Home Part 1-A
Spoilers: Up to 2.22
Warnings: Kidnapping, violence, ableism, homophobia, physical abuse by a caretaker, a smidgen of Stockholm's, serious injury, tertiary character death.
Rating: R
Word Count: Whole fic: 52, 000; Part 1: 13, 520
Disclaimer: RIB and FOX own everything ever.
Beta: rdm-ation
1A | 1B | 2A | 2B | 3A | 3B | 3C
This prompt. If Will wants a family, Terri will give him a family. And if he wants his precious glee kids - two birds, one stone.
Part One
Terri was a big-picture person.
When she was six years old, she asked for a dollhouse for Christmas. It was a very specific dollhouse. It was taller than she was, and both sides swung open to allow access to its thirteen rooms. It took up most of her cramped room, and she had to keep some of her clothes in Kendra’s room to make space.
The dollhouse had very convincing plastic in the windows and was painted the kind of white that hurt her eyes when the light hit it. It had a gray roof and green trim. It took her another two years to collect the furniture for it - beds that fit in her hands with pillows that slid between her fingers, dark shiny tables and chairs with spindly legs, rugs that looked like doilies, serving bowls the size of marbles. She never broke or lost a piece. She cleaned it once a week and never, ever let Kendra play with it. This was hers, she thought, and some day it would be hers for real.
When Terri was ten years old, Kendra asked her why she didn't have any dolls.
This was a puzzler and a little embarrassing. She had gotten everything ready and, focused on the ‘everything,’ forgotten why she was doing it in the first place.
For her eleventh birthday, she got a husband and a wife, as well as two babies, and decorated the babies’ rooms in pink even though her mother said that one of them should be a boy and have blue. Terri knew exactly what she wanted, and it involved pink.
Twenty years later, it involved William Schuester.
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“What about yellow?”
Terri set down the towel she was folding and turned; for some reason, that voice made her think strongly of clean bathrooms and home cooked meals.
“I don’t think Kurt’s going to let you pick yellow,” said the six-foot Will 2.0 who used to be her subordinate, and that was how she knew these kids - they were in that glee club her husband was so obsessed with. In fact, she suspected them of being responsible for reporting that she’d given them a perfectly harmless performance-enhancing drug when she’d been the school nurse. Teenagers: ungrateful and untrustworthy, every last one of them.
“Why not?” The tiny girl clutched at a package of yellow sheets. “Yellow has psychological benefits! Looking at it makes you feel happier, and I am going to be under a lot of pressure this coming school year. As a senior trying to get into a prestigious college in New York and the leader of our glee club for my last chance to win a title at Nationals, I am going to need all the subconscious boosters I can get.”
“I don’t think Kurt cares so much about that,” said - Finn. That was definitely his name. He had been awful at folding towels. “I think he cares about stuff going together. And not being yellow or pink.”
This was ridiculous. She couldn’t escape them anywhere. Thank goodness she was moving, but still. She wouldn’t be surprised if she went shopping in Florida and that bitch of a cheerleader popped up to insult her clothing. And really, for how invested Will was in them, she shouldn’t even have bothered trying to take Quinn’s baby; she should have just adopted Quinn when she got thrown out of her house by her idiot parents. Everyone would have won. Quinn would have a home, Will would still be with Terri, she wouldn’t have to move to Florida to escape the pathetic shambles of the life she’d spent years building and which now clung to her as so much detritus. Really, Will wouldn’t have dared leave her if they’d had a child, even a teenage one. Make it a child from that glee club and he wouldn’t even have thought about it.
Oh.
Terri looked closer at the kids examining their sheet options; there was another boy with them now, one whose name she couldn’t quite place. He tried to grab the sheets away from the girl by force, and she clung to them, both of them talking with increasing volume about why they were right.
Terri smiled.
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“Rachel, the entire point of this is to give you a room that doesn’t make me feel like I’ve fallen into a bottle of Pepto-Bismol every time we have a sleepover, and you seriously want to replace pink with yellow? It will look like a bowl of lemon sorbet! We are giving you a real grown up bedroom or so help me god -”
“I agreed to let you help me give my room a makeover on the condition that I got to make all the final calls, and my final call is that I want a yellow theme! My room should reflect my personality, and I am a happy person obsessed with stars, which are yellow!” Rachel pointed fiercely to the bright yellow star on her sweater, which she felt underscored her point quite well. Unfortunately, this weakened her hold on the sheets, and Kurt snatched them away.
“We will get you all the yellow stars you want, but your room is not going to be yellow, and neither is your bed if you expect me to sleep there ever again! I have suffered enough indignity at your hands with those cotton-candy sheets of yours.”
“Finn agrees with me!”
“Well, Mercedes agrees with me. So does Blaine.”
“That’s not fair, they’re not even here and you would manipulate their decisions.” Rachel spun on Finn. “You do agree with me, don’t you, Finn?”
Finn blinked. “What? Oh, yeah, totally. Could we talk again about why my brother gets to sleep in your bed and I don’t? If anyone gets to suffer indignities at your hands, I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be me.” He smiled. “Did I mention that I agree with you about whatever this is?”
Rachel tried to decide whether she should yell at him and let Kurt explain that suffering indignities was a bad thing, or do the explaining and make Kurt be the bad cop, but was interrupted by a chirpy voice behind them.
“Are you kids finding everything all right?”
Rachel turned and, confronted with Mr. Schue’s ex-wife, died of embarrassment. Between knowing practically everything about their divorce and having scrubbed the woman’s bathroom…. She would almost rather have run into Jacob Ben Israel. “Mrs. Schuester,” she said desperately, and winced. “I mean, Ms - Del Monico! It’s so nice to see you! I was very sorry to hear about your divorce, which I did not in any way desire. I’m with Finn now. This is my boyfriend Finn, whom I love.” She grabbed his arm for emphasis. “I’m completely over any other crushes I may have had at any point.”
“Oh, really?” Terri frowned. “You two are together? That’s too bad. I thought you were Will’s favorites.”
“We’re the co-captains of the glee club,” Rachel explained as Kurt muttered, “Wherever did you get that idea?”
“Isn’t that a little - I don’t want to say incestuous, but I just did, so it’s too late now.” Terri laughed, but sobered rapidly. “Will always said you guys were like a family, but you date each other? Honestly, you look too young to be dating at all. Trust me, getting attached so early on in life rarely works out.”
“Oh… well…” Rachel looked around uncertainly, as if the yellow sheets or at the very least the blue ones might hold some kind of answer. “Not quite that close of a family…?”
“That’s more us,” Kurt said, pulling her under his arm. “Rachel and I are like siblings. She only dates all of the other boys in glee club.” He laughed his awkward laugh.
Rachel turned the full force of her worshipful gaze (which she intended to patent) on him, both as positive reinforcement for his saving her from uncomfortable social situations - albeit by making them even more uncomfortable, but at least the onus was on him now - and because of what exactly he had said. “If I could have any boy in the world for a brother, I would pick you,” she blurted.
“Oh, that’s lovely,” said Terri, smiling. She looked oddly relieved.
“Wait,” said Finn. “Since Kurt’s my brother, and I’m dating you, if you two were siblings - doesn’t this make it even more incestuous than just the glee club thing?”
Terri, who was staring at Kurt now, ignored him. “I don’t think I caught your name.”
“It’s Kurt. Kurt Hummel.” He took his arm off Rachel to shake her hand.
Terri clung to it, looking him over. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember you from glee club. Were you there when I was the school nurse?” She beamed. “I had a brief but very successful stint. Sometimes I worry I may have missed my calling.”
“Um, yes,” said Kurt. Rachel imagined he wasn’t used to people not remembering him. He gently extracted his hand. “I’ve actually been there since Mr. Schuester started the club.”
“He was way shorter when you were there,” Finn explained.
Terri cocked her head, still staring at Kurt. “Oh, how silly of me! Of course, I remember you now.” She frowned again. “You have grown a lot, haven’t you?”
Kurt glared at Finn. “I suppose so.”
“Well… that’s all right. A girl should have an older brother. I’m sure you two have a beautiful relationship.”
“I’m so glad you approve.”
