Title: What Doors May Open
Pairing: Rachel Berry/Quinn Fabray
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. Just having a little fun.
Summary: AU. Rachel comes out as gay after dumping Finn. People slowly start to find out and, when Head Cheerio, Quinn Fabray finds out, Rachel knows her life will never be the same again.
A/N: Sorry for the delay. I was going to work on this chapter days ago, but school work was in the way, and a wonderfully amazing girl of mine was feeling a little extra clingy lately so I've been reaping the benefits of that. But I'm here now! Thank you all for your reviews! And here's the next chapter.
Her eyelids felt incredibly heavy and she wasn't in any hurry to open them. She had missed her morning exercise routine by a mile; her internal clock told her so. But there was a slight weight on her that she couldn't get up from.
Quinn.
Rachel smiled.
She shifted a little in an attempt to get a better feel of just where she and Quinn were touching. It was much the same as last time; Quinn's head lay on her sternum, her nose nuzzling Rachel's left breast in a way that made Rachel blush. A hand was curled tightly around her side in a way that Rachel had come to love. Their legs, completely bare, intertwined so intimately to the point that Rachel had to shift her own to figure out whose was whose. Her leg rubbed against one of Quinn's bare calves and she held her breath as Quinn moaned something non-intelligible in her sleep before turning over.
Finally, Rachel blinked groggy-eyes open. She blinked until her vision cleared and stared straight ahead. Her eyes rolled to the window and the bright sunlight that shined in the room, fractured and dimmed from the blinds and baby blue curtains. She followed a stream of light to a nearby wall of the photos of Quinn that Rachel had seen when she first visited the room. Her gaze swept curiously over Quinn's room in an attempt to acquaint herself with all the little things she had missed the first time she visited. In the farthest corner of her room, tucked between the wall and a dresser lay a small white…what looked to be a stuffed lamb. Rachel grinned widely. That would explain Quinn's bed habits.
A hand rose to wipe the sleep from her eye as the other buried into Quinn's hair, lightly massaging her scalp. Last night had gone so much better than she thought it would. There was no drama, no fighting, nothing but thorough kisses and palm-fulls of Quinn's ass. And to top it all off, Quinn had asked her to be her girlfriend.
While she was slightly intoxicated, but it still counted.
Except it kind of didn't because before Rachel could even respond, Quinn had fallen asleep on her. And neither of them had brought it up last night before bed. Rachel didn't have the heart to because having a girl in her bed was already a shock to Quinn. And Quinn…Rachel wasn't really sure if Quinn even remembered or not. How much alcohol was required to constitute a blackout and memory loss of the night before? She didn't know and certainly couldn't Google it with Quinn sleeping peacefully on her chest with a possessive arm wrapped around her to keep her in place.
Rachel sighed. The longer she laid there, the more on edge she became. She was currently in the Fabray's house with the Fabray parents down the hall and their daughter's head on her chest. Their lesbian daughter who they were apparently completely ignorant to, if her own assumptions were anything to go on. She looked towards the door, making sure it was locked before she could breathe a small sigh of relief. But it would be short lived. Because eventually she and Quinn were going to have to get up and she was going to have to face Quinn's parents who—to Rachel's knowledge from what Quinn had told her—were not normal and drank on more than the occasion.
Uncomfortable, she grabbed Quinn's hand from around her waist and slowly pulled it away. She was becoming fidgety and didn't want to wake Quinn up because of her anxiousness. The more she thought over her situation, the more nervous she became. She was in the Fabray house, the people who burned witches, the people who Quinn couldn't even come out to—how the hell was Rachel supposed to handle this situation?
She slipped from under Quinn with minimal issue and sat on the edge of the bed. "Calm down," she told herself. "The worst that could happen would be Mr. and Mrs. Fabray forbidding me to come back over. And that isn't so bad, right? It would minimize the time I get to spend with Quinn outside of school, but I have a house, too, and she could—"
"You even ramble when you talk to yourself," Quinn muttered groggily from behind her.
