I feel like this is all stupidly full of backstory-ish Glee bonding, but I'm still pretty sure it's going to be wrapped up by chapter four. Thanks for everyone for reading and reviewing and subscribing. It means a lot. (PS for more KurtRachel brohood -- clearly my favorite thing -- you should read A Hard Won Go Ahead, and Popular, which is what would have happened, imho, if Rachel had been getting a makeover for Puck.)
Rachel Berry doesn't know how to make her own coffee in the mornings.
She knows how to work the coffee machine, technically, and she knows how to make a pot of coffee that most people would call pleasing to the taste buds, but Rachel is not most people.
Kurt Hummel is the only one who can make her a cup of coffee to her tastes, so most mornings he makes both of their cups, just the right amount of cream and sugar and a few drops of honey, tasting along the way to guide him.
Sometimes she wakes up first and he finds her sitting around their kitchen island, looking forlornly at the empty pot. He shoos her away to go brush her hair or get on the elliptical while he gets to work.
They sprout like weeds after the epic failure at regionals. (Didn't even place. This is not how Rachel had imagained it, but still.)
Quinn and Finn are still going to have a baby, and maybe they'll keep it and maybe they won't; the plan seems to change as often as the flavor of ice cream Quinn is craving, but the constant seems to be that Finn and Quinn will be best freidns forever and even Puck flutters around because he's the baby's daddy and he really, really ... cares about her, or about the baby, or some mixture of the both. (He claims that it's only his spawn, now, that maybe he had something with her, once -- or, he might have -- but no, not really but Rachel knows that things hurt so much more when you give them the power to -- you can only get burned when you keep your fingers by the flame.)
Anyways, they kind of get wrapped up in their own tangle of drama, Finn and Quinn blissfully devoted when their eyes aren't straying, and Puck saying or doing or feeling anything he has to to keep himself close to his unborn baby girl.
One morning, Rachel comes to school to find "itch" spray painted across her locker. Which doesn't make sense, until Puck returns from rincing out his rag in the hallway water fountain. "Sorry, Rach," he says, dragging one hand through his mohawk. He looks a little embarrassed, and six months ago he would have added, not that I care or anything, when clearly he was scrubbing profanity off of her locker. "If its any consolation, keep an eye out for Danny Huckle's black eye."
Artie and Tina break up again, and Tina briefly dates "Other Asian" (seriously guys my name is Mike I don't want to tell you again) and they all make a lot of Asian jokes, but eventually, they break up, and then somehow, Rachel and Tina bond over a lonely friday night when Tina's just desperate enought to call her up. I've got The Brothers Bloom and a tub of butter pecan ice cream... no, it isn't a musical, and yes, I know the "concequences" of dairy on my vocal cords, Rachel, you don't have to eat it, and just when she's ready to give up, feeling stupid for even having tried to reach out to the Ice Princess of Glee, Rachel says, "Give me ten minutes; I'll bring italian ice." (Which, ew, Tina eats, for some reason, putting the butter pecan back in the freezer, and hiding it under bags of frozen peas and carrots in case Rachel goes all vigilante on her dairy products.)
When Brittany and Finn's grades nearly kept them from being eligible from competing in sectionals, they start a study group. It's only to keep Brittany knowlegeabkle enough about geometry that she doesn't have to cheat off of Becky Jackson's tests, because that's not cutting it anymore, and to teach Finn the coping skills Santana shamelessly calls "cheating inconspicuously" but Matt, as it turns out, is like, seriously smart. A nerd, Puck calls him, laughing at their group, but sometimes he sits in on their meetings, pretending he's not there unitl he gets into it and forgets himself. Apperently he's explained all of his own classes to himself in terms of football and sexual metaphors, and sometimes Matt can't get a particular point through Finn's thick head, and kind of throws up his hands. "Puck, a little help? Doesn't this kind of seem like there's a punting analogy hiding here?" and Puck sighs like it's the thousandth time he's had to explain instead of the first time he's talked all group. "Yeah, bro, it's like this..."
(Rachel Berry looks at him like he's a Tony, and they all know how she feels about metaphors.)
All in all, the second half of Rachel's sophomore year is kind of like a Dawson's Creek relationship roller coaster, which was how she always thought high school would be. (She got herself through middle school by reminding herself that high school would be different; she would find her Joey and Pacey friends, a boyfriend to duet with, and have a best friend to teach her how to braid hair and go bra shopping with -- she loved her dads, really, but there were some things that they simply weren't capable of experiencing with her. It didn't happen freshman year, and then it didn't happen some more, but all at once it did, and she couldn't help but think that all of those lunches she ate alone were worth it. She's still working on the boyfriend.)
She even, paradoxically most shocking and most natural, becomes friends with Kurt. He tells her I'm sorry about the make-over, it was petty and you're actually really nice, and stop looking at me like that, you still have the most grating voice in all of Lima. But she keeps looking at him like that, and then she's apologizing back and he tells her that he'd like to have a second chance at making her look delectable, because seriously, she has potential, even if she covers it up in pantsuits and hideous sweaters.
(She gets asked out on her first date, first real date the monday after his weekend project. She turns him down, because she remembers being on the receiving end of a slushy from him once, he's on one of the teams she can't be bothered to remember, but she never forgets a letermans' number. It feels good, all the same.)
The Kurt she comes to know is still a brat, a smarmy fashion hound, but his bratty, smarminess is directed more at jocks in lettermans jackets, and when he leans in to catch her attention during class, it's not to whisper manhands or RuPaul like the Cheerios used to, but to snicker about something he's thought of or the fact that yes, Mr. Shue is indeed looking well fed and looked after and quite frankly, he blames Mrs. P. (You know, the redhead with the weird hair. By the way, he'd kill to be able to do something with the blouses.)
Three weeks after regionals, Mr. Shue is in the middle of making a speech about having fun and how he's so proud of them for becoming a family (and yes, he actually say that, and Kurt rolls his eyes, leaning in to whisper, "What idiot told him about the study group?") when he gets a phone call.
"Sorry guys," he frowns. "Do you guys mind if I take this?"
They tell him that of course they don't, and when he steps out of the glee room and out into the hallway, Mercedes hisses, "Seriously, guys, when he comes back, lets all vote on doing Hate on me Hater for the pep rally."
Puck shakes his head. "No way. I'm voting for Wonderwall. It's a classic, and we could all use fake accents."
"... I do like english accents," Finn piped, in this weird affirmation of their brohood. "Sorry Mercedes."
Through the little window in the door, they could see Mr. Shue pacing. Rachel watched him while she spoke. "I'll vote with you, Mercedes. I'd rather be doing on of showtunes we've been doing lately, but I also feel like there's a time and place for everything, and the pep rally will be neither of those, sadly."
"Thanks Rachel," she said, still eyeing Puck and Finn suspiciously.
"Guys!" Mr. Shue burst back in, face flushed and excited like he'd been after they brought him home first from sectionals. "I have some seriously great news."