A/N: This is an extended version of a drabble I posted over at tumblr. I was going to post it over there, but it's a little too long, I think, for the 'drabble' title, so... here it is! This is AU after Brody and Rachel's break-up, and is based on the premise that Finn moved to New York. If you're looking for a whole lot of plot here, you're looking at the wrong fic. Hope you like this, though, for whatever it is.
Rachel calls Finn on a Tuesday morning and he flies out to New York on Wednesday night. Burt's always been ridiculously generous when it comes to loaning Finn some money, and one day, Finn totally plans on paying him back. You know, once he has a job and a salary and all that.
She comes to pick him up at JFK and he gives her a hug that lasts maybe a beat longer than it should, and when they finally arrive back at her apartment, he thinks she's about two seconds away from breaking down completely. He knows he is, anyway.
Because this is weird – what's happening between them right now is weird enough, but then coupled with the Brody thing, and it seems like their life is some lame soap opera that should've been cancelled a long time ago.
When they're in her room, instead of saying something, anything, about the whole – the whole Brody situation, she instead touches her fingertips against the lapel of his jacket, gently, for just a moment.
"I've never seen you wear a coat like this before," she says, her thumb brushing over the zipper. "It's nice. You look nice."
Pulling her hand away quickly as if she's been burned, she smiles, though the gesture doesn't quite reach her eyes. And when she looks up at him, when her gaze reaches his, all he can think about is how she looks so tired. Her hair's pushed up into a messy, unfamiliar bun, her body swathed in a huge sweater that looks like it's five sizes too big. She seems completely exhausted, like she hasn't slept in weeks, and it's kind of fucking killing him to see her like this.
He wishes that he could find some words to say, some awesome phrase to tell her, that will reassure her, let her know that she's not alone right now. But he can't think of anything, because he can never think of the right things to say, not really.
So he just smiles at her, or tries to, anyway.
He makes some joke about trying to look nicer now that he's going to be giving this New York thing a try, but it falls flat in between them and she doesn't say a word. She just reaches out, brushes a hand against his jacket again. She presses her fingers briefly against his chest and he thinks that she has to be able to feel his heart racing. Breaking for her.
"You've always looked nice," she says, and she runs her hand over her hair, pulls at the strands that are loose, tucks a couple locks behind her ear. She's acting all self-conscious, and it's not needed.
"So have you," he says, sort of sternly, because he doesn't want her doing this. He doesn't want her to feel shitty about herself; that's not what he came here to talk about it and it's not what he wants her to be thinking about.
Because she's just so damn hard on herself sometimes, so unnecessarily harsh and critical, and that's like – that's good when it comes to her singing because it's why she's the absolute best at what she does. But she doesn't need to turn that critical light on herself right now, right now when her world's pretty much falling the fuck apart.
(There's a duffel bag in the corner of her room, stuffed to the brim with things that don't belong to Rachel. These are things that belong to Brody, things that are going to be thrown out in the trash if Finn has anything to say about it.)
He swallows, and he looks down at his feet, at their feet. Her tiny loafers that are just barely touching the tips of his boots. She's wearing dark leggings, black ones that have a tiny run dashing up the side of her right knee, and she looks so different and yet so familiar, all at the same time.
She says, "Thank you," in this quiet little voice, and then she sighs, shakes her head, looks all frustrated as her little hands ball into fists. "God, Finn. I don't even know what to say to you. I don't – I don't even know how you can look at me right now."
She lets out this harsh breath, a sob without tears. "I don't know how I can look at myself right now."
She takes a step away from him and Finn takes a step towards her, because that's what he's always done, that's how their relationship has always seemed to work. One of them backs away and the other moves forward, and he thinks it'll be nice once they finally figure out how they can move forward together.
"Stop," he says, and he sits down on her bed, kind of hoping that she'll follow suit. She doesn't, though, she just folds her arms across her chest and stands still a few feet away from him. He frowns and he says, "Rachel, stop being so – this isn't your fault, alright? What happened with him… you couldn't have known."
