summary: 'You shuffled, you clenched your fists. You wanted her, so you had her, like you did with everything, because you were Spencer and because you could. In the dark, you kissed her. Your ultimate downfall is that she kissed you back.' Fabrastings.

an (1): because i adore this pairing and had been working on this story as an idea for a while without actually ever having anything solidly written.

an (2): if you haven't, bon iver's cover of "i can't make you love me" is something you should certainly listen to.

...

pangea (or, the entire earth)

.

even more difficult to explain, than the breaking-up of a single mass into fragments, and the drifting apart of these blocks to form the foundations of the present-day continents, is the explanation of the original production of the single mass, or pangea.

—amadeus william grabau, the rhythm of ages

...

Quinn is beautiful still, and that is something that will certainly never change, because she carries it with her, draped around her shoulders like a cape, tied with a string of melancholy. It's what first attracted you to her, years ago, when you saw her from a stage at a bar in New Haven, lit from above by stage lights, science daring you to believe in angels; you were shrouded in darkness.

She was singing Patti Smith, and as you climb into the cab now, you take her hand; she smiles at you, gently, and there are new lines around her eyes because she's twenty-five and so are you, although sometimes you forget. But Quinn looks older, or at least you think she does, older from the last time you saw her, which was only months ago. Her hair is shorter now, falling just to her jaw, although it's still the blond of springtime, of childhood. She's wearing a dress like always but it's not one you recognize, and it's tweed, which makes you smile a little. You suppose you look older too, but your hair is still long and brown and you wear dresses still too, but there are lines appearing around your eyes.

You noticed, however, that Quinn limped a little on the way to the cab, even as she'd listened to you ramble excitedly about how well your internship at The Museum of Natural History was going, how two PhDs—in Anthropologie and Archeology—just seemed like icing on the cake now. She seems tired, jet-lagged, and she probably is that, as well, because she'd gotten in from Cambridge, and, according to your calculations, it's 1:22 am her time.

Her smile fades and she looks out the window. You wonder if she's remembering the first time you met; you wonder if she knows you're idly trying to figure out how fast your cab is going based on some rate of mathematics that she won't understand; you wonder if she's falling asleep; you wonder if she still loves you.

"Spencer," she says. She stares out the window.

"What?" you ask.

"I missed you."

"I missed you, too."

She nods minutely and never turns to look you in the eye. She sings Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine quietly as clear snakes of rain slither down the window. They look like tears.

.

"Spence?"

"Quinnie?"

She rolls her eyes, jabbing you lightly in the side with her elbow as you open your apartment door.

You kiss her soundly once you get inside; she tastes like always, like college libraries and vintage Yale sweaters, like coffee and fall leaves and rose lip balm.

"Hey," you tell her, and you feel her smile against yours.

"I'm starving," she admits.

"For actual food?"

She laughs, then backs up and wanders into your kitchen, opens the fridge.

"That too," she says. She tugs out a piece of pizza triumphantly and takes a bite, motioning with her other arm for you to come hug her again.

You do, because you've always been irrationally worried that if you didn't she might disappear; she reminds you sometimes of a phantom, a ghost from an old Hitchcock film, sent to haunt you, because she's pale and slight and constantly reciting poetry, fading if you don't pay attention. She moves like a dancer; she moves like someone who's been hurt.

But today she feels so solid, and today she doesn't need to fill her empty spaces with words, so you just listen to her heart beat contentedly as she eats a piece of cold pizza.

"You're a poet," you tell her after she's finished.

"Everyone's a poet if they're sad enough," she says.

.

The first time you saw her scars was during November of your Freshman year, and she sat back on your bed and closed her eyes, balanced against your hips. She looked uncertain and you hadn't really understood, so you swallowed and bit your lip.

You never wanted anyone before, not like this, and that was still all new to you. You didn't know if this was normal or if this was just Quinn.

You tentatively took your hands and placed them at the bottom of her sweater, and she didn't stop you when you tugged up. She lifted her arms—resigned, it seemed, although a part of you saw her ribcage contract with daring—and you watched her unfold in front of you, like you were performing an autopsy.

You couldn't stop it, your fingers, the scalpel, from floating to the left, tracing the scars between her ribs, drawing a line to her heart.

"My soul has managed to squeeze into such narrow spaces," she whispered.

You weren't a poet; you understood thoracotomies but not what it meant to breathe, so you kissed the scars and told her, "You're beautiful."

It seemed good enough then; she kissed all of your scars, too.

.

