"We need to set some ground rules before we get started."

Quinn stared at the petite woman sitting across from her, and merely nodded.

Rachel had come to the coffee shop wearing jeans and a simple shirt, along with a perfume that seemed to be a mixture of baby powder and sex, and Quinn had groaned to herself and hastily snapped the leash onto her inner horndog.

There had been no hug, which Quinn hadn't really expected anyway, but it would've been nice. Nice, though, was the look on Rachel's face as she'd walked up to Quinn, waiting for her outside the coffee shop. Red-cheeked from the cold, and maybe something else, she'd smiled at Quinn with a quiet "Hi," and she was quiet and shy still, completely un- Rachel Berry-like, as Quinn held open the door and ushered them both inside.

Quinn had ordered tea and Rachel had nodded, as if remembering that Quinn was a fancy tea girl, and not the sort to just down a black coffee in the morning before classes. She'd turned to Rachel to ask her order, but Rachel waved her off with the money in her hand, and once Quinn had paid for her own, ordered a double shot espresso.

"You'll be bouncing off the walls," Quinn had said in awe – and a little concern – but Rachel had just laughed. Coffee and tea clutched in slightly trembling hands, they'd sat down at a table in the back, and stared awkwardly across at each other, before Rachel had taken a deep breath, and spoken with the tone of someone determined to guard her heart.

Ground rules, Quinn thought to herself. She'd figured that Rachel would have some limits to their not-date, but she also hadn't expected Rachel to come right out with them as soon as they'd sat down. But Quinn also knew that Rachel was probably still scared, and probably still didn't know how Quinn would react or what she would do. This only served to make Quinn feel even guiltier for her behavior at the diner, but she pushed it down and focused back on Rachel. Still, even though she knew why the limits were being set, she wasn't sure she liked it.

"Go ahead."

But she'd do it for Rachel.

Rachel nodded, even though she looked surprised, and she cleared her throat. "You can't ask me why."

"But I—"

"No." Her voice was sharp, almost cold, sounding every bit as it had that first day Quinn had seen her at the diner. She tried to look past the anger to remember that this was Rachel, this had been her Rachel, and if she was angry and wanting to shield herself, she had a good reason.

It just wasn't a reason that Rachel felt Quinn needed to know.

"You can't ask me why, and if you attempt it, I will get up and walk out of thi—"

"I won't ask, just please don't leave."

Again. She didn't say it, but the purse of Rachel's lips as she regarded Quinn told her that the meaning had been clear enough.

"What other rules do you have?"

It was absurd, Quinn told herself. Absurd to be sat there like a submissive, asking Rachel what the rules were. She knew their dynamic had changed, knew that it had to change. But now Quinn felt trapped in a game, a game where Rachel made all the rules and Quinn was as helpless as if she was hogtied and blindfolded, waiting for a Dominant to come and have her way with her. She wondered if Rachel was enjoying this, if somewhere in the back of her mind she was reveling in having Quinn at her mercy.

But one look at her eyes… and Quinn's brief flash of anger melted away. It was true, that old cliché about the eyes being the window to the soul, and Rachel's soul was in pain. Even when she smiled the happiness didn't quite reach her eyes, except for a fraction of a second when she would glance over at Quinn, a dimple creasing her cheeks and the… oldness in her eyes giving way to what Quinn now believed, with everything she had, was hope.

Rachel was hoping for something.

Rachel was hoping for her.

Quinn would obey every rule in the damn book Rachel wrote, if she had to.

Rachel ticked them off on her fingers. "Don't ask me if I'm happy, because I am. Don't ask me if I'm safe, because I am. Don't ask me if I need money, because I don't. Don't ask me if I'm moving in with you, because I won't." She stopped and looked at Quinn.

"Any questions?"

"How's your mother?"

Rachel scoffed. "I forgot that one," she said with a shake of her head, and Quinn didn't miss the way that Rachel seemed to actually physically get smaller, before she straightened back up with a stiff line to her jaw.

"She's f-fine. She's doing well."

