because yes, Mr. Schue, I'm totally falling asleep in glee to be disrespectful, not because I'm so exhausted that I'm having trouble keeping my eyes open at pretty much all times.
She supposes she's earned the berating, considering she's also fallen asleep in his Spanish class a couple of times this year, but she can't help but be annoyed. Puck falling asleep in glee and in class? Happens all the time. Nothing to be concerned about. Brittany? Wouldn't be too surprising.
But she's Quinn Fabray, and she doesn't sleep in class. Or at least, she didn't. She's a perfectionist when it comes to her schoolwork and always has been, which is something Mr. Schuester should have picked up on by this point. But Mr. Schue just seems to think her inability to stay awake and her lack of enthusiasm as of late to be some leftover attitude from her rendezvous with the skanks, and that she's still in a bit of a rebellious phase. Or that she's still stuck up over her social status and feels that she's too good for glee club. The latter is an option that she couldn't fully blame him for thinking, but it still bothers her a little bit that he can't see that there's something larger at play here.
(Even if she won't admit what it is.)
Artie, apparently, is also bothered by Mr. Schuester's tirade directed at her.
"She said she was sorry, Mr. Schue," he says quietly, and their teacher turns to him with obvious irritation on his face. There are a couple of gasps, because while Mr. Schue rarely gets genuinely angry at any of them, it's historically not a great idea to talk back to him when he does.
"I wasn't talking to you, Artie."
"I know, I just think-
"I didn't ask."
Tina's mouth drops wide open, and Mercedes pulls out her phone, presumably to record the impending disaster.
"Mr. Schuester," Quinn says quickly before Artie's sudden noble streak can get him into any more trouble, "I really am sorry. I just haven't been sleeping well, but it won't happen again. Can we please get back to rehearsal?"
She flashes Mr. Schuester her best apologetic look, eyes wide an all, and relief washes over her when she sees his jaw unclenching.
"Fine," he sighs, "but no more funny business. And not just from Quinn. All of you need to stop being so complacent and just assuming that we're going to win sectionals because we did last year."
He then launches into one of his patented motivational speeches, and she immediately mentally tunes him out, because there isn't even an inch of her left that genuinely cares about whether they win sectionals or not. She just doesn't want a fellow glee clubber, especially one as nice as Artie, to bear the brunt of the ire that she produced in Mr. Schue.
When rehearsal ends, she grabs her bag and heads for the door as quickly as her tired legs will take her, but not before she can hear Rachel advising Artie not to take a bullet for Quinn that she wouldn't take for him.
She rolls her eyes, because if anything, she totally pushed Artie out of the bullet's path, but it's whatever. She's over caring that the majority of her fellow glee club members like her, but don't trust her not to throw a physical or proverbial slushie in their faces.
Okay, maybe it still stings a little bit, but these days she already things so lowly of herself that it's really not a big deal that other people do, too. Especially not people like Rachel Berry.
"Hey! Quinn!"
She rolls her eyes, because no one seems to be able to just leave her the fuck alone lately, which is pretty much the one thing that she wants from her friends.
"Yes?" she asks tiredly, willing herself not to cross her arms and glare. Because really, what has Mercedes ever done to her? It's not the other girl's fault that her patience is perpetually thin as of late.
"Can I ask you something…" she starts, quickly surveying the area around them to make sure that no one else is within earshot, "about Sam?"
Quinn raises an eyebrow at that, intrigued. She knows that Sam and Mercedes had some sort of summer romance before Sam moved away, but she doesn't know any of the details. She has no idea how serious it was, and she's never seen them together, so she has no idea what they were like as a couple.
Mercedes and Sam are probably her two favorite people in glee with her though, (barring Brittany and Santana whom she was friends with prior to glee), so she figures they're probably lovely together, and she does still care about their individual happiness, as distant from human connection as she tends to be this year.
So if they make each other happy, she's happy for them. And if Mercedes needs a little advice on Sam, she doesn't mind giving it, even if her best Sam Evans advice is probably "don't make out with Finn Hudson."
But then she remembers that she's seen Mercedes on another boy's arm this year. (A boy whose name she does not know, but she's never met him before so she figures that's less egregious than not knowing Kurt's-boyfriend-whom-she sings-with-on-the-regular's name.)
(She just can't seem to shake the uneasiness that's settled in her gut over forgetting Blaine's name. She doesn't forget people's names. She'll occasionally passive aggressively pretend to, but her memory has always been sharp as a tack.)
