One-Shot :) Okay I'm still working on both DGAO & Invincible, but I've wanted to write this for a while.
Finn's not really in Dream On. What if he was spurred on by Bryan Ryan too? What if Finn had a dream... and what would he do to find out what it was?
It's sort of AU from Dream On, but it involves a lot of the things that happened. K+ because it swears a bit... I imagined Finn's mind to be like that? Just me?
Please enjoy and please review :).
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Glee. Otherwise I wouldn't be sat on a broken stool writing about it, I'd be in America, writing even more fabulous Finchel storylines.
Finn sits at the back of the glee club rehearsal, tapping his foot impatiently. There's ten long minutes to go, and he has more important things he could be doing.
He's not really into glee club these days – Rachel's busy with Jesse all the time, so he doesn't really have any true friends in there. It's not even as if he's the male lead anymore, Jesse and his 'Vocal Adrenaline Star Quality' crushed any dreams he had of keeping that title under his belt. Finn can't help but feel sorry for people like Kurt and Artie who'd kill for a solo; they have no chance now Jesse St Jackass is on the scene. At least Finn had his time to shine.
Finn can't even think about Jesse and Rachel without wanting to kick things over. Jesse has one of those faces, the ones that would look better after he'd rammed his fist into them. He can't help but snicker at the thought of Jesse writhing in agony on the floor with a black eye and blood dripping from his nose.
He can't do that though. He has to be happy for Rachel. Finn didn't know before that being happy for someone else could mean your heart being crushed a million times and then stomped on some more.
Finn glances back up at the clock. Three minutes. Just enough time for a final word from Mr Schue. He tries to stifle a yawn. He totally respects Mr Schue and all, he's the closest to a father he's ever had, but he can't help but feel pissed at him right now. After all, he did just have his solos yanked from his hands and placed into the grasping, asshole's that belonged to Jesse.
He tunes back into the conversation just in time to catch the end of what Mr Schue was saying. Something about a man coming in for a chat with them about dreams at the next rehearsal. Finn doesn't know if there's any point of turning up. His dreams aren't that big and quite honestly, Finn came to glee to sing, not hear lectures on things he doesn't care about.
He looks up just as Rachel's leaving the room. Her hair bounces on her shoulders and her too-short skirt swirls, showing way too much leg as she turns the corner.
Finn totally knows he'll be at glee tomorrow just for one more glance at the girl that drives him crazy.
He's walking home from school and it's a really warm day for spring. Finn's totally not usually into this sorta thing, but he likes looking at all the blossoms on the trees and noticing how blue the sky is.
He can't really pinpoint when he started noticing things instead of sleeping through life, but he has a feeling it's something to do with a petite brunette called Rachel. When he's thinking of all these pretty things, like blossoms and the sky, he thinks of other pretty things, like Rachel and it's like he's carrying a part of her in him.
And now that he's feeling like a complete pansy, he walks into the one person that would give him a good smack with a baseball bat if he lived in Finn's head.
"S'up?" Puck's on his drive, shooting hoops with his little sister. Finn knows that Puck's way embarrassed, but Finn isn't going to take the piss out of him for this one – especially considering what happened in his head like two minutes before.
Finn knows it's not cool to play with your little siblings or think about girls in such a detailed way, but he's not one to judge right now.
"Hey," Finn replies, catching the ball that Puck sends his way. He bounces it once on the hard ground and then throws it, a long arching throw that scores no problem. Puck whistles and his sister squeals and Finn feels as if he's somehow redeemed himself.
"If only you could have played like that on our first game of the season," Puck states. Finn knows it's not a purposeful douche bag remark, even though it came across that way. Thinking back to those few months, he knows why he was off his game and he realises Puck feels like an ass right now.
"Well, when your girlfriend is wearing a bright blue shirt with your name on it, you sort of get distracted!" Finn smiles and Puck sighs, almost relieved at scraping through that without touching the sensitive subject of Babygate. Puck's sister stomps her foot then, desperate for the game to go back to her and Puck, and Finn begins his walk home again, stopping only when Puck motions at him.
He walks towards Puck, intrigued in what he has to say.
When the words fall out of his mouth and Finn's back on his way again, he finally realises what his ex-best friend meant.
"Everyone knows you miss her. I'm sorry."
