Hi guys. I've been re-watching the first like three seasons of Glee in quarantine and I just couldn't help but feel all the anger again about what they did to the whole Rachel/Shelby relationship. And then I started binging through like every single Glee Rachel-Shelby fanfiction there is and it's still not enough.
Soooo... long story short: I had this idea whirling around in my head and I just needed to write it down. And that's exactly what I did. There's someone who really inspired me when I began to plan this story. It's the user/author SemperScriptorum0622 who wrote an AMAAAAZING story called "The Watcher and the Dancer". I was (and still am) absolutely obsessed with that story and I loved the idea of Rachel and Santana being sisters. So I kind of borrowed it for my story lol. I hope that's okay. So, if you're like searching for an insanely good Shelby, Rachel, Santana drama... there you go. "The Watcher and the Dancer" is everything and more.
Anyway... back to this story lol. I don't really know where I'll be going with all this... I don't know how long it's going to be, how many chapters, what's going to happen, if it's suddenly going to turn into a horror-thriller kinda story (it's not.)... I've just finished writing chapter 5 (I'll try to stay like one or two chapters ahead so that it won't take me too long to update but I don't know if I'll be able to keep it up) and I still don't really know. I'm just going to go with it.
Usually, I plan a story out and finish writing it from first to last chapter before I post it but... new fandom, new approach, I guess?
I'd love to know what you guys think about this, so please review from time to time:)
Stay healthy and stay safe!
Started writing: 22.04.2020
Finished writing: 22.04.2020
(Edited (the whole story): 07.10.2020 first to third-person perspective because I can)
Tomorrow
By IceK04
Chapter 1
Overture
Rachel.
The first thing that she notices when Rachel opens the front door to our house on the whateverth of November is that her sister is there. She spots the white sneakers that have been carelessly abandoned in the corner of the hallway and rolls her eyes. She puts them away because she knows that her sister won't do it -not even if her mother asks her to. It's not that she doesn't want to listen to her, but she just forgets. Cleaning, she always says, is not what I want to do for a living. I don't need to practice it.
Rachel's a little surprised that her sister's here, she must admit; she told her just this morning that she'd be in Cheerio practice the whole afternoon.
She shrugs off her coat and scarf and hangs them into the closet next to her.
"I'm home!" She want to shout when she steps through the door of the small foyer into the hallway, but the sound of a door slamming shut—or perhaps bare hands slamming against the tabletop—stops her.
"Are you being serious right now?!"
Rachel winces. She's never heard her mother shout like this. Or screech like this. Or anything like this. She's tough, she raises her voice when she needs to, she knows how to keep control of her voice; she's an actress. A very good actress. Listening to her talk is like listening to a painter paint or a poet rhyme -though that's not really a good metaphor. She has a melodic voice; she can vary it from a soft, high pitch to a rich, low one, she plays with the words as they roll off her tongue; she masters the art of making talking to her something one longs to do. She makes simple sentences like "Good luck" sound like a whole song, and an "I love you" from her lips sends you right into heaven. She makes one word sound intense, sending shivers down your spine, and the next one is not more than a whisper. She keeps her voice in check, her volume, her pitch. She doesn't lose control.
But then why does it feel like she's not at all in control over her voice right now? She sounds like someone who's been smoking for one hundred years when Rachel knows that, as a matter of fact, her mom never once in her life has touched a cigarette. She sounds like someone who's just had to recover from the sound of one thousand forks scarping over a plate.
She sounds incredibly angry.
"Are you telling me," Rachel hears her take a deep breath. "That all that time you were pretending" she spits out that word. "To be working your -your ass off to provide us with a wonderful holiday trip for my birthday, when you were- when you were-"
She stops, and Rachel hears her breath hitch. She's trying not to cry. Rachel's chest contracts. She doesn't want her mom to cry. She's never seen her cry, in fact, there was never a reason for her to.
The muffled response is definitely coming from a male person. But it's, unlike Rachel's mother's, too quiet for her to decipher who is talking.
Her thighs are hurting from dance lessons, and although she was planning on going straight into her room, Rachel turns sideways and hurries down the hallway into her sister's room. She doesn't knock. Her sister never knocks either, and Rachel figures that it's okay.
