Her whimpers are quiet and soft, as if she is afraid to let them escape. She is totally unlike the vocal girl she is at school, with her sneers and insults that hurl so easily through the air. She's far too aware of the girl who hovers just above her, who has three fingers buried to the knuckles inside her. The insults, the jokes, the derision – these are the emotions with which she is comfortable. Rachel knows this all too well, knows that the Cheerio grits her teeth and purses her lips into a thin line, even as Rachel pulls out and thrusts back in particularly hard, with enough force to make the girl's hips lift and her eyes roll back in her head.

Rachel is the only one naked; it's been this way ever since the first time, nearly two months ago. She doesn't care. She's learned the art of hooking fingers into spankies in a way that won't cut off her circulation, but it doesn't matter because sooner or later the girl underneath her will clench her thighs in a death grip around Rachel's hand and she'll be pretty sure amputation isn't far behind.

But what she focuses on more than anything are the sounds, the way they surround them both in the room, even though the cheerleader who writhes with every touch tries desperately to stay quiet. Rachel's fathers aren't home – they really never are – and there's no need for silence. Even when Rachel slides down spankies and panties and her mouth caresses warm, slick softness and the girl underneath her tugs roughly at her hair, the only sound besides the rustle of the air conditioner is the squeak Rachel makes at the pain in her scalp.

Minutes later the silence is shattered by a guttural grunt that ends as quickly as it began, and Rachel helps the girl lift her hips off the bed so she can pull up her underwear. Then she crawls back to the head of the bed and says the first words of the hour.

"I love you."

"No, you don't, Berry." It's nothing more than a whisper.

"Yes, I do."

"Well, you shouldn't. It's not happening, man hands, no matter how much you want it."

Rachel turns onto her side, giving in to her tears, the sound so loud that she doesn't even hear the click of the door that Santana closes as she leaves.

After four years of it happening nearly every day, Rachel was achingly familiar with the sound. Even in a crowded hallway, it was as if time slowed down, every other noise faded away, and all she could hear was it. The tip of a cup in agile fingers, hand sliding deftly over plastic. The slosh of liquid, the peculiar tinkle of ice against ice, the casual wind of slush meeting air.

The splash, her gasp.

Time would start again and the roar of laughter would be all around her, within her. There was one laugh that always separated itself from the others: high and thin, uncertain, apologetic. Rachel had considered it strange at first, because the one that uttered the laugh had always been the one that had thrown the slushie.

Then there were the other sounds that Rachel had come to associate with her daily slushie ritual: the soft grating of her combination as she opened her locker. The rustle of the bag that held her second set of clothes, the creak of the bathroom door as it closed behind her, leaving her in blissful silence for a few minutes before she began her carefully crafted routine.

Soon the squeal of the faucet would go off like a cannon in the quiet room, and Rachel's ears would be filled with the rush of water as she baptized herself, watching red or green or blue swirl down the drain. More often than not, she heard sniffles, and tried not to think that they were coming from her.

As she dried her hair she ignored the muffled sound of the door opening again, the barely discernible click of the lock.

The white Sylvester-issued tennis shoes sounded harsh footfalls against the dirty linoleum, and by the time Rachel folded up her towel and placed into the bag that would now hold her soiled clothes, the Cheerio was standing directly in front of her.

And this time, it was Rachel Berry who said nothing as the icy cheerleader stripped her of her slushie-ridden clothes, talking the entire time she unbuttoned and pulled, folded and straightened. Apologies, wishes that things could be different, things that Rachel didn't want to hear but listened anyway. This wasn't love, this wasn't even tenderness. It was absolution… but not hers.

It ended the same way it began: wet sounds moving through air and time; almost, Rachel would think absurdly, like rain falling on slick pavement. Only this was lips against lips, soft but not wanting, both of them needing something that they knew they would never find in the other.

Quinn Fabray always came hard and loud against Rachel's fingers.

Rachel always wished for quiet.

She wondered why her life had always revolved around a swath of red.

For four years, her life lay just beyond a pair of red doors. Days of torture perpetrated by girls in red and white uniforms. Changes of clothes brought on by red ice and corn syrup splashing fiercely onto her face, only to drip (almost delicately, she thinks, desperate to find any silver lining) into a pool by her shoes.