She shakes her head, her lips pursing, and she just keeps shaking her head as she says, "But I could've. I could've. A cater waiter? Honestly? And he – Finn, he slept with my teacher, he never seemed serious about me, never, and I still didn't… I should've known."
Her words come out quickly, all in a rush, all in one breath, and she presses her hands against her stomach. The tears are starting to slide down her cheeks now, slowly, gathering at the corners of her mouth.
She shakes her head again, wipes her hands against her face as her shoulders start to shake. "I should've known. I should've known. I feel like everyone knew he was lying except me."
Finn stands up and he walks toward her. She doesn't back away this time, just presses her face against his chest as he wraps his arms around her waist, pulling her closer to him. She's still crying, and her hands grip the sides of his jacket tightly, her fingers digging into his hips. It's like the closer he holds her, the harder she cries.
"Everyone gets caught up in a lie at some point," Finn says, and he presses his lips against her hair, because he can't not. He knows he shouldn't and he knows that he's probably going to regret acting this way in the morning, but right now – he has to.
She sniffles, brushes her nose against his jacket and says, "Not like this."
He rubs a hand against her back and just rocks them back and forth slowly, as Rachel's breathing evens out. She still doesn't look up at him, though, still keeps her face pressed against his chest, keeps her hands tight against his jacket.
"I thought I got a girl pregnant from jacking off in a hot tub," he reminds her, and no, under normal circumstances, he would never bring that up.
Because it wasn't one of his bright, shining moments, you know? But it is sort of relative to this situation, because like – it's just true. Everyone falls for stupid shit once in a while. No one's immune to it.
Not even Rachel Berry, and she pulls away from him a little then, looks up at him. Her nose is all bright red and her eyes are still watery and Finn knows that no one can really ever fix another person, but he still wishes he could try.
He hates seeing her sad. He's in love with her, he thinks.
She lets out a laugh, just a little one, but it's the first laugh that Finn's heard from her in a long fucking time and he smiles in relief as she says,
"I suppose you're making sense."
His arms are still looped loosely around her waist and – this should be weird, right? Like it should be weird that he's so comfortable being around his ex-girlfriend, it should be weird that this all feels so right in light of how absolutely wrong things are going for them. But it's not, it's not really weird at all, and when they lay down on her bed together a couple minutes later, that doesn't feel weird either. Her legs are draped over his and it just feels kind of natural. It all feels very right in a very strange way.
"Thank you for coming," Rachel says and her voice is soft. "You didn't have to."
She's right. He didn't have to. But he wanted to. (And he needed to look for an apartment, anyway, because he's going to be moving here soon enough and he needs to have a place to live when he does.)
He rolls over so he's facing her and he asks, "Wouldn't you have done the same for me?"
She's silent for a moment, and he can feel his heart starting to drop. And then she says, almost sounding surprised, "Of course. Finn, of course."
He laces their fingers together and kisses her knuckles slowly, one by one, and she starts to cry again.
-x-
He moves to New York in June. She comes to pick him up at the airport, wearing a red bandana with her hair all twisted up, a polka dot shirt, black fancy shorts – and sneakers. Like, legit tennis shoes, all tied up and worn in and everything. He gives her a once over when he first sees her because, okay, first off, those legs, and second off, since when did Rachel Berry start wearing Keds?
"It turns out that I look fantastic in tennis shoes," she informs him, tightening her bandana slightly. She's blushing and she touches at a loose strand of hair for a moment before dropping her hands down by her sides. "And it also turns out that the summers in this city are brutal, and my hair's not exactly made for humidity."
He tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, and she says, "I know it looks awkward. I'm still not exactly sure how to – pull this look off. Kurt's trying to help but I really think it's something I'm just going to have to master on my own."
She's rambling and she's trying to grab at his suitcase, like she wants to help him carry it out or something. Which is a nice gesture and all, but she's like a hundred pounds and his suitcase weighs about half of that. He can handle it on his own, alright?
So he gives her a look and she smiles in this guilty sort of fashion, before biting at the bottom of her lip, looking away.
(She looks happier than she did the last time he saw her, that's for damn sure. She's not crying, not nervous, and she hasn't called herself stupid once. And she's actually genuinely smiling right now, none of that fake stuff that she was doing when he saw her last.)
