Date Night
Disclaimer: Don't own. Don't sue.
Author's note I: Let me begin by apologizing for the extended delay in posting. Real life demanded the majority of my attention these past two weeks. But to thank you for your patience, I'll actually be posting 3! parts of the story tonight (chapters 6, 7 and 8). I want to thank you all for sticking with this story, those who've reviewed, sent messages, favorited and set up alerts. A special thank you to momo who continues to send encouragement after each installment as well as CannotBreathe. Your kind words were simply awesome and I just hope that the rest of the story continues to meet expectations.
As always, I'd love to hear any all thoughts, comments and criticisms. Hope you enjoy!
Chapter 7 – Promises, Promises
Avoiding her would protect them both. That's what Quinn kept telling herself as she ignored yet another call from Rachel.
Quinn had been doing this for three days now, dismissing any and all calls and texts from the tiny diva. She presumed that after enough time had elapsed, Rachel would take the hint and accept the outcome.
Her phone vibrated on the ottoman (that served as a coffee table) yet again, indicating that she had a voicemail. Quinn groaned outwardly. She had just gotten back after her last class for the week and she was in no mood to deal with Rachel's persistence.
"Quinn Fabray. Rude! It is simply not proper etiquette to repeatedly ignore a friend's numerous calls, texts and attempts at communication. I've gone from being angry and upset at your constant slighting of my attempts to reach out to you to actually being worried since I haven't heard from you in nearly a week. I'm not even sure if you made it safely home on Monday evening. If I don't hear back from you by my call time tonight, I'm tracking you down. I have my methods. I know...people. Please, just let me know you're okay. Please?"
After leaving yet another message for a particular blonde that was slowly driving Rachel insane, she placed another call.
"Hello...Hi, yes it's Rachel...about tonight..."
Having just finished up her shower and clad in her favorite pair of sweats and comfy tee, Quinn settled onto the cushions of her couch for a night of Netflix and Thai.
She had gone for yet another run, what was quickly becoming a pattern when she felt overwhelmed, after listening to Rachel's latest voice message. For the few miles her legs would carry her, Quinn was learning to be able to push out all other thoughts from her mind and simply concentrate on the music blaring from her earbuds, her running form, or her consistent breathing.
She plucked her phone from the ottoman and was amazed to see that there were no missed calls or texts from the tiny diva, which was surprising because ever since Tuesday morning the calls and texts were being delivered nearly every hour if not more frequently. They were only ever put on hold during the nighttime hours as Rachel had so elegantly explained during one of her voicemails that "...as a burgeoning Broadway star, I require nearly eight hours of uninterrupted sleep each night to be able to appropriately function the next day, so this will have to be my last communication of the evening, and unless I hear from you before 8am tomorrow, please be advised that I will continue to pester you until you succumb."
Quinn dialed a number she knew by heart approximately one week after she moved to New York.
"Hi, Adi?...Hey, it's Quinn!...Ha, yes, the usual, how'd you know?...Great, see you soon."
Rachel walked as quickly as her small frame could propel her, continuing to glance down at her phone to make sure she was still on the correct path to her destination. When she got to the stoop of her building's destination, she was surprised to hear a familiar voice coming from the call box.
"Adi?"
"Yes, Quinn," answered a figure on the stoop's landing.
"Thirteen minutes exactly. You truly amaze me. Door's open!"
The apartment building's door buzzed, releasing the magnetic lock. As the delivery man opened the door, Rachel decided to press her luck.
"Excuse me, Adi is it?"
A short, older Asian gentleman turned towards the small brunette. "Yes?"
"Is this delivery for Quinn Fabray?" The man narrowed his eyes as Rachel stepped forward, entering the building behind the man. "I only ask because I was just headed up to visit Quinn and can deliver that for you. How much does she owe?" Rachel asked as she sifted for her wallet inside her bag.
"I think I'll deliver this in person," he responded, pressing the elevator's call button.
"Please, Adi? We...Quinn and I had a bit of a fight and now she's completely ignoring me, which is absolutely infuriating, frustrating and just down right, rude, don't you think? And all because of a stupid little kiss, well I guess quite a few kisses actually, and some minor groping," at this statement the man's eyes grew larger as his eyebrows threatened to reach his hairline, "and I suppose I just misread the signals or we had some kind of miscommunication and now she won't talk to me at all and we seriously need to talk about this because I miss her. I miss my friend."
