Return to Sender, Damaged in Transit
...
It's late on a Saturday morning when Quinn hears her doorbell ring.
When she opens the door, Jesse's standing right there, smirk in place and holding a coffee cup.
She's surprised to say the least. And it's not even because she never sees him on weekends. It takes her a good few seconds to respond and he thrusts a cup into her hand before pushing past her into the house. She closes the door and leans against it, watching as he makes himself comfortable on her couch. "What're you doing here?" she asks, trying really hard (and failing) to keep the smile off her face.
"Akron's finest brew," he says with a slight roll of his eyes. "I happened to be in the area. Sit."
She's left wondering how he's the one inviting her to sit, in her own house no less. What's worse is that she complies easily, sitting next to him, but leaving enough of a gap between them. "It's cold," she says, her nose wrinkling as she tastes the bitter drink.
"It's a two and a half hour drive from there, what did you expect? It's also the reason why I'm not joining you, I couldn't wait that long." He takes the cup from her hand and takes a long drag, making a face as he swallows. "Hmm. Shitty coffee still tastes shitty when it's cold. Who would've thought?"
"Don't you always spend your weekends at your parents' house?"
"Yes but I thought I'd make an exception." He smiles again and Quinn feels her insides twist. "You should consider yourself lucky Quinn. When my parents told me they were going to Peru for two weeks, I had every intention of enjoying the house to myself."
"You are too kind," she says dryly.
His eyes dart around the room, lingering on the glass case of prom queen crowns and Quinn can't help but feel like he's analysing her. Finally, they settle on her open laptop. "What were you doing before I got here Quinn?" he asks, eyes lighting up.
"Nothing." She moves to shut the laptop but he's faster and takes it into his lap.
"The online prospectus for NYU doesn't exactly seem like nothing."
She struggles to find the words to explain the damning webpage. "Look, I have to give my guidance counsellor a stupid list when school starts and I was just looking at different colleges. I'm not actually planning on applying." It's true too. She had been thinking about Rachel and Kurt and how they were just destined for New York and how looking at a website couldn't possibly hurt.
"Why not? I looked at NYU during my application process, granted it was the School of Arts, but I'm sure they're just as good for…" he looks into the distance "…whatever it is you want to do too."
If he didn't sound so damn condescending at the end, she might think about appreciating his advice. "Yeah well, one they're incredibly expensive and two, you need to have an amazing SAT score to even be considered. I don't fancy wasting my application fee."
"And have you taken the SAT yet?" he asks putting the laptop back down. She shakes her head and he raises an eyebrow. "Then how could you possibly know what your score will be?"
"I'm not you Jesse. I don't blindly back myself to achieve the impossible."
"Maybe you should try it sometime Quinn," he replies with a smirk, not missing a beat. "And besides, Broadway is hardly impossible. In fact, it's an inevitability for me." She figures he truly believes that and she's slightly relieved when he drops the topic and starts walking around her house. "Oh, you have a piano?" He quickly makes his way over to it and sits down, brushing his index finger along the keys. "The fine coat of dust tells me it hasn't been used in a while."
"Yeah, a long while," she says, moving over to stand next to him. "I stopped taking lessons after freshman year."
He smiles and she gets the feeling that he's smiling to himself more than at her. "That's too bad. After freshman year I was taking lessons in piano, voice, dance and acting. And that's not even including Vocal Adrenaline rehearsal."
"Well we are very different Jesse," she says, looking down at her feet.
"Yes we are." He pats the spot on the bench next to him and she sits down, somewhat awkwardly. The last time they were at a piano together hadn't ended pleasantly and well, sitting this close, she's just so much more aware of his every movement.
"I've never heard you play."
"You've never spent the weekend at my place," he says with a casual grin. "I play on Sundays, before I make the sickening drive back to Lima."
"I have church on Sundays." It's annoying how the corners of her lips curve upwards despite (because of) his suggestive comment.