Rachel sprang up from the bed. She spun around quickly to find Quinn lying propped up on an elbow on her side, a mop of long blonde hair shading her eyes from Rachel's view as Quinn scratched at it. Her lips were pursed and red, looking irritated that she had been woken up, but too sleepy for it to actually be scary. In short, she looked adorable and Rachel's heart began to race at the very sight of her. "Good morning, Quinn."
"Morning," Quinn greeted around a yawn. She lay back down on the bed, back bowing in a stretch as her arms reached overhead. Her shirt rode up to expose her bare stomach and Rachel's eyes immediately dropped to the sliver of flesh presented to her. Quinn chuckled. "Eyes up here, Berry."
Her eyes snapped up to amused hazel as Quinn sat up on the bed. The blanket fell to her feet as she raised her knees up and rested her head on them. "Sleep well?"
Rachel nodded. "I slept very well. Thank you." She walked closer to the bed and sat down. "Did you?"
"Yeah," Quinn sighed, scratching the back of her head.
"I would hope so," Rachel murmured with a grin. "You were sleeping on top of me again."
Quinn's jaw shifted back and forth as she grabbed at a pillow, her eyes firmly locked on Rachel. She picked it up and tossed at Rachel's head.
"Hey!" Rachel squealed, covering her head and ducking just in time. She rose up with a huff, smoothing down her hair. "That could have injured me!"
Quinn rolled her eyes. "You've never had a pillow fight before?"
She reached over to grab the pillow with a thoughtful frown. No, she had never had a pillow fight before. She had never been invited to sleepovers. But she had seen enough movies to know that this was what Quinn had initiated. And a part of her felt oddly welcomed, as if this was some sort of rite of passage and now she was in Quinn's life for good.
Smiling lightly, she picked up the pillow, fluffing it in her hands. Then she lifted it above her head and lunged at Quinn with a war cry. Quinn's eyes widened in surprise as Rachel collapsed on top of her. Rachel straddled her easily, fighting with a giggling Quinn to pin her arms down. "Get over yourself, Berry," Quinn grunted out.
There was a dirty joke about Quinn being under her somewhere in that statement, but Rachel couldn't make her mind concentrate on it as she tried to get a handle on Quinn's hands. She gripped her wrists tightly, pushing forward until Quinn's hands were pinned on either side of her head. Quinn's chest heaved against Rachel's with hardened nipples and a small blush to her cheeks.
It felt like The Lion King, this glorious, shining moment of victory and Rachel reasoned this was now Nala felt when she finally got the chance to pin Simba. Her grin split into a cocky one as she stared down at the almost peeved look on Quinn's face.
But then a dark smile that Rachel knew she shouldn't trust appeared on Quinn's face. She shifted, thrusting slowly in a way that made Rachel's eyes widen to saucers.
"Let me go," Quinn purred.
Rachel eyed her suspiciously. "How can I trust you not to hit me with another pillow?"
Her lips stretched even wider into an impish grin that Rachel definitely knew she shouldn't trust. "I won't," Quinn promised, all even white teeth and red lips that Rachel was now focusing on. Her hips pumped forward the barest hint again and Rachel found her grip slacken as she wondered if the two of them could forget the morning breath and make out anyway.
The next thing she knew, her world was turning upside down. She was being lifted, then thrown back onto the bed. Instinct kicked in and she began to grapple for leverage. Her struggle only made Quinn giggle more, which made Rachel's heart flutter by the very sound of it. She took one look at Quinn's tongue gliding along her lower lip as if wrestling turned her on beyond reason and Rachel felt her whole body turn to jelly. Quinn pinned her easily after that with a victorious smile. "Never trust a girl with a pretty smile, Rachel," she crooned smugly, leaning lower until their foreheads touched.
Rachel smiled at the way Quinn nuzzled their noses together in greeting. She couldn't even find it in herself to be upset with the way Quinn turned the tables on her if this was the reward she was getting for it.
"Quinnie, time for breakfast!"
Quinn immediately sprang up from Rachel. She looked like she had seen a ghost as her eyes shifted from Rachel towards the bedroom door where someone was banging on it. Rachel watched, fear beginning to shoot down her spine the more Quinn's shoulders tensed as she walked towards the door. "Coming!" she eventually shouted. The floor creaked under the weight of the retreating form on the other side of the door and Rachel exhaled harshly.
