A/N: I've been a bit of a writing streak lately, good for you guys I guess!

Chapter Two

Emma's POV

Emma rounded the corner, moving cautiously as she re-entered the Health classroom that was dubbing as their meeting place, careful to keep her steps even so the tea swirling suggestively within the mugs in her hands wouldn't slosh out.

She had left a few minutes after the group had ended and the kids had trickled out one by one, all but Scott who had pretended to study a poster of the human body. Emma had felt nervous for him, knowing that he was waiting to speak with her and probably self-conscious about the students who didn't seem to be in a hurry, gossiping by the door before waving their good-byes and turning down the hall only to think of one more thing to say.

He was sitting in a chair now, the same one he always sat in for the group, slid all the way back so that he feet hovered inches above the floor, absently, or maybe determinedly swinging one sneaker covered foot back and forth, his hands shoved under his body as he stared at the ground.

"Scott, you're still here." Emma concentrated on keeping her voice unassuming but the tea, the incriminating second mug, gave her away and she smiled warmly instead, dropping the act.

"Looks like you were expecting me." He said softly, eyeing the substance that she was holding out to him like a dog about to bolt. Or like a person with an eating disorder about to bolt.

Standing there, a smile plastered on her face to cover the frown of understanding, her arm outstretched in a silent offering that meant so much more than a simple mug of tea; it meant she had been waiting for him, it was a confirmation he couldn't deny that she was welcoming him, and as he carefully reached out his hand, roughly tugging the sleeve of his oversized sweatshirt back and wrapped his fingers around the handle, it meant acceptance.

"It's just tea."

A three-word reassurance designed to inform him that there weren't any calories. That the brown liquid couldn't hurt him, that she understood, and in that moment, she became the sufferer and the loved one, and the recovered anorexic. In that moment she was three people. She was the tense young man slumped in front of her, regarding the mug between his hands as though it contained poison. She was a woman recovering from an eating disorder, identifying with his fear of something not deemed safe with a painful clarity and she was her husband, looking on with sympathy and confusion as something that she had never perceived as a threat threatened the very being of the boy who wanted to talk, longed to hide, and wished for the help she knew he was unable to ask for.

"I bought my mom chocolate for her birthday." He blurted out, each word connected to the previous one as though rushed to leave the entrapment of his body, tell their story.

Tentatively he raised the cup to his lips, almost as if experimenting with how far the rim of the mug could be from his mouth and not spill. His eyes shifted restlessly, flickering from the tag on the tea bag to the floor and finally back to his lap. Never to her, not while confessing because that, connecting with her while he revealed something that had been eating away at him, would have been indulgent, and shameful.

Emma only nodded, clamping down on the scenarios that the simple action could have forced into action, waiting for him to continue, surprised and relieved that he had begun to talk so quickly. He never spoke in group, he listened, as if he were collecting information for a research paper he listened, but he never once opened his mouth. She had no qualms about that, she had stressed at the first meeting that if someone didn't have to talk they weren't obligated to knowing that it wouldn't do any good to force them when they felt as though they might be divulging what had come to be both a shameful secret and a source of insurmountable pride.

Today they had discussed how every time there was a negative consequence or they realized just how bad things had become as they became more entrenched in destructive behaviors, that the next time, even though they vowed to do better, they fell right back, somehow able to convince themselves that this time around, it wouldn't get so bad.

She had seen their eyes widen, or fall to their laps, two different reactions to the same feeling; recognition. Often, to ensure they didn't feel like they were the only ones speaking she would revisit some of her own experiences, a prospect that was bittersweet as the room around her seemed to disappear and the memories flooded back bringing with them sensations sometimes painful to recall.

She had explained that she did it, that everyone did it. That even now when she thought about some of the lowest points of her disorder, issues not necessarily related to weight, she downplayed how serious it really was and that every time, she believed herself. Mornings where it had been a colossal effort to even crawl out of bed were somehow chiseled into simply being tired. Tired, not weak from starvation. Tired, as though she had stayed up too late the night before, certainly not the result of weeks of subsisting on only a couple meager bowls of oatmeal a day.

