Glee fic: Show Face (1/3)

[wildejoy]

Title: Show Face (part 1 of 3)
Pairing: Jesse/Rachel
Rating: PG-13 (this chapter)
Word count: 4,321
Summary: This is the story of how Rachel manages to turn Jesse from the Phantom of the Opera into Raoul, and completely without intention. Jesse is dumbfounded.

From Sectionals to Journey (and beyond): this is Glee, from Jesse's point of view.


Oh, love is juicy, juicy and you see, I gotta have my bite, sir

One day in the fall Miss Corcoran tells Jesse to see her after practise. He doesn’t understand: if she wanted to praise him, she would have done it in front of everyone, as she always does. If she wanted to criticize him - well, she so rarely does, and likes to do so also with an audience. Public humiliation is a very effective spur.

Jesse dutifully heads straight for her, still soaked with sweat and breathing hard. “You did well out there today,” she says evenly, folding her hands on the desk. Her expression is unreadable. “What do you know about this year’s competition at Regionals?”

“Regionals?” He laughs a little, because Regionals has always been a cakewalk, but stops abruptly when he realizes that she’s serious. He straightens his shoulders, realizing she expects a real answer. “Aural Intensity just won their Sectionals last week, but only because the competition was so pathetic. Their vocals are only so-so. Short of bribery, I can’t imagine a scenario in which they’ll garner anything more than second place - and that only because the third spot will be filled either by a group of juvenile delinquents, a bunch of deaf kids, or some new choir called New Directions of which I’ve never heard, so they can’t be very good.”

She nods, leaning back in her chair with a pleased curl to her lips. “Good. I’m going to their Sectionals this Saturday. I want you to come. I’ll pick you up at ten.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replies, smiling because he loves to be picked out once again as her favourite. She’d always gone to others’ Sectionals alone, just to scope out the competition. She’d never asked him or anyone else along before.

“Now go get changed, or you’re going to start dripping sweat onto the carpet.”

He gives her a little salute and is pleased to get a quick bark of laughter out of her. He doesn’t guess then what the invitation is really about. Even sitting in the audience next to her four days later, he suspects nothing. The deaf choir shouts their lyrics and bring tears from a good two thirds of the audience. The Jane Addams girls have a couple of decent singers, but their dancing is straight from a rap video: all they lack is a chain-laden thug to gyrate against.

So even before New Directions comes on stage, Jesse would bet money it will be them. He recognizes the intro to Don’t Rain On My Parade by about the second note, and gears himself up for disappointment. There are some singers most people should never attempt - Barbra, Celine, Liza, Patti, Kristin - because they only make an amateur’s glaring flaws more obvious. Between performances, he’d been flipping through the program, which didn’t have set lists but just some information on each choir and a few photos, and he’d seen the name Rachel Berry. He’d thought no more of it than Artie Abrams, sitting just above it, or Mike Chang just below. But when that little slip of a girl bursts out of the curtains at the back, wild-eyed and tense all over, his second thought - after a back entrance, really, how over-dramatic - is that she has true raw talent, the kind the Jane Addams girls can only dream of. She is no Barbra, of course, but for this audience she doesn’t have to be. New Directions will win, because of this girl - short of the entire choir forgetting the words or tripping on stage, there is no way they won’t take first place.

He glances over at Miss Corcoran halfway through to gauge her reaction, and is alarmed by what he sees. She’s leaning forward in her seat, and her eyes are glistening: she looks like she’s trying not to cry. He snaps his head back to watch the girl, feeling suddenly uncomfortable, as though he’s somehow intruding on a private moment. He doesn’t understand, but neither does he dare question her: Miss Corcoran is the best choral director in the country, respected everywhere. The girl is good, she’s very good, especially compared to the competition that night. She’s good enough to be in Vocal Adrenaline, if she wants. And admittedly, the second I’ll beat my drum gives him a brief rush of goosebumps. But she isn’t good enough to draw tears. What is Miss Corcoran seeing in this girl that Jesse has missed?

He is both relieved and disappointed to find that the rest of the choir is just average, with a male lead who can’t even begin to keep up with the Barbra. Their choreography consists of stepping up and down the risers and doing a couple of do-ci-dos. Had they started rehearsing the night before? Is this an improv group? They clearly have no idea what they are doing. Still they take home the first place trophy, of course.

