A/N Ratings and disclaimers from Chapter One apply.

"Okay! I say we move to the friendship/physical attraction part of this conversation."

"You're the boss. You first."

Rachel grinned, "I love hearing that."

"That's a shocker."

Rachel tapped Quinn's knee, "Watch that mouth, baby."

"You know what? Finn and Puckerman and Sam have tried calling me baby or babe and they've always gotten an elbow in the ribs. But you say it and I just want you to say it again."

Rachel shrugged, "I guess I just got it like that."

"You certainly do."

Quinn watched Rachel's face change into serious!Rachel mode and she felt her stomach flutter.

"Alright Quinn. In less than 24 hours I've thrown up on you and broken your foot and you haven't batted an eyelash when usually if I'm only nominally near you in the hall at school, you find it offensive. That's why I said I was actually grateful to have heard what your best friend of sorts had to say about your feelings toward me. It helped quell my anxiety…well maybe just a bit, about your disclosure."

Quinn smiled, "That's Santana for you—a good deed every day."

Rachel rolled her eyes, "Let's talk about the sexuality of this situation. Obviously…"

"Talk? You realize this is a monologue, don't you? Not a dialogue. Since I'm not actually talking?"

Rachel stared at Quinn, who only looked fondly amused. She felt a sharp tug at her heart because she'd always wanted someone to play with and found she really liked it. "You'll have your turn, Ms. Fabray."

"Damn. Back to Fabray? Back in the doghouse."

"Yes, and back to the subject. Actually this is a serious one for you and for me."

"I'm sorry. I'm listening."

"You've identified yourself as gay to me. Is that how you really feel or are you just as Santana put it 'gay for Berry?'"

"I've liked boys. I've dated boys. I've even had sex with one boy. But I've never had romantic or sexual feelings for any of them. Ever. I have them for you. I notice other girls but I haven't had feelings for any of them because evidently my time's been taken up with you."

Rachel nodded. "In the interest of mutual disclosure, I know that I'm fully at least bisexual. I like boys and am generally sexually attracted to boys, at least in the abstract. But I can't say I've been actually sexually attracted to any boy I've kissed except perhaps, and I'm sorry, Noah."

"Okay. Just eww."

"If you remember I did preface that admission with an apology."

"No problem. He is a hot guy, if you're into that, and I'm not."

Rachel took a very deep breath, "I've been honest enough with myself to know I've been physically attracted to girls and specifically to you for years, Quinn. Let me quickly remind you that's not love. I think that's why all the Rupaul, manhands, treasure trail comments have stung me so badly."

Quinn frowned at this as Rachel continued, "I thought you could see it in my eyes or somehow sense it and you were disgusted and throwing it back in my face."

"Honestly, I think I was too busy projecting my own feelings onto you to do that but maybe you're a little bit right."

"So, that's that—an answer to one question I'm sure you had."

"Thank you."

"Now, about friendship."

"You're all over the map with your plan, Rachel."

"Thank you for the alert and I realize that. This is more complicated in action than I foresaw."

"It's not a criticism—you're doing great."

Rachel huffed, "Thank you again but do you realize you're fairly incapable of keeping quiet?"

"As you well know, I can be as silent and cold as an iceberg. It's just so tempting to talk to you now that we're actually talking that I'm finding it hard to help myself."

"That's a very nice sentiment but as you said yourself I'm in a bit of a monologue here and you're throwing me farther off my plan."

Quinn lifted both hands in surrender.

"Would you agree that our tally so far is that we've apologized and forgiven each other for past misdeeds and thoughts, expressed an interest in forming a friendship and expressed a mutual physical attraction?"

Quinn nodded.

"Now you can speak."

"Yes, that sums it up."

"Good. You're going to have to listen to this next part very carefully and do me the courtesy of not throwing your emotional walls up immediately because some of this is undoubtedly going to be hard for you to hear."

Quinn swallowed hard and visibly and hugged the throw pillow on her chest.

"I'm very serious. Don't speak until I say you can. Will you honor the fact that you should listen and really try to hear what I have to say to you? I've forgiven you but I believe you owe me that. And I want you to look me in the eyes while I say this, okay?

Quinn nodded although her eyes were beginning to swim with tears.

