Rachel found herself feeling somewhat miffed earlier, when she realized that she didn't know whether Quinn had asthma, and that she'd misunderstood her relationship with real estate. It got her thinking that she really doesn't know a whole lot of facts about Quinn. Or at least not a whole lot of facts that you know and tell, just for the sake of knowing and telling them.
Quinn on the other hand seems to know things about Rachel that she can't ever remember sharing with her - that she doesn't know why or when she would have. Not just the fact that Rachel's an only child – there are plenty of ways that might have come to her attention. Things like how she took Thursday night ballet classes at Jeanne's for six months even though she hated them, and then she just started teaching herself after school; how in her Freshman year she braided her hair and snipped it off during math class and tried for fifteen minutes to convince her teacher he should leave the braid on the floor and maybe put little pickets around it because she was an installation artist; how she loves Oreo cookies but doesn't eat them anymore because at first she assumed they had cream in the filling but then she read that they didn't, and decided that was cheating and so she wouldn't eat them anyway.
(Quinn thinks that's ridiculous. Food has no moral responsibility, she says. Rachel says on the contrary, the moral responsibility of people who produce food is exactly what being a vegan is about. They debate for the next thirty minutes and Rufus and the iron don't move an inch.)
These are things Quinn knows about Rachel. Down to the detail. Somehow.
Maybe she has a photographic memory, Rachel thinks jealously, and then she reminds herself that none of those things are photographs.
She props herself up on her elbows with such violence that her hair falls in her face. She shakes it away. "What's your favorite color?" she asks breathlessly.
Quinn squints. "Um… I like all the colors," she says.
Rachel sighs. "Yes, but do you love any of them?"
"Maybe I love them all?"
Rachel tries not to huff in an audible or visible way. "You wear a lot of white," she says helpfully, and all she gets back is "Your favorite color is pink," and a smile that probably isn't intended to be smug.
"I do like pink," she admits. She can't deny it. She sits up fully and crosses her legs, fires. "What did you want to be when you were a kid?"
Quinn shrugs. "I don't know," she says. "Superman, maybe."
Rachel rolls her eyes without quite meaning to. "I mean in the real world," she clarifies.
Quinn thinks for a long time in the way where her brow knits and her lip twitches. Eventually she says, "I wanted to be a ballerina or a farmer."
"A farmer?" Rachel asks, incredulously.
"Sure," Quinn says, with a distant smile. "I was quite enamored of overalls."
Rachel stares at her for a solid ten seconds and then says, "I cannot imagine you in overalls."
Quinn laughs and says, "Neither can I," and there's a sadness to it that Rachel can't break into, a long, silent explanation of who Quinn is, was, and will be, that she can't begin to understand.
Of course she can't understand it. Quinn's not actually saying anything, and faces only go so far. They're like poems, Rachel thinks - faces. They tell you so many things you can't make sense of. She resists the urge to ask Quinn what she's thinking right now, instead asks whether she prefers tea or coffee.
"Coffee," Quinn says, and Rachel thinks she knew the answer to that one already, and even if she didn't, that's the kind of question you could ask anytime - like, say, when you're a flight attendant?
She sighs.
"Alright," she says. She closes her eyes and holds a finger up in the air as if to say Wait for it. She opens her eyes and drops her arm. "Who is your role model? Who do you look up to? Who inspires Quinn Fabray?"
Bam.
Quinn falters. She says 'um' at least six times, and Rachel thinks she must have struck gold. This has to be something she's never told anybody or she'd know what to say. She leans forward in anticipation of the reply, ready to absorb every juicy detail.
She can't help feeling a little disappointed when Quinn finally says, with something like a shrug, "My Great-Grandmother, I guess, on my mom's side. She's pretty fierce. 91 and still living on her own and cooking all her own meals. That's kind of amazing?"
The last part is a question, as though she hopes the answer is satisfactory. It's not. "You're not going to be a senior citizen for a long time, Quinn," Rachel reproves.
Quinn says "That's all I've got. That and Ghandi." And then she sits up and leans back against her bed. "You wanted to be a big Broadway star and your role model is Barbra Streisand."
Rachel narrows her eyes and sits up on her knees. "Actually," she says, "I'll have you know I wanted to be an astro-physicist up until the age of 10."
Quinn blinks. "Really?" she asks.
Rachel crumples back to the floor. "Nooo," she wails. "Broadway and Barbra, always."
Quinn crumples too – with laughter – and she says, between one gulp of air and another. "It's nothing to be ashamed of. You know how I feel about your dreams."
