Work Text:
Rachel thinks it’s common courtesy to turn somebody down when you can’t do something.
She herself hems and haws and beats around the bush, sure, but in the end she always says what’s on her mind even if it takes her a while to get there, if only so she can hear the sound of her own voice a little longer. This - Finn turning her down two days before their ballroom classes were set to start, in favor of teaching children how to sing instead of taking the requisite two weeks which would vault them both to stardom, the two weeks she had paid handsomely for - is extremely different.
Well, technically her dads had paid for them but it was the principle of the thing, and her genuine desire to learn ballroom dancing to boot, because the more she could add to her resume the more she could look like an appealing college applicant, somebody anybody would want at their institution, and she is running out of time and she knows it.
All of this is to say she is standing on Mercedes’ doorstep like a girl in a love song, imploring her to join, and Mercedes is staring like she’s grown a second head.
“No.”
“Please? I swear I’ve paid for everything and I think that this could help both of us-”
“No,” Mercedes repeats, firm but not unkind, “it’d help you. This is what you do, Rachel, and I like you fine when we’re in Glee Club but I’m not about to spend my summer acting as a replacement for Finn to stroke your ego. Okay?”
There is no fighting her on this, Rachel knows - unstoppable force, meet unstoppable force, or however the saying goes, and Rachel has valuable time to spend imploring everybody else she knows to join.
“Understandable,” Rachel exhales. It’s impossibly sunny outside. “I’ll see you in the fall, then?”
“It’s Lima. I’ll probably see you next week.”
“That’s very true, actually.” Rachel starts to leave. “Goodbye, Mercedes.”
Mercedes waves, half-hearted, and it is only once Rachel’s halfway down her front path that she hears Sam’s stage-whisper of has she left yet? I’m stuck under this couch. Rachel very quickly turns around, knocks on the door again.
“Sam, if you’re interested in an introductory ballroom dancing course-”
“Get out.” Mercedes slams the door in her face and Rachel cannot entirely blame her.
***
Quinn Fabray’s summer plans are as follows: write a CommonApp essay, pretend she didn’t have a breakdown in April, and stay away from anyone at McKinley.
(She’s not a list-making person, she doesn’t plan - she holds everything in her head and hopes it sticks)
(There are girls in dark clothing who frequent the skate park near her house, a skate park Judy calls an eyesore, and sometimes Quinn swears they’re looking right at her)
The last item in the list is the easiest - she doesn’t live in the district, she isn’t as beholden to the Lima Bean and Breadstix as the others.
“You keep staring at us like that, Ronnie might get the wrong idea.”
Quinn’s snapped out of her summer thoughts by the skate-park girls’ ringleader’s voice - she doesn’t know her name, hasn’t bothered to learn it.
“I’m not staring,” she calls back, not yelling, just projecting, the way she’s learned to in Glee Club. The ringleader (Mackenzie?) scoffs, rolls her eyes.
“Yeah, no, you’re just looking at me for inspiration.”
A new Word document glares white at Quinn, cursor blinking on a timer.
Quinn Fabray 6/1/2011
Since I was young, I
It’s a stupid way to start anything. She’s still young. Three months from eighteen, blushing at this stranger’s insinuation. The ringleader (Mikayla?) plops down in front of her. Belatedly Quinn realizes she isn’t even holding a skateboard.
“Come on,” she continues, smoothing out her leathery skirt to keep her skin from the hot concrete. “It’s Lacey, right?”
“Quinn.”
“Wow, I was really far off the mark there. Were you one of the Cheerios? With the-” and the girl (god, what is it, Mickey?) holds her hair back like the ponytail, puffs out her chest. The impression isn’t that far off and Quinn surprises herself with a little laugh.
“I was. But I quit.”
“Weren’t you kicked off?”
“You know a lot about me for someone who didn’t know my name.”
“Eh.” A shrug. “Word gets around.”
“They let me back on last year. I quit the second time.”
“Why?” Now she’s laying on her side and Quinn still hasn’t moved from her stupid bench. “You Cheerios are like, top of the pyramid. Literally, you have those dumbass pyramids where you, like, stand on each other, it’s fucking barbaric.”
“Coach Sylvester tried to shoot my friend out of a cannon.” This is maybe a third of why she quit.
“Like I said. Barbaric.”
They’re quiet for a minute. Some of the other (actual) skaters rise and fall and clatter on hard rock.
Then the girl (though if she’s a girl, Quinn is too, and she feels more like a woman or maybe a pile of inconvenient feelings than that) gets up, rolls out a crick in her neck.
“Well, nice talking to you, Lacey.”
“It’s Quinn.”
