and isn’t this exactly where you’d like me

Celine Dion has performed on the stage she’s looking at right now.

Somehow, Rachel always thought this would’ve meant more to her, but the stage in the Colosseum isn’t that much better or brighter than any other stage she’s been on, and honestly, when she’d told Kurt that she wanted the summer off, she didn’t mean I just want to go to a different city and do the same thing I’ve been breaking my back doing for the past three years.

She’s a household name now. She’s also pretty sure that if Time ever ran an expose on the 100 loneliest people in America, she’d be at the very top.

The only highlight of her career, which really was everything she’d ever wanted, is that somehow she’s surrounded herself with people that she knows and loves, albeit not in the way that she wishes she could. has gone everywhere with her, starting out as just a roadie on some of her solo tours after the Les Mis revival she headlined shortly after graduating from NYU, and Kurt became her manager not long after that, when he finally felt like he had enough experience to deal with someone with actual star potential.

When she’s busy doing bit parts in LA, she crashes with Brittany and Santana, and when she’s in , she hangs out with Tina and Mike and discovers hidden and mysterious Chinese take-aways with illegible menus that somehow take the edge away. Back in Lima, Sam and Mercedes are happy with their first kid underway, and Finn will always be there, holding on to his glory moment of winning conference and wondering how it is that none of the girls in his life stuck around for the end.

Glee club had started out tenuously enough, with nearly everyone in it obviously hating her, but by the time they’d graduated, they’d all been friends. At least, she thought they had been, and they are the only people who remember the who occasionally had moments of weakness, and occasionally gave up a solo in exchange for a hug.

There’s only one person they’ve all lost touch with, and when Rachel starts wondering about what ever happened to , she knows she’s had far too much to drink.

Puck wraps an arm around her waist and says, “Rach, you’re killing yourself. You don’t need to do three dress rehearsals. You’re going to kick ass either way, you know that. You could fucking sing a bum note and nobody would even notice. They’re here for the image, babe. They’re not here for you giving them everything you’ve got.”

She knows he’s right, but he should know by now that the only way she knows how to do her job is by putting everything in. It’s the only way that she can stop thinking about the things that are missing from her life, and the delicious irony that , possibly the gayest man on Earth, has to keep reminding her that it would be career-destroying for her to come out at this point in her life.

She’s about to break into Hollywood, he keeps saying. And the money in Hollywood is conservative. You’re not seeing anyone anyway, Rachel, so while I appreciate that it matters to you to be true to yourself, you can be true to yourself when you’ve made enough money to retire.

The worst part is that he’s completely right.

“I’m so… how did I get here?” she whispers into Puck’s neck, and he lifts her out of the seat and hugs her tightly.

“I know, babe,” he says, pressing a kiss to her head and tucking her under his arm. “We’ll figure something out.”

*

The next day, she feels moderately better emotionally, and so much worse physically; she throws up once, and then a second time after attempting some Pilates on the floor by her bed.

They rented the house, because it’s a three month gig at Caesar’s, and she spends enough of her time in hotels as it is. Sometimes, she thinks about getting a dog or something, just to keep her company, but they’re not suitable for her way of life. She can’t even remember the last time she spent eight hours a day at , let alone with the energy to take a Golden Retriever jogging through Central Park.

There’s two messages from set managers on her phone, and she forwards them to Kurt without listening, because honestly: she’s just there to sing. Everyone else can take care of the issues around that, because the only thing she has left to offer these days is her voice.

*

She worries the show will fall flat. She’s seen Celine’s Las Vegas show live and on DVD, several times, and so much of it is about her relentless energy and audience interaction, and honestly, it’s the part of her job that Rachel likes the least.

“I don’t even know why they asked me,” she tells Kurt, picking aimlessly at the watercress and radicchio salad she’s having for lunch. “I’m not exactly known for being a crowd darling.”

“You’re known for being kind of a bitch, you’re right,” Kurt says, batting at his lips with a napkin. “This is a chance for you to undo some of that damage you did when you refused to sign that fourteen year old girl’s playbill two years ago.”

The moment still haunts her. The things the media had reported on was that she’d snubbed a small girl, who had been her ‘biggest fan’ ever—like that’s measurable somehow—without so much as batting an eye. The things the media had not reported on was that she’d been running a 102 degree fever and her understudy had sprained her ankle and she’d barely been able to keep standing throughout the performance, let alone muster up the energy to make some fourteen year old’s .

“I don’t care about my reputation,” she tells Kurt, because she doesn’t. She’s had it for so long now that honestly, if she could do it all again, all she’d do is add, “I’m sorry, I’m really not feeling well” to her previous dismissal.

The public, especially in New York, thinks they own her.

The absolute best thing about Vegas so far has been the fact that with just a pair of sunglasses, she’s a complete nobody, surrounded by hundreds of other famous people looking to get away.

*

On opening night, her dads call and tell her to break a leg.

She remembers clearly when they used to come to all of her performances, but honestly, the travel is too extensive these days and they both have jobs. She understands; it’s not that she doesn’t.

Just, sometimes, it would be really nice to have someone in particular to sing to. It would tip her performance from being what it is into what all her performances used to be: tortured love songs to that melted the hearts of everyone who watched them take in 2011 and 2012.

The most painful thing of all is the realization that the only time she’s ever thought she was in love, it was with a guy.

She spends all of her time acting out emotions that she has basically never felt for herself, except in those fleeting moments when Quinn Fabray used to let her guard down.

Not that she’d known it at the time. Hell, she hardly knows it now, except that the only half- relationship she’s ever been in was with a dancer from the Les Mis troupe who had blonde hair, graceful legs (if there even is such a thing) and the ability to keep things strictly professional.

They were all things that remind her, now that she’s working on being a little more honest with herself, of a girl that she never had the chance to get to know in high school.

Maybe she got out, Rachel sometimes thinks, going through old McKinley yearbooks and seeing Quinn’s face on every single page, beaming with contempt, the way she’d smiled in every picture that she’d known was going to be taken of her.

Somewhere, in a box full of things that she knows she can’t let herself look at, Rachel has a picture of Quinn and Santana, captured by Brittany at some moment during the run-up to senior year Nationals, when they’d been goofing off in their hotel rooms and Quinn had, just for two precious seconds, forgotten that she hated absolutely everything in this world.

But: maybe Quinn got out. And just maybe, she found something out that she didn’t hate, out there.

Rachel’s never known how to not be hopeful about these kinds of things.

*

Her melancholia is particularly noxious after the third show, somehow, and Puck and Kurt exchange worried looks while she’s taking off her make-up—Swan Lake inspired, for reasons she’s never bothered asking the choreographer, because they could dress her up like a sad clown hooker and it would still just be part of the job.

“You need a night off,” Puck finally says, but to Kurt, not to her.

“We all have one on Tuesday,” Kurt says, without even glancing at the schedule. “Though I would advise you to not suggest anything particularly stupid. I mean, this is Las Vegas. She has a certain image to uphold.”

“Yeah, people think she’s some child-hating bitch. Please, what can we possibly do to shred her rep even more?” Puck says, with a loud scoff.

“I’m right here, guys,” she reminds them, quietly, and watches as they both lower their eyes with something akin to guilt. “And while I agree that need a night off, I also agree that I’m not particularly in the mood to be in the public eye.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not giving up my first free night in Vegas to fucking play board games with you in that empty-ass mansion you’re calling home, Rach,” Puck says.

She looks at herself in the mirror and absolutely hates what she sees, which is the only reason she says, “Come up with a plan that assures us relative anonymity, and I’ll come out with you.”

“I can do that,” Puck says, exchanging a small and really effeminate low-five with Kurt that they think she can’t see.

It’s enough to make her smile, a little.

*

Here’s the thing that nobody knows about Rachel Berry, Tony winner and two-time guest star Emmy nominee:

She’s seriously, cripplingly agoraphobic.

… okay, so some people know. Puck knows, Kurt knows, Brittany and Santana know, and her dads know, but everyone else just assumes that she stays inside most of the time because it’s a pain in the ass to go places when you’re so well-recognized.

It is a pain in the ass. It’s also something that basically locks her in her throat these days, and makes her entire body shake until it just stops working for her and all she can do is lie down on the ground and close her eyes, willing the crowds of people around her to go away.

Her therapist is convinced there’s a clear trigger to when this started, and it’s linked somehow to a really unfortunate karaoke experience in her sophomore year of college when some of her classmates decided it would be fun to toss her into a crowd of drunken onlookers and it took her almost five minutes to stop screaming.

All she knows is that she didn’t have it when they took Nationals in 2012, but even now, the only way she can do Vegas is from behind a car door and with two Xanax in her system. A great combination with the amount of alcohol she’s already working on consuming.

Really, her entire world is a fog right now. It’s exactly how she likes it.

“We’re going someplace small and discreet,” Puck says next to her, driving them out of the hotel parking garage and heading onto the Strip.

Some part of Rachel thinks she could grow to like Vegas, because it’s nowhere near as claustrophobic as New York and, after some heavy testing of her condition, it’s become clear to her that she’s afraid of crowds, not of open spaces. Vegas is nothing but open space; exit the city proper, and there is nothing but sand around them. She briefly thinks that an ideal vacation would be spent there, in a hut or something, learning how to crochet.

She laughs, and Puck looks at her in surprise.

“Sorry. I’m just a little—” she says, and she doesn’t need to say more, because Puck knows how she self-medicates.

“Hey, if you feel a panic attack come on—just tell me, okay?” he says, reaching over and squeezing her knee.

She tilts her head against the window and closes her eyes, not opening them again until he lets on that they’ve arrived at their destination.

*

“What the fuck,” she hisses at Puck when the bouncer waves them through.

“Okay, here we go. Look, Rach, I’m all for you getting pissed at me for bringing you here, but come on. You’re fucking twenty five. You’re hot. And you live like you’re some fucking eighty year old woman who’s one foot in the grave, and let’s be honest, only some of that is because of your condition and shit,” Puck says, reaching for her coat.

She shakes her head and stares at him.

“I want you to be happy. Okay? Now, I know you probably don’t think that a strip club is going to make you happy, but we’ll get really drunk and watch some hot chicks straddle poles and I don’t know. Maybe you’ll forget about—whatever it is you need to forget about right now, okay?”

He means well.

The only reason she doesn’t immediately turn on her heels is because she knows he means well.

“You brought me to a strip club,” she just says, instead.

He shrugs, a small smile playing around his lips. “Kurt may think you need to like, stay in the fucking closet forever, but what Kurt doesn’t know won’t kill him.”

She sort of laughs and sighs at the same time and then says, “Okay, but I have no idea what the protocol for these places is, so I’m relying on you to make sure I don’t embarrass myself.”

“‘course.”

Maybe it’s not the worst idea after all, she thinks, before looking at him and tentatively saying, “You brought a stack of dollar bills, right? Because if I’m going to be in a strip club, I want to do it right.”

“Please—I got this,” Puck says, grinning and wrapping an arm around her lower back before ushering her into the club.

*

Not that she has much of a concept of what a high class strip club looks like, but it’s not a dive, thank God.

She looks around questioningly, trying not to flush at the sight of a good dozen or so topless girls, and then blinks at Puck. “This—how did you find this place?”

Puck picks a toothpick from a tray by the bar and says, “Brittany. Her dance partner used to work here or something. She said it’d be cool; they’re into like, privacy and safety and shit.”

“Safety?” Rachel asks, raising her eyebrows. “What, like, the strippers here don’t carry guns?”

“No, more like, they get tested for shit,” Puck says, before leaning over towards the bartender with a wink and ordering himself a Jack and coke and Rachel a vodka tonic.

“Um. Perhaps I’m missing the point of stripping, but I was under the impression it’s a hands- off activity,” Rachel says, feeling a bit of a blush run on her cheeks.

“Sure. Unless the stripper is hoping to make an extra buck.” Puck leans back against the bar and nods towards the stage. “Thing about this job is that the girls are in charge. Security is air tight in places like this; any dude who tries to grab or whatever without permission, they’ve got panic buttons and bouncers all over the fucking place.”

“Right,” Rachel says, staring at the stage. The lights are as bright as they are on Broadway, and she knows from experience that it’s basically impossible to see anything in the audience.

It makes her feel strangely better; like the dancers get to keep some of their dignity.

“So, the menu’s like this; the dancers in the room are a free for all,” Puck says, around the tooth pick. “You can look, and you can tip, but you can’t grab. Okay?”

Rachel makes a small noise and then picks up and drinks half of her drink; she’s going to need it if she’s going to actually participate in Noah Puckerman’s idea of a relaxing evening.

“Then, on top of that, there’s other girls who don’t dance on stage.”

“Why?”

“They’re better,” Puck says, with a small smile. “This place is high-end, obviously, but even then there’s rankings. You see that brunette on stage? Bad boob job, almost thirty. She’s not the same kind of bet as whatever it is they’ve got out back.”

“How do you know?”

Puck points towards the back of the room and says, “You place your order there. You can take something on the stage, something random, or ask for something in particular.”

“Like…” Rachel says. Her drink’s almost gone, and the fog in her mind is comfortable, settling down just enough for her to relax.

“Like—say you wanted to act out some fantasies about a certain… blonde cheerleader that— ”

“Don’t,” she tells him, shortly.

He smiles faintly, but lets it go. “Well, whatever. If you’re in the mood for something in particular, or a particular outfit—you let them know, and they’ll accommodate, if they can.”

Rachel chews on her lip for a moment and then says, “How many of these places have you been to in your life?”

His expression darkens for a moment and then says, “It’s not easy being a single mom in Lima.”

Shit, Rachel thinks, and the apology is already on her lips when he continues, “They’re people, Rachel. Okay? So—we’re here because maybe all you need is a little bit of consequence-free attention. No muss, no fuss; not for you, and not for whatever girl is going to be riding your lap later.”

She takes a deep breath and says, “I’m not sure I can handle this, Noah.”

He smiles at her crookedly and says, “You’re Rachel Berry. You can handle anything.”

*

Six drinks later, she’s forgotten about that thing where she doesn’t want to talk about blonde cheerleaders to anyone, ever, let alone the guy who knocked Quinn up and put the first dent in her golden future.

Puck winks as he slides another dollar into their waitress’ g-string, and Rachel smiles when she notices—not for —that he does it in what looks like the least sexual way possible. His hand doesn’t even touch skin, for God’s sake.

Noah Puckerman: resident good guy. She never would’ve thought he’d be one of her best friends, but honestly, without him…

A flash of blonde hair in the background distracts her from the thought, and for one second she thinks that—

But it’s obviously just wishful thinking.

Still. Isn’t that what this night is supposed to be about?

She’s feeling it now. A lot of wishing and hoping, and a lot of other things that are never going to happen for her. Seven years of the occasional one night stand, usually with guys whose names she doesn’t even know, just because the alternative of seeking out someone who looks like her is too humiliating. Seven years of wishing she could’ve done something different, back then.

Maybe it’s time. Maybe, she’s feeling wishful enough for her to put her drink down and say, “I—yeah. I’m going to do it. I’m—”

“Go get ‘em, tiger,” Puck says, with a grin, and then whispers something else at the waitress, who beckons gently with her head.

Rachel follows without tripping, which is pretty much already an accomplishment, but then has to somehow vocalize some sort of request.

“What’s your type, beautiful?” the waitress asks, in a way that sounds more soothing than sexual, and Rachel exhales shakily and says, “Blonde. About five foot six. … small breasts, great ass.”

The waitress blinks at her a few times and then says, “You know, you’re not the first person who’s had a really specific type, by some distance… but you’re the first one that I’m actually going to promise that we have exactly what you’re looking for.”

Rachel swallows hard and watches as the waitress disappears behind a curtain; she almost changes her mind in the minute or so that it takes for the girl to come back and say, “C’mon. We’ll get you settled, and your dream girl will be with you in a minute or so.”

I doubt it, Rachel thinks, but she’s had enough to drink where thinking hard about anything she’s doing is not really an option anymore.

*

She wanders around in the little room they’re in, which is somehow tastefully done up in creams and reds, rather than the black she always figured that back rooms at strips clubs were.

Not that she’s spent a lot of time thinking about that, either.

She’s drunk, but not drunk enough to not be a little bit nervous and gun-shy. Her hands fly to the buttons on her coat but then drop again, because—maybe she needs to wait for the certainty of instruction. Is it okay to take it off? Will she keep it on? Does it even matter?

The door opens behind her, just when she thinks that she’s going to bail—again, and some part of her reminds her that the Rachel Berry she used to be wasn’t a quitter, no matter what she was doing—and she sort of freezes on the spot.

“Okay,” a quiet and sure voice says, behind her. “There’s a few ground rules that we need to go over.”

This isn’t real, Rachel thinks. Xanax and the alcohol—I’m hallucinating.

But it’s undeniable. It’s the voice. Even though she hasn’t heard it sneer at her in years, and the last time she did hear it, it definitely wasn’t saying, “You keep your hands on the sides of the chair at all times” or anything even remotely like that, Rachel knows Quinn Fabray’s voice like the back of her hand.

“Oh, my God,” she says, sitting down on the chair just because it’s there, and that brings her lap dancer of choice—the girl of her dreams, her mind reminds her—in full sight.

At the sound of her voice, Quinn turns around from where she’s doing something to the stereo on the table by the door, and their eyes lock.

Rachel can’t breathe. She tries, but honestly, all she can do is sit and watch as Quinn’s eyes widen, just for a second.

Then she straightens abruptly, and that impeccable mask slides back over her expression. Rachel was the one who was going to make money acting, but Quinn was the one who actually played all the roles. It’s how it’s always been between them, and somehow, even with Quinn in six inch heels and a loosely-fitted men’s suit—with a fedora, God, if that isn’t a throwback to Glee club Rachel doesn’t honestly know what would be— that hasn’t changed one bit in the last seven years.

“My second rule is that you keep your mouth shut,” she says, after a moment, with a bit more bite than before. It’s the only sign that any of this is getting to her. ”Think you can manage that, Rachel? Or has absolutely nothing about you changed?”

Rachel looks down at the ground and presses a hand to her lips, willing herself to wake up. Willing a time machine, or something, so that she can go back in time and slap Puck for his idiotic suggestion and slap Brittany for giving Puck this address, of all the places she could’ve gone in Vegas.

“Take off your coat,” Quinn says, a little more calmly. It’s not a question, and it’s definitely not going to happen.

Rachel wills her legs to move and she shakily gets up on them, jittering like Bambi on ice, almost, but unable to look away from Quinn’s… everything. ”I can’t do this. I’m sorry, this is … well no, I’m sure it’s worse for you than it is for me, but it’s pretty bad for both of us, but either way, I assure you that nobody will ever know about this, because there isn’t really any earthly way for me to explain how I ended up almost getting a lap dance from Quinn Fabray anyway so—”

Quinn exhales slowly through her nose and leans back against the table, crossing one leg slowly in front of the other and then crossing her arms. It’s so reminiscent of who they were years ago that Rachel almost cowers instinctively, and then just lowers her eyes.

“The door’s open,” Quinn finally says. ”Your money’s right here, next to me.”

Rachel’s legs move her to it automatically, and when she reaches for the bills her hand freezes above them. It’s that stupid impulse she’s always had: to show Quinn kindness, where Quinn wants none.

“Keep it,” she says, softly.

Quinn is at her side in a flash, harshly hissing in her ear. ”I don’t need your charity, Rachel. I didn’t dance for you, so you need take your fucking money and go.”

Rachel’s fingers close around the bills, squeezing hard, but then she glances to her right, at Quinn’s face—almost blank, but there’s barely suppressed anger there—and says, “No.”

“No?” Quinn repeats, incredulous.

“No. I’m—oh, God, I’m drunk, and I’m fairly sure I’m sixteen seconds away from either waking up or realizing I’m dead and this is what the afterlife is like, but the Quinn Fabray I knew in high school would not be a stripper unless she desperately needed the money. So— no. I’m not taking the money, and you don’t have to dance for me.”

Quinn’s lips twist violently, and then she reaches for Rachel’s hand, closing it around the money. ”You don’t know the first thing about me anymore, Rachel. So take your cash, and take your brilliant, successful life, and get the hell out of mine.”

Rachel sways dangerously and squeezes her eyes shut, because God, this hurts. Seeing that this is what became of Quinn just hurts. “You could’ve been so much more than this. I always hoped—”

“I swear to God, I am going to hit you if you don’t stop talking, and then I’ll lose this fucking job and—” Quinn says, before exhaling sharply, taking two measured steps backwards and balling her fists. ”Why the fuck are you even here, Rachel? Surely the great Rachel Berry can get laid any time she wants to and doesn’t need to resort to paying for what she wants?”

Somewhere, Puck is laughing at her; who the hell would manage to screw up a lap dance so badly? It’s a lap dance. Maybe this is humiliating for Quinn, and maybe that’s why she’s lashing out, but the reality of their situation is that Quinn has done more degrading things to her than whatever this is. All those pictures, the jokes about how she should get sterilized, the endless reminders that she’d never be good enough for Finn Hudson…

Her hand relaxes, and the bills flutter back onto the table.

“If dancing is the only way you’ll take the money—then you’ll dance for me,” she says, as calmly as she can. ”But we abide by your rules. You don’t ask me why I’m here, and I don’t ask you why you’re here. Nobody talks.”

Quinn almost smiles at her when she says, “Who knew that we’d finally find something to agree on?”

It’s about the least erotic experience of Rachel’s life so far—fifty percent nausea and fifty percent horror sums it up—but when she sits back down on the edge of the chair and Quinn takes two quick strides to land in front of her, her breath catches in her throat anyway.

“Last chance,” Quinn says, in barely more than a whisper.

God, it’s just a dance, Rachel thinks. I make my living doing musical theater. People have mounted me for professional reasons for years, so this is hardly going to be a novel experience.

She shakes her head as a sign that she’s not backing down, watching as Quinn’s entire body goes from bone-rigid to limber at the snap of a finger, and Quinn’s hands slide up her body, from her hips up past her breasts, towards the skinny tie around her neck.

*

Despite messing with the stereo, Quinn doesn’t use music.

Rachel watches without wanting to, and wonders why not—if Quinn just never does, or if maybe the no music rule is for those rare occasions when you’re giving an old classmate a lap dance. Maybe it says so in the stripper code.

God, stripper. Quinn Fabray is a stripper. It sounds unbelievable, and yet Quinn is right in front of her, staring at her and slowly twisting the tie she’s wrapped around her hands, before looping it around Rachel’s neck and sliding onto her lap.

It takes every bit of restraint that Rachel has to not panic, and to not start babbling like crazy. It’s what Rachel Berry, old or new, does in situations where has no idea what else she can do. Some part of her is dying to compliment Quinn on her style, honestly, because she has to be the classiest stripper that Rachel has ever even thought of seeing, and the rest of her just tries to desperately think about things other than the fact that Quinn’s (thankfully still clad) hips are rocking into her own.

Quinn, true to her word, doesn’t say anything; but the no touching rule doesn’t apply to her, and when she nudges Rachel’s chin up with a pointed finger and arches her eyebrow, the challenge is clear.

You’re paying for me to do this, so you’re damn well going to watch me do this.

Rachel exhales shakily, even as Quinn’s other hand falls away from her neck as well, and then reaches for the collar on the suit jacket.

The silence in the room is making the entire experience almost claustrophobic. It’s adding to the embarrassment she’s feeling, because Rachel knows she’s breathing loud enough for it to be audible. Meanwhile, Quinn’s just—untouchable.

She laughs shakily when she thinks it, and Quinn’s eyes flash for just a second before she shucks out of her jacket and it pools to the floor at Rachel’s feet.

Nothing about this is too strange so far, Rachel thinks, dimly. The rocking motion, maybe; the way that Quinn’s left hand is holding on to her for balance, but other than that, it’s not so different from the Push It dance she did with Finn in high school.

Of course, then Quinn starts slowly unbuttoning her shirt, and it pretty soon becomes clear she’s not wearing a bra underneath it, and Rachel’s eyes shift down, and then up again, and then down, and then up again. Her hands clutch the sides of the seat, and even though she’s not moved a millimeter since this started, they’re now almost brushing against Quinn’s thighs.

When her gaze flickers back up to Quinn’s face, there’s a small smile playing around her lips.

Just for a second, though, and then Quinn gets back up, her shirt loosely dangling around her, and oh, this is a visual that Rachel’s never going to forget: Quinn’s hips slowly twisting back and forth in a circle, even as her hands slip down to the button on her slacks and pop it, slowly but loudly.

The rule is no talking. Rachel is fairly sure she hasn’t violated it with the strangled little noise she just made, but Quinn hesitates for a beat anyway.

She’s a professional, though. It’s clear from every part of what she’s doing; the rules, the carefully measured space between the parts of her that aren’t on offer and the parts that are; and the way that when she starts slowly working her pants off her hips, she follows them. All the way down to the floor. All the way.

Rachel’s stomach twists uncomfortably at the sight of it, and God, the knowing little smile Quinn gives her as she slowly straightens again makes it worse. Or better. She can’t even really tell anymore.

She curses herself for being as drunk as she is, because she has no idea how much of this she’s going to remember, and if Quinn’s tightly-coiled anger is anything to go by, they’re not going to have coffee and laugh about it like old friends afterwards.

They were never friends.

And they’re definitely not friends now, because Quinn’s just wearing an unbuttoned shirt and a black thong, and this time, when she slowly approaches Rachel again, straddling her on the chair without sitting down, forcing Rachel’s face between her breasts, Rachel’s composure trips and falls completely.

She moans, because it’s all she can do that wouldn’t be breaking all the rules; her nails are already digging into the chair hard enough for it to hurt.

The sound that trips from her lips is loud enough for Quinn to sit down, lean back and look at her with an inscrutable expression.

“Sorry,” Rachel says, or whispers.

Quinn just shakes her head and says, “Are you done now?”

“With—”

“Rubbing it in?” Quinn asks, in a steely tone of voice that really doesn’t fit the moment, because Quinn is still sitting on her lap.

“I’m—this isn’t—I didn’t know,” Rachel says, stupidly, even as Quinn finally pulls the ends of her shirt back together and starts closing it. She gets up off Rachel a second later, and when she gets dressed, all Rachel can think is dressing rooms at Nationals, with Brittany helping Santana with her make-up and Quinn carefully curling her own eyelashes.

It’s so much like her old life that she knows she’s going to cry if she doesn’t get out of there right now. Now.

She grabs her coat, and feels around the pocket for all the cash she has left, and deposits all of it on the table before running out and blindingly looking for their rental car, leaning heavily on the hood when she finds it and squeezing her eyes shut, gasping for breath.

Puck finds her like that a few moments later, and says, “Was it the closeness? Do you need a pill?”

She shakes her head and sucks air back into her lungs, but it’s a moot point, because she’s going to throw up and Puck’s ready for it.

It wouldn’t be the first time that an innocuous experience has randomly set her off. And it’s definitely not the first time that Quinn Fabray has made her cry.

*

She sleeps restlessly, that night.

It’s endless tossing and turning, before finally giving up and digging around a box full of old Lima crap until she finds the picture of Quinn that’s always at the back of her mind.

God, what happened to you, she thinks, and knows that she’ll never be able to let this go—to associate this girl, with her free, uninhibited laugh, with the stoically angry woman that straddled her earlier. They’re about as much the same person as Rachel Berry, Gold Star of the McKinley High glee club is the same person as Rachel Berry, seeking out strippers because that’s all the connection she can handle these days.

She only manages to nod off when she decides that this isn’t where this ends, between them. Maybe there are rules about not talking to each other when Quinn’s… at work, but Rachel’s always been good at finding those little exceptions to the rules that make the difference in how things end up. and isn’t this exactly where you’d like me (2/8) Quinn/Rachel, NC-17, for an anon we’ll call “first name rach, last name berry” who wanted Rachel doing a show in Vegas for 2-3 months and somehow ending up getting a lap dance from Quinn.

AN: Part 2. I call this genre “Quinn Is A Bitch, Rachel is Angsty, And Then They Do It”. Except not quite yet, in this part.

*

She wakes up the next morning from a tentative, half-drunk dream that involved Quinn sliding off that fedora and letting her hair fall down, and then arching over her like some sort of hellion and then saying something—she can’t remember what, though.

Her head is throbbing and she almost immediately reaches for the nightstand to take some Aleve, but there isn’t any; there’s just Kurt, sitting on it primly and staring at her.

“Holy hell,” she says, watching as he almost laughs at her, before sobering again quickly.

“Puck told me that—you might not be in the best form today.”

“Which is an excuse for you to just wander into my bedroom? There could’ve been someone—”

He arches an eyebrow at her, and she sighs, rubbing at her eyes.

“Okay, so there couldn’t have been someone here, but that’s still no reason for you to just sit there when I’m dead asleep.”

Kurt clears his throat gently and says, “Do we need to call your therapist?”

“No,” Rachel says, softly, before sitting up a little bit more and stretching, her cotton t-shirt scratching at her skin uncomfortably. “I’m okay. It wasn’t—it’s not what you think it was.”

“A little more explanation wouldn’t hurt, Rachel. According to Puckerman, you basically hightailed it out of the bar you were at and then spent ten minutes hyperventilating and throwing up by the car.”

She directs a sharp look at him and says, “Sometimes, I feel like you forget that all you manage is my career.”

Kurt looks very unimpressed with her. “And since when is your career separate from your life?”

They stare at each other. Rachel looks away first, which is nothing new.

“I didn’t have an episode,” she finally says. “I had an unexpected encouter with … with a fan, who sort of invaded my personal space, and I had far too much to drink.”

“Okay then,” Kurt says, uncrossing his legs and sliding off her nightstand. “I’ll go and get us some smoothies for breakfast, and then we can talk about that interview you’re giving a few days from now about your show. The critic for the Post is coming to watch next week, remember? It’s time for some positive publicity—and it would be great if we could sustain the momentum this time.”

“Of course,” she says, though it’s clear to both of them that she really couldn’t care less.

*

Rehearsal that afternoon is a disaster. Not because she’s hungover, because honestly, that’s nothing new. No, it’s because the middle part of the stage involves this number in which all the female dancers around her cross-dress in black, pin-striped suits, and then slowly start taking them off as she sings.

One of the girls, Layla, used to do shows and can lift her legs in ways that Rachel has only ever seen Brittany do. She’s also blonde, and wearing her head up in the same kind of small French bun that Quinn had on last night.

She forgets words. It’s the first time in her life, and when she makes her way off stage, mumbling something about needing the bathroom, it’s like her high from last night finally wears off all at once and she’s suddenly almost throbbing with repressed memory: Quinn’s cheekbones, angular as ever and set into sharper relief by that whorish shade of red lipstick she’d been wearing; her eyes, dark and moody and impossible to read, not least of all because Quinn still has the longest eyelashes she’s ever seen on another woman; her legs, which, honestly, Rachel doesn’t even know if she’s ever seen them. And the shirt, with crisp white tails loosely swaying in front of her torso, occasionally showing glimpses of perfectly round, hard-nippled breasts.

