Confession time - I ADORE Halloween, and could not resist writing a themed story this week. I will not be held responsible if the amount of sticky-sweet fluff gives anyone cavities; please blame the Halloween candy! ;) Oh yes, multiple time jumps, and maybe some general spoilers for Season 4. As per usual disclaimer, if you recognize a character, then they belong to RIB (sadly).
Young at Heart
October 2027
"Jesse! Where did we put the camera?"
He follows the sound of her voice down the hall into their bedroom, finding her standing on a chair and searching on a high shelf in their closet where a few random electronics live.
"I think I saw it by the piano."
"I knew there was a reason I kept you around." Rachel beams cheekily at him, hopping down off the chair to give him a quick kiss on the mouth, looking at him in amusement when she pulls back.
He grins guiltily. "Busted."
"We haven't even left the building yet, and you've broken into the Halloween candy? Come on. You're already too sweet."
"Only to you."
"Now that's not true and you know it."
"Hey now - I have a reputation to uphold."
"Well ... " She pauses as he slides his arms around her waist, looking up at him suggestively through her lashes. "I might be convinced to keep what I know to myself ... "
It's an old game - one that he knows all the moves to. Forgetting where they are - they really might as well still be teenagers - he's just about to back her further into the bedroom when she squeaks and pulls back.
"Come on, don't distract me! I've got to find the camera and check the batteries." She heads off in the direction of the living room, calling back over her shoulder. "My dads want us to send pictures."
He laughs. "Like your dads have any shortage of Halloween pictures ... "
March 2010
"Oh, my God. What is this?"
They've mostly been quiet as they sit on her bed and sort through the boxes of memorabilia she dragged upstairs from the 'Rachel Berry museum' in the basement, the silence broken every now and then by her pausing to show him something particularly interesting, or him asking a question. His mouth feels too dry, that stupid tape burning a hole in his pocket. He's stalling, he knows - but halfway hoping, against his common sense, that maybe her dads have an old photo of Shelby stashed away somewhere, where they can just stumble over it and he can feign shock. The photo album he's just unearthed momentarily distracts him, however.
She scrambles to look over his shoulder at the album he's just opened. Affixed to the page is a photo of a young girl, in a red wig and a red dress, clutching a stuffed dog. Rachel as 'Annie,' Halloween 1999 it reads.
She squeals. "You weren't supposed to see those!"
"Come on, that's ADORABLE," he says, only half teasing as he leans in to kiss her nose.
She blushes and smiles up at him shyly. "Halloween is my favorite holiday," she confesses.
"Dressing up. Playing a character," he surmises.
The way she lights up, nodding enthusiastically, tells him he got it in one. "Of course! When else do you have the excuse to put on another character for an entire night, in front of such a varied audience, and practice improv? It's a wonderful acting exercise."
He swallows back the sick feeling that rises in his throat at the phrase 'acting exercise,' turning the page of the album instead, to what looks like a very young Rachel standing in between her dads, in a red dress, red cowboy hat, and boots.
"Annie Get Your Gun?" he guesses. She nods. "I'm sensing a theme, here," he teases.
She laughs when he turns to the next page, where she is in a red and blue plaid shirt with denim overalls over it. "I had just seen Oklahoma! for the first time that year, and decided Laurey was one of my dream roles."
"Some of those are a little subtle for a general audience." He gestures to the photo of her on the facing page, in a white dress with a red sash. "Maria, obviously. But not everyone would know that."
"A demonstration did the trick," she shoots back. "Everyone's seen West Side Story - even if they don't know the characters on sight, they remember 'Tonight.'"
He can't help laughing at the image of a tiny version of Rachel performing a pitch-perfect rendition of Carol Lawrence's iconic number on some stranger's porch step in Lima.
It's even funnier because when he was eight, his uncle had to drag him off the front step of some prick in Akron who threatened to call the cops when he launched into 'One Song Glory' when asked for the tenth time that night what his costume was supposed to be.
He had a bit of a thing for Halloween himself growing up, okay?
Not that he'll tell her that - give her that one more piece of evidence that they're perfectly matched. It's already killing him to know what he'll be losing when Shelby inevitably orders him back to Carmel. Better that he is the only one who has to suffer with it.
Her watches her as, smiling to herself, she rummages in the box for the next photo album, absently humming the opening bars of 'Tomorrow.'
He wishes Shelby had never said a word to him, never given him that tape that he's going to have to plant in the box when she's not looking.