“Whatever. I’ve gotta go find some weirdo at the gas station who wants to hook up.”
“What’s your name?” The question’s there, no preamble. Three words. Quinn isn’t sure why she wants to know.
“The Mack.”
A pause.
“That can’t be your real name.”
“It’s as real as ‘Quinn.’”
“Mm, touché.”
“Well, see you around, Quinn.” Then the Mack walks away and Quinn’s Word document (now helpfully titled CommonAcfdxcfd 2 since she’d apparently rested her elbows on the keys during that conversation) remains frustratingly blank.
***
Rachel has nearly everybody crossed off (Kurt: family road trip, Tina: camp counseling, Santana: spending time with Brittany, Brittany: spending time with Santana) and she is running out of options and time alike - the class starts tomorrow and she will not under any circumstances arrive alone or with one of her dads as her dance partner.
(She is prideful and she knows this will someday be her downfall but she refuses to be regarded as a loser ever again)
The studio (which she is scouting out because she has nothing better to do) is a perfectly average brick building from the outside, with plastic signs likely covered in dozens of different businesses over the years advertising their current occupants.
It has nothing to do with Quinn, even if she did happen to notice that this is near her district thanks to the sleuthing of one Lauren Zizes and the newly minted William McKinley High School 2011-2012 Student Directory, which contains a list of dates not yet important to anybody, including Rachel’s own graduation.
Absolutely nothing to do with her; she hasn’t contacted any of them over the summer and Rachel intends to return the sentiment. No use in chasing after somebody who isn’t interested. They’re friends, maybe, but Rachel respects her decision to keep her distance.
“Yeah, I’ll see you later, 'the Mack'.”
Rachel’s ears perk at the sound; she can’t help it.
Quinn’s standing a few feet away, leaving behind some girl with a scowl who Rachel used to see under the bleachers back when she would eat alone on the bleachers, and it is happenstance the way happenstance happens in the musicals - with some intention on both parts, with great labors paid to make it look accidental. Rachel thinks about Nicky Arnstein at the train station, the way somebody can steal your breath even from a distance.
“Rachel,” she says, breaking their usual pattern (and saving Rachel an appropriately breathy Quinn), stepping forward. She has her hands in her pockets and she’s crossing the street, fast. Rachel is about to tell her to look both ways when she realizes that Quinn’s already stopped in front of her. “What are you doing here?”
“I have a class,” Rachel explains, pointing at the building behind her, gears turning very very quickly in her head (fast enough that they’d likely generate steam if she were a machine and not an extraordinarily fallible girl) and she is risking something here but she is a risky person generally; she’d be remiss not to ask. “What are you doing for the next two weeks?”
“Essays. College prep.” Quinn’s shiftier than usual, not making eye contact, looking over Rachel’s head at the signs. Unless she’s interested in Morris Accounting or physical therapy for children, Rachel suspects she’s trying not to look at her. “Or, I’m supposed to be doing those.”
“Oh?”
“Nothing. I’m just having trouble coming up with topics.”
“The Common App is a bitch,” Rachel sagely agrees. “Personally I’m going to write mine about the various hardships I’ve experienced as an aspiring professional Broadway actress in a school lacking a proper drama program. I’ll likely pepper in the Judaism and two gay dads somewhere in there as well.”
“Right, well.” Quinn pauses. Folds herself tight, drums her fingers along her own bicep. The motion makes Rachel’s heart hike up. “I don’t want to talk about my hardships to the admissions office at Ohio University for a chance at acceptance. It’s grotesque and you’ve all seen too much of it anyway.”
“I’m going to run over this once more to ensure that I have all the pieces together because there’s a very good chance I can make something of this. You have no plans beyond essays and vague, likely depressing introspection. I have a vacancy. What would you say to the offer of a ballroom dancing class? Two hours a day, for the next two weeks. You wouldn’t need to drive me; I can get here fine on my own.”
“What’s in it for you?” This is how they operate, it’s how they’ve always operated. Deals, getting even. A score, kept and counted meticulously for a game that will never end.
(Oftentimes Rachel wants to call a stalemate but she has no idea how)
“A dance partner,” she says, “and some much-needed companionship given how many of our peers are scattered to the winds currently. And you would have interesting subject matter for your essay that isn’t related at all to psychological distress.”
Quinn looks, but she doesn’t stare - there’s a very slight distinction, one that Rachel’s learnt over the years, and she reminds Rachel of an owl, the tilt of her head, the carefulness of it. She takes a handful of agonizing seconds before replying.
“Fine. Sure. Tomorrow?”
“At two PM.” Rachel might burst.
