These strange steps

2. Two

She wakes up the next morning from a tentative, half-drunk dream that involved Quinn sliding off that hat and letting her hair tumble down her back, 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 and blindly reaches for the nightstand to take some Aleve, but there isn't any there; there's just Kurt, sitting on it primly and staring at her.

"Holy hell," she exclaims, 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 show up here 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 comforter 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 encounter with ... with a fan, who sort of invaded my personal space, and I'd 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 from 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 show involves this number in which all the female dancers around her cross-dress in dark grey, pin-striped suits, and then slowly start taking them off as she sings.

One of the girls, Layla, used to do burlesque 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 in place underneath the fedora 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 the night before finally wears off all at once.  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 that much of them before, Cheerios skirts notwithstanding. And the shirt, with crisp white tails loosely swaying in front of Quinn's torso, occasionally showing glimpses of perfectly round, hard-nippled breasts.