Fic: Chances (4/ )
title: Chances (4/ )
fandom: Glee
pairing: Rachel/Will
rating: PG?
spoilers: Through Sectionals, it's my own version of canon after that.
a/n: So, I wasn't planning on posting this part so soon, but fuck it because there were so many moments in the finale, I'm all giddy. Really, that hug? It makes me need to write more, which I shall, right about now. Oh, thank you to takemeaway for being an awesome beta, and in advance for the flaily conversation we will have about this episode. And, in case you hadn't, go here.
. . . but maybe read this first? Because things happen, and you might want to be around for that.
Prologue
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
The play isn’t great. The script is self-important, the direction over-reaching, and the sets are pretty hideous. Will glances around and wonders if everyone in the audience is there under obligation.
Rachel does everything she can with her part; Will can feel the enthusiasm rolling off her from the fifth row of the tiny theater. And that’s why none of it really matters; she’s twenty feet away and he can hear her voice and see that she’s fine. All summer he couldn’t shake the thought that something was wrong, though he could never identify what it could be, or how he was supposed to be able to help. Just something that ached and bothered him almost constantly.
He stands for her during the curtain call, and she squints in his direction as she beams out at the audience, but the lights are so bright that he’s not sure she sees him.
He makes his way backstage afterwards; the theater is run pretty informally so it’s not that hard to slip in unnoticed. Even though there are fewer than thirty people in the cast it’s a melee behind the curtain. He stands against a wall with his hands jammed in his pockets, and feels completely unsure. He didn’t even tell her he was coming and suddenly it seems not supportive and sentimental but misguided and invasive.
She didn’t come back, he keeps reminding himself.
“Mr. Schuester!” he hears her shriek a second before she launches herself at him. He’s taken off his feet a little and stumbles, but she’s tiny and almost weightless in his arms and she’s squeezing his neck as hard as she probably can and talking breathlessly in his ear.
“I thought it was you but I couldn’t tell. I didn’t know you were coming! You didn’t tell me! What did you think?”
She beams up at him expectantly. “You were great,” he manages.
It’s strange seeing her again and he feels like he just needs to stare at her for a while to figure her out all over again. There’s something, something different and visceral about just looking at her. He’s too aware of her, of the space between them and how small it is and how he should be taking a step back.
She’s thinner; her bone structure exaggerated not just by the stage makeup she has on. She looks exhausted; he can see shadows of darkness under her eyes despite the makeup. But she also looks invigorated from the performance, her same confidence laid over fragility evident on her features.
Her hand on his forearm tightens and she reaches up to hug him again, laughing happily and standing on her tip toes. He thinks of her in the black dress at the reception after the funeral, and how her voice had broken into his ear. He feels her ribs under his palm when he wraps his arm around her again.
“You were really great,” he repeats as he pulls back and steps away slightly. They pause for a moment, and then Rachel gets jostled by a passing cast mate.
“So, you’ve probably got a cast party or something, right?” Will asks.
“Oh, probably.” She leans in, “honestly I wouldn’t mind skipping it.” She looks up at him meaningfully, though Will’s not entirely sure what she means.
He blanks a little, feeling neurons firing on overdrive but he’s not quite caught up. She doesn’t feel like his student anymore, and yet he still feels like her teacher. He swallows over a lump of worry in his throat.
“Well, why don’t I buy you dinner? You can tell me all about the big city, and what you’ve been up to, and . . .” he’s grasping at straws, feeling completely out of line.
“Yes!” she interrupts happily. “Yes, I’d love to. Just, give me a second and I’ll get my things.”
“Okay,” he replies, and she somehow flashes a bigger smile on top of the one she had already. He watches her navigate through the thinning crowd and suddenly he doesn’t care that he’s probably grinning like an idiot.
There’s a nagging voice in his head, the one that wouldn’t shut up on the plane until he forced himself to sleep, the one that whispered in his ear in the taxi from the airport to the theater. Will rubs a hand over his jaw, and ignores it.
When Rachel returns, out of costume with her stage makeup hastily scrubbed off and a bag slung over her shoulder, he holds the door for her as they make their way out, then sticks his hands back in his pockets. She slips her hand around his elbow as they walk to her apartment.
That’s the first time the voice in his head mutters the word “date.”
_
Her apartment screams “actress.”
