Sunshine Enough to Spread

Everything about the place was hot. Sand, water, air. Rachel could feel the headphones in her ears and the rings on her left hand heating like irons in the fire. She propped herself up on her elbows, protected from the scorching sand by her soft, sea turtle patterned beach towel, and squinted at the horizon.

Tina's voice filtered through her headphones, distant, mangled by her car's Bluetooth. "So where exactly are you guys staying?"

Rachel glanced reflexively at the beach cottages behind her. "Hanalei Resort."

"And it's on the beach? Where?"

"On the North Shore," Rachel replied, smiling when her eyes found their target – four heads bobbing in the water, two blonde, two dark, all clustered where an outer swell was breaking over the reef. "It's like ten minutes from the shop Quinn's looking at tomorrow."

Tina hummed. "It sounds fancy. Is it fancy?"

Rachel considered the private cottage she and Quinn had been handed the key to that morning, the Jacuzzi, the glass walls, the linen sheets, the short, pebbled paths to the other cottages and the beach.

"Tina, it's –" she shook her head, searching for the words.

She was met with a garbled mix of laughter and static. "Okay braggy, it's fancy, I get it."

"This is why you should've come."

"Yeah, next time I'll just – fuck!" Tina shrieked, and Rachel startled at the volume and yanked the headphones out of her ears.

"Stay in your lane, dick!" Tina continued, her voice muffled and tinny and even more distant than before. Rachel plucked a headphone out of the sand, blew on it, and stuffed it back in her ear.

" – was saying next time I'll just tell my boss that Rachel Berry wants me to come to a fancy resort in Hawaii to help her wife scout out a location for another surf shop. I'm sure he'll give me the time off."

"I'm sorry, what?" Rachel said loudly. "I've gone deaf."

"Yeah, okay. I apologize. Are – "

"What?" Rachel repeated. She could hear Tina's eyes rolling.

"You have been spending too much time around your wife."

Rachel laughed. It was probably true. Her eyes quickly found the four bobbing heads again. One was slouching lower than the rest, tired or lazy or more at ease, arm lifted like she was pointing at the incoming swells, talking to the others.

Rachel watched as Sam splashed her with a barrage of water and then paddled quickly away before she could retaliate. He caught the first convenient swell, carved up and down the surface of the wave once, and then tipped forward just too far and nose-dived into the washing machine. He surfaced about ten seconds later, ten yards closer to shore, sputtering and laughing audibly.

Quinn and Santana were bellowing things Rachel couldn't make out.

"The Thoroughly Modern Millie premiere is next week, right?" Tina asked.

"The LA premiere, yes," Rachel nodded proudly, picturing the poster of her newest film projected on the giant digital billboard at The Grove. Her feet were still sore from all the tap dancing.

"So you'll be back by then?"

"We'll be back by then," Rachel confirmed.

A cacophony of car horns and static erupted in Rachel's ears, making her wince.

"Okay, I gotta go, Rach," Tina declared over the racket. "Love you, miss you, good luck tomorrow."

"Miss you too," Rachel said. She plucked the headphones out of her ears finally and nestled them safely inside her bag.

She sat up fully on her towel, legs crossed, and watched with interest as Santana and Mike dropped into the same wave. Mike wind-milled his arms clumsily, thrilled to even have caught the wave, and Santana mimicked him and lost her balance in the process, falling backwards into the foam. Mike carried on, doubled over, and then bailed when he reached Sam.

Quinn was the only one left at the outside break, with the others laughing in the shallows, messing around, letting the whitewater slowly push them in. Quinn passed up two more waves, then paddled for the last one in the set. She caught it easily and popped up, second nature, flicking her hair out of her eyes.

Rachel smiled as she slashed the top of the wave, creating a spectacular spray of seawater around her. Showoff, she mused, while Sam whooped. Quinn turned at the bottom of the wave again and then shot back up to the lip and aerialed out of it. She landed in reverse, steady on her feet for a split second before her knee gave out and she let herself topple backwards into the ocean.

"Well that cleared out my sinuses," Santana declared, sloshing ashore with her shortboard under her arm, leash trailing behind her.

Sam followed, shirtless in flamingo print boardies, shaking out his hair like a dog. His entire chest was bright pink, having foregone a rashguard for the session. "Cleared out more than just my sinuses."

Santana stared at him.

"Don't ask him, don't ask him," Mike advised, bouncing out of the water behind them. He wore black neoprene booties with his boardies, despite Quinn's mocking, to protect against the reef.