"Yes," Rachel says miserably. "But how do you feel about your dreams and what are they please?"
This is the problem. If anybody ever asked her what Quinn Fabray wanted out of life, Rachel would promptly say, "Yale," and Quinn already has that.
"I don't know, Rachel," Quinn says, sobering. "I want…"
She hesitates, and suddenly she's drawing her knees up to her chest and looking at the carpet.
"I want a lot of things and I guess I just have to work out…" She takes her iron off New York Avenue. She hasn't bought it yet. Rachel thinks maybe she won't. She thinks maybe she won't buy it even though she's rolling in cash and Rachel only has eleven dollars left under her side of the board anyway.
Quinn looks up, finally. She looks Rachel in the eye. She says, "I guess I just have to work out which of those things I might be able to get and go from there."
"Okay," Rachel says softly. She's not sure why but she feels like she should be very quiet. For a little while. At least until Quinn says, "Anyway," and puts her iron down on Tennessee.
Rachel smiles to herself. Sweet, she thinks. And then she's annoyed because she didn't even tell Quinn she was holding out for that card.
Quinn just knew.
"Chocolate or vanilla?" she asks, in a much more intense way than anyone has ever asked that question, she is sure.
"Chocolate," Quinn says, without hesitation, and Rachel frowns. She was sure she was going to say vanilla on account of how white is her favorite color, and then she realizes that they never did establish what Quinn's favorite color is.
And white's not even a color, she thinks crossly, and she asks Quinn whether she's ever collected anything, and Quinn says "Stamps," and Rachel knows that she's teasing her.
"What's your favorite movie?"
"Teen Break 6."
Rachel throws Virginia Avenue at her. "That's not even an actual movie," she says, then "Is it?"
Quinn shrugs. "If it's not someone should make it. I'd give it 5 stars."
Rachel throws Rufus at her. He lands in her lap. "I'm going to give you one last chance," she says. She closes her eyes and searches for a good question – one Quinn might actually answer.
"What city do you most want to visit?"
She opens her eyes when she's done asking, and sees Quinn smiling.
"New York," she says.
Rachel is caught mid-yawn. She's confused and just now remembering that she probably only slept about four hours last night. "You've already been to New York, though," she says.
"Yeah, for less than 48 hours. Most of which was spent stressing about Nationals, or crying in a hotel room." Quinn rolls her eyes. "I mean I didn't even get to eat a bagel, I was so worried I wouldn't fit into my dress."
"What?" Rachel squeals, and "You were crying?" and "I ate two bagels a day."
Quinn waves a hand. "Water under the bridge," she says.
In ten seconds' time, when Quinn is asking her if she's ever been to Paris, Rachel will be surprised at how quickly her mind wandered from the water under Quinn's bridge, to the water under her own bridge, and at how quickly the two ran together.
Last time she was in New York – before NYADA – she was losing Nationals and winning Finn. She was being wooed and it was wonderful. There were bubbles and flowers and Patti Lupones and serenades in the street…
Was that why Quinn was crying in the hotel room?
Rachel says, "It's been on my list since I knew how to make lists," and Quinn tells her she's been three times and it's still on her list too – she thinks it always will be - and Rachel's still wondering if it's possible that Quinn was crying in a hotel room in New York because Rachel had bubbles and Finn.
She's never really entertained the notion that Quinn might actually have gotten hurt by what happened. Perhaps because she gets this vibe from Quinn sometimes that despite her protestations to the contrary whenever she told her not to marry him, she really doesn't like Finn anymore. Sometimes she gets this vibe that she never really did.
Still, looking back, she's startled by just how close Ms Sylvester's sister's funeral and Nationals were. She thinks it might have been a week. A week between Finn kissing Quinn and Finn kissing her.
Rachel tells herself she doesn't have to feel guilty about any of it. Quinn cheated on Finn, and then she cheated with Finn. She has no right to the moral highground where he is concerned.
A little voice in her head whispers, You cheated with Finn, and then you cheated on Finn.
She's disturbed by the symmetry. She's troubled by the fact that if Quinn doesn't have the highground… neither does she.
Quinn's telling her about a church in the South of France that has rabbits living in it, or had rabbits living in it when she was eight, and Rachel thinks that sounds nice. She's trying to concentrate, because she thinks this might be one of those stories she'd like to know and tell about Quinn someday, but her eyes feel so prickly and her stomach feels a lot closer to her spine than it should.
