"So what should our major export be?"
"Can it be corn? I like saying maize. Or, oh! What kind of animals can be exports?" Brittany stopped drawing in her own notebook to look up. Rachel's own notebook was open in front of her, neatly taken notes color coded and tabbed. Rachel sat at the head of the library table while Brittany sat on her right, Quinn on her left. Santana sat next to Britt, and the two Cheerios were passing Brittany's notebook back and forth and scribbling sweet nothings to one another, or so Quinn assumed. They kept giggling as they passed between them, whispering in each other's ears and making bedroom eyes at each other. It made Quinn a little uncomfortable, but Rachel was ignoring it easily so it must have been a common occurrence.
Rachel smiled, making a note, "Well, we can look into corn. I don't know how common animal exports are and I'd rather not end up with a country that has an animal trade that could wind up devolving into animal cruelty."
Brittany's head shot back up and she looked upset. "Oh no, I don't want that! Let's keep all our country's animals then."
"Sounds like a plan," Rachel replied cheerfully. Quinn realized that Rachel had said no without saying 'no'. Rachel understood Brittany and understood how to talk to her. Few people could claim that ability. It wasn't that Brittany was dumb. Brittany just thought differently than most. And she was absolutely smart in her own way.
Rachel sighed defeat and stood. "I apologize, I have to use the restroom." She looked truly guilty about having to go.
"Don't apologize, jeez," Quinn grumbled. Santana had scoffed at Rachel's apology, too, and when Quinn and Santana looked at one another they smiled hesitantly.
Rachel hid a grin and pushed in her chair. "Back in a jiff!"
"Oh, yeah, me too!" Brittany said abruptly, rocketing out of her seat and linking her arm with Rachel's. Santana let a protest die on her lips. Quinn heard it and empathized. No way did she want to be stuck alone with Santana, either.
Brittany waved over her shoulder as she and Rachel left. After they were out of earshot, Santana turned to Quinn and exhaled loudly. "You know why she did that."
"She wanted us to be stuck alone together so we could talk," Quinn said simply. Santana nodded. Quinn may not have been friends with Brittany anymore, but she still knew the girl. She knew that Brittany was probably always thinking of ways to get Quinn to talk, and she had grabbed on to the best opportunity. She'd had to wait, of course, for Santana and Quinn to get to the point where they wouldn't rip each other's throats out when left alone together.
They sat in awkward silence, neither girl willing to break it, and both two stubborn to give in first. Finally, Santana couldn't take it anymore, and she blurted out, "So, why'd you quit?"
Quinn flinched, refusing to look at Santana. She knew what this question actually was. An easier, less personal way of asking why she'd stopped being Santana and Brittany's friend. Quinn couldn't explain, obviously, but this was the first time Santana had asked since freshman year. Maybe now that Santana was over their friendship she could give an excuse without the risk of getting murdered.
"It was too much pressure."
Santana snorted loudly in disbelief. Quinn looked up with a glare. Santana was sneering at her, and she shook her head when Quinn finally looked her way. "Bullshit, Fabray. You live off pressure. You're lying, as usual. God, Q, what is with you? We needed you!"
"Did I miss something? Did the Cheerios collapse into chaos and despair and destroy itself after I left? Are there now scarecrow Cheerios? You did fine without me, won competitions and everything, so I don't see how you needed me!" Quinn snarled back, ignoring the fact that Santana might have been saying that she and B needed her and not cheer squad.
"That wasn't me, okay?"
Quinn frowned in confusion. "What?"
Santana scowled and crossed her arms over her chest. "I did okay the first month in charge, but I started to unravel. I'm not a fucking captain, not like you could have been. I don't dictate, I fucking pound into place. I don't make rosters and schedules. I was in over my head. Waiting for you."
"… Waiting for me?"
"I was a goddamn place holder, Q! Sue was waiting for you to come back! But you didn't, and- god, I was going insane! Then Rach became my friend. She fucking saved our asses."
"Rachel?" Quinn asked in alarm. "What does Rachel have to do with it? She isn't a Cheerio."
"She's our manager, a position we wouldn't have needed with you in charge." Santana was clearly unhappy to have to broadcast her shortcomings. If it had been a few weeks prior, she never would have admitted any of this to Quinn. But they were trying to be Quinn's friend and Rachel had encouraged Santana to be honest.
"That's why? Not just because she's your bff now?" Quinn was genuinely surprised to learn this. She'd thought the managerial title was mostly honorary.
"Part of the reason she's even my bff now is because of that. Look, I know you were sort of hell-bent on ruining Rach that first week, but it seemed way more personal than just picking a target, so you know I largely stayed out of it. I mean, it got real intense." Santana tapped her pen, thinking. "You know, I never really got that. Sure, Rach was pretty annoying freshman year but there were way easier targets. Look how easy she slingshotted from bottom of the barrel to popularity, it wasn't all me and Britt. Seemed like a bit of a Daddy Fabray move, not the Q I knew-"
"Drop it, Santana," Quinn growled warning. It was not okay for San to dance so close to something Quinn had buried long ago.
