A/N: This is not an official update to the story. It is more of a flashback to before the story began. Something was bugging me about the first chapter's past segment where Rachel and Quinn meet back up. I thought they needed more background than what was provided there so now I am giving it. Thanks for the reviews and comments. Always much appreciated.

I Hope that I Don't Fall in Love With You

INTERLUDES (QUINN)

"Hey, your name is Quinn, right?"

Quinn looked up from the book she was reading and towards the stranger who had just sat down in front of her. "Do I know you?"

"Not so much," he answered. "We're in the same English course. You sit all the way up front. I sit all the way in the back." He leaned further in. "This ringin' any bells for ya?"

"Should it?" She asked. Already, she was done with the conversation. She felt no need to socialize with her peers while they sat in the hallway waiting for the lecture hall to empty so that they could enter.

"Okay, so you're not all with the warm and fuzzies, I get that." He cleared his throat. "I'm not hitting on you, if that's what you're concerned about."

Quinn pulled her headphones from her ears and then laid down her book. "Do I look concerned?"

"No," he drew out the word, "but you are making me nervous."

Quinn raised her eyebrow. "If I'm making you nervous then why don't you go away?"

He chuckled. "On the 'being approachable' scale you rate a negative ten."

"Then why are you still talking?" She has been pulled into the intrigue his appearance generated. No one approached her. No one tried to talk to her. She'd built a wall between her and the world. It had protected her well the last few years of her life.

"On Tuesday you sat out here with your headphones shoved in your ears and a book in front of you, and I couldn't get you out of my mind." He confessed.

She smirked. "I thought you said you weren't hitting on me."

"I'm not," he smiled. "I'm propositioning you."

She pulled back, her eyes widened. "Excuse me?"

"Okay, that sounded weird," he held up his hands. "I can admit that, but I'm a producer."

She crossed her arms in front of her. "I think you'll want to try this again."

"Not for a porno," he quickly defended. "No, nothing like that. I want you for a web series."

"You realize that doesn't sound much better, right?" She was completely committed to the conversation now and intent on seeing it to its end.

He dipped his head, having been caught in another conversational misstep. "You make a fair and valid point," he admitted. "Will you accept a do-over?"

She softly laughed. "Why don't I take the lead this time?"

"Go for it," he happily agreed.

"Okay." She sat up straighter and then offered out her hand. "My name is Quinn Fabray."

He wiped his hand on his jeans before he reached out and gripped her hand in his. "Alex Latiolais. Nice to meet you."

"You want to go get a cup of coffee?" She asked as she released his hand.

He looked around. The lecture hall had emptied and their classmates were already rushing into the vacated room. "You ever skip a class before?"

"Why do you ask?" She gathered her bag and her book. "Do I not look like a girl who skips class?" She looked back to him. "Do you think I'm not your average college student?"

"I don't know." He shrugged. "You seem like some kind of poster of a girl, hardly real at all."

"And that's why you want me to be in your web series?" She deciphered.

"There's something big happening behind those brown eyes." He reached over to take her bag, but she didn't allow him the chivalrous moment.

"Okay," she decided, "you buy me a cup of coffee and I'll do your web series."

"Right on." He kept his voice calm, not wanting to scare away the treasure he had just won. "So where are you from?"

"Nothing and Nowhere," she answered.

"Oh," he shoved his hands in his front pockets, "I'm from Louisiana."

"You have an accent," she pointed out. "It's different. Most people here seem to want to be anyone else in the world but themselves. It's probably because they're trying to reinvent themselves from high school."

He wisely decided not to point out that she was part of 'most people'. "I think most places are like that."

They finally started to walk towards the exit, Quinn was leading the way. "I knew a girl once; she never hid anything about herself. It drove me crazy."

"I once knew a guy who could recite the alphabet backwards while drunk." He kept pace with Quinn. "It was the freakiest thing since the boy was halfway illiterate."

She stopped walking. "What?"

"It's true," he kept walking. "We called him Drunk Alph."

