Chapter 2
A.N. Hurray! I have returned – just when you thought I had abandoned another story. Never fear, I have been battling all night to finish this but it has gotten too long and my bed is calling me so I'll post the rest soon (it will be a short third chapter, I think) and I hope you enjoy this one. And if I happen to voice any of your frustrations with the past and current season of Glee, then you owe me a review!
"Rachel - your date is here, princess."
Responding promptly to her cue, Rachel floated downstairs in her champagne pink strapless gown, cheeks blushing at the open admiration stamped across Jesse's face.
"Hi," he breathed, momentarily starstruck before he pulled himself together and cleared his throat. "Perfectly groomed as promised, I see."
Rachel brushed a fingertip over the delicately pink rosebud in his lapel. "Thank you. I also find your grooming quite... fastidious." They both smiled at the small in-joke.
"Aww - aren't they adorable, LeRoy?" Hiram said, wiping away a mock tear. "Come on, snap yourself out of your Tony Danza ice fishing fantasies and set up the tripod so we can get the pre-prom photo session underway."
"You're never letting that go, are you?" LeRoy sighed as he positioned the set lights. "I just need to take a light meter reading and we can begin."
"Dads, we really need to get going..." Rachel attempted, trying to spare Jesse from her fathers' usual over the top antics. She knew Finn would be pulling at his collar and inching towards the door at this point.
"Nonsense, there's always time for a photo session," Jesse declared, a sentiment which gained him approving nods from both of the Berry men. He tugged Rachel in front of the tripod and was only mildly surprised to see an actual mark duct-taped over the carpet where they were to stand.
"Do you have any idea what you're getting yourself into?" Rachel asked over her shoulder as Jesse wrapped his arms around her waist from behind.
"Well, I already figured that the same men who kept all your baby teeth in a jar would not let their only daughter go to her senior prom without recording the moment for posterity." Rachel nudged his stomach with her elbow, stifling a giggle when Jesse squeezed her tighter in revenge. Besides, it's even money her Dads will be mounting one of these pictures over the fireplace where Finn will have to look at it every time he's in this house.
GLEE / GLEE / GLEE / GLEE / GLEE / GLEE / GLEE / GLEE /
"So. Dinosaurs." Jesse raised an inquiring eyebrow at his date.
"Brittney took over the prom committee."
"Say no more."
"Still," Rachel mused, taking in the whole picture – the high spirits, the enthusiastic dancing, the giant paper-mache T-rex – "it turned out surprisingly well."
"Rachel!" The petite brunette swirled around at the voice of her best gay. "You're here! And looking utterly divine, I must jealously admit." He nodded coolly in Jesse's direction. "St James."
"Thank you, Kurt. Where's Blaine?" Rachel asked.
"In the bathroom trying to separate the hair gel from his hair; he tried to buck the system, but Brittney used her executive power and enforced her draconian prom law regarding no hair products. You should probably watch your back, Jesse."
"No fear – I control my mane through sheer force of will," Jesse stated. "Nice top hat, Kurt."
"He does say all the right things," Kurt smiled with a raised eyebrow.
"Alright, teenage mutant songsters, keep it moving," Sue barked from behind them. "No loitering, especially not near Sue Sylvester's Super Special Prombrosia. That better not be a hip flask in your pocket, Porcelain, or I'll be taking a machete to your cravat collection." She then turned her basilisk glare on Jesse. "And as for you, Marvellous Marvin, I've got my eye on you. Don't go pulling any of that fighting crap like last year."
"Jesse didn't fight," Rachel defended her date, stepping in front of him protectively. "He just ducked when Finn tried to punch him."
"Exactly! What kind of sissy-weak fight was that? Shoving and ducking! At my junior prom when someone started a brawl, there was none of this schoolyard shoving – it was bare knuckles, body blows and kidney punches all the way. At our last high school reunion we all sat around and compared battle scars. Now that's a prom!"
"Er, Coach, I think I see Puck heading over to the refreshments table," Rachel distracted the insane educator. Sure enough, she was soon barrelling through the throngs of teens in pursuit of the next threat to her punchbowl.
"You know, I think she's mellowing," Kurt mused. "She seems a lot calmer this year."