She'd stuttered. Quinn nodded slowly, looking down at the paper cup of tea in her hands, and ignored it. She glanced up and met Rachel's eyes.

"Why don't you ask me questions?" she said. Rachel had listened – well, eavesdropped – to her conversations with Sam, Elle, and Jamie at the gallery, and had practically admitted to wanting to know things about her. And since she wasn't allowed to ask very many of her own, or at least the ones she really wanted to…

"Are you happy?"

Quinn shut her eyes briefly and smiled before reopening them. "Like I said at the gallery, there are things I wish I could change. But yes, I'm happy."

"And you're… safe? You live in a good neighborhood?"

It wasn't the best neighborhood, Quinn explained, but it was relatively safe and she wasn't worried.

"Plus my dad wants to help me get a new place; I don't know, I might take him up on it."

It'd be nice, if Rachel ever decided to visit, to have more to offer her than a studio apartment. And Quinn knew that Van would be happy to have more space to terrorize.

"Do you like living alone?"

There was something wistful in Rachel's voice now, and Quinn swallowed past the lump in her throat. She'd thought Rachel would have been on her own by now, and she'd be lying if she said it hadn't surprised her that Rachel was still with her mother. She didn't like it, especially since things had seemed so strained when she and Rachel were children. But she figured that was yet another thing that she couldn't ask, and so Quinn simply answered Rachel's question.

"It's nice. I like being able to just come home and dump my clothes on the floor, which I probably do more than I should," she admitted, grinning sheepishly, which grew wider when Rachel giggled. "I can stay up as late as I want, watch whatever I want."

"But it gets lonely," she ended softly. "Sometimes I miss my parents, my grandma. Sometimes I miss… other people."

"Do Jamie and Elle come over at all?" Rachel avoided what Quinn had alluded to altogether, an expert at ignoring certain things, Quinn guessed. "Or Sam?"

"Not really, Van makes it kind of impossible for me to have guests. Oh!" Quinn pulled out her cell phone and quickly scrolled to a picture of Van, pushing her phone across the table to Rachel.

"Oh he looks very… um, very…"

"Like an asshole?" Quinn laughed, and Rachel gaped at her. "Sorry, but I had the pleasure of adopting the crankiest, most hard to please cat ever. And I wouldn't give him back for anything."

"He got hurt though," Rachel said, regretfully handing the phone back to Quinn, and she wondered just how much Rachel had always wanted a pet.

It made her irrationally angry, that she didn't have one, but Quinn fought it down again.

"He's fine now; the other cat probably got the worst of it. Now he's endlessly spoiled and acts like he hates every minute of it."

"Does he let you pet him? Maybe he'd like it if I pet—"

She stopped, biting her lip and flushing pink, and Quinn beamed, even as she made sure not to get ahead of herself.

"Maybe," she said gently. "We'll see."

They fell into semi-awkward silence then, both of them sipping their tea and coffee, pausing to take small glances at each other. Almost as if they were sizing the other up, taking stock, seeing where they stood.

Well, sat.

"You're an artist," Rachel said suddenly, and Quinn jumped a little. "I mean, I was quite certain you would be, you did love to draw so much. I'm glad to see that you still do."

"I still love history, too," Quinn said, "And I don't think I want to try art as a career, I'd really rather not starve." She fidgeted, playing with the buttons on her shirt. It was all so strange. Things felt so familiar but so foreign at the same time; the girl sitting across from her was her Rachel and yet not. So much had changed in five years and Quinn couldn't even ask about it, even those things she was pretty sure hadn't changed at all.

"Do you still sing?" she finally dared to ask. "I mean I've heard you humming so…." She trailed off, unsure of how to finish. Quinn could feel herself flinch a little; she didn't know what kind of reaction a "simple" question such as that would inspire in someone like Rachel

But the young woman smiled, even if it was a little forced. "When something is such a part of you, can you ever really let it go? I find myself singing at the silliest times. There was a greeting card commercial on last night that was using a song from Broadway. I was singing along at the top of my lungs before Mom—" Rachel stopped, looking as if she'd just been caught cheating on a test, and she cleared her throat. "Well, I didn't want the neighbors to complain," she joked, but it was weak, and Quinn's hands tightened around the cup of tea.

