Hey guys! Sorry for the delay but I have literally been on cloud nine ever since the Super Bowl and have been dancing around New York participating in festivities. So here's the deal, I didn't want to keep you guys waiting any longer so I split this chapter into two parts. The next one's going to have a bit more action in it and it should be up soon, but I'm going back to school up in Boston tomorrow and am thus far unsure how long it will take for me to finish basking in sweet victory and gloating :)
As per usual, thank you for being awesome!
Rachel Corcoran – September 2011
(Part I)
Rachel Corcoran was on a mission.
It was the only explanation accurate enough to describe her determined motions as she strutted confidently down the length of the hallways of William McKinley High School, marching directly into territory previously uncharted – the senior hallway.
It wasn't as if Noah didn't allow her to enter into his so-called domain, no, instead, Rachel's unwillingness to embark down William McKinley's east wing was more of an unwritten rule that she had enacted upon herself in the nearly one month that it had been since she'd entered high school in an effort to avoid facing blatant humiliation at the hands of her brother's peers.
But today, Rachel wanted… no, she needed her brother's help, and what Rachel Corcoran wanted, she generally got.
"Noah, I need to talk to you." Rachel stomps the last handful of steps towards her brother aggressively as he lounged casually against his locker, flashing his football jersey proudly about a flock of pathetically swarming Cheerio's in preparation for tonight's opening home game.
Noah's face drops instantly in response to his sister's presence, his eyes fading into a distinct horror that fades into a deep, red flush of embarrassment towards her actions.
"Ooo, Noah," Quinn Fabray shrieks in her laughter in a manner that leaves Rachel unable to help but to roll her eyes, her pupils following her brother's motions as he ducks out from the center of his huddle of groupies in an effort to drag Rachel by the shoulder out of earshot in an effort to avoid any further potential embarrassment.
"What the hell, Rachel?" Noah groans, his voice swelling as it drops into a miniscule grumble so that his eavesdropping girlfriend and her fellow cronies couldn't hear them.
"Sorry, Puck," With an exaggerated roll of her eyes, she responds to his obnoxious insistencies upon calling him the name by which half the population of Lima, Ohio truly believes to be what's written on his birth certificate. "But I really need to talk to you."
"About what?" He asks quickly, eyes darting rapidly between her and the small group of Cheerio's impatiently awaiting his return…
Most of the time, Rachel just couldn't keep up with her brother's bipolar tendencies, truly she couldn't… He could be throwing a punch looking to defend her honor one minute, and skiving her off trying to push her to the side for the next.
She never knew what to expect when it came to Noah, but it came with the territory… she guessed; after all, this was a territory that she knew absolutely nothing about – popularity.
But she couldn't have all of the blame placed on herself for that factor of her life, it was after all, purely the fault of extenuating circumstances that had ensured the decade of secondary school nightmares that she had thus far endured.
In the beginning, she had found herself to be a pretty popular kid… Yeah, sure, she might have only been four years old at the time, but still, she'd managed to make friends relatively easily; she was extroverted, wildly talented and relatively easy to get along with…
Rachel's biggest downfall since day one had been her competitive nature; a trait that had all but forced Shelby and Hiram to avoid enrolling her into athletics and instead, to focus on dance and music… but even then, Rachel had always felt the need to be on top.
And then she had gotten sick…
In a heartbeat, Rachel had gone from a constant concern about the state of her macaroni pictures to simply finding herself just trying to stay alive another day, and the friends that she had made, the ones that she had been continuing to establish, they could no longer be her number one priority.
And Rachel had quickly learned, even at her young age, just how situations like that tended to work; at that age being out of the ordinary might as well have held her under the same classification as having the bubonic plague… Nobody wanted to be around her after she'd fallen ill, nobody…
Tragedies such as that one, they had a tendency to become front page news for a little while at least before they began to fizzle out into nothingness once more… Some people had stuck around, most simply faded into mere background noise, and at the beckoning of their parents – too afraid to take their child into a pediatric oncology ward for fear that leukemia was as contagious as small pox – it was weeks before all of the friends that she had made in school were gone.
She was six years old by the time that she was strong enough to so much as be tutored at home, seven before she could enter into the school system once more where Shelby had had no choice but to enroll her a year behind the rest of her classmates.
Her struggles were obvious, they had been, ever since she was a child, but Rachel had been born a fighter, they'd all known that, ever since the very beginning.
But even in those rare moments where she couldn't seem to find it in her to pull herself out of the darkness of continuing, unfortunate circumstances, her family at the very least, had always been there, and as her rock, Rachel had learned to fully rely on Noah.
And today was no different.
"I need you to join the glee club." His reaction was instantaneous, eyes shooting so wide that they practically fell straight out of his skull as his jaw dropped and muscles stiffened instinctively.
