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CHAPTER 5: Never My Intention
Rachel isn't talking to him.
It's really hard, because she needs to call an emergency glee practice to talk about her VA espionage, and people are way more likely to listen to Finn ("a good guy") than her ("crazy and annoying"). But she really cannot handle even looking at him right now. It makes her want to sob. Looking at Santana, meanwhile, makes her want to light things on fire, so that's kind of out of the question too. In the end, she manages to round up Kurt, Mercedes, Artie, Quinn, and Sam, and she trusts that the five of them will get the word back around to everyone else.
"I don't understand why this is such a big deal," says Quinn. "It's Vocal Adrenaline. We know they're freaky good. They've always been freaky good. Knowing which song they're going to be freaky good at doesn't really mean anything."
"Be that as it may," Rachel insists, "the closer we can go song-for-song against what they've got, the better we can prove ourselves just as freaky good as they are." She adjusts the hem of her skirt a little, annoyed, when Sam leans onto Quinn's shoulder with a bored, vacant look. "They're getting bolder. Without Jesse as their shining star - "
"Oh come on," says Mercedes.
"Without Jesse, they're putting less juice behind solo-driven numbers and doing more ensemble pieces. I saw a little bit of Seasons of Love and a disturbingly good Backstreet Boys song."
Kurt, sipping from a latte, sputters a little. "BSB? Which song?"
"The one," Rachel hisses, "about the loser cheater boyfriend who calls his girlfriend on his cell phone."
Sam and Artie exchange a weird glance, too. "No way."
"No way is right," says Kurt - "Dalton's Warblers have a killer arrangement of The Call too!"
"What?"
"You're joking."
"Wait a second," says Rachel. "How do you know anything about the Warblers' set list?"
Kurt pauses just long enough for her to sense that he's lying. "There was - a video - on Facebook!"
"Hang on, no," says Artie. "I've been all up on Dalton's Facebook scoping out my friend Dwayne who's in their concert band. All their a cappella stuff is set to private. How come you can see it?"
"I just - "
"Spill the beans, Kurt," says Mercedes, taking his latte from him before he can crush the cup and placing her hand over his. "It's too late."
"Too late for what?" says Rachel.
Kurt sighs, adjusts his bangs, and then rolls his head back up to look them all straight in the eye in turn. "When we had our boys versus girls match a few weeks ago, I might have gotten a little...carried away," he says. It's an understatement, but they allow him to continue. "Someone suggested I go spy on Dalton. I took it seriously...so I did. The Warblers are intense. They knew I was a spy and went ahead and performed for me anyway, just to show off. If we can't get it together pronto, we're going to have our asses handed to us at sectionals."
"That still doesn't explain how you're Facebook friends with them," says Quinn. "For the record, I don't care," she adds. "But still."
"The first guy I ran into - the guy who led me in the direction of the Warblers, and then turned out to be their lead soloist..." He trails off, and looks panicked to Mercedes. She's not giving him any help. Rachel, however, is pretty sure she's pieced it together correctly in her own head.
"Is he that guy you've got the picture of up in your locker?" she says.
"Oh yeah," says Quinn, "the cute one with the eyebrows?"
"Why are all of you so privy to the contents of my locker?" Kurt demands, snatching his coffee back from Mercedes and taking a big drink of it.
"Kurt's totally got the hots for this guy," she finally says. "His name is Blaine, and he's legit. It's not another Jesse." Mercedes shoots Rachel a glare. "And even if it was, they're not dating. They're just...friends."
"Who wish they were dating," says Artie.
"I don't have to stand here and be humiliated like this," Kurt tells them. "I hate you all."
But no matter how much they pick on him, they all seem pretty pleased. And Rachel, for the first time all day, is smiling - though perhaps not for the same reasons as everyone else.
"This is perfect though!" she cries. "If VA and Dalton have a partially overlapping set list, we look that much better for being fully original. It'll be just like last year, but this time we'll be on the good end of the deal."
"No," says Kurt.
"What do you mean 'no'?"
"If Vocal Adrenaline is doing The Call, I have to tell Blaine. My cell phone turns back on in four hours and twenty-three minutes, and I'm going to tip them off. We don't need to cheat. We can handle it."
"How is the two of them picking the same song completely independently from each other or us cheating?" says Sam. "So they screw each other over. Awesome."
"I'm with Kurt on this," says Artie. "If it were us, I'd want this Blaine guy to tell us. That's sportsmanship, man."
"Sportsmanship isn't showmanship," says Rachel. "Kurt, you can't."
"Don't tell me what I can't do!" says Kurt. "I've already been grounded for three days, I'm getting really sick of being told I can't!"
"Well everyone else seems to think it's okay to cheat, why can't we?" Rachel realizes suddenly that she's kind of screaming, and then the icing on the cake walks in. The icing being Finn, Santana, and the rest of glee club.
"Whoa, there you guys are. Are we missing something?" Finn asks. As if he doesn't know.
"I don't know, Finn, why don't you tell me!" she shouts, right in his stupid face, and spreads her arms wide to indicate her whole self. "What exactly is it, that you are missing?"
When he can't answer immediately, she runs from the room. Finn, she can tell by the thundering footsteps, is right behind her, and the rest of glee club isn't too far back either. But Rachel just keeps running, before she sobs, or lights stuff on fire.
She sings instead.
