Author's Note: Set after Lifelong Long Letter and the If I'm A Fool For Love ficlet and before Forget the Wrongs That I've Done.

She Was Pure Like Snowflakes

She was pure like snowflakes
No one could ever stain
The memory of my angel
Could never cause me pain.
~Centerfold, J. Geils Band

She doesn't Google Rachel's name very often anymore. Reading some of the things that so-called fans say about her wife tends to enrage her more than it makes her smile. It was boredom and a severe case of writer's block that had led her idle hands to type Rachel Berry Fabray into the search bar this afternoon. She'd started with what had appeared to be a relatively harmless link to a celebrity gossip board but had turned out to be a lesbian chatroom with an entire thread about Rachel's relationship with her.

She'd been shocked and a little horrified to see just how many photos of them had somehow made their way onto the internet. There had even been a picture of them with Santana followed by some cringe-worthy jokes about threesomes. (An epic argument had followed that because apparently she and Rachel had fans who insisted that they would never, ever do anything like that because they're soulmates and fated and were apparently virgins when they married.) They obviously wouldn't ever have a threesome, but that's beside the point.

Quinn really should have known better than to click on the link that she'd found on that board, but morbid curiosity had blindly guided her fingers over the mouse. What she'd found on the other end of that link had her clicking back out as fast as possible.

She'd been horrified, and embarrassed, and then just pissed, so of course she'd gone back to the site where she'd found the story to send a complaint and a request to take it down, only to realize that there are about six hundred stories featuring Rachel archived there—and not all of them have Quinn as her willing bed-partner. There are stories about Rachel with her various costars, male and female—sometimes both at once—and a few with celebrities that Rachel has never even met! Quinn is sick just thinking about it, and for the life of her, she doesn't know why she keeps opening links to read them. She thinks it must be the same twisted, fascination that makes people stop to gawk at accidents and murder scenes.

And that's how Rachel finds her when she comes home from the theater, hunched over her laptop in muted horror. "Quinn, baby, are you okay?" Rachel asks in concern, resting her hands on Quinn's tense shoulders.

"No," Quinn mutters, still staring at the screen. "I could have gone a lifetime without knowing what watersports are."

"Watersports?" Rachel echoes in confusion. "You mean like swimming and water polo."

Quinn laughs a little deliriously. "No. Nothing like those at all."

Rachel leans over her shoulder, squinting at the screen. "Are you doing research for your novel?"

"I wish. The chapter I wrote you as a joke isn't even as bad as some of this," Quinn grumbles, gesturing to the screen.

Rachel's brows furrow as she reaches around Quinn and moves the screen so she can read without the glare from the light. After several silent minutes, she gasps, "Oh, my God! I would never! And Pauline is straight anyway. If I would have hooked up with any costar during West Side Story it would have been Jessica."

Quinn turns her head and glares at her wife. "Excuse me?"

"Well, Jessica is gay. And, let's face it, she isn't exactly picky."

"That's so not the point," Quinn snaps. "People are writing tons of this…this drivel about you."

Rachel's eyebrows lift in undisguised curiosity. "Tons? There's more."

"Rachel!"

"Is it all about me and Pauline? Or Maria and Anita, rather?" she questions eagerly, tapping the mouse to browse the site.

"I can't believe you," Quinn says in exasperation. "Do you not care that people who have never met you are writing about you having weird, kinky sex with people we actually know?"

Rachel frowns. "Well, when you put it like that," she concedes, her frown deepening. "That is kind of unsettling."

"Tell me about it. The ones about us are the worst."

"There are stories about us?" Rachel asks, surprised. "Like you and me us?"

"That's generally what us means," Quinn comments wryly.

Rachel's jaw clenches and her lips thin as she glares at the screen. "I don't want people sexualizing you for their own amusement and putting it out into the public domain," she grits out.

Quinn doesn't know whether to be touched or irritated that her wife is more defensive about this fanfiction stuff when it's focused on Quinn when she doesn't seem to mind so much on her own behalf. "And now you know how I feel."

"I'm going to write a strongly worded email to this awful site and demand they take these down. I'll call the ACLU if I have to!" Rachel insists, grabbing the laptop away from Quinn and clicking through to the contact us link.

"My hero," Quinn quips on a chuckle, feeling strangely calmer about the whole thing now.

Rachel darts her eyes in Quinn's direction as she begins to type. "Just out of curiosity, exactly how many of these did you read?"

Quinn feels her cheeks heat. "A few," she admits, downplaying the actual number.

Rachel's lips quirk into a sly grin. "Did you happen to pick up any interesting ideas along the way?"

Quinn clears her throat and ducks her head. "I'll tell you about them later," she murmurs.

Rachel's laughter rings out over the sound of her typing, and Quinn rolls her eyes, dropping her chin into her palm as she watches her wife defend their honor. She's never Googling Rachel's name again.

Okay, she probably will, but she's sure as hell not clicking on any unknown links. She doesn't need to read about some fantasy version of Rachel—she's got the real thing.