It’s a miniscule studio in a picturesquely dilapidated building a few blocks from the theater. The peeling plaster walls are dotted with play bills and posters, some autographed. A queen-sized bed piled with floral linens and a mound of pillows sits prominently against the same wall as the tiny kitchen. There’s a green brocade couch with a few jackets and sweaters draped over the back at the foot of the bed with just enough room to walk between. A television is on a dresser in front of the couch, and shelves on the walls surrounding it are stacked with DVDs, framed pictures, and the glittery ephemera that collect around romantic young women.
“I’ll be right out,” Rachel smiles at him and closes a drawer of the dresser, holding a change of clothes to her chest as she slips into the tiny bathroom.
Will looks around the room, feeling like he’s on a movie set until he looks closer at the pictures on the shelves and dotting the walls and sees that most of them are from Glee club.
There’s a group shot with the trophy from Sectionals the first year, and one from Nationals the following year. There’s one of Finn holding a laughing Rachel in his arms at graduation. One of her shoes is about to fall off her toes and she’s holding his cap in one of her hands, the other wrapped around his neck. There are pictures of her with Mercedes and Tina (posing) and Puck (smirking), and Will feels a stab somewhere in his gut. He runs a hand over his forehead and takes a step back.
“Ready,” she says, joining him in looking at the pictures. She takes down the one of her and Finn and wipes at the glass with the edge of her shirt.
“Do you hear from him often?” Will asks, trying not to sound like he’s asking with a purpose, or like he knows the answer. Finn’s given him some sort of update every time Will’s talked to him since Rachel left.
She nods. “We keep in touch.” She smiles down at the photo. “I miss him. He’s the only real friend I made in high school. Not like the other kids in Glee who just tolerated me because of my talent.”
“Rachel they didn’t just tolerate you. Everybody missed you last year.”
Rachel shakes her head slightly, and won’t meet his eyes.
Will watches her still rubbing absentmindedly at the glass before she hangs the frame back up and straightens it carefully. She looks up at him and brightens. “What sounds good?”
“Hm?”
“Dinner?”
“Oh yeah. Anything, Rach. Anything you want.”
_
“Will?”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t snore, do you?”
He laughs out loud into the dark. “No,” he answers. He leans up on one elbow and looks in the direction of the bed over the back of the couch. “Do you?”
He can just barely make out her form, and she’s mirroring his posture, watching him from the mass of blankets and pillows. “No,” she says softly.
It stops being funny, even with a belly full of wine. They’d had Moroccan at a place around the corner; easy conversation punctuated with long smiling pauses over a bottle of red wine that he’d raised his eyebrows at. Rachel had blushed and rolled her eyes.
“The waiter’s a friend,” she’d dismissed before taking a drink.
It was then that Will fully counted the years; he was twenty nine when he’d started Glee, and she was sixteen then. Three years later didn’t seem even remotely appropriate for dinner and soft lighting and wine, no matter how he looked at it.
“-your wife,” Rachel had finished a sentence softly, interrupting his thought and glancing up at him through her lashes.
“I’m doing okay. Thanks.” He’d looked down at the table and slid his glass forward and back with one hand.
Will blinks and suddenly the air changes, because she’s just watching him silently, and he’s looking at Rachel Berry in a bed and his brain can’t even approach that concept.
Abruptly, Will drops to his back again, letting the air out of his lungs with a whoosh. He scratches at his hair distractedly, and concentrates on breathing in and out.
“Will?”
Rachel’s standing at the edge of the couch, picking at a loose thread. The way she says his name sounds like she’s testing it. He takes a breath and sits up.
“Yeah.”
She walks around to the front of the couch and sits on the very edge next to his knees. Will feels his heart pounding like a fist against his ribs, feels a pull through his fingers towards her. Rachel scoots forward slightly and raises her hand to pet over his shoulder before settling and tugging him toward her just a little.
“Rachel,” he whispers, warning.
She shakes her head and protests, “Let me-” and it’s begging and insistent, like it so often is with her.
And then her mouth touches his and the only thought in his head is to not lean forward, to not drag her closer and touch her like his hands want him to because this is Rachel.
Her bottom lip fits between his slightly open ones and his eyes close automatically. He responds, and when he feels the tip of her tongue slip against his upper lip he wraps the fingers of one hand into a fist.
