9. Wander
"Have you ever felt this lost before? Because I haven't. I am eighteen; I've been through two school transfers, two sexual redefinitions and three nasty break-ups. But today I'm just wandering."
Blaine Anderson was just the shadow of the boy he once was. He spent the days lurking up and down the hallways of the William McKinley High School, waiting for time to pass, a sign to lead him or a solo to sing. But he was lost, empty and all by himself.
"Spit it out," Sam Evans said as he sat next to him during lunch on Friday.
The short boy turned to look at the blond one. It was a weak stare, sad, like an undermined dike ready to give in and let it all go. "What?"
Sam chuckled and put a hand on Blaine's shoulder. "Dude, you look like crap. It's like watching a sardine bleeding out out of the water."
"Would have been funnier if you'd said 'trout out of the water'." Blaine made it to smile.
"Your audition is tomorrow, right?"
"Supposedly, yeah."
"What are you singing?"
"Don't even know if I'm singing."
He had a ticket to New York, an audition with Madame Carmen Tibideaux at Saturday 9:48 and nothing rehearsed. He had spent the last couple days buried in his bed, doing nothing. Just breathing.
And then Tina Cohen-Chang, who had developed a berric sixth sense when it came to subjects that affected her, dropped her platter on the boys' table, splashing soup all over. "You what?! Oh, no, you are coming. I can't go all by myself to that hole! Berry lives there!"
Blaine chuckled. "Since when are you concerned about me?"
"You wish." Tina made an eyeroll. "You have to distract her. You are like the ball of yarn to an evil egocentric alcoholic lucky bitch." Her face turned into a proud grin. "Man, my rhetoric is ready for New York hipster dorks."
Blaine eyerolled back at Tina. With his elbows on the table, he rested his head on his hands, looking deep into his plate of soup. "Don't call her that."
"What? A… damn, I forgot what I said. A bitch and you try to remember the rest."
"Don't call her that," Blaine repeated weakly.
Sam and Tina's eyes met across the table. The girl knew, thanks to her brand new berric sixth sense, that it was time for an intervention. But the boy didn't get it that easily, so he just frowned and let his disturbed friend take the lead. "Okay, little bird, what the hell is wrong with you? Stop defending her! She's a bitch, she's been playing with you, she doesn't love you and she keeps you hanging on because you are her pathetic toy!"
And then Sam got it and was able to intervene. "Dude… Tina has a point. Your life can't revolve around one girl…"
"A girl that doesn't give a crap for you," Tina added.
"Rachel is my friend." Blaine took a deep breath. "And she cares about me…" he kept on slowly, dragging the words out of his throat. "And… we are friends." A tear fell into his soup. "And I am moving on." And he broke down. "I have to move on." Blaine stood up and headed out of the cafeteria, but both Sam and Tina held his wrists.
"Dude, we know what it is to be the one left. And you have to dwell on it, but… not at the cost of your own life!" Sam tried his best to cheer his friend up. He recalled the time when Quinn dumped him, when Mercedes left, when… well, his current dating status was still unclear. Spoiler alert: the boy was getting some action, but with Fabray, so it doesn't count as 'action action', just danger spiked with horny diabolic sex. "Mike Finned you, didn't he, Tina?"
Tina sighed. "He didn't Finn me. We agreed to break up."
"And lie about it because you didn't want to look like Rachel," Sam replied. "Anyway, Blaine, let us help you, man," he said as he looked into his friend's red eyes.
Blaine agreed to sit back down. "I… I feel like I can't breathe. I want to call her. I want to talk to her. I need to see her. And this is hard as fuck." He was a mess and he was taking it all out of his chest finally.
"Then talk to her." Sam shrugged. From his point of view, everything was easy to do. "Just a text. A 'how are you doing' or an 'I'll be there tonight if you want to work it out' is enough. You don't have to make a proposal and stuff."
"Under different circumstances I would just go and mind my own business because I have no interest in getting involved in this bullshit you have going on, but… we are talking about Berry. We all know how to fix things with her." Tina stood on the table and made a sign to Jacob so that he would start recording it all. What she didn't know is that he had spent the whole lunch getting graphic material of Blaine's breakdown for a blog documentary he was producing: 'How To Hit Rock Bottom in Less Than 75 Songs.'
[How to save a life – The Fray]
Tina:
Step one: you say we need to talk.
He walks. You say, 'sit down it's just a talk.'
He smiles politely back at you.
You stare politely right on through.
Sam:
Some sort of window to your right.
As he goes left and you stay right.
Between the lines of fear and blame
you begin to wonder why you came.
Blaine:
Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend
somewhere along in the bitterness.
And I would have stayed up with you all night
had I known how to save a life.
Blaine dried the tears off his face and stood up on the bench along with Sam.