She's got these sunglasses on, the kind that has those mirrored lenses, and he can see his reflection every time he looks over at her. It's sort of unnerving and he tells her,
"I mean, you look – you look awesome, seriously. I feel like a slob being near you."
He laughs and stuff, but it's the truth. He's wearing old jeans and a Lima University shirt that Puck got for him last year. It's not that he intentionally is trying to look like shit; it's just that he knew he was going to be moving stuff all day. He didn't feel like getting dressed up when he knew he was going to be huffing it up and down the apartment's stairs all day, moving all the boxes and shit in.
And… yeah, Rachel picking him up? Not expected. Not at all.Santana was supposed to pick him up and help him find the apartment (because directions aren't really his thing, and he's still definitely not comfortable, at all, getting around New York on his own) but she got called into work. And Kurt's hanging out with some guy, so, Rachel volunteered at the last minute to help him out.
He didn't find all this out until he was already past security and his suitcase was checked, otherwise, trust him – he would've changed his damn shirt, because this one has a grease stain on it that's never really been able to be successfully washed out.
(Also, even though he and Rachel aren't dating or anything, it's not like he wants to look disgusting in front of her, okay?)
He looks over at her, and she looks so determined and sure of herself, as she leads him out of the airport. She's going on and on about some restaurant that she wants to try for dinner, and then she's talking about how excited she is about this concert that she's going to next week, and then right as they're about to leave the airport terminal, she turns to him and she says, her eyes wide and her smile matching,
"I hope you love it here. I know you'll love it here."
He laughs and says, "I mean, I hope so. The school seems like it'll be a good fit and everything, you know? It has the teaching program, and then the music -."
She interrupts him, shaking her head. "You'll love the school, I already know that. I'm saying that I know you'll love it here, in New York."
She looks over at him, smiles, and when he smiles back, he can see himself in the reflection of her glasses – and call it cheesy, call it maudlin, fuck it, he doesn't care. But he's pretty well aware that he looks the happiest that he has in a long time.
-x-
So he and Santana are going to be living together. He's still not totally sure how that whole thing went down, but Santana was looking for an apartment, and he was looking for a roommate, so – it kind of just worked out perfectly. Because as much as Santana loves Kurt and Rachel, she doesn't really, like… fit with them, and their lifestyle.
They wake up at six in the morning, every day, to work on their cardio. And that includes singing along to Katy Perry and Rihanna, and it just. Yeah. When Santana says they were putting a cramp in her style, she wasn't exaggerating.
She and Finn found this apartment that isn't so far from his school, and that isn't so far from Rachel and Kurt's loft. When he turns the key for the first time to let himself in, it sorts of hits him all at once that like, he's a grown up now. He's an adult. His mom's not going to yell at him to go to bed, Burt's not going to be bitching about him drinking all the milk.
He can do whatever the fuck he wants, and he just stands in the doorway for a minute, kind of taking it all in. Rachel smiles up at him and she asks,
"Exciting, right? Being all on your own?"
He glances down at her, and she's staring at him with this look on her face, like she's so proud of him that she could start to cry or something. He shrugs and he tries to act all nonchalant and shit, but honestly, this is kind of a huge deal. For how absolutely shitty his life has been for the past year, the fact that he's here right now, here in his own apartment –
It's pretty fucking cool.
He tells her, "But I'm not totally on my own," and he makes sure that she gets the double meaning because he stares at her all seriously and holds her gaze.
She blushes and nods, looks like she's about to say something before she stops herself, shakes her head, walks over to the little kitchen that's right off the main hallway. Dragging her fingertips against the countertop, she says,
"You'll need to clean this before you move your stuff in. It looks dusty. And I think I see something that looks suspiciously – mold-like."
Turning around, she wrinkles her nose, and Finn sticks his tongue out at her for just a second because she's ruining that awesome good mood vibe he had going on thirty seconds ago.
Rachel giggles, places a hand against her forehead. "I'm not trying to be a downer," she says, in response to his unspoken words, "but in order to be an adult, you also have to act like one by keeping your apartment clean. Cockroaches are no joke, Finn Hudson."