Rachel paused at the sight before shaking her head and looking resolutely at the girl in front of her. "You might find it interesting to know that I consider you to be, outside my family, the most important person in my life. That's because we've been in an intense, long-term and extremely committed relationship for ten years. A relationship between a primary abuser and her primary victim."

Quinn's tears fell. Both she and Rachel ignored them.

"Even though I've never hated you and actually have always felt a distant sort of fondness for you, for whatever physical or emotionally masochistic reasons, that's been our only true relationship, Quinn. Abuser and victim. Now you want to change it. And God knows how much I've wanted to change it for so many years. How many times have I asked you? Do you know how frightening it was for me even to approach you? To actually speak to you without being spoken to? How every time my hands were cold and I was literally scared spitless and I still tried? Even and especially when you were pregnant and were getting your first taste of slushies. I thought surely now—but no. Every time I was shot down. Back to manhands. And now you know I knew I felt something for you so please imagine how that felt."

Quinn's tears were running now and her nose was, too, but she continued to focus on Rachel.

Rachel looked at her for a long few moments, sat up, leaned over Quinn and pulled two tissues out of a box on her nightstand. She wiped Quinn's tears, then softly placed it over the girl's nose, "Blow."

Quinn complied, Rachel wiped her nose, then handed her the other tissue. She sat back in her original position.

"That said, of course I'll be friends with you. That's all I've ever wanted. You started the war. I would have gratefully—you can't imagine how gratefully—settled for peace. A peaceful coexistence but of course I would always have and still want more. So yes, emphatically yes to friendship. Okay?"

Quinn nodded.

"Now for the harder part and I'm sorry. I feel your sincerity when you say you have romantic feelings for me and I know I need to tell you how I feel. You really need to listen to all of this. Do you understand?"

Quinn dabbed at her eyes and nodded again.

"What I feel when I think about a friendship with you isn't happiness. I can't and won't get my hopes up to happy around you yet because that would just be stupid of me. I only feel relief. Someone who's been painfully twisting my arm just agreed to stop. I'm sorry to say that but it's truthfully how it feels for me."

She put her hand on the girl's cast, "My physical attraction notwithstanding, I have no romantic feelings for you, Quinn. None. When I look at you I feel that distant affection I've always felt and a sort of dazzled girl-crush feeling but crush describes it. When I see you, I feel the crush of the primary emotions I associate with you, which are anxiety, insecurity and fear. They don't add up to romance for me."

Quinn didn't speak but she was still crying without sound and began to lightly knock her head on the pillows behind her.

"What I need from you, Quinn, is consistency—I need a consistent friend. And I'm not saying by any means, given our physical and emotional feelings, if we develop a real friendship that it might not lead to more. I don't know if it will or won't but I'm not ruling it out. I'm saying yes to friendship, no to romance now but maybe to the future. A very, very firm maybe, which you need to understand means maybe yes or maybe no. We have to work on being friends. If you hit a person for ten years, and frankly sometimes I'd have preferred that, you don't just get to say 'sorry' and raise your arm and not expect the person to flinch. You created this reflex in me, Quinn. You did it and if you want to be friends with me we'll have to work together to remove it."

Quinn nodded again, chose the moment to use her tissue on her nose but not her eyes, and continued to look at Rachel, who took her hand. "This will be a big adjustment for both of us, baby. We need to work on it and I'm completely willing to. Now I need to say one more very, very important thing to you, okay?"

Quinn squeezed her hand.

"I'm a very tactile…affectionate person. If you're my friend I want to be able to hug you or hold your hand watching a movie or even cuddle a little. I've never actually done it because I don't have friends and with boyfriends it leads to trouble but I imagine that's what I'd want to do. Is that something that you could tolerate with me, considering your deeper feelings?"

Quinn wiped her eyes and nodded vigorously.

Rachel smiled. "That's why I have to tell you something important, okay? And now you can talk."

Quinn jokingly opened her mouth three times as if testing her jaw, "Jesus—that was killing me."

"Be serious, because I'm really going to be vulnerable with you now, okay?"

The girl gripped Rachel's hand and said, "Absolutely. Anything, Rachel."

"I don't want to kiss you, Quinn. And I don't want to have sex with you. I'm telling you this because I would do both. It would be so easy for you to seduce me that it's not really funny to me. It's a little bit terrifying. So please understand you need to help me and keep us both out of any situation that might lend itself to sex."

Quinn really had nothing to say to that but, "O-kay?"

