Disclaimer 1: I don't own Glee. The title comes from the song The Sound of You And Me which belongs to Yellowcard.

Disclaimer 2: The views and/or opinions expressed by characters in this story do not necessarily represent my own. Any apparent commentary on religion in particular and persons involved in it is not meant to generalize. (Or: I don't think exactly like my characters and one character being a jerk about his religion does not make all members of said religion jerks.)

I also have no doubt that there are minor details from the episodes that contradict minor details from the story, but if you just go with it I'm sure you'll be fine.

Lucy doesn't remember when she met Blaine. It's understandable—she was only a couple months old and he had just been born when her parents took her over to their neighbor's house to meet their friends' new baby.

She doubts anything important happened that day. They probably just looked at each other and drooled a lot as their mothers held them while their parents talked. And that day isn't important. Because Blaine has pretty much always been in her life, just as much as her parents and her sister have.

So they never make the decision to be friends. They're left in the same playpen all the time, set next to each other in respective strollers as their mothers get pedicures together, sent to the same school from the start.

When they go to school, they meet other kids, but they stay together. She shares with him her special 64-pack of crayons that she doesn't share with anyone else and he lets her help him color in pictures of Disney princes and princesses and talking objects in the giant coloring book that he drags around everywhere.

Her parents think it's adorable. They tease them about Blaine being her boyfriend and laugh with the other adults when they think she and Blaine can't hear, joking about how they probably are going to end up married one day, at the rate they're going.

Blaine asks Lucy what being someone's boyfriend means. She's not entirely sure but she tells him that her sister has a boyfriend, and he's just a boy that comes over a lot and hugs her when he leaves.

They reason that Blaine goes over to Lucy's all the time, so they shrug and go along with it and make it a point to hug goodbye at the end of every playdate.

When they get even older, they're still together, separated from the rest of the kids, but not as much by choice this time. They're still best friends, but the other kids don't like them as much because he's The Boy Who Dresses Weird and she's The Chubby Girl With The Glasses and they're both the Rich Kids From The Rich Neighborhood Who Think They're Better Than Everyone Else.

They don't, though. They don't think they're better, and they don't understand why the other kids care where they live.

They realize now what their parents are saying when they joke about them getting married, and they figure that they're best friends and they never want to be apart and that's what being married is, isn't it? Living with somebody forever? And Lucy can't think of anybody that she'd rather live with forever, so they agree that one day, they'll get married. Blaine wants to give her a ring because he knows he's supposed to, so he comes to school the next day with a little plastic silver band he got out of a machine at Cici's.

Lucy wears it for three days until it breaks and won't stay on her finger anymore, then she puts it in her music box and promises Blaine that she'll keep it forever anyway.

Lucy gets chubbier and Blaine is the only one who doesn't seem to notice at all. One day, during recess, she asks him if he thinks she's pretty. He stops the swing he's been pushing himself back and forth on and looks at her for a minute.

Then he shrugs.

"I think you're the prettiest girl in school," he says. "Come push me, I want to get high enough to jump."

She can't help the huge smile on her face as she runs up behind him to push him on the swing.

On the third day of seventh grade, Hayley Hoffman calls Lucy fat in the locker room, loudly enough for everyone in their gym class to hear, loud enough to make everyone laugh while all Lucy can do is clutch her gym clothes to her chest and stand, paralyzed, until their gym coach comes in and yells at them to be quiet and get dressed, or they'll have to run extra laps at the end of class. Once she's gone, the rest of the girls in the locker room glare at Lucy like it's her fault.

It takes Hayley exactly one hour, until the end of gym class and the next round of changing in the locker rooms, to come up with the nickname—Lucy Caboosey.

That afternoon, Lucy manages to make it through the bus ride home with Blaine, who can tell something is wrong but accepts the fact that she doesn't want to talk about it until they get home.

As soon as they get inside her house, up the stairs, and into her room, she bursts into tears.

Blaine's eyes, which have been wide and worried the entire ride home, get wider. Dropping his backpack to the ground, he pulls her over to her bed and makes her sit down.

"What happened?" he asks.

Lucy stutters out the whole story between sobs, letting Blaine hug her and pat her back and feeling so safe with him, safer than she feels with anyone else in the world.

When she's done, and she can't cry anymore, she just waits for his reaction.

"Lu, why do you care what Hayley Hoffman thinks? Hayley Hoffman is an idiot. And she only says stuff like that to get attention anyway."

"It's not just her. It's everyone, Blaine. Everyone was laughing at me and tomorrow everyone is going to know the stupid nickname, and everyone is going to be calling me it."

"I'm not," Blaine replies, shrugging.

"And everyone already hates me because I'm fat and ugly and have gross skin—"

"I don't hate you," he interrupts. "And I don't think you're fat or ugly or have gross skin."

"So?" Lucy mutters. "It's not you they all listen to, it's idiot girls like Hayley."

"So? Why don't you listen to me, instead of idiot girls like Hayley? Who cares what the rest of the school thinks? I don't."

Lucy considers this and almost wants to get mad at Blaine for what he's saying. Because if Blaine really wanted to, if he were willing to wear clothes he doesn't like and stop hanging out with her, he could be popular. He's good-looking, athletic even if he is kind of short, and as soon as they hit middle school being from the rich part of town ceased to be a bad thing at all and became a very good thing, especially to idiot girls like Hayley Hoffman. She's not even sure that Blaine knows how popular, how liked, he could be if he tried.

And this kind of irritates her because she doesn't have that. She doesn't have an out, no amount of changing she could do to her clothes or personality could fix her, and he's got one and he's not taking it.