She can’t think of this Quinn as a woman who’s had a child; and this is not Quinn Fabray, eighteen and beautifully angry at the world, either. This is a wet dream, coming back to haunt her.

She locks herself in the bathroom off stage and leans against the stall door heavily, working her way through a breathing exercise that usually is enough to stave off a panic attack, but the problem is that this isn’t panic. It’s nothing short of pure want.

Her motives for going back to the club are altruistic. Her motives for sliding a hand up her thigh and working her fingers around her panties, in the middle of a goddamned rehearsal for a show that’s supposed to bolster her CD sales enough for her to actually be able to take a six month break afterwards—

No, there’s nothing altruistic about the way she pictures Quinn’s knowing little smile—the curve of her lips, the passion in her eyes—right when she comes all over her fingers.

It’s downright selfish, when all she really wants to do is take Quinn away from a position where anyone else ever has the right to see her like that.

* Because she is, at the end of the day, a consummate professional, nobody bats an eyelash when she comes back and cites food poisoning; except Puck, of course, who mimes a drink at her and raises his eyebrows.

Well. It’s probably better if they all go home thinking she’s turning into an alcoholic. It’s not like the media hasn’t gotten into that particular brand of speculation ages ago, so.

*

Masturbating while thinking about Quinn Fabray is not a new thing for her.

God, not by a long run. The first time it happened she’d still been dating Finn, and somehow the one thing that always got her off was thinking about Finn making out with someone— which then somehow automatically became Quinn. She’d written it off as it just being too awkward to picture herself three-dimensionally at first, but then fantasy-Quinn had started moaning in a way that real life Quinn never would have done, at that age, and at some point Finn had just disappeared from the fantasy altogether.

No, from about age seventeen and a half onwards, at least three nights a week, Quinn Fabray has been in her mental bedroom, moaning like a porn star while fucking the daylights out of her, and Rachel can’t even remember the last time she had an orgasm that wasn’t somehow about the idea of Quinn pressing her back into the , threatening her with all sorts of things—”if you’re not quiet, I’ll tell everyone what a slut you are”, which, honestly, it’s so cliche and yet somehow, with Quinn’s abrasive personality, completely in character. And the in character part of it has always been what gets her wet; the idea that Quinn could turn some of that angry attention into sexual attention, because when Quinn wants something—

It’s not a new thing. What is new, though, is how much she knows. The way Quinn’s hips roll forward when she’s simulating sex; the way Quinn’s hand feels dragging past her neck. The way that small tendrils of Quinn’s hair work their way out from under that ridiculous hat when she’s slowly shimmying out of her outerwear.

Quinn has always been in her sexual fantasies, but after that ill-fated lap dance, she’s suddenly there in technicolor, vivid and present like she’s never been before.

After the show, Rachel drinks half a bottle of wine and fucks herself three times; by the third time, she’s completely given up on even feeling embarrassed about it.

If she just gets it out of her system, she might actually be able to carry out her plan and have a conversation with Quinn, next time she sees her.

*

Brittany and Santana drive up that weekend, by which time Rachel feels slightly more in control. Reality has gotten in the way of whatever else she’d like to be doing in a hard way; and now, she’s being plagued by the knowledge that Quinn has a lot of information on her that Kurt has been trying to keep out of the press for a very long time.

Like:

Rachel Berry goes to strip clubs.

And:

Rachel Berry moans at the feel of another woman’s breasts being somewhere near her face.

She should’ve stayed. Hell, they keep non-disclosure agreements in the car at all times just in case something like this happens. (Not that anything even close to something like this has ever happened to her before, because she’s normally intelligent enough to say no to Puck’s harebrained schemes.)

She should’ve just marched back in there, demanded to see Quinn again (or whatever her stripper name is. That’s a thing, isn’t it? Stripper names?) and forced her to jot her Jane Doe on the page, so that she could’ve gone back to her house and spent the rest of her existence having tortured fantasies without worrying about when People or US Weekly were going to out her.

The most terrifying part of all of this is that sure knowledge that Quinn, for whatever reason, could use the money.

She has legal representation coming out of her ass, thanks to Kurt, but not a single person she’d be happy to talk to about this; which is why it’s great that Brittany and Santana are visiting, because Brittany’s the one who knew about the club, and Santana’s the one in law school.

They give her tight hugs—the kind she gets from people who secretly feel sorry for her, but she doesn’t mind it so much from them—and she pours them both some Cabernet before they settle in her living room. (It’s almost sterile levels of white and gray and feels more like a doctor’s office than a house, which is why she’s spent exactly ten minutes in there before now.)

“You look worse than you normally do,” Santana says, wrapping an arm around Brittany’s shoulder, who tilts her head down and rests it on Santana’s arm in kind.

It’s ridiculous how envious she is, even of that much. “Thanks, Santana. That’s—I’m glad to see you’re doing well, as always.”

“Hey, we’re friends. Friends tell each other the truth,” Santana says, with a pointed look. “If you’re really as worn out as I think you are, you should’ve told Kurt to fucking shove this show somewhere and just taken off. Hawaii’s awesome this time of year.”

“It is,” Brittany agrees, reaching up and twisting the band on Santana’s finger. “Really pretty, and like, super relaxing.”

“Yeah, well. Maybe after the summer,” Rachel says.

Hell, she doesn’t even begrudge Kurt pushing for the tour. It’s good for her career, and she doesn’t know what she’d do with herself if she wasn’t working. Probably just drink all the time in her apartment; listen to old Broadway classics on vinyl and forget to cook. She needs the routine of the work almost more than she needs the break.

But more than that, she’s starting to realize that she just really needs help.

“I have a situation,” she says, folding her legs under her. The bags under her eyes feel heavy, and it took twenty minutes for Cheryl to cover them before the night’s performance. She wants a haircut, but can’t get one, because all the hair pieces depend on her having shoulder-length hair. Sometimes, she wishes she could just perform wearing her glasses, because she’s had three eye infections in six months from her contacts. And yet all of that pales completely to what she’s about to say. “This requires your complete discretion, and on top of that, I would really appreciate it if you didn’t laugh.”

Santana’s lips already twist into a light smirk. “Damn, Berry, I’m not making any promises. What’s with the secret service talk?”

“Sh,” Brittany says, and then nods for Rachel to continue.

“The other day… Puck took me to this place called Rapture,” she says, looking at Brittany’s face.

“The strip club?” Santana asks, before looking at Brittany as well. “The one that Ashley used to work at?”

“Unless there’s two of them and the other one is like, I don’t know, a petting zoo,” Brittany says, squinting at Rachel. “I don’t think she’d be so weird about going to a petting zoo, though.”

“Britt, I have to ask you something, and I want an honest answer, okay?” Rachel says, ignoring Santana’s small smile and eyeroll.

“Sure,” Brittany says, shifting up a bit and leaning into Santana more casually. “Is it about stripping?”

“No, it’s—how much do you know about the people who work there?” Rachel asks, because there’s not really a better way to put it.

“Well, my friend Ashley used to. I mean, we do fusion jazz ballet together, right. She’s really cool and told me about it, and then I told Puck because Puck wanted to know about things to do in Vegas. But I don’t know anyone other than Ashley, and I mean, she doesn’t work there anymore. Why?” Brittany asks, with a frown.

“Well,” Rachel says, biting her lip. “I sort of… got a lap dance from someone. And realized after the fact that they knew who I was. And I didn’t get them to sign off on it. I was hoping that you could tell me—I was hoping you’d know more about the girls that work there. Maybe assure me that if I go back with an NDA that…”

Santana laughs. “Rachel, are you stupid?”

“What?”

“You can’t go marching into a strip club with an NDA like four days after you got a lap dance. First of all, if that shit was going to get sold to the tabloids it already would have been; and secondly, stripping’s like hooking. There’s a code of honor. Whoever gave you a wettie that night, it’s never going to leave that room.”

Rachel looks between them and shakes her head after a moment. “No. I need more than that. This is my entire career, for God’s sake. A code of honor isn’t enough.”

“Well, an NDA over something that’s already happened isn’t going to fly, legally. You sign before you find out things; not after,” Santana says, finishing her wine and putting the glass back on the table. “You’re going to have to go about this the old school way.”

“Which is?”

“Asking nicely,” Brittany says.

“Yeah, no. I meant bribery,” Santana amends, before leaning down and kissing Britt. “Too sweet for this world, Britt-Britt.”

“Someone has to be nice,” Brittany says, with a shrug.

Rachel’s had many similar thoughts in the last four days, albeit for totally different reasons.

*

By the time Tuesday rolls around, she’s back to shaking. She blows off rehearsals, because honestly, it’s been two weeks and the show’s glued to the back of her mind already. They’re making a few changes to the mid-show intermission anyway, and she doesn’t need to be there for those—it’s the one part of the production she has no personal stake in.

Instead, she goes to the gym and spends a good hour on the elliptical, trying to work as much frustration and anxiety out of her body as she can. By late afternoon, she’s staring at the bottle of pills in her nightstand, but—she just can’t. Xanax helps, but it also turns her into a zombie. She knows for a fact that she would’ve handled seeing Quinn again a lot better the first time around if she’d been less out of her mind, and this is her last chance.

If it’s even a chance at all.

The last time, she’d been wearing a simple black dress with flats, just because Puck hadn’t told her a thing about what they were doing. Now that she knows what her intentions are— and maybe it’s just to talk to Quinn, but even so, she’ll be damned if she doesn’t look her absolute best—she’s taking out a short, strapless red dress instead. The kind of thing she doesn’t wear in public anymore, because it’s asking for twenty million pictures on TMZ that the entire world starts tearing apart.

She’s not lacking in confidence. She’s just a lot more selective about who gets to see what parts of her these days.

With the dress come five inch dark red heels that will, if she’s guessing right, just about bring her at eye level with Quinn. If they stay standing. Her gut roils at the idea that they won’t be, because if they’re sitting down—

There’s only one chair. She looks down at the hem of her dress again, and wonders how far it will slide up if she’s back on that chair, gripping it for dear life while Quinn more or less bullies her into accepting a dance she doesn’t really want.

Except that’s a lie.

She’s going to be sober this time, and it might be fucking torture, but Rachel accepted a long time ago that being tortured by Quinn Fabray is something that holds a lot more appeal for her than it should.

Why the hell else would she have put up with it for so long in high school?

*

The drive over is smooth enough; traffic hits an early evening lull in Vegas that is wholly unfamiliar to someone used only to endless jams out of LA and a complete lack of desire to own a car in New York, but she’s at Rapture by seven thirty, which has to be the weirdest time on earth to be entering a strip club.

The bouncer looks at her and says, “Welcome back”, which—she gives him her best haughty glare, but he just looks amused by her. She can’t blame him; she probably looks positively provincial right now, what with that baby rabbit look that she knows is all over her face. Still, she shakes her hair out and says, “I apologize for asking what is probably a very strange question, but do you serve any vegan food?”

The bouncer laughs. “You’re not here for a dance, are you.”

She smiles almost despite herself. “Not… immediately, anyway.”

“Kitchen does things on request, so if you can explain your vegan food, you’re good to go.”

It’s how she ends up eating a tofurkey burger while watching three strippers talk about their hair extensions in preparation of their eight pm show.

*

Her appetite isn’t what it should be, but she makes her way through most of the meal anyway, rolling her eyes when the waitress leans down extra far to ask her how it was.

“Delicious, thank you,” she sort of murmurs, before sliding a twenty up the girl’s hip and snapping her panties against it to put it in place..

“Is there anything else we can do for you?” the waitress asks, with a small smile at Rachel’s pretty serious blush.

“I—a vodka tonic, please. Make it a double.”

She might not want to be out of her mind right now, but the hell if she’s going in there stone cold sober, when in that room, Quinn holds all the cards and she can at best just hope not to make a fool out of herself.

*

Her handle on the situation drops abruptly when she makes her way over to the entrance to the back area and finds a different girl manning the table there, around 9pm.

“What can we get you?” the girl asks, a little gruffly, and Rachel feels a twinge of guilt at the reminder of what all of these girls are doing here.

Still. She’s the exception to the rule, because honestly, she really is just here to talk, tonight.

“There—you have a girl; she’s blonde, about 5’6… likes suits,” Rachel says, fumbling over the words.

“Oh, right,” the girl says, scanning down the reservation list in front of her. “You mean Rachel.”

“I—what?” Rachel asks, blinking at her.

“Blonde in suits, nice ass, right? Rachel. She’s with someone right now, but she’s free in about half an hour. How long do you want her for?”

Rachel hesitates. “… thirty minutes.”

“You got cash for that?” the girl asks. It’s a fair question, because fifteen minutes is three hundred dollars.

Rachel smiles wryly and says, “I don’t suppose you take American Express.”

Seconds later, her card is swiped through a terminal and she’s signing her name off on a bill that says, quite clearly, private services as the purchased item. My God, the amount of physical evidence—Kurt would kill her.

Something about the look on her face must tip off the girl in front of her, who chews her gum loudly for a second and then reaches for her hand. “Hey—don’t worry. I know who you are, as does everyone else in here, and nobody’s ever going to be told by us, okay? We’ve all got secrets we’d like to keep.”

Rachel takes a deep breath and nods, handing back then pen, and running a hand through her hair just to have something to do.

“You can go on ahead if you like. She’ll join you when she’s done,” the girl says, holding the curtain open again.

Rachel thinks she’s marginally more ready for what’s going to happen next now than she was the first time.

*

Unlike the first time, Quinn’s hair is down tonight; curled lightly at the edges, but otherwise flowing the way she used to wear it when she’d quit the Cheerios the second time around. The interplay of what Rachel expects to see and what she is seeing, absolutely overlapping for a change, is a lot for her to take.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Quinn says, pausing in the doorway, one foot off the floor like she can’t honestly decide if she wants to come in further to kick Rachel’s ass or just turn around again and decline her services.

“I’m—” Rachel hesitates, scanning up and down Quinn’s black skirt suit—hemmed just above the knee, and weirdly it looks like a real suit. Not the kind of fantasy fodder strippers would wear. Her collared shirt underneath the jacket is skin-tight and baby blue. The outfit is topped off by another skinny tie, this time tucked snugly under the jacket, and honestly, if she didn’t know better she’d think Quinn was on her way to some sort of Young Republicans fundraiser.

Quinn purses her lips for a long moment, before stepping into the room and closing the door behind her.

“I didn’t buy a dance,” Rachel says, getting up off the chair just to make that really, really clear. (She’d only sat down on it because fifteen minutes is a long time to be pacing.) “I came to apologize, and then—”

Quinn stares her down, until she adds, “I was hoping we could talk.”

“My conversational skills aren’t for sale,” Quinn says, sharply.

“This isn’t about pleasantries, Quinn,” Rachel says, feeling the conversation slip from her grasp. “I’m not here to bond about where we’ve been for the last seven years or how much we both loved Finn Hudson in high school.”

Quinn says nothing to that; just leans back against the door and raises an eyebrow at her.

Good God, that look makes her weak at the knees. Even after all this time.

“I’m—” Rachel starts to say, and then looks at the ground, licking her lips and gathering her thoughts. “As far as the rest of the world knows, I’m in a relationship with Puck.”

Quinn makes a small sound that clearly means and I care why?

“There are many reasons as to why we perpetuate that myth, but the foremost reason is that there just isn’t a lot of money in being the lead in romantic comedies as a lesbian,” Rachel says, a little more firmly, before glancing back up at Quinn. “And you know that romantic comedies have always been my forte.”

Quinn’s surprise fades within seconds. “You’re here to make sure I don’t tell anyone you went to a strip club.”

“Yes,” Rachel says.

“And moaned loudly at the feeling of another woman sitting on you. Touching you,” Quinn says, before pushing off from the door.

Rachel says nothing, but swallows hard at the almost predatory look on Quinn’s face.

“Well. I can’t say I saw this coming,” Quinn murmurs, stepping into Rachel’s personal space without any hesitation whatsoever. Rachel abstractly wonders if there’s even such a thing as personal space in this job, but then Quinn continues with, “You have the entire world wrapped around your finger, Rachel, and yet here we are, with me holding your future in my hands.”

Rachel closes her eyes unwillingly and says, “I would really appreciate it if we could both be adults about this.”

Quinn laughs softly and says, “Yes Because that’s what you and I have always excelled at. Being adults together.”

“High school was a long time ago, Quinn. I’ve forgiven you for all the shit you’ve done to me, so maybe you can get over your issues with me as well, and we can just… shake on it,” Rachel says, forcing herself to angle her head just enough to look into Quinn’s eyes.

Quinn’s expression slackens for a second, and then she says, “Tell me, Rachel. What part of it did you get off on last time—the fact that you finally had one up on me, or the fact that you could finally see something you’ve apparently been wanting to see for seven years?”

Rachel feels herself blanch. “I don’t know—”

“We’re all friends; the other girls and I,” Quinn says, with a small but mean smile. “Tracy said that you might as well have held up a picture of me when you … requested the dance.”

“Why are you doing this?” Rachel asks, quietly and softly.

Quinn says nothing in response to that, but does thankfully a step back and says, “If I was going to try to ruin your life, I would’ve done so three days ago.”

“Why haven’t you?” Rachel asks, exhaling slowly and willing her legs to stop shaking. “It’s not like we were ever friends. It’s not like you owe me anything. And you clearly need the money, so—”

Quinn stares her down, and Rachel bites her lip at that look; it’s the one that, in every single one of her fantasies, precedes Quinn shoving her up against a wall, or a mattress, or a tree, or anything, and then taking her without even asking if it’s okay.

This isn’t a fantasy, though, and Quinn just says, “You know what my rates are. I don’t need the change I’d get from spreading a rumor about you to the media.”

Rachel flushes heavily and says, “You’re—I mean, some would argue that you’re overpriced, but—”

Quinn scoffs, rolling her eyes, but then says, “How long do you have me for?”

Rachel almost swoons at the question, but then sobers immediately when it’s not an offer of something more. It’s just a statement of fact.

“Thirty minutes,” she says, feeling incredibly ashamed of it. “And I meant what I said, I don’t—”

“Are you sure?” Quinn asks, her hands already moving towards the front button on her jacket.

“Quinn, you’re—you might not be a friend, but you’re not a—”

“A whore?” Quinn says, dryly, with a small smile.

“I was going to say purchase, but—” Rachel says, swallowing the rest of her sentence.

Quinn’s smile lingers when she says, “I suppose you’re going to insist I keep the money?”

Rachel makes a small noise and sort of halfway nods and tilts her head.

“I told you before that I don’t do charity,” Quinn says, calmly.

“I—”

“Sit down, Rachel. And don’t bother trying to pull your dress down further. At six hundred dollars, you’ve earned a little thigh on thigh contact,” Quinn says.

Rachel mutely sits down on the chair and watches as Quinn walks around it, until she’s standing behind her.

“Would you like some music, or—”

“God,” Rachel exhales, softly.

“We’re really going to have to work on rule number two with you, aren’t we,” Quinn murmurs.

Rachel almost asks something stupid like why are you doing this to me, but vocalizing that would not only break rule number two; it might make it stop, which is about the last thing she wants. She might be paying for it, God, and she can already tell she’ll feel horrible about all of this tomorrow, but Quinn is doing what she can to make her forget it.

If this is her fantasy, she’ll live it out in whatever way she wants to.

“I’m not good at staying quiet,” she says, ignoring the way her voice cracks. “And I don’t care about the music. Do what you want.”

Quinn laughs low, her hands pressing down on Rachel’s shoulders, and says, “You know, I can’t even tell you how many times I wished someone would gag you in glee club. It’s funny how things turn out, isn’t it.”

Seconds later, Quinn’s skinny tie is slipping down over her forehead, past her eyes, her nose, and then finally settling on her lips.

“Bite down on it,” Quinn says. It’s not a question, and all Rachel can do to stop from moaning really prematurely is close her eyes and follow her instructions.

It’s tied behind her head quickly after that, and Quinn moves back around her, her fingertips trailing around the top of Rachel’s back.

“I wish Finn Hudson could see us now,” she murmurs, softly.

Rachel’s knuckles are already whitening with her grip on the chair, and Quinn’s not even undone the second button on her jacket.

It occurs to her far too late that Quinn might simply be trying to kill her, and honestly, when Quinn starts softly humming something a moment later, glancing at Rachel’s face from time to time but mostly just running her hands up and down her own body and watching that happen, Rachel can’t honestly bring herself to care.

*

She’s breathing heavily around the tie by the time Quinn’s down to her underwear— matching bra and panties this time—and settling down on Rachel’s lap.

“You know,” she says, her voice still not much more than a low murmur, “I’ve always wondered what women get out of this.”

Rachel could explain, if she wasn’t gagged, and if she wasn’t too busy staring at Quinn’s hand, trailing down between her collarbones and then cupping her own breast through her bra.

“I mean—” Quinn says, before sliding forward just that little bit more, until her thighs are sliding Rachel’s dress up the rest of the way and they’re almost stomach to stomach; and Rachel can feel Quinn’s hand between them, clearly plucking at her own nipple but running the back of her hand against Rachel’s every time she does it. “It’s not like you can actually feel me against anything that—matters.”

Rachel inhales sharply when Quinn’s mouth moves up to her ear, and continues, “Though maybe you don’t need actual contact. Maybe just the thought of me, finally this close, is enough for you.”

Her heart is almost beating out of her chest and she knows Quinn can feel it; can tell that Quinn’s enjoying herself immensely, and God, this is so high school. Not that she’d ever thought she’d be getting a lap dance from Quinn Fabray in high school, but they’re still being bitchy sixteen year olds, fighting over—God knows what, at this point.

Maybe fighting just to win. All Quinn wants is to best Rachel, and all Rachel wants is for Quinn to realize that she’s trying to win the wrong thing.

Well, she wants that, and maybe a hand between her legs; fuck, she’d settle for a thigh right now.

Quinn’s looking at her carefully, smiling viciously at the way Rachel’s pupils have blown completely, and the small sheen of sweat on her forehead.

“How long have you been thinking about me like this?” she asks.

Rachel makes a helpless noise, feeling herself clench emptily again, because they’re not her rules and it’s not her tie.

“Senior year?” Quinn asks, raising her eyebrows and running her hands up and down Rachel’s arms.

Rachel shudders at the feel of her hands—soft, feminine—but is cogent enough to shake her head.

“Junior year?” Quinn asks, circling Rachel’s wrists and then gently pulling them off the seat.

Rachel inhales sharply and shakes her head again.

Quinn’s relentless levels of confidence at the power trip she’s on drop away a little when she leans back and says, with a frown, “Surely not sophomore year.” Her thumbs are still brushing against Rachel’s wrists, and Rachel’s heart rate kicks up another notch at it.

Rachel shrugs helplessly. There’s no point in lying about it; she’d found Quinn unbelievably attractive before the pregnancy, but it wasn’t until Quinn’s life had fallen apart completely that she’d felt anything other than abstract admiration for her.

Quinn’s expression hardens for a moment, but then she sighs and says, “It doesn’t really matter. I don’t know why—”

Rachel swallows carefully and then looks down at their hands; at where Quinn’s thumbs are still making small circles right up against her pulse.

Quinn snaps out of whatever mood she’s in and pulls on Rachel’s wrists, almost crushing them together, but then bringing her own hands up towards her upper back, and Rachel can’t help a little surprised noise at what she thinks is going to happen.

Quinn looks at her sharply and says, “Do it without touching skin, or we’re done.”

Rachel honestly doesn’t know how she has any circulation left to her fingertips, but they cooperate, and that’s when the idea that she might not just have to put up with Quinn tormenting her like this.

She’s past the point of being embarrassed, because so what if Quinn knows how she feels; Quinn’s the one who’s mostly and straddling her. They’re in this together, and that means that she’s not the only one who can play this game.

She lets her left arm fall away, and brings her right hand up towards Quinn’s bra clasp, squeezing it together with just two fingers—carefully, to be sure that she’s not accidentally touching skin—and then letting it snap open.

The bra falls forward, between them, and Quinn stares at her for a long moment, not saying anything.

Rachel stares back and then follows the edge of the bra, up and over Quinn’s shoulder, to where it’s mostly dangling on her upper arm now.

Quinn watches her hand go, until it stops right at the edge of the cup and lingers there, and then says, slowly, “I would’ve thrown anyone else out of the room by now.”

Rachel blinks slowly and then feels herself smile.

“You never could follow instructions for the life of you,” Quinn murmurs, rolling her shoulders until her bra actually drops away, and then letting it dangle from one of her fingertips for just a second, right in front of Rachel’s face, before tossing it to the side. “Hands back on the chair, Rach.”

Rachel abstractly wonders if it’s possible to come without anyone touching her, which is when Quinn shifts around on her lap and brings her legs between Rachel’s, spreading them further until she can sit between them.

Her ass rocks backwards, and Rachel’s moan is completely to be expected at this point, muffled as it is by the tie. Quinn looks over her shoulder and smiles before rolling her body back again, and says, “I hope you know that this is pathetic.”

Rachel could legitimately give a fuck, and closes her eyes as Quinn shifts against her, again and again—so close, but not close enough.

*

Just like that, it’s done. With a quick glance at her watch, Quinn’s off her and says, “Keep the tie; you’ve practically bitten through it.”

Rachel reaches behind her head and unties it gently, before forcing her legs together and jolting when there’s contact.

“Jesus Christ,” she mumbles.

Quinn’s already mostly dressed again by the time she can think enough to pull her skirt back down, and is staring at her with an inscrutable expression.

“I was never going to tell anyone,” she says, finally.

“Trust me, neither was I,” Rachel murmurs, standing up clumsily, one hand on the back of the chair to steady her.

Quinn’s collected expression falters for a moment as she’s zipping up her skirt. “Would there be anyone to tell? Anyone I know, I mean.”

Rachel takes a deep breath and says, “I can’t do this, right now. We can talk, but—not here.”

Quinn’s face falls, briefly, and then goes that calculated level of cold again without warning. “Right.”

“Quinn, don’t,” Rachel says, almost desperately. “That’s not how I meant it. I’m obviously not judging you, I just—”

“I shouldn’t have asked,” Quinn says, running two hands through her hair and giving Rachel a dismissive look. “We’re not friends. A good tip doesn’t make for a relationship.”

“For God’s sake, I didn’t—”

“Rachel. You’re a client. And I’m a dancer. Lima might as well be another planet as far as I’m concerned. I haven’t been back since high school, so the reason I don’t actually want an answer to my question is because I don’t care,” Quinn bites out.

“How did you end up here?” Rachel asks, because she can’t help herself. “Are you—are you okay?”

“It’s really none of your business,” Quinn says, already heading to the door.

“Wait,” Rachel says, feeling around her purse for the tip she desperately wants to leave behind, in the faint hope that it will make this less awkward for both of them. “Let me—”

“So help me God, if you’re going to try to tip me two hundred dollars again, I will do a lot worse than gag you next time,” Quinn says abruptly, her hand already on the handle. “Dancing is what I do, Rachel. I don’t need your fucking guilt money.”

Rachel stops in her tracks and watches as Quinn disappears around the corner, with only one thought running through her mind.

Next time? and isn’t this exactly where you’d like me (part 3/8) Quinn/Rachel, NC-17 (x 10 million), for an anon we’ll call “first name rach, last name berry” who wanted Rachel doing a show in Vegas for 2-3 months and somehow ending up getting a lap dance from Quinn.

AN: Almost, almost sex! Well, in some countries I think this counts as sex. I appreciate your patience in this matter. Rachel told me to stick to the script. The script involves angst and masturbation, so. NOTE THIS IS A REPOSTING I ACCIDENTALLY DELETED THE ORIGINAL CHAPTER 3. THIS IS NOT CHAPTER 6.

* The rest of the week is plainly torturous. Rachel considers taking a freezing shower and then standing outside in the night air for like five hours just to give herself pneumonia by Thursday, but while that would get her out of her nightly commitment, it would also give her … pneumonia.

There’s basically nothing she can do but count the days, tossing and turning desperately under a top sheet each night while Quinn whispers next time in her mind.

The times when she’s not singing her way through Broadway and popular classics on autopilots, she’s picking at meals with Puck and Kurt while wondering what else Quinn can do to torment her. She knows she should stop it—she’s an adult, for God’s sake, and Quinn might not want to have a conversation with her but she could also just—what, exactly? Wait outside of Rapture for Quinn to finish, and stalk her outside of her car? Take her out to an early breakfast or a really late dinner, and discuss where they’ve been for the past seven years over some eggs benedict and diner coffee?

There is no way Quinn would agree.

And honestly, the more questions she asks Quinn, the more she’ll have to answer. Things that Quinn seems to enjoy tormenting her about enough as it is; her ridiculous crush, her sexuality, her inability to do anything about either of them.

The reality of it is that those thirty minutes she buys are the only window she’s ever going to have, and she’s going to have to work within them. Quinn needs to dance to keep some semblance of dignity, and Rachel needs to give her money out of some sense of irrepressible do-gooding, or whatever. There’s a reason she supports five different charities. Maybe this is just the sixth one.

She’s letting Quinn Fabray torture her with her body out of some misguided sense of pity, and that’s just not okay.

She’s going to have to change the way they relate to each other if she ever wants it to be about more than that.

*

By the time Sunday rolls around, it’s all she can think about.

The show is a disaster; she trips on a cue and almost faceplants into her male dancer’s lap, which would’ve probably given a bit of extra swing to the bad impression of Mariah Carey she’s currently powering her way through—if not for the part where it’s decidedly unsexy, and just kind of amateurish.

She’s not an amateur, for God’s sake. She hasn’t been an amateur since she was five and won her first legitimate singing competition. Even so, she can’t seem to stop acting like one; flubbing lines, flopping cues and nearly freezing on stage every time she sees shoulder- length blonde hair or a woman wearing a suit.

She already knows that she’s going to get reamed out by her vocal coach by the time her summer’s over. Her voice is strained and the rest of her is too tired to compensate for it with technique.

Kurt starts looking guilty by the time the Monday rehearsals roll around, at which point she asks that some of the dancing numbers are replaced a few sit-down numbers. For one moment, he drops the concern about her career and her choices and just says, “I have an idea.”

His voice is out of practice, but next to hers, it doesn’t even really matter; she introduces him as her best friend and “the only other Evita worth hearing” and they get a standing ovation from the audience after a toned down, hand-held version of Don’t Cry For Me Argentina that brings tears to her eyes.

“Thank God,” Kurt whispers against her neck, also sounding choked up. “You do still feel it, sometimes.”

It adds another crack to her heart, bisecting the collection she’s already carrying with her and has been ever since high school.