Really, she feels like she's going to crumble into spiny dust if she doesn't get some food soon. She glances up at the clock. It's half past two. Quinn's regaling her with tales of rabbits and pubbits – pulpits - and Rachel suppresses the urge to yawn or clutch her stomach like it's a poor abandoned stray with nobody to love it.
She thinks if this was the sort of world where absurdly beautiful porcelain-skinned, bright-eyed vampires who know what's best and don't need to sleep or eat existed, Quinn would definitely be one of them.
She's moved onto Stockholm. Rachel shivers. She feels weak.
The question is whether she gets seasick. Rachel isn't sure. She says, "I'm not sure," and then, immediately after, in a plaintive tone, "Quinn, do you eat lunch?"
Quinn looks at her clock. She frowns and tells Rachel she thinks it's wrong. Rachel says no, her stomach can confirm that it is right via gnawing pain.
"I'm sorry," Quinn says, and "Time flies, I guess."
She's getting her jacket and her umbrella, and Rachel's still lying down on the floor. She listens to the world outside and notes that it's stopped raining. She wonders when that happened.
She lifts an arm. "Help," she says, and then Quinn's standing above her and reaching down.
She takes her hand. She says, "You can stay here if you like. I'll bring the food to you."
Rachel's mind churns. Or it tries to churn and can't quite get all the way around. It's been a long week and it was a long night and that was a long game of Monopoly that they never finished.
She doesn't want to stay here. She wants to grip Quinn's hand and haul herself up and go to get lunch and hear all about Stockholm and boats.
She wants to go boating.
She wants to know whether she gets sea-sick.
She blinks. She says, in a small, guilty voice, "Would you? I just need to rest my eyes for a second."
Quinn smiles. She says, "I would." She says, "I'm going to let go of your hand now Rachel. Don't hit yourself with it."
Rachel chuckles. Her hand falls down on the carpet with a mild thump.
The door clicks closed.
Quinn comes back with vegetarian sushi, teriyaki tofu with steamed rice, a pumpkin and spinach muffin she has been promised contains no egg or butter, and a small serve of fries – she didn't know what Rachel would want so she thought she'd just get everything she might want - it's okay, she thinks, she can just pretend she's really hungry too.
Maybe she is really hungry. She feels a little light-headed and her throat is dry. She should have gotten them sodas. She hurries back down the stairs to the vending machine in the lobby.
She's been running around campus – sometimes literally – for the better part of an hour. She hopes Rachel hasn't passed out waiting for her.
She yanks the sodas out of the bottom of the machine and makes a mental note to open them out the window even though it's raining again. One of them is dented and they're a little shaken. She shoves them into the lunch bag and tries to take the stairs two at a time, nearly topples over when she bangs her shin against one.
That has never happened before.
She sits down and presses her hand against it, mouthing Ow, telling herself she's just lucky she didn't drop the bag of all the animal-free lunch in the world. When she gets up her shin is still aching like a clanging sound. She hobbles the rest of the way. It's past three when she gets to her room.
It's past three and Rachel is asleep. She's slumped over the Monopoly board.
Really? Quinn thinks, because it looks as though she may have actually passed out waiting for her.
Quinn clutches the lunch bag tightly in a moment of absurd panic, and rushes to kneel by Rachel's body. By the time she's arrived at her side she can see clearly that she's breathing just fine, and snoring mildly into the money. It's fluttering. She has a dollar bill sticking out of her sleeve. Quinn shakes her head and leans back against her bedframe.
She sighs.
She doesn't know how to feel. Irritated, sure, because she has all the animal-free lunch in the world, and the only thing she feels like eating herself are the fries and they'll be cold and soggy by now. And then on the other hand, there's the fact that Rachel managed to fall asleep sprawled on top of the Monopoly board like she tried to hug it, with a dollar bill up her sleeve and what Quinn suspects might be the card for New York Avenue clasped tightly in her fist.
Quinn thinks, She's even silly when she's sleeping, and smiles.
She's sitting on the ground and holding the plastic bag up. She's worried she might have spilled something in her haste– and maybe there's a minute hole in the bag – she doesn't want grease or teriyaki sauce leaking onto the carpet. She grabs the Monopoly box and puts the bag down on that, reaches in and pulls out the sushi.
She can see carrot, cucumber, and something squishy that is either avocado or wasabi. She thinks it will probably taste of nothing, but she needs to eat or she might end up passing out on top of Rachel.
And there's the little matter of the dinner reservation.
