my wasted heart
Title: my wasted heart
Chapter: 1/1
Pairing: Mike/Rachel (and some Puck/Rachel that snuck in)
Warning: Language. Some angst.
Word Count: 4,800
Summary: Mike doesn't know how he fell in love with his best friend, but it's proving problematic.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Part of the Twelve 'Ships of Christmas. Dedicated to smc_27 because she may be the only person who likes it.
"Mike Chang!"
Rachel's voice rings through the apartment, and he can't help grinning when he sees her making her way towards him, a half-empty bottle of cider clutched in her hand and her hair pushed back into a messy knot at the nape of her neck.
She only uses his first and last name when she's a little drunk.
She muscles her way past a blonde girl that Mike recognizes from other parties here at Blaine's, then stands on her toes to hug him, pressing the length of her body against his the way she always does, the way that he always thinks his thirteen-year-old self would have loved and hated her for simultaneously.
"Why are you late?" she demands, setting her hands on his shoulders and staring up at him when she pulls back.
He shrugs. "I got hung up." He only uses the excuse because he knows that she's drunk enough that she won't give him any grief for it.
She insists that he needs a drink, grabbing his hand and weaving their fingers together so she can lead him into the kitchen. In the fridge, there's a twelve-pack of Woodchuck pear cider with the words For Blaine and Rachel ONLY! scrawled on the side in Rachel's handwriting (and if there was any doubt that she wrote it, the exclamation point has a star at the bottom). She hands one to him and perches herself on the counter, hooking her feet behind his thighs to pull him close enough that she can talk without having the shout over the music. He lets her, because he likes being close to Rachel, even when he knows that it's a bad idea.
"I had breakfast with Jesse this morning," she tells him quietly. "His new show opens next week, and he invited me."
"Great." Yep, letting her pull him closer was a bad idea.
"Can you go with me? I don't want to sit there alone, and Blaine kind of hates Jesse."
Mike has less than zero desire to sit next to Rachel and watch Jesse St. James sing on a stage in some scroungy off-off-Broadway theater. "Sure."
Rachel lets out a big, dramatic breath and leans forward to press her lips to his cheek. Mike's hand lands on her waist when it feels like she's going to fall forward off the counter. "You're the best."
He wants to ask her if she really wants to get all wrapped up with Jesse again, but he knows that as useless as it would probably be the have the conversation at all, it's less than useless to do it when she's been drinking. He's just tired of seeing the things she lets this guy do to her over and over and over (and over and over, if he's keeping count) again.
Rachel deserves to have everything. Beyond the fact that she's fucking gorgeous (which she is), Rachel is truly one of the kindest, most interesting people that Mike has ever known, and the fact that she's in the habit of not insisting that guys treat her the way that she deserves is hard to watch. He supposes she's always let the people in her life do that to some degree; the only guy other than her dads who even comes close to treating her right is Blaine, but she isn't in a relationship with him.
Mike likes to think that he treats her the way that she deserves, but as a friend. Because that's how Rachel sees him. He's the guy she comes to when Finn or Jesse or Puck or Kurt or that guy from her composition class treats her like crap.
Whatever.
They hang out some, though after a while Blaine drags her off, and then Mike watches from a distance while she goes from a little drunk to completely drunk, her cheeks pink and her laugh ringing through the room every few minutes.
Blaine, Mike, and Rachel hang out together quite a bit, and usually if one of them throws a party where the others both drink, they just crash wherever. Tonight, Rachel asks Mike to walk her home when the party starts dying down and she realizes that Blaine isn't going to be letting her sleep over in his bed this time around. (That honor appears to be reserved for Jackson, who has messy blonde hair and his tongue in Blaine's mouth.) He agrees because she's his best friend and he'd do anything for her, but also because he knows that she'd do it by herself if he said no because, 'I have pepper spray, Mike, and this is a safe neighborhood, and I can't be afraid to do things on my own, even if I am a petite woman.'
She takes his hand when they cross the street at the end of Blaine's block. She doesn't let it go again until she has to use both hands to pull her keys out of her purse to get into her building, talking the whole time about how she was the one who introduced Blaine to Jackson in the first place and how she hopes that this thing between the two of them turns into more than a one-night stand.
(Mike is inclined to agree. At least part of the reason that Blaine came to New York was to be with Kurt, but in the year that they had been living in different states, they'd each changed, and that relationship fell apart just a couple of months after school started. Two years later, Kurt and Rachel aren't friends any more either, though she and Blaine are close, and Mike can't even remember the last time he saw Kurt. Blaine's had a series of pretty crappy relationships, and he deserves better too.
Actually, commiserating over crappy relationships is probably part of the reason that Blaine and Rachel got so close in the first place.)
Mike goes into the kitchen when Rachel goes into her room to change out of her little dress. She only craves real junk food when she's been drinking, but after three and a half years of running out for Doritos or Oreos or whatever else she wants at two or three in the morning, she's finally started keeping stuff in the cabinet for nights like these. He finds a bag of tortilla chips and some salsa, pours two glasses of water from the filter pitcher in the fridge, and carries it all into the living room. Rachel is standing there in a tank top and a tiny pair of pink shorts, clutching a DVD box in her hand and watching him hopefully.
