The Matchmaker ~ a tale of Rachel and Santana ~

chapter one

It's something she's heard way too often from friends and family alike: being so involved in the lives of others is just a way for you to avoid dealing with your own life.

And yes, Santana Lopez can admit that there maybe some truth to that - if only to herself - but damn it, she's good at what she does, she's proud of it, and she makes no apologies for it. Besides, somebody's got to help the people in this city of millions who desperately want to find that one person who's right for them, that special being who completes their busy, harried, frazzled lives and brings them the elusive happiness that's so insanely hard to find.

It's something that's amazingly difficult to do, and Santana is better at it than anyone. She'd started out with both straight and gay clients, but over time, she's become more and more popular in the gay community as the one matchmaker in the city who consistently gets it right. It helps that she's a lesbian herself, of course, but it's more than that; she seems to have an uncanny kind of sixth sense for these things, a rare, unique combination of intelligence and instinct that rarely misses the mark. She can just look at two people together and know whether or not they're really right for each other, and when she predicts how long their relationship will last, she's almost never wrong.

Except, of course, when it comes to her own sorry excuse for a love life. All work and no play makes for a lonely and frustrated Santana. Ah, irony. All those years spent in school, becoming an expert in psychology and human sexuality...you'd think it would be of some benefit in figuring out how to find someone to occupy the giant empty space in her life where a significant other should be, but no. The phrase Physician, heal thyself comes to mind, but you know what? Fuck that. She's worked too hard and too long to allow herself to wallow in self-pity, to spend her precious free time on second-guessing herself, after all the good she's done for people in this crazy town.

Today has been a particularly long day, and she's bone-tired, more than ready to go home to her empty refrigerator and empty bed, scrounge up something to eat, then collapse into blissful slumber. (Maybe this time she'll even remember to undress first.) Artie, her loyal assistant, rolls up to her open door and knocks at the frame to announce his presence, as he always does. She smiles at his unfailing consistency; they both know she's heard the sound of his wheelchair on the carpeting well before he even gets there.

"Hey, boss," he says, smiling as he pushes his rectangular glasses up the bridge of his nose. "We made it to the end of another long week. Got any special plans for the weekend?"

Santana clicks "shut down" on the Apple menu and wearily turns from her flat-screen monitor to the bespectacled young man occupying the doorway, dressed in his usual adorkable way: bow-tie, crisp white dress shirt, colorful sweater vest. He's been her right hand man almost from the beginning, and his cheerful manner belies the highly disciplined way in which he runs the office like a well-oiled machine. She doesn't know what she would do without him.

"If you call sleeping, doing laundry and restocking my refrigerator 'special plans,' then yes, I have special plans," she replies with a chuckle. "How about you? Still seeing that girl you met at the anime film festival last month?"

Artie blushes, laughs nervously. He really is a sweet guy; she knows he's going to make some lucky woman very happy someday. It's funny how tongue-tied he gets whenever she asks him about his love life, as though he's still a shy teen at the high school dance with his back planted firmly against the wall, hoping that someone will notice him, yet completely terrified at the possibility.

"Um, yeah. She's cool. Things are going pretty well, actually. We're actually going up to Massachusetts to visit her parents tomorrow."

She perks up at this bit of news. "Really? And you waited until now to tell me this? Artie, that's awesome! Quite a big step. I guess you two are getting serious?"

"Oh, I don't know about that." He suddenly gets very interested in examining the loafers on his unmoving feet, but Santana hears the excitement in his voice despite his best attempt to keep it low-key. "Maybe. She is pretty amazing."

Santana gets up from her desk, crosses the carpeted floor to where he sits. She bends at the waist to press a kiss to his cheek. "And you were so worried you'd never find anybody. See? It's like I always say – there's someone for everyone. I'm really happy for you."

The smile he gives her stretches all the way across his face, the perfect picture of happiness. "Thanks, boss." The smile disappears, replaced by a slight frown. "But what about you? Where's your someone?"

"Good question, Wheels," she answers, teasing him with the nickname he claims to hate, but which she knows he secretly loves. "That, as they say, is still to be determined. Now what do you say to a celebratory plate of wings and a few drinks, on me?"

"I say, you're on. Nuclear sauce this time? I'm feeling brave tonight."

