He wasn't lying when he said that he saw fireworks when he kissed Quinn. All bright colors and loud pops of first love exploding like cartwheels on the inside of his eyelids.
He's seventeen when he falls in love with Quinn for the first time.
He's seventeen when he falls in love with Rachel for the first time.
And he's still seventeen when he falls in love with Rachel for the second time.
[-]
Everyone is stressed for Regionals. The choir room is a constant war zone. Picket lines drawn up, sheet music like empty bullet shells littering the floor, chairs tipped over as walls of defense. It's a fucking wreck. And them, the soldiers, sit and wait for the skirmish that inevitably will either result in a win or a loss. With war there is a winner and a loser. Fate is yet to be determined.
[-]
Kissing Rachel for the first time in a dim auditorium on a red blanket sets off land mines in his stomach. And then every time after he sees her, this colossal bubbling like shifting earth plates jags and jigs and pops in his mind. She is a fucking ninja the way she sneaks in all knee socks and tiny skirts, grinning like a crazy person.
And then he hears her sing. He forgets that she may be certifiably nuts and finds all of her MySpace videos and turns them into a playlist.
They are what he listens to every night as he falls.
[-]
When Quinn strides up purposefully to his kissing booth, Sam in tow, he can't fight the grin etching over his features. And her navy sweater makes her eyes look even greener and he can almost smell the vanilla sweat radiating from her skin. It's so fucking intoxicating, and she has this smirk wrought on her lips like she owns the world and when his mouth meets hers in this innocent plight, he closes his eyes because
He. Can't. Believe. This. Is. Happening.
And then she is in front of him and there's this burst of pinks, reds, blues, greens, purples, golds, silvers. The world explodes in one ripe throw and he can't believe the way his heart spins echoes of first love around the nicely stitched Rachel on his second hand heart. First loves are never really over.
[-]
Fireworks are awesome. He can feel them pop in his stomach in an auditorium and flip through his fingertips on the small of Quinn's back, hands pressed to her tangled mess of corn silk hair and on her teeny tiny waist. They are this myriad of bright potential just like him and her and their second chance. No babies, no sleeping with the best friend, and he's about to think no small Jewish girls with loud voices, and then he thinks that the only reason there is a second chance is because the first one didn't exactly work.
And he remembers why. Quinn slept with Puck and had a baby. Finn fell in love with someone else. Those are not the kind of things that a person forgets. Rewriting history is not an option and the moment he realizes that, he is sitting in another auditorium listening to his stepbrother wax romantic onstage.
[-]
Finn's never been really good at understanding things. Math is difficult and his English essays are always a bit discombobulated, but he gets music.
And Kurt is staring at Blaine in a way that makes Finn sit on the edge of his seat. Eyes producing a slow burn that was always there but has just been ignited in the present. And Kurt sings about a candle and Blaine replies, and it is just, okay, a little bit over the top, but Finn knows what is happening and that is why he turns and focuses his attention on the small Jewish girl with a loud voice.
Rachel gets it too.
[-]
"Break a leg."
"I love you."
[-]
It isn't the past. It really happened. And he knows this candle stuff that Kurt and Blaine are singing about, and maybe that's why when Quinn takes his hand and he feels the fireworks fizz and bubble and pop, and then extinguish, he understands.
Fireworks are really cool. They make awesome spectacles of a color wheel exploding all over the palette of a sky, but then they fade and disappear into thin air. No substance. Just this fantastical show. And that's all him and Quinn are, were, will be.
But Rachel, she's this candle. Burning fierce in the dark, holding out for any and everything that will come and say "oh, there you are". She's his light that never goes out.
[-]
And this makes him wonder, hand in Quinn's, what the point of rewriting history is if you already know the ending?