Rachel scanned the water for Quinn again and found her paddling in, having resurfaced closer to shore. She caught a wave, an ankle breaker she'd call it, and stayed flat on her board, coasting with her torso propped up on her elbows. Rachel narrowed her eyes as she got closer, picked up on the pained expression on her wife's face, the stiffness, the way she wasn't dragging her hands through the water or kicking her legs or laughing as Mike fell over yanking his booties off.

Rachel stood up slowly, brushing the sand from the backs of her thighs.

"It's fuckin hot," Santana observed idly, spinning around with her hands on her hips. Her wet rashguard was now draped around her neck like she'd only had enough energy to get her arms out before giving up. "I thought we were escaping Florida."

She looked accusatorily at Rachel while she said this, and followed her gaze to Quinn, now shuffling slowly, stiltedly, out of the waist-deep water.

Her hands dropped from her hips. "Oh shit," she muttered.

Quinn's black rashguard was plastered up around her abdomen, her faded red shorts twisted sideways and pushed up her thighs. She made no move to fix any of it, just limped up through the shallow water, leaning heavily on her board for support.

Rachel hurried forward. "Babe, you okay?"

Quinn's eyes flickered briefly to hers. She nodded shortly before wincing and stopping in knee-high water.

"What happened?" Rachel splashed through the shallows, following Mike, who grabbed Quinn's board and jogged it up to dry sand. Rachel seized one of Quinn's arms and draped it over her shoulders.

Quinn was breathing heavily, deeply, with her usual quiet wheeze, and Rachel could see no new injuries above her knees.

"You eat the reef, bro?" Sam questioned, taking Quinn's other arm and helping her up the beach.

"Something like that," Quinn breathed out.

Rachel ducked, searching for her eyes. "Did you hit your head?"

Quinn shook her head.

"Are you sure?"

Quinn narrowed her eyes and finally met Rachel's gaze. "Wait, who – who are you?"

Rachel's heart seized up for a moment, her whole body frozen, eyes wide, gripping her wife's arm with white fingertips, before she caught the slight upturn of Quinn's mouth.

She contemplated letting go and just dropping Quinn into the ocean, but her limp was getting more pronounced the closer they got to dry land, and her face scrunched up in pain with every step.

"What happened?" Santana demanded, laying out a beach towel right at the edge of the water for Quinn to collapse onto.

Rachel saw it as soon as Quinn's right foot was clear of the water.

Several black spines were sticking out of the arch of her foot, all surrounded by rings of blue bruising and raw skin, a mess of reef rash.

Santana took one look at it and spun on her heel, gagging.

"You met an urchin," Sam observed conversationally, helping Rachel lower Quinn onto the towel. Rachel stayed crouched at her side, one hand on the back of Quinn's neck and the other on her arm, eyes wide. She imagined Quinn's foot turning black, rotting off, paralysis, gangrene.

"Are they poisonous?"

"Sometimes." Sam nodded thoughtfully. "The big problem is the spines breaking off inside, though."

Rachel's jaw dropped a little further.

"I'll get a lifeguard," Mike offered, turning to run off towards the main beach.

Quinn whipped her head around. "No. No. I'm fine. Mike, I'm fine."

Santana waved a hand towards Quinn's foot. "Yeah, that looks fine. Looks great, Q."

"Babe – " Rachel started.

"Just get 'em out," Quinn barked at Sam, who was crouched over her foot studying the spines. "Use – you have tweezers, right? Go get 'em."

Sam studied her for a moment before seeming to decide that it would be better to just do what she said, hopping up, and jogging off towards his hut. Mike followed.

Rachel dragged the dripping blonde hair off of Quinn's face, stared at the side of her head until Quinn finally turned and met her gaze.

"I guess this is why Mike wears booties," Rachel mused quietly.

Quinn scoffed, eyes flashing. "Those would've gone right through his little booties."

Rachel kept staring until Quinn deflated slightly and continued, "I went through the washer a little bit, waited until it passed and then went to push up off the bottom. I was still over the reef though, and my foot just…"

She trailed off, voice trembling, and made a stomping motion with her good foot.

Santana groaned.

"Have you done this before?" Rachel questioned.

Quinn shook her head. "Sam has."

"So he knows what to do?"

"I know what to do."

"Okay," Rachel humored her. "Do you feel sick?"

Quinn shook her head again.

"Are you sure?"

"It's like a splinter, Rachel," Quinn growled, flinging a hand out towards her foot. "Like a bad splinter."