There were other colors that she noticed: hazel eyes that always seemed mournful. Pink lips set into a tight line below a different set of eyes, brown and flashing, perpetually angry, daring the next person to say one thing.

Then Rachel noticed something different. The soft bob of blonde hair tied up in a stiff ponytail, as its owner took her hand and led her into a janitor's closet on the second floor.

She took in the grimy walls, dirty water sloshing in a mop bucket that looked as if it hadn't been drained in years. She wrinkled her nose and looked up into blue eyes.

"I see the way you look at her. You love her."

It was matter-of-fact, never a question.

Rachel wondered how she knew, but then realized that wondering how was pointless. The blonde girl towering over her always knew, no matter how much she tried to shove it down.

So she nodded.

And then the red was back because Rachel found herself pulled into a pair of soft arms, pressing her close into the warmth of the cheerleading uniform. It was odd, that she should be finding comfort in a Cheerios uniform, but if anyone could make it that way, it would be the girl who was currently holding Rachel tightly in her embrace.

"You really shouldn't, Rach." Her voice was kind, her blue eyes sympathetic. "She'll only break your heart."

Rachel shrugged. It was already broken.

The pieces she had left couldn't stop beating for that name.

There was pink above the red, pink as the cheerleader bent low and softly pressed her lips to Rachel's. She should have been surprised, but again, nothing about the dancer surprised her. She was aware of the girl's reputation, knew that she was just one in a long line.

"Be careful."

Later in the day, she saw red again and remembered the warning. She watched as Santana glanced back at her, just before Brittany led the Latina into that very same janitor's closet.

It hurts.

She clenches her teeth but Rachel can't help but wince as the burn spreads, curling up low in her belly like the embers of a slowly dying fire. She supposes it is the curse of her creativity that she can't calm her mind even in a situation such as this, but all she can think is of how absurd the contrast is.

The pain between her legs measured against the coolness of the sheets against her bare back. Her hair, splayed across the pillow like a halo, tickles her face. The fingers inside her are stiff.

The fingers gripping her hand, surprisingly, are the gentlest she's ever felt.

She whimpers when the hand leaves hers, scrunches her face when the pads of those fingers trace over her cheeks, brushing away tears.

"I'm sorry," the voice whispers. "It'll stop hurting, I promise. I promise you it will."

Rachel knows it won't.

But her hips are soon bucking and the hand that was on her face is in her hair, stroking as dark eyes watch her closely. She squeezes her eyes tightly shut against the assault on her senses that has been going on since she made it to her house after school. Rachel doesn't know why, but she expected it to be rough. She expects everything they ever do to be on the other girl's terms… because it always has been.

She hadn't expected every touch to be careful, cautious; hadn't expected those dark eyes that were usually so hard to be so attentive, so expectant this time. Fingers skim over every inch of her, feeling, stroking, and curling until her body was reacting in ways that terrify Rachel.

She can handle roughness. She's used to it.

But this?

It feels a lot like love, and that, she knows, is dangerous.

When her very first high has subsided and she manages to get her breath under control, she swipes a hand over the sweaty tendrils in her eyes until her vision clears, and she attempts to roll on top of the other girl.

"No, Rachel."

She draws back, comforted and wounded by the harshness that has returned to the cheerleader's voice.

"But you… and I want to…" She's normally so verbose, but good god if this thing they have doesn't take all the words right out of her.

"I want to… because I love you."

"We need to stop this, Berry."

The warmth of a palm against her cheek is painfully final.

The window is cool under her fingertips and the curtain scratchy against her face as she watches Santana's car drive off.

The liquid burned as it flowed down her throat. She had never liked alcohol, but the room was too hot, the music too loud, and a tan body mounting the stairs behind smooth dancer's legs won't leave her mind, no matter how much she closed her mind against it.

So Rachel drank, and tried to revel in the harsh taste of beer coating her mouth, praying that in a few minutes she'd be dull enough to not even care.

"She won't come around."

Rachel hummed, a noncommittal, bored sound.

