an (1): so, lovelies, good news and bad news: i'm going on a super cool trip all over the east coast (going to new haven and nyc, not even joking), and i'm leaving on friday, so idk how often the updates are going to be. i'll do my best to get some writing done, i pinky-promise. (and also i'm seeing once so it might get all sappy again that day). anyway, i'll be on this trip for ten days, so not that long. i just wanted to give you all a heads up now.
also, um, no, by angst i meant like shit-went-down-these-past-four-years-that-needs-to-be-addressed angst, not-i'm-going-to-kill-quinn angst. i mean, the story's in her pov. and she's my baby. i would never ever kill her.
those things being said, here's the next update! yay! i hope you like it. your reviews are magic. x
an (2): title from "cannons" by youth lagoon. listen up. :)
nine. i have more dreams than you have posters of your favourite teams (and though the shot won't kill me it still bruises my skin)
.
"Are you sure they'll like me?" Quinn fidgets with a button on her coat as they walk towards Rachel's car parked in Quinn's driveway.
"They already know you," Rachel says.
"But—"
Rachel shakes her head, turning towards Quinn and taking her hand. "They're going to love you, okay?"
Quinn takes a deep breath and nods. "Okay."
Rachel nods once, and Quinn thinks it's reassuring, like floating on her back in the pool during months of physical therapy, breathing for just a moment before she started frustrating work forward again.
Rachel drives slowly and Rachel holds Quinn's hand the entire time. Rachel turns on Youth Lagoon and starts singing quietly.
"Those aren't the words," Quinn says.
"You can't even understand the words."
"You can understand some of them. Or look them up."
Quinn watches Rachel's profile lift into a smile. "How come you never sang any of these songs during glee club?"
"Because I don't know the words?"
Rachel shakes her head. "No, not just Youth Lagoon. I mean the music you love?"
Quinn shrugs. "People don't really listen to it, or appreciate it. I don't know."
"I appreciate it."
Quinn smiles. "I know you do."
"Why didn't you sing it?"
"It's—" Quinn bites her bottom lip— "Sometimes I just feel like someone wrote a song just for me. And it resonated, made so much sense in my head. Made me feel less lonely. And, you know, if I shared it with people and they didn't think it was as important, then it would seem smaller. Less significant. And I needed it to stay big. I needed it to stay powerful enough to save me."
"Quinn."
Quinn takes a deep breath as Rachel turns down her street. "Does that make any sense?"
"So much." Rachel puts the car into park as soon as they get to the driveway.
Quinn smiles. She feels feathers melting and oceans of notes—every song in her head is sung by Rachel—letting her know they were there always, no matter how long it took for her to fall. "Good. Because when I said that in my head it sounded a little bit crazy."
Rachel undoes her seatbelt then turns towards Quinn. "God, they're going to love you."
Quinn stares down at her hands.
"Come on, girlfriend," Rachel says, getting out and skipping around the car to open Quinn's door, offering her hand.
"I'm dating a nerd," Quinn says, taking it with a smile and unfolding from the car.
Rachel says, "A chivalrous one, though."
"That's true."
"And you're also a nerd, miss 4.0 at Yale."
"You got all As too." Quinn smooths her hair as they walk up the short path with her free hand, and then Rachel tugs on her arm.
"You look beautiful. Your hair is perfect and sexy and adorable and you're perfect and sexy and adorable and my dads are so happy for us, so just be your bat shit self and relax."
Quinn laughs. "They already have a high baseline for crazy, having raised you and all."
Rachel rolls her eyes but squeezes Quinn's hand as they walk through the front door. "We're home," Rachel says, and Hiram comes from the dining room.
"Hi girls," he says, hugging Rachel and then hugging Quinn. His cologne smells nothing like her father's used to, and she relaxes just a little more.
"Thank you for having me over," Quinn says.
Hiram waves his hands. "It's our pleasure."
Leroy hurries out of the dining room. "Stay a while, Quinn," he says.
Rachel laughs and ducks her head and says, "Daddy," and Hiram motions to take her coat.
