Maybe It Should Be Us for zippadedoodah
Title: Maybe It Should Be Us
Pairing/characters: Sam/Rachel
Rating: PG-13
Summary: "They float around each other all through high school, orbiting in and out of Finn and Quinn's pull and never quite crossing paths. A chance summer meeting a few years later opens their eyes to possibilities and maybe, just maybe the planets have aligned just for them."
A/N: I'm sorry that this is really late, and also thanks to paintchips for reading this through for me, and for listening to me angst about it for weeks.
He was no leading man, Rachel saw that from the start. He didn’t have Finn’s charisma or Puck’s attitude, he couldn’t silence a room with his voice like Kurt or make everyone stop what they were doing to watch him dance like Mike, he was no future Broadway star, or any kind of star. Everyone in school, or everyone in the Glee club, at least, seemed to think he was the natural successor to Finn. He could play football, he was good-looking and likeable, she was informed repeatedly of how much he “kicked ass” at video games, and he was a gentleman. It seemed to take the others by surprise when he never quite got there, when he never quite became one of the most popular guys, when he never could captain the football team for more than a few games, when he never got more than a handful of solos in Glee. Rachel wasn’t surprised though - he was no leading man.
Kind of cute, though, even if he did need a haircut.
She wondered, sometimes, what it would have been like if he’d agreed to go to prom with her. If she’d have been proud to be his date, when she saw him in his tux, if he’d have told her she looked beautiful in her dress, if he’d have been reluctant to dance or if he’d have done it without hesitation, no matter how good he was (not very), and if he’d have kissed her at the end of the night.
In the end though, she didn’t need to fantasise about a better prom night, because Finn was her date, and if they didn’t win prom king and queen, when they took to the stage to sing together it was clear who the real winners were. She hugged him close when he drove her home, breathed in his familiar scent, relieved to finally have him, for good this time.
xxx
If he was honest, she sort of scared him. Well, a lot of the girls in Glee club scared him a little, they always seemed to be working towards some secret goals he could never really figure out, like they were GLaDOS or something, but Rachel was the worst of all. She constantly seemed to have some big plan, some scheme or something to win Finn, or win Nationals or whatever, and she always yelled a lot and corrected his pitch in Glee club - it wasn’t exactly his fault he hadn’t ten years of vocal training, unless jamming along to his dad’s CDs in his bedroom counted as “training”. Everyone else could be sort of mean about her though, even Finn, and the two of them were in love and stuff. He thought she was okay though, she just wanted things a lot, and he could understand that. He spent weeks learning Na’vi just because he thought it would be cool, and maybe impress some girls, and it was cool but it didn’t impress any girls, but he still didn’t regret it. He guessed Rachel didn’t regret all her crazy stuff either.
She was kind of pretty too, especially when she was singing.
He spent his first year at McKinley pretty confused, things worked differently here than they did at his old school, maybe because there were actually girls here. He spent half the year convinced he would spend the rest of his life with Quinn, and the other half kind of glad he got out of that whole crazy mess when he did. With all the drama inside the Glee club, he was probably a lot better off dating outside of it, or maybe just hanging out with Puck and Kurt and Blaine, playing some video games and not worrying too much about the whole thing.
That changed though when, a week before prom Quinn slipped her arm through his and smiled up at him, and his breath hitched at the sight of those eyes, and before he knew what had happened she’d asked him to prom and he’d agreed. When they danced with the crowns glittering on their heads, and she smiled softly then leaned up to kiss him, he thought that even if it was a mess, it was probably a good mess to be in.
xxx
During the summer she formed a tentative friendship with Quinn, at first out of necessity, as Finn and Sam were friends and seemed determined the four of them would spend time together, but soon because they found they had more in common than shared ex-boyfriends and the Glee club, and they talked to each other not just because the only other option was listening to their boyfriends bicker about sports and kill/death ratios (whatever they were). There was the added bonus that it made Finn happy, and she was determined that he would make Finn happy.
They made a happy foursome, she thought, she liked to watch Finn play basketball (although she wasn’t sure how good he was, he never seemed to score many touchdowns), even if it seemed to bore Quinn, and occasionally she could even convince the others into an impromptu concert. They’d meet the Glee club and lounge by a pool in an empty house Puck had found, or go to the park with a picnic. This was the sort of summer you were supposed to have age seventeen, she thought, spending time with your friends and boyfriend in between vocal training and dance lessons. She liked meeting them in the morning and spending the day doing little more than hanging out, stopping briefly to scribble song ideas for Sectionals in her notebook or protest the treatment of a baby animal. She liked waving goodbye to Sam and Quinn and Finn driving her home, kissing her on her doorstep. She thought this was the sort of summer people wrote pop songs about.
She was surprised then, and more than a little put out, when Quinn called to tell her she’d broken up with Sam.
“But why?” she asked, more petulantly than she might have liked.
“He liked me a lot more than I liked him,” Quinn said, “It wasn’t fair to him.”
Rachel didn’t understand, Quinn and Sam had been dating for months, and surely, in a relationship (unless it was a rebound relationship or one created for the purpose of making some jealous) you were all in, or you were all out. It seemed she wasn’t the only one who thought that, because the next time she saw Sam, he looked deflated and sad.
xxx
His first summer in Lima was a good one, for the most part. Half of it was spent lazing in the sun, playing basketball or swimming, the other half in a drunken haze at one or the other of the Glee kids houses. They drank whatever they could find and regretted it when their mother’s yelled at them the next morning, fought off their hangovers to spend another day outside. Rachel organised impromptu concerts whenever she could, lectured them about the importance of practising, even during the summer, and everyone groaned and jeered and argued with her, but in the end they’d all be in the park, or by a pool or in somebody’s living room singing “Don’t Stop Believing” like their lives depended on it.
