This chapter contains discussion of religion (because Quinn obviously)
"No, nope, definitely not, I change my mind."
"Come on, Quinn! They're lovely, I promise you." If Rachel was certain the action wouldn't make Quinn flinch, Rachel would have been tugging on her arm to get her to follow them into the choir room.
"Yeah, okay, they're great, fantastic, I mean wow, but I'm still not going in there."
"Fine, then we'll just bring our friends to your little prude club, right Rach?" Santana snarked, grinning mischievously as Brittany giggled. "We'll miss the first fifteen of glee, no big, and I'm sure the germaphobe will appreciate more company than your mug."
"Her name is Ms. Pillsbury," Quinn snapped.
"Oh, whatever."
"Quinn, Santana, enough." The girls kept trying to stare each other down but they quieted. Rachel let out an exasperated sigh. "Though we probably will do that, Quinn. We want our friends to meet you, so they'll know who to look after."
"Again, not a charity case, Berry." Quinn was getting more and more agitated.
"No, but I'd like them to know why we're cracking down, and them meeting you can only help. Trust me, they'll love you."
It was very clear that none of the girls (except possibly Brittany) entirely believed that. Quinn scowled to hide how self-conscious this was all making her feel. Quinn knew she wasn't the most warm and fuzzy person, even before the pink hair, and it had never been the greatest of feats for her to keep people at arms length. Not even her teachers had warmed to her much when she was younger, even being the student with the best scores. It was just part of who she was. An unlikeable, cold girl whose only good attribute was her looks and her-
Quinn kicked a locker nearby, startling the other the girls, but Quinn didn't notice as it distracted her enough to re-orient her thoughts in the right direction. The point being, Rachel Berry's friends were not going to love Quinn.
But she also wasn't about to let members of the glee club invade her safe space.
"Lead the way," Quinn said with a sigh, and Rachel beamed as she pushed open the choir room door. Quinn followed, hoping this would be over with quickly so she could go to her own club.
Only about half the club was already assembled, including, of course, Rachel's closest friends. When Rachel and Santana and Britt had taken over the club, it had already been most of the way through freshman year, so they hadn't done any competitions or even found the required 12 member lineup for participation. They'd spent their first semester in glee club figuring out each others strong suits, and had managed to rope four football players into the club, Finn, Puck, Mike and Matt. The club had only taken shape the very beginning of sophomore year, when the sign-up sheet had been put on the bulletin board and Mercedes, Kurt and new freshmen Artie and Tina had signed up. It had been just the eleven of them for a month, and they'd bonded in that time. They'd finally put on a production to entice their final needed member, and had been inundated with applicants.
Rachel still had a soft spot for her originals, not to mention that some of them had become some of her dearest friends.
Kurt and Mercedes snapped to attention when they noticed who accompanied Rachel, San and Britt. The mysterious pink-haired girl, looking uncomfortable and defensive. It had only been yesterday, after all, that they'd found out that the girl had broken Ritter's nose for assaulting a girl in the hallway. "Rach sure works fast," Mercedes whispered to her best friend, who nodded in agreement.
"Hello, everyone, I'd like you all to meet Quinn Fabray," Rachel announced, gesturing to the spot next to her to try and move Quinn front and center. Quinn didn't budge and Rachel let her hands fall.
Brittany bounced to the rescue. "Q is super awesome, you guys, even if she has resting bitch-face."
Puck couldn't hold in a snort. Quinn raised an eyebrow and gave him her best ice queen impersonation, but Puck just looked back at her coolly.
"I, uh, don't quite understand," Artie ventured, looking at Quinn doubtfully. "Is she… going to join glee club?"
The looks of derision and amusement at the suggestion made Quinn's blood boil with anger and humiliation, but before she could turn to leave a lazy arm draped over her shoulders. When she looked to see who it was, Santana's smug face greeted her. Santana poked Quinn's cheek with a finger. "Aw, is little Quinnie gonna join glee?" Quinn wanted to punch Santana very badly, but she felt a bubble of affection swell in her chest. Santana was doing this deliberately, taking Quinn's anger and redirecting it. It was what Santana did, in lieu of being a shoulder to cry on. She became the shoulder to punch, to make you feel better.
