Take me home, tend me
Baby, lay me down easy
For I have grown weary on my own
all alone
I wither and I bruise
I run my mouth like a fool
I'll be so quiet for you
Look like a child for you
Be like a shadow of a shadow,
Of a shadow for you
I wander aimless
I work the corner of an endless grid
I'll be so still for you
Like a dead dog
Lay there till my eyes pop,
all for you
There was anger in Quinn, but mostly there was only defeat. When she looked down at her hands, she suddenly remembered to feel pain again; truthfully she hadn’t realized she’d forgotten to in the first place. And she winced at the first lick of heat that curled through her bloody palms.
“Hey,” Rachel’s fingers were on her bicep. “Hey, you’re okay.”
And here, Quinn felt a strange mixture of things— appreciation and love and a vulnerability that made her feel horribly, dirtily exposed. She pursed her lips, bit her tongue. There was no response that could possibly express this to Rachel. There was no way to say hold me, but don’t look at me.
She couldn’t remember smashing the monitor. Couldn’t remember the shards of glass tearing at her flesh. Couldn’t remember the exact moment at which the heel of her left shoe snapped.
When she could not watch Rachel dab at the cut on calf anymore, she switched to closing her eyes, counting her breaths. But this brought only a wash of red, the backs of her eyelids reminding her to be angry and sad and pathetic. The view of her hands, limp her lap, offered minimal respite. Watching blood ooze from one of the deeper gashes in her forearm, a small, rational part of her brain told her to apply pressure, but a much larger part of her brain was overcome by the foreign feeling of true defeat. The sensation was unprecedented. It was crippling. Her breaths rattled in her chest like an empty jar.
Quinn had been told “no” many, many times. But no had never meant no as definitively as it did tonight. In every instance Quinn could remember, no had meant find a solution, Quinn. But here, no meant no. It meant no options, no possibility of a domestic happy ending. It meant that, from now on, when she was at her wits end and work felt impossible, she was going to have to come up with a different fantasy to calm herself.
And here, it was Rachel’s jagged voice that pulled her from her eddying thoughts.
“Let me see,” it said.
See what? Quinn wondered briefly before she realized Rachel was reaching for her hand, holding it gingerly in her own, her eyes scanning the shredded mess it had become.
“Oh,” Quinn grumbled. And although she could not meet Rachel’s eyes, she felt the swell of them fill her lungs and rush through her bloodstream. She wanted to cry again, because this was not what she had ever intended. She had never planned to end up here, sitting on the toilet seat of some eliminated contestant, bleeding onto her towels, soiling this little safe-haven. Quinn wondered in passing if this had been the bathroom in which Grace had worshipped at Adam’s belt last season. Or where Anna had prodded her throat to the point of purge.
“Was this… Anna’s room?” she murmured.
“What?” Rachel paused in her bandaging.
“Nothing.”
And Rachel’s finger’s brushed at her bangs.
“Stop it, Rach,”Quinn knew she was too quick to protest, but she there wasn’t much more she could handle tonight, this she knew definitively. And Rachel’s affection was not something she was sure she could take on.
So, Rachel retreated. She, too, understood that there was not much more Quinn could handle tonight, and having a hand in Quinn’s final downfall was certainly not on her to-do list. Of the many things burned in her mind’s eye, Quinn’s contorted mouth and wet eyes were not something she presumed would fade quickly.
I. Love. You.
Quinn had strained against the constrictions of her own throat. And Rachel had longed, more than anything else, to shut down. She had yearned for the final release, the acceptance of breakdown, the comfort that would inevitably accompany it. But instead she had swallowed the rising lump in her throat and she had dug her fingernails into her palms and she had committed to doing something right, if not for the first time in her life.
She wasn’t sure how exactly they’d ended up here, in Yael’s recently vacated room, Quinn on the toilet seat and she rummaging through the measly first-aid kit in the medicine cabinet (she made a mental note to stock the girls’ bathroom’s a little better next season).
There were many things that Rachel knew about Quinn: she broke her arm when she was seven, she liked her coffee strong and her bourbon stronger, she cared about few and loved far less. Of all these things she knew, however, it was with the most certainty that she recognized the degree to which Quinn valued privacy.
And this was the reason, she would understand much later after a detailed examination of her own instinctual actions, that they had ended up here behind the first lockable door she had found.