"Anyhow, I don't think I'll be needing to jump into any fights this year," Jesse said, grinning down at Rachel, "not when Miss Berry here is so quick to come to my defence."
She shrugged, blushing lightly. "Better late than never, right?" As Kurt looked between the two, the air between them charged with some strange feeling, he felt the odds that this prom would be violence-free plummeting; especially now that Finn had caught sight of his fiancé and her date.
"Excuse me, Jayze and Beyonce," Kurt interrupted their moment, nodding towards the tall young man striding towards them, "But... Finncoming."
"Good Finn pun," Jesse acknowledged, tearing his eyes away from Rachel to assess the threat.
"Thanks. I wish I could hang around but this shirt is Armani and bloodstains are a bitch to get out." So saying, Kurt melted into the dancing crowd, just as Finn reached the couple. Once again, Rachel stood in front of Jesse, raising her chin defiantly towards her boyfriend while Jesse enjoyed the way her back barely brushed against his front.
"Step away from the slimeball, Rachel," Finn gritted as his enraged eyes clashed with Jesse's mocking smirk.
"Finn, I must insist you cease referring to my date with such derogatory remarks," Rachel said firmly.
"Derogatory is another word for insulting," Jesse's explanation removed the confused/constipated look from Finn's face.
"Well, you're my fiancé so that gives me the right to call any guy who goes near you whatever I want," Finn countered, and then folded his arms with the satisfaction of one who has made a compelling argument. Jesse waited for Rachel to laugh in Finn's face at this piece of verbal rubbish but to his amazement some of the steel went out of her spine at his words and a flicker of doubt crossed her face. Was she actually buying this?
"Look, Hudson, I don't know what century you're living in but, here in the 21st, women aren't treated like they're the personal property of the man they're dating," Jesse explained. "Just because Rachel has, for whatever inexplicable reason, agreed to tie herself down to you doesn't give you carte blanche to step all over her decisions or her friends."
"Why don't you just stay out of this, St Jerk! There must be some other girl out there who's stupid enough to fall for your lines, right up to the moment when you crack an egg on her head."
"Wait – did you just call Rachel stupid?" Jesse asked. Anger immediately chased away the self-doubt on Rachel's face at Finn's implication while Finn went from smug to terrified in a nanosecond. He then compounded his blunder by trying to rationalise it.
"No, of course not! I mean, you were kind of stupid back then to think that Jesse actually cared about you when it was obvious he couldn't possibly – I mean, there was no other reason other than show choir for him to pretend to – "
"Pretend to what, Finn? Love me?" Rachel finished, hurt evident in her voice. "Is it so far-fetched that someone else could find me lovable?"
"Look, it doesn't matter now anyway! We all know you were only with him then to make me jealous, just like you're doing the same thing now, asking him to prom just because I asked Quinn first. Don't think I bought all that "making amends" talk. It's obvious you're here with Jesse just to spite me. At least I wasn't trying to hurt you when I agreed to go with Quinn."
"I know you weren't trying to hurt me, Finn," Rachel said quietly. "But it would have meant so much more to me if you were." She then turned to Jesse. "Would you like to dance now, Jesse?" Her eyes, suspiciously moist, begged him to say yes. With a nod, he took her hand and removed her from the painful scene as Finn watched her go, mute incomprehension in his dog-like eyes.
They danced in silence for the first half of some manically-depressed Adele ballad, Rachel's head nestled against Jesse's shoulder as they swayed. Until the wavy haired youth could no longer hold back his curiosity. "Okay, I hate to sound like Finn but I don't get it." Rachel looked up at him.
"What?"
"Why would it have been better if Finn asked Quinn to the prom out of spite? Ethics aren't exactly my strong suit, I admit, but wouldn't that be a bad thing?"
Rachel paused so long that Jesse thought she had ignored his question. Then she said "You are in a play on Broadway. It's opening night, the night you have been dreaming of all your life. You give the performance all you have, you hold nothing back. Then the next morning you get all the newspapers and sift through them for reviews of the play, and more importantly, your performance." She looked Jesse in the eye. "The play is only reviewed in two papers – one of those reviews never even mentions you – not your name, not your character, nothing. Everybody else is fairly critiqued but you may as well have been invisible for all that is said of you. But in the other paper, you are noticed with a vengeance. The critic points out the moment when your voice wavered imperceptibly on a high note, or your footwork was not as sharp as it could be. It is like reviewing a one-man show, the reviewer is so fixated on you to the exclusion of everyone else. So the question is, Jesse, which of those two reviews would you hate the least?"
