He thinks he might be breaking her.
Which is really quite hilarious actually, because she's so tainted and dark that she has to be the one breaking him, but he doesn't feel that way, not at all.
But then, he feels like he's breaking her in a good way. Breaking off the bad, chipping through that mask of hers. She's nicer to him than before, and she smiles more often, and it makes him proud, almost. Proud to be her secret that's never to be told.
If he can just break her before she can break him, everything might be okay.
.
She has a pretty smile. That is, when she smiles, it's pretty.
It may be because her smiles are so rare that he finds them so mystifyingly gorgeous, more so than Rachel's, which is too big for her face and white enough to blind him, and more so than Quinn's, which is innocent and little-girly but also always hiding something.
Hers looks purer. When she smiles, he can tell it's not a lie, because if she's lying she'll smirk and raise her eyebrows and her voice will be laced with venom – but if she's not her smile will be right there, laughing and shining and it will just be so beautiful, he'll want to press his lips against it.
But he doesn't dare. Not unless she goes first.
.
He might love her, kind of.
(But he's still just the teeniest, tiniest bit in love with a girl with argyle sweaters and knee socks and Mary Janes.)
"Can I tell you I love you?" he asks, cupping her cheek and waiting, wanting, wishing for that smile to come upon her face. (He has to ask permission, she's always in charge.)
But no, she shakes her head, and his fingers fall from her face, down back to his side. He feels the word why creeping up his throat, but it can't make it past his tongue, so nervous is it.
"You don't," she answers anyway, hands on her hips now, using her own glossy black hair as her masquerade mask. "You don't love me, Frankenteen, so don't even start lying." There's something he catches in her tone, like she's afraid to even be near him, to touch him (or she'll break him).
And it almost, in a small, small way, relieves him, because it may prove he's breaking through her a little more.
But mostly, it just upsets him because she thinks he doesn't love her but she claws his face and sucks his bottom lip anyway.
.
He starts dating Quinn again, and he likes being with her again because she still gives him that boyish hummingbird-heart feeling, despite it all. He just worries about Santana.
But Santana doesn't act jealous or mad; she acts exactly the same, emotionless and blank, except maybe for those wry smirks and few(er) smiles. It weighs down his heart, like a stone tied to a hummingbird's wing, because he wants her to do something; something that proves he's more to her than bored Saturday nights, and that she knows she's more to him than that.
But she doesn't.
And neither does he.
.
"You should've been my first." Quinn whispers in his ear.
(he feels sinful & dirty & shameful with her, even though she's an angel of god and santana is better justified as a damned soul)
She shouldn't have been his.
.
"Do you love Brittany?" He's not sure why he asks this, it hasn't been something he's pondered about that much before, but it's too late and it's out and now he has to wait.
"Yeah," Santana replies nonchalantly, "I do." He thinks it's too nonchalant, even for her – love isn't that way, and it'd take him a hundred and one years to be able to say he loves someone that easily. However, she's always been just a little bit smarter than him.
"What?" She questions his quiet, his fiddling with his uneven hoodie strings (one too long, and one too short, and both too imbalanced). "You love Quinn, don't you?" He shrugs then; he doesn't really know. He might have, once, just like he might have loved Rachel, once (twice, thrice). He can't bring himself to admit it though; he's not very good at that.
Santana rolls her eyes. "Whatever, Hudson." she says, then reaches across his body for the drawer containing many takeout menus and a beat-up bible that he's sure nobody's read in this motel room in a long time. "So, where are we eating this time?"
.
He thinks, maybe, she loves Brittany more than him.
And he thinks, maybe, she doesn't love anyone.
(He'd rather it be the former.)
.
It's storming outside, and the blue in the sky fades to gray. Everything is ruined when it rains; everything turns gray, tasteless and gross, and then it smells – well, the smell's not half bad, but there's puddles and worms and muck everywhere.
She chokes out his name, and it cracks with the thunder.
"I love storms." she snarls, like she hates that she does, and Finn just thinks to himself Of course you do, and lays kisses on her neck.
.
She may have a chance to get out, he thinks.
Why not? She's stunning and talented and dryly funny, and those are the kind of girls that pack their bags and get the hell out – the girls that make someones of themselves, girls with dreams and sparkling eyes, drinking champagne out of tall wine glasses with a man on each arm, clean-shaven, rich, handsome gentlemen.
But then, she's also the kind of girl that may end up simply knocked up, smoking cartons of cigarettes behind the gas station and working dead-end jobs because she doesn't give a crap.
Rachel would never be like that, she'd always have a way out, a chance to at least move to Missouri or something.
(He's a homebody, so that's definitely not the girl he wants.)
.
He knows for sure he's in love with Rachel. Not Quinn, no matter how much she persists, no matter how much he wants it to be her again. No, it's Rachel.
But it's also Santana.
He thinks he's in love with her. He wants to be, wants to hold her hand and whisper that in her ear, but she makes it far too hard. Every time he touches her fingers, they zap him, hurl him backwards.
It's just too hard.
.
He tries to kiss Rachel. To feel something.
She rejects him. He sees in her eyes maybe she doesn't want to, maybe she wants to kiss him, but everything else of her yells no.
He finds Santana that night. She knows what to do with him.
.
And he does kiss Rachel, eventually. Kisses her beneath the dim lighting of the theatre, amongst the glee club and the competition and many New Yorkers come to see a show. But when he closes his eyes, there's a starburst, flecks of sparkles raining down and memories of her swirling in his brain, intoxicating him and he knows – just knows – he loves her.
RachelRachelRachel.
He loves Rachel.
(He hates himself.)
.
Santana doesn't mention the kiss.
Never.
He sits beside her on the back of the bus, before Brittany has the time to, and both of them seem a little confused but Brittany just skips off to the place two seats in front of them.
"So, we lost, huh?" he says. She shrugs.
"'Cause we suck, huh?" she responds. He licks his lips. (It's just too hard.)
"I'm sorry."
She looks at him, with her arms crossed, and fleetingly he thinks he sees something there in her gaze. (But it's gone way too quickly.)
"Do you love Rachel?" It kind of shocks him, the question, before it settles in, because there's no spite or venom or jealousy in it and he thinks there ought to be, like maybe she's just covering it up with a mask he failed to break.
"Yeah," he mumbles softly, "I do."
She smirks (smiledarlingsmilesmile) and squeezes past him in the tiny space to stand in the middle of the long stretch of the bus. He thinks he hears her whisper "okay," but the engine is too loud and Mr. Schuester's long we-are-still-stars lecture is one big drone blocking her out, but he can't mistake how she avoids him to sit with Britt.
(He feels a hundred and one years older.)
.
She does love Brittany more than him, that much is clear.
And he does love Rachel more than her, that too is clear.
(But sometimes he wishes he could've at least broken her for somebody else.)