Author's Note - Hey guys, long time no ASWD chapter, as per usual these days. Thanks to all of you who left encouraging or thoughtful words - or both. Hope those of you who are sticking around enjoy this chapter :)

Kurt Hummel is in New York with luggage. He has chosen this day of all days to move in chez Lopez.

"I can't believe you've chosen this day of all days to move in chez Lopez!" Rachel is squeaking. She's clapping her hands about it.

Quinn groans. Not audibly. There are such things as manners, after all. But she's pretty sure that if Kurt had been looking at her he would have seen the groaning.

"Why? What's today?" Kurt is asking her, holding both her hands to his chest with his eyes wide. "Is there going to be a parade?"

"Quinn is here," Rachel replies, with a flourish in her direction. She looks back at Kurt and then back at Quinn and then back at Kurt and back at Quinn and says, "It's like a Lima reunion only better because it's not in Lima and only the cool kids are here."

Kurt raises a brow as he nods at Quinn. "We're the cool kids now?" he asks with genteel skepticism.

Amazingly, Rachel turns and shoots Quinn a questioning look. Quinn is mortified. She shakes her head and her handbag slips off her shoulder and thuds into her elbow. "Hi Kurt," she says. She thinks it sounds pretty neutral. She hates him.

"Hi Quinn," he says back, and then he asks her what she's doing here, pleasantly, but with a swiftness that makes Quinn hate him even more.

"She came to see me!" Rachel says excitedly.

Kurt holds Quinn's gaze for a moment longer, then turns his attention back to Rachel. He lets go of her hands and cups her face, leans in. "She came to see us, Rachel," he says, "When people are bunking with our other friend we need to learn to share."

Quinn isn't sure what annoys her more. The use of the word 'bunk,' the use of the plural pronoun, or realizing that she missed what Rachel had to say to that entirely. Whatever it was, Rachel is now trying for a group hug that turns out to be Quinn and Kurt patting each other's shoulders at arm's length while Rachel holds onto both of their necks at a squeeze.

"Oh, I can't believe this!" she's saying, eyes squeezed shut. Then she opens them. "My soulmate and my friend."

She looks at Kurt on the former pronouncement. Quinn on the latter. Obviously.

Obviously, Quinn thinks. And then she thinks of how in Britain they call their friends mates and maybe that means she's like Kurt to Rachel, only without the soul. She looks at her shoes. She hates them. Next thing she knows she's helping Rachel and Kurt lug his bags up the stairs.

Aiding and abetting, she thinks, and she asks Kurt, "Does Santana know you're crashing because…"

"Because she didn't mention you were crashing too," he finishes for her, in a curious kind of tone.

Quinn frowns. She yanks his bag against the stairs in a dragging motion. She hopes it contains many delicate items.

"I called her last night," Kurt says, still curious. Then he suddenly drops his suitcase and grabs Rachel's shoulder, grins into her cheek. "I wanted it to be a surprise!" He pulls back after kisses, and Rachel is giggling like a schoolgirl who doesn't know any better when he says, "Since it was totally a surprise for me, it seemed only fair. I mean…"

He launches into a discussion of how Blaine convinced him he should be living in New York whether NYADA was ready for him or not. Quinn actively ignores it. She dawdles on the stairs and waits till Rachel and Kurt have disappeared into the apartment just to see if they really will.

She sniffs haughtily, leans on the railing, releases her grip on the strap of the bag. It's a little strange to expect people to help you with your luggage when they're not yours because you're already helping them, she supposes.

That's when Rachel appears at the top of the stairs. It seems to Quinn like she crept up quietly – like she might have been standing there for a second or two or even three, four, five before Quinn ever noticed. She's leaning over a little, looking down carefully. She smiles when Quinn meets her eye.

Quinn reacts just as quickly. Only a second or two elapse in which they don't know what they're doing.

She hoists Kurt's bag up over her shoulder again, making an exaggerated huffing sound as she does. "How did his puny shoulders ever get this here from Lima and why?" she asks, before she realizes how aggressive it will sound.

Rachel shakes her head. "Quinn..." she says with alarming softness.

In response Quinn literally jogs up the stairs. She wouldn't want Rachel to start telling her again how much Kurt doesn't really hate her and how haikus would be forthcoming if she would only ask nicely.