Rachel takes Quinn's hand again and even gives her a chaste kiss, and when Quinn glances up, both Hiram and Leroy are grinning.
Rachel rolls her eyes. "Dads," she grumbles.
"Dinner will be ready in two minutes, so you can sit down," Leroy calls, walking back towards the kitchen.
Rachel leads Quinn to their dining room. It's warmer and less formal and a little smaller than the one she'd grown up with, and Rachel sits right next to her, instead of across the table.
"I hope you like pad thai. Rachel said you did, but we were suspicious because it's Rachel's favourite." Leroy sets down a steaming bowl of food in the middle of the table.
"I love pad thai," Quinn says.
Hiram smiles, kissing Rachel on the top of the head before sitting down. "Good to know Rachel wasn't lying. Although," he says, tapping his chin, "you could be lying now."
"Dad," Rachel reprimands, and Quinn laughs.
"We're just going to have to watch you eat, I guess." Leroy raises his brows.
"Pad thai's not a very graceful food for me," Quinn says.
"You're not alone in that. The first time Rachel tried to use chopsticks—she was three—she got noodles everywhere. Hiram, go get that picture. Adorable!"
Rachel puts her face in her hands and says, "I thought we agreed to wait to show her baby pictures until the next time."
Quinn quirks an eyebrow. "Oh, there's going to be a next time?"
Rachel laughs. "Absolutely."
Quinn kisses the side of Rachel's head. Hiram hums a little tune happily.
The rest of dinner is easy and light, and Quinn's nervousness fades away. Hiram and Leroy tell her stories about Rachel as a baby and toddler, which makes Rachel's cheeks flush and an embarrassed smile shape her lips. Rachel holds her hand and they help clear the table when they're finished.
During dessert—vegan chocolate cake and strawberries—Hiram asks what Quinn is thinking of doing after she's finished undergrad, and when Quinn says, "I mean, I love drama, but I think maybe I'd like to write. Get an MFA or something. Maybe screenplays. NYU has a cool program," Rachel absolutely beams.
They leave a little while later with hugs and kisses on the cheek, some leftover cake on a plate covered with saran wrap for Judy.
"It was wonderful to have you, Quinn," Hiram says.
Leroy nods, squeezing her shoulder gently.
"It was wonderful to be here," she says.
They get in the car and Rachel hums along to Youth Lagoon. It's beginning to snow.
There are tears on Quinn's cheeks and she clutches the plate of cake in her lap.
Rachel looks over concernedly before asking, "Oh, Quinn, what's wrong?"
Quinn shakes her head. "I'm just so happy."
Rachel pulls over and puts her hands on either side of Quinn's face, and Rachel cries too. Quinn feels shifting in her chest, glass boxes sliding open, waves pouring in to fill tidal pools: the spaces between her ribs, the lining around her lungs, the valves in her heart, moving to a rhythm that finally was big enough, that finally seemed to make sense.
Quinn tastes their tears like salt water when they kiss.
.
"This is so good," Rachel says, holding up Quinn's cup from the Lima Bean in the middle of the Anthropologie.
"It's just tea, Rach." Quinn laughs, picking up a candle off the top of a stack to smell it.
"It's delicious." Rachel fingers a pretty blouse. "You're really going to get Santana a candle?"
"Her apartment smells disgusting."
"Quinn," Rachel says, tugging at Quinn's hand. "You can't buy your best friend a candle for Christmas. Candles are what you buy for people you don't know."
"I already—I have a present for her, but I wanted to get her something else too. And it's December 23rd, so, you know—" Quinn holds up a vanilla chai scented candle— "a candle."
"What else did you get her?"
"I can't tell you that," Quinn says, watching Rachel scrunch her nose at a green candle.
"Why not?"
"It'll ruin your present too."
Rachel walks over to a shelf housing scarves.
"I think maybe a scarf is worse than a candle," Quinn says, moving behind Rachel, then putting her arms around Rachel's waist.
Rachel leans her head back a little into Quinn's collarbone and smiles up at her. "Love you."