She shook her head, and then started walking again. "Rachel," she said once she caught up to him, "her name was Rachel Berry."

"The name sounds familiar."

"She's on Broadway now."

"Do you think you can get her to be in the web series, too?" he selfishly asked.

"I don't have her number anymore," she almost sounded regretful. "Besides, we've never really been friends."

"What if I write a script about you and her?" He freed his hands from his pockets. "What if the web series is based on it?"

"That's a big what if." She contemplated the proposal.

"It'll be awesome," he got lost in his own thoughts. "It'll be like a mirror thing. Two set ups. One apartment. Two people in the same body."

"Berry and I are nothing alike," Quinn crashed his creative flow.

"Yeah," he sighed, "it'll be awesome." He ignored her. "The big reveal in the end is that these two enemies share the same body, the same lives, the same desires…awesome."

"You're not listening to me anymore, are you?" She pointlessly asked.

"My computer cursor shall make you a legend," he finally looked to her. "Awesome."

She rolled her eyes. "Just buy me a cup of coffee."

INTERLUDES (RACHEL)

She made a dramatic entrance into their rehearsal space. Her fellow actors were gathered together overlooking an electronic tablet.

"What are you doing?" She shrieked. "We are supposed to be rehearsing. Opening night is in five days and we are not being paid to socialize."

"Shut up, Rachel," the group said as one.

"The last episode was just posted and we want to see how it ends," Jessica explained.

"The last episode of what?" Rachel moved towards the group. "What could possibly be more…"

"Shut up!" The group demanded once more.

"Well, I never," she indignantly whispered as she shoved herself further into the group so that she could better look at what had their undivided attention.

Once she was close enough to clearly see the image on the small screen, she reached out and ripped the tablet away from the hands it had been grasped in. "Quinn!" she yelled in surprise. "What is she doing?"

"Hey!" The group protested.

"You're going to make us miss it," Keith complained.

"Sorry," Rachel quickly apologized as she stretched out her arms so that everyone could look at the screen.

They all started watching the action on the screen play out. Like Jessica had said, it was the final episode of the web series and they had been promised a big finale. Rachel silently watched along with her peers. She gasped and laughed in all the appropriate places. The series was well-written and well-acted. It also happened to star Quinn Fabray. Her Quinn Fabray from Lima, Ohio. The same Quinn Fabray who had been in Glee club with her in high school for three years. The same Quinn Fabray who had…

Well, it was the same Quinn Fabray from high school. The same brown eyed girl.

"I'll want my tablet back," Keith said, "I'm not giving you to you or anything."

"W-what?" Rachel asked confused and then quickly realized she still held the device in her hands. She had been staring at the screen sucking up every detail presented to her in the still image of Quinn Fabray.

"You look a little pale," Keith reached over and took his tablet.

"Yes well," Rachel pulled herself back into the moment. She had a rehearsal to get through. Opening night was less than a week away. "Are you all ready to begin working now or are you going to continue watching subpar material?"

"Get over yourself, Rachel," Jessica muttered.

"I refuse to work with actors who do not take this seriously," Rachel haughtily declared. "Please call me when you all decide to take your careers seriously." She rolled her shoulders back, looked around the room judging each set of eyes that dared to meet hers, and then stormed out. She brushed by the producers and directors as she left, not bothering to explain where it was she was going or why it was she was leaving.

She grabbed her bag on the way out of the theatre, and then walked to the nearest café. She found a seat, sat down, pulled out her phone and headphones and then quickly typed in the website for the Quinn's web series. She clicked on the link for the first episode. It played to the end and then she played the next, and the next, and the next. She played them all until she watched the finale for a second time.

As the credits rolled on the final episode, she noticed that there had been a special thanks offered to one R. Berry, and Rachel was conceited enough to believe that the thanks had been offered to her. She didn't completely understand why the credit had been given. She was inclined to believe that it had something to do with Quinn taking a poke at her in some way. She couldn't be certain that it was supposed to be vindictive in any way. Though, it did leave Rachel with the image of Quinn saying in a sing-songy voice, "Anything you can do/ I can do better."

