Author's Note: GUYS. Someone, for some reason beyond me, nominated this story at Glee Awards 2010 over at Livejournal for Best Work-in-Progress. Which is kind of awesome and kind of insane, seeing as this is like... my hobby for when I'm injured and bedridden (which, admittedly, is way more than I'd like to admit) and really never expected anyone to read it. So that's kind of awesome and I thank you, whoever you are. I would give you a cookie if I could. Or a beer. Wine, if that's your preference. Or a flower, if you like neither cookies nor alcoholic beverages.
The day before the glee club was set to leave for Regionals—the bus would be pulling out of the school parking lot at eight Friday morning for the six hour drive to kick off the long weekend, Principal Figgins having excused them all from classes for the day—Quinn found herself torn between wanting to lock herself in her room to hide from Rachel's manic behavior and grabbing the smaller girl to shake her until she calmed down, a persistent headache pressing behind her eyes. Rachel was racing around the house, double and triple checking to make sure she had all of her costumes, obsessively unpacking and re-packing the bag that she was stowing her iPod and sheet music and meticulously-kept notes in, and shrilly demanding that Quinn do the same for her own luggage.
"Rachel!" Quinn shouted finally, after Rachel had burst into Quinn's room babbling about Quinn needing to make sure she had a spare set of shoes for each number they would perform. "Heel!"
Rachel froze in her tracks, halfway between the door and Quinn's closet, her hands still outstretched to snatch up pairs of shoes, and stared at Quinn momentarily. "I'm not a dog," she said indignantly.
"Really?" Quinn said sardonically. "Because you're acting very much like my aunt's Yorkie does after a really long nap."
"Now, Quinn," Rachel said, her hands coming to rest on her waist, one hip canting out to match the positively saucy look in her eyes. "While I maintain that I am very definitely not at all dog-like in my behaviors, I'm offended that you would choose to compare me to a Yorkie. That's just unnecessarily mean."
Quinn smirked. "Next time we have a competition, I'm breaking out the video camera beforehand."
"You're not allowed near any of the media equipment, remember?" Rachel countered Quinn's smirk with one of her own before continuing towards the closet. "Seeing as you almost killed Daddy's blueray player."
"Step away from the closet!" Quinn said sharply. She leapt athletically off the bed, vaulting over the small pile of luggage sitting on her floor and landing neatly on the other side of her small room. She grabbed Rachel around the waist, tugging her back from the closet. Rachel squealed, ticklish as always, and fought valiantly to grab the closest pair of shoes; she was no match for a taller and stronger Quinn, though, and the blonde simply tightened one arm around Rachel's waist and pinned her arms down with the other easily.
"That's cheating," Rachel said sulkily.
"Rach, I don't need to take three extra pairs of shoes," Quinn said.
"What if you lose a pair on the road?" Rachel demanded. "Or you break a shoelace, or step in a muddy puddle, or Finn drops a hot dog again and the ketchup stains them?"
"We'll improvise," Quinn said. She inhaled slowly, the top of Rachel's head just below her chin and smelling annoyingly wonderful.
"Are you…. Smelling my hair?" Rachel spoke slowly, as if Quinn were either a child or a psychopath.
"Your shampoo smells like oranges," Quinn mumbled. "I like oranges."
"Quinn, you hate oranges. You think they feel like brains."
"Yeah, but I really like orange juice," Quinn said defensively. She felt Rachel tremble from holding in a laugh, and tightened her arms around her in response. "Don't laugh at me," she said plaintively.
"You're ridiculous," Rachel muttered, and Quinn could almost feel her rolling her eyes. Quinn grumbled incoherently, loosening her arms. Rachel spun around dizzily quickly, looking up at Quinn with a glaringly bright smile. "But ridiculous is okay," she added. She bounced up on her toes to kiss Quinn quickly, before darting away and snatching up a pair of black Converse hi-tops.
"Rachel!" Quinn ground out. "I already have a pair of the low-tops packed."
"But—"
"No."
"What if—"
"No."
"Even—"
"Not. Happening." Quinn tugged the shoes out of Rachel's hands and tossed them towards the closet.
"You're mean," Rachel muttered. She crossed her arms impishly. "You know, I just want to ensure that as many variables are eliminated from this weekend as possible. We're going up against the best club in the country, you know, and while I feel that we certainly have a shot based on talent, we remain a significant underdog and I would hate for something like mismatched shoes to adversely affect our scoring potential."
"Right," Quinn said slowly. She blinked once, then shook her head and made her way back to stretch out on her bed and retrieve the book she'd been reading when Rachel barged in. "Okay. If you think it's that big a deal, take as many pairs of shoes as you want. But just so you know," she added quickly, as soon as Rachel's eyes lit up in victory. "One, if you want to take them, they're going in your luggage. And two, I am not carrying said luggage for you."
