Hi guys, thanks for your patience.
Chapter title is from The BeeGees song 'Secret Love'.
Big thanks to Jade for checking this through for me.
Chapter Twenty-eight: Maybe We Can Find A Hideaway.
They'd purposefully picked a class that they didn't share and that coincided with fourth period.
Five minutes into the Spanish lesson Quinn quietly made her way to the front. "I'm not feeling very good, Mr. Schue, can I please have a hall pass?"
Instantly alarmed, which made her feel guilty, he asked quietly, "Is it the baby? Do you need me to take you to the nurse?"
"It's just . . ." She pressed a hand just beneath her breastbone and swallowed hard. " . . . more morning sickness, I think. I need to get to a bathroom." That wasn't a lie.
"Okay." He was already writing out a hall pass for her as fast as he could. "If you start to feel worse, go to the nurse, or call someone if you feel too sick, okay?"
"Thanks, Mr. Schue."
Rachel had been groaning, rolling her eyes deliriously and wiping her sweat-free brow (although it was getting sweatier as time wore on) for five minutes now but the teacher was too engrossed in her book with the unsavoury snake woman on the cover to notice her distress.
In the end she had no choice but to go for the direct approach and stalked up the teacher's desk. "Can't you see I'm not feeling well?"
Mrs. Peach eyed her unsympathetically. "What's wrong?"
"I have a headache, a sore throat and I'm pretty sure I've feverish! Do you have any idea what a sore throat un-rested could mean for my future career?"
"You had me at headache," Mrs. Peach handed her a yellow slip and went back to her novel.
That had been so easy it was hard for Rachel to stay in character when she just wanted to skip out of the door and all of the way to the restrooms at the back of the school.
Quinn waited in the bathroom behind the gym for Rachel to turn up. It was a few minutes after they'd said they'd meet but she knew it might be harder for Rachel to get away from her lesson because she didn't have the built in baby excuse. When ten minutes had gone by she started to think up ways to kill Finn for saying something that had made Rachel decide not to turn up.
And then the door opened and everything was okay again.
"I was starting to think you weren't coming."
"Blame Mrs. Peach's complete lack of concern for the health of her students. I'm considering putting in a formal complaint . . . oh, you brought a blanket?" Rachel shucked off her book bag and knelt down in front of her. "Did you bring food too?"
"No, I'm not having a picnic in a bathroom! This is one of the Cheerios towels. I snuck in and grabbed it on my way here."
"Oh yes, I see now," Rachel said as she recognised the upside down, inside out red logo. "You still have your key?"
"No. Coach made me give that one back . . . but I made three copies the day I received it. One is in my pocket, Santana has another and the third is in a locked box in my bedroom."
"Your deviousness over a towel closet knows no bounds, Quinn."
"I know," she smirked.
"I also brought something to add to the ambience." Rachel pulled two fat candles out of her bag and set them either side of the towel.
Quinn's eyebrow arched higher. "When I texted 'Okay, fourth period, it's a date' you know I didn't mean date-date, right?"
Rachel looked up from lighting each candle with a long red stove lighter with a roll of her eyes. "Yes, obviously. But in case you haven't noticed our platonic rendezvous is in a school bathroom and these candles are scented so . . ."
Rachel settled more comfortably onto the large towel, crossing her legs and clasping her hands in her lap. As the room slowly filled up with the smell of sandalwood she looked around as if she was appraising the interior design of a new restaurant.
A faucet dripped in the sink behind her and occasionally the cisterns bubbled. Quinn wished she had thought to bring a pack of cards or something to occupy her hands with "You know, it feels unsettling to be hanging out with you in complete silence."
"Then start a conversation," Rachel murmured with a smirk. "You know you're dying to."
"I'm not going to put you in the awkward position where you feel you should spill my boyfriend's secrets if you want to stay friends with me, Rachel."
That stopped Rachel's thorough inspection. "Are you acquainted with the term 'Passive Aggressive' or do I need to hold up a mirror?"
She rolled her eyes, "What did he say?"
Rachel took her time replying, "I'm not going to tell you everything we discussed because it was personal, but I promise it was nothing you should be concerned about."
"Did he come on to you?" she asked bluntly, because that was what she really needed to know.
Rachel laughed uncomfortably, which didn't ease Quinn's concern. "No, he didn't. Not at all."
"Really?"
"Honestly Quinn, he wanted to talk about the baby."
Somehow that made her heart sink even more, "Why couldn't he talk to me about it?"
"I don't know, maybe for the same reason you feel it easier to talk to me about it. I'm a third, non-involved party."
"Are you?"
"Where you're concerned, no. Where Finn's concerned, yes I am." When she raised her eyebrow questioningly, Rachel sighed. "It's not Finn I want to raise your baby with."
"Rachel," she warned, because she didn't want to hear that, or more to the point she
shouldn't hear that!
"I'm only telling the truth."
"That doesn't make it okay for you to say it."
"There is one thing that I feel obligated to tell you, however" Rachel said hesitantly.
"And that is?" Quinn was apprehensive now, half-expecting her to come out with a list of baby names and/or, even worse, ask for her hand in marriage!
