These strange steps

32

Quinn is exhausted, when they go to bed, and nods off almost immediately.

Rachel's eyes are blown wide open, and really, any other night, she'd relish this; Quinn shifting towards her without a single restraint or consideration of what it means, but just touching, connecting, and pulling on her in every single way-but tonight, Quinn sleeps because she can't stay awake anymore, and Rachel stays awake because she can't sleep.

She's tried coke exactly once in her life, which has to be approximating the all-time low in her career field, and it gave her this paranoid, rabbit-y feeling of being over-exposed. This isn't dissimilar, and when Quinn shifts next to her, splaying both an arm and a leg over her in a violent call of don't leave me, all Rachel can think of is the many different ways in which Quinn has called her useless over time.

The tears are slow in coming, because she's so drained, but when they do, at around three in the morning, they come hard, and she has to throw Quinn off her and rush to the bathroom, where she throws up without warning and then slumps to her knees next to the toilet. The worst thing is how quiet she has to be, because she doesn't want Quinn to wake up. It's not Quinn's problem, right now. It's hers to deal with and it won't help either of them if-

God.

She washes her face, notes she looks like shit the way she did when Xanax was her main breakfast food, but this time it's for inevitable reasons.

Quinn keeps a notepad in her kitchen for grocery shopping lists, and she takes it out and makes some tea-because that fucking coffee maker, God, she wouldn't know where to start-and writes. Writes down a list of all the things she wants to be saying and can't; should be saying and won't; and then finally just writes what this really boils down to, which is, am I actually committing to a future with someone who does this to me every time they're not okay?

...

When she wakes up, Quinn is eating a bagel next to hear, and the notepad next to her says I will stay in therapy until I can find some other way of dealing with my feelings, and I promise that I will never make you feel like you can't leave when I'm being like this again (and I hope I won't be like this again but I can't make that promise.) You say you'll come back; that it's not really leaving. I have to believe you, because I want it to be the truth, and you've never been anything other than honest with me. So, please leave. Please don't let me do this to you ever again, if I can't stop myself.

She looks across the counter, at the way Quinn is picking at her food, and then says, "This-I wasn't trying to make you feel worse than you already-"

"Rachel, you can't, first of all, and second of all, don't apologize." There's a pause, and then Quinn adds, "My father used to-that temper is hereditary. He used to go off on me that way. Never Fran, but then she was perfect, so there wasn't anything to yell at her about. But with me... when I slipped and got an A- on a world studies test, or when I gained a pound, or when I-for whatever reason, really. Anything little fat Lucy did that made her even less acceptable. And I'd stand there and take it because that's what it meant to be a Fabray, and afterwards..."

She stops, and then laughs a little wryly and shakes her head.

"I spent most of my allowance when I was ten on buying a spare set of pillowcases so they wouldn't know about how I cried myself to sleep at night, almost every night. I'd take the wet ones, and-dry them at the back of my closet, and put on dry ones, because crying about what a failure I was was the easy way out, according to my dad. So I hid it. And then-eventually, I made it all go away completely, but-it's not the kind of thing you can ever forget about. It's just something you-well, it's like you and high school."