Something - Quinn Fabray

Chapter 44

The next afternoon, Quinn was sitting in her room, idly playing with an old school picture in her hand. Ryan had said he'd be coming over in a few minutes, and she was a little apprehensive. She had enjoyed last night, but...She looked down at the four-year-old photograph in her hand. She studied the image with distaste. The girl in the photograph gazed right back at her - glasses, mouth full of metal, pimples all over the place, and an ugly nose. She'd done everything she could to get away from that girl.

And she wanted, needed to tell Ryan about her. She cared about him so much, it was almost scaring her. She'd never felt like this about anyone before. She'd never considered telling Finn, and telling Santana or Brittany would just be stupid. But with Ryan she just felt a compelling need to tell him for some reason.

The doorbell rang, startling her out of her thoughts. She made her way downstairs and opened the front door, smiling when she found her boyfriend. "Hey."

"Hey, yourself," Ryan teased, leaning over to give her a fleeting kiss. She let him step past her into the house. "How was your morning?"

"Same old," Quinn said offhandedly. "Come on." She took his hand and pulled him up the stairs and into her room, watching as he looked around interestedly. He hadn't really had the chance to look around last night, what with their other activities. He ran his hand down the books on one of her three bookcases. Not a lot of people outside of Quinn's family knew she loved reading. Santana and Brittany. Finn, because he'd been in here when they were together. Her love of books was one part of Lucy that had never left Quinn.

"This is very cool," Ryan said, with an impressed tone. "You have quite the sophisticated taste in books, I can see you have all the classics here. Have you read all of these?"

Quinn relaxed, not realizing she had been a bit tense in the first place. She'd almost been waiting for Ryan to make fun of her being a bookworm, the way the kids in grade school and middle school had. You idiot, of course he wouldn't do that, Quinn chastised herself. "Yeah," she said almost shyly. He picked up her dog-eared copy of Pride and Prejudice.

"I know Austen's sort of considered a girl's author, but I actually enjoyed reading this last year," Ryan admitted. "That is, until we had to write that analysis paper. I hate writing essays."

"Really? I love it. It's sort of cathartic to express your thoughts in writing." She sat down on the bed. "I like the classics best. There's something fascinating in the cadence of how the old authors wrote."

"That's what singing is for me." Ryan smiled as he put the book down, looking through some other titles. "And of course, Shakespeare is essential to the very foundation of the world of theater..."

Smiling a little, Quinn pulled him away from the bookshelf, pulling him down to sit beside her on the bed. He looked at her expectantly. "What did you want to tell me? It sounds important. You're not breaking up with me, are you?" he asked teasingly.

"If I were going to break up with you, doing it on my bed in my room wouldn't really be the top of my list," she answered dryly, trying to hide her anxiety.

"Then what's up?" Ryan asked curiously. He hesitated. "Is this about last night? Are you...are you sorry we went that far?"

Quinn shook her head quickly. "No, god no." If anything she'd wanted to go further. "I...I just wanted to talk to you about something else." This was the first time she was ever going to tell this story to anyone. She slowly reached out to pick out the picture she'd been looking at earlier, glancing down at it before looking at Ryan. This was it. She could do this. She trusted him. Maybe she wasn't hiding her trepidation quite so well, since Ryan picked up her hand, squeezing it comfortingly.