[these were requested on my tumblr, so i thought i'd post them on here in case someone missed them. they're in chronological order as follows:
1. the first time quinn kisses another girl at yale
2. quinn comes out to judy
3. rachel catches a glimpse of one of quinn's poems
4. quinn & rachel pick their first dance song for their wedding]

1. you could drown in those eyes, i said

.

so it's summer, so it's suicide, so we're helpless in sleep and struggling at the bottom of the pool.
—richard siken

.

She tastes like smoke. Not in the glamorous Audrey Hepburn 1960s sort of way, but like she'd be more than willing to burn you with the heat beneath it, summer pre-rain heady. You're in the alley behind the small art house theater, those dripping bricks, the forever loose asphalt, the cracks.

Later you will marvel at the simplicity of Jill's name, how it sounded gentle from your lips—timid bite. After that old noir, before thunderstorm breaking, you cannot fight any longer: You want to be fucked by softness, torn apart. Boys have fucked you all semester while you stared at Jill during seminar and tried to picture the backs of her teeth. She is beautiful in a grungy sort of way, all heavy boots and ripped jeans and flannels and half-shaved head. Maybe you want her to kiss you because she reminds you nothing of Rachel; maybe you want her to kiss you because she is completely at home in her sexuality: Yale LGBTQ pin on her backpack and all.

You want her to kiss you: Your lungs are all broken bloom, unable to expand enough to accommodate your new grown body. You've forgotten the exact feel of an IV pressed below your collarbone, pinpricks against your feet, all of the retribution there.

You tell Jill, So I said I'm straight but I'm not.

She nods.

You tell Jill, Kiss me.

She does, in the alley after the film before the thunderstorm. You don't know what you expect it to feel like but she has green-green eyes that scare you. Her lips and jaw are softer than any of the boys' you've ever felt. Your legs are a pit of wet heat; you are embarrassed that your knees go weak and you want to cry.

You do not cry. You tangle your hands in her hair and you kiss her until you cannot breathe, because your scars are beginning to heal and you have never hated yourself more. She seems more than willing to rip you to pieces; she shoves you against the skittering bricks and bites hard against your bottom lip, palms between your legs.

Your heart is a waved thing, these simple crashes after a storm—debris-gray wound. You cannot see the moon behind the clouds tonight, and you'd like a few more scars no one can see.

Jill tastes like failed CPR. You would like to die, you suppose, and this might be just the thing. If you were braver you'd have already done it yourself. Jill shoves her hand down your high-waisted shorts and you can't seem to care to stop her. You watch the gathering clouds and you don't make a single noise—it's all drowning, the lines on your skin.

I love making girls like you come, she tells you.

She kisses you again. The smoke is still there.

...

2. every speck of dust illuminated

.

the dawn was breaking the bones of your heart like twigs.
—richard siken

.

You squish the bee with the toe of your shoe enough so that it's almost dead. On the back porch of your big frozen house in summer, you're tired. It's almost time to go back to Yale, the old books and tall castles and the stifling sense that your brain is becoming more of this foreign thing that is connected much too closely to your body, jungle-green and startled.

You curl up in the porch swing and watch the bee squish-swirl around in circles. It's not that you're apathetic about coming out, it's just that at Yale and with Santana and Rachel it's been easy.

At the moment you're tired enough to trust Judy with being mildly unhappy but with having learned enough that she won't fuck with you like that again, when she let your father kick you out and all the years before—the belt lashes, the slaps.

Judy brings you a glass of lemonade and you thank her. It's nighttime, and it's the dumbest combination of all of the noises you'd expect—cicadas, crickets, sprinkler—so much so the poet in you hates the mundanity.

Judy sits next to you. She seems comfortable enough around you now—she's seen you naked, she's cared for you gently, washed your hair, changed bandages.

Mom, you say, can I tell you something?

Sure, she says, and turns to look at you.

You see so much of yourself in her face, tilt of cheekbones, dip jut of nose, small dimple in chin. You imagine all the times she agreed with your father about fags going to hell, about how it's so wrong—You are so wrong. You know this is why you constantly punish yourself; you know this is why you haven't told Santana what you've let Jill do to you. You're tired, but you want to preface with—Please don't hate me; Please don't be mad; I'm so sorry.

I'm gay, you say.

She pauses—one beat, two, crickets cicadas roll stop roll sprinkler, takes a sip of her lemonade. She says, Okay.

You worry your bottom lip between teeth hard enough to draw blood from your gums. You have so many words but they're lodged in the marrow of your pelvis, the dust of your wrists.

I'm not exactly immediately comfortable about the idea of you with another woman, she continues. But I hope you know what you mean to me, Quinn.

You don't, not exactly, because you cannot erase the absence of her hands.

Thanks, Mom, you say.

She nods.

You finish your lemonade in silence.

I'm going to go to bed, you tell her.

I love you very much, she says as you stand. She reaches for you, like she wants to squeeze your hand or pull you in for a hug. You shrug back against the hush night, shrink.

