Rachel didn't bother to tell any of her friends what she was doing. She spoke to the Bushwick apartment manager after classes one day when she knew the rest were at work and starting going through the apartment filling her now empty suitcases with her books, movies, and records.

She felt kind of sneaky about it and started wondering how much she could take before they realized she was moving out. It would be especially difficult because Santana constantly went through everyone's things. On the other hand she always took her most precious items with her because she didn't want them to destroy anything she'd left.

On Thursday however she, Mark and Russ came by and stripped her room bare before heading to her storage unit that held all the things she'd taken from her home in Ohio after it sold. There was barely room for her in her tiny apartment once everything was moved in and she resigned herself to slowly going through and giving things away. Mark pointed out where the recycling bins were but otherwise left her to it until it was time in sing at The Wooden Fish. Russ was expecting a large crowd and Mark was bouncing. Privately both men would feel a lot better about Rachel walking through Hell's Kitchen at night with Mark's larger than life presence beside her.

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Santana did her usual perusal of Rachel's things after she left. Going through her trash and rolling her eyes at the perfectly arranged everything. Nothing out of place. Ever. Rachel was so boring. She stole some emergency chocolate the girl had tucked away under her mattress then went to watch reality TV for the rest of the night.

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Mercedes picked up the mail and casually flipped through it as she climbed the stairs. She was a bit grumpy as Rachel would be moving from Elliot's apartment to Sam's in a few days and she was not happy about that arrangement at all. Little bitch didn't think she saw the way she was eyeing her man up she was wrong. Coming up on Rachel at the apartment to find her curled up on the couch with him while he played his video games. Her in her little shorty shorts and some man's shirt on her. She didn't think Mercedes knew what she was about?

On the other hand Santana refused to deal with Rachel for more than two weeks at a time. Sending her to Elliot's for a week and then Sam's let them all unwind a little without Rachel's grating presence. Seriously she did those ridiculous vocal exercises every day! At 5 am in the morning. When decent people were trying to sleep. She tossed the mail on the tabletop with an almost malicious glee in the face of the fact that when Rachel was there she got the mail and separated and stacked it all neatly beside every one's plates. She walked over to pour her morning cocoa puffs ignoring the letter addressed to Rachel marked urgent.

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Kurt gathered the left over letters for Rachel after a few days and tossed them through her curtain carelessly. The urgent marked letter from their apartment manager slipped unnoticed under her bed. Kurt groused at a tub clogged with dark hair wondering if it was left over from Rachel or Santana or Mercedes but he cleaned it out before taking a nice hot bath. He was going over to Blaine's later that week to make sure Rachel kept her freakish hands away from his boyfriend. He frowned as the memory of Blaine's face as he pulled back from Rachel's kiss played through his head again. The way those wide hazel eyes had stared down at her so softly before he'd glanced over her head at him, his face went blank and he declared that he was 100% gay. The suspicious way he'd went to the bathroom immediately afterwards. Blaine was bi as much as Kurt hated to admit it and Rachel was much more dangerous to Blaine's fidelity than Sam or the heterosexual male models Blaine lived with in his opinion.

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Rachel spotted the letter after Russ and Mark had carried her mattress out. She'd already filled out a change of address form of course but still she opened the letter and read the notice of her dissolution of the lease and the need for Kurt and the others to come by and fill out the forms necessary to transfer the apartment. She left the notice in the center of the kitchen table and finished packing her remaining belongings up.

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"Hello Gorgeous!" Rachel gave the packed room a huge smile as they whistled and cheered her ascension to the stage. "Okay everyone I'm starting with another thank you to Russ, the owner and bartender, and our bouncer, Mark, who is my new super for all their help. Most of you probably wouldn't know it to look at me but this time last week I was kind of homeless." At the wave of aww and sounds of concern came from the audience some of which she saw were her cast mates who looked very concerned as Rachel hadn't mentioned this to them at all.

"But Russ called Mark who found me a space in his building and they helped me get moved in so a big hand to these two wonderful men. This song is for you." Rachel waited for the applause to die down before humming a second and breaking into a heartbreakingly beautiful rendition of Find Out Who Your Friends Are. There were more than a few wet eyes after she was done but Rachel gave them a big smile and explained she was taking requests at the cost of a beer from the bartender.

