Fic from anon prompt “Quinn is on Tumblr...”
Written for this prompt, from anon: “Quinn is on tumblr after months of inactivity due to her and Rachel’s (temporary) breakup , and sees that Rachel’s new girlfriend posted a somewhat revealing picture of Rachel. How does Quinn react?”
Quinn sighed as she glanced out her bedroom window where the sun was setting, casting her room in a soft orange glow. She grimaced. Sunsets were for lovers, she thought bitterly, and she wasn’t a lover. Not anymore, at least. She couldn’t be. She hadn’t been in two months, ever since Rachel left.
If she hadn’t been so lethargic from sitting in bed all afternoon, Quinn would have gotten up to shut the blinds. Instead she pulled her laptop toward her for the fifth time that evening; only this time she altered her routine and hovered over the small ‘tumblr’ icon on her bookmarks. She’d been absent from the website for two months--a combination of fading interest and a strong desire to avoid her ex-girlfriend’s frequent posts. Rachel ran a personal blog, with a good deal of Broadway thrown in as well, and Quinn had convinced herself that reading what Rachel was up to would only cause her pain.
So her account had remained inactive for two months. Quinn sighed again. It couldn’t hurt to go back on, it wasn’t like she was going to start bawling at Rachel posting about the newest cast member of Cabaret on Broadway, or yet another vintage photograph of Barbra Streisand. And besides, Quinn thought, she did see Rachel every day in school--though they never spoke, and Quinn had taken to skipping Glee club more than attending it these days--so it wasn’t as if she didn’t already know how Rachel’s life was going. She wouldn’t see anything surprising enough to cause an emotional tailspin, at any rate.
Quinn counted down from five in her head and then clicked the button. The familiar grey-blue screen resolved before her, and her heart stopped hammering in her chest as she realized that the first few posts on her dashboard were, in fact, not from Rachel. She scrolled past a few pale posts with apathetic sayings scrolled at the bottom, past a photograph of a woman whose nude frame was clothed in the shadows of a dusky meadow, and past a quote from Yeats’s Stolen Child. She reblogged a photo of a beach.
After a minute of scrolling, in which her heart-rate had almost returned to a normal caliber, Quinn’s fingers halted their downward motion on the trackpad. Her breathing quickened as she realized what her eyes had focused on. A somewhat-blurry image of Rachel, naked from the waist up, facing away from the camera and turning her head toward the photographer. She was kneeling on a bed Quinn didn’t recognize, and was cloaked in maroon sheets which effectively hid her bottom half from view. Her wavy brown hair tumbled down her back, a few stray pieces falling into her face, and she was biting her lip.
Quinn’s immediate arousal was stifled when her brain caught up with her body. Rachel was almost nude, on a bed Quinn didn’t recognize, and she was being photographed in a sexual manner. Quinn willed herself not to read the caption under the picture, but her willpower gave out. She never really had any willpower at all, when it came to Rachel.
My gorgeous girlfriend agreed to be my subject for today’s shoot. Thanks, Rach.
There was a small heart at the end of the sentence and Quinn fought the urge to vomit. She read and reread the words until her eyesight had gone blurry from unshed tears. Rachel was somebody’s girlfriend. Rachel was getting naked for someone. That someone wasn’t her. Rachel had moved on.
The tears fell and Quinn’s cheeks grew slippery with salty droplets as she looked to the reblog symbol next to Rachel’s URL. She knew she shouldn’t click it. She knew that absolutely nothing good could come from it.
The link brought her to a black and white photography page, and Quinn quickly scanned the subjects of the photos. Mostly landscapes, a few animals, old dilapidated houses that Quinn recognized from the corner where Lima morphed into Lima Heights Adjacent. It seemed that the image Quinn had stumbled upon was the only one of Rachel. Quinn bit her lip as she clicked the ‘about’ link at the top of the page, and waited for her browser to load.
The first thing to load was an image of an athletic-looking brunette sitting at the base of a tree with a black lab puppy at her feet. Quinn’s breath hitched as she stared at the girl. She wanted desperately to glean any sense of comfort in the girl being unattractive; but Quinn’s heart only sank further as her eyes scanned soft facial features, bright blue eyes, a smattering of light freckles across prominent cheekbones, and dark brown hair pulled back into a long braid.
She was beautiful. Prettier than me, Quinn thought.
The short bio under the picture told Quinn that the girl was nineteen, lived somewhere in Allen County, and had won several awards for her photography as well as an equestrian regional competition, and a few dance awards. There was no name.
She was impressive. And Quinn felt like nothing. A disparaging glance down at her body only made her feel worse--past a stomach she detested, past thighs that made her want to stop living, and past a litany of faded white lines across her wrists where she had tried to do exactly that. She was a mess, and this girl was anything but. It was no wonder Rachel moved on.
Quinn bit her lip again, willing the tears to cease. She needed the hurt to stop too, and she considered resorting to her old methods to take the pain away. But she had made a lot of headway, and wasn’t ready for another downward spiral the likes of a year ago, so she took several deep breaths and closed her eyes. She considered calling Santana, but the thought of talking to anyone right now made her stomach clench and her chest tighten, so she decided against it.
Quinn’s thoughts drifted back to the image of Rachel, scantily clad and posing for her new girlfriend. Bile rose in her throat and she swallowed roughly. All Quinn wanted was to hear Rachel’s voice telling her that it wasn’t true--that none of it was real and that she loved Quinn eternally. That nothing had changed and that the last two months didn’t happen.
