2. Citadel

Song choice: Citadel
Pairing: RachelxFinn
Genre: Romance
Rating: T
NOTE: I have nothing against vampire books (in fact, one of my favourite books is Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side. I highly reccomend it) please don't leave a comment screaming at me for berating a nameless novel.

There were plenty of reasons why she didn't have a boyfriend- she was unpopular, scoffed at by those of higher social standing. She was socially inept and thought too much of herself. Her rigorous Myspace schedule kept her too busy for such trivial things as 'love' and 'romance'. Her focus was on being an all-around overachiever, something she couldn't do while being bogged down by emotional problems and stupid boys.

Yes, those were all acceptable reasons for why Rachel Berry didn't have a boyfriend, and whenever she wondered why she had no significant other, she would remind herself of these things, and they would usually cheer her up. But the reasons she'd thought up were only excuses- blatant lies that she used to fool herself so that she could sleep easier at night.

The truth was that seeing couples in the hallways at school, attached by the hands, lips, or some other appendage, it hurt. Rachel hated watching them, yet she couldn't tear her bitter eyes away. She'd only ever had one experience with 'love' and it had ended negatively. So negatively, in fact, that she'd badgered her fathers to withdraw her from the expensive private school she was attending, and planted herself in the middle of a public school where she knew no one. No faces were familiar, no voices rang a bell, no names made her heart ache.

The thing about love, Rachel had learned, was that it wasn't always the idyllic, fairytale-esque emotion portrayed in movies and that God awful vampire book that her cousin just couldn't stop yammering about. No, love was a double-edged, hateful sword ready to stab its wielder in the heart, wounding her so deeply that no feeling akin to affection was ever able to pierce it again.

Dramatic? Maybe so. But the knowledge that love was simply an ugly chemical creation that messed with the brain and the sex organs was comforting. That meant that the chemicals would wear off and someday, sooner or later, everyone would be alone, just like Rachel.

Or at least, that's what she told herself until she bumped into Finn Hudson. Wouldn't you know it? Her first week of sophomore year she came down with a nasty cold- a very undignified cold. Snot and boogers blasting everywhere, a hacking cough that could challenge a chain smoker's. It was so notglamorous. Anyway, the point of the story is that after she was excused to go to the office and call home, she went out into the hallway, started down the stairwell to the main office (her biology classroom was right next to the stairs) and, in a bout of very uncontrolled, unRachel-like behaviour, she lost her balance and fell.

Her head spun, the air around her head whistled, and she managed to sneeze mid-fall.

"Whoa! Are you okay?" Suddenly she was braced against something solid, something hard. When she opened her eyes, they saw a clean black t-shirt reading: SPORTS ARE LIFE in big white letters. Her eyes followed the shirt upwards, a nice neck, a fucking gorgeous face-

Whoa, what?!

Rachel blinked, stunned. Her pale cheeks were suddenly pink, but she easily dismissed that, rationalizing it as the fault of the mild fever she had.

"Um…" the nameless hottie's- erm, guy's- eyebrows went up. "Are you okay?" He frowned, his perfect pink lips- gahh! What was with her?- contorting into a frown.

"Uh, yeah, yeah." Rachel confirmed, only just then realizing that one of his toned arms was around her waist and the other rested firmly on her shoulder. It was like they were dancing, only not, because he was holding her up, as she was half-bent over from the impact of her fall.

"I'm fine…" please don't sneeze, please don't sneeze, please don't sneeze. "ACHOO!" And there it was. She'd just let loose a catastrophic explosion of mucus, fresh from her nose, straight onto his shirt- whoever he was.

"Ah!" His arms dropped from their securing positions, luckily, she steadied herself in time.

