Thank you for all the lovely comments I got on the first chapter. Some people asked if this story will be completely in Rachel's point of view. The short answer is that it won't, but it also won't be an even split between Rachel and Santana's viewpoint either.
Much thanks to my lovely beta, quasisuspect, for taking time out of studying for the bar exam to help me with this chapter.
Rachel is grateful that the first interview is for a magazine. The idea of being on camera with Santana sitting next to her in a leather jacket with her hair wavy and her makeup being the perfect shade of smoky gray to pull out the deep brown of her eyes makes Rachel feel completely inferior.
Of course, Kenzie, her manager, has made sure she was prepared as well, but she's anything but comfortable in the five inch heels and skintight jeans that she literally had to wrangle herself into. She knows the look is not effortless on her, not in the way that everything seems to be on Santana.
She sits up straight as they wait for Michael Dempsey, the reporter from PlayBill that is supposed to be meeting them for lunch. Santana taps away at her cell phone, ignoring Rachel sitting beside her completely.
Finally, a man in dark rimmed glasses and a gray suit weaves through the restaurant tables and drops his messenger bag next to the table before turning to greet them. Rachel stands up to shake his hand enthusiastically and he smiles widely at her before turning to Santana. Santana barely looks up from her phone and it takes all the strength Rachel has to not kick her under the table to force her to get her ass into gear.
They order food - Rachel's team reminded her about thirty times to order the least messy salad possible - and make small talk as they wait for their food to arrive. Michael is bubbly and Rachel has a feeling that she could talk about old Broadway shows with him for hours without getting bored. Santana looks unamused in general, but Rachel is glad to see that she at least tucked her phone into her purse for the time being.
As soon as the waiter drops off their plates, Rachel can feel the change in Michael's demeanor, from warm and friendly to serious reporter. Knots tie themselves tight in the pit of her stomach, and the idea of even taking one bite of her food makes her sick. She steals glances at Santana, who is picking at her own salad, taking tiny, polite bites in between sips of her water.
"So you two both went to the same high school, starred in the same glee club, and then moved in together when you headed out here?" Michael asks casually, though Rachel is acutely aware of the recorder he's placed on the table next to his untouched food.
Rachel feels the burn of Santana's eyes on the side of her head, obviously hoping that Rachel will field the question for both of them. Santana is her understudy. The only reason she's even at this meeting is that Rupert thinks it would be good press for the show as a whole to have this unique backstory. She's stuck pretending that they made it here together, not that Santana waltzed into her dream and has been sticking to her like an unwanted barnacle ever since she showed up unannounced at the door of the loft.
She swallows her bite of salad and clears her throat before answering.
"We did go to high school together back in Ohio," Rachel confirms, forcing herself to stick to answering the questions directly. With a little digging, Michael could find out everything about their murky past, but Rachel is willing to answer honestly without giving too much away. "We were in the same glee club for the majority of high school, though Santana left to form an all-girls group during our senior year. When they lost to us at Sectionals, we welcomed their members to join forces with our club again and we were able to come to a compromise that allowed us to work together and win Nationals."
Michael hums under his breath for a minute, jotting some notes down onto a yellow legal notepad.
"How did you both end up in New York?" he follows up, pen ready in his right hand as he grabs a quick bite of his food with his left one.
Rachel pauses, giving Santana an opportunity to answer. She knows how she got here; it had always been her plan. But why was Santana here when Los Angeles would have given her more opportunities for chasing fame?
"Well, I can answer for myself at least," Rachel finally says, her cheeks burning under Santana's unwavering gaze. "I always knew that New York was where I was meant to end up since the first time my dads brought me here to visit when I was in middle school. I looked into acting schools, and NYADA ended up being the fit that I had always imagined. My audition process was rocky, but ultimately I got my acceptance letter and I moved out here to pursue my education and career."
The ball is in Santana's court now; Rachel isn't going to answer for her on how she ended up here when it isn't something Santana has ever bothered telling her about in the first place.
Michael looks pointedly at Santana, who takes her time chewing and takes a large gulp of her water before she even looks at him.
"For me, coming to New York was just for the adventure. I actually went to college for a semester on a full cheerleading scholarship, but life on a in Kentucky just wasn't working for me. So I packed up and left. I had liked New York when we came for Nationals a couple of years ago, so I hopped on the train and started a new life."
This seems to pique Michael's interest. Rachel's story is cookie cutter: a young girl from a small town with huge Broadway dreams. Santana is different than what he's used to and it makes Rachel envious for a moment that she isn't more unique.
