The Geek's Got the Girl (Quinn/Rachel)
Name: The Geek's Got the Girl
Rating: PG
Summary: Rachel gets sick. Quinn attempts to take care of her. Rachel has other ideas.
Author's Note: This is for rachberry BECAUSE IT IS HER BIRTHDAY. HOLLA, GURL.
“Quinn Ivy Fabray, get that thermometer away from me!”
Quinn stands on one side of she and Rachel’s kitchen table, thermometer in one hand and the other on her hip, as Rachel stands on the opposite side, crouched in anticipation of her next move. You would think two years of being together and one year of living together would make Rachel more comfortable about being sick around Quinn. And you would think 23 years of living would make Rachel more comfortable with sickness in general.
But sadly, Quinn thought as Rachel sprung to the right, obviously intent on making it to the living room and escaping Quinn’s apparently treacherous thermometer, neither of which has happened. Quinn races after Rachel, cursing to herself as the girl bucks Quinn’s predicted path and darts sideways into their guest room, diving over the bed and landing precisely on the other side.
“Rachel, you’re sick. Let me get your damn temperature!”
“You are mistaken, Quinn Fabray! I never get sick. I am just as healthy as ever and you are merely upsetting my fragile ego by assuming otherwise!”
Rolling her eyes at the phrase “fragile ego” and at the very obvious stuffy tone to Rachel’s words, she starts to round the bed, only to be knocked sideways by a streaking midget of a girlfriend, into the desk and knocking the lamp off of it. Quinn groans as she hears their bedroom door slam shut.
“Rachel…” she moans, slumping her shoulders and walking over to the bedroom door. “Baby, you’re sick. Let me take care of you.”
“I am not a child! I am a functioning, normal, and completely healthy adult, and you should respect my wishes by not assaulting me with this slanderous case against my health! I, in fact, feel completely and totally ready to attempt any such thing that could prove my health - ”
Rachel cuts herself off with a serious of five sneezes that has Quinn thumping her head against their door in sympathy. Taking care of Rachel was rather like taking care of a petulant child, now that Quinn thought about it. Her girlfriend had been insisting in between coughing, sneezing, and wheezing that she was not sick, and that Quinn had better stop feeling her forehead or offering her Dayquil. For the last three days.
In addition to it being the most tiring three days of Quinn’s lifetime, Rachel had only gotten worse, and at this point, Quinn was about to abuse the handcuffs she had bought a week ago for an entirely different purpose than intended if only to get Rachel to hold still long enough for Quinn to get an accurate reading of her bodily temperature.
Although, handcuffing Rachel to the bars of their headboard and climbing on top of her might not present the most accurate representation of Rachel’s normal temperature…
Which brought her back to square one. Rachel was being a child. An annoying, adorable, ridiculous, argumentative, but still cute child.
“Rach, baby. Please?”
After a few moments of sniffling and silence, the door slowly opened and Rachel looked up at her with droopy eyes that indicated just how tired she really was. And then she sneezed right in Quinn’s face.
//
The next morning, Quinn was woken up by Rachel shouting. Her voice was still ridiculously stuffy and there was a box of tissues set on Quinn’s stomach (of course her girlfriend would deem her a better table than the hundred dollar nightstand that Rachel had insisted they buy), but she was shouting.
Unfortunately, Rachel was shouting quite angrily at her PS3, and careened sideways into Quinn when an RC car drove into her and blew up.
“Ridiculous! This game is a horrendous, evil cheat and deplorable! Whose idea was it to have RC car bombs? Such a travesty. A travesty!”
“Rachel.”
“And you know what? I’m quite sure all the opposing team members are using illegal cheats allowing them to better attack my team. I am certain of it.”
“Rachel.”
“This game is about to be about skill! And they are cheating the system, horribly. Cruelly! Terribly!”
The PS3 and television turned off with a click, and Rachel screeched in indignation as Quinn ripped the controller out of her hand and threw it into a drawer in her nightstand. Rachel scrambled across Quinn to try and retrieve the remote, but Quinn grabbed ahold of her and shoved her back down to the bed, leaning over top of her and staring down at her ridiculous, childish girlfriend.
