AN: Thank you so much for the lovely, thoughtful, and encouraging reviews! For anyone who may have been wondering, the description of the Mississippi prom case in the first chapter did happen in real life—just last year (2010) in fact. I added an author's note to the end of that chapter describing the case in a bit more detail and providing information for online links that tell more of Constance's story. Since the fanfiction website doesn't allow me to insert actual internet links, I have put the name of the main website in text and then included the end extension that can go after entering the www dot name of website into a browser.

This chapter lets us see into Finn's thoughts and get a sense of how he feels about things as the time of Prom approaches.

Disclaimer: I own nothing and am in no way connected to or affiliated with Glee or anything to do with the show; just an avid fan who likes to imagine what might happen if . . .

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The next week, Mr. Schuester started rehearsal by going over their practice schedule for the week and then said he had an announcement to make about something Principal Figgins had asked them to do. Amid the groans from his fellow teammates, who all remembered Figgins' last request for the glee club to do something (when would the man ever learn than glee club + McKinley audiences = disaster on a massive scale), Finn noticed that Mr. Schue seemed kind of nervous, and kept darting glances at Rachel, Mercedes, and Kurt. Finn wondered if the request required a soloist and if Mr. Schue was bracing himself to tell them either than one of the three divas got the solo while the other two did not—something sure to bring on cries of outrage and valuable rehearsal time lost to yet another diva-off—or, what would be even worse, that the solo was going to someone else, in which case they might see a triple-storm-off and the end of getting any glee stuff done that day.

"Guys, guys, settle down and let me tell you about it, OK?" Mr. Schuester waited for the room to grow quiet—or at least to settle down to sullen murmurs—before giving them the news. Figgins thought it would be nice, as a way to spotlight the glee club and help send them on their way to Nationals, if the New Directions performed a set at Prom. Into a sudden, dead silence, and with yet another nervous glance toward Finn's brother and Kurt's two best friends, Mr. Schue asked, "So, what do you think? Performing anywhere helps to make us that much more prepared for Nationals, right?"

Out of the corners of his eyes, Finn seemed to see all the people around him turning their heads to look at each other and then—and this was starting to creep Finn out, a little—to look nervously at the 3Ds, as everyone called them now. It still seemed a little weird to Finn that he never sat near Rachel in glee any more; even when they weren't together, they often used to sit near each other so that they could listen to how their voices would blend in numbers. Once Regionals was over that had all changed. Finn understood why. And yeah, he was glad that Rachel had finally developed such great friends and all, really. (Although, to be honest? He kind of thought he understood now what she was saying last September when she told him that she wanted to be the only thing that made him happy. He used to be that for her, and it kind of sucked to have lost that). It was just weird to see her enter the choir room and look around not for him, but for Mercedes and Kurt; weird to see her choosing her seat not in relation to where he was sitting, but going over to be with them until and unless Mr. Schue arranged them differently for vocal effect. Finn knew things were different now, but sometimes he missed the way they used to be.

The silence kept going on; it seemed like everyone was waiting for somebody else to say something. A hand clutching his arm pulled Finn's attention away from the room and to his girlfriend. He took in the frozen frown on her face; clearly, Quinn didn't want the glee club to be performing at the Prom. While a lot of Quinn's attitudes about Prom—what it should be like and why it mattered—were a mystery to him, a reluctance to have New Directions sing there actually made sense for once. Prom was supposed to be a formal, dressed up event; a special occasion; memorable, yes, but not memorable because of a glee-induced riot breaking out, or gleaming gray vomit spewing across the room.