It was kind of spoiled by losing Quinn, obviously, but even while he was pretty sure his heart was completely broken, he knew that it was the second time she’d broken it. He should have guessed, he told himself, he really should have guessed this would happen. She said she just didn’t feel the same as him, and he wondered if that was his fault, for getting all caught up in how pretty her eyes were, but he couldn’t say for sure. He didn’t think he regretted it though, after all, maybe she’d change her mind. Maybe not. He decided to enjoy his summer whatever, since the weather was good and even if sometimes he’d get caught staring at Quinn across the room, he was still having fun.
Soon after the breakup his friends were forcing drinks on him to cheer him up, and even while he was shrugging and claiming “I don’t feel too bad about it, at least we gave it our best shot”, he accepted them, so early in the night he realised he’d drank too much too soon and he was already fighting with his stomach for dominance. He stumbled outside for fresh air, leaning against the wall and realising it was no use, he retched and threw up into the bushes, feeling totally uncool and pretty certain Santana was going to kill him for doing this in her garden.
Cool fingers brushed his hair away from his face even as he heaved disgustingly, and when he finished he turned around, to find Rachel standing behind him, smiling slightly. “You normally don’t have to do that for boys,” she said, “Hold their hair back, I mean.”
He managed to focus his vision, and he meant to thank her before he realised her face was streaked and red, her make-up running, her cheeks still damp from tears. He scrabbled in the pockets of his jeans for a tissue, realised he didn’t have one and frowned, unsure what to do. She watched him, clearly far more sober than he was.
“Are you okay?” he asked finally, pretty sure he was too drunk to be dealing with crying girls.
She nodded, “Finn and I had an argument.” she paused to sniff and dab at her eyes with her sleeve, “I think we might break up.”
She started to cry again, and for a lack of anything else to do, he hugged her, and held her against his chest until Mercedes and Kurt found them outside. They pulled her away from him, mouthing thanks, and he watched them lead her away.
xxx
In September she and Finn were still together, although Mercedes tried more than once to sit her down and discuss whether that was such a good idea, and Finn said Kurt had done the same for him. She didn’t understand it, all couples went through bad patches, and if sometimes she caught him looking in Quinn’s direction, if he seemed disinterested sometimes and she didn’t know why, if sometimes they’d lapse into awkward silence on the phone or on their dates where they used to talk happily, it didn’t mean anything. It was just a rough patch, and that would pass. It wasn’t as though Kurt didn’t occasionally call her, distraught over some silly fight with Blaine, it wasn’t as though Mercedes had much experience in relationships at all. To make up for it she hugged him closer when they said goodbye, kissed him harder, told him she loved him that one time extra.
He’d grin down at her affectionately, and tell her he loved her too, but she still felt sad when she closed the door behind her.
xxx
For a while it seemed like Puck and Quinn might get together. He didn’t know much about it, it wasn’t like he was going to ask Puck or something, but that’s what the other Glee kids kept saying. Quinn told Rachel who told Kurt who told Mercedes who told Tina who told Brittany who told everybody that they were “hanging out”. “Let’s hope she’s learned more about birth control since the last time they ‘hung out’”, Santana said, braiding Brittany’s hair while they waited for practice to start. There was another thing he didn’t really get, Santana and Brittany - it wasn’t so long ago Santana was claiming she wanted him, and now she was pretty much a full lesbian. He was happy for Quinn though, she was a nice person when she wasn’t breaking his heart or anything.
Kurt suggested one day though that he “get rid of the Bieber ‘do”, and he was surprised to find her slipping into the chair next to him and running her fingers through his hair. “Don’t cut it,” she said, in that husky voice that drove him totally crazy, “I like it long.” He glanced across the room to find Puck looking away pointedly, Kurt just raised one eyebrow but said nothing.
When they left rehearsal she tried to grasp his hand, and he frowned, “Do you just want me when you’ve got nothing else going on, or you’re trying to make another guy jealous, or something?”
She looked taken aback, “Excuse me?”
He might not know a lot about relationships but he knew enough not to make the same mistake three times. “I don’t want to do this with you again,” he said, and walked away from her.
xxx
“I just don’t think it’s working out, Rach,” Finn said, “I’m sorry.”
She was confused, “But I think it is working out.”
He shrugged.
“I can’t believe he broke up with you the week before Nationals,” Tina said, when most of the Glee club had gathered at her house to console her and discuss what was to be done about the competition, since Rachel was sure she couldn’t sing with Finn now.
“Well look at it this way, Rachel, you gave it your best shot. What more could you have done?” Blaine said, earning a glare from Kurt, and a whispered “not helping”.
“I thought,” Rachel sobbed into Mercedes’ neck, “I thought we’d be together forever.”
She sensed the disbelief from her friends, but chose not to acknowledge it. Eventually the club had to leave, and they filed out slowly. Sam patted her on the shoulder awkwardly, and she gave him a thankful smile.
xxx
There was an agreement amongst the single Glee kids that they’d attend their senior prom as a group, and in the end it turned into the whole club going together, and hanging out, and since it was one of the last times they’d be able to do that, it was pretty awesome. He danced with Quinn and was pleased by how not-awkward it was, argued with Puck and Mike about how much the new Batman movie was going to suck, got briefly sucked into a conversation with Mercedes and Kurt about who was the best dressed but was quickly rescued by Finn, and had to sit down for a while after Santana and Brittany decided to dance with him at the same time. Eventually the other kids disappeared to the dance floor or the bathroom or to make out outside, and he found himself sitting across the table from Rachel, staring forlornly at Finn.
Finn had brought one of the cheerleaders who Sam didn’t know, but had spent most of the night dancing with various different girls, right in front of the girl he’d just broken up with and barely acknowledging his date. Sam wasn’t an expert or anything, but that seemed pretty uncool to him.
“Hey, Rachel,” he said, standing up and offering her his hand, “You want to dance?”
She joined him on the dance floor with a strained smile, barely paying attention to him as she kept glancing across at Finn.
“It’s going to be a weird summer,” he tried, bravely, “With everyone leaving and everything.”
