Room 317, Saturday Morning

[former_cheerio]

Quinn's morning was already starting off a little on the weird side. First, there was her wine cooler headache. Then there was Santana's overnight text -- Heard Finn tried 4 choir. He gay now? -- that no one was answering her panicked return texts about. Quinn was about ready to believe all of her friends were just trying to further mess with her head, God.

So the hand that drifted in through her open door carrying juice, and then occupied itself combing and arranging Quinn's hair while she drank the juice? That was actually almost a good thing. Even if it came from a floating hand, she'd take her pampering where she could find it.

[OOC: Open door, open post though I may be slow. And yes, this is how I kick off her modified canon. Huzzah.]

Comments

[wesleynotponcy.livejournal.com]

Wesley was wandering idly through the hall when a random disembodied hand zipped through the air and pointed at Quinn's door. When he went to keep walking, the hand wagged a finger at him and then pointed again, more insistently. All right, all right, fine...

"Er. Hello," he said, knocking gently on the open door.

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

"Ow!" Quinn protested, not at Wesley -- the hand brushing her hair had just hit a snag and been less than gentle about removing it. A moment later, she glanced over at the door.

"Oh, hey. Did you go away for a while or something?"

[wesleynotponcy.livejournal.com]

"Yes, I spent three weeks at h- at my parents' house," he replied. Well, nice to know he'd been missed! One of the hands gave him a thumbs-up. "How have you been?"

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

Quinn shrugged a little. "One really bad week, a couple of pretty good ones," she said honestly. "And apparently my boyfriend's lost his tiny mind. Want to come in?"

[wesleynotponcy.livejournal.com]

"Oh, certainly, thank you," he said. The hand waved him in.

"What was that about your boyfriend?" Wes inquired. He was honestly dying to know what kind of guy would date someone like Quinn. And gosh, between Quinn and Katniss he was going to have no shortage of information on other people's boyfriends.

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

"He's trying to commit social suicide," Quinn answered. "He's auditioning for show choir. He claims" -- she'd finally gotten a text back -- "that he was blackmailed."

She shook her head. "I've given him five entire months of my life. We would have been king and queen of the school next year. And now he's trying to throw it all out so he can sing and dance. Moron."

The kind of guy who would date Quinn was, apparently, someone with very low self-esteem.

[wesleynotponcy.livejournal.com]

Well, that sounded about right. "Quite honestly, I can't fathom why someone might blackmail someone into participating in a choir," he mused. "That seems like a fairly flimsy excuse."

Yeah, Mr. Schu was just ethical like that.

"I must say, I rather thought you the sort to date an athlete."

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

"He is," Quinn said. "He used to be, anyhow. He's a quarterback and he plays basketball. Now he's probably going to take up tap dancing too."

One of the hands helpfully supplied jazz hands to punctuate Quinn's point.

"I have no idea why somebody would be blackmailed over glee club, either. I'm not getting the whole story."

[wesleynotponcy.livejournal.com]

Wesley raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps he's simply protecting his, ah, masculinity?" he proposed. Quinn's boyfriend did not particularly sound like the most cultured fellow.

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

Quinn didn't follow. "By joining glee club? That's sort of the opposite."

[wesleynotponcy.livejournal.com]

"No, by saying he was blackmailed," Wes explained. "By shifting the decision onto whoever was blackmailing him, he protects himself from being accused of being - er - anything associated by teenagers with being 'unmasculine,' or some such rubbish."

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

"So you're saying he wanted to do it and he's telling me he has to so I'll bitch less about being his beard," Quinn summarized. "That's ... kind of complicated for Finn."

Which was not to say she thought it was necessarily false.

[wesleynotponcy.livejournal.com]

"Ah, is he not one of the world's great thinkers?" Wesley laughed. Huh. Somehow he'd thought Quinn the kind of girl to get rather impatient with anyone like that. Well. Good on her, then.

"In that case, perhaps he truly was blackmailed." He was kind of skeptical about that, though. 'Cause seriously. "Or he simply interpreted it as such."

