Return to Sender, Damaged in Transit
...
When random redhead girl had said everyone had a head start, she hadn't been kidding.
The bar is packed and the music is blaring; as Quinn glances at all the strange faces in the room she involuntarily tightens her grip on Jesse's hand. A lot of people, including the redhead, are crowded around the bar and they seem to be cheering on a couple of men who are doing shots. Jesse manages to find an empty booth and allows her to sit down. "Jesse don't, you'll get carded. Look we're inside, we can just sit here -"
"Quinn, trust me."
"The last time a guy said that to me, I ended up pregnant," she says dryly, keeping a firm grip on his hand.
"Well you're in luck; I don't sleep with drunks."
She opens her mouth to make a snide comment and suggest otherwise but her mind draws a blank – so she lets go of him and gives Jesse her best bitch smile. "Fine. You were our show choir consultant, which kind of makes you a staff member, which kind of makes you responsible for me. If we get in trouble - I'm blaming you."
"Me? I'm saying this whole thing was your idea. I can be very convincing." He winks and turns around to make his way over to the bar. Quinn closes her eyes and sighs, waiting for the moment the bouncer comes to show her to the door. When she opens them, Jesse is walking – no – strutting back to her, two beers in hand.
She grudgingly takes the bottle; his eyes are giving her such a haughty look, she almost wishes he was smirking instead.
"Admit it Fabray, this is fun," he says before taking a long swig of his beer.
"Yes, because getting drunk in some random dive bar with Jesse St. James is...fun."
"That's your opinion," he shrugs. As much as she hates to admit it, this is the most relaxed she's felt during the entire New York trip. There's no Finn to watch over, no Rachel to watch out for and no Kurt and Mercedes to watch her. It's wonderful. "And you're not drunk – I hope." He eyes her still half full bottle – he's already on his third. Quinn, on the other hand, figures Mr. Schuester will be less appreciative of her excuse for sneaking out if it comes out slurred. "Besides, I'll bet you you're having more fun than Rachel right now," he adds with a sly curve of his lips.
"Well obviously – she's with Finn." Quinn's eyes widen and Jesse lets out a sharp laugh as she realises that the snarky remark about her ex had in fact come from her. It feels familiar and more than that it feel good.
He relaxes into the seat and runs a hand through his hair. "How come you didn't audition that day?"
So he did notice.
"I...changed my mind," she says simply.
"Quinn, if you haven't already noticed – we are very much alike. Amongst other things, I too am good at playing it close to the chest. Of course it goes without saying that I can tell when I'm being lied to."
She levels his piercing gaze. "I am nothing like you," she says definitively, "and besides I heard about what you said to the others. It seems like I saved myself the trouble."
"You cannot improve without criticism and it's just ignorant to think otherwise," he shrugs.
"How did you get us these drinks anyway?" Yes, she changes the subject, whatever.
"God Quinn, it's called having an ID. This may be hard for you to believe, coming from Lima, but there's more to parties than just cheap mixers that taste like piss and sweaty teenagers' basements."
"I know that." She makes it a point to ingest the rest of her beer in one gulp. It goes straight to her head.
"Careful, I'd hate for you to get too ahead of yourself," he drawls with a smirk. "Anyway, back to why you didn't sing for me."
She rolls her eyes; clearly he isn't going to give up until she tells him. "Finn said he didn't want me 'taking your side.'"
"And you listened to him?"
"I...didn't want to lose him." It sounds even more stupid and pathetic when she says it aloud. And she hates herself for allowing Jesse to coax it out of her.
Jesse stops mid sip. "What I don't understand is why girls like you and Rachel, so beautiful and with so much potential, choose to settle for...that. McKinley is just fucked up."
For a moment Quinn's brain freezes; she's caught between being annoyed at the fact that he has grouped her and Rachel together and being surprised that Jesse St. James thinks she has potential. It really shouldn't be news to her, of course she has potential. For what exactly? Well, she's working on it and that's good enough for now. "Finn's popular, sweet and goofy in a cute way," she says regaining her voice.
"And these are uh – qualities you value?"
She gives him a sideways glance. "Okay you've made your point. But I could ask you the same thing about Rachel. Sure she's talented and I get that you're somehow attracted to that – but even you can't deny it was bitch move to get you to come all the way out here and then stick her tongue down Finn's throat, right in front of you."
His facial expression doesn't change even though she's being overly graphic just to spite him. "I agree that it was highly unprofessional and the Rachel I knew would never pull a stunt like that, especially when the stakes were that high. I don't claim to understand it. At least you had your back to the audience and weren't subjected to the display...some things just can't be...unseen," he says, the bitterness in his voice becomes just a little bit more tangible.
She smiles sardonically and drinks again. "I don't think the judges would've appreciated Santana vomiting mid performance."
"I beg to differ. She would've been...channelling the audience's emotions," he says making a gesture with his hands, "you guys might've placed eleventh."
Quinn covers her face as she laughs and she can hear Jesse joining along (it's one of the nicer sounds she's heard in a while) – the alcohol has to be kicking into gear. "I get it, you had it worse – but you can't talk to me about Finn without answering my question – why are you still in love with Rachel?"
Yes it's definitely the alcohol.
"Who says –"
"I don't care how much cheating you do," she interrupts, "UCLA is a pretty hard place to get it into, especially with a scholarship – I have a hard time believing you flunked out because you're dumb."
The smile never leaves his face but for a second she sees something flicker in his eyes as he stares back at her. He takes a long sip of his beer and exhales loudly. "For the record, she didn't make me come here."
She makes a face.
He shrugs.