“Yes,” she said, looking up at him finally, “It’s sad.”
xxx
As the summer arrived and she wasn’t forced to see him everyday, she found her sadness over Finn lessening. Kurt’s well reasoned words finally began to take hold - she’d be in New York at the end of August anyway, an opportunity to meet new guys and make new friends, where she wouldn’t want to be tied to a silly high school boyfriend. It was a little disingenuous, since Kurt would also be going to New York with his high school boyfriend in tow, but she could see the sense in it. In New York she could find her real leading man, perhaps someone with a voice that could really challenge her own. They would blow the audience away at their wedding. The only thing she was leaving in Lima were good friends, and they’d see each other at Christmas anyway.
On the last day the Glee club could all be together, not long after the prom, she asked them if they’d like to sing something, one last time. There were the usual jeers and groaning, Santana asked if the bridge was missing its troll yet and Mercedes muttered something about “unending insanity”, but they all took the sheet music she’d brought with her happily enough.
As everyone muttered amongst themselves and shuffled the sheets and complained about the parts they’d been given, she noticed Sam frowning down at his page.
“Is everything okay?” she asked him, “Can you sing that part okay?”
“Yeah, I mean - “ he sang the lines he’d been given tentatively, as if he was expecting correction, so she smiled encouragingly.
“That’s right, but your breathing is a little off,” taking his hand, she placed it over his diaphragm, “It should come from there. Breathe in.”
She looked up at him with her hand covering his as he took a deep breath, and for the first time felt a tiny pang of regret.
xxx
He waved his friends off one by one, as they all left for college or bigger and better things than Lima, Ohio. A few of them were staying here, Artie was going to college locally, and Puck was taking a job with Kurt’s dad so he could help out his mom and his little sister, Brittany was staying too, but there was little doubt she’d be moving out to be with Santana as soon as possible. He’d left his friends behind once before though, and that felt more like a loss than this. He’d miss them, sure, but he was going to college himself at the end of the summer, and it wasn’t like he’d never see them again.
In the middle of August the remaining members of the Glee club gathered at Puck’s house, to drink beer he’d acquired from somewhere and play video games. He and Puck were kicking some zombie ass, although he was thinking the two beers he’d had were starting to have an effect, since he couldn’t seem to keep up - and normally he completely rocked at this game, so when Rachel entered and asked if she could play, he gladly handed the controller over to her.
“Oh, dude, come on, she totally sucks at video games.” Puck said, “No offence, Rach.”
She pursed her lips, “I do not suck, Noah.” and then looking up at Sam, “So which buttons do I press? The blue one?”
He smiled, “No, see, here - this one to aim, and this one to shoot.”
“Oh, okay.” she pressed the buttons experimentally, “And who am I shooting at? That guy?”
“No, that’s Puck - you see all the zombies? Rotting, undead, totally want to eat your brains, those dudes? Shoot at them.”
She wrinkled her nose in disgust, but obediently followed his directions as Puck unpaused the game, and squealed in delight as she managed to kill something. “I did it!” She handed the controller back to him with a grin, and he found himself smiling back.
“That’s it? You’re done playing?”
“Yep,” she smiled, “I’m quitting while I’m ahead.”
She trotted away to join Brittany in the kitchen, and as he watched her go, he couldn’t help wondering if he’d missed out on something in Lima after all.
xxx
It was strange to go to college and find she wasn’t the only person who’d audition for every role, turn up ten minutes early for everything and stop to talk to the teacher about any extra-curricular work if she could. She wasn’t the only one dreaming big, certain she was going to make it on Broadway, and for the first time she felt as though she was being challenged. It was good. It was scary, terrifying in fact, and a little disheartening when she remembered being the undisputed star of the Glee club, and now she was just one of many stars.
There were guys who came and went, most of them would tell her she was beautiful, or the best singer in their class or destined to be world famous by the time she was 21, but it always seemed a little false when they moved in to kiss her immediately afterwards. Besides, none of them gave her that unhealthily-obsessive thing she’d had with Finn, that “I just really want to make out with you” thing she’d had with Puck, or even those surprising butterflies she’d had with Sam during the last weeks of summer.
It was better though, she reasoned, not to have any distractions.
xxx
College, it turned out, was pretty awesome. It was like all the good bits of high school (hanging out with friends and not cleaning his room) with a lot less of the parts that sucked (studying). He found himself immediately popular by virtue of being one of the only guys who both owned an acoustic guitar and could actually play it, and pretty soon he’d fallen in with a couple of other dudes who liked comic books and playing music, and even though they were pretty crappy, within a few weeks they’d decided they were a band and were arguing about what to call themselves.
Although they’d been pretty sure the whole band thing would land them a ton of girls, it turned out girls weren’t really interested just because you played your songs to 15 people in a bar that you weren’t old enough to buy beer in. He dated a couple of people here and there, slept with a couple more while kind of trashed, but it didn’t seem fair to try anything more serious when there wasn’t anyone he was all that serious about.
xxx
It was the middle of her sophomore year when she found herself alone with him in New York. She wasn’t quite sure how it had happened, supposedly a couple of the Glee kids were coming to the city to hang out, but then their plans all seemed to change, they had to work or care for their sick family members or they were finally going to hook up with this totally hot chick, and in the end it was just Sam. That would have been fine, since Kurt would have been around too, but then by some coincidence he and Blaine had a huge fight, and they had to spend the weekend alternately making up and falling out again. So that left Rachel to show Sam the sights.
She thought it was worth it though, when she saw his awed expression at the Empire State Building.
“I can’t believe you’ve never been to New York before.” she said.
He shook his head incredulously, “I’ve only ever seen it getting destroyed in movies and stuff.”
On the way to the Statue of Liberty they discussed the best cinematic destruction of New York, and she was delighted to see his face light up as he tried to convince her that Ghostbusters was one of the best movies of all time.
He looked unsure when she suggested they see a show, but emerged from it declaring the whole thing to be “totally awesome” and asking if they could go see another before he left.
