Title: An Unexpected High School Reunion
Rating: M for smut in later chapters
Pairing(s): Mainly Finchel, with mentions of others
Summary: AU where Finn never joined the glee club. Rachel moved to New York with Kurt and Blaine after graduation, but she hasn't made it big on Broadway. Instead, she manages a bar in the city. Finn finds himself in New York, living with his best friend; Puck, and in desperate need for a job. So he interviews for a position as a bartender at Rachel's bar. Rachel is understandably surprised to find her high school crush in her dive of a bar, and she does wish he'd remembered her, even though he was popular and she was a nobody. This is based on a video from BuzzFeed called; When Your High School Crush Returns. Reviews, follows and favorites are appreciated, though not required. So, you know, no pressure.
Chapter One
Finn walked down the streets of New York with his hands shoved into his pockets and his shoulders hunched over. Someone rudely rammed into him and continued walking at a brisk pace without a glance backward. When he first arrived here, he tried to apologize to everyone who he bumped into. In Lima, that was expected. But New York was a lot different from his hometown. He knew that when he moved here, of course, but the extent of the difference didn't hit him until he was fully immersed (ten point vocabulary word right there,) in the New York culture.
And he still wasn't used to his new home yet. Not really. He often found himself being reprimanded (he was killing it with these vocab words today,) by Puck for "still acting like a Lima Loser, dude".
Finn honestly didn't think Lima was that bad. He liked the small, quiet town. He didn't want to spend his whole life there, but that was more the principal of not wanting to be able to truthfully say he'd only lived in one town his whole life. So after graduating from a community college, (he hadn't been able to snag a football scholarship, and an academic scholarship was always out of the question,) he called up his best friend and asked him if he had a spare room in his apartment.
He hadn't chosen New York because he particularly liked it or anything. He just didn't want to move to a new city not knowing anyone. Plus, he figured having a place to stay was always a good thing.
But if he was being completely honest with himself, wanting to "broaden his horizons", or however his mother had worded it, was not the only reason for his abrupt move across the country. The biggest reason was her. His high school sweetheart. The girl he had dated since his sophomore year at William McKinley High. The girl who had broken up with him on the day of his college graduation for some asshole he hadn't even known about. The girl who broke his heart. The girl named Quinn.
He shook himself of his thoughts when he finally arrived at the place he was looking for. A flickering neon sign hung above a downward staircase that consisted of about twelve steps. The sign read Twelve Steps Down. He shook his head and chuckled at the name. When Puck first told him about the place initially, it had taken him a minute to get the joke, but now he was fully caught up and he totally understood it now.
He descended the staircase, arriving at the door. The door was wooden, with green paint peeling off of it. Finn could tell this place was a hole in the wall, but he really didn't care. He needed a job. Badly. And there, in the window, hung a big, red and white help wanted sign. Plus, he had a feeling this place wouldn't require many more credentials than a community college degree.
So Finn took a deep breath, opened the door, and stepped inside.
Note: Twelve Steps Down is the name of a bar located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The bar in this story is loosely based on that bar, as I was too lazy to come up with my own bar.