Emma Pillsbury sat in her usual seat for lunch, second table from the coffee machine, with her back to the door, awaiting the man who usually took his place across from her. That was a usual habit and now as she pulled on her plastic gloves she was particularly aware of his absence. Only a few moments later, once she had acquired and laid out her usual lunch spread, water, grapes, peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and a small apple (which she left in her lunchbox), he came in the room. She turned to see him once he entered her peripherals.
Immediately she noticed the exasperated expression on his face, it was one she had grown accustomed to after Glee club and she also noticed his habit of reaching a hand to his curly hair, before running his fingers through and tugging lightly. She placed her sandwich down on her neatly spread napkin and with a concerned expression attempted to meet his eyes.
"Will, is everything okay?" Emma asked, leaning forward to him slightly, feeling the urge to extend her hand, but there were so many germs that lay on his hand, she was sure of it. He hadn't sanitized since he walked in. So instead she held her hands close to her own body. He shook his head, looking up at her with tired eyes.
"No, it's Glee club, the kids…" He paused and leaned back in his chair, letting out a frustrated sigh.
"Are they fighting again?" She asked with sincere empathy, having dealt with numerous accounts of interclub dilemmas in her own office. As well as in the hallways and in the choir room itself.
"No. Well, not yet." He said, although to him, that didn't mean anything because by the next day there would be the typical high school drama. A makeup or breakup or rumor, and then everything would start back over again, turmoil rising within the club. It was something he'd grown accustomed to when working closer to the social lives of his students.
"Then what's the matter?" She asked gently and the small tone of her voice seemed to soothe him a bit, it had always done that. It had a certain sound to it, her voice, and he noticed how her tongue just slightly poked out whenever she made a "th" noise and he smiled the slightest bit.
"I don't know, maybe I'm just over thinking things. I'm just worried about Sectionals." He said and shrugged, trying to push the topic away.
"Already? That's ridiculous, Will," she said, almost appalled that he would be worried about that when the school year had hardly started. They had plenty of time to prepare and recruit, and he knew that she was always a willing partner.
"No," he shook his head and sat up straighter. "You don't understand, Em. Caramel probably already has their choreography. Or they are working late to get it anyway," to that Emma raised an eyebrow and Will challenged her with a serious expression of his own. "They have kids willing to work from sunrise to sunset and we can hardly find enough kids to qualify. If we don't get some dedication out of them, we're not going to get anywhere." He stayed leaned forward at the table, reaching forward to grab a tissue and pick a grape out of her small pile. It was a normal action, one that he'd adjusted to and she very much approved of.
The complete homeliness of that action, as they could have easily been sitting in a shared kitchen, caused her to avert her eyes, she felt a heat on her pale cheeks, and then picked a grape of her own up, which she polished off with her cloth, before she popped it into her mouth.
"Why don't you do one of those competitions that you like so much?" She said, looking up from under her eyelashes at him, to which he broke into a smile. His mouth opened to spoke and he was rudely interrupted, which should have been anticipated when he was anywhere within hearing range of Sue Sylvester.
"Lady," she started nodding towards Emma and Will was almost positive that her voice would cut through glass, or make a baby cry, or some other hideous act. "And man with head covered in enough hair gel to lubricate an elephant's penis," she said, that sly smirk creeping on her thin lips, feeling particularly clever in her insult. Emma's eyes stayed down, while Will gave a challenging look, know for a fact that she had more to say.
"After inviting my block over to my house for a little inspirational pep talk, I noticed that your band of rejects are painfully similar to my neighbor's cat," she said with ease and then grabbed Emma's apple from her lunchbox, to which the red head just shied away from the action, and didn't even bother to cut in. Sue tossed it a few times between her hands as she spoke, as if examining it for quality. "They're both fat, lazy, and screech like banshees stuck in a washing machine."
"Ah, but there is good news ginger and her elfin playmate, one faithful day, that cat and your useless club will get hit by a car." She took a large bite out of the apple, the crunch seemingly like a punch in the face, should they have resorted to physical violence. Usually it was just the mental toying.
"You always have something to say don't you?" Will burst, standing up, the anger that been built up bubbling over and now spilling between his lips. Emma eyes him as he did, the chair he'd been sitting in making a hideous screeching. "Sue, I'm tired of you putting down the students in this school. They are still students, even though they aren't in your 'precious elite,'" he said with a smidge of sarcasm. "What they do still matters to this school." And with that, he left. He didn't wait for her to respond, didn't even have parting words to Emma, he just left the room in a fit of anger.
Sue sat down the apple with a bite out of it, leaving it on the table beside Emma as she also left the teacher's lounge.
Emma packed up her stuff quickly, using her gloved hand to carefully pick up the apple, before placing it in the trash. She held her lunchbox at her side as she walked to Will's classroom and when she arrived he was scribbling furiously on a piece of printer paper.
"Will, it's going to be okay," she assured him, walking on the other side of his desk and looked down at him working on words that were hardly legible. "What are you doing?" She murmured and he started tearing the paper into sections that were almost what you would consider equal.
"We're having a competition, Em, just like you said. They need motivation, we'll give them some motivation," he went over to a cabinet that had props usually used for their Glee performances and grabbed the top hat out, dumping the scraps of paper in. If you asked her if how he referred to "we" she probably would have told you it didn't matter, and then she would be deliberately lying for one of the few times in her adult life. At her questioning look, he shook the hat playfully.
"Names," he stated simply, and she now understood, breaking into a smile. "See you tomorrow at lunch?" He asked as he walked out the door, her falling in step at his side. She nodded and he spoke excitedly.
"Okay, great, I have to get going. I'll talk to you later?" he said, taking a turn in the opposite direction she was going, away from her office, but walking backwards so he could still face her. She smiled and nodded, choosing to stay silent, as he always seemed to put her at a loss for words.
As he turned around she let out a small sigh, hesitating and watching him walk away, before turning and walking with a void at her side where he normally was until she reached her office door.
Emma Pillsbury, though, was not aware that just a few doors down another altering discussion was taking place.