Quinn sat at her desk, staring pensively at the papers in front of her, the eraser of her pencil tapping along absentmindedly to the sound of the Raveonettes drifting from the speakers on her laptop. She had been staring at the calculus study guide in front of her—a gift from the teacher to the class, as the first stages of preparation for the upcoming AP exam—for half an hour; the review was elementary, and had done nothing to hold her focus from shifting to Rachel's odd behavior for the second half of the day.
Whatever Kurt had said to Rachel had prompted her to avoid Quinn for the rest of the school day, and, more impressively, even after they returned to the house. Quinn wasn't entirely sure how someone could avoid someone they lived with so perfectly, but Rachel was doing an admirable job. Quinn had tried catching up to her in the hallways, catching her eye during class, and elbowing her subtly during glee practice; she had thought that at the least, she would get a chance to get Rachel to talk on the drive home, but the brunette had brightly informed Quinn that she needed to talk to her pre-cal teacher about something and it might take a while and she'd already called one of her parents to come pick her up later, so Quinn was free to go on home. Quinn had considered waiting around outside the school until Rachel came out, fantasizing about smacking her in the back of the head and asking her why she was being so avoidant, but had decided that such actions would be slightly too stalkerish and that hers and Rachel's friendship was still just new enough for that to disrupt things.
When Rachel had skipped out on dinner, though, and stayed in her room both when Quinn left to go see her family for a few hours and when Quinn returned, Quinn found herself fed up. The calculus study guide would have to wait. She tossed her pencil down and stood abruptly from her chair, too engrossed in her thoughts to even notice that the sudden movements—for the first time in two weeks—didn't hurt in the least.
Stalking out of her room and across to Rachel's door, Quinn rapped her knuckles smartly against the door at the same time she pushed it open unannounced. Rachel, sitting on the floor by the foot of her bed with pages of sheet music spread out around her, squeaked in surprise, her eyes wide and mouth open.
"Quinn!" she said. She sounded halfway to breathless.
Quinn shut the door behind her and leaned back against it, arms crossed authoritatively across her chest. "You're avoiding me," she said bluntly. "I want to know why."
Rachel looked back down at the sheet music, straightening a few of the pages. "I'm not avoiding you," she said. "I just had some things I needed to do this afternoon."
"Bull," Quinn shot back.
"Really," Rachel said insistently. She half-glared at Quinn, chin stuck out stubbornly and eyes too wide to be really honest.
"Come on, Rachel," Quinn said. She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Look, if you don't want to talk about it, okay, fine, whatever. Tell me you don't want to talk about it. But don't treat me like a child." Her voice hitched in the slightest, and her confidence wavered. "Everyone's treating me like I'm going to shatter right now, and I'm tired of it. I'm not broken."
"But you are," Rachel said softly. Her hands shot up to cover her mouth, eyes widening impossibly more. Quinn remained motionless, staring at her levelly.
"I'm not broken," she repeated.
"You're hurt," Rachel said, hands lowering slowly. She flushed delicately and cast her eyes down to where her fingers were twisting in her lap. "You don't want anyone to see it, but we all know it. You were hurt and you want to bounce back, but you can't bounce back from everything, Quinn, and trying to make yourself move on and be fine when you need time to heal isn't going to do you any good in the long run and—"
"I'm not broken," Quinn ground out. She couldn't keep the edge out of her voice, or stop herself from stepping threateningly away from the door and glaring at Rachel. Consciously, she tamped down on the roll of anger and frustration in her chest and softened her tone. "If I was so broken, I wouldn't care that you were avoiding me."
"Or maybe you care too much about it because you need something else to focus on," Rachel offered.
Quinn scoffed and rolled her eyes. "So you admit it now?"
"No!"
Quinn shook her head. "Too late to backtrack over that one," she said sardonically. "Look, I'm dealing with this my way, okay?" She took a slow breath, counting to three in her head. "When I'm not completely controlled by pregnancy hormones, I don't tend to cry much at all, and certainly not around other people. I manage things in private, and I move on in private, and that's all that matters. I'm dealing with this, I'm not avoiding it, and I want to know why you're avoiding me."