***
Quinn wishes she could say she regretted agreeing. The weird thing is that it’s one of only a few things she doesn’t regret.
She doesn’t sleep much that night.
***
Rachel watches the summer-green trees pass by and wonders what it is like to drive all this way every day - if Judy Fabray drives Quinn to school, if Quinn takes the bus, if she is one of those people who drives herself.
She does not expect any of these questions to be answered and she tells herself that it doesn’t matter - she needed a warm body, basically, and she found it and now she is going to spend two weeks chest-to-chest with Quinn Fabray. Normal! Not at all concerning. Nothing to worry about.
***
Quinn has no idea why she was expecting a ballroom, given that this is an office building in the Ohio suburbs, but some romantic sting in her is disappointed anyway. It’s a barebones room, high-ceilinged, floor smooth enough to slip on.
Rachel is there first, because of course she is, and she waves Quinn over.
“I’ll be entirely honest, I wasn’t expecting you to come.”
“You thought I’d back out.”
“It’s something you’re very good at.” Rachel doesn’t take the snipe back or try to explain it away. Quinn loves her for this. Then she doesn’t think about that.
The point of this summer, she’s finding, is just not to think.
“It starts in a few minutes but I’m guessing they’ll allow people to be fashionably late, given that we’re the only ones here so far.” Rachel peeks inside again. Quinn follows her gaze. There’s an instructor - a man in his seventies, very tall - reviewing a frayed folder.
“Mm, maybe.”
“In any case it’ll be best for us to wait out here.” Rachel inspects a bulletin board next to the door - like the rest of the place, the things it’s advertising are clinical, dull. This isn’t a place for high school kids. Quinn isn’t sure why that makes her feel so funny.
“Are they going to have a problem with me being there?” She swallows. Rolls back her shoulders. The scourge of McKinley until she wasn't. “With me being your partner.” Dance partner, she wants to add, but she hates going back on anything. She won’t be shaken.
“What, because you’re a girl?” Rachel turns away from a leaflet advertising a babysitter for hire and looks Quinn in the eye. “I doubt it. Ballroom dancing isn’t exactly a notoriously heterosexual sport - the reason I knew about this class in the first place is because my two gay dads are friends with the instructor’s husband’s life coach. And if they are homophobic I’d honestly rather know now than later - it’s non-refundable but at least I’d be able to leave a bad review.”
“That makes sense.” It barely does. Something loosens in Quinn’s chest anyway.
***
As promised, the rest of the class - all of them older than Rachel and Quinn, most of them probably married - files in a few minutes after the start time. The instructor - Louis, according to the website - checks everybody on the sign-in sheet, makes checkmarks with a hotel pen.
He reaches the pair of them last, glances from the clipboard to Quinn back to the clipboard again.
“That would make you two Rachel Berry and…Finn Hudson?” Louis tries his best to hide his surprise, tries not to stumble over the names, but Rachel notes his fall. The real downside to being a performer - you become so good at catching mistakes that it takes some of the enjoyment out of everything.
She’s been accused, before, of seeing the forest for the trees, but by that measure she’s an arborist of the highest order, because maybe her understanding of the big picture is fuzzy at best but she is a master of noticing the smaller movements, useless on a massive stage as they may be. Rachel sees Louis puzzling over Quinn, sees Quinn tense up.
“No,” Rachel hastens to explain, “this is Quinn, there was a last-minute replacement, you can just scratch Finn’s name out of that,” she’s talking faster than she thought she could, Quinn is a block of ice, Louis is making a note on his clipboard. “Quinn Fabray.”
“Well,” Louis says, with a funny little wink, “I hope you kids have fun.”
***
They’re thrown into the proverbial deep end with no preamble. Just Louis and his friend at the front of the room, backs to the mirrors, calling out instructions like this is a square-dance.
(In a year and a half or so, when Quinn sways against Santana and feels herself lit up like a glowstick, she will not be lying when she says she’s never slow-danced with a girl before - this is fast, this is not gentle, this is a tight waltz which demands perfection and Quinn is all too happy to give it, to get this right if nothing else)
“Why am I leading?” she asks, a few minutes in.
“Because you’re taller, and also because I’ll need to know how to follow for most of the woman-parts on Broadway.”
Quinn looks around. They’re the youngest people there by a good thirty years, maybe more.
“I don’t know how relevant this is for Broadway.”
“You never know.” Step, turn. “Besides you’re very good at this.”
“We needed to have a sense of rhythm during Cheerios routines.” The way it seeps into every conversation is another thing she hates. Rachel doesn’t notice but maybe she’s synonymous with it anyway. Quinn Fabray, head Cheerio, head bitch, pregnant pariah, serial cheater and serial liar. Maybe once she gets to college she’ll just be Quinn.