As the elevator 'dinged' it's arrival, Adi looked from the brown paper bag containing Quinn's order to the pleading brown eyes of the short girl standing in front of him.
"Quinn's a good customer. You don't hurt her." He handed over the bag over to Rachel's eagerly awaiting hands. "Order total was $13.99, but Quinn's a big tipper."
Rachel pulled two twenty-dollar bills from her wallet and handed them to Adi accompanied by one of her trademark smiles.
Hearing the knock on her partially opened door, Quinn absentmindedly answered, "Door's open, Adi, come on in," from her position in her kitchen. This was her and Adi's routine.
She walked out carrying her plate and cutlery along with her bottle of water and setting it down on the table, Quinn finally looked up to greet her old friend. "Just let me get my wallet and..." her words tapered out as she watched Rachel shut the apartment door, holding up the delivery with a cautious grin.
"Adi, my how you've changed since last Friday," Quinn drawled, unamused.
Rachel approached and dropped the bag onto the dining table. "Quinn. We need to talk. Please talk to me."
"How'd you even know where I live?"
"I told you I knew people. I've got some friends who owed me favors."
"What'd you do? Call one of my past or current employers?" The lack of response gave the Quinn her answer. "And speaking of employers, shouldn't you be at your show?" the blonde continued to deflect, leaning down and resting her arms on the back of a chair.
The diva dropped her eyes and scuffed her shoe along the wood floor. "I called in sick."
"Yet you're here looking perfectly healthy."
"Thank you for that astute observation and diagnosis, Dr. Quinn, medicine woman," Rachel replied as she met Quinn's hazel eyes with a certifiable twinkle in her own brown.
"Seriously, Rachel?" Quinn asked incredulously. Rachel just stared back, her eyes smiling. "Well, this has been great fun. How much do I owe you?"
"What?"
"For dinner? I know that I'm Adi's favorite customer but there's no way you gave you this meal for free," Quinn stated as she pulled bills from her wallet.
"I don't want your money, Quinn."
"What do you want?" came the loaded reply.
Rachel gazed at the blonde standing a mere five feet away, though the distance felt as if they were separated by so much more, Quinn's face unreadable. "I...I want you to talk to me. I want you to stop ignoring me."
Quinn turned on her heel, strolling back into the kitchen. Rachel, not pleased that she was still being ignored continued, "I'm mad at you."
"Well that makes two of us. Glad we can agree on something," Quinn replied as she exited the kitchen with an additional table setting and bottle of water. She pulled out a chair and began to serve the dinner, evenly distributing the dish on the two plates. "You gonna join me?" Quinn questioned as she motioned to the empty chair.
"Is that-" Rachel inquired as she shrugged off her jacket.
"Drunken noodles. Basically just a veggie stir fry with rice noodles, though it can be quite spicy. So I think it should meet your dietary restrictions, Berry."
"Oh, so we've regressed back to Berry now, have we?"
"Just sit down and eat. You're ruining my favorite meal of the week," Quinn huffed as shoved her first forkful in her mouth.
They ate in silence for a few minutes, Quinn reveling in what she was sure would be a short-lived peace while Rachel scanned the blonde's living space. She noted it was sparsely decorated and there were actually quite a few cardboard boxes and plastic containers shoved against the far wall. Besides a corner desk that housed a computer and looked well-lived in with numerous papers and books scattered across the surface as well as the table they were currently sitting at, the only other items in the room were an apartment-sized couch, ottoman and wall-mounted TV.
Quinn could feel Rachel's eyes on her. She hoped that if she continued to fight her gaze, the blonde could prolong the silence, but the diva had other plans.
"Did you just move?" she asked after taking a swig of water and nodding her head towards the wall of boxes.
"In May," the blonde replied, still focusing on her dwindling meal.
"As in five months ago?" Rachel gaped in astonishment.
Quinn ticked off on her fingers, "Yeah, I guess so."
"And you're still not unpacked?"
"I don't really see the need."
"Don't you ever have company and friends come over to hang out? And don't they question why you still have boxes of your belongings lining your wall after weeks of living here?" the diva continued to pry.
