A/N: Hi all! Just a few warnings, if you will, before you start reading. First, if you are reading this because you follow me (well, first, THANK YOU! You're awesome.), I will start by offering a slight apology then beg you to stick with me. I know that most of my followers follow me for one reason only, and while it might not seem like it at first, I promise it will be worth it in the end. Secondly, I adore Puckleberry. I also love Finchel for the most part. And I absolutely love all three of the three individual characters involved in each of those pairings. I welcome (and beg for, really) reviews, including constructive criticism, but please know that the 'Review' page for this story is not the place for hate for any of the pairings or characters I just mentioned. Now, if you're still with me, thanks, and enjoy, hopefully.
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Prologue
Always had an eye for things that glittered
Rachel Berry was a handful. She was loud. She was overly ambitious. She had a tendency to say whatever was on her mind, regardless of how anyone else felt about it. In short, she was super high maintenance (admittedly so). And she was spoiled. Boy was she spoiled. But in spite of all that, or because of it, really, Finn Hudson was crazy, head-over-ass, stupid in love with her. Because while she was no doubt one of the most high maintenance girls he'd ever met, and definitely spoiled (seriously – he can't stress that enough, she's an only child with two dads, daddies' only little girl, and she's super talented on top of that; there's almost nothing she's ever wanted that she didn't get), she wasn't anything like all those other high maintenance and spoiled girls.
All those other spoiled, high maintenance girls, they weren't just spoiled and high maintenance. They were bitches. Really – rude, snotty, straight-up mean bitches. But Rachel wasn't like that. At all. Yeah, she was, at the risk of being like, redundant, or whatever, super high maintenance. But that was only because she'd had dreams, big dreams, her entire life and wouldn't let anything get in her way. And yeah, she got pretty much everything she wanted. But nothing was ever just handed to her, and she didn't expect it to be. She worked her ass off for everything she got – every part, every solo, everything. Including Finn.
And that was the kicker, really. There had been a connection from the beginning, from the first time he heard her sing, sure. That was undeniable. And like he'd told Quinn, stupidly thinking that it might make her understand their break-up, he felt tethered to Rachel. But that tether didn't just, ya know, appear. They made it. She made it. Because again, she worked for him – for them. And then once she had him – well, this is where it became perfectly clear how truly different she was from all those other high maintenance and spoiled girls. All those other girls, the Quinns and Santanas of the world, made sure that anyone they were with knew how lucky he was to be with her. They never stopped reminding any guy who worked and scrapped and begged and pleaded to get a date with one of the members of local royalty just how special they were, and just how honored he should feel to get said date. That's what high maintenance was. That's what spoiled was. Right? Not always. Because Rachel – she was the exact opposite of that. Rachel believed that she deserved everything, that she had a right to it almost, except Finn. From the second she decided that she wanted him (that she wanted to be with him), all she did was work to convince him of how special he was – just the opposite of the others, who only tried to convince guys of how special they were. She never stopped telling him how great he was, how kind and how selfless and how talented he was. And on top of that, she never stopped telling him how lucky she was to be with him. And that was exactly why Finn Hudson loved Rachel Berry.
That was also why Finn usually wasn't bothered by her sometimes selfish tendencies in other areas (and why he put up with them even when he was). So when Rachel kind of went crazy during Christmas of their senior year (he knew she wasn't really like Kim Kardashian, but damn if she didn't freak him out for a little bit), Finn just reminded himself that in all other aspects of their relationship, she was close to perfect. Then he sold his letterman jacket (who wears those things after high school anyway, right?) to buy her the earrings that she really wanted. Honestly, it wasn't that he didn't want to get them for her in the first place, and he didn't really mind that she gave him a list of what she wanted. It just scared him, because it made him wonder, just for half a second, if she was more like those other girls than he had thought, and if she was about to realize that she wasn't actually the lucky one in the relationship. But then, just before he gave her the earrings, he gave her that 'Name A Star' certificate that had cost him like, 30 bucks. And the look on her face when he explained to her that he decided naming the star after himself instead of her seemed like a better idea so that he could always look over her even when they weren't together made his chest feel all tight. In case he wasn't already convinced that she was perfect (he was), she said that getting the star and the jewelry and the wonderful boy (he was that boy!) was more than one girl deserved. So they both took back their gifts (not the star, that one was a keeper) and gave the money to charity and Finn decided, yet again, that it was the best Christmas ever. But more importantly, she was the best girl ever.