Chapter 5

It's been five days, and Quinn still hasn't snapped me back.

5 days! The rain pattering against the bus window is very reminiscent of my mood. Curse my heart for falling for a popular girl, I'm not sure what I expected. Quinn responded quickly to my snaps because she was curious, not because she was interested.

Ah, stupid me. Stupid stupid stupid.

At least I still sit next to her in class, so it's not so bad. I like the collaboration projects the most because Quinn usually moves her desk so it's next to mine, and we work on the project Mr Schue sets us but we always get side-tracked so we end up chatting and having done no work. So when the time came for us to present our projects, it was an awkward 3 minutes as I tried to explain why our work was incomplete before Quinn shushed me and tried to charm our way out of punishment.

Mr Schue must be gay because Quinn's charm didn't work on him and we both got Fs.

Okay, don't you dare say Quinn's a bad influence on me because I'll have you know it is usually me whose mind starts to wander and I bring up some non-subject-related chat. So, if anything, it's me who's a bad influence on her, because if I didn't get side-tracked, we would've gotten some work done, because she's surprisingly quiet for one of the popular group. Oh and I apologised to her about it but she didn't seem to care, saying that's what she would've gotten anyway.

I swipe up Quinn's profile on my phone and her snapscore is still increasing (not that I'm recording her daily snapscores and stuff, I just have good numerical memory okay) so she's still snapping other people. I'm going to be one of the people who gets lost down in Quinn's long list of people she snaps to, and that makes me sad because I kind of hoped to have a streak with her, and maybe get on her best friends list.

But good things don't come to good people, I guess.

(I'm a good person, right? Surely?)

After a gruelling double biology lesson that was just the teacher droning on and on, it's finally breaktime and since Sam is at some music rehearsal (he's forming a boyband and for some strange reason, people are actually interested), I'm left companionless. Is it sad how I literally only have one friend who I'm comfortable with? And after scanning around the common room for any friend groups I could drop into for a nice chitchat, my unpopularity is confirmed. Bleugh.

I did notice one interesting thing though – the jocks and the sporty girls are together as always, but Quinn isn't with them! I have no idea where she is but honestly, anywhere is better than with those ego-fuelled assholes.

I decide to go to the library since I have nothing to do. I don't go there very often contrary to popular belief. I don't understand why people even think that, I don't even like reading.

I scan the library, wondering if I should use one of their computers to play some games on before I spot somebody sitting alone at a distant table. I don't even need to see her face to know who it is: I think her graceful and confident posture and golden hair are telling enough.

It didn't take a lot of debating with myself to decide what to do next. Before I knew it, I was standing right next to her, watching her work on her laptop, earbuds on.

I scare myself sometimes with how creepy I can be, I swear to god.

"Hey," I say and Quinn looks up from her work, smiling when she sees me.

"Heya," she simply responds, taking one earbud out of her ear.

"Um," I open and close my mouth. "Is this seat taken?" I point at the seat opposite her awkwardly, and okay my legs are shaking, hopefully she can't sense the nerves that suddenly decided to rush me with no warning.

Quinn's eyes follow where I'm pointing before she shakes her head, still smiling.

"How are you?" she says as I clumsily pull the chair back and sit down, nearly tripping over my own bag because it got caught on a chair leg.

"Tired," I respond. The only appropriate answer considering how heavily I'm breathing. Why am I breathing so heavily?

"Tell me about it," Quinn says, rolling her eyes. "I'm ready to slay my English teacher for this stupid forty-mark essay she set us."

"I don't understand why you do this to yourself," I laugh. "Writing like five essays every week can't be fun."

"I could say the same to you," Quinn shoots back, wrinkling her nose. "Numbers and, uh… algebra and uh… the spectrum thing…"

"Spectrum?" I raise an eyebrow. Spectrum could mean a lot of things. She couldn't be referring to…

"You know, um… that thing that goes from red to purple… uh…"

"What, the electromagnetic spectrum?" I say.

"Sure."

"That's physics," I deadpan. "Which I… do not do."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Quinn laughs, not sounding sorry at all. "You get what I mean."

"Yeah, yeah. So you here to write your essay… during break?"

"I had a free period beforehand," Quinn sighs, taking her earbuds out and setting them on the table. "Came here because I actually wanted to get some work done and not get distracted, you know."

"Oh." Every brain cell I have is grimacing at how stupid I was. Quinn's literally never by herself, so of course if I see her by herself she doesn't want to be disturbed. Ah, shit. "I-I'm really sorry, um, should I go?" I'm already half out of my chair.