"It's not the first time we've heard of someone moving to New York to take a chance on making it big with no real backup plan. Did you have anything drawing you to New York beyond having visited once in high school?"
Rachel can see that he's fishing for an epic friendship story, of how Santana knew that she could team up with Rachel and they could conquer the world together. Telling him that would be a complete lie. Rachel knows that the only reason Santana ever moved in with her and Kurt was purely out of convenience due to her impromptu move to the city. She wants this interview to go well, but not at the stake of her being a liar marring her budding reputation.
"Knowing Berry, er, Rachel, and our other roommate, Kurt, definitely helped," Santana says, obviously trying to appease him without going too deeply into the truth. Her eyes flit to meet Rachel's, almost like she's hoping for approval. Rachel looks away and pushes some lettuce around on her dish.
"Rumor has it that your other roommate, Kurt, is also a student at NYADA. Is that right?"
"Yes, Kurt and I both applied during our senior year, and Ms. Tibideaux decided to take him after letting him perform at the NYADA Winter Showcase in December. To be honest, he really deserved a spot. His original audition was breathtaking."
"And why did you not apply to NYADA as well, Ms. Lopez?" Michael questions, looking like he's excited to dive deeper into Santana's past.
Santana bites her lip for a moment and Rachel doesn't miss the nervous way that her fingers play with the edge of the napkin on her lap.
"Musical theater isn't something I dreamed about from birth. Honestly, until we performed West Side Story during senior year, I had never cared about it at all. But I loved playing Anita in that production and I figured that auditioning for something like Funny Girl would be worth a shot. Before that, the stage had always kind of belonged to Rachel and Kurt. There was no chance that I was going to get in ahead of either of them."
"How does it feel to be playing the understudy to a girl that you admit overshadowed you all through high school as well?"
Rachel internally cringes at Michael's offhand question. Nothing sets Santana off faster than being compared to someone else's talent.
"Well, Michael, I don't think I've ever lived in Rachel's shadow. We have always had very different goals and interests. I was a Nationally ranked cheerleader for the entirety of my high school experience. Glee club was something fun that I did on the side as a break from my athletic pursuits. For Rachel, glee club was pretty much her entire existence. So yeah, maybe I'm performing under her in this production, but I got here because I'm talented and I have potential to grow in an industry that I never even considered as a career option until I moved to New York."
Rachel's jaw nearly drops at how poised Santana remains through her entire response and Michael is eating it up. Santana is this underdog story here. Rachel wouldn't be surprised if this article turns into something about Santana working her way up the ranks into stardom, having come from no musical theater background or training.
It's unfair, but as she's read these magazines for years, Rachel knows that being different sells copies. And she isn't any different than most people starring on Broadway shows these days.
The questions turn towards the production then, and Santana sits back as Rachel rambles on, promoting the show just as she was trained to do. She feels like a deflated balloon, but she maintains her best smile and tries to sound bubbly with excitement over every question he shoots at her.
Finally, the bill is paid and he shakes both of their hands, and slips each of them a business card before he leaves them standing next to one another on the sidewalk outside of the restaurant.
"See you at rehearsal, Berry," Santana comments, her eyes already glued back to her phone as she walks away, leaving Rachel standing there by herself.
She should be grateful that the interview went off without a hitch. The horrible memories of high school with Santana could have easily been dragged out over lunch, leaving their history painted in the print of a publication. In the grand scheme of things, she knows that the interview was successful and that Rupert will be pleased enough with the results. It's her job to keep everybody happy, and so far she's managed to do that.
Yet her heart feels heavy in her chest. Santana basically admitted in that interview that this role isn't even her dream, yet Michael fawned over her like she was something they haven't seen in a lifetime. Performing in Funny Girl is something Rachel has dreamed of since she was three years old. Santana probably didn't even know what the show was about until she was handed her official script a few weeks ago.
She still has over an hour until they're due at rehearsal, but she heads for the theater anyway, figuring that she can at least bask in the quietness of her dressing room until their call time.
Santana is nowhere to be seen when she arrives, and Rachel quickly closes herself in her dressing room before anybody can disturb her. Her feet ache from walking in heels for so many blocks, but it's a relief to yank off the jeans and swap them for yoga pants and an off-the-shoulder NYADA sweatshirt.
Rachel collapses back onto the couch and concentrates on her breathing, counting her breaths until the tightness in her chest starts to subside, only to be left with the rhythm of her thudding heart.
A knock on the dressing room door pulls her out of her dazed state and she bolts upright and runs a hand through her hair before calling for the person to enter. Paolo, the male lead playing Nick Arnstein, is standing there, looking unamused to be performing the task of fetching her when it could have easily been done by a chorus member.