So Rachel's mother still didn't like to hear her sing.

She couldn't imagine anyone not wanting to hear Rachel sing. All right, so she hadn't ever actually heard Rachel sing; hearing a person in reality versus in your head was a lot different. But she knew Rachel sounded beautiful. It wasn't even in the way she sang, when she was quietly tucked inside Quinn's mind, but in the way that she talked, in the way that even now, her eyes lit up when she recounted singing along to a card commercial.

Quinn couldn't understand why someone wouldn't want Rachel to sing, when that was all she wanted to hear.

"Tell me about your friends," Quinn said suddenly. "You've already met Sam and Elle, Jamie. I want to know about your friends."

"Oh, Burt," Rachel said, brightening. "He's so nice, even though maybe he doesn't seem like it at the diner. He's just really good at what he does, and he's only a little hard on me. I don't mind it, since he gives me cakes and pies to take home for Mo- for us. He's always been really good to me, and he's always helped me when I need days off and such. He's brought Mom and me some great food at Christmas before, and the bonuses are always very, very nice."

Rachel laughed, and Quinn tried to laugh along, but it bothered her. Rachel had seemed to enjoy talking about Burt, but Quinn had noticed that nowhere in Rachel's breathless ramble was there any mention of a person her age. And Burt was her boss. He could be a friend, sure, but he wasn't a friend like Quinn's own little group. People to support her, to bear her up when times got their hardest.

To understand.

Rachel had just recently graduated, Quinn figured. And though she only remembered slushies and sadness from before Rachel had severed the connection, there had to have been at least one or two people who had been her friends…

"What about school?"

Rachel looked at her suspiciously, and Quinn could practically see the wall that had slammed up around her. "What about it?" she said, trying to affect an air of nonchalance and failing.

"Er… your friends from school?" Quinn tried. "What were they like?"

Rachel shrugged. "I had my studies and… other things to do," she said. "I had acquaintances at school, of course, people with whom I studied… Although that ended up with me giving them the answers more than actual studying."

"Oh," Quinn said, almost to herself, and fell silent.

"Yes…"

She tried not to think of it, of Rachel alone in her school dealing with slushies and the sneers of people who didn't realize that she didn't belong there, who had no clue that Rachel Berry was so much better than they were. She wondered if Rachel would walk the hallways by herself, books clutched tightly to her chest and her brown hair falling into her eyes as she tried to avoid the snares of the high school hierarchy.

If Rachel had gone to school with her, Quinn wondered, and they had never known each other, would she have been one of them?

"Rachel?"

Brown eyes rose to her hazel ones. "Yes?"

"I'll be your friend."

The corner of Rachel's mouth quirked up. "You want to be more."

It was said so matter-of-factly, but it summed up Quinn's entire existence from the time she was seven years old. She wanted more; they were destined to be so much more…

"I do," she confirmed. "But if that never happens… I want to be your friend."

"I might not be what you want."

Don't you know you're so much better than I could possibly want? she wanted to cry out, but Quinn didn't.

"I want you, as my friend." Quinn shook her head. "I want us to talk, to go for coffee, and maybe go for walks or, I don't know, even to the mall – do you even like the mall?"

"I prefer the smaller shops. Locally-owned, organic, that sort of thing."

"We'll go to the locally-owned, organic, hippie stores then." Rachel raised an eyebrow at her, and Quinn soldiered on with a nervous chuckle. "Or maybe a museum or two, it doesn't matter."

She sighed. "It doesn't matter where we go, or what we do. I just want to be your friend, Rachel."

There was quiet then, broken only by the customers calling out orders and the barista yelling out names; Quinn had the thought that maybe she had just done a very, very bad thing, because Rachel was looking at her oddly and not saying anything, and that was so unlike Rachel as to be unnerving.

