Not Making the Same Mistake Again

Summary: Less than four months remain of the school year, for some students it's the last four months at William McKinley High. Therefore it's natural for the kids to want to make the best of the remaining time. However, a lot of things can go wrong in sixteen weeks . . .

Rated Teen for language primarily. There may be some spoilers for the two first seasons of the show as well as the third up until somewhere short after the episode Hold on to Sixteen.

I hope you will enjoy reading this multi-character fanfiction as much as I have enjoyed writing it!

I apologize in advance for any incorrect grammar or typo that may occur.

Reviews are very welcome.

Disclaimer: I donot own Glee nor do I own any of its characters. The same goes for anything involving the music mentioned.

End of author's note. Now on to the story!


Chapter 6 – A picture says more than a thousand words

[SATURDAY]

It is Saturday morning and actually a little bit warmer outside than it was last night. But you still have to put a jacket on, since the winds that blow are still quite chilly. But at least the snow has melted away.

He puts on his dark grey converse and lazily ties the shoelaces, something that he remembers Mr. Schuester taught him. The All Stars are pretty cold to wear at this time a year but he really likes them, and someone once told him 'no pain, no gain' and he guess that they were right. Come to think of it Quinn was probably the one who told him that. Appearance was always important to her – it still is.

He pulls his WMHS varsity jacket off the coat rack and puts it on.

'Where are you going, honey?' his mother calls from the kitchen/living room/office whatever you call it. Their new house isn't big, but at least he and doesn't have to share a bedroom with his siblings and his parents anymore.

'Cleaning the car. Dad asked me,' he calls back. 'Inside only,' he ads as he sees his mother pop her head out in the hallway, about to tell him that he cannot clean the car when it's below freezing point outside. 'I'm not stupid, mom.'

'I know you're not, Sammy,' she says lovingly. 'It's just that sometimes—'

He sighs. 'Yeah, yeah . . . I know. Sometimes I don't really think before I act, I know.'

His mother smiles. 'I love you, sweetie.' Then she turns around and heads back to the sink and the awaiting mess of dirty plates, forks and knives.

'I love you too,' he says quietly as he reaches for the door handle and pushes the front door open.

The red truck is parked on the driveway and Sam notices that it should need an exterior wash as well, but as his mother so kindly pointed out to him it is below freezing point and he doesn't want the car to freeze up just because he was foolish enough to clean it in this cold. So instead he brings out a vacuum cleaner and a couple of polishing cloths. He starts by vacuuming the floor of the vehicle only to realize how much dirt has hidden under the rubber mats. He bends over and vacuums between the seats, it's quite cumbersome but at least the car gets cleaner. Then he moves to the small space between the driver's seat and the door. He ends up finding four dimes and a penny and a couple of gum wraps. Guilty, he admits and feeds the gum wraps to the vacuum cleaner. The four dimes and the penny he shoves in his pant pocket. Maybe he can use them to buy more gum sometime.

Then he moves to the other side of the car, reaching down to vacuum between the passenger seat and the door on that side. That is when he sees something white and plastic lying on the floor in the small space between the seat and the door. He reaches down and picks it up.

'An iPhone,' he mumbles confused, knowing that none in his family owns one. The white electronic device looks rather small in his hand. He turns it over to check if there's a name tag on it or something—as if anyone actually still print their name on all their belongings—and to his surprise he actually finds a tiny letter carved into the backside of the IPhone. In the top left corner there's a small, barely visible, Q incurved.

Sam smiles despite himself. She must have dropped it last night, he notes. It's so typical Quinn to tag it though, he thinks as he let his index finger run across the small letter.

'Sam,' the unexpected sound of his mother's voice causes him to startle and hit his head in the car headlining.

'What, mom?' he calls back, rubbing his throbbing head. I'm so gonna get a bump from that. Thanks mom . . .

'Can you drive Stace to Marie's later?'

'Yeah, I guess.'

Mary smiles at him. 'Thank you, honey.' She closes the door again.

Okay . . . where was I? Oh, right . . . cleaning. He picks up one of the polishing cloths and starts to wipe down the dashboard, while humming Bieber's Baby.