Afterwards, Jesse asks Miss Corcoran what she thought of New Directions.

“No competition at all,” she says calmly as they file out of the auditorium and head for the coat room. “They didn’t seem to have rehearsed even once. They can’t dance to save their lives. They have some good singers, but we can crush them.” He pulls her coat off its hanger and holds it open for her. “They were right to win, though.”

It is all as Jesse suspected. She doesn’t mention Barbra at all that night, so he doesn’t either. But the next week, Miss Corcoran tells him to stay behind again, and informs him that Barbra’s name is Rachel Berry, and that she has a mission for him.

Is it me you’re looking for?

Admittedly, Miss Corcoran had said ‘befriend’, but she’s known him four years and cannot possibly expect him to interpret that as anything other than ‘woo, date, and seduce’. (The first two are there out of respect for Miss Corcoran, because he doubts she’d take kindly to her daughter being just another notch on Jesse’s well-whittled bedpost.) So he feels no guilt going into this with roses and lines: it’s what he does.

He doesn’t go the traditional route: the roses are metaphorical. For one, roses are a gift for after a show, and Jesse won’t be the one to congratulate her on a performance that was so far from her full potential. A girl like Rachel will receive thousands of roses in her lifetime. After his first meeting with her - bribing a freshman to follow her for a few days reveals her most frequented places and that she has something of a routine - he will wait a few days (long enough for her to wonder if he hadn’t liked her after all, but not so long that he would fall from the forefront of her mind). Then he will present her with Gerber daisies, because he has no idea what her favourite flower is, but he figures she’ll enjoy the vibrant colours and the originality.

Jesse quickly surmises the best musicians in Carmel’s band and recruits a few very easily with his status and the promise of fifty dollars each for just one song. He tells them to practise Till There Was You, but makes sure they’re capable of improvising if necessary.

They do very well with Hello, he thinks, and the best part is that she doesn’t even question their presence. For people like Rachel Berry and Jesse St. James, it is expected that there are always strings and drummers around, waiting to complete the soundtrack of their lives.

I’m not blind, and I know that you want to want me but you can’t let go

Jesse has every member of New Directions pegged within his first week at McKinley. He feels affection for some of them - he enjoys Santana and Kurt’s cutting remarks, and he has to admit some admiration for Quinn’s attitude - but mostly, he feels contempt and disappointment for the all these singers, going to waste under the egotistical, inept direction of a man whose sexual exploits are spread around the school like Lindsay Lohan’s. They’re no Vocal Adrenaline, but they have genuine talent. It’s sad, really: he has some idea of what they could do in the capable hands of someone like Miss Corcoran, who would actually have them rehearse songs for competitions instead of pulling assignments out of thin air in order to teach life lessons ripped straight from a Disney movie or those inspirational posters hung up around school. Jesse imagines Mr. Schuester’s apartment has one of those posters with a kitten clinging to a branch, urging him to Hang In There! as he sets the table for one.

He figures Rachel out just as easily: he quickly surmises what she is looking for in a boyfriend, and it isn’t at all difficult to become that boy. Quite conveniently, she wants him, without the lies and betrayal. Well. She wants a more gentlemanly version of him, as he soon realizes - one more prone to euphemisms and romantic gestures.

The funny thing is, after her refusal to have sex - even after he transferred all the way to McKinley and moved homes, for God’s sake - he doesn’t pressure her. It is an unpleasant and rather sharp shock to go from having the Carmel girls at his fingertips whenever he - or they - felt the urge, to complete celibacy. He feels sure he could have Rachel, if he really worked at it, because she isn’t as complex as she likes to believe. Rachel Berry is attracted to talent, and it is what made her so easy to snare in the music store. It could be the key to her virginity, and if he has any doubts, they are eradicated barely a week after the whole sex fiasco.

Leaning back against her headboard with her tucked between his legs, her back against his chest, she turns her face up to him and commands softly, “Sing something to me.”

It is a great deal of pressure, because whatever he chooses is not just a song. It will be taken to pieces and carefully examined by that surprisingly analytical brain. Music means something to them.