Maybe she should just go, Quinn thought. Maybe a friend wasn't what Rachel needed, or even wanted. Or maybe Quinn wasn't the friend Rachel needed, or wanted. Or—

"If we're going to be friends, there's something you need to give me."

"What?" Quinn asked, dumbly, sneaking a glance up at Rachel through the hair that had fallen over her eyes.

"Well, ah… your number," Rachel said, glancing out the window. Her cheeks were pink, matching the slow descent of the sun on the horizon. Had they really been sat there talking that long?

"I mean if we're going to friends and… going to locally-owned, organic but not necessarily hippie stories then… I'll need a way to contact you."

"Oh!" Quinn said, suddenly beaming. Rachel wanted her phone number.

Rachel wanted her phone number.

"Sure, you can put it in your phone if you want."

"Oh, shoot!" Rachel said, coloring even more, if possible. "I left my phone at home…"

"That's no problem," Quinn assured her, and reached into her purse. "I can write it do- oh, well, I could if I had something to write with." When had all her pens suddenly vanished?

"Maybe I can help with that?" Rachel reached into her own bag and held out a Sharpie. In response to Quinn's look she said hastily, "For stage door. And one never knows when one might run into a Tony Award winner on the street."

"No," Quinn said, trying to tame the butterflies in her stomach. "One doesn't. But I don't suppose you have paper in that bag of yours? For an artist I'm really unprepared today."

Rachel looked, and then sighed. "I certainly hope I don't run into a Tony Award winner on the street, unless he wants to sign something of my anatomy. Though I'm not into that sort of thing."

Quinn gaped at her momentarily, and then bit her lip. She could get a napkin, she reasoned. All she had to do was go up to the counter and get one. But…

She slowly reached across the table, and with her eyes locked on the other girl…

Quinn Fabray took Rachel Berry's hand.

Rachel's eyes widened, and Quinn could feel her tense, could feel the pressure of Rachel's determination to keep herself safe, and so she waited. Waited, with Rachel's hand in hers, and her eyes never leaving the face of the girl she used to call her princess.

Rachel's hand relaxed in hers, turning palm-up, and Quinn smiled.

She wrote slowly, deliberately, trying to savor the fact that she was holding Rachel's hand. There was no amazing epiphany; no clouds opened up to the sound of thousands of angels singing. There was no realization, no cliché of running across a crowded room into each other's arms.

There was no connection.

But there was Quinn, carefully and gently holding Rachel's hand, each pen stroke light and cautious as she wrote down her number, and signed it with a Q.

She put the sharpie down on the table but didn't move to release Rachel's hand; instead she stared down at it, trying to memorize each and every line, each dip and pool of tan skin, the warmth spreading slowly over her own hand and seeming, she thought, to reach the tips of her own fingers.

She could cry, Quinn knew. She could cry, and fall apart, and clutch Rachel to herself, never letting her go. Because that was the way it was meant to be, that was how it was supposed to play out. Rachel was meant to be hers; Rachel had been born to be hers.

Quinn took a deep breath, smiled, and with her other hand, curled Rachel's fingers around her own palm, covering the numbers, and released her hand.

"There you go," she said softly. "You'll put that in your phone?"

Rachel nodded. "Let me give you mine?"

She wanted Rachel to pick her hand up, to scrawl the numbers on her skin, but Quinn merely retrieved her phone from her pocket and quickly typed it in, saving it.

Rachel Berry

A simple entry, that meant so much. Another quick tap and a gold star lit up next to her name.

"Now you're a Very Important Person," Quinn teased lightly, to try to diffuse the tension of the situation, and Rachel laughed a little.

"That's very good to know."

The sun was almost gone now, and Quinn found herself saying, this time, that she really needed to go. She had laundry to be done and Van was probably angry that his food person hadn't made it home yet. Plus, she thought but didn't voice, she really hated the idea of Rachel being out alone in the dark. Quinn knew that she had just as much likelihood of being mugged or worse as Rachel, but if there was one thing that wasn't going away in all of this, it was her protectiveness of the petite brown-eyed girl who was nodding, and saying that she needed to get home as well.

