It seemed so absurd that all Quinn could think about in that moment was that her panties that were blasphemously hanging off Jesus for the whole world to see. Maybe her parents hadn't seen them yet, maybe she could run over and grab them before they noticed, although doing so would just bring more attention to them and then they definitely would notice.
"Quinn?" Ryan squeezed her thigh, bring her attention back to him and the horrible situation they were in. He was looking up at her, clearly waiting for her to tell him what to do.
Swallowing hard, Quinn dismounted him rather ungracefully -Sue Sylvester would not have approved-. Squeezing her legs tightly together to try and keep Ryan's seed from dripping down her thighs -Quinn was certain that if she wasn't already pregnant, that load definitely would've done the trick- she did her best to shield him from her parents judgmental eyes as he tucked himself away and fastened his fly and belt.
When Ryan stood up next to her, Quinn immediately plastered herself to his side, locking her arm around his and intertwining their fingers together. "Mom, Dad, this is-"
"I know who he is," her father spat hatefully. Of course he knew who Ryan was; as the son of not only a gay couple but the only interracial couple in town, there were very few people in Lima who didn't know who Ryan Berry was.
"Ryan's my boyfriend," Quinn finished, trying to keep her head held high.
"Boyfriend?" her mother parroted. "What about that nice Finn boy that we were going to have over for dinner?"
"That hardly matter now, Judy," Russell snapped at his wife. Then he turned his attention back to his daughter. "You still haven't answered my question, young lady."
Quinn shrunk in on herself and clung to Ryan's arm, feeling like a child that had been caught with her hand in a cookie jar -although, she supposed, it was more like Ryan had been caught with his hand in her cookie jar...and by hand she meant penis.-
"We weren't doing anything wrong," she said in a soft but resolute voice. All her life, Quinn had been taught that sex was dirty and bad but being with Ryan had made her see that it was neither of those things, it wasn't something to be ashamed of. Sex was beautiful as long as it was with the right person and Ryan was definitely the right person for her.
"Not doing anything wrong," Russell repeated to himself, as if he couldn't believe those words had come out of his little girl's mouth. "You've broken your vow, Quinn! The Chastity Ball is only a few weeks away and you've let yourself be defiled and by a Jew, no less."
Quinn felt Ryan bristle at her father's comment and squeezed his hand, silently cautioning him against saying anything. Ryan may have been in amazing shape but he was still fairly small and her father was a big guy, she didn't even want to think about the damage he could do to her boyfriend if the confrontation turned physical.
Russell shook his head angrily. No, this would not do at all. They'd raised their daughter better than this. Quinn had morals, integrity, she never would've gone against everything that she believed in if that boy hadn't made her.
"Judy, go and get me the telephone," he commanded. Quinn's mother, of course, obeyed without question, disappearing from the room to fetch the phone.
Quinn eyed him cautiously. "Daddy, who are you going to call?"
"The police," Russell said curtly. "Don't worry, sweetheart, we're not going to let this little heathen get away with forcing himself on you."
Ryan scoffed and rolled his eyes at the ridiculous accusation. Quinn was on top of him, how could her parents possibly think that he was forcing her to do anything, the very idea was preposterous and he was sure that the police would see it that way too.
He may not have been worried but Quinn was. She knew that her father had friends in high places, he played golf with the mayor and a bunch of judges every second Friday. If Russell Fabray wanted to make some bogus rape charges against Ryan, they'd stick no matter how untrue they were. "He wasn't forcing himself on me," she tried to deny.
But Russell didn't want to hear it. "How else do you explain what your mother and I walked in on? Quinnie, you're a good girl, I-" He'd rather his daughter be known as a rape victim than a common whore.
"We weren't doing anything wrong!" she reiterated, firmer and louder this time. Her mother should've been back with the phone by now, she realized in the back of her mind. She must've been stalling, trying to give Quinn enough time to change her father's mind, one small silent act of rebellion for the sake of her daughter.
But all rebellions must come to an end and Judy re-entered the room, looking at Quinn with apologetic eyes before handing the telephone to her husband and moving to the bar to fix them both a drink.