She found herself surprised when she realised three days had passed, and she had to wave him goodbye at the airport.
xxx
It was strange to find some unlikely combination of events saw Rachel Berry going from “that girl he was sort of friends with in high school” to a real friend. His best friend, maybe, or at least he was pretty sure that he should call her that since they texted and emailed constantly, it seemed kind of rude for her to not be that. It turned out they had a lot in common, and he wasn’t sure how he ever missed that. They both totally liked movies, even if they liked them for different reasons, and music, and he had to admit the whole Broadway thing was a lot cooler than he’d thought it was and he was pretty sure that with a little time he could get her to learn her way around an Xbox. It became a familiar experience to hear his phone buzz in his pocket, and know it was her, texting to ask him to confirm some movie fact for an argument with a friend, or making sure he’d remembered it was his little sister’s birthday next week, or telling him she’d seen a guy dressed as Batman and it reminded her of him (“Batman’s the one with the butler, right?”) .
During spring break she flew out to see him, and he was pretty sure his band had never played so well as when she got up on stage with them to totally blow the fifteen people in the audience away. She beamed up at him when he hugged her after the show, and when she slipped his hand into his as they walked home, it felt like the most natural thing in the world.
xxx
If they texted every day and talked online as often as they could, she figured it was just because they were good friends. If her heart beat a little faster when his name flashed up on her phone, she thought it was probably best not to read too much into things. If sometimes she got drunk and called to tell him he had the best lips of any guy she’d ever seen, and if sometimes he got drunk and called to tell her that he was going to marry her some day, “definitely, Rach, I’m gonna be Mr Sam Berry, you wait and see”, well, that was just something people said to each other when they drank too much. It wasn’t like they were anything more than friends, and even if they were, what did it matter? They lived hundreds of miles apart, and they would for two more years.
So when she found herself missing him a little too much, felt herself getting in a little too deep, and so tried to stop talking to him quite so much, she didn’t feel too bad. She felt a little more guilty when he texted her asking if he’d done something wrong. She felt horrible when he came out to see her for her birthday, they went to a bar and made out in the cab on the way home, and even worse when, in her bed with his shirt off, he slurred, “hey, let’s not do this while we’re drunk, okay?”.
xxx
They never really talked about what happened in New York, and it happened sort of naturally that they talked less and less after that. He started dating a girl who had clearly wanted him for months, and he heard from Kurt that she was seeing some guy who he couldn’t help but think of as a jerk. He drifted through the rest of his junior year and his senior year after that, iin a kind of daze, constantly surprised that he couldn’t just call her up to hear her voice on the other end of the phone, hear her laugh at one of his dumb impressions and try to imitate them, badly herself. He found himself missing her at odd times, while he was studying for finals or hanging out with the band, he felt pathetic wondering if she missed him too, but couldn’t help thinking it.
He remembered her running her fingers through his hair and telling him to get a haircut. “Are you going to still look like a failed sixteen year old pop star when you’re thirty?”, she asked, and he’d laughed and pointed out the animal sweater she was wearing. He stared at his hair, already too long, in the mirror one day, and decided to cut it.
xxx
There was a reunion of the Glee club after graduation. They ate barbecue food in Puck’s back yard and reminisced about high school. They discussed what they’d be doing next, with college over and done with. She watched him carefully as he shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Live in Lima, for a while, I guess”, and remembered being simultaneously frustrated with his lack of ambition and relieved to have someone in her life who didn’t have their entire careers mapped out. Even while it was hypocritical, she’d loved that about him.
She’d stored him away carefully since she last saw him, put him out of her mind, avoided the things that might remind her of him, dated some guy who was too full of himself and that she couldn’t care less about, and broke up with him out of boredom. She found herself missing getting texts at breakfast telling her about the hilarious accent of a guy he’d met had, of him gently trying to explain to her the subtle emotional nuances of Spiderman, and tried her best to pretend she hadn’t made a mistake. She had no experience with this, the subtle ache, as if without even realising Sam, with his stupid haircut and his obsession with comic books, had slipped inside her heart and made himself at home, and then unceremoniously she’d kicked him out, and now she had to deal with the loss.
Then she saw him, and ridiculously, all she could think was “he cut his hair”. It had been months since they’d last avoided each other at a party, and she found her eyes drawn to him as soon as he entered, even as he made an effort to look away from her.
Inevitably, the old Glee club members ended up singing together. They ran through their old repertoire, yelling out the words to Journey songs as they all tried to out-sing each other and Puck’s neighbour’s curtains twitched. It was odd to find it was still familiar, they could still fall into the old dance routines they hadn’t done in years. They joked that Finn’s dancing still hadn’t improved, Artie insisted on finding something to rap to and Puck winked and leered as he played guitar along with them.
Gradually, as the sun began to set, the mood wound down. They drifted away to pick at the remainders of the food and talk in small groups. Puck strummed quietly at his guitar as Santana sang something slow, Brittany’s head on her shoulder and their hands clasped together.
She sat down next to Sam and found herself immediately unsure what to say, and apparently he felt the same because he smiled awkwardly and said, “It’s kind of funny, how it’s just like high school, isn’t it?”
“I suppose,” she said, because really everything seemed just like high school except for the two of them, they’d always missed out on each other then, and then they’d come close in college but never quite got there. “You cut your hair,” she said, and felt stupid.
He ran his hand over his head, “Yeah.”
They fell into silence, listening to the song, until finally he said, almost whispered, “So, I - uh - missed you, and stuff.”
She grinned, “I missed you too.”
“When are you going back to New York?” he asked, with a sideways glance.
“A couple of weeks,” she answered, and grasped his hand, “Come with me.” He looked taken aback, and she was too, surprised by her own words, but she didn’t regret them.
“What - “ he frowned, “Really?”
“Yes.” she said, hardly daring to look at him, “I’d like it if we could...you know, if we could try. You and I, we should try. I think it might work.”