Usually she's up with the rooster. Having half of her daily chores done by the time her friends get out of bed. She has always been a morning person, has always loved the feeling of getting up when the day breaks, watching the first rays of sunlight reach over the hills, but every once in a while Rachel lets herself have a little sleep in. Her fathers say it's good for her since she's a teenager – and teenagers are supposed to sleep a lot. And this morning Rachel could do nothing but agree with them.

The alarm clock by her bed tells her that it's 10.24 A.M. when she reluctantly lets her eyes flutter open. She can't remember exactly at what time she got home last night, but she can tell that it wasn't at eleven which she had told her dads that she would be home.

Hope they're not too upset, she wishes as she rolls over to her stomach and reaches to the night stand for her cell phone. Fifteen texts and two missed calls? Oh my . . .

Most of the texts and both the calls as it turns out belong to Finn. The continuous thread throughout the nine texts that her boyfriend has sent is in short "Hope you had a great time yesterday. Heard you left late. I want to see you today. Call me. I love you.'' in different constructions. There are also two texts from Kurt, asking her how she feels today; one text from Tina, who asks if she has spoken to Quinn yet; two from her dads, the first one telling her to take the pork tenderloin from the freezer and put it on the counter and the second remembering her about the pork tenderloin in the freezer, in case she has forgotten about it; and last but not least there's one text from Brittany containing a bunch of random letters and digits that doesn't say Rachel a squat. Guess the girl accidentally unlocked her phone again and sat down on it. Wouldn't be the first time . . .

As much as she would actually like to stay in bed today she knows that she has to get up. There are a lot of things she has to do today and from personal experience she knows that if she doesn't do them right away she'll just put them on hold until there's enough on her to do list to drown her. Therefore she reluctantly shoves the blanket a side and swings her feet over the edge of the bed. Immediately after heaving herself up into a sitting position, feet dangling off the edge of the bed, she comes to regret the decision she just made of getting out of bed. Her head throbs and the world spins slightly as her brain tries to adapt to the change in level.

I am so not playing Truth or Drink with those guys again, Rachel makes a mental note as her world slowly begins to turn stationary again.

Carefully she moves her weight to her feet and stands up. After noting that her body works properly despite her dull head she makes a move for the bathroom. She can't meet Finn later looking and smelling like this – if Finn still has time to see her that is.

Staring at the reflection in the mirror Rachel establishes that she doesn't look as bad as she thought – as bad as she feels. Actually she looks just like normal . . . well, with exception of the glossy eyes.

Anyways she takes that shower. It's a good thing to start your day with; it gives you an extra energy boost. But it also feels good.

After exiting the shower and drying her hair she sends a text to Finn asking if he is still interested in seeing her in the afternoon. His answer drops in almost at the same time as she sets down her phone. Obviously he's been keeping his iPhone close all day, waiting for a text or call from her.

- Would love to! Working 'til 1 P.M though :/ Your place at two? :)Love you! /Finn

She texts him back telling him that 2 P.M. will be perfect before she heads downstairs to make herself a nice brunch. Two toasts with cheese, tomato and cucumber, an apple and a glass of tropical juice is probably the best thing, next to a shower, to start a morning with. Or in this case the forenoon. The short brunette bites into one of the toast and hums a content 'Mm . . .'

Thinking about it Rachel notes that she pretty much loves her life right about now. She's doing well in school and Glee Club is great – she's getting a lot of solos, and Quinn and she have buried the hatched and are actually pretty good friends now, or at least they can sit down and talk like two civilized young women now. But even so the best thing is probably that Finn and she are back on, again, finally. And it's for real this time. She can feel it. No more cheating, no more back-stabbing, no more lies and no more heart-breaking. This time it's going to last forever.

Being awaken from her thoughts by the sudden ringing of the phone, Rachel almost chokes on her toast. She has to beat her chest multiple times to cough up the piece of bread before she can pick up the phone and hit the green button.

'Berry household,' she croaks.

'Rachel, is that you?' Kurt's soft voice says over the line. 'Are you feeling okay? You sound a bit—'

'I'm fine!' the brunette girl says and clears her throat. 'It's only that you almost had me choking on a piece of toast just now.'

'Oh . . . I'm so sorry, Rach!' The boy sounds genuinely sad.