Rachel inches back, her breath touching his lips softly. His mind is reeling, stumbling through what just happened. Rachel kissed him. He kissed Rachel. He listens for the sounds of the world falling down outside her windows.
“I’m sorry,” she says softly. “I thought-”
“No,” he cuts in. He reaches blindly and finds her hand shrinking back from his shoulder and cages it between his palms. He stares down at her fingers closed in his.
“No,” he continues, “I was . . . it’s you and I- I could never think about this, before.”
He brings her hand up with his and curves his hand over hers around his cheek. His hand drops away from hers and lands against the inside of her knee. Her skin shivers up into goose bumps as he instinctually swirls his fingertips. She closes her eyes for a moment and trails her thumb back and forth lightly over his cheekbone.
“And now?” she asks, her voice cracking into a whisper.
His mind goes blank as he tries to conjure up the answer. He chases thoughts down, thoughts that could develop into sentences that would make answers for her because she’s waiting for him and how long has she been waiting for him while he’s been slogging through life in Lima?
But they melt into images of her lips, and her legs in knee socks, and her hands reaching out into a spot light, and her hair falling down her back as she walks away.
All he can do is let out a breath and say her name. Her hand slips away from his cheek and he brings it to his mouth and presses kisses into her palm and up along her fingers before releasing it. He reaches up and runs his fingers through her hair.
He studies her face, trying to make her real, trying to reconcile this moment to his memory. She stares back, lips still slightly parted, eyes hooded. The picture slides into line with the others that come to mind when he thinks of her and it feels too seamless.
He picks her hand up again and traces designs over her palm and up her wrist. “I can’t do this,” he gets out finally.
She starts to protest.
“I can’t do this tonight, Rachel. Not- not now. Do you understand?”
She nods slowly.
He exhales. “I just can’t. Not with you, not yet.”
She nods again, and her eyes lower to the floor. Will reaches up and trails his fingertips over her temple and down her cheek. He leans forward and kisses her forehead and then rests his against it, his hand cupping the back of her neck. It feels somehow familiar for a moment, as if they’re together like they used to be, scheming or commiserating over Glee.
“When did this happen?” he murmurs.
“I think this has always been happening,” she whispers back.
_
fandom: Glee
pairing: Rachel/Will
rating: PG?
spoilers: Through Sectionals, it's my own version of canon after that.
a/n: So, I wasn't planning on posting this part so soon, but fuck it because there were so many moments in the finale, I'm all giddy. Really, that hug? It makes me need to write more, which I shall, right about now. Oh, thank you to takemeaway for being an awesome beta, and in advance for the flaily conversation we will have about this episode. And, in case you hadn't, go here.
. . . but maybe read this first? Because things happen, and you might want to be around for that.
Prologue
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
The play isn’t great. The script is self-important, the direction over-reaching, and the sets are pretty hideous. Will glances around and wonders if everyone in the audience is there under obligation.
Rachel does everything she can with her part; Will can feel the enthusiasm rolling off her from the fifth row of the tiny theater. And that’s why none of it really matters; she’s twenty feet away and he can hear her voice and see that she’s fine. All summer he couldn’t shake the thought that something was wrong, though he could never identify what it could be, or how he was supposed to be able to help. Just something that ached and bothered him almost constantly.
He stands for her during the curtain call, and she squints in his direction as she beams out at the audience, but the lights are so bright that he’s not sure she sees him.
He makes his way backstage afterwards; the theater is run pretty informally so it’s not that hard to slip in unnoticed. Even though there are fewer than thirty people in the cast it’s a melee behind the curtain. He stands against a wall with his hands jammed in his pockets, and feels completely unsure. He didn’t even tell her he was coming and suddenly it seems not supportive and sentimental but misguided and invasive.
She didn’t come back, he keeps reminding himself.
“Mr. Schuester!” he hears her shriek a second before she launches herself at him. He’s taken off his feet a little and stumbles, but she’s tiny and almost weightless in his arms and she’s squeezing his neck as hard as she probably can and talking breathlessly in his ear.
“I thought it was you but I couldn’t tell. I didn’t know you were coming! You didn’t tell me! What did you think?”
She beams up at him expectantly. “You were great,” he manages.
It’s strange seeing her again and he feels like he just needs to stare at her for a while to figure her out all over again. There’s something, something different and visceral about just looking at her. He’s too aware of her, of the space between them and how small it is and how he should be taking a step back.