Santana arched an eyebrow, then she shrugged and continued, "Anyway, I wouldn't have even given her a second thought after your very successful teardown campaign, but Britt latched onto her pretty soon after you quit Cheerios. Britt invited Rach to one of our weekly sleepovers after they became such fast friends and I went along with it. She was still obnoxious back then, but it had been just me and Britt for a couple of months and I-" Santana bit back the last of her thought, glaring at Quinn. "Rachel came over, saw my mess of a chart for positionings and my extremely detailed plan on how to kill that senior Trisha Campanelli, and she fixed it. Fixed the whole damn chart, as much as she could without seeing us in action and just taking my word. I got her to come to practice the next week, she fixed the rest. Damn near blew Coach's mind."
Santana fiddled with her pen as she said, "Coach has never respected me the way she did you. The way she does Rachel. All three of you, you're planners. I more-"
"Carry a big stick?" Quinn asked, smiling slightly.
"What?"
"It's a quote. 'Speak softly and carry a big stick'. It means you sound nice, but you have a plan to beat people up if you don't get your way. Roughly."
"Oh. Yeah. Except not the speak softly part. That's more you."
Quinn laughed and Santana grinned. "Yeah, I go off, I don't get cold and scary like you. Coach likes planners. People who can see the big picture."
Quinn bit her lip. She hadn't realized. Sure, she'd known her departure would effect the Cheerios, but she'd only been on the team for a week. She hadn't known that Coach Sylvester had waited for her to return. That Sue respected her so much.
"Why did you quit, Q," Santana asked again.
Quinn shook her head. Santana kept waiting, kept wanting to understand, and Quinn couldn't make her understand. "I can't-" Quinn said gruffly, then shook her head again.
"Can't? What?" Santana looked more baffled than angry now.
"It was too much- too much time away. Too many trips and- and I wouldn't have the GPA I have now if I was on Cheerios."
Santana glowered, clearly not at all impressed by this excuse. Quinn was feeling trapped, lightheaded, and god, this was why she couldn't have friends, everything just went wrong and-
"Hey, you okay, Q?" Santana asked almost gently as she stood and rounded the table. Quinn nodded her head, but Santana looked unconvinced, and she loosely put her arm around Quinn's shoulder. Quinn hiccupped a laugh. The "Unholy Trinity" had always been rather touchy-feely, even with Quinn. She was the least hands on out of the three. But tangled up under a big duvet on Santana's floor it had sometimes been hard to tell where she ended and her best friends began. She missed it. Brittany's cuddles, Santana putting her feet up on Quinn's lap, the three of them squished together on a couch to watch a movie even if there was enough room to spread out. The love and warmth of contact.
If Quinn allowed herself to feel, allowed herself to relax instead of holding herself like a statue of granite, she might have turned and wrapped her arms around Santana's waist, buried her face against Santana's stomach and never let go. If she was anyone but Quinn Fabray, she might have done it.
Instead, she said, "I'm fine, Santana, thank you."
Santana looked down at Quinn with soft, troubled eyes. But she knew when a wall had been put in place around Quinn, so she only sighed and said, "Fine, whatever you say, Fabray."
Quinn felt the return of being addressed as her surname like a slap. But it was no more than she deserved. They were always going to push each other away.
Santana went back to her seat and the two sat in uncomfortable silence until Rachel and Brittany returned.
.
"I was hoping you'd talk more than that," Brittany pouted after Santana told her best friends the conversation.
"Then you should have been the one to try," Santana complained.
"No, that wouldn't have worked," Brittany said plainly. "Quinn expects mad, and she can reply to it. If I come at her with the happiness I feel knowing she's talking to us again, she gets all quiet and twitchy, because she doesn't know how to naturally react to kindness. It always makes her think something else is coming." At Santana and Rachel's stares, Brittany shrugged. "But mad she can do. With mad she can get mad back, and then there's yelling, but she actually says more than two sentences and you get more out of her."
"Wow, you really know her don't you," Rachel mused.
"Of course I do, silly, just like I know you. That's what best friends forever do."
"So what do you want me to do, Britt Britt," Santana groused. "She shut me down, like always. I don't know what more you want from me."
"So you don't think the reason she gave you for quitting Cheerios is the truth," Rachel asked again.
"No, Rach, I don't think it's the truth. Q doesn't even go to class and pulls straight As. No way would Cheerios hamper her any more than her own damn self does." Santana sighed and leaned against Brittany. "But I still have no idea what the real reason could be. Cheerleading captain seems right in Mr. Fabray's wheelhouse, he probably wanted her to join. Think she was trying to piss her dad off? Not be picture perfect Q anymore? The Skank thing would make sense, then, but not ditching us…"
"I take it Mr. Fabray didn't like you?"
