Fic: B-Sides
Title: B-Sides
Author: kappamaki33
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Sam, Kurt, Blaine, Puck, Artie, Mercedes, Santana, Karofsky, Quinn, Lauren, and Rachel; canon pairings
Word Count: ~6,900
Warnings: Language, non-explicit talk of sex
Spoilers: Through 2.19 (Rumors)
Summary: Six ficlets about a handful of the untold stories in the episode “Rumors,” with each one based on one of the songs on the album Rumors not sung in the episode. Each ficlet can be read as a stand-alone.
Authors Notes: Though I’m not a huge Fleetwood Mac fan, I’m extremely familiar with them via osmosis; my parents listened to them a lot when I was young. The songs are definitely not all perfect fits for the stories that go with them, but in the spirit of Glee twisting songs to fit situations, I did my best to make them fit the stories I most wanted to tell.
I know “Silver Springs” was not included in the original release of Rumors, but I’m including it because it is on the re-release version, and it fit well. I also realize this is a sin against Ohio geography, but I’ve made Westerville a “suburb” of Lima so Sam’s pizza delivery to Dalton makes something like sense; I highly doubt Lima pizza parlors make deliveries over ninety miles away.
B-Sides
Oh Daddy (Sam, Kurt, and Blaine)
Sam pulls out the map one more time and tilts it so the dome light in his rustbucket of a car can at least make it readable. He has a hard enough time finding his way around Lima Heights Adjacent; he’s never even been to Westerville before. Bart had said it would only take Sam fifteen minutes to drive out there. It’s now been almost a half-hour, he’s wasted a ton of gas (which he has to pay for), and he knows he’s losing out on the chance for more tips every additional minute it takes, not to mention increasing the chances the person on this delivery will stiff him for being late.
Sam thinks he finally has the way to Dalton in his head now, so he half-folds, half-balls up the map and gets on the road again. His fingers clench hard around the steering wheel, as if that will stop the thought of this is the worst night of my life from going through his head over and over again.
He sniffs and straightens himself up in his car seat. Buck up, Sammy. It’ll be okay. Better than okay. Give it some time, and it’ll be great again, he hears his dad say. Dad had said it when they moved from Tennessee to Ohio. He’d also said it the day he’d gotten laid off, even though Sam could see in his eyes that his heart was breaking. If Dad could not only handle that but be strong for him and Stacy and Stevie, then Sam can handle one crappy first night on the job.
“Give it some time,” he repeats to himself under his breath.
Sam does think it’s fair to admit how utterly crappy a night this has been, though. He hadn’t realized he’d have to pay for his own gas when he’d taken the job, and because You Wanna Pizza Me is a little family-run place, they pay him a little less than minimum wage, expecting him to make his real money on tips. He’s only been a pizza delivery boy for three hours, and he’s already been bawled out for a pizza having black olives on it when they hadn’t ordered black olives, peed on by a nervous Shih Tzu, and sent on a prank delivery of four pepperoni and anchovy pizzas to “Mike Rotch” at an address that turns out to be a Pizza Hut. Sam is pretty sure he’s not imagining how his whole car smells like anchovies now, since he’d gone straight from the Pizza Hut to Westerville.
He breathes a sigh of relief when a stately mansion-like building comes into view over a hill, knowing that must be Dalton. It reminds him a little of his old school, though Dalton’s grounds are smaller and their sports fields must be somewhere behind the main building. Sam pulls on his You Wanna Pizza Me cap, gets out of the car, and grabs the three veggie pizzas from the backseat before climbing the steps to buzz the intercom.
“We’ll be right down,” a voice says, and Sam is still trying to figure out if he recognizes it or not when the door opens.
Kurt and his boyfriend are at the door-and, well, that’s about the worst pair that could’ve answered out of the hundred or so Dalton boys it could’ve been, but it’s been that kind of a night-but Sam is all right and smiling until he hears what they’re saying.
Kurt hasn’t looked at him yet; he’s still in the middle of talking to the guy whose name Sam is struggling to remember. Kurt laughs, “Ten minutes late. That means it’s free, right?” Then he looks. “Sam? I didn’t know you worked for the pizza place.”
The bottom drops out of Sam’s stomach. All the sudden, he remembers the first day of football practice, where the pizza guy got pranked and delivered a dozen pizzas to Coach Bieste. My boss says if you don’t pay for them, I have to. Which means we reuse my kid’s Pampers. For another week. Sam had been so scared that someone was going to jump out from the bushes at the Pizza Hut and attack him (one of the more seasoned delivery guys had told him prank calls were often setups for muggings) that he hadn’t even thought about who was going to pay for the pizzas. And now he wasn’t going to get paid for these pizzas either, and he’d spent thirty bucks on gas, and oh God, he was a total failure at everything.
Sam doesn’t realize he’s nearly crying until Kurt and the other boy look at him with concern.
“Are you all right?” the other boy asks.
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say the answer to that one is a big fat ‘no,’” Kurt says. “Come in and sit down for a minute, Sam.”
Sam shakes his head. He doesn’t really want to fall apart in front of an audience. “I’m not allowed to go into anybody’s house while I’m on the clock,” he says.
Kurt nods and looks at him thoughtfully for a moment. He takes the pizzas from Sam’s hands and passes them to the other boy. “Okay. Blaine, you take these inside to the Warblers meeting. We’ll have this worked out by the time you get back.”
Blaine nods and gives Sam a confused but sympathetic smile before disappearing with the pizzas into the dark school. Kurt props the door and steps outside. He sits down on the stoop and pats the cement beside him. Sam sits. Much to both their surprise, the whole story spills from Sam without prompting, all in one impossibly long sentence. Kurt listens.
“And now I have four pepperoni and anchovy pizzas stinking up my car, and I somehow need to convince the manager not only to not make me pay for them but also to not fire my ass for being the worst pizza delivery boy ever, which is going to be even harder because I’m pretty sure I saw Bart snorting a line of coke back in the kitchen with Woody and Alex and he’s already pissed at me for not agreeing to deliver a paper bag of what smelled to me like pot along with an order of cheesy sticks.”
Kurt’s mouth and eyes are open wide. “Well, I don’t think I’ll be eating that pizza anytime soon,” he says more to himself than anything. Then he says to Sam, “That’s terrible. Especially that they don't pay you mileage. All that stop-and-go residential driving has to be hard on your brakes and tires.”
Sam has a moment to be oddly glad that Kurt is talking about the pizza delivering rather than Sam's dad losing his job and the house before the realization sets in. Then Sam’s head drops into his hands. He hadn’t even thought about that, another thing he can’t afford.
“Hey,” Kurt says gently, but also like an idea has just occurred to him. “When you need a tune-up, bring your car to my dad’s shop. We’d be happy to service it for free in exchange for word-of-mouth advertising among your pizza delivery coworkers.”
Sam knows a handout when he sees it, but he’s grateful that Kurt is going to the trouble of trying to disguise it.
“I don’t think I ever told you this, but I always appreciated how you were willing to sing a duet with me for glee club,” Kurt says. “I was kind of a stylish Typhoid Mary at McKinley, and you actually had a decent shot at being popular.”
“Typhoid who?”
Kurt smiles at him like he’s said something dumb but Kurt isn’t going to call him dumb. “Never mind. Just, thanks.”
“Hey,” Blaine says quietly from behind them. He looks like he’s trying to figure out what’s going on without interrupting, though that’s impossible. “We were always going to pay for the pizzas, you know. The thing about the delivery time was just a bad joke,” he says, pulling out his wallet.
Kurt springs up from the step and stands beside Blaine, a hand on his arm. “Blaine, we really didn’t order enough pizzas for the Warblers, did we?” He turns to Sam and adds, “We’re having a meeting to discuss whether we’re going to accept an invitation to perform at the Westerville Air Show grandstand, and the head of the Council won’t stop muttering darkly about Charles Lindbergh. We could be here all night arguing.” Kurt goes back to talking to Blaine. “Sam has four pepperoni pizzas in his car that nobody wanted. We should buy those, shouldn’t we?”
Blaine is still trying to catch up. “But you hate pepperoni so much you won’t let anyone eat it in your presence. You say the grease is so thick it clogs your pores just by being in the same room with it.”
Kurt says very sweetly, “Darling, just buy the damn pizzas.”
Sam shakes his head at Kurt, but he can’t help but smile. By the time he’s gone to the car to get the pizzas and come back again, Blaine is showing the money he’s going to pay to Kurt, apparently getting his approval of the amount of the tip. Sam accepts it without counting.
“Have a good night, Sam,” Kurt says, sliding his hand into the crook of Blaine’s elbow, even though it’s awkward with Blaine now holding a stack of pizzas. “And if you need absolutely anything, you let me know, all right?”