"Fine, fine," Rachel mumbled. She already had the pair of Converse back in her hands, and was scanning through Quinn's closet intently. "Where are your black ballet flats?"
"Already packed," Quinn said, not looking up from her book. "And before you ask, yes, I only have one pair."
Rachel made an annoyed sound in the back of her throat, and Quinn lifted her book a little higher to hide the indulgent smile tugging at her lips. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Rachel pick up a pair of yellow sandals and wedge them under her arm.
"What about your white slingbacks?"
Quinn blinked confusedly. "Okay, not only are those not even similar to any of the shoes we'll be wearing for any of the numbers, but I also can't do half of the choreography in them. Brittany's the only person who can dance in those kinds of shoes. I'd totally break my ankle."
Rachel hummed distractedly, half of her body hidden in the closet. "Yeah, okay. Oh, there they are!" She lofted the shoes over her head victoriously, holding them delicately out from her body as she extracted herself from the closet.
Quinn stared at her, the book in her hands forgotten. "You're completely off your nut," she muttered affectionately. "Absolutely bonkers."
"Whatever you say," Rachel said brightly. She juggled the three pairs of shoes into one hand—Quinn smirked when Rachel groaned in frustration and ended up tossing the yellow sandals back into the closet before smiling widely once more— and flitted across the room to Quinn's bed, leaning down and pressing a brief kiss to her lips. Quinn leaned into the kiss without even meaning to, and made a disappointed noise when Rachel pulled away, flashed a smile at her, and danced out of the room with Quinn's shoes.
Disgruntled, Quinn tried to return her attentions to her book, but Rachel's intrusion remained a distraction even when the brunette could now be heard shuffling her luggage around in her own room. Quinn struggled with her own self-control for what felt like an eternity before she tossed her book down and leapt off the bed once more.
She strode across the hall, slipping in through Rachel's open door and shutting it behind her quietly. Rachel, singing softly to herself and attempting to cram Quinn's shoes into her bag, had her back to the door when Quinn came in, and glanced over her shoulder briefly at the sound of the door clicking shut.
"Come to help me?" she asked. "I could use some assistance getting this zipper shut."
"Not exactly," Quinn murmured. She flushed inadvertently, and wondered if there was a tactful way to verbalize the fact that she'd abandoned her reading so she could spend the next hour and a half before Rachel's parents returned making out with her.
Things had been strangely comfortable between them since Quinn's weekend with Devon. Quinn had yet to mention to Rachel the details of any of her conversations with her sister, electing instead to keep quiet and try to sort through the jumbled tangle of emotions that had been exposed. Neither her behavior, nor Rachel's, had shifted in the past week—they still bickered about tastes in movies and Rachel practicing too much and Quinn running too much, and Rachel still talked Quinn through her nightmares and panic attacks, and Quinn had unconsciously stepped into a fiercely protective role of the brunette whenever anyone spoke up against her—but Quinn felt almost lighter about it all, as if something she had been holding onto had been holding her back and she had finally disentangled herself from it.
And apparently, as she was learning, part of the wonderfully lighthearted feeling was her wanting to kiss Rachel, even when she wasn't desperate for something to shut off the overwhelming stress in her mind; really, she wanted to kiss Rachel almost all the time, and it was horribly distracting. The headache she'd been struggling with for hours was gone, banished by the lighthearted exchange in her room moments earlier, and the prospect of kissing Rachel instead of reading suddenly seemed like the greatest idea ever.
"And really, there's nothing wrong with being prepared, you know." Rachel was rambling on, her focus on the suitcase in front of her and her back to Quinn, oblivious to Quinn's considerations.
"Uh huh," Quinn said absently. "Rachel, stop talking."
Rachel turned around slowly, staring at Quinn quizzically. She was normally the one barking out orders, constantly attempting to direct Quinn and the rest of the glee club, or talking Quinn down from a panic attack, or even trying to keep her from breaking the more expensive electronics in the house, as Quinn had proved worryingly adept at doing.
Eyebrows furrowed, she crossed her arms over her chest and stared at Quinn, fidgeting as she waited. "Yes?" she said impatiently. "You know, if you really think it's that ridiculous for me to be prepared, you should just say so directly. Indirect mockery is unnecessary. I'm aware that I tend to—"
"That's not it," Quinn mumbled. "That's kind of cute." She blushed deeper at the slow smile that appeared on Rachel's face at the words. "It's just… your dads will be home at eight."