"Was that your mother?" she asked quietly.
Quinn nodded curtly. She turned, took one look at Rachel, then dropped her gaze with a thoughtful frown. "You can use my bathroom. I'll use the bathroom in the hallway, then we can go downstairs to eat breakfast."
"Quinn—"
"And whatever you do, whatever you say, don't say anything about you and me." Quinn looked up at her, fear that wasn't there seconds ago now shining clearly in her eyes. "They don't know, Rachel. And they can't know."
"Quinn—"
"You don't know what they'd do to me," Quinn told her.
Rachel stood from the bed when it was obvious Quinn wasn't going to stop rambling off fear-filled possibilities of what her parents were going to do to her if they found out she was gay. She grabbed both of Quinn's shoulders and drew her closer. "I won't say anything," Rachel told her earnestly, looking her directly in the eye. "If you don't want them to know, then I won't say anything. And I get it, okay? I didn't tell my parents I was gay until a couple of months after I finally admitted it to myself. It's hard. I get it. Just…calm down a little and take a deep breath."
Breath coming in shallow bursts, Quinn forced herself to take a deep breath as she stared down at Rachel. The tendons in her shoulders slackened under Rachel's firm grip and she took another breath. "Thank you," she murmured after a moment.
Rachel loosened her hold on Quinn's shoulders, walking them along her neck. "Want a hug?" she asked.
"I don't really hug," Quinn halfheartedly prefaced as she stepped into Rachel. "But sure."
They hugged briefly before Quinn pulled back, puffing out an overwhelmed breath as she looked Rachel up and down. Her gaze lingered on Rachel's legs distractedly for a moment. "Do you dance?" Quinn asked.
Rachel smiled proudly. "I do, actually. My dads spoiled me in the arts when I was a little girl and I've been dancing ever since. Mostly ballet now, but I've done tap and jazz also."
Quinn nodded absentmindedly at the end of Rachel's ramble. "You have really great legs," she mumbled with a small blush. She immediately turned away after that and walked out of the room.
Stunned, Rachel could do little more than watch her leave. Once the compliment sank in, she smiled bashfully, gaze dipping to watch her toes dig into the carpet as if Quinn was still in the room. She took a deep breath to calm the butterflies battling in her stomach and walked into the bathroom. Quinn hadn't given her a toothbrush and Rachel didn't even know where to begin looking for one. Nonplussed, she began to open all of the drawers under the bathroom sink. To her luck, it was the very last drawer, of course, that had new, packaged tooth brushes in it. She plucked one, peeled the package off and began freshening up.
She spied her dress in the same place she had left it once she was done, and decided not to put it on now. Wearing the same clothes she was wearing last night was not a good way to impress Quinn's parents. Though, she wondered if it was even possible to impress such people. Quinn wasn't an impressionable teenager by any means, so Rachel could only guess that she had gotten her disposition from her parents.
She was walking back into the room when a knock on the door followed by a muffled, "Rachel," caught her attention. "Are you decent?"
Rachel walked over to the door and opened it. Quinn was standing on the other side, looking refreshed with her hair thrown atop her head in a messy bun. "Good morning," she mumbled courteously as if they hadn't just seen each other ten minutes ago. "I told my parents you're here. As a friend," she continued pointedly. "Breakfast is ready if—shit!" Her head drooped in disappointment before she looked back up at Rachel sullenly.
"What's wrong?" Rachel asked in concern.
"You're vegan," Quinn sighed. "And there's an abundance of eggs and bacon downstairs."
Rachel's eyes widened in surprise that Quinn had actually remembered and the fact that she herself had actually forgotten. "Oh," she murmured. Then she waved Quinn off, saying, "It's alright. I'll just call my dads." Maybe this was a sign. A sign that she didn't need to spend a prolonged period of time with Quinn's parents. "I'll just go call them now." She spun around and turned away from Quinn to walk towards the nightstand beside Quinn's bed.
Quinn walked further into the room and closed the door. "Are you sure?"