As Quinn hissed at him, "Do something!" Finn felt, for a moment, like he was experiencing—what was the name Rachel had told him about for that feeling that you've lived something before? Doggie View? And what did dogs have to do with it? Could they time travel? Because a time-travelling dog would be really cool; he could use it to take a test and then go back before the test and know what to study and come back to the test prepared to ace it. What a way to bring up his grade point average! Well, whatever it was called, Finn felt like he'd lived through this before as he remembered Mr. Schue announcing the plan for Sectionals and Rachel, after trying on her own to change the teacher's mind, bumping him in the shoulder as she whispered "Do something!" And yeah, that had pretty much been a disaster all the way around; maybe the time-travelling dog thing was best left alone. Unless it could take him back in time to before he didn't tell Rachel about him and Santana, or before he slept with Santana, or before he broke up with Rachel because he wanted to find his inner rock-star . . . .

Before he could pull himself out of those rancid memories to obey the insistence of Quinn's hand still pulling on his arm, he heard Rachel speaking up.

"Mr. Schue, while we appreciate the confidence Principal Figgins has in us, and while it is touching that he'd like to give us the opportunity to have the school show us their support . . ."

"Like that would happen," Santana's voice uttered. "More like setting us up for public humiliation. It's bad enough on normal days, but we really don't need it at Prom."

Sending a glare her way that said, as clearly as anything, "Shut up!" Rachel continued. "As I was saying, while we appreciate the gesture, I really do not think that would be a good idea. We need to be putting all of our energies into preparation for Nationals. Taking time to come up with, learn, and rehearse selections appropriate for performing at the Prom could only distract us from the focus Nationals demands from us."

Immediately on the heel of Rachel's statement, as if they had planned it together and were in perfect harmony with all of each others' thoughts (which Finn knew to be far from the truth; they were much more like dissing . . . distant . . . distanent (what was the word?) . . .well, much more like clashing notes than music in harmony), Quinn chimed in, saying that she agreed perfectly with Rachel, as she was sure they all did; that not one of them would want to do anything to endanger their preparation for Nationals; and that it might actually do them good, after devoting their full attention to the upcoming competition, to have a single night off from glee—a night when they could relax and refresh themselves and just be regular students enjoying a party and not worrying about being on stage.

Finn thought she was laying it on a bit too thick with that last part. He knew full well that being on stage at Prom figured hugely into Quinn's plans for the night; it was just that she did not intend to be up there as a part of glee. She intended to be up there on her own, the sole occupant when Prom Queen and King were announced. Well, not as the sole occupant-she intended for them both to be up there, but Finn increasingly felt like he was more of a well-thought-out and matched accessory, not a co-equal winner. Quinn was already pissed that two of the other glee members were running against her for Prom Queen, and that two of her former boyfriends were also running for King—Puck because he was running with Lauren and Sam because he'd been nominated by a huge gaggle of freshmen girls who followed him around all the time asking if they could play with his Biebalicious hair. Finn wondered if Sam ever got tired of shaking the hair out of his eyes; that one time he'd tried to rock the Bieber look his neck had been sore for a week as a result of all the awkward head-tossing.

Having the other guys running for Prom King was fine by him; Finn didn't really mind. He felt like he was a pretty safe bet for King, and while it would be cool to, essentially, be voted the most popular guy in the school, he already pretty much had that after the championship game; he'd be riding that victory until football began again in September. But Quinn did mind, and she certainly would not want them to do anything that might showcase or put any of her—she'd say their—rivals in the spotlight. And Finn had a feeling that she really didn't want Rachel to be in the spotlight on that night either-that for Quinn, a night off from glee was kind of like saying a night off from Rachel. But if New Directions was singing—well, everyone knew who would end up being seen as the star. Rachel would be the one shining on that stage, just like she did everywhere else . . . .