"I'm aware," Rachel said, her brow creasing in confusion.
Quinn bit her lip, wishing that she could either tactfully admit to wanting to kiss Rachel senseless, or that she could at least be less embarrassed about her lack of tact. Instead, she crossed the room silently to stand in front of Rachel and leaned down to kiss her.
"Oh," Rachel said slowly when she pulled away. She smirked. "You know, you could have just said something." Her arms, suddenly no longer crossed over her chest, wrapped loosely around Quinn's neck and pulled her closer.
"Yeah, sure," Quinn muttered. "When you find a subtle way to say 'hi, let's make out', let me know." She gladly let Rachel pull her in for a kiss.
"Subtlety is overrated," Rachel breathed out. She stepped back blindly, one hand shoving her half-closed suitcase out of the way before she sat down clumsily, pulling Quinn with her.
"Come on," Quinn said breathlessly when Rachel moved to kiss her neck. "I'm all about subtlety. It's what I do best."
"Quinn, stop talking," Rachel said crossly.
"Yes ma'am," Quinn said. She smirked when Rachel rolled her eyes at the moniker and let herself be pulled in for another kiss.
An hour later, the sound of the garage door opening pulled them apart. Quinn mumbled discontentedly as she flopped back on Rachel's bed, cheeks flushed and hair in disarray. Rachel giggled flirtatiously and bounced off of the bed, making her way over to the mirror to straighten her own hair and clothes.
"Well," Quinn said breathlessly. "I don't know about you, but I'm feeling better than I was an hour ago. I seriously needed that."
Rachel was silent for a long few seconds and Quinn, still trying to level out her heartbeat, was too focused on her own breathing to notice.
"Daddy said that he was going to try his hand at grilling some steaks," Rachel said suddenly, eying Quinn in the mirror. In the months since Quinn had moved in with them, insisting on earning her keep by way of laundry and cooking, Rachel's parents had both taken to experimenting in the kitchen under Quinn's guidance. Quinn had never thought that the cooking classes her mother had forced her and Devon into at church would come in handy so soon, but had found herself enjoying passing on the knowledge to the Misters Berry.
"That's going to be interesting," Quinn responded. She pushed herself to a sitting position and made a face when she caught sight of herself in the mirror. "Has that grill ever even been used?"
"I think my uncle made some hot dogs last summer." Rachel, her hair pulled back neatly and her clothes straightened, returned her attentions to the suitcase that had been pushed to the floor and now lay sideways with its contents spilling halfway out. Quinn's white slingbacks that Rachel was mysteriously intent on taking lay haphazardly on the carpet, drawing a frown from Rachel.
"You're seriously going to take those?" Quinn asked.
"Yes," Rachel said simply. She lugged the suitcase up onto the bed and set to refolding the clothes that had fallen out, setting them expertly into the bag. The extra shoes she insisted Quinn take were laid atop the clothes, and Quinn watched with amusement as Rachel all but lifted herself off the floor in her attempts to squash everything down into the suitcase.
"Hold on, hold on," she said through her laughter, climbing to her feet. She elbowed Rachel out of the way and, using her height to her advantage, levered the suitcase lid down and held it long enough for Rachel to manhandle the zipper shut.
"Great!" Rachel said. Quinn's eyebrows knitted together momentarily, Rachel's bright demeanor feeling forced. "Now I just need to check my sheet music and I should be ready to go."
"Rachel, you don't need the sheet music. You've had the words down since the second rehearsal and the cues since the fourth."
"That's the kind of thinking that will get us in trouble, Quinn!" Rachel said shrilly. "We cannot afford to get complacent. We got lucky at Sectionals, but we cannot rely on such things in this caliber of competition."
"Right," Quinn drawled. "If you say so. But just so you know, you're starting to act like that Yorkie again."
"Preparedness is, I like to think, one of my more positive personality traits," Rachel said, eyes narrowing. She stepped around Quinn and dragged the suitcase off of her bed to set it by the door to her room.
"If you say so," Quinn said again.
Rachel whirled around, arms crossed over her chest as she glared at Quinn, who blinked in surprise at the genuine annoyance in Rachel's eyes. "You know," Rachel said lightly. "A more appropriate and romantic response to that would have made mention of the multitude of other positive qualities you find in me."
Quinn stared at her, feeling rather dumbstruck. "I'm…sorry?" She wondered if this was how Finn had felt any number of times she had been furious at him and had needed to explain to him with flashcards what he'd done wrong.
"Honestly, Quinn, I thought that one of the upsides of dating another girl was that she would understand such things."
"Do what?"
