Author's note: So happy to be back! Merry Faberry everybody!
By the time Rachel comes back to the table Quinn is halfway through a glass of Sauternes and the bowl of sorbet she ordered for Rachel is threatening to become a bowl of fruit soup.
She's been gone that long.
Quinn has been tugging at her napkin and wondering how much stronger she'd need to be to pull it apart like it was made of paper. She never does this. She never fidgets. It has been so long since she has let herself.
She remembers the deportment classes her mother ran from home for a summer. Three people came and she knew them all well, of course – it wasn't so much a class, really, as an excuse to get out the good china and reflect on how the behavior of others could be improved.
Quinn was fourteen, and every Wednesday and Friday morning from 10:30 to 11:45 she sat quietly on the edge of her seat with her ankles crossed and her hands folded. She thought she was a model of composure, until one day the woman next to her leaned in and whispered to her to stop scrunching her toes in her sandals.
Her mother overheard. "It's a sign of weakness," she agreed, "Movement without purpose. A no-no. Excellent point, Candy."
She's on the edge of her seat now and her toes are scrunching like nobody's business. By the time she finally sees Rachel exiting the bathroom she's actually started hovering about the chair, wondering at what point it's fair to follow someone in there; at what point it's fair to assume that a dinner-type-friend has crawled out the window and legged it.
She frowns. Dinner-type-friend. She's not even sure Rachel's really the d – She interrupts herself uneasily. They always do that in the cartoons, she think, nodding idiotically as Rachel approaches at a cross between a shuffle and a run.
Quinn sips her drink, thinks Rachel could be a cartoon, and then she is there and buckling her shoe and looking up and smiling.
"Hi," she says brightly, and then "Ooooh," when she spies dessert. She almost knocks the waitress over when she stands up.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," she says excitably, and the waitress, says, "It's fine," in a muttered kind of way like it's probably not.
She picks up Rachel's napkin from the floor, walks away and returns a second later with a fresh one, which she places on her lap.
"Ohhh thank you," Rachel says, and she scoops a heaped spoonful of sorbet into her mouth with the same enthusiasm.
"It's fine," the waitress says again, and Quinn's eyes un-narrow a little because it seems sincere. Maybe she's just socially awkward. Maybe she's just accidentally rude to everyone.
Quinn sips her sweet wine, and in a faraway place she hears Rachel asking for another spoon.
"Oh no, it's okay," she interjects quickly, "that won't be necess – "
"Yes it will!" Rachel says cheerfully looking straight at her.
Quinn falters. "No, I…" she says, and then she nods and the waitress is on her way. She doesn't want to eat sorbet, but she realizes at the last moment that if she insists on not needing another spoon, Rachel may think she just wants to use hers, and then they'll be back in that awkward place where cutlery is hovering between them, and the sorbet will drip on the tablecloth, and Quinn will blush and Rachel won't have any idea why.
Neither will I, she thinks crossly, messily. Neither. Will. I.
"This is exactly what I needed!" Rachel exclaims, right before another heaped spoonful goes into her mouth, "It's so hot in here, I mean I was actually sweating into my shirt."
"Is it?" Quinn asks, then "Are you?" She tips her head to one side and her whole body relaxes. "I do feel warm," she observes.
"What you got there?" Rachel asks, nodding at her little glass.
Quinn smiles. "Sauternes. It's a dessert wine, basically. Sweet and sort of strong. You wanna try?"
She holds the glass out and its contents glimmer in the candlelight.
Rachel shakes her head, smiles, looks down at her sorbet and scoops another spoonful. "No, no," she says, "To be honest, my head's kind of…" she twirls her free hand around whilst eating, and then says around the mouthful, "…making… like… circles?"
Quinn smiles. "Your head is spinning," she says evenly. She takes another sip of her wine. She really does feel warm. And golden. And maybe her head is kind of making circles too.
She watches Rachel eat her sorbet and chug along merrily about how she thinks one of them is blackberry, but she knows one of them is raspberry, and raspberries are better than strawberries except that they get hurt easier, and…"
Quinn smiles again, or maybe she was still smiling. She drains the last of her wine. She thinks maybe it's okay. Maybe it's okay to just sit here and watch Rachel eat fruit soup and feel warm and golden and fond of her.