Blaine with Sam.
Let him know that you know best,
cause after all you do know best.
Blaine:
Try to slip past his defense
without granting innocence.
Blaine with Tina:
Lay down a list of what is wrong.
The things you've told him all along.
And pray to God he hears you.
And pray to God he hears you.
And…
Blaine, Sam and Tina:
Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend
somewhere along in the bitterness.
And I would have stayed up with you all night
had I known how to save a life.
Sam wrapped his arm around his bro's shoulders. The funny thing is that the rest of the student body wasn't paying any attention to the number, though there was a massive green piano in the middle of the cafeteria (they ran out of purple paint. Figgins' economic policies).
Sam:
As he begins to raise his voice
you lower yours and grant him one last choice.
Drive until you lose the road
or break with the ones you've followed.
Quinn, walking into the cafeteria:
He will do one of two things:
he will admit to everything
or he'll say he's just not the same
and you'll begin to wonder why you came.
Blaine and Quinn:
Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend
somewhere along in the bitterness.
And I would have stayed up with you all night
had I known how to save a life.
Blaine, Quinn, Sam and Tina:
Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend
somewhere along in the bitterness.
And I would have stayed up with you all night
had I known how to save a life.
The other three kids frowned at Quinn's sudden appearance, but they were the Glee Club in the middle of an impromptu performance. No more explanation needed.
Quinn:
How to save a life.
Blaine:
How to save a life
Blaine, Quinn, Sam and Tina:
Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend
somewhere along in the bitterness.
And I would have stayed up with you all night
had I known how to save a life.
Blaine and Tina:
Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend (Quinn and Sam: Where did I go wrong?)
somewhere along in the bitterness.
And I would have stayed up with you all night (Quinn and Sam: I would stayed up)
had I known how to save a life.
Blaine, Quinn, Sam and Tina:
How to save a life.
Blaine:
How to save a life.
Sam smiled fondly at the blonde girl while Blaine and Tina went to Jacob to ask him for the tape. "I wasn't expecting you here."
"It's funnier when I just drop by." Quinn returned the smile, as mischievously and playful as she could. "So… how is the little Warbler doing?" She sat on the table while playing with her hair.
Sam sat down next to her. "He's… doing fine. Yeah. But… you? What are you doing here?" He chuckled. "Not that I don't like it, it's just…"
"I'm not the one who holds on to her old life even though when she's more than done here?" She chuckled back. "You left me yearning for… a little bit more." Quinn got closer. Way closer than a lady should get, with a soft hand running up and down an inner thigh it shouldn't be running up and down.
"Good evening," Rachel whispered into Finn's ear to wake him up from his nap. He fell asleep, as usual, while catching up with his DVR. Rumor has it that someday he would finish season 7 of How I Met Your Mother, but that would happen when they were telling the story of their grandchild. Anyway, it was almost dinner time and Rachel had 'fixed' something. 'Fixed' in the strictest way possible because she had even messed the salad and had to fix the excess of vinegar with a disgusting amount of sugar. Yes. Sugar.
However, maybe dizzy due to the smell of that infamous bunch of lettuce floating on a bowl of dressing, Finn flipped over on the couch, turning his back on Rachel with a groan.
She rolled her eyes with a smile on her face and decided to let her man sleep. Rachel had to admit that they hadn't slept a lot that night. Make up thing and stuff of people in love when they have an apartment of their own and carnal cravings.
Rachel went to Kurt and Santana's apartment, looking for some entertainment while the the lazy boy got ready to get involved in the most dangerous culinary venture of his life. She knocked on the door just out of habit, but she came in as if it was her own house too. "Are you decent, available or…? What are you doing here and why weren't you yelling as usual?" she asked with an extreme frown on her face when she saw Jesse sitting on their couch.
"It's called rehearsal, and you have to take it to this nasty neighborhood when your co-workers decide to take days off just because they feel like it," St. James answered with a rough, yet not rude, look at Santana, who was wandering up and down the living room with a script she hadn't memorized in her hands. "Anyway, how are you doing with the kid?" he asked Rachel.
"Don't call him that," the diva replied sourly. The Blaine issue was a subject she had spent the last 24 hours trying to avoid, and though Jesse had proved (more or less) to be kind of a decent friend to her during their winter in the city, she preferred not to go any deeper into the topic.
"Use 'Frodo'. We invented it for something," Santana added as she let herself fall onto the couch. "Did he call or something?"
Rachel sat between the other two people. "Not me." And, at that moment, her phone buzzed.
"Flubbers needs a backrub?" Santana asked with a chuckle.
"No, Jacob's blog. A video update." Rachel hit play and waited for the 'New Directions Ruining Innocent People's lunches #28' to buffer.