“So anyway, Mrs. Schuester, we were going to get some new sheets and curtains for Rachel’s room,” said Finn, who had no sense of tact but, to be fair, was being hit with a frightening death stare from Kurt. “And she wants to do yellow but Kurt doesn’t think that’s a good idea? Maybe you could help us out and I could get home in time for the game. Not that that’s important compared to Rachel’s room.”
“That’s a wonderful idea,” Terri said, putting a hand on Rachel’s arm. “What kinds of colors do you like?”
“Um, bright ones?”
“Green,” said Kurt. “She likes green. Think Elphaba, Rachel.”
“Well…”
“Green sounds perfect,” said Terri. “I’ll make a note of that. You kids have fun now!” She disappeared quickly into the back of the store.
“What,” said Kurt, “was that.”
“I think that was pretty normal for her, actually,” Finn pointed out. “So, green?”
“Excuse me,” Rachel said.
“Green,” Kurt said firmly. “And let’s just grab the sheets and go. We can get everything else… anywhere but here.”
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“Howard,” Terri said, “I need you to call Sandy Ryerson and ask him to come here.”
“Mr. Ryerson?” said Howard, who lacked distinctly in all things resembling drive and ambition and who really should be on the phone already, seeing as she was the assistant manager and had given him a direct order. “You want me to call him and have come here? On purpose?”
“And then go and stock the shelves with those pillows, you know the ones - with the kittens sleeping in the monkeys’ hands like they’re about to be lunch. His number’s in my rolodex so I can call him when we get a shipping of anything colored fuchsia. Go!” Terri, for her part, pulled out her cell phone and called her sister. “Kendra,” she said, interrupting the standard “this had better be good”, “we are going to get me a baby!”
“Oh, Ter. Did you find another one already? Honey, didn’t Will already drop you like four-week old pasta salad to chase that copper-plated floozy? Why don’t you come over and we’ll talk this out over some vodka.”
“No,” Terri snapped. “Not a literal infant.” She leaned around the door of the office. Kurt and Rachel were at the checkout counter, still bickering. “I found something better.”
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Rachel locked the door behind her, always safety conscious, and called, “Hello?” even though the house was dark. No one answered.
She sighed and dropped her shopping bags in the hall. She could take them up to her room later; she’d promised Kurt she would put the new sheets on, at least, since he was staying over tomorrow night to move her furniture out and to help her paint her walls. But she would have time before he got here tomorrow. She was tired and needed dinner. Proper nutrition was vital to a young adult, and eating after eight o’clock was extra-fattening, especially if one kept to an early schedule.
She made broccoli for the calcium and scrambled some tofu with spices as comfort food, even though she’d sworn off fried foods Monday through Friday. She ate it at the dining room table, which stretched away in front of her, reflecting the ceiling faintly.
Her dads called at eight-thirty, as agreed upon, to check in on her. She stared at her phone, waiting a few rings before picking up, even though all she was conscious of wanting was to hear their voices. Then she snatched it up, and almost dropped it trying to hit the answer button. “Hello?” she said.
“Hey, baby girl,” said Hiram Berry. There was faint orchestral music in the background, and the sound of silverware hitting glass occasionally. “How are doing on your own? Do you want me to call Mrs. Castle for you and see if she can come over for a concert? I know, I know you don’t like to go more than twelve hours without singing for an audience.”
“No,” Rachel sighed, “I spent today with Kurt and Finn, so we sang at each other a few times. And I think I’ll film and upload at least three YouTube videos of myself singing Broadway from the late 1950s tomorrow. I don’t feel quite up to entertaining tonight.”
“You don’t feel - Rachel, baby, I want you to sit down and put your head between your knees; your father and I are driving home right now.”
“Dad,” she said, allowing herself a small giggle. “I’m just tired. It’s fine. You guys should enjoy your mini-cation. I know how important it is to keep romance alive within a marriage, and since my therapist has moved back out I don’t think I could handle it if you got divorced. The emotional scars would make interesting reading for my eventual autobiography, but I’m not sure it would be entirely worth it.”
“Leroy,” Hiram said, voice growing indistinct as he held the phone away, “talk to your daughter, she’s having some sort of episode.”
“Rachel,” Leroy said very calmly, “the Xanax is on the top shelf of the refrigerator; I’ll talk you through the child-proof top.”
“I’m fine,” she repeated. “I think I’ll turn in early tonight, that’s all. You’re overreacting.”
“Well, pumpkin, if you want us to come home early, I hope you know you just have to say the word. As soon as your dad’s had his massage, because I can’t take another two hours in the car with him without that massage.”
“No, I promise. I’m going to bed now. I’m tired and it’s important for me to get my beauty sleep.” She yawned ostentatiously. “I got quite a lot done today with Finn and Kurt - I just hope I didn’t overextend myself.”
“You are not to overextend yourself, a girl with your fragile disposition,” Leroy said. “Go to bed right now, then, young lady, and call us tomorrow if you feel sick.”
“I promise,” Rachel said. “I love you.”
“We love you too. Hiram, tell her you love her.”
“We love and support you, baby!”
“Okay, goodnight,” Rachel said, a bit hurriedly, and hung up. Something creaked, somewhere in the house, and she jumped. “Hello?” Clutching the phone to her chest and digging in her purse, she advanced on the door to the living room. “I have a rape whistle and I’m dialing the police,” she added, voice going shrill.
A lace curtain, which Hiram hated with a deep and abiding passion but Leroy had insisted on when he lost all the other battles over interior decoration, wafted gently in the breeze from the open window. Nothing else happened. Rachel sniffed and closed the window.
There was no one in the kitchen, or the hallway, or the bathroom or any of the bedrooms. She locked the doors and windows, and the basement for good measure. She took a thorough shower, washed her face, and went to bed.
She lay there for a long time with her eyes open, and wished that her dads didn’t trust her to be quite so grown up - maybe not all the time.
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There were too many people in the house. This wasn’t a problem Kurt had ever encountered before, but it was suddenly a pressing one.
He’d never in his life had to work at getting privacy in his own home. Even when his mom was alive, his dad worked all day, and anyway both parents had been perfectly content to let Kurt wander off to his bedroom to bedazzle something alone when he was ‘in a mood’; this averted a great deal of conflict before it could begin.
Then for years, after his mom died, the house had been his. His dad had a set of rules about how much Kurt was allowed to do to the living room - not enough, in a word - but the upkeep and décor had been Kurt’s domain. And since his dad was at work so often, the whole place was Kurt’s oyster, as it were. Add a whole floor as his bedroom even when his dad was home….
And suddenly, every time he turned around there was someone there.
Carole had gotten more say in how to decorate this house, so it was cozy but only barely this side of tacky, and only because she was willing to let him guide her. It was an unfamiliar space, and there was always someone in it. The basement and attic were unfinished and filled respectively with must and dust to which he refused to subject his lungs or his clothes. The first floor was big enough, but very open; you always knew what everyone else was doing in the other rooms - Finn playing a video game, his dad watching TV, Carole reading a thriller. The second floor was just small. There was space enough, technically, but it had been chopped into three bedrooms and two bathrooms, meaning everything was right on top of everything else. Whenever someone came up to get something, they knew instantly where Kurt was and what he was doing.
Kurt wasn’t secretive, exactly, but when Carole asked him how he’d enjoyed Funny Girl over dinner when he hadn’t told anyone he’d watched Funny Girl, he found himself surprisingly irritated.
Fortunately Carole had followed this up with, “You know, I never got that movie. Are we supposed to think she went back to that irresponsible man after the song with all the black?”
“Oh my god, Carole, you have to watch it with me. I will walk you through it so that you can appreciate it properly - maybe we’ll have Rachel over - you’ll see, it’s only the most amazing movie ever made. Of course the real Fanny Brice was only on her middle marriage with Nick Arnstein, but she did have a huge ‘My Man’ complex about him; she visited the man in Sing-Sing and still thought he’d make a great husband…”
But the point stood. She shouldn’t know what he’d been doing. No one should, unless he told them.
And instead it was all, “Dude, can I borrow that music you were listening to earlier?” and “Hey, buddy, how’d that math problem end up treatin’ ya?”
He resorted, today, to hiding in the back yard. It was smaller than their last one, but prettier, since Carole had started a rock garden and his dad had let him splurge on some lilac bushes along the back - it was sort of busy-looking, but nice. He’d set up a lawn umbrella and a chair and was driven, today, to doing the summer English assignment.
“Hey, kiddo.”