"Finn dumped me at a funeral," she says casually, as though they're discussing something as trivial as the weather. It's been on her mind and she figures she may as well tell Jesse about it, if only for the reason that he hates Finn and is likely to insult him in several creative ways. "And it wasn't even the it's-not-you-it's-me routine – no he took something that a woman wrote for her sister's eulogy and turned it into a breakup line." She grits her teeth together as the image of the two of them in the car flashes vividly in her mind. She still hates herself for crying in front of him. For being weak in front of a boy who couldn't give two shits about her.
Jesse looks at her and he tilts his head in a way that she's not familiar with, almost as though he's analysing her. The small gesture makes her a little uncomfortable. "That must have been incredibly humiliating for you," he muses.
"No here's the humiliating part – I told him I'd stay with him while he worked through his obsession with her. Then he told me I have no feelings." She takes a particularly long swig of beer and loudly smacks her lips together. "Now that's just not true because you know what, I feel like taking his tether and choking him with it." She doesn't bother explaining Finn's ridiculous plagiarised metaphor because even thinking about it makes her feel like throwing up. "I feel like bashing Rachel's head in until she really sees stars. I feel like telling my mother to shove a couple more pills down her throat and just end it already." Quinn closes her eyes and holds her head in her hands as her temple begins to throb." If he's stunned by her violent thoughts, he doesn't let on and simply continues drinking. "You were right, going to that funeral was a stupid idea," she says darkly. When she looks at him again, she sees that he's giving her a weak smile. It's only then that she realises that as much as she's hurting from Finn leaving her, Jesse – even if he is less than straightforward and doesn't show it – is hurting just as badly, if not more. At least she didn't waste her money on plane tickets. When she meets his gaze again she returns a small smile that silently acknowledges the mutual crapshoot of a year they've had.
"So –" he presses a finger to his lips "– let me get this straight. You were head cheerleader, dating the school quarterback and president of the celibacy club."
"Pretty much."
"Then you cheated on him with his best friend, got pregnant on your first time, slapped the very girl that your now ex-boyfriend claims to love again and he broke up with you at a funeral."
She raises an eyebrow in annoyance. "If you're trying to make a point St. James, get there faster."
A grin crosses his features. "Give it a couple more years Quinn and you could be the subject of a very successful off-off-Broadway musical."
Jerk.
She resists the urge to just be a full-on bitch to him because for the first time in a long time, she's having an honest conversation with someone and she's a little thankful that he's the one changing the subject. She goes with it. "You forgot the part where my own father kicked me out of the house and set the timer on the microwave as I packed."
Jesse raises his eyebrows and Quinn laughs with him (if she doesn't she's pretty sure she'll start crying) as she thinks about the calamity that the last two years of her life have been. "Of course I could say the same for you," she begins because well, being a little bitchy is fun and Jesse is still kind of a dick. "Dashing performer, shoo-in to take Broadway by storm, flunks out of college and comes back cross-country for the girl he's so desperately in love with. You take her to junior prom, get into a public fight with her jaded ex and when you fly out to New York to support her, she's up there in bright lights –" she makes a purposely over the top gesture with both hands as though there's a stage in front of her "– kissing said ex. I don't think you should complain though; at least your fight was actually set to music."
His jaw drops and he blinks a few times, the look on his face is just hilarious – she knows that he hadn't been expecting her to say that. She laughs again – he's actually speechless and she is all kinds of smug about it. "Naturally my story is a good story," he says and she can tell he's trying to put his show face back on (but failing because the corners of his lips are twitching), "appropriately dramatic. A little heavy on the bathos maybe, but you're right – I wouldn't have it any other way."
"I'm sure you wouldn't."
"I don't judge you though," he says suddenly, the serious tone back in his voice, "for any of it."
Quinn, still laughing, raises a hand to her chest and gasps in mock surprise. "Jesse St. James – passing up such a golden opportunity?"
"Shocking I know," he says with a wry smile before draining the last of the beer from the bottle, "I just wanted you to know that."
Suddenly nothing's funny anymore and she awkwardly nods before busying herself with tracing the neck of her bottle with her finger. For the first time that night she begins to feel embarrassed; she would never have joked about herself like that with anyone else and there's nothing to stop Jesse from using all of it against her sometime in the future. She knows he's a good actor and the fact that he's already gotten so much out of her is really quite frightening.
"Pete's on his tenth shot – a round of Jager bombs on him!" yells out one of the guys at the bar and everybody starts to cheer. 'Pete' is sitting (swaying) at the bar, looking like he's one drink away from blacking out. Soon two large glasses filled with a golden drink are placed on their table along with two smaller dark shot glasses that contain what she thinks is alcohol.
"What is this?" Quinn asks.
Jesse grimaces as she inspects her two glasses. "It's a shot; you drop this –" he explains picking up the dark shot glass "– into the Red Bull and drink up."
Huh.
Without thinking twice Quinn drops the shot glass into the larger glass, squeezes her eyes shut and chugs, waiting for the alcohol to burn her throat. It never does – in fact it goes down smooth, almost surprisingly so. When she opens her eyes, she is instantly buzzed; Jesse watches her with a mixture of alarm and amusement. "Your turn."
He chuckles. "No thanks, I'd like to make it back to my hotel room tonight."
"Your loss," she shrugs, pulling his glasses towards her. "My gain."
...
Author's Note: A massive thanks to everyone who's sticking with this story - I know St. Fabray is not a super popular ship. Please, even if you've added this to your alerts, do leave a review. Any feedback is always appreciated. Quinn doesn't hold alcohol very well does she?