Author's Note: Sorry for the delay on this. I hope it was worth the wait!

Chapter Eight

Rachel had never believed how long three days could be. She went to college, met Tina and Kurt and Mercedes dropped by on Tuesday for coffee. This were happenings when time seemed to pass sensibly, every other minute stretched into eternity, especially the night.

Of course the hours were dotted with the occasional text he sent but the time in between replies seemed to take twice as long as the regular long hours.

Blaine checked in with her, at least three times a day, once when she got up, once after college and once around nine pm when he told her Quinn returned from work and he didn't have to watch Beth anymore.

Rachel was still jealous of Quinn and the whole situation. Blaine's love for Beth bled through even in the short messages and she felt insecure and inadequate because he already had two women in his life, having lived for years like your average middle class family. She thought there was no room for her which was silly because she knew there wasn't any need for room in the first place.

She wasn't there and she wouldn't be to fill it anyway. She was harvesting her crush on him, knowing it was a hopeless endeavor, yet she couldn't seem to stop herself. The elation and buzz she felt whenever her phone vibrated with one of his texts was like a sugar high she'd began to crave, that she'd become addicted to.

When Wednesday finally came she sat restlessly at supper, nibbling without appetite on a toast Sam had given her to dip into her tomato soup.

"It's just a skype call", he muttered, glancing up from his own bowl, "You look like you're about to piss yourself"

"Shut up", she muttered without much resolve and then after a pause that Sam filled with a very pitiful look she sighed deeply, "I'm so nervous"

"But what for? He can't jump through the screen", Sam said and seemed honestly perplexed at her discomfort, not that she fully understood it herself.

He was right, Blaine wouldn't jump through the screen. Still it was like a first date of sorts, them, just talking because there was nothing else to do and that was as nerve-wracking as it was agonizing. She couldn't just kiss him or touch him or ruffle his hair when she felt like it, he'd be painfully 2D.

Plus she really didn't know what she wanted to happen, half of her was afraid she wouldn't have enough smart things to say and it would be awkward and she didn't want that, she wanted him to like her, to find her smart and witty and funny but the other half of her wished that they wouldn't get along at all in the light of day so her heart would stop yearning for him.

Sometimes her chest felt like it wanted to jump out of her, wobble to the ocean and swim to him, the feeling such a distinct pull as if a sling had been thrown around her heart and someone yanked at it, hard. Every second of the day.

"I don't know", she finally answered Sam, she didn't know what she was nervous for, she couldn't decide which of the two emotions was stronger – her wish to please and to keep or to be appalled and free.

As it was getting closer to nine she helped Sam clean the kitchen and then went back to her room. Her bother left her alone and didn't pry, probably registering that she wasn't fit for his mockery for once.

Rachel thought about trying to impress Blaine, putting on make up and a dress or maybe her exact outfit from the pub but she eventually saw no use in a costume.

He'd seen her photos on facebook – even commented with flirty banter on some – he knew that she was more Goldilocks than Femme Fatale and so she stayed in the red maxi sweater that had a huge Minnie Mouse head weaved into it, her black leggings, cozy winter socks she had worn all day and put her peppermint tea in her favorite mug (a blue one with comic-y owls on it) next to her computer, running a hand through her wavy hair before opening the video chat program.

It was five minutes to nine and he wasn't online yet. His screen name was blaine-warbler and it still sat low at the bottom, nowhere near her other online contacts she was in no mood to talk to. She deliberated for a second but then she clicked on her description and changed her "mood"-status, erasing the quote she'd had there for months and putting in a single word: "superbass."

She made a note of the full stop for emphasis. It was idiotic maybe and she was pretty sure she hadn't used social media status updates to send cryptic messages to a boy (trying to tell him how she felt about him in code so she wouldn't have to say it to his face) since Middle School. Of course it had never quite done the job back then but she was going into it expecting the boys she fancied actually payed any attention to her profiles.

Now Blaine would look at it for sure once he came on though and maybe he'd get the hint. Because the breezy Nikki Minaj song fit her so well. I really got a thing for American guys...