Sam looks at them, and for a moment, he is intensely jealous: jealous of their private school uniforms and of how Blaine can buy forty dollars’ worth of pizza that no one will eat and grossly over-tip without batting an eyelash. Accepting handouts is harder than he’d thought; then again, Sam had never thought he’d need to accept a handout. But maybe if he can think about it as help from a friend...maybe it can be okay.
“Thanks,” Sam says. “Good luck with the meeting, and...thanks.”
As Sam walks to his car, his dad’s words come back to him. Give it some time, and it’ll be great. It isn’t anywhere near great yet, but for the first time that night, Sam truly believes that someday it will be.
Second Hand News (Artie and Puck)
Puck and Artie sit in Puck’s backyard in lawn chairs, staring at the vacant lot that lies next to it and passing a bottle of Jack between them. Well, Artie’s not sitting in a lawn chair, obviously. He’s in his wheelchair, which Puck thinks is handy, because Puck’s other lawn chair has a big hole in the seat. He decides against commenting on how convenient it is that Artie comes with an almost-built-in lawn chair, though. He’s pretty sure Artie wouldn’t appreciate it right now.
“Between Santana practically brainwashing her and basically every other guy in school telling her it’s hot when she and Santana have sex, I can see why Brittany would be confused,” Artie says, gesturing so forcefully while holding the bottle that Puck fears he’s going to spill or drop it. He gently disentangles Artie’s fingers from the bottle’s neck and takes another swig himself.
Puck shrugs. “See, that sounds to me like a solution rather than a problem. Make up with Brittany for the stupid comment, then tell her that it’s only okay for her to get it on with Santana if you’re there. Relationships are all about compromise.”
Artie rolls his eyes. “I’m not saying that I don’t find two girls together hot-because, duh, it is-but it’s not the same for a guy like me as it is for a guy like you.”
“Huh?”
“I mean this in a completely straight dude way, but you’re a stud,” Artie says, arm waving so wildly that his wheelchair rocks on the uneven ground. He’s pretty wasted. Puck shrugs and grins because, yeah, even if it’s a little weird to have another dude call him a stud, it is the truth, after all.
Artie continues, “Not only am I a total nerd, but I can’t even move my hips, Puck.”
Puck’s been wondering about something for a long while, and Artie is drunk enough that Puck doubts he’ll get weirded out by the question for once. “Also in a completely straight dude way, if you’re paralyzed from the waist down, how does sex work?”
“Oh, I’m, uh, fully functional in that respect,” Artie says, his eyes a little wide. “Thank God. It’s just that Brittany pretty much has to run the show. I can’t compete with...anybody. The only way I’m ever going to win the girl in a love triangle is if I become the next Bill Gates or the other side of the triangle dies.”
“Aw, that’s bullshit,” Puck drawls, starting to feel the Jack himself. “What about that guy in the wheelchair with the mechanical voice who’s always talking about black holes and shit? I bet he still gets chicks.”
Artie cocks his head. “You mean Stephen Hawking? How the hell do you know who Stephen Hawking is?”
Puck shrugs. “Money’s tight, so we canceled our cable subscription and started watching lots of PBS. ‘NOVA’ is actually kind of fucking awesome.”
Artie stares at him with his jaw hanging slack. “Okay, so I can get the girl if I make billions, the other person dies, or I become a brilliant theoretical physicist. Great.”
“Well, there is one other option,” Puck says, scratching his head thoughtfully. “You could get really good at going down on girls. They seem to like that.”
“That’s what I was banking on,” Artie says, sighing, “but it doesn’t help when you’re up against another girl. Santana, knowing what the receiving side feels like, has a definite advantage.”
“Huh. I never thought of it that way,” Puck says. They sit in silence for a long time. “So do you suppose that means gay dudes get better blow jobs than we do from girls? Since the guy giving knows the other end?”
“Probably,” Artie says. “I think we’re pushing the limits of ‘I ask this in a completely straight dude way’ here, though.”
Puck’s spine snaps so he’s sitting up straight in the chair, and he precedes his next statement with a manly grunt. “Sorry, dude. Zizes being such a tease must be getting to me. Her rack is worth waiting for, though.”
“Don’t sweat it, man,” Artie says. They fist-bump and talk about tits and cars and videogames and other manly shit until darkness falls and the streetlights flicker on.
The Chain (Mercedes and Kurt)
It’s the display in Kurt’s locker that finally gets her.
No, Mercedes doesn’t begrudge him the little shrine to Blaine, particularly not now that he’s actually Kurt’s boyfriend. Nor does she begrudge the existence of the photo of Kurt, Rachel, and Rachel’s dads waving rainbow flags at the Columbus Pride Parade, or of Kurt and Sam at Kurt’s dad’s auto shop.
What she does begrudge is the fact that Kurt didn’t tell her he was dating Blaine until a week after the fact, which she understands to some extent because he couldn’t talk about the kiss without talking about the duet and thus the competition’s set list. Even so, by the time she heard the story, she could tell the shine had worn off somewhat. He’s still giddy and breathless over the whole thing, but it’s just not the same as the rush of him calling her the moment he gets home after something important happens.
She begrudges the fact that, when she asked why Kurt hadn’t even mentioned the Pride Parade, let alone invited her to tag along, he pulled the religion card on her and said he’d assumed it was incompatible with her beliefs (which they both know is untrue and not at all fair). She begrudges the fact that Kurt brushed her questions off when the photo with Sam first appeared, then continued to refuse to tell her what was really going on when the rumors about the motel started. She begrudges the fact that Kurt and Tina are constantly having these knowing, smug “isn’t my serious boyfriend adorable/infuriating/clueless but in an endearing way” conversations that she can’t join in on because, judging from their looks when she tries, her brief time dating Puck doesn’t count. She begrudges the fact that Karofsky was tormenting Kurt, and Kurt couldn’t tell her.
Looking back, Mercedes realizes she should’ve known that the basis for her and Kurt’s friendship was always tenuous. She would never believe they’d become friends just because they were the leftovers once the straight white kids had all paired themselves off, and yet...had they? They both love fashion, but Mercedes thinks Kurt’s harnesses and sweater-corsets are nuts, and Kurt never holds back on his feelings about zebra print. They both love music, but they’d never sung a duet together for glee club. Maybe they are too much like their voices, she thinks: not a bad fit for each other, but not natural and inevitable enough that they would work together without the perfect song and a lot of effort.
No, she doesn’t begrudge Kurt having so many pictures with other friends in his locker. What hurts is when she sees how the new photos cover up the old ones of just the two of them.
You Make Loving Fun (Kurt/Blaine)
Blaine grins like a fool when he hears his “Blackbird” ringtone, the way he always does. He flops down on his bed and settles in for as long a conversation as his homework will allow him.
“Hey, Gorgeous,” he answers, consciously turning up his internal charm dial to eleven.
Kurt makes a noise somewhere between a scoff and a chuckle. Blaine is pretty sure Kurt is blushing, even without seeing him. Blaine loves making Kurt blush.
“Still testing out pet names, are we?” Kurt says.
“How do you like it?”
“Better than yesterday’s,” Kurt teases.
“‘Hot Lips’ is a classic. They used it on M*A*S*H*.”
Kurt gives a mock long-suffering sigh. “Someday, I really need to give you a nice, long lesson in a little concept called ‘context.’ So, how was your day?”
“Oh, let’s see, Thad tried to convince me that my ‘For the Longest Time’ is better than Billy Joel’s, David nearly popped that blood vessel in his forehead when Jeff suggested we perform ‘It’s Getting Hot in Here’ sans blazers, and we diverted Wes from plotting world domination by daring him to come up with an acapella arrangement for ‘Classical Gas.’”
“Same old, same old, then?”
“Not quite. You’re not there.” Blaine knows he sounds like a sap, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
“Glad to hear that my whip-smart humor and boat-rocking but never used song suggestions had enough of an impact to leave a void,” Kurt says, and Blaine knows that the sarcasm veneers genuine feeling.
Satisfied with that light-hearted lead-in, Blaine takes a breath and internally rehearses what he’s going to say one last time. “There was one strange thing that happened today,” he says, proud of how laid back his tone sounds.
“Oh?”
He winces, because he can tell from Kurt’s tone on that one syllable that Kurt has already seen through his mock-casualness and knows something is up. “Rachel texted me today.”
“I warned you not to give her your number.”
“I kind of enjoy the daily Broadway on YouTube links, but the weekly assisted reproduction websites are a little much.”
Kurt coughs like he’s choking on a drink. “She sends-oh god. Vaguely Eurasian babies. Oh dear god. As in she wants to be your surrogate, or she wants you to be her sperm donor? Never mind, I don’t want to know. Both are disturbing beyond words.”