“Rachel. It is four in the morning. I realize that you are sick and that you are outraged about your Call of Warcraft - ”
“Call of Duty, Quinn!”
“ - But I am asleep. And you should be asleep too. So lay down. And sleep.”
Rachel groaned in defeat, sinking back into her pillows and shifting around restlessly when Quinn settles in next to her.
“Can I - ”
“Yes.”
Rachel immediately flips over and crawls up to Quinn, settling her head on Quinn’s shoulder and throwing a leg over Quinn’s, snuggling in as tightly as possible. Within minutes, the girl is asleep.
Quinn sighs as Rachel’s hand comes crashing into her hip, settling there and locking on with a rather tight grip, right on the bruise she had gained the night before from crashing into their guest room desk. But she kisses Rachel’s head instead of shifting away.
“I love you.”
Quinn kisses Rachel’s head again, smiling at the girl’s quiet mumble. And frowning when she is coughed on by her beautiful girlfriend.
//
“This book is very informative.”
Quinn glances up from her own work to see Rachel brandishing a book about, of all things, ocean creatures of the deep. Why Rachel would find this interesting at one in the morning was beyond her, but apparently it was quite entertaining. And informative. So Quinn nods and smiles, before turning down to look at her work once more.
“Did you know that the gulper eel is sometimes called the umbrellamouth gulper due to its large mouth?”
Quinn has a minor flashback to Sam and wonders if she had emailed him recently at the mention of a large mouth.
Rachel is silent once more for ten more minutes, before she bursts out with another fact:
“Look at this!”
Quinn glances up once more from her work to be greeted with a photo of a giant bug-looking creature that apparently lives in the deep ocean. It was labeled giant isopod.
“It’s related to pillbugs!”
Rachel seems entirely overjoyed by this notion. Quinn stares at it a moment too long and imagines the pillbugs in her garden back home growing to that size and attacking her like the ants from Them!
She looks back down to her work, intent on finishing it before Rachel comes out with more facts.
“Did you know that snailfish have no eyes that scientists have been able to see?”
“Rachel.”
“That’s rather intriguing, isn’t it? They recognize other animals by vibration.”
“Rachel.”
“They’re the deepest known species of fish!”
“Rachel, you are a dork.”
“Excuse me?!”
Quinn stares wide-eyed at Rachel, who has now lowered the book she was so enamored with just moments ago to stare accusingly at Quinn.
“You’re my dork?”
Rachel assesses the look on Quinn’s face, which Quinn sincerely hopes comes across as earnest and adoring. Otherwise, she is sleeping on the couch tonight.
“Look at the Dumbo squid!”
//
Quinn walks into their apartment to find Rachel singing at the top of her lungs. She’s still stuffy, after three days of Dayquil and Nyquil. And she is obviously quite frustrated with her off-key belting.
Rachel doesn’t notice Quinn when she walks in, just continues to sing along to “Lady Marmalade,” and awkwardly tries to dance like a member of the Moulin Rogue.
Suffice it to say that Rachel, clad in sweatpants and a sweatshirt that Quinn had bought her as a joke (one with argyle pattern in pink and blue), is not exactly Nicole Kidman. But Quinn hasn’t ever had much of an appetite for tall, ridiculously pale, straight women.
She rather thinks Rachel Berry is her thing, her only type. Just Rachel. Always Rachel.
But that’s not the point, Quinn thinks, distracting herself from that treacherous thought path that always ends with snuggling and being sappy. Rachel is singing and she shouldn’t be. Quinn should stop her.
So Quinn grabs their sound system remote and turns off the song, crossing her arms just in time as Rachel whirls around to face her.
“Quinn.”
“You shouldn’t be singing, Rachel. You’re sick, you could hurt your voice. And neither of us want that to happen, now do we?”
“Quinn.”
“And “Lady Marmalade” is probably not the best choice of song to re-enter the musical world with, anyway. You’re just frustrating yourself!”
“Quinn.”
“What?”
“Hi.”
Quinn looks at Rachel fully, noticing the leaning over of Rachel’s body and the sleepy eyes that greet her.
“Did you try that Benadryl I went and got you yesterday?”