*

On Tuesday, she feels essentially the exact opposite from how she felt the week before. It’s not ready, exactly, because God knows that she’s never going to be ready to see Quinn, but it’s a lot calmer, anyway.

Two dresses are hanging on her closet for most of the day while she putters around, resting her voice by for a change not humming and actually taking the time to cook something for lunch rather than relying on another round of take-out, it’s almost time to head out.

Of course she’s looked up Rapture’s opening hours. Honestly, there’s less of a chance of her getting spotted if she’s there embarrassingly early, and it’s not like Quinn can possibly make her feel worse about being there at all.

Maybe there’s the added fact that last time, she’d had to hear that Quinn was with someone else, and—

God, now she’s getting possessive about a stripper.

She shakes her head and looks at the dresses; one white, skin-tight and mid-thigh, and the other black and long, and in the end decides that maybe, she’s been going on about this all wrong. Quinn obviously has no problem playing head games with Rachel Berry, Broadway’s favorite cretin, but she might have a lot more difficulty pretending that this is all just a job.

She pulls on her oldest pair of jeans, a pair of ballet flats, and a red, soft cashmere sweater and does absolutely nothing to her hair aside from run her hands through it a few times for volume. When she looks in the mirror, she looks almost eighteen again to herself—and maybe this will be the thing to make Quinn stop and actually listen to her for a change.

*

The bouncer smiles at her and she smiles back, and the bartender asks, “Vodka tonic, right, Ms. Berry?” when she walks over to it.

It makes her realize she’s somehow become a regular, in two visits. Which then makes her realize that Quinn is probably waiting for her; well, as if the phrase next time hadn’t been indication enough.

So much for the complete advantage of surprise.

Not that she was ever hoping to have it, anyway. She’s never managed to surprise Quinn. Even when she told Finn about the baby, Quinn had been bracing herself for it all along. And that just brings her back to wondering what the hell Quinn is bracing herself for now; what it is that’s gotten her into this city, into this line of work, and how long she’s been doing it given how good she is at it.

The waitress who brought her Quinn the first time around smiles at her from across the room, and Rachel awkwardly raises a hand before taking another large sip from her drink. It seems to be enough of an invitation anyway, because the girl—Tracy, she thinks—stands next to her and says, “So, you and Rachel.”

“Me and Rachel,” Rachel agrees, before laughing softly. “What does it mean when someone uses your name as their stripper alias, exactly?”

Tracy shrugs and slides a tray of empty ashtrays onto the bar. “It has to be a name that you’ll respond to; something easy to remember. Something close to you. Tracy’s my middle name.”

“Right,” Rachel says, wondering if she looks as confused as she feels.

Tracy hesitates for a moment, before looking at Rachel with an open, curious expression and saying, “Who does she remind you of?”

“Hm?”

“Everyone who comes to places like these is hoping to find something to replace something they don’t have anymore, or never had at all. People who come more than once suffer from it more badly than others,” Tracy says.

When Rachel blinks at her twice, she smiles and says, “I’m majoring in psychology. Debt- free, I might add.”

Rachel exhales softly and says, “Shit, I’m sorry. I’m sure that my assumptions were all over my face, even if I didn’t say anything.”

“Hey, it’s fine. According to the Enquirer, you eat babies for breakfast, and that clearly isn’t true, either,” Tracy says, with a smile.

“You know, this is probably the most honest conversation I’ve had in months,” Rachel says, finishing the remainder of her drink and putting it on the bar. “And you’re not wearing a shirt. Or pants. If only the Enquirer knew, right?”

Tracy laughs, but sobers quickly and says, “Whoever it is you’re trying to forget about—this isn’t going to help in the long run, you know. Rachel’s just a fantasy, and she’s never going to be more than that.”

Rachel sighs and says, “It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“In what way?” Tracy asks.

Rachel glances towards the back area and says, slowly, “It’s not my place to say.”

Tracy lets that go easily enough; just glances at the clock above the bar and says, “Her shift starts in ten minutes. Can I book you in?”

“Yeah,” Rachel says, already reaching for the credit card in her purse. “You can.”

*

The first thing she does when she gets to the room—a new one; sea foam green with accents of yellow, like some sort of beach house fantasy that Rachel doesn’t really care to analyze too much. It feels more like a bathroom, and definitely not the kind of place where clothes are going to be tossed around for her entertainment—is pick up the chair in the middle of the room and move it into the corner.

Then, she sits down on the floor in the middle of the room, legs folded in front of her, and just waits.

It gives her a little bit of edge, but just for a second, because when the door opens and Quinn walks in—

Rachel actually gasps, and Quinn smirks in response, before nudging the door shut with a white tennis shoe.

“You’re almost ridiculously predictable,” she says, without any real rancor, her hands almost automatically reaching up to her hair and pulling it up into a ponytail with such practiced moves it’s like they’re actually still eighteen, or at least in high school, and Quinn’s about to go to a pep rally and show the entire world her spank pants.

Rachel doesn’t bother trying not to stare; not when that’s the whole point of the outfit. Instead, she stares at Quinn’s face for a short while, before dropping her eyes and scanning up Quinn’s bare legs to that shred of a skirt that doesn’t cover anything—honestly, whoever designed the Cheerios uniform was at best a pervert and at worst a pedophile— and then the top, tighter than it ever had been on teenaged Quinn. The lack of sleeves have always been what got to Rachel back then; Quinn’s arms, almost unwillingly defined and giving her an edge that good, Christian girls really didn’t have much reason to have.

“Jesus, Berry,” Quinn says, when her low, slow gaze finally settles on Quinn’s eyes again. “Desperate much?”

“Honestly, Quinn, I’m not ashamed to say that this is doing something to me. What defies belief is the idea that you would dig out a seven year old uniform just because you think it will get a rise out of me,” Rachel says, praying she can keep her voice steady throughout.

The certainty on Quinn’s face flickers away for just a few seconds, but it’s enough for Rachel to realize there is an opening, and she says, “I know why I’m here, but why aren’t you throwing me out?”

Quinn’s eyes are sharp when she says, “Because you keep paying for me to be here.”

“You said the other day that you didn’t need extra money,” Rachel points out, pulling her legs up to her chest. “Surely a few hundred bucks aren’t worth having to spend 30 minutes near someone that you never liked and now positively loathe?”

She watches as Quinn’s jaw works for a moment, but there’s no response forthcoming.

“What are you getting out of this, Quinn?” she asks again, softly. “Just the knowledge that I want you and I can’t have you? Or is there something else?”

“How long?” Quinn asks, in response, but it’s with an undercurrent of steel that wasn’t there before, and Rachel gets up to her feet when she realizes that she’s actually getting through to Quinn.

“I’m not here because I pity you,” she says, taking a tentative step forward. “I need you to understand that. This isn’t about—maybe it is a little, but it’s not just about pity. Not for me, and not for you.”

“Why would I pity you?” Quinn asks, her voice thready. “You got everything you ever wanted.”

Rachel takes another step forward, until she’s in Quinn’s space, and looks at her as steadily as she can. “Not everything.”

Quinn’s lower lip disappears between her teeth, and Rachel watches as she chews on it. It’s probably the most normal thing she’s done since her first time at the club, and it makes her want to reach out and touch Quinn’s face; hold it, maybe. Kiss her.

She digs her nails into her palm and shakes her head to clear her mind..

“I paid for an hour,” she says, softly. “And you can’t possibly take that long taking off your clothes, since you’re only wearing about four pieces anyway. So we’ll have to figure out something else to do for the remaining, oh, thirty five minutes.”

Quinn’s eyes darken abruptly. “Do we really, Rachel? Because the way I see it, all I have to do is sit on you for an hour and the terms of our little agreement here will have been satisfied.”

Rachel sighs when they’re at the same fucking impasse all over again.

“And what if I don’t pay you?”

Quinn’s mouth sets. “Then you leave, because someone else will.”

That thought sets something sharp and angry running through Rachel’s gut, and she looks back up at Quinn abruptly. “That’s not an option.”

“Fine. Then sit down on the chair, and let’s get started,” Quinn says, straightening abruptly; it’s all very head Cheerio, and Rachel smiles unwillingly, before shaking her head.

“No.”

“Rachel, stop wasting my fucking time—”

“I’m the one paying you, so you don’t get to tell me how to fulfill my fantasies,” Rachel says, a little sharply. “I’m tired of that particular repetition of our game.”

Quinn’s eyes close and open slowly, and then she smiles sharp—like a shark. “No offense, Rachel, but your body wasn’t exactly complaining about what I did for you last time.”

Rachel narrows her eyes and says, “You’re the one who insists on dancing for me, and I figure that at twelve hundred dollars a dance, I can start making some requests. Or am I still not understanding your job description correctly?”

The clearly visible anger and annoyance on Quinn’s face is way too much of a turn- on. “Fine. What do you want, Rachel?”

Rachel takes a deep breath and says, “You. Controlling me. Telling me exactly what I can and can’t do. Making me beg.”

“Beg for what?” Quinn asks.

“I really don’t care,” Rachel says, with a level of certainty that she doesn’t think she’s felt in years. Not since the last time she had one of those raging bitch fights with Quinn, anyway, and—judging by the small smile playing around Quinn’s lips, she’s not alone. “You’re smart, Quinn. Figure out how to work around what I want, and give me what I’ve paid for.”

Quinn examines her for another moment and then says, “Fine. If at any point, this heads into a direction you don’t like, say Hudson.”

“I’m—” Rachel blinks at her a few times, and then smiles faintly. “I’m not sure how I’ll manage that when you’re bound to just gag me again.”

Quinn’s answering smile is downright predatory. “Do you want to be gagged?”

Rachel feels herself get wet even before she says the words, but forces them out anyway. “No. In an ideal world, the only thing covering my mouth would be your hand.”

Quinn’s eyes flash with something she can’t interpret at all, but then Quinn just says, “I’m willing to bend the rules a little for twelve hundred dollars. Talk all you want.”

“What about touching?”

Quinn’s expression sobers quickly. “I’m not a goddamned prostitute, Rachel, no matter how much you might wish I was one.”

Rachel makes a small noise in the back of her throat and says, “You have no idea what I wish you were, but I would never demean you like that.”

Quinn hesitates for a moment and then says, “I know.”

*

Rachel’s first request is simple enough. “Dance for me. In front of me, I mean. Not on me.”

“I thought you wanted me to … control you,” Quinn says, lowly.

Rachel heads over to the chair and puts it a little closer to the center of the room again, before sitting down on it and crossing her legs.

“We both know what I said, Quinn. Figure out how to make it work,” she says, finally, watching as Quinn heads over to the stereo system by the door and flicks through the iPod on it.

“Fine. You don’t move. No matter what I do, you don’t move a fucking inch,” she finally says, not even looking at Rachel.

Rachel smiles for a second, before the slow pulse of some old Garbage song that she faintly recognizes comes through the speakers.

It almost reminds her of Glee club, the way Quinn slowly turns around and mouths the lyrics; except this song is about singular obsession and devotion, and the look on Quinn’s face is knowing, even as she starts softly singing I would die for you over Shirley Manson.

Her hands start loosely at her sides, but soon enough slide onto her hips, then up towards her waist, and finally up towards her own breasts.

Rachel almost points out that Quinn’s instruction is kind of stupid, because she’s not really capable of doing much more than mutely stare as Quinn dances a little further into the room. She was always good with choreography, but she’s almost Brittany levels of fluid and graceful now. It occurs to Rachel belatedly that she can actually say something.

“You’ve improved, since high school,” she says, softly.

Quinn glances at her for a moment, and then—right as the chorus starts—starts slowly sinking down into a straddle splits, one torturous inch at a time, her sneakers easy giving way on the floor beneath them. When she settles she smiles and says, “I picked up a few things since then.”

Rachel almost laughs, but honestly, the way Quinn then twists her upper body and drags it across the floor before arching it up towards Rachel—her laughter trails off into sort of a whimper instead.

“God, yes, you really have,” she murmurs, noting that Quinn sort of smiles at her again, but the lightheartedness of the moment can’t last; not when Quinn’s hands slide up her own body and she pushes up from the floor again using just her own knees as leverage. It’s— fucking impossible, and yet happening, and Rachel is almost transfixed by it.

Quinn sings a few more lines of the song, and then starts moving around the chair, running a hand along the back of it without touching Rachel, and Rachel almost cranes her head back to look but—the rule is no moving, now, and so she digs her heels into the ground a little bit more and then jerks unintentionally anyway when one of Quinn’s legs appears over her left shoulder.

“I think we’ll chalk that up to reflex,” Quinn says, leaning down low, murmuring the words right into Rachel’s ear.

“It was,” Rachel points out, a little pointlessly. Half of her is stuck in some archaic fantasy where all of this is happening in the middle of gym class, and she and Quinn are alone in a locker room, Quinn’s fingers sliding up her thigh at an alarming pace, before fucking her hard and fast, biting words of resentment and caution in her ear, like be quiet and you’re disgusting, look at how much you want me. The other half is watching as Quinn ignores the rest of her request and slides down onto her lap in one smooth movement, before singing a little bit more of the song, hands running up her own legs and then under the pleats of the Cheerios skirt.

“How do you still fit in that,” Rachel asks, dazedly.

Quinn shrugs a little and says, “I stay in shape. I’m clearly not alone, there.”

“No,” Rachel agrees, and watches as Quinn’s hands slide from under her skirt up Rachel’s thighs, before wrapping around her back and sliding down, cupping her ass. “Oh—what—”

“Don’t even bother denying that you like this,” Quinn says, squeezing hard without warning, and Rachel jolts forward, almost sending them both sprawling off the chair; Quinn has the presence of mind to put a foot down and balances them both, but then tsks at her warningly anyway.

“Sorry,” Rachel whispers, and then watches wordlessly as Quinn stops moving altogether and just stares at her.

“Were you in love with me, in high school?” she finally asks.

I’m in love with you now, Rachel thinks, stupidly, and then just says, “Maybe. I don’t know. We didn’t know each other well enough.”

Quinn tilts her head, running one hand back up Rachel’s back, and then says, “Yet somehow, all your fantasies are about me… using you.”

“It’s not about being used, Quinn,” Rachel says, even as her voice shakes when Quinn’s hand slides under her sweater and a fingernail trails up her spine. “It’s about giving up control.”

“Why would anyone want to do that?” Quinn asks, her eyes flickering from Rachel’s face to the bare inches of space between their hips, and then canting hers up again to the slow, steady beat coming from the stereo.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Rachel says, almost smiling but not really; working too hard on not shuddering to smile. “But there’s a reason that all my fantasies were about you.”

Quinn’s eyes drop down to her free hand, and it tugs on Rachel’s sweater. “Take this off.”

“I don’t—”

“Take it off, Rachel,” Quinn repeats, with another one of those slow rocks forward, and Rachel inhales sharply and bites her lip.

“You first,” she finally says, and watches as Quinn smiles and starts slowly dragging the Cheerios top over her head.

*

Whatever rules there are about Quinn’s job, some part of Rachel knows that a hell of a lot of them are being violated. For one thing, it’s not normal for the stripper to be undressing their customer, but somehow she’s exactly as topless as Quinn, and when Quinn tells her to shift forwards on the chair and then wraps her legs around Rachel’s waist, she actually gasps, because it brings them together in a way that—

“Put your hands on my hips,” Quinn says, softly. It’s an order, but it’s a tentative one.

“I thought you said—”

“Balance, Rachel,” Quinn insists, and Rachel’s not about to start arguing the physics of their current position; not when with every twist of Quinn’s hips into her stomach, the chair starts to cant a little bit.

She’s getting better at her levels of control, though, and maybe that’s how she ended up shirtless to begin with; Quinn looks moderately annoyed at the fact that she’s not a shaking mess like she has been the last two times already, and is pushing the envelope to get her into that state.

Quinn’s hands stop using Rachel as a resting place, and instead start moving; blunt fingernails trail up and down her sides in swirling shapes, and when Rachel tries to both move into and away from Quinn’s hands, Quinn makes a small noise of approval.

“I’m not being still,” Rachel reminds her, and Quinn glances up at her face, looking positively distracted.

“Can you even be stiller?” Quinn asks, and—there’s something about her voice that makes Rachel’s toes curl.

“What—”

“Shut up,” Quinn says, sitting up further and reaching behind her to unsnap her bra.

“God,” Rachel says, because—there’s no coat tails covering them this time; Quinn’s just wearing spanks and the skirt and her tennis shoes, and her breasts are right there—until they’re not just there, but actually brushing up against Rachel’s bra when Quinn shifts forwards again.

Rachel feels her hands dig into Quinn’s hips and releases a strangled noise that results in a low chuckle from Quinn, who says, “Am I living up to your expectations yet?”

“No,” Rachel says, because she can, but her head cants forward dangerously and settles on Quinn’s chest—by the time she remembers that she can’t touch unless told to, one of Quinn’s hands has already settled in her hair and is holding her in place. And God, she’s so close; so close to Quinn’s breasts, but she can’t do anything about that other than try to keep breathing.

“Talk to me,” Quinn says, somewhere above her.

Rachel shivers involuntarily and says, “About—”

“The fantasies that keep bringing you back here. They must really be something, Rachel; you didn’t have an awful lot going for you in high school, but you always had dignity,” Quinn says, sounding amused.

Rachel groans and says, “Surely you’re joking.”

Quinn leans back to look at her and says, “I’m not known for my sense of humor.”

“Funny, because calling yourself Rachel is pretty amusing from where I’m sitting,” Rachel says.

It’s almost an affectionate conversation, she realizes a moment later, when Quinn’s expression relaxes and she says, “Consider it a particularly petty form of revenge.”

“Revenge for what?” Rachel asks, wondering when Quinn’s going to say something about the way her fingers are almost kneading Quinn’s sides—but all Quinn does is run the back of her hand down her own chest, brushing over her own nipple on the way down, before saying, “It doesn’t really matter.”

Rachel makes a small noise, before watching the trek of Quinn’s hand on the way back again—Quinn’s other hand still in her hair, forcing her to keep watching—and God, she actually brushes her thumb past her own nipple. Inches away from Rachel’s face.

“What would you be doing right now, if you could?” Quinn asks. Something about her tone of voice has changed completely in the past few seconds, and—of course. She’s thumbing her nipple, and now pinching it. There is no way to simulate that movement, nor is there any way to stop a reaction to it.

Rachel says, “You know what.”

Quinn’s fingers twist again, and then she says, breathily, “You’d like it better if I demanded you do it, though, wouldn’t you.”

Rachel knows she’s going to be throwing out a pair of panties later that evening when she glances up at Quinn, eyelids heavy and vision not entirely 20/20 anymore, and says, “And to think that people thought we didn’t understand each other.”

Quinn’s hips still against her stomach, just for a few seconds, and then she says, “Scoot forward. I’m going to sit behind you.”

Rachel starts to protest, but Quinn tips a finger under her chin and looks at her with an incredibly haughty—and hot—expression on her face. “I thought you wanted me to take control. Don’t be a coward, Rachel. It’s unappealing.”

Rachel wonders if she should be talking to her therapist about how being so summarily dismissed is somehow the bigger turn-on between that and Quinn shifting around her, pressing into her back and wrapping her legs back around Rachel’s waist, before slipping her ankles between Rachel’s knees and then forcing her legs apart.

If not for the fact that she’s wearing jeans, she’d be incredibly exposed right now, and she knows it.

If the low humming sound Quinn makes behind her is anything to go by, she’s not the only one who knows it, either.

*

They have twenty minutes left, and honestly, there is not a lot of dancing going on anymore—Quinn’s faintly undulating against her ass, but most of it is just fingertips dancing around her skin, moving around all the places where Rachel would like to get touched.

Not that she’s not back to her previous state of shaking, hot mess anyway, though, because there might not be a lot of dancing, but there’s a lot of talking, and Quinn’s voice, silky and purely evil in her ear, demanding to hear every last one of her sexual fantasies is doing so much to her that for one stupid moment she actually wonders if she’s going to have a spontaneous orgasm.

“No, on my stomach,” she says, closing her eyes and moaning quietly when Quinn’s nails scratch down her stomach again, lingering around the waistband of her jeans.

“So I’d be pressing you into the mattress from behind?” Quinn asks, cruelly, because Rachel’s just about painted a fucking portrait of the position they’re discussing.

She can’t even formulate a yes anymore; just makes another helpless sound, her head tipping back onto Quinn’s shoulder and taking a deep breath.

Quinn’s hand brushes past the button on her jeans, just once, and then her hips still completely. “If you could do anything at all right now, what would you do?”

“God, Quinn, you know what—”

“Stay within the rules,” Quinn reminds her, still right up by her ear, and for one ridiculous second Rachel thinks she can actually feel Quinn’s lips on her neck.

“I’d—fuck—” she says, forcing some more air into her lungs, but honestly, if it wasn’t for Quinn’s arm around her waist, she’d be falling over.

“Fuck what?”

“I’d—myself,” Rachel says, feeling her cheeks burn red even though it’s surely not possible for her to be embarrassed anymore at this point.

Quinn’s fingers dance around the front of her jeans one last time, and then snap the button without any hesitation. “Do it.”

“Are you—”

“I said do it,” Quinn repeats, and even though some part of Rachel is pretty sure this is an awful idea, her hand has a mind of its own and disappears under her waistband within seconds.

“You’re going to have to be quiet. We don’t want to alarm anyone,” Quinn says, low; when Rachel glances to the side, Quinn’s eyes are trained on Rachel’s hand, moving rapidly between her helplessly spread legs, and masked only by her jeans.

“If you honestly believe that now is the first time in my life that I’m going to shut up—” Rachel starts to say, in one big rush of breath, and Quinn’s hand covers her mouth before she can get the rest of it out.

“I wonder what everyone at McKinley would say if they could see you now,” Quinn says, even as Rachel’s teeth close around one of Quinn’s fingers, and her hand swallows the first moan Rachel can’t contain.

She inhales sharply through her nose, even as Quinn murmurs, “You’re so depraved. And to think you spent all of those years pretending to believe in waiting for the right guy. Look at you. You can’t even wait until you can get home.”

Rachel closes her eyes and wishes she could shift her jeans down, or something, because the angle is tight and she can’t quite get her hand down far enough to comfortably fuck herself. Instead, her fingers are forced to just stay near her clit, sweeping past it and then around it while Quinn keeps on saying awful shit about her.

“It’s sad, Rachel. All those years of pretending to be obsessed with Finn, when really you were thinking about his girlfriend. I mean, what is that?”

Sad, Rachel thinks, which hardly stops her hips from jerking upwards hard enough to dislodge Quinn’s hand, though.

Quinn’s breath catches in her throat and then she says, “You’re nothing but a coward. Always telling me that we’re both destined for great things. That I’m more than just a face. That all that mattered to you was success. And now look at where we are; the darling stepchild of Broadway, fucking herself in front of a stripper.”

Rachel’s fingers slip and slide helplessly around her clit, she’s that wet, and she knows that Quinn is going to have some uncomfortably visible bite marks on her middle finger for the next few days, but it doesn’t matter; she’s close, incredibly close, and all it’s going to take is—

The next words out of Quinn’s mouth are, “Tell me, Rachel. Is this where you think you belong?”

She comes so hard she sees stars, which would be a joking matter at any other point in her life, with any other person holding her up and leaning away from her.

It takes her a good twenty seconds to catch her breath, and Quinn slips out from behind her in that time, casually getting dressed again—except for the part where she’s clearly shaking, a little, and Rachel exhales, “Don’t”, before forcing herself to take another deep breath and not shake.

“Don’t what?” Quinn asks.

“Don’t pretend that that didn’t just happen.”

“There’s a difference between pretending it didn’t happen and not caring,” Quinn says, before giving Rachel a pointed look. “Finn Hudson is a fairly accurate representation of the average man in terms of stamina, Rachel. You’re hardly the first person to come on the job.”

“That wasn’t the job,” Rachel states, with certainty.

“Believe what you want, Rachel. All I care about is if you think it was worth twelve hundred dollars or not,” Quinn says, coolly, before fishing her bra off the floor and looking at her wrist watch. “Unfortunately, we have five more minutes. I didn’t expect you to … finish as fast as you did.”

Rachel flushes furiously, but then forces herself to look at Quinn; really look at her. “Do you really expect me to just pick up my shirt and go home after this?”

Quinn stares at her with a hint of regret for a second, but then she just shakes her head. “You’re still so naive.”

“And you’re still not capable of letting yourself feel a damn thing.”

The mask slips down completely at that statement, and Quinn just says, “Don’t come back again, Rachel. There is nothing here for you.”

“You’re wrong,” Rachel says, with certainty she hasn’t felt in years.

Quinn’s out of the room before she can add anything to it, and she manages to just about get her sweater on before she feels her eyes well up. and isn’t this exactly where you’d like me Quinn/Rachel, NC-17 (x 10 million), for an anon we’ll call “first name rach, last name berry” who wanted Rachel doing a show in Vegas for 2-3 months and somehow ending up getting a lap dance from Quinn.

AN: I am running WAY late so I have not even read over this ONCE, but I’m pretty sure everyone has the right amounts of ladyparts, so whatever. Let me know if there are gregarious errors somewhere and I will edit them out. Thank you, kind audience; and now, let the angst sex begin.

*

It’s ridiculous to be crying. It’s ridiculous, because Quinn is right. It doesn’t make Rachel any less right, but it does mean that in seven years they’ve managed to not move an inch forward from where they were when they last saw each other: at high school graduation, with Quinn giving their class’ speech and sounding like her future was within her grasp.

Rachel had cried then, too, because at some point when talking at the podium, Quinn had looked right at her and almost smiled—and it had almost made it all worth it. The bullshit about Finn, the final year of having to watch Quinn separate from him altogether and grow up into her own, the realization that she’d stopped giving a shit about Finn and instead wanted to follow this new, mature Quinn wherever she was going, and then finally the knowledge that it was never going to be an option.

She hoped, then, that things could be different. And now? Now, she’s sitting in her car, silently crying, wondering what the hell else she can do. She wants to talk to someone about this; not her therapist, who would just tell her that she’s being unhealthy. Well, no shit. Of course she is. It’s unlikely to help at this point.

She’d tell Puck, but he and Quinn have such a complicated history that she has no idea what his reaction would be: barging in and fireman-carrying her out of the club, or just that deadly, jaw-locked expression that he gets sometimes when he doesn’t want to let on that something upsets him.

A bigger issue is that she can’t tell anyone that Quinn knows, because it would mean giving up Quinn’s secret altogether, and—maybe she doesn’t care if her friends know that she’s now blown an incriminating chunk of change on lap dances, but she cares too much about what they would think of the person giving them to her.

Her own reaction had been oh God, what has happened to you. Santana’s and Puck’s wouldn’t be as polite, and they had been Quinn’s people, once. She can’t even imagine how Kurt would react.

There’s only one person who wouldn’t judge, but Brittany still can’t keep a secret from Santana for the life of her, and so all Rachel can do is sit in her car and wait for her vision to clear, hoping that something will just give her an answer.

*

The knock on the window is what wakes her up, and when she blinks blearily, she sees Quinn. Not that that’s something new; except that the frown on Quinn’s face isn’t exactly the stuff of dreams, nor is the impatient motion she’s making that clearly means lower your window.

“What are you doing?” she asks, when Rachel’s followed her instruction.

“I fell asleep, Quinn. Last I checked it’s not a crime.”

Quinn’s mouth sets and then she says, “Are you hungry?”

“No, but I could use some coffee,” Rachel says, because it’s true; her hands are shaking with something and the caffeine will steady her.

“There’s an all night diner about five minutes away from here,” Quinn says, after another second of hesitation. “I can direct you there.”

Rachel says nothing; not because she doesn’t have words, but she’s worried that if she voices any of them, Quinn will just disappear again.

It would really help if she had some idea of what was happening right now.

*

The diner’s almost empty, and after a few moments Rachel slides off her sunglasses and almost relaxes into the booth.

She watches as Quinn rattles off an order that sounds a lot like “the usual” and then asks for some regular drip for herself.

“What happened to your hair?” she finally asks, when Quinn folds her hands together on the table and doesn’t say anything otherwise.

“They’re extensions. I haven’t let it grow out since senior year,” she says. She’s in jeans and a white, fuzzy sweater and about an eighth of the make-up that she wears on the job.

Rachel feels herself fall in love all over again, which is just so wrong and masochistic, because surely this is yet another step in Quinn’s ongoing plan to screw with her.

“So. Rachel Berry’s a lesbian, huh,” Quinn says, when they’ve been served.

Rachel nearly chokes on her first sip of coffee and then glares at Quinn, who barely hides a smile while cutting into her hash browns.

“I’m not trying to …” Quinn says, and then spears some potato, blowing on it before bringing it to her mouth. She swallows quickly and then says, “I’m trying to have an actual conversation.”

“You could pick a slightly less controversial starting point, given what happened earlier,” Rachel says, gripping her coffee tightly.

Quinn makes an assenting noise but then says, “It’s not a big deal, Rachel. You’re not alone.”

“Well, clearly I am, or I wouldn’t have blown nearly three grand on getting lap dances from you,” Rachel says.

Quinn coughs loudly and then says, “God, you really haven’t changed much.”

“Where I stand, honesty isn’t something to be disparaged for.”

Quinn wipes at her mouth with a napkin and levels Rachel with a look that promptly makes her shut up. “What I meant was, you’re not alone, in being gay.”

Rachel blinks at her a few times and watches as Quinn starts to fidget.

“You’re—”

“There’s a reason I can stay detached from what … I do,” Quinn says, a little absently. “It’s because it doesn’t do anything for me.”

“When did you realize?” Rachel asks. Her voice is little more than a whisper, because something about this answer matters a lot.

“Shortly after moving out here,” Quinn says.

“Which was—”

“After high school. UNLV offered me a partial on cheerleading, and they were cheaper than most of my other options.”

Rachel frowns. “But surely your parents—”

“Broke. And not the kind of people I wanted to be dependent on for much longer anyway,” Quinn says, cutting up a sausage and slathering some ketchup on it.

Rachel watches her eat it for a moment and then says, “Is this what you eat every night when you clock off?”

Quinn shrugs.

“Okay, not that I’m in any position to lecture you on the benefits of a home-cooked meal, but how on earth are you staying this thin?”

Quinn smiles wryly and says, “I have a fairly high-energy job, Rach.”

With that muted reminder, Rachel feels her stomach twist hard again, and she knows it’s showing on her face when Quinn’s relaxed expression disappears within seconds.

“I’m sorry. About—earlier,” she finally says, because they’re finally doing what she wanted to be doing all along: talking. Maybe even reconnecting. It seems inappropriate to not at least attempt an apology for—well, whatever they want to call it.

