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Her hand actually aches with the need to just do it.
There’s five inches between them.
It’s such a small amount of space to transcend, but in crossing that distance, she’s going to be making all sorts of statements that she’s not ready to make; not here, in a bathroom at McKinley High, where she’s still recently single and coiffed former head cheerleader and ex-pregnant scandal Quinn Fabray.
Not when the hand she’s reaching for belongs to Rachel Berry.
*
Mentally, she’s already said goodbye to all of this by the time her senior year starts.
She’ll go to UCLA, major in pre-med and apply to the best medical schools in the country. She’ll prove everyone wrong about what she’s capable of. (She’ll prove one person right, more importantly.)
There will come a point where, just after she’s passed that final exam that means that the next stethoscope she wears will actually be just hers, she’ll feel like she’s proven just about enough. Maybe.
They’ll still be Facebook friends, because Rachel doesn’t know how to not be friends and Quinn will have over 700 people friended at that point, and so the fact that there’s only person whose profile she ever clicks on won’t be noticeable to anyone but her. It will all be inconspicuous, like the way she’s focusing on Hemingway in the middle of Glee practice because it’s all she can do to not stare.
She’ll say something like, “I’m so proud of you”. Or maybe something less desperate than that, like, “How are you? How’s New York?”
Rachel will respond, because she’s polite and interested, and in answer to Rachel’s polite and interested response, Quinn will take a deep breath and put it all out there, because after ten years of holding it in she just won’t be capable of doing anything else anymore:
I just graduated medical school. I’m second in my class, and I’m going to do my residency at one of the best hospitals in the country, which happens to be four blocks from where I know you live. I know where you live because I asked Finn, and he told me because he’s known something that I’ve tried to keep to myself all this time, but there are some things you just can’t lie about to the people who know you. It’s strange that Finn is one of those people, but I guess life doesn’t always work out how you expect it to.
Anyway, the point is: I made something of myself, and I couldn’t have done it without you. Even though we haven’t spoken in almost a decade now, I want you to know that I am who I am because of you. Some part of me will always be that seventeen year old girl who hangs her hopes up on a tiara, but the rest of me has been hanging my hopes up on something else for a very long time now, Rachel, and it’s the idea that some day, you and I could be something real to each other. I guess I’m hopeful that that time is now.
There will never be a right ending to the message. She could throw an I love you on the page, but she understands Rachel in ways that she’s never understood anyone, and the less she says, the more she’ll actually be saying.
I love you would be unbelievable.
I am who I am because of you will sound like a terrible, but honest, truth.
She’ll sit and refresh her messages desperately, even though her Blackberry will let her know the minute she has a response, and because this is a fantasy that takes place about ten years down the line, Rachel’s response is always the same.
I wish you’d said something back then. I would’ve loved to be your friend.
And she’ll feel her hands shake, one tab open to Kayak for the cheapest flight to New York, and one tab open to that one response that’s going to change everything.
I’m saying something now, and at the risk of giving you a heart attack: I’m not saying friendship.
She won’t get a message back for a long time, but when it finally comes, all it will contain is a phone number.
It’ll almost make her faint with relief, and gratitude.
*
Relief and gratitude.
Nobody but Rachel will have ever made her feel those things simultaneously. She will spend years thinking that she’ll get over it, and she’ll see other people, but they won’t be right for her. These other people will invade her space and try to claim her and own her and force her to be something she isn’t.
Rachel will always ask her if it’s okay, first. (And her hands will be careful, and tentative, like Quinn is some gun-shy deer that will bolt at the first sign of someone genuinely caring about her.)
Quinn will always say yes.
*
It’s not that time, yet, however, and currently all she has is this:
A hand that aches to reach out across the clean white porcelain of the bathroom sink, to where Rachel is quietly standing next to her and fixing her hair. (Rachel has bangs again. Quinn hates them, for reasons she can’t articulate. Or maybe she can—maybe bangs are Rachel with Finn, and no bangs are Just Rachel—but… maybe that’s just too much to handle, right now.)