Rachel chuckles softly. 'No, it's okay, Kurt. I do that all the time!' Okay perhaps that wasn't true, but it happens . . . sometimes.

A short moment of silence passes.

'By the way, I had such a good time yesterday!' Rachel exclaims in a happy voice. 'It's been a really long time since I laughed that hard . . . and much.' She snickers.

Kurt joins her sniggering and then says, 'Well, thank you so much, Rachel, but I could not have done it without you girls.'

Oh, Kurt, always the gentleman. 'You suck up!' she laughs, but then turns her tone serious, 'But I suppose you didn't just call to chat today, did you?'

The cheerfulness in Kurt's voice is completely lost when he opens his mouth to speak again. 'I wanted to ask you about what happened last night?'

'What do you mean?' Rachel can hear herself ask even though she has a pretty good idea what Kurt is referring to.

'Quinn,' he simply says.

Rachel drags a deep breath and then slowly blows the humid—now a bit damp—air out. What is she supposed to say? 'I think it is pretty clear,' she slowly says, though she doesn't know if it is the right thing to say, 'that she got a bit upset about when it came to Sam in that whole Truth or Drink thing.'

'Yes, I know that—after all I was there, Rach—but that was not what I was talking about. What I am asking you is why she reacted the way she did?' his tone was dead serious, but there was this hint of concern there.

'I, I don't know . . . I suppose she is still mad with Sam for breaking up with her or something.' Even though she got what she deserved after how she treated him last year. Cheating on him with Finn like that, just to get a better shot at the prom queen crown, though she would have had the best of chances of winning it with Sam. 'And she had had quite a lot to drink, and you know what effect alcohol has on Quinn. She's the epitome of a hysteric drunk.'

Kurt cannot help but to let a short chuckle escape his soft lips. But he soon sobers. 'But still . . . the reaction wasn't very Quinn-like. Drunk or not.'

She knows that Kurt has a point. And unfortunately she doesn't have an answer to his question. 'I don't know, Kurt. What do you want me to say?' she says resignedly. 'It isn't like she tells me everything that is troubling her now, just because we don't want to kill each other all the time. We're friends but that doesn't automatically result in the two of us feeling like we can share everything with one another.'

Rachel can hear the boy at the other end sigh heavily. 'I know it doesn't Rachel, but I just thought that you girls might be more willing to open up to each other when it comes to boyfriend-issues and similar stuff than you are to, say, me, as a boy.'

'I suppose we do . . . But you know Quinn just as well as I do, and we both know that she has a tendency to keep her feelings hidden away from everyone else. She doesn't talk about them.'

Kurt sighs again. 'Yes, you are right.' Then there is a short sequence of silence before he continues. 'But I should probably get going. I have a date with Blaine later and I heard that you are meeting up with Finn, so I am not going to keep you distracted any longer. Take care, Rachel.'

'That sounds lovely, Kurt. Tell Blaine I said "hello". See you at Monday, if not sooner! Bye!'


Six minutes past two Finn's old blue beat up truck pulls up on the driveway out front of the Berry home. He is a few minutes late, he knows that, but he got kind of hold up at work. And it's not like he can just leave whenever he wants to – Burt needs him, because Kurt is not really the kind of guy who gets his hands greasy voluntarily, and Burt, well he's kind of busy nowadays.

He climbs out of the truck and slams the door shut. Let the force still be with me, Grilled Cheesus, he whispers and draws a deep breath as he begins to cross the well-kept lawn. He knows that it probably is ridiculous to still be praying for strength from an old sandwich with a burn mark the shape of Jesus, which was thrown in the trash a long time ago, but he needs to pray for strength from somewhere right? But maybe Grilled Cheezus isn't the best superiority to worship . . . it might after all be the reason why Sam ended up at the hospital with a dislocated shoulder.

His eyes are set on the robust front door. He knows that Rachel will let him know that he is late. She hates it when he is late. And Rachel, well Rachel isn't one you want to be around when she is angry. Often things get thrown around and plates get crashed and that is never funny. Especially not when the plates are thrown at you.

One last deep breath, then he rings the doorbell. Only a second or maybe two passes before he hears someone unlock the door and unhinge the latch. Finn fiddles with his hands and tries to focus on something other than the intense voice of Rachel Berry in his head that are screaming at him for being late and for occasionally throwing glances at Quinn or for being stupid or clumsy or whatever. Unconsciously he squeezes his eyes shut to block out the furious voice.