"Uh, hi," she mumbles, yanking her hair up into a quick ponytail and straightening her sweatshirt as she scans the room for her sneakers.
"Rupert wants to go through some of our scenes today rather than work on the choreography. Find Santana too, he wants to run it through with both of you at once so we can move on."
With that, Paolo disappears again, leaving the dressing room door wide open.
Rachel hasn't missed the way that Paolo's eyes appreciate Santana's figure every time she walks out onto the stage. Rachel might look like Fanny, but Santana looks like every guy's wet dream.
She begrudgingly ties her sneakers and goes off in search of Santana in the wings of the stage. Rachel finds her sitting with a few of the background dancers, laughing happily. Most of them ignore her presence as she walks up to their little circle, but Santana's eyes meet hers dead on.
"We're running lines with Paolo today instead of doing choreography," Rachel tells her simply, willing her cheeks to not turn red over feeling the other girls eying her up. She's sure that they're wondering how this teenage girl could be the lead role with Paolo in the first place and it takes all of her focus to keep her back straight under their judgmental gaze.
Santana gives her new friends a simple goodbye and pops up from her spot on the floor before tailing Rachel to meet up with Paolo.
Rachel tries to not be jealous. Hanging out with chorus members might be fun, but everybody in this industry is cutthroat. Santana doesn't need to keep her distance; in reality her role really isn't any more important than those girls' are.
Rachel has everything to lose. So while it sucks to realize that she's not particularly cared for by the cast, she also tries to keep her eye on the prize.
Paolo is standing in the middle of the stage with Rupert as the girls approach, jeans slung low on his hips with his hands buried in his pockets. He looks every bit as seasoned as he did when Rachel did her chemistry read with him for the part, and so far they haven't spent much time rehearsing together at all.
Of course, Rachel has all of her lines memorized - it's a skill that she prides herself greatly on - but she notices Paolo's script is tucked into the back pocket of his jeans, corners dog-eared and pages covered in highlighting and pencil marks.
Santana's script still looks pretty much brand new as she rolls it between her hands as she waits. Rachel thinks of her own copy, which is lying on the vanity in her dressing room, looking worse for wear than Paolo's copy.
Fortunately, Rupert picks a scene that she knows inside and out and he calls her to her mark beside Paolo, leaving Santana to stand awkwardly on the edge of the stage. She catches a quick glimpse of Santana thumbing through her script, looking for the current scene before Paolo steps in front of her view and says his first line.
Paolo may be older and more distinguished in the industry, but Rachel can't deny that they have good chemistry. Rehearsing with him comes easily and she delivers line after line, playing off his little gestures.
Rupert seems pleased after only a few run throughs and tells them to take a five minute break before Santana takes her turn. Paolo's understudy, a dark, broody guy in his 30s, slouches in a seat at the front of the theater, mumbling lines under his breath as he reads his script. She thinks about going to sit next to him, but she doesn't recall his name, so she chooses instead to grab a bottle of water and takes a seat closer to Rupert instead.
Santana looks nervous, Rachel observes, as she heads towards the middle of the stage. Rachel focuses on her little ticks, making mental notes to pay attention to her own gestures in her next run through. Paolo runs a hand through his hair and waits patiently for Santana to be ready.
On Rupert's cue, Paolo delivers his first line effortlessly, and he attempts to look down into Santana's eyes, but she's staring right past him, obviously trying to remember her own line. She fumbles a couple of words, but recovers well, allowing Paolo to continue without starting over. It's not enough that most audiences would realize, but Rachel can't help but feel happy that Santana isn't going to be able to walk right past her into the leading role without a struggle.
Santana's turn takes nearly double the amount of time that Rachel's did, between repeating scenes for screwing up lines and Rupert calling out directions to help her posture, her delivery, and her basic approach to Paolo as a love interest. Paolo seems frustrated at being forced to waste his time training newbies, and finally Rupert releases him for the day, allowing his understudy to step in instead.
Rachel leaves rehearsals on a bit of a high. For the first time since Santana joined the production, Rachel isn't worried about losing her spot to her high school tormentor, and that makes everything feel minutely better, if only for an evening.
The night of happiness quickly turns into a pity party when Rachel gets home to see that Elliott is missing once again. She has a bottle of red wine and her leftovers from lunch, which turns into a one person feast on the coffee table.