One girl, a junior with shoulder-length brown hair and a penchant for brightly colored clothing had spoken up next, saying that it was so twisted how the eating disorder could convince you that, somehow, the bad stuff couldn't touch you. Emma had felt her brow furrow in a gut reaction to the confession that while running, on an empty stomach, for miles on end the girl's body had finally given out and she had collapsed with a pain in her chest she would learn later was a mild heart attack. It was enough to scare her, initially, but soon, after days of being forced to cut back on her exercise because of the heart monitor that would give her away her legs were itching to run and the very day she got it removed, she was out running. To Emma's relief, her parents had discovered what was going on and she had gone to treatment and was now eating healthy and no longer exercising excessively. These things were good but the mindset was still there, and though her body appeared normal, the girl felt anything but and that was why she was there.

"I bought my mom chocolate for her birthday and because I was so afraid of it, so terrified that somehow just because it was in my hands that it would be absorbed into my body through osmosis, I threw it away in a neighbor's dumpster." Scott looked up at her then, pain and sorrow and guilt etched into every crevice on his young face. "It was money I borrowed from my dad." He whispered, his voice then growing in intensity as though mocking his actions. "I had to sneak into my own house, grab the spare cash I always keep hidden just in case and go out and buy a card, not food because I wasn't going to make that mistake again, but a card because I needed him to think I had spent the money."

A tear was forming in the corner of his eye and his bottom lip was quivering, his mouth threatening to pull into a frown even though she could see how tense he was, how much he was trying to avoid succumbing to what to him, would be a sign of weakness.

"I did something similar to that once." Emma longed to reach out and hug him but refrained, opting instead to match his confession with one of her own because she didn't really have the words and saying 'I'm sorry' just didn't seem appropriate.

"I bought Will some of this ridiculous candy he loves so much and I was so excited about it. We had just started dating and I had seen it in the store and couldn't resist and what made the whole thing worse is that I felt normal, buying that for him but on the way home I started to get nervous, because it was sitting next to me on the passenger seat and that was too close so I threw it out the window." Her voice trailed off, somewhat melancholy as Scott glanced up at her through the tears he was still trying to prevent and she could see it on his face, the relief that it wasn't just him.

"It gets worse." Emma continued, "I turned around and drove back to get it because I had realized that Will was going to be driving that way to come to my apartment and I didn't want him to see it. That's pretty crazy you have to admit. He would have been zipping along at thirty-some miles per hour and I was afraid he was going to see a bag of candy and somehow equate it with me."

Scott laughed, a choked sound that couldn't decide if it wanted to give itself over to the new emotion that was nestling into the sadness so freely overtaking his mind.

"That is bad." He admitted, taking another sip of tea and chuckling once more, his eyes finding hers as they shared a laugh at her expense, at the expense of the logic that only masqueraded as such.

"I want to be normal, like everyone else" He confessed, fixating his gaze this time on her, because this wasn't exactly so much of a confession, as a longing.

"A friend once told me that if you think someone is normal you don't know them well enough." Emma countered gently, finally placing a supportive hand on his shoulder, wondering if the jarring sensation, the instantaneous urge to remove her hand, as she detected prominent bone beneath her palm was how her husband had felt when he had done the same with her.

Will appeared in the doorway then, skidding to a halt, winded undoubtedly from teaching the kids the new choreography he had been working on in the evenings, often involving her even though she was fairly certain she wasn't needed. He paused, caught between bowing out gracefully because he had interrupted a moment he hadn't been aware of and committing to the entrance that had already committed to him.

Scott stood up abruptly, casting his eyes to the ground, hastily jamming the half-drank tea onto a nearby desk. "I have to go," he whispered. "Hi Mr. Schuester." And he swept past Will, not acknowledging his response, eager to get out and Emma couldn't fault him for that, she had been there once too. It seemed she had been everywhere the young man currently was.