"Is it so bad to want people to like you?" she asks. "Why is that so bad? Why is it so bad to want to be pretty and skinny and blond—"

She breaks down crying again, and he winces, hugging her again.

"I think you're beautiful," he says quietly. "I think you're way prettier than her and I like you this way." Lucy pretends to believe him. He doesn't buy it, of course, because he can always see straight through her, but he goes along with it and pretends to believe her in return.

So Lucy hates middle school. She hates that she's managing to get even bigger. She hates changing in the locker room. She hates only having a few classes with Blaine when in elementary school, being in the same homeroom meant being in all the same classes.

The only bright spots of her day are lunch and the two classes she has with Blaine, neither of which are Biology. She's lab partner-less in Biology. She dissects her own frog. At least Blaine has Biology with one other outcast who he's not really friends with but they're lab partners because nobody else will take either of them.

For the next year and a half, every Sunday when both their families go to church together and they have a chance to pray, Lucy asks God to make her beautiful. She begs God to make her skinny and pretty and good enough for everyone.

Lately, she always finishes way before Blaine, and then she pretends not to watch but she does. She watches and she wonders what it is he's praying for that makes him look so sad and anxious while he's doing it. Then he finishes and looks up at her and she can tell that even if she doesn't know what he prayed for, he knows exactly what she did.

She can't ask him, though. If there's one thing she understands keeping a secret, it's what somebody talks to God about. So she just watches and hopes that his prayers get answered, whatever they are.

Lucy loves God and she loves her church but she doesn't like it when her parents make her go to confession. She feels weird about it because she and her family know their priest really well, and she feels like it's easier to confess straight to God anyway. It makes her feel better to think that God will listen to her, just her, even without the help of Father Thomas.

Still, her parents make her go every once in a while and Blaine's parents usually take that as the cue to make him go too.

Lucy and Blaine wait together as their parents go into the room and come out, one by one.

She did notice that Blaine looked kind of weird when he first sat next to her, but now he looks seriously sick. With each passing minute he gets paler and he gnaws on his lower lip harder, staring at the ground and fiddling with his hands, twisting them over and over.

She's just about to ask if he's okay, if he thinks he should maybe go home and rest or something, when her father comes out and tells her that it's her turn.

As usual, it's strange for her to talk to Father Thomas about her sins, even though she knows it's not supposed to be and feels really bad about it. But she doesn't have anything horrible to say, so she just pretends that she's talking straight to God until it's over.

Lucy exhales a sigh as she leaves the room, which she knows is also a part of it—She's always been claustrophobic and the tiny room doesn't help anything.

As Blaine goes in, his skin ashen, she bites her lip and prays like Father Thomas told her to. She prays for her sins and at the very end she adds on a prayer for Blaine, to help him with whatever it is that she can't ask about.

Just a second after she finishes and stands up, Blaine comes out. He looks around as if in a daze, and then catches her eye for just a second before turning and half-running out of the church.

Their parents look around in confusion, then at her, as if she knows what's wrong. But she doesn't, so she shakes her head and chases after him.

She catches up to him as he walks quickly down the road, away from the church and towards their houses.

"Blaine," she says, out of breath. "Blaine, what's wrong?"

He doesn't answer, just keeps walking.

"Blaine, our parents are waiting back there, we need to go back."

He doesn't stop, and she lets out a frustrated, scared breath before reaching out and grabbing his hand to stop him, forcing him to turn to face her.

The look on his face makes all her words die in her throat. He looks completely shattered, like his heart has just been stomped on and then kicked away. Tears are pushing at his eyelids as hard as they can and as soon as he looks her in the eyes, they break free.

"I'm not going back," he whispers. "I'm not going back there."

"Blaine, please—"

"I'm going home. You go back if you want."

As he turns to walk away again, something falls from his hand into the grass. Lucy bends down to pick it up, wiping a piece of dirt off its silver surface.

It's the cross necklace, the one that matches hers, the one that he got at the same time she got hers, for Christmas when they were both seven years old. The necklace that neither of them has taken off since but is now in her hand, the chain snapped apart.

She doesn't move. She can't make herself walk away with him, and she can't make herself walk away from him. Finally, when she can't see him in the distance anymore, she forms a careful fist around the necklace and turns to walk back to where both their parents are waiting.

She tells them that Blaine felt sick and walked home. The explanation makes no sense, of course, but it's obvious that she knows no more than the rest of them so they let it go and get in their respective cars to drive home themselves.

Blaine stays in his room and doesn't come out for three days.

He won't talk to anyone beyond sending Lucy texts every once in a while to tell his parents that he's not dead and no, he doesn't want to talk about it.

It's weird going to school without Blaine, who loves getting his perfect attendance award and hasn't missed a day in three years. Their lunch table is so empty and the rest of the cafeteria is so full, so noisy when he's not there. She sits in the back of English and Geometry by herself, trying to ignore the laughter from the front of the room that she knows is directed at her.

He comes to school on Wednesday, looking haggard and exhausted but determined to not talk about it with Lucy, no matter how hard she tries. Finally, she gives up and allows them to talk about unimportant things, like what work Blaine missed and the new school scandal—Hayley Hoffman's boyfriend kissed her best friend and then asked her to the end of the year dance ten minutes after he and Hayley broke up.

Blaine laughs and says that girls can be so weird sometimes, and that they only went out for like two weeks anyway.

Lucy studies him as he talks and suddenly realizes that just as she's never had a boyfriend, despite miniature secret crushes on the popular boys that she knows she's supposed to hate, Blaine has never had a girlfriend. And she wonders if he has miniature secret crushes on the girls like Hayley that he's supposed to hate but doesn't.