Blaine grimaces. Up until now, he had thought she was doing it as some weird but sort of sweet way of showing she accepted his sexuality after their strange date. He is tempted to ask about the story behind ‘vaguely Eurasian babies’ but thinks better of it. “Anyway, today’s text was...I know you’ve told me she’s...a bit eccentric.”
“I believe my words were ‘batshit insane,’ but yes,” Kurt says. Then his tone switches. “Can you please just tell me what’s wrong instead of tiptoeing around it?”
“She sent me a link to the McKinley Muckraker online edition-”
“She did what!“
“-followed by a directive to ‘fight for my man’ and a list of recommended songs from love triangles in various Broadway musicals.”
Kurt cuts in frantically, “Blaine, you have to know I would never, ever-”
“I do,” Blaine reassures just as quickly. “I know you wouldn’t. And I know that if we have any shot at making a semi-long-distance relationship work, we need to trust each other. I trust you, Kurt.”
Kurt sighs in relief. “You have no idea how nice it is to finally have someone not jump to salacious conclusions.”
“It’s just-”
“Just what?” Kurt says, voice turning cold and defensive in an instant.
“No, it’s just, are things really okay at McKinley, Kurt?” Blaine asks. “I know you keep saying that it’s better there now. But then I saw the things people at that school are saying about you in this paper...they’re cruel.”
Kurt’s tone is too steady for Blaine’s comfort. “Maybe so, but they’re commonplace, Blaine. They’re petty and pedestrian, so much so that I don’t even deign them with my attention.”
Blaine has always understood that Kurt’s haughtiness is a form of armor. He’s not sure he really understood how necessary that armor is until now.
“Anyway, Sam is the one catching most of the flak for it, and he’s refreshingly far more bothered about the rumors suggesting he facilitates cheating than how they imply that he’s bisexual.”
Blaine’s stomach turns at the thought of what could happen if the paper starts printing things about Kurt and someone not so accepting. Like, Kurt and basically anyone not in his glee club. Oh God, Karofsky. Blaine has to close his eyes for a moment to gather himself before changing the subject. “Sam seems like a good guy. Is whatever was up the night he delivered pizza at Dalton better now?” Kurt had spent half an hour sitting on the front steps and talking with Sam after the guy had nearly burst into tears when Kurt kidded about the late delivery equals free pizza rule.
“Sadly, no,” Kurt says, honest and tired-sounding. “That’s part of what all this in the Muckraker is about, but I can’t tell you any more than that. It’s not my story to tell.”
“I understand.”
After a long silence, Kurt giggles. “I was just thinking what the Muckraker would do with the story of Sam delivering pizza to an all-boys school, met at the door by two notorious homosexuals, and the fact that it took him an hour to make the delivery.”
“It does sound like the premise of a porno or two.” Blaine smiles.
“You would know,” Kurt says, teasing again.
“Watching porn does not make me some sort of pervert,” Blaine says, half playing and half actually defending himself. “It makes me a teenage male.” The statement comes out before he has a chance to think it through, which is never a good thing. This is why he rehearses potentially awkward conversations. “I didn’t mean it like that, Kurt. I wasn’t talking about you at all.”
“I know. I know you always mean well, even when the words don’t come out quite right. Trust me, living with Finn, I’m very used to that,” Kurt says, and Blaine imagines Kurt waving the comment off dismissively in his mind. The fact that Kurt was so adept at waving off so many nasty things in that newspaper makes Blaine feel much less secure in that proving his mistake is not a big deal.
It does, however, bring up something Blaine has been thinking about a lot lately. “You know,” he says quietly, cautiously, “I could send you a couple really mild, kind of more romantic ones with no embarrassing tattoos-”
“Blaine-”
“-I think you must have accidentally run across something extremely hardcore initially-and I can totally see how some of the stuff out there would make sex look downright terrifying-but it’s not all like that.”
“Blaine, stop,” Kurt says calmly. Blaine does. Kurt continues, “Thank you. Okay, now it’s time for the first of what will likely be many lessons on context. I don’t doubt that what you say is true. However, sending someone porn takes on a slightly different meaning when you’re dating said person.”
Blaine’s eyes fly wide open. “I’m not doing this to try to seduce you, I swear. I just want you to be informed and comfortable about yourself as a sexual being.”
“Which you have a personal, vested interest in since we’re dating now.”
“Oh.” Blaine pauses for a moment, letting that sink in. “Oh.” He covers his eyes with his free hand.
“Yes. That’s context,” Kurt says slowly, clearly relishing his teaching moment. “I can’t be your naïve little baby gay in training anymore. I don’t have a daddy kink, and that’s the only way I could see someone finding that sort of dynamic appealing.”
“Sorry. I told you I’m awful at this romance thing. I promise not to bring up porn again.” Then Blaine’s brows furrow. “Wait a minute. How do you know about daddy kinks? That’s not exactly the sort of thing covered in the kind of pamphlets you said your dad gave you.”
“I’ve been doing some independent research, just not of the audio-visual variety,” Kurt mutters, low and hurried. “Okay, then, time for a new conversation topic.”
“If things get bad at McKinley, you will tell me, though?” Blaine presses. Before Kurt can object, Blaine adds, “That’s not being a mentor. That’s being a concerned boyfriend.”
Kurt hums happily. “You know hearing you say the b-word is my weak spot.”
Blaine sits up, interested. Actually, he hadn’t known that before. He plans to take full advantage of it from here on out. “Well, then, I have to finish my essay for Mr. Roskin’s class, but I would love to take my boyfriend out for coffee tomorrow after school, if he’s available.”
“I do believe your boyfriend is free tomorrow,” Kurt says. Blaine can almost hear the grin in his voice.
“Then now I must bid my boyfriend good evening.”
“And I wish my boyfriend- We are so ridiculous.”
“Ridiculousness is what being young and smitten is all about,” Blaine laughs. He knows this is the part of the conversation where “I love you” should fall, right between “see you tomorrow” and “goodnight.” But it’s too soon for them to be able to say it and really mean it. It’ll be worth the wait.
Instead, he adds, “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.”
Gold Dust Woman (Santana/Brittany; Santana/Karofsky)
Santana looks up for a moment from her phone, out the windshield of Dave’s pickup. Lots of things look pretty if you view them from a distance, but not even the vantage point high above the town and a sunset can cure Lima of its terminal case of fugly. Why people ever bother with Lover’s Lookout when they could just drive a few miles more and park on a gravel country lane is beyond her. Then again, she guesses most people who come up here aren’t here for the scenery.
Dave shifts in the seat beside her. Her eyes drop back down to her phone.
“Shouldn’t we be, like, doing something?” Dave asks.
“What, you want to practice fucking a girl while picturing Lance Bass so you don’t call out the wrong name with the future wifey? Because I’m not nearly drunk enough for that.”
She flicks her eyes up long enough to catch his look of disgust. “No. Just-what if somebody sees that we’re not doing anything?”
Santana sighs. “Just chill and trust my skill at deviousness, okay? This morning, I made sure Mercedes ‘accidentally’ found out we were parking, so half the school knew by sixth period. Everybody knows your truck, so that’ll be enough to confirm the rumor. Nobody but Jacob is pervy enough to actually look in the windows, and Azimio broke the telescopic lens on his camera two days ago, remember?”
Okay, so the Bully Whips had let that one little incident slide. But it was Jacob ben Icky, who, despite being a punching bag, probably caused everybody at school more pain and torment than the football and hockey teams combined. And what do you do when bullies bully? Her answer would be, kick both their asses, but she doubts Figgins would go for that.
Dave continues to shift restlessly in his seat. “What are you doing?”
Santana snaps, “Playing Angry Birds. Now shut up and watch the sunset.”
That’s not what she’s doing, of course. She’s on her third draft of a text to Brittany, trying to come up with a way to explain why she can’t go through with “Fondue for Two” in a way that Brittany will understand. It’s hard enough explaining something like “brunch” to Brittany (“I finally get the whole salty-or-sweet issue with breakfast figured out, and now you tell me there’s another weird meal to deal with?”). Explaining why she couldn’t say what she feels to the whole school, when Brittany is either so brave or so completely out-to-lunch that she has absolutely no fear about all this...it feels impossible.
An idea springs into her mind with such force that she feels like the thought itself is what makes her head snap up.
“You’d dump the Bully Whips if I dumped you, wouldn’t you?” she asks.
“What?” Dave blinks, like she was interrupting his own thoughts.
“This whole bearding agreement we have. It’s important to you, isn’t it? Like, important enough that you’d go back to harassing Kurt without it, wouldn’t you?” That is something Brittany would understand, and that Santana could squeeze within the 250-character limit of a text.
Much to Santana’s surprise, Dave looks at her with a level of disdain that matches the look from when she was teasing about Lance Bass. “Look. I know you’ve got me by the short hairs. You don’t have to remind me every five seconds.”