"I'm sorry," Will began, twisting his head over his shoulder to watch the boy power-walking down the empty hallway, his sneakers squeaking ominously on the freshly polished floors. "I didn't know…"

"It's okay." Emma smiled, collecting the mugs and motioning for Will to follow her to the teacher's lounge. "He'll be back next week, don't worry. He's just scared."

"Of me?" Will questioned, taking the mugs so she could grab a book on the way out the door.

"Well, he probably knows you know about eating disorders, so I imagine so, yes." She said gently, hoping that her answer wouldn't offend the man now deep in thought a few feet away.

They conversed for a while on different topics, Will having changed the subject to Rachel's latest antics in Glee but Emma could tell his mind hadn't stopped turning over what she had said as they gave in to a shamelessly teenagers-in-love display and held hands as they made their way home.

"It's weird talking with them sometimes. I felt like you today." Emma admitted, fumbling with the keys for a few frustrating seconds before locating the one for the front door.

"What do you mean?" He asked, as she held the door open and they both stepped inside to the sight of Moritz who was acting as though he hadn't seen them in five years instead of a day, bouncing indecisively between her and Will, not sure who he wanted to greet first.

"He was afraid of tea and although I understood that, that almost primal fear that overtakes you when something isn't considered safe I couldn't help but feel confused because tea was never something I was afraid of, and even though I entertained my own screwed up ideas about food, the idea that he could be afraid of something that didn't have any calories was…hard to understand." She finished, her voice rising in pitch as though saying how she had felt out loud only made her reaction more confusing.

"Sucks, doesn't it." Will quipped, smiling at her, depositing a kiss on her cheek before bending down to scratch Moritz under the chin, the burly dog practically melting into his touch, slumping against him with the equivalent of canine oblivion; squinted eyes and mouth lolling open in a broad grin, evident on his face while his tail thumped wildly against the floor.

His response was so natural, easy-going, a comment that could have seemed flippant if she didn't know what was unspoken behind it, the countless situations where he had sacrificed his time and exhibited more patience than she thought one person had any right to possess to convince her that something, often something as innocuous as blueberries with oatmeal, wouldn't rocket her into some frenzied state of mindless eating.

"We need to finish grooming him." Will said, straightening out, and with a smirk turning to her. "I believe I was trying to do that last night."

Emma blushed, giggling as she remembered her shameless attempts to distract him even though she had known he had wanted to get done with the dog last night. They had given Moritz a bath, and Will's training once again defied what she often pictured when she envisioned bathing a dog; soaked shirts and a soggy, soap-covered dog sliding through the house while hapless owners yelled futile commands. Moritz had only stayed as Will had instructed and in the end it had been Emma who had purposefully splashed Will with a glassful of water, jumping up and skidding her way down the hall as he had darted after her, finally pinning her on the couch, where truthfully, she had wanted to get caught.

Another round of tickling had begun and digressed into the realm of things more intimate until the dog, finally deciding that he had endured enough, climbed out of the tub trailing wet foot prints and soap suds through the living room, sitting there staring at them as if telling them off. The bath water had been drained and refilled, having gone cold in their absence and after they had managed to soak each other while Moritz had looked on, they had finally succeeded in getting him bathed. They never got him on the grooming table though, Emma running her hands underneath Will's wet t-shirt had pre-empted that activity before it had even begun.

"You didn't stop me." She grinned, swatting at his chest then reaching down to playfully grab the retriever's tail so he would spin after it.

Will had always joked that Moritz had done more 'doggy' things than any dog he had ever owned. If she made a move for his tail his ears would perk up and his head would whip around as if discovering the appendage for the first time and he would turn in endless circles until he miscalculated and grabbed his back leg instead, throwing him off balance much to her delight. He also had a doggy odor, something Emma had come to accept, while in an odd turn of events, it still bugged Will who claimed to have always rolled his eyes when owners complained of their dogs smelling like a dog.

