Disclaimer: I own nothing of Glee and everything related to it. Just borrowing Quinn and Rachel for a bit.
Spoilers: Flashback scenes from '2.04 - Duets' forward.
Quinn woke up to the vibrant sunshine streaming in through her bedroom window. It was full of hope and beauty and after hopping up out of bed and taking a peak out her window at the sun shining down her street; she knew she could do this. She knew she could be with Rachel. She knew she could be everything that she needed to be before she even thought about starting something that would last forever with the petite brunette. What she didn't know was how ready she didn't think she'd be when it came time to make that decision.
Quinn wondered about all the things that she and Rachel had experienced on their tense, then exceedingly passionate vacation together. She wondered about how fate had some miraculous part in their meeting on the other side of the world. The fact that they had both taken their vacations at the same time and in the same country with the same thing in mind, totally blew the lawyer's mind, no matter how hard she thought about it and the more she did think about it, the more she started to believe in serendipitous fate.
The longer the ex-cheerleader watched the morning slowly pass; she thought about the day that Rachel and she had parted ways through no fault of her own. As much as Rachel had said to Quinn that she had to be everything that Quinn deserved, Quinn knew instead that she had to be everything the songstress deserved. If there was one thing that she had learnt from her asshole of a father, it was that she had to strive to be the very best she could be before deserving everything she had ever wanted.
The blonde leaned gently against the window frame, half-secluded from the world outside as everything she thought about eventually moulded it's self into a one-sided pros and cons list. Everything she wanted with Rachel, the love, the passion, the one chance at her forever, their forever, was on the pros side. The only thing that weighed down the cons side was the fact that Rachel had broken her heart, obliterated it even, into several million tiny pieces, each of which had been meticulously glued back together with a lot of time and the love that still raged inside her soul for the singer: the love that she had always had for her, and despite the fact that it had taken so long for them to re-enter each other's lives, it still burned with a frivolous, flaming passion.
It had been an agonising 36 days since Quinn had watched Rachel's town car take off down the street from her sidewalk after being dropped home from the most fateful and amazing vacation of her life. She knew it was a long time to make someone wait, even though it had already been over seven years since that day at the train station, and that it was quite a big thing to ask of someone but Quinn knew that Rachel understood that she needed this for them to have any kind of a future together.
The more Quinn watched the world go by the more she thought about all the questions that she had been asking herself over the last few weeks;
Do I really want to do this?
Am I ready to be with the one person my heart has ever loved?
I am good enough for her? Is she good enough for me?
Do I trust myself?
As she thought about it some more, a young woman on her side of the street called out to another on the other side. She watched the woman cross the road and engulf the woman on her side of the street in a bone-crushing hug. The lawyer watched them stand there, basked in brilliant sunshine, just holding each other.
Quinn thought about turning away as she felt like she was interrupting something, but the women pulled apart only to capture each other in a breathtaking kiss. Quinn watched them just being with each other and it was at that moment that she felt exactly what those two women felt for each other:
Love.
And it was with this stolen moment on her sidewalk that she knew her answer.
Yes.
Quinn turned away from the beautiful scene below her with a smile on her face, marvelling at how beautiful it was to witness. The brilliance of the sunshine, combined with a clear morning and with people happily walking their dogs and playing with their children in the lush park nearby, was enough to make Quinn almost have an epiphany of some sort. She had discovered her answer to knowing what had wanted to do with being with Rachel, but she now knew she had no idea how to go about it. Quinn moved about her bedroom, making the bed and stripping her sleep shorts and singlet off as she went, throwing the clothes in her hamper near her bathroom door.
She walked into her bathroom in all her beautiful, naked glory and pulled open the shower screen, turning the taps on. She let the steam gradually fill the bathroom as she brushed her teeth and retied her hair up in a loose bun. She spat out her toothpaste and was rinsing her mouth as she caught her rib tattoo in the mirror.
She stood up and dried her face with a handtowel, placing it back on its ring. She turned slightly and held her left boob with her right hand, getting a good look at the eloquent script forever etched into her skin;
I'll keep a place in my heart – you'll see it shining through,
So please, find a way to my heart and I will follow you.
Now, I know you haven't made your mind up yet, but I will never do you wrong,
Because I knew, from the moment we met, no doubt in my mind, we belong.
Rereading the words that Rachel had written to her at the end of their senior year just confirmed her decision even more. It firmly cemented the 'yes' in her heart to wanting to be with Rachel. She knew that had finally found their way from being separately at Yale and NYADA and making names of themselves on the stage and in the court room and she knew it was time, despite the fact that she still had a shred of self-doubt, but Quinn knew that stemmed from being treated like she was never good enough for one Russell Fabray.
Washing her self-doubt down the sink with the remnants of her toothpaste, she opened up the screen and deciding that the water was hot enough to soothe her lithe body, she doused herself in the water letting it trickle down herself. She picked up the bottle of her favourite vanilla bean and caramel body wash and began cleansing herself, both literally and of all the things she had been worrying about. She thought about her tattoo and the meanings behind it, along with the letter that the songbird had written to her all those years ago. Quinn remembered how proud Rachel had predicted she'd be as she stood up there delivering her valedictorian speech at Yale, how much she knew that Rachel had said she needed it. They both needed it, no matter what each other thought and now that Quinn had finally smashed down her walls, the lawyer knew it was time as her hands glided over her tattoo.