"Daddy, please, I love him!" Quinn tearfully pleaded as Russell prepared to dial. It had no effect, Russell pressed down the nine. Quinn knew that there was only one thing she could do. "We're having a baby!"
Russell paled, his arm falling limp against his side, the phone slipping from his fingers and clattering harmlessly against the carpet. He looked at her uncomprehendingly; she couldn't have just said what he'd thought he'd heard, not his little girl.
"What did you just say?" he demanded, advancing on them.
Quinn buried her face in Ryan's shoulder as her father approached them, unable to bear seeing the disappointment in his eyes.
"Look at me when I'm speaking to you," he ordered sternly.
Sniffling, Quinn did as she was told. "I'm pregnant," she confessed. "I'm having Ryan's baby."
Her father flinched, like the words were a physical blow. Suddenly, her daddy didn't look so big and scary anymore; he just looked sad and tired and so very old.
"Quinn, go up to your room."
"You're grounding me?" she squeaked.
Russell shook his head, keeping his eyes fixed on the floor. "Go up to your room and pack your things, you have thirty minutes to get out of this house." He didn't even sound angry, just resigned. "I can't even bare to look at you."
"Why, because I'm not a little girl anymore?" Quinn cried. It wasn't like she hadn't seen this coming, she knew that once her father found out she'd be leaving the only home she'd ever known, one way or another. Him giving her time to pack her things was more than she'd been expecting but it didn't mean that it didn't hurt.
Her father looked up from his feet. "Who are you? I don't recognize you at all." This girl standing in front of him was not his daughter. This wasn't the little girl who fell asleep in his lap at the first baseball game he'd ever taken her to. This was a stranger.
Seeing the devastation on his girlfriend's face, Ryan couldn't keep his mouth shut any longer. "Mrs. Fabray," he addressed the woman who was sitting at the bar and nursing a gin and tonic, knowing that her husband was a lost cause. "I've never had a mother but I was under the impression that they were supposed to protect their children above all else. Are you really going to stand by and let this happen?"
"Don't bother, Ryan," Quinn said, looking resentfully at her mother. "If she wanted to do something she would've when she found out that I was pregnant."
Russell whirled around. "You knew?" he gasped. He couldn't believe this, betrayed by two of the most important women in his life.
"What? I...no," Judy stammered in denial. "She didn't tell me anything."
"But you knew," Quinn sobbed, her voice raw. "And I needed you, I needed my mom and you were so scared of what he would do when he found out that you just pushed it aside, like we do every bad feeling in this house. If you don't talk about it, it doesn't exist."
"It doesn't matter now," Russell declared, wishing that they had never done the responsible thing and come home early from the country club before they were to drunk to drive. "It's done. I'm going to set the timer on the microwave. You've got thirty minutes, Quinn."
Thirty minutes to pack up my entire life, Quinn thought as her father walked out of the room, her mother trailing obediently at his heel.
With as much dignity as she could muster, Quinn leaned forward and plucked her panties from Jesus' head and put them back on. Her father may not have snapped yet but she figured that leaving a trail of semen all over his pristine red carpet might just send him over the edge.
"Quinn, I-" Ryan began looking at her with big, sympathetic brown eyes.
"It's not your fault," she assured him, taking his hand again and tugging him towards the stairs. "Come help me pack."
###
Thank God for Ryan's anal retentive attention to detail, Quinn thought, stuffing the last of her dresses into her already over filled Cheerios duffle bag. If it wasn't for him, she wouldn't have remembered half the things that she needed to take with her. He'd taken charge of collecting everything she needed for school -Quinn may have been pregnant, off the Cheerios and as of now homeless, but she'd be damned if she let her GPA slip- while she sorted out her wardrobe and he'd already stopped her from wasting space on clothes that weren't even going to fit her in a few weeks time and, mortifyingly, he had to remind her to pack her underwear. Not that it mattered so much about her bras, she knew that she was very soon going to need to buy new ones, she'd already gone up half a cup size.
"I think that's everything," Quinn sighed, pulling the zipper closed on her bag and taking one last look around the room that had been hers since the day she was born. It was hard to believe that she was never going to spend another night in her bed.
"This is probably a stupid question," Ryan said, taking her into his arms. "But are you okay?"