One of Rachel’s hands is gripping the edge of the sink, because she’s on her toes to get enough of a clear view of where, exactly, her hair isn’t parting right, and Quinn’s fingers tighten around her make-up brush, because—
It’s five inches.
It’s an ocean.
*
She didn’t think they’d actually start dating. She’s not sure why, now that it’s a done deal. She thought that maybe, Rachel would show her—
—what, some respect?
Their interactions have been about many things, but the part of Rachel she both loves and hates the most is the part that always goes for it. Whatever Rachel wants, she goes for with absolute dedication and a relentless desire to succeed.
Right now, that something is still Finn. But she has to believe that Rachel will getover it someday, and the worst part of her now will become the best part of her then.
(Quinn herself will draw on that drive for inspiration when she flunks some exam, years down the line, and then she’ll retake it only to get a 96% three weeks later. Santana will buy her a bottle of tequila and tell her she’s a fucking legend, and she’ll silently toast to the only person who believed in her when she didn’t even believe in herself.)
It’s difficult to reconcile the reality of her senior year with her expectations of it, sometimes. She thought that maybe… after prom, or even after Nationals, … they’d actually be able to sit down and talk to each other.
Instead, she’s in the back row, fighting off boys fighting over the right to her again, and Rachel’s hand—when not gesticulating wildly mid-solo—is in Finn’s lap, tangling with his fingers and laying down a gentle claim.
She knows the position well. She spent enough time in it herself, and Finn is uncomfortably big and sheltering; she never did find a way to sit next to him without being swallowed up by him completely.
Rachel manages, somehow.
The disappointment of it is bitter, but she forces herself to push that to the side and focuses on her ideas of the future instead. She starts ordering college brochures. Stanford is a good choice for her, and her mother would be so proud, but she’s finally stopped being lonely and the idea of starting all over again is just a little too much to bear, sometimes.
She wonders if it will make a difference to Beth—if her birth mother went on to attend an Ivy League or not—and then wonders if it will make a difference to Rachel.
In the end, the full ride comes from UCLA, and when she finds out that Santana and Brittany are headed down there, she accepts it without looking back.
*
Rachel finds her flipping through sheet music in the choir room, days before high school’s all over, and their hands are once again inches apart—on the piano, this time.
“I just wanted to wish you the very best,” she says, a lot polite and a little distant.
It’s not surprising, that. They haven’t exchanged more than ten words with each other all year; for the sake of the team, or maybe just for the sake of keeping some dignity, because with every passing month of almost being gone, Quinn’s tenuous grip on what is and isn’t a good idea is slipping.
(It can never be, in Lima. Never.)
Rachel’s already letting her hand slip off the piano, clearly not expecting a civil response (or a response at all), and Quinn reaches for it reflexively.
“You’re better than even you think you are. Do not let him hold you back,” she says, unintentionally angrily.
Rachel flinches at the tone of her voice, but then, her expression becomes curious, and finally she just sighs with a faint smile.
“What are you majoring in?” she asks, quietly.
“I’m not sure yet,” Quinn answers, even though she’s been sure for years.
“We should—” Rachel says, and then stops just as quickly.
They’re not really friends. They haven’t ever been. They’re just the people who somehow come together when nobody else is around to make them focus on what matters.
Quinn can’t help a small smile at the frustration on Rachel’s face, and squeezes her hand tightly, just once. Just because she can.
(Just because it’s all she’ll have for the next decade.)
“Thank you,” she then finally says; her voice breaks on the ‘you’, just like every other part of her has been breaking on Rachel for months now.
She leaves before Rachel can formulate a response, and reminds herself that she’s good at keeping it together.
She always has been.
*
The day comes, much more slowly and then much faster than she’s expecting it.
Her stethoscope is pink.