She thinks that just for tonight maybe it's okay to just be fond of Rachel – and let the rest – let it go.
She unfurls her hand from the stem of the glass and makes it loose on the table.
Let it go, she thinks.
Rachel says once she dressed up as a raspberry for Halloween, and Quinn's other hand makes a fist in her lap.
Rachel keeps dabbing at the corners of her mouth. She's not aware of much at the moment, but she is always aware of the ways sorbet or any similar dessert can get all over her face. Once she spent the whole back half of a date with Finn with a smear of mango on her chin and he didn't say a word. She remembers explaining to him the next day that it is imperative that he tell her these things, especially as one of these days she's going to be a celebrity, and this is exactly the kind of embarrassment the paparazzi line their pockets with. He said it didn't matter, she looked beautiful, with or without fruit on her face, and she smiled and kissed him and closed her eyes and remembered that wasn't the point.
She gulps water. The sorbet is sweet and the wine already had her thirsty. She's not sure how long it's been since she said something but she's pretty sure Quinn hasn't said a word since then, whenever it was.
And she looks… tired, maybe. Bored? Maybe? Rachel squints and holds her spoon aloft for no reason. It is not a magnifying glass, she reminds herself. But she can see from here that Quinn's eyes are heavy-lidded and she's biting her lip and looking at her glass like it's the Mona Lisa.
Rachel's never seen the Mona Lisa, but she's seen people looking at it in photographs.
She frowns and licks her lips thoroughly. She doesn't want to decide exactly how Quinn feels. She wants to just say she's calm – that's all. But Quinn is always calm – except when she's not, of course. And that's so rare, isn't it? It's hen's teeth, Rachel thinks, whatever on earth those are. The crying – the slapping – the out-of-control... Rachel thinks nobody in this room would dream Quinn was capable of any of that. She thinks people who've known her for years would swear she was a liar if she told them about the life and times of the two of them.
Maybe she does know Quinn after all, she thinks. Maybe the facts don't matter – the know and tells. The show and tell is what she has and maybe it's enough. Quinn has slapped her on prom night. Quinn has played a game of Monopoly with her that never ended. Surely, by anybody's standards, that makes them friends. Surely it makes them friends that if she ever plays Monopoly again, in a couple of months, or in twenty years, or when she's old and in a luxurious retirement home reflecting on her glorious career… she is sure she will pick the dog, and she is sure she will call it Rufus.
She smiles. "You know I always wanted a dog," she says, and Quinn looks up. "But my dad's allergic – well," she leans in, rolls her eyes, "He said he was allergic. Honestly what I think he had a problem with was the prospect of having to fend all its attempts at affection off with a lint brush." Her smile widens. She wonders if Quinn minds dogs – the kind of dogs that jump all over you without asking first – maybe she'll ask first – soon – she'll ask if Quinn minds dogs - she wonders if…
She's still talking while she wonders: "I remember hearing papa saying we could get a black dog if he was worried about his suit coats, and dad said not all of his suit coats were black, though, some were pastel, and then papa said how would he feel about getting a poodle or one of those things Paris Hilton has that looked like a plucked chicken, and dad just looked at him." She chuckles, shakes her head. "He said, 'Hiram, we are not a stereotype.'" She closes her eyes, drops her spoon and clutches her chest. "God, I really miss them," she says.
Quinn smiles. She almost asks why Rachel didn't take the weekend to go home then,but stops herself just in time. Instead she says, "My dad was the same. Although he blamed it on the fact that we took too many vacations overseas." She makes air-quotes. "'It's not fair to a pup.' He was probably right."
She feels a sadness creeping over her all of a sudden, and then just as suddenly it's not creeping anymore, it's running all over the place, and she's running with it, she's saying, "My friend growing up – one of my friends – he had two dogs that used to sleep in the bed with him. I used to spend a lot of time round his place, when my mom didn't..." She stops running. Now is not the time to hash out the issues between her mother and her best friend who was a boy and gave her a GI-Joe for Christmas. "… have me doing chores or homework or whatever," she finishes hastily, thinking as she does how she never did have the guts to tell her she'd asked for it – her mother – the GI-Joe.