"Oh my God." She clapped both hands over her (probably contagious) mouth, eyes wide in horror. "I'm so sorry." She whimpered between her fingers. Great, she felt like crap, she looked like crap, there was snot spewing out of her nose like lava spewing a volcano, and he was probably so disgusted that he'd never want to see her again. God, when she was famous and on top of the world, he'd probably tell the press about this debilitating moment. Rachel could just see it now, in one of those horrible mental flash-forwards:

"Oh yeah, that Rachel Berry? She sneezed all over me in high school, she was a really gross loser kid back then. Probably still is now. She was so unhygienic, she does notdeserve that Grammy… give it to the Miley chick instead."

Oh, God, the shame! The horror!

"Are… you okay?" He asked again, seeing as how her eyes were glassy and moist.

"Uh, I… I'm fine." She repeated. Snot was leaking unattractively from her nose. She was a wreck. She began walking toward her original destination, the office- maybe those four inch heels weren't such a smart idea- when a voice called her back.

"Are you sure you're okay? Um…"

She glanced back at him over her shoulder, he was obviously filing through his brain, trying to recall her identity.

"My name's Allison!" She blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "Allison Cameron!" So that was the name of her favourite character on House M.D, but it wasn't likely that this guy would ever know.

"Right. Allison. Do you need some help getting to the office?" A flutter began in her chest, light, quick, and completely unrelated to her illness.

"No!" She began hopping away, heels be damned. "I can get there myself, thank you."

"Are you s-"

"Yes! Thanks!" She rounded the corner and checked over her shoulder. Thankfully, Mystery Guy had not followed her. She sighed in relief, hobbling the rest of the way to the office. She hoped he wasn't going to get sick.

Mystery Guy, as it turned out, had a name; Finn Hudson. He was an amazing athlete, good-looking, and popular among his fellow peers. Not the sharpest crayon in the box, but Rachel often wondered if he was really as dumb as he let his friends believe, or if he was intentionally dense for the sake of tying together his "popular jock" box with a nice ribbon on top. She'd seen him be intelligent. She knew he wasn't maximizing his "smart" potential and that bothered her. Call her a crazy woman but she hated to see anything wasted, especially if it could be used to benefit a person.

Not that she'd ever tell Finn she thought he was letting his brain rot for the shallow purpose of impressing his dunce friends; no, she'd never tell him anything. She wasn't allowed near him. She was unpopular, which, at William McKinley high school, was equal to her being the carrier of the bubonic plague or something. Wouldn't want to infect any of those who had social standing with the Black Death.

And she was fine with that. Being cast out on the fringes, watching Finn being an obnoxious bastard, so unlike the sweet boy who'd saved her that one day, it just meant that she could isolate her heart. Protect it from unnecessary hurt and pain. And no, she wouldn't candidly admit that observing Finn portraying himself as an obnoxious bastard hurt her. She couldn't.

Life went on.

Finn got himself a girlfriend, Quinn (oh look, their names rhymed! How absolutely gag-worthy), Rachel could pretend she was unaffected all she wanted, but that didn't stop the sleepless nights or the sobbing, unheard, into her star-shaped throw pillow.

When she started writing Finn's name in the margins of her notebook during class, she knew she had to do something drastic to get him out of her mind. Something like… joining the glee club.

Well, why not? She was already socially fucked. Might as well transform into a full freak, give into the rightness of doing what she loved (singing). High school was almost over anyway. No need to have regrets.

And she'd learned that one of the strategies for having no regrets was to not get hurt. It was simple, yet genius; it was how she operated, numbing herself against pain and trying to embrace what little good she could find in her day-to-day life.

But fate had other plans for the aspiring starlet, and fate, as it turned out, had a correlated plan for Finn Hudson. Rachel never knew the exact reason that Finn joined the glee club, (ie, Mr. Schuester's uncanny and unexpected ability to manipulate completely oblivious and trusting students) but when she saw him stroll into the auditorium, head down, misery plain on his handsome face, she could swear that she was having a heart attack. But… the good kind of heart attack. Was there really such a thing?

Apparently so.

