Heuristic: There's No Us In Success

9

It had taken all Quinn's skill to avoid a meeting with Santana before the weekend after their eyes had met at the end of lunch and Santana had that infuriatingly irritating I-know-something-you-don't-want–me–to look. Quinn had hoped she had been imagining it but the Glee club members who had been seated at the table for that fateful 'chocolate brownie' lunch all began to treat the pair of them differently. She could deal with Brittany's manic grinning but avoiding being left alone with Santana took far more guile and cunning. Fortunately she had a physio appointment and the ability to persuade Rachel they needed to leave early as she was feeling a bit tired with the odd twinge of pain in her legs on the thursday. Quinn felt guilty about misleading Rachel in a bid to put off the inevitable conversation that Santana wanted to have. Rachel's solicitous care and sympathetic concern just made her feel guiltier about her duplicity.

She knew she'd been a bit less communicative than usual after physio and during their evening meal at hers. She'd noticed the sidelong glances Rachel threw her way when she thought Quinn wasn't looking. Then there was her mother cast appraising glances over the pair of them, her gaze switching between her and Rachel as the concern grew on her face. Quinn had a momentary panic attack that someone had said something to Judy. Her fear dissipated when Judy shot her an affectionate smile and asked whether she was okay as she'd been a bit quiet. She claimed tiredness from the exercises, a partial truth at best so she looked down at her plate as she said it. Rachel had immediately begun apologising for wearing Quinn out and for not noticing her tiredness, claiming she'd have gone home earlier if she'd realised. Rachel rushed to clear her place at the table and hurried out of the house with a half-hearted goodbye and such a pained look on her face. Quinn had quickly shut down all Judy's attempts to start up a discussion about what had happened and whether Rachel was upset. In the end she retired to her room early allegedly to have an early night but really to turn over the events of the past day in her head and to try and decide on a way forward.

Unfortunately lunch had seemed to persuade the Glee club to think she and Rachel were, well more than they were if her interpretation of Santana's smug look was accurate. It was made more complicated by the fact that she reluctantly had to acknowledge that she wished that they were. Just the idea of Rachel's lips pressed against hers was enough to make her hot and bothered. It wasn't worth considering for long. Her mother would have a fit and they were only just getting back on track in terms of their mother-daughter relationship before the accident had happened. She didn't dare risk her relationship with the only person left who loved her. Yes her mother seemed to like Rachel but that would soon wear off once Rachel moved from the good friend column and into the love-interest category. Quinn could almost hear her mother's so called friends being simultaneously scandalised and delighted as Quinn moved her mother on from her teenage pregnancy, banishment form the family home, near life or death experience through temporary paralysis only to throw lesbianism into the mix. In a rare moment of honesty with herself she acknowledged that if everything had been different – her family, her history and Rachel's heterosexuality – then just maybe she might think about making a move. But things weren't different and so she wasn't going to do anything to rock the rather unsteady boat she found herself in. Glee club hadn't so much got the wrong end of the stick as the wrong damn branch.

Quinn knew she needed to be less tactile with Rachel as that was the behaviour that seemed to be driving the assumption that there was something going on between them. She knew it would be difficult, as it had grown to be such a habit that it was almost automatic. Besides, she needed to change her behaviour gradually if she wasn't to alert Rachel or worry her. Quinn resolved to at least try and reduce her hugging or touching Rachel in sight of the rest of Glee club members. She just had to hope that some other relationship drama kicked off in the club so that attention switched from the non-story of her and Rachel. Nothing to see, nothing to know and nothing to gossip about.