A/N: This part was originally a one-parter and is what started this entire story. Every time I hear Boyce Avenue, I picture that Alejandro (the hunk of gorgeous man who is one of three brothers that formed the band) is Cory Monteith even though he doesn't look like him and only somewhat sounds like him. I can automatically see Finn singing this song just because Boyce Avenue covered it. I'm normally fanatical about the music I listen to anyway, but this is the only time I'll say this (maybe): go YouTube their cover of this song so you can see what I'm getting at. It's awesome—which is saying something because I capital-F-ucking hate Leona Lewis.

That being said, I'm starting to feel a little more at home here. I've coerced Paceismyhero into posting and reintroduced myself to Abigail Snow. Hello, ladies! They already know, but for everyone else: replying strokes my ego and I update faster. I'm just saying. Oh, and thanks to those who have already read, replied, favorited, followed, etcetera.

Chapter 1: I Don't Care Anymore

Song Used: Bleeding Love (Leona Lewis cover) by Boyce Avenue

The nerves were bad enough as he paced around in front of Schue's office, the first arrival of any Glee kid to the last class of the day. The childish rhyme last the best of all the game echoed through his mind and made him smile. As stupid as it sounded, it helped him relax and gave him focus. He blew a nervous breath out of his mouth and picked up the speed of his pacing.

Today was the day. He had been waiting and debating, never sure and feeling unprepared, for the better part of the last two months, and now he knew the time was right and all that was going to end.

He knew Rachel had been crushed when he "officially broke up" with her. The biggest way he knew, maybe, was that she hadn't actually mentioned it. As he had tentatively reached out, hesitating and almost going two steps back for every step forward in his typical way, he had been just waiting for it. Rachel would go into Diva-mode and tell him off. She was never quiet about her feelings. She was never quiet about any of it. Instead of doing as he expected though, she had stayed quiet.

She had thought for a long moment, a moment that felt like a week, when he had invited her to 'hang out' at the newly decorated house.

He knew she'd been there a couple of times with Kurt when he was home from school, messing around and trying some half-assed mash-ups because Kurt made her. They never did stuff like that at Dalton and it was driving him crazy. But out of respect, and out of fear of the possible yelling, he had stayed away while she was there. He had stayed in his room, catching up on back issues of Sports Illustrated (it was supremely unfair to look through the swimsuit issue when it was winter and the once-sunny world was frozen, he had decided eventually) and listening to loud, angry music in his iPod headphones to drown out the sound of singing because he just couldn't take hearing her sing, hearing her happy and still feeling so sad inside as he tried to figure everything out. She had stuck her face in his room when she left the last time, offering a brief wave and an even briefer smile. Before he could react other than opening his mouth and reaching for the earbuds, she was gone. No yelling. No words. Certainly not the apology or even the simple, friendly question he wanted so badly to ask. How are you? She was just gone.

So finally, unable to take the silence anymore, he had invited her over and she took her time thinking before she issued a careful reply. "Do you really… do you really want me to?"

She was so timid, so unsure. So un-Rachel-like. He knew he'd done that to her and he was genuinely sorry. It was true that he had asked for time and space, and she pushed too hard before she gave him what he needed. He had just never realized until that moment, until she was soft and careful right in front of him, maybe they had both been pushing and the tension had been holding everything up. It took both of them to keep their relationship going and when she'd stopped pushing, he kind of fell over and then he was really lonely.

He was not good at thinking about emotions this way.

"Yeah," he offered in a whisper, watching her as carefully as he was watching his own heart, looking inward for signs of trouble or signs that it was too much. Instead of that caged feeling, like he needed to pace and needed to be free, he just missed her. That was all. That was all that was left. He really, really missed her. His missed his friend. He missed his girlfriend. He missed the only person in his life who always spoke the truth. He missed her and he wanted her to hang out.

So they had eased into seeing each other again, taking their time and dancing around issues and being polite (sometimes literally because they were still the Glee leads after all, and once school started up they all had regionals on their minds). One night, though, he had been horsing around with her and comfortable in that way he could only ever be around her. Instead of unwrapping his straw, he had just pulled a bit of the end off and then blown the rest of the white paper wrapper off the straw and toward her face. She had laughed as she reached up to grab the trash away from her head; she twisted the paper around her fingers and looked at him with questions in her eyes. They were questions too big, too important for him to answer. But again, she had been very quiet and uncertain. Very un-Rachel-like. He knew again that he had done that to her, had made her like that. It was just a reminder of how far they'd come. And then she turned the big questions into her eyes into actual big questions and she looked to him for answers and he had to explain himself. She explained herself again, and what it ended up amounting to was they didn't have a whole lot to offer by way of new information, and they were both people who did things and then actually thought about them later. In not thinking a little bit ahead, they had hurt each other terribly.