She pulls up her email on her phone as she eats, and notices a list of possible events with links to her Google calendar that her publicist and manager have added. Some of them are small affairs, like mall appearances and meet and greets with Funny Girl fan clubs, but others are major interviews that Rupert had mentioned to her.
Her days are filling up faster than she can protest and she notices overlaps with her diner hours on pretty much every weekend from now until the show opens. Even if Alison and her team aren't saying it outright, the message is obvious. If she's going to be a star, she needs to leave the safety net of a menial weekly paycheck behind.
Rachel's a professional, so although it's just a job at a touristy diner in Midtown, she still makes the trek with her uniform newly dry cleaned in order to quit.
Gunther doesn't seem surprised that she's leaving - it was assumed that she would be doing so when the show started anyway - but he seems confused about her big speech about the opportunities this position offered her as he accepts the uniform wrapped in plastic.
It hurts a little to walk out of that back office and through the diner as the girls set up for the lunch rush. The diner was the place that she found out that she would be playing Fanny Brice. It's where her friendship with Santana really blossomed. At this point, it's the only real tie she has to Kurt and Dani since she doesn't see them for band rehearsals or social outings these days.
None of them say goodbye to her as she heads back out onto the street, forcing herself to not glance back.
It's a Sunday and she has no commitments for the day - it's the first time in weeks - so rather than rushing back to the subway for her next stop, she enjoys the bustle of people through midtown and tries to remember the magic that made her fall in love with New York in the first place.
Two blocks into walking around, she realizes that midtown is probably not the place to find magic. There are people standing around in filthy Elmo costumes on every corner, men keep trying to convince her to ride on sightseeing buses, and there's nothing to enjoy besides the hordes of overwhelmed tourists with their cameras and stupidly large backpacks.
She begins to walk away from the crowds, people-watching as she goes. It's without conscious thought that she ends up walking uptown until she's staring at the face of a green witch hanging above the Gershwin Theatre.
Her Broadway dreams had planted roots in her heart way before she snuck onto the stage inside this building with Kurt during their junior year of high school. She still remembers watching YouTube clips of Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth belting out the songs in the original production, trying to match them note-for-note like she could one day fill their shoes.
Broadway had felt like a far off dream on that trip. She never expected that less than three years later, she would be on her own stage with her name lighting up the marquee. That dream life always came with an epic romance and friends that are sitting in the front row on opening night. She knows her dads will be there and that they'll make sure that she has a giant bouquet of flowers on her dressing room vanity. Mr. Schue might even make the trip, seemingly out of obligation to his glee club prodigy. But somehow, it still feels like a letdown that besides Kurt, none of the people she always imagined being there will be in the audience when the curtain comes up for the first time.
Rachel walks into the theater and heads straight for the ticket booth. It's a show that she had made a point of seeing within her first month of living in New York, even though she had already seen it with her dads the first time they visited New York. At the time, Kurt still wasn't living here and Cassandra July was making her cry herself to sleep pretty much every night. Broadway was the only thing Rachel had that made her feel like she was supposed to be here following what still seemed like a pipe dream.
She hadn't felt the awe that had accompanied seeing her first show with her dads when she was a kid. Over the years, it had grown into appreciation more than fascination. These days, shows come with mental notes of improvements and noticing missed cues or wrong steps. The simple joy of the music and the storyline is buried beneath her critical analysis, only strengthened by classes at NYADA and spending day after day in rehearsals with people that point out everybody's mistakes.
Broadway is no longer her source of entertainment. It's her professional career.
The lady at the ticket booth gives her a sad smile, like buying a single ticket for tonight's show is something to feel sorry about. Rachel figures that the woman believes her to be a tourist, here looking for the magic that New York has always promised her. And for the day, Rachel wants to be that person, so far removed from her daily life in the ever-growing spotlight.
Rachel tucks the ticket into her bag before she heads back out onto the street to kill a few hours.
Maybe reading a book while sitting in Bryant Park isn't some fabulous outing, but she sips at her soy latte from under the shade of the umbrella of the table. People walk by paying her no mind and it's a blissful afternoon of feeling like she can just be a normal person without an agent running her life and a former best friend trying to steal her job. It's a perfectly mundane afternoon and she basks in the peacefulness of it.
The giddy excitement grows as the hours creep by until she can't help but stick her earbuds in to listen to Idina belt some of her favorite songs in the world as she walks back uptown towards the theatre. She moves at the pace of the businessmen, slipping between the tourists on the sidewalk. It's easy to fall into the flow of New York, and it makes her comfortable to know that she can disappear into the crowd and just be another passing face in a throng of people.
