Carl set the basket of plaque disclosing tablets down on the piano, along with a case of toothbrushes and floss. "I brought props," he told Will, who smiled. Yes, he could tell Will was definitely grinding his teeth.

"I'm not going to be able to introduce you to all the students when they arrive," said Will, gesturing to the man behind the piano, "but this is my good friend and Glee accompanist Brad Ellis."

Carl shook Brad's hand, remembering Finn's description of the largely-silent adult who'd procured their attic room for them. "Nice to meet you."

"I'm just here," Brad said, waving his hand vaguely. "Will, I'll do some filing while the presentation is happening."

Carl opened his mouth to make another polite comment when Kurt appeared in the doorway, followed by Finn. They looked from Carl to Will, both somewhat aghast.

"Mr. Schue?" Kurt said in a strangled voice.

"I'm just on my way out the door to teach Spanish," Will added to Carl. "If you don't need anything from me before next period…?"

"Oh, don't worry about me," Carl said. He purposely avoided Kurt and Finn's eyes. "I can ask Emma if anything comes up. Okay if I wait here in the choir room?"

"Okay by me." Will gave him a polite smile, then paused and looked expectantly at Finn. "Coming to Spanish, Finn?"

Finn blinked, refocusing on Will. "Sure… yeah, Mr. Schue, I'll see you there."

He stood there until Will had disappeared, then whipped his head back around to stare at Carl. The expression on his face could have meant what the hell are you doing here, or it might have meant I have no idea what to do now. It didn't really matter either way. But Carl could tell if he didn't head this off, it might escalate into something unmanageable.

"Haz lo que yo hago," he said sharply. Finn took a quick breath and rocked back on his heels. Carl looked at him steadily. "Captas?"

"Ya lo capto," Finn said immediately. Then he spun and fled after Will.

Kurt was not the only one listening to their conversation. The accompanist, Brad, was standing in the doorway to the little office behind the piano. He looked at Kurt.

"Do you speak Spanish?" he asked curiously.

Kurt shook his head. They both turned back to Carl.

"I needed him to do something for me," Carl said. To do as I say — to follow my lead. He had no doubt Finn would listen, no matter that they were at school, or that it had been far too long since Finn had been to his office for a session with the whip. He had a brief, dizzying moment in which he wondered if Finn was keeping up with the plug training in the absence of his Top, but he quickly buried those thoughts and smiled brightly at Kurt. "Do you have a class this hour, young man?"

"I — um. Yes. I have French." Kurt took a step back, and then another. "Are you… here to do something with the Glee club?"

"I'm going to talk about taking care of your teeth," he said. Kurt's what-the-fuck expression was much more guarded than Finn's, but he was clearly just as confused and worried about the situation. "Your choir director asked me to come. I'm Ms. Pillsbury's friend. I certainly wasn't going to say no."

"No, of course not." This seemed to be enough to appease Kurt. He nodded. "I guess… I'll be back in an hour, then. Bye."

Brad appeared more amused than concerned by this entire interchange. He regarded Carl for a long moment.

"I take it you know these kids," he said.

Carl had plenty of experience talking around questions like this. "I'm not sure what makes you say that."

"Never mind. It's none of my business."

Carl nodded at the music on the piano. "Don't tell me the kids are singing Christopher Cross in Glee club?"

Brad made a face that made Carl laugh. "Will is very sure they should be doing more 80s music than contemporary pop. The kids would beg to differ. They want to do Britney Spears."

"Mmm. And what do you think?"

"Me?" Brad looked surprised. "I — am a neutral party. I play what they need and I stay out of it."

"Except you might have a few Britney numbers queued up, just in case." He reached out a hand and slowly pulled the corner back on the sheet music stack, thumbing through to show the cover of the Britney book. "I'm not so old that I wouldn't recognize the picture on that cover."

"I know plenty of musicians my age who wouldn't." Now Brad was trying not to smile. "You have a teenage daughter?"

"I do," Carl said. "But that's not why I recognize it. I've played in a couple bands over the past decade or two." He tugged on the book, questioning with his eyebrow, and Brad let him slide the book out from under Christopher Cross' Sailing. Carl flipped through the pages, then creased it to stay open on the page he chose and propped it on the piano. "We've got a little time. Unless you feel strongly about that filing."

Brad laughed, obviously bemused. "No, no, this is better. Okay. Rock and roll." He reached up and fiddled with the keyboard next to the piano, running through a couple different dance beats, until he settled on one that pleased him. He played the melancholy opening violin line on the keyboard, too, combining electronic and acoustic instruments into a seamless whole.