Rachel's nodding and saying, "See now I didn't even have any friends with dogs! Or, you know, any friends at all, really, but that's another matter." She's eating her sorbet and she's thinking she's sure Quinn almost told her a secret – she's thinking even if Quinn told her a thousand secrets after tonight she'd never know if it was the right one – this one – that one - the one she almost got.
"I'm sure you did," Quinn is protesting. She knows Rachel isn't the type of girl who would have been a popular as a kid. She isn't the kind of girl who will ever be popular, most likely, no matter how many people will beg, borrow and steal to see her sing. But she can't imagine that once upon a time there wasn't some little girl – or boy - who adored the things that others decried.
Rachel frowns, and shakes her head dismissively. "I was quite alienating, even as a child. I like to think it makes me special."
"Maybe it does," Quinn agrees, and when Rachel laughs she wonders if it was meant to be a joke.
"Anyway, I was fine," Rachel says, with her head held high and something like a pout, "I didn't need anybody. I had Fred and Audrey."
"Astaire and Hepburn?" Quinn asks.
"Correct," Rachel says, and she reaches across the table and pats Quinn's hand about it. "They had funny faces! But they were hermit crabs, you know, so they couldn't really dance that well. Or sing. But that was okay, because I would do the singing, and let's face it, I've always liked it better that way."
Quinn has closed her eyes. She's laughing when she opens them. "I'm sorry?" she asks "Hermit crabs?"
"Yes!" Rachel says, "They don't shed, you see. Or do much of anything at all." She grins. Quinn downs what's left of her golden stuff Rachel can't remember the name of. She thinks she'll ask her how she feels about hermit crabs – really – the unvarnished truth, Quinn, she will say, hermit crabs, yes? No? Maybe you just haven't met the right -
The extra spoon arrives and all the sorbet is gone. Rachel is crestfallen and covers her mouth, Quinn keeps shaking her head, and it's as though the two of them are having the conversation without words – the one that goes 'Oh my god, I ate all the sorbet, I am such a dope, I'm gonna order more, let me order more? Or do you want something else? Wait why didn't you get any dessert?' and is peppered with protestations from Quinn about how she didn't want any, it's okay, stop fussing, Rachel, it's fine, really, stop.
And so she does, and they get their coats even though Rachel says it's so hot and Quinn agrees again that yes, she does feel warm, and they head for the door – Quinn stalks, Rachel potters – and when they push it open – the two of them at once, Rachel with an oof sound, Quinn looking behind her and smiling at the maître d' – it's cold.
Rachel as good as shrieks, and wraps her coat quickly around her shoulders. "What happened?" she asks Quinn, and Quinn smiles.
"You'll get used to it," she says, slipping her own jacket on. She smooths her hair and finds several pins come out in her hands. She should probably just leave it alone, but she can't help trying to fix it, without a mirror, walking down the street, and quite frankly, a little drunk. Distantly she hears a pin clatter to the sidewalk. "It's like a cold shower in summer," she says around the one in her mouth. "Eventually it feels good."
"I've never taken a cold shower in my life," Rachel says proudly. Quinn's not sure why, but she laughs, and laughs. They've been walking for about a minute when Rachel suddenly turns and grabs her, eyes wide, mouth open. "Quinn!" she squeals. "Did we just dine and dash? Oh my god I think we just dined and dashed."
She starts running back the way they came, pulling her purse out of her bag and notes out of her purse, calling anxiously to Quinn over her shoulder, "Do you hear sirens?" and "I have never dined and dashed in my life," and by the time Quinn can catch up with her and get to stop, she's actually started crying.
Quinn covers her mouth with her hand, steadies Rachel with her other hand. "It's okay," she says, "I got the check when you were in the bathroom taking a vacation."