And there it was. “Hi, Carole.”
“What are you reading?” Carole set a laundry basket down by the small stand she’d set up in lieu of a real line.
Kurt took a deep breath. “The Little White Bird.”
“Oh, how is that?”
“So far? It’s creeping me out.” He set the book down. “Do you want help hanging?” Even though I keep telling you it’s detrimental to half of these fabrics to leave them outside, and to all of the colors but the whites to be in direct sunlight.
“No, hon, you’re fine. Slow day, and I actually like hanging clothes.”
Kurt, mostly out of a general sense of bad grace, nodded and picked the book back up. His dad was in the kitchen and Finn was practicing on the drums upstairs; it wasn’t like moving was going to get him any more privacy. This was it.
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Terri had realized that all she was missing to give Will that feeling of family was an actual family. And now she was on her way to giving him one.
She stood in the middle of the camper and clapped her hands. “Oh, Kendra. I love it.”
“Phil thought we could go camping this summer.” Kendra sipped her martini. “I told him I would rather eat rat poison than spend a month trapped in a vehicle with him and my two demon spawn, and he went out and bought this thing anyway. Believe me, you are doing me a favor getting it off my hands.”
Terri beamed. “I don’t think I’ll mind the drive with mine.” She didn’t want to rub Kendra’s face in it, but hers were older, and much better behaved.
The door to the camper slammed open. “Oh my dear Lord,” said Sandy, climbing the two steps up and managing to make it look like a precarious operation which might well end in his death. “Honey Badger, I hope you’re not seriously considering driving to Florida in this thing with any kind of company. I find that for people of our disposition, a minimum range of ten square feet of free space is safest, especially on a bad morning. My dear departed Aunt Lucinda tried to drive across the country in one of these in the fifties and died, either of asbestos or rat poisoning, we never did find that out for sure.”
“Sandy, you’re looking very pastel,” Terri said with what she considered superhuman patience, given that she was expecting. Then she dropped the patient tone. “Did you bring everything I told you to?”
“Oh, aren’t we using code names for this?” Sandy set his bags down on the admittedly cramped counter running along the wall nearest him and spread his arms, allowing a pink cape to flutter beneath his conspicuous white trench coat.
“Pink Dagger,” Terri said, “did you bring me what I need?”
“I did,” Sandy breathed. He patted the bags, one brown paper and tightly folded at the top, the other a small canvas suitcase. “You have enough drugs in there to put an angry bull elephant to sleep every day for a month, two weeks, and five days; I have that on the authority of my doctor.” He poked the suitcase, which clinked. “And these have been thoroughly cleaned with bleach. They’re very high quality; I know a man who lost the key to one of these babies and had to gnaw through his wrist to escape.” He sighed gustily. “Carlisle was never the same after; he would play the piano one-handed for days without showering. I believe his mother had to euthanize him in order to redecorate the music room.”
“That’s so sad,” said Terri, who didn’t care at all. “I’ll make very good use of everything, thank you, Sandy.”
“On this horse that you’re transporting,” Sandy said.
Kendra was staring at him with open and revolted fascination. “I don’t know what kind of yellow that is,” she said, gesturing to his pants, “but I want a color swab of it. I think I could train the ginger devil children to yack whenever they see it.”
Sandy sniffed and ignored her with what, in him, passed for dignity. “I want my payment, Honey Badger. I can’t tell you how I’ve coveted that thing; it will be just perfect for my little darlings.”
“It’s in the front hall of the building,” Terri said, rustling through the paper bag and running over the hypodermic needle procedure she’d found on the internet. This would be easy. She’d been a nurse. “Howard will help you get it.”
“Where is he?” Kendra drained her glass. “He was supposed to get me a refill bottle.”
“Howard,” Terri shrieked; she could be very piercing when necessary.
“Coming,” Howard said mournfully from somewhere outside.
“That man,” Terri said. “It’s like a cow lowing. And he’s as slow-moving, too. You get someone arrested one time and you’re punished with passive aggression for the rest of your life.”
“I have your groceries,” Howard said, stumping up into the camper. He was largely invisible behind the pile of plastic grocery bags in his arms.
“You can put them away later. Right now I want you to help Mr. Ryerson collect his payment.”
Sandy coughed.
“Help the Pink Dagger collect his payment,” Terri corrected.
“Okay,” Howard said, and turned to stump back out with Sandy on his heels.
“I can’t believe you’re finally giving that thing up.” Kendra leaned over to peer out the tiny window nearest her.
Terri joined her, making a mental note to cover the windows completely and securely before she picked the kids up. Outside, Howard and Sandy weaved back and forth under the weight of the white dollhouse they were hauling to Sandy’s car. “It was time,” Terri said. She smiled, dreamy. “I have the real thing now.”
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Rachel’s nine to twelve Sunday ballet lessons could be a burden to get to in the summer. She had to get up at seven after staying up until one in the morning squeezing out every last second of making-out time before Finn’s more generous holiday curfew, which was not ideal.
She had yet to miss a class, though; missing classes was a slippery slope. You skipped one chemistry exam and the next thing you knew, you were smoking behind the bleachers with the Skanks and eating cat excrement in your spare time. Anyway, she had made herself an inspirational poster using copious amounts of gold glitter and that saying about how if you missed three practices your audience could tell. Kurt had even let her keep it in her redecorated room.
And bothersome or not at seven in the morning, by twelve Rachel was always glad she had gone. She did a few twirls on her way to the car just to enjoy it. She felt graceful and empowered, ready to face the rest of the day as a future star. She also felt sweaty and a little rank, but that was the price for legs as toned as hers.
She was always the last to leave; being more invested and ambitious than the other students, she usually had questions that took up a great deal of time. She knew Ms Calver appreciated her interest, though. Why, just today, she’d told Rachel that she’d never had a student like her before. Rachel made a mental note to try to convince Kurt to join again; Finn was a completely lost cause, but she couldn’t bring herself to give up on Kurt. Maybe if she tried through Blaine - he was less sensitive about the things he arbitrarily decided were too “girly” for him. And, she thought hopefully, Blaine would look incredible in tights -
“Rachel?”
Rachel dropped her keys with a small scream; between her being the last one to leave and most of Lima being either at brunch or church, she was usually alone right about now.
“I’m sorry,” said Ms Del Monico, smiling. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Oh, no.” Rachel bent and scooped up her keys, trying not to scratch her nails against the pavement. Mercedes had spent hours getting this shiny polish just right, and it even complemented her new green-and-gold room. “That’s okay. Are you here to discuss dance lessons with Ms Calver? I think there is a class for our more well-aged citizens, and I think it’s so admirable of you to take up active hobbies after your divorce. Barbra Streisand never let a few divorces get her down, either.” A car revved behind her, which was odd given how deserted the lot seemed, but it would have been rude to turn away from Terri. And - she didn’t really want to let Terri out of her sight just now. Not with that smile.
“No,” said Terri. She kept smiling. “I’m not here for dance lessons. I was hoping to see you, actually.”
“Oh.” Rachel frowned. She really hoped this wasn’t about her very brief and misguided crush on Mr. Schue, but from the stories she’d heard, Terri was a very jealous woman. She braced herself emotionally; this would be an ordeal, but it would look fabulous in her unauthorized biographies. “What can I do for you, Ms Del Monico?”
“Oh, no, no.” Terri stepped forward, close to Rachel - into her personal bubble, actually. Rachel wasn’t normally aware of her personal bubble, but suddenly, she emphatically was. Terri didn’t seem to notice her discomfort. She reached up and stroked Rachel’s hair, looping it behind her ear. “Sweetie, I’m going to do so much - for you.”
“I see,” Rachel said carefully. “In that case -” and someone grabbed her from behind.
She had time for one brief, shrill scream before she was blinded, air cut off by a cloth spread over her face and pressed into her nose and mouth; her arms and legs were trapped between Terri and the person behind her and for a second she thought Terri was helping - trying to push the other person away - and she realized too late that the scant air she was getting was sour, singeing her lungs…
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“You don’t think anyone heard her, do you?” Kendra hunkered low in the back seat of their rental, diligently duct-taping Rachel’s wrists and ankles. Terri really didn’t know how she’d repay her sister for this one. “She’s got lungs on her like those baboons at the zoo that wouldn’t shut up when my kids were throwing banana chips into their cage.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that. They probably thought she was bursting into song and then changed her mind. These glee kids are so flighty.” She peered into the rearview mirror, adjusting it until she could see Rachel’s knees, the only bit of her visible from the driver’s seat, as the girl was bundled onto the car floor. “You have the shot, don’t you?”
