This chapter is a direct continuation of the last one guys. Thanks for all of the comments :D You know how to massage me ego! Sorry for any mistakes. It is early or late, and I haven't been to sleep yet.
More so than usual, Finn couldn't concentrate. Miss Gilbert's smooth plump lips were moving, as she stood at the front of the classroom, but were any sounds leaving them? Fuck if he knew. Was he learning anything?
Nope.
His mind knew nothing but the intimate embrace that he'd seen his ex-girlfriend wrapped up in with none other than McKinley High's biggest loser. When they'd been McKinley's star couple, both him and Quinn had enjoyed torturing the ugly little midget on many an occasion; bonding over picking out which color slushie they were going to have thrown into her face, and coming up with demeaning nicknames that were sure to have Rachel drowning in her pillow each night.
Sam Evans was the least of Finn's problems. Quinn had gone gay... for Rachel Berry!
He had seen it with his own eyes.
The tall boy absently rubbed his aching ribs, and pondered what this meant for him. To question what was so faulty about him that he had driven the hottest girl ever into another girl's arms, much less RuPaul's arms, was natural. He couldn't help but go over every one of their past sexual encounters. Every kiss, every orgasm.
"But I made her come all the time," he quietly muttered, frowning his frustration into the desk.
During many - ok all - of their sexual encounters, Quinn would always shudder, before placing a delicate but preventative hand to his shoulder. She would squirm tellingly and then tell him that they were to stop making out, because her orgasm had left her feeling overly sensitive.
In his mind he'd regularly made Quinn come from kissing only which, in terms of his ego, had more than made up for the fact that his pants had always bulged, afterwards, without promise of relief.
As soon as Miss Gilbert turned her back to the class, and began to scrawl on the blackboard, a ball of scrunched up paper soared through the air, missing Finn's head only by an inch or so. It rolled to a stop on the desk.
Somehow he imagined that the perpetrator's intention had not been to hit him, which made this ball of crumpled up paper that much more menacing.
He stared at it and gulped.
If he were to open it up, what would it say?
No more than five seconds later, the ball that had once been lay flattened out on the desk, save a few defiant crinkled corners.
The message was clear to see.
Looks like you weren't man enough to keep Man Hands away from your girl. Lmao! Rachel probably just has a bigger dick than you, Finnpotent! ;)
Heat bubbled, popped, and gurgled sourly in Finn's stomach. Unable to take it, he tossed a furious glance over his shoulder, scowling at the back row of overly innocent faces. "Have some balls and say it to my face!" he growled at them with maddened eyes.
Not one expression twitched.
"Is there a problem Mr Hudson?" Miss Gilbert suddenly asked, turning around to shine her full attention on Finn.
Yes.
Yes, there was a problem.
Finn knew that he had to get Quinn to come back to him; he couldn't stand to think that Rachel's dick was bigger than his. But he also knew that before he could even consider trying to put his wooing foot forward, he was going to need some answers.
And he wasn't the only one...
Quinn was going to need some freaking answers too, and she was going to get them come hell or high water!
She paced the murky out-of-bounds toilets on tense legs, back and forth. Back and forth. Waiting. Her chin still dripped a little with the water that she'd rigorously washed her lips off with. There was no way that she was going to be able to eat her lunch and keep it down now. Not after that fiasco earlier.
Man Hands had crossed the line; Quinn didn't know what kind of rage her trembling pale hands were going to take on once the brunette finally did show up.
She wanted nothing more than to scream until the tendons in her neck popped, but she didn't want to draw any attention, or to have to clean up the mess. She'd had the parameters of her space violated - her plan compromised.
It just couldn't fly. She was Quinn Fabray. When she told people to jump, they were supposed to ask how high, and then ask if she wanted their lunch money too…
Upon her late arrival, Rachel didn't have her feet in the room two seconds before Quinn had snatched the neck of her Argyle sweater, and flung her up against the wall, holding her there.
"Listen, freak!" the blonde sneered, ripping the bow from Rachel's head band and tossing it, "the shenanigans stop now! Do you hear me? I told you that if you fucked this up, there would be dire consequences. I wasn't kidding! Stop fucking with me!"