"Oh…" Rachel says, and "Oh thank god." She wipes the tears that have fallen away quickly and smiles sheepishly. "I'm scared of police officers, Quinn," she confides. "You know how I stole that fake dollar bill?" She laughs a little, then out of nowhere, like someone said something funny, she starts laughing again in earnest. "My dads found out – to this day I have no clue how – and they decided to teach me a lesson about – their exact words – "the grand consequences of petty crime". So they got their friend Barry to come around in his uniform and give me an official caution – except Barry wasn't actually a cop, you know, I think he just had the costume from Halloween or…" - she covers her eyes and grins – "something. Anyway, I knew he was Barry because he and his partner Simon were like, my dads' best friends and came over every other week for dinner, but they kept telling me it wasn't Barry, and then of course I started crying, not because I was in trouble so much as because I'd known this man since I was three and I was sure he was Barry. And anyway, then my other dad – the sensible one – he came in from the kitchen and was all "This has gone far enough." So they started arguing back and forth and then one of them said they were going to call the actual cops, and one way or another, by the end of all of that… I'm scared of police officers, Quinn."
Rachel smiles, nudges a silent Quinn. They've been walking while she's been talking; she can't have fallen asleep on her.
"Sorry…" Quinn says, but she doesn't sound it.
She doesn't feel it.
What she does feel is sleepy and self-indulgent and unaware. She thinks: it's like it's easy to pretend she isn't where she is, like it's easy to pretend she isn't with Rachel at all – only watching her – only listening to her long, little stories – like the way you sit in a movie theatre surrounded by people and you all pretend you're all alone.
Quinn frowns. Unless you're up the back making out. But she's never been that kind of girl – there's something tawdry about paying to make out, even if you're not paying the –
Rachel's telling her another story and she missed the start. She's thrusting wads of cash at her and saying "Quinn! Quinn!"
"What?" she says, pausing to grab a twenty dollar bill before it blows away. She shoves it quickly back into Rachel's accidentally open palm. "No, no, no, it's fine, Rachel, it was my treat."
Rachel shakes her head and says some more things Quinn misses while she's taking her money and shoving it back into her purse. "But!" Rachel says, and "But!" and then she says, "You can't pay! It's not like we're on a date! Oh my god, I bet they think we were on a date. They must be thinking we were on a date?"
Quinn snorts. "Relax, Rachel," she says, "What they think if they think anything at all is probably…" - she slips a ten dollar bill into Rachel's coat pocket, Rachel slips a twenty into hers. – "exactly what's happening right now."
"What do you mean?" Rachel asks distractedly, anxiously collecting the coins she tried to get into Quinn's hand from the sidewalk.
"You," Quinn says, "Giving me money." She crouches down and helps her, snatches her purse and diligently drops the coins in.
"Yes," Rachel wails, tipping the coins out, realizing her mistake, tipping them back in along with her mascara, three old subway tickets, a tissue and a packet of mints. "But you're not taking it."
They're walking again in no time. Or Quinn is walking and Rachel is hurrying. She casts a sidelong glance her way and thinks it's strange, she has the exact same look on her face she had when she came back from not-a-meeting last night.
Guilty, Rachel thinks, how does that work when I'm the one eating for free?
She tells herself No, no, she is not going to decide what Quinn is feeling. She catches up at a run, pulls out the dollar bill that has somehow found its way into her shirt and throws it at Quinn.
"Take it!" she says, with what she knows is exaggerated vehemence.
Quinn squeals, laughs, runs, leaves the dollar to the wind – she can let her lose that much in the name of fun. "Stop throwing your fake dollar bills at me, Rachel!" she exclaims breathlessly, and Rachel's about to protest that her dollar bills are not fake, thank you, but instead she clutches her side and says "Stop! Stop! I think I'm having a heart attack," and Quinn doesn't stop laughing, but she does shuffle quickly back to where she is.
Quinn laughs. She wants to check Rachel's pulse. Or tell her she's being silly. Or ask if she's never had a stitch before. Or make fun of her for being drunk on a thimbleful of wine. She wants to do everything at the same time, and she does nothing except stand still and check her giggles and say, when she has them checked, "Are you okay?"