"Mean Girls. Please. Please, oh, please, Mike Chang."
"No," he tells her seriously, setting his loot on the coffee table and taking the box from her hand to toss it aside.
"But, it's Tina Fey, and--"
"Rachel, I am Mean Girl-ed out." This isn't even the fifth time he's said this. "Anything else. Please."
She pouts at him for a second, then knits her eyebrows together when she realizes that he isn't going to give in. "Fine."
She chooses Breakfast at Tiffany's, which could be the strangest choice of drunk movie ever, but Mike is fine with whatever makes her happy. She skips past the part where Paul finds out who Holly really is, then lays her head against Mike's shoulder when Paul takes Holly drinking in the middle of the day.
"Do you think I'm deeply and importantly talented, Mike?" she murmurs. He can tell she's almost asleep, but he also knows that this is her favorite part of the movie. She's asked this every time he's watched it with her.
"I do," he answers, just like every other time. It's the truth. That stripper may only be superficially talented, but Rachel is a lot more.
She falls asleep there with her head on his shoulder, so he watches the rest of the movie alone, then picks her up and carries her into her bedroom, tugging the blankets up over her before stepping out of his jeans and slipping in beside her.
It isn't until she curls up against his side that he realizes that at some point, he woke her up. "You're the best, Mike Chang."
He kisses the top of her head and resists the urge to slip his hand into her hair so he can tip her face back and kiss her lips. "Night, Rach."
Mike doesn't know how he fell in love with his best friend, but it's proving problematic.
*
Jesse and Rachel 6.0 falls apart just six weeks after it begins when Rachel stops by his theater after a class to show him the jewelry that she found for her Halloween costume (they're planning to go to some party together as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, for whatever reason) and finds him in his dressing room in a particular state of undress with his female co-star, Phoebe.
Phoebe, from what Mike can gather later, was in a state of undress as well.
When Mike gets to Rachel's apartment with the pumpkin ale that he knows she's been drinking lately, Blaine is already there, and they've started Love Story.
"Okay, no," Mike insists, putting the beer on the coffee table and flicking off the television, ignoring Rachel's protests. "You don't do this for this guy any more," he declares, gesturing at the television. "This movie is too good for that guy."
Nevermind the fact that Mike hates Love Story. Rachel thinks it's wonderful, and every time she goes through a break up, she watches it and a bunch of other sad movies. But this thing with Jesse has worn out it's right to be mourned the same way as a normal relationship. Well, either that or it's earned it's own ridiculous, overblown, hopefully-for-the-last-time ritual.
"Mike, I like this movie," she reminds him, leaning forward so she can drop her tissue on the coffee table.
"That's my point. Why are you ruining it by watching it for Jesse St. Doesn't-Know-a-Good-Thing-When-He's-Got-It?"
"Mike."
"Rachel."
Blaine just looks between them with wide eyes.
Mike grabs on of the beers and twists off the cap. "Go get dressed, and drink this," he orders, handing it to Rachel. "We're going out."
"But--"
"Don't argue with me." He points a finger toward her bedroom and channels his father. "March."
She makes a sour face at him when she stands up, taking a sip of the beer and mumbling something about sounding like someone's dad when she's in the hallway.
"Is this a good idea?" Blaine asks when her bedroom door slams.
Mike shrugs, handing Blaine a beer before twisting the cap off one for himself. "Can't hurt, right?" He flops down on the couch. "You hate the guy even more than I do; aren't you sick of seeing her cry over him?"
Blaine concedes with a nod.
Mike doesn't care if they sit in some crappy dive bar and Rachel cries into a screwdriver made with well vodka. He's been watching her mope about Jesse since they were sixteen, and he's sick of it.
The bar they go to is a step above a dive, and she orders is a gin and tonic, but otherwise, it's remarkably like he imagined it might be.
"How could he cheat on me?" she demands, her eyes going all shiny for the umpteenth time tonight.
"'S'cause he's kind of an asshole, Rach," Mike slurs.
He's maybe been matching her drink for drink, and he's maybe kind of a lightweight for a dude. So he's maybe a little drunk.
Whatever.
"Rachel, he's never appreciated what he has with you," Blaine interjects, ignoring Mike.
Mike watches her lean forward across their table and lock eyes with Blaine. "I think he's my soulmate."
Blaine takes her hand and says, gently, "You thought Finn was your soulmate, too, sweetie."
Given the way that her eyes well up with tears all over again, this was apparently not the correct thing to say.
"I think Finn was my high school soulmate," she concedes, leaning back against the booth and bringing her drink to her mouth. Mike watches her struggle for just a moment before she manages to wrap her lips around the straw and take a long drink. "But I had this image in my head of what Jesse and I were supposed to be. Like Liz and Dick, but without the divorce and the other spouses and the scandals."
"Rachel--"
"I'd take the jewelry though," she interrupts Blaine.
"You know that only works if the guy you're dealing with isn't a douche, right?" Rachel gives Mike a dirty look. He shrugs and takes another sip of his drink. "Look, maybe you won't be half of the next Tim and Faith," he says, "or maybe you will, but with some dude you haven't met yet who isn't Jesse St. Fuck-Around."
Rachel rolls her eyes, and whatever. Fucking with St. James' last name never gets old and never stops being at least a little bit funny.