With an actual effort, Finn forced himself to stop thinking about Rachel, and to pull his eyes away from where they'd strayed to rest on her. Quinn had told him, over and over, that he did that constantly, and each time it seemed to make her a little bit angrier. When it happened at times when Prom was the subject, Quinn's reaction was even worse. So he tried to make himself stop, turning his head back toward the front to see Mr. Schue nod as he clapped his hands together once and said, "OK, that settles it; no singing at Prom. I'll tell Principal Figgins. Now, let's get to rehearsing." Finn thought he must have been right about Mr. Schue seeming nervous; probably, Finn decided, he didn't really want them to sing at the dance but just didn't know how to deprive Rach—deprive the divas in the group of a chance to perform. Finn knew his choir director well enough by now to know that if he'd really wanted them to sing, he'd have kept pressing them; and if he hadn't already agreed with what Rachel said, he'd have had the glee club put it to a vote on the assumption that the majority would vote Rachel down.

Quinn's hold on Finn's arm was now caressing rather than clutching; she looked pleased as she smiled to herself and hummed a bit. He supposed he was happy that she was happy about her Prom expectations continuing smoothly with glee interruptions or interference. For himself, he was just glad that they could really concentrate on getting the group ready for Nationals. Prom was just another night for him, really, although he was trying to make himself care about it because it mattered so much to Quinn and she was his girlfriend and everything. But all he really wanted to focus on at this point was the coming show choir competition; he was one of the team leaders, and he wanted them to have a real fighting chance to bring home a trophy or to win it all outright. He'd actually considered taking the season off from the school's baseball team this spring so that he could spend extra time trying to perfect his dance moves. After all, he played baseball because it was the top spring sport, but it was a distant third, in his book, to football and basketball. Finn played it because he was a jock, and jocks played sports year round, and baseball was fun and all that, but winning at it didn't capture his heart and soul like winning football did. Finn had even gone so far as to look up some casual city league that he could join once they were back from New York and summer began, a league he could take part in just for the fun of playing a game until football practice began in August.

When he mentioned his plan to Quinn, though, she'd put a stop to it, insisting that he needed to keep up his school athletic involvements and leadership because it was a part of their campaign. "People expect to see you playing sports, Finn," she'd said. "They expect to see you helping to lead the team to a win. Now isn't a good time to do something that might go against their expectations and make them wonder if Finn Hudson really is the cool sports superstar they know and count on-and whom I know and count on, too," she finished, a sweet smile on her face. So, as he'd done since he was a freshman, Finn played baseball for McKinley and took the position of captain. He wasn't enjoying it all that much; it was kind of lonely, because Puck and Mike both had dropped baseball this year to focus on Nationals. Their girlfriends had agreed that was a better way of spending time (and of spending more time with them) with all of the work they had to do to get ready. Once or twice, Finn wondered if part of Quinn's encouraging him to do something other than just focus on glee was a way of putting some distance between him and the other glee kids (between him and Rachel, especially, he couldn't help thinking) in the mind of the school.

In fact, it sort of felt like he and Quinn were kind of splintering off from glee a little bit. They were always at the rehearsals and took part in any official event to get the team ready or to help raise funds for their travel expenses; it wasn't like they were doing any less than was expected of them. But every instant of free time outside of official glee stuff or class or sports had been scheduled by Quinn for Prom-campaigning—they were promoting themselves as Prom Royalty 24/7. Finn thought that Quinn might be preparing herself for working one day to be a campaign manager for politicians; he was pretty sure that she'd rock at it, if the amount of planning and energy she put into something like Prom elections was any indication.

They were always together, which was kind of cool and he guessed that was kind of expected when you were dating and serious and everything, but sometimes it seemed like a little too much. He and Rachel had spent tons of time together, but while he was dating her he'd still had free time to hang out with Puck and shoot baskets in the park, or to go over to Artie's for marathon Halo tournaments. But Rachel, of course, had had her singing and dance and piano and acting and other lessons to keep up with, and that had left him with some hours to himself almost every day. In fact, it had often seemed like there wasn't enough time for him to spend with Rachel; on the rare occasions when they'd have an unscheduled day and would hang out from morning to night, he'd always found himself at the end of their time together wishing there were a few more hours before they had to part. Quinn, it seemed, had nothing to do but school, glee, and campaign for Prom; all the energy and focus that used to go into being the head cheerleader on a nationally ranked team was now directed toward a single goal: winning a crown . So campaign for Prom they did, morning, noon, and night.

