A/N: This starts the first round of updates for all my stories that will be happening throughout the next week. The Faberry date will be next, so review if you want more.

Part 4

Rachel walked into the precinct and immediately spotted exactly who she was looking for. His dopey smile and awkward limbs, as he fumbled with some papers on his desk, were like flares in a starless sky. The ability to pick out the most susceptible with only a fleeting glance was unfortunately a skill Santana had spent countless hours painstakingly honing.

Growing up, they spent the majority of their time at the mall, since it was probably the safest place to be that didn't require payment to hang around. They never really bought anything—Santana's five-finger discount wasn't exactly the same—but they did watch a lot of other people purchase things.

Santana would take her into a store at random and make her tell her exactly what a customer was going to buy. They wouldn't leave the mall until she got a person in every store right, even the ones that went in wanting nothing at all. Rachel always hated doing it, still hated looking at a person and judging them based on their outward appearance to the world. People had been doing that to her all her life—so she knew exactly how it felt—but after a while Rachel learned that most of the time life was made up of a lot of things that she really didn't want to do.

The dopey guy's head flew up in her direction at the sound of her heels echoing around the room. His bright blue eyes tracked her arrival, as he quickly ran a hand through his short dark hair in an attempt to make himself a little more presentable.

Rachel was half-expecting him to whip out a mirror, when he sprang up from his chair—the ancient piece of wood threatening to crumble to pieces with a loud disgruntled groan—and stumbled uncoordinatedly toward her with the grace of a bull in a china shop. His exuberance was almost charming and it helped distract from the fact that his motor functions hadn't quite caught up to the giant size of his body just quite yet.

He was the only one in the bullpen at the moment—thankfully a guest spot on Law and Order back in the early days of her career afforded her with the correct terminology—but there were seven other empty desks paired off and facing each other throughout the room. Those big whiteboards on wheels were scattered around as well, almost one to every pair of desks and then a giant one was pasted against the far wall to keep track of open and closed cases.

It all seemed pretty mundane—personally she had expected more from the headquarters of her adversaries—and holy Barbra the slate coloured walls were just tragic. She couldn't help but wonder if Homicide Division had it better. A nice marigold yellow on the walls seemed completely plausible to brighten the days of people dealing with murder and death throughout the workweek. With insurance, robberies were almost essentially victimless crimes—petty thievery was too insulting to the craft to count—so if severity was how wall colour was determined by the NYPD, slate did seem kind of fitting on the brightness scale for Robbery Division.

"Hi, I'm Finn, Detective Finn…I mean, Detective Hudson," he stammered excitedly as he finally reached her with the same silly smile still plastered to his face, though it had turned a little sheepish in light of his greeting. "Can I help you with something?"

She looked up at him, giving him a shy smile and flipping her hair back, just like Brittany had told her during Santana's mandatory—by threat of death—seminar on seduction before she left. He almost seemed to teeter dangerously in response and Rachel had to quell her innate reaction to jump backward to save herself from being clobbered if he actually did go down.

Instead, she nodded, biting her lip slightly and battling her eyelashes. Rachel couldn't help wondering how Santana thought this could possibly work in between.

"I'm actually here to inquire about someone. Do you think you could assist me?"

If it was possible, Finn seemed even taller, as he straightened up and nodded eagerly to show her he was the man for the job. "Sure, just tell me who it is and I can totally help find them. It's too bad you weren't looking for me, 'cause I'd be easy to find because I'm right here."

Rachel wasn't exactly sure if he was joking with her or being completely serious. At any rate, it was sincere—the gleaming authenticity to his eyes was hard to argue with—so Rachel responded to that.

She reached out, making sure to touch his forearm to initiate the casual contact she'd learned in the tutorial, and said, "Yes, that is unfortunate but if I ever return, I'll know exactly where to find you."