She takes a nap now, which you'd expected. She's an awful person to sleep with—to actually sleep with—because she splays out along the bed, greedily stealing covers and flinging arms and snoring. It always makes you laugh, because Quinn asleep is the exact opposite of Quinn awake: ungraceful, messy, careless.

You do some work on your thesis, although it's pretty much finished by now. You're proud and so is Columbia, and you're completely on track for your doctorate in a year and a half, and you should feel so happy right now, because Quinn is home and you have everything you've ever wanted.

But then Quinn turns over, and her shirt rides up, and you know the scars down her back like you know your own. Sometimes you try to calculate the pressure her back had been under during the accident, based on the speed of her car and the supposed speed of the truck, the angle of impact, airbags and seat-belts. You have solid numbers but you really just calculate that she almost died.

Your thesis is about the breaking apart of a single land mass into the current continents of the world, and it's also about the fact that Pangea wasn't actually the first single land mass to have existed and broken apart, and somehow you're sure that Quinn understands all of it better than you ever will.

You lay aside your laptop and curl up behind her, squeezing too tight.

.

"You can't heal scars," Quinn told you one night when you'd been tired and studying for finals and she'd caught you painfully staring at her back.

You looked down; she seemed she wise; you wanted to understand.

"Trust me," she said. "I've tried."

.

She shows you pictures of Beth, who is almost ten now.

She's absolutely beautiful; she looks happy.

She looks exactly like Quinn; she looks nothing like her at all.

.

"Let's have lots of children," Quinn told you, slurring and sleepy.

"Of course." You refused to let go of her hand even when she fidgeted, because she was in the hospital, having trouble breathing, in intense pain. It terrified you, although you refused to admit it out loud to anyone; you called Hanna in a panic—Quinn was twenty-one, and none of this was fair.

"I want to name them Emerson and Leo and, for you, we can even name one after a scientist, like Newton maybe."

You crinkled your nose. "Newton?"

"Oh. And Alice."

"I like Alice," you said.

Quinn nodded. "I miss Beth."

"I know you do."

"She loved you."

"That was remarkable, wasn't it?"

She shook her head. "You're going to be a great mom."

You kissed her knuckles and she coughed, shutters of her lungs clattering during a tornado.

"How about Rudyard?"

"Go to sleep, Quinn."

.

"How's your mom?" you ask.

Quinn shrugs, swallowing a bite of pancakes. "How's your mom?"

You take a sip of coffee, which earns you an arched eyebrow.

"You're never going to fall asleep now," she says.

"What makes you think I want to sleep tonight?"

Quinn blushes. It's adorable, how she's still so bashful.

You shrug. "You're a fine piece of ass, Fabray."

"Spencer."

You laugh. She smiles, although her hand in yours doesn't feel quite as warm as you've always remembered.

"You forget how well I know you," you whisper into the shell of her ear as you climb out from the diner booth.

She shivers. "I don't," she says.

.

"I ran away from home once. When I was six or seven," you told her, playing with her hair, trying your best to braid it, because it was just long enough now. She squirmed.

"Why?"

You sat back against her headboard. You shrugged. "No one even noticed I left."

"People disappearing goes unnoticed much too often," she said.

You thought of Aly; you thought of Melissa. Quinn knew all about them; you were juniors. There were no more secrets, only things that you never told anyone else before, things which took years to even remember.

"Spencer, I'm glad you came back."

You said, "Me too."

.

Her kisses tonight are gentle, knowing, practiced. She used to overthink them; she used to get scared; she used to get angry.

Tonight they fill you with longing, pulses along fault lines.

She only says your name.

.

"I'm supposed to think I'm detestable," she said, naked, wrapped around you; she had bruises. "I'm supposed to think that about you, too."

"I'm sorry," you said.

"I can't."

You waited.

"I love you," she said.

"I love you," you told her.

She cried.

She whispered, "I no longer need you to fuck me as hard as I hated myself."

She kissed you.

She said, "Make love to me."

So you did.

.

Tonight is not the same. It's familiar and wonderful and doesn't hurt anywhere near as much as you'd been expecting, because the dip of Quinn's collarbones and the swell of her breasts and the precipices of her hips are no different, and she has mapped you too.

But you ache, and nothing she does manages to take that away.

Afterward you lie on your back and stare at the ceiling; you can't hold her.

"Goodnight," she tells you, but neither of you fall asleep until much later.

.

The second time you ever saw her was on a snowy day, in the middle of campus. You knew her immediately; snowflakes caught on her eyelashes.