Right now, tomorrow is the last thing he wants to happen.
"This year is special and you know it," Rachel says, coming back into the room with the camera in hand.
"No arguments here," he agrees, taking it from her and popping open the bottom casing to ensure the batteries are, in fact, loaded. "We'll take enough for your dads to have a whole album if they want it."
"I'm kind of surprised you didn't already send them pictures from the trial run at the costume shop," she teases. "The two of you nearly closed the place down."
"Hey, there's a lot of thought that goes into the selection of a Halloween costume," he defends.
"Yeah. It's important to pick something that reflects you." She smiles a little, sadly, and he knows exactly the Halloween she's thinking of.
October 2011
She works to keep her showface carefully in place - maybe if no one can tell how bored she is, she won't be engaged in another drunken conversation.
She doesn't know anyone else in the room. A friend of Finn's from the football team, who graduated from McKinley two years earlier, is throwing the costume party; so theoretically, she supposes she's shared classes with a few of the others here. But they're all either football players or cheerleaders; two groups she decidedly doesn't mix with outside of the choir room.
She'd tried a few sips of whatever punch concoction was being served, the sour taste making her wrinkle her nose before opting for a diet coke. It's already obvious that she will be their designated driver home from this house near Ohio State. Finn is playing a game of beer pong on the other side of the room - he'd checked on her a few times, but when she'd brightly assured him she was fine, he'd become wrapped up in the game, luckily too unperceptive to pick up on her fake smile.
She pastes that smile back on her face when someone brushes behind her, trying to force the idea out of her head that staying in for Kurt, Blaine, and Mercedes' offer of a pajama party and scary movies would have been a preferable evening.
"Nice try," a low voice behind her murmurs. "You're just as bored here as I am."
A shiver goes up her spine at the entirely-unexpected voice. "Jesse."
Reflexively, she looks across the room, trying to pick Finn out in the crowd - knowing this evening will go from bad to worse if the two cross paths.
"First of all, Hudson is so wrapped up in his game, he hasn't looked this way in half an hour, and you know it. Secondly - this is a costume party."
She looks back over her shoulder, and can't stop the genuine smile. The Phantom. Of course.
"Great choice," she mutters wryly.
He smiles with an expression she can't place, looking her up and down. "And you. ... Interesting choice."
She feels uncomfortably warm, resisting the urge to reach up and straighten the cat ears on top of her head. "Interesting? Look around." She gestures around the room. "It's hardly unique. I blend right in."
He nods, not disagreeing. "I just would have expected something ... different, from you." He glances across the room, then inclines his head in the direction of the door. "Come with me a minute." Not in the mood to put up a fight in public, she lets him lead her outside to the driveway.
She knew he was back in Ohio, of course - Dustin Goolsby's firing in the wake of Vocal Adrenaline's first loss in eight years had made headlines in the show choir world, followed up, of course, by the news of his replacement. But she hasn't actually seen Jesse since Nationals in May. Upon returning home, she'd agonized in front of her computer for the entire weekend, trying to compose some sort of explanation to him, some draft of an apology that makes sense. After three days of pacing in circles around her desk, she'd typed in his address and hit 'send' before she could back out again. No reply.
"What are you doing here, Jesse?" she asks, crossing her arms across her chest to ward off the late-October chill.
He shrugs. "A friend of a friend asked me along. I needed to get out of the routine this weekend." His lips curve up in a vaguely self-mocking smirk. "And I couldn't very well go to any party anyone from Carmel was throwing. Kids from the current team will undoubtedly wind up at those. Student-coach conflict, and all that."
"Like that ever stopped you," she mutters.
His self-control visibly frays at that. "Am I going to keep apologizing for that forever?"
"You're one to talk about accepting apologies," she retorts. "I made a mistake, and I did my best to explain it to you, and didn't hear a word back."
"Like I didn't get a word back after we kissed at McKinley and you proceeded to ignore my texts for a week?" he snaps. "You made your feelings on the matter perfectly, clear, Rachel. What was I supposed to do?"
"You could have fought for me," she hisses.
"Is that what you wanted?" His voice is low, dangerous. Really, she'd feel better if he were yelling. "For me to fight for you the way Hudson did? What part, exactly, won you over? When he ignored his own prom date to try to punch yours out, because he was upset someone else showed an interest in his toy? When he didn't respect your wishes to put the competition first? When he threw Nationals by kissing you on stage after you told him again to back off? When he rubbed it in my face like you were some prize he won? Because if that was what you wanted, Rachel, then I guess you chose right. You'll never get that behavior from me, because I respect you."