"Finn knows Puck's in love with you."
"What?" she managed.
"Finn knows that Noah loves you."
"He doesn't!" she insisted, "That's insane."
"Quinn, anyone who took the time to look could see it. Which means most of Glee Club probably haven't figured it out because they are way too self-involved."
Quinn cocked an eyebrow and Rachel rolled her eyes, "Obviously I have a vested interest. Plus Noah admitted it to me when we broke up."
"He did? What . . .? What else did he say?" she demanded.
Rachel didn't seem to notice her anger and simply shrugged. "Just that neither of us stood a chance because you're carrying Finn's baby. Which he's right about, isn't he?"
Quinn looked down at the towel beneath them and didn't answer as she recovered from her scare. Fear had scorched her insides at the thought of what he might have told Rachel in a fit of jealous pique. She trusted him with this secret only when he was feeling level-headed and this was Puck, he wasn't the most rational guy in the first place and he'd been getting more volatile as the weeks went on. He'd gotten into a fight with Finn in the halls only the week before, for God's sake, and then all that business of stealing the Bake Sale money. She didn't know how many more times she could tell him it was never going to happen, that he was never going to be this baby's parent, but backing off and trying to ignore him wasn't delivering the hint either . . . and now Rachel was getting in on the act, giving her those same deep brown puppy eyes in exactly the way Finn didn't look at her any more.
Maybe she should just give the baby to Puck and Rachel to raise together. Would everyone be happy then?
"Quinn?"
"What?"
"You never answered the question."
She hadn't really heard the question, something about staying with Finn.
"He's my boyfriend," she said, because it was an easy response and covered any number of questions.
"He wouldn't be if you broke up with him."
She looked up so sharply that Rachel flinched. "And why would I do that, Rachel?"
"Because . . ." a little shrug completed the sentence.
"It's not like I care what Puck thinks; and we're just friends, aren't we? That's what you wanted."
Rachel's head bobbed in reluctant agreement.
"So tell me again the reason why you think I should break up with my baby's father; and you'd better make it a good one." Because no matter how often Quinn thought about it she couldn't. All she could ever come up with were small petty selfish reasons.
"I don't think you should break up with him if you don't want to. If you do want to, however – and I'm not saying that you do, this is merely me conjecturing - then surely that would be the only reason you needed."
It should have felt good to have Rachel simplify it for her like that. Only it couldn't, because what she wanted shouldn't come into it. It was best for her baby to have a stable father-figure and however she felt about it – that had to be Finn.
"This is such a stupid conversation. I wish I'd stayed in class."
"No, don't say that. Let's talk about something else." Quinn remained tense and silent. "Please? I'll let you pick the topic."
"Okay, fine. There is actually something we need to discuss soon anyway or it will be here and we still won't know what we're doing."
Rachel looked alarmed, as if the choice she'd been offered was Truth or Dare and it was Santana doing the asking.
Quinn smirked, "I have no idea what you're hiding to look that terrified all of a sudden."
"I'm not hiding anything, what would I be hiding? That just sounded extremely ominous."
"Fair enough. So: What song or songs do you think we should sing for our assignment? Or: What movie are we going to watch at yours this afternoon?" Rachel visibly relaxed with a smile and Quinn had to ask, "Okay, seriously, what did you think I was going to say?"
"I really not sure, but I have just crossed one of our many lines and I suppose I was expecting retribution in the form of a difficult or embarrassing subject matter."
"I think we've probably covered all of those already, haven't we?" she said playfully.
"Well, there is one more I can think of."
Okay, with the way Rachel was looking at her she just had to bite.
"And that is?"
"Now that we're just friends, what happens in—" she did a quick calculation in her head and Quinn already knew what was coming. "—wow, five and a bit weeks now?"
She cleared her throat, the heat in her cheeks super noticeable in the cool room. "Well, nothing I suppose. Now that we're just friends."
"Oh."
"Did you . . . were you . . . do you have a different opinion on the matter?"
"No!"
"Oh."
"I mean, not necessarily."
"But possibly?"
"I don't know."
"Okay."
They stared at each other, neither of them knowing how to push the conversation forward or back away from it gracefully. Rachel rolled her eyes and Quinn bit her bottom lip and then when the tension couldn't possibly get any thicker they laughed.
"Well, I'm really glad we made time for this discussion," Quinn got out between breath-choking chuckles.
"See, both difficult and embarrassing, I am the master," Rachel gasped through her giggles.
They sobered eventually; slowly calming down until they were just smiling at each other.
Quinn was the first to speak, "It would be weird, wouldn't it? To be just friends for five weeks and then say, 'Oh, but its written in my date diary so we have to do it'. Uh, I didn't mean it I . . ."
Rachel sat forward in excitement. "You wrote it in your diary?"
"Of course not," she scoffed. Why would she do something so creepy?And that little red heart – hey, Rachel had her gold stars, hearts just happened to be Quinn's thing, it didn't mean anything – on the page exactly nine and a third weeks after their first real date could represent anything at all.
Rachel's eyes turned shifty all of a sudden. "Oh my God, you did, didn't you?"
