Chapter 21: Not the Fall but the Sudden Stop
Quinn frowned, a small bead of sweat dripping down the side of her face. The heat of summer came earlier than usual, drenching sweat through the thin fabric of Quinn's shirt. While it was driving everyone else crazy, the heat wasn't responsible for Quinn's frown. In fact, it did nothing to her, not when the reason for her frown was sitting in front of her, not meeting her eyes and working hard to push her out.
Why are you trying to hide from me, she silently asked the still brunette in front of her. She could almost see Santana trying to push her out. Usually, Santana thought outloud and let Quinn hear what she was thinking, but Quinn felt Santana actively working to not let herself be open. Santana had been like that for a few days, at least, not telling Quinn anything when the blonde came to her house and found her missing. Not talking to her, often clenching and unclenching her hands in a nervous habit, like she was apprehensive about something.
Quinn tried to give Santana the space she clearly wants but…
The way Santana was lying, how her legs crossed on the couch, the light giving the caramel skin a golden sheen, almost giving off its own tempting shine. Her muscles flexed just a little as Santana drummed her bare feet lightly against cushion, a thinking expression beautifully knitted in her eyebrows. Full lips pursed. Delicate collarbones caught the light and pooled on her skin. There was nothing subtle about Santana's beauty; it was the effortlessness that made her stunning. Something about Santana, the way she moved, the way she smiled at Quinn, the flame that blazed in her spirit, made Quinn gravitate towards Santana without even being aware of it.
Right now, even though she was beautiful, she was also not here. Not in the moment with Quinn, lost in her own world. The way Santana looked at her…or more accurately, didn't look at her.
This room is too small, Santana thought, feeling Quinn's scrutinizing gaze raise a flush in her cheeks. The room was getting smaller, she was convinced. The high ceiling must be a misnomer because it was not high at all and the walls were definitely closer than they were before. Quinn made the world seem bigger, wider with possibilities but ever since her decision, any room they shared suffocated Santana. As the date slowly and steadily approached, she really felt the room bear down on her, threatening to cage her in with Quinn.
She had yet to talk to Quinn. Or Brittany, but Santana suspected Brittany knew what was happening anyway, picking up on what most people couldn't or didn't. Maybe Brittany knew how to read minds. Regardless, Santana couldn't do much to keep Brittany out of the loop.
Not that it was any easier to keep Quinn in the dark. Those green eyes shot straight through her. It took every ounce of Santana's energy to cover up her intentions, layer them under countless fake expressions. To carefully maneuver every conversation away from the dreaded topic of their future. How can I do that to you? How do I walk away from someone who is as necessary as the air I breathe, as much a part of me as the veins in this imperfect body? Santana wondered if Allele Inc. injected some natural martyrdom into her blood stream, something that made her want to instinctively love the girl until it even hurt herself. Loving Quinn was so overwhelming that it overpowered every impulse, every reflex in her body. Even now, she had to clench and unclench her hands to keep herself from throwing herself onto Quinn. Every nerve in her body tingled, aching to touch her skin, her hair, press her lips to her forehead to ease the frown in Quinn's brow. That scent of jasmine and something so unique to Quinn's presence declared war on her resistance.
Santana closed her eyes for a second, trying to let her desire fade away but Quinn's trained gaze didn't do anything to help. In her gaze, she felt Quinn's bewilderment and something else. What was—
Lips pressed onto Santana's, making her eyes fly open with surprise. Quinn's eyes were closed, inches away from hers as she kissed the brunette; Santana wished they would open, look back into her eyes with a shade of emerald that never failed to captivate her, suck the breath from her lungs. She tasted something sweet, like spiced honey, on her lips, along with something that left a searing taste of Quinn and Quinn alone.
It was intoxicating.
When Quinn's eyes did finally open and meet an endless darkness in Santana's eyes, Quinn recognized the sad unwillingness on Santana's lips. What are you so unwilling about? Questions bubbled up, only to get caught in her throat.
Are you leaving?
Every look made sense, every glance made sense. Every finger pressed into her skin radiated with something that didn't make sense to Quinn because she was never on the receiving end of Santana's stony silence. But having finally put a finger on what it was, there was an unwilling resistance mixed in with Santana's yearning and unwillingness, every shade of her emotion.
Santana felt Quinn press her lips tenderly, her salty tears falling onto Santana's face, making her wonder if Quinn felt every degree of unwillingness that she felt, every nuance of heavy dread that sat in Santana's gut. It was impossible to tell whose tears were whose.