Especially if you've been sucking back gin for a couple of hours.
He isn't sure if Rachel is really done with Jesse this time (she never was before, after all), but she's singing Sara Bareilles at an obnoxious volume instead of crying when they're walking back to her place, and she kisses both Mike and Blaine on the lips as a thank you before she stumbles into her room to go to sleep.
Mike thinks about the whole thing when he's walking back to his place (Blaine stayed at Rachel's to make sure she's okay). He knows that he's never going to fit into Rachel's image of her ideal romantic life. He doesn't fit into any of the images of her ideal romantic life as far as he knows, and there are more than a few. (For example, he knows that she would still give things a chance with Finn if the guy showed up here in the city unannounced because it would fit into her 'married the high school sweetheart' image.) He knows that he isn't the guy that Rachel wants, and that's fine.
He's in love with her, but it's fine.
It's just hard to stand by and say nothing when he knows that he could be everything she ever wanted if she realized that he was there waiting to be.
Maybe he falls asleep feeling a little drunk and more than a little sorry for himself. But whatever.
*
Mike, Blaine, and Rachel drive back to Ohio for Thanksgiving together. They did it last year, and save for a little incident involving a turtle when Rachel was at the wheel of Blaine's car in Pennsylvania, it was successful enough to convince them that they should do it again.
It's a little weird being back in Lima, sleeping in the bedroom that he moved into when he was eight and his family moved across town. The room with the same green walls and the dent in the wall behind the bookshelf that his mom still doesn't know about. (He'd been hanging out with Matt and Finn after a baseball game the summer before freshman year, and there was a thing with a ball that ended with it being flung against a wall.)
Mike's mom basically holds him hostage at the house for the entire weekend, which would be fine if he wasn't a grown man totally capable of taking care of himself. He loves his mom - he would do anything for that woman, honest to goodness - and he likes spending time with her, but he leaves the house on Sunday morning to head over to Blaine's feeling grateful that he isn't going to be home again for Christmas in just a few weeks.
They stop about three hours into the drive at the same rest stop that they can now officially say they 'always' stop at to stretch their legs and get a snack and switch seats. Mike tries to make the best of the terrible truck stop coffee options, filling a large cup halfway with the scorched-smelling drip coffee and topping it off with what claims to be English toffee-flavored 'cappuccino.' It's terrible, but it's caffeinated, and with Rachel in the passenger seat (and therefore in charge of the music) for the next few hours, he's going to need it. She great and all, but he kind of hates the fact that he can sing along with the entirety of no fewer than ten different Broadway soundtracks.
Rachel's fiddling with her iPod when Mike hits the on-ramp, flicking on his turn signal and glancing at his blind spot so he can merge into traffic, all while keeping hold of his drink, which he knows Rachel hates. Blaine's rustling around in the back seat, flipping pages in an enormous book of Shakespeare's plays for a class, and Mike has just set the cruise control when Rachel drops her iPod onto her lap and turns to look at him over the console.
"I had sex with Noah."
He doesn't know how it happens, but there's suddenly hot coffee all over his right hand, running down his wrist and dripping onto the gearshift. Blaine is talking, leaning up between the seats and handing Rachel a golf towel (why is that in here?). She takes the paper cup from Mike and looks at his hand to make sure that he hasn't actually scalded his skin.
It's all sort of a mess for a few minutes, even though Mike is still moving Blaine's car steadily up the highway, until Rachel manages to get all of the coffee wiped up and his now half-empty cup is safely in the cup holder.
Blaine is the one who asks the question. "You had sex with Puck?"
"Yes."
"When?"
Mike doesn't know why she look sheepish when she says, "When I told you I was going to temple." Oh.
"Rachel!"
"Well, I did go to temple," she counters, turning in her seat to face Blaine. Mike watches the guy's face in the rearview mirror. "Noah was there with his mother, and we went for coffee afterwards and got to talking, and...well, one thing led to another, and..."
"And he fell and put his penis inside you?" Blaine asks dryly. The dude rarely pulls the crude card, so it really hits home when he does.
"Don't be disgusting," she snaps, sparing a bit of her glare for Mike when she realizes that he's snickering beside her. Her expression softens a bit, and he can see her face out of the corner of his eye when she twists in her seat to look at Blaine. "He's moving to New York."
Something twists in Mike's stomach.
"When?"
"In just a couple of weeks, when he finishes up the class he's teaching. He found out that he could get a lot more session work in New York than he can in Chicago, and he says that he has enough saved to stay in the city for a while once he gets on his feet." She shrugs her shoulders. "It's a good idea."
"And was jumping into bed with him again a good idea?"
Blaine is way better at this part of being Rachel's friend than Mike is. Mostly because Blaine has no desire to jump into bed with Rachel himself, and Mike can't talk about the subject without feeling queasy or super turned on.
Right now, it's queasy, and his coffee hybrid is seeming like an even worse idea than it was when he spilled it all over himself and the car two minutes ago.
Rachel turns to sit correctly in her seat, picking up her iPod again and fiddling with it. "Noah and I have always been a what if. I'm not saying that I'm jumping into a relationship with him, but I'm not going to turn my back on something that I've always wondered about."