"And you kiss your girl with that mouth? All right. It's your funeral."

With that, she flicks the light switch to the "off" position as he wheels himself out of her way. The room goes dark and she pulls the door closed behind her; it automatically locks with a soft click. She takes hold of the twin handles at the back of the chair to push him along in front of her, and in minutes, they're on the elevator, in the building's spacious lobby, then out the door and into the New York City evening.

RACHEL

Just a small town girl...living in a lonely world...she took the midnight train going anywhere...

She closes her eyes, thinking back as she always does to the time when she was that small town girl, channeling the emotions she'd felt in those days and pouring them into the song as it spills from her lips. There'd been times when it had indeed felt like a lonely world. Sometimes her dream of the Broadway stage had been her only companion, and she'd alternated between singing herself to sleep and crying herself to sleep more times than she cared to remember.

But this is her world now, and it's a world away from where she used to be. She'd gotten herself out of Nowhere, U.S.A. (also known as Lima, Ohio) by virtue of a combination of sheer will, unshakable belief in destiny, and more talent than could be fully contained by her five foot one body, and now she's here, pounding the hallowed pavement of New York City and treading the (for now) off-Broadway boards on her way to the stardom she's always known to be her birthright.

The song ends on a shouted word and a clenched fist held high above her head, and in place of the cheering, shouting audience she knows will one day be hers, there's the long, slow clap of three pairs of hands reverberating throughout the empty theater.

"That was great, Miss Berry," comes the voice of Producer #1 over the PA. Rachel squints into the light, trying to make out the details of his face. He's an older gentleman, late fifties, black hair going to gray, a genuinely admiring look in his eye. "Really great."

Producer #2 is a somewhat younger woman, maybe mid-forties, with red hair that falls in soft curls about her head and shoulders. It reminds Rachel of her high school guidance counselor. The woman looks down at a piece of paper on the clipboard she's holding, then up at Rachel.

"How old did you say you were again?" she asks.

"I'm twenty-one," responds Rachel, infusing her voice with all the confidence she can muster. "Just about to graduate from NYADA."

"The New York Academy of Dramatic Arts, eh? Impressive. Great school. Produced a lot of fine performers. I've hired a few of them." says Producer #3, his voice a low rumble. He's a big man, obviously well-fed, the oldest of the three; Rachel would put his age at around 70, maybe a little younger, but not much. He reaches into the front pocket of his immaculately tailored charcoal-gray suit jacket and pulls out a purple handkerchief to wipe away the sweat that's collected on his wide forehead, just above his bushy gray eyebrows.

"Yes, yes. Impressive," the woman echoes, looking up again from her clipboard with intensely green eyes. "It says here that you were in school productions of West Side Story and Cabaret. Lead roles. Your professors and peers gave you excellent reviews for those performances. What would you say you'd bring to the role of Fanny Brice in this production that no one else could?"

"Well, my high school glee club teacher always said that I was like a new Barbra Streisand. 'Barbra for the new millennium,' he said. Of course, I demurred," Rachel replies. It's true. He really had said that. It's one of her most cherished high school memories. "I told him, 'there's only ever going to be one Barbra.' And as much as I love and worship her, I'd rather be the first Rachel Berry than the second Barbra Streisand, honestly." She pauses, trying to gauge the trio's reaction to her words. Their faces are unreadable masks, so she plows ahead. "To answer your question more directly, I think I would bring more of a midwestern girl-next-door kind of quality to the role, as opposed to the expected New York bluster and brassiness."

"Yes...yes...I can see it," the older man says, and the tone of his voice tells Rachel that he really is envisioning it. Or at least, she hopes so. "That was a very good answer, Miss Berry. You're young - very young - but mature beyond your years."

The younger man pipes up. "It's risky, though." Rachel closes her eyes. She'd had a feeling he'd be the one to doubt her. "Casting a virtual unknown in a big revival like this? Will the audience go for it? Ticket buyers like to get the return on investment that a more well-known performer gives them."

"Yes, but they also like the excitement of seeing someone fresh and new in a classic role," the woman argued. "Someone with a different take, someone who can move the character in a new direction."