“Don’t apologize,” Quinn says, scraping her knife around the plate and then licking that off, too. She does it casually, but Rachel feels a low throb in her groin anyway. It’s the tongue. Or maybe the satisfied little noise Quinn makes. “Like I said; it wasn’t out of the ordinary.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It was you and me,” Rachel says, a little more sharply than she means to; mostly to distract herself from what she really wants to do right now, which is shove their orders off the table and crawl over it to kiss the living daylights out of Quinn.

The corner of Quinn’s mouth lifts. “It’s a more interesting way of dealing with our… issues than slapping you in the face, don’t you think?”

Rachel says nothing, because there’s nothing to say.

*

It’s a strange ending to an even stranger night, but when Quinn pays—noting that “don’t bother; this is all your money anyway”—and reaches for her jacket again, Rachel says, “Wait.”

“What?”

“What—what do we do now?”

Quinn’s already halfway out of the booth, but settles back into it and gives Rachel a cautious look. “What do you mean?”

“I mean—so we’ve had coffee, and we didn’t kill each other. Can I—” She trips on the words, and how embarrassing is that? “Can I see you again?”

Quinn’s expression glosses over quickly. “I don’t think so.”

“I just—”

“Rachel—clearly tonight did something to you, and I’m not in the habit of ignoring people I know when they’re sitting in their car, looking like their dog just died. You look like you can drive, now, so I’m going home to get some sleep, and I suggest you do the same.”

It’s cold. It’s so cold that it actually hurts, but the one thing that Rachel has now is the knowledge that on some level, Quinn cares.

“You are so full of it,” she says, training her eyes to Quinn’s and not flinching when Quinn’s narrow. “You’re so desperate to not connect with anyone who knew you before that, what, you’re just going to make me feel awful until I back away?”

Quinn says nothing.

Rachel pulls her sunglasses back down and says, “Really, Quinn, after four years of doing it daily, you should know by now that making me feel like shit really doesn’t result in me giving up.”

“Yeah, well, maybe it should,” Quinn says, sharply.

“Maybe you should just try something else for a change,” Rachel responds, getting out of the booth.

Quinn follows her outside and then reaches for her shoulder, stopping her.

“You’re here for what, two more months? What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right? You’re having some fun because you can, for a change, and then you’ll go back home and it’ll all just be this fond memory. But I don’t get the luxury of leaving this behind, Rachel, so—“ she says. Her voice betrays that this is the first true thing she’s said all night; maybe even since they met.

“If you actually think that I could ever put this behind me, you’re not as perceptive as I thought you were,” she responds, softly.

Quinn’s hand falls away, and by the time Rachel turns around, she’s already walked off towards a bus stop across the street.

She looks young, and tired, and altogether like someone that Rachel wishes she could actually get to know—have lunch with, cook dinner for, joke about the plot of an awful movie with. It’s Quinn, rather than that girl who strips for her, and when Quinn shoves her hands in her pockets and leans against the bus stop sign, looking down at the ground, Rachel knows that she’s going to keep trying, no matter how hard Quinn might try to discourage her.

Forgetting about her altogether isn’t ever going to be an option. Not now.

*

In the end, she calls Brittany anyway. Britt’s at some sort of dance class, but gamely cancels the entire thing when Rachel says, “It’s important.”

“What’s up?” Britt asks. There’s some rustling and then a sigh and Rachel smiles faintly at the sure knowledge that Brittany’s managed to contort herself into some ridiculous position only she would find relaxing, bracing herself for a long, rambling phone call.

It’s not clear when exactly they became friends, let alone good ones, but whenever she needs to forget about her day to day existence, Brittany is the first person she calls—always in fine form with her funny animal facts and ability to construct an entire conversation around the guy she saw walking to the bus stop with the cane that morning.

This isn’t going to be quite as light, unfortunately, but—God, she really just needs to talk to someone about it.

“I’ve been seeing a stripper,” she says. After careful considerations of various ways to break the news, this seems like the best one.

“What, like—dating one?”

Rachel feels her entire body cringe when she says, “No, like… paying one to give me lap dances. Every Tuesday for the past month.”

Brittany says nothing for a moment, and then goes, “You don’t need to pay for sex, Rachel, you’re way too hot for that.”

“Thanks, Britt, and—I’m not having sex, so that’s not it. It’s really just—well, I guess it’s not really just dancing, but… there’s reasons for it.”

Brittany sounds like she’s smiling when she says, “Okay, I’m confused. Use fewer words, and string them together better. Why are you paying for a stripper?”

“Because,” Rachel says, “the stripper in question is Quinn.”

Brittany says, “Oh.” A long pause, and then, “Quinn Fabray?”

“Yeah,” Rachel says, rubbing at her forehead.

“Huh,” Brittany says, and then adds, “I’ve always wondered what happened to her. Stripping, huh?”

“Britt, you can’t tell anyone.”

“No, of course not, she’d kill me,” Brittany says, and Rachel sighs in relief when apparently, seven years of not speaking don’t undermine the Cheerios hierarchy one bit.

“That includes Santana.”

Brittany makes a noise and then says, “So, is she good?”

Rachel knows she’s going a ridiculous shade of red. “At… stripping?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Yeah, she’s—” Rachel bites her lip and says, “I—oh, my God, I’ve never been more sexually frustrated in my life.”

“You should ask her out,” Brittany says, in response to that.

“I—what? I mean, I’ve tried. She doesn’t want to.”

“Oh, that sucks,” Brittany says, sighing. “I hate when Quinn used to do that. Like, we all knew she liked you, but she was always like blah blah I can’t. You know, how Santana was during junior year, but like way worse.”

“Wait,” Rachel says, blinking. “She liked me?”

“Oh, yeah,” Brittany says. There’s a loud crunch—an apple maybe—and then she adds, “Come on, Rachel, you saw those drawings in the bathroom.”

“She drew those to … bully me. And humiliate me,” Rachel says, dimly.

“Well, sure, but that’s just because it would’ve been super gay to just carry around a notebook full of drawings of you all year, I mean. What if she lost it?” Brittany says, with another loud crunch and some chewing. “Not to mention that like, when you hate someone, the way I hate that guy with the balloons over by the subway, you don’t draw them with flattering boobs, okay.”

Rachel wonders how it’s possible to feel so close to laughter and tears at the same time. “Okay, hypothetically speaking, if you are right about this—why wouldn’t she—I mean, I’m here now. And she obviously knows I’m interested—”

“Oh, she does?” Brittany asks, sounding genuinely curious.

“It’s—nevermind, Britt, not really the point,” Rachel says, before chewing on her lip and saying, “Why won’t she just—is it that awful to like me?”

“Aw, honey,” Brittany says, or almost coos. “Of course not. Quinn’s just complicated. Santana always said that she’s like an onion, because she makes people cry a lot when they cut her, or something. You know?”

Rachel laughs weakly and says, “Yeah, I know.”

“So maybe don’t cut her; just try to peel her, and it’ll be okay,” Brittany says, before yawning loudly and adding, “Hey, did you know that ducks have like two lady spaces? One real one and a fake one, because they get sexually assaulted a lot and if they don’t like the guy duck that’s trying to do them, they’re just like, no way are you getting into my actual baby duck maker.”

Rachel gives up on not laughing at that point, and half an hour later, when Brittany has to go, she actually feels substantially better.

*

Technically, there is nothing stopping her from hiring a private investigator.

There’s no Q Fabray (or L Fabray) in the phonebook, and trolling Facebook just reveals that Quinn has a locked profile that Rachel clearly can’t do anything with. Nobody else she knows would have Quinn’s phone number, and she can’t exactly call Judy Fabray out of the blue and be like, “May I have your daughter’s number? I ran into her at a strip club recently and would really like to reconnect in a way that doesn’t involve quite so much grinding.”

So: private investigator, which would be beyond creepy and invasive, or yet another Tuesday night at Rapture.

She doesn’t even bother reapplying her make-up this time, and when Tracy says, “Hey, we didn’t think you’d be coming back—” Rachel cuts her off with, “Here’s 1200 in cash; tell her to wear her normal clothing, please.”

Tracy blinks and says, “Okay, but—”

“I’ll deal with her questions. Customer is king, right?” Rachel asks, a little pointedly, and with all the fake diva bluster that three years of being a media darling have taught her to have. So what if she’s already feeling a little faint, and she knows this level of bravado will evaporate as soon as she’s near Quinn?

So what, indeed.

*

Quinn actually looks mostly amused when she walks in, wearing a knee-length red skirt and a white off-the-shoulder t-shirt that brings up all sorts of weird Flashdance thoughts—not that Rachel really needs more thoughts about Quinn dancing.

She’s barefoot, also, which is even stranger.

“I’m glad to see that you’re willing to listen to reason,” she says, dryly.

“Shut up and sit on me,” Rachel responds, tilting her chin up and almost daring Quinn to say no.

Quinn’s lips twist subtly, but then she says, “Or what, Rachel?”

“Or we have a conversation. About why you work here, maybe. Or about how long you’ve had feelings for me.”

Quinn’s eyes darken immediately. “Who the hell gave you that idea?”

“That’s a funny way to react to something that you clearly don’t think is true,” Rachel says, smiling in a way that she knows will piss Quinn off even further.

Quinn takes a quick, sharp breath and then says, “So much for wanting us to be friends this time around, huh, Rachel?”

“I find that friendship can’t be built on a bunch of posturing and lies, Quinn, so anytime you’re willing to drop those and admit that you feel something—just let me know,” Rachel says, leaning back against the chair and patting her lap gently. “Until then, I’m happy to be involved enough for both of us.”

Quinn shakes her head, but after a few moments moves to stand in front of Rachel anyway. “What do you want today?”

“You,” Rachel says, before reaching and tugging on the hem of Quinn’s skirt until their knees are almost touching.

Quinn says nothing for a moment, but then says, “I’m going to blindfold you.”

“Shouldn’t you be asking me if I’m okay with that?” Rachel asks, her fingertip still skimming along the edge of Quinn’s skirt, but not touching anything—not breaking the rules.

Quinn leans forward, brushing Rachel’s hair away from her ear, and says, firmly, “What makes you think I care?”

Rachel grips the skirt, hard, and then blinks in surprise when seconds later, it’s slipping off Quinn’s hips altogether.

Quinn doesn’t ask how much time they have; just trails her finger down Rachel’s cheek and says, “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

She walks out of the door in just her shirt and a pair of boy shorts, and Rachel almost laughs at the sight of it—really, though, how the hell can someone so comfortable with their body can be so uncomfortable with what it wants?

Like an onion, she reminds herself, and starts unbuttoning her own light blue dress shirt just because really, she’s going to need to work a little harder at peeling Quinn if this is in fact going to be the night that things change between them.

*

“How many of these ties do you own, anyway?” Rachel asks, when another one is slipped over her eyes and quickly tied behind her head.

“A few,” Quinn says, non-committally, and then asks, “Can you see anything?”

Rachel shakes her head, and then sits and waits, hands on the sides of the chair again, for something—anything to happen.

“I’m not sure this is the best idea,” she finally says. “I’m spending a small fortune to watch you dance, because God knows I don’t get to touch you, so—”

Quinn’s hands reach for her own without warning, and next thing she knows, she’s running them up and down Quinn’s sides—or well, Quinn is making the movement for her, straddling her legs easily and then pushing their joint hands up to her breasts.

“I—” Rachel starts to say, but then shuts up when Quinn’s nipples harden against her palms. “Oh, my God.”

“This is the last time,” Quinn says, softly—so softly that Rachel almost doesn’t think she’s actually said it, until she continues with, “I need you to leave me alone after this, Rachel.”

“What if I—”

Quinn’s hips shift forward abruptly, and Rachel’s hands grip almost without meaning to.

“I’ve given you everything I can. It’s just going to have to be enough,” Quinn says, in a tone of voice that sounds a lot like self-loathing.

Rachel closes her eyes despite the blindfold, and then finally nods. “Okay. I—okay.”

Quinn moves in even closer after that, and says, “Run your hands up and down my back; slowly, and use your nails.”

Rachel feels her panties soak, and bites her lip to not make too much noise too soon. They both like the anticipation, and if this is the last time—God, she can’t even think about it.

She just can’t.

*

Quinn’s face tracks along hers, nose brushing against her skin—first her cheek, then down her neck, and finally nuzzling between her collarbones. She can only feel where Quinn is going to go next, and Jesus, this really doesn’t meet the textbook definition of a dance in any way whatsoever anymore; her own hands are slipping under the back of Quinn’s bra, and she knows she’s marked her—knows that whoever comes next is going to get some seriously pre-used goods, and even though she’s more turned on than she ever has been in her life, the thought makes her feel like she’s going to be sick.

“How much for the entire night?” she asks, when Quinn’s nose brushes past her shoulder, and her hips slam forward hard enough to make the chair wobble.

“That’s not how this works,” she says, roughly.

Rachel’s hands blindly fumble until one of them is covering Quinn’s own hand, and says, “It works however you want it to, doesn’t it?”

Quinn’s hips grind to a halt, and then she says, “You do the math. I’m on until two. It’s eight thirty.”

Rachel laughs and says, “You actually think I can do math right now?”

“Fifty four hundred,” Quinn says, after a moment.

“Done,” Rachel says.

“Rachel, for fuck’s sake—”

“I know you’re not for sale. And we’ll do the hour, and after that, you can do whatever you want; read the newspaper, get an early late dinner, or play Scrabble with me or whatever. I just don’t want—”

She can’t finish the sentence, and Quinn takes an incredibly deep breath right by her ear and then says, “Why are you doing this?”

“Because you won’t,” Rachel says, and unsnaps Quinn’s bra, without asking for permission.

*

Most of her is focused on creating a memory; the way Quinn smells, like a weird combination of vanilla and cinnamon that just reminds her of somehow. The way Quinn’s lips feel close to her skin at all times, even if they’re not. The way that Quinn’s hips don’t ever really stop moving, even if it doesn’t feel like she’s focusing on them. The way Quinn’s hands are digging into her back, now, even if she’s trailing her own hands around Quinn’s sides and letting them rest just below Quinn’s breasts, silently asking if it’s okay.

Quinn says nothing, but her hips jerk a little more uncontrollably, and then Rachel decides that she’s a little tired of waiting for Quinn to voice anything she actually wants.

It’s never going to happen, and if she wants something, she’s just going to have to take it.

Her head lolls when her fingers first touch the puckered skin around a nipple, and she listens to Quinn breathe lightly through her nose.

“Is this—”

“Harder,” Quinn says, without even a second of hesitation, and Rachel’s hands clamp down almost involuntarily; cupping entire breasts, and then pinching Quinn’s nipples tightly enough for it to hurt.

Quinn’s hips jolt, and Rachel almost smiles—almost, if not for the part where she thinks she might actually lose her mind.

“I want—” she starts to say, but Quinn bites down on her shoulder, hips still sloppily rocking forward, and she trails off into a moan that’s loud enough to drown out the sound of the dance floor in the main club.

“Fuck,” Quinn hisses, around the skin between her teeth, and Rachel twists her thumb and forefinger, wondering how much longer they’re going to pretend that this isn’t—

She thinks she imagines it, the first time, but Quinn desperately cants forward again, pressing herself against Rachel’s stomach again, and she’s then she’s sure. She knows.

“You’re—” she breathes, taking a deep breath and licking her lips, hoping for just a little bit of calm.

Quinn lifts her head, by the feel of it, and then says, “What?”, all irritably and like she really couldn’t give a fuck about whose lap she was on.

“You’re wet,” Rachel says, still disbelieving, but—Quinn’s hips stop moving immediately, and Quinn’s entire body tightens until they’re just mutely sitting together. “You’re—oh, my God. You’re getting wet.”

“Rachel—”

“You want this,” Rachel repeats, because you want me sounds like far too much to read into the situation. “How can you possibly still expect me to pretend that you don’t want this, when I can feel what it’s doing to you?”

Quinn’s off her lap in a flash, and by the time Rachel has slipped off the tie and is seeing again, Quinn’s already shrugging back into her shirt.

“Quinn—”

“Rachel, just shut the fuck up,” she almost snarls, before fishing her bra off the floor and heading over to the stereo with jerky movements.

Rachel’s off the chair in seconds and—fuck the rules, she thinks. Fuck them. She reaches for Quinn’s shoulder, and then gasps when Quinn whirls around and, without a break, grabs for both of Rachel’s wrists and holds them tightly.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Why are you so upset?” Rachel asks, taking a step back, and rubbing at her wrists when Quinn lets go of them.

“Why the hell do you think?” Quinn asks, in a trembling voice that usually precedes her cracking open almost completely—Rachel flashes back unwillingly to junior prom, and wonders if she’s going to get slapped in the face again.

“I don’t know, Quinn, because clearly you’re not the only one in this room who is incredibly turned on right now,” she says, hating the way her voice sort of whines through it, but she’s incredibly out of her depth.

Quinn exhales through her nose and then straightens, slowly. “This is a job. This is—for God’s sake, a few nights a week, I perform a few dances, because it’s getting me through my degree and I need the money. It’s a fucking job, Rachel—a job without attachments and with clear limits that avoid conversations like this happening.”

“I know there are limits. I didn’t ask to break them. You made me touch you,” Rachel says, sharply. “And I’m not the one who has consistently insisted on paying for privilege of having your company, either. If you want to fuck me, you could’ve just—”

“No, I couldn’t have,” Quinn says, slowly and deliberately.

“Why the hell not?”

“Because you’re Rachel Berry, and when you look at me, you see a fucking fantasy you had years ago at best, and a stripper you can pay for at worst,” Quinn says, her voice cracking on the last word. “You just tried to buy me, Rachel. I don’t care what your intentions are—”

“So what, this is all about pride?” Rachel asks, unable to keep her voice from hitting hysterical registers. “The reason we’re standing here having this conversation is because you get to keep your pride?”

Quinn doesn’t say anything, and Rachel, for once, wonders if she might be the one to snap and hit Quinn instead.

“What about my pride? What about the fact that I can’t pretend that I don’t feel things for you, or the fact that I’ve let you back me into this ridiculous corner where the only parts of you I get are the ones that you can justify giving up under the pretext of this job?” Quinn’s eyes fall to Rachel’s feet momentarily, and Rachel shakes her head. “I can’t believe you think I’ve ever thought so little of you.”

“Why? It’s the truth, isn’t it?” Quinn says, running a hand through her hair and leaning back against the door. “I’m not ashamed that I’m using my body to make money, Rachel, but there’s a long divide between not being ashamed, and being okay with someone I know— who used to know me, seeing me like this.”

Rachel licks at her lips and says, “So don’t let me see you like this.”

“It’s a little too late for—”

“Let me take you home.”

Quinn’s entire face draws shut. “What, now that you’ve paid for it?”

“Not because I’ve paid for it. Because you want me to.”

Quinn exhales very shakily and then says, “Rachel—”

“If you can’t, I need a reason,” Rachel says, not even caring that she sounds like she’s begging now. It won’t be the first time, around Quinn. Not by some distance.

“Because I need this job, and you’re destroying my ability to compartmentalize,” Quinn says, sounding every bit as devastated as she did when she said I don’t hate you in that hallway, all those years ago.

This is the girl that Rachel’s never known how to not be in love with, because there is something so incredibly beautiful about a Quinn Fabray who’s falling apart in front of her.

“Okay,” she says, quietly, lowering her eyes to the ground and looking around for her shirt.

Her back is turned when she’s shrugging into it, and her fingers tremble around the buttons too long; she misses one and has to start over, and then all of a sudden, Quinn is right behind her again, her forehead dropping onto Rachel’s shoulder.

There’s a long, tense moment in which Rachel doesn’t even dare to take a breath.

Finally, Quinn exhales, and whispers, “I hate you for doing this to me.”

“Doing what?” Rachel asks.

Seconds later, Quinn’s hands are swatting away her own, and her shirt is pulled open, buttons flying everywhere, and then she’s being backed into a wall, with Quinn’s angry, biting kisses pushing her over there, step by step.

*

Quinn doesn’t ask her what she wants, now. She’s so wet it’s almost painful; all Quinn said to her was, “Don’t talk, for once in your life—”, but then she’d covered Rachel’s lips with her own again, bruising them and plying them apart with her tongue.

Rachel, for once, has no need for words at all; she’s just holding onto Quinn’s shoulders desperately, arching towards her and into the wall at once when Quinn pushes her legs apart and slides a thigh between them.

“Jesus,” she moans, when Quinn scratches down her sides and then reaches behind her, trailing hands up her arched back and unsnapping her bra so quickly that Rachel almost protests—they have time, they have—

But then Quinn traps her hands in the shirt that’s still dangling around her lower back, and she’s bucked into the wall with every thrust of Quinn’s hips; Quinn’s hands are back on her stomach, sliding upwards, and she’s still kissing her and barely giving her a chance to breathe.

“Is this how you’ve pictured us,” she finally asks, her voice low and shaky, before her mouth presses against Rachel’s neck and she inhales quickly. “Up against a wall, you soaking through your panties, grinding against my thigh—and God, you want to touch me, don’t you, but you can’t.”

Rachel just whimpers and knits her hands into the shirt again, even as Quinn plucks at her nipple with a sigh.

“Fuck, Rachel, how stupid are you if you think you’re the only one who’s thought about this?” she says, and Rachel’s so glad she opted for a high school style skirt, because God, the friction Quinn is creating against her is delicious—it’s driving her crazy and yet not even close to pushing her over, and she wants this to last forever.

Quinn thumbs one of her breasts again, and then brings her hands to Rachel’s wrists, holding them against the wall, before lowering her head and nudging her bra out of the way. “You’re so—” she says, her eyes almost burning a hole in Rachel’s chest.

Rachel watches as she closes them and then peppers a trail of kisses right down the middle of her sternum, before flicking a tongue out against her already painfully hard nipple. She can’t keep her eyes open after that, just feels herself desperately rubbing up against Quinn, whose soft, breathy moan when she sucks, hard, gets her wet all over again.

“Quinn, please—”

“No,” Quinn says, with a small, sharp bite. “You don’t get to tell me what to do. Not now.”

Rachel’s eyes roll back into her head, and the only other concession she demands is easy; her fingers reach for Quinn’s hands, still pushing against her wrists, but the message is understood, and seconds later their hands tangle together.

She’s strung so high so quickly that when one of Quinn’s hands falls away and reaches for her thigh, she doesn’t even realize it at first—not until Quinn’s knuckles are brushing up against her panties, and Quinn straightens and looks so fucking smug that for one second, Rachel has to remind herself that this isn’t about winning and they’re not in high school anymore.

“Don’t act surprised. I’ve wanted you since the first time I laid eyes on you,” she just says, instead, because nothing unravels Quinn more quickly than the truth.

Quinn’s eyes drop to her mouth, just for a second, and then there’s another one of those kisses that, fuck, she can’t focus on anything else; not until Quinn’s pulling her panties down just about far enough to reach inside of them with two long, slender fingers that stroke their way down and then hover, not touching anything that matters.

It feels like she’s waiting for permission, which Rachel gives just by rocking her hips forwards and giving her an almost pleading look, when Quinn pulls back long enough to raise an eyebrow.

The thigh between her legs drops away, and Rachel’s immediately struggling to hold herself upright; the angle isn’t ideal because Quinn is taller than she is, but when Quinn bends down enough to pull Rachel’s completely destroyed panties off all the way, she has a good go at it anyway. Her nails scratch up Rachel’s inner thigh hard enough to leave marks, and Rachel spreads her legs more automatically, praying that Quinn’s remaining hand can keep her steady, given that she’s on her toes.

Quinn’s fingers swipe past her clit, just once, and she almost keens at the feel of it; but then they’re pushing inside of her, slowly and with just enough burn for her to be able to dwell on the reality they’re in right now: Quinn, inside her. Quinn, fucking her. Quinn, looking like she can’t believe it any more than Rachel can.

“You’re so fucking tight,” Quinn states, her eyes burning into Rachel’s. “When’s the last time—”

“Eight months ago,” Rachel says, slamming her hips down on Quinn’s hand when that agonizingly slow speed at which her fingers are twisting and pulling is just not even close to being enough.

“And you’re—are you—” Quinn hesitates and then says, “Are you clean?”

Rachel blinks her eyes open and says, “Are you?”

Quinn nods, a slightly guarded expression on her face, even as her fingers curl up and she presses down a little bit harder. Rachel moans and says, “Good, I had no doubts, and I’m also fine, I get tested every six—”

Next thing she knows, she almost falls over, because Quinn’s on her knees, pushing up her skirt and disappearing underneath it.

She hates not being able to see much, but at the same time, it’s probably for the best, because at the first touch of Quinn’s tongue, she knows she’s going to come in about a minute. The look on Quinn’s face right now would probably just send her right over, and she wants to enjoy feeling this much: Quinn’s fingers inside of her, three of them now, stretching in a way that’s uncomfortable but so right, and Quinn’s tongue, pressed up against her clit, drawing something that feels vaguely like a letter—like she’s being marked.

Her hands grip Quinn’s shoulders, even as Quinn’s spare arm presses her against the wall, and when Quinn pulls away just long enough to glance up and say, “Come for me, Rachel”, she has no choice.

She’s never been able to stop her reaction to her name slipping from Quinn’s lips, and with Quinn’s fingers dragging an orgasm out of her that she starts to feel in her toes before it really even starts, and Quinn’s tongue rubbing at her clit before sucking on it lightly, she just doesn’t stand a chance.

*

The arm on her waist holds her up, but barely, and it’s for the best that Quinn gets back up on her feet shortly afterwards, leaning Rachel into the wall and pressing a wet hand against Rachel’s cheek. She licks her lips, which makes Rachel clench one more time, and then just stares at her for a long moment.

Rachel waits for her heart to stop hammering, and then says, “Now what?”

“Now, I give you back your money,” Quinn says, quietly. “And my number. And you’ll call me next week. And we’ll do something.”

“What about—” Rachel says, because Quinn looks a little bit unsettled and Rachel swears she can almost smell how wet she is, God; she honestly doesn’t think she’s up for another round, but there are parts of her that clearly feel otherwise. She just glances down at Quinn’s hips, and those unexpectedly boy shorts.

Quinn sighs and says, “Not now. I need—I can’t. Not here. Okay?”

For once, even though she can still barely formulate thoughts, she has no difficulties interpreting Quinn at all, and it’s unexpectedly soothing.

“Okay,” she just says, and then hesitantly reaches for Quinn’s face, cupping it. “Next week.”

“Yeah,” Quinn says. “I’m off all day on Tuesday. Until—”

And, just to stop what is bound to be a devastating reminder of what their lives are, and how they got here, Rachel leans forward and kisses her.

Reality can wait until tomorrow. and isn’t this exactly where you’d like me (part 5/8) Quinn/Rachel, NC-17 (x 10 million), for an anon we’ll call “first name rach, last name berry” who wanted Rachel doing a show in Vegas for 2-3 months and somehow ending up getting a lap dance from Quinn.

AN: for Rachel, who has had a crappy weekend, and for Beba, who has redefined straight to mean “secretly dating thememoriesfire even though that bitch is married DON’T YOU KNOW SHE HAS A WIFE?” I love tumblr. I also love all of you. Merci for your patience.

*

Patience has never been her strongest suit.

It surprises her that she lasts until her dinner break on Thursday to dig out the note with Quinn’s number on it—her print still fine and girly, as an almost morbid contrast to the rest of her these days—and shakily dials it. She doesn’t let herself get nervous, because if she starts to think about it, she’ll just—

“Hello?” Quinn asks, sounding distracted. Rachel can hear traffic in the background, which is good, because it means that Quinn’s not—at work. God, that thought smarts. She pushes it to the side and clears her throat.

“It’s me.”

“Oh,” Quinn exhales. There’s another loud honk in the background, and Rachel waits patiently. “I thought we agreed—”

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” Rachel says, because it’s a little bit better than we only have two months, Quinn, stop wasting our time. Not much, but a little.

The line is silent, background noise notwithstanding, until that suddenly dims and Rachel hears a door slam. She closes her eyes and tries to visualize Quinn’s place; is it an apartment or a house? Is it homey or distant? Sleek lines or the same kind of archaic, Napoleonic print that Finn once told her lined the Fabray house?

“Is this a booty call?” Quinn finally asks. Her voice has changed, though. She’s definitely not not interested, and Rachel slides down a little further on the couch, putting her plate on the ground, and stretching out completely.

“If you want,” she says, easily enough.

“I’m not the one who called.”

It’s weird, because this is exactly the same kind of fractured conversation they’ve been having ever since they encountered each other again; but rather than it feeling unsettling, Rachel just smiles and starts toying with the first button on her shirt.

“I know. I’m happy to just… talk. But—”

“What are you wearing?” Quinn says. A refrigerator hums in the background, and Rachel laughs.

“Are you putting away groceries while initiating phone sex with me?”

Quinn hesitates for just a second. “No?”

“What did you buy?” Rachel asks, and then undoes the first button. “Tell me, and I’ll tell you what I’m wearing.”

Quinn laughs softly and says, “This is the strangest conversation of my life.”

“I very much doubt that,” Rachel says, her finger brushing against her sternum just about under her shirt.

“Spaghetti,” Quinn says. “Tomatoes, some crusty bread for bruschetta. Olive oil. Um.”

Rachel chuckles and says, “My God, that’s pedestrian.”

“I live a shockingly boring life, Rachel,” Quinn says, the smile ringing through in her voice. “What are you wearing?”

“A pink dress shirt; I think it’s Puck’s,” Rachel says, her finger slipping underneath the fabric again, toying with the second button. “Um, cotton work-out shorts. And… that’s pretty much it.”

She can picture the look on Quinn’s face; her nostrils, flaring for a second, the only thing to give her away.

“No underwear?” she asks.

“I’ll answer that if you tell me what your plans for the night are.”

Quinn laughs again and says, “Jesus Christ, Rachel.”

“Just go along with it,” Rachel says. “Or I’ll stop unbuttoning this shirt, and then what will we do?”

Quinn’s sigh sends a shiver down her spine. “I was going to watch a Buffy rerun and eat some pasta. Maybe do some work on my dissertation.”

“Do you have pets?” Rachel asks.

“Pop another button,” Quinn says, in kind. Rachel feels herself twitch. “Slowly, and then tell me where your hands are.”

The button snaps loud enough for Quinn to hear it, and Rachel says, “There. Right by my breasts, and the other one is, um, holding the phone, obviously.”

Quinn makes a small noise that sounds a little like give me a break, Rachel, but then says, “No pets. Just me and my television.”

Rachel’s thinking about her mouth, moving—making words, shapes against her, which is why she doesn’t stop herself from saying, “That sounds awfully lonely.”

“Loneliness is relative,” Quinn says. “Another.”

The increasing urgency in her voice makes Rachel drops the pretense, and she quickly fingers the remaining buttons on the shirt open. “They’re all done, now. What next?”

“Spread your legs,” Quinn says, much more softly.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking up a recipe for tomato and herb pasta,” Quinn says, dryly.