The Christmas song from Rent rings through the car then, effectively ending the conversation. Rachel stares out the passenger window, and Mike can hear Blaine flipping pages in his book every few minutes.
Rachel plays Christmas music the entire time that Mike drives, which would probably be a lot more fun if the three of the weren't playing some weird version of the quiet game. Mike's a litle preoccupied thinking about how much he doesn't want Puck to move to the city and then feeling like a crappy friend, to Rachel and to Puck, for feeling that way.
The fact that he's friends with Puck means that he's going to be subjected to seeing more of him with Rachel once they get together. And Mike is fairly certain that they're going to end up together; there's always been something between those two, even if they never did manage to get it figured out. They tried once before, when they were both back in Lima for the summer a couple years back, and they just ended things that fall because Puck was in Chicago and Rachel was in New York and neither of them was planning on that changing any time soon.
Mike isn't like, desperate for Rachel or whatever. He's working on accepting the fact that he's in love with her, and they're never going to happen. Watching her with other dudes makes that hard. Watching her with dudes that he knows, dudes that he's pretty sure love Rachel at least a little bit already, is like torture.
He doesn't bother unpacking his bags when he gets back to his apartment. Instead, he just drops his stuff inside the front door and crosses the room until he's flopping back on his bed, only moving again to lift his phone so he can text his mom to let her know they made it back safe.
*
Rachel left out the part where Puck was moving into her apartment.
"The lease on his place doesn't start until February. It's not a big deal," Rachel says. She and Mike are in Brooklyn doing some Christmas shopping, though they came out here specifically to get a tie for Blaine from this store that he's really into. "I actually don't hate having a guy around like I thought I would."
Mike's fists clench a little in his pockets.
"And he knows everything about me," she goes on, oblivious to how much Mike's hating the conversation. "Jesse knew a lot, but not like Noah. And even though it feels like we know everything already, we don't run out of things to talk about." She takes a deep breath and blows it out, her breath forming a cloud in front of her for just a second before it dissipates. "I think it could really work this time, Mike."
He hates his life.
"I'm sorry," Rachel says when he doesn't say anything right away. "I usually save this kind of gushing for Blaine."
"It's fine," he insists. "You can tell me anything, you know that." He means it. She can tell him anything. Even the stuff that makes him want to go watch It's a Wonderful Life but stop before the happy part.
She smiles fondly up at him, looping her arm through his. "You're the best, you know that?"
He kisses the top of her head and tugs her into a little used bookstore, partially because he's cold and partially because she likes bookstores.
It's mostly just so he has an excuse to take a few steps away from her.
*
"So, how long have you been in love with Rachel?"
Mike stares at Blaine over the top of his bowl of Crispix, and the only thought in his head is, how the fuck does he know?
"What?" he asks stupidly.
Blaine rolls his eyes and leans tiredly against the counter. "I see the way you look at her, man. And I saw the way you drank last night every time you saw Puck put his hands on her."
Fuck Blaine and all of his I'm-a-perceptive-gay-best-friend bullshit. Yeah, Mike drank more last night than he has in a long time, and yes, it's because he was stuck in Rachel's apartment with her and Puck, and yes, it's probably a really good fucking thing that he was drinking beer instead of liquor.
"Shut up, dude."
Blaine gives him a knowing look, but instead of saying anything else, he just puts the bottle of Advil on the counter next to Mike's cereal bowl before he goes to get in the shower.
*
Rachel decides that she wants to host a little Hanukkah dinner celebration at her party since she has another Jew around. Neither Blaine nor Mike is totally ignorant, but they don't know a lot about Hanukkah either, so it sounds like a good idea.
Well, it would sound like a good idea if it didn't mean that just the four of them were going to hang out at Rachel's place - the place she's currently sharing with Puck - and watch them be Jewish together.
He's avoided spending time with the two of them together. Hell, he's gone so far as to avoid both of them, because the whole thing makes him feel sort of crazy and pathetic all at once. If he wasn't man enough to make his move, he doesn't deserve to have her. He knows that. But that doesn't make watching her with someone else suck any less.
And he's a terrible friend for it, but he can tell that she's really happy with Puck right now, and it makes him feel even more awful.
Rachel finds him standing at the window in the living room after they've eaten and done the candle thing. She has a neighbor across the tree who has turned the three windows on this side of his apartment into this strangely elaborate lighted scene, and Mike's trying to figure out what the shape in the middle window is supposed to be.
"I feel like I haven't seen you in ages," Rachel says softly, standing close enough so her arm is pressed against the length of his. "I guess you've been busy."
He nods because that easier than admitting the truth.
She blinks up at him with sad eyes. "I miss you."
He can't help himself. He hates himself while he's doing it, but he slips his arm around her waist the way he has a million times before, dropping a kiss to the top of her head. Really, at this point, he has two choices: He can walk away from her and their friendship, or he can suck it up and take her how he can get her.
He hates his options.
"So what's going on over there?" he asks her when she leans into his side, gesturing out the window and across the street.
He and Blaine are quiet in the elevator on the way downstairs, watching the numbers go down on the display in silence like they're strangers instead of best friends. Mike knows that he's being terrible company right now, but his mood really sucks.
"For what it's worth," Blaine says, pausing when the elevator dings and the doors slide open, "she's really happy right now."