But how taxed Rachel felt. She had been so brave, for Quinn, but her nerves were chronically frayed. She would never be able to escape their perpetual sizzling or the sporadic nature with which they ticked, unhinged, beneath her skin. She had control of herself, yes, but her grasp was not strong.
And Quinn, as battered as she felt, could not break free of her own perceptiveness. She could practically feel Rachel vibrating at her feet where she knelt, taping the last piece of gauze against her palm.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry I’m doing this to you.”
“Quinn, stop.”
There was something horribly recognizable about the way Rachel’s eyes flicked up at Quinn’s and deviated away with unimaginable swiftness.
“Rachel,” She did not wish to cry again, but defeat had thrown her and tonight, she was not Quinn King. “Rach…”
Her hands slipped too easily under Rachel’s arms, where they grabbed and lifted, gathering Rachel’s threadbare body towards her own. When pain shot through her palms, still, she could not let go.
And Rachel, for her part, felt paralyzed by the comfort of Quinn’s arms. She couldn’t bring herself to pull away, couldn’t bring herself to let go and say no, ending this before it seized and captivated her. Quinn was too familiar, even as un-Quinn-like as she was now, covered in her own dried blood and shattered dignity.
She tried to breathe but she could only hiccup out a gasp. Falling into Quinn was like falling into bed, clean and recognizable and endlessly warm.
This was an action they’d have both scoffed at on a normal day, but tonight, desperation had the better of them both.
She wanted to say, you still have so many chances, but she could only grip the back of Quinn’s hair and anchor herself with more conviction. Quinn’s face dipped against her shoulder, tucking itself there, burying itself, where it could melt in hidden peace.
They were mere, struggling beings, intertwined somewhere in the middle of a burning building. And it was nearly parasitic, the way they breathed from one another’s lungs, the only forms of beating flesh that pulsed to the same rhythm. They fed from each other because they could not feed from anything else. And how they fed. In mind and in soul and in body.
The kissing was too easy and it felt too good to stop. Nothing else felt good, and Rachel’s lips felt inconceivably soft.
Quinn knew it was her own shameful tears that dripped messily between their mouths. When Rachel tasted them, she thought she tasted God, asking her if she was prepared to posses a being so orgiastically complex.
She had always imagined Quinn would be a vocal kisser; she’d watched her kiss Chet many times, listened to the way she had hummed against his mouth. But here, she was quiet. She closed her eyes and took only gentle breaths as Rachel pressed her lips gingerly against the base of her neck.
Quinn whispered Rachel’s name when she felt lips on her chest. She allowed herself to be undressed, allowed herself to be lowered into Yael’s bed.
She could not remember the last time she had been completely naked with another human being. Sex was easy when nothing was exposed— no skin, no secrets, no authenticity.
But she was bare, and so was Rachel, and the reciprocity of it all overcame her in a single wave. Rachel was above her and she was holding Quinn’s face and lowering herself down until their bodies were touching in a way Quinn had never experienced. She’d forgotten she had been crying at all until Rachel’s chest brushed hers and a thigh pressed gently between her legs and she let out a sobbing moan that overtook her entirely.
The touching was experimental, but the kissing was constant, and because it was them and there was not another human being on the planet that Quinn understood more deeply, rhythm was not difficult to find.
When she whispered against Rachel’s mouth that she was close, she felt a soft shake of Rachel’s head and the slowing of her body.
“Wait for me,” Rachel’s lips moved against her sticky cheek.
Coming with Rachel was outer-body. It was the culmination of just so much, and Quinn was never as weak as she was in Rachel’s presence. Here, she possessed no strength at all. Control was relinquished in its greatest degree and synergy pulsed through her hiccupping body.
The noise Rachel made against her mouth floated and vibrated. To bottle it and stash it away would have been the greatest gift, but it dissipated, flattening out against Quinn’s skin until it was nothing, and they were motionless.
Rachel’s body was a comforting weight on top of Quinn’s, but they could not stay here forever. Quinn’s less-wounded hand passed over the back of Rachel’s hair and the suggestion of moving floated between them. But they were fragile in these languid moments. Motion would not yet come. This would take many long minutes. Accepting tonight for all of its mangled beauties would take many long weeks.
Time was frozen for them, here, but Yael’s clock could not regard this. It ticked and it reminded them, they were not alone, and yet so, so alone.