The unmoved brunette simply clicked her tongue, and sighed as if disappointed. She cast blasé eyes down towards her discarded bow and then looked, head on, at her pretty tormenter. "Is this any way to treat your girlfriend?" she mocked the other girl. "Our future children are most definitely going to hear about your violent outbursts -"
Quinn, having heard enough of Treasure Trail's ridiculousness, pressed her palm over Rachel's mouth. The immediate silence was music for her soul. "You're supposed to sit with me in the cafeteria, but now I don't know about that because you're a-a..." Her hands flailed around in such frenzy; she didn't even know which word she was looking for. "A fucking liability! Why can't you just do as you're told?"
Rachel merely blinked, maintaining her silence. Not that she could say anything anyway, with the cheerleader's hand clamped over her lips.
"Why did you kiss me? That wasn't in act one of the script that I gave you!" the blonde growled, reluctantly dragging her palm away from the brunette's mouth. Unfortunately, answers were more important than the luxury of silence.
"I don't like you, Quinn," Rachel answered at the drop of a hat. "I'm going to make this entire thing as arduous, for you, as I can. It's just a bit of fun; surely you can understand. Does that adequately answer your question?" She pushed past the blonde, without needing a response, and headed over to the triad of sinks, from where she regarded her own reflection in the mirror, and fixed the wild strands of hair that had sprung loose when she'd lost her bow.
It wasn't as if Quinn needed to ask Rachel why she disliked her, but she still found herself wanting to...
"Well if you hate me so much, why would you kiss me like that? I'd sooner crack you in that hideous nose than kiss you... like that!"
"Note that I didn't say that I hated you," Rachel pointed out, fetching a comb from her bag. "But, yes, I hate you enough to put you through having to kiss me. But let us not act like you weren't pleasantly surprised by it. P.S: I hope you know that you'll be required to buy me a new head band, to replace the one that you just needlessly destroyed."
Quinn folded her arms, scoffing incredulously as realization cast a whole new light on the kissing situation. "Oh my God. You're just like every other asshole in this joint; you want a piece of me. You wanted to kiss me," she gleaned.
Rachel giggled, maybe even snorting a few times, as she preened her hair in the shiny silver surface. "Yes, because being called a freak and a tranny makes me so wet," she retorted, deadpanning. "Might I add: it's very interesting that you view those that find you attractive to be assholes. I wonder what that says about what you think and how you feel about yourself."
Quinn had sort of zoned out. She could only think about that kiss - how sensual and soft it had been. There was no way that there had been nothing in it. And what about the manner in which Rachel had gazed at her? Nobody was that good of an actress without having had professional training.
Everyone found Quinn terribly attractive. In fact that had been the story of her life – people fawning all over her and giving her whatever she wanted simply because of her aesthetics. She'd been using her looks to her advantage since the moment that her father had first caved; handing her that pack of gummy bears when she'd fluttered her long lashes at the ripe age of four.
Rachel was open-minded, had gay parents, and never talked about boys...
It all made perfect sense.
Quinn grew convinced, and just like she did with everybody else's Achilles' heel, she deviously sought to use Rachel's apparent crush against her.
Cat-like, her bone-white Cheerio pumps pattered soundlessly towards the unsuspecting brunette, who had busied herself with perfecting a stray eyebrow hair in the mirror. "Tell me what you want, and I'll give it to you," she breathed, hot and close, into Rachel's ear. "All you have to do is cooperate, and whatever you want – I'll do it."
Rachel, stunned into literal silence, merely peered at the reflection of the surreal events that seemed to be taking place. The picture stared back at her in all of its solidity, no matter which angle her eyes scrambled to consume it from. She realized that it wasn't going to go away – that this was truly happening.
When the blonde gently hovered her hand over Rachel's shoulder, the shorter girl's eyes popped.
Surely Quinn wasn't this desperate to get back on top of that prestigious McKinley High mountain. It wasn't even like she'd tumbled that far down. She had maybe a bruise or two, but nothing that should warrant such repulsive and undignified behaviour!