"Quinn…" Rachel says again, over the jogging, and then as Quinn looks up, blows stray strands of hair out of her face, smiles as hard as she can, she thinks Rachel seems suspended – still, silent, between states of being – she thinks she looks more unsure than she has ever looked in her life when she has been looking at her.

With a sudden vigor she remembers that time Rachel crept into the auditorium and asked her if they were friends. She remembers back further - her eyes squeezed shut like Quinn was going to land a blow.

She swallows. She says, "Things never work out exactly like we think they're going to, huh?"

(Before she realizes how lonely it will sound.)

Rachel is still on pause. Her mouth is open though – Quinn missed the change – and just when she's thinking of saying how she might take a walk because she told her mom she'd pick her up something - anything - Rachel is saying, "They should though. Everything should stop getting in - "

Kurt appears loudly. He takes his bag from Quinn and praises her load-bearing shoulders like he might have been listening at the door. Quinn says, "Thanks," and doesn't mean it. She and Rachel are still locked on each other until Kurt takes Rachel's hand and says, "Santana is an angry hostess," and then she's laughing and following him into the yellow light that's spilling from the apartment.

It's gray in the hall.

Rachel doesn't look back.

Rachel has taken to wringing her hands. She's already asked Santana and Kurt three times each where they think Quinn went, uselessly. She's checked the bathroom three times too even though there is nowhere to hide in there seeing as how Santana doesn't even have a shower curtain.

She looks out the window. She squeezes her fingers like lemons.

Quinn is standing under a slender spider-webbed awning holding a bag of one and a half donuts away from her body.

The other half of the first donut is being chewed vigorously, and as she chews she eyes the grease that is working its way through the paper and into her fingers and she is very conscious of the fact that similar grease is descending into her digrestive system as she swallows. She pulls the other whole donut out of the bag and crams it into her mouth, looking around fervently as she does so.

There's a homeless person over the street. She would give him the last half of donut but he's sleeping and it's started to rain. She drops the bag to her feet, looking around fervently again. Nobody sees.

Quinn is standing under a slender spider-webbed awning looking at her fingers helplessly. They're covered in sugar. Her eyes close shut quickly but not before tears fall out. She wipes her hands on her skirt aggressively, pulls a pack of Virginia Slims out of her bag and wrestles the plastic off with her nails and her teeth. She hasn't smoked in a year and a half – more. She hasn't wanted to smoke ever. She pulls a cigarette out like it's the most important thing in the world, shoves the pack back in her bag and retrieves the tiny orange lighter from her jacket pocket.

(The guy at the news stand asked her what color she wanted like it was a game. 'Anything but pink,' she remembers maybe saying.)

The cigarette flickers. A drop of rain slips through and slides right by.

Quinn inhales on a sob. She can't believe it has come to this. She can't believe it has come to fucking up lungs she used to believe in so wholeheartedly. She has a resentful little spasm of thought: maybe she believed in Rachel's more. And then it's all Rachel's more, Rachel's more.

Quinn sucks the nicotine and the who knows what else that will kill you faster down. Or in, she thinks. In. It goes straight into her and she can't stop it, she can never ever stop it when it starts like that - the feeling that she'll never get to be the person she always knew she was in the back of her mind, the person she was supposed to be if anyone is supposed to be anything, and if anyone isn't supposed to be anything she can't help feeling like Rachel will be both of them for her – Rachel and the possible Quinn – she can't help feeling like Rachel will carry everything she was supposed to be away and the real Quinn – the physical Quinn, that is - she will be a shell again just like she was when everybody loved her - light and empty and excellent, Yale's shining star is what she will be and it will mean nothing - nothing – because Rachel won't - because Rachel won't let her – Quinn sucks hurriedly. In, in, she thinks.

Her head is spinning. She tells herself that she ate cereal and sang the Smurfs theme a couple of hours ago and it seems impossible.

She squeezes her eyes shut, opens them. She shoves the cigarette in her mouth messily, so it sparks. She feels her eyes filling with tears again. She remembers how whenever her father was in a grouchy mood the most important thing was not to ask what's wrong.

Don't ask what's wrong, she tells herself, and don't ask, and don't tell.

She thinks that will be an end to it.

Ten minutes later Quinn is feeling slightly nauseated. She's been up and down both aisles of the 711 twice and each time failed to spot the little bottles of hand sanitizer that are suddenly – mercifully – in front of her. She takes one and proceeds to the counter where the gum always is.