She gives him what's supposed to be a stern look, and Finn nods, gives her a mock salute. She giggles again, walks back over to him and hits him lightly on the arm. He laughs because he can't not, and because yeah, whatever, so he's going to have to clean the place a bit. This is still probably the coolest thing that's ever happened to him.
He feels like he's living in some movie or something, you know? Moving to the city, starting college, living with his friend… this seems all too good to be true. None of this seems real – none of this seems like it's actually his life.
Rachel's phone buzzes then, and she glances at it for a second before rolling her eyes, tucking it back into her purse. Finn raises an eyebrow at her, and she just shakes her head before going back into the kitchen, stating that she needs to make a list of cleaning supplies he needs.
He doesn't follow her at first, just keeps standing in the doorway, stretches up onto his tiptoes and touches the top of the doorframe. And he sighs, and he calls out,
"You okay?"
She doesn't answer him, so he walks inside the apartment, closes the door behind him before walking into the kitchen. She's bending down and is peering into the cupboard underneath the sink, a piece of paper and a pen beside her. She's tapping at a pipe or something and is looking all hypercritical. Finn knows that he has about five seconds to try to talk to her before she slips into like, super DIY Network mode.
"Who was it?" he presses, and Rachel looks over her shoulder at him, with this sad little look on her face.
"Do you really want to know?" she asks, and her voice is quiet and small, and she goes back to making her list.
He doesn't know what to say for a second, doesn't know what to do. So he just sits down beside her and helps her write out the list of cleaning supplies. After a minute, she says,
"I hate him. I never thought I would hate anyone, really, but I hate him."
He nods and he says simply, "I hate him, too."
Rachel looks over at him, smiles with this look of like, complete relief on her face, before going back to her list.
-x-
He and Rachel settle into this weird routine when he moves to New York. They're friends and stuff, and they hang out quite a bit, and they do – fuck, everything together. She helps him find his way around his new campus, tells him the best places to go grocery shopping, and helps him find a job at a coffee shop near his apartment.
They talk about a lot of stuff, too, practically everything under the sun it seems like. But here is what he and Rachel don't talk about:
They do not discuss anything that happened during their senior year of high school. They do not discuss their (broken) engagement and they do not discuss their (defunct) wedding plans. Finn doesn't ask her where her wedding dress is resting, and Rachel doesn't ask him where her wedding ring is hiding.
If he did ask her, he'd find out that the wedding dress is hanging in the back of her closet, between an old dance costume and a summer dress that never fit her quite right. And if she asked him, she would find out that the wedding ring is in his sock drawer, still resting in the black velvet box.
Sometimes, Finn thinks that he's ready to talk about all that. He thinks that enough time has passed, that the wound is closed and the scar has formed, and that he's ready now to have a mature discussion with her; about why they fell apart, why they couldn't find a way to put themselves back together.
But then something will happen. Something small, something petty, something inconsequential, but something that sticks with him, sticks with him deep inside his bones. Santana makes a joke about teen brides. Kurt makes a comment about the marriage rate declining.
And the scar rips open again.
-x-
New York's kind of weird. And loud – always loud, like a buzzing noise that's constantly going off inside his brain. He doesn't mind it, though. He likes it. He likes that feeling, that no matter what, no matter what time of day or night it is, he never has to be alone.
He calls Rachel one night, about two a.m. The ceiling fan's whirring above him, and he can hear Santana snoring soundly, but he can't sleep. He knows he should be, because he has work in the morning and it's not like there's much time for him to rest at a coffee shop. But he can't sleep and for some reason, he knows that she's awake, too.
Tethered and all that, you know. He didn't just say that for show.
"Finn?"
"Let's do something," he says, sitting up in his bed. He's got a white undershirt on, an old pair of gym shorts from high school. He climbs off from the bed, pulls on his boat shoes, runs a hand over his hair and then grabs a baseball cap off from the floor.
His room's clean, and it's funny and it's stupid, how easy it is to find stuff when a place is actually clean. Funny because he used to spend twenty minutes a day in high school looking for shit. Stupid because – yeah, he used to spend twenty fucking minutes a day in high school looking for shit.