She frowns at him. Dave continues before she even has time to devise a wicked come-back. “You’ve got the trump card here, I get it. You can make me take you out to fancy dinners or buy you jewelry or dump me and tell me to make a big show of chasing after you, and I have to take it, because any time you want, you can tell everyone I’m gay and point to us not doing anything when we’re out like this as proof. And that’s not even counting how Hummel...” Dave shakes his head, and Santana knows she’s not going to hear anything more.
Not like she really cares what kind of power Kurt has over Dave right now. She deletes her carefully-worded text one last time. The words “take me home” are on the tip of her tongue. That’s not what comes out when she finds her voice.
“Are your parents home?”
Dave answers, “They go out for a date night every Thursday. They’re probably gone by now.”
She puts her fingertips to her forehead and squeezes her eyes shut. She feels sick and only wishes she could convince herself it was a migraine. “Do they have a liquor cabinet?”
As Dave starts the engine and shifts the truck out of park, Santana’s fingers fly across her phone: “I can’t.” She hits ‘Send,’ turns the phone off, and buries it in her purse before she can change her mind.
Silver Springs (Quinn, Lauren, and Rachel)
Quinn is used to being the center of attention. She is used to crowds in the halls parting before her like the Red Sea, used to holding court at the most popular table at lunch, used to being at the pinnacle of the human pyramid in Cheerios and in high school in general.
Yet for someone so accustomed to the spotlight, Quinn has found herself lurking behind corners and in doorways a lot lately.
Today she stands in the dark in the very back of the auditorium, near the door. She watches the stage, and she listens. From back here, Rachel Berry looks like nothing more than a plaid blob sitting at the piano. Even back here, though, Quinn has to admit that Rachel Berry sounds like a star.
Quinn nearly jumps out of her skin when someone murmurs in her ear, “Whatcha doin’ back here?”
“What are you doing here?” Quinn hisses back before she even thinks, turning toward Lauren.
Lauren crosses her arms over her chest and looks at Quinn like she’s not about to take crap from anyone. Not that she ever looks like she’ll take crap from anyone. “You may have the better diction, but I so beat you to the question.”
Quinn turns back toward the stage as Rachel sings an impressive run, then scribbles in a notebook. “She’s arranging another Fleetwood Mac song as a duet,” Quinn says, seething. “When is she ever going to get it through her head that no matter how good they sound together, she’s not going to get what I have with Finn?”
“Funny you should bring that up,” Lauren says, “because that it’s-me-or-the-duet thing you pulled today in glee? Is crap.”
Quinn jerks her head over her shoulder and scowls at Lauren. “You’ve seen the way Rachel looks at Finn when she sings to him. I had to do something, and anything subtler than a two-by-four to the head wasn’t sinking in with her.”
“I don’t dispute that. I also don’t get why everybody acts like we can’t survive a competition without a Rachel and Finn duet when pretty much all of you guys sing pop and musicals in ways that knock the socks off my punk rock and heavy metal loving feet,” Lauren says. “But apparently, you all do think that, and even if you didn’t, deciding for the group that two other people can’t sing together is wrong and pathetic and, frankly, way below your A-game, Fabray.”
Quinn feels even more anger welling inside her. She wants to stamp her feet like an utter brat, but instead she grips the backs of the auditorium seats hard. “Oh yeah? What would you do if Puck and I sang a flirty duet and he made eyes at me?”
Lauren doesn’t even need a moment to think before she responds. “Depending on the level of eye-sexing, I’d either dump him, or tug him away by the ear after the performance and tell him to keep his eyes, hands, dick, and any other interested body parts to himself, or I’ll dump him.”
She acknowledges what Lauren says, but deep down, Quinn knows that’s not at all what she wants to hear. Like any smart animal will do when backed into a corner, Quinn goes on the attack. “How do you trust Puck to be faithful to you, after all the women he’s cheated on and with?”
Lauren is beside Quinn, leaning her forearms on the backs of the seats and watching Rachel plunk out patterns on the keyboard. “Well, there are lots of different reasons cheaters cheat, but I’m pretty sure that Puckerman’s reason is he struggles with the concept of cause and effect.” Quinn looks at her, and Lauren shrugs. “I never claimed to be dating him for his brain. Besides, that doesn’t necessarily have to do with how smart he is. I think it’s mostly because a lot of things come so easy for him, they go his way no matter what he does, and as for the things that don’t, those tend to go wrong for completely random reasons outside his control.”
“What?” Quinn finds herself asking without thinking again. It’s so strange to hear someone talking about Puck so seriously. She admits to herself that she’s never even thought about what might be under his surface, especially because she has always half-assumed the answer is “nothing.”
Lauren rolls her eyes. “Long story short, among many, many other things, you and your cheerleading ilk falling for him no matter how he treated you, and also going back to your more respectable boyfriends, again no matter how he treated you, fucked with his sense of reality.”
“Yet another person’s life being screwed up is all my fault, too, huh?” Quinn laughs bitterly.
“No. It’s his life, so it’s his responsibility.”
Quinn worries her lip with her teeth and keeps her eyes glued to the stage. “If you know so much about psychology, then what would Finn’s motivation be if he cheated on me with someone like Rachel?”
“That question assumes I actually pay attention to Finn. To be honest, the only times I consciously think about him are when I’m trying to not get partnered with him for any dancing number and wondering what the hell is so great about him when you and Rachel square off over him like two dogs fighting over the world’s last Beggin’ Strip.” Lauren pauses for a moment, then asks, “Don’t you find it at all ironic that you, of all people, are worried about whether and why other people cheat?” Quinn glares. Lauren shrugs. “Nope, guess not.”
Quinn is ready for this conversation to be done and regrets having begun it at all. She sits down in the back row, hoping Lauren will take the hint.
She doesn’t. Instead, she leans over the adjacent seat again. “Back to your original question, the cause-and-effect thing is true, but the real reason I’m not fretting about Puck cheating on me is because if he does, I’ll live. Yeah, it’d suck, but being single again wouldn’t be the end of the world.”
Quinn looks up and sees Lauren looking at her knowingly, as expected. She knows what everyone thinks of her stringing along Sam until she was sure she wanted Finn instead. She knows what she would think of Santana or Brittany or Rachel doing the same thing. That doesn’t mean she wants to be lectured on it.
Rachel’s voice carries all the way to the back of the auditorium, even though at least in theory she’s singing to herself. She repeats lines over and over again, adjusting the piano accompaniment. And don’t say that she’s pretty, and did you say that she loved you...
Lauren is still talking when Quinn shifts her attention again. “Of course that’s not all of it. I know I can’t completely understand it because, frankly, my parents are awesome and have always got my back, but having a parent flake out like that, it has to screw with a person.”
The stage blurs before Quinn’s eyes. She digs her thumbnail into the fleshy part of her other hand between her thumb and forefinger as hard as she can. Even that doesn’t hold it all back. She sniffs and closes her eyes.
Lauren apparently sees. “What are you-oh, fuck. I was talking about Puck and his dad. I’m sorry. I completely forgot about the thing with your parents last year.”
Quinn wants to snap at her for making it sound like the ordeal is over with now. It will never be over. She will always wonder if her mother would have ever spoken to her again if her father hadn’t had an affair. Quinn still thinks she sometimes catches Mom looking at her as if she’s thinking, If it weren’t for what you did, we would still have that life. If it weren’t for you, I could have pretended, and everything would have been fine.
Quinn hates the way her voice quavers when she speaks. “About two months ago, I saw my father for the first time since he threw me out. In the grocery store.” She doesn’t know why she’s saying anything, let alone this. Tears magnify the stage lights’ brightness until they hurt her eyes.
“You mean he hasn’t-” Lauren stops herself and checks her tone of disbelief. For that, Quinn is eternally grateful. “Did he say something to you?”
“No. Nothing,” she says, shaking her head like that isn’t bad, like it’s a relief.
That’s a lie, though. Not the silence-that was true. He had been in the baking needs aisle, leaning on a shopping cart and scrolling through text messages on his phone as his new girlfriend and her daughter good-naturedly squabbled over which flavor of cake mix they should get. He had looked up and made eye contact with Quinn as she stood frozen beside the Jell-O display, stupidly crushing the box of sugar-free pudding mix in her hand. He said nothing.
He walked right past her, with his girlfriend who was a carbon-copy of what Quinn’s mother had looked like in their wedding photographs, and that girl, about thirteen and red-haired but otherwise nothing like Quinn (Lucy) because she was slim and pretty and smiling and perfect. He walked right past her, looked her in the eye, and said nothing.
“I’m-” Lauren starts, placing her hand on Quinn’s shoulder. She stops speaking when Quinn grabs that hand and squeezes, hard. They stay frozen like that for a long time, just listening to Rachel sing.