That night, even though she was forty minutes late for curfew and had been getting 5-minute texts from the dads asking where she was because she hadn't left a note at all, they stayed at the restaurant and hashed everything out. He drove her home, and after she replied to the dads that she and Finn were chatting in the driveway, the text messages stopped but the conversation kept going.

He was pretty sure he saw her dads alternately looking out the window, no doubt making sure the car windows weren't too foggy or there wasn't a handprint pressed on them or something else like that, but he did slip two over on them: he held her hand and he gave her a sweet little kiss goodnight. That had been almost a week ago.

Now, they didn't hold hands at school, but they walked so close while they chatted on their way to classes that the backs of their hands touched(usually not the same classes because most of hers had 'AP' after them while his did not—except chemistry. For some reason he totally got chemistry). He had brushed her hair back over her shoulder once or twice, and they had hung out nearly every night after they finished up extracurriculars and before homework. Sometimes she helped him with homework like she used to.

She entered the room, her bright pink folder full of music pressed tightly to her chest and she looked around. He recognized her clothes, the shirt anyway, as the spare she kept in her locker. Since the football team's decent showing, largely lead by him on total accident, he had not been the victim of any of the B-level football players' lame, mean tricks. By association, Rachel had also not been on their list.

It seemed that had stopped now that she wasn't officially dating the quarterback anymore and she had received the latest slushie facial. Her face was stripped clean (he was still not sure how she got the blue raspberry syrup out of her skin—the last time he'd caught a blue one to the face, he looked like a Smurf for most of glee), her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was still shivering a little. He knew it wasn't out of fear but because she always had trouble getting warm after she picked ice chunks off her skin, out of her hair…at some point she had also seemed embarrassed to reveal she never kept a spare bra in her locker because her locker had been broken into before, so if the slushie went down her shirt she couldn't change it. So he was sure she was cold through and through.

He shook his head, looking at her. He was going to kick Karofsky's ass—again. Maybe Sam would go in on it with him, even if he didn't have to be extra-badass to make up for his girlfriend's lack of social status. Finn slipped his arms out of his letterman's jacket and took the three steps to the door. Her eyes caught the movement and she looked over, giving him a small smile.

"Hey," she said simply. He wrapped the jacket around her shoulders and pulled the collar together, letting the entire thing wrap around her. She looked like a kid wrapped in a huge blanket. As he pulled the sides of the collar together, he used it as kind of a hook to pull her close and kiss her forehead. The skin under his lips was frosted and it wasn't fair.

"I'm gonna kill those guys."

Rachel had seen Kurt. Rachel had talked to Kurt quite a bit over the break, and she may not have known the details, but she knew who was responsible for Kurt wanting to transfer. "It's not worth it," she said simply.

Why was she always right? How had she found a way to both be the source of and override his hot head? He sighed and pulled her into him again.

"Was anyone with you?" Finn asked. Rachel pulled away from his hug and looked at him.

"No," she said and it came out disbelieving. For all the strides she'd made socially, she still walked down the hall alone most of the time. And she knew he knew it.

"Can I please at least just take a baseball bat to their cars?" He pleaded.

She smiled a little and moved away from him, using her hand to keep his jacket around her. Eventually, she bent down in front of the front row chair she normally occupied during class to place her Glee folder and her purse down on the hard plastic.

"Wouldn't the fact that it isn't yet baseball season tip them off that someone had an ulterior motive?"

"Do I care?"

"Finn!" She breathed. She turned to face him with fire in her eyes. It looked like she was hoping she wouldn't crack a smile.

"If you were with Puck, it wouldn't have happened at all," he said slowly.

"Yeah, but I wasn't so it isn't really worth discussing." She dropped tiredly into a chair. "I don't know what I was thinking auditioning for that community play at OSU-L. Now that rehearsals have started, I'm exhausted."

He frowned. He knew that wasn't something she would normally admit out loud so her next actions practically shocked him as she pulled a small blue and silver can out of her purse. She popped the top and the motion just looked wrong. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen her drink anything but water, and maybe the occasional coffee when she snuck a sip of his if he was drinking it black.

"What are you doing?" He asked. "Is that RedBull?"

She shook her head as she raised the can to her lips to take a long drink. She swallowed as she pulled it back down to her lap. "Sort of. It's like the earth-friendly version."