Eventually, he takes a few deep breaths and sits up straighter, silently thanking his morning routine of vocal exercises. He had not expected this request, but he is always prepared for such an occasion. She sits up, too, turning around to look at him, her dark eyes solemn and attentive. He feels a sudden, irrational wave of anxiety, but it soon passes. Jesse St. James doesn’t get nervous. She sits primly with her legs stretched out, her hands in her lap, and waits.

“No more talk of darkness: forget these wide-eyed fears,” he sings, and her whole face lights up. “I’m here - nothing can harm you,” and here he reaches out and takes her hand, because he knows she appreciates these saccharine gestures, and that nothing pleases her more than feeling as though she’s living fiction. “My words will warm and calm you…”

He’d considered singing The Music of the Night - it’s sexier, and he knows he can hit the higher notes with a perfect clarity that flatters his voice - but upon consideration it was obvious that she would cast him as the Phantom, leaving Finn as Raoul, and that would not do.

He pauses when he hits Christine’s entrance, but she does nothing, only watches him, so he skips the female parts, singing on, and he watches her eyes widen and her lips part when he hits a particularly perfect note or keeps up a well-controlled vibrato. He grows indulgent and begins to show off, holding notes unnecessarily long and making little changes in the tune to keep it interesting. He watches her hand touch her throat and her eyelashes flutter and all of her dramatics please him, because he knows it is entirely genuine. He watches her cheeks flush, and best of all, he watches her pressing her legs together and sees her toes curling on the bedspread.

She joins in on share each day with me and sings with him to the end, which is good because he’d been worried about how to make that a solo. But all he is thinking by the end is that her cheeks are pink and her eyes very bright and he knows she’s wet. He feels a surge of triumph and pride, because he has just made Rachel Berry cream.

It’s unusual, but he of all people understands it, and everyone has their kinks. And this means he knows exactly how to get under her little plaid skirts. He would set the lights low and perhaps put flowers out somewhere - not rose petals on the bedspread or anything, because even Rachel has her limits, but something fragrant and romantic - and he would sit her down and sing to her, sitting close, his hand on her knee or tracing patterns on her arm. He would smooth her hair back from her face and trace her jawline until she strains for more touch, and all the while he would sing - he’s narrowed it down to I’m Your Man and Completely Pleased - and he knows by the end of it, with very little coaxing he’d get at least to third base. Hopefully further, considering all the work, but sweet Jesus, at this point, even second base would be a blessing.

Now and then I get insecure from all the pain, I’m so ashamed

The opportunity arrives when she tells him offhand that her parents are going out of town for the weekend. The funny thing about it is she doesn’t realize what it usually means for a girl to say that to her boyfriend - she’s just making conversation.

Nevertheless, Jesse skips last block on Friday, climbs in her window and sets it all up, lighting candles - vanilla scented, her favourite - and taking apart the bouquets he’d bought at the florist’s and strewing the flowers around the room. It’s all sort of haphazard, but he thinks that’s his best bet - if it seems too planned out, she’ll automatically be suspicious.

She walks in and gives a little shriek to find him in her room, but then she sees what he’s done, and before she can say anything he presses play on her stereo and the opening notes of I’m Your Man fills her Candyland bedroom.

He puts on his very best show, and the song completely lends itself to seduction - it’s a cakewalk, and she’s looking up at him with that desperate longing that is so acute as to seem almost exaggerated. Child’s play, then, to manoeuvre her onto the bed, past second base, and then she begins to work at the fastenings on his jeans, so close to where he’s wanted her for so long, and then disaster hits.

“Wait,” he hears himself say, and a dozen things flash across her face - most prominently insecurity and hurt, and a great deal of confusion. He’s confused, too, because she was right there, and he’d stopped her. “You’re not ready,” he says, and his heart sinks, because he realizes that she’s trapped him in the role of Raoul. “I... don’t want you to feel... pressured.” Get a grip, St. James, what is this?