"What's going on?" She asks and closes the door behind her, without saying say hello -it seems too unimportant.
Her sister is sitting on the windowsill, legs drawn close to her chest as she stares out the window. Her black hair is pulled back into a ponytail and she has changed out of her Cheerio uniform into sweatpants and a Carmel High hoodie from their mom. Rachel still doesn't get how she can be so proud about being at McKinley at school that she never goes there without wearing her Cheerio uniform, but then once she's home, she wears those hoodies like she owns the school that has its logo embroidered on the front.
Santana turns around to face her. Her cheeks tell Rachel that she's been crying, her eyes tell her that she's been planning out a murder. She's probably been doing both. Her face never lies. Not at home. Not to Rachel.
"He cheated."
Rachel's face falls. She knows her sister. She knows her too well for her own good. And she knows for a fact that she was devoting herself to her relationship, to Noah.
Rachel gasps. "Oh my God, San, I'm so-"
"He cheated on her."
She stops short in her movement. "Wait, what? What are you talking about?"
"That asshole cheated on her," she spits out.
Rachel still doesn't understand. Her mind is racing a mile a minute; all of Santana's friends (female friends, that is) have boyfriends. Katie, Brittany, Quinn… but why would she cry?
"When they've finished talking, I'm going to kill him," Santana hisses.
Rachel frowns. "Wait, San, what is going on? I don't-"
"Dad!" She jumps up from the windowsill and Rachel jumps backwards and almost crashes into her cupboard. Santana clenches her fists. "Dad cheated on her."
For a second, Rachel wants to laugh. Her dad is the most amazing dad ever.
He's an assistant to some kind of brilliant detective, and he knows all the great gangster stories. He took them to his work once, and they met that brilliant detective that he always gushes about; Mr Travers. When they were little, he sometimes climbed into their beds and pretended to fall asleep beside them only to suddenly jump up and tickle them to death. He played with their barbie dolls when they asked him to, and he never complained that they wouldn't let him be Ken. When Rachel comes home after a long and exhausting day at school, and has to run the washer because her clothes are covered in blue and purple slush, and he notices and knows immediately that she doesn't want to talk about it, he sits her down on the couch and drapes her legs over his and tells her about his day and makes up some story about a stupid criminal that never gets away with what he's doing, and he makes her laugh, and then he holds her and tells her that he loves her. He scoops her up like she's a baby and carries her all the way upstairs into the master bedroom, and then they watch Funny Girl together, and when Mom comes home, she finds them like that and laughs, though weakly because she immediately knows what's up.
Rachel loves her dad, and her dad loves her, and he loves her sister, and most of all, he loves her mom.
She know that he does. When he's home before her, he always cooks dinner for all of them, and she always acts surprised just so she can kiss him a little harder than she does normally when Santana and Rachel are around. And when she's home early and cooks dinner, he sneaks up on her from behind her, and wraps his arms around her, resting his chin on her shoulder so he can kiss her neck, and she giggles like some teenage girl—or like herself, but on drugs—and tells him to stop teasing and make himself useful and set the table, he obeys. Because he loves her so much. And she loves him even more.
The laugh that was bubbling inside her dies on Rachel's lips. Santana is seething in front of her.
She almost chokes on her next words. "N-no."
Santana nods her head. "Yes."
"No."
"Yes, Rachel."
She watches her trembling fingers move on their own accord to stroke through her hair. "No, that's not true. Dad- he loves her. He loves Mom. It's not true, San, it can't be, it-"
"Rachel," Santana presses. "It is true. He cheated on her. That fucking asshole."
Rachel's hands stop roaming through her hair. They sink to her sides, and she stares up into Santana's deep brown eyes—and knows the truth. Deep inside, she knows it, but her heart is stumbling and stuttering and her mind wheels away from the possibility that her dad has hurt her mom. That he has broken his promise. To Mom, to Rachel, to Santana, to himself.
"B-but," her voice cracks. "How could he? He- he loves her. He loves her so much."
Santana crosses her arms in front of her chest to keep her hands from shaking. "Apparently not."
Rachel's mind is spiralling around her thoughts—or are her thoughts spiralling around her mind?
He did it. He cheated on her. Says a voice in her mind that is too low to be her own, but too high to be Santana's.