Rachel sung a wide variety of songs only getting stumped once when someone asked her to sing something from Nightwish and she didn't know the band but she promised to learn the song during the week and if they'd come back next week it'd be the first song she sung.

Rachel had made a colorful tip jar covered in stars to replace Russ' hat and placed a notepad and pencil for people to make their requests at the bar. The notepad made its way around the room before returning to her fully filled out. After five songs she took a break and drunk some hot lemon tea Russ had brewing behind the bar at her request. She sang the whole night until only a few people were left and Russ was closing the bar.

She screwed the lid on the tip jar and took it over to Russ where he had a bank bag ready to let her empty it again. "I can't believe I got so many tips. Umm do you need like a cover charge or something? How does this work?"

"I pay you to come sing remember?" Russ put another $100 in the bank bag before zipping it up and hanging it back to her with a smile. "Great job with the song requests prompting people to buy drinks and the drink requests. Good thing you like the high end stuff."

"But I didn't drink any of it. You put my tea in the shot glasses." Rachel thought that was clever. The waitress started bring her the drinks and she'd been leery of drinking and singing but the first time she'd thrown the shot back she'd been surprised to find it was warm and contained her lemon tea.

"Doesn't matter. Customer was happy they got to buy you a drink and I charged them like they'd bought you a Crispy Crunch." Russ chuckled. "If you want I can keep track of how much you get bought and when you reach a whole bottle of the stuff I'll send a bottle of each home with you?"

Rachel giggled. "Sure. Keep track for me and when I get through those bottles at home you can give me another. Should only take me a year or three. I don't really drink that much."

"You got a deal." Russ chuckled. Thursday's were looking to turn into his most lucrative night. He'd promoted Rachel on his Facebook page pretty heavily throughout the week and posted on promotion sites as well. The joint had been packed and he'd raked it in.

"Get our girl home safe hey Mark."

Mark tucked Rachel's little body under one huge arm and ambled out of the bar with her as Russ locked the door behind them.

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Across town Kurt and Mercedes blew into Blaine and Sam's apartment with their faces wreathed in tight smiles expecting to see Rachel curled up in a chair playing on her phone and showing off her ridiculously long legs but instead walked into a COD marathon while Blaine was making something in the kitchen that contained a lot of cheese and more than a few peppers.

Mercedes got a head nod from Sam who was concentrating on the screen and she took a seat on the side with her arms crossed and an unhappy look on her face. She'd gotten in front of the TV one time that they'd been playing one of these games and discovered that Thomas and Jonathan could get pretty into their game. When she'd caused them to lose both men had banned her from the apartment for a month solid before letting Sam invite her back. Now she just silently seethed.

Kurt headed to the kitchen. "That's a lot of cheese."

"Oh yeah. Beautiful isn't it?" Blaine grinned as he made the layered dip. "It's cheat day."

"I see. What's our little vegan miss have to say about all that dairy?" Kurt looked around but he didn't see Rachel's suitcases.

"She'd probably wrinkle her nose at us if she was here."

"She isn't?"

"Nope. I haven't talked to her at all this week. She texted me last Thursday asking if you guys were still here but nothing since then." Blaine was distracted as he sliced olives and peppers. He appeared to be making his own homemade salsa in a pot on the stove. "You know she goes kind of radio silent while she's at Elliot's."

"Yeah but it's late I expected her to be here by now."

"She knows its cheat day. She probably stopped off to get something she can eat."

Kurt nodded but nonetheless he was a little worried. It was dark. Rachel didn't travel in the rough neighborhoods after dark unless she was with one of them. Kurt pulled out his phone and shot her a text message.

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Mark dropped Rachel off at her door with a friendly kiss to the top of her head. Rachel smiled at him and opened the seven locks to get inside. Once she was inside and had locked all nine locks she knocked a little shave and a haircut on the door and Mark responded before finally leaving. He wasn't leaving anything to chance especially since Rachel had a rather large wad of money with her.

Rachel turned and slowly walked among the towering boxes to her bed and fell back on it. She was alone and she waited for the silence to press in on her the way it used to when she was in high school and her dads were away on a business trip or a cruise. But instead she heard the sounds of cars outside her cracked window. The light coming in from the window was muted but still there. It reminded her that although she was alone inside this small space there were millions of people just outside her door. Mark was downstairs and Russ was down the street. The rest of her friends were just a subway ride away. Rachel smiled happily. She loved New York City.