Author: kappamaki33
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Sam, Kurt, Blaine, Puck, Artie, Mercedes, Santana, Karofsky, Quinn, Lauren, and Rachel; canon pairings
Word Count: ~6,900
Warnings: Language, non-explicit talk of sex
Spoilers: Through 2.19 (Rumors)
Summary: Six ficlets about a handful of the untold stories in the episode “Rumors,” with each one based on one of the songs on the album Rumors not sung in the episode. Each ficlet can be read as a stand-alone.
Authors Notes: Though I’m not a huge Fleetwood Mac fan, I’m extremely familiar with them via osmosis; my parents listened to them a lot when I was young. The songs are definitely not all perfect fits for the stories that go with them, but in the spirit of Glee twisting songs to fit situations, I did my best to make them fit the stories I most wanted to tell.
I know “Silver Springs” was not included in the original release of Rumors, but I’m including it because it is on the re-release version, and it fit well. I also realize this is a sin against Ohio geography, but I’ve made Westerville a “suburb” of Lima so Sam’s pizza delivery to Dalton makes something like sense; I highly doubt Lima pizza parlors make deliveries over ninety miles away.
B-Sides
Oh Daddy (Sam, Kurt, and Blaine)
Sam pulls out the map one more time and tilts it so the dome light in his rustbucket of a car can at least make it readable. He has a hard enough time finding his way around Lima Heights Adjacent; he’s never even been to Westerville before. Bart had said it would only take Sam fifteen minutes to drive out there. It’s now been almost a half-hour, he’s wasted a ton of gas (which he has to pay for), and he knows he’s losing out on the chance for more tips every additional minute it takes, not to mention increasing the chances the person on this delivery will stiff him for being late.
Sam thinks he finally has the way to Dalton in his head now, so he half-folds, half-balls up the map and gets on the road again. His fingers clench hard around the steering wheel, as if that will stop the thought of this is the worst night of my life from going through his head over and over again.
He sniffs and straightens himself up in his car seat. Buck up, Sammy. It’ll be okay. Better than okay. Give it some time, and it’ll be great again, he hears his dad say. Dad had said it when they moved from Tennessee to Ohio. He’d also said it the day he’d gotten laid off, even though Sam could see in his eyes that his heart was breaking. If Dad could not only handle that but be strong for him and Stacy and Stevie, then Sam can handle one crappy first night on the job.
“Give it some time,” he repeats to himself under his breath.
Sam does think it’s fair to admit how utterly crappy a night this has been, though. He hadn’t realized he’d have to pay for his own gas when he’d taken the job, and because You Wanna Pizza Me is a little family-run place, they pay him a little less than minimum wage, expecting him to make his real money on tips. He’s only been a pizza delivery boy for three hours, and he’s already been bawled out for a pizza having black olives on it when they hadn’t ordered black olives, peed on by a nervous Shih Tzu, and sent on a prank delivery of four pepperoni and anchovy pizzas to “Mike Rotch” at an address that turns out to be a Pizza Hut. Sam is pretty sure he’s not imagining how his whole car smells like anchovies now, since he’d gone straight from the Pizza Hut to Westerville.
He breathes a sigh of relief when a stately mansion-like building comes into view over a hill, knowing that must be Dalton. It reminds him a little of his old school, though Dalton’s grounds are smaller and their sports fields must be somewhere behind the main building. Sam pulls on his You Wanna Pizza Me cap, gets out of the car, and grabs the three veggie pizzas from the backseat before climbing the steps to buzz the intercom.
“We’ll be right down,” a voice says, and Sam is still trying to figure out if he recognizes it or not when the door opens.
Kurt and his boyfriend are at the door-and, well, that’s about the worst pair that could’ve answered out of the hundred or so Dalton boys it could’ve been, but it’s been that kind of a night-but Sam is all right and smiling until he hears what they’re saying.
Kurt hasn’t looked at him yet; he’s still in the middle of talking to the guy whose name Sam is struggling to remember. Kurt laughs, “Ten minutes late. That means it’s free, right?” Then he looks. “Sam? I didn’t know you worked for the pizza place.”
The bottom drops out of Sam’s stomach. All the sudden, he remembers the first day of football practice, where the pizza guy got pranked and delivered a dozen pizzas to Coach Bieste. My boss says if you don’t pay for them, I have to. Which means we reuse my kid’s Pampers. For another week. Sam had been so scared that someone was going to jump out from the bushes at the Pizza Hut and attack him (one of the more seasoned delivery guys had told him prank calls were often setups for muggings) that he hadn’t even thought about who was going to pay for the pizzas. And now he wasn’t going to get paid for these pizzas either, and he’d spent thirty bucks on gas, and oh God, he was a total failure at everything.
Sam doesn’t realize he’s nearly crying until Kurt and the other boy look at him with concern.
“Are you all right?” the other boy asks.
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say the answer to that one is a big fat ‘no,’” Kurt says. “Come in and sit down for a minute, Sam.”
Sam shakes his head. He doesn’t really want to fall apart in front of an audience. “I’m not allowed to go into anybody’s house while I’m on the clock,” he says.
Kurt nods and looks at him thoughtfully for a moment. He takes the pizzas from Sam’s hands and passes them to the other boy. “Okay. Blaine, you take these inside to the Warblers meeting. We’ll have this worked out by the time you get back.”
Blaine nods and gives Sam a confused but sympathetic smile before disappearing with the pizzas into the dark school. Kurt props the door and steps outside. He sits down on the stoop and pats the cement beside him. Sam sits. Much to both their surprise, the whole story spills from Sam without prompting, all in one impossibly long sentence. Kurt listens.
“And now I have four pepperoni and anchovy pizzas stinking up my car, and I somehow need to convince the manager not only to not make me pay for them but also to not fire my ass for being the worst pizza delivery boy ever, which is going to be even harder because I’m pretty sure I saw Bart snorting a line of coke back in the kitchen with Woody and Alex and he’s already pissed at me for not agreeing to deliver a paper bag of what smelled to me like pot along with an order of cheesy sticks.”
Kurt’s mouth and eyes are open wide. “Well, I don’t think I’ll be eating that pizza anytime soon,” he says more to himself than anything. Then he says to Sam, “That’s terrible. Especially that they don't pay you mileage. All that stop-and-go residential driving has to be hard on your brakes and tires.”
Sam has a moment to be oddly glad that Kurt is talking about the pizza delivering rather than Sam's dad losing his job and the house before the realization sets in. Then Sam’s head drops into his hands. He hadn’t even thought about that, another thing he can’t afford.
“Hey,” Kurt says gently, but also like an idea has just occurred to him. “When you need a tune-up, bring your car to my dad’s shop. We’d be happy to service it for free in exchange for word-of-mouth advertising among your pizza delivery coworkers.”
Sam knows a handout when he sees it, but he’s grateful that Kurt is going to the trouble of trying to disguise it.
“I don’t think I ever told you this, but I always appreciated how you were willing to sing a duet with me for glee club,” Kurt says. “I was kind of a stylish Typhoid Mary at McKinley, and you actually had a decent shot at being popular.”
“Typhoid who?”
Kurt smiles at him like he’s said something dumb but Kurt isn’t going to call him dumb. “Never mind. Just, thanks.”
“Hey,” Blaine says quietly from behind them. He looks like he’s trying to figure out what’s going on without interrupting, though that’s impossible. “We were always going to pay for the pizzas, you know. The thing about the delivery time was just a bad joke,” he says, pulling out his wallet.
Kurt springs up from the step and stands beside Blaine, a hand on his arm. “Blaine, we really didn’t order enough pizzas for the Warblers, did we?” He turns to Sam and adds, “We’re having a meeting to discuss whether we’re going to accept an invitation to perform at the Westerville Air Show grandstand, and the head of the Council won’t stop muttering darkly about Charles Lindbergh. We could be here all night arguing.” Kurt goes back to talking to Blaine. “Sam has four pepperoni pizzas in his car that nobody wanted. We should buy those, shouldn’t we?”
Blaine is still trying to catch up. “But you hate pepperoni so much you won’t let anyone eat it in your presence. You say the grease is so thick it clogs your pores just by being in the same room with it.”
Kurt says very sweetly, “Darling, just buy the damn pizzas.”
Sam shakes his head at Kurt, but he can’t help but smile. By the time he’s gone to the car to get the pizzas and come back again, Blaine is showing the money he’s going to pay to Kurt, apparently getting his approval of the amount of the tip. Sam accepts it without counting.
“Have a good night, Sam,” Kurt says, sliding his hand into the crook of Blaine’s elbow, even though it’s awkward with Blaine now holding a stack of pizzas. “And if you need absolutely anything, you let me know, all right?”