"No," Rachel said quickly and then gave a sheepish smile, because she was always better at coming clean than Quinn. "I may, however, have circled it on my calendar. I was really looking forward to it, okay?"
Quinn just grinned at her. What else was she supposed to do with a confession like that?
"It's the Wednesday before Sectionals, incidentally."
Oh, what the hell, right? "Yeah, I know."
Rachel gave her a smile for the small admission. "I know we were only going to talk about where our physical relationship might progress to and not necessarily make the progression that very night, but . . . it was still going to be a pretty big event in my life."
Quinn nodded, "Mine too."
"And, I know you're not supposed to be able to miss something you never had, but it still feels like its been stolen right out of my hands."
"We could still do something special that night."
Rachel's expression perked up, "Like?"
"Well, not anything, uh . . ."
"Sexual?"
"Um, yeah, obviously, but something . . . to mark the occasion."
"Sit in your car at the freight yards and talk about what might have been?" Rachel asked dryly and Quinn chuckled because that's kind of where her mind had gone to too.
"Yeah, maybe."
Rachel's tongue curled around her top teeth as she smiled and nodded, "It's a date."
Quinn couldn't help feeling like she'd just let herself in for a world of trouble as she stared at that tongue and that smile and then nodded too. Chances were though that they'd be so firmly locked in the friend zone by then that the thought of doing more than hang out that night wouldn't even enter their heads.
"So I'm forced to admit I have no clue how to proceed with our assignment. I mean, what angle should we even tackle it from? We're supposed to resolve our differences through what we choose to sing; which should mean we pick songs that address the fact that we are star-cross'd lovers, desperately attracted to each but unable to make it work because of the cruel circumstances of our lives – and if that were the case I could have fifty songs on the table at once, but . . ."
"We can't sing about that," Quinn finished for her, not seeing any point in telling Rachel to rein it in, because as melodramatic as her synopsis might have been, it wasn't wrong. "Because nobody is supposed to know that we're . . . hang on, we're Romeo and Juliet, really?"
"Without the suicides obviously and with less sword fights but . . . look, just go with it."
"Fine, we can't sing about that. We need to sing about . . ." She looked for a way to put it nicely. ". . . how we want different things."
"You mean how I want you and you don't want me?"
"Those are the roles we've cast for ourselves."
Rachel didn't get upset, ever the professional when it came to a performance. "I agree. There must be more than a few duets that deal with exactly this issue."
"I don't think we should do a duet. We're supposed to be only practicing over the phone, remember? And rehearsing a duet together takes time and, you know, being in the same room sometimes."
Rachel gave a small nod and hugged her knees.
"Talk to me."
"I just thought this might be our only chance to duet together and I guess I wanted that. You're right though. What songs do you think we should sing?"
"Well, Santana thought you might sing 'Every Breath You Take!'."
"But that's about a stalker!" Rachel exploded but then deflated immediately, rubbing her forehead with a tired chuckle. "Okay, I get it."
"You don't have to, obviously."
"Can you think of anything more appropriate in the eyes of the Glee Club? "I'll go through my iTunes library tonight for something else, but if I can't find anything . . . It's a good song, despite its subject matter. How do you think you're going to lyrically reject me?"
"I have no idea."
"I suppose this is harder for you. At least I get to sing what I feel, whereas you . . ." her tone changed slightly, revealing some insecurity. " . . .you won't be singing what you feel, will you?"
"No, I don't want to reject you, lyrically or publicly, but its just something we have to do, just another hurdle, so that we can be together."
Their eyes met in the loaded pause that followed.
"As friends?" Rachel asked softly.
"Uh, yeah. I mean, that's what I meant . . . obviously."
This was getting complicated. She'd known it would sooner or later. It wasn't even their fault, she was doing her best and she was sure Rachel was too, but this damn thing . . . in some moments it felt bigger than both of their best intentions.
Moments like this . . . when there was barely a foot of towel separating them and despite the overhead fluorescents being on the candlelight still made it feel romantic and it would take half a second to be up on her knees and closing the gap . . .
She wondered if Rachel was thinking the same or if making that move would be completely unexpected and unwelcome in its inelegance. Her eyes, for once, weren't giving a lot away and Quinn wasn't sure enough to act first. What if it ruined all of their hard work? All two days of it? Relapse was a natural part of recovery, wasn't it?
'Do something, Rachel!'
Quinn just needed her to move or blink or look away; anything that would give her the sign she needed to either kiss her or act like she didn't want to kiss her because just staring into each others' eyes like this was beyond awkward.
And then fate stepped in to help her out; it had to be fate because God would never be so cruel.
There was a noise, beyond the dripping tap, the bubbling cisterns and their own laboured breathing, something, a footstep perhaps outside the bathroom. She tensed, because who wouldn't when they were playing hooky from class with someone they were supposed to loathe. But she refused to over-react this time and signalled for Rachel to stay calm and quiet. Reaching over she gave Rachel's hand a comforting squeeze, because they were perfectly safe in their sandalwood-smelling cave. They'd taken precautions so that nobody from the world outside could touch them in here.
And then the door was pushed open and after a moment of blank-faced confusion she thought 'I forgot to lock the fucking door after Rachel arrived!'