Chapter Text
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'Just so you know I usually don't go this fast, with someone I just met.'
Her breath was hot and heavy. Sweat rolled down her neck as they kissed on the blonde girl's bed in her dorm. Spencer didn't even know her name yet, Queenie maybe? It began with a Q, that was for sure.
She'd met her earlier that evening, at some fresher's rager before the classes started. At first in the hazy, flashing lights Spencer had thought she was Ali, with her tousled blonde hair and razor sharp cheekbones. The mystery girl had scared her for a moment, then she looked over across the room at her.
It was her smile she'd seen first. Just with that Spencer could tell it wasn't Ali, because Ali would never smile like that at a stranger.
Maybe she wasn't Ali, but she still made Spencer's heart sped up.
It had happened so fast, she suspected it must have been something in their drinks; but one moment they were meeting and the next she was in her bed. Their clothes were thrown about in a pile on the floor.
From the minute the girl introduced herself Spencer knew there was something intriguing about her, something magnetic that she couldn't believe she'd been living without. It seemed she'd thought the same, else wise she probably wouldn't be here.
It was strange, she'd never thought she'd been into girls before now. Even as they moved about in the flowery sheets on the girls' bed, she couldn't quite believe she was. Maybe it was just her.
'Neither.'
The other girl whispered it into her lips, like a secret. Spencer wanted to kiss her more until her conscience stopped screaming at her. She didn't move slowly, in anything in her life. It was her motto that if you didn't pounce upon a chance, you didn't get it.
This felt a bit like pouncing, as long as she didn't fuck it up. That was something Spencer found she was effortlessly able to do when it came to most things.
Both girls knew what they were saying was a lie, hast came to them easier than breathing. Going slow was for people who never got anything, and liked the way breathing was drawn and hard.
But neither could tell the other wasn't telling the truth.
_
Turns out the girl's name was Quinn. She noticed it scrawled into the side of a pencil case that was left on the floor.
She'd woken up first that morning, and slowly pondered what to do. In her experience it wasn't the fucking that was the hard bit, that was easy. It was the morning after that she'd never managed to work out.
If there was one thing she'd managed to avoid in Rosewood, it was one night stands. Rosewood was too complicated for simple things like that. She had thought she was too complicated for things like that, maybe she was wrong.
Turns out simple-ness came quite easy to her. As complicated as she was, something undemanding could last a while. Yet not forever.
Nothing could last forever, not even love.
She slipped out of the slim bed. Sliding her arm from underneath the girl's body, she thought she was still asleep. Doing up the buttons on her blouse, she was quick and quiet, not wanting to wake her. Figuring it was easier to leave, for both of them.
'It's not awkward if you stay, you know.'
Came a voice behind her, still croaky from sleep. She turned around, and didn't bother to do up the zip in her skirt like she might have done before.
'I thought it'd be easier.'
She said, looking straight into her eyes. They were an icy blue, though she found them not to be cold at all. Strange, huh?
'If you're anything like me, nothing comes easy.'
Now it was easy to agree with that. She had never been given the quickest route in life, not in the house she grew up in. Her family had taught her a lot of lessons, mostly about how life wasn't fair and working hard. However meritocracy didn't get you out of the hands of a crazed stalker, usually it just made life even harder.
Yeah, life was pretty unfair.
'Tell me about it.'
She scoffed, running her hand through her mussed hair. The girl, no Quinn, looked at her with amusement, and a little bit of curiosity.
'If you sit down, I can.'
So she did. She swallowed down her nerves and squished herself onto the single bed. She let Quinn speak first, and frankly she was expecting some vanilla introduction with something about star signs.
'I got pregnant during my sophomore year.'
Spencer let out a breath, so she was serious. Honestly teen pregnancies had been the least of her worries during high school, but it would have made things a hell of a lot harder if it had happened.
'I got kidnapped for a month by my second crazy stalker.'
It was taking a chance on a stranger, and she could only be blindly hopeful it would be worth it. She felt this time it could be different.
'I spent about that long in a wheelchair after I got hit texting and driving.'
Quinn didn't respond the way she had thought she would, and she couldn't think of a better way she could have. Spencer laughed in the back of her throat, smiling at her as she intertwined their hands.
So Spencer stayed next to her, and she told a long story of tragic teen pregnancies and Glee club woes and something called Cheerios? Regardless, it was true and Spencer felt herself let go from all the bridges she built up at Rosewood.
So with a girl she met only last night, she found herself telling her everything.
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Theirs was an easy relationship. It was quick in a way that felt easy in some others. They clicked fast and hard, and somehow the swiftness didn't scare her.
If anything it was perfect.
It worked well for both of them, as neither was really the sort to play things slow. Playing the slow game got people nowhere in life, something they both knew all too well. To win you had to grab victory with both hands and cling on like lives depended on it.
Sometimes they did.
When Quinn found her roommate was an inconsiderate bitch and kicked her out whenever she brought the new boy of the week over, Spencer told her she could come and stay with her. Quinn had happily accepted, and moved in straight away.
