Hey! So this is the third chapter in my first ever Mongron story. I'm loving all of the reviews I'm getting. It gives me the motivation that I sometimes lack to continue to write. Anyway, I'm going to try to take the story slow so it has a real life feel to it. I don't really think anywhere in reality that guy tells girl he's in love with her, then girl dumps her boyfriend with no issues and immediately goes to other guy... or at least it rarely happens. Just trying to please!
"And cut!" Brad Falchuk shouted. "Alright everyone, that's a wrap!"
"Nice guys, nice work. I think we're going to be coming back strong for season 2." Ryan Murphy praised the entire group who were now coming down from the stairwell where they had just finished their last scene, the group dance number for their premiere episode, "Audition" to the song, "Empire State of Mind."
The dance went perfectly for filming and everyone, especially Dianna was impressed with how good Cory did. It was like a 180 rebound for him after the pep talk from Chris and Mark. He was more confident of himself and therefore, more confident in his dancing ability.
Kevin stood up from the wheelchair and walked down the steps with the rest of the cast. "Yeah, we take our craft seriously." he jokingly told Ryan in return which earned him an approving pat on the back as he walked past.
Cory and Lea were the last two to start to come down from the top of the stairwell where they had run up to ask a crewmember a quick question.
"So, you really did great Cor, I'm proud of you." Lea complimented, giving Cory a soft nudge with her elbow as they made their way down the stairs. "You kicked those dance moves butt's. You really brought it from rehearsals a few days ago. What changed from the fumbling, unfocused Cory?" she asked, teasingly.
"I uh, got some good advice from Chris and Mark. It was quite the pep talk actually." Cory answered with a smile, brushing off her teasing as they stopped mid way on the stairwell landing.
"Oh? And what exactly was said in this pep talk to make you have such a turn around?" Lea questioned with a quirked eyebrow and an accompanying smirk.
"Well, what happened was-" Cory had started to explain when a voice from the bottom of the stairs called up to him.
"Hey Cory! Come here you!" Dianna called playfully with a summoning finger.
Cory smiled at Dianna and quickly shifted his view back to the petite brunette in front of him.
"Can I tell you later?" Cory asked hopefully with apologetic eyes.
Lea let a small understanding smile grace her features and nodded as she took a deep breathe and drawled, "Go ahead…" in an exasperated tone.
Cory gave Lea his famous grin to thank her and turned to continue to make his way down the stairs to his favorite girl.
"Hey!" Cory said cheerfully, leaning against the edge of the stairwell railing, trying to act nonchalant and cool.
"Hey." Dianna echoed, smiling. "I just wanted to say that you did really well with the dance and filming just now." Cory smiled and blushed a little, not enough for Dianna to notice though, and stayed quiet as she continued to talk. "I was a little worried about you the day we started to learn the dance-"
"Oh! The day you brought Alex by?" he interrupted in a subtly bitter tone.
"Yeah, that day." Dianna agreed in an up beat voice, clearly not picking up on the venomous tone Cory had given.
Cory wanted to roll his eyes from thinking about that day but decided against it and just nodded along instead for Dianna to continue to talk.
"But anyway, I'm proud of you." Dianna smiled a full on smile as she poked Cory in the chest.
"Wow, you know, you're the second person to tell me that they're proud of me today." He informed her, pausing to fold his arms across his chest now as he continued to lean against the railing. "You know, I didn't think I was that bad before."
A playful smile grew on her face at his reasoning before she said, "Oh Cory, I'm not even going to comment." letting out a giggle even though she tried not to.
"Oh, I'm hurt Di." He held his hands over his heart as he feigned his emotional scarring.
"Aww, poor Cory, I'm sorry." she played back, rubbing his shoulder as he hung his head down in pretend shame before looking back up.
Their eyes met for a few short seconds and Cory could definitely feel the connection and he wondered if Dianna could feel it too.
Then Dianna broke their trance, "So anyway…" 'Damn, maybe she couldn't'. "I was going to go out later and I wanted to know if you'd like to come." she told him.
Cory could feel a huge urge to smile. "Yeah, that would be cool." Then he paused to ask, "Do you mean, just us?" making sure this could potentially be what he thought it might be.
"Oh um, no, it would actually be you, me, and Alex. Just the three of us though." she clarified for him.
'Yeah… I'd totally love to go out in public and be the third wheel again… NOT!' he thought to himself.
"Oh uh, actually Dianna, I just remembered I had to do something else later." He would have loved to go out with her but he just couldn't sit there and watch the happy couple make kissy faces at each other.