“Oh. That makes sense. Transferable skills - I try to ensure that all of mine are transferable, really. I used to take different classes every single day when I was younger.”
“What happened?” They’re the only two people talking - everyone else is focused fully on the dance.
“Glee Club, school - I decided to zero in on what I’m best at, which is singing, but there aren’t many opportunities in the summer, so here I am.”
“Here we are.”
***
“The worst thing is when you discover a chasm between your ability and your ambition.” Rachel lets herself be swung. This is a faster iteration of ballroom dancing than she was expecting - likely for the best. “Every time I have difficulty hitting a note I want, every time a song turns out different from the way I pictured myself performing it in my head, it’s like torture.”
“I think I can understand a bit of that.” Quinn looks away, purposefully, and Rachel can see the thin curve of her contact lenses, stuck close to the iris. She wonders if Quinn wears glasses at night, if she keeps them on her head, librarian-esque. It’s a surprisingly cute image and Rachel has to stop herself from smiling.
“In your music?”
“Try my life.” Then Quinn dips her - a little too early; they’re off-kilter already - and Rachel holds onto her shirt for purchase before she realizes she’s doing it. It’s a thin shirt, expensive-looking even though she’s sweating in it.
They’re very very close and Rachel is inches from the floor and inches from Quinn’s face and a few of the old people surrounding them have taken notice.
“That’s alright, Finn!” Louis yells from the front of the room. “Everyone stumbles at the beginning!”
Rachel hoists herself back up, takes a deep breath, and starts again.
***
Quinn could walk home, after the dance class lets out - she could leave the way Rachel’s clearly been expecting her to from the beginning, could retreat back into herself, and it’d be so goddamn easy.
Instead, because she hates herself apparently, she’s sitting on a bench outside a little sweets parlor she hasn’t visited in years, Rachel Berry next to her, both of them in the sun where anyone could see them.
Like so many other things, she can’t bring herself to care.
“I just think,” this, from Rachel, around a mouthful of dairy-free ice cream suffocated beneath a mountain of rainbow sprinkles, “that twelfth place isn’t a career-ender. We still managed to defeat thirty-eight other groups. If anything, my stunt bolstered our reputation.”
Quinn very much doesn’t want to hear about Rachel and Finn’s escapades and both of them know it. She huffs a little, to show this.
“In any case,” Rachel continues, unable to stop, unable to make either the eating of the ice cream or her sentence an uninterrupted thing, “we’re going to win Nationals next year. We need to or else all my time with the New Directions has been a bust and I can’t allow that.”
“About that.” The sun is heating Quinn’s legs alive. She feels like a roast chicken.
“What?” Rachel puts a hand on her thigh, thoughtless, everything she does is so thoughtless and it’s exhausting. Quinn thinks about Santana and Brittany, holed up in the latter’s bedroom, hooking up with Lord Tubbington watching because there’s nowhere else for them to go.
It’s Ohio. It’s America. There’s a pressure on her chest she can’t alleviate.
“Nothing. Just…people can change over the summer. Some people might not be interested in continuing.”
“Well, it’s about more than them at this point. It’s the New Directions, a unit, near-champions.” Rachel licks at a sprinkle caught in her teeth, wrinkles her face. “To abandon it at this point would just be selfish.”
“More selfish than trying to drag people to a dance class for your own benefit?”
“I never said I wasn’t guilty as well.” Rachel sets her cup down, bites her lip. Quinn can’t focus on anything other than her face. There’s a biker somewhere down the road, ringing their bell over and over. “Honestly if I was given the opportunity, tomorrow, to play- Cosette, or some other youthful but prominent lead on Broadway, or even somebody in the ensemble, I wouldn’t hesitate. I’d be on that train before the sun went down and I wouldn’t look back.” Rachel laughs, but it’s strained, choked almost. “Isn’t that terrible?”
“I’d do the same thing.” Quinn’s heart burns. She doesn’t expect it to stop anytime soon.
“What colleges have you been looking at?” Rachel asks. It’s almost a normal conversation. They’re almost friends.
“A mix. Ones close by, a few out of state.” Quinn shakes her head. The ice cream’s all but dripped away onto her fingers; she doesn’t deign to lick it. “But they’re reaches.”
“You’re on the honor roll. I know you are, because I am, you’re bound for valedictorian because while my GPA is excellent my extracurriculars do get in the way - you could likely go anywhere that you wanted.” Rachel takes a deep, long breath, and the sun’s shining on her face and Quinn can feel this moment falling away.
