['You shake your head and kiss her once more, because you don't want to hear the conclusion of that sentence.' or, three times quinn gets the last word. fluff, angst.]

a/n: feel free to blame closetcasefabray on tumblr—& also geneva & anne carson's red doc—for this explosion of feels.

time compared to the wild fantastic silence of the stars (time between the little clicks)

.

when he is there they lift the stones together. the stones are her lungs.

—anne carson, red doc

…

1

It's infuriating, how pretty she looks when she's mad at you. You've always thought it, always been struck by the gold of her eyes, the snap of her jaw—in high school you thought she was intimidating; now you think she is just stripped bare.

You're both sophomores in the beginning of spring term, and you're not entirely sure what you're fighting about anymore, but Quinn is drunk and quite possibly high, and Quinn is yelling at you over Skype, running a hand through her hair. You're momentarily distracted by that, because she's growing it out—mainly because you know she's too lazy to get a haircut—and her long fingers get caught in a few tangles. She loves your hair, always winds up in it when you're beneath her, the roughgentle you're so in love with, her lips and teeth and echo of her hands.

She's not easy to be in love with, though, not right now. You think this fight started because her therapist wanted to try medication and Quinn was resistant—she's a Fabray, after all, and she told you, a few nights ago on the phone after trying weakly to hide a sob, that she's not sure her suffering is enough for help like that. You think maybe that's what you were fighting about, but you've had two glasses of wine and it's almost one in the morning, so all you're really sure of is that Quinn is giving herself more scars daily; that you can't stop the bleeding; that behind the sheen of her glasses and the shitty pixilation over Skype, she's crying.

You're pretty sure that she's terrible for you right now, that her love is so thin, even though you know she's trying. Kurt has hinted; Santana has flat out told you: Quinn Fabray isn't much good for anyone at the moment.

But there is so much good in her, so much light you want to fight for—you know you're young and for all intents and purposes very naive, but you don't feel doubt that Quinn is the love of your life. So in the middle of Quinn ranting about distance, about wanting to be held, about how she's so angry at you, at the god she doesn't believe in, at her mother and father, at herself—you say, so softly, "This is hurting me."

She's immediately quiet, and you know—despite Skype's lack of perfect sound quality—that her breath has hitched from the way her chest stutters. "You mean I'm hurting you."

You want to deny it, desperately, more than you've ever wanted anything. "You existing like you do right now is hurting me, baby."

She swallows. "I'm glad my shit is about you."

"Quinn—"

"No, that's great." Her eyes are hard, none of the softness left. "I'm trying to deal with how fucked up my brain is getting and of course it's about how you feel."

"Your shit is about me," you say, not bothering to temper your voice. "Because you know what, Quinn, I am in love with you, and I really, really wish I wasn't, because you don't deserve someone as good as me."

A little muscle jumps in her jaw. "Fan-fucking-tastic. That means so much to hear that."

"I'm sure it does."

She tugs at the tangles in her hair hard and then asks, "So you want to stop?"

"What?"

She looks you straight in the eyes and says, "Do you want to stop being in love with me?"

You can't bear to meet her gaze, and your chest feels heavy, like you might never be able to sing again, but you croak out an "I don't know."

She nods. "Fuck you, Rachel," she says, and then ends the call.

You close your computer, finish off a bottle of wine and finally pass out near sunrise. Two days later you go to New Haven and let her fuck you until she cries, and then you tell her that you can't do this to yourself anymore, that you can't keep breaking your own heart.

She's desperate when she tells you, "I won't be able to stop—"

You shake your head and kiss her once more, because you don't want to hear the conclusion of that sentence.

(Almost two years later, late at night, you tell her, "I never fell out of love with you."

She laces your fingers together and tugs your arm across her stomach, presses her spine into yours. "Fuck you, Rachel," she says so softly and you can tell she's smiling, then she turns and laughs, kisses you with all of the holiness in the world, and you fall asleep hours later, tangled and sure.)

.