"You deserve someone better."

"You offering?"

The girl next to her snorted. "Sorry, Berry, my tastes range more towards the penis variety."

This time Rachel turned, raising a perfect eyebrow at her blonde counterpart, and smirked when she was rewarded with a flush.

"Most of the time," the captain of the Cheerios mumbled.

Rachel chuckled darkly. "Most of the time. That's about as much as I get." She glanced towards the stairs, towards the closed door she knew lay just beyond it.

Her bedroom.

"You'll always come second with her, Rachel."

She knew that. She took another drink, tasting salt and she realized she was crying.

"To Brittany."

"She doesn't even love Brittany. Everyone comes second to her own damage."

"I'd never have classified it as damage. Ego, perhaps."

The blonde girl took a swig of her own drink, tongue darting out to lick a few stray drops from the neck. Rachel eyed her, then glanced back up at the stairs.

"Damage hides behind ego."

The other girl's eyes are fastened across the room, at a boy who is still minus his Mohawk and screaming at the video game on her television.

"When did you get so wise?" Rachel asked.

The girl smirked. "I had eight months to consider my own ego. It deflated as my body expanded."

It was two hours later when she caught sight of Santana and Brittany coming down the stairs. The Latina didn't even look her way as they left Rachel's house.

She moved to take another drink of her beer and came up empty, tipping the bottle up to drain it of its last dregs.

"I could get you another?" her couch companion offers.

Rachel glanced at her, then up the stairs.

"Get me something else."

On Rachel's bed, Quinn writhed underneath her mouth. Rachel closed her eyes and stroked her tongue over folds, until the girl tasted of everything: salt, beer, vanilla lip gloss left on her lips after hurried kisses.

Bitterness.

Damaged.

Glee is usually her safe haven. She is used to losing herself in the music, used to the sneers and objections of Kurt and Mercedes every time she suggests something that she knows will be beneficial to the group.

She is used to being the outcast.

But there are days that are different, when she can still sing and go through the motions of whatever dance Schuester is trying to teach them (she avoids Finn as much as possible as they dance), when she can smile brightly through the pain of a well-placed jibe about her clothes. She marvels at how she does it, and knows it'll come in handy when she's a star on Broadway.

On certain days, Rachel goes through these motions because she just can't think.

Every so often, the cheerleader comes into the room and rather than taking her usual place next to Brittany, she sits behind Rachel.

It's subtle, really. Anyone else wouldn't even notice it. But it's Rachel, and even though she knows she's being toyed with, she craves it.

She smells it.

The first time she figured out what it was, she'd laughed, because the thought of the badass Latina wearing something as gentle as baby powder is as foreign as the thought of Rachel losing her voice for good.

But then that first time, caught in a tangle of legs and arms, baby powder suddenly isn't as innocent anymore, when she mixes it with sweat and moan. And sometimes, just before she would leave, the girl would carry her bag to Rachel's bathroom, returning minutes earlier with the scent even stronger.

She always covers up what they do, in more ways than one.

So Rachel sits on the risers and breathes it in, drowns in it, praying that the sweat mixed with Santana's baby powder scent is just from Cheerios practice.

She had always narrowly avoided getting her fingers smashed every time her locker door would be slammed closed. Rachel associated the head cheerleader of William McKinley High School with violence, thinly-veiled rage and repression just boiling under the surface.

She was the lucky one who always got to watch – feel – it erupt. Even in their most intimate moments, there were brutal tugs of hair, slaps on thighs, teeth tugging a lower lip into bloody submission.

So when she broke down in the middle of glee because she just couldn't take it anymore, it surprised no one more than her when Rachel found herself wrapped up in gentle arms, a soft hand rubbing her back as she sagged against her locker and cried.

"Why?" she mumbled. "Why can't she just… just…"

"I told you why."

"Her fragile, damaged ego," Rachel scoffed.

"Something like that."

Gentle fingers raise her chin up, trace along her jaw line.

"Why can't you just give up on her?"

"Why can't you give up on him?"

Hazel eyes flashed and Rachel winced because the fingers became rougher before they stilled, then dropped to hang limply at the cheerleader's side.