"I know." He knows.
Chapter: 1/1
Pairing: Mike/Rachel (and some Puck/Rachel that snuck in)
Warning: Language. Some angst.
Word Count: 4,800
Summary: Mike doesn't know how he fell in love with his best friend, but it's proving problematic.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Part of the Twelve 'Ships of Christmas. Dedicated to smc_27 because she may be the only person who likes it.
"Mike Chang!"
Rachel's voice rings through the apartment, and he can't help grinning when he sees her making her way towards him, a half-empty bottle of cider clutched in her hand and her hair pushed back into a messy knot at the nape of her neck.
She only uses his first and last name when she's a little drunk.
She muscles her way past a blonde girl that Mike recognizes from other parties here at Blaine's, then stands on her toes to hug him, pressing the length of her body against his the way she always does, the way that he always thinks his thirteen-year-old self would have loved and hated her for simultaneously.
"Why are you late?" she demands, setting her hands on his shoulders and staring up at him when she pulls back.
He shrugs. "I got hung up." He only uses the excuse because he knows that she's drunk enough that she won't give him any grief for it.
She insists that he needs a drink, grabbing his hand and weaving their fingers together so she can lead him into the kitchen. In the fridge, there's a twelve-pack of Woodchuck pear cider with the words For Blaine and Rachel ONLY! scrawled on the side in Rachel's handwriting (and if there was any doubt that she wrote it, the exclamation point has a star at the bottom). She hands one to him and perches herself on the counter, hooking her feet behind his thighs to pull him close enough that she can talk without having the shout over the music. He lets her, because he likes being close to Rachel, even when he knows that it's a bad idea.
"I had breakfast with Jesse this morning," she tells him quietly. "His new show opens next week, and he invited me."
"Great." Yep, letting her pull him closer was a bad idea.
"Can you go with me? I don't want to sit there alone, and Blaine kind of hates Jesse."
Mike has less than zero desire to sit next to Rachel and watch Jesse St. James sing on a stage in some scroungy off-off-Broadway theater. "Sure."
Rachel lets out a big, dramatic breath and leans forward to press her lips to his cheek. Mike's hand lands on her waist when it feels like she's going to fall forward off the counter. "You're the best."
He wants to ask her if she really wants to get all wrapped up with Jesse again, but he knows that as useless as it would probably be the have the conversation at all, it's less than useless to do it when she's been drinking. He's just tired of seeing the things she lets this guy do to her over and over and over (and over and over, if he's keeping count) again.
Rachel deserves to have everything. Beyond the fact that she's fucking gorgeous (which she is), Rachel is truly one of the kindest, most interesting people that Mike has ever known, and the fact that she's in the habit of not insisting that guys treat her the way that she deserves is hard to watch. He supposes she's always let the people in her life do that to some degree; the only guy other than her dads who even comes close to treating her right is Blaine, but she isn't in a relationship with him.
Mike likes to think that he treats her the way that she deserves, but as a friend. Because that's how Rachel sees him. He's the guy she comes to when Finn or Jesse or Puck or Kurt or that guy from her composition class treats her like crap.
Whatever.
They hang out some, though after a while Blaine drags her off, and then Mike watches from a distance while she goes from a little drunk to completely drunk, her cheeks pink and her laugh ringing through the room every few minutes.
Blaine, Mike, and Rachel hang out together quite a bit, and usually if one of them throws a party where the others both drink, they just crash wherever. Tonight, Rachel asks Mike to walk her home when the party starts dying down and she realizes that Blaine isn't going to be letting her sleep over in his bed this time around. (That honor appears to be reserved for Jackson, who has messy blonde hair and his tongue in Blaine's mouth.) He agrees because she's his best friend and he'd do anything for her, but also because he knows that she'd do it by herself if he said no because, 'I have pepper spray, Mike, and this is a safe neighborhood, and I can't be afraid to do things on my own, even if I am a petite woman.'
She takes his hand when they cross the street at the end of Blaine's block. She doesn't let it go again until she has to use both hands to pull her keys out of her purse to get into her building, talking the whole time about how she was the one who introduced Blaine to Jackson in the first place and how she hopes that this thing between the two of them turns into more than a one-night stand.
(Mike is inclined to agree. At least part of the reason that Blaine came to New York was to be with Kurt, but in the year that they had been living in different states, they'd each changed, and that relationship fell apart just a couple of months after school started. Two years later, Kurt and Rachel aren't friends any more either, though she and Blaine are close, and Mike can't even remember the last time he saw Kurt. Blaine's had a series of pretty crappy relationships, and he deserves better too.
Actually, commiserating over crappy relationships is probably part of the reason that Blaine and Rachel got so close in the first place.)
Mike goes into the kitchen when Rachel goes into her room to change out of her little dress. She only craves real junk food when she's been drinking, but after three and a half years of running out for Doritos or Oreos or whatever else she wants at two or three in the morning, she's finally started keeping stuff in the cabinet for nights like these. He finds a bag of tortilla chips and some salsa, pours two glasses of water from the filter pitcher in the fridge, and carries it all into the living room. Rachel is standing there in a tank top and a tiny pair of pink shorts, clutching a DVD box in her hand and watching him hopefully.
"Mean Girls. Please. Please, oh, please, Mike Chang."