From somewhere beyond the two siblings, a sudden, shrill shriek of laughter told Rachel that in her excitement, she seemed to have forgotten to drop her voice low enough to prevent her brother's friends from hearing her…
Rachel sinks her head slightly, embarrassed for both him as well as herself; Noah's friends weren't, after all, exactly known for their being the most forgiving when it came to public humiliation.
"Are you crazy?" His voice elevates strategically, ensuring that his friends would be able to hear the displeasure behind his tone before he grabs Rachel by the shoulder and drags her even further down the hall. "You do realize that I have a reputation to uphold at this school, right?"
"Oh come on, Noah!" Rachel stomps dramatically; there was a hidden strength inside of her, an expressed ambition that made it nearly impossible for anybody to avoid her dreams once she had her mind set on them…
The single exception to this rule was her brother, his strikingly similar personality often forcing their meetings like this to clash aggressively in a manner that both Rachel, as well as Noah knew drove their mother absolutely insane.
"It's only temporary, I swear!" She continues after her brother proves unable to come up with a response, switching her tone with a flawless accuracy, from a stony defiance to a desperation that Rachel knew would be nearly impossible for Noah to resist.
"I'm not joining your glee club, Rach," He's trying to stick to his guns, but Rachel can already hear his voice softening just as she'd intended. "It will ruin me completely; do you realize how long it took for me to make it so that the geeks wouldn't even look me in the eyes anymore, to get teachers to fear me enough to not even send me to the principal?"
"Oh, because that's such a good reputation for a person to have!" Rachel shoots back, her jaw setting and inclination rising in a manner that resembles their mother so convincingly that Noah can't help but to recoil.
"That's not the point!" He waves her off, stepping away from her in an effort to walk back towards his locker; willing to go anywhere in order to move away from this conversation. "I have football Rachel. Scouts are coming to look at me this year and I need to work my ass off this season… I can't have any distractions, none whatsoever… You know that mom can't afford to send me to college, this is my last chance!"
"And imagine how good it's going to look on your resume when the admissions board sees that you've managed to balance both football and glee flawlessly…" Rachel argues, "Come on Noah, it would make you a shoe-in and I know you, you're always willing to work hard… you can do both!"
Noah sighs, he has to give his sister some credit – she has always been a master of persuasion.
"Why do you need me to join glee so badly?" He asks the question that tells Rachel that she has her brother exactly where she wants him; directly inside of the palm of her hand.
"Because Noah, our Sectionals competition is next Saturday and we need twelve people to compete in order to qualify." Rachel explains patiently, the heartbreaking details that Mr. Schuester had informed them of mere days ago.
"And how many members do you have now?"
"Well… we have me, Kurt, Tina, Mercedes and Artie…" She counts off the abysmal number; managing to squeeze all of their members in on the fingers of a single hand… they don't even have half of what they need in order to qualify for competition, "So including you, we would have six."
"And how many do you need again?"
"Twelve," She informs him, "And before you make your final decision, please remember that if I can't win Sectionals, then I won't even have the opportunity to go to Nationals, forget Internationals… My resume will be stained by a devastating loss in the preliminary rounds… the preliminary rounds, Noah! I'll never get into a descent performing arts college, and then I'll never go to Broadway. I'll grow up and become nothing more than a homeless burn out living on the streets and selling my body just to get enough money for a couple of dollar crack hits a day…"
"Jesus, relax," Noah stops in the midst of her typical tangents; he wasn't exactly sure when this conversation went from being about glee clubs to crack heads but suddenly, he was no longer following. "Listen Rachel, I know that you're smarter than me at this whole math thing, but I'm still pretty sure that even if I do join the glee club, you'll still need six more people."
"Well…" Rachel sounds suspicious as if this were a problem that she has already not only considered, but came up with a solution for as well. "I was thinking that maybe… well maybe you could ask some of your friends."
"Did you hit your head this morning or something?" Noah laughs although his question presents as semi-serious as he ducks downwards in an effort to meet Rachel's eyes, pretending to check her pupils for signs of a concussion.
"Noah, I'm serious…" She slaps him away from her, "My Broadway dreams are on the line here!"
"I'll think about it, okay?" Noah offers, his sigh masked by the warning bell as it rings above both of their heads. "I've gotta go to class, okay, I'll see you later."
"You don't have to go to class, Noah, you never go to class!" Rachel's voice elevates as Noah slings his backpack further up the length of his shoulder and takes off quickly down the hallway. "You're avoiding having to give me an answer!"
"I gave you an answer!" He calls back to her from the opposite end of the hallway.
"I meant a real answer, Noah!" She counters as her brother slowly disappears amidst the crowd, "Don't forget, Noah; crack head! Crack head!"