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

"He's got a really good heart," Quinn said, a bit defensively. "But thinking, yeah, it's ..." she shrugged, and repeated, "He has a really good heart."

She sighed. "I almost want to go home and play detective until I have the whole story, but that would look sort of paranoid."

[wesleynotponcy.livejournal.com]

"Yes, I would advise against that," he cautioned. "It might come across as a bit mad, actually."

He paused. "Er. Not that I think you're mad, of course. Just that such behavior would look a bit mad. Regardless, it's hardly a pressing issue from here, yes?"

That would be Wes' inner snob judging what constitutes a pressing issue. Sorry, Quinn.

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

"I guess not," Quinn said, a little sulkily. She didn't like being told her ideas were 'a bit mad.' "I'd look desperate, too."

Which was far more serious, to Quinn.

Finished with her hair, the hand floated over to Quinn's dresser and began straightening things. "How cool is that?" she asked rhetorically.

[wesleynotponcy.livejournal.com]

The rhetorical thing flew over Wes' head, of course. "It's quite nice," he agreed mildly. "Er... Does anyone know why these hands are here, exactly?"

The hand that had been following Wes around flicked him on the shoulder, reprimanding him. "Well!" he huffed.

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

"To help us out," Quinn answered, ignoring the larger implications. "Maybe the school realized things sometimes kind of suck here and gave us ... robot servants. I'm not complaining."

[wesleynotponcy.livejournal.com]

"Well, yours must like you, then," he remarked dryly. "Whereas it appears I've gotten off on the wrong... well, hand with mine." (One of the hands flipped him off.)

Then, impressedly: "You seem quite well-adjusted to the more odd occurences here at this school," he observed.

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, well, after you get pulled into some other dimension where you're killing scorpions and in danger of radiation poisoning, hands seem kind of friendly," Quinn said bluntly. "But you should have seen me last night at Caritas. I'm so tired of everyone being something out of a movie except me."

[wesleynotponcy.livejournal.com]

"Something... out of a movie?" he repeated. "Er, just to clarify, I assume you are not speaking literally? One never knows, around here."

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

Quinn shook her head. "No, I just mean everybody fights vampires or has superpowers or just found out they're a prince or whatever. Even my roommate's some crazy science genius."

She wrinkled her nose. "I didn't mean that to sound as insecure as it did."

[wesleynotponcy.livejournal.com]

"Oh." He wasn't the best at comforting people, but he supposed he'd do his best. "Well, if it makes you feel better, I've only ever seen cheerleaders in movies before. They're rather uniquely American, I'm afraid. And you a well-known one... Regardless, you've also the most profoundly intimidating attitude of anyone I've ever met." Which, for someone who was generally rather skittish, was saying something. Something nice, too.

"But I'm quite familiar with the feeling of being rather commonplace, compared to some of our classmates. It's quite unnerving."

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

Oh, Wesley knew how to say the sweetest things. Quinn beamed. "Thank you," she said.

She worked hard on seeming intimidating. It was good to hear it worked.

"Who makes you feel commonplace?"

[wesleynotponcy.livejournal.com]

Well, he certainly wasn't going to say that demigod brat who'd beat him in a spar the other day. That simply wouldn't do. Even though it would be so, so true.

"Oh, people around," he said vaguely. "Particularly the people who are heroes back home, or who are working on overcoming rather trying obstacles. And a few of the professors, as well, though I recognize it's not an entirely fair comparison."

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

"It's not fair, but I get it," Quinn answered. "You always want to be better than the best, right? I get that way with my coach at home."

[wesleynotponcy.livejournal.com]

"I demonstrate similar tendencies with my fa- with some of the more prominent Watchers." Really smooth, Wes. Niiiice. "It's a highly-ingrained sense of competition. Made particularly more agonizing through the utter impossibility of my achieving such success."

Ooh. Weird moment. New topic!

"But you're quite well-known, as a cheerleader, yes?" he verified. "Or your team is?" He thought she'd said something about that on the first day, but he couldn't be sure.

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

"National champions," Quinn verified with pride. "I mean, it's not like they give out gold medals for it or anything, but yeah, in that world my school is a pretty big deal."