Any school event where "votes might be found" found them there, seeking votes. Finn didn't think he'd been to as many parties thrown by McKinley students in all of his three years at the school as he had attended in the past two months, and he'd never realized just how many teams and clubs and organizations the school had, with each and every one of them putting on some sort of performance or activity or something almost every day. The delightful afternoons they'd spent shut up in Quinn's bedroom before her mom came home from work were largely a thing of the past; while they still had time to make out, it was mostly squeezed into hurried moments in the car or an empty school hallway as they went from place to place on the campaign trail. There were a lot more public displays of affection, though; Quinn had developed a way of always reaching out to hold onto Finn's hand, to wrap her arm around his, to lean against his shoulder, to pull herself into his side, to reach up to caress or kiss his cheek. It was like she wanted everyone to see (or maybe one person in particular?) that they belonged to each other now.

Mr. Schue was now going over a panel by panel chart of the dance routines for one of their Nationals numbers. Finn knew he should be paying attention—dancing was by far the hardest part of glee for him, no matter how much extra coaching Mike squeezed in when he could—but he couldn't seem to keep his mind from wandering.

"It'll be the best of the best at Nationals, guys, and you've proven that you are a part of that best." Mr Schue was in the middle of his 'encourage them to greatness' pep talk. "Now we've got to give it our all to outshine the competition and blow them away. Each step, each gesture, each expression on your face will be a part of what is judged, just like your singing, and it deserves your best efforts. This is the big time, guys; the big leagues. This is New York, where dreams are made and all the world is watching!"

Finn still couldn't quite believe that they were actually going to New York. He remembered saying a long time ago that most of the kids at McKinley might never leave the state of Ohio; remembered telling Sam how most of the kids in the school had never seen the ocean. Hell, he was one of them; or he had been. But now he was going—they all were going—and they'd all be seeing what Rachel talked about all the time. She had been before, of course; many times, in fact. Her dads took her at least once a year, and he knew that there were certain blocks of Broadway that she could walk blindfolded (not that she'd ever dream of shutting her eyes when there was so much to see there, she'd told him; it was just the opposite—she'd try to make herself go for as long as she could without blinking so she didn't miss the tiniest part of a second of looking around and taking it all in). And now, mostly because of her—her leadership in glee, her unrelenting pushing of them to excel, and her own outstanding performing— they were all going there.

Finn knew, and he knew that everyone in the glee club knew, that they had already won Regionals by the time Rachel hit the bridge of her ballad. Singing "Loser Like Me" afterwards had almost been an unnecessary encore. He'd known that she could do it; that she could write a song that would win it all for them, and that the power of her words and voice and genuine emotion would pull the entire room up out of their seats and onto their feet in wild applause. He hadn't yet found the words to truly tell her just how amazing the song was; admitting to himself that he was being a coward about it, Finn hadn't even really tried to do so. Because every time he started to think about it—every time he put himself back in the wings of the stage, watching her sing, letting himself hear her, really hear her for the first time in a long, long time sing a real song, and sing it to him (even though it was far from just being sung to him or being about him)—he started to feel like he was drowning and melting and exploding all at the same time. It was a dangerous, overwhelming feeling, and he didn't know how to handle it and the emotions it brought up, so he just tried to avoid it. On the bus ride home from Regionals, Finn had realized something: ever since Sectionals, he'd been refusing to really let himself listen to Rachel sing out of self-protection (the same reason he'd refused to let himself give her a real kiss at his stupid kissing booth), because he hadn't felt like he could afford to experience what it did to him inside—how it moved him inside—when he heard her sing.

