A/N: Okay, a little more rapid updating than I had planned, but oh well. Thanks for letting me know you're enjoying. REALLY let me know after this part because this is one of the parts I was excited about from the start. Thanks for all the encouragement! Just a little reminder, I know I changed the rating on this to M and what that implied. For now though, I'm just more comfortable having it that way due to language (which is about to get a lot worse) and just kind of adult content in general. If that's a disappointment and you were looking for something else, I sincerely apologize.

wood-u-like-2-no: thanks for the back and forth. It has been a lot of fun and you're now responsible for about a third of the plot that follows. Thanks for that and I hope this continues to live up to your adult expectations.

Paceismyhero: thanks for your handholding, as always. Even though I know you won't have time to read til tomorrow I hope it brightens your day.

The Fildos - umm... no. This isn't my haze fic. But will it keep you distracted for a bit longer?

Chapter Ten: As Long as You're Housebroken

Finn really, really didn't want to move out of the backseat of Josh and Katie's car—like ever. Because if he moved it meant he would have to go inside and he see Quinn. And there were not enough "really"s in the world to go before the amount he didn't want to do that.

Josh had drawn the short straw and been designated the DD for the night so he was the driver while Katie was snoring in the front seat.

"I pulled into this spot like two songs ago. Feel free to vacate whenever," Josh said, finally turning in his seat to look at Finn.

Finn groaned. "Can I just sleep in your backseat…for the rest of my life?"

"I'm gonna go with 'no'," Josh said. "C'mon. It can't be that bad. You just disappeared to some hotel with a random for, like, an hour and a half. I think the bro code covers me not telling Quinn. At least you came back."

The responding smirk was almost as heavy as the unentertained sigh before Finn retorted with the only comeback that had occurred to him out of all Josh said. "You've gotta be kidding me. And Rachel isn't a random."

"That just makes this worse. Stick with my version."

Finn shook his head and swiped his hand over his face tiredly. "Hey, can I ask you something on the down low?"

Josh looked over at Katie; the only way secrecy was possible was if she was out cold—which she was. "Shoot."

"Can I crash on your couch for a while?" Finn asked, his voice deadly calm and totally serious. "Not, like, we leave right now, but like I move in? Because me and Quinn need to have a conversation and I'm pretty sure I'll need somewhere else to live after that."

"Is everything okay?" Josh asked.

"No."

There was a long pause. Finn figured Josh was hoping he would elaborate. Finn wasn't planning on it.

"Do you need to talk about something? I can try to wake Katie up."

Finn gave a chuckle that was more like a breath. "No."

"Well, I think we even have a spot in the guest room. As long as you're housebroken."

For some reason, that quip made Finn laugh a little. "I think so," Finn said carefully. "I can't say the same for Katie after her puking incident in the bushes, though."

"At least I made it to the bushes," Katie half mumbled, half slurred. The two guys looked at each other in shock that she was awake before they busted out into laughter.

But then Finn remembered Rachel's face and Rachel's words and what he had to do and the laugh died before it really started. He reached for the door handle and popped it before he leaned over to grab his jacket and drumsticks off the seat. He tugged his jacket on quickly and shoved the sticks in his back pocket before he gave an open-palmed press to the air for a wave and turned to head inside.

As was to be expected, Quinn was long since in bed. The entire apartment was dark and still, other than the clock above the stove that glowed a faint green to light his way. He knew he would look like the world's biggest asshole if he woke her up now, but he knew he couldn't leave it even for the few hours until morning. It would eat through him by then and make everything about a thousand times worse. That was one thing he'd learned and he couldn't forget it now—he didn't have a flash temper, necessarily. He just put off dealing with things until they boiled over and then exploded. If he dealt with things as soon as they started, he didn't think he was that bad of a guy to be around.

His hands were open like he was miming something about a book and he pushed his nose into them, feeling a little comforted when the rough of his palms met the rough of his scruffy face. Even the comfort of that touch, the one he wanted to belong to someone else, couldn't get all the words and all the music out of his head. It was swirling around, all blended together and it really fucking hurt.

Can I start again with my faith shaken… before all the rest of it… giving up on you 'cause I can't go back and undo this.… the only way I would ever fix it somehow get it right… she told me, Finn and I accept the truth that sometimes life isn't fair… would get my heart broken… my best intentions keep making a mess of things… I didn't belong…

It wasn't until the light flipped on, flooding the space all around him with a hazy glow and filtering through the spaces in his fingers, that he realized he was crying and making a noise that was on the verge of screaming. When he pried his fingers away from his eyes, he saw Quinn standing before him, looking about two-thirds asleep and one-third totally confused. Her hair was down, tumbling over her shoulders in haphazard honey curls and waves, and she almost looked like that same fifteen year old girl who had broken his heart.

He wished he could go back to fifteen and feel like the whole situation was that simple.

"You do realize it's two-thirty in the morning and you're yelling?" She asked in a low voice. She was still squinting against the bright light.