"As do I, but I stopped going a long time ago."
"Why?" She knows Mercedes goes to church, but Quinn had never actually spoken to her about it and she's kind of interested to know what would make someone stop going.
"I used to sing in church, of course, but the hymns were easy and honestly most of the singers were perpetually sharp. So once I realised I was wasting my talent, nothing there could ever hold my attention for long. Fortunately the female choir members were more than willing to alleviate my boredom." A smirk appears on his face, she rolls her eyes, and his smirk grows even wider. "One day an incident involving a confessional booth was brought to light and needless to say my presence is not looked upon favourably anymore."
"That's disgusting."
"No, that's irony. It's not my fault that those girls' legs weren't pressed together as tightly as their palms during prayer." He lets out a soft chuckle and suddenly looks straight at her. "I'm sorry Quinn that was rather insensitive of me. The insinuation about your past was purely coincidental; I meant no offense."
He says it all very quickly and looks fairly sincere but Quinn feels her face get warm anyway; she's used to people saying things behind her back but no one has ever spoken so bluntly about her, right in front of her. "Doesn't your uncle have a piano?" she asks, wanting to change the subject as soon as possible.
"Yes but it's not nearly as nice. The one in Akron was custom made for my 16th birthday. Let's just say it would have been easier on my parents if I had asked for a car." He slides his fingers along the keys, getting a feel for her piano but not playing it; again she can't help but stare at him - the way the veins pulse on his hand, wind up his arm and disappear under the sleeve of his t-shirt. And wow, she really needs to finish the rest of her cold coffee.
"Any requests?" he asks with a smile that she knows is his most charming one.
She wonders what her face must look like right now. "Surprise me."
Jesse ends up staying for a lot longer.
In fact, it's almost dinner time and he's still there. She knows that she really should say something about how her mother could come home at any time but every time she comes close to mentioning it, he'll play something beautiful on the piano and she'll put it off for a little longer. He sounds amazing, and she tells him so, in a less enthusiastic way of course. (She can't bear the thought of inflating his ego even more.) Quinn can't help but think that someone this good shouldn't be confined to playing at home with just her for an audience.
Eventually they're on the couch, flipping through some of the mediocre Saturday night movie specials and now she really should tell him to leave. She doesn't know why she's having so much difficulty; it'd never been a problem for her to tell Finn or Sam to buzz off. She'd just fib and say she had to get started on evening prayer – of course, neither of them had ever been able to tell she was lying.
She turns to look at Jesse and he's not actually watching the movie; his eyes are closed and if it wasn't for the fact that his fingers are lightly drumming on the arm of the couch, she'd have thought he was asleep.
"Are you okay?"
Jesse's eyes snap open and he turns towards her. "Why do you ask? Was it the Stravinsky?"
It takes a lot of self-control for Quinn not to roll her eyes at his dramatic tendencies and thankfully she doesn't, because it wouldn't help her tell him about the thing that has been on her mind ever since he looked at her laptop.
"No, it's just…you seem different."
"No Quinn, it just so happens that, unlike any of the other guys you've spent time with, I am capable of relaxing without having to take my ADHD medication."
"You always ask me about senior year, so now it's my turn. I go back to school next week, what are your plans?"
She half expects him to blow off her question with a melodramatic response but instead his brow creases and he looks away. "A week is a long time Quinn; we don't need to talk about such trivial things now."
"You know you can still sing right?" she asks quietly.
He barks out a laugh and quirks an eyebrow, looking at her in disbelief. "Yeah. I know. Care for an impromptu performance?" He flashes a wide smile but it doesn't quite reach his eyes.
"At college Jesse. You can sing and dance and act and everything at college. I'm pretty sure OSU has rolling admission." In fact she's one hundred per cent sure; she looked it up when he was in the bathroom.