"I was sitting on the fence
And I thought that I would kiss you
I never thought I woulda missed you
But you never let me fall, push my back against the wall
Every time you call, you get so emotional
I'm freaking out!"
Because she is. She's freaking out. Rachel is really, really good at freaking out. The rest of the club corners her in the auditorium, and she whirls on them, staring down Santana.
"Ring ring - is that you on the phone?
You think you're clever but you're never sayin' nothin' at all!"
Her stare shifts to Finn.
"Hey hey, the way you spin me around
You make me dizzy when you play me like a kid with a crown
"It's what I wanted
Until you lost it!"
And back to Santana, and she can't figure out if she's screaming or singing or crying any more because this is so, so screwed up, and all she wants to do is win, for once. Win sectionals. Win Finn. Win something.
"Why won't you leave me alone?
Hang up the phone, just let me go!
Is that you on the phone?
You think you're clever but you're never sayin' nothin' at all
Hey hey, the way you spin me around
You make me dizzy when you play me like a kid with a crown!"
As she tears her way through the last chorus, pretty much everyone gets the picture that this has become about more than just their rival groups' set lists, and they clear out. Puck stays long enough to mutter something in Finn's ear, and the look Finn gives him is the nastiest Rachel's seen him since they found out about Beth. Rachel collapses against the front of the proscenium and forces herself to stop looking at him. She's already crying and that will just make it worse.
"Rachel," Finn says.
"What do you want from me?" she whispers.
"I want..." He struggles, but then sighs and firms up. "I want my girlfriend back. My nice, confident, superstar girlfriend who will still go on dates with me. Not how crazy you've gotten lately."
"I'm sorry if my crazy isn't doing it for you!" she snaps. "You've gotta call up Santana for that particular brand of psycho, huh?"
"No. No, Rachel." He puts his hand on her shoulder, and she lets him leave it there, though God knows why. "Look, I don't know what Puck told you, but what I'm going to tell you is the truth. I did go out with them on Saturday. And I did go to Santana's house afterward, because I thought...well. I thought. Or I didn't think, I guess, because I'm kind of bad at thinking. But I worked it out pretty quick nonetheless and I got out of there as fast as possible. We didn't do anything."
"Why should I believe you?" says Rachel.
"Because," says Finn, "I'm about to tell you something that I've literally never told anyone." The sincerity rings so deeply in his voice that she turns around, and finally looks him square in the eye.
"What is that, Finn?"
"I'm - I'm not a virgin. I slept with Santana last semester."
Rachel's lip quivers, fresh tears threatening to spill over. "Finn - "
"Last semester, Rachel. Before we were back together for real. And I can tell you, it was terrible. If I could go back, and never ever do it, I would. Because I wish...I wish I could have saved that, for you."
Oh.
"I realized that, when I went over to Santana's on Saturday. I was going to do it just because I was feeling crappy, and I thought it might make me feel good instead. But when I was up in her room, I kind of figured out that I wasn't going to feel...anything. And the thought of something like that not feeling like anything at all, that's terrible. It needs to be better than that. It needs to be amazing. And I feel like for it to be amazing, you have to love the person you're doing it with.
"And I love you."
Rachel blinks back as much of the tears as she can. "Well, that's - that's awfully presumptuous of you, Finn Hudson."
"Pre-what?"
"Look," she says, "this is your last chance, Finn." She turns her voice as serious as possible, which is pretty serious, considering how much vocal training she's had. "I'm not laying much of the blame in this situation on you - it's mostly her fault. And...and my fault. For going so crazy about Vocal Adrenaline again, and not seeing what was right in front of me - that this was getting...bad. But - but fool me twice shame on you, you know?"
"Rachel, I'm so sorry. You know I would never do anything if I - if I thought it would - "
"If you thought it would." She sighs, and finally can smile at him, just a little. "Just...try to be a little bit more careful, next time? Because I'm a fragile-hearted girl, Finn. And there's only so much of this I can take."
"I promise," says Finn. "We will wait until you're ready. Which means I will wait until we can do it as us."
Us, thinks Rachel. She and Finn are an us. And she hopes to stay that way for a pretty long time.
-xxx-
It takes a while for Finn to get Rachel cleaned up enough that she feels prepared to join the rest of the group again. By the time they crawl out of the auditorium, lunch is almost over, and Finn is going to have to go to Spanish and Rachel is going to have to go to physics and things will have to kind of be on pause until glee club later in the afternoon. But at least they'll be on pause at like, a good part, thinks Finn. Like the part in the movie right when something awesome explodes, instead of when you pause it on somebody's face right as they're moving and they make a really stupid expression that you never would have seen otherwise.
Except that's kind of the expression on the faces of the rest of the glee club when they meet back up with them, because standing off to the side with Kurt is a short dark-haired dude in a sissy blazer, and they're doing whatever the whispering version of shouting is. Then they seem to notice they have an audience, and they cross back over to the group, but Finn thinks they look like they've definitely put something on pause, too.
"Guys," Kurt says, a little tersely, "this is Blaine."
-xxx-
tbc.
download music from this chapter: Ring Ring - Mika
(additionally, I got RETARDED with this song while writing this fic, and started singing it to myself up in the range where I imagine they'd put it if Rachel were to actually sing it, so if you want to hear my super-classy Lea Michele impression you can listen to it at my Tumblr.)
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