“I just can’t think about anything beyond the next couple of days, honestly.” Quinn prods at her own stomach. “You never know what’ll happen, right? Why make plans when they might not even work out.” It’s hard for her to muster up the lilting question at the end of her sentence.
“I can’t see you staying here.”
“Neither can I.” The real-estate agent plan has fallen by the wayside, as have her intentions to marry Finn in a loveless 50s-housewife fantasy that’d surely end with them both miserable. Small mercies, or whatever. “But like I said. The essay’s not going anywhere, so.”
“You’ll do fine.”
“I just don’t want to jinx it.”
“Superstitious - I wouldn’t have guessed that for you.” Rachel tosses her ice cream in the trash, doesn’t take her eyes away from Quinn for even a second. She wonders if this is what it’s like to watch her on a stage (always Quinn viewed competitions from the back; if she wasn’t performing herself she’d have a clean view of everyone’s asses), if Rachel has that way of making eye contact with everyone, stage lights be damned.
“Says the theater kid. What would happen if I said good luck to you, right now?”
“I’d push you into that fountain.”
“I’d like to see you try.” This is new. This is - not flirting, exactly, but it’s different, and it’s exciting, and at just about the same time they both get up and Rachel shrieks, delighted, as Quinn rushes to the fountain.
***
Rachel isn’t sure that she likes the way Louis and his lifelong friend (her name is Rose, she is exactly his age, they are best friends and maybe siblings? and Rachel wonders if that will be her and Kurt, in about sixty years) instruct - the way that they just show, that they don’t tell, that she only knows she’s doing something wrong when she’s told of it.
“I wonder if they’ll have a showcase at the end of this,” Rachel muses aloud, midway through the first week, holding herself tall, doing a decent job of not stepping on Quinn’s shoes. Quinn herself has her arms around Rachel’s back, flat, never too intimate.
Finn probably would have been terrible at this - and Rachel realizes belatedly that she’s barely thought about him, that he’s surely enjoying teaching children how to play drums, that she likes having Quinn here, instead.
“I hope not.”
“It would be optional.” Rachel tightens her hold on Quinn’s shirt, ever-so-slightly, swallows just a bit. “But nobody would think anything of it.”
She does not want Quinn to think that she's naive, because she isn't; she wants to explain that nobody would care at this dinky dance studio and that doesn't negate the realities that await them outside, but then they're all instructed to dip their partners and it stops being relevant.
***
During water breaks Quinn learns that Rachel’s dads have gotten married twice - the first an entirely non-legal union attended by dozens of friends in the early nineties before Rachel was born, the second in Massachusetts in 2003, with a nine-year-old Rachel pulling double duty as ring bearer and flower girl.
“I couldn’t bear letting somebody else have the spotlight,” she explains, swiping over a photo of a photo on her phone. Little Rachel, in a purple dress, flower petals flying like confetti. They’re planning on getting married again once it’s legal in Ohio, too - Rachel pauses at that part, adds that she’s convinced that they’d get married in every state if they had the time.
Rachel learns that Quinn has a cat named Miss Cleo who only answers to bastard, that she listens to smooth jazz and prefers 20th-century novels to Shakespeare. They’re little tidbits of information, always, and this is intentional on Quinn’s part and Rachel’s been sensible enough to play along.
“I’m so happy for you girls,” Louis says, once, while Rachel is taking a swig from her water bottle and Quinn is mopping at her forehead with a towel.
“Why?” Quinn doesn’t like the implication.
“Just - well, it’s lovely to see kids being so proud. Together. Girls dancing with girls, boys with boys-” this with a nod towards the two older men Quinn’s always seen around the practice, never spoken to. She hasn’t spoken to anyone other than Rachel the whole time, she realizes belatedly. “It wasn’t always like that.”
Rachel shoos him away before Quinn can hear the end of his thoughts.
***
Rachel sits next to her friend - because they are friends, they must be, people who aren’t friends don’t agree to two weeks of ballroom dancing on a whim - at the skate park as the sun finally disappears and she feels old.
“This is the sort of thing I always pictured, when I imagined what it was like to have friends,” Rachel says, the first thing she’s said in a few minutes. There aren’t any skaters left this late - the place is just close to the studio. Convenience, proximity. That’s the only reason they’re both here, so. “In elementary school and the like. Just - talking to people, at night.”
“Low standards.”
“It’s what I had.” Rachel shrugs. Drums her fingers on the concrete - it’s not so hot at night, though she’s still careful, given the unevenness, given the care she exacts towards herself. Quinn’s kind of scrunched up, chin on her knees, combat boots (and when did that happen?) toeing the edge of the ramp.
