sorry about the wait, although the good news is that i've got like another 3 chapters already written. Again thank you to all my lovely reviewers, please continue even though i've been crappy with this! This is just fluff really, Yay!
When they eventually rolled back into camp with their hands entwined in a way they were always meant to be; half their peers wore smug grins and started exchanging money they had wagered and in some cases lost. The others looked simply astounded but said nothing as they prepared for their walk.
"Have I missed something?" Mercedes murmured to Kurt as they linked arms and began their walk, Kurt being on the girl's team as always.
"The whole of high school by the sounds of it if you honestly didn't see that coming." The stylish man smirked as Mercedes' jaw dropped in indignation.
Quinn, however, was utterly oblivious to anything that wasn't Rachel. "So, what's your favourite colour?" A contented smile across her lips.
Rachel laughed. "I have to be honest Quinn, when I said we could ask questions I thought it they could be a little deeper than my favourite colour."
"There's no harm in starting with the easy stuff. After all I don't want to buy you something yellow thinking it's still your favourite colour and then you hate it because you can't stand yellow anymore and would have much preferred it pink." Quinn smirked, she was loving how easily they were slipping back into conversation.
Rachel sighed, shaking her head. "Well that scenario would have been entirely accurate had you not just correctly guessed that my favourite colour is indeed pink. Since I evidently don't have your mind reading powers, what's yours?"
"Blue, but like the ocean rather than the sky. I've always found it really calming, you know? It's just a really vast colour rather than a burst of intensity. I'd never even seen the ocean until I went to Long Beach with West and Iris and it was so beautiful and massive I never wanted to be away from it."
Rachel smiled at how poetic Quinn could be with even something as simple as a colour. "Well thank you for making my answer look like a 5 year olds with your incessantly beautiful description. So next question; favourite meal?"
"Enchiladas, have been since I was 8 and I first had dinner with the Lopez's. Even now when I visit Santana's mom gives me like 10 helpings and complains about how thin I am. What about you?"
"Sushi, since I stopped being vegan due to the lifestyle being financially impossible when I was in college I decided to still avoid meat but eat dairy and fish so long as it is responsibly sourced and let me tell you as soon as one of the crew members on Funny Girl let me try some sushi I was hooked."
Quinn nodded with a smile. "Still no bacon though?" Rachel laughed and shook her head.
"I can't believe you're still obsessed with that stuff, remember when you locked yourself in the dressing room at our first sectionals because Puck forgot to get you a BLT? He was terrified!"
"Hey! Everyone knows not to mess with pregnancy cravings! If he was going to knock me up the least he could have done was get me bacon especially since it was the day I was giving birth to his daughter."
"Ah but you didn't know that at the time."
Quinn waved her hand and scoffed. "Irrelevant!"
Rachel could only hold her giggles for a few second before she collapsed in laughter, Quinn followed soon after.
"Even you have to admit you were a nightmare back then." Rachel stopped and tucked away a blonde lock behind her ear. "A beautiful one, but God help us when it's our kid."
Quinn froze; it had been so easy to chat about the simple stuff but at the brunettes words she had immediately thought to a time where she and Rachel were in a perfectly suburban house with the smell of cookies lingering in the air and a litter of tiny Quinns and Rachels running around. She had forgotten that dream for years, in fact it had conveniently disappeared along with her dream of her Father walking her down the aisle and becoming an astronaut.
"Oh my god I'm so sorry Quinn, I didn't mean to say that. I completely understand if you aren't comfortable with talking about a future like that especially since Beth." Rachel rambled with wide eyes until Quinn waved her hands and gripped her shoulders to still the tiny diva who was practically shaking with anxiety.
"Hey, don't worry about it. I'm not some meathead guy who'd run away at the slightest hint of commitment nor am I unaware that we are no longer teenagers and starting a family is something that won't be far away from either of our minds. I have wanted you since the moment we met, whether I knew it or not, and that life is something that I just hadn't let myself think about. But now you're here and there's nothing that sounds better and I'm sure when the time comes we'll be the perfect domestic goddesses. When we're ready for that."
Rachel nodded with a smile. "When we're ready." She looked down, unsure of whether this was the time to branch their rather shaky immediate future. "So we're in this for the long haul, right? This isn't some holiday fling?"
Quinn laughed and shook her head. "I think we are both far too intense for holiday flings. Put it this way, I've held onto you for all this time without any inclination that you'd ever change your mind, I'm not about to throw this away. We just talked about kids for god's sake! I'm here for as long as you'll have me."
"I'm so sorry for taking so long to figure this out. You are the most patient, forgiving, beautiful woman I've ever met; you've never once pushed or pried, you just put up with me even when I've been vile to you for all these years. I need you to know that I'll never shut you out like that again and I hate that ever did it in the first place."