Rachel laughs, and then gasps when her spare hand trails down her stomach, goosebumps following in its trail. “What are you actually doing?”

“Thinking about my hands, on you. Inside of you,” Quinn says, her voice incredibly neutral. It somehow only makes it hotter..

Rachel moans softly and says, “So much for messing around, huh?”

“I’m putting you down for a second, because I don’t think I can get myself off with these jeans on,” Quinn says.

Rachel’s hips jerk upwards against nothing, hard. She focuses on breathing steadily as she hears the phone being put down, and then sighs when her knuckles brush down further, stilling near the top of her shorts.

“The things you say,” she says, when Quinn is clearly back; she can hear her breathing now, and it’s making her uncomfortably hot and antsy.

“The things you make me want to say,” Quinn responds. “Where are you?”

“Sofa, in my living room,” Rachel says. “I’m—can I touch myself?”

“No. I’ll tell you when you can.”

Rachel’s eyes roll back in her head, and she knows that she just whimpered loud enough for Quinn to hear it, but God, does Quinn ever know how to press her buttons. “We have to hurry up, though; I’m meant to be on stage in about half an hour,” she says, shakily.

Quinn laughs low and says, “You know, prior to three weeks ago, the only thing I thought when I thought of you was that I really fucking hated how successful you’d become.”

Rachel chuckles almost despite herself. “Am I supposed to be disappointed by that? After what you did to me, you think I care about whether this is old or new?”

“I don’t know, Rachel. What do you care about?” Quinn asks, a little sarcastically.

“Feeling like this,” Rachel says. “Like—if you don’t touch me, or if I don’t touch myself, I’m actually going to die.”

“I can’t believe how fucking hot you are,” Quinn says, before moaning quietly. It’s the first noise she’s heard Quinn make, and her hand slips underneath the waist band of her shorts immediately. God, she’s hearing Quinn touch herself.

“I have thought about this so often,” she says, knowing her heavy breathing is giving her away and closing her eyes. “Please, Quinn, can I—”

“Two fingers, inside,” Quinn says, immediately. “Slowly; the way I’d do it. I’d make you feel it, Rachel, and I wouldn’t give you what you want. Not immediately.”

Rachel swallows a moan with relative success and then says, “Tell me what you’re doing.”

“I don’t think so,” Quinn says, with a soft gasp. “You don’t get to make demands right now, Rachel.”

Her fingers are picking up pace even though Quinn told her to go slow, but with the soft little whimpers on the other end of the line getting louder, she can’t help herself. “What—just tell me what to picture. God, please. I’ve thought about this for so long, and you—”

“I like drawing it out. Even when I’m by myself,” Quinn says; she swallows audibly. “My fingers are around my clit, but never quite on it. Not until I can’t stand it anymore.”

“I—oh my God,” Rachel says, her hips arching off the couch, heels digging into it for a better angle. She’s almost shaking with frustration at this point, because it feels fucking amazing but it’s never going to make her come.

“I’m not going to go inside, because—fuck, Rachel, I want your fingers there, not mine,” Quinn says, shakily.

“I need—can I please—” She can’t even formulate whole thoughts anymore, let alone words.

“Yeah,” Quinn exhales, gasping again almost immediately. “Go fast, I’m—”

Rachel doesn’t need to be told much more than that; her fingers slip back out, slick and sticky, and start rubbing against her clit almost immediately. “I’m—oh, God, I can’t stop thinking about your mouth, Quinn—” she says, because it’s true—there might be fingers circling and stroking right now, but all she can think of is Quinn’s tongue, running up against her clit, tasting her with soft mewling noises.

“So don’t,” Quinn says, voice pitching precariously. “Think about it, because I want to do that again, but next time I’m going to tie you up and—”

“God—”

“Yeah, you like that,” Quinn says, with a small laugh that trails off into a moan. “Jesus, Rachel, I always thought you were square as hell in high school.”

“You thought I was square?” Rachel asks, breathlessly. “You were—oh my God, I can’t talk about this right now—”

For a few seconds there’s nothing but Quinn’s breathing on the other end of the line, until that trails off into a whimper. “If I told you to stop, right now, could you do it?” she then asks.

Rachel’s fingers lift almost immediately, and her hips follow her hand, but she doesn’t let them connect again. Tears well up into her eyes without warning. “I—oh God, why would you do that—I—”

“I’m not. I just wanted to see if—Jesus, Rachel, now,” Quinn says, gasping loudly.

Rachel stops breathing, because God, she wants to hear everything; every little sound that comes out of Quinn, and if she focuses hard enough she can actually hear how wet Quinn is. God. With that thought, it only takes about three more aimlessly placed strokes until she’s done, just about hearing Quinn say, “Damn it, Rachel, come for me” before also crying out softly.

Her hand lies limply against her thigh, afterwards, sticking to her shorts. She flexes her fingers for a long moment, working on slowing her breathing, and listening for any cues from Quinn that this was—okay, maybe. Or at least not not okay.

“Well,” Quinn finally says, long after Rachel’s started biting her lip not to blurt out something stupid. “I guess I forgive you for calling early.”

“I’m—”

“Don’t apologize. But you should probably go. I imagine you’ll want to shower before you go on,” Quinn says, in a really soft and intimate tone of voice that makes it sound like she cares.

Rachel can barely bring herself to believe it. But she has to try, anyway. It’s just how she is.

“Can you—maybe call, next time?” she asks, tentatively.

Quinn says nothing for a long while, and all Rachel can hear is her steadily slowing breathing.

“Yeah, okay. Why not.”

It feels like a massive concession.

*

The concert is a mess. She can’t stop thinking about having Quinn in the audience, looking at her knowingly, and while being incredibly horny does add a certain warmth to her voice, it’s also incredibly distracting.

She splashes cold water in her face at the intermission and then jolts hard when Puck puts a hand on her shoulder, popping up behind her from out of nowhere.

“What is up with you, Rach?” he asks, frowning at her darkly. “I mean, I know your heart’s not in it and shit but come on, you’re better than this. What—”

“I know,” she says, wiping her hands under her eyes, bringing away streaks of apparently not-so-waterproof mascara. “I’m just going through something.”

“Is this about—that strip club?” Puck asks, tentatively.

Rachel glances at him in the mirror and then takes a deep breath and a risk; she’s sort of lucked out with all the other ones she’s taken lately, so why not this one?

“I’m—I met someone. There.”

Puck blinks. “What, like, a dancer?”

“Sort of. She’s… a student,” Rachel then says, because it only occurs to her once she’s started talking that she has no idea what Quinn actually does, or how the hell she’s still in college even though she moved to Vegas immediately out of high school.

“A student who strips for a living,” Puck asks. His face goes through a variety of expressions, until he finally says, “Look, I obviously know they’re people just like you and me, but not all dancers are good people, okay? Are you—does she know who you are?”

Rachel almost laughs; it’s painful. “Yeah, she does.”

“So—is there any chance that you’re just being dicked around for your millions?”

Rachel does laugh at that. “What millions, Noah? You know as well as I do that I’m nowhere near being a millionaire.”

“Yeah, but does she know that?” He gives her a pointed look and then sighs. “Look, Rach, not that I’m not all about you finally moving on from that bullshit crush you’ve had on Quinn for basically your entire life, but—a stripper? Really?”

It rubs her the wrong way, unexpectedly. “You know, as much as you like to talk a big game about how you respect that it’s just a job, you’re being awfully quick to jump to conclusions here.”

“Rachel, you’re my best friend and let’s face it, you’re—” He trails off.

“A mess?” she asks, pointedly.

“Your words, babe, not mine.”

“Yeah, well,” she says, before blotting at her face with a paper towel and taking a deep breath. “Maybe I wouldn’t be such a mess if the people in my life actually for once approved of the few goddamned choices I still get to make for myself.”

Puck says nothing else, but squeezes her shoulder in a silent apology.

*

She spends the rest of the week making up for that awful, awful Thursday show. She doesn’t call Quinn again, and instead works on discipline: having a real breakfast that isn’t just some stale coffee she’s reheated from the night before. Actually spending her requisite half an hour on the elliptical. Working through her vocal exercises even though her coach is halfway across the country.

By the time Sunday rolls around, she almost feels like herself again—whichever version of it, really—and thinks that the show is getting better.

Kurt confirms as much for her. “You sound more—involved,” he says, with a small smile. “I don’t know what brought this on, but can we please focus on making it last? I know you sometimes think I’m just out to make your life miserable, Rachel, but—”

“I know what your job is, and I know I’m not grateful enough for how well you do it,” she says, legs curled up under her on the sofa. “I’m working on it, okay? It’s just a lot to—I still distinctly remember being able to go and buy my own groceries without being mobbed, and without having severe panic attacks, and now my entire life has been reduced to my apartment, carefully emptied locations, and the stage.”

“There was a time when you thought you wanted your entire life to be the stage,” Kurt says, in a tone of voice that clearly means that he’s open to having a real conversation with her. As friends, not colleagues.

“Yeah, well, I was wrong,” she says, lowering her eyes and then smiling faintly. “It was just easier to want the stage than to admit to myself what I really wanted.”

Kurt crosses his legs gently and leans forward, touching her knee. “You know, I’m all for moving on; you know that I didn’t shed any real tears about Blaine not wanting this kind of life at the end of the day. But—when you’ve tried as hard as you have, and it’s still not happening… Rachel, why don’t you just try to look her up?”

She laughs weakly and says, “Because it would be insane.”

“You were friends, weren’t you? Near the end?” He tilts his head and says, “As much as Quinn had a relentless capacity for petty backstabbing, I’m sure she’s done some growing up in the years between. I honestly—” He hesitates and then says, “Do you want me to get a number? Because I can. Or well, Puckerman seems to think he can.”

“No,” Rachel says, sharply, because—what a fucking mess. Of all the times for Kurt to prioritize her personal happiness over her work, this has to be the worst one. If he finds Quinn’s number, he’ll also find a Vegas area code, and then she’ll have a lot of explaining to do. “You and Puck have been right. And—I’m working on it.”

“What, moving on? You—”

“I’m seeing someone,” Rachel says, curtly.

Kurt’s expression shifts from caring to annoyed in seconds. “And you didn’t think this was relevant information for your manager to have because…”

“Because it’s new, and it’s probably not going to last for more than the time we spend in Vegas, and I’m being careful, and—” She knows that some sort of episode is coming on when her breath rushes out of her with a, “Jesus Christ, Kurt, I want something that is just mine. Why the hell is everything I do always for everyone else? Why can’t I—”

“Oh, Rachel,” he says, and when she looks at him there are honest-to-God tears in his eyes. “You know that we don’t—”

“It doesn’t make it any less awful,” she says, and heads to the bathroom without waiting for his response. One pill, just one, she tells herself. It’s just one. But it’s so necessary.

*

She leans heavily on the bathroom counter for a long moment, looking at the small piece of partial forget in her right hand.

Her phone rings from the other room, and she’s still swallowing when she makes a run for it; Kurt hasn’t respected her privacy in years and is unlikely to start now.

“Don’t,” she snaps at him, when she catches him already reaching over and glancing at the caller display. She thanks her lucky stars that she was smart enough to put Quinn in as Rachel, because honestly, the worst he can ask is why she’s calling herself.

“Is this—” he asks, when she’s reaching for the phone, still ringing.

“You can let yourself out,” she says, shortly, and walks into her bedroom without waiting to see what he will do.

Her thumb brushes up against the slider and she smiles when Quinn says, “Oh, good. I thought you were ignoring me.”

Never, Rachel thinks, but doesn’t say. “Sorry, my—manager is in the other room.”

Quinn makes a sort of scoffing noise. “Well, we can’t have your manager knowing that you’re talking to a stripper.”

“My manager,” Rachel says, trying not to force her annoyance with Kurt onto Quinn,”is Kurt Hummel. So—no. We can’t.”

Quinn says nothing for a moment; then a skeptical, “Really?” follows.

“Why would I make that up, Quinn?” Rachel asks. She’s tired; the pill is slowly dissolving its way through her system, and she can already feel that blissful don’t-care set in.

“I don’t know,” Quinn admits, and then sighs. “God, this is going to get complicated.”

“What is?”

Quinn doesn’t respond to that, obviously. Rachel’s not even really expecting a response.

“What do you want?” she asks, instead. It comes out a bit sharper than she means for it to, and so she adds, “Is this a booty call?”

Quinn makes a small noise and says, “I—it can be.”

“That’s my line; try coming up with one of your own,” Rachel says, sinking down onto the mattress and closing her eyes. Her heart is hammering away in her chest still, and she takes a deep breath. “You know what I want, Quinn.”

“No, I don’t,” Quinn says, sounding both frustrated and confused. “There’s a big difference between you having had some school girl crush on me back in Lima and wanting something now.”

It’s a fair point, and Rachel takes a second to collect her thoughts. “Okay, well, since clearly you’re just getting a kick out of me putting myself out there without any sort of concessions on your part—”

“Rachel,” Quinn says, warningly.

Rachel sighs and says, “When I first saw you, in that club, all I wanted was your body.”

Quinn exhales audibly.

“But—only because I knew that it was what’s on offer. You’re so hard to read, Quinn, and with the job and everything…” She trails off stupidly and then says, “I’ve always wanted all of you. The parts that I think are there and nobody else gets to see. I don’t care that you’re not eighteen anymore. In case you missed the memo, I’m not either. And we hardly know each other.”

“But?” Quinn asks, in an unreadable tone of voice.

“I want to know you. God help me, you are possibly the worst person in the world for me to want any of this from, but I want—I want something real,” Rachel confesses, and then bites down on her cheek, waiting for the inevitable laughter, or whatever new, cruel ways Quinn has come up with in the last seven years to reject her.

Quinn laughs shakily and then says, “This is Vegas, Rachel. I don’t think real is possible in this city.”

“Yeah, well, you also didn’t think we’d win Nationals in junior year, so,” Rachel says.

It takes a second, but then Quinn laughs again and says, “Meet me for lunch. There’s this place—”

The small, tangible effects of the pill wash away completely, on the spot.

“No,” Rachel says, quickly.

Quinn says, “I’m sorry?”

“I can’t—meet you. Not in public. I—” Rachel says, or stammers, really, and she can feel her entire body get clammy almost instantly. “I just—”

Quinn’s voice grows icy. “Right. So when you said you wanted something real, what you really mean is some dirty fucking secret because God forbid anyone finds out that Rachel Berry is dating a stripper.”

“It’s not about—” Rachel starts to say.

To the dial tone.

“Fuck,” she murmurs, and calls back immediately, but it just goes to voicemail.

Her head falls back onto the mattress, and for one awful moment, she considers taking the easy way out: just a few more pills, until she can fall asleep for the rest of the day without thinking about anything.

Quinn would hate her for doing that, though—and so she forces herself out of bed and calls Puck instead.

“I don’t want her number. Get me an address,” she says.

To his credit, he doesn’t ask a single question and just says, “Okay.”

*

Puck stares at her probingly when he shows up a few hours later, just about at the start of the Sunday night show, and then says, “She’s in town.”

“What? That’s—wow, what a coincidence,” Rachel says, in possibly the worst bout of acting she’s had to put on since sophomore year and that stupid musical.

Puck raises his eyebrows. “Dude—”

“Puck, I swear; I will tell you all about this as soon as there’s something to tell, okay? But for now, thank you for this, and I need to do some breathing exercises,” she says, tipping onto her toes and pressing a small kiss to his cheek.

He blushes, because despite all of his bluster, he’s nothing but a giant marshmallow at the end of the day. “Okay, but just—be careful, yeah? Quinn’s—”

“We have no idea what Quinn is or isn’t anymore,” Rachel says, brusquely.

His lips twist into a half-smile and he says, “I hope she’s ready for you.”

“God, me too,” Rachel says, before closing the door again and leaning against it hard. It’s just four lines on a torn bit of envelope, but they honestly feel like the only thing between her and a nervous breakdown right now.

*

It’s late morning on Monday; Kurt thinks she’s off with her personal trainer somewhere, jogging along a desert trail—and it’s honestly just such a relief that Kurt and nature don’t mix, because no person with any sense of direction would have bought that line from her— and Puck is fielding everyone else for her, explaining that she’s taking a half personal day or something to rest her voice.

It doesn’t really matter, because they can all yell at her for the rest of her life for bailing on another rehearsal and fucking up this show for all of them; it still wouldn’t change her mind about what she’s doing.

Quinn’s apartment block is on the outskirts of the city, in a neighborhood that Wikipedia had described as being up and coming and kind of bohemian hip. Rachel has a really hard time picturing any of that in Vegas to begin with, let alone picturing Quinn in it, but it’s as good a reminder as any that she doesn’t really know what she’s doing here.

She’s in love with something: Quinn from years ago, Quinn’s potential, but she can’t honestly keep telling herself that she’s in love with Quinn, because there are far too many barriers to cross before that becomes anything other than stupid and self-deceiving.

Lunch is what they can handle, right now. Lunch, and maybe a conversation that doesn’t result in nudity, though with the way Quinn’s eyes burn into hers, Rachel doesn’t even think nudity is a necessary precursor to fucking anymore.

She sighs and opens her car door, before tentatively walking over to the front door of the complex and eyeing all the buzzers. There is a Q Fabray there, thankfully, and she wipes her hand on her jeans quickly before pressing the button, just once.

There’s no answer, and Rachel leans the side of her head against the front door.

Then, she sits down on the steps in front of the building and gets out a torn, ratty paperback copy of Wicked; she’s read it so many times that she almost has it memorized, but it’s still the only thing that reminds her that she has a lot of dreams that she doesn’t want to give up on.

*

She feels Quinn before she sees her, getting out of a small little European-looking car of some kind, and then freezing next to the door for a few seconds before slamming it shut. It shouldn’t be possible for all the hair on Rachel’s body to stand on end with Quinn still twenty feet away from her, but it happens anyway.

Quinn’s expression goes from surprised to annoyed to detached in seconds, but—and this doesn’t surprise Rachel—she doesn’t back down; just gathers a few paper bags full of groceries from the trunk and carries them over to the door.

“Aren’t you worried you’re going to be seen?” she asks, pointedly.

“No,” Rachel says, quietly.

Quinn stares at her for another moment and then says, “The keys are in my back pocket.”

Rachel fishes them out without lingering and unlocks the door on the second try, and then follows Quinn up to the second floor.

“I’m not sure I want to invite you in,” Quinn says.

“You don’t have to,” Rachel says, leaning against the wall after sliding the keys in the door. “I just wanted to offer an explanation.”

Quinn’s smile is wry. “What, you think you’re the first person to have had some problems with my part-time job?”

“Quinn, it really—” Rachel starts to say, bone-weary and already feeling that dull pressure of being in an unfamiliar place sneak upon her. There are not words for how crippling this condition is, and in the end all she ends up doing is opening up her purse and wrapping her hand around three different prescription bottles. “Did you study psychology, like you were going to?”

Quinn nods after a moment.

Rachel lifts her hand out of the purse and shows Quinn the three bottles and says, “The Paxil only helps about twenty percent of the time but I’m afraid to stop taking it; Propanolol makes me intensely nauseous but I take it every night before going on stage just because I can’t handle the combination of the crowd and the adrenaline rush that comes with performing; and every time I even so much as think about leaving my house, or seeing you, I have to fight the urge to drown myself in Xanax. My therapist thinks I’m becoming dependent, which is therapy speak for you’re completely fucked, Rachel.” She smiles after a few seconds, when Quinn’s eyes flicker towards hers with a silent apology. “So, believe me. It’s not about you.”

“When?” Quinn asks, twisting the door handle and pushing it open.

“A long time ago,” Rachel says, because it’s true.

Quinn drops her groceries inside and pulls the door shut again, before giving Rachel a slow once-over. “You hide it well. I’m assuming the media would have picked up on it by now if you didn’t.”

“I was out of my mind the first time I saw you, here,” Rachel says, with a small laugh. “I’m— trying to be a little more present, now.”

Quinn fishes her keys out of the door and says, “I’m not inviting you in.” She holds up her hand when Rachel starts to speak and says, “It’s not about you. It’s about me. And I want us to—if we’re going to try to actually have a conversation, I want it to be on neutral ground.”

Rachel has been in therapy long enough to recognize an iron-willed defense mechanism when she sees one. “Okay.”

“What are your limits?” Quinn asks, before gesturing for Rachel to walk back to the staircase.

“That diner was fine. Anywhere I’m going to be recognized is out of the question; no malls, no crowds, no signings,” Rachel says. It’s like a life mantra at this point.

Quinn nods carefully after a moment and says, “Would you be up for mezze at this Lebanese place that’s three blocks down? It will be empty at this time of day.”

Rachel shrugs. “I won’t know until I try.”

It’s apt commentary on the entire situation.

*

They manage a conversation. Stiltedly, and Rachel feels more like she’s in a counselor’s office than on a date, but it’s the closest thing they’ve had to semi-normal interaction in, well, ever.

“I’m surprised you’re not more hair-trigger about intimacy,” Quinn says, breaking off a piece of pitta bread and swiping it through some hummus. “Not that neuropsychology is my specialism by any measure of the imagination, but, from what I remember—”

“Who says I’m not?” Rachel says, taking a sip of water just to not have to look at Quinn.

“You’re not with me,” Quinn points out.

“You’re—from before,” Rachel says, because it’s the closest thing she can do to offer an explanation. “You also didn’t know. It makes a difference, somehow.”

Quinn nods after a moment, and Rachel watches her face; contemplative and withdrawn, but somehow more present than she ever has been before. She’s so lovely, and Rachel has to quickly eat an olive to stop herself from saying anything that she might regret—that might shatter this quiet peace time they’re building right now.

“What are you studying?” she asks, instead.

“Forensic psychology,” Quinn answers, with a small smile. “Hence why I have to stress I’m not an expert. You’re not a serial killer.”

Rachel smiles. “Graduate school, huh?”

“Yeah,” Quinn sighs. “Feel free to analyze the fact that as soon as all expectations of me excelling at academia fell away, I actually realized I liked school.”

“I don’t want to analyze you, much,” Rachel says. Her hand’s been inching across the table for ages, and her fingertips are now just about in reach, brushing past Quinn’s for just a second. “I’d rather find out things because you tell me about them.”

Quinn smiles faintly and says, “You’re forever the most honest person I’ll ever meet.”

“I was lying to all of us for the entirety of high school,” Rachel reminds her.

“It’s not the kind of lying that makes you less honest,” Quinn says, and covers Rachel’s hand with her own, in a flash, before reaching for her napkin and wiping her mouth. “It’s—I’ve always found your sincerity threatening.”

“Why?” Rachel asks.

“Because it’s never something I’ve been capable of,” Quinn says, relaxing into her chair a little more and giving Rachel an inscrutable little smile. “Then again, there were a lot of things I didn’t think I was capable of until about a week ago, so.”

Rachel hesitates before asking the question that’s burning at the tip of her tongue. “Do you mean sexually, or—”

“I mean or,” Quinn says, before flagging down the waiter and paying for their food.

It’s a date, even if it lacks all of the essential components of them; it’s a date, because when she gets up again and reaches for her coat, Quinn helps her in it and keeps a hand at the small of her back before steering her back out.

“What are you doing the rest of the day?” Rachel asks, turning around to glance at Quinn’s face.

“Exploring,” Quinn says.

“Exploring what?”

“This,” Quinn says, leveling her with a look that makes her wish they weren’t in public.

“Come—you should come see the show,” Rachel says, aimlessly. “I mean, I can get you on the guest list.”

“I hate Celine Dion,” Quinn says, neutrally. “No offense to you, I’m sure you’re still a brilliant singer, but—no thank you.”

“I don’t care if you like my singing. What I know is that you like the idea of me on stage, soaking wet and thinking about all the ways in which you touched me just a few hours earlier,” Rachel says, in a careless rush, her eyes still searching all of Quinn’s face.

Quinn’s spare hand reaches for her car keys and the little black car honks as it’s unlocked. “You’ve got me all figured out, don’t you?”

“I think you’re someone worth figuring out,” Rachel amends, .

The muted, sexual look on Quinn’s face disappears almost instantly, and instead she murmurs something unintelligible before walking around to the driver’s side.

Their drive back to Rachel’s is quiet, directions notwithstanding, and for a horrible moment Rachel thinks she’s actually just gone and fucked everything up by saying something nice. Not even in a way that’s supposed to pressure or manipulate Quinn. It’s just the goddamned truth.

Quinn hesitates when she pulls up, and Rachel sighs and says, “Don’t. You’re thinking too much. And you’re talking yourself out of this. Don’t.”

“Someone has to think about what we’re doing, Rachel, because—”

“Is it that fucking horrifying to you that you might actually like me as a person?” Rachel asks. The pills jangle in her purse, crying out for her, but she forces herself to look at Quinn and not miss a single thought that passes over her face. “Is that what the problem is?”

“No,” Quinn finally says. “It’s not.”

She’s not going to get a better answer.

*

Ten minutes later, when Quinn’s shrugging out of the last of her clothing before pushing her onto the bed, she’s not really sure she even wants one.

“Grip the headboard,” Quinn says, before kissing her, biting at her neck for just a moment— and it might mark, God, it might mark, Rachel can barely even handle how quickly she gets wet at the idea of actually needing to cover up what Quinn’s done to her—then saying, “Don’t let go.”

Seconds later, Quinn’s shifted upwards and has straddled her face, and Rachel almost swoons with emotion at it; the idea that Quinn is willing to be this vulnerable for her, and the idea that she’s going to get told exactly how to get Quinn off.

If this is all she’s going to get for now, she’s going to savor every last moment of it; Quinn’s taste, the trembling in her thighs, and the relentless way in which she’s seeking out her orgasm, hips rocking almost brutally up into her mouth. The bursts of words that slip from her mouth, unconnected and random, and the way her palm is pressed hard against the wall behind Rachel’s headboard, until she starts shaking everywhere and that palm drags down the wall like nails on a chalkboard.

She breathes out Rachel’s name, right before she comes, and Rachel feels it everywhere.

It’s a pretty lethal combination, the things that Quinn Fabray can still do to her without even really trying. Still, when Quinn lets herself sink back down onto the bed and Rachel rolls over to kiss her, deep and slow and in all the ways she’s always wanted to kiss an eighteen year old girl with so much potential, Quinn’s heart rate spikes.

It feels like an invitation to ask for just a little bit more, and so Rachel says, “Please. Just touch me.”

For all the times she’s thought about Quinn touching her—taking her, really, because her fantasies are nothing if not consistent—nothing prepares her for the way she melts when Quinn’s hand just gently slides up between her legs, stroking ever so gently, while she’s pressing long, hard kisses up against Rachel’s neck.

It’s the opposite of all of her wishful thinking, this gentle, slow rock that they get going together—but maybe it’s what she should’ve been fantasizing about all along. Quinn’s lips never stop moving, never stop pressing small words against whatever part of her they can reach, and when she gets close—when she can feel the slow build of Quinn’s probing fingers hit a plateau that will only ever precede a peak—she lifts her head just long enough to say, voice trembling, “Tell me something. Anything.”

Quinn’s eyes focus on her slowly, her fingers stilling for just a second, until she says, “I’ll come. To the show, tonight”, which is not at all what Rachel was expecting her to say.

It has the same effect on both of them, though; her body curls inwards onto itself and she comes with a sigh, before pressing her face down onto Quinn’s chest and listening to her heartbeat. It jumps and skips all over the place, right up against Rachel’s ribcage, until Quinn whispers her name a second time, almost like a plea.

Rachel starts to wonder if maybe she’s not the only one who has no idea how they’re supposed to not do this, however bad a long-term idea it might be. and isn’t this exactly where you’d like me (part 6/8) Quinn/Rachel, NC-17 (x 10 million), for rachberry, who wanted Rachel doing a show in Vegas for 2-3 months and somehow ending up getting a lap dance from Quinn.

AN: Hey look, it’s an update to that story that I only started writing to become internet famous and am never ever going to finish! Ahem. For those of you who have taken “I’m really, really busy right now, sorry about any delays in updating this” at face value, thank you for being spectacularly awesome, and I hope this part lives up to the rest of the story so far – angst, sex, angst, sex, TEARS, BONDAGE, FEEELINGS!!! is a rough summary. Oh, and a disclaimer: I am not a doctor. By any measure of the imagination. Wikipedia is my medical degree. And not very thoroughly at that.

*

Quinn doesn’t hang around after the show.

Rachel’s not honestly sure what she was expecting; the fact that she stuck around to attend it was enough of a surprise for her to just forget any other questions she might have had. A quick call over to her team downstairs and a had been added to the guest list without issues, and honestly—the blinding lights have never come in better than with the knowledge that Quinn was out there, somewhere.

Rachel knows she’s gone pretty much before actually visually confirming that Quinn isn’t waiting for her somewhere backstage—and my God, there’s a dream she hasn’t let herself have in years now; someone waiting for her when she’s done, telling her exactly how good she was or wasn’t on the night, before taking her into her dressing room and letting her unwind from the rush that performing does still give her, medication be damned.

No, she finds out because as soon as she’s done signing a few things—with a carefully queued, small crowd of people who bought the best seats in the theater, obviously—Kurt takes her by the arm and says, “Someone just left some fan mail for you at the bar.”

“What, in the restaurant?” she asks, blinking at him and letting him lead her back to her dressing room.

“Yeah,” Kurt says, feeling around in his jacket pocket and then handing her a folded note. “I’m hoping this isn’t as bad as it looks.”

Rachel unfolds the note, which says, truth: you got more bang for your buck when you paid to see ME perform :), and bursts out laughing.

“Rachel—what on earth—” Kurt asks, giving her a concerned look.

“It’s—oh, my God. It’s not my secret to tell, but I assure you this is not as bad as it looks,” Rachel says, swallowing the rest of her laughter and mentally cursing Quinn.

“Okay,” Kurt says, opening her door and locking it as soon as they’re both inside. Rachel deflates immediately, after placing the note on her dresser, and starts pulling the pins out of her hair, always up for the closing number for some reason. When she glances back at Kurt, it’s clear that he’s not done talking to her, and then finally says, “Puck gave you an address.”

“He did,” she says, simply.

“And?”

“And—I will let you know what comes of that,” Rachel says, as neutrally as she can.

Kurt smiles slyly and says, “So there’s absolutely no reason for me to think that you could have possibly lied to me about where you were most of today and snuck out to see a former ?”

Rachel tosses the pins onto her dresser and turns to look at him. “If you know, why are you asking?”

“Rachel, as much as it pains me to have to know what you’re up to at all times, I like the illusion that you would just tell me what’s going on with you because I’m your friend,” Kurt says, sounding a little peeved. “If you’re not going to give me that courtesy, then—”

“We had lunch,” Rachel says, without elaborating. “It was—exactly as awkward as you would expect it to be, given that I haven’t seen her in seven years and she wasn’t exactly expecting me.”

“I’m sorry,” Kurt says, after a long moment.