“You don’t want me,” she says, her eyes widening, and he almost laughs at the absurdity of it. Her wide, pouting lips, her tight, toned body, her perfectly high and round breasts, her hair smelling of lemons, dancer’s legs and singer’s breath control, her lack of a gag reflex (she’d mentioned it like she didn’t even know the implications) - of course he wants her. But he doesn’t know how to tell her all this without blurting it out and ruining his suave image, so he compromises.

“You’re crazy,” he says, shifting his body so she can feel his want. But it isn’t enough, he can still see the anxiety on her face, so he tells her what he’s never admitted aloud. “God, Rachel, the first time I jerked off was to Barbra Streisand.”

She giggles, shrill and a little hysterical, unsure of how to respond. She’s quivering underneath him, her muscles tensed and her breathing ragged, like a horse about to bolt. He slides a hand back under her shirt and over the plain cup of her bra, and beneath it the soft swell of her breast, and feels her heart beating out a terrified staccato against his fingers.

“You make me crazy,” she says, breathlessly, and he takes care to keep his other arm on the bed to prop himself up, lest she feel his heart against her chest, an answering cry for attention or affection or anything she might deign to give him. Helpless in a way that he’s supposed to make her. Desperate, wanting to arch into her touch as she does to his, wanting to give up his Don Juan act and give in to her.

That’s when he knows he’s well and truly screwed. They do nothing that night but make out, and then sleep curled up together, spooning, which he’s never done in his life, and he thinks about very little, other than that he’s failed - his director, his teammates, his friends, himself. Her.

The next morning, he wakes up to the smell of her hair. Sometime in the night, she had turned into him, and now her face is pressed into his neck and his arm is wrapped around her waist, his hand settled in the curve of her spine against bare skin where her shirt has ridden up. She makes a breathy little sound when he tries to extricate himself from her embrace.

It’s not like he hasn’t slept in a bed with a girl. He has. Girls like cuddling through their afterglow. But usually they are naked, and also, they don’t mind waking up to feel his morning glory, whereas he feels certain Rachel is going to shriek like a banshee. He shifts his hips back, away from her, and tries to think of dead puppies or banana slugs or the constipated face Finn makes when he sings. But her breath is hot on his neck and he can feel the tickle of her eyelashes and her damn hair still smells like lemons. And also, best of all, he realizes that she’s in her pajamas, and therefore not wearing a bra, and that’s when he figures he’s lost all hope.

He tries once again to pull away, and this time ignores the noise of protest. Her arms release him easily. He looks at her sleeping face, and wonders why she isn’t drooling or snoring or doing any of the other undignified things people tend to do in sleep, and then he notices that her breathing is not so deep and even as it should be. Looking closer, he sees her eyes aren’t moving behind her eyelids.

“You aren’t very good at faking sleep,” he informs her, and she cracks one eye open. “I can teach you how sometime, if you’d like. For one, your mouth should be slightly open.”

She sits up, rubbing her eyes and pulling her knees up to hug them to her chest. He gets a spectacular view of her legs in their polka-dotted boxer shorts. “I wanted to know if you were just going to leave,” she admits. “I’ve been awake for a while now.”

He doesn’t ask why she didn’t get up. She looks still sleepy and open and so painfully vulnerable.

“I was just going to brush my teeth,” he says, which isn’t a lie. He doesn’t mention that afterwards he would have left, if she was still asleep.

Rachel stares at him for a moment, and then she says, “There are extra toothbrushes under the sink.”

Her bathroom, like her bedroom, is as tidy as his own, and colour-coordinated. Her shower curtain is blue with - of course - gold stars. Her toothbrush has a tiny gold star sticker on the handle. Under the sink, everything is sorted into perfect categories, and he easily finds a small collection of toothbrushes wrapped in plastic, the kind you get from a dentist’s office. He picks a red one at random, and then, on reflection, puts it back, claiming the blue one as his own instead. He will stay loyal to his roots in small ways.

“I’m going to make coffee,” Rachel calls. He frowns at his reflection. He could have sworn Rachel told him once she doesn’t like coffee. (He made sure to put this in his Rachel Berry folder: it was helpful in winning her over. He’d always bought her hot chocolate on his way over to pick her up for school.)

Jesse likes coffee. He rarely drinks it because it stains the teeth, but sometimes he indulges himself. He doesn’t think she would make it just for him, and yet…

When he comes downstairs, there are eggs sizzling on the stove and she’s pushing chopped potatoes around another a pan, sprinkling them with some kind of powder.

