Well I may be super lame cause I don’t get to spend Halloween with everyone, but it looks like I will get to spend some time with lovely people this weekend. And I desperately need it. This whole new job + move = happy thing is totally not working for me. In fact, I just may enter the fandorm and never come back out. That’s how over everything I am.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY PLATONIC SOULMATE poohlikeaboss!
Ficlet written for Pooh's birthday. Essentially a Fapezberry writing exercise.
Read on AO3.
Or read below.
Your childhood will be basically normal. Your parents will be busy. Your grandmother will be harsh. But you’ll learn. You’ll grow up strong and confident.
You’ll make a few friends. You’ll slowly realize popularity is important. You’ll begin to keep these friends at arm’s length, fearful of what they might discover about you.
You’ll fall in love, for the first time, and it will be terrifying and satisfying all at once. She’ll be your best friend. Of course she’ll return your feelings. You’ll only have eyes for her.
But you’ll be cautious. No one will be allowed to know, because you’ll know that loving her will get you ostracized, beaten, slushied…responses you’ll have helped perpetuate against other queer kids.
You’ll blame everyone else, on the outside, for how afraid you are. You’ll lash out. But inside, you’ll blame yourself the most.
You’ll look at the Cheer captain. You won’t understand the hot feeling that rushes over you. You’ll mistake it for jealousy.
You’ll look at the Glee club captain. You won’t notice it’s the same hot feeling in your chest. You’ll believe it to be disgust.
You’ll be distracted with your first love, throughout high school, even when you’re not together. Even when you’re both dating boys, who she’ll like, and you won’t.
By the end of high school, you’ll be sure that you’ll be in love with her forever. You’ll push away those thoughts about Quinn’s ass in jeans, or Rachel’s legs in short skirts. Brittany is for you.
You won’t be ready to face the fact that you and Brittany will grow apart. That like so many first loves, you won’t stay the people you felt sure you’d forever be together. That you’ll both change too much to sustain that love.
You’ll be bitter and frustrated at being almost twenty-one, as hot as you are, in New York City, and single.
Maybe, then, in the wanderings of your mind, you’ll recognize those feelings you ignored in high school for the potential that they were.
I am someone who is sure to always know myself. I am unable to fathom how I missed something like this.
This feeling, I know now, has always been there. This feeling that I once clouded and covered up with Finn and Jesse and other boys I thought I could have loved, at the time.
Bubbling beneath the surface has always been women.
It’s hard not to see it now, in retrospect. I’m not someone who tends to look back as I move through life. But now…I have to. Otherwise, I can never accept how these feelings snuck up on me.
Quinn is here, now, visiting from Yale, in her last semester, and…it’s hard. I want to tell her what happened. I want to tell her how Santana accidentally let slip the feelings she has, the feelings that I realize I have been returning.
I want to tell her, but I can’t. Because a part of me is realizing, now, that it will break her heart.
A part of me is realizing what all those looks meant, back in high school. What Quinn wanting to stay in touch meant. What it means now, that she is here, when I’ve asked her to be.
Instead, we happily eat together. We talk about everything else. I watch her.
She’s so different from Santana. On the surface, they seem the same, but…Quinn hides more. Santana isn’t able to hold back her feelings that way. Quinn thinks more. Santana feels more. Quinn has fears and vulnerabilities that it can take forever to uncover. Santana practically parades hers around, daring you to poke at them.
Santana is gay. Quinn probably is, too.
I don’t know what this could mean to me.
This thing with Santana…it’s new. That’s not to say it hasn’t been a long time coming. We pushed at each other in high school. We supported each other, then tore each other down. It wasn’t just petty girl fighting. It was evidence of something neither of us was ready to admit. But we’ve admitted it now. We’ve assembled the pieces of our past and created something new.
This thing with Quinn…it’s ancient. It’s been present since the first moment we laid eyes on each other, and Quinn forced herself to curl her lip, and push me roughly aside. I have always seen the pain Quinn carried around in her. She has always believed in me, in my talent. We’ve clashed and argued and pushed each other, because we’ve always wanted the best for each other, even when we couldn’t agree on who should have the boy.
I shouldn’t be realizing this, now, in the wake of discovering what has been between Santana and I.
I should learn to be more introspective.
We finish our meal, and I haven’t been able to bring up Santana. I don’t know how to. I can’t break Quinn’s heart.
When we step outside the restaurant, she leans in and kisses me.
It’s everything.
She didn’t know exactly when she had fallen for her two friends, but she knew why. They both constantly challenged her. Santana forced her to be better by always wanting the same things. Rachel coaxed her to rise above herself by always believing she was good, and worth something.
And sure, maybe they fought. Maybe they all fought a lot over things that really didn’t matter all that much. Behind it all, Quinn always felt that tension.
She’d fallen for Rachel first. But Santana wasn’t far behind. Still, she had never been able to bring herself to do anything about it. Quinn was a coward, and love was the scariest monster of all.
Kissing Rachel took all the courage in her guts.
She didn’t know, then, what it could mean. She didn’t know what to make of Rachel’s reaction.
And then there was Santana, confronting her, demanding that she, too, get to kiss her.
Quinn had eagerly complied.
And before too long, they were rolling around in bed together, and Quinn was playing the role of their third, and she was elated and devastated all at once.
They let this continue for a little while, until one day, Rachel called her up in tears.
She loved Quinn too much, she said, to let her suffer just playing their third.
Santana snatched the phone from Rachel and drawled that she loved Quinn too, damn it, and the stupid bitch should be their stupid girlfriend.
Quinn didn’t even really know what this could mean. She understood threesome. She understood joining them in bed for fun. She didn’t understand that loving them both, and having them both love her, could be something in and of itself.
She didn’t understand the notion that she didn’t have to choose. That they could both choose her.
I wasn’t going to be perfect right away. Rachel sat them both down an explained to them that if they thought dating one girl was hard, dating two was even harder. She explained that they needed rules and open communication and to make sure no one was ever feeling left out, and that it was okay to lean on one partner for one thing and the other for another. That when Quinn moved down to be with them after graduation, they would have to find ways to make their household run as smoothly as their relationship.
She stressed that it was going to be very hard. But that, if they loved each other, it could work.
Quinn thought about the times that love had hurt. She thought about Santana and Brittany growing apart, about Rachel sobbing on the train after Finn had left her, about all the times her own love for both of these girls had left her nearly paralyzed with pain.
And for the first time, Quinn saw love open up before her, alight with possibility and pleasure.
Summary: Quinn briefly contemplates choosing a bar close to Santana's apartment, but she doesn't particularly want to spend the night on her pull out sofa bed—with or without Rachel—because she already knows that she won't be leaving Santana alone tonight.
Twenty-Third in the Don't Blink series. Set between Diamonds Along the Way and Forget the Wrong That I've Done.