That's reliability, she thinks. That's things working out exactly the way you think they're going to.

The cashier interrupts her, says it's a nice day with a conspiratorial sarcasm. Quinn says, "Sure," and leaves it at that.

She exits the 711, sucking at least seven tictacs, squeezes neurotic amounts of sanitizer into her palm, lathers, walks at a brisk pace.

She thinks her hands may as well be made of ice.

Rachel ends her second call and sends her fourth text message.

She is very aware that both Kurt and Santana are rolling their eyes about it, and it only makes her turn away from them and toward the window, clutching her phone in a fevered kind of way and peering out into the misty water-colored memories Brooklyn always looks like to her.

She feels enormously guilty and sad and she knows exactly why and that is what is so confusing.

Why should she feel guilty that someone else is here at the same time Quinn is? Why should she feel sad about the same thing? Sure, she would like to spend time with Quinn alone. Of course she would. The more she's with Quinn the more she's arrived, that has long been the case and she has spent a good part of the morning reflecting on it.

And then at the same time she found herself half-wondering as she brought the coffee out: what's the difference between Quinn and Santana? She casts a furtive glance behind herself. Santana is snickering and Kurt is pretending not to notice.

What's the difference between Quinn and Santana? she asks herself formally, answers herself unconsciously, Why is a raven like a writing desk?

She winces and shrugs at the ghost of her reflection, clarifies.

If I've arrived at Quinn I've arrived even more at Santana. Haven't I? There was further to go, after all - wasn't there?

Rachel frowns and shudders. It's cold by the window. The tips of her toes are frozen in her boots. She's about to head back into the kitchen where people are talking about food when she spots a tiny blonde person rounding the corner of the street.

Quinn's running in the rain. She has a plastic bag over her head.

Rachel bites her lip and grins. She watches her, nose pressed closer and closer to the icy glass, all the way till she disappears underneath, at the entrance to the building. Rachel bites her lip and grins and watches all the way before remembering it might have been nice if she'd been down there to open the door, so she didn't have to wait on the stoop.

She flails, yells "Coming!" and of course only Kurt and Santana hear her and of course neither of them replies. There are raised brows she doesn't see as she blurs out of the apartment - a buzzing over the intercom she doesn't hear.

She bowls Quinn over at the bottom of the stairs. She literally throws herself at her and they skitter against the door frame as the door swings shut and Rachel laughs and says "Kurt said maybe you went window shopping and I said 'Around here? Where? At a 711? Quinn Fabray?'"

She pulls back and squishes Quinn's face in her hands on impulse, regrets it immediately, drops her hands, steps back like she just touched something with a rope and a sign around it.

"Sorry!" she says, and then "Where were you?" and "We were worried," and "Well I was worried – everybody else thought I was being, you know," She blinks downward at her hands, smiles reflexively, "theatrical."

Quinn breathes in and out. "Ohhh," she says, like it's a word. She says, "When are you not theatrical?" archly, sweetly, to fill space, and then wonders to herself with a shocking intensity, When is Rachel not theatrical?

Really. She wants to know. Is there ever a time when Rachel Berry is just like the rest of us? Does she ever come down to earth and just exactly where does she land?

She covers her mouth with her hand – an excuse to smell her fingers which are musty and make her think of hospital but tell no tales. "I just wanted some air," she says. She shakes her head wetly. "Turns out I got some water, too."

"You're a mess!" Rachel says delightedly and her hands are on Quinn's face just as they were a moment ago, squishing. Quinn grimaces. She is a pug dog in her mind's eye.

Rachel face looms happily. She says, "So Kurt wants to get lunch but we were waiting for you," before letting go, taking the plastic bag from Quinn's hand and shaking it out diligently.

"You were waiting?" Quinn asks, like it's the most important part of that sentence, though it's not, actually, because she doesn't want to 'get lunch' - she just had breakfast - and too much donut and half of three cigarettes.

Rachel has draped the bag over the end of the bannister and she's saying things like "Of course!" and "What else would I…" and she's rubbing Quinn's jacketed arms up and down and talking about her favorite kind of fleece.

What cuts through: "Didn't you get my messages?"

Rachel thinks Quinn must be lying when she says "No." How exactly do you not notice 2 phone calls and 10 text messages. She must have been busy, Rachel thinks – not for the first time – she's been thinking it for the past hour. She must have been busy. Or she must have been with someone. What are the top ten reasons for not answering your phone, Rachel asks herself quickly, as she hurries up the stairs – looking back – almost every step she is looking behind herself and Quinn is smiling up.