Finn was breathing hard, still not sure if he could get actual words out. Looking at her, seeing her just made it worse. Like, a hundred thousand fucking times worse.

"You…you ruined everything," Finn said.

Quinn scowled and folded her arms against her chest. She flipped her head a little bit, letting a stray curl bounce back over her shoulder and out of the way. "Excuse me?"

"Tell me about a conversation you had with Rachel before she wrote that song way back in high school."

The flinch wasn't visible, exactly, but he saw her jaw set and her arms tighten across her chest. "Why don't you tell me why you're so upset first?"

"Oh, I will," he warned. "You go first."

"I gave her the wake up call she needed so she would leave," she said, stepping a little closer to him. "That's all."

"You didn't tell her that you and I would stay behind in Lima and start a family? You didn't tell her the only way she could get it right was to give up on me?"

"So what if I did? What difference does it make now?" She asked. "It's no less true than it was then." She tilted her head. "Except I was right."

Her superior, smug grin made him so mad he wanted to smack it right off her face. He could feel his fists balling up at his sides. "It's not what I wanted for my life. Did that matter to you at all?"

"What we want and what we end up with are not always the same thing," she said, her voice still level and deadly calm. "Let me tell exactly how this is going to play out, hmm?" She started moving, walking around him in a slow circle. "You and I are going to bed because we have to be in Lima at eleven tomorrow for a family brunch. Family. I'm part of your family whether you choose to acknowledge it with an engagement or a marriage or not.

"When we wake up in the morning, you'll apologize because this silly world where Rachel tells you something that happened ten years ago and you then attack me for it is not your reality. This is not okay, Finn."

"It's not okay that I'm thinking for myself?" He bursted out. "So it's okay for you to tell her that you don't think I can? What kind of life do we have if you don't think more of me than that?"

"You tried to leave, didn't you?" She asked, her voice dropping down into a more freezing level now that she was starting to wake up. "Look how far that got you. You teach fifth grade. You play drums on the weekends in Columbus, Ohio—two hours away from the small town you grew up in and claimed to hate. You ended up with a girl you dated in high school. Your horizon was never that big, and it certainly hasn't extended." She pressed her lips together to study his face and his reaction. There was nothing to be seen except the fierce calm of his glare. "So you will do what I say because you don't really have another choice other than ending up alone. And we both know how well you've done with that."

He stepped closer to her so he was right in her face. "I'm done," he spit. She flinched a little bit as he towered over her.

"If that's really how you feel, Finn…then get the fuck out. My name is on the lease. Not yours." She held his glare with a challenging one of her own. "And let me ask you another question, while we're at it. How far do you think Rachel Berry would've gotten if I hadn't submitted that recording from Regionals to my mom's cousin in Los Angeles? Hmm?"

He stared and blinked as her question really sunk in. He wanted to tell her that things would've been fine without her and Rachel would've 'made it' on her own, but maybe things would've even been better because there would have been more time for him. But something else was floating through him, another realization that made his anger flare again, tinged in bitterness and regret; he couldn't get the words out.

It really was her in the beginning, always interfering in his relationship with Rachel. She had started all of this. She had undone everything, including him.

He felt the punch building before his arm ever started to swing; he turned so it landed into the wall on his left. His fist sunk into the drywall, caving it in, and left pieces of sheetrock flaking off and down onto the linoleum floor as he retracted it. It didn't matter that his knuckles were scraped and bloody; it didn't matter that his hand started throbbing as soon as it made contact.

The whole thing didn't matter because he didn't feel any better and he knew he had to go before he caved into the urge to hit a person—more specifically, a small blonde person with a wry smirk as big as her face. He knew hitting girls was wrong, but right now he thought it would be more like punching the devil. He couldn't look at her and see the girl he had loved even a little bit—even though the more he thought about it, the more he thought it had been a long time since that was actually the case.

"You… you…." He sighed and rubbed his hand over his forehead again. "This is over. It's just..it's just over. I have to go," he choked out before he turned and left the apartment, not sparing another glance her direction because he just couldn't stand to look at her again.

He had started walking in the general direction of Josh and Katie's house before he even understood the full scope of what was going on.

He had left Quinn. He was single. He didn't have a girlfriend. He didn't have a home. Basically all he had to his name was the phone in his front pocket, the drumsticks in his back pocket, and the clothes on his person. Because there was no way in hell Quinn would leave anything he owned alone so he could go back and move out later.

He stopped and sat down on the curb, his legs so long they formed a sharp triangle when he put his feet on the ground and he dropped his head between his knees.

What the fuck was he going to do now?

Somewhere in a dusty, cobwebbed corner of his mind were some breathing exercises Rachel had taught him back in Glee club when he wanted to actually sing a note for longer than, like, a beat and a half. She had taught him how to make his lungs stronger for singing with random breathing tutorials.

