By the time New Year's rolled around, Quinn had stopped even her casual mentions of finding her own place. The guest room had become her own, the few knick knacks and photos she'd packed from her parents' house spread out around the room. A framed picture of the glee club, from after sectionals, sat on her bedside table—all of them crowded around where Quinn sat in Artie's lap, the two of them hoisting the trophy above their heads—beside the worn Book of Common Prayer she had received at her confirmation ceremony, the folded up picture from her first sonogram tucked inside the front cover.
She had tried to talk to Rachel about the confrontation with Finn several times, only to have been shut down repeatedly, the conversation changed to dinner plans, or the list of songs Rachel was going to give to Mr. Schuester that she felt could help them win Regionals. Eventually, Quinn let her questions simmer on the back burner of her mind, forcing herself to instead focus on more pressing matters. A job, rent money, the possibility of college all filled her mind; surprisingly enough, after only a day of trying to focus on something besides Rachel's unprecedented outburst at Finn, Quinn had lost herself in other concerns.
"Hey," Rachel said, startling Quinn from where she sat pensively at her small desk, leafing through the stack of college brochures she'd taken from the college fair a year earlier. "I'm craving Thai food. Do you want to come?"
"What?" Quinn muttered distractedly. She shoved the brochures under a stack of textbooks. "I mean… yeah, sure, that sounds good." She pushed herself to her feet, biting back a wince as best she could at the twinge in her back.
The drive to the other side of town was filled with Rachel chattering away. Over the past months, Quinn had become adept at half-listening to the other girl, picking up every other sentence whilst tuning out the rest; it made the brunette far easier to handle. As Rachel went on about the upcoming second half of glee's season, Quinn stared out the window at the passing scenery, dirty snow plowed to the side of the roads speeding by.
Her thoughts segued back towards the brochures she'd been looking at; she wondered if there was any way she could still manage college. Were her grades good enough for the schools she'd always wanted to go to? Were they good enough for scholarships? If she kept the baby—and only a small part of her dared consider such a thought; she was too young and not ready—could she juggle classes and childrearing?
Rachel whipped her car haphazardly into a spot in the restaurant parking lot. Quinn, pulled back to the present by the music stopping as Rachel shut off the car, exited the car slowly, following Rachel's bouncing form into the restaurant. She remained silent as they were seated and a waiter set menus in front of them.
"Quinn," Rachel said sharply.
Quinn shook her head, looking up from the menu she'd been staring at blankly. "What?"
"What's wrong?" Rachel asked, her tone softening. She shut her own menu, folding her hands over top of it and leaning towards Quinn slightly. Quinn felt suddenly anxious, trapped in the full attention of Rachel Berry's infamously singular focus.
"I'm fine," Quinn said evenly. She forced a smile and quirked an eyebrow at her friend—because sometime, they'd become more than teammates, more than housemates, more than a girl and the peer she was doing a favor for—before turning back to her menu.
"Come on, Quinn," Rachel said. "You've barely said two words this whole time."
"Well, not all of us have the energy to talk at two hundred words a minute," Quinn said good naturedly. She smirked at Rachel, who merely rolled her eyes before honing back in on Quinn, dark eyes staring intently across the table.
"Seriously," Rachel said softly. "Give me some credit, okay? I've lived with you for almost two months now. It's not hard to tell when something's bothering you. And we both know how well things turn out when you try to bottle everything up, so why don't you just tell me what's bothering you?"
Quinn rolled her eyes, shooting an annoyed glance at Rachel. Possibly the most infuriating thing about having Rachel as a friend was that she was right a disturbing percentage of the time.
"College," she said quietly. She abandoned the menu—which she had discovered she didn't really understand anyways; Rachel apparently had found the one authentic Thai restaurant in all of Ohio—and rested her forehead on her fist, propping her head up tiredly.
"What about it?" Rachel asked. She mirrored Quinn's pose, the picture of friendly curiosity.
Quinn shrugged, sighing. "Everything, I guess," she said slowly. "It was always a given, you know? Both my parents went to college. All of my grandparents. My sister went to Brown. It was expected, you know?" She paused as Rachel nodded, taking a deep breath. "But now… nothing's really a given anymore, is it? I don't know if I'll be able to keep my grades up this semester, and I don't know if I'll get into any of the schools I always thought I'd get to choose from, and even if I did I don't have the money for them. And I don't even know how I could manage college with a kid—"
She cut herself off, clapping one hand over her mouth. Rachel stared at her, moving slowly to sit back in her chair, hands folded in her lap. Neither spoke for the longest time. Quinn wished fervently that she could step back just those few seconds in time and stop herself from speaking; she had barely acknowledged to herself that she might want to keep the baby, much less admit it to anyone else.
"Do you want to keep her?" Rachel asked gently.
Quinn's breath caught in her throat, her heart beating painfully. Her. Not once had someone referred to the baby as her; Quinn herself had determinedly kept referring to her as "it" or "the baby", convinced that if she acknowledged the humanity growing in her stomach, she'd never have the strength to give the baby up.
