AN: One-Shot, possible follow up to "Feet and Traffic Lights". T for language. This came to me through the course of two months on a series of bus and train rides. I do not own Glee though my heart wishes I did.
While my peers are caught up in their sex-addled fantasies, I am well on my way to making it, to becoming a star. My life is an elaborate and careful plan, a precise calculation that would ensure that I, Rachel Berry, see the lights of Broadway by the age of 23.
All was well on track before I met him. He whose eyes twinkled when he laughed, whose large hands fit perfectly on my hips as he taught me how to bowl, whose voice was the perfect complement to mine as we broke into harmony and whose more gorgeously perfect pregnant girlfriend stood between us. Needless to say, this case of foolish unrequited love barreled towards me like a tidal wave, veering me off course and throwing my boat asunder on a lost island.
For once, throwing myself in my work and music did not give me the gratification I craved. I began looking for something hot, reckless and entirely dangerous. Something completely out of my element.
Him.
I had seen the way he'd stare longingly at her and knew that we were both looking at the same ship sail.
The opportunity all but fell so perfectly into the palm of my hand, he was hurting and so was I. I'll never forget the way my heart was beating so fervently in my chest, like a caged animal bursting to get out as I spoke to him. At first, he seemed shocked at my proposition, after all, I am who I am and he is he: two like poles necessitated to repel.
The first time was messy, painful and though tore me entirely apart also seemed to complete me in ways I never imagined.
From then on all we did was gravitate toward one another. We found moments, stolen moments away from the prying judging eyes of the student body, away from the harsh words she so venomously threw at him - away from reality. From the supply closet to between costumes changes tangled in the mess of the stage curtains in the auditorium – wrongly perfect moments.
I wish more people knew that his boorish demeanour and penchant for crude words and violence was just a mask to protect whatever fragile remains of a heart he had. Others see the way he is outside and think him to be one of those lovers who are far from sensitive, only caring for himself and his needs, leaving you as just another mindless fuck.
The time I had with him however was far from it. In those moments, it was like the world only consisted of me, him and passion - hot, heavy and loving. We explored nooks and crannies filling the emptiness where they had so unknowingly hollowed us out. His lips on my skin, his kisses were like a flame from a lighter so gently teasing the wick of candle before it happens - ignition.
When we came, the names that escaped our parted lips were never his or mine, it was theirs.
Strangely enough, our moments after were often peaceful, like the exploration of each other an equivalent to reaching to the skies and grabbing a handful of stars and lighting the darkness within us. For awhile everything would seem right even though they were in fact so very, very wrong.
Sometimes he'd drift off to sleep and I would catch myself staring at him and realise all over again just how perfectly gorgeous he really is. From the curvature of his nose, his soft supple lips, the scar on his forehead he got after an unfortunate run in with the counter top as a child, to the hardness of his jaw, set, his anxiousness showing in the way he'd grind his teeth.
Some nights he'd murmur monosyllabics and I'd know that he was revisiting the horrors of his life that has passed: "no", "stop", "please", "don't", "Quinn".
Those fitful nights were the worst and watching as the wetness trailed down the side of his face often felt like something worse than a dagger to the heart.
Noah taught me that heartache did not just manifest when one was awake but even in the deepest of slumbers.
It's funny how one falls into a cycle, a familiarity that becomes so a part of you that if something different were to happen the world would stop and fall into mourning. It came on what began as a raging thunderstorm, cold and blistery that expected turned into the most gorgeous summers day Lima has ever seen.
I had gone running towards him, the one place I felt safe. We were well into it, him venting out his years of pent up emotional turmoil and me trying desperately to erase the image of having seen them, the two who in the first place had us running toward one another. They were so...happy, and I for one, could not comprehend why I, why we could not be.
I'll never forget the way he trailed kisses down my neck stopping right at the spot where my neck meets my collarbone, the spot he knew I loved and sunk his teeth and sucking for but a second before running his tongue over the bruised, tender flesh. His soft lips lingered on that spot, peppering soft kisses before trailing back up to my lips only to suddenly stop.
A strange unfamiliar look seemed to cross his face, turning his eyes a beautiful shade of hazel, almost green. I remember staring at him, confused as his eyes bore into mine and at that moment I knew we were both reading into each other's souls.
"You're so beautiful, Rachel" he said his voice laced with tone that was just so uncharacteristically him but did not fail to make my heart palpitate. A smile crept upon my face, betraying my mind that was screaming "What about him? What about Finn! YOU WANT FINN!"
When we reached, the name that came forth from my lips was not his but well, "Noah."
I tried to swallow the words as they eked forward and bit my lip hoping he hadn't heard it.
The strange calm that usually fell upon us in the moments after was brimming with uncertainty. Unasked questions lingered in the air threatening to spill forth, with neither of us wanting to disrupt the placid surface.
"Noa-" I had started only to be silenced by his lips.
"Shh. We can be anything you want us to be." It was like those words had awakened a sleeping giant, or uncovered fossilised feelings that until then had been repressed under history.
Like before, my reply came without hesitation and I knew my heart had taken full rein of the wheel.
"I want you."
It's funny how things never turn out the way you expect it. Daddy married at 18 to Agatha Townsend, thinking it was eternal love. High school sweethearts, it seemed like the natural next step to get married. They went to college together, though in different fields and that was where Daddy was reunited with a friend from his past, Stan Clery.
Stan is my Dad.
Sometimes what we know we should do clouds the path that we know is truly right, but with the right light slab by slab the cobbled stone road will show itself.
The first time I told a boy "I love you", I lied. or at least I thought I did love him. I was more in love with the notion of being in love that actually being in love. Standing where I am now, in the gradient of the black and white I've come to realise how much I really do love him, that even our names roll off the tongue much easily than they would with theirs. Rachel and Noah. Noah and Rachel. It even feels like love.
Sometimes while we will walk down the hallways hand in hand, grasping our own cups of slushies - both always grape, mine because I love it and his because I spilt mine once and he hated that he could not give me his cherry flavoured (cough syrup tasting) one, I wonder what I've done to deserve him. I used him because I could not get the boy I thought I loved to the point of wearing him down to weathered loose threads that precariously held what little of the woven fabric together.
I don't deserve him ("Do you ever think of what you could have with him?""Sometimes.") and we are so wrong for each other on so many levels ("You make me feel like lighting myself on fire!" "WELL FINE, SHOULD I DO IT FOR YOU?") that it hurts just to be with him. but... I love him. And he loves me. And that's all that really matters. We're perfectly imperfect, and that to me is more than perfect.
Break it all down and we are like sand. Small, insignificant pieces of stones and rocks that can hardly be seen as a single grain but when piled tonnes upon another grows to a small mount that though more significant can still be easily shifted by even the slightest of winds. Add something else, a burning flame - passion. And sand turns to glass. He is the fire to my sand, and we are glass: fragile but beautiful.
And when the white light hits us, throwing a gorgeous rainbow, we are and forever will be - infinite.
FIN