Glee fic: "Harps on the Horizon"
Title: Harps on the Horizon
Pairing: Jesse/Rachel
Rating: PG
Word count: 629
Summary: Jesse can't resist one last look at Rachel before he leaves - and one last piece of advice.
Written for laura_sommeils , for her request at rachelandjesse .
Rachel’s examining a sweater in a truly awful shade of kelly green. It makes her look ill when she holds it up against herself. Jesse actually bites his tongue to stop himself from telling her this: she’s six feet away and he’s half-hidden behind a clothes rack. He doesn’t want her to notice him.
He knows this might seem kind of creepy, but all it takes is the right soundtrack to put things into context. The score of this scene is not ominous or predatory. He hears a small orchestra in his head, not quite despairing, but simply resigned. It is quiet: the resonance of flutes, the warmth of an alto saxophone - no strings, not yet. The strings are to be saved for his departure, because tomorrow he leaves for UCLA and he won’t see her again until they’re on a Broadway stage. It takes true sorrow to merit strings.
She turns to Finn, clearly asking his opinion, and he nods with a bland little smile. It’s painfully noncommittal, which is, Jesse quickly realized, how Finn has always dealt with Rachel. Keep your head down, agree with her, tell her what she wants to hear, and if you have to lie, just act casual. She will interpret it as she likes.
Wrong, Jesse wants to tell him. She needs somebody to tell her that she looks like a flu-ridden Ugly Betty in that sweater, and you can sugarcoat it, but it has to be said. She likes to be challenged, as much as she likes to challenge you. Let her lead but don’t just follow blindly.
Rachel heads off to the changing room with an armful of equally terrible clothes. Jesse waits patiently, ignoring the salesgirl tentatively asking him if there’s anything she can help him with. Her shrill voice clashes with the flutes.
When Rachel finally returns, she’s carrying a smaller load of clothes - everything she intends to buy. The green sweater sits on the top of the pile. Jesse can’t bear it.
“That colour is terrible with your skin,” he sighs, stepping out from behind the rack. It’s mildly humiliating, letting himself be seen lurking like this, but the thought of Rachel wandering around Lima in that thing… “Get the cerulean one.”
Rachel’s mouth works silently for a moment, and then she straightens her shoulders and tilts her chin up defiantly. “I suggest you leave,” she says coldly. “Or my boyfriend will be forced to escort you out.”
Finn looks like he’d be entirely too eager to try, too. Something about the way she says my boyfriend makes Jesse wants to tell him to go ahead and give it a go, but he really can’t afford to show up to his first day of university with a black eye.
So Jesse turns away. (A cello thrums, like the strike of a gavel. Violins join it, smoother, as if to soften the blow.) He can’t resist looking back one last time, though, to see that Rachel is casting a considering look at the cerulean sweater. (The key changes, though it’s still minor, but Jesse notices the change more than initiates it. He’s no longer the one conducting.) She knows he’s right - if she buys the green one now, it’ll be entirely out of spite. It wouldn’t be unlike her to be so short-sighted. (A harp begins, now, and Jesse begins to get frustrated - it's all wrong, it doesn't fit. The harp is the instrument of love, and it has no place here anymore.)
Finn frowns when she picks up the blue sweater and replaces the green one, but in Jesse’s head, the final chord resolves. That isn’t right - there is no resolution here.
Still, the unexpected concordance makes hope swell inside him, in the silence that follows.