Finn smiled cheerily in response with this glazed over look that let Rachel know he didn't understand the majority of what she said. He nodded enthusiastically anyway though and the vain, attention seeking fraction of herself couldn't help but find his eagerness to please her attractive. In another life, Rachel could definitely see herself wanting him desperately.

"Yeah, for sure," Finn exclaimed before quickly looked around and settling his eyes back on her. "Um…do you want to sit down or…oh who was it you were looking for? I can't remember if you told me or not."

She nodded slightly and followed Finn back toward his desk. She was still a few steps behind him—thanks to his abnormally long legs—so he was able to produce another battered chair from somewhere previously unknown and set it beside his desk before she arrived. Finn waved his giant arms towards it prior to sitting down in his own chair with a loud thump. The chair furiously protested and Rachel was sure to sit daintily on hers, just in case.

He was looking at her, waiting eagerly for her to speak, and Rachel smiled, surprisingly without much thought. She knew it was that part of her that wanted the steadfast adoration he was offering, but the fact still remained that liking him made this a lot more difficult than she had anticipated. Nevertheless, she was Rachel Berry and there was no way she was going to back down, especially not during one of Santana's plans.

"Quinn Fabray, I suppose Detective Fabray if you wanted to be formal, which I'm hoping won't be the case soon enough," Rachel rambled and when she noticed the disappointed look on his face, she acted like she was surprised that she saw it there. "Is something wrong? Can you not locate her? I think I'm early—"

"No, I mean, yes I can find her, nothing's wrong," he sighed with a small shake of his head. "I must've messed up the messages again, sorry. Her and her partner are questioning a suspect. I didn't think she had the night off tonight."

Rachel smiled, nodding absently. She, of course, already knew where Quinn was. The blonde had told her during their call to explain how busy she really was. Arriving early had all been about looking for a guy like Finn, and unfortunately, it would never quite be for the reasons he wanted.

"She doesn't," informed Rachel with almost an amused twinge to her lips, "but I convinced her to allow me to accompany her to dinner on her break."

Finn glanced over to a desk across the room nearest to the whiteboard on the wall—Rachel imagined that it was Quinn's—before looking back at her with another giant smile.

"She works a lot," he admitted with a slight nod. "Hopefully she didn't forget about your dinner, she gets distracted by work a lot too. They're on this big case, so she might've, but if she did, don't worry, I can go with you."

Rachel looked at him, completely floored by his lack of tact. That small part of her that wanted him, briefly acknowledged that his ignorance would get more annoying than she might be able to handle after a while. Everything else was trying not to take the unintentional bait he had provided but she couldn't help herself. She was curious by nature and even the threat of Santana soaking all her shoes in beef broth for deviating from the plan was slowly losing against Rachel's need to know everything.

And then, finally the dam just broke. Rachel leaned in conspiringly; biting her lip, almost like she was sure Santana would pop out from underneath a desk with a soup can in one hand and one of Rachel's most prized Jimmy Choos in the other.

"Case? She never mentioned that. Of course, I probably wouldn't be able to comprehend the majority of it, so I suppose that might be why she felt it necessary to forgo discussing it. Maybe you could try to explain it to me though. I have, after all, taken countless roles as characters in law enforcement," she said quickly in a hushed whisper for dramatic effect.

Finn looked genuinely confused, almost like he didn't realize the implication of his previous words. Rachel waited impatiently, as she watched him replay his statement in his head more than once, until finally a light came on.

He smiled brightly, almost excited at the prospect of sharing a secret that could impress and maybe win him the girl in return. Rachel knew then that Santana was going to kill her if she ever found out—this was so far off the reservation of the plan it wasn't even laughable—but she hoped Santana would be a bit more forgiving if she had information about Quinn's case against them to share in return.

"It's a robbery crew, two of them, maybe three. Q's been on it off the record for a while until Capt'n gave her the case last week. She found a suspect or something; I'm not sure. She doesn't really talk to me much, only Puck, sometimes," Finn explained with a slight tilt of his head. "I'm working on a case about cab robberies. I can tell you more about that, if you want?"