Carl began, keeping his tone light and breathy, like Britney's. It wasn't anything like the music he'd sung with Finn and Blaine at Irene's last spring. It was more the kind of song he could imagine Adam singing, and that made him smile. Singing with Adam at Valentine's Day had been a lot of fun - spending time with all of them, really. It was hard to admit, but Finn wasn't the only thing he missed about being around that odd little family.

(listen to Carl sing this on youtu dot be slash 64ovc5dRFE4)

You took your love away too fast
Left no chance to say, look back
And now I know the truth, it makes it easier
Maybe when time goes by, I'll understand

Let's pretend that I moved on
Then I'll tell myself that life goes on without you
Open my eyes, look deep inside
I run away, I run away, I run away

You threw it all away, so blind
Pushed me far from you in your life
Now I know the tears won't lead to loneliness
Maybe when time goes by, understand

Let's pretend that I moved on…

Brad brought it to a reasonable conclusion, and sat there with his hands on the keyboard for a long moment before grinning at Carl in appreciation.

"Jeez. That's a lot more depressing than most of her songs."

"Yeah, well, ballads usually are, right? Pick something a little more upbeat and I'll join you on the guitar." Carl stood up and got the electric from the stand in the corner. "You accompany jazz band too?"

"They have their own pianists. I'm only here part time. I teach piano lessons and take care of my kids the rest of the time. Well, when I'm not in California."

Carl looked up from tuning the guitar, smiling. "You're the guy working with Gaga on the new album!" Then, from the look on Brad's face, he realized he would have had no way to know that. He turned his attention to tuning. "It's, uh. Which one are we doing?"

"Do you play with Finn and Blaine?" asked Brad. Carl almost choked before he added, "In their band. Labyrinth. Puck told me about it."

The meaning of the word play Carl had been considering hadn't had anything to do with music. He tried to relax. "So you know them, too."

Brad nodded back. "Puck babysat for me all summer while I was in California. He's really good with my kids. And his own."

He strummed a few chords, trying to figure out what he could say. "I — used to be married to Beth's other parent. Shelby." Kind of.

"Wow." Brad blinked. "That's an unexpected connection." He refocused on the music in front of him, and laughed, shaking his head. "Hey, did Britney really cover this song?"

"She really did."

Brad bent down and tugged a little monitor amp out from behind the piano, offering the cable to Carl. While Carl plugged in, Brad adjusted the volume until the guitar was loud enough to be heard.

"We don't really have to keep it down in here," he said. Brad looked pointedly at Carl. "Nobody can hear what's being said in this room."

"That may be," Carl said, looking right at Brad, "but as long as I'm at this school, I think it's good to keep it quiet. I wouldn't want to disturb anybody's learning."

It wasn't exactly the kind of song you sang quietly, but Carl managed to rock it out anyway. He didn't bother to try to make his voice sound like Britney this time. If anything, it was more like the Joan Jett version than the original by the Arrows. Like most rock music, he'd been playing this one since long before Finn was born. But there was something that happened when a new musician played a cover of an old song. It made it easier to look at it in a new way. When he played the drums or guitar or sang with the boys in Labyrinth, it didn't matter that Carl was approaching fifty, no more than it mattered that they were thirty years his junior. The music was an equalizer.

(youtu dot be slash M3T_xeoGES8)

I saw him dancing there by the record machine
I knew he must have been about seventeen
The beat was going strong
Playing my favorite song
And I could tell it wouldn't be long till he was with me, yeah me

Singing, I love rock and roll
So put another dime in the jukebox, baby
I love rock and roll
So come and take your time and dance with me

Brad was actually singing along on the chorus when Kurt skittered in through the doorway. His eyes were huge as he looked from Carl with the guitar and Brad at the piano. They stopped playing.

"Hey, Kurt," Carl said casually. "Brad and I were just talking about Lady Gaga and Shelby and things."

"Oh." Kurt's mouth looked like it wanted to add a couple things of its own, but after a few moments of silence, he just said, "Rachel's on her way down the hall."

"Well, then, I suppose I'd better put this away." Carl lifted the guitar over his head, feeling the flutter of Rachel in his stomach, and unplugged it before placing it carefully back on the stand in the corner. He went through a series of calming exercises — the same ones he'd taught Finn; the same that Tess had taught to him so many years ago.

By the time Rachel arrived, chatting with Finn, his face was neutrally cheerful. Finn did not look at him, in a way that seemed incredibly obvious to Carl, but he decided nobody else in the room would notice.

Emma and Will arrived next. They were both smiling, but their faces were showing a little strain.

Carl picked up the basket of plaque disclosing tablets and shook it. "Showtime!"

