I know that some of you wanted to see more Faberry interaction. It seems that you were in luck…
Thanks to all those who took the time to review the last few chapters. I really appreciate it, as Progpoet knows lol.
JackilisFaMo, is it wrong that I am happy to have reduced you to a laughing mess in front of your brother? Lol! Thanks for commenting ;)
Emma ran her fingertips over the large oval basket of snacks that sat center of the enormous king-sized bed.
Her king-sized bed, now that she was Head Of Household.
The quiet woman glared around the beautiful HOH room - the spacious en suite, the rich burgundy and chrome decor. She even glared at the letter that was neatly folded on her silk pillow. The one that she'd yet to open up and read.
The one that her mother had probably written, aflourish with words of encouragement and praise for her HOH accomplishment.
The snacks, the letter from home, the luxury room, the photos from home - Emma had earned them all, fair and square, through winning the Head Of Household competition.
But she couldn't enjoy a thing - hadn't even called the other houseguests up to listen to her read her letter from home, or see her room, or look at the photos of her cat, Maisey - because there were two rats downstairs, who were lying to her and all of the other houseguests. Two rats who were looking to secure her seat on the chopping block, in order to save themselves.
Two rats that Emma would sniff out, even if it killed her...
She pattered out of the room to the landing, and fastened her stone-white hands around the chrome bar to the balcony that overlooked the lounge and kitchen area downstairs. Her big brown eyes lowered as she peered into the kitchen, where Quinn was sat on the work surface, eating into her first slop sandwich.
"Quinn!" she called.
The blonde downstairs immediately glanced around, her eyes darting up.
Emma's mouth drew into a tight smile as she offered up a small wave.
Quinn smiled back, hoping to ease the tension that she could see knotting the redhead's shoulders. "What can I do for you, Emma?"
"The secret couple - it's you and Rachel isn't it?"
Quinn's jaw stopped churning, her kind smile quickly draining from her cheeks. She blinked, and then frowned up at the other woman. "I'm sorry, but what?"
"The married couple. It's you and Rachel, isn't it? The way that she told you to be quiet out in the garden, during the HOH competition, seemed too easy. Too comfortable... Intimate almost. Like she wears the pants in your marriage, and you're the whipped one."
"How did you even come up with..." Quinn's lips fluttered open and closed, only to part again. "Gay marriage isn't even legal in Ohio, and Rachel isn't my type. You're over analyzing the incident in the garden."
Emma's expression grew cold. "So what is your type then, Quinn?" The pale lady-like woman leaned her head to the side, and ran her tongue out over her lips. But that unmoving eerie stare never once twitched or wavered. "Hmm?"
Quinn sincerely hoped, in that moment, that Big Brother had carried out some sort of psychiatric assessment on the strange woman, before giving her the green light to be a part of the show...
Following a few beats of silence, the cautious blonde answered, "whatever my type is, it's not Rachel."
Emma merely stared at her. Or through her; one couldn't be sure.
With a sigh, Quinn dumped the tasteless slop sandwich down on her plate, and dusted the crumbs from her thighs, before giving the HOH her undivided attention. "Look, you're wasting your time accusing me and Rachel of being the secret couple. On the outside world, it's just me and my daughter. My sister's the only one who's married, much to my mother's disappointment, and yours apparently."
"Well... I guess I'll just have to keep my eyes peeled," Emma chuckled, eyes much to bright, tone much too cheery. "I'll be watching."
With those words lingering in the space between them, Emma span on her heel and ushered into the HOH room, slamming the door shut behind her.
"She still pissed about the secret couple thing?" Santana asked, casually waltzing into the kitchen in nothing but a green towel and her mustard-yellow night mask. She headed towards the fridge, pulling it open to allow her gaze over its contents.
Quinn watched small beads of water roll down the latina's caramel arms, and vanish into the dark carpet. Now that she thought about it she, too, could do with a nice hot shower. Letting hot steamy droplets of water pelt her skin was exactly what she would've been doing if she were at home, and Beth would have been in her room listening to some music...
"Earth to blondie," Santana prompted.
Quinn shook her head free of thoughts about her amazing daughter, simply because she knew that she'd end up crying if she didn't. "I was just... thinking about my daughter." She trained her glassy hazel eyes into Santana's back, and tucked a blonde strand behind her ear. "But to answer your question, yes, Emma's still furious about the secret couple thing. She just asked me if it's me and Rachel, actually, which is just..."