Quinn finally raised her eyes from her plate, her meal finished and thus there was nothing left there to demand her attention. "Well, besides the movers, the guys who delivered the most of the furniture, the building's maintenance staff, the landlord and Adi, I think you're the only other person who's ever been here."
"Oh."
The blonde pushed back against her chair and cringed, not only at the noise it made sliding across the wood floor, but also the tension that she had originally released during her run was coming back with a vengeance and settling between her shoulder blades along with prickles of her self-hatred that were climbing the rungs of her spine.
Quinn all but threw her dirtied dishes into the sink, turning on the water and letting the pressure from the spout rinse them clean as she proceeded to get lost in her own thoughts.
She was supposed to be rid of these feelings. Rachel wasn't supposed to be here and they weren't supposed to be talking. Rachel wasn't supposed to be demanding to know why Quinn kept the majority of her life packed away, ready to move at a moment's notice.
Quinn had gotten used to keeping her life in boxes, keeping everything compartmentalized, forcing certain objects, wants and desires of her life from ever mixing together. Compartmentalization reduced her anxiety and simplified her life. She needed the simplicity to hold it all together.
And, Quinn hadn't had a true home in years. She had been kicked out of the only home she ever truly knew at the age of sixteen, shuffled around to various "friends", before returning to her mother's house, which of course never felt like home ever again, and then she had gone off to school. The blonde had lived in a dorm her first year and subsequently moved each year after the fact, living with various friends in different apartments and houses off-campus. Each year and with each move Quinn had shed more of her past life, her Lima life had slowly relinquished to trashcans and dumpsters.
When she had started college, all of Quinn's possessions had originated from Lima, but now as she gazed out through the kitchen's doorway, her eyes fell to the tiniest cardboard box, the only one labeled 'HS'.
Besides that small box and the frustrating and nosy (and beautiful) brunette still sitting at her kitchen table, there was nothing Lima-related left in her life. However, the problem was that Rachel wasn't just fitting into the Lima part of Quinn's life anymore, she wasn't staying in her designated compartment that Quinn could push aside and to the back of her mind. Oh, no. That diva was seeping into everything the blonde tried so desperately to keep separate. She had invaded her work, her personal life and now the closet thing she had to a home in the past seven years.
"Quinn?" The blonde jumped, startled by the diva's voice drawing her out of her own thoughts. "I'm sorry for scaring you, but I'm fairly certain your plate is clean by now, seeing as you have been rinsing it for the past five minutes."
Bewildered, the blonde looked at Rachel. Had she really been lost in her thoughts for that long?
"Here," Rachel motioned, brushing Quinn aside from the edge of the sink. "Let me do the dishes. It's the least I can do since I crashed your favorite meal of the week," she explained, adding soap to a sponge and quickly making work of the two plates, knives and forks in the sink before setting them aside in the drying rack. She turned from her work to find intense hazel eyes watching her.
"Quinn," she tried again.
"How much do I owe you?"
Rachel pushed past the stubborn blonde, sauntering over the couch before taking a seat indian-style and patting the cushion next to her. She looked squarely at Quinn, refusing to back down. "I already told you talking could be my payment."
Resigned to the fact that nothing she could say or do would convince the stubborn diva to leave, Quinn dragged a chair from the dining table across the room. She propped her long limbs across the corner of the ottoman. She needed to keep her distance before she spilled anymore of her secrets.
"I still can't believe you played hooky and missed your show tonight. To stalk me," Quinn challenged with her characteristic raised brow.
"I'd hardly call this stalking. Unwarranted solicitation, possibly," Rachel offered along with a warm smile. "And anyway, I think you're worth it."
Quinn shook her head and rolled her eyes. "I'm definitely not worth you risking your dream, Rachel."
"I didn't risk my dream..."
"Really? What if there was someone important in the audience tonight? What if, um, Barbra, or ah, Liza...Bernadette," Quinn bit her bottom lip in thought as she flipped through the rolodex of her limited Broadway knowledge, "or some big name producer that could realize your star potential were in the audience? And if I remember correctly, it was only a few weeks ago when you were trying to kick me out of your apartment saying how you couldn't afford to miss yet another performance. And I would think that mantra would be especially important now seeing as you're no longer a swing or understudy."
Quinn was entertained as she watched the internal struggle play out across the diva's features.