"No, no, stay," Quinn says quickly, leaning over the table and pushing me back into my chair. "I'm literally finished. See?" she beams, turning her laptop around so I could see the document so full of text it made my eyes hurt.

"You wrote that… in an hour?"

"Yep," Quinn chirps, scrolling up and down her document to flourish her essay in all its glory. "Fifteen hundred words."

"Wow. Well, go off I guess, smarty-pants."

"Coming from you!" Quinn huffs. "Private tutor."

"Ugh, why do you always call me that?" I whine.

"Because you're the reason my teachers haven't kicked me out of econ yet!" Quinn laughs. "I'm so bad at it you don't understand. I've been talking to my parents and the teacher, I think I'm going to drop it soon."

"What? No!" I say quickly, because… because oh my god I need Quinn to stay in my class. What the hell am I going to do without her? She's the only reason I still do the damn subject. "You keep talking yourself down, but you're really not as bad as you keep saying you are!"

"That's very sweet of you, Santana –"

"If you drop it, I'll drop it too."

"That's also very noble of you, Santana, but there's no need for that," Quinn sighs. "Look, I'm struggling in class, okay? I'm lucky because I have you to rely on when I'm stuck which is all the time, but I won't have you to help me when it comes to finals. My parents will kill me if they find I got an F, okay?"

"I can help you understand it if you need," I offer, because more private time with Quinn? Fucking hell yes. "Look, I've got to be honest with you here. I don't like econ, I don't like Mr Schue. But you make it better. So please stay?"

Oh, the sap. I feel I'm in a romantic movie except unfortunately, there's no bidirectional romance here.

Quinn looks at me for a few moments before she smiles softly. "I'll think about it."

Not exactly the answer I was hoping for, but I'll settle for it for now. If I pressed further, I might give myself away, and that wouldn't be good.

Quinn saves her essay before she closes the document, revealing her… interesting choice of wallpaper.

"Cute," I nod at her laptop, and Quinn looks confused before following my line of sight and instantly blushing.

"It's a bit of an embarrassing story," Quinn says meekly, covering the Peppa Pig wallpaper with her hands. "I don't think you'd understand."

"Go on, try me," I smirk because Quinn's getting flustered and I love it. She's still looking hesitant so I say, "Come on, you can't tease me like that!"

"Okay, fine!" Quinn covers her face. "So my therapist said I should have it as my wallpaper."

"Oh." Count that the second stupid thing I've done in the space of ten minutes. My heart drops and I hate myself. "Um… I'm sorry, I probably shouldn't have pushed –"

"It's not like that," Quinn waves a hand. "She's not a therapist, not really. My parents just call her my bacon therapist."

I can process fucking multivariable calculus but I can't process what Quinn just said. "W-What?"

"I told you, you wouldn't understand," Quinn rolls her eyes. "Alright, so I don't know if you know this already, but I have an… everybody is calling it an 'addiction'," Quinn wrinkles her nose. "To bacon. So my bacon therapist said I should put Peppa Pig on my wallpaper so I would feel bad about eating bacon, because… well, look at how cute these little pigs are!" She points at the children playing in the background.

I'm actually aghast. "R-Right…" I say slowly, because Quinn's still beaming, tickling the little pigs with her fingers. "Would you say your… addiction has gone after with this new wallpaper?"

"Hell no," Quinn grins as she pulls a bag of bacon from seemingly nowhere. "Sure, the pigs are cute, but they're fictional. And what can they do about it, hmm?" She pulls a strip out of the bag and places it delicately in her mouth, letting out a barely suppressed moan that made me clench my legs tighter.

But I still gape at her eating the bacon so mercilessly. "You're a monster!"

Quinn frowns. "You can't call me that for liking food!" she huffs, putting another strip in her mouth.

"You're not even meant to eat in the library," I say.

"So what?" Quinn says casually, eating another strip. "What are they going to do about it, take it away?" she mocks.

"That's… exactly what they would do."

"The school sanctions are so over-glorified," Quinn says, rolling her eyes. "They would never take bacon away from me."

Quinn closes her eyes and is about to put another strip in her mouth but it was plucked out of her hands by the librarian.

"Wha-" Quinn blinks, confused as to what happened and why she was suddenly sitting in an enormous shadow.

"No eating in the library," the librarian says in that nasal voice, snatching the bag away from Quinn before she had a chance to protest. He then sees the other bags of bacon in Quinn's rucksack and takes them away too.

"H-Hey!" Quinn protests.

