Author's Note: I've decided to post various short one-shots/drabbles under one heading.
The tale of IT. A St. Berry Care Bear Fairytale.
(First written for a St. Berry Week Challenge. Slightly revised.)
If anyone would have told Jesse that he'd be packing IT with him wherever he moved to, he would have told them they had lost their minds. But the fact was, wherever he lived, IT came to live too. Once, he had actually stuffed IT into his waste paper basket (that was the day after the "Run Joey Run" humiliation when he'd demanded that Rachel return IT to him.) But then he'd had second thoughts and retrieved IT the following morning, merely banning the care bear to his bedroom closet. A few weeks later IT was quietly retrieved from that dark space to sit upon his bed.
After the egging incident, Jess had actually shed real tears into the care bear's soft plushy fur, while trying to convince IT (and himself) that he'd had to do the egging in order to maintain his status with Vocal Adrenaline. He hadn't been able to explain his reasons satisfactorily and every time he looked at IT, he felt shame and guilt and loss. So back into the closet IT went.
Before he moved onto campus in LA, Jesse had the blue care bear cleaned and put into a plastic gift bag, which he then smuggled into his dorm room. He pretended he had just bought IT for his girlfriend back home and would give the bear to her as a surprise when next he saw her (at least that's what he told his friends when they chanced upon IT.)
After failing college, Jesse returned to Ohio, and of course IT came too. He filled the care bear's ears with his guilt and his thoughts before he finally got up the nerve to apologize to Rachel. For a short time Jesse was happy, and he'd tell IT about all the plans he had for New York with Rachel and their future on Broadway. Then the kiss at Nationals happened. Jesse would have given IT away immediately after that, but he had left the bear back in Ohio, and by the time he returned home he was once again unable to bring himself to totally sever the tie, so he kept IT.
One day he saw another one just like IT, only in the color pink. The bear made him think of Rachel and on a whim he bought the pink care bear and sent it to her in care of her Dads' address. All he wrote on the card accompanying the gift were the words "to Rachel from J., who will always care." He never heard back from her, but he didn't expect to as he hadn't put a return address (besides, he expected she'd married Hudson by then.)
Over the following years, IT was relegated to a storage closet in whatever apartment Jesse was living in. He rarely looked at or thought of IT, because if he did, then he would remember and remembering made him feel things that still hurt. But one day, IT came out of storage. Jesse was moving to a loft and the realtor had told him to make his current apartment look like a suitable home for a family with a child in order to attract more potential buyers. So on the day the realtor was showing his apartment he put his trophies from childhood on a shelf in spare room, placed IT on the bed, then left the apartment prior to the viewings.
When he returned he was surprised to find the realtor still there. She told him he had an interested buyer, and they would be back shortly. Twenty minutes later Jesse opened the door to find a petite brunette with large expressive brown eyes standing at his door clutching a slightly worn pink care bear.
Rachel never did buy the apartment. Instead she and Jesse live very happily in the loft he bought, which has plenty of room for them, their twins and the two care bears that adorn the children's nursery.