Rachel remained silent, fingers clenching repeatedly at the material of her sweatpants and eyes locked on her lap. Quinn watched the second hand on the truly atrocious pink and blue clock hanging over Rachel's desk click away a full minute before sighing frustratedly. Moving away from the door, she stepped over the sheet music to stand next to Rachel and lowered herself to the floor.
"Scoot over, man-hands," she muttered, elbowing Rachel gently until there was room for her to sit next to the brunette within the small clear area by the foot of the bed. She opened her mouth to comment on the inexplicable but obvious tension she could feel from where her side pressed up against Rachel's, but instead she focused her attention on the pages of sheet music.
"What is all this?"
"Music," Rachel mumbled. Quinn rolled her eyes.
"Clearly." A slight lilt to her tone conveyed her amusement. "But why is it all out on the floor?"
"I was thinking about the songs," Rachel said. She finally unclenched her hands, reaching out and straightening a few of the sheets at her side.
"What for? An audition?"
"Not exactly," Rachel muttered. "Just thinking, really."
"Right," Quinn said. "Because that makes sense." She leaned forward, wrapping her arms around her shins and peering over top of her knees, chin resting on one denim-clad knee, at the music. One of her eyebrows rose, and she turned her head to look at Rachel, cheek now pressed against her knee.
"These are all love songs," she said. "Are you planning on serenading Mr. Scheu again?" She smirked good-naturedly, and it grew into a small smile when Rachel barked out a short laugh.
"Not even," she said.
"So, what then?" Quinn asked quietly. She watched silently as Rachel bit down on her lower lip and looked anywhere but at Quinn.
"Rachel," Quinn tried again. She stayed still, absurdly afraid that if she moved it would send Rachel bolting out the window. "What's going on? Does this have something to do with what Kurt said to you after lunch?"
"No!" Rachel half-shouted, far too insistently to do anything but tell Quinn that it absolutely had to do with what Kurt had said.
Quinn sighed. She straightened up, leaning back against the foot of Rachel's bed tiredly and shaking her hair out of her eyes. "Okay," she said after a long pause, her patience—always average at best—dissipating quickly. She pushed herself up to her feet. "When you feel like talking to me about it, you know where I am."
She carefully stepped over the sheet music once more, making her way out of the room silently. In her room, she dropped down into the chair by her desk once more, a frustrated sigh pushing past her lips. She considered texting Santana, who always seemed to have more insight and advice than people expected of her, but decided against it; she'd heard Brittany mention that the two of them were having a trash television marathon that night, which would no doubt devolve into something far more carnal between the two of them that Quinn absolutely did not want to interrupt.
Just as Quinn decided to just go to the source of the problem and nag Kurt until his perfectly coiffed head exploded and he told her what he had said to Rachel, Quinn's door opened without preamble and Rachel stood in the doorway. Quinn, phone in hand, felt her mouth drop open slightly, eyebrows raised in silent question. Rachel hesitated, bottom lip caught between her teeth, before stepping purposefully over the threshold and shutting the door behind her. Quinn flipped her phone shut and set it on the desk, crossing her arms and looking at Rachel in silent expectation.
"You're right," Rachel blurted out. "I have been avoiding you."
Quinn swallowed the urge to make an extremely sarcastic remark, and simply continued to stare at Rachel, who looked so uncomfortable that Quinn felt like they had flown back in time a full year and she was still the Cheerio captain who tormented Rachel in the hallways of school.
"It wasn't very mature of me," Rachel continued. "I apologize for that. When I have something that I need to deal with, I should hardly behave so childishly."
"Noted," Quinn said impatiently. "Avoidance equals immaturity. Check."
Rachel fell silent momentarily, staring at Quinn uncomfortably, before taking a slow, deep breath. "Forget this," she mumbled under her breath, stepping over to stand next to where Quinn still sat with crossed arms. "Don't hit me, please."
As Quinn was about to ask Rachel what she was going on about, Rachel, hands moving to grip Quinn's shoulders lightly, leaned down and pressed her lips against Quinn's. Quinn's eyes flew open impossibly wide at the feel of Rachel kissing her, her entire body tensing at the surprise attack as she froze completely.