"Almost glib, Quinn, but not quite. I mean our relationship is so intense and so loaded with mixed messages we're both sending each other, you could kiss me now or put us in a situation where it'd be reasonable to kiss and in fifteen minutes I wouldn't be a virgin anymore. I know that about us. And what I'm saying is I'd do it and it would be completely consensual physically but it would be entirely non-consensual for me emotionally. I know you understand how important that difference is."

Rachel's eyes were soft, earnest and frightened.

"Of course I do, Rachel."

"I promise I'll verbally tell you if I'm ready for those activities. But until I say those words, please protect me, like you did last night, from you and mostly from myself."

"On my life, I promise. Friend hug?"

Rachel leaned forward and, as Quinn wrapped her arms around her, decided that life was decidedly looking up.

When she resumed her position and saw Quinn's swollen eyes, she asked, "Was I too mean to you?"

"No, sweetheart. You told me the truth and it hurt like hell but it was sort of good. You told me things I needed to hear and told me to take it without closing down and I did. It's nice to know I can take it because that was worse, actually, than when Dad kicked me out of the house. You kick like a mule, Berry."

"So I'm Berry now?"

"No. Only when I'm comparing you to a mule. Which I never would by the way except I just did. And when, exactly, do we get to this cuddling part?"

"Pig." Rachel said as she smiled at Quinn and left the bed with a wild airy relief…because everything was unbelievably okay and that made her feel like…like…what…like a hot air balloon lifting into the sky named Rachel Barbra Berry.

"We've both learned from the best," Quinn said as she lowered her voice, "Burn, baby mama," and she yawned as she said, "you're one hot Jew."

Rachel laughed as she stood by the bed, "You're better than Noah at that, just so you know. Now, I hate to break this party up but I think I should go do my punishment now, while I'm feeling happy. You can take a nap up here if you want. You've been traumatized, put on pain-killers and forced into deep discussions in a matter of hours."

Quinn ignored most of this, "What's the punishment?"

"Hand-washing our sweaters and towels from last night."

She yawned again. "Whoa. For gay men, they're pretty butch with the punishment."

"I know, right?"

"I can help.

"No you can't. Your leg needs rest and elevation."

Rachel pulled the pillows from behind Quinn's head and helped her adjust herself on the bed and placed pillow under her cast, then knelt by the bed.

"I'll promise you something I probably shouldn't, okay? "

Quinn nodded on her pillow.

"Until we figure out what we really are, I promise you I won't accept a date from anyone, okay? I don't want you to feel insecure about me. Until we understand what we are, I want you to know you're my main focus."

"Really?"

"Really—and you don't get to date anyone either. We have to work on this together, okay?"

"That sounds great," Quinn said as her eye began to lose focus. "So we're exclusively not-dating?"

"Yes. Now go to sleep"

Quinn pouted even as her eyes closed and she murmured, "You won't be with me."

"No, but I promise I'll come up after and take a little nap with you."

"Really?"

"Yes, really."

"But I'll be asleep and I won't know."

Rachel rocked a little in place before she said, "But you'll sleep knowing there's someone who will always come back to you and for you."

"Rachel."

"Sleep."

Rachel washed the sweaters and towels with the full sense of disgusted horror she knew her parents had intended. It was, she knew, not enough to put her off drinking for life but definitely enough to put her off drinking too much. And eating spinach dip and carrots for the time being, which was a shame because it was one of her favorite snacks.

She led her fathers into the laundry room to show them she'd done her best and asked, "Should I give them a wash? I've done my best and we'll see."

Jacob nodded, "Might as well try but no chance with your sweaters. The towels will come out okay I think."

"My thoughts exactly," she said as she loaded them into the washing machine and started it.

She finished and hugged both of her fathers, "I'm very sorry to have disappointed you."

"We're good, baby—just watch yourself with alcohol and no more slamming doors."

She grimaced, "I've learned my lesson, believe me. If you don't mind, I might go join Quinn in a nap. Making a fool of myself, throwing up on someone, having a hangover, fracturing her foot and having a long overdue conversation as tasks within 24 hours are quite enervating."

"Speaking of, how'd your conversation go?"

Rachel looked from her daddy to her dad, who seemed to be waiting for more of an answer than she could imagine they'd be asking. "We're going to work on being friends. That's the best I can accept at the moment. Would you wake us for dinner?"

"Will do," Eric said.