“You worry too much, Ter.” Kendra brandished the needle. “Just give me a second to find a vein. I remember this from that year in community college; I won’t even leave a bruise.” She hauled limp arms up into her lap. “Didn’t I drug your experimental girl just fine?”
“I think we should just sneak up on Kurt,” Terri said, fingers flexing on the steering wheel. “It’s a little upsetting talking to them and then knocking them out. I didn’t mind so much with the last one, but she wasn’t mine.”
“Sweetie,” Kendra snapped. “You have got to toughen up, and you have got to do it now. Kids are nothing but hell on earth, and you better be ready for it. They will hold you down and eat your heart out of your chest unless you arm yourself with emotional steel.”
“Oh.” Terri craned her neck and managed, finally, to get a glimpse of Rachel’s face. Her cheeks were squished by the tape, a faint line drawn between her eyebrows. She was adorable. She did not look capable of tearing anyone’s heart out. Still, Kendra did have more experience. “I’ll keep that in mind,” Terri decided.
“You’d better,” Kendra said very emphatically, jabbing the needle into Rachel’s arm. “I know you think you’re up for it after what you went through in Florida, but you have no idea. Remember I told you this, Terri. These kids will break your heart.”
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Kurt had a standing date with Blaine on Sunday evenings this summer. This was effectively meaningless; unless Kurt was helping Rachel redesign her room or having dinner with his family, he was with Blaine anyway, and setting a formal date was somewhat moot.
He’d been grateful for it tonight, though; he’d spent most of the day helping his dad and Carole go through boxes from the attic in order to sort out anything left over from the move that they could get rid of. Having a prior commitment made for a graceful and polite extraction, and an excuse to shower immediately and get dressed up, which was nice after more than three hours wearing sweat pants and a t-shirt.
And - some of his mom’s clothes had been up there, buried under jerseys from his dad’s days on various football teams. Kurt had been the one to suggest that it might be time to let them go. Carole had reached out to touch his arm and then snatched her hand back, looking at Burt. “We’ll remember her without some old jeans and sweatshirts,” Kurt had said, and leaned toward Carole until she hugged him. “We’re getting rid of the jerseys, too, though,” Kurt demanded, and she’d laughed, and everything had been fine, it was just - he was glad he’d been able to see Blaine.
And folded expertly into the bottom of his messenger bag right now was a cheap sweatshirt that said Tiptoe through the Tulips over a tacky picture of purple flowers; it smelled mostly of years in a cardboard box but, at the neck, something of her perfume lingered.
He reached over to pat the bulk at the bottom of the bag and nearly missed the car parked on the side of the road, directly under the lone working street lamp, blinkers flashing. Even seeing it, he would have driven past - he was not in the habit of getting out of his car on dark roads to check on strangers, especially when the local news was starting to rumble about the disappearance of a girl his age. No one he knew, but his dad was edgy about it, and he didn’t want to worry him.
Except it wasn’t a stranger; waving forlornly at his car was Terri Del Monico.
“What in the world,” Kurt muttered, and seriously considered swearing. This was a ridiculously under-used route; it was his favorite shortcut from Westerville back to Lima, but it was also just this side of a dirt road, most of the lights were busted, and at eleven o’clock at night it could be counted on to be entirely deserted. What Mr. Schuester’s ex-wife could be doing on it at this hour he had no idea.
Still. Never let it be said that a Hummel gentleman would abandon a lady in distress. Kurt sighed and pulled over, abandoning sweet thoughts of a bubble bath before bed and resigning himself to fixing something on her car and being asked uncomfortable questions about his favorite color. “Ms Del Monico,” he said, sliding out but leaving his car running for now. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Kurt!” Terri rushed toward him, teetering in high heels on the rough pavement. “You are just the person I hoped to see!”
“What’s wrong with it?” Kurt asked, reaching out to steady her when she planted a heel squarely in one of the cracks in the road where some vengeful plant life was making a comeback.
She blinked at him. “What’s wrong with what?”
“Your… car…?” Kurt gestured toward it.
“Oh, don’t get me started on that thing. Do you know I’m paying ninety-nine dollars a day for it? And the brakes squeal! I plan on making a strongly-worded complaint and getting some kind of refund. It’s just ridiculous.” She shook her head, caught up in the appalling lack of justice in the world.
“So the problem is the breaks,” Kurt offered.
“That and the smell. The air freshener is just offensive.”
“Most of them are,” Kurt couldn’t help agreeing, though he did manage to move them closer to the car. “What scent did you get stuck with?”
“It’s called Midwinter Eve. That’s not even a scent. It would barely make a good name for a paint color.”
“And they would use it in July,” Kurt said sympathetically. “These agencies really must be stopped.”
Terri beamed at him. “It’s so nice to have someone who understands,” she said, and then things got very confusing, mainly because of the cloth that was wrapped around his head; someone punched his stomach and when he gasped in pain, the air was awful, sticky and sharp, and then his head started to swim.
He thought, just before he went under, that he was definitely going to miss his curfew.
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Terri sighed happily as Kendra grunted and struggled to hold Kurt up. “He’s such a sweetheart,” she said.
“He’s a prince,” Kendra agreed, “but he’s heavier than he looks. I want fashion tips from this boy, he weighs twice what I’d have guessed. Help me get him in the back.”
They weren’t in nearly the kind of hurry they’d been with Rachel, and Terri bent over the backseat as well, taping Kurt’s mouth and wrists while Kendra got rid of his shoes and attended to his ankles. “Thank you so much,” Terri said, making sure to loop the tape over his fingers to avoid any unwanted scrabbling. “I couldn’t have done this without you.”
“I did turn out to be pretty good at spying, didn’t I?” Kendra grinned, tying Kurt’s shoelaces together considerately. “And I chose those three pickup spots perfectly. You know, next time I think Phil’s cheating on me, I won’t even hire Mr. Enderson to follow him around snapping pictures with a telescopic lens. I’ll just do it myself.” She waved the boots around. “Where do you want these?”
“Oh… in the trunk,” Terri said. “I don’t think he’ll need them, but you never know.” She leaned up to retrieve the needle and drugs from the glove compartment. “Honestly, Kendra, you’ve been an absolute lifesaver. All the time you’ve spent on this for me, not to mention postage to get the plans down to me in time…”
“Don’t worry about it, Ter.” Kendra tossed the boots into the back, then slid into the passenger’s seat and retrieved a flask from the still-open glove compartment, unscrewing the top and taking a swallow. “We’re family. Our grandmother shot a man in the back of the head for Great-Aunt Lily once, remember. I think he’d spilled fruit punch on her gray dress. Sometimes I wonder about the brains and blood getting on that dress.”
“It all came out,” Terri said absently, twisting the belt she’d brought along for the purpose around Kurt’s arm and tapping it, waiting for a vein to show. He had beautiful skin. “Mom wore that dress for her fortieth birthday party.”
“You’re right.” Kendra knocked back another gulp. “Didn’t she hold her purse over her right hip the whole time, though? I wonder if that was to hide a little bit of a bloodstain.”
“I want to know what Gran was doing with a gun at a school dance,” Terri said, shaking her head. Guns were so nasty and unnecessary. You could get any job done just as well without them. She slid the needle under Kurt’s skin gently, wincing in sympathy.
“That woman carried a pistol at my sixth birthday party,” Kendra said. “It had pearl handles. It clashed with her dress something awful.”
Terri patted Kurt’s cheek and slid him down to the floor of the car, throwing a quilt over him. You couldn’t be too careful. “Oh Kendra,” she said impulsively, leaning up to grab her sister’s hand. “I’m going to miss you when we’re in Florida.”
“You can always call, honey.” Kendra blew her a kiss. “Anyway, you won’t even notice. Your hands are going to be full with these two, I can tell you that.”
“Maybe with Rachel.” Terri sighed happily and moved up to the front, starting the car. “But Kurt… he’s older, and he can discuss a good color palette. I don’t know, Kendra. I just feel like… I’m not only getting a son. I’m getting a friend.”