Yeah, you say, and squish the now-still, unblinking bee entirely before you go inside.

...

3. i want to tell you this story without having to say that i ran out into the street to prove something

.

and words, little words, words too small for any hope or promise, not really soothing but soothing nonetheless.
—richard siken

.

Quinn comes to visit you in September of her senior year, all bones and gentle fingers. The way she thumbs through her books has always drawn you towards her hands, dotted with a few light freckles and full of this soft fleshy pale skin. When you'd dated before you tried to memorize them, the wrinkles of her palms, the way her wrists connected harshly, the second knuckles on all of her fingers.

They're different hands now, different wrists, with red blotches of scars from the past year that you do not recognize: Two red lines in the thick stretch between her left thumb and forefinger, a purple divot where the top of her left hand connects to her wrist. You know about the scar on the underside of that fleeting thing, how it traces Quinn's vein all purple-red-blue, how she tries to wear braided bracelets and her watch to cover it—she'd taken them off to sleep, drifting off the night before, and you'd touched it with gentle fingers. You'd not known what to say, what to ask, and Quinn swallowed, looked at you with sad eyes, shrugged.

Does it still hurt? you breathed.

She said, Yes. She adds, Only sometimes.

It's evening now, and you'd spent the day wandering around MoMA and Fifth Avenue after brunch on the Upper West Side, and it's dark now and Quinn is working on homework on your dorm bed, fingers flying on keys. She has a pen stuck behind her ear, glasses pushed up into her hair, touches the book laid open every now and then beside her on the mattress. You're supposed to be studying for your music theory exam tomorrow, but she's this quiet captivating creature, gentle pads and violent speed of worries her bottom lip a few times, rubs her nose. You know with a press ache that you're in love with her, that you're in love with all of her, and it rocks you deeply.

You swallow and sigh, touch her arm lightly. She glances up, tugs down her glasses and pushes them up on her scrunched nose—this habit she's developed that is ridiculously cute, it makes you smile even now.

How's it going? you ask.

I'm pretty much done, she says, shrugs. I'll get an A, whatever.

Yale's made you even more full of yourself, you say, and she smiles into the opposite shoulder of her sweatshirt. It's moments like this that make you think that she's getting there, growing and healing into this person that can love well.

How's your studying? she asks.

Uh, you say, I probably won't get an A.

She laughs. Rachel.

I'll be fine, you assure her, then reach over and tickle her ribs just to hear her laugh again. She does, and she scurries off your bed.

I'm going to pee, she announces, pulling on a pair of boxers over her underwear. Don't have fun without me, she says and waves as she goes out of your room.

You roll your eyes and move to organize the scattered stack of papers Quinn spread all over your bed, and when they're in your hands, you realize they're her poems, because Quinn Fabray is typed in the top left hand corner, and you can almost feel the pops and clicks of each letter in her palms.

The one on top is called 'Pretty Villages, Pretty Flames,' and it has some of Quinn's scrawled notes on it, all looped f's and scratched s's.

You read quickly—it's beautiful—until you get to the line, 'You should want to ask how many stitches it took to take away her hands,' and then you suck in as much air as your lungs allow and quickly shove the papers into the library book about queer poetics or something Quinn had rambled about earlier, slap shut the book.

You don't know what to do—whether you should laugh or cry or just fuck being patient and kiss the hell out of Quinn. You don't know all of what happened with Jill, and you don't know all of what happened in the past year, but you know enough from Spencer and Santana to be able to grasp that Quinn's poems aren't stories.

You chew on a hangnail and take a few deep breaths, and Quinn sort of skips back into your room, fluttering blonde hair and a Yale hoodie and blue boxers with little pink bicycles on them.

Geez, Rach, she says, plopping back onto the bed, I'm sure the exam won't be that bad. She pats your knee.

You shake your head. It's fine, you say.

Quinn tilts her head. Are you okay?

Your chest breaks. There are so many ways Quinn has tried to die.

You move quickly and suddenly and turn to wrap her in a hug. Yeah, you say into her shoulder as you feel her arms come around your back.

Yeah? she whispers.

I'm so sorry, you say.

She backs up and you don't want her to. But you let her, and her brows are crinkled when she looks at you. What for?

You don't know how to apologize for her brain. You shake your head. Just, I know life was tough last year.

She looks at her hands. It was, she concedes. But it's not last year, you know?

I know, you say, and she gives you this little half smile.

You can't help yourself and you pull her into a hug, and she sort of laughs but returns it tightly.

I love you so much, you say, breathing in her smell—lavender coconut sandalwood vanilla—and trace notches in her spine.

I love you too, she says. Promise promise.

You smile into her sweatshirt at that, at her little particular ways of vernacular so less serious than her written diction.

She sighs and you let her go, despite wanting not to. You have so much you want to say, so many scars you want to kiss, so many more smiles you'd like to see on her face. You'd like very much to kiss her.

