Author's Note: Sorry this chapter took so long. I was busy due to Xmas break & New Years but this should be back to being more regular again soon. Once again, I'd like to thank Luiza for helping me out with this. She truly is the Rachel to my Mike. This chapter reveals a lot more about what has happened so it answers some of the questions some of you asked me in past reviews. Enjoy, read and review please!
Disclaimer: No ownage of Glee or the songs or anything.
"And here's the bathroom when you need a quick break." Finn finished with a slightly awkward smile Mike who he, quite nicely, invited to work on next week's glee project with. "That's awesome." Mike nodded and followed Finn to his bedroom.
"We're hanging out here tonight. My mom's having her weekly womens' reading group in a half hour and she told me not to bother them unless it's an emergency." Mike smiled as he recalled meeting the friendly woman at her wedding where the entire glee club sang and danced at. "Just sit anywhere." Finn gestured at his bed and a few comfortable looking chairs. Mike parked himself on one of the chairs, not wanting to intrude somebody's bed and spoke. "So what song were you thinking of? We had fun with 'I Gotta Be Me' last year, didn't we?"
Finn nodded with a smile at the memory of asking Mike to teach him a couple moves which eventually just became him asking Mike to be part of the performance with him. Mike was glad there was no awkwardness between them. Well, on the one hand he was glad but on the other this meant Finn seemed to be over Rachel. He wasn't quite sure what to make of this assumption. Yes, Mike was a boy but he was a good people reader and the prospects of a Finn/Rachel reunion seemed slim. Nevertheless, Rachel seemed adamant that her plan would work and Mike wasn't about to get in the way of the girl when she was on a mission.
"I don't know really, it's harder to think up a random song without a topic like Mr. Schue usually gives us." Finn remarked as he sat on his bed with a thump. He pushed himself until his back rested on the wall and pursed his lips in thought for a song.
"Well, what music do you like?" Mike said, thinking aloud.
"Uh…a lotta things. I'm into a lot of the oldies. Journey, Bruce Springsteen, Phil Collins…I was brought up on the stuff." Finn explained.
"I'm…I'm not sure I can sing that stuff yet. That's really iconic stuff and I don't want to ruin it." Mike admitted sheepishly. It was true. Last year he was admittedly terrible at singing solo. He got so nervous that it was almost like he developed temporary tone deafness, as demonstrated with his and Tina's duet last year. That's why he only sang back up for the past two years of glee club. In fact, if it weren't for his dancing ability and Mr. Schuester's need for more members for the club he would have highly doubted whether he would have been accepted at all. However, since it was his last year of high school, senior year, he decided he should at least make an effort at everything. The world would only get bigger and scarier after this year. So, during the summer he plucked up the courage to go to a few karaoke nights here and there to get over his fear of singing in front of an audience and hopefully glee club would have another confident voice to be added into the mix, albeit whether it be a particularly amazing one.
"Oh, sure. Yeah, I suppose you're right." Finn half agreed, though something told Mike the boy was slightly saddened by not being able to sing his favorites.
"What about modern stuff?" Mike had a knack for turning things around when a conversation went cold.
Finn pondered for a while before listing a few acts, "Well I'm not that into new music. I like a few Kanye West and Eminem songs but they're mostly rap and I don't rap well. Never again after Empire State of Mind." He chuckled to himself and Mike smiled, thinking back to some of their daring attempts as a club to go out and do a random impromptu performance. Not some of their better ideas.
Mike hummed in thought, eyes out of focus as zoned out for a while, thinking of a universally friendly song until Carole's voice was heard from downstairs. "Finn! I'm gonna be ordering pizza in for you and Mike tonight. What toppings do you boys want?"
Finn looked over at Mike and he replied, "I eat anything as long as it's in pizza form."
"We'll have everything, mom!" Finn shouted back, and with Carole's shout back of affirmation of Finn's request Mike was reminded of Burt and Carole's wedding again. "You sang Just The Way You Are at your mom and Burt's wedding, right?" Mike said, slowly…almost as though he was letting his genius silently sink in first.
Finn's brows were creased in confusion at first but when the penny dropped his mouth was agape, which then slowly morphed into an enthusiastic smile and nodding. "Of course! Bruno Mars! That's perfect, man. And you know what? We can do one of his newest ones, the one with the monkeys so you can dance too."
"The Lazy Song?" Mike beamed, that being one of his 'jams' at the moment.
"Yeah! Exactly. I don't think the song's too hard and the dance moves don't seem that hard either. And even if it doesn't work we can just blame the song." Finn chuckled.
"It is the 'lazy' song, after all!" Mike agreed with a smile.
After their laughs died down Mike decided to just confirm his previous assumption. "So are you okay with Rachel and I dating? I know you guys were quite a big thing so yeah…and is it too much of me to ask how you and Quinn got back together again?"
Finn was slightly caught aback by this sudden segue to another topic but answered in a well mannered fashion anyway. "I'm actually quite relieved Rachel's moved on so quickly."
"Wrong." Mike thought to himself, though nodding in agreement.
"Though I think she's always been good at that whole 'moving on' thing. Like when she dated Jesse and Puck before."
"Wrong."
"I kinda always knew she wasn't that into me."
"Wrong."
"We weren't really right for each other."
"Wro-…wait, maybe right…"
"We never really had too much in common. She's going off to big things in New York but I'm not like her. I wanna see if I can get a football scholarship and Burt wants me to take over his garage when he retires and I'm more than happy about that."
Mike nodded genuinely this time, Finn's ambitions were never going to match up with Rachel's.
"Plus I don't think I'll ever understand what I vegan is. It means you like vegetables, right? That's why I put a lot of lettuce in her burger once when I cooked for her."