Deciding that she was thoroughly cleansed both literally and metaphorically, Quinn turned the taps off, opened the screen and stepped out of her shower. She grabbed a towel and began to dry herself off, walking into the bedroom after deciding she was dry enough. She walked over to her closet door, opened it and walked inside.
The walls of the closet were lined with shoes, dresses, accessories and countless things that the stunning young lawyer could dress herself in. Despite that she had Marc, Karl, Coco and Christian amongst others living her closet and that it was cool enough in the morning even with the sun shining so brightly; she opted for black three-quarter yoga pants and a marle grey sloppy joe with black ballet flats. Pulling her pants on, she grabbed the three-quarter sleeved jumper and pulled it over her head, adjusting the fabric so it sat off her shoulder as she walked out her closet, closing the door behind her.
Quinn made her way downstairs to her open kitchen after dressing herself and fixing her hair up in a loose bun at the nape of her neck. She rubbed a kink out of her neck as she moved around the island bench to her fridge. She opened up the steel door and grabbed a carton of apple and guava juice out, swinging the door behind her as she closed it. The lawyer reached opened up a cupboard and pulled out a glass, pouring herself some juice and putting it back in the fridge. She grabbed a banana out of the fruit bowl and made her way out of the kitchen and into her office. A wall of books with a heavy door in the middle of it separated her working area from her open plan living area.
Countless books on conspiracy, law, religion, poetry, politics, classic literature, ancient history, mythology, murder and crime and even a few shelves full of fantasy and romance separated her profession from who the ex-cheerleader is as a person. Quinn had read somewhere once that if you didn't know someone, you could always tell what sort of person they were by what their bookshelves housed. What stories they read and reread to escape the mundane tasks of every day life. The characters they went back to, to relate to something that is happening in their reality. The plots and twists that make so much sense to that person and the things that have gone through.
By the amount of books that Quinn possessed, it was certain that she is an avid reader. Having a wall of books in her home that divided the two people she is made sense to her, as it was an in between for the two people she is: the fierce, passionate lawyer who stood her ground for justice and the whimsical, artistic soul with so much love for the world around her. Quinn perused her books, dragging a delicate finger tip along the spines of countless hard covers, as she decided what she was going to read that day.
Every Sunday Quinn would read, whether is was a old classic, a personal favourite or something new, she had a book in her hand one way or another. She got to her conspiracy section and her hand stopped on a large hard cover of Dan Brown's Inferno. She had read this a few times before, but something about his writing and conspired interpretation of Dante's works was what caught the passionate blonde's eye.
She pulled the book off the shelf and walked out of her office, stopping by her kitchen to put the glass in the sink along with her banana peel in her organic waste bin and graciously made her way over to her hallstand, picking up her keys, phone and a twenty dollar note from one of the rich mahogany drawers encased in the stand. She grabbed her glasses and sunglasses out of her briefcase she had left on there the day before and slipped the sunglasses on top of her head. She put her other valuables in her bag that she had taken off the hook of the stand and fished out her wallet, placing the twenty in there. Slinging her bag over her shoulder, with her book in her hand, she walked over to her front door, opening it, locking it and walking out with the gentle thud and click of the door following behind her.
The blonde finally reached the ground floor and made her way from the elevator out on to the sidewalk of her building. She saw the two women from an hour or two earlier and watched them walk down opposite sidewalk, hand in hand, with coffees in their free hands.
Coffee. Just what I need for this novel. The blonde mused to herself, taking off in the opposite direction down to the Black Sparrow café on the corner of the next block.
She opened the door of the café, walked up to the counter and placed her order. She turned around putting her wallet back into her shoulder bag and found herself a table. She sat down and got herself situated and thinking that before she got herself lost in her book, she'd better check her phone to see how loved she was that morning.
Fishing around in her bag for her Galaxy S4, she pulled it out, unlocked and pulled down her notification bar:
Three new txt messages, two new emails and a Facebook notification bleakly beamed up at from the screen.
She checked her emails; one from work regarding a meeting change and the other was junk. Reading the work email, she tapped out a reply and then deleted the spam. Moving on to her Facebook notification, she brought up the app and saw that Santana had posted on her wall;
Santana Lopez Quinn Fabray with Brittany S. Pierce
Hey bitchette, B and I have nuthin planned 4 this wknd comin up. Seeing as we neva ge anymore we shud totes catch up 4 dinner n a drink. Txt me and lemme know yeah? :) S x
43 minutes ago via mobile, near SoHo, New York City, New York
Brittany S. Pierce likes this.
Quinn let out a small chuckle and liked the post on her wall.
Closing the app, she moved onto her txt messages. She had three - one from Santana, one from Brittany and the other from Rachel;
'Santana: Oi bitch, chck yo' Facebook! I wanna know wat u rekn? S x'
'Brittany: Hey Q! Santana is getting reaaally impatience wit u and she sed no sxc times 'til u reply. So can u plz reply 2 her. I wanna sex her up :P - Brit x'
She hastily replied to her two best friends, not wanting to cop any form of abuse because Santana hadn't gotten off that morning.
She opened up Rachel's text message that simply read;
'It was too beautiful when I woke up to not say good morning to you today, so, 'Good Morning!' :) – R x'
A/N: 14 months later and I finally have the bug back for this story. To everyone who has read this, this is for you :) – K x