"I could walk you?" Quinn suggested.

"No!" She was somewhat taken aback at the forcefulness, but Rachel quickly recovered herself and said it again, gentler this time. "It's not that far from here to the subway, and I'll be home in no time. Really, it's not necessary."

"If you're sure," Quinn said, following Rachel out of the coffee shop and into the cold air. Rachel noticeably shivered and Quinn's fingers itched to button the girl's coat around her, to tighten the scarf around her neck. But she held back, once again, and found herself smiling at how cute Rachel was, pulling her beret on and taking the mace and whistle out of her coat pocket.

But Rachel lingered without saying goodbye, and Quinn tilted her head. "Rach?"

It was familiar, probably too familiar for the situation, especially since Rachel's eyes shot up to her and she stared, a strange expression on her face.

"Are you… okay?"

"I am," Rachel said slowly. "I was just wondering something."

"Oh. Um… yes, I do think that Elphaba is supremely misunderstood and that things would have been a lot better if Fiyero had just stayed in Munchkinland like he was supposed to?"

Rachel burst into laughter then, and once again Quinn had to swallow past the lump in her throat because it was the most beautiful sound she'd ever heard in her life.

"No," Rachel said, still giggling a little. "Well, I mean yes, but no, that wasn't what I was wondering. I was wondering…"

"Yes?"

"Do you like to bake?"

"Bake?" Quinn repeated.

There was something about Rachel Berry that made her both feel and act like an idiot.

"Bake. You know, pastries, cookies, cake. I really like—"

"Chocolate cake," Quinn said, her eyes lighting up. "I remember."

"I make cakes and cookies sometimes, for one of the community centers here. I could just take some of Burt's, I know he wouldn't mind, but I like to make them. They seem to mean more that way."

"Yeah," Quinn said, "I can see why they would. I don't bake much, but I love it when I do."

"Well, I thought, er… I thought that if you wanted to, perhaps we might bake something together and take it to the community center?"

She wanted to. Oh, how Quinn wanted to. She could scarcely believe her luck, really. Today had started out as… just coffee. Just coffee, with Quinn taking 2 hours to decide what she would wear, and another 30 minutes just to get up the nerve to leave her apartment.

And now she had sat for hours in a coffee shop with Rachel. Had sat and talked with her, had given the girl her number, had held her hand. And now she had Rachel's number, and Rachel wanted to bake cookies with her.

"I'd love to," Quinn said. "Let me know what day you want to, and you'll have to give me directions to your house, but of course I—"

"Not my house."

"I'm sorry?"

"Not my house," Rachel said again, and Quinn saw the wall come up once more. "I'd have to… come to your apartment; we can't bake in my house."

She sounded almost panicked, and Quinn hastened to reassure her. "We can bake at my apartment," she said quickly, then smiled. "Yes, we can bake at my apartment, and you can meet Van."

"I think I'd really like to meet him."

"Just don't be upset when he doesn't like you," Quinn said, silently praying that Van wouldn't bite or scratch Rachel. She didn't think the shelter would like her explanation if she brought him back for that.

"I'll try not to be," Rachel said, "but I hope he does. Um, how does next Saturday sound?"

Next Saturday, next Saturday… "That sounds perfect," Quinn said, feeling sick with excitement.

"You'll text me your address when it gets close?"

"Yeah, yeah, I definitely will."

"Good," Rachel said with a shy glance down at her feet again. "You don't need to worry about buying any ingredients, I'll bring everything."

"And if I want to make my famous Grandma Connie's Chocolate Chip Cookies?"

Rachel grinned. "Then buy what you need, and we'll make Grandma Connie's Chocolate Chip Cookies." She glanced off into the distance, then back at Quinn.

"We're friends, right?"

"Yeah, Rach," Quinn said, thinking of the number etched on the other girl's palm. "We're friends."