Thirteen
With all things considered, Rachel had actually thought things were going moderately well. Not that they couldn't have gone better but at least Mercedes had put aside her need to participate in the club-wide vendetta against Quinn and Puck long enough to reinforce the bright side of performing last, something Rachel had tried valiantly—and failed—to get across before she was insulted.
Of course, in hindsight they'd both been wrong. But, really, they had no way of knowing that the other schools had divvied up their set list like a freshly baked apple pie until now, when it was blatantly being displayed up on stage. Rachel looked to her left and Mercedes' eyes rivaled that of their acting chaperone and she could see the girl pretty much thought they were doomed.
Furthermore, Rachel could not believe that man in front of her was crying. She understood the emotional impact of the school for the deaf singing about everlasting hope but even that didn't constitute enough for a grown man to start balling his eyes out in public. Not when Barbra, Patti or even Idina weren't involved.
Fuming, she stood up, hands clenched at her sides and yelled, "Meeting in the green room in five minutes."
Rachel then marched away before she could be sure anyone had heard her. She reasoned they probably did because they were too busy worry about their lack of a set list to remember they weren't supposed to like usual.
Once hitting the hallway, Rachel impulsively veered left toward the washroom in hopes of using the five-minute window before the meeting to figure out what the heck she was going to do. Nothing in all the contingency plans for Sectionals that she had made in case Mercedes happened to fall ill—Rachel would graciously take her place—or Finn not arriving—give Noah his solo and get Brittany to rework the chorography—had prepared her for this.
She was just turning the corner to the hall—that was helpfully labeled with directions to the restrooms—when it became apparent something wasn't right. No one was around, it was eerily quiet and then the fact she was suddenly being manhandled and thrown through an open door, her sixth sense was way past tingling.
Of course, she'd been in this situation before and when the door slammed behind her, Rachel quickly spun around the face her assailant, who was leaning against the door.
"Santana was that really necessary? While I admire your flare for the dramatic, I'll have you know I would've been happy to speak to you without you dragging me into this…" Rachel trailed off and looked around at an enormous amount of boxes stacked around her, "where are we exactly? I'd imagine a storage room of—"
"Berry, I'll find a roll of duct tape and seal your trap shut if you say another word."
There was a brief pause of silence—where Santana breathed a barely audible sigh of relief at the quiet and Rachel tried her best to follow the order—when not surprisingly Rachel cracked.
"I would just like to say that this whole situation is extremely unsettling and I find it hard not to let my anxiety manifest itself in streams of intellectually woven rhetoric. Also, I don't believe I can be held at fault for such a reaction, since associating with you has had the residual affect of unwittingly entering into a James Bond movie. Recently, I even entertained the thought of sweeping my house for listening devices."
Santana rolled her eyes and stepped forward, smirking when Rachel immediately stepped back. "Can it, Berry. We're here to talk about your grubby little hands being all over my girlfriend."
Rachel felt her nerves leave instantly and she huffed in annoyance at the accusation. Her eyes narrowed dangerously and it was her that took a step toward Santana this time. For her part, the Latina just looked confused and mildly interested.
"You can't blame that on me, Santana Lopez. Brittany is a tactile person by nature and since you're being ridiculously obtuse at the moment, I'm the only one around her to offer her that type of support."
Santana rolled her eyes. "I don't care about the reason for it happening, I just want it to stop."
"Well, unfortunately that won't be happening until you get over yourself and stop playing with Brittany's emotions like their tied to an end of a string."
Rachel was gesturing wildly with her hands, looking like—for lack of a better description—a human tornado in a dress. Santana didn't look intimidated though, really the Latina never looked intimidated, much to Rachel's chagrin.
"A yo-yo, Berry," Santana exclaimed suddenly and Rachel realized the girl was all set to ignore everything she'd said except the one thing she could knit pick. "The metaphor is a yo-yo. Shouldn't you know that? Aren't those like you're thing?"
Rachel scoffed at the insinuation. "Actually, what I said was technically a simile since I employed the use of like instead—"
"I've decided I'm shoving your ass inside a box instead. Then I can employ my own use of like and say you're like a man in a box," the Latina growled and Rachel's eyes widened in fear that she desperately tried to shrug off.
"Don't be ridiculous, Santana," she laughed loudly until the cheerleader started stalking towards her with a sinister glint in her eye. Rachel immediately jumped backward. "Stay back! I'm well versed in the art of pepper spray. I took a class at the Lima Community Centre and I'm warning you I'm armed and dangerous!"