He smiled, “I think so too.” Then he kissed her, as the song drew to a close.
Pairing/characters: Sam/Rachel
Rating: PG-13
Summary: "They float around each other all through high school, orbiting in and out of Finn and Quinn's pull and never quite crossing paths. A chance summer meeting a few years later opens their eyes to possibilities and maybe, just maybe the planets have aligned just for them."
A/N: I'm sorry that this is really late, and also thanks to paintchips for reading this through for me, and for listening to me angst about it for weeks.
He was no leading man, Rachel saw that from the start. He didn’t have Finn’s charisma or Puck’s attitude, he couldn’t silence a room with his voice like Kurt or make everyone stop what they were doing to watch him dance like Mike, he was no future Broadway star, or any kind of star. Everyone in school, or everyone in the Glee club, at least, seemed to think he was the natural successor to Finn. He could play football, he was good-looking and likeable, she was informed repeatedly of how much he “kicked ass” at video games, and he was a gentleman. It seemed to take the others by surprise when he never quite got there, when he never quite became one of the most popular guys, when he never could captain the football team for more than a few games, when he never got more than a handful of solos in Glee. Rachel wasn’t surprised though - he was no leading man.
Kind of cute, though, even if he did need a haircut.
She wondered, sometimes, what it would have been like if he’d agreed to go to prom with her. If she’d have been proud to be his date, when she saw him in his tux, if he’d have told her she looked beautiful in her dress, if he’d have been reluctant to dance or if he’d have done it without hesitation, no matter how good he was (not very), and if he’d have kissed her at the end of the night.
In the end though, she didn’t need to fantasise about a better prom night, because Finn was her date, and if they didn’t win prom king and queen, when they took to the stage to sing together it was clear who the real winners were. She hugged him close when he drove her home, breathed in his familiar scent, relieved to finally have him, for good this time.
xxx
If he was honest, she sort of scared him. Well, a lot of the girls in Glee club scared him a little, they always seemed to be working towards some secret goals he could never really figure out, like they were GLaDOS or something, but Rachel was the worst of all. She constantly seemed to have some big plan, some scheme or something to win Finn, or win Nationals or whatever, and she always yelled a lot and corrected his pitch in Glee club - it wasn’t exactly his fault he hadn’t ten years of vocal training, unless jamming along to his dad’s CDs in his bedroom counted as “training”. Everyone else could be sort of mean about her though, even Finn, and the two of them were in love and stuff. He thought she was okay though, she just wanted things a lot, and he could understand that. He spent weeks learning Na’vi just because he thought it would be cool, and maybe impress some girls, and it was cool but it didn’t impress any girls, but he still didn’t regret it. He guessed Rachel didn’t regret all her crazy stuff either.
She was kind of pretty too, especially when she was singing.
He spent his first year at McKinley pretty confused, things worked differently here than they did at his old school, maybe because there were actually girls here. He spent half the year convinced he would spend the rest of his life with Quinn, and the other half kind of glad he got out of that whole crazy mess when he did. With all the drama inside the Glee club, he was probably a lot better off dating outside of it, or maybe just hanging out with Puck and Kurt and Blaine, playing some video games and not worrying too much about the whole thing.
That changed though when, a week before prom Quinn slipped her arm through his and smiled up at him, and his breath hitched at the sight of those eyes, and before he knew what had happened she’d asked him to prom and he’d agreed. When they danced with the crowns glittering on their heads, and she smiled softly then leaned up to kiss him, he thought that even if it was a mess, it was probably a good mess to be in.
xxx
During the summer she formed a tentative friendship with Quinn, at first out of necessity, as Finn and Sam were friends and seemed determined the four of them would spend time together, but soon because they found they had more in common than shared ex-boyfriends and the Glee club, and they talked to each other not just because the only other option was listening to their boyfriends bicker about sports and kill/death ratios (whatever they were). There was the added bonus that it made Finn happy, and she was determined that he would make Finn happy.
They made a happy foursome, she thought, she liked to watch Finn play basketball (although she wasn’t sure how good he was, he never seemed to score many touchdowns), even if it seemed to bore Quinn, and occasionally she could even convince the others into an impromptu concert. They’d meet the Glee club and lounge by a pool in an empty house Puck had found, or go to the park with a picnic. This was the sort of summer you were supposed to have age seventeen, she thought, spending time with your friends and boyfriend in between vocal training and dance lessons. She liked meeting them in the morning and spending the day doing little more than hanging out, stopping briefly to scribble song ideas for Sectionals in her notebook or protest the treatment of a baby animal. She liked waving goodbye to Sam and Quinn and Finn driving her home, kissing her on her doorstep. She thought this was the sort of summer people wrote pop songs about.
She was surprised then, and more than a little put out, when Quinn called to tell her she’d broken up with Sam.
“But why?” she asked, more petulantly than she might have liked.
“He liked me a lot more than I liked him,” Quinn said, “It wasn’t fair to him.”
Rachel didn’t understand, Quinn and Sam had been dating for months, and surely, in a relationship (unless it was a rebound relationship or one created for the purpose of making some jealous) you were all in, or you were all out. It seemed she wasn’t the only one who thought that, because the next time she saw Sam, he looked deflated and sad.
xxx
His first summer in Lima was a good one, for the most part. Half of it was spent lazing in the sun, playing basketball or swimming, the other half in a drunken haze at one or the other of the Glee kids houses. They drank whatever they could find and regretted it when their mother’s yelled at them the next morning, fought off their hangovers to spend another day outside. Rachel organised impromptu concerts whenever she could, lectured them about the importance of practising, even during the summer, and everyone groaned and jeered and argued with her, but in the end they’d all be in the park, or by a pool or in somebody’s living room singing “Don’t Stop Believing” like their lives depended on it.