Quinn didn't mention that to Rachel this morning because she didn't want to make a big deal out of it. And it would definitely seem like a big deal if she had to tell her she'd hung up on the first place she tried mid-sentence when she heard Rachel coming back from the shower – if she had to tell her she took her phone with her to the bathroom and googled for twenty minutes, and texted her mom, and made at least three calls hovering in a stairwell with wet hair.
She should have just booked in front of her. She should have just said "Hey Rachel, wanna go into New Haven tonight? There's this place on Fountain street that supposedly does amazing pasta. Hold on, let me just google and see if they have decent vegan options."
That wouldn't have seemed like a big deal. That would have seemed completely normal and above board and breezy.
Quinn thinks she's probably chosen the noisiest eating option possible. When she slides the rubber band off the plastic tray it crackles loudly. Rachel says, "What?!" and then makes a kind of a zzz sound.
Quinn grins and takes a bite of sushi. It would be better with soy sauce, but she's not going to risk it. Those little foil packets have a habit of rebelling on her.
It's only once she's started eating that she realizes how hungry she really is. She wolfs down five pieces before getting up and taking one of the sodas over to the window. Behind her she hears Rachel say "Why?" in a small voice, and she presses her forehead against the window and laughs as quietly as possible.
It's pouring again. She pushes the window up and the sound of it rushes in.
Quinn looks back at Rachel. Her palm is open now and the New York Avenue card is over by the door. Not bad for someone who couldn't throw a football to save herself. Quinn's laughing again, silently. She's remembering Rachel barreling down the pitch at McKinley in a helmet she looked like she shouldn't be able to stand up under. She presses her lips together and turns back to the window, leans out under the raindrops, cracks her soda open. She takes a few uneasy sips.
She wishes Rachel were happier. With New York. With NYADA. With life all alone.
Quinn turns around and sets the soda down on her nightstand. She walks back to the bed – to the board – to the girl slumped over it. She thinks she feels responsible for the state she's in. Like maybe she was just projecting her own readiness for change. Like maybe she expected Rachel to be too strong. Like maybe she wanted too much from her.
She crouches down.
She feels like she needs to do something – that is, like she should do something. Rachel's hair is obscuring her face. All she can really see is an eyebrow and half a set of eyelashes that are very dark and very long. Quinn smiles. She got up ten minutes early every morning of sophomore year to put on falsies, and spent at least $500 into the bargain, all in a vain attempt to have eyelashes that were very dark and very long.
Rachel looks uncomfortable, though, she reminds herself. She thinks it can't be comfortable to sleep with a Monopoly board. She thinks the iron might be sticking into her because she can't see it. She can't see Rufus either.
She reaches out to move Rachel's hair away from her face, or she thinks that's what she might have been about to do before she swerves, as smooth as a dance move, stands up and steps toward her bed.
She shakes her head. It wouldn't be feasible to drag Rachel up here. She'd wake up on the way and possibly think for a second or two that she was being abducted.
That would definitely ruin Christmas.
Quinn bites her lip. An idea is forming in her mind and she's not sure if it's perfectly rational or the stupidest thing she's ever done. The comforter is on the floor. She's already tugging at her sheets.
It takes her a solid five minutes to get her mattress off the frame – that is, to get it off the frame without making too much noise. She inches it around the other side of Rachel, that's another five, and by the time she's lowering it down, with excruciating slowness, she's broken out in a mild sweat. It's times like these Quinn is glad she picked a dorm with a gym in it. She can bench-press sixty pounds on a good day, and yes, she is proud.
When she gets the mattress down she has to lie on it for a minute to recover. Her right leg is shaking. Rachel's feet are in her face. They are just getting started.
Quinn sits up and observes Rachel's body. This would be a lot easier if she could get the mattress closer to her ass, but unfortunately her legs are in the way. She'll have to lift them. She'll have to lift Rachel's legs, and shuffle the mattress forward with her knees.
"This is ridiculous," she says, out loud, half hoping the sound of it will wake Rachel and the game will be up.
It doesn't.
Quinn sighs. She gets herself around the other side of the mattress, and leans over until she can grab Rachel's ankles. Any second now she's going to seize them. Any second now she's going to seize them gently. Quinn counts herself in with whispers.
Three…. Two… One…
She hesitates long enough for the countdown to be useless, and then she takes Rachel's ankles in her hands, shoves the mattress forward with her knee, and places said ankles carefully down on it, saying Shh, as she does, even though Rachel's not talking.
She thinks she should keep her hands under them for a moment, till she settles again, and Rachel says Mmhm, like she agrees.
Her socks feel soft in Quinn's palms. She thinks they might have cashmere in them. Or silk.