(Santana helped him organize when he moved in. They bought a bunch of old milk crates, labeled them, made sure that everything he owns has a 'proper home'.
She loves him. She doesn't say it ever, but she does because Finn can feel it, can see it in all the little things she does for him. And that's cool, because Finn loves her, too. He thinks she's the best friend he's ever had sometimes, which is weird, really fucking weird, considering how much they hated each other in high school. But things change, sometimes without you ever realizing it happened at all. )
Rachel tells him it's late, softly, but she's not arguing. Not really, and Finn grabs his keys off from the nightstand, slips his wallet inside his pocket.
"I'll be over in ten minutes?" he says, a question that ends up coming out a lot more like a statement. "Maybe fifteen."
He walks out of his room and towards the front hallway, takes his windbreaker off from the coatrack and slips it on as Rachel tells him,
"Be careful, alright? I feel like all the weirdos end up out on the streets around this time." She pauses for a moment, and then says, "Or just stay on the phone with me the whole time."
Finn smiles to himself as he lets himself out of the apartment, closing the door softly behind him so that Santana doesn't stir or wake up. "But what'll we talk about for so long? The weather?"
"I heard it's foggy out tonight," she says, giggling. "But I think that might just be a lie."
Finn tells her that he'll let her know once he's outside, and when he finally gets out to the street, he lets her know that, "It's not foggy at all, Rach."
"I knew that weatherman was a liar." She sighs. "If you can't trust the weatherman, who can you trust?"
It's starting to drizzle a little, and Finn wipes at his forehead, pulls his hood up over his baseball cap. "Maybe bankers. Or like, the government."
He passes by a couple drunk guys on the street, one of the guy's singing about a lost love and a lost life. The irony isn't really lost on Finn.
Rachel laughs and then she says that if it's raining out, he better be prepared to share his coat. "Mine's dirty from our last excursion out in the rain," she tells him, "and I'm not going to be parading around New York in a sweatshirt that's just going to get all soggy and wet."
He laughs and agrees. She could ask him for anything, really. And he'd do whatever he could to give it to her. It's just how it's always been, and how it'll probably always be. Even when she's asking him for something as silly and little as a raincoat.
They end up spending the night at a diner by her apartment, eating French fries and drinking chocolate milkshakes. Rachel likes to forget that she's vegan sometimes, and when Finn asks for a side of gravy with the fries, Rachel blurts out to the waitress that she should just pour the gravy all over the fries – don't bother dirtying another dish.
"Rachel Berry," Finn says, "I think you might be getting a little too wild for me."
She laughs, blushing, puts her head in her hands. "You're a bad influence, I guess."
But when she smiles at him through her hands, when she drags a French fry through the gravy without saying a word a couple minutes later, he knows that she really wouldn't have it any other way.
He gives her a piggyback ride to her apartment around four. Her arms are loosely knotted around his neck, her chin resting on his shoulder. When she talks, he can feel her breath on his ear and there's something so like – intimate about that. It kind of makes him shiver, but he plays it off, acts like it's colder outside than it really is.
"I think that was the best midnight meal we've had so far," Rachel says, tightening her hold on him.
He shrugs, stops for a second so that he can shift her up higher on his back, so he can tighten his grip on her legs. "I guess. Those burgers from last week were pretty bomb, though."
She giggles, lays her head down on his back. "No, no – we're pretending that didn't happen, remember? You promised, Finn."
He turns his head a little, so he can sort of see her, and he says, "I said I wouldn't tell other people about it. I didn't say I wouldn't talk to you about it."
Her eyes look so big, so impossibly brown, and her nose brushes up against his when she says, "I suppose that's fair enough."
He should kiss her then, right? He wants to. He doesn't, but God, he doesn't think he's ever wanted something so badly in his life.
Instead, he brushes his nose against hers, softly and for just a moment, before continuing the walk again.
-x-
Santana hates going to the Laundromat, but the piles of clothes in their apartment are starting to get ridiculous – no matter how neat she tries to make them. She even uselessly tries to convince him that just because it's taking over half of her room doesn't mean that it's taking over the whole apartment.