That Sunday, Blaine refuses to go to church with them. He locks himself back in his room until his parents absolutely have to leave or they'll be late, so they give up and go without him.

The next Sunday, he does the same thing.

After three weeks, his parents stop trying to get him to go and write it off as a phase, a rebellious streak that all teenage boys go through at some point. They're sure that he'll go back soon enough.

Lucy isn't so sure. She bugs Blaine as much as she dares about it, asking whether he's going this week or hinting at how it's so much more boring with just her and the four adults there.

And they end up having a big fight about it, when he finally snaps at her that he's not going to go back and would she just give it a rest already?

And she snaps back that he's being stupid and immature and maybe he's trying to prove some kind of point to his parents but this shouldn't be about his parents, it should be between him and God.

"Maybe it's not about my parents," he says angrily. "Maybe I just don't believe in all that stuff anymore."

"You can't just not believe in something anymore," she counters. "Whatever you think you're doing, you can't pretend that you don't believe in him."

"Do you not believe me?" he asks, raising his eyebrows. "You want me to prove to you that I think it's all a joke and there's nobody out there?"

"Don't say that," she replies, glaring at him. "You can't say things like that!"

"I can if I don't think I'll be sent to Hell for it," he counters, glaring back.

"Why do you have to challenge everything just because you can?" she demands in frustration.

"Well excuse me if I don't want to mindlessly genuflect to the big man in the sky with you guys," he shoots back. "And listen to constant lectures about how horrible I am for being human."

She storms out of her room and slams the door, then returns a second later upon the realization that they're in her house so he should be the one to leave.

"Go away," she practically yells at him. "Just shut up and go away."

So he stalks out, slamming the door again for good measure.

They don't speak to each other for two days straight until she apologizes and tells him that it's his decision, and she's not going to get mad at him for what he believes or not going to church with them.

He replies that he's sorry too, that all the stuff he said was really rude and if she believes something that he doesn't, that's fine and he doesn't want to lose her over it.

Then they hug and make up, and refuse to let the religion thing be an issue. And for a while, they're okay.

Lucy loves summer. She loves the long stretch of time in which she doesn't have to see anyone from school that she doesn't want to see, she loves the lazy days on Blaine's parents' boat, she loves teasing Blaine about how crazy his hair gets in the humidity. She loves the opportunity to wear all the new clothes her mother bought her as a reward for the weight she's lost from ballet.

She still has a ways to go and she's not yet thin enough by any means, but she knows how much better she looks already and she loves that she can wear shorts and bathing suits now without shame.

When she shows Blaine her new sundress with the little rosebuds on it, twirling happily, he smiles and says that it's really pretty. She rolls her eyes.

"But how do I look?" she asks, twirling again for effect.

He's still smiling as he says, "You always look beautiful, Lu."

She mock-sighs in exasperation but accepts the answer, hugging him and saying that they should go swimming in her pool because she wants to wear her new bikini.

It's two weeks into summer and it's already way too hot. Lucy and Blaine are sitting together on the hammock in his backyard, desperately trying to get under as much shade as possible because his mom locked them out of the house so they could get some fresh air, or something.

A few months ago, Lucy decided to make Blaine learn to braid her hair because she can never get it right in the center of her back. Then, when he learned that, she taught him how to French braid and weave in ribbons and soon enough he could do pretty much everything she can to her hair. He goes along with it good-naturedly because he knows that Lucy hates her brown hair and likes to make her realize how pretty it actually is.

So he's sitting behind her, concentrating hard as he finishes the long plait down her back.

"I'm thinking of dying it," Lucy says as he finishes. "I really want to dye it blond. Do you think that would look good?"

Then he says the same maddening thing that he always says, the thing that she can't actually get mad at him for saying because it really does make her feel great to hear it.

"You'll be pretty no matter what," he replies, shrugging as she turns to face him. Then he adds, "But I like your hair like this."

She cracks a smile, reaching up to fiddle with her glasses, a bad habit she's had for years. Her hand meets empty space and she almost hits herself in the eye as she remembers too late that she got contacts a week ago.

They sit in comfortable silence for a minute before he speaks.

"Lu?" he asks, his voice uncertain.

"Yeah," she replies, looking up from the end of her braid that she's been inspecting.

"Can I tell you a secret?"

Lucy raises an eyebrow because Blaine knows that he can always tell her secrets.

"A big secret," he clarifies. "You can't tell anybody. You can't tell your parents or anyone else, no matter what."

"Okay," she agrees.

"Promise," he says, and she nods.

"I promise."

He takes a deep breath and begins to speak slowly.

"Lu, I… I think… No. I just…" There's a long pause. "Lucy, I'm gay."

The world stops for a second. There's a full second in which time stops and her brain whirs and tries to make sense of what Blaine just said.

"You…" she says, trying to wrap her head around it. He stares at her hopefully, worry creeping into his eyes every passing second that she doesn't answer. "One second," she manages to say, because her brain is working way too much for her to talk. He bites his lip and but stays silent.

The math is wrong. The math that's going through her head, trying to put together everything she knows about Blaine and everything she knows about being gay, isn't working.

Everybody tells her that it's wrong. Her parents, Father Thomas—they don't constantly vocalize it but she's heard enough to know that the little leather-bound book that she carries with her everywhere in her purse says that this is wrong.

She knows that Blaine is, for lack of a better word, right. He's the best person she knows, the most moral, selfless, good person that she can possibly imagine.

