Fic: Chances (3/ )
title: Chances (3/ )
fandom: Glee
pairing: Rachel/Will
rating: PG for this part
spoilers: Through Sectionals, it's my own version of canon after that.
a/n: So, I think this is the "light at the end of the tunnel" chapter. Thank you dearly to my beta takemeaway.
Prologue
Part One
Part Two
Everything is a mess the next morning. Finn spends it repeating more or less convincingly to the Mr.’s Berry that he doesn’t know where Rachel is (lie), but that she’d promised she would call them soon and explain things (truth).
Eventually they get so frustrated with Finn’s careful recitation of what Rachel had clearly had him memorize that they call Will.
“She what?” He feels like he got shoved off his feet.
“We were hoping you’d know. She’s gone. Finn says she’s fine and she’ll call us soon but we were hoping you might know something more?”
“No, I’m sorry. Last I knew she had her hopes set on Julliard. I haven’t really been in the loop since she quit Glee. I’ll let you know if I hear anything, okay? And I’ll call Finn and see if he’ll talk to me.”
Finn levels with Will, but only to a point.
“Look Mr. Schue, I promised Rachel I’d help her with this. You’ve gotta trust me, she’s not doing anything dangerous, and she’s gonna call her dads and explain everything in a few days. She just needs everybody off her back right now.”
“Finn, this is a big deal. They have a right to know where their daughter is.”
“Not really. She’s eighteen.”
Will takes a breath.
She’s eighteen, and she’s gone.
He gets a rush of dizziness and has to shake his head to clear it.
_
Before long it comes out; Rachel’s in New York. Even though she’d been accepted to Julliard, she’d gotten a minor role in an off-Broadway play and a job at a library and found an apartment.
Will mostly avoids giving in to his compulsions to hound Finn for more information on a weekly basis when he doesn’t hear from her himself. He’s not sure why he expects it, but he does for the first month or so she’s gone.
His preoccupation only grows as the summer drags on.
He spends it feeling hungover, as if the divorce and his dad’s death were just part of a weekend bender and Rachel disappearing to New York was the last shot of liquor.
He waits.
He waits as he watches the students in his summer Spanish class stare back at him blankly, as sweat sticks his shirts to his back, as he answers emails and Facebook friend requests from his past students.
When the school year starts again he almost feels like he’s waking up.
He sets Glee auditions in motion, and sits in his spot in the audience with his clipboard and calls the first name and a girl with dark blonde hair walks out to center stage and sings.
His eyes drift as she makes her way capably through the newest Leona Lewis song and he catches sight of Casey’s head of hair poking out from behind the curtain.
Casey’s looking at the girl like she’s . . . like she’s Rachel, Will realizes. Will stares back at the girl and stutters when he realizes it’s quiet and she’s stopped singing.
“Uh, thanks, that was very good.”
The girl smiles and walks over to Casey in the wings and Will watches him bumble in front of her for a moment before Will calls the next name. Girl after girl, audition after audition.
They’re good, mostly. They’re fine. They’re not her.
_
Rachel stands with her hands on her hips, turned out of her blocking as the director gives her and her cast-mate instructions for their scene.
She begins to zone out, because Sam has a tendency to use four sentences to convey a few words’ worth of information. She studies him, taking in his lightly graying soft brown hair and dark eyes. He motions with his hands here and there, pointing and making flowing motions back and forth between her and the actor playing her fiancé.
A few of the women in the cast have expressed interest in him, and Rachel can see why. He’s attractive and passionate about his work.
Still, she’s never really seen the appeal. He doesn’t challenge her, or seem to really get her. She’s just another actress to him, and he’s just a director to her.
Sam places a hand on her shoulder, and one on the actor’s whose standing across from her, and the gesture reminds her instantly of Mr. Schuester, and she realizes with a little mental click who she’s been comparing Sam to.
_
He thinks about Rachel in New York on her own, performing every night. It seems so foreign and dangerous, even though he knows that’s somewhat ridiculous. But she’s not in school, and he’s never not been in school in one way or another. Instead of learning or teaching she’s doing and he’s never done.
_
It takes a little longer, and it happens in the midst of eighteen hour days of rehearsals, talking to Finn on the phone about the old days of school buses and Glee and everything high school, and weeks of eating nothing but ramen and peanut butter sandwiches because that’s all she can afford from the bodega on the corner.
She misses him.
_
Rachel, his student, his Rachel is on stage somewhere in New York, doing what she’s worked and trained and striven for. He spends his nights sketching out choreography for this year’s first invitational.
_
She misses him, and not all of the emptiness that still lingers around her as she drifts through her days in between performances is because of the still-aching wound her mother has left in her.
_
Sometimes he hates her for it. Sometimes it makes him want to quit his job and run away to New York himself.
_
She misses him, and it’s not a bittersweet kind of missing, it’s an insistent want.
_
Sometimes he just can’t stand the thought that maybe he’ll never see her again.
_
She sends him a clipping of a review of the play from The Village Voice right before Labor Day. Scrawled on the back is the strangely shy-sounding message: “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”
He buys a ticket for opening night and books a flight to New York that day, tests waiting to be graded still in his bag by the front door.