She can’t justify the choice to anyone, let alone her two best friends, but Santana looks at her knowingly before saying, “At least you didn’t bedazzle it.”
She’d say something about how it’s a viable choice for a pediatrician, but she’s not so much in the habit of pretending anymore. California has been good for her, because nobody here knows that Quinn Fabray. She’s made herself someone better, at long last.
Santana and Brittany hover behind her when she loads up her second bookmark—the first being Google, and only because she’s never changed it—and clicks onwards to the messages function.
This is where it’s supposed to change for her; but not like this.
Her hand hovers over the touchpad until Santana says, “If you don’t fucking click on that message in the next five seconds, I am reading it first, and then you’re probably going to kill me, so.”
She opens it, and swallows hard before reading.
Dear Quinn,
I know this must come out of the blue, given that we haven’t spoken to each other in years, but I’ve heard through Kurt (who knows through Finn, obviously) that you’ve graduated from Stanford Med with honors and I just wanted to let you know that I’m incredibly proud of you. I’m sure that it sounds stupid to you, but I frequently wonder what became of you after Lima, and … well, whether your fears or your abilities won out. I can’t say I ever knew you well enough to have any ideas about what your future career plans were, but medicine seems like a beautiful fit, and I know through Shelby that Beth is incredibly proud of you. (Sorry if that’s a strange thing to pass on at random.)
There is a lot more I could say right now, but I think I will start with what you said to me that day in the choir room: thank you.
I’m going to be in San Francisco for the GLAAD awards soon, and at the risk of coming across completely insane—I’m sure it won’t be the first time!—thought I would give you my number. In case you wanted to meet, and catch up. Or possibly get to know each other for the first time. I’ve thought about sending this message many times before, but it finally feels like the right time, if that makes sense. You’re welcome to say no; I’m sure you haven’t thought of me in years, though maybe you have. I’m in a lot of magazines these days, and it’s harder to avoid me now than it was back when I was Glee co-captain. (I’m not nearly as arrogant as they make me out to be; possibly just exactly as arrogant as I was back in Glee club, so you should be okay.)
I’m sorry about the lack of coherence in this message. I’m a little nervous about sending it at all, but I couldn’t not say anything. You’ve done so well for yourself. I always knew you could, but there’s something beautiful about being proven right, especially when it’s about something so glaringly obvious and wonderful.
Yours,
Rachel (Berry)
Santana clasps her shoulder for a long moment and then says, “If you want to cry or something, just say the word and we’ll leave.”
It’s too late. She’s already crying, but not before hitting the reply button frantically and pushing out a quick Yes.
Maybe they don’t need more words than that, right now.
*
She’s contorted Rachel in her mind to being taller; more youthful. Possibly lessreal.
Instead, what she gets is a visual that knocks the breath out of her altogether, because Rachel has grown up, and everything that was lovely about her before is just deadly now.
“God,” Rachel says, shakily, and one of her hands reaches for Quinn automatically.
She stops it in time, though, and then asks, “Can I—can we hug?”
Quinn can barely bring herself to nod, and then there’s finally something in that empty space she’s been keeping for years now; it’s Rachel-shaped, carved out of her side, and she feels herself settle instantly, as soon as Rachel’s small hands wrap around her back and she gets a whiff of whatever perfume Rachel wears these days.
(It won’t hit her until hours later that it’s the same stuff she wore in high school. It won’t hit her until weeks later that maybe, that was deliberate.)
“You’re still the prettiest girl I’ve ever met,” Rachel says, sounding like she might cry.
“I’m a lot more than that,” Quinn murmurs, with a watery smile, and when Rachel laughs and pulls away, all she can do is keep smiling.
There’s rambling about the reservation she’s made, and how Rachel really hopes they’re serving something other than Italian wines because the grapes give her a headache, and how she sometimes wishes she could live somewhere other than in New York, but more than that, Rachel is pulling her along into the restaurant.
There are five fingers clasping her hand, and they don’t have any intention of letting go.