"Jesse - "
"You're applying to NYADA, Rachel." He states it as a fact, and she wonders for a split second how he knew. "What's Finn going to do in New York? Just look at you now. You're at this party, where you clearly don't want to be, dressed in some costume that you think makes you fit in. You're going to bury more parts of yourself to please him, and you'll wind up losing your dreams and resenting each other."
Everything he's saying - she'd be lying if she claimed it hadn't crossed her mind from time to time in the last six months. She thought she'd laid it out clearly for Finn - senior year, and then ... ? But he hasn't mentioned it since, and she wonders if he's in denial as much as she is. It's so uncomfortable to hear from someone else's mouth.
She knows someone who cared less about her would be trying to make her feel better.
"What do you want, Jesse?" she asks softly.
"I want to see you going after your dreams - "
"No," she interrupts. "What do you want? You think I'm losing focus - but what about you? You were going to be a star, Jesse. I know you're talented enough to do it. But now you're back in Ohio, coaching a high school show choir?"
He stubbornly averts his eyes. "Plans don't always work out. I blew my shot. You can't blow yours."
She shakes her head. "No. I can't believe that you would just give up. You're not going to read me the riot act, then pretend like it doesn't matter. You can't accuse me of forgetting who I am, not when ... not when I see you doing the same."
He stares at her, then slowly lets out a breath, smiling sadly. "I'm ... a little messed up right now, Rachel."
She doesn't feel quite brave enough to meet his eyes. "That makes two of us, then."
He sighs and opens his arms in invitation. She deliberates a moment. She feels incredibly stupid, and broken, and Finn - her boyfriend - is the person she is supposed to want to make it better. But the only person who understands it is here in front of her - wearing a mask, literally and figuratively, but just as broken as she is. She gives up, stepping closer to wrap her arms around his waist, leaning her head against his shoulder as his arms close around her.
She's glad he's wearing his customary black. No one is going to be able to tell she cried on his shoulder. He keeps her close, head head tucked under his chin, as he hums softly - the melody is familiar, but she can't quite place it.
"Part of me knows you're right. And part of me thinks if I keep holding on to the fantasy long enough, it'll work out," she admits, feeling awful when Jesse tenses against her. She looks up at him. "That's not going to be enough, is it?"
He smiles at her, sadly. "You tell me."
Moving slowly, as though afraid to startle her, he brings his hands up to cup her face. The way he is looking at her, she thinks for sure he will kiss her. But what he does next is just as shockingly intimate. With slow, careful fingers, he brushes the tears off her face, then straightens her cat ears. "There. Good as new."
She doesn't let him step away. "Almost." When he looks at her quizzically, she reaches up, to gently tug his mask back into proper place - then brushes away that tell-tale wetness under his eye. "There."
He turns his head to kiss her palm thankfully - her heart thudding in her chest when he lingers a moment - then leans in.
"You're not meant to blend in," he whispers against her ear.
He releases her and steps back. She hesitates, knowing in a moment he'll be gone again.
"Jesse?" she calls after him. He stops and turns, lifting one eyebrow in question. She smiles a little shyly. "There were a lot of costumes at the store that I thought ... girls might wear to a party like this. I ... went with the cat instead of the butterfly because I could at least pretend I was Grizabella in this."
He smiles. "I'll see you soon, Rachel Berry."
And then he's gone - in typically dramatic fashion.
She stands in the driveway, hugging herself for a moment, before turning to go back inside - just wanting to find Finn and get out of here. Suddenly, the tune he was humming snaps into her mind, crystal-clear again.
I remember the time I knew what happiness was.
He wraps his arms around her from behind. "You weren't completely out of your mind." He moves her hair aside to softly press a kiss to her neck. "The cat ears were pretty hot."
She shivers at the touch, but still turns around in his arms to slap his chest playfully. "Behave, St. James."
"Same to you, St. James."
She grins at the familiar repartee, then blinks up at him as something else crosses her mind. "Oh, no. Kurt had an early deadline at the magazine tonight, right? He's going to be home by the time we make it to that end of the neighborhood?"
"Relax. Overplanner," he teases gently, fondly. "They're not going to miss this."
"Even if we might have scarred him for life on Halloween?"