At first he thought he meant Drizzle (Finn's totally never gonna stop calling her that) but thinking about it, maybe Puck was being deeper for a change. Maybe being a good friend.
"Everyone knows you miss her."
He misses Rachel so much he feels physically sick when he thinks of how badly he treated her.
Finn sits down on a bench on the sidewalk, head in hands, remembering the basketball game – how damned ashamed he was of her with that shitty little t-shirt. Remembering how he wanted to curl up and die, remembering how he was that disgusted with it he couldn't even aim straight.
Right now he'd give anything to have her back in that teeny shirt, cheering him on from the sidelines.
One tear drops onto the pavement below; he wipes his cheek impatiently, making sure his foot covers the mark the tear left.
An elderly lady comes and sits next to him, nodding at him like she knows everything he's feeling and placing her hand on his back like she saw the tear fall. She looks like his late gran.
"Darling, the past is the past for a reason. Let it go." She stands up then, carrying on her way. Finn looks after her, stunned.
He can't help but think how that lady was the smartest he'd ever met. He really does miss his gran at times like this.
Finn turns up at the rehearsal like he knew he would, collapsing on one of the front seats next to Mike. When he glances at Puck, Puck just tilts his head, almost as if he just knows what he was thinking yesterday. He nods back and spins to face the front, gazing at the piano and making it very obvious he does not want to speak to anybody.
When Rachel finally arrives – unusually late – she sits next to Kurt. Finn notices that her lapdog Jesse isn't there and he can't help but grin a little bit, trying to disguise it when he realises he shouldn't feel smug, he should feel sad for his best friend.
Mr Schue runs the warm up and Finn sings this time, still feeling slightly ashamed that he got caught cheating out of singing for like five lessons in a row. Rachel's ear was deadly and even though she had a shitty throat and couldn't sing, she totally busted Finn's ass when it came to skiving off. By the time the warm up is finished, the man is here and Finn sits awkwardly next to Mike, feeling unsure how to act and what to say when it comes to dreams.
The man – Finn thinks he's called Mr Ryan – tells them that they have to write down their dreams. When Finn looks around, he sees everybody furiously scribbling, even Mike having written something down in his curly handwriting.
At the end of the five minutes it's only Finn that has a blank sheet. His pen has hovered precariously over the paper for all that time and he still didn't write one shitty little thing down! Now Finn feels like crap – what sort of person has no dreams? Finn always thought his one dream was to get out of Lima, but he didn't feel like he could write it down. What was wrong with him today? Wasn't that what he'd always dreamed of?
Finn flinches when Artie's dream is screwed up, but with it, Finn feels relief. Mr Ryan talks about statistics and how they have no chance of getting out of Lima, and it makes him feel better. Finn's glad he hasn't written something down; it was bad not having a dream, but it would have been worse watching his dream be screwed up like Artie's.
Tina bursts into tears, and Mr Ryan's told to leave.
Finn thinks maybe dreams are overrated.
After that depressing talk with Mr Ryan, Finn goes to the library with Artie after rehearsal. He leaves Artie in the autobiography section, preferring to go over to a computer to search some things (Artie seems upset and wants to be on his own anyway).
He settles into one of the blue chairs and starts up a search engine, typing in 'dreams'. It comes up with a definition, the one thing he's been unsure of all this time. Sure, he's not stupid, but dream is a big word (even though it's only five letters) and can mean a lot to a person. It sure as hell means a lot to Finn.
After discounting all the ones that must be about the sleep type of dreaming, the search engine tells him, 'A dream is an ambition: a cherished desire'. Finn thinks that's kind of right in a way, cause after he's searched cherished (it means perfect apparently) he agrees that dreams should be perfect and they should be an ambition. Feeling sort of smug with himself, he shuts the computer off and looks over at Artie to make sure he's okay. When he sees he's with Tina, he leaves him to it and walks out of the library.
Finn has to ignore the pang in his stomach when he'd looked at the happy couple. He knows it's not jealousy (because really, Artie's his friend and he cannot, be, jealous!) and he's hungry.
Finn decides to skip fifth lesson – because really, what's the point of Spanish when he struggles enough in English? – and decides to head down to the nearest supermarket to grab some snacks. He doesn't want to do basketball practise on an empty stomach after all.