Her shouts elicit curious glances from a few passerby as they stare at Rachel as if she has three heads while meanwhile, Noah all but ignores her, offering her nothing more than a small wave, not even bothering to turn to face her as he disappears around the corner and out of sight completely.
With a sigh of defeat, Rachel turns towards the opposite direction that her brother had just disappeared beyond, her eyes subconsciously meeting with those of Santana Lopez's as the Latina lifts her head from the huddle of Cheerio's previously crowded around her brother, the sneer on her face telling Rachel that they had just been talking about her… and it hadn't been because they were giving her compliments.
"What is it Man Hands?" Santana sneers as their eyes catch, "Do you want to ask us to join the chess club?"
Their heads rear with a malicious laughter that practically forces Rachel to turn her head and just keep walking… She ignores her brother's friends strategically,
She always does, she always has to.
Noah had been meticulously avoiding her all day long, or at least, that was the impression that Rachel was starting to get anyway…
Following their brief meeting in the hallway, he had spent the rest of the school day treating her like a ghost, their only interaction since then being a single, allusive text that he sent her, telling her that he couldn't give her a ride home after school because he was spending the afternoon in the gym…
He'd snuck through the back door when he finally had arrived home, slipping silently up and into his bedroom, leaving Rachel worried that he was more upset with her than he originally thought for having called him out in front of all of his friends earlier that day…
She's barely paying attention as her soup slowly boils within the stovetop below… She had never been much of a chef, no, that job was better reserved for her mother, but Shelby had somehow found herself trustworthy of her children enough to leave them home alone for the weekend while she went up to Detroit for a long, overdue visit to her sister, and considering Noah was even more hopeless at the culinary arts than she was, it was this, or it was nothing.
She hisses in pain, her hand retreating naturally away from the heat as the soup boils over the edge of the pan and splashes recklessly against her skin.
Frustrated, she shuts the gas off on the stove more aggressively than what is probably necessary, slamming the spoon down against the countertop… She knows that she needs to talk to her brother and she knows that she needs to do so soon if she wants to accomplish anything more than a couple of third degree burns tonight.
Rachel slips up the stairwell slowly, planning her and Noah's entire conversation out inside of her head as she moves.
Noah's bedroom door is open a small crack, never having closed all the way, not since he'd slammed it so hard one day that he'd knocked the entire frame straight off the wall…
His light is slipping as a silver of yellow from out the door, drenching the otherwise dark hallway, and Rachel is mere seconds from barging straight into his bedroom, demanding answers when she hears his voice, barely above a whisper as it emits softly into the hall.
Rachel walks on her tip-toes, back pressed firmly against the wall; clearly whatever her brother is saying is meant to be kept secret…
She falls silent, containing even the very sounds of her breathing as her ears adjust to register his soft words… His tone sounds upset, desperate almost; he's breathing in a manner that makes it sound as if he's barely managing to hold back the tears, and finally, just as Rachel is starting to actually grow worried, his words ring clear, straight through her ears.
But once they do, she almost wishes that they hadn't…
"Pregnant, are you sure?"
Rachel's heart freezes as it leaps upwards and into her throat. She isn't exactly certain who it is that her brother is talking to on the phone, although she has a relatively good idea, and she isn't exactly sure of the context, although she knows that she could take a pretty accurate wild guess, but whatever this was, she was absolutely certain of at least one thing – this couldn't be good.
"Santana, calm down, don't cry okay?" Noah inadvertently confirms Rachel's initial assumptions, the last bit of hope that she had for this not directly involving her brother sucking out of her lungs with a rush of cold air. "We'll figure this out, okay, we'll be fine… Maybe… maybe this isn't as bad as you think."
He sounds more as if he's trying to convince himself of this rather than her, but Rachel can't blame him too much, the Corcoran's have grown to become optimists, no matter how hopeless a situation was. It was the only way that they had ever made it this far, it was the only way that they would ever make it further.
"I'll get another job, San," Rachel could truly only make out one side of this phone call, but really, it was all she actually needed, "I'll drop out of school and pick up some extra shifts at Sheets-n-Things. We'll be okay; everything is going to be okay."
Rachel shuts her eyes in her silent emphasis of her disappointment towards her brother's projected solution towards his problems, unnoticed by anyone but her as she leans her head back against the wall, heart continuing to slam faster and faster inside of her chest.
"Listen, I have to go but I'll see you at the game tonight… we'll talk then, okay?" He fell into a quick silence, the indistinct, muffled sounds of Santana's inaudible response through the phone filtering through the blank spaces lingering within the air between her and Noah. "I love you too… you and our baby."
Rachel hears the soft beep indicative of Noah's hanging up his phone and she immediately presses her ear closer against the wall, trying to listen in on his brother's response although, as it turned out, she didn't have to try nearly as hard to hear as she'd originally thought.