The tiny Diva quickly scrambled to pull the tiny pink pepper spray canister from where it was hanging on a chain around her neck hidden by her dress and aimed it at Santana. Finally her fathers' gross overreaction to her first kiss at music camp was coming in handy.
The Latina stopped and started shaking her head. "Put that shit down, Mighty Loud and tell me what Brit told you about me."
Rachel lowered the canister slowly—incase this was a ruse of some kind to lull her into a false sense of security—before her face suddenly transformed into a beaming beckon of happiness.
Santana took a giant step back and shuddered at the sight but Rachel didn't seem to notice, already lost in another inevitable ramble. "Your adoration for Brittany really is your most admirable quality, Santana. You should show it more often, preferably without threatening me first. I think—"
"Berry," Santana growled and Rachel's mouth snapped shut immediately, "you got three seconds."
Rachel crossed her arms over her chest and huffed in protest. "Fine. I was merely trying to encourage you to embrace a more emotionally enriched lifestyle. There was no need to—" Santana reached over and grasped the pepper spray container that was still hanging around Rachel's neck, yanking it so Rachel stumbled closer, the proximity making it easier to turn the spray so the nozzle faced Rachel's way. "What I meant to say was that Brittany has already forgiven you but is still concerned about the next time you boorishly drop her by the wayside when problems arise."
Santana dropped the container and stepped away much to Rachel's relief. The Diva quickly shoved the item back under the collar of her dress before she looked up at Santana, who was pacing a few feet away from her.
"I don't mean to do it," the girl whispered, and even though Santana wasn't looking at her Rachel decided the comment was meant for her anyway.
She forced down the urge to smile—a mistake she wasn't about to make twice—because this was what friends did, well, threats aside. Rachel suddenly had the overwhelming urge to help, not just Brittany but Santana as well.
"Well, if you're serious about getting her back…" Rachel trailed off and Santana looked up at her suspiciously, considering Rachel Berry never willingly interrupted one of her own rants. "That means we won't ever be in this situation a third time…"
Santana rolled her eyes and gestured with her hand for Rachel to get on with it. When the Diva didn't listen, Santana reluctantly sighed, "Fine."
Rachel clapped her hands in excitement, ignoring the murderous look on Santana's face in reaction to her enthusiasm. "Ah, excellent. I think I might have a satisfactory plan to help you."
"Oh it better because if it doesn't I'm planning on killing you so and me and Brit can have lots of comfort sex," Santana supplied, smirking devilishly.
Rachel's eyes widened and she quickly shook her head. "No, no, I assure you Plan C will be widely unnecessary."
"Suit yourself," the Latina offered with a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders. "I think it would've been pretty fun."
Everybody was in the green room once Rachel had arrived, well except for Quinn, who Rachel was set on ignoring until Sectionals was over anyway. It was essential—now more than ever—because New Directions' survival depended on Rachel concentrating all her efforts on the task at hand, intentions that Quinn had the uncanny ability to destroy.
"You leaked the set list. You don't want to be here, you're just Sue Sylvester's little moles," Kurt yelled and Rachel's eyes widened because the dissention amongst the ranks was worse than she thought.
She quickly walked over toward the wall beside Kurt, leaning against it and silently looking up toward the ceiling for help; wishing for Mercedes—who just seemed to want to follow Kurt's lead of glaring at the Cheerios—to take the lead. Rachel couldn't do it, not alone, not when nobody listened to anything she had to say.
When Rachel looked back on the action, she spotted Santana staring at her just as Quinn walked in, stealing Rachel's attention instantly.
"I know for a fact that's true. Sue asked us to spy for her," the blonde agreed and Rachel shut her eyes again, trying to clear her head of Quinn long enough to figure out what they were going to do.
There was an offended scoff—Santana—Rachel imagined she was glaring at the blonde too before the Latina's voice filled the room. "Look, we may still be Cheerios but neither of us ever gave Sue the set list."
"Well, I did," Brittany said softly and Rachel's eyes snapped open to seek out her friend, probably her best friend actually, "but I didn't know what she was going to do with it."
The rest of Glee was instantly up in arms and Rachel watched Santana try to fight off the urge to strike back with something scathing. The cheerleader looked over at Brittany and not surprisingly—at least to Rachel—Santana turned back to the rest of the club much calmer.
"Okay look, believe what you want but no one is forcing me to be here." She started to walk towards Rachel, while still in full command of the room. Rachel watched on in equal parts awe and jealousy. "And if you ever tell anyone this I'll deny it but I like being in Glee Club, it's the best part of my day okay. I wasn't going to go and mess it up."
Santana was sitting in the chair beside her now and Rachel looked at her carefully, remembering all the heated conversations—arguments—they've had over the past couple months before smiling.