It's the first time they've really kissed in public, outside of a safe place with friends or family, but Quinn can feel Rachel's smile.
It doesn't last long, and when Quinn looks up and Rachel takes a step away and then simply takes Quinn's hand, one woman is smiling shyly in their direction, but other than that, no one is even paying attention.
Quinn glances over at a sweater she's sure Santana would love, and thinks that she's breathing out more ghosts all the time.
.
They walk along outside after Quinn buys the sweater, and Rachel twirls a few times in the falling snow.
"One time, when we had Cheerios over winter break, Santana, Brittany, and I snuck outside and had a snowball fight. In our uniforms and everything," Quinn says.
Rachel laughs. "Did you—"
"—Quinn!"
Quinn turns around because she knows—remembers, however hazily—Abigail's voice.
Quinn waves hesitantly when she sees her a few feet behind them, the same flash of perpetually tangled bright auburn hair and green eyes, freckles across her nose, just exiting La Province. "Hi, Abigail," she says.
Abigail walks toward them, stuffing her hands in her pockets. "I almost didn't recognize you without the pink hair," Abigail says.
Quinn runs a hand through her hair. "Too much upkeep," she says, and Abigail laughs.
Quinn turns toward Rachel. "Rachel, this is Abigail, my friend," Quinn says, motioning between the two of them. "Abigail, this is Rachel, my girlfriend."
Rachel smiles even brighter at Quinn's lack of hesitation, and Abigail smiles too. "It's nice to meet you," Rachel says, and Abigail shakes her outstretched hand.
"You too, Rachel." She turns toward Quinn. "What've you been up to?"
"I'm at Yale," Quinn says.
"Yale?" Abigail grins. "That's great, Quinn."
"Thanks. How's school for you?"
"Same old, same old. I just took the MCAT though, which was not fun."
"I'm sure you did great," Rachel says.
"Thanks," Abigail says. "Where are you going to school?"
"NYADA," Rachel says.
"New York? You must love the city."
"I do." Rachel takes a deep breath, and Quinn can tell she's preparing for a ramble.
Before she can, though, Abigail glances at her watch and says, "I'm sorry, but I have a thing with my mom in, like, twenty minutes, so I have to go, but it was really nice to see you again. You seem really good, Quinn."
"Thanks. Good luck with everything," Quinn says.
Abigail nods. "You too. And, Rachel, it was nice to meet you."
Rachel says, "You too."
"You're a lucky girl, Rachel," Abigail says, then turns with a little wave.
Quinn breathes a few times and blinks snow out of her eyes as Rachel turns towards her, starting to walk down the sidewalk again. "She was nice. Where do you know her from?"
"We met last summer," Quinn says. "At the mall, and then—we—um—"
"Quinn?" Rachel asks.
Quinn takes a breath to steady herself—she thinks of a paramedic telling her, Try to breathe now, Quinn, okay? You have to keep breathing for me—and says, "Are you ready to talk about this kind of stuff?"
Rachel's breath catches and then she swallows. "I think so."
"Okay." Quinn leads them towards a bench.
Rachel snuggles into her side.
"Just, promise you won't get mad at me," Quinn says.
Rachel looks up at Quinn. "Is it really that bad?"
Quinn bites her bottom lip.
Rachel reaches both of her hands inside Quinn's pockets and lacing their fingers together. "I promise."
"Abigail and I slept together. A few times. It wasn't dating or anything, and I—it wasn't important. Meaningful." Quinn studies the buckles on her riding boots.
"That's—I mean, I didn't expect you to have not—" Rachel lets out a breath quickly, the air visible in front of her. "That's not that bad."
Quinn watches a man drop a tower of wrapped packages on the ground when he walks out of Williams-Sonoma.
"Santana and I had sex," Quinn says, looking back at Rachel.
Rachel's eyes pinch together. She squeezes Quinn's hands tighter.
"Before junior year, and it was just twice," Quinn continues, her breath coming out in hurried puffs, condensing in the cold air. Proof. "It was—I—we were—"
"Why the fuck would you sleep with Santana?" Rachel whispers. Her eyes are filling with tears.
