"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
~Oscar Wilde
Finn wakes to the clanging of pots and pans in the kitchen, the hush of water running in the sink, and Mr. Hummel trying to escape his mother's care.
"I'll just fry up some eggs, a little toast, you have time for hashbrowns, don't you?"
"No, no, it's fine. I'll just grab something on the way."
"Let me just scramble some eggs for you. Two minutes."
Finn wrestles a hand out from under the sheets to rub his eyes. Good luck to Mr. Hummel. Finn has dealt with every variety of over-protective Carol Hudson in the last sixteen years and the 'no-leaving the house without breakfast' kind is one of the most insistent.
"Okay." A chair scrapes out from the kitchen table and there's a sigh from Mr. Hummel. "Just eggs. I've got five minutes."
Finn smiles at this. All things put aside, Mr. Hummel is a nice guy and it's nice to have him around. It's nice to have someone else to share the worry for his mother and her happiness.
Finn stretches his arms out as far as they'll go and kicks the blankets off his feet. He feels better today. Still a little tired, but nothing more. He remembers the last time he slept in his mother's bed. He was twelve years old and had the flu of the century. Raging fever, puke and then some. He remembers the bed being a lot bigger then. HIs feet didn't hang off the end, for example. Still, just being close had made him feel so much better. Now, waking up with the summer sun coming in through the window and comforting voices drifting from the kitchen, Finn can hardly wait for the rest of the summer.
With a smile on his face, he sits up and climbs out of bed to start the day.
After that, as it has so many times in the past, everything starts to go down hill.
On the way from the bathroom to his bedroom to get dressed, Finn is struck with a wave of dizziness that sets the hallway on a slow tilt. He shakes his head, closes his eyes, and takes a few deep breaths, but it doesn't help. No matter, he gets dressed quickly. It's already after ten, which means everyone will be at Kurt's in less than two hours.
He makes his way out to the kitchen for breakfast, but his mom stops him on his way and diverts them to the couch with a hand on his arm.
"Here we go, Finn. I got everything you could need. Burt moved your Xbox out here. Here's the phone. Some water. I made your favorite breakfast. Your ipod is right here. I already called Sheets 'n' Things and told them you wouldn't be in for a few days." She smiles tightly as she fluffs a pillow, the pillow from his bed, now on what is apparently his couch bed. His couch bed which resembles a nest of all things Finn.
"Uh...thanks?"
"Did I forget something?"
"No. It's just, I don't really need this, Mom. I'm not sick."
Carol sits down on the edge of the couch, forcing him to sit with her. "Now, the doctor said you should rest. So that's what you're going to do. I mixed some spinach in with your eggs. It's supposed to have lots of iron in it." She pats his leg and picks the plate of breakfast up from the coffee table to hand it to him. "Eat up, babe."
Getting out of the house to go to the glee meeting, practice, whatever they're supposed to call it, is actually easy. Carol goes out to the backyard to work on the pint-sized garden ("I have my cell phone, Finn. You just call if you need something.") Finn walks out the front door, easy as pie.
Five blocks down, he starts to think maybe it wasn't such a good idea. The sidewalk sways like the deck of a ship and he's breathing like he just finished a set of wind sprints on the football field in late August. He keeps going though; Kurt's house is only two blocks more if he cuts through a couple of backyards.
When he finally gets there, he's the last one to arrive, and tries to hang on the edge of the group, finding a chair on the Hummel's back porch to melt into. He takes a moment to look around. Brittany and Santana are lounging in a couple of chairs on the patio as well, looking like they're trying to work on thier tans. Mike and Matt are practicing dance moves in the shade of a giant oak tree. Puck is leaning against the tree. He doesn't look very happy to be here. Artie is parked on the grass and Tina, Mercedes, and Quinn are sitting around him in the sun. Finn can't help but notice how...small Quinn looks now, like she has shrunken or collapsed inside herself.
"Finn!" Rachel waves from where she is standing, talking to Kurt. She bounces over and sits on his lap just long enough to plant a kiss on his cheek before jumping up again. "I was waiting for you. Why are you sweating so profusely?"
Finn waves a hand through the air in a loopy motion. "It's hot."
"I suppose it is. Well, now that everyone's here, we can get started." She claps her hands and raises her voice. "Okay. First of all I would like to thank everyone for coming. It's a true display of your dedication both to glee club and our uncanny group friendship. Also, thanks to Kurt for offering his house and providing us with a wonderful spread of hors d'oeuvres. I would like to get started right away with a quick warm-up. Kurt?"
Kurt takes his cue to hit play on the CD player. After a moment, the first few chords of 'Lean on Me' begin to play, a song that they can all, more or less, sing together.
Finn sort of tries to mouth along with the beginning from his chair. He listens as everyone else begins to sing and then...as they stop.
