Hey guys. Thank for all of your beautiful reviews. :) Made me happy this weekend. Anyways, sorry if my tenses skip. I'm terrible at that.
"Hey beautiful."
"No, no, I'm shopping with Rachel."
"Yes, Rachel Berry, do we know another Rachel?"
Rachel Berry could only hear half of Kurt's phone conversation, straining to hear the other voice from his passenger seat with no avail. She'd been sort of embarrassed to discover that she literally had to jump into his Navigator until she watched from her seat as he scrabbled in.
When he hung up, she was staring at him. "Why do you guys do that?"
"Do what?"
"Rachel Berry me." The way she said her own name like a verb made Kurt laugh.
"You mean, why do we call you by your full name?"
She nodded in response which Kurt probably couldn't see, on account of how he was devoting his full attention to the road. Probably.
"You just seem like the full name type," he explained, and before she could launch into a speech about how she was torn by that assessment, because obviously she would be hearing her full name on a daily basis from the paparazzi and of course on magazine covers, but then of course, the mark of a real star is to be recognized by a single monkier -- Cher! Madonna! Prince! -- and if I can't even get my sophomore class to remember my name... (Seriously, the second she opened her mouth, he heard the whole speech in his head. Clearly she didn't need to start that nonsense.) he cut her off with a "So, Puck, huh?"
Her mouth snapped closed at the speed of fiddled with the hem of her skirt, and then smoothed it over her lap. "Um. Well. Did I say that?"
He stared at her until his light turned green. "Unless that was a dream, and considering your hideous bedroom, it would have been a nightmare."
Rachel was still staring at her lap.
"He's nothing to be ashamed of; Noah Puckerman is a fine specimen of human musculature," Kurt told her, laughing. "It's just too bad about his, you know, personality."
"I don't actually know," Rachel says, voice gone funny. "It's like, he's terrible, and used to throw corn syrup in my eyes and I'd be lying if I said I didn't still keep a spare outfit in my locker just in case. But. There's something about him."
"Is it his Jewhood?" Kurt asked, wryly.
Rachel scoffed. "If I was just interested in him because of his ethnic background I would have gone after Creeper Israel a long time ago."
"No one will ever go after Creeper Israel," Kurt explained sagely. He was usually optimistic about other people's prospects after a life of growing up gay in a small town, lost in middle America, (it was one of Mercedes' favorite insults to point someone out and inform him that "that guy's going to have to become a rapist - he'll never get any, otherwise." and usually it was Kurt's job to tell her there was someone for everyone. Except maybe, he'd said once, Rachel Berry. Looking back, he was kind of ashamed.) but his sexuality had been the subject of too many of Jewfro's editorials for him to get any sort of grace.
Rachel's mouth tucked into half a smile. She did have a great smile, Kurt decided, if only she knew how to harness it.
"The way life works out, he'll win the lottery, and buy his own harem," she scoffed.
"Die young and syphilitic, you mean." Kurt corrected, hand going to fiddle with the radio.
"That sounds better," Rachel Berry said, adjusting herself more comfortably against the back of her seat, and here Kurt had to wonder how he'd ended up driving with Rachel Berry, the fashion sense of a T-Rex and about twenty percent less tactful, to the Lima Mall. Seriously, how had this become his life?
He'd just planned on giving her a lesson in basic pattern-collor theory, and about mixing sluttiness levels in the same outfit (because she seriously looked like a mental patient in her they-might-as-well-be-underwear skirts and chastity-belt-turned-holiday-sweater tops).
After that, he took the low harmony when his favorite Shania Twain song came on, and let her belt the soprano bits, but when he missed a fantastic spot in the parking lot, he possibly made her get out to stand in it until her could pull around.
She huffed about it when he parked and got out, (maybe scrambling out of the driver's seat in a very dignified manner) but he reminded her that she wouldn't be complaining when they only had to lug their purchases twenty feet from the entrance of the mall. And yes, he assured her, there would be purchases.
* * *
"No, No," she said, as he pulled a shirt off of the rack, and another. She punctuated each retrieval with another no. Kurt chose this moment to go selectively deaf.
"Kurt!" Rachel huffed. "That's not a term of endearment! Didn't your father teach you that no means no?"
