Another Finntana fic only this time it's set 4 years after high-school graduation and it's going to be a long tale of many chapters... Unless of course people think it's no good and then I may not waste my time, but I have it planned out (with more comedic/smuttier chapters in the future) so hopefully it I'll get through it! So um.. yeh hope you enjoy! All reads and reviews greatly appreciated!
She has an office. Granted it's the smallest office in the firm but it's still her own personal office with her own desk and chair and computer and a shiny gold plate on the door with the name 'Santana Lopez, J.D.' engraved on it. And it's all deserved.
After graduating high school she worked her butt off at the 'University of Chicago Law School', graduating with honors and earning herself an immediate internship at a respected firm in Cincinnati Ohio, in which she now has her own office and gold plated nametag.
Despite being her first official day as a paid attorney the workload is already high and stressful, so when some of the girls from the firm invite her out for celebratory drinks to wind down the end of the day, she doesn't think twice about accepting. So after locking the door to her new office and swelling with pride one last time at the sight of her gold name plate, she heads out with her new coworkers to an elegant bar down the street. It's the kind of stuffy and 'hoity-toity' place the old 'Lima-Heights-Santana' would have scoffed at and thrown two fingers up to, but she was now a new Santana; a classier Santana whose background was unknown to her new peers and whose background would remain unknown…
Her workmates are nice; a little judgmental and condescending to those around them, but in general she seems to share their opinions so they get along just fine. And her direct attitude and quick wit allows her to establish herself in the group effortlessly, so she ends up having a pretty good time. All in all she's ready to chalk this down as a great day. The beginning of a new era, and a great start to the rest of her future…
That is until some giant oaf clatters to the ground after falling off a bar stool across the room and as he gets up and loudly starts apologizing to the entire bar in a drunken slur, she recognizes the face of someone she once knew. It's been so long since she last saw him; she has to double take to make sure she's not seeing things. But sure enough, standing completely opposite her is the drunken body with the unmistakable face of the giant oaf named Finn Hudson. No. Shit. Her eyes widen animatedly whilst her mind suddenly jumps alert with a thousand thought processes, the first and most prominent of which issues the word 'AVOID' stamped across the inside of her head in large, flashing red letters. She shifts uncomfortably in her seat as her friends gradually start paying attention to the buffoon across the bar. But it's fine. She'll just completely ignore his existence and hope for the sake of her new friendships and respect from her coworkers that for the love of god he doesn't come over and recognize her. And even if he does, she can deny it. After all, who would believe a giant, slobbish drunk who was now laughing hysterically at what looked to be a peanut, over a hot, respectable lawyer. No one. So, panic over, back to the conversation. But she's smirking. Every neuron in her brain is reminding her that blanking the embarrassing drunk is by far the best option, yet somehow she becomes powerless to a little smirk that forms across her lips as memories and flashbacks of everything associated with the name, Finn Hudon, play out in her head. However, the mocking laughs of her colleagues snap her back into the present as she joins them in watching the comical sight of Finn being escorted/thrown out of the premises.
Her reputation breathes a huge sigh of relief but as the girls go back to their conversation once more, yet she can't help ponder a million different questions about her blast from the past. What happened to him after McKinley? What was he doing now? Where did he live? Was he still with Rachel Berry? Was he happy? The answers to the last two questions seemed pretty obvious given the state she'd just seen him in, however she couldn't help but itch in curiosity to what the rest of the answers were.
Finn Hudson was always a sort of novelty to her - an easy target to mock and prank but someone she still respected and cared about, even if she didn't always admit that at the time. After leaving McKinley she never looked back, she just kept her eyes on the prize and focused solely on what was in front of her. Running from it all allowed her to avoid any crippling nostalgia of high school and more specifically 'New Directions', but seeing him again awoke an ache in her chest she had been desperate to prevent over the last four years. After years of ignoring it all, it was now impossible to deny how much she missed the glee club and it aggravated her how one fleeting glimpse of one of its members had undone all her hard work in evading this fact. Fuck it. Realizing it's a losing battle she gives into her curiosity, making her excuses to her friends and thanking them for the night as she hastily makes her way out of the bar in an irrational effort to track down and interrogate the ex-glee club co-captain.
