Unexpected faces

Previously in More Than Just a Footnote: The New Directions waded through the first week of term in a daze wondering how to make this year work. The recent graduates tried to settle down in New York and now worlds might be about to collide again...

William McKinley High School

Ever since the first Glee practice a week ago Blaine had been missing Kurt more and more, he'd never imagined how much being at McKinley without him would hurt, everywhere he looked there were reminders of him. He'd text him constantly and sure Kurt would reply, sure he would say that he missed Blaine too but Kurt's messages and phonecalls were full of exciting stories from New York and NYADA, he was building a new life without Blaine and that hurt. He knew that it was selfish, but somehow it was happening inside of him anyway and he didn't know how to stop it.

So Blaine was wandering the hallways in a half-daze, wondering how to get through a whole year without Kurt when he suddenly glanced into a classroom off the corridor and saw a face he had never expected to see in McKinley, so much so that he had to look twice to see that it really was her. But it was, so he put his head round the door, 'Melanie?'

'Blaine? What are you doing here?' The girl sitting at a table near the front of the room asked smiling at him and tucking her hair behind her ear. She was small and slim, with pale skin and a slightly pointed nose that stuck out from under her glasses. Her hair was dark and long, but pulled back into a ponytail, she was wearing jeans and a plain blue t-shirt. It had been a couple of years since Blaine had seen her but he recognised her – he remembered her blue eyes.

'What are you doing here?' he said almost at the same time as her.

She laughed, 'I transferred, we moved, I don't get it, last I heard you were blazering it up at Dalton?'

'Yeah, I'm not sure, I came here a year ago, there was a guy, well there is a guy, but he graduated,' Blaine looked sad and fiddled with his hands.

'I see, that sucks,' she shrugged.

'So, you like it here?' he asked her.

'It's not terrible, I know no one though,' she didn't look at Blaine as she said this, she didn't want him questioning her any further.

'You should come to our Glee club; the guys there are really cool.'

'Blaine, don't be ridiculous, I don't sing and dance that's yours and Toni's thing, not mine,' she shrugged, looking sad too.

'Just come, you can make friends and that, you don't have to sing if you really don't want to, but you should, you're really good.'

'Whatever, now about this guy…' Melanie said, changing the subject and giving him a little teasing smile.

'Kurt, I met him when he came to Dalton for a bit, but then he came back here and being the stupid idiot that I am I fell in love and transferred schools to be with him and now he's gone to New York and left me all alone,' his voice caught as he said the last few words.

'Hey, you're not alone,' she touched his shoulder gently.

Blaine rubbed his eyes and half-smiled at her, 'You sound so much like your sister.'

'I learnt from the best,' she grinned.

Sam stopped in shock as he walked down the corridor, there was a guy he had not been expecting to see at all, 'Rory, you're back!' he said with great surprise. On the list of people he was expecting to see at school that day Rory wasn't even at the bottom, he didn't even figure, Rory was meant to be in Ireland, he had told them all there was no way he'd be back and as far as Sam knew no one had heard a word from him all summer, not even Sugar.

'Yeah, I figured you'd need me to hold onto that Nationals trophy,' he quipped.

'But I thought your visa expired man?' Sam asked confused.

'Yeah, I managed to get another year on my exchange programme, I never thought I would though, it's dead competitive.' Rory said, 'It's awesome to be back.'

'Yeah, great to have you, we're gonna need singers this year,' Sam said, though he wasn't sure how thrilled the girls were going to be about this development and everything this year was already extra complicated.

'Anyone new joined?'

'Just this girl Maria that used to be in The Troubletones,' Sam shrugged, not looking impressed. 'Are you coming to practice after school today?'

'Of course, see you later,' Rory smiled and the two boys set off to their respective classes. On his way Sam quickly texted the other seniors to let them know the news, well except Brittany because he assumed she already knew but due to living in her own special little world hadn't thought to tell anyone. These were the replies he received:

Artie: Nice, he can sing

Blaine: No way – had anyone even heard from him?