“Rachel?”

She looks up and smiles at him, her hair still tousled from sleep. “We don’t have bacon in the house,” she says, which he could have guessed. “But you like eggs, right?”

“Yes,” he answers cautiously.

“We can make pancakes, or-”

“Rachel,” he interrupts her, and her face freezes with the eager, bright-eyed expression. He almost says, I have to go, but she would ask where, and what would he say? Nowhere. You’re making me uncomfortable.

Instead he plays the part of her gentlemanly, considerate boyfriend, the one who likes cuddling and will eat her burnt cooking. He doesn’t even like pancakes that much, and Miss Corcoran forbids them for all the calories involved (butter, syrup, whipped cream). “I’d love pancakes,” he says, his smile hurting his cheeks as much as any show face he’s ever given Miss Corcoran.

Her answering smile is wide and honest, full of delight, the same one she beamed out at the audience at Sectionals as her voice still echoed in the rafters. She does not differentiate: she has no show face.

Breakfast is better than he’d expected - he should have known Rachel wouldn’t allow herself to be below average at anything. She doesn’t burn or undercook, and the potatoes are good, if a little too spicy for his taste. The coffee is very dark, which Rachel says is the only kind her dads will buy, but he doesn’t mind. It’s strong and rich, and just right.

“Go to the prom with me,” he says, and Rachel freezes with her fork inches from her lips.

“Senior prom?” she asks, blinking her large doe eyes at him.

“Of course.”

The corners of her mouth curl up in a hesitant smile. He’d expected elation and squeals, not this subdued, somewhat anxious reaction. Has he done something wrong?

“I don’t have a dress,” Rachel says, her voice small.

“You have plenty of time,” he points out, and she shakes her head.

“Aren’t you worried about… people’s reactions?”

“What?” He laughs a little to tell her how ridiculous the idea is.

“Have you ever seen Carrie?” Rachel asks, looking down at her food. He reaches across the table to take her hand, turning it over and stroking her palm. She watches their hands, looking a little hypnotized.

“I don’t think that’s likely,” he says. “But we can wear raincoats over our formal wear.” He grins, waiting until she looks up at him hesitantly. “It’ll be a fashion statement. Very avant-garde.”

She laughs, and it still sounds a little anxious, but she looks relieved. He sits back, pleased. He’s not sure how long this assignment will last, but senior prom isn’t long before Regionals, so it may have been a stupid thing to ask her. Yet he can’t see that she wouldn’t notice the lack of invitation to an event he would be expected to be attending. He decided in his first week of being Rachel’s boyfriend that if he was going to actually do the dating thing, he would be the boyfriend to whom all her future boyfriends would be compared (and found lacking). In the beginning, she’d been startlingly passive - after her effulgent performance at her Sectionals, he’d pinned her as the sort of girl who would all but write him a to-do list. In every other area of her life she was indomitable, effusive, and downright bossy. He’d expected her to know exactly what she wanted from him and ensure that she got it. He respected that.

But there was always a little hesitation, as if she was asking why me? He found it off-putting and flattering at the same time - that she thought he was too good for her stroked his ego; that she was constantly surprised by his interest in her made him irrationally angry with whoever had done this to her. He has a good idea of who that is.

Jesse knows he is superior to Finn in every way, and he will prove it. He makes himself the best boyfriend she could ever dream up, not only to prove his prowess, but because it frustrates him to see someone like Rachel, which so much potential, pause before initiating a kiss and qualify all her suggestions of musical marathons or dinner dates with if you want.

She’s getting better. He’s proud of himself, and of her. They eat breakfast slowly, because Rachel talks more than she eats, and Jesse is too polite to leave before she’s finished. He chews on Tic-Tacs to keep himself entertained as he listens.

“I really should go,” he says at last as they clear the plates. “I have homework.”

She looks disappointed, but admits that she has things to do, too. At the door, he kisses her, deeply and sincerely, despite the fact that she hasn’t brushed her teeth and tastes like breakfast. Jesse St. James is nothing if not a giver.



part two (rated NC-17)