Rachel just nodded as she flipped her phone open and scrolled through her contacts for Hiram's number.
"I'm sorry this keeps happening," Quinn muttered. "I don't have any vegan friends, really."
Rachel paused, flipping her phone shut and lying it on the bed. She turned to Quinn and grabbed her hand, intertwining their fingers. "It's not a big deal, Quinn," she assured. "I don't expect you to suddenly have vegan friendly meals in your house on the off chance that I'll spend the night here with you after we both drank at a party. It's fine, I promise."
Quinn stared down at their joined hands with a sigh. "Did you have fun last night?" she inquired, not meeting Rachel's eyes.
"I did. Though, the most fun I had was when it was just us," Rachel admitted with a dimpled smile.
Quinn looked up at her, no doubt assessing the truthfulness of Rachel's statement. "Yeah?"
Rachel nodded. She scooted closer, her gaze flicking along Quinn's face. Her tongue swiped over her lower lip nervously. "Do you remember last night?" Rachel asked tentatively.
Hazel eyes narrowed minutely, lips down turning as Quinn muttered, "Yeah, a little."
Rachel throat bobbed with a tight swallow. She couldn't be sure, but her instincts were telling her Quinn wasn't being completely truthful. But if that were the case then that meant Quinn didn't want to have this conversation. She didn't know whether to proceed or back off, but she had never been good at retreating when all signs pointed to doing just that.
"Do you remember what you said to me before we both fell asleep on Noah's bed?" she ventured further.
Quinn pulled her hand away with a humorless chuckle, rubbing it along the back of her neck. Her bottom jaw dropped as if she were about to formulate some type of response before someone knocked on the door murderously.
"Quinn, come eat breakfast! You know how ornery you get when you haven't had a balanced meal."
Rachel tilted her head towards the door, amusement swirling in her eyes as she looked towards Quinn's furious blush of embarrassment.
"Okay, mom!" Quinn growled, rising from the bed to stomp towards the door with tense shoulders.
"And bring your friend, too!"
The statement reminded Rachel that she couldn't eat here and she picked up her forgotten phone, gesturing towards Quinn to hold on while she dialed Hiram's number.
Quinn cracked the door open enough to poke her head out. "She can't eat what's down there," Rachel heard her tell Mrs. Fabray. "She's vegan."
"Like a vegetarian, dear?"
Rachel rolled her eyes in amusement. "Hi, dad," she greeted once the line clicked over. "Yes, I'm ready now. She was wonderful—no, we—" she looked up to where Mrs. Fabray was still at the door. "Nothing happened," Rachel hissed into the phone. "I can't talk about this now. I'll see you later when you pick me up. Bye, dad."
She flipped her phone closed and stood up from the bed. She took a deep breath, determined to make this meeting go as smoothly as possible as she walked up to Quinn.
Quinn opened the door to let them both out and Rachel smiled widely at the woman before them. Quinn was the spitting image of her mother. Mrs. Fabray had blonde hair that lightened so much in places it was almost gray. Her eyebrows were carefully manicured and seemed to have a mind of their own like Quinn's as they rose along the woman's crinkling forehead. Her lips were full and red, curling into a familiar smile that Rachel always saw on Quinn's face. "Good morning, Mrs. Fabray," Rachel greeted warmly. "I'm Rachel Berry. Thank you for allowing me to stay in your home last night. Quinn is a good friend." She was throwing out all kinds of compliments and good manners that seemed to please Mrs. Fabray as she looked from Quinn to Rachel again.
"Call me Judy, dear," was the first thing she told Rachel. "And it's so very nice to meet you. I didn't know Quinn had any friends with manners."
Quinn scoffed quietly, crossing her arms like a defiant teenager under her mother's gaze. She looked so cute and uncharacteristically chastened that it made Rachel smile.
"Now, Quinn tells me you can't eat here," Judy continued. "Something about being a vegetarian."
"Vegan," Rachel gently corrected. "Though, they're very similar." At the blank look on Judy's face, Rachel decided to spare her the lecture on the difference between them tickling the back of her throat and settled on, "But don't fret. My father will be here soon, and I can just eat when I get home."
