After rehearsal, Rachel went off to the Lima Bean for coffee with Kurt and Blaine. As Finn made his way out of the building, he was called back by Mr. Schue.

"Finn, do you have a few minutes? I'd like to talk, if you have some time."

"Ah, okay, sure. I've got an hour before my shift at the tire shop. But I still have to eat."

"I know better than to get between you and food. Come on, we can talk in my office."

Finn nodded and followed his teacher down the hall and into his office to sit down in front of the desk. They looked uncomfortably at each other for a few moments.

Mr. Schue cleared his throat. "Okay, I'm just going to come right out with it. Finn, what are you doing?"

Sitting here, Finn thought. Yeah, I know. "Marrying the person I want to spend the rest of my life with."

"I know you love Rachel, but..." Mr. Schue hesitated.

"Everyone says that. 'I know you love Rachel, but.' Or to her, 'I know you love Finn, but.' But what? But we can't? We can and we're going to."

"Ever think that 'everyone' may be right?"

"They never have been before." Finn shrugged. "And everyone else gets to go on with their own lives, so why do they get to tell us what we should do with ours?"

"They're your family. And they love you."

"Yeah." Finn exhaled. "Too bad that doesn't go as far as wanting to know how I feel about my own life."

"What do you mean?"

"I always get things sprung on me. Done deals. When Mom and Burt decided that she and I were going to move in with Burt and Kurt – I was the last to know, Kurt was already redecorating, and they didn't even really ask me what I thought about it. Yeah they got better about telling us together when they got engaged, and right away, so that's something I guess. But then there's that all that stuff about my dad, and Burt's been planning on me looking after the tire shop while he's in DC, and... I don't know. It just seems like everyone in my life, except for Rachel, just tells me what my life's supposed to be like without even asking me. Quinn was like that too, was she ever."

"Well... do you know what you want to do with your life?"

"It's still my decision. Just because I haven't made it yet doesn't mean they get to make it for me." Finn snorted. "You know, everyone says I'm bad with change, and yeah they're kind of right. But change is bad with me, it always gets thrown at me. Maybe if I could actually see it coming instead of getting blindsided by it I'd deal with it better. I'd have a chance to."

"I think you're better with change than you know – you've dealt with a lot over the last few years, and you always step up when you're needed, more than anyone. But what you're doing is about the most sudden change you can have."

"It's different when it's my idea and my decision. Our decision, mine and Rachel's."

"Your ideas can be rather unusual, Finn."

"Doesn't make them wrong. You're always the one who says we need to be more creative."

"This isn't a question of creativity. You can't really be ready for a big commitment like that."

"We're already committed, Mr. Schue. I don't want to live without her, and she's the same about me. So we make that official."

"You're making it sound awfully simple." Mr. Schue shook his head.

"Isn't it? I know Rachel's complicated, but loving her isn't."

"Look, you grew up really fast two years ago, with all that mess about Quinn and the baby. Are you sure you're not doing more of the same now?"

Finn thought for a moment. "Okay, yes, when I thought Quinn was having my baby and she moved in with us I had to deal with a lot. But if I've grown up fast then I have, I tried going back to being a kid last year and it didn't work. I wasn't that guy any more, and I'm glad I'm not. Rachel's a serious person and I'm serious about her." Finn swallowed. "Yes, a lot of things are going to be hard. But us knowing we want to be together – that isn't one of them."

Mr. Schue frowned. "It takes a whole lot more than just wanting to be together, Finn. Look at me, I married my high school sweetheart and it was a disaster."

"I'm not saying everyone should. But we're not like you were." Finn frowned. "Excuse me for saying so, and I didn't know your wife much, just from when I worked for her and she did help me out a lot with that, but I did kind of get the idea that she was a lot more like Quinn than like Rachel, mapping your life out for you instead of with you. And you waited a few years after high school to get married and it still didn't change anything."

"I guess not. Even with all our history, and my career set up, it turned out that I wasn't who she wanted me to be."

"I'm sure Rachel would never want me to become an accountant. Unless I really wanted to and she thought it would make me happy."

Mr. Schue laughed ruefully. "No. Though you never know what needing money will turn people into."