"The second one," Jesse chose immediately. "Of course."
"Even if you look at the name of the critic and realize it was written by a fellow drama student who was always jealous of your talent?" Rachel added.
"Even then," Jesse said, smiling sadly at Rachel as he took her point. "Better to be in the front of someone's mind, even if only in spite, than to be forgotten altogether."
"Exactly," Rachel sighed. "Finn said yes to Quinn's prom proposal not to hurt me but because he forgot about me – because my feelings weren't important enough to him to even remember, let alone hurt. If it had been spite, at least then it would have been about me." She looked up at Jesse beseechingly. "Is that selfish? That I wanted him to think about me first, even when he was just trying to do a friend a favour? Oh God, that does sound selfish. What have I done?."
"Before you go running off to Finn or Quinn to make some abject apology which takes all the blame upon yourself and leaves them white as snow," Jesse forestalled, "Let me tell you that wanting the person you love to consider your feelings, that's not selfish, Rach," Jesse reassured, smoothing his hand comfortingly over her back before she started to hyperventilate. "In fact, it gives me hope. I was afraid your self-esteem was completely beaten down when I saw your reaction to Finn's caveman act before, but if you're willing to stand up for your right to be noticed, then I guess there may still be traces of the girl I used to pretend to love."
"Pretend?" Rachel cried indignantly, her self-reproach forgotten. "What do you mean pretend?"
"Come on, Rachel," Jesse cajoled as he spun her under his arm to the up-beat love song Santana was singing to Brittany. "Didn't you hear what Finn said? I pretended to love you to win a competition just like you pretended to love me to make Finn jealous. You really should pay attention when someone tells you what your subconscious motivations were."
Rachel narrowed her eyes at her escort. "I know what you're doing, Jesse! Don't think you can distract me with your... your Finntellectual arguments."
Jesse gave a shout of laughter. "And the award for best Finn pun of the night goes to..."
Rachel looked regretful for a moment. "Oh dear. Please don't tell Santana I said that. After all the times I've scolded her for the same thing, she will never let me hear the end of it."
"Hear the end of what, Berry?" the girl in question asked, approaching her fellow diva from behind.
"Speak of the devil and she doth appear," Jesse murmured.
"So what were you tortured drama queens moaning about?" Santana demanded, hands on hips. "Can't find a jazz-hands class that works around your ballet schedule?"
"Nothing," Rachel said quickly. "We were talking about nothing."
"Well, I wouldn't say nothing," Jesse pondered, ignoring Rachel's warning glare. "We were just having a little philosophic discussion about life imitating art. How sometimes what starts out as a performance takes on a life of its own."
Rachel's glare transformed into Jesse's favourite smile of hers – starry eyes with lips gently curling upwards. "Yes, the capacity of pretence to transform into something of great significance is a common theme in the dramatic arts."
Santana rolled her eyes. "My God, I had forgotten how nauseating it is to listen to you two talk, like you're sharing one Broadway-obsessed brain. When it's one on one I can just hold down my breadsticks but talking to you in stereo is exhausting. Why don't you just stop wasting all that oxygen on words, go behind the Stegosaurus backdrop and Jurassic pork your brains out - give the rest of us a break from the UST." Santana smirked at Rachel's shocked-drop-jaw expression (which is what she had been going for all along).
"What are you doing here, Santana? Did you approach us just to make snide remarks and lewd innuendos?" Rachel asked impatiently as Jesse silently laughed beside her.
"Why else would I talk to you?" Santana said, eyes wide. Then she laughed at Rachel's smouldering glare. "I'm kidding, dwarf. Actually, there was something I came over here to tell you." Santana looked thoughtful, as though trying to recall something. "Oh right, I remember now – catch!"
Rachel fumbled then grasped the microphone Santana had thrown to her. "What's this for?"
"You sing with it, Berry. Like now."
"What? But I don't have anything prepared – " It was true; since the disastrous audition Rachel had shied away from public performing, nightmarish fears of forgetting the words haunting her.
"Don't worry, I picked out a song you know so well you could sing it in your sleep. You should join her, St James – it works well as a duet."