They'd all been right about her song, and her singing; she'd sung them to victory, and now New York City was just a few weeks away. Rachel, being Rachel, had looked up the location of the competition early on in the summer. She had known, long before Mr. Schue announced it at the beginning of the year, that they would be competing in "their" future city—his city and hers, she'd said, in the future she was so sure of, when she was a star on Broadway receiving those first Tony awards at a ceremony with him by her side. "We'll make it there, Finn! We will; I just know it-this is our year!" she'd triumphantly insisted, already envisioning them on the Nationals stage a year into the future. Finn thought of the plans she'd made to show him around New York, to "show him our home, Finn, the city we'll have at our feet!" and recalled the hours she had spent through long summer days and nights picking out numerous possible songs-solos and duets and group numbers-for them all to perform at each step of the competitive season. Well, not all of those visions were coming true; it wasn't going to be their city any more, and the music she had planned for them was not what they were rehearsing today. But they were going to be there, as she'd predicted, and Finn was absolutely certain that another part of Rachel's vision would come true, too—one day, it would be her city: she would be there and would get those Tonys and would shine brighter than any star on Broadway, or in the Milky Way for that matter.

But as far as Nationals was concerned, nothing other than making it to the competition there in New York was turning out like Finn had thought and like Rachel had planned. He was the first to admit that their competition strategy was brilliant (Rachel's idea, again, so he wasn't surprised), and he was totally on board with it as a way to win, but it was absolutely the opposite of what they had imagined. Finn was singing a minor lead part on one group number–one of several lead voices—and, for the rest, he'd be doing backup. It felt strange—not because he felt he should always have a solo, or competed for them or anything, but because they were going with a whole different pattern of singers and a new way of delivering a song. And this wasn't because Mr. Schue had decided the biggest competition of their lives would be the perfect moment for delivering a meaningful life lesson, either. It was all Rachel's idea.

When Mr. Schue first announced his plan for Nationals, Rachel put her hand up and began to say she thought they should do it differently. And everyone almost died of shock. Because they always thought that she used these moments of criticism to push for a bigger part for herself (with good reason, because she had certainly done that enough in the past), to make sure she had the solo and was the star. And this time, in the wake of her performance at Regionals, without her having to fight for it Mr. Schue had planned a program that featured her heavily in every song. He'd gone back to their first Sectionals and Regionals competitions, with Rachel doing a solo ballad, Finn and Rachel singing a duet, and then the two of them and Artie leading the group number with Mercedes wailing out the end.

Rachel had insisted that wouldn't work. Speaking at her rapid-fire pace as all of them were busy trying to haul their jaws off of the floor, she told them that Vocal Adrenaline—the team to beat as Nationals winners for the previous four years in a row—would be totally expecting them to do this. They would be planning their strategy with the expectation that New Directions would feature her, and so they would tailor their performances with the specific intent of having their strong soloist, Sunshine, out-sing Rachel in every number. She told them (because none of them had been there to see Vocal Adrenaline last year; everyone but Rachel had been at the hospital with Quinn and Puck) that Vocal Adrenaline worked by focusing on a super strong voice and using everyone else to be a theatrical support for that voice in a hugely staged number. She was certain that their performance would be a knock-down solo with a whole lot of back-up singing and mind-blowing dancing.

"If we try to go up against that with that," Rachel had said, "we'll lose. That's their game, and we can't beat them at it. We'll win by being different." Finn had noticed eight pairs of eyes, belonging to him, Kurt, Mercedes, Tina, Artie, Quinn, Santana, and Brittany, swiveling to her with flashes of recognition and remembrance as they were transported back in time. Back to the moment when she stood down that evil dwarf Dakota Stanley and said that they'd win because they were different. Finn had never forgotten Rachel saying that. While he'd been kind of excited by her when she made her speech in the celibacy club about girls wanting sex and all, and had been attracted to her from the time of their abruptly ended picnic in the auditorium, it had been in that moment, when she said their individuality was their greatest strength, that he, Finn Hudson, felt like he was really seeing Rachel Berry for the first time. Seeing right inside of her, and really, really liking what he saw. Finding himself wanting to spend more time with her, so that he could learn from her how to really believe that the things that made him different were the best things about him. Wanting to discover from her how to have the courage to let his differences show without being afraid of what others might say about him.