“And now?”
“Now I’m a few months away from turning seventeen, I’ve gotten wasted in my own basement, and I have you, and Kurt, and Santana sometimes, and really the entire club, and sometimes it doesn’t feel entirely…real? Or possible, I guess that’s the better word. Like this is somebody else’s life.” Rachel takes a deep breath. “But that’s ridiculous to think, too, because I’ve earned it. I’ve been through enough - I should get to reap the benefits of my toils and I shouldn’t be looking over my shoulder, terrified it’s going to end, except that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
Quinn doesn’t say anything. She’s not good at advice, Rachel’s noticed (probably because things haven’t exactly worked out swimmingly in her favor) and she doesn’t talk a lot when she doesn’t need to. Her arms are bare and pale and desire knots itself in Rachel’s gut, impossible to pull away without taking her whole self with it.
“I just want senior year to be over,” Quinn admits.
“It hasn’t even started yet.”
“I know. But still.” She exhales, closes her eyes, looks exhausted.
“Have you ever tried it?” Maybe Rachel is eager to change the subject, away from the future that terrifies her and might excite Quinn more than the present does. Maybe she is trying to let them be friends, normal friends, friends who talk about superficial things instead of the things that scare her.
“Tried what?”
“Skateboarding. Or anything related to this ramp, really. It feels like a bizarre landmark to have in the middle of, well, what might be construed as-”
“Just say it-”
“-WASP territory.” Rachel grimaces. Quinn just laughs, the one that almost sounds fake, except it’s not, and Rachel is grateful for her very good memory because it means she’ll remember this for a long while yet.
“I know. I have no idea how the neighborhood council agreed to it, but it’s been here since I was little.” Quinn shrugs. “It’s a good place to go when you need to get away from yourself - or your thoughts.”
“And you need to do that?”
“Jesus, Rachel, you sound like a therapist. I just like to be by myself sometimes. Is that so hard to imagine?”
“It is for me.”
***
Quinn - Lucy, even - was never a friendly kid. Rachel doesn’t need to know this. Rachel doesn’t think she’s friendly anyway.
***
“Right, well, I’ve been going here. Working on my essays.”
This feels - private - like an entry into Quinn’s world, a prized ticket that Rachel isn’t sure she’s supposed to have. Quinn has been to her house, Quinn has written duet arrangements in her bedroom, but Rachel has barely set foot in the Fabrays’ territory partially because she does not live close to the district but mainly because it scares her a little.
“You could always come to my house.” Rachel’s keeping one eye out for the Berry family’s station wagon, secretly hoping that it takes a little while longer for it to arrive, that she can stay here.
“This is fine.” Quinn breathes in, once.
“I think you’re the only person who understands me,” Rachel says, freezing up for a moment. Quinn stares at her. She can’t embellish it, can’t hide it beneath a lengthy explanation - can do nothing but say it and hope that there are no skateboarders lingering in the shadows, that nobody else is listening.
Quinn licks her lips, exhales, rolls her eyes up at the sky and then at the ramp below her before she says anything.
“You too.”
They’d kiss, now, if they were different people - Rachel surely wants to, so badly that it makes her weak in the very literal (not proverbial, not metaphorical for once - she has sat criss-cross applesauce here for long enough that her legs are starting to fall asleep) but she could not do that to Quinn (or to Finn, uncertain as their relationship may be at this point in time) and besides they’re precarious enough that it’s very likely she might just slip down the ramp and fall if she leaned forward.
“Look at us. This really is like a movie, isn’t it?” There’s something in Quinn’s voice - bitterness, relief, some mix of them - that Rachel cannot pin down. She knows that it’s only through convenience that she’s here right now, that Quinn has been avoiding the rest of her class like the plague all summer.
She thinks that this - like so many of their moments - is one that’s bound to slip away, that can never really be any sort of permanent thing.
She leans against Quinn’s shoulder, barely brushing it, not because she needs the warmth (it is hot, there’s no need for body heat) but because she wants to. Quinn breathes in. Neither of them move.
***
The classes have been getting harder; the dances are faster, Louis is still a kind of useless instructor. Quinn knows there’s not a lot of time left, and maybe that’s why she invites Rachel to her house after the third-to-last one, even though it’s ridiculous that she’s counting them like that when there were only ten classes to begin with.
(Rachel doesn’t need to know that she was bored out of her mind the whole weekend, or that the Mack returned to the skate park and said, with a chipped-tooth grin, that she’d missed seeing Quinn there)
“It’s a walk away,” she explains, “if you don’t mind walking.”