One evening she had come home late from a required seminar on counseling in a neighboring town to find him Febrezeing the dog bed. She had pointed out that he should have simply trained Moritz to do it himself like the dog in the commercial that when around spraying where his humans had been. That was how she learned that Will kept abreast of the latest accomplishments in the dog world. Apparently that dog really had been trained to wrap his paw around the bottle, no technology had enhanced the effect.

"Maybe I didn't want to, stop you that is, but we are going to pay for that tonight. The show is tomorrow and I'm no expert in grooming Chesapeake Bay Retrievers. I'm operating off of instructions via the phone from our breeder."

She still couldn't feel guilty despite the slight trace of worry she detected on his face. Peeling wet clothes from each other in a fumbling attempt to get to the bedroom had been worth it. Smiling as her mind relived sections of the night before she entertained, then discarded, the idea of helping him set up the grooming supplies. His movements were so practiced she would have guessed he had been doing this for years as he easily flipped the table upside down, pressing one foot onto the bottom while he unfolded the legs before righting it and attaching the grooming arm she always thought resembled more of a noose.

Even the way he handled the dog, placing one hand just beneath his chin and the other underneath his stomach to quickly and effortlessly, lift him onto the table bespoke of his knowledge in this area. Emma had once asked why he didn't place on arm at the front of his chest and the other just beneath his rear and lift him that way. Will had blamed his childhood Golden Retriever, saying that if he had carried her that way it would have messed up her coat and that now, even though Moritz didn't have much of a coat to mess up, it was habit.

Secretly she loved seeing him interact with a dog, curling up into a comfortable ball on the couch as he began scissoring the scraggly furs at the back of Moritz' legs, his lips pursed and his movements calculated. He trimmed up the dog's ears, going over his entire body to rid him of hairs that would disrupt his outline before taking a stripping knife to the sides of his neck to thin out his coat.

An hour and a half went by as he moved on from the finer points and covered the basics such as making sure that Moritz' toe nails were cut back as far as they possibly could be, far enough that they didn't touch the ground, and cleaning out his ears, jamming q-tips far deeper than she would have ever dared.

"Couldn't you puncture his ear drum?" Emma questioned, wincing on behalf of the dog that seemed completely oblivious to Will's digging.

"There's a ninety-degree turn before you reach his ear drum. It would be pretty tough." He commented somewhat absently and Emma found herself shaking her head at the amount of knowledge this man seemed to have accrued.

"At least we don't have to chalk you right bud? Or use Kolestral, I hate that stuff." Will loosened the noose around Moritz' neck, letting him jump down from the table, answering Emma's questions before she had a chance to speak them. "For white dogs, or even white patches a lot of times people put chalk on the coat to make it whiter and Kolestral is used to give the coat more body. Have you decided if you are going to show one day?"

Emma paused, not wanting to throw away the numerous evenings she had spent outside with Will as he had gently instructed her in the finer points of showing a dog. "Let's go train tonight and if I don't do something incredibly stupid, I'll consider it."

He smiled, and she melted, taking the show lead that had somehow found its way into her hand, making sure it was turned the correct way before putting it on the Moritz. They stepped outside, the air growing chilled as the months drew nearer and nearer to winter and Emma listened when Will told her to act as if she had just entered the ring. There were so many things to remember, the dog needed to be on her left, the lead balled up neatly in her hand, not fisted, but gripped lightly and then of course there was the Four Second Rule that had been imparted to Will by a trainer; one second to correctly place each foot.

Will casually stepped over to her, greeting her as though he didn't know who she was, congratulating her for a fictional win, running his hands first over Moritz' head while she made sure to distract him with a hot dog slice, keeping the lead directly behind his ears while Will's hands roved over the dog, feeling his sides, skimming down his front legs, pulling down ever so slightly on his tail to see that it was the right length before very discreetly traveling back up and between his rear legs.

Emma giggled, the sound erupting from her despite her valiant effort to contain it. She knew it was a necessary part of the examination, checking between the dog's legs but for some, probably childish, reason it always made her laugh to watch Will do it.