Rachel looks at the note on her dresser, covered in scattered pins, and says, “I’m not. I never expected any sort of … confrontation between us to be easy, Kurt, and things not happening exactly as I wanted them to is hardly going to deter me at this point.”

“So you’re going to talk to her again,” Kurt says, rather than asks, tilting his head. “In the hopes of what, exactly?”

“Getting to know her. Finally,” Rachel says, reaching for her hairbrush.

She wonders if the normal etiquette of waiting a day or two before initiating contact again applies to them. She also knows that wondering about those kinds of things is just a waste of time, because unless she keeps pushing, Quinn will never give her anything to hold on to.

*

Then, she’s surprised, because sometime around 5.30 am, her phone rings and Quinn says, “Are you coming tonight?”

Rachel says, “I hope so”, without thinking, and then says, “Oh, you mean to the club.”

Quinn’s laughter is muffled by something, which Rachel realizes is probably breakfast when she glances blearily at the clock.

“Rach, I have to—okay. I know this isn’t the best time to have this conversation, but we have certain rules,” Quinn says.

“We? Or you and the club?”

“The club. They—it’s not exactly encouraged for people who, um, know the dancers in their private lives to—show up.”

Rachel rolls onto her back and closes her eyes, pinching at the bridge of her nose. “Quinn, it’s not even six am and I had a long night. Can you just tell me what you mean, for a change?”

Quinn sighs deeply, and Rachel hears a spoon clatter against something ceramic. She holds her breath, because she’ll start babbling just to not have to listen to Quinn’s clearly conflicted silence for much longer, but then relaxes as soon as Quinn says, “Regardless of what we want to call it, we’re seeing each other, and if I’m seeing you you’re banned from Rapture.”

“We’re—I need to have a real conversation with you about your job, at some point,” Rachel says, before she doesn’t get a chance to say it at all. “I’m not disparaging you for it, but if we are seeing each other, regardless of what we want to call it, I think I need to voice my opinion.”

Quinn laughs abruptly and says, “Yes, because when it comes to issues that don’t concern you, you’re so good at keeping your opinion to yourself.”

“Quinn,” Rachel says, trying not to sigh.

“I’m not saying no. I’m just saying—not now. And just so we’re clear, throughout my entire shift there will only be one person I’m thinking of, and it won’t be someone who’s there,” Quinn says, a little forcefully. Like she’s expecting to be challenged on this. Like she actually thinks Rachel is dumb enough to assume she’s in a position to tell Quinn to quit her job.

“Come over after,” Rachel says, instead. “Can you?”

Quinn hesitates and then says, “I’ll be pretty tired. I’m not sure—”

“Quinn, believe it or not, I think we could actually spend some time together without fucking if we really tried,” Rachel says, before mentally cursing herself; this is why it actually says in her contracts that nobody can contact her before she’s had at least one cup of coffee in the morning. Kurt has insisted, over the years.

Quinn’s clearly smiling when she says, “I don’t know, I’m not too sure about that.”

“I can keep it in my pants—”

“Are you even wearing pants right now?”

“I sleep in the nude, but that’s really not—”

“Ugh,” Quinn says.

“Ugh?” Rachel repeats.

“I’m—I have to be at the morgue in like two hours for a private showing of some stab wounds that will really help my dissertation hypothesis, and all I can think is that I’d much rather drive by your house to go down on you for like three hours.”

Rachel blinks hazily and says, “I’m not sure whether to be flattered or kind of appalled that you just actually weighed up looking at a corpse against the possibility of sleeping with me.”

“You’re winning,” Quinn says, her voice taking on that unbearable honeyed quality that means that she’s turned on, and Rachel closes her eyes, trying not to laugh, before saying, “We were much better at this the first time around.”

“What?”

“Phone sex,” Rachel says, pushing the covers off her with her feet already. “I think not discussing your professional interests right beforehand was an excellent decision.”

“We can talk about my other professional interests,” Quinn says—but there’s something about the way she says is that takes Rachel out of the mood a little; just something about it that sounds a little too self-deprecating, like she’s talking to a girl who still wishes she could’ve won that tiara years ago. Like that would’ve fixed everything.

“Quinn—don’t. You’re a psychologist, okay? You’re not—”

“Hey,” Quinn says, cutting her off gently. “I know. You didn’t say anything.”

Rachel’s hand stops halfway down her stomach, and she bites her lip, torn. With one quick nudge back towards sex, she could be getting off right now, spending the rest of her day mildly aroused and thinking about Quinn coming over later to do whatever.

But—

“Are we seeing each other?” she asks, instead.

Quinn sighs, frustrated, and says, “Rach, I said not now.”

“I just mean—are we at a point where we can be honest about having gotten back in touch with other people? Without necessarily being honest about… everything, obviously.” Rachel takes a deep breath and says, “Puck and Kurt know that you’re here, and that we’ve had lunch.”

“I’m surprised I haven’t been called about non-disclosure, in that case,” Quinn says, dryly.

“This is not about my career, this is about my life,” Rachel says, irritated by the idea that even her fucking…. whatever Quinn is, seems to think about this in terms of the media rather than what will make her happy.

“Okay, so, what about your life?”

“We—I would like to do something. With all four of us.” Rachel waits for Quinn to say something, but she doesn’t, so then she adds, “For old time’s sake. I’m not trying to obligate you to come with me as my girlfriend, or anything like that. I just—on a very basic level, I’m glad we reconnected, and I don’t want to keep it a secret from my only real friends.”

“Rach, I really don’t know—” Quinn says, sounding like it’s paining her to decline, but like she has no choice anyway.

“Quinn, they were your friends once, too.”

It’s a stupid thing to say about Puck especially, because even though Rachel and Shelby haven’t spoken since Nationals in senior year, she’s always acutely aware on some level that she has a little sister who is actually Quinn’s daughter. Even if she has no idea if Quinn’s in touch with Shelby or Beth.

Quinn makes a little noise and then finally says, “I’ll think about it.”

Rachel’s learning to take answers like that at face value, rather than as polite rejection, and says, “Okay.”

Quinn chuckles and says, “So. Mood’s kind of killed extremely dead, isn’t it.”

Rachel rolls her eyes and says, “Quinn, if I so much as think about the way you look at me I’m wet; trust me, it can be revived.”

It only takes about ten minutes for her to prove as much to her partner in crime.

*

She falls asleep on the sofa, watching old movies on TMC, and wakes up when her buzzer rings.

Quinn looks fresh—like she’s showered, and some part of Rachel is immensely grateful—and exhausted, in her sweat pants and a UNLV hoodie, and just says, “Hey.”

Rachel opens her door further and gestures for Quinn to just head straight to the bedroom.

“I’m really not sure I can stay awake long enough for—”

“Shh,” Rachel says, pulling back the covers. “I like morning sex. It can keep.”

Quinn’s smile widens as her face hits the pillow, and she’s out like a light within minutes.

Somehow, Rachel manages to not spend the entire night wondering whose lap she spent the last seven hours on; it’s probably something about the utterly relaxed and open expression on Quinn’s face, which isn’t something she can ever associate with that girl who brought her to orgasm twice in a strip club.

*

The next morning, she wakes up with Quinn’s mouth between her legs, tongue already lapping at wetness she doesn’t even remember producing; Quinn’s hand digging into her hip, her other hand snaking upwards towards her breast, before pulling on her nipple unexpectedly.

She can’t even form a full word, just sort of groans before digging her heels into the mattress and tangling her fingers in Quinn’s hair hard enough for it to hurt; she knows because Quinn sort of hisses before swiping her tongue past Rachel’s clit again, and it only makes her pull harder.

There’s just something about pissing Quinn off that makes it all better, and when Quinn lifts her head—and God, her eyes are so dark that Rachel swallows abruptly at the sight of them—and says, “Do I need to restrain you?”, she completely involuntarily blurts out, “Yes, please.”

Quinn laughs, shakes her head and says, “Why do I even ask—later, okay? Later.”

Rachel says, “Sure, whatever, just don’t—”

“Fuck, you taste good,” Quinn murmurs, right up against her clit, before shifting just enough to bring one of her hands between Rachel’s legs and pushing two fingers inside of her. “I wish I’d known the real you, back then. We could’ve had—so much fun. God, New York. Nationals? I would’ve—”

Rachel closes her eyes and thinks about the room they’d shared, just them and Santana and Brittany, and she bites on her lip and says, “With them there—we would’ve had to be so quiet.”

“But you can’t be quiet,” Quinn agrees, pulling back further, clearly admiring the way that Rachel’s hips are thrusting up against her fingers. “Can you? We would’ve been caught in minutes, the way you just can’t seem to control yourself.”

Rachel’s hands slip from her hair and dig into the sheets instead. “I would be more quiet if you weren’t the best fuck I’ve ever had, Quinn, so really, if we’re going to be placing blame and responsibility—”

“Ever?” Quinn asks, and when Rachel looks down, there’s an almost fond smile on her face; it’s jarring in comparison to the way that her fingers are still moving, hard and fast and without giving a single fuck about what Rachel wants right now—not that she doesn’t want hard and fast, but God.

“There’s never been anyone who gets me like this,” Rachel admits, hips almost off the bed now, chasing after Quinn’s hand. “And I don’t think there—”

“Don’t,” Quinn says, sharply; her finger slow and Rachel whines unwillingly.

“Just because you can’t handle hearing it doesn’t mean it’s not true,” Rachel says, staring at Quinn until she lifts her eyes. “Do you really think this is just about sex for me?”

“We hardly know each other,” Quinn says, moving further up the bed again, fingers slipping out and brushing past Rachel’s clit instead. She says the words like she’s chastising Rachel with them, but the expression on her face is more complex than that; wondrous, almost.

“We’re working on that,” Rachel says, blinking furiously to keep her eyes open, looking at Quinn’s face. “At least, I am.”

Quinn stares back at her, fingers gently pinching Rachel’s clit just to keep her on edge, and then says, “What are you thinking right now?”

“That you’re beautiful,” Rachel says, immediately. “And—so unbelievably sexy.”

Quinn’s eyes smile a little, but she says, “What else?”

“That—I’ve barely seen anything in this city, since I moved here, and I’d like a tour. From someone who knows it well,” Rachel says. She gasps when Quinn slips one finger back inside of her, curling it a little and pressing down.

Quinn stares at her disbelievingly, a small smile playing at the corner of her mouth. “Seriously? You’re thinking about sight-seeing. And this is the best sex you’ve ever had? Geez, Rachel.”

Rachel’s laugh trails off into a groan when Quinn starts fucking her with more purpose again, but she reaches down and stills Quinn’s wrist for just a second to say, “So I lied. What I’m actually thinking is that I’m glad you came, last night. And that—you could come again any time. Okay?”

Quinn’s expression softens, just for a moment, but then Rachel’s opportunity to analyze it further disappears, because Quinn leans down further and kisses her, to and through an orgasm that makes her toes cramp up and her vision spot.

“This isn’t just sex,” she repeats, when she opens her eyes and Quinn is gently stroking her thigh, just looking between her and the flush on her chest. “Maybe it could have been, but it’s not now.”

Quinn’s nostrils flare for just a moment, but then she glances back up and says, “When’s your other day off? I’ll take you into the desert.”

“Oh, great, a desert road trip with someone who once expressed a concrete desire to kill me. That sounds—amazing,” Rachel says, as dryly as she can, because she knows she almost pushed too hard and too fast, earlier. (Not that she really holds herself responsible for the shit that comes out of her mouth when they’re having sex; Jesus, she’d promise Quinn the world for just a few more strokes of those fingers.)

Quinn just rolls her eyes and says, “You’ll like it.”

Rachel tangles their fingers together, bringing them up between them, and says, “What will it take for you to have lunch with Puck and Kurt? Not today. Just—someday.”

Quinn’s eyes tense, for just a beat, but then she says, “Make me come as hard as I just made you come, and we can have lunch together next Tuesday.”

Rachel smiles, and then says, “Roll over. I want to do you from behind.”

“Oh, do you,” Quinn says, sounding amused, but flipping onto her stomach anyway.

“Mmhmm. I’m growing a little tired of looking at your face. It’s so—”

“Rachel, shut up,” Quinn says, with a laugh.

Rachel grins and bites down on her shoulder before running a hand down her back and slipping it between her legs.

*

She honestly thought she’d be more frustrated, at the knowledge that they won’t see each other again until the weekend because Quinn has work to do—dissertation stuff, and stripping stuff—but as it is, she’s just sort of relieved because God knows she can’t focus on her own job when Quinn’s around.

They shower, separately, and Quinn makes a quick frittata with some of the leftovers in Rachel’s fridge before heading off to go do some work; they barely even touch hands in the doorway, and Rachel waits for that awful feeling that means that she’s all alone again to sink back in.

It doesn’t, and when she wanders back into her house, Quinn texts her a quick, don’t bring up Beth around Puck, please, which means that she needs to start coming up with a logical story as to why Quinn Fabray is in Las Vegas, or this will be the single most awkward lunch date of all time.

*

Before she can come up with anything good, it’s the weekend, and she calls Kurt to say that she’s going on a trip with a friend and won’t be back until Sunday.

“A friend, hm?” he asks, voice knowing.

“Oh, leave me alone,” she says, with a half-hearted grumble. “It’s not salacious at all, so stop making it sound that way.”

“Who said anything about salaciousness?” he counters. “Although, while we’re on the subject; if anything should happen between you two, I would appreciate being told about it so we can take some measures to … control exposure.”

“Kurt—”

“Rachel, it’s my job. Yours is to be the best possible singer, and mine is to make sure that you keep getting hired, okay? So just—” He trails off and then asks, pointedly. “Is there something I should know?”

The answer is clearly yes, because she’s borderline in love with a stripper and God help her, one picture of her and Quinn together matched with one picture of Quinn heading to Rapture and her career would be over.

But then she thinks about the storm brewing behind Quinn’s eyes, all those feelings that she needs to keep just between them if she’s ever going to figure them out, and there’s only one thing she can possibly say to Kurt right now.

“We’re barely even friends, Kurt. I appreciate your support, I think, but you’re not going to come across any pictures of me going down on her in the back of an Escalade anytime soon.”

“That’s—awfully specific, and I’m glad,” he says, sounding flustered.

Rachel thinks about Quinn’s tiny-ass car and almost laughs at the idea of having sex in it, but then just says, “Trust me. Okay? I’m not stupid enough to throw it all away over a seven year old crush.”

She means every word of it, too.

The problem is that it’s not a crush anymore, and it’s really not seven years old.

*

Quinn surprises the absolute hell out of her when she fiddles with the car radio for a few moments before asking, “How do you feel about aliens?”

Rachel blinks at her from behind sunglasses. “I’m sorry—did you just actually ask me that?”

“Yeah,” Quinn says, with a small smile. “I mean, you were always fairly close to being completely off your nuts in high school—I’m just wondering where you stand on UFOs.”

Rachel squints and says, “Well, truthfully, it’s not a subject I’ve familiarized myself with deeply, but do I believe the government is capable of covering up massive occurrences for the sake of protecting itself? Yes, absolutely.”

“You’re a Mulder,” Quinn says, or states.

“I’m not so much a Mulder as a gay celebrity with an overactive PR team who tries to make me look as straight as humanly possible,” Rachel says, dryly. “See also, my relationship with Noah Puckerman. Anything can be disguised to look like something it isn’t, is all I mean.”

“So—no interest in aliens?” Quinn asks.

“I didn’t say that. I just said I’m not a Mulder, which is a reference that would’ve been completely lost on me had I not at some point in my life had enough interest in aliens to at least sit through some of the X-Files,” Rachel says.

Quinn rolls her eyes and says, “Are you under contract to just never be able to say yes or no to questions or something?”

“No,” Rachel says, glancing towards the GPS in the dash. “I’m starting to suspect you’re under contract to never say exactly what you mean, though.”

Quinn grins and says, “It’s fun to keep you on your toes.”

“You’ll find it’s also fun to keep me on my back, or my front. Or seated. Or—” Rachel says, crossing her legs and wiggling her eyebrows.

Quinn finally cracks and laughs. “Okay, God. Fine. I was going to drive us up to Rachel, for the name and the schmaltz value, but also because it takes us through the desert and also, the population of Rachel is, at last count, about eighty people in mobile homes.” She glances at Rachel for a second and says, “I—I mean, casinos are always an option, but I thought—”

“I’ve recently come to the realization that my ideal vacation would be in a yurt in the desert, so that sounds …. perfect, actually,” Rachel says, covering Quinn’s hand briefly.

She almost pulls it away when Quinn shifts the car into drive and then just reaches for her hand again, holding it.

Rachel doesn’t bother asking what it means, because really—she’s not going to get more than one straight response out of Quinn in 24 hours.

*

Quinn makes her pose next to the town sign for a picture, which she does while trying not to roll her eyes.

“We should get one of … you know. Us,” Rachel suggests, next.

Quinn smiles faintly and says, “It’s not a good idea.”

“Why?” Rachel asks, quietly.

“Because—I’m not sure documenting our association would be … a good idea,” Quinn says, glancing at the sand blowing around their feet.

Rachel stares at her hard for a moment. “Have you been talking to Kurt?”

“No. But I’m not stupid, Rachel. I’m—”

“You’re you, and I’m just me. This isn’t about Rachel Berry, this is about—” Rachel throws her hands up in the air in frustration. “For God’s sake, I’m not suggesting we make a sex tape. I’m just—”

“Rachel, it’s just a picture,” Quinn says, mutedly.

“Yeah, well, maybe I want the memory; so that when you’re done pushing me out of your life, as you will invariably do, I’ll have something to remind me of the best—”

She forces herself to stop talking and instead grabs her camera back from Quinn’s limp hand, whose hand then shoots out and grabs her by the wrist.

“Rachel, not everything is about—”

“Of course it is. You’re not the one with the career to ruin, Quinn,” Rachel almost spits at her. “It would be one thing if I was the one who was hesitating about committing to— whatever this is, but it’s not me. It’s you, and—”

“I have my reasons, and you’ll have to excuse me for not just throwing them all at you when up until two weeks ago, we’d at best had four conversations in our entire lives,” Quinn says, her cheeks darkening. “We’re not all you, Rachel. Some of us care about privacy.”

“You think I don’t care about—”

“You’re not me,” Quinn finally snaps. “You just—have feelings, and you don’t seem to need to process them, and everything you do is just chasing after some ridiculous romantic ideal that you developed when you were sixteen years old. I’m sorry, but some of us take the responsibilities we have to the world at large more seriously than that.”

Rachel bites down on her lip, hard, and then says, “If you think that all of this is just some irresponsible schoolgirl crush that’s getting out of control, why are you participating in it?”

Quinn doesn’t say anything, just reaches for her back pocket and pulls out a small wallet that contains some bills and what looks like a few pictures.

“You want to know why I’m not necessarily sure that I want this to become public knowledge, Rachel?” she asks, flipping through the pictures with shaking hands.

Rachel almost says, “No”, just at the look on Quinn’s face, which is some sort of awful cross between terrified and furious that she doesn’t really know how to interpret.

“Because if you really think that it’s just because I’m suffering from some sort of phobia of labelling or commitment—”

“I don’t, obviously,” Rachel says, as gently as she can, an apology all ready on her lips. “And—whatever it is that you’re doing right now, please don’t do it like this. Okay? I want to know, but not like this.”

Quinn’s fingers clench around the wallet for a tight moment, and then she shakes her head. “No. I should’ve told you sooner than this. Because unfortunately, it concerns you as well.”

“It—” Rachel says, and blinks. “But it’s not about my career.”

“No,” Quinn says, biting on her lip for a long moment and then finally producing just one picture and pressing it into Rachel’s palm. “It’s about her.”

Rachel looks at the picture, and says, “Oh, my God” without meaning to.

*

It’s Quinn’s spitting image; just with darker hair, and very tired-looking eyes and a weary smile.

That’s not the part that surprises Rachel. It’s that the pictures been taken in a hospital and Beth’s clearly hooked up to a respirator of some kind, and it doesn’t look like she’s just been in an accident of some kind.

“That was last year. She got pneumonia,” Quinn says, quietly. “She was on antibiotics at the time, but the infection somehow snuck past. It—um. It was touch and go for a while. This is after they went in and had to trach her. You know, with a tube.”

Rachel says nothing, just looks from the picture to Quinn’s face, which has drawn tight but stays focused on the picture.

“Your mother,” Quinn says, almost wincing but not quite, “offered an open adoption. I never told Puck, because I didn’t want him to have the responsibility, but I’ve received pictures and cards her entire life. And then, when she turned three—Shelby told me that, um.”

Rachel’s hand reaches for Quinn’s almost automatically, squeezing it tightly.

“It’s CF. I could go into the specifics, but basically, Puck and I carry recessive genes that don’t affect either of us but combined in her to—” Quinn stops talking abruptly and looks away from the picture, inhaling sharply and then shaking her head. “The medical bills are insane. Shelby’s insurance only covers so much, and—she’s a school teacher. You remember Mr. Schuester’s car. There is just—”

Rachel feels all of the air leave her lungs in a soft whoosh. “You started dancing for her.”

Quinn doesn’t admit it, but does say, “It wasn’t because the idea of student loans terrified me, Rachel. Is that what you thought?”

“I—honestly, I don’t know what I thought,” Rachel says, biting her lip and looking at the picture again. “How is she? Right now?”

“Okay,” Quinn says, with a shudder. “It’s just—you know. Eventually she’s going to need lung transplants. They’re not sure when, but—”

“Have you ever met her?” Rachel asks, quietly.

Quinn closes her eyes and shakes her head. “No. And before you ask, Shelby’s never asked for money. She told me about Beth’s condition because—it’s hereditary. And I should get any future partners tested for the gene if I ever have more children.”

Rachel, for once, can’t think of a thing to say that would make sense at this point. All she can do is tighten her hold on Quinn’s hand, who looks at her with a barely-present and half- hearted smile after another long moment.

“I’m not ashamed of how I’ve made the money to care for her, Rachel. I just don’t want her to have to deal with her birth mother being in a scandalous relationship with some Broadway singer who happens to also be her adoptive mother’s first child.”

Rachel sighs and says, “Well, when you put it like that…”

It works and Quinn laughs weakly.

“I’m really sorry,” Rachel says, tugging on their linked hands for a second, until Quinn steps in closer and into the hug that Rachel is silently offering.

She could say more, like, you’re so blind to how amazing you are, or maybe even, you’re crazy if you think I’ll ever get over you now, but the way that Quinn’s hands are digging into her waist, holding on tighter than she ever has before, Rachel thinks that maybe it’s for the best if she doesn’t say anything at all.

*

The drive back is quiet and tense, and Rachel takes the wheel when Quinn’s hands won’t stop shaking. The magnitude of this confession is ridiculous and has taken so much out of her that Rachel says, “You’re not going home” and ignores the mumbled protest Quinn voices about wanting some alone time.

It’s ridiculous. Neither of them want to be alone right now, and if Quinn wasn’t feeling so utterly exposed, she wouldn’t be bothering trying to deny it.

As soon as they get in, Rachel tugs on Quinn’s sweater and pulls her into the bathroom, leaving her alone just about long enough to get a bath running, and then undressing her methodically, without even the barest hint of seduction.

Quinn reaches for her face when she’s down to her underwear, cupping her cheek, and just says, “Thanks.”

Rachel sighs and says, “I wish I’d known. I could’ve—”

“No,” Quinn says, hand falling away. She shakes her head. “She’s—whatever feelings you’re having right now, Beth is not your sister any more than Shelby is your mother. Okay?”

“All I meant is—”

“I know you have money, but this isn’t your problem,” Quinn says, before almost angrily shrugging out of her bra and pulling her panties down her legs. “And I don’t need your—”

“Quinn, what I was going to say is that I wish I’d known so I could’ve been here for you. As someone to talk to. I wasn’t—I know what it’s like to have your independence taken away from you, and I would never insult you like that,” Rachel says, quietly, before turning and testing the temperature of the water.

The room smells like chamomile and honey, and she starts when Quinn pulls on her shoulder and turns her abruptly, kissing her with a whispered, “I know, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—” that trails off into nothingness.

She lets Quinn tug her out of her jeans and her t-shirt as quickly as she can, and then is nudged over to the bathtub, slipping into it and dunking her head under the water for just a second before jolting back upwards when Quinn settles on top of her and kisses her before she’s even broken the surface again.

She doesn’t get much of a chance to catch her breath, either—just tilts her head back and gasps when Quinn’s lips attack her neck and her shoulder, before reaching for her mouth again. Only when that kiss mellows just a fraction does she remember she can move, and she runs a hand through Quinn’s hair, stroking it and petting it until Quinn stops kissing her so frantically.

Rachel’s not surprised when she bursts into tears a moment later, and just stretches until she can toe off the hot water. Quinn cries as she always has—silently and beautifully, but it’s somehow a lot better this time, because Rachel can finally do what she’s wanted to do every other time Quinn has cried in front of her as well.

“It’s okay. I’ve got you,” she murmurs, and runs her fingers along Quinn’s scalp, until those quiet tears stop flowing and Quinn glances up at her with an expression so open that Rachel’s breath stills at the sight of it.

“I don’t know how this happened,” Quinn says, closing her eyes and swallowing hard. “It’s only been two weeks, but somehow…”

“Has it really, though?” Rachel asks, softly, her hand stilling.

Quinn declines answering and shifts instead, until their faces are so close that Rachel can’t even look at her without crossing her eyes.

“Don’t hurt me,” Quinn finally says, in a quiet exhale that hits Rachel right in the face.

“I won’t,” Rachel says, already bracing herself for a kiss so light and gentle that it bruises her heart on impact.

*

When they hit the bed, a good half hour later, Rachel’s arousal has been building so slowly that she’s not even sure she’s wet.

All she knows is that they’ve been kissing for ages, and her heart feels like it’s going to give out if she’s going to be made to feel much more than she already does, right now.

She’s not alone in that predicament, though, because Quinn sighs next to her ear, when they settle, and then looks at her with a really endearing shy expression on her face.

“I need—I want to…” she starts asking, ducking her head before glancing at Rachel again with eyes that speak volumes that Quinn herself never will. “Can I tie you up, now? I just want—”

She shakes her head again and bites her lip in frustration, and Rachel reaches for her chin, pushing on it until they’re looking at each other again.

“Yes,” she says, firmly, staring at Quinn until Quinn nods back at her. “Scarves are in the second drawer. I have a jump rope somewhere as well, if you’re feeling creative.” She smiles faintly at the end, even as Quinn brokenly laughs and rolls her eyes.

It’s something that should feel perfunctory, like a stupid game that two people who can’t get off without playing games would play; but it doesn’t, because Quinn’s fingers trail up her arms, stretching them towards the slatted headboard before locking them in place there. She ties the scarves quickly and efficiently, and some part of Rachel wants to know desperately who else has seen this side of Quinn. Nobody in Lima, that’s a given, but either way—she doesn’t actually want to know.

Some part of her knows that no matter how many times Quinn has gotten to tie people up in their beds, this is the only time she’ll remember, after this; and maybe that’s the only thing that actually matters.

“Do you trust me,” Quinn asks, softly, by her side. All she’s doing is running one finger up and down Rachel’s torso, straight down the middle, almost like the start of an autopsy. It’s fitting, because Rachel has never felt so torn apart as she does with the way Quinn looks at her—it’s like a promise, and an apology all at once.

“Whatever you want,” she says, in response, swallowing on the last word. “Hudson, right?”

Quinn smiles for a second and then says, “Is this the first time someone’s—”

“I’ve never wanted it to be anyone but you,” Rachel says, because this somehow is the moment she’s been waiting for; the time where she can be honest, and Quinn won’t run, because Quinn has what she needs: an illusion of control over both of their lives.

Quinn shifts and sighs simultaneously. “Rachel—for God’s sake, who says things like that?”

“I do,” Rachel says, flexing her wrists against the scarves and sighing when she realizes she actually can’t get out of them. It turns her on, but more than that, it turns her on to know that Quinn’s serious about this. “And you fucking love it.”

Quinn laughs after a second and says, “For someone who’s so naturally submissive you are really uppity sometimes.”

“Yeah. Maybe I should be made to pay for that,” Rachel says, already fairly sure she’s going to.

Quinn’s on top of her in a flash, palms pressing her shoulders into the mattress, but rather than the playful look she’s expecting, there’s an unexpectedly contemplative expression on her face.

“What?” Rachel asks.

Quinn shakes her head and says, “Just wishing I’d brought a strap-on, is all. I don’t suppose you have one here?”

Rachel stops wondering if she’s wet, and starts wondering if there’s anything at all that Quinn won’t be able to make her to feel.

Whatever limits to their affair she’d forced herself to accept just a few weeks ago—a few months, just the occasional bit of sex, take what you can get, Rachel, she’d told herself, over and over again—are bursting into focus, sharp and quick, and she takes a deep breath and tries to ignore the warning signs that are going off in her head.

“Relax, and close your eyes,” Quinn murmurs, lips against her ear again, and Rachel’s eyes slip shut automatically, even as her fingers dig into the headboard almost painfully.

She’s never going to be able to ignore Quinn; not even when letting her dictate this thing between them is a certain path to heartbreak that she’s not sure she’ll ever recover from.

They have seven more weeks.

It’s not going to be anywhere near enough time. and isn’t this exactly where you’d like me (part 7/8) Quinn/Rachel, NC-17 (x 10 million), for rachberry, who wanted Rachel doing a show in Vegas for 2-3 months and somehow ending up getting a lap dance from Quinn.

AN: we’re very close to the end now, and tonally this shifts the story significantly. I don’t see how it couldn’t, though, after what happened in part 6, so. No regrets! Thank you all for reading and caring so much about how this wraps up. It’s been a pleasure. :)

*

There’s an unexpected sort of serenity about the next morning. Rachel wakes up with Quinn’s arm flung over her waist and her face pressed into the mattress, and rubs a non- existent spot on her shoulder until she wakes up.

She doesn’t know if she’s expecting flight or just emotional distance, but what she’s not expecting is for Quinn to just yawn, stretch, and say, “Hey. Do you—have any breakfast stuff? I’m really hungry.”

It’s so weirdly normal that Rachel can’t help smiling, even though her shoulder joint hurts— something about the way she arched when she came, hands still tied to the headboard—and there’s a pleasant ache between her thighs that will become not so pleasant in the next few hours.

“We could go grab something,” she says, before thinking. All she has is granola and near- expiry-date milk, which—maybe they’re past the point where that’s all they can have, together.

“Pancakes?” Quinn asks, before shifting further up the bed and saying, “Turn; your shoulders are bound to be a little sore. … no pun intended.”

Rachel doesn’t want to know how she knows; just pulls her hair over her shoulder and says, “It was worth it.”

Quinn’s thumb presses into her shoulder first, but Rachel swears she feels her lips a second afterwards, nudging against the back of her neck.

