6x18

Finn's day had gotten off to a bad start before he ever set foot in the studio. First, he'd forgotten to set his alarm (again), so he'd woken up to his mother yanking the covers off of him and yelling about being late for school. Then he'd had to take a math test that he had completely forgotten about and failed it (not enough to significantly lower his grade average and jeopardize his spot on A-Troupe, but certainly enough that his parents wouldn't be happy about it). And then he'd found out that his driving instructor's pregnant wife had gone into labor, so his test to get his license- the one thing he'd been looking forward to for months- was getting postponed (for the fourth time).

A-Troupe rehearsal was supposed to be the saving grace for this terrible day, but then Emily and Michelle had chosen him as a candidate for the team's alternate in the ten-person Regionals dance.

So, to put it lightly, today sucked.

Noah had taught the four potential alternates the choreo for the alternate audition before leaving to check on the other small groups that were rehearsing simultaneously. The contemporary group was rehearsing on the other side of Studio A, and Finn was hyper-aware of Piper's presence in the room as he danced. The last thing he wanted was for her to look down on him for being considered as an alternate. Just the thought left an unwelcome feeling of humiliation buried deep inside of him.

Noah eventually returned to the alternate group, observing them with his arms crossed as they finished their final count of eight then held their final pose. He nodded to himself, looking around at each of them as he said, "That looks good, guys. I know you've been working on this for a while, so go take a break, and then meet Emily and Michelle back in here in 15 minutes. Sound good?"

As Ozzy stalked out of the studio alone and Davis and Kenzie headed for Shakes and Ladders together, Noah informed Piper, Summer, and Kingston that Emily and Michelle would need Studio A for the alternate audition and to clear out before then. Finn trudged over to the cubbies to grab his water bottle, avoiding making eye contact with the others as he went. He plopped onto the bench, his back to everyone else and took a long drink of water, intending to keep practicing once the studio was clear again.

He had always been confident in his dance abilities and had been working really hard this season to prove to Emily and Michelle that he wasn't a back-row dancer. His hard work clearly wasn't paying off, however, because his studio heads still saw him as one of the weakest dancers on the team if they were considering him for alternate.

He had always been a featured dancer at his old studios. Miss Angela had even thought he was good enough to bring with her to her other studios. Had he ever been as good a dancer as he'd once thought? Or was he only full of "pop and sizzle" that was good enough for Miss Angela but not enough for anyone else?

Good dancer or not, he really didn't have time to doubt himself right now.

The only thing that mattered now was not being the alternate, so when Kingston and Summer exited Studio A together, Finn intended to keep rehearsing alone before pausing when he realized Piper hadn't left with the other two.

"How's it going?"

Piper had plopped down on his other side, nudging his shoulder with her own as she voiced the question. Finn sighed and gave a shrug of the shoulders, glumly telling her, "It's going."

She immediately picked up on his downcast mood and nudged his arm with her elbow. "Well, you looked good earlier. I highly doubt you have anything to worry about."

Normally, he'd thrive at her complimenting his dancing, but his heart just wasn't in it today. Forcing a half-smile for her, he muttered, "Thanks Pipes."

He avoided looking at her out of sheer embarrassment, instead staring down at his lap where his fingers were bridged together. His knee bounced with restless energy, and Piper inclined her head towards him seriously. "Come on, Finn. Don't let this get to you."

She clearly wasn't planning on leaving him alone anytime soon, and if he had to talk to someone about this, he figured he'd want to talk to Piper. "I've never been an alternate before," he admitted. "I don't want to start now."

With a level of confidence he rarely heard from her, Piper assured him, "You're not going to be the alternate. Don't even worry about it."

"That's easy for you to say." She hadn't been the one practicing for the alternate auditions all afternoon.

"You're already in the hip-hop routine, which you killed the other day by the way."

The sincerity of her compliment brought a genuine smile to his lips, but then a thought struck him. "But wait, so is Kenzie," he pointed out.