"Her," she whispered. Her voice was barely audible, her hand still half over her mouth. The pronoun felt heavy on her tongue, as if the weight of the little girl in her stomach was carried with it. Slowly, she let her hand fall, looking up to meet Rachel's gaze. "I don't know," she whispered. "I think I might."
Rachel nodded slowly, pushing her hair back and reaching forward to fiddle with the napkin in front of her awkwardly. "Well," she said eventually. "You don't have to make that decision right now, do you? You've got time."
"I guess so," Quinn said. She stared at a spot on the wall behind Rachel's shoulder, unable to keep from being distracted by a daydream of holding hands with a little girl with the same blonde curls and green eyes.
"What schools do you want to go to?" Rachel asked after a few seconds, pulling Quinn out of her daydream.
"What?"
"College," Rachel said. "What colleges do you want to apply to?"
Quinn huffed out a sigh, slumping back in her chair. "It's going to sound stupid now," she muttered. "None of them will take a knocked up ex-cheerleader."
"That's crap," Rachel snapped, her voice loud enough to grab the attention of both the surrounding patrons of the restaurant and the waiter who had neglected them thus far; he scrambled over apologetically, offering them water refills and insisting on taking their order. Rachel, with a nod of acquiescence from Quinn, ordered for them both, shoving the menus into his hands and hurrying him off on his way.
"Seriously," she said as soon as the waiter was gone. "You've got really good grades, you're very smart. Why wouldn't you get into college?"
"Oh, I could get into college," Quinn said sullenly. "Lima Technical Community College would love to have me."
"That's not what I asked," Rachel said. "Where do you want to go? What schools did you always think you'd go to?"
Quinn rolled her eyes, not for the first time wishing that Rachel—even with all she'd done for Quinn, for the surprisingly good friend she had turned out to be—was a little less pushy. Rachel continued to stare at her expectantly, eyes wide, from across the table, until Quinn sighed, shoulders slumping in defeat.
"Stanford," she mumbled. "Duke. Columbia. Georgetown."
Rachel's eyebrows rose a little more with each school Quinn listed out. "Wow," she murmured, propping her chin in her hand and staring at Quinn appraisingly. Quinn felt a small bit of dread forming in her stomach, recognizing the look in Rachel's eyes. It was the same one she got when she decided that one of the dance steps in glee's choreography needed to change, or when she decided that the whole household was going to sit down to play Monopoly "as a family", or when she came to the conclusion that Quinn spent too much time on her own and needed to join her and Brittany and Tina and Artie on a trip to the movies. It was the look she got when she was scheming, as Quinn had taken to describing it, and it never seemed to end in anything but frustration and defeat for Quinn.
"No," Quinn said sharply. "Rachel, no. I'm not one of your projects. This isn't some cause for you to pick up."
"Why not? Rachel said. Her eyes were bright, as they always were when she found a new project. "Come on, think about it. We both know you've got the brains, and I've got plenty of planning and organizing capabilities. I can help you keep your grades up this semester, and help you do the necessary research into scholarship and student loans and fellowship programs, and we can make sure you at least get phone interviews, because I know you can ace those, and—"
"Hey," Quinn interrupted. "Career planner. Time out." She fixed a stern glare on Rachel, not blinking until Rachel clamped her mouth shut, teeth coming together in an audible click.
"Okay," Quinn said slowly. "Firstly, I don't know if my grades are even enough for any of these schools. Secondly, I highly doubt that even if they are, they'd be enough for scholarships. Thirdly, I clearly haven't really figured out yet what I want to do about this baby, which is something I think I need to decide first. And lastly, I am not your pity project, nor am I your new hobby."
Rachel looked down, having the grace to look properly sheepish. "Sorry," she mumbled, smiling a little guiltily up at Quinn. "I guess I went a little off there."
"Only a lot," Quinn said, unable to keep a small smile off of her lips. She took a sip of water, her smile widening as Rachel smiled back.
The waiter reappeared, setting their food down in front of them. Quinn prodded at some kind of dumpling on her plate, slightly dubious about the edibility of it; she put off discerning what it was composed of by looking back up at Rachel, who was biting into a dumpling of her own.
"Do you really think I could get in?" she asked abruptly.
Rachel chewed and swallowed her food, looking at Quinn thoughtfully. "Third in the class, right?" she asked.
Quinn nodded, looking down at her plate in an attempt to keep some sense of humility.
"What's your GPA?" Rachel asked matter-of-factly.
Quinn looked back up at her, one eyebrow raised. She should have known that Rachel wouldn't be able to have a casual answer to the question; surely, she knew the brunette that well by now. Releasing a small sigh of defeat, Quinn answered, "Three eight."
Rachel nodded silently. Quinn thought she saw an impressed glint in Rachel's eyes, but bit down on her lower lip, telling herself not to read too much into anything.
"SAT?"