"Shut up." He deadpanned, his professionalism dropping off before settling back into his voice just as quickly as it had left. "Down and back please, ma'am."

Stifling a comment Emma returned her attention to the directions he had just given, balling the leash up in her hand the way he had made her practice when there had been no dog on the other end, making sure it was placed directly underneath Moritz' chin, coming up from underneath the ear closest to her in the trademark way for handling most sporting breeds. She made a small circle in front of Will, a courtesy turn he had called it, and took off down the driveway, taking four walking-speed steps before breaking out into a sort of loping run that had taken her a while to perfect.

Supposedly, the top of her head was supposed to glide not bounce as she moved the dog. They had garnered curious stares from their neighbors as he had demonstrated the handler's gait over and over with no dog and Emma had realized then, that showing a dog was just as much about knowing how to blend seamlessly into the background as it was presenting the actual dog.

Upon reaching the end of the driveway, she stopped, allowing Moritz to circle around her, and she held out her right hand to focus the dog's attention before heading off towards Will again, making sure to glance up at him when she was at the half-way mark. Will had told her that it was perfectly acceptable for her to stop if the judge wasn't looking but she had a feeling she would never be able to do that. It seemed to close to demanding the judge watch because she and her dog were the best, but maybe that was what it was about, that confidence.

Free-stacking, getting Moritz to pose himself at the end of the pattern was the easiest part. The dog did it effortlessly, after many not-so-effortless nights on Will's part spent teaching the dog to adjust his paws on command. Will studied the dog, moving around the dog so that Emma was forced to move with him, the golden rule of always keeping the dog between the judge and herself surfacing in her mind. He ran then, giving her no warning as he darted around them, coming up behind her, whispering 'oops' into her ear while his hands rested on her waist.

"That's not fair," Emma started to protest, cut off by the sight of their neighbor that had just moved in earlier in the day stepping outside.

She was slender, tall, dressed in a pair of black running shorts with a baggy plain-white t-shirt hanging straight down, not interrupted by any curves, especially not interrupted by her barely-there, breasts Emma noticed immediately. This woman had just moved in, Emma had seen her outside all day with friends moving heavy pieces of furniture and now she was going out for a run. It was perfectly plausible that running was a way for her to relax and that she simply enjoyed running through places she didn't know but it was also perfectly reasonable that something else was going on, more than reasonable.

Trying to not be conspicuous she watched the nameless woman fish an iPod out of a pocket and place it in the holder on her arm, bouncing on the balls of her feet for a couple seconds before taking off at an easy jog, a pace that didn't appear to be too physically demanding, but then again, Emma had no idea how far this woman ran. She turned to smile at them, a self-conscious smile as though she was uneasy about people seeing her. It was that expression that told Emma everything she had truthfully already known.

Normally, someone out exercising wouldn't care either way if others saw them but it made this woman nervous, and she had looked sheepish, like she thought she was doing something wrong, and then there had been the expression in her eyes, the dull exhaustion warring with a grim determination that Emma, although not a runner, was all too familiar with.

Had she been at a different point in her life Emma would have been envious of the woman who was now disappearing around the corner, jogging to the tempo of some song only she could hear, to the tune of a disorder Emma knew like the back of her hand. Her past self would have been overcome with a sort of defensive anger. Defensive because this woman would have represented a threat, someone who had the potential to be better than her at something most never dreamed of attempting and anger because the woman was running, showing more discipline than her.

Throughout her disorder Emma had read about anorexics who exercised compulsively and she had always hated that she didn't, lying in bed at night thinking about how much more weight she could be losing if she were burning more calories through physical activity. It was one of the roads she had never travelled, and she was grateful for it now. Recovery had been difficult enough without having to deal with the real-life physical withdrawal symptoms that someone with an exercise addiction went through.

"I'm sorry." Emma whispered in the direction the woman had taken, almost wishing that she could somehow impart those words, the understanding that they carried, to the complete stranger she felt an almost visceral connection with.

Will's arms wrapped around her, and he pulled her close causing her to realize she must have spoken out loud. He never said anything, holding her tightly against his body as though he was trying to protect her from what they had just witnessed.