Rachel nods, stepping closer to Quinn and crashing into her, wrapping her small self up into Quinn’s waiting arms and mumbling something about waiting for Quinn so she could sleep.
So Quinn smiles and steers Rachel to the bedroom, flipping on a quieter playlist in Rachel’s iPod on the way. Rachel kisses her cheek and murmurs along to the song that’s playing.
It’s perfect until Rachel rubs her nose into Quinn’s sweater, sniffling a little, and Quinn just knows she now has snot on her perfectly good cashmere.
//
“What are you doing?”
Quinn is standing in the doorway of she and Rachel’s guest room, watching Rachel sitting in a chair in front of their apartment window with binoculars.
“People watching.”
Quinn stares at Rachel’s back for a few more minutes, wondering what both the point and origin of this new hobby is before she throws up her hands and drops down onto the guest bed, wondering why she had managed to pick the craziest, most perfect person possible to live forever with.
“Ooh, someone is wearing a wonderful animal sweater! I wonder where they got it!”
//
“Quinn!”
“Yes, Rachel?”
Quinn glances out of her office to the one across from her, wondering why Rachel is so enthusiastic at nine in the morning, when Quinn had left her snoring at only seven.
“I don’t have a fever! And, I hit a high F!”
“Rachel.”
“I also can smell the ridiculous bacon-scented candle Noah gave you at Christmas last year that you have so graciously decided to light when I was not able to smell the stench of dead pig!”
“Rachel.”
“My kill death ratio is doing spectacularly well!”
“You are a giant dork.”
“Your dork!”
Quinn glances down at the photos lined up on her desk, and down to the ringbox sitting out on her desk.
“Yeah. My dork.”
//
The next day, Quinn is woken up by a round of sneezes coming out of her own nose, and an overwhelming deathly feeling coming over her right after the series.
In the silence that follows, she feels Rachel shift around to face her, placing a box of tissues right next to her head and kissing her cheek.
“I hate you so much.”
“You love me.”
“Why?”
Quinn’s voice is stuffy as she whines, reaching for the tissues and blowing her noise until she hears Rachel’s answer.
“How could anyone not love me?”
Quinn sneezes on her.
the end
Rating: PG
Summary: Rachel gets sick. Quinn attempts to take care of her. Rachel has other ideas.
Author's Note: This is for rachberry BECAUSE IT IS HER BIRTHDAY. HOLLA, GURL.
“Quinn Ivy Fabray, get that thermometer away from me!”
Quinn stands on one side of she and Rachel’s kitchen table, thermometer in one hand and the other on her hip, as Rachel stands on the opposite side, crouched in anticipation of her next move. You would think two years of being together and one year of living together would make Rachel more comfortable about being sick around Quinn. And you would think 23 years of living would make Rachel more comfortable with sickness in general.
But sadly, Quinn thought as Rachel sprung to the right, obviously intent on making it to the living room and escaping Quinn’s apparently treacherous thermometer, neither of which has happened. Quinn races after Rachel, cursing to herself as the girl bucks Quinn’s predicted path and darts sideways into their guest room, diving over the bed and landing precisely on the other side.
“Rachel, you’re sick. Let me get your damn temperature!”
“You are mistaken, Quinn Fabray! I never get sick. I am just as healthy as ever and you are merely upsetting my fragile ego by assuming otherwise!”
Rolling her eyes at the phrase “fragile ego” and at the very obvious stuffy tone to Rachel’s words, she starts to round the bed, only to be knocked sideways by a streaking midget of a girlfriend, into the desk and knocking the lamp off of it. Quinn groans as she hears their bedroom door slam shut.
“Rachel…” she moans, slumping her shoulders and walking over to the bedroom door. “Baby, you’re sick. Let me take care of you.”
“I am not a child! I am a functioning, normal, and completely healthy adult, and you should respect my wishes by not assaulting me with this slanderous case against my health! I, in fact, feel completely and totally ready to attempt any such thing that could prove my health - ”
Rachel cuts herself off with a serious of five sneezes that has Quinn thumping her head against their door in sympathy. Taking care of Rachel was rather like taking care of a petulant child, now that Quinn thought about it. Her girlfriend had been insisting in between coughing, sneezing, and wheezing that she was not sick, and that Quinn had better stop feeling her forehead or offering her Dayquil. For the last three days.