Judy frowned. "Well, at least join us at the breakfast table, Rachel." She turned to Quinn, muttering, "Why didn't you tell me she was vegan?"
"It's not like we knew ahead of time she would be spending the night!" Quinn defended as they began walking down the hallway.
Rachel followed behind, noting their similarities and differences along the way. Quinn's parents didn't seem so bad. Well, at least her mother didn't. Maybe a little on the insincere side, but nothing too incriminating.
They walked down the stairs and sitting at the head of the table was who Rachel assumed was Mr. Fabray. He was very blonde also with wisps of graying hair that made him look distinguished instead of old. He was a handsome man with a pretty wife who created the beautiful daughter Rachel was in love with. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes at how perfect they all looked.
"Good morning," Mr. Fabray called loudly, voice booming with authority in the way Quinn's always did when she wanted attention and respect. "I'm Russell, dear. Nice to meet you."
"I'm Rachel Berry," Rachel greeted as she walked over to him. "It's nice to meet you, sir. What a lovely home you have."
Judy took a seat at the other end of the table and Quinn sat on in the seat closest to her in one of the side chairs. Rachel hesitantly sat beside Quinn, feeling a little uneasy about being so close to who was obviously the head Fabray in charge.
"No need to be nervous, dear. I don't bite," Russell told her as he reached for her hand.
Confused, Rachel slowly gave her hand to him, jumping nervously when Quinn grabbed her other one.
"We're saying grace," Quinn explained with a small chuckle at the perplexed look on Rachel's face. She nodded in understanding a moment later and bowed her head, clenching her eyes shut as Russell said a prayer.
Afterwards, they all began eating, except Quinn who just stared at Rachel, then looked back down at her plate.
Rachel turned to watch the frown on Quinn's face and offered a small smile. "You can eat, Quinn. I'm fine."
"You don't like breakfast food?" Russell asked conversationally.
Rachel shook her head. "The meal smells lovely and I'm sure it tastes just the same," she assured. "It's just…I'm a vegan."
"Ah," he murmured, looking down at his plate. "Well, I suppose you can't eat anything here," he continued with a hearty laugh.
Rachel joined in with him and shook her head with a small smile. "Not even a bite."
"So, Rachel, it's my understanding that you and Quinn attend the same school," Judy said from downwind. Rachel turned to find her breaking apart a slice of bacon into dainty bits to put in her mouth. "Why am I just seeing you?"
"Mom," Quinn admonished.
"Quinn and I have just started this…friendship," Rachel said carefully. "We've been getting to know each other, and I've learned that she is a wonderful person."
"I like her," Russell asserted, gesturing in Rachel's direction with his fork. "I like her a lot better than those other cheerleaders Quinn hangs out with. What are their names—Whitney and Sarah?"
Rachel smiled in amusement.
"I think their names are Bridgette and Samantha," Judy guessed.
"Their names are Brittany and Santana," Quinn growled. "Can't even get their names right."
"Watch your tone, Quinn," Judy warned offhandedly.
Quinn slumped back in her seat, jaw clenched in irritation. Rachel nudged her knee with her own under the table. She flashed a small, reassuring smile when Quinn looked over at her.
"Well, I like you better," Russell said again. He sat up in this seat, placing his elbows on the table as he angled towards Rachel. "The thing is, Rachel, I've been telling Quinn to get some new friends for a while now."
From beside Rachel, Quinn shot straight up, aghast as she stared her father down. "This isn't the time or the place to discuss this." She gestured towards Rachel. "She's a guest, daddy."
"One that I'd like to see around more often." He dismissed Quinn and looked back over to Rachel. "Santana and Brittany are lovely girls, I'm sure. But from what I've seen of them hasn't shown me that. Santana is rude and slothful."
"With such a foul mouth," Judy contributed.
Rachel shrugged a shoulder, wishing she could take up for her new friend, but, in a nutshell, that was what Santana was eighty percent of the time.
"And that other one—she's nice," he allowed. "Not the sharpest tool in the shed, though." He cleared his throat, looking directly at Rachel. "But my biggest concern is how…gay they are," he stated bluntly. "Quinn has a lot of gay friends."