'Finn,' it says. 'Finn? Hello! Finn!' It sounds so goddamn real! 'Finn, what are you doing? For goodness sake open your damn eyes, Finn!' Afraid that the imaginary Rachel will start throwing expensive china at him if he doesn't obey he slowly pries his eyes open and finds himself standing face to face with the real deal.

'Holy shit!' he exclaims and takes a fast step back and ends up almost stumbling backwards off the step. In the last second he gets a hold of the railing and manages to stay up straight.

'Oh my God, Finn! What are you doing?' Rachel gasps as she reaches for Finn's arm as he fights to regain balance.

'Uh . . .' Finn hums, still confused of how he ended up clenching the railing like it is the last thing keeping him from falling down a bottomless shaft.

The petite brunette eyes him suspiciously for a moment before she decides to let it go. 'So how has your day been?' she asks as she reaches up and brushes some dust out of his hair.

'Uh . . .' She isn't upset? He frowns. 'Well, good, I guess.'

Rachel squints at him. 'You guess?' she reaches for her red coat. 'Has something happened?' There is a worry in her voice and a pout on her lips that causes him to think that maybe she believes that he just received some really bad news that his uncle or grandmother or an old childhood friend or someone else tragically has passed away.

'No, nothing's happened,' he explains and lets her hook her arm with his. 'Well, there was this lady that came in just before my shift ended . . .'

'What about her?' Rachel asks with mild curiosity, the black bird that is picking on the neighbor's garden gnome seeming much more interesting.

'She insisted that there was something wrong with her car; and ancient Ford that belongs nowhere but in a museum or at the junkyard.' Finn chuckles to himself as he replays the scene in front of his eyes. It wasn't funny when he was in the middle of it, but now, looking back, it was pretty funny.

The brunette girl turns her attention from the lone bird and glances up at her ridiculously tall boyfriend, suddenly seeming a lot more interested in his story. 'What's so funny?'

He looks down at her and gives her a lopsided smile. 'You really wanna hear?' He almost sounds surprised.

She nods rapidly and pulls him closer by the arm. 'Tell me everything.'

Finn chuckles again, but this time it is not because he is finding something amusing but because he realizes that he has got pretty much everything he has ever dreamed of having right about now: he is captain of the football team, he has got the quarterback position, he is the co-captain of the Glee Club, he is the most popular guy at school and he has got the girl. She might not be the girl, the one that every other boy at school wants or the one that every other girl at school wants to be, but she is the only girl that he wants. The one that is perfect for him.

'Are you going to tell me or will I have to milk my sources and find it out that way?' she asks while nudging him in the ribs.

'What sources?' he queers and blinks confound. There is no one at the garage that he can think of that Rachel would be able to put pressure on for information. Of course there is always Burt, but he is not one to chew the fat; plus he wasn't even there today.

'Just continue with your story already,' she smiles and leans her head against his shoulder as they pass by the intersection in which she always turns left when she heads for school.

Finn figures that the best thing to do is to follow Rachel's instructions and go on with the story—though it is not much of a story—before he gets even more confused.

He tells her that when he had about half an hour left of his shift an old lady came in with her old—or ancient as he had put it earlier—Ford to have it repaired. According to her there was something wrong with the mechanics that spray the washer fluid on the windshield. Almost one and a half hour after the lady had come in he could still not find anything wrong with her car. Had it not been for Blaine—who dropped by looking for Kurt—Finn tells Rachel, he would probably still be at the garage looking for an explanation for the malfunction.

'What did Blaine do?' Rachel asks curiously as they stroll down the trail to the park.

'He walked up to us and introduced himself to the old lady. Then he asked her if he could have a look at her glasses if she didn't mind.'

Rachel chuckled as she imagined the situation happening in front of her eyes.

'She gave them to him and he told her how much he admired them and then he whipped them off and handed them back to her before disappearing again.'

'Yes . . . and?'

'And . . . Well, then the lady said I was a very fine young man that had helped her fix her windshield and then she paid me and took off,' Finn finishes and shrugs.

