The first time it happens, they’re wasted. The ratings have come in and they’re the best in years. For a show on the brink of cancellation for being stale, having the bride leave the latest dimwit at the altar for the runner up is a stroke of brilliance. Chet’s off at some meeting to talk about next season and while Quinn is droning on, Rachel’s only focused on her mouth, the way it moves as she talks, fast and furious.
Rachel takes another sip of her beer and bobs her head at the appropriate times, feigning interest in work when all she wants is Quinn in a strictly unprofessional capacity.
“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?” Quinn asks after a while, a well-manicured eyebrow cocked in amusement. She leans in and plays with Rachel’s hair, twirling it around her finger like she owns her, and maybe Quinn does.
Rachel inhales sharply as Quinn leans in, pressing her squarely against the wall. Quinn shifts her hand from Rachel’s hair to the wall and her heart beats wildly in her chest over the possibility of it all.
Rachel looks up at Quinn, towering over her in impressively high heels, and catches something that seems like yearning reflected in her gaze. This is probably a bad idea, but the words tumble out before she can think better of them.
“Are you propositioning me?”
Quinn pulls her hand away as if she’s been scalded and she scoffs at the idea—at just how far they’ve gone by not going anywhere at all. “Don’t flatter yourself, Goldberg. I’m not into chicks.”
“Yeah, I get it, I’m just drunk,” Rachel fumbles over her words, completely off center and unsure how to find solid ground. Quinn holds all the cards here, just like she holds them at work and as much as her mother screams at her that it’s unhealthy, Rachel’s always enjoyed having someone else to blame because she isn’t in charge. “Sorry.”
Her stomach twists at the apology, the pathetic way she tries to break down the tension that’s built between them, without any of the polish or game she shows with the contestants when she’s manipulating them into what she wants them to be. Rachel thinks there’s something kind of meta about it, maybe, probably—but she’s too fucking drunk and stupid to care.
Quinn softens just enough for Rachel to see it as she reaches for Rachel’s beer. Their hands brush and Rachel tightens every muscle in her body in a desperate effort not to react as Quinn pulls it from her fingers and puts it to her mouth, downing it in one big swig.
Quinn hands her back the empty with a wink and Rachel furrows her brow. This is weird and strange, even for her—and she lives for the weird and the strange.
“Oh what the hell,” Quinn grins, cupping Rachel’s cheeks and pulling her in, forceful and commanding as they collide into one another, lips and arms and tongues with as much grace and poise as seven beers and two shots allow. But it’s perfect and terrible all at once and Rachel finds herself craving more.
They trip and slide into a back room somewhere, clothes leaving a trail of what will be certain regret come morning and before either of them can hit the breaks—because while Rachel knows better she knows that she wants this—Rachel is against a table and Quinn is buried inside, fingers pumping wildly and all Rachel can think is how fucking amazing this all is before she can’t think of much at all.
~*~
“You should fuck Jeremy,” Quinn says in bed one night. They’re naked and coiled together like two snakes, deadly and dangerous, less symbiotic and more parasitic in nature. The words are delivered so coolly, floated as if they’re discussing the weather.
“What? No. No. That’s just—Jeremy?”
What she doesn’t say is that she knows that Quinn’s pushing her away. They’ve gotten too close, too intertwined and this is the next step in their relation—whatever this is—a step backward, a way to gain perspective.
Rachel doesn’t need perspective. She knows what she wants and what she wants isn’t Jeremy. But she isn’t supposed to say that, she isn’t supposed to be one of those girls that cry and fucking pine over someone else. That’s not who Quinn wants, that’s not who Rachel is or who she wants to be.
“He likes you. You should fuck him. Toughen up the puppy,” Quinn prods, her mind already three steps ahead, not waiting for Rachel to catch up.
“Toughen up the puppy? Do you even hear yourself right now?”
“What? Cynthia’s around less so Chet is going to get more demanding,” Quinn explains and Rachel narrows her eyes. This is the weirdest threesome in history, or foursome, maybe. Probably. And Quinn and Chet are stronger magnets than she could ever be, so when he pulls and takes she’s left outside their orbit. “You should fuck him.”
“What makes you think that I like him?” Rachel asks, trying to hide the offense, the words that say that the only one she wants is naked next to her. It’s not that she doesn’t like Jeremy, he seems nice and genuine and everything that she’d want, if she weren’t such a fuck up. The kind of person—man—her mother would want for her, minus the whole Jewish thing.