A small smile curls the corners of Rachel's mouth upward. She knows all about new directions; that had been the name of her high school's glee club. The group had won two national championships with her as their leader, and it was largely on the strength of those accomplishments that she'd gotten the full scholarship to NYADA that had brought her to this moment.

"Simmer down, you two," the older one barks, mildly irritated by the bickering. He finds it unseemly to have such discussions in front of an auditioning performer. "My apologies, Miss Berry. After all these years, I still haven't gotten the puppies house trained."

The woman coughs in embarrassment. Rachel decides she's quite beautiful. The younger man glares at her, miffed at being contradicted so forcefully, and then so thoroughly chastised by his mentor.

"Yes, well," the woman finally manages to stammer. "Thank you very much, Miss Berry. We'll let you know."

"I'm grateful for the opportunity. Thank you," Rachel says simply. She wants to say more, but she's learned to rein in her natural loquaciousness when necessary. It's one of the first lessons she'd had to learn when she came to the Big Apple. She gathers her bag from where it lies at her feet and exits the stage, not hurriedly, trying to project the sense that this is her stage, that she belongs on it, whether they choose her for the part or not.

In moments, she's on the sidewalk outside the theater, looking up at the currently blank marquee above the doors. It's only a matter of time before her name appears on it, she knows. She puts on her sunglasses, then pulls her cell phone out of her bag. She swipes to unlock it and taps the name on her contact list of the person she knows would kill her if she didn't let them know how the audition had gone as soon as it was over.

It's a glorious day, so she decides to walk the ten blocks or so to the subway stop instead of taking a cab from the theater. From there, she'll take the first of several trains back to her apartment, where her roommates Mercedes and Tina are presumably waiting for her with bated breath. As fellow NYADA students, they know all too well how important this audition is for Rachel, and honestly, she feels pretty good about her chances. Who can resist the power of an expertly sung classic rock anthem? Smiling into the sun with her sunglasses on, she listens patiently to the ring of the phone on the other end, then bursts out laughing when she hears the half-shouted, half-panted greeting.

"What did they say what did they say what did they say?!"

"Hello to you too, Marley."

"Don't hello me, Rachel. I'm your sister - and as you well know, you are required to give me any and all details before engaging in simple pleasantries. Now spill!"

Rachel giggles in delight. No one else can make her laugh like her adopted older sister. They've shared so much together, weathered so much sadness and difficulty, and yet Marley Rose is an ever-shining light in her life, illuminating even the darkest times with the infectious optimism that's become Rachel's own, for which she's become well-known around the NYADA campus.

"Honestly, I think it went very well. One of the producers didn't seem to like me very much - but the other two had only positive things to say, so I think I have a real shot at this. Oh, Marley, I'm so excited!"

"Rachel, that's great! I'm proud of you." Marley's voice is thick with emotion; Rachel can tell she's struggling not to cry. Her sister has never been able to hide anything from her. "Not that I had any doubt you'd totally knock 'em dead, of course. You were born to rule the stage. All you've ever needed is for someone to give you the chance to prove it."

"And what about you? How are things out in L.A? Everything all right with those new roommates of yours, Kitty and...what's her name again?"

"Unique," Marley laughs. "They're quite a handful, always sniping at each other, getting mad and then making up. Mostly I think Kitty's mad that Unique has better makeup skills than she does. It's kind of amazing, really."

"Mmm." What Marley says is true; Rachel's seen pictures. "And how goes the songwriting? You haven't played me anything new in a while."

"I'm working on a couple of new things, actually – in fact, one of them would be perfect for you to sing at your final showcase performance at school. It's called This Time, and it's about our days in Glee Club. I played it for Mr. Schuester the other day, and he cried, Rachel. He actually cried! Don't tell him I told you that, though."

"While I'm offended that you played a new song for him before you played it for me, I'm very excited to hear it! Will you be around later?"

"Well...I was going to surprise you with the video of this afterwards, but since you asked..." Marley's voice is low and conspiratorial, as though secret agents might burst through the door and lead her away in handcuffs for possessing the information she's about to share. "We're doing a showcase of our own tonight down at the Night Light!"

"WHAT?" Rachel shrieks, completely unmindful of the fact that she's stopped still in the middle of a busy New York City sidewalk, forcing all the other pedestrians to part around her like she's Moses in the Red Sea, or Quinn Fabray in the hallways of their old high school. "Oh, Marley, that's fantastic!"