"What are you up to, Satan?" Jesse asked suspiciously as Santana began herding them towards the stage.
"Since Finn and Rachel are having a prom do-over, it's only right that Berry should sing a song dedicated to Finn like she did last year. Jesse, you get to stand in for Finn – you've had plenty of practice at that."
Before either of them could lodge a protest, Rachel and Jesse found themselves centre stage with a very familiar overture prodding them into performance mode. With an audience before them and the music behind them, what else could they do? Fears forgotten, Rachel dropped into her performance subspace and levelled Jesse with an accusing stare as she sang,
Baby, you'll come knocking on my front door
Same old line you used to use before
I said ya, well
What am I supposed to do
I didn't know what I was getting into
Together: So you've had a little trouble in town
Now you're keeping some demons down
Stop draggin' my
Stop draggin' my
Stop draggin' my heart around
Jesse took the next verse, casing Rachel with stealthy steps as he sang in reply.
It's hard to think about what you've wanted
It's hard to think about what you've lost
This doesn't have to be the big get even
This doesn't have to be anything at all
I know you really want to tell me good-bye
I know you really want to be your own girl
(Did he imagine the flicker of sadness in her eyes as he sang those last lines to her?)
Together: Baby you could never look me in the eye
Yeah, you buckle with the weight of the world
Stop draggin' my
Stop draggin' my
Stop draggin' my heart around
Damn Santana, Rachel thought as she sang. How can someone who seems so self-involved be so perceptive of others? Throwing herself into these lyrics was forcing her to find the emotions in herself that corresponded to them, and she was dismayed at how ready-made those emotions were, almost entirely thanks to Finn.
During the instrumental portion Jesse and Rachel came together in a sinuous dance that spoke of unwilling but undeniable attraction. They were so caught up in the throbbing beat they were blind to the throbbing glare of Rachel's fiancé, watching with the enamoured crowd.
People running 'round loose in the world
Ain't got nothin' better to do
Than make a meal of some bright eyed kid
You need somebody looking after you
I know you really want to tell me good-bye
I know you really want to be your own girl
Together: Baby you could never look me in the eye
Yeah, you buckle with the weight of the world
Stop draggin' my
Stop draggin' my
Stop draggin' my heart around
The cheers were thunderous as the song rocked to a conclusion and Rachel drank it down like the headiest of champagne. It had been so long since she had performed in front of an admiring crowd. She could not believe she had forgotten this feeling; she wondered how she ever thought she could live without it. When Jesse opened his arms to her, it just felt right to fall into them and join him in an ecstatic hug. She recognised the same wonderment on his face and guessed that it had been even longer for him since he had been so totally in his element.
But when she came down the stairs and saw Finn look at her with reproachful eyes, she was surprised in herself that instead of the expected guilt, all she felt was annoyance. She had just had a wonder-moment – why couldn't he let her bask in it for 10 minutes? So when he opened his mouth she shut him down. "Not now, Finn." And she tugged Jesse behind her by the hand, deliberately moving as far away from her fiancé as possible. She did not notice Quinn seated in her wheelchair at Finn's side, trying to keep up the pretence of perfect prom couple. If she had she might have seen more than enough guilt on her face to satisfy the situation.
"Finn, I'm so sorry," Quinn apologised to her stricken ex-boyfriend. "I never realised asking you to prom campaign with me would split you and Rachel up. I never would have suggested it if I had known."
"I can't believe she said that," Finn muttered to himself. "'Not now, Finn'. Rachel always has time for me. She always listens to me. It's that St Jerkface that's messing everything up."
"It will be Okay, Finn," Quinn promised. "Rachel belongs with you – you guys are Finchel, for crying out loud. Besides, if anyone has messed things up for you, it's me."
"No, Quinn, this isn't your fault. Besides, we both owe you so much seeing as how you wouldn't be stuck in that wheelchair forever if you weren't rushing to our wedding."
"About that... actually – and this is a funny story, true story – I can walk."
"WHAT?!"
"I know, I know, Quinn, how could you be so manipulative, Rachel has nothing and you have everything, blah, blah blah. Look, let's just move past this because I think I know how to make it up to you two and bring you back together."
A.N. The eleventh commandment – Thou shalt review!