Author's Note: 1) I know it's been like a month since I updated this... yeah, see, the World Cup ate my soul and I've been stuck unable to write. Mostly because Spain finally won one and I may or may not have been drunk for the last two weeks, despite lacking any Spanish heritage.
2) This is a really big stinking chapter (seriously... it's like 9,000 and change) that I wanted to split up, but found it impossible to do so without it feeling super awkward. SORRY, Y'ALL.
Quinn barely made it onto her flight back to Ohio, bolting through security in the Chicago airport at record speed and once more blessing Cheerios' practice wind sprints as she darted through the crowd to her terminal, running horribly late after getting caught up arguing good-naturedly with Rachel outside of the security checkpoint. It was only when she heard the first boarding call for her flight—from a gate a ten minute walk away from security—that they realized how long they had been bantering flirtatiously in the middle of an airport, and Rachel had glanced at her watch, horrified, before shoving Quinn's bags into her hands and manhandling her into the security line.
"I'll see you in two weeks!" she shouted, jumping up slightly to see Quinn over the shoulders of the family who kindly let the hassled blonde in front of them in security. She waved wildly, a bright smile painting her features, and Quinn couldn't suppress the urge to roll her eyes when she looked back after clearing the metal detectors to see Rachel still bouncing up and down and waving.
Rachel pointed at her watch and motioned theatrically for Quinn to run; Quinn frowned when she looked at her own watch and, with a harried wave to Rachel and a muttered string of curses she would never admit to knowing, gathered her bags and shoes into her arms and started sprinting barefoot as the third boarding call rang out for her flight.
She was flushed and breathing heavily when she made it to her seat, gaining a disapproving glare from the man across the aisle from her and a good-natured smile from the flight attendant. With a sigh, Quinn jammed her overnight bag into the compartment above her seat and dropped down into the chair gratefully to finally put her shoes back on.
The flight back to Ohio went far quicker than the one three days earlier, and the overbearing weight of exhaustion and trauma and grief was absent from her shoulders as she strolled towards the baggage claim, headphones in and eyes locked on her phone as she tapped out snarky responses to the text messages Rachel and Santana and Finn had left her during the short flight.
"Fabray."
The low rumble of her name caught her attention, and Quinn slammed to a halt when she looked up to see Puck leaning against a column at the baggage claim, arms crossed over his chest and sunglasses propped atop his mohawk cockily. For a split second, the tiny part of her that had so easily fallen into bed with him warred with the overwhelming majority of her that was coming to terms with being in love with Rachel, and she admitted to herself that Noah Puckerman was, on occasion, unfairly attractive.
"Puck," she said quietly, yanking her headphones out of her ears. "What are you—"
"I talked to Rachel's dad," he interrupted. "Asked if I could come get you."
"Oh," she said faintly. She nodded, as if it made perfect sense. "Why?"
He pushed away from the column, moving to stand in front of her. His eyes flicked down from hers to the fading bruise and almost-healed cut gracing her cheekbone, and his jaw tightened. Coarse fingertips, roughened from years of weightlifting and guitar playing, appeared in front of her and traced over the injury, barely a breath away from her skin.
Quinn held stock still, fighting the instinct to flinch even then, and didn't dare breathe; for the first time in months, she ventured a look into his eyes. Steeling herself for a pounding wave of fabricated memories of a child who wasn't born, she was surprised when she saw not Sarah Noelle Puckerman, but just Puck, with unbridled frustration in his eyes and his jaw clenched tightly.
He dropped his hand down to his side, shoving it into his pocket; his eyes stayed locked with hers and she couldn't make herself look away.
"I need to tell you something," he said. "I guess I didn't get it until Santana told me what happened with your dad or whatever. But I figured it out now, and I want to tell you."
"Okay," she said slowly. She wished suddenly that they were anywhere but in an airport, somewhere quiet and private, because she felt like she was having far too many emotional moments in airports that week.
"I loved you," he said. It came out heavy, the words pushing into her and disrupting her balance; she instinctively curled her toes inside her shoes and physically braced her body, as if expecting a barrage of heavy wind to come and knock her over. "I told you when we hooked up that it wasn't just another thing for me, and it wasn't. I think I hated you for a while, for not believing me, but whatever. That's over. Finn was always the better guy, I wasn't, that's just how it is. But he's my boy, my best friend, and if I couldn't have you then I was okay with you being with him."
He yanked his sunglasses off of his head, rubbing one hand over his mohawk. Quinn stared at him, watching as his throat worked, and she wondered if he was trying not to cry.
"After—" He paused, swallowing visibly, and coughed loudly. "After Karofsky and the hospital and all that, I still loved you. What happened to us was shit, such shit, but I thought that maybe we had one good thing coming out of it, that we could put things back in place together. And we were both patching things up with Finn, so I figured that even if you and me didn't work out, you'd have him.
"But then you… then you went and hooked up with Rachel." His jaw clenched once more, and Quinn finally moved, her chin dropping slightly and shoulders slumping. "And I was so pissed, you know? Because it should've been me. You should've let me take care of you, even if you never had before, no matter how much I asked. I wanted to be that guy, I didn't want to be my dad, but you never gave me the chance. First it was Finn, and then I thought you'd give me a chance after him ,but instead you went to her. And I was so ticked off and I wanted to hate you both."
Quinn swallowed, chest tightening as she remembered the anguished look in his eyes when he slammed out of the choir room the day they told everyone, the fury as he glared at her and Rachel, the absolutely broken set to his shoulders when Finn had bodily dragged him out of his father's apartment. Months ago she'd wished that she could stop doing things that hurt Finn Hudson, and she felt a swell of guilt pressing over her at the realization that she should've been just as worried about doing things that hurt Noah Puckerman.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
He shook his head, holding his hands up defensively. "Don't," he muttered. He took a deep breath, rubbing his hands over his hair again. "That's not all I wanted to say," he ground out. He took another deep breath. "I was really pissed, you know? That you chose her over me, that you were so convinced that she was what you needed. But I was angry enough that I thought that maybe I could get over you. I've been hung up on you since the seventh grade, and as ticked off as I was that you went all Ellen on the world with Rachel freaking Berry, I also thought that that would let me get over you.