Rachel tried not to show how distressing the news was, especially now that she had decided to invest more in this than a game of cops and robbers. She was genuinely interested in pursuing Quinn. There was just something about her that drew Rachel in, even in the current reality that the blonde was working towards arresting her and coming closer than most ever had.

Their brief first meeting—in the midst of Santana's snarky comments and Puck's creepy leering—when almost everything they both said to each other were lies, she had felt something. Rachel had thought Quinn did too but Finn was doing a good job at making her think otherwise. Still, she couldn't help but hope he was wrong.

"Uh, no, that won't be necessary. It sounds like Quinn's good at her job," Rachel offered with a small smile because if anything she was sure of that.

Finn's whole face seemed to fall when he realized his plan to amaze had somehow gone awry. He shrugged, trying to look nonchalant, though his narrowed eyes just made him look bitter. "She's okay, I guess, but I think I could totally be better. I could, you know, show you, if you want, like dinner or something?"

Rachel raised her eyebrows in surprise because she hadn't actually expected him to come out and ask her. Unfortunately, this was the moment that Santana had made her repeat ten times, so it would almost make her feel invested in breaking his heart. It wasn't really working but she needed to do it before Quinn appeared to take her out. Despite everything, all of her still wanted to give the blonde a chance and that small part that was attracted to Finn had no way to compete.

"Finn," she started, letting his name and her aggravated tone fall between them, "I can't imagine why you'd ask me such a thing, when I'm clearly here for a date with one of your colleagues. It's completely inappropriate and I tried to be the bigger person and ignore your previous blatant disregard for gentlemanly conduct but I cannot any longer. I'll put it as plainly as I possibly can: please stop with your advances, I'm not interested."

His mouth opened and shut like a fish out of water and Rachel tried her best not to flinch at the wounded look he was giving her. She couldn't even blame Santana because Rachel was the one that picked Quinn over Finn. Sure at the time, Finn was just a faceless employee of the NYPD, but it was him all the same.

"Rachel?" Quinn's voice said from behind her and Rachel was glad for any excuse to get away from the dejected looks of Finn Hudson. Of course, the reason being Quinn was definitely a lot nicer. "You're early. I just need to change—"

"No," Rachel exclaimed, jumping from her seat beside Finn and walking towards Quinn, who was still standing shocked in the mouth of the hallway she had appeared from. The tiny brunette couldn't imagine why Quinn wanted to change, when the blonde's charcoal slacks looked like they were painted on and her silky black blouse made Rachel yearn to touch to feel the warm skin underneath. "You look absolutely stunning and I already feel guilty enough for luring you away from you're work. I fear that anymore of your time spent on me could ultimately tip my karmic scale unfavorably in the light of such gluttonous greed."

Quinn smiled, clearly amused by the ramble before Puck barged in from behind them, seemingly purposely knocking the blonde aside into Rachel to get through to his desk. Rachel swiftly nodded, when Quinn looked at her to see if she was okay, and then hazel eyes zeroed in on the aggravated guy shuffling around at his desk.

"Jeez, watch where you're going, you dumbass," the blonde growled and Puck just flipped her the bird in response.

"Whatever, Fabray," he scoffed, crossing his arms defiantly. "Have fun on your date."

Quinn rolled her eyes and quickly grabbed Rachel's hand to tug her away from the bullpen, whispering an apology for Puck's actions on the way out. The tiny brunette didn't mind the commotion, much less blamed the blonde for any of it, she was just more confused than anything. Looking back briefly, Finn's hurt looks weren't all that surprising, but Puck's angry glare definitely was. Rachel was sure she hadn't done anything to warrant such a look in the brief time he'd been at her apartment, but her personality was a lot to take in. Adolescence had taught her that.

While Quinn was hailing a cab, Rachel texted Santana and then quickly silenced her phone. Her part of the plan was done and she wanted to enjoy her time with Quinn while she could, just incase it turned into another area of her life that was all for show.