"Wait a minute." Mercedes stands from where she was seated on the grass by Tina. "I think we should start with some scales. I mean, that's how we've always done it."
Kurt hits pause to stop the music. "She has a point."
Rachel returns to the center of their circle. "I know that we typically began with scales and arpeggios, however, as we are now in a more relaxed atmosphere, I was hoping to start with something a bit more casual and work our way into more technical exercises over the afternoon."
"Wait a second." Puck steps forward. "Over the afternoon? Just how long are we going to be here? 'Cause I've got...stuff to do."
"Well, I was thinking, since we're only meeting once a week, it should be for a few hours at least," Rachel says.
"What am I doing here?" Brittany wonders.
"When did you decide all of this Rachel? It isn't just your club, you know. It's our club." There's murmured agreement to Mercedes' statement and increasing noise as everyone voices thier ideas. "We should decide these things together."
"I'm the captain," Rachel announces. "That means I'm sort of in charge."
"Finn's a captain, too," Kurt puts in.
Suddenly, all eyes are on Finn. He shifts uncomfortably in the lawn chair.
"What do you think we should do?" Mercedes asks.
"Yeah, Finn." Kurt's tone is just the wrong side of sarcastic. "What do you think?"
All Finn can really think about is how soon he can get out of there and for how long can he keep up appearances. With everyone waiting, he opens his mouth, and prays for something good to come out of it. "Well... obviously we all have a lot of ideas and we all want to be here and...um, so I think we should take a vote."
"A vote?" Rachel looks doubtful.
"Yeah, we can write down what we would like to do over the summer and then talk about it and take a vote."
"I would like to campaign for just a moment in favor of-"
"Wait." Kurt interrupts. "If you're campaigning, I want to campaign, too."
Mercedes raises one hand in the air. "All in favor of running things the way Mr. Schuester ran things?"
"I don't know what's happening," Brittany whispers to Santana.
"No." Rachel's tone has been on a steadily increasing level of shrillness. "Since I organized our meetings and I'm a captain, I definitely feel that I should have a greater vote. That's only fair."
"Fair?"
"Guys!" Finn stands up and grabs onto the porch railing. "Let's...let's just take a week off. Write down whatever you would like to do this summer and then next week Rachel and I will take a vote. With papers and hats and stuff."
Everyone more or less nods and starts to shuffle off. Finn watches as Rachel gathers her things and then marches over to him with a straight face. "I wish you had backed me up," she says.
Finn doesn't know what to say to that, so he doesn't say anything at all.
When Finn thinks too hard about something, he usually needs to sit down and close his eyes for a minute. It's easier to concentrate that way. That's pretty much why he spent two hours sitting on a couch in the furniture section at Wal-Mart.
Mr. Hummel had just kicked him out. The week before, he'd walked into the Hummel home with 'Welcome Home' banners and sparkling cider and now he was out. That part didn't bother him so much. He hadn't wanted to live there in the first place. What did bother him, was what his mom was going to say. She would probably have to move out, too. She would probably be mad. Mostly, Finn hoped that Mr. Hummel and her wouldn't break up. He was pretty sure that he couldn't handle something like that being his fault.
He tried to add it all up. All the things Kurt had ever said to him and all the things they'd done and what he'd said just today in that basement. Kurt's basement. Thier basement. Now, just Kurt's basement again.
Truthfully, Finn liked Kurt. He was a cool guy, strange clothes put aside. Finn just didn't like him in that way. He thought that he had been polite and tried to make that clear, but apparently it hadn't worked out that way.
It's too much to think about. All Finn ever really wanted was for no one to be mad. Too bad he was typically the one that blew up in the end.
The walk home from Wal-mart was short and he trudged up the front steps to thier shoebox house with heavy feet.
Finn was certain that his mother hadn't taken very many of thier things to the Hummel's yet, though much of it had been packed and sat in boxes piled along the walls. The walls themselves looked bare. Dusty rectangles outlined where photos used to hang. The shelves beside the TV looked bare without all the knick-nacks that typically took up that space.
The couch still sat in the middle of the room though. And beside it, the chair. Dad's photo on the table. The urn beside that.
Finn stumbled the last few feet to the couch and sat down.
The door is unlocked when Finn gets home. He pushes it open slowly, one hand on the doorframe for balance. He takes a deep breath that only makes the room spin faster and raises his head.
Carol sits on the couch in the middle of the Finn-nest. She looks upset.
Finn opens his mouth to apologize, but he must look at least half as bad as he feels, because she just shakes her head and opens her arms out to him.
He crosses the room in three long strides and falls onto the couch beside her, feels her arms come up around him. He has his face in her shoulder, arms around her back, and before he knows it he's crying, gasping, choking tears and he doesn't even know why.
Everything is a mess and he just can't find the right way to fix it. He feels terrible, tired, and dizzy, and out of breath. He presses closer to his mother, but this time, it doesn't make anything better.