"Oh sorry, I know you guys' breakup wasn't very pretty. It's fine. See you tomorrow, Quinn."
Quinn looks at Mercedes in confusion, and then realizes that she never responded to the other girl's question.
"Mercedes, wait. It's fine. Sam and I are friends now. I just zoned out for a moment."
"Okay, good. Well, you know how I've been seeing someone else this year?"
"Yes," she says warily, hoping she's not about to hear Mercedes tell her about how she's cheating on her boyfriend with Sam.
"Well, his name is Shane and I really like him. But now Sam's back and… I thought I was over him but now I'm not so sure. And I'm trying to stay focused on Shane and ignore Sam, but I can tell that he wants me back. And he's so romantic, I'm just having a hard time completely shutting him down. Does that make me a horrible person?"
"No," Quinn smiles, "Sam is a dork, but an admittedly romantic one. And when he likes someone, he likes someone. The attention is very flattering, I remember that much."
"How did you deal with it?"
"I'm probably not the best person to ask, considering I was very adamant about not having a boyfriend last year, and Sam still ended up winning me over anyway. He can be very persistent, and don't tell him I said this, but he's very charming."
"I just don't know what I want and I feel terrible about it."
"Well, you never expected Sam to come back, so you're not a bad person for starting over with someone new. And you're not a bad person for still having some leftover feelings for Sam. But you do need to figure out what you want, or I guess, who you want."
"And how do I do that?" Mercedes groans, and Quinn can't help but laugh, even if it's a little hollow.
"Listen, I'm notorious for getting into trouble romantically because I'm not sure what I want," she says, because even though it's actually a bit more complicated than that, she can relate, "but as cliché as it sounds, I think you need to just look inside your heart. Take a couple days to think about which relationship is more worth pursuing. And Sam is a wonderful person and if you decide you want to date him, I will be 100% supportive, but make sure it's not just nostalgia or infatuation that you're feeling for him so you don't leave your perfectly nice boyfriend on a whim."
"You're right," she sighs heavily, "thanks, Quinn."
"Oh, and one more word of advice?"
Mercedes turns to her eagerly, and Quinn almost feels bad that she's about to make a joke instead of giving her more sincere guidance.
"If one of them gets you pregnant, don't lie and tell the other one that they're the father."
"Quinn!" Mercedes shrieks, lightly smacking her on the shoulder.
"What? It's important!"
"Girl, I still can't believe you did that. No offence."
"None taken."
She walks with Mercedes out to her car, joking about how the hell Finn ever fell for that lie, because enough time has passed that even Finn himself finds it funny.
Mercedes leans in to hug her before she gets in her car to drive away, and Quinn accepts the hug because she doesn't want to be rude, and because it feels good that Mercedes trusts her enough to ask her for advice about their shared ex-boyfriend.
"Get some sleep tonight, Quinnie, okay? I don't want Mr. Schue to go after you and Artie again tomorrow."
"I will," she smiles tightly, bidding goodbye to her friend and walking toward her own car.
It's most likely a lie. It's not like she gets exactly zero sleep, but she spends a good portion of each night staring at the ceiling, wishing she was asleep. It's ironic and cruel that as exhausted as she is from taking out her pain on her body, the hunger in her belly and aching in her muscles keep her awake, which in turn just adds to her exhaustion.
If Mr. Schuester knew the truth about what was going on with her, he would probably be begging her to sleep in class.
She gets in her car and begins her daily ritual of sitting with her head on the steering wheel for a few minutes before she feels physically well enough to drive.
She didn't even have cheerios practice today, but just the walk from the choir room out to the parking a lot is enough to make her lightheaded, which admittedly terrifies her a little bit.
Her conversation with Mercedes was a fleeting few moments of levity, but as she sits in her car, willing her vision to straighten out, it dawns on her that it's not her reality. This is.
Whether or not to date Same Evans isn't her biggest problem anymore. In fact, boy drama of any kind isn't a problem for her at all.
She always thought it would make her happy when she moved past the part of her life that was ruled by dating and boys.
She remembers how the year before, she had decided that she was going to do just that: move on from it. But then she ended up entangled up with Sam, and then with Finn. She remembers how much she wished she could just stay single and live beyond it all.
Well, now she's single, with no romantic prospects at all.
Just not for the right reasons.