She pulls her hands away before she can be sure, and gets to work evening the mattress up. And when she's done, it's time to accomplish the impossible. It's time to roll Rachel over without waking her up.
Quinn's not entirely sure how to even begin to do this. She was a candy-striper for about three weeks on a geriatric ward with Santana, but neither of them exactly paid attention to anything the nurses were doing. Rachel probably weighs about as much as a little old lady, Quinn surmises. If only she and Santana hadn't been so preoccupied with each other's outfits all the time.
She crawls over to Rachel's side. Her instincts are telling her to take hold of her shoulders. So she does. She takes Rachel's shoulders in her hands and gently pushes her over toward the mattress. It's kind of hard not to roll over there with her. Quinn's teetering on the edge of the Monopoly board on her right knee. Her left is in the air. She probably should have thought this through more carefully. She leans forward just a little more, till she's sure Rachel's not going to actually hit the mattress with a bounce if she lets go, and then she's tipping with her – it's inevitable – she winds up braced above her like she's getting ready to do push ups.
Quinn backs up fast. She's on her feet in no time, and Rachel is already curling around onto her side. She's on the mattress, mostly. Quinn thinks she should get a solid A. She crouches down again and pulls a blanket out from the pile beside her, drapes it over her body as lightly as possible.
Rachel says, "Goodnight," and Quinn answers back softly, "The rain's stopped. The sun is shining."
She lingers for a moment, and then packs up the Monopoly set. When she's done, she grabs her laptop and sits down on Rachel's bed. She may as well get started on some of the reading she needs to do for her history class next week. She pulls her Holocaust porn stash out from under the bed and smiles at herself.
Rachel won't mind. She's facing the other way and she's fast asleep. And besides, now that she's thinking about it, she's pretty sure Rachel's long list of clubs at McKinley included the Student Body Holocaust Memorial Association, of which she was President two years in a row. So she might even, you know, approve.
Quinn shakes her head and pulls a book out. She really doesn't need to be worrying about anybody's approval but Professor Beresford's.
She opens up where she left off yesterday, and gets to work.
It's twenty past five when she comes up for air. She's three chapters richer on world war two. Rachel hasn't moved.
Quinn closes her laptop and stretches her arms up. She supposes she'd better get herself ready. She made the reservation for seven, in anticipation of awkward stretches of time in which the two of them might have run out of things to do and say. If she'd known Rachel was mostly going to be taking a nap during her stay she might have made it for eight.
She gets up and loads herself up with her toiletries and makeup and a fresh set of underwear. She opens her closet and takes out the white silk dress she rescued yesterday.
She tiptoes out of the room.
Quinn rubs moisturizer into her legs. She sprays herself with cologne. She blow-dries her hair. She puts on sheer pantyhose. She slips the silk down over her hips. She runs black liquid lines along her eyelids. She glosses. She dabs concealer onto a blemish the naked eye couldn't see.
Her hair's gotten long. She hasn't had it cut since she left Lima, because she doesn't know which stylists she can trust around here. She pins it up into a French roll, and puts on the diamond studs her mother gave her for her eighteenth birthday.
There. Perfect. Or as close as you can get to perfect when you've been effortlessly keeping a tally of everything that's wrong with you since you were eleven years old.
Quinn gazes at herself in the mirror until someone comes into the bathroom. She's pretty sure she knows her. She might be called Mandy. She says "Hi," and leaves it nameless just in case, and Maybe-Mandy drops a pile of clean sweats in the corner and heads for a stall, says "Wow, you look great, are you going to a wedding or something?"
Quinn says, "No," and then, "Thank you," and then "Just going out to dinner… with… with a…"
She trails off.
It's okay. The stall door is closed and the shower is on. In a couple of moments the mirrors will start to fog again, but Quinn doesn't need to look any longer. She's already decided the dress is too much – far too much.
She hurries back to her room.
Rachel's still sleeping but she's moved. She's turned over and now she's halfway across her bed again – her original bed, that is, the one that isn't really a bed.
Quinn wonders if that's why she's so tired. She wonders if she was uncomfortable last night. She can't be very comfortable now. She has her head on one of Quinn's books, and it's a hardcover.
Quinn opens her closet and pulls out a black pencil skirt and a green blouse. She stands behind the door while she changes, popping her head around at the completion of each movement to make sure Rachel's not waking up on her. She slips on a darker green crossover cardigan, and black pumps, and thinks I am not going to a wedding or something.
She thinks she feels better. And now there's nothing left to do except figure out a way to get Rachel to wake up.