The brunette girl giggles. 'Her glasses were greasy, that's why she though there was something wrong with the, uh, the . . . washer fluid thing. But really the stains were on her lenses.' She laughed heartedly now. 'Seems like you have had a pretty interesting day.'

'And exhausting!' he sighs and yawns. 'What about you? What have you done?' he queers and gives her a quick peck on the cheek.

'Not much,' she answers and gazes out on the late winter scenery. It is beautiful, she notes, but I prefer it snow-capped. It is halfway through February and the first signs of spring have already been starting to show here and there. The snow is gone since about . . . yesterday? Didn't it snow on Friday? Maybe she remembered wrong; after all, she was a bit wasted when she left Kurt's party.

'That is good too, sometimes,' Finn speculates. 'Doing nothing, I mean. Sometimes your body needs it. And your mind.'

Rachel smiles and reaches up on her tip-toes to kiss her boyfriend. Sometimes he is the smartest person she knows. Most often though, he is the stupidest.

'Oh, I almost forgot! How was the party?' Finn had spent the night at Puckerman's since he didn't want to disturb Kurt and the girls but also because he knew that some of the girls could get rather emotional when they got drunk and whether he liked it or not he had a history with quite a few of them. His subconscious immediately begun to tick the names off. There was Quinn, his first love; Rachel, his current girlfriend; Santana, one-nightstand, though Santana wasn't at the party so he didn't have to worry about her; Brittany, one date . . . or was it two?; Quinn again, as she cheated on Sam—God, he still feels horrible for doing that to Sam—and then it was Rachel again. The list could be made pretty long. But mostly it would consist of two recurring names: Quinn and Rachel. Thinking about how completely different the two girls are he almost finds it hard to believe that he has been in love with both of them – and still is in love with one of them. Talk about two people being each other's complete opposites. One blonde contra one brunette. One popular contra one unpopular. One who's living with a perfect little family who loves her and one who's living in a broken home, having once been kicked out of her own house. One who's being totally forward and open with her feelings and one that keeps them hidden in her heart, locked up behind a cold wall. One who always seems to win in the end and one that always ends up losing it all.

'Are you okay?' Rachel asks with a worried face. Obviously Finn's empty eyes—the ones that he gets while he is thinking too hard—gave him away. They always do.

He nods and pulls her into a side hug. 'Fine. I'm fine. Tell me about the party. Did you have fun?'

The petite brunette squints at him in an attempt of seeing through the façade he is trying to put up. But as she gets nothing but cheer confusion from him she decides to drop it and focus on his question instead. 'I had a really good time, as always when Kurt is around. He is a very good party host, in my opinion.' She smiles as she pictures the basement which Kurt had spent all afternoon to decorate for the party. 'When we marry I want him to plan our wedding reception,' she says with a broad smile and sparkling eyes.

At the words 'we' and 'marry' and 'our wedding', Finn unintentionally freezes. He hasn't paid a single though to the fact that he had actually in one fuzzy moment mentioned that he would like the two of them to get married someday.

Judging by Rachel's sudden change of mood from super happy to a mixture of worry and irritation Finn figures that his sudden twitch and momentarily petrifaction hadn't passed unnoticed. He lowers his head in shame like a dog that has gotten caught while stealing sausages from its owner's plate while he or she looked away. How could I be so stupid, he truly wants to leave his own body for a minute just so that he can beat himself up.

'You twitched!' Rachel points out. 'You twitched!' She pokes her finger against his chest angrily.

'Hey, hey, hey!' he puts his hands up in defense. 'Rach, calm down! I didn't mean to—'

'You forgot!' she cries and pushes herself away from him.

'No, no, no! I didn't.' Liar, liar, his inner voice screams.

She sighs as she steps away from him. Her eyes are filling up with moist. 'I cannot believe that I thought that you would—'

'Hey, Rach,' he pleads and takes a step towards her. 'There has just been a lot going on in my head for the last couple of days.'

'Like what?' Rachel snaps and stares at him, hands firmly placed on her hips.