“He’s hot. What’s the problem?” Quinn asks as if it’s obvious, as if there is no underlying connection or that kind of bullshit between them. And maybe to her there isn’t. But Rachel thinks that there is, and since they’re both experts at lying, they’re probably both right and wrong at the same time.
“I barely know him.”
“There’s nothing to know. He just broke up with sad and mopey in makeup.”
“She has a name,” Rachel interrupts, even if she can’t think of Jeremy’s ex’s name right now. She’s not sad and mopey, she’s just quiet and kind of oblivious to how terrible all of this is, and still believes that there are right reasons to actually be on Everlasting.
There are no right reasons to be here, only wrong ones. It’s a game, all of it. And the one Rachel’s playing is the most dangerous of them all.
“Yeah. It’s called no one cares. Go. Have fun,” Quinn commands and puts her palms against Rachel’s back, all but pushing her from the bed as she exits and heads for the shower.
~*~
Jeremy becomes Jeremy and Rachel and then it becomes JeremyandRachel. At the start Rachel does it because she wants to prove to Quinn just how much fun she can have when she’s not around—when they’re not fucking—Quinn is always around, after all. They work together and that’s not going to change even though a part of her wants to escape.
They’re in Mexico shooting. It’s another season selling romance in edited clips and Rachel is so caught up in it all, in Jeremy, that Rachel’s version of Quinn contorts into something ugly—her demands, all the lies. She’s started to hate Everlasting and herself along with it.
Jeremy says that he wants to go to New York and she clings to it as they get closer, her one bit of hope as she continues to drown in piles of her own bullshit. Rachel makes up entire narratives about how Quinn and the show are toxic and she almost gets herself to believe them. Almost.
But then they’re fucking around with videos and talking about the future and it’s all fun and games until he says that he plans to marry her. Rachel does all the right things, because she’s an expert in knowing how to respond to this level of crap, but all she wants to do is run.
Several drinks and a night shoot are all Rachel needs before she’s fumbling toward Quinn as if she’d never left. As if this hadn’t been Quinn’s grand plan in the first place—setting the butterfly free and if they come back it’s meant to be and all that new age shit.
Rachel bangs on the door and Quinn opens it. She leaps at Quinn, or Quinn pulls at her—she isn't sure what came first, only that they'll both be coming later, and it’s just like old times. They leave clothes like breadcrumbs on the stairs and tumble into bed.
“I was just about to ditch Chet, but this is a much better plan,” Quinn grins against her mouth before reaching toward Rachel, her fingers’ muscle memory well aware of just what, exactly, Rachel likes best.
What Rachel won’t tell her is, she likes the words ditch Chet most of all.
~*~
“Want to know a secret?” Quinn asks the next morning, when they’re sober and naked on the obnoxiously oversized hotel bed. It’s a king, probably; production went all out when they realized the shoot would be on location. “Our bride is getting left at the alter.”
“Oh. So she’s getting dumped on the same day you dump Chet,” Rachel says and then curses internally. Maybe she’s still drunk, but the words are out now and she can’t take them back.
Quinn raises an eyebrow as she props her head up with her hand and meets Rachel’s stare with her own. She purses her lips and pulls them downward—it looks like no one is getting their happily ever after today. “I’m not dumping Chet, Rachel. I thought you knew that.”
“Right. Yeah. No, of course,” Rachel trips over her words and shifts backward, which Quinn notices immediately. Shit.
“Get your little romance fantasies out of your head. This is just sex,” Quinn snaps and Rachel finds herself nodding her head. Quinn’s always been the one to define whatever this is and that, clearly, isn’t going to change now.
“Yeah, sex.”
“I mean you’re a great little carpet muncher, Goldie, but what would lover boy say when he realizes you have a lady on the side?”
Rachel opens her mouth and shuts it, too many thoughts running through her head to even begin to make sense of everything that she’s said between the lines. The backhanded compliments covered in insults and slurs are her way of creating just enough distance to make this weird and while she used to think this was fine, that this was okay, something has shifted in the last ten minutes.
God, she’s such an idiot. She’d believed Quinn when she’d said she wanted to ditch Chet—which is code, in their secret language of subtext and half truths, for I love you. Quinn doesn’t love her, not in the way Rachel wants.
“Wow, Quinn. I’m going to go take a shower,” Rachel says, wanting to create some distance between them.