"What are the chances of that, her moving in next door?" She questioned more to herself than the man whose heartbeat she was listening to. "It's like a conspiracy theory."

"It's sad." Will admitted with a heavy sigh that seemed to reverberate through her, "but she probably needs a friend or two."

Emma smiled, touched that he hadn't hinted that he was worried about what they had just found out, worried about her, and what it could mean to see someone actively engaging in such behavior but rather, that he had suggested they reach out to her and if she was anything like Emma had been, isolating herself more and more as her routines grew increasingly bizarre and harder to explain, she was probably very lonely.

They remained outside for another hour, Will having her do a couple other patterns that might be asked all the while the fact that the woman had not returned from her run not escaping Emma' s attention.

Back inside the house, they tore down, and packed the grooming equipment into the trunk of the car, deciding it would be easier and less stressful to do it the night before seeing as Chessie's, because they required so little grooming, showed at ten in the morning. Show clothes were chosen as well, Will choosing a grey suit and Emma, just in case, throwing in a blue blazer and skirt. The reservations at a motel that accepted dogs had been made only a few miles from the show site. It was a bit backwards to be driving to the show in the morning but they hadn't wanted to spend the money for two nights. As it was they had only got a room for Saturday night, choosing to drive home Sunday after the show.

Will's POV

Having decided to make spaghetti, a dish they hadn't really attempted since the night Emma had dropped the can of sauce, Will relaxed into the evening, only slightly on edge about the events looming on the horizon. His own nervousness about something he hoped he still enjoyed.

He was steadfastly refusing to put much thought into the woman they had seen while out working with Moritz. Sadly, before his experience with Emma he probably would have thought that she was just a naturally slender, dedicated athlete. Now, he was able to pick up on the small details that would have escaped him, the characteristic way in which her clothes had hung loosely around her frame, not the result of her shirt being purposefully oversized as he probably would have once believed, and the tense, curt smile she had afforded them before setting off that looked exhausted, forced, and sick.

Hopefully, with time they could befriend her and maybe show her that interacting with people wasn't so bad, especially if they weren't going to be those neighbors who randomly popped by with brownies or some variation thereof on the societal tradition for welcoming newcomers.

The meal fell into place effortlessly and soon they were sitting at the table, something they tried to do almost every night. It didn't escape his attention that they were eating later than usual, well past the time that at one point, had been the cut off point for Emma. She had once revealed to him that what had started as breakfast and then a meal at five in the evening had transformed into no breakfast and a meal, a bowl of oatmeal, at five and never later. She had read a study about weight gain in women who ate after eight in the evening and even though that study had applied to women who were eating a normal amount she used it with herself.

Occasionally they would sit down to a meal and he would find that the event passed by casually as if it forgot that not too long ago it had been a major undertaking. While the food steadily disappeared from their plates they talked of their day, Emma revealing what Scott had revealed to her and confessing something she had never told him.

His shock was marred with sympathy but not surprise when she recounted having thrown out the candy, then driving back to dispose of it somewhere else. It was just another in a long line of nonsensical things the disorder had convinced her was something that needed to be done.

"Speaking of candy," Will stood up, crossing the kitchen to the small green bowl of chocolates they usually tried to keep on hand, plucking up two and tossing one over to Emma.

He loved that she indulged in a piece of chocolate every night, something she had started after hearing at the meetings she used to attend, that a recovered anorexic did as a treat to herself, and a sort of 'screw you' to the mindset that still surfaced once in a while.

As she smiled at him, the chocolate half-way to her mouth, he snatched the camera that had been carelessly placed by one of them on the counter just behind him, wanting to capture the moment, Emma sitting in their kitchen with her feet tucked underneath her, looking natural and relaxed, an empty plate in front of her, her nose wrinkling in protest in the most adorable way just as he snapped the picture.

A/N: I enjoyed writing this and I hope you all enjoyed reading it. Reviews are like...Idina returning to Glee!