The song was already playing in her head and the minutes passed. Nine am sharp, five past nine, ten past nine. Rachel had gone to check her emails and her facebook multiple times and had gone on to just refreshing her profile to see if Blaine had left her a message that he couldn't make it.

In between that she alternated between starring at skype (still no sign of him) and her phone (no new messages).

At nine fifteen she wanted to text him but that seemed needy and pushy and she didn't want him to think of her this way but she was uneasy and felt almost betrayed, no, she felt righteously stood up.

But then, just when she was about to throw something heavy off her table in frustration, blaine-warbler set himself at the top of the online list and in the blink of an eye a window popped open, his words black on white background.

Blaine Anderson - 21:15

I'm so sorry, Quinn got in later from work, had to watch Beth.

How are you?

Rachel took a deep breath in relief but part of her wanted to let him roost a bit and so she took a large gulp from her mug and made him wait a bit.

Rachel Berry – 21:17

It's fine. How are you?

Blaine Anderson – 21:17

Good, a little tired but otherwise great. I miss you though. I want to see you.

She felt prompted and pushed the little "phone" button to initiate a video call, she had checked her webcam twice to make sure she worked, sound and image, but Blaine declined the call.

Blaine Anderson – 21:18

Give me a second to adjust the camera, I'll call you.

Rachel waited and she had about enough of that when the skype jingle blared through her speakers as she had turned them up all the way to hear Blaine right, so it would feel like he was in the room with her. But just before she picked up she was so nervous she couldn't breathe.

She would see him again in a second, for real. It had only been three days but it felt like she'd been missing him for years and now she suddenly felt unprepared for this moment.

But she pressed the button and the screen changed, it took a time to load but then there he was, sitting relaxed and at ease in what she assumed was his bedroom, hair wild and face scruffier than the two o'clock shadow she remembered on him and her heart stopped for a moment and then took flight.

Boy, you got my heartbeat running away, beating like a drum and it's coming your way, can't you hear that boom-badoom-boom-boom-badoom-boom-bass...

Her memory and his facebook photos had done him no justice. He was so pretty it almost hurt and he grinned from ear to ear, both of them taking a second to take each other in. He eyes flickered to his "mood"-segment and it said: "Here we go again, I feel the chemicals kicking in" - a quote from a song too. She wondered if it was meant for her.

But she didn't linger, her eyes quickly found their way back to him, then down to check how she looked in the camera (good enough), she could see her head in a little square at the bottom of his window, and then back to his face.

"It's good to see you", he said when he seemed to feel like he'd waited long enough.

"It's good to see you too", she repeated and couldn't help the huge smile on her face.

"How's your day been so far?"

"Uneventful. Yours?", if you thought sitting around and biting nails waiting for a skype call was uneventful this was even the truth.

"I finally put some new articles on my blog, I put a piece out on Obama today, I can send you the link if you want to"

"Sure send it over", Rachel beamed. It wasn't like she hadn't already been stalking Blaine's politics blog but he didn't need to know that, "So are you a little less busy now?"

"Hardly, I still have a ton of stuff to catch up on but the pressure is off for now, I delivered and now I can try and settle back into work, it's kinda tough after six weeks of vacation"

"I can imagine", Rachel smiled, she couldn't help it, seeing him was like flying.

"I love your sweater", Blaine laughed and she lifted her chest and got her hair out of the way so he could see Minnie better.

They complimented each other for a little bit, Blaine pointing out things in her room he liked, Rachel doing the same and they were all smiles and laughs for a while until a bit of an awkward silence settled over them and Rachel started to panic. She was sure now that she didn't want to be appalled by him or vice versa, she wanted him to like her, maybe even more than that. So she raked her brain feverishly for something to say. Blaine was faster.