"What do you think we should do then, Rachel?" Finn had been surprised that it was Santana who asked, before anybody else, and actually asked like she wanted to hear the answer. That was something new, and it showed just how much things had changed between Rachel and others in the group. Rachel had convinced them that they needed to do the opposite of Vocal Adrenaline; they needed to draw on as many of their individual voices as was possible—to draw on their different and unique sounds and styles, featuring the many contrasting voices that made up their group. Forget trying to just blend our voices behind one lead, she had said—the more we can show our contrasts and ultimately bring them together, the better. We'll stand out in the judges' minds by doing something different and surprising them, and it will reflect what we do best and what we're all about.

It hadn't taken much convincing after that, and Rachel barreled right on with song ideas and recommendations. They were going to start off with a lead number featuring Mercedes and Kurt, with Mercedes singing melody and Kurt providing what Rachel called "transcendent counterpoint"—he could remember those words because Rachel repeated them every single time her two fellow Ds rehearsed-something she doubted any other group would be able to pull off, because none of the other teams there would have Kurt. She beamed at Finn's stepbrother as she said this, being met by an answering beam and a mouthed "love you!" as she added, "We'll win Nationals because we have Kurt. And Mercedes," she hastily added, reaching out a hand to her other friend. "Kurt and Mercedes will deliver something that will sound like nothing else any other team can bring."

Their next number would feature five voices that all had very different tones and qualities—Kurt, Tina, Artie, Santana, and Rachel. Rachel had originally proposed four voices, leaving herself out, but she had been overridden when the entire group insisted that she be a lead part, too. And their finale would be styled as one of their boys v. girls mash-ups, following Mr. Schue's lesson earlier in the year with the guys leading off on songs traditionally sung by women and the girls leading on songs usually done by men. That was the number where Finn was one of several leads, along with Puck, Sam, and Artie for the guys with Santana, Tina, and Rachel for the girls, with Mercedes and Kurt bringing it all home at the end (because, Rachel explained, it will remind the judges of how we started off, and we all know that Mercedes always brings it home for us).

Finn had worried that Quinn would be upset at not having any major part, but she had actually turned down a suggestion that she be one of the vocal leads in the final number. She said that she was too absorbed with other things and didn't want to take on the responsibility if she didn't feel she could give it her all. It almost seemed like Quinn was saying, somehow, "Rachel gets glee; that's fine. I've got other things." Lauren, who, it turned out, had an amazing eye for visual effects—that probably explained, Finn thought, why she was the president of the AV club—was working with Mike and Brittany to plan out the best staging for the entire group as they sang—staging that would both feature lead voices and provide spotlight moments for their two star dancers to dazzle the crowd.

It was all really different, but Finn thought it had a great shot of working. And he thought it was amazing and really cool to see Rachel taking charge by taking herself out of the center of attention, and even cooler to see how the members of the club insisted that she take her fair turn in the spotlight. Finn wondered if she was trying to work so hard, and was so willing to put herself on the side, in part because she was still beating herself up about weakening the team when she drove Sunshine away last September. He'd seen her face at the benefit concert when Sunshine sang, and he knew that the emotion on it was neither admiration nor jealousy—it was fear. Abject fear, not that someone might be better than her, but fear of rejection. Fear that the group would go back to feeling she had destroyed their chances by sending Sunshine straight into the arms of their biggest rival, and that the relationships she'd been building up with the glee kids would turn sour as they remembered what she had done. There certainly had been some sour looks turned her way that night at the concert, but they didn't last, and Rachel came in to rehearsal the next Monday with her plan all worked out. She talked and argued and explained, not giving up until shebrought everyone on board.

