['You talk to a few other people, try to ignore the swell in your pants and the confusion in your chest as you think about Quinn and Rachel. You're not jealous, not in the slightest, and you're turned on but that's just—not the most important thing. You love Quinn, you'll always love her because she had a child with you, so you want good things for her.' puck finds out about faberry. quinn & puck being bros. fluff & a little angst & momentarily bashful quinn. trigger warning (in passing).]

in your eyes i see the eyes of somebody i knew before (i change shapes just to hide in this place)

.

as when we come to love a thing/ for no better reason than that we have found it,/ and find it wants for love. have you ever/done that?
—carl phillips

…

Quinn is crying.

You don't know why, and you're at one of Artie's reunion parties, and it's spring, and Quinn is in her last semester at Yale. You'd sort of lost touch, and you don't really know much about her other than that she'd been a bit more in Beth's life since the fall, more frequent emails and phone calls.

But she's more beautiful at twenty-one than she was at sixteen. She's hot—she's Quinn; she's always been hot—but she's sitting by herself on a corner of a couch and she's wiping tears quietly, and you've seen Quinn cry before but never this gently. She's messier, and her hair is as short as the beginning of senior year but it's very blonde, and she's wearing glasses.

And she's beautiful.

You're about to go over to her—not ever in your life have you been good at making sure she's okay—and at least sort of check on her, but before you can, Rachel sits down close and hands Quinn a beer, frowning.

Quinn attempts a smile, and Rachel sort of laughs, which makes Quinn roll her eyes, but her smiles gets less fake. Like, it's a smile you've never actually seen before. Not really.

Sam comes over and you talk to him for a bit, but you're distracted by watching the two of them, because all of a sudden, you're confused as hell. Rachel rests a hand on Quinn's thigh, and Quinn leans her head against Rachel's shoulder, and you know they're drinking but it really isn't that late and they don't seem drunk.

And then Rachel kisses the top of Quinn's head, and Quinn sits up and turns toward Rachel.

"Sam," you say urgently, and gesture toward the two of them.

He looks and shrugs. "I think Quinn's been out for a while. Sorta makes sense, don't you think?"

You have to swallow a few times to compute. "What?"

Sam's brows knit together. "Yeah, Quinn's definitely gay."

"She didn't—" You don't finish your sentence because Rachel puts her palm on Quinn's cheek and runs a thumb under Quinn's eye, wiping along gentle tear tracks and pale skin and a dusting of freckles that wasn't there years ago, and then she kisses her.

And yes. It's hot. Really goddamn fucking hot, because you know Quinn is a phenomenal kisser and Rachel had always had natural talent, and they look practiced and they close their eyes and when Quinn shifts to deepen the contact you see tongues and—

"—Puck?" Sam says, elbowing you.

"Uh," you say. "Yeah. Um, well. Quinn didn't tell me but—that's cool for them."

You struggle to not look back over at them.

"I didn't know you and Quinn still talked," you tell him, mostly as a diversion, but you also are curious now.

Sam nods. "We email every now and then. I heard from Blaine, who heard from Kurt, who heard from Rachel, who heard from Santana—" he pauses to look at you with a laugh—"that she'd, uh, just had a rough go, and we'd lost touch for a little bit but I figured, you know, she always tolerated me, so."

"You're a good guy, Sam," you say, clapping him on the back. "Do you know, um, well—"

He shrugs. "Not much. She's always been hard to get close to, you know? Even tougher over email. Had to get my dictionary app out."

You smile and look over at Rachel and Quinn again, who are now just talking with their faces close enough to kiss again. "Well at least that's the same," you say.

Sam nods, and then a very drunk Santana steps between you and puts her hand on Sam's chest. "Samuel Evans, as I live in breathe."

"Santana, we've already said hello like five times tonight," he says, but she smiles and he follows her to a couch without protest, pulling a little face of apology.