"We're kind of pathetic."

"We are," she couldn't help but agree. "But I love her."

"And I love him."

Somehow their hands became linked. The locker was cool on the back of Rachel's neck as she leaned against it.

The cheerleader's other hand came up to brush a soft thumb against tears.

"You deserve better."

"She is better." Rachel Berry was nothing if not stubborn in her beliefs.

Their hands had separated by the time someone else made it out of the glee room. She strode down the hall, even steps touching the linoleum in a harsh rhythm. She stopped, seeing them, and, Rachel thought perversely, found what she was looking for.

Rachel allowed her eyes to touch Santana's just briefly, waiting as the girl took in the tears that streamed down her face. The gaze rose to meet her captain's, who glared before she walked off, leaving the two of them alone.

Santana's hand lifted, index finger trailing along the wetness still streaking her cheeks.

Rachel hoped it burned.

She leans against the locker with her eyes closed, feeling the gentle hand on her face.

Her eyes fly open when she feels lips on hers.

This has never been part of the game, this casual cat-and-mouse that they've been playing, in which Rachel is the mouse struggling to get her tail out of the trap the cat keeps setting for her. She's had her lips everywhere but on that mouth, because, though it had been unspoken, she knew it was forbidden.

Uncharted territory, which has been best left alone.

As always, she took what she was given, and has learned to be grateful for it.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Everything and nothing at the same time.

So when she tastes chapstick she's surprised; when a tongue probes her and her mouth opens and she tastes cinnamon and some spice that she can't recognize, Rachel's mind reels.

Her arms raise to loop around a neck as the kiss deepens. She has the feeling that she's being searched, memorized, and it terrifies her because to be memorized means to be left, and so she clings tighter.

Her body comes alive and she resists the urge to move, to lift a thigh between legs to grind against spankies that she knows must be wet, because the girl is making sighs and groans into her ear.

But she doesn't want this to end, she is hungry for that taste, because even though it mingles with tears that she's pretty sure aren't hers, she knows it will end all too soon.

And it does, because the Latina trembling in her arms jerks away, breathing heavily. Her eyes are heavy, hooded, and dark with something that Rachel has never been able to place. An expression that she has only seen when the cheerleader looks at her.

It's filled her with a sad pleasure that she's never looked at Brittany that way.

"Please," Rachel begs. "Please, I lo—"

"Don't," she hisses. "Don't fucking… I don't… I can't."

"Why?"

She clenches her fists, grits her teeth.

"You're too good for me."

"Please…"

"It'll stop hurting, I promise," she says brokenly, both of them recalling the first time she'd said it. "I promise you it will."

Santana walks off and Rachel traces her tongue over her lips.

The taste is still there, heady and strong, mingling with something else.

Want.

It's a start, she thinks.

She watched from the doorway as the girl danced. Took in the way her long legs flowed like water through a stream, the way her hair whipped and wound in golden strands as her hips twisted.

It could almost be called seductive, if Rachel was ever inclined to see the dancer that way. She frequently wished she could, wished she could fasten her eyes on those long legs and the swell of hips that rose up underneath an all-too short Cheerios skirt. Rachel had felt Brittany's lips once, but it hadn't left her with the same amazement and tingle that someone else's lips had; Brittany's hugs were nice but they didn't raise fire under her skin, didn't leave her wet and teeming with want.

So she couldn't quite figure out why she was standing outside of the glee room, watching as Brittany pulsed and bounced to the rhythm thumping out of the radio. But then Brittany whirled around and caught sight of her, and Rachel would have made a break for it if the blonde girl hadn't grinned and beckoned her with the smallest crook of a finger.

"You were beautiful," Rachel said, smiling a little.

Brittany beamed and almost tackled her with a hug. "Thanks, Rachel!"

Rachel laughed and tried to disentangle herself from the embrace, but Brittany held fast.

That's when she smelled it.

Rachel froze.

Brittany drew back, her brow furrowing at the way the brunette-haired girl had gone stiff in her arms.

"Rachel?"

"You… you smell like her." She cursed herself for whimpering.

Baby powder, mixed with sweat.