Rachel was absolutely horrified, and it wasn't long before the maddening sensation of anger descended down upon her form, like red dust blown from an evil witch's lumpy lips. All Quinn had to do was apologize! Simple. Yet she thought it more acceptable to offer her body up in exchange for cooperation, instead of just saying sorry?
"There are so many things wrong with this picture, that I don't even know where to begin!" Rachel spat, suddenly shrugging Quinn's touch away. She stuffed her comb back into her bag, zipped it swift and tight, and turned around, looking like she was getting ready to leave.
Quinn wasn't the Head Cheerleader for nothing. She sprang back gracefully, blocking the door before any such thing could happen. "Where do you think you're going? We're not done here!"
"We're done when I say we're done!" Rachel argued, jabbing her thumb back towards her own chest with authority. "At this present moment, I own you Quinn! I could tell the entire school what it is that we're doing, and everybody would believe me because through that pretty little facade of yours, everybody knows that you're a self-loathing, insecure, control freak, who will do absolutely anything to be on top again!"
The truth always seemed to pack a punch like no other. The pain of said blow was the fuel behind Quinn winding her hand back, and poising it for a thunderous introduction to the disrespectful brunette's cheek.
Rachel rolled her eyes. "Go ahead! Slap me, Quinn! Then you can go home at the end of the day and wallow in self-pity, scolding yourself for being such an awful person. I see you, Quinn Fabray. I know that the self-pity and the self-loathing is just an excuse – classic self-fulfilling prophecy, which just allows you to be an awful person day after day after day without you having to do a damn thing about it, because you've already made up your mind that you're an awful person! Well congratulations!" she raised her voice, waving her hands around manically in mock celebration. "Congratulations; you've just offered to more or less sell your body to me to get your own way, when all I've ever wanted was a sincere apology from you, so that I could release the resentment that I feel for your past actions. You're right, as usual. You are an awful person!"
She brought her hands together, clapping miserably. But she was more than aware of the fact that there was nothing to celebrate; nobody had won here.
"Hopefully one of these days you'll develop the fortitude to do something about the reprehensible way you treat other people, in order to fill the gaping void that exist within yourself." Rachel sighed, feeling somewhat spent as the last remnants of her anger seeped out of her mouth. "I don't want to spend another second in your toxic presence. So if you'll kindly remove yourself from the door, I'll leave."
Under the weight of Rachel's many words, Quinn's hand slowly lowered until it dangled lifelessly down by her red and white Cheerio's skirt.
She couldn't hide, because Rachel had seen her and she was seeing her right now. Even though Rachel had made it clear that a sincere apology was what she'd been after this whole time, Quinn realized that she had no idea what to do. Her entire life was about this beautiful manipulative character that she sent out into the world for the purpose of playing human chess. Her parents, Russell and Judy Fabray, were exactly the same, and as a result they hadn't taught their daughter to be comfortable with just being herself. They hadn't taught her that it was most often the participation that mattered, and not the perfection of winning.
"I don't want to have to ask you again, Quinn. Please move so that I can leave."
"I'm not moving. You're gonna shut up and listen to me."
Rachel rubbed her face wearily. Had none of what she'd just said sunken in?
Quinn's jaw twitched. She put her hands on her hips and then dropped them again, sighing.
The brunette frowned, watching her clearly uncomfortable tormenter studiously. "Say whatever it is that you've got to say. I would like to eat something this lunch time," she pushed after a few seconds of strange quiet.
Quinn glared. "Didn't I just tell you to shut up and listen to me? 'Cause I could have sworn that I did."
Rachel sighed. She liked to think that she would never use physical force, but hunger did strange things to people. There were no guarantees in life, unless you had a voice like hers and your dream was Broadway, of course.
"I, I wasn't actually going to… do anything with you," Quinn finally grated out, not daring to look the other girl in the eye.
Rachel had never heard her sound or look so meek. It was disconcerting, like a sign that something was off-kilter in the great cosmos or something. She understood what was being said to her, despite the scant elaboration. But she wasn't sure she believed that Quinn would not have gone through with… whatever it was that she, herself, may have proposed in the way of sexual favors. And that was frightening.