"I've been thinking", he said and because that's a kind of sentence that is mostly followed by bad news, Rachel felt her face twitch and prepared for the worst, "I've been wondering how we did what we did but I still don't know the basic things about you, like your favorite color or dish or deep dark secrets of your past"

Rachel had to laugh, "It's purple and baked potatoes with Broccoli...as for the deep dark secrets -"

She let her voice fade and pulled a mysterious face, Blaine was of course hooked, "Come on, spill it, you can trust me"

"I don't really have secrets"

"Then things you're not proud of. I want to know the darkness", the glint in his eye made her chuckle again, "I'm not picky"

"I don't know", she hesitated but Blaine didn't let go.

"Tell me the worst thing you ever did"

"Okay", she caved, "But no judgment"

"Promise"

"Um, okay, so, when I was, um, oh God", she was already so embarrassed it took Blaine another row of pleas until she blurted it out, probably too quick for the webcam mic to catch it at all, "I almost got married senior year in High School"

"What?", Blaine squealed and she could tell he wasn't sure whether to be shocked or amused, "How did that happen? To whom?"

"Finnigan Hudson, been to the same schools together all our lives and it was kind of a never ending story, going back and forth and -"

"- then he knocked you up", Blaine concluded and Rachel wasn't surprised.

"That's what you'd think, wouldn't you? And everyone here did too, after all it's not that uncommon, I had two girls in my grade who already had a baby and another was walking around bloated like she would squat down and give birth any minute. But I wasn't pregnant"

"Then why?", Blaine was incredulous. She couldn't blame him, even telling the story now seemed alien to her, she didn't know that girl she had back then anymore. In fact, she wasn't sure if she'd even known herself then. She still thought for a moment to put her thought process into words, the reasons she'd gathered to explain her behavior to herself in retrospective, something she had never really told a soul before.

"I guess I just wanted to take control of my life", she said and Blaine looked at her, hanging on her lips, waiting for her to elaborate, "I was nearly done with school and I had no clue what to do with my life, that's to say I'd always been sure before. I wanted to be an actress, I'd had worked and prepared for that but my Dads were saying that I should study something solid first, something to fall back on and I just thought they were mean and preposterous, that they didn't believe in my abilities.

"So I went to the local auditions everywhere and got rejected by every last school, I didn't even make it to the second round in all but one and then they sent me home too. I was angry and lost and disappointed and I thought that everyone was set on destroying my life, like everything was being taken away from me. My childhood, because I was graduating and suddenly had to be all mature and wise and then my future too, because they were taking away my dreams and my fathers didn't even believe in me. And then there was Finn and I was the only constant in his life so he was terrified to loose me after graduation and he asked me.

"Initially I thought he was crazy but then it was kind of an act of defiance to say yes, to tell the world, here I am, watch me make my own decisions. You all want me to be an adult, watch me do adult things, watch me chose my own future while you're all so busy trying to plan it your way. And, unlike the acting schools, Finn wanted me. So I agreed to becoming Mrs. Finn Hudson"

Blaine was speechless at her monologue at first and he took her in, making her skin tingle even through the computer screen. That really was remarkable. He wasn't even physically present but the way he looked at her sent a current through her body none the less. She caught her breath and tried to focus on what he was saying when he spoke again.

"What made you change your mind?", he asked.

Rachel blew some air through her nostrils in a slaphappy kind of way, like old people often did before telling some story of their wild rebel days of pesky youth.

"We'd already set the date, it was about a month away and then my dress arrived. I'd ordered it from Poland because they make the prettiest, most affordable, most gorgeous wedding dresses in all of Europe, that's what I think anyway, and you know, there it was. I put it on and I looked like a princess, it was truly the most beautiful thing I'd ever worn. And that's when I knew I couldn't marry him.

"Suddenly everything was real. You know, it wasn't some game anymore, some funny castle you built out of candy cotton where you pick out flowers and make seating plans and invited and uninvited people in your head. I mean, I'm a girl, I had my wedding planned by the time I was eight but this was real and I was barely eighteen. I panicked and it just hit me in the face that I was doing it for all the wrong reasons and that my decision was based around the event, the wedding as a happening and the message it would send rather than what it would mean for my life, rather than basing the decision on who I was gonna be wed to.