But half of her room is basically equal to a quarter of their living space. So. Finn tells her that he'll make dinner for the next week if she'll just do three loads of laundry.
She agrees, obviously, because if there's one thing that Santana hates more than laundry, it's cooking.
"You're going to make a terrible wife," Finn tells her as they enter the Laundromat. "You hate cooking, you hate laundry, and you never let me pick what we watch on television."
Santana shrugs, pushes her sunglasses up on top of her head. "But I like cleaning and ordering people around so like, it evens out."
"Ordering people around?"
"I'll have our kids in line like that," she says, snapping her fingers. "If you think those little shits are going to talk back to me or my wife, you have another thing coming."
Finn nods, laughs, as he starts to separate his own laundry. "Little shits. Alright. I take back what I said. You're going to make an awesome wife, but a scary ass mom."
Santana shrugs, as she starts to work on her own clothes. "That, I can live with."
They get a couple loads of laundry going, grab their stuff and get a table by the window, pull out their textbooks and notes. Well, Finn does, at least. School started the other week and he already feels like he's drowning in work. Santana, on the other hand, is still on self-imposed sabbatical from school.
She's reading a Vogue and she tells Finn that, "Those stupid boat shoes of yours are almost out of style. I can feel it. And I can't wait, because the minute it happens, I'm tossing them in the trash."
"Don't be a hater."
"Don't say hater, it's creepy," Santana says, and she flips another page. She clears her throat, and she looks up at Finn quickly before looking back down at her magazine. "So, when are you and Rachel going to get back together? Kurt and I are curious. And may be placing bets. I'd just like to know if I'm on the right track."
She shrugs, innocently, raises an eyebrow at him.
Finn says, "We're not."
Santana snorts, rolls her eyes. "Okay," she says, drawing the word out so it's about five syllables long. "Whatever you say. I see that we're still in the land of denial."
He shrugs, tries to go back to his notes. But it looks like they're written in Latin, and his focus is one hundred percent shot now. All he can focus on is the noise of the laundry machines, the couple fighting over in the corner, and the fact that Santana's looking at him like he's five years old.
He shuts his notebook flippantly, tosses his pen at her. "Happy? You have my attention."
"Let's not get crazy, I wasn't asking for that," she says, tossing the pen back at him. "I was just curious about how long the two of you are going to do this run around thing for. It's getting old."
"I'm sorry," Finn says, "that you're getting bored by me and Rachel. I'll try to shake things up for you after midterms. Maybe I'll tell her I love her right before she goes in for her next audition or something."
Santana laughs and she pushes her hair up into a ponytail, shrugging. "Look, I'm not trying to get you all offended and shit. I'm just saying, if you're waiting for her to put up a neon sign or something – Rachel Berry, Open for Business – you're going to be waiting for a long fucking time."
He sighs because sometimes he thinks that Santana – she means the best but she doesn't always have the best delivery.
By always he means, like, never. She never has the best delivery.
He tells her, "I'm not ready yet."
She stares at him for a moment, just watching silently, and Finn repeats himself. "I'm not ready. I just. I'm not."
He doesn't have to explain himself to her, because he knows that he can explain things to himself.
He's not ready. He tore Rachel apart and she tore him apart and they're just starting to reach a place now where they can be in the same room without all those – all those old feelings coming up and tearing them apart all over again. What happened between them at Schue's wedding (non-wedding?) all those months ago was awesome, and it definitely made it clear to Finn that what he wants is Rachel. Who he'll always want is Rachel.
But he's not ready yet. He's not.
-x-
They get in a fight a week later, a drunken fight that ends with her crying and him slamming the door to the bathroom so hard that the mirror on the wall shakes. He stares at himself in the mirror for a minute, hates himself. He drops the beer in the trashcan, sits next to the sink and pulls his knees up to his chest as he takes a few deep breaths.
He closes his eyes and he thinks to himself that relationships shouldn't be this hard.
A few seconds later, he hears her knocking on the door, quietly at first and then louder and louder.
