The repetition, the sheer numbing, mundane repetition of tasks in the tire shop was just what he needed: no decisions to be made, no comparisons, no judgments, no thinking of ways to make her happy, no responsibilities other than to the job at hand, no challenges, no wondering how he could be better for her, no striving to be better, no fretting about his dancing. And he could be alone. Burt and his mom were in DC most of the time, so he had the run of the place to himself. He told none of his friends, especially the ones in Glee Club, what he was doing or where he was. His life became a ritual, a kind of secular mass, living replaced by liturgy.

I'm going to rent myself a house
In the shade of the freeway
I'm going to pack my lunch in the morning
And go to work each day
And when the evening rolls around
I'll go on home and lay my body down
And when the morning light comes streaming in
I'll get up and do it again
Amen

He felt little shame anymore because benthic creatures like him had no further to sink. There was no need to look up; sunlight and nourishment filtered down to him from above, in just enough quantities for him to see and eke out a living. He felt no desire to rise above his station because there was no one to unrealistically remind him of what he once aspired to be, no one to get him to dare lift his dreams upward anymore. He hugged and embraced the sea floor like an ancient trilobite, armored from the creatures that lived gloriously above him.

It felt like freedom.

Occasionally, he would be reminded of who he used to be by the radio in the shop. It was always tuned to a classic rock station, and every now and then a song would trigger a memory of her, a memory of them, and for a few minutes he would forget who he was now, look up, and then realize how much she had changed, how sophisticated and chic she was compared to his wretched, inept bumpkinry, and he would cast his gaze down again where it belonged. He had forfeited the right to be proud for her anymore. Fortunately, he toiled in the far corner of the shop, and none of his fellow workers saw him weeping, tightening lug nuts and balancing tires as if the work were a communion.

Sometimes the memories tempted him to slide into a pathetic hubris, where he actually commended himself for ending it with Rachel, and freeing her to become the glorious creature that she was now. But even that raised him only a tiny bit up from the comfortable mud, and he found himself sinking back, when the truth, that he had not been noble at all, but instead simply didn't deserve to love her, finally sank in.

It felt like he was finally accepting the truth about himself.

For a brief time he actually felt content. The constant war between what he thought he wanted and for what he was capable seemed over. His life was, finally, in a kind of equilibrium; an equilibrium where he was at the absolute bottom, a state which required no energy to maintain. It was a state in which he had no dreams to be dashed, no aspirations in which to invest, no more disappointments to absorb. It was the state he deserved.

It felt like he was at peace.

There was one problem with all of this, however: he still loved her. It was one of those essential facts about him, woven into his very nature, almost down to the DNA. His love for Rachel could neither be buried, nor rationalized away. It mattered not that he never deserved her love in return. He would love her for the rest of his life, even if it meant dying alone, never having loved again. The honor of loving her was enough.

I want to know what became of the changes

We waited for love to bring

Were they only the fitful dreams

Of some greater awakening

The equilibrium he thought he had achieved did not last long. A curious property of the chemistry of love is the way it forces one to look up. No matter how content one is with the mud, love eventually catalyzes the aspirations upward, making it impossible for one to resist wanting to become better. Love builds a kind of spiritual buoyancy, requiring an enormous amount of active energy to suppress. Finn's love for Rachel slowly and quietly made it more and more difficult to remain where he was; the only way he could prevent wanting more from himself was to deny that love. Which was impossible. The result was a profound restlessness within him. He could no longer pretend to want to be the insular, emotional hermit he thought was his lot.

Are you there?

Say a prayer for the pretender

Who started out so young and strong

Only to surrender

It began with the glum realization that he had surrendered twice. The first time it was to the idea that both of them needed to reach their dreams on their own. That decision had placed both his life and Rachel's in free fall, but she continued upward due to her talent and drive while he fell away, like the shed skin of a lizard. Tragically, he surrendered again to a misplaced sense of inadequacy leading to where he was now, anonymously toiling in his stepfather's tire shop, almost exactly where most of his friends had predicted he'd end up.

She never did, he thought one night, trying to sleep. Why she had such faith in him seemed a mystery. Why couldn't she see him for what he was, the quintessential Lima Loser, as everyone else did, as he did? Alone in the house, windows open, he listened to the sweet sound of insects in the cooling autumn air. Somehow, his love for her had lifted him just enough from the mud to accept the idea that Rachel saw something in him which he simply couldn't see. He wondered what that might be, and how he might find out.

And, for the first time in months, he drifted easily into sleep.

A/N: Lyrics are from Jackson Browne's "The Pretender". And yes, dear readers, there is no such word as "bumpkinry". But there should be. Many thanks to those kind enough to review.