"Two," Quinn cut in sharply. "They're only two friends that I have who are gay."
Rachel slunk in her seat under Russell's critical gaze, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. "Surely them being gay has no bearing on how great they can be as friends."
Russell waved it off. "No, of course not. As I said, I'm sure they're wonderful people despite the fact that they have yet to show that to me. But it's nice to see that Quinn has friends outside of those two."
"They're just very…affectionate," Judy tried, looking towards Rachel. "All the time. Which is fine," she assured. "But we don't want our Quinnie to get the wrong idea."
Rachel blinked in shock at everything that was being said. Her wide, disbelieving eyes whirled around to find Quinn slumped back in her chair, arms folded across her chest as she glared down at her half-eaten meal.
"Thank you, dear," Russell said. "What we're trying to say is that we're glad that Quinn has friends who are…" he trailed off.
"Who are not gay," Rachel supplied for the now seemingly prudish man. She pushed out a humorless laugh.
"Exactly." He nodded, signaling the end of the conversation. "Maybe you can help Quinn get a boyfriend," he joked after a moment.
Both Quinn and Rachel stiffened at the passing comment. Rachel turned towards him, feeling overwhelming anger and resentment swirl in her stomach until it ached. She was beginning to feel alone in this large house with two bigoted parents of a girl who could do little more than agree with whatever they said.
"Oh, and prom is just around the corner!" Judy conjured up out of nowhere.
"It's over a year away," Rachel responded with, trying to keep her voice light and charming as her anger continued to mount. Quinn seemed to wither in the seat she was in, not engaging anyone in conversation as she forked over the cold food on her plate.
"You can never be too prepared," Judy insisted. "Don't forget to vote Quinn for prom queen."
"Mom, don't," Quinn finally interjected.
"Don't what, dear? Don't get votes for you to win? Don't you want to win?"
The conversation was turning ugly fast and the only thing Rachel wanted to do was hide away in Quinn's room until her father arrived.
"I don't want to talk about this," Quinn gritted out forcefully.
Judy eyed her critically for a long moment. Quinn avoided her gaze, sitting forward in her seat to take a sip of her apple juice then sitting back again.
"Well, Rachel, what do you think about prom?" Judy prodded. "Are you going to take your boyfriend with you to prom next year?"
She was absolutely fed up with this conversation. It took her several months to become even halfway comfortable with her sexuality and she felt like Judy and Russell were sitting there beating her back into the closet with their intolerance. Her fingers trembled as they held fast to the kitchen table, the urge to shoot up and storm away from the table building inside of her with each passing second. "No, I will not," Rachel said, an edge creeping into her voice at the thought of how hard she had fought to get this comfortable with herself and how it was all crumbling down while Quinn was practically hugging herself in discomfort at the breakfast table. "I broke up with my most recent boyfriend months ago because…I'm gay," she stated plainly, heart pounding in her chest at the deafening silence that followed.
At Judy's muted gasp of surprise, Quinn turned to Rachel, jaw hanging limply in shock. Rachel grimaced at the palpable tension in the room and excused herself from the table. She quickly walked up the stairs and into Quinn's room, shutting the door behind her as if that was going to keep anyone out who wanted to get in.
She sat atop Quinn's bed, back ramrod straight and hands firmly clasped in her lap. At any movement she felt like she would shatter, the uneven breaths she kept inhaling sounding shallow. Tears would be flowing soon; she could feel the pressure building behind her eyes and all the while she wondered where the hell her father was.
Her chest heaved irregularly with gasping breaths. It felt like someone had taken out her stomach and that her lungs were lodging themselves in her throat. She couldn't feel her heart anymore, but guessed it must have still been beating somewhere inside of her because she was still alive.
This was the first group of non-supportive people she had come out to and she felt like hell because she knew they were all judging her downstairs while Quinn mutedly listened, not once standing up for her.
The door creaked open and Rachel honestly didn't know whether to be happy or sad that Quinn was closing the door, locking it and rushing to her side. Quinn scooped up a boneless Rachel with ease, shushing sobs that Rachel hadn't realized until now she was crying. Her face fell into the crook of Quinn's neck as if it belonged there and she inhaled the scent of lavender body wash along with the uneven breaths she couldn't seem to regulate.