Sam looks at them, and for a moment, he is intensely jealous: jealous of their private school uniforms and of how Blaine can buy forty dollars’ worth of pizza that no one will eat and grossly over-tip without batting an eyelash. Accepting handouts is harder than he’d thought; then again, Sam had never thought he’d need to accept a handout. But maybe if he can think about it as help from a friend...maybe it can be okay.
“Thanks,” Sam says. “Good luck with the meeting, and...thanks.”
As Sam walks to his car, his dad’s words come back to him. Give it some time, and it’ll be great. It isn’t anywhere near great yet, but for the first time that night, Sam truly believes that someday it will be.
Second Hand News (Artie and Puck)
Puck and Artie sit in Puck’s backyard in lawn chairs, staring at the vacant lot that lies next to it and passing a bottle of Jack between them. Well, Artie’s not sitting in a lawn chair, obviously. He’s in his wheelchair, which Puck thinks is handy, because Puck’s other lawn chair has a big hole in the seat. He decides against commenting on how convenient it is that Artie comes with an almost-built-in lawn chair, though. He’s pretty sure Artie wouldn’t appreciate it right now.
“Between Santana practically brainwashing her and basically every other guy in school telling her it’s hot when she and Santana have sex, I can see why Brittany would be confused,” Artie says, gesturing so forcefully while holding the bottle that Puck fears he’s going to spill or drop it. He gently disentangles Artie’s fingers from the bottle’s neck and takes another swig himself.
Puck shrugs. “See, that sounds to me like a solution rather than a problem. Make up with Brittany for the stupid comment, then tell her that it’s only okay for her to get it on with Santana if you’re there. Relationships are all about compromise.”
Artie rolls his eyes. “I’m not saying that I don’t find two girls together hot-because, duh, it is-but it’s not the same for a guy like me as it is for a guy like you.”
“Huh?”
“I mean this in a completely straight dude way, but you’re a stud,” Artie says, arm waving so wildly that his wheelchair rocks on the uneven ground. He’s pretty wasted. Puck shrugs and grins because, yeah, even if it’s a little weird to have another dude call him a stud, it is the truth, after all.
Artie continues, “Not only am I a total nerd, but I can’t even move my hips, Puck.”
Puck’s been wondering about something for a long while, and Artie is drunk enough that Puck doubts he’ll get weirded out by the question for once. “Also in a completely straight dude way, if you’re paralyzed from the waist down, how does sex work?”
“Oh, I’m, uh, fully functional in that respect,” Artie says, his eyes a little wide. “Thank God. It’s just that Brittany pretty much has to run the show. I can’t compete with...anybody. The only way I’m ever going to win the girl in a love triangle is if I become the next Bill Gates or the other side of the triangle dies.”
“Aw, that’s bullshit,” Puck drawls, starting to feel the Jack himself. “What about that guy in the wheelchair with the mechanical voice who’s always talking about black holes and shit? I bet he still gets chicks.”
Artie cocks his head. “You mean Stephen Hawking? How the hell do you know who Stephen Hawking is?”
Puck shrugs. “Money’s tight, so we canceled our cable subscription and started watching lots of PBS. ‘NOVA’ is actually kind of fucking awesome.”
Artie stares at him with his jaw hanging slack. “Okay, so I can get the girl if I make billions, the other person dies, or I become a brilliant theoretical physicist. Great.”
“Well, there is one other option,” Puck says, scratching his head thoughtfully. “You could get really good at going down on girls. They seem to like that.”
“That’s what I was banking on,” Artie says, sighing, “but it doesn’t help when you’re up against another girl. Santana, knowing what the receiving side feels like, has a definite advantage.”
“Huh. I never thought of it that way,” Puck says. They sit in silence for a long time. “So do you suppose that means gay dudes get better blow jobs than we do from girls? Since the guy giving knows the other end?”
“Probably,” Artie says. “I think we’re pushing the limits of ‘I ask this in a completely straight dude way’ here, though.”
Puck’s spine snaps so he’s sitting up straight in the chair, and he precedes his next statement with a manly grunt. “Sorry, dude. Zizes being such a tease must be getting to me. Her rack is worth waiting for, though.”
“Don’t sweat it, man,” Artie says. They fist-bump and talk about tits and cars and videogames and other manly shit until darkness falls and the streetlights flicker on.
The Chain (Mercedes and Kurt)
It’s the display in Kurt’s locker that finally gets her.
No, Mercedes doesn’t begrudge him the little shrine to Blaine, particularly not now that he’s actually Kurt’s boyfriend. Nor does she begrudge the existence of the photo of Kurt, Rachel, and Rachel’s dads waving rainbow flags at the Columbus Pride Parade, or of Kurt and Sam at Kurt’s dad’s auto shop.
What she does begrudge is the fact that Kurt didn’t tell her he was dating Blaine until a week after the fact, which she understands to some extent because he couldn’t talk about the kiss without talking about the duet and thus the competition’s set list. Even so, by the time she heard the story, she could tell the shine had worn off somewhat. He’s still giddy and breathless over the whole thing, but it’s just not the same as the rush of him calling her the moment he gets home after something important happens.
She begrudges the fact that, when she asked why Kurt hadn’t even mentioned the Pride Parade, let alone invited her to tag along, he pulled the religion card on her and said he’d assumed it was incompatible with her beliefs (which they both know is untrue and not at all fair). She begrudges the fact that Kurt brushed her questions off when the photo with Sam first appeared, then continued to refuse to tell her what was really going on when the rumors about the motel started. She begrudges the fact that Kurt and Tina are constantly having these knowing, smug “isn’t my serious boyfriend adorable/infuriating/clueless but in an endearing way” conversations that she can’t join in on because, judging from their looks when she tries, her brief time dating Puck doesn’t count. She begrudges the fact that Karofsky was tormenting Kurt, and Kurt couldn’t tell her.
Looking back, Mercedes realizes she should’ve known that the basis for her and Kurt’s friendship was always tenuous. She would never believe they’d become friends just because they were the leftovers once the straight white kids had all paired themselves off, and yet...had they? They both love fashion, but Mercedes thinks Kurt’s harnesses and sweater-corsets are nuts, and Kurt never holds back on his feelings about zebra print. They both love music, but they’d never sung a duet together for glee club. Maybe they are too much like their voices, she thinks: not a bad fit for each other, but not natural and inevitable enough that they would work together without the perfect song and a lot of effort.
No, she doesn’t begrudge Kurt having so many pictures with other friends in his locker. What hurts is when she sees how the new photos cover up the old ones of just the two of them.
You Make Loving Fun (Kurt/Blaine)
Blaine grins like a fool when he hears his “Blackbird” ringtone, the way he always does. He flops down on his bed and settles in for as long a conversation as his homework will allow him.
“Hey, Gorgeous,” he answers, consciously turning up his internal charm dial to eleven.
Kurt makes a noise somewhere between a scoff and a chuckle. Blaine is pretty sure Kurt is blushing, even without seeing him. Blaine loves making Kurt blush.
“Still testing out pet names, are we?” Kurt says.
“How do you like it?”
“Better than yesterday’s,” Kurt teases.
“‘Hot Lips’ is a classic. They used it on M*A*S*H*.”
Kurt gives a mock long-suffering sigh. “Someday, I really need to give you a nice, long lesson in a little concept called ‘context.’ So, how was your day?”
“Oh, let’s see, Thad tried to convince me that my ‘For the Longest Time’ is better than Billy Joel’s, David nearly popped that blood vessel in his forehead when Jeff suggested we perform ‘It’s Getting Hot in Here’ sans blazers, and we diverted Wes from plotting world domination by daring him to come up with an acapella arrangement for ‘Classical Gas.’”
“Same old, same old, then?”
“Not quite. You’re not there.” Blaine knows he sounds like a sap, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
“Glad to hear that my whip-smart humor and boat-rocking but never used song suggestions had enough of an impact to leave a void,” Kurt says, and Blaine knows that the sarcasm veneers genuine feeling.
Satisfied with that light-hearted lead-in, Blaine takes a breath and internally rehearses what he’s going to say one last time. “There was one strange thing that happened today,” he says, proud of how laid back his tone sounds.
“Oh?”
He winces, because he can tell from Kurt’s tone on that one syllable that Kurt has already seen through his mock-casualness and knows something is up. “Rachel texted me today.”
“I warned you not to give her your number.”
“I kind of enjoy the daily Broadway on YouTube links, but the weekly assisted reproduction websites are a little much.”
Kurt coughs like he’s choking on a drink. “She sends-oh god. Vaguely Eurasian babies. Oh dear god. As in she wants to be your surrogate, or she wants you to be her sperm donor? Never mind, I don’t want to know. Both are disturbing beyond words.”