Before she knew what she was doing, and before she could think through her actions, Quinn was diving for her phone on the nightstand. Ten seconds later Rachel’s caller-ID picture was on Quinn’s screen and the phone was ringing.
Quinn’s heart skipped a beat. Hearing Rachel’s voice over the phone, directed at her, was remarkably different from hearing it barking orders at her fellow Glee Clubbers during school.
There it was again. Quinn thought she could listen to it forever. She thought she’d die if that voice ever went away again.
“Quinn, I know it’s you. I have caller-ID. Is this a prank?”
“No!” Quinn practically yelled, finally finding her voice. “No, it’s not a prank.”
“Ok then why…” Rachel paused. “Have you been crying?”
“Have you been crying? It’s just that your voice-- never mind,” she stopped herself. “Why are you calling me?”
“I…” Quinn struggled, trying to find an answer. She couldn't.
“Well this has been a wonderful chat, thanks for calling. I’ll see you around.” Rachel barked, and Quinn heard a whoosh of air as Rachel pulled the phone from her ear.
“Wait!” Quinn cried. She didn’t know why she was calling, and she didn’t know what she wanted from Rachel. She just knew that if Rachel went away again, she’d die.
“What. Please don’t waste my time, Quinn, I’ve got to--”
“I miss you so much.” The words were out before Quinn could stop them, and she was incredibly ashamed of the sob that followed.
“Are you drunk?” came Rachel’s voice after a few beats.
“No! Rachel, no,” Quinn choked out, trying to get her berating under control.
“I truly am sorry, Quinn, but I can’t do this right now. I don’t even know why I picked up the phone.”
“Why are you being like this?”
There was a sigh on the other end and neither girl spoke for a minute.
“I have to be at my girlfriend’s house in fifteen minutes,” Rachel whispered, sorrow painting her tone.
Quinn felt like her heart was physically shriveling.
“Stay. Stay on the phone and talk to me,” she begged, her voice wavering.
“No. No, I have to go. I’m sorry, Quinn.”
Quinn could have sworn she heard Rachel’s own voice shrink, like she too was trying to hide her tears.
“I saw your pictures…” Quinn added hastily.
“The ones she took of you. Online.” Her voice cracked.
“Oh,” Rachel stammered. “Oh. You weren’t meant to… I thought you’d stopped going on…” She let out a long sigh and continued. “Ok. So you saw them.”
“They were beautiful,” was all Quinn could think to say.
“I wish I were the photographer,” she admitted, her voice barely audible. Rachel didn’t reply. “The thought that someone else has seen you like--”
“My body isn’t yours Quinn.”
“I know.” The unspoken words I’m not yours rang through the heads of both girls.
“I really have to go,” Rachel reminded her.
Quinn only sniffled, not trusting her voice.
“I’ll…I’ll see you around school. Have a good night, Quinn.”
Quinn couldn’t respond, her face was scrunched up in a monumental effort to hold back her wracking sobs, and so Rachel’s goodbye went unanswered. She hung up.
Quinn heard the dial tone and let her phone drop to the ground. She was crying hard, but she was numb all over. And Rachel was really gone.
Falling back into bed, Quinn buried herself under her covers and brought her stuffed lamb up to her chest, gripping it tightly and trying to forget that she was alive.
Twenty minutes later Quinn heard the front door open and close. Someone was walking up the stairs and then Quinn’s bedroom door was being flung open. Quinn registered her mother’s voice.
“Get up, Quinn. And put on the dress you wore to church last weekend-- we’re going out to dinner with some of your father’s work friends. Go light on the makeup, but cover up the spot on your chin I saw yesterday. No heels, a nice pair of flats will do. And curl your hair, it’s getting out of control again.”
Quinn bit her lip to hide the fact that she’d been sobbing, and nodded, not looking her mother in the eye.
“And my god, Quinn, stop eating these,” she strode over to Quinn’s nightstand and picked up the bag of pretzels, tucking them under her arm. “Do you want to get fat?”
Quinn shook her head. Memories of Rachel holding her and telling her how not fat she was flooded her brain.
“Well come on then, up,” Judy sighed, leaning over and running a hand awkwardly through Quinn’s hair. Quinn wanted to recoil, but she closed her eyes at her mother’s touch. She felt Judy’s fingers brush against wet cheeks, and she heard her mother let out a small breath, almost like a sigh. If things were different, Quinn thought, she’d tell her mother everything, and Judy would cancel the dinner to sit in bed with her daughter, eating junk food and watching cheesy reality tv to laugh at people whose lives were far more pathetic than theirs.
“An hour and a half,” Judy nodded, standing back up. Her maternal nurturing was done for the day. Probably for the entire month, Quinn thought. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”
Quinn nodded again and managed an “ok” before the door closed again and she was pitched into darkness.
Hey anon! Hope that did it for you! I’m sorry it was so long. I really enjoyed the prompt idea and I didn’t think I’d be able to do it in a short drabble. I wanted to give Quinn’s emotions justice. Sorry about the sad ending… But like you said-- TEMPORARY breakup :) Anyway, thanks for reading, if you’ve got this far. And thanks for the awesome prompt! I love when they’re detailed like this, makes it easier and more fun.
