Cigarette Daydreams

Chapter 2

Rain slaps the pavement and all Quinn can think about is her hand slapping Santana's face. She feels sick and turns the volume on her television set up all the way. She's been curled up on her hotel bed since she arrived the previous afternoon. The lump in her throat turned into a boulder sometime last night and she can't even lift her head without feeling exhausted. Her entire encounter with Santana drained her and now she's a pile of skin and bones and a faint heartbeat chained to a strange bed. She didn't even tell her parents she was coming home for the holidays, not ready to hear the tense silence that always suffocated them while she was in the house; God, she feels pathetic.

Her phone rings so loudly she almost jumps from her spot, but the tiredness that settled in her joints keeps her in place. Santana, the screen reads, and her stomach drops. She thinks she can get away with not answering, but it keeps ringing and ringing and something inside of her is just aching to hear her old friend's voice; feel the familiarity wrap around her throat like a noose and let her fall into slumber, ending the war she's been roped into for as long as she can remember. So, she picks up.

"Quinn?" If she focuses hard enough, she can see the concern etched into the frown she knows Santana has on her face. Her tongue feels like it's a thousand pounds and she can't speak. "Q, I can hear you breathing." Nothing comes out. "I just wanted to make sure you were okay after yesterday. I went to your house, but Judy said you were still in New Haven, what's going on, Fabray?"

Quinn feels like the walls are closing in on her and the earth is collapsing, and everything is falling from underneath her feet. She squeezes her eyes shut and tries to focus on Santana's steady voice. "Your house," she finally croaks out. "I'll meet you at your house." And then she hangs up. She closes her eyes for a moment and imagines what she's even going to say to Santana. How does she explain that she's been broken since she was 13 and now, she's almost 19, an adult, still unable to put herself back together? How does she explain that to Santana, whose mother will love her until the day she dies and whose father can at least muster up a smile when she's in the room? Confident, free, snarky, Santana, who's also the only person Quinn knows that might have more broken bits sticking out of her than herself. And it's dizzying to think that maybe they aren't all that different; that they might still be those 8-year-old girls somewhere inside.

Once she gets back to the inside roads, the drive to Santana's house is so familiar that Quinn thinks she could make it there with her eyes closed. If she wasn't so afraid of who she'd hurt in the process, she might've. It sends a million thoughts through her head at breakneck speed. How would Santana react to a phone call that Quinn had been in yet another car accident, but this time it was fatal. Would she blame herself because Quinn was on the way to meet her? Would she care at all? The idea makes Quinn sick and she turns the radio up to drown out her disgusting thoughts. She isn't suicidal, or at least, she doesn't think she is. Growing up in the Fabray household never let one dwell on the state of their mental health for too long, lest they stop self-medicating with substances and actually get psychological help. Never, because looking like a mental patient would be worse for the family than the alcoholism they exhibited behind closed doors.

She gets to Santana's house and her thoughts cut off abruptly. She remembers the way she would unbuckle her seatbelt and throw the car door open in a haste to jump from her booster seat to the pavement, jus so she could ring the doorbell for their weekend playdates. She remembers tangling her arms around Santana's tiny frame every time, as if they hadn't seen each other in years. It's nothing like the way she stumbles from her car to the door. She doesn't ring the doorbell this time, opting instead to text her arrival to the other girl. When she hears the lock click from the other side, though, when she sees Santana's face with worry etched into her features, she falls into her old friend's arms once more. It's not the same. It's not happy and innocent and filled with squealing and excitement. It's so melancholy that Santana's arms almost burn where they wrap around Quinn, as if Quinn's body is telling her just how unworthy she is of this concern and affection. Neither of them says anything for a few long minutes, Quinn just holds onto Santana like she's her lifeline and Santana supports Quinn in a way she didn't know she could.