"I went to talk to my Dads who'd been freakishly supportive of everything until this point and told them that I wasn't so sure anymore – I was still in my wedding dress, bawling on the couch in the living room and that's when they came clean.

"They'd been trying some weird reversed-psychology thing, hoping if they acted like they condoned the wedding I would rebel against that, refusing to get married then and they thought their plan had worked. I told them they were idiots but that wasn't the point. The point was that they'd thought from the beginning I was making a horrible mistake and more, that they never thought for once that Finn and I even had a shot. That did it"

She shrugged and tried not to be too ashamed of herself but Blaine had asked and she had tried to give him the most honest answer she could. He had to make what he wanted out of it now. He still seemed to digest though and she was worried that she had maybe scared him off after all.

"What did your fiancé have to say about that?", he asked, relatively unafraid to her ears.

"He was hurt", Rachel said, remembering a few very ugly scenes after she called both the wedding and the engagement off, "And his ego didn't recover so we were history. I was single for my graduation ceremony"

"I'm sorry", Blaine said sympathetically but Rachel just chuckled mildly.

"I'm not", she shook her head, "I'd be divorced by now. Rachel Berry-Hudson, a twenty-two year old divorcé...That's a little too new Hollywood for my taste"

Blaine laughed.

"So what's your deepest darkest secret", Rachel asked.

"I set a cemetery on fire by accident when I was a kid", he shrugged like that was just something you did when you were young, like playing yo-yo, "But that's hardly a secret, the neighbors still gush about it when I come home and whenever there's a funeral someone will always crack that joke not to let me and my brother stand too close by the hedge"

Rachel was stunned, "How can you even do that? Burn down a cemetery?"

"Well, we didn't burn it to the ground", he explained, "Just the hedges and some of the trees, we were playing with matches and my Mom's deodorant bottle and then woosh"

He gestured something that was meant to resemble a fire ball with a tail and then he made funny little stirring moves with his fingertips to portray the sizzling flames.

"Of course Cooper went on record saying it had all been my fault", Blaine added, "He always did that, you know and how's that fair anyway? I'm the little one, he should have protected me"

It was all in good humor but Rachel sensed a strain underneath, a thin layer of true hurt about his brother's reluctance to protect him back then and maybe on more occasions afterward.

"Do you get along with your brother now?", she asked curiously, wondering if Blaine was as close to him as she was to Sam.

"We're fine, I visit him once every blue moon", he replied, "He lives with his wife and two little kids in Boston. We're mostly phoning each other"

"Do you miss him?"

"Sometimes", Blaine scratched the back of his head, "But I have Beth and Quinn here, you know, keeping me pretty occupied"

Blaine noticed that her lips tensed as soon as he mentioned his living situation. Eventhough her camera wasn't as good as his, it was still able to pick up the change in her features and Blaine tried to wrestle out whether he liked her discomfort still, enjoyed her jealousy or if it was already at that point where he wanted to clear the air.

But then he would have to tell her that she was so much more to him than a holiday hook-up and he wasn't sure if either of them were ready to deal with that sort of confession. He decided to validate his theory on why she was pissed in the first place. That seemed like a reasonable enough approach.

"Can I ask you something and you must promise to answer honestly?", he tilted his head, testing the waters.

"I guess", she replied, a little wary.

"Why are you so annoyed with Quinn and Beth?", he was blunt and her jaw fell but he figured he could might as well put their cards on the table. Rachel was deliberating.

He had a feeling she was weighing off lying against telling the truth. To his relief, she chose the truth.

She took a deep breath and her eyes flickered up to him shortly, sheepishly and then she talked, slowly and steady and he knew she was being honest.

"It bothers me that...that you essentially have a family, even if it's not in a traditional sense, it still feels like there's no space left in your life"

She didn't say there was no space left for her because they both knew, technically, space or no space, Rachel wouldn't be around to fill it. At least physically. She seemed uneasy and he wanted to find a way to reassure her without bringing up the fact that their whole effort, the skyping, the texting, the sleepless nights missing each other was rather pointless.