"Calm down," Quinn murmured, rubbing up and down Rachel's back. "It's okay."
"It's not okay," Rachel sobbed, feeling a déjà vu moment of when she had cried those exact words to Finn when she had come out to him. If it was possible, this moment felt even more devastating because telling the parents of the girl she loved that she was gay didn't really bode well for spending more time with Quinn.
Quinn grabbed her and pulled her away. Whimpering at the loss of contact, Rachel looked up at her with a thick swallow of emotions cascading down her throat and into the pit of her stomach where digesting them was going to be a hell of a time.
Quinn rubbed a thumb under her eye like a windshield wiper until all of her tears were gone. Her jaw clenched as she looked all around Rachel's face before looking away. "I really wish none of that just happened."
"Are you mad at me?" Rachel couldn't help but ask with an incredulous tone to her voice.
"I'm not mad at you," Quinn said. "But this whole situation was just…" she trailed off, shaking her head when she didn't know how to continue. "I'm sorry."
Rachel sighed heavily, pitching forward to rest her forehead on Quinn's shoulder. "That was the first time I've ever told anyone who wasn't a friend that I was gay."
"And it sucked," Quinn guessed astutely. "I'm sorry. But that's just…how they are. Which is why I don't want to tell them that I'm gay."
Rachel pulled back, sitting up on her own to make eye contact with Quinn. "But you're going to have to eventually."
"Not right now," was all Quinn told her.
"But eventually—"
"Rachel, can we not talk about this?" Quinn asked her in this thin, strangled mess of a voice.
Her lips clamped shut with finality. Feeling wholly defeated, Rachel stood up from the bed.
"Where are you going?" Quinn called from behind her.
Rachel kept walking towards the bathroom, her bottom lip jutting outward with each step she took. She closed the door and locked it behind her, learning that trick from Quinn. Doors were hardly ever locked at her house because it was such an honest and open atmosphere. But what she had come to learn in the past several hours from the party onwards was that Quinn locked doors wherever she went in an attempt to hide her own actions.
It baffled Rachel that someone went to such great lengths to hide such an essential part of themselves. But then she took one look at herself in the mirror, wearing Quinn's clothes, and found that she couldn't walk about and act like she and Quinn were so different.
She stripped herself and put her own dress back on, feeling stifled in this house and wanting nothing more than to leave. She jumped when the doorknob to the bathroom jiggled with impatience.
"Your father is here," Quinn called from the other side of the door.
Rachel fumbled to unlock the door, wanting to get home as soon as she could. She opened it to find Quinn standing on the other side, shoulders tensed with hands twitching at her sides. They stared at each other for a moment like they were seeing each other for the first time. And for all the times that Rachel had forgotten that Quinn was just a girl at the end of the day, just like her, the lost look on her face reminded her of that. After a few painstaking seconds of neither of them saying anything, Quinn walked away towards her bed. She sat down, resting her elbows on her knees and cradling her head in her hands.
Rachel walked further into the room, staring at Quinn's stoic figure on the bed. There was nothing she could think to say. This entire morning had turned into a disaster the moment she met Quinn's parents. She felt rattled to her very core and really just needed to be home right now more than anything. She didn't have reassuring words or gentle murmurs. All she had right now were fully functioning tear ducts that were beginning to make themselves known again.
She walked over to the bed and picked up her phone from beside Quinn. She watched the way Quinn flinched and drew away from her with a frown. With a sigh, Rachel swiped up her phone and turned sharply towards the door.
"So, I guess you don't like me anymore," Quinn accused from across the room. "Because of what my parents said."
Her shoulders pulled taut as soon as that statement left Quinn's mouth. How Quinn could think so little of her feelings, Rachel would never understand. But she was tired, needed a good cry on her fathers' shoulders and probably some tea, and couldn't deal with this right now. "Have a good day, Quinn," Rachel called wearily, closing the door behind her and wondering if Quinn was going to lock it.