"Sure, Rachel's used to having money, and she's pretty spoiled when it comes to that. But she knows I've never had much and doesn't care. And she's driven, she really wants a big career herself. I'd still want to be able to provide for her, though. When we have a family."

"You certainly can't now."

"No. But – no." Finn thought for a moment. "We're not planning to change all that up, though. It's not supposed to be all that different than if we don't get married, just we'll also be committed to each other. Officially."

Mr. Schue was very skeptical. "Do you really think your parents are going to let you do that? They can make things very difficult for you if they just kick you out on your own."

"So they just decide to punish us because we're not doing what they want? Because that doesn't sound like they would be the mature ones in this."

"People can react very badly to change, Finn. It's not just you. Much worse than you, actually. And whatever they do, you'll have to deal with it."

"Well right now they say they're behind us. And my mom let Quinn move in when she needed help, at least until we found out the truth about the baby, so she wouldn't completely bail on us."

"They say they're behind you," Mr. Schue responded, stressing the key word.

"Yeah, well..." Finn exhaled. "You're right, we don't know what they're going to do. But we can't not live our lives because we're afraid of that."

"I just don't see how you think this is the right time, that you're remotely prepared. You have so much of your life ahead of you."

"A life I want to spend with Rachel," Finn insisted. "Is it ever really 'the right time'? Does it really matter when love finds you? You were married when you met Ms. Pillsbury, you can't tell me that was 'the right time'."

"No. Of course I was having trouble with my marriage, but -" Mr. Schue looked chastened. "No." He smiled thoughtfully at Finn. "How is it that you see right through things like that?"

Finn shrugged. "Rachel says I should always say what does and doesn't make sense to me because sometimes things really are wrong but I'm the only one who can see that. Because I think about them differently, or something. Less complicated."

"So speaks a woman who knows the man she loves."

Finn smiled. "Yeah. She really gets me, understands me, you know? More than I do myself. It used to scare me, like she could see inside my head, but it's good." He swallowed. "Look, we want to be together, and we know this is right for us. This will be the foundation for everything else. I mean, you see how we are together. More than any other teacher, because we can really be ourselves in the choir room. Do you really think we're just like other dating teenagers?"

"Honestly? Sometimes you seem like a couple of starry-eyed kids blown away by your first real love. And sometimes you seem like an old couple that's been married for forty years, finishing each others' sentences and still unable to keep your hands off each other. But even if you are some sort of exception, and I'm not saying you are, as an educator I am worried about the example it's setting. For other students, they'll see the hearts and flowers but won't know what it took to get you there. And it took a lot."

"We can't worry about that, Mr. Schue. Yeah I want to be a good example, but we have to live our own lives. And it's not like Rachel and I are a couple that people try to follow, most of McKinley doesn't get what we even see in each other, so won't it just be yet another weird thing that those losers in Glee Club did?"

Mr. Schue laughed briefly. "Maybe. But one thing, though, Finn – where are you going to live? And how?"

"Now that we don't know, not for right away," Finn admitted. "Her dads say they're being supportive of the whole thing, us getting married, so we're going to take it from there."

"They're not necessarily that good at following through – this is the third year of Rachel in Glee Club and they've yet to show up to a performance. Or her star turn in West Side Story."

"Yeah, I know, for two men who love her so much they sure don't seem to be there for her, they're so busy," Finn said. "Still. We don't need them to be there, we just need them to not get in our way. And not punish Rachel for deciding it's time to live her own life, so we can be there for each other."

"Is it time? Do you even know what your lives are?" Mr. Schue shook his head. "I mean, I understand where you're coming from and your commitment to Rachel, but it still seems like you're trying to run before you can walk. You're still in high school. And I know how torn up you were about your dad, so I can't help but think that this is coming from a very confused place."

"Rachel's the clearest thing there is. Just – when I'm with her, the world is... bright."

Mr. Schue stared at Finn. "Do you realize you just quoted from Funny Girl?"

"What? No."

"Yes, you did." He laughed. "Come on, Rachel must've made you watch it with her, it's her favorite. And that's a line from her favorite song, the last one."

"Sure, we watch it a lot, well she watches it and I watch her watching it. And a lot of the time we fall asleep on the couch before it's over, she has it memorized anyway." Finn snorted. "Guess there's something to sleep learning, maybe nodding off in class wasn't as bad as I thought."