“Good. You smell like desperation. I’m going to go down and see where we are with everything.” Quinn throws on a dress and some heels—they may be in Mexico but she carries her outfits like armor everywhere she goes—and fixes her with a look as she opens the door.
“Get your head back in the game, Rachel. We have a marriage to ruin.”
Instead, Rachel eyes the vodka on the nightstand and starts drinking as fast as she can. She doesn’t remember much about what happens next. At least not until she crashes the Ferrari and then it all comes back as she’s puking in the ambulance while they ask if she’s okay.
Rachel isn’t.
~*~
Quinn’s called her at least twenty times since she’s come up for air, but this is the first one she’s taken. They start in jail and then spin from there, but Rachel decides to bury herself under blankets and self-loathing as the world shifts and spins and her mother diagnoses her from afar.
Depression. Sociopathic tendencies. Bipolar. Every bullshit buzzword there is and when she tries to explain it all to the psychologist, the one who isn’t her mother, the one who she is forced to see, Rachel finds herself spinning further downward, a spiral she’s pretty fucking sure she’ll never climb up from.
But when she’s hit bottom, Quinn’s proposition seems like a lifeline and so Rachel accepts even though she hates herself for it. It helps, in a weird way, that Quinn holds her bills over her head like a guillotine because gives her someone else to blame.
Rachel’s return goes about as fucking well as she’d planned, between Shia playing the video of her very mature reaction to Quinn's rejection and Jeremy getting back with Lizzie, but she doesn’t leave. She tells herself it’s because her roommate is a total bitch and there are bills to pay. When that doesn’t work Rachel convinces herself she’s back here because she wants to fight for Jeremy, as if he’s hers to fight for in the first place, but it’s a lie, it’s all a lie. Jeremy is easy and if she were normal and had her shit together he would be perfect, which is why he’s so fucking wrong for her at the end of the day.
She’s here because Quinn is. How stupid and pathetic is that?
~*~
Rachel finds herself revisiting the old videos of her and Jeremy when Quinn is giving her space and the cold shoulder. Being back here brings back old feelings and since she can’t have either of them now, the videos that Shia didn’t leak are all she has left of the life she lived before she burnt it all down after too much vodka and not enough discretion.
She appreciates the irony of it, the irony of Jeremy and how disgustingly cute they are together. They’d found love in a hopeless place, but if this is love, then what was Quinn? Rachel still refuses to believe it’s just sex. She sees the way Quinn watches her and Jeremy, and how she goes to Chet afterward, even though she and Jeremy are definitely over. Her mother would have come up with hundreds of narratives by now and all that Rachel can say about it is that they’re all fighting to win the battle for the most fucked up of them all.
When Quinn finds her and orders her to clean herself up, hands on her cheeks and and lips dangerously close to her own, Rachel’s convinced she’s won the title once and for all.
~*~
Chet almost kills her on the highway, but it’s not until Quinn delivers the news that Rachel feels like she’s dying.
Chet and I are together now, so you need to suck it up and do your job.
She thinks about it for hours afterward—not the argument, the argument is superficial, another exercise in dancing around the obvious—but the words. Quinn and Chet are together, and there’s jewelry involved and although years of Everlasting have taught her that there is nothing final about a ring and a proposal, or even the marriage itself, but Rachel is fucking tired of all the bullshit.
She’s sick of being a manipulative bitch, walking in tandem with Quinn toward their mutually assured destruction. But Quinn has a point, this is who they are, this is what they do—and Rachel has become the master.
Maybe she should use it.
The realization of what Rachel has to do comes quickly after that. It’s always been there, if she’s being truly honest with herself. Jeremy had been Quinn’s idea because he wasn’t a threat, but instead someone that she could contain, because Quinn always has to be in control. Adam, and all his bullshit, is someone that Quinn can’t manage at all.
Rachel plays her part to perfection, first the sex and then everything after. It’s moves and countermoves that bring them back together, each one trying to one-up the other until the show blows up in their faces and the two of them are the only ones left standing atop the burning wreckage of Everlasting, if somewhat worse for wear.
Adam confesses Quinn’s sins when things have quieted down and the marriage is over before it’s begun. Rachel should be angry, but she’s not—this means that Quinn cares and that’s the most telling part of this whole series of events.
Later, when Rachel says that she loves her, with words, not with subtleties and coded misdirects, Quinn says it right back.