"Open the door, Finn Hudson!" he hears her call out, the tears still present in her voice. "Right now. We're fixing this right now."
He tells her that it's not locked, and she immediately pushes it open. There are still tears falling out of her eyes and that just makes him hate himself more, and he looks away, looks at it his shoes as he feels her sit down beside him.
She places her hand on his knee and he expects her to yell at him. But she doesn't. She's just quiet for a moment, silent, really, and then she places a hand on the back of his neck, squeezes a little. She laughs, a watery laugh that sounds like it's coming from deep in her stomach or something, and she says,
"I guess we shouldn't have serious talks when we're drunk."
He laughs despite himself and he says no, they shouldn't. "Didn't we learn that back in like, junior year?" he asks, thinking back to that stupid party, the one where Rachel wore that green dress, and he left with Quinn.
God, he hated that year.
She nods and she says, "Old habits die hard, I suppose." She wipes a hand across her face and she says, sighing, "I'm going to be completely honest. I know we were fighting about you leaving for the army and Brody again, but I can't remember why."
The alcohol's still searing through his veins and he tilts his head back against the wall, wills the room to stop spinning for just a few minutes so he can get his bearings.
"Yeah," he says, and his head's all cloudy. "Same fight. Different day."
He pulls at a thread on the bathroom rug and Rachel tells him to stop, it's dirty and she doesn't want him to get sick. But Santana just cleaned it last week, she cleans everything once a week, and so Finn keeps pulling at it because it's distracting him from something that he doesn't really want to think about.
Which is him, and Rachel, and her and Brody, and – fuck.
"You think we'll ever be able to move on?" Finn asks, and his voice is flat and it's hard because sometimes it hits him that to be with Rachel again means that he has to face all that stuff from the past again, and that's something that he's not totally keen on doing.
And he's not totally sure that she is, either.
But she takes this deep breath and she lets it out in a sigh and she says, "I can't hate you for what you did anymore. It takes too much effort, that I could be spending on something else. And since we're endgame and everything, I think it's just – I don't know."
She tells him it's time to move on, together, from the past.
His head's still fuzzy and she's cupping his cheeks with her hands, and she tells him, "We're endgame, remember?"
He supposes that he does. And then he's kissing her, pulling her on top of him because it's been so long since he did that, since he felt her, really felt her. He thinks that maybe they shouldn't be doing this, that maybe they should wait until the winter to talk about this again.
But she's pulling him closer and then she's pulling him into her room and he thinks that everything feels very right even though he knows that how this is happening right now is very, very wrong.. Because he's in love with her, he knows he is, but then sometimes he thinks that he's not ready for her – that he'll never be ready for her, never be ready for their relationship and all that it entails. And he thinks she feels the same way.
There's so much history between them and sometimes he thinks it's going to swallow them whole.
Does that even make sense? Is he even making sense?
"Shh," she says, kissing his chin, tugging at his shirt. "Stop thinking. Stop thinking, you're thinking too much."
Maybe he is.
So he stops thinking and he just acts. He pulls Rachel's shirt off from over her head, pushes her shorts down her legs, kicks at his own jeans until they're lying in a crumpled heap on her floor. And when he's inside her, when he's moving inside her like he's wanted to do since that wedding all those months ago, he thinks that he's been making his life a whole lot harder on himself than it needed to be.
-x-
When he wakes up the next morning, she's already up, sitting cross-legged and working on her computer. She looks over her bare shoulder at him, smiles slightly, nervously.
"Hi," she says, and she tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "There's, um. There's food, out in the kitchen… if you want anything."
Finn sits up, runs a hand over his head, yawns and then shakes his head. He just sort of stares at her for a minute, and she stares back, and it's like this totally weird, super emotional thing is happening between them right now and he doesn't even have to say a word.
But finally, he says, "You're ready – for this?"
She nods and she says, almost like she's amazed or something, "Yeah. I am."
A few months later, she shows him her wedding dress. Or, what would've been her wedding dress, anyway. It's beautiful and innocent, absolutely what an eighteen year old Rachel Berry would've bought for her wedding day.
She smiles when he says that and tells him,
"I know. I would never pick this out for myself now."