FIC: Step Ball Change, Chapter Four
Title: Step Ball Change, Chapter Four
Characters: Love quadrangle Rachel/Puck/Finn/Quinn, with Brittany and ensemble
Word Count: 1892 this chapter
Disclaimer: If I owned Glee then all proceeds would go to the Howard Bamboo Legal Defense Fund.
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers up to "Mash-Up." There's a nonspoilery reference to a character in "Wheels." Beta would also advise not to drink and read at the same time.
Summary: Rachel, Puck, Finn, and Quinn try to sort out their relationships with one another, while Brittany tries to make new friends in glee club.
A/N: Beta'ed once again by the ridiculously good-looking cameroncrazed.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Sue Sylvester's office was full of shiny things. Trophies, plaques, a flat-screen TV mounted in the corner - it was mesmerizing, really. Whenever she was in there, Brittany's eyes flashed from one thing to the next like a magpie's. Without the distractions, of course, she'd have to start listening to Coach Sylvester's tirades against Will Schuester, glee, and the state of the union, and Brittany just didn't have the attention span for all of that.
It was still a privilege for Brittany to even be there. Most of the time when students ended up in that office, it was because they were about to be ripped to pieces. Even the hallowed Cheerios uniform didn't provide protection from Sue's wrath, as Quinn Fabray could attest to. In fact, up until Quinn's unceremonious dismissal from the squad, Brittany had simply been the red shirt in the espionage enterprise; now that Sue had lost her primary mole, she was relying on both Santana and Brittany to pick up the slack.
And Brittany was clearly in over her head.
Sue had spent a good half-hour picking Santana's brain about the weaknesses in the glee club when she finally turned to Brittany. "What about you, blondie? Anything you'd like to add?"
Brittany stared blankly back. She hadn't been listening since, well, ever, and she couldn't even be sure that Sue was talking to her. For all Brittany knew, Sue could have been talking to herself.
"What about that wheelchair kid?" Sue pressed on.
"What wheelchair kid?" Brittany asked, knitting her eyebrows in confusion.
Sue leaned forward. She held her sunglasses in her hand, the end of the temple arm dangling delicately between her lips. She spoke slowly for the sake of both clarification and condemnation. "The kid. In the wheelchair. Who's in glee club."
Brittany's eyes widened. "There's a kid in a wheelchair in glee club?" she asked, genuinely surprised. "Who is it?"
"It is a marvel, Brittany, that after generations and generations of evolution, your parents still managed to meet in the shallow end of the gene pool."
Brittany tried her best to process Sue's remark. "I think Mom and Dad met at an Olive Garden."
Sue looked at Brittany with a look of piteous disdain before it was time to lay down the plan. "Okay, here's what I want you to do. Santana, I want you to go after the Hummel figurine and his soul sister. See what seeds of discontent you can sow there. Brittany, you get wheelchair kid and his geisha."
Brittany started to ask what a geisha was, but a quick elbow jab from Santana shut her up.
"If anyone asks questions, you just remind them that I am still the co-chair of the club. All right, girls. Get out. I have to work on my audition tape for The Amazing Race. They rejected me last season because I didn't have a partner. Fortunately I got a friend of mine to join me this time; she had to resign from her job as governor of Alaska, but I told her it would be worth it. I think together we have a real shot at winning it."
Santana and Brittany exchanged a look that encompassed both admiration and fear before they rose from their seats and skedaddled the hell out of there, leaving Sue alone with her delusions of grandeur.
****
The skills one builds as a cheerleader sometimes come in handy. For example, when Rachel came up to her in the hall, Quinn perfectly executed a quick about-face and double-timed it the hell out of there.
"Quinn, I just want to talk to you," Rachel called out after her, her tone accusatory. "Wait up," she added, when she realized that Quinn wasn't about to stop.
Quinn upped her pace and went all the way down the hall, around the corner, past the main office and out the front door to the parking lot. But Rachel kept close at her heels like an annoying little dog that won't stop yapping.
"How could you do that to him, Quinn?" she asked, and even though Quinn strove to keep her steely facade, Rachel's words were needling her. Frustrated, she turned around so quickly that Rachel knocked into her, startled.
