Sing Me Home

Chapter 5: Find Your Grail

Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.

Arnold Bennett

"Pardon my language, but, what you need to do is get the fuck out of that cow town."

It's Saturday night and while the only physical reminder of Thanksgiving is the neat stacks of Tupperware containers in the fridge, the evening is monopolizing almost all the space in Rachel's brain. She's sprawled out on the couch in her pajamas, her laptop perched on the ottoman, and has Jesse pulled up on Skype. Despite the fact that he's scowling, it feels good to talk to him.

"Look, Lima's a shit hole and you should have never gone back. If you stay, you're just going to end up a real estate agent or, worse, somebody's mom. It doesn't make sense for you to stay there when I just bought a house that has plenty of room."

Scratch that, it felt good to talk to him.

"Jess…"

"No, you don't get to Jess me when you called me yesterday, sobbing your heart out, at three o'clock in the morning. You've been there for less than a year, Rachel. Just think what a year is going to do to you. Five years. Ten years. Before you know it, you're going to be on the cover of some Christian Inspiration book talking about how Jesus, and your five kids, saved your life."

Rachel isn't sure why she keeps listening to him, really. It would be so, so easy to end the video call, turn off her phone, and forget the conversation even happened. Except. Except there's a part of her, a small part of her, that might just be close to buying into what he's saying. It's the same part of her that wanted him to sneak a gun into her hospital room. It's the same part of her that wanted to be Mrs. Catherine Fraser.

It's a part of herself that she hates very, very much. The cowardly part. The part that just wants to drown in pain killers and pray for an accidental overdose.

"Lima's been good for me," he snorts (loudly) and that one action propels her forward, "This is where I need to be right now." Because she can't. She can't go back to L.A. with its flashing lights, weekly trends, blog snobs, and traffic. She can't go back to L.A. because just the thought of holding car keys makes her break out in a cold sweat. She can't go back to L.A. because she hates that city because it's nothing like New York (the city of her heart). And because it's where her career (life) was (ended) brought to an abrupt, screeching halt.

"I just…" Rachel doesn't want to be cagey; she's just not ready to be one hundred percent truthful. The truth is: she's not ready to let Jesse know about her hallway breakdown and the conversation that really solved nothing. "…I had a really bad Thanksgiving and it'd be nice if I could talk to you without all of this being thrown in my face."

"Rachel, I love you, but you need to grow up."

And that is the end of that. So, she cries herself to sleep on the couch and, when she wakes up stiff the next morning, downs two Tylenol with some orange juice and vodka.

Her dads get back from Texas in visibly bad moods.

No one talks about it. Her daddy sulks around the house and storms out of the room whenever her dad enters. Her dad goes to work early and comes home late and takes up slamming any door he can get his hands on (hard). Rachel tries to stay out of the way and is surprisingly successful considering she's home bound (Santana's out of town and Noah's on third shift). About the time she's seriously tempted to pick up the phone and ask to crash at Finn's (or Melody's or Sue Sylvester's if it'll get her out of the house), her dads call her into the dining room.

They're both sitting at the kitchen table and she's so relieved to see them sitting in the same room that she doesn't immediately register their expressions. Her daddy looks sick, not 'a little green around the gills' but honest-to-God sick. Her dad looks…well, mostly he just looks tired. Strangely enough, it reminds her of the spring of 2012, when they opened her rejection letter from NYADA and hid it from her for a week.

Rachel tries to swallow the lump in her throat and blink back the tears in her eyes, but, she's pretty sure, whatever is coming next, she doesn't want to have any part of.

"Rachel, bunny, what are the state of your finances?"

The question shocks her enough that she jerks back.

"Hi', you promised."

The small Jewish man across the table from her gives the large Black man beside him a look that could freeze over hell before continuing.

"Don't Hi' me, Leroy. You wanted to have this conversation but I'll be damned if I have it on your terms." Her dad rolls his eyes, hard, before crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back in his chair. If the tension wasn't so thick that she could cut it, Rachel would probably think it was all pretty funny. She may have inherited her talent from Shelby but her flair for the dramatic definitely came from the men sitting in front of her.

"Bunny, can you just answer the question before your dad interrupts again?"

Money isn't really something that Rachel thinks a lot about. While she's only been in one big show, thanks to Bradley she's been working almost constantly since graduating. It wasn't just the shows, either. There were a couple of really lucrative endorsement deals, a short lived (but profitable) advertising campaign, and the money from the Pirates of Penzance album. And, of course, the settlement from the city and county of Los Angeles. Combined with the guest role on Jesse's show, living modestly, and a really good investment banker, she's done pretty good for herself considering she's twenty five and has been living in New York since she was eighteen. She hasn't had to have a "real job" since college (when she waited tables) and while she's not rich by New York standards, Lima is not New York.