But you don't, and she tosses the book with papers tucked in it to the ground, puts one headphone in and nudges her feet underneath your legs. They're ice cold as always, but right now you don't mind.

Study, non-Ivy-League human, she says, pillows her head in the crook of her arm. You can tell she's watching The Office when she laughs at her screen.

She falls asleep after twenty minutes, glasses crooked, mouth slightly open. You think about turning her computer off and you think about moving because your legs have fallen asleep, but she's just so painfully beautiful you stay still. You give up studying for your exam a while later, because either you know enough by now or you're too distracted by Quinn anyway.

You close your laptop and move slowly and quietly to place it on your desk. Quinn wakes up and it's in the second she forgets where she is that you have to turn away because you just need to give her time.

I fell asleep, she mumbles.

Yeah, you say, walking back towards her. You close her laptop with a gentle smile and put it on the dresser.

C'mere, she says, turning away from you, which you know by now is Quinn's way of asking to be held.

You stretch your body out against hers, take your arm and put it over her chest. When she laces your fingers together, you press your lips into the back of her neck, and she squeezes your hand.

I know, she says.

You can feel the scars on her hand when you run your thumb over the skin there, and you tug her to you tighter.

She tells you, I'm okay.

You breathe into her skin, remember its taste against your mouth, and you wait until her breathing evens out to start to cry.

...

4. i am singing now while rome burns

.

we were in the gold room where everybody finally gets what they want.
—richard siken

.

They set a list of basic rules to begin with: Nothing based off Broadway; no 'weird hipster shit' (you don't even bother to take offense); nothing—nothing—they sang in Glee; in English, because despite your grasp of French, Rachel would like to understand the lyrics.

It starts as something you think is sweet, Rachel's pouring over your Spotify like she's choosing baby names (which is a terrifying thought in its entirety). You're finishing up your first doctorate in philosophy at Columbia; Rachel is in workshop for a new show, so between the two of you, you're generally busy.

But you're twenty-eight and you've been with Rachel for years now to know how she feels about music—and about wedding plans in general—so you allow your one staunch request to be getting to write your own vows, and you acquiesce on most other things without much fight—you're busy teaching classes and with office hours and finishing your dissertation, which by this point feels like the universe's longest ramble.

It starts as something sweet but Rachel soon goes into full Rachel Berry mode—which, of course, you love, but you're a little tired, and Rachel begins playing suggestions at 6:34 am two months before your wedding, you groan and hide under your pillows.

She begins with Celine Dion and even an old Christina Perry song. Your response is a raised eyebrow as you glance up from the Times over your coffee, and Rachel nods and says, I know I know. Just starting simple.

She tries to convince you of things by The Beatles, by the fact that she's had Barbra in her mind for her wedding since she was seven and a half years old. So far, you've agreed to everything she's wanted: green and white color scheme, June on the rooftop at the Gramercy Park Hotel—which is cliche and ridiculously expensive, you're a lowly professor and you know Rachel is paying for the majority of things, although she insists on them.

You found a wedding dress with Santana's begrudging help, and it's unspoken that she's your maid of honor.

Rachel continues to play songs that you can't quite agree to, despite the fact that they're not horrible. It's just that you'd like something whole, not just sappy, not just about good. Because you know that it's what you want your marriage to be about, by this point: The fullness of everything.

On the morning of the day you're defending your dissertation, Rachel is busy bustling around, making you your favorite breakfast, running to pick up a latte, putting on her "good luck dress" for her spot in the crowd. You're not worried or even that nervous—your committee is fantastic and by now you know what defenses go like. You're pulling on your panties and humming when Rachel shoots into your bedroom.

What song is that? she asks.

What?

You— She points wildly at you as you clasp your bra, and her eyes don't even drift towards you're breasts, so you know she's serious— You are humming something, Quinn Fabray, and for the life of me I will take off your great-grandmother's heirloom ring right now if you don't tell me.

You want to laugh, but you know not to. Whoa, you say and raise your hands in surrender. It's 'Sweet Song' by Blur. You go into your closet and thumb through your dresses.

You hear Rachel typing away on your computer, and then you hear the song start playing, and you stand still in the closet until you hear Rachel gasp, then sigh, then start crying, then laugh.

Quinn! she shouts. This is it!

You think about the lyrics, pop your head out. Okay, you tell her.

She beams, all teary-eyed and gorgeous. You may be busy and you may care less about the details of your wedding than your fiancee, but when she smiles and stands up and walks over to you, puts her hands firmly on your hips and kisses you gently enough to make you ache everywhere—you do not doubt in any part of you that you want to marry her.

Okay, she says.

You nod and rest your forehead for a moment on her shoulder, and then she tickles the small of your back and you swat at her with a laugh. Go get dressed, dork. You have some word vomit to spew.

You shake your head and put on a dress and heals, linking hands with Rachel on your way out of the apartment. Your great-grandmother's diamond ring is bright on her finger, warm when it touches your skin.