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"I think he would appreciate it if you talked to him," Jesse says after an unusual stretch of silence, and Rachel immediately knows he's talking about Finn even though Finn is not in the cafeteria and neither one of them has mentioned him since they walked out of Glee. Rachel makes a mental note to add eerily successful communication to her list of reasons why she and Jesse are soulmates.
Rachel thinks about it and says, "You won't mind? You know, since you're my boyfriend and all." She is, of course, far above asking a peer for permission to do anything, even if he is Jesse St. James and she's dating him, but she thinks, swirling a lock of hair around her finger, nobody can blame her for expecting and even wishing for a little bit of jealousy.
"I only said you should talk to him," Jesse says, calm. Then, he laughs ever so softly and leans forward, the beginnings of a smile lovingly stretching his lips as he speaks. "If your impromptu plans to carry that out include consoling him through kiss, we may have a problem."
*
Finn is understandably upset by the thought of her mom selling the few mementos from his late father they've both held onto for years. When he mentions the chair, Rachel immediately comes up with a way to be helpful as the friend she promised he'd have in her now that Jesse had filled the role of gentleman caller in her life.
"I'll buy your chair," she says earnestly.
Finn looks up at her and blinks. "What?"
"I'll buy your chair," she repeats. "My dad is remodeling the basement, and he's too afraid to keep any furniture around while he's working on it in case it suffers any casualties, so he keeps taking lengthy breaks just to sit down. A chair he doesn't care about ruining — he'll spread a sheet over it, don't worry — will speed things up significantly." Finn is frowning like he doesn't understand why this is a favor to him, so she adds, "If I buy your chair, you will know where it is at all times, and if you ever feel compelled to see it again, you can always visit or buy it back. At any time. Because we're friends, and I know it means a lot to you, and my dad won't be able to get much use out of it once he's done with the basement."
Finn's eyes take on a glint of understanding as he takes her words in, and then he says, "You'd do that?"
"Gladly."
Finn doesn't take her up on it, but he stops dodging her in the halls, so she counts it as a win.
*
She meets Jesse in the parking lot after that, and they have a random make-out session so intense in the front of his car she worries she might accidentally forget her decision to lose her virginity only when she's ready and only in a bed.
He pulls away just before her hands leave her sides.
She holds back a giggle: he's definitely jealous.
The thing about Rachel Berry is she makes it really hard to like her. Jesse was aware of that going in. Shelby told him she was entitled and determined and, according to her sources, extremely annoying. Jesse spent a whole second being offended on her behalf by the unprofessionalism of whatever teachers had revealed their feelings on Rachel Berry to his Glee coach, and then he decided it was the perfect set-up. He would never warm up to her antics, but he'd consciously lived with his own quirks for over a decade, so he'd be able to handle her without letting her drive him crazy just fine.
The thing about Jesse, and one he did fail to consider when he agreed to this pantomime of deceptions, is that he'd never been exposed to someone like himself for longer than a fake three-second handshake at individual talent competitions.
*
It's like this: the first time she applies the word 'boyfriend' to him in all seriousness, he has to pretend there's a spider on her dresser so she won't see him gag. It's the first time he's swung by her house while her dads were home, and the words that come out of her mouth the second her bedroom door clicks shut are, "I don't think my dads believe you're my boyfriend."
He's pretty sure she doesn't get how relationship labels work, or even the fact that you can't just choose your relationship status without talking to the other person first. He would have said yes, of course, because that was — is — the whole point of his ploy to take down New Directions from the inside, but it still feels invasive and something somebody should call her out on.
After the spider incident — which is, in hindsight, mishap #1: when he really sees a spider and his arachnophobia creeps out, she's going to wonder why he was so calm while hunting one down in as enclosed a space as her bedroom — he coughs and slaps on a smile and says, "Why not?"
"I've never had a serious boyfriend before," Rachel confesses. Her voice is slightly softer than usual, and her tone is almost questioning. "There was Finn, but I don't think even he thought of me as his girlfriend, and we mostly hung out at his house anyway." He shakes his head supportively until her face clears, and then she adds, "Or it could be — I think one of my dads thinks you're gay."
Jesse holds back a snort and shifts the motion of his head towards a nod. "That must be it. I get that a lot," he says.
She buys it.
*
The second time, he's already transferred to McKinley High, and he overhears Rachel talking to Mercedes in that high-pitched, smug way of hers, saying, "I'd love to join you guys," at which Mercedes pulls a face that makes him laugh, "but I told my boyfriend we'd lay low tonight."
It's ridiculous, and he can't believe he's sullying his reputation by pretending to like her, but he realizes her assumptions have spared him a long, awkward and obligatorily cheesy on his part conversation about where they stand with regards to each other.