Dianna knitted her eyebrows in confusion on Cory's sudden change of mind.
"It's very, very important." he lied, trying to get the confused look off her pretty face and make her believe him.
"Oh okay." she said. "That's a little disappointing to hear but if you have something to do that's totally fine."
"Yeah, I am really sorry. It would have been fun though." he shrugged with pursed lips.
Dianna solemnly nodded her head before touching Cory's arm and letting her fingers gently run down the rest of its length. Cory's breathe caught in his throat at her delicate touch. It felt like a trail of fire down his arm, but in a good way.
"Let me know if your plans change and I'll do the same." she asked of him with one last smile before she walked off to her trailer.
"Okay!" Cory called after her before walking off towards his own trailer. Was she seriously even remotely upset that he couldn't make it or was that just one of those automatic responses people give? Cory shrugged it off but was left to wonder as he continued on to his trailer.
On his way there, Harry, Mark, Kevin, and another guy caught up to him.
"Hey dude, do you want to grab some lunch with us? We're heading down the street to that sandwich place." Mark asked, pointing in the direction of the road where their favorite sandwich shop was.
"Yeah sure." Cory responded as they started to walk. It would be better than the banana and left over peanut butter sandwich he was going to eat. "Let me just go change out of this New York t-shirt." He still hadn't changed from his outfit from filming. He still had on bling and all.
"Oh, no way bro. If we're all going in our New York get ups, then you are too." Harry said, pulling Cory out of the direction of his trailer.
Cory just smiled and rolled his eyes in defeat as he put on his black Ray Ban wayfarers and let himself be pulled along.
They usually had to wear sunglasses for a couple reasons. One, it was usually really sunny and two, they were told to wear them so they weren't easily recognized. The last part never worked but it was like another unwritten rule of Hollywood. There were just so many, Cory thought.
He wondered, what would sunglasses do to keep him the least bit anonymous when not even Michael Jackson could do it wearing a hat, bandana, and sunglasses. Hmm…
As they walked, Kevin pulled the unknown blonde guy towards him and introduced him to Cory.
"Hey, by the way Cor, this is Chord, our newbie on the show."
Cory looked at the guy and smiled. "Oh yeah, I was starting to wonder who this strange guy following us was." he joked as he stuck out his hand.
"Cory Monteith." he said, introducing himself.
"Chord Overstreet. I'm gonna be Sam." Chord replied, shaking Cory's hand.
"Sweet dude. Welcome." Cory said as they turned to enter the shop.
At the sandwich shop, they got in line and ordered their food to go. They usually brought back food and ate in the Paramount Lot so they wouldn't be too hassled by paparazzi.
On the way back, they walked by a news stand on Melrose Avenue and Harry stopped the whole group.
As Harry skimmed the shelves looking for the latest issue of Rolling Stone, something else caught his attention.
"Hey guys, check this out." he told the group as he pulled a Star magazine out from its slot.
Harry held it up and Cory's eyes went wide.
There it was, on the cover of one of the gossip magazines. A picture of Cory taken the day he went to the airport to pick Dianna up with flowers in hand. The big yellow words next to the picture read: What girl wouldn't want this? And in smaller letters right below it said: Flowers go in but never come out.
Cory yanked the magazine out of Harry's hand and continued to look at it. 'Is this seriously the feature story? Couldn't they have found something else, anything else to put on the cover? Maybe another Lindsay Lohan stint? God this sucks!' he thought to himself.
The group continued to stare at him. He ignored them and looked to the owner of the stand.
"I'm going to buy all of these." he informed the old man, picking up the stack of about twenty Star magazines and placing them on the small checkout area, hoping this attempt would keep Dianna in the dark about this.
"That'll be $79.80 please." the man said, not even looking at the cover to notice that it was the buyer that was on the front. The guy probably didn't even make any connections. Cory doubted the man knew who he was, assuming that an old man didn't watch Glee.
Cory pulled out his wallet from his back pocket and quickly pulled out four twenties and paid for the magazines. Probably the most he has ever, and will ever pay for gossip magazines, especially when they were like, four or five dollars apiece.
Before leaving the stand, he checked every other gossip magazine like People, Us, Ok!, In Touch, and all of the teen magazines to make sure his embarrassing picture wasn't on the fronts of those. Thankfully, Star Magazine was the only one with it.