"I was messed up," Quinn says.
Rachel unwraps her hands from Quinn's. "That's not good enough."
Quinn takes her hands out of her pockets, picking frantically at her left thumb nail. "It was, like, I—If Santana pretended hard enough, I felt like Brittany." Quinn rubs her eyes. "And if—when I closed my eyes and said your name, I could pretend she was you."
"Oh," Rachel mumbles, and her shoulders slump. "Quinn, that's—"
"—Sad," Quinn says.
Rachel puts one hand—it's warm and small and soft—against Quinn's cheek, wiping away a few freezing tears. "I'm not mad."
"You're not?"
"Unless you have a really long list of girls you're going to keep telling me about or something."
Quinn shakes her head. "That's it."
One corner of Rachel's mouth lilts into a gentle smile. "Then I'm not mad."
"Promise?"
Rachel's lips are reassuring. "I promise."
Quinn takes Rachel's hand again. "And it was just Finn for you?"
Rachel nods. "Just Finn."
Quinn stands then, a little stiffly because of the cold, and grabs the Anthropologie bag with Santana's sweater in it from the ground. "I bet I'm going to be so much better," she whispers in Rachel's ear.
Rachel shivers, and Quinn grins because she's sure it has nothing to do with the cold.
.
Quinn paints her nails in an attempt not to bite them, but after a while she gives up and just takes the gold nail polish off, sitting in front of the TV and watching reruns of Breaking Bad while she absentmindedly chews her fingernails down to the quick.
Judy walks by with a basket of laundry and says, "Quinn, stop that," but it's gentle, and, for a moment, Quinn does.
But then she looks at her phone and it's already 9:32 pm and there's no text or call from Rachel, and so she resumes her nervous habit, eyes glued glassily to the screen.
Quinn doesn't even have to dream this time to come up with images of her skin flayed open and her organs exposed. This time Quinn thinks that maybe her bones would be glass too, and Rachel could touch one part of her—a rib, her femur, a vertebrae in her spine—and then the rest of her would shatter, tempered and designed, a chain reaction, into an innumerable number of little pieces like stars in the sky, and Quinn's blood would pool and collect inside her skin, and her organs would be unprotected from the brokenness of what was supposed to keep them safe.
It had, after all, happened before, she reasons.
And then, at 9:57, her phone dings. Rachel's text says: Can you come over now? I'm okay but I just really want to see you. I love you.
Quinn scrambles off the couch and shouts, "Mom!" while she gathers her phone from the floor and tugs on her boots, rushing to the hall closet and fighting to get her arm through the sleeve of her coat.
Judy walks down the stairs and helps Quinn put her other arm through the sleeve calmly, then takes her keys out of the bowl on the counter and heads towards the garage.
When Quinn says, "Go faster," under her breath, Judy smiles. She doesn't speed up, but Quinn realizes that for the first time in almost a year, she actually wants to be in a car. Or maybe it's just that she wants to be somewhere. To be. Alive, but also with Judy, and Rachel, and herself. She thinks that being is starting to fill the empty spaces between her ribs and spine, that the ghosts are floating away, just because there's no room anymore.
.
"When I told him that I'd never want to be with him again, he got sad," Rachel says, sniffling.
Quinn pulls on a pair of Rachel's sweatpants as quickly as possible—she's wearing reindeer underwear because she hadn't considered the very prominent likelihood that she'd spend the night at Rachel's and not want to sleep in her jeans—but Rachel doesn't seem to notice.
"And then?"
"He's Finn, you know." Rachel's eyes follow Quinn's arms this time as she lifts her sweater over her head.
Quinn puts one of Rachel's NYADA t-shirts on. "Yes, I know."
Rachel shrugs, staring at her clasped hands.
Quinn climbs up on Rachel's bed and crawls towards where Rachel's sitting. She situates herself against the pillows and then puts an arm around Rachel's head, guiding it gently so that Rachel's curled against her chest.
