If It's For Her,
Written by WickedSong.
Disclaimer/Note : In chapter one. I mention a song used in 3x10 but not the performance so this is where I feel like I'll start deviating from what will happen in canon.
He had been making his way to the table where most of the glee club sat in the lunchroom the day following his chat with the glee guys when Sam noticed the foot in his way. He looked around to find it belonged to Santana, who sat at a table with Brittany, Puck, Rory and Sugar.
"Take a seat, lips," she declared, taking her foot away as Puck removed his backpag from a vacant seat beside himself and Rory. Sam sat in between them, opposite Santana, Brittany and Sugar.
"You know, Santana, we get it, my lips are a bit big. Can't we move on from," he visibly cringed as he remembered, "Trouty Mouth?"
Santana shrugged and rolled her eyes. "What can I say? Old habits die hard. Besides, you should take it as a term of endearment. Not everyone gets a nickname." She gave a small laugh.
Sam assumed this meant she wasn't going to stop and so he didn't bring it up a second time and probably wouldn't try to do so again. As she said it was a term of endearment.
"Now I think you can guess what we're doing here," Puck said, looking around the small table, at the side of the room.
"Operation Chocolates White and Thunder is now a-go," Santana supplied, in case Sam didn't know.
Sam gave a look of slight bewilderment, and then a small smile as he cast his eyes down to his tray, knowing that he probably shouldn't have approved of the name as much as he did.
"We came up with the name ourselves," an excited Sugar revealed gesturing to herself and Rory.
Rory looked equally as excited, not even letting his overriding fear of Santana stop this, as he gave a thumbs up to his friend.
"Don't you think the name's a bit-"
"A bit what?" Sugar asked sharply, with a warning look, obviously not happy with even the slightest doubt being cast upon the name she had so carefully chosen.
Sam was sure the younger girl was going to pick up her fork and stab him with it if he didn't reply positively within the next five seconds but luckily Santana saved him. "Now, now, the name doesn't matter. What matters is the plan."
"Which is?"
She held up a hand. "Wait a sec, Trouty. A bit of background before I begin."
When Sam rolled his eyes, Santana looked just about ready to also use her fork to harm Sam but Puck, after looking behind him turned to her. "Not worth it, San. Just tell him."
She put her cutlery down but gave a warning look to Sam. "Right, what we know is that you joined swimming to impress her. Why? Because football is almost finished for the season and you think being a jock again will somehow increase the chances of her wanting to be with you even though we can put her dating three jocks down to a coincidence."
Sam looked to Puck, recognising a lot of that from the conversation they had had earlier on in the week, and realising that he must've told Santana most of it.
Puck shrugged his shoulders. "Hey, only trying to help dude."
Sam failed to see how telling Santana his insecurities would help but he nodded to hear the rest of what she had to say.
"But what's actually coming off from it is that you're gonna do mostly anything, even something as further down on the food chain from Glee as synchronised swimming."
"I would do anything."
"Exactly."
"So what do you propose we do?"
"I like the use of the word propose here, because you're gonna use Mr. Schue's assignment to your advantage."
That afternoon, before Glee rehearsal, Sam managed to catch Mercedes just as she was leaving her last class. It wasn't actually on purpose this time but the timing couldn't have been any better.
"Hey, Mercedes, wait up!"
He didn't know whether or not she was ignoring him or not and he was almost certain his effort to talk to her would be futile until she eventually turned around. He stopped and simply smiled at her when she did so.
"Well hurry up or you'll make us both late."
His grin only widened at this but he obliged and ran to catch up with her. She began walking again, at a slightly slower pace until he was walking in step with her.
"So what do you want?" she finally asked after a moment of silence between the two of them, only their shoes being heard on the corridors, which were mostly deserted, except for one or two kids still lingering at their lockers.
"Can't a guy walk with a girl to glee without wanting something?" he replied in mock hurt. She gave him an expectant look as if she knew what he was doing and he nodded. "OK, OK, I have something for you. It's not a lot but..."
"You don't have to get me anything. We're not together anymore and nothing will change that. I'm with-"
"Shane, yeah, I know," Sam said, finishing her sentence. He added quietly, hoping she didn't hear, "Don't remind me." He shook his head and spoke more clearly and this time to her. "And it's a late Christmas present."
"But Sam-"
"No buts. It took me a while to do this."
"Do what?"
They turned a corner and arrived at his locker which he opened quickly, before pulling out a parcel wrapped in colourful Christmas paper. "I know it's January but better late than never, right. I meant to ask someone to drop it off at Christmas but I wanted to give you it myself."
"You really didn't have to. I didn't get you anything. I'll feel bad." She folded her arms as he tried to give her the parcel.
He kept pushing it in her direction though. "I have no problems with being late to glee a second practice in a row."
She gave a long sigh and took it from him. "Ok, but this doesn't change-" Her last words were cut off when she opened to find a photo frame with a picture of them at prom night. It wasn't even the prom portrait with Rachel also in it. It was just the two of them. Dancing.
Mercedes looked up at him. "Don't do this to me," she demanded. "Don't make me remember."
"Remember what? How that night felt. Because it was a lot more than what you make everyone think it was," Sam said. "The start of some small summer fling that you never think about. The start of 'so June.' When that picture, it proves it was a whole lot more than that."