She’s thinner; her bone structure exaggerated not just by the stage makeup she has on. She looks exhausted; he can see shadows of darkness under her eyes despite the makeup. But she also looks invigorated from the performance, her same confidence laid over fragility evident on her features.
Her hand on his forearm tightens and she reaches up to hug him again, laughing happily and standing on her tip toes. He thinks of her in the black dress at the reception after the funeral, and how her voice had broken into his ear. He feels her ribs under his palm when he wraps his arm around her again.
“You were really great,” he repeats as he pulls back and steps away slightly. They pause for a moment, and then Rachel gets jostled by a passing cast mate.
“So, you’ve probably got a cast party or something, right?” Will asks.
“Oh, probably.” She leans in, “honestly I wouldn’t mind skipping it.” She looks up at him meaningfully, though Will’s not entirely sure what she means.
He blanks a little, feeling neurons firing on overdrive but he’s not quite caught up. She doesn’t feel like his student anymore, and yet he still feels like her teacher. He swallows over a lump of worry in his throat.
“Well, why don’t I buy you dinner? You can tell me all about the big city, and what you’ve been up to, and . . .” he’s grasping at straws, feeling completely out of line.
“Yes!” she interrupts happily. “Yes, I’d love to. Just, give me a second and I’ll get my things.”
“Okay,” he replies, and she somehow flashes a bigger smile on top of the one she had already. He watches her navigate through the thinning crowd and suddenly he doesn’t care that he’s probably grinning like an idiot.
There’s a nagging voice in his head, the one that wouldn’t shut up on the plane until he forced himself to sleep, the one that whispered in his ear in the taxi from the airport to the theater. Will rubs a hand over his jaw, and ignores it.
When Rachel returns, out of costume with her stage makeup hastily scrubbed off and a bag slung over her shoulder, he holds the door for her as they make their way out, then sticks his hands back in his pockets. She slips her hand around his elbow as they walk to her apartment.
That’s the first time the voice in his head mutters the word “date.”
_
Her apartment screams “actress.”
It’s a miniscule studio in a picturesquely dilapidated building a few blocks from the theater. The peeling plaster walls are dotted with play bills and posters, some autographed. A queen-sized bed piled with floral linens and a mound of pillows sits prominently against the same wall as the tiny kitchen. There’s a green brocade couch with a few jackets and sweaters draped over the back at the foot of the bed with just enough room to walk between. A television is on a dresser in front of the couch, and shelves on the walls surrounding it are stacked with DVDs, framed pictures, and the glittery ephemera that collect around romantic young women.
“I’ll be right out,” Rachel smiles at him and closes a drawer of the dresser, holding a change of clothes to her chest as she slips into the tiny bathroom.
Will looks around the room, feeling like he’s on a movie set until he looks closer at the pictures on the shelves and dotting the walls and sees that most of them are from Glee club.
There’s a group shot with the trophy from Sectionals the first year, and one from Nationals the following year. There’s one of Finn holding a laughing Rachel in his arms at graduation. One of her shoes is about to fall off her toes and she’s holding his cap in one of her hands, the other wrapped around his neck. There are pictures of her with Mercedes and Tina (posing) and Puck (smirking), and Will feels a stab somewhere in his gut. He runs a hand over his forehead and takes a step back.
“Ready,” she says, joining him in looking at the pictures. She takes down the one of her and Finn and wipes at the glass with the edge of her shirt.
“Do you hear from him often?” Will asks, trying not to sound like he’s asking with a purpose, or like he knows the answer. Finn’s given him some sort of update every time Will’s talked to him since Rachel left.
She nods. “We keep in touch.” She smiles down at the photo. “I miss him. He’s the only real friend I made in high school. Not like the other kids in Glee who just tolerated me because of my talent.”
“Rachel they didn’t just tolerate you. Everybody missed you last year.”
Rachel shakes her head slightly, and won’t meet his eyes.
Will watches her still rubbing absentmindedly at the glass before she hangs the frame back up and straightens it carefully. She looks up at him and brightens. “What sounds good?”
“Hm?”
“Dinner?”
“Oh yeah. Anything, Rach. Anything you want.”
_
“Will?”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t snore, do you?”