"Oh yeah, definitely," Santana said lowly, nodding along, "A really bad splinter that's also more like a knife and is also poisonous, and – oh!" she snapped her fingers. "Also there are multiple of them sticking straight out of you."

She tilted her head and smiled knowingly at Quinn. "But yeah Q, just a splinter, no big deal."

Sam and Mike jogged up behind them, kicking up sand and panting. Sam dropped a bucket of hot water, sloshing over the edges, at Quinn's feet, while Mike handed off a selection of items to Rachel – Advil, a clean towel, and a bottle of soap.

"No vodka?" Quinn frowned.

"We just got here," Sam defended, "We haven't stocked up yet." He held up his tweezers and looked at her questioningly. "You ready, bro?"

Quinn nodded, jaw set. She accepted the two Advil and bottle of water that Rachel held up to her mouth, only choking on it a little bit.

Sam set to work delicately plucking the spines out of the soft flesh of Quinn's foot.

"Oh my God," Santana muttered, staring off to the side at the expanse of empty beach. "I'm gonna vomit."

"Then go away," Quinn ground out.

"I'm supporting you."

"You don't support people by vomiting on them."

"How about we talk about something pleasant?" Rachel interjected, squeezing the back of Quinn's neck.

Quinn tipped into her touch. "Sweet potato fries."

Rachel chuckled. "Or, you know, what we're gonna do for the rest of the week, our wedding, your last birthday, or something like that."

Quinn opened her mouth to respond, but then bit down again and let out only a groan as Sam plucked the longest spine out. "Be careful," she ordered, tense under Rachel's hand.

"Few more to go," Sam announced, grinning apologetically.

"Remember our wedding day?" Rachel asked, louder than necessary, with her gaze purposely unfocused and thoughtful and her head tipped toward the sky. She ignored Santana's snort.

Quinn eyed her suspiciously.

"The sunshine, the singing," Rachel carried on when Quinn offered no response. "That guy in the Speedo who kept crashing our photos."

"Kurt," Mike nodded sagely.

Quinn's eyebrows furrowed, and Rachel knew what was coming. "Wait, we're married?" she questioned while Rachel drowned her out with, "Shut it, babe," eyes rolling out of her head.

Quinn's laugh turned into a garbled gasp as Sam plucked another two spines out. Her whole body was trembling, Mike even holding her foot still at this point, and Rachel leaned further into her side.

"You remember when it was?" Rachel asked conversationally.

"You forget already, Berry?" Santana chimed in.

"Two years ago," Quinn replied, nodding to herself.

"Where?"

"Jupiter."

"With who?"

Quinn paused, then lifted her hand up kind of halfway and gestured around. "Everyone?"

"What'd you have for breakfast this morning?" Rachel continued her interrogation.

"Denny's pancakes," Quinn said quickly, surely, smiling a bit to herself.

"What beach is this?"

Quinn's eyes flickered over.

Rachel smiled at her. "What's our room number?"

"Ooh, that one's unfair," Mike chuckled. "I don't even remember mine."

"The name of the hotel, then," Rachel conceded.

She watched Quinn's head shake slowly, unable to unearth the information that had never been buried in the first place. It was a game they'd play frequently, testing Quinn's limits, an easy gauge of what was most important to her subconscious and what information her mind deemed garbage and disregarded, dependent on somebody else to remember. Things like where she was staying and whether she'd closed the rental car window to the rain and what time their reservations were for were all forgotten, but every detail of their wedding day stayed. Just like the name Rachel Berry all those years ago.

"Got 'em all!" Sam announced, clapping his hands on his bare thighs, flamingo shorts riding up.

Right away, Quinn attempted to climb clumsily to her feet, despite Rachel's protests. She held the injured foot fully in the air, and leaned on Rachel's and Santana's shoulders to drag herself up, muttering, "fuck, fuck, fuck."

She went pale once vertical, and Rachel fully expected her to drop back down, but she colored again after squeezing her eyes closed and shaking her head. When she opened her eyes, they were bright hazel and determined, glittering grains of sand stuck all over her face and ears. The scars on her abdomen and legs stood out in the sun, and her right foot was swollen and bruised, the arch covered in black circles where the spines had been.

"Okay, babe, wait –" Rachel said stiltedly as Quinn made to hop towards their beach hut.

"Jacuzzi," Quinn said determinedly, nodding down at her foot. "Gotta soak it."

Rachel looked helplessly at Sam as Quinn took another hop in the sand, almost crumbling with her bad knee supporting all her weight. Sam mouthed "I got her," and stepped up behind Quinn, collecting her in a bridal carry.

