One of the first things Rachel learned at NYADA was that Quinn had to be practically dragged out of bed in the morning. She'd woken up and gone through her entire morning routine, and yet Quinn was still just a lump under her covers. With a sigh, Rachel had marched over, ripped the covers off, and tugged on Quinn's arm until she tumbled to the floor.
Since then, they'd fallen into a routine, but only after Rachel had threatened her roommate with a bucket of ice water. Rachel would get up first, and if Quinn didn't get up when her own alarm went off a half-hour later, Rachel had express permission to literally drag her from her bed.
It was odd (and somewhat violent), but it worked.
Then Kurt arrived, they all rented an apartment, and they had to come up with an entirely new morning schedule because there was one bathroom and Quinn had a tendency to take showers so long that Rachel actually thought she'd fallen asleep in there the first day and Kurt's morning routine was just as lengthy as Rachel's – not to mention Quinn started having a claustrophobic panic attack if she was in the closet-sized bathroom with anyone else, which hadn't been a fun thing to find out.
The problem was only resolved when Rachel posted a schedule on the wall outside the bathroom and explained that if they followed it, everyone should be happy. Kurt had clapped his hands together and thanked whatever deities he could think of, and Quinn had swept Rachel up in a bear hug, given her an exaggerated kiss on the forehead, then swept off to raid the fridge.
With the bathroom debacle settled, the three of them turned out to be surprisingly amicable cohabitants – aside from the occasional spats between them that were entirely unavoidable with three strong-willed personalities inhabiting the same small living area.
When Kurt came bursting through the front door screeching something about getting a job at Vogue, the combined voices of he and Rachel caused Quinn to have to congratulate him loudly with her fingers stuffed in her ears in an attempt to save her eardrums, but she had been grinning when she'd yelled at them to lower the volume.
Quinn was majoring in acting, while Rachel was going for a triple threat, so it wasn't unusual for her to be the last one to go to sleep and the first one up the next morning. A few weeks after moving into their apartment, Quinn took to keeping Rachel company late at night when Kurt had already crashed and soothing her when her stress levels began to fly off the charts.
For Kurt, it wasn't unusual to walk into the living room the next morning to find papers still strewn about, laptop still open, and Rachel clinging to Quinn, who was leaning over the end of the couch with Rachel pressed tight against her side – having obviously fallen asleep first and become a large, fluffy pillow to Rachel.
As well, Rachel was slowly attempting to convert the other two to vegans, but while Quinn didn't seem the slightest bit bothered, Kurt had screeched like a large bird of prey the first time he discovered Rachel had switched her vegan stuff with his. Since then, he'd taken to meticulously checking the labels on everything he ate.
A few weeks later, Rachel paused outside the small kitchen when she heard Kurt ask, "How can you eat that stuff?" She could tell from the tone of his voice that his face was contorted and his nose was wrinkled in disgust, and Rachel clapped her hands over her mouth to stifle the giggle that threatened to erupt.
Quinn made a muffled sound that told Rachel her mouth was full. "It's easier than arguing with her," she said clearly after a few seconds, and Rachel's heart sank to her feet. "Anyway," Quinn added nonchalantly, "it's not really that bad once you get used to it. But I won't be dropping milk any time soon, so she and the cows will just have to get over that."
Heart fluttering somewhere back in the region it was supposed to be, Rachel stepped around the corner. Quinn beamed at her around a mouthful of egg substitute and mumbled a passable good morning, and Kurt just looked sickened, shoulders slumped as he shook his head at the ground.
/
Plans were made the first half of Thanksgiving break for Brittany, Santana, and Blaine to visit them in New York. All six of them talked things over on Skype – three of them crammed into one tiny screen until Quinn gave up and sat on the other side of the room with her own computer – and worked out sleeping arrangements.
Blaine would be staying with Kurt (obviously), and Quinn agreed to give Brittany and Santana her room if they promised not to have sex in her bed. She'd raised an eyebrow when Santana had promised through her snickers, which prompted her to raise her hand and swear they wouldn't, though Quinn hadn't seemed satisfied until Brittany promised.
That, however, left Quinn out of a bed, and after the three occupants of the apartment eyed the couch warily, Rachel had volunteered her room instead. They'd been sleeping on the couch together for the better part of a month, so moving to a bed didn't seem like a big deal.