Kurt looked at her thoughtfully. "Actually, no, I don't think I ever got that lecture." He pushed the heap of clothes into Rachels arms, and she took the pile grudginly. "He did give me a can of pepper spray, though, so maybe that was a tactful variation?"
Rachel looked at him with wide eyes over the mountain of clothing in her arms until he laughed.
"Don't be so serious, Berry." He said, reaching for even more clothes.
She groaned. "Hey, you try on twenty things to find one that fits perfectly."
"I have a fairly typical build," she said, eyeing the clothes sceptically. "Outfits I try on tend to generally fit."
"Obviously, you don't understand the meaning of fits perfectly," he scoffed. "But I do think we have enough for now." He started to walk away, towards the dressing rooms. It took her a second to snap out of her daze and follow.
"Are you sure I need to try on all of these?" she asked in a small voice.
Instead of answering her question, he opened the door into the women's fitting area. The woman attending the fitting rooms started to move towards them with a startled look. "Excuse me, uh, sir."
Kurt waved away her concern with a hand. "I'm not interested in ladyparts," he said, like he was offended at the very suggestion, and then jumped right back in. "Look at my friend; look at her! No, behind the clothes. Clearly she needs help!"
He was pretty sure the next words out of Rachel's mouth would have been "My dads are gay..." like she always did when she wasn't getting her way, had the attendant not nodded in a resigned sort of way. In a fit of holiday cheer, he dropped a little nugget of wisdom for her. "You'd look fantastic with choppy layers!"
"Thanks," he heard, belatedly, from the other side of the door.
He pushed her into the big dressing room with the bench, leading her with his hand on her shoulder. "Cowgirl up!" he demanded cheerfully.
* * *
"It fits, Kurt," she explained as she came out for the fourteenth time. "And it's kind of slutty, just like you like."
The mother of the freshman trying on hideous leggins and overlarge T-shirt combinations gave him a look. He shrugged at her. "What can I say?" he said with a wink.
Then, he gave Rachel Berry his full attention. "Rachel," he said, urgently, "go back in there. Did you even look at yourself?"
Rachel snorted through her nose, exasperated. As a matter of fact, she'd been on autopilot since the third dress, but now that she looked at it... "Kurt, it's not that bad."
"Exactly!" He said, as if this was a matter of life and death. "If I give you this fish, you'll have a grand total of one fish." He grabbed her hand and tugged her towards the tri-fold mirror down the short wall of curtained rooms. "However, write this one down in the words of wisdom notebook, Berry, because this? Is a perfect fit."
She looked at herself in the mirror, black dress clinging and emphasising a shape she hadn't fully realized she posessed. He twisted her hair up to give her a good view of her visable shoulders, and then let it all down, separating a bit to lay in front of her shoulders.
Rachel wasn't in the habit of worrying about how big her ego seemed (because stars were sort of her thing, and if kids laughed at that, it was because they weren't going anywhere, she regularly reminded herself) but after making eye contact with her own reflection for several seconds, she looked away, blushing.
"Now," Kurt said, smiling, "get back in that stall and try on the rest of them. We're teaching you to fish. You might not always have fashionable friends to pull you out of your slumps. There will be a pop quiz."
Rachel groaned, but Kurt noticed that she put on the rest of the dresses (two hideouses, one no way that she unfortunately approved of, a sort-of-maybe-if-you-squint and a yes, sure if you live in sluttville.) with very little fuss, even when he corrected her misassessments with, "Now, Rachel, why is this dress a no, again?"
In the end, she only bought two black dresses and a pair of pumps to go with both, (although an idea was sort of knitting together in Kurt's revolving around a catsuit and lycra, but he hadn't worked out the finer points yet) and certainly didn't complain when she only had to carry them to her hard-won parking space.
Rachel slumped against his seat after tiredly climbed in (like a gentleman, Kurt had tugged her up from the drivers seat, of course) like she'd ran a marathon. "Are we done now?"
He wanted to tease her, but instead, he swatter her hand affectionaly away from his radio. "You are ready to be feasted on by the eyes of McKinley High," he asured her.
"And by extention..." she trailed off.
Kurt almost rolled his eyes, but he was still to happy from his successful mission. "And by extention, one Noah Puckerman."
:) Tell me what you think, please. Next stop: Puckleberry!