She got up to shower and dug her large I heart NY shirt out to sleep in before fixing herself a cup of mint tea and finally crawling into bed at four am for a few hours nap. Her first class wasn't until ten and living so much closer to campus meant she got to sleep a lot later. She forgot to check her phone at all.

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Kurt and Mercedes were getting ready to go. Sam was trying to coax a kiss from an upset Mercedes while Kurt was checking his phone for a reply from Rachel with a worried look matched by Blaine.

"I'm calling Starchild. Maybe she decided to stay another night."

"Maybe he murdered her and dumped the body in the Hudson." Mercedes groused. She was completely not in the mood to be worried about little Miss Rachel Berry. She bet Sam and his boys wouldn't have ignored her all night.

Sam winced. "That's not very nice Mercedes. I know you don't get along with her but Rachel's not that bad. I live with her too sometimes remember? We don't have a problem with her. If you and Kurt could get over being jealous of her we'd let her stay here all the time."

"What did you say? I am NOT jealous of that little hussy." Mercedes put her fists on her hips and was about to launch into a tirade that had Thomas and Jonathan rolling their eyes and heading for their rooms.

"Starchild said he hasn't seen Rachel since last Thursday." Kurt's voice cut her off. He hung up the phone and looked down at his text to Rachel which still hadn't gotten a reply. "He said he got a new roommate. A permanent one and that there was no room for Rachel."

"Well I saw her Tuesday at NYADA. It was down the hallway before classes but she waved at me. So I know she was okay as of then." Blaine commented.

"Santana would have told us if she didn't show up to work." Mercedes pointed out. One of the reasons Santana insisted on Rachel staying gone for two weeks was the fact that she had to deal with her at work as well.

"Why isn't she answering my texts then?" Kurt asked in a somewhat panicked voice.

"Not to go out on a limb here or anything but maybe she's pissed at you?" Jonathan said. He was grabbing a couple of bottles of water from the fridge.

"Why would she be pissed at me?" Kurt asked.

"Uh gee let me think." Jonathan in a voice that suggested he thought it should be pretty damn obvious. "You kick her out of an apartment she pays rent on for two weeks at a time. Then Starchild or whatever the fuck his name is kicks her out when she pays rent there too then you guys come over here like a couple of jealous bitches so she can't come here immediately. She may have had to find a hostel or slept at the theater or something. That's some pretty good reasons to be pissed. If Thomas and others tried to kick me out of here, when I pay rent? Fuck that shit. I ain't going nowhere. But I tell ya one thing. Lease ain't in my name. I'd be gone if you treated me like that and fuck ya all trying to come up with the other part of rent. Maybe all y'all finally pushed little Rachie too far." He finished in an obnoxious tone of voice that suggested he thought they all were idiots before tossing the other bottle to Thomas who'd been standing in the hallway listening. Thomas gave them an unimpressed look before following Jonathan down the hall.

Blaine pulled out his phone. He was starting to feel really bad. But it'd all gotten routine. Rachel would annoy Santana, Mercedes or Kurt pass the breaking point and she'd head to Elliot's for a week. During that week she typically didn't talk to them at all something Santana suggested to give them all a break from her before she descended on the models. Then she'd live with the models for a week the most annoying part of that being that Mercedes and Kurt visited constantly and dropped in unannounced all that week before telling Rachel to come home with them. Elliot had messed up the routine though and because of the week long radio silence Rachel hadn't felt like she couldn't ask any of them for help.

"Okay look. Kurt and I will hunt her down at school tomorrow. If she hasn't answered us yet she's not going to. You guys go on home. We'll talk tomorrow. Jon's right. This has got to stop. We're not being very good friends to Rachel." Blaine told them as he sighed down at his phone.

Sam frowned and held the door open. Now Mercedes went in for a kiss but Sam ignored her. He was really worried about Rachel now. He knew what it was like to be homeless and he wouldn't wish it on anyone. That fact that Rachel had technically been moving from place to place for over a year now bothered him a lot once he started thinking about it.

Kurt and Mercedes went home to find Santana was using her one night off from the show on a one night stand. She'd thrown them a text letting them know not to wait up and didn't that hit them the wrong way. No one was waiting up for Rachel. No one ever did. They each went to their rooms ignoring the piece of paper on the table.