Rachel jerked back after a few long, awkward seconds, hands sliding from Quinn's shoulders as she took two steps back. Quinn stared at her, fully aware that she was gaping like a child and not caring a whit because Rachel Berry had just kissed her, completely out of the blue.
"That's what Kurt was talking about today after lunch," Rachel blurted out. "He told me that I should stop staring at you and just kiss you and I didn't think that anyone knew and it completely caught me off guard and I didn't know what to do, so I just avoided you while I tried to make sense of it all—"
"Kurt told you to kiss me?" Quinn said slowly. The confusion was as evident in her voice as it was certainly on her features.
"He told me to relocate my backbone and make a move, to be specific," Rachel said. Her blush deepened, her hands once again twisting together. "You're not mad, are you?"
"Mad? Quinn echoed. Her eyebrows came together, forehead creased as she tried to organize her thoughts. She stood, pushing her hands through her hair and taking a deep breath; she inadvertently stepped behind the chair, putting it between her and Rachel. "I…. don't know. Kurt told you to make a move on me?"
"This isn't about Kurt!" Rachel half-shouted. Quinn stared at her, eyes wide. "It's about me and you," Rachel continued, her voice softer.
"Me and you," Quinn said. She shook her head, rubbing her hand over her eyes. "You… you kissed me."
"I did," Rachel said. Her flush was fading slowly, skin returning to its usual tan hue; she hooked her hands together behind her back and regarded Quinn with what was obviously forced calm.
"You kissed me," Quinn said again. "You kissed me."
"I think we've established that fact," Rachel offered.
"Quiet," Quinn snapped. "You don't get to give me a big lesbian smooch and then be flippant about it."
"Sorry," Rachel mumbled; her calm dissolved the slightest bit.
"I'm not gay," Quinn said. Her eyes were wide and she stared at Rachel, her arms wrapped tightly around her stomach.
"We're still in high school, Quinn," Rachel said, her voice gentle. "We're too young to know where our sexual orientations may or may not lie, and it's silly to try to pinpoint them at this age."
"No," Quinn said, shaking her head fervently. "You can experiment all you want, but I'm not gay."
"Quinn," Rachel said. Her voice wavered slightly, and at the sound of it, Quinn felt a small stab of pain in her chest cut through the fog of confusion and fear that had blossomed in her head. "I kissed you because I wanted to. Not because Kurt told me to, or because I grew up with two gay parents, or because I wanted to convert you into a lesbian or confuse you or anything like that. I've wanted to for a long time and I'm sorry if my doing so is going to put you into some identity crisis—"
"Do what?" Quinn interrupted, eyes snapping up to catch Rachel's. "How long?"
"Since Finn came by before Christmas," Rachel said sheepishly.
"What?"
Rachel shrugged. "You know, the thing that you never saw for years was that even when you were making fun of me at school or wherever, the few times we actually spoke outside of a social context, we got along pretty well. We're pretty compatible, all things considered, which is probably why we were able to become friends after all of the things that happened. I always knew that, but it… I don't know. It changed after Finn came by and acted like a jerk and I realized that I wanted to hit him for making you cry. After that…" She shrugged once more. "It wasn't a big leap from that to wanting to kiss you."
"You never said anything."
"Other things were more important," Rachel said simply. "Like you being pregnant. And glee. And me sucking at pre-cal and needing to study all the time."
"Right," Quinn said, confusion lacing her voice. "You can choose to be super-rational about that, but not about what Kurt said?"
"I didn't think anyone knew," Rachel said slowly. "I thought I had done a better job of managing my feelings and my expressions, but apparently Kurt figured it out regardless. He caught me off guard."
"Right there with you," Quinn muttered. She sat on the edge of her bed, chewing on her thumbnail distractedly.
"Quinn," Rachel said after a long silence. "I realize you're confused right now, and that I surprised you with this. I understand that you'll want time to think about it."
"Time to think?" Quinn said. "Rachel, I'm sorry, but I like guys. Always have."