"No eating in the library," the library repeats before leaving, pulling strips of bacon out of the bag and eating it himself.

Quinn is shellshocked for a few seconds before ire boils through her blood and she grits her teeth angrily. "Fucking hypocrite," she mutters furiously. "Dickhead. Son of a bitch. Stupid bastard."

I gape at Quinn; I have never heard her swear before. "You need help."

Quinn glares at the librarian for a few more seconds before she softens and looks back at me. "Yeah I do." she concedes.

Quinn never leaves my mind all afternoon, she honestly looks adorable when she's mad. And that bacon addiction thing, it's cute more than anything. Sure she probably is a bit overzealous and needs to cut down her intake a bit, but come on, the sounds she makes when she's eating bacon, makes me want to search up bacon recipes tonight and hear her make those sounds again.

I'm standing at the bus stop under my umbrella because it's raining heavily again, and it's nice because I can secretly laugh at the silly people who are standing in the rain, getting soaked. There's this poor guy whose glasses keeps on slipping down his nose because of the rain. He's the only guy I'm not laughing at because I feel a bit bad for him.

I scan the other people getting soaked by the rain and… wait, no way.

I've been taking this bus for months but never have I seen Quinn at my bus stop. What's the date today, because I need to file this under one of my lucky days.

April 14th. Noted.

I don't know if I should approach her or not though, I feel like I've already used up my pass to talk to her this morning during break when I learnt about the extent of her bacon addiction.

I'm deep in thought debating whether I should approach her, so deep in thought I don't realise Quinn has noticed me staring at her until it was too late. I smile tentatively and she smiles back, but she was squinting, trying to wipe the wet tendrils of blonde hair from her face while trying to shield her folders from getting wet. She keeps looking at my umbrella, as if she was too scared to ask if she could share it.

Fuck, I'm thinking in the ideals. No chance that happens –

"Hey," Quinn says, having made her way over to me already. Did she run?

Okay, she obviously wants to share the umbrella because her teeth are chattering and she's bobbing up and down, clearly freezing from being soaked to the skin.

I tilt my umbrella towards her and her face lights up.

"Really?" she breathes and I nod. "Thank you so much," she scurries over and sighs happily when she's finally under cover. I secretly tilt my umbrella even more so she's fully protected from the rain; it doesn't matter if I get a little wet.

"Never seen you at the bus stop before," I say.

"It's a one-off," Quinn says, drying her folders with her sleeves which didn't help because they were also wet. "I have a dentist appointment," she smiles toothily to make her point.

"Not been brushing your teeth then?" I tease.

"What? Of course I do, who do you take me for," Quinn huffs. "It's just a check-up."

"Right, okay," I nod. "Which bus you taking then?"

Please say the 12.

"The 5," Quinn says, leaning into the umbrella because the wind was blowing rain into her face again but her body bumped against mine and okay, she's really wet.

Wait, that sounds sus. Damp? No, that's not it either. Soaked? Ah, shit.

Waterlogged. Yeah, she's really… waterlogged.

"Ah, I'm sorry," Quinn says instantly, wiping my clothes but it's just making it wetter.

"No, it's okay," I say, straightening my clothes and Quinn smiles gratefully. We stand in silence for a while, but honestly, it doesn't feel awkward. It's comfortable, which is a good sign, because it means we're getting closer to each other.

Quinn looks ahead thoughtfully and I take this opportunity to look at her, because she's standing so close to me. I can see the water droplets trailing down the curve of her cheek, the slope of her neck and finally dripping down to the floor from her cross necklace.

She's so beautiful.

"That's your bus," Quinn smiles and I blink, dazed.

My eyes focus and she's right. My bus never arrives this soon. Why the hell is it here already?

"Better get going then," I say regretfully. "Do you want to borrow the umbrella?"

"No, no, of course not," Quinn shakes her head with a smile. "You need it."

If she said yes, I would've lent it to her and walked home in the rain after getting off my bus. Ah, the lengths I go to for this girl.

"Sure?" I say and Quinn nods. "Alright, see you tomorrow."

"Bye!" Quinn says and I leave to get the bus. The rain is soaking Quinn again but at least she seems fine about it.

Halfway through the bus ride, I see Quinn has sent me a snap. But I don't want to open it straight away, because either I reply and it comes off as too eager or I don't reply instantly and risk Quinn thinking I'm airing her.

It makes me happy anyway.

A/N: Would love to hear any thoughts! I'm sure we all know how Santana feels about Quinn but how do you think Quinn feels about Santana?