And it was awesome to have Kurt back. He was, well, stunning in his parts, and all of their vocal arrangements were put together to show off the full extent of his incredible vocal range. Rachel was right: if they won this year, it probably would be because of Kurt as much as anything. But Finn still kind of felt like they were taking a risk by not having Rachel perform a solo, too. They did need to be different to win, but surely they could find a way to be different while still featuring the voice that literally pulled people out of their seats. Something just didn't seem—right, or fair, or smart, or something—in them not putting Rachel out front and center. And a part deeper down inside himself, a part that Finn was less likely to admit to even when it was just in his own mind, thought that they'd have first place in the bag if he and Rachel were singing a duet together, because then it wouldn't just be the words and sounds and contrasts and showmanship and differences that would be delivering for them, but the feelings of the song capturing the audience and taking them away.

Finn had a sense of how those feelings might deliver a victory to them, because in addition to their competition numbers, they were also practicing "fake" numbers. Rachel and the five others who had, at one time or another, been Cheerios had all insisted that Coach Sylvester would absolutely be spying on them and leaking information to Vocal Adrenaline, if not to all of the other teams competing. Those six especially, either from being part of her "destroy the glee club" machinery in the past or from being played by her, knew how Sue Sylvester worked. They knew that they had to take her into account or else all of their planning would be for nothing, and Mr. Schue absolutely agreed. So they were doing double practices, going ahead with the original plan Mr. Schue had come up with, being sure to practice those numbers frequently and when they knew others were around. And because the ex-Cheerios had told them about the cameras Sue had hidden everywhere, all of the glee club members were careful not to refer to their real plan anywhere on school grounds except in coded words. Sam had offered to teach them all na'vi so they could openly discuss their real plans, but Mr. Schue said they didn't have the time to learn a new language- especially when some of them still couldn't figure out how to complete a full sentence in Spanish. Finn was pretty sure he was one of the students Mr. Schue eyed as he said that last part.

This meant that Finn was doing a fair amount of "fake" singing with Rachel (a Journey number and others from the same time period; Mr. Schue had said Sue would absolutely believe those were their Nationals numbers because they were what he always had the glee club do) and fake practicing with Rachel. They made sure go through the duet several times with their "walk from the back doors of the auditorium" routine as further bait to convince the Cheerio coach. When Sam asked whether Coach Sylvester would start to suspect something when she heard them doing all the other numbers, they assured him it wouldn't be a problem; Kurt explained that Sue would believe the glee club was just doing its usual thing of wasting time singing songs about feelings and life lessons instead of buckling down to focus and practice for big competitions before the very last minute arrived.

Those fake songs, at least from Finn's perspective, were absolutely full of feelings. Maybe full of fake feelings—he knew they should be fake feelings, because he wasn't supposed to be having those feelings for Rachel anymore; he was supposed to have them for Quinn-but feelings nonetheless. And while it might not technically count as cheating to have those feelings for Rachel when we was with Quinn, it kind of felt like it, and Finn was willing to bet that Quinn would agree. And he didn't want to be that guy, but he kept finding himself thinking about Rachel with those feelings even after the music had come to an end and the rehearsal was over, and he didn't know how to stop. It kept him on edge a lot of the time, causing him to have a shorter temper than usual; trying to push the feelings down made it even harder for him to pay attention and focus when Quinn would tell him something about Prom.

It was impossible to push those feelings down when they were singing with each other, so he didn't even try after a while, justifying it to himself by saying they were trying to put on a convincing performance for Sue. Because when he let himself hear her sing, and when he sang with her, it was all feeling and emotion and soaring and voices interweaving and becoming one and Rachel Rachel Rachel and he ended, every single damn time, feeling breathless and caught up in another world, staring into her eyes as he held her in his arms and slowly lifted up her hand. And then she would break away from him and turn to ask Mr. Schue how they'd done that time, and if their acting appeared convincing, and what they could do to make it better, and she'd go from looking totally into it to appearing totally not, like it was just an act, and he'd remember that it was a performance and was just for show, and when he'd finally look around he'd see Quinn's fixed gaze staring him down, and he'd remember once more that it was fake singing of fake songs in a fake performance. He still bet, though, that even fake feelings like those would more than convince an audience that everything was real and would give them the win.