Football, girls, cars, Santana's cleavage, you, Call of Duty and . . . well, girls. He realizes tough that he cannot say those things to his girlfriend without further pissing her off. So instead he goes with, 'Well, you know . . . things about college, my job at Burt's shop, Glee Club. Those kind of things.' He shrugs. Rachel scoffs and pokes her foot at an old root that is sticking up under the half-decomposed sheet of leaves that are covering the ground. The tall boy slowly moves closer to her. 'I really love you,' he says, his voice is barely a whisper. 'You know that.'

She levels her head and peers up at him. When did he come so close?

He brushes a strand of dark brown hair from her eyes. 'Are we cool?' he queers quietly as his thumb gently graze her smooth skin. As she contemplates the arguments and the counterarguments for forgiving him for his lack of attention and awareness she wrinkles her forehead and purses her lips in true Rachel Berry spirit. 'So?' he asks after a moment.

Lowering her gaze again and licking her lips slowly, she comes to remember how many times she has been in this position, the one where she doesn't know if they—that often means him—are breaking up. 'We're cool,' she whispers after a while and steps into his now open arms.

Most people would probably not understand what they see in each other let alone understand how the two of them always seem to reconcile no matter what happens. The road Finn realizes has been rather bumpy. Ever since they first laid eyes on each other—or since he laid eyes on her, he didn't know she existed until halfway through freshman year—their relationship has been full of obstacles. First it was the simple fact that Finn was dating Quinn. That kind of solved itself though when the blonde cheated on him and ended up pregnant with his best friend's child. That made it pretty easy to break up with her. Then came Jessie St. James and threw a spanner into the works. And with him gone, in stepped Noah "Puck" Puckerman and grabbed Rachel from him once again. After that things went kind of smooth for a while before it surfaced that he had slept with Santana, and that became the second break-up for Rachel and him. Then somewhere after that Quinn walked into the picture again—or she was rather pulled into the pictured by Finn who persuade her into cheating on her then-boyfriend Sam Evans—but just as fast as she had appeared she was gone again. And all of that led up to this. Finn and Rachel, together again and hopefully this time it will last longer than six months.


He has troubles sleeping. He's had for quite some time. Simply there are a lot of things going on in his life right now. Just a few months ago he was taking his clothes off in Kentucky for money so that he could bring home cash for food and rent.

After having spent two hours of tossing and turning in his bed, he decides to pick up the iPhone from his jacket. He puts the headphones into his ears and scroll down the track list. To see that Quinn has got almost the entire soundtrack of the Lion King as well as Aladdin on her iPhone makes him smile. He knows how much she loves those songs, A Whole New World being her absolute favorite.

After having skimmed through the entire track list he settles for Journey's Don't Stop Believing, making sure that the music that escapes the earphones isn't loud enough to wake up his younger siblings that are currently sleeping at either side of him. They fell asleep there while watching A Goofy Movie.

Their parents are out working night shifts to bring home some extra pay and the two young blonde kids are too scared to sleep alone in the room that the two of them share since they saw Monster's Inc. earlier today and strongly believe that there are monsters out there that feed on scaring children.

Sam smiles at the thought. They can be so cute, Stevie and Stacy, yet again they can be a real pain in the ass. Right about now though they're just adorable, both sound asleep against his body, his little sister resting her head against his shoulder nuzzling the fabric of his Star Wars tee.

The song ends and another one start, this time it is Living on a Prayer by Bon Jovi. The feeling this song generates to his body is amazing. It has got a beat that makes it close to impossible for him to keep his body still and the lyrics are great. A real master piece in his opinion.

But for the sake of the children's sleep—since he feels his body starting to move slightly with the beat—he picks the iPhone up and change the track to a more soft song.

He backs out of the music library and opens the folder with photos. She's got quite a collection. He taps the first photo to enhance it. It is a nice picture of Quinn and Santana outside of the Lima Bean. They are both smiling as they are watching something out of the picture. Judging by their position and facial expressions none of them were aware that the photo was taken. Sam guesses that it is probably Brittany who has taken the photo as he finds her on a few of the next photos taken at the same location, either lacking Quinn or Santana. There are about a dozen of these photos.

Next he finds a couple of photos of Finn and Quinn, taken at Breadstix, the Lima Bean, school, Quinn's house and in some park he doesn't recognize. Common denominators throughout the pictures are their happy faces and somewhere deep down in his stomach Sam can feel something contract, he tries to convince himself that it is probably just gas from the kebab pizza he and Mercedes shared earlier today, but somewhere inside he knows that that is just bullshit.