Quinn drew back and gently laid her head on Santana's chest, slowly rising and falling with Santana's breath. Santana reached around to hold Quinn, letting her arms rest across Quinn's shoulder blades. It felt like they were in the eye of the storm, the pinpoint of calmness in a storm that was brewing around them.
Even when Santana shut her eyes, she only saw Quinn's sad gaze looking back at her and she tucked away Quinn's gaze, the one that asked nothing of Santana but made Santana want to give everything anyway.
Bzz, bzz.
Brittany perked her ears at the sound.
Bzz, bzz.
Nope, yeah, that's definitely a phone vibrating. Brittany swung her backpack around as she climbed down the front steps of the school, excited to finally hang out now that school is done for the day.
Bzz, bzz. A picture of Santana's face, with a smear of pancake batter across her cheek from a late-night breakfast craving at a sleepover, greeted Brittany.
"Hello," Brittany trilled into the phone excitedly. "Where are you now? The lady statue with the light? The wire tower in France?" She never knew where Santana was calling from.
"Nope and nope, even though it's on my bucket list to fly off of the Eiffel Tower," Santana's voice volleyed back, fake cheeriness thinly veiling whatever was lacing Santana's voice. Brittany couldn't put her finger on the tone that Santana was trying to hide. "I'm actually at the water tower. Can you come here? Don't tell anyone, yeah?"
Brittany nodded.
"Sweetie, I can't tell if you're nodding over the phone." The smile in Santana's voice was genuine. Brittany always forgot to answer her aloud.
Oh yeah. "Okay, I'm on my way."
Rachel loved the auditorium, everyone knew. No one knew just how much. Enough to come here, every day afterschool, even if it was just to appreciate the vastness of the room.
A deep inhale flooded Rachel with the scent of freshly-cleaned wood and the dusty seats. The silence in the auditorium was never eerie to her. In fact, it was beautiful, like the silence of a meadow or someone's happy place. When she opened her eyes, she could almost imagine the audience, the roar of applause echoing in her imagination. Yep, this is my happy place, she nodded decisively.
Just a few more weeks and she would be at NYADA, the stepping stone onto Broadway.
Broadway.
The word alone made her smile. The blanket of awe that echoed in an auditorium, the moment of blindness when a spotlight shot straight onto her, the darkness that enveloped everyone in the audience, they were all just a bit closer. This auditorium, as lovely and comforting as it was, was nothing compared to the ones in New York, on the Broadway Stage. Rachel casted her eyes down at the smooth, oak wood panels that lined the floor underneath her ballet flats. Her feet paced back and forth, quiet clicking noises as her heel met the ground. These floors will be familiar to me someday.
"Hey, hobbit," a voice softly floated out from the backstage.
Rachel jumped, startled at the unexpected presence. When she turned, Rachel found Quinn sitting on the grand piano near the back curtain. The blonde softly jumped off the piano, landing gracefully with bent knees. She shook her blonde hair as she straightened with all the elegance and poise of a ballerina.
With a turkey-avocado sandwich in her hand.
"What are you doing here?" Rachel asked, taking a step back as Quinn stepped forward into better light. The petite girl couldn't decide if she was more curious or scared of Quinn but the blonde smiled reassuringly and swept forward and sat on the edge of the stage. Her long, slender legs dangled off the edge. She looked at Rachel expectantly; Rachel was supposed to sit next to her.
"Afraid to share the stage?"
Rachel wanted to retort back at Quinn's question with some sarcastic bite but Quinn's smile told her that she was just teasing.
"We share the stage all the time," Rachel smiled and sat next to her. She's not so bad, she thought as she watched Quinn take another bite of her sandwich without a trace of malice. "You didn't answer my question."
"Coach Sue will kill me if she sees me eating an avocado, let alone a whole sandwich. Plus, I like this silence," Quinn waved vaguely at the space in front of her. "It's kind of like a private world, a happy place, you know?" Rachel was surprised to hear her own words come out of Quinn's mouth as the blonde mused over the familiarity of the serene silence as she chewed. It was calm and quiet, like after a thunderstorm. When she closed her eyes, the serenity of the moment washed over her mind. She let out absent-mindedly, "It's almost like Santana's house."
"You really like her, huh?" Rachel asked without thinking. Quinn snapped her eyes to Rachel, unsure of how to respond, how to gauge Rachel's response or even her own feelings. Rachel flinched at the suddenness of Quinn's movement; she didn't know what the blonde was thinking.
No one knew about her and Santana but it wasn't like they were being particularly subtle. That's what happened when you had that kind of love.