"Then Santana called me on Saturday, and sometime between fucking up that bastard's car and lighting his mailbox on fire, I figured it out." He smiled, thin and humorless, and looked her dead in the eyes.
"I'm never going to get over you," he said simply. "I've loved you for a long time, and I guess I probably always will. And you… you're never going to love me, are you? You loved Finn, and you love Rachel, but I won't ever be on that list."
Quinn stared at him, wide-eyed and oblivious to the tear that was threatening to slip down her cheek. "Puck," she choked out.
He shook his head. "I'm not trying to go all Jewish guilt trip on you or anything," he said. "I'm a good Jew, but not that good." He sighed heavily. "I just needed to say it. I love you, and I loved our daughter, and even if I find some smoking hot Jewish wife in the future, I think I'll always love you."
Quinn finally moved, her knees weak as she stumbled over to a row of plastic chairs and plopped down onto one of them. Her hands folded automatically into her lap, and she stared up at him incredulously. He looked like a completely different person than she'd even seen—he wasn't the nymphomaniac jock who threw people into dumpsters, or the guitarist who enjoyed glee more than he'd ever admit, or even the boy with the sad eyes who kissed her and took her to bed and promised to always be there for their daughter. He seemed smaller and quieter and far more morose than she'd ever seen him, and she had not the first clue how to handle this version of him.
"I'm sorry," she mumbled. "I'm so sorry." She sniffed, wiping at her eyes frustratedly and forcing herself to look up at him. He avoided her eyes, guilt and frustration marring his features as he stared at a spot on the floor between their feet.
"I wanted to be with you," she said, pushing the words out slowly. "Before—before we lost her. I really did. I wanted to keep her and I didn't want to do it alone. I wanted to get the hell out of Lima, but I wanted to do it with you and her and us as a family." A strangled sound escaped her throat, and one hand came up to cover her mouth as her shoulders started to shake. "I wanted that so badly, I can't even tell you. But—but then they told me she was gone and it was over and I just—ever time I looked at you, all I could see was her. And I hated myself, so much, and I didn't want to be a family without her."
"It's not your fault," he mumbled. "You have to know that."
"It doesn't matter," she said. Her hands trembled, and she shook her head when she thought she saw a shadowy bruise on his jaw, a creeping sense of déjà vu pushing at the edges of her consciousness and pulling her back toward the first time they had this same conversation. "I may or may not come to terms with that someday. But I just want you to know that I was falling in love with you. I never wanted to, I tried so hard not to, but I was, and I would have married you and we would have had a family with her. And I really think we could have been happy."
"We would have," he said solidly. "I'm not my dad." He said it forcefully, so much so that his whole body seemed to vibrate, his hands fisting visibly in his pockets. Quinn looked up at him and smiled even though she was crying, and his eyes drifted down to her cheek once more.
"And neither of us are our parents," he added. He rolled his eyes when she bit her lip and looked down at her knees. Sighing loudly, he dropped down onto a chair next to her, long legs splayed out. He knocked one knee against hers childishly. "You're not like them," he said. "You're better than they ever were. You'll be a hell of a mom one day."
Even staring at her knees, she could practically hear the smirk in his voice when he added, "And a totally smoking hot one, too. Hall of fame. Madonna's got nothing on you."
She laughed in spite of herself, reaching out blindly to swat at his leg, and the quiet chuckle she was rewarded with went miles towards loosening the tightness in her chest.
Long moments passed, and he finally pushed himself to his feet, holding out a hand to help her up. "We cool?" he asked.
She looked up at him, her mind slowly turning over the exchange they had just had, her conversation with Rachel on the sidewalks of Chicago, the acceptance her mother had offered, the altercation with her father, and finally, she nodded and accepted his hand. "Yeah," she said, standing. "We're good."
"Cool," he said. He nodded approvingly. "Now that we've got all that crap out of the way," he said, grabbing her bags and swinging them over one shoulder easily. "You need to know that, since we're like friends and all now, and you're totally getting it on with a chick, that makes us bros. And you know what that means?"
"We're not getting it on," she mumbled, flushing brightly.
"Right," he said. He rolled his eyes cheekily as he backed out of the doors of the airport, pushing his sunglasses onto his nose. "Whatever you want to call it. The point is, me and you? We're bros. So that means you're going to have to start hanging out with me and Finn more, and drinking beer and playing video games and perving on underwear models with us."
"Puck!" she said. "I'm not a lesbian."
"Right," he said again. He shook his head as he hopped up onto the running board of his truck and stared at her from over top of the roof. "It's not like you're sleeping with Rachel Berry or anything."
"We're not—"
"Of course not," he said. He swung down into the truck and cranked the engine. "But you're basically like a dude now, is the point. A dude with boobs who I totally don't feel lame for staring at, but that's not the point." He put an arm up to block her swinging hand before it connected with the back of his head and smirked. "The real point is that this weekend, you're totally chilling with me and Finn. I even bought another X-Box controller so you can play Halo with us!"
The ringing of her phone saved her from having to respond, and she smiled in spite of herself at Rachel's name flashing on the screen. Puck laughed softly, shaking his head when she blushed.
"You're stupid in love with that girl," he said sagely. She flushed darker, opening her mouth to argue—she was only seventeen, after all, and the last time she'd been in love with someone it had ended disasterously—but he just rolled his eyes. "Shut up and answer the phone, Fabray."