No, he didn't. He loves her. Says another voice.
He did.
He didn't.
The voices in her head are screaming at each other. It isn't helping.
She closes her eyes and tries to calm down. It's not working. She's stopped breathing and her fists clench.
Is this a panic attack? She feels like it is. But then, she's never had one, and she doesn't think she's the panic-attack-kinda-person. And she's a chronic diva and theatricality is something that belongs to her like her own mind, and she does tend to overreact at times, she must admit.
"You're not having a panic attack."
She didn't even realize that she spoke those things aloud until Santana raises her voice.
"I feel like I do," she says. Her voice is shaking, and when she pries her eyes open, she realizes that Santana is standing right in front of her.
She feels like a little girl by all sudden, not like a soon-to-be fifteen-year-old. "Why would he do that?"
It's a stupid question and one that she certainly didn't intend to ask.
Santana scowls. "You'll have to ask him."
"But how?"
She does not sound like a soon-to-be fifteen-year-old, either. She sounds like a child that has just learned how to talk.
"He's right out there," says Santana harshly. Her hands are gesturing furiously in front of her. Rachel doesn't think she can control it. "Go ask him."
The younger girl does not move. There's a weight on her chest by all sudden that makes it hard to breathe. No, not hard to breathe. But hard to remember that she needs to—that she wants to.
"Are you really going to kill him, San?"
Her sister narrows her eyes. "I think Mom will do a much better job."
"Oh shit."
Rachel doesn't see how Santana raises an eyebrow at her. She never curses. But now, things have changed.
Rachel whirls around and yanks the door open. When she rushes into the hallway, she can hear her mother's voice again. She's crying.
And suddenly she understands Santana's longing to kill him. She feels the sudden urge to race up the stairs and claw his eyes out for ever even so much as looking at another woman. She loves her dad. She loves her mum. And right now, she hates her dad on top of that.
She never really thought about the concept of love and hate before, but right now, as she stands here in the hallway and hears her mother cry upstairs, she suddenly begins to understand something.
Hate on its own is a very strong emotion. Hate, according to every crime story there is, can lure people into doing something very wrong thinking they're very right just because of their hatred.
But what the crime stories forget to mention is that hate that used to be love is something much more venomous and much more dangerous.
And right now, Rachel is impossibly conflicted. She feels like crying because her mother is crying, and her mother isn't supposed to be crying. Her mother is supposed to shield her from all the bad in the world, she's supposed to keep her away from anger and sadness and danger and tears, she's supposed to be incredibly strong. And, most importantly, she's supposed to shield herself from all that as well. She feels like screaming because she doesn't know what else to do. She feels like punching a wall, but that's a thing that Santana would do, not Rachel. She feels like running away. She feels like locking herself in her room, but her room is upstairs next to her mom's study, and she doesn't think that she could face her dad without killing him. Like, really—really killing him.
And although she knows she shouldn't think like that, Rachel cannot stop herself. In the back of her mind, a memory flares up and tells her 'Honour thy father and thy mother' and 'Thou shall not murder' and she wants to laugh right into God's face and tell him to screw himself and his stupid Ten Commandments because—to hell with it!—she's half Jewish, but then she remembers that, sadly, the Ten Commandments also exist in Judaism and so she's thinking, screw religion altogether. She doesn't care if she'll go to hell for that. Not right now.
Rachel knows that Santana is standing behind her without her giving a signal. She wraps her arms around her as they listen to their mother's cries.
"I can't believe it," says Mom. Her voice is still loud enough for them to hear, but it's far away from the shouting she did a few minutes ago.
Rachel wants to laugh at that realization; it feels as though it was hours ago that she arrived at home.
"I can't believe you would do that to me. To the kids. God, David, the kids!"
"I know."
Rachel hisses at the sound of her father's voice. It used to calm her, to make her feel safe. Those times are over.
"Do you?" Her mother challenges. She still has a strong voice, a demanding one, although it's shaking. "Do you really know what you are doing, David? Do you really know what you are doing to them? What you are doing to me? Because I don't think you do. If you did, you would never have gone off to have an affair and screw another woman behind my back."