The next couple of photos contains a variety of people, there are some with Kurt and Quinn trying on different clothes at some fashion store, then some of Kurt alone, a few with Kurt and Blaine posing proudly and then a couple of Quinn, Kurt and Blaine and an additional five with Blaine alone and two with Blaine and Kurt and some random red haired girl dressed in a white suite.

There are also a few pictures containing Mike, Tina, Mr. Schue, Mercedes, Quinn's mother, some other girls who Sam doesn't recognize and a few of Brittany's cat Mr. Tubbington.

Sam skips forward and finds photos of Brittany and Artie kissing outside of some theatre that is definitely not located in Lima. There are a couple of photos with Artie and Quinn too and even some with Santana and Artie, which surprises Sam a tad. He finds a few photos of Puck and his ex-girlfriend Lauren Zizes, some of Quinn and Zizes, a bunch of pictures of Santana and Puck, a dozen of Santana, Quinn and Puck. There are surprisingly few of Puck and Quinn alone though, just about ten or something and most of them are taken at events where several others of the Glee kids were present. He only finds about two or three pictures of the two alone that seem to have been taken by them while they were completely on their own. In one of them Quinn is holding her daughter Beth as Puck is leaning over her shoulder watching the baby sleep. The angle is bad though and from holding the camera some of Puck's arm covers the view. But all in all it is a nice picture. All three of them seem very happy, though Sam can see a hint of sadness in the eyes of his ex-girlfriend. She has mentioned to him a couple of times how she misses her baby and she has even once offered him the opportunity to raise Beth with her, an offer he declined stating that she shouldn't rush into adulthood but instead enjoy her youth. He had told her to 'Hold on to sixteen.' He had also told her that is was just 'rich white girl problems' something that he isn't equally proud of.

Much to his surprise—knowing that Quinn and Rachel haven't always gotten along and considering the love triangle of theirs, involving Finn, that happened last year—the next five images contains Rachel, Finn and Quinn in different combinations. The first one is taken of Rachel and Finn posing happily in front of the camera, the second of Rachel alone, the third and fourth of Rachel and Quinn and the fifth of the three of them together.

Then he finds the pictures of them—Quinn and him—from when they were together. There are about fifteen of them, most of them taken in school by class mates, but there are a few that he recognizes as pictures that he or she has taken while there was just the two of them.

He notices that one of the photos is taken from Burt and Carole's wedding. He and Quinn are sitting at a table—if he remembers right; they were watching Kurt and Finn dance—behind Rachel. Quinn is looking absolutely amazing in a red gown and her blonde hair pulled up into a bun. He—he notices and smiles despite himself—is looking pretty good himself in a black tuxedo and a bow tie, as long as you ignore the ugly big blackeye he is sporting He is sitting behind her, his arms pulled around her and her hands are on his. They are both smiling, just as the people in the background, though they are not the one that he is looking at now.

He jumps to the next photo which shows the two of them in Glee Club, sitting next to each other on the top row. She is basically sitting in his lap leaning against his chest. The arm that he has wrapped around her back has its hand resting on her thigh, right about were her WMHS cheerleading dress ends. His other hand is resting on top of hers on his denim clad lap. They both look extremely focused. Sam tries to remember who took the photo but comes up blank. Whoever it was took one hell of a nice picture, he notes.

And like this he continues for about ten pictures, all of them showing the two of them happily together either cuddling or kissing.

The thirteenth picture however causes him to laugh out loud almost waking his younger sibling up. The picture is of him only, dressed in a pair of very tight golden shorts. He knows exactly from where the picture is taken; The Rocky Horror show they did last year, in which he had the leading role – for a while. He cannot help but to smile. Oh my gosh she actually kept this! I look pathetic and scared out of my skin! But the abs are pretty okay. He absentmindedly reaches under his shirt and carefully pinches his hard muscles.

Then he decides to call it a night and pulls the earphones out of his ears, puts the iPhone on the night stand and kisses his two siblings goodnight once again before he gives the Sandman another chance.


Author's note

So the seventh chapter is up! Hope you liked it and please don't forget to review! :)