She smiled gratefully at him, accepting the call and putting the phone up to her ear. "Hey, you," she said.
"You were supposed to call me when you landed," Rachel said indignantly.
"I texted you!"
"A text message that adds to the long list of creative insults regarding my stature does not count," Rachel said drily.
"Well, I thought it was funny," Quinn said.
"Quinn!" Rachel said. Quinn winced at the shrill edge to her voice, knowing the exact look on the brunette's face, and Puck smirked and suddenly reached out to snatch the phone away from Quinn.
"Puck!" Quinn said. "Give me that!" She reached out to grab the phone back, but he merely laughed, putting one hand on her forehead and holding her at arm's length.
"Chill out, Berry," he said into the phone. He blew a kiss at Quinn, who slumped back into her seat and stuck her tongue out sulkily. "I hijacked her at the baggage claim. We needed to have a chat." He paused, listening for a moment, before pulling the phone away from his ear and staring at it incredulously. "Berry, did you seriously just threaten to beat me up? You're like the size of a ferret. You can barely reach my nose to punch it."
Quinn snorted, and he winked at her, then winced at what sounded suspiciously like a shriek coming from the phone. "Seriously, dude, chill," he said. "Rachel! Shut up!"
Quinn raised an eyebrow as the shrill sounds emitting from the phone suddenly ceased, impressed. Puck smirked at her, raising one eyebrow arrogantly in return.
"Look," he said into the phone. "I wasn't trying to steal your girl, so chill out. I needed to tell her that if she ever lets someone hit her again I'm going to end up in prison for killing them, so she needs to cut that shit out. Also, she's, like, totally bros with me and Finn now, so this weekend she's going to come over and play Halo and drink beer with us. And maybe watch porn."
He pulled the phone away once more, one eye screwed shut at the indignant squawking coming from Chicago. Seemingly satisfied, he held the phone back out to Quinn.
"Rachel," she said, rolling her eyes and smacking Puck in the arm as he started out of the parking lot. "Rachel!" she half-shouted, finally getting the other girl to be quiet. "Calm down, will you? You're bordering on histrionic."
"Histrionic?" Puck mouthed at her. "Seriously? This ain't the SAT."
"Histrionic?" Rachel snapped. "Quinn, I am entirely within my rights as your girlfriend to be upset at the fact that the boy who got you pregnant has decided to invite you over for beer and video games and porn this weekend!"
Quinn put one hand over the phone as Rachel continued on and glared at Puck. "I'm totally going to kill you," she muttered darkly. He blew another kiss at her, smirking.
With a sigh, she returned to the phone. "Rachel," she said placatingly, trying to get a word in edgewise. "Rachel, love, come on, calm down. He was kidding."
"So was not!" he shouted. Quinn leaned over and slammed her fist into his bicep, grinning triumphantly when he actually let out an "Ow!" and looked at her incredulously.
"What was that?" Rachel said suddenly. "Who said ow?"
"Puck did," Quinn said. "I punched him."
"You punched him? Quinn, that's hardly an appropriate response."
"Are you kidding me? You just threatened to beat him up!"
"That was merely to make a point, we all know that any attempt at violence I would ever consider towards Noah would be laughable and—"
"Histrionic!" Quinn shouted. "See? You just proved me right."
"I did no such thing," Rachel said indignantly.
"You totally did," Quinn said. She shared a grin with Puck, who held out a hand for her to high-five. "I totally just won an argument."
"You cheated," Rachel said. The sulk in her voice was painfully obvious.
"Oh, come on, Rach," Quinn said. "Don't be a sore loser."
"I'm not," Rachel said, sniffing indignantly. "I'm just annoyed that you didn't call me when you said you would."
Quinn sighed. "I'm sorry?"
"You should be," Rachel mumbled. "But I'm glad you're home safe. And apparently are now—er—bros with Puck and Finn."
"Uh, yeah," Quinn said. "Me too. I think."
There was a pause over the phone before Rachel spoke again. "I realize that it's childish of me, but I kind of wish you'd actually missed you flight. I don't care if it's sappy, I miss you."
"Yeah," Quinn said quietly, voice dropping inadvertently. "You, too." She studiously ignored Puck's probing stare. "But you'll be back in a few weeks, so…"
"Yeah," Rachel said. "Two more weeks."
"You know, if you guys want to have, like, lesbian phone sex, I'm totally cool with that," Puck interjected, loud enough to draw a scandalized squeak out of Rachel and another punch from Quinn. "Okay, seriously, Q, stop hitting me."
"Shut it, Puckerman!" Rachel shouted over the phone. Her voice rang in Quinn's ears, making the blonde wince. Quinn held the phone out to Puck.
"She wants to say something to you," she told Puck sweetly.
"No way, dude," Puck said. "She already screeched at me once. I get enough Jewish anger from my ma, I don't need it from her, too."
"Then don't make salacious comments like that to my girlfriend!" Rachel bellowed over the phone. A brief blank look passed over Puck's face at the word "salacious", and Quinn rolled her eyes, pulling the phone back and trying to slide a word in somewhere in Rachel's current rant.
"Rach," she tried. "Rachel!" She rolled her eyes. "Rachel Berry, I will hang up this phone right now if you don't stop!"
Puck looked at her, eyebrows creeping up above his sunglasses. "That really worked?"
"Yep," Quinn said. She returned her attention to the phone. "Rach, love, calm down. It's Puck, you know he likes screwing with us. It's what he does."
"I'm going to shave off his stupid mohawk when I get home."
"I'll help," Quinn promised. She stuck out her tongue at him, and he shrugged, turning his attention back to the road.
"You'd better," Rachel muttered. "Very well. I have some work I need to get done. I assume I'll speak to you later tonight?"