Piper shrugged and nodded. "It wouldn't make sense for either of you to be the alternates because you're already featured in other dances. Ozzy and Davis are the ones who should be concerned."

Maybe Piper had a point. Feeling a little better about his chances, he said more confidently, "Yeah. You're right. I've got nothing to worry about."

She let out a light laugh at the return of his usual enthusiasm, and the sound sent a wave of fondness through him, immediately brightening his mood the slightest bit.

"So I killed it, huh?" he asked, raising his eyebrows at her and grinning.

She rolled her eyes at his cheeky expression. "Yes, you were pretty good."

"That's not what you said a minute ago."

"It means the same thing."

"No way, Pipes. 'Pretty good' and 'killed it' are two totally different things."

She shook her head exasperatedly, but there was a smile on her lips as she glanced at him and said, "Don't make me take it back."

"Why would you take it back?"

Her eyes narrowed as if she wasn't entirely sure if he was joking or not, so he gave her another cheeky grin to let her know he was. On a more serious note, however, he told her, "I don't know why you didn't make the hip-hop group too though. I was kind of hoping you would."

"You were?"

"Yeah, it would have been our first A-Troupe dance together." He didn't know why Piper seemed so surprised by that and continued with, "Besides, you were the best dancer in the girls' group. Seriously, I don't know why LaTroy and Sloane didn't pick you. I couldn't take my eyes off you the whole time."

"Oh." This seemed to catch her even more by surprise, and maybe it was just the lighting, but Finn could have sworn her cheeks had turned a light shade of pink. "I don't know. Jacquie, Kenzie, and Summer are all really good at hip hop, so..."

"Yeah, but so are you."

It wasn't even Finn's crush on her that made him think she should have made the hip-hop group. It was just an objective fact as far as he was concerned. All of the girls had done well in their hip-hop routine, but Piper had outshined them all. She had danced with such fierceness, and if Finn hadn't known her already, he might have assumed hip hop was her primary style of dance.

When she finally seemed to pull her thoughts together, Piper said, "I'm just glad I got the contemporary routine." She glanced at him, twisting her hands together in her lap. "I was starting to worry I wasn't going to get featured in any this year."

"Yeah, but you're one of the best contemporary dancers on the team. That was a no-brainer."

She looked at him, shaking her head in wonderment as the corners of her lips twitched upwards. "I'm glad you have so much confidence in me."

"Someone has to." He said it with a joking tone, but he genuinely meant it. Piper's confidence in herself was minimal at best. He wished she could see how incredible of a dancer she was like he could.

"How's the contemporary routine going anyway?" Finn asked her curiously.

"It's good," she told him, "We're still figuring the choreo out, but we have a lot of ideas."

"Between you, Summer, Kingston, and Noah, it's bound to be awesome. You guys are going to crush the contemporary category. All of the other teams are gonna wish they didn't have to compete against you."

Something in her demeanor had immediately shifted as soon as they'd started talking about the contemporary dance. She wiped her hands on her shorts, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye nervously. Finn raised his eyebrows, wondering what she was thinking. "What?"

"Nothing. It's just... Summer wants us to do an aerial, and I just—" Her eyes widened a bit, haunted by failed aerials of the past, and she shook her head at the thought. "I don't know."

"There's still a month until Regionals. That's plenty of time to get it, Pipes."

Piper let out a slow breath and nodded. "Yeah, I guess." She returned to twisting her hands nervously in her lap and reluctantly added, "I actually did one during the contemporary auditions."

What? How had she not mentioned that to him already? That was a huge milestone!

Pride surged through him as he told her enthusiastically, "That's great!"

She gave a forced smile, barely meeting his eye as she nodded. "Yeah." She wiped her hands on her shorts again then reached for her water bottle sitting next to her and stood abruptly. "I should probably go. I've got that paper to write."

Finn's grin faded at her weird behavior. He'd seen Piper distressed about her aerial more times than he could probably count this season. She should be way more excited about this than she currently was. He didn't have time to question her, however, as she had already made a beeline for the door.