Rachel let out an exasperated puff of air, throwing up her hands dramatically. "You don't appreciate me!" she all but shouted.
Quinn took a step back in surprise, almost losing her balance when her calf collided with the bed frame; her hands raised up in front of her in a defensive posture automatically, she decided that this was exactly what Finn must have felt like and resolved to apologize to him immediately.
"I… okay, time out," Quinn said slowly.
"No," Rachel snapped. "You don't get to call a time out on a relationship, Quinn."
"That's not what I'm doing!" Quinn shot back. "I just meant… I mean, give me a break, okay? You just went from happy-making-out-Rachel to homicidal-you-don't-appreciate-me-Rachel in like two point five seconds and I need a second to figure out what in the world just happened!"
"It's not that hard to figure out," Rachel said childishly. "You don't appreciate me."
Quinn rubbed her hand over her eyes, feeling a headache starting to push at her temples. "What do you mean? Why are you saying that?"
"Because!" Rachel said. "Because…" her shoulders slumped, the anger seeming to fade from her in pieces until she was entirely deflated and looked even smaller than usual.
"Rach, come on," Quinn said quietly. "What's going on?"
"I feel like you're using me sometimes," Rachel whispered. She refused to meet Quinn's eyes, and Quinn felt a sick feeling expanding in her stomach. As many times as she'd thought the exact same thing herself—as many times as she'd said the exact same thing—it still felt like a slap to the face when Rachel said it. It was one thing to think such derogatory thoughts about herself, or even to say them; it was another matter entirely to hear Rachel voice them. Every time Quinn had mumbled out her own concerns about using Rachel, it had been Rachel who had immediately come to Quinn's defense, who had shored her up and talked her through it and insisted that they were more than that.
"That's what you think?" Quinn said in a small voice. Every moment of uncertainty she'd felt since Kurt Hummel had prodded Rachel into making a move, every second of concern that she was digging them both into a hole they would never escape, every sliver of fear that she was going to drag Rachel into the inescapable cyclone of depression and self-loathing she felt swallowing her up, every thought she'd ever had about why she was going to break Rachel's heart came washing back over her like a tidal wave. Her mouth dried up irrevocably, her throat feeling heavy and her chest starting to ache with every second Rachel remained quiet.
"Okay," Quinn said after a long minute of silence. Though she was no stranger to confrontation—truly, she sometimes felt that she thrived off it—Quinn nonetheless remained incapable of handling a situation head-on when she felt that she had lost control. And if she was honest with herself, which she always thought she should be but generally failed miserably at, every situation with Rachel felt out of control.
Unable to conjure up a single word that she felt she should say—to apologize, explain, rationalize, say anything to Rachel that she had said to Devon just days earlier that a part of her was certain Rachel was hoping to hear— she pushed herself to her feet and shuffled out of the room, carefully stepping around Rachel and thinning herself to avoid touching at all.
In her room, she stood limply by the foot of her bed. Exhaustion swept over her, the indecipherable emotions rushing through her sapping her energy away. Justifying it with the fact that she was worn out from the extra rehearsals Mr. Scheu was putting them through, she changed tiredly into her pajamas, shuffled downstairs to tell Rachel's dads she was too tired for dinner, and curled up in her bed with a pillow clutched to her chest.
After half an hour of lying awake, she shoved the covers back and stalked across the room to grab the yellow sandals Rachel had been unable to carry. Unzipping her suitcase, she shoved them in roughly and forced the zipper shut before returning to her bed.
She woke up six hours later, trembling violently, a phantom ache in her wrist matching the one in her stomach. Her bed felt too big without Rachel there to comfort her, as if the space between her body and the far edge of the mattress was threatening to swallow her whole. Casting a longing glance at her door, she bit down on her lip to keep from tiptoeing across the hall and into Rachel's bed and saying whatever she needed to say to get Rachel to hold her and make the tremors wracking her body go away.
Instead—because that would only prove Rachel right; because she didn't know if she was using Rachel or not; because for all that she had been feeling like things were going so well, it was clear she was still too lost in her own trauma to properly manage a relationship with someone like Rachel—she dragged the comforter and a pillow off of her too-big bed and dragged them down the hall to the bathroom. Settling herself on the floor, she curled up with the blanket wrapped around her, told herself that she was enough of a jerk to deserve the hard edge of the molding on the wall that was digging into her back, and waited for sleep to come again.
Quinn woke up with a groan on the bathroom floor. Her spine felt twisted, a sharp pain digging between her shoulder blades. The sky outside small window across from the sink was still dark, colored only by the house next door's floodlight highlighting its driveway, telling her she hadn't yet made it all the way to morning.