"Yes, ma'am," Quinn said. "Don't work too hard."
"Don't go running tonight," Rachel shot back. "And don't let Puck get you into too much trouble."
"I won't," Quinn said. "Promise."
"Take care," Rachel said softly. "I'll talk to you later."
"Later," Quinn echoed. "Bye, love."
Puck was silent for long seconds after Rachel hung up and Quinn set her phone down on the console. When he finally spoke again, the mirth was gone from his voice, his hands tight on the steering wheel and gearshift.
"Does she know?" he asked quietly.
"Know what?"
"That you're in love with her," he said. He pulled his sunglasses off, turning to face her as he slowed to a stop at a red light. "Have you told her?"
Quinn looked down at her hands, flushing delicately. Though it had become abundantly clear to her, at some point between making the unconscious decision to side with Rachel unquestioningly over her father and the hours she'd spent alone in a church in a strange city, that she was as in love with Rachel as she ever had been with Finn, or come close to being with Puck, it still made her chest pound heavily with trepidation. She had loved Finn as best as she knew how, and had wound up hurting him horribly; she still loved her father irrevocably, but would probably never speak to him again after letting him down so thoroughly; she had loved her daughter with everything she had, and still been unable to protect her. Her stomach ached with the thought of Rachel becoming another statistic in her wake.
"No," she said carefully. "Not yet."
"Has she told you?"
"How do you know she is?" Quinn retorted, desperate to direct the conversation away from her incapability.
Puck snorted. "Q, that girl would go to the moon for you. There's no way she's anything but in love with you." He smirked when Quinn looked at him skeptically, and rolled his eyes. "When are you going to stop underestimating me? I'm not as dumb as you think."
Quinn sighed. "No," she said softly. "You're not." Even as she said it, she fought a swell of distaste at the relief she felt that, even if he really wasn't dumb at all, he still wasn't perceptive enough to read her mind perfectly.
"And she did. She has. Told me. She said she wasn't asking me to—to say I felt the same way. But that she wanted me to know."
"You know that's not the truth," he said, his voice just as quiet. "She's going to want you to say it."
"I know." She swallowed. "I just—I don't know. I guess I'm scared."
Puck shrugged and scoffed. "You're Quinn fucking Fabray," he said brashly. "You've got, like, balls of steel. Just say it."
He dumped the clutch as the light turned green, laying down a layer of rubber on the asphalt behind them as they roared into the Lima city limits. Quinn remained silent, staring at familiar streets as they flashed by as they made their way to the Berry household.
In the driveway, he hopped out of the cab of the truck and handed her the bags he'd stowed in the backseat. "Just say it, dude," he advised. "If I can say it, why can't you?"
"Because," she said softly before she could stop herself. "I break everyone I love. What if I break her, too?"
"You won't," he said, without a second's hesitation.
"You don't know that."
He shrugged and smiled good naturedly. "Nah," he admitted. "But I do know that you're so scared of it that you're going to be, like, super careful not to hurt her. Which means you probably won't."
Quinn stared up at him, wishing for a single desperate second that she could have loved him the way he loved her, that they could have been the family they both wanted, that things could have gone their way; the second passed fleetingly, though, and instead she unthinkingly stepped forward and hugged him tightly.
"Thank you," she whispered into his shirt, fingers tightening against his back. She held on tighter as his arms wrapped around her waist just as tightly, holding her closely.
"She's good for you," he said into her hair. "If I can't have you, you deserve that much."
"Thank you," she whispered again.
He nodded, arms tightening even more around her. "And if you guys want to have a threesome, I'm like totally down with that," he said in the same quiet voice. "Or, like, make a movie with Brittany and Santana. Or—ow!"
He leapt back, rubbing the back of his head where she'd slapped him. "Seriously, you need to cut that out!"
"Right," she said dryly. She gathered her bags. "I'll consider it. Thanks for the ride, Puck."
"Sure," he said easily. He hopped back into the truck, revving the engine. "Friday! Beer and Halo and porn! My place at nine, don't be late!"
"Wouldn't miss it for the world," she deadpanned as he backed out of the driveway. He saluted her comically from the street before gunning the engine and disappearing down the block.
That night, when Rachel's phone call interrupted Quinn doing yoga on her bedroom floor, Quinn sat propped against the side of her bed for an hour listening to Rachel ramble contentedly about her afternoon classes, half of her attention focused on Rachel's voice and the other half trying to screw up the courage to follow Puck's advice. But when Rachel prepared to say goodnight, all Quinn could muster up was a soft "I miss you" as she inwardly cursed her inability to speak aloud what she actually wanted to say.
Every phone call for the remainder of Rachel's days in Chicago followed the same pattern, and despite the cheerful face Quinn put on around Rachel's parents, or the no-nonsense captain façade she perpetuated all day long with the Cheerios, she slipped slowly into self-doubt and distaste, convinced more than ever that her love was the kind that reduced the best people to rubble in its wake.
Somehow—both surprisingly and not—it was in Puck she confided her fears the few times she could bring herself to speak of them out loud. Instead of going to the best friends she'd had her whole life in Brittany and Santana, or the stalwart pillar of support and camaraderie Finn had grown into, Quinn found herself capable of acknowledging her apprehensions and self-loathing only in the security of Puck's basement, the familiar sound of computerized gunfire echoing around them as Puck systematically dismantled faceless strangers in Halo.
A week before the school years started, Rachel flew back to Ohio, and Quinn stood dumbly by the driver's side of her car on the street in front of Puck's house, clenching her keys tightly as the sound of Santana and Puck's voices telling her to buck up and get going was drowned out by a rolling thrill of fear at the possibility that the moment she saw Rachel in person she would burst out into a romantic sonnet and accordingly doom Rachel to a shattered heart.
