Not a song fic. Just a prompt from my favourite Beatles song. I own nothing. Except a bit of debt after the post-christmas sales.
Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name. Nobody came.
Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from her grave. No one was saved.
All the lonely people: where do they all come from?
Rachel is nattering about something. Her voice is irritating, and she's bossing them around in that horrible, pretentious manner she has. It's not that important, but she's determined to lecture them anyway. She wonders, because they've been doing that in class, whether it was a 'nature' or 'nurture' thing. She's been picking out qualities in her friends she knows to be nurtured or nature based in their personalities – Kurt being gay? Nature. Mercedes being religious? Nurture.
Rachel being a pain in the ass? Well she's never met Rachel's dads, thank God, so she doesn't actually know about her –
But she starts to hyperventilate in the middle of Rachel's diatribe because she knows who she has met, and who that, if Rachel's exasperating nature didn't actually come from nurture, and men in general were not known for their overbearing, in-your-face qualities, then perhaps it came from nature.
Perhaps it came from her mother.
The mother that was now raising a very different child.
Her breathing gets heavy, and for some reason her mind flashes to the Lamaze breathing before she runs from the room with terrified to tears in her eyes, leaving Rachel stunned into silence for once in her life.
She leans against the wall trying to steady herself and slow the tears, and slow her breathing. She rocks herself back and forth, trying to conjure a song in her head, but failing. Her mind is running through Rachel's horrible qualities, and trying to think of Shelby, and the qualities they shared – what would Shelby be instilling in the small blonde's mind?
She's engulfed in a set of strong arms, and there is inconsequential whispering in her ear, and this set of arms is doing a far better job at slowing her breathing, but nothing to slow the tears, and she's falling into rhythm, and she realises she's half way between sobbing and muttering about 'Rachel', 'Shelby', 'Pain in the ass' and 'soulless automaton'.
"In and out," she recognises. Small words are good. He's not listening to her because he knows her well enough to know she's not actually saying anything. "In and out."
Eventually, she calms. She has no idea how long it takes, but she thinks it's probably a while. He just sits and holds her, and occasionally reminding her how to breathe.
Once she's back on planet earth, registering whose arms are around her, breathing and thinking like a normal person, he speaks.
"You wanna talk?"
He's not supposed to do that. He's not supposed to be kind, or understanding. He's not supposed to know how to calm her, how to ease her tears, slow her breathing, bring her down from the brink of a panic attack. He's not supposed to because he's spent so long proving to the whole world that he's not that guy, and she's ignored him for so long trying to convince herself of that very fact. He's not supposed to offer to talk, because he's the only one who would actually know what to say to her, even though they both know he's not very good with words. He's not supposed to be that guy, least of all when her defences are down.
She won't look him in the eye. She's supposed to turn for comfort to another man, a different man, who she chose because he was so starkly contrasting to the one holding her so sweetly. She almost curses him, because this isn't how they're supposed to be.
"No," she whispers in response to his question, and despite herself, utters something further. "Just hold me a while."
She doesn't know how long they sit there in silence, her lying in between his legs, head on his chest, his arms pressed around her. Nobody comes near them. Nothing more is said. No one is saved.