Rachel's mother never curses. She never swears, she never lashes out, she never insults. Not when she's angry. She sometimes playfully calls Rachel's father an idiot and laughs, but nothing else. She is strict about that. Stricter than her. Rachel doesn't think that so many people would call 'screwing' a curse word, but to her mother it is. To her, everything is a curse word that isn't a nice or at least a somewhat-nice word. So, when her mother uses the word 'screwing', it means she's pissed beyond what anyone knows her to be able to be.
"Shelbs-"
"Do not 'Shelbs' me on this one, David!" her mother snaps. "You do realize that this is not only about me and you, don't you? You do realise that this has everything to do with our daughters, right?"
There's a pause, and Rachel imagines her mother standing in front of her desk with her arms crossed, slightly bent forwards, piercing her father down with one of her serious-business-looks. She imagines that her father shrinks underneath her look and nods.
Then, her mother goes on. "Do you remember our wedding vows?"
He probably nods.
"So, you remember saying that—and I quote you, David—'I will love you and protect you forever'?"
This time, there's no pause to even give her father time to nod.
"And do you remember what you told me the day Santana was born? When we were in that hospital, and I suddenly realised that one day I would have to let her go outside on her own, even though I knew what badness waits out there? Do you remember that?!"
Her voice is getting louder and louder, and Rachel feels Santana's grip tighten on her.
"You said that you would never let anything happen to our children, David! You said that you would protect them from harm, that you would never ever hurt them!" She is yelling at him. Rachel's never heard her mother yell at anyone quite like this until today.
"I know," is her father's quiet response.
"And what do you think are you doing right now?!"
Somewhere along those words, her mother's voice cracks, and Rachel knows immediately that she is this close to breaking down. Because her mother's voice never cracks. Never ever. And yet, she goes from full force yelling at her father to something between a cry, a groan and a whisper in less than two seconds.
Santana holds Rachel even closer.
"What did I do wrong?"
She's crying again. Rachel doesn't think she's ever in her life felt that helpless.
"What?" asks her father.
"What did I do wrong?" Mom repeats. "What did I do that made you stop loving me? That made you fall in love with someone else?"
He's in love with someone else?! Rachel's head whips up, and her skull misses Santana's nose by a mere two inches.
"Y-you didn't do anything," says her father. "It just happened."
A sob echoes through the otherwise completely quiet house. Rachel feels like dying.
"When?" asks her mother and her voice wavers, trying to get a grip on the force in it again, so it can be louder and more demanding. "When did it 'just happen', David?"
The silence that follows her question is so tense that Rachel can literally feel it against her skin. It's a silence that threatens everybody in this house, a silence that tells her that there's something awful to come.
"Around the time that Santana started at High School."
Rachel's mind is racing a mile a minute. When did Santana start High School again? Was it-
"Three years?!" Her mother yells.
She's much better at math than either of her daughters.
"Three years, David!" she screeches. "I thought a couple of months, maybe half a year, but-"
She stops. The silence that once again fills the house seems deadly.
Her next words seem deadly, like they might send a cork right back into the champagne bottle.
"Get out," she says. There's no emotion in her voice—she sounds like a creepy robot of sorts.
"Wh-?"
"I said: Get out," her voice wavers, but she recovers quickly. "I mean it, David, I don't want you to be here right now. I can't have you here right now."
Rachel's father tries to say something—there's a strange noise echoing through the house, but her mother cuts him off.
"I won't say it again," she says. "Go away. You can pick up your stuff tomorrow when I'm at work. You have one minute to get out of here before I might forget myself."
Rachel hears a chair scrape over the floor, and then there are steps near the staircase. Santana and Rachel are not in the right condition to even think of leaving the hallway and Rachel suddenly realizes that neither her mother nor her father knew that that they are here. They thought they were at school. Still, she cannot bring herself to move just the tiniest centimetre.
Santana loosens her grip on her sister when their father slowly comes into view. First, they can only see his legs, then his torso, and finally, his face. He spots them standing on the left side of the room where the hallway to Santana's room starts, and his eyes widen.
For a moment, he stands completely still. There is a strange noise coming from upstairs—a tearful wail of sorts and then the sound of glass crashing to the ground—that makes Rachel jump in Santana's arms. She twists in her arms to free herself from her grip, but she holds on like Rachel's some sort of lifeline, and the younger girl knows it isn't because she wants to keep her from clawing their father's eyes out, but because she needs her sister to be there when she does what she does.