It was kind of spoiled by losing Quinn, obviously, but even while he was pretty sure his heart was completely broken, he knew that it was the second time she’d broken it. He should have guessed, he told himself, he really should have guessed this would happen. She said she just didn’t feel the same as him, and he wondered if that was his fault, for getting all caught up in how pretty her eyes were, but he couldn’t say for sure. He didn’t think he regretted it though, after all, maybe she’d change her mind. Maybe not. He decided to enjoy his summer whatever, since the weather was good and even if sometimes he’d get caught staring at Quinn across the room, he was still having fun.
Soon after the breakup his friends were forcing drinks on him to cheer him up, and even while he was shrugging and claiming “I don’t feel too bad about it, at least we gave it our best shot”, he accepted them, so early in the night he realised he’d drank too much too soon and he was already fighting with his stomach for dominance. He stumbled outside for fresh air, leaning against the wall and realising it was no use, he retched and threw up into the bushes, feeling totally uncool and pretty certain Santana was going to kill him for doing this in her garden.
Cool fingers brushed his hair away from his face even as he heaved disgustingly, and when he finished he turned around, to find Rachel standing behind him, smiling slightly. “You normally don’t have to do that for boys,” she said, “Hold their hair back, I mean.”
He managed to focus his vision, and he meant to thank her before he realised her face was streaked and red, her make-up running, her cheeks still damp from tears. He scrabbled in the pockets of his jeans for a tissue, realised he didn’t have one and frowned, unsure what to do. She watched him, clearly far more sober than he was.
“Are you okay?” he asked finally, pretty sure he was too drunk to be dealing with crying girls.
She nodded, “Finn and I had an argument.” she paused to sniff and dab at her eyes with her sleeve, “I think we might break up.”
She started to cry again, and for a lack of anything else to do, he hugged her, and held her against his chest until Mercedes and Kurt found them outside. They pulled her away from him, mouthing thanks, and he watched them lead her away.
xxx
In September she and Finn were still together, although Mercedes tried more than once to sit her down and discuss whether that was such a good idea, and Finn said Kurt had done the same for him. She didn’t understand it, all couples went through bad patches, and if sometimes she caught him looking in Quinn’s direction, if he seemed disinterested sometimes and she didn’t know why, if sometimes they’d lapse into awkward silence on the phone or on their dates where they used to talk happily, it didn’t mean anything. It was just a rough patch, and that would pass. It wasn’t as though Kurt didn’t occasionally call her, distraught over some silly fight with Blaine, it wasn’t as though Mercedes had much experience in relationships at all. To make up for it she hugged him closer when they said goodbye, kissed him harder, told him she loved him that one time extra.
He’d grin down at her affectionately, and tell her he loved her too, but she still felt sad when she closed the door behind her.
xxx
For a while it seemed like Puck and Quinn might get together. He didn’t know much about it, it wasn’t like he was going to ask Puck or something, but that’s what the other Glee kids kept saying. Quinn told Rachel who told Kurt who told Mercedes who told Tina who told Brittany who told everybody that they were “hanging out”. “Let’s hope she’s learned more about birth control since the last time they ‘hung out’”, Santana said, braiding Brittany’s hair while they waited for practice to start. There was another thing he didn’t really get, Santana and Brittany - it wasn’t so long ago Santana was claiming she wanted him, and now she was pretty much a full lesbian. He was happy for Quinn though, she was a nice person when she wasn’t breaking his heart or anything.
Kurt suggested one day though that he “get rid of the Bieber ‘do”, and he was surprised to find her slipping into the chair next to him and running her fingers through his hair. “Don’t cut it,” she said, in that husky voice that drove him totally crazy, “I like it long.” He glanced across the room to find Puck looking away pointedly, Kurt just raised one eyebrow but said nothing.
When they left rehearsal she tried to grasp his hand, and he frowned, “Do you just want me when you’ve got nothing else going on, or you’re trying to make another guy jealous, or something?”
She looked taken aback, “Excuse me?”
He might not know a lot about relationships but he knew enough not to make the same mistake three times. “I don’t want to do this with you again,” he said, and walked away from her.
xxx
“I just don’t think it’s working out, Rach,” Finn said, “I’m sorry.”
She was confused, “But I think it is working out.”
He shrugged.
“I can’t believe he broke up with you the week before Nationals,” Tina said, when most of the Glee club had gathered at her house to console her and discuss what was to be done about the competition, since Rachel was sure she couldn’t sing with Finn now.
“Well look at it this way, Rachel, you gave it your best shot. What more could you have done?” Blaine said, earning a glare from Kurt, and a whispered “not helping”.
“I thought,” Rachel sobbed into Mercedes’ neck, “I thought we’d be together forever.”
She sensed the disbelief from her friends, but chose not to acknowledge it. Eventually the club had to leave, and they filed out slowly. Sam patted her on the shoulder awkwardly, and she gave him a thankful smile.
xxx
There was an agreement amongst the single Glee kids that they’d attend their senior prom as a group, and in the end it turned into the whole club going together, and hanging out, and since it was one of the last times they’d be able to do that, it was pretty awesome. He danced with Quinn and was pleased by how not-awkward it was, argued with Puck and Mike about how much the new Batman movie was going to suck, got briefly sucked into a conversation with Mercedes and Kurt about who was the best dressed but was quickly rescued by Finn, and had to sit down for a while after Santana and Brittany decided to dance with him at the same time. Eventually the other kids disappeared to the dance floor or the bathroom or to make out outside, and he found himself sitting across the table from Rachel, staring forlornly at Finn.
Finn had brought one of the cheerleaders who Sam didn’t know, but had spent most of the night dancing with various different girls, right in front of the girl he’d just broken up with and barely acknowledging his date. Sam wasn’t an expert or anything, but that seemed pretty uncool to him.
“Hey, Rachel,” he said, standing up and offering her his hand, “You want to dance?”
She joined him on the dance floor with a strained smile, barely paying attention to him as she kept glancing across at Finn.
“It’s going to be a weird summer,” he tried, bravely, “With everyone leaving and everything.”