She didn't realize she'd mumbled it aloud until she realized that Puck and Santana were staring at her incredulously.
"Sonnet?" Santana said slowly.
"Doom?" Puck echoed. His brow furrowed. "Who the hell says the word doom unless they're, like, talking about the video game?"
Santana rolled her eyes, elbowing him away as she stepped up to Quinn, snapping her fingers in Quinn's face. "Get a grip, dumbass," she said. She crossed her arms and flicked her ponytail over her shoulder. "You can't break her that badly no matter how bad you mess up. Nobody loves anyone that much. Don't flatter yourself."
"Hey," Puck said warningly. He was overwhelmingly protective of Quinn now, possibly more so than when she was carrying his daughter, and the past two weeks had born witness to more spats between him and Santana than their entire history combined.
"It's true," Santana sniffed. She sneered at Puck elegantly. "In case you missed the memo, this is high school, kids. We're teenagers. Taking yourself that seriously in high school, about a high school relationship, is about as idiotic as thinking that Kurt Hummel is straight."
"Um, what the hell is the deal with you and Brittany, then?" Puck challenged, crossing his arms and raising his eyebrows.
Santana scoffed. "That's different," she said, a dark look crossing her features as she glared at Puck. Quinn looked back and forth between the two of them and contemplated speaking up on Puck's side—because even the oblivious Principal Figgins could see that Brittany and Santana were as close to soul mates as ever actually graced reality—but a second glance at Santana glowering at the both of them kept her mouth from opening.
Santana's gaze softened the tiniest bit as she met Quinn's wide and uncertain eyes. "Come on, Q," she said lowly. "This isn't you. You don't flip out like this, you hear? You man up and go get Berry from the airport. If you tell her you love her—which you so shouldn't, because she's the very definition of ridiculous—then it's not the end of the world. You don't have, like, a black magic love jinx hanging over your head, because that crap doesn't exist."
Ignoring Quinn's involuntary warning grumble at the comment about Rachel, Santana reached around Quinn and yanked the car door open. It smacked into Quinn's back, and Santana smoothly caught her around the waist as she stumbled and levered her bodily into the car.
"Hey!" Quinn snapped. "Watch the manhandling, S."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Santana muttered. She rolled her eyes. "Key in the ignition, there you go. Now turn it and—"
"Shut up," Quinn and Puck said in unison. Santana smirked triumphantly as Quinn started the car nonetheless.
"Drive safe," Santana said, a saccharine smile gracing her lips; despite the mocking expression, though, Quinn was wholly aware of the genuine support in her eyes.
"Don't forget," Puck said, pushing Santana out of the way. "We're having a party tomorrow night."
"Don't forget?" Quinn said, blinking. "How can I have forgotten something that you just told me for the first time?"
"Quinn," he said slowly. "We're having a party. Tomorrow night. Here."
"You're clever," Quinn deadpanned. She pulled the car door shut, sticking her tongue out at Puck and rolling her eyes when Santana blew her a mocking kiss.
The drive to the airport disappeared faster than she wanted it to. Quinn found herself standing uncomfortably at the baggage claim, fidgeting with her keys as she shifted her weight back and forth, her eyes locked on the escalator Rachel would appear on at any moment. Her limbs felt jittery and detached, and she flexed up onto the balls of her feet and back down repetitively, the familiar need to run, feet pounding into the pavement in a comforting rhythm, washing over her.
Her attention taken up so fully by her nerves, Quinn completely missed Rachel's appearance, oblivious to her waves and cheerful greetings until the brunette stood in front of her with her arms crossed in annoyance.
"Quinn!" she said sharply. "It's very rude to ignore your girlfriend when she returns home from a summer of separation."
"Huh?" Quinn said, blinking slowly and shaking her head at Rachel's sudden presence. "When did you—what?"
Rachel glared at her, even going so far as to stomp one foot melodramatically, if quietly, against the carpeted floor. "Quinn Fabray," she said. "Are you on drugs? Have you been staying up all night drinking beer and playing childishly violent video games? Has Puck turned you into a pot head in the last two weeks? I swear on all that is holy, I'm going to shave his mohawk and—"
"Rachel!" Quinn intervened. "I'm not stoned. Jeez. And I don't stay up all night playing Halo." She rolled her eyes. "I'm, like, impressively bad at it."
Rachel only continued to glare at her, arms crossed petulantly and a pout replacing her glare, and Quinn's nerves faded away, replaced by a familiar feeling of affection.
"Hi," she said shyly, stepping closer.
"Hey," Rachel said begrudgingly.
"How was your flight?"
"Long," Rachel said. "I made the most of it that I could, though, and compiled a finalized presentation for Mr. Scheuster to look at regarding this year's Sectionals."
"Right." Quinn nodded solemnly. "Of course you did. I watched Stick It on my laptop on my flight back."
Rachel rolled her eyes. "For someone as intelligent as I know you to be, you have horrendously stupid taste in movies."
Quinn scoffed. "Don't hate," she said with a smirk, and it grew into a smile when Rachel rolled her eyes once more. Rachel's crossed arms finally fell, and Quinn stepped in and pulled her into a tight embrace. "I missed you," she mumbled into Rachel's hair.
"You, too," Rachel whispered back, her arms just as tight around Quinn's waist. "I've been worried about you."
"I'm okay," Quinn said, pulling back and sliding her fingers through Rachel's as she tugged the other girl over to where luggage had started emerging on the conveyer belts. "Really. I haven't had a nightmare in a while."
"Oh, my concern was much more superficial than that," Rachel said cheerfully. "I was afraid Puck was going to charm you into his bed again."
