A/N: So I started writing this during the hiatus, and it collected dust in my hard drive for months, until today.
It hits him at two o clock in the morning in the middle of the week. He'd actually been sleeping since after dinner because practice had been a bitch and he's pretty sure he's got a bruise the size of a golf ball on his back from when Puck had rammed him to the ground. He wakes up at two though, startled awake by a dream where he was tripping on a staircase and pitched forward. His eyes fly open and he stares in confusion around his room for a few seconds as he tries to figure out what day it is.
He checks his phone and finds five missed calls from Rachel and one text message telling him that she talked to Kurt, who told her that Finn's snores could be heard all the way from Kurt's room at the far end of the house. He blushes a little at that but decides to ignore it as he continues reading about her appointment with Miss Pillsbury the next day.
I'll meet you after practice at the field. This meeting has been scheduled for weeks, and even though I'm sure that I've got almost all of the next ten years mapped out, it never hurts to get a second opinion on one's future. Admittedly, I am a little hesitant, since the last time we decided on counselling, it did end horribly. But still, she is our guidance counsellor, and I'm sure she's helped hundreds of former McKinley students with their college applications and whatever other alternative futures they have made. Anyway, I digress. I'm sure you're probably skipping through this entire thing. You don't need to read all about my future preparations, you hear about it enough on a daily basis. So I'll meet you at the field, okay? Oh, and we need to make a stop at the grocery store. My dads may have promised us dinner, but I know for a fact that there's hardly anything edible in our fridge. Well, for you anyway. I hope you get a good night's rest Finn. Love you. *
It's two o' clock in the morning, and he's freaking the fuck out. He's not sure what it is. Maybe it's the long ass message she just sent him, or the fact that she kept mentioning the word future until it's bolded in capital letters in his brain, complete with a blinding spotlight. Or maybe it's just that for the first time ever in all this time, when she talked about her future ten years from now, his mind just leapt forward and he saw... nothing.
It's not that he doesn't think of the future. He totally does. Only, most of the time his future consists of next week's football match or like, his mom's birthday two months from now. And sometimes when he thinks a little further, like a few years further, all he thinks about is Rachel's. God knows she talks about it enough. He can see her in New York next year, starring in her first college production the year after that, and working her way slowly towards Broadway in the next five to six years. She tells him all about it, and he sees it all so clearly. He can see her future. He sees the plans she's mapped out for herself (Literally. She has like, a whole scrapbook about it, with cut-outs of her pasted in the middle of like, Times Square). He never sees him in there (Only occasionally, he thinks about being in the audience, or being the first person ever to congratulate her after a show, but he pushes those thoughts away 'cause they still haven't really talked about that yet), and he's coming to the sinking realization that he never sees him anywhere.
The future is coming for Finn Hudson and all he can see is a blank slate.
So he goes to what he naturally turns to when his brain works on over load, he calls Rachel. It takes him five tries before she picks ups, and he knows from the way she mumbles about Barbra that she thinks she's still dreaming.
"I'm screwed," he bursts out, ignoring her incoherent mumbles. "Rachel, I'm so so screwed."
He doesn't really know what's wrong with him. He's never really felt like this before, like the walls of his room are closing in on him and there's nowhere he can run to get away from them. Well he has, but those times related to almost having a baby or realizing that that was a lie, or finding out that Rachel had her tongue down Puckerman's throat (Again), not about this. This feeling is foreign. It's weird.
"Finn?" The confusion in her voice is unmistakable. "What time is it?"
"I don't know. Like, two fifteen or something. Rachel, focus. I don't know what I'm gonna do."
"With what?" she asks, stifling a yawn, her tone still a little bewildered.
"With- with.. life," he answers helplessly. There's silence from the other end and he's worried that she might have gone back to sleep before she answers.
"Life?"
"Yeah," he answers, more confidently as he sits up from his bed. He groans as the bruise on his back demands his attention and leans back against the wall. "Yeah, life."
"Did you have a nightmare? Is it the one about that doll that tries to kill you again?"
"What? No. And that's not a doll Rach. That's Chucky, and he's a serial killer trapped in a badass- dude, that is so not the point."
"I am not a dude," she sniffs as he rolls his eyes. "I am a lady, and Chucky is a doll."
"Rachel," he says quietly as he leans his head back against the wall and shuts his eyes. "I'm serious."
"What's wrong Finn?" she asks, concerned.