It enabled Quinn to turn and face the New Directions square on and say coldly, "Not on your life."
"Then why are you here," Puck demanded.
"Noah, you apologize this instant or so help me!" Rachel fumed, causing the rest of the New Directions to exchange looks of alarm. Combined with glares from both Santana and Brittany, it was enough to make most of them shrink in their seats.
Puck frowned, then looked back at Quinn. "Sorry."
"Quinn is now under the full protection of the glee club umbrella, and as such I expect all of you to look out for her," Rachel informed them all.
"And I'm here to tell you all that this is stupid and you don't have to listen to her," Quinn said, shrugging off Santana's arm.
Rachel shot her a look then turned back to her audience. "As many of you know, I have crusaded to make McKinley a bully-free zone. And I have failed." Ignoring the protests from around the room, most coming from the back row glee flunkies and not the glee club proper, Rachel continued, "It is my new mission to fix this. We owe the students of this school an apology. What good is it to have a school that's only safe for some? Make a place where Kurt and Karofsky can come out, but students who aren't part of any club or team are victimized? That's not alright with me!"
There was a chorus of agreement, though to Quinn it sounded more like the kind of agreement a queen bee would receive, drones buzzing in time. But Quinn knew from (admittedly brief) experience that drone buzzes of approval ended up just as powerful as those of people who actually believed.
"I, uh, don't quite follow, Rach," Finn said uncertainly. Quinn wasn't sure she'd ever seen the kid not look confused. "Do you want us to chaperone the loner kids around the school?"
"If that's what it takes!" The calls of agreement were noticeably less.
"How would we find them? Do Skanks even go to class?" Tina asked. There was a smattering of titters around the room.
"I can't believe you all!" Rachel yelled, utterly dumbfounded. "You of all people should know-"
"No, Rach, they don't," Kurt cut in. He gave Tina a scathing look. "They came into this school with the social standings already shifting. They don't know what it's like." He turned back to Rachel. "I, on the other hand, spent nearly a year dodging bullies and ducking slushies, before glee and before things changed. I don't know if your plan will work, but I'll help where I can."
"Me too," Mercedes added. "I never had it as bad as Kurt at school, but I remember feeling alone and unsafe before glee. Not to mention all the other stuff I got going for me, out in the world." She cast a genuine smile Quinn's way. "I got your back, Quinn."
Despite her better judgment, Quinn felt herself warm slightly to the black girl. The other one she was a little more wary of, but you always had to keep one eye on guys anyway.
"Sure, whatever," Puck said, trying to sound nonchalant. "It makes me sick to think guys are picking on girls, that's got to stop." As unbothered as Puck looked Quinn remembered his anger at Ritter. He wasn't as calm about it as he pretended.
"Okay, this is all great, well, bye," Quinn rattled off, side-stepping Santana as she made her escape. Rachel almost called after her, but stopped herself when she thought about the beginning responses to Quinn's presence. She was entitled to the safety of her club, just as Rachel was entitled to her own club's safety net.
"Where's she headin' off to in such a damn hurry?" Mercedes asked as soon as Quinn had vanished.
"Celibacy club, it meets the same time glee does, 3 to 5 every day."
"So what is this really about, Rachel," Kurt said dryly and before he had to suffer Rachel's protests he pressed on, "I don't doubt your justice crusade, not for a second. You forget how well I know you. But you didn't have to bring Quinn in here to tell us all this, you could have just released the hounds. Why did you want us to meet her?"
"So you could put a face to our movement," Rachel answered proudly.
"Nuh uh, not buying it," Kurt replied, leaning back in his chair.
"She wanted us to like her," Puck said with a shrug. "We're her peeps, if she's gonna mack on a girl she wants us to think she's cool."
"Noah!" Rachel shrieked, blushing head to toe.