"Yeah," Rachel says, and she seems serious – suddenly solemn again, and she opens her mouth and closes it and opens it again and just before she can speak Quinn says soberly "You know, my dad is a drunk"
"Really?" Rachel asks weakly, and Quinn looks down at the ground beneath her feet.
"For a while," she says, carefully, like you walk in a straight line for the cops, gingerly, like you walk the plank for pirates, "For a while I thought he turned into a drunk because he was so depressed – because mom threw him out – because of me." She swallows, lifts her head slowly. Rachel might be holding her breath. She looks unnaturally still. Quinn smiles and her shoulders sag. She says, "But then I looked back and I realized… no… he was always a drunk… more or less." She shrugs. "And my mom kind of was too."
"Really?" Rachel says again. Quinn's half turned around, ready to keep walking, but Rachel is still not moving.
Quinn nods and takes a step. She's thinking of what she said earlier today about scrabble and how it always ends in tears. It was meant to be a joke – and Rachel laughed – and Quinn was glad. But thinking about it now it was also a matter of fact. Scrabble always did end in tears for the Fabray family.
It was never long before the dictionary came out and the whiskey came with it. Her dad and her sister would always – always – argue over whether something like 'shiraz' was a word – "An American word," her father would say in something like a snarl, and Frannie would snarl right back and call him a xenophobe, and Quinn would spend the whole afternoon trying to make little teeny tiny words no one would notice, and her mom would say, over and over, to nobody, as though she had long ago learned not to expect an answer: "When is it my turn?"
Quinn smiles to herself. Rachel's saying something like "That must be really difficult," and Quinn interrupts her a full second before she realizes it's rude. "My mom's tee-total now though,' she says, and then softly, "Sorry."
Rachel shakes her head like No, please, and Quinn continues. "Ever since she let me come back home. Ever since he left. She doesn't touch alcohol." Quinn smiles, nods back the way they came. "Not so much as a glass of wine with dinner," she says.
Rachel swallows and sways. She's not sure if this is the kind of thing she wanted to know. Or rather she's not sure if it's the kind of thing Quinn wants her to know. Maybe she'll be sorry in the morning. Maybe she'll say the wrong thing before she can change the subject and Quinn will hate her forever –again – just like she used to before they were friends.
"Good for her," Rachel says, awkwardly.
"Good for her," Quinn echoes, like it wasn't awkward at all. And then she says, "What you told me about Shelby and Puck. How I should be angry. If I'm honest…"
She waits for a long time. Then she shakes her head, keeps walking.
"If you're honest?" Rachel prompts from behind her, just when Quinn's started thinking maybe she won't be.
Two confessions in one day. She is not used to this.
She sighs, stands still, sets off. "If I'm honest, I was never really angry about that because I was too busy being angry about everything else." She glances back at Rachel, puts her hands in her jacket pockets as she does. "I was just looking for an excuse."
Rachel nods. She puts her hands in her pockets too. "And then you found one."
"And then you ruined it for me," Quinn says, smiling.
"Sorry 'bout that," Rachel says, smiling back.
Quinn doesn't see. She's watching the ground beneath her feet again.
They're walking very slowly now. Rachel thinks it's okay. Quinn thinks it's okay, too. If they miss this bus there are still three more to go. If they miss those they can sleep under the stars.
She smiles. She bargains down. We can call a cab. And just when she's about to try to hail one in an empty street, Rachel asks "Do you miss Beth?"
Quinn thinks – or tries to think. It's hard with the better part of a bottle of wine and then some in you. Eventually she shrugs and says "It's hard to miss someone you never really had."
She snorts, kicks at a twig, nearly stumbles, rights herself expertly. "I mean apart from in the way with the screaming and the panting and the taking the lord's name in vain."
Rachel laughs lightly. "Right," she says. And then they're not walking anymore, because she touches Quinn's shoulder and says "You know I wish I'd been there for that – to help you with the screaming and panting."