He sat down next to her. She didn't protest when he took the can out of her hands and studied it carefully. "Guru. How does it taste?" He asked. She was normally super sensitive about sharing drinks, even with him, because she claimed it was one of her secrets to not getting sick. She just flipped her hand in a motion for him to try it. After he had swallowed it (and it was just about as bad as your average energy drink but certainly no worse), he handed the can back to her. "Am I going to be able to keep up with you during rehearsal if you drink that?"

She rolled her eyes. "Please. This might just actually keep me sitting up in my chair."

He laughed. "You can lean on me if you need to." What the hell? He couldn't keep his voice from cracking. Not cool.

She smiled and looked at him for a long time, but didn't reply because all the other group members were starting to filter in. He allowed himself one more glance at her before he moved to the front up by the piano to start getting music and stuff ready as Mr. Schue had said he needed it at the end of last class. He'd take care of it and let her relax for a minute—if she even knew how to do that. Since she didn't move, it seemed like she might be learning.

The bell rang and Finn frowned. Where the hell was their teacher? Mr. Schue wanted Finn to sing first but he kind of had to be there for Finn to do it. Although the song he had chosen was specifically for Rachel to hear, he still wanted and needed a good grade on it; which he was going to get, but the teacher was kind of major in that plan. Once everything was prepared, he uncertainly sat back down next to Rachel and folded his arms to wait.

A few minutes later when he looked over at her she was turned away from him, dipping into her purse for something or other.

They were like two magnets, Finn and Rachel, constantly pulled apart but eventually coming back together. He shook his head like his brain was an Etch-a-Sketch and he could erase the thought. If there was anything he had learned, it was that there was no science to this. He also knew that, despite their best intentions, they would hurt each other again. That's just the way it was, but he had survived this last round. All the bruises were gone, old scars were healed, and now he just wanted to step across that super thin line back into the brightest place his life had ever been. It could be that easy.

He totally ought to slip Schue a five or something just for this opportunity. Schue had even agreed to help him out. First it was by teaching him to play the chords, but when the ultra girly song had proved too hard for him to learn in the only three private sessions his over-packed schedule would allow, Schue had offered to just play it.

It was definitely better than going to Puck or Sam, the resident guitar players. Because as he had uncertainly talked over the situation with their trusted teacher, he knew this was going to be all about swallowing his pride. Mr. Schuester had imparted the lesson that true love has no pride. After that conversation, Finn had heard a band of three brothers, who were notorious for their acoustic covers, playing on a local radio station during his morning run the next day and he knew immediately that he wanted to do their version of that song. Asking Puck for help would basically be like forking a testicle or maybe both over to his somewhat friend, especially right now. Puck had actually apologized over the winter break, without giving too many details, and Finn wondered for a long time who started and who stopped their makeout session. Once he had heard the song, he realized that it didn't matter anymore. None of it mattered anymore. He wasn't good at a lot of things, but he was good at being with Rachel. He liked being with her. He loved her. There was no going back or moving on. She was the endgame. She always had been.

Of course, the other lesson he'd been quick to learn was that relationship were a two-sided deal. He had to do his best not to treat her badly. The more he thought about it, he knew other things had often come before Rachel—Glee, football, not playing football, his reputation, his own pride and lies—and he wanted to make sure it wasn't going to happen again. So as girly as it was, he was going to rock this song and he was going to watch her and he was going to kiss her at the end.

He could live with his reputation being 'good boyfriend to Rachel Berry.' It was the only thing that mattered to him anymore.

Schue finally walked in, running a few minutes late, and nodded to Finn as he walked. It was the first official day of their Valentine's Day assignment, and they had already discussed that Finn would be going first. He felt like his message was the most urgent, because if he knew Rachel (and boy, did he know Rachel) she would want some time to think before she issued her musical reply and this way she would have all the way until Friday to reply. He could only hope it wouldn't be a sequel to the "Gives You Hell" song. His eyes flicked to her again, but this time she wasn't bent over. She was looking right at him. As well as he knew her, he hadn't seen that look before and it almost made him puke all over his shoes and then beat a hasty retreat so he wouldn't have to lay himself out this way.

But where would the fun be in that?

He offered her a tiny and nervous smile before he wiped his slightly sweaty palms over his jeans before he stood up. He looked down, the McKinley basketball jersey draped over a t-shirt and his lanky frame like it always was on game days. Since it was a home game, the jersey was red. It kind of already looked like he was bleeding a little bit; like he was in costume. Schue emerged from his office with his guitar in hand and approached as Finn mashed his hands together and looked out over his teammates.

"You guys think I'm crazy. I get it. I just don't care anymore," he said simply. His eyes darted nervously back to Rachel, sitting in front and off to his right just beside his vacant seat with a calm, puzzled expression on her face.