Santana grinned. "Damn straight! And proud of it. Staying my friend would have been perfect fodder for thumbing her nose at Daddy Dearest."
"He liked me," Brittany said quietly, face scrunched with concentration. A thought seemed to dawn on her and her eyes filled with tears. "Was it me? Was I not bad enough to make her dad mad and she had to break up with us cuz of that?"
"No, Britt, I'm sure that's not it," Santana comforted Brittany, tugging on the blonde's ponytail gently and making Brittany give her a watery smile. "Q knows that I could have been a terror enough for the both of us." Brittany laughed and nodded at that.
"And if Quinn wanted me to be badder, I so can be. I'm the one who stole all the frogs in 7th grade science class. And then all the Bernstein burners because I was already in there."
Both Santana and Rachel laughed. It was true. People often mistook Brittany's bubbliness and joie de vivre for lily-white goodness. Brittany was just as mischievous as her girlfriend, sometimes more because she didn't care as much what people thought about her. Underestimating Brittany was a good way to ensure you'd be blindsided by her in the near future. And once that happened, all you'd get was Santana laughing at your expense, Rachel giving a 'you should have known better' look, and Brittany giving you the most wicked smile.
The name Unholy Trinity hadn't come from nowhere.
Rachel smiled, thinking about little Santana, Brittany and Quinn getting up to all sorts of shenanigans. She was jealous, in a way, but more fascinated than anything. Their friendship was a mirror to her own friendship with Brittany and Santana. Santana and Brittany were good together, more than good, but sometimes they could use a leader, especially in a social situation like high school. Rachel was their leader as Quinn had been before.
Once upon a time Rachel would have been scared that upon befriending them again, Quinn would reclaim her spot and Rachel would be left out in the cold. But she was confident in her friendship with Britt and San, confident in herself. She knew that Brittany and Santana loved her. Adding Quinn back into the fold… well… now Rachel would have someone when Brittany and Santana disappeared on her to go make out in the showers.
And maybe, if Rachel was really lucky, she and Quinn could be as close to each other as Britt and San were.
Without the romantic portion, of course.
.
Quinn had left the three other girls in the library about 5 minutes before the bell rang, socially expended for the day and more than ready to grab her homework from her locker and head over to have celibacy club with Ms. P. Ms. P didn't count as a social interaction, not one that drained Quinn of all her energy, anyway. To Quinn it felt like every person in McKinley was emitting high levels of radiation that she could only take for so long. Even if she liked them well enough, like she did Rachel, she started to feel like collapsing after a while. Ms. P didn't emit radiation like everyone else. If she was sending off anything at all it was a cleansing breeze. Enough to carry Quinn through the rest of her day, before having to deal with her dad and then barricading herself in her room without contact for at least 8 hours.
Interacting with people hadn't always been so exhausting. But the pressure to Be Okay loomed these days, and having to Be Okay was tiring work. Because she wasn't, she wasn't okay. If she really admitted it to herself, Quinn was falling to pieces a little at a time. Or maybe she was already all smashed up and the act of holding herself together at all was like having to generate her own gravitational pull. Keep herself from disintegrating in the school hallway.
With Ms. P she could relax, let her shattered pieces shift around a bit, because all she had to do was eat a PB&J sandwich and talk about books. Heck, even Ms. P's trying to get Quinn to talk about her social life was simple to navigate, because pretty much no matter what Quinn said she was happy to hear about it. Ms. P was easy to please. Quinn saying hello to the school secretary when she came in to drop off her homework had Ms. P grinning ear to ear.
She had to stop by her English teacher's office to ask if she could do the upcoming group project solo. Unfortunately there was another student talking to her, and by the time she was free the last bell had rung and Quinn wasn't as ahead of the pack as she'd hoped to be. Ms. Harris hemmed and hawed over the decision, making Quinn grit her teeth in frustration as she waited, but finally she agreed to let Quinn work alone.
By the time Quinn headed to her locker the halls were mostly clear give or take a few stragglers. She opened her locker and grabbed her homework, then started toward celibacy club.
"Hey, Pinkie!"
Quinn turned, startled. Three jocks were headed her way, definitely not glee goons, and she took a step back. "What?"
"That's you, isn't it? Pinkie? See, Phil knew it was you, when Puck mentioned somebody called Pinkie. You narced, and now our bud is banned from doing anything cool, and there's been some insane crackdown." The boy in the lead swung his fist into his palm a few times, approaching her with a menacing glint in his eye. Quinn put a hand against a locker as she kept backing up, glaring as forcefully as she could. The three boys kept coming. "Isn't that just shitty?" The lead boy continued, shaking his head. "My boy Phil gets in trouble for messing with some Skank, and now Rachel fucking Berry is acting like she's fucking Mother Teresa. Pretending she cares about all you wasteos, like you matter. And I figure it's all your fault."