It’s not the first mark Quinn’s left on her. It’s the first one Rachel thinks she won’t ever forget about, though, because it feels like it means more, somehow.

*

She’s very conscious of how they appear, heading out together to get some stuff at a deli three blocks from Rachel’s house. There’s space between them; not awkwardly or deliberately so, but just enough for it to look like they’re at best casual acquaintances.

Still, Quinn opens the door to the shop for her and nudges her inside in a way that can only be seen as possessively, and Rachel feels a headache coming on at the idea of needing to discuss this, eventually.

Ten minutes, two coffees and two sandwiches later and they’re strolling back, not even really talking. Some part of Rachel wonders if this is what her life could be like if she gave it up: the spotlight, or maybe just her desire to be perfect at absolutely everything. Maybe she could be perfect at this without needing to worry about what it would mean for her career. Maybe it would be worth it.

Quinn breaks the silence by saying, “I need to tell Puck about Beth.”

“Surely he already knows,” Rachel says, fidgeting with her keys in her pocket.

Quinn gives her a surprised look and Rachel sighs and says, “I was thinking about this last night, but—if Shelby contacted you to let you know about her condition—”

Quinn blinks furiously and then exhales with a slow, “Fuck.”

“I don’t think—he doesn’t resent you for not telling him. I would know if he did. But he’s never said anything,” Rachel says, not adding that he’s also not taken a day of vacation in the last few years and that she’s fairly sure now why he’s wanted to work as much as he can.

“I should have, though. Not about her—about the adoption,” Quinn says, rubbing at her cheek for a moment and then sighing. “I just—”

“You were really young,” Rachel says, as gently as she can. “And he wanted to keep her. I don’t blame you for not wanting to encourage him.”

Quinn makes a non-committal noise and then says, “So. This lunch, on Tuesday.”

“Mm.” They’re almost back at the house, and Rachel glances over at her drive; spots a flash of silver there that makes her hesitate for just a moment.

“What are we telling them?” Quinn asks. She doesn’t look nervous, but there’s some poorly hidden anxiety in her voice, anyway.

“Whatever you want,” Rachel says, before putting her hand on Quinn’s arm and saying, “Um. I think we’re about to be ambushed.”

“By?”

“There’s still only one person I know who drives a Lexus,” Rachel says, glancing at Quinn’s face. “Did you and Santana—”

“We didn’t keep in touch. I—there was too much history,” Quinn says, her face a little pained. “But—”

“Brittany knows about you,” Rachel says, softly. At Quinn’s look, she sighs and says, “I had to tell someone. And I didn’t want to give my therapist more fodder to lock me away.”

“What does she know, exactly?” Quinn asks, shoving a hand into her jacket pocket and clanging some coins together there for just a few moments. It’s a strangely endearing tic, if that’s what it is, and Rachel reaches for her other hand automatically; tangles their fingers together for a few seconds, just because she can.

“That—I’ve been halfway in love with you since high school. I mean, everyone knows that,” she says, ducking her head for a second with a wry smile. “But that—I saw you, at Rapture. And that I have—a lot of feelings for you. Still.”

“Right,” Quinn says, taking a deep breath. “So Santana knows.”

“No, she doesn’t. I asked Britt not to say anything. She and I—we’re close,” Rachel says, with a shrug at the look on Quinn’s face. “I need someone in my life who won’t judge me. She’s—”

“A good friend, yeah,” Quinn says, pulling her fingers away.

“Quinn—for what it’s worth, we can go in there and tell them that I tracked you down and seduced you, okay? I don’t mind looking like a fool for you. I don’t want you to feel like—”

Quinn smiles and presses a finger to Rachel’s lips. “You’re not deranged, Rachel. You don’t have to make yourself out to be deranged just to spare me, either.”

“So—what? You live here, came to see the show for nostalgia reasons? We met up afterwards, and now—”

“Now,” Quinn says, and looks at Rachel’s face questioningly. “We’re dating.”

“Dating?” Rachel asks; the question’s almost a kiss against Quinn’s fingers. “Are you—”

“I’m not sure about anything, but—” Quinn sighs deeply and then just sort of smiles and shakes her head. “Rachel Berry gets what she wants, right? It wasn’t any different in high school.”

Quinn’s hand drops away and she starts walking again, spine straightening with every step, like she’s gearing up for some long-lost confrontation with Santana. It’s almost funny, because Rachel knows Santana will at worst just be disinterested in seeing Quinn again, and is more likely to just be pleased to see an old friend. Either way, there’s something oddly endearing about the familiar walls that Quinn pulls up just at the idea of dealing with a situation that harkens back to Lima.

“Hey,” she says, waiting until Quinn looks back over her shoulder. “Don’t panic. We’re not doing anything wrong.”

She has no idea what the look on Quinn’s face means, but it’s not really about Quinn.

The first step to overcoming a problem is admitting you have one, isn’t it? And maybe, her problem has been letting other people tell her how to act for far too many years.

Quinn waits for her, and they walk the rest of the way side by side; casual acquaintance distance, but anyone who knows them will not be fooled by it at all.

It’s oddly comforting.

*

Santana and Brittany are baffled by the sight of Quinn in Rachel’s house, but Brittany gets over it within seconds, hugging Quinn tightly enough for Quinn’s eyes to well up for a few moments. It’s discrete enough for nobody else to notice; Rachel feels a spark of something at the idea that she can read Quinn where nobody else can.

Santana’s a little more wary, as she always has been, but finally just shrugs and says, “World works in mysterious ways, doesn’t it” and gives Quinn a hug as well.

Rachel makes them all some coffee and then wonders what in God’s name they’re going to talk about all afternoon. Quinn is feeding them some bullshit story about how they met up after the show and, with enough time passed, they finally worked out some of their issues from high school. It’s hilarious because they’ve talked about exactly nothing in the time they’ve been seeing each other, but now this conversation is taking place with other people instead.

When they ask after Quinn’s job and she has to start explaining what her research is focused on, Rachel realizes she’s only involved in a very, very small part of Quinn’s life. She gets nights and mornings, but not an awful lot in between.

She’s watching coffee percolate and drip when it hits her that she wants so much more than this; that she’d probably actually give up the sex if it meant things like, being able to show up unexpectedly at Quinn’s apartment, or giving her a random call to talk about something stressful happening during rehearsals (like that time when one of the lights had come sailing down to almost land on her foot, or the time when one of the dancers had thrown up all over the choreographer because of a bad case of food poisoning—five minutes before they’d been due to go on).

A hand on her back snaps her out of it, and when she looks up, Brittany says, “So.”

“Yeah,” Rachel sighs. Brittany gives her a small smile and says, “She really likes you.”

“I hope so,” Rachel says.

It’s an incredibly stupid thing to feel about someone who said don’t hurt me last night, who kissed her so desperately it felt like drowning, but she finally understands what Finn meant when, many years ago, he said that being with Quinn was like constantly being in the dark.

She’s a little too addicted to the dark to be able to stop herself, though—and only half of that is about Quinn at all.

“I’m so in love with her and she’s going to end this before the summer is over,” Rachel says, lining up four mugs next to the coffee maker, straight and with handles all facing the same direction.

Brittany flicks off the coffee maker and hands her the pot. “So make her not do that.”

“I live on the other side of the country,” Rachel says, softly. She has no idea how Quinn takes her coffee, and pauses with a spoonful of sugar above the mug. She knows how Santana and Brittany take theirs, but has no idea how Quinn takes her coffee, because coffee isn’t what they do, between them.

The tears come on unexpectedly, and Brittany’s arm wraps around her back.

“You feel a bunch of stuff because it’s been so long. It’ll be okay,” she says, confidently and warmly. Rachel glances over her shoulder at the living room, to where Santana is smiling about something before rolling her eyes and Quinn’s shoulders are shaking with quiet laughter, and—

This is everything that’s missing from her day to day life, and God help her, if Quinn takes it away from her—

“Thanks,” she says, against Brittany’s shoulder.

“If she still drinks it like she did in high school, milk and no sugar,” Brittany says, with a final pat on her back, before carrying two mugs back into the living room.

Quinn glances over her shoulder towards the kitchen and gives Rachel a small smile.

Rachel almost returns it, and takes a chance on the coffee.

*

Quinn is the first to go; obligations, she says, and Rachel looks at the clock and knows that it’s time for her to go home, get changed, put in some extensions and head to the club.

Her stomach swells with nausea and she says, “Excuse me” before she can help herself and heads to the bathroom without looking back.

She’s tapping the pill bottle against the sink when Quinn nudges the door open, steps inside, and closes it again.

“Talk to me,” she says, wrenching the pills from Rachel’s hand.

“I—no,” Rachel says, running the tap and splashing some water into her face.

“You were fine with it last week.”

Rachel presses her face into a towel and says, “Last week we were just fucking.”

Quinn doesn’t say anything to that, and Rachel doesn’t want to look at her.

“Rach, it’s just about the money,” she finally says, tired and sad.

Rachel lets the towel drop and then says, “I know that. I’m in the entertainment industry. God knows that what you see isn’t what’s actually going on. I know that.”

“So then—”

“We need to talk about what we’re going to do two months from now, because—” Rachel shakes her head. “I know it’s been two weeks, for you, but for me this has been a lifetime. I was so close to giving it all up right before I met you. Did you know that? I was literally five shows away from either an overdose or just a complete retreat to some treatment facility in Hawaii or something.”

Quinn looks at her with a perfectly composed therapeutic face that really, really grates. “So—”

“So, I haven’t felt a thing other than lonely in years. I know it; everyone around me knows it. I’m a nervous breakdown waiting to happen. But then I come across you, and—you’re everything I don’t have in my life. Everything. And you expect to be able to just swoop in and give me this—this reminder of what I don’t have, and you act like it’s going to be fine when you take it away again.”

Quinn lowers her eyes and says, “I never promised anything, Rachel.”

“Yes, well, I thought I’d be able to stop myself from fucking falling in love with you all over again, but I’m an idiot,” Rachel says, holding her palm open and saying, “Give me the pills.”

“What do you expect me to say to you right now? That—after two weeks, I see forever for us? That I’m going to quit my job for you? That—what, at the end of the summer I’ll move to New York?” Quinn asks, sharply.

The pills pass between them without any connecting touches.

“How about you just tell me that you don’t already have a speech prepared for how you’re going to end it?” Rachel says, tipping the cap off the bottle and letting the first pill slip onto her palm.

Quinn’s jaw tightens, but she doesn’t lie.

“That’s what I thought,” Rachel murmurs, before swallowing the pill dry and throwing the rest of the bottle into the sink. “And you know what? If I hadn’t met you when I did, I might have been strong enough to tell you no. But I’m not, and—”

“Give me some time,” Quinn says, slowly and surely.

“Time to do what?”

Quinn’s breath comes out in a slow push, when she says, “To catch up. To where you are.”

Some part of Rachel wants to scream. Something idiotic and high school like if you felt the way I do time wouldn’t make a difference, but she’s a borderline drug addict and Quinn is a stripper and this isn’t some fucking fairytale romance about how everything is going to be magically fine once you meet the right person.

“We’re going to absolutely destroy each other, aren’t we,” she says, instead, because it’s the only thing that feels true.

Quinn’s response is to nudge her up against the counter until she sits on it, and to kiss her hard enough to make her forget that she wants more: more Xanax, and more of the life that she can now finally visualize accurately.

*

She cancels the lunch.

Quinn doesn’t ask why; just texts back ‘ok’ and doesn’t get back in touch at all.

The show is the worst it’s ever been, though she really does sound like her heart is breaking on every single she sings.

Kurt and Puck look really, really concerned.

She renews her prescriptions two weeks early because she’s out, and looks at a calendar that tells her that in six weeks time, her commitment will be done and she can take a vacation.

She makes a reservation for a hotel in Croatia; the northern part of the country, which is deserted but with beaches, and wonders if she could rent a dog or something to walk there with her.

She was lonely before, but at least she knew how to handle it. Now? Now she’s just—

*

It’s been a week, or maybe more.

Time is passing in a blur.

She’s already polished off half a bottle of vodka with cranberry juice when the doorbell rings. It’s a Monday, it’s after midnight, and she knows she’s a wreck.

Quinn’s right there, in her hoodie and her sweat pants, looking tired and wan and guilty about something. It’s not enough, just looking that way, Rachel doesn’t open the door all the way this time.

“You’re drunk,” Quinn says, instead of a greeting.

“Yes. And what about you? Lost? Or just horny?”

Quinn loses her patience almost immediately. “You know, I thought that by not calling you for a week you’d get what I was trying to tell you, but apparently you’re too bent on making your entire life into a disaster to read between the lines.”

“The lines?” Rachel asks, leaning against the wall heavily and then laughing. “Quinn, you don’t speak enough for there to be lines. All I have is fucking moments, here and there. Moments don’t make up a relationship, whatever you want to call it.”

“How did we go from yeah, let’s tell some people we’re seeing each other to this?” Quinn asks. There’s a lot of anger in her voice. “I mean, what, you thought that was my subtle way of letting you know you’re just someone to fuck to me?”

“I don’t know what that was, other than a way for both of us to save face,” Rachel says. Her head hurts, and she wonders if she took any pills today; she can’t actually remember, but God, she’s not capable of having this conversation right now.

“Why do you—” Quinn starts to say, and then shakes her head. “God, nothing about you has changed since Lima, has it. You’re never happy with what you have, even now. You always want and need more, until you have everything, all at once. Life doesn’t work that way, Rachel.”

She can’t think of any way to respond, and after a second Quinn turns around starts walking away.

“Why are you here?” Rachel asks, before she can actually leave.

“Because—Beth went into respiratory failure tonight, and I could use a friend who—knows about all of it,” Quinn says, without turning around.

Rachel closes her eyes, feels like shit, and then feels even worse because she starts crying.

“Yeah,” Quinn says, offering absolutely no sympathy; but then she does turn around and wrap an arm around Rachel’s waist, holding her upright and kicking the door shut behind her.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” Rachel says, when she can squeeze it out past the tears; hell, she’s not even sure why she’s crying, just that she is.

“I know,” Quinn says, guiding her back to the couch and sitting both of them down.

“I shouldn’t be crying. You should—God.”

Quinn runs a hand down her back, pressing down steadily, and then says, “Rach—you need help. This isn’t just about me. Or about—us. You need help.”

“You think I don’t know that?” she says, breathing shakily. “There just isn’t time for help in my tour schedule, and Rachel fucking Berry can’t just disappear off the face of the earth for a few months. I’m better off coming out than talking about this; it would be less scandalous.”

Quinn presses a kiss to her temple, unexpectedly, and Rachel sighs and feels a fresh wave of tears come on. “You know the Rachel I know—the one who wants us to be real, and who doesn’t give a shit who knows about us…. that Rachel wouldn’t give a fuck about whether or not it’s scandalous or career destroying.”

She sighs and sort of half-sobs simultaneously. “Yeah, well. I’m not the one who determines which Rachel Berry the world gets to see, these days.”

“You don’t have to put up with that,” Quinn says, pulling back a little. “I’m not going to actually sit here and counsel you, because God knows that would be beyond unethical, but— ”

“I know. And I don’t want you to counsel me, God,” Rachel says, shaking her head and pressing her palms into her eye sockets. “Is Beth okay? I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to— God. I’m so spectacularly good at making everything about me, aren’t I. I thought I’d outgrown that since high school. I’m—really, I don’t even know what to say.”

“She’ll be okay, just an overnight stay in the hospital,” Quinn says, a little shakily, her hand falling away from Rachel’s back. “And you’re not being selfish. Not currently, anyway. You’re just drunk.”

Rachel almost laughs at that, because, honestly, it shouldn’t still be an excuse given how much of her time she spends self-medicating. Still. Maybe she’s not actually selfish, though, because she manages to suppress that impulse and just looks at Quinn instead and says, “What can I do for you, right now?”

Quinn makes a small face and says, “I don’t know. Just—distract me.”

“I’m not in the mood for sex,” Rachel says, plainly.

“Neither am I,” Quinn says, equally plainly, before frowning and looking around the room. “Do you have any movies? Or … board games?”

Rachel sighs and says, “Scrabble. But I’ll need some coffee first unless you’re really desperate to beat me.”

Quinn runs a hand up and down her thigh in a way that’s nothing short of affectionate and says, “I’ll make some. We can watch a Law & Order rerun while you sober up.”

Rachel almost smiles, not so much because it’s true that there’ll definitely be a Law & Order rerun on somewhere, but because she’s drunk and an idiot.

Quinn doesn’t ask how she takes her coffee, or where her mugs are. Quinn just walks into her kitchen and hums something under her breath, and takes care of business: effective, in control, and without mincing a boatload of words she doesn’t need.

They’re not the same person, and they’ll never do things in the same way.

Maybe she can learn to handle that, though.

*

They don’t even fuck the next morning; Quinn just looks at her and says, “Time for some Advil, eh?” in the most unsympathetic way possible.

Rachel glares at her half-heartedly, but being actually sober feels compelled to say, “I’m sorry. I’m—really not in a position to be a part of anyone else’s life, and—”

“Rachel—no matter how grudging the choices I make are, they’re still mine. I’m not blind to what’s going on with you,” Quinn says, effectively shutting her up.

Rachel sighs and says, “I wish you would’ve liked me before I became like this. I was—a lot more than this, once upon a time.”

“Who says you can’t be again?” Quinn says, and then stretches towards the window behind the bed, pulling open the curtains.

It’s really fucking sadistic. It’s also forcing some more normal on Rachel, and that’s the part that she’s barely capable of handling: waking up next to someone who smells like vanilla bean, who scratches lightly at her ass cheek when she gets out of bed and says things like, “I’ll let you have another go at Scrabble today, because honestly; candy from a baby last night, Rach.”

“We’re actually dating, aren’t we,” Rachel says, in response.

Quinn glances at her and says, “Are we?”

“I want us to be,” Rachel says, with a small, carefully checked frown. “I mean—you just scratched your ass in front of me. I think we’re—”

Quinn laughs and says, “Really. That’s the defining moment?”

“It’s—” She hesitates for a moment, and then says, “It’s real, Quinn. I know that’s what you want to avoid at all costs, but it’s real, and I’m in this. Can’t you just give it a real chance, at least?”

Quinn’s expression slips into a tiny smile after a moment, and then she crawls back onto the bed and kisses Rachel so softly that it’s like a barely felt whisper. “Rachel—buy a clue, won’t you?” she then says, and Rachel closes her eyes and pulls her into a hug.

*

They spend the entire day doing stupid things that stupid people who are actually dating do. They talk about preferred vacation destinations, and whether or not New York is actually as fucking terrifying a place to live in as Quinn’s always thought it would be, and how to cope with having to analyze really fucked up people who do really fucked up things on a daily basis, and what it’s like to have every part of your life torn apart by the tabloid media.

They kiss out in the back yard, when Rachel finally wins a game of Scrabble with her encyclopedic vocabulary, now that she’s sober, and they kiss again in the kitchen, when Quinn refuses to pour a two hundred dollar bottle of wine into a sauce until Rachel says a few pointed words about how much money she makes a month and it becomes kind of a moot point.

It’s six by the time Quinn looks at her wrist watch and says, “I have to go”, and it’s seven by the time she actually does.

“We’re dating,” Rachel says, in the doorway, hand wrapping around the bottom edge of Quinn’s hoodie for a moment. She can’t help how hopeful it sounds, even though it’s a little pathetic. “This is what—relationships are like.”

“More or less, anyway,” Quinn agrees, stepping into her space and giving her one last kiss, this one with a lot of promise. “Come over to my house, tomorrow. After the show. I’ll—I don’t know. Just come over.”

There’s a pulse in Rachel’s heart that she hasn’t felt in years, and she already knows that the show tomorrow is going to be the best performance she’s given since she was twenty two.

*

The buzzer wakes her up at some ungodly hour and she fumbles her way to the door, only to have a newspaper slapped into her face.

“What part of warn me wasn’t clear to you?” Kurt says, almost shrilly.

Rachel grapples with the paper, before looking at a picture of herself and Quinn laughing— laughing and then kissing in her back yard.

“How the hell—”

“Telephoto lenses, Rachel. It happened to Brad and Jen, and now it’s happened to you,” Kurt snaps at her. Then, he runs a hand through his hair and takes a deep breath. “What— God, please tell me she does something really respectable for a living. Does she work with disabled children or orphans or something?”

Rachel starts laughing without meaning to—it’s nerves, shredding on the spot—and says, “She’s a stripper.”

The look on Kurt’s face is absolutely indescribable, and it sets her off all over again until she remembers, God, that this doesn’t just affect her; then she’s off towards her bedroom, hitting the last dialled number on her phone, fingers clenching and unclenching around the newspaper the entire time.

“It’s a little early for a booty call,” Quinn’s voice says, gravelly.

“I wish I was calling for that, but—God, I’m so sorry,” Rachel says, ignoring the way Kurt has followed her into the bedroom and is staring at her with a disbelieving expression. “It’s The Globe. We’re front page news.”

“We—meaning. Rachel Berry had lunch with a friend?” Quinn asks, sounding a little more alert.

“Unfortunately, it’s not lunch I’m having so much as—you,” Rachel says, with a wince. “It’s—sorry, it’s not that scandalous, we’re just kissing, but—”

“Fuck,” Quinn says, anyway. “What—”

“If this has gone out, I’m sorry, but at best you have half an hour until the press pieces together who you are and finds their way to your apartment. You—I don’t know. Do you want to come over here? We’re probably going to have a really detailed crisis containment meeting,” Rachel says, looking at Kurt, who nods. “And—it might be better if you’re here, rather than on your own.”

“Rachel, it’s five in the fucking morning,” Quinn says. “Surely they’re not—”

“Where does she live?” Kurt asks. “I’ll get her.”

Rachel rattles off the address and then says, “Stay on the line until Kurt gets there.”

“Rachel, come on. How horrible can this possibly get?” Quinn asks, still sounding like she’s completely not convinced that this is actually a disaster.

Kurt’s phone starts ringing a second later.

“You have no idea, babe,” Rachel says, sitting down weakly on the edge of her bed and pinching the bridge of her nose. “Just know that I’m so, so sorry about this.”

*

Kurt gets to Quinn’s just in time; the street in front of Rachel’s is covered with photographers already by the time they get back, but there’s a reason it’s a massive, gated house, and Quinn manages to get inside—looking a little shell-shocked but otherwise fine— without any further pictures being taken.

“Well,” Kurt says, when they’re all in the living room. “I’d like to thank both of you for the salary increase I’m about to demand, because this is possibly the worst thing that’s ever happened to any celebrity anywhere.”

Quinn bites her lips and looks away; Rachel stares back at him.

“I mean, honestly, Rachel. I know you’ve been in love with her half your life, but did you really have to wait for her to become a stripper to start dating her?” Kurt asks, so sarcastically that it’s almost painful to listen to.

The time for niceties is definitely through, and she feels anger swell abruptly in her chest. “I don’t know, Kurt. Maybe if someone had given me permission to be out a little sooner in my life, I wouldn’t have been fucked up enough to go to a strip club in the first place. And maybe, I would’ve just looked up her number and called her like a normal person. Maybe, I wouldn’t have to act like this was some sort of top secret covert mission all the time. Maybe I would’ve just been with someone I love and I could’ve been happy about it.”

Kurt rolls his eyes dramatically. “Yes, Rachel. Woe is me. It’s so incredibly hard on you to stick to the plan we’ve lined out for your career. I’m sure it’s been torture every step of the way, getting everything you’ve ever wanted professionally while—I mean, I don’t know, maybe I’m the wrong person to ask. Quinn, as someone whose life has obviously turned out exactly as you always wanted it to, how does it feel to hear recording artist and Tony award winner Rachel Berry whine about how many problems she has?”

Rachel has never slapped anyone in her life, and if not for the fact that Quinn’s arm blocks her almost instinctively, she’s not even sure she would’ve been able to stop at slapping him.

Kurt deflates a moment later, and grips his head. “I’m sorry, that was out of line. I don’t think I can quite put into words the amount of stress I’m under.”

“Kurt,” Quinn says, in a very, very carefully composed tone of voice. “I—I don’t care about this coming out. My concerns are slightly more narrow, and personal.”

“In the sense that—”

“In the sense that whatever you’ve done to cover up Rachel’s parentage to date—is it airtight?”

Kurt blinks at her for a moment, until recognition dawns on his face. “Oh my God. Your baby.” He shakes his head and then says, “Nobody will ever know about Shelby. It’s been buried. Rachel’s birth certificate has her dads’ names on it, and everyone who knows about Shelby, Jesse St. James included, has been forced into NDAs years ago.”

“Okay,” Quinn says, and relaxes immediately.

“Okay?” Rachel and Kurt ask simultaneously. They burst out into hysterical laughter almost at the same time, and it doesn’t taper off until Quinn’s also started chuckling.

“Well, I’m glad one of us is fine,” Kurt says, wiping at his eyes long minutes later. “I’m sorry if I insulted you; stripping is just not particularly high on the list of desirable attributes for Rachel Berry’s male romantic interest. Nor are breasts, actually.”

Rachel sort of scoffs at him and then says, “We need—a plan.”

“You’re in love. It’s that or bust,” Kurt says, quickly. “I can’t—my God. It’s ridiculous enough if you’re in love with a stripper, but the alternative is that you’re just seeing one, and frankly, that’s worse than you being gay and falling for your childhood friend who’s had a rough time in the past few years.” He clears his throat and says, “It’s … Pretty Woman. With lesbians.”

“Oh, my God,” Quinn mumbles, shaking her head. “No.”

“Quinn—”

“I refuse to say anything about this. People can think what they want. God knows they’re going to anyway. But you’re not saving me from anything. I’m intelligent and accomplished and not sorry. I refuse to pretend that I am just so it will make you look better,” Quinn says, a little sharply, before adding, “Not to mention—shit, I need to call my mom.”

“We’re going to have to say something,” Rachel says, offering Quinn her phone.

Quinn palms it and then says, “Tell them whatever you want about you, but I’m not becoming a part of this. Jesus, Rachel. I don’t want to be the stripper with a heart of gold who un-closeted Rachel Berry.”

Rachel glances at Kurt, who gives her a small eyebrow raise that basically means she has a point.

*

Kurt leaves to talk strategy with legal a little while later, and when the front door opens and closes behind him, they can hear the crowd that’s gathered outside. It’s not super-sizable, but it’s there, and Quinn deflates a little more and says, “Jesus Christ.”

“I’m—well,” Rachel says. “I have a lot of Xanax, if you think it’ll help.”

Quinn laughs weakly and says, “I’m—God. I’m probably going to get fired over this. They’ll think I seduced a client. It’s against all the rules.”

“I’d be happy to let them know that you didn’t so much seduce me as just naturally turn me into a puddle at your feet,” Rachel says, scooting a little closer and running a hand through Quinn’s hair. “Come on. We need to get some sleep.”

“You think I can sleep like this?” Quinn asks, and when Rachel’s hand drops to her shoulder, she realizes Quinn is outwardly calm, but almost vibrating with tension.

“They won’t find out about Beth,” Rachel says, softly. “It’s—there are no paper trails between any of us, baby. You heard Kurt.”

“It’s not just Beth, it’s—everyone who doesn’t know about what I’ve done, and who’s going to find out because of this. And—” Quinn exhales shakily. “I didn’t want this. This level of fame? I just wanted out of Ohio, for God’s sake. I’ve accomplished everything I’ve ever wanted. I’m not you. I just—”

“What are you saying?” Rachel asks, carefully.

“That this isn’t about you,” Quinn says, after a long pause. “It’s about me.”

“Right,” Rachel says, not bothering to hide her bitterness.

Quinn rolls her eyes and says, “Rachel—for once in your life, just stop reading too much into what I am and am not saying.”

Rachel’s not entirely sure she knows how to do that, but opts to shut up instead and let Quinn process, a variety of emotions flitting over her face.

“We can commit to this publicly, and that would make it go away,” she finally says, when Quinn still has no answers forthcoming. “But it’s not our only option. If you back out now, I am happy to release a statement to the effect that we are old friends who reconnected and that it meant nothing.”

“And I’ll be forgotten about,” Quinn says.

By everyone but me, Rachel thinks, but otherwise nods.

Quinn gives her a quick look, then looks away, and the takes a deep breath and actually stares into her eyes. “I can’t do that.”

“Because—”

“Because—I graduate in two months time, and you are going to need someone in your life who will push you to get healthy, and when you have gotten healthy, you are going to need someone in your life who keeps you from self-destructing all over again,” Quinn says.

“You’re not my therapist,” Rachel reminds her, freezing when Quinn’s knuckles brush against her face.

“I was hoping it would come off sounding … less clinical than that. Because I don’t mean it in a clinical capacity.”

Rachel knows her face is falling with acute horror. “I don’t need you with me out of a sense of pity, Quinn. God, I will take anything I can get from you, but pity?”

Quinn’s expression opens up completely, just for a second, and her voice is edgy when she says, “Why on earth would you ever think I pity you? I’ve envied you the entire time we’ve known each other.”

“I—” Rachel says, and then realizes she is completely out of words.

“You really think I hated you because of some stupid popularity thing in high school? God, Rachel, I wanted to be you. You’ve never struggled to be anything but who you are, and I can’t think of a single day in my life when I’ve woken up with as much belief in myself as you had in you. This isn’t about pity. This is about—you being you.” Quinn’s eyes flicker over to the table with the newspaper on it. “The world sees you as something other than what you are, and you’ve convinced yourself that it’s true—that there’s nothing more to you than a massive ego and sense of entitlement and a voice that’s had better days. But—I look at you and I see—”

“Quinn, you don’t have to—” Rachel finally says, because Jesus, it’s been a long day, and she doesn’t want to associate the end of her career with the start of something much more important—though it seems to be quickly heading down that path.

“It’s very easy to fall for you, you know,” Quinn says, cutting her off with a wry little head- shake and smile. “Everyone else in Lima sure as hell managed it quickly enough. Maybe I’m a little slow on the uptake, but—it’s not pity.”

Rachel has so many things running through her mind that absolutely none come out. All she has is the idea that this is a turning point in so many ways, and she knows that after they’ve gone to bed and have slept—and fucked, because God, she wants to fuck Quinn more now than she ever has before—she’s going to call Kurt and tell him to release a very open-ended statement about how Puckleberry is definitely over and Rachel is looking forward to moving on with her life in a positive way.

“Well. At least my crazy fans will have really pretty visuals to play with,” she finally says, directing Quinn’s eyes towards the picture on the table. “Look forward to mountains of fanmail for me that’s just candids of us pasted together.”

Quinn laughs, shakes her head, and says, “I’ll be sure to forward the better ones to my Mom, so she can enjoy them when she’s done having an aneurysm.”