It was a big ugly red flag!
"I hope that's the truth, Quinn. We're all worth more than that."
"I'm sorry."
At the sound of those abrupt words, Rachel's breath caught in her throat.
For all of her hope, over the years, she never actually thought that she would hear those words uttered from Quinn Fabray's lips. A slow-burning smile tugged her cheeks up, however tentatively. "What are you apologizing for?" she gently pushed, wanting to take everything that she could whilst the cheerleader was in this open state of mind.
Quinn pursed her lips and returned her hands to her hips, drawing strength from the classic Cheerio stance. "You're going to be annoying about this, aren't you?" she asked, though something about her voice was tinged with an almost undetectable plea.
"I know when to be serious," Rachel reassured her with a comedically dutiful nod of the head, and a big grin. "What are you sorry for?"
"Firstly, I'm not sorry for calling you annoying. You are annoying, and you know you are. So are your clothes. But… deep down I know that that doesn't give me, or my goons, license to terrorize you. That is what I'm apologizing for. The slushies are fucked up. So are the nicknames, and… I'm fucked up for thinking of them in the first place," Quinn somewhat quietly admitted, a wince flickering in and out of her pale forehead. She sighed, and looked Rachel in the eye once and for all. "Look, I'm never going to be your biggest fan, and you're never going to be mine! But we can operate under mutual… respect."
"I… I honestly don't know what to say." The brunette didn't like to think that she'd been relying on someone else's apology to reclaim a small portion of her happiness back. But essentially, she sort of had been.
"You might as well delete the insurance that you have on me. The bullying stops, regardless of how our deal goes."
Rachel scoffed, though it was somewhat light-hearted. "I have accepted your apology, Quinn. But I haven't even begun to forgive you yet. Not to push my luck, but that is going to take time and proof of your regret. I don't trust you. However heartfelt this apology may seem, it could be just another one of your ruses. Because of that I have concluded that it would be stupid of me to delete the insurance at this point in time. But that doesn't mean that I don't appreciate the apology, because I really do."
Quinn smirked inside. She was still much too uncomfortable with the outward submission of her dominance to laugh, or smile, or smirk. But she would always appreciate someone who was sharp-minded, even if she was too competitive to tell them most of the time.
Rachel chewed the inside of her cheek and then offered her hand out. "Well, that's our first big lover's tiff out of the way. Now that I've accepted your apology, because you're clearly the guy in this relationship, I am ready to let you be my beloved once more," she chirped, attempting to make light of the heavy air that had fallen around them.
Quinn didn't take the shorter girl's hand. She would do so when she absolutely had to. That, and she was annoyed by the brunette's dramatics. "I hope you're not expecting me to laugh at your lame little jokes now, just because I've apologized to you."
"If you want people to ship us together, as Faberry, you had better find my jokes funny by the time we reach the cafeteria."
"That better not be a portmanteau of our names," Quinn griped, completely unamused as she yanked open the door. Now wasn't the time for jokes or laughter. In fact she just wanted to go home and recover from the trauma of feeling so utterly exposed and vulnerable.
But recuperation was going to have to wait until the mandatory, false, loved-up smiles had passed.
Both girls ignored Jewfrow's insistent pleas for an interview upon exiting the out-of-bounds toilets, and headed to the cafeteria hand in hand, where they sought to further cement the idea of Faberry in everybody's mind. They sat close to one another, faux-giggling at nothing in particular and whispering static into each other's ears whilst Rachel ate.
Finn's food went untouched. So did Puck's. For the most part everyone's plate did.
Santana's teeth were one of the only sets that could be heard tearing into meat; her lips slurping obnoxiously around a straw. There would be time to grill the Head Cheerleader about Berry once Berry wasn't around, but until then the Latina was going to eat until she was bursting at the seams…
Quinn's intention had been to arrive home at the end of the school day, and crash until morning. But later that evening, she somehow found herself online ordering an expensive yet obnoxious head band, with a garish blue bow sewn into it.