“Yes,” she said, looking up at him finally, “It’s sad.”
xxx
As the summer arrived and she wasn’t forced to see him everyday, she found her sadness over Finn lessening. Kurt’s well reasoned words finally began to take hold - she’d be in New York at the end of August anyway, an opportunity to meet new guys and make new friends, where she wouldn’t want to be tied to a silly high school boyfriend. It was a little disingenuous, since Kurt would also be going to New York with his high school boyfriend in tow, but she could see the sense in it. In New York she could find her real leading man, perhaps someone with a voice that could really challenge her own. They would blow the audience away at their wedding. The only thing she was leaving in Lima were good friends, and they’d see each other at Christmas anyway.
On the last day the Glee club could all be together, not long after the prom, she asked them if they’d like to sing something, one last time. There were the usual jeers and groaning, Santana asked if the bridge was missing its troll yet and Mercedes muttered something about “unending insanity”, but they all took the sheet music she’d brought with her happily enough.
As everyone muttered amongst themselves and shuffled the sheets and complained about the parts they’d been given, she noticed Sam frowning down at his page.
“Is everything okay?” she asked him, “Can you sing that part okay?”
“Yeah, I mean - “ he sang the lines he’d been given tentatively, as if he was expecting correction, so she smiled encouragingly.
“That’s right, but your breathing is a little off,” taking his hand, she placed it over his diaphragm, “It should come from there. Breathe in.”
She looked up at him with her hand covering his as he took a deep breath, and for the first time felt a tiny pang of regret.
xxx
He waved his friends off one by one, as they all left for college or bigger and better things than Lima, Ohio. A few of them were staying here, Artie was going to college locally, and Puck was taking a job with Kurt’s dad so he could help out his mom and his little sister, Brittany was staying too, but there was little doubt she’d be moving out to be with Santana as soon as possible. He’d left his friends behind once before though, and that felt more like a loss than this. He’d miss them, sure, but he was going to college himself at the end of the summer, and it wasn’t like he’d never see them again.
In the middle of August the remaining members of the Glee club gathered at Puck’s house, to drink beer he’d acquired from somewhere and play video games. He and Puck were kicking some zombie ass, although he was thinking the two beers he’d had were starting to have an effect, since he couldn’t seem to keep up - and normally he completely rocked at this game, so when Rachel entered and asked if she could play, he gladly handed the controller over to her.
“Oh, dude, come on, she totally sucks at video games.” Puck said, “No offence, Rach.”
She pursed her lips, “I do not suck, Noah.” and then looking up at Sam, “So which buttons do I press? The blue one?”
He smiled, “No, see, here - this one to aim, and this one to shoot.”
“Oh, okay.” she pressed the buttons experimentally, “And who am I shooting at? That guy?”
“No, that’s Puck - you see all the zombies? Rotting, undead, totally want to eat your brains, those dudes? Shoot at them.”
She wrinkled her nose in disgust, but obediently followed his directions as Puck unpaused the game, and squealed in delight as she managed to kill something. “I did it!” She handed the controller back to him with a grin, and he found himself smiling back.
“That’s it? You’re done playing?”
“Yep,” she smiled, “I’m quitting while I’m ahead.”
She trotted away to join Brittany in the kitchen, and as he watched her go, he couldn’t help wondering if he’d missed out on something in Lima after all.
xxx
It was strange to go to college and find she wasn’t the only person who’d audition for every role, turn up ten minutes early for everything and stop to talk to the teacher about any extra-curricular work if she could. She wasn’t the only one dreaming big, certain she was going to make it on Broadway, and for the first time she felt as though she was being challenged. It was good. It was scary, terrifying in fact, and a little disheartening when she remembered being the undisputed star of the Glee club, and now she was just one of many stars.
There were guys who came and went, most of them would tell her she was beautiful, or the best singer in their class or destined to be world famous by the time she was 21, but it always seemed a little false when they moved in to kiss her immediately afterwards. Besides, none of them gave her that unhealthily-obsessive thing she’d had with Finn, that “I just really want to make out with you” thing she’d had with Puck, or even those surprising butterflies she’d had with Sam during the last weeks of summer.
It was better though, she reasoned, not to have any distractions.
xxx
College, it turned out, was pretty awesome. It was like all the good bits of high school (hanging out with friends and not cleaning his room) with a lot less of the parts that sucked (studying). He found himself immediately popular by virtue of being one of the only guys who both owned an acoustic guitar and could actually play it, and pretty soon he’d fallen in with a couple of other dudes who liked comic books and playing music, and even though they were pretty crappy, within a few weeks they’d decided they were a band and were arguing about what to call themselves.
Although they’d been pretty sure the whole band thing would land them a ton of girls, it turned out girls weren’t really interested just because you played your songs to 15 people in a bar that you weren’t old enough to buy beer in. He dated a couple of people here and there, slept with a couple more while kind of trashed, but it didn’t seem fair to try anything more serious when there wasn’t anyone he was all that serious about.
xxx
It was the middle of her sophomore year when she found herself alone with him in New York. She wasn’t quite sure how it had happened, supposedly a couple of the Glee kids were coming to the city to hang out, but then their plans all seemed to change, they had to work or care for their sick family members or they were finally going to hook up with this totally hot chick, and in the end it was just Sam. That would have been fine, since Kurt would have been around too, but then by some coincidence he and Blaine had a huge fight, and they had to spend the weekend alternately making up and falling out again. So that left Rachel to show Sam the sights.
She thought it was worth it though, when she saw his awed expression at the Empire State Building.
“I can’t believe you’ve never been to New York before.” she said.
He shook his head incredulously, “I’ve only ever seen it getting destroyed in movies and stuff.”
On the way to the Statue of Liberty they discussed the best cinematic destruction of New York, and she was delighted to see his face light up as he tried to convince her that Ghostbusters was one of the best movies of all time.
He looked unsure when she suggested they see a show, but emerged from it declaring the whole thing to be “totally awesome” and asking if they could go see another before he left.