At least until Santana started giggling maniacally on her screen and only stopped when Kurt threatened to block her from the chat and force her to sleep on the couch. That had shut her up rather quickly.
/
On the Friday the others were due to arrive, Quinn bounced around the entire day like a child on a sugar high, and Rachel belatedly realized just how much Quinn had missed her best friends. The three of them had only been able to talk all together on Skype a few times, what with different schedules and time zones, but whenever they had, Quinn was always in a good mood on those days.
To no one's surprise, Quinn offered to go meet everyone, and Rachel insisted Kurt go with her, citing the reason that Blaine would likely feel like a third – fourth? – wheel, although she had a feeling Kurt knew she was really pushing him to go because they had missed each other as much as the Unholy Trinity had. As such, he hadn't put up too much of a fight, and Rachel had been left in charge of dinner.
Dinner was an undisputed topic in the apartment. Rachel had attempted to cook once, and that had ended with a fire extinguisher and a ban to keep her away from anything that involved the stove, even boiling water. Kurt, as well, had trouble cooking, although his hadn't ended as disastrously as Rachel's attempts had. Thus Quinn was queen of the kitchen – Rachel made a mental note to thank Judy when she saw her next – unless she decreed otherwise, because Rachel and Kurt had a tendency to insert themselves as taste-testers that she'd eventually just learned to live with.
So when the others arrived, there was a stack of pizzas sitting in the kitchen that Santana instantly began salivating over – she'd eaten New York pizza before on the Glee Club trip to New York and had proceeded to swear off any other types of pizza for the rest of her life.
By the time midnight rolled around and Rachel was genuinely beginning to fear a noise complaint – why had she decided having all these people in one apartment was a good idea, and oh god the bathroom was going to be a disaster in the morning – most of them were dead on their feet, and they all went obediently when Rachel called for bedtime.
Santana was snoring on Quinn's bed not ten minutes later, head propped up in her hand in what had been an unsuccessful attempt to keep herself awake. They all spent a few minutes snickering at her before Brittany waved them off and moved to maneuver her girlfriend the correct way in the bed.
In all the excitement, Rachel had all but forgotten that Quinn would be sharing a bed with her, and thus almost jumped out of her skin when she felt the other side of the bed dip with weight as she was just dozing off.
"Sorry," Quinn mumbled as Rachel blinked uselessly in the dark, "I didn't mean to startle you."
Rachel mentally shook herself and settled back into bed, glad the darkness was hiding her embarrassed blush. "It's fine." Despite the fact that she couldn't see her friend, she knew without a doubt the expression on her face. "And stop grinning like that before I smack you with a pillow."
She heard a chuckle, and then a creak of bedsprings before an arm was flung over her waist and Quinn snuggled up to her. "Payback for you using me like a pillow for the last month," Quinn muttered into her shoulder, wriggling a bit closer. "Night."
"Goodnight," Rachel whispered in reply, and then everything was quiet and Rachel realized just how nice it was with Quinn cuddled up behind her. It was definitely a whole lot nicer than Finn or when she'd fallen asleep on Noah's shoulder.
Quinn tightened her grip on her waist, and Rachel paused, confused, before she realized from the sound of her even breathing that she had already fallen asleep. Yet another thing she'd learned by rooming with Quinn: she could fall asleep in the blink of an eye.
With Quinn's breath fluttering against the back of her neck, Rachel wrapped Quinn's hand in hers and felt that sleep would come easy surrounded by Quinn's warmth.
/
For the five days Santana, Brittany, and Blaine stayed with them, Rachel slept better with Quinn in her bed than she suspected she ever had in her entire life. When the others departed on Saturday, Rachel felt guilty for morning the loss of her bed companion than the others – because there was only so much time she could spend with Santana before she began having to resist murderous urges.
That night, after Rachel and Kurt had fought over what to have for dinner while Quinn calmly read a book on the couch, Rachel tossed and turned in her bed for over an hour, unable to get comfortable. Her bed felt cold without Quinn's warmth, and try as she might to fall asleep, her body refused to cooperate.