"I believe you," she said and quickly looked away to put her attention on everybody else. In a span of seconds she took in everybody's faces: some angry, Brittany being just confused and all of them worried, except for Quinn. She was all of those things but she also looked hurt too—which made sense after yesterday of course—but Rachel just wished that the blonde would meet her gaze, if only once. When it didn't happen, Rachel reluctantly tore her eyes away and back to the task at hand. "Okay look guys, there is no point in us arguing anymore. We have to go on in an hour."
"And we have no songs," Tina pointed out, almost resigned to failure and it made Rachel angry. Everybody just looked like they were giving up and that was not the way Rachel Berry did things.
"Perhaps I could improvise some of my deaf poetry jams," Artie suggested, looking around for people to agree.
Rachel sighed, what was wrong with these people? They'd all been through much tougher circumstances than this—and admittedly Rachel was flirting with the possibility of giving up after the Jane Adam's girls wheeled themselves off the stage—but she was sure they could still do this now.
"No," Tina answered when nobody else did, shaking her head.
Finally Rachel had had enough. Finn might not be there so she could vicariously use him to rally them altogether, Mr. Schue had never really been good at encouraging them anyway and Mercedes, well, clearly the responsibility was too much for the girl. But Rachel was determined to make sure all that didn't matter.
"No, " she exclaimed and hoped she wasn't imagining the tiny bit of faith that began swirling throughout the room, "look we're going to do this the right way. Lets start with the ballad. Mercedes, do you have anything else is your repertoire?"
She looked at the girl on the couch, silently pleading with her to cooperate. It seemed like her request was filled because the singer looked up seconds later.
"Yeah, but it's not as good as anything you're going to sing," Mercedes admitted with a resigned sigh.
Rachel knew this was her moment to take her solo back because she could see it. The pressure to perform something spectacular on the fly was getting to the other diva. Rachel's heart was beating excitedly, as she imagined the lights and the crowd but then she remembered. Mercedes hadn't received the solo because she was the better balladeer; she'd received it because the group needed her to have it.
And if there was anything Rachel put above herself, it was winning. She couldn't take it—no matter how much she wanted to—because right now the club desperately needed the morale that had them out of their seats giving a standing ovation just days before.
"No, we agreed," Rachel said with a slight nod until she decided that wasn't convincing enough.
She was walking toward the couch Mercedes was on, ready to persuaded her to sing another solo, when the girl abruptly stood up.
"We agreed that I would sing, And I'm Telling You and that ain't happening." Mercedes was now right in front of her and Rachel just stared at her, wondering what exactly her fellow diva was trying to say. "Look Rachel, the truth is you're the best singer that we've got."
"As much as it hurts me to admit it," Kurt cut in and Rachel glanced at him, still too stunned by what Mercedes had said to do much more than that, "and it does, she's right. Rachel's our star, if anyone is going to go belt it on the fly, it should be her."
They were complimenting her. Well, Kurt was his usual catty self—refusing to personalize and directly give her validation in anyway—but Rachel knew it was hard for him. They were really alike in that way but what Mercedes said was a real acknowledgement.
Rachel smiled at them both—probably the most hideous smile she'd ever given, it wasn't showface enough at all—and her eyes landed back at Mercedes. "Well, I do have something that I've been working on since I was four."
Mercedes laughed and Rachel looked at her, surprised that she seemed genuinely amused. Rachel was about to thank her when her attention was immediately drawn elsewhere.
"Then I guess we have our ballad and we can close with Somebody to Love. It's a real crowd pleaser."
Quinn.
This ignoring her—might but probably not returned—feelings idea was definitely not working. The blonde just had to speak and Rachel would be thrust into a hazy frenzy where she couldn't do anything but think about Quinn. It certainly didn't help appease the feeling the blonde was talking directly to her—smiling at her even.
Of course, then Noah came up behind Quinn and the fog dissipated extremely fast. Even Brittany had said Quinn stared at Noah, it was a 'will they, won't they' for the ages—she'd watched enough episodes of Friends—because she felt it important to know everything there was to know about her namesake—to recognize the classic signs.
"Yeah, that and a can of soup will guarantee us third place. We still need another song we can all sing together."
Everybody's smiles were wiped away, even Quinn's—which Rachel personally thought was a travesty, since the blonde didn't smile a lot these days—and Rachel wasn't sure what to do.
"I have one." It was Finn. Rachel had to blink just in case she was imagining him but he was still there. "I found the sheet music online, used the Cheerios copier to make copies and then I trashed the thing." He'd even printed his own sheet music that he carelessly threw onto the table in front of Matt. "Mike, Matt, Brittany, Santana, you're our best dancers. Figure something out and we'll all follow your lead."