With a slight crease across her brow Rachel acknowledged, "Those are indeed excellent arguments, Quinn. However, considering the fact that I recently accepted a lead role in a new workshop, your concerns for my career are unnecessary and thus, wouldn't have altered my decision."
"Are you serious about the workshop?" Quinn dropped her feet to the floor in excitement.
Rachel couldn't suppressed the grin the enveloped her face. "We're still working out the specifics, but it's basically a done deal. Though, besides my agent and the individuals involved in the project, you're the only one I've told about this. I haven't even told my dads. So mum's the word," the diva emphasized by locking an imaginary key in her lips before tossing said key over her shoulder.
"That's awesome, Rach. I'm really proud of you. I...I can't think of anyone more deserving than you," the blond enthused.
"Thanks, Quinn. That means a lot, especially coming from you."
Quinn just nodded in return, Rachel's comment inadvertently dredging up ghosts of high school past and all the hurt associated with them.
An awkward silence simmered up over the next minutes with Quinn glaring at the tiny cardboard box labeled 'HS' and Rachel seemingly enamored with the cuticles on her hands.
"Are you gay?" the brunette popped the bubble of silence that had formed.
"Excuse me?"
"Are you gay?" Rachel repeated. "I mean...I'm just trying to figure out what I did wrong the other night and since you refuse to talk to me about it, I've simply been left to my own devices and my head is currently a very confusing place and I'm tired of being confused. We've blurred the line of intimacy and friendship and maybe I just misread signals. But I thought from what you said the other night, well I guess you didn't really say but rather implied that you were gay. And again, I don't know what I did wrong when I kissed you, especially if you're gay-"
Quinn raised her hand to silence the rambling word vomit spewing forth from the brunette's mouth, hoping that the atypical nervousness she had heard in Rachel's voice accounted for her stupidity.
"Do you realize what you were just implying?" she pointedly asked, looking at the diva with raised, questioning eyebrows. "You're saying, that just because I might be gay, that it's okay for you to kiss me? That's like claiming that because you're probably straight that the douche with the broken nose from the club had a right to force himself on you."
"Quinn, that's not what I meant! Stop twisting my words. I just don't understand what I did wrong. And it's not like I was forcing myself on you. You...you kissed me back," Rachel countered as Quinn pursed her lips and looked away. "Just stop being so defensive and just-just let me in! Talk to me!"
Quinn rotated her body so she was looking directly into Rachel's eyes, trying to find strength in her for the words she wanted to say. But Quinn had only now realized in that moment that she had never actually admitted the fact to another person besides herself. Sure, others had asked over the years, especially college classmates whom demanded she label herself, but she had been able to either ignore such questions or give ambiguous answers such as, "I'm here with you, right?" or she simply went home with them. That usually shut them and answered all questions. Maybe she could still get away without saying those words out loud.
"Yes."
Rachel was confused. She didn't remember asking a question... "Yes, what?"
"Who's on first, Rachel. Jesus!" Quinn exclaimed, throwing her arms up in the air, whether out of frustration or desperation for the brunette to just understand, she wasn't sure.
"Now I'm confused."
"Oh, for fuck's sake. Yes, Rachel, I'm gay!" Quinn shouted loud enough that she was sure her next door neighbors, Alden and Josh, would leave rainbow cupcakes on her doormat. But saying those words aloud for the first time sucked all the air from the blonde's lungs and she had to will herself to keep it together.
Failing to realize the significance of Quinn's confession, Rachel surged ahead with her questioning. "So you date women exclusively?"
Quinn glared. "I don't date, and what wasn't clear about my previous answer?" was pushed out through clenched teeth. She was moments away from emotional collapse and needed the spotlight off of her, the sooner the better.
"What do you mean you don't date-"
"What about you, Rachel? Are you gay or just a little bicurious?"
"Quinn, I don't really appreciate your tone. And, I-I don't know. I've never been with anyone besides Finn. Until a week ago, I've only been interested or had relationships with the opposite sex."
"And now?"
"I don't really understand society's need to define every single minutia of our lives. Labels, schmabels."
"Oh my god. You are so frustrating! You refuse to define your own sexuality yet you just forced me to label myself as gay! Do you realize I've never actually told anyone that before!" Quinn was up and out of her chair, hand to her forehead and pacing the room.
"Wait. What? What do you mean you've never told anyone?"