The usher takes her ticket as he scans the barcode, reminding her to enjoy the show before directing her up the stairs into the theatre. Rachel knows that it's something he says to every person after he scans their ticket, but she takes it as a reminder that this isn't an assignment. She can just sit back and appreciate the performances without being compelled to critique it.
Her seat isn't the best in the house by any means, but it's good enough that she smiles as she sits down, her eyes scanning the intricate props lining the stage's boundaries. A family settles in beside her as she flips through her PlayBill, reading the bios of the cast. The father looks a little grumpy at being dragged to a show, but Rachel realizes that it'll be worth it as soon as he sees the looks of joy on the faces of his two little girls. The mother sits herself down next to Rachel, placing the girls, who Rachel guesses are about eight and ten, between her and her husband.
The two girls are chatting excitedly, pointing at the set and filling with wonder about all that is to come.
"Rachel, sweetie, the people behind you aren't going to be able to see if you keep bouncing in your seat."
The man behind them chuckles as her dad places his hand on her thigh to try and calm her jittery body. She grips at her PlayBill, having already read it cover to cover, and checks her watch obsessively, waiting to hear the first notes ring out from the orchestra.
She knows the entire score, having listened to the original soundtrack so many times that her cd was actually wearing out. She hums the opening notes and props herself up on her knees to get a better view of the stage over the woman in front of her.
"Sorry, it's her first time in New York and she's been obsessed with Broadway since she was three."
The man behind them laughs again, but it doesn't deter Rachel from her sheer excitement, even though she knows the man is laughing at her.
"Well, it would have been even better if we could have came for my birthday before Idina Menzel left the show," Rachel reminds her fathers, still upset that she missed her chance to see Idina play Elphaba live.
But it's hard to be upset when the orchestra finally starts playing and she realizes that it's so much better in this huge acoustically-sound theatre, rather than the tinny sound from her boombox ricocheting off of the tile in her bathroom.
She tries to settle in her seat, her heart pounding in anticipation. The stage fills with the chorus members for the opening number and she's mesmerized, glued to the spot as she tries to take it all in at once. She misses the look her dads share over her head as Glinda descends from the rafters, but it's one of joy at making their little girl's dream come true.
As soon as the show begins, the girls settle in, the younger one snuggling into her mother's shoulder affectionately. Rachel misses most of the opening number as she watches them, their faces alight with wonder at what's to come.
At intermission, the father takes off to buy them some refreshments and the girls start asking a million questions about the show. The mother seems overwhelmed as she tries to Google the answers for her curious children as fast as they're asking them.
"May I?" Rachel pops in after one of the girls asks if Elphaba is really a wicked witch.
The woman sighs in relief and nods gratefully at her.
With that, Rachel launches into the tale of Glinda and Elphaba's friendship and how it's not a story about good and evil as much as it is about the journey that they both take. The two little girls hang onto her every word, every once in a while turning to make sure that their mom is listening to the story too. Rachel eats it up, happy to educate them on something that she has loved so dearly since she was their age.
The mom mouths "thank you" at her as the curtain comes up again for Act II and Rachel smiles at her graciously before turning her attention back to the stage.
At the end of the show, Rachel waits for the theatre to clear out, but the family lingers next to her as people start making their way down the aisle.
"Thanks so much for answering the girls' questions," the mom says again, patting the younger girl's head. "We just moved to New York and they've never seen a real Broadway show before."
"Well, I hope you liked it!" she says to the girls, who both nearly squeal with their happiness. "I'm actually going to be starring in the revival of Funny Girl that opens in a few weeks," Rachel admits.
The woman's eyes go wide at the fact that she's spent the last two hours sitting next to a Broadway star.
"I'd love if you and the girls would come see it at some point," she tells the mom, and the girls squeal again at the idea of seeing another show so soon. Rachel rifles through her bag for an old receipt and a pen. She scribbles her name and number on the back of it. "Call me and I'll make sure that there are tickets left at the box office for you. It wasn't that long ago that I was sitting here for the first time and it's where my dreams began too."
The mother hugs her in gratification and the girls thank her a million times before she finally ducks out of the theatre.
She can be that inspiration for little girls that she once craved so desperately in her own life. She wants the show to be a hit - a successful show means accolades and bigger contracts, after all - but more than that she wants to give those girls someone to look up to, someone to aspire to be when they grow up.
Tomorrow is a day filled with fifteen hours of rehearsal and a lunch meeting with her PR team. These days of blissful peace are going to be few and far between from now on, but she's ready for it. Because when she does have them, she knows there's always a place for her in an audience, a place where she can remember why it's always worth busting her ass day after day.