She and Santana didn't share good love. Good love patted you on the back, made your lips perk into a smile from time to time, gave you a glass of water when you were thirsty. Good love walked beside you. No, this wasn't good love.
It was great love, in the barest essence of the word, neither good nor bad but infinite and omnipotent. Great love casted you in the wind, made you burn and set your soul ablaze. Great love, like the one she felt, didn't kindly pat your head and merely patiently wait; it grabbed you by the hand and dove headfirst into your entirety, lighting the day and night with a certain sheen of brilliance. Great love sent ripples of joy from her heart to her fingertips. You walked with good love; great love made you fly. Santana felt great love and gave great love to Quinn, an experience that would make Quinn fight against half-lives, broken promises, and inadequate love for the rest of her life. A taste of overwhelming, all-consuming love dulled everything else. It was tranquil and chaotic at the same time, igniting every inch of her life.
"I do," she quietly admitted. Santana seared her fingerprints on Quinn's soul. "I love her." Whole-heartedly.
Rachel quirked an eyebrow but the pieces made sense and fell into place in front of her. The way they looked at each other, the way that Santana sung that song to Quinn in Glee, the wanting in Santana's eyes, the utter flood of adoration in Quinn's eyes. Rachel smiled at the notion that she understood Quinn Fabray a little better. She, of all people with her two gay dads, would never judge. In fact, she wasn't even closed to the option of falling in love with a woman: "I think it's great to have someone you love like that."
Quinn smiled back, letting Rachel's words linger a little before switching topics. There wasn't really much that she could say after that, anyway. "So New York. Huh? We're gonna be pretty close to each other once we get outta Lima." The transition was smooth and welcomed by the petite brunette.
Rachel nodded and beamed, "You are always welcome to stay with me in New York, although I can't say a dorm will be the most comfortable place to stay." Being high maintenance demanded a full vanity, preferably in a Victorian taste. "But it is in the city and that alone is completely worth it."
The blonde laughed at the image of Rachel in a cramped dorm room, angelic notes of her genuine laughter reaching the corners of the auditorium. Rachel never heard it before. "I'm going to take you up on that. I'm not paying a hundred dollars for a night in the city."
Quinn pulled her phone from her pocket. "Damn," she muttered as she hit it against her palm, not that it would really do anything to wake up her dead phone. Still, it made her feel like it might spring a little life into her phone's dead battery. Having a dead phone made her feel a little naked and like she was wiped from the face of the Earth. Who would know where she was? Rachel watched her cautiously as the blonde let out a frustrated sigh before she casted her gaze at Rachel.
"Give me your phone." Quinn held out her hand, a lovely emerald bracelet with one red stone circling the blonde's slim wrist, capturing Rachel's attention for a moment.
Rachel hesitated. The moment was nice and fuzzy but still, this was Quinn, the very girl who slushied her, although that was two years ago, before Quinn joined Glee club. Even now, the blonde had a look of impatience that startled Rachel and convinced her she should quickly. Rachel pulled her phone from her pocket and placed it warily in Quinn's outstretched palm.
Quinn tapped on the screen speedily, the beeps of the button a second slower than her rapid fingers. She offered it back to Rachel, who looked at the phone inquiringly. She wanted to ask what Quinn did but was scared to ask.
The blonde, anticipating the unasked question as she always did with people she understood well (which was everyone, actually), answered, "I put in my number and texted myself. Now you will have to house me." Quinn scrunched her nose in a way that let Rachel know Quinn was half-joking.
Rachel replied genuinely, "Of course."
They sat together, looking out into vastness of the room and reveling in the silence that enveloped them both. It was hard to say how much time passed before the blonde stood up. Probably hours. Quinn gently brushed debris off the back of her legs.
Rachel smiled gently. "We're kind of friends, huh?"
Quinn winked at the girl still sitting below her and called out just as the warm night air outside the auditorium embraced her, "Kind of."
"What are you doing here when you can be at the Lady with the light in New York," a cheerful voice asked Santana as Brittany's equally cheerful face popped over the platform at the water tower.
Santana's lips pulled into a smile when her eyes landed on the quirk of Brittany's smile. The sun made her hair bright yellow, a different blonde from Quinn's golden hair but one that made her smile nonetheless. It reminded her of what Quinn and Santana used to call Brittany as she greeted the perky blonde, "Hey, Bumblebee."
Brittany scrunched her nose adorably at the sound, loving the way it sounded. She bounced over to where Santana sat. The sun was setting on Lima, Ohio, making it more beautiful than Santana had ever remembered. Maybe it was just all this sadness and unwillingness about her decision.