She found herself surprised when she realised three days had passed, and she had to wave him goodbye at the airport.
xxx
It was strange to find some unlikely combination of events saw Rachel Berry going from “that girl he was sort of friends with in high school” to a real friend. His best friend, maybe, or at least he was pretty sure that he should call her that since they texted and emailed constantly, it seemed kind of rude for her to not be that. It turned out they had a lot in common, and he wasn’t sure how he ever missed that. They both totally liked movies, even if they liked them for different reasons, and music, and he had to admit the whole Broadway thing was a lot cooler than he’d thought it was and he was pretty sure that with a little time he could get her to learn her way around an Xbox. It became a familiar experience to hear his phone buzz in his pocket, and know it was her, texting to ask him to confirm some movie fact for an argument with a friend, or making sure he’d remembered it was his little sister’s birthday next week, or telling him she’d seen a guy dressed as Batman and it reminded her of him (“Batman’s the one with the butler, right?”) .
During spring break she flew out to see him, and he was pretty sure his band had never played so well as when she got up on stage with them to totally blow the fifteen people in the audience away. She beamed up at him when he hugged her after the show, and when she slipped his hand into his as they walked home, it felt like the most natural thing in the world.
xxx
If they texted every day and talked online as often as they could, she figured it was just because they were good friends. If her heart beat a little faster when his name flashed up on her phone, she thought it was probably best not to read too much into things. If sometimes she got drunk and called to tell him he had the best lips of any guy she’d ever seen, and if sometimes he got drunk and called to tell her that he was going to marry her some day, “definitely, Rach, I’m gonna be Mr Sam Berry, you wait and see”, well, that was just something people said to each other when they drank too much. It wasn’t like they were anything more than friends, and even if they were, what did it matter? They lived hundreds of miles apart, and they would for two more years.
So when she found herself missing him a little too much, felt herself getting in a little too deep, and so tried to stop talking to him quite so much, she didn’t feel too bad. She felt a little more guilty when he texted her asking if he’d done something wrong. She felt horrible when he came out to see her for her birthday, they went to a bar and made out in the cab on the way home, and even worse when, in her bed with his shirt off, he slurred, “hey, let’s not do this while we’re drunk, okay?”.
xxx
They never really talked about what happened in New York, and it happened sort of naturally that they talked less and less after that. He started dating a girl who had clearly wanted him for months, and he heard from Kurt that she was seeing some guy who he couldn’t help but think of as a jerk. He drifted through the rest of his junior year and his senior year after that, iin a kind of daze, constantly surprised that he couldn’t just call her up to hear her voice on the other end of the phone, hear her laugh at one of his dumb impressions and try to imitate them, badly herself. He found himself missing her at odd times, while he was studying for finals or hanging out with the band, he felt pathetic wondering if she missed him too, but couldn’t help thinking it.
He remembered her running her fingers through his hair and telling him to get a haircut. “Are you going to still look like a failed sixteen year old pop star when you’re thirty?”, she asked, and he’d laughed and pointed out the animal sweater she was wearing. He stared at his hair, already too long, in the mirror one day, and decided to cut it.
xxx
There was a reunion of the Glee club after graduation. They ate barbecue food in Puck’s back yard and reminisced about high school. They discussed what they’d be doing next, with college over and done with. She watched him carefully as he shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Live in Lima, for a while, I guess”, and remembered being simultaneously frustrated with his lack of ambition and relieved to have someone in her life who didn’t have their entire careers mapped out. Even while it was hypocritical, she’d loved that about him.
She’d stored him away carefully since she last saw him, put him out of her mind, avoided the things that might remind her of him, dated some guy who was too full of himself and that she couldn’t care less about, and broke up with him out of boredom. She found herself missing getting texts at breakfast telling her about the hilarious accent of a guy he’d met had, of him gently trying to explain to her the subtle emotional nuances of Spiderman, and tried her best to pretend she hadn’t made a mistake. She had no experience with this, the subtle ache, as if without even realising Sam, with his stupid haircut and his obsession with comic books, had slipped inside her heart and made himself at home, and then unceremoniously she’d kicked him out, and now she had to deal with the loss.
Then she saw him, and ridiculously, all she could think was “he cut his hair”. It had been months since they’d last avoided each other at a party, and she found her eyes drawn to him as soon as he entered, even as he made an effort to look away from her.
Inevitably, the old Glee club members ended up singing together. They ran through their old repertoire, yelling out the words to Journey songs as they all tried to out-sing each other and Puck’s neighbour’s curtains twitched. It was odd to find it was still familiar, they could still fall into the old dance routines they hadn’t done in years. They joked that Finn’s dancing still hadn’t improved, Artie insisted on finding something to rap to and Puck winked and leered as he played guitar along with them.
Gradually, as the sun began to set, the mood wound down. They drifted away to pick at the remainders of the food and talk in small groups. Puck strummed quietly at his guitar as Santana sang something slow, Brittany’s head on her shoulder and their hands clasped together.
She sat down next to Sam and found herself immediately unsure what to say, and apparently he felt the same because he smiled awkwardly and said, “It’s kind of funny, how it’s just like high school, isn’t it?”
“I suppose,” she said, because really everything seemed just like high school except for the two of them, they’d always missed out on each other then, and then they’d come close in college but never quite got there. “You cut your hair,” she said, and felt stupid.
He ran his hand over his head, “Yeah.”
They fell into silence, listening to the song, until finally he said, almost whispered, “So, I - uh - missed you, and stuff.”
She grinned, “I missed you too.”
“When are you going back to New York?” he asked, with a sideways glance.
“A couple of weeks,” she answered, and grasped his hand, “Come with me.” He looked taken aback, and she was too, surprised by her own words, but she didn’t regret them.
“What - “ he frowned, “Really?”
“Yes.” she said, hardly daring to look at him, “I’d like it if we could...you know, if we could try. You and I, we should try. I think it might work.”
He smiled, “I think so too.” Then he kissed her, as the song drew to a close.