The rest of the club began to filter in. Carl could recognize most of them from Finn's descriptions. Quinn sat in the second row near two other cheerleaders. The one with dark hair stared at him suspiciously.

"Are you a teacher?"

He smiled. "No, I'm a dentist."

When Puck arrived, he ignored Carl, too, so Carl figured Puck had already been alerted to his presence. He sat next to Kurt, but they weren't snuggling or touching in any way.

"Are we singing about teeth now?" asked the tall blonde girl.

Mr. Schue stepped forward. "Guys, let me introduce you to Carl Howell. Dr. Howell is here to talk to us about good dental hygiene. I know this is a little break from what we usually do, but I want you to give him your full attention, because this is important. You're going to need good teeth if you're planning to be performers."

"Or eat," added Carl. "Or open up those plastic packages, the ones that are impossible to cut?" He waggled his eyebrows at the suspicious dark-haired girl, who grinned back at him. "I'm kidding. You should never use your teeth to open those things. All right, so here's the deal." He held up a plaque disclosing tablet between his fingers. "You chew this little capsule. Now, if there's any plaque you missed, the dye will stick to it and turn your teeth blue."

The dark-haired girl raised her hand. "Can I just say that you are the hottest dentist I've ever seen?"

"I get that all the time," Carl said.

"No, like, seriously, you can totally drill me whenever —"

"Santana," Emma interrupted hastily. "Okay? Let's… stay focused."

"Rock n' roll, Emms." Carl handed out the last tablet and returned to Will, clapping him on the shoulder in what he hoped was a manly way. "And besides, this guy? He's pretty easy on the eyes too, huh?"

They all gave him a very familiar teenager look, the one that said, you're shitting me, right? Because of course none of them had ever flirted with or hit on their Glee club director. Carl mentally kicked himself and tried again.

"And you know what? No matter how hard I tried, I bet I couldn't sing and dance like him."

Carl thought he heard a little snorting sound from the direction of the choir office. Emma smiled serenely, clearly too polite to comment.

"Uh, probably not," Will murmured.

They chewed their tablets with predictable results; most teenagers were terrible flossers. When Rachel opened her mouth to reveal shiny azure teeth, Carl could only say, "Well, sometimes it's genetics." He wasn't going to mention Shelby's bout with gingivitis when she was in college. He wondered if he could convince Leroy and Hiram to take Rachel in for extra fluoride treatments.

After following up with the students who had the worst plaque build-up, he invited everyone to come take a toothbrush and a spool of floss, then go to the restroom to brush away the tablet residue. In the midst of everyone's movement, Carl came down the risers and found himself abruptly face-to-face with Finn. They both paused.

"Uh," said Finn. He was already blushing. "Thanks for, uh, teaching us about plaque and stuff."

I have so many things left to teach you, my boy. Luckily, Carl had learned long ago how to control his physical responses to others. He handed Finn a card. Finn stared at it.

"If you want to make an appointment," Carl said. "My secretary will arrange a time for you to come in and we can discuss… options."

"O-okay," Finn said hoarsely. "Thanks."

Rachel returned from the bathroom with her usual shiny white smile, but she looked distressed.

"Dr. Howell," she said, approaching him with determination, "I need to schedule a deep cleaning. This is unacceptable. My teeth need to convey exactly who I am to the world."

"Don't worry, Rachel," he said, giving her a card. "We'll make them shine as bright as the star you are."

She beamed at him. He thought about the gold star tattoo on his shoulder, the one Alec had done for him when Rachel went to kindergarten. That made him think about the other tattoo over his heart, the triplet sixteenths with the accent and the fermata, matching the ones Kurt and Puck and Finn and Adam had. All of his tattoos meant something to him, even the stupid tramp stamp, but that one had been special. It still was.

"Well," said Emma, once all the students had gone. She took a deep breath. "That was… educational."

"Thanks for giving me the time," Carl told Will. "I hope I didn't interrupt your rehearsal schedule too badly."

Will gave him a strange smile. "No, no. I can tell the kids got a lot out of your visit."

He nodded. "You should come in to see me yourself, you know? I could do something about that grinding. And I'm sure you and I have plenty to talk about."

(Author's note: The YouTube link to what appears to be a male cover of Britney's song "I Run Away" is the actual Britney Spears song modulated down a fifth in Audacity. It might give you an idea of what Carl would sound like singing it. I think it actually sounds a little like Adam. Sadly, there is no cover out there of John Stamos singing Britney Spears, but at least we have pictures of Brittany and John Stamos in leather and sequins to inspire us. -amy)