And if Blaine equals gay and gay equals wrong but Blaine couldn't ever equal wrong… It doesn't add up. It's like she's taking a test, a test timed by the growing look of panic on Blaine's face, and she can't figure out the answer.

She searches herself and can't find a part of her that is grossed out by it the way that so many kids at school say they are. It doesn't feel wrong to her, and she wonders if it should.

But that book—the book that she reads so often, it says that God, who equals good, says that gay is sin and equals wrong.

She can't figure it out and he's still watching her.

Her eyes flicker to Blaine's neck, where the chain that holds his cross isn't there and hasn't been since that day at church because he wouldn't take it back from her, and wonders if this is what he was praying for all that time.

Somehow, all she can think of to say is, "I won't tell anyone."

The crushed look on his face forces her to say more.

"I need to… think. I need to think for a while, okay?"

He nods, and she can tell he's holding back tears.

She stands up and stutters, "I have to… I have to go."

He nods, not looking at her, staying on the hammock as she backs away and then turns and half-runs home.

Before she can figure out what to say to him, everything else comes crashing down.

She finds out the next morning, from the whispers of her parents in the kitchen when they think she can't hear, that Blaine came out to his parents the night before and it didn't go well.

That's all she gathers before her parents notice her standing behind them and turn with fake smiles to wish her good morning.

As soon as she can escape from the breakfast table, she rushes to her room and calls Blaine.

It rings. And rings. And continues to ring until she's just about to hang up before he answers.

"Hello?" he says, sounding exhausted.

"Blaine?" she chokes out. "Blaine, what happened? My mom said you told your parents about—" she pauses. "About the thing you told me."

"I did," he confirms tiredly.

"What happened? Are you at home? Are you okay?"

"I'm not at home."

"Where are you?"

Another pause.

"I'm in Columbus. Cooper's letting me stay with him."

"Why?" she asks with a growing sense of dread.

"Because my dad told me to get out so I left and went to Columbus," he says dully, almost cruelly in the lack of emotion in his voice.

"You should've… You could have called—"

Then she stops short. He couldn't have called her. Her parents wouldn't let him stay with them, not after his parents kicked him out. She wouldn't have been able to do anything.

"Don't worry about it."

She wants to yell at him that she has to worry about it, that he's her very best and oldest friend and the most important person in her life. That he needs to come home and not let go of their friendship because of this.

But she doesn't. She can't.

"So," he says wryly. "Think about it yet?"

"This is just… This is really hard for me, okay?"

He lets out a sharp bark of laughter.

"This is really hard for you." He repeats. She winces because she's never, ever heard Blaine talk like this, so cold and angry and distant. "My parents won't let me come home and practically everyone I know is refusing to talk to me and my best friend won't either, and this is really hard for you?"

"I am talking to you," she says defensively, because that's pretty much the only thing she can defend.

"Well, you got what you called for. I'm fine. So why are you still talking to me?"

"Because you're my—" She can't finish the sentence and can practically hear his heart breaking even more as she stops talking. "Blaine, why did you have to tell them? Why did you have to tell everybody?" Why did you have to tell me? Why did you have to go and ruin everything?

They both hear the unspoken questions.

"Because I loved you guys and I figured you loved me too and at least one of you would be okay with it," he says bitterly. "Was I supposed to keep it a secret?"

"I don't know. You could have…" You could have not been gay in the first place. That way none of this would have happened. She knows it's not fair, she knows that it's not a choice and Blaine didn't decide for this to happen, but it's the first thing that pops into her head.

"What was I supposed to do?" he presses, and she snaps.

"Why can't you just be what they want for once?" she says angrily. "Why can't you just for once try just a little bit to be what you're supposed to?"

There's a long silence.

"What am I supposed to be?" he asks quietly, his voice carefully controlled.

"I don't know. Not… Look, I know what I'm supposed to be and it's not that hard to go along with it, okay? Why is that so hard for you?"

"Maybe I'm brave enough to listen to myself and not them."

His voice is even more controlled as he says this, but it hits her like a knife in her gut, and she responds before she can stop herself.

"So you're brave. That's great. Which one of us is at home with their parents right now?"

He's silent, and her words hit her and she knows that what she just said, what they both know she's thinking, this entire conversation, is unforgivable.

"Then you should probably go. I don't think they'll like you talking to me." The statement is so hostile and angry but also resigned because it's probably the truth.

"Blaine, I…"

She can't finish the sentence. She has no idea what she was planning to say anyway.

"It's okay. Really. I get it. I won't be mad, just go."

"Blaine, can't you just—"

"I hope you don't dye your hair. I like it for what it is."

And she gets the horrible double meaning, that it's both meant to hurt her, leave her with some sort of lesson, and to tell her without actually saying it that he's not going to be giving her hair advice again anytime soon.

"Bye, Lu," he says sadly. And she knows that he's going to hang up anyway so she has no choice but to respond the way she does.

"Bye," she whispers, then lets the phone fall out of her hand at the click and the dial tone informing her that he has hung up.

Lucy goes downstairs at lunchtime and as they eat the chicken salad that her mother made, she studies her parents. They're determinedly not mentioning Blaine at all anymore, and she doesn't want to talk about him either so she lets them. She lets her mother talk instead about the appointment she made for Lucy at her hairdresser's, nods and smiles gratefully and tries not to think about Blaine's parting words to her.

She looks at their faces, at the smiles they give her when she politely asks them to pass her the lemonade; at the smiles they give each other when her father compliments the food.

And she wonders what they would do, if she did something like this. If she turned out to be a lesbian and actually had the guts to tell them. If she was straight but had sex with a boy who wasn't her Nice Christian Husband, if she got pregnant, if she decided to not be who she was supposed to.

