Title: Driving underneath the stars

Characters: Rachel Berry and Quinn Fabray

Prompt: Gotta Get Out by 5 Seconds of Summer

Challenge: Spotify (Most Played) Challenge

Warning: OOC.

Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or the song, I do not make any profit from writing this.

Word Count: 1,267

Quinn Fabray had done a lot of things this year that was not part of the plan, not her plan and definitely not her parents plan and they had told her so on numerous occasions. There was a part of her that understood why they couldn't push that particular thought out of their heads but for most parts she couldn't tell them that. Her parents had big moments in plan for her, getting pregnant was probably one of those even if they would never admit it but neither parent thought that she would get pregnant as a teenager. To be honest, neither had Quinn. But then again, she had never planned on making driving around town with Rachel Berry into a regular occurrence.

It was a coincidence that they even met that first time that it happened.

Quinn had left her house in anger after another fight with her parents. Her hair was forcefully pushed behind her ears and she ignored the wind and cursed under her breath the entire time that she was walking with her arms almost resting on her bump. It was stupid to walk outside alone and she did recognise that but she was, in spite of everything, still a teenager with hormones raging and feelings bubbling inside of her which meant that she didn't think about any of the supposed dangers. Quinn was just starting to shake (the grey pyjama which made her bump appear bigger was not doing anything to keep her warm) when bright lights appeared in front of her. Through the window of the car that stopped next to her she saw none other than Rachel Berry. Quinn had rolled her eyes and thought that this was just her luck because she would prefer literally everyone over Rachel with her brown hair pushed back in a ponytail, a confused expression, sitting in a car in the middle of the night wearing pyjamas with pink unicorns that Quinn stopped wearing when she was around the age of nine.

"What are you doing here?"

Quinn glared at her in spite of the fact that she was cold and her feet had begun aching. "I'm walking. What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?"

Rachel shrugged. "I'm driving."

The silence was deafening and normal because the two girls had grown up thinking and being told that they had nothing in common. They had been told that they were polar opposites of each other both when it came to appearance, personality and talents. Despite this, Rachel asked a question which must have shocked herself as much as it did Quinn.

"Do you want to come in?"

"Come in and do what? Have you drive me back home? No thank you, I don't feel quite up for round two of fighting with the parents yet," Quinn's ice queen glare deepened. "Where are you going?"

Rachel shrugged. "I'm not sure. I just wanted to drive for a bit and think. You can come if you want to."

Quinn only thought about it for a few seconds before nodding and getting into the car. That was the first of many night drives. At first, they didn't speak to each other, they only sat in silence with their thoughts and music in the background which both paid an immense amount of attention to. Then one night that changed.

"How do you keep being yourself?"

Rachel glanced at Quinn but didn't respond.

"People, me included, have tormented you for being yourself but it's like you don't care at all. You just keep being yourself, why?"

Outside of the car there were only stars, darkness and occasionally houses. It felt as if they were the only two people in the world when they were driving around and if there was no one else around, why not ask uncomfortable questions?

"I have an annoyingly strong personality trait which means that when people dislike a certain behaviour, I tend to emphasize it just to show that I don't have to conform and I won't change because of what other people tell me."

Quinn didn't ask any more questions. The rest of the drive was done in silence.

After a few night drives Rachel stopped asking if Quinn wanted to come along, the brunette merely stopped the car outside of her house and Quinn got in. There was a certain calm in the air that made them both feel as if the world didn't exist outside of the car and there were no facades to uphold thus there were no snide remarks, there was no need to look a certain way or care what the other thought. One night, Rachel looked up after having fidgeted for the better part of an hour and looked over at Quinn with a curious expression on her face.

"Do you want to keep the baby?"

"I don't know," Quinn shook her head and laughed. "I've never actually told anyone the truth about that. I always ask something back to the person who asked me to try and find out what they want me to say and then I lie because it feels like I should."

She looked down on her bump and stroked it with a smile on her face.

"Why should you lie about that?"

Quinn shrugged. "Because when people ask me what I want to do they're not really asking me what I want to do. They're asking me to confirm their own suspicions of who I am as a person."

Rachel hummed. "I don't know why I asked about the baby to be honest but I can tell you that I wasn't expecting a particular answer and I would have accepted any answer."

If anyone else had said those words Quinn would have found that hard to believe but she believed them this time because it was Rachel who had said it and because there was a tone in her voice that Quinn had never heard before. The fact that she could tell the difference in the brunette's tone of voice, even if she couldn't quite say what the difference was, made her both confused and happy at the same time.

After a few seconds Rachel coughed. "I'm sorry for telling Finn that the baby wasn't his. I know that I've said that I was sorry before but this time I truly mean it. Sometimes I do rash things that harm people because I think it's the right thing to do but I was wrong this time and I'm sorry that you got hurt because of me."

There was no missing the sincerity in her voice and Quinn felt a lightness in her chest. It didn't mean that everything had changed but something had started and there was no fighting the process.

"Thank you, Rachel, and I'm sorry too, for what it's worth, about how I've treated you. An apology isn't going to fix everything but it's a start, right?"

Rachel nodded. "Yeah, thank you Quinn."

Their drives continued and as time went on the conversations began to dominate and eventually there were playlists ready so that no one had to stop talking to change the song. The music became a background noise to their conversations which were sometimes deep and other times just silly. During their drives underneath the stars, these two very different teenagers found common ground and realised that there were more similarities than there were differences. They realised that while the earth crumbled underneath their feet, they could support each other until the chaos subsided and when needed, they could just get out of there.

The end