In addition to it being the most tiring three days of Quinn’s lifetime, Rachel had only gotten worse, and at this point, Quinn was about to abuse the handcuffs she had bought a week ago for an entirely different purpose than intended if only to get Rachel to hold still long enough for Quinn to get an accurate reading of her bodily temperature.
Although, handcuffing Rachel to the bars of their headboard and climbing on top of her might not present the most accurate representation of Rachel’s normal temperature…
Which brought her back to square one. Rachel was being a child. An annoying, adorable, ridiculous, argumentative, but still cute child.
“Rach, baby. Please?”
After a few moments of sniffling and silence, the door slowly opened and Rachel looked up at her with droopy eyes that indicated just how tired she really was. And then she sneezed right in Quinn’s face.
//
The next morning, Quinn was woken up by Rachel shouting. Her voice was still ridiculously stuffy and there was a box of tissues set on Quinn’s stomach (of course her girlfriend would deem her a better table than the hundred dollar nightstand that Rachel had insisted they buy), but she was shouting.
Unfortunately, Rachel was shouting quite angrily at her PS3, and careened sideways into Quinn when an RC car drove into her and blew up.
“Ridiculous! This game is a horrendous, evil cheat and deplorable! Whose idea was it to have RC car bombs? Such a travesty. A travesty!”
“Rachel.”
“And you know what? I’m quite sure all the opposing team members are using illegal cheats allowing them to better attack my team. I am certain of it.”
“Rachel.”
“This game is about to be about skill! And they are cheating the system, horribly. Cruelly! Terribly!”
The PS3 and television turned off with a click, and Rachel screeched in indignation as Quinn ripped the controller out of her hand and threw it into a drawer in her nightstand. Rachel scrambled across Quinn to try and retrieve the remote, but Quinn grabbed ahold of her and shoved her back down to the bed, leaning over top of her and staring down at her ridiculous, childish girlfriend.
“Rachel. It is four in the morning. I realize that you are sick and that you are outraged about your Call of Warcraft - ”
“Call of Duty, Quinn!”
“ - But I am asleep. And you should be asleep too. So lay down. And sleep.”
Rachel groaned in defeat, sinking back into her pillows and shifting around restlessly when Quinn settles in next to her.
“Can I - ”
“Yes.”
Rachel immediately flips over and crawls up to Quinn, settling her head on Quinn’s shoulder and throwing a leg over Quinn’s, snuggling in as tightly as possible. Within minutes, the girl is asleep.
Quinn sighs as Rachel’s hand comes crashing into her hip, settling there and locking on with a rather tight grip, right on the bruise she had gained the night before from crashing into their guest room desk. But she kisses Rachel’s head instead of shifting away.
“I love you.”
Quinn kisses Rachel’s head again, smiling at the girl’s quiet mumble. And frowning when she is coughed on by her beautiful girlfriend.
//
“This book is very informative.”
Quinn glances up from her own work to see Rachel brandishing a book about, of all things, ocean creatures of the deep. Why Rachel would find this interesting at one in the morning was beyond her, but apparently it was quite entertaining. And informative. So Quinn nods and smiles, before turning down to look at her work once more.
“Did you know that the gulper eel is sometimes called the umbrellamouth gulper due to its large mouth?”
Quinn has a minor flashback to Sam and wonders if she had emailed him recently at the mention of a large mouth.
Rachel is silent once more for ten more minutes, before she bursts out with another fact:
“Look at this!”
Quinn glances up once more from her work to be greeted with a photo of a giant bug-looking creature that apparently lives in the deep ocean. It was labeled giant isopod.
“It’s related to pillbugs!”
Rachel seems entirely overjoyed by this notion. Quinn stares at it a moment too long and imagines the pillbugs in her garden back home growing to that size and attacking her like the ants from Them!
She looks back down to her work, intent on finishing it before Rachel comes out with more facts.
“Did you know that snailfish have no eyes that scientists have been able to see?”
“Rachel.”
“That’s rather intriguing, isn’t it? They recognize other animals by vibration.”
“Rachel.”