"It's incredibly easy to get through life without ever having to brand yourself as one thing or another. I had enough of that back in high school, Rachel, so I've worked really hard these past few years to keep people from categorizing me and determining who I should be."
"You never told anyone you were gay? Oh my goodness! Is that why you were so upset the other night? Was that your first 'gay' kiss? I'm so sorry!"
"Fucking unbelievable," Quinn muttered as she pinched the bridge of her nose. "That was hardly my first 'gay' kiss, Rachel," the blonde mocked her finger quotes. "Just because I never actually said that I was gay to another person, doesn't mean I didn't act on those feelings. And for the love of all that is good and holy stop apologizing. I...enjoyed the kiss. The kisses."
"Oh, that's right. The girl from the club. The one at the bar."
Quinn had to laugh. Of course Rachel would remember that interaction now and completely disregard the latter part of her previous statement. "Yeah, that was Kay. One of my many conquests."
"Conquests?" the diva asked with a smirk on her lips.
"Yes, you know me. Slutty McSlutterson. Slutting it up for all the ladies," Quinn teased as she finally collapsed next to Rachel on the couch in an emotionally tired heap. "I don't date, Rachel, because dating and being in relationship requires me to feel something deeper than just attraction and lust, and those feelings are just too," Quinn bobbled her head from side to side, searching for the right word, "complex, I guess. I want my life to be simple and dating and relationships are anything but."
Rachel waited a few moments before cautiously reaching and taking Quinn's right hand in hers. She was very conscious to the fact that the blonde had been avoiding any type of physical contact all evening. "It looks like your hand healed up well. You followed Papa Bear's advice?" She brushed her thumbs over the pail flesh that only had a hint of light bruising remaining, circling the palm and tracing straight lines to fingertips.
"Yeah," Quinn breathed out a satisfied sigh, internally questioning why she had denied herself the opportunity to be touched by the brunette up until this point when such a simple gesture could ignite these types of sensations throughout her body. "Ice buckets to reduce the swelling and pain meds. Good like new and ready to punch the next asshat who so much as looks at you the wrong way," she stressed by forming her hand into a fist. Rachel laughed and continued to lightly stroke the hand in her grasp.
They sat in a comfortable silence, the first of the night, for a few minutes before Quinn raised her head from Rachel's shoulder where it had settled.
"Rach?"
"Hmm?"
"You don't have to answer if you don't want to want to, but what happened between you and Finn?"
Rachel's hand movements, which now had traveled from massaging just Quinn's right hand to her whole right arm, stilled for a moment as she took a deep breath. As she began talking, and much to Quinn's delight, she started rubbing Quinn's hand again.
"Did you keep in touch with anyone from high school when we all went off to college?"
"Sort of for the first couple of years, but not so much now," came the blonde's muffled reply. She had relocated her head back to Rachel's shoulder.
"Well, long-distance is never easy so we had our struggles due to lack of communication, jealousy, lying, Facebook pictures that would be posted after a crazy party. Accusations of infidelity, et cetera. Then this past summer after graduation, Finn actually sort of moved out here for a couple of months. We were going to try and make it work, and it honestly did for awhile."
"Did you live together?"
"We actually did not and I'm so thankful for refusing to back down on that decision. Finn of course just wanted to move in to my apartment, but after our past history, I was more than a bit hesitant. Luckily, Nate and Tom needed to rent out their second bedroom in their loft so Finn was able to move in there. We saw each other constantly and seemed to rebuild what we had lost over time. And just when I thought things couldn't be better, I found out he had been cheating on me. For well over a month. With one of the chorus girls."
"I think I just found who my next punching victim should be..."
Rachel smiled at the gesture. "If he ever has the audacity to show up again after the last stunt he pulled to try and apologize and win me back, I'll gladly take you up on that offer."
"What did he try to do to win you back?" Quinn probed, still unsure how anyone would ever think to cheat on Rachel in the first place.
"It was like Glee Club all over again. You should have seen it, Quinn! Horrible dancing and a mismatched mash-up along with flowers. Carnations, Quinn. Carnations. And he did this at the theatre in front of nearly all the cast members."
"Shit."
"To say I was livid would be an understatement. And then on top of it all, when I rejected his apology yet again, Molly informed me that he left with his chorus girl mistress and actually moved in with her since, of course, Nate and Tom threw his ass out on the street. Last I heard he's back in Ohio now working at Burt's garage."