2

You watch her face when you land in Geneva. Quinn is a terrible flyer—claustrophobic and endearingly superstitious, so she spends most of the succession of flights you take from JFK to Heathrow to Geneva as drunk as possible—but when you're coming in over the city, she starts to get the biggest smile.

She'd been there a few months ago for a conference, and she's been invited back to give a few guest lectures for two weeks. You're between shows and various other projects, and she's your fiancée now, and so it makes sense for you to go with her to a place she'd admittedly fallen in love with.

You understand—New York has always taken up that residence in your heart. But you know Quinn has never had any lingering attachment to a place—she was in New Haven for Yale; she's living in New York for you—until, apparently, Geneva. Fucking Switzerland—which is, for all intents and purposes, very, very far away from New York.

You get off the plane and try your best to steady Quinn, who is absolutely still drunk, but you manage to get your bags and onto a tram without much fanfare, and Quinn is actually sufficiently adept at remembering the city and gets you to your hotel without any incident.

You have to admit that Geneva really is beautiful, with its lake and its gardens and its street cafes and its cobblestones rues twisting up and down sloped city, mountains blue in the background. You and Quinn take a shower, and she kisses you softly, so full of a gentle wonder you don't think you've ever really felt from her before. Later she takes you to dinner, and the city lights up slowly, kindly, and it's quiet, unlike New York.

She doesn't have class for a day after that, so she enthusiastically takes you on a tour of the city the next day, most notably to the top of St. Pierre's Cathedral. You climb the steps behind her and gratefully stare at her perfect ass, and it helps quell the budding fear in your chest that maybe, just maybe, she might pick this place over you. And then it blooms—you watch her watch the city, short hair whipping in the wind, when you reach the top of the belltower. Quinn has had a thing for rooftops for as long as you can really remember, and this is no exception: she looks younger and more peaceful, standing there in the sun, the light playing with her hair, her eyes. They scan the city like someone scans a lover, and she leans against the railing, sighs.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" she says reverently.

You shakily come stand next to her. "It is," you say, and you do mean it.

She smiles at you, and you're sort of dazed that you've never seen her like this before.

But she's as loving as always, and affectionate and sweet and holds your hand, kisses you, buys you a bouquet of flowers and a box of macaroons. The next few days you explore the city on your own, visit the Broken Chair and the Palace of Nations, wander the streets, visit the watch museum and a few more churches. She meets you for lunch in the gardens after her morning lectures, and she surprises you with dinner on a yacht one night. When you ask how in the world she afforded that—she just got her PhD, and you have a decent amount of savings, but you're paying for an expensive Central Park West brownstone, and you know your earnings can't account for all of that—she laughed and said it's a professor's at the university's boat and he agreed to let her use it for the night.

It's then you realize, quite certainly, that they're trying to hire her.

To move.

To Switzerland.

All of a sudden the wonderful French wine, the perfect crepes, Quinn's soft eyes—they make you feel sick. Quinn's brow knits together in worry. "What's wrong?"

You swallow and ask, so quietly, "Do you want to move here?"

She leans back in her seat and tilts her head to the side, calmly takes a sip of wine. "You know, if I wasn't in love with you, I'd probably take this job."

Your heart wrenches in your chest.

"But, sweetheart," she says, takes your hand and rubs the pad of her thumb over your ring, "I am very, very much in love with you."

Tears prick dangerously at the backs of your eyes when you meet her gaze. "I don't want to—I can't hold you back."

Her face softens and she kisses you. "You've already given me more than I could've ever dreamed of, and New York means waking up next to you every morning, falling asleep with you every night. And New York means Broadway for you, and I know you can't leave that." Her smile is wistful when she says, "If I wasn't lucky enough to get to marry you, I'd settle. For Geneva." She adds, "Who isn't nearly as good a lay," with a grin.

A little watery laugh bubbles out of you, and you fall more in love with this brilliant, stupid woman in front of you every minute. "You're such a precious idiot, Lucy Quinn Fabray."

She kisses you again. "So I've heard."

You take a deep breath and scoot back a little, put your hands on her shoulders seriously. "Are you sure you won't resent me for taking you away from here?"