"So do I," Rachel said. "I did date Puck, remember? For all his qualities, intellectual conversation is hardly a forte." She moved cautiously across the space separating them, stopping when she stood directly in front of Quinn, forcing Quinn to tilt her chin up if she wanted to meet Rachel's eyes. "The point is, I like guys. But I also like you. I like that you color code your notes and can quote The Princess Bride and always sing along to those atrociously catchy Lady GaGa songs. I like all of that about you, and I like your sarcasm and your intelligence and that you seem to get why I am the way I am, and I'm attracted to you. It's that simple."
"Nothing is that simple," Quinn said weakly. She couldn't hold Rachel's eyes, her gaze shifting to a spot somewhere behind Rachel's left ear.
"It is," Rachel said. "Everything isn't that simple, and I'm not saying it would be. But this? This is simple." She took a step closer, minimizing the distance between them; the material of her sweatpants brushed against the denim covering Quinn's knees. Rachel reached out slowly, as if Quinn were a deer about to bolt, and gently pushed some of Quinn's hair back from where it had fallen in her face.
Quinn bit down on her lower lip, an ache building in her temples from the myriad of thoughts running through her head. The loudest part of her was screaming, in a voice that sounded painfully like her father had the night he kicked her out, that this was just wrong and immoral, that Rachel was perverted and trying to impose her perversion on Quinn. Not as loudly, but just as insistently, was the impatient whisper in the back of her head that brought up every time Rachel's gaze had lingered on Quinn, how readily the brunette had forgiven her, how protective Rachel had been of Quinn through all the trials of the past months, how safe Quinn had come to feel in Rachel's presence, and said that such things could hardly be bad or immoral simply because Rachel as a girl.
Quinn's eyes drifted down, locking on her knees. She wasn't gay, she thought insistently. It didn't bother her as much as she might have expected that Rachel could be gay, but Quinn fervently believed that she herself simply wasn't.
"Quinn," Rachel said, in the same gentle tone she spoke in whenever Quinn woke in the middle of the night from a nightmare with a racing heart and teary eyes. Her fingers were still in Quinn's hair, thumb against Quinn's forehead and palm resting feather-light against her cheek; her hand slid loose from Quinn's hair to hook a finger beneath her chin and tilt her head back until she had to look at Rachel. "I'm going to kiss you again." She remained still, eyes locked on Quinn's with every bit as much focus and fervor as had radiated out of them when she carried glee to a victory at sectionals.
"I…okay?" Quinn mumbled. Her brain continued to turn in circles, thoughts and voices and opinions racing through and around and over one another, but she couldn't find any other words to formulate.
Rachel's lips curled into a smile at Quinn's words, and she leaned forward, closing what remained of the distance between her and Quinn. Quinn's eyes slipped shut at the last minute, and then Rachel's lips were pressed against hers once more and the only thought in Quinn's head was that she could hardly believe she had never considered any of this before. Rachel's hand remained firm under Quinn's chin, her lips moving slowly until Quinn found herself returning the kiss without even meaning to. She felt Rachel's other hand move up to thread into her hair, and though Quinn's hands remained clenched together atop her thighs, she leaned forward and up into the kiss, tilting her head back to pull Rachel in further.
It wasn't like kissing Finn, who was always far too tall and awkward and never seemed to be able to find a middle ground between a chaste kiss on the cheek and a full-on petting session. It wasn't like kissing Puck, who was almost painfully controlled at all times, born from far more experience than any boy his age should have. It wasn't like the boy she'd kissed at summer camp two years ago, just months before she started dating Finn, who had flushed purple the first time his tongue brushed against hers and he immediately leapt back to apologize for his giving in to temptation. It wasn't the most arousing kiss Quinn had ever experienced—Puck, for all that he was far too controlled and gentle with her, as if she would break like a China doll, had certainly learned plenty before he ever fell into bed with her—but it banished all the confusion and thoughts that had threatened to overwhelm Quinn's head, and pushed away the constantly nagging thoughts of her stillborn daughter, and effectively erased all coherent thought from Quinn's mind until all she could comprehend was the fact that she was kissing Rachel Berry and it didn't really matter too much that they were both girls.