"Quinn and Beth are family, that's true and that's good as well", he began, "but there is space, more than a lot. I just truly, honestly haven't met anyone who could fill it yet"

Except for you, he added in his head. But that was not for her ears yet.

She studied him for a while and sat perfectly still which in turn only made him itchy and fidgeting.

"Rachel?", he asked when she'd stared at him for a long while, "Talk to me"

Then, to his ease and joy she smiled and swiftly changed the subject.

They talked and talked and talked, just like they had the first night when they walked through Kensington to the bridge. She told him funny stories about Sam, someone Blaine was sure he'd like and he told her stories about Beth. She wasn't on edge with Beth at all, he learned, her problem was Quinn. She had probably seen his friend's pictures on his facebook, seen that Quinn was very very pretty and figured that Blaine couldn't possibly live with someone that good-looking without getting involved with her.

But Quinn was like his sister, he never thought of her that way, even now, thinking the way Rachel would think, imagining them together, his face contorted into a weird grimace. There would be something so fundamentally wrong about getting with Quinn, it would be like he made out with Cooper.

Rachel didn't inquire about them anymore though, instead he grilled her a little on her ex-boyfriends beside Finn and learned that there was only Jesse St. James, the son of a friend of her mothers and how they'd been dating in the gap between Rachel getting with Finn, breaking up and getting back together.

Apart from that, no other boyfriends. Rachel told him she had lost her virginity to Finn, something she huffed out a bitter laugh about saying aloud. She also told him she never got with Jesse and she never had one night stands. So what she essentially confessed to him was that he was her second lover. In all. In ever. She'd only slept with two people in her life and one of them was her teenage love, someone she'd even agreed to marry and the other was him. Talk about being special.

It was almost one thirty AM her time when she started yawning heartily and Blaine insisted for her to go sleep but she resisted until two when her head sank onto her palms and her eyes closed for longer intervals.

"Okay, that's it, Rach", he ordered, "You're going to bed now"

"But I want to see you", she protested, fighting her lids to stay open.

"You will, we'll talk on Friday, nine your time", he promised and she ended up nodding, reluctantly saying her goodbyes.

Blaine was hit by a sudden pang as she went to take her cup back into the kitchen, preparing to sleep. He wanted her to get some rest but he wanted to see her too. It was no use though, she ought to be in bed with college the next day and he was just gonna have to deal with her gone.

When she was ready to go, he brought his index and middle finger to his lips and kissed them like he'd kiss her forehead as good night and held his fingers towards the camera. He saw her shuffle and lift her hand out of the frame. She was touching the monitor, touching him. The image of him. He could almost feel her fingertips on his which made parting that much harder.

"Text me?", Rachel asked before she turned the camera off and hopefully climbed into bed.

"Of course", he vowed and smiled, seeing her smile softly one last time before her window went to black.

He sat in front of the dark screen after he turned the computer off and tried to get used to this pulling and yearning feeling in his chest. It didn't work. It was like someone was yanking at him, like someone had put a magnet into his chest, and it pulled him towards Rachel. Only she was so far away. He sighed sadly and finally pried himself away from his desk.

He found Quinn on the couch in the living room, sipping on a glass of red wine.

"Beth missed you at dinner", she said but it didn't have a bad ring to it, she just wanted to tell him, "How was your video date?"

"Good", Blaine said curtly and Quinn eyed him piercingly, her very own form of interrogation, just staring him down, until he couldn't stand it anymore and blurted out what he couldn't hope to contain any longer, "I think I'm in love with her"

The next chapter won't be up before Sunday because I have a very busy weekend ahead of me. Our latest short film premiers tonight and tomorrow I have an audition/acting workshop for "Cabaret" in my home town so I won't be able to write more.

I can tell you, however that the next chapter will switch from Blaine and Rachel to Quinn and Sam. Not for ever, just for this next chapter but we will probably revisit their heads somewhere along the line.