It's a horrible feeling, realizing that she's not entirely sure that they wouldn't do to her exactly what Blaine's parents did to him.

A week later, Lucy hears through further eavesdropping that Blaine's parents are letting him live with them again. She doesn't go over to visit him. She's too afraid.

Two days after that, Lucy's father tells her that he's been promoted and immediately transferred to a different city. It's not too far from where they live now—Lima is just a couple hours away fro Westerville.

He tells her that since he got a big raise and he wants to reward her for her hard work and all the weight she's lost, she can have a present, pick out almost anything she wants.

She looks down, twirls her new blond hair between her fingers as she considers. Then she asks her father if she can get a nose job. He gives her a big smile and says, "Of course, Lu."

Lucy wants to snap at him not to call her that, because that's Blaine's name for her and nobody else can use it. But she figures it's best not to look a gift horse in the mouth and just smiles back.

They leave for Lima another week later, an appointment in place for Lucy to see a cosmetic surgeon there a few days after they arrive.

Lucy can't bring herself to say goodbye to Blaine. She can't face him and she doesn't want him to see her hair. She figures that if he's never going to see her again and probably hates her anyway, the least she can do is keep him from knowing that she dyed her hair anyway.

As they drive away, her father uses the name again.

"You okay, Lu?"

She winces slightly and realizes that she doubts she can stand being called that name even one more time. That she doesn't really want to hear the name "Lucy" anymore at all. That she isn't Lucy anymore, because Lucy was fat and ugly and she's not anymore.

Lucy also had a best friend, a voice in the back of her mind whispers. And you don't anymore.

She ignores it, and, in a sudden flash of inspiration, tells her family that she doesn't want them to call her Lucy. She wants them to call her Quinn from now on.

Her parents seem to have no problem with it. It doesn't even take the time to get to Lima for her father to come up with her new nickname.

"What do you want to eat, Quinnie?" he asks affectionately as they sit down in the restaurant where they've stopped for lunch.

"I hear they have great salads here," her mother hints.

"That sounds great," Quinn says, smiling back at her father.

Quinn hates Kurt Hummel.

She feels bad about it, because he didn't even do anything to her. And she doesn't even hate him for the same reason that the rest of the school does—that he's a loser, that he dresses weird, that he's in Glee club and sounds like a girl when he talks. She doesn't even hate him for being gay, which everyone figures he is even if he isn't out yet.

She hates him because every time she sees him in the hallway, walking with his head held high, her mind flashes back to the only other person she's ever met who was that determined to be who he was, no matter what anybody else said.

And she hates Kurt Hummel for making her think of him, because she's been fighting to forget him ever since she came to Lima.

So she has no problem agreeing to take down the Glee club. Maybe if she can get Kurt to stop being so damn proud about who he is, she can stop feeling guilty every time she sees him.

But when she and Santana plot to break the club apart by making Mercedes Jones think Kurt likes her and set her up for inevitable rejection, Quinn kind of hopes that it won't work. She kind of hopes that he'll go along with it, leap at the chance to have a girlfriend to hide behind, pretend to be straight, maybe get some new clothes and start singing boy songs to keep it convincing. Maybe for once sink to her level and make her feel just a little bit better about herself.

Of course, he doesn't. Instead, he comes out to Mercedes when he thinks nobody's listening but Quinn's just around the corner and starts being incredibly obvious about the crush he has on Quinn's boyfriend.

Just once, Quinn lets go and does something that she's certainly not supposed to do, something completely taboo. Just once.

And she gets pregnant.

If that doesn't solidify her belief that people should just stick to the status quo, nothing does.

So she does her best to keep as close to the status quo as possible: She tells Finn that the baby is his. At least getting pregnant by not having sex with Finn Hudson is better than getting pregnant by having sex with Noah Puckerman.

When Quinn's father kicks her out of the house, she can't even say that she's surprised.

And as she stares out the window of Finn's car as they drive away, all she can think about is that Finn is taking her in because he has to. It's the obvious thing to do.

But her mind keeps wandering back to the person that she hasn't spoken to in two years, the person that got kicked out of his own house, the person that she did nothing to help.

And she knows for an absolute fact that if she were to call Blaine right now, he would take her in without a second thought. He probably wouldn't be very glad to hear from her, but he would find a way to get her to Westerville and fight tooth and nail with his parents until they agreed to let her stay with him. There is not a doubt in her mind that he would do it. Because that's just the kind of person Blaine is.

And she's ashamed of that way more than she's ashamed of getting drunk, cheating on Finn, or lying about who the father of the baby is.

Quinn doesn't hate Kurt Hummel anymore. But when he shows up to Glee club dressed exactly like his father and sings a boy's song for once and even starts dating Brittany, she can't help her feeling of triumph.

Because even Kurt Hummel, mayor of Gaytown and king of Screw-You-I-Don't-Care-What-You-Think-Land, has to cave eventually, has to get over himself and stop making everyone notice how special he is and just try to blend in.

She does kind of miss his outfits, though.

It only lasts a week anyway. Soon enough, scarf wearing, boy liking, and Broadway singing Kurt is back.

Whatever. He did cave for a while. Even Kurt Hummel isn't always perfect.

Another year goes by.

Quinn and Kurt are kind of friends. She's managed to stop seeing Blaine every time she looks at him. She's even managed to push Blaine almost entirely from her mind.

She's even happy for Kurt, because he met someone. A guy.

And she doesn't think Kurt's going to Hell for it, and she's determined to let him know that. So she asks Kurt if she can meet him, even though so far he's refused details to anyone but Mercedes.

