This chapter is from Shannon Beiste's point of view.

It takes place about a year after the last Emma/Beiste conversation (the bowling alley scene in chapter 6). In my AU version of the-second-half-of-season-5, Marley, Jake, Ryder, and Unique never transferred to any different school and the glee club still exists for these kids' sophomore year at McKinley High as well.

Now feel free to skip this unnecessarily long author's note and just get on with reading the chapter. But for those who care, I just can't quite resist voicing my frustration that Glee's seasons 4 through 6 timeline makes absolutely no sense – a fact I'm sure many fic writers before me have realized, and one I too have struggled with once before. (It was during my "To Have Loved and Lost" series of oneshots about Finn's death. which I do hope to keep writing eventually. :P)

If Emma got pregnant in episode 5x10 "Trio", three episodes before what is presumably May or June 2013 when "The class of 2013" graduates from McKinley, then the latest 5x10 could've taken place is May of that year, right? May was the latest it could've been when Emma found out she was pregnant? Not, say, July? I would like to assume she conceived in early May. This means her baby would've been due in January. However, in episode 5x17 "Opening Night" when Daniel Finn Schuester is actually born, the show confirms that it is April already because of the calendar on the wall? And while some people – Rachel, Santana, even Will, if you squint right – wear full length wool coats, that doesn't clear much up. Honestly, judging by all of the characters' outfits combined with the weather, it does look more like a cool week in the month of April than an unseasonably warm New York winter. But that makes no sense for the birth of Will & Emma's baby. Emma didn't find out for sure – from a doctor – that she was pregnant, and then 11 or 12 months later gave birth. She does not have the gestation period of a sea lion! Come on, Glee. Why did you do this to us fic writers?

So for my own sanity I am creating a headcanon where the opening night for Funny Girl, along with the birth of Emma's baby, was early January.

And therefore this chapter opens… during what I am saying is McKinley's two week winter break in 2014, a couple weeks before the baby's birth/the time Will travels to New York City. It's after Christmas 2013/but before New Year's.

Please enjoy it! ;)

Chapter 9: More Ace Faces

Shannon's snow boots were leaving the very first imprints in the fresh white covering over the ground. She stepped onto the approximate location of the cement walkway leading up to the Schuesters' apartment building. Looking back up toward the door, she caught sight of Will and smiled. He returned the expression.

"I can't believe my dentist didn't just close the office today, given the streets!" Will said in good humor.

"Well, the main roads have been cleared," Shannon assured him.

"That's good. I should be back within three hours," Will promised.

"Well don't feel like you have to rush!" Shannon replied.

She truly was happy to be able to help out by keeping Emma company while Will got his teeth cleaned and then stopped by the grocery store and, if they were open despite the snow, the dry cleaners. She knew he didn't feel comfortable at this point in her pregnancy being left all alone. He would have to do it for school once it returned for the second semester, even if she was already on maternity leave, but at least McKinley was only about ten blocks from his building. Emma had insisted she'd be fine if Will took the train to New York in January for less than a day just to see Rachel's first ever Broadway performance. While Will had agreed that his former student deserved that from him, he had been so reluctant to leave town so close to her due date, so he'd asked Shannon as well as Emma's sister, Ella, to both keep her company when that day came.

Today, his appointment would also be taking him further away than was typical on a day when he simply went in to work. So he asked Shannon to stop by this afternoon as well, and decided to take the opportunity to do a couple of other errands too.

Shannon took the elevator up, then arrived at their door and knocked. She was welcomed in, and tried to hide how surprised she was by how big Emma's bump had gotten. It was a shocking sight to see the tiny woman like this. Per usual, Shannon removed her shoes in the doorway. This time, she then looked up toward the Christmas tree, which was still up, although all remnants of wrapping paper was certainly long gone.

"Your tree looks gorgeous."