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Next part...
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Master List
Warnings: Kidnapping, violence, ableism, homophobia, physical abuse by a caretaker, a smidgen of Stockholm's, serious injury, tertiary character death.
Rating: R
Word Count: Whole fic: 52, 000; Part 1: 13, 520
Disclaimer: RIB and FOX own everything ever.
Beta: rdm-ation
1A | 1B | 2A | 2B | 3A | 3B | 3C
This prompt. If Will wants a family, Terri will give him a family. And if he wants his precious glee kids - two birds, one stone.
Part One
Terri was a big-picture person.
When she was six years old, she asked for a dollhouse for Christmas. It was a very specific dollhouse. It was taller than she was, and both sides swung open to allow access to its thirteen rooms. It took up most of her cramped room, and she had to keep some of her clothes in Kendra’s room to make space.
The dollhouse had very convincing plastic in the windows and was painted the kind of white that hurt her eyes when the light hit it. It had a gray roof and green trim. It took her another two years to collect the furniture for it - beds that fit in her hands with pillows that slid between her fingers, dark shiny tables and chairs with spindly legs, rugs that looked like doilies, serving bowls the size of marbles. She never broke or lost a piece. She cleaned it once a week and never, ever let Kendra play with it. This was hers, she thought, and some day it would be hers for real.
When Terri was ten years old, Kendra asked her why she didn't have any dolls.
This was a puzzler and a little embarrassing. She had gotten everything ready and, focused on the ‘everything,’ forgotten why she was doing it in the first place.
For her eleventh birthday, she got a husband and a wife, as well as two babies, and decorated the babies’ rooms in pink even though her mother said that one of them should be a boy and have blue. Terri knew exactly what she wanted, and it involved pink.
Twenty years later, it involved William Schuester.
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“What about yellow?”
Terri set down the towel she was folding and turned; for some reason, that voice made her think strongly of clean bathrooms and home cooked meals.
“I don’t think Kurt’s going to let you pick yellow,” said the six-foot Will 2.0 who used to be her subordinate, and that was how she knew these kids - they were in that glee club her husband was so obsessed with. In fact, she suspected them of being responsible for reporting that she’d given them a perfectly harmless performance-enhancing drug when she’d been the school nurse. Teenagers: ungrateful and untrustworthy, every last one of them.
“Why not?” The tiny girl clutched at a package of yellow sheets. “Yellow has psychological benefits! Looking at it makes you feel happier, and I am going to be under a lot of pressure this coming school year. As a senior trying to get into a prestigious college in New York and the leader of our glee club for my last chance to win a title at Nationals, I am going to need all the subconscious boosters I can get.”
“I don’t think Kurt cares so much about that,” said - Finn. That was definitely his name. He had been awful at folding towels. “I think he cares about stuff going together. And not being yellow or pink.”
This was ridiculous. She couldn’t escape them anywhere. Thank goodness she was moving, but still. She wouldn’t be surprised if she went shopping in Florida and that bitch of a cheerleader popped up to insult her clothing. And really, for how invested Will was in them, she shouldn’t even have bothered trying to take Quinn’s baby; she should have just adopted Quinn when she got thrown out of her house by her idiot parents. Everyone would have won. Quinn would have a home, Will would still be with Terri, she wouldn’t have to move to Florida to escape the pathetic shambles of the life she’d spent years building and which now clung to her as so much detritus. Really, Will wouldn’t have dared leave her if they’d had a child, even a teenage one. Make it a child from that glee club and he wouldn’t even have thought about it.
Oh.
Terri looked closer at the kids examining their sheet options; there was another boy with them now, one whose name she couldn’t quite place. He tried to grab the sheets away from the girl by force, and she clung to them, both of them talking with increasing volume about why they were right.
Terri smiled.
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“Rachel, the entire point of this is to give you a room that doesn’t make me feel like I’ve fallen into a bottle of Pepto-Bismol every time we have a sleepover, and you seriously want to replace pink with yellow? It will look like a bowl of lemon sorbet! We are giving you a real grown up bedroom or so help me god -”
“I agreed to let you help me give my room a makeover on the condition that I got to make all the final calls, and my final call is that I want a yellow theme! My room should reflect my personality, and I am a happy person obsessed with stars, which are yellow!” Rachel pointed fiercely to the bright yellow star on her sweater, which she felt underscored her point quite well. Unfortunately, this weakened her hold on the sheets, and Kurt snatched them away.
“We will get you all the yellow stars you want, but your room is not going to be yellow, and neither is your bed if you expect me to sleep there ever again! I have suffered enough indignity at your hands with those cotton-candy sheets of yours.”
“Finn agrees with me!”
“Well, Mercedes agrees with me. So does Blaine.”
“That’s not fair, they’re not even here and you would manipulate their decisions.” Rachel spun on Finn. “You do agree with me, don’t you, Finn?”
Finn blinked. “What? Oh, yeah, totally. Could we talk again about why my brother gets to sleep in your bed and I don’t? If anyone gets to suffer indignities at your hands, I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be me.” He smiled. “Did I mention that I agree with you about whatever this is?”
Rachel tried to decide whether she should yell at him and let Kurt explain that suffering indignities was a bad thing, or do the explaining and make Kurt be the bad cop, but was interrupted by a chirpy voice behind them.
“Are you kids finding everything all right?”
Rachel turned and, confronted with Mr. Schue’s ex-wife, died of embarrassment. Between knowing practically everything about their divorce and having scrubbed the woman’s bathroom…. She would almost rather have run into Jacob Ben Israel. “Mrs. Schuester,” she said desperately, and winced. “I mean, Ms - Del Monico! It’s so nice to see you! I was very sorry to hear about your divorce, which I did not in any way desire. I’m with Finn now. This is my boyfriend Finn, whom I love.” She grabbed his arm for emphasis. “I’m completely over any other crushes I may have had at any point.”
“Oh, really?” Terri frowned. “You two are together? That’s too bad. I thought you were Will’s favorites.”
“We’re the co-captains of the glee club,” Rachel explained as Kurt muttered, “Wherever did you get that idea?”
“Isn’t that a little - I don’t want to say incestuous, but I just did, so it’s too late now.” Terri laughed, but sobered rapidly. “Will always said you guys were like a family, but you date each other? Honestly, you look too young to be dating at all. Trust me, getting attached so early on in life rarely works out.”
“Oh… well…” Rachel looked around uncertainly, as if the yellow sheets or at the very least the blue ones might hold some kind of answer. “Not quite that close of a family…?”
“That’s more us,” Kurt said, pulling her under his arm. “Rachel and I are like siblings. She only dates all of the other boys in glee club.” He laughed his awkward laugh.
Rachel turned the full force of her worshipful gaze (which she intended to patent) on him, both as positive reinforcement for his saving her from uncomfortable social situations - albeit by making them even more uncomfortable, but at least the onus was on him now - and because of what exactly he had said. “If I could have any boy in the world for a brother, I would pick you,” she blurted.
“Oh, that’s lovely,” said Terri, smiling. She looked oddly relieved.
“Wait,” said Finn. “Since Kurt’s my brother, and I’m dating you, if you two were siblings - doesn’t this make it even more incestuous than just the glee club thing?”
Terri, who was staring at Kurt now, ignored him. “I don’t think I caught your name.”
“It’s Kurt. Kurt Hummel.” He took his arm off Rachel to shake her hand.
Terri clung to it, looking him over. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember you from glee club. Were you there when I was the school nurse?” She beamed. “I had a brief but very successful stint. Sometimes I worry I may have missed my calling.”
“Um, yes,” said Kurt. Rachel imagined he wasn’t used to people not remembering him. He gently extracted his hand. “I’ve actually been there since Mr. Schuester started the club.”
“He was way shorter when you were there,” Finn explained.
Terri cocked her head, still staring at Kurt. “Oh, how silly of me! Of course, I remember you now.” She frowned again. “You have grown a lot, haven’t you?”
Kurt glared at Finn. “I suppose so.”
“Well… that’s all right. A girl should have an older brother. I’m sure you two have a beautiful relationship.”
“I’m so glad you approve.”
“So anyway, Mrs. Schuester, we were going to get some new sheets and curtains for Rachel’s room,” said Finn, who had no sense of tact but, to be fair, was being hit with a frightening death stare from Kurt. “And she wants to do yellow but Kurt doesn’t think that’s a good idea? Maybe you could help us out and I could get home in time for the game. Not that that’s important compared to Rachel’s room.”