She had taught him so much, whether she was actually around or not. Thinking of her was kind of like his own personal breathing exercise—only now he didn't have to feel guilty for thinking of her and letting the warm, gentle feeling soothe him and calm him down. It wasn't like he was thinking of another girl or the girl he could never be with or—

Holy shit. He could go be with her if he wanted to. He…he wondered if this is what it had felt like for Kurt's bird their senior year of high school when Finn had "accidentally" left the door open (shut up, it was so an accident and not because that stupid bird started chirping at weird times all summer long). The door was open and the time was right and all you had to do was step out and…

Be.

He hadn't thought about it before, but maybe he had really been learning. Maybe he was still learning. He didn't know who to be. He didn't know what he wanted to be or where he wanted to be. All he knew was that right there, sitting on that curb, instead of drowning in fear of never being or having more—he was drowning in possibility. He had no idea what to do or where to go. So he sat there.

Slowly, the cool night turned into a cloudy morning. There were so many thoughts running around his head he didn't move, he just let all the thoughts pull him under. It was like he relived his whole life, or at least the most important parts of it, sitting there on a curb that didn't even look familiar to him. Finally, he lifted his head up and pulled a deep, crisp breath into his lungs.

Even if he didn't know what he was doing or where he would end up, he had to start somewhere. He couldn't just sit on this curb forever.

He sighed and finally stood up. The flow of blood to his legs was almost painful and he stretched his arms out as if to remind his body that it was actually six foot three and could stand up tall. He wasn't just a lump on a curb. It took a minute for his muscles and even his back to believe him. Getting older kind of sucked that way.

He looked around. He had walked probably two miles before the racing thoughts overtook him and he sat down. He wasn't particularly close to the apartment, but as far he could tell, he wasn't extremely close to Josh and Katie's house either. He squeezed his eyes shut tight. He didn't even know what time it was or how long he'd sat there.

He knew Kurt would be heading back to Lima eventually. Knowing Kurt, it would be sooner rather than later because Kurt hated relying on the "emergency" supplies he kept in his car. He would get home as soon as he could. That's how he decided he would call Kurt, even if he was only kind of paying attention when he did it.

Before the phone connected with his stepbrother, though, he realized that calling Kurt kind of meant calling Rachel. All he had to do was think her name and he felt a hundred percent better about things, but at the same time, he didn't want her to see him like this either. She would be all warm and smiles and he kind of looked like he'd spent all night in a gutter. Because he had.

He thought about hanging up, but then Kurt answered. (He was a little relieved that was actually the number he called.)

"Oh, Finn, this had better be good because it's barely six in the morning."

Finn smirked a little. Well at least he knew what time it was now.

"Can you come get me?" Finn finally asked.

Kurt groaned. "Where are you?"

Finn squinted a little, trying to will his dry eyes to work the same way he'd had to will his body back to life. "Umm…"

"Are you even kidding me?" Kurt asked, his sleepy voice tinged with annoyance.

Finn sighed. "It's a long story and I'll tell you about it when you get here. Do you remember where the high school is? The one Quinn works at?"

There was a long pause and something rustled against the mic on the phone. "I think so. If not I'll just put it into my GPS. What's it called again?"

"Bexley," Finn said. He was close enough to there he could walk to the high school. He looked down at himself, still dressed from the night before.

"Okay," Kurt sighed. "Give me like twenty minutes. And you owe me."

"I'm sure. Maybe I can talk Mom into baking you something."

"No, I could do that myself. I have fat rolls, Finn. Not all of us have the appetite of a horse and the metabolism of a meth addict even though we're thirty."

"You are snappy for how early it is," Finn said flatly.

"Either way, you owe me something epic. I'll see you soon."

Finn sighed and tucked his phone back into his pocket as he started walking slowly toward the high school. The bonus to it being the ass-crack of dawn on a Sunday morning in residential Columbus was there wasn't a lot of traffic passing by to stare at him and make him feel like a criminal.

Homeless, maybe; but he was, in fact, homeless.

What in the hell was he going to do?

He sighed. He still had the principal, Dr. Jamison, on speed dial from the time he'd broken his ankle in a rec basketball game right before the start of school two years ago. He would just have to call and ask for a sub…maybe in a couple of hours. That would give him a day to find somewhere to live. He almost wished they hadn't settled two hours away from home. He was sure his mom would let him crash there for a bit until he could get his life in order. She would probably be ecstatic he had broken up with Quinn. Maybe. He was pretty sure.

He roamed his way through the side streets to the high school and he was following the yellow lines on the driver's education range like his own sobriety test when Kurt pulled up right next to him.

He didn't miss Kurt's eyes giving him a once-over as he climbed into the car. But he smelled coffee, and even though he hated coffee he was glad Kurt had thought to stop this time.

"Finn, why do you look like you slept in a gutter? You're still wearing the same clothes you had on last night and… I have a feeling this is going to be a long story."

Finn sighed after he shut the door and smirked at Kurt a little. Kurt had no idea. It was kind of nice not to be the only one in the dark.