You caught up to her hunched form and suggested coffee; she agreed. When you sat down next to her, warm mug in your freezing hands, she smiled. It was terribly sad, and you recognized yourself.

You started talking, and she just listened as you told her about everything in your past that had riffled through the carefully shelved ventricles of your heart, tearing pages out.

She blinked. "It's nice to meet you for real, Spencer Hastings."

.

You take her to the museum the next morning, after a quiet breakfast. It's freezing outside, the coldest day of winter so far, the pervading cold New York seems to inhabit because everyone just says so.

You show her your functioning models of Pangea, and of the land masses before that.

She tells you how wonderful and smart you are; you smile. Your coworkers love her.

You show her the models of the land masses breaking apart.

.

"How could anyone love me?" you asked, because it was the question that had plagued you for longest, the thing you'd always been most afraid of.

Quinn looked at your fiercely; her eyes were green. You were standing in the hallway, and you'd blurted it out just after saying goodbye before you dropped her off at whatever ridiculous English class she was taking.

"Why do you love me?" Your voice was small.

"You remind me of poetry," she said.

You must have looked confused and possibly even a little offended, because she laughed this tiny laugh.

"You're confusing and overbearing and sometimes just annoying," she said.

"Those are so wonderful," you mumbled.

She took your hands. "No," she said. "You're those things but you're strong and so important, because you get to be the thing that takes patience, that exists in the spaces where nothing else is capable of being. You're the things people don't want to talk about, the things that are hard to acknowledge, like bravery, like ambition, like fear. You're history and you're broken form; you're meant to be heard." She kissed your cheek. "You're just beautiful, Spencer. My favourite thing."

You forgot how to breathe.

"I'm going to be late," she said, then walked into class, leaving you in the hallway standing completely still, your heart pounding away with stubborn alliteration.

.

When you watch her eat a salad for lunch at her favourite restaurant, you ask, "Do you think I should've taken the internship in London?"

She swallows her bite of food quickly. "What?"

"We could've been together."

"You're happy here," she says.

"I am," you say.

.

You got into Columbia for your graduate program, your number one choice because of the internship opportunities with various different museums in the city.

Quinn got into every school she applied to.

"I picked Cambridge," she told you. "Too many poets have already come from New York."

You know now that this was the moment that ended things; then, all you could think was that the Atlantic Ocean seemed very, very small.

.

"There's no one else, is there?" she asks, unsteadily, curling into your chest.

You hold her; you will not lie. "No. No one but you."

She nods. "For me either. No one else."

"Sing," you whisper.

I can't make you love me if you don't, Quinn murmurs immediately, her breath hot against your skin. I will give up this fight.

.

Although you panicked for a solid month afterward, and talked Emily's ear off, the first night you saw Quinn was the first night you kissed her, and probably the first night you truly fell in love with her.

You went up to her after she finished her set.

"You were great," you said.

"Thanks," she said.

"I'm Spencer."

"Quinn."

"Do you go to Yale?"

She nodded. "You?"

"Yep. Freshman."

"Same here."

You shuffled, you clenched your fists. You wanted her, so you had her, like you did with everything, because you were Spencer and because you could.

In the dark, you kissed her.

Your ultimate downfall is that she kissed you back.

.

She's only supposed to stay the weekend; it's time for her to go back. This is not her home, and it never will be.

"Don't go," you say; you want to scream and cry but Quinn's touch is too gentle.

"I'll see you soon," she says, because she's a poet; because she understands syntax.

Because she's a better liar than you'll ever be.

.

"It's weird," you said, sitting on the couch in your new, tiny New York apartment as she hunched forward. You rubbed the super-fine, baby hairs on the back of her neck. "It's like, there was this huge thing of land that was never supposed to break apart. And then there were all these little cracks, and all these earthquakes, all the time. But they never broke the land. Then, one day, it just was too much, and it split, just a little. Then, it was gravity and currents and just the natural progression of everything; it wasn't violent or sudden. But before you know it, there was an ocean between them."

Quinn kissed your breastbone.

"But the world was still intact, you know?"

You felt her nod. "It was just different."

.

"Given enough time, there's a chance that the continents could drift back together."

Quinn smiles at you in the middle of the airport. "Our very own little infinity."

You kiss her.

You wave; you wave goodbye.

...

references.

patti smith's "gloria"
anis mojgani's "come closer"
buddy wakefield's "we were emergencies"
bonnie rait's "i can't make you love me"

...

(also. um, i may have to write more about these two very soon. i needed to write something without a happy ending, but they could totally have one.)