"You're not embarrassed," Mr. Schue commented.

"Should I be? I meant what I said."

His teacher eyed him speculatively. "She means it too, you know," he said. "About you. She sang that song last year when we were auditioning potential soloists for Nationals. It was just before Jean's funeral and you were still with Quinn. Jesse asked her if she was singing it thinking about anybody, wanting it to be himself of course. She said no. But by the end of it the rest of us knew it was about you."

"Wow." Finn breathed. "I didn't know about that, back then I was afraid she was getting back with Jesse."

"Not a chance. Especially not after that song – Rachel's performances are always moving, but that was..." Mr. Schue shook his head. "A whole new level."

Finn smiled softly. "And still you wonder why we're holding on to that as hard as we can."

"Maybe not," Mr. Schue replied thoughtfully. He shrugged. "I do know the two of you have really grown together. You're unconsciously quoting from Funny Girl, she's planning a solo from a metal band – in some ways you're still the Classic Rock jock and Broadway diva, and in other ways you're not, you're better."

"Better together, always. That's love and that's us."

"Yes," Mr. Schue admitted. "But living your lives together, that's not like trading musical tastes. Have you even thought about what sort of lives you want? A family?"

"Sure, we've talked about that. And yes we want a family, if we can."

"Kids?"

"Two or three. Probably in seven to ten years, depending on what works for Rachel, she wants to be able to take a good career break. Certainly two, each of us grew up as an only child and wished we hadn't. It's great having Kurt for a brother now, so we want that for ours. And Rachel wants the kids to go to Temple, which is fine, though we'll still have Christmas." He looked over at his teacher. "Anything else?"

"Diet. She's vegan, you're a carnivore."

"Start with both, then let them choose if they want."

"You've really thought this through," Mr. Schue said slowly, a little stunned.

"Yes."

"What if you can't have kids? That's one of the things that caused a problem for me."

"Then we deal with it together. You can't plan for everything, and thinking that you can just makes it feel worse when you find out you can't."

"Hmph." Mr. Schue looked puzzled. "How do you figure that?"

"'Cause you think things are going to be easy and they're not. Makes the hard things harder because you don't expect to have to deal with them."

His teacher smiled. "That's an interesting insight."

Finn shrugged. "Been there a lot. And I know who I need with me the next time the world throws crap my way, and she'll be there, we'll be there for each other."

"But should you be doing this just to hold onto each other? Getting married is a big step and very hard to undo if things fall apart. Trust me."

"I don't think it's just anything, Mr. Schue," Finn replied. "Look, the way we feel about each other, if things fall apart it's going to be devastating anyway. Rachel's everything to me. And she's told me she already feels committed. So we hold on tighter, it should make it harder for things to fall apart." Finn looked sincerely at his teacher. "We're all in, Mr. Schue. We already were. There's no going back, so we go forward."

"Alea iacta est."

"Um, what? Did we learn that in Spanish class?"

Mr. Schue laughed. "Actually it's Latin." He caught Finn's puzzled look. "It means 'the die is cast'. I was reading up on Julius Caesar, preparing something for History class on the Ides of March when he died, and that's what he said when he brought his legions across the river into Roman territory. Invaded, basically, since the army was supposed to stay outside the homeland."

"'The die is cast'," Finn quoted back. "Sounds cool. So what does it mean?"

"That there's no going back."

"That's what I said."

"Yeah." Mr. Schue looked sheepish. "I guess I was mostly talking to myself."

"So I'm like Caesar invading Rome?" Finn looked highly skeptical.

"The allusion's falling apart at that point. Though he was successful, the ordinary people loved him and he made a lot of changes to how things were run."

Finn chuckled. "And he was assassinated. No thanks."

"Yeah." But Mr. Schue sobered and looked over at Finn. "Just be careful, Finn. This is big-deal adult stuff you're doing."

"I know it's big. It's the most important thing. Thanks, though." Finn got up to leave.

Mr. Schue nodded in acknowledgement. "And lay off of Rachel's neck before Regionals, okay? We need her to look her best, and that makeup isn't fooling anyone."

Finn chuckled. "Yeah, I know. It should fade by then."