He grins. "Please. I think we've learned to be a little more grown up."
October 2012
"I can't believe you dragged us out in this," Kurt growls, shaking the water out of his hair.
The worst of the storm has died down by Wednesday evening, but their apartment is still dark, the streets of New York are still waterlogged, and the subway is still closed down - so they'd walked ten blocks. She wasn't going to let them sit at home in a dark apartment, not when they'd already planned this weeks ago. Blaine came to visit, and he and Kurt clearly need to have some fun to help them get through this rough patch in their relationship. Santana desperately needs to be distracted following her break-up. They already have their costumes, and the Callbacks costume party is still on - and sounds like too much fun to pass up.
Jesse is the only one who understands her irrational love of Halloween. Tonight, in between Santana grumbling in Spanish and arguing lightheartedly with Blaine and Kurt, she catches him smiling at her with that look in his eyes that warms up a funny place inside her.
Other times, he's watching her with a different look in his eyes - the black catsuit does not leave much to the imagination - and she feels herself flushing all the way to the roots of her blonde wig.
"Come on," Blaine is saying, straightening Kurt's matching black eyepatch - leftover props from the unfortunate slushy incident with the Warblers last year made for easy costuming. "I think this is going to be fun." He glances over at Rachel and Jesse. "Although I'm not sure how tasteful Sandy jokes are going to be considering the storm that just blew through here."
She laughs, pushing the door open. Santana, who got impatient with Kurt trying to fix his hair in the vestibule, is already inside - easy to spot in her red dress, and flirting up a storm. The boy she's talking to turns around, lifts a hand in recognition. Rachel smiles and waves back at Brody, happy that that awkward little phase is over and she's got an actual friend. Kurt almost immediately drags Blaine off to introduce him to someone, leaving her standing on the edge of the crowd with Jesse.
After they'd kept things civil at Nationals, she'd been shocked to run into him at a bookstore that first weekend she had gone to New York after graduation to check out the dorms. He'd saved what he could from coaching, quit his job after the school year was over, and moved to the city to try his luck auditioning. He surely notices that her ring finger is bare, and that she doesn't mention Finn - but he doesn't pry and ask.
It's unspoken between them that they are going to be mature about things this time around - and either one of them saying "I told you so" would just ruin that.
They kept in touch all summer, and when she moves for good in August, he's there to help drag her things into the building. She offers to buy him a cup of coffee as thanks, and they fall into an easy pattern, meeting up a few times a week, rushing for cheap tickets on the weekends, dissecting the performances late into the night. They finish each other's sentences, catch each other's eye and crack up. He complains to her about his parents, and she cries on his shoulder when her relationship with Brody - a blatant rebound, she candidly admits - ends. A month into the school year, Kurt comes to New York and moves in with her, and - although there's a good deal of snark on all sides - they become a comfortable group of three.
Like he knows she's thinking about him, she suddenly feels Jesse's hands settle on her shoulders, rubbing her upper arms. He gives her an innocent look when she turns to look over her shoulder. "Just trying to warm you up. Kurt's right - it was kind of a brutal walk."
"Well how else were we supposed to get here?" she teases. "'Greased Lightning'?"
"Is that your way of telling me you're getting in character for karaoke later?"
"What do you think?" She gestures to the stage, where a handful of NYADA sophomores she recognizes from one of her classes are laughing their way through 'The Time Warp.' "Think we can take them?"
He grins. "You're on."
Several hours later, they're still high on applause from their - multiple - turns at the mic when they stagger through the door of her apartment. Kurt, Blaine, and Santana elected to stop two blocks back for a quick cup of coffee to ward off the chill - the two of them decided they didn't need any caffeine added to the mix.
"I'm beginning to think we should have gone with Rent instead of Grease," Rachel quips, hunting for the matches to light the candles she and Kurt had lined along the edge of the counter a few days ago.
"Turn around," he urges quietly when she settles on the couch next to him.
She acquiesces, wondering what he has in mind, then smiles softly when she feels him beginning to undo her hair from where she'd braided and pinned it up on top of her head under the Sandy wig. She closes her eyes, relaxing under his hands. Gentle. He's patient with her - so patient, she thinks.
Her mind is curiously calm when it dawns on her that she is going to have to be the one to make the first move, then.
So when she feels the last pin come out of her hair, she turns to meet his familiar eyes, leaning in to kiss him slowly, deliberately.