She flips Rachel’s phone open a moment later and keys in a number from memory, and her spare hand reaches for Rachel’s seconds later. They sit quietly while a phone somewhere in Lima rings, and Quinn closes her eyes when there’s a faint answer on the other end of the line.

“I need to tell you something; it’s nothing horrible, but you probably—are you sitting down?” she asks.

Quinn’s mother says something inaudible in response—probably it’s six thirty am, I’m in bed—but then Quinn just takes a deep breath and says, “Do you remember Rachel? From show choir?”

More murmuring.

“Yeah. Yes, the singer. I know she’s in town. I’ve—seen her perform,” Quinn says, pitched, and Rachel bites down on her cheek to urge down some inappropriate laughter. “It’s—okay, there really is no easy way to say this so I’m just going to come out with it. We’re—in a relationship. It’s going to be all over the news in the next few hours. I just wanted you to know first.”

It’s deadly silent for what feels like almost half a minute, and Quinn’s entire expression falls; Rachel leans in closer and hugs her the best she can, but it’s not much help.

“Well. At least you won’t have to worry about paying off your student loans,” Quinn’s mother finally says, sounding like she might still faint, but all in all, it’s about the best they can hope for under the circumstances.

Quinn laughs and tears up at the same time, and Rachel pulls away as they continue talking a little bit more; there’s so much honesty in Quinn’s words—”it just happened, no, I didn’t feel this way about her in high school; but she’s always been really special”—that she didn’t think she’d ever be privy to, and some part of her wants to run out into the back yard and yell “thanks so much!” at that asshole who outed them.

She heads to the bedroom instead and slips under the covers, waiting for Quinn to join her; and she’s already halfway asleep when she feels the mattress dip.

“We’ve never even been on a real date,” Quinn murmurs into her ear.

“Dating is overrated. It involves public appearances and me hyperventilating,” Rachel says, rolling over and curving into her. “And besides, I know what I think of as our first date. It’s going to be hard to top, in terms of excitement.”

Quinn blushes faintly and says, “Well, some day, maybe? According to my mother you’re one of the hundred wealthiest women in the country. Maybe you can rent out an entire restaurant or something.”

Rachel smiles and says, “I’m not that rich. And besides, I need that money for retirement.”

“Yeah, like, fifty years from now,” Quinn says, pressing a kiss into her scalp.

“No,” Rachel says, leaning back a little and giving Quinn a faint smile. “I don’t—have you ever felt like you’ve worked your entire life towards something and it really just doesn’t matter, at the end of the day?”

Quinn smiles faintly and says, “Yeah. I have.”

“Yeah. Well. Maybe I’ll love performing again, some day, but—”

Quinn kisses her, and it’s an appropriate reminder of the fact that they’re actually going to have time to deal with this, now. It’s a slow and languid kiss, and Quinn breaks it only long enough to say, “When do you think I can go back to my apartment?”

“I—Kurt can pick up some stuff,” Rachel says. “Your thesis? Is that what you’re—”

Quinn flushes brightly and says, “Well, that, too, obviously. And some clothes. But um, I don’t think I want Kurt to pick up what I’m thinking of.”

Rachel laughs and says, “You and your strap-on.”

“You’ll grow to love it as much as I do, I promise,” Quinn says, with a very smug look on her face for a second. It slips away quickly, though, and then she just brushes Rachel’s hair out of her face with a soft, “So. Hey.”

“Hey,” Rachel says back.

“What are you doing when you’re done with your show?” Quinn asks, hand still lingering by her cheek.

“A lot of thinking. What are you doing when you’re done with your degree?”

“A lot of thinking,” Quinn says, her eyes dropping to Rachel’s lips again; Rachel feels her mouth dry out almost immediately.

She rolls over onto her side more properly and says, “I’m a little on edge. Can we—”

“You don’t have to ask,” Quinn says, licking her lips and then smiling wryly. “You’re not the only one who’s started resembling a teenager in the past few weeks.”

“I know, but—can we just keep it nice and easy? No games.”

“You like the games,” Quinn says, but her hand slips between Rachel’s legs anyway, and Rachel bends her leg at the knee to make room for her. “As do I.”

“Yeah, but—” Rachel says, her fingers slipping beneath Quinn’s boy shorts; she can’t help a small smile at the way Quinn sighs and presses into her, but then closes her eyes when Quinn feels around with a bit more purpose and her own hips shift forward as well.

“I know,” Quinn says, leaning in for a kiss that’s exactly as paced and delicate as the small movements their hands are making.

Everything about it is easy and comfortable and nice and slow. Rachel comes with a shiver and a soft sigh, and watches as Quinn’s eyebrows knit together as she follows half a minute later.

“Remind me to thank Kurt for forcing me to come to Vegas,” she says, softly, when it doesn’t seem like there’s anything else to say.

Quinn smiles without opening her eyes, and Rachel closes her own in response. and isn’t this exactly where you’d like me (part 8/8) Quinn/Rachel, NC-17 (x 10 million), for rachberry, who wanted Rachel doing a show in Vegas for 2-3 months and somehow ending up getting a lap dance from Quinn.

AN: Along with global warning, the recession, and the constant state of near-tears I’m in whenever I look at my dash in the morning, I blame Achele for the ending of this story. Damn you, ladies. Everyone else reading: thank you for your support, it’s not always been the easiest story to write but your continued interest has made it a lot more fun and easy to get through it. And finally, thanks to Rachel for the prompt. This isn’t what you expected from it, but I hope you’re pleased with it anyway.

*

3 Months Later

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to start jumping on your chair like Tom Cruise,” she says, throwing a small smile to the camera.

“It’s not usually the first thing I assume when people come in, but—well, will you look at this girl’s face?” Ellen says, egging the audience on, who really—they’re cheering much more heartily than either of them had expected. There’s signs, obviously, but Rachel’s been applauded long enough to know when it’s sincere or not.

Of course, one look at the crowd and she feels like she’s at Dinah Shore, so—her smile is spontaneous, and then turns into a cringe when she sees the screen behind her and—of course it’s that picture.

“Oh, dear,” she says, covering her eyes.

“Can you assure me that the man who took this shot is still alive? Because, judging by the look on your face—”

The audience laughs and Rachel knows she’s getting red. “I have people to do that kind of thing for me, so honestly, I can’t tell you. Shhh,” she says, anyway, before glancing back at the shot; Quinn in a bikini, looking more surprised than anything, and her already on the war-path, fist raised towards the camera.

“Look at you, though. If that’s not the picture of happiness—I mean, right now. Not Tarzan up there,” Ellen says, shifting in her seat a little and then giving Rachel a nod and a more serious look. “We all know, obviously, that this isn’t your typical love story. But what about the ending?”

Somewhere, back stage, is her purse; and in her purse is an unfilled prescription for Xanax that she’s been carrying with her as a crutch, but not so much as a weapon anymore. Somewhere, across the country, there’s a house on the outskirts of Brooklyn, where someone should be unpacking a few more boxes by now.

She’s in the moment, but she’s really so many other places, that there’s nothing to say but, “I don’t really believe in fairy tales anymore, because, honestly—most of them are much too depressing. But—I believe in second chances, and working for something you really want.”

“Your career speaks to that,” Ellen says.

“I like to think that it does, but still. Things get away from you so quickly once—you stop being you, and you start being what everyone wants you to be. I think that the best thing to happen to me, in all of this, is that I found someone who remembers what I’m really like and can always remind me, even at times when I forget.” She smiles after a second and says, “Well, that, and have you seen her?”

“She’s not ugly,” Ellen says.

Rachel just laughs and says, “No, she’s not ugly.”

“I’d go so far as to say that she’s going to be the hottest chick ever to grace a morgue outside of television,” Ellen says, with a small smile.

It’s contractual, this—she’d refused to go on unless they could discuss Quinn as something other than ‘the stripper’—but Ellen sells it easily, and is for whatever reason clearly willing to help them out.

“Yeah, I don’t like to talk to her about that job much, either,” Rachel says, with a wink towards the audience.

They eat it up, and after a few more pleasantries and some questions about what she’s going to do now that she’s left Vegas and isn’t headlining anything on the stage either—”Still working through that; I’m honestly just enjoying my life right now”—and she’s back in the wings, where Kurt hands her her coat and purse with a fond smile.

“You know, I never thought I’d say this, but Quinn Fabray might be the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”

She shrugs her coat around her shoulders and smiles. “Is this you apologizing or admitting you were wrong about how we would be received?”

“Neither; it’s me acknowledging that you actually managed to charm an audience, for a change,” he says, slinging an arm around her back.

“I’m very charming when I’m not clinically depressed,” she says, and Kurt hip-checks her until they both start laughing again.

*

The flight back has her wishing for drugs, but when the stewardess takes one look at her face and brings her a whiskey sour immediately, she sort of relaxes anyway. There’s a book in her carry-on, something Quinn thought she might like, and a very nice middle-aged lady next to her who isn’t trying to make any conversation. Kurt is staying behind for another few days, so she’s free to just sleep for the few hours of the flight and try to regroup for the ridiculous amount of press that will be gathered at JFK for her return.

She doesn’t know exactly when she stopped dreading them so badly—but remembers as soon as she’s through the customs clearance, and up against a pole in the middle of the arrivals hall, two hands in pockets and sunglasses firmly affixed, is everything she’s ever wanted to come home to.

“How’s Ellen?” Quinn asks, a small smile playing around her lips; she reaches for Rachel’s bag automatically, and even though it registers distantly that dozens of shutters are going off around them, all Rachel can see is that small smile and the way their hands brush together just briefly.

“Shorter than I thought she was. It’s nice to be interviewed by someone who isn’t just staring down my dress,” she says, not bothering to hide her grin; Quinn relaxes that last little instance, and when Rachel says, “C’mon, then. You know what they’re here for”, their kiss looks almost entirely natural.

Of course, when they’re actually kissing, Quinn’s always the one taking the lead, and Rachel usually finds herself maneuvered up against unmoving objects; here, Rachel presses into Quinn and nips at her lip for just a second.

Stage-kissing for the professionals. She half-turns and smiles at the nearest photographer, and by unspoken agreement, they all back off a little bit.

“Some day, we’ll stop being news, right?” Quinn asks, when they’re out by the car, working Rachel’s luggage into the trunk.

“Sure. When we’re seventy and there’s officially nothing left to say,” Rachel says, dryly.

Quinn’s face is a little tight, but—she’s getting better about it. Given that it took Rachel four years and a hell of a lot of medication to get used to being under this much scrutiny, actually, ‘better’ doesn’t feel like it’s extending quite enough credit.

*

Their new bedroom is half-painted; a strip of slate blue literally stops halfway up the wall and fades over into magnolia, and Rachel laughs when she sees it.

“Did you get bored?”

“No, just busy. More applications,” Quinn says, a little shortly.

It’s a sensitive subject; she’s obviously immensely qualified, and graduated top of her class, but thanks to all the media attention, the one or two interviews she’s had—as Lucy Fabray, obviously, because no matter how much she doesn’t want to be anything but Quinn, her name is now negative capital for some time to come—have been, to put it mildly, very uncomfortable.

“Anything that you think I haven’t ruined for you?” Rachel asks, shrugging out of her coat and dropping it onto the floor. The rest of their furniture is still being boxed in her old apartment; and most of Quinn’s stuff is in the other bedroom. All they have in here is a mattress, really, and some part of Rachel actually thinks fuck it, who needs a bed. It’s like a half-painted little nest, for just the two of them.

“We’ll have to see,” Quinn says, neutrally. Her face is a little drawn, though, and after two months of studying it for almost every waking moment, Rachel knows better than to keep asking questions.

Instead, she just says, “Hey, do you know what I found when I was unpacking your kitchen utensils yesterday?”

Quinn blinks at her, hands already reaching for Rachel’s waist, and says, “Um—are we not having sex right now?”

“Trust me, I’m on topic,” Rachel says, before smiling wide. “Though I would really love to know why on earth your strap-on was in with your Tupperware.”

Quinn’s jaw drops for just a second, and Rachel starts laughing hysterically.

“It’s—the dishwasher, it’s important to—” Quinn fumbles, blushing furiously, before just settling on a glare. “Oh, fuck you.”

“Yes, please,” Rachel says, tipping onto her toes and wrapping her arms loosely around Quinn’s shoulders. “It’s been a day. That’s way too many hours. Now that I’m not constantly out of it anymore, I find that I’ve become a lot more—”

“Horny?”

“Interested in connecting is what I was going to say, but—” Rachel says, laughing when Quinn rolls her eyes but then kisses her on the forehead anyway.

They stand like that, sort of swaying, for just a few moments.

“I’m going to fuck you so hard you won’t be able to sit tomorrow,” Quinn then says.

“Such big words,” Rachel says, teasingly, before leaning and whispering, “It’s on the counter next to the water bill” right in Quinn’s ear.

Nothing about that statement should be sexy, which is why it’s great that Quinn just sort of snorts and says, “Have you paid it yet?”

“Baby—priorities,” Rachel says, with a pointed look, before reaching for the zipper at the back of her dress and letting it pool around her feet.

“Yeah, right, those,” Quinn agrees, backing out of the room with so much haste that she knocks her head in the doorframe.

It’s been at most eighteen hours since they last saw each other. And it’s been like this every other time they’ve been forced to be apart as well. (Nothing quite as heinous as the vacation in Croatia, where Rachel managed to run up a 1200 dollar phone bill in long distance charges and couldn’t rotate her wrist for three days after she got home, but still.)

She lets herself fall backwards onto the mattress and runs a hand through her hair, and then laughs when Quinn more or less stumbles back into the room, holding their new best friend and tossing it over to Rachel.

“You’re way ahead of me,” she grumbles, pulling her cashmere v-neck over her head and then tripping forward again when she tries to get her pants off too quickly. Her hands save her, just in time, as she lands almost directly on top of Rachel, who laughs and says, “Hey, we have time.”

“I don’t care,” Quinn mutters, shoving her pants the rest of the way down until Rachel’s heels draw into their waistband and push them all the way off. She doesn’t even really get much of a chance to look at Quinn after, because Quinn’s clearly in some sort of mood and—

Rachel knows, objectively, that this is about the pictures at the airport, or maybe just all of it; they way they’d been lambasted outside of her house in Vegas three months ago, or the way Quinn had stubbornly refused to believe that she couldn’t go grocery shopping at a Whole Foods anymore without an army of press apes stalking her. She’d not wanted to believe it until it had actually happened, and even then, she’d not really talked about it.

“Hey,” Rachel says, pulling away from a heated kiss with a palm to Quinn’s chest. “Are you okay?”

Quinn’s denial is at the tip of her tongue, Rachel can almost see it, but then she just sighs and says, “A lot of big changes in a short amount of time. Sometimes, I just need—”

“We have nothing to tie me up to here,” Rachel says, tilting her head back and looking at the wall. “I mean, I suppose you could just restrain me generally, but—”

Quinn doesn’t respond, and when Rachel looks back, there’s a very strange look on her face.

“What? Sorry, I thought—”

“So many people would tell me that—it’s not normal to want to be in control of something this badly. God knows I’ve thought it often enough myself. But you—” Quinn’s eyes fall for a second and then, when she looks back at Rachel, Rachel’s breath actually catches. “I don’t believe in destiny, because it clearly wasn’t my destiny to become pregnant and homeless at age 16, nor was it to become and exotic dancer for two years; but I don’t know.”

There’s a long moment of silence and unfocused staring, until Quinn adds, hesitantly, “You make me want to believe in something, sometimes.”

An indescribable feeling sort of swells and then ebbs in Rachel’s chest, and after a moment of just looking at Quinn, she smiles and says, “All of that just because I’m a kinky little bitch, huh.”

Quinn laughs quietly and says, “Yeah, that’s what I meant.”

“I love you,” Rachel says, still smiling.

When she was sixteen, she had all sorts of ideas about what the perfect time for such a declaration would be, and it certainly wouldn’t have been in some half-painted room with a pile of messy clothing on the floor and Quinn looking torn between wanting to fuck her and wanting to cry about something, but, honestly.

It comes from the heart. Maybe that’s all that matters.

*

She’s always thought of strap-ons as kind of silly and very likely to break the mood. All of this hypothetical, of course, because her entire induction course in lesbianism consists of three one night stands and a lot of Googling of what, exactly, else could be done.

Porn makes it look like cheap male fantasy.

Quinn makes it look like it’s a part of her, of them, that’s the only thing that’s going to get her off sometimes. Like, if she doesn’t actually feel that hip-to-hip connection, she’s never going to peak, and Quinn will just be pressed against her for the rest of her life, holding out and not giving in.

Yeah, the straps are kind of a pain in the ass, and the thing looks positively ludicrous jutting out like that, but something about the way that Quinn’s attitude shifts as soon as it’s in place is just—fuck, she soaks just thinking about it.

Then, there’s the cocky way in which Quinn sinks to her knees and says, “Fuck, Rach, if you get any wetter I’m just going to slip right out of you again”, and it’s like the promise of a high that nobody else will ever, or could ever, bring her to.

She thinks about protesting Quinn’s words, but Quinn swipes a hand between her legs and she groans, both at the feeling and the knowledge that any protest would be futile. The harsh squeak of the toy when Quinn wets it is enough to make her squirm, and when Quinn smiles a little and says, “Hands and knees; I don’t want to break a hip, babe”, she’s flipped herself over in a flash.

Who cares if it’s a little over-eager? Quinn’s hands run up and down her back for a moment, before molding to her hips and pulling just a bit, until her ass is sticking up in the air and the rest of her is almost flat against the mattress. Almost, because she’s human, and because Quinn leans over and bites down on her shoulder for a moment, which makes her head arch back up. She can feel the toy nudging between her thighs, and grinds against it aimlessly; all it does is make Quinn shift again and say, “Bite down on your hand if you’re going to be loud. I’d like to be on friendly terms with our neighbors.”

Rachel half-heartedly turns to glare at her, but God, Quinn has that look on her face; the one that’s so smugly confident about how good a fucking she’s about to deliver that Rachel just feels her insides jolt all over again, and she gamely puts her hand against her mouth.

“Good girl,” Quinn murmurs, invisible behind her again, and then suddenly, she’s there; sliding in an inch at a time, so slowly that Rachel actually has to brace herself so as to not just flatten onto the mattress with the movement.

Why anyone would want to fuck guys given that this is an option, she has no idea. Quinn has such levels of control over her movements that, honestly, the first time they did it ended with Rachel begging to come, almost crying with the need for it, while Quinn still leisurely rocked in and out of her, hovering over her with shaky arms but such determination that— fuck, Rachel could’ve kept on begging all night. It wasn’t until Quinn saw whatever it was that she wanted to see that she’d relented.

It’s hilarious, really, that Quinn’s still a little surprised that Rachel’s so up for it.

Maybe she should return the favor sometime, and—

“God,” she moans, at the idea of it, even as Quinn finally settles inside of her fully, hips to ass, moving only in the most minute rocking motion. It sends sparks down Rachel’s spine.

“I love doing this to you,” Quinn exhales, sounding a little more strung out than she normally does when they do it like this; and Rachel involuntarily wiggles her ass in response, listening carefully for Quinn’s breath to catch.

“So do it, then,” she says, dropping her forehead to the mattress, and wincing when Quinn’s hands tighten around her hips. Not the first time she’s going to have finger marks there; some part of her considers just getting them tattooed in place, though really, she could never film an underwear scene again in her life, so it’s probably not the best idea.

Quinn’s hips pick up a bit of pace, and Rachel jerks forward on the mattress, kept in place only by that steady pressure of Quinn’s hands. Her mind wanders; if she focuses too much on what Quinn is doing, she’s done for too quickly, and some part of her just never wants this to end; the low thrum of friction inside of her, the slap of Quinn’s hips against her, the not-quite-heavy breathing coming from behind her, and the way that Quinn murmurs something every once in a while, just a, “Come on” or a “Yeah”, but—

It’s different, today, because she’s building more quickly; maybe it’s the arch of her back, or something, but Quinn’s hitting her where it matters on every stroke in and out, and her fingers lodge in her mouth after just a few minutes of it. Quinn laughs breathlessly when she sees it, but then groans when Rachel whimpers loudly against her own hand.

“God, what you do to me,” Quinn says, and then—

“Fuck,” Rachel almost cries out, when Quinn slides out of her altogether—but then Quinn yanks on her hair, pulling her head back hard, and kisses her so deeply, and with so much meaning, that she almost forgets they’re here to get off—until Quinn lies down next to her and says, “Ride me.”

Two sexier words have never been spoken in the English language, and Rachel laughs and sighs simultaneously, before kissing Quinn again and sitting on her stomach, barely brushing against the toy. It’s funny, because when Quinn nudges up onto her elbows, it feels almost like they’re role-playing in reverse; Rachel shifts her hips a few times and hums softly, and Quinn breaks away from the kiss with a laugh.

“You want to give me a dance, babe?” she asks.

Rachel twists her hips again and says, “Warning: not nearly as good at this as you are.”

“Good’s in the eye of the beholder,” Quinn says, running her nails up Rachel’s thighs; they tremble wildly in response, and she cants forward into another kiss without meaning to. Her hips grind down, and then back, and there’s a little bit of fumbling with Quinn’s hands, but yeah—they’re kissing, and Quinn’s sucking on her bottom lip, and she stays right in that moment as Quinn’s hips rise up to meet her.

Then, she opens her eyes, and watches as Quinn stares at her with a look of almost pained concentration.

“Hey,” she says, not smiling; not moving.

Quinn doesn’t smile or move, either; just slips her hand back around to the front and lets it linger right by Rachel’s inner thigh. “Hey,” she says, back.

“I meant it, you know,” Rachel says, shifting up onto her knees a little and then sinking back down.

“I know,” Quinn says, using her free hand to pull Rachel back down into a kiss.

It’s sloppy and uncoordinated, the way they’re helping each other get her off; Quinn’s fingers playing around her clit and Quinn’s hips rising up when her own slam down. It’s sloppy, because somehow, all Rachel can worry about is that kiss they’re in; slow, and wet, and God, she feels it everywhere.

When she comes, it takes her by surprise and she bites down on Quinn’s lip hard enough to draw blood; Quinn hisses, but doesn’t break the kiss, not even when Rachel slips off the toy and lies down more fully on top of her, hands reaching for Quinn’s hair, and tangling in it.

They’re panting for air when they finally break, and Quinn’s eyes are wild with something, searching Rachel’s face in a way that makes her stomach flip with butterflies.

“I mean it, too,” she finally says, and Rachel closes her eyes and presses her face into Quinn’s neck. She smells like cinnamon and vanilla, but more than that, she smells like fucking home.

*

It’s not perfect.

Some days, Quinn ignores the fact that she’s been reduced to a depressed, drug-addled starlet’s trophy girlfriend just fine, and they go out jogging together and talk about what kinds of dogs they’d like to have, at some point, when they’re a little more certain.

Sure, they live together, but it’s by necessity rather than because it means something more right now—Quinn can’t afford to live anywhere in New York State, even, unless she has a job, and Rachel’s not emotionally capable of handling a long distance relationship. All of that discussion had been weirdly clinical, more along the lines of “will this aid or impede your recovery” than “let’s buy a house together”. The mortgage is in Rachel’s name, and most of the furniture is Rachel’s as well. The fact that they’d gone out looking for a few bits and pieces together—well.

Some days, Quinn is fine with the attention. Rachel gets her a few wigs just for the hell of it, and starts getting a little worried when Quinn actually takes to wearing them in public, but she’s had enough of a nervous breakdown to know when one’s coming, and it doesn’t seem like that’s in the cards.

It’s just one hell of an adjustment, and after the fifth or so rejection letter from state-wide police departments, she knows that Quinn is just being a real person about the bittersweet ways in which being with Rachel has affected her life.

She can’t apologize for it enough, and Quinn can’t handle her apologizing for it. It’s their endless struggle about whose fault it is, and who makes their own choices . Some nights, they almost end their conversations with doors slamming—but even that’s never the actual end. There’s always middle of the night tip-toeing across hallways to murmur a few apologies afterwards, and after that, they build yet another bridge that the outside world will take to tearing down.

The worst part of it is that Quinn’s saved, substantially, but it’s not long until her student loans start collecting so much interest that she’ll have to start paying for them; and Rachel doesn’t want to ask what she’s thinking about Beth’s medical costs, because that’s something that, legitimately, is none of her business until Quinn brings it up.

She knows that Quinn and Puck are talking about it to each other now, after a nerve- wracking afternoon in Rachel’s house that she knows next to nothing about—and it drives her crazy that she doesn’t know what they worked out, but a lot of living with Quinn is about respecting established boundaries.

She’s trying. She really is.

Quinn’s not the only one who’s working on making some adjustments; honestly, Rachel’s been in therapy four days a week every single day since they got outed, with the exception of her short trip to Croatia. Quinn had refused to come along to that, reminding Rachel that they both needed to do some thinking—and yeah, she has no regrets. The beaches will still be there when she gets back, one day, this time with Quinn.

(She’s not famous in mainland Europe. It’s almost enough to make her want to learn fluent French and just pack up all their shit and go, some days, because God knows she’s wizened up enough to know that her heart is in fact not in .)

She’s fluctuating between feeling fine and feeling like she’s going to die if she doesn’t get her hands on some Xanax in the next ten minutes, and it’s to be expected—her therapist warned her, Quinn warned her, Kurt expressed some concern—but it doesn’t make it any less hard when the panic attack does hit, and her feeling of control over her life evaporates on the spot.

Still, she’s learning a few things about coping—funnily enough a lot of it is just in breathing techniques that she’s used to applying before recording in studio, but now finds herself doing in the driver’s seat of her car, before heading out to pick up some dry-cleaning.

It’s the first normal thing she’s been able to do in her own place of residence in almost four years, now, and when Quinn brings home a bottle of champagne after signing up with a temp agency in Manhattan later that day, it feels the opposite of condescending.

“One day, things will be normal,” she says, as the toast, and Quinn smiles wryly and says, “You and I, we’ll be many things, Rachel, but normal?”

Normal’s entirely overrated anyway.

*

It’s almost November when Quinn finally has a job interview that doesn’t just involve her interviewers staring at her for an entire fucking hour while they are thinking this is that stripper who fucked Rachel Berry. Really, by then, she’s gone from that stripper to Rachel Berry’s partner Quinn, and it’s in large part thanks to Ellen, who has pulled them into a different kind of media circus that is all about de-demonizing Quinn and turning her into a normal person.

They’re the poster children for young, gay America now, and while that comes with its own load of pressure, it’s a lot nicer pressure, and a lot more manageable.

Rachel takes three days off from vocal and piano lessons after the interview, and they spend every waking hour in reach of the phone; even when they fuck, a slow and easy bout of Quinn going down on her on the couch, Rachel’s hand is never more than an inch away from both of their cell phones — just in case the call comes through.

When it finally does, they’re in a sloppy heap together on the couch, a wine glass precariously balanced on Quinn’s thigh, and almost asleep. The wine spills everywhere as Quinn lurches for the phone, and Rachel is so tense she thinks she might actually explode when all Quinn says is “uh-huh” a few times over.

The look on her face when she hangs up is placid and unreadable, and Rachel almost shouts, “So?” in her face, just to get an answer.

“We’re going to have to move to Jersey if you ever want to see me again, but…” Quinn says, with a quickly growing smile.

All Rachel can do is scream, in actuality, this time, because really: she’d move to hell for Quinn’s sake, at this point. Jersey feels like a fairly easy compromise to make.

*

It’s December when she gets an offer to do a West Side Story revival.

Quinn doesn’t nudge her into making a decision one way or the other; just watches from across the room as she paces and thinks out her decision out loud. Everyone else has already offered their opinions, but Quinn’s is the only one she really cares to hear—her dads aside—and Quinn just isn’t saying anything.

Her gut feeling is…

She’s almost ashamed to say out loud that she does still crave it—the spotlight, the attention, the ability to make people swoon just with the power of her voice. It almost killed her, however dramatic that sounds, and yet—she can’t help but want it again.

In the end, she just says, “I don’t know if I can do this if you’re not behind me.”

Quinn looks up from her book and says, “I’ll support your decision no matter what it is.”

“I’ll become more famous, if I do it,” Rachel points out, finally moving over to the couch again and perching on the coffee table in front of Quinn. “If I lead this, it’s probably another Tony, and with another Tony will come bigger offers to branch out into Hollywood. I’m not even sure that I’m stable enough for it, let alone that we’re stable enough for it.”

Quinn closes the book slowly and looks at Rachel carefully for a moment.

“Quinn, I’m serious. I need some input.”

They’re still not done unpacking after their second move in six months, and Rachel’s of half a mind to just leave things in boxes this time, because nothing seems to be going the way she’s planned for her entire life.

“I didn’t love you in high school,” Quinn says, softly. “But I couldn’t love you now if you weren’t still a little bit who you were then.”

“So…”

Quinn’s smile is faint. “So—when people look up star in the dictionary, eventually there’ll be a picture of your name there, Rach. I’m with you, if that’s what you want.”

It’s only when Quinn says the words that Rachel realizes why she wants to get back on stage. It has nothing to do with awards or praise or infamy, but so much to do with feeling like she’s something in her own right—just about enough of a person for Quinn to want to be with her.

“Please don’t start calling me Maria,” she says, reaching for Quinn’s hand. “Kurt and Puck have being completely annoying covered. I had stupid nicknames for two years after Les Mis.”

“Deal,” Quinn says, squeezing her fingers for a moment.

*

The weight of the world falls off her on opening night. She knows that Quinn isn’t behind those perplexing lights in front of her that she’s now carefully bowing to, blindly, but is instead leaning against a prop somewhere off stage, finally done mouthing all the words at her just as a superstitious precaution, and ignoring any buzzing of her phone that let her know she’s needed at work.

There will be flowers in her dressing room, and someone to help her undo her hair and make-up, and someone to rifle through the notes passed backstage from fans and laugh with her at the marriage proposals and well up at the touching coming out stories that she’s getting all the time these days.

There will be someone who drives her home and gives her a glass of milk and patiently waits for her to run through her warm-down exercises and who then lets her collapse into bed, eyes already closed, when all the adrenaline fully wears off.

There will be someone there the next morning, saying “Hey” in a honey-rough voice, hovering over her and teasing at the edge of her thigh with one hand already.

And, there will be someone who, over breakfast, will say, “You were flat on the end note of the final song,” with a teasing smile that means it’s a clear lie, meant only to inspire a bit of roughhousing until the real world calls and picks them both back up again.

A lot of people have performed on the stage she’s bowing on right now, but on some level, Rachel knows that none of them have ever felt as real as she does right now.

It means a lot, and when she spots Quinn behind stage, clapping slowly and trying to hide a teary smile just so it doesn’t set her off ten feet over, in front of a wildly ecstatic crowd, she knows that she wouldn’t change a damn thing about how she got here.