"What a fuckin' mess," Santana observed, shaking her head.

Quinn let her head loll back so she could see behind Sam. She pointed between Santana and Mike and directed, "Rinse the boards off in the shower." She then redirected her finger to Rachel and simply held out her hand as she was carried away.

Rachel laughed shortly to herself. She slung her bag and beach towel over her shoulder, grabbed the abandoned bucket of lukewarm water and soap, and followed.

….

Quinn was sandwiched in the back of their rental car – a deep blue SUV with a push button start system that took Sam twenty minutes to figure out – between Rachel and Mike. She had on a faded black sweatshirt with a Jupiter Surf logo on the chest and a pair of Sam's flip-flops because she'd forgotten her own and Rachel had dainty infant feet.

Her foot still throbbed regularly, but the swelling had gone done a bit overnight after soaking in the hot tub and drinking pineapple vodka for four hours. Rachel had sat on the edge with her feet in the tub sipping mango juice and googling sea urchin first aid. She'd initially requested Quinn let her drip candle wax over the wounds to bind up the barbs, not visible to the naked eye, but Quinn had talked her down to simply wrapping everything in an Ace bandage.

Quinn clumsily lifted her foot up onto the divider between the front seats, spraying sand everywhere from the bottom of her flip-flop.

"Dude, come on!" Sam exclaimed, lifting a hand from the steering wheel to push at Quinn's foot.

Santana only glanced down at it and shook her head in disgust, leaned towards the window.

"It needs to be elevated," Rachel insisted while Quinn resisted Sam's attempts to shove her away.

The bandage was wrapped around the arch of her foot and then again around her ankle, hiding the worst of the raw skin and mottled, blue-black circles, and Quinn wiggled her sandy toes towards Sam's face until he left her alone.

The drive to Hanalei Beach was short and easy, along a two lane road surrounded by dense tropical trees and colorful houses. The greenness of everything was a drastic change from Redondo, even from Jupiter. Sam turned onto a road perpendicular to the beach and they passed two more houses, an airy blue bed and breakfast, and a squat tangerine colored building labelled "The Eggery" on the right. On the left, a skate park with a small bowl and a few ramps, and a donut shop. The road culminated in a red dirt parking lot that sat right up against the vast expanse of sand of Hanalei Bay.

Next to the parking lot was a two-story, pale green, wood-paneled, stand- alone building which resembled the shape of the original Jupiter Surf so closely that Quinn smiled as soon as she saw it. A short fence lined with old surfboards of all sizes and colors separated the building from the parking lot.

Santana twisted in her seat and caught Quinn's eye, smiling. "This looks familiar."

Quinn hurried out of the car and surged ahead of the rest of the group while they stood in place, stretching and spinning slowly and making casual remarks about the beautiful location. She limped heavily past the surfboard fence and up to the front of the building. The solid wood double doors were wide open, letting in the cool salty air, and a tall guy with wavy brown hair stood just inside the entrance. He spun around and grinned when he saw Quinn, held out his hand.

"Aloha! You must be Quinn."

"You must be Julian," Quinn returned, shaking his hand. She'd only met him over Skype once, after contacting him about the former surf shop on the market because the owners were re-locating to Waikiki. She'd learned that he had worked for them but was more loyal to the location than the owners, unwilling to move to "kook central," and would be mediating the sale if it happened.

He gestured at her foot, nose scrunched. "Reef?"

"Little bit," Quinn said wryly. "Mostly urchin."

"Oh I've been there," he hummed, holding his hand out so Quinn could see the mottled scars on his palm, right at the base of his thumb. "Candle wax did the trick."

Rachel, Sam, Mike, and Santana piled through the front doors then, a small herd of flip-flops smacking on the hardwood. Sam greeted Julian, delighted to be meeting a dark-haired version of himself, and introduced the others.

Rachel sidled up next to her wife, and Quinn leaned into her and observed the room they were in. It was big and airy, with tall ceilings and windows lining two full walls, making it as bright inside as outside, despite the dark hardwood. There was a solid staircase in the middle, leading up to another level which overlooked where they were standing. Quinn was fully anticipating a termite infestation or black mold in the walls, because so far it was too good to be true.

"Tour?" Julian offered, palms held up in question.

"Tour." Sam confirmed, clapping his own hands.

"So this was the main floor," Julian started, gesturing vaguely. "We had mostly apparel and shoes, a small skate section, and then a ton of family shit – so like boogie boards and skim boards and floats and things."