"Oh you haven't seen it yet, have you?" Emma said happily. "Let me show you the special ornaments." She led Shannon over and began to point out a couple of very pretty, one-of-a-kind, ornaments. "This one was given to Will this year by Carole, actually," she pointed out in a bittersweet tone.

Shannon hadn't realized just how close not just Finn but his whole family had been to Will until after his death. Emma and Shannon had loved Finn but never had known him quite as well, and Shannon had only briefly met his parents.

Shannon could tell the baby inside of Emma was making her feel extra sympathy for Finn's mother, so she tried to take the focus back to the tree. "Where did you get this one?" she asked, indicating a wooden snowflake that appeared to have been hand-painted. It was a vibrant blue and purple.

She squinted. "I'm not sure. I think Will may have had it before we got together. I'll have to ask him."

Shannon nodded, understandingly.

"He may have gotten it from Terri!" Emma added with a laugh.

It sounded like Will may have a lot of leftover items from his first marriage, and Emma had learned to take them in stride.

"Would you like something to drink?" Emma then asked, gesturing toward the kitchen. "I think Will has a couple of bottles of beer left in the fridge, or…" she faltered, and then looked wistfully out the window. "This weather is making me crave some Hot Cocoa. I could make us some?"

"That sounds amazing," Shannon replied. They began to walk toward the kitchen. "Would you like to sit down and let me boil the water, though?" she asked, mindful of the late stage of Emma's pregnancy.

"Oh, no, it's fine. You're my guest, sit," she said amiably, pointing toward a chair at the table before she reached into a cabinet for the tea kettle.

Shannon didn't argue.

"So have you made progress with the group?" Emma asked, fully aware that Shannon had been planning to use her break off of work to finally get an ace-spectrum meeting up and running.

Shannon's face lit up. "Oh, yes! Three people have already RSVP'd that they'll be attending it on the website. Plus with me, it'll be four of us." Shannon knew with Emma's new baby she wouldn't be able to come. "We'll meet in a corner of The Lima Bean, and hopefully it'll be secluded enough for private conversations."

Emma filled up the kettle in the sink. "Did you think a public place was necessary for the first meeting, rather than, say, your house?"

"Exactly," Shannon replied. "I wonder what their romantic orientations will be."

"Do you think you'll get gray-As showing up too?" Emma asked.

"Well, I told them they were welcome if they fell anywhere on the spectrum, or even if they were just questioning and thought they might. So we'll see!"

Emma turned on the burner, and then joined her friend at the kitchen table. "So what's the date?"

"It'll be after school's back in session, since I wanted to make sure no one's winter vacations would interfere with it. I scheduled it for the final weekend in January."

"That sounds perfect."

"I came out to Lori, too," Shannon then informed her, changing the subject slightly.

"Oh?" Emma replied, cautiously.

"Yeah," Shannon said with a bit of a shrug. "It could've gone a lot worse. I think she's warming up to the idea. She just can't relate at all and didn't know it could be a thing, so at first she kept asking all these intrusive questions, like if I masturbate and stuff, and when I told her I did she basically said I couldn't be asexual."

Shannon had been pretty hurt, at first, by some of those comments her sister made. She'd been over at Lori's for Christmas, spending some time with their parents, who had also come by. Lori also had a husband and a son, and Shannon loved spending time with her nephew. He had just turned ten and his vocabulary already was rivaling Shannon's when she and her father joined him in a game of Scrabble.

"She's warming up to the idea, though?" Emma asked.

"Yeah, she apologized after I got a little angry. I told her I had spent a lot of time looking into this and I was sure and she should trust my word, and then she kind of… realized I was right."

"I'm glad," Emma said. "I still haven't told my sister. I don't know what I'm waiting for."

"Well, there's no real reason for you to come out to her," Shannon said. "I mean, all that really matters is that she knows you're happily married, right?"