He finally agrees and brings her along to the Lima bean one day when he's going to meet the guy for coffee.

On the way, he warns her.

"You can't tell Rachel about this, okay? Who he is. She'll freak and think he's a spy and he's just going to be another Jesse, but he's not."

"Okay," she agrees. "Because he goes to Dalton?"

Kurt bites his lip. "A little closer to Jesse than that," he says carefully.

She shakes her head at him.

"If you're dating somebody who's actually in the Warblers, she's going to kill you."

"I'm not dating him," Kurt denies, blushing slightly as they pull into the parking lot. "And don't say that around him. It'll freak him out."

Quinn rolls her eyes but promises to keep quiet.

The Lima Bean is ridiculously crowded.

"Is he here?" Quinn asks, scanning the shop for a boy with dark hair, which is all Kurt would tell them about the guy.

"He'll be easy to spot," Kurt says, looking around with her. "Because he wears his uniform everywhere… Oh, there he is."

Quinn turns to look at the boy that Kurt is waving at and freezes.

Because this cannot be happening. This. Can. Not. Be. Happening. To. Her.

But it is. She doesn't recognize the uniform, or the hair, but she recognizes the eyes, which are locked on hers, and the face wearing the same shocked expression as hers.

"Come on," Kurt says, pulling her over towards the table where he's sitting. She tries to protest, but it's no use, and a second later he's making her sit down next to him at the table.

Everything's coming back to her, all the memories she's struggled to repress.

"Hi," Kurt says happily. "Quinn, this is Blaine."

Quinn nods at Blaine numbly.

"And this is Quinn," Kurt continues, and Blaine nods back. "I'm going to go get some coffee for us, okay? You two talk."

Then he leaves, and Quinn is sitting alone with Blaine Anderson for the first time in three years.

"Hi," he says awkwardly. "You look different."

Her hand comes up to touch her nose self-consciously.

"So do you," she replies.

"It's been a really long time, Lu—"

"It's Quinn," she says sharply, automatically, cutting him off. Then she shakes her head and makes herself speak calmly. "Don't call me that. People call me Quinn now."

"I guess it suits you," he replies, half-smiling, then looks down and raises his eyebrows. "Cheerleader, huh?"

"What?" she replies before she realizes that she's wearing her uniform. "Oh. Yeah."

"I'll bet you're good at it," he says, smiling.

"Dalton, huh?" she shoots back.

He raises his eyebrows.

"Yeah. They don't treat you differently for being gay there."

She bites her lip and takes a shaky breath. He frowns.

"Sorry," he continues. "That was kind of mean."

"It's okay," she whispers, looking down at the table. "Look, Blaine, I never meant to… I didn't actually…" She shakes her head.

"It's okay," he repeats. "It wasn't your fault."

"Yeah, it was," she disagrees, and then remembers something. "Blaine, people here don't know about me. They don't know anything."

He sighs because he can still read her mind and he knows exactly what she's asking him.

"Don't worry," he says with a wry smile. "I won't tell anyone."

"Thank you," she replies, unable to look up at him.

Kurt comes back to the table with three cups and hands Quinn a caramel macchiato.

"So Blaine," he says, smiling. "Quinn's promised not to tell anyone who you are, so you're safe for now from Rachel." He turns to Quinn with a raised eyebrow. "Right?"

"Right," she replies quickly, still looking at Blaine. "Yeah. I promise I won't tell anyone."

After that day, Quinn makes it a point to avoid anything to do with Blaine Anderson. She declines further invitations from Kurt to accompany them for coffee or lunch or shopping, even when Kurt transfers so she doesn't see him as much. At the big football game and at Breadstix on Valentine's Day, she determinedly pretends he isn't there and refuses to catch his eye.

When Kurt brings him along to Rachel's train wreck of a party, Blaine spends the night making out with Rachel Berry.

Which she really wants to count as a triumph for her, but the look on Kurt's face while it's happening, and how he sounds when he talks about the fight he and Blaine had keeps her from doing so. Because she wants Blaine gone but she can't stand seeing that look on Kurt's face.

However, not caring how selfish it is, she hopes that he and Kurt never actually get together because if they don't, maybe they can bring Kurt back and he and Blaine will lose touch and he'll once again disappear from her life, and she can be safe again.

Of course, they do get together right before Regionals, because she's just that lucky.

But the New Directions get Kurt back, which is a small comfort. She did miss him, especially since she was definitely not going to visit him at Dalton, where Blaine actually lives.

Blaine comes to their school with his entourage and serenades Kurt in the courtyard, which is stupid and over-the-top and do the kids at Dalton even have classes at all?

But Kurt looks so happy that Quinn can't help but smile.

Her smile disappears when Kurt tells Blaine that they're never saying goodbye.

That very same week, they do an entire lesson on accepting yourself for who you are.

Kurt's shirt tells the world that he likes boys. Quinn thinks that if Kurt had worn that shirt a year ago, she would have gotten Puck to slushie him just so he would take the stupid thing off and stop being so damn proud of himself. Now, she's not going to have him slushied, but looking at it still makes her feel horrible.

Because she knows what she should put on her t-shirt, but she can't. Nobody can know.

They all find out anyway because of Lauren Zizes. Lauren freaking Zizes and her stupid posters.

Quinn manages to rip three posters down on her way to the parking lot, where she launches herself into her car and bursts into tears.

It's all crumbling down. Everybody is going to know what a fraud she is. It's all going to come out.