Tina: What? Britt said nothing, Sugar is gonna kill him, I'd like to kill him…

Glee club that afternoon was even more awkward than Tina had thought it would be, when she arrived with Brittany, Rory, Joe and Artie were sitting on one side of the room and Sugar and Maria were sitting on the other. Tina made a quick decision and went to go and sit with the other two girls, Brittany followed her over but sat on the edge of the group. When Sam and Blaine arrived they hesitated but in the end followed some sort of high school logic and went to sit with the guys.

After the end of the meeting Tina was fuming about Rory, 'I can't believe he said he was leaving, went home, had no contact with any of us all summer and then just rocked up back here like nothing had changed,' she said to Brittany.

'Isn't that what leprechauns do?' The taller blonde girl asked.

Tina sighed, there were only two people who could deal with Brittany's special brand of genius; Santana – who was in New York – and Sam – who seemed to have taken the boys' side in this situation. 'Not exactly, but it doesn't matter Britt, I'm going to go catch Sugar and Maria, see you tomorrow.'

Sugar and Maria were walking just ahead of them so Tina caught up with them quickly. 'So what's the deal with Rory, Tina, I've been trying to get her to explain, but it keeps turning into pure anger.' Maria raised her eyebrows and gestured at Sugar.

'I just don't understand why he never called me, I could have seen him, I don't understand any of it, my Dad would have paid for it all, he can't just turn up like nothing happened.'

'No he can't,' Tina said, understandingly, 'You know Rory was on exchange last year, well he told us all he couldn't come back this year, contacted us not one bit and now has just turned up, did you guys ever even properly break up?' she asked Sugar.

'Not really, when he left we said goodbye, not much else, I just want him to explain, I don't want him back or anything,' she replied.

'Really?' Maria said, 'I know that look.'

'Yeah,' their older friend said thoughtfully.

Blaine however still had his mind on the other unexpected face he had spotted at McKinley, 'Joe,' he said to his younger friend as they were walking out, 'is that new girl in any of your classes?'

'What new girl?' Rory interrupted.

'The pretty one?' Joe asked.

'Dude, I'm not sure that's the best way to describe a girl to Blaine!' Sam joked.

'Dark hair, glasses, slim, big blue eyes, doesn't talk?' Joe tried again.

'Yeah her, you say she doesn't talk?' Blaine asked.

'No, I don't think I've heard her say a word apart from answering the register, why? Do you know her or something?' he asked, he really did think the new girl was pretty, also her silence had intrigued him a little bit.

'I guess I used to,' Blaine said, as he thought, she used to talk and she talked to me yesterday, she used to chatter in fact, and she didn't used to have that sad look in her eyes she tried to hide yesterday.

However, the next Glee rehearsal was going to bring a rude awakening for everyone who had somehow been taken up with problems of the normal high school variety like ex boyfriends coming out of the woodwork. 'It'd be awesome if the others were still here, who graduated I mean, Rachel was annoying but she could sing and Kurt and Mercedes and Puck and Finn.'

Sam winced visibly and Tina put an arm round him protectively, Blaine kind of wished he could be the one to provide that comfort to his friend but he knew it was better coming from Tina. Everyone looked at Rory, even Maria who had hardly known Finn, 'What did I say?' he asked, 'When are they all coming back to visit anyway?' The silence in the room was deafening.

Joe stood up, 'Umm Rory, I need to talk to you outside a minute.'

Blaine felt guilty, how had they forgotten to tell Rory, he guessed that they had all sort of assumed that someone else had done it, but Rory had liked Finn, he had stood up for him when he was bullied just after arriving at Mckinley the year before.

Joe came back in a few moments later, 'Britt, I'm gonna take him back with me for a bit,' he paused and Brittany nodded, 'Will someone tell Mr Schue?' he asked.

'Sure,' Blaine said, 'Is he ok?'

'He'll be fine, he just needs some time to process you know,' Joe said, thinking time that the rest of us got and that someone should have given him, how did we let this happen?

'Yeah sorry,' Blaine said, not knowing why he felt so particularly responsible for this oversight, and also knowing that his apology could not possibly make up for everything that had been wrong with the last few moments.

NYU

'You've never seen the L word?' Toni said looking at Santana in amazement.

'No I haven't, I'm just not as gay as you are Toni!' her friend snapped at her. They were hanging out just the two of them in Quinn and Toni's room because Quinn was already on a date. A few moments before Toni had tossed her dvd of the L word in Santana's direction as a means of suggesting they watched it because clearly neither of them wanted to study and Toni certainly didn't want to make the effort of going out.

