Part 1 of 3
It happened in the strangest, most random way, but then Finn learnt a long time ago that some of the best days (or nights) tended to start out like that.
He had no particular reason to be in the park, it just sort of happened. He stumbled out of a nearby apartment block, met by the sun too high in the sky, dark glasses keeping the harsh light of day out of his eyes, clothes seemingly as impeccable as ever, despite all the fun he had last night. Normally, he would call for his car the moment his foot hit the pavement, but today was different. He crossed the street and took himself into the park, dropping down onto a bench and breathing the air a while. He had nowhere to be today, nothing specific to do, nobody to see. Finn found himself in one of those rare and strange reflective moments. For an hour, he was sat there, not watching out for women or even trying to get his bearings, just sitting, being, thinking.
His silent reverie was interrupted by a small presence to his right that made no sound but was suddenly very much there, a tiny hand on his knee.
"Well, hello there, darling," he said, looking down at the little girl in the yellow sun-dress. "Aren't you just adorably sunny?"
She looked momentarily bashful at the attention and then she smiled wide and bright. Finn was startled by the way the little face lit up, the way the blue eyes sparkled. Lowering his sun glasses to the end of his nose, he peered over the top to get a better view of the beautiful child. She was, in a word, photogenic.
"Maia!"
He didn't need to look at the mother who came rushing over, admonishing her daughter for running off that way. Finn already knew just exactly who was there, because her daughter was the spitting image of her, because the voice was as familiar and welcome to him as the sweetest music.
"Rory Gilmore," he said, seeing her only when she literally stepped into his field of vison, swinging her daughter up into her arms. "Been a while, love."
"Finn? Oh my God, what are you doing here?"
He rose to hug her, mindful of crushing the little one. The funny part was when Maia seemed to realise she might be missing out and reached out her arms to hug both of them too. She had to be all of two years old, and it wasn't just Rory that Finn saw when he looked at her a second time.
"I could ask you the same thing, darling," he replied to the question, tearing his eyes from the little girl and looking to Rory once again. "Shouldn't you be living the quiet life in that adorable little town of yours? I'm guessing husband, child, little white house with roses around the door?"
His tone was necessarily sarcastic because he was fairly certain he was wrong. Maia wasn't the result of some relationship that Rory had gotten into recently. If she were, Rory wouldn't be looking so awkward right about now.
"I, er... It's not exactly like that."
"Well, maths was never my strong suit, love, but I can hazard a guess when this little beauty made her debut," he said pointedly, looking at Maia.
She grinned at the compliment, not understanding much of what he said, Finn was sure, but any female responded to the word 'beauty', he knew. She certainly was her mother's daughter, almost a perfect copy of Rory, but with just one or two tell-tale signs of her Huntzberger blood.
"Mama?" said Maia, looking at Rory with those wide innocent eyes.
They were so much like her own, like her mother's, and yet certain times she was every inch her father's daughter. That always hurt. Rory figured it always would.
"Sweetie, this is... Uncle Finn," she said then, grinning wide at the expression it caused on his face.
It probably wasn't a title he ever thought to have, unless he was using it himself in some misguided attempt to chat up a distressed woman. Rory was sure she had heard 'Come tell Uncle Finn all about it' at some party or bar in the dim and distant past. It felt like a million years ago that they were so young, so carefree. She had even told him her own troubles once or twice, when she was a little drunk, when Logan was being a particularly special brand of ass and even his friends were on her side.
"Unca Finn," said Maia, breaking into Rory's thoughts. "Hi," she added, waving her arm.
"Hello, sweetheart," Finn replied smoothly, recovering from too many surprises about as easily as Rory might've expected. "Well, how about I take you two ladies to some fine local establishment for refreshments? Seems we've got a bit of catching up to do."
"Um, no" Rory shook her head, deliberately looking away from Finn's pointed look. "I mean, I'm sorry, but we can't, not right now. I have a meeting with my publisher in an hour, and I have to get Maia to the babysitter before then."
"Publisher?"
"I wrote a book. It's kind of a long story."
"As most books are."
He was smiling when he said it, in that disarming way that had brought many a woman to surrender against their own better judgement. Though preying on the drunk and broken had been a tactic in the old days, Rory knew Finn didn't need to use it. He was plenty capable of enticing women into doing anything at all. He had that way about him, she would have to be blind not to notice it from the start. A bit of a rogue, that was one way of describing him, and a terrible flirt was another. Yet underneath it all, she knew he was a good man. He had reasons enough for the way he behaved, she remembered.
Maia's childish jabbering got Rory's head back in the game for a second time. She didn't usually have this much trouble concentrating, not lately. There was always so much going on, so much to do, there wasn't much time for wondering, for thinking about the past. It was safer that way, the last two or three years. Now she couldn't help the urge to reconnect with a piece of her former life that she had never expected to be granted access to again.