"I know! Don't tell our dads, please, Rachel," Marley pleads. "I should have known that I couldn't surprise you, but I really, really want to surprise them, okay?"

"I don't know how you expect me to walk around the rest of the day keeping this news all bottled up, Marley," huffs Rachel as she resumes her walk, paying no heed to the dirty looks being shot her way. "But fine - I won't tell them. Who can I tell, then? Quinn? Sam? I can tell Mercedes and Tina, right? They're my roommates, after all. They'll know something's up as soon as I come through the door."

"Yes, yes, you can tell anybody else you want – just...just not Hiram and Leroy, okay? Swear it."

"Swear it? What are we, twelve? Come on, Marley. I just said -"

"I mean it, Rachel. I won't be able to perform if I think there's even the slightest, the tiniest possibility that they know what's happening. This could be really big for us – I can't screw it up. I can't let Kitty and Unique down. Plus, I'd never be able to forgive myself if I disappointed our dads like that."

"You could never disappoint them, Marley. Or me." Rachel's throat tightens. "Or...or your mom. We're all so, so proud of you. I know she would be too."

"I still miss her. I miss her so much." She hears her sister sigh, and her heart breaks for her all over again. "All these years, and...it's funny. I can write songs about everyone else, but not her. Not for my own mom."

Rachel bites her lip softly. There's so much she wants to say to her sister, so many words of love and support and encouragement, but she's nearly at the subway stop and the traffic is so loud and – she sighs. It's just not the time or place for that conversation. Not now. Not here. But soon. Maybe later tonight, after Marley has sung her songs with her weird but entertaining roommates to a packed house, earning the praise and applause her talent has always deserved.

So she just says, simply and earnestly, "You will, Marley. You will."

She hears Marley's breath hitch, can practically feel the tears tracking their way down her cheeks, and she knows that her words have been heard but not believed. After all, Rachel's been saying this for years, and yet Marley's inability to express her feelings about her mother in song has remained a constant source of pain for both of them.

"One day," Marley replies quietly, so quietly that Rachel can barely hear her above the dull roar of cars and buses and rapid footsteps on the pavement of New York City. This is what she always says. It's become a sort of mantra for them, a prayer that the wall behind which Marley's feelings about her mother have been barricaded for so long will finally begin to crack and crumble and fall away.

"One day. You'll see." She pauses to swallow down the lump of emotion that's threatening to steal the power of speech away from her. "Anyway, listen – I have to go now, but you call me as soon as you get home from the show, okay? And break a leg, as we say in the theater."

Marley laughs, and Rachel's heart swells in her chest at the sound. As long as her sister can laugh, there's hope. As long as she can laugh, she can keep the sadness at bay. As long as she can do that, she can find the strength to get through today, and tomorrow, and the next day.

"I will. And good luck to you too, even though I know you don't need it. This is your time, Rachel. I know it, you know it, and pretty soon the whole world is going to know it too."

Rachel smiles. Marley has always been her biggest cheerleader. "We shall see. In any event, I really do have to go now. Give my best to Kitty and Unique too, okay? I love you."

"I love you too. Talk to you later. Bye!"

The call ends, and moments later, Rachel's on the train, a host of different emotions swirling inside her. The more some things change, she muses, the more other things stay the same. She sends a fervent prayer to the universe that 'one day' will come sooner rather than later, as the rhythmic wheeze and rumble of the train somehow beats in time with her heart.

SANTANA

Several hours, two plates of nuclear hot wings ("I can't feel my tongue!," Artie had exclaimed in delight) and three full pitchers of water later, Santana unlocks the door to her apartment, throws her keys on the kitchen counter, undresses on the way to her bedroom, and finally collapses bonelessly onto her new and wonderfully comfortable mattress in just her underwear. Dimly, in the back of her mind, she admonishes herself for leaving her clothes on the floor, but she's just too exhausted to care at this point. She'll pick everything up tomorrow. It's too late, she's too sleepy, and fuck it, that's what Saturday mornings are for anyway.