Toni held up her hands, 'Ok sorry, I didn't mean it like that, it's just a good show.'

'Sorry, just this having a friend who's a lesbian is new to me.' Santana admitted, not really looking Toni in the eye.

'Yeah I got that and when I ask if you want to watch the L word or if you think a girl is hot I am not asking you to change who you are,' Toni said, trying to be patient, 'just because I don't wear dresses and make up and have short hair and fulfil some lesbian stereotypes doesn't mean I think you have to.'

'Sorry, I guess I have been a bit touchy about it all,' she admitted.

You think Toni thought, but she said, 'And I'm not suggesting you have to automatically like every lesbian t.v. show, movie and musician, but sometimes it's cool to watch stuff that's about people like you.'

'Alright,' Santana said, still feeling pretty uncomfortable about all this, 'put it on, but if it's terrible I don't care if they're lesbians we are not watching it.'

'Deal,' Toni said and put the dvd on.

Two episodes later Toni's phone buzzed, it was on the other side of Santana so she picked it up and tossed it over, 'Hey honey,' Toni said, answering it and going to the other side of the room.

'Yes darling, Blaine's an idiot, he was just trying to help.' Santana heard her say, 'Yes of course I'll come home at the weekend, don't cry please love, come on.' Santana then realized she probably shouldn't be listening to this conversation and she got up to go to the bathroom, when she got back Toni was sitting on the bed looking worried.

'Are you ok?' she asked her friend, 'Who was that?'

'My sister, she's not exactly fitting in and Blaine was trying to help by making her join glee club and…' Toni stopped when she suddenly realized that that was something else that hadn't exactly come up yet.

'Your sister is at our school?'

'She transferred, we moved,' Toni said, well it was sort of true, they had moved.

'And you never mentioned this before?' Santana was absolutely positive that there was more to this story, but to her great surprise she had actually been enjoying this new friendship and didn't want to ruin it.

'It just never came up,' her friend deflected, knowing that Santana was too observant for that to work.

'Whatever, you don't have to tell me, but umm are you driving home?'

'Yeah I guess,' she said, thinking of the long lonely drive on her own.

'Could I maybe come? It's just I'd really like to see Brittany, I haven't been a good girlfriend to her lately and I really miss her.'

'Of course you can, you can drive right?' Toni asked.

'Sure, you want to split?'

'That's way better than driving to Lima on my own,' she was relieved she had been thoroughly expecting the third degree from Santana about this. 'You know, we haven't really talked about Brittany much,' Toni said, happy to change the subject.

'I guess that's another thing I'm not all that used to doing,' Santana admitted, 'it was a secret for so long and I never really even let myself realize how I felt about her for a long time.'

Toni nodded, 'So she's a year younger than you?'

'No, actually she's the same year as the rest of us, but she didn't graduate last year, so now she's in Blaine's year, well you know the year that Blaine is in now, that's how we found out about Sadie Hawkins and that, this summer Britt had a proper meltdown about being older than everyone else and so Blaine told her she wasn't the only one, but she's not stupid, she's incredible, she knows me better than anyone and she always knows the perfect thing to say, and she's hot.' Santana gushed.

'She sounds pretty awesome, do I get to meet her?' Toni said trying not to be too jealous in her own single state.

'Of course, what about you?'

'What about me?'
'Well the only thing I know about your love life is that you used to date Blaine?' she fished.

'There's not much to know, I dated a girl from another school for a bit in senior year, but it didn't really work out,' she said, 'life got too complicated.'

Santana sensed that the subject was closed so she picked up the remote, 'Shall we watch some more of this then?'

'You do like it!' Toni said triumphantly.

'Maybe a bit,' Santana admitted, which Toni knew really meant she was going to be borrowing the dvd.

A/N So here is Melanie and a bit more of Maria - who actually was the first OC, but we didn't know much about her so I didn't think of her when I called Toni the first OC. I enjoyed developing some of the friendships more in this chapter - a bit of Blaine and Sam, Joe and Rory (they're friends in this universe) and Santana and Toni...