Quinn shot her an annoyed glare. Rachel smiled cheekily and stepped around Quinn, taking ahold of her giant duffel bag and attempting to pull it off the conveyer belt. Quinn watched, disgruntled and amused, as the bag dragged Rachel along a few steps; she rolled her eyes and smirked when Rachel squeaked indignantly, and finally stepped forward to nudge Rachel out of the way and swing the bag onto the floor.
When they were halfway home, caught up in an easy conversation about the upcoming school year and balancing classes with glee and practices and college applications, Quinn suddenly turned to Rachel at a stoplight and blurted out, "Do you still not trust me?"
Rachel, halfway into a description of the schedules she intended to draw up for both of them, fell abruptly silent and stared at her incredulously. "My intention in creating a schedule for us has nothing to do with trust and everything to do with—"
"Not that. What you said at the airport," Quinn said uncomfortably. "About Puck. Did you think I would actually cheat on you?"
"Quinn, I was joking," Rachel said, her voice quiet.
"Do you still not trust me?" Quinn asked again. She hated the vulnerability creeping under her voice and into her words, and was grateful when the light turned green and she could return at least some of her attention to something besides Rachel. "You didn't trust me when I rejoined the Cheerios."
"I didn't have all of the facts," Rachel said carefully. "Had I known from the start that you were doing it to help out Brittany and Santana, I never would have doubted you."
"But you did," Quinn said. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel, and she was thankful for the mirrored sunglasses she had stolen from Puck that were hiding her apprehensive eyes from Rachel. "And you're not answering me now."
Rachel sighed, turning to look out the window as she seemed to mull over her words. Quinn counted the seconds that ticked by, wishing desperately for Rachel to turn to her and laugh brightly and say that Quinn was being humorously paranoid in her questioning.
"It's a fair question, I suppose," Rachel finally said. "And more than anything I want to say that, because I love you, I trust you unconditionally. But I refuse to lie to make either of us feel better, and I must admit that a small part of me remains afraid that you're going to be the one who walks away."
"That's not fair," Quinn said lowly. "I don't know what else you want me to do to prove that I'm in this all the way. I don't know what I can do."
"Neither do I," Rachel whispered. "I just need time, okay? No, I didn't honestly think that you would cheat on me with Puck, or Finn, or anyone else. But my apprehensions are not completely ungrounded, I think, and I'm doing everything I can to work through them."
"What do I need to do?" Quinn kept her eyes locked on the road, scared more than ever that admitting to Rachel how she felt would be the last piece of deadweight to drag the other girl down, convinced that she was fated to break Rachel's heart eventually no matter what and that Rachel would be even more broken if she knew that Quinn had done so even while loving her. Every moment of fear she had battled against for the past weeks, every nagging thought that her love was an inevitable catastrophe for everyone involved, melded together into a heavy feeling of molten dread lodged in the pit of her stomach.
"I just need time," Rachel repeated. "I'm almost there, okay? I love you and we're good together and we're working through everything. It just takes some time."
"It feels like we're just going in circles," Quinn muttered. She felt torn, half of her desperate to break the continuous cycle of arguments and miscommunication by just voicing what she'd said to Puck countless times in the past weeks, the other half stubbornly insisting that doing so was a surefire was to bring about a disaster that neither of them could prevent.
"We're not," Rachel said. Her voice was stronger than Quinn expected, and she couldn't help flinching instinctively when Rachel reached over to take her hand. Even after two weeks of being manhandled childishly by Finn and Puck, she still jumped like a frightened rabbit when someone touched her unexpectedly.
Her chest tightened when she heard Rachel sigh softly at Quinn's actions. "I'm sorry," she whispered.
"It's okay," Rachel said. "I know that you know I won't hurt you. You just need more time to overcome the trauma."
"I'm getting better," Quinn said, defensiveness creeping into her voice. She turned her hand over in Rachel's, gripping tightly, as if to prove her recovery by holding Rachel's hand.
"You are," Rachel said. Quinn chanced a look over at her, and the invisible clamp on her chest loosened at the way Rachel was smiling, quietly and fondly, across the car at her. "You really are."
The rest of the ride passed in silence, and Quinn trailed after Rachel up the stairs to the brunette's room without thinking about it. She sat down primly in the chair sitting in front of Rachel's desk, spinning around idly once and twirling her keys on one finger.
"Are you going to help me unpack, or are you just going to observe?" Rachel asked, hands on her hips and one eyebrow canted. Quinn smirked in response, halting the chair midway through a second spin.
"Captain's don't do," she intoned. "We delegate."
"And you wondered why I didn't like you being a cheerleader," Rachel muttered. She glared at Quinn before turning on her heel and starting to pull clothes out of her suitcase. Quinn swallowed a giggle at the offended set to Rachel's shoulders and the annoyance she was directing at each piece of clothing she yanked from the bag.
"Don't laugh at me," Rachel mumbled.
"I'm not," Quinn said. "You're just kind of adorable and I can't help it."
Rachel blushed, almost as darkly as Quinn did, as the words slipped out to hang between them. A small smiled curled Rachel's lips up, and Quinn stilled her hand, keys falling limply against her palm as she stared at a spot on the wall somewhere to Rachel's left.
"I don't understand why you always get so flustered when you say things like that," Rachel said, dropping down to sit on the foot of her bed. "It's not like the fact that you like me, or find me attractive, is any kind of secret between us."
Quinn shrugged, finding fascination in her fingernails in an attempt to avoid Rachel's gaze. She heard Rachel sigh and rustling as she stood up.
"It shouldn't embarrass you," Rachel said, sounding tired.
"I'm not embarrassed," Quinn said. The denial escaped into the air before she could stop it, and she clamped her mouth shut.
"Quinn," Rachel said archly. "You've been living with me since December. We're around each other constantly, and I happen to excel at reading the minutia of human interaction when I put my mind to it—which I always do when you're involved. And you get embarrassed and flustered every time you say something like that."