Rather abruptly, Santana closed the fridge door, and span around to lean back against it. "Well I wouldn't put it past the two of you. You've been playing the sweet blonde card, and she's shiftier than a sex offender at a nudist beach."
Quinn arched her eyebrow in a fashion that was anything but sweet. "Well screw you too. How do I know that you're not one half of the secret couple?"
One of those damp caramel-colored shoulders rose to indicate a shrug. "Guess you're just gonna have to take my word for it." The latina nodded towards the gooey abandoned sandwich that lay beside the stoic blonde. "How's the slop?"
"Awful - and I guess that you're just gonna have to take my word for it too."
Santana smirked. "I'm thinking that this whole secret couple thing is more obvious than everyone thinks. Where's the best place to hide something?"
"Out in the open," answered a growing voice. "That's the best place to hide something."
Both Quinn and Santana watched the owner of said voice grab a bottle of water from the cupboard, before leaning her lower back against the plain black work surface. "What were you guys talking about anyway?" Rachel rather bluntly asked, twisting loose the cap from her bottle.
"The secret couple BS," Santana filled the short woman in, accompanying it with a casual wave of the hand. "And you're right. Best place to hide something is out in the open, 'cause nobody's lookin' for it there, which brings me to the grandpa of the house, Will."
When neither Quinn nor Rachel said anything, Santana rolled her eyes. "He already said he's married..."
"You think his other half's in the house too?" Quinn supplied, her cynicism almost palpable.
"Actually, that's not such a mashugana notion," Rachel offered, lifting the mouth of her bottle to her lips.
Santana smirked. "Exactly."
Still not sold, Quinn stretched her arms up and out, listening to the satisfying crack of her joints "Well Emma thinks it's me and you."
Rachel almost choked hastening her bottle down from her lips. Surely her attraction to the gorgeous hazel-eyed woman was not that obvious. "What? But..."
"Yeah, she accused me before you came out of the diary room. Said that the way you told me to be quiet, out in the garden earlier, was with such ease indicative of marriage," Quinn added, studying the aghast brunette, who seemed downright offended for reasons that the blonde wasn't sure she'd like.
Was she really that repugnant?
Santana chuckled. Maybe she could have some fun with this. "There's definitely tension with the two of you. For all I know, you are the secret couple."
"She and I," Rachel piped up, snappily gesturing her hand between herself and Quinn, "do not have any tension. We've never seen each other in our lives. We're not married!"
"Cool your jets. I was just saying."
"Well I'd appreciate it if you didn't just say in future!" Rachel griped, pissed that she had failed to keep her overly emotional nature in check, like she'd promised herself that she would.
No more than a moment later, she stormed out into the back garden, slamming the sliding door shut behind her.
"What a lunatic. But I bet she's good in the sack though, right? After all, you'd know wifey."
Quinn didn't even bother to feed the latina's goading. She just raised her middle finger, and let that do the talking instead.
Santana used the silence to mourn for the cuddles that she could have been sharing with her wife...
By twelve-forty five AM, the houseguests had all crawled off into different pockets of the house. Most to sleep and some to socialize, like Artie and Puck, who both seemed to have a boundless tank of energy. Sam and Brittany were goofing around, trying to make slop lasagna in the kitchen area, whilst Santana seethed in her bed, and tried not to go off every time she heard her wife giggle.
Nobody had heard a peep from Emma, but all of the houseguests knew that she'd be watching them from her flat screen TV up in the Head Of Household room. The one that showed twenty-four hour mute footage of every room in the house, except for the toilet.
That left Rachel, who was relaxing in the hot tub out in the garden, and Quinn, who'd thrown on a red bikini in order to join her.
The blonde thought it peculiar that Rachel hadn't opened her eyes upon her entry into the body of warm frothing water. Maybe the brunette was asleep. Quinn decided to test the theory by way of playfully tossing handfuls of the water in the other woman's direction.
"Very mature," Rachel mumbled, though she didn't crack open so much as one eye.
"What was with the epic storm out earlier?"
Rachel sighed, clouds of warmth swirling on the water's surface and up around her face. "Maybe I just don't like being accused of things for which I am not guilty."