Finn would stay awake long into the night, thinking it was stupid that he was unable to get over this, and telling himself it felt just like it had when they sang the Madonna mash-up together, because that had felt so real and left them breathless and panting and staring into each others' eyes. But after it was over, he reminded himself, she had turned away from him and had gone to Jesse, and he had turned away from her and gone to Santana, and everything was wrong. Except not everything, because she still hadn't gone through with sleeping with Jesse and she had said it was because of him. Or no, she had said she just told him she had slept with Jesse to make him, Finn, jealous, so he was there somewhere in the mix, at least. And even though he had gone through with sleeping with Santana, he had known that it didn't feel right because it wasn't with Rachel and he had decided not to tell her because, even though he'd done it to make her jealous, it turned out he didn't want to try to hurt her, so she was still there somewhere in the mix/ And, so, even when they were apart they were still together, and something, although he wasn't sure any more what and how much, of the feelings were real.

Or they always had been real. But now, for the first time he could remember, it felt like they weren't. Because Rachel really did seem to be moving on. Since Regionals, there had been no more apologies from her. No more coming up to ask him for advice on her songs. No more seeking him out with her gaze. No more moving on to another guy to try to make him jealous and how messed up was it that he almost found himself wishing she was trying to make him jealous, because then it would mean she still felt enough for him to want to make him jealous. She treated him like a teammate and a casual acquaintance. She was perfectly friendly in a group; she would start light, amusing conversations when he'd see her at his home on the occasions when she came over to hang out with Kurt, but that was it. As many times as she'd been over, and even with him and Kurt sharing a bathroom between their rooms, she'd never once—not ever—even glanced into his room in the new Hudson-Hummel abode. It struck him he had felt something was missing from the new room, and it wasn't his wallpaper with the cowboys who had watched over him since he was a tiny boy. It was something that had in a relatively short time become an essential ingredient of that old room. The new room felt strange and uncomfortable, even though it was so much more spacious, because it was Rachel-less; he didn't have one memory of Rachel being in there, or of talking to Rachel on the phone while sitting of lying down in there, or of logging on to his computer to Skype with her or IM with her or ask her for help with homework in there. Every time they saw each other she was perfectly nice; and she was professional, always about their singing; but that was it—there was nothing more. So maybe the feelings really were gone, and a performance was all that remained.

It wasn't until everything changed that Finn realized how much he'd come to depend on the fact that no matter where he was or what he was doing, if Rachel was anywhere in eyesight he could depend absolutely on looking her way and seeing her looking back at him in return. What had made him kind of nervous when he first met her had become such a stable part of his world, holding and fixing him in place, that he wasn't even aware it was there until it was gone. But gone it was, now, and Finn figured it was unlikely that it would ever return.

As rehearsal came to a close, Finn watched Rachel talking animatedly to Mercedes and Kurt. He saw Puck and Lauren come up to them, Puck slinging his arm around Rachel for a brief moment and pulling her into a hug as Lauren said something that sounded like, "Good save, Berry." He watched Tina and Mike and Artie and Brittany pass by and flash smiles to the 3Ds, Artie and Brittany reaching up to give them all high fives. He watched Santana go by, turning her head to call, "Berry, I'll be by later this afternoon to drop off that thing we were talking about," and saw Sam saunter past, saying "See you later, little D." It wasn't until Quinn demanded, for the third time, that he run through their campaign schedule for the afternoon that he even became aware that he was doing it again—staring, attention completely focused, at Rachel.

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