He laughs out loud into the dark. “No,” he answers. He leans up on one elbow and looks in the direction of the bed over the back of the couch. “Do you?”
He can just barely make out her form, and she’s mirroring his posture, watching him from the mass of blankets and pillows. “No,” she says softly.
It stops being funny, even with a belly full of wine. They’d had Moroccan at a place around the corner; easy conversation punctuated with long smiling pauses over a bottle of red wine that he’d raised his eyebrows at. Rachel had blushed and rolled her eyes.
“The waiter’s a friend,” she’d dismissed before taking a drink.
It was then that Will fully counted the years; he was twenty nine when he’d started Glee, and she was sixteen then. Three years later didn’t seem even remotely appropriate for dinner and soft lighting and wine, no matter how he looked at it.
“-your wife,” Rachel had finished a sentence softly, interrupting his thought and glancing up at him through her lashes.
“I’m doing okay. Thanks.” He’d looked down at the table and slid his glass forward and back with one hand.
Will blinks and suddenly the air changes, because she’s just watching him silently, and he’s looking at Rachel Berry in a bed and his brain can’t even approach that concept.
Abruptly, Will drops to his back again, letting the air out of his lungs with a whoosh. He scratches at his hair distractedly, and concentrates on breathing in and out.
“Will?”
Rachel’s standing at the edge of the couch, picking at a loose thread. The way she says his name sounds like she’s testing it. He takes a breath and sits up.
“Yeah.”
She walks around to the front of the couch and sits on the very edge next to his knees. Will feels his heart pounding like a fist against his ribs, feels a pull through his fingers towards her. Rachel scoots forward slightly and raises her hand to pet over his shoulder before settling and tugging him toward her just a little.
“Rachel,” he whispers, warning.
She shakes her head and protests, “Let me-” and it’s begging and insistent, like it so often is with her.
And then her mouth touches his and the only thought in his head is to not lean forward, to not drag her closer and touch her like his hands want him to because this is Rachel.
Her bottom lip fits between his slightly open ones and his eyes close automatically. He responds, and when he feels the tip of her tongue slip against his upper lip he wraps the fingers of one hand into a fist.
Rachel inches back, her breath touching his lips softly. His mind is reeling, stumbling through what just happened. Rachel kissed him. He kissed Rachel. He listens for the sounds of the world falling down outside her windows.
“I’m sorry,” she says softly. “I thought-”
“No,” he cuts in. He reaches blindly and finds her hand shrinking back from his shoulder and cages it between his palms. He stares down at her fingers closed in his.
“No,” he continues, “I was . . . it’s you and I- I could never think about this, before.”
He brings her hand up with his and curves his hand over hers around his cheek. His hand drops away from hers and lands against the inside of her knee. Her skin shivers up into goose bumps as he instinctually swirls his fingertips. She closes her eyes for a moment and trails her thumb back and forth lightly over his cheekbone.
“And now?” she asks, her voice cracking into a whisper.
His mind goes blank as he tries to conjure up the answer. He chases thoughts down, thoughts that could develop into sentences that would make answers for her because she’s waiting for him and how long has she been waiting for him while he’s been slogging through life in Lima?
But they melt into images of her lips, and her legs in knee socks, and her hands reaching out into a spot light, and her hair falling down her back as she walks away.
All he can do is let out a breath and say her name. Her hand slips away from his cheek and he brings it to his mouth and presses kisses into her palm and up along her fingers before releasing it. He reaches up and runs his fingers through her hair.
He studies her face, trying to make her real, trying to reconcile this moment to his memory. She stares back, lips still slightly parted, eyes hooded. The picture slides into line with the others that come to mind when he thinks of her and it feels too seamless.
He picks her hand up again and traces designs over her palm and up her wrist. “I can’t do this,” he gets out finally.
She starts to protest.
“I can’t do this tonight, Rachel. Not- not now. Do you understand?”
She nods slowly.
He exhales. “I just can’t. Not with you, not yet.”
She nods again, and her eyes lower to the floor. Will reaches up and trails his fingertips over her temple and down her cheek. He leans forward and kisses her forehead and then rests his against it, his hand cupping the back of her neck. It feels somehow familiar for a moment, as if they’re together like they used to be, scheming or commiserating over Glee.
“When did this happen?” he murmurs.
“I think this has always been happening,” she whispers back.
_