"Well, I'm pretty close with Ella," Emma replied. "She was there for me when I had to flee from my huge wedding, and since then we've bonded a bit more. I wasn't very close with her after high school, but now we talk on the phone more and it's nice. But I feel like I'm lying if she ever comments on, you know, George Clooney and I don't bring it up. A lie of omission, I suppose, but still."

"I get that," Shannon replied. "Do you think you'll ever tell your child?" Shannon asked, raising her eyebrows meaningfully as she looked in the direction of Emma's belly.

Emma smiled. "Oh, after being a guidance counselor for so many years, there is no way I'd even think about hiding that kind of information from him or her. Hopefully, one day, all of my children will find out about all of the things I wish I knew when I was young."

"Oh, you're planning to have more than just this one?" Shannon asked with a little bit of surprise. She was always surprised when she learned that people she knew were starting families, and so far her main experience had been Sue and Lori, who had each only wanted one child.

Emma smiled. "Will and I have both always dreamed of a large family."

"You guys will be great parents," Shannon replied. "Do you have any names picked out?"

Emma smiled. "For this one? Yeah. We've decided on Daniel if it's a boy, and Charlotte if it's a girl."

"Those are both lovely," Shannon replied in earnest.

The kettle began to whistle, and Emma got up to prepare the delicious chocolate beverages.

About a month later, Emma was still on her leave, busy with a baby. Shannon talked to Will at lunch and was pleased to learn Emma was handling the spit-up and diapers just fine, even with fewer therapy appointments. When it was little Danny's messes, she was, in a way, happy to help clean them up. Parenthood was hard, and Will was more exhausted than he expected he'd be, but Shannon was so happy for them. She could tell it was also everything they'd hoped for.

When Shannon had informed Sue what she would be doing that coming weekend, it was also the first time she'd come out as aro ace to the cheerleading coach. Shannon probably shouldn't have been surprised when the blond woman had confused asexuality with being agender, and told Shannon to have fun with all of the "Local Sexless Freaks". Shannon knew her friend still cared about her; this was just Sue's way of showing it. Sue had been her rock, in many ways, when her marriage with Cooter blew up. Shannon knew if she ever really needed Sue, she'd be there for her again.

A fifth person had signed up to come to the ace meet-up, and Shannon was now a few minutes early, sitting with the cup of joe she'd just purchased at a table along the back row of the café. She was impatiently waiting, vaguely enjoying the pop radio station the place had playing. This was going to be her chance to see Marley for the first real time since the school shooting scare. Despite them having spent that time hiding in the same classroom, Shannon still hadn't really ever spoken with Marley before. Marley was the only student at McKinley that Shannon knew of who was asexual, and in fact she'd asked Ryder to tell her, as his friend, about this new group once she'd gotten the website up and running.

There was only one person of the male persuasion planning to show up, but he was the person who was closest to her in age – he was forty years old, according to his online profile, and had been married for ten years, his asexuality causing problems that had led to his divorce. Most of the people had not been so detailed online, so she'd have to wait till she saw them in-person to find out what their stories were.

She spotted a Latina girl walking slowly into the center of the seating area, her eyes scanning the room, looking for something. Shannon held up the "Aces of Lima" sign she'd printed off of her home computer, hoping if she displayed it more prominently it might help this young woman out. She wasn't sure if this was the 'Ana' who had RSVP'd on the website, but since 'Ana' had not uploaded any profile picture, she thought it may very well be.

Sure enough, the girl smiled in recognition when she saw the sign and approached the table. "Hi, I'm Ana," she said as she reached out her hand. Shannon grasped it and then shook it as she replied, "And I'm Shannon. It's so nice to meet you!"

They chatted casually for about fifteen minutes while the other five people all trickled in to join them. Shannon kept having to reiterate to the new person at the table that she was a high school football coach, and she was a little surprised that no one questioned it at all. She was used to having to defend being a woman doing such a job, and this automatic acceptance of it as if it was typical was a refreshing change. There was something just so comfortable at their little table of six. They all were strangers, but they were all there with the same purpose, and somehow they just naturally slid from the surface details of each other's lives into the nitty-gritty of their experiences with sex, romance, and relating to peers.