He kind of wishes more girls were this clueless.
She's also making it a lot easier to break her heart.
*
The third time, he sees his name next to the word right on her MySpace, where she's dedicated one of her homemade videos to him. He finds it on his own — and, in hindsight, that's mishap #2: he gets so distracted by her voice he has to watch it twice, and then he gets so distracted by her face he has to rewind it again, and it never occurs to him that he didn't even need to look her up online in the first place. While it's inordinately bizarre that she hasn't told him about it, she clearly didn't expect him to stumble upon it, because Rachel Berry's weirdness doesn't include addressing people in the third person.
He drops it into a conversation by critiquing her delivery of a few notes, and his smile is not 100% fake when he sees her face light up.
*
He stops counting, and then Finn's single parent starts dating Kurt's single parent and Kurt breaks into a song on the subject and he feels bad for all of them, not so much because he cares about their feelings as because they're ruining his sabotage.
And then he tells Rachel to go bond with her ex-boyfriend. It's a low. It's a very low low.
It's still miles higher than the need to punch something he feels when he's waiting for her in his car while she comforts Finn, picturing worst-case scenarios that start off as the two of them somehow deciding they can win Regionals without Jesse and kicking him back to Vocal Adrenaline before he's done any real damage, and rapidly shift to Finn misinterpreting Rachel's advance as romantic and kissing her, and her going with it.
If he wants to fix this, he can't lie to himself: that's a pang of jealousy.
None of this is probably helped by practically pouncing on her when she gets in the car, but he can't help himself.
*
As it turns out, Jesse likes people who make it hard to like them.
Fuck.
*
For their one-month anniversary, Shelby arranges a dinner and musical date to a show he can't stand — in Shelby's words, "That way you won't blame Vocal Adrenaline for ruining something you love."
To add insult to injury, Rachel and he went through a whole virginity removal fake-out kind of recently, so it's going to take another two or three dates before he can, as a good, loving boyfriend, subtly start pushing her down the general direction of putting out again.
Everything about the date should make him want to flee the country, but he finds himself being ready with minutes to spare, fidgeting in his car down her street as he waits for their agreed-upon meet-up time — Rachel's a stickler for punctuality — and holding her hand over her thigh when they stop for red lights, where there isn't even a point in interacting at all with her. The third time he reaches out for it, he doesn't even let go after: he wraps it around the steering wheel and drives.
She's near-stupidly charmed by all of this, and he's kind of charmed by the painful obviousness of her reactions.
In the theater, she actually notices his lack of interest when the most unbearable song in the entire show comes on, and, in a shockingly generous, perceptive move, puts his hand on her knee and proceeds to drag it continuously and inappropriately up and down her thigh. She returns it to the armrest when the last notes of the song fade away, and he's so genuinely disappointed he doesn't have time to police his brain out of wishing, momentarily, for an encore.
On top of her adorable weirdness, she's turning out to be sweet.
He's clearly out of his mind.
*
Life at McKinley High is surreal, and being a part of New Directions is some kind of disgusting theme park ride where you get fake vomit poured over your head just for fun, and later realize it has freaking conditioning agents or something. For all the crazy and backstabbing and baby drama he's been told about and rumors about the cheerleading coach blackmailing the principal, there's something sickeningly sweet about the way the Glee club pulls together when someone needs them, and Jesse's torn between participating for show and participating because he wants to.
In Vocal Adrenaline, if you show that sort of weakness, somebody will take note of it and trip you and catch you on stage for maximum embarrassment. And this — this isn't accidental. This is a low self-esteem parade, and Jesse St. James does not have low self-esteem. His self-esteem is pretty high up there. He's a talented, good-looking guy. He can get a perfectly nice girl to fall for him just by lying to her face. His self-awareness borders on narcissism, and yet still here he is, raising his hand and feeling like it's not all a pretense.
When Mercedes starts singing, he lets Rachel pull him to his feet and drag him into the small crowd of losers rallying around the cheerleaders. They're singing "Beautiful," the most obvious, overused song ever written, in the school gymnasium, which is tacky as hell, during a pep rally, which makes the whole situation lamer than the time he tried to rock a pompadour for a Grease medley. And yet, despite all that, for the first time since he transferred to McKinley, he feels like the new kid, wondering if all those people watching from the stands are looking at him and willing him to go away, if any of them realize his intentions are dishonorable beyond their initial suspicions.
He doesn't stand out, but nobody's going out of their way to dodge him either. He feels like he belongs, somehow, or could grow to, and it doesn't feel as bad as he always imagined it would.
He wraps his arms around Rachel, and feels her humming as a soft vibration trotting comfortably over his skin.
It's the most connected he's felt to a person in his entire life.
He has no idea how he's going to make it out of this alive.