"I don't know," Quinn answered honestly, closing her eyes and resting her head on his shoulder. "Right now I just feel numb. How long have we got left?"
She felt him move his arm from her back to look at his watch. "Four minutes and twenty nine seconds."
Quinn chuckled silently at him and started playing with his tie. "I meant it, you know," she said softly.
"Meant what?"
"That I love you."
One of Ryan's hands came up to cradle the back of her head as he pressed a tender kiss to her temple. "I love you, too."
Curling her fingers into his shirt, Quinn pulled back. "We'd better get downstairs before my dad comes up to get us," she said, wiping away the single tear that had spilled down her cheek. She couldn't imagine how badly her father would react to finding her in Ryan's arms in her bedroom.
Quinn reached for the handle of her duffle bag but Ryan got to it first. "I've got it," he said, lifting it easily. He already had the backpack containing her laptop and school books slung over his shoulder, apparently he was determined not to let his pregnant girlfriend do any heavy lifting.
They were on the way out the door when Quinn realized that she was leaving behind something very important. "Wait."
She dashed over to her desk and started rifling through the drawers for disk she had hidden away. Ryan watched with raised eyebrows as her search became more frantic.
Where is it? I know that it's in here, I put it back after I watched it last night. When her hand closed around the disk that had been jammed up the back of the top drawer, Quinn almost fainted in relief. There was no way in hell that she was going to leave her copy of their baby's first sonogram behind.
"Have you got everything now?" Ryan asked, watching her closely.
Quinn nodded, taking his free hand to lead him downstairs. She knew it was rather pathetic but the only time she felt safe was when she was touching him.
Downstairs, Quinn's mother was nowhere to be found. Quinn wasn't surprised, her mom had never been good with goodbyes. She heard the sound of the tv coming from the den.
Her father was inside, watching the Indians game. Any other day, Quinn would just gone in and joined him, curling up next to him and talking stats and batting averages. But not today.
She froze in the doorway, shifting nervously from foot to foot, she was actually too afraid to cross the threshold. "Daddy, I'm going now."
Russell didn't even turn to look at her. "Leave your keys in the bowl by the door."
Quinn swallowed back a sob at how easily he dismissed her and pulled her keys out of the pocket of her cardigan. Her house keys, car keys; she knew that she couldn't keep them. Keys to the room they held Christ Crusader meetings in at church; if she didn't give them back, Quinn was fairly certain Father Thomas would send someone to pry them out of her hands once he found out about this. She briefly considered keeping her keychain -her mother had it specially made for her when she'd made head Cheerio, with two golden charms, a cross and pom poms, hanging off the ring- but she wasn't that girl anymore, she had no right to keep it.
She squeezed her fist closed around the keys, barely feeling the metal cutting into her skin. "Goodbye, Daddy."
This time she got no acknowledgement at all.
###
"This is the spare room," Ryan said, stopping outside the closed door next to his own bedroom.
"I'm not going to be staying in with you?" Quinn asked, she'd just assumed that she'd be sleeping in Ryan's bed.
"You can if you want to, you're welcome in my room at any time, Quinn," Ryan was quick to assure her. "But I thought that you'd like to have your own space. It's not easy to adjust to living with someone."
He pushed the door open and set her bags down on the end of the bed. As soon as his hands were free, Quinn hugged him, sagging against his chest. It had been such a long, life changing day, it was hard to believe it was only three in the afternoon.
"How are you feeling?" he asked, rubbing soothing circles on her back.
"Relieved, mostly. I've been living with all these secrets for so long, so terrified of what would happen when everyone found out the truth. But now it's all out in the open, it's a relief. I mean, I'm scared about what's going to happen on Monday when we go back to school, how Finn and the other's are going to react but...I feel good. Better than I have in a long time actually," she admitted honestly. Free from the gilded cage that was her family's expectations for her for the first time, Quinn felt like she could do anything. She didn't have to follow the plan that her parents had set out for her since before she'd even been born. It was exhilarating and daunting.
"Do you want to talk about, you know, your dad?" Ryan offered awkwardly.
"Not particularly, not right now anyway." Quinn lifted her head from his chest and pressed a kiss to the underside of his jaw. She sighed and took in her surroundings, the room was nice, the only objects in the room were a double bed, a chest of drawers, a small closet and... "Is that a sword?"