"Why are you following that pervert?" the other girl said.
"I like his weekly Berriminders. Keeps my memory at school alive."
Jesse chuckled and raised his hand up in the air. "Ego high-five, please."
Rachel didn't let him hanging and the clap sounded loud right when the performance of 'How To Save a Life' started. The three of them watched it in with rigorous silence. A tense atmosphere only disturbed by a couple tears Rachel let run down her face and a string of curses Santana expelled when Quinn joined the song.
"To all these things we still can get right." Rachel read the first comment with her voice broken, written by someone under the initials B. A.
Santana, raging as usual when she had to see the face of the only person on Earth who could fight over the title of Queen of the Bitches with her, stood up and resumed her wandering. "Okay, omitting the fact that I don't like that that slut is still in Lima without my consent, what the hell is this boy trying to do? Wasn't he the one who said that you couldn't be friends anymore? The day he sticks to one final choice I'll buy him a condo in the Hamptons. Mother of God…" She sighed, bored by Blaine's unfitness to take definitive decisions.
"He's…" Rachel tried to find the words as she cleaned the smudged mascara off her face. Struggling? In pain? Being a pain in the ass? Suffering for her?
But her thought got interrupted by more knocking on the door. "Ten bucks on Finn saying that he's hungry," Jesse said as he went to open the door.
"I left him the dinner ready," Rachel said through tears and a weak chuckle.
"I see your ten and raise you twenty more. Nothing personal, we smelled it." Santana chuckled back at Rachel as she comforted her by rubbing her arched back.
"Speaking of the devil…" Jesse opened the door wide and stepped aside for the boy at the door to come in.
"Didn't like my salad, did you?" Rachel faked a smile for her man. A smile that faded away when she saw that Finn wasn't the devil Jesse announced.
Blaine frowned as he walked into the apartment with a suitcase in his hand. "What salad?" He dropped it on the floor, but the second he did it, he leaned down to take it back and run away. "I didn't think you would be here. I…"
Santana grabbed Jesse by his arm and took him out. "I'm going to fake I have to run some errands with this jerk even though all the stores are already closed. Give me a missed call when you're finished."
Once they were all by themselves in Kurt and Santana's apartment, Blaine sat down next to Rachel, trying to avoid eye contact, as Rachel played nervously with the hem of her shirt. "How are you doing? Scared?" the girl asked trying to break the one-foot thick ice.
"I'm going with 'Crying'. Strong enough and suits me like a glove," Blaine, awkward as humanly possible, replied. "Vocally, I mean," he added. "Not that I've spent the last days crying my guts out over you, which is pretty accurate too," he thought.
Rachel smiled. "Good choice. What time is your audition?"
"9:48."
"Use those four minutes the way you know how to use them, okay?" Instinctively, Rachel held Blaine's hand. It was their thing. The way she used to support him without any microphone or showtune needed.
Blaine returned the smile and they fell into a feared and long silence. He didn't know what to say. She was afraid of something she could say… So Rachel, leader by nature and expert at trying to get things right with her best intentions (usually failing), threw herself into their quicksand. "You are not staying at my place, are you?"
He shook his head, as emotionally devastated as usual. "Tina agreed to… trade couches."
"To all these things we still can get right," Rachel quoted Blaine's comment on the video of their performance.
It took him a while to realize what she meant with the unlinked sentence, but he couldn't do anything but chuckle at his own behavior. "I am ridiculous, I know."
"We can work it out, Blaine. I know we can."
He made it. Finally Blaine turned his head and looked into Rachel's eyes. "There's this thing that always happens to me. When I'm with you, I'm totally okay. It feels like… everything is alright somehow." He kept on as Rachel nodded wide-eyed. "But when we are apart… when I can't talk to you… Rachel, I'm in pain. And I think and think and think and think about it. I keep going over and over these last words you've said to me and all those I want to say to you the next time we see each other." Blaine sighed and thought carefully what he was about to say. "All these dreams are rotting inside my chest, Rach. I like thinking of you to sleep every night. I like this crazy idea of you, maybe someday, taking the chance and… being with me. But it's not healthy. It's not fair for either both of us."
Rachel sat there. Still. Not even blinking. She knew everything. No breaking news in Blaine's statement. But the fact that he was opening his chest and ripping his heart out for her… That was one of the bravest things anybody had ever done for her.
"And now we are here. Nothing hurts, nothing dies. But I know this isn't real. That I am a fool and I'm living an illusion that is not going to happen. So, no, Rachel, I can't sleep on your couch while you are in a bed with the man of your life ten feet away."
Rachel teared up. "How are we supposed to fix this if you can't sleep at my place?"
"Think of Finn."
"So Finn is the problem?"
"No, I am the problem. He is just the only thing holding me back."