Finally, after almost two hours of struggling, Rachel gave up and tiptoed out of her bedroom and down to where Quinn's door was cracked just slightly. Quietly, Rachel pushed the door open farther and squinted into the gloom so she could just make out Quinn curled up on her side, tightly clutching a stuffed lamb to her chest. She looked adorable, and Rachel quickly wiped the dopey smile off of her face.
After glancing over her shoulder to make sure Kurt wasn't getting up for a late night snack – hey, he'd done it before and almost given her a heart attack on the way back from the bathroom – she slipped inside and pushed the door to behind her.
Quinn stirred slightly at the movement, and Rachel held her breath, but all Quinn did was roll over and tuck the lamb under her chin.
After waiting a bit without any more of a reaction, Rachel moved again, this time toward the bed. Carefully, she picked the sheets up and slid under them until she was comfortably resting beside Quinn. Speaking of Quinn, she seemed to be magnetically attracted to body heat, because she immediately gravitated to Rachel and snuggled up to her side.
Instantly, Rachel felt at ease again, and she smiled as Quinn unconsciously clutched her tighter, her lamb abandoned somewhere on the other side of the bed in favor of Rachel, not that Rachel minded in the slightest.
/
When Rachel woke the next morning, Quinn was holding her from behind, legs tangled together and her face buried in the crook of Rachel's neck.
Rachel blinked blearily at the sunlight that was streaming into the room; she was used to her room being practically pitch black in the morning.
"Morning." Rachel started at Quinn's low, raspy morning voice, heart leaping into her throat. "You know your room's across the hall, right?" she asked, stifling a yawn.
With her heart thundering loudly, Rachel shifted into Quinn's limp hold so they were facing each other, and she felt heat begin to creep up the back of her neck at the sight of the sly grin on Quinn's face.
"I'll make pancakes," Quinn chirped. Then she pitched forward, kissed her on the forehead, rolled out of bed, and all but skipped out of the bedroom, leaving an embarrassed and suddenly shy Rachel still in bed.
Of all the days to wake up early, Rachel lamented, before smacking herself in the face with Quinn's pillow.
/
That night, Rachel fell asleep on the couch with her computer on her lap, but she woke up the next morning alone in Quinn's bed, the lamb sat on Quinn's pillow smiling at her with its sewn-on mouth. She stared at it for a minute, drowsily wondering how she'd gotten here, before she came to the conclusion that Quinn must have carried her in here.
It was the same thing the next day, except Quinn was there, glasses sitting on her nose and her laptop open as she typed away at an English paper. She smiled at Rachel when she saw she was awake before returning her attention to her computer screen; Rachel stared blankly at her for five minutes before she realized what she was doing and crawled out of bed, pointedly ignoring Quinn's amused chuckles as she blushed a deep crimson.
From them on, she woke up either to find Quinn in bed with her or obvious traces that she had spent the night there – in either bed depending on where she'd fallen asleep the night before – and eventually, she just stopped questioning it and went with it and Kurt stopped raising an eyebrow whenever they emerged from the same bedroom late on weekend mornings.
/
The next time Rachel questioned things, she was laying in her childhood bed in Lima during Christmas break, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling and missing Quinn.
Okay, friends didn't do this, she decided as she hugged Quinn's stuffed lamb to her chest, face tucked in its fuzzy wool – yeah, she'd packed it in her bag before they left New York, and she had a sneaking feeling Quinn knew if they way she'd been grinning when they'd left was any indication.
This was reaching new levels of ridiculous. Something was going to have to give before she went crazy and started moving all her things into Quinn's room.
Which totally hadn't been gradually happening since Thanksgiving, nope, definitely not.
/
"What are we doing?" Rachel asked the night they returned to New York. Kurt had fallen asleep in his favorite armchair almost immediately after sitting down after dinner, which left Quinn and Rachel awake on the couch while the TV played quietly, though neither of them was really watching it.
"Um, sitting on the couch?" Quinn looked down at her, frowning.
Rachel sighed and shifted so her legs were crossed and she was facing Quinn. "You know what I'm talking about," she said, with a bit more bite than she meant.
"We're friends sleeping in the same bed," Quinn replied calmly. "Why? What is it to you?"
"I don't know," Rachel huffed irritably. "That's why I asked."
Despite how frustrated Rachel was feeling, Quinn didn't seem the slightest bit bothered. She tapped her fingers against the back of the couch where her arm was stretched, and shrugged when Rachel peered expectantly at her, waiting on a reply.