"Um, could you...?" she asked, moving to hand Maia over.
Finn looked less startled than Rory might've expected, taking the little girl into his arms and bouncing her on his hip. He was a natural, which was sort of shocking really. On the other hand, Rory wasn't sure why she should be surprised that Finn could charm a two-year-old just as easily as a woman of twenty or thirty. Hell, she was pretty sure he would have her grandma eating out of his hand in five minutes flat given half the chance. That was just Finn.
"You are going to be some heart-breaker when you grow up, my love," he was telling Maia when Rory got done scribbling her number and address on a piece of scrap paper. "Just like Mum," he said pointedly, the moment she glanced up and met his eyes.
"You really haven't changed, have you, Finn?" she countered, swapping the paper in the hand for the child in his arms.
Maia frowned from her mother's embrace, reaching out her arm.
"Unca Finn," she said, trying to get back to him.
"We'll meet again, baby girl," he promised her, grabbing her little hand and kissing it. "I guarantee," he added, eyes shifting to Rory then.
"It'd be good to catch up," she confirmed, nodding her head. "I'll see you soon, Finn."
They shared a smile before parting ways, then he finally looked at the paper in his hands. He wasn't absolutely sure where the apartment block was, save for the fact it was a long way from his own place. Clearly, the book wasn't a best-seller yet, but she must be doing okay to be living in the city, raising a little one by herself and all.
It would be three days before Finn saw Rory again, but not so long before he learnt at least some of her story.
"This is not an easy thing to find," he said from the door way of her apartment, proffering a book she recognised in his right hand and removing his sunglasses with his left. "Also, how on earth you managed to write the college years without including yours truly, I have no idea. It falls a little flat if I'm honest."
He was at least half-joking, Rory was sure, which was why she took no offence. For as long as she knew him, it was always clear that Finn was never really trying to offend anybody, it just happened sometimes, like a side-effect that couldn't be helped. It was strange how she had missed that, how she had missed him, though perhaps she hadn't realised it until she saw him again just recently.
Inviting him inside, she checked on Maia, sat in front of the TV and lost in some cartoon that would be of no interest to anyone over the age of four. Rory offered coffee then and took Finn with her to the tiny kitchen, from which she could still see her daughter in the living room.
"So, you read the whole thing?" she said of 'Gilmore Girls', not even looking at Finn when he answered.
"More or less. You know me, love, not much of a great reader, but I got the gist. 'Course, the blanks I need filled come a bit later than where this ends," he said, dropping the hardback onto the counter with a thud.
Rory turned to look at him then, arms folded defensively across her chest. She almost expected him to be mad at her. Perhaps she ought to have known better. Finn really didn't get mad. He got drunk, he got crazy, mostly happy, sometimes melancholy, but never angry that she could remember. It wouldn't have suited him, she was sure.
"Pretty sure you told me the other day that even you could do the math on this one," she said, glancing through to where Maia sat giggling on the couch.
"Nothing wrong with my maths, love, or my biology," he said with a look. "What's got me confused is how I didn't know. Unless... Well, me and dear Logan don't see quite so much of each other since he got fitted with the ball and chain, but I'd like to think he'd let me know I was 'Uncle Finn' before now."
Rory looked away awkwardly, tried to cover herself by moving back to the coffee machine and busying herself with filling two mugs. She could feel Finn watching her and knew he was trying to figure out the situation without her explaining it.
"Look, far as I can tell, we've got two options, love," he told her back, since it was all he had right now. "Either he's got no idea a little Huntzberger girl is running around on the planet, or he does, but the two of you made some deal to keep her quiet."
The coffee pot made a clang going back into the machine, but Rory didn't say a word. She turned around to hand Finn a mug, tears evident in her too blue eyes. He wasn't sure which option of the two was true, if either of them, but it killed him to see her hurting like that.
"Logan knows," she said, visibly swallowing hard. "We both made our choice. This is how it is," she said, shrugging her shoulders and looking out towards Maia one more time.
Finn closed his eyes a moment, let a mess of emotions he wasn't expecting wash over him. There was an urge to hug Rory, which he felt it best to over-ride for the moment, and the need to take a swing at a man he had called a friend too long, it seemed. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. His own childhood and upbringing had been less than stellar thanks to parents that couldn't get their act together, and though it could have been as much Rory's decision as Logan's to let Maia live without a father, Finn felt more mad at his old Life & Death Brigade brother. Blame his own Daddy issues, or his soft-spot for Rory, or a hundred other things. Didn't change the fact it was true.
"So, what's been going on with you, Finn?" asked Rory then, pulling him back to the present with that sunny smile he knew so well, the one that hid her pain almost too well. "Come on, it's been years. You've probably got so many stories to share."
He smiled because she was smiling, because it was easier. Because it was what she wanted, and somehow that was all Finn had ever been capable of giving her - just exactly what she wanted. Why change the habit of a lifetime?