When he gets there, he spends at least five dollars on donuts and crisps.
The pang in his stomach hasn't gone yet, alright?
After eight donuts and three packets of crisps later, he gets out of his car, finally ready to face the next couple of lessons before a long nap, drums and more sleep.
Finn feels a hell of a lot shittier when the first thing he sees on re-entering the school is Rachel and Jesse talking and being close. How freaking dare he touch her ass?
His first instinct is to get the hell out of there and run, but Finn Hudson wasn't afraid of any Vocal Adrenaline asshole. Finn just kept walking, keeping a suitable distance between them... but they were totally in earshot. He couldn't help himself.
Finn tunes himself in; surprised when he hears they are talking about dreams. He catches Jesse telling Rachel "A dream is something that fills up the emptiness inside - the one thing that you know if it came true, all the hurt would go away!" and then Finn stops, letting them walk away as he stands there dumb in shock.
He allows the success to wash over him, finally realising the true depths and constraints of a dream at last.
Then he swiftly steps into the choir room, spying Karofsky and Azimio coming towards him with slushies in hand.
Rushing towards the square of paper he left on his chair earlier in the day, he picked it up and leant against the wall. Pulling a pen out of his pocket, he let Jesse's words repeat in his head, over and over until he has them written down word perfect. He then slips the piece of paper into his back pocket, ready to stick it in his locker and face the words until he knew damn straight what his dream was.
He was told once by his mom that you need a dream to focus on – something to help you get out of the rut you may be stuck in.
Finn was just kind of bummed out that the words had to come from such a jackass. He'd never let Jesse or Rachel find out about this, ever. He wasn't giving them the satisfaction.
This was something he had to do on his own anyway.
Artie comes up to him at the end of the day. He slams his locker shut; he doesn't want anyone seeing his new inspirational quote (and he definitely doesn't want anyone knowing the words fell from Jesse's mouth).
Artie just looks at Finn and Finn thinks he understands. He just grabs the back of the chair and wheels him to the car park, helping him get into his truck before walking around to the other side and getting in.
Finn looks at Artie and Artie just shrugs. He thinks maybe it's been a bad day for the two of them.
"Wanna go get ice cream?"
It's immature and sort of weird for two boys to do together, but right now he wants ice cream because it cheers him up. And if it works for Artie too, he's killing two cats with one stone (he thinks it's that anyway) because he'd be cheering up a friend and getting himself some awesome cheering up medicine.
When Artie nods, Finn can't help but grin. He fires up the engine, slams in a Journey CD and rocks out with Artie all the way to his favourite ice cream parlour ever – Scoop, just two minutes away from his house.
They get out of Finn's truck and Finn goes orders their ice creams whilst Artie saves them a table. Finn's more of a chocolate guy and it turns out Artie's into strawberry.
Finn thinks it's pretty cool how two guys who like completely different things can sit together and do epic things like rock out to awesome music.
They eat their ice creams in silence, and when they're done, Finn looks at Artie and repeats the best piece of advice he's ever heard.
"Sometimes, being special sucks."
Artie laughs and begins to wheel himself to the car.
Finn follows, feeling pretty special knowing that he just made his friend laugh after having such a shitty day.
After dropping Artie off after his house, he goes home to see his mom sitting on the sofa, grinning at the door like she knows he's about to come in.
Sometimes Finn thinks his mom is psychic.
She gets up, kissing him on his cheek. He'd never let any of his friends see that, but he doesn't mind at home. He loves his mom – she's the best thing in his life now he doesn't have Rachel.
"What do you want to eat, honey?"
She asks him a typical mom question, and he doesn't know why his eyes are watering up.
"Finn, baby, are you okay?"
She looks at him all concerned, and it takes all his will power not to let the tears fall.
"I'm fine mom. I'm glad you're not doing more overtime. Have you had a good day?"
Finn slumps into one of the dining room seats, and she gives him her special cut-the-crap look.
"It's been perfectly normal. Now, tell me what's up!"
He knows he can't argue with his mom when she's like this, so he tells her everything.
How worried he is that he doesn't have a dream.
How much he misses Rachel.
How worried he is about Artie.
But mainly how worried he is that he doesn't have a dream.