It wasn't just on her part either, on the first night of living together, a friend of Quinn's facetimed her, Rachel. When Spencer popped into the camera's view, Quinn didn't call her the new roommate, she called Spencer her girlfriend.
Her girlfriend.
It felt right and gave her butterflies in her stomach every time Quinn called her that. She wasn't entirely sure that Quinn meant it the way she really, really wanted her to mean it, but regardless it was something new and fast and utterly great.
It didn't hurt that the sex was great, so she could handle some half-assed labels of their relationship. She was still coming to terms with it anyway.
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'Quinn, do you ever feel we might be moving faster than others?'
She was loading up the dishwasher in her small kitchen, while Quinn was lazing on the sofa reading. It was raining outside and the weather forecast said it would be for the next week. It didn't matter to her, not like it might have used to. It was better inside anyway.
What she was asking, it had been something she had been thinking about for a while.
Moving fast didn't totally scare her, moving quickly was the only way she managed to survive Rosewood. However this was a big step, considering it was less than a term and they had already moved in together.
It felt very fast, not that she had experienced something slow.
Quinn leaned her head back against the couch cushions, her eyes reaching the kitchen but not far enough to reach hers.
'It's fast, but I think when you know, you know.'
Her answer made her heart race. Yeah she liked that idea, really liked it. It was like love at true sight, it was something she'd never really believed in before but she was coming to terms with it.
She really thought she did know.
Quinn felt like her second half. Well maybe not that far, but she felt like the little piece then managed to complete what had never been right before. She was so like and unlike Rosewood that Spencer felt like home around her, while not getting that uncomfortable feeling she got in the town.
They clicked so well. She really, really thought this could be it.
_
Well, she had thought she'd known.
It was the weekend after valentine's day, and everything was off with Quinn.
She'd gone away for the wedding of her old choir teacher, Spencer wasn't entirely sure why she had been invited to it; though she got the impression that Glee had meant a lot to everyone involved. Quinn spoke about glee the same way she talked about Rosewood, with fond memories but glad to be done with it.
When Spencer had dropped her off at the airport it had been grins and hugs, at the arrivals gate she was greeted by fake smiles and awkwardness. They might have not been together long, but already Spencer knew Quinn. She knew when she was uncomfortable, and this was it.
She knew it wasn't because the bride hadn't shown up. No, this was something more.
Something else.
By a week later, things were still odd and stilted. With strange hellos and even stranger goodbyes. Weren't they supposed to be something like girlfriends and shit. Didn't girlfriends or people like them tell the other if something was going on?
For all the things Quinn had told her, she was weirdly tight lipped about it. Really, it could be anything from the stuff she'd told Spencer about. It felt like being back in Rosewood again, back in the dark in which she had lived for so long.
She hoped whatever it was would pass. She really didn't like being back in Rosewood.
Literally or metaphorically.
_
All through the long flight back, Quinn had felt bad. Not just bad, that wasn't enough to describe what she felt. She felt sick and horrible.
She'd slept with Santana at the wedding, twice. While being with someone else, and not just any old someone. She was with Spencer.
Spencer was different from all her boyfriends, she was something real in a sea of nothingness. God, she'd cheated. It felt like being in high school all over again, and that was something she'd sworn to never do again.
Never before had it ended well, and she knew it wouldn't end well this time.
But sleeping with Santana had been so good, and easy. It had been so simple to fall back into their own patterns, ones that had formed over long years and felt like an old pair of sneakers that never worn out. Santana was comfortable and familiar in the way Spencer wasn't.
Spencer knew about everything. But Santana had been there for all the things she now looked back on and cringed about.
It wasn't like she couldn't blame the alcohol, or a brief lack in judgement. She was fully at fault, and she knew it. San wasn't even to blame either this time, Quinn hadn't made it exactly clear she wasn't available.
She knew Spencer loved her or something, it was almost pathetic how much she cared.
For god's sake Quinn, stop being a bitch. That was something the old her would have said, and she was trying so hard not to be that person anymore. She didn't want to hurt her, especially not after everything Spencer had told her about.
Still there was something different about being with Santana, and yes she knew that was wrong. But having Santana pick her from a room full of people, made her feel so elevated and stupidly special she'd pushed aside her protests and all her rational thinking.
She wasn't someone who was known for making the right choices after all.
So when she saw Spencer at the arrivals gate, she did what she did best and kept it a secret. All throughout high school she'd kept secrets. She might have not kept them well at times, but it was much easier to hold them close to her chest than to show her mistakes.
Mistakes were for the weak, and she felt comforted that Spencer knew that as well as she did. Several states apart, it was strange to think how similar their parents' lessons were.
She was determined to keep her secret. It never left the small crawl space next to her heart where she had shoved it away. She was sure it was the reason they survived college together, staying strong for three whole years without break.
She didn't know it would come back to haunt her. Then again if she had known, she might have made better choices.
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