Heuristic: There's No Us In Success

11

Friday turned into a day of limbo. Not because there were gradually lowered bars that everyone tried to dance under to reach their classes, but because there was an oppressive atmosphere of everything being somehow on hold - everyone was waiting. The entire student body was waiting for the weekend to arrive, Mike and Tina were waiting for some hint of what had had Quinn so crushed yesterday, Santana was waiting impatiently to tease Quinn with what she had planned for movie night, Mercedes and Kurt were waiting for any hint from Rachel that she was ready to disclose 'all the juicy details' as requested, Puck was waiting confirmation that the threesome he had planned was on and the majority of staff were waiting for the chance to cross of another week off on the 'countdown to holidays' chart. No one really had their heart set on being an inspirational teacher or enthusiastic inspired learner so in some ways it was business as usual.

The minute hand reluctantly dragged itself around the face of the clock in an agonised crawl watched intently by Quinn and surreptitiously by Rachel, each of them too preoccupied with their own thoughts to appreciate the distraction of the other. An apprehensive Quinn nibbled her lip nervously and fought with herself about what, if anything, she should do to head off the disaster waiting to happen with Sarah's casual meet for a friendly coffee with Rachel. Sarah had been unequivocally clear that there was nothing friendly or casual behind her intent to discredit Quinn. Quinn vacillated between depressed helplessness of just waiting powerless for the inevitable and a more perky stubbornness not to let fate slap her around yet again. The latter response proved difficult to maintain for any length of time hence the clockwatching countdown to oblivion.

Quinn was torn between saying something to Rachel - but what? - or the less humiliating (but probably emotionally more devastating) option of her usual ignore-and-deny strategy. In her experience if you ignored the elephant in the room for long enough it eventually went to find someone more responsive to play with. From an early age she'd been cajoled and threatened with the saying 'confession is good for the soul' - the jury was still out on that one because her soul hadn't exactly soared once she'd confessed Puck was the father of her illegitimate baby. She couldn't think of one single instance where confession had proved a successful strategy. Did it really deserve one last outing?

Quinn had tried out various approaches she could make to Rachel in her head, all along the theme 'everyone thinks we're dating' but every scenario led to disaster of some kind. Maybe her empathy skills were off but irate Rachel slapping her face, or tearful Rachel feeling betrayed or highly amused Rachel unable to stop laughing hysterically at the totally ridiculous idea that anyone could even think she and Quinn could be romantically interested in each other - all sounded suspiciously more Quinn than Rachel like in her head. Always - always!- imaginary Rachel would ask either if Quinn were a lesbian or whether she had a lesbian crush on her and each time imaginary Quinn froze in panic at the mere mention of the L word. There was so much more at stake then her blatant dishonesty to Rachel and her deliberate misleading of creepy Sarah.

If Quinn's mother even suspected that she was a - Quinn looked guiltily about and lowered her voice even in her head - homosexual, then she'd find herself yet again homeless and alone. Ostracised and ridiculed, kicked out and rejected by what remained of her 'family'. The thought paralysed her - well, more than she currently was anyway. There had been little enough help available for a homeless teenage mum-to-be but homeless disabled lesbian was even more of a niche market - she probably made up Lima's quota for the next century. Quinn needed to be out of this chair before she even thought about the remote possibility of mentioning her sexuality to her Mother - in fact it might be better to never ever ever mention it. She would need to find personal fulfilment through immersing herself in a demanding career rather than bringing yet more shame on the Fabrays. She just couldn't shake the memory of her father's unchallenged comment of 'better dead than gay' on hearing about David Karofsky's suicide attempt.