They sat together for a short while before Brittany finally asked, "So what's up, buttercup?"
Santana hesitated, "Well… I wanted to talk to you about something and I need you to listen carefully."
"Hey, Preggers!"
Coach Sylvester's harsh voice barked at Quinn's backside. Quinn whipped around, ready to retort something just as abrasive back at the woman marching towards her but stumbled on her words when she felt Coach Sue yank her arm towards her office and half-shouted, "We're going to talk."
The coach barely closed the door to her office when the blonde snarled at the woman, "What? It's late and I want to go home."
"Home, I'm sure," Coach drawled sarcastically before launching into a rapid rant. "I want to know how your 'home'," her hands made air quotes, "decided to quit head Cheerio. Do you seniors completely disregard the meaning of 'passing on the legacy'? I know winning Nationals is great, Tubbers, 'cause I've been there six times now but you seniors are reckless as drunk hippos, high off of Will Schuester's hair spray."
Quinn snapped, "What are you talking about?"
"If you didn't interrupt," Coach Sue retorted, "I would have told you."
Quinn crossed her arms and tapped her foot as she waited. Coach raised an eyebrow dangerously at the blatant display of annoyance before she continued a little slower, "Your girl, Santana, just quit Cheerios."
Quinn's heart plummeted as Coach continued without noticing, "You know, you two, as Head Cheerios, need to announce next years' Cheerio team and Head Cheerio but Satan decided to quit school early. She had it arranged with all her teachers, passed with flying colors even though the courses weren't even finished and Ms. OCD-Ginger let her do it. She's not even walking at graduation. They're mailing her diploma to her and…" Quinn flew out the door before Coach Sue finished her sentence.
The exasperated woman shook her head and muttered, "Rude."
"So you're leaving?" Brittany's sad puppy eyes managed to jerk at Santana's heartstrings when Santana explained her decision.
"Not because I don't love you or Quinn," Santana choked a little as she said Quinn's name. "You guys are the reasons, the only reasons, I would stay, if I could." She reached to brush a strand of loose blond hair from Brittany's forehead.
"I have to do this, though, Bee," Santana smiled sadly. "I already sent my acceptance letter and finished all my finals. You know me, the closet genius," she tried joke lightly, gently nudging Brittany's slumped shoulder with her own. "Honestly, this stuff with Allele, it's really dangerous and I'm not sure what I'm getting into yet. Please understand that's because I really care about you guys. You're my everything, my best friends, my family."
"It's not like we're not going to never see each other again," Santana poked a finger into Brittany's cheek, the same thing Brittany did only a few weeks ago to make Santana smile. "I promise I'm going to visit, wherever you are. And we'll talk all the time." Brittany perked up a little at the promise; Santana never broke her promises, not to Brittany and Quinn anyway.
"Can you—can you make sure she's okay," Santana asked cautiously, not even explaining who "she" was. Whatever this would do to Quinn, would be amplified for Santana. On top of heartbreak, there would be regret, self-imposed guilt, and most noticeably, a void that was roughly the size and shape of Quinn; there was only one person who could fill that vacuum. This is the best for us both. "Be angry with her for me, take care of her, talk to her. Make her smile. I love her," Santana choked, "So much, you know?"
Brittany nodded slowly. "I know, Tana, and I will." Her simple words reassured Santana. Brittany softly stroked Santana's arm and laid her head on Santana's shoulder. "And you'll still talk to me and visit?"
Santana squeezed Brittany's hands gently, "You're stuck with me for life, Bee."
"Damn it," the blonde exclaimed it as she tried turn on her dead phone. Quinn shoved the car charger into her phone and groaned with frustration when the screen replied that it was too dead to turn on yet. It'll be at least 15 minutes before it turns on.
The gears turned in her head as she tried to figure out what to do. In one swift decision, she hopped into her car and sped off to Santana's house.
You don't have to go. Please don't go. I love you. In so many ways. Quinn's brain stuttered with the idea of losing Santana as she tried to summon the words she wanted to say. The world witnessed a million ways in which one asked their lover, their best friend, their soulmate to stay and the best she could come up with was, Please don't go. Stay with me. We'll make this work, whatever it is. There was no eloquence, just pure pleading.
And it seemed that she was popular with all the red lights today.
"Santana!" Quinn pounded on the door, not caring who heard. The neighbors could think she's a robber or whatever but as long as Santana opened the door. "Santana! Open the door!"