It ended up being Marley as the only high schooler, two women in their twenties – Clarice and Ana, a woman in her thirties named Lydia, and finally John, the 40-year-old man.

Lydia found out about the meetup on AVEN, and explained that she'd always known she was asexual, she just didn't learn the word for it until about five years prior. She was so happy there was finally a way to meet other ace people in the area, and thanked Shannon profusely for starting the group. Lydia was aromantic too, and had resigned years before learning the term to never be in a relationship. She never had even needed to try it, she'd just known she wouldn't be comfortable.

Ana had actually come from quite a few towns over, and it had been over an hour of a drive, but she said it was worth it. She was really happy there was finally a way to meet other aces in the area, as she was heteroromantic and likely demisexual. She was hoping she might, in the future as the group grew, become friends with an ace man, and then maybe they could end up dating. She couldn't fathom online dating. In her words, "if you don't get to know the dude first, how can you know if you wanna date him?". Ana also introduced the members to the idea of a 'queerplatonic' partner, which was something quoiromantic people like Marley might sometimes be interested in. "It's like dating, but also not," she'd explained vaguely. Clarice seemed to know the term already and was nodding affirmatively at that description. Shannon realized she had some more learning to do and resolved to Google it when the meeting was over.

Clarice had just figured out she was asexual the week prior thanks to Tumblr, and was the person who'd put in the last-minute RSVP. She was so happy to learn she wasn't alone. She voiced something that Shannon had been thinking too. "There is something really reassuring about the fact that none of the other people in this restaurant would even be able to tell we were all asexual by looking over at us. We really are just… average, everyday people." Shannon thought it was a lot easier to not feel broken once she realized that asexual people were simply people, like every else, with all sorts of looks, and careers, and personalities.

Everyone got a chance to tell their story, and then John suggested they see what board games The Lima Bean provided over in the couch area. They headed over and the first game they pulled out was a falling apart cardboard box containing Jenga. The group casually hung out for a few more hours, the café not crowded enough to mind their extended presence. They laughed as the blocks fell, and then proceeded to use the deck of cards for a few different games. Marley was particularly excited to learn how to play poker. John was somewhat of an expert and taught the rest of the group, as surprisingly none of them actually had gambled at all before. They didn't bet real money this time, and instead just used assorted pieces of Candy that Lydia happened to have in her purse. The group parted ways in time for dinner, but resolved to make the next meet-up about one month later, in a new location. Clarice had suggested Faurot Park and the others had liked the idea, if the all of the season's snow had melted in time, otherwise they thought maybe that'd be a better suggestion for March or April. Shannon was sure she could handle picking the spot they'd meet, though.

Simultaneously, the group began to notice what song was playing on the radio, which the younger ones recognized for sure at the lead in to the chorus.

You are what you love
Not who loves you
In a world full of the word 'Yes'
I'm here to scream

No! No!

Clarice, Ana, and Marley looked amongst themselves and giggled a bit. "This should be our group's anthem," Marley commented. The others nodded vigorously in agreement. The song was "Save Rock And Roll" by Fall Out Boy featuring Elton John, and Shannon had never heard it before, not being very in tune with the newest music anymore. Clarice explained the song didn't usually play on the radio despite being the title song for an album.

As the day drew to a close, Shannon realized just how excited she was to tell Emma all about what had happened when she next got a chance. Before, Emma had been the only asexual-spectrum person she'd ever met. Now, she had met six new people who she could relate to in a vital way.

Please don't forget to download catupatree's amazing fanmix. I featured it at the start of chapter 1 on Archive of Our Own but now that you've read through chapter 9 you can appreciate the final song choice and all of the art, including what she put on the back cover! So check it out. You can quickly get to my Archive of Our Own page by going to my profile on this site here - it's linked at the top.