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 39th cycle. Now cycle 40!
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** UPDATED WITH CYCLE 40 CHEAT SHEET ** Check it out to find out about shift days, starting in cycle 40!
This is a shift day [see above]. There will be another upload this afternoon: The Ties That Bind, chapter 13.
"Back to Work"
Rachel/Puck & the Rent company
Project No Day But Today #13 (following 'Rest & Relaxation')
The day before, in mid-afternoon, Rachel had taken up her phone and for the first time in weeks she had activated the phone tree: Tmr. 12. HQ. It was Puck who had named Rachel's house as headquarters, claiming that with all her charts and plans for the musical it really was kind of 'secret ops'-like.
The self-assigned hiatus had done them good, she could tell. It had felt necessary, to recuperate after the whole situation with the showcase, the almost-cancellation. The last time they'd gathered, all of them, had been her cast-only holiday party. It was almost touching to see they did kind of miss each other, all of them.
In something of a record time it was just under ten minutes later that Puck sent the confirmation that the message had reached him. She could just imagine it going from phone to phone… It brought her to tears, though she wouldn't tell a soul. And now she had to prepare.
The next morning, with Dad and Pop off on errands for the better part of the day, she set everything up in the living room. She had her checklist of issues to discuss with the group, that was ready. Usually discouraged the concept on grounds of it being potentially distracting and/or messy, she had set up an assortment of snacks and – non-alcoholic – beverages; this was still a meeting.
Puck had arrived at eleven, and from the bags he carried she could tell he had deviated from her shopping list. "What's…" she asked.
"You asked them to come at noon, so… This is lunch."
"Hot dogs?" she saw as he started emptying out his bag.
"It's about as easy as it comes," he explained. "Don't worry, I got something for the vegans," he showed her, with an uncertain look. "You eat this?"
"I do, and it's tastier than it looks," she smiled.
"I don't know about that, but I trust you," he shrugged.
"Oh, so you'll try it then?" she smirked. He looked up at her. "Come on…" she tried to tempt him.
"That's not going to work on me," he pointed to her face.
"It has before…" she smiled innocently. He was stuck. "I'll owe you one…" she upped the stakes.
"Anything?" he asked cautiously.
"Within reason," she nodded.
"We'll see, okay?" he finally gave and she smiled. "Okay, now step aside and let the Grill Master get to work," he gave an 'intense' face.
"Grill Master?" she laughed, and he nodded. "You just keep things nice and separate, okay? A-and crack a window."
"Got it."
With Puck on grill duty – or however he could get with the equipment at his disposal – Rachel was able to carry on with her end of the snacks and such. She'd already started, so… For a moment she'd almost forgotten about the meet, and then the doorbell rang.
Over the next ten minutes, the house filled up with the rest of the cast. The hot dogs, of both kinds, slowly disappeared. "Any more of the vegan dogs? Annie might have one," Rachel returned to the kitchen. Puck shook his head. "I thought I'd counted six," she frowned, trying to count them off in her head… then she looked to Puck. "You ate it?"
"I'm still saying it's weird…"
"You didn't just eat it, you liked it," she teased, approaching him.
"You're going to owe me big time," he was still denying it.
"You liked it," she maintained, kissing him. He let out a breath. "Now come on, we have to get started."
Getting to the living room, the place was packed and loud. It took three calls to silence them, the last of which was accompanied with whistling. "Okay, if we can start, I'd like to welcome you all back. It's really great to have you here, so ready and motivated."
"Are we going to get things done or are you just going to speak at us?" Santana asked, only mildly annoyed.
"Right, okay, well after considering what we have done so far, it allowed me to try and figure out what we need to do next, with the priority items first… obviously. Call them… missions. The first is the money."
"Do we have any?" Kurt asked.
"No, we do not," Rachel admitted simply, meeting with a chorus of groans. "But we have Mr. Schue on our side…"
"Secretly," Artie reminded.
"We don't have school financing, and we won't, so long as we're in the dark. And we can't… do bake sales, or car washes, or anything to raise funds that way," Quinn pointed out.
"You know, we keep going like this secret thing is bad," they looked to Puck when he spoke. "It's not a secret, we're just not telling anyone. We're handling things on our own. That's not bad, it's productive, and…"
"Industrious," Rachel added, with a proud smile.
"Industrious, yes," Puck agreed.
"So we're sneaking around because…" Tina asked.
"Just because we're smart enough to know that people would sooner say no than they would ever listen to why we're doing this, doesn't mean we have to feel bad about it," Rachel stood her ground.
"I've got money," Brittany spoke up. "You can have it," she shrugged. "I want to do the musical," she declared.
"My birthday's next week, I should have a big cheque coming," Gus volunteered. "My Nana does not understand how many zeroes to put… More than enough, so I can share."
"Yeah, I'm in," Annie raised her hand, and she was joined by Finn, Mercedes, Blaine, Kurt, Reid, Alicia, Lizzie, Ellie, and Elliott.
"I don't have much, but I'm in, too," Sam put in, and the remaining heads nodded away. Rachel breathed.
"So that's one issue we'll deal with."
"What else?" Quinn asked.
"Well, we need to keep an eye on things, the further we get into this. We'll probably need to involve more people, that's more chances for things to go wrong."
"Sorry I asked," Quinn sighed.
"I also need to lock down our script. We've been running too long on random pieces. I'll get to work on that," Rachel nodded.
"You're not going to cut us out, right?" Lizzie asked, looking small and pleading all of a sudden.
"What? No, of course not. You're here, you're needed, you're not going anywhere," Rachel reassured her and she smiled. "Once the script is set we can settle another thing and that's the split on the double cast roles," she went on, looking to Quinn. At the same time, Puck looked to Sam, Artie to Mike, Santana to Mercedes, and Brittany to Tina. "I was also thinking we need to break down task teams, you know, costumes, sets, lights, everything. If you need more people, you can bring them in, but make sure they understand the rules and keep me posted." Santana's hand shot in the air.
"I call costume team captain," she declared. Brittany looked up, giving a two-finger wave. "And Britt's co-captain." The co-captain grinned. "Okay, who wants in?" she addressed the others.
"All in time," Rachel interrupted, and Santana glared at her for the rest of the meeting.
"Shouldn't we have like a deadline?" Annie asked. "When we open, how long… Are we doing this in the auditorium?"
"The auditorium is ours," Puck shrugged.
"Basically, yeah," Rachel took over. "We'll have to book it, good thing we have Mr. Schuester on our side now."
"So what's our deadline?" Kurt asked. Rachel looked to the twenty-four staring back at her, took a breath.
"I'll… work on that, too." When the meeting disbanded, Rachel plopped down on the couch, and Puck sat across from her, on the coffee table. "What are you doing?"
"Trying to decide something."
"Decide what?" Rachel asked.
"How you'll pay me back for that vegan dog."
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!