You talk to a few other people, try to ignore the swell in your pants and the confusion in your chest as you think about Quinn and Rachel. You're not jealous, not in the slightest, and you're turned on but that's just—not the most important thing. You love Quinn, you'll always love her because she had a child with you, and Beth is still the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, and so. You love Quinn. You want good things for Quinn. It's strange, because even though you went to school together and had a fucking child together, you've never really known that much about her. She's probably the smartest person you've ever met, and she's beautiful, and her family wasn't good to her—you know that much. But you don't even know her coffee order, or the way she sleeps—maybe you knew them once, but you can't remember, and you don't think you ever really paid enough attention anyway.

You drink a few more beers, and you force yourself to go outside for some air when everything starts to feel far too stuffy.

The screen door opens behind you, and then you smell Quinn before you see her. She doesn't smell any different from when you were sixteen, and it's sort of grounding.

She doesn't say anything when she comes to stand next to you, and you realize that maybe she's very much the same and different all at once.

"Hey," you say.

She takes a long drag of her beer—which is unbelievably sexy, annoyingly enough—and then says, "Hey."

You stand there and just will yourself to be able to say something not entirely dumb, because there is not one single part of you that wants to kiss her, or anything else, but she makes you nervous. Like, in a stupid high school proving yourself sort of way.

She looks up at the night sky and then says, "You can't see shit in New York, you know."

"I've never been," you say.

She turns to look at you. "It's beautiful."

You realize, looking at her more closely, that she has a few more wrinkles, tiny ones, around her mouth, and that her eyes are just—different. "I bet," you say.

She smiles slightly at that, and she steps just a tiny bit closer. "You can ask, you know, if you want."

"About what?"

She laughs, heartily, a laugh you've never, ever heard from her before.

You feel your face heat up and you're glad it's dark. "Uh, so, when did that happen?"

"Well, I've been gay forever," she says, gesturing grandly with her hands.

You wait for a beat and then she laughs again, elbows you playfully. You're not sure you understand this older Quinn, but she's at least slightly less scary.

"Don't worry," she says, "it wasn't you or Beth."

"Yeah," you say, "Right."

She lifts a brow. "Promise promise."

You unwillingly smile. "So, you and, well—"

"Rachel," she says, "yeah. Well, we've officially been together since New Years."

She looks so, so happy when she tells you—and you realize that you've never seen her happy before—that you tug her into a one armed hug before you remember how Quinn hates to be touched without permission.

But, surprisingly, she only stiffens momentarily before snuggling into it a little. "I dated one girl seriously before this," she says. "Spencer Jill Hastings. We met in class, smartest girl at Yale. Broke my fucking heart," she says.

You make a little sound that you hope sounds like sympathy, because this is by far the weirdest thing that's ever happened to you—Quinn fucking Fabray being open about her lesbian relationships. "Has, well, can I ask—"

"Yeah," she says, "whatever you want. Doesn't mean I'll answer."

And that Quinn is what you remember, and it makes you smile. You think back to high school, and Quinn and Rachel's bizarre relationship, their connectedness. You think of how Quinn looked at Rachel—looked—and you might've not noticed so much then, but you're pretty sure now that they were loaded looks of, well, complication. Not just hate. And maybe you get that now. It's starting to make more sense. "It's always been Rachel, huh?"

She says, so quietly, so gently, "Yeah."

You don't say anything for a long time, because that's one of the saddest things you've ever heard, maybe you understand a little bit of why she was so incredibly hurt in high school—scary, hurtful, crazy, but just, so sad. "She makes you happy," you say, when the realization hits you out of nowhere, the most obvious thing in the world.

Quinn smiles hugely. "She makes me really happy."

You kiss the top of her head. "You sorta deserve that," you say.

"I don't deserve anything about her, but I suppose there's something about me that's redeemable."

"You're Quinn Fabray," you say, "of course there is."

She pats your chest. "Thanks, Puck."

You're quiet for a while, and when it's clear that she's not going to say anything more, you say, "So I bet you're ruling Yale by now."

She shakes her head. "Your faith in me is, I'm afraid, far too overreaching. Although," she says, lifting a brow with a smirk, "someone who knows books is, actually, quite appreciated sometimes, just so you know."

"Yeah," you say, "of course."