"Why?" Quinn had tears in her eyes now although she loathed herself for them. "Why shut me out for so long and then suddenly decide you changed your mind? I needed you, I didn't know how to function when you turned me away you were my future and I lost you! I spent my life keeping up ridiculous charades so I never had to deal with that! You know what I felt for you then isn't gone but I need a reason, please?"
Rachel looked to the ground and silently begged for a way out. "I was scared Quinn. Everything I feel is so… intense. With Puck and Jesse and Finn everything went out of control, I fell for what they could be rather than what they were. But then there was you." She looked up to see glimmering hazel eyes and hated that she was the cause for those tears. "And all of the sudden what happened with everyone else was child's play and I knew if anything happened I'd die. I wouldn't be able to deal with you cheating or lying or insulting me like everyone else had if I opened myself up to you and I had no cause to believe you wouldn't do any of those things. So I stuck with Finn and the idea that he will always be my prince charming and no one could ever live up to him. I put him on a pedestal so that no matter how sweet or kind or beautiful you were you'd never live up to him, but I know what I did and I'm so sorry for hurting you for so long for the sake of being selfish."
Quinn took a deep breath and softened her voice with a sad smile. "I can understand that, I didn't exactly have the best track record in high school. To be honest I wasn't in a position to have anyone else to care for but myself. I didn't even know what love was until the day you were supposed to get married, it was only then that I knew what it was like for your happiness to depend on someone else's." Quinn shuddered at the memory of that day, she still hadn't told anyone the truth. Even Frannie believed the car accident story. "Santana was wrong when she said that all the stuff that happened in college was your fault. I've never been ok, from my father to Beth and then being in a wheelchair, that kind of stuff has an impact you know? I needed that time to grow up, to get better, and now I am. And now I'm yours."
The two girls shook of the gravity of the situation and continued their more light hearted questions until Santana and Kitty appeared behind them.
"You two sorted out your shit then?" Santana asked with an amused smile, wrapping her arm around Quinn. She may not be 100% behind their relationship but she was willing to at least try and see them from a different perspective.
"Yeah cause as your fellow head bitches, we need an assurance that you're not going to let the side down by crying anymore Q. At least one of us needs to have a clear head and not be a lovesick puppy or there's no way we're gonna beat the boys." Kitty joined in next to Santana.
"Like you can talk, you practically threw a fit when Marely was annoyed at you last night. Anyway, I'm not as whipped as either of you. Just because I'm back with Britts doesn't mean I'm a puppy again like back in high school nuh uh I've grown into a wild beast that cannot be tamed by anyone even if they are beautiful and smart and perfect." Santana retorted with a smug expression.
It took Quinn and Kitty about 5 seconds before they burst into fits of laughter. Rachel knew Santana well enough not to join them, after all she wasn't exactly in her good books, so she limited herself to a small smile. Apparently even that was off limits to the fiery Latina.
"Don't you start you…" She scowled with a hiss; that was until Brittany bounced behind them.
"Are you being mean to Rachie?" She asked with big blue puppy dog eyes.
"No! No of course not! We were just, I mean, I-I-it wasn't like that." Santana stuttered.
"Yeah, I'm sure she wasn't because if she was then I'd be sure to rip her head off; wouldn't I Sanny?" Quinn had calmed to a sickly sweet tone that was terrifying.
Santana nodded meekly as Kitty looked away pointedly to avoid gaining the hazel eyed blonde's attention. Brittany simply grinned obliviously.
Rachel, however, was incredibly turned on. She didn't care whether it was the menacing glare in those beautiful eyes or it was just that Quinn had just stood up for her (a feat that none of her exes to date have succeeded in) but in that moment it took all her self-control not to drag her off into the woods and have her up against a tree. That probably wouldn't go down so well with their fellow campers.
Quinn looked to Rachel and saw her glazed over expression, she spun around so she could face her properly and shut out their friends babbling around them as Marley and Kurt joined them. "Are you ok? I was just kidding around; I didn't mean to scare you with that stuff. I'm not the same person as I was in school, I don't…" She barely got to finish her sentence before full lips silenced her.
"I think we should leave them to it." Kurt suggested with a cough but both girls were oblivious to the remark and their sudden privacy as Quinn pulled Rachel's bottom lip between her own. Quinn could feel the blood rushing through her body when she was pulled flush against Rachel with grasping hands on her hips. She threaded her fingers through silken locks with a moan as she felt a tongue dash across her upper lip, begging for entrance; though just as she was about to grant it she felt a sharp pain on her head. The two girls pulled away with a start to see a smirking Mercedes with a twig in her hand.
"Hey! Keep it PG over there! You guys do realise that you're not the only couple here, right? But you are the only one that can't stop yourselves from sucking face every 10 seconds! If I catch you guys at it again don't think I'll hesitate in splitting you up."
Both Rachel and Quinn shared a look of horror at the thought of being separated and obediently nodded their heads.