Blaine grimaces. Up until now, he had thought she was doing it as some weird but sort of sweet way of showing she accepted his sexuality after their strange date. He is tempted to ask about the story behind ‘vaguely Eurasian babies’ but thinks better of it. “Anyway, today’s text was...I know you’ve told me she’s...a bit eccentric.”
“I believe my words were ‘batshit insane,’ but yes,” Kurt says. Then his tone switches. “Can you please just tell me what’s wrong instead of tiptoeing around it?”
“She sent me a link to the McKinley Muckraker online edition-”
“She did what!“
“-followed by a directive to ‘fight for my man’ and a list of recommended songs from love triangles in various Broadway musicals.”
Kurt cuts in frantically, “Blaine, you have to know I would never, ever-”
“I do,” Blaine reassures just as quickly. “I know you wouldn’t. And I know that if we have any shot at making a semi-long-distance relationship work, we need to trust each other. I trust you, Kurt.”
Kurt sighs in relief. “You have no idea how nice it is to finally have someone not jump to salacious conclusions.”
“It’s just-”
“Just what?” Kurt says, voice turning cold and defensive in an instant.
“No, it’s just, are things really okay at McKinley, Kurt?” Blaine asks. “I know you keep saying that it’s better there now. But then I saw the things people at that school are saying about you in this paper...they’re cruel.”
Kurt’s tone is too steady for Blaine’s comfort. “Maybe so, but they’re commonplace, Blaine. They’re petty and pedestrian, so much so that I don’t even deign them with my attention.”
Blaine has always understood that Kurt’s haughtiness is a form of armor. He’s not sure he really understood how necessary that armor is until now.
“Anyway, Sam is the one catching most of the flak for it, and he’s refreshingly far more bothered about the rumors suggesting he facilitates cheating than how they imply that he’s bisexual.”
Blaine’s stomach turns at the thought of what could happen if the paper starts printing things about Kurt and someone not so accepting. Like, Kurt and basically anyone not in his glee club. Oh God, Karofsky. Blaine has to close his eyes for a moment to gather himself before changing the subject. “Sam seems like a good guy. Is whatever was up the night he delivered pizza at Dalton better now?” Kurt had spent half an hour sitting on the front steps and talking with Sam after the guy had nearly burst into tears when Kurt kidded about the late delivery equals free pizza rule.
“Sadly, no,” Kurt says, honest and tired-sounding. “That’s part of what all this in the Muckraker is about, but I can’t tell you any more than that. It’s not my story to tell.”
“I understand.”
After a long silence, Kurt giggles. “I was just thinking what the Muckraker would do with the story of Sam delivering pizza to an all-boys school, met at the door by two notorious homosexuals, and the fact that it took him an hour to make the delivery.”
“It does sound like the premise of a porno or two.” Blaine smiles.
“You would know,” Kurt says, teasing again.
“Watching porn does not make me some sort of pervert,” Blaine says, half playing and half actually defending himself. “It makes me a teenage male.” The statement comes out before he has a chance to think it through, which is never a good thing. This is why he rehearses potentially awkward conversations. “I didn’t mean it like that, Kurt. I wasn’t talking about you at all.”
“I know. I know you always mean well, even when the words don’t come out quite right. Trust me, living with Finn, I’m very used to that,” Kurt says, and Blaine imagines Kurt waving the comment off dismissively in his mind. The fact that Kurt was so adept at waving off so many nasty things in that newspaper makes Blaine feel much less secure in that proving his mistake is not a big deal.
It does, however, bring up something Blaine has been thinking about a lot lately. “You know,” he says quietly, cautiously, “I could send you a couple really mild, kind of more romantic ones with no embarrassing tattoos-”
“Blaine-”
“-I think you must have accidentally run across something extremely hardcore initially-and I can totally see how some of the stuff out there would make sex look downright terrifying-but it’s not all like that.”
“Blaine, stop,” Kurt says calmly. Blaine does. Kurt continues, “Thank you. Okay, now it’s time for the first of what will likely be many lessons on context. I don’t doubt that what you say is true. However, sending someone porn takes on a slightly different meaning when you’re dating said person.”
Blaine’s eyes fly wide open. “I’m not doing this to try to seduce you, I swear. I just want you to be informed and comfortable about yourself as a sexual being.”
“Which you have a personal, vested interest in since we’re dating now.”
“Oh.” Blaine pauses for a moment, letting that sink in. “Oh.” He covers his eyes with his free hand.
“Yes. That’s context,” Kurt says slowly, clearly relishing his teaching moment. “I can’t be your naïve little baby gay in training anymore. I don’t have a daddy kink, and that’s the only way I could see someone finding that sort of dynamic appealing.”
“Sorry. I told you I’m awful at this romance thing. I promise not to bring up porn again.” Then Blaine’s brows furrow. “Wait a minute. How do you know about daddy kinks? That’s not exactly the sort of thing covered in the kind of pamphlets you said your dad gave you.”
“I’ve been doing some independent research, just not of the audio-visual variety,” Kurt mutters, low and hurried. “Okay, then, time for a new conversation topic.”
“If things get bad at McKinley, you will tell me, though?” Blaine presses. Before Kurt can object, Blaine adds, “That’s not being a mentor. That’s being a concerned boyfriend.”
Kurt hums happily. “You know hearing you say the b-word is my weak spot.”
Blaine sits up, interested. Actually, he hadn’t known that before. He plans to take full advantage of it from here on out. “Well, then, I have to finish my essay for Mr. Roskin’s class, but I would love to take my boyfriend out for coffee tomorrow after school, if he’s available.”
“I do believe your boyfriend is free tomorrow,” Kurt says. Blaine can almost hear the grin in his voice.
“Then now I must bid my boyfriend good evening.”
“And I wish my boyfriend- We are so ridiculous.”
“Ridiculousness is what being young and smitten is all about,” Blaine laughs. He knows this is the part of the conversation where “I love you” should fall, right between “see you tomorrow” and “goodnight.” But it’s too soon for them to be able to say it and really mean it. It’ll be worth the wait.
Instead, he adds, “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.”
Gold Dust Woman (Santana/Brittany; Santana/Karofsky)
Santana looks up for a moment from her phone, out the windshield of Dave’s pickup. Lots of things look pretty if you view them from a distance, but not even the vantage point high above the town and a sunset can cure Lima of its terminal case of fugly. Why people ever bother with Lover’s Lookout when they could just drive a few miles more and park on a gravel country lane is beyond her. Then again, she guesses most people who come up here aren’t here for the scenery.
Dave shifts in the seat beside her. Her eyes drop back down to her phone.
“Shouldn’t we be, like, doing something?” Dave asks.
“What, you want to practice fucking a girl while picturing Lance Bass so you don’t call out the wrong name with the future wifey? Because I’m not nearly drunk enough for that.”
She flicks her eyes up long enough to catch his look of disgust. “No. Just-what if somebody sees that we’re not doing anything?”
Santana sighs. “Just chill and trust my skill at deviousness, okay? This morning, I made sure Mercedes ‘accidentally’ found out we were parking, so half the school knew by sixth period. Everybody knows your truck, so that’ll be enough to confirm the rumor. Nobody but Jacob is pervy enough to actually look in the windows, and Azimio broke the telescopic lens on his camera two days ago, remember?”
Okay, so the Bully Whips had let that one little incident slide. But it was Jacob ben Icky, who, despite being a punching bag, probably caused everybody at school more pain and torment than the football and hockey teams combined. And what do you do when bullies bully? Her answer would be, kick both their asses, but she doubts Figgins would go for that.
Dave continues to shift restlessly in his seat. “What are you doing?”
Santana snaps, “Playing Angry Birds. Now shut up and watch the sunset.”
That’s not what she’s doing, of course. She’s on her third draft of a text to Brittany, trying to come up with a way to explain why she can’t go through with “Fondue for Two” in a way that Brittany will understand. It’s hard enough explaining something like “brunch” to Brittany (“I finally get the whole salty-or-sweet issue with breakfast figured out, and now you tell me there’s another weird meal to deal with?”). Explaining why she couldn’t say what she feels to the whole school, when Brittany is either so brave or so completely out-to-lunch that she has absolutely no fear about all this...it feels impossible.
An idea springs into her mind with such force that she feels like the thought itself is what makes her head snap up.
“You’d dump the Bully Whips if I dumped you, wouldn’t you?” she asks.
“What?” Dave blinks, like she was interrupting his own thoughts.
“This whole bearding agreement we have. It’s important to you, isn’t it? Like, important enough that you’d go back to harassing Kurt without it, wouldn’t you?” That is something Brittany would understand, and that Santana could squeeze within the 250-character limit of a text.
Much to Santana’s surprise, Dave looks at her with a level of disdain that matches the look from when she was teasing about Lance Bass. “Look. I know you’ve got me by the short hairs. You don’t have to remind me every five seconds.”