"No," he tells her seriously, setting his loot on the coffee table and taking the box from her hand to toss it aside.
"But, it's Tina Fey, and--"
"Rachel, I am Mean Girl-ed out." This isn't even the fifth time he's said this. "Anything else. Please."
She pouts at him for a second, then knits her eyebrows together when she realizes that he isn't going to give in. "Fine."
She chooses Breakfast at Tiffany's, which could be the strangest choice of drunk movie ever, but Mike is fine with whatever makes her happy. She skips past the part where Paul finds out who Holly really is, then lays her head against Mike's shoulder when Paul takes Holly drinking in the middle of the day.
"Do you think I'm deeply and importantly talented, Mike?" she murmurs. He can tell she's almost asleep, but he also knows that this is her favorite part of the movie. She's asked this every time he's watched it with her.
"I do," he answers, just like every other time. It's the truth. That stripper may only be superficially talented, but Rachel is a lot more.
She falls asleep there with her head on his shoulder, so he watches the rest of the movie alone, then picks her up and carries her into her bedroom, tugging the blankets up over her before stepping out of his jeans and slipping in beside her.
It isn't until she curls up against his side that he realizes that at some point, he woke her up. "You're the best, Mike Chang."
He kisses the top of her head and resists the urge to slip his hand into her hair so he can tip her face back and kiss her lips. "Night, Rach."
Mike doesn't know how he fell in love with his best friend, but it's proving problematic.
*
Jesse and Rachel 6.0 falls apart just six weeks after it begins when Rachel stops by his theater after a class to show him the jewelry that she found for her Halloween costume (they're planning to go to some party together as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, for whatever reason) and finds him in his dressing room in a particular state of undress with his female co-star, Phoebe.
Phoebe, from what Mike can gather later, was in a state of undress as well.
When Mike gets to Rachel's apartment with the pumpkin ale that he knows she's been drinking lately, Blaine is already there, and they've started Love Story.
"Okay, no," Mike insists, putting the beer on the coffee table and flicking off the television, ignoring Rachel's protests. "You don't do this for this guy any more," he declares, gesturing at the television. "This movie is too good for that guy."
Nevermind the fact that Mike hates Love Story. Rachel thinks it's wonderful, and every time she goes through a break up, she watches it and a bunch of other sad movies. But this thing with Jesse has worn out it's right to be mourned the same way as a normal relationship. Well, either that or it's earned it's own ridiculous, overblown, hopefully-for-the-last-time ritual.
"Mike, I like this movie," she reminds him, leaning forward so she can drop her tissue on the coffee table.
"That's my point. Why are you ruining it by watching it for Jesse St. Doesn't-Know-a-Good-Thing-When-He's-Got-It?"
"Mike."
"Rachel."
Blaine just looks between them with wide eyes.
Mike grabs on of the beers and twists off the cap. "Go get dressed, and drink this," he orders, handing it to Rachel. "We're going out."
"But--"
"Don't argue with me." He points a finger toward her bedroom and channels his father. "March."
She makes a sour face at him when she stands up, taking a sip of the beer and mumbling something about sounding like someone's dad when she's in the hallway.
"Is this a good idea?" Blaine asks when her bedroom door slams.
Mike shrugs, handing Blaine a beer before twisting the cap off one for himself. "Can't hurt, right?" He flops down on the couch. "You hate the guy even more than I do; aren't you sick of seeing her cry over him?"
Blaine concedes with a nod.
Mike doesn't care if they sit in some crappy dive bar and Rachel cries into a screwdriver made with well vodka. He's been watching her mope about Jesse since they were sixteen, and he's sick of it.
The bar they go to is a step above a dive, and she orders is a gin and tonic, but otherwise, it's remarkably like he imagined it might be.
"How could he cheat on me?" she demands, her eyes going all shiny for the umpteenth time tonight.
"'S'cause he's kind of an asshole, Rach," Mike slurs.
He's maybe been matching her drink for drink, and he's maybe kind of a lightweight for a dude. So he's maybe a little drunk.
Whatever.
"Rachel, he's never appreciated what he has with you," Blaine interjects, ignoring Mike.
Mike watches her lean forward across their table and lock eyes with Blaine. "I think he's my soulmate."
Blaine takes her hand and says, gently, "You thought Finn was your soulmate, too, sweetie."
Given the way that her eyes well up with tears all over again, this was apparently not the correct thing to say.
"I think Finn was my high school soulmate," she concedes, leaning back against the booth and bringing her drink to her mouth. Mike watches her struggle for just a moment before she manages to wrap her lips around the straw and take a long drink. "But I had this image in my head of what Jesse and I were supposed to be. Like Liz and Dick, but without the divorce and the other spouses and the scandals."
"Rachel--"
"I'd take the jewelry though," she interrupts Blaine.
"You know that only works if the guy you're dealing with isn't a douche, right?" Rachel gives Mike a dirty look. He shrugs and takes another sip of his drink. "Look, maybe you won't be half of the next Tim and Faith," he says, "or maybe you will, but with some dude you haven't met yet who isn't Jesse St. Fuck-Around."
Rachel rolls her eyes, and whatever. Fucking with St. James' last name never gets old and never stops being at least a little bit funny.