"I just- I don't know what I'm gonna do Rach. I mean, after this. Like, after we graduate and stuff. I don't even know if I can get into college-"
"Don't be ridiculous, of course you-"
"And like, I don't even know what colleges I'm gonna apply to, or what I'm gonna do. I just- I'm freaking out here."
"Well," she starts slowly after almost a full minute of silence. "What do you want?"
That's the problem isn't it? He doesn't know what he wants. He doesn't know what he can have, and what he can't, or what he can do and what he can't. He just doesn't know.
Xxx
He sits awkwardly in the hard chair, wondering what he's doing here. Well, he knows why he's here, kind of. It's still weird though. He's still a little out of sorts, what with Rachel pulling him out from practice and the Bieste actually allowing her to do it. His tiny girlfriend had a death grip on his arm as she marched on purposefully, talking a mile a minute as he tried to keep up with her. He heard "uncertainty" and "advice" somewhere in her jumble of words, but he didn't know what was really going on until they stopped in front of Miss Pillsbury's office and she looked up at him expectantly.
"What?" he had asked, confused. She'd smiled at him a little exasperatedly before she told him to go inside.
"I'm giving up my appointment to you Finn," she said, and he could see Miss Pillsbury craning her neck to look at them from inside. "I figured you need her guidance and good council more than I do. Tell her what you told me yesterday and-"
"I don't know Rach," he said doubtfully. He'd never really been all that comfortable talking about his feelings and shit to people who weren't Rachel or his mom. And maybe Kurt.
"Just try Finn," she told him gently. "Please?"
Which is why he's sitting in this uncomfortable chair with Miss Pillsbury's eyes boring into him as he trains his on the bookshelf behind her head. She's got this pretty big file open in front of her and he knows she's waiting for him to say something. She's throwing him off a little though, 'cause like, her eyes are fucking huge and they're not like Rachel's, who's got really awesome eyes that kinda makes him feel all tingly inside sometimes when she looks at him a certain way. Miss Pillsbury's eyes are just like, golf balls or something, and when she looks at him sometimes it's like she's trying to see something, only he doesn't know what it is and she doesn't either, and it freaks him out a little.
Plus, he doesn't remember ever having one good thing come out of seeing Miss Pillsbury.
Like, the first time she ever called him in, he ended up getting slapped in the face by Rachel. And then there was that whole Grilled Cheesus incident, which okay, was pretty much his own epic fail, but that didn't change the fact that he felt really shitty after talking to her, because she essentially told him he'd been believing in something that's not even real. And seriously? Last time he was in Miss Pillsbury's office, Rachel cheated on him with Puck and fucking broke his heart. So really, he's a little wary about seeing Miss Pillsbury about anything, because he's starting to get the feeling that the things she tells him aren't really all that helpful and like, counsel-y.
"So," Miss Pillsbury finally starts and he forces himself to look her in the eyes. "Rachel tells me you could use a little help."
"I- uh... Yeah." She smiles at him.
"She's determined that we map out a life plan for you in the next hour."
He rolls his eyes and smiles a little at that, 'cause yeah his girl takes the term bossy to whole new level. But he knows it's kind of the same thing as her scrapbook. If he tells her he wants to be a fireman in like, Alaska or wherever, she'd probably start cutting out pictures of him and sticking it in like an igloo or something. She just cares about what happens to him, and that's kinda why he loves her so much.
"What do you want Finn?" He looks up at Miss Pillsbury, who's staring back at him expectantly. He shrugs. He's not trying to be an ass, but asking the same question for the hundredth time is not going to make him magically know. Trust him, he's tried. She nods like she understands and she's leafing through the file on her table.
"So would you like to talk about your college applications?" He hesitates a little, wondering if he should just come out and ask the question he's been too afraid to ask.
"Is- is that an option?"
Miss Pillsbury looks up from the file she's been reading like she's surprised. Her eyes get even huger, which is seriously wigging him out a little, 'cause she kinda looks like Bambi, now that he thinks about it.
"You didn't think it was?" she asks gently. He shrugs again, a little uncomfortably. "I don't see why not," she continues, looking back down at the file in front of her.
"Your grades, admittedly, aren't exactly Ivy League material, but you've been doing okay. I see you've been pulling a few B's this year too."