Despite the absolute silence that met her demands, Quinn was relentless.
"Come on!"
Frustrated, Quinn twisted the doorknob, warmed from the afternoon sun. She didn't expect it to be unlocked and was startled when it swung sweepingly open.
Light switch, light switch, Quinn struggled to find the damn light switch, her hands scaling the wall in the darkness, until…
Click.
With one click of the light switch, she knew Santana was gone. The room lit up in front of her, momentarily blinding her with all the white. White sheets, white sheets, white sheets draped over everything, protecting all the spaces she shared with Santana from the dust that would settle in the years ahead. In a single moment, Santana's very real departure swept through Quinn, briefly paralyzing her. I don't… Where… Nothing seemed clear anymore, a sudden absence in her life obscuring any sense of direction she had.
A quiet beep reached her; she turned to look out the front door, still wide-open. In fact, all the doors were open, from the front door to the car doors. Doors are stupid, she thought, letting random thoughts barge through her terrified mind. It did seem silly, she had to go through so many doors to find out what happened. So many doors to get to this place that she grew to love and find it… utterly empty of the only one who made her love it. The only one who made her feel like she could love and be loved.
Beep. Right. Quinn headed towards the familiar sound of a full recharge coming from her phone, buried somewhere in her jacket on the passenger seat. The steps she took felt surreal.
A small sigh escaped as Quinn turned on her phone.
Soft bells rung, the little envelope indicating she had a new voice message.
From a few hours ago.
"Please enter your password," the robotic voice on the other end of the phone squawked. Numb, Quinn managed to type in the right combination of numbers that didn't even make sense right now. "The following message will be deleted. Your message from—"
Quinn deleted it without even thinking. Voicemails frustrated her because she hung up right after hearing them, completely forgetting to delete it. It often resulted in a pile of skipped messages and some randomly saved for long periods of time until the voice mailbox reminded her. Frustration rose in her chest until the next set of monotone robotic words threw her breath out the window.
"You have one unheard message. To listen to these messages, please press one. To listen to—" Quinn pushed the right button and pressed the phone hard into her ear, scared and hopeful as she anticipated the message and who it might be from. She was really waiting and hoping for only one voice.
And as if the universe wanted to grant her wishes and nightmares, Santana's low voice played through.
"Quinn…" A moment of hesitation interrupted Santana's breath. Like she was unsure of how to start. "When I started tearing up when we were watching RENT… I cried only because I felt you crying." Pause. "I think I was only half-alive before we had these last few months. I didn't know it but I was waiting for someone to come crash into me, to leave me breathless, to make me feel like I was living, not just surviving. And you showed me I wasn't falling; I was flying."
Santana's sheer honesty tore through Quinn.
The voice on the other cracked slightly as the message continued, "I felt like an open wound, everything I touched hurting every part of my body. Everyone seemed to know how to stay alive, like there was a introduction manual that I missed out on. But you came and saved me." Santana's voice cracked with emotion. "And I didn't know that this whole time, when I was aching, I was homesick for you, to know you and be known by you. Only you."
Tears streamed down Quinn's face, her surroundings completely blurring around her.
"I thought I would be holding your hand when I leave Lima, that—"
Quinn snapped her phone, unable to handle the stream of words that steadily broke her heart. She crumbled, crouching as she hugged herself, trying to hold all the grief and loss she felt spilling from her eyes. It wasn't the fall but the sudden stop at the end, the rush of her world yanked from under her feet, that threw Quinn off-guard and shattered her heart into a hundred jagged pieces. The hand she was not holding made anguish flood into the cracks of her broken heart.
When a glass cup drops, it shatters loudly into tiny fragments. When paper rips, a harsh shredding sound fills the space. When mirrors break, chair legs break, clothes tear, the world makes a corresponding sound, almost as though it was demanding that people acknowledge the demise of something. But when a heart breaks, it is silent. You would think that a breaking heart would echo across the world and reach the ears of someone who could mend it, send some sort of signal out to universe to acknowledge the brokenness. But there is only deafening silence that gives all the room for the pain of a heartbreak to flood in.
And there were no bells, no trumpets, not even a beep that indicated that two hearts were breaking somewhere, miles away from each other but for the same reason.
End of Part I
Hey, all!
Updates may be coming slower for two reasons: 1) school is starting 2) I want to make these next parts perfect, especially after this chapter.
Have faith, dear reader. I'm not going to stop writing until this is finished, promise. There is a story to be told and like I said, stories are meant to have happy endings (in my world, at least).
We have yet to begin the real story :)