Quinn was unperturbed. "Listen, butterface, I don't have to answer to you about anything. This has nothing to do with you, so just back off and mind your own business before I really get angry."
"You have to come clean sometime, Quinn."
"What is this, the Spanish Inquisition? What do you want, a confession? If that's what's going to get you off my back, then here it is. I slept with Puck. I got pregnant. I told Finn he was the father. Now leave. Me. Alone."
"Why'd you do it, Quinn?" Rachel asked, so softly it was almost silent. "Puck's so mad and Finn's so hurt."
"So really you just wanted to corner me to make me feel bad about myself," Quinn replied, her eyes stinging with tears that she barely managed to keep from falling. "Thanks for the help, beer goggles, but I was really doing fine with that on my own."
"I just can't figure you out, Quinn. I've tried so hard to extend an olive branch in friendship, but you always stab me in the back with it."
"Maybe it's because you use overly-complicated metaphors," Quinn snapped back, realizing how lame her retort sounded. She bit her lip, for a moment trying to contain the thoughts that were racing through her head, but the dam was breaking. "Fine. You know what? All I've been trying to do is pick the lesser of two evils. Getting pregnant made me a hypocrite. Getting pregnant by someone who wasn't my boyfriend makes me a slut, too. That's why lied."
Rachel was startled by Quinn's sudden outpouring of honesty. Her lips worked uselessly for a moment as she tried to find something to say in return. "You're not a slut," she said in an attempt to sound supportive.
"Yes I am. Ask anyone at school and they'll tell you," Quinn said. "There are far worse words for people like me."
"You're not a hypocrite or a slut, Quinn," Rachel insisted. "You've just made some poor decisions - all of us do, sometimes. It's a part of life. You really hurt some people with your decisions, though, and I really hope everything works out."
Quinn narrowed her eyes and lowered her chin to her chest for a moment to catch her breath. She swallowed the lump in her throat before she raised her gaze again to meet Rachel's. "Stop it."
"Stop what?"
"Stop trying to be nice to me," Quinn growled. "And if you don't get that smug look off your face next time I see you, I'll claw it off myself." With that, she turned away, her curls twirling as they fell back across her shoulders.
Left alone in the parking lot, Rachel's shoulders sagged. That could have gone better, she thought.
****
Brittany didn't have a good chance to corner Artie and Tina until the next day at lunch. They sat alone at a table across the cafeteria from where she and Becky usually ate together; Becky was absent that day (leaving Brittany to fend for herself on a quiz), so Brittany thought she'd try following Sue's orders. She slung her backpack over her shoulder as unsuspiciously as possible as she strolled over to the table.
"Hi Artie," she said, smiling. "Hi Tina."
Artie looked up from his sandwich, hesitant. While they spent a lot of time together in glee, neither he nor Tina knew Brittany that well outside of practice. "Hi... er... Brittany."
"I never noticed you were in a wheelchair before," Brittany told him. "I like how the wheels in front sparkle and stuff."
Artie's eyebrows shot up in surprise; his glasses fell askew and he reached up to readjust them. "Really?" he asked, incredulous. "But you've pushed it for me a few times. I even ran over your foot once at rehearsal."
Brittany's mouth fell open. "No way. Did it hurt?"
"You cried a little bit."
Brittany's ponytail bobbed up and down; she nodded her head gently, thinking back to this event that she clearly didn't remember at all. "Weird."
Tina was frowning; she couldn't fathom why Brittany would wander over to their table when there were so many others where she'd be welcomed. Artie, however, was a little more accepting. "So, will you be joining us for lunch?" he asked, if only because Brittany's expression was bordering on blue-screen-of-death, and he didn't know what they'd do if her brain completely shut down.
Brittany lit up at the suggestion. "You guys don't mind, do you?" she asked, setting her backpack on the floor by an empty chair. "I usually sit with my friend Becky from math class but she isn't here today."
"It's c-c-cool," Tina told her, although the look she gave Brittany said differently. She couldn't tell whether or not Brittany was flirting, and if she was... well, then, definitely not cool.