She laughs. "I'm teasing. I have some wonderful friends and a good job on campus and good grades and stuff, so I'm doing okay." She waves her hand a little. "So, what've you been up to?"

You're not really sure how to make cleaning pools still sound anywhere near as impressive as fucking Yale, so you just shrug. "Same old, same old."

She nods—she's gracious and grown up enough to not ask further questions. When she lifts her Amstel Light this time, you see this startling scar all the way down her left wrist, and then Sam's she'd had a rough go runs through your head, and you never, ever cry, but this is Quinn, and—

—She catches you staring, and she just simply lowers her arm and says, "Things got really, really fucked."

You don't know what to say, and all of this is way to much to process this drunk and this late, so you just say, "Are you, well, feeling better?"

She laughs lightly, which is encouraging, and then says, "Much. But, can we not do this? It's not you, it's just—I'd rather not."

This Quinn, this Quinn who puts up walls in a second, is one you know well, and it's comforting in a way. "Yeah," you say.

She nods, and you're both quiet for a long time. You try to process that Quinn Fabray is a lesbian who has, ostensibly, tried to, well, at least hurt herself a lot, but that she's feeling better and, god, dating—fucking—Rachel Berry.

"Can I tell you one stupid boy thing?" you ask.

She rolls her eyes. "Sure, Puck."

"You and Rachel are so hot."

"I'm going to take that as a compliment, and not as some permission to have fantasies," she says dryly, but her smile is easy and gentle, and you smile back.

You're quiet again, and it's getting late, and you take one last look at her.

Rachel comes outside, and you catch her eye before Quinn does, and she smiles at you fondly before she says, "Baby, ready to go?"

You feel Quinn nod and extract herself from under your arm. She takes Rachel's hand with the warmest look you've ever seen her give to anything, and then she says, "Email me sometime or something, okay?"

"Yeah," you say. "Okay."

"Take care of yourself," she says, and Rachel places a gentle kiss to her shoulder.

They're hot but they're also, like, really, just, nice, together, you realize. "You too, Fabray."

You smiles crookedly, and Rachel straightens her glasses with a laugh as they walk back toward the house.

"Hey, Quinn?" you ask.

She turns around. "Yeah?"

You shrug. "You'll always be my, well—you know."

She nods. "Yeah," she says. "You too."

They go inside, and you wonder if you'll ever really know her.

But she responds to your email—I'm really bad at writing so please don't be too mad at me but how are you and congrats on graduation—a few weeks later. She writes briefly and without any real pride, that she has a 4.0, and that she's graduating summa cum laude with two theses, which actually doesn't really surprise you much. And then there's a whole paragraph that you have to read multiple times. You don't really know what all of her ramble means, but you can tell, from your limited reading of what everyone says are masterpieces or whatever, that Quinn is just—gifted.

I know I've always just been this terrible contradictory thing to you, she writes, to everyone, for a long time. We're all so big, though, and I'm glad to connect on any level with people—because we're multitudes and universes ourselves, and no one can really say what they feel (I study words, and I study how they never actually mean what they say—how ironic is that?). But Rachel is special, and she's always been so, so special, and I'm trying to let myself have that. Good things in general, I suppose. You know I've never been particularly gifted at that. But anyhow, it's a wonderful thing, to fall in love and finally not have it fuck you up—at least in the bad way, because all falling-in-love fucks you up a bit—isn't it? I suppose maybe that's the closest to happiness I'll ever consistently get. But, of course, I have poems to write and scars to live with and hands to hold, so it's not all bad. I like to think it counts for something, that it's enough, you know?

Please write again soon.

You read it over a few times, and you decide that she's always going to be this person you'll want to watch. You always did, and she's the same and different and thinner and more beautiful and more hurt and more healed. But she's Quinn, and you get it. She's just Quinn, and that day, in the Lima spring sun, you pay special attention to the leaves on the bottom of the pools you clean, because they make you feel like you understand a little more, because they make you feel not as hopeless as before, because they're Quinn's eyes, right there in your hands: soft and shimmering with life, green and gold.

I think that's probably more than most people could hope for, Q, you write back.