"It's not that I'm embarrassed," Quinn mumbled. "I'm scared." Her eyes widened, and she wondered when exactly it was that she had completely misplaced her internal filter, because she couldn't remember a single instance in her life before dating Rachel that she had been so incapable of controlling her words.
Rachel paused in folding a shirt, looking up at Quinn quizzically. "You're scared?" she asked slowly. "Of what?"
Quinn looked back down at her hands, fidgeting with her keys nervously. Two weeks of Puck propping her up, encouraging her to own up to the fact that she was—as he put it—stupid in love with Rachel warred against six months of debilitating fear that the moment she admitted such things aloud would be the moment she set them up to fail. Santana's sneered declarations from earlier in the afternoon floated through Quinn's head, and Quinn wondered if her best friend was right in her conviction that Quinn was not, in fact, a love jinx.
Taking a deep breath and gathering her courage, Quinn swallowed and gathered her courage. "I'm scared that I'm going to hurt you," she said carefully. "Because I think it's just some given by-product, that I end up hurting people who love me, people who I love. Because I don't want to hurt you, but I don't think I know how not to."
"Quinn, you're no more likely to hurt me than I am to hurt you," Rachel said. "This is a risk in all relationships. We both knew that coming into this."
"You don't have my track record," Quinn said quietly.
"Maybe not," Rachel said. "But I have just as many flaws as you do. Even I'm not egocentric enough to think that I don't." Her self-depreciation drew a tiny smile from both of them, though Quinn continued to keep her eyes locked on her hands, convinced that she wouldn't be able to continue speaking if she looked at Rachel.
"The fact is," Rachel went on. "We're both stubborn, and headstrong, and we have incredibly different views on a lot of things. We argue a lot, I know. But we've worked our way through every argument we've had, and we've done so on our own, without the pushing or prodding of anyone else. For all of our flaws, we somehow seem to fit together, for who knows what reasons, and that means more than you being convinced that you're cursed or something."
Rachel appeared in Quinn's line of sight suddenly, kneeling in front of Quinn's chair and covering fidgeting fingers with her own. Quinn bit down on her lower lip, determinedly not looking up to Rachel's eyes and instead keeping her gaze focused on her hands, now wrapped within Rachel's delicately.
"I could be wrong," Rachel said softly. "But I think that you want this to work as much as I do. And that's what matters, more than anything else. If we want to make this work, if we both put the effort into making it work, then it will."
"You don't know that," Quinn mumbled. "You can't know that." She slumped back in the chair, her head falling back as she stared at the ceiling. "I think we spend more time fighting than anything else."
"Quinn, we've known one another since the sixth grade, and our relationship has been adversarial that entire time. Even when we were friends, we bickered."
"How is that a good thing?" Quinn shot back.
"It can be a good thing if we make it one!" Rachel said resolutely. "It can either be a bad thing if we let it dominate everything and get angry at one another every time we disagree, or it can be a good thing if we use it to work through things and learn about one another. The fact that we argue doesn't have to mean anything except that we both continue to hone our debating skills."
Quinn jerked away, shoving her way to her feet and starting to pace restlessly in the small area of clear floor. "This isn't some romance novel, Rachel," she said desperately. "You can't just want thinks to work out for the best and then magically have it happen."
"That's not what I'm saying," Rachel ground out. "I didn't say it would be easy. It hasn't been easy since we got together, you know that as well as I do. We've had some pretty epic fights. But like I already said, we got through them. That matters more than fighting!"
"No," Quinn said, shaking her head repeatedly. "It isn't that easy. Nothing is that easy."
"Why are you fighting this?" Rachel half-shouted. "Why is it that every time we start to get closer, you react by pushing me further away?"
"Because!" Quinn snapped. "Because I don't want to hurt you."
"And I don't want to hurt you, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to keep you at arm's length in some silly attempt to prevent it from happening."
"It's not silly," Quinn shot back. "I hurt everyone who matters. I loved my family more than anything, and I broke them apart completely. I loved Finn and lied to him and screwed him over completely. I loved Puck and broke his heart, I loved our daughter and she died. It's a pattern and I can't ignore it and I love you too much to think that I won't do the same thing to you, too!"
Rachel's hands dropped from where she had been gesturing with them, her eyes widening even more than usual as she stared at Quinn, who felt the blood drain out of her face and her head start to spin. Her words hovered in the air between them, and Quinn fought the urge to run away as she determinedly looked anywhere but at Rachel.
"You know," Rachel said slowly. She finally caught Quinn's eyes, and the smallest uptick of one corner of her mouth tempered the spinning in Quinn's head. "I'm fairly certain that if you would just tell me these things when you think them instead of bottling them up so they come bursting out violently, we would have fewer fights."
The blood rushed back to Quinn's head, her cheeks heating up, and she dropped her gaze to the floor, mumbling incoherently.
"What?" Rachel asked, brow furrowing as she tried to decipher Quinn's words. Even in her puzzlement, she was looking at Quinn with an overjoyed look in her eyes.
"I said," Quinn offered at a more accessible volume. "That I didn't want to say it. Which is why I hadn't."
"Why didn't you want to?" The cheerful look in Rachel's eyes faded, apprehension growing steadily to replace it.
"Because I'm a love jinx," Quinn muttered under her breath. She clamped down on her lower lip, stubbornly avoiding Rachel's eyes still.
"You're a what?" The incredulity was anything but subtle in her voice. "Quinn, firstly, that's insane, because such things don't exist. Secondly, it's ridiculous and sounds like the name of either a bad romance novel or a pornographic film. Thirdly, even if neither of the above were true, they would be moot points, because you are not a jinx."