"Shit!" He bellows so loudly that Rachel jumps, releasing an inadvertent gasp of surprise muffled by the sounds of Noah's cell phone hitting the wall opposite her, where it inevitably had shattered into pieces.
She'd been so distracted that she hadn't even noticed the sound of Noah's footsteps until she was mere feet from his bedroom door, and by default, her.
Her adrenaline is pumping with the idea that she doesn't want her brother to know that she had heard his secret quite yet, forcing her to scamper away on the balls of her feet, moving silently in a manner that she'd acquired only from years of dance so that she quickly sits herself at her desk, trying to look pre-occupied.
"Hey…" She hears Noah call to her alongside a soft knock and she turns, putting her best expression of blissful ignorance on her face.
He's already in the jacket and tie that his football team requires for game days and she can't help but to think that it makes Noah look older, more grownup… especially with the burden of impending fatherhood looming above his head.
"My phone, uh… fell into the toilet. I gotta go get a new one before my game so will you be okay getting to the field by yourself?"
His voice sounds sad, distant even… It's uncharacteristic of her brother, especially right before a football game, and she can't help but feel as if even had she not been aware of the circumstances of his mood, she would have still been able to read the tension between them like a book.
It makes her more than a little bit nervous about what's going to happen once their mother returns from Detroit…
"Yeah," The truth sifts between them thick as steel, but she simply does what she can to avoid it. "Yeah, I'll call Kurt, his dad can drive me.
"Okay…" He seems uninterested, but his firm stance tells Rachel that he's not quite finished with her yet. "And listen, since mom's not around this weekend, um… the after party for the game is going to be here tonight, okay?"
Rachel eyes him skeptically… Forget that Shelby had explicitly stated before she'd left that there would be absolutely no people inside of this house other than them while she was gone, Rachel couldn't help but to think that with the emotional baggage associated with the announcement that he was going to be a father at seventeen, drinking at all, let alone hosting an entire party wasn't a smart move.
"Are you sure that's such a good idea?" She hints, trying to force him to understand a sense of responsibility, especially right now, without allowing him to figure out that she knows his secret.
"I don't need a lecture tonight, Rachel okay?" It wasn't like him to get snippy with her like this, and Rachel struggles to put it aside, trying to remind herself that this attitude wasn't about her, that her brother simply had a lot of things on his plate at the moment. "Look, I've just had a really long day, okay and I really, really want to get plastered tonight… So make sure you pack a bag or something so that you can stay at a friend's house and –"
"I'm coming to this party," Rachel tells him defiantly and her statement isn't emitted as a question, but a fact. "You can't kick me out of my own house, Noah!"
"No, you're not" He doesn't hesitate before he gives her his final answer. "And yes, I can."
"But Noah…"
"No!" He emphasizes, his voice rising exponentially, "Don't even try, Rach, I'm not in the mood today."
Rachel's mouth hangs open in an immediate retort; there are a million things that she wants to say right now, there are a million things that she can say right now, but she remains silent despite herself, no is just not the right time.
"Fine," Rachel concedes verbally, but in her head she's mentally crossing her fingers; there's no way in hell that she is going to leave her brother alone to get drunk and belligerent tonight, not with all of this on his mind. "I'll sleep over at Kurt's house."
"Good," He nods, satisfied with his victory, to pre-occupied to see her lie for what it was. "I'll see you at the game."
Noah ducks from her bedroom with a stiff nod, leaving Rachel fidgety, itching to make her first motion… But she plays it safe, she waits until she hears the front door slam shut, and the unmistakable roar of Noah's car as it takes off down the street before she lunges for her cell phone, ripping it open before immediately sending out a mass text to her four fellow glee members…
'Do you guys want to go to a party tonight?'
Crazy-Wee-Cat – It's definitely a start to the explanation but there's still a bit more mystery about Hiram to come around and this is definitely a huge factor leading up to that. Thanks for the review!
CloudGaze15 – You are very, very welcome, please, take some more! I'm glad you liked Hiram's view on the matter, it was definitely the beginning of a much bigger arc for his character that clearly effects the rest of his family a lot so watch for little clues here and there. I'm trying to give you all a break from the sadness for at least a chapter or two, because the next part is when everything starts going down big time! As always, thanks for your marvelous reviews!
PurpleCocoa – Thanks for reviewing! Hiram will have his chance up again in a couple of chapters, as they come it will get a little clearer how insecure he is about himself, mainly his sexuality which is a big reason why he decided to marry Shelby and start a family with her. Everything's got to do with everything so keep watching for clues!
Sillystarshine – Ahh, thank you, thank you! He did a good job hiding his secret for a few years but now that it's starting to get out in the open, he's going to have a harder time controlling it and things are gonna start spiraling pretty fast for these poor guys.
Marinka4 – Hahaha, me neither, trust me. Thanks for the review!