Especially if you've been sucking back gin for a couple of hours.
He isn't sure if Rachel is really done with Jesse this time (she never was before, after all), but she's singing Sara Bareilles at an obnoxious volume instead of crying when they're walking back to her place, and she kisses both Mike and Blaine on the lips as a thank you before she stumbles into her room to go to sleep.
Mike thinks about the whole thing when he's walking back to his place (Blaine stayed at Rachel's to make sure she's okay). He knows that he's never going to fit into Rachel's image of her ideal romantic life. He doesn't fit into any of the images of her ideal romantic life as far as he knows, and there are more than a few. (For example, he knows that she would still give things a chance with Finn if the guy showed up here in the city unannounced because it would fit into her 'married the high school sweetheart' image.) He knows that he isn't the guy that Rachel wants, and that's fine.
He's in love with her, but it's fine.
It's just hard to stand by and say nothing when he knows that he could be everything she ever wanted if she realized that he was there waiting to be.
Maybe he falls asleep feeling a little drunk and more than a little sorry for himself. But whatever.
*
Mike, Blaine, and Rachel drive back to Ohio for Thanksgiving together. They did it last year, and save for a little incident involving a turtle when Rachel was at the wheel of Blaine's car in Pennsylvania, it was successful enough to convince them that they should do it again.
It's a little weird being back in Lima, sleeping in the bedroom that he moved into when he was eight and his family moved across town. The room with the same green walls and the dent in the wall behind the bookshelf that his mom still doesn't know about. (He'd been hanging out with Matt and Finn after a baseball game the summer before freshman year, and there was a thing with a ball that ended with it being flung against a wall.)
Mike's mom basically holds him hostage at the house for the entire weekend, which would be fine if he wasn't a grown man totally capable of taking care of himself. He loves his mom - he would do anything for that woman, honest to goodness - and he likes spending time with her, but he leaves the house on Sunday morning to head over to Blaine's feeling grateful that he isn't going to be home again for Christmas in just a few weeks.
They stop about three hours into the drive at the same rest stop that they can now officially say they 'always' stop at to stretch their legs and get a snack and switch seats. Mike tries to make the best of the terrible truck stop coffee options, filling a large cup halfway with the scorched-smelling drip coffee and topping it off with what claims to be English toffee-flavored 'cappuccino.' It's terrible, but it's caffeinated, and with Rachel in the passenger seat (and therefore in charge of the music) for the next few hours, he's going to need it. She great and all, but he kind of hates the fact that he can sing along with the entirety of no fewer than ten different Broadway soundtracks.
Rachel's fiddling with her iPod when Mike hits the on-ramp, flicking on his turn signal and glancing at his blind spot so he can merge into traffic, all while keeping hold of his drink, which he knows Rachel hates. Blaine's rustling around in the back seat, flipping pages in an enormous book of Shakespeare's plays for a class, and Mike has just set the cruise control when Rachel drops her iPod onto her lap and turns to look at him over the console.
"I had sex with Noah."
He doesn't know how it happens, but there's suddenly hot coffee all over his right hand, running down his wrist and dripping onto the gearshift. Blaine is talking, leaning up between the seats and handing Rachel a golf towel (why is that in here?). She takes the paper cup from Mike and looks at his hand to make sure that he hasn't actually scalded his skin.
It's all sort of a mess for a few minutes, even though Mike is still moving Blaine's car steadily up the highway, until Rachel manages to get all of the coffee wiped up and his now half-empty cup is safely in the cup holder.
Blaine is the one who asks the question. "You had sex with Puck?"
"Yes."
"When?"
Mike doesn't know why she look sheepish when she says, "When I told you I was going to temple." Oh.
"Rachel!"
"Well, I did go to temple," she counters, turning in her seat to face Blaine. Mike watches the guy's face in the rearview mirror. "Noah was there with his mother, and we went for coffee afterwards and got to talking, and...well, one thing led to another, and..."
"And he fell and put his penis inside you?" Blaine asks dryly. The dude rarely pulls the crude card, so it really hits home when he does.
"Don't be disgusting," she snaps, sparing a bit of her glare for Mike when she realizes that he's snickering beside her. Her expression softens a bit, and he can see her face out of the corner of his eye when she twists in her seat to look at Blaine. "He's moving to New York."
Something twists in Mike's stomach.
"When?"
"In just a couple of weeks, when he finishes up the class he's teaching. He found out that he could get a lot more session work in New York than he can in Chicago, and he says that he has enough saved to stay in the city for a while once he gets on his feet." She shrugs her shoulders. "It's a good idea."
"And was jumping into bed with him again a good idea?"
Blaine is way better at this part of being Rachel's friend than Mike is. Mostly because Blaine has no desire to jump into bed with Rachel himself, and Mike can't talk about the subject without feeling queasy or super turned on.
Right now, it's queasy, and his coffee hybrid is seeming like an even worse idea than it was when he spilled it all over himself and the car two minutes ago.
Rachel turns to sit correctly in her seat, picking up her iPod again and fiddling with it. "Noah and I have always been a what if. I'm not saying that I'm jumping into a relationship with him, but I'm not going to turn my back on something that I've always wondered about."