“They’re the deepest known species of fish!”
“Rachel, you are a dork.”
“Excuse me?!”
Quinn stares wide-eyed at Rachel, who has now lowered the book she was so enamored with just moments ago to stare accusingly at Quinn.
“You’re my dork?”
Rachel assesses the look on Quinn’s face, which Quinn sincerely hopes comes across as earnest and adoring. Otherwise, she is sleeping on the couch tonight.
“Look at the Dumbo squid!”
//
Quinn walks into their apartment to find Rachel singing at the top of her lungs. She’s still stuffy, after three days of Dayquil and Nyquil. And she is obviously quite frustrated with her off-key belting.
Rachel doesn’t notice Quinn when she walks in, just continues to sing along to “Lady Marmalade,” and awkwardly tries to dance like a member of the Moulin Rogue.
Suffice it to say that Rachel, clad in sweatpants and a sweatshirt that Quinn had bought her as a joke (one with argyle pattern in pink and blue), is not exactly Nicole Kidman. But Quinn hasn’t ever had much of an appetite for tall, ridiculously pale, straight women.
She rather thinks Rachel Berry is her thing, her only type. Just Rachel. Always Rachel.
But that’s not the point, Quinn thinks, distracting herself from that treacherous thought path that always ends with snuggling and being sappy. Rachel is singing and she shouldn’t be. Quinn should stop her.
So Quinn grabs their sound system remote and turns off the song, crossing her arms just in time as Rachel whirls around to face her.
“Quinn.”
“You shouldn’t be singing, Rachel. You’re sick, you could hurt your voice. And neither of us want that to happen, now do we?”
“Quinn.”
“And “Lady Marmalade” is probably not the best choice of song to re-enter the musical world with, anyway. You’re just frustrating yourself!”
“Quinn.”
“What?”
“Hi.”
Quinn looks at Rachel fully, noticing the leaning over of Rachel’s body and the sleepy eyes that greet her.
“Did you try that Benadryl I went and got you yesterday?”
Rachel nods, stepping closer to Quinn and crashing into her, wrapping her small self up into Quinn’s waiting arms and mumbling something about waiting for Quinn so she could sleep.
So Quinn smiles and steers Rachel to the bedroom, flipping on a quieter playlist in Rachel’s iPod on the way. Rachel kisses her cheek and murmurs along to the song that’s playing.
It’s perfect until Rachel rubs her nose into Quinn’s sweater, sniffling a little, and Quinn just knows she now has snot on her perfectly good cashmere.
//
“What are you doing?”
Quinn is standing in the doorway of she and Rachel’s guest room, watching Rachel sitting in a chair in front of their apartment window with binoculars.
“People watching.”
Quinn stares at Rachel’s back for a few more minutes, wondering what both the point and origin of this new hobby is before she throws up her hands and drops down onto the guest bed, wondering why she had managed to pick the craziest, most perfect person possible to live forever with.
“Ooh, someone is wearing a wonderful animal sweater! I wonder where they got it!”
//
“Quinn!”
“Yes, Rachel?”
Quinn glances out of her office to the one across from her, wondering why Rachel is so enthusiastic at nine in the morning, when Quinn had left her snoring at only seven.
“I don’t have a fever! And, I hit a high F!”
“Rachel.”
“I also can smell the ridiculous bacon-scented candle Noah gave you at Christmas last year that you have so graciously decided to light when I was not able to smell the stench of dead pig!”
“Rachel.”
“My kill death ratio is doing spectacularly well!”
“You are a giant dork.”
“Your dork!”
Quinn glances down at the photos lined up on her desk, and down to the ringbox sitting out on her desk.
“Yeah. My dork.”
//
The next day, Quinn is woken up by a round of sneezes coming out of her own nose, and an overwhelming deathly feeling coming over her right after the series.
In the silence that follows, she feels Rachel shift around to face her, placing a box of tissues right next to her head and kissing her cheek.
“I hate you so much.”
“You love me.”
“Why?”
Quinn’s voice is stuffy as she whines, reaching for the tissues and blowing her noise until she hears Rachel’s answer.
“How could anyone not love me?”
Quinn sneezes on her.
the end