Thank you for all the kind reviews! I love you guys… and seriously? HE'S COMING BACK! Excited much?

I don't own glee, just my vivid imagination.

Chapter 11 - Rumour has it

After a turbulent weekend spent in their little bubble of love both Jesse and Rachel realized that sooner rather than later the other shoe was going to drop.

Gravity deems it so right?

After loosing at Regional's, Rachel hadn't seen any of the other glee-clubbers apart from Santana and Brittany during their entertaining trip to Wal-Mart. Monday had started on a good note with a sweet text from Jesse: 'We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.'

Smiling to herself as her fingers tightened around her phone within her pocket Rachel never had the chance to see the slushies that had came out of nowhere and drenched her literally from head to toe while people gathered around to laugh.

Rachel inhaled deeply and thought of Jesse and being the bigger person while she calmly wiped the gunk off of her face. She hadn't expected for Santana to yet again come to her rescue, yet as she blinked again to make sure she was hallucinating she realised that Santana was indeed standing in front of her cussing the brave few who had stayed behind in Spanish. Looking down at the hand that had wrapped itself delicately around her wrist Rachel's eye's followed the limb up to it's owners face and found Brittany's feline eyes gazing upon her kindly.

"You're all wet." Brittany observed. Rachel smiled ruefully.

"Yes Brittany, I am." Brittany's head tilted slightly and she bit her lip as if she was assessing the situation and how to fix it. Brittany startled Rachel when she grabbed her bag from the floor from were she had dropped it in shock and marched forward. Brittany, realizing Rachel wasn't following her turned and looked at her like she was an idiot.

''Well? Come on!''

Rachel followed perturbed.

Inside the bathroom, she soon found herself being manhandled by Brittany who was unbuttoning her blouse before she could protest. Rachel stood in the middle of the bathroom in her skirt and bra watching Brittany buzz about. She soon found herself being lead by the tall blonde over too a near by sink and being pushed into a stool.

"Brittany?"

"Yeah?"

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to wash you're hair silly. But Santana has my gym bag and that has my shampoo, the soap in here leaves you're hair all hard and crispy, like straw!"

"Oh, thanks. But…But why are you doing this?"

"That's an easy one! Because you're our friend. Santana says we're familia, that's friends right?"

"I guess so."

Santana barged into the room soon after and with an air of authority walked over towards the two girls sitting and handed Brittany the shampoo bottle before she began turning on the taps. Testing the water Santana deemed it warm enough before nudging Rachel's head towards the water. Taking the hint Rachel moved forwards thankful that it was luke-warm rather than scalding. Brittany washed out her hair gently before she lathered it up with the sweet smelling shampoo. Santana watched on silently.

Rachel absentmindedly began towel drying her hair with the towel Santana had thrust in her direction. She turned to the Latino, with eyes full of questions.

"Contain yourself hobbit. We aren't best friends now. This was a favour. I heard through the grapevine about who adopted Puck and Quinn's baby. You didn't need all the extra shit today, you're already loco, we don't need something to tip the scales."

Rachel smiled softly at the hidden meaning behind Santana's words, 'You're having a tough time of it and you don't deserve this'. Quietly she murmured, "Thank-you."

Brittany beamed while Santana rolled her eyes.

Glee club was usually Rachel's favourite part of the day. Today however, she was reluctant to go. If she went today this would be her last ever glee club meeting. She would never get to sit around and sing songs that told people stories that few would be brave enough to tell themselves without the shields of drums or guitars. It was all over.

She couldn't find it in herself to blame Jesse however. Yes, while he had been at New Directions, certainly their male vocals had improved but Rachel was aware that while she and Jesse sounded good, amazing even, together the two of them with the rest of New Directions were not ready yet to take down the power house that was Vocal Adrenaline. Vocal Adrenaline had the numbers, the sound and the synchronicity that as a new club New Directions lacked. And while New Directions made up for it with sheer force of will and love for music, sometimes even that wasn't enough. Still though… Aural Intensity?

Well that was a fix.

Taking a deep breath she reluctantly moved into the choir room to find it empty. Gazing around she thought of all the moments she and her friends had shared here, all the songs, dreams and tears that had defined them all as a group and as friends. She truly hated that it was over.

Hearing the others come in behind her and hastily wiped the few stray tears from her cheeks and turned to them with a smile. Finn rushed forwards and she recoiled slightly. "We're thinking about doing a song for Mr Shue, to say thanks you know?"

"That sounds like a lovely idea everyone!"

"Can you think of any songs that we could do?"

Rachel looked at them all then her eyes flickered to the whiteboard that she had 'Good Luck Guys!' written over it in Mr Shues' untidy scrawl. Her heart warmed and she just new the song they had to perform. "I've got an idea…"

After their performance of 'To Sir, With Love' Rachel found herself sitting behind the gymnasium nearly hysterical. She couldn't handle being in the auditorium a second longer and had promptly abandoned the room for some air . She just needed to breathe.

"Hey." She didn't need to look up to realise Jesse was standing behind her.

"What? How did you know to come here?" She asked through her tears before pressing her face into her knees not really waiting for an answer.

Looking down at the little heart broken girl Jesse sighed before moving to stand behind her and bending down to sit behind her. He turned her around on his lap before taking the handkerchief out of his jackets top pocket and mopping up her tears. "Well, Seeing as I gave you a ride to school this morning I did assume I would be giving you one back. And after waiting in my car for about 20 minutes before realising that you had glee club today," He rubbed her back soothingly when her cries hitched at the mention of glee club, "And I went over to the auditorium to see what you were doing. Your song was beautiful by the way. And that's the story really, I saw you leave and then I came here to comfort you."

"I'm going to miss them so much Jesse." she gazed into his eyes as he continued to dab at her face with his now ruined handkerchief. "What if they don't want to be my friend anymore now that we aren't in glee club together?"

Jesse tilted her chin upwards, "Don't think like that Rachel, of course they'll still be your friends. You are a family Rachel, that doesn't change." Jesse leaned forward and caressed her lips with his own, savouring the soft texture of her mouth.

Rachel pressed herself hard against him, slipping her tongue into his mouth and pressing herself further into his lap. One of her hands snaked up into his hair as the other curled around a muscular bicep. Rachel shifted her hips slightly to create friction and was pressed to feel the evidence of Jesse's excitement pressed against the inside of her thigh.

Jesse pulled away slightly, "No, Rachel. Not here." Rachel rolled her eyes and moved forward slightly to kiss down his neck.

"We've made out in school before Jesse, what's the big deal?" She whispered before moving to suckle on his collarbone . Jesse's eyes rolled back at the feel of her tongue on his sensitive skin and he groaned at the feel of her teeth scraping his skin. Trying to remember why he was protesting he gently pulled at Rachel's hair to remove her from his neck.

"Not like this Rachel, not when you're so upset. You aren't doing this because you want too." He said breathlessly.

"I always want you Jesse." Jesse gulped.

"Be that as it may, now is not the right time too-"

"What the fuck?" Jesse and Rachel's heads snapped around to stare at the intruder.

Finn Hudson.

One remote thought crossed Jesse's mind as he glared at the gangly boy who was looking at him with disgust and shock evident on his features.

'Fuck My Life.'