(Rachel and Jesse don't even bother him that much, okay? Kicking things over is a perfectly reasonable solution to his anger anyway.)
His mom looks at him all worried, then nods.
"I see what the problem is."
Finn looks at her all surprised and she just laughs.
"Take this pen and this piece of paper and write down a dream. No matter how big or small, it doesn't matter if it's still something you aspire to have or be."
His mom begins to leave the kitchen.
"Finn, baby, you didn't want anything to eat did you?"
He shakes his head furiously and begins to write.
She inwardly laughs as she walks away. That's the first time she's ever seen him refuse food.
After an hour, Finn only has two things written down, but he feels more accomplished then he has all day. His very short list, written in his typical Finn scrawl consists of:
1) GET OUT OF LIMA (no matter what Mr Ryan says)!
2) Find somebody to make your life feel right.
He knew the last one made him sound like a bit of a pansy, but it was true. Right now Finn's life was all upside down and twisty turny, and he just wanted someone like Rachel to sort it out again (he secretly hates the fact he had to say 'someone like' these days).
When his mom comes back into the kitchen, he slips the list in his pocket. She asks if he's hungry, and this time he replies with an enthusiastic yes, bouncing upstairs and sticking his list on his wall before helping her prepare dinner.
He eats loads and feels way better then he has done all day.
After he's cleared up the plates, he returns to his room. Spying his drums, he gets them out, sets them up and starts playing them, allowing all his emotions to flow through his arms and into the drum kit.
Drumming has always been one of his biggest releases after all.
When he's finished playing Jesse's girl (he still loves that song; he loved it before Jesse and he sure as hell loves it after) he puts them away again and realises he has another point for his list.
To play the drums forever and ever and ever!
It sounds immature, but he knows it's what he wants to do.
Before Finn goes to sleep that night, he taps out a text to Artie, making sure he's feeling better now.
A few moments later, he gets a reply.
"Good thanks dude :-)"
One of the last thoughts Finn has before falling into sleep is wondering how such a bad day could turn into such a good one.
Finn wakes up bleary eyed, his strange dreams chased into the distance. He hardly knows what happened – he can only remember Artie and Rachel kissing in the back of the choir room, with Jesse's head ripped apart and thrown on to the floor.
Finn thinks maybe he's being over worked, with glee club and basketball and all.
Even though it's Saturday and 11am (which is like, the crack of dawn) he has to drag himself out of bed and get his ass down to school for an emergency basketball practise.
Coach Tanaka decided that they were totally gonna get ripped apart by Carmel High on Monday (turns out they have some pretty badass jocks as well as freaking stuck up Future-Broadway stars) so he scheduled a Saturday morning practise as a punishment for not working as a team.
Finn thinks it's pretty stupid trying to get people like himself and Puck to successfully bond with assholes like Azimio and Karofsky... especially on a Saturday morning.
By the time Finn's even got dressed and eaten (there's no point of showering when he's just gonna be kicking ass on a basketball court) it's 11.25 and he knows there's no chance of getting there for 11.30. He climbs into his truck and sets off anyway, pulling into the school parking lot at around 11.45.
When he gets out of his truck, he sees Karofsky and Azimio and the rest of the team going straight back home. Puck dawdles over, chewing gum and nodding his head to his music as he goes.
"Practise is cancelled. Think Tanaka is like dead or something... Rumour is he ate a 30 pound burger last night on top of a load of beer and went off his head. Apparently he's in hospital."
Finn's pissed; he could have had more sleep.
"Oh, thanks for letting me know dude. No point of hauling my ass outta bed then?"
"Nope," Puck pops the P. Finn finds this irritating. "Guess we might as well go home. Tanaka sounds like a beast to me; if he wasn't a teacher, he'd be pretty cool. He could get the six packs in for me."
Puck's in another world, probably planning his next party tonight.
"I guess. See you around, Puck."
Finn walks off, leaving Puck without another word. He just crawls into his truck and goes for a drive – his mom's not back until 1pm anyway, and he totally forgot his keys.
It's not until he's been driving for like twenty minutes that he realises he's gone to the mall. Deciding to follow his instincts for just this once, he just parks up and hops out, heading to the door closest to the milkshake store first.
After queuing up for ten minutes or so and getting his favourite milkshake (Oreo of course) he wanders around. It's not like he has a purpose here anyway, and he has a lot of time to kill.