The Christmas song from Rent rings through the car then, effectively ending the conversation. Rachel stares out the passenger window, and Mike can hear Blaine flipping pages in his book every few minutes.
Rachel plays Christmas music the entire time that Mike drives, which would probably be a lot more fun if the three of the weren't playing some weird version of the quiet game. Mike's a litle preoccupied thinking about how much he doesn't want Puck to move to the city and then feeling like a crappy friend, to Rachel and to Puck, for feeling that way.
The fact that he's friends with Puck means that he's going to be subjected to seeing more of him with Rachel once they get together. And Mike is fairly certain that they're going to end up together; there's always been something between those two, even if they never did manage to get it figured out. They tried once before, when they were both back in Lima for the summer a couple years back, and they just ended things that fall because Puck was in Chicago and Rachel was in New York and neither of them was planning on that changing any time soon.
Mike isn't like, desperate for Rachel or whatever. He's working on accepting the fact that he's in love with her, and they're never going to happen. Watching her with other dudes makes that hard. Watching her with dudes that he knows, dudes that he's pretty sure love Rachel at least a little bit already, is like torture.
He doesn't bother unpacking his bags when he gets back to his apartment. Instead, he just drops his stuff inside the front door and crosses the room until he's flopping back on his bed, only moving again to lift his phone so he can text his mom to let her know they made it back safe.
*
Rachel left out the part where Puck was moving into her apartment.
"The lease on his place doesn't start until February. It's not a big deal," Rachel says. She and Mike are in Brooklyn doing some Christmas shopping, though they came out here specifically to get a tie for Blaine from this store that he's really into. "I actually don't hate having a guy around like I thought I would."
Mike's fists clench a little in his pockets.
"And he knows everything about me," she goes on, oblivious to how much Mike's hating the conversation. "Jesse knew a lot, but not like Noah. And even though it feels like we know everything already, we don't run out of things to talk about." She takes a deep breath and blows it out, her breath forming a cloud in front of her for just a second before it dissipates. "I think it could really work this time, Mike."
He hates his life.
"I'm sorry," Rachel says when he doesn't say anything right away. "I usually save this kind of gushing for Blaine."
"It's fine," he insists. "You can tell me anything, you know that." He means it. She can tell him anything. Even the stuff that makes him want to go watch It's a Wonderful Life but stop before the happy part.
She smiles fondly up at him, looping her arm through his. "You're the best, you know that?"
He kisses the top of her head and tugs her into a little used bookstore, partially because he's cold and partially because she likes bookstores.
It's mostly just so he has an excuse to take a few steps away from her.
*
"So, how long have you been in love with Rachel?"
Mike stares at Blaine over the top of his bowl of Crispix, and the only thought in his head is, how the fuck does he know?
"What?" he asks stupidly.
Blaine rolls his eyes and leans tiredly against the counter. "I see the way you look at her, man. And I saw the way you drank last night every time you saw Puck put his hands on her."
Fuck Blaine and all of his I'm-a-perceptive-gay-best-friend bullshit. Yeah, Mike drank more last night than he has in a long time, and yes, it's because he was stuck in Rachel's apartment with her and Puck, and yes, it's probably a really good fucking thing that he was drinking beer instead of liquor.
"Shut up, dude."
Blaine gives him a knowing look, but instead of saying anything else, he just puts the bottle of Advil on the counter next to Mike's cereal bowl before he goes to get in the shower.
*
Rachel decides that she wants to host a little Hanukkah dinner celebration at her party since she has another Jew around. Neither Blaine nor Mike is totally ignorant, but they don't know a lot about Hanukkah either, so it sounds like a good idea.
Well, it would sound like a good idea if it didn't mean that just the four of them were going to hang out at Rachel's place - the place she's currently sharing with Puck - and watch them be Jewish together.
He's avoided spending time with the two of them together. Hell, he's gone so far as to avoid both of them, because the whole thing makes him feel sort of crazy and pathetic all at once. If he wasn't man enough to make his move, he doesn't deserve to have her. He knows that. But that doesn't make watching her with someone else suck any less.
And he's a terrible friend for it, but he can tell that she's really happy with Puck right now, and it makes him feel even more awful.
Rachel finds him standing at the window in the living room after they've eaten and done the candle thing. She has a neighbor across the tree who has turned the three windows on this side of his apartment into this strangely elaborate lighted scene, and Mike's trying to figure out what the shape in the middle window is supposed to be.
"I feel like I haven't seen you in ages," Rachel says softly, standing close enough so her arm is pressed against the length of his. "I guess you've been busy."
He nods because that easier than admitting the truth.
She blinks up at him with sad eyes. "I miss you."
He can't help himself. He hates himself while he's doing it, but he slips his arm around her waist the way he has a million times before, dropping a kiss to the top of her head. Really, at this point, he has two choices: He can walk away from her and their friendship, or he can suck it up and take her how he can get her.
He hates his options.
"So what's going on over there?" he asks her when she leans into his side, gesturing out the window and across the street.
He and Blaine are quiet in the elevator on the way downstairs, watching the numbers go down on the display in silence like they're strangers instead of best friends. Mike knows that he's being terrible company right now, but his mood really sucks.
"For what it's worth," Blaine says, pausing when the elevator dings and the doors slide open, "she's really happy right now."
"I know." He knows.