Brittany reached into her bag for her brown-bagged lunch and a notebook, placing them carefully on the table in front of her. She opened her hand and brought it to her face. She'd written her mission in her palm so she wouldn't forget what she was supposed to ask, but that had been in first period and now the ink on her skin had smeared and the words were difficult to read. "So how do you guys like glee club? Do you think Mr. Schuester is treating everyone with equash... equaminous... equine-ity?"
"You mean equality?" He leaned over to see what Brittany had written; all he could make out was the word "geisha" smudged and spelled wrong on the heel of her hand.
The notebook said "10th Grade English" on the front, but when Brittany opened it, the first page was blank. She found a pen and quickly began jotting things down. "Equality! How do you spell that?" she asked.
Artie frowned. "Are you taking notes?"
"If I don't write it down, I'll forget."
"Why does it matter?"
Brittany rolled her eyes as though Artie should already know the answer. "Because Coach Sylvester wants to hear everyone's opinions."
Artie balked. "Brittany, you can't do that!"
"But she's the co-chair," Brittany replied.
"She's out to g-get glee, Brittany," Tina interrupted. "If you complain about anything to her, she'll r-ruin everything for us."
Brittany's face fell. "She'll ruin everything for you and Artie?"
Tina blushed and looked away for a moment; it was up to Artie to clarify. "Everyone in glee, Brittany. Even you."
Now Brittany was really concerned. Not only was Coach Sylvester out to destroy Tina and Artie, but the whole club? "But I like glee," she said, thinking out loud.
"So do w-w-we, Brittany," Tina told her. "You gotta do the r-r-right thing here. You can't tell Sue anything."
Dismayed, Brittany scanned the rest of the cafeteria nervously. Santana was sitting at a distant table with some of the other Cheerios and jocks from the football team; even from far away, though, she caught Brittany's eyes and locked them with a cold, hard stare.
And even though Brittany wasn't the sharpest crayon in the barrel, she knew instinctively that Santana's disapproval and disappointment would only be a fraction compared to the wrath of Sue Sylvester.
Characters: Love quadrangle Rachel/Puck/Finn/Quinn, with Brittany and ensemble
Word Count: 1892 this chapter
Disclaimer: If I owned Glee then all proceeds would go to the Howard Bamboo Legal Defense Fund.
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers up to "Mash-Up." There's a nonspoilery reference to a character in "Wheels." Beta would also advise not to drink and read at the same time.
Summary: Rachel, Puck, Finn, and Quinn try to sort out their relationships with one another, while Brittany tries to make new friends in glee club.
A/N: Beta'ed once again by the ridiculously good-looking cameroncrazed.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Sue Sylvester's office was full of shiny things. Trophies, plaques, a flat-screen TV mounted in the corner - it was mesmerizing, really. Whenever she was in there, Brittany's eyes flashed from one thing to the next like a magpie's. Without the distractions, of course, she'd have to start listening to Coach Sylvester's tirades against Will Schuester, glee, and the state of the union, and Brittany just didn't have the attention span for all of that.
It was still a privilege for Brittany to even be there. Most of the time when students ended up in that office, it was because they were about to be ripped to pieces. Even the hallowed Cheerios uniform didn't provide protection from Sue's wrath, as Quinn Fabray could attest to. In fact, up until Quinn's unceremonious dismissal from the squad, Brittany had simply been the red shirt in the espionage enterprise; now that Sue had lost her primary mole, she was relying on both Santana and Brittany to pick up the slack.
And Brittany was clearly in over her head.
Sue had spent a good half-hour picking Santana's brain about the weaknesses in the glee club when she finally turned to Brittany. "What about you, blondie? Anything you'd like to add?"
Brittany stared blankly back. She hadn't been listening since, well, ever, and she couldn't even be sure that Sue was talking to her. For all Brittany knew, Sue could have been talking to herself.
"What about that wheelchair kid?" Sue pressed on.
"What wheelchair kid?" Brittany asked, knitting her eyebrows in confusion.