"Am too," Quinn said obstinately, lifting her chin to stare at Rachel. "Look at what's happened to the people I loved. I cheated on and lied to Finn. I sent Puck spiraling out of control, to the point where he ran away to his abusive Lima-loser dad. I singlehandedly dismantled my family. I loved all of them, and I broke them all."
The words felt strangely light as they passed her lips, and her entire body curved down in on itself as she slumped, resigned to having the fear she'd been struggling with for months out in the open.
Rachel sighed. "Quinn, you made mistakes with Finn and Puck, but the circumstances were extenuating and extraordinary in both cases. We both know that. And nothing that happened with your father is your fault, at all." She crossed her arms over her chest with finality, staring at Quinn intently. The blonde shifted uncomfortably, feeling Rachel's eyes on her even when her head was tilted down towards the floor tiredly.
"And, more important than any of those former points," Rachel added quietly. "Is the fact that even if they were all true—which they aren't!—I wouldn't care. Somehow in the last year, you went from being a rival to a teammate to a friend to a girl I'm very much in love with. I don't care if you think you're some kind of romantic curse, because I love you and I want to be with you."
"I don't want to hurt you," Quinn whispered, repeating the words that had echoed over and over in her mind for months.
"It's going to happen," Rachel said. "And I'll hurt you. That's just how things work, okay? We're in a relationship. No matter if you love me or not, something you say or do will eventually hurt me. And no matter how much I love you, something I say or do will eventually hurt you. But that's not the part that matters, because people hurt each other all the time. What matters is that we love each other and we do what we can to avoid the hurt, and when we can't avoid it, we work through it.
"Don't you remember what you told me in Chicago, about life and people and God? 'Love covers a multitude of sins.' It's entirely true." Rachel parroted the words back to Quinn stubbornly, arms crossed over her chest in triumph at the way Quinn's resolve slowly started to crack.
Quinn shook her head half-heartedly. "It really can't be that simple." A lifetime of complex rules and restrictions, from as far back as she could remember in her childhood and up through school and church and cheerleading to her present predicament, had done nothing but tell her that life was anything but simple and that love was always the most complicated facet of it all.
"It can be," Rachel responded. She smiled, the emphatic gleam from her speech fading as she smiled softly and moved to sit at the foot of her bed. Reaching out, she wrapped one hand around Quinn's where it hung limply at her side and tugged her down to sit on the bed as well. Quinn slumped tiredly, a loud breath escaping her lungs. "And just simple doesn't mean easy, you know. They mean two very different things."
Rachel's fingers slid between Quinn's, tightening around her hand. Quinn stared down at her knees, brow furrowed as she turned Rachel's words over in her head repeatedly. Her head ached, the past minutes battling against the past weeks of apprehension and the preceding years of restriction and confusion and frustration. Though the bruise on her cheek had long since vanished, she felt a sudden phantom ache as she fought to quash the reactionary sound of her father's voice condemning both her and Rachel.
It wasn't until Rachel squeezed her hand gently that she snapped back to reality. "So what now?" she said quietly.
"I don't see that anything has changed," Rachel said. "I love you and you love me, and all that's different now is that we finally got you to admit it." She giggled when Quinn rolled her eyes at the lofty tone in her voice. "We're still together. So, now we just go on with our lives. Together."
"Together," Quinn murmured. She chewed on her lower lip, eyes locked on their interlocked hands pensively. "I need you to be patient with me," she added suddenly. "Please."
"I'm an astoundingly patient person, Quinn," Rachel said immediately. "I'm offended that you might insinuate that I'm anything but—"
"Shh," Quinn admonished. A small smile played across her lips at Rachel's indignant look. "What I mean is that I'm… I'm scared. And my instinct when I'm scared is to be a bitch. So just… please don't get too upset at me if I flip out and get bitchy with you or something."
"I'm scared, too, you know," Rachel said. "To date, my longest standing relationship was with Puck, who was only dating me because I was Jewish and he couldn't have you. That only lasted like a week."
Quinn rolled her eyes, scoffing at the mention of the two of them together. Rachel giggled quietly.
"The point is, I'm just as scared as you are. I don't want to hurt you, either, any more than you want to hurt me. I've been an only child for my entire life, and I clearly have never been good at sharing attention in any arena. But I'm certain that I love you enough to displace that pathological need to be the center of attention."
"Pathological?" A smile quirked at her lips.
"Something like that," Rachel mumbled, blushing.
"Right," Quinn said teasingly. She leaned over and kissed Rachel's cheek, hand sliding free so her arms could move to embrace the smaller girl.
"Thank you," she mumbled into Rachel's hair.
"You're welcome," Rachel said politely, arms tight around Quinn's waist. Seconds ticked by slowly and Quinn relaxed against Rachel, inhaling the familiar scent of oranges contentedly.
"Quinn," Rachel said eventually, voice even. Quinn made a discontented noise, too sleepy in her relaxation to form a full response. "As touching as all this is," she went on. "Can I kiss you now? It's been weeks."
Quinn snorted. "You're such a guy," she muttered into Rachel's hair, pulling back nonetheless so Rachel could shrug before leaning up to press a kiss to her lips.
"Someone had to say it," Rachel breathed out, kissing her again. "And you clearly weren't going to take the initiative."
"I was getting there," Quinn said defensively.
"Quinn," Rachel said crossly. "Stop talking."
"Puck wants a threesome," Quinn shot back. She snorted as Rachel immediately shot up from the bed to retrieve her phone from the desk, and reclined back on her elbows to watch with raised eyebrows as Rachel spent the next twelve minutes berating Puck over the phone. A warm, soft, horribly sappy feeling spread from her chest and throughout her body as she watched Rachel pace up and down the room, blathering on about objectification and stereotypes, and smiled comfortably the entire time.