She looks down and realizes that she's still holding one of the posters, crumpled up in one of her fists. Sobbing, she viciously rips it in half, then into quarters, desperate to make the haunting image of her, fat and ugly, disappear.

Then she jumps violently as her car door opens, then looks up to see none other than Blaine Anderson climbing into the passenger seat.

"What are you doing here?" she asks harshly.

"I'm picking Kurt up to go get coffee, but I think he's running late," he says, shrugging.

"What are you doing in my car?" she clarifies.

He raises his eyebrows. "You looked like you needed help."

"I don't want your help," she snaps. "Okay? You have no right to just come marching back into my life and trying to act like it didn't happen."

She knows that she's being mean, but she doesn't care because she just wants him gone. She wants him to leave and go back to just being a distant memory from her past.

"Because I'm not supposed to be here, right?" he asks, smiling that maddeningly calm smile at her.

"No! You're supposed to want nothing to do with me and stay out of my life!" she cries.

"I thought we established that I don't do what I'm supposed to," he replies, not even blinking at her outburst. "You should know that by now, Lu."

"Don't call me that," she snaps.

"What am I supposed to call you, then?" he asks.

"Don't call me anything. Go away."

He's silent for a minute.

"You know, I think one of the biggest reasons my mom was upset about me is that she loved you so much. I'm pretty sure she was planning on us ending up married and her finally getting a daughter," he muses quietly.

"Well, that's not happening," Quinn replies harshly, wondering why he's even bringing this up. "What does it even matter?"

"Do you ever wonder," he says slowly. "If that's what would have happened if I was straight? If everything was like it was supposed to be?"

She can't help but consider this for a minute.

"I still would have moved here. My dad would've been transferred anyway. So it's a moot point," she says, closing her eyes and trying not to imagine it.

"Kurt lives just as far away from me as you do," Blaine points out. "And we make it work. So hypothetically—"

"Well, I'm not Kurt," she interrupts irritably.

He stares at her for a full minute until her eyes finally meet his.

"No," he says, nodding. "You're not."

And somehow, that's the meanest thing he's ever said to her.

Quinn is really angry now. She hates Blaine for getting into her car and talking to her for seemingly the express purpose of punishing her for things that she did years ago. She wonders if he's rehearsed this entire conversation, figured out exactly what to say to hurt her most and just waited for a chance to say it.

She wants to yell at him to get the hell out of her car, but then she realizes that if he can punish her, she can punish him right back.

"I thought you were supposed to be above bullying," she says nastily. "Gay Yoda and all that. At least that's what Kurt thinks."

"I'm not bullying you. I'm telling you the truth."

"No, you're not. You're shoving your pathetic holier-than-thou attitude down my throat!"

"Well you'd know all about pathetic holier-than-thou attitudes, wouldn't you, Quinn?"

It's the first time he's actually done what she asked and called her Quinn. And it stings.

"Maybe you should go pray for me to go away. Hell, pray for me to not be gay because apparently if I were straight everything would be perfect," he continues.

"You're one to talk. As if you didn't spend a whole year begging to stop being gay and then being a whiny little kid about it when it didn't work."

He freezes and stares at her, quiet fury in his eyes.

"Did you think that I didn't notice?" she continues as he remains silent.

He takes a deep breath but doesn't move or look away.

"Does Kurt know about that part, Blaine? That you weren't always so proud about it? That you tried for so long to just make it go away?"

"You…" he says slowly. "You know nothing about that. Nothing. You don't know anything about what happened because you couldn't be bothered to ask, you were too busy asking for straight teeth and better hair and all that stuff because that was the only problem with your perfect little life that you could come up with."

"My life wasn't perfect," she snaps.

"Oh, right. It's so hard having a gay best friend for all of ten minutes. I forgot about how much that sucked for you."

"I hate you."

She says it with as much venom as she can muster.

"Yeah? Good," he replies without even flinching. "I'd rather be screwed over by someone who hates me than my best friend."

Then he opens his car door and climbs out, slamming the door shut behind him. The parking lot is pretty much empty, so she gets out on her side and stalks around the car to follow him.

"I thought you wanted me to go away," he says sardonically, turning to face her from a few parking spots away.

She ignores him, grappling in the pocket of the purse she brought out with her.

"Looking for your makeup bag? Still not pretty enough?"

"Shut up," she says, snapping open the little velvet box that she's procured, the box that until a couple weeks ago had been hidden in the back of her top desk drawer. Then she yanks an object out of the box and hurls it at him.

Time slows to a crawl as it sails above their heads, glittering in the sunlight as Blaine automatically extends a hand. She was aiming for his head, but he manages to catch it.

"Now take that and get the hell out of my life already!" she shouts, near tears.

He's not looking at her. He's staring down at the chain, still broken right where the clasp starts, twining between his fingers, and the little silver cross resting on his palm.

"I don't want this," he says with quiet, simmering anger.

"Well, I didn't want you to come here," she replies, no longer shouting. "But here you are."

The hand holding his necklace clenches into a fist, so tight that the points of the cross have to be hurting his hand, but he doesn't respond.

Finally, he speaks.

"After you left, I tried really, really wanted to hate you," he confesses, not relaxing his grip on the necklace. "But I couldn't. I couldn't make myself be mad at you until I actually saw you again." She stares at him, breath evening out as he speaks, and his eyes meet hers. "Then it was easy."

He turns and walks away, and she falls back against her car door, finally starting to cry.

After so many failed attempts that Mr. Shue makes her start bringing in her own white t-shirts, Quinn just gives up and makes it.

Lucy Caboosey.

It's a tiny comfort that not everybody knows what it means.