The smile drops and she sees something that looks like irritation flash in his eyes. "It wouldn't be the same," he says, jaw setting as he speaks. "It wouldn't be performing. It would be getting stuck at a Midwest college, pandering to an audience of small-town philistines."
He's glaring at her, for the first time since the whole 'Run Joey Run' thing, he looks genuinely angry. She feels as though she's on a precipice; she knows that if she says one more thing, she'll fall over the edge but it's been on her mind for days now and he has to know. "It doesn't have to be OSU, I just thought –"
"You thought wrong," he cuts in. "Now can we go back to watching the movie? You're making me miss important plot details."
If she was thinking straight she'd accept his hostility towards the subject as a clear message to just stop talking. "I don't see what's so bad about OSU; it's the best place in Ohio." Then again, she hasn't been thinking straight for a while now.
"You just answered your own question Quinn. It's in Ohio. Finn's probably going to apply there. Tell me, is OSU on your list of prospective colleges?"
It isn't. She hasn't actually made her list yet, but anywhere in Ohio isn't even going to be a backup to her backup. If things get that bad, she'll apply to somewhere in Illinois or Pennsylvania. She hesitates and Jesse raises an eyebrow, obviously calling her out. "Well, I haven't flunked out once before." The words escape her mouth and she sees his eyes narrow. "I…I didn't mean…Jesse, just hear me out, please." He takes in a breath and turns towards her again; his expression is in no way any softer. "I just think that you could do so much more there – it'd be better than working at a place you hate. OSU has a musical theatre program."
She gets his attention at that and his eyes meet hers, still intense but slightly less so. "It's not the same."
"The same as what? UCLA? Obviously. But it's better than ending up as a washed up high school singer who won show choir competitions that no one outside of the Midwest has even heard of."
"For your information Quinn," she really hates the way he spits out her name, "people have heard of Nationals. When I told the casting director at UCLA that as a winner of four successive show choir competitions, I was more than prepared for the lead in the spring musical, despite being a freshman, he agreed with me. It just so happened that I…wasn't quite what they were looking for." His voice trails off a little towards the end and it's strange for her to see him this unsettled. "Besides, I do have plans. I was thinking of coaching Vocal Adrenaline, after their train wreck of a push for Nationals with that dumbass Goolsby and the midget Asian, I figure they'd want someone with real experience and the talent to back it."
"You don't even have to stay at OSU for four years, you could transfer," she continues, ignoring his last sentence. He's just as stubborn as she thought he'd be and it kills her a little that she's pretty much ruining what they have as she speaks. Of course the news that he wants to coach VA where she knows he'll come into contact with Rachel again may also factor into her reasoning. "To somewhere in New York. Because coaching Vocal Adrenaline won't make you male lead again."
He looks at her again, but this time his face is a mixture of annoyance and surprise. "I know that. But it'll mean that I'll have another trophy to my name and after the New Directions tarnished my record by losing, winning will do wonders for my show choir consultancy."
"I'm just saying that there's more out there than show choir."
"What's gotten into you Quinn?" His voice is damningly polite and his face is calm again. "If anything I'd have thought you wouldn't want to get rid of me so soon, it's hardly as though you've got friends lining up at your door. Or is that what you actually want? I mean you do eventually find a reason to push everyone away."
His words sting her more than they should, she's not entirely sure why. "You're an ass Jesse," she snaps hatefully, glaring right back at him now. She actually wants to hit him. Or throw the cup of cold coffee in his face. "But you have something. Something that can take you away from this place. I would give anything for a ticket out and here you're too – I don't know – stubborn, proud or just lazy to act on it."
His eyes widen and before she can say anything, he stands up and walks out. Just like that. He doesn't storm or stomp but she hears her front door slam shut and the silence echoes through the room.
...
Author's Note: Quinn's not the only one with issues...
On another note, Jesse is coming back! Oh dear god, my heart is bursting thinking about the fact that maybe, just maybe St. Fabray could actually happen. Please please please please. Come on RIB!