Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 66th cycle. Now cycle 67!

"Periphery"
(Older) Rachel & Chloe (OC) + Berry Workshop
Red series
(no listing yet; sequel to Like We Were Family)

Coming into the workshop that day, Chloe felt good. She'd had a couple great days off, and it left her energized and ready to take on whatever Rachel Berry threw at them next. The last thing she wanted was to show herself as the shy girl from Indiana, but then she saw something, a vision from nights past… There was a Greek statue standing by the window, stretching.

"George?" she sputtered before she could stop herself, and when she saw him looking up at the sound of his name, she slapped her hand over her mouth and considered turning on her heel and running off out of sheer embarrassment. But there were Tara and Eva and Marcus behind her, blocking the way.

It wasn't that she didn't want to talk to him, far from that. Whether she would admit it to anyone or not, and she had not, she hadn't been able to get him out of her head since she'd met him that one night. But then she knew what would happen when she tried to talk to him again, and she liked it better that, if he should be left with an image of her, it wouldn't be of her making a complete fool of herself. But then far more important of a matter was a very important question: what on earth was he doing here?

"You alright there, Indy?" Tara asked with a chuckle. "You look like you saw a ghost." Chloe spun to look at her.

"He hasn't been here this whole time, has he?"

"George? Sure he has, hasn't he?" Eva frowned, thinking.

"Believe me, someone like him, I'd remember if he wasn't there," Marcus pitched in. "Been keeping to himself but he's been there."

"There aren't that many of us in here, you know?" Tara still looked highly amused by Chloe's flustered look, which only made her frown and walk from them. Fine, if this is what I have to do. She walked up to the Greek statue and her legs were jelly.

"Has your phone recovered from its untimely death?" he gave her as greeting. For a moment she frowned, unsure what he was talking about, but then she remembered, their apparently-not-first-at-all first meeting, the phones, Princess Boo…

"Oh, yeah, it's… I mean I charged it, and… I'm sorry, this is going to sound kind of bad, but I didn't know you were… well, here," she admitted.

"It's alright, I've kind of been keeping to myself," he admitted.

"In here? With her?" Chloe could hardly believe it, then regretted saying like that. But he wasn't insulted.

"I do better when I observe for a while, and she knows."

"But we've had to go up there, and I didn't…"

"I haven't gone up yet," he admitted. "I have to do it today actually. My hands are freezing I'm so nervous," he held them before himself. She hesitated, but then placed hers over his.

"Wow, you weren't kidding." Her hands were as warm as her cheeks felt, and neither of them moved, as her hands warmed his. "Why are you so nervous? I'm sure you'll be great." I mean look at you. No, don't say that. "You wouldn't be here if you weren't," she pointed out. Yes, that's better.

"Right," he looked just a little bit more at ease for that, and she felt happy to have given him that. "If I do well, maybe you and I could coffee after, celebrate, warm my hands some more," he offered, and if she could feel her own hands tremble, she could imagine he'd felt them, too.

"I-I… Well… Yes, alright," she finally heard herself say, and when she remembered they were still kind of holding hands, she casually brought hers back down, so he did the same. She had a feeling the moment she turned around she'd have the whole of the workshop staring at them. "Knock 'em dead," she gave him a final word of encouragement, nodded, then turned about, skittering off without looking until she was back with Tara, Eva, and Marcus and they took their seats, waiting for the workshop to start. She could still feel the coolness of his hands under hers, and she didn't want the feeling to go away.

"What was that?" Eva spoke, and Chloe finally looked up to see her friends staring at her with full-blown curiosity.

"It's a long story."

"Tell it, tell it now," Marcus insisted.

"Hey, stop it," Tara scolded him, then, "Well?"

"We're going to get coffee after the workshop," she confided.

"Indy got a date?" Tara laughed, tapping her shoulder. "Alright, well done." Chloe almost gulped. She was right, this was kind of a date, wasn't it? Why'd she have to make her realize it?

"Wait, is he the guy with the phone?" Marcus spoke up, and Chloe would have lied, but her face was plenty happy to spill all her secrets.

There was still that same problem though, wasn't there? She still lived in Indiana once this workshop was done, and he still lived in New York. By the looks of it, he was from here, full time. This was all going to break her heart in the end, wasn't it?

She spent most of the start of the workshop thinking that she had to find a way to cancel without sounding rude. She couldn't get herself taken, couldn't let herself fall.

The moment he went up and did his song, she knew she was already done for. If he looked like a god, he sang like an angel. The whole time he was up there, she couldn't take her eyes away, her heart was going so mad that she was paralyzed. When he was done, she blinked for the first time when Tara asked if she was crying. Reaching to her cheek, her hand swiped and found what would have been all of three or four tears. She was just shy of being out of breath, but she knew… She couldn't cancel. She wanted to see him, to get to know him more than she'd started to know him.

At the end of the workshop she'd stood on her feet and gone up to him. He smiled, still looking a bit nervous. "Well?" he asked. We should duet.

"You were brilliant," she told him, and he smiled that shining smile of his.

"So, coffee then?"

"Yes, please," she closed her eyes for a moment, feeling like there was no end to her awkwardness. When she opened her eyes, he was still there, still smiling. "H-How are your hands?"

"You tell me," he offered her one. I'm going to crash so hard, aren't I? She took the hand he offered, felt her heart leap.

"Still a little chilled. But a coffee cup will warm that right."

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!