"Oh yeah, it's a rapier, actually." Ryan released her to go and pick up the sword that had been propped up in the corner. "It's part of my costume for Renaissance Club."
"You're in the Renaissance Club?"
Ryan nodded proudly. "And the Chess Club, Student UN, Black Students Union, Horticulture Club. I'm the most involved student in the school." Well, almost, damn that Jacob Ben Israel. Ryan only needed one more extracurricular activity to beat him. "Of course I will be quitting them all after the yearbook pictures to spend more time with you."
Quinn shook her head, he was already doing enough for her, she didn't want him to give up anything else. "You don't have to do that."
"I want to," he said firmly. "I'm only in all those clubs because it'll look good on my college applications. The only one I really care about is Glee and I have no intention of quitting that. Anyway, I should go and put this away and get changed. Give you some time to settle in...unless you don't want to be alone?"
Quinn smiled fondly at him. "I think I can manage by myself for ten minutes."
"Right." Ryan blushed bashfully, kissing her on the cheek before running off to put his sword away.
Sighing, Quinn flopped down onto the bed. She moaned as she sunk into the soft mattress. Her father always insisted that she had a firm mattress, claiming that a soft mattress lead to a weak spine.
It was hard to believe that in one day she had lost a boyfriend, gained a boyfriend, been caught having sex with said boyfriend by her parents, told them that she was pregnant, been disowned and kicked out of the only home she'd ever known and, oh yeah, met her boyfriend's fathers who absolutely hated her.
Because Quinn apparently had the worst luck in the entire universe, both of Ryan's parents were home when their son had walked through the door, pregnant girl and her luggage in tow. They'd demanded an explanation and Ryan had given them one in his usual tactless way, leaving nothing out -not even the parts where Quinn had pretended that it was Finn's baby, which was rather mortifying-. After that both men looked at Quinn like she was the Devil incarnate and Ryan's very Jewish father, Hiram, kept calling her a Shiksa -Quinn didn't know what that meant but if she had to guess it was something along the lines of 'evil whore that's ruining my son's life'- as he ranted about how stupid and irresponsible they both were.
It was when Hiram started demanding they do a paternity test before they allowed Quinn to stay there, that Ryan put his foot down -seriously, he'd stamped his foot- and told his fathers that he understood that they weren't happy about the situation but he'd appreciate their support.
Then Leroy, Ryan's other father who'd be quiet up until that point, stood up and hugged his son -glaring at Quinn over Ryan's shoulder- while telling him that they'd always support him even if they didn't agree with the choices that he made and that of course Quinn could stay with them. Hiram had looked like he was about to argue but one look from his husband had him snapping his mouth shut.
Of course, then Leroy had started on the guilt trip, saying that they'd drilled into Ryan's head the importance of safe sex. Quinn had been about to own up to the fact that it was her fault but Ryan beat her to it, he lied to his fathers -probably for the first time ever- and told them that they'd used a condom but it broke, adding that he'd already written a strongly worded letter to the manufacturers.
Quinn didn't like that he was lying to his fathers because of her and she could already tell that it was going to be unbearably awkward living with them, but where else could she go? Obviously, Finn's was out of the question and she didn't even want to think about the nightmare that staying with Santana would be -they were barely able to make it through sleepovers without killing each other-. Brittany's was always a possibility but that would only ever be a temporary solution.
She glanced at her watch, five minutes had passed since Ryan had left, it wouldn't be pathetically clingy of her to go to him now, would it?
With some difficulty, Quinn struggled up into a sitting position. She envied her younger self for not understanding how lucky she was to have the ability to just spring up out of bed.
She padded down the hall to Ryan's room, finding that he'd already changed into a pair of sweatpants and a tight grey t-shirt. She wasn't going to lie, she was a little disappointed that he wasn't still wearing the suit that he was currently folding.
"Hey," he said when he looked up and noticed her in the doorway.
"Hey." As she moved to sit on the bed, a stack of baby books sitting on his bedside table caught her eye, all of them had multicolored post-its sticking out from the pages. He hadn't just been reading them, he'd been studying them.