By the time Rachel broke the kiss, both of them were bordering on breathless, with bright eyes and flushed cheeks; Rachel leaned her forehead against Quinn's temple, breathing heavily. Quinn was motionless, hands still intertwined on her lap and eyes wide; after the longest time, she relaxed slowly, leaning against Rachel bonelessly.
"Okay," Quinn said eventually. Her voice was unrecognizable even to Quinn herself; quiet and husky and entirely unlike her. "Okay."
"Okay what?" Rachel's breath ghosted across Quinn's cheek and neck, sending a small tremor down the blonde's spine.
"Okay," Quinn said a third time. "Okay, maybe we can give this a try." She leaned back the slightest bit. "I don't know much of anything anymore," she admitted softly. "Everything's changed this year, and I don't know if this is what either of us actually wants, but I'm trying to be the person I'd want to be the mother of my daughter to have been, and she wouldn't be close-minded like my parents are."
Rachel smiled at her, a quiet understated smile that so rarely was shown, oft overridden by one of the eight rehearsed smiles and grins that she had compiled for headshots and auditions. "Okay," she said. Cautiously, she leaned in towards Quinn and pressed a chaste kiss to the corner of her mouth. "That sounds wonderful."
Quinn nodded, finally untangling her hands, one moving up to rest against Rachel's arm. Rachel straightened up slowly, her own hands sliding down to rest on Quinn's shoulders. "It's late," Quinn said, glancing at the clock as if to prove her point.
"Yeah, it is," Rachel said absently. "We should probably sleep." She paused, biting her lip, and looked at Quinn uncertainly. Immediately, Quinn knew that she was waiting to see what Quinn wanted to do—she had slept with Quinn every night since Quinn returned from the hospital, except when Quinn's sister had stayed over, and clearly expected to continue to do so.
"I…" Quinn hesitated, biting down on her lip. "I think I'll be okay on my own tonight." She avoided the wounded look on Rachel's face, but simply knowing it was there was enough to make her throat ache. Glancing up at Rachel, she offered what she prayed was an apologetic look. "I'm sorry, I just… I need to sort some things out, you know?"
"I understand," Rachel said, voice overly bright. "Absolutely." She pushed some of Quinn's hair back behind her ear before stepping back.
"Thanks," Quinn whispered. She stayed where she was, awkwardness spreading between them as the seconds ticked past.
"Okay then," Rachel said. "I guess that's my cue to go." She reached out for Quinn, her hands freezing in the air momentarily before she pushed ahead anyways and took Quinn's hands, pulling the other girl to her feet. Quinn could feel both of their hands shaking, and ducked her head. Rachel, far shorter than Quinn's athletic frame when she wasn't wearing heels, leaned up on her toes and pressed a final kiss to Quinn's lips before pulling back quickly. "Good night."
"Night," Quinn mumbled. She searched desperately for something—anything—to say that would negate the poorly disguised frustration in Rachel's eyes, that could convince the brunette that even though she was prone to be utterly baffled about something like this didn't mean she was opposed to the fact that kissing Rachel felt far more comforting than anything she'd ever done. Nothing came to her mind, though, but Quinn nonetheless felt her mouth open and a question floating out.
"What was with the sheet music?"
Rachel paused in the doorway, the door pulled half open, and looked over her shoulder with a blush. "I was trying to find a song," she said embarrassedly. "Everyone always said that I'm better when I sing."
Quinn nodded slowly, as if on autopilot. That was so terribly Rachel, and the thought was unbelievably and inexplicably comforting. "Makes sense," she said. "Didn't need it, though."
"No," Rachel said. "I suppose I didn't." With a final smile, Rachel stepped out the door. She paused once more, turning back to Quinn. "If you need anything, you know where I am."
"Yeah," Quinn said. "I do." She smiled, and was surprised that it didn't feel too forced. She watched as Rachel shut the door behind her softly, and remained standing awkwardly in the center of her bedroom. One hand drifted up, fingers brushing over her lips unconsciously. She was still standing there long after she heard Rachel's sleep playlist start and Rachel's dads close their door and the light in the hall turn off, fingers ghosting over her lips as she tried to reason through exactly what had just happened.