The whole club started muttering amongst themselves and Santana looked at Rachel as if she'd grown a second head, but Brittany was nodding beside her enthusiastically.
"That's not at all what I intended!"
"Now it makes more sense," Kurt said to Mercedes, who nodded agreement. No one was listening to her.
"She needs friends. We can be her friends!" Rachel continued fruitlessly.
"But do we really seem like the kinds of people she wants to be friends with?" Artie asked.
Rachel pouted and opened her mouth to argue, but nothing came out. There was no argument there. Artie was completely right. But Rachel's actions had nothing to do with being romantically interested in Quinn. Because she wasn't.
.
Friday the glee club kids focused on pinpointing their targets, which was easier said than done given the relative anonymity of the kids being bullied. Starting with the Skanks and working outward from anyone they talked to even once, they got a vague foundation, but loners were of course, by definition, not friends with any group of people, including the Skanks. Most of their scouting depended on visual confirmation of alone-ness, and, on one occasion, actual witnessing of a bullying event.
Not able to depend on either the Cheerios or football players not in glee club to help with any protective guard, Santana and Finn had put out the order to leave the loners alone, because clearly the blanket order not to bully was too unclear. Unfortunately, both the Cheerios and football team had shaped up slightly since the regime shift, and the big offenders were going to be on teams that glee had little to no affiliation with, like the hockey team.
And Miles Brody, who had been demoted form second string to locker duty.
Some of their members were more worldly, like the sophomore Sam Evans who was on the swim team as well as glee and football, and the kids who were part of the decathlon team. Unfortunately most of those satellite teams were not the type inclined to bully, and Sam giving a five minute speech with large parts in Na'vi fell on ears that had nothing to do with either side of the problem.
It was frustrating going, especially for someone as driven as Rachel Berry, but there wasn't much more to be done about it except inform Coach Sylvester about the crackdown. Sue had been largely neutral to the whole endeavor, only reminding her manager that any reports of serious bodily injury or sexual assault came straight to her. After some consideration Rachel had gone to Ms. Pillsbury as well, who had been more than thrilled and supplied Rachel with nearly twice as many student names than Rachel had already collected, making Rachel feel foolish for not going to Ms. Pillsbury first thing.
Rachel spent the weekend shuffling between Cheerio manager duties, glee club duties, and making a roster of all the bullied students, pairing glee members with a specific kid if the suspicion was strong enough (for example, both Mike and Artie had been tasked with looking out for young Rigby).
And, of course, every glee club member (but especially Rachel's friends) was tasked with keeping an eye out for Quinn.
Via text messages Rachel collaborated with Quinn on the roster and specific student needs. Or, collaborated might not have been the right word. The process had been like pulling teeth, lots of dismissals and claims that Rachel's planning wouldn't help anyone. Despite Quinn's efforts she was more helpful than she'd intended to be. Quinn was surprisingly observant, and aware of many things that were useful facts and variables for Rachel's chart.
Sunday found Rachel texting her friends their 'assignments', which allowed enough time before Monday morning for questions. There were a few, but Rachel's word was 'law', no matter how her friends teased her.
Monday morning was certainly an adventure.
Rachel, who hadn't assigned herself to anyone because she was going to oversee the whole operation, was witness to a lot of false starts. Many of the students who they were trying to help found it more than a little suspicious to have popular kids shadowing them or trying to strike up a conversation. They had a lot of runners. Students who, because of the skills required to dodge bullies, disappeared for hours on end.
When Rachel informed Quinn of the difficulties, Quinn had just cackled.
But by Wednesday, they had been marginal success, including the win of Rigby being taken under Artie's wing, and Rachel was pleased.
.
"Hey girl, how's it hanging?"
Quinn turned in alarm. Mercedes Jones waved a hand as she caught up with Quinn. Quinn, of course, knew that the New Directions had been ghosting after her since the start of the week, but none except for Rachel, Brittany, and Santana had attempted conversation. Mostly she'd seen them trying to be clandestine, ducking behind corners and into classrooms. Quinn had shaken them once or twice but mostly let them double oh seven her so that she didn't have Rachel stomping after her twenty-four seven.