He turned and caught Quinn's eye. "I know you guys'll have less of that, more surf, scuba, snorkel, paddle stuff."

Quinn tilted her head agreeably.

"And then up there we had all the boards and wetsuits," Julian waved towards the staircase. "It's all the original wood. The place was renovated a few years ago but they didn't mess with the bones."

He showed them through a door into a sandy hallway in the back of the shop. There was a large stockroom, two restrooms, and a sunny room with ocean blue walls and a sliding glass door facing the beach. Out back, an overhang created a large, shaded workspace next to another small, separate building which looked like it had budded off the main one.

"That's mine," Sam declared as soon as he saw it. He stared at Quinn, pointing at the little building, pleading. "That's mine. For shaping, it's perfect."

It's exactly the same thought Quinn had had when she'd seen photos of the place. She narrowed her eyes at Sam thoughtfully. "Maybe," she nodded.

Julian guided them over to a few outdoor showers, wide enough that Quinn wouldn't slam her board into the surrounding wooden slats like she did on a daily basis in Jupiter and Redondo. The water was less than a hundred yards away from the back of the shop, and Quinn was itching to jump in.

She bit back the urge though and followed as Julian led them back inside and up a narrow staircase, through a blue door and out into Quinn's new favorite place. The roof was uncovered, aside from a patio area with an overhang, and Quinn visualized sticking a couch there and napping every day. From up here, she had the perfect vantage point to gauge the tides and the height of the waves, and the surrounding mountains and forest were just a bonus. The retaining wall was about waist high, so no danger of one of them drunkenly tumbling over the edge.

"What do you think?" Julian asked after several minutes of them all wandering around the roof in awe.

Quinn swallowed back her excitement and schooled her features, turned to face him. "It'll need some work," she shrugged. "Some paint. And we'll have oxygen tanks so we'll have to figure out storage for those."

Quinn shrugged. "But yeah, I'm interested."

….

They spent the day in the water of the bay, in and out, exploring the breaks and talking to the locals, and getting to know their future beach home. Mike scored free donuts from the neighbor shop, welcoming them to the area, and Sam borrowed a child's skim board and injured his back trying to teach them a trick.

They were all sprawled out on towels in the sand as the sun was setting, the air turning cooler, most of the beachgoers gone. Quinn watched all the surfers carefully. It wasn't the season for big waves – that would come in winter – but bobbing heads still played around on the fun size breaks close to shore.

Rachel leaned into her side, sweet and warm.

"You smell like board wax and seawater," Rachel whispered.

Quinn grinned proudly, pressed her thumb against her first two fingers. "Eau de Quinn."

"Eau de dumbass," Santana called from a few yards away, covered by a sweatshirt and blanket she'd bought from another shop on the beach.

Quinn glanced down at her wife, at her dark hair curled from the ocean, lifting around her shoulders in the breeze. She could see her own mop of sun-bleached hair in the reflection of Rachel's sunglasses.

"You know what I'm super excited for?" Quinn whispered against her ear.

Rachel smiled, shaking her head. "What?"

"Teaching her to surf."

Rachel's smile widened. "How do you know it's a girl?"

"I feel it," Quinn nodded confidently.

"What if it's a boy?"

"Then I'm super excited to teach him to surf."

Rachel leaned up then and kissed her, one hand in Quinn's salty, tangled hair. Quinn grinned against her lips. "Head on straight, Rachel Berry?"

Rachel hummed.

Quinn wrapped both arms around her wife, squeezing her tight. She let one hand drop onto Rachel's belly and kept it there, bent forward a little and addressed the belly directly. "I love you little grom. I love you and you can grow up to do whatever you wanna do – sing and dance like Mommy if you want – but just know my heart will break if you don't like surfing."

Rachel rolled her eyes. "She'll like surfing."

"She better. I think Sham's shaping her a little board already."

"A rocket," Sam confirmed, lifting his head up off the sand to look at them. "It's all finished. Just waiting for the kid."

"She'll like it," Rachel assured, ruffling Quinn's hair. "She just might not have your talent."

"We can't all have my talent," Quinn agreed sagely.

Rachel ignored her. "You'll be a good teacher, though. You teach all those kids. You managed to teach me. Or, you tried at least."

"You're a good surfer."

"You're only saying that because I'm pregnant."

Quinn gasped loudly, wide eyes fixed on Rachel's. Rachel started laughing, unrestrained and melodic and contagious, and Quinn's moron friends were slinging sand in her direction before she could even get the words out through her own smile.

"Rachel Berry, you're pregnant?"