She tosses and turns all night, though, despite the comfort of the plush mattress and the soft sheets in which she's gotten herself tangled. Her sleep is always restless, her dreams always filled with the faces of the one woman she's ever truly loved, and the one who had tried so desperately to take that woman's place.

When she'd broken up with Dani, she'd taken great pains to explain that it wasn't because of anything the other woman had said or done; it was just because Brittany still had too much of a claim on her heart for her to truly give it to anyone else just yet. It had been an amicable, if tearful split, and in fact, the years since Britt had left the city for MIT and a life of academic study had been kind to both of them. Britt was at the forefront of her field - advanced mathematics and quantum computation – while Santana had become one of the most successful and sought after matchmakers in all of New York City. They had done quite well for themselves, and both knew that they probably wouldn't have achieved half of it had they stayed together. This inescapable fact hadn't made Santana's loneliness any easier to bear, however, and after a period of self-imposed retreat, she'd finally made the decision to put herself out there once more.

That was when she met Dani one fateful late night into early evening at the Spotlight Diner, a hot, hip eatery known for its singing wait staff, most of whom were young, aspiring actors and musicians. (Hence its slogan: "The only place in town where the talent sings for your supper, not theirs.") She'd seen Santana occupying a booth by herself, thought she looked sad and lonely, and sat right there next to her, asking what a beautiful woman like her was doing watching a Sunday sunrise all alone in a diner. San, who normally would have verbally sliced and diced anyone who dared to invade her personal space like that, felt the cloud around her heart begin to dissipate at the waitress' boldness and quirky charm.

By the time they'd quietly sung a chorus of Here Comes the Sun, she'd felt warmer and lighter than she'd been in a log time. From then on, Dani became a constant presence, helping to fill the aching void that Brittany had left, and for a time, things were good. Really good.

Dani really was a great girl: lively, vivacious, fun and talented, a bohemian dream who loved life and lived it to the fullest each and every day. Santana was still healing, but the whirlwind ride that was Dani provided a great distraction from the grief and sorrow she'd been feeling for so long over Brittany's absence from her life. They laughed a lot, sang a lot, and when they made love, Dani surprised her with the passionate ferocity she brought to their bed.

And yet, Santana felt she couldn't give herself completely to the feisty, short-haired girl who wrote songs and played guitar when she wasn't serving burgers and singing pop tunes at the diner. She just couldn't bring herself to be that vulnerable, that open, the way she'd been with Brittany, and the more she thought about it, questioning herself in the dark and quiet spaces of the night, the more she realized it was because she still wasn't entirely over the tall, blue-eyed blonde who had been her everything, once upon a time.

So when she had finally worked up the courage to end things with a variation of the old "it's not you, it's me" speech, seeking to land the blow as softly and gently as possible, she'd thought that Dani would understand, that they could move forward as friends.

Unfortunately, she'd thought wrong. Dani didn't take the break-up well at all, erupting in a white-hot fury so intense that Santana, who prided herself on not being afraid of anything, was actually frightened. Glasses were thrown, lamps and dishes were broken, neighbors awakened, and only a threat to call the cops had finally gotten Dani to leave Santana's apartment and return to her own small, neglected place – but not before rasping out the words that still send a chill up Santana's spine whenever she thinks back to that unhappy night.

"I'll go – but you'll never be alone, Santana. No matter where you go, what you do, I'll be there. I'll never stop loving you. I'll never stop trying to be with you. One day you'll come to your senses, and you'll realize that no one else can ever love you the way I do, as much as I do – but until then, until that day, Santana, you will never be happy. You get me? Never! I'll be waiting. And I. Will. Be. Watching."

And then Dani had stormed out of her apartment, the angry slamming of the door a complete contrast to the gentle way she'd entered Santana's life just a few months earlier. Santana was left to weep, to clean up the mess, and to wonder just what the hell was going to happen next...and whether Dani was right.

She didn't have to wait long for the chips to start falling. First it was the letters, written in Dani's loopy cursive scrawl, initially begging Santana to give their relationship another chance, then demanding that they get back together, or else. Sometimes they would say that if they didn't get back together, Dani would die of a broken heart, while other times, she would make thinly veiled hints at the possibility of suicide, which both saddened and enraged Santana. It was incomprehensible to her that the girl would think so little of herself and her own life that she would even consider ending it over a relationship that hadn't even lasted a full year. Surely there had been things in her life that had given it meaning before they'd met...hadn't there? She wondered, afraid of what the possible answer to that question might be.