Brittany tilted her head. "What?" She brightened, realizing. "Oh! Well, yeah."

It was as if the blonde girl was mocking her, and Rachel's lips tightened into a thin line.

"I have to go."

"Rachel, what's wrong?"

"What's wrong?" Rachel yelled, feeling only a little guilty when Brittany's eyes widened and she took a step back.

"What's wrong is I'm in love with someone who can't keep her hands off you! What is it about you, Brittany? What do you have that I don't? Why… why am I not good enough?"

She shook her head and sunk into a chair on the risers.

"Why am I never good enough?"

Brittany squatted down in front of her.

"Rachel," she said uncertainly. "I'm sorry you're mad. I won't hug Santana any more if you don't want me to."

Rachel scoffed. "I wish hugging was the only thing I had to worry about."

"But that's all we do," Brittany said, her voice still registering confusion. "I mean, we used to do a lot more, but… not for a few weeks now."

Rachel glanced up, staring at the girl and finding nothing but sincerity. "You stopped having…" She hesitated. "You stopped. Why?"

Brittany grinned and playfully slapped Rachel's knee. "You know why, silly."

Rachel shook her head. "I don't."

"Well then ask her yourself."

Rachel's head lifted again as the door opened and she caught the scent once more, even as Brittany left. She closed her eyes, breathing in deeply until it faded.

She strides out the door of the school and towards her car, steps slowing when she realizes there is a person leaning against the passenger side. A person who is formidable, scowling, hands on her hips as she stands in the sunlight.

She's gorgeous, and Rachel's breath hitches.

She stands in front of her, waiting, but the other girl just stares at her.

Rachel meets her eyes, measure for measure, until she's sure that five minutes have passed and she begins to feel hot, not just from the sweltering Ohio heat but from the gaze that holds hers steady. And even though she feels like something important is happening, she's all too cognizant of the abuse that used to happen whenever that girl would look at her.

Rachel tears her eyes away.

The other girl doesn't.

"You're staring," Rachel says feebly.

"You're annoying."

'While I realize that at times I can be high-maintenance—" She ignores the snort of derision and presses on. "I'm not sure what purpose your insults are meant to have at this time, and I'm going to be late getting home. As much as I enjoy spending these moments engaged in a staring contest with you, I really don't want to be grounded and—"

"Shut up."

She huffs and puts her own hands on her hips, but when she looks up she sees uncertainty and the retort dies on her lips.

"Please shut up before I lose my goddamned nerve."

"I would find it fascinating to watch you lose your nerve, though."

"Berry!" she yells, but a faint smile crosses her lips, and Rachel grins before making a "zip her lips" gesture.

"You," the girl says, beginning to pace around the car, "are annoying. You talk too fucking much," she says pointedly, and Rachel rolls her eyes.

"You know exactly what you want and that scares the fuck out of me because as much as I want to get out of this cow town I don't know if I can, because I have no idea what I'm going to do if I get out of here. You have the worst taste in clothes of anybody I have ever met, and I swear to God if you try to get me to wear anything even remotely argyle I will end you."

Rachel tilts her head at this, at the "if," but she doesn't dare hope, and so she stays silent.

"I don't do long walks by the beach, I won't ever take you on a picnic in the park, and yeah, I'm probably going to forget birthdays and our anniversary. More than once. Unless you buy me a calendar but I will burn it if you even try to give me one with cats in it."

She growls indignantly then, but Santana stops her with a raised hand.

"I'll break your heart," she says uncertainly. "I'll break it and I'll probably break it hard, but I swear, every time I do, I'll try to put it back together. Maybe even stronger than it was before."

Rachel smiles, and, to her surprise, Santana smiles back – but only a little.

Rachel gets into the driver's side of the car, and almost bounces in her seat when Santana climbs in next to her.

"What made you change your mind?" she says finally as she angles the car in the direction of home, as she has so many times before.

This time, though, Santana reaches across the console and tangles their fingers together.

She shrugs. "I finally see you," she says quietly.

Rachel laughs. It's simple, it's corny, it's perfect.

It's about time.

She drives with a smile, her eyes on the road, and Santana just grins, her eyes on Rachel.