The top ten reasons for not answering your phone are: You are at a Broadway show. You are at the movies (maybe, unless you're a doctor on call, for example). You are at temple. You are having sex (usually, she thinks, you probably don't answer your phone during sex, but she has only had sex a few times and the phone has never rung during). You are in the shower (Quinn was in a downpour!). Somebody has just died (Rachel hopes somebody hasn't just –

She finds herself turning around abruptly and stopping on the stairs.

"Are you okay?" she asks Quinn, and she thinks it sounds both caring and reserved, just in case whatever is bothering her is too personal.

Quinn can barely look up. She wishes Rachel hadn't stopped. She wishes she'd just kept charging ahead and vanished into the apartment so she could be left alone with her cellphone.

She's had it on silent since the Lion King and that feels like since forever ago.

What the multitude of text messages feel like?

They feel exactly like having your hair brushed by another person. This is a part sensation, part emotion, it is in the truest and best sense feeling, and Quinn has always thought it's a feeling that should have a name, but unfortunately she has only ever been quite able to understand it in many adjectives: solid, slender, accepted, liked, loaded, not-lonely-anymore…

Let-in.

The back of her neck tingles messily. She closes her eyes. She opens them again. She tells Rachel she's okay and rushes past her, into the apartment, into the bathroom.

10:52 Quinn?

10:55 Where did u go

10:56 Can I come with u

11:01 Sorry that was rude if u need ur privacy

11:08 Do u need ur privacy?

11:15 Kurt and Santana ask what u want for lunch

11:21 Kurt wants to know what ur fav TLK song was

11:21 LOL r u ever coming back

11:21 LOL is laugh out loud

11:40 I hope u come home soon

There are voicemails too.

Quinn decides she'll listen to them later. And then erase them. She supposes she could just erase them now since she's back and Rachel's here, and her mailbox is pretty close to full, but then it's possible there were things Rachel told her in the voicemails that she's never said in person and might never say again. Things like I hope u come home soon.

She grins as she scrolls through the texts again. She tries to think of the things she would have done with this kind of ammunition back in freshman year if she'd ever had it but she can't remember. She can't remember what it would have been like then to have a flood of needy communications from Rachel Berry on her phone.

Quinn's still grinning. She's not an evil genius anymore – she's not that girl anymore - that's the thing.

And the other thing is that Santana is pounding on the bathroom door and saying she hopes she's taking special care of the special magazines.

Quinn finishes in a hurry, hurriedly washes her hands.

Rachel can't stop talking all the way to lunch. Santana wants to eat Polish food and said it would be okay because Rachel likes cabbage, right? And Rachel started talking about how she feels about cabbage and never stopped.

Her arm is linked through Quinn's. Kurt's slipped out somewhere along the way and he was muttering but she couldn't catch the drift of it and she wasn't in the mood for running. She skips a little. Chill air huffs from her as she turns to Quinn and says, "It's just that the Polish are so meat obsessed! You know, sausage is the most important thing in the world."

Rachel rolls her eyes just as Santana calls back, "Yeah, that's why I love 'em so much."

Kurt snickers and Rachel thinks she knows why. Carnivores are so obvious – even him.

Quinn is shivering and lagging and Rachel slows, reaches up with her other hand and pats her shoulder. "Are you cold?" she asks, "Are you happy? Are you okay?"

Quinn frowns. Or it looks like she's frowning. They're moving and Rachel is half trying to look where she's going and an awful lot of Quinn's face is hidden behind hair.

She let it out, Rachel thinks, and it's still a little damp and snuggling wetly into the space between her jacket and her neck. That's why she's shivering.

"I have a blow-drier back in my room at the dorm," she says, slowing, stopping. Quinn stops too. Kurt and Santana snicker on ahead. "We could make a stop."

Quinn shakes her head and smiles slowly like she had to think about it. "Santana had a blow-drier," she says.

"Yes, but Santana is mean about things like that," Rachel says quickly and in the same brief moment she reaches up and takes hold of the limp, stringy bits of Quinn's hair. "I could try to wring you out?" she asks, absently, running the slender clumps between her gloved fingers.