Rachel looked over the website again her eyes drawn to the link that sent comments to the cast. Her finger hovered over her phone and then dropped heavily on the link. A new window popped open and her fingers hovered again. She didn't know what she wanted to type. She didn't know if Quinn would even ever see any nearly perfect comeback Rachel could come up with. Rachel could be wasting her wit on someone undeserving.

Still…such an insult to her character could not be ignored.

She sent her comment to whomever might end up reading it, gathered her things and then headed back to the theatre. Opening night was only five days away.

(INTERLUDES)

"Success," Alex began his speech, "is me standing here in front of you all not completely insane from making this thing happen." For a man who was good with written words, he wasn't very good at speeches. Still, Quinn enjoyed the shortness of it. She clapped along with the apartment's other occupants. They were celebrating the last episode of their web series cheap pizza and cheap beer.

Quinn mingled with the crowd for long as she felt it necessary and then silently departed. She hadn't wanted to go to the party in the first place, but she knew it was best for her to be a team player. Alex was the first friend she had made since coming to California and she didn't want to push him away. She didn't necessarily want to pull him in closer either, but she thought it was good she had started to socialize again.

She walked back to her dorm and then shuffled to her room. Her roommate had gone home for the weekend so she had the room to herself. She could do anything she wanted, but she chose to sit down at her desk and turn on her laptop so that she could work on her homework.

Her dedication waned immediately after she began reading her assignment. She distracted herself by going to the website her series had been hosted on. She fast forwarded through the latest episode. She wasn't drawn into the story since she was too focused on how she looked through each scene. She pressed play once she had reached the credits. Alex had gotten permission to use a local band's song to play during the end credits.

Quinn listened to the song as she scrolled down and read the comments left by viewers. She hated the criticisms but loved the praise. The comments almost made her feel like she hadn't been completely out of her mind when she decided to sign on to Alex's project.

"This is a perfectly executed exhibition of mediocrity," she read aloud. The comment had been signed under the pseudonym Broadway.

Quinn leaned back in her chair with a smile on her face. "So she did watch it. Leave it to Berry to seek out anything with her name on it."

Quinn flexed her fingers and then began typing, and smiled as she clicked on the reply button.

Across the country Rachel Berry was just sitting down in front of her computer. She was curled up on her mattress on the floor in her tiny apartment. She was intent on researching some method in which she could improve the lighting of her most recent production, but for some reason she ended up typing in the web address for Quinn's web series. The page quickly loaded and Rachel navigated to the comments.

"I'm glad you thought it was perfect," she read and immediately realized that Quinn had just been sitting around waiting for her initial comment. She had known that Quinn was jealous of her success.

She quickly typed out a reply and just as quickly got a response. The conversation made her feel like she was back in high school. The years in between began to peel away. She and Quinn traded barbs like they had never spent any time apart. Email addresses were exchanged, but neither of them bothered to ask for a phone number.

They weren't old friends reconnecting. But still, it felt good to talk to someone who could help fight off the isolation they had each fallen into. The night ended with Rachel excusing herself due to an early morning rehearsal and Quinn needing to work on her assignment, but before either of them could sign off Rachel asked one more question.

"Why was I added to the ending credits?"

"Two halves of the same whole," Quinn replied. "At least that's what Alex thinks."

Rachel had more questions but she was afraid to ask them. "Goodnight," she typed instead and then closed her laptop.

Quinn read Rachel's last word. She would have felt disappointed that her last comment had been ignored if she hadn't been so breathless at having told the truth. She could have lied and said something just as snide and bitchy as she would have said only a couple of years ago. She could have never responded at all.

She could have done nothing. They could have never started…whatever it was that had just begun between her and Rachel. They could have their separate happy endings, but Alex had been so damn persistent about his stupid story. He had made up this fictional tale in his head and Quinn had fallen into its world.

Seemed like, though, Rachel had fallen into it too.