She paused when a thought seemed to strike her and turned back to him in the doorway of Studio A. "Um, I'm going to go work in Shakes and Ladders I think, if you want to come find me after the audition and let me know how it goes."

Damn. He'd actually managed to forget about that audition for a few minutes.

Nodding, Finn promised he'd catch up with her later, and she wished him good luck before setting off for Shakes and Ladders. Finally alone, Finn set his hands on his knees and looked around the empty studio. He couldn't shake the feeling that there was something that Piper wasn't telling him, but he couldn't focus on that right now. There were just under ten minutes until the alternate auditions would begin, so he pushed Piper's weird behavior aside to focus on Noah's choreo.

He would just have to ask her what was going on later.

-----

When Piper went cross-eyed from boredom after half an hour of working on her English essay, she knew her effort was going to be a lost cause. She normally liked to stay ahead on her schoolwork, but essays were the one exception. They were just so long and time-consuming, and she'd much rather spend an evening working on Algebra problems or reading her History textbook than writing an essay over symbolism in The Great Gatsby, which she hadn't even read all the way through because she didn't have time to between dance and all of her other classes. (That's what she kept telling herself anyway. She probably could have read it in all the time she'd spent scrolling through Instagram and watching dumb YouTube videos that Finn sent her, but those things were kind of more important than a book written, like, a hundred years ago.)

Regardless, it wouldn't have mattered even if she had read the book because her mind wasn't focused on her essay at all. As she skimmed the SparkNotes page for The Great Gatsby, the only thing her mind could focus on was the fact that Finn thought she was one of the best dancers on the team.

It was probably a good thing he hadn't been at the contemporary auditions. He surely would have changed his mind if he had seen her dancing there.

But then again, he had seen her struggle and fail to do an aerial on his first day at the studio. That was the lowest point of her dance career thus far, and if he still genuinely believed that she was one of the best dancers on the team after that, then she was inclined to accept the compliment.

In a way, she supposed, it was nice to know that someone who wasn't related to her truly believed in her. Finn's opinion meant way more to her than she cared to admit.

"Pipes! You're never gonna guess who's the alternate!"

Piper jumped at Finn's loud exclamation, looking up from her laptop as he stumbled over a chair at another table in his hurry to slide into the seat next to hers. His eyes were bright with excitement, and she figured it was safe to assume that the audition to not be the alternate had turned up in his favor- just as she'd known it would.

"Well, you're too excited, so it can't be you," she observed as she shut her laptop.

"Well, yeah, but that's not an actual guess."

Piper dramatically sighed at that and pretended to think for a minute before guessing, "Davis?"

"Kingston."

Okay, he was right. She never would have guessed that.

"What? How did that happen? Emily and Michelle didn't—"

"I know," Finn interrupted her, leaning towards her like they were conspiring over something top secret despite the fact that he was talking loud enough for the whole of Shakes and Ladders to hear him. "Apparently, he's been skipping school for weeks to put in more time for dance. He's failing all of his classes, and he might get kicked off the team."

Piper shook her head in disbelief, shock radiating through her. How could Kingston let things get that out of hand? What was he thinking? Everyone knew they had to keep a B-average in school to be on A-Troupe. Biting on the inside of her cheek, she clenched her fists as she snapped, "I can't believe he would do that to the team. We're a month from Regionals. What did he think was going to happen?"

"I guess he figured he wouldn't get caught, but Ozzy threw him under the bus." He pursed his lips thoughtfully and added, "I guess that explains why he's gotten so good recently."

"What are we supposed to do about the contemporary dance? We're down a dancer now," Piper said, ignoring Finn's last comment as the thought hit her. They were only halfway through choreographing the routine, and Kingston had been bringing a lot of good ideas to the table.

"Ozzy's taking his place," Finn told her simply.

Piper had mixed feelings about Ozzy joining the routine. He had improved a lot since moving up from J-Troupe, and he was pretty good at contemporary, but Kingston was better. Besides that, Ozzy had a tendency to play around during rehearsals. She really needed this dance to go perfectly, if only to prove to herself that she was the dancer she'd always thought she had been.