Come on, Rach. You know me. You know what this is even though I haven't opened my mouth.

He looked over his shoulder at Schue and nodded slightly. He'd had some trouble with the entrance so he paid extra attention during the first two, quick beats and he searched his memory desperately to find the exact note and the opening words. He tucked his hands into his pockets, unable to look directly at her just yet as he opened his mouth, starting out rather timidly until he was sure he'd gotten it right from the start.

Closed off from love, I didn't need the pain

Once or twice was enough, and it was all in vain

Time starts to pass, before you know it you're frozen

But something happened for the very first time with you

My heart melted to the ground, found something true

And everyone's looking 'round thinking I'm going crazy

He echoed the little 'yeah' that initiated a little more rhythm picking up and dared to look at Rachel. Her face wasn't quite smiling, but she was wide-eyed and listening intently. That was all he could ask for. After all, it wasn't the first time she'd heard his worry about what everyone else thought. It was the first time he was ready, really ready, to go beyond that. He couldn't help it as he started to move a little in time with the song, his eyes still all over her.

But I don't care what they say, I'm in love with you

They try to pull me away but they don't know the truth

My heart's crippled by the vein that I keep on closing

You cut me open and I…

Keep bleeding, I keep, keep bleeding love

Keep bleeding love, keep keep bleeding love

You cut me open

He was getting into it now, relaxing a little as her lips started to tilt toward a smile and her cheeks started to turn a little pink. He had pulled his hands out of his pockets and was (as she had said once during rehearsal about the motion, "rather adorably—now knock it off") drumming on his thighs as he started to groove a little more. The next chorus slowed a bit and his gaze shifted from her and over the other members of the club.

Trying hard not to hear but they talk so loud

Their piercing sounds fill my ears, trying to fill me with doubt

Yeah, I know that the goal is to keep me from falling

His hands were moving around his head as he took in the familiar faces that were sprawled out. Brittany was moving in her seat, bopping her head back and forth and looking at Artie with a faint smile. Mercedes was watching, arms folded, and what could only be described as undecided. He was starting to tread on her territory, after all, and she had never really considered him able. Puck was watching with his well-practiced disinterest, looking like there was a sarcastic and cutting remark chopping his tongue off. Santana appeared a little undecided but mostly bored and was examining her nails. Tina and Mike were rocking to the song. No, literally, they were rocking back and forth in their chairs in some sort of a bumper car game that it appeared Mike was losing on purpose. Quinn had her arms folded primly and he understood, sort of, how it was possible all the open declarations of love between he and Rachel were a little hard on her. Sam's eyes were darting around the room a lot like Finn's were, taking it all in, with a different perspective.

He took it all in with a quick sweep of his eyes over the choir room, but then he looked at Rachel again. He just couldn't take his eyes away from her for that long, and as he fought the threatening smile so that he could, you know, form actual words as he sang, her smile opened up and blazed bright enough for the both of them. It was like the sun came out while he sang the next words straight from the bottom of his heart, meaning them no less than one-hundred and ten percent.

But nothing's greater than the rush that comes with your embrace

And in this world of loneliness I see your face

And everyone around me thinks that I'm going crazy…maybe

As they opened up into the last verse, Finn was literally singing his heart out, rocking back and forth on his feet in place in time to the guitar-only beat. Although he couldn't see exactly what Schue was doing behind him, Finn knew from their practices and from the sound that Schue was pounding on the strings expertly, providing a strong base for the song and rocking it thoroughly. Even though it was acoustic, and it was a chick song, and he was singing it for Valentine's Week and there was absolutely nothing manly about any of it, he felt like it was his inner rock star coming out.

But I don't care what they say, I'm in love with you

They try to pull me away but they don't know the truth

My heart's crippled by the vein that I keep on closing

You cut me open and I…

Keep bleeding, I keep, keep bleeding love

I keep bleeding love, I keep, keep bleeding love

You cut me open and I

You cut me open and I

Keep bleeding love

As Schue played the last note then quickly stood up, the girls in the room cheered and the boys' eyes shifted uncomfortably at the emotional precedent he had set.

But true to the lyrics, he blocked them out. It didn't matter. It didn't matter that the original artist screeched her way through that song, and probably still did it at least once a day for an audience somewhere. It didn't matter that he was red-faced and breathing a little hard after reaching for higher notes than he normally sang. He looked at Rachel, who hadn't cheered and hadn't even moved. None of it mattered if she didn't get it. For the first time ever he smiled to see tears standing in her eyes. He made her cry, in a good way and in the right way for once, and it made him feel like a man.

He felt like her man.