"And you never cheated on him? After six years of pretty much being together and knowing that he was probably fooling around behind your back all throughout college, you never once retaliated?"
"The only time I cheated on him was in high school with Puck, and that was just kissing, more of a lapse in logic than outright cheating, is really how I tried to rationalize it back then. Once I was out here in New York and at school, I was honestly too busy and focused on classes and trying to land roles or hit up open mic nights to really worry about actively pursuing anything outside of Finn. It was an easy routine to fall back on with our history."
Quinn nodded silently against Rachel's shoulder. There was a question on the tip of her tongue and she let it roll around in her mouth for a few minutes before finally gathering the courage. "So I'm the first girl that you've kissed?"
"Yes, Quinn. You're my first and only experience into the foray of lesbianism." The diva chuckled lightly before her mind drifted back to the night she had found out about Finn's infidelity and how Molly and Briana had rallied around her in support. When Finn had had tried to enter their shared dressing room to apologize, Molly had chased him away and Briana had made her move. That kiss had shocked Rachel and completely caught her off-guard, especially due to her already stunned state in regards to Finn's manwhorish ways. So no, she didn't feel like she was lying to Quinn because Briana's error in judgment meant nothing to Rachel, the older girl's feelings were definitely not returned. It was unimportant, it didn't count.
Rachel could feel Quinn's jaw working against her shoulder, clenching and grinding just as it had minutes before when the blonde was pondering her question. The diva smiled.
"Quinn?"
"Yeah?"
"What is it?"
The blonde thought only for a brief moment before spilling her worry. "This," Quinn gestured to their entwined hands, the lack of space between their bodies and Rachel's continued light touches along the blonde's right side, "scares the hell out of me. It's a lot more than you realize, I think, and even though this is all knew for you, having feelings for another woman, this is not new to me by any means." That statement was only a half-truth, too, since Rachel wasn't privy to knowledge of how deep and far into the past Quinn's affections originated.
Rachel hummed her understanding before adding, "This is new, you're right. And right now, can this just be us...enjoying each other's company?"
Quinn laughed at the phrasing and though that line of thought wouldn't work in the long run, she refused to allow Rachel to just become another one of her faceless bar babes. It would work for right now since she was indeed enjoying the diva's company.
"Rachel?" She lifted her head and shifted to meet questioning brown eyes. "I'm going to kiss you now, okay?"
A small smile formed on the brunette's lips as her eye lids slid closed in anticipation. Rachel shuddered when she was gifted with the reconnection of Quinn's lips. At first just a delicate graze, Rachel soon found herself lost in the languid pace and sensations of pulls and tugs of lips and tongue as Quinn brought her hands up to cup and cradle Rachel's cheeks. How the brunette had gone the past four days without this connection, she was unsure, but in this moment she had no problem giving full and complete control to blonde hovering above her.
The kiss was over too soon and as the blonde pulled away, Rachel reached out in protest. "No, come back," her forehead creased in worry.
Quinn realized too late that her actions appeared to mirror her same foolishness from Monday, and she brought the thumbs up to the diva's eyes to brush away the tiny tears that had already formed. "I'm not running away this time, Rach. No need to chase me. I just need to stop myself now, otherwise I won't be able to adequately behave like a proper lady should," she offered with a shy smile.
"Promise?"
"Promise what?"
"That you won't run away from me again. That you won't walk away and shut me out. That you won't stop returning my calls and texts."
"Promise. Sealed with a kiss." Quinn pecked Rachel's lips. "But now, you need to head home since you're 'sick' and all and need to rest up for tomorrow's shows." She pulled the brunette up to a standing position. "Two options. I can pay you back for dinner by sending you home in a cab, or we can walk to the subway. Pick your poison."
"If we walk, would it be alright if I wanted to hold your hand?"
"If you'd like."
"Then let's head out."
After arriving back to her apartment from dropping Rachel off at the subway's entrance where the diva had demand not one, but four goodnight kisses, Quinn took stock of her bare living space. Her gaze drifted over to the abandoned boxes that lined the wall.
Quinn needed to stop avoiding her past regrets and memories and finally confront and deal with them, especially since Rachel Berry was proof that things from her past could improve with time.
Author's note II: Hope you all really enjoyed this installment. This was by far my favorite chapter I've written yet.