Mike blinked awkwardly and nodded slowly, "Yeah…that's right."
"Oh then that's good." Finn seemed to be impressed with himself and Mike didn't quite have the heart to correct him. "And with Quinn, before you think I cheated on Rachel or anything, I didn't. We got to talking again during the summer because she was getting down about Beth and needed to talk to somebody. Talking about things just kinda made us realize we still have feelings for each other. Quinn gets me and I get her. God knows I'm not good with girl feelings but Quinn's put up with me for a long time and I don't think I ever really got over her."
Mike understood what Finn was saying, Rachel was a complex person. Even with Mike's perceptiveness, Rachel was still quite a difficult person to fully predict her emotions and what she was thinking whereas Quinn, however complicated was still easy to read. Quinn emotions were very much cause and effect related and it must have been easier for Finn to deal with somebody who was like that. This simply reinforced the belief that a Finn and Rachel reunion was a no go.
"I'm sorry about Tina, by the way. But I'm glad you're happy with Rachel and Rachel's happy with you. You'll treat her right, I saw how you were with Tina and I'm glad Rachel's in good hands."
"I'll take care of her." Mike said simply, ambiguously so as to not fully lie as Finn smiled at him and the conversation ended with a mutual understanding before they got to work.
"Tina." Rachel said, slightly impatiently now. After half an hour of them naming each others' favorite artists and they couldn't agree with anything to sing in a duet together. "How about we both get a drink and when we come back up we could…how about we take a look at each others' iPods and work out artists that way?"
"Yeah…sure." Tina replied, noticing Rachel's animosity and once again mistaking it for the fact that she had dated Mike rather than Rachel's annoyance at their music incompatibility. Tina felt so awkward standing in Rachel's house, she was already intimidating enough to talk to after she began dating Mike, more than how she usually was, now to have to talk to her one on one was proving to be quite difficult indeed.
"What would you like to drink, Tina? We have orange juice, apple juice, soya milk, Diet Coke, English tea, Chinese tea, Camomile tea-"
"Water will be fine thanks." Tina interrupted, regretting it a split second later when Rachel appeared to be slightly put out at not being able to finish her list. However, she reached over to the water filter and poured out two glasses of water for them both. When Rachel turned, Tina followed her once again and glanced at her watch. It was strange how early it still was, the evening was dragging on definitely.
When they went back up to their room Rachel retrieved her pink iPod nano from the similarly pink bedazzled iPod dock and held it up to Tina. "Just browse through the artists and tell me if anything catches your eye."
Tina nodded and reached into her jeans pocket to give Rachel her slightly battered purple iPod. "The menu button doesn't work properly because I dropped it on the ground one too many times so just press it down real hard and it should work."
Rachel nodded and they were both seated on the edge of her bed again. The room was silent for a while as they both silently scrutinized each others' music tastes until Tina spoke up. "I'm not a threat to you, y'know."
"A threat? Well Tina, I know that. I've known that from the start. Your vocals are absolutely lovely but when it comes to a real, trained vocal range I fully understand that-"
"I mean with Mike."
Rachel silenced herself and a little, "Oh…" uttered from her lips.
"He was the one that broke up with me so even if I were to have feelings for him they wouldn't be returned. But it was a mutual decision. He said the relationship had run its course and I agreed really. What we had came and went quite quickly. I'm with Artie now, did you know?"
Rachel raised her eyebrows at Tina's words. It struck her that she hadn't thought to ask Mike why he and Tina broke up, she felt a pang of guilt that she had thrown all of her problems about Finn at Mike and not even given Mike a chance to talk about his own problems. She made a mental note to talk to him about it later and returned to thoughts about Mike and Tina's relationship. The break up seemed rather strange. Mike and Tina seemed like quite a steady, loving romance. Albeit unexpectedly expected at the beginning of Rachel's junior year, it was one of those relationships that didn't cause drama and they were an altogether 'nice' couple. Still, Artie and Tina seemed very loved up in their freshman year so it Tina must be feeling better about the break up.
"That's news to me but um, thank you for informing me. I'll keep that in mind." She cleared her throat and looked back down at Tina's iPod. "Have you found anything yet?"
Tina felt herself smiling that she made things clear so there would be no strange air about them both as they worked, even if it was only for this week it would only be right to put things right. "I see you like Lady Gaga?"
"I do. Even more so with her new material, it's so artistic and expressive. I want to reach that level of artistry one day. Though I must say, to cover her newest material would require a lot of work and vocally I'm not sure whether it would suit…us." Rachel said with a friendly smile at the last word. She sensed that Tina probably felt her initially negativity which brought out her need to speak about Mike. It was sweet of her, really.
"I was thinking her older stuff. Maybe even her first album because The Fame Monster begins to transition to her Born This Way style."
"Precisely!" Rachel perked up, connecting Tina's iPod to her dock and scrolling until she reached 'The Fame'. One by one she played the songs, both of them scrunching their noses up and shaking their heads at the more pop stylistic songs like 'Just Dance' and 'Paparazzi'. Just as they were both losing hope they came across 'Brown Eyes'. It was slower and both of them looked at each other with a smile of approval.
What Tina didn't know was that this was on Rachel's 'Music of yearning and woe' playlist on her iTunes and she had been listening to this as she wallowed by herself over Finn and his 'brown eyes'.
What Rachel didn't know was that Tina got over Mike pretty well initially until one day her iTunes put this song on when it was on shuffle and reduced her to tears as she listened to the lyrics.
What they both didn't know was that both of them were a little more attached to those 'brown eyes' than they let on.
Everytime you leave a review for me a little parade starts in my head. No joke.
Songs mentioned are 'The Lazy Song' by Bruno Mars and 'Brown Eyes' by Lady Gaga.