"Hey…" Quinn mumbled quietly, looking past Mercedes to see if Rachel was forcing her to do this. No sign of the diva, who was one of the worst at sneaky.
"I wanted to ask you, celibacy club?"
Quinn's blood ran cold. Oh no, no no, she couldn't want to join. "Yeah, what of it?" Quinn tried to bluster, but it came out a croak.
Mercedes raised an eyebrow in amusement. "I just wanted to ask, is it personal or religious? Your celibacy pledge."
The anxiety Quinn felt switched gears as the fear of invasion dissipated and the unease of the new topic settled in. She was the worst kind of hypocrite, claiming to be celibate when the real truth was that she was a disgusting slut. She supposed, technically, she'd never had sex in the biblical sense. "Uh, a bit of both," she replied softly. That wasn't untrue. Personal because, well obviously, and religious because her dad had put a good helping of God-fearing into her head.
"That's cool," Mercedes said happily, grinning at Quinn. "So what are you, if you don't mind me asking. Jewish, Christian?"
"Christian… Catholic, to be exact," Quinn replied.
Mercedes' smile only got wider. "Jesus fan, rock on! I'm Baptist, myself, but I figure we're all down with Christ so whatever. Plus, you guys got that mad love for the Virgin Mary, which I think is pretty awesome."
Quinn smiled a little. She did like the Virgin Mary. Her relationship with religion was complicated, to say the least, but that was due to her father and not much the meaning behind the words. There were certain passages, no matter how beautiful, that she'd never be able to read again after what her dad had done to her or made her do while reciting, but there were many more that had no such bad connotations, and they filled her with some peace. Jesus and his friends weren't vicious and hateful, like her dad wanted her to believe.
God, on the other hand…
The truth was that Quinn just wasn't sure, and she'd stopped wearing her cross because she didn't want it defiled any more than it already had been, but when she'd been confirmed in the church it had been one of the only times in her life she'd felt whole and clean.
It hadn't lasted, but it was something.
"Yeah."
"I'm sorry for the rambling, but most of my friends aren't religious, and Rachel is Jewish. My best friend Kurt doesn't believe in God, which is kind of a bummer. I don't get to talk about this stuff much."
"Me either. I… don't really go to church much anymore." That had been a point of contention with her father, but in the end her dad had decided bringing his pink-haired daughter to church wasn't an option, and he told all the church parishioners that Quinn was always at home studying. Which was true. Russell always brought her report card to church with him the weekend after he got it.
"Girl, you should come to my church! Everyone's welcome! Even crazy dye-jobs." Mercedes laughed. The black girl was being very familiar with Quinn for a stranger, and it was a bit uncomfortable, but the offer was almost nice.
"Thanks, but I don't really think it would be a good idea," Quinn said. Part of the reason she'd stopped going to her own church was the increasing fear that upon crossing the threshold she'd simply burst into flame for being that sinful.
"Mkay, but the offers there. Come on, let's get you to class," Mercedes said cheerfully, nudging Quinn gently along.
Quinn didn't even bother telling Mercedes that she had planned on skipping and walked with her.
.
"Quinn, I am formally inviting you over to my house," Rachel announced without preamble at the start of Spanish.
Quinn blinked slowly, then said, "Do we need more project time? I thought we were doing pretty well on our study hall sessions."
"Not for school, Quinn, for fun!"
Quinn didn't know immediately how to respond. It had been years since she'd been invited to someone else's house, let alone invited for fun. "And that'd be… okay?"
"Of course, silly!" Rachel backtracked a little when Quinn scowled. "I mean, yes, it's more than alright. I'd love to have you over, and my dads are dying to meet you."