It doesn't take very long to find him, as he hadn't stumbled very far - although his distance seems reasonable given the amount of energy he was using up singing the song 'Out Tonight' from 'Rent' at the top of his lungs. (Perhaps he was still hanging around with Berry…)
As she begins to close the distance between them, he just about makes it to the chorus of the song and so begins howling and flailing his arms around goofily as he stumbles off the sidewalk and into the road. The sight of his awkward dancing forces an eye-roll and a slight snigger from her and a strange rush of excitement takes over in anticipation of speaking to him again after so long.
"Some things never change, do they Hudson? Or should I say 'drunk'-son!"
Finn turns on his heels a little too fast, causing his eyes to keep spinning in his head a little longer than the rest of his body, and after a little composure is regained, his mouth literally drops at the sight of Santana Lopez calling him out.
"Y-you? No… wait. You? Is that…. Standana?"
Another chuckle escapes her as she continues to close the distance between them. He hasn't changed one bit. He's still tall and awkward, like a baby giraffe that wasn't quite used to its oversized proportions and consequently looked like it could topple over at any second. She thinks he's filled out a bit though and despite the worn-down scrubbiness of his attire she can tell he's in pretty good shape. The headlights from a distant car allow her to see him more clearly as she finally catches up with the surprised drunk. At first all she can see is his childish grin beaming ear to ear, flashing those adorable dimples and the warmth of his familiar amber eyes. However the excitement that had been building up to this moment disperses in an instant, as she notices the more than obvious bruises and swellings surrounding those amber eyes and the bright gashes that lay across the corner of an attempted raised eyebrow and stretched bottom lip.
He may have been smiling but his face is battered and worn and he looks like he hasn't shaved in a few weeks. Her heart does a funny jump from seeing him like this. She doesn't know whether to feel sympathetic, scared or just plain shocked so a little of each emotion takes over her as she adjusts to the sight. He looks fucking awful.
"Finn, what the hell happened to you? Are you okay?"
He gives her a little shrug and a look to say a combination of 'where do I begin' and 'you don't want to know', but before he can say anything, the headlights from the distant car swiftly get closer as the now not–so-distant vehicle runs over the foot of the drunken idiot standing on the edge of the road, causing a yell to erupt from him that sounds fairly similar to the noise he was producing during his rendition of the 'Rent' song a minute ago.
He passes out in the ambulance ride on the way to the hospital. Whether because of the pain from having his foot run over or from the level of alcohol intake it was unsure, but luckily for him and the hospital staff, he ends up sleeping right through his visit. And as another bonus of luck, the boy happened to be wearing the best type of footwear one could hope to wear when getting your feet flattened by the wheel of a Chevrolet Cobalt and so escapes with just a couple of fractures. He's out cold, but all wrapped up and the nurses have finally decided he's best left alone to sleep it off so, without thinking, she takes the opportunity to search through his jacket and pockets for clues to what his situation is. But there's hardly anything to be found except a small packet of gummy worms, some business cards with some weird band logo on it and his wallet, which contains an old family picture and $3 in change. No keys, no phone, no credit-card…. If she hadn't had been there it would have been impossible for the hospital staff to identify him at all. She can't help but feel sad wondering what on earth had happened to him. Last she remembers he was heading off with Puck to Boston College or somewhere with a football scholarship and now here he was 4 years later, lying in a hospital bed with a fractured foot, a battered face and dribbling what was probably an excess from the volume of beer he had downed that night.
It was now ridiculously late and she has an early start in the morning so again without thinking she hastily puts his limited possessions back where she found them, slips her business card into his jacket pocket with a scribbled 'call me when you wake up' note written on the back, and exits the hospital, calling a cab to take her home. She feels slightly bad leaving him but he seemed content with being completely out of it and she knows he'll find her card in the morning so her conscience is soon clear. After getting back to her apartment she wastes no time in getting ready for bed and making sure her alarm clock's set an extra 20 minutes early so that she has time in the morning to call Brittney (the only friend from McKinley with whom she has stayed in touch over the years) to tell her the crazy story of how she had randomly run into a scarily messed up Finn Hudson, and how a Chevrolet Cobalt literally ran into him as well...