"2250," Quinn answered. She rolled her eyes mockingly at Rachel, giving in. "And I'm taking AP calculus BC, English, US history, and economics right now. Next year, I'll take AP stats, English lit, world history, and psych."
Rachel's eyebrows rose even further, before she smirked as well, turning back to her food. "Yeah," she said after a few bites of food had disappeared. "I think you can get in."
Quinn couldn't help a small swell of pride from rising in her throat, or a pleased smile from spreading across her lips.
"Seriously," Rachel said suddenly. "You are a total brain. It's almost geeky."
"Hey," Quinn said, voice sharp. "I am not geeky."
"Hey, don't blame me," Rachel said, holding up her hands defensively. "It's a simple fact. You take an abnormally high amount of very difficult, high-pressure classes. You get very good grades in them. You have extremely high test scores. And," she added with a smirk. "You're in glee club."
She sat back, crossing her arms triumphantly across her chest. "Quinn Fabray," she announced. "You are a geek."
"I am not," Quinn said indignantly. "And seriously, where do you get off calling anyone a geek, miss I-have-a-scrapbook-for-every-musical-I've-ever-seen?"
"Making a scrapbook for a trip with my parents is not geeky," Rachel said. Her eyes narrowed at the challenge. "Besides, you seem to know more about Wicked than even me."
"Only the book!" Quinn said quickly. Her brow furrowed as she leaned forward, the same competitive spirit that had made her captain of the Cheerios and pushed her to con Sue out of a page in the yearbook surging to the forefront. "You have an itemized list about why Eliza Doolittle is the 'epitome of the perfection found in flawed humanity'."
"You color code your study guides."
"You have a pro and con spreadsheet for every song you've ever considered using in audition."
"You get a very particular and happy smile when you calculate a derivative in your head."
"You can name every actress who's ever played Elphaba on the stage, even for the tour. And the understudies!"
"You…" Rachel paused. Quinn held her breath, sitting back from the table and looking at Rachel sideways. Rachel sighed, tossing her hands up in defeat. "Okay, good point."
"Ha!" Quinn said. She crossed her arms over her chest smugly, tossing her hair over her shoulder in a practiced manner. "Victory is sweet."
"Don't get used to it," Rachel warned. She left a few bills on the table for the check, climbing to her feet and pulling her coat on.
"Don't be a sore loser," Quinn said loftily, shaking her head. She pushed herself to her feet, and the smile on her lips vanished as a sharp stab of pain lanced through her lower back, the muscles protesting the movement. A quiet gasp pushed past her lips, one hand going to her lower back and tears springing to her eyes.
"What's wrong?" Rachel asked, her voice bordering on frantic. She materialized next to Quinn, concern burned across her features, one hand hovering over Quinn's elbow, as if the blonde might topple over at any second.
"It's nothing," Quinn ground out. "Just muscle cramps. This whole pregnancy thing is killing my back." Stubbornly, she pulled her hand away from her back, forcing herself to stand up straight. "It's just a cramp. It'll go away."
"Are you sure?" Rachel asked nervously, hand still hovering over Quinn's elbow. "Do you need to go to the obstetrician?"
"No," Quinn said. She forced a smile. "Really, Rachel, don't worry. It's just a cramp. I used to get them all the time in the Cheerios. They're manageable."
As if to prove that she was fine—prove to exactly whom, she was unsure—Quinn shrugged into her coat and led Rachel out of the restaurant. Rachel hovered directly behind Quinn, matching her steps, as if shadowing her would make everything alright if Quinn suddenly collapsed.
Once they made it to the car, Quinn came to a quick halt. Rachel, as focused as she was on catching Quinn if she suddenly pitched backwards, bumped into her back. The blonde turned to look at her, one eyebrow raised imperiously, the haughty look belied by the quiet smile on her lips. Rachel flushed and ducked her head, making her way to the driver's side of the car as she fumbled with her keys.
"If you want, when we get home, I can give you a massage," Rachel offered awkwardly. Her gloved hands struggled with the keys, her cheeks still flushed. "I took a class one summer. It might help." She finally located the remote for the car, mashing her thumb over the unlock button.
"Strange, isn't it?" Quinn said from the other side of the car. She regarded Rachel levelly, eyes unreadable, over the roof of the car. "I bet you never imagined you'd be so concerned about catching me if I fell."
Rachel blinked, unable to find a response to voice, as Quinn lowered herself into the car. Slow seconds ticked past before she could make herself uproot her feet and slip into the car herself. Quinn was already seated and strapped in; Rachel clumsily buckled her own seat belt and started the car. The drive home was broken only by the soft sound of the soundtrack from My Fair Lady.
At home, Quinn took Rachel up on the proffered massage. Within minutes, Quinn had fallen asleep on her side. Rachel moved to the chair at Quinn's desk and sat, staring pensively at the sleeping blonde. She didn't move until the sound of the garage door signified that one of her parents was home; the sun had long since set, and Quinn hadn't yet awoken.