Rachel tried to fool herself into thinking that Finn being part of the glee club wouldn't change anything in her life. He sang lead, she sang lead, it meant nothing. Except that whenever he was around, she couldn't stop staring at him, and when any kind of opportunity to talk to him presented itself, she snatched it up and chattered away about the most irrelevant, inconsequential things. Hey, just because she'd banned herself from falling in love, didn't mean she couldn't flirt harmlessly, right? Except that, while Rachel was a talented singer and dancer, she had absolutely no idea of how to flirt. This translated into ninety five percent of her conversations with Finn Hudson being nothing more than acute, embarrassing verbal diarrhoea. She didn't talk about normal things like the mall or what movie was currently playing that she wanted to see- she didn't know why, she just couldn't. Whenever Finn was around, she was reduced to a babbling baby, and the only thing she could think of to do was talk about glee while feeding herself comments to help keep her ego afloat. Afterwards, he'd just stare at her weirdly and walk away… and she was left feeling like the dumbest person on the face of the planet.

But it didn't matter, she assured herself, because any romance with Finn would've been a wasted venture. High school love didn't last, love was stupid anyway, and she had other things- like her future career- to consider. But just because love didn't last, it was stupid, and she shouldn't be thinking about it, didn't mean that she was immune to it. Every time Finn was within eyeshot, her heart would beat faster, her face would flush, and she'd feel inexplicably giddy.

Damn it all to hell.

In the springtime, Mr. Schu told them they'd be featured in a local competition for a cash prize. It was a little immoral and against the school ethics code, he said, but the glee club's financing had to come from somewhere. Only this time, instead of Finn and Rachel being the leads, as they usually were, Artie and Tina were given the chance to shine as the all-star duo. Rachel pouted for a little bit (fine, two weeks. Almost half of the allotted rehearsal time) but when she realized that she couldn't get her way, she grudgingly accepted being in the back. Standing so close to Finn that she could smell his cologne and feel the heat radiating from his body. Well, maybe being backup wouldn't be such a tragedy. This time.

In spite of her "demotion", Rachel was keen to win the competition. She pushed the others to push themselves, forced them to put in a couple more hours everyday of singing and dancing (in Artie's case, wheeling). She wanted and expected nothing but the best from the group. She was always early to rehearsal, she liked to sit in the seats in the middle of the auditorium and visualize herself up on the stage, singing and dancing, doing great things. She was just in the middle of a fantastic daydream when someone tapped her on the shoulder, calling her attention. She opened her soft eyes to find Finn, standing over her. Her stomach gave a squeeze that was both painful and euphoric. She closed her eyes again as he plunked down next to her.

"Tired?" He asked, by way of conversation starter.

"No." She said, "just resting."

"I broke up with Quinn."

"Oh?" She was smiling. Why are you smiling? Stop smiling! Then he'll know you like him.

"Yeah. I… kind of like someone else."

The smile on her face instantly faded, her eyes popped open, a feeling of horror making everything clench up so badly.

"Don't you want to know who it is?"

"Sure." She lied. "Who?"

"Allison Cameron." There was laughter in his voice.

Rachel pushed herself forward in the seat, tipping her head at him. "I don't think I know her." Best to accept defeat with dignity and grace.

"You wouldn't. She's a character from House, M.D."

"You mean you have a crush on the actress who plays her?" Rachel corrected.

"No. See, I ran into Allison last year… she was really sick. Sneezed all over me."

"Oh…" so he'd figured her out.

"Yeah. Turns out when she's not getting sick all over someone, she's actually pretty cool. In a weird, obsessive, bossy, quirky, beautiful sort of way."

"Oh…" did he just call her beautiful? Holy shit, he did! She couldn't stop her body from reacting, the flush dominated her skin, the butterflies danced in her stomach, there was no way she could've looked beautiful right then.

"I really like her."

"Oh!" She felt two things at once: euphoria and horror. Euphoria because she'd dreamed of him saying those words and horror because he'd actually said them. Now that he'd taken that step, someone was liable to get hurt. "I, uh, I don't think-"

He frowned. "It's apparent that she doesn't like me."