Sue leaned forward. She held her sunglasses in her hand, the end of the temple arm dangling delicately between her lips. She spoke slowly for the sake of both clarification and condemnation. "The kid. In the wheelchair. Who's in glee club."
Brittany's eyes widened. "There's a kid in a wheelchair in glee club?" she asked, genuinely surprised. "Who is it?"
"It is a marvel, Brittany, that after generations and generations of evolution, your parents still managed to meet in the shallow end of the gene pool."
Brittany tried her best to process Sue's remark. "I think Mom and Dad met at an Olive Garden."
Sue looked at Brittany with a look of piteous disdain before it was time to lay down the plan. "Okay, here's what I want you to do. Santana, I want you to go after the Hummel figurine and his soul sister. See what seeds of discontent you can sow there. Brittany, you get wheelchair kid and his geisha."
Brittany started to ask what a geisha was, but a quick elbow jab from Santana shut her up.
"If anyone asks questions, you just remind them that I am still the co-chair of the club. All right, girls. Get out. I have to work on my audition tape for The Amazing Race. They rejected me last season because I didn't have a partner. Fortunately I got a friend of mine to join me this time; she had to resign from her job as governor of Alaska, but I told her it would be worth it. I think together we have a real shot at winning it."
Santana and Brittany exchanged a look that encompassed both admiration and fear before they rose from their seats and skedaddled the hell out of there, leaving Sue alone with her delusions of grandeur.
****
The skills one builds as a cheerleader sometimes come in handy. For example, when Rachel came up to her in the hall, Quinn perfectly executed a quick about-face and double-timed it the hell out of there.
"Quinn, I just want to talk to you," Rachel called out after her, her tone accusatory. "Wait up," she added, when she realized that Quinn wasn't about to stop.
Quinn upped her pace and went all the way down the hall, around the corner, past the main office and out the front door to the parking lot. But Rachel kept close at her heels like an annoying little dog that won't stop yapping.
"How could you do that to him, Quinn?" she asked, and even though Quinn strove to keep her steely facade, Rachel's words were needling her. Frustrated, she turned around so quickly that Rachel knocked into her, startled.
Quinn was unperturbed. "Listen, butterface, I don't have to answer to you about anything. This has nothing to do with you, so just back off and mind your own business before I really get angry."
"You have to come clean sometime, Quinn."
"What is this, the Spanish Inquisition? What do you want, a confession? If that's what's going to get you off my back, then here it is. I slept with Puck. I got pregnant. I told Finn he was the father. Now leave. Me. Alone."
"Why'd you do it, Quinn?" Rachel asked, so softly it was almost silent. "Puck's so mad and Finn's so hurt."
"So really you just wanted to corner me to make me feel bad about myself," Quinn replied, her eyes stinging with tears that she barely managed to keep from falling. "Thanks for the help, beer goggles, but I was really doing fine with that on my own."
"I just can't figure you out, Quinn. I've tried so hard to extend an olive branch in friendship, but you always stab me in the back with it."
"Maybe it's because you use overly-complicated metaphors," Quinn snapped back, realizing how lame her retort sounded. She bit her lip, for a moment trying to contain the thoughts that were racing through her head, but the dam was breaking. "Fine. You know what? All I've been trying to do is pick the lesser of two evils. Getting pregnant made me a hypocrite. Getting pregnant by someone who wasn't my boyfriend makes me a slut, too. That's why lied."
Rachel was startled by Quinn's sudden outpouring of honesty. Her lips worked uselessly for a moment as she tried to find something to say in return. "You're not a slut," she said in an attempt to sound supportive.
"Yes I am. Ask anyone at school and they'll tell you," Quinn said. "There are far worse words for people like me."
"You're not a hypocrite or a slut, Quinn," Rachel insisted. "You've just made some poor decisions - all of us do, sometimes. It's a part of life. You really hurt some people with your decisions, though, and I really hope everything works out."
Quinn narrowed her eyes and lowered her chin to her chest for a moment to catch her breath. She swallowed the lump in her throat before she raised her gaze again to meet Rachel's. "Stop it."
"Stop what?"