"Good, I guess. I mean, I don't own any property and I've got some money tied up in the bond market, but, I'm doing pretty well for myself."

Her dad makes a weird noise in the back of his throat and Rachel watches as his face develops a very deep purple color. "Good, Hiram, did you hear that? Our daughter is doing well for herself."

"I don't…I'm not…is this about rent? Because I offered and…"

"Bunny," her daddy shoots her dad a mean look (something she's not used to seeing on his face) before turning back to her, "do you think you could be a little more specific?"

"Not really," now it's her daddy's turn to make a noise that makes him sound like he's being strangled, "I know this sounds really bad but I've had other things on my mind. Up until now, someone else took care of that for me."

Her dad makes that same weird noise and her daddy cuts him with another harsh look and it doesn't take long before they're arguing in hushed tones (it's like she's five years old and they're arguing about Nana and Bubbie coming for Hanukkah). By the time their voices have started to rise, she's gotten up, dug through her stack of papers on the kitchen counter, and slid a couple of the more important ones across the dining room table.

"This is…"

"Good. Isn't it good, Lee?"

Money isn't Rachel's forte. She knows (knew) how to make it (by picking good projects and otherwise doing what Bradley told her to) and she knows how to keep it (spend less than you feel comfortable spending) but she doesn't know how to grow it (hence the investment banker). As far as she's concerned, a good investment is a safe investment (and one she can liquidate fairly easily). Still, whatever her dads are seeing is easing the tension in the room, so, that's apparently all the money sense she really needs.

"Rachel, your dad and I think it would be best…"

"Don't say it like that, Hi'. Your dad, yes, because I'm the bad guy here. I thought we were going to present a united front, not…"

"…think that it would be best if you started looking for somewhere else to live."

She's not excepting that to come out of her daddy's mouth. 'We're getting a divorce,' or, 'Your Aunt Rhoda has cancer,' or 'We've decided to adopt another baby' were all in the running before 'You should live somewhere else.' It's just, beyond a partial scholarship and her waitressing job and her trust fund set up by her bubbie, she hasn't been a financial burden since she went off to New York. With the exception of the emotion hardships caused by her living in New York and only seeing her parents a couple times a year, Rachel didn't think she was much of a burden at all.

"I see."

Except she doesn't. It's not like she wants to be there. She wants to be in New York, living in her tiny apartment, and in the final rehearsals for her next show. She doesn't want to be stuck in an endless loop of small town life. It's not like she wants to be taking up space in their guest room, hobbling around the house until her next physical therapy appointment.

"Rachel," her dad finally decides to speak and she feels like she's eighteen and being told she can't go to NYADA all over again, "we just don't think this is good for you."

"Speak for yourself, Leroy."

There's a beat of silence and then her dad clears his throat and starts again.

"We love you, so much, but, this isn't good for you. Physically, sweetheart, you're blowing your doctors away with your recovery. But, mentally…you need some purpose in your life. You need a reason to get up in the morning beyond one of us pounding on your bedroom door. You need to get your things out of storage and you need a job and you need…"

"…I need to get out because you don't want to deal with your broken daughter anymore."

It's hard to storm out with a stiff leg and blurry eyes, but, hard never stopped Rachel before. She just manages to slam the door to her room before she bursts into tears.

Rachel stops speaking to her dads.

Truthfully, it's slightly less childish than her first plan, which was to ignore her dad and speak only to her daddy. And then only in (bad) Hebrew. But, she decides if it's so important that they present a united front then she'll just be united in her desire to not speak with either one of them. Yeah, it's only slightly less childish.

The problem is that her dads are the first people that she comes to when she needs help. They are the most important people in her life and despite the fact that they aren't always physically around, whether separated by conflicting schedules or hundreds of miles, they've always been there when she needs them. So, while it's hard to ignore them, it's even harder to wrap her mind around the fact that they made the decision to kick her out without even really talking to her about it. It all boils down to the fact that she needs somewhere to live.

Like any other Rachel Berry problem (including 'How to get Finn to love me' and 'How to convince Mr. Shue to start preparing for competition more than a week in advance') it means whipping out poster board and her favorite pack of colored pencils.

The easiest solution would be to rent an apartment. She already has everything she'd need to furnish it and, being Lima, she'd have considerably more space than she did in New York. On the other hand, an apartment is an apartment. She wants a garage (for when she is finally able to drive again) and a fenced in backyard. Most importantly, Rachel's tired of sharing walls with other people; she just wants her own space. With an apartment out of the equation, a rental house would be the next easiest solution to her housing woes. She wouldn't have to worry about what to do if the oven broke or a pipe burst; her landlord would take care of it. Then again, she'd be limited in what she could or couldn't do with the house or the yard, which defeats the purpose of having her own place.