Finally, Rachel gave up and threw her hands in the air. "People in relationships do this; people in legitimate, long-standing relationships sleep in the same bed every night." Quinn's expression was unreadable, which only served to further irritate Rachel. "And I missed you over the break when you weren't there, and you obviously like sleeping together with me or you wouldn't carry me to bed every time I fall asleep in here."
Her voice had been steadily rising in volume, but she only realized it when Kurt let out a grunt and shifted unconsciously in his chair so he was facing away from them.
"I still don't see what you're freaking out over," Quinn said lowly as Rachel eyed Kurt warily. "Santana and Brittany slept together for years – okay, bad choice of wording and example. What I mean is, it's only a big deal if you make a big deal out of it. This doesn't have to mean anything."
Rachel stared at her and wondered how she could be this calm about this. Apparently, she must have been speaking her thoughts out loud, because Quinn answered her rhetorical question with more than a bit of underlying bitterness.
"I'm calm because I've been wishing we were close friends for a good while now, and you're a good step up from cuddling with a stuffed lamb." Rachel felt heat begin to creep up into her cheeks when she realized that Quinn would have definitely noticed her missing lamb when she threw her bags in her room upon arriving home. "And this is honestly a lot more than I ever expected."
It was like a dam broke in Rachel's mind. Suddenly she knew why Quinn had been so cavalier about their sleeping arrangement. Her jaw dropped open, and Quinn quirked an eyebrow up in question.
Rachel launched herself into Quinn's side and hugged her tightly; Quinn's arm dropped from the back of the couch and wrapped around her, though Quinn herself still looked confused.
"You want it mean something," Rachel muttered into Quinn's shoulder, who coughed uncomfortably and looked away, cheeks turning red. Rachel took that to mean she was right in her assumption and squeezed her tighter. "I missed you when we were in Lima," she whispered, burrowing into the crook of Quinn's neck, and she felt it warm as Quinn blushed.
/
Not much changed, except that Quinn took Rachel out for dinner – and sometimes a movie – a few times. Initially, Rachel was worried about Kurt's reaction, but he seemed to have either stopped trying to work out their odd friendship – relationship now – or figured it out and settled on ignoring it.
The sort of secret became a not-so-secret when Santana arrived on their doorstep one night with a few bags and a smirk on her face, before pushing past Kurt who had answered the door and asking where she was going to sleep from then on.
They eventually got the whole story out of her. College in Kentucky had just been another McKinley but without her friends and Glee Club, so she'd dropped out and decided to move to New York and work while she tried to figure out what she wanted to do with her life.
When they'd asked what Brittany and her parents thought of her new plan, Santana had shrugged and said that Brittany had been the one to suggest it and that her parents had been trying to get her to go to New York since the end of senior year.
So here she was, and they needed to work out sleeping arrangements again. Santana hadn't seemed too bothered that she'd likely be crashing on the couch, but the others knew that after an extended period of time sleeping on it, she wouldn't be nearly as complacent. Therefore, Quinn offered her room, and that had been the end of she and Rachel's clandestine relationship.
The responses they received were entirely expected. Kurt grumbled something about living in a damn lesbian colony and stalked off to his room, and Santana had grinned, clapped them both on the back, and told them it was about time.
When she had disappeared off to her new room, Quinn sighed and rubbed a hand over her face. "Well," she mumbled, "at least I don't have to worry about she and Brittany having sex on my bed anymore. Hopefully."
Rachel smiled and draped herself over Quinn's shoulders, wrapping her arms around her waist and pressing a kiss to her cheek. "I know you're happy that she's here," she said quietly as Quinn leaned her head back against her. "Don't even try to fool me."
She grinned widely when she heard Quinn laugh, but the moment was ruined when Santana's voice yelled, "Yo, Fabray! Come move your shit out of my room!" Quinn sighed and rolled her eyes, but Rachel could see that she was stifling a smile.
I really enjoyed this week and I'm sad it's over, but I just want to say thank you to everyone who reviewed, followed, or favorited my stories this week and even those that just read - because that's what I do, I'm willing to admit.
And to those asking for sequels, I don't have plans at the moment, but if I'm struck by inspiration, I would definitely be okay with continuing some of my works.