Quinn laughs. Not lightly. Loudly. For a second she's worried there will be saliva. "I'm sorry," she's saying, her hand over her mouth, her body convulsing. "It was just the way you said it. You were so serious and I just – I just – I – "
She's actually cackling – the way Rachel sometimes used to cackle in Glee when they were up past ten o'clock and she was hopped up on twizzlers and ambition. "I just," she wheezes.
"Don't laugh at me," Rachel protests, laughing a little herself. "You're not supposed to laugh!"
Quinn's sorry, maybe, but she's not even trying to stop. It's the most freeing thing, laughing like this. She feels like her insides have fallen apart and there's no need to put anything back together, at least not until tomorrow.
Rachel whines good-naturedly, and Quinn can barely hear her above the blood rushing to her head, but she thinks amid the drawled Stoooooops and Doooooon'ts there's something like Everybody's always laughing at me, and she says, recklessly, still on the verge of further cackles "Who?! I'll beat them up!"
"No you woooooon't," Rachel says, still stretching her o's out.
Quinn makes a sound like What would you know, and says "Have you even seen my guns?"
"Oh my god, you won't shoot anybody," Rachel scoffs.
Quinn says "What?!" and she's not quite sure what happened, but she's grabbing Rachel before she hits the sidewalk.
She holds onto her until they've both stopped wobbling, says "Bend your knees more," asks, "Have you ever been skiing?"
"It's a lot drunker outside," Rachel replies.
Quinn smiles, swallows, sighs, plots a straight line in front of them. "You're always a lot more drunk when you let yourself be drunk," she says. "It's crazy how long you can stay on the edge… how fast you fall when you jump in..."
Rachel's not listening. "Everybody laughs at me on the inside," she says, as seriously as you can say things when you're small and inebriated and wearing mary janes and have coins in the sleeve of your cardigan somehow, and in your bra, somehow. She sighs. "Everybody will laugh on Monday when I sing."
She grabs Quinn's arm for support or to make a point, Quinn's not sure, and neither is she. "Do you think I overdo it?" she asks anxiously, "Leanne says I overdo it. One time I said I'm just being myself and she said I was overdoing that especially."
"Leanne is a horrible idiot," Quinn says bluntly, and as she says it she thinks she can remember, in a land far, far away, further than the sidewalk, further than the other side of a little table, she thinks she can remember telling Rachel she should try to be less like Rachel. She thinks she can remember almost everyone in Glee club saying something to that effect at some point in one way or another.
She thinks she probably said it more than once.
Quinn pulls together again – squeezes tight – her whole body is a fist for a second or two or however many it takes till Rachel is twenty feet ahead.
She runs to catch up. She's shivering now. It really is cold, even if she only remembers that in pinpricks the size of moments – no, moments the size of pinpricks – whatever – that's not the point - the point is she feels warm – the point is she should have worn the sensible jacket instead of the pretty one – the point is –
"You're the top, Rachel," Quinn calls out, before she has thought – before she has caught her breath – before she has even made it all the way to where she is - and Rachel turns around with a furrowed brow.
"You know," Quinn smiles, forgets to check if the street is still empty, sings, out loud: "You're the top! You're a turkey dinner!"
Rachel beams. The response is immediate. It cannot be contained, and she can't see any reason why she would contain it if she could.
Quinn is feeling that feeling again - the Julie-Anne and the twinkie feeling – warm – allowed – let in – wanted.
Rachel takes two syncopated steps backwards – forwards - whatever you want to call it. "It's sublime," she corrects. "I'm sublime, if I'm the dinner."
"You're sublime," Quinn concedes quickly. She feels her face flush. She wrinkles her nose. She remembers the enormous steak she almost ordered, the fish that was smaller and less bloody, but just as dead and just as alive once. "You're the time of a Derby winner," she says apologetically.
Rachel grins, ducks her head, says "I could be the turkey's dinner next time. Like… grain. And Worms?" She turns, all the way back around, says "The bus stop still looks so tiny and yellow. Like in a dollhouse. Like in a doll town."
She starts walking again and Quinn follows.
I'm a toy balloon that's fated soon to pop.
Not out loud – only on the inside – only small – only by the way.
But if baby I'm the bottom you're the top.