"No, I just-" Rachel bit her lip, cursing herself for being such a damaged freak. She couldn't even confess her feelings properly. "It's… we're not such a great idea?"

"Huh?"

The auditorium door opened and other voices floated through. Rachel swallowed any reply she'd been about to utter and stood quickly, walking toward the stage.

"Rachel-" Finn started. She marched on as if she hadn't heard him, her body singing the wedding march, her brain humming the funeral march. Life just wasn't fair.

Four hours passed. Two hundred and forty minutes of thinking of nothing but Finn, even after she did her homework, posted a Myspace video for the hell of it, and helped her father Tim make dinner. While she was silently shoving penne pasta casserole into her mouth, her father Joseph noticed that she was unusually quiet. Joseph was the emotional, sensitive, motherly one. Tim wasn't as in-tune with his daughter's feelings as her other father.

"Rachel, honey? Are you okay?" Joseph was a marriage and family counsellor. He was big on talking.

"Not really." She sighed in reply. "I don't want to talk about it, Dads."

Joseph and Tim exchanged a worried look while she pushed the remaining food around on her plate. Ten minutes later, she felt as if she were ready to cry.

"Can I be excused?"

"Sure, Rach. Don't worry about cleanup, we'll take care of it." Rachel nodded in thanks to her parents and sprinted up the stairs, bursting into the bathroom. Maybe a long, hot shower was exactly what she needed to soothe herself on such a miserable occasion. She turned the water on full blast, coupled with her shower radio (a gift from her doting Nana last Christmas) it was almost impossible to hear herself think. Almost.

When she finally stepped out of the shower, instead of feeling relieved, she felt drained. The hot water had done a good job of fogging up the bathroom; Rachel felt a little light-headed. She grabbed a towel from the rack before her bleary eyes caught sight of a pair of fresh pyjamas- pink, gingham, smelling comfortingly like lavender detergent. Rachel smiled, one of her dads must've put them there for her. She slipped on her nightclothes and walked to the mirror, wiping away the heavy condensation with her fingers, grabbing her hairbrush and blow-dryer.

Rachel Berry, you're going to be a star. You're also an idiot.Her soundless reflection was mocking her as she combed out her damp hair. When she finally crashed into her bed, in spite of her exhaustion, she was unable to get to sleep. Thoughts of Finn and her past experience with "love" infiltrated her brain. Finally, she threw aside the covers, turned on the lamp residing on her nightstand, and grabbed her gold ipod off the vanity dresser, where she'd placed it before her shower. It was late. The clock on her ipod showed that it was almost two in the morning- she'd be a walking zombie in class if she didn't fall asleep soon.

Rachel climbed back into bed, hit 'Shuffle Songs', jammed the headphones into her ears and tried to let the sweet sensations of familiar music overtake her.

And of course, the first song she heard was Don't Stop Believingby Journey. That was significant because it was the first song that she and Finn had ever sung, successfully, together. The tears started slowly at first, then picked up speed until she was shaking like an addict in need of a fix, she ripped the earbuds from their place and slammed her ipod (still playing) down onto the nightstand. She slipped out of bed, out of her room, down the hallway and down the stairs. There was a carton of strawberry ice cream stashed safe in the freezer, used specifically for moments of insomnia and distress such as this one. Halfway through scooping pink, creamy goodness into a bowl, the kitchen light snapped on and Joseph, in his robe and slippers, squinted at his teenaged daughter, who stared back at him with wide eyes.

"Strawberry ice cream?" He tilted his head thoughtfully, scratching his head. "You usually hate that stuff… unless you're upset."

She offered no coherent reply, jamming her spoon into her mouth and grunting around it- and her ice cream- instead.

Joseph went to the freezer and retrieved the carton Rachel had just put away, making up a bowl for himself. "So, kiddo, you wanna talk about it?" He suggested.

She swallowed heavily. "No."

"Oh, alright then." he pulled out the chair next to her and ate quietly, knowing that sooner or later, the dam would break and her feelings would pour out.

"It's just," she frowned. "there's this boy at school. I like him a lot."