She feels wrong, though, as she dances, even though she knows that her shirt fits the assignment the way it's supposed to.

This thought makes her laugh because hey, there's that word again, the one that Blaine hates and she apparently loves.

But the shirt doesn't say what she needs it to.

She does the number anyway, and they totally kill it. Kurt is amazing, as is his t-shirt.

Afterwards, she notices Santana and Karofsky, sitting in the audience and watching them.

And behind them, way in the back, is Blaine.

Quinn doesn't watch as Kurt bounds up to him to hug him, or stay to listen to Rachel's accusations of spying and Kurt's response that they had already beaten the Warblers at Regionals so why would Blaine want to spy on them anyway?

No, Quinn just heads back to the choir room because she really wants to get her shirt covered up.

She finds her bag and knows that along with several failed shirts, her jacket is in it somewhere. Digging into the bag, she pulls out her jacket—and the shirts come out with it, falling to the ground.

Sighing, she kneels to the ground to pick them up, trying not to read them.

Then she turns to face the open door when somebody knocks on the doorway.

"Hey," Blaine says from the doorway. Quinn sighs and stops picking up the shirts, but remains on the floor.

"Are you following me now?" she asks with honest curiosity and a surprising lack of malice.

He cracks a smile and walks over to sit down in a chair beside her on the risers.

"Just this once," he promises, and she looks at him expectantly because he's obviously got something to say. "I'm sorry."

"What?" she asks, moving to sit in the chair next to him.

"I'm sorry," he repeats. "That I said all that stuff. About you."

She's silent.

"If you want to dye your hair and be Prom Queen… That's not really any of my business anymore. I shouldn't judge you for that."

She shakes her head.

"I guess not," she agrees quietly.

"Besides, you're still beautiful," he adds with a small smile.

"I always look beautiful?" she replies, smiling hesitantly too.

"Yeah," he confirms. "Still true."

She's quiet for a minute before replying.

"I'm sorry too. For screaming at you and throwing things at you and… everything. I'm sorry for everything."

"Well, it didn't hit me," Blaine points out optimistically, and she laughs and before she knows it she's hugging him and he's hugging her back for the first time in three years.

The first thing she registers is that he's a lot bigger, but he's just as warm and he hugs her just as tightly and it still feels like she's in the safest place in the world.

"What are these?" he asks when he lets go, pointing to the shirts on the ground.

"I didn't know what to put. For the project. Well, I did, but Lucy Caboosey is different," she's rambling now but it's kind of hard to explain. "I know we're supposed to do things that we were bullied for, but I wanted to put something that I'm really ashamed of, even if it wasn't really something I was born with. But I couldn't really…. Get it right. Find the right word."

He picks one up and examines it, at the word Selfish pressed on in big black letters.

"Oh," he says, looking at it more closely, then reaching down for another one.

Traitor.

Two-Faced.

Coward.

Bitch.

He raises his eyebrows at the last one, and she laughs.

"I didn't make that one. It was Santana's but she gave it to me."

"That's kind of insulting."

"That's Santana."

They fall into comfortable silence again as he hands her the shirts and she stuffs them back into her bag.

"You shouldn't be so hard on yourself. A lot of stuff happened that you didn't even have anything to do with at all."

"I should've been there. I should have been there for you and I wasn't."

Blaine shrugs.

"Maybe, but that's not you. That's just something you did."

Quinn lets out a small laugh but shakes her head.

"And you were really great. In the song," Blaine continues.

"I didn't do that much. Kurt's the one with the big solo."

"Yeah," Blaine replies, a thoughtful, affectionate smile on his face. "He is pretty amazing, isn't he?"

"Yeah," Quinn agrees, standing up.

"He talks about you a lot, you know," Blaine muses. "Well, he used to talk about you before, but he never told me who you were. He just said that he had a friend that was really religious but never hated him for being gay or anything."

Quinn pauses.

"Yeah, he's pretty amazing," she repeats. "But you're already engaged, remember?"

He looks at her in confusion and she digs in her bag for a second before pulling out the box that held his necklace and opening it.

He laughs when he sees the little plastic ring inside it.

"I can't believe you kept that," he says, taking it out carefully and trying to get it onto his pinky finger. Even with the break in it, the ring won't go on. "That was forever ago."

"I did promise," Quinn replies.

"Right," he agrees, placing the ring back into the box just as Kurt comes through the door.

"Hey," Kurt says, smiling at Blaine. "I was afraid you got lost."

"Nope," Blaine replies cheerfully, reaching out and taking Kurt's hand when he gets close enough. "The choir room isn't that hard to find."

"Hey, Quinn," Kurt says. "Brittany, Mercedes, Blaine, possibly Tina, and I are going to Breadstix. Want to come?"

Quinn's face breaks out into a smile because in the process of avoiding Blaine, she's missed a lot of girl-time as well as Kurt-time.

"Yeah, that'd be great," she replies, and they walk off together.

Quinn looks at where Blaine's hand is holding Kurt's and that timed test from so long ago, where nothing equaled what it was supposed to and it didn't add up, is suddenly clear to her now, because it's not that there's no answer, it's that it's a stupid question. Like when a teacher makes a typing mistake that makes a test impossible.

So she writes her own question, in which Blaine equals good and Kurt equals good and together they equal love which equals good.

And it all adds up.

I couldn't get a scene in where Kurt finds out the whole story, but let it be known that they do tell him sometime after the story ends, so no getting mad at Blaine for that.

If you happened to spot the minor 80's movie reference... Kudos to you.

Anyway, reviews are great but no matter what I hope you enjoyed it. :-)