"So then he asked if it was because of him, and I said it was sort of, but mostly because of myself. My dreams were—are—bigger than his and that's not fair to either of us."
Rachel's hand starts rubbing little circles against Quinn's stomach, wrinkling up the shirt.
"And then he asked if there was someone else."
"What'd you tell him?"
"I almost lied, but then—" Rachel sits up and scoots so that's she's resting on her elbow. "I'm so proud to be with you."
Quinn smiles, kissing Rachel softly. "So you told him."
Rachel nods, snuggling again into Quinn's chest. "I told him that yes, there was someone else. And when he asked who, I told him it was you."
Quinn kisses the top of Rachel's head.
Rachel sighs. "And then he kind of got all red and stood up and then sat back down, and I thought he was going to stop breathing or something, but instead he just punched the table once."
"Did he touch you?" Quinn tries not to make her voice sound as scary as she's feeling.
Rachel shakes her head. "No, no, Quinn. Not at all. Just, he said that he needed to go but that he hoped I'd be happy."
Quinn smiles softly into Rachel's hair. "And are you?"
Rachel's hand snakes under the hem of Quinn's borrowed t-shirt. Quinn's breath catches and she closes her eyes. "I think I'll manage," Rachel says.
.
When Quinn dreams that night, small hands cup her heart and burn it, scald it.
But then those same small hands are soft as they peel away the layer of charred tissue to reveal fresh, raw, new muscle, slightly larger than the last.
Shiny and smooth, worn like sea glass, but loud, lyrics Quinn can't quite understand but knows anyway.
.
Quinn walks downstairs, Rachel right behind her, their hands together. Quinn's sure she's a mess—she always is in the morning, especially her hair—but Hiram beams when glances at them over the top of his newspaper.
"Good morning, girls," he says. "There's coffee."
Hiram goes back to his crossword and Rachel says, "Sit down," and motions towards a chair at a small, pretty table in their kitchen. Quinn glances at Hiram's crossword puzzle, reading the clues quickly, and Rachel places a cup of coffee—black—in front of Quinn before pulling out the chair next to her and then taking her hand.
"Fifteen across is 'Mimi,' from Puccini's aria," Quinn says, remembering an excited conversation Rachel had had with her on the phone after one of her theory classes.
Rachel looks at Quinn, happy and shocked.
"Believe it or not," Quinn says, "I actually listen to most of the things you say."
Hiram laughs. "She's a keeper, Rach."
Leroy nods in agreement and places a stack of pancakes down in the middle of the table, then distributes plates. Quinn watches him kiss the top of Rachel's head, and then he kisses the top of hers.
Her heart is taking up new room, she knows, ghosts evaporating like fading tide with each beat.
.
For Christmas, or Hanukkah, she writes everyone important—Judy, Frannie, Robert, Santana, Brittany, Rachel, Beth—their own short story, like she had for Hazel and David. They're all different, one of a kind, and they're simple, and they mean things she'd never be able to say without the help of narrative and characterization and emotional plot structures.
Mostly, though, they're about denouement.
She writes about reconciliation and redemption through her characters, and she thinks of scars when she does this, because marks are left, no matter what. Along spaces, mostly, where things break—spines, ribs, the palms of hands. Scar tissue, however, is the body's response to trauma. The body's resolution. Falling action. To build up defenses. To repair. To heal.
Each wrapped in a neat box, the only things bigger than the stories themselves are the people Quinn gives them away to. They're sort of like scars too: No matter how much they've hurt, they've ended up saving her a thousand different times.
...
references: um, stores? lol. okay so like all of quinn's wardrobe is from anthropologie on glee, and i know about all the lgbt stuff. their clothes are so cute though, and quinn wears them, so that's why that's there. also williams-sonoma and la province are stores i like, lol. i think that's it though.
...
references: um, stores? lol. okay so like all of quinn's wardrobe is from anthropologie on glee, and i know about all the lgbt stuff. their clothes are so cute though, and quinn wears them, so that's why that's there. also williams-sonoma and la province are stores i like, lol. i think that's it though.