_
fandom: Glee
pairing: Rachel/Will
rating: PG for this part
spoilers: Through Sectionals, it's my own version of canon after that.
a/n: So, I think this is the "light at the end of the tunnel" chapter. Thank you dearly to my beta takemeaway.
Prologue
Part One
Part Two
Everything is a mess the next morning. Finn spends it repeating more or less convincingly to the Mr.’s Berry that he doesn’t know where Rachel is (lie), but that she’d promised she would call them soon and explain things (truth).
Eventually they get so frustrated with Finn’s careful recitation of what Rachel had clearly had him memorize that they call Will.
“She what?” He feels like he got shoved off his feet.
“We were hoping you’d know. She’s gone. Finn says she’s fine and she’ll call us soon but we were hoping you might know something more?”
“No, I’m sorry. Last I knew she had her hopes set on Julliard. I haven’t really been in the loop since she quit Glee. I’ll let you know if I hear anything, okay? And I’ll call Finn and see if he’ll talk to me.”
Finn levels with Will, but only to a point.
“Look Mr. Schue, I promised Rachel I’d help her with this. You’ve gotta trust me, she’s not doing anything dangerous, and she’s gonna call her dads and explain everything in a few days. She just needs everybody off her back right now.”
“Finn, this is a big deal. They have a right to know where their daughter is.”
“Not really. She’s eighteen.”
Will takes a breath.
She’s eighteen, and she’s gone.
He gets a rush of dizziness and has to shake his head to clear it.
_
Before long it comes out; Rachel’s in New York. Even though she’d been accepted to Julliard, she’d gotten a minor role in an off-Broadway play and a job at a library and found an apartment.
Will mostly avoids giving in to his compulsions to hound Finn for more information on a weekly basis when he doesn’t hear from her himself. He’s not sure why he expects it, but he does for the first month or so she’s gone.
His preoccupation only grows as the summer drags on.
He spends it feeling hungover, as if the divorce and his dad’s death were just part of a weekend bender and Rachel disappearing to New York was the last shot of liquor.
He waits.
He waits as he watches the students in his summer Spanish class stare back at him blankly, as sweat sticks his shirts to his back, as he answers emails and Facebook friend requests from his past students.
When the school year starts again he almost feels like he’s waking up.
He sets Glee auditions in motion, and sits in his spot in the audience with his clipboard and calls the first name and a girl with dark blonde hair walks out to center stage and sings.
His eyes drift as she makes her way capably through the newest Leona Lewis song and he catches sight of Casey’s head of hair poking out from behind the curtain.
Casey’s looking at the girl like she’s . . . like she’s Rachel, Will realizes. Will stares back at the girl and stutters when he realizes it’s quiet and she’s stopped singing.
“Uh, thanks, that was very good.”
The girl smiles and walks over to Casey in the wings and Will watches him bumble in front of her for a moment before Will calls the next name. Girl after girl, audition after audition.
They’re good, mostly. They’re fine. They’re not her.
_
Rachel stands with her hands on her hips, turned out of her blocking as the director gives her and her cast-mate instructions for their scene.
She begins to zone out, because Sam has a tendency to use four sentences to convey a few words’ worth of information. She studies him, taking in his lightly graying soft brown hair and dark eyes. He motions with his hands here and there, pointing and making flowing motions back and forth between her and the actor playing her fiancé.
A few of the women in the cast have expressed interest in him, and Rachel can see why. He’s attractive and passionate about his work.
Still, she’s never really seen the appeal. He doesn’t challenge her, or seem to really get her. She’s just another actress to him, and he’s just a director to her.
Sam places a hand on her shoulder, and one on the actor’s whose standing across from her, and the gesture reminds her instantly of Mr. Schuester, and she realizes with a little mental click who she’s been comparing Sam to.
_
He thinks about Rachel in New York on her own, performing every night. It seems so foreign and dangerous, even though he knows that’s somewhat ridiculous. But she’s not in school, and he’s never not been in school in one way or another. Instead of learning or teaching she’s doing and he’s never done.
_
It takes a little longer, and it happens in the midst of eighteen hour days of rehearsals, talking to Finn on the phone about the old days of school buses and Glee and everything high school, and weeks of eating nothing but ramen and peanut butter sandwiches because that’s all she can afford from the bodega on the corner.
She misses him.
_
Rachel, his student, his Rachel is on stage somewhere in New York, doing what she’s worked and trained and striven for. He spends his nights sketching out choreography for this year’s first invitational.
_
She misses him, and not all of the emptiness that still lingers around her as she drifts through her days in between performances is because of the still-aching wound her mother has left in her.
_
Sometimes he hates her for it. Sometimes it makes him want to quit his job and run away to New York himself.
_
She misses him, and it’s not a bittersweet kind of missing, it’s an insistent want.
_
Sometimes he just can’t stand the thought that maybe he’ll never see her again.
_
She sends him a clipping of a review of the play from The Village Voice right before Labor Day. Scrawled on the back is the strangely shy-sounding message: “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”
He buys a ticket for opening night and books a flight to New York that day, tests waiting to be graded still in his bag by the front door.
_