"It's going to be choppy," Mike exclaimed, looking around at the others around him.
Finn smiled. "Good, we're best when we're loose."
Rachel was busy looking over his song choice and admittedly it was a good one, exactly the song she'd imagine Finn would choose: You Can't Always Get What You Want. Rachel glanced up at Quinn and thought about how true the sentiment was.
Sighing, Rachel reluctantly looked back at Finn—as he continued on with his pep talk—silently hoping that someday soon she'd figure out what to do about those sad hazel eyes that she just couldn't forget.
With a shake of her head, Rachel set about the task of encouraging Finn so he'd perform at the level he was capable of. "It's good to have you back, Finn."
He smiled at her and Rachel smiled back because if anything she was happy he'd shown up. When Finn started talking to Jacob, Rachel zoned out again because Quinn had moved into her eye line just behind the two ex-friends.
Noah and Finn were in a stand off and when Finn refused his—admittedly lack luster—apology Quinn just looked so guilty when Finn's eyes fell on to her.
"Finn I…" she mumbled, her voice cracking with the weight that she might never make this right again.
Rachel stepped forward, her foot straying toward the blonde once again, but then Finn slipped in front of her doing that half smile thing that used to make her swoon. When Rachel subtly leaned to the side to look around him, she realized Quinn was already over with everybody else and she reluctantly returned her attention back to Finn.
"You okay?" she asked softly while trying to hide the resentment inside of her the best she could with a smile.
His eyes were shining in a way that made her breath catch; he hadn't looked at her like that for a long time: since her disastrous makeover and his reunion with Quinn. She wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry because she'd been waiting for this moment for so long and it had finally arrived. He was looking right at her—she finally had his attention, all of it—and it was too late. It had been too late for a while now and Rachel had no idea how she was going to tell him.
"…this is your chance, don't screw it up."
Wait, what?
He'd been speaking this whole time and…oh gosh, the solo.
How had she forgotten about the solo?
The solo, how could she forget about the solo? That was all that was going through her mind for the past half an hour. Being preoccupied made it extremely hard to rehearse the new song and choreography along with everybody else, especially when she was charged with teaching Finn's two left feet to appear somewhat rhythmically inclined. Thankfully, Rachel Berry was a master multitasker—a must learn trait when living a frenetic lifestyle such as her own—because she wasn't sure how she would've made it through otherwise.
Finn's attention was making her uncomfortable and more than that Rachel just hadn't had time to prepare as well as she would've liked. But, even a seasoned performer such as herself was allowed a few moments of anxiety, especially with circumstances as they were. Because when Rachel said she'd been working on something since she was four, she hadn't actually meant she'd ever it performed it in front of anybody before. Her fathers and her stuffed monkey, Lithgow—a consolation prize for Daddy when Sally Solomon was nixed off the list of her potential namesakes in lieu of Rachel Greene—notwithstanding, since they were all incredibly bias towards all her endeavors.
Still, this was what she'd been waiting her whole life for and Rachel was sure that she just needed a couple minutes alone to regroup her bearings. She turned toward Brittany to tell her she was leaving when something hit her from behind. The tiny brunette shrieked as she felt herself falling, just barely able to get most of her body out of the way of the table next to her except the side of her leg that collided with the corner.
"Rach!" Brittany yelled and the blonde was quick to her side, gripping her arms in an attempt to pull her into her lap. "Are you okay?"
There was a groan next to her and Finn sat up with a slight frown on his face, wondering why nobody was worried about him until Santana walked over to slap him in the back of the head.
"Great job, Dumbass. You're lucky her head missed the table," the Latina barked, hitting him once again for good measure.
"S, I think she hurt her leg," whimpered Brittany as the tall blonde carefully turned Rachel's leg to the side to inspect the large scrap on the top of her calf.
Rachel immediately looked up at the cheerleader, trying to reassure her as best she could with a smile. "It's okay, Brittany. I have no doubt I'll be fine. I after all packed a First Aid kit for an instance such as this."
"Oh, Rach, I'm sorry," Finn yelled, scrambling closer so he was looming over them both. "I tripped and I…you're not really hurt are you?"
This time not just Santana rolled her eyes. Even Finn's number one fan—Kurt—seemed to see the idiocy in the comment.
"Does she look fine, Ginormous?" Santana scoffed when everybody else seemed to be standing around staring at the blood trickling down Rachel's leg. "God, get the kit, RuPaul was talking about."
Surprisingly, Quinn shot up from the couch and started off toward the big bag Rachel had dragged on the bus with her this morning. It was big, blue and argyle—not very hard to find.