She looks up at him and smiles, and he forces himself to smile back. Here's the thing though, he didn't always work for his grades. Like, up until junior year, he really didn't work on them at all. Actually, he didn't even do any work. He's not sure if Miss Pillsbury knows this and is just ignoring it on purpose like all the other teachers, but up until junior year, all his schoolwork had been taken care of by other people. Meaning, those 'losers' he used to let Puck throw in the dumpsters behind school.
In his defence, he didn't start out letting people do his homework. But football is hard, okay? And training can be a bitch. Who had the time for schoolwork in between getting rammed on the side by a hulking senior and releasing his stress with video games? It was like a tradition anyways. Tanaka was totally in on it, because he couldn't exactly have his football team if half the guys were failing, could he? It wasn't until he joined New Directions that he found out that Artie had been doing his Math work for him.
"It's not as easy as you might think, you know, turning that problem into an exact B minus," the dude had commented to him once as he wheeled past Finn. Of course, that was when it all started to feel kind of wrong. It was one thing to dump his school stuff on dudes he didn't even know; it's kind of another thing to dump it on his almost-kinda-sort-of friend. So he started trying to do the school thing by himself, which was about the time his grades nosedived. It was bad. Seriously, like it got so bad he actually cheated off of Brittany once. Tanaka was pissed. But then Artie, being the totally awesome dude that he is, came up to him one day and just started teaching all this stuff, and yeah, he still only got about half of what was going on, but it was enough to get by.
It was a good thing too, 'cause then Tanaka went off his rocker and Bieste came along, and there was no way in hell she would have let the whole thing go on. He was pretty sure half of the reason some of the team got cut last year was because of their grades, so yeah, he's definitely grateful.
He kind of does okay in Math, but like, that's only 'cause he's got Artie. And his English is okay too, once Rachel started making sure he stops sleeping in class. He's lost in Spanish eighty percent of the time, but Mr Schue is awesome, and sometimes all he does is speak certain words to him in Spanish until he remembers. The only thing he's really bad at, is US History, because reading about dead people? Yeah, so not fun. It's hard enough trying to remember things about those who are alive.
He realizes that he's totally spacing and looks up to see Miss Pillsbury smiling patiently at him.
"I get a lot of help though," he tells her slowly. She keeps on smiling that smile, like she doesn't understand what he's trying to say and he stifles a tired sigh. This is totally pointless.
"Isn't that a good thing? I'm glad that you seem to have such a positive and supportive environment around you."
"Uh- yeah. I guess."
"You know, colleges have things like tutors and student enhancement units, so if you're worried about being on your own, you don't have to be. There's plenty of help if you know where to look, and I'll be more than happy to guide you through."
"It's not that," he says slowly. Although, that's awesome to hear, 'cause he sure as hell is gonna need all the help he can get if he gets into college.
"Then what is it?"
"I just-" He stops, frustrated as he runs his hand through his hair. He thinks maybe Miss Pillsbury is trying to give him an encouraging look or something, 'cause her eyes get even wider as she nods her head. "I don't think I know what I want," he finishes quietly.
Miss Pillsbury is staring at him like she's got one of those lightbulbs turned on in her head like those Saturday morning cartoons, and she leans forwards as she finally closes the file.
"And do you think that knowing exactly what it is you want is important?" she asks. He frowns as he looks back at her.
"Well- yeah. Isn't it? I mean, how do you even know where you wanna go if you don't? Like, Rachel and Kurt, they wanna go to college in New York 'cause that's where Broadway is, and Artie said he's applying to UCLA to get into directing or something. I mean, everybody knows what they wanna do, you know? But me? I just- I think I'm lost."
She's nodding her head with this knowing look on her face, and it both annoys him and gives him hope at the same time, 'cause maybe Miss Pillsbury's got it figured out. Maybe she'll tell him what he wants. She's the guidance counsellor, right? Isn't that what they do? Guide you to make the right decision?
"I'm going to let you in on something," she starts as she pumps a little sanitizer onto her palm. She offers the bottle to him, but he shakes his head. "Most of the kids that come in here don't know what they want. In fact, most of them don't even realize that they don't know it. You're not alone Finn. And you're not lost. Actually I think the fact that you're even thinking that disproves it."
That doesn't make sense.
"That doesn't make sense," he tells her bluntly. She smiles at him patiently.
"There's a whole world out there waiting for you Finn," she tells him. "It's not about what you can do, it's about what you want to do. And it's okay if you don't know it yet. But you should know that you have options. We can look into football scholarships, and even music scholarships. We can even look into schools that have both a sports and music program if that's what you want. We'll keep our options open until then. There's still time for you to figure things out."