"I think there are so many parts of me that are alive because of you," she says, then shrugs. "Plus, Geneva will always be here, and if you're okay with a few weeks of me lecturing here every year, and a holiday or two," she says, slipping her hand up your thigh, "then I'll be the exact opposite of resentful."

Her hand is so quickly shoved down your pants your eyes flutter back and you bite out, "I don't know if this is the—god, Quinn—the most effective ending to this conversation."

You feel her smile into your shoulder as she climbs further on top of you and fingers your clit expertly, then deadpans, "It seems quite effective to me."

(For her whole life, Quinn will come back to Geneva, and you always think of them as some sort of lovers—but you don't mind sharing, because that night you spend on the lake, and the next morning you wake up to Quinn's favorite sunrise and your favorite sight—Quinn stretched out bare beneath you, eyes completely gold.

"I love you more," she tells you. "I love you more.")

.

3

She had a few months, is what they'd told you—her lung infections are more frequent, more severe, and there's only so much they can do. It's easier for her to process, and you think maybe it's because she's lived with being out of breath for most of her life, that she's not scared, any longer, of not being able to breathe.

But you've know her for seventy years, been in love with her for little less. You've had careers and records and books and awards, children and grandchildren. You have built a life with this woman, and she's going to die.

"I'm not scared," she tells you, the oxygen dipping and stuttering. Her voice is so soft.

You kiss the back of her hand. She's aged more gracefully than anyone you've ever seen—the blonde of her hair turning a perfect, silky white, her eyes never losing their sharpness. She'd taught as a professor emeritus until three years ago, when she'd officially retired for good, but you're pretty sure she's still been writing.

She's on hospice now, in a hospital bed they'd moved into the living room at your home. You'd wanted to take her back to Geneva one last time—but then again, you'll always want more time. You're greedy that way.

You don't realize you're even crying until she weakly wipes tears from your cheeks.

"Sweetheart," she says, and you kiss her gently. "We had such a good run."

You nod, and you surprisingly do not let grief overtake you yet: she is still here, and she still says, "I love you." And you kiss her again and again.

But then it's your last kiss. Then she's not breathing anymore, and her eyes are closed, and the moment you've dreaded for your whole life has come and gone, and time has moved beyond you.

The next few mornings you wake up and for a split second don't remember, but then it hits you in a rush—your wife is dead. Quinn is dead.

Her funeral is lovely, packed full of people. So many of them are writers and scholars, and so many give brilliant and gentle and funny and moving elegies. Nora holds your hand and Oliver kisses your cheek, and, although you cry, you do laugh, and you do smile, because Quinn—as always—was right: she had a brilliant life; you had a brilliant life together.

It is the last time you sing to her.

The next day you're back home, staring at a freezer full of casseroles you know you will never eat, when you get a call from Quinn's longtime editor, Trevor. He asks you to come to his office, and so you do, and when you get there, he gives you a long, long hug and hands you a book.

It's a book of essays, you discover, by Quinn, that she arranged to have published posthumously. You don't have any idea how she hid it from you, but always so smart, always so thoughtful—she did. They're essays on music, art, your children, travel, academia, mental illness, Broadway, even. You go home and read them all and cry—Quinn is lively, wordy, academic, careful, brazen, loving.

The last essay, you discover, is about love. More specifically, it's about you.

I suppose my words have a different texture to them now, or perhaps my hands do—I have always expected mortality, just never been this cognizant of it before, she writes. I'd like it if no one heralded these as my best work; that was years ago and these essays are mostly unfinished. What we amount to, all of us, is mostly unfinished.

But what I wish to say last, most incompletely, most importantly: we cannot theorize two things, love and suffering. They are reverse sides with no reverse sides, and we cannot make them go away. If life is measured by anything, because of my wife, I have loved more than I have suffered. I have lived in a land without maps, in a palace of breath rather than wind. And, Rachel: I am writing this from the light.

(Your grief will overtake you briefly then, your lungs hollowing out, your hands going numb. But you will climb out of that dark hole every morning, every hour, and you will sing, and you will not forget.)