Pairings: Finn/Rachel, Rachel/Quinn
Author's Note: Dedicated to dirtypiratepimp and bldarkness on Twitter for inspiring this cracktastic idea.
He's not crazy.
He's not.
Everything that he said happened, did.
He's not crazy.
It started right after sectionals his sophomore year. He had kicked a chair running out of the room a few days before the competition and that, Finn found out, was a big mistake. The nightmares started soon after.
The chair would show up in his nightmares. It was angry.
"You fucking prick," it hissed in a Jamaican accent. "I never did anything but provide your freakishly tall ass with a place to sit and how do you repay me, man? You kick the bolts out of me. Do you know how much it hurts to lose a screw without it being loosened first? Fuck you, Finn Hudson. Fuck you."
Finn woke with a start and, in his haze, he swore he saw the chair outside of his window. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. There was nothing.
The nightmares kept increasing in frequency and more than once, Finn saw the chair. Outside of his window. At the end of his bed. In the bathroom mirror. Outside the shower.
It was stalking him.
Of course, Finn couldn't tell anyone. They would think he was crazy. It was probably just from the stress, anyway. But it kept happening.
Things started escalating right before sectionals of senior year. Finn could handle the nightmares and the hallucinations but not anything else.
He swore when he was in rooms alone that the chairs, all of them, would somehow end up tripping him. It was like they were all conspiring against him. One of them always ended up in his path. And he swore, he just swore he heard laughter every time he would fall.
Once, after a lengthy football practice, Finn dragged himself out of the locker room after all of his teammates and headed to the parking lot. As he was walking down the hall he heard it. The rolling. He turned around and saw nothing.
"Artie?" he asked, hopefully.
No response.
As Finn continued walking, he kept hearing the rolling. Finally, he took off in a dead sprint toward the door and out the parking lot. He swore when he looked back that it was there. Staring out the window at him. It was then that Finn knew for sure that he wasn't crazy. The chair really wanted revenge. And it wasn't going to stop.
The first person he told was Rachel. He sat on his bed while Rachel was sitting on his desk chair, hands folded in her lap and very attentive. His girlfriend looked at him with furrowed eyebrows and scooted away a little by the time he had finished his story.
"Finn…I think the stress of senior year is getting to you."
"I'm not crazy!" he insisted. "I'm not."
Rachel didn't believe him. She started recommending some kind of vitamin things. Finn wasn't really listening. He just took the containers of pills and tossed them in his desk drawer. It was a mistake.
Finn had another dream that night. This time, it was his desk chair.
"You stupid boy," the chair said. It had an Australian accent. "You don't even care about her. You don't listen to her. You're selfish. And you'll get what you deserve. We'll make sure of it."
"No," Finn mumbled.
"Oh yes. I know what you did, Finn Hudson. It told me. I know what you did. I know how you treat people and you'll not get away with it anymore."
When Finn woke the next morning the pills were on the seat of his desk chair, facing him.
"I'm in so much trouble," he mumbled.
Finn took to not sleeping. If he didn't sleep, the nightmares didn't come. But it didn't help with seeing chairs staring at him everywhere. He went out to dinner with Rachel and he swore the chair he was on bit him. It was after he told Rachel "The chair bit me" that she began distancing herself.
"She's in love with someone else."
Finn spun around and looked at the empty risers behind him. He was in the choir room doing some dance practice when he heard it. It was a hissed whisper.
"She's in love with someone else. And we'll do all we can to make sure she gets what she wants. She deserves better than you."
"This isn't funny!" Finn yelled. "Who is it? Puckerman? Blaine?"
"Just us, Finn. She comes in here to talk. And she loves someone else. Someone who doesn't abuse us."
"Come on!" he growled. He spun and looked at the chair he had kicked two years prior. "One time! I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry I kicked you. I was angry and I shouldn't have. Can you please just stop this?" he pleaded. "Please?"
"It won't stop."
"This is bullshit! Just leave me alone!"
"Dude?"
Finn snapped his head up to see Puck standing in the choir room doorway, eyebrow arched.
"I was…there was this uh…"
"You were talking to a chair, dude."
"I know."
"Are you like…okay? You need to go to the nurse or somethin'?"
"Nah, I'm alright."
"A'ight. I'll leave you alone with your chair."
Finn looked back down at the chair in front of him and he swore he could see it smirking.
It was the rehearsal right before sectionals that made him snap. New Directions was going through dance steps for their number when Finn tripped over a chair leg and he completely lost it.
"I'm sick of this!" he yelled, jumping to his feet and hovering over the chair. The chair taunted him with a chuckle. "You think this is fucking funny? How about this?" He picked up the chair and threw it with all his might into the wall and laughed maniacally when he saw the plastic base crack in half. "Yeah, who's laughing now!" The other chairs were horrified. But that didn't stop him. He needed to show them a lesson. One by one, he picked up each chair and threw it, all the while laughing and taunting them.
The rest of New Directions fled the choir room after the second chair was thrown. Finn didn't notice, only focusing on the pure joy he felt throwing the chairs into a pile and yelling at them, making them sorry for everything they'd done.
"Finn Hudson?"
Finn stopped mid-throw when Principal Figgins appeared in the doorway.
"They were taunting me," Finn said. "They wouldn't leave me alone. I had to do it. I had to."
And that was how Finn Hudson found himself in a white-walled room with nothing but a bed and a desk. The chair was removed after he screamed like a girl and passed out at the sight.
He's not crazy. He's not.
XXXXXXXXXX
Epilogue
Rachel sat alone in the choir room in one of the only chairs that hadn't been damaged beyond repair by Finn's rampage. This one was a little wobbly but Rachel took good care to slip a few pieces of paper under it to even it out.
"And I thought I was the crazy one."
The voice belonged to Quinn Fabray. She was standing in the doorway with a little smile.
"I suppose I should've kept an eye on him after he confessed this to me," Rachel said. "But I just felt myself pulling away from him."
Quinn nodded and carefully pulled a chair about a foot away from Rachel on the brunette's left. The pair sat in silence for a while before they finally met each others' gazes.
"Quinn, I…"
Before Rachel could say anything, the gap between the two chairs inexplicably closed – the chairs scooting together on their own accord. The result was Quinn's lips against Rachel's. Neither one protested, only deepened the kiss. Both assumed the other had been the one to move and would never question it. When they finally got up to leave choir room there was an applause immediately after the door slammed shut. When Rachel opened the door to look in, no one was there. Just the piano, the instruments…..and the chairs.