“That’s a wonderful idea,” Terri said, putting a hand on Rachel’s arm. “What kinds of colors do you like?”
“Um, bright ones?”
“Green,” said Kurt. “She likes green. Think Elphaba, Rachel.”
“Well…”
“Green sounds perfect,” said Terri. “I’ll make a note of that. You kids have fun now!” She disappeared quickly into the back of the store.
“What,” said Kurt, “was that.”
“I think that was pretty normal for her, actually,” Finn pointed out. “So, green?”
“Excuse me,” Rachel said.
“Green,” Kurt said firmly. “And let’s just grab the sheets and go. We can get everything else… anywhere but here.”
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“Howard,” Terri said, “I need you to call Sandy Ryerson and ask him to come here.”
“Mr. Ryerson?” said Howard, who lacked distinctly in all things resembling drive and ambition and who really should be on the phone already, seeing as she was the assistant manager and had given him a direct order. “You want me to call him and have come here? On purpose?”
“And then go and stock the shelves with those pillows, you know the ones - with the kittens sleeping in the monkeys’ hands like they’re about to be lunch. His number’s in my rolodex so I can call him when we get a shipping of anything colored fuchsia. Go!” Terri, for her part, pulled out her cell phone and called her sister. “Kendra,” she said, interrupting the standard “this had better be good”, “we are going to get me a baby!”
“Oh, Ter. Did you find another one already? Honey, didn’t Will already drop you like four-week old pasta salad to chase that copper-plated floozy? Why don’t you come over and we’ll talk this out over some vodka.”
“No,” Terri snapped. “Not a literal infant.” She leaned around the door of the office. Kurt and Rachel were at the checkout counter, still bickering. “I found something better.”
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Rachel locked the door behind her, always safety conscious, and called, “Hello?” even though the house was dark. No one answered.
She sighed and dropped her shopping bags in the hall. She could take them up to her room later; she’d promised Kurt she would put the new sheets on, at least, since he was staying over tomorrow night to move her furniture out and to help her paint her walls. But she would have time before he got here tomorrow. She was tired and needed dinner. Proper nutrition was vital to a young adult, and eating after eight o’clock was extra-fattening, especially if one kept to an early schedule.
She made broccoli for the calcium and scrambled some tofu with spices as comfort food, even though she’d sworn off fried foods Monday through Friday. She ate it at the dining room table, which stretched away in front of her, reflecting the ceiling faintly.
Her dads called at eight-thirty, as agreed upon, to check in on her. She stared at her phone, waiting a few rings before picking up, even though all she was conscious of wanting was to hear their voices. Then she snatched it up, and almost dropped it trying to hit the answer button. “Hello?” she said.
“Hey, baby girl,” said Hiram Berry. There was faint orchestral music in the background, and the sound of silverware hitting glass occasionally. “How are doing on your own? Do you want me to call Mrs. Castle for you and see if she can come over for a concert? I know, I know you don’t like to go more than twelve hours without singing for an audience.”
“No,” Rachel sighed, “I spent today with Kurt and Finn, so we sang at each other a few times. And I think I’ll film and upload at least three YouTube videos of myself singing Broadway from the late 1950s tomorrow. I don’t feel quite up to entertaining tonight.”
“You don’t feel - Rachel, baby, I want you to sit down and put your head between your knees; your father and I are driving home right now.”
“Dad,” she said, allowing herself a small giggle. “I’m just tired. It’s fine. You guys should enjoy your mini-cation. I know how important it is to keep romance alive within a marriage, and since my therapist has moved back out I don’t think I could handle it if you got divorced. The emotional scars would make interesting reading for my eventual autobiography, but I’m not sure it would be entirely worth it.”
“Leroy,” Hiram said, voice growing indistinct as he held the phone away, “talk to your daughter, she’s having some sort of episode.”
“Rachel,” Leroy said very calmly, “the Xanax is on the top shelf of the refrigerator; I’ll talk you through the child-proof top.”
“I’m fine,” she repeated. “I think I’ll turn in early tonight, that’s all. You’re overreacting.”
“Well, pumpkin, if you want us to come home early, I hope you know you just have to say the word. As soon as your dad’s had his massage, because I can’t take another two hours in the car with him without that massage.”
“No, I promise. I’m going to bed now. I’m tired and it’s important for me to get my beauty sleep.” She yawned ostentatiously. “I got quite a lot done today with Finn and Kurt - I just hope I didn’t overextend myself.”
“You are not to overextend yourself, a girl with your fragile disposition,” Leroy said. “Go to bed right now, then, young lady, and call us tomorrow if you feel sick.”
“I promise,” Rachel said. “I love you.”
“We love you too. Hiram, tell her you love her.”
“We love and support you, baby!”
“Okay, goodnight,” Rachel said, a bit hurriedly, and hung up. Something creaked, somewhere in the house, and she jumped. “Hello?” Clutching the phone to her chest and digging in her purse, she advanced on the door to the living room. “I have a rape whistle and I’m dialing the police,” she added, voice going shrill.
A lace curtain, which Hiram hated with a deep and abiding passion but Leroy had insisted on when he lost all the other battles over interior decoration, wafted gently in the breeze from the open window. Nothing else happened. Rachel sniffed and closed the window.
There was no one in the kitchen, or the hallway, or the bathroom or any of the bedrooms. She locked the doors and windows, and the basement for good measure. She took a thorough shower, washed her face, and went to bed.
She lay there for a long time with her eyes open, and wished that her dads didn’t trust her to be quite so grown up - maybe not all the time.
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There were too many people in the house. This wasn’t a problem Kurt had ever encountered before, but it was suddenly a pressing one.
He’d never in his life had to work at getting privacy in his own home. Even when his mom was alive, his dad worked all day, and anyway both parents had been perfectly content to let Kurt wander off to his bedroom to bedazzle something alone when he was ‘in a mood’; this averted a great deal of conflict before it could begin.
Then for years, after his mom died, the house had been his. His dad had a set of rules about how much Kurt was allowed to do to the living room - not enough, in a word - but the upkeep and décor had been Kurt’s domain. And since his dad was at work so often, the whole place was Kurt’s oyster, as it were. Add a whole floor as his bedroom even when his dad was home….
And suddenly, every time he turned around there was someone there.
Carole had gotten more say in how to decorate this house, so it was cozy but only barely this side of tacky, and only because she was willing to let him guide her. It was an unfamiliar space, and there was always someone in it. The basement and attic were unfinished and filled respectively with must and dust to which he refused to subject his lungs or his clothes. The first floor was big enough, but very open; you always knew what everyone else was doing in the other rooms - Finn playing a video game, his dad watching TV, Carole reading a thriller. The second floor was just small. There was space enough, technically, but it had been chopped into three bedrooms and two bathrooms, meaning everything was right on top of everything else. Whenever someone came up to get something, they knew instantly where Kurt was and what he was doing.
Kurt wasn’t secretive, exactly, but when Carole asked him how he’d enjoyed Funny Girl over dinner when he hadn’t told anyone he’d watched Funny Girl, he found himself surprisingly irritated.
Fortunately Carole had followed this up with, “You know, I never got that movie. Are we supposed to think she went back to that irresponsible man after the song with all the black?”
“Oh my god, Carole, you have to watch it with me. I will walk you through it so that you can appreciate it properly - maybe we’ll have Rachel over - you’ll see, it’s only the most amazing movie ever made. Of course the real Fanny Brice was only on her middle marriage with Nick Arnstein, but she did have a huge ‘My Man’ complex about him; she visited the man in Sing-Sing and still thought he’d make a great husband…”
But the point stood. She shouldn’t know what he’d been doing. No one should, unless he told them.
And instead it was all, “Dude, can I borrow that music you were listening to earlier?” and “Hey, buddy, how’d that math problem end up treatin’ ya?”
He resorted, today, to hiding in the back yard. It was smaller than their last one, but prettier, since Carole had started a rock garden and his dad had let him splurge on some lilac bushes along the back - it was sort of busy-looking, but nice. He’d set up a lawn umbrella and a chair and was driven, today, to doing the summer English assignment.
“Hey, kiddo.”
And there it was. “Hi, Carole.”
