Fic: 'Never Quite Over'
Title: “Never Quite Over”
Fandom: Glee
Characters/Pairings: Rachel/Jesse,
Challenge/Prompt: Written for paperclipbitch's Post-Easter multi-fandom comment ficathon. But it got a bit long for a comment fic…
Rating: G
Genre: Gen
Word Count: 1286
Copyright: I don’t own ‘Glee’ or anything to do with it; I just have vivid hallucinations.
New Directions win at Regionals.
It's kind of inevitable-- Vocal Adrenaline were in a totally different grouping due to that immensely suspicious tie in the Sectionals-- and when the victors are announced Jesse feels an odd spark in his chest that might precede an outpouring of affection or might precede a heart-attack.
The idea of penning original songs was certainly impressive (although he would argue that the style choices didn't showcase the talent of New Directions as a group to anywhere near its full potential). But their show-stopping anthem number was perfectly pitched to a room literally full to bursting with Lima Losers, and it rolled right over Oral Aural Intensity's Jesus-lovefest and that ode to homosexuality from Dalton Academy.
Jesse slides down a little in his seat and continues his polite clapping as the victory sinks in. Out of obligation, he lets his gaze wander over the stageful of competitors, amused at some of the faces, impressed by how much some of them have changed, although some haven't at all. Then he lets his eyes settle, and he watches Rachel: because no-one's here to tell him not to.
The first-place trophy is almost as tall as she is, but that doesn't stop her. Mr Schuester grabs it first, but his star soloist snatches it away almost immediately, pulling it into her chest like a comically oversized Tony award.
Jesse's not sitting close enough to see the sparkle in her eyes; the huge perfect pearly white grin, made for the spotlight. Instead, he remembers her lips caught in a tight pink line; her knuckles white in Finn's iron grip, the stage lights twinkling across the gold lace of her dress. He remembers the slide of her big, dark, soulful eyes, and the second they met his, as if perfectly choreographed.
Then Vocal Adrenaline's name was called, and he didn't see her face anymore... He couldn't bring himself to look at it, and buried himself in the ecstatic huddle of his teammates instead.
The cassette tape with Shelby's voice on it is covered in gold stars, with a neat label that says 'mom' across it, in big friendly letters.
Rachel listens to it quietly sometimes, in the dark, or when her dads are out. She took it into school once and played it in the auditorium after rehearsal was finished.
Shelby. Mom. Shelby. Mom.
The two words never seem to mesh very well.
Especially when that third name keeps trying to slip in on a counter-rhythm:
Shelby. Mom. Shelby. Jesse. Shelby. Mom. Shelby. Jesse...
"What's this?" Big eyes; expression surprised but curious. He turns the tape over in his fingers and reads, with a slight indent between his eyebrows. "From mother to daughter...?"
Rachel did figure it out, eventually, as she lay on her prickly carpet in the dark, thinking about dreams, and tigers, and summers spent by his side. But even knowing it had all been a set-up-- not just on behalf of a wily show-choir director, but on behalf of her own mother, who sent rakishly pretty baritenors as bait after her abandoned daughter-- Rachel can't help wanting to talk with him again; ask all about the woman who's DNA she has swimming inside her; the woman who gave up her daughter for a chance at stardom; who taught a title-winning showchoir but has Rachel's eyes, even down to the pain swirling around behind her steely, well-practised show-face. Because Jesse knows her mom in a way Rachel can't even pretend to. As a mentor. A friend. A co-conspirator.
Rachel imagines herself and Jesse sitting in the window of some trendy LA coffee house, far enough away from the people who would judge her for it, toying with decaf lattes. Neither of them has anything to hide anymore, and they're not competing. They just sit, and talk about this amazing woman who gave them both life (although in totally different ways, my god) who meant so much to them... And it would be nice, and it would be genuine, and maybe, at one point, Jesse's fingers would find hers, and he'd stroke along the outside of her pinkie and both of them would pretend not to notice.
"Befriend her, is what I said, actually."
But yet, for some reason, Shelby was totally ok with her star pupil seducing her biological daughter.
That's the thing. None of it was ever really about Jesse and Rachel. It was about Rachel and Shelby. It was about New Directions and Vocal Adrenaline. On the periphery it was about Rachel and Finn; Jesse and his acting abilities.
It was never about Jesse and Rachel.
It even sounds weird in his head: Jesse and Rachel.
Nevertheless, Jesse spends a year in his dorm room at UCLA watching Rachel Berry's relationship status on Facebook, and convinces himself it’s for his own sick amusement:
Rachel Berry is in a relationship with Finn Hudson.
Rachel Berry is single.
Rachel Berry is in a relationship with Finn Hudson
It's complicated.
Rachel Berry is single.
It's complicated.
Some things apparently never change.
He wonders if he could do it again: swoop in right under the nose of that freakishly tall quarterback and steal away his girlfriend. Even in his own head Jesse's not sure if he'd be doing it out of spite, or out of irony, or out of... some other thing.
Fact is: he did seduce her. He spied her in that library on a muggy Tuesday afternoon, rifling through sheet music, her dark her swinging in front of her face as her brow furrowed in concentration, and decided he would kiss her before the week was up.
Shelby wanted him to befriend Rachel Berry. But, well: Jesse always was an overachiever.
Trouble is, sometimes, he just has no freaking clue what he wanted to achieve.
Yes, she had Finn's shoulder to cry into-- but somehow, even that didn't seem enough, as she watched her ex-boyfriend and her own mother hug on stage before hefting that beautiful, shiny first-place trophy high into the air.
It didn't take long for the New Directions to change and pack up, every one of them feeling the words 'Lima Losers' hanging over their heads like a foul-smelling cloud of Puck's 'medicinal marijuana'. For a long time Finn waited by the door, holding both their bags; but eventually even he cottoned on and followed the others to the bus as Rachel stood in the centre of the dressing rooms: still not a star-- just a short, average-looking high-school sophomore, cheeks scrubbed pink from make-up remover and tears, a kink in her hair from the bumpit.
She busied herself tidying up some scraps from the floor, flicking all the light switches the right way; re-adjusting her purse across her shoulder, re-zipping the front of her dress-cover. But Shelby never came. Nor Jesse.
She felt they were due a last scene; some closing dialogue.
Apparently, life didn't always work like a well-balanced screenplay.
Jesse's phone bleeps. He glances up at the stage-- just to check New Directions aren't making a triumphant exit up and out the centre aisle-- before sliding his cell out of his pocket. It's from Andrea:
7 for 7. xx
(Don't read anything into the kisses. They're aimed at the air just beside his cheek-bones; pure showbiz).
Vocal Adrenaline won their Regional. They're going to New York.
Thoughtfully, Jesse turns his phone over in his fingers, and he looks back at the tiny brunette in the garish sky-blue dress, still leaping into the arms of her fellow Glee-clubbers, getting in the way as paramedics rush past to tend to a thoroughly concussed Mrs Turlington-Stevens.
Nationals.
Three show-choirs.
Two of them his exs.
Really; it would be suspicious if he wasn't there.
xxx