So, the only real option is to buy a house. Rachel Barbra Berry, New Yorker at heart, is going to buy a house. With that decided, Rachel does a little research online. It's just enough to know that it's a buyers' market in Lima and that she has enough money to buy the kind of house she wants outright. What she doesn't know is where to go from there. Or, rather, she knows where to go; she just doesn't know how to get there.

This is the point where she'd ask her dads for help. 'Who's the best realtor in town?' or 'What parts of town do you think I should avoid?' or any number of simple, but really important questions. Even though Rachel wants to ask them for help, she won't. It isn't just a matter of pride (although that's part of it). It's the fact that she does have a purpose (getting better) and if they can't see that she's doing her best, then she doesn't want to talk to them at all.

It was so, so, so hard to get out of bed every day and just try; now they're telling her that it wasn't enough. That nothing she's done since May, since her life was destroyed, was enough.

So, instead of acting like their words don't hurt her, she shoots a quick text to Noah instead. 'Call me when you get a minute. No hurry.' Rachel has every expectation that he'll take his time (maybe even wait until Santana's back in town) but her phone lights up almost immediately.

"What's up?"

She ignores his horrible phone etiquette and gets straight to business. "Would you happen to have a recommendation for a realtor?" The line goes silent for a moment, except for the sound of static and breathing, and then it's suddenly filled up with laughter.

"Sure, yeah, I know someone."

And just like that, Rachel Berry is officially in the market for a house.

Rachel clashes with her realtor immediately. Which is really ridiculous because he's basically her (if she were forty three years old and a guy). He thinks her graphs are silly and she thinks his charts are stupid; he thinks she's being too specific about what she wants and she thinks he's not taking her future purchase seriously enough. They both hate each other just a little bit (even if she does love his bullet points - smiley faces!). Fortunately, Noah tags along to make sure they don't kill each other.

She doesn't ask him to and, if she's completely honest, she almost doesn't want him there. The last major housing decision she made was her apartment. She'd been nineteen and entirely too in love with Finn and the whole time she was looking at places, she kept calling him and sending him pictures and asking him over and over 'What about this one? I just want you to be comfortable when you visit.' Of course, he didn't really care (because he figured she'd be coming back to Lima in a couple of years) and she ended up settling on something because he liked it better than all the others. She has no intention of going down that road again.

Then again, Noah isn't Finn (not even close). For one, she's not obsessed with him. Also, while she might (occasionally) respect his opinion, she doesn't need his validation. Finally, there's the fact that they're stuck in some weird friendship limbo. So, Rachel just decides to be thankful for his company (and the cup of coffee he brings), if only because it keeps her from committing homicide. Besides, she's always liked having Noah Puckerman around.

It has nothing to do with the fact that she wants to lick his jaw.

"So…"

They're standing alone in the kitchen of the fourth house of the day. It's a nice kitchen: lots of storage, granite counter tops, chrome fixtures, and an island. Rachel can definitely see herself in this kitchen; it's the rest of the house that she's not sure about. That's been the major problem all day. Either she likes the whole house, except for one room, or she hates the whole house, except for one room.

"…what exactly brought this on?"

Noah's leaning against the island, his (beautiful) arms crossed over his chest, and he's staring at her like he's never really seen her before. It's just a little bit unsettling.

"I needed to get out of the house," the lie slips past her lips so smoothly that it scares her, "at this point in my life, renting would just be a waste of money."

"Right and you decided I'd be the best person to go to for real estate advice?"

"Well…" he wasn't so much her first choice as her only choice. Santana wasn't available and she sure as hell wasn't going to her dads, but, she doesn't actually want to tell him that. Maybe, a life time ago, she knew him well enough to be that candid, but now…now it just seems unnecessarily mean. "I figured, at the very least, you could steer me out of the high crime neighborhoods."

Noah quirks his eyebrow and it still has the same effect on Rachel as it did ten years ago: the bottom falls out of her stomach and her panties get impossibly wet. It doesn't help matters that he looks really good just standing in the kitchen (that could be hers).

"Look," she walks over to him and places her hands on his biceps, "when we were in school, you always supported me; even my really crazy ideas. I just figured, even if it was just the name of a realtor, I couldn't go wrong asking for your help."

His eyes get all soft and dark and, just as he starts to lean forward, Thomas chooses that moment to stroll back into the room and ask what she thinks of the crown moulding in the attached dining room. Noah mumbles some excuse that might involve work and stalks off before Rachel can register exactly what's going on.

She's not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. Honestly, it's basically both feelings at the same time.

A couple days later, Rachel answers the door to find Noah on the other side, still dressed in his uniform.

"Are Hiram and Leroy in?" When she shakes her head no, he breaks out into a wide smile and sighs in relief. "Can I come in then?"

She just moves back, unable to do much more than smile and nod and take in just how good he looks in his uniform. Because he does look really, really good. She's never really understood the whole bit about men in uniform (maybe because she's used to men in costumes) but something about this man in this uniform just does something for her. Santana Lopez is very lucky woman.