Quinn doesn't answer and Rachel thinks perhaps it was a rude suggestion to make. She tries, briefly, to picture herself making a ponytail out of Quinn's hair and squeezing, right here in the middle of the street. She blinks and looks around and the moment is passed.

Quinn has started saying how she's lost sight of Kurt and Santana and asking Rachel if she knows the way. Rachel scoffs importantly. "Of course I know the way," she says, and then she smiles, forgetting to be important, tells Quinn all about how urbanspoon dot com has been her go-to internet website ever since Quinn said she was coming, and she memorized the routes for all the likely contenders because she actually has an extremely good memory which is probably down to spending so much time with – and without – sheet music as a child and actually Madame Polovitska's wasn't on any shortlist but she's been there a couple of times already with Santana and –

"And I'm actually quite frustrated that you're not staying two nights," Rachel says, as she pulls the beanie off her own head and tugs it down over Quinn's damp scalp.

"Frustrated?" Quinn asks quietly, like she's thinking of something else.

She's not even looking at Rachel and it's like she didn't even notice the kind gesture of the hat variety.

Rachel sighs. "Yes," she says. "I expected you to take me out to dinner."

She's not sure why she said it, exactly, except that she expected a reaction from Quinn. She expected her to stop staring fuzzily over her shoulder at Kurt and Santana who are long gone. She expected her to furrow her brow. She expected her to remind her that she already did take her out to dinner. She expected her to laugh. She expected her to promise she would take her out to dinner next time.

Any of the above would do.

Instead what she gets is nothing. Nothing except a non-committal "Yeah…"

And that's when Rachel resorts to calling spades spades – or Quinns Quinns as the case may be.

"Quinn, I put a beanie on you," she says commandingly. And when Quinn only nods, still as though she's thinking of someone else, Rachel adds, "Is it making you feel better?"

"Sure," Quinn says quickly, focusing on Rachel, finally, then, "Warm as toast," then, "What color is it?"

"You didn't notice?" Rachel asks and she's not sure whether she's faking the resentful tone and she's not even sure why she would. "I've been wearing it for two blocks."

Quinn smiles and shakes her head, shivers and grabs hold of Rachel's forearms. "Pink, right?" she asks.

"More of a puce," Rachel replies with a stiffness that might also be affected - even though in any other circumstance she would accept pink and award all points.

Quinn says, "Puce, right," and shakes her head. She hesitates, visibly. Opens her mouth and shuts it. Rachel is torn between pulling clumps of hair out of the beanie so they sit straight and suggesting they hurry up before Santana and Kurt come back for them.

Before she can make a decision Quinn's saying, "Puce means flea, in French. Like… pest? Like a nuisance, I guess. But then it's also a term of endearment. Like… my darling. Sweetheart, or something." She shrugs and turns all the way around, a hundred and eighty degrees into hiding. Rachel just barely hears, "It's weird."

"Quinn?" Rachel asks, in a way she thinks is steadfast. "Are you okay?"

The sun is peeking through the clouds when she finds herself holding onto Quinn's shoulder with both hands – she's on tip-toes – they're both in heels, but Quinn's are higher and she was always tall.

"What are you doing?" Quinn asks, turning quickly, and Rachel thinks she doesn't sound annoyed so it's probably okay.

"Comforting you with gestures," she replies very, very quietly, just as two or three people walk by and don't hear.

Quinn smiles. There are definitely tears in her eyes. Sometimes Rachel has difficulty telling because Quinn's such a shiny kind of person generally, but this time it is quite clear.

"Why are you crying?" Rachel whispers dangerously. The sun slips behind a cloud and it feels dark when Quinn breaks free of her subtle hold, says, "How did you get us lost in a few hundred feet worth of follow the leader?"

She smiles and Rachel is bewildered, spins around when Kurt pounces on her shoulders.

"Oh!" she says, laughing hysterically suddenly, like something funny just happened. She hears Quinn saying, "Rachel got us lost," in an assertive kind of voice, feels her beanie being replaced awkwardly on her head. She pulls it down and tucks her wisps under, resists a sudden urge to cry, wonders if whatever Quinn has is catching.

It doesn't matter now. Santana is whistling at them - fingers in her mouth whistling and it's loud - and Kurt has his arm linked in hers and is hurrying her along.

Rachel squints at the fleeting pavement and replies to something Kurt said.

She's pretty confident she can hear Quinn's boots tapping along behind.