"Oh, and not Ritter's fault for assaulting a girl?" Quinn snapped back, but her voice was quieter than she'd meant it to be. God, was she scared? She'd never been cornered quite like this before. None of them had slushies, they came empty handed, which meant they had some other idea of what they were about to do. No one was in the hallways, and celibacy club was clear on the other side of the school. Even if she started running, she wouldn't be able to keep ahead of them for that distance. Running and ducking into an empty classroom would be as good as running herself into a dead end.
And if they herded her into an empty classroom they could close the door behind them. At least in the hallway there was open space.
"The popular kids will get bored of this shit soon, and where do you think you'll be?" The leader said, making Quinn's stomach flip flop. She hadn't thought of that…
He made a grab for her and Quinn did the first thing she could think of: drop into the fighting stance Puck had her practice yesterday and pop him in the chin. Another of his friends came at her and she kicked him in the shin, turned, and ran.
Celibacy club was out, too far. Sue's office? No, that was in the opposite direction. Where could she go, where would she even find people at 3:10 in the afternoon?
An idea struck her and she legged it, the boys hot on her heels.
The choir room door was closed and Quinn pulled up to open the door, getting it an inch open before one of the jocks grabbed her. "Get off me!" She yelled, and through the crack she saw the entire glee club turning her way. The boy let go and she tumbled into the choir room, glaring over her shoulder. The three jocks looked confused to find themselves right outside the choir room.
As one their faces became masks of fear and they turned tail and ran. Quinn turned to see what they were looking at. Puck, Finn, Mike and two other boys she didn't know ran past her, yelling at the boys to stop and explain themselves.
"Quinn, are you okay?" Rachel demanded, already up and out of her seat and hovering by her side, Santana and Brittany right behind her.
"I'm fine." Quinn's voice was a rasp, not just from the running but also from the fear that had fueled her, and she glowered back out the door. "Just some jerks."
Santana started swearing in Spanish and nearly took off after the boys herself before Brittany grabbed her wrist and said to Quinn firmly, "You're safe now, we'll make sure."
And Quinn felt it. Just the smallest feeling of safety, but it was more than she'd felt in a long time. It was thanks to her friends, her dangerous luxury. She looked around, taking a step towards the door. "Yeah, well, I'm heading off to club-"
"You most certainly are not, not until we know the boys got them!" Rachel huffed, and Brittany grabbed Quinn's hand and pulled her further in. Mr. Schuester was standing uncertainly next to a piano, obviously not positive what had just happened, and the rest of the New Directions were whispering amongst themselves. It made Quinn squirm, but then Mercedes raised a hand and waved and she relaxed a fraction of an inch.
Rachel made Quinn sit down next to her, Brittany on her left and Santana sat behind Quinn, still glaring at the door as she waited for her friends to return. Mr. Schue walked towards them.
"Are you alright, Quinn?"
"I'm fine," Quinn bit out, self-consciousness making her jumpy. "Just go back to what you were doing."
"What happened? Were those boys bothering you?"
"No, obviously I wanted them chasing me." Quinn sunk further in her seat as the whispers started in earnest around her again.
"Quinn, we have to report this-"
"Just go back to your lesson, Mr. Schue!" Quinn yelled, and the whole room went quiet.
Mr. Schuester started to reply, clearly starting to get angry, but Rachel butt in. "Well, I think Sam was going to perform for us, but he ran off with the others so that's off the table for right now. How about I sing something while we all try to calm down?"
Mr. Schuester looked between the girls, from Rachel's pointed look and protective posture, to Quinn's ducked head and crossed arms, and finally he sighed and nodded. "Alright, Rachel, why don't you take it from here?"
"I always do, Mr. Schue," Rachel said brightly, hopping to her feet and standing next to the piano. She went over to the piano man and band and gave them a song. As if getting a cue, Santana slipped from her seat behind Quinn to the seat Rachel had vacated, so that Quinn still had two people at her side. Quinn noticed this only briefly, because at that moment Rachel Berry started to sing.
Because I'm the writer and I can do whatever I damn well please, this is the scheduling for Cheerios in case anyone was confused: Practice every morning an hour before school, then practice Mon, Wed, Fri during the last period of school, which is a study hall/free period. The girls have been getting together to work on their projects every Tuesday and Thursday, not every single day.
Also any ideas on what Rachel should sing? If I'm not struck with inspiration soon, I'll probably go generic, but any recommendations would be lovely! (remember, this fic takes place in roughly 2011, so no songs after then!)
As always, reviews are amazing, they make my day :) And over 100 followers, awesome!