It's that thought that catches her runaway brain up with reality. Reminding her that she's not getting involved in the NoahandSantana situation.

"Sorry I ran off the other day. I just…"

"…had something come up at work?"

There was a point in her life when Rachel would have wanted a straight answer, no matter how much pain it might cause everyone involved. Just because Santana and Noah aren't in a particularly monogamous relationship doesn't mean Santana would appreciate Rachel stepping in and starting something with her not boyfriend. She's heard the way her friend talks about the other women in Noah's life; it's not flattering. And while she doesn't have anything in common with Andie or Susan or Laura, she's more than willing to give Noah a pass if it means she doesn't find out how bad this could go.

Oh, because she can imagine.

"Rachel." Noah Puckerman has always had a way of looking at her that makes her forget her own name. That she has a boyfriend. That there's something else in the world besides him. "Nothing came up at work."

"Oh." Of course, Noah would grow up, becomes a police officer, and decides to stick to a strict policy of honesty.

"I wanted to kiss you, okay?" It's not okay. It's not okay in the slightest. It's not okay because he sleeps with her (best?) friend and fucks a lot of women and is basically the one who got away (or, at least, the one she should have tried a little harder with). "I just…Santana wants to kiss you too, so, I didn't really think it was fair. You know, to start something if she's not here to start something too."

Santana wants to kiss her too. Santana wants to kiss her too. Santana wants to kiss her. Rachel's not really sure why it comes as such of a surprise as it does. Yes, they've spent a lot of time together in a relatively short amount of time. Yes, they've talked about lady banging and gender preferences. Yes, she nearly fell to pieces at the thought of Santana not being around for Thanksgiving. However, none of that means that Santana wants to kiss her.

Now she just feels like a whore. You know, because she's always had a soft spot for the guy sitting in front of her but, at the same time, she has this thing for loud, opinionated women who worm their way into her life before she can really notice what they're doing. The easiest thing to do would be to put the house hunting on hold and go run away to Los Angeles and stay with Jesse.

Except, ever since she flushed the pain pills down the toilet, Rachel's been promising herself that she'd stop trying to take the easy way out.

"Okay. Okay, so, this, right here, this is a little weird."

"Why do you think I've been ignoring you? I don't want to be that guy." He leans back in his chair and she takes a minute to study the line of his body. It's not what she should be doing (it's certainly not helping her clear her head) but she can't help herself. Really. "Things were weird enough after Thanksgiving…"

The scene in the hallway will be seared into Rachel's brain forever. Noah with his arms wrapped around her from behind and Santana with her hands cupping Rachel's face. For one singular, crystal moment they all worked. But it was just for that one moment; then Finn called out from the living room and Bradley stomped in from the kitchen and, basically, everything went back to the way it was. Confused and disjointed.

"You can kiss me, if you want to," the words tumble out of her mouth before she can stop them, "but only after I walk you to the door and you can't kiss me again until Santana has a chance to." She wants the living room carpet to swallow her up and send her wherever the bad Jews go. Even worse, where the bad Broadway starlets go.

Noah smiles so hard that it crinkles the corners of his eyes. Her heart leaps in her throat even while a little part of her dies. She doesn't deserve him looking at her like that. Not when she doesn't know what she wants. Not when his not girlfriend wants to kiss her too.

"All right Rachel, but, I'm warning you, I've gotten a lot better since our junior year."

He stands up and takes her hand, practically dragging her to the front door.

She fumbles with the door knob, once, twice, before finally wrenching the door open. "I don't know if I can believe that, Noah." It's not fair if he really has gotten better. No one should be that good at kissing.

Then he leans down and takes her face in his hands and…damn.

Noah Puckerman still sets Rachel Berry's world on fire (he doesn't even have to slip in his tongue).

Author's Note: All right, so, a bit of a cliffhanger. However, not only will Santana be back next chapter but we'll figure out why she took off (hint: it really has nothing to do with Rachel or Noah). So, anyway, these last two chapters have been difficult because, like Rachel, I've been stuck in a bit of a holding pattern. I find it really easy to write hurt/grieving Rachel because I can relate to it. The hard part has been moving the story forward; not only past surviving into real recovery but also moving her relationship with Noah and Santana forward in an honest, believable way.

At the core of all of this, I'm trying. I'm trying to be respectful not only to the characters involved but also to you guys. I figure, if you were just looking for hot, smutty threesome time, you would have gone somewhere else by now. That's not to say that there won't be some hot sex (that's going to bring a whole new set of challenges) but obviously that's not just what this story is about. So, I'm doing my best and don't be surprised if I get a little slower with the updates and let me know what you think. A little feedback keeps me convinced that I'm on the right trail...and not leading you on a wild goose chase in the wilderness.