Quinn submerged her shoulders further underwater, splaying her arms out across the hot tub's edge and fluttering her feet out, like a swimmer who was going nowhere. "It actually wasn't that big of a deal. They can all think it's us if they want. Emma goes up on the block if she nominates us as the married couple anyway."
"And if the secret couple choose me - or you, even - to go up on the block, alongside her, then what? There's no Veto competition this week. I'd rather Emma successfully nominate the secret couple, and one of them leave Friday."
"Aww. How sweet of you to look out for me. I didn't know you cared."
The moment that Rachel opened her eyes and saw the fifty different shades of sarcasm that dripped from the stunning blonde, she swiftly retorted, "well somebody's got to be the eye candy of the house."
Quinn snorted, which led into one of the huskiest chuckles that Rachel had ever heard.
The brunette internally rolled her eyes, because trust Big Brother to put her dream girl - as far as aesthetics went - in the house with her for the summer.
"So you think I'm eye candy?" Quinn probed, her smirk just shy of a grin.
"Quit fishing for compliments."
"Well you started it!" Quinn quipped, slapping a splash of water at the difficult little woman.
"I entered this hot tub so that I could relax. Not so that you could re-enact your childish fantasies pertaining to splashing people with water."
"Well maybe if you'd just answer the question..."
Another juvenile splash.
Rachel drew her dripping hand out of the water, and plucked a few damp strands of hair from where they had plastered themselves to her wet face... thanks to Quinn's idea of water sports. "You're extremely beautiful. No one in this house, male or female, can hold a candle to you. That a good enough answer for you?"
Now that it was out there, Quinn wasn't too sure how to feel, or react. "I guess," she settled upon.
Rachel scoffed at the lame response. But other than that said nothing.
"So is that why you've been kinda cold with me? Because you're jealous?" Quinn asked, knowing how arrogant that had probably sounded, but also knowing - from past experience - how some women, even the beautiful ones, could get around her. "Not that you're harsh on the eyes or anything like that," she quickly tagged on the end.
Rachel simply chuckled, because the blonde couldn't have gotten any further off base without ending up in another country.
"You know, you're way too cryptic all the time," Quinn pointed out as she made wide lazy swirls in the water with her fingers. "It makes you unapproachable and hard to form a bond with, which will trip you up in a game like this."
"Have you considered that it's just you who feels that way?" Rachel hadn't missed a beat.
"If that is the case, then it's because you've been kind of difficult with me. Take earlier, for example. You offered to make everyone in the lounge a hot cup of cocoa, and didn't bother to ask me, when I was sitting right there." Quinn had made a point not to sound whiny, because she wasn't whining; she could make her own cup of cocoa.
She just wanted the brunette to know that she'd caught the deliberate attempt to exclude her.
"I'm not jealous of you. Far from it," Rachel stated, resolute.
"Then what's the problem?" Quinn challenged her, getting kind of irritated with the other woman's evasive way.
Rachel sighed, and visibly. She was quickly realizing that she wasn't going to be able to play this game with no emotion. She'd never been a robot, always the overly emotional diva. "I'm not jealous. I just think that you're stunning. It almost pains me to look at you, much in the same way that it pains to look directly into the sun."
Quinn frowned, still no clearer on what Rachel was actually getting at. "So..." she urged.
"I find you to be rather attractive, and I didn't want to come in here and be attracted to anybody."
It was out now, free to come back and bite the brunette in the ass, which she was certain that it would...
"So I've been attempting to minimize our interaction," she added, watching several emotions flit through those complex hazel eyes. "It's pretty much why I yelled at Santana earlier, too. I don't like to be so transparent when it pertains to who I'm attracted to, and especially not in a house like this."
"Okay..."
Rachel chuckled. "Relax. Believe me when I tell you that it's not going to be a problem for you. We can still talk, and even work together as far as the game goes if that's what you want; I'm not going to jump you in the shower. You have my word."
Quinn shook her head profusely. "No, t-that's not what... I was thinking."
"Sure you weren't."
Quinn glanced off and shook her head, all kinds of flustered. "They're definitely gonna show this conversation on TV, aren't they?"
Rachel winked her way. "Of course they are."
Hope you enjoyed it.