“I don’t.” Rachel shakes herself out, waves to Louis and Rose, who wave back in unison.
“My mom’s out of town for the night. Business trip.”
“Oh.” They’re walking, not quite in unison, but close - Quinn’s legs are longer but Rachel hurries everywhere, so they even out. Quinn isn’t sure why this charms her. It’s sunny; it’s been a ridiculously nice summer.
(The next year, when storms wreck the East Coast, Quinn will laugh at herself for thinking this - but by then she’ll have graduated, she’ll have a worse back, she’ll have asked Rachel point-blank if she was only singing to Finn and she still won’t have a clear answer)
“The nose ring is new.”
“It’s fake. A - friend - dared me to do it.”
“Santana?”
“I haven’t talked to her since school let out.”
“Who, then?”
“You don’t know her.” True. “She doesn’t go to our school.” A lie, not needed.
“Have you received your class schedule yet?” Rachel’s voice works, somehow, in tandem with her steps. Like she’s about to break into song, like everything she does needs a rhythm to it.
“It’s June.”
“I know, but sometimes they post them early.”
“I haven’t checked.”
“Right, well, I haven’t gotten mine yet - I was wondering if maybe they staggered them, though if they were doing that I guess I’d have mine earlier than you. Berry before Fabray, unless your last name is a fabrication as well.”
“It’s not.”
This is what they’d call a walk-and-talk, in movies. A conversation in motion so that they’re not just talking heads. Quinn’s lived here all her life (nobody moves to Lima, nobody finds this place, you’re born here and you die here, or so she’s been told) and it’s still hard for her to map out the best way to her house - all the streets look the same, all their names are similar too.
“You’ll need to be careful about my cat,” Quinn says, once her own house comes into view. “She’s a little…apprehensive, when it comes to strangers.”
“Just like you.” It’s the oldest joke in the book - pets and their owners, twins and/or mirrors, and still it makes Quinn shiver. Far be it from her to know why. Far be it from her to understand anything - she just digs her house key out of her pocket and opens the door. Miss Cleo, formerly dozing, opens one eye as Rachel steps inside, Quinn close behind, shutting the door so as to keep out the mosquitos.
“Oh, is this her?” Rachel cooes, dropping to her knees, beckoning Miss Cleo with her finger. Miss Cleo, who has no notion of loyalty, jumps off her scratching post and butts up against Rachel’s knee, purring. “She's sweet.”
“Not to me.”
“I'll agree to disagree.” Rachel scratches the traitorous asshole behind the ears, and she melts into her touch. Quinn is not jealous of her own cat. That would be stupid. “Have you ever thought about setting her up with Lord Tubbington?”
“He’s bisexual with a preference for men,” Quinn says in her best impression of Brittany’s monotone, even though she’s not the kind of person who does impressions, even though seeing Rachel crack up is the last thing her own cracked and stupid heart needs.
Rachel gives Miss Cleo a little kiss on the head, yelps as she digs a paw into her rib, and Quinn doesn’t know what to do with it.
***
They’re better than they were - they don’t step on each other’s toes at all (they really rarely did - it’s weird how rarely they did, it’s weird how Rachel’s learned to read Quinn’s breath like that’s a transferable skill at all) and they can dance fast, they can do all the dips and things, they’re not at Brittany and Mike’s level or even at Santana’s but they make it work and Rachel is already imagining numbers for them to feature in front and center, come the fall.
“Rachel! Finn!” Louis struts forward, navigating easily through the other pairs, coming to a stop in front of them both.
“It’s Quinn.”
“Right, apologies - those names sound so alike and the paperwork still has Finn on it. Just wanted to say, you two are doing fantastically.”
“Thank you.” Rachel glows under the praise; there are two days left and there is no showcase but she needs to come away from this with something and if it is only praise from the instructor, well, that is at least something, even if it isn’t something she can put on her wall.
“And, if I can say it, it’s so sweet seeing young love.”
The air disappears from the room.
***
“We’re not,” Rachel forces out, “we aren’t- it’s actually a very funny story, she was dating my boyfriend, except we weren’t dating at the time, I mean me and the boyfriend, she was dating him, except then I broke my nose and before that we’d tried to write a song together-”
There’s blood pounding (to say it’s rushing would be too nice; this is something ripping her apart) in Quinn’s ears, and she can’t talk, can’t say anything.
“We aren’t dating,” Rachel tacks on, “though I have two gay dads and as an enjoyer of and participant in the theatrical arts since my youth I’ve been surrounded by the LGBT community for a long time and consider myself an incredibly staunch ally and that’s part of why I think that it’s wonderful that you’ve set this up to be inclusive but that just isn’t what’s happening between myself and Quinn.” It’s all one breath. Louis backs away.