"I like to be prepared," Ryan said sheepishly, once he realized what she was looking at.
Quinn didn't know how she ever could have thought she was doing the right thing by denying this boy his paternal rights. She grabbed his hand, pulling him down to lay next to her on the bed and cuddling up against his side. "You're so perfect."
Ryan scoffed. "No, I'm not."
"You are for me." He shouldn't have been, they both knew that. Finn should have been her perfect man, not Ryan. They shouldn't have worked but they did. "But I think I should find somewhere else to stay."
"You don't want to live with me?" Ryan asked, sounding hurt.
"No, I do," Quinn assured him, smoothing her hand up and down his stomach, feeling the soft bumps of his defined abs. She wondered if it would be insensitive of her to ask him to take his shirt off while they had this conversation. "It's just...your dad's hate me-"
Ryan cut her off, tightening his arm around her waist. "They don't hate you. They're just...caught off-guard by all this. I don't think that they'd ever imagined that they'd have to deal with this with me as their son."
"Still. I don't want to make them uncomfortable."
"They'll adjust. Besides, they're only here on the weekends, anyway," he said, like it was totally normal. "So-"
"Wait." Quinn lifted her head from his chest to look at him. "Why are they only here on the weekends? Where are they during the week?"
"Cincinnati, they have an apartment there."
"And why do they have an apartment there?" Quinn prompted when he didn't elaborate any further.
"Because that's where they work and it doesn't make sense for them both to be making five hour round trips every day when I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself."
"But why don't they just get jobs in Lima?"
Ryan smiled sadly, Quinn had no idea of how intolerant Lima truly was. "Well, nobody in town would hire my father once they found out that he was gay. My dad tried to make it work here but after his store was burned down for the second time he decided it was best to cut his losses and relocate somewhere bigger, more accepting."
"They burned down his store?" Quinn couldn't believe it.
"I guess they got tired of throwing rocks through the windows and spray painting 'fag' on the door," Ryan said ruefully. Apparently the fact that his family was the target of this kind of bigotry was coming as a shock to his girlfriend. It was partly his fault, he supposed, he was always telling anyone who'd listen how great it was having two gay dads. And it wasn't like he was lying, his dads were great, they doted on him, spoiled him a lot more than they probably should, it was other people that were the problem. It was the hateful homophobes who felt the need to lash out against things that they didn't understand and, even worse than them, it was the ones with good intentions thinking that they were doing him a favor by calling Child Protective Services because he was a boy and his dad's were gay so they'd have to be molesting him. He had a penis after all, how could they resist? Thankfully, once he'd passed puberty, the calls to CPS had died off.
"I can't believe that people would do that."
Ryan didn't have the heart to tell Quinn that she probably knew some of the culprits from her church. From the way she felt him shrug beneath her, Quinn guessed that Ryan didn't want to talk about it any further and changed the topic.
"So during the week it's just going to be you and me? Alone?" she asked, marveling at the foreign concept. Her parents didn't trust her to stay home alone even when they only went away for a weekend; they either took her with them or forced her to stay with a friend.
"Yes."
Apparently the baby liked this idea just as much as Quinn did, because the flutters started up again. Quinn gasped sharply and grabbed Ryan's hand to place it flat against her belly.
"Quinn what's-" he began, alarmed, before he felt it too. His eyebrows scrunched together as he tried to figure out what he was feeling. "Is that?" he whispered, awestruck.
"It's our daughter, Ryan."
He beamed at her, wider than she'd ever seen him smile before. "Our daughter," he repeated, moving down her body until his cheek was pressed against her stomach, where his hand had been.
Smiling softly, Quinn began raking her fingers through his hair as he caressed the spot that was seeing the most activity. She closed her eyes, letting herself enjoy the moment.
"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are grey," Ryan started singing quietly, bringing anguished tears to Quinn's eyes. "You'll never know dear, how much I love you-"
"You know that this doesn't change anything," she felt the need to remind him and herself. "We're still not keeping her."
Ryan sighed and looked up at her sadly. "I know. But that doesn't mean that I'm not allowed to love her...It doesn't mean that you aren't either."
Quinn smiled weakly. "I know." Yes, it really does.