They've kissed before. During the first two incarnations of their relationship, of course. Friendly kisses on the cheek in the last two months, like you'd do with a best friend. Or a kiss on the forehead when one or the other of them falls asleep at the other's place. Or stage kisses while running lines with their group of friends.
She doesn't think he'll disagree if she calls this one different, though. They're not children anymore - there are no more secrets and half-truths. Neither one of them is running scared this time.
"Are you saying what I hope you're saying?" he whispers against her mouth.
She nods slightly, smiling, knowing that what she's about to say is a little irreverent, but perfect for them. "You're the one that I want."
His eyes are soft at the significance of that statement, but his mouth curves up in a familiar smirk. "Finally," he murmurs, leaning in to kiss her again - deeper this time.
"I'm sorry," she whispers when they come up for air, "that it took me so long - "
He silences her with a finger against her lips. "I would have waited - " He kisses her softly on her forehead, " - for a hundred years - " her nose, " - though a hundred rebound guys - "
He finds her mouth again, and after that, there is no more talking. They're so wrapped up in each other, they don't hear the keys fumbling in the lock. It's only when the big, noisy rolling door of their apartment slides open that Rachel bolts upright, grabbing Jesse's discarded jacket to cover herself more properly.
"Es hora sobre maldita," Santana mutters, pushing past the other two boys to stalk into the bedroom. Blaine has a giant grin on his face. Kurt just stares, aghast.
"Not on OUR COUCH," he sighs.
"Much as I loved that Halloween, I think this year might top it," Rachel says.
He smiles, agreeing. "Speaking of being ready for this Halloween, should we go check on things?"
"Sure. Just let me finish getting ready."
She snatches the black pointed hat from where it's been sitting on the dresser, setting it on her head with a flourish. He rolls his eyes fondly.
"We said we'd stop dressing up a few years ago when we all hit our thirties," he reminds her.
She waves a hand in dismissal. "YOU all said. I agreed under protest. Besides," she continues, leading him down the hallway, "this one's a special occasion."
At three, going on four next March, Melody St. James already has a fiercely independent streak - which surprises no one - insisting on getting herself ready for her trick-or-treating debut. Some of the more complicated Orwellian concepts of Wicked at lost on her at this age - but she understands very clearly that Glinda wears a sparkly dress and gets a star-shaped wand. When she sees them at the door, she hops down from the end of her bed where she's been standing and runs across the room in a flurry of tulle and glitter, her blue eyes wide and anxious. "Daddy, do I look okay?"
He intercepts her mid-run to swing her around in midair, making her giggle furiously. "Perfect," he pronounces. "You wear that better than Megan Hilty ever did."
"Who's that?" Melody wrinkles up her nose, her Broadway education still a work in progress.
"Someone daddy had a little crush on a LONG time ago - " Rachel teases -
" - Who is clearly NOT as pretty as you or mommy," he finishes firmly.
"Wise answer," Rachel responds playfully, before leaning in to address their daughter. "What do you say, Mel? We'll visit a few buildings for candy and then go to Uncle Kurt and Uncle Blaine's for hot chocolate?"
Melody cheers, wriggling out of his arms to dash out her bedroom door. He goes to catch her before she can consider jimmying the apartment door open - she definitely inherited her mother's impatience - but is brought up short when he notes that Rachel is hiding something behind her back. He narrows his eyes at her in suspicion.
"Not so fast," Rachel grins mischievously, producing the scarecrow hat from behind her back.
He should have known better than to think she'd let him get out of this. He scowls at her in protest, but takes the hat and yanks it down over his curls, ignoring her satisfied smirk.
(She's had him wrapped around her finger since she was fifteen, and this is not the first time he's called his dignity into question.)
"Daddy looks like Fiyero!" Mel chimes in from the doorway, making him laugh.
"Daddy might know a few of Fiyero's lines," Rachel comments, winking at him.
He kisses her on the cheek - keeping things chaste in front of their very observant three-year-old - then grins. "Daddy's VERY glad mommy isn't wearing the green body paint this time."
"I looked great in green and you know it," she retorts.
He rolls his eyes fondly, holding up his hands in surrender. "Come on, my two gorgeous girls - it's going to be dark soon - "
As she runs to grab the camera where she'd set it on the dresser, Rachel allows herself a split second to count her lucky stars as she hears their laughter floating in from the front hallway.
This really might be the best Halloween ever.