Right. Rachel had dads. The plural of dad. The plural of father. Quinn shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Rachel's home life was probably vastly different from her own but the idea of meeting Rachel's fathers still filled her with all kinds of apprehension. Irrational, absolutely, but persistent. Gay didn't mean frigid and since girls were only good for one thing…
Quinn felt nauseous. She bent over slightly in her seat. Distantly she heard Rachel asking if she was alright, and then a tender hand started rubbing her back rhythmically, and she looked up. Rachel's expression was one of deep concern. Quinn felt a rush of hatred for her.
"Get your hands off me. Right. Now." Quinn growled, her expression lethal.
Rachel withdrew her hand, placing both of them behind her back to indicate she was keeping to herself. She didn't outright apologize because she wasn't sure what she would be apologizing for, but the intent was clear on Rachel's face.
"Don't ever touch me again without my permission, Berry," Quinn hissed.
"Understood," Rachel quickly agreed, feeling now that she knew what had happened. "I do apologize, Quinn. I'm a touchy sort of person, and I forget my boundaries. That's no excuse, however, and I will do my utmost to guarantee that I don't overstep again. If I do you have absolute justification to be angry with me, and I will accept that with grace."
Quinn grumbled as she looked down at her desk, hiding where her hands were shaking. "Did you know you use about ten sentences to get across what three words would do?"
"I have been told I tend to be especially verbose. Santana says it's because I like the sound of my own voice, but I think I do it because it comforts me," Rachel said with a shy smile. "Spelling myself out clearly leaves less room for people to misunderstand me."
"It's really annoying," Quinn said to her desk. She idly hoped that continuing to be mean to Rachel would get the invitation to the Berry house withdrawn. That, and being a nasty bitch gave Quinn a lot of hiding space.
Rachel furrowed her brow and after a moment she said, "Well, it's too bad you find it annoying, but I'm afraid that's who I am. I'm sure we'll find a middle ground in our friendship that both of us are comfortable with."
"I don't want to find a middle ground, I want you to shut your yap every once in a goddamn while," Quinn replied. She was mortified to find that the anger was leaving her voice and she was just starting to sound drained.
"I can see that you're not in the best of moods, so I'll be going back to my seat now," Rachel said shortly, holding her head high. Of course she wanted to be Quinn's friend, but standing around to get insulted wasn't always a necessary part of her attempt at tolerance, and as they moved further into the relationship Rachel was going to be less and less permissive of it. Still, before she left she said clearly, "The offer still stands, and my weekend is free. I can get you home at any time, and even pick you up if you need a lift. Just text me your answer."
Quinn responded with a glare.
.
On the way to glee club Rachel got a text.
I need to be home by 5:30 to get dinner started. Don't make any grand plans that go longer than 5. I can get myself to and from your house.
Rachel smiled triumphantly and typed back a reply.
That sounds perfect, Quinn. How early can you come by? And would Saturday or Sunday work best for you?
Saturday, Sunday's church. If I'm not at church I gotta study.
Alright then! Time? My dads and I will make lunch.
Ugh, all vegan?
I'll turn you yet.
Haha. Unlikely.
Time?
I can come over at 11. If that's too early 12 works.
11 is great! We can talk about it more tomorrow in class!
Do we really need to talk about it more than this conversation.
Of COURSE, I have to know what your taste in musicals is!
See you tomorrow, Rachel.
Rachel skipped into glee.
Ahhh and we come to this, the confusing status of Glee Club. Is it a class? Is it just a club? Is it every day after school? If it's every day when is Celibacy Club or God Squad, both of which Rachel, Quinn and others have been shown attending as well as glee. In this fic, glee is just a club, Mon-Fri, 3-5. Celibacy club is also Mon-Fri, 3-5. Quinn wouldn't join glee, it conflicts with her downtime with Ms. P.
And as for the religion part, I do hope brief talk of religion doesn't turn anyone off the fic. Christianity is pretty important to Quinn, and also I love Mercedes and Quinn's friendship and one way I thought they could bond was through that. The topic will come up again so please tell me if you'd like me to keep warning for it.
Thank you for the answers about the later glee kiddos. I probably would have mentioned Kitty if I mentioned anyone at all.