“Right. So sorry for the misunderstanding, kids - you go back to practicing, now.”
It’s so hot - there’s no AC, there never has been. Quinn finger-combs her hair. It’s all new growth; nothing she can point to as a witness to her old sins. Rachel watches her do it, says nothing, worries at her lip.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” Quinn snaps, not fine, obviously she isn’t, maybe she hasn’t been all summer. They’re staring down the future like it’s a canyon and she’s been dancing. A few of the other members of the class - so old, with so much behind them - turn to stare.
“I’m going outside.” Rachel’s headed for the door. Rachel’s not backing away, just walking forward with her head inclined in Quinn’s direction. Rachel is good and she’s terrible and she’s doing this for herself, she’s always done this for herself, and Quinn can’t even be mad at her for it because however selfish Rachel’s been, she’s worse.
“Trouble in paradise?” an old woman asks.
“Nothing important,” Quinn retorts, and slings her bag over her shoulder and walks out and wants to be in college, wants to be away.
***
“Quinn!” Rachel feels like she’s at the climax of a film, the moment you lay everything out on the line, but there’s no urgency, not really. If she misses Quinn then she can just text her. Still she runs, tries to catch up, wonders what’s been bubbling beneath the surface that she just couldn’t see. Quinn makes it too easy for her and stops, turns.
“What is it?”
“You - I didn’t know that they’d do that or that that was what they assumed-”
“What did you assume, Rachel? We were taking a class together with only couples. Of course they'd think that!" Quinn presses her face into her hands, pinches her nose, which is also a lie in its own way.
(In a few months, Rachel and Santana and others will try to cobble together an explanation for her punk shift – and it will have nothing to do with this, and it will have everything to do with expectations and control and the way her heart thrums, even now, at Rachel standing so close to her, but of course none of them know that, and none of them will)
“That wasn’t my intention.”
“Right, well, that’s what happened. So.”
“Is it the worst thing, anyway, if that’s what they assumed?” Rachel knows that she sounds naive, knows that she is anything but - she is not a girl in a coming-of-age narrative, pushing anybody out of the closet before they’re ready, and Quinn is so unknowable that she cannot make the judgment anyhow, but she needs to say it.
You regret the things you don’t do more than the things that you do, or so she’s heard. She already has plenty of regrets when it comes to Quinn - what’s one more?
“I'm not trying to 'make the most out of my summer,' Rachel,” Quinn says, as if that's the thing that matters. Her shirt’s bunched up and two little sprigs of hair are standing up at the back of her head. Rachel does not reach out or give her an inspirational speech, though she is extraordinarily tempted to do so. She’s changing the subject. Rachel knows this well. “I don’t want to- hold onto any of this, I want it to be over. Okay?”
Quinn starts to walk away again and this time Rachel doesn’t follow her.
***
Quinn ends up going to the skate park instead of the brick building the next day. She doesn’t see Rachel or anyone else for the rest of the summer.
***
Rachel visits Yale a little under two years later (and other things happen between these - important things, confessions and graduations et al) and they are the only two people left in the library and Quinn sets her Post-It-marked copy of Lighthousekeeping down with a sigh. Rachel has been flicking through her phone, for lack of better things to do. Spring break at an Ivy League isn’t very different from any other point in the year, apparently. Quinn’s been working on this paper all evening.
“Oh,” Rachel says aloud, holding up her flower-girl photo. Quinn chortles. “Do you remember this?”
“The two weddings, right?”
“The second. I didn’t exist for the first one.”
“Right.” Quinn closes her eyes, sighs. “That feels like a lifetime ago. The ballroom class.”
“It basically was.” Rachel puts her phone away, knows that the battery’s draining. “Given - well, the fact that we’re college students now, that I nearly got married, that I’m Broadway-bound and you’re a scholar.”
“Sure.”
“I still remember a few of the steps,” Rachel admits, as if this is something shameful, as if it is not a simple and sweet and transferable skill, as if they are not both, for better or worse, where they wanted to be.
“For old time’s sake, then,” Quinn sighs, and she stands up, breathes in. Rachel hesitates.
“If you can do it - what with your back I’d resent myself forever if I hindered your progress.”
“I should be fine for a few minutes.” Quinn sets her cane aside, careful - she’s thoughtful now, in a way that maybe she always was, or else she learned that, too, at Yale. They take each other up, step on each other’s toes, dance without music. Quinn’s sweater is soft and Rachel still wants to breathe her in.
Since there’s no music, there’s no clear moment for them to stop, either, so they don’t.