“What are you reading?” Carole set a laundry basket down by the small stand she’d set up in lieu of a real line.
Kurt took a deep breath. “The Little White Bird.”
“Oh, how is that?”
“So far? It’s creeping me out.” He set the book down. “Do you want help hanging?” Even though I keep telling you it’s detrimental to half of these fabrics to leave them outside, and to all of the colors but the whites to be in direct sunlight.
“No, hon, you’re fine. Slow day, and I actually like hanging clothes.”
Kurt, mostly out of a general sense of bad grace, nodded and picked the book back up. His dad was in the kitchen and Finn was practicing on the drums upstairs; it wasn’t like moving was going to get him any more privacy. This was it.
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Terri had realized that all she was missing to give Will that feeling of family was an actual family. And now she was on her way to giving him one.
She stood in the middle of the camper and clapped her hands. “Oh, Kendra. I love it.”
“Phil thought we could go camping this summer.” Kendra sipped her martini. “I told him I would rather eat rat poison than spend a month trapped in a vehicle with him and my two demon spawn, and he went out and bought this thing anyway. Believe me, you are doing me a favor getting it off my hands.”
Terri beamed. “I don’t think I’ll mind the drive with mine.” She didn’t want to rub Kendra’s face in it, but hers were older, and much better behaved.
The door to the camper slammed open. “Oh my dear Lord,” said Sandy, climbing the two steps up and managing to make it look like a precarious operation which might well end in his death. “Honey Badger, I hope you’re not seriously considering driving to Florida in this thing with any kind of company. I find that for people of our disposition, a minimum range of ten square feet of free space is safest, especially on a bad morning. My dear departed Aunt Lucinda tried to drive across the country in one of these in the fifties and died, either of asbestos or rat poisoning, we never did find that out for sure.”
“Sandy, you’re looking very pastel,” Terri said with what she considered superhuman patience, given that she was expecting. Then she dropped the patient tone. “Did you bring everything I told you to?”
“Oh, aren’t we using code names for this?” Sandy set his bags down on the admittedly cramped counter running along the wall nearest him and spread his arms, allowing a pink cape to flutter beneath his conspicuous white trench coat.
“Pink Dagger,” Terri said, “did you bring me what I need?”
“I did,” Sandy breathed. He patted the bags, one brown paper and tightly folded at the top, the other a small canvas suitcase. “You have enough drugs in there to put an angry bull elephant to sleep every day for a month, two weeks, and five days; I have that on the authority of my doctor.” He poked the suitcase, which clinked. “And these have been thoroughly cleaned with bleach. They’re very high quality; I know a man who lost the key to one of these babies and had to gnaw through his wrist to escape.” He sighed gustily. “Carlisle was never the same after; he would play the piano one-handed for days without showering. I believe his mother had to euthanize him in order to redecorate the music room.”
“That’s so sad,” said Terri, who didn’t care at all. “I’ll make very good use of everything, thank you, Sandy.”
“On this horse that you’re transporting,” Sandy said.
Kendra was staring at him with open and revolted fascination. “I don’t know what kind of yellow that is,” she said, gesturing to his pants, “but I want a color swab of it. I think I could train the ginger devil children to yack whenever they see it.”
Sandy sniffed and ignored her with what, in him, passed for dignity. “I want my payment, Honey Badger. I can’t tell you how I’ve coveted that thing; it will be just perfect for my little darlings.”
“It’s in the front hall of the building,” Terri said, rustling through the paper bag and running over the hypodermic needle procedure she’d found on the internet. This would be easy. She’d been a nurse. “Howard will help you get it.”
“Where is he?” Kendra drained her glass. “He was supposed to get me a refill bottle.”
“Howard,” Terri shrieked; she could be very piercing when necessary.
“Coming,” Howard said mournfully from somewhere outside.
“That man,” Terri said. “It’s like a cow lowing. And he’s as slow-moving, too. You get someone arrested one time and you’re punished with passive aggression for the rest of your life.”
“I have your groceries,” Howard said, stumping up into the camper. He was largely invisible behind the pile of plastic grocery bags in his arms.
“You can put them away later. Right now I want you to help Mr. Ryerson collect his payment.”
Sandy coughed.
“Help the Pink Dagger collect his payment,” Terri corrected.
“Okay,” Howard said, and turned to stump back out with Sandy on his heels.
“I can’t believe you’re finally giving that thing up.” Kendra leaned over to peer out the tiny window nearest her.
Terri joined her, making a mental note to cover the windows completely and securely before she picked the kids up. Outside, Howard and Sandy weaved back and forth under the weight of the white dollhouse they were hauling to Sandy’s car. “It was time,” Terri said. She smiled, dreamy. “I have the real thing now.”
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x Three Weeks Later x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
Rachel’s nine to twelve Sunday ballet lessons could be a burden to get to in the summer. She had to get up at seven after staying up until one in the morning squeezing out every last second of making-out time before Finn’s more generous holiday curfew, which was not ideal.
She had yet to miss a class, though; missing classes was a slippery slope. You skipped one chemistry exam and the next thing you knew, you were smoking behind the bleachers with the Skanks and eating cat excrement in your spare time. Anyway, she had made herself an inspirational poster using copious amounts of gold glitter and that saying about how if you missed three practices your audience could tell. Kurt had even let her keep it in her redecorated room.
And bothersome or not at seven in the morning, by twelve Rachel was always glad she had gone. She did a few twirls on her way to the car just to enjoy it. She felt graceful and empowered, ready to face the rest of the day as a future star. She also felt sweaty and a little rank, but that was the price for legs as toned as hers.
She was always the last to leave; being more invested and ambitious than the other students, she usually had questions that took up a great deal of time. She knew Ms Calver appreciated her interest, though. Why, just today, she’d told Rachel that she’d never had a student like her before. Rachel made a mental note to try to convince Kurt to join again; Finn was a completely lost cause, but she couldn’t bring herself to give up on Kurt. Maybe if she tried through Blaine - he was less sensitive about the things he arbitrarily decided were too “girly” for him. And, she thought hopefully, Blaine would look incredible in tights -
“Rachel?”
Rachel dropped her keys with a small scream; between her being the last one to leave and most of Lima being either at brunch or church, she was usually alone right about now.
“I’m sorry,” said Ms Del Monico, smiling. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Oh, no.” Rachel bent and scooped up her keys, trying not to scratch her nails against the pavement. Mercedes had spent hours getting this shiny polish just right, and it even complemented her new green-and-gold room. “That’s okay. Are you here to discuss dance lessons with Ms Calver? I think there is a class for our more well-aged citizens, and I think it’s so admirable of you to take up active hobbies after your divorce. Barbra Streisand never let a few divorces get her down, either.” A car revved behind her, which was odd given how deserted the lot seemed, but it would have been rude to turn away from Terri. And - she didn’t really want to let Terri out of her sight just now. Not with that smile.
“No,” said Terri. She kept smiling. “I’m not here for dance lessons. I was hoping to see you, actually.”
“Oh.” Rachel frowned. She really hoped this wasn’t about her very brief and misguided crush on Mr. Schue, but from the stories she’d heard, Terri was a very jealous woman. She braced herself emotionally; this would be an ordeal, but it would look fabulous in her unauthorized biographies. “What can I do for you, Ms Del Monico?”
“Oh, no, no.” Terri stepped forward, close to Rachel - into her personal bubble, actually. Rachel wasn’t normally aware of her personal bubble, but suddenly, she emphatically was. Terri didn’t seem to notice her discomfort. She reached up and stroked Rachel’s hair, looping it behind her ear. “Sweetie, I’m going to do so much - for you.”
“I see,” Rachel said carefully. “In that case -” and someone grabbed her from behind.
She had time for one brief, shrill scream before she was blinded, air cut off by a cloth spread over her face and pressed into her nose and mouth; her arms and legs were trapped between Terri and the person behind her and for a second she thought Terri was helping - trying to push the other person away - and she realized too late that the scant air she was getting was sour, singeing her lungs…
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“You don’t think anyone heard her, do you?” Kendra hunkered low in the back seat of their rental, diligently duct-taping Rachel’s wrists and ankles. Terri really didn’t know how she’d repay her sister for this one. “She’s got lungs on her like those baboons at the zoo that wouldn’t shut up when my kids were throwing banana chips into their cage.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that. They probably thought she was bursting into song and then changed her mind. These glee kids are so flighty.” She peered into the rearview mirror, adjusting it until she could see Rachel’s knees, the only bit of her visible from the driver’s seat, as the girl was bundled onto the car floor. “You have the shot, don’t you?”