"There is?"
"There always is."
Xxx
They're both quiet on the drive to the grocery store, even though he knows that Rachel is probably dying to say something. He's not really sure what he's got to say though, because yeah, talking with Miss Pillsbury did kinda made him feel better about the whole thing but still, he doesn't think he's any closer to figuring anything out at all. But she totally pulled out all these college brochures for him (and slipped in a little flier that had 'School rules rule!" on the cover), that he's shoved in his backpack, and she told him that they were all 'options' and cool, he's got options now.
He pulls up at the parking space, and she leans over to kiss his cheek before she makes a move to get out. He stops her by grabbing her wrist.
"Hey Rach?" he starts when she turns to look at him inquiringly. He looks down at the gear shift for a second before his eyes move back up to his face as he screws up the courage to finally ask her the question.
"Do you ever like, see me? You know, in New York?"
She leans back into her seat, turning her body to face him. The look she gives him is scrutinizing, and a little reserved.
"Truth?" she asks finally, taking his hand to toy with his fingers. He nods his head a little nervously.
"Nothing but."
She looks at him a little longer before she nods her head determinedly.
"All the time," she answers earnestly, smiling shyly at him. "Always. I just- I never told you because I didn't, you know- I didn't want to presume anything."
"Yeah?" he asks quietly, smiling a little.
"Yeah." She sits up and frowns before she turns to look at him, her face hopeful. "Why? Do you- do you wanna go to New York with me?"
It's his turn to stare, looking hard at the tiny scar on her forehead as he thinks about his answer.
"Truth?"
She nods her empathically.
"Nothing but."
"I- I don't know."
"Oh." Her eyes are downcast as she starts to look away, and he gently nudges her jaw to turn her head back towards him.
"But I know I wanna be with you," he tells her honestly. "All the time, you know? Always."
She smiles at that, leaning into his hand as she beams up at him. He grins back as she moves in closer and wraps her arms around his waist.
"Does it make me really, really selfish for wishing that you'd go to New York for me?" she mumbles, her voice muffled against his shirt. He rests his jaw on the top of her head and sighs.
"I guess it's just as selfish as me wanting you to stay for me. Not that I'd ever let you," he continues hastily, 'cause he won't.
"Why would you want me to stay in Lima?" she asks, as she pulls away to frown at him. She crosses her arms over her chest as she leans back, her brows furrowed. He freezes. Shit. Did he just fuck up?
"You won't be here," she continues, smiling broadly as she giggles. He relaxes as he tickles her side, snorting as she squeals.
"You think that's funny?"
"I had you," she tells him proudly.
xxx
"Ohio State has a campus in Lima," he tells her seriously later as they walk hand in hand through the dairy section. "I read it in the brochure that Miss Pillsbury gave me."
She stops walking and turns her head up towards him.
"And do you wanna go to Ohio State?"
"I don't know yet," he answers, shrugging. He sees the determination coloring her eyes as she straightens up and starts to pull him away from where they're headed.
"C'mon," she tells him firmly.
"Where are we going?" he asks, confused, as he lets her drag him along. "The chicken's over there."
"This is a little more important than that poor, dead chicken Finn. We're going to the stationery section."
"Why?" he asks, getting the feeling that he already knows the answer.
"We're getting you a binder of course," she tells him in a no-nonsense tone, not bothering to look back. "We're going to need one if we're going to plan out your future."
xxx
He watches her in amusement as she looks intently at the binders, leaning against the edge of the shelf with his arms crossed. There are like, a hundred of them.
So many options.
"I think I like the blue one," he tells her. She turns to look at him and smiles as she reaches out to pluck a blue binder from its place.
"Excellent choice," she tells him approvingly. "Now, we're gonna have to have a brainstorming session Finn. How are we going to go about doing this? I'll look for pictures of the campuses online and maybe we can paste a picture of you in there, see how you would look in the environment. Ooh! You know what we could do? We could have a little roadtrip at all the colleges nearby and check them out. I've always wanted to have a roadtrip Finn."
He wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls her tight against him as she carries on talking animatedly, her hand flying every which way. He takes the binder away from her before she hurts someone as they head back towards the chicken.
He's not gonna lie, the future still scares the crap out of him.
Like, he still hasn't figured out what he's gonna be when he grows up.
The future is totally and completely unknown.
But now when he thinks about it, he thinks there is nothing but opportunities.