She frowns at him. Dave continues before she even has time to devise a wicked come-back. “You’ve got the trump card here, I get it. You can make me take you out to fancy dinners or buy you jewelry or dump me and tell me to make a big show of chasing after you, and I have to take it, because any time you want, you can tell everyone I’m gay and point to us not doing anything when we’re out like this as proof. And that’s not even counting how Hummel...” Dave shakes his head, and Santana knows she’s not going to hear anything more.
Not like she really cares what kind of power Kurt has over Dave right now. She deletes her carefully-worded text one last time. The words “take me home” are on the tip of her tongue. That’s not what comes out when she finds her voice.
“Are your parents home?”
Dave answers, “They go out for a date night every Thursday. They’re probably gone by now.”
She puts her fingertips to her forehead and squeezes her eyes shut. She feels sick and only wishes she could convince herself it was a migraine. “Do they have a liquor cabinet?”
As Dave starts the engine and shifts the truck out of park, Santana’s fingers fly across her phone: “I can’t.” She hits ‘Send,’ turns the phone off, and buries it in her purse before she can change her mind.
Silver Springs (Quinn, Lauren, and Rachel)
Quinn is used to being the center of attention. She is used to crowds in the halls parting before her like the Red Sea, used to holding court at the most popular table at lunch, used to being at the pinnacle of the human pyramid in Cheerios and in high school in general.
Yet for someone so accustomed to the spotlight, Quinn has found herself lurking behind corners and in doorways a lot lately.
Today she stands in the dark in the very back of the auditorium, near the door. She watches the stage, and she listens. From back here, Rachel Berry looks like nothing more than a plaid blob sitting at the piano. Even back here, though, Quinn has to admit that Rachel Berry sounds like a star.
Quinn nearly jumps out of her skin when someone murmurs in her ear, “Whatcha doin’ back here?”
“What are you doing here?” Quinn hisses back before she even thinks, turning toward Lauren.
Lauren crosses her arms over her chest and looks at Quinn like she’s not about to take crap from anyone. Not that she ever looks like she’ll take crap from anyone. “You may have the better diction, but I so beat you to the question.”
Quinn turns back toward the stage as Rachel sings an impressive run, then scribbles in a notebook. “She’s arranging another Fleetwood Mac song as a duet,” Quinn says, seething. “When is she ever going to get it through her head that no matter how good they sound together, she’s not going to get what I have with Finn?”
“Funny you should bring that up,” Lauren says, “because that it’s-me-or-the-duet thing you pulled today in glee? Is crap.”
Quinn jerks her head over her shoulder and scowls at Lauren. “You’ve seen the way Rachel looks at Finn when she sings to him. I had to do something, and anything subtler than a two-by-four to the head wasn’t sinking in with her.”
“I don’t dispute that. I also don’t get why everybody acts like we can’t survive a competition without a Rachel and Finn duet when pretty much all of you guys sing pop and musicals in ways that knock the socks off my punk rock and heavy metal loving feet,” Lauren says. “But apparently, you all do think that, and even if you didn’t, deciding for the group that two other people can’t sing together is wrong and pathetic and, frankly, way below your A-game, Fabray.”
Quinn feels even more anger welling inside her. She wants to stamp her feet like an utter brat, but instead she grips the backs of the auditorium seats hard. “Oh yeah? What would you do if Puck and I sang a flirty duet and he made eyes at me?”
Lauren doesn’t even need a moment to think before she responds. “Depending on the level of eye-sexing, I’d either dump him, or tug him away by the ear after the performance and tell him to keep his eyes, hands, dick, and any other interested body parts to himself, or I’ll dump him.”
She acknowledges what Lauren says, but deep down, Quinn knows that’s not at all what she wants to hear. Like any smart animal will do when backed into a corner, Quinn goes on the attack. “How do you trust Puck to be faithful to you, after all the women he’s cheated on and with?”
Lauren is beside Quinn, leaning her forearms on the backs of the seats and watching Rachel plunk out patterns on the keyboard. “Well, there are lots of different reasons cheaters cheat, but I’m pretty sure that Puckerman’s reason is he struggles with the concept of cause and effect.” Quinn looks at her, and Lauren shrugs. “I never claimed to be dating him for his brain. Besides, that doesn’t necessarily have to do with how smart he is. I think it’s mostly because a lot of things come so easy for him, they go his way no matter what he does, and as for the things that don’t, those tend to go wrong for completely random reasons outside his control.”
“What?” Quinn finds herself asking without thinking again. It’s so strange to hear someone talking about Puck so seriously. She admits to herself that she’s never even thought about what might be under his surface, especially because she has always half-assumed the answer is “nothing.”
Lauren rolls her eyes. “Long story short, among many, many other things, you and your cheerleading ilk falling for him no matter how he treated you, and also going back to your more respectable boyfriends, again no matter how he treated you, fucked with his sense of reality.”
“Yet another person’s life being screwed up is all my fault, too, huh?” Quinn laughs bitterly.
“No. It’s his life, so it’s his responsibility.”
Quinn worries her lip with her teeth and keeps her eyes glued to the stage. “If you know so much about psychology, then what would Finn’s motivation be if he cheated on me with someone like Rachel?”
“That question assumes I actually pay attention to Finn. To be honest, the only times I consciously think about him are when I’m trying to not get partnered with him for any dancing number and wondering what the hell is so great about him when you and Rachel square off over him like two dogs fighting over the world’s last Beggin’ Strip.” Lauren pauses for a moment, then asks, “Don’t you find it at all ironic that you, of all people, are worried about whether and why other people cheat?” Quinn glares. Lauren shrugs. “Nope, guess not.”
Quinn is ready for this conversation to be done and regrets having begun it at all. She sits down in the back row, hoping Lauren will take the hint.
She doesn’t. Instead, she leans over the adjacent seat again. “Back to your original question, the cause-and-effect thing is true, but the real reason I’m not fretting about Puck cheating on me is because if he does, I’ll live. Yeah, it’d suck, but being single again wouldn’t be the end of the world.”
Quinn looks up and sees Lauren looking at her knowingly, as expected. She knows what everyone thinks of her stringing along Sam until she was sure she wanted Finn instead. She knows what she would think of Santana or Brittany or Rachel doing the same thing. That doesn’t mean she wants to be lectured on it.
Rachel’s voice carries all the way to the back of the auditorium, even though at least in theory she’s singing to herself. She repeats lines over and over again, adjusting the piano accompaniment. And don’t say that she’s pretty, and did you say that she loved you...
Lauren is still talking when Quinn shifts her attention again. “Of course that’s not all of it. I know I can’t completely understand it because, frankly, my parents are awesome and have always got my back, but having a parent flake out like that, it has to screw with a person.”
The stage blurs before Quinn’s eyes. She digs her thumbnail into the fleshy part of her other hand between her thumb and forefinger as hard as she can. Even that doesn’t hold it all back. She sniffs and closes her eyes.
Lauren apparently sees. “What are you-oh, fuck. I was talking about Puck and his dad. I’m sorry. I completely forgot about the thing with your parents last year.”
Quinn wants to snap at her for making it sound like the ordeal is over with now. It will never be over. She will always wonder if her mother would have ever spoken to her again if her father hadn’t had an affair. Quinn still thinks she sometimes catches Mom looking at her as if she’s thinking, If it weren’t for what you did, we would still have that life. If it weren’t for you, I could have pretended, and everything would have been fine.
Quinn hates the way her voice quavers when she speaks. “About two months ago, I saw my father for the first time since he threw me out. In the grocery store.” She doesn’t know why she’s saying anything, let alone this. Tears magnify the stage lights’ brightness until they hurt her eyes.
“You mean he hasn’t-” Lauren stops herself and checks her tone of disbelief. For that, Quinn is eternally grateful. “Did he say something to you?”
“No. Nothing,” she says, shaking her head like that isn’t bad, like it’s a relief.
That’s a lie, though. Not the silence-that was true. He had been in the baking needs aisle, leaning on a shopping cart and scrolling through text messages on his phone as his new girlfriend and her daughter good-naturedly squabbled over which flavor of cake mix they should get. He had looked up and made eye contact with Quinn as she stood frozen beside the Jell-O display, stupidly crushing the box of sugar-free pudding mix in her hand. He said nothing.
He walked right past her, with his girlfriend who was a carbon-copy of what Quinn’s mother had looked like in their wedding photographs, and that girl, about thirteen and red-haired but otherwise nothing like Quinn (Lucy) because she was slim and pretty and smiling and perfect. He walked right past her, looked her in the eye, and said nothing.
“I’m-” Lauren starts, placing her hand on Quinn’s shoulder. She stops speaking when Quinn grabs that hand and squeezes, hard. They stay frozen like that for a long time, just listening to Rachel sing.