“You worry too much, Ter.” Kendra brandished the needle. “Just give me a second to find a vein. I remember this from that year in community college; I won’t even leave a bruise.” She hauled limp arms up into her lap. “Didn’t I drug your experimental girl just fine?”
“I think we should just sneak up on Kurt,” Terri said, fingers flexing on the steering wheel. “It’s a little upsetting talking to them and then knocking them out. I didn’t mind so much with the last one, but she wasn’t mine.”
“Sweetie,” Kendra snapped. “You have got to toughen up, and you have got to do it now. Kids are nothing but hell on earth, and you better be ready for it. They will hold you down and eat your heart out of your chest unless you arm yourself with emotional steel.”
“Oh.” Terri craned her neck and managed, finally, to get a glimpse of Rachel’s face. Her cheeks were squished by the tape, a faint line drawn between her eyebrows. She was adorable. She did not look capable of tearing anyone’s heart out. Still, Kendra did have more experience. “I’ll keep that in mind,” Terri decided.
“You’d better,” Kendra said very emphatically, jabbing the needle into Rachel’s arm. “I know you think you’re up for it after what you went through in Florida, but you have no idea. Remember I told you this, Terri. These kids will break your heart.”
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Kurt had a standing date with Blaine on Sunday evenings this summer. This was effectively meaningless; unless Kurt was helping Rachel redesign her room or having dinner with his family, he was with Blaine anyway, and setting a formal date was somewhat moot.
He’d been grateful for it tonight, though; he’d spent most of the day helping his dad and Carole go through boxes from the attic in order to sort out anything left over from the move that they could get rid of. Having a prior commitment made for a graceful and polite extraction, and an excuse to shower immediately and get dressed up, which was nice after more than three hours wearing sweat pants and a t-shirt.
And - some of his mom’s clothes had been up there, buried under jerseys from his dad’s days on various football teams. Kurt had been the one to suggest that it might be time to let them go. Carole had reached out to touch his arm and then snatched her hand back, looking at Burt. “We’ll remember her without some old jeans and sweatshirts,” Kurt had said, and leaned toward Carole until she hugged him. “We’re getting rid of the jerseys, too, though,” Kurt demanded, and she’d laughed, and everything had been fine, it was just - he was glad he’d been able to see Blaine.
And folded expertly into the bottom of his messenger bag right now was a cheap sweatshirt that said Tiptoe through the Tulips over a tacky picture of purple flowers; it smelled mostly of years in a cardboard box but, at the neck, something of her perfume lingered.
He reached over to pat the bulk at the bottom of the bag and nearly missed the car parked on the side of the road, directly under the lone working street lamp, blinkers flashing. Even seeing it, he would have driven past - he was not in the habit of getting out of his car on dark roads to check on strangers, especially when the local news was starting to rumble about the disappearance of a girl his age. No one he knew, but his dad was edgy about it, and he didn’t want to worry him.
Except it wasn’t a stranger; waving forlornly at his car was Terri Del Monico.
“What in the world,” Kurt muttered, and seriously considered swearing. This was a ridiculously under-used route; it was his favorite shortcut from Westerville back to Lima, but it was also just this side of a dirt road, most of the lights were busted, and at eleven o’clock at night it could be counted on to be entirely deserted. What Mr. Schuester’s ex-wife could be doing on it at this hour he had no idea.
Still. Never let it be said that a Hummel gentleman would abandon a lady in distress. Kurt sighed and pulled over, abandoning sweet thoughts of a bubble bath before bed and resigning himself to fixing something on her car and being asked uncomfortable questions about his favorite color. “Ms Del Monico,” he said, sliding out but leaving his car running for now. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Kurt!” Terri rushed toward him, teetering in high heels on the rough pavement. “You are just the person I hoped to see!”
“What’s wrong with it?” Kurt asked, reaching out to steady her when she planted a heel squarely in one of the cracks in the road where some vengeful plant life was making a comeback.
She blinked at him. “What’s wrong with what?”
“Your… car…?” Kurt gestured toward it.
“Oh, don’t get me started on that thing. Do you know I’m paying ninety-nine dollars a day for it? And the brakes squeal! I plan on making a strongly-worded complaint and getting some kind of refund. It’s just ridiculous.” She shook her head, caught up in the appalling lack of justice in the world.
“So the problem is the breaks,” Kurt offered.
“That and the smell. The air freshener is just offensive.”
“Most of them are,” Kurt couldn’t help agreeing, though he did manage to move them closer to the car. “What scent did you get stuck with?”
“It’s called Midwinter Eve. That’s not even a scent. It would barely make a good name for a paint color.”
“And they would use it in July,” Kurt said sympathetically. “These agencies really must be stopped.”
Terri beamed at him. “It’s so nice to have someone who understands,” she said, and then things got very confusing, mainly because of the cloth that was wrapped around his head; someone punched his stomach and when he gasped in pain, the air was awful, sticky and sharp, and then his head started to swim.
He thought, just before he went under, that he was definitely going to miss his curfew.
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Terri sighed happily as Kendra grunted and struggled to hold Kurt up. “He’s such a sweetheart,” she said.
“He’s a prince,” Kendra agreed, “but he’s heavier than he looks. I want fashion tips from this boy, he weighs twice what I’d have guessed. Help me get him in the back.”
They weren’t in nearly the kind of hurry they’d been with Rachel, and Terri bent over the backseat as well, taping Kurt’s mouth and wrists while Kendra got rid of his shoes and attended to his ankles. “Thank you so much,” Terri said, making sure to loop the tape over his fingers to avoid any unwanted scrabbling. “I couldn’t have done this without you.”
“I did turn out to be pretty good at spying, didn’t I?” Kendra grinned, tying Kurt’s shoelaces together considerately. “And I chose those three pickup spots perfectly. You know, next time I think Phil’s cheating on me, I won’t even hire Mr. Enderson to follow him around snapping pictures with a telescopic lens. I’ll just do it myself.” She waved the boots around. “Where do you want these?”
“Oh… in the trunk,” Terri said. “I don’t think he’ll need them, but you never know.” She leaned up to retrieve the needle and drugs from the glove compartment. “Honestly, Kendra, you’ve been an absolute lifesaver. All the time you’ve spent on this for me, not to mention postage to get the plans down to me in time…”
“Don’t worry about it, Ter.” Kendra tossed the boots into the back, then slid into the passenger’s seat and retrieved a flask from the still-open glove compartment, unscrewing the top and taking a swallow. “We’re family. Our grandmother shot a man in the back of the head for Great-Aunt Lily once, remember. I think he’d spilled fruit punch on her gray dress. Sometimes I wonder about the brains and blood getting on that dress.”
“It all came out,” Terri said absently, twisting the belt she’d brought along for the purpose around Kurt’s arm and tapping it, waiting for a vein to show. He had beautiful skin. “Mom wore that dress for her fortieth birthday party.”
“You’re right.” Kendra knocked back another gulp. “Didn’t she hold her purse over her right hip the whole time, though? I wonder if that was to hide a little bit of a bloodstain.”
“I want to know what Gran was doing with a gun at a school dance,” Terri said, shaking her head. Guns were so nasty and unnecessary. You could get any job done just as well without them. She slid the needle under Kurt’s skin gently, wincing in sympathy.
“That woman carried a pistol at my sixth birthday party,” Kendra said. “It had pearl handles. It clashed with her dress something awful.”
Terri patted Kurt’s cheek and slid him down to the floor of the car, throwing a quilt over him. You couldn’t be too careful. “Oh Kendra,” she said impulsively, leaning up to grab her sister’s hand. “I’m going to miss you when we’re in Florida.”
“You can always call, honey.” Kendra blew her a kiss. “Anyway, you won’t even notice. Your hands are going to be full with these two, I can tell you that.”
“Maybe with Rachel.” Terri sighed happily and moved up to the front, starting the car. “But Kurt… he’s older, and he can discuss a good color palette. I don’t know, Kendra. I just feel like… I’m not only getting a son. I’m getting a friend.”
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