He looked down at the picture and in it they looked close. Her arms were around his neck, his around her waist, At first they had been awkward, not really sure what to do, but eventually they had settled into a comfortable position, she looking at him, beaming and him looking at her, with a matching expression.
Mercedes didn't speak. She only looked down at the picture. Eventually she found words. "This is beautiful. But it reminds me of what was, what could have been and just what isn't anymore. I can't look at you and say I don't have feelings because I do." She shook her head. "You left. I know you had no choice but you left. I thought I wasn't going to see you again so I moved on. Can't you understand that?"
"You keep telling me that but I don't believe it."
"Why?"
"Because you still look at me the way you did this summer."
She didn't have a reply to that one.
"I'll see you in glee."
Sam watched as Mercedes walked down the corridor and he noticed that she still held the picture close to her. She didn't hand him it back.
He grinned at this as he closed his locker door.
"Sam, I'm not exactly sure what you're looking for," Rory confessed as he scrolled through the seemingly endless photos on the school website of the 2011 Junior Prom.
"There was a picture of Mercedes and I dancing during prom. I'm gonna give her that picture for Christmas."
"A picture she can find on the internet?"
The symbolism and what this picture represented seemed to go over Rory's head.
"It's more about that night, rather than the picture. It was the night I finally saw her, like really saw her," Sam clarified, as he also scrolled on the computer next to him in the school library.
Rory gave a mock salute. "I guess we'd better keep looking then, right?"
"Right?"
They gave up their search that day and between helping at the soup kitchen, ringing the bell outside stores and school work he felt as if this was a futile mission.
That was until miraculously Brittany came through for him.
"How did you find it?" Sam questioned Rory, as he looked at the picture, happiness and excitement bubbling up inside him. He hugged his friend in his elation before placing the picture carefully in a plastic wallet in one of his binders. He had bought the small frame a couple of days so the hardest part was over.
"Brittany has all the pictures. Says she loves the memories. She got me a copy so you should thank her really."
Sam nodded and then raised a fist in the air in happiness in the middle of the hallway.
"...so Mr. Schue, while we all agree these ideas are from the depths of your romantic soul, we believe we have found a better way for you to propose to Ms. Pillsbury," Rachel finished quickly and then nodded to Santana.
"So, we all know that Trouty Mouth here has decided to join his kind in the water-"
"Cold, Santana."
"That was harsh."
"I'm used to it by now."
"Sam isn't a fish. Or is he?"
Santana ignored Kurt, Finn, Sam and Brittany, although she did give the latter a bright smile, and continued, "-and Coach Washington said that she would be alright with us using the pool so why not a song to an awesome synchronised swimming routine."
Rachel and Santana looked at each other before Rachel spoke up. "We've been working on the perfect duet, which talks about finding love and hope from someone when nothing else seems to be going right." No one missed the pointed look Rachel shot at Mercedes and then at Sam and then at how she sort of nodded her head, to one back to the other.
She had become excited at the prospect of this plan and subtly in showing this was not her strong point. Santana cleared her throat and then spoke, "We thought it would fit perfectly."
Everyone who was in on the plan, this included every glee clubber except Mercedes, looked brightly optimistic at this idea, much to her confusion. Of course Rachel's look had not gone unnoticed.
Mr. Schue nodded, and looked as if he approved of what they were saying. "I like it guys. We'll have to practice it though. I'm thinking I should propose next week at the latest." He looked at the clock. "OK, that's you all dismissed. I'll talk to Coach Washington in the morning and if we can, we'll use the pool. Bring what you'll need."
He left and before Mercedes could tell the group she had an inkling they were up to something they had all left, except Santana.
"Look, San, I know you're doing what you think is right but I'm with Shane-"
"And you're happy, and you're totally not missing Sam, and you want to live the rest of your life with Shane and have those cocoa babies once you get that Grammy while he becomes an amazing football player."
That was the thing about Santana. She didn't sugarcoat anything. It was clear from the sarcasm in her voice that she had her doubts about this plan.
"And you think I'll be happy with Sam?"
"I've lived in denial before. It may seem like a pretty city on the inside but once you knock down all the buildings all you're left with is self-loathing and resentment." Santana hugged her quickly, an action which caught Mercedes off guard but something she returned. "We may have always been at each other's throats before but...but you're one of my best friends now." And as quickly as an uncertainty and vulnerability in her voice came, she changed to her more confident self. "And I will not let one of my best friends live in that city, not when I did."
Mercedes hugged her. "Just...just give me time to think. Please."
Santana nodded her head. "We're still doing this song and the operation is still underway but take your time. You're lucky. I think he'd wait forever if it meant one more chance with you."
Santana didn't say anything else, picking up her bag and leaving Mercedes to face the words she had said.
This chapter was fun to write. I had been planning that whole Sam giving Mercedes the picture thing for so long but it didn't fit into a oneshot and the opportunity just presented itself in this chapter. And Operation Chocolates White and Thunder is finally in motion. There is more to this plan than We Found Love but I'm really writing this as I go so who knows? I'm not gonna lie to you all! Haha!
I think next chapter I may do more from Mercedes' POV, including maybe writing some Shane (the things I do for you, readers) but he won't be in this story a lot.
Thank you for the wonderful reviews, the messages on tumblr and the favourites/alerts and some people have even put me on their favourites/alerts for being an author so that is awesome! It just means so much to me!
Until next time,
WickedSong x