summary: '"Why'd you kiss me?" you ask her. "I wanted to," Spencer says. It's simple. "Why'd you kiss me back?" You kiss her again. "You don't remind me of anyone else I've ever known."' Fabrastings drabbles, college and future stuff.

an (1): so, i totally loved writing this pairing. it's so faceted and beautiful and smart. so this is going to be a multichap-type fic, but it's going to be drabbly and random and possibly not in order.

an (2): title from tom waits. chapter title from andrea gibson's 'wasabi.'

...

a sweet little bullet from a pretty blue gun

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one. your hips the gates of hell if i know if heaven exists, but this will do just fine

...

The first time you see Spencer, from a distance, you think she looks like Rachel, but only because she has long brown hair and shoulders set in constant defiance of the world.

But then she's as tall as you are, or maybe even a little taller if you don't stand up straight. Everything around you smells like smoke, because you're at a bar, climbing off a stage; the lights are dimmed since you finished.

You want to say something from Casablanca, because Spencer is the kind of beautiful that is torn from another era; you are too, and you understand this because it requires crushing sadness.

In another time, you would have remembered Lot's wife; Spencer kisses you, and she is soft.

You forget Rachel; you forget Santana and Abigail and Eloise Pendleton; you remember (or meet) yourself.

.

"I tried to steal all of my sister's boyfriends or fiances." Spencer rubs her nose.

"I tried to steal back my daughter from her adoptive mother."

Spencer spins her coffee mug around on the table, brow knit in concentration. "This is an absurd game," she finally says, meeting your eyes.

You laugh. "You're really the only one who's come close to being able to challenge me, though. It's nice."

Spencer tilts her head. "Yeah, it is."

.

"Why'd you kiss me?" you ask her.

"I wanted to," she says. It's simple. "Why'd you kiss me back?"

You kiss her again. "You don't remind me of anyone else I've ever known."

.

During November, you're in your dorm. Kissing Spencer is unlike anything you've ever done before; it's not full of fear or anger, but longing. There's certainly a part of you that doesn't understand how you begin to want her, because it doesn't hurt the way longing after Rachel did. It's because you have Spencer, because Spencer wants you back.

Your heart is a rabbit in your chest; sometimes you fear it will go too fast and never finish whatever frantic race you've been running your entire life—running away from demons, running away from yourself.

You sit back against Spencer's hips and she looks up at you; she looks.

Her hair is messy from your hands; her lips are swollen from your lips.

She looks uncertain; the accident is the trump card of all of the games you've played so far. You haven't told her because of so many reasons, because it's something that you can't explain, because it's something that haunts you all the time (you used to be a dancer).

She fists her hands in the bottom of your soft sweater; it's winter and you're tired of dresses, you're tired of being perfect, you're tired of hiding. You're tired.

You close your eyes. You don't stop your hands. The air of your dorm feels cool, soothing. Spencer touches the scars that web across your ribs, then draws a line to your heart.

It gives you goosebumps. You tell her, "My soul has managed to squeeze into such narrow spaces."

She brings her lips against your scars. She tells you that you are beautiful.

You believe her. She has scars too.

.

"You're a poet," she tells you.

"Spencer," you say, "anyone can be a poet if you're sad enough."

.

One night you fight your way out of a nightmare, one that is actually more of just a memory than anything else.

You feel around, because there's weight on your chest and you're disoriented.

"Quinn?"

It's Spencer's voice.

"Hey," she says.

You try to breathe and you realize you're shaking; she's holding you to her chest. "When the paramedics got there I was conscious," you whisper.

She brushes aside your messy bangs.

"They administered a corticosteroid, you know. And a chest tube."

"Quinn," Spencer says again, and she's smart enough to say it like no one else ever has.

.

You talk to Rachel, who is dating someone new.

You are too, and you're happy for both of you, absolutely and unequivocally, because he seems like such a better guy than Finn and Rachel is back to rambling and being completely overbearing and ridiculous, and you don't feel in nearly as much pain when she says your name.

You're also pretty sure that Spencer is smarter than anyone you'll ever meet, even at Yale or after that, and that's something that, for some reason, makes you feel absolutely proud.

.

You win the game: "I have depression," you say.

Spencer closes her eyes. She hates to lose.

.

"Come home with me," Spencer says. "Just for a weekend."

"Are you going to dress me up and introduce me to your parents? Show me off?"

Spencer smiles slightly. "Nope."

"Then why do you want me to come home with you?"

"Two reasons," she says, then kisses your closed eyelids. "First, I want to make some good memories in a place that hasn't had too many of them."

"And the second?" you ask, because she's brave.

"I want to prove to everyone that I really did meet someone just as crazy as I am."

She laughs.

"You're an idiot," you say.

"Is that a yes?"

"Fine," you say. "Fine."

.

She meets Beth and you meet all of her family; you introduce her to Santana and Rachel and eventually your sister via Skype.

She still feels like the only person who's made you see yourself, and that's something.

In her big, cold, empty house, you make love all night long.

.

"You make me feel so happy," she tells you.

"It's a novel thing, isn't it?"

.

The first time you have to go to the hospital is two days before your nineteenth birthday, because your lung spontaneously collapses during a tickle-fight.

Spencer stays calm and makes sure to follow procedure that you're convinced she googled—just in case—because Spencer did stuff like that.

They give you anesthesia this time when they put in a chest tube, and when you wake up, Spencer is holding your hand, staring at you worriedly.

"We're going to live forever," you mumble through your oxygen mask.

She smiles.

It feels like the truth.

.

You get a summer internship in Philadelphia, at U Penn, so that you don't have to go back to Ohio, because it feels so scary you can't breathe—you're not that brave.

Spencer gets into a program at a museum there, too.

She takes you to Pride.

You wonder what your father would say to you now, and, for the first time in your entire life, you don't care at all.