Swallowing another groan, she dragged herself up from the floor. She paused in front of the mirror, frowning tiredly at the dark circles under her eyes and the lines pressed into her right cheek from the pillow, visible even in the faint glow filtering in. With a disgruntled sigh, she trudged out of the bathroom, comforter and pillow clutched tightly to her chest. In her room, she rolled her eyes at the clock flashing 4:54 and thanked God that she and Finn had decided not to run that morning before heading to the bus. She reset the alarm on her phone from her usual wake-up time, and flopped gracelessly down onto her bed.
Sleep refused to come. Quinn stared disinterestedly at the ceiling, watching as the soft edges of light started to press in around her blinds as morning crept closer and closer. Half an hour later, she heard Rachel's alarm go off, her cheerful exercise music audible through the walls.
Making a split second decision, Quinn flung the comforter away from where she had haphazardly pulled it over herself and shuffled out of the room. She hesitated momentarily before raising her hand to knock halfheartedly.
She was tiredly contemplating sprinting back into her room when the door opened, an exhausted-looking Rachel looking up at her with some unintelligible mix of guilt and anger. Quinn, her hand still raised from knocking, stared down at Rachel stupidly, and suddenly wished that she had at least brushed her hair before this.
"Did you need something?" Rachel said. Quinn flinched at her cool tone, even if she could see the guilt in Rachel's eyes. "Because I have exercises to do, and I'd rather not start my day off behind schedule."
"I'm sorry," Quinn blurted out. "I'm sorry. Can we just be okay again?"
Rachel looked up at her appraisingly, folding her arms over her chest. Quinn bit back the instinctive commentary on the fact that Rachel, five minutes out of bed and in pajamas with fluffy cloud prints on them, looked more adorable than angry.
"Sorry about what?"
Quinn took a deep breath. "You aren't going to make this easy on me, are you?" she muttered.
"Of course not," Rachel said tartly, and Quinn winced again.
"I'm sorry," She repeated. "I'm sorry if it seems like I don't—if I don't appreciate you, as a friend or—or in our relationship. Because I do. I really do."
"Appreciate me how?" Rachel asked. "As a life boat, a friend, a girlfriend? I never know where I stand with you, Quinn, and lately I've felt more like a stuffed animal and a make-out buddy than anything."
Quinn flushed. "You're more than that," she said defensively. "To me you're more than that. I—I'm not really good with putting a name on anything right now, but you mean more to me than pretty much anything, and spending time with you is like the highlight of my day now. And yeah, you help me more than anyone, but that's not why I like being with you. I just… it feels good, like it never really did with Finn. Like it's okay if I'm not perfect." She frowned momentarily. "Or, you know, it did. Now I'm not so sure."
"You don't have to be perfect," Rachel mumbled. "You could just be nice enough to tell me every now and then that I'm not just a plaything."
Quinn smiled shyly, ducking her head momentarily and feeling entirely unlike herself. "Rachel Berry," she said, enunciating carefully, her voice clear in the darkness of the hallway. "You are so much more than a plaything to me." She bit her lip, the smile slipping away.
"I meant it when I said you were the only thing holding me together sometimes," she said softly. "I know you're probably tired of keeping me in one piece by now, and I'm trying to be okay, I really am. But that's not the only reason I like being with you. It feels good and it's fun and I like making you smile." She clamped her teeth together, blushing furiously as Rachel stared up at her with the faintest edge of a smile.
"Really?"
"Yes," Quinn murmured, feeling her blush deepen. She bit down on her lip once more, overcome by a night of horrible sleep and bad dreams and wanting nothing more than to crawl into bed with Rachel and just sleep, knowing that whatever happened in her dreams the brunette would be there to make things okay again. Without meaning to, she cast a brief and longing look over Rachel's shoulder to her unmade bed.
Rachel looked at her cryptically for long seconds, and Quinn fidgeted uncomfortably. Finally, Rachel reached out silently and took her hand, pulling Quinn into the room and shutting the door softly. Quinn, uncertain as always when coming off a fight, stood awkwardly still until Rachel prodded her towards the bed.
"Come on," Rachel said tiredly. "We're both packed, we can crash for another hour before we need to leave."
"Oh, thank God," Quinn mumbled. She all but fell onto the bed, a wide and sleepy smile pressing into the pillow when she felt Rachel's arm settle over her stomach, Rachel's body pressing against her back.
Within minutes, Rachel's breathing evened out, her arm loosening around Quinn's stomach as she fell back to sleep. Quinn, one hand resting tentatively over Rachel's that was pressed protectively to her stomach, waited for sleep. She lay awake, listening to Rachel breathe, until the alarm went off again an hour later.