Mark and Harry each carried a small stack of the magazines and Kevin carried Cory's sandwich for him on the walk back while Cory flipped through one of the magazines, finding the story along with it. 'How could someone even write a story on a minute long walk into LAX?' he wondered as he shuffled through the pages.
Once he got to the page, he read the first paragraph out loud to the group.
"Glee actor, Cory Monteith, 28, as seen walking into Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) arrivals terminal with a ravishing bouquet of calla lilies for a special someone perhaps? Monteith was reportedly picking up co-star Dianna Agron, 24, and her I Am Number Four co-star and reported boyfriend Alex Pettyfer, 20. As seen in picture, Monteith walks in with the flowers but shortly after, walks out, no flowers to be seen in the group. Read on for Celebrity Analyst's conclusions."
Once he finished reading, Cory stopped and immediately brought his hand to his face, squeezed his eyes shut, and pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration.
"That sucks dude." Mark concluded after a few minutes of silence. "You should have expected this to happen."
"Of course I expected this to happen!" Cory shouted, which made Mark jump a little, along with the rest of the guys. Cory saw this and quickly felt bad and began to speak in a softer voice. "Sorry, it's just… yeah, I figured the pictures would end up somewhere but it wasn't a reality back then. Now it is; now I have to come up with a fake story to save my ass if she sees this."
"Okay, calm down. This is no problem." Mark reasoned.
"What do you mean it's not a problem? Of course it is!"
"Um, I'm sorry but… I'm the new guy. Am I missing something here?" Chord asked, unaware of the significance of the picture.
"Well to catch you up, Cory has a thing for Dianna, but she doesn't know. He was going to tell her when he went to pick her up and he brought flowers, then he found out she's dating someone so he can't tell her how he feels, he ditches the flowers, not giving them to her obviously, and now he's afraid she'll see the magazine and find out." Kevin finished explaining, out of breathe.
"Huh," Chord said, nodding his head slowly, trying to take that all in. "Just make up a story to go along with it." He finally suggested, trying to help his new cast mate.
"Like?" Cory asked, throwing up his hands in frustration.
"You had Herb drive you right?" Kevin questioned, to which Cory nodded his head. "Then just tell her that Herb asked you to bring in some flowers to one of the gate agents he likes since he was too nervous to do it himself."
Cory looked at Kevin like he had just suggested the most stupid thing in the world.
"What? It could happen." Is all Kevin offered in response to the look.
"No, Kevin's right Cor. All you need to do is talk to Herbert about this." Mark added and the guys nodded.
"And ask him what? Hey, take the fall for me on this one and say you're so in love with some security guard that I did you a solid and brought her flowers that would profess your love for her?" Cory asked sarcastically.
"Well no, not if you put it that way." Harry spoke for the first time in the conversation.
"Okay first, I said a gate agent-" Kevin started.
"And second," Mark interrupted, "Herb is a great guy and he likes you. I guarantee he won't mind helping you out here."
"And this is if she even sees the picture or reads the story." Chord reminded him.
"Right, exactly. Does Di even read this magazine?" Mark questioned, nodding to the stack in his arm.
"No, I don't think so." Cory began. "She says she doesn't like to read many magazines beside Vanity Fair because she thinks all the others are too gossipy and fake." Then it clicked it his head. She probably wouldn't even see it since she doesn't read gossip magazines, and if she ever did and brought it up, he could use the story they made for an excuse.
"See? Then this is perfect." Harry said.
"This will totally work if she ever finds out." Mark assured.
Cory actually felt safe in this situation for the first time ever since they came across the magazines.
"Okay." Cory breathed, a smile starting to grow on his face.
"Okay!" Mark repeated for emphasis and confidence.
Cory looked around the group and said, "Thanks guys. You all really helped." Then he looked at Chord and added, "You know, you're alright for a newbie. I like you already." Cory gave him a laughing smile and put up his fist which Chord bumped. Cory was so happy that he even followed it with one of those hand explosions.
"So, it's good that we put our noggins together and solved this issue. It makes me really hungry, so can we please start walking again and get back to Paramount so I can eat?" Kevin asked and the rest of the group laughed and began the short remaining distance back to the set.
How was it? I wasn't really sure about it while writing but PLEASE let me know so I can get opinions on how to improve it and make the story better and more enjoyable to read in the future. I don't know when the next chapter will be up but I'll work on it. I have some ideas of how I want the exact plot of this story to go but if anyone has any input I'll try and see if I can fit it into the story and make it exactly what you want to read. Tell me by leaving a review :)