You're one of the best contemporary dancers on the team.

Finn's words repeated in her head, breaking through the panic about Kingston possibly being kicked off the team. She seriously needed to have the same confidence in herself that Finn did. If only it could be that easy. Finn didn't have to live in her head with the rest of her doubts and insecurities.

She glanced over at him to see him nodding toward someone in greeting and followed his gaze to find Kenzie and Davis entering Shakes and Ladders. They both smiled at Finn, but when Davis' gaze met Piper's, her smile immediately turned sour. Guilt shot through Piper at the sight of her, and she quickly averted her gaze and pulled her laptop in front of her, opening it up again and trying to look preoccupied despite the fact that she was just staring at her log-in screen.

"Piper?"

"Hmm?"

She reluctantly glanced up at Finn over the top of her laptop, suddenly ashamed to meet his eye. He'd been so excited when she had mentioned getting her aerial earlier, and she didn't want to have to break the truth to him about what had really happened.

From the way he was looking at her, however, she wasn't sure she could get away with not telling him.

Why did Davis have to come to the juice bar? Couldn't she have gone literally anywhere else?

"Why do you look guilty? What did you do?" Finn questioned as his eyes narrowed suspiciously at her.

"I didn't do anything," she told him, but she could hear her voice raise an octave higher as she spoke, and he was bound to notice it too.

Sure enough, he simply knit his brows together, still watching her through narrow eyes. Sighing, she reluctantly admitted, "Okay, fine. I may have done something bad during the audition the other day."

"Like what?" he asked, sounding genuinely surprised by this revelation.

Resignedly, she explained how Noah had set up the contemporary auditions as three different duets and how she had been paired with Davis.

"She tried to help me with my aerial when she realized I couldn't do one, but then when that was going nowhere, we both agreed that we wouldn't do one – you know, to keep things fair. But then she was out-dancing me, and I knew that Noah was going to give her the spot on the routine if I didn't do something, so I- I did my aerial. And it was really good." She tried to finish positively, but the smile plastered on her face felt wrong, and she quickly dropped it.

She was afraid to look at him when she finished, afraid that he would say she wasn't the person he thought she was, but Finn was simply staring at the table, nodding to himself as he processed her story. His lips were pursed, and she didn't think he looked disappointed per se, but he definitely wasn't as excited about her aerial as he had been before.

Piper bit her lip, waiting nervously for Finn to say something. When he finally did, all he had to say was, "Oh."

Her expression fell as she stared at him in shock. Oh? "That's all you have to say?" she asked somewhat indignantly. This was Finn. Half the time, she couldn't get him to stop talking, and when she needed him to actually say something, all he had to say was 'Oh'?

He sighed and shrugged at her, holding his hands up on the table in front of him. "You pulled your best moves. There's nothing wrong with that."

She wouldn't say that her aerial was her best move, but now didn't seem like the time to point that out. Instead, she pursed her lips uncertainly at him. Had he missed the major point of her story? She betrayed Davis. When she pointed this out to him, he shook his head at her.

"Pipes, we're on a competitive dance team. You can't always put other dancers before yourself, not in an audition like that."

"So... You don't think I'm in the wrong here?"

He frowned at her, tilting his head to the side and telling her meaningfully, "I don't think you should have agreed to it at all. But Davis should have known better too."

She stared at her fidgeting hands as she told him the one fear that had been on her mind for the last couple of days. "But I keep thinking I took her spot in the contemporary dance." At the look of disbelief he gave to that, she jumped to defend herself. "If I hadn't done my aerial like we agreed, Noah would have given the spot to her."

"You don't know that," Finn told her, but she pursed her lips, looking down again. She was pretty sure she did know that, actually. She'd seen Noah's face as they had danced. Davis had clearly been impressing him.

Sighing, Finn said, "You know how half an hour ago, I said you were one of the best contemporary dancers on the team?"

Piper glanced up at him and nodded slowly. "Yeah..."

"I'm pretty sure Noah knows that too."