And then there were the phone calls, which came at all hours, at home, at work, on the cell phone. Constant, sometimes silent, sometimes filled with rage, other times tearful. Pleading, begging, cajoling, demanding, berating, and yes, threatening. Santana would change her numbers, multiple times, yet somehow Dani would find a way to track them down. She found out later on that someone in the office - a dopey guy who'd fallen for Dani's vague promises of sex, or company, or something – had been giving her the new numbers every time Santana changed them. And then, after she'd fired him, he continued to get them from former co-workers. She'd had to fire four other people before the calls finally stopped.

It didn't stop the flowers and the gifts, the teddy bears, the shiny Mylar balloons saying "I Love You" and "I Miss You," and the sometimes bizarre singing telegrams until she'd called the various delivery persons and telegram singers' employers and let them know in no uncertain terms that she wanted none of it, and that if they insisted on continuing to show up at her home and / or her office, they would be hearing from her lawyer - one Sebastian Smythe, from the well-known firm of Smythe & Karofsky. There was no fiercer, or more feared, counselor at law in the entire city, she warned, and that was enough to get it all to stop, much to Santana's relief.

Later, Sebastian had called to let her know he'd followed up to make sure that everyone understood she wasn't bluffing. They'd met and become friends in college, and his work on behalf of her business had been instrumental in helping it to get off the ground and become successful. His loyalty, and his ability to effortlessly charm anyone and everyone with his handsome looks and beguiling smile, has been invaluable. She reminds herself, thinking about it now, that she still owes him the dinner she'd promised at the time.

After that, she would go on awkward, tentative dates, which under normal circumstances would have been difficult enough, but since Dani knew all of her favorite places to go and things to do, it was easy enough for her to crash those dates and easily ruin them with a glare or a casually placed remark or cruel insult. It was infuriating, but as long Dani wasn't doing anything more than that, not being threatening or violent, Santana found it all but impossible to stop her without making threats of her own. She wasn't afraid of a fight, having been in her share back in her high school days, but she was loathe to do anything that might draw some sympathy for Dani. And besides, going to jail for assault, however justified, wasn't going to do her or her clients any good.

So a weary, angry Santana did the only thing she felt she could do: she stopped going on dates. As much as it burned her to admit defeat, she was tired of trying to circumvent Dani's strategy of inflicting embarrassment and humiliation upon her dates. And maybe, really, her heart wasn't in it anyway, and it wasn't it kind of unfair to keep going out with these women when she was so tense and distracted with worry over whatever Dani might do next?

Now, as she wakes up slowly with the late Saturday morning sunlight streaming through the blinds and her cat meowing softly to be fed, Santana feels the familiar glum resignation that this is how her life is going to be. She's going to keep helping others with their love lives while never having one of her own. They'll go places and do things and eventually they'll get married, all happy, smiling, laughing, while she's forever the guest at the wedding, sad and bored, nursing her fourth glass of champagne and fending off the clumsy advances of male guests from out of town who don't know or care who she is; they just know she's hot and that they'd very much like to know what she's got going on beneath that dress she's wearing.

She supposes it's a price she can pay for getting to make a pretty nice living doing something she really likes and enjoys doing. It's not something most people can say, after all. And yet...

And yet, she can't keep the feeling that she needs and wants more at bay. That she deserves more. That all her hard work should translate into something beyond a beautiful apartment, a cat she adores, and an absolutely ridiculous number of Facebook friends and Twitter followers. As much as she likes her life – the detour with Dani aside – she can't help but wonder with a plaintive sigh: this just can't be all there is...can it?

She groans, pressing a hand to her back, as she rises from her bed to gather yesterday's clothes from the floor, throws them in the hamper on the way to the bathroom. Shortly after that, she feeds the cat, earning a meow of approval from the hungry feline, and begins to prepare her own morning meal. Humming the tune to Valerie, an old song she still loves, she sits down at the kitchen table with her bowl of cereal to stare out at the city through her living room windows, completely unaware of the fact that everything is very much about to change.