He pops into Game for a while, but really thinking about it, he sort of doesn't use his X-Box anymore. Finn can't remember a day where he went without using it – never mind a month, but with surprise he realises he hasn't touched it since... Christmas, when he got with Rachel and all was okay.
Finn realises maybe Rachel changed his life in more ways then he thought.
He leaves Game, not wanting to think about Rachel (even though she's all he thinks about) and heads to the nearest music store, striding straight to the back where his classic rock is.
He sees a Pink Floyd album – Wish You Were Here- and reaches for it, intrigued to see why he doesn't have this in his vast music collection yet.
He misses the small brunette way under him that he almost crushes whilst leaning over.
"Oh crap I'm sorry! Here, give me your hand and let me help you up!" Finn babbles, like he always does when he's nervous.
His stomach dives out of his freaking feet when he sees it's the one and only Rachel Berry.
"Thank you, Finn. Chivalrous as always," Rachel smiles at him. He thinks his heart just melted, even though he forgot again to search what chivalrous meant.
"Anytime!" He smiles back, and he thinks he said the right thing because she doesn't look at him with the special face she does when she's confused.
She goes back to looking at her CDs, and he goes back to looking at his.
When she's about to go, wishing her farewells, he taps her shoulder and stops her from leaving.
Something really important just hit him in the face, and he thinks he needs to go home and sort it.
"Can I have one of your famous gold stars?"
He loves the way she doesn't question his motives, just burrows in her bag and passes him one in the most dramatic way she can.
He says goodbye and almost runs to his truck.
He needs to get busy.
When he's in school again on Monday – they have to pull out of the basketball game, Tanaka doesn't turn up – he sticks his new list in his locker, next to his quote about dreams and heads on down to glee.
Mr Schue's talking about the musical. Finn knows he got the lead, and he can't help but feel proud of him. Schue is the closest thing he has to a dad, and he's proud that he finally managed to follow and achieve his dreams.
He feels sort of devastated when Mr Schue tells him he gave up the part. He wanted him to fight for what he wanted and believed in, like his father did. But then he realises how much it must have taken for him to give up all he ever wanted and Finn thinks maybe Mr Schue is a hero after all. Finn couldn't imagine giving up all he ever wanted.
"I'm sorry you had to do that Mr Schue!"
Finn means it. And when Finn thinks about what Mr Schue did even more, he thinks maybe he did fight for what he believed in – what he believed in being the glee club.
He thinks that's a pretty epic way to crash out of the play.
They go down to the auditorium and watch Tina and Mike dance to 'Dream A Little Dream' whilst Artie's on vocals.
Finn can't help buy wonder how crappy that must feel for Artie. When Quinn puts her hand on Artie's shoulder, he feels a form of relief that the person next to Artie has noticed things too, that Finn's not making things up.
After rehearsal, Finn asks Artie how he is.
"I'm fine. I just learnt something really important today and I'm doing my best to come to turns with it. You're a really nice guy, Finn; you tried really hard to cheer me up the other day. But, I'm never going to become a dancer, and it's hard to come to turns with. Thank you anyway."
Artie wheels down the corridor and Finn feels sorta bad. Finn could become a dancer (well if he tried seriously hard) but Artie never could.
Finn wonders how he could have missed something that important; he just presumed Artie was over it.
He decides to try harder to be real good friends with Artie in the future.
Carrying on down the corridor, he gets to his locker, looking at his dream.
He has the other three written down in biro, stuck next to Jesse's really epic words.
The other dream is written in silver highlighter, gold stars drawn around it and that one special star sticker used as an exclamation point.
Finn thinks he's pretty lucky to have a dream as epic as Rachel.
The only thing about having someone like Rachel as his dream is that it's an inevitability.
Finn knows they are meant to be – she has his heart, and he'll sure as hell have hers.
Slamming his locker shut, he walks down the corridor and leaves school for the day.
He thinks he's love in Rachel Berry and he likes the fact it sends delicious shivers of excitement down his spine.
He's surprised to see the thought of it doesn't scare him at all.
Hope you enjoyed and that the ending wasn't too cheesy. I'm the biggest Finchel shipper ever so, I tried to do it justice.
Please review :)! x