"Good, Juno will put her skills as an illegitimate mother to good use and take care of the midget. The rest of us are changing into our costumes." When nobody started to move, Santana's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Did I stutter? Let's go. Now!"
There was a sea of commotion and the room was literally a ghost town within seconds, all except the two blondes and Rachel. Brittany seemed reluctant to go, even when Quinn returned with the kit, so the tiny Diva looked up at her and smiled.
"Brittany I assure you, I'll be fine. It's just a scrape, I promise."
The blonde cheerleader nodded and slipped out from behind her. She was running to catch up with the rest of the club when Quinn kneeled down beside Rachel.
"I guess I should clean it first," Quinn whispered and started shifting things around in the red container looking for what she needed.
"You don't have to do this, Quinn. I am quite capable of doing it myself. My fathers were incredibly inept at first aid when I was growing up so I've become very efficient caring for myself in that regard."
The blonde's head shot up and she quickly shook it. "It's okay, I…um…it will give me a reason to stay behind from the rest."
"Surely you'd rather be around Noah or other's that you actually like. Actually, I think I see him waiting for you down the hall," Rachel commented, looking in said boys direction as he stood leaning carelessly against the wall a little ways away.
"I know." When Quinn noticed Rachel's gaze had returned to her, she elaborated. "He's always around waiting."
The tiny brunette smiled softly in response because Quinn just looked so tired. The urge to hug her was swirling dangerously in her chest and Rachel quickly shook the need away. She had to focus on Sectionals and her solo and winning…
Rachel watched Quinn retrieved the item she was looking for from the box and rip it open in one fell swoop. "I'm positive Noah's just worried about you, Quinn,"
"Well, he shouldn't be," the blonde said lowly—almost in a frustrated growl—and Rachel swallowed down the flare of heat manifesting in her cheeks. "I'm fine."
Rachel tried to sit perfectly still as Quinn set to work but it was hard, especially with the blonde's finger tips ghosting across her skin. Thankfully, the sting of the peroxide helped, if only a little.
"Forgive me…" Rachel trailed off in a wince and Quinn looked up with a challenging tilt of her head before tossing the cotton ball in her hand away. The tiny brunette immediately tried again, "Forgive me for saying but I find that hard to believe when you're willingly spending time with me to avoid people you actually tolerate."
The pregnant girl looked to be debating some type of cream but quickly shook her head, placing it back where she'd found it. Rachel was about to ask what it was, when Quinn looked up at her with a small smirk.
"I tolerate you, Berry. Just not all the time." At Rachel's skeptical look, Quinn sighed. "I can't go with them, everybody hates me and I'm sure you do too."
"Hate you?" Quinn just nodded and Rachel laughed. "Don't be absurd, Quinn. While I don't agree with the majority of your choices that doesn't give me grounds to hate you. In fact, if I was going to hate you, I think that given our history this would be the last instance I'd site for just cause."
The blonde retrieved a Band-Aid and was playing with the wrapper, almost nervously and Rachel couldn't figure out what she had said. It wasn't everyday—never—that one got see see Quinn Fabray look like this. "You said that before that you don't agree with the choice I made…" the blonde said softly, still not looking up from her hands.
"Yes, I might have mentioned it but a difference in opinion doesn't mean I hate you for thinking differently." Rachel had been on the other side of that too much in her life to do it to anybody else, unless her career was involved in someway of course. "It is true for the club too. They'll come around."
Quinn laugh darkly before leaning over to put the bandage on Rachel's leg. "I doubt that."
"Yes, well, faith is taking the first step, even when you don't see the whole staircase. You just have to go on hoping things will be better, or at least that's what I've gathered from the less than ideal experiences in my life to date."
Quinn looked up at her and whispered, "Thank you."
Rachel nodded—deciding not to put too much stock on this odd conversation in fear of scaring the blonde away—and moved to stand so she could inspect the bandage to make sure it was properly sealed. When she turned her attention back at Quinn, the blonde was now fiddling awkwardly with the First Aid Kit and the uncharacteristic demeanor instantly charmed Rachel once again.
"I should be thanking you," the tiny Diva gestured down toward her leg in explanation, "and as I said before, you don't have to go through this alone."
Quinn didn't say anything, just shut the large red case and stuffed it back into the Diva's hideous travel bag.
Smiling, Rachel decided this was a good enough foundation as any to start…something with Quinn Fabray. The blonde wasn't exactly gay and was having another man's baby but Rachel at least held hope for friendship. First she had to win Sectionals though…the solo.
Oh no, how had she forgotten about the solo again?