"The boy from glee? Pim?"

"Finn, Daddy." Rachel rolled her eyes playfully. "Anyway, he told me he liked me today…"

"Uh oh." Joseph whistled, knowing how difficult and stubborn his little girl could be. "What did you say, Rach?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing." Rachel lifted her agonized eyes to his face. "I was too scared. I am scared. Daddy, I don't wanna get hurt."

"Oh, honey bunch." Joseph frowned and leaned forward, wrapping her in a hug. Rachel allowed her spoon to fall into the bowl with a clatter and hugged back, new tears springing to her eyes.

"I don't wanna get hurt." She whimpered. "I don't."

"It looks to me like you already are." Joseph said sagely, pulling back just enough to wipe her tears away.

"But, no! I'm protecting myself."

"From what?" Joseph asked. "You know, Rach, I have a client who recently got married again-"

"Ellen Burr?" Rachel sniffed. "Yeah, we were at her wedding."

"Right, well, I was trying to be discreet. Patient-doctor confidentiality." Joseph smiled sheepishly. "Anyway, this is Ellen's second marriage and her new husband is much different from her old one. He's more attentive to her needs and less self-absorbed."

"Good for Ellen."

"They're currently separated."

Rachel frowned. "Was that supposed to cheer me up? Because it didn't."

"They're separated because Ellen doesn't seem to realize that Husband Number One and Husband Number Two are different people. She blames Husband Two for Husband One's mistakes."

"But that doesn't make sense." Rachel puzzled. "Why would she think that?"

"Ellen's only trying to protect herself. She thinks that by avoiding Husband Number Two, protecting herself from confrontation, things will just work out on their own. She misses him terribly, and he misses her."

"Daddy." Rachel frowned sulkily. "Are you saying I'm a bitter divorced woman who can't come to terms with being shafted in the past?"

"I'm saying," Joseph chuckled. "That not every guy is the same. You have to kiss a lot of toads before you find the frog prince, and even if there's a lot of empty space between the time you find those toads and frogs, it doesn't mean you won't find the right person."

"I don't want to get hurt." Rachel said adamantly.

"How do you know he's going to hurt you? How do you know you're not hurting him?"

She paused to consider the questions. "I don't." She finally admitted. "But after the way I acted today, it's not likely he'll want to give a relationship a shot again."

"Feelings like that don't just go away overnight, honey bunch."

"Really?"

"Really. I know my stuff. That's why I get paid the big bucks." Joseph winked.

"Well well well, what've we here? A midnight feast?" Tim stood in the kitchen entryway, arms crossed, teasing smile on his face.

"Just some father-daughter bonding, dearest." Joseph replied. "You good to go, Rach?"

"Yeah, thanks Daddy." She spooned the last of the ice cream into her mouth and carried her plate to the dishwasher. "You really helped me out." She kissed Joseph on the cheek, leaving a sticky strawberry mark, and gave Tim a hug and a kiss on her way out as well.

As the young brunette ascended the stairs, she could hear Tim asking Joseph what had just happened. She smiled and tiptoed back to her room, snuggling down under the covers and closing her eyes. She wasn't afraid to fall anymore, not when she was sure that Finn would catch her (and if he didn't, for some ungodly reason, her fathers would be after him with a vengeance). Yes, Rachel decided, life was good. And she was starting to think of reasons for why she could have a boyfriend in high school.

What if I fall
What if I don't
What if I never make it home
What if I bleed
What if I break
And I find that I can't take
The city below the citadel
Holding my own hand?

Thank you for the feedback! In response to questions and comments, I would like to say that this is a series of oneshots with multiple pairings. I'm happy that you liked the first one (very happy, in fact, considering that I thought it was horrible) but it will not be made into a full-length story. In regards to this oneshot, well, it was a lot happier than I originally intended it to be. I'll probably post a second version with a not-so-happy ending. This has not been spell-checked, so I apologize for any errors you might find. Reviews inspire me -smiles-.