Title: Lemon Pepper Chicken
Disclaimer: Own nothing to do with Glee.
Summary: Rachel invites Finn over for Father's Day. One shot, Finn/Rachel.
A/N: Just a short little fic! For this story, there is no Shelby, and also, Finn's mom and Kurt's dad are not (and never have been) together. I hope you enjoy!
Rachel invites him over for Father's Day dinner. He agrees to go, only because Rachel's a really, really good cook. (After a month of dating, her dads still make him slightly nervous, and he always ends up saying something stupid or awkward around them. Rachel says it's not a big deal, and that they like him, but he's not so sure sometimes.)
Also, it's not like he has anything else to do on that day. He doesn't have a dad.
"Hey," Rachel says, a bit breathlessly, as she answers the door. She looks a little confused as she continues, "You're early!"
Finn shrugs. "Yeah. I didn't really have anything else going on, so I figured I'd come by and see if you needed any help getting stuff ready. I know I said I was going to bring potato salad, but my mom forgot to pick up the ingredients." That last part is only sort of a lie. His mom had definitely not bought the ingredients, because she had spent the last two days crying and sitting in his dad's chair. When he tried to broach the subject with her – it's not like he has any money to spend on stupid potato salad – she had just started crying harder.
Usually his mom's pretty good with his dad being gone, but sometimes even she has bad days.
"Oh," Rachel says, and she frowns for a moment, but she quickly masks it with a smile. "Well, that's okay! I made a huge batch of ratatouille, and you can start grilling the chicken since you're here now." Finn nods, and walks inside the house, making sure to take his shoes off by the door. He follows Rachel into the kitchen, and of course, there's like a five course meal laid out on the granite countertops. She must've been working on this feast for hours.
Rachel blushes. "I like to go all out for them," she says, sounding a bit embarrassed as she tucks a few strands of hair behind her ear. "I know it's probably not the easiest thing in the world, being my fathers, so I like to make sure that I show them how much I appreciate them." Finn forces a smile.
"Yeah, no, that's totally cool. It looks great, Rach." And it does, way better than anything Finn has ever made his Mom for Mother's Day. Rachel always manages to make the food look pretty, somehow, like it's not just food, but art. Finn notices a platter of cookies on the counter, cut out in shapes and frosted with smiley faces, and there's a huge pitcher of some sort of drink on the table, something fruity. He glances back over at her, as she starts to chop up cucumbers and peppers.
"I'm going to be finishing up the salad here," she notes, "and the chicken is in the fridge. I left it in there because I just hate the sight of it." She sighs a little sadly, and she's starting to look a bit bummed. Finn gets nervous. When Rachel is bummed, it is not a good thing. "I wish I could make the chicken for them, too, but I can't touch it. It's all jiggly and slimy. I just can't handle it." She shudders and he laughs, trying to make her feel better.
"Well, that's what I'm here for, right? Gotta grill that chicken," he says, drumming his fingers against the counter absentmindedly. Rachel puts the knife down, and looks at him a bit curiously. She wipes her hands on her apron and opens her mouth to say something, before apparently deciding against it, going back to her chopping. Finn goes over to the fridge, and he opens it up. The chicken is in there, wrapped up in three plastic bags, so that it's practically not even visible. He rolls his eyes.
"Rach, if it grosses you out that much, why are you making it?" he asks, pulling it out of the fridge. "I'm sure your dads would be cool if you just fed them the vegetable stuff." She nods, and starts dropping the cucumbers and peppers into the salad, carefully, making sure there's an even amount throughout the whole thing.
"Yeah, I know," she says quietly, self-consciously, "but Daddy really likes chicken. And he never eats it when I'm in the house because he knows how it bothers me. I think he'll be really happy to see it, to see that I put in effort to do something he likes for once." Daddy is Mr. Berry Number One. He is tall, and seriously frightening. Finn thinks that if he ever hurts Rachel (not that he would, because he loves her, a lot), that Daddy would be the father who would come to his house and seriously hunt him down.
Finn just nods in response to what Rachel said. He's starting to feel uncomfortable again, like he shouldn't be here, like he's intruding in some Berry tradition that he doesn't yet have a right to be a part of.
He starts to un-wrap the chicken and once he finishes, he looks up at Rachel.
"What do you want me to put on it?" Rachel looks confused.
"What do you mean?" Finn isn't sure if she's serious or not. She looks serious, but maybe she's trying to pull some sort of joke on him. Sometimes he can't tell. So he says slowly,
"What do you want me to put on the chicken? Like, spices? Or barbeque sauce?" Rachel's face drops and all of the vegetables she was holding spill onto the counter as she slaps her hands over her mouth.
"Oh my gosh!" she says hysterically, beginning to walk around the kitchen in circles, and she starts snapping her fingers psychotically. "I forgot spices! I forgot barbeque sauce! I forgot a recipe!" She's starting to look kind of crazy, and Finn's getting more and more nervous with every second that passes. "I thought you would just cook it up and that would be fine!" Finn looks at her, as if she has two heads.
"Chicken tastes really disgusting if it doesn't have some sort of spice or sauce on it, Rach."
"I don't eat chicken!" she practically screams. Finn tries to come up with a solution.
"Okay, be quiet, let me think," he says, closing his eyes tightly.
"This is a disaster," Rachel whimpers, oblivious to her boyfriend. "Daddy is going to be so, so heartbroken after he hears that I couldn't even manage to make him chicken properly." Finn attempts to ignore the fact that she is talking to herself (is she actually crying over this?) and suddenly remembers what his mom used to make every Sunday when he was little. He opens his eyes. Rachel is still walking around the room, and there are tears making their way down her face.
"Okay, you have pepper, right? And like, lemons?" Rachel wipes her hands across her eyes and nods, so quickly that she looks like a bobble head. "Okay, well, it's fine then, I can just make lemon pepper chicken. My mom made it for me all the time when I was a kid," Finn says, proud of himself. It's really not that often that he is the one who comes up with a solution to one of his and Rachel's problems.
Rachel smiles gratefully at him, and she reaches up, giving him a kiss on the cheek. "My hero," she says dramatically, and Finn blushes, because he's really not a hero but it's nice that Rachel said that because he likes making her happy.
"Well, it's not me, it's my mom," Finn says, as Rachel goes to get the lemons out of the fridge. She tosses him the lemons, and he catches them easily.
"You're so lucky you have a mom," Rachel says, and she almost sounds a bit jealous, but not a bad jealous. Like a sad jealous, a longing jealous. Finn reaches across the kitchen island, and grabs her hand, holding it tightly for a second.
"And you are so lucky you have your dads."