"Stop trying to be nice to me," Quinn growled. "And if you don't get that smug look off your face next time I see you, I'll claw it off myself." With that, she turned away, her curls twirling as they fell back across her shoulders.
Left alone in the parking lot, Rachel's shoulders sagged. That could have gone better, she thought.
****
Brittany didn't have a good chance to corner Artie and Tina until the next day at lunch. They sat alone at a table across the cafeteria from where she and Becky usually ate together; Becky was absent that day (leaving Brittany to fend for herself on a quiz), so Brittany thought she'd try following Sue's orders. She slung her backpack over her shoulder as unsuspiciously as possible as she strolled over to the table.
"Hi Artie," she said, smiling. "Hi Tina."
Artie looked up from his sandwich, hesitant. While they spent a lot of time together in glee, neither he nor Tina knew Brittany that well outside of practice. "Hi... er... Brittany."
"I never noticed you were in a wheelchair before," Brittany told him. "I like how the wheels in front sparkle and stuff."
Artie's eyebrows shot up in surprise; his glasses fell askew and he reached up to readjust them. "Really?" he asked, incredulous. "But you've pushed it for me a few times. I even ran over your foot once at rehearsal."
Brittany's mouth fell open. "No way. Did it hurt?"
"You cried a little bit."
Brittany's ponytail bobbed up and down; she nodded her head gently, thinking back to this event that she clearly didn't remember at all. "Weird."
Tina was frowning; she couldn't fathom why Brittany would wander over to their table when there were so many others where she'd be welcomed. Artie, however, was a little more accepting. "So, will you be joining us for lunch?" he asked, if only because Brittany's expression was bordering on blue-screen-of-death, and he didn't know what they'd do if her brain completely shut down.
Brittany lit up at the suggestion. "You guys don't mind, do you?" she asked, setting her backpack on the floor by an empty chair. "I usually sit with my friend Becky from math class but she isn't here today."
"It's c-c-cool," Tina told her, although the look she gave Brittany said differently. She couldn't tell whether or not Brittany was flirting, and if she was... well, then, definitely not cool.
Brittany reached into her bag for her brown-bagged lunch and a notebook, placing them carefully on the table in front of her. She opened her hand and brought it to her face. She'd written her mission in her palm so she wouldn't forget what she was supposed to ask, but that had been in first period and now the ink on her skin had smeared and the words were difficult to read. "So how do you guys like glee club? Do you think Mr. Schuester is treating everyone with equash... equaminous... equine-ity?"
"You mean equality?" He leaned over to see what Brittany had written; all he could make out was the word "geisha" smudged and spelled wrong on the heel of her hand.
The notebook said "10th Grade English" on the front, but when Brittany opened it, the first page was blank. She found a pen and quickly began jotting things down. "Equality! How do you spell that?" she asked.
Artie frowned. "Are you taking notes?"
"If I don't write it down, I'll forget."
"Why does it matter?"
Brittany rolled her eyes as though Artie should already know the answer. "Because Coach Sylvester wants to hear everyone's opinions."
Artie balked. "Brittany, you can't do that!"
"But she's the co-chair," Brittany replied.
"She's out to g-get glee, Brittany," Tina interrupted. "If you complain about anything to her, she'll r-ruin everything for us."
Brittany's face fell. "She'll ruin everything for you and Artie?"
Tina blushed and looked away for a moment; it was up to Artie to clarify. "Everyone in glee, Brittany. Even you."
Now Brittany was really concerned. Not only was Coach Sylvester out to destroy Tina and Artie, but the whole club? "But I like glee," she said, thinking out loud.
"So do w-w-we, Brittany," Tina told her. "You gotta do the r-r-right thing here. You can't tell Sue anything."
Dismayed, Brittany scanned the rest of the cafeteria nervously. Santana was sitting at a distant table with some of the other Cheerios and jocks from the football team; even from far away, though, she caught Brittany's eyes and locked them with a cold, hard stare.
And even though Brittany wasn't the sharpest crayon in the barrel, she knew instinctively that Santana's disapproval and disappointment would only be a fraction compared to the wrath of Sue Sylvester.