"Girls," begins their father, and he suddenly sounds more like a 70-year-old than a 43-year-old. He certainly looks ten years older.
Rachel feels the anger bubbling in her belly, forcing its way up her throat. She never knew she was capable of being so angry with someone she usually loves so much.
"Don't say another word," says Santana. Spits Santana. Every single word seems a bit more venomous than the one before.
If their father is smart, he's going to let it go. But he doesn't seem to be acting all that smart today. Or in the last three years, as it seems.
He hesitantly takes a step closer, and it's probably only that hesitation that lingers in his step that stops Santana from jumping at him.
"Girls, I-"
"Shut up!"
The words echo through the altogether silent house. It takes Rachel a second or two to realize that she was the one who uttered them. On the floor above us, a door opens. Then… nothing. No steps, no yelling. Just silence.
Her father's eyes are locking with Rachel's. He pleads her silently, not to hate him.
She wonder if he's looking at her because he loves her, or because he knows that she might be the easiest one to convince of his innocence. She grew up to be more of a daddy's girl, after all. In the years between her third and thirteenth birthday, she was her daddy's girl through and through. But then, puberty hit her full force, and suddenly it was her mom's side of the bed that she crawled into at night—out of fear or sadness or pain because God knows that she totally inherited her mother's sensibility in that particular time of the month. It was her mom's arms that she threw herself into when she came home, covered in slushy. But still, she loves her dad very much. One day ago—had she been asked—she would've answered that she's simply a parents' girl. Now, though, she's totally devoted to her mom.
"Didn't Mom just ask you to leave?" She says slowly and surprises herself with the lack of upset in her voice.
Her father steps even closer.
"Didn't—Mum—just—ask—you—to—leave?!" it's Santana's voice, this time, and she sounds so dangerous that even Rachel feels shivers running down her spine.
"Girls, I-" he reaches out with one hand.
"Shut up!"
"Don't touch me!"
Santana and Rachel say at the very same moment.
It seems to suddenly dawn on their father that he really, totally, and irreversibly screwed up. His shoulders slump. Rachel feels her knees shaking.
"Mom said you should go," she says. Her voice is shaking along with her knees. "You know the way out. Go."
There's a pain in her chest that pushes her down, and she doesn't know how long she's going to be able to hold herself upright. Not when he's looking at her like that.
"GO!" yells Santana. She lets go of Rachel and strides toward their father. "I hate you! You ruined this family, you freaking asshole!"
Under normal circumstances, he would never have let her talk to him like this. But then again, under normal circumstances, he would never have cheated on their mother either.
He doesn't say anything. He just looks at them, one after the other, and sighs, and that makes Rachel so angry that she almost jumps at him.
"Screw you," she mutters. And then, louder: "Screw you, dad!"
Her father tries to take a step towards them. "Girls, please-"
Santana has been holding Rachel's hand until now. But then she lets go, and Rachel almost scream because she thinks she's going to hit him. Instead, she whirls around and yanks the front door open. "LEAVE!"
Rachel falls to the ground. It's like her legs suddenly forgot how to work, and they fold underneath her.
Her father leaves. She watches him go through the front door, and then the front door gets closed by her sister, and- she didn't even realize she was crying until Santana crouches down before her and tries to wipe her tears away. Her shoulders are shaking so hard that it makes her whole body shake along with them.
Santana holds her for a while and then she hauls Rachel up into her arms and they sit down together at the kitchen table. From there, they can see the door to their mother's study. It's opened, and from time to time, a long shadow falls through the door into the hallway. Their mother is pacing. She rarely paces. And she never paces for longer than a minute, but still, they find themselves sitting there, watching her shadow disappear and reappear for at least a quarter of an hour before she eventually stops the pacing and comes downstairs.
She pretends to be okay for about two seconds. Then, Rachel shoots up from her seat and crashes into her body, and she folds her into her arms and cries. And it's such a heart-wrenching sound that Rachel can't help but cry along with her.
"Fuck him," she hears Santana say. "Fuck him."
And Mom doesn't even have the energy to scold her for the cursing anymore.